Dawn Wind (27 page)

She made as though to slip out of his hold, but he said quickly, ‘No, wait—let me think, Lilla; I must have a moment to think.’

And she stood still again, watching him. Owain had loosed his hold on her, and stood frowning straight before him and scratching at the old scar on his arm as he still did when he was thinking deeply. At last he moved, with a little sigh. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said. ‘I do not know whether I can do anything at all, but I’ll try … You must go home now, Lilla.’

When she had gone, he picked up his slasher again, and went steadily to work on the task that he wanted to finish before he went up to the steading for supper.

It seemed to him that evening that a feeling of strain lay over the house-place like a shadow. The mistress of the house looked white and drained, and seemed to have little taste for the good fish broth with herbs and barley-meal, while Lilla scarcely dipped in the communal bowl at all; and they took care to avoid looking at each other—not as though there was any anger between them, Owain thought, but in a kind of dreary understanding and sympathy. Even Bryni, who was not given to awareness of other people’s moods, looked at them more than once without asking what was amiss, then caught Owain’s eye across the hearth and shrugged one shoulder; a shrug that said as plainly as words could do: ‘Women!’

These hot summer evenings no one stayed in the house-place after the evening meal, but wandered out again to their own affairs. Most evenings, Athelis, who had little enough time to spare during the day, would betake herself to tend the tiny herb patch under the apple trees behind the steading, which was her rest and her joy.

This particular evening she delayed so long that Owain, mending a piece of harness in the shade of the stable wall, and watching for a chance to speak with her alone, began to be afraid that she was not going at all. But at last she rose, and going into the house-place, came back with a newly lit lantern and her wicker creel of gardening gear, and disappeared round the end of the house.

He gave her a little while, then went and hung up the piece of harness in its accustomed place, and followed her.

She had hung the lantern on the branch of an apple tree, and was tying up tall-growing purple comfrey that had been battered by the wind. She looked up when she heard Owain’s footsteps, and he thought she had a very good idea why he had come. He leaned against the branch where the lantern hung. He did not know how to break into the thing that he had come to say. Once he had begun, it would be all right. ‘Mistress,’ he said at last, abruptly. ‘Lilla came running to me a while since. She said that Vadir Cedricson had asked for her.’

Athelis ceased all pretence at tying up the comfrey and dropped the twists of dry grass she had been using, back into her creel. ‘She had no right to run to you with her troubles.’

‘She was too frightened to think what rights she had,’ Owain said bluntly. And then, as she did not answer, ‘She told me that he will come for your answer in three days’ time, and that you will say yes. Is that true?’ It sounded accusing, but he did not know how to put it any other way.

She was still silent a moment, then she said, ‘Yes, it is true. What else can I do?’

‘You should have settled the matter with Brand the Smith years ago. You know that Beornwulf wished it so.’

She flung out her hands. ‘I should have—I should have. But I did not. I suppose I wanted her with me a little longer. And now it is too late. What use to tell me I should have done this, I should have done that? What can I do now but say yes? She will do well enough when she is married to him.’

‘Will she? I doubt it. But maybe I see Vadir Cedricson somewhat darkly, remembering that he let his dogs kill my old Dog, and found it not unpleasant to watch.’

She said quickly, ‘He was young then, not much more than a boy; and boys are often more cruel than men.’

‘He had seen five or six and twenty summers if he had seen one,’ Owain said. ‘The man is twisted, body and soul, and you know it.’

She looked at him with eyes turned all to black in the lantern light, and for an instant he wondered if she was going to strike him across the mouth for his insolence. But she only said, ‘He is powerful, and we have no man to spread his shield over us.’

‘The King would not let harm come to the household of his foster brother, even though Vadir be distant kin to him; and Bryni will be a man next spring.’

‘The King! Haegel has spared little thought for the household of his foster brother since Wodensbeorg,’ Athelis said bitterly. ‘And even if it were not so, there are harms over which the King has no power. And as for Bryni, you know how wild and headstrong he is. Always, whenever they meet, he is on the brink of a quarrel with Vadir; but if Vadir takes Lilla for his wife, even Bryni will not dare to draw knife on his own kin—and nor will Vadir.’

‘You do not think that, knowing his sister is being forced into this hand-fasting, the boy will draw knife on Vadir
before
they become kinsman?’ He was being brutal, he knew that, remembering the thing that he had told the ten year old Bryni, the first time he threatened to kill Vadir. But he was remembering also the cruelty—cruelty even towards the thing he loved—that he had felt in Vadir Cedricson on the night that Teitri was born, and he was fighting for Lilla with whatever weapon came to hand.

Athelis was gripping and twisting her hands together. ‘I do not know,’ she whispered. ‘At least you will still be here. You can handle him—a little. You are the only one who can, since Beornwulf died. After next spring, you will be gone.’

There was a long silence. How loud the sea sounded tonight, a hollow sounding like the echo of waves in a shell; and somewhere within it, he seemed to catch the remembered echo of Uncle Widreth’s voice … ‘Only while one is young there is always the hope that one day something will happen; that one day a little wind will rise …’ How often that had comforted him. But it was a barren comfort, after all. He had thought, four years ago, that the wind was rising, but it had died away again into the grass; and he had waited so long, so long, for the time of his freedom to come. He was not even really young any more, and all his manhood until now had gone in waiting. It was too much for any man to expect of him; these people were the enemies of his people; Beornwulf had had full value for his gold piece. Yes, but Beornwulf had not thought of it as part of the value of his gold piece; he had asked it in the hour of his death, as a man may ask a great thing of a friend he trusts.

He looked up slowly. ‘If I let my freedom wait, if I bide here until you tell me that I am free to go—would that make any difference?’

