Egelric offers more help

“I thought I would find you up here when there was no one home,” Egelric chuckled as Gunnilda came down the steps of her new house to greet him. “Alwy told me he told you.”

“I’m so glad to see you, Egelric!” she said. “Tell me it’s true! I just can’t believe someone hasn’t been playing a trick on poor Alwy.”

“No tricks here! This is your house, yours and Alwy’s.”

“But it’s even finer than yours, and you’re a squire!”

“That’s because I’m too lazy to build myself a better one. And I suppose I don’t find myself worthy of such a fine house.”

“Am I?” she laughed.

“Alwy certainly thinks so.”

“Is it true, everything he said about Osric and everything?”

“I don’t know what he told you, but if he said that Osric will be working for him now, it’s true. I think the Duke means to have another man out here as well, for the sheep, and put him under Alwy. But don’t mention it just yet.”

“I feel awful, Egelric. I was always nagging him and pestering him for working all hours, and here he was, building me a house…”

“Don’t feel sorry for Alwy,” he laughed, taking her arm and strolling with her around the back of the house to overlook the downs. “I believe he got a lot of fun out of his little secret.”

“I just don’t know how he kept it hid from me all this time,” she said, shaking her head. “And I thought I had a nose for gossip!”

Egelric laughed. “Everyone in the valley was in on it but you! Even your own traitorous children knew. A great many people helped out up here this winter. You should know there are many people in this valley who think highly of you, Gunnilda, starting with Alwy and going on down. Alwy doesn’t realize that’s anything out of the ordinary, so I thought I should tell you. You’ve delivered a lot of babies and healed a lot of sick children and given a lot of good advice. And you’ve been a mother to my daughter, against which service my work here has been little more than a gesture, but it gave me pleasure to do it for you.”

“I just don’t know what to say,” she murmured.

“That’s fine, because I haven’t finished talking. There’s something else I might be able to do for you here. It was Alwy that gave me the idea, but I think I can help. Now, when he asked me what I thought about this site, I told him I almost built here, and one of the reasons that I didn’t was because it’s rather windy and rocky on this hill and it wasn’t good for Elfleda’s roses and lilacs and other flowers. And Alwy was disappointed because he had been hoping to make a garden for you.”

“A garden for me? With flowers?”

“Wouldn’t you like one?”

“Well – I don’t know. I guess I never asked myself the question. I never thought I could have one.”

“Alwy thought you would like one.”

“Well, Alwy may be right!” she laughed. “I never thought I would like a fine stone house, neither, but I guess I do!”

“Indeed! So I asked myself, ‘What kind of flowers could grow in a windy, rocky place?’ And then I thought, ‘Why, the windiest and rockiest place I know is my grandfather’s country, in the hills!’ And wouldn’t you know I brought a whole bag of seeds home with me last time I went?”

“Seeds from Scotland?” she smiled.

“The red heather and the white heather, and the broom, and the blaeberry, and others who only have Gaelic names so far as I know – it wouldn’t be a thing like Elfleda’s garden – not really like a garden at all, rather a fragment of the moor – but wouldn’t it be splendid to see this hill all purple and golden in the fall?”

She laughed to see his excitement. “Is this my garden or yours?” she asked slyly.

“Why – ” He turned to her, taken aback. “You don’t like the idea?”

“Oh, no, I do – very much.”

“Then it will be ours.”