Alred speaks

Alred yawned widely, yet again.

“Would you like to take your after-​dinner nap before dinner?” Sigefrith asked him.

“I’m sorry, Sigefrith. I scarcely slept.”

“Another poem coming on?”

“That, and then Matilda was lying in wait for me when I finally came to bed.”

“To fight with you, or what?”

“What.” He yawned again.

“Well, that’s nothing to yawn over.”

Alred shrugged impatiently. “I wouldn’t if I thought she wanted me. I think she only wants a baby.”

“That’s… new.”

“I suppose she fears it’s her last chance. She has stopped thinking about her own mortality long enough to think about mine.”

Sigefrith sat quietly, waiting to see whether he would speak further. He never did, unless he joked, but today he seemed to tired or too despondent for jests. That dark flood of melancholy had come at last to overtop the dikes he had so long maintained.

“I had thought that, after fifteen years, a man might think himself safe,” Alred muttered. “If a woman loves you for fifteen years, she always will, won’t she?”

“Ask me again in fourteen years.”

“Sometimes I hate you all for being happy,” Alred said bitterly. It was strange to hear bitterness on that voice. “You and your new wives, it’s all ahead of you—you and Eadgith, Cenwulf and Edris, Egelric and Sela. But I’m wrong, aren’t I? I was happy all those fifteen years, while you all had more than your share of sorrows. Still, I hate you now.”

“I know you don’t.”

“I do. I still love you, but I hate you, too. Sometimes I should like to hurt you. Egelric I do.”

“You might ease up on him and hurt me for a while. I think I could take it better.”

“Could you? I don’t think so. You have no idea how I could hurt you.”

“Why do you say that, Alred?” Sigefrith asked, chilled.

“Simply to warn you. But I suppose I don’t want to hurt you. You haven’t deserved it.”

“Egelric has?”

“He’s been dreadful at times. More than you know. But most especially because I have to sit across from his daughter every day and look at her eyes. If anyone but he had put that look in her eyes, he would have long since killed him with his bare hands and ripped his heart out with his teeth.”

“What does he tell her about the situation?”

“Nothing, as far as I know. And she doesn’t want to see Sela or the baby, so she doesn’t ask him why she mayn’t. Anyway, if he told her, would it help?”

“I don’t know.”

“He still chose to live with Sela. I suppose he didn’t have a choice, but he still had to choose.” Alred leaned his head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. “I wish I had been more of a father to her. I have always tried not to be.”

“It’s too soon for regrets, Alred.”

“What does that mean? That it’s not too late? I don’t want to be her father. I want Egelric to be.”

Sigefrith nodded.

“When I am with Egelric and Sela—and when I see how happy he is with her—I feel as if I could forgive him anything. But when I come home and see Iylaine creeping around like the shadow of her shadow… sometimes I wonder whether Sela has bewitched him. Do you suppose it’s possible?”

“I suppose anything is possible with elves until we learn otherwise,” Sigefrith sighed.

“Do you think I’m doing wrong to take him with us?”

“It’s his duty. He’s not the only man leaving a new wife and a baby behind.”

Alred shook his head as if to clear away the wistful expression that was stealing over his face, and to put the look of sullen anger back on it.

“I’m turning into a vicious sort of bastard in my old age, aren’t I?” he asked. “He hates me for it, though he will come. And I make him come because I hate him.”

“Hate is a strong word.”

“You are giving me lessons on the weight of words?”

“I don’t like to hear that one. Not out of your mouth.”

“Why not out of my mouth?”

“Because you say it as if you knew what it meant. Caedwulf hates his lessons and he hates peas, but that isn’t the same.”

“I told you, I still love you all. I simply hate you as much.”

“So—what? They cancel each other, and you feel nothing?”

Alred gazed thoughtfully at the floor for a moment. “I only wish it were so.”