by Joan Wolf
Niniane did not have the heart to tell him that the corn crops of wheat, barley, and rye were due to be harvested.
* * *
Chapter 16
The harvest was a good one and the storehouses and barns and bins at Bryn Atha were consequently well-stocked for the winter. Ceawlin celebrated the Saxon Autumn Festival with a great banquet. There was, of course, no Saxon temple at the villa and he decided against creating one. To do so would clash with his policy of placating British sensibilities. So they had the banquet in the villa dining room, with prayers to Woden and Thor and Tiwaz in lieu of a formal sacrifice.
November went out in a downpour of cold, heavy rain and the sullen gray skies of December set in. Ceawlin worked hard at keeping his men busy. No snow had fallen as yet, so he had them out practicing on the iron-hard ground and riding madly through the woods in crazy competitive games. The thanes were joined as often as not by the British boys who had fought with them at Cob Ford. The cold and the grayness were no rival for the youthful high spirits that reigned at Bryn Atha.
Niniane was heavy with child and found the dreariness far more stressful than did the men. As her time drew nearer she began to have fearful dreams and fantasies. Would the babe be healthy? She had seen children before who had been born without limbs, with horribly deformed mouths. Surely, surely, such a thing could not happen to her child. Surely God would not punish a little innocent child for the sins of its mother?
Ceawlin wanted to celebrate the feast of Yule and she worried about that. She had been too lax in permitting all these pagan practices. Surely she should be striving to convert him, to convert all these poor souls to Christ.
The thanes decorated the reception room and the dining room with evergreens they had picked in the wood. At Winchester it had been the women's work to prepare for Yule, but the only women at Bryn Atha were Christian and so the thanes did it themselves. Niniane and the three British girls stayed in the kitchen and listened to the laughter of the men as they hung the pine and the holly. Ceawlin's voice was clearest of all.
"They sound as if they're having fun," said Meghan a little wistfully.
"Filthy, pagan doings," replied Amena. She was the oldest of the girls, and the homeliest.
"They're not doing anything so terrible," Wynne said. She was a pretty girl with red-gold hair and green eyes. Ceawlin had said to get rid of her, that she was too pretty to be let loose around a pack of hungry-eyed thanes, but Niniane needed her help and there had been no one else willing to come to Bryn Atha. So Wynne had stayed. "It's nice," Wynne added now, "decorating the house with greens. It's cheerful."
Amena snorted.
"I think it is nice," Niniane said firmly. "And I don't see any reason why we cannot celebrate Christmas at the same time the thanes are celebrating Yule. The feasts fall on almost the same day."
"Celebrate the birth of Christ with a bunch of filthy pagan rites?" Amena was horrified. "Never!"
"You know what Father Mai said when he was here in August, Amena." Niniane turned from the bread she was kneading to give the girl a stern look. "He said we were all missionaries for Christ. That it was our duty to do our best to bring the word of Christ to the Saxons. And Yule does not have any 'filthy pagan rites.' It is merely a happy feast. We have a special banquet for Christmas too. There can be no harm in combining the two. It will be a way to tell the Saxons the story of Christ's birth."
"I think that is a splendid idea!" said Wynne.
"Yes." Meghan smiled shyly. Then, to Amena in her gentle voice, "Niniane is right, Amena. It is our duty to be missionaries for Christ."
"I don't agree," said Amena.
"Then you do not have to come to the banquet," Niniane said with perfect pleasantness. "Perhaps you would prefer to go home to your family."
Amena glared but did not answer. After a minute Niniane went back to kneading her bread.
* * * *
The sky was full of snow the morning of Christmas-Yule. Niniane went out into the backyard for a few moments to get away from the smells in the kitchen, and saw that the sky was growing darker. The clouds had taken on an ominous yellowish tinge and the wind was strong enough to blow her hair and whip her skirt around her knees. It looked as if a storm was coming.
