Born of the Sun (20 page)

Naille looked away from those confident eyes. “That is so,” he said uncomfortably.

“Well, then, what Niniane has said must make sense. Your people are not warriors. Surely you saw that at Beranbyrg. Allow me the freedom of Bryn Atha and I will promise that when I am king I will not touch any land that belongs now to the Atrebates.”

“What do you plan to do at Bryn Atha?”

“Assemble a war band to take against Guthfrid.”

Niniane stared at him. This was the first she had heard of this plan.

“You expect me to allow you to keep a Saxon army at Bryn Atha?”

“We will not bother you,” Ceawlin said impatiently. “I have given you my word, Naille. My word is sacred.”

“Naille …” Alanna spoke at her husband’s elbow. “He
is
married to Niniane.”

“A Saxon marriage. That means nothing.”

“I will be happy to marry her in your faith if that is what you want,” Ceawlin said promptly.

“There. See, Naille? What better testament of his good faith?” Niniane realized with faint humor that Alanna had become Ceawlin’s supporter.

“Oh, yes, Father.” Isolde appeared at her father’s side and tugged on his tunic. “He is a nice man. He got my cat down from the tree.”

Naille looked surprised. “The cat that was in the tree behind the house?”

“Yes. He climbed all the way up and got it down for me.”

Naille looked at Ceawlin. “Very shrewd, Prince.”

Ceawlin grinned and looked like a harmless boy of eighteen. Naille, who had seen him fight at Beranbyrg, was not deceived, but his wife and children clearly were. “All right,” he said slowly. “You may stay at Bryn Atha. For now.”

Niniane rode Bayvard and led the cow. Ceawlin walked and led the chestnut, which was loaded with chicken crates. “My heart nearly failed when Naille recognized you,” she said as they walked along the track between the plowed fields.

“I was not surprised,” he answered.

“You weren’t surprised? You never even hinted to me that you thought Naille might recognize you!”

“You went to the farm yesterday behind my back.”

“That is not the same thing at all.”

He looked over his shoulder at her but made no reply. “Well, I suppose it has turned out for the best,” she said after a minute. “You seemed to persuade Naille.”

“It was the cat.” She could hear from his voice that he was smiling.

“My heart almost stopped when that branch broke under you.”

“Your
heart.” He pushed up his sleeve and looked down at his arm. “The misbegotten thing scratched me when I was trying to get it into the bag.”

“Let me see.” The track had widened and he let her come alongside him and showed her the deep red scratch in his forearm. “Nasty,” she said, and had to resist an impulse to kiss it. “I’ll wash it out and put some salve on it for you when we get home.”

He nodded and walked along beside her for a few minutes in silence. “Did you mean what you said about collecting a war band at Bryn Atha?” she finally asked.

“Yes.”

“But how? Who?”

“The young thanes from the princes’ hall, for a start. I spoke to some of them before I left. They will join me here at Bryn Atha.”

“Ceawlin, it was the thanes from the princes’ hall who were going to kill you.”

“I did not speak to those thanes, naturally.”

Long pause; then, “So you really mean to go to war?”

“Of course I mean to go to war. I will have to, if I am to be king.” The track was starting to narrow again and he moved closer to her horse. “We are going to have to find the means of feeding a large group of men, Niniane. This cow and a few chickens won’t be sufficient.”

“When do you expect the thanes to come?”

“Not until I send word. I had no idea of what I would find at Bryn Atha, of course. I said I would send when I was ready.”

“Will Cutha come?”

“Cutha will be my ear in Winchester. I do not want Cutha at Bryn Atha yet, even if he would come. Sigurd will come, though, I doubt I could keep him away.”

“I am going to have to plant a very large garden,” Niniane said. “And there is the corn to get into the fields …”

“I cannot understand this,” he said impatiently. “We cannot plant our own corn. There is no one to plant it!”

“My father and Coinmail …” Her voice trailed away as he stared up at her incredulously.

“Your father worked in the fields? He was a prince.”

“He was a British prince. And there was no one else—

“I will buy corn,” he said flatly.

“Where?”

“Surely there is a local market.”

“Well, yes. But, Ceawlin, what will you use for barter?”

