Everyone streamed out across the level grassland, and down the path between the budding trees the troop broke rank and came leaping and sliding. Judith shamelessly snatched her skirts into her belt and ran like a lad, and Hild, steadying Elfwyn with an arm about her, had to check her as she tried to follow. Then she cried out, pulled free of the old woman and broke into a clumsy run. Niall, holding back from the welcome in which he had no right to share, uttered a brief oath and ran after her.
Leofric, sitting his pony like a sack of meal with his right arm in a sling, lifted a face grey with loss of blood, pain and fatigue, and kicked his mount into a weary trot. Niall caught him as he slid from the saddle, but Leofric did not even see him. He and Elfwyn were fast joined, each upholding the other as they kissed and exclaimed and protested each to the other that all was well.
Edric and Cynric were grappled fast in Judith’s hold.
Niall stepped back. All about him men and women clasped each other, laughed and wept and stammered thankful prayers. Children clung to their fathers’ legs, proud urchins brandished spears, dogs leaped and barked. Old Hild, standing aside like himself from the tumult of greeting, caught his eye and gave him an unwontedly benign nod. He laughed and seized her, staff and all, and kissed her resoundingly on both cheeks. She snorted and smacked his face, but lightly, and her grim old face broke into a thousand laughter-cracks.
“Impudent whelp, wasting kisses on one old enough to be your granddam!”
"Waste, grandmother? There is juice in the dryest apple if you do but squeeze it!” he retorted outrageously, and kissed her again.
If she were out of practice, the knack came back to her speedily. She slapped him again for the look of things, a mere token blow, and thrust him off.
Three or four women whose men had not come home wailed in mourning, and the thankful clamour began to subside. Edric, freeing himself from the three-fold knot, looked about him. The first object that filled his gaze was Niall, and his eyes stood from their sockets. He leaped on him.
“Niall!” Edric gripped his arms, Cynric thumped his shoulder, and they pelted him with questions. “Niall, what befell you? How are you alive? How came you here?” Then they stood aside, laughing with pleasure that warmed him, to let Leofric greet him.
His good arm was round his wife, who had both her arms about him, so that he had no hand to offer, but his whole bearing was a welcome. “We believed you slain and carried out on the ebb! How are you here alive?”
“More by luck than contriving,” Niall answered. During the ensuing confusion of explanations and questions he hoisted Leofric back into the saddle, perturbed by the weakness he tried to conceal but which was obvious to his experienced hands and eyes. He opened his mouth, met a warning scowl from the redhead and swallowed his words whole and unuttered. Instead he asked how the battle had gone for them.
“We lost Ceolwin,” Leofric answered briefly.
The whole village surged through the gateway and into the tiny church, dim as a barn, to render thanksgiving and commend to God the souls of their dead, rejoicing sobered by loss. It was an odd, maimed service with no priest to lead it; priests and monks were now scarce in Wessex, and those who survived were mostly under arms. He spoke of it.
“Our priest died outside Exeter last year, with our father,” Leofric told him shortly.
“And my betrothed,” added Judith, accounting for her being at least seventeen and still unwedded. “A sad waste of the trouble my father took to find him.” She saw the faint surprise cross Niall’s face, and explained, “I met him but twice, so I cannot mourn him with any great grief.”
“And now it is all to do again,” Cynric observed, his eyes on Leofric’s exhausted face as they emerged into the sunny garth. “And men growing scarce.”
“And those willing to be burdened with red-haired shrews never thick on the ground,” mourned Edric. “We will have her on our hands for ever.”
“A fitting penance,” Judith retorted, entirely unmoved at the frightful prospect of perpetual maidenhood. Niall grinned with them, but marvelled. His unhappy home had known nothing of love so safe and sure that it could afford to mock itself.
The whole village trooped after them into the hall, children and dogs and all. Leofric, heedless of pleas that he should lie on his bed, seated himself heavily in his great chair and leaned his flaming head against its high back. All hushed. For a moment the only sound was a stifled sobbing, and then that was smothered. Briefly he bade them all to sup that night in his hall, and bade the house-servants kill and cook, and broach ale and mead. They raised a cheer for him and for Odda and straggled out.
Leofric leaned to speak softly to Judith, who nodded and went into the bower. She returned with a long, linen-wrapped bundle. Only one object was that length and shape, and Niall felt his heart race. His hands went out, and Judith laid it in them.
They were all there; sword and dagger, belt of silver plates, and his jewels too. Speechless, he clasped the belt and settled the weapons. He looked at the silver and gold winking in the cloth, the garnets and amber for which lesser men might have murdered him. Before they realized what he was about he had cast the chain over Elfwyn’s fair head to lie on her breast. As she gasped aloud he pressed the brooch into Judith’s hand, and thrust on each of the brothers one of his golden arm-rings. He put his left hand through the last and pushed it up over his sleeve, smiling a them. Leofric began to protest, and he shook his head.
“Are we not friends and comrades?”
Leofric considered him, and nodded gravely. Niall knew that he was fully accepted. Even his atrocious sin of warring on his own kin, which reason might endorse but feeling must abhor, was forgiven him, and that had stuck in Leofric’s gullet since the battle. Only Judith, clearer-sighted and perhaps more ruthless than her brothers, had swallowed it without blenching.
They talked for a while of their several adventures and of the battle, and then Niall, feeling that he had trespassed long enough on the privacy of their reunion, excused himself and strolled outside. Eglaf grinned broadly and saluted him with the twin of the spear that had menaced his entrails. He left the stockade, down the river to the shore. The village was hidden from the sea by a turn in the valley, but the distance was less than a mile. He came out into a steep-shored little bay between two arms of low cliffs. No fishing-boats were drawn up on the beach to betray the village’s existence to Danish ships nosing along the coast; he had not yet even learned where they were hidden.
He climbed the eastern headland to look along the channel.
Eastward he saw another bay, a longer, flatter curve edged with pale sand, ending in a jut of dark rock-fangs plumed with white spray. He had seen them but once before, dimly through earliest dawn-twilight, but his mouth contracted. Not far away stood a cairn of large beach-stones, and he knew what that was. He said a prayer for thirty-one honest souls, heathen or not, and gazed out across the channel, where under a flaring sky the water was taking on the hue of burnished bronze and the hills of Wales rose in a purple bar from its edge. No ship showed black upon the brightness. He turned back to those men of another blood with whom whatever morrows he should see would lie. He was a wanderer who could wander no further, and the swan’s way was his no more.
They made him welcome. They were generous. Leofric called him to his side at the high table, and Judith sat at his other hand. The long fire on the stone-guarded hearth flamed with fresh fuel; torches fluttered along the walls, and candles glowed on the table. Steam and smoke edied among the blackened rafters, and his nostrils filled with the scents of flesh and fish and herbs, ale and mead. The painted shields, long spears and swift javelins patterned the walls again, and the side tables were crowded with grinning faces.
Down at the lower tables, as the ale and mead sank in the tubs, the battle was fought over and over, but at the high table they skirted that topic in the company of a Dane. The food was only what could be hastily assembled and hurriedly cooked in the leanest season, and the
winter-gaunt, new-killed mutton kept their jaws occupied. Leofric looked very white and strained, and was obviously in pain. He had made light of his wound, a sword-cut above the elbow, and had refused to let the women meddle with their salves and plasters, so no one had seen it since he came home. Niall, uneasily aware that a gash along a muscle, however deep, seldom did lasting harm, whereas one across it could cripple a man for his lifetime, wondered whether these farmers knew as much. Tomorrow he must have sight of it.
He looked down the noisy, smoky, steaming room. The women and boys trotted to and fro replenishing platters and mugs, or fell to themselves as the demand slackened, and the little children skirmished among the rushes with the dogs. Niall ate, and watched, and joined in the carefully casual talk, while old Hild moved behind them with the mead-pitcher. After its second filling he turned down his horn, but after he had shaken his head for the third time young Cynric, already red-faced and stumbling in his speech, rounded on him grinning.
“Hey, man, this is a feast and not a funeral!”
All eyes turned curiously on him, and a flush burned up under his skin.
“You are a guest in my household, and this night no man goes sober from my board!” Leofric declared, draining his own horn and holding it out to the pourer. “Fill up for our Dane, Hild!”
He shook his head again. Since they would plainly take it as an insult to their hospitality for him to remain above the table, the ignominious admission must be made and their scorn for one lacking in proper manhood faced. “Do not take it amiss,” he begged, “but I cannot get drunk. Another cup would bring back all that went before.”
“But—”
“Do not press him!” Judith commanded sharply, and Cynric subsided. Niall glanced shamefaced at her, and saw only understanding in her freckled face. He was glad that she knew why he could never lose command of his faculties in mead. They smiled at each other, and Edric, still completely sober, stared intently from one to the other and lifted his horn to eclipse a grin.
A little later Elfwyn withdrew, accompanied by Judith and the women attendants. Leofric, entreated by his lady, consented to excuse himself to the company and retire with them. The women in the lower part of the hall gathered their children and slipped out to their own cottages. The talk grew louder and more incoherent as the bottoms of the barrels were reached. A fuddled argument started at one table over the number of Danes the disputants had slain, and would have ended in blows had they not been too far gone in malt to see straight. Others began to sing, but as no two could agree on the choice of song the results were more painful than entertaining, and set the dogs howling resentment.
The company thinned. Cynric was sprawling across the table with his head on his arms, mumbling to himself. Edric had disposed himself more tidily along a bench and was sleeping. Some men had sufficient sense of direction left them to discover the door and reel homeward to the tolerance of their wives, while others, incapable of the venture, lay upon the tables or disappeared beneath them. The dogs gathered about the dying fire, cracking bones and scratching for fleas.
Niall, in all the bleak and lonely dignity of being the only sober man in the room, leaned his elbows on the board, propped his chin in his hands and surveyed the casualties. Someone was still singing to himself, another was conducting a long, unopposed argument with repetitious gravity, and a dozen distinctive snores afflicted his ears. He grinned wryly as he visualized the morrow’s waking. A man half-roused among the rushes and began to vomit noisily. Niall grimaced and got up, picked a path to the door between men and dogs, and went out into the cold clear night.
✹The Straits of Gibraltar to Constantinople
8
Under the moot-ash in the middle of the garth Niall halted for a moment, as the two tie-dogs which were loosed each night slouched up growling and sniffed at him. They knew him by now, and let him pass. He climbed the earthen bank to the stockade, and leaned there looking out on the fields and woods. The rain-clouds had blown over, and a half-moon was just lifting over the valley’s rim, silvering river and puddles and thatch. The woods were black and shaggy as a bearskin, the fields and common grey spaces splashed with black patches, the rocks by the waterside pale faces and black shadows. A light chilly wind was blowing up the valley, and it lifted Niall’s loose hair and blew it about his face. He shivered slightly. He was sweating from the hall’s heat, his tight tunic gripping him uncomfortably. His hair clung to his sticky face, and he thrust it back and plaited it out of his way.
He walked slowly down to the gate, which looked down the valley, towards the sea. A narrow wooden bridge, just wide enough to take a farm cart, spanned the ditch, and from it the tracks fanned out up and down the valley. The garth was very quiet, but for the occasional stamp and whicker of horses in the stable. The flocks were folded on the hill, where a few shepherd lads kept watch for wolves and for Ubba’s ships on the channel. The cattle had been scattered in the woods, and only a handful of swine as yet rounded up.
The wind nipped shrewdly, and he moved on to make the round of the stockade. He was not particularly sleepy, and in no hurry for his bed. As he passed the hall the rasping grumble of snores sounded loudly in the hush, and he grinned to himself and decided to seek out a truss of straw in a quiet barn for his bed this night.
He halted again opposite the gate to look up the valley. The stream, swollen by heavy rain, wrestled with the stones of its bed in endless laughter. Tawny owls hooted in the woods, and one flapped soundlessly past him, beating purposefully across the pasture. One of the mastiffs snuffled at his heels and thrust a wet cold nose into his dangling hand. He fondled the broad warm head absently.
