Egelric gets a different reception
Egelric let himself be dragged into the hall by a scandalized five-year-old girl.
“Mama!” Ete cried. “Guess who this is!”
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Wynflaed is pulled out of her own pain
Lady Wynflaed was becoming as devout as she appeared. It was perhaps unseemly for a lady to pray in the chapel in her nightgown, but here on the high gallery, no eyes ever saw her save the Lord’s. Occasionally there were also her husband’s, but he came less often now. With the passing years Sigefrith was growing accustomed to her pain, and moreover he knew she would no longer consent to cuddle on the bench with him. The Lord, however, she felt to be always near.
She had confided her illness to the Abbot, having seen in his gaunt face and blue-shadowed eyes the signs of fellowship in the brotherhood of pain. He had taught her that the Lord did not send such afflictions on good Christians for the purpose of making them martyrs to their suffering. He had told her that she need neither be ashamed of her pain nor bear it in silence, so long as she did not go to the other extreme and give herself up to it utterly.
Gwynn kisses a beardless gentleman
Conrad grabbed Cedric by the back of his shirt and pulled him against the wall.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
Gwynn is dispensed from kissing beards
Lady Gwynn was not ordinarily a shy girl. When it came to greeting guests, she was always first in the fray, and especially when they were favorite friends.
A few days before, she had managed to kiss Lili and Mouse, Cat and Flann, the baby and the boys, all before her stepmother had the chance to greet them. She had omitted only Egelric as she flitted beelike from lip to lip, and had missed only Ethelwyn, who would not be kissed before he could pay his respects to the Duchess.
The elf takes up his staff
It sounded like morning and smelled like winter. The damp air was like a cloth tied over his ears, but it also magnified his sense of smell. The last piles of melting snow at his feet steamed with acrid cold, and beneath them was the dead, metallic odor of mud too chilly to molder.
The drip and plash of water falling from pine branch onto pine branch was further muffled by the springy needles, but its fragrance was spice and balsam like the churches of the men. This tincture of incense dropping onto his hair seemed a consecration. Perhaps she would want to be married in a church by a priest. Then the man Egelric would have nothing to say.
Iylaine embraces an elf
“Iylaine?”
The voice was timid and trembling, but it was a voice she knew. It was fortunate that she recognized it, for the elf she saw when she turned was more frightening than familiar. He was not dirty, but he appeared ragged nevertheless, with untrimmed hair, patchy clothes, and a beard.
Catan is bothered
Catan was learning discipline of the mind. She could not truly “not think”, as she claimed, but she could keep her thoughts focused on nothing—on trivial things, on imaginings.
Often she thought of places rather than people, and not places she knew—for they were all populated—but entire dream landscapes where never men had trod. Sometimes she would soar over them like an eagle, far above the canopy of green and red and gold trees, the misty valleys, and the craggy hills. Sometimes she would slink through them like a cat, remarking every stem and leaf that stroked her flank, contemplating every pebble that passed beneath her paws. From bird-height or cat-height the world was bearable. It was life on the scale of people that she could not endure.
Egelric says what he has been dying to say
“What do you want?” Egelric muttered after Ethelwyn had gone out. The elf could hear that he had his back turned.
“I wish to speak with my wife.”
The elf meets his ally and his enemy
The yapping of dogs could be heard for miles on a still night, and the shouts of men nearly so far. The elf knew his mountainside well enough that he could find his way without these. It was not until he reached the forest’s edge that he was truly blind.
The torches of Sir Egelric’s castle hailed the lordly fire in him at such distance that it was like seeing them with eyes, but it meant that the castle was no more to him than a few dozen points of light.
Iylaine and Gwynn each get a new idea
“Look at him!” Lady Iylaine giggled breathlessly. “Look at him! He doesn’t need me to hold his hands, but he thinks he does.”
Lady Gwynn dutifully looked at Duncan, but she was hoping her friend’s fascination with her own offspring would not long endure. Gwynn had already squirmed with impatience waiting for her garrulous father and Iylaine’s equally talkative husband to make up their minds to leave.
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“Are you no? I beg your pardon, sir…”
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