Alred meets a priest and a pagan
“Wait, wait, wait! You wait here!”
Alred pulled up panting next to the two men he had spotted walking by the stable yard, where he had been out looking over the latest colt.
“I would recognize Brother Bufflehead here anywhere, but I want to know who this magnificent pagan is!” he laughed.
“That’s Duncan mac Dogface, you fool!” Sigefrith cried. “On your knee, peasant!”
But Alred only laughed and threw his arms around the man.
Egelric grinned, but couldn’t bring himself to laugh – his lord had grown so thin! Only his pink cheeks and shining eyes gave him a hint of lingering good health.
“Well, Sigefrith,” Alred said, turning to his old friend, “I would say you got the worst of it this time. You look like a black bear in a habit. Here I thought you had brought the King of Scots himself back with you.”
“Don’t laugh, man, he made quite a conquest up there!” Sigefrith replied. “What about you? You look like a sheepdog with that ridiculous hair.”
“It’s growing! What am I supposed to do? Are you calling everyone Dogface lately?”
“Only you two louts, and only because you’re too afraid of me to do anything about it.”
“We’ll see about that!” Alred cried, punching him in the arm before turning away to cough.
“We should go talk inside,” Sigefrith said gently.
“Never mind,” Alred said, shaking his head. “I can’t wait. Tell me what happened then! Did you get a chance to try out your Gaelic on them, old man?” he asked, turning to Egelric. “You never told me you spoke Gaelic, you knave!”
“Did he ever!” Sigefrith cried excitedly. “Listen to this: The day after we left Leol we’re picked up by a band of Scots, all painted blue and dressed in wolfskins like something out of a nightmare, and they sit us down next to their fire and start arguing over us in their devil’s tongue like a gaggle of harpies. So I say to Egelric, ‘Can you tell what they’re saying?’ And he looks at me, serious as a dried-up old nun, and says, ‘I can’t be sure, but I do believe they mean to kill us.’ Just like he would say, ‘I can’t be sure, but I do believe it’s going to rain.’”
Alred laughed. “I can just picture that!”
“So then Egelric gets up, calm as you please, and starts blathering at them. One of them turns and roars like a lion who has just noticed a mouse, and then Little Miss Lilyheart here bursts and lets loose a flood of molten obscenity that would have turned yours truly into a pillar of ash had I understood two words of it.”
“I had no choice!” Egelric protested. “If you knew what he said about my parents!”
They only laughed.
“All I know how to do in Gaelic is argue,” he explained sheepishly. “I learned it all as a boy living with my mother and my grandfather.”
“I should have liked to have met your mother!” Alred cried. “Sounds a lot like Matilda.”
“So that big red-headed ogre just threw back his head and laughed at our man here,” Sigefrith continued, “and clapped him on the back and made some dreadful sounds that probably meant ‘Hail fellow well met’ and suddenly Egelric is pulling out some ring he failed to mention to me” – he glared at Egelric in mock displeasure – “and next thing I know we had been escorted across the border and into a nest of fifty black-haired ogres who all had – may lightning strike me dead if I lie – the exact same abomination of a nose as our man.”
“Are you saying that God in His wisdom made more than one of those?” Alred cried.
“I don’t think that God had anything to do with that crew,” Sigefrith said. “May I never meet an unrulier band of devils!”
“They were my cousins,” Egelric blushed.
“They took our man in like the prodigal son come home again, and painted him blue and black, and dressed him up like a pagan prince and mounted him on a furry black steed that looked like a cross between a bear and a warhorse, and pummeled him and chased him around and hugged him like a rag doll, and all the rest of the journey he was Mac Donnchada, and woe betide yours truly if I slipped and called him Egelric. In fact, those were the only times they ever noticed me.”
“Poor Sigefrith!” Alred laughed. “Humbled by the son of a serf!”
“Aye, but also the grandson of black Donnchad mac Donnchada mac someone else I always forget!”
“Cuilén,” Egelric submitted shyly.
“That’s the gentleman! He’s the one killed seventy Norsemen with one blow, or some such. And spawned a tribe of devils whose name is Legion, for they are many! And mac Dogface here is the long-lost and only grandson of the long-lost and only son of the eighth son of Cuilén.”
“I didn’t know any of that!” Egelric protested. “I simply thought they might recognize my grandfather’s ring.”
“Supposing they had, and they killed us for it?” Sigefrith asked.
“They were going to kill us anyway.”
“Very logical, is our man,” Alred laughed. “So what then? Did they crown him on the spot, or did they take him to Stirling first?”
“So, they sent two of them with us, to whom I shall refer as Gog and Magog, to Stirling,” Sigefrith explained.
“Gog was my cousin Colbán and Magog my cousin Máel Coluim,” Egelric added.
“That’s about right. And it wasn’t till we got there that anyone payed the slightest bit of respect to me, and that’s only because the Scots Queen is the Aetheling’s sister, so she knows who Lord Hwala is. And she does not speak in tongues. A most charming and gracious queen.”
“What about the Aetheling himself?” Alred asked.
“Ah, but Malcolm and Edgar were already gone a-raiding. So Gog went back to tell the rest of the merry band where they were to go rampaging next, and Magog took mac Dogface and me to the camp at Durham.”
“They’re at Durham?” Alred gasped.
“They were when we left, but they’re planning to move still farther south. Listen – they’ve hundreds of English with them. They’re ten months too damn late, but they may have something!”
“Your Majesty,” Egelric interrupted timidly. “I think I see Alwy Hogge down the road, and that reminds me that I should like to run home and see my daughter, if Your Majesty will kindly excuse me.”
“Ah, it’s to be ‘My Majesty’ again, is it?” Sigefrith sighed tragically. “I suppose I mustn’t call you mac Dogface any longer, either?”
“I shouldn’t like the serfs to pick it up,” he grinned.
“Run home, then, Goodman, but I shall want to see you at the castle tonight when I can get you and Alred and Cenwulf together.”
“And Matilda and I shall no doubt send for you beforehand, old man. She will be happy to see you again,” Alred added.
“We can’t keep calling him Goodman, Alred,” Sigefrith said after Egelric had started down the road.
“If you can get him on a battlefield you can always knight him.”
“I had thought of it.”
“Look at him, Sigefrith. He hasn’t walked like that since we left for Ely.”
“Could be the wind blowing up his skirts!” Sigefrith laughed.
“No – Matilda was right. It did him good.”
“You know, I think he was happy to find his family,” Sigefrith said as they began to walk towards the castle. “It seems that he barely knew his father, had no brothers or sisters, and his mother and grandfather were rather harsh. Suddenly he had fifty brothers who were all pummeling each other to get the first chance to embrace him. Gog and Magog were fighting all the way to Stirling over which of his cousins he would marry.”
“Oh, does he mean to marry one of them?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t seem to take it seriously – about the cousins anyway. But I think he was tempted to stay behind with them, Alred.”
“I’m happy he didn’t, although I suppose that’s selfish.”
“Well, Alred, at least he knows he has somewhere to go in case – in case he needs to go somewhere.”
“Aye,” Alred said, smiling sadly. “We all may need that.”
