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Daughter of the Wolf is set during the Dark Ages, in an England ruled by rival kings. Of the lords who serve them, none is more important than Radmer of Donmouth, known as the King’s Wolf, guardian of the estuary gateway to Northumbria.
When the king sends Radmer on a mission to Rome, Donmouth is suddenly vulnerable, left in the safekeeping of his only daughter, Elfrun, whose formidable grandmother would force her to take the veil, while across the river, treacherous Tilmon of Illingham wants her for his son.
This is the story of daughters in a man’s world. The story of Wynn, determined to oust her brother and take over from her father, the smith. Of Saethryth, wilful daughter of the village steward, whose longing for passion will set off a tragic sequence of events and of Auli, whose merchant venturer father plies his trade up and down the coast, spying for the Danes.
Above all, it is the story of Elfrun, left in charge of Donmouth, uncertain of her father’s fate, not knowing whom she can trust, or whom she can love.
For Stella, my bright star
Cover
Welcome Page
About Daughter of the Wolf
Dedication
Part One
The Chronicle, York Minster Scriptorium
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part Two
The Chronicle, York Minster Scriptorium
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Part Three
The Chronicle, York Minster Scriptorium
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Part Four
The Chronicle, York Minster Scriptorium
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Part Five
The Chronicle, York Minster Scriptorium
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Coda: The Chronicle, York Minster Scriptorium
Historical Note
Glossary
About Victoria Whitworth
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
25 MARCH 859. FEAST OF THE ANNUNCIATION.
The first day of a new year. Time to look back and take stock. The chronicler was making himself a new quill, splaying the tip and slicing with the lethal blade of his pen-knife: brief, accurate strokes. He eyed the nib approvingly before dipping the sharp, shaped point into the little pot of gall-black ink, letting one or two drops fall back into the tiny midnight pool before drawing his first mark on the fresh sheet of vellum.
Up at a slant. Down again. Across. Straight up. Downward curve. Gathering speed a little as his hand accustomed itself to the new nib, to the consistency of this batch of ink, to the slightly rough surface of this calfskin.
AD DCCCLVIII In hoc anno...
His quill was the flight feather of a wild grey goose, tense and powerful in his hand even in this denuded and reworked state. Late March, and just that morning he had seen the first of the great mournful flocks turning north again, arrowing already across the Northumbrian skies to their unknown summer homes. Today was a day fit for new beginnings. The anniversary of that first separation of darkness from light; and of the day on which Eva’s catastrophe had been reversed by the angel’s Ave to Maria.
He sighed, looking down at the still almost empty page. In this year... How powerful it was, the desire to make some kind of mark, leave some kind of record, ink patterning vellum like footprints on sand. How long would it be before some little wave, harbinger of the rising tide, broke over this desk, this room, this great church, and washed the marks away?
He mused over the events of the last year, the news that had come in, brought by legates and royal envoys coming along the old roads; by merchants and sailors putting into the riverside wharves of York, whose cathedral sat like a spider at the heart of its worked net.
Time to dip his pen again. It hovered, while he hesitated over what might be worthy of record. Some events were easy enough. Tap a superfluous drop from the nib, little serif, strong downward stroke...
In this year died King Cinaed ap Alpin of the Picts; and also Athelwulf Ecgberhting of the West Saxons. Domnall ap Alpin and Athelbald Athelwulfing succeeded to the kingdoms.
Clumsy phrasing: he should have drafted it first rather than gone rushing in. The story of his life. Never mind, the meaning was clear enough.
Also in this year the pagans burned the minster at Tours.
He wiped the nib on a square of linen, and gazed at the white-plastered wall. There seemed so little that merited the effort of writing down. Who on earth would be interested in the small events that had marked out this last annus domini for him? In this year a girl gave me a flower on the kalends of March. Her face and bosom were freckled, and her eyes were blue. She made me think of a songthrush egg.
And what about the things that didn’t happen? In this year there was no famine, no murrain of cattle. The pagans were elsewhere. Those were, surely, miracles in themselves.
He had never been to Tours, and now he would probably never get the chance.
Small events, unworthy of record. In this year Ingeld was made priest against his better judgement and appointed to the abbacy of Donmouth.
He stroked the little tuft of remaining feathers that topped the quill against his close-shaven chin and smiled at the softness, lowering his eyelids the better to imagine the bird, high against the sun, heading north into a Hyperborean land of light. What did Northumbria look like to the geese? The estuary that gave the land its name, and the fan of rivers, the hills of chalk and limestone and grit stretching north and west until they ran out into the sea, the northern waters splitting the land, the territories of Dumbarton and the Picts. How far to the north had this supple quill carried its previous owner? His imagination lost itself in a dazzle of snow and sun.
Slowly he opened his eyes again, to the prosaic world of writing-slope and inkhorn, quill and knife and whitewashed wall. How marvellous it would be, to fly with the geese. To see the storms before they hit, to spot where armies were massing, the harbours in which the sea-wolves lurked, to swoop down and hear the treasonous speech men uttered in hall and bower when they thought themselves safe. To have all Northumbria in one’s hand, its hills and waterways no more than the lines and curves that mapped his palm.
He smiled, and shook his head. That was a dream for the statesmen and the warriors, men like his brother. He would be happier with his eyes on the edge of the world, no care beyond the exquisite thrill of the moment, his wings riding the wind.
‘End of the field and back?’ Athulf was out of breath, cheeks pink and eyes bright under his rough-cut fringe. Elfrun thought he looked very like the unkempt ponies whose halters he was holding, hot in their shaggy winter coats and the late Easter sunshine.
