For Me Fate Wove This

by Octavia Randolph

  Her lips twisted into a wry smile, thinking on the endless loop of her ruminations. The fact that she had found herself with child the very day that Hrald had found the woman he would wed was irony too great not to smile. Two beginnings, on one and the same day. Yet her beginning had also signalled an ending.

  She picked up the cup of well water which Burginde had earlier brought her and took a final sip. The acidic taste of her vomit in the back of her throat had receded. The larger issue remained. She could hide her morning retching easily enough, living in the bower house as she did, with her mother and Burginde to care for her. Burginde made up any number of soothing herbal possets for her unsettled belly, and by night she was able to eat well, even heartily, in the hall. But soon her waist would thicken, and even given the looseness of her gowns, her truth proclaim itself to all.

  “I must let the hall know,” Ashild told her, setting down her empty cup. “I will not have them whispering and wondering, grinning behind my back as they guess.”

  Burginde was clear-seeing in these matters. “Then we will make of it no secret, my girl. For after all, ’tis no secret. The whole hall, and village too, knows Ceric of Kilton has been courting you, and for years. We will make of it their secret, by making it open. They might as well believe a secret wedding, as not.”

  Ashild’s eyes opened the wider as Burginde went on.

  “’Tis a simple thing for me to bear the news. A word or two to those in the kitchen yard will reach the ears of all in hall and village. Every good gossip will spread it for us. You need say nothing.”

  “What will you say?”

  Burginde leant forward in eagerness, her dark eyes snapping with glee.

  “Only the truth, my girl. How the hall rejoices that Ashild will soon bear the child of Ceric of Kilton. All knew of his recent visit.”

  Ashild had set her elbows on the table, and with folded hands and furrowed brow looked over at the nurse as she went on.

  “Wilgot may not have muttered his prayers over you, but you are man and wife, for you gave freely of yourself, and he to you.” Burginde’s firmness in this made it its own proclamation.

  Ashild was forced to consider her words. Indeed, Ceric had named her wife several times. Amongst the Danes, two need only to agree they were man and wife for their hand-fast to be upheld in law. Even in Wessex a union need not be blest by a priest or even witnessed by others. It was enough for a man and woman to both consider themselves wed to the other.

  Burginde was watching Ashild’s face, and went on with renewed strength. “So what if the wedding be a secret one? ’Tis as good a one as if you had stood on the step of Oundle, and the priests there, and the Abbess herself, had blest your union.”

  Tears of clarifying gratitude wet Ashild’s eyes. Burginde had lived a life of such uprightness that none could doubt that which she pronounced was true, or even hinted was so, to be anything but.

  “Burginde, from your mouth it is all so… simple.”

  Burginde crooned her approval, stroking Ashild’s hair in reassurance. “Aye, and ’tis simple, my girl, ’tis.

  “All will know this now. When you begin showing, you will be met with nought but smiles.”

  To seal this promise, Burginde leant in and kissed her cheek.

  Ashild nodded her head, wanting to believe all this. “But… I must tell Hrald first. And soon.” She was chewing on her lip, thinking on this.

  Burginde gave a decided nod of her rounded chin. “Aye. He is brother, and Lord, both, and must know of it. ’Twill gladden him, truly it will.”

  Ashild had opened her mouth in silent protest. But the nurse ploughed ahead.

  “You be the daughter of the hall, destined for a fine match. And Ceric be his fast friend. This be what Hrald most wants for you both.”

  The nurse let her eyes scan the garden, a sanctuary of flowering beauty which gave respite to those privileged to be invited within. She nodded her head in satisfaction and then went on.

  “All works round in its own time, that is what I can say. Look at me. I loved a village boy at Cirenceaster, and was got with his child. He was slow to wed me, even when my own father gave him a shake. After that, riled as I was, even if he had asked I would not wed either him or the baker’s boy, who had been following after me for months. The first was now unworthy, and took hands with the smith’s daughter, and the second I would not settle for. I wanted the babe though, and prideful as can be went ahead and had her. She was born blue, and died the second day of her sweet life. I wept as I had never before, cried my eyes out. Then the cook from the hall knocks on our door. The Lady there had just given birth, was weak as a kitten and could give little milk. Could I come up and suckle the babe? And she was no less than your own dear mother, that babe. I had never been within the hall before, and now could care for both babe and mother.”

  Burginde paused in her telling of this tale, one Ashild had never before heard in its entirety. She gave Ashild’s hand another pat.

  “Something bigger came to me when I thought all was lost. Something bigger is coming to you, Ashild. Mark my words.”

  Hrald rode back to Four Stones with Jari and the rest of his body-guard, having parted with his uncle at the turning to Turcesig. The young Jarl approached in a state of elation as he neared the gates of his keep, and urged his horse into a canter as he heard the whistled signal ring out that he was returned.

  The first member of his family he saw was his sister Ashild, who came towards him wiping her hands on the apron panel of her gown. She had been in the paddock, performing a task that always gave her pleasure, that of brushing down her horses. She had two at the hall just now, her bay mare, and the white stallion, and each knew the firm touch of her hands and the skillful wielding of brush and comb upon their coats, manes, and tails.

  Hrald was returned from his riding to see Haward, and one look at his jubilant face told her he had known success. He caught her up in his arms and hugged her.

  “She is mine,” he told her. He broke from their embrace to look at her, his grin making him even more boyish to her eyes.

  “I am glad,” she managed. She answered him in Norse, which led him to switch to it as well.

