Aengus does Flann a favor

Considering the nature of their conversation the last time Aengus had shown up uninvited at Osh’s door, it was no wonder if the elf looked a little hesitant to welcome him in. “No more surprises,” that face seemed to say.

Well, he was in for a big one tonight.

“How do you do, Osh? Ach! no doubt you’re wishing me at the Devil—I see I’m interrupting your supper!”

“We were just sitting down to dessert!” Flann called from inside the house. “Come on in, Aengus, and have some pie!”

“Please do join us,” Osh added for his part, and he stepped aside. Aengus made a perfunctory attempt to kick the mud off his boots and preceded him in.

“Thank you kindly, darling,” he said to Flann, “for I’ve not had my own supper. Hallo, ladies!” he greeted the grinning serving girls. “And how are you, my little pookadoo?” he cooed at Liadan. “Will you help your Cousin Aengus eat his crust?”

“Ach, no grown-​up food for her, Aengus,” Flann warned. “Just because you give your babies ham bones to teethe on!”

“Puts hair on their chests,” he confided to the giggling girls. They were sisters, and he never could remember their names. The Short One and The Ugly One, as he recalled them.

Aengus pulled out a chair and pretended to almost sit down before springing back up. “Ach! Speaking of babies—almost forgot why I came! Flann, you’ll never guess!”

Flann tipped back her head and groaned, making Liadan laugh. “No she isn’t!”

Aengus tickled Liadan’s irresistible cheek while he talked to her mother. “Begging your pardon, darling, but I think we’d better take her word for it and get you down there. I tried telling her it could wait till I’d had a bite of supper, but she answered me in such terms as I’ll not be repeating before tender ears.”

He gratified the serving girls with a wink. But he was careful not to peek at Osh behind him.

Flann snorted. “If she can still talk, she’s not that far along. You’ll have time to eat a slice of pie. Osh? If it’s not too much to ask, would you please saddle my horse?”

Only a woman could pack so much sarcasm into such a sweetly lilting question. Aengus pulled out his chair and thumped down, taking his head out of the range of any missiles or smoldering stares.

Osh murmured, “I go right now,” and opened the door again. Aengus studiously sized up the pie on the table, while Flann remained rigid behind his chair until Osh had closed the door.

“Don’t just stand there,” she snapped, taking out her anger on the girls. “Cut Aengus a piece of pie or cake. Which will you have, Aengus?” she asked him, struggling to soften her voice out of courtesy to him.

“Cake?” Aengus wailed, looking back and forth between the chastened girls. “Nobody told me there was cake too! Now how shall I decide?”

“There’s whipped cream with the cake, sir,” Shorty said.

“Well then, that decides it! Cake it is!” Aengus slapped his hand down on the tabletop, startling Liadan into peals of hearty laughter that sent the two girls into giggles. Only Flann appeared immune to the general hilarity.

“Besides,” Aengus pointed out to Ugly as she went to fetch the bowl of cream, “there’s no crust with cake.”

“Clever man!” Shorty said.

“I did think it rather astute of myself.”

“Aengus?” Flann asked thoughtfully.

Aengus braced himself. Liadan panted with excitement and watched him with sparkling eyes, doubtlessly hoping he would smack the table again and make that funny noise. But her mother looked like someone best approached on tiptoe.

“Aye, darling?”

“The baby hasn’t dropped yet, has it? It hadn’t when I was there yesterday.”

“Ach, Flann!” Aengus groaned. “He was still in his mother’s belly when I left the house, and that’s all I know or care to know!”

Ugly was returning with the bowl, so for her benefit Aengus rubbed his head and added, “Talk to the father of me if you’re wanting a man who knows all about dropping babies. I still have the dents!”

The girls laughed, and this time Liadan took her cue from them. But not Flann! She snorted and made a smart turn that whipped the hem of her skirts against the legs of Aengus’s chair.

“I misdoubt it’s a false labor,” she announced as she stormed back to her bedroom with her chortling baby dangling from her arm, “but I shall stay with my sister until it’s time! I daresay Osh won’t show up till the babe is dangling by the cord, but he’ll still say he kept his word!”

Aengus winced at this mental image and then jumped at the slam of the bedroom door. He did not hear Liadan laughing at that funny noise. With his luck, Flann’s sour mood would prove to be catching, and the baby would cry all the way home. But there was no use fretting about it now. Aengus turned gratefully to the girls who were assembling his dessert.

“Ach, and isn’t that almost too pretty to eat! You missed a spot, love,” he pointed out to Ugly, who was wielding the spoon and the cream.

Ugly smirked at him and held up the spoon, threatening the tip of his nose with the cream. Aengus grinned. This was more like it.

After his first bite of the cake, he moaned in unfeigned pleasure and pressed his hand to his heart. “Perfection!” he announced through his mouthful. “And I’m not only thinking so because I’m famished. To which one of you ladies do I owe my compliments?”

“I mixed the cake,” Ugly said, “and she whipped the cream.”

