Born of the Sun (38 page)

“That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.” Sigurd was usually very kind to his young wife, but his eyes now were colder than she ever remembered seeing them. “I do not want to hear you say such a thing again, Edith. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Sigurd.” And her eyes filled with tears at his unusual abruptness.

The familiar guilt wrenched at his heart. It was not Edith’s fault that he did not love her. It was not her fault that the very gentleness and sweetness that had attracted him to her in the first place had long since begun to cloy. As had her adoration. It had been so comforting at first, to find a woman who had eyes only for him; her love had soothed his ego as well as his heart. It was why he had married her, only to find out too quickly that it was not Edith’s love he wanted. And now all he could feel for her was this miserable guilt. “Don’t cry,” he said more gently.

“I won’t,” she said, and her eyes brimmed over.

“What is the matter?” It was Cutha, who had noticed Edith’s tears.

“Edith was just telling me some mad story that is going around the women’s quarters,” Sigurd said. “Something about Niniane having enchanted the king with her music.”

Cutha’s eyebrows drew together, making the ends seem to fly even higher. “Nonsense,” he said.

“I know. But it could be dangerous nonsense, Father. I shouldn’t like such a tale to reach unfriendly ears.”

“Hmm.” After a minute Cutha nodded. “I’ll speak to Ceawlin.” He gave his daughter-in-law an irritated look. “Do not cry, Edith. You were right to tell Sigurd of such a charge. Now, be a good girl and drink your wine.”

Edith hastened to obey.

The priest put Coenburg’s fingers into Penda’s and tapped upon their joined hands with the sacred hammer of Thor. Then, with much laughter and encouragement to Penda, the eorls and thanes of Winchester escorted the bride and the groom from the great hall to the hall that Ceawlin had built for Penda when he had first named him an eorl five years before. Sigurd felt a brief flicker of sympathy for his sister as he saw her frightened eyes, but it had to be. And Penda would make it easy for her. One thing you could count on with Penda was his knowledge of women.

Sigurd found himself walking next to Ceawlin as the crowd of well-wishers returned to the great hall. The women had retired with the departure of the bride, but the men would continue to drink well on into the night. Behind him he heard Cuthwulf’s drunken roar of laughter and suddenly Sigurd had no heart for it. “Edith said something to me today that I think you should know of,” he found himself saying to Ceawlin.

“Oh?” Ceawlin cocked his silver-blond eyebrows in a familiar look of inquiry.

“It has to do with Niniane.”

They walked in silence for a moment; then Ceawlin called to Ine, “I will be back later, Ine. The rest of you enjoy yourselves.”

“We will, my lord!” came the boisterous reply.

“Come along with me to the king’s hall,” Ceawlin said to his friend. “Niniane will be putting the children to bed and we can be private.”

The king’s hall was indeed empty except for some servants and Ceawlin’s old hound. Only their youngest child slept in the hall with Ceawlin and Niniane these days. At Ceawlin’s insistence the older children and their nurses had been moved last year into the princes’ hall.

“Get us some beer and then you can leave,” Ceawlin said to the servants, and gestured Sigurd to a chair at Cynric’s old table, which still stood in the middle of the room. When the cups of beer were before them and they were alone, Ceawlin turned to his friend and said, “What is this about Niniane?”

“It is some nonsense that Edith told me, but I thought you should hear it. They are saying in the women’s hall that Niniane has enchanted you with her music.”

Ceawlin’s reaction was not at all what Sigurd had expected. The king threw back his head and roared with laughter.

“It may not be so funny if such a tale reaches unfriendly ears,” Sigurd said when Ceawlin finally grew quiet.

“Do you mean Guthfrid?” Ceawlin took a long drink of beer. “Guthfrid has been saying far worse things about Niniane for years.” The humor completely left his face. “It is not what Guthfrid says but what she does that concerns me.”

“I know.” Sigurd felt again the horror he had known last winter when they had apprehended a henchman of Guthfrid’s right within the walls of Winchester. The man had been carrying poison, poison which he confessed was meant for the queen. Ceawlin had wanted to execute the man on the spot, but Niniane, with a scorn she was sure would infuriate Guthfrid even more, had sent the man back to East Anglia for Redwold, the East Anglian king, to deal with.

“You should have killed Guthfrid when you had the chance,” Sigurd said.

