The Conquest

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  'No, he might not,' Aubert agreed, but not as if he really meant it. 'We'll know more in a few days. The reports from the north are very fragmented.' He looked at Ailith. 'If Rolf is dead, then you know that you have my protection, and my roof to comfort you.'

  Ailith nodded stiffly. 'Thank you, Aubert, but I know he still lives,' she heard herself say in a voice that was calm, without hint of a tremor, 'and I have my duties here at Ulverton. Indeed, I should be preparing a feast to celebrate his return.' A feast to honour a hero's safe deliverance, or a wake for a man who had flirted with danger once too often. She knew to her cost that refusing to believe in the death of a loved one could not bring that person back to life. She touched the thin, pink scar of an old knife wound on her left wrist and not for the first time, wished that Rolf had not found her that winter's day in the forge.

  CHAPTER 26

  Rolf was impressed by the ponies that Ulf showed him. Propelling himself about on a wooden crutch, the village leader instructed one of his people to load a black pony with two sizeable panniers of stones. The animal bore the weight easily and trotted along without any signs of labouring. 'Yon beast will carry the burden of such as you or my Beorn in full armour, thirty miles a day for a full seven-night,' Ulf declared with quiet, sure pride. 'You'll find nowt better if it's stamina you want.'

  Rolf was inclined to agree, but kept a straight face and indifferent manner the better to haggle. Ulf was shrewd and equally determined to obtain the best bargain possible, but finally they reached an agreement, and Rolf found himself the owner of six mares – two maidens and four in foal, and a young bay stallion with sweeping black mane and tail.

  'Take my advice,' Ulf said after the coins had changed hands and they were sealing their agreement with a cup of mead. 'Make your way homewards now. The north is no place for Normans.'

  'I have a wager to settle in Durham with Robert de Comminges,' Rolf protested. 'I will owe him a warhorse if I do not go.'

  'Forget your wager. Tonight it will snow. Turn south.'

  Rolf heard the note of urgency in the horse-trader's voice. Ulf knew far more than he was telling, and whatever his knowledge, it boded ill for Robert de Comminges. 'I will heed your warning,' he replied gravely, 'but let me in my turn warn you. If you resist King William, he will make you pay. I do not speak as your enemy, but as a fellow trader concerned for your future and that of your village. I know William of Normandy. He is a powerful man and you have no-one of his strength to unite the north now. If he comes seeking retribution, his wrath will be black indeed.' His glance flickered to Beorn's attractive young wife and the two children.

  Ulf followed Rolf's gaze. 'If he comes,' he answered evenly, 'we will be ready.'

  Rolf opened his mouth.

  'No,' Ulf said brusquely, 'I will hear no more. Tonight it will snow. Tomorrow, you will turn south.'

  Ulf was right and Ulf was wrong. That night it did snow, but in the morning, any hope that Rolf had entertained of going anywhere was abandoned to the blizzard which howled some of the flimsier dwellings out of existence and buried others up to the tops of the shuttered windows. Animals huddled in pens at one end of the long houses and humans huddled at the other around the smoky warmth of their hearths. Every time anyone ventured out to fetch more kindling from the wood pile or to squat in the snow, the fire would flatten and belch out great gusts of smoke, and all the rush lights and candles would be extinguished.

  For three days and nights the storm held Rolf and his men prisoners in Ulf's long house. The fourth morning brought still, cold sunlight that glittered a bleached yellow splendour on a landscape of undulating, brittle white.

  Rolf aided the villagers to dig paths to the stream and the village well. He helped to repair the damage wreaked by the storm and resigned himself to the fact that he would have to stay here for several days more until the roads were passable.

  During a respite in the snow shovelling, Beorn's wife Inga served him with ale, a chunk of new bread and slices of smoked goose.

  'I do not see your husband.' Rolf tucked his mitts inside his tunic and bit ravenously into the food. Indeed, he had not see Beorn since the evening of first arrival, nor half the young men of the village.

  'He has business to attend elsewhere,' she said, her manner cool, verging on the hostile.

  'Fortunate then, that you have some Normans on hand to lend you aid.

