Dagmar’s mother had never received a ring from Guthrum; none of his wives had. A ring as a token had special significance, one they had never been granted.
She smiled at him as she answered. “It is not small at all,” she returned, and then looking at it there above her knuckle, was able to laugh, and make him laugh as well, when she said, “You are perhaps right, it is a bit small.”
If there was one slight lack in the delight Hrald took in his wife, it was that she had not told him she loved him. He had said it to her that day in the treasure room, using his regard for her as his reason for holding himself back. She had not answered him then with a return of those words, and instead seemed struck he had uttered them. And he had not said them again, though he felt it with all his being. Dagmar’s actions in both public and private assured him in all things, and he felt sure she would soon declare her love for him in words as well as deeds. He must not press her. There was about her some slight mystery which served to enhance her attraction, an unknowable quality which he felt he should respect though he did not understand. But then, all women were perhaps the same in possessing this; it was in their nature. He sometimes gave thought to how confounding Ceric found Ashild.
Once when he awakened at night he sensed that she lay awake as well, and was looking at him. They lay side by side, and his eyes were shrouded by his lashes, but he could discern the expression on her face, almost a kind of puzzlement that she should be lying next this man.
He closed his own eyes, pondering this, and fell back into sleep. In the morning when he felt her stir he took her in his arms, began kissing and stroking her, and felt glad in her ready surrender to the act of love.
Two months had passed since Hrald and Dagmar had stood on Oundle’s step and wed each other. Trees which had been in full leaf then now held bare branches, reaching up to grey and chilly skies. The shortening of the days and the keenness of the wind heralded Winter soon to come.
One afternoon as the early dusk was falling, three breathless men on winded horses galloped through the gates, whistling alarm as they came. They were three sent to be watch- men along the southern border of one of the roads leading to Four Stones, and their detail was the relief of three who had spent a week there by one of the tall rock cairns marking the keep’s property. When they arrived they found the three men dead, their horses and weapons gone, their modest camp plundered. Little remained of their campsite, set back from the road in a thicket of trees. Men on foot had done this, they reported; the number of booted tracks suggested at least two score, and the decay of the bodies told that the hapless dead had lain there for three or more days.
Those gathered to hear this baleful tale included many of Hrald’s picked men, and Ashild and Dagmar too. Ashild, alone with Dagmar and her Aunt Eanflad up in the weaving room, had heard the whistled warning and read it correctly. She uttered one word, “Trouble.” Then she rose from where she sat at the table, pushing herself up. When she stood long at her weaving her back ached, and she must sit at some other work. Dagmar looked at her, set aside the spindle she held, and followed her down. Ashild felt ungainly on the narrow stairs, awkward and tentative with the weight she had gained. These were steps she was used to fly down. Even her gait was off, and though thankfully the morning retching was behind her, her sense of growing impairment and limitation made her more restless than usual.
The two young women stood there at the outer circle of the men surrounding the returned riders and heard all their report. Hrald’s hand had risen to his hair, and he pushed it back from his brow as the men told him the names of the three dead.
“I will ride in the morning,” he said. The sky was rapidly darkening; no start could be made tonight.
Jari spoke. “Nej. There is nothing to gain.” His look to Hrald said more, told the young Jarl he must stay here and defend his keep.
Hrald paused a moment, then looked to Kjeld. Someone must go, discern what he could of the attackers, and recover the bodies. He did not like risking so trusted an arm, but that same trust forced him to say the next. “Kjeld. You will lead five men, and take pack horses to carry them back. Be ready to ride at dawn.”
Jari spoke again. “Hrald. It has been three, four days.” His grimace said the rest. Having lain for days, even in the chill of approaching Winter, the corpses would be putrefying. No horse could be asked to bear that. They must either bury them there or bring the bodies back in a waggon. They could not lay a pyre and fire them where they lay; these were Christian men.
