She looked at him. Her eyes were a pale gold-green, the colour of the most expensive French wine. Cat's eyes, set on a slant, utterly bewitching, and utterly cold. 'Some would say that.'
'Are you one of them?'
'I keep my own counsel,' she answered and gestured brusquely. 'Eat your food. The servant will collect your bowl when you have finished.'
He watched her walk away, admiring her proud carriage, disgruntled by her frigid response.
Four evenings later as he sat at Ulf's fire, making his preparations to leave the next day, Beorn and the village men returned from their 'business', floundering through the snow on several fine Norman warhorses. As well as bearing a man, each horse also carried an assortment of plunder — mail and weapons, cups, belts, brooches and other personal effects.
'We have wiped out the stain of Hastings field!' Beorn declared, his eyes alight, his flowing red hair burnished with gold from the flames of his father's hearth as he swept his arm around a fierce, smiling Inga. 'The Normans have been slaughtered to a man in Durham town!' His stare fell upon Rolf and fingered the haft of the Norman langseax hanging at his belt. 'Every last one, horse-trader, what do you say to that?'
Rolf stared at Ulf's huge, handsome son and thought of the huscarl on Hastings field whose axe now hung on Ulverton's wall. There was a sick emptiness of fear in his gut. He was among wolves and they would eat him if he displayed the slightest sign of weakness… as they had eaten Robert de Comminges. 'Do you wish me to cry out in terror or admit that your prowess is beyond compare?' he declared far more boldly than he felt. 'Robert de Comminges is not William of Normandy. If you can defeat him, then you will have reason to exult.'
Beorn's eyes narrowed. 'You have a bold tongue. Perhaps I should cut it out with your countryman's seax.'
Rolf regarded him impassively. 'That would silence me,' he agreed.
'Beorn, sit down!' Ulf snapped. 'Your own tongue wags too much for its own good. The rules of hospitality apply and Rolf de Brize has repaid them more than fairly with the way he and his men have toiled to clear the snow. By all means celebrate the victory at Durham, but this man will go on his way unmolested.'
Beorn's lips tightened. There was a long silence while stubborn will met stubborn will, but finally the younger man capitulated with a sulky shrug and releasing his wife to her duties, sat down cross-legged before the fire.
That night, lying on his sheepskin, Rolf dreamed that the entire north country was covered in a thick, vellum layer of snow, and lying upon it, inscribing its pristine pages with crimson scrawl, were the bodies of men, women and children. The bare trees were roosts for flocks of ravens, their bodies plump with feeding, their plumage sheened with blue and purple like the rotting corpses on which they gorged. One bird, larger than the rest, launched itself into the still air. Its wings blocked the sun, and Rolf saw that its terrible red eyes were those of his King.
In southern parts, the promise of spring retreated beneath a sifting of snow and a new, bitter, deep cold. Sitting on top of the fire in Ulverton's hall, Ailith abandoned the pretence of working on a delicate netting bonnet and stared into the flames. King William and the core of his army, his hardened mercenary troops, had struck to quell the rebels. This much she had heard from a pedlar who had seen the army ride past on the great north road.
They were going to avenge, not to rescue. 'Too much blood has been shed already,' she muttered to herself and glanced with revulsion at the battle axes hung in pride of place above Rolf's empty chair at the end of the hall. Rolf called them his luck. But the luck of the battlefield was fickle, and someone always had to lose.
Unable to sit still any longer, she put her needlework aside and went to lift her cloak from its peg. Tancred raised his eyes from the game of tafel he was playing with his son and glanced at her, but he offered no comment. He had voiced his intention of returning to Brize-sur-Risle if there was no news by the end of the week. 'For if there is none,' he had said to Ailith, 'I think we must assume that my lord has perished in Durham with Robert de Comminges.'
Tancred's was the voice of reason. She had seen in his eyes that his lingering was only a matter of form, that he had already resigned himself to the belief that Rolf was dead.