The baby kicked and she put her hand on the rounded mound of her stomach. Her back ached. Just a few more weeks, she thought. Surely it could not be any longer than that. She was so weary of always being weary. So weary of the clumsiness, the burden of weight she must carry wherever she went. Would she never be slim and vigorous again?
She looked once more at the sky, sighed, and went back to the kitchen.
The combined feast was a great success. The men had roasted a boar for the traditional Yule meal in honor of Frey, and the women had baked for days in order to load the table with special delicacies. There was plenty of mead to go around. The dining room was bright with candles and evergreens and the sound and the laughter of young voices.
When the food had been finished, someone called upon Bertred to play the harp. Niniane had not been able to hold the harp for some time, having lost her lap, and so Bertred, the youngest of the thanes, had been pressed into service as a substitute.
Niniane sat at the big table, with Ceawlin on one side of her and Sigurd on the other, and listened to the sound of Bertred's pleasant voice. There was a fire going at the stoke hole of the hypocaust, and no one else seemed to feel at all chilled, but Niniane's hands and feet were freezing. Her hands and feet seemed always to be cold these days. It was as if the babe were drawing all the blood from her, she thought as she pulled her cloak more closely around her shoulders.
"Are you cold?" It was Sigurd, concern in his kind gray eyes.
"I'm always cold now," she answered, and gave him a rueful smile. "Feel my hand."
She extended her fingers and for a moment his hand, large and callused and wonderfully warm, closed around hers and engulfed it.
"You're freezing!"
"What is it?" Their soft voices had caught Ceawlin's attention.
"Niniane is freezing," Sigurd said. He sounded almost angry.
"Are you?" Ceawlin unpinned the brooch that was holding his own cloak and settled it around his wife's shoulders. It was warm from his body and she huddled into it gratefully. Ceawlin turned back to the music.
"Shall I get you a rug to wrap up in?" Sigurd asked her.
"No. No, thank you, Sigurd. I shall be all right."
"The tip of your nose is red."
Ceawlin looked at them again, a slight frown between his brows. "You are distracting from the music."
"Sorry," said Niniane, and looked dutifully to Bertred. Sigurd's mouth tightened but he did not reply.
Bertred was giving them a familiar Saxon lament for lost youth. It was the sort of song only the young could enjoy, Niniane thought as she listened to the chanted words:
and he dreams of the hall-thanes
The giving of treasure, the years of his youth,
When his lord bade welcome to wassail and feasting ...
The thanes were all lounging in comfort around the tables, listening cheerfully. The candlelight flickered on blond and brown heads. Not a gray hair in the room, Niniane thought. Nor was Ceawlin the only one still without a beard. Her eyes halted at the table where Penda sat. He was looking at Wynne. As Niniane watched, the girl's eyes turned toward him. The Saxon raised his mead cup slightly and smiled. Niniane was just in time to catch a returning smile on Wynne's full mouth. Then the girl saw she was being watched and gave Niniane a wide-eyed innocent look before turning back to the harper.
Niniane frowned. This could be trouble, she thought. If Wynne should ever ... Perhaps she ought to tell Ceawlin. But he would make her send Wynne away, and she could not do without that extra pair of hands. Not now, not when she was feeling so wretched.
She would keep an eye on the girl herself. Penda was not one of the young thanes from the princes' hall. He was older, a man, not a boy. And the Winc
hester thanes were not accustomed to celibacy. Perhaps she ought to tell Ceawlin.
"And now, my lady ..." It was Bertred, finishing his song and turning to her. "I believe you have a story you wish to tell to us."
All eyes in the room were turning her way. Niniane put Wynne firmly from her mind and concentrated on the words she had prepared to say. "Yes. This day of Yule is also the feast day of our God, the Christ. I would like to tell you the story of his birth. I hope you do not mind."
A murmur of courteous encouragement ran around the dining room. "Well, then," Niniane began. "Once there was a woman named Mary ..."
