Matilda dreads the dawn

“You shall sleep tomorrow night,” Leofric said.

Matilda lifted her head. “Why?”

“Because I don’t like these dark circles under your eyes,” he said, tracing one of them with the tip of his broad finger.

“It’s nothing.”

“You are tired, I say, and I won’t have it. Besides which, knowing you would try to refuse, I promised Dunstan I would play a game of chess with him tomorrow night.”

“Oh.” She laid her head back on his chest, atop the pale scar.

“Poor runt has been wondering why I suddenly lost interest in his company.” He stroked her hair back from her cheek and sighed. “Poor runt.”

She squirmed. She did not like to hear such sighs.

“I wish I knew what you did to him,” she said, trying to make her voice light. “He’s been a different boy these past weeks.”

“I only treated him as I treat any runt. With cuffs and insults.”

“But he’s not just any boy. He’s so sensitive and sad.”

“He’s a boy like any other. You coddle him.”

“But I must! The least little thing hurts him.”

“That’s why. You should treat him as you do Yware or Cynewulf or even the girls. Just a boy, and not a little Duke.”

“A little Duke?”

“Alred anyway. He doesn’t expect Yware to be anything but Yware, but he expects Dunstan to be a small Alred, and by God, that’s too much to ask of anyone. I’m certain even Alred wasn’t a small Alred at eleven. Or perhaps he was…” he mused. “I wonder what his father was like with him.”

“Severe. And his grandfather, too. But Alred isn’t severe.”

“By that you mean what?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think he’s hard on the boy. If Yware does something foolish, Alred knocks him on the noggin and tells him to cut it out. If Dunstan does, Alred simply shakes his head and sighs. Must be devastating.”

“I don’t think it’s quite so marked.”

“The other problem is that the boy has mistaken his father for the Second Coming, and since he can’t admit that Alred can do wrong, he doesn’t have a boy’s natural feeling for the great unfairness of his existence. A boy of eleven is supposed to think his father is a doting old fool who exists solely to spoil his fun. But what can he do? His father is so God damned perfect.”

He sounded bitter. She did not like to hear that either. She sighed and lay limp against him. She was so tired.

“Don’t fall asleep, my dove,” he said after a time. “I’m not certain I shan’t, and one of us had better be awake to wake the other. You may do your sleeping tomorrow night.”

“You should sleep too. I wish you would. At least I get some sleep after I leave.”

“My lady may lie in bed until dinner if she likes. I have work to do.”

“I may not! I have work of my own to do.”

“It is true. You are not a lady like the others. All the more reason for you to get your rest.”

“Play chess with Dunstan tomorrow night, and I shall sleep. And the following night you shall come, and I shall watch you sleep.”

“What luxury,” he chuckled, “to sleep with you beside me! as if these hours were too many to be reckoned. I shan’t waste them snoring, my dear. There will be time enough for sleeping later.”

“When? When you die?” she smiled. It was what her father had always said.

“I mean when your husband returns,” he said gravely, but gently.

She shuddered against him. It was too painful even to think about. It was too cruel to mention.

“But perhaps it is the same thing,” he said thoughtfully to himself.

She lifted her head and began to speak, but he hushed her mouth with his finger.

“Alas! There’s the bell,” he sighed.

“Lauds,” she muttered. Even the bell and the chapel were Alred’s doing.

“It is not a dove I have me, but a little white owl,” he said, “who hates the dawn.”

“It comes so early in June,” she complained.

“At Midsummer in Nidaros it dawns at Lauds.”

“How dreadful!”

“And at Christmas the sun comes up an hour after Terce, and sets before None.”

“A night of twenty hours!” she laughed.

He pulled her head down into the corner of his neck and pressed her body tightly against his own. He could hold her there for but a little while longer.

“I think it would not be enough,” he said.