Trust him? Hirel wasn’t that much of a fool. He had been shepherd’s boy then shepherd at Donmouth all his life, brought up to it by his father, and he knew the wiles of hall servants, even those that were now his kin. But he chewed his lip and twisted his cap and said none of this. ‘What when Radmer comes back? What if he finds out?’
‘He won’t. But better safe than sorry.’ Luda tapped his finger against the side of his nose. ‘So mum’s the word, eh? Even to Saethryth. You know what women are like.’
Hirel frowned. ‘I want my penny now.’
But Luda was already pushing past him on his way to the door. ‘While you’re about it, pray for a kind winter.’ The steward limped out without looking back.
As if Hirel needed telling. Every man, wife and wean in Donmouth was praying for a kind winter. It had not been the worst of years, but very far from being the best. It was wrong, the lord being away. It was as though the weather knew they were weak. So yes, they were all praying, just as the minster men told them to do. Ducking under the thatch and out into the yard, he kicked viciously and accurately at a stump of rotten wood by the path, and it splintered in a shower of tindery fragments.
The next pedlar who came through lugging his fardel on his back, the next merchant’s boat to put in, Hirel had planned to buy as many pretty things as a silver southern penny could get him. Ribbons. Beads. Such trash as women liked.
Pretty things for that pretty wife he had somehow landed, who dragged around the sheepfold with a face like the thunder which was threatening. Hirel gnawed his chapped lower lip. He had been away from home for too long already. Four miles to plod, with the westering sun and the sweat in his eyes, back to the little sheepwick on the edge of the high summer pastures where he cared for a few sheep of his own and a great many of those belonging to the lord of Donmouth hall and the abbot of Donmouth minster.
25
‘Will you take off your dress? And your shift as well.’
Saethryth just stared at him.
‘What? Is it so much to ask?’ He smiled. ‘Cat got your tongue?’
But when he looked at her like that she lost the ability to think, never mind speak.
‘I want to hold you,’ Ingeld said. ‘I want your skin next to mine.’
Hot blood charged through her veins. She had thought she knew so much, and yet here she was flustered to incapacity by this simple request. His little private bower was dim, but she felt as though the noonday glare was flooding through both the room and her body.
She mumbled something, more thoughts than words. Then she lifted her head and spoke clearly. ‘Hirel never asks me to take my shift off.’
‘If Hirel valued you properly you wouldn’t be here, would you?’
There was only one possible answer to that.
In the end it hadn’t been the butter that had furnished the means of her coming to him. That butter had been for the hall, and there would have been questions asked if the weights were short. After nearly two weeks of seeking excuses, she had come down with the cheese instead. Two big rush baskets of hard cheeses wrapped in the coarse leaves of butterbur and pinned with thorns, that had banged against her legs, their plaited handles chafing her fingers, for the darkening three miles between sheepwick and minster. At least the path was downhill all the way. And then the minster cook had tried to take them from her and shoo her away, but she had stood her ground. ‘I want to see the father abbot. I have an important message for the father abbot.’ And in the end, grumbling and shrugging, they had let her knock at his door.
And he had said nothing. She had come in and closed the door behind her, and when he saw her his face had lit up, and he had risen from his stool and taken her in his arms, holding the whole length of her close against him, a broad, solid wall against which she could rest. She had buried her face in his shoulder and breathed in the smell of him until the wool began to fret the skin of her cheek, and then she had lifted her face and let him kiss her as though he were trying to drain her to the dregs, leaving her gasping and unsteady.
Being slobbered over by Hirel was sickening; his thick, flabby mouth made her flesh creep. There was something cold about the way he touched her, that didn’t realize she too was a living, responsive creature.
But every kiss from Ingeld had seemed a different question. Is this what you like? This? And now?
And now this.
He had taken a step backwards, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and breathing hard before sitting down, and now he was on the edge of the bed, looking up at her, elbows on his knees and hands loosely clasped. ‘Well?’
