Born of the Sun (17 page)

He turned his head slightly to look at her over his shoulder. “That is so.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, that is very likely. He can fight no longer, so he might as well wed.”

Niniane did not answer. She could feel the strong muscles of his back under the palm of her hand. She ought not to be so surprised by them, she thought, remembering the duel with Edwin.

“I will cook the chicken today,” she said, changing the subject, “but you are going to have to go hunting if we are to eat tomorrow.”

He gave her a quick boyish smile and then faced front again in the saddle. “Certainly.” Then he added, “We will have to go and see this Naille. He will perhaps know more about your brother. And we need some livestock if we are to live at Bryn Atha. Livestock for ourselves, and hay and grain for the horses.”

“Yes,” said Niniane, and was glad he could not see the worried look on her face. “We will have to go and see Naille.”

They had the chicken for dinner. Niniane fried it Roman fashion, in oil in a bronze pan on top of the raised hearth stove. She also seasoned it with some herbs that were still left in the larder. Ceawlin ate with obvious relish.

“What did you do to the chicken?” he asked curiously after he had eaten for five uninterrupted minutes. “In Winchester all our meat is either roasted or stewed.”

Niniane explained. Then she added, “I shall have to restart my garden, but until it yields, we shall have to buy vegetables and corn from the local farmers.”

“Buy?” He raised his fair eyebrows. “Surely the tribe owes you a food tax. Since your brother is not here to collect it, why cannot you?”

“A food tax?” repeated Niniane. “The farms do not belong to us, Prince. They belong to those who work them.”

“Don’t call me prince,” he said irritably. Then, “What does it matter whom they belong to? The fields of the vil belong to the coerls who work them, but still they owe the king a food tax. How else is the king to realize income?”

“The Prince of the Atrebates does not take from the people just because he is the prince.” Niniane’s large, widely spaced eyes were grave and steady on his face. “We farm our own lands, and what else we need, we trade for.”

There had been wine in the pantry as well as the oil and herbs, and she had poured him a cup to take with his dinner. He sipped it now as he thought about what she had just told him. Clearly, he could make no sense of it at all. “What
is
the prince, then?” he asked her at last.

“He is the leader.”

“From what you have just told me, he is no different from anyone else in the tribe.”

“One doesn’t need material things to be a leader,” she replied a little haughtily. “Leadership is a moral thing, Pr … Ceawlin.”

He put down his cup, annoyed by her tone. “Moral?” he said. “You were left all of this,” and he gestured to include the room and the villa, “and you make no effort to maintain it or defend it. Is that moral?”

“You are the ones at fault there, my lord Ceawlin!” she answered hotly. “You Saxons. You come like wolves, destroying everything civilized that Rome has left.”

“Oh, no. Look around you, Princess. Have there been Saxons at Bryn Atha? Not until two years ago, yet the place had already fallen into decay. Silchester—the city you call Calleva—was a city of ghosts long before any Saxon set a foot in it. It is your people who have lost the Roman civilization. You have been in retreat from everything Rome stood for ever since the last legion pulled out.”

“That’s not true!” Her small round chin rose and she glared at him. “Have you forgot Badon, my lord?”

“Arthur was the only one of you who understood what it means to be a king. And he was half Roman.”

She reached for her own wine cup. “And what does it mean to you,” she asked, “to be a king?”

His eyes moved from her hand to his own, so much larger with calluses across the palm from holding a sword. “To be a king means that you are responsible for the people,” he answered. “These things like the food tax, the poll tax, they are due to the king because he has taken upon himself the burden of that responsibility.”

“And what exactly does that responsibility entail?” He felt her eyes on his face even as he looked at his own hand.

He answered slowly but readily. This was something he had thought of before. “The king’s responsibility is to lead his people in war, to protect them from famine, to give them justice, to sacrifice for them to the gods.” He raised his turquoise eyes. “It is not freedom that a king knows, Niniane. It is responsibility. But it is a responsibility that he takes up gladly, because it is in his blood to do so. The kings of Wessex are Woden-born; the blood of the god gives us our mission.”

If she noticed the change in pronoun, she did not say so. Instead, “Do you think that Cynric was a good king?”

