Born of the Sun (44 page)

The night of their return to Winchester, Ceawlin held a huge victory feast in the great hall, which was crammed beyond capacity with the eorls who had returned with the army and their thanes, as well as the hall thanes belonging to Ceawlin himself. Alric outdid himself with his commemorative song. He could have heard the details of the battles only a few hours before, yet he had it all down in glorious music; Sigurd’s own rescue march came in for great play.

“How did he manage it so quickly?” Sigurd asked Ceawlin across Niniane’s empty seat.

Ceawlin grinned at him. “I sent someone back to Winchester right after the battle to regale Alric with the tale. I wanted him to be ready.”

Sigurd started to laugh. “Gods. Do you never forget anything?”

“Rarely,” Ceawlin answered, and turned to join in the chorus that was calling for a repeat of the song.

“Oh, Sigurd, that was wonderful.” Edith’s blue eyes were shining as she regarded her hero-husband. “You saved the king’s war band. I am so proud of you.”

The smile he gave her was faintly crooked. “Are you, Edith?”

“Oh, yes.”

Her thin, fragile hand was lying on the table and he patted it gently. “I’m glad,” he answered.

The singing continued and the wine passed around and around the hall. Then Alric retired to enjoy the wine cup himself and the roar of male voices and male laughter rose to the rafters. Bertred and Wuffa and Gereint were sitting on the other side of Edith, and Sigurd could hear them reminiscing about their days of chasing around Wessex after Edric. They were all eorls, all save Gereint, who had refused to accept the Saxon title in deference to his father, and all ruled over the large numbers of slaves and ceorls and thanes that were attached to their manors; yet tonight they sounded like boys again as they relived their coming-of-age exploits with Ceawlin.

“I think it is time for me to retire,” Edith said in Sigurd’s ear.

He laughed. “Yes. It is getting rather noisy.” Around the hall the other women and girls were standing, making ready to depart, to leave the hall to their wine-guzzling men.

“Will you be coming soon, my love?”

Her blue eyes were so hopeful. Sigurd felt the familiar stab of guilt and said heartily, “Of course. Do not go to sleep just yet.”

She smiled at him, her pretty face lighting to radiance. As she walked away Sigurd chanced to turn his head, and Ceawlin caught his eye.

“Lucky man,” Ceawlin said. “The rest of us have wives at too great a distance this night.”

“There are willing women enough in Venta!” Wuffa called, overhearing Ceawlin’s comment, and the men at the first table roared with approval.

“Not for the king,” Sigurd heard himself saying.

There was a faint flicker of surprise in Ceawlin’s eyes. Then Bertred said, “Ah, well, Niniane is worth the waiting for.” He grinned, leaned around Sigurd, and said to Ceawlin, “Do you remember how she made us dig in the fields like slaves all that summer at Bryn Atha?”

“Do I not,” Ceawlin said with feeling.

“Well, I will tell you this,” said Wuffa boisterously. “Because of that summer, I can tell when my own coerls are slacking off. I know when a field is due to be harvested!”

“Do you remember …” Gereint said, and the old comrades were off on another round of reminiscences of bygone days. After half an hour, Sigurd left to go to his wife.

The sun was shining the day the queen returned to Winchester. Sigurd was with his father at the armory when he heard the shouts.

“Niniane is back,” Cutha said, and did not look at Sigurd.

“Yes.” Sigurd continued to watch the thanes stacking the shields and swords and bows they had taken from the field at Gild Ford. Then, after a minute, “I’d better go. Ceawlin is not here this morning. I’ll be back shortly.” Cutha watched his son’s figure all the way to the door, a frown between his high-arched brows.

There was quite a procession coming up the street and Sigurd saw immediately that Penda was riding beside Niniane. He stood in front of the great hall and watched the horses slowly advancing toward him.

Suddenly a small figure ran into the street crying “Mama!” Sigurd recognized Ceowulf’s bright blond head and ran forward himself as the small boy crossed into the path of the oncoming horses. Then Cerdic and Crida appeared, following Ceowulf but walking more slowly. Cerdic had his two-year-old brother on his shoulders in the same way that Ceawlin had always carried his boys, and as Niniane’s horse came to a halt her sons surrounded it. Sigurd slowed his own steps and moved to join Penda.

