Daughter of the Wolf

by Victoria Whitworth

  She stared at him. Sorry? What was that supposed to mean? But before she could speak Athulf had pushed in between them, rounding on his father. ‘What are you sorry for?’ And Elfrun realized she had mistaken her cousin’s feelings: he was white and pinched with fury, not nausea. ‘They cheated, those scum. We should round them up—’

  ‘Be quiet, Athulf.’ Ingeld sounded exhausted. He turned back to Elfrun. ‘I thought they would defeat the bear, the hounds, the three of them together.’ He pushed at the crease between his brows with one well-kept finger. ‘Everything they say about me is true, isn’t it?’

  Elfrun bit hard on her lip, but the words wouldn’t stay back. ‘Why on earth did you goad Hirel like that? He’s my good servant and yours, and the whole place rests on his work, minster as well as hall. And as for the dogs – the waste, the dreadful, stupid waste...’ She stared down at the fingers of both her hands twined in Gethyn’s curly coat. The dog was still shivering. ‘And you a priest. I should have stopped this.’

  ‘Waste?’ She was barely aware of Athulf staring at her, still livid with anger. ‘They were ours to waste. The honour of Donmouth—’

  ‘I told you to be quiet, Athulf.’ Ingeld turned back to her. ‘Elfrun, I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘Take the dog, and the boy, with my blessing.’

  She nodded, shocked at herself as well as him, not trusting herself to come out with acceptable words.

  Widia was dragging the dead hounds to one side by their back legs. She knew he would feed their bodies to the living dogs in the kennels, and she was determined that Gethyn would not be part of that banquet, as eater or eaten. Widia wouldn’t let him back among the hunting dogs, anyway. He would have to stay with her.

  She looked for Finn, for the bear-leader and his ward, for the girl in green, but they were nowhere to be seen. The milling crowd had scuffed the bloodstains from the soil with their feet, and the band of travelling entertainers had vanished into the sea-mist as though they had never visited Donmouth at all.

  51

  Elfrun sat in her father’s great chair, its bare wooden seat hard against her bones, fondling Gethyn’s ears and trying to find her courage.

  After the disaster of the bear-fight, she had moved out of the women’s house and into the little bower annexe to the hall that had been her father’s private quarters. It was lonely, sleeping by herself for the first time in her life, but it felt right, somehow. For the first time, she could look head-on at the fact that whatever the future might hold for her, she was the lord of Donmouth and she needed to behave like it. No more tolerating Ingeld’s waywardness, or Athulf’s aggression, or Luda’s patronizing assurances. Learn to fight, Fredegar had said. Well, she would.

  Strange that the rest of Gethyn’s coat should be so wiry, but that there was such comforting silk in his ears. He whined slightly, and nudged at her hand, and she dug her fingers around the base of those lovely ears. Gethyn sighed with happiness, and slumped against her, as though he knew just how much she was in need of comfort.

  Before the news had come of her father’s drowning Elfrun had felt as though she were part of a makeshift plough-team, an uneasy but functioning alliance, yoked all together and heading in the same direction. Luda, and her grandmother, and her uncle, her companions at the looms, sheepwick and dairy and kale yard, everyone doing their bit to keep the complex, recalcitrant creature that was Donmouth moving onwards, to keep everyone alive, so they could work, and eat, and sleep, and work again.

  Even Athulf, with his pilfered grain, and his whales, and that cow.

  Like sun and moon and planets, all in their measured dance round an earth whose absence could be coped with, because it would only be short-term.

  Now she had been forced into that central space, trying to fill up that vast absence, and she found herself alone.

  It was the morning after Johnsmas, and every unmarried girl in the women’s house and from the steads and wicks around had been up in the hills all night, with the young men, dancing and singing round the fires they lit for the Baptist’s birthday. But she hadn’t gone, not this year. They would have noticed. They would have been talking. She didn’t care.

  She couldn’t stand the giggling and the gossiping and the coarse jokes that they made when they thought she couldn’t hear – or pretended they thought she couldn’t hear. And then they gave her those sidelong glances, and fell ostentatiously silent.