She nodded. ‘Dismount and vault three times, turn at the hawthorn tree, same again’ – she gestured largely – ‘finish here. And I’m riding Mara.’ She glared at her cousin, challenging him for possession of their favourite, noting the beginnings of his frown, how that soft lower lip was already starting to pout.
‘Come on!’ Both the other boys who had accepted the challenge were already jostling their own mounts into position a few yards away. She knew one of them vaguely, had seen him before at other spring and harvest meetings, but his father’s lands were in distant Elmet, several days from her own home of Donmouth. The other was a stranger, a tall, quiet-faced lad on a gleaming bay mare. They had come trotting up only moments earlier, just as the race was being planned.
Would Athulf throw a tantrum, with these strangers as witness? Elfrun braced herself even as she laid a possessive hand on Mara’s halter.
Her cousin surprised her, however. ‘As you like.’ And he tugged Apple towards him.
But he was looking neither at her nor at the fat-rumped little pony whose bridle he was gripping. His gaze had gone flickering past her, and a look of calculation was crossing his round face.
‘Come on,’ the lad from Elmet shouted again, and all at once Elfrun decided that, whatever Athulf had seen, she didn’t want to know. She tugged Mara round and scrambled on to her back, clapping her heels into the chestnut’s flanks and screaming, ‘Go!’ A crazy headlong dash ensued, with hardly time to swing herself down, find her stride and bounce back on to Mara twice, never mind three times, before swinging round the hawthorn tree in its fresh green leaf. Her plaits were coming free, and though she had kilted her skirts they unknotted themselves, flying out and hampering her. No room in her head for anything but the exultation of the moment, not for her bashed ribs, not for the other riders, not for the clamour of rooks that rose raucous from the stand of elms at the bottom of the field; and certainly not for any of Athulf’s funny faces. Elfrun came in a screaming second, mud-spattered and exhilarated. The tall lad on the bay had won.
But not by much, and he had noticed. ‘Well ridden!’
She reined Mara in, narrowly avoiding riding into his horse’s rump, grinning in return, flushed and too breathless to answer.
She might not have won outright, but she had beaten Athulf. Beating Athulf was harder than it used to be, and the pleasure that much greater. Sweeping a tangled skein of hair out of her eyes Elfrun slithered triumphant down from Mara’s sweaty back.
Her grandmother stood in front of her.
Abarhild said nothing.
She didn’t need to. Her face, framed in its neat white linen, was set even harder than usual, and her bony hands were clamped one over the other on the silver-gilt mount that capped her blackthorn stick. Elfrun eyed the distance between her grandmother and herself: she knew full well how fast and hard Abarhild could strike. And how she would be blamed for Athulf getting into trouble.
The silence lengthened and deepened. Elfrun could feel the hot blood mounting from somewhere near her heart until it had flooded her already flushed cheeks, her palms moistening where they clutched Mara’s reins, her heart thudding and blocking her breath. One of the horses let out a long, stuttering fart, and Elfrun heard a stifled snigger behind her, but she didn’t dare turn to see whether it came from Athulf or one of the stranger boys.
Abarhild lifted her staff, and Elfrun braced herself, but her grandmother was only gesturing, not lashing out – not yet. ‘Athulf, take that animal. You’ – she stabbed the staff at Elfrun – ‘come with me.’ She turned and began stumping her way up the field in the direction of the Donmouth tents, whose bright roof-poles and finials were visible above the hedge, never once turning to see whether her orders were being obeyed.
Elfrun thrust Mara’s reins blindly at Athulf. ‘You knew. You saw her coming.’ Her breath stuck in her throat. ‘You could have said.’
Her cousin just smirked. She turned, hot and wet-eyed with anger and humiliation, and hurried after Abarhild.
Her grandmother began speaking as soon as Elfrun fell into step, marking each word with a vicious stab at the turf. ‘You – are – fifteen – years – old.’ She stopped, and turned, the sunlight flickering on the gold crosses embroidered on the border of her veil. The Gallic accent that still buzzed around the edges of her grandmother’s voice, even after fully fifty years in Northumbria, was stronger than ever when Abarhild was angry. ‘Is this sin, or just stupidity?’ Her eyes were watery, pink-rimmed and folded deep in her wrinkled face, but Elfrun knew she missed nothing. ‘I thought you were going to show the world your bare arse.’
Elfrun clapped her hands defensively to her buttocks. ‘You did not!’
But her grandmother was shaking her head. ‘You have no idea, do you? Look at you’ – another stab with the gnarled blackthorn – ‘bringing disgrace... Strangers...’ She clamped her mouth and breathed in through her nose. ‘Nearly sixteen. Pro Deo amur – for the love of God, Elfrun, where is your dignity? In your good blue dress, too. And in the field next to the king’s tents. This is absolutely the last time I want to have to say this to you.’
Abarhild glared at her granddaughter, looking for a sign that her words were getting through to her. Elfrun was a good girl at heart; Abarhild was convinced of that. Never been beaten enough, though, or given the responsibility she needed. Elfrun’s father had always been too easy on his only surviving child, and since the girl’s mother had died... Spoiled, she thought now, looking at the wild hair escaping from what had earlier been neat brown plaits, the spatters of mud across Elfrun’s wide forehead, her cheeks’ hectic flush – a flush begot, Abarhild suspected, by excitement rather than shame; and her mouth tightened again.
Elfrun bowed her head and bit her lip, doing her best to look remorseful, but there was a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
Biting back her anger, Abarhild turned and started walking up the slope again, her stick thumping into the grass and the keys chinking at her belt, and Elfrun hurried to catch up.
