Born of the Sun (29 page)

Ceawlin cursed, thrust his hand through his hair, and resumed pacing up and down the room. Sigurd sat in silence and watched him with resigned sympathy. There was nothing Ceawlin could do—which was why he was so frustrated, of course. The door of the room opened and Niniane looked in.

“Ceawlin? I have something I must speak with you about.” Her eyes fell on Sigurd, sitting in Coinmail’s old chair. “Sigurd! I did not know you were back.”

He smiled at her. “I just rode in, Niniane.”

Her small face lighted with a returning smile. “I am glad to see you safely home. These trips to Venta make me nervous.” Then, to Ceawlin, “I shall come back later.”

“No, you might as well come in now.” He continued to pace the floor, not looking at her. “Well, what is it?” This, when she closed the door but stood in silence, her back against it, watching him. “I warn you, though, Niniane, do not say anything to me about the livestock or the fields. I am in no mood for playing farmer just now.” His tone of voice was noticeably disagreeable. Sigurd frowned.

“I wish that was all I had to bother you with,” Niniane said.

Ceawlin stopped pacing and stared at her. “What is it?” His voice was hard.

“Wynne is pregnant,” she answered. “She has named Penda.”

Ceawlin’s eyes narrowed to slits of turquoise. “You are saying that Penda has corrupted her?”

“Yes.”

He cursed, long and fluently. Then, almost shouting, “I told you to get rid of that girl!”

“I know you did, Ceawlin, but I needed her help. With all these men, there is so much to do—”

“I don’t want to hear about how much you have to do! Gods! For the sake of a few miserable meals and lengths of cloth you have put me in an impossible position! Gods,” he repeated, his voice becoming less furious as he began to think about what he must do. “I could choke you, Niniane.”

“Ceawlin.”
Sigurd was horrified by the way Ceawlin was speaking to his gentle wife. “It is not Niniane’s fault. What did you expect? There are no women here and the thanes have healthy appetites. I’m surprised you haven’t had a rape on your hands all this long winter. If it wasn’t Wynne, it would have been some other woman.”

Ceawlin’s eyes flicked his way, but otherwise he ignored Sigurd. “He will have to marry her,” he said to Niniane.

“I know.”

“He will marry her and I will pay a fine to her family.”

Niniane nodded. Her eyes looked huge in her small face. “I am sorry, Ceawlin,” she said miserably. “I suspected there was something between Penda and Wynne. I should have told you …”

Her voice trailed off. He was looking at her in utter disgust. “You suspected something and yet did not tell me?”

She bit her lip and nodded. She looked so small, so helpless standing there in the blaze of Ceawlin’s wrath. Sigurd wanted to reach out and gather her safely into the shelter of his arms.

“Well, pray to your crucified god that Naille and her parents will accept the fine and the marriage as recompense for the loss of their daughter’s virginity,” Ceawlin said to his wife. “If they do not, then I will be forced to have Penda executed. And he is a man I cannot afford to lose.” His voice was deeply bitter.

All the color drained from Niniane’s cheeks. She looked stricken. “You wouldn’t do that,” she whispered.

“I will have no choice. I cannot lose the goodwill of the Atrebates.” He picked up a small pottery cup from a table and threw it on the tile floor, smashing it into pieces.
“Gods!”
he said again forcefully, pushed by Niniane as if she were not there, and slammed out the door.

The two left in the room listened to the sound of his footsteps going down the gallery. Then Sigurd said, his voice very gentle, “It is all right, Niniane. It is not your fault. Ceawlin should have foreseen something like this was bound to happen.”

“But he did, Sigurd.” She was still standing forlornly by the door Ceawlin had slammed closed. “He told me to send Wynne away and I wouldn’t. And at Christmas I saw a look pass between them … Ceawlin is right. I should have told him.” She looked so distressed that he crossed to her side and put a brotherly arm around her shoulders.

“Do not fret. It will all come right. Ceawlin will make Penda marry her.”

He could feel her shoulders trembling under his arm. “I knew he would be angry,” she said.

“It is not just your news that upset him. I had to tell him that my father is planning to lead his own war band, not join forces with Ceawlin. He was angry before ever you came into the room. He just took his temper out on you.” Sigurd did not sound as if he approved of his friend’s behavior.

