Daughter of the Wolf

by Victoria Whitworth

  ‘I could go.’ She started to get to her feet.

  ‘No. This is not your business.’

  ‘You’re stabbed and left for dead on my land?’ Her outrage made it hard for her to speak coherently. ‘That makes it my business, Finn, whether it was your friends who attacked you, or your enemies, or even a band of sea-wolves.’

  He was still for a moment. Then, ‘Well, it wasn’t sea-wolves, anyway.’ He pulled himself up to standing. ‘Come on, if you must.’

  Down through the trees, across the rough grass and to the edge of the mist-wreathed marsh. A long brackish creek ran in here from the river. At low tide it was easy enough to cross over to Illingham. But as they drew closer to the eerie zone where land and water intermingled they could see that the tide was high now, lapping against the grasses and reeds that grew on the blotches of damp land. A heron launched itself into the air as they came close to the water’s edge, flapping off on heavy, reproachful wings.

  Elfrun stopped. ‘They can’t be here. They would have frightened the heron.’

  Gethyn was stiff-legged and growling. ‘He doesn’t like me going too close to the water,’ Elfrun said, but Finn shook his head.

  ‘He’s scented something.’

  Elfrun looked down at the familiar grey muzzle. Gethyn was staring out at the marsh and the reed-beds. She put her hand on the dog’s shoulder and realized he was trembling slightly with the effort of holding himself still.

  ‘Shall I let him go?’

  Finn nodded.

  ‘Seek, boy, seek!’

  Gethyn sprang away from her with a tense, rocking gait. He pranced along the water’s edge, giving little high-pitched yips.

  ‘Stay back,’ Finn said.

  She ignored him.

  There was something dark, large, shaggy...

  The bear’s corpse lay half in and half out of the water. A broken spear-shaft jutted from its belly. The beast was still muzzled, the sodden tags of ribbon, red and green and yellow, floating on the water’s surface.

  ‘I told you to stay back.’

  She had seen her uncle’s body dragged out of the mud. She wasn’t as nesh as he thought. ‘How bad can this be?’

  He had already turned away; she didn’t think he had heard her.

  Beyond the bear were two more bodies, human ones. Elfrun recognized the bear-master’s heavy, dark-bearded face at once. It took another long moment to identify the boy who had danced along the rope, the blood was so thick, clotted across his face and matting his hair. It was immediately evident that they were beyond all human help.

  Finn was hugging his ribs, staring down at them. The only sound was the little lap and wash of the water.

  ‘Finn, who did this?’

  There was a muscle jumping in his cheek. ‘We were down here waiting for a boat to put in, to take us off. We had an agreement: we’d wait for each of the nights of the dark of the first moon after the harvest even-nights. They would aim to come at sunset, wind and tide allowing, and we would wait till they came.’

  She could have interrupted then, demanded to know why they had been making free with Donmouth’s waterways, but she pressed her lips together and waited.

  ‘The first two nights, nothing. We lay low in the reeds. We thought no one had seen us. But I think now we were wrong, I think we were being watched, from up in the hills.’

  She turned to peer along the misty slope in the direction he had indicated. There was nothing to see in this weather, but she knew that he could be right, that in the rough scrubby land of the hill-edge there was plenty of cover. ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know who they were, Alvrun. They came down on us in silence; we hardly even heard their horses’ hooves until they were right on top of us. We were looking out for the boat – we were off our guard, or we would have gone out into the swamp, where the horses couldn’t follow. Three men on horseback, with spears. They went for Varri first, like it was a game. I think at first they only planned to attack Varri as a bit of fun, but it got too exciting for them.’

  ‘Varri?’

  ‘The bear. His name was Varri. Myr tried to fight them off. He had Varri from a tiny cub, you see. But they had spears, and swords too, and horses. We weren’t armed like that. Why would we be?’

  ‘Your shoulder...’

  ‘Spear. I was the furthest out.’ He gestured vaguely at the marsh. ‘When it hit me it glanced off the collarbone, and the blow knocked me backwards into the water, among the reeds. They must have thought they had killed me too. Auli wasn’t far from me. She came for me while they – they were busy.’ He stopped and swallowed painfully. ‘She pulled me up out of the water, and held me so I could breathe.’