Leaving the smoky hall, Ailith crossed the moon-silvered bailey. Ice crunched beneath her shoes and she felt the cold pierce the soles of her feet as she climbed the wooden walk lining the palisade. Her breath emerged in puffs of white vapour. The only sound was the soft whispering of her feet on the rime of the wall walk, echoing the muted swish of the sea. The water was visible as the faintest glimmer of moving darkness patterned by a road fashioned of narrow slices of moonlight. She paused to stare, drawn in by the beauty and tranquillity of the deadly elements of black and white cold, deep and dark, air-bright and fragile. For a long time she stood in silence, absorbing and being absorbed, the chill seeping into her bones until she was a frozen part of the night, an icicle.
A sound chimed gently against her brittle shell and vibrated upon a remaining strand of her consciousness. She blinked and shivered, and the enchantment shattered into a million crystal fragments. Her hands were numb, her lips and cheeks and feet. Ailith turned round, intending to make her way back to the hall, but the sound came again, arresting her motion. She heard the clink of harness and the voices of men, the clop of hooves on an iron- frost road. Her heart started to thump and she stared out into the night with eyes stretched so wide that they ached.
It had been full dark for two hours now. It was almost time to set out the sleeping pallets and bank the fire for the night. No visitors would be on the road so late. And an enemy would use more stealth. That left but one alternative. For a moment Ailith was unable to move, her body and mind disconnected from each other, but then they slammed together with a jolt so strong that all previous inhibitions were hurled aside and with a small cry, she sped towards the bailey gates.
He was the first to ride through them on his familiar chestnut horse, and he was closely followed by his men and several dark-coloured ponies, some of them laden with packs. Ailith saw this with a distant part of her mind, but the force of her attention was focused upon Rolf. He dismounted and handed the stallion's reins to the groom who had come running at the summons from the gate guard. And then he raised his eyes to the wall walk and saw Ailith.
Her impetus carried her rapidly forward until no more than a body's length separated her from Rolf. She halted, swaying slightly. Torchlight flickered over him, brightening his hair, emphasising the lean bone structure. He was as thin and muscular as a wolf, and as dangerous too, she thought, but it was probably too late for caution to be of any use.
'We thought you were dead.' Her voice was a dry croak and her swaying resulted in another pace forward. 'Aubert brought us the news about the massacre in Durham.'
'I did not go to Durham.' He spoke the words absently, a matter of rote without any thought behind them. Ailith saw the narrow glitter in his eyes, the rapid rise and fall of his chest. The ice encasing her heart melted away beneath the fierceness of his stare and her knees turned to water.
Rolf caught her, his arm hard about her waist. 'Jesu,' he groaned softly as she came into his embrace. And then, a moment later, 'Jesu forgive me,' as he bent his head and took his first taste of her lips.
Ailith lay across Rolf, her head upon his naked chest, her fingers toying with the downy stripe of auburn hair running from the base of his breastbone to the bush at his groin. The latter was indeed red as she had once wondered. The feel of him upon and within her had been one of completion, of a dull ache banished by the fierceness of their loving. Her body now held a gentle, diffusing warmth. Her smoothing fingertips encountered tiny droplets of sweat, the faintly raised line of an old scar, the hollow of his navel.
'I wish this was a dream,' she said softly. The words had been spoken more than half to herself, she had thought him drifting into sleep, but he stirred beneath her hand and his muscles tensed.
'Why should you wish that?' he asked.
Ailith was silent for a while. Then she said pensively, 'There is no retreat from what we have done… from what we are doing. If this were no more than a sinful dream, I could keep it to myself, it would not matter.'
'Is what we have done sinful? Look at me, Ailith.' He grasped a handful of her hair, making her turn to his will. 'It would have been a sin to deny our love.'
'You have a wife.' Ailith had the misgiving that the word 'love' came too easily to his tongue, that to his way of thinking, it was just a more courtly word for 'lust'. And she had no right to throw it in his face, for her appetite was as great as his, if not greater, for she wanted more.