Niniane’s shoulders had stiffened as soon as he spoke of Cutha’s plans. Now she said, her voice sharp with alarm, “What does this mean, Sigurd? Cutha is going to lead his own war band? Does this mean he is seeking the kingship for himself?”

“No.” He let his arm drop away from her. “Ceawlin asked me the same question. I cannot believe that either of you could think such a thing. It is merely that my father, as the older and more experienced warrior, feels he can serve Ceawlin better by leading his own men.”

Niniane tipped her head back to look searchingly into his face. Her neck was long and slender as the stalk of a flower. Her bright hair hung straight to her waist, a shining fan of coppery brown. “Ceawlin was counting on additional men,” she said.

“I know. But my father may strike the decisive blow for him.”

Niniane’s small white teeth bit into her lower lip. Ceawlin would not like that either, she thought, and the thought was plain on her face for Sigurd to read. But all she said was, “I can well see it was not the time to tell him about Wynne.”

“No.” His eyes on her upturned face were oddly still. His voice was perfectly normal, however, as he added, “But he had to know sometime. He will get them married, Niniane. Do not worry. Everything will be all right.”

A beautiful rose color flushed into her skin along the lines of her cheekbones. “How could I have been so stupid as not to tell him what I suspected!”

He raised his hand as if he would touch her, then dropped it again. His mouth tightened. “Stop blaming yourself.” His voice sounded short. “It was as much Ceawlin’s fault as yours.”

Niniane caught the change in his voice and thought he was annoyed with her. “I’m sorry, Sigurd,” she said apologetically. “I did not mean to bore you with my guilty conscience. You are wanting to go to Ceawlin and I am keeping you.” She gave him a small smile to indicate that he could go without hurting her feelings.

“You are not boring me. You could never bore me.” Now he sounded angry. “I just do not want you to think you have failed Ceawlin. You have not.”

Niniane’s smile became more genuine. “Thank you, Sigurd, for trying to cheer me up. You are a good man.” She reached up to touch his cheek with gentle fingers. Then she sighed, put her hand on the door, said, “I had better go and get something to clean up this mess,” and was gone.

Sigurd stayed on in the chamber for several more minutes, his eyes on the smashed pottery on the floor, his fingers on his cheek.

Ceawlin had an extremely unpleasant interview with Penda, who said the same things to him that Sigurd had said. “You have a woman here, Prince. For how long did you expect the rest of us to do without?”

The truth of Penda’s words only made Ceawlin more furious. He controlled his temper, however, and got Penda’s agreement to marry Wynne. Then he went to Naille’s farm, where he stayed the night, and the following day he and Naille together called on Wynne’s parents.

“Yes, it will be all right,” he said to Niniane irritably when finally he returned to Bryn Atha from his rounds. He had gone into their bedroom to change his tunic, and found her there, feeding Cerdic. “They agreed to the marriage. A Christian marriage, of course, so it cannot be done until the summer. It is costing me a big fine in gold, I might add.” He pulled his good tunic, one Niniane had recently finished making for him, over his head and threw it on the bed. Then he went to the clothes chest to get his old one. “This has been a lesson to me, though,” he said as he bent over the chest. “I cannot keep the thanes idle any longer. Next week we take to the war road.”

Her body jerked with surprise and Cerdic lost the nipple. “All right, love,” she said to the baby as she replaced him at her breast. Then she told Ceawlin, “But Sigurd told me that Cutha was going to lead his own war band.”

“I don’t care what Cutha is going to do. I will have to set my hand to what is available to me right here. I cannot challenge Edric to battle, that I know. But I can take some vils, perhaps even pick up some ceorls who are tired of the farm and wish to see what the life of a thane is like. That is one way to increase my war band.”

Niniane stared at him as he put on the second tunic. She longed to cry out that he should not go, that he should wait for Cutha, that it was madness to think some two dozen or so men could successfully defy the army of Winchester. But she said nothing. He would do what he felt he must do, and nothing she could say would make a difference.

“Bertred is interested in Meghan,” she said instead.

“Well, that decides it then. I will get them away from Bryn Atha. We will raid some vils and collect some women. Otherwise I will be spending my life facing the irate parents of Atrebates girls!”

Niniane’s mouth fell open. “You are going to bring women back to Bryn Atha?”

He was buckling his sword belt over the tunic. “You will have to find some place to house them.”

