Daughter of the Wolf (11 page)

Would Hafoc have to go to Rome, too? She couldn't imagine how her father would manage without him.

Hafoc was her father's horse. Luda her father's steward, Widia her father's huntsman, Cuthred her father's smith. And she was her father's daughter. Who were they, if Radmer went away?

Ingeld and Wulfhere had ridden out on the great road that led north out of York up into the heartland round the Pickering marshes, where the rich little minsters clustered thick as gems on a necklace, Stonegrave and Hovingham, Coxwold, Malton, Lastingham and Hackness, and all the way to Whitby. Not that they were going even as far as Crayke today, but the sun was shining, and why should the Archbishop of York and the abbot of Donmouth not ride out together, old friends as they were?

And here on the road, while they might be observed, no one could overhear their murmured conversation. York was several miles behind them already, and apart from the occasional herdsman they had seen few folk in the meadows, and on the road itself they had met only a single pedlar with his pack. Not many folk chose to build their home close to a road where armies marched. Life was dangerous enough without drawing down that kind of attention on one's head. Both abbot and archbishop were armed and in layman's tunic and leggings, and no one had done more than lift a cautious head to watch them pass. Still and all, their talk so far had been of matters that any man might listen to. Domnall ap Alpin, king of the Picts, had held a council of Church and State at Forteviot, and York's envoys had just returned with news of the great church his folk were building at Dunkeld to house the relics of St Columba. Word had come in on a merchant ship that back at the end of winter the Saracens had martyred the new archbishop of Cordoba.

‘Eulogius. Poor man.' Wulfhere shook his head. ‘I never met him, but by all reports he was a good and learned priest. Never even enthroned as archbishop, either.' He sighed. ‘There have already been miracles, the man said.'

‘Saracens and sea-wolves. Hispania is truly beset.'

‘Are you making a song about it?'

Ingeld shook his head. ‘I'd rather write an elegy for my brother.' He twisted round in his saddle. ‘Radmer is going to Rome.
Radmer
.'

Wulfhere said nothing. They were riding knee to knee, Ingeld on a borrowed mare from the archiepiscopal stables as Storm was resting after the two-day journey from Donmouth. Their servants kept their horses a discreet dozen paces behind.

Ingeld wasn't going to let the matter drop. ‘You must have been part of this. After everything we've said...' His tension was communicating itself to his horse, and she jibbed a little, swivelling her ears. Ingeld leaned forward and stroked her neck. ‘Hush, beauty, hush there. It's not you, it's me.'

Wulfhere clicked his tongue and his horse stepped out a little more quickly. ‘You've only just taken up your place at Donmouth minster. Why do you want to leave so soon?'

Ingeld urged his own mount to keep pace. ‘Only just? It's been half a year already, and now the winter's coming.'

‘You have your mother for company.'

‘My mother, to whom I am a disappointment. My stiff-necked brother, who finds his only pleasure in thwarting mine. And my not-so-little niece. I thought her a fine fighting spirit but they're crushing her between them. Millstones.' Ingeld fell silent, intrigued by his own insight. ‘She should fight back. I want to smack her sometimes.'

Wulfhere was not interested. ‘Radmer is going to Rome on the king's orders, not mine.'

‘But it's a mission to the Pope.' Ingeld was very ready to push thoughts of his family away. ‘You must have been involved.'

‘Peter's pence is a royal tithe, not an episcopal one.'

‘But it gets sent every year, without a man of Radmer's stature going as escort.' Ingeld twisted round again. ‘Why not me? We've always talked of going to Rome.'

‘Aye, and Ravenna, and Constantinople.' Wulfhere raised an eyebrow, the closest his cautious face ever came to smiling. ‘We'll make our pilgrimage one of these years, my friend. Jerusalem, too, if you like. But Osberht has it in mind that Athelwulf of Wessex went to Rome, with his youngest son, just a few years since, and returned with powerful new friendships, not just with the Pope but the kings and princes whose lands he passed through, coming and going.'

‘And a thirteen-year-old princess as his bride, if memory serves.'

‘Indeed.' Wulfhere's tone was dry.

‘So why isn't Osberht going himself?'