“Bury them where they fell,” Hrald said at last. The ground was not frozen; it would be a labour, but far less danger to the men than a slow ride back with a waggon in their midst.
“You said two score of men,” Hrald asked of those returned. They all three nodded their agreement.
Hrald looked through the still open gates at dusk settling on the village outside the walls. An army was afoot and might even now be overpowering more of his watch-men.
“I will bring the folk in,” he said, almost to himself. Ordering the village folk, beasts and all into the yard, would cause fear, perhaps panic. But no panic would be so great as the village overrun by a hungry enemy.
“I will bring the folk in,” he said again, louder and with decision. Jari nodded.
Hrald turned to look at the stable door, where he had seen Mul standing, little Bork at his side. Mul had already vanished into the dark interior, gone to fetch the traps of Hrald’s bay, standing in the paddock.
Ashild turned too, facing the kitchen yard. “My mother is in her bower; go and tell her,” she instructed Dagmar. “I will go to the kitchen yard and warn them.”
The night which unfurled was a long one. It began with Hrald riding through the village, telling all they must quit their crofts, bring their beasts and what foodstuffs they had readily at hand, and take shelter behind the palisade walls. Women gasped, children cried, and all who were of an age to bear one took up hoe or scythe as makeshift weapon. The driving of so many cows and pigs into the yard, the capture and carrying of geese and hens was labour enough. The harassed animals filled the cold air with lowing, grunting, and crowing. The sheep, afield in pastures near and far, could not be herded in the dark; that must wait for dawn.
Within the yard there was no way to house so many, and it was too cold for them to sleep beneath the vault of the starry heavens. The second hall must shelter them all, and those younger warriors drew straws to find which half of them would be sleeping on pallets in the great hall, and which would need seek shelter in barn, stables, and outbuildings.
The folk had brought what food they could, but needed means to cook. Their animals need be penned, and fodder found. They themselves must be accommodated within the second hall, and lacking alcoves for all, the young would bunk on the planked floor on anything which could serve as pallet. Ælfwyn and Burginde seemed everywhere at once, ordering kitchen men to dig fire-pits for cooking, entrusting older children to usher the younger to the quieter recesses of the keep where they would not be underfoot, directing fearful crofters to the second hall, whose vastness daunted them. Bork popped up by Ælfwyn’s side, and his look of entreaty to be of service was such that she must place him in charge of carrying messages between her and her son, busy with the hasty knocking up of additional animal pens. When at last the evening meal was served in the hall it would be hours past its normal time.
Dagmar and Ashild worked together within the second hall. It was a place Ashild had rarely entered, and Dagmar, never, for it was the preserve of unwed warriors. Now, its rightful inhabitants shooed off, their belongings under their arms, they worked with serving men and women to ready the space for the scores of families who would sleep there.
“Has this before happened,” Dagmar asked Ashild in a hushed voice. They were taking bronze cressets from a tray and filling them with oil. The colour had fled from Dagmar’s full lips, and it was not only the dimness of the hall which made large her eyes.
“Never,” Ashild mur
mured, keeping her eyes upon the cresset in her hand. “Not in my memory.” She paused, remembering what she had been told. “Though by the time my mother came, both hall and village had been almost destroyed. This hall,” she went on, “was built by Hrald’s father on the foundations of a burnt building.”
She did not add that it was during the attack by her father that the fires had raged. No one need hear that now, and she would not remind herself of the fact.
This news, of the rarity of such threats, seemed to add to Dagmar’s discomfort rather than allay it.
Ashild too knew fear, but said what she could. She gestured that Dagmar lift the cresset she held nearer the spout of the oil jug she tipped, as it was hard in the low light to see if it were full.
“It is good we are too busy to be frightened,” Ashild told her, with as much of a smile as she could muster.
That night Dagmar went to the treasure room long before Hrald did. She had left him at the high table, Jari and Kjeld and his other chief men clustered about him, as they discussed the slaying of the three watch-men. All three men would never be together at one time in their camp, suggesting that one on active watch had been captured and forced to lead his captors to the others, where they were surrounded and killed. How it had truly occurred, and who had done it seemed an endless circle of conjecture, one ending in the death of three men.
