Daughter of the Wolf (7 page)

Not
her
fault. She was ready to be friends. But Saethryth always deflected such overtures, with her sharp tongue and contemptuous glance.

A ripple of shocked, stifled giggles, and Saethryth looked up to meet Elfrun's eye, a challenge in her gaze.

‘What?'

Saethryth shrugged, and smiled, but she didn't look away.

‘Yes, what is it, girl?' Abarhild looked up from her needle. ‘If you have something to say, share it with all of us.'

Saethryth ducked her head and looked demure. ‘Sorry, lady.'

Abarhild snorted, and Elfrun just had to hope that her grandmother wasn't fooled. She jabbed her needle into the thick blue wool and it went right through and pierced the ball of her thumb. She snatched her hand away, stifling a yelp, and jammed her thumb in her mouth before any blood could get on her clothes, bending her head in the hope that the others wouldn't notice, staring furiously at a head of cow parsley that was just coming into flower. The pain was astonishing for such a tiny wound, and she bit hard on the end of her thumb, hoping to blank out the first shock with a more manageable one. A small ladybird was crawling across the flower-head, a red bead.

Abarhild was still glaring at Saethryth, rheumy eyes narrowed. The familiar smell of baking bread was coming from the cook-house, and from the hillside above the yard she could hear the bubbling, swooping call of a curlew.

Saethryth caved in at last. ‘Sorry, lady. We were just talking about weddings.' That bold glance at Elfrun again. ‘We were wondering who might want to marry Elfrun.'

‘That is none of your business.' Abarhild looked at the girl, eyes like chips of flint in the shirred, pouchy skin of her face. After a moment Saethryth had to look away. Abarhild gestured with her stick, its silver-gilt mount flashing. ‘Bring me your work.'

‘Why?' There was a little ripple and shiver in the group of girls.

‘I want to see if you can weave as well as you can gossip.'

Saethryth rose to her feet and advanced a few slow paces, holding the little loom in front of her as though it smelt bad.

‘Closer.'

Another two paces, and Abarhild's stick darted out and up, knocking loom and braid away from Saethryth's shocked hands into the long grasses. ‘I don't have to look at it. I know you, you lazy lummock. You girls, you're all the same. I'm sick to death of you. Pick it up, undo it and start again.' Elfrun lowered her face and tried hard not to smile.

Saethryth scowled, massaging the knuckles of her right hand. ‘And what if I don't?'

‘I shall beat you, you know that, you idle lump. And so will your father.'

Saethryth was biting her lip, drawing breath. She clearly had more to say, but she was interrupted by a furious shout from the hill.

‘Out of the way, all of you – out of the way!' A fair-haired figure came pelting down through the trees to the little grassy field where the girls were sitting. They scrambled to their feet, staring. Behind him now they could hear the thud of hooves. ‘A boar—' The man bent double, winded, his sides heaving. It was Dunstan, Radmer's sword-bearer.

‘There's a boar coming?' Abarhild was hauling herself up from her stool, keys jingling at her waist. ‘Down this way?'

‘No – no – Widia.' He panted hard. ‘The boar charged... Lady, he needs your help.'

‘Widia's hurt?' Saethryth was pushing in, her face pale, the corners of her mouth tugging down.

‘Yes.' Dunstan was nodding, his sides heaving. ‘It gored him. Ribs. His face.'

The girls were scrabbling after their tools and cloth-work, scrambling over against the hedge, and the horses coming into sight now over the ridge, two of them, one led not ridden, with loping hounds and a couple of boys tearing down in their wake. Staring, Elfrun realized Athulf was one. Cudda, the smith's boy, was the other. Her uncle Ingeld was in the lead, on grey Storm, with a long, bulky, wrapped bundle thrown over his saddle-bow.

Not a bundle. Oh God. A man. She could see his arm hanging down, the hand bouncing like a dead thing. Widia.

‘Mother! You're needed!'

Blood, great quantities of blood, soaking Ingeld's hands and the front of his tunic, but much, much more drenching Widia's clothes. How many pints ran through a man's veins? Storm's white hide was streaked with red, and Elfrun was amazed that the mare could tolerate the smell.

