The Queen keeps smiling

“Lullay, lullay, little nightingale,” Eadgith sang as she brought her tired niece into the twins’ room.

Gala was fond of her aunt, but she whined and reached for her mother at once, and Eadgith’s heart sank wearily within her. She would have to hand the warm, soft baby back to her mother, and then go out into the cold night with her husband, her arms empty. Drage would never dream of sitting on her saddle when his Papa and his Papa’s tall horse were nigh.

“I wondered when she meant to get tired,” Wynflaed said.

“We were having such a nice, cozy gossip by the fire,” Eadgith smiled. “I hope Mama got some rest.”

“Mama and brother did, both.”

“Now he’ll be up all night!” Eadgith laughed. “We shall simply take him home with us and let him sit up drinking and talking with Sigefrith and Malcolm.” She wished she could take him home, but she would certainly have kept him to herself if she could have!

“That would put him to sleep,” Wynflaed agreed.

“The drinking or the talking?”

“Both, probably!” Wynflaed said, and they laughed.

“Come here, you tired girl,” Wynflaed cooed. “Auntie Eadie probably kissed your toes off, if she didn’t gossip your ears off.”

“She was so good,” Eadgith sighed.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Truly! She didn’t fuss at all.”

“You must have a way with her. And I wish you could teach it to me!”

“The nice thing about visiting you,” Eadgith said, already leaning over Brid in his crib, “is that there’s always a spare baby for guests.”

“Oh? Will you two have another cozy gossip now and let Gala rest?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” Eadgith said sadly. “Sigefrith already called for the horses.”

“Drage must be tired too.”

“He’ll never admit it.”

“That’s the way of men,” Wynflaed smiled.

“Oh, Sigefrith ‘admits’ he’s tired all the time! It must be the way of young men. Does your Sigefrith?”

“No, he doesn’t admit it. He simply falls asleep in the chair.”

“Well, and we don’t blame him, do we?” Eadgith asked baby Brid. “With two squalling babies to keep him up at night.”

But her own Sigefrith often walked the floor at night, though he had no baby to oblige him. She thought it might do him good to have a nice, solid baby in his arms while he paced and thought over his troubles. But Eadgith could not give this to him.

“It makes me wish I could have them sleep apart,” Wynflaed said. “One of them wakes and wakes the other. But if I put them in separate beds, they cry until they’re together again.”

“Aefen and Aeri were the same way. It’s so sweet to see them cuddle up together, though, isn’t it?”

“Sweeter than anything,” Wynflaed agreed with a sigh. “But twins are more than twice as much work, Sigefrith says.”

“My father says that twins aren’t additive, but multiplic – multiplic – something.”

“What does that mean?” Wynflaed asked.

“I don’t know. Something with numbers. Two and two is four, but twice two is four also, so I don’t understand the difference.”

“Neither do I.”

“Oh, well, then I don’t feel like such a looby. If I had known I was to be a queen, I might have learned sums. But I only learned how to milk goats and scrub floors.”

“As did I.”

“You never thought you would have that in common with a queen, did you?” Eadgith smiled.

“No! Nor that I would have a queen for a sister.”

“But I’m simply plain Eadie, your sister. I have to be a queen for the people, but not for you.”

“If you say so.”

“But you know we’re good friends! Quite like sisters – or the closest I ever had. I never had a sister, you know, that was at all close to my age.”

“I know.”

“I hope you think of me as your sister, or your friend, and not as your queen.”

“I do now.”

“You can say anything you like to me.”

“I know. Thank you.”

Eadgith smiled at her, and after a moment was about to make some comment about the babies, but Wynflaed interrupted her to say, “There’s one thing I have been wanting to say to you – or ask you.”

“Anything!”

“I simply wanted to know… because I can’t ask my little mother of course… to know…” Her face was turning red beneath the bronze. “How soon after one’s baby is born does one begin bleeding again?” she asked quickly.

“Oh, dear!” Eadgith said. “Well, that depends. If you’re nursing it can take a while. Let me see… I think it was in the winter for me, so six months or so after Drageling came. But you’re not truly nursing, are you?”

“Not any longer. And never very much.”

“So… I don’t know. Soon, probably. Haven’t you started yet?”