Behind the thick walls of the treasure room Dagmar could just discern the muffled voices around that table, low but still urgent. She drew off her clothing, washed, and climbed into bed, pulling the wolfskin spread up high under her neck. There were two brass braziers burning on the floor in the room, but she shivered under the coolness of the linen sheet, and hugged herself for both warmth and comfort. She wished Hrald would come in, though she knew she must work to not show him her fear.
She was safer here behind these stout oak walls than anyplace in the fortress; this was its strong room. She gave thought to Hrald’s mother in her bower house, a place undefended save that it lay behind the palisade, and thought too of Ashild, carrying a babe and far from its father. They were fearful too, but she felt their fear of a different quality to her own. This was the hall and folk they loved, and for Ashild, all she had ever known. Their connection to the place was deeply rooted, as it was for Hrald, not only born here but now ruling the domain. Dagmar’s attachment was new, both to man and the place. She felt slight kinship to her older brother Agmund, save that fact of their common father, and did not like his choice to break the intent of their father’s Peace and side with new invaders. Yet Agmund had been given Headleage, the most well protected of Guthrum’s keeps. Perhaps no fortress in the length and breadth of the land could match it for strength, and it was now one of her brother’s halls. He might be there now. If she were back at Headleage she could flee to it for shelter.
Was it Agmund’s men who had killed these three of Hrald’s? Was her brother’s hand in the battle ground strewn with dead that Hrald had ridden to inspect? Was Agmund truly joined with the invader Haesten and his vast army, or had they parted ways, and now her brother sought to take over all Anglia – perhaps all Angle-land – himself?
As these thoughts were tumbling in her brain she returned to something Jari had said before she left. The women had risen from the table, each to go to her final tasks of the night. The men stood as well, scraping their benches across the stone floor to crowd about Hrald’s chair. Jari at this point had been speaking in a bantering tone about coming war, after the sustained pleasures of peace. The man he addressed was another of the older warriors.
“Men who have been too long from war lose their belly for it,” Jari claimed.
The other man tapped the back of his hand to Jari’s midsection. “The raven might still emerge to feed,” he grinned.
It was all said as a jest; Dagmar knew that was how men often spoke of war. They need laugh at it to mask their own fear. But it unsettled her. If the chief amongst Hrald’s body-guard spoke thus, she could not but question their fitness in the conflict now sure to come.
As she lay there, still cold and unable to warm herself, Hrald’s key turned in the lock. She had left the cresset burning and she sat up in bed, clutching the wolf spread to her for warmth.
“I – I am so glad you are here,” she began. She felt close to tears, and his face made clear he saw it.
Hrald pulled off his belts and clothing and was next her in bed in a few moments. She placed her hand on his shoulder and turned her face toward him, pressing herself against the firmness of his skin. She wanted to bury her head under his strong right arm and shut out the noise of the day, and the confusion of her thoughts. She let herself inhale the scent of his body, that warm mix of leather, horses, and the tang of sweat. His hands and arms wrapped her back and rested on her skin, holding her close.
As he held her, she felt her breathing slow, and within her a welcome calm begin to spread. The broadness of his chest felt a refuge, and the strength of his lean body gave comfort. The memory of another young man’s chest and arms arose, a man with golden hair. She bit her lip to drive it away. She was Hrald’s wife and was lucky to be so. She had found delight in the embrace of her lover; now she sought succour in the arms of her young husband.
She did not like to think of the difference in their ages, and indeed neither had ever brought it up. But her cousin had told her Hrald was nearly two years from twenty, and she was close to two years past it. Hrald’s face, even with its strong brow, dark eyebrows, and shadow of a beard upon his shaved chin, was still boyish. The body she pressed herself against was one of a man. Young as he was it had been shaped by years of training. Yet there was a sweetness about him, a manly sweetness, one easily glimpsed when he looked at her from downcast eyes fringed by his dark lashes. She had seen him flush, as well, the pale blush of colour rising from chin to cheek for a moment, when he touched her in certain ways, or took special delight in looking upon her naked body.
