Daughter of the Wolf (25 page)

The door was open now, but that was only because without the light that came through it he could not see to clean this hovel that passed for God's house in Donmouth. The last of the old season's filthy rushes had already been heaped and were outside the door, ready to be carted to the midden. A fitting job for Lucymas, the darkest day of the year. Lucy, whose very name meant
light
. The returning sun would shine on a clean church, whether the abbot liked it or not.

Like it? Ingeld wouldn't even notice.

His jaw was tense and his hands had tightened around the broom handle as though it were a weapon. Fredegar was finding it hard to breathe. He knew his anger with Ingeld was what kept him going, a source of dark energy on which he could draw when the shadows started closing in again. But he also knew that it was a sin, and a danger. Spend too long wandering down that path, and he might never find his way back.

He began sweeping again, focusing on long, even movements of the broom as though each one were the strophe of a prayer, and slowly the hard heat around his heart began to ease. The dirt floor would never be really clean, and the thatch of the church roof had been full of mice since the first frost. The sparrows congregated up there as well: he could hear their cheeping now, and he wished the folk of Donmouth spent half as much time singing in their church as those little grey-brown birds did. Fredegar stopped sweeping, a smile almost forming on his face at the thought of the busy feathered flock in the roof at their ceaseless devotions, despite all the work they gave him.

His face grew sombre again.

Only the previous day, after supper in the minster hall, he had suggested to Ingeld that come the good weather they might replace the thatch. ‘Look at it, Father abbot. Sagging, so thick with moss, almost black in places! And it lets the water in.'

Ingeld hadn't even turned to face him. ‘Order the reeds cut, then.'

‘I had thought perhaps oak shingles...' Donmouth great hall, Radmer's hall – that had shingles. No birds there that he had ever seen, and few signs of mice. The hall also had beautifully carved barge-boards and elaborate finials.

‘If you pay for them.' Ingeld had pushed past him and out into the yard.

He pay for them? He had nothing of any value but his books: his psalter, his gospels, and his battered penitential... Did the abbot mean he should sell those to pay for timber? He was sure he could find a buyer for them, in York, but why should he? He didn't need them – the words they contained were inscribed on his heart – but he loved them. Cold, sick fury sat in his belly as he stood in the doorway and watched Ingeld stroll away.

Fredegar began sweeping again, short vicious jerks of the twigs against the packed dirt. Bare earth. Bare earth and thatch for God's own house. Ingeld's own snug little hall might be thatched, too, but at least it had floorboards... Again, he forced himself to be calm. No merit in gouging little ruts in the consecrated floor.

After he had finished sweeping he would have to put his mind to the altar furnishings. The cloths were of fine quality, but old, dotted with ancient stains of wax and smoke, threadbare in places, their embroideries unravelling. In the dark of the church one hardly noticed their maculate state, but he had had them out into the light and he found it painful to look at them. He would talk to his
domina
Abarhild.

Wooden candlesticks.

A chalice of horn. Base horn, for the
Sanguis Christi
.

Only the processional cross had any beauty or richness in its making, and that had been the minster's chief treasure since long before Ingeld had been born. Heahred had told him it had been a battle standard in its day, carried against the Mercians a hundred years ago and more. Certainly the prayer inscribed along its arms,
Rise up, Lord, and scatter thy foes
, was as fit for a fight as a mass.

Three months, he had been putting up with all this. Quite long enough.

As the strokes of his broom brought him gradually closer to the door Fredegar became aware of an unexpected shadow, long in the solstice light that shone from low in the south. Certainly, someone was waiting outside. Someone restless and fidgety, to judge from the shadow's twitching. Had one of his flock summoned up the courage to consult him? Fredegar rested the besom against the wall and walked towards the door. His bare feet were almost silent, but as he came to the threshold the shadow darted away, and when he ducked under the thatch and squinted into the cold December sunlight he found the churchyard deserted. He peered to right and left. The frost was still thick on the grass, and he could see where feet had left their marks, but that shy visitor must have run with the speed of the wind.