She knew fine well her grandmother would want to see compunction and penitence before any reconciliation or absolution could be offered; and she did feel a scruple of genuine shame. But more, much more, she was angry with Athulf for not giving her some warning. It would have been so easy – a wink, a jerk of the head... She dug her nails into her palms. She would get him, later.
Abarhild never talked about Athulf’s dignity.
‘What was that? Did you say something, girl?’
‘Sorry, Grandmother.’
‘What?’
Louder this time. ‘Sorry!’ And somewhere, deep down, against all desire, she had to admit that the world would agree. Abarhild was right; she was getting too old for these games. But admitting it, even to her private self, felt like a betrayal, a little death.
Abarhild huffed. ‘I’ll have more to say about this later on. Just now there’s no time. Your father wants you.’ A third, lesser sniff. ‘Clean and well turned-out.’
‘Where?’
And now Abarhild did swing her stick, but it thwacked only into the flesh of Elfrun’s calf, not the bone of her ankle, and she knew from this that the worst of her grandmother’s wrath was on the ebb. ‘He’s on his way to attend on Osberht. You’re to wait with him, until you’re called.’
‘The king?’ Elfrun’s eyes went wide. ‘What about?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough. Something particularly concerning you.’
‘Is there something wrong with the wool? The lambskins?’ Their home of Donmouth was famous for them, their number, their quality, and the way they were processed, both with and without the fleece. Both king and archbishop relied on them, and there was a constant demand from the fine leather-workers in York. The wool, raw, spun or woven, might be Donmouth’s mainstay, but the lambskins were their fame. Under the tutelage first of her mother, and now of Abarhild, Elfrun had been learning not merely the spinning and weaving that every girl started mastering as soon as she was tall enough to hold a spindle, but all the complex economy of wool and parchment, milk and cheese.
Her mother used to joke that all Donmouth’s glory balanced on the back of a sheep.
But why would the king ask for her, if all he wanted was to talk about lambskins?
She opened her mouth again but one look at her grandmother’s face deterred her. By now they were almost back at Donmouth’s little cluster of cheerfully striped canvas. Abarhild’s lips were pursed and her brow drawn tight; and it hit Elfrun that her grandmother was as much in the dark as she was herself.
Her scalp was smarting from the tugs of her grandmother’s fine-toothed antler comb, her face and hands were glowing and abraded from the coarse linen towel, even her fingertips stung from the gouging Abarhild had been giving her nails. And dressing her down all the while, listing her seemingly endless faults of morals and manners while Elfrun squirmed under her grandmother’s glare and the interested regard of the other members of their party.
Especially Saethryth’s. The eldest daughter of the Donmouth steward, she had been roped in to dab the mud off the blue dress, and Elfrun still felt hot at the memory of the other girl’s disingenuous cornflower gaze, directed alternately at the spatters of filth on the wool and at Elfrun herself, fidgeting in her linen shift under her grandmother’s litany of shame. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been any one of the other girls, but Saethryth’s angelic fairness always had Elfrun feeling angular and grubby. And Saethryth’s talent for well-aimed and malicious comments was second to none.
Elfrun had hardly had another moment to wonder why the king might want her.
Now, her grandmother chivvying her as she might a wayward ewe, they were walking as fast as Elfrun’s stiff leather shoes would allow her on the dewy grass to the thronged open area outside the king’s tents. To her great relief her father was there already, seated on the bench nearest the entrance to Osberht’s tent. She could pick him out from any crowd in that blood-red cloak. A gift from the king only a few days earlier, and far and away the gaudiest thing he owned, he was wearing it over the much more characteristic wolf-grey tunic which was the last thing her mother had ever woven, soft and light with all its worth in the fineness of the weave. His only glitter came from the silver tags weighting the woven bands that fastened the cloak at his shoulder.
But, plainly dressed though he might be, in his daughter’s eyes Radmer of Donmouth shone brighter than any half-dozen of the more gaudily clad dish-thanes and riding-men who hovered wasp-like around the king’s court, bullion glinting silver and gold at shoulder and wrist and throat, and on the sword-belts they insisted on wearing even if the swords themselves were packed away.
No weapons in the king’s presence, not at spring and harvest meeting. Stakes were too high, old feuds always simmering too close to over-boiling. Northumbria might have been at its fragile peace since Elfrun was little more than a toddler, but she had heard the threats chewed over and spat out in the hall often enough. Internal dissent, brooding exiles, sea-wolves and the warlords of Mercia and Wales, Pictland and Dumbarton. The king’s cousin, Alred, banned from coming south of the Tees since his rebellion seven years earlier. She knew fine well there were stories of disloyalty and over-leaping ambition attached to some of the faces she could see here, too. But she found it difficult to take any of the hard-edged talk seriously. With her father at the king’s side, what could ever come to hurt them?
Radmer was gesturing to the bench beside him. No smile, but the lack of a frown was enough to fill Elfrun with relief. She knew only too well the drawn brows – worse than any spoken reproof – that would have greeted her if she had arrived in her former muddy and tangled state, and she felt a burst of still half-sulky gratitude to the old lady stomping along beside her.
Abarhild lowered herself on to the bench in silence, back straight and mouth still clamped.
‘Mother.’ Radmer bowed his head, still fair rather than grey in the spring sunlight, and she nodded.
