Born of the Sun (23 page)

“Yes. Everyone else was watching you, but I was watching Edwin.”

“Why?” He dropped the tunic on the floor and looked at her inquiringly. His hair was ruffled into a halo of silver, and she smiled.

“Because I didn’t trust him.” She bent to pick up his tunic. He took off his shirt and she took it from his hands and went to put them both on the clothes chest.

“I did not mean why were you watching him, I meant why did you warn me?” He stood on one foot to remove a shoe, then on the other. Niniane picked up the shoes as well and put them in the corner. Then she came back to him and placed her hand upon his lean, muscled back. She loved to touch him.

“Where did you get all these muscles?” she asked.

“Wrestling, I suppose. I never had much weight, so I had to be strong.” He sat on the edge of the bed so their eyes were on a level and drew her close to him. “I have always wondered why you warned me. You were to marry him. He would have been king. I should have thought your interest lay with him, not with me. Was it for my mother’s sake?”

“Partly.” Her small face was grave as she looked back into his eyes. “But I did not want to marry Edwin. He … he frightened me.”

He frowned and reached a hand up to smooth her hair. “Did he? Why?”

“I don’t know.” Her eyes were very gray. “He was just … strange.” She grimaced a little. “He repelled me, if you must know.”

Ceawlin looked over her head. Then he said, with extreme quietness, “I don’t think he had a soul. Even a man one dislikes, distrusts … still one can see he has a soul. It’s there, in his eyes. It was not in Edwin’s.”

Her eyes almost engulfed her small face. “Yes,” she whispered. “He was like that. He made my flesh creep.”

“Mine too.” Their eyes met and held. “Guthfrid and Edric I can deal with … but him … and he was my brother.” There was a faint trace of horror in his voice.

“I was glad when you killed him,” she said.

“So was I.” The horror had been replaced by a note of distinct grimness. “I will have to pay for it one day, I know. Fate does not allow a brother-slayer to go unpunished. But I will face it when I must. For now, fate is on my side. I can feel it.”

“Ceawlin, it was not your fault. Edwin was going to kill you.”

He smiled a little crookedly. “No, Niniane. One cannot hide from the gods what is in one’s heart. I wanted him dead. I wanted to be king. And whatever may come to me in the future because of what I did”—his eyes narrowed to slits of turquoise—“it will have been worth it.”

Niniane had been very tired these last few weeks, falling asleep as soon as she settled herself in the bed, but tonight she lay awake, her mind busy with what had happened between her and Ceawlin.

Never had she expected such a reaction to her news. Never would she be able to understand him. He was so utterly different from anyone else she had ever known.

He fascinated her. She lay curled against his warm, sleeping body and thought about her marriage. Was what she felt for him a sin? She supposed it was, at least until they were married by a priest. But he had agreed to a Christian marriage, so that would be all right. Naille had told her the priest was due to come in August. Then they could be properly married.

What she felt might be a sin even when they were properly married. She did not think it was right to do such things with a man … to want to do such things. Yet she could not help herself. She could not even think of saying him nay.

He fascinated her. Nor was it just the things they did together in the night. There was something about him, a power she recognized though she could not put a name to it. He would get what he wanted, Ceawlin. Of that she had no doubt.

Her eyes began to close. Her bed had been so lonely those nights he was away in Venta. Finally she slept.

Ceawlin woke with the dawn. Niniane was still asleep. She was lying on her back this morning, one arm flung above her head with the abandon of a sleeping child. The inside of her elbow was delicately veined and fragile. Her lashes lay quietly against the pale honey of her tanned cheeks. She did not look old enough to be having a baby.

He felt again the surge of triumph he had known last night. He had fathered a child! His wife was going to have a baby!

Ceawlin had never confided this to a living soul, not even to Sigurd, but for years now he had gone in terror that he would never father a child. True, he was only eighteen, but none of the women he had lain with had ever conceived. And his beard had yet to grow. In vain had his mother assured him that fair-haired men grew their beards late. “Your father was late in growing his,” she had said, striking fear even deeper into his heart. All of Winchester knew that Cynric was a poor breeder.

