Daughter of the Wolf (33 page)

Abarhild was interrogating Athulf endlessly, about the sword, and his riding and where he had been, tutting and hissing occasionally, but mostly nodding in approval. Thancrad tried to join in, but she ignored him, and after a little while he shifted round to hunker down by Elfrun's side.

‘How are you?'

She turned to look at him. ‘Really?'

‘Of course, really.'

‘Then,
really
, I wish I was dead too.' That threw him, as she had intended, and he was silent for a long moment.

Then, ‘And is that all?'

‘All?' Her voice was too loud and she lowered it. ‘Listen to my grandmother. You know why she's asking Athulf all these questions? Because she thinks maybe he can take over Donmouth now. She doesn't have to try to force him to be a priest.'

Thancrad frowned. ‘But Donmouth is yours. The king said as much. Everyone knows that.'

‘Till someone steals it from me.' She was perilously close to tears, and she had to stop, breathe, swallow.

‘Drink your wine.'

She nodded, and sipped, but it stuck in her throat.

Thancrad huffed a sigh. ‘You want your father back, but sometimes I wish mine would just disappear.' He glanced at her, looking for a response, but she felt no curiosity. He and Tilmon were her father's enemies. Why should she care about them, and any quarrel they might have? Thancrad went on, ‘He's got so much, but he always wants more.' Again that glance, that pause, as if he were waiting for her to answer. Why did he think she was interested?

Eventually she shrugged, staring into her wine, and he gave up, moving back to Athulf, and the conversation turned to cattle.

Only slowly did she realize that Abarhild was falling asleep. The stick was slipping sideways from the old woman's hand, and Thancrad leaned forward and fielded it easily, propping it against the stool.

‘She lives at the minster, doesn't she? She should go home.'

Elfrun scrambled to her feet, relieved beyond measure. ‘I'll tell Luda to see the oxen are harnessed.' She spotted her chance to escape. ‘I'm going back to the minster too. So, goodbye.'

‘No need.' He was standing too. ‘Put your grandmother up on your pommel, Athulf. I will be honoured if you ride with me, Elfrun.'

‘But the oxen—'

‘It's nearly dark,' he said. ‘It'll be much quicker on horseback, and more comfortable. Why go jolting over a rutted track when you can ride in style?' She could tell from his voice that he was smiling now, though the hall was too dark to see his face clearly, with the hearth behind him. ‘Athulf tells me you like horses. You'll love Blis.'

Something odd in the way he said the name. ‘Bliss? The bay outside? The one you were riding when...' She tailed off. It was more than a year since that crazy race, and Thancrad had never given any sign that he had recognized Elfrun of Donmouth as that wild-haired, screaming girl who had so nearly beaten him. Where had that girl gone? She seemed like a stranger now.

‘Blis,' he corrected, the vowel oddly long.
Blees
. ‘I've had her from a foal. She's nine now. She's perfect.' He jerked his head and turned, leaving what felt like no choice but to follow. Elfrun looked longingly at her grandmother, but Athulf was already helping Abarhild to her feet and out into the courtyard, still lit with the afterglow of the sunset.

And Blis was certainly extremely beautiful: a neat head, her brow marked with a white flash, lustrous dark eyes and eyelashes, a nose soft as moleskin and a fragile grace which, Thancrad told her, was wholly misleading. ‘Strong as an ox. And a great heart, haven't you, girl?' And, watching him run his hand up under her mane and caress the soft fur beneath and around her ears and the way the pretty mare rubbed her head against his shoulder with such obvious pleasure, Elfrun almost found herself warming to him.

Thancrad had been riding bareback. He gathered his reins into his left hand and grabbed a handful of mane, and almost faster than Elfrun's eye could follow he leaned his weight on his left leg and swung his right foot up over Blis's back, hooking and hauling, his knees gripping her hard and his whole body following. He grinned at her from his vantage point. ‘It's handy being tall.' Her eyes followed his to watch Athulf's ungainly scramble, and she smiled unwillingly. Luda was helping Abarhild up to sit in front of her grandson.