The thanes listened in attentive silence. Outside, the wind was picking up; Niniane could hear it rattling the shutters they had closed against the cold. "And the shepherds from the fields saw the star as well," she said. Next to her she saw Ceawlin's fingers moving restlessly up and down the curve of his mead cup. Meghan's brown eyes were huge as she listened with breathless attention to Niniane's words. Bertred was looking at Meghan, not at Niniane.
"And that is how the Christ was born," Niniane finished. She did not want to talk too long. "We believe he came to save the world from sin and death, and that is why we worship him."
"Save the world from death, my lady?" It was Wuffa speaking. "How is that? People still die."
"They die, yes, but not forever. After death we believe we go to live with Christ in a land called heaven."
"It is not where we go when we die that concerns me, but how we live." Ceawlin's voice sounded perfectly pleasant but Niniane could hear the undertone of irritation. He suspected what she was about and he did not like it. "And I rather think we are getting our first winter storm. We had better see to the animals now, before the snow comes too heavy."
There were groans and complaints from the comfortable thanes, but everyone rose to his feet. Outside, it had already begun to snow. The thanes fought their way through the snow and the wind down to the barns. By the time they returned to the house, the gray day had slipped into the dark.
* * * *
The Yule feast in Winchester was more lavish than the one held at Bryn Atha, but not nearly as joyous. The defeat of the war band by Ceawlin still rankled. But it was more than pride that had gone down with Edric's men at Cob Ford. Two of the eorls had lost sons in that skirmish, and they had sworn vengeance against the man who had shed the blood of their kin. Come the spring, that debt would be paid.
There were others in Winchester who were waiting for the spring also, waiting to see how Ceawlin and his thanes got through the winter. If the prince proved he could keep a war band, there were those who preferred Cynric's son, a Woden-born prince of his line, to the usurper they were faced with in Winchester these days.
Cutha left the Yule feast early to return to his own hall. He had been furious when he returned from East Anglia to find that Edric had outwitted him. Of course, it could have been worse. The boy had beaten the attackers, turning their own surprise back on them. But still Cutha had not been happy.
He sat now before his own hearth, with his elder son beside him, and brooded. The temper in Winchester was just what he had hoped it would be. He knew that come the spring there would be a goodly number of thanes ready to throw in their lot with Ceawlin. The lines were beginning to be drawn. Why, then, was he so discontent?
"What a gloomy feast!" Cuthwulf stretched his legs to the fire. "It is enough to put any man off his food, the sight of that lowborn thief sitting in Cynric's place."
Cutha watched the figure of his wife moving back and forth on the far side of the hall. Coenburg had not been feeling well these last few days and her mother was nursing her. "Yes," he said after a minute, in response to Cuthwulf's comment. "The hall seemed quite empty, I thought."
"No Ceawlin, no Sigurd, no Penda. Fara is gone." Cuthwulf drained his cup of beer. "Just a bunch of old graybeards left around Winchester these days."
"That is not true." Cutha was distinctly annoyed.
"Well, the best of the young ones are with Ceawlin. You can't deny that." Cuthwulf grinned. "Myself excluded, of course. And, come the spring ..."
"You are not planning to join with him?"
Cuthwulf's prominent blue eyes stared. "What is the matter, Father? I thought you were supporting Ceawlin."
He was, of course. The problem was, Cutha had intended to win the kingship for Ceawlin himself. He had not counted on the young prince taking such an aggressive role in his own destiny. It discomposed him. Cutha's aim was to put the new king heavily into his debt. The eorl fully intended to be as important a figure in the reign of Ceawlin as ever he had been in the reign of Cynric.
Things were not going as he had planned.
"We will see how he gets through the winter," Cutha said now to his elder son. "Ceawlin is a great fighter. We all know that. But he has no experience at keeping men. In Winchester it is easy. The food is readily available. It will not be that way at Bryn Atha. And these Britons who fought with him will need their own food to feed their own people. We shall see."
"My lord?" It was his wife's soft voice. She was his second wife, and much younger than he, the mother of Coenburg but not of Sigurd or Cuthwulf. "May I fetch you some more mead?"
