by Katy Moran
So this Londinium is not the home of Wulf and Anwen? I thought. Where am I to be taken?
Leading me back into the gloom of the hall, Anwen took me to a row of wooden kists lined up against the wall and dug around inside one, saying, “Cenry grows so fast, I’m sure these are too small for him even since we left Repedune.”
She gave me a tunic of rough wool, nothing like the soft stuff we have at home. Bright red it is, with woven strips around the collar and the cuffs.
“Here, take these as well; Cenry shan’t miss them.” Anwen handed me another tunic, this one of pale linen, with longer sleeves, and a pair of leggings. She even found a pair of boots worked out of sheep’s hide. They bind tight around my legs up to the knee.
Sitting here in the darkness, I wonder what this Cenry is like and how pleased he shall be that I wear his clothes. Anwen took my rags to burn, and watching her walk away with them I felt my final link to home was about to be blown up to the high thatch with the rest of the smoke in this hall, for those rags were once the blue tunic of soft wool my mother wove for me out in the courtyard when Tecca was sickening, lying there in her little bed, watching the fountain, listening to the loom-weights clink together as Ma made cloth for me.
Anwen laid a blanket and a sheep’s hide on the floor for me – they do not have chambers here, or even beds, which seems a cruel trick of fate after my months at sea. But at least there is no way of being locked up. They all sleep here in this one hall, from the highest to the most low. I do not know yet where I fall in the order of things. Anwen bade me rest, but I cannot sleep, lying here in this shadowy place, listening to the low murmuring of voices from by the fire, and the floorboards creaking as unknown folk move about.
I am alone.
Thorn
SOMEONE comes – maybe it’s this Cenry whose clothes I wear. But it’s a girl: a girl in a long, woollen robe held up at the shoulders with a pair of coppery brooches, with a linen dress underneath. Her hair hangs in twisty curls over her shoulders, and there’s a slanted, wicked look to her eyes that makes me sit up.
Oho, my dear, and who are you?
“So,” she says – in proper Anglish that I can understand – “another hostage. I’ve heard a lot of pretty tales about you, and I shouldn’t wonder they’re all lies. A Northumbrian child from across the sea in Constantinople? Could you not have thought of a better tale than that, my friend?”
I raise my eyes and look at the girl. Her face is alive with merriment. I’m glad she finds the tale amusing, because I do not.
“Still nothing to say?” she goes on. “I wonder what you’re hiding and who you really are. Well, it’s no matter. Our tasks don’t go away. Do you come with me – whoever you may be.” She pauses. “I am called Thorn.”
It suits her: she is sharp and lovely; and I wonder why she was given such a sorrowful name. I do not offer her mine, though. I cannot.
I sit there long enough to let this Thorn know that I come of my own mind, and not because she ordered it, and then I follow her. She is taller than me by a finger’s width – she must be a summer or so older; I’m long-legged for my age. The hum of voices in the hall has grown much louder and torches have been lit, flaming in iron stands screwed into the walls.
We walk past long tables where men and women sit, talking and laughing, and the smell of charring meat hangs in the air. How long has it been since I ate meat? Who are all these folk?
Tasik once told me that when Constans gave feasts at the Great Palace it was only for the men, with all the women in another chamber, curtained off and hidden. It’s not like here, where they all mix together, and the women talk just as loud as the men, and do not sit around looking meek and fair as they are meant to do at home. Although I do recall Ma telling me that when the Empress Fausta held court in her own quarters of the Great Palace, the women were drunker and more riotous than the men, or at least her headache the next morning was worse than Tasik’s.
Thorn takes me to the far end of the hall, which is alive with flickering shadows cast by a great fire and bustling with women carrying pots and platters. Three long spits rammed with the carcasses of birds are licked by flames and I watch, dumb, as a pair of girls a few years older than Thorn lift the spits from the fire and slide the fowl off onto wooden platters with strange, twisting patterns carved about their edges.
“Here, Aidith,” Thorn says, dragging me to a woman with thin grey braids wound all about her head, “this is Cai. He’s to help like me and Cenry do.”
So she does know my name. Word spreads fast in this wooden shack.
The woman turns and looks at me steadily. She has a roundish, high-coloured face and her eyes are quick. I feel as though she can see all my secrets. “And where did you come from, child?” Aidith hands Thorn a steaming bowl of greens. “Take these, my girl – set them down at the far end first. Come back for more when you’re done, and tell that foster-brother of yours to hurry.”
“He doesn’t speak,” Thorn tells her. “And Cenry’s gone down to the butts to shoot his daft arrows, so you may whistle for him.”
Aidith laughs. “Imp of a wretch. Here, take this.” She hands me a bowl of greens – it warms my hands, but I think I shall always feel cold while I’m on this island. “Well,” she says to me, “you don’t talk, then? Why?”
I shrug.
Thorn is staring. “It’s no use,” she says. “He’s not said a word.”
But Aidith just pats her on the shoulder, shoving her lightly towards the table. “Go on with your work, child, and don’t be bothering me.”
Thorn sighs, rolling her eyes, and marches off with her bowl.
Aidith watches her go, then turns to me. “She’s trouble, that young girl: if you’ll hear my counsel, be wary of her. Folk need not be sick in their bodies to be ailing sore, Cai. It’s your soul that’s wounded, child, and so I shall tell my lady Anwen.”
Is my soul wounded? How should this Aidith know if it were – is she some kind of witch-woman, like Sia? I want to ask her but my throat is still dry, twisted with sorrow.
She need not have warned me away from Thorn, though, for it takes one to know one, and I can spy another bad apple from more than thirty paces.
I think I will enjoy her company.
WE HAVE been riding two days now. It’s a long time since I was in the saddle, and my legs do ache like fury. This nag I ride hates my guts. As if to mock my hunger, she dips her head and starts dragging tufts of long grass from the wayside. I jerk the reins but she just stops dead where she is. I jerk them once more; my face grows hot with shame. I wish Tasik were here, or even Elfla. They should know what to do. We used to laugh at him and Elflight, Tecca and I, because they both said beasts spoke to them, but Tasik and Elfla had a better way with horses than anyone I know.
I would rather die than sit with the lady Anwen in that cart that bumps and jolts along the high, ridged track. She is with child, Thorn says, and that’s why she does not ride; yet I’m sure that tearing along these roads is like to shake a brat from the womb in a hair’s breadth. In places where the drifts of hard mud thin out I can make out flat paving slabs, and I wonder who built these roads and why they have been left to swim in muck like this.
Cenry rides up alongside me. He’s the one who led me in when I came with the chief. It’s his clothes I’m wearing. Dark, floppy hair hangs in his eyes, and his face is all over freckles. He looks just like the Devil’s Cub, only smaller. “By the time this moon dies, passage north’ll be finished for winter,” he says. “I’m glad to be going home. There’s nothing to do in Londonwick. At home there’s shooting, and hunting, and the river. It’s good. Do you know how to catch a trout?”
I nod, shrugging. I wish he’d just leave me alone. I have not forgot the way Cenry looked at me when the chief and I came to Wulf’s hall. He talks to me now only because Thorn will not. I wonder what he has done to offend her, for the last few days she has looked through him each time their paths have crossed as though he’s wrou
ght of nothing but air.
“Why don’t you ever eat or speak?” Cenry says, twitching the reins lightly as he draws closer. “You’ve got my mother all riled; she thinks you’ll starve to death.”
What would he say, this Anglish boy who thinks of nothing but catching fish and hunting, if I told him? I no longer eat because I wish my body and my spirit to drift apart. I wish to slip between the worlds, to bring back my sister, to find my own family. There must be a way. I am the Ghost: I can run and leap without being seen. I travel across the worlds. If anyone can do it, I shall.
He grins. Like his father’s, Cenry’s face is ever alight with laughter. “You shan’t tell me anything, will you? Here, not like that, she kens you’re vexed. You wouldn’t move, would you, if someone dragged at you like that? She’s but hungry.”
Cenry is right about that. Do the horse-kind feel the indignity of their slavery, as I did on that boat?
“Look, speak to her,” Cenry says. “Talk to a horse with respect and she’ll not fail you.”
