Alred Faces the Truth

Theobald threw himself back into his work the next morning, as usual, but farm work allowed plenty of opportunity for reflection. He’d sent Githa off visiting, for she’d been hovering anxiously around him all morning, begging reassurances that he had indeed forgiven her. He needed time to think.

She’d awoken him in the darkest hour of the night, having just remembered the occasion when Alred walked in on her bath, desperate to tell him the whole truth right away. He had mumbled something about not blaming her for what was obviously an accident and begin drifting back to sleep, but he had started awake a few minutes later and asked her whether this happened before or after Alred had started visiting her for the ointment.

“Before,” she had said. “No, no—in the middle, after Matilda’s baby came. He didn’t come back for a few days after that. But it was definitely before he…” she trailed off.

“Before he what?”

“Before he had me start doing the front.”

“I see. Go back to sleep, Githa.”

As he worked, he thought over all she had said from a man’s perspective, and believed he was able to fill in a few details that she had been unable to perceive. He’d known his little girl-​cousin since she was in diapers, and even though she had grown nearly as tall as he, she’d had so little experience of life outside of her quiet, devout family that she could no more imagine what a man was capable of than could a child. And Alred was a soldier, he reminded himself, and capable, perhaps, of more.

Thus he saw how masterfully his wife had been led from one indiscretion to the next, until the combined weight of them had oppressed her into obedience, yet without frightening her to the point that she would flee to her husband in desperation. And no one had ever taught the poor, generous soul that it was possible to refuse a request for help.

Theobald was behind the barn helping build the new stone fence to replace the wooden sheep-​pen they’d thrown up in that cold first winter. It was the sound of the dogs barking at the gate that told him someone was coming up to the house. He dusted off his hands and went around the barn to see what looked for all the world like the Duke of Nothelm coming up the path.

He stopped and stared. “By God, he’s coming to see Githa,” he whispered, stunned at first, and then filling with fury.

He met the Duke at the front of the house. He didn’t expect the man to turn tail and run, for that would have invited suspicion more surely than anything else. But Alred seemed to have found the person he was seeking. “Theobald Selle, I need to talk to you.”

Theobald flung open the door without a word, and they went inside.

Alred could see that Theobald knew. Jupiter, Theobald Selle was a big man. He wondered whether it had been wise to come unarmed.

“I believe that Cenwulf has spoken to you. I—I don’t know what Githa has told you. I hope you let her explain to you—”

“I most certainly did let my wife explain to me, but I mayn’t have as much patience with you. Get on with it!”

Alred shifted uncomfortably. “If Gi—if your wife has already told you what happened—and I swear to you that nothing more did happen—I can only add that I hope you hold her entirely blameless. She would never, never knowingly do anything dishon—”

Theobald howled, “How dare you presume to tell me what my wife would or would not do?”

“Yes, yes, I beg your pardon—let me tell you what I did, then, so you will see.”

“Get on with it!”

“It’s this: I’m sick and I—”

“I don’t give a damn if you’re sick, and I don’t give a damn about this medicine story you’re about to tell me! I want to know why and how you got my wife to stand here obediently while you got undressed in my house and then got her to put her hands all over your body!”

Alred cringed. Certainly if it was explained like that… but that was it, wasn’t it? He had ceased being honorable when it had ceased being about the medicine and had become an excuse to have a lovely, gentle woman touch him. He hung his head. “It was just so agreeable… and so easy…”

Theobald could take no more. He drew back his arm and punched the man full in the face.

Alred fell back onto a chair and held his ringing head in his hands.

Theobald stared scornfully down at him for a long moment.

“There are more types of honor than the honor to be won on the battlefield,” he said quietly. “I always knew Sigefrith only made you Duke for your money, but I’d thought your wife’s royal blood sanctified it somehow. Little did I imagine how unworthy of her you are.”

Theobald stalked from the kitchen doorway to the fire and back again.

“Do you know, I think I might have had some sympathy for you if you’d fallen in love with my wife, because God knows I can understand that! But when I think that you simply used her for a few moments of—of pleasure…”

Theobald’s shaking voice cracked, and he flushed with fury as a few of the images from his long night’s visions came back to him.

Alred said nothing at all.

“I would tell you to stay away from my wife,” Theobald said, “but I don’t have to. Do you know why? Because she’s horrified at the very thought of you. That’s right, my lord. The sweetest, gentlest, kindest, most generous and most forgiving woman I know is frightened of you. If that doesn’t make you ashamed, then by God, you are beyond all hope of salvation.”

Still Alred sat, and the blood from his broken nose began to trickle down his arm.

“That’s all I have to say to you. Now get out of my house.”

Alred rose, still holding his nose, and stumbled past Theobald and out the door.

Outside, the snow was just beginning to fall.