And now Niniane was with child. His child. She was no Guthfrid, his Niniane. Of that he was sure. He looked down at his wife’s sleeping face.

She was so sweet, so yielding, she gave herself to him with such heart-searing trust. It was that quality in her that moved him most, that trust. For some reason, when he was with her the carnal flame of passion was always tempered by a tenderness he had never felt for any other woman. It was because she had been a virgin, he supposed, and had known nothing of love until he had taught her.

He had never given her a morgengabe. He frowned as this thought struck him, and it was his frowning face that Niniane saw when her eyes first opened. She blinked, then blinked again. “But what is wrong?” she asked, her voice husky with sleep.

“I was just thinking that I have never given you a morgengabe.”

She rubbed her eyes and yawned. He laughed at her efforts to wake up. “What is a morgengabe?” she asked.

“The gift a husband gives to his wife the morning after their wedding. It is to signify that she was a virgin, that her blood is pure.”

“Oh.”

He was very grave. “I will give you a morgengabe one day, Niniane. I promise you that. One day, when I am king.”

She smiled sleepily and yawned again. “That will be nice.”

“Go back to sleep,” he said. “You’re tired.”

“Not at all. I’m fine,” she said. He got out of bed and began to dress. When he turned around to the bed once again, she was asleep.

Niniane waited until the thanes had been at Bryn Atha for a week before she approached Ceawlin with a subject she knew was going to be unwelcome to him. “The hay is ready to be cut,” she said.

“So?” He cocked his eyebrows. “Then get it cut.”

She had ridden out to their hayfields that morning to inspect them and had sought him out as soon as she returned to Bryn Atha. She took him into the kitchen so they could be alone. “I cannot cut it myself,” she returned.

“Of course you cannot cut it yourself. No one is suggesting such a thing. Get Naille to send some men over.”

“Ceawlin, you don’t understand. Every man within miles is cutting his own hay. There is no one to cut ours.”

“They can come here after they finish their own.”

“The hay will not last that long. It must be cut now, while the weather is fine. One rain and we will have lost it.”

His eyes were beginning to deepen in color. “What are you suggesting, Niniane? That I cut it?”

She raised her small round chin. It was going to have to be said sooner or later. “Yes. You and the thanes are going to have to cut it.”

“No.”

“Then your horses will have no hay. The cattle will have no hay.”

“I told you I will buy what we need.” The scar at the corner of his eye was becoming whiter, the way it always did when he was angry.

“No one will sell you hay, Ceawlin. They need it for their own beasts.”

“We were always able to buy hay for Winchester.”

“You had your own farms for Winchester, worked by ceorls who owed tribute to Winchester. There are no ceorls among the Atrebates. No one owes us tribute. What we eat, what we feed our animals, we must grow ourselves.”

There was an ominous silence. The smell of her stew filled the kitchen. Niniane had known this was going to be his reaction. The Saxon thanes considered themselves a warrior elite; the very idea of farming would revolt them. It clearly revolted Ceawlin.

“Are you suggesting that I ask my thanes to work in the fields like common ceorls?” His voice was dangerously quiet.

“If you don’t, then you will starve,” she answered.

“I told you months ago. I will buy what food we need in the market.”

“You cannot. Oh, there is food available right now, I grant you. But let the winter come, Ceawlin, and it will be a different tale. Then there are no more vegetables, and the hunting grows sparse. If we do not have grain and corn stored up, and fodder for the animals, we will all starve. Do not expect Naille to feed your war band for you. He will not.”

“I can buy from the Saxon vils.”

“And when Fara’s jewelry is gone? What do you expect to use to equip your war band? To reward your war band? When your money is all spent for food.”

“How can I send my men out to plow the fields?” His nostrils flared. He was becoming really angry. “They are Saxon warriors. Not farmers.”

Niniane did not back down. “Tell them that if they don’t farm, they don’t eat.”

“I am their lord. I am responsible for seeing to it that they eat!”

Niniane stared up into his blazing eyes. He knew she was right, of course. That was why he was so furious. “Well, you may be a Saxon and a prince, my lord, but if you want to live to be a king, you will learn to farm.”

