Leila pronounces a happy phrase
“Ohhhhh Leilaaaaa…” Conrad called in a coaxing sing-song.
“What is it, Conrad?” she sighed. Philippe was fussy from the heat, and she was feeling rather hot and fussy herself.
“There’s a gentleman here to see you.”
“A gentleman? Isn’t—” She lifted the squalling baby away from her body so that his bare chest would not be pressed against her bare neck. “Isn’t your father here to see him?”
“He’s out in the fields, but anyway this gentleman was most particular about seeing you.”
Conrad sounded quite pleased with himself, as if he had a delicious secret.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Come see!”
“Conrad!” she groaned. “Is it Cedric? or one of the twins?”
“Come and see! And give me that baby and pretty yourself up.”
“You want to hold the baby? This must be an important personage,” she grumbled.
“You will think so.”
“Is it Alred?”
“No! And I shan’t play guessing games with you, so you will simply have to come and see. I’m going back downstairs. And don’t forget to have a peek in the mirror,” he winked. “You women seem to think you’re frightful if you have more than three hairs out of place.”
“Only if they are the hairs on my upper lip,” she joked, but she glanced at the mirror all the same. Fortunately she did not appear as wet and wilted as she felt.
Conrad was all but giggling behind her as they descended the stairs.
“Is it the Old Man?” she asked.
“Stop guessing, Leila! I shall never tell you, and you will never guess. You’re almost there.”
Then she was there—and no one else.
She sighed. “Is this some sort of joke?”
She told herself she must not be short with him. She told herself she would not have been so annoyed if not for the heat. It was hot in her country, of course, but that was a dry heat that could be eased by the merest breeze, even from a fan.
“I told him to wait in the next room,” Conrad said. “I wanted to see your face myself.”
“Conrad! Who is it?”
“You may come in now!” he called.
Perhaps it was the heat, or perhaps the effect of a dark room and blindingly bright windows. Perhaps it was merely the way he walked, with the smooth, efficient stride of a nomad, born to flow like water over stone and sand.
From the first moment she knew him for a countryman. His body, the heat, and the shadows and the light all conspired to make her feel not that he was out of place here, but that she had been whisked away home again. She was surrounded—after all this time, she was about to be killed for her crime—
“Ya lu’lu’ah… ya habibti…”
It was her father’s voice, her father’s name for her… But the man was impossibly young. She had been whisked back in time as well.
She was whisked back to the present by an exasperated whine from her baby son, followed by the loud and slightly sheepish voice of her stepson saying, “It’s your brother Joseph, Leila.”
“Yusuf! Yusuf! Praise God! Praise God!”
It was all she could say in the time it took her to lift the hem of her skirt and run into his arms.
Her baby brother had been scarcely twelve when she had run away—a slight, shy, almost effeminate boy—and in her mind he had somehow so remained. But thirteen years had passed. He was a man now, truly. And she should have recognized him.
“Yusuf!” she babbled. “You must see my son Aefen! He looks so much like you!”
He laughed. It was very nearly their father’s laughter. “Then this must not be Aefen behind you.”
“This is my husband’s son, Conrad,” she said.
“I heard my name!” Conrad piped.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Conrad,” she said, finding English suddenly to be a difficult language. “This is my brother Yusuf!”
“We’ve met,” Conrad said.
“Oh, and show him the baby! My brother, this is my new baby, Philippe. He is almost two months old.”
Her brother saw and exclaimed over the baby, but Leila could not take her eyes from her brother.
She had been eight and he three when their mother had died, so she had been too young to be a mother to him. However, they had been more than friends, and she had loved him passionately, as she had not loved any of her other half-brothers or half-sisters. Yusuf had always come to her when he cried, and what she most regretted about running away was leaving him behind without her.
Once Conrad had gone in search of Odile and they were seated before the bright window, she said in wonder, “You’re a man!”
“Are you surprised I managed it without you?” he smiled.
“Yes!” she cried: an honest answer.