Elfrun thought of riding three miles with Thancrad's arms tight round her and his breath hot on the back of her neck, and she felt queasy and a little giddy. ‘I'll go up behind you.'

‘As you will.'

And she didn't want Luda to help her, either. She called with relief to Widia, who seemed to be in urgent conversation with the dog-boy. Had they found a common means of understanding one another? He patted the lad on the shoulder and came over to make a step of his hands and throw her up, with her skirt rucked up to her knees.

She had ridden behind her father a hundred times. Why should this be so different? She gripped loosely with her bare calves, feeling the calm, gentle lurch of Blis's pace, leaning away from Thancrad and putting her hands on the mare's warm back rather than around his waist. But then Blis moved into a trot, and she had to hold on to him, trying to clutch the soft brown of Thancrad's tunic rather than his midriff, uncomfortably aware of his rangy strength beneath the cloth. She had known he was strong from the easy way he had handled her after her ridiculous tumble at the spring meeting, helping her to his parents' tent. As Blis picked up her pace Elfrun had to hold his waist harder with her left hand while she rubbed at her eye-socket with her right, feeling the shape of the bone beneath. Finn's mirror had told her that the bruising had long gone, but even all these weeks later a tenderness lingered.

Blis had a lovely, forward-going pace, much smoother than Elfrun was used to. She couldn't help saying as much.

‘You like her?' She could hear the smile in his voice.

‘I love her,' she said frankly, and bit her lip.

‘She's my truest friend.' He dropped his voice, and sitting behind him as she was she had to lean forward to hear. ‘My parents and I, we were always moving from one court to another. Here and there in Frankia, the Danemarch. It's strange, being the son of an exile. You have no kin, no foster-father, godparents.' He shrugged. ‘Athulf is always complaining about being left out, but from where I sit...' He let out a long breath. ‘And now it's strange having land, being the son of somebody embedded... My father has fitted right back in. But me...' He half twisted so he could look at her. ‘Sorry. Very dull. I just wanted you to see why Blis matters to me.'

Not dull. Certainly not dull, though the thought of him unlocking his heart's secret for her made her profoundly uncomfortable. She made some non-committal noise, and they rode on in silence, with the colour slowly leaching from the sky.

Athulf and Abarhild had been left well behind. Elfrun tried to keep her breath steady. He was her good neighbour, doing her a kindness, nothing more. The familiar path wound up and down and to and fro, avoiding the patches of bog to one side and salt marsh to the other. The stream was high with the rain of the previous day, and Blis splashed through the rills that ran down among the trees before the path made for the higher ground over the big spur and down at last into the sheltered, spring-rich combe where the minster sat on its little plateau. Blue smoke curled gently up into the dusk, smelling comforting and homely. Abarhild's women would have some broth or some porridge waiting, and at the thought her stomach grumbled loudly.

Thancrad laughed. ‘Ready for your dinner?'

Oh, Lord in Heaven, did he expect to be invited? But as they jolted into the yard she saw Fredegar ducking out from under the thatch of the clergy house, and she slithered and bumped down even before Blis was quite at a standstill, hurrying to him in relief. The priest was frowning at her, but his brow cleared when she said loudly, ‘Athulf is bringing Grandmother, and Thancrad kindly carried me,' and then in a hurried mutter, ‘Please, get rid of him, Father.'

Fredegar nodded, his face still stern, and he put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Thank you, young man, for bringing our daughter home.' His voice was loud and firm, his tone both courteous and dismissive. ‘Go into your grandmother's house, child, and see that all is ready for her.'

Elfrun went, feeling both graceless and grateful. Thancrad had been kind, that was all. Very kind. She paused in the doorway and looked over her shoulder to see him lifting a hand in salute, but she pretended she hadn't noticed and hurried inside. The pot on the hearth smelt as savoury as she had hoped, and it was good to be out of the chill.

Fredegar came in a few moments later, ushering Abarhild and settling her down on her stool. Her woman came clucking forward with a soft shawl, and the old woman grumbled and muttered to herself. Fredegar stood in the shadows and watched. When he was certain Abarhild was comfortable he jerked his head. ‘Come.'

‘But I'm hungry!'

‘Bring a piece of bread then.'

