Oathbreaker (The King's Hounds series)

by Martin Jensen

  “As long as you’re also right about Simon not being the murderer, you’re probably right about that.” Winston gave me an almost sarcastic look. “Well, you’ve told me what didn’t happen. What have you decided did happen?”

  “It was his right hand,” I said, and paused. Maybe it was foolish of me to pretend I’d thought through the case.

  “Which you would hold out to someone in friendship,” Alfilda suggested.

  She was on to something.

  “Which you would use to steal from someone,” Winston pointed out. He was also right.

  “Which holds your sword,” I said, wanting to get in on the action.

  “Which caresses a woman.”

  “Which puts silver into the hand of a shopkeeper.”

  “Which you raise when you take an oath.”

  “Which you hold to your heart in greeting.”

  “Which shakes the spear at your enemy.”

  “Which brings the food to your mouth.”

  “Which pulls the arrow and the bowstring back to your ear.”

  “Which slaps the slave.”

  We all looked at each other. We knew we could keep going with this list, but also that this wasn’t getting us anywhere. We had no idea why the hand had been chopped off, just that it was a message of some kind.

  Winston released Alfilda’s hand and leaned over the table.

  “So, Alwyn let the cat out of the bag and told you what they were doing here last summer,” he said.

  “Bringing Eadwin home to his father,” I replied.

  “What do you know about this Eadwin, son of Leofwine?” Winston asked.

  “Not much,” I said, thinking it over. “He’s a thane with some land out west, I believe, so actually I don’t understand what he was doing here.”

  “He wanted to be close to his father, the jarl,” Alfilda suggested, leaning forward like Winston.

  “And his brother, who’d just been promoted,” I pointed out. After all, I had a brain, too.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Winston said, and then cleared his throat. “Didn’t you say that Alwyn’s words were, ‘Eadwin is not satisfied by much’?”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking back on it.

  “Interesting wording,” Winston mused. “Not satisfied by much, not, not satisfied with his brother’s promotion?”

  I had found that interesting, too.

  “Alwyn tipped you off,” Winston concluded, pausing to bite his lip for a moment. “Leofwine’s decision to transfer command of the fyrd to Leofric was not what caused Eadwin to hide here in Brixworth.”

  “I suppose not,” I said. “Maybe it was his father making peace with Cnut?”

  “Is this Eadwin a hothead?” Winston asked.

  “Not from what I’ve heard.”

  “Then he would realize that the only way forward for his family goes through Cnut,” Winston said.

  “But,” I added quickly, before I lost the thought. “That way forward goes through a swamp of Danish jarls.”

  “Leofwine’s jarldom really is quite surrounded by Danes and Vikings,” Winston said, nodding.

  “Leofwine isn’t the one who’s scheming against Cnut,” I said. I could see it now.

  “No, it’s Eadwin. That’s why Ælfgar was sent to bring him back to his father—so Leofwine could return him to the proper path.”

  Winston’s and my eyes met, but it was Alfilda who asked the uncomfortable question. “If you’re right,” she said, “how will you two prove it?”

  “We may not be able to,” Winston replied. “Maybe Ælfgar will talk if we show him we’ve figured it out. Or maybe we don’t need to prove it. If we’re right, Eadwin has been helped to see the wisdom of his father’s point of view—and his brother’s.”

  “Which means that if we don’t find any indications of trouble brewing in Mercia, we can report to Cnut that the jarl is keeping his word,” I said, leaning back in satisfaction.

  All three of us were quiet. The proprietor appeared in the doorway looking hopeful, but I shook my head.

  “So you want to go straight to Ælfgar?” I asked.

  Winston hesitated. “No,” he decided. “We’ll start with Turold. It will be easier to get him talking than Ælfgar. Turold has no reason to be on his guard against us when it comes to questions about Jarl Leofwine and his family.”

  “Ælfgar knows we’re Cnut’s men,” I said with a nod.

