Both men opened their mouths, but as Wulfric raised his hand, they shut them again with a snap.
“And if either of you draws blood over fowl again while men whisper of war on the coast, I will set you both to mucking the lower ditch until winter freezes your toes together.”
A few of the villagers murmured their approval. Hild’s mouth turned up at the corner before she hid it. She had buried a husband and raised five sons, and had no patience left for foolishness unless it arrived with a hot meal.
The matter now settled, the crowd drifted back to ovens and churns, fences and milking, the hundred small labors that kept hunger from the door for one more day. Wulfric watched them go. Every one of them looked to him to keep them fed and safe, and there were days the weight of it sat on his shoulders like a wet cloak.
A small hand tugged at his sleeve. “Lord Wulfric?”
He looked down to see Tova, Anya’s youngest, standing barefoot in the mud, hair escaping its plaits. She held up a wooden horse with one leg missing.
“Can he be mended?”
Wulfric took the horse. The carving had been Aelfwyn’s work. She had made toys in winter, when the nights grew long and her hands could not bear idleness. He knew every nick in the little thing.
“Aye,” he said. “If the wood has not split too far.”
“Mother says you mend too many things yourself.”
“Your mother speaks too much.”
Tova’s eyes went wide.
Wulfric lowered his voice. “But she is often right.”
The child considered this, solemn as a judge. “She says you do not eat enough.”
“Then she is right twice, which will make her unbearable.”
Tova grinned, showing the gap where a front tooth had been. “She is already unbearable.”
Wulfric looked over the girl’s head to where Anya stood outside her doorway, trying and failing to pretend she had not heard. A faint smile touched the woman’s face before she turned and went back inside.
He tucked the broken horse into his belt. “Come to the hall after supper. He may have four legs again by then.”
Tova ran off, satisfied, and Wulfric stood still until the ache in his chest settled back where it belonged.
Aelfwyn had wanted children. They had lost one babe before her belly had begun to show, and another before there was time to speak of it beyond their bed. After that she stopped counting the months aloud. He never knew whether the silence eased her sorrow or deepened it. With Aelfwyn, courage and kindness had always worn the same face.
“My lord.” Godwin’s voice was soft.
Wulfric turned. “More geese?”
“Nay.” The humor had gone from the old man’s face. “Riders. From the south road.”
Not cows or barley or a broken axle. Something far worse.
Wulfric strode toward the edge of the village, where two men rode in beneath the ash trees. Their horses were lathered, their cloaks stiff with salt, and their faces gray. He knew one of them, Eadric, a fisherman’s son from the coast who sometimes brought eels, news, and a tongue too loose for either. The other man was a stranger, blood dried black along his sleeve.
Eadric slid from the saddle, and would have fallen if Wulfric had not caught him by the arm.
“Speak.”
“Ships.”
The word tore out of him.
“So many the sea was dark with them. Normans. Horses. Men in mail. They have landed near Pevensey, and there may be more behind. We saw the fires before we fled.”