Malcolm is a fool again
“Oh, no, not you!” Malcolm groaned when he came around the corner of the long corridor at Nothelm castle.
“Boy!” Sigefrith barked.
“What he meant to say,” Alred offered, “was ‘Why, fancy meeting Your Majesty here! What an unexpected pleasure!’”
Malcolm’s head drooped like the miserable little white blooms he held in one hand – his head because he was waiting for the mockery to begin, the flowers because they had been crushed underfoot by an unhappy little elf girl.
“Now I know why you wanted your afternoon holiday two days early!” Sigefrith laughed.
“Is that why you came?” Alred asked him.
“You know why I came. Meeting this runt was only an unexpected pleasure!”
Malcolm cocked his head and waited for them to finish.
“Malcolm, if you had only told me what you were about,” Alred said, “I could have told you not to bother. Bertie already tried that this morning, and his little flowers got the same treatment. I hope his mother accepted her share more graciously.”
“Were they pink?” Malcolm asked.
“I believe they were.”
“Aye, then Bertie is a fool! Baby doesn’t want those pink flowers. I thought she might like white ones. I rode all afternoon to find these!” he cried in frustration.
“Perhaps she doesn’t like flowers. You might try taking her thorns next time.”
“Aye, I might,” he muttered. “Let her trample thorns for once!”
“What’s the occasion?” Alred asked. “Her birthday was a week or two ago.”
“It’s the first day of spring. I don’t know what the occasion is. I don’t know why I do this every year.”
“I do!” Sigefrith crowed. “You want to be a squire.”
“What’s this?” Alred smiled.
“I told him I never knew a squire who wasn’t a fool for the girls, and since then Malcolm has been trying his damndest to qualify himself.”
“He picked a good girl for that in Baby.”
“What she truly wants is to go outside,” Malcolm interrupted.
“But I mayn’t let her, you know,” Alred said sadly.
“It isn’t right! Have you seen her eyes?”
“I have,” he sighed. “But I am not her father.”
“And who is? I should like to know!”
“Your cousin is.”
“Some father! I believe I spend more time with my father in a year than she does with hers!”
“Malcolm,” Sigefrith said gently.
“You don’t think it’s right, do you?”
Sigefrith and Alred looked at one another. Malcolm hated these looks that passed between adults, over his head.
“I believe your cousin Egelric has got himself into a very difficult situation,” Alred said, “and no matter what he does now, it will be wrong for someone.”
“So he chose that elf woman over his daughter!”
“It would be difficult for him to abandon her now, and her child.”
“She needn’t have had a child! He knew what he was doing!”
“Malcolm, let’s not shout in the corridors, hmm?” Sigefrith said.
Malcolm flushed. Of course Iylaine could easily hear him at this distance – not that Sigefrith knew it.
“May I go?” he asked.
“Your afternoon is your own,” Sigefrith shrugged.
“Thank you.”
Malcolm bowed to each of them and continued down the hall. He expected a final jest to follow after him, but none came. Sigefrith and Alred only exchanged a glance over his head as he passed.