‘Now is not the time. You know that.'

And Ingeld did know. Radmer might think him a lightweight, but he paid attention. From a safe distance the violent machinations of court politics held all the illicit thrill of a cockfight.

‘Tilmon.'

Wulfhere nodded. ‘Tilmon and Alred have been seen together, close as they ever were. South of the Tees, where Alred is not supposed to be.'

Ingeld was quiet for a moment, working out all the implications. ‘Osberht must be wetting himself.'

‘He wants them at hand, where he can watch them. Tilmon and Switha, safely at Illingham.'

‘And yet he sends the King's Wolf to Rome.'

‘He shows the world the King's Wolf is still tame, still his to command. And that Northumbria's monarch has friends the length of Frankia and Lombardy, as well as at the Lateran.' Wulfhere looked thoughtfully at his friend. ‘Osberht is angry with Radmer. Osberht thinks the way to hold Tilmon is a Donmouth–Illingham alliance, and Radmer is a stubborn fool who is still fighting over the wars of seven years ago. The world has changed, and Radmer hasn't noticed. So Osberht is using this opportunity to show Radmer who rules Northumbria. That a good dog obeys his master.
Sit up. Roll over. Die for the king.
'

‘And you approve?'

‘Why not?' Wulfhere shrugged. ‘Osberht may be my cousin, but I don't think my fortunes rise and fall with his. Let him run his risks. So yes, why not?'

Ingeld ruminated, casting the odd sidelong glance at his friend's narrow face. He was probably right, that the fortunes of king and archbishop ran on their separate courses. Kings and their thanes were subject to the vagaries of fortune. The court shuffled endlessly between the king's many vills, from Driffield and Goodmanham in the south to Bamburgh and Edinburgh in the far north, faces continually changing as men fell into and out of favour. But the wealth and power of York's archbishopric were stable and eternal. Its radiant churches: St Peter, Holy Wisdom, St Martin, St Mary, St Gregory. The greatest library west of Milan. Always something new in York, something beautiful, to distract him from the ever-present threat of boredom. And worse than boredom, despair.

He glanced once more at the archbishop to find that Wulfhere was watching him, still with that eyebrow raised. ‘You know what they say in Frankia?'

‘What?'

‘While the wolf's away the little foxes frolic.'

‘Ha.'

They rode in silence for a little while. The sun was hot, but a breeze was freshening, and to the north, over the Hambleton hills, thunderheads were beginning to build.

‘We should turn back.' Wulfhere reined in.

Ingeld baulked. ‘Must we? Speaking of wolf, we could go into the hills. Look for tracks now, and come back later with the hounds.'

Wulfhere sighed. ‘Haven't you noticed, little fox? We're not novices any more.'

‘Really, my lord archbishop? How did that happen?' With an exaggerated shrug, Ingeld tugged his horse's head round to the south. The surface was good here and they trotted for a while.

Wulfhere was right. He had been too distracted by ridiculous, childish outrage at his older brother being given this exceptional treat. Radmer's absence could offer advantages. He would have to think about that.

The roofs and walls of York's great minster were just coming into view. ‘Come on,' Ingeld called. They might not be novices any more, but he was damned if he was going to let his closest friend dwindle into middle age without a fight. ‘I'll race you.'

As soon as the shout went up that the sail was sighted Radmer walked to the stable.

‘Tell Elfrun to come after me.'

He swung himself on to Hafoc's blanketed back and headed for the hill that sloped away and up behind the yards. The late-summer grass was long, pink and bronze with seed heads, spangled with the last of the buttercups, all a green-gold haze, though the wind that rippled through the grass was the same nagging easterly that had set in over the last day or two. It had brought the ship at last, weeks after they had first started looking for it. Lambs, stocky now and hardly distinguishable from their mothers, bolted at his approach, tails bouncing in their wake. When he got to the row of barrows that marked the crest of the hill as seen from the shore he slowed and looked around.

