Gunnilda has a late visitor

Gunnilda Hogge was exhausted. Alwy and the children were all sick, and she had only just managed to get all three of them to sleep. Afterwards she had had to clean up the house and rinse her good shift and hang it to dry, for poor Wynna had crowned the evening by throwing up all over her mother.

She had not quite fallen asleep when she thought she heard a knocking.

What now? Had one of the children awoken already in the other room? She sighed as she threw the covers off her legs and got up.

But the two of them were sleeping soundly, their poor cheeks flushed with fever.

She heard the knock again—it was outside, at the door. Yet it was so faint that she wondered whether the knocker had any intention of being heard.

She remembered that she was wearing her old shift, the one she wore when nursing, and which had an unfortunate habit of flapping open at the most inconvenient times. But anyway, she would have to find out what this was about. She couldn’t wake Alwy.

She opened the door and found no one. Surely she had not been imagining things.

She stepped outside and down the stairs—she would just have a look around.

Just as she turned the corner of the house she nearly ran into Egelric Wodehead.

She was so startled she forgot to insult him.

“Oh, Egelric! It’s just you!” she laughed, relieved.

“Did you need Alwy for something? He and the babies are sick, I hope we don’t have to wake him.”

Egelric shook his head slowly.

“Egelric, what is it?” His look frightened her. In the dark she couldn’t be sure, but his eyes almost looked as if he had been crying.

He wrung his hands but didn’t speak. He had been hoping to find Alwy—in truth, he had almost hoped to find no one. He hated to wake Alwy, but he didn’t know where else to go. He dared not sleep in his barn. As he had walked that night, the idea had struck him that Elfleda might be capable of burning it down around him while he slept, and now he could not shake the thought loose.

Instead he had woken Gunnilda, and the fact was so far outside of what he had been expecting that he was unnerved. He wouldn’t have had to have explained anything to Alwy, but of course Gunnilda would ask him questions…

“Egelric, has something happened? Has something happened to Elfleda?”

He looked away from her searching eyes.

“Ahhhh, what has she done now?” she asked knowingly.

Reserved as Egelric was, and as double-​faced as Elfleda was, Gunnilda had long perceived that there was something not right at the neighboring farm, and she disliked Elfleda a little more for it every day.

Supposing he did tell her? To whom could he speak if not to her? Alwy was his closest friend, but Alwy couldn’t understand. The only other man he knew well was the Duke, and he of course was too far above him to be troubled by such things. There was the priest… but if Egelric spoke of this to him he would also have to talk about the curse, and he knew how furious Father Brandt could be when he overheard peasants talking about the curse. Gunnilda was of his station, he saw her almost every day, and although his only conversations with her tended to be jokes and playful insults, he knew that she was a capable and a—a caring woman.

He would just tell her about the trip to town. No need to mention the boots, or Elfleda. It would be a relief to tell of his reception in the town to someone who was likely to be sympathetic.

Gunnilda listened to his story, nodding in commiseration. “We just can’t go home any more, can we, Egelric?” she sighed. “I’m surprised the Duke would send you.”

Egelric paused. Could he tell her that much? “It wasn’t… the Duke, in fact,” he said. “It was Elfleda needed some… some boots.”

“Boots?” she asked, bewildered. “What on earth does Elfleda need boots from town for?”

“I think she… I think she just wanted me to go to town, knowing how I would be received. I think she just wanted to do that to me,” he said, his voice beginning to tremble.

Gunnilda gasped.

“She wouldn’t! That’s just—that’s just—”

“Cruel?” he suggested, quietly. “You don’t know what my life is, Gunnilda. You can’t imagine, or else you wouldn’t be surprised.” He leaned back against a birch trunk with a sigh and closed his burning eyes.

Gunnilda stood quietly, dazed. She had suspected… It wasn’t normal for a man to spend most of his evenings away from his wife. She had known Egelric and Elfleda back when they had fallen in love, but there wasn’t any sign of that affection left in either of them. Elfleda had certainly changed since she came to Lothere—since her baby died, in fact—but surely she hadn’t become so vicious? And Gunnilda often left her alone with the children! She shivered.

“Why, Egelric,” she said softly when she looked back at him, “I believe you’re crying.” She reached up automatically to brush a tear away with the back of her hand, as she would have done for Sigebert, or—well, anyone, she told herself.

Startled, Egelric grabbed her wrist, but he didn’t pull her hand away.

He knew Gunnilda to be affectionate with her family, but the bustling, harried housewife he met in the evenings had never struck him as being gentle. Indeed, this was quite a different Gunnilda from the one he knew. When he saw her, she always wore some rough and shapeless dress with a patched apron, had her hair untidily pinned up, and usually had a squalling toddler or two clinging to her legs. And she never talked but she yelled.