Radmer looked beyond her, at Elfrun’s demurely bowed head, the neat, pale parting in her rich brown hair. ‘Daughter.’ She came to stand in front of him, hands folded, gaze still lowered. ‘The king has summoned me,’ he said quietly. ‘And he said you should come too. Something to our advantage.’ Radmer set his hands on his knees. ‘Well, I’ve been here for a while, and still waiting. There are legates come from Canterbury, and Archbishop Wulfhere is with them. But Osberht’s steward said he’ll see us next, whatever it is.’ He reached out his hand and gave hers a brief pat. ‘How have you been amusing yourself? Not frowsting in our tents, I hope, not on a day like this?’ She lifted her steady brown gaze to his, and he smiled reassuringly.
Elfrun could feel the auger gaze of her grandmother boring into her. ‘Watching – watching Athulf with the horses. Racing.’ Not quite a lie, even if truth fell down through the crack between her words.
‘Did he win?’
She wished suddenly, passionately, that her father had seen her ride. Radmer might have been – no, he would have been – angry, but no one had a better eye for horsemanship. And she was as good as Athulf, she knew she was. Better. The way the wretched boy had been sawing at Apple’s mouth... ‘He – I—’
‘He did well,’ her grandmother said. ‘The other boys were older.’ She shot Elfrun an inscrutable look. ‘And he was riding Apple, not Mara.’
‘Athulf.’ Her father sounded thoughtful. ‘Now your uncle Ingeld’s home from York, it’s time he took that lad in hand. Promising boy, but he’s been left to run wild for far too long.’
‘He should be trained for the Church.’ Abarhild’s tone was flat, uncompromising. Elfrun stared at her grandmother. Sulky, whining Athulf, a cleric?
And it seemed her father shared her incredulity. ‘That puppy? Less fitted even than his father.’
Elfrun braced herself for the blast. But Abarhild had set her withered face hard, the lines between mouth and chin deep and oppressive. ‘The boy is our responsibility. What’s the alternative? Will you make him your heir?’
‘Promise him the hall?’ Radmer turned on his mother with a swiftness that startled Elfrun. ‘Ingeld’s brat? I’ll be damned first.’
‘Why not? Who else is going to take over Donmouth after you?’
‘Don’t bury me, Mother.’ Radmer glanced from his mother to his daughter, and then turned his stare back to the king’s tent. ‘I’m not dead yet.’
‘Radmer! Don’t ignore me. You need to do something for Athulf.’
‘Why?’ Her father’s voice was flat and hard as stone. ‘Ingeld got him. Let Ingeld look after him.’
Abarhild levered herself to her feet and stalked away, her very shoulder blades eloquent of disapproval.
Radmer was drumming his fingers on his knee. ‘As though I haven’t done enough for Ingeld already.’ He bared his teeth, white and strong in the silver-blond beard, but there was no smile in his eyes. ‘Sit down, daughter, and learn the virtues of a king’s good servant from watching me.’
‘What are they?’ The bench stood on uneven ground, and it lurched a little as she sat.
Radmer snorted. ‘Obedience. Patience. Anticipating every need. And never asking questions.’
It sounded very like Abarhild’s standard lecture on being a good granddaughter, and Elfrun wanted to say as much, to see if she could make her father smile. But Radmer was no longer paying any attention to her. His whole body had stiffened, like a wolf that scents the hunt on its heels. She followed his gaze across the thirty feet of open grass that served as an antechamber to the royal tent, but she could see nothing.
Just men.
But as she watched she realized a bustle of activity had been starting up across from them, like one of the little sand-devils that whirled on the beach at Donmouth on windy days; and then the clump of men parted left and right to let a solid figure, his bald head gleaming in the sun, emerge to walk across the grass towards the king’s awning. Although he paced steadily his eyes went sweeping this way and that: Elfrun could see his gaze flickering over every face, and stopping, sudden and hard, when they sighted her father. But he never broke his stride. Elfrun only realized how massive he was when he stood next to the king’s steward. This newcomer overtopped the tall steward by half a head, and was broad in proportion. With that lumpy, lowering brow he only needed the addition of a pair of polled horns, and he could easily be mistaken for an ox. On its hind legs. She put her hand to her mouth to stifle the giggle that threatened.
The steward listened, and nodded, and ducked into the tent.
And now Elfrun was beginning to realize that her father was not the only one to have been transfixed by the arrival of this stranger. The hangers-on were shifting, staring, regrouping. Men bending to mutter in each other’s ears, listening with wary faces, drifting away from the quarter whence the stranger had come, to form new alignments. But that tight little clump of men from which he had emerged still clung together, all stout, weather-beaten, with something alien about them, though she would have been hard pressed to say quite what. The angle of a cap, the way in which leggings were bound, the nature of a pattern on a braid...
And then she realized as they moved and turned that they weren’t all men, that the bundled figure of a woman stood among them, and a tall boy behind her, holding a horse.
Had he been alone, Elfrun might not have remembered the boy: she found boys of little interest in themselves. But she recognized his neat-boned bay mare immediately; the thrill of the race, and how even in the heart of the moment she had observed how mount and rider moved as one.
The boy had noticed her watching.
He was staring back, half raising his hand in acknowledgement. She stuck out her chin, forcing herself to hold his gaze. She could look, couldn’t she? Even Abarhild couldn’t object to her looking. What business did he have bringing a fine mare like that to the meeting if he wasn’t prepared to let folk look? But the thought of Abarhild made her blush and shift her eyes elsewhere.
Now that Abarhild had left them, that round little woman in her swathes of brown twill was the only other female present. Were she and the boy kin, then, to each other and to the big bald man? The lad was tall enough, but russet-headed and slender, and looking every bit as out of place as she felt herself.
