These hot summer evenings no one stayed in the house-place after the evening meal, but wandered out again to their own affairs. Most evenings, Athelis, who had little enough time to spare during the day, would betake herself to tend the tiny herb patch under the apple trees behind the steading, which was her rest and her joy.
This particular evening she delayed so long that Owain, mending a piece of harness in the shade of the stable wall, and watching for a chance to speak with her alone, began to be afraid that she was not going at all. But at last she rose, and going into the house-place, came back with a newly lit lantern and her wicker creel of gardening gear, and disappeared round the end of the house.
He gave her a little while, then went and hung up the piece of harness in its accustomed place, and followed her.
She had hung the lantern on the branch of an apple tree, and was tying up tall-growing purple comfrey that had been battered by the wind. She looked up when she heard Owain’s footsteps, and he thought she had a very good idea why he had come. He leaned against the branch where the lantern hung. He did not know how to break into the thing that he had come to say. Once he had begun, it would be all right. ‘Mistress,’ he said at last, abruptly. ‘Lilla came running to me a while since. She said that Vadir Cedricson had asked for her.’
Athelis ceased all pretence at tying up the comfrey and dropped the twists of dry grass she had been using, back into her creel. ‘She had no right to run to you with her troubles.’
‘She was too frightened to think what rights she had,’ Owain said bluntly. And then, as she did not answer, ‘She told me that he will come for your answer in three days’ time, and that you will say yes. Is that true?’ It sounded accusing, but he did not know how to put it any other way.
She was still silent a moment, then she said, ‘Yes, it is true. What else can I do?’
‘You should have settled the matter with Brand the Smith years ago. You know that Beornwulf wished it so.’
She flung out her hands. ‘I should have—I should have. But I did not. I suppose I wanted her with me a little longer. And now it is too late. What use to tell me I should have done this, I should have done that? What can I do now but say yes? She will do well enough when she is married to him.’
‘Will she? I doubt it. But maybe I see Vadir Cedricson somewhat darkly, remembering that he let his dogs kill my old Dog, and found it not unpleasant to watch.’
She said quickly, ‘He was young then, not much more than a boy; and boys are often more cruel than men.’
‘He had seen five or six and twenty summers if he had seen one,’ Owain said. ‘The man is twisted, body and soul, and you know it.’
She looked at him with eyes turned all to black in the lantern light, and for an instant he wondered if she was going to strike him across the mouth for his insolence. But she only said, ‘He is powerful, and we have no man to spread his shield over us.’
‘The King would not let harm come to the household of his foster brother, even though Vadir be distant kin to him; and Bryni will be a man next spring.’
‘The King! Haegel has spared little thought for the household of his foster brother since Wodensbeorg,’ Athelis said bitterly. ‘And even if it were not so, there are harms over which the King has no power. And as for Bryni, you know how wild and headstrong he is. Always, whenever they meet, he is on the brink of a quarrel with Vadir; but if Vadir takes Lilla for his wife, even Bryni will not dare to draw knife on his own kin—and nor will Vadir.’
‘You do not think that, knowing his sister is being forced into this hand-fasting, the boy will draw knife on Vadir before they become kinsman?’ He was being brutal, he knew that, remembering the thing that he had told the ten year old Bryni, the first time he threatened to kill Vadir. But he was remembering also the cruelty—cruelty even towards the thing he loved—that he had felt in Vadir Cedricson on the night that Teitri was born, and he was fighting for Lilla with whatever weapon came to hand.
Athelis was gripping and twisting her hands together. ‘I do not know,’ she whispered. ‘At least you will still be here. You can handle him—a little. You are the only one who can, since Beornwulf died. After next spring, you will be gone.’
