Daughter of the Wolf (31 page)

And, as ever, remembering the day of Cudda's death made her thoughts flash to Finn. How would she describe him? A pedlar who had come, so mysteriously, from the sea. Come, and gone, and it was as though a hand had tightened around her heart.

Should she mention him? Her very reluctance suggested not – how important could he be? He might even be here, one among the merchants and hucksters who swarmed around the hem of the great meeting. Just because she hadn't seen him...

Ingeld prodded her sharply in the arm.

The king was looking at her. His eyes were kind. ‘Radmer's daughter.'

‘My lord.'

She knelt and pressed her brow to the fine twill covering his knee, and she felt his hands press down, brief and gentle, on her head before bringing her back to standing.

Just start, and pray that the words would come.

‘My lord king.' Deep breath. Head up – and never mind the black eye. Heart pounding. ‘My lord archbishop.' Louder. ‘Men of Northumbria. Donmouth is in excellent heart. Last October we had a fine sea-harvest—'

Shouting at the edge of the crowd, and a sudden hiss and babble of talk. They weren't listening to her. They were turning away from her. What was going on? Hadn't they realized she had begun talking? Was her voice too low?

A rider on a black horse was pushing his way through the men on foot, heading for the dais, shouting for the king. He had the look of a mariner, or a foreigner, eyebrows startlingly fair against his red-brown skin.

‘My lord.'

‘What news?' Osberht had risen and come forward to join Elfrun at the front of the dais. It was a long moment before Elfrun recognized the newcomer. Gaunt as well as tanned, but the mop of butter-coloured hair was the same, and the way he sat a horse.

Dunstan, her father's sword-bearer. She staggered as though buffeted by a gale, and, recovering, looked immediately beyond him, for Radmer's familiar outline.

But Dunstan seemed to be alone.

Somehow, they were all in the king's tent. It was hot in there, a little private space created by embroidered hangings and dividers, the awning lowered, painted canvas underfoot. Everyone was making a fuss, finding a creepie-stool for her despite her protests. Why were they wasting time? Ingeld was there, and Athulf, and her grandmother, also seated. Heahred. And Tilmon. Why was Tilmon there?

‘What news?' the king asked again.

‘My lord, we delivered all your letters. We – we reached Rome.' He stopped. ‘We gave the money to the Holy Father. He received us well. We...'

‘What?'

‘Radmer wanted to get home. We took a boat from Massalia, a merchantman, that was taking the sea-road past Iberia, and Ireland. There was a storm. A terrible storm.'

Elfrun heard a voice saying, ‘Dunstan, where is my father?'

He was crouching in front of her, taking her hands but she couldn't feel the pressure of his fingers. ‘Elfrun, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.' Another unbearable pause. ‘I saw him go over the side.'

‘This is damnable.'

‘You knew the risks.'

‘I'm sorry for the girl.'

‘Soft, my lord,' Wulfhere said. ‘There's no room in this life for softness.'

‘My conscience...'

‘We have been indulging your conscience for over a fortnight.' Wulfhere tapped the table. ‘Her grandmother wants to send her to a convent.'

‘It's one solution.'

They had been walking up and down in Wulfhere's great hall, where the great stone walls and columns the Romans had left behind supported a towering superstructure of carved beam and gilded shingle. Osberht's attendant men-at-arms were standing near the door, passing the time of day with Wulfhere's retainers. Hard to tell king's men from archbishop's, all in their bright cloaks, their gleaming gilt-tricked helmets tucked under their arms. Places for the young men, rewarding the young men. So much of Osberht's power depended on them, on harnessing their desire, their ruthlessness, their glorious physical energy, to serve his needs.

How many of them were wondering what he was going to do with Donmouth?

Osberht looked at his cousin, keeping his face a careful mask. Wulfhere's authority came from God and St Peter, not from the swords and spears he could command. The lands of the archbishopric extended more widely than those of the king, and he had authority outside Northumbria of which a king could only dream. Osberht's mouth tightened briefly. How long would Wulfhere's glory last without the men with swords to do God's will for him?
I bring not peace but a sword...

