Elfrun closed her fist again, feeling how the silver was warming under her touch, and scrambled to her feet, tucking the tag into the little pouch at her waist. Something had been nagging on the edge of her awareness for the last few moments. There had been no second thump when the door had fallen shut behind Thancrad. Had he neglected to bar it?
As soon as she realized that the heavy oak was yielding to her hand her movements became more tentative. She eased it away from her until a minute crack appeared, and peered out.
She had expected to see the yard crowded, but it was sunlit and empty, at least of human life, though there were bags and rolls and bales in abundance. Had she really caught that fugitive glimpse of Auli? The girl was so distinctive, with her neat, oval head, her stitched and coiled braids, her amber eyes, but what on earth could she have been doing at Illingham? Elfrun peered this way and that, trying to orient herself in this strange yard. The direction of the sun told her something, but she had to remember that she was over the other side of the river now, and familiar clues would lead her astray; and she was muddle-headed with weariness.
That way, it must be.
Another cautious glance through the crack, and she eased the door a little wider.
Still no one, though she could hear the mutter and rumble of voices from the hall. Its door was closed, though.
Elfrun stepped out into daylight, the hampering folds of the alien wool and linen bunched in her hands, placing her bare feet carefully on the unknown soil. Her senses felt strained, scalp tugging, shoulder blades high and twitching, nostrils flared. Another swift look around. There was no point in dragging this out. If they saw her, they saw her. She walked fast and straight across the yard, aiming for the gap between the buildings which by her reckoning should lead out towards gate and river.
The buildings were laid out differently from home: Illingham’s long block of horse-stalls stood right on the far side of the yard, away from the hall, and blocking the view of the gate. She had almost made it when she heard new voices, clearer and closer. Two of them: young, male, question and response; and then a third, further away, calling their names.
Not shouts, just a brief, hard-edged exchange from around a corner, but enough to make her throw herself through the open door of the stable and hurtle, clutching her skirts, to the far end of the row of half a dozen stalls, waiting for the doorway to darken.
She crouched herself down against the wall, as much out of the sightline as she could manage, and waited, hardly daring to breathe, eyes darting left and right, looking for better places to conceal herself. There was a mound of hay, with a pitchfork left in it. Hiding place and weapon in one? Her dress was much the same colour as the hay.
Or among the horses?
She shifted her weight and rebalanced, a tiny, silent motion, so that she could look into the closest stall, the end one.
A grey mare stood with her head down, tugging wisps of hay from a manger. Elfrun couldn’t see her face clearly, and she had never tended her day in and day out as Athulf had since Ingeld’s return from York, but she knew the ripple of that tail, the whorl of the hair on her flank, the fall of the mane.
‘Storm,’ she said, disbelieving.
The mare’s ears pricked.
Elfrun clicked her tongue, and the mare lifted her head and looked round.
‘Hey, girl.’ Still making soothing noises, she eased herself in alongside. Her hands were damp and her heart was hammering, but she moved and breathed as gently as she could. There was no question but that this was Storm.
She looked well tended enough, even fat, if not quite the gleaming creature on whose care Athulf had prided himself.
Elfrun glanced around, but there was no sign of Storm’s tack. ‘Oh, Storm.’ And for the first time she missed Ingeld with a visceral intensity that astonished her.
Slowly, with her arm around the mare’s neck and leaning against her warm, infinitely comforting bulk, Elfrun began to think.
In all the time since her uncle had died, they had found no trace of Storm. Floundered into the marsh, Widia had speculated. Or panicked at the smell of blood and bolted so far that she had never found her way home.
Or stolen, he had postulated bitterly only a few hours since, by the same outlaws who had robbed Finn and killed his friends, two nights ago now.
Stolen.
And ended up here.
The same outlaws...
Elfrun was cold suddenly. She stared at her right hand where it was stroking Storm under her mane and behind her ears, and it looked like the hand of a stranger. That couldn’t be right.
Illingham wanted Donmouth. Illingham had always wanted Donmouth.
Kidnapping her, forcing her into marriage was one thing. This was another. Was their hostility directed against the minster as well as the hall?
And why not? The estates might be held and managed separately, but their lands were intermingled, their flocks ran together, and the lord of Donmouth hall and the abbot of Donmouth minster had been brothers or cousins for as long as anyone could remember. You could not take the hall and leave the minster as it was.
And how easy it would be to let the minster drift, with no priest, no services, until the archbishop was ready to relinquish any claim and it simply became part of the hall estate? Why, under Ingeld they had floated halfway down that stream already.
She had a sickeningly vivid image of Ingeld’s body thumping over to lie face up in the mud and sharn. The same outlaws... Myr and Holmi and the bear, dumped in the tide-washed marshes, with the coloured ribbons, green and red and yellow, moving in the water. Finn, wounded. She was blinking fast, a nervous muscular twitch over which she found she had no control. Her hands clenched, and Storm nickered and shifted her weight; and she had to force herself to breathe slowly, to relax her hands.
To think.
Could all this be the wildness of her over-tired imagination?
Perhaps Storm had indeed bolted, and found her way to Illingham, and for some explicable reason – perhaps nothing more than an unscrupulous stable-master all too ready to appropriate a handsome mare – no one had ever thought to enquire about her origins.
It was plausible. If you didn’t know Storm, her intelligence and loyalty. Elfrun had no doubt that if she were to challenge Illingham she would hear some story much like the one she was dreaming up now.
But she wouldn’t, and didn’t, believe it.
Illingham had killed Ingeld. She wasn’t too concerned just then with why, or whose hand had held the blade.
Her guts lurched and contracted. This was no place for her. And no place for Storm. With any luck they could leave together. Breathing carefully, she gave Storm a reassuring pat and untied the tether to lead her carefully round and out into the yard. She was only wearing a head-collar, so Elfrun brought the rope as well. She fairly sparkled in the early-morning sunlight.
‘Where are you going?’
She spun on her heel, and gasped. Blood streaked his face and his hands, and she thought for a moment it was some trowie fetch, come to take her soul. She was scarcely less frightened when in the next stuttering heartbeat she realized it was Thancrad, standing against the rising sun, in that same pose he had assumed at the spring-meeting, arms folded, weight on one long leg, mouth hard and straight. It seemed so long ago.
‘Where do you think I’m going? Home. On my uncle’s mare.’ She glared back at him, defying him to interrupt, before turning back to Storm.
Hell and damnation. There was no easy hauling herself up on to the mare’s back, not in these hampering yards of wedding linen and wheat-hued wool. She could feel his eyes on the back of her neck.
‘Your uncle’s mare?’
Why was he repeating her words in that fatuous way? ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’
‘But I don’t.’ He was staring at Storm, at her, then swivelling to look back at the hall. The door was ajar now. ‘Truly, your uncle’s mare? Ingeld’s?’
And now she wanted to smack him. ‘Of course Ingeld’s.’ Her voice was a low scream. ‘What is she doing here?’
‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘Elfrun, you have to believe me.’ His words were oddly articulated, as though he’d just had a numbing blow to the face. And then she realized that that was exactly what must have happened, that someone had hit him hard, only moments ago. The thought gave her considerable pleasure. He threw another glance behind him, at the open door of the hall, and now she knew why. He was afraid.
‘The son of your father’s house, and you didn’t know about this? For all I know you were part of it.’
‘I was with you the whole time!’ He couldn’t hide his hurt.
Oh, God in Heaven, it was true. She had entirely forgotten. Yes. It wasn’t only that they had found Ingeld’s body together. They had spent so much of that awful day together. Whoever had raised his hand to Ingeld, whoever had dragged her uncle’s head back and slashed that killing cut across his windpipe, it had not been Thancrad. Thancrad had not so much as stood by and held the killer’s horse.
Maybe he was telling the whole truth, about not knowing. And maybe not. Perhaps he had done a lightning-swift calculation and concluded she would be more compliant if she thought him stupid rather than guilty. A fine mare like that appearing in his father’s stables out of nowhere. Better not to ask questions.
‘A gift.’ His voice low. ‘My father said she was a gift.’
‘You saw her that day at the sheepwick. Didn’t you recognize her?’
He stared. ‘You think I was paying attention to the horse? All I could think about was you.’
Elfrun flushed, half-angry and half-confused by the intensity in his voice. She refused to let herself be distracted. ‘And Athulf? What story did your father tell him?’
He stared at her. The skin around his eyes contracted. ‘Athulf has been in and out of these stables a hundred times. He’s seen this mare. He never said anything.’ And again, ‘Are you sure she’s Ingeld’s?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
Thancrad shook his head and winced, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
But their eyes met, and Elfrun somehow knew that he was thinking of the little silver tag. Her face grew hot. ‘We know Athulf is a liar,’ she said in a low voice. ‘He has betrayed both you and me. But that he would have even the faintest clue as to who killed his father, and do nothing?’ She shook her head.
She could accept, against all her desire, that Thancrad was telling the truth about his innocence in the killing of Ingeld, his ignorance. But what about killing the bear-leader, and the dancing-boy, and Varri the bear?
And Finn. That Finn was still alive was a miracle.
Her lips tightening, she turned back to Storm.
He was at her side. ‘Here. You need to go. Fast.’ Making a step for her with his hands. She stared, and swallowed.
‘What about Finn, then? Who attacked Finn? Was that you?’ She wanted him to admit it; she needed more reasons to hate him.
‘Who?’
‘Finn and the others. The bear.’
‘What bear? What are you talking about?’ The blood was crusting dark around his nostrils, and his face was pale and frowning. ‘Athulf said something once about a bear. It killed some dogs, he said? That’s not important now. You need to go, Elfrun.’
She placed the ball of her foot in his interlocked fingers, gripping the rope with one hand and her skirts with the other, and he tossed her up on to the mare’s back. Elfrun urged Storm forward with her knees and pointed her head towards the gate.
Finn stood there, framed.
73
‘Get them! Stop them!’
The shout came from behind, from inside the hall.
Storm jibbed, and Elfrun was flung forward, hanging on to the mare’s mane. She jabbed her bare heels into Storm’s flanks. ‘Come on, girl! Come on!’
Thancrad was running alongside her, shouting something. ‘Go to the river. Get to the river!’ She was through the gate, barely registering that the figure standing there was indeed Finn, his weary face suddenly alert, his eyes seeking hers, his arms full of bundled cloth. And he was accompanied for some unfathomable reason by Wynn and the dumb dog-boy. But she was through the gate and past them before she could respond. A movement at her heel caught her eye, and she realized that Gethyn was running alongside her, keeping pace even as Storm’s brisk, jolting trot moved into an easier, rolling canter.
She had put a couple of hundred yards between her and the gate now. They were just coming into the trees and, against all her better judgement, Elfrun half twisted to assess the pursuit. She had thought she would see Tilmon, Switha, Athulf, some of their men, somebody coming after, but the track that led out from the gate was empty.
Elfrun felt a ridiculous sense of anti-climax, after the exhilaration of scrambling on to Storm’s back, of Thancrad’s exhortations. Why was no one coming after her?
Had that shout even been for her?
And what in heaven’s name was Finn doing here, with her dog and the Donmouth children?
Storm slowed again, sensing that her rider’s interest was elsewhere. Gethyn trotted beside them, head turned up to her, mouth open and tongue lolling. She was torn in half. Thancrad was right. She should get home. But Finn was here.
And if she had one desire in the world that transcended all thought of her own safety, it was her wish to put things straight with Finn. Whatever happened, she had to tell him she was sorry. Coming to a sudden, unreasoned decision, she slithered down from Storm’s back, knotted her halter over a branch, and turned back.
‘Finn.’ She was out of breath, too agitated to be embarrassed at the recollection of the last words she had spoken to him. ‘What’s happening?’ Gethyn panted at her side, red tongue lolling.
‘I came to save you,’ he said. ‘To bring you this.’ He offered her the bundle of red cloth, and she took it, barely even registering what it was. ‘But you didn’t need me.’ He looked beyond her, to Storm, and back again. ‘What are you doing? Are you all right?’ His eyes sought hers.
She knew what he meant, and she wanted to reassure him. ‘All right? Yes. Yes, I am.’ And she was, she realized, with that wary grey gaze of his finding hers, looking into her eyes, her very soul, with such concern and affection. She struggled to find the words to tell him that she was sorry, and that she would come with him, but all that she could manage was to repeat, ‘What’s happening?’
Suddenly Thancrad was at her side again out of nowhere. ‘Why are you still here?’ He looked at Finn. ‘I’ve seen you before. You’re one of Tuuri’s men.’
Finn nodded.
‘He thinks you’re dead. Killed.’
Finn smiled, but his eyes had gone cold. ‘And I would be, if it weren’t for the lady of Donmouth.’
The shouting was coming from the hall, getting louder. Thancrad swung round, then said urgently to Finn, ‘They’re arguing – about the killings. The bear. They’re debating what to do with Athulf and the others. They tried to run for it but Tuuri’s men grabbed them at the door. You need to go in there and show them you’re alive.’
Finn nodded and turned, but they were forestalled. Men were spilling out from the hall, pulling their belt-knives, shoving and swinging their fists. It was impossible to tell who was fighting whom.
Elfrun stared, appalled, and suddenly realized that Athulf was pounding towards them, three or four men hard on his heels. There were other scuffling tangles forming. Tilmon, a head taller than anyone else. And Switha, her hand on his arm.
And it wasn’t just men chasing Athulf. Auli too was in the little knot of furious pursuers.
‘Out of my way.’ Athulf was gasping, running hard.
Elfrun stepped aside, but she saw Finn and Thancrad exchange a glance, and they moved closer together, blocking the way.
‘Move!’
But they didn’t, and he didn’t stop, he came barrelling towards them, and his momentum was too great for
them to do more than slow him down. He sent them spinning, and he was through the gate, and making headlong for tethered Storm.
He had to slow, to stop, before he reached the mare, in order not to frighten her; and suddenly a small figure – two small figures – darted out of the clump of hazel and thorn. The smith’s girl and the dumb dog-boy. The boy was going confidently up to Storm and untying her halter. Why were they helping Athulf?
They weren’t. Wynn may not have fully understood what was going on, but her astute gaze had taken in enough of the situation at a glance, and she flung herself at Athulf like a furious cat, claws out and going for his eyes. The dog-boy was jogging Storm down the slope, towards the river, towards Donmouth.
Elfrun had her free hand pressed to her mouth. Even with the ropy strength the forge had nurtured Wynn could never be a match for Athulf.
But she didn’t need to be. She only needed to slow him down. The others were catching him up now, circling him. He had flung Wynn sideways, his face bleeding and excoriated from her nails.
Elfrun swallowed hard and walked forward. Wynn was getting to her feet, her face expressionless. Athulf darted a look of pure hatred at the girl. No one was touching him, but he was surrounded.
Elfrun took a deep breath. Athulf was her man. This was her call, to judge him or to hand him over. And before anything else, she had to ask him about Storm. She opened her mouth to speak, but even as she did so Auli raised a hand, catching Elfrun’s eye. Finn was at her side. Finn, Auli’s slave. Auli’s amber eyes met Elfrun’s, limpid yet inscrutable. Her head was tilted slightly to one side, and she raised her eyebrows.
Elfrun became aware of the crowd forming behind them, the pressure of eyes on the back of her neck, the crawling of the collective gaze on her shoulder blades. Fear prickled, without her quite knowing why, and she leaned over to Wynn, her voice low and urgent. ‘Take Gethyn. Follow the dog-boy. Go back to Donmouth.’
Daughter of the Wolf Page 43
