'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.

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.