Born of the Sun (34 page)

Ceawlin cocked an eyebrow. Edric had burned Bryn Atha’s storehouses, and extra food would be needed for the winter. “Perhaps we ought to pay a visit to Calleva,” Ceawlin said.

Ine grinned. “There will be women there too. They came from all around this last month, once word got out that the gold-rich Winchester thanes were at Calleva.”

“A further enticement,” said Ceawlin. “Food and women. Most certainly we shall march for Calleva.”

Ceawlin’s men rode into Calleva late on the morning of October 22 and found the city as Ine had said, well stocked with food. There was beer as well, and the thanes broke open a barrel almost immediately. Most of Calleva’s residents, having experienced one Saxon invasion, stayed inside their houses with the doors locked. As Ceawlin had given orders that none of the British in the city were to be harmed, they were left largely undisturbed. Of far more interest to Ceawlin than the impoverished British were the sackfuls of grain he and Sigurd discovered stacked in the Christian church.

Ine had been right about the women as well as the food. There was a gratifying number of British and Saxon whores in the city who had gravitated to Calleva in the hope of earning gifts from Edric’s men. These entrepreneurs seemed perfectly ready to offer their services to Ceawlin’s thanes, and by and large the offers were enthusiastically accepted. Between the beer and the women, the thanes were in no mood to load sacks of grain, and Ceawlin prudently decided to give them a day and a night before reminding them of their real reason for coming into Calleva.

He was standing on the steps of the forum, contemplating the grid of city streets lined with Roman houses, when a feminine voice said to him in Saxon, “My lord, would you care to come and see my room?”

Ceawlin looked down to the step below him and saw a girl with corn-colored hair and long-lashed blue eyes gazing up into his face. When she saw she had gotten his attention she smiled. “It is not far,” she added enticingly.

He had not had a woman in months, not since Niniane had left for Glastonbury. This girl was extremely lovely and his body let him know, instantly, that her offer was very welcome. Without thinking, he put out a hand and touched her sunny hair. She lowered her lashes and gave him a long, seductive look. “Follow me, my lord,” she murmured, certain from his gesture that she had won a customer. He moved down a step to stand beside her, but then, when she turned to lead him further, he stopped.

He was surprised by his actions himself. Don’t be a fool, he told himself impatiently as he stood irresolute beside the golden-haired whore. You need a woman. Niniane will never know. Then, when still his feet did not move: It could be years until you see her again. Do you intend to remain celibate the whole time?

The girl was looking at him out of puzzled eyes. “My lord?” she said when still he did not follow.

It was impossible. Of course he could not stay away from other women. It was ridiculous even to contemplate such an idea.

But the irrational, instinctive, superstitious part of him was saying something else, was saying that Niniane was his luck, that if he betrayed her, then his luck might betray him. He remembered suddenly the words she had whispered to him as he saw her off on the road to Glastonbury. She had been sitting on the quietest horse they had in the stable, holding Cerdic in her arms. “When next I see you,” she had whispered as she bent down to kiss him good-bye, “perhaps you will have another son.”

No other woman had given him a child. Niniane had given him Cerdic and she would give him more children. He was certain of it.

He moved back up to the top step. “No,” he said to the girl, and smiled to soften the rejection. “I cannot, sweetheart. Someone must keep watch on the road, I’m afraid, and I appear to be the only one sober enough for the job.” Then he turned away from her and went down the steps on the opposite side.

Ceawlin scowled furiously as he walked along the main street of Calleva toward the city walls. He was sure he had been a fool. His body was telling him he had been a fool. He almost turned and went back to find the girl. But he didn’t.

He was standing on top of the city walls watching the road when Sigurd joined him an hour later. He could tell from Sigurd’s rumpled clothes that his friend had not been too scrupulous to enjoy the town’s offerings. For some reason, this put Ceawlin more out of temper than ever. He glowered at Sigurd and said, “Is there a sober thane in the whole of this city?”

“I doubt it.” Sigurd ran a hand through his disordered hair. “Why don’t you join in the fun?”

“Someone has to keep watch on the road,” Ceawlin returned disagreeably.

“I don’t see why,” Sigurd said. “It is evident that Edric is returning to Winchester. He would not have traveled so far south if he were not.”