“I decided to escort the queen myself,” Penda said as he jumped to the ground from his horse’s back. He gave Sigurd a regretful smile. “I wanted to hear the whole tale firsthand. I gather you beat Aethelbert pretty decisively.”

“We annihilated him,” Sigurd said.

“And I missed it.” The regret was even more noticeable.

Sigurd smiled. “You more than did your part, Penda.” But his eyes were no longer on his brother-by-marriage; they were on Niniane as she was preparing to alight from her horse. “Let me,” he said quickly and moved forward to lift her from the saddle.

Her waist was reed slim under his hands and she smiled up at him once she was on her feet. “Thank you, Sigurd.”

“Mama! Mama!” Her youngest was holding out his arms to her and she reached to take him from Cerdic, saying, “You should not carry him like this, Cerdic. You could drop him. He is no lightweight anymore.”

“I can carry him, Mother,” Cerdic said impatiently. “He likes it.” Then, in a burst of wounded feeling, “Father made us stay here in Winchester the whole time! We missed all the fun, Mother!”

Niniane laughed. “You sound remarkably like someone else I know,” she said, and looked mischievously at Penda.

The eorl smiled back reluctantly. “Women never understand these things,” he said.

“Well, that is a true word,” she replied. Then, to Crida, “Where is your father?”

“He was judging a dispute in Venta this morning, Mother,” Crida answered. “We did not know that you were so close to Winchester.”

Niniane reached out to ruffle his shining fair hair and he ducked his head away from her hand, self-conscious of his mother’s caress in front of the men. “Come along inside,” she said to her sons, “and tell me what you have been doing while I was away.” She bent to put little Sigurd on his feet, then took up his hand and began to walk toward the king’s hall.

“Ceowulf,” Sigurd said softly as the children turned to follow their mother. Ceawlin’s third son turned to look at him inquiringly. “Do not run out in front of horses like that. You could frighten them. You would not want your mother to be thrown, would you?”

“My mother has never fallen from a horse,” Ceowulf replied scornfully.

“Sigurd is right,” said Penda. “You could get yourself trampled, running in front of horses like that, Prince.”

“All right,” said Ceowulf, anxious to be off and clearly not relishing this rebuke from his father’s eorls. Without waiting to give them a chance to say more, he turned and ran after his brothers.

Penda shouted to the men who had ridden in with him to take the horses to the stables, then turned back to Sigurd. “Come into my hall with me. I want to hear all about the battle,” he said, and Sigurd obligingly fell into step with him as they crossed the courtyard.

Ceawlin did not arrive back in Winchester until late in the afternoon. Niniane was in the women’s hall with Nola. When Ceawlin had first become king, Niniane had seen to it that the bower girls were all offered decent marriages, either to thanes or to tradesmen from Venta. Nola had not married, however, had chosen to remain in Winchester as Niniane’s chief handmaid, and she had long been in charge of the women’s hall and the bower. Niniane was consulting with her this afternoon about a possible marriage for Brynhild, one of the bower maidens, when Brynhild herself came into the hall with two other girls and said, “My lady, the king has just ridden in.”

Niniane’s face lighted to beauty. “I’ll speak with you about this again tomorrow, Nola,” she said, smiled briefly at the three young faces she saw staring at her, and walked to the door of the hall. The three thanes’ daughters who were under Nola’s charge immediately went out to the porch, from which point they would have a good view of the courtyard.

The breeze was lifting Ceawlin’s hair from his shoulders, and the color of his eyes was visible all the way to the porch of the women’s hall. He had seen his wife, and as the girls watched, he swung down from his horse, threw his reins to a groom, and enveloped her in a ruthless embrace.

Merta, the youngest and most impressionable of the girls, sighed longingly. “She is so lucky,” she said, wide eyes on Niniane, who was now laughing up into her husband’s face.

“It isn’t fair,” the second girl answered. “No matter how fine a husband we may get, still there will never be another man like the king.”

“How does she do it?” Brynhild, the eldest, repeated the most-oft-asked question in all the women’s hall. “How does she bind him to her? A man like that … how does she do it?”

“It is very simple, really.” The girls had not heard Nola come out onto the porch and they all jumped guiltily at the sound of her voice. “He loves her,” said Nola. “That is all it is.”

