Daughter of the Wolf (14 page)

‘His daughter,' Hirel said, loud and sudden. ‘I want her.'

‘Saethryth?' This was so unanticipated, and so much less serious than Elfrun had been picturing, that she was hard pressed to stop herself laughing out loud.

‘It's past time that girl was married,' Abarhild said sharply. ‘She's a flighty creature, even more than most. Marriage will burden her, slow her down, like it did the rest of us.'

Luda darted a sharp look at Abarhild, one that smoothed away to a tight-lipped smile when he became aware of Elfrun's curious gaze. ‘She's a good girl, lady, as you well know. A great help to her mother. A credit to her, as well. Handy.'

If Elfrun had been listening she might have taken issue with some of that, but she hardly heard a word. If Saethryth were to marry Hirel she would go and live up at the sheepwick, miles away, on the edge of the hill pasture.

No more Saethryth in the women's house, with her endless whispering, that speculative giggle, the conversations which were hushed as soon as the other girls became aware that Elfrun was present. With Saethryth gone, she could start again. Hard enough being Radmer's daughter without the extra burden of Saethryth's malice.

But if she were to do this, she had to do it properly. There was more involved than just granting permission; she had seen her father go through this a dozen times over the last few years. There were rules for this kind of thing, and to Elfrun's relief she could remember them. ‘And the maiden, is she willing?'

Luda was nodding. ‘We wouldn't be here otherwise.'

Hirel said, ‘I wanted to ask her at midsummer, but she had gone. Now was my next good chance.'

Elfrun nodded. The sheep were back from the hills now, now all the fields were cut, feeding on the barley stubble and the aftermath of the hay, and enriching the soil with their dung. The shepherd would have more excuse to come down to the yards.

The temptation just to take Luda's gilded words at their surface value, to say yes, to wave a hand and make it happen, was palpable: she could feel the yearning in the palms of her hands, in her midriff, her shortness of breath. How delightful, how
convenient
, the thought of sending Saethryth away. With a mere nod of her head she could confound all the other girl's power over her.

But how she would hate it if this were her own future, being decided behind closed walls.

And she was acting for her father. Anything she did, was in his name.

She had to get this right.

‘Go and fetch the maiden,' she said, hiding her diffidence with the formal words, a haughty voice and a chin held high.

Luda glanced at Hirel, shrugged, then turned and limped to the door.

The moments stretched out. A trapped fly was buzzing loud up in the rafters. Elfrun was longing to question her grandmother but Hirel's big silent presence inhibited her. He had taken off his greasy felt cap and he was twisting it round and round in his massive hands, breathing hard.

If she thought for a moment that Saethryth was reluctant, she could stop this wedding with a word.

And she would, too.

But when Saethryth came in the other girl was loud, fast-talking and full of flashing smiles. Hirel was clearly besotted, following her with doting eyes, and many of those smiles were sent in his direction, although Elfrun noticed that whenever Saethryth had cause to look instead at her father her eyes narrowed and her lips tightened, and she kept well away from him.

‘Come with me,' she said, scrambling up from the low stool which had left her feeling at such a disadvantage. ‘Just Saethryth. Outside.'

Saethryth hovered in the doorway, although the big yard was deserted.

‘Come
on
.' Elfrun was frustrated. ‘I'm on your side. Tell me, where they can't hear. Do you really want to marry the shepherd?'

Saethryth flung her head up and stared at Elfrun defiantly. ‘I can't pretend I had the idea. Hirel asked Da, and Da told me he wanted it.'

‘But what about you? You don't have to if you don't want to. I'm not going to make you.'

Saethryth was pink-cheeked now. ‘I've got to marry someone, and I want to do it soon.'

It was Elfrun's turn to stare. ‘Are you... Is there a baby coming?'

‘What's it to you?' Saethryth's eyes narrowed and she gave Elfrun much the same look as she had been giving her father. ‘Why don't you want me to marry the shepherd? Are you saying I'm not good enough for him?'

‘What? Where did you get that idea?'

Saethryth tossed her head, pale braids swinging. ‘I know what you think of me. The way you look at me. You're loving this.'

