Maire feels the perfect ache

Maire was unaccustomed to sneaking about in her own house. She had not known there was a creaking board in the floor at the end of the hall. She had not known how loudly bare feet slapped on bare wood. She had not known that the door to this room squeaked on its hinges.

Indeed, the daughters of Aed were unaccustomed to sneaking about in any place, at any time, and Maire had been inexperienced enough to wait for Egelric to begin a hesitant, snuffling snoring again before she had closed the door behind her. It had squeaked a second time – a long, eerie wail, since she had to close it slowly to prevent a slam – and since then Egelric had been silent.

In comparison the night suddenly seemed loud. The wind blew a mournful tune across the lip of the chimney, a distant shutter flapped and banged, and from time to time a spattering of sleet struck the window like fistfuls of salt scattered by a superstitious hand.

Maire felt herself turning inside-​​out through her ears as she strained to listen for a man’s breathing beneath the wintry clamor.

Her bare feet ached with cold, but once upon the rug they carried her quietly as far as the bed curtains. Egelric did not snore, but neither did he stir. Maire had slept beside a man often enough to know that with enough persistence they could be prodded into a position that would silence their snoring. Perhaps, she thought, Egelric was a particularly easy bedfellow, and could be silenced with a sound.

At last she stood near enough to see through the golden glare of the curtains into the darkness behind.

The heavy woolen bedclothes lay smoothly over the man’s body like a night’s fall of snow, and a ribbon of firelight lay across them, broken only where the blankets heaped over his hips and cast their shadow.

Maire hooked her fingers over the edge of the curtain and slowly pulled it aside. The thin band of light broadened and spread upwards until her body shadowed his body and the fire illuminated his face.

He slept.

Maire shivered. She dropped the curtain and wrapped her arms around her body, trying to stop her trembling in the only way she knew, as if she only shook with cold.

But she did not fold her arms beneath her breasts as she supposed she would. Instead her left hand slid around her back, and the right came up to clench her shoulder. As soon as they settled into their places a memory swept over her in a shiver.

It was of her girlhood, when she and her sisters and cousins had played at being grown ladies in love. They had practiced swaying their hips and flirting with their eyes, practiced kissing by the proxy of dolls and sister’s cheeks and the backs of their hands…

And they had held contests to decide who could look the most like she was being embraced by a boy from behind.

Now her hands fell easily into that peculiar arrangement again; and the perfect ache that arced from elbow to elbow across her shoulders revealed the reason why lately she often woke so sore.

She pushed aside the curtain and turned to leave – humiliated, miserable, but relieved that Egelric had not woken to know.

Then another gust of wind and another grizzling of sleet against the panes reminded her of the bleakness of the night, and of the damp chill of the bed sheets to which she would be returning.

The curtain billowed over her as it settled, closing her inside. The glowing heat of the fire was abruptly extinguished, and its light only lay over her in a band, like a few straggling rays of sunlight slipping through a crack and striking the wall of a cave.

The man’s body in the blackness below her was her only warmth: an uncomforting, smoldering, smoggy heat, like a charcoal pyre. One would not like to lay oneself down upon it – not even dead.

But Maire was not certain he would notice if she did. For three days he had lived in her house with her, breakfasted and dined with her, held up her cloak for her, opened doors and tended fires for her, and she did not think he had once seen her. He did not even glance at her lips and breasts and thighs as any ordinary man did – as he still did, four days before.

Since she had left her girlhood, it was not her lovers who seemed unreal so much as Maire herself. Aengus could shrug when she tried to scorn him, and go on living his placid life without her, in the same house, as though she was not and had never been. Malcolm had sometimes forgotten he even had a wife for months or years at a time.

And floorboards could crack beneath her feet, doors squeak and curtains flutter beneath her hands, and light rise and fall with her shadow, and Egelric did not notice she was near.

She hated him, she decided, as she hated all men. In her heart the hatred was warm and real. She did not need a man’s love.

But she would not leave until she had stolen from him some proof of her existence. Her hand fell lightly upon his blanket-​​draped hip like another settling of snow. She would not wake him – only gently prod him into a position that would unsilence his snore.