She had guessed right. His voice was unsteady, and he turned his face away. “Truly you read minds –”
“No,” she said gently. “I have been there myself. Men do battle on the field, women in the birthing chamber. When I lost my children, I was very ill, as you have been. I was sure that the miscarriage was my fault, that I had done something, or failed to do something, that had killed my children. I relived the time over and over again, trying to see how I should have known, what else I should have done. I dreaded telling my husband, for he had so much wanted a son, and I had failed him. You see – a late miscarriage – of twins especially – does much – damage – and the midwife said – there will never be another chance. I – I – I – even wished for a time that he would not come back, so I would not have to face his anger – and he – he never did – !”
She broke down. Acting on instinct, Eadwine put his arm around her and drew her to him. At first she resisted, and then suddenly she threw her arms about him and sobbed against his shoulder as if her heart was breaking.
“I am so sorry –” she gasped, after a while. “I – I – thought to give comfort, not to take it –”
“You have, in a way.” His own face was wet with tears. “At least I no longer feel I am losing my mind, if someone else has felt the same.”
“If I have helped, even a little, I am glad. Blodwen’s mother-in-law helped me, a little. But there is not much that really helps – only time – ” She sniffed, and sat up. “It does get better. A bit. Eventually. You may trust me on that.” She rubbed her eyes. “Do you – did you – have children?”
“No.”
“And you were not angry with your wife?”
“We were not married, only betrothed. That was my fault, too. But it is not, surely, something that any man would hold against his wife.”
“Do you think so? Do you think he will still want me, when he comes back?”
“If I was him, I would.”
“Will you go back for your wife – your lady?”
Eadwine had not thought of that, in all the nights his mind had been trudging its weary treadmill. Was it possible that he could rescue Aethelind from whatever had happened to her? Salvage something from the wreck? Was that too much to hope for?
“I don’t even know if she is still alive – or if she would have me now – I failed her –”
Severa brushed at her eyes again. “I would have my husband back on any terms.”
The certainty in her tone took Eadwine’s breath away. Hope flickered up like a dying fire stirred into life. Vengeance was an absolute duty but a cold one, even if it was achievable. It might satisfy honour, but it could bring him no joy. Protecting Aethelind, as he had sworn to do, was also an absolute duty, but one that might have love and life and hope at the end of it. Severa could have given him no greater gift.
Hereward strode back to Eoforwic in a black temper. He had seen plenty of the aftermath of war, but the sack of Eboracum was different.
“Animals!” he muttered to himself. “Scum! These aren’t foreigners and slaves, these are Anglian girls! Like their own wives and daughters!”
He stomped up to the looted hall, scowling. No doubt they would have to go and fight somebody for a stolen pig, and then butcher it and roast bits of it over the fire, burning their fingers and then choking on half-raw meat coated with charcoal. And then he’d have to sleep on the floor among his spearmen, who could snore for Bernicia, and if he got any sleep at all he would wake up with a crick in his neck and a stiff back. He was getting too old for this, and too bad-tempered. He banged open the door.
The hall had been tidied up, the furniture righted and the fire lit. His spearmen were ranged demurely along one of the tables, politely handing plates and cups down the line. They looked a trifle sheepish, and a lot cleaner than usual.
“Er – lord – the lady said we was to wash before dinner,” one of them ventured. He pointed to the end of the table nearest the door, which held an empty basin, a large pitcher of clean water and a towel.
“Dinner?” said Hereward vaguely, and then registered the appetising smell, the cauldron bubbling gently over the fire, the beer barrel and the large pile of freshly-baked loaves. “Oh. Right.” He washed obediently – where there was a lady of the house her word was law in domestic matters – and took the place of honour in the middle of the top table. He sniffed appreciatively. This was more like it.
Aethelind listened by the door in the family chamber until she was sure the contented chomping from the hall was well under way. Then she turned to the bed. Not her own small bed, which was neatly tucked away against the wall, but the big bed her father had shared with her mother, and then with the numerous concubines of his cheerfully squalid widowerhood. She smoothed down the clean sheets, plumped up the feather pillows, and gave the coverlet a final twitch. She hated disorder and had been itching to manage the house properly for years.