There was a long silence. How loud the sea sounded tonight, a hollow sounding like the echo of waves in a shell; and somewhere within it, he seemed to catch the remembered echo of Uncle Widreth’s voice … ‘Only while one is young there is always the hope that one day something will happen; that one day a little wind will rise …’ How often that had comforted him. But it was a barren comfort, after all. He had thought, four years ago, that the wind was rising, but it had died away again into the grass; and he had waited so long, so long, for the time of his freedom to come. He was not even really young any more, and all his manhood until now had gone in waiting. It was too much for any man to expect of him; these people were the enemies of his people; Beornwulf had had full value for his gold piece. Yes, but Beornwulf had not thought of it as part of the value of his gold piece; he had asked it in the hour of his death, as a man may ask a great thing of a friend he trusts.
He looked up slowly. ‘If I let my freedom wait, if I bide here until you tell me that I am free to go—would that make any difference?’
Athelis put up her thin hands to her face; then she let them drop, and looked at him again. ‘Do you mean that?’
‘I should not have offered, if I did not mean it,’ Owain said harshly.
‘No, that was stupid of me.’ She had caught herself together now, and her voice was calmer. ‘Owain, I can settle nothing with Brand the Smith now: that would be to bring Vadir down upon us at once; you see that, do you not?’
‘I see that, yes.’
‘But if you do not leave us, at least—not yet, I will tell Vadir that he must ask again in a year’s time. I will say that Lilla is too young. More I dare not promise, but she shall not be hand-fast to him for a year.’
A year’s respite; it was the best that could be hoped for, he knew that. Well, many things might happen in a year. Vadir might change his heart, the sea might break in over the levels one night and overwhelm them all.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will stay.’
Exactly what passed when Vadir came for his answer, Owain never knew. He was working down at the furthest end of the Intake that day. But that evening when he made his way up to the steading at supper-time, he found Lilla waiting for him among the newly made pea stacks. She was pretending to be very busy about the evening search for eggs, which fell to her alone now that Helga was married and away, but she gave up the pretence as he drew near, and stood up, the egg basket in the crook of her arm.
‘He came,’ she said, ‘and now he is gone and he will not come again for a year.’
Owain nodded. ‘That is something gained. A breathing space at all events. I wish I could have done more, Lilla, but a year was the best that I could do.’
Lilla was staring into the egg basket, her head drooping under the big white kerchief that hid her hair; but after a moment she raised grave blue eyes to his face; he had never noticed quite how blue they were before, not bright but soft, harebell coloured. ‘My mother said that I had not any right to carry my troubles to you.’
‘I’d not worry too much about that,’ Owain said.
‘But she was right. If I was a good girl, and—and brave and sensible, I would go to Vadir now and tell him that I was ready to be hand-fast with him, and not let you go on giving up your freedom for us. But I’m not a good girl, and I’m not brave—’
To his dismay, Owain saw two tears spill over and trickle down her cheeks. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said quickly. ‘Please don’t cry, Lilla. If it is for me—it will do me no harm to wait a while longer; and if it is for you—see now, you have a whole year gained. Anything may happen in a year.’
Lilla dashed the back of her free hand across her eyes. ‘I’m not crying, at least—not very much, and I do not know who it is for … But whatever happens, or if no
thing happens at all and I have to go to Vadir in the end, I will have had one more year—and I will remember always and always that it was you that gave it to me.’
The shrill cheerful sound of somebody whistling between their teeth was coming up towards the stack garth even as she finished speaking, and she added in a quick low tone of warning, ‘It’s Bryni,’ and turned away a little, to hide her face. ‘See, isn’t this a big egg?’
‘Double-yoked, by the look of it,’ Owain said.
Better, very much better, that Bryni should know nothing of what had happened.
19
The King’s Hunting
FROM that time forward the Beornstead household saw no more of Vadir Cedricson, and nor did any but the four who knew of it already, come to hear of his wooing. He was too proud a man for that.
So the months wore away and autumn brought the wild geese south again.
