marriage, by imaginings of how it would be with Rolf. Was the bush of his manhood as red as his hair? The thought made her blush at her own boldness, but not enough to abandon her speculation.
Rolf's grey stallion was at grass with his mares in the fields below the castle mound. Ailith halted Elfa at a safe distance, not desiring Sleipnir to give chase. The grey's thick winter coat was as silver as frost. In the summer he was darker, with dapples like charcoal bubbles on his quarters and belly. Rolf said that he was proving a potent sire. Almost every mare he had covered the previous season was heavy with foal. It only remained to be seen over the next few years if he had bequeathed his own excellent qualities to his offspring.
She rode away from the stud herd and took the stony path down a gully to the shore. The mare's hooves crunched on shingle and then thudded hollowly on firm sand. Spindrift blew off the tops of the waves and tingled Ailith's lips with salt. Beneath each curl of white crest the sea was a cold, clear green. Ribbons of weed, dark as blood, trailed in its glassy coils. Ailith urged the mare first to trot, and then eased her into a canter.
Her hooves skimmed the edge of the waves, her mane flew like a banner, her tail undulated behind, and as the mare stretched herself, Ailith began to feel a sense of freedom. She flew with the horse, became part of her motion, and it was all too soon that Elfa's stride slackened as the mare became winded. Ailith slowed her to a walk and made the resolution to exercise Elfa every day until the gallop along the beach was twice as long.
When, eventually, she rode into the bailey, she saw that a groom was rubbing down a mud-spattered bay which looked as if it had been hard-ridden.
'A visitor rode in while you were gone, mistress,' the man responded to her anxious query. 'The seneschal and Sir Tancred are with him in the hall.'
While he was speaking, Ailith's eyes travelled again to the weary horse. There was something familiar about it, and in a moment she recognised it for the one that Aubert rode when he had business abroad.
'The visitor, what does he look like?'
The groom shrugged. 'Not above your own height, mistress, and dressed in a brown cloak and brown English cap. Bushy eyebrows too.' He made this last remark to thin air for Ailith was already off the mare and running across the bailey. She was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding, and when she burst into the hall and saw Aubert standing before the fire with the other two men, a fortifying cup of mead in his hand, she knew from the look on his face that her fears were about to be borne out.
She had gathered her skirts and raised them to her shins, the better to run, but now she let them drop and advanced to the hearth. 'Aubert, what has happened? Is it Benedict or Felice? Tell me!'
Aubert's eyes were suspiciously moist. 'No, no, Felice and the babe have never been better… it is about Rolf that I have come.'
Ailith stared at him. 'About Rolf?' she repeated, and clenched herself, knowing that she was about to be dealt a mortal blow.
'Do you want to be seated, Ailith?'
'No, tell me,' she said with wooden composure. 'Now. Is he dead?'
Aubert's heavy brows drew together across the bridge of his nose. 'I do not know, but it is more than likely. Robert de Comminges and the main body of his troop were slaughtered in Durham-by English and Scots rebels. De Comminges and his bodyguard were chased into the bishop's house and the place was set alight around them. There were very few survivors, none of Rolf's men among them. The news arrived in London four days ago. King William is mustering an army to go north and quell the rebels, but the damage is already done.'
'Rolf went north to buy horses, he might not have been in Durham at all,' Ailith said. There was a cold ache in the pit of her stomach that no fire would ever dissolve. She recognised the sensation from the night when Goldwin had died. It had been with her ever since that time, but she had been learning to ignore it. Now it reclaimed her attention, threatening to freeze her in solitary confinement.
'No, he might not,' Aubert agreed, but not as if he really meant it. 'We'll know more in a few days. The reports from the north are very fragmented.' He looked at Ailith. 'If Rolf is dead, then you know that you have my protection, and my roof to comfort you.'
Ailith nodded stiffly. 'Thank you, Aubert, but I know he still lives,' she heard herself say in a voice that was calm, without hint of a tremor, 'and I have my duties here at Ulverton. Indeed, I should be preparing a feast to celebrate his return.' A feast to honour a hero's safe deliverance, or a wake for a man who had flirted with danger once too often. She knew to her cost that refusing to believe in the death of a loved one could not bring that person back to life. She touched the thin, pink scar of an old knife wound on her left wrist and not for the first time, wished that Rolf had not found her that winter's day in the forge.
CHAPTER 26
Rolf was impressed by the ponies that Ulf showed him. Propelling himself about on a wooden crutch, the village leader instructed one of his people to load a black pony with two sizeable panniers of stones. The animal bore the weight easily and trotted along without any signs of labouring. 'Yon beast will carry the burden of such as you or my Beorn in full armour, thirty miles a day for a full seven-night,' Ulf declared with quiet, sure pride. 'You'll find nowt better if it's stamina you want.'
Rolf was inclined to agree, but kept a straight face and indifferent manner the better to haggle. Ulf was shrewd and equally determined to obtain the best bargain possible, but finally they reached an agreement, and Rolf found himself the owner of six mares – two maidens and four in foal, and a young bay stallion with sweeping black mane and tail.
'Take my advice,' Ulf said after the coins had changed hands and they were sealing their agreement with a cup of mead. 'Make your way homewards now. The north is no place for Normans.'
'I have a wager to settle in Durham with Robert de Comminges,' Rolf protested. 'I will owe him a warhorse if I do not go.'
'Forget your wager. Tonight it will snow. Turn south.'
Rolf heard the note of urgency in the horse-trader's voice. Ulf knew far more than he was telling, and whatever his knowledge, it boded ill for Robert de Comminges. 'I will heed your warning,' he replied gravely, 'but let me in my turn warn you. If you resist King William, he will make you pay. I do not speak as your enemy, but as a fellow trader concerned for your future and that of your village. I know William of Normandy. He is a powerful man and you have no-one of his strength to unite the north now. If he comes seeking retribution, his wrath will be black indeed.' His glance flickered to Beorn's attractive young wife and the two children.
Ulf followed Rolf's gaze. 'If he comes,' he answered evenly, 'we will be ready.'
Rolf opened his mouth.
'No,' Ulf said brusquely, 'I will hear no more. Tonight it will snow. Tomorrow, you will turn south.'
Ulf was right and Ulf was wrong. That night it did snow, but in the morning, any hope that Rolf had entertained of going anywhere was abandoned to the blizzard which howled some of the flimsier dwellings out of existence and buried others up to the tops of the shuttered windows. Animals huddled in pens at one end of the long houses and humans huddled at the other around the smoky warmth of their hearths. Every time anyone ventured out to fetch more kindling from the wood pile or to squat in the snow, the fire would flatten and belch out great gusts of smoke, and all the rush lights and candles would be extinguished.
For three days and nights the storm held Rolf and his men prisoners in Ulf's long house. The fourth morning brought still, cold sunlight that glittered a bleached yellow splendour on a landscape of undulating, brittle white.
Rolf aided the villagers to dig paths to the stream and the village well. He helped to repair the damage wreaked by the storm and resigned himself to the fact that he would have to stay here for several days more until the roads were passable.
During a respite in the snow shovelling, Beorn's wife Inga served him with ale, a chunk of new bread and slices of smoked goose.
'I do not see your husband.' Rolf tucked his mitts inside his tunic and bit ravenously into the food. Indeed, he had not see Beorn since the evening of first arrival, nor half the young men of the village.
'He has business to attend elsewhere,' she said, her manner cool, verging on the hostile.
'Fortunate then, that you have some Normans on hand to lend you aid.
