Elfrun had hardly had another moment to wonder why the king might want her.
Now, her grandmother chivvying her as she might a wayward ewe, they were walking as fast as Elfrun’s stiff leather shoes would allow her on the dewy grass to the thronged open area outside the king’s tents. To her great relief her father was there already, seated on the bench nearest the entrance to Osberht’s tent. She could pick him out from any crowd in that blood-red cloak. A gift from the king only a few days earlier, and far and away the gaudiest thing he owned, he was wearing it over the much more characteristic wolf-grey tunic which was the last thing her mother had ever woven, soft and light with all its worth in the fineness of the weave. His only glitter came from the silver tags weighting the woven bands that fastened the cloak at his shoulder.
But, plainly dressed though he might be, in his daughter’s eyes Radmer of Donmouth shone brighter than any half-dozen of the more gaudily clad dish-thanes and riding-men who hovered wasp-like around the king’s court, bullion glinting silver and gold at shoulder and wrist and throat, and on the sword-belts they insisted on wearing even if the swords themselves were packed away.
No weapons in the king’s presence, not at spring and harvest meeting. Stakes were too high, old feuds always simmering too close to over-boiling. Northumbria might have been at its fragile peace since Elfrun was little more than a toddler, but she had heard the threats chewed over and spat out in the hall often enough. Internal dissent, brooding exiles, sea-wolves and the warlords of Mercia and Wales, Pictland and Dumbarton. The king’s cousin, Alred, banned from coming south of the Tees since his rebellion seven years earlier. She knew fine well there were stories of disloyalty and over-leaping ambition attached to some of the faces she could see here, too. But she found it difficult to take any of the hard-edged talk seriously. With her father at the king’s side, what could ever come to hurt them?
Radmer was gesturing to the bench beside him. No smile, but the lack of a frown was enough to fill Elfrun with relief. She knew only too well the drawn brows – worse than any spoken reproof – that would have greeted her if she had arrived in her former muddy and tangled state, and she felt a burst of still half-sulky gratitude to the old lady stomping along beside her.
Abarhild lowered herself on to the bench in silence, back straight and mouth still clamped.
‘Mother.’ Radmer bowed his head, still fair rather than grey in the spring sunlight, and she nodded.
Radmer looked beyond her, at Elfrun’s demurely bowed head, the neat, pale parting in her rich brown hair. ‘Daughter.’ She came to stand in front of him, hands folded, gaze still lowered. ‘The king has summoned me,’ he said quietly. ‘And he said you should come too. Something to our advantage.’ Radmer set his hands on his knees. ‘Well, I’ve been here for a while, and still waiting. There are legates come from Canterbury, and Archbishop Wulfhere is with them. But Osberht’s steward said he’ll see us next, whatever it is.’ He reached out his hand and gave hers a brief pat. ‘How have you been amusing yourself? Not frowsting in our tents, I hope, not on a day like this?’ She lifted her steady brown gaze to his, and he smiled reassuringly.
Elfrun could feel the auger gaze of her grandmother boring into her. ‘Watching – watching Athulf with the horses. Racing.’ Not quite a lie, even if truth fell down through the crack between her words.
‘Did he win?’
She wished suddenly, passionately, that her father had seen her ride. Radmer might have been – no, he would have been – angry, but no one had a better eye for horsemanship. And she was as good as Athulf, she knew she was. Better. The way the wretched boy had been sawing at Apple’s mouth... ‘He – I—’
‘He did well,’ her grandmother said. ‘The other boys were older.’ She shot Elfrun an inscrutable look. ‘And he was riding Apple, not Mara.’
‘Athulf.’ Her father sounded thoughtful. ‘Now your uncle Ingeld’s home from York, it’s time he took that lad in hand. Promising boy, but he’s been left to run wild for far too long.’
‘He should be trained for the Church.’ Abarhild’s tone was flat, uncompromising. Elfrun stared at her grandmother. Sulky, whining Athulf, a cleric?
And it seemed her father shared her incredulity. ‘That puppy? Less fitted even than his father.’
