Dark Under the Cover of Night

by Jayne Castel

  For a moment, Raedwyn could not breathe. Luckily, the powdered snow had broken her fall. Gasping for breath, Raedwyn rolled onto her back and wiped the snow off her face. Blackberry stood nearby, watching her reproachfully. Raedwyn was relieved to see the horse was not favoring a foot. Such a stumble could have broken Blackberry’s leg. Berating herself, Raedwyn attempted to get to her feet, only to gasp in pain and sink back down onto her haunches. She had twisted her ankle badly, despite the fur ankle boots she wore.

  “Raedwyn the Stupid,” she muttered as she reached down and gingerly touched her ankle. It felt hot, although she was able to move it a little. Raedwyn hissed through her teeth when she flexed it too far. She hoped it was just a bad sprain, and not broken.

  Raedwyn finally managed to get to her feet by rolling onto her knees and using her good ankle to lever herself up. She hopped over to where Blackberry still stood, eyeing her patiently. Raedwyn reached out and stroked the velvety muzzle.

  “You’re a loyal one, aren’t you?” She ruffled the horse’s fluffy forelock and looked into its kind eyes. “That was my fault, not yours.”

  She tried to mount but the pain in her ankle was excruciating. After clinging to Blackberry’s furry neck until the pain subsided, Raedwyn limped back the way they had come, using her horse as a crutch. As if sensing her rider needed assistance, the mare plodded sedately alongside Raedwyn, allowing Raedwyn to clutch onto her mane to keep her balance. Raedwyn had ridden quite a distance from Rendlaesham and her progress back was slow. It was bitterly cold and soon Raedwyn’s fingers and toes were numb. The air stung her lungs as she breathed.

  She was still some way from Rendlaesham when it began to snow. One moment the sky had been clear; the next, a soft white shroud settled around Raedwyn, obliterating her surroundings. The snow fell silently, gently, but its innocuous appearance did not deceive Raedwyn. She knew how quickly someone could die in a blizzard. Almost immediately, she lost her sense of direction. The snow covered the tracks she had made earlier and she could not see more than a yard in front of her. Certain that Rendlaesham must be ahead if she continued in the same direction, Raedwyn hobbled on while the snow fell ever thicker.

  A while later, Raedwyn stopped and wiped snow from her numb face. Blackberry halted next to her. Snow frosted the mare’s mane, forelock and eyelashes. Blackberry’s thick winter coat protected her from the weather but Raedwyn could feel herself weakening. For the first time she felt a tickle of fear but she pushed it aside angrily.

  Rendlaesham must be close by. She had the disconcerting sensation she was hobbling round in circles with the town just out of reach. She cursed her poor sense of direction. Memories of getting lost in the forest after her escape from Ceolwulf’s encampment flooded back – a deranged bat could navigate better than her!

  Deciding that her current path was not leading her home, Raedwyn turned Blackberry left and they continued their sluggish journey.

  Time passed slowly in a silent, white world and Raedwyn could feel tears of panic pricking at her burning eyelids when the figure of a man appeared in the distance. He materialized like a shade from a cloud of swirling snowflakes. He was shabbily, if warmly, dressed and dragging an enormous basket of firewood. A fur-lined hood was pulled up over his head and it was only when he was close by that Raedwyn recognized him.

  She abruptly brought Blackberry to a slithering halt.

  Caelin stopped a few feet from her and pushed his hood back, looking upon her with surprise.

  “Raedwyn?”

  When she did not reply he came closer, frowning in concern. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I went out for a ride, fell off, hurt my ankle and now I’m lost,” Raedwyn replied stonily, hating herself with a passion at that moment.

  Raedwyn looked into Caelin’s face and saw he looked considerably healthier than the last time she had spoken to him. She had not sought his company after their conversation in his sickroom. After his first, relatively slow, period of convalescence, Caelin’s body had healed itself quickly. As soon as he had been able to walk, Raedwald had set him to work. Raedwyn had rarely glimpsed Caelin inside the Great Hall after that, for Raedwald grew vile tempered whenever Ceolwulf’s son crossed his path. A theow could own property, such as a cow or a couple of sheep and had some rights, but the king gave Caelin nothing. He spent his days doing the chores everyone else despised: shoveling muck, cleaning privies, collecting wood, washing clothes, dying wool and tanning leather. They fed him the leftover food that was usually thrown to the dogs and he slept with the horses in the stables.

