Musing on these things, it was a relief when Alde sat up in her bed and announced, "Judith has drunk all the ale."
"I have not." Judith's face was dark with anger, her blue eyes sullen. Kneeling up on her pallet, she placed her hands on her hips and let fly with, "Alde is a liar."
"I am not!"
"Are!"
"Sunniva, can we eat?" Isabella was tugging at her hair. "I am hungry."
"Soon, little one," Sunniva replied, wondering how Marc could sleep through this. Perhaps this distraction was not such a relief after all.
The girls were quarrelling again, Marc realized, as he groggily surfaced through a heavy wash of sleep. It was no wonder. For days they had been forced to stay indoors, barricaded within their room at the inn, while the London streets seethed with rumour, riot, fire and murder. Since their first days in the city he had gone down to the docks and harbour and hired a half-dozen Danes for their protection. These men he trusted, since one, Ragnar Fire-Breeches — the nickname had stuck ever since Ragnar had accidentally set his leggings on fire while tending a watch-fire — had served with him in Constantinople. They were outside the door now, snoring in the corridor.
He had tried to hire a nurse for the girls, too, but she had run off with her hire-money after one night. He did not blame her. No one knew who was friend or foe in these times. For their own protection they moved regularly from inn to inn, never staying in any one place for too long.
Scraping sleep from his eyes, he rolled over and tickled the scrapping Alde and Judith. In moments all three girls were on him, pinching and prodding. He let them rough with him far more than usual, anxious as he was that they might start having nightmares again, especially Isabella. London was a place of fire these days, with timber and thatch buildings blazing up like torches. Most were deliberately fired by mobs of angry men: sailors stuck too long in port, merchants losing their livelihoods as no one could trade, frightened townsfolk, suspicious of any strangers.
He tensed, almost flinging the girls off and going for his sword, before he realized that the slight draft across the small of his back was merely Sunniva, easing the shutters open a crack.
"Forgive me," she mouthed, while aloud she said, "The room needs an airing," and then, "I thought I heard a street trader, selling oysters."
"I love them!" crowed Isabella, bobbing her curls.
"Yuck!" Alde did not care for sea-food.
"We must eat what there is, child," Sunniva said quickly, as Marc bounded from the bed to the door. If there was a seller, any seller, in the alleyway outside it was worth stopping the person. Naked, he put his head round the door and called to Ragnar, still bundled in his cloak in the corridor.
"There may be a street trader out in the alley," he told the man, speaking quietly so as not to wake the scullery lads and spit boys who also sprawled down the stairs. They were on the first floor of the inn in the more expensive rooms — a slight illusion of safety.
'Food and news,' Ragnar said at once. He was a scrawny, black-haired, black-stubbled, hook-nosed dancer of a fighter, agile as a leaping salmon and twice as quick. An old campaigner, he needed no more telling but was shaking his companions awake.
'Good!' Marc left him to it, and when he turned back into the room and closed the door, he found Sunniva dressed and combing Judith's thick brown mop, bringing some order to her hair. Judy was at the no-wash, no-comb stage of personal grooming and for Sunniva to be even touching her hair was a triumph.
"I want as many braids as Alde," Judith was saying, while Isabella was counting how many oysters she would eat.
He smiled: he could not help it. Without Sunniva this would be impossible: his girls would have been weeping by now. Was it down to her that they slept in peace still, untroubled though the world about them snorted fire? He rather thought it was.
"Ragnar has gone out to look," he told her. "And no, he will not harm the creature, whoever it be."
She looked her gratitude in a way that made him think of bed, but it was time they moved on, and tomorrow they would. They had stayed in this inn for three days: word would have seeped out that strangers, possibly foreign strangers, were at the Goldsmith's Inn on Fetter Lane.
She jerked her head slightly and he clambered over the straw mattresses to the small window. She eased the shutter for him to look down into the alley leading off the larger, usually more noisy Fetter Lane.
"The metal workers have fallen strangely silent over these past days," she murmured. "And not only because of the curfew. It is like a tomb here."
