Alred and Matilda come to say goodbye

Alred took his wife’s hand as they stepped into the bedroom. Such a small and slender and fragile thing a woman’s hand was! He could have crushed half of the bones in it with the grip of his own hand.

It was a miracle the grip of the terrible world did not simply crush the life out of such creatures as she. He would do all he could to protect her, but in the end he knew he had only God to thank, and perhaps Saint Margaret of Antioch, that she lived at all.

Cenwulf was not so lucky.

Queen Maud was sitting at Colburga’s bedside, her delicate profile silhouetted before the lamp.

Cenwulf said that she had been watching since dawn, and that Maud herself had washed Colburga’s body. It didn’t seem like Maud, but there she sat, her head high on her proud neck, disdaining even to turn it to look at them.

“Perhaps you would like to rest a while, Maud,” Matilda said gently. “We can sit up with her.”

“I do not care to rest, but you may sit with her a while if you like.” She rose and brushed past them, never turning her head.

“Oh, Maud,” Matilda murmured, reaching for her arm, but Maud only yanked it away and walked out the door.

“Let her go, Matilda,” Alred said. He did not care to worry about Maud now.

“We both loved Colburga,” she said. “It is the one thing we had left in common.”

“Let her go.”

“Oh, Alred, look at her,” she whispered as she led him to the bed. “There’s nothing left of her.”

Alred could not look. If he looked he would cry, and he wanted to allow Matilda to cry if she would. He knew she would not if he did. She too did all she could to protect him.

“She gave all she had to her baby,” Matilda said. “Oh, I hope he lives! Cenwulf never will if he doesn’t.”

“I wouldn’t in his place.”

“Don’t even say that, Alred.”

“What else does a man have to live for?”

“You would have to live for your own precious self, because I commanded it.”

She would make him cry even if he didn’t look at Colburga.

“Do you think Colburga fought and fought to give Cenwulf that baby, only so that he would come following right after her?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Matilda,” he whispered.

“Well, she didn’t. She wanted him to have that baby so that he would have something to live for, as you say. And she lived for that. But now your long struggle is over, poor darling. And you can rest now, can’t you, dear? And you’re with your babies now, aren’t you?”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t talk to her.”

“Why not?”

“You’re killing me.”

“Oh, my poor man. Listen to me going on while your heart is breaking.”

“Now you’ve done it, Matilda.” He tried to blink away the tears, but it was too late.

“Oh, never mind. You couldn’t love the way you do if you didn’t feel the way you do.”

Well, at least he could look at Colburga now. He had no dignity left to lose.

Matilda was right. There was nothing left of her.

Her face was so hollow that the forms of the skull below could be seen. There were only great, dark shadows where her eyes had been, and her lips that had once been full and smiling were pale and dry and parted slightly over dry teeth. Only her thick auburn hair had the look it had in life.

People always said that the dead looked as if they were at peace, but Alred had never been able to see it. Colburga looked exhausted, as if she had borne life as long as she could and then collapsed under its load, never having felt the relief of its being lifted from her back.

His father had worn a look of angry surprise, as if his broken nose had come from Death punching him in the face. His little brother had lain with his brows knit in consternation, seemingly unable to believe that a ten-​year-​old boy such as himself could truly be dead. And Alred had seen hundreds upon hundreds of men who had died on the battlefield, or died in agony afterwards, and none of them seemed to have felt peace at the time.

Where was the pert, laughing, deliciously vulgar little Saxon battle axe he had met ten years before? His one great feminine rival in the domain of jest and irreverence? She was not here. He would never meet her again.

But he bent and kissed the hollow cheek of the body she had left behind.

“Alred?”

He stood and wiped his eyes on the back of his arm.

“Would you say she looks to be at peace?” he asked his wife.

“I would, yes.”

“Then there is something about death that I shall never understand. Or something that you never will.”