  “Well, he’s certainly guessed that we’re not here just to draw pictures for Edmund and his fellow monks,” Winston said, standing up. But my upheld hand made him sit down again. “Yes?” he said.

  “How much blue clothing do you own?” I asked, directing my question to Alfilda.

  Winston muttered something, surprised by my question. Alfilda’s eyes widened.

  “Clothing?” she asked, puzzled. “Blue? What?”

  I nodded.

  “A dress, maybe? A skirt or a top?” I asked.

  She shook her head. Winston watched me warily.

  “I don’t follow your train of thought,” Winston said.

  I smiled at him and then quickly smiled at Alfilda as well.

  “No, I suppose not. Because you know as well as I do that even if Alfilda could afford such expensive clothing, it would hardly be worth her while to show off her wealth that way.”

  “I had a blue hairband once,” Alfilda said with an apologetic look at Winston. “It was my betrothal gift from my husband.”

  Whom she never talked about—at least not when I was around. The only thing I knew about him was that he’d left her the inn and tavern in Oxford when he’d died several years earlier.

  “Who demonstrated his esteem for you,” I said. One glance at Winston’s icy face had caused me to avoid using the word love. “By giving you something made of the most expensive color there is.” I didn’t bother to point out that maybe the point of that had been lost since he’d only given her a hairband.

  She nodded, still not understanding where I was going. “And what’s your point?” she asked, allowing Winston to take her hand again.

  “There’s a farm wench here in the village who wears a blue kerchief, quite brazenly,” I said, doing my best to sound scandalized. I leaned back, satisfied with the look on their faces as they slowly grasped what I was saying.

  “A farm wench,” Winston said, rubbing his chin.

  “The daughter of Ribald, whose family you’re staying with, Alfilda,” I added.

  They looked at each other.

  “Well, he’s not exactly the poorest man in the village,” Alfilda said pensively.

  “His wife was quite overt that he’s the best farmer in the village,” I pointed out.

  “But he’s hardly a man who would buy his daughter expensive clothes,” Winston said, staring at me. “What are you getting at?”

  “Someone gave her that kerchief,” I said. They both nodded, so I continued: “Someone with some power. Someone who knows how to reward people with expensive gifts.”

  “A nobleman,” Winston declared.

  “Exactly. And what do noblemen usually reward pretty farm girls for?” I asked, avoiding looking directly at Alfilda, which she acknowledged with a gently mocking snort.

  “For spreading her legs,” she said indulgently.

  “Exactly.” I flashed her a winning smile. “And as a rule, the gift is given once the nobleman has gotten what he wanted, when he wants to move on.”

  “You mean—” Winston sat up straight now.

  “That a nobleman bedded Ebba and thanked her with a gift. I wonder if it was one of the two noblemen we know have stayed here in the village?”

  “You might be on to something,” Winston said, cocking his head and studying me. “And I suppose you thought you might go ask the girl who gave it to her?”

  “Yup, while you’re with Abbot Turold,” I said with a nod.

  “Good,” Winston said, rising. “No doubt you’ll use the same means of persuasion employed by thi
s unknown nobleman before you.”

  I hid my chuckle. He knew me well. I do indeed have a way with the ladies. But that wasn’t the only reason I smiled to myself. I relished the thought of Edmund bumping into Alfilda on her first visit to the monastery.

  The good prior’s fear at finding himself face-to-face with a comely woman would be surpassed only by his subprior’s horror.

  Chapter 27

  Finding Ebba turned out not to be so easy. First I went to the thicket where Elvina and I had run into each other the day before, assuming the sheep would probably follow the same pattern today that they had yesterday. But there was no sign of the girl or the flock entrusted to her care.

  Swallows twittered above me, a curlew whistled sadly over the banks to the west, and somewhere in the village a dog barked, but I didn’t hear the tinkling of the bell around the bellwether’s neck or the calls of the shepherdess.

