Daughter of the Wolf (49 page)

He was trying to stop her from being so hard on herself, but he could only do it by showing her how little she knew of him, how little she meant to him. She took refuge in anger. ‘I don't like all these secrets.'

‘I didn't choose them either.'

She stared at him for a long moment that drew out past all bearing.

‘I'm cold,' he said at last. ‘Cold and damp. Could I trouble you to find me a tunic, to replace the one you so recklessly hacked to pieces?'

She was about to retaliate in kind; and then she realized that the lift of his eyebrows should have told her he was teasing, that he was trying to draw the sting. To move their encounter on to higher, drier, less treacherous ground. She had a sudden image of him lying in the muddy marsh water, the red blood spilling out of him, getting colder and colder, knowing he was dying. Not knowing whether his friends were dead or merely wounded, only that either way he could not help them.

Finn
.

She had come so close to losing him entirely.

‘Sit down.' Blinded with sudden tears, she blundered her way to the heddern at the back of the hall, where she and Athulf had had their confrontation over the sword not six months since. She had lost that argument. She was determined not to lose anything else. It was dark in the little chamber and Elfrun thought belatedly that she should have ordered a candle brought. She would manage, though – she mustn't waste more time. Old tunics of her father's were stowed in the great chest, and Finn could have one of those. She had in mind that grey lambswool, summer-weight but warm and softer than most, and wide-woven – wide enough that a hurt man might shrug his way into it without the pain being beyond bearing. It had been one of her father's favourites, but he had left it behind in favour of more splendid garments.

But when she hauled back the lid of the chest and dug through the layers to the grey tunic, she found that the moth had got into the armpit. Her fingertips could poke right through the holes. Bunching it up and burying her face in it, Elfrun inhaled the scent of sheep-grease and the sprigs of costmary and mugwort that were supposed to keep the moths at bay. She had been no better at guarding her father's clothes than she had been at keeping any other part of his realm safe.
Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust and moth consume...

All that labour, for this.

Breathe.
Breathe
. Finn was waiting. Would this one do, despite the holes? No doubt Luda would say that Finn, as a beggarly wanderer of the roads, was lucky to get it and should be grateful.

Her jaw tightened. She would not send him out in moth-eaten cast-offs for Luda to mock, not if she had a choice. She leaned forward into the chest again, her fingers leafing in the gloom through the neatly folded garments. She knew them so well, she didn't need a light. The dark brown was too heavy to sit comfortably on a man wounded in the shoulder. Not the blue – her father had never liked that blue one: she could see him running his finger around the inside of the collar, complaining that the wool was too scratchy, that it chafed him. Every single garment had memories threaded through warp and weft; and nothing was right.

Caution had been abandoned now: she was pulling out the clothes one after the other, only to reject each item in turn, drop it on the floor and reach after another. She could feel hysteria building like thunderclouds, memories thick as midges about her head.

Elfrun took a deep breath and sat back on her heels, resting her hands on her knees and trying to still her hammering heart.

Perhaps she should send down to the minster and see what Ingeld had left in his chest, although Abarhild had refused to let anyone touch her darling son's possessions, even Athulf, to whom they surely belonged by right. There were some fine things there – finer than anything Radmer had left behind him. Despite her grandmother's intransigence they would need sorting, and sooner rather than later to judge by the state she had let her father's clothes get into. Less than a year of neglect... She swallowed painfully, thinking back to Athulf's righteous fury about the rusty sword, its cracked, flaking harness and tarnished silver buckles. He had been right, but she had been too angry to see it.

And she would have to see these clothes put back into the chest, in some kind of order. Finn needed a tunic now, not in half a day. Perhaps the grey would do after all. If she took it into the light and had a better look at it...

‘Alvrun?'

‘What?' He was right behind her.

‘You took so long. I wondered if you – if everything was all right.'

‘Sorry. I – I was thinking about moths.' She thrust the tunic at him blindly.

He grasped her wrist instead, and the grey tunic slithered to the floor. ‘Alvrun... have I thanked you? Thanked you properly? I would have died. What can I do for you?'

The moment trembled between them. Elfrun felt something huge swelling under her ribs, like some great creature of the deep sea, rising and breaching the water and coming darkly shining into the air at last.

She went with a rush into his arms, burying her face in his right shoulder, feeling the renewed warmth of his skin through the damp linen. So different from the corpse-chill of last night. His hand cupped the back of her head, stroking her hair.

Him and his secrets. There were so many questions to which she should demand answers. She had no idea what Auli was to him. How had he come by that spider's web of scars? Why these secret assignations with strange merchants on her land? But none of those buzzing, wasp-like issues mattered, not just at that moment. Someone had taken out her blood and replaced it with sun-warmed mead. She turned her face up to his and kissed him, hard and clumsy, right on the mouth, her arms around his waist.

He was startled: he rocked slightly and found his balance again before kissing her in his turn. She could feel her knees caving in, the earth tugging her downwards, and she found herself pulling hard until they were both kneeling on the floor, among her father's rejected finery, still kissing, fierce enough to bruise lips against teeth. He was cupping her face with his good hand, stroking his thumb over her cheekbones. ‘
Alvrun...
'

She tried to tug him closer, to make him lie down beside her as she had lain by him in the ash coppice, but he jerked away with a wince. ‘Sorry – my shoulder.'

Her heart was beating so hard she could hardly breathe; it was like some frantic wild bird struggling in the huntsman's lime. She felt that if she spoke she would break the spell, that she would lose this ferocious determination, so she just nodded and shifted round and tried to pull him down against her on the other side. He groaned and buried his face in her neck, and suddenly she was terrified she had really hurt him.

‘What is it?'

‘Alvrun... Alvrun...'

‘What?' She was properly frightened now.

‘Not here.' The breath was catching in his throat. ‘I – My shoulder hurts. The bones grated. But it's not that. Your charming steward might come in.' He was sitting up, his breath steadying. His eyes were shadowed in the filtered light. Somewhere up in the rafters a mouse or a rat squeaked and scrabbled. ‘He might come in any moment. And then what about your name, and your reputation, Alvrun? And what price my life? You didn't save me last night to see me die at the rope's end.'

She batted away the buzzing, unwelcome cloud of words, hanging on to the first two. ‘Not here? Then where?'

He sighed. ‘What is it you want?'

‘You.' She was amazed by her own boldness.

‘As a means to what end?'

‘What?' She shook her head at him, not wanting to talk, wanting to recapture that honey-warm energy of a moment since.

‘There's something going on with you. You're frightened of something. What's frightened you so badly that you want to use me to bring your world crashing down around you?'

‘That's not true, any of it.' She was appalled by his words. ‘I'm not using you. I dream about you.' She closed her mouth, because it had been about to say,
I love you
.

‘Then what is true? A dream?' He shook his head. ‘You have the right of it, Alvrun. I am no more than a dream. A thief in the night. A creature of shadow. You don't want me.'

That torrent of blood and desire was ebbing now: she could feel it slowly withdrawing like the turn of the tide and the slow retreat across the sand; and a deep mournful longing taking its place. There was anger in there too, but she didn't know why, or with whom she should be angry, and she bit it back.

‘You're right in one thing.' She breathed out sharply, a short huffing sound. ‘Luda could come in, or anybody really.' She pulled away from him, rearranging her rucked skirts. Too late, her modesty was reasserting itself, and she could feel hot shame staining her cheeks. ‘Here.' The grey wool. ‘It's the softest, although the moth have—'

Finn caught her wrist. ‘Would you come away with me?'

Of course she had turned him down.

But first there had been a long stunned moment, like the floating time of shock after a bad fall; a moment in which a whole other life had unfolded itself before her, one in which she was free of Donmouth; in which guilt and grief and terrible responsibility were no more than the rags of last night's dream; in which she and Finn wandered the green lanes in some endless summer.

