Born of the Sun (37 page)

A single horseman had ridden out through the gate, and she knew him instantly by the pale hood of his hair. He put his horse into a canter and Gereint’s party stopped to wait. Niniane watched him come on, her heart thundering in her breast. The baby must have heard it, for he awoke from a sound sleep with a sharp cry of protest. Niniane shushed him and then Ceawlin was before her.

They stared into each other’s eyes and for a moment neither spoke.

Then he looked at the bundle in her arms. “My lord,” said Niniane with commendable steadiness, “will you take up your new son?”

He was off his horse and standing beside her before she had even seen him move. She bent to put the baby into his arms, and their faces touched. He looked into her eyes again, a quick brilliant look that held an unmistakable message. Her heartbeat was like a drumroll within her.

“Is that my father?” Cerdic asked Gereint. Ceawlin and Niniane had spoken in Saxon, but Cerdic spoke in British.

“Yes, lad,” Gereint answered in the same language. “That is your father.”

Ceawlin stared at his son. “Cerdic?” he asked.

“Cerdic,” replied Niniane softly.

Ceawlin, still with the baby in his arms, walked over to stand beside Gereint’s horse. “The last time I saw you,” he said softly to the little boy in British, “you were a baby. Now you are a boy.”

“Big boy,” said Cerdic proudly.

Ceawlin grinned. “Very big.”

“Me hate the litter,” Cerdic said. “Want to ride the horse.”

“Would you like to ride my horse with me?” Ceawlin asked.

Cerdic stared with big eyes at the splendid bay stallion his father was riding.
“That
horse?” he asked.

“That horse.”

“Me want to ride that horse.”

“All right,” Ceawlin replied. “Let me give your little brother back to your mother, and you can ride Bayvard with me.”

And so they rode in through the gates of Winchester together, Niniane with the baby in her arms, Cerdic seated before his father on Bayvard’s back, pretending to steer with the ends of the reins.

Winchester looked just the same: the paved street, the great wooden halls. Niniane looked around, remembering, then turned to Ceawlin. “Where are you staying?” she asked.

He gave her a quick sidelong glance. “The king’s hall,” he replied.

Her breath caught and for the first time she took it in. The king’s hall. It was really true. Ceawlin was really the king. A fear she had not yet thought of struck her heart. Did that mean she would have to live in the queen’s hall?

“Ceawlin,” she said in an urgent undertone, “I do not want to live in Guthfrid’s hall.”

They were alongside the temple now; the huge wooden pillar of Woden towered over the temple fence to their left. The great hall with its magnificent roof rose before them at the end of the road. “I am not going to put you in the queen’s hall,” he answered. “Guthfrid would be too … present.”

“Yes,” she answered fervently. That was it exactly. She would feel the contaminating presence of Cynric’s queen in every nook and corner of that building. She knew it.

The horses were continuing their stately advance up the road. There were thanes in the great courtyard, many of whom Niniane recognized from Bryn Atha. She felt the eyes of all Winchester upon her, saw the smiles of greeting on both familiar and unfamiliar faces.

He would put her in the women’s hall, then, where Fara had reigned. The women’s hall and the bower. All the exotic marital arrangements of Winchester that had been so distant from her own marriage when they lived at Bryn Atha came rushing back into her memory. She bent to hide her face in the baby-softness of her infant son. Her heart felt like a stone in her breast. Dear God. How could she bear to live like that with Ceawlin?

“Here we are, Cerdic,” she heard him saying to the child before him on Bayvard. “This is where you are to live.” She felt her horse come to a halt and reluctantly she raised her head. They were in front of the king’s hall. She turned her eyes to her husband.

“I thought we would be more comfortable living together,” he said.

She smiled. The blood rushing to her head made her feel suddenly dizzy. His eyes had that look in them again. “Yes,” she said, and laughed. Her laugh sounded dizzy too. “Much more comfortable.”

There was a banquet in the great hall that night to celebrate Niniane’s arrival in Winchester. Ceawlin sat in the king’s high seat with his wife beside him, and for the first time Niniane bore the pledge cup around the hall, as Guthfrid used to do. Cutha had been given his old place at the king’s side and Niniane proffered him the cup first. Sigurd, who had been placed next to Niniane, was the last guest she would come to, and he sat with his elbows propped upon the table and watched her as she circled the hall.