  She looked at him. Her eyes were a pale gold-green, the colour of the most expensive French wine. Cat's eyes, set on a slant, utterly bewitching, and utterly cold. 'Some would say that.'

  'Are you one of them?'

  'I keep my own counsel,' she answered and gestured brusquely. 'Eat your food. The servant will collect your bowl when you have finished.'

  He watched her walk away, admiring her proud carriage, disgruntled by her frigid response.

  Four evenings later as he sat at Ulf's fire, making his preparations to leave the next day, Beorn and the village men returned from their 'business', floundering through the snow on several fine Norman warhorses. As well as bearing a man, each horse also carried an assortment of plunder — mail and weapons, cups, belts, brooches and other personal effects.

  'We have wiped out the stain of Hastings field!' Beorn declared, his eyes alight, his flowing red hair burnished with gold from the flames of his father's hearth as he swept his arm around a fierce, smiling Inga. 'The Normans have been slaughtered to a man in Durham town!' His stare fell upon Rolf and fingered the haft of the Norman langseax hanging at his belt. 'Every last one, horse-trader, what do you say to that?'

  Rolf stared at Ulf's huge, handsome son and thought of the huscarl on Hastings field whose axe now hung on Ulverton's wall. There was a sick emptiness of fear in his gut. He was among wolves and they would eat him if he displayed the slightest sign of weakness… as they had eaten Robert de Comminges. 'Do you wish me to cry out in terror or admit that your prowess is beyond compare?' he declared far more boldly than he felt. 'Robert de Comminges is not William of Normandy. If you can defeat him, then you will have reason to exult.'

  Beorn's eyes narrowed. 'You have a bold tongue. Perhaps I should cut it out with your countryman's seax.'

  Rolf regarded him impassively. 'That would silence me,' he agreed.

  'Beorn, sit down!' Ulf snapped. 'Your own tongue wags too much for its own good. The rules of hospitality apply and Rolf de Brize has repaid them more than fairly with the way he and his men have toiled to clear the snow. By all means celebrate the victory at Durham, but this man will go on his way unmolested.'

  Beorn's lips tightened. There was a long silence while stubborn will met stubborn will, but finally the younger man capitulated with a sulky shrug and releasing his wife to her duties, sat down cross-legged before the fire.

  That night, lying on his sheepskin, Rolf dreamed that the entire north country was covered in a thick, vellum layer of snow, and lying upon it, inscribing its pristine pages with crimson scrawl, were the bodies of men, women and children. The bare trees were roosts for flocks of ravens, their bodies plump with feeding, their plumage sheened with blue and purple like the rotting corpses on which they gorged. One bird, larger than the rest, launched itself into the still air. Its wings blocked the sun, and Rolf saw that its terrible red eyes were those of his King.

  In southern parts, the promise of spring retreated beneath a sifting of snow and a new, bitter, deep cold. Sitting on top of the fire in Ulverton's hall, Ailith abandoned the pretence of working on a delicate netting bonnet and stared into the flames. King William and the core of his army, his hardened mercenary troops, had struck to quell the rebels. This much she had heard from a pedlar who had seen the army ride past on the great north road.

  They were going to avenge, not to rescue. 'Too much blood has been shed already,' she muttered to herself and glanced with revulsion at the battle axes hung in pride of place above Rolf's empty chair at the end of the hall. Rolf called them his luck. But the luck of the battlefield was fickle, and someone alway
s had to lose.

  Unable to sit still any longer, she put her needlework aside and went to lift her cloak from its peg. Tancred raised his eyes from the game of tafel he was playing with his son and glanced at her, but he offered no comment. He had voiced his intention of returning to Brize-sur-Risle if there was no news by the end of the week. 'For if there is none,' he had said to Ailith, 'I think we must assume that my lord has perished in Durham with Robert de Comminges.'

  Tancred's was the voice of reason. She had seen in his eyes that his lingering was only a matter of form, that he had already resigned himself to the belief that Rolf was dead.