The ill temper left Ceawlin’s face with startling abruptness, to be replaced by an alert look that Sigurd knew well. “He left too much food here,” he said to Sigurd, but absently, as if he were not paying attention to his own words.

Sigurd’s eyes had followed Ceawlin’s, but he could not see whatever it was that had brought that look to the prince’s face. “What is it—?” he was beginning when Ceawlin suddenly swore.

“It’s Edric,” Ceawlin said, his voice cold and hard. “By the hammer of Thor, Sigurd. It’s Edric. And he’s got us trapped.” Ceawlin swore again.

Still Sigurd could see nothing, but he did not doubt Ceawlin’s word. The prince’s vision was legendary among his men. The blood rushed to Sigurd’s head, then drained away. He felt instantly sober. “What shall we do?” he asked.

“Get the men out of here,” Ceawlin answered. “Now, Sigurd! There is no time to waste.”

Sigurd grabbed Ceawlin’s arm as the prince turned to leave the wall, forcing Ceawlin to swing around to look at him. “You go,” Sigurd said with deadly seriousness. “I mean it, Ceawlin. Save yourself. The men are all at least half-drunk; you won’t be able to move them fast enough. I’ll try to rally them, do the best I can to clear them out of Calleva, but you must leave now. You are the one we cannot afford to lose.”

“No,” said Ceawlin, and pulled his arm out of Sigurd’s grip. “We’ll all get out of here together. Now, come on!”

Sigurd was never afterward quite sure how Ceawlin pulled his men away from the beer and the girls, but somehow he did it. Within fifteen minutes the entire war band was in the saddle. They took the north gate out of Calleva but ten minutes before Edric marched in through the gate from the south. Ceawlin’s men were still clearly visible from the city walls as they fled northwest along the road toward Corinium. Edric, who had initiated a mounted troop himself since the summer, took off in hot pursuit, his horsemen first, his foot following after.

Within an hour, dark had fallen. “If they continue on this road,” Onela said to Edric as the two eorls rode through the night, “the road will take them into British territory. Not friendly British territory, either.”

Edric grunted. “He must turn toward the hills. It is his only chance. He cannot afford to get himself caught between the British in Corinium and us.”

“He is probably heading toward the Badon pass again,” said Onela grimly. “He will do the same thing to us he did once before, Edric. Take the pass from one side of the hills to the other, only this time he will be going in the opposite direction.”

“I think that is what he will try to do,” Edric agreed.

“He will escape us once more!”

“Not this time.” Edric glanced back at the horsemen riding behind him. “I have taken care to learn the territory this time, Onela. The Corinium road here goes north as well as west, but Ceawlin will have to keep to it until he reaches the place where he can cut south for the pass. I propose to cut off the road now, onto a track that goes due west along the line of the hills. When Ceawlin turns south to head for the pass, we will be there before him.”

Onela thought for a minute, playing out in his mind the strategy Edric had just described. Then, slowly: “Very good, Edric.” Another pause. “Very good!” He gave a distinctly unpleasant laugh. “What a shock for the bastard, to find us in front of him when he will have thought us behind.”

“Yes,” replied Edric. “So I hope.”

Onela was thinking further. “He will try to turn and run,” he said. It was too dark to see his face, but Edric could hear the frown in his voice.

“We will post some men in position just off the road,” Edric explained. “He will not see them in the dark and they will let him pass. But if he turns to run, he will find his way out blocked.”

Onela laughed. “Trapped,” he said. “The fox will finally be trapped.”

“Exactly.” Edric turned and called to the scout who was riding behind him.

“The track we must take is just up ahead, my lord,” said the man, a Saxon, one of his own thanes whom Edric had dispatched weeks ago to spy out just this territory for just this purpose. This time he was not going to rely on the trustworthiness of a British farmer.

“Very good,” said Edric. “You may take the lead, Wiglaf. We will follow.”

It was pitch dark as Ceawlin’s men rode along the road toward Corinium. Sigurd had long since come to the conclusion that Edric had just detailed for Onela. They would have to cut off the road and head south to the hills, to the Badon pass. He said as much to Ceawlin.

“That is what Edric will expect us to do,” came the grim reply.