  Off to my right, a few hundred paces up the Lady Path, stood a wide oak tree, its lowermost branches at about shoulder height. I wrapped my arm around one and pulled myself up, with difficulty, swinging my leg up over it and struggling until I was standing on top of it. From there, it wasn’t hard to climb high enough that I had a clear view of the foothills between the village bank and the hills that rose in the west.

  No woolly creatures and no blonde wenches to see.

  I scanned the horizon. The church and the monastery area were behind me. A few men in cowls moved around on the grass, but I saw no sign of Winston or his lady friend, so they were probably in the abbot’s chambers.

  Outside the palisade I had a good view of the center of the village, including the hospital. Narrow lanes extended out from the village green between the various farms. Smoke rose from the smoke holes in most of the roofs and from the smithy. Two barelegged boys drove a herd of pigs down a clayey street with a great deal of hullabaloo. Even from my lofty perch, the boys appeared to be crawling with lice.

  My eye stopped at a fold on the other side of the village, where I spotted gray sheep jostling each other behind a wattle fence. Either Ebba had chosen to graze her flock for just a little while today, or she’d been asked to do some other job.

  I climbed back down to the lowermost branch, then slid back to the ground, where I slipped on a decaying mushroom. I heard an unmistakable giggle as I landed flat on my back.

  “Are you shirking your work again already?” I asked. I rolled over and got up on all fours, and from there, back to standing.

  “Aren’t you too old to be climbing trees?” Elvina asked, popping her head out from behind the tree trunk.

  “Well, maybe to be climbing back down from them.” I smiled at her. “What work are you avoiding today?”

  She stuck her tongue out at me in response.

  “I’m not avoiding anything. Can’t you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The swarm,” she said, her tan hand pointing up the path. I looked where she was pointing and saw the brown mass before its buzzing reached my ears. “It’s from my father’s best hive, so I’m supposed to follow it, because he doesn’t want to lose his hardest-working bees yet.”

  “But autumn is upon us,” I pointed out.

  “My father is a good beeman,” she explained nonjudgmentally, “who makes sure his bees stay in the hive. This is the first swarm of the year, and as I’m sure you know, the hardest-working bees are the ones who follow the queen.”

  I had no knowledge about such things, so I just nodded.

  “So you’re going to bring the bees back?” I asked. I decided not to mention that her father obviously wasn’t good enough to actually keep the bees from running off in the first place.

  “Of course not,” she said with another long-suffering glance. “My father will take care of that. I just have to tell him where the swarm is.”

  So I had some company as I walked back. Elvina skipped along happily at my side, chattering away incessantly, and I let her talk while I waited for the right time for my question. My moment arrived when she swallowed a fly and had to stop talking in order to cough.

  “That’s what happens when your mouth runs on like a water mill,” I teased as I thumped her on the back.

  She was gasping for breath and had to make do with giving me an angry look.

  “And your sister?” I continued before she recovered. “Is she off chasing bees today, too?”

  “Why are you asking about her?” she said, looking irritated.

  “No particular reason.” I shrugged. “I was just wondering. I mean, you can’t be the only one in your family who has to slave away.”

  She didn’t respond, so we walked on in silence, which she didn’t break until we stood in front of her father’s farm.

  “Ebba’s tummy hurts,” she mumbled with a pouty glance. “If you know what that means.”

  I refrained from smiling. Elvina herself had probably not known the meaning of that for very long, but I was glad that whichever nobleman her sister had lain with, it hadn’t had any consequences.

  But apparently their mother did not consider their monthly bleeding an excuse for shirking their duties. Although Estrid hadn’t made Ebba take the sheep on a rigorous countryside trek, she apparently hadn’t allowed the girl to be idle all day. We eventually found Ebba sitting on the bench next to the farmhouse door, where Winston and Alfilda had sat yesterday. Her blue kerchief lay carefully folded at her side as she bent over the drop spindle, which spun beneath her hands.

  Elvina pouted at me when I headed toward her elder sister, who didn’t look up from her work. Elvina stomped off, presumably to find her father and tell him where to find the swarm of bees.