“You saw him when he was old.” He looked over her head, as if he were seeing a picture in his mind. “But I remember him when he was great. Look what he has done for his people. The poorest ceorls, who came landless from Wight, now have rich fields to farm. The thanes sit each night in a splendid hall; the eorls will soon have great lands of their own.” His eyes found hers again. “Look what he has done for
your
people. Venta was dying when Cynric took it; now it is a thriving city.” He took a sip of wine. “Cynric made the West Saxon people into a nation,” he said. “He was a great king.”

“I am sure you will understand when I say I cannot agree with you.” Her tone was dry, astringent.

“No,” he said. “You will never understand. It is because you are a Christian.” And he looked at her with pity in his eyes.

When they had finished eating, Niniane cleared the dishes off the dining-room table and Ceawlin went to the stable to see to the horses. Niniane washed the dishes in the kitchen and remembered that she and Ceawlin were married and that the night was coming on.

The thought of lying with Edwin had petrified and repulsed her. She was not sure how she felt about lying with Ceawlin.

She finished putting the dishes away, went down the gallery to Coinmail’s room, and opened his clothes chest. It was empty save for a few old tunics that he had evidently felt it not worth taking with him. She lifted one tunic out of the chest and held it up. It would be short on Ceawlin, of course, but it might do for a little until she could make him a few more. He had not brought much with him from Winchester.

She heard the door open and then his voice. “Niniane! Where are you?”

“In here,” she called back, and listened to his footsteps coming down the gallery. In a trick of memory another scene flashed before her mind: the one other time she had waited in this room and listened to the sound of Saxon footsteps coming nearer. All of a sudden the fear she had felt then washed over her again. Her heart began to pound and she stared at the door with dilated eyes.

It opened gently. “What are you doing?” Ceawlin asked, and came into the room.

She did not answer right away, and he cocked an inquiring eyebrow. She felt her hammering heart begin to quiet. It was all right, she thought in some confusion. It was just Ceawlin. “Looking to see if Coinmail left anything you might be able to wear,” she managed to answer at last.

“Oh.” He took the tunic from her hand and held it up against himself. “I don’t think so.”

It was too narrow as well as too short. Niniane was surprised. Ceawlin looked so slim; his shoulders were wider than she had supposed. “Oh, dear.” Her voice had still not reached its normal register. “Well, I shall have to try to patch two of them together somehow.”

He dropped the tunic on the bed. “At the moment, Niniane, I am not interested in new tunics.”

“Oh,” she said again, and looked at him out of eyes that were absolutely huge.

He had stepped away from her to model the tunic, and now he moved toward her again. She was standing with the clothes chest directly behind her. She could not back away. “You are my wife,” he said, his voice very soft. “You know what that means.”

“I … I suppose I do.”

He was close enough now to touch her. He stopped and looked down into her eyes. They were not wearing the guarded expression so familiar from her days in Winchester. Instead they were apprehensive, unsure, and faintly … frightened. He cupped her face in his hands like a flower. “I won’t hurt you.” His voice now was dark and gentle. He bent his head and began to kiss her.

She was still as marble under his touch. He realized, with pleasure, that no one had ever kissed her mouth before. He raised his head for just a moment and whispered, “Kiss me back.” When her mouth began to answer to his, he felt a thrill that was different from anything he had known before.

His lips moved from her mouth to her cheeks, her nose, her forehead. “See? It can be very nice.” Then he found her mouth once more. After a while her arms came up to circle his waist. He bent and lifted her in his arms.

“No,” she said when she realized he was taking her to the bed. “Not here. My room.”

He carried her out of the door of Coinmail’s room to the next room on the gallery, kicked the door open, and laid her on the blue wool blanket that covered her bed. Then he lay down next to her.

Niniane could feel his kisses all the way down in her stomach, and when his hand moved to caress her breast, the power of the sensation she felt shocked her. “Ceawlin …” she murmured, and her voice was breathless.

He raised his head and looked down at her. “I told you it would be nice.” His own voice was hoarser than usual. Then he sat up and said, “Niniane, take off your clothes.”

Her fingers were shaking as she began to obey him. First the tunic came over her head, then her gown. She was down to her linen undergarment when she raised her eyes to look at him.