“But he is behind us,” said Sigurd. “What can it matter if he guesses, so long as we outrun him? Once we are on the other side of the hills, we are in friendly territory, Atrebates territory, territory we know. We do not know the hills around here, Ceawlin.”

“But suppose Edric does.”

The night was dark and Ceawlin was but a shadowy figure to Sigurd, who was riding close beside him. The thanes behind them were silent. Silent, sober, and weary. The only sound in the night was the crunching of their horses’ hooves on the gravel of the road.

“What do you mean?” asked Sigurd slowly.

“I mean that Edric planned this trap very carefully. He knew I have him watched, made sure I would think he was going to Winchester, made sure my thanes knew there were food and women in Calleva. It was a pretty certain thing I would come into Calleva once I thought he had left.”

Sigurd strained to see an expression on Ceawlin’s face, but saw only the shadow of his profile. “So he came back, hoping to catch you in Calleva. He almost did, too. If you had not been watching the road …”

He could just see that Ceawlin was shaking his head. “I’m sure he would have liked to catch me in Calleva. But I am equally sure he had made contingency plans in case he did not. If I were Edric, that is what I would have done.”

“Edric is not as smart as you.”

“Edric is not stupid, however. And he had time to plan this out. He was in Calleva for a whole month.”

“Well, what are you afraid of, then, Ceawlin?” asked Sigurd impatiently.

“I am afraid that Edric has found a way to get between us and the hills,” came the devastatingly simple reply.

“Name of the gods,” said Sigurd.

“Yes.”

Silence fell again. Behind him Sigurd heard one of the thanes complain to the man riding beside him that he felt sick to his stomach. “What are we going to do?” he asked Ceawlin at last.

“Turn around,” came the unexpected reply.

“Turn around?”

“Yes.” And, suiting action to words, Ceawlin halted Bayvard. ‘“We’re going back!” he shouted to the men behind him.

A babble of protest greeted his words.

“Keep quiet and listen to me,” Ceawlin said, his voice pitched just loud enough to carry to the last line of horse. “I think Edric is cutting between us and the hills. If we return to Calleva, we will avoid him.”

“And if he is not cutting between us and the hills, we will run straight into him on the road.” It was Penda. Sigurd recognized his voice.

“I don’t think we will,” said Ceawlin. “We go back.”

The war band opened ranks to let Ceawlin and Sigurd pass through. Then they turned resignedly to follow their leader back along the road to Calleva.

For the next two hours the two war bands marched parallel to each other but heading in opposite directions. Edric, straining to catch a glimpse of Ceawlin in front of him striking south toward the hills, had no idea that the prince was in fact retracing his steps eastward to Calleva. It was not until he had waited a whole day at the Badon pass that Edric conceded that once again Ceawlin had managed to outmaneuver him.

For his part, Ceawlin did not allow his men to stop in Calleva to rest, but made them push on toward the west until they were safe in the friendly territory of the hills they knew. As his exhausted men dropped to the ground to sleep, Ceawlin prepared to take the first watch himself.

It occurred to him, as he posted himself on a convenient rock and tried to get comfortable, that if he had accepted the golden-haired girl’s offer, Edric would have caught him in Calleva. Once again Niniane had proved to be his luck.

Niniane sat on a stone bench and looked at the great mound of Glastonbury Tor outlined against the blue February sky. She had been looking at the Tor for months now, she was sick of looking at it, but it was the most imposing part of all the landscape surrounding Glastonbury. It drew one’s eyes like a magnet, no matter where one was within the monastery grounds.

The sun felt warmer today, she thought. Winter was ending. Soon it would be spring; the season for war. Her eyes moved from the Tor to search for her son. She had brought him out into the garden with her for some fresh air and given him a trowel to dig with in the still-winter-hard dirt … no, he had found a mud puddle. He saw her looking at him and gave her a beatific smile before he squished his hand once more into the mud. Niniane winced, then laughed. Let him play, she thought. It was good for him to be outdoors again.

The child within her kicked and she shifted on her hard seat, then stood up. Cerdic was enthralled with his mud and she walked to the edge of the garden, folded her arms, and stared at the stone building that housed the religious women of Glastonbury who had given her refuge these last months.