  Leaving the smoky hall, Ailith crossed the moon-silvered bailey. Ice crunched beneath her shoes and she felt the cold pierce the soles of her feet as she climbed the wooden walk lining the palisade. Her breath emerged in puffs of white vapour. The only sound was the soft whispering of her feet on the rime of the wall walk, echoing the muted swish of the sea. The water was visible as the faintest glimmer of moving darkness patterned by a road fashioned of narrow slices of moonlight. She paused to stare, drawn in by the beauty and tranquillity of the deadly elements of black and white cold, deep and dark, air-bright and fragile. For a long time she stood in silence, absorbing and being absorbed, the chill seeping into her bones until she was a frozen part of the night, an icicle.

  A sound chimed gently against her brittle shell and vibrated upon a remaining strand of her consciousness. She blinked and shivered, and the enchantment shattered into a million crystal fragments. Her hands were numb, her lips and cheeks and feet. Ailith turned round, intending to make her way back to the hall, but the sound came again, arresting her motion. She heard the clink of harness and the voices of men, the clop of hooves on an iron-frost road. Her heart started to thump and she stared out into the night with eyes stretched so wide that they ached.

  It had been full dark for two hours now. It was almost time to set out the sleeping pallets and bank the fire for the night. No visitors would be on the road so late. And an enemy would use more stealth. That left but one alternative. For a moment Ailith was unable to move, her body and mind disconnected from each other, but then they slammed together with a jolt so strong that all previous inhibitions were hurled aside and with a small cry, she sped towards the bailey gates.

  He was the first to ride through them on his familiar chestnut horse, and he was closely followed by his men and several dark-coloured ponies, some of them laden with packs. Ailith saw this with a distant part of her mind, but the force of her attention was focused upon Rolf. He dismounted and handed the stallion's reins to the groom who had come running at the summons from the gate guard. And then he raised his eyes to the wall walk and saw Ailith.

  Her impetus carried her rapidly forward until no more than a body's length separated her from Rolf. She halted, swaying slightly. Torchlight flickered over him, brightening his hair, emphasising the lean bone structure. He was as thin and muscular as a wolf, and as dangerous too, she thought, but it was probably too late for caution to be of any use.

  'We thought you were dead.' Her voice was a dry croak and her swaying resulted in another pace forward. 'Aubert brought us the news about the massacre in Durham.'

  'I did not go to Durham.' He spoke the words absently, a matter of rote without any thought behind them. Ailith saw the narrow glitter in his eyes, the rapid rise and fall of his chest. The ice encasing her heart melted away beneath the fierceness of his stare and her knees turned to water.

  Rolf caught her, his arm hard about her waist. 'Jesu,' he groaned softly as she came into his embrace. And then, a moment later, 'Jesu forgive me,' as he bent his head and took his first taste of her lips.

  Ailith lay across Rolf, her head upon his naked chest, her fingers toying with the downy stripe of auburn hair running from the base of his breastbone to the bush at his groin. The latter was indeed red as she had once wondered. The feel of him upon and within her had been one of completion, of a dull ache banished by the fierceness of their loving. Her body now held a gentle, diffusing warmth. Her smoothing fingertips encountered tiny droplets of sweat, the faintly raised line of an old scar, the hollow of his navel.

  'I wish this was a dream,' she said softly. The words had been spoken more than half to herself, she had thought him drifting into sleep, but he stirred beneath her hand and his muscles tensed.

  'Why should you wish that?' he asked.

  Ailith was silent for a while. Then she said pensively, 'There is no retreat from what we have done… from what we are doing. If this were no more than a sinful dream, I could keep it to myself, it would not matter.'

  'Is what we have done sinful? Look at me, Ailith.' He grasped a handful of her hair, making her turn to his will. 'It would have been a sin to deny our love.'

  'You have a wife.' Ailith had the misgiving that the word 'love' came too easily to his tongue, that to his way of thinking, it was just a more courtly word for 'lust'. And she had no right to throw it in his face, for her appetite was as great as his, if not greater, for she wanted more.

  'My wife is in Normandy. Our marriage bed is cold and she does not have the spark to set it ablaze. I have wanted you for a long time, Ailith. You may have anything of me just for the asking — a wife's rights if you will, although there can be no sanction from the church. If anyone looks at you with the slightest degree of contempt, I will have the hide off him, I swear it.'