  Despite his ragged, dirty appearance, Caelin’s face had filled out and lost the haggardness of near death. Still, his eyes were tired and haunted.

  “What are you doing out in this weather?” she asked, immediately regretting asking such a foolish question – as he was towing a bag of firewood behind him it was obvious what he had been doing.

  “There isn’t enough wood for the Yule bonfire,” Caelin explained, “so I’ve been sent to collect some pine cones and oak branches.”

  “In a blizzard?” Raedwyn arched an eyebrow.

  “Well they don’t want to make things too easy for me do they?” Caelin replied, and Raedwyn saw a glimmer of his wry sense of humor return for an instant.

  “Come,” Caelin said, stroking Blackberry’s neck. “We’ll both freeze if we stay out here much longer. Let me help you up into the saddle.”

  He cupped his hands under Raedwyn’s knee and boosted her up onto Blackberry’s back. When she had mounted, Caelin took hold of the mare’s reins and turned her left.

  “How far are we from Rendlaesham?” Raedwyn asked.

  “We’re closer than you’d think,” Caelin replied. “Your father’s hall lies just through that copse of trees and over the next rise.”

  “But your firewood?”

  “I’ll come back for it,” Caelin answered, unbothered by the basket he was leaving behind, “I think your father would judge your safety more important that a load of dead wood.”

  Raedwyn’s response was out before she could censor it. “I don’t know about that. I think he might prefer it if I were dead.”

  Caelin turned to her frowning. “Why would you say such a thing?”

  Raedwyn stared at him, wishing she had not spoken, but knowing that, now the words were out she would have to tell him the truth.

  “Ceolwulf and Hengist both told my father that I offered myself to your father, and that you and his men all took great sport with me.”

  Caelin’s face darkened further. “What?”

  “You were not the only survivor – Hengist also lived and tried to escape the battle before they caught him. After he called me a lying slut in front of my family, my father slew him.”

  “You told them it was a lie?”

  Raedwyn nodded. “Most of my kin believed me, except for my father. Since that moment, he no longer bothers himself with me.” Although Raedwyn tried to keep her voice matter-of-fact, she felt tears sting her eyes at her admission.

  Caelin shut his eyes for a moment and rested his forehead against Blackberry’s neck.

  “I can go to him,” he said finally. “I can tell him you were not touched.”

  “It will make no difference,” Raedwyn replied, panic rising inside her, “and my father will believe I have seduced you into defending me. He will only think worse of us both and you’ll be whipped. It’s better to let it lie.”

  Caelin straightened up and his eyes met Raedwyn’s for a moment. He opened his mouth as if to argue with her, but then thought better of it. His shoulders rigid, he turned and led Blackberry through a thick copse of young skeleton oaks. They emerged the far side and climbed up an incline. The snow was falling so heavily now, they could hardly see a yard ahead. They struggled down a slope and suddenly squat wattle and daub huts appeared. They had reached the outskirts of Rendlaesham.

  Raedwyn’s face burned with embarrassment at how close she had been to
home – she had indeed been riding around in circles.

  There was no one about as they trudged through the settlement towards the Great Hall. The townsfolk were all safely indoors now, sheltering from the blizzard. Wood smoke and the smell of roasting mutton tinged the gelid air. A tall wooden fence ringed Raedwald’s hall and the stables below it. Two sentries, huddled within heavy cloaks, guarded the gate. They looked upon Caelin with hostility as he led Blackberry past. Only Raedwyn’s challenging stare prevented the guards from blocking their path.

  The stable yard was deserted. Caelin led Blackberry into one of the stables reserved for the royal family’s horses and helped Raedwyn dismount. Raedwyn’s teeth were chattering and her ankle was now a dull throb.

  “I should get back to the hall,” she said between clenched jaws. “Mother will be worrying.”

  Caelin took off his cloak and wrapped it around Raedwyn’s shoulders. Then he helped her over to a pile of clean straw so she could sit down.