Fredegar let out a long sigh. If someone among his folk had a troubled conscience he could only hope that whoever it was, man or woman, would find the courage to come back. He turned towards the church door again to finish his chores, and as he did so his eye fell on a small, ragged object just outside the doorway.

A scrap of brown sacking, carefully tucked around its contents. He picked it up gingerly, not knowing what it might contain, but the edges of the cloth unfurled to reveal a little cross, carved of bone, on a leather thong. A simple enough object, but made with some skill, highly polished and symmetrical. As he turned it in his hands, his brow furrowing, he realized that it had exactly the same proportions as the minster's great treasure, the gilt-bronze processional cross, the same flared arms and pattern of little bosses. Someone had been observing minutely, and working with great patience, to make a gift that he might cherish.

But who? Which of Donmouth's residents would take time out of their winter evenings to make a thoughtful offering to their foreign priest? The cross swung back and forth on its leather thong, teasing him.

A gift from an unknown hand was a disturbing thing. He did not know, by accepting it, to what obscure compact he might be setting his own hand. If such a gift had been left for Ingeld he would have been in no doubt that it was some light love token, from one of those shuffling, giggling girls who swarmed at the hall. But there was nothing, surely, in his own aspect or behaviour to prompt such inappropriate devotion. They shied away from him, rather. He was sure the story of Cudda's death had lost nothing in the telling.

Still, Ingeld's folly cast a long shadow.

Lucymas, and the shortest day, and this was the first time in all the long weeks Fredegar had been at Donmouth that anyone other than Elfrun and Abarhild had lifted a hand to make him feel welcome. At last, shrugging and still thoughtful, he slid the little knots together and eased the thong over his head to settle around his neck, the cross tucked out of sight under his robe. From whatever source, it was welcome.

But he paused again in the doorway before going back into the church, feeling the shape of the cross under the coarse wool of his robe. Were his first instincts wrong? Could Abarhild have left it, or asked someone to leave it for him? Possible, of course, always possible, but his instincts told him otherwise. If his
domina
wished to make him a gift, there would be no subterfuge. Elfrun, then? He had wondered about her, her clear singing voice and the regularity with which she obeyed her grandmother's request for her to attend the offices several times in the week, despite the long walk and the many responsibilities which visibly burdened her. He would look up sometimes to find her disconcerting brown gaze fixed on him, as though she could see every mote of dust and cobweb that cluttered the darker corners of his soul. He knew Abarhild had been considering a convent for the girl, and he thought it would be a wise choice. She felt too deeply, that one.

But no. The little bone cross surely did not come from her. Like Abarhild, if Elfrun wished to present him with a gift she would do it openly.

Someone else cared enough to make him that small donation. As he went back into the church and began readying the altar Fredegar had tears in his eyes.

Elfrun traced her fingertip around the whorls and curves incised into the bronze. Finn had not come back. All that long day of All Saints, and the next, and a few days after that, she had been hoping every moment that he might yet come through the gate and into her yard.

But that had been weeks and weeks ago; and now, with Yule and Candlemas behind them, try as she might, she could barely recall the details of Finn's face, and that troubled her. Nonetheless, looking at the mirror was a certain way of summoning once again that unfamiliar sensation of heat and light which his presence had given her. Sunlight glinting on the golden hairs of his arm as he drew the silk ribbons over his skin. The warmth of his hand pressing her fingers around the mirror handle. She could close her eyes and breathe in, letting the memories course along her veins, until she felt like a flower unfurling its grateful petals and opening itself to the generous sun.

Somehow she had managed to keep the mirror a secret all winter. Without having to ask she knew that Wynn had told no one. Taking it out and examining its patterns had become her great pleasure, all the more intense for being rare and guilty. She might spend a little time looking at her own softened and gilded features, searching for whatever the pedlar had called ‘beautiful', but her reflection never held her for long.

