Alred meets them going out

Alred was just coming out through the gate of the castle as Egelric and his cousins were riding in across the bridge, trailing a band of peasant children behind them.

“Well, Bacchus,” he cried, turning the head of the skittish son of Jupiter back into the gate, “Looks like it’s right back to the stables with you!”

After the guards had scattered the children and sent them squawking and flailing back onto the road like a flock of disappointed geese, the horsemen were allowed to enter, and they found Alred waiting for them in the forecourt.

“Now it came to pass in my thirtieth year that the heavens opened, and I saw visions of God!” he announced, standing with his arms open and waiting to be embraced and pummeled by a pack of rowdy Scots, which he very shortly was.

“Still the old blasphemer!” Colban cried as he pounded Alred’s shoulder.

“Egelric!” Alred slung an arm around his squire’s neck. “Don’t tell me you rode all the way to Scotland and all you brought home with you was these two yammering foot-​lickers. I’ve been looking forward to kissing your bride.”

“My bride?” Egelric asked, bewildered.

“Don’t blush, my fair one. Before you left you asked me a few questions that brought me to thinking that you might be considering bringing some young and delicate creature home with you, other than these two louts.”

“And so I did,” Egelric laughed, pointing to a small boy who stood shyly apart from the men.

“Now, who’s this?” Alred smiled.

“Truly, this lad is the son of God!” Malcolm proclaimed.

“Malcolm!” Egelric cried, horrified.

“Don’t worry about him, Squire,” Alred said. “The wise woman tells me I wrestled with the Devil himself when I lay dying, and I won. So when you get to hell, My God, you just tell the old man that Alred Sebright sent you, and he’ll leave you well alone. So this is your boy, God?” he asked Colban, though he could see now by the child’s golden eyes that he was.

“Malcolm, the younger of the twins.”

“Well, does he speak only Gaelic or what?”

“He speaks your barbarian tongue very well,” the elder Malcolm smiled, his eyes flashing. “He has a delightful accent. It was his Uncle Malcolm taught him.”

“So he has understood every blasphemous thing I have said thus far?”

The boy smiled.

“We warned him about you,” Colban said.

“Well, he has his father’s eyes, but he has the unholy smile of the Lord My God, doesn’t he?”

“Our fathers were brothers and our mothers were sisters,” Malcolm reminded him.

“Nevertheless, I would hardly consider you interchangeable.”

“A pity, for he has a lovely wife,” Malcolm said, leering at his cousin.

“Get your own,” Colban growled.

Malcolm only laughed.