Born of the Sun (6 page)

“Yes,” said Niniane sadly. “Their whole civilization is slipping away from us, all their knowledge …” Her voice trailed away and Fara looked at her shrewdly.

“The Romans could build with stone, true, and that is a skill we do not have. But these buildings are the only trace of occupation they will leave on this island, Niniane. You see, they came as conquerors, not as settlers. They came, they built roads and buildings, and then when their emperor called them, they left, like dust blowing away in the wind.” Fara shrugged. “So you see, my dear, they were not so successful after all.”

And are you not conquerors as well? Niniane thought. She looked at the friedlehe’s beautiful profile and prudently held her tongue. But she did not see how the Saxons differed from the Romans in that way.

“There is the forum,” Fara said, and Niniane looked in the direction the friedlehe was indicating. The Venta forum was larger than the one at Calleva and there were shops set up under the colonnade arches and a bustle of people going in and out. The tall blond Saxons mingled with the smaller, darker people who were Venta’s older inhabitants.

“We’ll have a look around the shops, but first I’ll show you the building the Britons call the praetorium. And perhaps you would like to visit the Christian church?”

“Yes,” said Niniane quietly. “I would.”

The praetorium was empty. The centerpiece of Roman rule in this part of Britain, the building which had housed three British high kings after the departure of the legions, was as deserted and bare as most of the buildings in Calleva. Niniane felt tears sting behind her eyes.

“What were the words the scop sang at the banquet the other night?” she asked Fara.

The answer came in a soft voice: ” ‘The battlements crumble, the wine-halls decay …’ That is the true Saxon spirit, my dear.
Lif is
laene …
life is fleeting.”

“My father’s harper would have understood that,” Niniane said. Kerwyn’s face came vividly to her mind. “Arthur is gone …” she murmured with infinite sadness, her eyes on the empty shell of the praetorium.

“Life is indeed short,” Fara said, and now her voice was brisk. “But that does not stop us from enjoying the time and the wealth that we have. Come. Let us do our shopping, and then you shall see your church.”

Niniane thought the shops were sumptuous. To a visitor from Paris or Rome or Constantinople, they would have been meager, but to a British girl who had never seen a truly functioning city, Venta was a marvel. The jeweler, a blue-eyed German of some sort, even had a necklace that had been imported from Soissons to show to Fara.

The language generally spoken, even by those who were obviously Britons, was Saxon. The means of exchange was mainly barter, although Fara had some gold imperial coins from the Continent with which she paid the jewel-maker. Niniane’s eyes were bright with pleasure as she followed Fara around the marketplace. She had quite forgot the melancholy she felt when she saw the praetorium.

They went to the Christian church before they left to return to Winchester. It was a small building, with plastered walls that had been painted in imitation of marble. The nave had a mosaic floor of red tiles and the floor under the altar was a panel of checkered tile in black, red, and white. The church was perfectly intact, although clearly unused.

Niniane stood before the altar, bowed her head, and listened. Empty and deserted as it seemed, still this room was not dead. There was a presence here, a presence she could feel, a presence that listened to her, a presence that cared.

There were monks still at Glastonbury to the west; that she knew.

Dumnonia and Wales were still strongholds of faith. If the British could not conquer the Saxons in battle, perhaps they could conquer the pagans in this. The thought came to her out of the silent air, and she smiled. She felt quite at peace when she rejoined Fara on the main street of Venta.

Three days later Niniane was sent for by the king. Sigurd’s father dispatched him to fetch her from the women’s hall for the marriage arrangements. Sigurd did not want to be involved in these particular plans, but he did not dare say so to Cutha. He went.

He waited on the porch of the women’s hall with ill-concealed impatience. Ceawlin was being spared this scene; Sigurd did not see why he had to be part of it. His father knew well his feelings about Edwin.

Cynric had sent Ceawlin into Venta that morning to interview the participants in a dispute over a trading license. Cutha had told Sigurd that the king did not want Ceawlin present at this business of Edwin’s marriage, but he did not want it to look as if Ceawlin were being deliberately excluded either. By making the arrangements today, the king had an excuse for his elder son’s absence.

