Daughter of the Wolf (29 page)

Athulf sprang to his feet, grappling with his hilt. Thancrad had turned round, and he and Dene were both watching. Addan had his hands on his hips, his head cocked to one side. Athulf couldn't see too clearly, but he was sure the other was smiling.

Athulf pulled his sword from its sheath. There had been no time yet to take it to the smithy for regrinding. But he had brought it back to brightness with sand, and used Widia's whetstone to polish away some of the smaller gouges in the blade-edge; now was not the moment to agonize over all that he had left undone. He tossed the belt and scabbard to one side. ‘Come on then. I'll show you how hungry men of Donmouth can be.'

Addan glanced over his shoulder, and Athulf realized, first, that the other lad was unarmed and, next, that he was frightened. Exhilarated, he took a step forward, lunging with the sword, and Addan flinched. ‘Thancrad? Dene?'

But they stayed where they were.

‘Where's your own sword, Addan?' Athulf took another step forward. ‘You should know better than to step away from it. Didn't your bones tell you battle was coming? What kind of warrior are you?' He gave his blade a little shake, knowing that if he didn't take care the wooden hilt, smooth from the grip of men long dead, might slip from his greasy fingers. ‘My sword doesn't look so useless now, does it?'

Without realizing it, Addan had backed himself against the broad trunk of an ash tree. Slowly he raised his hands to shoulder-height.

Athulf lifted the sword to tap the point of the blade against Addan's chest. He almost smiled, remembering his encounter with Elfrun in his uncle's treasure-chamber. ‘You're not half the man my cousin Elfrun is, for all your beard.'

‘Enough.' Thancrad straightened up, and only then did Athulf realize he had been keeping a restraining hand on Dene's shoulder. ‘No need to prove yourself against an unarmed man, Athulf. We get the point. All of us.' A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘And, Addan, you're a fool.' He made an exasperated, flicking gesture. ‘I say we ride out at midnight. In the meantime, tend to your horses and get some sleep. Athulf, do you want to keep the first watch?'

Suggestions, not orders.

Athulf decided he could acquiesce without losing face. And he wouldn't have slept, anyway, not in that company. He kept his sword loose in its scabbard, close to him under his cloak, and stared into the half-dark, waiting for Addan to come back and get his revenge. High thin cloud covered the sky, and somewhere behind it a waning and westering moon, against which the bare trees formed a dark lattice. The night was full of rustles and creaks. The occasional harsh bark of a fox came up to his ears, and the horses shifted their hooves and snorted and tore at the meagre grass, but as far as he could tell the other three slept soundly until the stars told him the middle of the night had come at last.

It was exhilarating riding down to the pastures, the hooves of their horses muffled with rags. Picking out four likely cattle, then charging in and heading them off for all their frantic bellowing, driving them up and away while the sleeping children who should have been watching them were still scrambling to their feet in panic terror. It was also a thrill to be on guard at the rear while they escorted their shaggy, bewildered prizes – all, he suspected, in calf – back along their trackless route as the sky slowly lightened. He had felt a deep sense of triumph when they came riding through Donmouth at dusk and his own dark-brown, long-horned prize was singled out and driven into the yard, while the women and children came tumbling out of doors to stare and point and wonder.

But nothing of all this –
nothing
– could compare with the pleasure he had experienced when Addan had taken that first step backwards, the corners of his mouth tugging down in terror and his shaking hands rising to shoulder-height, half fending, half appeasing. Athulf found himself smiling in reminiscence. Pressing his lips together, he glanced at the others where they were hauling their horses round to herd the three remaining cattle across to Illingham.

Thancrad caught his eye, and raised a hand.

Thoughtful, Athulf returned the salute. Thancrad thought he was master; that he could lead by making men love him. But fear might prove a more useful weapon than love.

A
PRIL
860, H
OLY
S
ATURDAY

‘We thought you'd given up on that project.' The librarian peered short-sightedly at the stack of vellum. ‘It got put here somewhere in the waste pile, to be scraped back, but I don't think anyone's done it yet.'