Elfrun braced herself for the blast. But Abarhild had set her withered face hard, the lines between mouth and chin deep and oppressive. ‘The boy is our responsibility. What’s the alternative? Will you make him your heir?’
‘Promise him the hall?’ Radmer turned on his mother with a swiftness that startled Elfrun. ‘Ingeld’s brat? I’ll be damned first.’
‘Why not? Who else is going to take over Donmouth after you?’
‘Don’t bury me, Mother.’ Radmer glanced from his mother to his daughter, and then turned his stare back to the king’s tent. ‘I’m not dead yet.’
‘Radmer! Don’t ignore me. You need to do something for Athulf.’
‘Why?’ Her father’s voice was flat and hard as stone. ‘Ingeld got him. Let Ingeld look after him.’
Abarhild levered herself to her feet and stalked away, her very shoulder blades eloquent of disapproval.
Radmer was drumming his fingers on his knee. ‘As though I haven’t done enough for Ingeld already.’ He bared his teeth, white and strong in the silver-blond beard, but there was no smile in his eyes. ‘Sit down, daughter, and learn the virtues of a king’s good servant from watching me.’
‘What are they?’ The bench stood on uneven ground, and it lurched a little as she sat.
Radmer snorted. ‘Obedience. Patience. Anticipating every need. And never asking questions.’
It sounded very like Abarhild’s standard lecture on being a good granddaughter, and Elfrun wanted to say as much, to see if she could make her father smile. But Radmer was no longer paying any attention to her. His whole body had stiffened, like a wolf that scents the hunt on its heels. She followed his gaze across the thirty feet of open grass that served as an antechamber to the royal tent, but she could see nothing.
Just men.
But as she watched she realized a bustle of activity had been starting up across from them, like one of the little sand-devils that whirled on the beach at Donmouth on windy days; and then the clump of men parted left and right to let a solid figure, his bald head gleaming in the sun, emerge to walk across the grass towards the king’s awning. Although he paced steadily his eyes went sweeping this way and that: Elfrun could see his gaze flickering over every face, and stopping, sudden and hard, when they sighted her father. But he never broke his stride. Elfrun only realized how massive he was when he stood next to the king’s steward. This newcomer overtopped the tall steward by half a head, and was broad in proportion. With that lumpy, lowering brow he only needed the addition of a pair of polled horns, and he could easily be mistaken for an ox. On its hind legs. She put her hand to her mouth to stifle the giggle that threatened.
The steward listened, and nodded, and ducked into the tent.
And now Elfrun was beginning to realize that her father was not the only one to have been transfixed by the arrival of this stranger. The hangers-on were shifting, staring, regrouping. Men bending to mutter in each other’s ears, listening with wary faces, drifting away from the quarter whence the stranger had come, to form new alignments. But that tight little clump of men from which he had emerged still clung together, all stout, weather-beaten, with something alien about them, though she would have been hard pressed to say quite what. The angle of a cap, the way in which leggings were bound, the nature of a pattern on a braid...
And then she realized as they moved and turned that they weren’t all men, that the bundled figure of a woman stood among them, and a tall boy behind her, holding a horse.
Had he been alone, Elfrun might not have remembered the boy: she found boys of little interest in themselves. But she recognized his neat-boned bay mare immediately; the thrill of the race, and how even in the heart of the moment she h
ad observed how mount and rider moved as one.
The boy had noticed her watching.
He was staring back, half raising his hand in acknowledgement. She stuck out her chin, forcing herself to hold his gaze. She could look, couldn’t she? Even Abarhild couldn’t object to her looking. What business did he have bringing a fine mare like that to the meeting if he wasn’t prepared to let folk look? But the thought of Abarhild made her blush and shift her eyes elsewhere.
Now that Abarhild had left them, that round little woman in her swathes of brown twill was the only other female present. Were she and the boy kin, then, to each other and to the big bald man? The lad was tall enough, but russet-headed and slender, and looking every bit as out of place as she felt herself.
