Born of the Sun (53 page)

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His heart began to slam in his chest. “I know what you think of me, Niniane,” he said. “I don’t need to stay here to hear it.”

“You don’t know what I think of you,” she answered. Then, “Ceawlin knew why you were showing your father’s banner. He said to me, ‘Sigurd is flying that miserable banner to give me a chance.’ ‘

He pulled his fingers from under hers and, bending forward as if in pain, buried his face in his hands. Niniane sat watching and, unseen by him, her eyes held a distinctly speculative look. She said now, “Ceawlin is trusting you to keep his sons safe.”

He did not move.

“Sigurd,” she said relentlessly.

“I know.” His voice was muffled by his hands. “I will get them away if it comes to that, Niniane. But this game has not been played out yet. Ceawlin will come back.”

“I know he will.”

Finally he raised his head. She smiled at him, a smile full of pity, and he said suddenly, “Do you know why I left Winchester to go and live at Wokham?”

She shook her head, and a strand of hair, which she had tied on the top of her head for coolness, loosened and slipped down her neck. “Ceawlin would never tell me.” A delicately arched brow rose a little higher. “Are you going to tell me, Sigurd? Does it have aught to do with what has happened?”

He was surprised by how strong was the temptation to tell her. To say, “I have loved you since you were sixteen years old; since the time we were playing ring-toss with the children and you took the ring from my hand, accidentally touched my fingers, and looked at me like a startled fawn. I loved you before Ceawlin ever thought of you, Niniane. And that is why I left Winchester.” Even to himself he could not say that was why he had finally betrayed Ceawlin.

“No,” he answered, his voice low. “No, it has nothing to do with what happened.” And now he did rise to his feet.

“If you do hear news of Ceawlin,” she said quickly, “you will tell me?”

“Yes. I will tell you.” He turned on his heel and walked away as swiftly as he could.

“It is not just Coinmail, Ceawlin said to his two faithful followers when they met privately to discuss Owain’s news. “I am convinced that if I stay out of Wessex much longer, I will lose it. I cannot give Cutha the time to establish himself.”

“You have no war band, my lord,” said Gereint.

Ceawlin cocked his eyebrow in a gesture they had not seen for months. “And I will never have a war band unless I show myself in Wessex to collect one.”

Gereint found himself smiling. “After all,” he said. “It is not the first time you have been in this position.”

Ceawlin grinned. “The eorls have been reluctant in my absence. We shall see what they will do once they find me at their hall doors.”

Ferris bit his lip. “It is risky.”

“It is riskier to do nothing,” Ceawlin replied positively. “I have wasted the entire summer and have naught to show for it but the crops stacked in Owain’s storehouse. I dare delay no longer. It is time to throw the dice.”

“Where shall we go first, my lord?” Gereint asked.

“To Wyckholm.”

Ferris swallowed hard. He had been the one to speak to all the eorls on Ceawlin’s behalf. “My lord, Penda has promised to stay neutral. I do not think he will betray you, but neither do I think he will come to your aid. He is one to look out for himself, is Penda.” ‘ “He came to Bryn Atha for me once,” said Ceawlin. His eyes looked lighter than usual in his tanned face. “I think Penda will find it difficult to refuse me once I am under his roof.”

“His wife is Cutha’s daughter,” Gereint reminded his king.

“Penda is not a man to be swayed by a woman,” Ceawlin said. “We will go to Wyckholm.”

It was the last day of August when Ceawlin and his two companions rode away from the farm that had sheltered them for the last four months. Owain and his wife stood by the gate and watched the horses disappear into the haze of the hot, still morning. “Thank God,” said Maire.

Owain sighed. “Yes,” he agreed, but his voice sounded regretful. “The wagon is ready to go into Corinium,” his wife reminded him. “All right.” The farmer cast one more glance up the road, then turned dutifully to return to his work.

Penda was stunned when a thane brought him the news that the king was at his gates. He did not really believe it was true until the tall, sunburned figure of Ceawlin was actually standing before him. “My lord!” he said, his hazel eyes going searchingly from Ceawlin to the two Britons who accompanied him. “What are you doing here?”

Ceawlin stretched the muscles of his back as if they were stiff. “I came to see you, of course. Gods, Penda, but I’m thirsty. We came straight through from Ufton.”

