Malcolm is snapped at and bitten
“Good day, Wulsy,” Iylaine could hear Malcolm say down below. She had thought she had recognized the dancing tread of his horse.
“Hallo, Malcolm!” Wulsy said brightly.
“Baby here, by chance?”
“Good guess, young sir. Her’ll be up in the loft, methinks. Take your horse?” Wulsy spoke in the ungrammatical, affectionate manner he used for animals and for children he liked, and she could hear the grin on his lips.
“Well…” Malcolm hesitated ostentatiously. This was always the joke between them.
Iylaine scowled and scooted down deeper between the bales of hay. Perhaps he would not see her, and Wulsy would be proven wrong. Who were they to be smiling and joking?
After he and the groom had concluded their exchange of insults over the other’s fitness to care for such a fine animal, Wulsy led Druid away, and Malcolm came clambering up the ladder.
He did not climb as most people did, pulling himself up with his arms and pushing himself up with his legs, but swung from rung to rung with his body arched away from the ladder. If a hand slipped, he was sure to swing out into space and fall, but he climbed with the self-assurance of a cat who has measured every step long in advance.
Malcolm never fell, and he climbed faster than any of the boys, she thought with a swell of pride. But she didn’t want to see anyone just then, she reminded herself, and she drew her misery back over herself like a cloak, as if that would help to hide her.
She heard him scolding the yowling barn cats in Gaelic, and then he asked their queen, “Is that Baby here? Where have you hidden her?”
The great tabby yowled solemnly, and Iylaine heard the soft padding of two of this year’s princesses as they trotted directly to her hiding place. Damn stupid cats! she swore to herself.
“Hallo, Baby,” Malcolm said gently when his face appeared over the edge of the bales. “Say, you have been crying.”
“I haven’t either!” she cried. “It’s the hay dust makes my eyes red.”
“Then why are you all slumped down between the bales, stupid girl?”
“Because I like it,” she said cooly, though the force with which she hurled an intruding cat out of her hollow revealed her agitation.
“Oh!” Malcolm shook his head in wonderment at her stupidity. “I saw your Da come in to see the King. I thought that if he was home, he might have talked to you.”
“And?” she snapped.
“May I come in?”
“You would come even if I said no,” she grumbled.
“Because you like it,” he grinned and climbed in beside her. “Well, my fine Baby,” he said once he had settled in. “Did he or did he no?”
“He talked to me,” she scowled and turned her face away.
“Is that why you’re up here rubbing hay dust in your eyes?”
“No. I came to see the cats.”
“Oh! Is that why you’re tossing them out when they come to see you?”
“Shut up, Malcolm, or I shall toss you out.”
Malcolm laughed. “I shall only come back like the cats. There! You see?” The black cat she had most recently ejected had returned, though she warily clung close to Malcolm now. “Listen, Baby – ”
“What?” she snapped.
“I said, ‘Listen, Baby,’ not ‘Interrupt, Baby’! May I speak?”
“You will, whether or no,” she said, but she quieted.
“I said I saw your Da, and I should like to know what you think of all this.”
“All this?”
“Nobody likes stepmothers at first, of course, but I think it’s a fine thing for you that she’s an elf.”
“She’s no elf!” Iylaine shrieked.
Malcolm started back and stared at her. The black cat leapt to the safety of a high bale, as a precaution.
“She’s lower than a dog! And what else! She’s isn’t my stepmother, for I shall never see her! Never!”
“Now, Baby…”
“Is that all?”
“That isn’t very nice of you. Think of your father a little. I suppose – ”
“I think of my father! I think of my father every day! But does he ever think of me?”
“Now, Baby, of course – ”
“He doesn’t care about me! If he did, he wouldn’t have chosen that dog-elf over me, that’s what!”
“He didn’t choose her over you!” Malcolm shouted back at her. “Don’t be so jealous all the time! You haven’t even met her!”
“No, and I never shall!”
“Baby!”
“It’s so! My Da said so! He said it is better if we don’t meet, so there!”
“What?” Malcolm gasped.
“He said! And I know why! It’s because she’s a dog-elf, that’s why, and she’s not fit to lick my feet, that’s what!”
“A dog-elf! You little mushroom! What are you, a shrew-elf or what?”
“I am a true elf,” she said imperiously.
“A true shrew! What is this nonsense? You’re only jealous! It’s always the same with you!” he cried bitterly. “Nobody may love anybody but you!”
“Shut up, you stupid halfwit!”
Malcolm let himself fall back against a bale and sat scowling at her.
“You have a flea on your arm,” she said with a sudden, cool composure.
He plucked it off and crushed it between his thumbnails, glaring at Iylaine all the while. “You’re so sour, even the fleas can’t stand the taste of you. I shall pity Bertie-boy on the day he finally works up the courage to kiss you.”
“As if I should let him!” she gasped. “I shall smack him across the face, that’s what!”
“That is precisely what I mean.”
“He won’t try it twice,” she sniffed.
“He won’t try it once. He’s too afraid of you, and I don’t blame him.”
“You have another flea.”
“The devil! Baby, why do you make me come up here? It’s a den of fleas! Simply because they don’t bite you…”
“I’m certain I never asked you to come. If you don’t like it, stay home.”
“Listen, Babe,” he said softly as he began searching his arms and ankles for other fleas, “did your Da truly tell you that you mightn’t see your stepmother?”
“She isn’t my stepmother. She is only his mistress.”
“His mistress! Who taught you the difference?”
“Everyone talks of my Da, and I can hear, remember.”
He sighed. “I wish they wouldn’t. Or you couldn’t.”
“So do I,” she said, with more sorrow apparent than she had intended.
“Did he say you mightn’t see her, then?”
“He said I couldn’t see her or her baby, and I can’t go to live with him. Not that I want to.”
He stopped searching for fleas and looked up at her. She found she couldn’t hold his eyes and looked away.
“That’s not right,” he said after a while. “He’s your Da.”
“You see? He chose her over me.”
“I don’t understand why he doesn’t marry her. He hasn’t a wife, and I don’t suppose she has a husband. It’s not too late.”
“That isn’t why I can’t see her.”
“Why, then?”
“I told you. Because she is not fit to see me.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“No. But that is why.”
Malcolm shook his head. “That isn’t why, Babe. There has to be another reason. Would you like me to find out for you?”
“That is all you will find out,” she shrugged. She looked up at him again and found that his eyes had not yet lost that thing she did not want turned on her face.
“Let’s go down,” she said, throwing off her cloak of misery and applying a smile to her face like a mask. “Before the fleas eat you up. Let’s see whether Cook has any cake left, and eat that up instead.”
“That’s a fine idea,” he said, and he stood and pulled her to her feet. “Oh, Wulsy!” he shouted.
“Oh, Malcolm!” Wulsy called from below.
“Cook hasn’t any cake left, has she?”
“And how should I know?” Wulsy laughed. “But she might for you two!”
“Thought so!”
“How should Wulsy know?” Iylaine whispered to Malcolm.
“It seems to me that there’s something in the kitchen that has a great attraction for Wulsy lately, and I can only assume it’s the cake.”
“I hope he left us some.”
“I would wager he did,” Malcolm laughed.
