This weeks excerpt comes from WIP Wolf’s Bane, Book 3 in the Sons of the Wolf Series. Tovi is now in his fourteenth year and has been at the collegiate for priest’s school in Wlatham for more than two years. As we can see he has not settled in very peacefully.
Tovi stuffed the last of the honey cakes into his mouth. He munched heartily as he stoked the forge to suffuse the coals with red hot heat. Tongs in his hand, he was about to remove the glowing metal he was working on when he heard, “Eh hem,” and a soft feminine voice said. “My mama sends these oatcakes and eggs for the fathers.”
The girl looked familiar, though he couldn’t quite place her. A good few years younger than him, a smile like a sunbeam, she stared at him with a pale-blue gaze. A willow basket covered in linen was extended out to him. Tovi was surprised. It was not often girls were allowed inside the walls of the collegiate. Except on Sundays when they could attend Mass.
Behind him in the workshop, the tuneless singing of a man’s voice, rang out in time with a rhythmic hammering, and Tovi cringed.
“Well, take them then,” the girl said with a giggle, “before my arm drops off with the ache of it.”
Tovi, irritated by the interruption, slapped down the tongs and wiped the crumbs from his mouth with his sleeve. Averting his eyes, he took the basket from her.
A moment of silence fell between them, before she said, “I know you… do I not?”
Tovi turned slightly to one side so that he faced away from her. He gazed at the ground awkwardly, like a child under the stern eye of an adult, about to berate him. His face grew hot.
The girl was not deterred by his silence. “Do you remember me?”
He glanced at her obliquely and caught her smile, then quickly looked away again. “Girls are not allowed inside the collegiate,” he said quietly. He put the basket down on a bench and started fiddling with the tongs in the firepit to distract himself, hoping she would go now.
Annoyingly, she remained where she was, her eyes watching him. He remembered her, now. She was the earl’s daughter. He had been in Waltham for more than two years and a half, and he had not seen her until that moment, though he had seen her father enough times. Lord Harold had often of late been seen wandering about the place, inspecting the work that was going on in the new church.
“Don’t you ever speak?” she asked. Her voice was girlish, soft and sweet like honey. “I remember you did once. A lot.”
He sighed and looked up at her. He had sisters. It was not as though he didn’t know how to talk to girls, he just hadn’t for some time. She smiled brightly and to his displeasure he found he liked it. She seemed nice; was well attired in a bright madder-dyed woollen cloak. Aye, it was her alright, but he could not remember her name. He looked down at the ground again, wanting to speak to her, but the words just would not come. Anything he said would most likely be stupid, so it was best not to bother. He scuffed the dirt with the toes of his shoes, and his eye began to twitch. He knew she was waiting for an answer, but he wished she would just go away.
“Th-th-th-,” he began. He groaned inwardly. The stammer had begun before he left Horstede, but since being in Waltham, he had also developed the eye twitch. In times of angst, he could not stop it from happening, and it was made all the worse by the trying. “Th-thank you f-for the cakes and eggs.”
“You’re welcome… What do they call you?”
“T-Tovi.” “I remember now. You’re the boy who saved me. We came to your house; my sister and brothers played in the forest with you.” The expression on her face grew more animated as she spoke. ” There was a rope swing and I fell off and fell into the water, and you jumped in and got me! You held my head above the water until my father came!” By the end of the telling, she was jumping like an excited puppy.
Tovi preferred not to remember that particular embarrassing occurrence. He and his sister Winflaed had taken the earl and lady’s children into the woods to play, whilst their fathers went hunting. Gytha had been so little then, unable to hold on to the rope. The first thing he thought of was that if she drowned he would be blamed. He’d been the eldest of the children. He was responsible. As he watched her slip off the rope and sink down into the water, he had to do something to get her out. He’d been mortified when her father, Earl Harold, loomed over him to thank him for saving her. And he’d been even more mortified when that evening, not being a soul who liked attention, he was called out by the earl in front of everyone in the hall to receive the gift of a magnificent seax for his heroic actions. And it was she who had presented it to him. It had been one of the most awkward moments in his life. He had never felt so disconcerted. Jealous, his older twin brothers had given him a bad time because of it.
Now after all this time, there she was again, looking at him expectantly, and all he could do was give an uneasy nod.
“I must go now,” she said. “My father is waiting.”
The heat that had suffused his cheeks, had only just begun to fade when it rose again. He felt stupid. Could he not have said something? She was just a mere girl, albeit the daughter of the most important man in the land, next to the king.
He watched as she pushed off the fence to hurry away. “What about the b-basket?” he called,
Turning she said, “I’ll fetch it on the morrow,” then with a wave, continued on her way.
