Alred knocked on the door in the least threatening manner he knew.
Egelric’s horse was dozing in the shed, Belsar was dancing and fawning around his feet, there was a fire in both chimneys, and the rope that Egelric had hung from a low branch to summon the elf had been removed. All of these seemed to be good signs, but he didn’t dare think too long on what they might mean. It was easiest simply to knock and learn the truth.
Egelric awoke, and Sela was not there. He even thought he had awoken because she was not there. Her absence seemed odd.
It took such an effort for her to rise lately that, whenever she could wait, she preferred to lie in her bed until he could pull her to her feet. But the bladder of a pregnant woman could be both demanding and unpredictable, and he himself was notoriously difficult to wake, so he suspected she had gone lumbering out on her own. He closed his eyes and listened for her.
“Oh, no, not you!” Malcolm groaned when he came around the corner of the long corridor at Nothelm castle.
“Boy!” Sigefrith barked.
“Oh!” Hilda sighed dramatically once she had removed her cloak and sat in Brede’s favorite chair. “I said good morning, but it feels like good midnight in here!”
“The new hall will have windows, you know,” Estrid said smugly. “Yours doesn’t.”
Sela was shaking his shoulder and yet trying to hide her face in it at the same time.
“Was I snoring?” Egelric asked in drowsy confusion. “What? The baby? Sela? Is it time?”
There was a man standing between her and the dying fire, a dark silhouette of a tall man in a cloak, moving silently.
“Da?” she quavered. But it could not have been her Da. She would not have been so terrified of her Da.
Matilda stood in the doorway of the baby’s room, briefly startled speechless. Something about the scene reminded her painfully of herself with her father—the tall man, the broad back, the baby peering over his shoulder…
Of course, it was absurd to believe that she had any memory of her babyhood, and quite impossible that such a memory would involve seeing herself from a distance, from the point of view of another person. She must have been thinking of another tall man, another baby—Harold, perhaps, with one of his sons, or Sigefrith… but the sight went straight to her heart, as if it were her father…
Malcolm knocked thrice, twice, and once on Bertie’s door. It had been their secret signal, back when they were but little boys.
He heard Bertie laugh inside. “Hallo, Malcolm!”
“Finally, I can see you alone,” Ethelmund grumbled as he came into his bedroom. His wife lay on the bed in her nightgown, but she had not yet crawled under the blankets.
She looked up in surprise, as if he had interrupted some engrossing thought.
Dunstan walked uneasily at Bertie’s side. He felt himself to be little more than a useless appendage of his page, for the important duty of protecting Iylaine fell to Bertie and to Malcolm, who walked on the other side of the girl.
Nevertheless, he preferred the role of humble hanger-on to the possibility of being called upon to actually defend her. He knew that Malcolm and Bertie both wore swords under their cloaks. Dunstan had had the forethought to “forget” his.
“I think that we should try and try to be happy whenever we can and however we can, even if there is a risk that we will be made unhappy. I think we must keep trying.”
Chapters
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