by Joan Wolf
At twenty-seven, Ceawlin had lost all traces of his boyhood. His shoulders had broadened, the extreme slimness of adolescence turned into the lean, powerful strength of a mature man. His least conscious gesture bespoke the authority of a king who holds the power of life and death in the hollow of his hand. He was, as Bertred had once remarked to Sigurd, as close to being a god as a man was ever likely to get.
"I wanted to talk with you about Niniane too, Sigurd," he said at last over his shoulder. He put down the stick with which he had been stirring the fire. "You may have noticed we have been at odds of late."
"I noticed," Sigurd replied, his voice expressionless. Then, "You are easy to read, you two."
Indeed, Sigurd thought as he watched Ceawlin's broad shoulders move in a resigned shrug, all of Winchester had known there was strife between the king and his wife. Sigurd had come into the king's hall several times recently to find Ceawlin shouting and Niniane wearing a still, frozen, implacable look that was not at all like her usual serene expression. "Are you going to tell me what is the matter?" he asked when Ceawlin did not speak.
"Nan wants to see her brother."
Sigurd sat bolt upright in his chair. "What?"
"Her brother," Ceawlin repeated. He turned around. "Coinmail. The one who lives in Glevum. She wants to visit him."
"It would not be safe," Sigurd said. "Surely you won't allow her to go." But he knew as soon as he spoke that Ceawlin would. He would not be speaking thus to Sigurd if he had not already decided that. And he had called his wife Nan.
"I won't allow her to go to Glevum, certainly. She would be all too tempting a hostage for any British prince with illusions of power. But I have said she may meet him in Glastonbury if he will come there. The Christians have this belief in the sanctuary of the church. She swears she will be safe in Glastonbury."
"But why?" Sigurd asked. "What is the purpose of such a meeting?"
"The gods only know." Ceawlin shrugged again. "She wants to see her brother. She has not seen him in almost ten years and she wants to see him now. I don't understand it either, Sigurd, but it is important to Niniane."
"So you have told her she could go?"
"I have told her she could go to Glastonbury if Coinmail will meet her there ... and if you will agree to be her escort." He looked at Sigurd out of narrowed blue-green eyes. "I must send someone I can trust with her. She would make an extremely valuable hostage. I will give you an escort of thirty men."
"Name of the gods, Ceawlin!" Anger flared in Sigurd's voice and eyes. "Are you mad? What good can possibly come of letting her go to Glastonbury? Keep her here in Winchester, where she is safe."
Ceawlin sighed. "Sigurd, about most things Nan is the mildest, most yielding of women. Rarely does she set her will against mine. Last year, for example, when I insisted she move the boys out of here so I could have a little peace, she did not want to do it, but she gave in, let me have my way. But every once in a while, something is important to her, really important. And then she does not give in. She was like that about having the children baptized Christian. And they have been, all of them. She was like that when I wanted her to get a wet nurse for Ceowulf." He began to walk back toward the table. "Do you know what she did?"
"No."
"She was so weak from childbed—that is why I wanted the wet nurse—and she got out of bed and took a knife to the woman. A knife!" Ceawlin shook his head in wonder. "She could hardly stand, and she held a knife to that woman's throat and said, 'Give me back my baby.' '
Sigurd felt a pain in his chest. "She loves her children well, does Niniane."
"So do most women love their children, but not like that. A knife! It had been a hard birth ... she was not supposed to be out of bed ... I was terrified she was going to start to bleed." Ceawlin had reached the table, and now he picked up his beer cup and drained it. "What could I do? I gave her the baby and she nursed it." He put down his empty cup and looked at Sigurd.
"There was nothing else you could do," Sigurd said.
"No." The grimness left Ceawlin's mouth, to be replaced by a look of distinct amusement. "This business of the women's bower. They say she has witchcraft because they know I sleep with no one else. But do you know how Niniane would take it if I did, Sigurd?"
The pain in Sigurd's chest deepened. "She would get out her knife again?"
Ceawlin came around the table and sat down. "She might. And I'm not at all sure she wouldn't use it on me!"