He could feel power sifting away from him, like flour through a riddle.

Wulfhere picked up Abarhild's letter and looked it over again. ‘Send her to Hovingham, she says.' He tossed the letter back on to the oak slab. ‘I see no merit in it.'

‘It would free up Donmouth, and see the girl safe.'

‘Is that what you want?'

‘Radmer was my old friend.' Shield wall and council table and feast in the hall. Twenty years. More. Osberht picked up the letter and looked at the little scratch marks, like the footprints of a bird in mud. He felt an obscure and – he knew – unjustified resentment. Why had Radmer been so careless? If he had to drown, could the man not have left his affairs in better order? ‘He cherished that daughter of his. I wish he had said yes to Tilmon. I feel an obligation...' He tailed away, looking at Wulfhere's narrow face, his teeth showing in the vulpine smile that always made Osberht nervous. ‘What?'

‘Stop thinking about the girl. However did you manage to stay in power before you started coming to me for advice?'

Osberht wasn't sure if his young cousin really wanted an answer to that question. He stared at the embroidered hanging behind the high table. King Edwin, seated in council, debating the coming of the Faith to the Angles of the north. Paulinus, Wulfhere's predecessor, at his side. An old retainer, gesturing at a bird in flight. He couldn't read the words that surrounded the wool-and-silk figures, but he knew the song.

...We come from winter; and winter takes us again.

Brief as the birds are we; and our bones lie long in the grave..
.

He gave himself a shake. ‘What are you saying?'

‘I'm asking you what you really want. You've been playing tag with Tilmon all winter, as though you were children again. Illingham, and now Howden. You know he won't be happy. He's been seen with Alred. Alred may have stayed north of the Tees but he's been keeping funny company. Tilmon's been in the Danemarch. You can count to four, can't you?'

Osberht grunted. He could put two and two together better than most. How else had he kept power? He didn't need Wulfhere to tell him that. ‘I want Tilmon on my side. Should I give him Donmouth? Is that what you're hinting at?'

‘You won't get his support that road. The man's a blackmailer by nature. Give him Donmouth!' Wulfhere spat into the straw. ‘Try to buy him with land, and he'll think you weak and ask for more. You know he's a traitor. Once and always.'

Osberht scowled. ‘I have no proof. I cannot exile him again without proof. He has too many friends.'

‘He has friends because he and Alred are promising them rewards. Opportunities. You should be doing the same.'

‘Give someone else Donmouth? I've been thinking about that. There are solid men who need land.' He gestured at Abarhild's letter, then swung round to look at the promising young men of his bodyguard. Would they still look out for him if they were being offered rewards elsewhere? Or would they be watching his back in another sense, waiting for the moment to strike? They might be doing that already. ‘That's why sending her to Hovingham seems a good idea. If I give the girl with the land it would need to go to a younger man. Unmarried.'

Wulfhere smiled again. ‘We've known men put away their old wives for plums less ripe than Donmouth. But that's not what I meant. You want Tilmon and his worms to come out of the woodwork?'

Osberht nodded warily.

‘Then do nothing.'

‘
Nothing?
'

It was Wulfhere's turn to nod. ‘Leave the girl where she is.'

Osberht stared. ‘As lord of Donmouth?'

‘How do the shepherds lure the wolf pack so the huntsmen can take them down? Stake out a lamb, and wait.'

Osberht turned the idea over, testing its soundness. ‘I don't like it.'

‘No one's asking you to like it.'

And that was fair enough. God knew he had done enough things for which he had no appetite in his time. His dislike made them no less necessary. A thought struck him. ‘Will you tell Ingeld? Can you trust him?'

Wulfhere smiled. ‘Ingeld is my dear friend.' His eyes met the king's. ‘Of course not.'

The great boar came snuffling through the brushwood. It stood a yard or more high at its dark, bristly shoulder, and its tusks were a good five inches long. Widia had been stalking it all morning, but the beast had been following a meandering path and it must have circled back on itself while it had been out of sight in the burgeoning undergrowth. The wind came from the boar now, a rank, musky scent, unmistakable. It was a big old beast, it would make challenging eating, but Widia wasn't planning on eating it. He had a suspicion that this was the same animal that had gored him a year ago. He bore no grudge, but he needed to know its habits, as he did those of every stag and every dog fox, guarding the wild wealth of Donmouth against Radmer's return.