The shot was too close to home. ‘You're imagining things. Why would I—?' Elfrun gave up. ‘Oh, never mind. Marry him tomorrow, for all I care.'

Tuuri wrapped the rope twice around the tree stump and tied it fast. ‘You're in charge.' Auli nodded. She had already set a couple of men to gathering firewood. Myr and Holmi were baling. Varri gave a wet, pink yawn, showing all his surviving teeth.

Tuuri set off up the track, kicking his way through a yellow drift of birch leaves. It wound along a ridge of high ground, heading for the terrace where the kirk was nestled. Never straightforward, these meetings. He was true to the day, to the very hour, that he had promised, but that was no guarantee that his paymasters would have done the same. And he could not blame them. Apart from wind and tide, there were so many things that could go wrong.

Men planning treachery were always vulnerable.

Northumbrians here on the Humber's southern shore, in the land of Lindsey, could never be certain of their welcome. The men with whom he had his appointment might have run into any sort of trouble.

As he climbed the path a silvery-grey ash bole unfurled itself and stood up. He squinted, and made out Finn's face.

‘Good man.'

Finn nodded.

‘Have you been here long?'

Finn shrugged. ‘Two-three days. I came from Lincoln.'

‘Business?'

‘Good. I have silver for you. I buried it. And some new stock.'

They fell into step together, Finn keeping pace with the bigger man. No more words were exchanged until the ditch and bank around the church came into view.

Tuuri said, ‘Did you make yourself known to them yet?'

Finn shook his head. As they approached the causeway he fell back a pace or two, his already reserved face taking on a more servile, closed expression. Tuuri threw back his shoulders.

But there proved no need for swagger. Horses were already tethered outside the kirk, and the hall doors, north and south, stood open. They were welcome. White doves preened in the autumn sun.

The usual courtesies, new ale and mead, the words the same in the tongues spoken either side of the North Sea. Then the abbot of Barton left them, well pleased with his gift of silvered-copper cups chased with vines and strange beasts, and they got down to business.

Finn watched, taking everything in as was his second nature.

‘Here's Northumbria.' Tuuri was holding out his left hand, fingers splayed, back of the hand towards his audience. ‘This' – he pointed with his other hand to the big gap between thumb and index finger – ‘this is the Humber. Here's the Tees' – the gap between index and middle fingers – ‘here's the Tyne' – middle and fourth fingers – ‘and here's the Forth.'

The big man's face had plumped and creased with amusement. ‘So your little finger is Fife, and here in Barton we're sitting on your thumb.' He had no neck, just rolls of fat. Where did a man get fat like that?

Laughter, louder and longer than the quip merited.

‘So, tell us where and when.' Tuuri was nodding, waiting for their merriment to run its course. ‘We can bring you three ships.'

‘Sixty men?' The quiet, mouse-haired man spoke this time.

Tuuri nodded again.

‘And they'll be good men? Fighting men?'

Tuuri began to answer, but the big man overrode him. ‘You wouldn't ask if you'd seen them! Manning those boats, it bonds men together like nothing else. They're kin, anyway. Lads from good families, know how to use a sword. But the boat's the key. Clinch this now, and I'll take word to—' He stopped, and winked, and nodded.

‘Ships,' Tuuri said mildly. ‘Not boats. How much will you pay?'

‘Forgive me. Ships.'

The mouse-haired man said, ‘Excuse us.' He indicated the door.

The courtyard was enclosed from the wind, and Finn could feel himself relaxing and opening up under the kindly rays. He closed his eyes and lost himself in a red haze, listening to the crooing of the doves on the roof and the chittering of the sparrows, but opened them again when Tuuri said, ‘Do you know who they are?'

‘The big man, I've seen him before. At Hedeby, I think.'

‘Hah. No missing him, even with eyes like mine! Tilmon. He's been in the Danemarch for seven years. The other one is Alred. He wants to be king north of the Humber.'

‘What's wrong with the king they have now?'

Tuuri shrugged and spat. ‘Nothing.' He grinned. ‘Everything.'

‘Only three keels?'

Another broken-toothed grin. ‘Got to keep some stock in reserve.'

‘Not much of an army. Three keels. Not for winning a kingdom.'