The looters had overturned her coffers and scattered the contents, but there had been more disarray than actual destruction and Aethelind had spent the afternoon setting things to rights. She lifted out her best gown, the rich deep blue one with the embroidery a foot deep around the hem, and laid it on the bed. It would have been her wedding dress, and she shed a few tears for Eadwine before pulling herself together and dabbing her eyes dry. A woman needed a man, and Hereward was strong, had his own hearth-troop, and most importantly he was here. Besides, it was a pity to waste all the embroidery. Her best under-dress had also survived, and she changed into it and smoothed it down. The very best white silk, and she could not guess how much her father had had to give the foreign merchant for it. It looked very modest and virginal, until you realised it was so fine it was almost transparent. Aethelind’s father had reckoned, with good reason, that his daughter’s face was not her only fortune. Her best jewellery was all gone, but at the bottom of the coffer she found a pair of intricate silver filigree brooches, given to her by Eadwine as a betrothal gift. She had never liked them much – her taste ran more to half a pound of gold and gemstones – but they were graceful and delicate and anyway they were all she had left. She fastened the gown at her shoulders, draping the front rather lower than usual, and tied the girdle into place so that it would accentuate her hourglass figure. The little brooches looked very pretty against the deep blue of the dress. More rummaging located the festoon of beads that went with them, beautifully-wrought beads of gleaming blue glass. The exact colour of her eyes, Eadwine had said when he gave them to her, like a midsummer sky. He was always saying things like that, and again Aethelind mourned briefly for her lost prince before fastening the festoon neatly into place. She hung the household keys from her girdle, slipped her feet into her best house shoes, and then had the happy thought of retying the girdle so that just a glimpse of well-turned ankle showed beneath the hem of her gown. She combed out her long golden hair and considered for some time whether she should adorn it with some ornament, before deciding that the pure maiden look was best and leaving it to flow free. She gave the great friendship cup a final polish – the gold one had been stolen, but she had unearthed the old carved wooden cup from a dusty coffer – and filled it with mead.
She took a deep breath, whispered a brief prayer to Frija, and turned to the door. She was ready.
Hereward gaped as the chamber door opened and a vision of loveliness stepped over the threshold. Surely he wasn’t that drunk? Anyway, he never saw visions like that when he was drunk.
The vision glided gracefully across the room, carrying a great carved wooden cup in both hands, and offered it to him.
“Good health, my lord,” she murmured.
“Er – I thank you, my lady,” Hereward mumbled, automatically.
Her fingers lingered on his as he took the cup, but she kept her eyes demurely downcast. Such a beautiful girl, so delicate, so fragile, so in need of a man. For protection, of course.
He could not take his eyes off her as she moved about the hall, carrying the
cup to each of his spearmen in turn. The men seemed equally smitten, their heads turning like sunflowers to the sun, but the girl gave none of them a second glance. Very proper. Maidenly modesty. Hereward liked to see that in a girl.
She came to stand before him, and drank from the cup herself. Her eyes met his over the rim, cornflower blue, and there was a flash of invitation in them before she dropped her gaze. Hereward shifted in his chair and wondered how he could get her to look at him again.
She set the cup on the table, and kneeled gracefully at his feet. She raised her head and gave him the full force of her cornflower blue gaze. Her hair rippled over her shoulders like threads of spun gold, framing a face that a man might die for and a long column of slender white throat.
Aethelind saw Hereward’s gaze leave her eyes and slide down the front of her gown as if on a magnet. So he had one thing in common with Eadwine. She shifted her position slightly to give him a better view.
“My lord,” she murmured, in a low voice that managed to be submissive and inviting all at once.
Hereward gulped, and his eyes came back to her face. “What’s your name, lass? Lady?”
“Aethelind, my lord,” she said softly.
“Aethelind,” repeated Hereward thickly, “that’s a lovely name –”
And Aethelind gave him the full benefit of her very best smile.
Chapter 11
“He likes that girl,” Lilla commented one evening. Eadwine was helping Severa refill her weaving shuttles, holding the hank taut for her while she wound the thread onto the shuttles. It was a monotonous task that required little concentration and did not interfere with a lively conversation.
“Good,” said Ashhere. “Seems unfair that we should have all the fun.” He caught Blodwen’s eye across the fire and winked at her. “What do they find to talk about so much though, that’s what puzzles me?”
Lilla concentrated. His Brittonic was already better than Ashhere’s. “Well, right now he’s trying to explain about the sea and what a ship is. Earlier it was what plants you use for which colours, and before that it was how do mountain hares know to turn white in winter.”
“Do they?”
“Apparently.”
Ashhere shrugged, thinking that he had managed all his life so far without that piece of information and saw no immediate need for it in the future. “Well, it keeps him happy.”
“I hope so,” Lilla said thoughtfully.
Ashhere grinned, and nudged him. “He’s cheered up a lot since you started going fishing, and he doesn’t like trout that much.”
Lilla laughed. They had all noticed that Eadwine’s spirits and health seemed to be picking up in some indefinable manner, and there had been much speculation over the reason. The leading theory, inevitably, was that he might have begun an affair with Severa, although there was so little evidence in support that even Drust was not prepared to take a bet on it.
Eadwine was aware of the speculation and chose to ignore it. What he had found in Severa was a rarer commodity, another mind. As long as he took care to keep away from anything that might betray his identity or his origins, he could raise any subject that came into his head and be sure of an intelligent response. He and Severa were from utterly different worlds, his the luxury and violence of a royal court, hers the workaday foundation on which all such luxury depended. And yet they had in common the experience of being different, of not quite fitting correctly into the spaces they were supposed to occupy, of not always thinking and feeling as they were expected to think and feel, and often that produced an echo of recognition so startling it was like a physical shock. She had given him not only pity – which he always distrusted as akin to contempt – but understanding without judgment. Although the dreams still came they were not now so overwhelming, and he was more able to think of the future. He still could not see how his obligations could be achieved, but he had begun to treat them as problems to be solved rather than disasters to be feared. Whatever the truth about Eadric’s death, he was sure that Beortred was the key to it, and even if Beortred could no longer speak there might be some clue on his dead body. It would be unfair to Beortred’s memory to share his suspicions, but there was another excuse he could use to search for the remains.
