For Me Fate Wove This

by Octavia Randolph

  As they moved towards the Abbess, Dagmar hoped she had made the right decision in how she had attired herself for this meeting. She knew Sigewif was a noblewoman, and had as well attained the highest position any churchwoman could, that of Abbess, ruling over not only many nuns but the monks and brothers of this doubled foundation. Dagmar was a King’s daughter, yet knew that before such a woman as Sigewif a certain reserve in dress and manner was not only becoming but required. She had but one set of bronze shoulder brooches, those given her by her father, and set with pearls as they were, they proclaimed opulent, even undue wealth. Strung between these brooches she typically hung another gift from her father, the doubled strand of slightly smoky beads cut from rock crystal, both strands interspersed with silver beads. She had other silver to hang from her brooches as well, chains and narrow twisted rope. This morning Inkera had urged her to wear all her gems, to impress the Abbess, who was herself sister to a King. Yet Dagmar had hesitated. Any crystals were costly, and served to proclaim the wealth of she or he who sported them. Sigewif would be well apprised as to Dagmar’s lineage, and she was not certain that an overt show of riches, especially of ornaments as eye-catching as were hers, was what she wished to convey before so august a personage as the Abbess.

  She had decided for modesty and indirectness, pinning instead a far simpler chain of twisted silver between her pearl-set brooches. She felt the rightness of this reserve as soon as the steel-grey eyes of the Abbess met her own.

  Dagmar had been in the presence of a number of persons of importance in her short life. With many of them, one might be impressed by their treasures or achievements, but rarely were they themselves impressive. She had seen herself that few had about them a commanding air, one that drew eyes towards them, and made others stop and listen. Her father Guthrum, late King of the Danes in Anglia, possessed such command. This woman was another.

  Dagmar found herself standing even straighter before Sigewif, and hoping her face did not betray the strain she was feeling.

  Sigewif looked at all before her, from the Lady of Four Stones and her nurse Burginde to Inkera, with a quick yet penetrating glance. Lastly she looked to Guthrum’s elder daughter. Dagmar felt she had been taken up, and decided upon, in a moment by the Abbess. Ashild’s words, “She knows your thoughts,” were still sounding in her ear.

  All bowed before Sigewif, and Dagmar, lifting her lowered head, saw true reverence in Hrald’s eyes as he raised his own. It was the Abbess herself who made introduction, in greeting all, and welcoming Dagmar and her sister by name. This formality complete, Dagmar watched as the Abbess opened her arms to Hrald’s mother. The two women kissed.

  Sigewif now turned to Ashild, who stepped forward. The Abbess placed her hands on Ashild’s shoulders, and kissed her brow. She held her long enough to make this gesture more benediction than mere greeting. As she let go of Ashild, the Abbess looked to Dagmar and Inkera.

  “She is our Judith,” she said, with no little pride.

  The allusion was unknown to the two sisters; that was clear to all from the slight puzzlement which briefly shadowed their faces. Inkera smiled and nodded, content in her innocence. Dagmar regained the same interested expression as before, but no light shown in her eyes in acknowledgment of the reference, nor affirming word fell from her lips. Instead her face took on a heightened state of attention. Sigewif, watching her, read at once that she was not familiar with the Old Testament tale of the great Hebrew beauty. It was a Bible story which Hrald and Ashild had been raised hearing. The resourceful Judith had saved her people from siege by slaying the savage and lustful general Holofernes in his tent.

  Ashild felt the awkwardness of it for Dagmar, witnessing the warm, quietly fulsome greeting bestowed by the Abbess on her own head. This was a world from which as a newcomer Dagmar was naturally excluded, one which she seemed very much to wish a part in. The unintended exclusion ran even deeper, as Dagmar did not understand the praise lavished on Ashild by the Abbess.

  Sigewif would not embarrass their young visitor by making any more of it, and shifted the mood in a moment. A slight gesture of the Abbess’ hand granted permission for Bova to make her own greeting. She stepped forward, and with a shy smile made a deep and reverential bow to Ælfwyn, followed by one almost as deep to Hrald. Then her eyes turned to Ashild. She took another step forward, her eyes shining, her face aglow. Bova extended her gently cupped hands to Ashild, then placed them on her own breast, over her heart. She stood there, her slight figure gently swaying as she looked at Ashild.

