Raven: Blood Eye (33 page)

'Then why did you save my life?' I asked. 'You could have run. Left me to those shit-faced whoresons.'

'I could have,' she said simply. Then she sat back against the trunk and looked out through a narrow slit at the black forest beyond. Somehow, she had hauled my heavy, mailed, unconscious body through that opening. 'I am a woman,' she said, 'but that does not mean I do not know what honour is. You men wear your precious honour like an ermine cloak, but you do not own all of it.'

'But you hate me, Cynethryth.'

'You came for me,' she said. Then she shrugged and peered out through the split again. 'You came.'

'No.' I shook my head. 'Weohstan came for you. I came for the book.' Just then a loud crack echoed off the forest trees and we held our breath. For a long time we stayed silent in the damp darkness of the hollow oak, afraid that the Welsh were prowling the forest. Then we slept.

In the morning, Cynethryth smeared a fresh poultice of herbs, crushed leaves and clay across the cut in my back and we ate the berries and nuts she had gathered in my helmet before dawn.

'You will need some meat to build up your strength,' she said, screwing up her face as she chewed a bitter berry. 'A man can't live on these.'

'The ones picked from the south side of the bushes are the sweetest,' I said, pouring a fistful of greenish berries into my mouth. 'They get more sunlight.'

'I know that, lord,' she said mockingly, and I shrugged, chewing the gritty fruit. It was a bright morning and our hiding place inside the old oak did not seem so safe now that daylight poured in through the split.

'You haven't speared me a boar for breakfast?' I asked with a weak smile, baiting the girl when I should have been thanking her. 'Thór's teeth, I shall never wed you, woman.' But Cynethryth had no smiles for me this morning.

'Do you think he is alive?' she asked. The gospels of Saint Jerome sat in her lap. I shifted back, afraid of the thing with its jewelled cover and hidden secrets. 'Speak truthfully, Raven. Whatever you believe.'

I tore my eyes from the holy book and looked into Cynethryth's. 'I believe he is dead, Cynethryth,' I said softly. 'After what we did to them . . .' I shook my head. 'Those bastards would have finished him.' In truth I thought there was another possibility and that was that the Welsh might have taken Weohstan for ransom or surety against Mercian raids. But they might just as easily torture him to death. Cynethryth did not need false hope and so I made her believe he was dead. Cynethryth's green eyes filled with tears, and when she closed them the tears spilled down her dirty face.

We stayed in the hollow old oak one more night, and that night Cynethryth found a dead raven by the tree. She took one of its wings and plaited it into my long hair so that the glossy feathers shone in the moonlight. 'Now you really are a Raven,' she had said, the ache of losing Weohstan dulling her eyes like a skin of ice. 'Now we can fly away. Far away.' I did not feel as though I would be able to walk properly, let alone soar like a bird, but I thanked her anyway.

'You sound like a pagan,' I had accused her, and she had made the sign of the cross then, but she left the raven's wing in my hair and I thought I would never untie it and one day it would be no more than a stinking, rotten scrag.

We ventured out into the forest then, hoping the Welsh war band had given up searching for us. They had already taken much Mercian silver from Glum and with any luck they would have slipped back into their own lands beyond King Offa's wall. I was weak, but Cynethryth said the wound in my back was healing well given that I was trudging across difficult ground instead of resting in straw. We were heading south. After all that had happened, I still had the book and I knew I must fulfil Jarl Sigurd's part of the bargain by putting the treasure in Ealdorman Ealdred's hands, for only then would
Serpent
and
Fjord-Elk
be returned to us. Though what I would do with two longships, I did not know. But for Sigurd's honour and perhaps my own too, Ealdred would have the book. I would have my freedom.

'Would Ealdred have paid Glum good silver for you and Weohstan?' I asked as we walked through gorse and bracken, a thin rain falling to wash the blood from my mail. I knew that I risked her tears by mentioning Weohstan, but I needed to know something about the ealdorman I would soon have to face again. I still walked with the spear taking much of my weight so as not to twist and risk tearing open what Cynethryth had sewn.

She shrugged but said nothing, so I breathed in the air which smelled of rain, and pushed deeper. 'Glum thought if he gave you to Ealdred, the Mercians would pay to get you back. I suppose he was right. I'd wager Ealdred would not turn his back on the chance of having something the Mercians want. There were whispers flying around the fires that you were King Coenwulf's daughter,' I said, watching her face for signs of the truth. 'You don't look like a princess to me.'

'And you have known many princesses, have you?' she said. I shrugged. Cynethryth pursed her lips and bent to snatch a slender hazel branch from the forest floor. 'Coenwulf might give a fur or two to have me back at his hall, Raven,' she said, 'if he still had a hall. But not for the reasons you think.'

'So you're not his daughter, but you are nobly born,' I said, 'that much I know.' She raised one eyebrow. 'I was teasing before,' I said. 'Your clothes, your bearing. Your father is a rich man, whoever he is. He must be known throughout Mercia.'

'Shhh, Raven.' She turned to face me, pressing a finger against my lips. 'I am no Mercian. Do I sound like one?' She shook her head. 'You are a strange heathen boy.'

I leant on my spear and held out a hand, inviting her to explain, and she shook her head as though wondering how I could be so stupid.

'I'm Ealdorman Ealdred's daughter.'

'His daughter?' The news struck me between the eyes. 'Then what were you doing in Coenwulf's fortress?'

