Brede makes a threat

Brede came into the dusky hall and looked around briefly before stepping into the bedchamber. When he came out again, he asked, “Synne, where’s Sigi?”

“I don’t know,” Synne mumbled and shrugged.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” he asked in irritation.

“I mean I… don’t…” she repeated slowly. “Oh, wait! I do know. She’s at the brook.”

“What? At the brook?”

“Don’t you hear anything the first time?” Synne snapped.

“What’s she doing at the brook?”

“Sewing, I suppose.”

“What?” he cried. “Sewing?”

“What?” she mocked. “Sewing?”

“Quit it, Synn! With whom?”

“I don’t know. With no one.”

“You let her go out there alone?” he cried.

“I let her? I am supposed to be watching her?”

“Well, what have you been doing all this time?”

“I was watching cook make the tarts.”

“Very fine, Synn. And meanwhile Sigi is out sitting by the brook like a – God! You two know you aren’t supposed to go away from the house alone! Where is she? Upstream or down?”

“Ummmmm, downstream is that way, right?” she asked, pointing to the south.

“Is that where she is?” he asked as he stalked to the door.

“No, upstream then.”

“God!” he cried and slammed the door behind him. He hurried across the court and was about to shout her name when he thought better of it. If she was not alone after all, he wanted to find out with whom she sat “sewing.”

He found her sitting on a log a short walk up the brook from the house. She was sewing, and she was alone. His quivering anger subsided and left him merely annoyed and exasperated.

He would much rather have had the charge of little girls. The sorts of trouble they could get into – falling out of the loft, getting crushed under a wagon wheel, drowning in the pond – were dangers he thought he could contrive to prevent. His fear for girls of Sigrid’s or even Synne’s age was that which simply went by the name of “getting into trouble.” His own observation over the years had shown him that girls of any age seemed to go out in search of danger, for all their supposed meekness, but at least lofts and wagon wheels and ponds did not also actively conspire against them.

“Sigi, what are you doing out here?” he cried as he dragged himself through the brush and out into the small brookside clearing in which she sat.

Sigrid gasped and clutched her sewing to her chest for an instant. “Oh, Brede! I thought it wa – ” She stopped in the middle of a word, and her face reddened.

“Was what? Or whom?” he asked, feeling his anger rising again.

“Someone I didn’t know.”

“Or someone you did?”

“No.” She rose and tossed her sewing back onto the log behind her.

“What are you doing here, Sigi? Sewing? Why?”

“It’s so gloomy and dark in the hall,” she whined.

“It’s as sunny in the court as it is here! Or is this spot favored by some additional celestial body of which I have not been made aware?”

“But there are so many people in the court. Farmers, and common people coming in all the time.”

“Oh, so you come out to the woods alone and sit here like some common – common – ” He couldn’t use the first word he had meant before a lady, and he couldn’t use the second either. “Like some common girl?” he gasped in the end.

“Brede!” she cried, guessing his meaning.

“Well? Why don’t you simply go down to the King’s Road and sit on a stile like the rest of them?”

“Because then you would see me when you went out to the stile to pick one out for the night!”

“You little – little – God! Do you speak so of your brother before other people?”

“No, but they all know it anyway!”

“What do you know about anything? I never picked up girls alongside the road!”

“No, you pick them up in castles, I suppose.”

“Watch your tongue!”

“Why may you do whatever you like with whomever you like, while I mayn’t even go to the woods for some peace and light?”

“Because I am a man and you are a young lady.”

“And?”

“And? So, young lady, since you want me to tell you how the world works, I shall explain. The fact is that there is one kind of man in the world, and all he wants is all the girls he can have. Quite simple, really! But there are two kinds of girls – the kind one marries and the kind one doesn’t. And you don’t want to be the latter kind. It might be fun for a while, but you will spend the rest of your life wishing you were dead.”

“Is that what you did to ‘all the girls you could have’?” she sneered.

“It’s not your affair what I did, nor were any of them young ladies of gentle blood.”

“What about Estrid?”

“What about Estrid?” he hissed, grabbing her arm.

“What did you do to her that got Eirik to hate you so?”

“Not what you think, little mistress!” he growled. “She’s a lady.”

“Hmph!” she sniffed, which only infuriated him.

“And I thought I told you never to mention that name before me.”

“It’s only a name.”

“I want you to forget that such a person even exists.”

“He’s our cousin!”

“Distantly. And I don’t want to hear you talking about Estrid either. You don’t know her, and you won’t know her, and I will not stand to hear her name bandied about by someone who knows neither the person nor whereof she speaks.”

“I’m certain she’s very nice, Brede,” Sigrid said, suddenly contrite.

“Let’s forget about her too,” he grumbled. “Now, get your sewing and say goodbye to your log. You’re not coming here again without me or Sigefrith or someone. If I had known this was going on, I would have told Uncle to stay home with you two all day.”

“Oh, no!” she wailed. “Anything but that!”

“Well, then! Simply stay at the house and I shan’t make good on my threat. God!”