"Yes." He watched her figure as she went to fill his cup. Normally Cutha was a frugal drinker, unlike most of the Saxon thanes and eorls. But tonight he was feeling gloomy. It was blowing hard outside and the snow was coming heavily.
"Gods," said Cuthwulf at his side. "This is going to be a long winter."
* * * *
The January world was white with snow. There had not been so much snow in ten years, so Naille told Ceawlin when the prince rode home with Gereint one day to share a meal at the farm. Ceawlin had come mainly to see Alanna. He wanted to make sure Naille's wife was ready to come to Bryn Atha to help Niniane during childbirth.
"Of course I will come," Alanna assured him. "I promised Niniane long ago that I would."
"Why not come back with me now?" Ceawlin asked. "That way you will be sure to be there. Suppose we should get another storm and you cannot get through?"
Alanna restrained herself from patting his hand. "I will get through. It may be another week yet, Prince, and I cannot leave my own family for so long a time just to sit around Bryn Atha waiting. First babies are often late. Do not worry so. I will be there."
She stood at the door of the farmhouse and watched Ceawlin ride away. Then she turned to her husband, her face wearing the bemused smile it always wore for Ceawlin. "Such a sweet boy," she said. "He is worried about her."
Naille grunted but said nothing.
It was snowing the following morning, and in the afternoon Niniane's pains began. Ceawlin saddled Bayvard and rode out into the blinding whiteness to fetch Alanna.
He had been afraid of this, he thought grimly as he pushed on through the snow-heavy woods. Why wouldn't the stupid woman come with him yesterday? Now he had to get her back through a snowstorm. And it would be dark too. She would probably not want to come, would probably say it was too dangerous.
She would come if he had to take her by force. Those girls at Bryn Atha knew nothing of childbirth. They were all virgins! Alanna would have to come. Niniane needed help. Something might go wrong. The baby might die ... she might die ... Alanna would have to come.
It was already dark by the time he rode into the farmyard. As soon as Alanna saw his snow-covered form in the doorway, she knew what was happening. "You must come," he said. His face was grim and he did not look young at all.
Alanna sighed. "Why do babies never come when it is convenient? All right, Prince. Come in and get warm. I must put some things together."
Ceawlin's face relaxed a little when he realized she was not going to object, and he stamped the snow off his feet and came into the room. He would not take off his cloak, however, and in ten minutes Alanna was in the saddle of one of the farm horses. Ceawlin took her reins and led the way out of the yard.
The ride to Bryn Atha was one Alan
na never forgot. The snow was blinding, covering the path so that the horses were up to their knees. Alanna buried her face in the blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders for warmth. The going was very slow, but Ceawlin never faltered, never once lost his way. He had to be guiding them by instinct alone, Alanna thought. It simply was not possible to see. She had never been out in such a storm, and she was very cold, but she was not frightened. She had implicit faith that he would get them there.
And get them there he did. They were in the courtyard before she realized they had made their destination; the snow was so thick she had not seen the walls until they were on top of them. He lifted her off her horse and said, "Go in. I must see to the horses."
She nodded and toiled through the snow to the door. It opened immediately. They had evidently been keeping a watch. Ceawlin saw her go in and then he turned to lead the horses to the stable.
Niniane had not known there could be such pain. At first it had been endurable; there had been a respite between one onslaught and the next. If this is all it is, she thought, I can bear it. She clenched her teeth and her fists and fought against crying out. She wanted very much to be brave. But then the pains came closer and closer and soon there was no respite. There was nothing but pain. Her body was delivered over to it, eaten up by it, torn apart.
She was so grateful to see Alanna. She had been afraid the woman would not make it ... there was a storm ... she could hear the wind rattling the shutters. "You are here!" she gasped when first she saw Alanna's face.
"I am here, my dear. Your husband brought me safe and sound. How are you doing?"
"I ... All right." Then the pain came again. Alanna took her hand. "Squeeze," she said. "It's all right, my dear." She looked around at the frightened girls behind her. "Get some hot water in here," she said. "And a hot drink for me. I'm freezing."