Rolf pinched his upper lip between forefinger and thumb. 'Did he speak to you?'
'He didn't see us,' Ailith said quickly. 'We hid our faces until he had passed. I felt sorry for his poor wife. She was dressed in so much finery that it was weighing her down, and I could tell that she was longing to be sick. When I think that it could have been me…' A little shiver ran through her.
'But it isn't,' Rolf soothed. 'You are safe forever from such as he.'
Aubert spoke up, trying to dispel the sombre atmosphere that had suddenly settled, 'Out of the frying pan and into the fire, I would say.'
Ailith reddened and excused herself to the safe stowing of her purchases. She heard Rolf say something reproachful to Aubert, although she did not catch the words, and then Aubert's hearty laugh, which terminated in a bout of coughing.
Moments later, Rolf joined her in the corner of the hall where her pallet and belongings lay. 'I'm going north for a few months,' he announced.
'North?' Ailith stopped what she was doing and stared at him. 'Where?'
'To Durham with Robert de Comminges. He's been appointed earl in Gospatric's place. I have heard that there are good sumpter ponies to be bought in Mercia and Northumbria.'
She was gripped by a cold feeling of dismay, 'The north has not been tamed. My brothers used to say that the peoples beyond the Humber saw King Harold as a foreigner. They look to the Norse for their succour. Their language and their ways are different.'
'I know,' he said without concern. 'My own family were once Vikings. I am told that my great-grandfather was as fluent in Norse as he was in French.'
She shook her head. 'You will be putting yourself in great danger.'
'No more than I ever did by joining the English expedition in the first place.'
Her lips tightened. She turned away and began folding the yards of bought linen into a coffer. 'You have responsibilities that you take as lightly as your care for your own life,' she said without looking round.
Rolf snorted. 'I know my responsibilities. Christ, you sound like my wife!'
'Then follow your whim up the great north road,' she retorted stiffly, 'and pray that your gains outweigh your losses.'
'What is that supposed to mean?' He grasped her arm and dragged her round to face him.
Ailith shook him off. 'You fool. Do you never stop to think that the green on the other side of the hill might be nothing but a quagmire?' She glared at him, banged down the coffer lid, and stalked away.
Rolf had not bargained for such a hostile response. Several emotions assaulted him at once. He was angry at the manner in which she had spoken to him, and that in turn made him all the more determined to travel north. He had wanted to take her in his arms and brutally cover that furious mouth with a kiss. Lust, frustration, the need to possess. Most unsettling of all, as he stood staring at the coffer and the empty pallet, a treacherous thread of reason told him that he should heed her opinion and bide here in the south.
A sharp pain in his clenched fist caused him to look down and see that the pin on the silver cloak clasp had come unfastened and stabbed his palm.
CHAPTER 24
North of York, two days' ride from Durham, Rolf took his leave of the Norman army and its arrogant commander Robert de Comminges. Partly this was because Rolf desired to investigate the types of horses and ponies that these northern climes bred, but the other part of the decision was caused by Rolf's irritation at the attitude of his fellow Normans.
They treated the lands through which they rode as conquered territory, not asking, but taking what they wanted with a rough hand. Any who made complaint or resisted found themselves looking down the blood gutter of a war sword. In their wake, de Comminges' army of mercenaries left a smouldering resentment, and the further north they rode, the brighter grew the embers and the less cowed became the people. Here, the majority of the local lords were still of the native Anglo—Danish blood. They owed their allegiance to the English earls Edwin and Morcar, and to Waltheof, son of the great Siward of Northumbria. These powerful English lords might have bent the knee to William of Normandy, but what they really wanted to do was spit in his face.
'We have to show them with an iron fist that we are the masters,' Comminges said to Rolf. 'If they think for one moment that we are weak, they will be upon us like a pack of wolves.'
Rolf grunted and tightened the cinch on his chestnut's girth. Dawn had broken a hole in the slate-coloured sky, and a half moon was lingering to greet it. 'I have no doubt you are right,' he replied, thinking of the dark scowls they had received along their way.
'You should not be leaving us to ride alone.' Rolf raised his brows at de Comminges. The man had a florid complexion that was threaded with a hard drinker's broken veins. The upright stubble on his scalp, short-shaven at the back, gave him the look of a man who spent all his time in fights, most of them disreputable. But Robert de Comminges, for all his brutality and arrogance, was no mindless vandal. He had a brain when he chose to use it. 'You have your horses,' Rolf said to him, 'and I have my money. I doubt that Durham will be any safer than the villages round these parts.'
'Yes, but there are more of us.'
'And a greater native population in Durham,' Rolf pointed out. 'Do not worry about me. I can take care of myself.'
De Comminges looked sceptical. 'There are bound to be refugees from Hastings up here.' He scowled. 'You'll be dead before you're even out of the saddle.'
'The sword is a language that every man understands,' Rolf answered. 'But so is trade. Wherever one goes, so does the other.' Catching up the reins, he swung across the chestnut's back. 'I will see you in Durham town, within a seven day.'
De Comminges snorted. 'I'd wager on that boast if I ever thought I'd see the colour of your coin.'
'How much?'
De Comminges pursed his thin lips and rubbed the back of his shaven neck. 'The price of a good warhorse.'
'Agreed.' Rolf reached down from the saddle to seal their bargain with a handclasp. De Comminges had a meaty palm and solid, fleshy fingers. Even now, in the chill dank of a winter dawn, they were moist and slightly warm.
Rolf's were cold. As he rode out of the Norman camp, he pulled on his sheepskin mittens. They were proof that, despite the difficulties, trade was possible with the natives of northern England. He had bargained for the mittens in York with a shepherd's wife. While she had made her contempt of all Normans obvious, she had not scorned his silver. It was in York too that he had learned of a horse-trader who might be willing to deal with him.
The sounds from the Norman camp dwindled. Soon, when he looked over his shoulder, Rolf saw nothing but bare, black trees and the dull green and brown of a dormant winter countryside. The sky lightened to a uniform, dreary grey with a heavy border of darker cloud menacing the direction in which he and his men were heading. The road was well used, for tracks had been laid upon tracks, and picking out one particular set from the morass of trampled mud was impossible.
They came to a wayside shrine, but it was not a Christian one. The rain-weathered features of the Norse god Odin glared out at them from an oak-wood effigy. At the feet of the crude representation, there were offerings of bread and mead. One of Rolf's men made the sign of the cross and muttered a Christian charm against the evil eye. Rolf, however, fingered the hammer of Thor at his throat and, dismounting, took a chunk of bread from his saddle bag and laid it beside the other offerings. He might believe in Christ, but he believed in the power of the old gods too, and if the people here were pagans, then he was quite willing to respect their ways.
His groom looked at him askance.
'For luck,' Rolf said, and smiled.
'But, sir, it is blasphemy!'
Rolf twitched his shoulders, which were aching beneath the weight of his hauberk. 'One day the priests will