Severa wound the last shuttle and picked up her spinning, and Eadwine came to sit with his friends.
“I’ve been thinking,” he announced, and laughed as they exchanged resigned glances. “Poor Beortred. Don’t you think we owe him a decent funeral?”
“Who is this?” Severa enquired, winding the new thread around her drop spindle before setting it spinning down again.
“We had a companion, on the moors, before Ashhere found you,” he explained. “He was killed by a troll and –”
“A what?”
Eadwine realised he had used the Anglian word for troll and searched his memory for the Brittonic equivalent. There didn’t seem to be one. He tried to explain about giant human-shaped creatures made of stone, who lived in wild and rocky places and preyed on travellers.
Severa shook her glossy dark head. “None of those round here,” she said.
Drust grinned. An ally at last.
“We all heard it!” Ashhere protested, and put his hand to his new wooden hammer amulet. “And I saw it!”
Severa raised an eloquent eyebrow and spun another length of thread. The other women giggled. Ashhere sulked.
“Well,” Eadwine said hastily, “whatever it was, something killed poor Beortred while he was trying to protect us from it. The least we can do is go and search for his body and build him a funeral pyre.”
“Where did he die, Steeleye?”
“We last saw Beortred among the – the – rock outcrops –?”
“Tors. Which ones?”
“It must have been quite near where you found us, because we can’t have got far.”
“Nae distance at all,” Drust said. “Ye look like ye weigh nothing, until we have tae carry ye.”
Eadwine looked across at Severa. “Could you direct us, Severa?”
“I’ll do better than that, I’ll come with you. We can take the sheep that way tomorrow. There’s hardly anything left to do in the dairy and I’ve hardly been off this hafod all summer. A change will do me good.”
It was the first time Eadwine had been up on the moors, conscious at least, and the weather obliged with a bright clear day. It was cold first thing, so he borrowed the threadbare blanket to use as a cloak, fastening it with the brooch they had taken from the dead thieves. There had been no opportunity to replace his lost shoe, but he was accustomed now to going barefoot around the hafod so it was no great hardship. He was very pleased to find that he could manage the climb all the way up through the woods without having to stop, although he was grateful that the sheep didn’t move especially fast.
They paused a little way above the treeline, ostensibly so that he could admire the view, although he suspected that it was really a tactful excuse to allow him to rest. The view was worth admiring, though. The Derwent valley snaked away north-south, filled by woodland that was now beginning to flame with autumn colours. The trees lapped high onto the surrounding moors, fading gradually into lower vegetation to leave just the flat tops of the high ground bare of tree cover, like overturned boats half-submerged in the sea. Close at hand, the moorland vegetation was an intricate mixture of stringy grass, faded heather, low shrubs and the occasional rowan. The slanting sun lit up the rowan berries like jewels, and picked out subtle hues of gold, russet and brown. The moor formed a wide tilted shelf, and the sheep spread out over it and began quietly grazing. Only the tearing sound of masticated grass, a few bleats, the occasional bird call and the wind sighing through the grass broke the deep and tranquil quiet. It was like standing on top of the world. Eadwine took a deep breath of the fresh, peat-scented air. He had always liked high places.
All along the eastern horizon, an irregular row of boulders and tors marked the edge of a slightly higher plateau. The ro
ck was dark grey in colour and curiously rounded, like stacked cushions or piled cakes of bread. At close quarters it was coarse-grained and abrasive, full of large rounded pebbles and occasional tiny flecks that caught the light and sparkled in the sun.
“What a strange rock,” Eadwine said, turning a pebble in his fingers.
Severa glanced at him. It took some doing to be interested in rocks. “Is it? All the rock is like that on these moors. It makes good querns and grinding stones. We call it gritstone.”
“Seems appropriate,” Eadwine said, dropping the pebble. “So you brought me all the way down from here? I’m impressed.”
“That’s where you were camped,” Severa said, pointing out a jumble of outcrop and boulders to their left. “And you had come from that direction.”
Eadwine followed her gesture across the brindled moorland. A short distance away to the south, a gritstone tor reared its stepped profile against the bright sky.
“Let’s start there.”
They had steeled themselves for a scene of grisly feast and slaughter. Even Severa, adamant that there were no trolls on her moors, was prepared for the gruesome results of a fall from the tor and several weeks’ attention by wolves and buzzards. But there was nothing at all. They searched below the rocks, above them, among them, and found not so much as a bloodstain.
“This is ridiculous,” Eadwine said, after they had scoured the area for the third time. “We know this is the right place.” They had found his missing shoe and Ashhere’s dropped amulet. “We all heard the fight. So why can’t we find anything?”
“Trolls eat their victims –” Ashhere began.
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