“Are you planning to turn my home into a brothel?” Her voice was shrill with outrage.

He finished with the buckle and looked up. “Do not argue with me on this, Niniane. Sigurd and Penda are right. It was unreasonable of me to expect Saxon thanes to live like your gelded priests. I shall raid a few vils—Saxon vils … do not worry, I won’t bother your precious Britons— pick up some women, and perhaps some men for the war band. That will enliven the thanes a little and let them know that they have chosen a lord who knows how to look out for their welfare.”

“You will scandalize the Atrebates if you bring such women here,” she said. “Christians have a very different view of such things.”

“Well, then, they will have to be scandalized. I have sworn not to interfere in their lives, so let them not interfere in mine. I must have women for the thanes, and there is an end to it.” He picked up his sword, which he had dropped on the bed along with his good tunic. “Tell your people the women are here to work in the kitchen. The gods know you have certainly whined enough that you don’t have sufficient help! Now you will have some.” And he left the room, slamming the door behind him.

“Cutha has not gone to join Ceawlin after all.” Edric was speaking to Guthfrid in the privacy of the queen’s hall one wet and blowy afternoon in March. “He is at Banford.”

“Banford?” Guthfrid’s slim shoulders were very straight as she sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her husband. “What is he planning? Does Cutha desire the kingship for himself?”

“He says not. He has declared for Ceawlin. But it is certainly strange, the fact that he has not joined forces with the bastard. The eorls do not like it. They do not trust Cutha. Nor do I. He has known power for too long to relinquish it lightly.”

“How many men went with him?”

“Fifty.”

Guthfrid raised a thin, arched eyebrow. “You have three times that number.”

Edric smiled with satisfaction. “I know. Cutha thinks he is a war leader, but all his successes came under the direction of Cynric. We shall see how he does on his own, and outnumbered three to one.”

“You will go after him?”

“I will go after him. And quickly, before he has a chance to prepare his defenses or change his mind and join with Ceawlin.” Edric patted the queen’s shoulder with his thick, callused fingers. “It could not have fallen out better,” he said. “With Cutha and Cuthwulf out of Winchester, I no longer need to fear the knife at my back. Now I can take a full war band on the road. And once I have dealt with Cutha, we shall turn north and finish Ceawlin once and for all.”

“Bring Ceawlin’s head home to Winchester,” said Guthfrid, “and I will lay it as an offering on Edwin’s grave.”

There were a number of Anglo-Saxon settlements in the valley of the upper Thames, established by settlers who, since the time of Arthur, had come up the river valley from Kent or along the Icknield Way from East Anglia. It was an area of Britain that had not yet been successfully claimed by any of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and this was the place Ceawlin chose for his first raid. “I have sworn to increase the borders of Wessex, to make her equal with the other English kingdoms,” he said to Sigurd when first he told his friend of his plans. “We will start with the upper Thames. I hear the land there is rich, the farms prosperous. Let them swear allegiance to Ceawlin of Wessex.”

Gereint and his friends wanted to accompany the Saxons, but Naille refused to allow them to go. It was one thing to fight when their own land was being threatened, he said, and quite another to fight for the expansion of a Saxon kingdom. Ceawlin had accepted his refusal with perfect good humor and even reprimanded Gereint for protesting his father’s decision.

The war band left Bryn Atha on a chill overcast March morning and Niniane saw it off with ill-concealed resentment. The thought of Ceawlin’s bringing women into Bryn Atha was eating like acid into her heart. He knew how she felt but he did not care. He needed women, “and there was an end to it.” They parted with each one feeling the other was being unreasonable.

Ceawlin thought that she was being a prude. It was not that at all, she thought as she watched the last of the war band ride out the gates of Bryn Atha. She had lived for too long in Winchester to be outraged by the easygoing morals of the Saxons in regard to sex. The thanes could bed a hundred Saxon girls for all she cared. It was Ceawlin who was on her mind. She could not forget Cynric and the women’s bower: the harem that had existed solely for the pleasure of the king.

What would she do if Ceawlin should take one of these women into his bed? The very thought drove her into a blind and jealous fury. She had never thought of herself as a possessive person, but with Ceawlin … She was not like Fara, she thought despairingly as she turned to go back into the house. She was not made to love and share. She could not stand by and watch another woman … she could not even think about it without her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides.