Daughter of the Wolf

by Victoria Whitworth

  ‘My father asked you to keep an eye on me,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘So he did.’ He looked her up and down in a way that made her skin crawl. ‘And that’s just what I’m doing. And you know what men call Radmer?’

  ‘Call him? The King’s Wolf.’

  ‘The King’s Wolf. Indeed. And do you know why?’

  He was leaning in, and she shifted another inch towards the end of the bench, talking fast to keep him at bay, repeating words she had heard in the hall. ‘Because Donmouth’s the gate to Northumbria, and he guards it. Hold the river, and the estuary, and the kingdom is strong.’

  ‘And that’s not all he guards, is it, Osberht’s pet wolf?’ He seemed to think this was funny. ‘Radmer’s been growling and snapping at strangers on the king’s behalf for twenty years. He’s proud. He should be.’ Edmund turned to look at the king’s tent. ‘But with Tilmon back he won’t be growling. He’ll be wanting to go for the throat.’ He laughed. ‘Exciting times.’

  He was still much too close. Elfrun could feel the warmth and heaviness of him leaning against her, but she was right at the end of the bench now, the edge digging into her right buttock. Any further and she would fall off. All she wanted was to get up and walk away, but Abarhild would be shocked when she heard of such discourtesy to a kinsman.

  And what if he followed her, shouted at her, made folk stare?

  So she concentrated on her clasped hands, the pale half-moons on her thumbnails, not speaking, hardly even breathing. Edmund grunted enquiringly, but she kept her lips tight-pressed, and at last to her infinite relief she felt the bench tip as he hauled himself to his feet. When she dared to look up again she saw that he had rejoined one of the little clusters that hovered at the far side of the king’s tent. Low muttering, sidelong glances – a few of them at her – emphatic gestures.

  But it wasn’t all about her. The Northumbrian riding-men and dish-thanes and hall-wards, with all their hangers-on, were clumping and forming larger groups. Tilmon’s men were pulling closer together in response.

  The boy with the bay mare had withdrawn himself a little, however, and was walking her up and down. Elfrun watched her neat lines, her forward-pricked ears and gleaming hooves, and the way the sunlight shone on her hide, so different from Mara and Apple. Her dainty head had something almost birdlike in its grace, as did her little pecking steps. That boy must spend hours clipping, and combing, and oiling. He turned his head and she looked away quickly in case he caught her staring yet again. It would be good to race that bay mare again, though Mara would never have a chance against her.

  Dear, shaggy Mara and Apple – and a pang of conscience struck her. Could Athulf be trusted to look after the ponies properly, with all the distractions and temptations offered by the meeting? She cast a calculating look at the curtain screening the entrance to the king’s tent. How much longer were they going to be? She could be quick: she could run.

  Just to see that Apple and Mara were all right.

  But what if they weren’t? What if Athulf had just left them loose in the field? Still tacked up, even? She would have to catch them.

  Elfrun half rose to her feet, then stopped, hovering somewhere short of standing.

  Her father might come out of the tent, and she not back. What if the king had asked for her? And what if she got muddy again? If he didn’t kill her, her grandmother most certainly would. So she slumped back on to the bench, still torn, trying to keep her face composed, her hands folded and her back straight. But the bench was hard, and getting harder all the time, her seat was aching, and her feet were cramped and hot and chafed, her heels blistering in the stiff leather shoes she almost never wore. She felt desperately self-conscious, sitting there alone, but it was still preferable to Edmund coming back. And all the while the sun was shining and every lark in Deira was pouring out its heart, singing its alleluias in the Easter sky, and from down towards the river Elfrun could hear splashing, and laughter. She had a suspicion she could hear Athulf’s shrieks among the others.

  Abarhild had been angry enough about her riding with the boys. What would she have said if she had caught Elfrun swimming?

  Now she could hear other raised voices, not so far away.

  Shouts, even. And coming from the king’s tent.

  Her hackles had risen without her realizing.

  And she was not alone. Everyone had frozen, hands already halfway to absent sword-pommels. The woman in the brown twill and the boy were standing close together. The boy was looking at the tent, but the woman was staring across the grass. Looking, Elfrun realized, at her. Perhaps she – Switha, that was the name – perhaps she too felt ill at ease in the midst of this throng of jumpy men.

