Sidroc looked up at the sky, one pale blue, a tracery of clouds skimming it in narrow waves. Spring would soon be here. And Hingvar and Svein were already at war, in Wessex.
“Does Æthelred live?”
“They have not caught him yet,” came the answer. “But they have had victory in three battles against his armies.”
The King of Wessex still lived; he had eluded the brothers so far. Æthelred had craft, or luck, or both, though his forces had been hard hit. But Kingship was strong in Æthelred’s blood. Two brothers had ruled before him, ruled and died doing so. And their father had been the great warrior-king Æthelwulf. Æthelred had seemingly bottomless store of silver, as had his brothers and father before him, silver to train and arm his thegns, and silver to buy off the Danes who posed too great a threat to him. The Saxons, when they could not win peace through arms, would buy it. What was this, but what Ælfsige had done, with the Peace he had made with Yrling.
The horses Sidroc had brought were two mares, both fast, both needing work. He would stretch their legs now; carry this news to Four Stones before any other rider did.
He nodded to Guthrum’s man. “I ride now to bring Yrling your message.”
He looked to the monk, fidgeting away.
“Get off. You must walk to Four Stones; the mare will break your neck if I leave you alone. Be there at noon or I come back and sling you over the saddle like the baggage you are.”
The man slipped off the horse as unsteadily as he had sat upon it. Sidroc and the outrider raised their hands to each other, then each spurred their horses to their respective halls.
Sidroc passed the winded mares into the keeping of the stable boy. Yrling was easy to find; he had been leaving the stable as Sidroc rode in. They moved together to the paddock where the boy was cooling the mares, walking them, now saddle-less, in large circles.
“A monk is on his way, will be here shortly,” Sidroc told his uncle, knowing that this would not explain the haste in which he had arrived, mares nearly lathered, and he himself slightly out of breath. He then repeated what Guthrum’s man had told him.
“Toki will urge you to ride,” he finished.
Yrling had listened to the report with eyes lowered, taking it in. Now he looked across the paddock to where the mares moved, tails swishing, the youth walking between them, leading them by their reins.
“Já,” he agreed. “Toki is always hasty. Haste can mean being first to the table, or finding that the table is still bare.”
He turned to look at Sidroc, and was pointed in his question. “And what do you urge?”
Sidroc was ready with his answer. He had been thinking of the path ahead the entire ride back.
“You have Guthrum’s favour. I urge that you keep it.”
He paused a moment before going on. “Whatever happens in the rest of Wessex, you will need help at Cirenceaster.”
Yrling would not deny this.
“Já. Such a holding will be handed to no one, even one who has such claim on it as me.” He thought a moment. “Ælfsige has no son. My wife is the eldest of other daughters. In law, she, or her mother, will have claim to it, should Ælfsige die.”
Unspoken was the shared knowledge that if Wessex fell, its laws could crumble too. And a rival Dane who captured Cirenceaster would care little about the rule of law of the people he had overthrown. Only a more powerful Dane could force him to surrender Cirenceaster to the prior claim-holders.
“All the more reason to stay Guthrum’s man,” his nephew was telling him. He built now on what Yrling had told him of his meeting with the Jarl. “He knows of your marriage, listened well when you asked him to defend any future Wessex claim.”
“A claim that may mean nothing if Hingvar and Svein grow much stronger,” Yrling said. “To stay here and know they are after Æthelred himself…” He shook his head as his voice trailed off. “And Guthrum gave no pledge to me,” he reminded.
They had been standing side by side at the paddock fence, their eyes on the circling horses, only rarely tilting their heads to glance at the other. They both turned, began to move off. The hall door was opening, and Sidroc saw first the shield-maiden and then Ælfwyn step out.
But Sidroc was not done yet, and would not be deterred. If Yrling must take wrong action, he wanted it to be for a right end.
“If you must go, go as Guthrum’s man. Go on his behalf, as well as your own. See the brothers, then judge who to join.”
“You have made up your mind,” Yrling observed.
“Because I see clearly,” came Sidroc’s retort. “I would rather have Guthrum at my back, than face him shield first.”
“He turned your head with his offer to you, that you come to him,” Yrling responded. He spoke here of Guthrum sizing Sidroc up at their first meeting, and of the Jarl inviting him to join his body-guard of picked men. Yrling gave a short laugh before going on. “Toki was never so put out.”
Toki would not last one week in such duty, and both men knew it.
“Já. I would serve as his body-guard,” Sidroc answered, of this honour. “Would not you? Guthrum will be King of the Danes here soon.” Yrling raised his eyebrows at this, but Sidroc’s face showed that he fully believed it.
Sidroc felt a flame of anger arise in him, that his uncle could be blind to Guthrum’s full worth. “I believe Guthrum will be King. But you are my uncle. You, when not much more than a boy yourself, took me from a place where I was not wanted. My loyalty is to you.”
Yrling turned now to his nephew.
“Then you will back me, whoever I fight,” he said.
“I will back you,” Sidroc vowed.
They had rarely spoken like this, and the finality of Sidroc’s answer sealed their tie.
The two maids were looking at them. Sidroc remembered his mission as he neared.
“I have found a holy man,” he told them. “He will be here at noon.”
The man finally arrived, and at Yrling’s urging, mumbled some words over Ælfwyn, waving his hand above her in the Christian blessing. The bride-ale that followed was a riotous feast. It was late in the evening when the hall was broken down, table tops taken from the trestles, and the treasure room door finally closed behind Yrling and his bride.
Lying there on his pallet in the body of the hall Sidroc found his eyes wide open. The hall was shrouded in darkness, every torch rubbed out, the fire in the pit banked down. Most of the men about him were already asleep, too drunk for restlessness or even snoring. Off to one side, only a little more than an arm length’s distance away from where he lay, stood the oak of the treasure room wall, behind which Sidroc knew Yrling was embracing Ælfsige’s daughter.
Sidroc kept his eyes straight up. Above the stairs near the hall door he pictured the narrow room where the shield-maiden lay. Deprived of her friend, she would be alone with the serving woman.
He had been late to the hall. Before the food had come he had seen Toki speaking to her, and seen her answer. She turned from him abruptly, to where he himself was approaching the table. She rose and looked at Sidroc and invited him to go to Ælfwyn and Yrling, and wish them joy. He extended his hand, and she had taken it.
“Toki will be angry that you prefer my hand to his,” he told her, as they moved off.
“You do not fear his anger,” she returned, showing all her high spirit. “And for Toki any woman’s hand would do as well.”
During the course of the feast she had again sat next him. She was wearing the green gown she had worn the day they arrived, the verdant hue of which was an echo of her eyes. The fire had been heaped high, and besides the torches jutting from the walls there were oil cressets set on the tables. So much flame gave her chestnut gold hair an added gleam, bringing out the ruddy tints in it, making golden her skin. When she had picked up the silver ale cup in her hand and brought its gilded rim to her lips he could not force his eyes away. And she seemed happy, hopeful for her friend and nearly at ease a
mongst the revelry. When Toki sang she watched, but Sidroc saw, despite the sweetness of his cousin’s song, the hardness in her eyes. When Aki got up and began tossing and catching three rings of brass, then wooden sticks, and then three bronze cups, she laughed with all the others at his skill. He had not heard such laughter from her.
They spoke together as well, more than they had at other meals. From their first words together she had listened with care, perhaps because his accents were not her own. This night his words and manner to her seemed less wrong to him, more true to how he wanted to sound. It might be just how her beauty affected him. With the women he had lain with, there had been no courting. The pretty whore in Ribe had not needed courting, only silver. The others he had known carnally back in Jutland had been due to drink, or here in Angle-land, desperation. Now she was come, a creature high-born, of another and unknown country. And he already fully expected her to be his.
In the morning the door to the treasure opened early. Yrling came out in the dimness, called his closest men to him, and set out on horseback to the valley of horses. There was no need for such a ride, Sidroc felt, other than his uncle’s need to clear his head after both feast and hand-fast night. The ribbing and grins Yrling was the target of he shook off with a knowing grin of his own. But Sidroc was glad for the early air, the strength of his horse beneath him, the view of the Sun first paling, then staining the sky orange and yellow as it lifted above the dark trees.
When they returned and gathered to break their fast Ælfwyn and the shield-maiden came down from their upstairs chamber. Both were smiling. The new Lady of Four Stones went to her husband’s side, and her friend came to him. Toki shot a look at him, one Sidroc refused to acknowledge. But his first words to the shield-maiden were of it.
“You make Toki jealous. He thinks you should sit one meal with me and one with him.”
It made her pause. He had meant it lightly, but her answer was solemn in its questioning. “Yesterday when I said you did not fear Toki’s anger you laughed. Was I wrong in saying this?”
“I do not fear Toki, though many men do,” he told her.
The next she said with the same seriousness. “No, you do not fear him, for you are a better man than he.”
It was his turn to pause. “You think I am a better man than Toki?”
Her words were decided, almost warm. “Yes, I do, for you try to shame us less in your words and looks, and so you act more honourably to both my Lady and to Yrling.” After a moment she went on. “And it is clear that Yrling listens well to your words.”
He was smiling at her; he could not help but do so. She smiled back, and so spurred, went on.
“And I think you are also a better warrior than Toki, for the scar you bear must be from a great battle.”
His chin dropped so suddenly that she gave a little gasp. He raised his head and looked at her, aware in a way that he had not been for some time of the deep rive marring his left cheek from eye to chin.
“The scar I bear is from Toki, and he gave it to me when we were but boys.”
She struggled for answer. “Perhaps he was jealous of you even then,” she offered.
He gave a snort. “I think not,” he said.
Her hand was about the cup she drank from, and now she took a sip, her eyes looking into its silvery depths. She was abashed, uncertain; he knew this.
He kept looking at her, considering her words. She saw the scar, but saw more than that.
“It is good that you think I am the better warrior, for I am,” he told her. It was said without boast.
She turned to him, a smile once again playing about her lips.
He must name her again, make of his name for her the gift he meant it to be.
“You are a true shield-maiden. You do not turn from a scar on a man’s face.”
She met his eyes, and more than fully. A child’s gravity was in her answer, that, and a woman’s resolve.
“My father was an ealdorman, and his brother ealdorman after him. He taught me that a scar is the badge of honour of the warrior, and this I believe.”
She did not stop looking at him. He saw her, and saw behind her, to her sire and kin. He could not but praise them, in his admiration of she who had spoken thus.
“I think I am glad we did not face your father and his brother in battle,” he told her, “for they were of better stuff than what we have found here.”
Chapter the Thirtieth: The Beech
SIDROC was, next morning, at the forge fire of the weapon-smith. He had wanted two throwing-spear points hammered up; the wooden shafts he had smoothed himself were in his hand. He was now ending his jesting talk with the Dane into whose keeping he passed them. The smith had a name, but all called him by Weland, after the weapon-smith of the Gods. Sidroc still wore his smile when he turned from the heat of the forge to see the shield-maiden enter the forecourt from the hall door. She was clad in her gown of russet brown, and walked towards the kitchen yard, intent on some errand.
It would have been quicker, more direct to go through the passage-way inside the hall; he knew this. Had she avoided the dim passage because some one of his brothers loitered there, one who she must walk past? None would try to touch her, he knew that; but what they might mutter, the way they might leer would be enough to make her choose to leave hall and men and walk out under the open sky.
