Daughter of the Wolf (5 page)

‘And then this.' The abbot gestured. ‘Word from a cousin of mine. Distant cousin. She was a novice at Chelles, but then she got married, and then she got married again to an Englishman. One of the northern kingdoms. The messenger said she's in quest of a chaplain. Have they no priests left there?' He stopped and looked at Fredegar. ‘Our library's warm, you know. And they'll speak English there. I don't suppose you speak English.'

‘I've heard it spoken. Frankish is close enough.' No one would know him in Northumbria. No one would expect anything of him, or compare the man he had been with the creature he seemed to have become. ‘Where is this place?'

‘Somewhere in the middle wilderness of Britannia. The English bit.' Ratramnus squinted at his notes. ‘How's your handwriting? I can't read mine. It would be such a help in my work, you know, Fredegar, to have someone with clear cursive.' He handed the little wooden rectangles over. ‘What does that say?' A jabbing finger.

‘Beginning with D?'

‘
Donmouth
,' Ratramnus said. ‘I remember now. There's been a minster there for a hundred years. More. But I don't suppose it's up to much. Too far from York.' He looked around. ‘Not like here, you know, in the English kingdoms, not these days. No monks. Half the abbots are laymen and even bishops are as good as married.'

Fredegar nodded dutifully.

Ratramnus tutted. ‘You don't have to go, Fredegar. There won't be a library. No scriptorium. Nor any other priests, for all I know. Maybe a boy to ring the bell for you. Maybe not even a boy.' He snorted. ‘Maybe not even a bell.'

Fredegar closed his eyes. ‘Father, with your permission, I'll go to Donmouth.' His tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar clot of consonants.

Ratramnus nodded. ‘Ah, well. Pity.' He paused for a long moment. ‘There's always a place for you here, if things don't turn out. As long as I'm abbot.'

‘Yes, Father.' Fredegar bent to kiss the abbot's hand before turning to leave.

‘We'll arrange your passage. By land and then from Dorestad, I think. I'll give you letters of introduction to Wulfhere of York, and the other bishops.' Ratramnus paused again and looked into the distance. ‘Hexham, Lindisfarne – I think there's one more. And...'

Fredegar paused in the doorway out to the sunny courtyard. ‘Yes, Father?'

‘What happened at Noyon –
whatever
happened – it wasn't your fault.'

‘Yes, Father.'

Midsummer eve. The annual battle between Donmouth hall and Donmouth minster was well under way. Hours, now, since the lord and his brother the new abbot had stood on the mound and together thrown the keg hard into the crowd. They were not playing.

A shame, Hirel had thought, watching Radmer and Ingeld side by side. Little family resemblance, but they were both strapping men who would have been a credit to the fight. Not in those fine clothes, though! Hirel himself was stripped to the waist, in the thick of the scrum where he had been for most of the game, shoving with all his strength. Like most of the players he had had his hair and beard close-cropped for the fray, to deny the foe a handhold. He had no idea where the small wooden barrel for which they were all fighting might be, and just then he didn't care. Glory enough to be in the heart of this mindless mass of men, crammed together like bullocks, the air thick and damp from their sweaty bodies, without a care in the world except staying on his feet and using his bulk to keep the minster men at bay. As well, perhaps, that the abbot was not playing: with those broad shoulders of his he would be an opponent to reckon with. Hirel might care for the minster sheep as well as the hall flocks, but he knew fine well where his true allegiance lay.

Staying upright was getting harder all the time. The week before had been wet, so the grass was slippery and the ground soft and waterlogged beneath it. After the hours of fighting they had churned it to a buttery mush. Hirel thrust down with his feet and out with his arms at the same time, a great immovable wall of a man, trying to hold the scrum while some more nimble hall man could find the little keg and run like a hare. The battle was fought across the whole three miles between hall and minster but most years the real fight was here, at the stream by the stand of coppiced ash midway between minster and hall, where the keg was first thrown soaring into the forest of waving arms to disappear, often not to be seen again in daylight. Come the brief summer dark, someone would make a break for it. Already the sun was rolling along the tops of the hills to the north-west. Too many years they fought it out in the rain; this year the sun had shone from dawn to dusk, sparkling on river and estuary, gilding the hills and ripening the hay.