Saethryth narrowed her eyes. For all his passion Ingeld had an air of amusement, like an adult waiting for a little child to catch up, and this made her furiously angry. She didn’t want him quiet and smiling, she wanted him hungry and desperate. ‘Don’t laugh at me.’
‘It’s a sad world if we can’t laugh at things that make us happy. Has Hirel never seen you naked, then?’
‘I’ve not been naked since they washed me for my wedding,’ she said. ‘I mean, I’ve changed my shift. But only to put the clean one on.’ She snorted. ‘I don’t think Hirel knows my shift comes right off me. And I don’t think I want him to, either.’
He couldn’t have missed the note of bitterness, but he was too wise to comment on it. ‘So will you?’
‘Stand around and catch my death while you stare at me? Not likely.’
‘Come and sit down then.’ He patted the embroidered cover.
But she stayed standing where she was, knowing that she could turn and run if she wanted to, looking down at him. All was new, and exciting. Her lips were tingling, grazed from his stubble.
‘Give me your hands,’ she commanded. Obediently – and that, too, was exciting – he held them out to her, palms upwards, and she took them in her own and looked at them carefully, letting him curl his fingers round hers. Clean, dry and warm, with well-trimmed oval nails, no dirt in them, no ragged edges, though the hands were hard-palmed and sun-browned. Strong fingers, and the thought of him touching her made her breathe a little harder. She turned his hands over, looking at the scatter of dark hairs on his wrists, tracing her thumbs along the courses of his veins. His right hand was weighed down with the massive gold ring of his office. Saethryth had never touched gold before.
He shivered suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ He closed his eyes. ‘A goose walked on my grave, isn’t that what they say? I want you. I want you very much. I want to see your breasts. I’ve been dreaming about them for months. Your mouth.’ He opened his eyes and looked straight up into hers. His eyes were brown and green in equal measure. Their hands were still clasped. ‘You. Can you blame me?’
She wriggled a little at the intensity of his gaze. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘I’m looking for judgement. Weighed in the balance and found wanting... But all I can see is acceptance. And roses, and lilies.’
She smiled at that, feeling little leaves and tendrils of power begin to unfurl and grow inside her. She stroked his palms with her fingertips, wanting to make him shiver again, thinking about his words. ‘You owe me, you know.’
He creased his brow.
‘I was going to marry Widia.’
‘You blame me.’ He dropped his hands.
‘It was your fault,’ she said boldly. Too boldly, because she saw him flinch, and she quickly changed the subject. ‘The other day, other week I mean, the day when you came up to the sheepwick—’
He nodded.
‘You wanted me then. Why didn’t you – you didn’t do anything about it. You could have. Nobody else was there. You could have done anything you wanted.’
‘I know.’ He raised an eyebrow then, a little rueful, self-mocking.
‘So? Why didn’t you?’
‘But where would the challenge be in that?’
She frowned at him. ‘I don’t understand.’ He was making her feel stupid again,
and he must have seen that all was not well, because he took her hand once more and cupped it in his, tracing the lines and whorls of her palm with his index finger and making her feel as though she were one of the blown glass vessels they used at high table in the hall, that if he exerted one more ounce of pressure she would shiver into fragments.
‘What I wanted was for you to come here. For you to want me.’
26
Abbot Ratramnus had been almost right. Donmouth had no library, never mind a scriptorium. The only books in the place were a tattered missal, full of rites Fredegar only half recognized, and the abbot’s collection of pagan Roman poetry, in a commonplace book the man had compiled for himself. In what world were Ovid’s Art of Love or Book of Changes suitable fare for a man in holy orders, the putative shepherd of this little flock? All the spiritual wealth of York at his disposal, and he frittered his time and his soul in this way, reading of erotic love and the discredited gods of Rome.
The man could read, and he read of profanities. He could sing, and now, joining his voice to Heahred’s and Fredegar’s own in the De profundis, his light tenor sounded as merry as though he were singing love songs at a sheep-shearing.