He had stripped completely and thrown his clothes onto the floor. He was standing in a pool of light from the window, and she stared at him with suddenly widened eyes. He looked, she thought in astonishment, exactly like the god pictured on the mosaic floor in one of the houses in Calleva. It was Apollo, her father had told her, the god revered by the Romans for his healing and his power of prophecy. The mosaic had shown a beautiful young man, fair-haired and beardless, with smoothly muscled shoulders and upper arms, flat stomach, narrow hips, and long athletic legs. The god had worn but a cloak draped across one shoulder and had carried a bow and a quiver of arrows. Niniane had thought when first she saw the picture that he was the most beautiful thing in the world. And now he was standing here in her bedroom, alive.

He was like the god when he came to her this time too. Mastering. Overpowering. A rush of feeling and desire that she could not even think of denying. She obeyed his wishes, her heart hammering, her body flooding with foreign and overwhelming sensation.

He did hurt her when he entered her, but she did not try to pull away. Did not want to pull away. And was rewarded by a wild and glorious burst of pleasure such as she had not known could possibly exist.

After a while he braced his hands on either side of her shoulders and lifted his weight from her. She looked up into his face, framed by the hood of moonlight that was his hair. It was Ceawlin, she thought. Not the god. But she was not sure.

“Do you know,” he said softly, “I don’t think I am going to mind staying at Bryn Atha after all.”

Niniane awoke first the following morning. It took her a moment to remember that she was in her own bedroom at Bryn Atha. She remembered instantly who it was sleeping next to her in the bed.

He was lying on his stomach, his arms stretched over his head. She raised herself up a little cautiously and contemplated the part of him that she could see protruding from beneath her blue blanket: a well-muscled back and a tangle of extremely blond hair. He did not look like a god this morning. He looked like a very large young man who had usurped most of the space in her bed.

What had happened to her last night? She looked from the tangled silvery mop on the pillow to the window, as if seeking an answer. Was sex really like that? Or had she drunk too much wine? She looked back toward the pillow and was caught by two sea-blue eyes. He was awake. She stared at him, afraid to speak, not knowing what she could possibly find to say. He smiled at her sleepily and reached up an arm to pull her down next to him. “Oh, no,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere for a while.”

She did not argue.

They had breakfast on Geara’s second loaf of bread and more cheese. “I shall have to bake,” Niniane said. “Fortunately Geara gave us enough flour.”

“We had better ride over to see this Naille this afternoon,” Ceawlin responded. “According to Geara, he is the one who has charge of all the villa livestock.”

“Thursday is Naille’s day to visit the tribe,” Niniane replied. “I think we would be wise to wait until tomorrow, Ceawlin. There is little point in traveling to Naille’s farm only to find him gone.”

He looked irritated, and she added quickly, “Besides, I thought you were going to go hunting today.”

His brow cleared. “That is true. You will have to show me where the hunting is best.”

“That’s easy. The upper wood. I can give you the direction. If I go with you, I won’t be able to bake.”

“That is so.” He looked toward the window. “The day is fine. It will be good to get out in the wood with a bow.” His eyes came back to her. “You have no dogs?”

“We had dogs. Coinmail must have taken those to Naille too.”

He nodded, finished the cheese he had cut, and stood up. “The horses should have finished their grain. I’ll go saddle up Bayvard and put Ruist out to graze.”

Niniane smiled and nodded and began to carry the dishes into the kitchen for washing.

She stayed busy in the kitchen, making dough and kneading it, until he had been half an hour gone from the villa. Then she went herself down to the stable and saddled up the chestnut gelding. She was going to Naille’s today and she was going alone.

As Niniane had told Ceawlin, Naille was the chief man of the Atrebates after Coinmail, and his farm lay some four miles from the villa. Once, two hundred years before, when Bryn Atha had first been built, all the land in the surrounding area had belonged to the prince. Tenant farmers had worked much of it, and for a long time their labor had been largely responsible for the villa’s prosperity. However, as the years went by, much of the land had passed out of the hands of the chiefs. The choicest farms had gone to younger sons of the chiefs family, who, as the cities failed, needed to be able to live off the land. In the end, some of these farms had turned out to be more prosperous, though certainly less luxurious, than the original villa.