  In the young nun’s mind, the preservation of Oundle had been inextricably linked to the presence of Ashild. Her courage in riding out to face the attackers and her words of encouragement to Bova before she did so had made deep and lasting impress. Furthermore, Bova had had her own vital role to play in that rout, for she had flung herself at the rope of the church bell, forcing the bronze it tethered into voice. Its loud pealing gave cue to the forces within Oundle to attack. Bova had fainted from fear and the strain of her efforts, yet upon awakening had been both warmly commended for her own efforts and told of Ashild’s valour. In Bova’s heart and mind, she and the daughter of the hall of Four Stones were thus linked. Together they were as sisters in the fight for the salvation of the sacred property and persons of the foundation.

  Hands were rinsed and dried, and the ale poured out by the brewster herself, Bova. The young nun herself took no refreshment, but the praise the others offered as they took a draught coloured her pale cheek. Then Sigewif turned to her.

  “Sister Bova, will you await us at the church? We will not be long.”

  With another bow Bova left them. The Abbess raised her large and well formed hand to the door behind her, which she had left ajar. She smiled at the daughters of Guthrum.

  “I should like you to see my writing chamber, in which Hrald and Ashild perfected their hand.”

  They filed inside, to find an elderly nun standing within.

  “Mother!” This warm salutation was from Ælfwyn, as she hastened to her mother’s side, and into her arms. Ashild was then gestured into the old woman’s arms, and finally Hrald.

  Sigewif lifted her hand to the nun, and looked at her young visitors. “This is Sister Ælfleda, who in the world was mother to the Lady of Four Stones.” The sister so named gave a bow to the Reverend Mother, before allowing her eyes to rest on the young women before her.

  Hrald spoke now. “Grandmother, this is Dagmar, daughter of Guthrum. She and her sister Inkera are visiting us at Four Stones, and wanted to see Oundle.”

  She looked kindly upon them, her eyes crinkling. “I am happy to meet you, my dear girls.”

  Ælfwyn’s mother had lived as first novice and then nun at Oundle most of Ashild and Hrald’s lives. Ælfwyn was of her flesh, but Ælfleda was no longer of the world. Perhaps due to her own reawakening to the potential pleasures of the world, Ælfwyn now looked upon her mother with fresh eyes. Seeing her son present Dagmar, a young woman she knew Hrald hoped to wed, to his grandmother spurred Ælfwyn’s thoughts. Her children had given her the greatest and most lasting satisfactions of her life. She desired their happiness with an ardent longing, and would do everything she could to support them in their path towards it. This respect for the desires and inclinations of her offspring did not stop at her son, marked almost from birth to great power, even the Jarlship should he prove able. It extended to Ashild and Ealhswith as well.

  Her mother Ælfleda had an innate mildness, a suppleness of nature about her. She had not been able to keep Ælfwyn’s father from sending their eldest daughter off to a captured keep as part of a private and ultimately fruitless quest for peace. There was no room in Ælfwyn’s breast for harboured resentment over this; her father and grandsire both were men of such firm purpose that no tears nor pleading from either she or her mother had moved them once they had come to decision.

  None could know what strife may lie ahead for the young of Four Stones, but Ælfwyn felt an almost fierce conviction
that never would she force her daughters to the kind of marriage she herself had been sold to. This knowledge filled her breast as a single taper lit a small room. It was enough; gift enough for her girls, and source of strength for her. And she would do all in her power to help her son to a happy match.

  Dagmar looked about her. Entering this private chamber of the Abbess was, she knew, honour akin to entering the treasure room of a great keep. The precious goods were of an entirely different sort. A slanted reading table by one of the two casements held an array of bound volumes, lying flat, the leathern faces of their cover boards worked in scrolls and intertwined spirals. A few even bore gemstones, held in mounts of silver, studding the covers with flashes of glinting colour as the Sun glanced over them. A table near these clearly acted as work-desk for the Abbess. It bore shallow basins, several mortar and pestle sets, tiny mixing bowls, and baskets of tree bark and galls, all telling of the preparation of ink. Another broader table must be Sigewif’s own writing desk. Upon it lay a lining rule, scraper, tiny pots of what Dagmar guessed to be the finished ink, and a pottery tray of long grey-feathered goose quills, with a knife and wooden slicing board to open up the nib of the cut quill.