Sigurd looked resentfully at the man sitting beside him. Ceawlin had gone back to staring at his cup, and all Sigurd could see of him at the moment was the edge of his clear-cut profile and a thick curtain of pale hair. Was Ceawlin doing this deliberately? he wondered. Ceawlin knew how he felt about Niniane. Could he possibly be inflicting this pain on purpose?
"This business of Coinmail," Ceawlin was saying. "It is the same thing. She wants to see her brother, and that is that. Either I give in to her or I break her; there is no alternative. Under the circumstances, I think it best to let her go. But I must make certain that she will be safe."
"Gods!"
"Yes." Ceawlin turned his head to look at his friend. "I don't mean to burden you with my marital problems, old friend, but I wanted you to understand how it is." His sea-blue eyes looked confidently into Sigurd's. "Will you go?" he asked.
Sigurd heard himself answering that he would.
* * * *
Niniane could not herself say why it was so important to her to see Coinmail. It had happened over the course of the last two years. First she had begun to dream about him at night. Next she had ridden to Bryn Atha to ask Naille if he ever heard from her brother. When Naille had been unable to tell her anything, she had sent some Britons to Glevum to see what they could learn. The Atrebates messengers had returned with the news that Coinmail was indeed married to the Dobunni chief's daughter and had become himself one of the important men in that tribe. It was then that Niniane had known that she must see him.
Ceawlin had kept his word to the Atrebates when he became king, and no Saxon had ever been given a hide of land that belonged to a Briton. There had, however, been plenty of open land, land that had once been farmed in the days of Rome but had stood empty ever since. This was the land he had given to his eorls and thanes, and now Saxon and Briton lived side by side throughout Wessex and peace reigned.
She wanted to tell this to Coinmail. She wanted her brother to understand that she had not betrayed her people, that accommodation with the Saxons was not something to be feared, but something to be striven for. She tried to explain this to Ceawlin, and though he understood what she was saying, he did not see the need for her to carry such a message to Coinmail. "I have no designs on his land, Niniane," Ceawlin had said. "I have enough to keep me occupied at the moment right here in Wessex. I am no threat to Coinmail and he certainly is no threat to me."
The problem was that in her heart, Niniane was not so sure. She was so happy with her husband and her children, with the life they led together. She felt this fierce necessity to protect it, to protect Ceawlin and her sons, and for some reason she could not explain even to herself, she felt that Coinmail was a threat.
She needed to see him. And so on a beautiful morning in early June she left Winchester with Sigurd and an escort of thirty thanes to go to Glastonbury, where Coinmail had said he would meet her. The only one of her children whom she had with her was the baby, Sigurd, who was still at the breast. The rest of the little band of brothers had remained in Winchester under the supervision of their nurses. She would not have brought them even if she thought Ceawlin would have allowed it. They were too like their father, too obviously Saxon, ever to soften the heart of her brother. But this new little babe—his hair was a downy red-gold in color, his eyes the dark blue that she knew would turn to gray. Sigurd was going to look like her, like Coinmail, like a Briton.
"Have I told you how grateful I am to you, Sigurd, for taking me to Glastonbury?" Niniane said as they rode along the road
that went west from Winchester toward the old Roman city of Aquae Sulis.
"Yes, Niniane, you have," he answered, and gave her a teasing smile. "Many times."
She laughed. "Ceawlin is furious with me for insisting on making this trip," she confided. "He has this mad idea that someone will kidnap me and hold me as a hostage."
"Well, he is right. You are too valuable to be risked in enemy territory, Niniane. All the world does know how Ceawlin loves you. You would make an all-too-effective hostage." Sigurd's voice was stern, and when she turned to look at him, his face was stern as well.
"Well, no one will kidnap me with you to guard me, Sigurd," she answered. "All the world does also know how great a warrior you are." And she gave him her most enchanting smile.