  But still, she should have gone. Because she hadn’t, they would think she held herself too lofty. There was no winning, whatever she did. Behind her back, the rumour mill would grind her name and her reputation into ever finer powder.

  No matter how hard she worked, the king might take Donmouth back into his own hands, and use it to reward some loyal thane; no matter how many charters she might dig out of the chest to brandish at him. He had smiled at her after that dreadful spring meeting, plied her with reassurances, but he wouldn’t go on smiling forever.

  And what would happen to her when Osberht’s expression changed? Would she be handed over, part and parcel with the estate?

  She had to hold on to Donmouth. And she had to hold on to it with a sterner grip than she had used so far.

  Gethyn was leaning against her with all his weight, pressing her thigh painfully hard against the edge of the chair, and Elfrun slapped him on his storm-cloud flank, harder than she had intended. He looked at her with reproachful eyes and she felt a pang of guilt. ‘Sorry, boy.’

  She pushed herself up from the chair. If she went to the weaving shed now, she would be there in time to give a similarly accusing look to the girls when they came in, bright-eyed and flushed, with their hems dew-soaked and skirts spattered with fallen petals. Some, always some, with the backs of their dresses green-stained.

  She would do her best to channel some of Abarhild’s snapping looks and acid words.

  It worked.

  The women and girls were tired, too, and the usual non-stop chatter was subdued and sporadic. Elfrun herself was sitting tight-lipped in front of her two-beam loom and beating the cloth down with more than usual vigour when a horn was heard sounding from the path that came down through the hills from the south-west.

  ‘Go and see what that is.’

  Within moments the excited girl came scurrying back into the weaving shed. ‘It’s a pedlar! Asking leave to open his pack! Please, lady...’ She looked at Elfrun with enormous, hopeful eyes, and looking round the gloomy shed Elfrun could see that expectation echoed on every face there. She nodded, and before she could even open her mouth the girl had swung round, scooped up her skirts and raced back into the sunshine. Elfrun could hear her shouting all the way.

  ‘May we, lady?’

  ‘Yes – but don’t just drop everything!’ Almost too late, but shuttles and heddles were hastily stowed, and bobbins rolled at speed and tucked into their baskets. Moving much more slowly, Elfrun followed her women out and latched the door behind her. The last thing she needed was one of the goats getting into the weaving shed again. Gethyn had been waiting for her at the door, and now he bounced to his feet, tail an eager blur. She snapped her fingers, and he fell in behind her.

  As she had expected, it was Finn.

  He was standing in the open space outside the door of the hall, his hands resting on his pack, half-protective, half-teasing, and he was fielding questions and comments from the Donmouth girls with a merry smile. She could hear his laugh from where she stood.

  Next to him stood a girl in a kale-green dress. Her hair was smooth and tightly braided, and it took Elfrun a long drawn-out moment to recognize her as the dancer whose rippling brown locks had shimmered so enticingly on the dreadful day nearly two weeks ago when the bear had fought the dogs. Elfrun felt her throat tighten. Oh God, what stupidity was this? She barely knew the man. Why should the foundations of the earth be shaken at the sight of him standing by the side of another girl?

  But he had called her beautiful, and he had noticed that she had been crying; he had recognized that
like him she had a burden to shoulder. She could feel her heart hammering: it had moved up into the space beneath her breastbone and was threatening to rise up further yet and choke her.

  Did he know her father was dead? If he knew, surely he would say. Some word of sympathy, of understanding...

  Not trusting her treacherous face, or voice, Elfrun kept her distance and watched the pair of them. The stranger girl was standing back a little, hands folded and gaze lowered, letting Finn have his moment of glory, very different from the way she had milked the crowd on her last visit, with her tossing hair, her gestures like withies in the wind, and her radiant smile. Finn was fending off those would-be customers who were trying to dart in and unlatch his pack, when he looked up and saw her. His face lit with his own heart-lifting smile, the one she remembered so well from her first sight of him, and she felt a sudden blaze of anger with him for his easy power over her and her women. These stupid girls, blushing and giggling. Bite it back, hard.

  She might well be a fool, but no one else could be allowed to catch a glimpse of her folly. And it was her folly. It hurt beyond reckoning to think that any other woman might respond to him with the same delight as she did.

  ‘See?’ His voice was pitched loud for her to hear. ‘I told you all I wouldn’t open my fardel for anyone but the lady of Donmouth herself.’ He beckoned with his free hand. ‘Come here, lady. What can I lure you with?’

  She walked across the yard straight towards him, head high, aware of the stares. ‘What have you got for me, pedlar?’ She looked right into his eyes, and he held her gaze until she felt the colour burn hard in her cheeks and her mouth go dry. She had meant to say, Transact your business, and move on. Let my women get back to their looms. But she was silenced. Her heart seemed to be beating in unfamiliar places: in her throat, in her belly, between her thighs.

  ‘Nothing like good enough for you.’ His fingers were working the buckles as he spoke. ‘But pretty, pretty things, all the same, to tempt these Donmouth magpies.’ He pushed the fall of his ash-blond hair out of his eyes and pulled the lid back, drawing out a length of coarse brown cloth at the same time. He handed this to the nearest of the giggling girls. ‘Lay this out for me, will you, my darling?’

  Little brooches of gilt copper, some set with enamel. A leather bag of beads, white and purple crystal, amber and jet, which he tipped rattling into a wooden bowl. Silk ribbons, some with gold and silver threaded in. Treasure piled upon little sparkling treasure until the brown cloth had almost disappeared under its tantalizing burden. The girl in green had moved closer. Elfrun thought at first that she too was drawn by the glitter though she must surely have seen it all before, and then she realized that the girl was watching for any hint of pilfering, leaving Finn at liberty to flirt and flatter and haggle. Elfrun bristled a little at the silent implication that her women might be light-fingered, and then she forced herself to relax. This was their livelihood. The girl’s narrowed eyes meant no more than her own latching of the door of the weaving shed against that opportunist goat.

  Finn was squatting, swirling his fingers in the beads, trailing the ribbons, smiling up through his lashes.

  ‘What’s going on? Why aren’t you at your work?’

  Luda had come limping up to the chattering group. His face darkened, and his eye fell on Elfrun. He beckoned, more abruptly than she liked. Had the steward not seen her when he had first addressed the group? He would never have spoken like that, surely, if he had known she was there.

  ‘Those are two of the cheating vagabonds who came with that damned bear.’

  ‘There was no cheating.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘That bear won both its fights, and fairly. Hirel is recovering cleanly.’

  ‘I know that. But they should have asked me before they came back.’ Elfrun stared at him. His face was turning purple, veins prominent on his forehead, in a way that the day’s warmth couldn’t explain, and glancing down she saw his fists were clenched. Had his son-in-law’s defeat by the bear rankled so much?

  ‘But they asked me, Luda.’ She shook her head at him. ‘Me.’ She had to make this clear though she would have preferred a smaller audience. ‘I’m the lord. If I say it’s all right, what business is it of yours?’ She was trying to keep her temper, trying not to say, You’re only the steward. But it was in her voice, and her face, and she knew he could read her.

  ‘The steward?’ Finn was at her side, leaving the silent girl in green to watch over the goods. Athulf had appeared from nowhere, and Elfrun could see him both eyeing up the trinkets and listening avidly to the conversation. Finn said, ‘They told us about you, on the road.’

  Luda opened his mouth, but Elfrun held up her hand. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look out for the steward of Donmouth, they said.’ A teasing note had crept into Finn’s voice, and Luda scowled even more furiously. ‘He’s got a name for it, they said. He’ll make you pay a fee to open your pack, and a fee to close it again, and like as not set the dogs on you to close the bargain.’

  ‘Is this true, Luda?’

  ‘No less than I’m entitled to do.’