It was so real, she could see the cow parsley and the meadowsweet and the loosestrife, all in bloom at once and as high as her head, the air fragrant and buzzing with the laden bees, and Finn's face warm and golden and turned towards her own.

Then, ‘No!' She had shaken her head at Finn, furious with him for even summoning up that tantalizing illusion. ‘How can I?'

It was like her stupid dream of taking her father's silver and fleeing to some haven with Widia as escort, but a thousand times worse because it was Finn and it was real and he was looking at her with those silver-grey eyes and the little lift of the eyebrows that somehow put all the humour and the charm back into his weary face.

She scrambled to her feet, thrusting the grey wool into his arms and backing towards the door. ‘Don't look at me like that.'

He followed her out into the lighter space of the high-raftered, echoing hall. ‘I mean it. Come with me.' There was a tight look to his jaw now, and she wondered whether he was angry with her. She felt her own temper rising in pre-emptive retaliation.

‘I can't. Don't be ridiculous. Put that tunic on. Be careful with the left sleeve – the moth—'

‘Never mind the moth!' He stepped forward quickly and took her by the hand. ‘I really mean it, Alvrun. You should come with me.' His gaze flickered towards the door and back to her face. ‘You have no idea.'

‘Donmouth—'

‘Donmouth can shift for itself. There's not a soul here who cares for you as they should. Look at you! I thought you were too thin when I met you a year ago—'

‘You said I was beautiful!' She hadn't meant to speak, but this betrayal tore the words out of her.

‘You are beautiful.' He was shaking his head. ‘And strong, and brave. And kind, too, for that matter. Kinder than you have any call to be. But your face...' He lifted his other hand and stroked a finger down from her eyebrow to the corner of her jaw, holding her gaze with his until she felt as though she were drowning. ‘You're all bones and hollows and corners, Alvrun. Donmouth isn't hungry, not this year. You aren't looking after yourself, and no one is looking after you.' He gripped her wrist tighter. ‘But this isn't what I meant to be saying. Alvrun' – and his voice was sombre suddenly – ‘I've heard things...'

‘About me? What things?' The floorboards seemed to shift beneath her.

‘No, no. Not about you. About... things. On – on the roads.' He paused, hunting for words. ‘You do, you know, travelling. At markets. Folk – I think folk forget I'm there.' His eyes were shadowed, remote, as though he were looking into the depths of his memory. ‘Bad times are coming.'

‘To Donmouth?' The ground was still lurching.

‘To all Northumbria. But from what I've seen and heard – yes, perhaps particularly to Donmouth.'

The gravity of his tone terrified her. She tried to fight the fear with anger. ‘Then how can I possibly go? My folk need me, Finn. How can I go with you? Are you asking me to be your woman?' A flash of memory: Ingeld's brown hand resting with such affectionate possession on the soft pale curve of Saethryth's hip; and she battled a sudden hot rush of tears. ‘What makes you think I'm so easy?'

‘Easy?
You?
' Finn closed his eyes. ‘I should never have asked you. Never. And if bad times do come it's at least in part my fault. Better for both of us maybe if you had left me where I lay, last night.'

She was speechless for a long moment. His words made no sense. Then, ‘But you would have died.'

‘Yes, most like.' He shrugged his good shoulder. ‘Men do die, you know. They die all the time.'

The flat fatalism of his tone drove her to fury. ‘Do you think I don't know that?'

‘I don't know what you know, Alvrun. And I don't know what you want. I wish you would come with me. But never mind.' He turned a little away from her and started to pull the grey tunic on over his head, flinching as he worked his left arm gingerly into the sleeve. He lacked some of Radmer's breadth, and she could see that the seams sat awkwardly across his shoulders and upper arms, but at least the moth damage was invisible. ‘I'll stay here tonight, if I may.' His voice was stiff. ‘I need to rest, with your leave. Then I'll be off at first light tomorrow.'

‘Where will you go?'

He shrugged, and winced again. ‘York, probably. After that, who knows?'

‘But you're hurt.'