  Without any invitation, I sat down next to Ebba, who acknowledged my presence with a subtle nod of her head, but conscientiously continued her spinning.

  I leaned back against the wall, stretched out my legs, and yawned loudly. The lass stole a glance at me, so I apologized and added that I’d had one too many tankards of ale.

  “It makes me drowsy, it does, the good ale you folks brew here,” I told her.

  No response. Apparently this was going to take more than me flattering her village’s brewing abilities. I casually let one of my hands fall to the bench so that it touched the kerchief, which I absentmindedly picked up and examined more closely. It wasn’t just the color that made it an expensive gift. The fabric itself was finely woven of soft wool.

  “What a beautiful kerchief,” I said, setting it back down.

  The lass blushed a little, but her hand didn’t stop the spindle from twirling on its axis.

  “It’s not from the village here, is it?” I continued, making small talk. “Was it a gift?”

  The redness spread from her cheeks down her neck.

  “From a man of means, I would imagine. Your betrothed?” As if I didn’t know the answer. No farmhand could have afforded such an expensive betrothal gift.

  Ebba quietly shook her head.

  “Oh,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. “Maybe you don’t have a fiancé?”

  She shook her head again.

  “A beautiful girl like you?” I said, leaving my hand resting on her soft arm. “But it was a gift, right?”

  She nodded.

  “From a man of means, as I said?”

  Just then the door opened. I turned and saw Estrid eyeing me with suspicion, a look I responded to with a friendly nod.

  “Good day, Estrid. I was just admiring Ebba’s kerchief.”

  Estrid looked sharply from my face to my hand, which was resting on her daughter’s arm. I gently removed it.

  “It was a gift, I understand. From a nobleman.” I looked Estrid in the eye. “No doubt as thanks for some big favor.”

  “What are you…?” Estrid began, her eyes narrowing.

  I snuck a glance at Ebba, who was quietly spinning away.

  “I’m sure all three of us know what I’m implying.”

  I said it coolly. I wanted to show them that I, too, underst
ood how Ebba had earned this token of appreciation.

  Ebba’s response was to bend over farther, becoming even more engrossed in her spinning. Her mother, on the other hand, came over and stood in front of me with her hands on her hips.

  “No, we don’t,” Estrid said tersely.

  “A gift like that?” I said, raising my eyebrows at her. “From a nobleman? Come now, Estrid, we both know what noblemen are willing to pay pretty farm girls for.”

  No sooner had the words left my mouth than I realized my foolish mistake. It didn’t take Estrid’s angry outburst, either. I’d already realized my stupidity before she unleashed her torrent of abuse.

  Of course I’d been wrong. Of course I should have realized it before I fired off my foolhardy, bullheaded remarks about farm girls. Ribald, the best and therefore also the richest farmer in the village, would never allow his daughter to wear a token showing that she’d been a nobleman’s whore. What was I thinking?

  He might have had to put up with Ebba allowing a nobleman between her legs—rarely can a farmer do anything to stop a thane who wants to claim what he considers to be his due. But he would never allow her to publicly wear the evidence of her shame.

  I held my hand up to fend off Estrid’s rain of anger, as I thought like crazy. Could I get myself out of this pinch? I hadn’t actually said the name of whore, thereby branding the girl. I had to try.

  “Stop, my good woman,” I pleaded. “You’ve misunderstood me.”

  The “good woman” continued her angry outburst, making it clear that she wasn’t convinced.

  “I didn’t mean who you think I meant,” I said, standing up and putting on what I hoped was a sorrowful expression, “and I apologize if you took it that way. I would never have dreamt of implying that your Ebba could do something like that.”

  Estrid had stopped scolding me, but the anger was still blazing in her cheeks and her eyes.

  “I meant,” I quickly continued, soothingly, “that noblemen are always willing to pay a farmer for his silence. Well, yes, I said pretty farm girls, but I’m sure you understand that that was just because I wanted Ebba to know that I find her pretty. Believe me,” I drooped sadly. “I would never think something like that of your family.”