“No. No, and I wonder because… because I’ve been feeling so sick in the morning lately, and – ”

“Oh, Wyn!” Eadgith cried. “Oh, Wyn! I hope it’s true! What happy news that would be!”

Wynflaed hid her face behind Gala’s belly.

“But you should ask the women. However, I think four months is a long time, if you aren’t nursing.”

“I thought it might be,” Wynflaed said with a frail smile. “And I was hoping that was the only reason why I have been ill.”

“I’m certain it is! What good fortune for you and your Sigefrith. You might have three babies in one year! Oh, dear! How my father will bellow!”

“Don’t tell him yet!” Wynflaed gasped.

“Certainly not! I shall leave you to tell whom you please and when you please. But I’m so happy you told me first, and so honored.”

They smiled at one another for a moment, and then Gala began to fuss. Once Wynflaed turned her attention to the baby, Eadgith was free to close her eyes and reconstruct her crumbling composure.

It was happy news of course, and she was pleased for Wynflaed and her brother, but the question had also served to remind her that she had been bleeding quite regularly for two years, and she had had none of Wynflaed’s good fortune. Any day now she expected that this latest month of prayer and hopefulness would come to a disappointing end. It was funny how one never grew accustomed to it. It was funny how it only seemed to get harder to bear month after month.

She did not have the time to quite collect herself before the door opened.

There was her brother, and after him came her tall husband with her little boy in his arms. Sigefrith looked at her with love only, and Eadgith managed to cobble together a brittle smile.

But her brother spoke. “I think that’s the prettiest thing I’ve seen in a while!” he announced. “Two pretty ladies and two pretty babies.”

Sigefrith understood, and he tried to send her brother a warning glance. But her brother could not begin to understand.

“Here!” Eadgith said to her brother with all the false and fragile gaiety she so often had to hold up before her pain. “This one’s yours.”

“I hope my ugliness doesn’t set him off to a disadvantage,” her brother laughed.

“He’ll only look prettier against it,” Sigefrith said. His words were for her brother, but it seemed his deep, familiar voice was sent out for her, to hold her up, to hold her together. But it was not enough.

Wynflaed’s good news had only reminded her of her own continuing sorrow. Her brother would say, as he had before, that he had only to look at his wife to get her with child. But she knew that was not enough.

Sigefrith had had four children with Maud. There was nothing wrong with him. It proved that there was something wrong with her. Drage’s birth was beginning to seem like a miracle to her, and she dared not hope for two miracles.

“Is it time to leave?” she asked brightly and walked past her husband into the corridor. She could not stand another minute in that room with that happy couple without breaking down.

She could hear her husband taking his leave of them, making them laugh, putting them at ease as Sigefrith knew so well how to do. Neither Wynflaed nor her brother would even remember that Eadgith had left so suddenly.

But Sigefrith would remember. He would never scold her for it, nor even speak of it, but she knew he noticed it, and she was ashamed. A great lady would never walk so rudely out of a room, and certainly not simply because she was feeling sorry for herself.

“It looks like Mama is ready to go,” Sigefrith said behind her, and she turned to him with another of her brittle smiles.

“I’m sleepy,” Drage yawned.

“Oh! You admit it!” she laughed.

“Papa admits it, too,” Sigefrith said.

“And Mama too! Shall we go?”

“I’ve been thinking you’ve been looking tired lately, young lady,” Sigefrith said.

“But we were up late the last two nights, and now three!”

“I mean in the last weeks. What do you think, runt? I think perhaps I shall send you two to your mother’s a little early. Before Christmas, say, and you can spend Christmas there.”

“But Christmas! Won’t you come?”

“I shall have to be here for Mass, but I shall come in the afternoon. And the people of Raegiming will have their queen for Christmas, whom they love so well,” he smiled. “Not to mention the boundless joy I shall thereby grant your father.”

“If you think…” she murmured. She could only think that if she stayed so long away from her husband, that would be so many missed opportunities… mid-​​January would come and she would not even have any hope – only a month-​​long disappointment.

“What say you, Drageling?” Sigefrith asked their son as they turned to leave. “Will you like to go a little early to see Old-​​Papa and spend your Christmas there?”

“Son of a serpent,” Drage mumbled sleepily, his head nodding against his father’s shoulder.

Eadgith took her husband’s arm and laughed her brightest, brittlest laugh. “I think that’s Dragonish for ‘yes’!”