She moved with purpose, head up, the wooden clogs protecting the thin and fine leather of her shoes no impediment. At times she lifted the hem of her gown with her hands, to avoid soiling the wool where mud might be thrown up by her footfall. About her waist she once again had tied her sash, the one with the thread-work of flying birds stitched into it. Today he saw she had something else tied there. A seax, the angle-bladed knife of the Saxons, hung there, encased in a brown leathern sheath, tied at her waist. He had not seen it before. It was large, too large for a woman to wear, though women often bore knives for everyday tasks they must meet. It must be her dead kinsman’s, the noble uncle she had spoken of last night, or even her father’s. And she wore it now, felt need to wear it, here as she walked alone through the yards busy with his brethren.
She had armed herself. Well, the shield-maidens carried spears. Now this young one of their ilk passed him, not seeming to see where he stood and watched. The gown was just snug enough about her breasts to express the roundness beneath; the sash at waist wrapped firmly enough so that hips and rump bloomed beneath that slender middle.
His eyes were fastened on her as she moved away. He stood watching, yet part of him moved with her, was there by her side, no longer his but hers.
It was a sensation never felt before, one of many welling up within his breast, and filling his brain.
It felt a kind of weakness. Weakness and fear had once been paired in his mind; through battle he had seen they need not be. He had felt fear before each battle, grappled with it, understood it well. Fear could walk, and strongly, with courage, be propelled along and transformed by courage. Fear was no enemy; he had harnessed it many times, used it to make him more alert, to heighten his senses, make him cherish his own life the more so he fought the better.
Weakness was utterly different. It could freeze a man, blind him to his options, bind him to a Fate he could not work. It was this he felt, but a curious weakness that despite its peril did not lead him to fear.
Watching her move away, he knew it fully. It was the deep and striking knowledge, painful in the chest to admit, that he had already given something to this one, something already in her keeping, which he could never reclaim.
She had vanished round the corner of one of the many store houses. He swung his head away, needing a broader view, a deeper aspect for his eyes.
He thought of where he would sleep when he had wed her. The hall at night was given over to a barracks of men, lying on straw-woven pallets which at dawn were collected and stacked in the alcoves running along the walls. Jari was clearing a plot of land out by the lon
ghouse guarding the valley of horses, in readiness for when the maid he had left behind could be brought over. Jari was building a house for her too, of timber, helped along by a few men there doing the same. But Sidroc was in direct service to Yrling; he must be near him day and night. And the shield-maiden was the same; she in her way was in service to the Lady of Four Stones, who would want and need her near. His thoughts flickered upwards to the rooms at the top of the wooden steps. The larger of them had already been made their weaving and spinning room, and the other two rooms could scarce hold a bed for the maid, let alone one as tall as he.
But the yards themselves held space. The precincts of Four Stones behind the enclosing palisade were large. He could build a small house here, he saw. The animal pens and fowl houses sat to one side of the kitchen yard. To the other, where his eyes now rested, was a plot with a few fruit trees and berry vines. Grasses grew there, and the yard cows wandered in its untended herbage. A house there would place them outside the noise and bustle of both hall and yard, yet be close at hand to Yrling and his wife.
He saw in his mind’s eye the house he would build, upright timber, gable-roofed, generous door, a fire-pit large enough for real warmth in Winter’s snow. And he saw himself entering through the door with her, for the first time…
He shifted his eyes from the scraggly apple tress to the pale blue sky. His hand lifted to his hair and he ran his fingers through it, combing his thoughts, clearing them. He must tell Yrling, and soon, that he wanted this one. All the men looked at the shield-maiden, and she could not long remain unwed. Others in his uncle’s favour might ask, even Asberg. It was the pressure of primacy he was aware of now, crowding his breast. Yrling must know.
He could not speak to his uncle until late in the day. He had seen the treasure room door close upon him and his new wife in mid-day; Yrling was taking full measure of the beauty of his bride. Toki had seen them too, and for his cousin’s sake had thrown back his head in a stifled hoot of laughter.
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