“Don’t be making eyes at the Lady Gytha, boy.” Tovi turned to see Father Godric, “She is not some filly from the village.” The blacksmith come priest, wiped his sooty hands on the thin leather blacksmith’s apron tied around his wide girth.
Tovi felt his face redden again. “I was not. She brought these,” he held up the basket, “from her mother.”
“Give me those,” Father Godric said. He snatched the hamper and glanced under the cloth to make sure nothing was missing, “and just make sure you’re not…”
“Not what, Father?” Tovi stared at him with deliberate innocence.
“You know whose daughter she is, don’t you? She won’t be taking up with the likes of you, Master Tovi. Now get on with your work.”
Tovi picked up the bellows, scowling. What did the old fart think he was going to do to her, anyway? She was a little girl. He – well he’d passed his fourteenth summer. That made him a man, apparently, though most people didn’t think so when he stood next to other boys his age. But even so, a lad of fourteen had no interest in little girls.
As he exerted the pump the into the furnace, he glimpsed Father Godric reach for his cake pouch, resting on a worktop. Tovi sniggered quietly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the blacksmith slip a coal-blackened hand into the small linen sack, and scrabble around inside. He casually pulled out a piece and put it straight into his mouth without even looking. He turned, looked at Tovi and chomped purposefully, giving him a deliberate look of enjoyment, meant to spark envy.
Tovi drew in a quiet gasp, and looked away, trying not to descend into peals of laughter. He hadn’t expected Father Godric to actually eat the stuff. He tried not to glance back but he could not resist. Father Godric’s smugness had disappeared. The priest grimaced, his tongue shot out, and he licked at his hands, uttering noises of disgust.
Tovi, pretending to be working, waited expectantly, wondering how Father Godric hadn’t noticed what he was eating. His eyes must be bad. He took another bite. Tovi suppressed the hilarity brewing in his throat, until it burst from his lips like the sound of the dinner horn.
“What are you looking at?” the burly blacksmith-come priest demanded. “Get back to your work!” Godric continued to remove what he couldn’t swallow from his mouth and tongue. Tovi tried not to look directly at him in case the spectacle caused him to lose control. Surely, the man must realise that these were not the usual honey oatcakes his wife baked for him every day.
Tovi hadn’t imagined that poor Father Godric would actually eat the charred dog droppings that he and Peter had blasted in the kiln earlier. He and his friend had replaced the real cakes with them, the real ones they had happily eaten. The jape was turning out better than expected. It had been done in revenge. Every afternoon, Godric took great pleasure in uttering envy-provoking noises that would make the boys’ stomachs rumble. Seeing his apprentices’ covetous faces, their tongue-licked lips, and desperate eyes, he would suck the crumbs defiantly from his fingers and reach for the next one with a huge malicious grin.
Tovi sneaked another glance.
“Get on with your work!” Godric yelled at him, scowling, the furry eyebrows raised over enraged bulging eyes. He turned away, muttering, “Damn Osyth, I knew her eyes were getting worse, putting mouldy leftovers in my cake pouch…. Whatever next? Dog scite?”
Godric’s eyes widened as though struck by realisation and reached into the pouch, pulling out its revolting content. He held a piece close to his eyes to examine it, then sniffed it, confirming an eyesight that was failing. Then he spluttered, trying to vomit.
Tovi asked with fake concern, “What is it, Father Godric?”
The blacksmith didn’t answer. His eyes were bulbous, and suddenly a blizzard of little specs of dark detritus sprayed in the air.
Laughter rang from the workshop doorway. Tovi looked over to his friend, Peter, histrionic with laughter. Tovi looked down at himself, realising he dripped with little black crumbs.
Godric scrambled to get to the bucket of water, pushing Tovi aside. He threw out the tools left there to cool and scooped a handful of water into his mouth, rinsed and spat. He then picked it up and plunged his whole face into the pail.
Bent double with laughter, Tovi and his accomplice were unable to control themselves.
“You!” Godric growled as his head emerged from of the bucket. He lunged towards Tovi.
Peter was out of the workshop and over hurdles in moments.
Avoiding the enraged canon’s grasp by inches, Tovi dodged this way and that while Father Godric, his bulk slowing him down, made unsuccessful grabs at him, narrowly missing toppling onto the forge.
Tovi followed Peter over the hurdles.
“A pox on both of you!” Godric bellowed.
As Tovi made good his escape, he could hear the balcksmith’s angry cursing. “By all the saints when I get hold of you, I’ll be using the pair of you for arsewipes! You’ll pay for this, by God you will, if it is the last thing I do on this earth!”
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