That winter the farms and settlements of the Maen Wood began to be troubled by a wild boar. It happened from time to time that wild pig would come down from the inland forests into the tangled wild-wood among the marshes, and make a nuisance of themselves until they were killed or driven inland again. But this was a king among boar, larger, fiercer and more cunning than the common run. He made havoc in the cultivated land, rooting up fences and goring young trees; he became the terror of the forest fringes where any man might meet him as he turned home with a load of firewood in the winter dusk. And bad as the thing was now, it would become yet worse when spring drew on and the crops were sown. More than once, the men of the Maen Wood had banded together in an attempt to hunt him down, but all that they had to show for it was the death of two of their number.
And then word came down into the settlements, south to the very tip of Seals’ Island where the fisher huts huddled among the ruins of the little Roman coast-resort, that the King himself was coming to try his spear against this king among boars. Let any man who wished to, hunt with him, meeting at a certain point in the forest at dawn on a certain day.
Bryni brought the news back from the settlement where he had been to pick up a new ploughshare from Brand the Smith. His eyes were bright and dark like the frost, and the colour burned under the brown along his cheekbones. ‘We are going hunting with the King!’ he announced.
Owain, who had met him in the steading gate, nodded gravely, when he had heard all the eager tale. ‘No doubt the King will have a use for all the beaters he can get—though it is not our boar, south of the creek.’
‘The brute might work round the head of the creek any night, and then it would be our boar, sure enough,’ Bryni protested, as though he felt that the honour of the Seals’ Island was at stake. ‘And as for beaters—’ he flung up his head defiantly—‘I am son to the King’s foster brother—though he seems to have forgotten it. Go you with the beaters and shout and fire the furze if you choose. I shall go with the spears!’
For a moment the two looked at each other in silence; and then, seeing the quirk at the corner of Owain’s mouth, the boy gave a crow of excited laughter. ‘Ah, but you make a jest of me—you never thought that I would go with the beaters.’
‘No,’ Owain agreed, ‘I never thought that you would go with the beaters.’
They got out the old boar spears, and all that evening Bryni sat by the fire burnishing them with white sand, and whistling to himself between his teeth in the way that was as much a part of him as the way that Owain scratched at the old scar when he was thinking.
On the appointed day—three days later—they set off while it was still wolf-dark, for they would have an hour’s walking to make the appointed meeting place. Three or four men from the settlement joined them at the old ford, and Hunna, grumbling at being roused from his sleep before the sky had begun to lighten, brought his crazy little boat across for them, and had to make two trips before they were all on the mainland bank. They left him still muttering curses, and pushed on together up the remains of the Regnum road.
Bryni strode out in front of the rest, still whistling through his teeth. It was his first boar hunt, and it was natural that he should be in wild spirits—being Bryni who was never troubled by a cold stomach—but Owain had a feeling that he was up to some devilry, and wondered whether he should have tried to make him go with the beaters after all. But the boy was a fine hunter, strong and skilled, and one of those who seem able to think with the mind of a wild animal, knowing by instinct what the quarry will do. And anyway he would have been as like to do something mad with the beaters as he was with the spears. The only thing for Owain to do was to keep an eye on him as well as he could. At all events Vadir the Hault would not have come to join the King’s hunting—war was one thing, but to track the wild boar on foot through miles of wood and waste was quite another, for a man with a club foot—and that was one danger the less. Owain drew a long breath, his heart lifting to the prospect of the day’s desperate sport, and settled down to the rhythm of the long loping tramp that carried them towards the King’s meeting place.
It had snowed a couple of days since, half thawed, and then frozen again, and pools of whiteness lay under the trees and in the hollows and along the dykes that bordered the roadway. The feel of frost and the feel of thaw was still mingled underfoot, but the smell of the night was the cold green smell of coming thaw. The men sniffed at it, and told each other that scent should lie none so badly on such a morning.
A low dawn was kindling bars of cold yellow light across the east when they came to the appointed gathering place. The earliest comers had made a fire against the cold, and Owain, with Bryni and the others, joined the men clustered about the warmth; there were a good number of them already, and more arriving all the while; it seemed that half the farms of the Maen Wood as well as a few from the Seals’ Island, had sent a man to join the King’s hunting. They pressed about the fire, talking and laughing, men who had not seen each other in months, greeting each other and exchanging news, and feeling the edges of their knives and boar spears.
