Daughter of the Wolf (13 page)

The inkhorn was dry, just a rusty stain – there would be more in the store. But instead of going at once to fetch it he hitched himself on to his stool, gazing at the blank area of the quire until it blurred under his gaze, and thought about the nature of time and space. Here they were, living somewhere towards the end of the Sixth and Last Age in a world grown old and tired with sin, and in these islands on the farthest edge of the Ocean, as far from the hub of Jerusalem as one could well be. He thought of the feast they were celebrating that day; of the Empress Helena doggedly ordering her men to dig until the true cross emerged from the mud and filth of Calvary. Nation by nation, God was gathering in his harvest, corn-cockle, darnel and tares as well as the good wheat. He looked down at his fine linen, his red leather shoes, the gold ring on his hand.
If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow thrown into the furnace...
He had no doubt at all that, gilded lily as he was, a just God would assign the furnace as his destination.

He shoved the stool back and went to fetch more ink.

In this year, also, Amlaibh and Imhair made an alliance with Cerball against Mael Sechnaill, and Meath suffered greatly because of it
. His pen stumbled over the alien names of Irish king and sea-wolf alike, heard the previous evening at the archbishop's table from a vagrant priest of Kells.
Athelbald of Wessex married his father's young widow, and the bishops of the West Saxons were much troubled thereby.

The alliances between kings and warlords, the anxieties of powerful bishops: these were great events, but were they the events that men would say mattered, looking back a year, a hundred, a thousand years from now, if the world should still be limping on? He paused, his pen hovering over the vellum.
In this year, King Osberht of the Northumbrians brought Tilmon back into his favour, and granted him Illingham. In this year also, the same king sent Radmer of Donmouth to Rome. Men wondered at both these things.

And the smaller things, and the things that didn't happen. The arrows that missed their target, the seeds that fell on stony ground. Once he and the archbishop had dreamed of writing a sequel to Bede's great history of the Northumbrians. ‘Bede stopped writing a hundred years ago, and more,' Wulfhere had said. ‘Think how much has happened since.' But Bede's work was dauntingly perfect. How could they cobble something together, and hitch it on behind?

They had never gone beyond dreaming.

And now, ten and more years later, the chronicler found Bede's great book even more troubling. That old monk of Jarrow had been so sure of the working out of God's plan in history. But he himself saw no such pattern. Rather, disjointed purposes. Messages that came too late or went astray. Accidents of ill-health or childbirth and death that put men and women where they were by chance, pure chance. Who could tell if a man were a saint or a black-dyed sinner? God, surely only God. Men could not make these judgements about each other, stumbling as they were in the dark.

The only heart-secrets he knew for certain were his own.

No, better he penned this petty chronicle. A little job, fit for a butterfly mind. Brief sentences, elliptical phrases, with no moral commentary attached or deeper meaning intended. How little human actions mattered. A just God would damn them all, every last one, with no hope of appeal. A merciful God would put out a hand to catch a faltering sparrow.

In this year the swallows came back to their wonted places on the ides of April. The cuckoo called in the woods. The sun shone.

The morning after her father sailed away, Elfrun woke with a strange hollowness under her breastbone. Her dreams had been restless ones of hunting for something she had lost, behind wall-hangings, down the cracks between the floorboards, and the sense of absence lingered, unsettling her. The sheltering sky had gone, and in its place was the void.

It wasn't as though he had never been away before. Even though his campaigning days belonged to her early childhood, he accompanied the king often enough; and travelled the roads of southern Northumbria on Osberht's behalf, one of the king's senior
prefecti
, the royal eyes and ears, assessing renders and seeing that they were paid, hearing complaints and channelling them back to the king. He could be gone for long weeks, and still Donmouth went trundling on.

Why should this be any different? Perhaps because there could be no word, of him or from him, with him gone across the sea. He would be on board even now, probably awake. Cold, without his red cloak, listening to the slap of the waves and the creak of the strakes, watching the edges of the world take shape as grey seeped into the sky.

She had always minded him being gone, even when it was only for a couple of weeks, even before her mother had died.