  Elfrun folded her arms. It was bad enough when he patronized her and dismissed her questions in the privacy of the wool shed but here, with all her women looking on, was infinitely worse. ‘The pedlar is welcome here,’ she said through gritted teeth. She thought of her mirror, wrapped in its linen. Fit for a queen. ‘He has already paid any fee required. To me. He and his are our guests.’ She turned to Finn, angling her shoulder to shut Luda out but raising her voice. ‘Will you do me the honour of coming into my hall and drinking some wine, when you have done here? Both of you.’ It was an unheard-of courtesy. The most her father would ever have done for a chapman would be to send him round to the cook-house for bread and small beer. But it was worth it, if only to see the blind fury on Luda’s face.

  And worth it a thousand times to have the pleasure of Finn’s company. She could feel how her longing for him was drawing her into duplicity, into lying to herself about her motives. And she didn’t care.

  And she suspected Finn knew exactly what she was doing. ‘With pleasure, lady.’

  Now she stepped back to include Luda in the conversation once again. ‘See that cups and a jug of the Rhineland wine are set out in the hall.’ After a long moment he turned without acknowledgement.

  ‘And will he do it?’

  ‘He is my servant,’ she said, her jaw still painfully tight. ‘He was my father’s servant when they were boys.’

  ‘Your father. We heard something – is it true?’

  She couldn’t speak.

  Finn looked at her hard for a moment, then nodded silently and turned back to his customers. She was grateful for the opportunity to swallow down the sudden surge of misery that had threatened to overwhelm her. Speaking those words had summoned a vision of her father far more real than the busy court in front of her. For a blessed moment he had been standing before her, solid and foursquare, his hair more grey than blond but his eyes as bright as those of any young man in the yard. Why did folk always comment on how handsome Ingeld was, with his white smile and his high colour? There had never been anyone to touch her father.

  She realized that the chattering group had slowly fallen quiet, and that a dozen faces were turned to hers. ‘Lady? Please?’ She gave herself a little shake. Her women, slave and free, all earned silver and bronze by their weaving, but she kept it for them.

  ‘Of course. A moment.’

  She turned and hurried into the hall. It had been a gloomy space since her father left, chilly today despite the spring sunshine, and she spent as little time there as she could. Though Dunstan had successfully steered most of the baggage home again the bundles were still tight-packed, stored in one of the barns. She could not bear to touch them, even to find out how sea-ravaged they might be. So the hall was dark still, the iron pegs forlorn without their bright, bullion-tricked hangings. Radmer’s massive chair with its gilded finials likewise looked forsak
en, bereft of its silk-trimmed cushion. The great table was dismantled, board propped against trestles. The one patch of colour in the whole gloomy barn of a place was her red cloak on its peg. Only now that she was to welcome Finn under her roof did she fully realize what a shabby apology for a house this had become. ‘Get a fire lit,’ she snapped at Luda, fumbling at her waist for the keys to the heddern and the little chest where the silver and bronze were kept.

  The handful of coins exchanged, the women chivvied back to the weaving shed, she turned her attention again to Finn and his silent companion. ‘It would do me great honour,’ she repeated, feeling clumsy and stupid, ‘if you would share that cup of wine with me.’

  Finn nodded. ‘I’ll just pack all my clutter away.’

  Luda, still glowering, had delegated the making of the fire to a small boy who came scurrying in with a bucket of glowing charcoal. The girl in green still hadn’t said a word. Elfrun watched her settle on to a bench. They were much of an age. The stranger was no more than medium height, shorter than Elfrun herself, but so slender that she appeared tall. Her sleek brown hair was tucked into tidy plaits which were knotted into one at the base of her neck and fell from there down the length of her spine. Elfrun was intrigued by the girl’s dress. She had a tunic of unbleached and fine-pleated linen, and over it she wore the kale-green pinafore. The back of the dress was pulled somehow up and over each shoulder, fastened to the front over each collarbone by a pair of big lumpy brooches. The dress had a band of sage-green woven decoration across the front, between the brooches, and below it that single string of polished amber. Her hands were folded in her lap and her ankles crossed. She had coiled bronze bracelets that went from her wrist halfway to each elbow, and an impressive belt-knife in an elaborate sheath nestled in her lap.