Nothing in the world existed except the battle, the moment, the hot press of grunting, swearing bodies. Hirel ducked his head and braced his shoulders again, trying to keep his stance strong. Many a man used the Keg as an excuse to settle old scores, but he had never had any truck with that. This was for sheer pleasure, the exhilaration of using all his strength, of being one of the many-headed, single-minded mob.

And he was at the heart of it.

So many years had passed since he had been anywhere else, Hirel could hardly remember being one of the striplings, the little lads who dodged round the edges, seeking to add their puny weight to the scrum before it overwhelmed them and they had to retire, purple-faced, wheezing and retching. He had heard that one such Keg, well before he himself had been born, had been the cause of Luda, the steward, breaking his leg, trampled underfoot by the oblivious throng.

Not the steward then, of course. Only a boy. Hard to imagine that sour pinched face with its suspicious expression ever belonging to a boy. Men said the lady Abarhild had patched him back together, but Luda had been too lame ever to walk straight again, never mind play in the Keg. The thought of Luda's bodily weakness gave Hirel a rush of illicit pleasure. He might be kept firmly under the man's thumb the rest of the year but on this one day of days he, the mere shepherd, was the better man.

He could see nothing but heads and shoulders; feel nothing but the treacherous ground below his feet and the great impersonal weight forcing in from all sides, that crushed ribs and stifled breath; smell nothing other than thick, rank sweat. But he could hear the crowd. Over-excited shrieks and exhortations from the women and children; bellows of advice and encouragement from the older men, many of whom had climbed into the trees the better to try and see down into the heart of the scrum, to guess where the keg might be, to shout strategy and tactics. Out of nowhere the sandy-haired deacon, Heahred, was facing Hirel, snarling and grunting, shoulder slamming into shoulder. Hirel shoved back even harder, looked Heahred in the eye, and laughed from sheer joy.

Then came one of those strange lulls that happened from time to time, by some unspoken accord. The pause rippled out from the centre, the men gasping for breath, wiping away the sweat, dropping their hands on to their knees and leaning forward, finding balance. And then the glances, the silent messages about force and direction. Hirel knew many of the eyes were on him, the biggest man in Donmouth. Something made him look out over the heads and shoulders of his foes and allies alike, to where the girls were clustered a little up the slope, clutching each other and pointing. Laughing. They were a mystery to him, these soft-faced creatures who took the fleece from his flock and transformed it into fine cloth by their secret processes. He'd been told he needed a wife. The dairy had not been well managed since the lady died. The girls were backlit with a rosy glow, and in his elated state Hirel truly could not have said whether the last rays of the sun gilded their edges so exquisitely, or whether they shone with their own inner light. The fair one, Luda's daughter. The one they all talked about. She was looking at him. She was looking right at him.

A roar from the scrum brought him back to his senses.

The sun had dipped now, and already the long, hazy light was beginning to thicken. The scrum swayed and lurched, with a sudden break in the direction of the hall. Women and children scattered, screaming with excitement, as the mob lumbered towards them. Something thumped into Hirel's midriff. He looked down and saw the keg had been thrust into his hands. Without hesitating, he bent low, his arms clapped tight around it, and he barged ahead, ploughing his zigzag through the steaming crowd as though the burly men had been so many reeds. He knew he could outrun most of the heavy men from the minster, and none of the nimbler ones had the force to wrest the keg from him. Get it out of the scrum, carry it a furlong or two, and he could pass it on to one of the other hall men, one of the sprinters. He looked around for an ally. Widia, perhaps, the hall huntsman, wiry and nimble, and known for his merciless play. But once Hirel had broken free of the pack no one was at hand, so he just put his head down, and charged...

They brought him shoulder-high into the hall yard. They were shouting his name.

The feast was waiting, and they all piled in, thick with mud as they were, minster-men and hall-men all now the warmest of friends. It had been the best Keg ever. The stuff of song; the making of a man's reputation. The smell of roasting pork was thick in the air, and the biggest southern barrels had been tapped. For the first time in his life Hirel was at the glittering high table, with Radmer, lord of Donmouth, and his brother the abbot, the lady Abarhild and her granddaughter and the senior servants of hall and minster, and his keg, garlanded with ivy, stood on the linen-clad board before him. He watched the women moving about the hall with their heavy spouted pitchers, and they looked like angels from heaven.