There was little outward change in her from the girl who had left Winchester three years before. She was as slender and fragile-looking as ever she had been; two children had not changed that. She wore her hair loose tonight, the fine, shimmering silk of it spilling all around her shoulders and down her back. She still held her small, lovely head like a flower on a stem. He watched her moving from thane to thane, greeting the men she knew with the gentle charm they all remembered so well from Bryn Atha. Then she was approaching him. She handed him the pledge horn and her fingers inadvertently touched his. She said something to him and he forced himself to smile and make a reply.

She took the horn back from him and looked at Ceawlin. Her eyes were like stars.

The harper sang. Ceawlin and Niniane listened gravely, but Sigurd noticed how they sat so that their shoulders touched. When the song was finished Ceawlin bent to say something into her ear, and when she replied, he covered her hand with his. Sigurd could see how her mouth had begun to tremble.

The wine cup went around and Sigurd drank deep. At last Niniane arose. “I won’t be long,” he heard Ceawlin murmur to her, and Sigurd watched dully as she left the hall. She walked beautifully. She had ever been the most graceful woman he knew.

Cutha offered Ceawlin more wine and Ceawlin laughed. “Not tonight,” Sigurd heard him say. At that he turned and looked at his friend, at the king.

Ceawlin was not laughing any longer. He was looking at the door, looking at it as a hawk must look as it swoops down from the sky, ready to fall upon its prey. The look was there in his fiercely glittering eyes, the hard, severe line of his mouth. Sigurd drew a painful breath and said what he would never have said had he not been drunk. “If you go to her looking like that, you will frighten her half to death.”

The glittering eyes turned toward him. “Looking like what?” Ceawlin asked.

“As if you were going to devour her.”

“I am,” Ceawlin answered, and his eyes did not change. Then, “Would you not feel the same if you were in my place?”

Sigurd felt the blood-red color rushing into his face. Ceawlin stared at him, eyes widening with sudden understanding. Sigurd stood up, backed away from that appalling recognition. Penda, on Sigurd’s other side, said, “What is the matter?”

“I … I must relieve myself,” Sigurd said wildly and, turning, weaved unevenly toward the rear door of the hall.

Penda looked across his empty place to Ceawlin. “What is wrong with him?” he asked.

“He’s drunk too much, I think,” Ceawlin replied somberly. Then, after a pause, “It is, after all, an occasion for celebration.”

There was but one bedroom in the king’s hall, and so Cerdic had been put to sleep on a bench near the hearth. The baby was asleep in his basket and Niniane was in the bed when Ceawlin came into the room.

“Ceawlin,” she said as the door opened. “Ah, Ceawlin.” Her voice trembled. An oil lamp was burning next to the bed and the room was soft with light. He saw that she had the blanket drawn over her breasts, but her shoulders were bare. The unease that his brief conversation with Sigurd had engendered disappeared in the flood of pure, uncluttered lust that swept through him at the sight of the pearl-like sheen of those naked shoulders. He had waited for her for so long … for more than a year he had waited … too long. He walked to the bed and with a ruthless hand stripped the blanket away. She reached her arms up, her bright hair spilling over the white satin skin of her full breasts. He groaned deep in his throat and flung himself down onto the bed beside her.

They did not sleep that night, but made love, then talked, then made love, again and again. “The bed smells like sex,” Niniane said as the lamp finally began to flicker and go out. “What will the handmaids think in the morning?”

Ceawlin yawned and stretched luxuriously. “They will think I was starved for it.” He grinned at her through the tousled hair that had fallen across his face. “And they will be right.”

Niniane leaned over and rained a shower of soft kisses along the line of his cheek. Then she sighed voluptuously and nestled her head into the hollow of his shoulder.

“Wait,” he said. “I forgot. I’ve something for you.” Reluctantly she moved so he could get out of the bed. He went to the chest in the corner and lifted something out. Her eyes widened when she saw what it was. A delicate circle of gold, beautifully engraved and set with precious jewels. It was the sort of rich adornment only a queen would wear, but Niniane had never seen it on Guthfrid. “I had it made in Venta,” he said. “For you.” His eyes were brilliant as he leaned over to place it on her long tangled copper-brown hair. “It is your morgengabe.”

