Leofric meets his match

Leofric did not turn his eyes from that ghastly face, but he laid a hand on Hetty’s fur-​​capped shoulder and pushed her gently away.

“Go, Hetty,” he whispered hoarsely. “Don’t come back.”

At first she only drifted away from him like a little boat shoved off from the shore, but then she turned her eyes away from his face to follow his gaze. Her scream was so high-​​pitched as to be no more than a whistling of bitter wind.

She ran, but to the door – not to hurl herself into Alred’s arms – not to throw herself at Alred’s feet. Leofric would carry that small comfort like a candle to warm him in his grave.

As soon as the door slammed itself shut behind her, Alred echoed, “‘Go, Hetty?’” His voice too was high and sharp with irony. “Thus does a lowly lord command Her Grace the Duchess of Nothelm – my wife!”

Leofric took a few tottering steps back into his room, instinctively seeking warmth and light, though he knew he was closing himself up in a trap. Alred followed, step for step, until he stood in the doorway that had been Leofric’s only hope of escape.

“This is not what it looks like, Alred,” he murmured.

“No?” Alred snorted. “It ‘looks like’ you were standing in a doorway with your arm around my wife and a bed behind you.”

Leofric had not expected Alred to swat down his attempt to explain by deliberately taking his words so literally. He told himself he should have known, however: Alred was more than his match when it came to a duel of words. The same was true for swords, and Leofric was grateful to see that the man had come unarmed.

“The bed has nothing to do with this,” Leofric said calmly. “She only wanted to talk.”

“And what did you want?”

“To – ”

“To talk!” Alred snarled. “Even that innocent young lady is not innocent enough to believe that of you! To think I left the hall because I had imagined she was frightened of you – frightened you would come after her if she went to bed alone!”

“Alred – ”

“And she was coming here!”

“Only to talk…”

“To talk, you say! What were you talking about when I arrived?”

Leofric’s silence was deathly. When Alred had arrived, he had just spoken the one word that was not only a word.

He handled it almost daily: with his children and grandchildren, with his comfortable wife, with his friends, and even with himself, when he muttered and grumbled to himself – for it was his very name.

But in all his fifty years and thirteen days of life, only twice had he unsheathed it and handled bare the raw, sharp, and shining word – the one most mortal word – the blade that could not be held out except with the steel pointed at one’s own heart.

He had offered it to Matilda – held it out and asked with a knife-​​edged precision that admitted no ragged region between “Yes” and “No” – “Do you love me?” Matilda had simply let it drop.

He had offered it to Hetty, humbly, asking nothing – and Hetty had run away with it. Once again they had been wrenched apart too soon; he would never know what she would have said. It was a mystery that would chill him even in his grave.

Alred’s eyes grew brighter the longer Leofric hesitated, sparking like the eyes of a wolf who has scented blood.

Alred had handled the naked word all his life, and he was as much its master as he was of the sword. He could see merely by the look in his opponent’s eyes to what his opponent’s mind had turned.

“She doesn’t love me,” Leofric whispered hoarsely.

He had only meant to throw up a wall of speech to ward off her husband, but he had said the one word, and to his surprise, he found the blade still bare. It bit into his heart, piercing deeply into the old wound. Perhaps his heart knew it true.

Alred leapt up and snarled, “That is just what you said about Matilda! By God, I wish she had!”

Leofric whimpered in confusion, “Alred…”

“For that I could understand! But if she didn’t even care about you – if Hetty doesn’t! What do those two women have in common that they should both want you? What do those two women have in common that you should want them? Unless it is me?” he howled.

“Alred, please, let’s be calm…”

“Am I so repulsive that they must refresh themselves with you?”

“Alred…”

“Do you hate me so much that you must seduce every woman I love?” he asked shrilly.

At last Alred too had taken out the word, and Leofric reacted with rage. Perhaps Hetty did not love him, but he was her One Man, and he would not suffer any rival.

“You dare!” he growled. “When you loved her sister!”

Alred’s face went first purple and then white with a wave of blood that rose and fell just beneath the skin. Leofric had struck him with his own blade.

“She is not yours to love or claim to love! You married her because you could not have her sister! You married her because you didn’t have the balls to tell her that poem was for her sister, and now, just when her little heart is aching as it never has before, now you tell her! Monster!”

Alred’s mouth hung open, so slack that Leofric began to expect to see him drool.

At last he whimpered, “She told you that?”

“Don’t act so scandalized! You told her that! That poor girl! When she was so proud of her poem – because no man ever had written one for her!”

“I wrote her dozens of poems…” Alred said dazedly.

“She doesn’t want your poems! She wants to be loved!”