No, the real attraction the mirror offered was its other side, those harmonious curves, one endlessly flowing into the next without seam or break, no beginning and no ending, and all perfect proportion and grace. The more she contemplated the pattern, the more certain she was that it encoded some secret, one that she could unlock if only given time enough and calm.

But, oh, God, how she wanted Finn to come back. She talked to him constantly in her head, telling him things that she could mention to no one else. How weary she was, how busy and how bored. Luda's frustrating evasions, the way he told her in so many words not to make such a fuss about nothing; that he had everything in hand. Fredegar was teaching her how to read, and how to tally, but it was a slower and more painful business than she had ever imagined. And Luda's records were kept according to some arcane formula he seemed to have drawn up himself, and she didn't understand.

When she said as much, however, the steward had shrugged, and told her that Radmer never bothered checking the details. ‘Your father lets me do my work.' That unnerving stare from eyes set too close together for comfort. ‘You should do the same, lady.'

Everything would be fine, surely, once Radmer returned?

Elfrun spent far too much time looking out, down the wintry, windswept river and estuary, to the open sea, and if she was honest with herself she admitted she was no longer sure whether she was looking for her father, or Finn. But the last few weeks had been proving dark and wet and muddy beyond belief, and Elfrun knew that she was a fool to imagine any ship would put into their harbour, or for that matter any wanderer of the roads would be seen at Donmouth, before Eastertide.

She sighed. There would be a long Lent first.

A clatter and a scuffle, and Elfrun hastily wrapped the mirror in a length of ragged linen and tucked it at the bottom of her box. Shoving the box away she scrambled to her feet, hot and confused. ‘Am I needed?'

Saethryth was in the doorway, gesturing. ‘Are you blind or something?' Elfrun had never even noticed the goat that had wandered in and was now nosing enquiringly at the nearly finished length of tabby on the loom. They shooed it out together, and Elfrun closed the latch firmly behind her. Had Saethryth seen the mirror? Surely not – she had been crouched with her back to the door; and if the other girl had caught a glimpse she would surely have asked what it was.

There was nothing wrong in what she had been doing; surely there was nothing wrong. But for all that, she didn't want to share her secret with anyone else. And especially not Saethryth. What was she doing down here anyway?

Coming out of the women's house and peering at the leaden sky Elfrun found the morning further advanced than she had thought. Fredegar had promised her a Latin lesson after terce, and she would need to make all decent haste. But first she needed to go back to the heddern to fetch the neatly folded lengths of linen she had promised her grandmother. New cloths to embroider for the altar, Abarhild had said. And Fredegar was quite right, her grandmother had added, their little church was a disgrace.

It was the closest she had ever heard her grandmother come to criticizing Ingeld.

The three miles to the minster were claggy underfoot, and Elfrun was hot-faced and breathless when at last she raised her free hand to knock on her grandmother's door, which was standing ajar. At that precise moment, a voice spoke, harsh with anger and only just the other side of the wood.

‘You should have had me gelded then, as well as tonsured. I've always said Radmer would have been the better priest.'

She jumped backwards and stared at the door.

Her grandmother's reply was inaudible.

‘You did it to me, and now you're doing it to Athulf. And Elfrun too, from what I hear.' Elfrun had been about to retreat, but the sound of her own name trapped her like a bird in lime. ‘Just because they wouldn't let you stay at Chelles—'

‘Athulf would make an excellent priest, given time and training.' That was loud enough.

‘Excellent?'

‘Good enough.'

‘Just like me, then.' A creak of the floorboards.

‘He knows I have his interests at heart.'

‘Really? Are you sure of that, Mother?'

There was a long silence, and then a muttered, incoherent response from Abarhild. When Ingeld answered he sounded weary.

‘Then you should have let me marry. You and your ambitions.'

This time her grandmother's voice was perfectly clear. ‘As if wedding would have stopped you. You've broken every other promise you've ever made.'