  But after that one outburst the voices inside the tent had fallen quiet again, as though belatedly aware of all those avid ears outwith its painted and embroidered canvas walls. Try as she might, she could hear nothing more.

  Long, slow heartbeats, and the world began to breathe again.

  The space under the tasselled awning darkened. Her father came blundering out into the daylight. She thought at first he was just sun-blind, but realized then he was snarling-angry, angry as she had never seen him. He came straight over to her.

  ‘Get up.’

  She scrambled to her feet. ‘Why? What is it? Does the king want me now?’

  But he had her hard by the bones of her elbow and was turning her away from the tent.

  ‘Father? You’re hurting me.’

  Eyes. Everywhere, eyes.

  Even she could see the eyes were noting his anger, his loss of self-command.

  ‘Father? Is it something I’ve done?’

  That got through to him. ‘You, child? No, absolutely not.’ He glanced behind them. ‘I can’t talk about it here. There are ears everywhere.’ But he loosened his grip on her arm.

  Ears as well as eyes. And tongues all too ready to twist what the eyes and ears had taken in. She longed for the familiar haven of Donmouth, where every face was known to her.

  Radmer was looking over her, back towards the king’s tent. ‘Damn it.’

  And the ox-man was there, out of nowhere, right in front of her, blocking the sun. ‘This is the girl?’ He reached towards her.

  Radmer moved between them. ‘You’ve had my answer, Tilmon.’

  ‘Think again.’ Tilmon looked back towards the tent.

  ‘Don’t insult me. A landless exile. A traitor. The king may be talking to you, but he still doubts your loyalty, and Alred’s.’ Elfrun could almost see her father’s hackles rising, hear the low snarl. ‘And he’s right.’

  Something touched her elbow, and she yelped.

  It was the dumpy, twill-swathed woman. Close to, she reminded Elfrun irresistibly of a hedgehog, with her bright black eyes, pudgy face and sweet smile. Her veil was pinned slightly awry, allowing tight, dark curls, streaked with silver, to escape around her temples. ‘Radmer.’

  Elfrun’s father nodded stiffly. ‘Switha.’

  Switha moved into the space between the men. ‘We’re on the same side now. At least look at my boy.’ Her voice was warm and low, with a caressing note.

  ‘Out of the question.’ Radmer tried to turn away.

  But, and to Elfrun’s amazement, the woman laid an intimate hand on his sleeve, moving closer to him and dropping her voice still further. ‘Whether Osberht trusts us or not, he needs us. He knows what’s in the wind.’ She turned, and her dark eyes scanned Elfrun, a long searching gaze, before she looked up into Radmer’s face once more. ‘How about letting bygones be bygones?’ She sounded so reasonable. ‘We were all good friends once.’

  He shook himself free and stepped back, out of reach. ‘Never.’

  ‘Why, Radmer? You have to put her somewhere.’ Tilmon made a sound that could have been laugh or growl, but Switha ignored him. She was still smiling. ‘This could be so easy, Radmer. And you’re making it so hard.’

  4

  The oars creaked with one last long pull. The oarsmen ra
ised them dripping out of the water and drew them in over the topmost strake as the boat glided in among the reeds. Its mast was already unstepped, and the evening was a gloomy one, though the reeds were alive with little brown birds. It had been a wild day and a night, though one would hardly guess it now, and the whole crew was exhausted.

  Finn crouched in the bows, his wickerwork pack balanced, ready to jump across to one of the little boggy tufts as soon as the boat-master raised his hand.

  But instead Tuuri beckoned him over with a crooked finger. Finn set his pack down and stepped over thwarts and bundles and snoring off-shift crew to where the older man stood, by the keelson socket. Auli was crouched at his feet, whittling a new bone flute.

  ‘We’re earlier than we planned,’ the boat-master said. ‘A good couple of weeks. But we had to take that wind when it came.’ His sun-battered face was giving nothing away.