Her father was still set as though in stone. She noticed that the mutterers were glancing at him, and then back at the tent, an endless flicker of eyes. The big man, the ox-man, was still waiting, but even as she watched a couple of priests emerged, and then the new archbishop, the king’s cousin. Wulfhere’s narrow, vulpine face was pinched and annoyed.
And the big man was summoned in.
He was important, then. Important enough for the king to cut short a meeting with his grace of York and these foreign visitors.
And important enough, she realized with a little cold shock, for the king to break a promise to her own father. He had said Radmer would be next, and then this man had appeared out of nowhere and gone barging up to the steward as if he owned the place.
Abarhild would have berated her for worldly curiosity, but Elfrun dismissed all thoughts of her grandmother. She had to know what was going on.
‘Father?’ He ignored her. ‘Father, who is that man?’
She put out her hand to tug his sleeve, but she was forestalled. One of the mutterers was making his way over to her father, cautious and stiff-legged as a cat approaching a mastiff. Elfrun recognized him, a distant cousin of her dead mother’s.
‘Radmer.’
Her father nodded. ‘Edmund.’
Edmund was a liverish-looking man a few years older than Radmer, with weary, wary eyes and an ill-tended brown moustache. ‘So. He’s back.’ He sat down on Radmer’s other side.
‘They. They’re back.’
‘Osberht must have known. Did you know?’ Edmund waited, but Radmer said nothing. ‘Well, it’s been seven years. More.’
‘He’s done his time in exile. He’s entitled to ask forgiveness.’ Her father’s voice was studiedly neutral.
‘Men are saying they’ve been in the Danish marches all this while. Hedeby, and around the Baltic Sea. Making friends. That these’ – he jerked his chin – ‘are some of them.’
Radmer shook his head. ‘They went to Frankia.’
‘That’s where they were supposed to have been. But men say otherwise.’ Edmund raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you believe it?’
‘I believe nothing on hearsay.’ Radmer let out a sigh. ‘And ever since we exiled Tilmon it’s been one goddamned rumour after another. That he’s been in the Danemarch is only the latest. But the king he tried to force on us is dead, and Northumbria has changed a lot since he left us. New alliances. New faces.’ Radmer paused, his face tightening. ‘With Wulfhere in the archbishop’s seat Osberht has never been stronger. Alred has been well bribed to stay in line, and he’s in the north. So, let Tilmon come back – at least let him try. See if it does him any good.’
Edmund glanced at the king’s tent. ‘Osberht has a lot to forgive.’
‘And he’s not the only one.’ Elfrun stared at her father, startled by the sudden harshness of his tone, but he seemed oblivious to her presence.
Not so Edmund. He caught her eye, smiled a little, then dropped a slow wink. Radmer frowned, a brief contraction across the brow, and he turned to look down at his daughter. ‘Big talk for my little girl to listen to.’
Edmund snorted. ‘That’s not a little girl, Radmer. Not any longer. And more like her dear mother’ – he signed himself with a sketchy cross – ‘every time I see her.’
Radmer’s face tightened. He turned and stared across the grassy forecourt once more. ‘So Tilmon has brought his wife and son back with him. He must be very sure he’ll be returned to Osberht’s favour.’
‘Either that or he’s planning to send Switha in to fight his corner for him.’ Edmund grinned on an outbreath. ‘I’d rather take him on than her, any day.’
‘True. She always was a foe to reckon with.’
They laughed, but their words made Elfrun squint all the more curiously across the grass at the bulkily clad woman. Switha. She looked quite ordinary, so small next to the men. As big a menace as her husband, the ox-man? And so the boy with the bay mare, he was their son. What was it like, having a father like that?
‘If Tilmon has been in the Danemarch,’ Edmund said slowly, ‘and if he is still shoulder to shoulder with Alred, then Osberht will have to buy his loyalty back somehow. How will he lime that branch? Do you know? Are you privy to this?’
Radmer eyed him sideways. ‘Think I’d tell you?’
‘Everyone’s wondering.’
‘Let them.’ Radmer stretched out his legs and clasped his hands behind his head. ‘You want to look at me?’ His voice was louder, more challenging. ‘You want to speculate, boys? Come on then, and welcome. Be my guest.’
‘Don’t push it, Radmer.’ Edmund sounded nervous.
‘Don’t push me, then.’
Elfrun’s eyes flickered from one man to the other, wondering at the sudden thundery crackle in the air between them.
Edmund stood up and yawned, showing his back teeth. He caught her looking at him, and frowned. ‘And what about this one, Radmer? What plans?’
‘Elfrun’s needed at Donmouth. She’ll take over the hall from her grandmother. In the fullness of time.’
‘Not marriage?’ Edmund looked at her appraisingly. ‘There’s many a family would value a Donmouth alliance. Does the girl have a voice?’
‘She wants to stay with me.’ Her father put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t you, Elfa?’
Elfrun squirmed at being the sudden focus of both men’s attention. But she didn’t have to answer. The king’s steward had appeared at her father’s side, beckoning urgently.
‘No, Radmer. Not the girl. Just you.’ He glanced at Elfrun. ‘For the moment, anyway.’
Her father frowned. ‘Stay here, Elfa. I don’t like leaving you on your own.’
Elfrun looked round, but there was no sign of Abarhild.
Her father was still frowning. ‘Keep an eye on her for me, Edmund?’
‘As though she were my own.’ Edmund’s voice was hearty.
She watched the king’s steward usher her father to the tent and lift the heavy embroidered door-curtain. The ox-man, this Tilmon, he hadn’t come out yet. So the meeting was between the three of them.
