Goldwin scowled. He banged another rivet into a link of the mail shirt he was making. Ailith watched him. She knew that he wanted her to go away, but she refused to yield. Their life together had been very sweet until recently and she had no intention of allowing it to sour any further than it had already done.
'I am with child too,' she said during a silence between the tapping of his hammer. 'I have been looking for a favourable opportunity to tell you, but you always seem to be frowning and short-tempered.'
Goldwin carefully set down his small hammer and his handful of rivets and links. 'You are with child?' he repeated, and instead of looking at her, he turned his back to fiddle with a stone jar of nails on a shelf. 'When will it be born?' His voice was gruff.
'At Yuletide, or just before. Are you not pleased?'
His hand slipped and the jar smashed on the hard earth floor, scattering the nails far and wide. He swore and she saw that he was shaking.
'Goldwin, what's wrong?' Worried now, Ailith hurried round his workbench and grasped her husband's sleeve.
'Oh, Aili, Aili!' His voice and control broke. Dragging her clumsily against him, he buried his face in her wimple and shoulder, his body shuddering. 'I have had such dreams of late — of battlefields and piles of bleeding corpses. I cannot think straight any more.'
She held him, rocking and soothing him like a child, a lump in her own throat.
'There is talk of war with the Norwegians,' he groaned into her neck, 'and William of Normandy is gathering a huge army across the narrow sea. I feel as if we are nought but a bone in the midst of a starving wolf pack.'
Ailith stroked his hair, then brought her palm tenderly down his face, over scratchy stubble and curl of beard. 'It is small wonder that you suffer nightmares the amount of time you spend in the forge. You cannot equip the entire English fyrd single-handed. You must cease toiling and fretting like this, or you will lose your wits.'
Goldwin inhaled shakily and kissed her palm. He squeezed her waist which was still trim, without sign of her impending motherhood. 'I could not be more proud that you are to bear our child, but I fear for our future, Aili.' Disengaging himself, he sat down on his bench and ran a distracted hand through his hair.
'It will be all right,' she said softly, and after considering him for a moment, picked up the trencher of food she had brought him. 'Come, we'll take this to bed with us and you can eat it there.' And fall asleep with your head on my breasts, she thought. It is what you need.
He looked at his bench and the beckoning pile of hauberk rivets and rings. Then he looked at the shards of pottery on the floor and the bright scattering of nails. Slowly he stood up. A weary, tentative smile curved his lips.
'If it is a boy,' he said, 'we shall name him Harold after the King.' Taking her free hand, he led her out of the forge into the starry April night, its darkness scored by the curve of the strange Dragon Star.
CHAPTER 6
Eyes narrowed against the dazzle of the sun on the sea, his chest bare, Rolf rode the dun gelding fetlock- deep through the gentle cat-lap of the waves. Behind him, on leading ropes, trotted two more acquisitions for Duke William's supply of Norman warhorses, and further behind still rode three grooms with the rest of the mounts — a dozen in total from his most recent expedition. He was required to deliver them to the main muster point at Dives-sur-Mer within the next fortnight.
Rolf had been busy since the early spring, scouring the countryside and the market places of Norman and Flemish towns and villages for likely beasts. In doing so he had reached the satisfying conclusion that his stud at Brize had few rivals this side of the Pyrenees, and that only the stallions of Spain and Nicaea could better his own.
He urged the dun to a trot, his body rising and falling smoothly to accommodate the change of gait. Silver fans of spray skimmed away from the dun's hooves, and returned to the sea in a mesh of spangled droplets. The other horses quickened pace.
Higher up the beach, close to a small harbour and the huts of a fishing village, a gang of shipwrights toiled upon one of the vessels that were to transport the anticipated two thousand warhorses across the narrow sea to England. Three had already been completed and rolled at anchor in the bay, awaiting the command to tack up the coast to the muster at Dives.
A group of sailmakers sat in the lee of the dunes, stitching heavy linen canvases to equip the vessel under construction. Rolf looked at the dark red stripes woven through the buff-coloured linen and imagined the sail bulging in a stiff breeze. For a moment the movement of the hone beneath him became the pitch and roll of a ship's deck, and he fancied that he could hear the creak of the hemp ropes and clinker-built timbers. The strain of Norse blood in the line of Brize-sur-Risle might be in its fifth generation now, but it still exerted a powerful tug on Rolf's soulstrings.
His gaze left the sailmakers and crossed the open sea until it encountered the blue smudge of the horizon. He had met a merchant once who claimed to have sailed off the edge of the world and discovered a land inhabited by strange, copper-skinned men and even stranger beasts. Rolf was not sure if he believed him. The merchant had stayed for several nights at Brize-sur-Risle and when he departed, had made Rolf the gift of a red toadstone which he said would cure lameness in horses. Rolf wore it around his neck beside his cross and a small, battered silver hammer of Thor which had been handed down father to son since the time of his pagan great, great grandfather.
It might be interesting to sail off the edge of the world, but for now what lay beyond the immediate horizon would do. England. He savoured the word, and a shiver of anticipation ran through him. Perhaps on a similar shoreline, unseen across the glint of water, a Saxon warrior was staring out to sea and honing his axe in readiness. The thought filled Rolf with so much restless energy that he wanted to burst. The dun broke into a canter beneath the tension in his master's thin fingers, and the sea water splashed higher, soaking Rolf's linen chausses and tossing cold spray over his midriff and shoulders.
At the edge of the waves near the village, a man was sitting on the beach close to the shoreline. His hands were bound around his raised knees and he was staring out to sea as hungrily as Rolf had been a moment since. Now and then he picked up a stone from the tidemark and flung it at the water.
Rolf slowed the dun. Then he reined to a halt and dismounted in the sandy shallows with a splash.
'By God's beard, do my eyes deceive me, or is it Aubert de Remy sitting on a beach in the middle of nowhere with naught to do but throw stones at the sea?' Laughing, Rolf gave his horses into the care of the following grooms and sat down in the sand beside the merchant.
'I'm waiting for the night's tide.' Aubert clasped Rolf's tough, blistered palm, then rightly punched the hard bicep.
'The night's tide to where?' Rolf eyed his friend speculatively. Aubert had a thriving, legitimate vintner's trade, but Rolf had known him for long enough to be aware that he dealt in more than just barrels of wine.
Aubert smiled and tossed another stone at the sea. 'England, where else?'
'At night, from a small port like this?' Rolf looked at him sidelong.
'I'm making contact with a wine galley from Bordeaux in mid-channel. We'll sail into London without harm. Harold of Wessex is not at war with the peoples south of Normandy.'
Rolf licked his forefinger and held it up to the snags of salty breeze. 'You'll need good oarsmen, there'll not be a wind tonight.'
'There's an eight-man crew, nine including myself'
'And when you get to England, what then?'
'That long nose of yours hasn't got any shorter with age, has it?' There was amused exasperation in Aubert's voice. 'How is Arlette these days, and the baby?'
Rolf grunted. 'They were both well when last I saw them.' His tone was perfunctory. 'What about Felice?'