She had made the right choice, she now told herself. This was followed by the rueful truth that her only choice had been to accept him. She had no other offers.
Her hand on his shoulder moved. It touched, and then cupped, the jagged scar there at the top of his upper arm. He was as yet unmarked by battle, save that scar wrapping the top of his right arm. She had not before asked of it, and thought to do so now.
She lifted her head away from his chest, and he stroked her hair.
“This scar,” she whispered, pressing her hand more firmly against it.
His hand stilled as he prepared to answer. He would not lie to her. But he could not share the full truth, that he had stabbed himself after unwittingly cutting his best friend. His act seemed too rash, one heedless to the point of utter recklessness. Only Ceric and his sister knew the whole story of the double wounding. All the others had believed them when they said the leathern sheaths covering their blades had failed.
“My friend Ceric and I. We were sparring…”
It was all he said, all he need say. Men injured themselves and others in training all the time.
She murmured in consolation, nodding her head, and then lowered it once more against his chest.
He had told no one about the act that had followed, how he had gashed himself by his own knife thrust, how he had told Ceric to stand still while they pressed their streaming upper arms together to become brothers in blood. He had not told Ashild that part, even when she guessed the cause of his wound.
I will tell her that, he thought now. I want Ashild to know this about Ceric and me. If I die soon it might help her go to Kilton…
He was so quiet that it made Dagmar lift her head again. “Do not think on it,” she whispered.
He made a sound of assent, and kissed the top of her head. “You are right,” he answered. “Not when there is so much more to think of.”
“You have much to protect,” she said next, of the many obligations he must meet.
Hrald wordlessly nodded his head. A deep exhalation of his bre
ath followed. His mind had been so full with the death of his watch-men and the rounding up of the village folk that other pressing concerns had slipped. He lay staring up into the gloom of the roof rafters and named one.
“Oundle,” he said. In its way that holy foundation was a greater target than Four Stones, for Oundle held silver and gold. The women it also housed made it a double target. Four Stones held treasure as well, in its weaponry and wealth of horses, and greater treasure in the men beneath its roof, could they be turned to fight for Haesten or Agmund. But the foundation at Oundle and its sacred contents and calling must be preserved at all cost.
Dagmar repeated it, so softly that it sounded an echo to his naming that place.
Her word seemed to rouse him, for he kissed her brow. Of all he was entrusted to protect, his wife, so beautiful and kind, was precious beyond ranking.
“No hand will touch you,” he promised.
On the morrow Kjeld and five men set out. They took but two horses for pack, bearing two small tents and four shovels, making for ungainly hide-covered baggage. This was tied to the beasts’ saddles, for if one of their own went lame they would abandon this kit in their need to return back to Four Stones at speed. They should be gone three days if all went well, but carried food for twice that. If travelling on the road became impossible they must do so more slowly overland.
Hrald’s next act was to send two riders to Asberg at Turcesig, warning him of the deadly incursion. At the same time he sent a score of mounted men to scour the immediate perimeter of the hall precincts, lest any warrior troop be harbouring in the forest beyond the far pasture lands. By midday they returned from their survey with no report of telltale tracks or encampment. This was welcome news, as provisional as it might be. The hall yards could not long support the many folk and animals as were now crowded in, and the folk themselves were eager to return to their crofts, flocks, and vegetable plots. He made decision to open the gates and let them file back to their thatched and waiting roofs. For added caution he doubled the nearest perimeter guard, halving the distance between each set of three men. Every such protection he extended lessened the number of men behind his own palisade, but it could not be helped. Hrald knew he might be stretched far thinner than this before long.
For Me Fate Wove This Page 15