He sounds like Tasik: that’s just what he used to say. The words rise up in my mouth like vomit – It is my fault he is dead – but I cannot choke them out. They are just a little handful of words, but they block the rest like old leaves in a storm-gutter. I lean forward in the saddle – God’s wounds, my legs do burn with the strain of sitting here! – and I pat the nag on the neck, feeling the silky bristliness of her coat all rough against my palm. She is grey like the sky glowering above us, grey like the inside of a mussel-shell. I think of Demosthenes in his stable with Helen and Paris, and the way he spoke to Helen as though she were a woman he loved out of all reason.
Come on, darling, I think. Enough of this grass for now. I swear you’ll be fed later, so what’s the worry?
I wonder what happened to Demos. I hope no one found him out for fixing those races, and that the mob of Constantinople did not tear him to pieces for spoiling their fun.
Cenry rides on, grinning. I’ll show him. I stroke the nag’s neck again, running my fingers through her wiry mane, tweaking the reins just a little touch. And, shaking the last strand of grass from her lips, she snorts and walks on. I have done it!
Cenry laughs when I catch up to him. “Her name’s Maelan,” he says, “and she’s my mother’s. She must have taken to you, silent little slave boy, though for the life of me I don’t know why.”
He seems not to mind that I don’t reply.
So the nag’s called Maelan, like a queen out of one of those old stories. It suits the beast – she is proud and wilful as I suppose queens must be. It was kind of Anwen to give me her horse; I did not know she’d done it. It was also foolish of her, for this night or the next I am going to steal her darling horse and ride away from these Mercian folk.
I’ll be bound to no man; slave or hostage: it’s all the same.
We stop in the gloaming when the light fades and the sky deepens into a haze of dark blue, as though someone has drawn a great sweeping cloth above the earth. The Devil’s Cub is cheerful as ever, shouting at folk to be quick that we might get the fire lit and the ale poured. The ground is treacherous here: thin, pale grass stands high, but everywhere there are boggy pools filled with rust-coloured water.
“Do not let the marsh-wights have you, Thorn, my dear.” Wulf pats her on the head as he passes, but all she does is frown.
“Indeed not, my lord,” she says, and her voice is cold and glittery like the skin of a fish newly caught. What has riled her, I wonder? She’s been like this since we left Londinium. She marches past Wulf to help Anwen down from her cart, which is left in the road. I can see why – if it gets stuck in this fenny mess the lady shall be walking the rest of the way, with child or no.
“The ground’s truer over here, Da,” Cenry calls, and so we shift ourselves to where he’s standing, a little clearing in a clutch of crabbed-up hawthorn trees.
I follow Cenry and the other men over to the hawthorns and loop Maelan’s reins around a tree-trunk, just as they’re doing.
“Here, have this.” Cenry helps me lift the saddle off Maelan’s back, and we hang it over a branch. I take the handful of woollen rags he gives me and watch as he and the others start rubbing down their mounts, talking softly to them, whispering all soft and gentle into their ears. They’re all in love with their horse-kind, these folk.
Wulf lays out a couple of greyish-brown sheepskins and Anwen sits herself down, calling to Thorn, “Come share the blanket with me, darling, and you shall help me brew the pot. You too, Cai, for you’re such a skinny thing I wonder you don’t blow away on the wind.”
I sit by her, and gladly, too, patting Maelan’s neck one last time as she dips her head into the nosebag. Thorn is silent still, her mouth set in a hard line, but she sits down with Anwen anyway, fiddling with the neck of a leather water-sack. Cenry and one of the men take dry sticks from a saddlebag and hammer away at an iron strike-a-light till there’s a blaze – though I know not how a fire’s to last in the midst of all this damp. The Devil’s Cub strode off with the one they call Garric, the smith, and his brother Hlafy who Cenry says is a ranger. I know not what a ranger is – Cenry said it means Hlafy is Wulf’s spare pair of eyes, and he goes where Wulf cannot to make sure all’s well in the kingdom of Mercia. Maybe Hlafy is a spy like Tasik was, out in the desert with the Arabs. Anyhow, they’re back now with an old log and armfuls of greenish branches which look as though they’ll smoke the eyes out of our skulls. The Devil’s Cub is cursing merrily about his soaking feet.