It was the raw matter which would become legend. Twenty, thirty years hence, when he was an old man, they would point at him and tell boys whose fathers were striplings now of Hirel the hall shepherd and how he had won his keg.

He floated on a warm sea of approval, flavoured with sweet wine and aromatic ale, his taste buds saturated with unfamiliar flavours and rare treats. The crisp greasy pork rind. Hare. Eggy bread made with some spice he had never tasted before.

The pitchers went round and the room grew louder and warmer, and the jokes and horseplay ever rowdier. Heahred the deacon was in the middle of the floor involved in some elaborate drinking game. The women had gone. Quite right, too.

No moon tonight. Hirel nodded sagely to himself, bleary-eyed. Very sensible. Who knew what dangers lurked in the summer-dim, on such a trowie night as this one? He pushed down hard on the board and lurched to his feet. He was the hero of the hour: he should be down on the floor in the thick of the games. He stepped down from the dais to a roar of approbation, and the sound of his name in men's mouths was sweet music to his ears.

And now he found he was regretting that the women had gone. He wanted them to admire him. He wanted the fair one to look at him again.

‘Enough. You've had my answer.' Radmer stood up, his head narrowly missing the beams. ‘You stay at the hall. We need you there for the time being.'

Abarhild hissed through her teeth. Now both her sons were thwarting her. Her sons, who never,
never
agreed with each other. The alpha and omega of all her child-bearing in her English marriage. The survivors.

Radmer, who from his first moment in her arms had contemplated her with that same stiff, judgemental stare he was using now. And Ingeld, unexpected Lammas lamb, born when she had thought she was past child-bearing. Ingeld, who gave her so much pain.

So much pain and so much joy. She had a sudden vision of him pinching her heart in a pair of tongs as though he were a blacksmith, heating it to an agonizing radiance and hammering it new, over and over again, a vision so clear she could almost feel the warmth of the imaginary forge fire on her face.

‘Time? A luxury I don't have.' She glared at her elder son. ‘I need to make my peace with God. I need a chaplain of my own.' A haven for herself at the minster, and a guide to help her to Heaven. Why were they frustrating her? Had they not noticed how short life could be?

Radmer shook his head. ‘We rely on you here at the hall, Mother. You insisted on bringing him' – he jerked his chin at his brother – ‘back to Donmouth, and I agreed against my better judgement.' He folded his arms and glared at her. ‘We've had ten years of you refusing to appoint a priest to Donmouth minster while you were waiting for him to be old enough. And now you want two?'

She hissed with annoyance. ‘Get yourself a new wife, if you need a lady for the hall. Or let Elfrun have my keys.'

‘Elfrun is a child.'

‘Nonsense. And you know it.' She turned to her younger son. ‘And you! I thought you'd welcome some educated company here. So you wouldn't be so lonely. Having to traipse back and forth to York all the time to hobnob with the archbishop! Very wearisome for you.'

Ingeld looked at her for a long moment. ‘Not wearisome at all, Mother. Wulfhere is my good friend.' To her annoyance a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, creasing the skin around his warm, brown eyes. His face was gilded by the fire-gleam. ‘But another priest at Donmouth just means someone else to disapprove of me. Why would I want that?' His eyes flicked sideways. ‘As though Radmer weren't doing a fine job already.'

‘Where is this priest going to come from, anyway?' Radmer took a couple of long strides and turned again, his energy cramped by the little space. Abarhild wished he would stop his pacing. He was reminding her of the caged lion she had seen long ago when she was a child, visiting the Emperor's court at Aachen: that same barely contained fury, the cold pale stare. ‘Who's going to feed him? House him? Priests are expensive. There's plenty the minster needs before another priest. Its own smith, for one—'

But Abarhild had had quite enough. ‘I will deal with all the necessaries.' She looked up at her eldest child. Did he have to tower over her like that? ‘I have my morning gifts.' Through all the long, difficult years, she had clung to the woods and fields that had come to her the morning after each wedding. Her comfort and her strength, and they brought in more than enough revenue.