The truth of that phrase struck Leofric breathless like the broad side of a shield. She wanted love – he loved her. They met and matched perfectly; she was his in some self-​​evident, foreordained way. In love’s kingdom she would be his forever. He would bear that thought like a parade of torches down into his grave.

“I love her!” Alred protested.

“Not well enough!” Leofric trumpeted.

Alred’s stunned face sharpened and grew savage again. “That’s what this is about!” he growled. “You arrogant, high-​​handed prick! You never could bear to see an ugly, common-​​blooded little man such as I come back a war hero, and be called the best swordsman of my age and isle, and win the Earl’s cousin to wife, and be made a Duke here over you – you’ve been jealous of me every step of the way!”

With every one of his exploits, he advanced another step on his way towards Leofric. This time Leofric swore he would not be moved.

“That is absolute nonsense!”

“And so you strike me where I am weakest and least defended! And with that sickening ‘talent’ of yours for seducing unhappy women, you decide to show me that I don’t love my wives well enough! That you can love them better than I!”

“That is not what this is about at all! I do not envy you at all.”

“Then you despise me so much you wish to prove a point!” he sniffed. “Or hate me so much you want to take from me everything I love, as I said. It is much the same.”

“But, Alred!” Leofric pleaded. “You’re wrong about everything…”

“I should have killed you the first time.”

Alred smiled the most malevolent smile Leofric had ever seen on him, and he knew then how utterly unforgiven he still was after all these years – though his own love for Matilda was cold and buried.

Alred lifted his face beneath Leofric’s and whispered hotly, “I was a fool not to.”

Then Leofric himself did an exceedingly foolish thing. Though Alred was unarmed, and though a fistfight was one domain wherein Leofric could still hope to best the smaller man, he glanced briefly aside to reassure himself of the presence of his sword.

But it truly had been said that Alred was the best swordsman of his age. He could see merely by the look on his opponent’s face to what his opponent’s eyes had turned.

Leofric jumped, but Alred leapt first, and his hand was on the hilt even before his eyes had turned to focus on it. Leofric leapt away.

“I might have seemed merely generous and noble for letting you live then,” Alred sneered. “You certainly could not allow that. You had to prove once and forever that I am a fool. If I let you live now, I could never look another man in the face again.”

Leofric shivered, chilled by the other man’s smoldering rage. “Alred, please, let’s talk calmly about this.”

“‘Only to talk, only to talk,’” Alred chuckled. “Decidedly you are in a talkative mood tonight, my friend. The time for talking is done, however.” His face went suddenly grim, like a gate closing forever. “I have been forcing myself to ‘talk calmly’ with you for years. Now, by God, I shall never have to speak to you again.”

Like the last miracle that had saved him from certain death, Leofric found the open door behind him now. If he could only back out slowly enough, calmly enough…

But the door to the court seemed so very far away! And the court itself seemed as wide as the world. He would never make it even as far as the great stairs. His daughter and sons, his grandson, his son-​​in-​​law, his friends – the fire and light of the hall – the sun – the summer – he would never see them again.

Arrogant and high-​​handed as he was, he found he was not too proud to beg.

“Alred, please… don’t do this…”

“Is life so very sweet?” Alred sighed dreamily, as if he had just sniffed a rose. “Is life so worth living?”

“It can be,” Leofric whimpered.

Alred muttered, “Only to the unconscious.”

Leofric stepped back, but there was only the awkward emptiness of the angular corridor behind him, and in his panic he could scarcely visualize where he stood. He could only assume that the moment his back hit a wall, his life would be over.

“Listen, Alred, here’s what we shall do. We shall get Sigefrith down here, and we shall discuss this calmly, like gentlemen…”

“Oh, no!” Alred cried. “I shall not ask Sigefrith to choose between his best friend and his father-​​in-​​law!”

In the raking angle of the candlelight, only the side of Alred’s neck was illuminated, and Leofric could see by a wavering shadow the pulse that was beating just below the skin. It seemed that the man’s heart was beating in perfect time with his own, at a runaway gallop, as if killing and being killed were one and the same.

“Then we shall have Dunstan, too.” Leofric tried to speak soothingly, but his voice was high and quaking with terror, making him sound briefly like the elderly man he would never be.

“No!” Alred barked. “I do not want my son to see this!”

Leofric was a skilled swordsman himself, and he did not fail to see Alred’s pupils dilate, his cheeks flush, his teeth clench. He knew the sword would rise an instant before it rose, and the raw horror of that instant seemed densely packed with all fifty years and thirteen days of instants that had gone before it.

Nevertheless, it was not time enough. Leofric moved to stop him, but Alred might indeed have been the best English swordsman of his age. He could not miss such an easy target. He could scarcely even have been made to miss.

He did not miss.