“But why, Nola?” asked Brynhild suddenly. “I like Niniane, I think she is very pretty, and for certain she has been a good wife to him, a good queen. Yet the same could be said for many wives, and their husbands do not honor them as the king does Niniane.”

Nola looked at the three young faces that were regarding her so wistfully. It was true that Ceawlin had set a standard for husbands that most men would find it hard to follow. Nola smiled a little wryly. “That I cannot tell you.” Her own eyes followed the retreating figures of the king and queen. “He was not always of so faithful a nature,” she said. “I remember well the days of the old king, when the women in the bower would kill to get a call to go to Ceawlin’s bed. But all that has changed since he took Niniane to wive.”

Merta’s eyes were enormous. “Nola, did you ever … ?”

“Enough of this talk,” Nola snapped, jerking her eyes back to the girls. “It is lucky for you that things have changed, that you have a Christian queen who thinks it important that the honor of the girls under her care be safeguarded. Now you have the chance of making good marriages, bearing children who will carry on the honor of their fathers’ names and lands. It is a good thing for all of us women that Niniane is queen in Winchester.”

“Yes, Nola,” the girls chorused in hasty agreement.

“I thought I had sent you to the dye house.”

“Yes, Nola. We are going.” And the girls fled from the hall and from the suddenly fiery look in Nola’s brown eyes.

Sigurd pushed the platter away from him and drank a long draft from his wine cup.

“What is the matter, Sigurd?” It was Niniane’s husky voice and he forced himself to look at her and to smile.

“Nothing,” he answered with effort. “I am just tired, that is all.”

Her slate-blue eyes searched his face. “You do look tired. Are you certain you are not ill?”

“Quite certain, Niniane. Don’t fuss over me. I am perfectly fine.”

Her eyes flickered a little at the unaccustomed irritation she heard in his voice. He could see that he had not convinced her, but she turned away as he had requested and gave her attention once more to Edith, who was sitting on her other side.

Sigurd himself did not understand what was the matter with him, why he was suddenly finding it so impossible to sit here with Ceawlin and Niniane in the familiar intimacy of the king’s hall. Ceawlin had invited Penda to sup with him, and Sigurd and Edith as well; it was not an unusual invitation. There was no reason for Sigurd to suddenly feel that he could do it no longer—sit with her and talk with her and watch her and pretend that he did not care.

She and Edith were talking of their children. He pretended to listen to Ceawlin but in reality he heard only the soft voices of the women as they shared their favorite remedies of what to do for a child who is cutting a tooth. Edith’s voice was faintly stiff. She had never been comfortable with Niniane. Sigurd sometimes feared that she suspected that his own feelings for the queen were deeper than they should be. It was certain that Niniane went out of her way to be kind to Edith; there was no other reason for his wife to be always so mistrustful of Niniane’s obvious goodwill.

Supper was finally over and he could decently say it was time to leave. The king made no effort to keep his guests. After all, Sigurd thought, Ceawlin had not seen his wife in weeks. He would be anxious to get her to himself.

Would you not feel the same if you were in my place?
Ceawlin had asked him that once, he remembered.

Name of the gods, why did it hurt so much? And it was not getting better. It was getting worse.

He went to bed in his own hall, the hall that had once belonged to Cynric’s eorl Onela and that Ceawlin had bestowed upon Sigurd as soon as he became king, and lay awake staring into the darkness. Sigurd held to the traditional Saxon practice and did not share a room with his wife; Edith slept in the hall’s second room with their children. It mattered not if he were restless. He would not disturb her.

His thoughts went round and round. For all these long years he had assumed he had made peace with this tormented love of his. It was not his fault, he had told himself, that he loved his friend’s wife. He had loved her before Ceawlin even thought of her or had planned to make her his. If fate had not taken a hand, Niniane would have been lying beside him tonight and not beside Ceawlin.

So he had always thought. Then at Wyckholm she had said, “I have learned to be a lion, not a deer,” and he had known that it was the lion that he loved. And for some reason, it was as if that knowledge had opened an old wound, a wound that bled and bled and would not stop.

And Ceawlin. The gods knew, he loved Ceawlin more than he did his own brother. Yet now he could scarce look upon his friend without seeing only the possessor of Niniane. He had even fantasized that if Ceawlin should be killed in the battle against Aethelbert, then would Niniane be a widow …