  “I will take you up,” he said, turning from her to where Blackberry stood looking dejected, “as soon as I see to your horse.”

  Raedwyn watched as Caelin removed Blackberry’s saddle and bridle before he rubbed the mare down with a twist of hay. Caelin worked with the ease of someone reared around horses, although when he lifted off the saddle, Raedwyn saw him wince.

  “You are not yet healed,” Raedwyn observed.

  “I’m well enough,” Caelin replied. “Time will take care of the rest.”

  Caelin fed and watered Blackberry before going to Raedwyn and kneeling down before her.

  “How is that ankle of yours faring?”

  Raedwyn grimaced. “I should go, Caelin.”

  “Let’s take a look at it,” Caelin ignored her protest, gently took hold of her ankle and rested her foot on his knee. He then outbound the leather lacing which bound the fur boot to her foot and ankle before removing the boot itself.

  “It’s very swollen.” His cool finger tips softly traced the line of her ankle and prodded around the bone. “But I think it is not broken, just bruised.”

  He looked up at her and Raedwyn felt a lump settle into the back of her throat. His face was impassive, almost cold, but his eyes were not. He was so close, all she had to do was reach out and touch him.

  The moment shattered as the stable door crashed open, bringing with it a gust of icy, snow-laced wind. Raedwyn brought her hand up to shield her face from the flurry, but saw, too late, the unmistakable outline of her father’s tall, broad shouldered frame filling the doorway. With him, was one of the sentries they had passed at the gate.

  Raedwyn knew that it looked incriminating – her sitting on the straw, wrapped in Caelin’s cloak while he knelt before her, holding her bare ankle. There was an intimacy in their manner that implicated them both. Caelin went very still as he returned Raedwald’s stare, a dangerous and unwise thing for a slave to do.

  “Fæder,” Raedwyn managed finally, feeling her father’s glare shift to her. “I fell off my horse while riding and got lost in the snow. Caelin found me and brought me home.”

  Even to her ears, the words sounded trite. They may have been the truth but her father, it seemed, was ever ready to think the worst of her.

  Raedwald’s face darkened. “Caelin?” he spat out the name as if it were something foul. “He lost the right to a name when he became my slave – yet you use it easily as if it were familiar to you.”

  This was the sign Raedwald had been waiting for; the proof his daughter had made herself his enemy’s whore.

  Anger erupted within Raedwyn. She pushed Caelin aside and stood up, ignoring the pain that lanced up her leg from her injured ankle.

  “Why father?” Her voice lashed across the stable, causing Blackberry to start nervously. “I have never given you cause to think me a slut! All you have is the words of two men who hated you, who sought to wound you. Have you ever asked Caelin what happened while I was Ceolwulf’s captive? Perhaps you should! I am innocent of all you accuse me of!”

  “Silence!” Raedwald roared. His face was florid and Raedwyn realized he had been drinking. He towered over Raedwyn menacingly and, for a moment, she was afraid he would hit her. Instead, he turned to Caelin, who had risen to his feet and was observing the altercation between father and daughter.

  “Dog! Don’t you dare look in my daughter’s direction again! The next time you touch her, I will cut off your fingers and feed them to you!”

  “Your daughter is innocent,” Caelin replied, ignoring the king’s threats. “Not I, nor my father, nor any of his men took sport with her.”

  Raedwald’s fist shot out and hit Caelin in the mouth.

  Caelin had not expected the king to strike him. Caught off-guard, he staggered backwards and fell against the wall. He slumped forward as blood gushed from his mouth.

  Raedwyn watched her father approach his slave, towering over him so that when Caelin looked up, wiping the blood off his chin, the King of the East Angles filled his vision.

  “Your death will be long and painful if you ever defy me again slave,” he warned, his voice soft. “One who has lost all honor does not have the right to speak either to me or any member of my family. If you wish to survive you must be as invisible as a wraith and slink around like the cur you are.”

  Caelin looked up at the king and held his gaze defiantly.

  “You do not want to test me slave,” Raedwald said finally. “For I do not make threats lightly.”

  Then, letting his words hang in the chilled air, Raedwald turned and left the stable – dragging Raedwyn after him.