I do not feel like a prisoner as I sit here, the westering sun gone now, and a cow-shank left over from the feast bubbling away in the lady Anwen’s stew-pot. The fire burns low and throws out great armfuls of heat, so the skin on my face grows tight and hot even though my back’s cold. Wulf’s man Garric is telling the tale of some errant god who drank the ground-up bones of a goat-lord, and everyone’s laughing and leaning in, waiting for him to round the next corner of the tale. A flask of honey-wine goes about, and when I get it, it burns a fiery path down my throat.
Drink your fill, my fine friends, I think. Drink your fill and sleep nice and sound.
Cenry sits by his father, leaning against him as if he hardly sees him, as if he is but a tree-trunk or a wall. The Devil’s Cub rests his arm around Cenry’s shoulders, and it hurts in my gut to watch them.
I have no place here. These folk are not my kin. I am but a gaming-piece the Devil’s Cub thinks he now owns. He is mistook.
I THINK they are all sleeping now. The fire is banked down with damp sods cut from the earth, just a dark lump now, cross-hatched with glowing cracks. It’s a clear night and there’s a good moon, nearly full. I shall have a few nights’ grace before she dies and the skies are dark. It’s strange how the stars here are the same as at home – I can see the Pleiades and, off near the horizon, the spare scribble of Cassiopeia in her lonely corner of the night. Webs of cloud drift quiet and peaceful, painted silver by the moon. I hear slow, steady breathing as they all sleep. Someone mutters and I freeze, sitting up with my blanket wrapped about my shoulders. But the words make no sense; they are just talking in their dreams, whoever it is. My guts clench and cramp again and I have to close my teeth tight together. It will be worth it, not eating, when I can talk with Tecca once more.
If I do not do this now, I never shall. I cannot let myself think on the marsh-wights and the shadows drifting across this endless bog. Moving swift and silent, I stand, gathering my blankets about me. Quick, quick, I step around the campfire and the humped, sleeping figures. There’s Cenry, curled up with his back to the fire. And there’s Garric, snoring softly. Farewell, farewell.
This is going to be the worst part, but I am not going anywhere without my ring.
I have seen that Wulf wears it still on the middle finger of his right hand, above another ring. That must be the one Tasik had first, the one he swapped with the Devil’s Cub so long ago.
Wulf and my lady Anwen are lying facing the fire: two dark shapes
. Softly, softly I creep towards them – if I am caught he will cut my throat without even thinking. He lies curled around her, his arm across her chest. I thank God he is sleeping on his left-hand side, or I would not be able to reach. His hand rests on the blanket, just a finger’s width from Anwen’s face. She sleeps with her mouth slightly open, giving her a childlike look. A strand of dark hair has fallen across her cheek, and with the soft movement of her breath it rises and falls. I see my ring on Wulf’s middle finger, slotted above the one that used to be Tasik’s. This is not really thieving, for I am only taking what is already mine.
I am not sure the Devil’s Cub will share my view.
I crouch down before them and wait a moment but neither of them moves and nor does anyone else. All is quiet. Oho, I had forgot the thrill of this, the way it makes my whole body thrum.
I cannot believe I am about to do this. What is wrong with me? Why do I love these things so much?
Gently, as though comforting a sick person racked with fever, I take Wulf’s hand. His fingers curl gently around mine and squeeze softly. In his sleep, he must think my hand is Anwen’s.
I am going straight to hell the moment I die, I know I am.
In the moonlight, the two rings glitter softly against his pale skin. I cannot breathe. I close my thumb and forefinger around the topmost ring – mine… Oh, dear holy Mother of God, make it come off. The ring catches slightly around his knuckle and I can hardly bear to look – but now it’s off, and in my hand. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I let go Wulf’s hand, placing it gently on the blanket. He sighs, and Anwen stirs – oh, Jesu! But they just shift closer together and I do not think either of them woke.
I have no time.
Clutching the ring as I creep away, I tear off one of the long ties at the neck of my tunic and knot the ring to it so I can hang it around my neck once more. It was not stealing, because Tasik gave it to me. It was not stealing.