He shrugged and turned away to look for a hospitable barn, pushing away the dog’s friendly muzzle. As he did so a flash of moonlight caught his eye, and he tensed at once, peering through the darkness. The dog sensed his alarm and growled softly, testing the air, but the wind was against him. Niall watched the grey meadow where it met the black woods that followed the stream down the valley. The flash came again, moonlight reflected from some bright moving object, and then two together, two brief twinkles of light. Niall stood for one heart’s beat as he realized what had reflected the moon’s whiteness, and then exploded into action.
He leaped from the embankment in one long bound, slithered on the sodden earth, recovered his balance and ran shouting to the hall. The mastiffs joined their thunderous voices to his. He crashed wide the heavy door, impartially kicked or trod upon every man in his path, and in a sudden uproar of cursing men and barking dogs reached the high table. He pounced on Cynric, jerked him up, kicked over Edric’s bench as he did so, shook the lad until his jaws clacked and slapped him viciously as he opened bleary eyes and mumbled stupidly. “Danes! The Danes are on us!” he yelled in his ears, slapped him again and threw him against the wall. Edric was heaving himself to all fours. Niall kicked him shrewdly to hoist him up, snatched a guttering torch from a bracket and stormed into the screeching darkness of the bower.
Women were scrambling from wall-beds and pallets on the floor, clutching bedclothes to their nakedness and shrieking questions, alarms and prayers. The torch spluttered and flared, casting enormous wild shadows and lighting disembodied faces, bare limbs and flapping sheets to a semblance of Hell’s maw on the Day of Judgement. Leofric’s voice shouted angrily, and suddenly he tumbled out of a wall-bed into Niall's sight and advanced, fuddled and furious, hauling on his braies with his one good hand.
“Up and out! The Danes are on us! Arm and out!” Niall roared, thrusting the torch into the nearest hand. Judith, a sheet bundled round her and her hair streaming over her slim bare shoulders, bounded across his vision, heaved up the lid of a great chest and started to toss out mail and weapons. Niall snatched up an armful of javelins and flung forth again.
Edric and Cynric, savagely sober, thrust past him for their own arms. Niall stormed back through the hall, striking or kicking every man he met. Most of them were on their feet now, blear-eyed a
nd witless for the most part, but some were snatching down shields and weapons from the walls and hauling at those still too sodden to rise. Niall yelled to those who were steady enough to follow, and led a shambling handful to the stockade in hot fury, cursing that most of them were still too fuddled to distinguish one enemy where they saw two.
The cottages were wakened. Women were shrieking, children wailing, men shouting. Half-clad folk were tumbling out seeking commands, and Niall gave them. They scattered to the stockade. The great mastiffs were baying furiously. He ran back to where he had been standing, scrambled up and peered between two of the pointed timbers.
The noisy alarm had caused the attackers to abandon their cautious approach under cover of the trees for an open rush across the meadow. Even as he looked, the first were running in a scattered group towards the ditch, stooping under great faggots of brushwood. Niall saw a javelin, flung by an uncertain hand, flash past and fall short, and yelled to his fools to hold their hands until they were sure of their marks. He waited, himself, until the first man straightened on the ditch’s edge to cast in his faggot, and hurled his javelin accurately a hand’s breadth beneath his breast-bone. His blade was not wasted, but the same could scarcely be said of his companions. A more erratic flight he had never seen. The bundles of brushwood tumbled down, piling to bridge the gap, and their bearers ran back, doubling and dodging, for more.
Leofric, a spear in his left hand, was below him, driving bewildered men to the stockade. Edric, on Niall’s left, was throwing torches into the ditch, trying to set the faggots alight, but the brushwood was too wet and full of sap to burn readily. His endeavours at least provided fighting-light where it was most needed. The darkness beyond was full of scurrying, whooping men, flashes of red light from helms and shield-bosses and weapons, fierce bearded faces leaping out of the dark and vanishing again.
The Price of Blood Page 11
