Lili asks too much
“Egelric!” Lili whispered.
His face lay in the shadow of the lamp, but there was enough light for her to see him smile faintly in male beatitude. However, she could not see the whites of his eyes.
“Egelric! Don’t be falling asleep yet.”
“No more!” he pleaded weakly.
“No! I want to talk with you.”
“Not now, henny! I’m liable to promise you anything.”
“You old devil!” she gasped. “When I asked you before you said the same thing!”
“Ask me t’morrow,” he mumbled. “At breakfast. Partic’ly if it’s burnt.”
“I can’t ask you tomorrow at breakfast because Stein and Sophie will be there.” His eyes were falling shut again, so she smacked his arm beneath the blankets. “Listen, old man! I did everything you wanted tonight, so now you must listen to me.”
“Everything I wanted?” he groaned and opened his eyes wide. “The devil! There are nights when you make me sorry I’m only a man and not a woman like you. And you call that sacrifice? What must it be when you get what you want?” He laughed at his own wit.
“Listen! You think this is funny. I want to talk about Sophie.”
“Ach, Lili!” he sighed. “That is definitely a conversation for a burnt breakfast.”
“I’m serious, Egelric! I shan’t sleep a wink. I’m trying to think of what to do for her.”
Egelric rolled onto his back. “I’ve already done as much as I can, henny. I’ll take any chance I can get to thumb my big nose at Father Brandt, but this is serious business. And I said I would help her pay the fine to his brother, but you know I’m not a wealthy man in terms of silver, Lil. I can’t pay it all.”
“Stein has enough. But I think it’s so stupid she can’t simply pay it with her dowry,” Lili grumbled.
“And I think it’s stupid to leave an entire kingdom in the hands of a fifteen-year-old boy and a bunch of women. That’s what you get.” Egelric jabbed his finger in the air as if lecturing the ceiling. “She can count herself lucky his father specifically forbade him from judging any capital crimes in his absence. Everyone says we old men are cold-hearted and conservative, but oh! the rigidity of youth!”
Egelric snorted like a self-satisfied horse in conclusion of his speech, and then rolled over onto his side, his back to her.
“But, Egelric,” Lili pleaded. “There’s more to it than the silver. She can’t go into a convent. She’ll never see her boys again.”
“Perhaps when they’re grown…” he muttered.
“Oh, Egelric!” she wailed. “How could you? When you miss your own son so!”
Egelric said nothing at first. He rolled his head slowly towards her as if it were a ponderous stone. The silhouette of his nose rose out of the silhouette of his head until it hid half the lamp. Truly, she thought, he had an intimidating profile. Lili feared she had gone too far.
But he did not sound angry when he spoke, only weary. “You’re wanting me to ask her to stay here.”
Lili did not dare to confirm or deny this supposition.
He sighed. “I like Sophie, and I don’t blame her for what she did, but I can’t let her stay, Lili. You know that.”
“Why not?” she asked softly, trying to sound meek and naïve.
“There are men in this valley who might permit themselves such a folly, but I am only the son of a serf. I have nothing but the rank I was given, and there are those who say I don’t deserve it.”
“What does that have to do with Sophie?”
“It has more to do with Jehanne. She already has the handicap of having an ugly, grouchy, pagan peasant for a father. She’ll never find a worthy husband if she grows up in the same household as a murderess.”
“Ach, Egelric!” Lili whimpered.
“Good night, henny. Tell your cook to burn my toast again if you want to talk about it more tomorrow.”
“But, Egelric!”
“I can’t help her more than I have. Now good night.”
“But somebody else might,” she pleaded.
“Then go talk to somebody else and leave me sleep,” he snapped.
Lili fell silent. She knew him well enough to know when she had reached the limits of his indulgence.
He took her hand and pressed it beneath his arm by way of apology for snapping at her, and within minutes he was snoring grandly.
Lili counted thirty snores, and then she wriggled her hand out from beneath the weight of his arm. Slowly she rolled away from him and slowly she slid out from under the blankets.
Lili had another idea she had not dared mention to Egelric.
She would rise and put on her nightgown. She would go down and speak to somebody else.
