Daughter of the Wolf (42 page)

Elfrun nodded. She watched Widia go into the stables and emerge with the fringed saddlecloth draped over one arm and a bridle in his hand. ‘Lady,' he called, ‘will you use your father's saddle?'

She was about to shake her head, but thought again. She had been wearing her father's cloak – though she was still waiting for the new silver tag – and sitting in his chair; and now she would be riding his horse: how would using his saddle be any different? Athulf may have been riding Mara without her leave, but at least he hadn't dared to take Hafoc again through the winter and the spring, not since the raid on Illingham's granaries.

Widia came back leading the dun gelding by the bridle and hitched him to a post while he went back in to get the great saddle. Silver-gilt studs sparkled in the late-afternoon sun. Widia stood holding Hafoc's bridle for her, but the horse jibbed, swinging his head, and Widia had to shake the bridle in his face and back him up a few paces before bringing him forward again. ‘Restless,' he said. ‘Not been ridden for too long, lady. I've taken him out when I can, but it's not enough. You should ride him regularly.'

She patted the snuffling whiskery nose and let Hafoc lip and nuzzle the palm of her hand. ‘You're all right, aren't you, boy?' Widia made a step with his hands and boosted her up. She ran her finger over the studs, noticing where the gilt was rubbing off, where the underlying silver had the purple bloom of tarnish. ‘I remember when I was a little girl, sitting up here perched on this saddle-bow in front of my father.'

‘I don't like you riding out on your own, lady.'

‘It's only to the sheepwick. And I've got Gethyn.' Still that grim face. ‘Come with me then, if you're so fretted.' She didn't care what he did, as long as he made up his mind.

He paused. ‘I have nets to mend, but...' He was forestalled by the sound of hooves. They both turned to see Thancrad of Illingham riding through the gate on Blis, sunshine glinting in the glossy russet of his hair.

He raised a hand in salute. ‘I was looking for Athulf.'

Widia laughed shortly. ‘Good luck. He's gone out on Mara. I thought he was meeting you – he said as much. Or at least that he was going to Illingham.'

Thancrad looked puzzled, then shrugged. ‘I've not seen him on the way. We've only just got back from Driffield.' He turned to Elfrun. ‘That's a fine horse you're riding.'

Elfrun reached forward to pat Hafoc's neck, hiding her smile. ‘My father's.'

‘Where are you taking him?'

She hesitated, feeling shyer than ever in the aftermath of her talk with Fredegar.

‘She's going up to the sheepwick,' Widia said.

‘On her own?'

‘Yes,' she said, and at the same moment Widia said, ‘I don't like it, either.' His eyes met Thancrad's, and there was a silent moment of masculine complicity which Elfrun found deeply irritating. Then Thancrad tugged Blis round.

‘I'll ride with you.' He paused. ‘If you like.'

She didn't like, but she didn't know how to refuse. Be rude, Fredegar had said. But how do you refuse simple courtesy?

It had rained earlier in the day, and now a light steamy mist was rising from the young barley. The sky had cleared, but there was more rain to come to judge by the dampness of the air and the shifting clouds to the west. Hafoc ducked his head and broke his stride. Lurching in the saddle, Elfrun gripped the edge of the pommel and pulled herself forward until she felt secure enough again to lean forward and pat his neck. He snorted and shook his head. She was very aware of Thancrad riding just to her side and behind her. Did he think she couldn't manage her father's horse? Warm damp air rose up from the long grass, thick and slightly sour with the scent of elder-blossom from the bushes that fringed the track. The sheepwick stood on the edge of the outland, three miles above the hall. They came up the little combe, following the dry course of the winterburn, and out of the stand of elder and alder, rowan and birch that grew on the little plateau which held the feed-barn and house and sheep-pens.

Elfrun jerked back harder on the reins than she had meant. A snowy mare was already there, dazzling in the sunlight, her back bare of anything but a blanket. She was tethered to a post of the fence that surrounded the lambing pens, empty now, with the flocks scattered across the rough grazing of the hills to which they were hefted. She had her head down, grazing among the sweet weeds that grew as high as her belly, but hearing other horses approaching she lifted her head and whickered an enquiry. The saddle was propped against another post.