Slowly the light grew in the sky, and high against it, Owain looking up, could see the long lines of the wild duck in their morning flight; and soon after the first wild duck came a muffled smother of hoof-beats and a voice asking questions and a quick deep laugh told them that the King was here.
The horses were led away to the nearby farmstead, and Haegel with his hearth-companions came forward into the light of the roadside fire. He was in leather hunting dress, worn and weather-stained and dark-spattered with the marks of more than one kill; his dogs thrust about him, and he carried his own spears. He looked about him at the men round the fire; quickly and appraisingly, as though to see what manner of hunting party had gathered to his call. ‘The greetings of the morning to you, friends and neighbours,’ he said. ‘I think we shall have good hunting today,’ and he turned to speak to the leaders who had stepped up round him, inquiring as to the placing of beaters, and discussing the plans for the day, putting swift questions to the man who had brought in news of the boar’s whereabouts last night. ‘Over by the Black Wood, say you? So, then, if he be there yet we may bring him to bay somewhere between the neck of the forest and Bremma’s Dyke.’
And so the King’s hunting began, as hounds and men streamed away eastward in a slow-moving pack, heading for the Black Wood where it ran down to the sea marshes above Pagga’s Ham.
The Black Wood stood like an island in the sea of marshes, black as its name even now in the light of the winter’s morning; and within sight of it they checked to set on the hounds. Even as they did so a boy came running, glancing back as he ran, and shouting his story even before he reached them. ‘He’s still there! He would not have taken to the marshes, and the birds have been quiet all the while in the neck of the woods, so he can’t have gone that way!’
There was a long wait, while the King’s hunters with the great hounds still in leash went questing to and fro. And then, far over towards the neck of scrub that joined the Black Wood to the forest, a hound gave tongue. ‘Sa! Garm
has him,’ said the King. ‘I’d know that bell note of his anywhere.’
And now the other hounds had taken up the cry, and the notes of the hunting horn were blowing thin through the tangled wildwood and scaring up the plover from the marshes. The pace of the hunt had quickened from the steady lope that it had been before, and suddenly they were all running.
They were among the trees now; the low-hanging branches lashed at their faces and tangled the spears, snags of rotten wood tripped them up, and brambles clawed at them like living enemies wherever the trees fell back a little—and always the belling of the hounds and the thin song of the hunting horn sounded through the woods ahead of them. Now the beaters were drawing close; Owain could hear their shouting, a great circle of uproar, beginning to narrow in on itself, as he ran, head down, behind the slight racing figure of Bryni.
And then, as it seemed between one gasping breath and the next, the whole pattern had changed, and they had come to the very heart of the day’s work. They were on the edge of a clearing where a great yew tree had come down in the winter gales and brought others with it in its fall; and on the far side of the open space, backed against the mass of the fallen bole, stood as though waiting for them, a gigantic black boar.
He scarcely looked a thing of flesh and blood at all, but as though he belonged to the dark earth of the wood itself, and the dark elemental spirit of the wood. He stood with lowered head swinging a little from side to side; his eyes were red like the sullen gleeds of a burnt out fire, and the great curved tushes gleamed against the blackness of his narrow wicked face. Yellowish froth dripped from his jaws, and where it fell on the snow, it steamed.
The hounds, yelling in rage and hate, sprang forward as they were slipped from the leash; from the darkness of the woods beyond, the yelling and crashing of the beaters was still closing in, and all round the clearing the hunters crouched, each man with the butt of his spear braced under his instep. Owain was just behind Bryni in the second line, his spear braced like the rest, in case the boar should break through, but having made sure that his knife was loose in his belt, for the more likely task of a man in the second line would be to help dispatch the beast if the man in front—in this case Bryni—ran into trouble.