Ceawlin shrugged. “I could not have won a war with East Anglia seven years ago, Sigurd. I had won Winchester, but any war band I put together at that point would have had divided loyalties. And if I killed Guthfrid, I would have had a war with East Anglia. Redwold accepted wergild from me for the death of Edwin, but he could not in honor have done anything but go to war if Guthfrid died. You know that.”

Sigurd did know, and made no reply. Ceawlin suddenly pushed the cup away from him, stood up, and paced over to the hearth. The white boarhound raised its head from its paws at his master’s approach. Ceawlin stooped to caress its long ears, then rose to his feet and began to poke at the fire. Sigurd watched him, comparing him in his mind with the Ceawlin of seven years ago, just as he had done with Niniane earlier in the great hall.

At twenty-seven, Ceawlin had lost all traces of his boyhood. His shoulders had broadened, the extreme slimness of adolescence turned into the lean, powerful strength of a mature man. His least conscious gesture bespoke the authority of a king who holds the power of life and death in the hollow of his hand. He was, as Bertred had once remarked to Sigurd, as close to being a god as a man was ever likely to get.

“I wanted to talk with you about Niniane too, Sigurd,” he said at last over his shoulder. He put down the stick with which he had been stirring the fire. “You may have noticed we have been at odds of late.”

“I noticed,” Sigurd replied, his voice expressionless. Then, “You are easy to read, you two.”

Indeed, Sigurd thought as he watched Ceawlin’s broad shoulders move in a resigned shrug, all of Winchester had known there was strife between the king and his wife. Sigurd had come into the king’s hall several times recently to find Ceawlin shouting and Niniane wearing a still, frozen, implacable look that was not at all like her usual serene expression. “Are you going to tell me what is the matter?” he asked when Ceawlin did not speak.

“Nan wants to see her brother.”

Sigurd sat bolt upright in his chair. “What?”

“Her brother,” Ceawlin repeated. He turned around. “Coinmail. The one who lives in Glevum. She wants to visit him.”

“It would not be safe,” Sigurd said. “Surely you won’t allow her to go.” But he knew as soon as he spoke that Ceawlin would. He would not be speaking thus to Sigurd if he had not already decided that. And he had called his wife Nan.

“I won’t allow her to go to Glevum, certainly. She would be all too tempting a hostage for any British prince with illusions of power. But I have said she may meet him in Glastonbury if he will come there. The Christians have this belief in the sanctuary of the church. She swears she will be safe in Glastonbury.”

“But why?” Sigurd asked. “What is the purpose of such a meeting?”

“The gods only know.” Ceawlin shrugged again. “She wants to see her brother. She has not seen him in almost ten years and she wants to see him now. I don’t understand it either, Sigurd, but it is important to Niniane.”

“So you have told her she could go?”

“I have told her she could go to Glastonbury if Coinmail will meet her there … and if you will agree to be her escort.” He looked at Sigurd out of narrowed blue-green eyes. “I must send someone I can trust with her. She would make an extremely valuable hostage. I will give you an escort of thirty men.”

“Name of the gods, Ceawlin!” Anger flared in Sigurd’s voice and eyes. “Are you mad? What good can possibly come of letting her go to Glastonbury? Keep her here in Winchester, where she is safe.”

Ceawlin sighed. “Sigurd, about most things Nan is the mildest, most yielding of women. Rarely does she set her will against mine. Last year, for example, when I insisted she move the boys out of here so I could have a little peace, she did not want to do it, but she gave in, let me have my way. But every once in a while, something is important to her, really important. And then she does not give in. She was like that about having the children baptized Christian. And they have been, all of them. She was like that when I wanted her to get a wet nurse for Ceowulf.” He began to walk back toward the table. “Do you know what she did?”

“No.”

“She was so weak from childbed—that is why I wanted the wet nurse—and she got out of bed and took a knife to the woman. A knife!” Ceawlin shook his head in wonder. “She could hardly stand, and she held a knife to that woman’s throat and said, ‘Give me back my baby.’ ‘

Sigurd felt a pain in his chest. “She loves her children well, does Niniane.”

“So do most women love their children, but not like that. A knife! It had been a hard birth … she was not supposed to be out of bed … I was terrified she was going to start to bleed.” Ceawlin had reached the table, and now he picked up his beer cup and drained it. “What could I do? I gave her the baby and she nursed it.” He put down his empty cup and looked at Sigurd.