  ‘Three armed men on horseback.’ Elfrun felt as though a cold hand had reached in under her ribcage to squeeze her heart. ‘Finn, why? Who were they? What did they want?’

  He shrugged lopsidedly. ‘Thieves, I guess, though they weren’t armed like common thieves. They robbed us, anyway. They took my pack, and Myr’s purse.’ He turned to look back at the corpses of his friends. ‘As to who they were... It was getting dark, and they wore hoods. They were yelling, but I didn’t hear any names.’

  Elfrun too stared at the bodies lying in the reeds, but she wasn’t seeing them. Thieves on horseback, armed like warriors. There were always rumours about bands of outlaws and lordless men haunting the hills and the wilder stretches of the king’s road where it crossed moor and marshland, but she had never known them to come down into Donmouth lands before.

  Except that she had.

  ‘It must have been them. They’re the ones who killed Ingeld.’ Her lips felt numb, and she didn’t recognize the fragmented, wavery sound that came through them as being her own voice.

  Finn still had his back to her. ‘Auli got me out of the water in the end, and we made it into the trees, but she had to wait till they’d gone. It took a while.’

  ‘I ordered Hirel’s death,’ she whispered.

  ‘You might have walked right into them.’

  She pressed icy fingers against her temples. He was right. She could easily have blundered into that gang of robbers as she walked to the minster, her head full of her stupid childish plans to take the silver and run away. And Abarhild had been right too, about the road being dangerous. Abarhild was always right.

  Finn had walked over to Myr’s side and was crouching down, bending over the dead man’s broad, dark-bearded face. He looked to be muttering something.

  Hirel hadn’t killed Ingeld.

  But Hirel was dead and gone, and the big and little fishes had picked his bones.

  That milk was spilled. There was nothing she could do to bring him back, nothing she could do to make amends to him, and if she were to stand up in front of the people of Donmouth and announce that he had been guiltless after all she would only undermine such authority as she still had. The shepherd’s name, his reputation and his memory would have to be sacrificed in the greater interests of Donmouth. In approving his drowning she had only put her name to the consensus.

  But what about these men, here and now, and their deaths? She thought back to that other misty day, back in June. The bear-fight, and everything that had come from it. She had stood up in public then, and asserted that these wandering folk were under her protection.

  An attack on them was tantamount to an attack on her. Three well-armed and mounted men were a serious threat. Now that she knew, she could see where their hooves had ploughed and churned the boggy soil.

  She looked sideways at Finn. She had sent him and Auli packing weeks before Ingeld’s body had been found. Had he learned of her uncle’s death, wandering the green lanes? Had he even understood her panicked words of a few moments earlier? Was he likely to make the connection? She hugged herself, trying to stand up tall against the weight of guilt. She should call a meeting, confess her mistake, make amends – but how? There was not even Hirel’s corpse to recompense with decent burial...

  Sinking down through the cold dar
k water, with shapeless, predatory things moving just out of sight...

  It was all her nightmares come home to roost.

  She swallowed hard. If she did not draw men’s attention to the parallels between her uncle’s murder and these, then no one else would either.

  No one but Saethryth.

  She would think about Saethryth later.

  ‘Finn,’ she said sharply.

  He rose and turned.

  ‘Come with me to the hall.’ She could hear she was too abrupt, and tried to soften her voice. He was not one of her men, after all. ‘I need you to tell your story to the men of Donmouth. You have been robbed on my lands, and while you and yours were under my hand.’

  He laughed.

  She stared at him.

  He was shaking his head. ‘You drove me and Auli out, Alvrun. You set your dog on us. Do you think your men have such short memories? I would not underestimate your steward like that, if I were you.’

  That hit home. ‘I never set Gethyn on you! Don’t say that! He just got excited.’ Her face flushed hot yet again at the thought of that undignified scene in her father’s hall. ‘And I’m sorry I behaved like that – I didn’t want to hear what you were telling me. You didn’t give me the chance to say I was sorry last night.’