‘It's Storm. My uncle's horse,' Elfrun said. ‘He must be here about the shearing too.' She frowned. ‘Funny, that he would come himself.' Minster sheep and hall sheep ran side by side, with only the differently cut nicks in their ears to mark them out, but she would have expected Heahred or one of the minster servants to be running such an errand.

‘Maybe someone's borrowed his mare?'

‘Storm?' She tried to repress a snort. ‘You clearly don't know my uncle. No-one would dare' – she thought of Fredegar coming to Cudda – ‘not without it being a matter of life or death.' Elfrun looped the reins over the high, carved saddle-bow and grabbed it with her right hand before leaning forward and grasping a slithery handful of Hafoc's dark mane, swinging her right leg over the cantle and pushing herself away from his flank as she thumped down into the grass, winded but with her skirts in place and her dignity intact. ‘Good boy!' Gethyn came trotting up, panting and pink tongue lolling, brown eyes eager. ‘Not you! Well, you are too.'

She looked back at Thancrad looping Blis's reins over a post.

‘Thancrad, could you hold Gethyn? There might be late lambs around, and I don't trust him.' Thancrad took Gethyn's collar with one hand and Hafoc's bridle with the other. He opened his mouth but she forestalled him. She had had more than enough of being fussed over. He was as bad as her grandmother. ‘Wait for me here.'

Without staying for his answer, she went through the gate.

The place seemed deserted. Elfrun frowned. The overwintering shed stood to her left and Hirel's little house to her right, and ahead there were the hay store and the dairy. Hirel's old dog was tethered by the dairy. He lifted his greying muzzle and stared at her, but didn't bother to struggle to his legs. She went over to the house, noting the smoke trickling out here and there through the thatch, and the door ajar and sagging a little against the ground on its leather hinges.

‘Hello?' The little house was dim after the enamel-bright sunshine of the midsummer late afternoon, but she could tell from the dull fall of her voice that the place was unoccupied despite the smouldering hearth. She came out again, past the stacked barrels and the cords of firewood and went over to the silent pens. Standing on tiptoe she peered over the top of the wattle panels, her gaze sweeping round the empty stalls. The door to the fodder store loomed, a gaping mouth waiting to swallow the imminent hay-harvest. Elfrun crossed herself hastily. If only this fine weather would hold.

She picked up her skirts to step over the high threshold. It was dark inside, punctuated by stabbing lines of bright light where there were holes in the thatch.

The entrance was flanked by mounds of last year's hay as high as her head, an old cartwheel looking for all the world like a giant spindle-whorl, random lengths of wood, little pots for tar and raddle. She took another couple of paces. This was silly. If folk were about they would have hailed her by now. Perhaps Hirel and Ingeld had gone on foot up to the high pastures, with the two lads who helped out.

But Saethryth should be here somewhere, surely.

Elfrun's lips tightened. Too many prickly memories of coming into the women's house to a babble of happy chatter that fell silent at the sight of her, and Saethryth's sidelong eyes, her sulky mouth and her muttering to her neighbour. But that was last year. Saethryth was a married woman now. She would be different.

The air in the barn was thick and sweet with the ghosts of last year's ingathering: hay and pea and vetch. Sparrows chirped incessantly in the rafters and from somewhere there came the buzzing of insects. A stir in the straw caught her eye, and a little sighing sound.

For a wild moment she thought it was a ewe, a marvellous ewe with a great cascade of long silky fleece, caught in a net of sunlight. And then she realized it was human hair.

Saethryth's hair, unbound.

It flowed over the girl's shoulders and down her back in a curly tangle that had all the pallid sheen of the best flax. A wooden flask, its stopper out, lay on the earthen floor beside her. Its contents had spilled and the sticky mess was alive with feasting wasps.

Saethryth shifted again and muttered some unintelligible words. She was deep asleep, lying with her near leg bent at the knee and her other leg over something colourful spread over the hay. Something with even more of a sheen to it than Saethryth's hair.

Silk.

A wasp buzzed in Elfrun's face and she batted it away.

Familiar silk.

Ingeld too was asleep, naked, his arm around Saethryth's waist and his face buried in her breasts. And they had spread out his chasuble, the best one, the yellow silk from Pavia, as a coverlet over the straw.

