Alred sees

Leofric could tell at once that Hetty had just taken down her hair: the unknotted ends were still damp and heavy from her bath hours before, and like a flower first opening, her hair was shedding all at once the perfume it had stored in its coils and folds.

But he could also tell that she had taken the shortcut through the open court, rather than walking the dusty hallway that crossed over the gate and into the south tower. There was an odor of November cold over her hair, sharp and metallic like the scent of cold blood, and sinister as frost on a flower.

For the moment, Leofric’s love’s greatest longing was to shelter her – to keep her forever sweet and dewy as a baby – to build her great fires, to wrap her in fur rugs, to fold her in his arms, and to press her chilly face against his neck, warming it with the blood-​​heat of his body. She would never again feel cold – never, for as long as he lived.

Hetty continued warming her cold hands with hot tears.

He tried to lead her inside, but she would not be moved. “Hetty, come in,” he whispered. “Come in and get warm.” He rubbed her arm briskly with his hand.

“I shall die,” she gulped.

She lifted her head, but it swung about drunkenly like a blossom on its wilted stem. The skin around her eyes was a ghastly pink, the color of dollops of blood beneath a dusting of snow. She had been shedding tears longer than her hair its floral perfume.

“I won’t let you.” He brought his mouth close enough to her temple that he felt his breath blowing back against his lips, eerily chilled, as if it had blown over a corpse. He shivered with tiny tremors of loneliness and fear. “Come inside, and I shall close the shutters and bring chairs to the fire.”

She found strength enough to growl, “It is wicked!” – sweetly savage as a kitten attacking its mother’s tail.

“No, Hetty…” he soothed. “Only to talk…”

She swayed from head to feet, battering her little body against his, chanting, “How could she? How could she? How could she? Go to his room?”

He thought she spoke of herself in the third person, and found her unspeakably dear. “Hetty, only to talk…”

“Not only!” she whimpered. “All those times he said he wanted to see Egelric… it was to see her! And she him!”

“Hetty, who?”

“Lili!”

“Good Lord, no!” he sighed. “Come inside and we shall talk about this.” He pulled gently on her arms, but she shrugged him off. “I don’t know what your husband did, but your sister never did anything wrong.”

“She did! I think it is his child, her baby…”

“Hetty!” he groaned. “Son of a serpent! What nonsense! Come in here and let me toast some warmth into you and talk some sense into you, and then we shall have a nice chat…”

He tried to coax her inside with gentle hands, a gentle arm, but her body resisted him, rigid and brittle as a stem of grass steeled with frost.

“Hetty, be reasonable,” he pleaded. “That poor runt looks just like his ugly old father, mouth and chin and hair and all. Anyway – ”

He paused to count on his fingers again.

“Hetty, you little looby,” he sighed indulgently. “Alred was in Norway with Sigefrith and me when that poor baby was first thought of. Did you even think to count?”

Hetty gasped and held her breath. Her body softened as she remounted the months. He tried to mold it against his, but she seemed to be melting away from him. He realized abruptly that in defending Lili, he had also been defending Alred.

“Hetty,” he whispered urgently. “Come in with me now.”

She breathed again: not her shuddering sobs, but the open-​​mouthed panting of a thoughtful baby. Careless of her breath, careless of her tear-​​streaked cheeks, she lifted her face – but not to him.

“Hetty, look at me.”

She looked. He saw only the frosty blue irises of her eyes, glinting with the metallic impassivity of blades that little care against whom they are turned, and the teary whites around them like blood-​​flecked snow.

Leofric swayed beneath great waves of loneliness and fear. She had not understood.

“Hetty, I love you.”

Slowly the rest of her face bloomed into his sight: the high, white forehead; the lily-​​like cheeks that would lie upon his bare chest; the tiny ears like petals he would stroke and pluck; and the pink mouth he would kiss – the sweet little mouth, with its sweet bottom lip, round and trembling like a drop of dew.

The mouth spoke a single sweet, shaking word – “Love” or “Leof” – an echo, a question, an affirmation, or merely his name. He would never know.

He glanced up, believing he had seen movement out of the corner of his eye. He had been mistaken, however. The man who stood before him was immobile as ice, his face white as snow.