  Finn nodded. He remembered this stretch of the Lindsey marshes, and he wanted to strike inland while the light lasted, make for the great monastery at Bardney where they knew him from last summer. He knew he would get a hearty welcome and a place by the fire. The Hedeby market had furnished him with fine eastern incense, smelling of summer roses and wrapped in oiled parchment; and tiny clay phials of oil and water and soil that were said to come from Jerusalem, brought up along the rivers to the Baltic Sea. He also had his usual range of popular trinkets and random acquisitions. The good brothers of Bardney would be delighted. He would make for Bardney, and then this year his road would take him on a long loop, and ultimately north. Tuuri and he had talked it through. A counter-sunwise circuit that would end with him going up the old road to Barrow and the ferry, and along the Ouse to York, calling at the minsters and halls on the way, one hand outstretched in friendship, the other never far from the hilt of his belt-knife.

  Finn bit back his impatience and waited. He knew Tuuri wouldn’t be keeping him here merely to exchange platitudes about wind and weather. He followed the older man’s gaze down the length of the boat, to where Myr and Holmi were lying, fast asleep, resting against Varri’s broad, hairy back. The lads had been wrestling with rope and wind for much of the day, and he didn’t grudge them their sleep, though it saddened him not to bid them farewell and good fortune. It would be a long season before he saw them again – and perhaps he never would. His world had no room in it for complacency.

  ‘You know what we need.’

  Finn nodded. He knew, exactly. How far upriver one might sail at low tide. Just what could be seen from a hall doorway. The number of armed men likely to be under a given roof on a given day. Whether the crosses and candlesticks were gold or silver gilt, silver or silvered bronze. His job was to see everything and forget nothing, to linger at high table and market stall when the transactions had been carried out and men’s minds had moved on, the soft-spoken pedlar quite forgotten, except maybe by one or two of the girls into whose eyes he had smiled. He had done this job the navigable length of the Shannon and the Liffey, in the marshy hinterlands of Dorestad, along the Seine, and last year Tuuri had brought him and the others to the English coasts for the first time.

  Of all the burdens he carried about him, this knowledge, this weightless, invisible merchandise, was by far the most valuable.

  ‘You know this stretch.’

  ‘I do.’ Finn swallowed. His voice was scratchy, still sore from shouting against the wind.

  ‘We’re going north of the Humber.’

  ‘The Tees, you said before.’

  ‘Aye, the Tees, likely. For now at least. But there’s a man wants to talk to us.’ Tuuri’s weathered face bent itself into a crafty, broken-toothed grin. ‘Wants to pay us. Wants us to talk to our friends. Meeting on Humberside. Around the even-nights.’

  ‘Where on Humberside?’

  ‘Barton kirk. On the Lindsey shore. The big kirk. You remember it?’

  ‘You want me there?’

  ‘We’ll want what you have to tell us.’

  Finn nodded. ‘I’ll be there. At the even-night.’ Five months away.

  ‘Two days before and two after,’ Tuuri said. ‘Barton, remember?’

  The boat bumped against a reed-thick islet. An arrow of north-bound geese flew high overhead. Finn hoisted his pack and settled it, and braced himself to jump.

  5

  Fredegar gazed down at his clasped hands, the interwoven fingers clenched so hard against each other that he could feel every bone under their thin covering of sallow skin. He pulled his hands apart and tightened them into fists, the knuckles showing white, the nails gouging his palms. The familiar heavy chill was in his stomach, like a slab of cold oat pudding, indigestible, although the air in the church was warm and close. Pro Deo amur...

  But he had been fine all morning, head down at work in the vineyard, with his basket and shears and little hoe. No need to talk to anyone, or even to lift his gaze above the hard-pruned vines in their rows. Just as he had been fine yesterday morning, knee-deep in the mud and reeds of the fishpond, his robe kilted high and the spring sun hot on his shaven crown. Only when the little bronze voice of the bell started up again had the darkness and constriction begun once more to creep around the edges of his vision, to tighten about his lungs.

  He took in a deep, ragged gulp of air and let it out again in his clear tenor, as true as that same abbey bell: And our mouths shall show forth thy praise.