“There was nothing else you could do,” Sigurd said.

“No.” The grimness left Ceawlin’s mouth, to be replaced by a look of distinct amusement. “This business of the women’s bower. They say she has witchcraft because they know I sleep with no one else. But do you know how Niniane would take it if I did, Sigurd?”

The pain in Sigurd’s chest deepened. “She would get out her knife again?”

Ceawlin came around the table and sat down. “She might. And I’m not at all sure she wouldn’t use it on me!”

Sigurd looked resentfully at the man sitting beside him. Ceawlin had gone back to staring at his cup, and all Sigurd could see of him at the moment was the edge of his clear-cut profile and a thick curtain of pale hair. Was Ceawlin doing this deliberately? he wondered. Ceawlin knew how he felt about Niniane. Could he possibly be inflicting this pain on purpose?

“This business of Coinmail,” Ceawlin was saying. “It is the same thing. She wants to see her brother, and that is that. Either I give in to her or I break her; there is no alternative. Under the circumstances, I think it best to let her go. But I must make certain that she will be safe.”

“Gods!”

“Yes.” Ceawlin turned his head to look at his friend. “I don’t mean to burden you with my marital problems, old friend, but I wanted you to understand how it is.” His sea-blue eyes looked confidently into Sigurd’s. “Will you go?” he asked.

Sigurd heard himself answering that he would.

Niniane could not herself say why it was so important to her to see Coinmail. It had happened over the course of the last two years. First she had begun to dream about him at night. Next she had ridden to Bryn Atha to ask Naille if he ever heard from her brother. When Naille had been unable to tell her anything, she had sent some Britons to Glevum to see what they could learn. The Atrebates messengers had returned with the news that Coinmail was indeed married to the Dobunni chief’s daughter and had become himself one of the important men in that tribe. It was then that Niniane had known that she must see him.

Ceawlin had kept his word to the Atrebates when he became king, and no Saxon had ever been given a hide of land that belonged to a Briton. There had, however, been plenty of open land, land that had once been farmed in the days of Rome but had stood empty ever since. This was the land he had given to his eorls and thanes, and now Saxon and Briton lived side by side throughout Wessex and peace reigned.

She wanted to tell this to Coinmail. She wanted her brother to understand that she had not betrayed her people, that accommodation with the Saxons was not something to be feared, but something to be striven for. She tried to explain this to Ceawlin, and though he understood what she was saying, he did not see the need for her to carry such a message to Coinmail. “I have no designs on his land, Niniane,” Ceawlin had said. “I have enough to keep me occupied at the moment right here in Wessex. I am no threat to Coinmail and he certainly is no threat to me.”

The problem was that in her heart, Niniane was not so sure. She was so happy with her husband and her children, with the life they led together. She felt this fierce necessity to protect it, to protect Ceawlin and her sons, and for some reason she could not explain even to herself, she felt that Coinmail was a threat.

She needed to see him. And so on a beautiful morning in early June she left Winchester with Sigurd and an escort of thirty thanes to go to Glastonbury, where Coinmail had said he would meet her. The only one of her children whom she had with her was the baby, Sigurd, who was still at the breast. The rest of the little band of brothers had remained in Winchester under the supervision of their nurses. She would not have brought them even if she thought Ceawlin would have allowed it. They were too like their father, too obviously Saxon, ever to soften the heart of her brother. But this new little babe—his hair was a downy red-gold in color, his eyes the dark blue that she knew would turn to gray. Sigurd was going to look like her, like Coinmail, like a Briton.

“Have I told you how grateful I am to you, Sigurd, for taking me to Glastonbury?” Niniane said as they rode along the road that went west from Winchester toward the old Roman city of Aquae Sulis.

“Yes, Niniane, you have,” he answered, and gave her a teasing smile. “Many times.”

She laughed. “Ceawlin is furious with me for insisting on making this trip,” she confided. “He has this mad idea that someone will kidnap me and hold me as a hostage.”

“Well, he is right. You are too valuable to be risked in enemy territory, Niniane. All the world does know how Ceawlin loves you. You would make an all-too-effective hostage.” Sigurd’s voice was stern, and when she turned to look at him, his face was stern as well.