Born of the Sun (39 page)

“Well, no one will kidnap me with you to guard me, Sigurd,” she answered. “All the world does also know how great a warrior you are.” And she gave him her most enchanting smile.

Sigurd’s face did not relax, and after a minute she gave up trying to coax him into a good humor and looked around with undisguised pleasure. She loved the spring best of all the seasons. The brown earth of the plowed fields was hidden by green spears of barley and wheat. The meadows were deep with grass and shimmered as a light breeze blew across them from the hills to the north. The smell of sap and growing things was in the air as they rode through the woods. She was young and strong and healthy. This last baby had been the easiest of all her children, both to birth and to care for. He slept now, cradled against her breast, and she bent her head to kiss his silky curls. When she looked up again it was to find Sigurd watching her. She smiled and this time he smiled back.

The country around Glastonbury was very wet; for this reason the British called it the Summer Country. Sigurd had never been this far west before and was surprised when the steep, odd-looking height of Glastonbury Tor reared up before them. “It was built long ago,” Niniane told him, “by the Old Ones who made also the standing stones at Avebury and to the south.”

The monastery itself was almost fully moated by a weed-strewn lake. Sigurd sent a contingent of men across the land bridge first, to make sure all was safe before he allowed Niniane to cross with him. They were met by Father Mai, who told them that Coinmail had arrived the day before.

Niniane wished to meet with her brother alone, and the priest offered to bring her to the room where Coinmail was lodged. Sigurd and his men made camp outdoors in the field and lighted the cook fires.

The first thing Niniane distinguished as she came into the darkness of the room from the bright sunshine outside was the color of his hair. She smiled and held out her hands. “Coinmail. I am so glad to see you.”

He crossed the room with an unhurried stride and bent to kiss her forehead. “You look well, Niniane,” he said in reply. Then, “Was it really necessary to bring half of your husband’s thanes for protection? I have come alone.”

Niniane flushed. How like Coinmail, she thought, to put her in the wrong from the start. “It was not my idea, Coinmail, but Ceawlin’s. He has this mad notion that someone will try to kidnap me.”

“Would he want to get you back?” Coinmail asked.

He was serious. She stared up into his face, at the beautiful, formidable features she remembered so well. He had not changed: the wide white brow was the same, the eyes still dark and gray as the northern sea. She had never seen aught of softness in those striking eyes, nor were they soft now as they regarded his only sister for the first time in eight long years. They looked merely curious.

“Yes,” she answered after a long pause. “He would.”

Coinmail raised an eyebrow. It was a trick of Ceawlin’s to do that too, but it made Ceawlin look charmingly young and boyish. Coinmail looked like God on Judgment Day. “Do you come from him, then?” he asked.

This meeting was not going at all as she had expected. “Of course I don’t come from Ceawlin! What could Ceawlin possibly have to say to you? I have come for myself.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” she cried in exasperation. “Because you are my brother, my only living relative, that is why. I wanted to see you.” Then, as he continued to look at her as if she were an enemy, “Is that so strange, Coinmail?” The exasperation had left her; she felt suddenly very sad.

There was no answering spark of recognition in his face. “Yes, Niniane, I find it strange. You have not wanted to see me for eight years. Why, all of a sudden, did it become so important?”

Niniane had not watched Ceawlin rule without learning something. So now she narrowed her own eyes and said in a voice quite as cool as Coinmail’s had been, “Why did you agree to see me?”

“I was curious. I thought you were either coming as a messenger from your husband, in which case I was interested to hear what he could want with me. Or I thought you might be bringing me some information that could be used in the struggle against him.”

“What?”

“Well, what else was I to think?” A muscle in his cheek jumped, the first indication of emotion he had displayed.

Her voice quivered with indignation. “I have brought you nothing, Coinmail, save a nephew who is sleeping in the convent with the nuns. I certainly did not come here to betray my husband.”

He did not answer.

“Coinmail …” Niniane took a deep breath and put a hand upon her brother’s arm. “Let us not quarrel.”

His arm was stiff and unyielding under the pressure of her fingers. “There is little else for us to do, Niniane,” he replied. “It is evident that you have thrown in your lot with my enemies. Do you expect me to love you for that?”