Edmund had drifted away a few feet. Little as she warmed to him with his sad, straggly moustache and his heavy, lingering eyes, he was at least kin, however distant, and her father had appointed him as a bulwark between her and all the other watchers. She tried to straighten her back and fold her hands in a way Abarhild would have approved. ‘Are you well, cousin Edmund?’
‘So, you do speak.’ He sighed. ‘Well enough, cousin Elfrun. Well enough. Tell me, how are matters at Donmouth? Do you still have that fine smith?’
‘Cuthred?’ She knew full well they had good men at Donmouth, but it was gratifying to know that the world had noticed. ‘Indeed we do, and his son has started working with him at the forge.’
Edmund shook his head. ‘Your father’s a lucky man. Smith, steward, shepherd – it’s a tight ship at Donmouth. And Widia – your huntsman is envied by the king himself. I hope Radmer counts his blessings?’
She nodded.
‘And, tell me, what has your father said about marrying again?’
‘Nothing!’ She was startled into a yelp.
‘Nothing? Really? It’s been a couple of years.’
Elfrun knew exactly how long it had been.
‘Nothing to you, at least.’ Edmund ran his tongue over the lower edge of his moustache. ‘How about naming an heir?’
She shook her head, increasingly uncomfortable under this arrow-storm of questions.
‘Well, well.’ He looked at her for a moment, a calculating light in his eyes. ‘But that holy priest your uncle has a son or two who could step in, am I right? Is that the way the dice are rolling?’
And all at once Elfrun hated him, the hint of malice in his voice and the way that his moustache drooped raggedly over his mouth so that she could barely see his lips move when he spoke. ‘One son,’ she said coldly. Athulf’s parting smirk was still rankling.
‘Just the one? Really?’ Edmund cackled. ‘And no chance for Ingeld to get more, I suppose, now that he has to leave York and head the Donmouth minster. Every step stalked by your father. That’s made us laugh!’ Suddenly he was looming down over her, close enough for her to see the red veins that threaded his eyes, the pores pocking the tip of his nose. ‘You want my advice? Don’t let Radmer’ – he jerked his head towards the king’s tent – ‘keep you withering on the vine at home. He will, you know, just because it suits him. I know him.’ He spat in the grass. ‘He should marry you off. You’re getting valuable.’ And now he sat down next to her and leaned in even closer, his thigh hard against hers, and she could smell last night’s beef and beer on his breath. ‘Are you ready for a man? You’re a skinny little thing, but one never can tell. And Donmouth could make any girl look attractive.’ She pulled back as far as she dared without being rude, revolted by his proximity, and he laughed.
‘My father asked you to keep an eye on me,’ she said stiffly.
‘So he did.’ He looked her up and down in a way that made her skin crawl. ‘And that’s just what I’m doing. And you know what men call Radmer?’
‘Call him? The King’s Wolf.’
‘The King’s Wolf. Indeed. And do you know why?’
He was leaning in, and she shifted another inch towards the end of the bench, talking fast to keep him at bay, repeating words she had heard in the hall. ‘Because Donmouth’s the gate to Northumbria, and he guards it. Hold the river, and the estuary, and the kingdom is strong.’
‘And that’s not all he guards, is it, Osberht’s pet wolf?’ He seemed to think this was funny. ‘Radmer’s been growling and snapping at strangers on the king’s behalf for twenty years. He’s proud. He should be.’ Edmund turned to look at the king’s tent. ‘But with Tilmon back he won’t be growling. He’ll be wanting to go for the throat.’ He laughed. ‘Exciting times.’
He was still much too close. Elfrun could feel the warmth and heaviness of him leaning against her, but she was right at the end of the bench now, the edge digging into her right buttock. Any further and she would fall off. All she wanted was to get up and walk away, but Abarhild would be shocked when she heard of such discourtesy to a kinsman.
And what if he followed her, shouted at her, made folk stare?
So she concentrated on her clasped hands, the pale half-moons on her thumbnails, not speaking, hardly even breathing. Edmund grunted enquiringly, but she kept her lips tight-pressed, and at last to her infinite relief she felt the bench tip as he hauled himself to his feet. When she dared to look up again she saw that he had rejoined one of the little clusters that hovered at the far side of the king’s tent. Low muttering, sidelong glances – a few of them at her – emphatic gestures.
But it wasn’t all about her. The Northumbrian riding-men and dish-thanes and hall-wards, with all their hangers-on, were clumping and forming larger groups. Tilmon’s men were pulling closer together in response.
The boy with the bay mare had withdrawn himself a little, however, and was walking her up and down. Elfrun watched her neat lines, her forward-pricked ears and gleaming hooves, and the way the sunlight shone on her hide, so different from Mara and Apple. Her dainty head had something almost birdlike in its grace, as did her little pecking steps. That boy must spend hours clipping, and combing, and oiling. He turned his head and she looked away quickly in case he caught her staring yet again. It would be good to race that bay mare again, though Mara would never have a chance against her.
Dear, shaggy Mara and Apple – and a pang of conscience struck her. Could Athulf be trusted to look after the ponies properly, with all the distractions and temptations offered by the meeting? She cast a calculating look at the curtain screening the entrance to the king’s tent. How much longer were they going to be? She could be quick: she could run.
Just to see that Apple and Mara were all right.
But what if they weren’t? What if Athulf had just left them loose in the field? Still tacked up, even? She would have to catch them.
Elfrun half rose to her feet, then stopped, hovering somewhere short of standing.