Tuuri sucked his teeth. ‘They'll be starting small. Harrying. Causing little bits of trouble, up and down the coast. Choosing choice spots, spots that will hurt. Trying to get his man to come out and fight. That's how these things start.'

There was a servant at the doorway gesturing them back in.

The big man said, ‘My lord and I accept your terms.'

They settled down to talk through the detail, suddenly cosy. Finn watched and listened.

Abarhild waited a long moment, then reached out with her stick and prodded Elfrun sharply in the ribs.

‘Ow! I was listening!'

Only partly a lie. The day had been a long one even though they were in October now and the light was shortening; long and all the harder for having been spent in Luda's company, going through the tallies, reckoning the paltry stores of grain against the mouths that would need feeding, human and animal alike. And the job not done yet. Only a few weeks since Radmer had left, but it felt like a lifetime.

Her grandmother seemed to have been ensconced forever in her tight-built little bower, pentice to the minster's common hall, where Heahred and the boys, and now Fredegar, resided. The foreign priest had become a familiar, though still a chilly, figure presiding over offices and masses alike. They had hardly seen Ingeld. He had been in York for weeks, even missing the riotous day and night of Hirel and Saethryth's wedding.

Within days of her father's departure Elfrun had begun to realize that she didn't know the Donmouth economy half as well as she had thought. The weights and measures and forecasts Luda had been putting before her set her head hurting.

Abarhild had begun again. ‘But Agnes said, “I am already promised to the Lord of the Universe. He is more splendid than the sun and the stars, and He has said He will never leave me...”'

Elfrun had always enjoyed her grandmother's stories of the virgin martyrs, whose feasts had marked out her winters as long as she could remember. Lucy on the shortest day; Agnes and her lambs in late January; Agatha, whose miraculous veil could quell a flaming mountain, just half a month later. And with her father gone to Rome the tales had taken on a new reality. But this evening she found it hard to pay attention, when the stories were so familiar and she had so much else fretting at her.

She pulled the fleece from her combs and looked at it critically before rolling it and putting it in the basket.

‘Don't frown like that.' Another sharp little prod. ‘The wind might change.'

Elfrun winced.

‘You should sleep here.'

Elfrun shook her head. The little bower was small, the straw pallet thin, and her grandmother snored mightily. ‘No. I'll go back to the women's house.' Even though she suspected the other women and the girls would be whispering about her, like everyone else, wondering if she would make the right choices to pull them through the coming winter that lurked on the edge of everyone's mind like the wolf that slinks round the sheepfold in the dusk. The harvest had been poorer than they needed. Feed was lacking for the cattle as well as for the men. She sighed. ‘I've got to make an early start tomorrow. I need to talk to Luda again.'

Abarhild rapped her stick on one of the stones that edged the hearth. ‘I don't like you walking all that way in the dark on your own.'

‘But I do it all the time. I've always done it.'

‘You're not a child any more.'

Elfrun managed not to roll her eyes. ‘What, you think the sea-wolves are going to take me?' She meant it as a joke, but her grandmother wasn't amused.

‘I want you to stay here.'

‘The moon should be up by now.' She got to her feet, ignoring Abarhild's hiss. ‘It's a fine night, Grandmother. Don't worry about me.'

Indeed, the hunter's moon was just rising, round and white as church-bread, his face veiled by scudding hanks of cloud. A cold muddy league lay between her grandmother's little bower by the minster and her own bed in the women's house at the hall. The damp autumn wind was coming straight from the north, over the sea, and it went through wool and linen as though she were naked. Her toes were already going numb, and before she was halfway home Elfrun was wrapping the folds of her father's cloak tightly around her and more than half wishing she had agreed to spend the night by her grandmother's hearth after all.

Moonlight gleamed in fitful ripples on the wind-stirred estuary as she rounded the spur of the hill, and her nostrils caught a welcome whiff of distant hearth-smoke. She quickened her step. In the women's house there would be a banked and glowing hearth, and plenty of warm bodies, and because she was her father's daughter she would have her usual place close by the fire and no one would have dared steal her pallet. She put her head down against the clammy breeze and hurried into the great thicket of coppiced ash that spilled down the slope, straddling the path and flanking the stream.