Colban meets his godson

Egelric smiled at the sight of the young Queen standing in the handsome chamber whose construction he had overseen. He liked to know that he had brought beauty into her life beyond even the garden he had made her.

He understood better than most men how some women had a need to be surrounded by pretty things. She was like Elfleda in many ways, he thought—how Elfleda would have been if she had been happy. His gifts and secret services to the Queen almost seemed to serve as small offerings to Elfleda—small offerings of atonement. There were so many things he should have done for her.

Looking at the love and pride on the Queen’s face, he was reminded of how Elfleda had looked in those first days after Finn’s birth. And with a glance at the King he realized how he must have looked as well, and his heart smote him. He would never smile that way again.

The poor Queen looked nervous and reluctant as she handed the baby to Colban. Egelric wondered whether she were not frightened of his cousins—perhaps of him as well, in his kilts. Sigefrith had come from far in the south, and he didn’t understand the ancestral fear of Scotsmen that the people bore in the north. He chatted away at Colban as if it were a perfectly natural thing for a shy young mother to lay her baby in the paws of such a lion of a man.

Egelric wished he could reassure her—Colban had three children of his own, and he was more gentle with them than was their own mother. He hoped she could see that by the careful way he held the baby in his broad hands.

Suddenly Colban looked up from his study of the baby—looked up at directly him, with a strange and seeking look in his uncanny golden eyes as his gaze danced over Egelric’s face.

Egelric blinked at him and gave him a questioning half-​smile, trying to guess what that look meant.

But then Colban turned to Malcolm, and Egelric saw his eyes narrow, and his nostrils flare, and his free hand clench briefly as though it had thought to move for the sword he wore at his side.

Malcolm stood unflinching, his hand on his hips, and met his cousin’s stare with a flicker of a smile.

But the exchange of looks lasted only an instant, and Colban turned back to Sigefrith, who still was raving about his son.

It was not easy for Egelric to see Sigefrith with his baby. He was accustomed to Alred’s boys, who were older, but he still had baby Finn in mind. Of course, Finn would be two now, but to Egelric he was still that tiny baby with Elfleda’s beauty and his dark eyes. He couldn’t imagine how Finn would look at two or ten or twenty, and so he would remain a baby forever.

He was surprised to see Malcolm so interested in the baby and so oblivious of the beautiful woman next to him, or, failing that, Alred behind him, who leaned forgotten against a column and stared out the window—rather atypically silent as well, Egelric thought.

Just then he caught the Queen’s eye, and she smiled at him with a smile far brighter than any she had yet bestowed on him. How happy she seemed! He smiled back shyly, wondering whether she smiled at him in particular, or simply smiled out of overflowing happiness onto anyone who looked her way. He was looking forward to presenting her with some of the wildflower seeds he had brought back from Scotland. A smile like that was worth many hours of grubbing around amongst the thorns.

“Feeling left out, Magog? Care to hold him?” Sigefrith was asking Malcolm.

The Queen made an odd sort of chirping sound. She truly was afraid of these men, Egelric thought.

“Not I,” Malcolm sniffed. “Babies always cry when they get a close look at me.”

“‘Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes,’” Alred quoted from the corner with a sarcastic drawl.

“Dunstan and his Latin again?” Sigefrith asked.

“No,” he replied without looking around. “I’ve been reading the Bible in a quest for knowledge of the nature of God and My God. However, I begin to believe that direct observation is far more enlightening.”

“Then why don’t you come join us?” Sigefrith laughed. “God and My God won’t be with us forever. Who knows? perhaps the next chance you will have to observe them will be in Paradise!”

Alred didn’t answer.

“You did promise us supper, Sigefrith,” Colban prompted. “I’m hungry enough to eat your cub.”

“Let’s have him here then!” Sigefrith chuckled, taking the baby. “Alred, won’t you show them down and send for wine? This boy looks hungry himself—Maud and I shall be down shortly,” he said, smiling up at his wife with such a look of tenderness that Egelric’s heart was struck cruelly once again.

Oh, he was happy for his friend—happy, so happy. But he was lonely, so lonely for himself.

“Let’s go, you ruffians,” Alred said, ambling to the door.

“We’re behind you,” Colban muttered, his golden eyes flashing in the firelight.