An abbot whose idea of duty ran to singing mass only when he was in the mood to wear that ostentatious yellow chasuble, and hunting on Sundays.
It would have been easier to bear if Ingeld had been stupid, or ignorant, or ugly. As things stood it was a damnable waste of talent and resources. And charm. Imagine that smile harnessed to a will to do good in the world! Fredegar had no illusions about his own forbidding aspect. He might compel people towards God through fear of Hell; Ingeld, had he been so minded, would have had them come rejoicing through the door of his little church as though he were St Peter welcoming them in through the gates of Heaven.
But in one important respect Ratramnus had been wrong about Donmouth. The minster had a bell, made of true brazed metal, and two boys who took pride in ringing it. And every time that clear note rang out Fredegar felt the old clench in the guts, tremor in the hands, prickle of sweat in the palms.
Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord...
The sun had set behind great banks of wind-torn cloud, and neither the thick autumn twilight coming through the church’s door nor the guttering rushlights on the altar shed much light on the page. But Fredegar hardly noticed. While he loved the sensation of the smooth pages under his fingers, soothing as a mother’s touch, he had no actual need for the book.
He stroked it now, his racing heart slowing a little. Would he ever hear a bell again with equanimity? That bright beacon, which should be the sound of salvation. The ringing of the bell at Noyon, which had let the sea-wolves know that the whole community was processing to the church for Easter, that gate and guard-house were untended.
It was a cold evening, but he was sweating.
Vespers ended with the abbot’s usual rapid gabbling of the prayers and Fredegar fell into step behind Ingeld, the deacon and the boys following. Elfrun and Abarhild had been standing quietly in the darkness of the western end. They both crossed themselves and bowed their heads as the little procession trooped past, and Fredegar amended his previous verdict.
Not entirely godforsaken.
Perhaps hope would return yet. Perhaps he had fled far enough, and he would find himself and his God again at the end of the road.
Barely were they out in the churchyard and the chilly autumn dusk before Ingeld was shrugging off his choir-robe and bundling it into Fredegar’s arms. ‘Put this away for me? Good man.’ He slapped the other priest on the shoulder and walked over to where his grey mare stood, ready-saddled and -bridled, young Athulf with his hand on her reins. Ingeld waved a dismissive hand without turning round and swung himself up into the saddle. He clicked his tongue and turned his horse’s head west and up the slope, and the gathering darkness rapidly swallowed them up, Storm’s whiteness glimmering in the dusk.
That iniquitous man was warm and alive and enjoying the good things of God’s earth, when so many better men were in their graves.
‘Do you know where he’s going?’ Fredegar found Abarhild at his side.
He looked down at her over the crumpled bundle of white wool and began smoothing the cloth. Even to the man’s mother, he would not criticize his abbot. Vows of obedience were right and proper and he would keep them as best he could. She had spoken in the Gallic of her childhood, and he answered her in the same language. ‘I’d better put this away, domina.’ How his patroness, this wizened creature compounded of fine parchment and holy water, had given birth to that big, ruddy, vital, blaspheming man, he could not begin to imagine.
He came out of the hall again to find that Abarhild had retired but Elfrun was still waiting for him, alone. ‘Father Fredegar?’
He nodded, but he could guess from her diffident expression that he still had a forbidding air about him. He took a deep breath and tried to unbend. ‘Elfrun. Domina.’ He switched to the Frankish which was so like her own language. ‘Frouwa.’ Then English, ‘Lady.’ Did she have something she wanted to confess, out of season? There was a burdened look about her which he associated with the Noyon novices and their fevered guilty dreams.
But, ‘I have a favour to ask you.’ She was twisting her hands together, but as he watched she stilled them consciously, clasping one hand firmly with the other.
He nodded again, and waited.
‘Will you teach me how to read? Latin, I mean? Grammar.’
He thought about it. ‘Wouldn’t your uncle be a more suitable tutor?’
