Matilda is welcomed home

Matilda had wondered to whom this fine house belonged when she had passed it riding up the hill to the great castle. She knew now – and should have guessed then – that it could only belong to Sir Egelric’s steward. Only such a fine, imposing house could have done for such a fine, imposing man.

“Welcome home,” the steward’s wife said cheerily.

Matilda had seen her once before, and had not dreamed then that such a frank-​​faced, smiling woman could belong to the fine, imposing steward. Even less when she had learned that the steward’s wife was known to one and all simply as Mouse.

“Your things are already up in your room,” Mouse said.

“Sorry we’re late,” Lady Lili sighed. “I made her walk the long way down so I could dip my fat feet in the brook.”

“Are your feet getting fat already?” Mouse cooed sympathetically. “I can’t wear anything but slippers these days.”

Lady Lili laughed. “I told Matilda that if seeing me frightened her for what was to come, she would be terrified to get a look at you.”

Matilda was not terrified about fat feet or even fat bellies. She had seen her own mother endure pregnancy after pregnancy, and nothing about the making or the bearing of babies was a mystery to her.

She was terrified about what would happen afterwards, when she would be husbandless and alone with a tiny, helpless baby who would be hated by most of the people for being the child of an elf. She was still more terrified to think that she might hate it herself.

Mouse and Lady Lili turned into a fine, big room as soon as they stepped into the house, but Matilda hesitated in the entry.

She had been told her room was upstairs. Was she supposed to find it herself? She did not presume to follow the ladies into the fine room.

But Lady Lili answered the question for her. “Come on in, girlie,” she said. “You must see the most important article of linen in the house.”

“Oh, Lili!” Mouse groaned.

“What?” Lady Lili cried. “If you don’t tell her, she might think it’s an ordinary towel and try to – to dust with it, or something,” she giggled.

“Matilda won’t be ‘dusting’ anyway. She is here to help me with the baby.”

“Well, then, she might try to wipe the baby’s bottom with it. Though it would not be the most inappropriate thing to do with it!” she laughed.

“Lili!”

“This, my dear,” Lady Lili said, waving at a plain, green towel that was serving as tablecloth, “is known as The Altar Cloth, with capital letters. Not because it is truly an altar cloth, but because Wyn was married in it.”

Matilda looked to Mouse for an explanation of this strange statement. Was she supposed to understand that the fine, imposing steward had been wearing a towel? As a cape, or…?

“We shall tell her the whole crazy story later,” Mouse sighed. “For now, I’m certain Matilda would simply like to go to her room and rest a while, if she has come all the way down ‘the long way’ with you.”

“And I never shut up for three seconds at a time!” Lili said gleefully. “But before you show her her room, you should show her the most important room in the house for pregnant women, at least when the baby starts getting big and pushing everything else out of the way.” Lili patted her own bump proudly.

Matilda did not yet have a bump, but her dresses were already quite snug around the middle. She did not know why the steward’s wife had suddenly desired the services of a disgraced thirteen-​​year-​​old daughter of a humble farmer, but she was grateful, and especially grateful that Mouse had been seized by the whim so soon. Sir Egelric’s castle was full of people, most of whom liked to gossip, and Matilda had felt that her belly was under constant surveillance.

Here there would only be the fine, imposing steward, his wife, and the few servants they had. Of course, she was intimidated by the steward, and a few things that Lady Lili had said on their “long way down” had made her fear that he was not pleased with this new arrangement. However, she had been all too certain of Sir Egelric’s displeasure with her presence at the castle.

Matilda was led through a kitchen that was nearly as large as her parents’ entire house, and into small anteroom that opened onto the front and back yards.

Mouse opened one of the doors on the other wall and said, “Here’s the necessary, in here.”

“Nothing was ever so well-​​named, as you will soon learn!” Lili groaned and hugged her stomach.

“You never had a big bladder in the best of times,” Mouse said.

“I can’t help that! I’m a tiny lady.”

“Who drinks as much as a tall.”

“That old devil goads me on! He likes me better when I’m tipsy,” she giggled. “‘The better to tip you over, henny!’” she said gruffly, in apparent imitation of her husband.

Matilda was bewildered. Except for that first day in the castle, after which she had been quite forgotten, she had scarcely spent ten minutes in the company of Lady Lili. Now she found herself in an unexpected intimacy with these two fine ladies – fine ladies who talked about bladders and getting drunk and being ‘tipped over’ by one’s husband!

And she had not had the time to recover from the shock of realizing that there were some people who had “the necessary” inside the house. She did not know how she would dare use it, “necessary” though it was.