He laughed their father’s laugh again. “A man—a mere doctor, so I shall never be a rich one. And, Leila, you’re a woman, a mother. I am scarcely less surprised to find you so. How many children do you have? My friend was not certain.”
“Seven children! All alive, praise to God. Five with Leofric— Ah! do you remember?”
But of course Yusuf remembered Leofric: it was her interest in the English lessons Leofric had been giving her brother that had allowed Leila to meet the colossal knight in the first place.
“I hope he will accept to meet with me again,” Yusuf said gravely. She was about to insist that her relations with Leofric were quite amicable, but then he smiled and said, “He will be furious at my lack of progress in English.”
“‘The cat is in the garden!’” Leila laughed, mimicking her own crude accent of those days. “‘The cup is on the table.’”
“Son of a serpent!” he cried.
She laughed. “That’s the lesson one never forgets! But who is your friend, who knows I have children but not how many?”
“It is a Christian priest—but I must tell you this story of how I found you, habibati. It is the most remarkable thing! It can only be the will of God.”
“Praise Him!”
“I was a doctor on this side and that of the Mediterranean, for even a Christian prince will welcome a Saracen into his house if he can heal his pain. And with my blue eyes, they could always pretend they didn’t know.”
He winked one of them, and she giggled out of overflowing happiness.
“And this spring, I had gone to Salerno to study, and one afternoon a man came to me with a message from his lady—a great lady, whom I saw from afar, all veiled in silk and on a horse with a jeweled bridle.”
“And she had fallen in love with you from afar!” Leila laughed. “You handsome boy!” She grabbed his wrists and squeezed them. “But aren’t you married yet?”
“No, sister. Neither my doctor’s fees nor my blue eyes will buy me a wife! But listen: the great lady was not in love with me at all. She knew of a penniless priest who was ill, and she wanted a good doctor to go to him, for all the Christian doctors were at the bedside of the Pope, who lay dying in the same city.”
“We heard of his death.” Leila crossed herself, which drew an odd look from her brother.
“So her man paid me,” he continued, “generously, and told me where the priest could be found. A big Irishman, with red hair. He was quite surprised to see me, and he did not know who the great lady could be nor how she knew of his illness. But he was very kind, despite his suffering, and he liked very much to talk. I say that sometimes listening is the best medicine, but after a few hours with him I felt as if I was the one who had been healed. For he told me he knew one of my countrymen: a lady named Leila who had married an English lord.”
“It was Father Brude!” she gasped.
He laughed. “I thought it was quite funny, and told him I had a sister named Leila who had run away with an English slave, and I joked that I was sorry it had not been with an English lord instead.”
“But it was Leofric and I!”
“Yes! He told me more about his Leila, and finally we decided it was my Leila, and he told me where to find you. Can you believe it? I asked of you everywhere I went, and no one had heard of you or Leofric. It was an Irish priest who told me! It is surely the will of God.”
“Praise Him! Perhaps the noble lady was one of His angels.”
“I don’t know what else to think of her! I tried to find her, to tell her what she had unwittingly done, and to give her all my thanks…”
“But she had gone back to Heaven!” Leila laughed. “Or to wherever mysterious ladies disappear in such remarkable stories. Oh, Yusuf!” She clapped her hands in delight. “This is the happiest story I was ever told! Only wait until Leofric can bring the children, and you will see them all!”
“Perhaps I shall not be so terrified of him any longer. I remember him as big as a mountain.”
“He still is!” She giggled wickedly. “But now he is a mountain with a little bit of snow on top!”
“I shall tell him you said that, Leila.”
“No!” she gasped, though she knew it would be more likely to amuse the man than to annoy him. It was also fun to tease and be teased by her brother. Her brother! She was shaking with joy that had boiled over in excitement.
“Ah!” He looked over her shoulder towards the doorway. “‘The baby is on the Conrad,’” he said in deliberately ridiculous English.
“Odile! My brother, come meet my daughter.”
They were words she had thought she would never say, and she would have the joy of saying them several times over in the coming days. They were among the happiest she had ever pronounced.