Penda pulled himself together. They were all standing in the center of his hall, and now he gestured his guests to the benches along the wall. “Please sit down. You must be tired. I’ll send for some food and beer.”

When he turned back from giving orders, he saw that Ceawlin had made himself comfortable on one of the benches, big shoulders propped against the wall, long legs stretched in front of him. As Penda approached him, the king grinned and rubbed his hand along his bare jaw. “I’m surprised you recognized me,” he said.

Penda found himself smiling back. “It would be impossible not to recognize you, Ceawlin.”

The beer came and the three new arrivals drank thirstily. Penda waited. Ceawlin finished, put the cup on the bench beside him, and said, “I cannot wait longer, Penda. I am gathering a war band. Are you with me or against me?”

“I am not against you, Ceawlin,” his eorl replied carefully. “But I must think of the welfare of my own people. Cutha has far more men than you can possibly hope to collect.”

Ceawlin leaned against the wall, looking perfectly relaxed, perfectly at ease. “If we collect only thanes, yes. But not if we take the ceorls.”

Penda stared at his king. “If we make the ceorls thanes, then, when the war is over, who will be left to till the soil?”

“I did not say make the ceorls thanes. I said make the ceorls fight. They are your men. You are my man. I need bodies, Penda.”

The eorls’s stare widened. What Ceawlin was proposing was something that was new among the Saxon kingdoms. More than a century before, when the invaders were still pouring in from Germany, the Saxon armies had numbered in the thousands. Every men who was of age to fight, fought. Then Arthur had pushed them back into their kingdoms along the eastern and southern shore and they had settled down to farm and to become civilized. For the last hundred years or so, all the fighting among the Saxons had been done by small bands of professional warriors, the thanes. The ceorls had worked the land. To ask a ceorl to fight had been to elevate him in class, make him one of the warrior elite. He had not gone back to the farm after.

“You have thirty thanes,” said Ceawlin. “You can arm at least thirty ceorls as well.”

“And after, they will go back to the land?” said Penda.

“Yes. I will pay them, Penda. Or I will pay you, and you can pay them. A man should have some reward for risking his life. But they will not become thanes.”

“It has never been done before,” Penda said.

Ceawlin slid his shoulders a little lower on the wall and contemplated his feet. “Life has been good in Wessex under my reign,” he said. “They owe me something for that.” He looked up and his eyes met Penda’s. He added very softly, “And so do you.”

For the briefest of minutes, his eyes caught in that turquoise gaze, Penda found that he had forgotten to breathe. Then, “I swore allegiance to you twice, Ceawlin,” he said, his voice gruffer than usual. “If you are determined on this course, then I am with you.”

Ceawlin smiled, teeth very white in his sunburned face. He got to his feet and put a friendly hand on Penda’s shoulder. “Good man,” he said. “I knew I could count on you.”

Penda gave his lord a rueful look. He had not intended to involve himself in this struggle between Ceawlin and his father-by-marriage. “Fate does smile on you, Ceawlin. It always has.”

“Fate smiles on those whose courage does not fail,” Ceawlin replied, and for the first time since he had arrived at Wyckholm, his voice sounded grim.

Two days after Ceawlin had left the Ufton valley, riders from Corinium galloped into Owain’s farmyard. The leading rider was a red-haired man with a beautiful austere face. Maire came out of the house to see what they wanted.

“This is Prince Coinmail,” one of the riders said to Owain’s wife. “Where is your husband?”

Maire stared at the prince, then hastily bobbed her head. “He is in the fields, my lord. Shall I send for him?”

“It is not your husband I wish to see, but your guests,” Coinmail replied. He spoke British with the accent of the Atrebates.

Maire’s heart began to pound. “Our guests?” She opened her eyes very wide in a look of innocence. “Do you mean my husband’s cousin?”

“His cousin,” came the grim reply. “And the tall blond man who is with him.”

Maire wet her lips. “They are gone, my lord.”

Coinmail stared at her. Maire did not think she had ever seen so cold a face. “Gone? Gone where?”

“Back to Wessex, my lord.”

“When?”

“Two days since.”

There was a long, very uncomfortable silence. Finally the horses began to paw the ground with impatience. Coinmail asked, “This man with your cousin, I understand he was British?”

“So my husband’s cousin said. And he spoke British, my lord. As you do, with the accent of the Atrebates.”