“But Ceawlin is not your enemy!” she cried passionately. Her fingers dug into his forearm with urgent insistence. “That is what I have come to tell you. Coinmail, listen to me. In Wessex today, Saxon and Briton live peacefully together. No Saxon thane has touched British land, I promise you. All live together in peace and harmony. Ask Father Mai. The priests from Glastonbury are welcome in Wessex. No British Christian need fear reprisals for practicing his religion.”

His answer was immediate. “And a Saxon is king. And British children are learning to speak the Saxon tongue and British girls are wedding with Saxon thanes and breeding more Saxons to follow in their fathers’ ways. Soon there will be no more Britons in Wessex, my sister. Soon there will be only Saxons. Did you think I would applaud that? Did you think I would be grateful to your husband for ruling over my people? For taking away my position? For turning the Atrebates into damned Saxons?”

Niniane dropped her hand as if he had slapped it away. “Coinmail … it is not like that.”

“Is it not?” he answered ironically.

“Well … even if it is … is it so bad?”

“I will fight such a way of life till my dying breath, Niniane. I would sell my soul to the devil if I thought I could stop it. Never, never, will I willingly cede an inch of British land to a Saxon. Never.”

She had begun to shake. “Ceawlin does not want to expand Wessex into the land of the Dobunni, Coinmail.”

“Not yet.”

“Not ever!”

His gray eyes were cold as ice. “How many sons have you, Niniane?”

She was shaking so much now that she was sure he could see it. “Four.”

“Four sons. And they will need land, will want land. As will the sons of all your husband’s thanes. Soon there will not be enough land in Wessex to hold them all. One day, Niniane, they will move into the land of the Dobunni, and from thence into Dumnonia itself.” He was not a big man but he seemed to fill the room with the intensity of his passion. Niniane found herself taking a step away from him.

“No,” she said, but her voice lacked conviction. The most horrible part of this whole nightmare conversation, she thought, was that Coinmail might be right.

“Go back to your Saxon, Niniane,” her brother said. “Go back and tell him that he has an enemy in Glevum.” And he pushed past her and walked out the door of the room.

She discovered, when she had composed herself enough to follow him some fifteen minutes later, that he had already ridden out of Glastonbury. He had not even stopped long enough to see her baby.

They were tracked for miles as they rode east from Glastonbury through Dumnonia. Even Niniane could see British scouts watching the road from various points of vantage along the way. Sigurd placed her in the center of a living shield of mounted thanes, and she clutched her baby tightly to her breast and tried not to appear frightened.

“Do you think it is Coinmail?” she asked Sigurd, who was riding beside her and looking grim.

“I do not know who it is, Niniane, but it is certainly someone who knew we were in Glastonbury.” Which meant, of course, that he thought it was Coinmail.

“Coinmail would never want to hurt me,” she said.

“I don’t think whoever it is wants to hurt you.” Sigurd’s eyes were traveling in a constant circle as he spoke, watching both sides of the road and before and behind as well. “That would only provoke bitter reprisals from Ceawlin. But as a hostage …” That was Niniane’s fear also, the fear that Coinmail would try to use her to force Ceawlin to do something he did not wish to do.

She knew now she had been wrong to insist upon meeting with Coinmail. Instead of soothing her fears, the meeting with her brother had only served to confirm her suspicion that he was a danger. And it had also stirred up some uncomfortable doubts in her own heart, doubts she could not fully dismiss even as she rode in the middle of a Saxon shield wall raised to protect her from her own brother, her own people. She could not deny that there was truth in much of what Coinmail had said.

They passed out of Dumnonia and into the boundaries of Wessex. “I am sorry,” Niniane said in a small voice to Sigurd as they made camp for the night within the safety of their own land. “Ceawlin was right. It was unsafe for me to go to Glastonbury. I am sorry you and your men were placed in danger because of me, Sigurd.”

She was sitting before the fire, feeding her baby, and he squatted on his heels beside her and stared into the flames. “Was it worth it?” he asked.

“No.” Her voice was oddly muffled, and he turned a little to look at her. She too was staring into the fire, and the flames suddenly flared up and illuminated her, the baby at her breast, her shoulders, her neck, the line of her face, and her hair. Sigurd felt his throat cramp. He could not speak.