  But lifting his gaze, and standing up with the rest of the brothers, meant that he had to look across the choir, over to the row of Corbie’s novices and oblates, and he couldn’t bear it. The young, untouched faces, pink and scrubbed under their well-tended tonsures. Innocentes, was that the word he was scrabbling after? But innocere meant to cause no harm, and that wasn’t right. Those boys could cause harm, right enough, in their thoughts and their words and their deeds, in what they had done and in what they had failed to do. Ignorantes, then? They had no idea of what might be coming, here at their inland haven. Even here.

  O Lord, make haste to help us.

  Better to die now, young and ignorant, than to live through what the future might hold.

  ‘Father abbot wants to see you, Father.’

  Fredegar nodded at the child and turned right along the shadowed, northern side of the church to the little stone aula where his new abbot held court.

  ‘Failure to thrive.’ Ratramnus steepled his fingers and looked at Fredegar over them, his grizzled eyebrows long and bristling as a stag beetle’s horns. ‘That’s what I’d say if you were one of the lambs. And I’d advise putting you in a basket in the kitchen and feeding you from a bottle.’ He sighed. ‘But you’re not a lamb. You’re a monk and mass-priest of Noyon.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Noyon will be refounded.’ Ratramnus’s voice was dry. ‘But until then we have to do something with you. And believe me, I mourn Bishop Immo and the others almost as much as you do.’

  ‘Do you pray for them, Father?’

  ‘Daily.’

  Fredegar nodded. He respected Ratramnus, and he was grateful; since for some reason he was still walking God’s earth then Corbie was as good a way station as any. But why was he, worthless as he was, here with every bodily comfort, when all his confraternity was dead?

  ‘Not sleeping?’

  Fredegar felt a wave of exhaustion roll over him at the question. He shook his head. ‘I can’t. When I close my eyes...’

  But Ratramnus was raising one of those magnificent eyebrows. ‘You do sleep, you know.’ No confrontation in the abbot’s voice, just the statement of fact.

  Fredegar was startled into opening his mouth, almost into contradicting his superior, but Ratramnus was nodding at him, lifting a cautionary finger. ‘The others have been in here to complain about the noises you make in the night.’

  ‘Oh.’ Had they? What, all of them? ‘I’m sorry, Father.’

  ‘They have a right to their sleep too, you know.’ Ratramnus sighed again. ‘What shall we do with you?’

  ‘Just tell m
e what to do, Father, and I’ll do it. Any job. The tannery. The pigs. I can sleep in the sty, if that would please the brothers better.’

  ‘And let you fill your belly with husks? All honourable labour, to be sure.’ Ratramnus sounded thoughtful. ‘I had something in mind, and then word came to me yesterday.’ He shifted sideways to lift his wax tablets from his writing desk. ‘What did the man say, now?’

  Fredegar waited.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Ratramnus squinted at the thin leaves of wood, then looked at Fredegar through the overhang of his eyebrows. ‘Now. I had been thinking I could use you in here. A petty enough task for a man of your abilities – I have seen your work, remember!’ He waited for a response but Fredegar was silent. The abbot sighed, and went on. ‘My treatise on the Holy Mass... someone to check my notes for me. You could sleep in the library. No one else sleeps up there but Gundulf, and he’s deaf as stone.’

  Ratramnus paused, weighing the tablets in his hand. He clearly had not finished, and Fredegar went on waiting.

  ‘And then this.’ The abbot gestured. ‘Word from a cousin of mine. Distant cousin. She was a novice at Chelles, but then she got married, and then she got married again to an Englishman. One of the northern kingdoms. The messenger said she’s in quest of a chaplain. Have they no priests left there?’ He stopped and looked at Fredegar. ‘Our library’s warm, you know. And they’ll speak English there. I don’t suppose you speak English.’

  ‘I’ve heard it spoken. Frankish is close enough.’ No one would know him in Northumbria. No one would expect anything of him, or compare the man he had been with the creature he seemed to have become. ‘Where is this place?’

  ‘Somewhere in the middle wilderness of Britannia. The English bit.’ Ratramnus squinted at his notes. ‘How’s your handwriting? I can’t read mine. It would be such a help in my work, you know, Fredegar, to have someone with clear cursive.’ He handed the little wooden rectangles over. ‘What does that say?’ A jabbing finger.