  'And he will hate you all the more and it will not change his opinion.' Ailith tossed her head.

  'And his opinion matters so much to you.'

  Ailith sighed, wondering how she could explain her feelings to him when plainly he did not see her dilemma. 'Yes, it matters, because in their eyes I see the reflection of my opinion of myself. I do not want to be just another casual tumble in the straw, a mare serviced along your way. I need your respect too, Rolf.'

  He raised himself up on one elbow and trapped her stare with his own. 'Have you not had proof of that over and again?' he reproached her. 'Have I not yielded to your wishes at every turn – a room with a bolt on the door and a village woman to sleep across the threshold? I fully admit they are of small use now, but at the time they were freely granted. You have my respect, you have all of me.' His voice softened and he stroked her naked shoulder where it gleamed through the strands of hair. 'Now give me all of you, Ailith. I swear on my soul that you will never have cause for grief.'

  She looked upon him and was lost by the tenderness and desire that shone in his eyes, by the warm curve of his mouth and the tiny, coppery glints of beard stubble. There could be no withdrawal from this situation. They had to go on together. She would make sure that he never so much as looked at another woman again. In place of his cold marriage bed, he would have this one with her, and she would brand him beyond bone to the spirit itself.

  Slowly she sat up. Tossing back her hair, thrusting out her breasts which were still firm despite the suckling of a child, she straddled his thighs. His response was gratifying and instantaneous, but she had no intention of granting him release just yet. She teased him, rubbing against his trembling shaft, pulling away, circling her hips, always just out of reach, until he groaned with frustration and arched his body.

  The Valkyrie image filled her mind. It had first been created for her by Goldwin, but she had long since made it her own. Now, here with Rolf, she was all-powerful and she would pluck him from his writhing mortal state and show him the home of the gods.

  And so she sheathed his straining flesh and heard with triumph his long moan of pleasure, relief, and renewed tension. She undulated slowly, keeping his frantic body at fever pitch while her own pleasure swelled and tightened. She rose and fell more swiftly. His hand was on her breast and then between her thighs. He grasped her buttocks with the other one, holding her hard, and thrust up powerfully into her body. A battlefield cry tore from his throat as he filled her, and Ailith caught her breath, her head thrown back, all her consciousness centred in the exquisite pulsations radiating fro
m her loins.

  Rolf's vision was filled with the sight of Ailith glorying in her climax, her strong, beautiful body arched with pleasure and a pink flush mantling her face and throat and breasts. He had never seen anything so magnificent, had never felt such intensities of emotion and physical sensation. This was how it should be.

  Ailith's head came forward. Panting, gleaming with sweat, she gave him back stare for stare. Her hips still swayed gently and there was an exultant smile on her lips.

  'By Christ and by Odin I love you.' His avowal was whispered with tenderness and awe. 'It is forever, Ailith, forever.' And he thought that he meant it.

  She leaned over him, her full breasts grazing his chest, the tips of her hair tickling his skin. 'Forever,' she repeated, and sealed the bargain, her mouth on his, their bodies still one flesh.

  CHAPTER 27

  His wanderlust temporarily sated and sobered by his experience in the north, Rolf was content to dwell at Ulverton, to oversee the breeding of his destriers and the new sumpter ponies, to watch the farmlands turn beneath the plough and the fishing boats bring home their catch. And to be with Ailith.

  They played like children in the snow, they stayed abed whilst the weather howled around them, and made long, slow love. When the season warmed into true spring, she rode beside him to look at the stud herd, and he accompanied her into the village. At first, because of her earlier determination to be chaste, she was embarrassed to go abroad among the people, but they treated the change of circumstance up at the castle with tolerant amusement and knowing looks which said that they had known all along how it would eventually be, and they were not displeased.

  The uprising in the north had been summarily quelled, and King William celebrated Easter in Winchester, where Rolf repaired briefly to present him with his tribute of a dozen warhorses and payment in silver in lieu of his personal presence on military duty in the King's service. He was only away from Ailith for a week, but it seemed like a year and he hastened home to her side and did not stir from it again until the land was covered in bursting, soft greenery on the borders of April and May.