  Finn clicked his fingers and Gethyn went trotting up to him trustingly to have his ears fondled. ‘No. No more I did.’ His voice had softened.

  ‘So will you come?’

  He was still caressing the dog with his right hand. ‘Where did Auli go?’

  ‘Auli? She ran away.’ Elfrun thought back. ‘She was sopping wet – you both were; you can’t have been out of the water long. She got my attention, and then she bolted. But she can’t have gone far.’

  ‘Unless the boat put back in for her. Did you see anything?’

  It was Elfrun’s turn to laugh. ‘I was too busy saving your life. After she abandoned you. Whose boat is this, anyway? Illingham?’

  ‘What? No – no – a merchant, that’s all.’ He was still staring at the waterlogged bodies, his voice quiet, distracted. ‘Someone who takes an interest – helps – helped us...’ He had straightened up and he was rubbing his left arm, and she felt a pang of conscience.

  ‘How’s your shoulder?’

  ‘Sore. Been worse. It’ll mend.’

  Elfrun had a sudden vivid and painful vision – more than vision: all her senses conspiring to make the thought real to her – of Finn’s body lying next to hers, his skin with its web of scars. She knew nothing about this man. She couldn’t give herself to some wandering pedlar on a whim. And he had given no sign he was interested since their meetings on the beach last year; so why should she flatter herself that that had been anything more than his chapman’s banter?

  But he had called her beautiful! No one but her father had ever called her beautiful before. There was a pain inside her that she couldn’t remember ever having felt, a keen, silent, acid wailing that brought water to her eyes and a lump to her throat and made it hard to breathe.

  ‘Alvrun, you’re crying. Don’t cry.’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ she said furiously. ‘Why do you always think I’m crying?’

  He lifted a finger and brushed first one cheekbone, then the other. ‘Look.’

  She tightened her lips and shook her head. ‘It’s the wind.’

  ‘Does it matter so very much to you that I come to the hall and you use me to assert your mastery over Donmouth?’ He gave her the same smile that she had first seen on his face on the sand dunes less than half a mile from this spot, when he had come walking out of the sea in a silver dazzle of light, almost a year ago. The smile that stretched the skin over his high, smooth cheekbones and tilted his eyes and was so beautiful that she couldn’t help returning it. ‘My life is in the palm of your hand, lady. If you want me, I will come.’

  64

  Widia was already mounted, boar-spear in hand. ‘Come on, Athulf.’

  Elfrun watched them ride out: Widia and Athulf, and the handful of other men from Donmouth whom she could trust not to slice off one of their own mount’s ears with an ineptly brandished hunting knife. Finn was also watching, his face hard. His eyes followed Athulf in particular, a little frown tugging at the patch of skin between his eyebrows.

  ‘He’s all right,’ she said, wanting to reassure Finn that she was providing the best that Donmouth had to offer. ‘He may look young but he knows how to use that sword.’

  She had come roaring into the yard. All the way from the site of the slaughter she had been trying her hardest to bring her father’s image forcibly before her, to remember the set of his shoulders and the tone of his voice, how he would bellow with all a bull’s trumpeting force if he found one of his horses ungroomed or unfed after a day in the hunting grounds. What kind of voice would Radmer have used if he had found men murdered by outlaws on his own land?

  And it had worked. Elfrun had simply shouted down any attempt by the men to interrupt, fighting the edge of shrillness that threatened to creep in, always aware of Finn standing quietly, grey-skinned and hugging his ribs in damp and muddy underlinen, the mute testimony to the truth of everything she was saying. She had ordered Widia and Athulf to lead the hunt, though Athulf had jibbed, complaining that he was tired, that his horse needed a rest, that he hadn’t broken his fast.

  ‘Come inside,’ she said to Finn now, wanting to be away from those eager eyes. ‘Sit down. Rest. You look exhausted.’

  ‘Sit? Where?’

  She pointed to her father’s chair.

  ‘I can’t possibly.’ He looked around for a bench.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. How’s your shoulder?’