“Before I left Winchester, my mother gave me her jewels.”

“Oh.”

“The track is getting too narrow, Niniane. You will have to drop back.”

She halted Bayvard and let Ceawlin get ahead of her. “About your brother,” he said over his shoulder, and her heart skipped a beat. “For how long does he mean to stay in Wales?”

“I don’t think he is in Wales exactly, Ceawlin. He is near to Glevum.”

He shrugged. Where Coinmail was was clearly immaterial so long as he was out of Ceawlin’s way. “How long?” he repeated. “Did Naille say?”

“He did not know.”

“He is shamed,” Ceawlin said. “That is why he has gone away. He is shamed to have taken his life from me.”

“Perhaps. I don’t know.”

“He is shamed to face his people, knowing he can no longer lead them in war. I do not think he will return soon.”

“Is that how you would feel, Ceawlin?” she asked. “Shamed?”

“I?” He looked over his shoulder at her. He seemed surprised. “I would have died before I swore such a thing,” he said. And looking down into his austere face, Niniane knew that he spoke the truth.

Niniane put in her garden and talked Naille into giving her back most of the villa’s livestock. She also managed to arrange with Naille for three men to come and help sow Bryn Atha’s fields with wheat and rye and barley. It was all very well for Ceawlin to talk of buying what they would need; Niniane knew they would have to grow their own food. It simply would not be possible to feed a group of men over the winter unless they had their own food stored. Come the winter, there would be no food at the market for them to buy. So she got the crops into the ground and thought she would bide her time before telling Ceawlin he and his men were going to have to harvest them.

Ceawlin divided his time between hunting and fixing up the slave quarters. Niniane was surprised at how competent a carpenter he was
.
“I used to watch the carpenters in Winchester,” he confessed a little shamefacedly when she commented on his proficiency. “When I was a child, of course.”

“Of course,” she agreed gravely.

“My father was still building Winchester, you see. Sigurd and I spent a lot of time making nuisances of ourselves. You know how boys are.” He was putting a wooden floor over the dirt floor of the slave quarters and was down on his knees nailing in the boards. Niniane was sitting on the part of the floor that he had already finished.

She hid a smile. “I know.”

“Anyway”—he aimed the hammer at a nail—“it has come in useful. We must have quarters for my thanes, and I don’t think you would want them in the house with you.”

“Decidedly not.”

He grunted. “The house is too small. And we will need the reception rooms that have been closed up for the women.”

She stared at him. He had finished hammering the nail and was choosing another. “What women?” she asked.

“You will need women to help with the cooking and the weaving, obviously.”

“Oh.” She looked at his lean strong hand setting the new nail. “Where are these women to come from?”

“I haven’t thought about that yet. Do you think we could get some of the local girls?”

“With a houseful of Saxon thanes? No.”

He looked up from the board he was hammering into the wooden studs he had already constructed. “No?” His brows were cocked in the way she loved, the way that made him look like a little boy begging for honey.

“No, Ceawlin. Too many families lost a son or a husband at Beranbyrg.”

He nodded slowly and began to hammer once again. “Do you know whom I think we ought to bring to Bryn Atha?” she asked after a minute.

“Who?” he said around the sound of the hammer.

“Your mother.”

He sat back on his heels and pushed his hair off his cheek. “My mother? But why?”

“Because I do not think she is safe in Winchester.”

His eyes widened. “Not safe? But … do you think Guthfrid would try to do her a mischief?”

“I think she very well might.”

He frowned. “Nonsense. My mother is no threat to her now. Cynric is dead.”

“The queen hates you, Ceawlin. You didn’t hear her when she was speaking about you to Edric.” Niniane shivered. “She hates you and would do anything she could to hurt you. And Fara is your mother.”

“She wouldn’t dare,” he said abruptly. But she could see that he had gone a little pale. “Cutha is there …”

“Poison is easy enough to administer. And what could Cutha do? Guthfrid has the power in Winchester now.”

“Gods.” His eyes were getting very turquoise. “I never thought of that. You’re right, Niniane. I must get her out of Winchester.” His voice became accusing. “Why did you not mention this before?”