  ***

  Alone in the stable, Caelin climbed to his feet and checked to see if the king had broken any of his teeth. The inside of his upper lip had split open; smashed against his teeth by Raedwald’s fist. One of his top teeth was loose but he had suffered no further injury.

  Caelin mopped up the last of the blood and, with a suddenness, which caused Blackberry to start for the second time, smashed his fist against the wall. Wood splintered but even the pain that lanced through his fist did not lessen the stomach clenching rage which consumed him. It was his first strong emotion since he had awoken to find himself Raedwald’s captive.

  His anger had been long suppressed. He had tried to ignore the part of him that ‘felt’; the part of him that wanted freedom and would not accept this was this fate. However, it would not be ignored. He would have to leave this place, or he would die before the next winter. He could not be subservient. It was not in him to grovel at another man’s feet.

  Raedwald was vastly different to the man Caelin remembered from all those years ago. Then, Raedwald had been loud, good-natured and, although severe when crossed, he had always been fair. That man was gone. It would not be long before Raedwald lashed out again – and next time Caelin would hit back. After that it would be finished for him.

  Caelin went outside and picked up a handful of clean snow, pressing it against his swollen mouth. A few servants moved by in the shadows, struggling through the ever-deepening snow with heavy baskets and buckets. All of them ignored Caelin. It was as if he were a ghost here. Caelin watched them trudge by, huddled within their furs, and realized the fact that everyone disregarded him here might prove advantageous one day.

  He would wait out the winter, until the spring had begun to settle into early summer and then he would make his escape. Even if he died trying it would be preferable to this half-life.

  Caelin thought of Raedwyn then. It was not deliberate, for an image of her came to his mind unbidden. Nonetheless, he did not like to dwell too long on Raedwyn. When she was in his presence she overwhelmed his senses, which was dangerous. She brought out a protective, fool-hardy streak in him which could easily get him killed.

  Pushing away thoughts of Raedwyn, he re-entered the stable and retrieved his cloak. Caelin then wrapped the cloak around his shoulders and pulled up his hood, before making his way back out into the snow.

  He had a baske
t of sticks to retrieve before nightfall.

  Chapter Eleven

 

  “I don’t want you going near that piece of maggot ridden dog spawn!” King Raedwald of the East Angles roared out across the hall, causing his daughter who stood before him to cringe as if he had slapped her. “He and his kin are nithing, without honor and accursed. Have you not shamed your family enough without disgracing yourself further?”

  “Why won’t you believe me father?” Tears streamed down Raedwyn’s face as she stood shivering before the king.

  Father and daughter had a considerable audience. Seaxwyn sat upon the raised dais, reserved for the king and queen, embroidering. Eorpwald sat at one of the long tables nearby, where he had been playing knucklebones with his cousin, Annan. Eni had been drinking with some of the king’s thegns, emptying mead from a huge barrel into clay mugs. Servants were roasting a deer over the fire pit, boiling vegetables and baking bread on a griddle. Despite the Great Hall’s cavernous interior and high gabled roof, the air was close and rank with the smell of too many people cooped up together in an enclosed space – a smell not even the cloying smoke and appetizing aroma of roasting venison could mask.

  Seaxwyn had gone pale and put down her embroidery when her husband had entered, dragging a disheveled and limping Raedwyn behind him.

  “Raedwald?” Seaxwyn stood up and stepped down off the dais, coming to Raedwyn’s side. She gathered her daughter’s sobbing form in her arms. “What have you done to her?”

  “What have I done to her?” Raedwald roared as if his wife stood on the other-side of Rendlaesham rather than two feet from him. “She had the stupidity to go out riding in a snow-storm and fell off her horse. Then this slut enlisted the help of the Exiled’s whelp to bring her back to Rendlaesham. I found them alone together in the stables.”

  Raedwald let the incriminating words hang in the air while the others gaped at Raedwyn as if she had been caught cavorting naked on the snow with the king’s theow.

  Swallowing her sobs, Raedwyn straightened up and pushed her hair off her face.

  “You know it was innocent! You know I am blameless! He was only making sure my ankle was not broken. It’s only you father that makes it sound sordid. It’s only you who twists things to seem foul and wrong!”