The women’s-hall door opened and Niniane came out onto the porch. Her smoke-blue eyes looked up at him with a mixture of apprehension and anticipation. “Has my ransom come?” she asked.

He could not meet those eyes. “The king wishes to discuss your future,” he temporized uneasily. Then, “If you will come with me, Princess?” He opened the porch door for her.

“Are you still afraid of the dark?” he asked as they crossed the courtyard side by side.

“It is not the dark,” she returned in her surprisingly husky voice. “It is being shut in. I am used to rooms with windows, you see.”

“Windows are nice,” he agreed. “We do not have the Roman skill of making glass.”

She gave him a quick upturned look. “Neither do we, anymore.”

“It is not so bad here in Winchester,” he said a little awkwardly. “We may not have windows, but life is comfortable.”

“Life is very comfortable, my lord,” she replied quickly. He could see she was afraid she had offended him. “It is just different from what I am used to.” And she gave him a tentative shy smile.

He felt anger swell in his heart. It was an outrage to think of this girl in Edwin’s bed.

They had reached the king’s private hall. Sigurd set his teeth and motioned for her to go in before him.

Cynric’s hall differed from most of the other halls in Winchester in that the hearthplace was not in the center of the room but in a corner.

The center was reserved for a great carved wood table with eight high-backed chairs arranged behind it. Seated in the chairs today were Cynric, Guthfrid, Edwin, Cutha, and Cuthwulf, Sigurd’s brother.

“My lord king,” said Sigurd in Saxon, “I bring you the Princess Niniane.” Then, in a lower voice to Niniane, “Go and stand before the king.”

He watched her walk across the floor and come to a halt before the table. She looked very small. Sigurd then went himself and took the chair next to his brother.

It was Cutha, his father, who spoke. “The king has made a decision about your future, Princess. You will be pleased to learn that you are to marry his son, Prince Edwin.”

Every drop of blood seemed to drain from her face. “Marry!” she said. Her eyes went from Cutha to the king.

“Yes, marry,” Cutha replied. “The king has deemed it will be wise for Winchester to make a match with the Atrebates.”

“But I thought I was to be ransomed …”

“You yourself are more valuable to us than any ransom your father might pay,” said Cutha smoothly. “You are a princess of your line. A match between you and Edwin will bring the lands of the Atrebates more easily under our control.”

The color had not yet returned to her face, but Sigurd could see how her chin rose. “I cannot marry a Saxon,” she said. “I am a Christian.”

“That matters little. We will not interfere with your beliefs.”

“Enough of these questions!” It was Guthfrid, speaking in broken British for Niniane’s sake. “You are to marry my son, and that is an end to it. Marriage is not a matter girls are allowed to settle for themselves.”

“No, their fathers settle it for them,” Niniane shot back. “And I’m quite sure mine will not approve of this. Such a match, my lord”—and here she looked once again at Cynric, knowing that he was the one to whom she had to make her appeal—“such a match is more likely to enrage my people than to placate them. Unlike the Christians in Venta, we take our religion seriously.”

Cynric turned to Cutha, who translated for him. Then Cynric looked back at the girl who was standing before him. “Come here,” he said in Saxon, and gestured to the place beside him. Niniane began to walk around the table. She did not look at Sigurd as she passed in front of him. Finally she was standing next to the king. He reached out and took her chin into his hand. She looked back into his eyes, her own not flinching.

After a long minute he dropped his hand. He turned to Guthfrid and said in Saxon, “Let us wait. She may be right.”

“My lord!”

He held up a hand and looked across her at his son. “We will inform her people of our intentions,” he said to Edwin’s unblinking brown eyes. “It might be necessary to marry her in a Christian rite. Let us wait and see.”

The butter-yellow head nodded. “Yes, my lord,” said Guthfrid’s son.

Niniane, who had understood nothing of what was being said, stood white-faced between Cutha and the king. “Tell her,” Cynric said.

“The marriage will be postponed until we have communicated with your people,” Cutha said to her. “Princess, you are dismissed.”

“Sit still, Ceawlin! His mother gave an impatient tug on the hair she was trimming for him. “I will cut it too short if you keep wiggling about.”