  The largest item in the room was a long and plain table of deal, up to which two benches were drawn. The surface of this table was darkened from years of ink blots, and as if ready for one of them to sit down at it, a few pieces of squared parchment were stacked at one end.

  Dagmar raised her eyes to see Sigewif looking at her. “This is where Hrald and Ashild practised their hand. But they had a fine start; their mother writes beautifully.”

  “Through diligent effort,” murmured Ælfwyn with a smile. “I take no credit for any gift.”

  “It is application which counts, always, in life,” answered Sigewif, with a smile of her own.

  Of a sudden Dagmar feared being asked to show a sample of her own hand. She could read a few words, but could scarcely write out more than her own name. She knew she should speak now about her own lack of skill, and express her wish that she lived closer to Oundle, where she might receive tutelage from one of the learned sisters there. But she kept silent, abashed to admit her own lack, and the need for its correction. And as a wish, it was almost a request to be granted a privilege which she had not yet proven she deserved. Unwilling to speak the truth, she ended up saying nothing. She must let them think what they might.

  It was Ashild who spoke. She had seen Dagmar’s growing discomfort, and understood it.

  “Hrald’s hand is far better than mine,” Ashild told her. “My scrawl is no better than it was as a child.”

  Her mother began to protest this self-judgement, but Ashild smiled and shook it off.

  Dagmar was aware of the kindness of Ashild’s words, yet her own thoughts had leaped ahead. Hrald writes well, she told herself. And his mother writes beautifully, the Abbess said so. Ashild may make light of her own skill, but I can do little more than write my name. I will be expected to teach my children…

  It was not only Ashild who sensed the unexpected lack of self-assurance in Dagmar. Ashild’s mother and Sigewif too were aware of it. This young woman had an almost preternaturally mature bearing for a maid, a bearing that told either of exacting schooling or a long and close observation of her elders. Dagmar’s face was composed and placid, but the dropped lids over her dark blue eyes could not hide their darting movement. Sigewif, looking on her with her own eyes of steel grey, thought of nothing so much as a beautiful but threatened animal.

  The Abbess now asked a question of both girls, one which seemed to turn the thoughts of all away from the less than happy topic of facility with quill and ink.

  “When were you baptised, Dagmar, Inkera?”

  The two sisters turned to each other. “Together,” Dagmar remembered. She studied Inkera’s pretty face for help, but the girl’s lips were pursed in thought. “I was perhaps eight or ten, and Inkera, half that.”

  Sigewif went on. “Let us think back. Your father Æthelstan received Christ as part of the Peace of Wedmore.” The Abbess here used the baptismal name of Dagmar‘s father, that which he was given at that event. The name was sometimes used in his official dealings, but all Danes still knew him as Guthrum.

  The Abbess’ quick mind worked the needed calculation. Guthrum had not received the Cross until after the defeat of Danish troops at Ethandun, in the Year of Our Lord 878. His doing so was part of the Peace he and Ælfred had agreed. This maid looked to be of twenty years or so. She must have been five or more years of age then. And Guthrum was not likely to be scrupulous in the speed in which he shared his new faith with his several wives and offspring. It made sense Dagmar would have eight or ten years, perhaps more, until she had received the sacrament. It was no wonder that she was ignorant of Judith. She was fathered by a man forced to become Christian. Her schooling in the faith, unless she had shown unusual interest, would have been indifferent, even at the hands of the best priest. Her birth decreed her Fate lay elsewhere. Dagmar looked as though she had been formed to be every inch a heathen King’s consort. Considering her, the Abbess could fault none of this, no just woman could.

  Sigewif smiled at the sisters, and gave a nod of her head. “You were both, I should say, of the perfect age when Christ came into your hearts,” the Abbess ended.

  Sigewif led the way out of the hall and to the single broad step of the grey stone church. Bova stood at its closed door, and bowed as she pulled it open for Sigewif and her party. The door was a heavy one, and showed the same care with which the entire church had been erected. The portal was built of upright planks of oak, embellished with strap hinges whose beaten iron work extended across the face of the wood like metal tendrils. The iron box lock on its front was as massive as on any treasure-bearing hall. Passing its protective heft gave added importance to the act of processing into a sacred edifice.