Elfrun blinked. The heat – it was hard to breathe.

Saethryth sighed and turned closer to Ingeld, wrapping her leg around his. Elfrun could see the pale swell of the other girl's buttock and her uncle's hand, sun-darkened as no priest's should be, cupped possessively around the smooth curve. Gold shone on his finger.

The air had so thickened and filled with dust, it was hard to drag it into her lungs. She took a careful step backwards, then another, and turned round. Her head jerked back. Thancrad was just a few paces away, a silhouette against the light, staring as she had stared. She walked straight past him, eyes fixed out on the rectangle of daylight. She could feel the pulse thudding hard in her neck, her wrists, her groin.

The yard was painfully bright and she shaded her eyes with her hand and stumbled over a long-dried rut. Where had this heat come from, this inability to draw breath?

Thancrad must not know that there had been anything in that sight to disturb her. She swallowed hard as she unlatched the gate. Gethyn came trotting up to her and she bent over the dog, making a fuss of his ears. Blis snorted and shifted from hoof to hoof, setting her harness-trinkets jingling.

‘It's your uncle, isn't it? And the shepherd's wife.' Thancrad's words were bitten off at the end. ‘What a risk to take.' Hot blood swamped her. She thought he was looking at her oddly. ‘And you didn't know.' It was a statement, not a question.

‘I knew... I knew there was someone.' She thought back four, no, five months, to that bitter day when she had inadvertently eavesdropped on her uncle and grandmother. She had almost forgotten that conversation in the shock of Fredegar telling her that he would be teaching her no more Latin. Thancrad turned his head sharply. He was looking away from her, up towards the hills.

‘What?'

He lifted a hand. ‘Listen.'

She frowned, concentrating. One of the horses snorted softly. And then she heard it too, hardly louder than the summer breeze in the birch leaves. Little bells, chiming and clanking in the far uphill distance, and behind the bells a soft steady bleating note almost too faint to hear.

Hirel was bringing the flock down for the shearing.

Thancrad vaulted the gate and pelted into the dark doorway of the barn. Elfrun could hear raised voices, muffled by the walls, and she felt sick again, imagining the panic, the vulgar, bare-legged scrabbling for breeches or overdress. It was humiliating to be associated with such a scene, even at this distance. She turned away to stare up the thickly wooded slope. The sound of those tinkling bells would carry some distance on a warm, still afternoon like this, but nonetheless Hirel might round the corner far too soon. She had to get up the hillside and forestall him.

Her only thought was concealing Ingeld's shame. She looked up at the great carved saddle on Hafoc's back and shook her head. Storm presented just as much of a challenge. Without a leg-up it would have to be Blis. Without Thancrad's permission? She glanced behind her, and swallowed. What choice did she have? ‘Come on, girl. Stand still.' Thancrad was nowhere in sight. She kilted her skirt up and hurled herself over Blis's back, swinging her right leg over and tugging her skirt back down as far as possible with one hand while she reached for the reins with the other. ‘Come on, darling. I've been up on you before. You know me, don't you?'

Blis walked obediently forward, and Elfrun found her balance, urging the pretty mare up the track with her voice more than anything else.

There was a furious barking ahead of her. Gethyn had gone questing up the hillside, sniffing this side and that, and now he was out of sight. From somewhere above her there came a high-pitched yelp.

Elfrun gave Blis a firm kick and the sleek little pony broke into a smooth trot that carried them several hundred yards further up the hillside's well-beaten track. Round a great clump of flowering elder and into a furious scuffle: two rough-coated sheepdogs and Gethyn in an all-out snapping whirl in the middle of the path. Hirel was wading through the terrified sheep, roaring away. The bleating from the sheep was tremendous. Hirel lashed out indiscriminately this way and that with his crook, and Gethyn went yelping back to his mistress. Hirel whistled sharply and his own two dogs slunk back to his heels. He shouted and pointed, and they went scurrying round the flock, nipping at the heels of the strays and the stragglers.

Elfrun had reined in. She and Hirel stared at each other. A horrified look was spreading over his face. He pulled the greasy felt cap from his head and made an awkward bow. ‘Lady! Begging pardon, but you should have kept that dog back. Couldn't you hear the wethers coming down?'