‘I asked him. But he said he doesn’t have the time.’ She must have been able to read his expression, because she said quickly, ‘I know. He has time for a lot of things. But not, it seems, for this.’
‘I can teach you, of course. I have no Priscian, or Donatus, but we can use the psalter.’
‘And...’
‘And?’
‘Renders,’ she said. ‘Tithes. Taxes. The kind of thing Luda has written down on his tablets. Can you teach me how to read those, as well?’
27
Elfrun lifted her head abruptly. A cry, like a strange bird, or a plaintive cat, just on the edge of hearing. But it went on and on, the same note.
Puzzled, she went to the door and looked out. Early morning had brought silent autumn mist, and she could see little beyond the nearest buildings. Beaded moisture hung in the thatch and the cold damp air made her flinch after the warm fug of the women’s house. Her bare soles curled away from the cold ground.
The sound went on, a thin droning. Somehow it spoke of pain more eloquently than any scream could have done.
She looked this way and that, frowning, trying to trace the sound to its source. One of her women was near her time, but this wasn’t the familiar bellows and blasphemies of labour. This sounded more animal than human.
A scuffle in the courtyard and a girl tugging at her sleeve. ‘Lady? Please come! Please help!’
The smith’s girl. Wynn.
‘What is it? What’s happened?’
More frantic tugging. ‘Just come!’
There was no gainsaying that intense brown gaze, and the girl’s thin fingers clutching at her cuff had an astonishing strength in them.
‘Is someone hurt? At the smithy?’
The girl nodded, eyes bigger than ever. ‘Burned.’ She opened her mouth to say something more, then clamped it shut. Her face was pale.
‘My grandmother, she’ll know what to do. Go to her.’
‘But you—’
‘Yes, yes, of course. But I’ll need more help.’
The girl nodded and scudded away.
Elfrun picked up her skirts and ran in the other direction, heedless of the mud and the sticks and small gravel. A clear half-mile down to the forge and she had never covered the ground so fast. Her heart pounding, she rounded the lean-to to find the smith in the doorway.
‘He fell, lady.’
She peered into the gloom.
A sprawled figure was lying on the beaten-earth floor. Someone had turned him over, rolled him out of the fire-pit.
The smith was blocking Elfrun’s view. The moan went on, rising and falling a little, like the east wind in the cracks between the wall-boards.
‘Let me see him.’ Elfrun took a step forward. ‘Is it Cudda? It is, isn’t it? I need to go to him.’
The smith was standing legs apart and arms folded. ‘There’s nothing you can do, maid. Go away. Get your gammer.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘Though I doubt me there’d be much she could do, either.’
Elfrun couldn’t let him get away with this. ‘I’ve already sent for help from the minster, but I need to see him myself.’ She had always been cowed by the smith, not just his ropy strength and his gruffness but his easy mastery of the mysteries of fire and iron. Every wise lord knew his power over land and men alike lay in the palm of his smith. But none of that would bar her from her plain duty. ‘Let me in.’
They stared each other in the eye. At last, to her huge relief, Cuthred dropped his gaze. ‘Maybe you’re not the little maid you were. I see that.’ He glanced behind him at his son. ‘Do what you can.’
Burning gorge rose in her throat as she ducked under the overhang. The smell...
Half his face was ruined. His arm... Oh, God. She could do nothing with this.
He must have stumbled sideways into the fire-pit, and lain there until the flesh had started cooking. Nothing else would explain the depth of those burns. Why hadn’t he scrabbled himself out?
She whirled to his father, dark against the slanting October light. ‘What happened? How did he fall? Why didn’t he get himself up again?’
Silence.
The bones of her skull were shivering under the strain.
At last the smith said, ‘He’s drunk.’ His voice was a growl. ‘Dead drunk. And I was outside. Wynn found him.’ Rising to anger: ‘Don’t you look at me like that, maid. Don’t you even think it. Why would I push my son in the fire? He’s the hope of my forge.’
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