  The Abbess entered first, and Ælfwyn, who was just behind her, paused for a moment on the threshold. It was not the beauty of the church which stayed her motion, though the church was an unusually fine one, but rather a natural respect she felt for the Abbess, that she should enter, first and alone, into this sanctuary. Indeed, all of the small party found themselves looking at the white veil trailing down the back of the Abbess as she progressed up the aisle, stopped to genuflect, and then continued toward the altar. Reaching there, she turned and opened her arms to her guests.

  Dagmar and Inkera had entered within but one stone church, that dedicated to St Mary at Headleage, where they had been given the sacrament of baptism, and where their father had been buried. This edifice at Oundle was no larger, yet was in every way possessed of a greater beauty, and somehow of greater comfort. The day was warm; the interior held a soothing coolness. The dome-topped windows admitted abundant sunlight through panes of pale glass, whose entrapped bubbles gave a sense of airy lightness and even movement. The massive altar was a block of white stone, draped with pure and snowy linen. Upon that cloth was set two branched candle holders of gleaming silver, reaching with tall tapers of yellow beeswax toward the lead-topped timber roof. A crucifix of wonderfully wrought silver stood between them, glinting down upon all who approached the altar. It was a larger version of what the Abbess wore upon her breast, for the figure of the Christ upon this was carved in walrus ivory. The pale figure was as long as a man’s hand. As she neared the altar Ashild found her own eyes rising to it. She had ever found it her favourite depiction of Christ, for the artisan had so sculpted that warm material that no anguish shown on the Saviour’s face or body. He looked, with his outstretched arms, as if he were almost dancing, not hanging in his death agony.

  Three statues of saints, carved of wood and painted in vivid hues, sat on three columns, two to the right of the altar, and one to the left. They were all three skillfully carved, but of noticeable age, the mazing of the paint telling of multiple layers, and in some places only emphasizing the cracking of the old wood. The one on the left was the largest, and was of b
lue-gowned Mary, the Mother of God. Inkera went to it at once, and Dagmar found herself following her younger sister. It was impossible not to, as about the statue’s neck and wrists hung three marvellously worked chains of gold. They were made up of golden disks, linked together, each with a different coloured gemstone in its centre. The bracelets, made for a human woman, were far too large for the wooden wrists of the statue, and hung down, glittering, from the figure’s outstretched hands. Inkera found her own hand reaching towards one of them, and had to check her motion, so great was her desire to touch it.

  Ashild had come up beside the two and now spoke. The expression of wonder on both their faces made her explain.

  “Those are the gifts my father Yrling gave my mother, the day of their hand-fast.”

  Both Dagmar and Inkera looked at her, but it was Dagmar who spoke. “And she gave them… here?”

  Ashild nodded her head and went on. She was aware of something close to awe in Dagmar’s voice, but there was none in her own, just a quiet retelling of fact. “This church and much of Oundle was built with Yrling’s treasure.”

  Dagmar knew Ashild and Hrald had different fathers, and that it had been Ashild’s father who had won, and first ruled Four Stones. She found her eyes lifting to where Ashild’s mother stood with the Abbess. The gift of such gems said as much about she who had given them as it did of the prowess of he who had won them.

  Sigewif, seeing the raised eyes of Dagmar, now spoke aloud, and to all.

  “We will leave you now. The Lady Ælfwyn and I have the affairs of the abbey to discuss. Sister Bova will attend you. Enjoy the church, and gardens. We shall meet later for a meal in the hall.”

  She turned, and with Ælfwyn at her side and Burginde just behind, passed through the still opened door and out into the day.

  Bova had been standing near to Ashild, off to her left, watching all she said and did. Hers was a gentle presence, but her hovering about the daughter of Four Stones made Ashild all too aware of the young nun’s admiration. They had seen most of what the church held, and Ashild yearned to be again out in the open air. She moved to the door, Inkera at her side, Bova just behind her, and Dagmar and her brother last. As Bova carefully pulled closed the door, the rest of them paused on the wide stone step, and looked out over the fanning expanse of the nuns’ garden arrayed before them in the fullness of its Summer blossoming.