Elfrun lay very still. For the last couple of years she had slept in the women's house, which served Donmouth also as its weaving shed. Few of the housesteads had a loom at home, and the older girls worked here. It was easier if they also slept here, they and some of the older women who had nowhere else to go. Half a dozen sleeping bodies huddled around the hearth. It must still be very early. She could feel the autumn chill seeping through the thatch and the daub.

Was it because he had gone over the sea? Elfrun could never think of the sea, the deep sea, without a twitch of the skin. The dunes were home territory, and the ebb, and she didn't mind the shallows. She was well used to foraging the shore in hungry times for crabs and cockles, samphire and sea-kale. But the deep water was another matter. Even the men who fished didn't go out further than they needed, and still they came home with stories of vast whales, strange mists and calms, of uncanny cries and groans that echoed through the strakes of their vessels. The songs of the drowned.

Her scalp crawled and a shudder went through her, as though a rat had gone scrabbling across her blanket. This would never do. She rolled over and got to her feet, treading a careful path between the sleepers. The world was colourless, dawn too far away for even the cocks to have noticed yet. Chilly, with a little mist. A visit to the need-house, an apple and a handful of cobnuts, and she would find something useful to do, to drive off the last rags and shreds of dream.

She had left the wool she was carding together with her combs in a basket in her grandmother's little bower. Abarhild slept badly at night though she napped readily enough in the afternoons, and Elfrun thought her grandmother might welcome her company.

But when she nudged open the door of the bower and peered cautiously into the gloom she found that Abarhild wasn't there. The two women who attended her were snoring on their pallets by the banked hearth, but the fine wooden bed that Abarhild had brought across the sea from her first marriage was flat and empty. Puzzled, Elfrun ducked back out under the low thatch and looked around. The first cock crowed from a nearby dunghill, and another answered from further away. Surely she couldn't have gone far? Elfrun walked around the bower, checked the need-house and the cook-house, and stood outside the hall, feeling foolish.

The world was beginning to stir. She could smell hearth-smoke, hear the call and response of sleepy voices.

And then realization dawned. Her grandmother must have slept at the minster. They had all stood watching the patched red-and-white sail dip and bob and vanish at last over the grey horizon, and then Abarhild and her new priest had headed for the minster. Abarhild had commandeered the mule and told Heahred to bring the new priest's bag.

Elfrun had been too wrapped up in her father's departure to take much interest, but she had overheard Heahred asking, ‘Did you know about this?'

Ingeld had shrugged. ‘She told me she had written to the abbot of Corbie.'

‘And you didn't think to let me know? Or Radmer? For God's sake, Ingeld!'

‘What would that have achieved?' Ingeld was still looking seaward, to where the sail had finally vanished behind Long Nab. ‘It might have led to nothing. Never trouble trouble...'

...
till trouble troubles you
. Was this new priest trouble? Her father had been angry. Heahred had looked angry, too, although usually he was so bluff and easy-going. Ingeld seemed to push everyone to the limits of their patience. And yet it seemed everyone loved him. Or almost everyone, she amended, thinking of her father.

How did he get away with it?

It was mid-morning before the creak and rumble of the ox-cart announced that Abarhild had returned. Elfrun tucked her heddle between the warp threads and came out into sparkling September sunshine to find her grandmother snapping orders. Her big carved bed had been unpegged and carried out of the bower, and now it was being loaded piece by piece over the tail of the cart. One of her women was standing guard over Abarhild's dowry chest and a neatly folded stack of wall-cloths.

Elfrun stared. ‘What's going on?'

‘There you are at last.' Abarhild didn't even look round. ‘I am moving down to the minster.' A small, tight smile creased her withered face.

‘But where will you live? And what about the hall? Father said you weren't to! Who's going to look after the hall?'

Her grandmother waved a dismissive hand. ‘As for where I will live, Heahred and Fredegar are seeing to all that.'

‘Fredegar?' The name was alien. ‘The new priest?'

Her grandmother nodded, then reached out and tapped Elfrun's shin smartly with her stick, not punishingly, merely indicating the way she was to go. ‘Into the hall. We need to talk to you.'