A shadow of pain skated across her wet face. 'I was to marry King Coenwulf's kinsman,' she said, 'to help heal the wounds between Wessex and Mercia. I was to be a peace-weaver, Raven. Father says the treaty is falling apart. My marriage was meant to bring the kingdoms together and put an end to the fighting.' She frowned. 'But I know my father and I know what I am worth to him.' She spat those last words as though they were poison. 'He would give me to Mercia to buy the time he needs to build his army for the day King Egbert marches against Coenwulf. Ealdred is land-greedy, Raven, and I am the price he would pay for war on his own terms.'

Peace-weavers. I had heard them called peace-cows also and powerful men have always used their daughters for such ends, but I had never considered that those daughters, women born to privilege, might not embrace their destinies. I thought of how I had helped the Norns pull free and sever the thread from my life that would have seen me take old Ealhstan's place at the pole lathe, amongst the sweet-smelling wood dust.

'Peace-weavers pay a heavy price too, Raven,' Cynethryth said. 'They trade themselves for trinkets and fine linen and they live in the cold, empty space between two families who can never bury their hatred. They have two lives and none at all.'

I understood Cynethryth then, for like a peace-weaver I was not whole. I was without a past and so neither English nor Norse. Cynethryth palmed the rain from her face and pushed her wet hair behind her ears. I could have looked at her for ever. 'I would have been married the day after Weohstan and I found you in Coenwulf's church,' she said, whipping the hazel branch through the air.

'So Weohstan is King Coenwulf's kinsman,' I said, thinking I understood.

'Almighty Christ and all his saints!' she exclaimed. 'A child's wooden sword is sharper than you, Raven.' She threw the hazel stick away. 'The man I was to marry was called Ordlaf. I suppose he might be dead. He rode off with the king because the Northumbrians were raiding the borderlands.' I said nothing. 'Anyway, I don't like him. He's a Christian,' she said, as though this made it better, 'but he's even more of a beast than you.'

'I don't believe it,' I said with a grin. 'Does he stink as bad as me?'

'No one could stink that bad,' she said, almost smiling, 'but you'd think he was a heathen. You would like him, I don't doubt. Maybe you should marry him if he is alive.' Her eyes shone with mischief then. 'And Mauger? Did you not notice that he was always close by me? From the moment you and your godless friends took us hostage?'

'I thought that ox wanted to have his pleasure with you,' I said, a flush of blood warming my cheeks. 'I don't trust him. He's a bastard.'

Cynethryth giggled. 'Old Mauger has known me my whole life,' she boasted. 'My father sent him with Jarl Sigurd to bring me back to Wessex. Perhaps he decided that it was too late to save the treaty. Too late even for a peace-weaver. He's no fool. He'd use me, but not for no gain. Not if he doubted the outcome. There are other kings with other cousins. There are other bargains, other trades to be made.' She began to walk on and I kept up with her.

'So your father sent Sigurd for the book and Mauger for you.'

'Yes,' Cynethryth said, 'but you did Mauger's job for him by keeping me in King Coenwulf's church. He just had to make sure your filthy heathens kept their hands off me.' She said it as though this task was easily within the Wessex warrior's capabilities and I wondered what he would have done if Svein or Bram or Black Floki had tried to have their fun with the girl.

'Well, he didn't do a very good job,' I said petulantly. 'Where was Mauger when Glum and his turds came for you in the middle of the night?' She frowned at that, which I took to mean she also wondered why Mauger had not woken to protect her.

'I can't believe he's gone,' she said then. 'It seems impossible. We were not close. Never.' She shook her head. 'My father says Mauger's a vicious man, that he loves his sword more than he loves any living soul. Can a man have such feelings for a piece of iron, Raven?' she asked, and my hand went instinctively to my sword's pommel, and that was enough of an answer because Cynethryth grimaced. 'Anyway, I expect he killed his share of Mercians that night in the charcoal pit. Father will miss him.' I remembered the sickness in my stomach at watching armed riders heading for Sigurd's camp. 'Mauger was the greatest warrior in all Wessex,' Cynethryth added almost proudly. My head was spinning as I tried to make sense of everything I had heard, though one piece still did not fit with the rest, like a knife rammed into the wrong sheath.

'Weohstan was your lover?' I asked accusingly. 'You were faithless, even on the night before you were supposed to be married to another? I saw you two holding hands outside the church.'

Now Cynethryth smiled bitterly and her eyes, the colour of ivy, filled with tears as she walked. 'He was my chaperon.' She cuffed an eye. 'Officially, anyway. In truth he was supposed to remain with King Coenwulf as surety against my father's attacking him.'

'So he was not your lover?' I said.

'Weohstan was my brother.'

WHEN WE REACHED THE WESTERN BANK OF THE SEVERN RIVER WE
found a boatman and his simple son and the man offered to row us across the narrowest part in his leaky old skiff. He was not so keen when I told him we had no money, nor did he believe Cynethryth was the daughter of Ealdorman Ealdred of Wessex, but he did believe my sword looked wickedly sharp when I showed it to him, and we were soon in Wessex.

We passed through a small village where Cynethryth was known to the folk who lived there and they gave us some bread and cheese and smoked ham. The women clucked around her, horrified by her ragged looks. But they were wary of me and I did not blame them, for I wore all my war gear and carried the painted round shield and had not yet cleaned the blood from them. I was used to people staring at me, for my blood-eye had always inspired fear, and I suppose I had come to relish their fear. I have heard men say that to have a man's respect is a far greater prize than to have him fear you. This is untrue. Fear is what freezes your enemy's heart and keeps his sword in its scabbard. Fear is what makes a man fight alongside you when he might otherwise fight against you. Respect is like a bejewelled mead cup, or the stone-encrusted cover of a prayer book. It is an unnecessary luxury, so I let them fear me.