Her father was still set as though in stone. She noticed that the mutterers were glancing at him, and then back at the tent, an endless flicker of eyes. The big man, the ox-man, was still waiting, but even as she watched a couple of priests emerged, and then the new archbishop, the king’s cousin. Wulfhere’s narrow, vulpine face was pinched and annoyed.
And the big man was summoned in.
He was important, then. Important enough for the king to cut short a meeting with his grace of York and these foreign visitors.
And important enough, she realized with a little cold shock, for the king to break a promise to her own father. He had said Radmer would be next, and then this man had appeared out of nowhere and gone barging up to the steward as if he owned the place.
Abarhild would have berated her for worldly curiosity, but Elfrun dismissed all thoughts of her grandmother. She had to know what was going on.
‘Father?’ He ignored her. ‘Father, who is that man?’
She put out her hand to tug his sleeve, but she was forestalled. One of the mutterers was making his way over to her father, cautious and stiff-legged as a cat approaching a mastiff. Elfrun recognized him, a distant cousin of her dead mother’s.
‘Radmer.’
Her father nodded. ‘Edmund.’
Edmund was a liverish-looking man a few years older than Radmer, with weary, wary eyes and an ill-tended brown moustache. ‘So. He’s back.’ He sat down on Radmer’s other side.
‘They. They’re back.’
‘Osberht must have known. Did you know?’ Edmund waited, but Radmer said nothing. ‘Well, it’s been seven years. More.’
‘He’s done his time in exile. He’s entitled to ask forgiveness.’ Her father’s voice was studiedly neutral.
‘Men are saying they’ve been in the Danish marches all this while. Hedeby, and around the Baltic Sea. Making friends. That these’ – he jerked his chin – ‘are some of them.’
Radmer shook his head. ‘They went to Frankia.’
‘That’s where they were supposed to have been. But men say otherwise.’ Edmund raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you believe it?’
‘I believe nothing on hearsay.’ Radmer let out a sigh. ‘And ever since we exiled Tilmon it’s been one goddamned rumour after another. That he’s been in the Danemarch is only the latest. But the king he tried to force on us is dead, and Northumbria has changed a lot since he left us. New alliances. New faces.’ Radmer paused, his face tightening. ‘With Wulfhere in the archbishop’s seat Osberht has never been stronger. Alred has been well bribed to stay in line, and he’s in the north. So, let Tilmon come back – at least let him try. See if it does him any good.’
Edmund glanced at the king’s tent. ‘Osberht has a lot to forgive.’
‘And he’s not the only one.’ Elfrun stared at her father, startled by the sudden harshness of his tone, but he seemed oblivious to her presence.
Not so Edmund. He caught her eye, smiled a little, then dropped a slow wink. Radmer frowned, a brief contraction across the brow, and he turned to look down at his daughter. ‘Big talk for my little girl to listen to.’
Edmund snorted. ‘That’s not a little girl, Radmer. Not any longer. And more like her dear mother’ – he signed himself with a sketchy cross – ‘every time I see her.’
Radmer’s face tightened. He turned and stared across the grassy forecourt once more. ‘So Tilmon has brought his wife and son back with him. He must be very sure he’ll be returned to Osberht’s favour.’
‘Either that or he’s planning to send Switha in to fight his corner for him.’ Edmund grinned on an outbreath. ‘I’d rather take him on than her, any day.’
‘True. She always was a foe to reckon with.’
They laughed, but their words made Elfrun squint all the more curiously across the grass at the bulkily clad woman. Switha. She looked quite ordinary, so small next to the men. As big a menace as her husband, the ox-man? And so the boy with the bay mare, he was their son. What was it like, having a father like that?
‘If Tilmon has been in the Danemarch,’ Edmund said slowly, ‘and if he is still shoulder to shoulder with Alred, then Osberht will have to buy his loyalty back somehow. How will he lime that branch? Do you know? Are you privy to this?’
Radmer eyed him sideways. ‘Think I’d tell you?’
‘Everyone’s wondering.’
‘Let them.’ Radmer stretched out his legs and clasped his hands behind his head. ‘You want to look at me?’ His voice was louder, more challenging. ‘You want to speculate, boys? Come on then, and welcome. Be my guest.’