The first stars were appearing, though the western sky was still streaked faint green and orange above the hills. Not frosty, but not far from it.

The young men had gone.

Elfrun wanted to explain that she had done nothing wrong, that she had merely been courteous to a guest and a neighbour, but she was reluctant to open her mouth. Why should she justify herself? If Abarhild hadn't censured her, then no one else had the right. But then why – if she had indeed done nothing wrong – this crawling sense of guilt? Her stomach was still growling audibly. She tried to nibble at the hunk of barley bread she was holding, but it was dry and a little stale and the crumbs stuck in her throat.

They had walked only a little way up the track behind the church when Fredegar stopped and turned to look down past the huddle of minster buildings to the sea, now visible beyond.

Elfrun braced herself.

But when he did speak at last his voice was quiet, and his eyes stayed on the sea. ‘The world doesn't understand virginity.'

She stared at him, the bread forgotten.

‘Perhaps integrity would be a better word.' He sighed, a long, juddering breath. ‘Elfrun, dear child, you have such integrity. Such innocence. Like a candle-flame.' She could see his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed, his beaky profile dark against the evening sky. She had never known him struggle so for words, even though English was a foreign tongue to him and he patched his inadequacies with Frankish and Latin. ‘Like a length of white linen. The note of a true bell.' He hugged himself, each hand clasping the opposite elbow. ‘From time to time your grandmother speaks wistfully of sending you to some house of holy sisters, like Chelles.'

‘But that's just her talk! Besides, I can't possibly go to Frankia.'

He shook his head. ‘There are nearer houses. Hovingham – she says you have family connections—'

Elfrun forgot all about deference in her anger. ‘She just can't stop meddling, can she? It's all about her, not me. She wants to retire, so I have to run the hall. She had to leave Chelles, so she makes these ridiculous plans for me to be a nun, because she couldn't. My father never wanted... He wanted...' But she had to stop then, because of the lump in her throat and the burning in her eyes. She pressed her lips together and stared at the restless far horizon, barely visible in the thronging dusk. She could not give in like this, not if she was lady of the hall, and lord in her father's absence.

But if he was really gone, forever, gone and not coming back, then who was she?

‘Elfrun – your grandmother – don't dismiss her suggestions too quickly.' Fredegar sounded more uncertain than she had ever heard him. ‘Child, I fear for you. The world...'

She waited for a long time, her heart slowing and her breath steadying. At last, trying to help, she said hesitantly, ‘I know I haven't much experience of the world, but I do know folk do... stupid things. And say them... and believe them. I'm not so innocent...' She was breaking off little bits of bread, crumbling them between her fingertips, discarding them, trying to make sense of his words. Her feet were going numb.

‘Stupid? Wicked, rather.'

‘Is this about Thancrad, riding with him, just now?' She was feeling obscurely insulted. ‘Because I didn't
want
to ride with him, Father, but I couldn't be unmannerly either, when he offered.'

‘Unmannerly?
Be
unmannerly!' The priest was still staring out to sea. ‘You must be less eager to please. Elfrun, you trust too readily.'

She shook her head at him. ‘I am the lord of Donmouth. I can't possibly be rude to a guest. What would my father have said?'

Fredegar exhaled, another shuddering sigh, and she realized to her shock that he was near tears. ‘These are the manners of the old world, Elfrun. But I am very much afraid that a different world is coming, and you will need to learn to stand up for yourself better. To fight.'

‘Where's your father?'

Wynn hadn't even noticed the shadowing of the forge entrance, she had been so engrossed in her work. Jumping up, she pushed the chunk of cow shank and the little knife with which she had been whittling out her design into the dark corner with a casual sideways flick of her foot.

Her mother was squinting suspiciously into the gloom. ‘Well? I want to talk to him.'

‘He's not here.'

‘I can see that!' Her mother had her arms crossed defensively and a little hard frown tugging at her neat, small-featured face. She took a few steps further into the forge. ‘He's found no one to work with him then.'

It was a statement, not a question. Wynn saw no need to respond. That was public knowledge.

‘What were you doing just now?' Her mother was peering into the corner.