Egelric looks into his father's eyes

“Why – that you, Egelric?” Alwy grinned, peering into his face.

“Yes, Alwy – I’m sorry to wake you but I need Gunnilda – I mean Elfleda does – I mean – can you get her?”

But then Gunnilda herself stepped shyly into the room, hestitating when she saw him. 

They had hardly spoken since that morning last month, and indeed he would have rather gone for Githa or one of the peasant women, but Elfleda had demanded Gunnilda.

“It’s time?” she asked when she got a look at his face.

“I’m sorry,” he began, but she shook her head.

“No, no. You run back home, you, and stay with her till I get there. Alwy you go with him and bring Baby back here while I dress. Bertie, you just quit your grinning and go lie down in my bed and go back to sleep, and I don’t want to hear a peep out of you!” All three stood staring at her if as if enchanted. “Go!” she shouted, breaking the spell.

Hours later, he was convinced that nothing good could come out of the heart-​​rending moans he heard coming from the bedroom. Sick and trembling, he was fit for only one thing: wrestling the beast that was hurting his wife behind that door. Standing and waiting he could not endure. 

He had stopped thinking of the baby by now and asked only that his wife would survive. She had never seemed so white! Gunnilda would not let him enter the room, would not tell him what was happening. She had finally threatened to send him out of the house if he didn’t leave her in peace. Did she look frightened for Elfleda? Or only annoyed at him?

So lost was he in worry and so quietly did she move that Gunnilda was standing next to him before he heard her come in, and it was the hem of her dress that he noticed first.

She was smiling triumphantly and her eyes swam in tears, but he only saw the squirming white thing in her arms. “Your son!” she whispered.

Egelric was enthralled. No doubt the child was Elfleda’s: he had her luminous white skin and red lips. “He looks just like her,” he breathed.

“Pish! Look at him: he has your eyes and hair. And I guess he’ll have your nose too, poor thing.”

“But his eyes are blue.”

“All babies’ eyes is blue, mumblehead. They’ll be real dark like yours, you’ll see.”

Egelric stared into those eyes for a long while before Gunnilda told him softly, “He’s the prettiest new baby I ever seen, Egelric.” 

And after a moment’s hestitation she added, “I guess that star was right.”

He looked up at her at last and saw tears on her cheeks. All at once he realized how much he owed her.

“Thank you,” he said. “Without you I don’t think I would be here now.”

“Oh, pish!” she laughed, looking away, embarassed.

“No – you showed me that star and you brought me home.” She would not look into his face. “What about you, Gunnilda?” he asked, trying to peer up into her eyes. “You saw your shadow too.”

“Oh, me!” she shook her head. “That don’t matter. I guess I’m happy enough just to see you happy.”

“You already have everything you want?” he asked, thinking of Bertie and Wynna.

“I guess so,” she whispered. “Now you take this here baby. I have to go see about Elfleda.”

And Egelric forgot about Gunnilda for the moment while he looked at his son’s face. Those were his father’s eyes, he thought, or would be if they were brown. If only his father could have seen this grandson! What might he not become?