“You look tired, honey,” Mouse smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to go up and take a nap?”

“In – in the day?” Matilda blurted.

“If it’s in the night, it’s called sleep!” Lady Lili laughed. “But you should nap, girlie, and get that baby in the habit of afternoon naps now. You’ll be thankful for it later.”

Neither Matilda’s mother nor Lady Lili’s housekeeper had ever suggested the utility of naps for her.

“Well, we shall go up and show you your room in any case,” Mouse said. “And if you’re not tired you can always come down with us and join us in filling up our bladders.”

Matilda crammed herself into a corner to allow the ladies to pass, but only Lady Lili took advantage of the opening.

“Oh!” she squealed as she went by. “Don’t you have some elderberry wine? The devil! That’s what I’m having!”

Matilda decided then and there that, though it seemed presumptuous for a servant such as she to nap in the middle of the day, it was far less presumptuous than drinking wine with fine ladies. She would nap.

But Lady Lili interfered with that resolution by immediately plopping herself down on the bed.

“I could use a nap myself!” she announced. “If only to get off my fat feet!”

Nor could Matilda believe that this was truly her bed. This entire room could not be for herself: a fine bed with a fine bedspread, a real mirror, a table with a basin and pitcher, a chest… even the seemingly impossible amenity of a fireplace, though it remained cold in this season. If the bed had been larger, she would have believed they were standing in the room of the steward and his wife.

In the end she decided the steward’s housekeeper must have been a particularly important personage, and this room was hers. There must have been a pallet beneath the bed for Matilda herself to use. At the castle she had shared a room smaller than this with three other girls.

“We already put your things in the chest, honey,” Mouse said. “And there are bed linens and towels in there, and everything you’ll need. And there’s room for a cradle, for when your little baby comes. Nice and snug, with the fire! When shall we expect him?”

“December,” Matilda whispered.

“That’s fine! Plenty of time to make everything we shall need. And we must get a chair in here. Oh, I have always dreamt about how sweet it must be to sit by the window with one’s baby in one’s arms, just watching the snow fall.”

Matilda bit her upper lip to prevent herself from crying. She had not yet thought of motherhood in any terms approaching “sweet”. She could not even imagine merely sitting in a chair and watching the snow fall, any more than she could imagine napping in the afternoon. In her family, snow meant drafts and leaks and misery. In her family, motherhood meant weariness, illness, and another mouth to feed.

“Do you know what I have always dreamt about?” Lady Lili asked from the bed.

“What?” Mouse asked.

“Candy!”

“Oh, Lili!”

“Don’t you still have some hazelnuts, Mousie?”

“And honey. And cream,” Mouse said wearily. “She likes candy all the time,” she explained to Matilda. “And twice as much when she’s expecting.”

“That old devil says I’m not really expecting at all,” Lili cackled. “Only pretending so I can hide how fat I’m getting from all that candy. Let’s make some! Mayn’t we, Mouse? Then Egelric won’t even know.”

“If Matilda likes.”

Matilda gasped. She did not know how she dared answer.

Fortunately, Lili answered the question for her again. “Of course she likes! If she doesn’t like candy, it’s because she doesn’t know what she’s missing!”

Matilda had only ever eaten candy at fairs, and then only when her father had done something for which he needed to pardon himself.

“Would you like to help us make some candy?” Mouse asked her.

“And eat it!” Lili added. “Which is the important part.”

“With you?” Matilda asked dazedly.

“Of course with us! Now that I have a girl here, I mean to have some fun.”

“And some candy!” Lili added.

Matilda could have protested that there were at least two other girls on the premises, for she had seen them shelling peas in the back yard. But she did not presume.

Mouse looked at her closely for a moment.

“Allow me to tell you two things,” she said softly. “The first is one that everyone knows. I grew up on a farm, just as you did, and nothing except the grace of God prevented what happened to you from happening to me. The second is one that not many people know, and I ask you not to repeat it. My little mother’s mother was not married to her father, but my little mother was the dearest, sweetest, lovingest lady ever born. So no one shall be permitted to say that your baby isn’t absolutely precious.”

“Let anyone try!” Lili said. “Mouse is a lady who speaks her mind. You shall see when she tells you the story of the red boots!”

Matilda was heartened enough by this show of compassion to joke, “Did you wear them at your wedding?”

“Honey!” Mouse laughed and gave Matilda the first hug she had had from anyone over the age of ten in many years. “I was wearing nothing but my nightgown!”