‘I can see it, sticking out.' The chronicler would not have cared, especially, even if that carefully prepared quire had been lost. But it lay near the top of the sloppily stacked pile, sitting askew, folded as though prematurely readied for binding and cutting. And since it had crossed his mind, and he had taken the trouble to come into the quiet scriptorium and ask, and it now lay under his hand, he might as well do some work.

‘You can't really expect us to keep your desk for you,' the librarian scolded. ‘Not when you're only here every couple of months.'

‘I don't expect it.'

The old man softened. ‘You're missed, you know.'

The chronicler laughed, and the librarian looked indignant. As well he might. The old man had taught the chronicler to write, and to ready vellum. Had chased him round the tannery threatening to throw him into a reeking pit and be tanned himself if he didn't mend his wicked ways. A lifetime ago, and through it all, always, a steady undercurrent of affection.

‘What will you set down?'

The chronicler shrugged. ‘The death of kings. Battles. A great synod. A new pope.' He spread out his hands. ‘Always new and always the same. Does it matter?'

The librarian said, ‘I'll see this doesn't happen again. Just leave it here, and I'll make sure it's kept for you.'

The door swung slowly shut. Was it really a year since he had first conceived the idea of writing a chronicle? It seemed too grandiose an idea now: he wondered how he had ever had the audacity. Who was he, to give events significance by scratching them down with his little pen?

In this year, a woman's breasts were like mounded cream tipped with strawberries, and they moved me more than pen can express. In this year, I have trespassed on other men's woods and fields, and hunted their private runs. In this year, I have lost my soul, and found it.

The chronicler looked down at the marks his pen had made and shook his head. These were secrets to whisper to a girl in the warm dark of midnight, or pour out in the confidential space between the penitent's mouth and the confessor's ear. There was no room for this kind of detail in the written record. A matter for the recording angel, to be sure, but not for other men's eyes. He watched the ink slowly turn matte and dry on the page. In a moment, he thought, he would pick up the knife and painstakingly scrape at the surface of the vellum, shaving away his words until the least, faintest, ineradicable trace remained. And then he would write again, write what had really happened.

Elfrun felt odd in her new shoes, her gait off balance and unfamiliar. They fastened with thongs that pulled tight round her ankles rather than the usual horn button, and she wasn't sure they had been a good choice, but last year's pair were worn right through. No matter how tight she tied the thongs, the shoes were still too loose round the heel, and her toes had to grip the insole with every step. Her feet had yet to mould the stiff leather into a comfortable form, and the slick spring grass made an untrustworthy surface. It was perhaps the thing she disliked most, at spring and harvest meeting, that her grandmother insisted on her looking her most respectable in the presence of all their neighbours.

Respectable, to be sure, but shuffling and gawky and afraid to stride out for fear of falling over.

In order to be set up in time to greet king and archbishop the Donmouth party had left home as soon as the eastern sky had begun to lighten. Now it was mid-afternoon, their tents and shelters were pitched, and everyone was exhausted. They had the same place every year, on good, flat, well-drained ground close to the great hollow ash that marked the meeting site but it was still as well to get there early in case any of their neighbours tried to take advantage.

Someone was always ready to take advantage.

Radmer had the best of the Donmouth tents with him to Rome, but Elfrun had set two of her women to embroidering a new awning over the winter and it made a brave show now, the blue and yellow dancing in the spring winds along with the sunlit daffodils that dotted the field's edge. It brightened her mood, and Heaven knew she needed something to cheer her, after the wrangling that had already marred her morning. Athulf had tried first to wheedle and then to bully her into letting him bring Hafoc.

‘Come on, Elfrun! How can it hurt? Last autumn you said maybe in the spring! Riding Hafoc, I'll make us look good in the races—'

‘No. And I never promised anything. You're making it up.' But had she? Maybe, and she had forgotten as he was claiming, but she didn't believe it. It would be just like Athulf to make up some story then keep badgering until she came to believe it herself. Still, she wanted to be concessionary. ‘You can have Mara.'