He was forty-two years old, and for fully half those years he had held Donmouth. He had travelled the length of Northumbria over and over; he had been in fights with the Mercians and men of Lindsey whose north-easternmost lands marched so close to his own estates; the Picts north across the Forth; the men of Dumbarton on their rock on the Clyde; and as far as Wales. And he had the scars to prove it. But his easterly horizon had always been bounded by that restless blue-grey mass of water. It glittered on the edge of vision now as he tugged on Hafoc's halter, and turned the horse's head to gaze back down the way they had come, over the roofs of hall and heddern and bower, cook-house and weaving shed. A couple of his men were up on the hall roof, patching the shingles. He was glad to see Widia in the yard, holding Mara while Elfrun scrambled on to her back. Such a relief that his huntsman was back on his feet at last. There was not a soul in Donmouth whom he didn't value. This huddle of buildings, and the fields and pastures beyond, moor and salt marsh and fen, the hundred or so folk who laboured incessantly to make Donmouth what it was, under his guidance, bounded by sweet and salt and brackish water. This was the whole of his world.

But Donmouth was more than just his hall and its lands. There was the minster, itself a rich endowment.

Radmer shook his head. The minster wasn't visible from the hall: the spur of land that jutted where the stream flowed down blocked his view. Three miles away, but not nearly far enough, he was finding, with Ingeld as abbot. Radner knew his anger was bad for him, body and soul.

Things would have to change.

When he returned from Rome he would do what his mother had long advised: build himself a little oratory by the hall. He could see it so clearly. A house fit for God, painted and plastered without and within, and a gilt cross finial attached to the gable end, so that when he was in his dotage he could totter out of the south door of the hall and its sunlit promise would be the first thing on which his eyes would alight.

It would give him comfort, Abarhild had said. Balsam for his soul. He could start working for the forgiveness and reconciliation he so sorely needed.

Hafoc shifted and tried to walk forward, and Radmer gripped harder with his thighs.

His dotage. There would be time enough then to repent all the deeds of violence, the hard counsel, to make amends with God. For his family, for Donmouth, for Northumbria. Never yet for himself – at least, that had never been his intention. Surely God would understand.

But he wasn't in his dotage, not quite yet. Radmer had a sudden urge to knee Hafoc into a headlong gallop, to go whooping and shrieking down to the shore and set sail, leaving all the worries in his wake. Instead he breathed deeply, allowing himself a little smile, and settled his red cloak more securely over his shoulders, its silver tags chinking gently against each other.

The last weeks had been full of such endless planning – for the voyage, but much more for Donmouth and how it would manage in his absence. The hay-harvest was long gathered and stored; the barley was in; the apples were ripening; but he could already feel the long winter coming up hard on the harvest's heels. Rationing and maintenance, killing the pigs and the bull-calves, the endless threshing, the predictable… and the unpredictable.

And that was just Donmouth.

Elfrun came trotting over the grass on Mara, breathless and pink-cheeked. As she reined her pony in Radmer raised a hand in greeting, batting away the anxieties that buzzed around him like summer blowflies. Beyond her, across river and estuary, the headland that marked the corner of the Illingham lands slept in the shifting sun and shade. He wasn't used to indecision, but he had been trapped into going to Rome, and he didn't know whom to trust.

Trust his instinct then. It had always served him well.

Osberht valued his loyalty. Osberht owed him his life. He and the king had been side by side for twenty years.

Osberht would never send him to Rome if there were anything to fear from Illingham. But for all that he couldn't rest easy, not with Tilmon and Switha so close.

‘You wanted me, Father?'

He nodded. He had been planning to talk to her ever since getting back from Driffield, and now he was running out of time. Abarhild was right: his little girl was leaving childhood – had left it, indeed, somehow without his noticing. She was as old now as her mother had been when he had married her, God forgive him.

And even now the words were almost impossible to find. How did he put his fears for her into words? It was tantamount to an admission of failure as father, lord, guardian.

‘Father?'

They were right, the gossips; they had all been right: he should have seen her safely stowed by now. Either with the good nuns north at Hovingham, as Abarhild had always wanted, or married to some steady man. He was letting her down.

He had been afraid of this parting, that there would be tears, tantrums. But she met his gaze directly, brown eyes wide and clear.

He nodded a greeting. ‘We'll be back in the spring. As soon as the mountain passes are clear.'