Her father might come out of the tent, and she not back. What if the king had asked for her? And what if she got muddy again? If he didn’t kill her, her grandmother most certainly would. So she slumped back on to the bench, still torn, trying to keep her face composed, her hands folded and her back straight. But the bench was hard, and getting harder all the time, her seat was aching, and her feet were cramped and hot and chafed, her heels blistering in the stiff leather shoes she almost never wore. She felt desperately self-conscious, sitting there alone, but it was still preferable to Edmund coming back. And all the while the sun was shining and every lark in Deira was pouring out its heart, singing its alleluias in the Easter sky, and from down towards the river Elfrun could hear splashing, and laughter. She had a suspicion she could hear Athulf’s shrieks among the others.
Abarhild had been angry enough about her riding with the boys. What would she have said if she had caught Elfrun swimming?
Now she could hear other raised voices, not so far away.
Shouts, even. And coming from the king’s tent.
Her hackles had risen without her realizing.
And she was not alone. Everyone had frozen, hands already halfway to absent sword-pommels. The woman in the brown twill and the boy were standing close together. The boy was looking at the tent, but the woman was staring across the grass. Looking, Elfrun realized, at her. Perhaps she – Switha, that was the name – perhaps she too felt ill at ease in the midst of this throng of jumpy men.
But after that one outburst the voices inside the tent had fallen quiet again, as though belatedly aware of all those avid ears outwith its painted and embroidered canvas walls. Try as she might, she could hear nothing more.
Long, slow heartbeats, and the world began to breathe again.
The space under the tasselled awning darkened. Her father came blundering out into the daylight. She thought at first he was just sun-blind, but realized then he was snarling-angry, angry as she had never seen him. He came straight over to her.
‘Get up.’
She scrambled to her feet. ‘Why? What is it? Does the king want me now?’
But he had her hard by the bones of her elbow and was turning her away from the tent.
‘Father? You’re hurting me.’
Eyes. Everywhere, eyes.
Even she could see the eyes were noting his anger, his loss of self-command.
‘Father? Is it something I’ve done?’
That got through to him. ‘You, child? No, absolutely not.’ He glanced behind them. ‘I can’t talk about it here. There are ears everywhere.’ But he loosened his grip on her arm.
Ears as well as eyes. And tongues all too ready to twist what the eyes and ears had taken in. She longed for the familiar haven of Donmouth, where every face was known to her.
Radmer was looking over her, back towards the king’s tent. ‘Damn it.’
And the ox-man was there, out of nowhere, right in front of her, blocking the sun. ‘This is the girl?’ He reached towards her.
Radmer moved between them. ‘You’ve had my answer, Tilmon.’
‘Think again.’ Tilmon looked back towards the tent.
‘Don’t insult me. A landless exile. A traitor. The king may be talking to you, but he still doubts your loyalty, and Alred’s.’ Elfrun could almost see her father’s hackles rising, hear the low snarl. ‘And he’s right.’
Something touched her elbow, and she yelped.
It was the dumpy, twill-swathed woman. Close to, she reminded Elfrun irresistibly of a hedgehog, with her bright black eyes, pudgy face and sweet smile. Her veil was pinned slightly awry, allowing tight, dark curls, streaked with silver, to escape around her temples. ‘Radmer.’
Elfrun’s father nodded stiffly. ‘Switha.’
Switha moved into the space between the men. ‘We’re on the same side now. At least look at my boy.’ Her voice was warm and low, with a caressing note.
‘Out of the question.’ Radmer tried to turn away.
But, and to Elfrun’s amazement, the woman laid an intimate hand on his sleeve, moving closer to him and dropping her voice still further. ‘Whether Osberht trusts us or not, he needs us. He knows what’s in the wind.’ She turned, and her dark eyes scanned Elfrun, a long searching gaze, before she looked up into Radmer’s face once more. ‘How about letting bygones be bygones?’ She sounded so reasonable. ‘We were all good friends once.’
He shook himself free and stepped back, out of reach. ‘Never.’
‘Why, Radmer? You have to put her somewhere.’ Tilmon made a sound that could have been laugh or growl, but Switha ignored him. She was still smiling. ‘This could be so easy, Radmer. And you’re making it so hard.’
The oars creaked with one last long pull. The oarsmen raised them dripping out of the water and drew them in over the topmost strake as the boat glided in among the reeds. Its mast was already unstepped, and the evening was a gloomy one, though the reeds were alive with little brown birds. It had been a wild day and a night, though one would hardly guess it now, and the whole crew was exhausted.
Finn crouched in the bows, his wickerwork pack balanced, ready to jump across to one of the little boggy tufts as soon as the boat-master raised his hand.
But instead Tuuri beckoned him over with a crooked finger. Finn set his pack down and stepped over thwarts and bundles and snoring off-shift crew to where the older man stood, by the keelson socket. Auli was crouched at his feet, whittling a new bone flute.
‘We’re earlier than we planned,’ the boat-master said. ‘A good couple of weeks. But we had to take that wind when it came.’ His sun-battered face was giving nothing away.
Finn nodded. He remembered this stretch of the Lindsey marshes, and he wanted to strike inland while the light lasted, make for the great monastery at Bardney where they knew him from last summer. He knew he would get a hearty welcome and a place by the fire. The Hedeby market had furnished him with fine eastern incense, smelling of summer roses and wrapped in oiled parchment; and tiny clay phials of oil and water and soil that were said to come from Jerusalem, brought up along the rivers to the Baltic Sea. He also had his usual range of popular trinkets and random acquisitions. The good brothers of Bardney would be delighted. He would make for Bardney, and then this year his road would take him on a long loop, and ultimately north. Tuuri and he had talked it through. A counter-sunwise circuit that would end with him going up the old road to Barrow and the ferry, and along the Ouse to York, calling at the minsters and halls on the way, one hand outstretched in friendship, the other never far from the hilt of his belt-knife.