And then as soon as Mara was tethered, rubbed down and fed he had streaked off, looking for friends with whom to plan the races and the wrestling and that insane match they fought with pig-bladders and wooden staves. Leaving her to oversee everything.

Last spring she would have been with him, for some of it anyway, dodging Abarhild, exhilarated by new woods and streams to explore, and new company. She thought back to that crazy, wonderful race on the ponies. She had beaten Athulf, but that had been the last time she had had the chance to ride like that. What a difference a year could make.

Even as these thoughts ran, yet again, through her mind, she saw her uncle duck out of his equally colourful tent to stand and stretch in the sunlight. Donmouth hall and minster always tented together, although most of the minster-men from the various big and little church communities had their habitual pitches a half-mile or so to the south, near the archbishop's estate at Sherburn. And for all the burden of tradition Elfrun could wish the tents of Donmouth minster further away. She looked away now, but too late. Ingeld had seen her and came smiling over.

‘Little niece. How are you doing on this blessing of a morning?'

‘Father abbot.' She couldn't find a smile with which to answer his. She was angry with Athulf, and some of that was rubbing off on his father. And she was still unsettled by Fredegar's refusal to go on teaching her Latin. Remembering that overheard conversation made her hot and uncomfortable.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘What a mardy face you're wearing. Have I done something to offend you?'

He had, but she couldn't possibly tell him. She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. ‘Why do you pitch your tent with us, and not with the other minster-men?'

‘What? Whatever put that into your head? We've always done it like that.'

‘And look at you!' She could hear the pitch of her voice rising to shrillness. ‘No one would know you were a priest! No tonsure—'

‘I know.' He ran a rueful hand over the thick dark-brown hair that crowned his scalp. ‘I'm planning to get it cut before the archbishop's party arrives.'

‘And your
clothes
– and Storm is finer than anything in my father's stable, and—'

He put out a hand and grasped her wrist to forestall her. ‘Why, I do believe you were about to fly at me. Who would have thought it? The little brown bird has found her beak and talons at last.' He leaned back and assessed her at arm's length. ‘I thought you were a sparrow, but you're a falcon! And I rejoice to see it.'

She twisted herself free, furious. ‘Don't laugh at me. I'm lord of Donmouth. I have to guard our honour.'

‘I'm not laughing. I'm impressed.' But she could hear the rich golden-brown note in his voice, like sunlight in ale, and knew he was, at least in part, lying; that for all her fury she was managing to do little more than amuse him. ‘And as for my clothes – Elfrun, do you really expect me to dress like a beggar? What honour would that do to Donmouth? Or perhaps you think I should travel the mud and dust of the roads vested for mass?' He sighed. ‘I've all the silk and gold thread I need packed away in my chest, and no doubt the worthy Heahred is getting the creases out even as we speak. So, stop fretting.' He patted her arm. ‘The sun is shining at last. It's been a long, filthy winter. Come on, little niece, count your blessings, then head out and make the most of them.'

She pulled herself up tall, wrapping her father's cloak around her, and glared at him, and this time he did laugh.

‘Sorry! Forgive me, Elfrun, but no one who wasn't watching just now would ever believe you could look so much like your grandmother.' He lowered his voice, and she had to lean in to listen. ‘She tries to change me, and so does your dear father, and now you. Look at you! You used to be such a lively child.' He shook his head, keeping eye contact, keeping the smile. ‘Why on earth do you think you should succeed where they have failed over and over again?'

She was beginning to understand Abarhild and Radmer's frustration. ‘But doesn't it worry you?'

‘Doesn't what worry me?'

‘That everyone's talking about you? That they say you're a bad priest?'

‘Do they? Then the very best of good luck to them.' His face broke into another of his irrepressible smiles. ‘Little niece, if the king, or his grace the archbishop, were to threaten to deprive me of Donmouth minster and its revenues I might think again. But that's hardly likely. A king tried that trick on us a hundred years since, and the Pope himself stepped in and put matters right. And besides...'