Ceawlin let out his breath in an impatient sigh. “It is a good thing you were not born a Frank, Mother,” he said, as he had said every time she cut his hair since he was five years old. “Then you would never have an opportunity to exercise your talents with the scissors. The Franks have a law against cutting the hair of their princes.”

“Well, you are not a Frank, you are a Saxon, and your hair should not be hanging below your shoulders.” Fara made the same response she had been making for the last twelve years also.

“It’s going down my back and it itches.”

“You can change your clothes later. Now sit still!”

Ceawlin caught the eye of one of the younger bower girls who was working at the loom and winked. The girl giggled, then, as Fara looked up, turned back to her work. Ceawlin crossed his arms and tried to get comfortable.

He did not really mind having his hair cut, but he had played this game with Fara since he was a baby and he knew it gave her pleasure. She did not have much opportunity to scold him these days, not since he had moved to the princes’ hall and out from under her jurisdiction.

“I want it short over my forehead,” he murmured.

“I know.” She picked up a comb from the table and smoothed the hair over his brow. “Close your eyes.”

He closed them and then blew upward as the hair fell down and tickled his nose.

“There,” his mother said with satisfaction, and he opened his eyes and saw Niniane coming in the door. She stopped a moment in surprise as she saw the unusual scene before her: Ceawlin seated in a chair with a cloth spread under it and Fara hovering over him with scissors.

Ceawlin grinned. “It’s a strange Saxon rite, Princess. Called a haircut.”

She came toward him with quiet dignity. “We have that ritual also, Prince. I used to cut my brother’s hair. He wears it like the Romans, much shorter than yours.” She stopped a few feet from him. “You will see for yourself soon enough.”

Their eyes met. Hers were dark and smoky and carefully expressionless.

Niniane’s position in Winchester had changed considerably during the course of the last year. Instead of approving a marriage between her and Edwin, the Atrebates had rallied and reoccupied one of the old hill forts in the mountains northwest of Calleva. The leader of the newly warlike Britons was Niniane’s brother, Coinmail. Her father had died three months after Sarc Water.

Since word had come to Winchester of Coinmail’s action, Niniane had been waiting to find out what her future was to be. Cynric had postponed all talk of marriage and was taking a war band north in a few weeks’ time to meet Coinmail’s challenge. Niniane’s fate would depend upon the outcome of that encounter. And for the first time, Ceawlin, who had turned seventeen over the winter, was to join his father’s army.

“I am looking forward to it,” he said now to the level blue eyes that were holding his so steadily.

She did not answer, nor did her expression change. He thought, all of a sudden, that he had never seen her smile.

“I see Alric finished your harp,” Fara said in a pleased voice, and for the first time Ceawlin noticed what Niniane was carrying in her hand.

“Yes.” Her small hands stroked the wood lovingly. “It was so kind of him.”

“Alric made you a harp?” he asked in amazement. The scop was not one to pay much attention to girls.

“Niniane is a very fine harpist,” his mother said to him as she brushed the hair off his neck. “There. You’re all finished, Ceawlin.”

He stood up and brushed at his tunic, which was dusted with silvery hairs as well. “You play?” His voice was frankly incredulous.

“My father’s harper taught me when I was a little girl.”

It was late in the day but not yet time to sup. He sat himself down in another chair and said, “Play something for me.”

Niniane looked at Fara. “Would you mind, my dear? We should all enjoy it,” said the friedlehe in her lovely, kind voice.

Niniane came forward with obvious reluctance and sat down on a stool at a little distance from Ceawlin. He leaned back in his chair, stretched his long legs in front of him, and waited. He did not expect much. Everyone knew women had no talent for music.

“The only songs I know are the songs of Arthur’s wars against the Saxons,” Niniane said. She gave him a sideways slanting look. “And you are not the heroes, my lord.”

“That’s all right. My feelings won’t be hurt.” He rested his head against the carved back of his chair.

Niniane looked at him measuringly. His evenly trimmed hair just cleared his shoulders and framed his head like a silver helmet. His half-open eyes were regarding her with lazy tolerance. Coinmail patronized her all the time; she did not know why the same treatment from this Saxon prince should annoy her so much. She decided she would give him “The Battle of Badon.”