We?

She had never seen the hall looking so forlorn, so dark and dull. Radmer had taken so much of their splendour with him. There were men there, but her first thoughts were about absence, not presence.

‘Sit down, Elfrun.' Abarhild pointed with her stick.

‘What, in the chair?' She was taken aback: too many memories of being told not to sit in it, not to climb on it. The thick cushion with its latticework of red and yellow embroidery had gone to Rome, but even in her father's absence the great elmwood chair with its lathe-turned finials embodied him and his authority.

But, ‘No, no, you silly girl. Down here, on the footstool.' Abarhild hobbled forward, and one of the men in the shadows loomed forward to offer his arm in support, but her grandmother brushed him aside. Now that her eyes were adjusting to the hall's dim light Elfrun could see it was Hirel, the shepherd. Hard to miss. No one else was that big, not in Donmouth.

He was a good shepherd, but Elfrun had never been comfortable around him. He was so massive, he moved and spoke at such a ponderous pace, and his nails were always black-rimmed, his hands stained rust-red. Still, she knew fine well the stains were only raddle and sheep-grease, for all they looked like dried blood. He had a name for being famous with the sheep, and his worth had only increased after that sensational run with the keg, back at midsummer.

Hiding her uncertainty, she came forward and lowered herself on to the stool. And now she could see that Luda was there too, and the knot in her belly tightened. Her father had told her, more than once, that Luda had all the virtues of a good steward. ‘He's sharp with my wealth. Never wastes anything. Honest as the recording angel.' And perhaps his suspicious glares were part of that honesty. But there were too many memories of him telling her off for the things she had done and those she had failed to do, and the skin of the nape of her neck and her shoulder blades twitched and shivered in his presence as though a horse-fly's feet were crawling there.

‘You want to be lady of Donmouth.' Her grandmother's tone was dry.

It was completely unexpected. ‘Yes, but...'

‘Here are the keys.' Abarhild's gnarled fingers were slipping the brass loop from her girdle. ‘Go on, girl.' They jingled faintly. ‘Take them.'

‘But Father said—'

‘I am tired, Elfrun. I am sick to death of arguing about this. If you need me I will be at the minster.'

Elfrun couldn't think of anything else to say. She stared at the ring of keys – money box, spice chest, heddern.

‘Take them.' Abarhild shook the ring. ‘Your father has no idea. When I was your age I had had my own household for three years and I'd already buried two babies.' Her grandmother shot a sideways glance at the men. ‘
Amur Deo
, Elfrun. Grow up. This is not the place to argue.'

Elfrun felt as though she'd been punched in the gut. But she couldn't challenge Abarhild, not with the shepherd and the steward looking on. And did she even want to? Her thoughts were rattling like dried peas shaken in a jar. Her father had planned otherwise. But her father had gone away.

For the first time she began to realize what that absence meant. How angry would he be, when he got back? But again, this was her chance.

She reached out, watching her hand extend, still unbelieving, and took the loop from her grandmother. The keys rang against each other as she unknotted her own girdle and tied them in place.

Luda moved in, one hand rubbing the other. ‘We need a word from you, the shepherd and I.' He paused. ‘Lady.'

Luda, speaking respectfully to her? It was still hard to breathe, but a thrill shivered through her. She needed to keep pace. ‘Is there some dispute?' She tried to find the right words. Over what might these two men clash? ‘Is it to do with lambing? The lamb-leather, the parchment?' Was it her imagination, or did Hirel jump?

But Luda moved in, smoothing hand over hand as though he were rubbing bacon-fat into cracked skin. ‘No, no, nothing to do with the sheep. A family matter, that's all. A formality.'

Elfrun felt so small, her knees on a level with her chin, staring up at the men. Her father's cloak hung on its peg, only feet away, and wrapping that round her might give her some of his authority, but she could scarcely ask them to pass it to her now. She must look such a child, in her patched blue dress, with her feet and head bare. If only she had a claim to the veil that married women and widows wore, that would make her look older, give her some ballast...