He nodded, aware as she was that London was unnaturally quiet. There were no carts. No markets. No hawkers. No drunks. Red kites picked at refuse and dogs roamed the alleys without hindrance. People crouched indoors. It was the silence of a city under siege, except that William and Edgar Atheling's supporters were supposed to have come to terms this month.
"It is since the king made peace with the city," he said, aware of Alde leaning against the closed shutter, trying to peer out. On the bed, Judith and Isabella had settled to a game of guessing. No one had sufficient energy to quarrel.
His stomach grumbled and he grinned, seeking to make light of it for the sake of the children. "If there is a seller of victuals out there, Ragnar will find them," he said.
Sunniva pushed the shutter further, pointing a narrow finger. "Every day that thing grows higher."
"The motte," Marc said patiently, aware that such a huge mound of earth and its purpose was unknown to her. She was right, though. Sometimes, when the wind was blowing in the east he could hear William's men working with their shovels and picks. Day by day the mound grew, massive and steep-sided, a defence against attack. Soon it would be topped by a wooden tower and Londoners would wake to find themselves over-looked by a Norman castle.
Beside him he felt Sunniva shiver. "I hate it," she growled, her sea eyes gleaming silver for an instant. Then she shook herself. "'Tis nothing," she exclaimed to the wary Alde. "A fleck of snow on my face. The days are growing cold."
That was true, Marc thought, and the worst was they could find no stalls open these days to buy more clothing. Ragnar had heaped them all with furs from his own ship, so they were warm enough, though the children were buried in the pelts, especially Isabella.
"What day is today, Sunniva?" Alde asked.
"It is the twenty-fifth of December." She smiled, and a thousand candles seem to light in their narrow, damp room. "Christmas Day."
"Christmas Day," repeated Judith. "Then why are the church bells not ringing?"
"It is early yet, and very cold," Sunniva said rapidly. "Bell ringers are usually very old or young: would you have them venture out and catch a cold? Even your uncle's leggings would sprout ice-crystals in this weather, were we to go out now."
Alde giggled, diverted by the image.
Marc pulled on the offending leggings and crossed again to Sunniva. "We must leave soon," he warned, in a low voice. "Ragnar will keep the girls safe here and guard them, but we shall need time to cross the river. When I met him last night, Odo of Bayeux was adamant that we attend the coronation today."
Sunniva nodded, frowning. She waved at someone in the street, saying, "Ragnar has found us an eel and pie seller."
"Then we shall have breakfast," Marc said, to squeals of delight from Isabella.
The sun was still rising when Sunniva and Marc set out for old King Edward's new abbey church at Westminster. Sunniva was uneasy and not only at having to pass through London.
"What manner of man is this Odo of Bayeux?" she asked, whispering in case any townsfolk heard the French name. Marc had said London had now sworn allegiance to William. If they had, it was only because William's army were camped close by and he and his men had burned and devastated parts of the city and the surrounding countryside. Each time Marc had cause to slip out into the narrow, twisting streets she had been in an agony of anticipation and dread until his safe return, especially last night, when he was gone for hours. He could pass for
English now but only two nights ago when — praise be to Freya! — the children had been sleeping, she had heard a dreadful hue and cry echo through the deserted streets: "A Norman! A bastard Norman!"
She had been trembling at the shouts and curses and shivering at the frantic footfalls under their window. Marc had warned her not to look out but listening to the mob and seeing the glare of torches through the chink in the shutters had been bad enough. She did not dare to think what had happened to the hapless foreigner: kicked and hacked to death most likely. They had not run him down by the Goldsmith's Inn but she had heard his desperate sprinting and once the wall had shaken as the stranger crashed against it.
Putting the stranger's ghastly fate from her by a deliberate effort of will, she said, "How do you know Odo?"
"I sold him a war-horse in Brittany," came back the flat, laconic reply. "And gifted him several more."
The way he spoke, Sunniva knew that the "gift" had been delivered by some kind of force. Marc confirmed this by saying next, "Odo and his men had set up a hunting camp close to my mother's. He saw my horses and liked what he saw."
"Hence the gift," Sunniva remarked. "I suspect that he is the kind of man who does not take 'no' as an answer."
"Not when he was within reach of my mother, certainly," Marc agreed, his handsome face stripped of all expression. "Odo also took a drink from her well, in my mother's best silver cup."
"He kept the cup, too," Sunniva guessed, stepping round a pile of rotting cabbages whose unwholesome stink had briefly made her gag.
"He did indeed. Odo likes treasure."
"But he is a holy man!" Anxiously Sunniva glanced up, in case anyone was leaning out into the street and could hear this.
Marc snorted at that. "Bishop he may be, but he is William's half-brother first and the same grasping blood flows in his fat, bald body." Marc glanced at the staff in his hand; he was using it to prod the ice puddles, in case any were hip-deep under the frosting. "Do you know he has a mace, studded with nails, or something like? It is said he uses it in battle to brain his enemies." Marc's eyes gleamed for an instant. "Of which there are many."
"How did you find him in this huge city?" she asked, falling into step with Marc down some stone steps showing fire-scorch marks.
Marc scowled at the fire-marks, his bright brown hair ruffled by a chill breeze as he raised his head, staring off into the distance where smoke still rose from field and woodland blazes lit by William's plundering army.
"Such men as Odo are easy to trace. In William's army camp, his was the most opulent tent. I bribed a guard and sent a copy of my seal ring ahead, in wax, as token of my good faith, and he remembered me. He saw me yester evening and promised he would speak to the king on my behalf."
Yesterday evening Marc had been out past curfew, Sunniva remembered again, and while he was away she had tried to teach the girls to hem neatly, her fingers cold and fumbling in her terror for his safety. Now he snapped his fingers, as if this whole lethal business was easy, and smiled to assuage Sunniva's constant dread. "Odo gave me a parchment to show the guards at the coronation," he said, "so we may pass through unhindered."
If we reach Westminster safely, Sunniva thought, though she said nothing. Nearby, a group of ragged beggars lurked in the ruins of a charred house and these now shuffled forward, blinking, into the misty half-light of the morning. Seeing their wasted faces and desperate eyes, Sunniva looked about herself for coins but found none. Snug from the whipping wind in her new white furs, she felt ashamed.
"We can do nothing for them," Marc breathed, flipping the lead beggar some small coins and hurrying her on. "Come, I can smell a fuller's and I would be past that as soon as we may."
Her breath held in against the truly vile, stale smell of urine, Sunniva ducked under a low house beam jutting out into the alley and rounded the corner into another deserted street. She could see the river ahead, milky-white and glossy as a new ribbon, lined with wharves and jetties. Already the air seemed sweeter, the houses more fine. Some were still the sunken-floored huts she had hurried past in other parts of the city, but more were bigger, with many shutters and brightly painted doors.
"Where is everyone?" she mused aloud, and Marc answered, "At Westminster, perhaps." His teeth showed very white in his lean face as he grinned at her. "Maybe even you English are learning to cheer the Normans."
"Maybe so," Sunniva replied, conscious of the man-made hill, the motte, rising at the edge of the city. "Will you cheer for William?" she asked.
"If he would confirm you in your bits of land, I would cheer for the devil."
"Oh, hush." Sunniva made the sign against the evil eye, wondering at the same time what she was going to do. If her fellow English did cheer for a Norman king, then would they not also cheer, in time, for a Breton lord? Surely that is a good omen for Marc and me, she thought, her pace quickening with her hope as Marc hailed one of the many small boats bobbing on the water and the ferryman began to row towards the nearest jetty to collect them.
Once they were on the river, Marc relaxed, to the extent he no longer fingered his sword hilt but turned Odo's scrap of parchment over and over in his hand. Sitting beside him in the narrow rowing boat, Sunniva turned her head this way and that, taking in everything. Her jaw dropped with astonishment at the bales of wool left on one jetty to spoil in the chill, frosty air, but Marc mentally shrugged: it was the way of war; people were splintered and forced from their normal lives. If William was a strong king there would be less suffering: kings were a necessary evil here on earth and only King Christ in heaven was truly just.