  ‘Better all the time.’ But still he didn’t sit down, and she knew he was lying.

  Elfrun interlaced her fingers and looked down at them, then up at Finn. ‘What were you all doing on our land, without telling me – us?’ It was the question that had been nagging at her all morning. ‘Why didn’t you come through by the hall?’

  He paused before replying. ‘You have no idea how terrifying you can be, do you?’ He shook his head. ‘I told you earlier – you sent us packing, me and Auli. I wasn’t going to come this way again, not after we’d upset you like that.’ His eyes met hers. ‘But our meeting-place with the boat – that had been arranged back in April. We couldn’t change that. So we came in over the hills and cut down by the stream...’ His face closed down.

  ‘This is my fault, then, for driving you away, in June.’

  ‘That’s not what I said, or what I thought.’

  ‘That’s as may be.’ Her guilt hurt so much, it was as though the room had gone dark, as though she had swallowed knives.

  ‘No.’ He was stern. ‘We didn’t want you or yours to know about the boat. It would have been a secret meeting, even if we had come by the road. So we would still have been attacked. It is nothing to do with you, Alvrun. Nothing to do with your lordship of Donmouth.’

  He was trying to stop her from being so hard on herself, but he could only do it by showing her how little she knew of him, how little she meant to him. She took refuge in anger. ‘I don’t like all these secrets.’

  ‘I didn’t choose them either.’

  She stared at him for a long moment that drew out past all bearing.

  ‘I’m cold,’ he said at last. ‘Cold and damp. Could I trouble you to find me a tunic, to replace the one you so recklessly hacked to pieces?’

  She was about to retaliate in kind; and then she realized that the lift of his eyebrows should have told her he was teasing, that he was trying to draw the sting. To move their encounter on to higher, drier, less treacherous ground. She had a sudden image of him lying in the muddy marsh water, the red blood spilling out of him, getting colder and colder, knowing he was dying. Not knowing whether his friends were dead or merely wounded, only that either way he could not help them.

  Finn.

  She had come so close to losing him entirely.

  ‘Sit down.�
�� Blinded with sudden tears, she blundered her way to the heddern at the back of the hall, where she and Athulf had had their confrontation over the sword not six months since. She had lost that argument. She was determined not to lose anything else. It was dark in the little chamber and Elfrun thought belatedly that she should have ordered a candle brought. She would manage, though – she mustn’t waste more time. Old tunics of her father’s were stowed in the great chest, and Finn could have one of those. She had in mind that grey lambswool, summer-weight but warm and softer than most, and wide-woven – wide enough that a hurt man might shrug his way into it without the pain being beyond bearing. It had been one of her father’s favourites, but he had left it behind in favour of more splendid garments.

  But when she hauled back the lid of the chest and dug through the layers to the grey tunic, she found that the moth had got into the armpit. Her fingertips could poke right through the holes. Bunching it up and burying her face in it, Elfrun inhaled the scent of sheep-grease and the sprigs of costmary and mugwort that were supposed to keep the moths at bay. She had been no better at guarding her father’s clothes than she had been at keeping any other part of his realm safe. Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust and moth consume...

  All that labour, for this.

  Breathe. Breathe. Finn was waiting. Would this one do, despite the holes? No doubt Luda would say that Finn, as a beggarly wanderer of the roads, was lucky to get it and should be grateful.

  Her jaw tightened. She would not send him out in moth-eaten cast-offs for Luda to mock, not if she had a choice. She leaned forward into the chest again, her fingers leafing in the gloom through the neatly folded garments. She knew them so well, she didn’t need a light. The dark brown was too heavy to sit comfortably on a man wounded in the shoulder. Not the blue – her father had never liked that blue one: she could see him running his finger around the inside of the collar, complaining that the wool was too scratchy, that it chafed him. Every single garment had memories threaded through warp and weft; and nothing was right.

  Caution had been abandoned now: she was pulling out the clothes one after the other, only to reject each item in turn, drop it on the floor and reach after another. She could feel hysteria building like thunderclouds, memories thick as midges about her head.