Sigurd's face did not relax, and after a minute she gave up trying to coax him into a good humor and looked around with undisguised pleasure. She loved the spring best of all the seasons. The brown earth of the plowed fields was hidden by green spears of barley and wheat. The meadows were deep with grass and shimmered as a light breeze blew across them from the hills to the north. The smell of sap and growing things was in the air as they rode through the woods. She was young and strong and healthy. This last baby had been the easiest of all her children, both to birth and to care for. He slept now, cradled against her breast, and she bent her head to kiss his silky curls. When she looked up again it was to find Sigurd watching her. She smiled and this time he smiled back.
* * * *
The country around Glastonbury was very wet; for this reason the British called it the Summer Country. Sigurd had never been this far west before and was surprised when the steep, odd-looking height of Glastonbury Tor reared up before them. "It was built long ago," Niniane told him, "by the Old Ones who made also the standing stones at Avebury and to the south."
The monastery itself was almost fully moated by a weed-strewn lake. Sigurd sent a contingent of men across the land bridge first, to make sure all was safe before he allowed Niniane to cross with him. They were met by Father Mai, who told them that Coinmail had arrived the day before.
Niniane wished to meet with her brother alone, and the priest offered to bring her to the room where Coinmail was lodged. Sigurd and his men made camp outdoors in the field and lighted the cook fires.
The first thing Niniane distinguished as she came into the darkness of the room from the bright sunshine outside was the color of his hair. She smiled and held out her hands. "Coinmail. I am so glad to see you."
He crossed the room with an unhurried stride and bent to kiss her forehead. "You look well, Niniane," he said in reply. Then, "Was it really necessary to bring half of your husband's thanes for protection? I have come alone."
Niniane flushed. How like Coinmail, she thought, to put her in the wrong from the start. "It was not my idea, Coinmail, but Ceawlin's. He has this mad notion that someone will try to kidnap me."
"Would he want to get you back?" Coinmail asked.
He was serious. She stared up into his face, at the beautiful, formidable features she remembered so well. He had not changed: the wide white brow was the same, the eyes still dark and gray as the northern sea. She had never seen aught of softness in those striking eyes, nor were they soft now as they regarded his only sister for the first time in eight long years. They looked merely curious.
"Yes," she answered after a long pause. "He would."
Coinmail raised an eyebrow. It was a trick of Ceawlin's to do that too, but it made Ceawlin look charmingly young and boyish. Coinmail looked like God on Judgment Day. "Do you come from him, then?" he asked.
This meeting was not going at all as she had expected. "Of course I don't come from Ceawlin! What could Ceawlin possibly have to say to you? I have come for myself."
"Why?"
"Why do you think?" she cried in exasperation. "Because you are my brother, my only living relative, that is why. I wanted to see you." Then, as he continued to look at her as if she were an enemy, "Is that so strange, Coinmail?" The exasperation had left her; she felt suddenly very sad.
There was no answering spark of recognition in his face. "Yes, Niniane, I find it strange. You have not wanted to see me for eight years. Why, all of a sudden, did it become so important?"
Niniane had not watched Ceawlin rule without learning something. So now she narrowed her own eyes and said in a voice quite as cool as Coinmail's had been, "Why did you agree to see me?"
"I was curious. I thought you were either coming as a messenger from your husband, in which case I was interested to hear what he could want with me. Or I thought you might be bringing me some information that could be used in the struggle against him."
"What?"
"Well, what else was I to think?" A muscle in his cheek jumped, the first indication of emotion he had displayed.
Her voice quivered with indignation. "I have brought you nothing, Coinmail, save a nephew who is sleeping in the convent with the nuns. I certainly did not come here to betray my husband."
He did not answer.
"Coinmail ..." Niniane took a deep breath and put a hand upon her brother's arm. "Let us not quarrel."
His arm was stiff and unyielding under the pressure of her fingers. "There is little else for us to do, Niniane," he replied. "It is evident that you have thrown in your lot with my enemies. Do you expect me to love you for that?"