Marc remembered Edward the old king, dressed and perfumed like a Norman lord but pious as a monk. He remembered the king's quavering voice when he had been presented to Edward at his new great hall at Westminster. His sponsor, one of Edward's Norman favourites at the court, had spoken of his skill with breeding and training war horses, and Marc recalled Edward's haughty distaste each time the word "breeding" was mentioned. Edward had never looked directly at him, a mere horse wrangler, throughout the entire interview.
William would be very different, he knew.
Briefly, he envied the ferryman pulling upstream against the current. He could do the same kind of work easily and this silent, bearded man did not have to be troubled with kings or nobles.
"Look! How wonderful!"
Sunniva's exclamation roused him from his gloom and he followed her pointing finger to the great cathedral of St Paul's, probably the largest church she had ever seen. Its long nave and three tall towers, all of stone, soared above the city walls and houses, but Sunniva's finger traced the nave roof, of painted wood and now, clearly a recent, hasty repair, with a section of golden thatch.
"How it gleams in the winter light," she breathed.
He smiled, taking delight in her pleasure as her busy eyes scanned the church again. When she frowned he felt a pang.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Those girls collecting water from the well. They are the first womenfolk I have seen in this city."
"You will see more at Westminster." Marc prayed it would be so, and for selfish reasons. Sunniva glowed in her white furs. What if Odo or William took a fancy to her? What if one of Odo's close followers demanded her as a reward?
Let any man try to come between us, Marc vowed, fingering his sword again.
Closer they glided to Westminster, the ferryman sculling nimbly over a series of mid-stream rapids before settling back into a broad, relaxed stroke. An earthy tang rose from the river, growing stronger as the dwelling places of London petered out and marshland took over. Sunniva pointed to a wading bird, commenting on the gleam of its wings.
"And it is good eating, too," she added, and then she laughed, rather shame-facedly. "Especially roasted, with parsnips and turnips."
The ferryman caught Marc's eye and winked.
Sunniva turned on the wooden seat and looked at both of them. "Would it not be better to give me the parchment and for you to ret
urn to London to guard your youngsters? It is my land."
"Absolutely not. And they are safe with Ragnar."
They lapsed into silence again and now Marc could hear faint cheering. Their boat rounded a bend in the river and he could see people ranged along its banks: Londoners dressed in their best, come to stare at their new king.
Sunniva inhaled sharply. Looking where she did, Marc found his own breath stopped. The abbey church of Edward towered above them, gleaming white, in the form of a long cross, with a semi-circular apse and a massive central tower.
"I never knew buildings could be so huge!" Sunniva breathed, and Marc said, "I have seen such a style before, in Normandy."
She flicked him a look. "Duke William will feel at home, then."
"King William," Marc reminded her.
Again, she teased him. "Not yet," she said.
Reaching a jetty, Marc hurried them off the boat and pushed a way through the thronging crowds — not quite a mob, Sunniva realized, but edgy all the same. There were guards standing all the way round the abbey church and men on horseback in armour, glowering at the people.
Marc seemed to know who to approach. In moments he had displayed the parchment with its precious seal and they were let through into the church.
Inside, the semi-darkness after the bright morning made Sunniva almost lose her footing and the rich tumble of incense caught in the back of her throat. Marc, his hand clamped about her wrist, propelled her to a space in the nave, close to a massive carved stone pillar and only released his other hand off his sword when they had their backs against the pillar.
"Now what?" she whispered.
"We wait," Marc replied, swivelling his head, obviously trying to see Odo of Bayeux, or any of the lords of Brittany, or indeed anyone he recognized.
Of course he is one of the victors, Cena hissed in Sunniva's mind. She shut her father out, praying to the old king Edward, whose grave was in this holy church. Please let Marc be safe, she prayed. Please let him not be a woman-killer. Please let us be together.
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 46