The King
(567-575)

The scop was singing of the coming of spring:

The new year has come to the dwellings of men
Earth’s lap is fair, the sky roof shines bright
The ring-prowed ship drives over the water …

Sigurd listened to Alric’s song, made in honor of Coenburg’s wedding day, and let his eyes run idly around the great hall of Winchester. The benches were filled this bright May afternoon; eorls and thanes who had taken to living for at least part of the year on the lands given to them by the king had poured into Winchester this last week for the wedding of Cutha’s daughter and Ceawlin’s eorl, Penda. Even his brother Cuthwulf, who had been at odds with Ceawlin these last two years, had come into Winchester for Coenburg’s day.

Sigurd looked at his sister’s pretty flushed face and suddenly his mind flashed back eight years, to another day, another place, another marriage ceremony. It had been a Christian marriage ceremony, Penda’s first one, performed by Father Mai at Bryn Atha. Sigurd remembered that day only too well. It had been the day before Ceawlin sent Niniane away to Glastonbury for safety, the day Ceawlin had first learned of his son’s baptism, the day that Sigurd, for the first time in his life, had felt frightening rage burn in his heart against his friend.

Sigurd raised his wine cup and resolutely steered his mind away from such dangerous waters. Instead he remembered Penda’s first wife, Wynne. How lovely she had been, he thought, and how brief her life … lost, as so many women’s lives were lost, in childbirth. As he had almost lost his own wife two years before. They had told him after the birth of his twins that Edith would have no more children, and he had thought of Wynne and been glad. He bore enough guilt in his heart when it came to Edith; he did not want to bear the guilt of her death.

Alric’s harp fell silent, and after a brief moment the hall rang with calls for yet another song. Sigurd watched as Penda bent his dark blond head to say something to Coenburg, saw his sister’s swift shy smile in reply. This marriage had been Cutha’s doing, Sigurd knew. It was a measure of how important Cutha thought Penda was, how important he thought Penda might become, that he had offered the young eorl his only daughter. Sigurd hoped Coenburg would be happy. Penda was not the most domestic of men. But then, one did not marry for happiness. One married for power. It was only the lucky ones who found something more.

Alric was gesturing toward the queen, and the noise in the hall rose even higher. Sigurd kept his eyes on the scop and saw the man holding out his harp. Then she was crossing the polished floor, her delicate cheeks flushed with color. Alric made her a bow and presented her with the harp. Sigurd looked quickly toward Ceawlin and saw him gesturing to the harper to join him on the high seat. Niniane touched the strings and the hall fell silent. After a moment her rich husky voice filled the room.

It was not often that Sigurd had such an excuse to look at her, and he stopped struggling, gave in to his need, and drank her in with his eyes.

She wore the gold circlet Ceawlin had given her when first she returned to Winchester, and her hair was loose, the way Sigurd liked it best. These days she usually wore it looped up and fastened on top of her head, but today it flowed around her shoulders and down her back, a shimmering mantle of autumnal silk. She wore a richly woven overgown of deep blue and there were jewels at her shoulders, throat, waist, and wrists. The garnets on her hands flashed in the torchlight as she moved her fingers on the harp strings.

Her figure was still slim and delicate-looking; as yet childbirth had not marked her. Yet she was not a girl any longer. Her face was thinner, her cheekbones more pronounced than they had been seven years before; her breasts were fuller, the breasts of a mother, not of a girl. The slightly wistful air that had so stirred his heart when first he met her was gone as well. There was a calm dignity about Niniane these days, the air of a woman who is accustomed to having her wishes obeyed. And there were four sons to sit around her hearth in the king’s hall, four healthy sturdy heirs for Ceawlin.

The last note died away and she looked up from the harp, caught Sigurd’s eye, and smiled. He moved his mouth in some kind of a response and watched as Alric came forward to claim his harp again.

“They say she can enchant people with her music,” his wife said into his ear. “That it is witchcraft.”

Sigurd swung around to stare into Edith’s pale blue eyes. “Who says that?” he demanded.

She looked surprised by his vehemence. “The girls in the bower.” Then, as he merely looked disgusted, “It is well known, Sigurd, that she has enchanted the king. And when our little Cutha was sick, Niniane played the harp and he grew better. And, too, her own sons are always so healthy. Surely it is enchantment.”