"But Ceawlin is not your enemy!" she cried passionately. Her fingers dug into his forearm with urgent insistence. "That is what I have come to tell you. Coinmail, listen to me. In Wessex today, Saxon and Briton live peacefully together. No Saxon thane has touched British land, I promise you. All live together in peace and harmony. Ask Father Mai. The priests from Glastonbury are welcome in Wessex. No British Christian need fear reprisals for practicing his religion."
His answer was immediate. "And a Saxon is king. And British children are learning to speak the Saxon tongue and British girls are wedding with Saxon thanes and breeding more Saxons to follow in their fathers' ways. Soon there will be no more Britons in Wessex, my sister. Soon there will be only Saxons. Did you think I would applaud that? Did you think I would be grateful to your husband for ruling over my people? For taking away my position? For turning the Atrebates into damned Saxons?"
Niniane dropped her hand as if he had slapped it away. "Coinmail ... it is not like that."
"Is it not?" he answered ironically.
"Well ... even if it is ... is it so bad?"
"I will fight such a way of life till my dying breath, Niniane. I would sell my soul to the devil if I thought I could stop it. Never, never, will I willingly cede an inch of British land to a Saxon. Never."
She had begun to shake. "Ceawlin does not want to expand Wessex into the land of the Dobunni, Coinmail."
"Not yet."
"Not ever!"
His gray eyes were cold as ice. "How many sons have you, Niniane?"
She was shaking so much now that she was sure he could see it. "Four."
"Four sons. And they will need land, will want land. As will the sons of all your husband's thanes. Soon there will not be enough land in Wessex to hold them all. One day, Niniane, they will move into the land of the Dobunni, and from thence into Dumnonia itself." He was not a big man but he seemed to fill the room with the intensity of his passion. Niniane found herself taking a step away from him.
"No," she said, but her voice lacked conviction. The most horrible part of this whole nightmare conversation, she thought, was that Coinmail might be right.
"Go back to your Saxon, Niniane," her brother said. "Go back and tell him that he has an enemy in Glevum." And he pushed past her and walked out the door of the room.
She discovered, when she had composed herself enough to follow him some fifteen minutes later, that he had already ridden out of Glastonbury. He had not even stopped long enough to see her baby.
* * *
Chapter 25
They were tracked for miles as they rode east from Glastonbury through
Dumnonia. Even Niniane could see British scouts watching the road from various points of vantage along the way. Sigurd placed her in the center of a living shield of mounted thanes, and she clutched her baby tightly to her breast and tried not to appear frightened.
"Do you think it is Coinmail?" she asked Sigurd, who was riding beside her and looking grim.
"I do not know who it is, Niniane, but it is certainly someone who knew we were in Glastonbury." Which meant, of course, that he thought it was Coinmail.
"Coinmail would never want to hurt me," she said.
"I don't think whoever it is wants to hurt you." Sigurd's eyes were traveling in a constant circle as he spoke, watching both sides of the road and before and behind as well. "That would only provoke bitter reprisals from Ceawlin. But as a hostage ..." That was Niniane's fear also, the fear that Coinmail would try to use her to force Ceawlin to do something he did not wish to do.
She knew now she had been wrong to insist upon meeting with Coinmail. Instead of soothing her fears, the meeting with her brother had only served to confirm her suspicion that he was a danger. And it had also stirred up some uncomfortable doubts in her own heart, doubts she could not fully dismiss even as she rode in the middle of a Saxon shield wall raised to protect her from her own brother, her own people. She could not deny that there was truth in much of what Coinmail had said.
They passed out of Dumnonia and into the boundaries of Wessex. "I am sorry," Niniane said in a small voice to Sigurd as they made camp for the night within the safety of their own land. "Ceawlin was right. It was unsafe for me to go to Glastonbury. I am sorry you and your men were placed in danger because of me, Sigurd."
She was sitting before the fire, feeding her baby, and he squatted on his heels beside her and stared into the flames. "Was it worth it?" he asked.
"No." Her voice was oddly muffled, and he turned a little to look at her. She too was staring into the fire, and the flames suddenly flared up and illuminated her, the baby at her breast, her shoulders, her neck, the line of her face, and her hair. Sigurd felt his throat cramp. He could not speak.