“Then you,” he said to Ugly, “are a mixer of the first order. And you,” he said, waving his spoon at Shorty, “are a champion whipper! Have you met my boys? I may have a job for you.”

The girls laughed, and Aengus dug into his cake, smiling while he chewed. For a few happy minutes he had no more tiresome duties than feasting on cake with fresh cream, and engaging in the chastely flirtatious banter so agreeable to twelve-​year-​old girls.

At one point Flann came out in her coat, but she only stalked past on her way to the stairs. She muttered something about bringing her gifts to the baby along with her, since she couldn’t count on Osh fetching them after it was born. Aengus kept his head down and concentrated on his cake until she was gone.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t gone long. She came swooping down the stairs again, distinctly unencumbered by any baby gifts, and pulled up beside Aengus’s chair.

“I knew it!” she hissed, speaking Gaelic so the girls would not understand. “I looked out, and both his horses are still in the pasture! He’s not coming!”

“Well, you said yourself that it’s probably a false labor—”

“And what if it is? If it’s not tonight it’ll be tomorrow, or the day after! Will he be waiting till we can see the head crowning, or when?”

Aengus laid down his spoon, suddenly a little less hungry. “Flann…”

“Aengus, you have to talk to him.”

Aengus clapped his hand over his forehead. “I!”

“He’ll be breaking my sister’s heart if he isn’t there! Make them talk to each other! I don’t care if they spend the whole night a-​quarreling! I want him there!”

“What am I supposed to do about it?”

“I don’t know! Some male honor thing!”

Aengus thumped his arm down on the tabletop and half-​turned to her in his chair. “What in the devil are you talking about?”

“I don’t know!” she wailed, sounding at the verge of tears. “But you must do something! I promised him I wouldn’t mention it again!”

“And I promised Cat I would be fetching you, and that is all! Now, I’ll take anyone you like back home with me—you and Osh and anyone who wants to go!—I’ll be the damned Pied Piper if you want me to be!—but I’ll not tell a grown man whom to talk to and where to go! Nor an elf!”

Aengus flourished his spoon and took an enormous bite of cake—enough to permit him to be silent for at least ten seconds while he chewed. Flann glared at him as if she begrudged him even the cream, but shortly spun about with another flare of her hems and stomped back towards the stairs. Aengus relaxed and swallowed.

“If you thought that was bad,” he said to the red-​faced girls who sat awkwardly silent on either side, “you should have seen her sister when I asked whether I might just have time to make a sandwich to eat on the road.”

The girls grinned at him, and he felt quite a bit better.

“Would you like me to make you a sandwich, sir?” Ugly asked him.

“Ach! That’s sweet of you, love, but I daresay the cake will last me till I’m home.”

“We can cut off the crusts,” Shorty wheedled.

Aengus laughed.

He was able to finish his cake in companionable conversation with the girls, and enjoyed a mug of good cider that Ugly poured just before he began to notice that his mouth was getting dry. Even Liadan seemed content to lie around and jabber to herself in the bedroom, from what he could hear. This was more like it.

But while Shorty was up clearing away Aengus’s plate, Osh opened the door and stepped in from the yard. Through the breaks in the trees Aengus could just glimpse a darkening sky. Osh pulled the door softly closed.

“Where is Flann?” he asked Aengus.

Aengus could not think of anything humorous to say. “Upstairs fetching some gifts for the baby, she said.”

Osh looked towards the stairs. Aengus was convinced he was about to go up after her—and he very much hoped he would—but instead Osh pulled out the chair Shorty had just left and gracefully settled into it.

“Did you have a piece of pie?” he asked Aengus.

“Had a piece of cake with whipped cream. We had just enough time to hide the evidence.” He turned to wink at Shorty at the washbasin.

Osh grunted and fell silent. Aengus took a drink of cider and then fiddled with his mug for a while. The attic floorboards creaked overhead. Osh laid his forehead in his hand.

“Ach, she’ll be fine, with God’s grace,” Aengus told him. “Birthing comes easy to the daughters of Flann. I couldn’t tell you how many nieces and nephews their sisters have borne them, and all of them alive and stout as seals, praise God.”

Aengus fingered the handle of his mug and let his thoughts drift towards his two frail daughters who had died soon after birth. He blamed himself for their deaths: Muirenn because he might have run away with Maire much sooner, while the weather was warmer and the babe only a speck in her womb; and Lathir because the shock of his infidelity had sent Maire into labor too soon.

Remembering his babies—and imagining the girls they might have been by now—hurt like holding his heart over an open fire. But there was no one left now who loved them but he. Thinking of them was a duty he did.

“Besides,” he said distractedly, “it’s likely only a false labor. First babies are often sly that way. Knocking at the door and then running away.”

He smiled up at Osh, and only then realized that Flann might take such reassurances as treachery against her cause.

“Of course,” Aengus added, “one never can tell. We might get back there only to find a wee one already awaiting us, and asking to know what took us so long. God, I hope so!”