And Abarhild was there, even before Ingeld and Dunstan had eased the huntsman down. ‘Elfrun, here's the key to the heddern. Get me some linen. Clean, new. The rest of you, go away.'

‘It came from nowhere.' Dunstan still sounded dazed. ‘Out of a bramble thicket, it came straight for the abbot. Widia pushed us out of the way...'

‘Elfrun,
linen
.'

She had been staring at her uncle, her mouth open, barely recognizing him. Blood had splattered across his cheekbones, streaked in his hair, stiffening it to spikes. She had never seen anyone look less like a priest.

‘It tossed him,' Ingeld said. ‘I drove it off.'

‘
Elfrun
.'

She picked up her skirts and ran for the hall. The heddern at the back was kept locked, and she had never before been entrusted with the key. It was stiff, and she struggled for a moment before the lock clicked open. Spices, and the money chest, and her father's weapons and war-gear, and the lengths of linen neatly folded on a low shelf. Grabbing an armful she hurtled back to the infield. Someone had brought water. Saethryth was pushing forward, trying to see. ‘Is he dead?'

‘Get away out of it, you girls. There's nothing more you can do.'

A groan from the wounded man, and Abarhild bent over him again. Elfrun could see a great flap of gory skin hanging loose from the side of Widia's face, a bloody sheen of pale pink exposed. She realized it was the bone of his cheek, and she looked away, revolted. ‘Come on.' She forced herself to take Saethryth's arm. ‘You heard my grandmother!' But Saethryth elbowed her away.

‘Help me get his tunic off,' Abarhild was saying. ‘No,
cut
it, you fool. Not over his head! There's ribs broken.'

‘He'll be scarred,' Saethryth said. ‘If he lives.' Her voice was low, lacking its usual truculent edge, and Elfrun thought the other girl must be as shocked as she was herself. ‘And not just his face.'

Radmer was striding towards them. Elfrun was glad to have the excuse to drop Saethryth's arm and run to him, seeking comfort. But he pushed right past her, his face set hard, making straight for his younger brother. Fighting hurt which she knew to be unreasonable, Elfrun turned and watched.

He and Ingeld were only inches apart, and for a moment she thought her father was going to hit his brother, his wrath was so palpable. Elfrun couldn't hear her father's words, but she didn't need to. His expression was enough.

‘If Widia doesn't die he'll be crippled.' Saethryth still had that unwonted quietness to her.

‘We don't know that.' But Elfrun wasn't really listening to the other girl, absorbed by her father's simmering gestures, that jabbing finger. Now Ingeld was turning his back and walking over to Storm. Radmer was following him, hauling his younger brother around by the shoulder, but Ingeld threw the hand off and swung himself up into the bloodstained saddle.

‘My fault? How is it my fault?' He was tugging Storm's head round.

‘Whom do you blame then?' Radmer had to raise his voice to reach his brother's ears. ‘I've told you before, gamble all you like with your own worthless life but leave me and mine alone. As though I haven't enough to worry me, with this news of Illingham.'

Ingeld didn't reply. He dug his heels into the mare's flanks and Storm set off at a jolting trot. Athulf stared at Radmer for a moment, then tugged at Cudda's arm and the two boys hurtled off in Ingeld's wake.

‘I'm going to ask your grandmother.' Saethryth sounded as though her teeth were tight-gritted. ‘Where he's wounded. If he's going to die or not.'

Elfrun only had eyes for her father, who was still glaring after Ingeld. ‘Don't be stupid! Can't you see she's busy?' Didn't Saethryth know better than to interrupt at such a time? ‘Anyway, no one can tell yet. If he lives, he might heal fine well in my grandmother's care. They taught her so much, the nuns, when she was a girl in Frankia.' She tried to remember what Abarhild had said. ‘But, yes, he might be crippled. Or he might live, and then the wounds stink and rot and he would die slowly from that.' She could hear her own voice rattling away, hardly aware of what she was saying, trying to remember Abarhild's teaching as a way of distracting herself from the horror of what had happened. ‘That would be awful. But nobody knows what's going to happen.'

‘But I need to know. I need to know
now
.' Saethryth's face had drawn in on itself like a thundercloud. She stared for a long furious moment at Widia's bloodstained figure, with Abarhild bending over him; and Elfrun thought she really was going to interrupt, and at the worst possible moment. But just as she reached a hand to the other girl's arm to warn her off, Saethryth turned round, hauling in her skirts and hurrying away in the opposite direction.

