Malcolm asks Maud

Malcolm stood a long while outside the door, listening to Maud talking softly to the baby. He was sorry he could not understand what she was saying.

He was in no hurry to enter, though he knew that he took a risk standing in the hall, even in the dark. The sooner he entered, the sooner it would be over. He had promised Colban this would be the last time he went to her—it was the condition on which all Colban’s aid hung, and Egelric’s, and Alred’s. He would not even have a home if he defied his cousin again.

She was bending over the crib, the baby in her arms, when he opened the door, but she turned her head and smiled at him. He would try to remember her like this.

“I was just putting him down,” she whispered as he drew closer.

“Let me see him first,” he said.

The baby was warm and heavier than he appeared. The moonlight was dim, but Malcolm tried to study the little face. Was this what he had looked like when his father held him for the last time, before he rode off to meet his death?

His father had always seemed remote and inscrutable to him: a sage towering over his young and irresponsible son from some great height of experience and wisdom. But Malcolm realized suddenly that he had reached those heights and was standing in his father’s place—had climbed beyond even, for his father had lived only twenty years, and he, Malcolm, was twenty-​seven. There would be no sudden enlightenment to make him wise and experienced like his father, when he would become a man and put away childish things—unless it was this: this child.

It was twenty-​seven years later, and it was a strange thing to be looking out through the elder eyes this time. He had often wished his baby self had made the effort to look and remember. Perhaps he too would ride off to his death in a few days’ time.

“Remember this face,” he whispered to the boy—and to himself as well, he thought. The lad would be much older if he ever saw him again.

Meanwhile young Colban looked up at the stranger with quiet intensity. He enjoyed studying faces, and this person was gentle and didn’t laugh or bounce him or tickle him, which only Papa knew how to do properly.

Colban looked over at his Mama to make sure that she knew and approved of this strange person holding him, and he was surprised to see her opening her gown. He had just been fed and now he wanted to sleep—he didn’t want to bother with feeding again. He whined and rubbed his face in the person’s shirt. It was a soft shirt and smelled like a man. A man wouldn’t try to feed him. He wanted to sleep here. He hoped the man would understand. The man laid him over his shoulder, which was a fine way to sleep, and he was saying something to Mama. He did understand!

“Wait—not yet—I want to speak with you first.”

“You’re the one that always says ‘Later, later,’” she teased.

“Last night we were interrupted, and there are things I must say to you.”

“I didn’t like the things you were saying to me last night,” she pouted, and she slipped out of her gown.

“You are too cruel, a chagair. I am but a man.”

“You needn’t look,” she smiled.

So he turned away from her and tried to continue. “Colban knows, and my cousin Egelric knows.” He had been told not to mention Alred. “It is only a matter of time before your husband knows. I must tell you what to do. This is more important than anything.”

She ran a hand down his back.

“Colban will ask Sigefrith to send the boy to him five or six years hence. He will be raised with us as young Malcolm will be raised here.”

“I will not send him,” she said, drawing her hand away. “I will not.”

“You must.”

“I cannot have you, and now you tell me I cannot have our son—I will not!”

“You would tell me that I cannot have our son?”

“I am his mother!”

“And I am his father,” he said, trying to remain calm. “A boy should be raised with his father if he is to be the man he is meant to be. He is a son of Black Colin—would you have him grow up never knowing it?”

“What is Black Colin to me?” she snapped.

“I don’t know what Black Colin is to you,” he said, growing annoyed. “I am Black Colin, if that means anything to you, and Colban is, and Egelric is, and this baby is. He’s bigger than all of us. Do you not understand? And you would deny him this?”

“Oh, you’re worse than Sigefrith with your grandfathers’ fathers and your grandsons’ sons!”

Malcolm looked at her in surprise. She didn’t understand. She only saw herself in the center of it. And her mouth was ugly when she was angry.

“I don’t know what Black Colin is to you,” he repeated, “I am more concerned with what he is to my son. One day he will learn who and what his father is, and I would have him say, ‘I also am this.’ I would not have him be a stranger to himself when that day comes.”

She only glared at him.

“Listen now, a chagair. You must do as I say, if you love me, and if you trust me. Else I shall know you do not.”

“As certainly as I know you do not love me.”

“You must never tell the boy who his father is, for a child can no be trusted with secrets,” he continued, ignoring this. “You must allow Malcolm to teach him Gaelic. You must raise him to be strong and bold, and not a girning lass. And you must let him go to Colban when Colban sends for him. You must.”

“And I should do all this, and give up my beloved son to strangers, because I love you?” she sneered.

“We are no strangers, we are his family. And you shall do all of this, because you love him. You must also consider that it is better for Sigefrith. If he learns late, it will be easier to lose a son he hardly knew than one he saw every day.”

“Sigefrith!” she gasped. “What does Sigefrith matter in this?”

“Sigefrith is my brother.”

“Your brother!” She laughed an ugly laugh, standing brazen-​eyed before him with her white skin glowing blue in the moonlight like the skin of the dead and drowned, and her red mouth—purple in the light—like a twisted wound. “‘Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife,’” she quoted with a sneer. “‘It is thy brother’s nakedness.’”

Malcolm could feel the hair rising on the back of his neck. She was uncanny. He wondered again whether it would not be best to take the boy and ride away this night.

This was not the meeting he had planned for them. He was supposed to have talked to her, told her these things, and she would cry and keen a bit, but he would take her in his arms, and he would comfort her, and make their last night such that she would not forget him though Sigefrith live a hundred years.

But she was not the warm and rosy and laughing girl he had met in the other chamber the night before.

“Give me the baby!” she snapped when she saw him move his hand protectively over the child’s head.

“Will you send him to me?”

“I said give him to me.”

“First tell me, will you send him to me?”

“I could tell you I will—how do you know I won’t?” she taunted.

“Would you lie even to me?” he asked, wondering.

“I hate you!” she said, stamping her small foot and beginning to cry.

Ah, this was what he had expected to find. He knew what to do with this. She was but an unhappy girl, and he had comforted many of these. He knew she would do what he asked.