Sela is returned

Egelric lay fully-​clothed and half-​awake on the bed. He had thought he had drunk enough to allow himself to sleep, but it had only sufficed to paralyze him in a queasy stupor. He had not lit a fire in the bedroom, and he was cold, but his face and hair and clothes were still soaked with sweat. He thought it must have become a reflex upon entering this room. It would take some time for his body to learn that it was no longer necessary—or to forget it ever had been.

The wind blew furiously outside and shrieked in the pines. He could hear the door shuddering on its hinges in the front room as the wind tried to force its way in. It was a tempestuous night, and all he had wanted was peace. He wanted sleep and dreams and forgetting, ale and forgetting, death and forgetting…

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Brede has a new letter to copy

“It’s about time! I wondered where you were all day,” Sigefrith said after Brede had finished kissing the hands of the assembled ladies.

“I was across the river. Was it urgent? I ate before I came.”

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Egelric learns the difference between dogs and wolves

Egelric left his horse in the clearing, untied and blown and still saddled, and ran up to the house. There was smoke in the chimney—light behind the window—she had come home! Of course, it might only be Alred, and he told himself he should not hope for too much after the week he had spent—but how could he help it? And the new moon only two days away?

“Sela!” he cried as he staggered into the kitchen.

He froze in the doorway as the tall elf at the other end of the room turned slowly and, out of the one eye that was not hidden behind his long hair, leveled on him a look of disdain. It was not Sela.

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Dunstan has a new letter to copy

Dunstan looked up only briefly as the man carried the letter in and handed it to his father. He was no longer so very curious when a letter arrived, for he knew that he would soon be copying its contents into one of the two great books of correspondence.

It was one of his favorite hours of the day, that after-​dinner time when his father went up to play with the younger children—or else nap on the floor while Cynewulf clambered over him—and Dunstan went into his father’s study to copy. The study too was one of his favorite places, especially when it was given over to him alone. In the after-​dinner time, as the sun went swinging across the southern sky, it shone in through the green glass of the window and made the entire room shimmer with a dim light that made Dunstan feel as if he were below the surface of the sea—or so he thought, for he had never had the courage to open his eyes underwater.

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Evening and Dawn come to Raegiming

“I wish he had at least told us whether it was a boy or girl,” Sir Sigefrith grumbled. He and his godfather were waiting in the hall at Raegiming to meet his new brother or sister, but the letter announcing the birth had been remarkably cryptic, though joyous enough.

“Why?” Sigefrith asked. “Would you not have come for a girl? Or for a boy, rather?”

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Leofric and Matilda plight their friendship

“You should have been told that I did not wish to see you,” Matilda said coldly. She threw back her head and stared at him, and despite the difference in their heights—and although she was seated and he stood—she seemed to be looking down on him.

“So I was,” Leofric said. “I presumed upon nearly twenty years of friendship and came anyway.” Leofric was not one to be unsettled by her stare.

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Leofric asks a favor of his daughter

“Oh, dear—has Hilda put Dora down for her nap already?” Eadgith asked, surprised to see her father come in to her so soon after dinner.

Leofric laughed a little sadly. “My baby! If I come to see you, does it mean that Dora isn’t receiving visitors?”

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Egelric realizes a number of things

“It is warm-​bright in de autumn-​no-​moon-​night,” Sela sighed happily after she had caught Egelric’s roaming hand again.

“That’s because we’re indoors,” Egelric murmured. “You like it now, don’t you?”

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Bertie pays an unexpected visit

“Ma, Bertie’s coming!” Wynna cried, for she sat in the favored chair that faced the kitchen window.

“Bertie! Oh! Hide the cake!” Githa laughed. “I’m sure I don’t know where he puts it.”

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Alred takes a detour

“Why don’t you come home with me for supper?” Alred asked Leofric as the two waited before the gatehouse of the castle for Alred’s horse. “We’ve already had a proper dinner.”

“Oh…”

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