Finn bit back his impatience and waited. He knew Tuuri wouldn’t be keeping him here merely to exchange platitudes about wind and weather. He followed the older man’s gaze down the length of the boat, to where Myr and Holmi were lying, fast asleep, resting against Varri’s broad, hairy back. The lads had been wrestling with rope and wind for much of the day, and he didn’t grudge them their sleep, though it saddened him not to bid them farewell and good fortune. It would be a long season before he saw them again – and perhaps he never would. His world had no room in it for complacency.
‘You know what we need.’
Finn nodded. He knew, exactly. How far upriver one might sail at low tide. Just what could be seen from a hall doorway. The number of armed men likely to be under a given roof on a given day. Whether the crosses and candlesticks were gold or silver gilt, silver or silvered bronze. His job was to see everything and forget nothing, to linger at high table and market stall when the transactions had been carried out and men’s minds had moved on, the soft-spoken pedlar quite forgotten, except maybe by one or two of the girls into whose eyes he had smiled. He had done this job the navigable length of the Shannon and the Liffey, in the marshy hinterlands of Dorestad, along the Seine, and last year Tuuri had brought him and the others to the English coasts for the first time.
Of all the burdens he carried about him, this knowledge, this weightless, invisible merchandise, was by far the most valuable.
‘You know this stretch.’
‘I do.’ Finn swallowed. His voice was scratchy, still sore from shouting against the wind.
‘We’re going north of the Humber.’
‘The Tees, you said before.’
‘Aye, the Tees, likely. For now at least. But there’s a man wants to talk to us.’ Tuuri’s weathered face bent itself into a crafty, broken-toothed grin. ‘Wants to pay us. Wants us to talk to our friends. Meeting on Humberside. Around the even-nights.’
‘Where on Humberside?’
‘Barton kirk. On the Lindsey shore. The big kirk. You remember it?’
‘You want me there?’
‘We’ll want what you have to tell us.’
Finn nodded. ‘I’ll be there. At the even-night.’ Five months away.
‘Two days before and two after,’ Tuuri said. ‘Barton, remember?’
The boat bumped against a reed-thick islet. An arrow of north-bound geese flew high overhead. Finn hoisted his pack and settled it, and braced himself to jump.
Fredegar gazed down at his clasped hands, the interwoven fingers clenched so hard against each other that he could feel every bone under their thin covering of sallow skin. He pulled his hands apart and tightened them into fists, the knuckles showing white, the nails gouging his palms. The familiar heavy chill was in his stomach, like a slab of cold oat pudding, indigestible, although the air in the church was warm and close. Pro Deo amur...
But he had been fine all morning, head down at work in the vineyard, with his basket and shears and little hoe. No need to talk to anyone, or even to lift his gaze above the hard-pruned vines in their rows. Just as he had been fine yesterday morning, knee-deep in the mud and reeds of the fishpond, his robe kilted high and the spring sun hot on his shaven crown. Only when the little bronze voice of the bell started up again had the darkness and constriction begun once more to creep around the edges of his vision, to tighten about his lungs.
He took in a deep, ragged gulp of air and let it out again in his clear tenor, as true as that same abbey bell: And our mouths shall show forth thy praise.
But lifting his gaze, and standing up with the rest of the brothers, meant that he had to look across the choir, over to the row of Corbie’s novices and oblates, and he couldn’t bear it. The young, untouched faces, pink and scrubbed under their well-tended tonsures. Innocentes, was that the word he was scrabbling after? But innocere meant to cause no harm, and that wasn’t right. Those boys could cause harm, right enough, in their thoughts and their words and their deeds, in what they had done and in what they had failed to do. Ignorantes, then? They had no idea of what might be coming, here at their inland haven. Even here.
O Lord, make haste to help us.
Better to die now, young and ignorant, than to live through what the future might hold.
‘Father abbot wants to see you, Father.’
Fredegar nodded at the child and turned right along the shadowed, northern side of the church to the little stone aula where his new abbot held court.
‘Failure to thrive.’ Ratramnus steepled his fingers and looked at Fredegar over them, his grizzled eyebrows long and bristling as a stag beetle’s horns. ‘That’s what I’d say if you were one of the lambs. And I’d advise putting you in a basket in the kitchen and feeding you from a bottle.’ He sighed. ‘But you’re not a lamb. You’re a monk and mass-priest of Noyon.’
‘I was.’
‘Noyon will be refounded.’ Ratramnus’s voice was dry. ‘But until then we have to do something with you. And believe me, I mourn Bishop Immo and the others almost as much as you do.’
‘Do you pray for them, Father?’
‘Daily.’
Fredegar nodded. He respected Ratramnus, and he was grateful; since for some reason he was still walking God’s earth then Corbie was as good a way station as any. But why was he, worthless as he was, here with every bodily comfort, when all his confraternity was dead?
‘Not sleeping?’
Fredegar felt a wave of exhaustion roll over him at the question. He shook his head. ‘I can’t. When I close my eyes...’
But Ratramnus was raising one of those magnificent eyebrows. ‘You do sleep, you know.’ No confrontation in the abbot’s voice, just the statement of fact.
Fredegar was startled into opening his mouth, almost into contradicting his superior, but Ratramnus was nodding at him, lifting a cautionary finger. ‘’