Radmer, who would not be returning.

Widia had been doing a lot of thinking in the weeks since Elfrun and Ingeld had returned from the spring meeting with the dreadful news. He knew he could trust the dog-boy with the mews as well as the kennels, and he was wondering whether he should just leave, and not return. His loyalty had been to his lord: with no lord he was a free man.

Radmer had promised land, and a wife.

Well, the wife was lost to him, married to that lumbering fool, although despite everything he still found the sight of her cut him to the bone. Elfrun might yet grant him land, but what use was that, now? No prospects, a scarred face and body and a lord lost on the whale-road. What was there to keep him here?

His face twisted further. Everyone knew that the abbot had developed a new and unexpected interest in the wellbeing of his flocks, their fleeces and especially their milk. He didn't blame Radmer for being drowned, exactly, any more than he blamed the boar for goring him. But the bitterness and anger which were becoming habitual needed a focus of some kind.

He gave himself a shake.

Such thoughts were dangerous in the forest, and it was while he had been brooding earlier that the boar had gone in a loop and come round behind him. A beginner's mistake, and possibly a fatal one. As though his ribs and cheekbone weren't reminder enough.

The boar lumbered along, its bristly head low, casting this way and that along the slope, grinding its tusks as it went. Widia noticed a slight foam at its jaws and tensed still further. Although it was early in the season it could mean breeding sows were around. Every few paces the boar stopped and rooted in the mulch. A sudden flash of red, and Widia spotted the bright-eyed robin, following in the boar's footsteps, head on first one side then the other, hoping that the animal's vigorous snouting of the soil would turn up some overlooked seeds or worms.

Widia gritted his teeth. He felt a strong kinship with the robin, dependent on unwanted scraps that the great men of this earth never even noticed they let fall. The robin had seen him and stared, brazen and unafraid. Why was this one little bird so confident, when most would flee the approach either of men or the massive, blundering boar? The beast was ambling off now, downhill, heading towards the stream, and Widia guessed it would be making for its favourite wallow. He was getting to know its perambulations of the woodland bounds intimately.

At least Athulf had stopped pestering him so relentlessly to be taken out on the trail of boar. Since the news had come of Radmer's death he had hardly seen the boy. That in itself was new, when for most of the last two years Athulf had spent what free time he had in making a nuisance of himself hanging around the mews and the stables.

Widia spent as little time as possible listening to the endless round of gossip that inevitably characterized the free hours of the folk of Donmouth. Too much petty-minded filth. Too much that he didn't want to hear. But that Athulf was running with the lads from Illingham, he couldn't help but know. He didn't care what they got up to or where they went, as long as they stayed out of his woods and drives.

The boar was out of earshot now. Widia straightened up, tension ebbing from his body. When he had been no more than ten, long before he ever took service at Donmouth, he had been handling dogs on a boar hunt when the quarry had exploded out of the bushes and made straight for the master huntsman. One quick flash of those razor-sharp tusks, and the man's thigh had fountained blood. He had died right there among the trees, bled out like any slaughtered pig. Long before his own violent encounter, Widia had had profound respect for these monsters of the dark woods, more than for stag or even for wolf. The boar were the only creatures that frightened him.

Thinking of wolves reminded him that weeks ago he had promised Luda to go round the high fences and the pens, looking for scat and spoor, and keeping an eye out for any unmended winter damage. He wouldn't have to go near the sheepwick, just walk the boundaries, hunting for any sign of coming trouble. Now was as good a time as any. Turning to make his way across the slope and out of the trees, he stopped dead as he heard a lightly whistled cadence of notes.

That was no bird.

‘Huntsman.' It was an acknowledgement, no more. Ingeld raised a hand as he came past, picking his graceful way through the briars and the fallen branches. Ingeld, who had held a requiem mass for Radmer and the other men lost at sea, but showed no other signs of grief.