‘Don’t push it, Radmer.’ Edmund sounded nervous.
‘Don’t push me, then.’
Elfrun’s eyes flickered from one man to the other, wondering at the sudden thundery crackle in the air between them.
Edmund stood up and yawned, showing his back teeth. He caught her looking at him, and frowned. ‘And what about this one, Radmer? What plans?’
‘Elfrun’s needed at Donmouth. She’ll take over the hall from her grandmother. In the fullness of time.’
‘Not marriage?’ Edmund looked at her appraisingly. ‘There’s many a family would value a Donmouth alliance. Does the girl have a voice?’
‘She wants to stay with me.’ Her father put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t you, Elfa?’
Elfrun squirmed at being the sudden focus of both men’s attention. But she didn’t have to answer. The king’s steward had appeared at her father’s side, beckoning urgently.
‘No, Radmer. Not the girl. Just you.’ He glanced at Elfrun. ‘For the moment, anyway.’
Her father frowned. ‘Stay here, Elfa. I don’t like leaving you on your own.’
Elfrun looked round, but there was no sign of Abarhild.
Her father was still frowning. ‘Keep an eye on her for me, Edmund?’
‘As though she were my own.’ Edmund’s voice was hearty.
She watched the king’s steward usher her father to the tent and lift the heavy embroidered door-curtain. The ox-man, this Tilmon, he hadn’t come out yet. So the meeting was between the three of them.
3
Edmund had drifted away a few feet. Little as she warmed to him with his sad, straggly moustache and his heavy, lingering eyes, he was at least kin, however distant, and her father had appointed him as a bulwark between her and all the other watchers. She tried to straighten her back and fold her hands in a way Abarhild would have approved. ‘Are you well, cousin Edmund?’
‘So, you do speak.’ He sighed. ‘Well enough, cousin Elfrun. Well enough. Tell me, how are matters at Donmouth? Do you still have that fine smith?’
‘Cuthred?’ She knew full well they had good men at Donmouth, but it was gratifying to know that the world had noticed. ‘Indeed we do, and his son has started working with him at the forge.’
Edmund shook his head. ‘Your father’s a lucky man. Smith, steward, shepherd – it’s a tight ship at Donmouth. And Widia – your huntsman is envied by the king himself. I hope Radmer counts his blessings?’
She nodded.
‘And, tell me, what has your father said about marrying again?’
‘Nothing!’ She was startled into a yelp.
‘Nothing? Really? It’s been a couple
of years.’
Elfrun knew exactly how long it had been.
‘Nothing to you, at least.’ Edmund ran his tongue over the lower edge of his moustache. ‘How about naming an heir?’
She shook her head, increasingly uncomfortable under this arrow-storm of questions.
‘Well, well.’ He looked at her for a moment, a calculating light in his eyes. ‘But that holy priest your uncle has a son or two who could step in, am I right? Is that the way the dice are rolling?’
And all at once Elfrun hated him, the hint of malice in his voice and the way that his moustache drooped raggedly over his mouth so that she could barely see his lips move when he spoke. ‘One son,’ she said coldly. Athulf’s parting smirk was still rankling.
‘Just the one? Really?’ Edmund cackled. ‘And no chance for Ingeld to get more, I suppose, now that he has to leave York and head the Donmouth minster. Every step stalked by your father. That’s made us laugh!’ Suddenly he was looming down over her, close enough for her to see the red veins that threaded his eyes, the pores pocking the tip of his nose. ‘You want my advice? Don’t let Radmer’ – he jerked his head towards the king’s tent – ‘keep you withering on the vine at home. He will, you know, just because it suits him. I know him.’ He spat in the grass. ‘He should marry you off. You’re getting valuable.’ And now he sat down next to her and leaned in even closer, his thigh hard against hers, and she could smell last night’s beef and beer on his breath. ‘Are you ready for a man? You’re a skinny little thing, but one never can tell. And Donmouth could make any girl look attractive.’ She pulled back as far as she dared without being rude, revolted by his proximity, and he laughed.
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