He picked up his mug and drained it dry.

In a stiff voice Osh finally spoke. “Is Rua there?”

“Ach, no, I’m going to fetch her after I’ve seen Flann and the wee pookie safely home. Thank you, love,” he said to Ugly as she refilled his cup. “You’re always knowing what I’m wanting ere I’m wanting it.”

The cider was good, but what he really appreciated was the distraction. He had not foreseen that the subject of Lasrua was to become so awkward between himself and her father. He thought Osh was a little sore that Lasrua had learned the truth from Aengus instead of him. At least, he hoped that’s all it was.

Aengus had not had a chance to be alone with her since he had told her, and he wanted to ask her how she went on. And if the night happened to be calm and the frogs singing, and the moon on the rise over the eastern hills, well, it would be folly not to enjoy a quiet ride side-​by-​side over the downs. He deserved a moment of peace on what was promising to be an exhausting night.

“I could have gone to fetch her first and brought her along here,” he said, impetuously answering an objection Osh had not even made, “but I reckoned I ought to get Flann to her sister right away. She’s gone through all this baby-​birthing business already, which Rua hasn’t, you see.”

This was going from stupid to worse.

“And besides,” he added with a sheepish smile, “if she has to sit around and eat cake anyway while a-​waiting to leave, she might as well feast on the remains of Meggie’s birthday dinner. No offense to your cake-​mixing or cream-​whipping talents, ladies,” he added, bowing left and right at the girls. “But Nothelm cooks are using the unfair advantage of cinnamon spice.”

Did that change the subject far enough?

“Say,” he said to Ugly, “speaking of pie—which we weren’t, but indulge me—perhaps you could cut me just a sliver of that handsome pie you have there? Which one of you girls will I have to favor with my compliments?”

“Oh, neither of us,” Ugly said as she picked up the knife. “We bought the pie.”

“And aren’t you wondering whether you got your money’s worth?” Aengus asked, smoothly changing tactics.

She laughed, and though it made her no prettier, there was a light in a laughing face that Aengus treasured above all earthly beauty. He grinned at her and caught her eye, and she paused with the knife in her hand to share a moment of merriment with him.

Then Flann came in from the stairs and spotted Ugly about to cut into the pie.

“Ach! You’ve no time for second helpings, Aengus, I’ve been packed for weeks. Why, Osh! Back already? That was taking no time at all!”

Such sweet sarcasm! Aengus cringed as she walked behind his chair.

“Cousin, will you kindly hold Liadan while I strap her basket to the saddle? I shan’t ask Osh to step out into the cold again tonight.”

She didn’t wait for an answer. Aengus kept his head down and played with a crumb of cake until Ugly broke off a bit of crust from the pie and slipped it beneath his gaze. Aengus popped it in his mouth and flashed her a secretive smile.

Back in the bedroom they heard Flann break into Liadan’s babbling with a babbling reply, and then the two of them returned to the kitchen. Liadan was still looking quite pleased with herself, but her mother was grim. Aengus got up.

“Here are you, my little pookie-​dookie-​doo!” he cooed at the baby.

He scooped her up just as she broke into a grin that showed off her two tiny teeth. There was no light like the light of a baby’s smile, and moreover there was nothing that changed a subject like an adorable baby. Aengus applied himself with all his heart.

“And just what were you saying to yourself back there?” he asked her. “‘Good Lordy, I’m about to be an aunt!’”

“A cousin, Aengus,” Flann said aridly as she stalked by, tightening her belt over her hips.

“Beg pardon?”

“A cousin. Cat’s her auntie, not her sister. It’s Connie and I who are to be aunts. And Rua too.”

Aengus held Liadan dangling, kicking her legs in her cocoon of blankets, while he paused to calculate. Flann was right—he was terrible at figuring out relations. Of course, if one considered that Flann’s husband was the father of Cat’s husband… What did that make them?

Flann broke into his calculations to ask him, “Are Rua and Connie there already?”

“Ach, Connie’s there. She was coming home with me after Meggie’s dinner. And I’m to fetch Rua after I’ve taken you and Mistress Pookie down home.”

He made another attempt at subject-​changing, lifting the baby almost to his nose and cooing “Pookie-​dookie-​doo!” to Liadan’s panting, slobbering delight.

But Osh effortlessly changed the subject right back when he pushed in his chair and announced in his quiet voice, “Do not bother yourself. I will bring Rua. Flann, you will not mind if Aengus takes you and Liadan, and not I. Nothelm is far to go, and Aengus has not had his supper.”

Aengus protested, “I had cake!” but Flann elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

“That’s very kind of you, to be sure!” he corrected himself. “My stomach is in your debt.”

Osh made no answer and opened the door.

Thus, Aengus thought, he had unwittingly granted Osh an excuse to see Paul again, in such a way that he could say he’d been obliged. At least, he hoped that’s all it was. At any rate Flann now owed him a favor.

Still, he wished he’d let Ugly make him a sandwich, or been quicker to ask for a taste of that pie.