“Don’t talk to me as if I were a child.”

“Then stop acting like a child.”

He clenched his fists and took a step toward her. She did not move. “That’s right. Hit me. That will solve everything.”

He turned on his heel and left the room.

That night he told his men they were going to have to harvest the hay.

“I don t care what may happen in Winchester! I want him dead, do you hear? Dead! Dead! Dead!”

“Guthfrid, try to calm yourself.” Edric cast a harassed glance at the door of the sleeping room.

“No, I will not try to calm myself! I will never be calm again until that bastard murderer is lying under the earth like my Edwin.” The queen’s brown eyes were glittering as if with a fever, and there were hectic spots of color in her cheeks. She had been hounding Edric on this subject ever since their marriage, but never before had she been so close to hysteria.

“I have told you,” he said with controlled patience. “Once I am secure here in Winchester, I will raise a war band and go after him.”

“I know what you have told me. And he has been gone for five months now, and you have done nothing!”

“What can I do? If I turn my back on Winchester, the eorls are likely to seize control of Edgar.”

“And do you think to keep Edgar safe by allowing his brother’s murderer to go free? Who knows what spies Ceawlin has inside Winchester? Fifteen of your thanes deserted to him. Who is to say what followers he has left within our gates? What dagger may be poised even now at Edgar’s heart?”

Edric looked at his wife. Since their marriage he had been openly sharing the queen’s hall and the queen’s sleeping room, and he had been hoping for a very different greeting when he came in this night after having dinner with Cutha. Guthfrid’s golden hair was loose for the night and she wore only a thin robe over her nakedness. She was very beautiful. He desired her as much as he ever had. But she was becoming obsessed with this need for revenge against Ceawlin. It was not getting better with time. It was getting worse. Nor was she wholly in the wrong, he thought. The desertion of the thanes had been a nasty shock.

“Guthfrid.” His voice was sober now, almost grim. “I cannot turn my back on Cutha. You know that. No matter what he may say to my face, he is Ceawlin’s supporter. He voted for him in the Witan over Edgar.

His son is one of the thanes who deserted to the bastard. I cannot leave Cutha in Winchester while I am gone.”

“Then get rid of him.”

“How?” He put his hands on her shoulders and moved his thumbs to caress the silky skin beneath the robe.

She tipped her head back to look up at him. “Send him to East Anglia.” The heaviness of her eyelids gave her a sultry look at all times, but when she half-lowered them as she was doing now, she was enough to ignite a fire in any man’s blood. His fingers dug into her shoulders. “We will send him on a mission to my father, Redwold. That will get him out of the way.”

“What kind of a mission?” His eyes were on her mouth.

She shrugged. “I will think of something.” Her eyes were so dark they were almost black. “Once Cutha is gone, you can take a war band and go after Ceawlin.”

“I suppose I could do that.”

The tense, strung-up look relaxed and she slid her arms around his thick neck. “You
will
do it. For me, Edric.” She leaned her body against his.

“Yes,” he answered. She was rubbing against him now and he groaned. “Yes, Guthfrid. I will do it.” And he tore the robe from her body and pushed her down on the bed.

The priest arrived in Atrebates country in August and, after a discussion with Naille, agreed to marry Niniane and Ceawlin. As Naille pointed out when the priest had first demurred, the Franks had been converted when their king married a Christian princess. Father Mai, a Welshman who had trained at Glastonbury, had seen the truth of this and so it was with visions of glorious conversions for Christ running through his mind that he went with Naille to meet the Saxon prince.

Bryn Atha was bustling with activity when Naille arrived with the Welsh priest early on the afternoon of August 14. Ceawlin had set up training grounds for his thanes all over the villa: wrestling area, javelin-throwing area, area for sword practice, for large spear practice and, for stamina, a running path that encompassed the perimeter of the villa walls. As Naille rode in through the gates, the priest by his side, the first thing he saw was his son and several other British boys throwing javelins at a target. He checked his horse.

Gereint was doing very well, he was pleased to see. But he had not realized how many Atrebates boys were coming here.

“All of these men are Saxons?” Father Mai inquired in shocked surprise. “I had not thought there were so many.”