“What color were his eyes?” the prince asked.

Maire knew then that her guess had been right. Rhys was important. “They were a mixture of blue and green, my lord,” she said with great reluctance. She would have lied if she had thought she could get away with it.

Coinmail’s face looked like chiseled marble, but his eyes glittered strangely. “You stupid cow,” he said to the woman who stood before him in the farmyard. “Do you know whom you have been sheltering all these months?”

“N-no, my lord.”

“Ceawlin. Ceawlin himself. God in heaven, if only I had known!”

“Ceawlin?” Maire stared at her prince as if he were speaking a strange language. “Do you mean the West Saxon king? Rhys was the king?”

“I mean that the man you knew as Rhys was Ceawlin, the King of Wessex. The deposed King of Wessex. My brother-by-marriage.” Coinmail’s voice was icy with bitterness. “I knew as soon as I heard the description of the man who was here with Gereint who he must be.”

“We did not know, my lord!” Maire cried desperately. “You must believe me, we did not know. Ferris told us he was a Briton, a friend who was fleeing the wrath of the new king, just as he was.”

Coinmail looked at her as if she were some kind of an unpleasant insect. Then he said to his men, “It is too late to catch him now. God knows where he will have gone.” He wheeled his horse and, without another look at the trembling Maire, galloped his horse out of the farmyard, almost trampling on the chickens as he went.

Maire waited a few minutes to make certain they were down the road before she ran to the fields to tell Owain.

On the first of September Witgar and his thanes left Winchester to march south. The shoreline across the bay from Wight had been part of Wight’s territory since the days of Cerdic, and reports had come to Witgar in Winchester of raiding from across the Sussex border. Evidently the neighboring kingdom was testing the stability of the new government in Wessex, and Witgar thought it wise to assert his authority in his old kingdom without delay. Cutha concurred, albeit reluctantly. He did not like to deplete Winchester of men.

The second week in September brought the news that Ceawlin’s family had long been awaiting. The king was in Wyckholm with Penda.

It was Sigurd who told Niniane and her two eldest sons. “My father received word from Coenburg,” Sigurd said, his eyes on the queen alone.

“What did the messenger say?” Niniane asked tensely.

“Just that. Ceawlin is at Wyckholm and Penda is joining him.”

The three were alone in a corner of the princes’ hall and now Cerdic laughed. “If Penda holds to my father, then will the other eorls do so also.”

Even in the dimness of the hall’s corner, Niniane could see the strain on Sigurd’s face. “Yes,” he said. “They will.”

There was silence as three pairs of eyes stared at Cutha’s son, Ceawlin’s traitor-friend. “What is Cutha going to do?” Niniane asked at last.

“Nothing, for the moment. It will come to a battle eventually. There can be no clear victor otherwise, and Wessex will continue in this uneasy state of waiting.”

“So he will let Ceawlin gather a war band?”

“I think so.”

Silence fell once more. “Well,” Sigurd said as the air seemed to grow heavier, “I thought you would like to know.” He turned and walked to the door; Niniane thought briefly that he looked very alone, very vulnerable. Then Crida said something and she turned back to her sons. She had no extra sympathy to spare for Sigurd.

The two boys’ faces were blazing. “At last!” Cerdic said.

“Can Sigurd be telling the truth, Mother? Will Cutha allow Father to gather a war band?”

“I think so,” Niniane replied slowly, thinking as she spoke. “Sigurd is right when he says it must come to a battle. Witgar cannot rule unless he proves himself on the battlefield. The eorls will not follow him.”

“Father has never been beaten in battle,” Cerdic said proudly.

But Crida knew the arithmetic. “Cutha has Father’s men locked up here in Winchester. The eorls have only thirty or forty thanes each. That means Father will be able to command fewer than two hundred men. Cutha must have four hundred, at least.” He looked at his mother, his silvery brows drawn together in worry.

“Your father has won with the odds against him before, my son,” Niniane said with more confidence than she felt. “There is no greater warrior in England than Ceawlin. We must trust him to know what to do.”

“Hammer of Thor!” said Cerdic, using Ceawlin’s favorite oath. “If only I could be at his side. I am so useless sitting here in Winchester.”

“Waiting is ever the hardest part of any endeavor, Cerdic,” Niniane said with a sigh. “Best to learn that now, while you are young.”