“I didn’t think of it before,” she confessed. In truth, she had thought of little else but him these last weeks, but she did not say that. “It was when you started to talk of bringing women here, and I thought
of the
women’s hall at Winchester and Fara. It just came to me….”

They stared at each other, both realizing they were guilty of forgetting Fara. Ceawlin put down the hammer and stood up. “I’ll ride to Venta and see Sigurd.”

Niniane stared up at him, but there was no one else who could go. “Yes,” she said finally, her voice low. “I think you had better.”

Ceawlin awoke early the following morning, the day he was to leave for Venta. The light outside the window was just beginning to turn from black to gray. Ceawlin was finding that he too liked sleeping in a room with a window. It was nice to wake in the morning and see the sky.

Niniane was still asleep, curled under the blankets like a kitten. He had kept her awake for quite a long time last night.

He propped his chin upon his hands and lay still, regarding his wife. Or what he could see of his wife, which was one bare shoulder and a shining stream of autumn-brown hair.

He loved making love to her. She stirred his blood more than any of the more knowledgeable, more experienced women he had known before. She knew nothing except what he had taught her, what they had learned together, yet he found the flicker of her eyelash more erotic than the most blatantly sexual enticements of any of his other women. It could be the isolation of Bryn Atha, of course. They were certainly not leading a normal life cooped up here together with scarcely another soul to speak to from morning until night. It could be. But he did not think so.

He should be getting up. He wanted to get an early start, make Venta before the gates were closed. He had certainly said sufficient farewell to Niniane last night. He remembered suddenly the first morning he had awakened beside her, in the storage barn where they had taken brief refuge on their flight from Winchester. He had wanted her then, and had refrained because she was a virgin and he had not wanted to frighten her. Well, she was a virgin no longer. He could certainly attest to that.

It would not take very long at all, really….

“Niniane.” He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her toward him. She was so light-boned, she weighed scarcely anything. But she held such profound delight…. “Niniane!” Her eyes opened and regarded him drowsily, dark and colorless in the gray light of the bedroom. He turned her on her back and slid over her, then into her. Her eyes opened wider. “Mmmmm,” he murmured deeply. He lowered his mouth to hers. For a moment she gave him no response, still half-asleep. He deepened the kiss and began to move slowly within her. He waited. He was not looking simply for his own quick relief; he had found that half his pleasure came from the delight he was able to give to her. After a minute her mouth answered to his, then her hips began to move in rhythm with his motion. “Nan,” he said against her mouth. “Ah….”

“I have to leave,” he said a little while later. “Gereint will be here later this morning.” He had made arrangements yesterday for Naille’s eldest son to stay with Niniane until he returned.

“Yes. You must.”

They neither of them moved. Then she said, “Whom will you go to in Venta? Who will be safe?”

“There is a woman I know,” he answered thoughtlessly, and felt her grow rigid against him.

“A woman!”

“An old woman,” he lied, “a friend of my mother’s.”

She relaxed again, warm and pliant in his arms. “Oh.”

He kissed the top of her head and got out of bed. She got up too and said, “I’ll get your food ready, Ceawlin.”

As he dressed, he wondered idly why he had bothered to lie to her. It was easier, he decided, that was all. He knew how women were. He had lived with his mother and Guthfrid for too long not to understand about women and jealousy. The less Niniane knew about his doings, Ceawlin thought, the better it would be for both of them.

He made Venta before the gates were closed, riding in on a horse he had borrowed from Naille. Bayvard would most certainly have been recognized, and quite possibly Niniane’s chestnut gelding as well. So, since secrecy was essential, he had taken a roan from Naille. He was also wearing a hooded cloak that had once belonged to Niniane’s father. He had protested to her at first that a hood in May would look suspicious. She insisted that he wear it.

“You may perhaps look a little unusual,” she had said, “but if you hunch over and pretend to be old, the cloak will cause no comment. Old people are always cold. In any case, the hood will be safer than going bareheaded. There isn’t another head like yours in all of Wessex, Ceawlin. You simply must wear the hood.”

She was right, of course, and so he pulled the hood up as soon as he was within sight of Winchester and kept it up until he was safe within the confines of Helwig’s house in the Lindum street of Venta. Helwig was surprised to see him.