Athelis put up her thin hands to her face; then she let them drop, and looked at him again. ‘Do you mean that?’

‘I should not have offered, if I did not mean it,’ Owain said harshly.

‘No, that was stupid of me.’ She had caught herself together now, and her voice was calmer. ‘Owain, I can settle nothing with Brand the Smith now: that would be to bring Vadir down upon us at once; you see that, do you not?’

‘I see that, yes.’

‘But if you do not leave us, at least—not yet, I will tell Vadir that he must ask again in a year’s time. I will say that Lilla is too young. More I dare not promise, but she shall not be hand-fast to him for a year.’

A year’s respite; it was the best that could be hoped for, he knew that. Well, many things might happen in a year. Vadir might change his heart, the sea might break in over the levels one night and overwhelm them all.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will stay.’

Exactly what passed when Vadir came for his answer, Owain never knew. He was working down at the furthest end of the Intake that day. But that evening when he made his way up to the steading at supper-time, he found Lilla waiting for him among the newly made pea stacks. She was pretending to be very busy about the evening search for eggs, which fell to her alone now that Helga was married and away, but she gave up the pretence as he drew near, and stood up, the egg basket in the crook of her arm.

‘He came,’ she said, ‘and now he is gone and he will not come again for a year.’

Owain nodded. ‘That is something gained. A breathing space at all events. I wish I could have done more, Lilla, but a year was the best that I could do.’

Lilla was staring into the egg basket, her head drooping under the big white kerchief that hid her hair; but after a moment she raised grave blue eyes to his face; he had never noticed quite how blue they were before, not bright but soft, harebell coloured. ‘My mother said that I had not any right to carry my troubles to you.’

‘I’d not worry too much about that,’ Owain said.

‘But she was right. If I was a good girl, and—and brave and sensible, I would go to Vadir now and tell him that I was ready to be hand-fast with him, and not let you go on giving up your freedom for us. But I’m not a good girl, and I’m
not
brave—’

To his dismay, Owain saw two tears spill over and trickle down her cheeks. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said quickly. ‘Please don’t cry, Lilla. If it is for me—it will do me no harm to wait a while longer; and if it is for you—see now, you have a whole year gained. Anything may happen in a year.’

Lilla dashed the back of her free hand across her eyes. ‘I’m not crying, at least—not very much, and I do not know who it is for … But whatever happens, or if nothing happens at all and I have to go to Vadir in the end, I will have had one more year—and I will remember always and always that it was you that gave it to me.’

The shrill cheerful sound of somebody whistling between their teeth was coming up towards the stack garth even as she finished speaking, and she added in a quick low tone of warning, ‘It’s Bryni,’ and turned away a little, to hide her face. ‘See, isn’t this a big egg?’

‘Double-yoked, by the look of it,’ Owain said.

Better, very much better, that Bryni should know nothing of what had happened.

F
ROM
that time forward the Beornstead household saw no more of Vadir Cedricson, and nor did any but the four who knew of it already, come to hear of his wooing. He was too proud a man for that.

So the months wore away and autumn brought the wild geese south again.

That winter the farms and settlements of the Maen Wood began to be troubled by a wild boar. It happened from time to time that wild pig would come down from the inland forests into the tangled wild-wood among the marshes, and make a nuisance of themselves until they were killed or driven inland again. But this was a king among boar, larger, fiercer and more cunning than the common run. He made havoc in the cultivated land, rooting up fences and goring young trees; he became the terror of the forest fringes where any man might meet him as he turned home with a load of firewood in the winter dusk. And bad as the thing was now, it would become yet worse when spring drew on and the crops were sown. More than once, the men of the Maen Wood had banded together in an attempt to hunt him down, but all that they had to show for it was the death of two of their number.

And then word came down into the settlements, south to the very tip of Seals’ Island where the fisher huts huddled among the ruins of the little Roman coast-resort, that the King himself was coming to try his spear against this king among boars. Let any man who wished to, hunt with him, meeting at a certain point in the forest at dawn on a certain day.

Bryni brought the news back from the settlement where he had been to pick up a new ploughshare from Brand the Smith. His eyes were bright and dark like the frost, and the colour burned under the brown along his cheekbones. ‘We are going hunting with the King!’ he announced.

Owain, who had met him in the steading gate, nodded gravely, when he had heard all the eager tale. ‘No doubt the King will have a use for all the beaters he can get—though it is not
our
boar, south of the creek.’

‘The brute might work round the head of the creek any night, and then it would be our boar, sure enough,’ Bryni protested, as though he felt that the honour of the Seals’ Island was at stake. ‘And as for beaters—’ he flung up his head defiantly—‘I am son to the King’s foster brother—though he seems to have forgotten it. Go you with the beaters and shout and fire the furze if you choose.
I
shall go with the spears!’

For a moment the two looked at each other in silence; and then, seeing the quirk at the corner of Owain’s mouth, the boy gave a crow of excited laughter. ‘Ah, but you make a jest of me—you never thought that I would go with the beaters.’

‘No,’ Owain agreed, ‘I never thought that you would go with the beaters.’

They got out the old boar spears, and all that evening Bryni sat by the fire burnishing them with white sand, and whistling to himself between his teeth in the way that was as much a part of him as the way that Owain scratched at the old scar when he was thinking.

On the appointed day—three days later—they set off while it was still wolf-dark, for they would have an hour’s walking to make the appointed meeting place. Three or four men from the settlement joined them at the old ford, and Hunna, grumbling at being roused from his sleep before the sky had begun to lighten, brought his crazy little boat across for them, and had to make two trips before they were all on the mainland bank. They left him still muttering curses, and pushed on together up the remains of the Regnum road.