“He hates Ceawlin,” Niniane said. “He will never be reconciled to Saxon rule, no matter how benign it may be. He is Ceawlin’s enemy, Sigurd. Nothing I said could change that. You don’t know Coinmail. He is like a stone; he never changes.”

“He is like you,” Sigurd managed to say, and saw her eyes fly to him in astonishment.

“I? I am not like that at all! I hate that in Coinmail, that … coldness … that inflexibility.”

“And how do you think you were, Niniane, when Ceawlin said he did not want you to go to Glastonbury?”

Her eyes were enormous dark pools in the fine pale oval of her face. “What do you mean?”

“You just said almost the exact words about your brother that Ceawlin said to me when he asked me to take you to Glastonbury. He said that you were like a stone, that no matter what he said, you wouldn’t change.”

“I … I …” She was deadly pale. He was hurting her by talking this way, but suddenly he felt within himself a savage desire to hurt her. She had hurt him.

Sigurd went on relentlessly. “Ceawlin said he could either give in to you or break you, that he had no other choice.” He stared at her out of eyes that were bleakly gray. “You are hard, Niniane, on those who do love you most.” And only he knew he was speaking of himself.

Brilliant color flushed into her face. He saw the glitter of tears in her eyes. “You are right, Sigurd,” she said. “Ceawlin is so good to me. Too good. I don’t deserve his goodness to me.” The tears glittered but did not spill over. “You’re right too when you say that he is the only one I am so hard on. But you see, Sigurd, I fear for him. He is so unafraid for himself that I feel I must be the one to fear for both of us.” The baby had finished nursing and she shifted him to her shoulder to burp. Sigurd had a brief glimpse of a white breast before she covered herself. She was completely unself-conscious, sitting there nursing her child before him. It never once crossed her mind that he might think of her in any way save as Ceawlin’s wife.

“Why should you fear for him?” he asked, his voice hard. “If ever a man was able to take care of himself, it is Ceawlin.”

“I don’t know why,” she said, and her own face was almost as somber as Sigurd’s. She patted her son’s back with a gentle hand. “But when I think of Ceawlin … of my children … when I think that anyone might be a danger to them … I feel … ferocious.” She did not smile, was deadly serious. Nor, looking at her small, fragile figure, was he inclined to laugh.

There was a long silence. The baby burped loudly and Niniane murmured to him. Sigurd got to his feet. “I am going to check the sentries,” he said, and left her to settle herself to sleep by the fire.

“Ceawlin pampers that woman ridiculously,” said Cuthwulf.

“He should not have allowed her to leave Wessex,” Cutha agreed. “But she is safe home now and naught has happened.”

“Safe thanks to Sigurd.” Cuthwulf raised his cup to his brother.

“There was no real danger,” Sigurd said mildly.

“That is not what I understood from the other thanes.” Cutha looked slantwise at Sigurd, but Sigurd’s face did not change. He had been back in Winchester for two full days, but this was the first chance he had had to speak with his father. Cutha had not been in the royal enclave when Niniane’s party returned.

Cutha’s hall was the same as it had always been, but the rest of Winchester had changed. Much of the change reflected the different way of life that the king and the queen had adopted. The unmarried thanes still slept on the hall benches in the great hall, but more and more men had married and moved out of Winchester, onto the lands given to them by the king. The bower had become quarters for those girls who had lost their fathers or natural protectors and who in consequence must look to the king to see them properly married. New halls had been built for the men who had fought with Ceawlin in his struggle for the kingship, men whom he had named eorls, but these men spent at least half of the year on their own lands. Only Cutha remained in Winchester at the king’s side, as of old. Cutha and Sigurd, who were known to be the king’s right and left hands.

They sat this night in Cutha’s hall, Cutha and Sigurd, and listened to Cuthwulf’s familiar complaint. “Gods, but life is dull in Winchester these days! Ceawlin is turning us into a nation of farmers.”

“Ceawlin is turning us into a nation,” his father replied. “And I do not want to hear of any more foolish exploits by you, Cuthwulf. Ceawlin was remarkably tolerant of the last one, but his patience will not last forever.”