Elfrun stared after her. But a moment later she had forgotten all about Saethryth, because her father was at her side, tight-lipped and shaking his head. ‘Three ribs broken, your grandmother says. That ragged filthy slash down the flank. The tusk must have gone in and sideways. And his face. There are teeth gone. It's a downright miracle that his skull's not smashed.' He smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘I said priesting Ingeld would make no difference. I told everyone, and look. Your grandmother should keep a closer eye on him. Her moving to the minster – maybe it's not such a bad idea after all.'

Dunstan and another man had come back with a rough stretcher and were gently lifting Widia on to it. It looked horribly like a dead man's bier.

Elfrun hung on to her father's last words as a distraction ‘She can't look after the minster as well as the hall. They're too far apart. There's too much to do. She's too old.'

And Radmer laughed. She couldn't understand why, but she felt such relief that she laughed too.

‘Don't let her hear you say that.' He was already sober again. ‘And even if she is getting old, your grandmother's a fine manager. But she's been singing that old song about wanting to take the vows they never let her when she was a girl. Find herself a chaplain. Fasting and prayer. Not yet, I've told her. We need her.' That edge of bitterness had returned to Radmer's voice. ‘But it seems Ingeld needs her more.'

As long as Elfrun could remember Abarhild had spoken wistfully of retiring to a little bower at the minster, devoting herself and her wealth to alms and prayer and fasting. She had been about to do so when Elfrun's mother had first fallen ill, almost three years ago. Was it really going to happen?

She reached for her father's sleeve. ‘I can do everything she does.' Honesty forced her to add, ‘Well, nearly everything.' But he had already turned away from her, heading towards the hall, where they had taken Widia.

Why wouldn't he listen? If she could manage the hall as well as ever her mother had, then perhaps there would be no more talking of marriage, of sending her away. That encounter at the spring meeting with Tilmon and Switha still haunted her.
You have to put her somewhere...
Something about that woman made her hard to resist. She had emanated a sweet reason, an almost-physical reassurance. But Elfrun's father had held out against her and whatever she was asking. Elfrun didn't begin to understand the simmering hostility between Donmouth and the new holders of Illingham, but she knew she had been glad to see her father turn his back on them.

But they were not the only threat. She had a sudden, queasy memory of cousin Edmund's ragged moustache, of the way he had pressed his thigh against hers on that rickety bench, the rankness of his breath.

A jolt of anger shot through her. How could her father just walk away? What she hadn't yet mastered around the hall, she could learn. She knew Donmouth, its intake and outfields, the shielings in the hills, the fish traps and weirs, the steady rhythm of summer harvest and winter hedging, the secrets of brew-house and bake-house.

She might not have Abarhild's mastery of loom and leechdom, but she was learning, and she could go on learning even with Abarhild a vowess at the minster. How much easier life would be without the constant fear of Abarhild's hard stick and harder speech. Just her and her father, working together.

But he was walking away from her, as though this were no more than a bitten lip, a grazed knee...

Elfrun felt a powerful desire to hit something. She folded her arms across her chest and glowered.

But the sun was still shining. And Abarhild would have forgotten all about her and her sewing in the worry about Widia. She could beg half a loaf from the bake-house and go out on Mara, and the day would be nearly gone before anyone thought again to look for her.

Ingeld slowed Storm to a walk. The shock was beginning to ebb, but he was still living in that moment, the one just before the world had erupted around them. They had been so careful, hardly breathing, treading so lightly that the grass barely rustled, ducking under branches, the dogs padding silently at their sides. They had left the horses tethered at the edge of the wood. And under the trees the world had been noonday-still, the birds quiet, the green-dappled shadow a welcome rest from the blazing day he had left down at the minster. He hardly noticed the hot sun now. His hands on the reins were slick with sweat, his heart still thudding.

Why hadn't the dogs scented it?

The boar must have been asleep: they had almost trodden on its body. Like a black rock come to life, it had reared up squealing out of a patch of brambles and swung round straight at him and Dunstan. A great shove from Widia had sent him flying, and then Widia – always so neat-footed – had stumbled.