He could scarcely have imagined that she could be transformed into this slender-​limbed, smooth-​haired, soft-​spoken maiden. He caught himself wondering how she hadn’t done better than Alwy. But he did his friend a dishonor. Even if their new king had never come along, Alwy was hard-​working and faithful enough to have made a better life for Gunnilda than most normal men would have done.

Still, though Alwy was a gentle man and loved his family, what did he know about the love between men and women? He had never seen Alwy looking at his wife the way—why, the way he used to look at Elfleda. He tickled her and pinched her and squeezed her, but did he ever caress her? What had Gunnilda given up when she chose Alwy? Did she even know?

He held her slender wrist lightly and bent his head to look into her eyes, but she avoided his gaze and intently fingered his hair, her hand occasionally brushing his cheek.

He was deeply moved by the gesture. It had been years since his wife had done anything of the sort. He wondered how long she would keep it up if he didn’t disturb her, and so he kept very still and watched her face as she played with his hair, apparently fascinated, her dark eyes shining in the dim light of the young moon.

After a while she seemed to realize what she was doing and stepped back, shyly smiling.

Still he did not let go of her hand. He studied it for a moment, and then, impulsively, bent his head to kiss it.

Surprised at first, she soon began to laugh. “Oh, Egelric, you’ve been spending too much time with the noblemen!”

He grinned up at her, still clasping her hand in both of his.

“That’s not how we common folk do,” she scolded.

“How do we do?” he asked.

“With a big hug!” she said, and threw her arms around him, laughing.

He laughed too, at first, but—God, how he had needed to touch somebody, to be held by somebody. He had been shrinking from his wife and everybody else for so long that he had begun feeling like an outcast from humanity. He held her tightly—ferociously even.

“I guess you needed one,” she said as her laughter faded. He didn’t answer. A moment later she giggled nervously and asked, “Are you planning on letting go of me sometime?”

“Damned if I will,” he growled.

Gunnilda gave a sobbing sort of laugh and then fell silent, but she laid a hand on the back of his neck and held his head against her shoulder.

“You like playing with my hair,” he said finally, smiling to himself.

“It’s soft,” she explained, feeling foolish.

“So are you.”

“Oh!” she cried, self-​conscious, and tried to squirm away.

“Not…yet…” he cautioned, holding her firmly. If he knew the contrary nature of women, she should like nothing better than to be carried with a rather high hand, having ruled supreme in her domain for years.

After she stopped struggling, he waited a moment longer and then stepped back from her, saying softly, “Now: let me look at you.”

She couldn’t hold his gaze for more than a few seconds, but more than that he couldn’t see in the darkness. He was sure of one thing, however. “You’re beautiful.”

“In the dark!” she laughed, grateful to find a chance to lighten the tone.

“In the dark, and in the day as well,” he said, stroking her cheek. “I don’t know how I never noticed before.”

“That’s because Elfleda is so beautiful,” she said fretfully. How often had she envied Elfleda for her snowy skin and perfect composure! Gunnilda always felt so brown and bedraggled next to her.

“Elfleda is only beautiful in the light.”

She let her arms drop to her sides and looked down, her heart pounding. She had deliberately said Elfleda’s name, and yet it hadn’t broken the spell.

He stepped closer.

“I shall never forget how you looked tonight,” he whispered. So close to her, he could smell her neck and her hair. A bit like fresh bread, he thought, and a bit like the green wheat in the dew or after a rain. He chuckled.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he murmured into her hair. “I was just thinking that I would make a dreadful poet.”

“A poet?” she asked weakly. Her arm twitched as the back of his hand brushed her fingers.

“Nothing,” he repeated. He left his arms at his sides, wanting to see whether she would let him stand long so close to her without being held. Her whole body trembled but she didn’t step away.

When at last she moved, she lifted her hand and sought the hollow of his neck with her fingers.

He held perfectly still, scarce daring to breathe. For long minutes she studied the curves of his collarbone with the same rapt attention she had paid his hair a while before. He knew something of women, but this one with her innocent ways was something he had never experienced, or even imagined.

What a fool he had been! He had never looked twice at dark, busy little Gunnilda—he had run after Elfleda with all the rest of them, clamoring for the chance to merit a toss of her proud head and one of her canny smiles. By God, he had won them. And meanwhile dark, busy little Gunnilda had chosen the one man who wasn’t running.

But so it was. He could feel the familiar sorrow stealing over him, and the weight of his dismal future with Elfleda settling back on his spirit.

Gunnilda was whispering something to him, but it seemed to him he was already gone. “I should let you get back to bed,” he murmured.

Gunnilda stood silent, her chin trembling.

“When you wake in the morning, you’ll see that this was all a dream. I have left no sign. Good night, Gunnilda. Take good care of Alwy,” he added, and he turned his back to her and walked away. If there was a servant awake at Nothelm to let him in, he thought, he would climb to the roof of the tower and spend the rest of the night far above the world—for a few more hours where no one could reach him. And from that height he could better see the sun rise.