“That is amazing, Wyn,” Sophie said. “Simply fascinating. Tell me more.”
“Well, you see,” Ethelwyn said, “one has to measure everything beforehand. For every nine score acres—that is to say, sixty of wheat, sixty of spring seed, and sixty fallow—one needs one plough. And if one knows precisely—”
Alred looked up as Egelric came in and laughed at the uncharacteristic sight of a smile on that dour face.
“Well and aren’t you grinning like a bear with a mouthful of honey today?” Alred asked him.
In times to come Angharat would never again attempt to explain away a “bad feeling,” but as of this Friday afternoon in mid-December, the lesson had not yet been learnt.
“Oh my God!” Ethelwyn moaned. “Not you!”
“Oh my God, not you, sir,” Egelric corrected.
“Oh my God!”
Ethelwyn was relieved to find that the moat was not so deep that he could not stand up in it, but a moment later he realized how close he must have come to breaking his neck, and he was temporarily bereft of the ability to do anything but hold his head in his hands and gasp, “Oh my God!”
Ethelwyn hurried across the outer bailey to the gate of Nothelm keep. He was no farmer to feel the change in the weather by the prickling of his skin or the aching of his bones, but even he could tell that snow was imminent.
The last week had been sunny and almost pleasant, but a cold wind had blown in that morning, and the sky was grim. “Sheep by the wall, snow will fall,” Egelric had said sagely to him when they’d passed in the stable. But of course, Egelric had grown up a farmer.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Selwyn cooed.
“Oh, God,” Stein moaned. “Who let that light in here?”
Lady Gwynn giggled to herself as her little brother pushed open the great door and entered into the Queen’s sitting room. Hetty had recently confided to her that Cynewulf walked with his father’s straight-backed swagger, but since he bid fair to become a rather tall man, Cynewulf risked becoming an intimidating personage—if he did not overdo it to the point of being a little ridiculous.
Gwynn certainly found him ridiculous already, with his gallant manners and his supposed interest in “the ladies,” but especially now with his funny hair that stuck up and stuck down and stuck left and stuck the other way.
“Yes, sir?” Ethelwyn asked.
“Wyn!” Egelric smiled. “There you are. I was just about to ride out to Nothelm, and I wondered whether you had any business of the non-amatory variety that I could handle for you… though if you have some of that kind too…”
“O dear Araphel: what might not your earnest charge have said while you were off frigging some louse-ridden hosteler’s daughter?”
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