  “I will go and tell her,” he said, twisting his head back in the direction where Asberg’s house lay. “We will be wed at Oundle, and soon.” It was custom that the maid be told by her own kin that her marriage was assured. Dagmar had none with her, and it left the bridegroom to deliver this news himself.

  But Ashild would stay him for a short while. All the action of the hall work yards swirled about them as they stood there. His body-guard were relieving their mounts of saddles and bridles and releasing them into the paddock from which Ashild had just come. Young Bork had taken Hrald’s horse and yet stood staring at the Jarl from the threshold of the stable doorway. Two of the kitchen boys were hauling water lately pulled up from the well, a wooden bucket in each of their hands. A cowherd was leading the hall’s own cows back in for their afternoon milking, while one of the goose girls ran after three goslings which had waddled, wings flapping, to challenge the lead cow in her progress across the yard.

  “Could we go to the treasure room,” she asked. “There is another matter to speak of, as well.”

  She wondered if she looked as wan as she felt. But her brother, after searching her face for a moment, gave a nod of his head, and led the way. The interior of the hall was dim, even in the strong afternoon light, and being sunken into the ground a few steps gave it a reviving coolness. A few toddling children were about, playing at the feet of the women who clustered near the light of the door, chatting as they teased out wool thread from masses of fluffy roving to fill their ever-whirling spindles.

  They reached the high table and the length of linen which sported the raven embroidery hanging on the wall behind it. By it was Hrald’s old shield, its red and black swirls curling toward the domed iron boss fronting the hand grip. The crack in its alder face was broad enough to show the lime-w
ashed wood of the wall it hung upon. Now Hrald was at the door just to the left of the shield, and drew forth the key to the box lock from his belt. The door was oak, almost black from age, its upright planks as thick as Hrald’s strong wrist and their height enough so he need only bob his head as he crossed the threshold with his sister.

  Shutting that door sealed off one world and admitted those who passed through it to another. Weapons room it was, the range of painted shields stacked in ranks against one wall, and a deep cluster of throwing spears ready to be grasped told of this. The number of wooden and iron bound chests, trunks, strong boxes and casks stacked as to size and what they held was beyond easy counting. More weaponry was within some of these, swords, knives, the war axes called the skeggox, and spear-points not yet fitted to shafts. Others held treasures Merewala and Merewala’s father, the latter of whom had founded Four Stones, had amassed. This had been added to by Ashild’s father, Yrling, who had wrenched this keep away from Merewala, and then expanded threefold by Hrald’s father, Sidroc. And Hrald himself had added to it. He had left most of the armaments in Turcesig there, to serve its men, and though that fortress had not been rich in treasure beyond this, had brought hack silver, coins, and a few silver ornaments from that which Thorfast inherited from Guthrum.

  The table and chairs within that room were not large, but had been carved with care, and their comfort seen to by the Lady of Four Stones, who had provided plush cushions of dark blue wool upon their seats. Even Ashild had contributed handiwork to this room and he who owned it, for against one wall near the hooped spears was set the war-flag she had woven and worked for her brother. The raven thereupon, spread-winged like a raptor, beak agape, hung in folds, ready to be brought to life by some young man who would wave it upon the field of battle to signal to Hrald’s men that their war-chief still lived. Ashild had seen it live before, furling out from the cantle of her saddle as she charged from the gates of Oundle. Hrald had fixed it there before she rode to the abbey’s defence.

  The single window, high upon the wall, faced west, a piercing beam of sunlight striking the planked floor, and making tiny motes of dust look golden as the Sun.

  He was looking at her, looking quizzically as he waited for her to speak. He was eager to find Dagmar, she knew, and she herself must go and welcome her.

  “I am happy for you, Hrald,” she repeated, and forced more heartiness into her voice.

  He smiled, and was about to speak when she went on.

  “Do you love her?”

  She thought it a strange question to hear, but she must ask it, as she wondered, young as he was, if it was mere want that drove him.

  He nodded, grinning, a little abashed at this directness. “Já, já.”

  Ashild’s next question went deeper.

  “Do you feel loved?”

  His hesitation gave Ashild an answer for herself. She felt Ceric’s love, even though she also felt she could not spend her life with him.

  He moved his head, for a moment confused. All he could feel was his own love and desire for Dagmar, his sense of fitness that she should be his wife. He had not thought to examine if his heart was warmed by the corresponding emotion from his intended.

  “I feel her regard… I believe she welcomes me.”

  It was her turn to pause as she considered this. She studied his face, and thought he was reaching for further words to express these new sensations. Nothing came, yet the earnestness of his face spurred her on. She must tell him, and now.

  She kept her tone light, despite the directness of her next question.

  “Did Ceric tell you of his time at Turcesig?”

  “A few words, only.” The surprise of what Ceric had told him rose again, yet he tempered his voice, not wanting to betray his friend. “That you would not go to Kilton.”

  “Anything more?”

  He gave a slow and single nod. “That you did not… reject him.”

  She drew breath, grateful that he knew. “I will have his babe, in the Spring.”

  His lips parted. He blinked his eyes, and she thought she watched an entire spectrum of emotion move in her brother’s face: surprise, confirmation, awe, urgency, everything.

  His first words were of happiness.

  “Nothing could bring Ceric more joy, than this.” He shook his head, his wonder at her news uppermost. “We must send you to him,” he began. “He will – ”

  “I cannot go to Kilton.”

  He tried to take this in. Of course, she was right. She could not travel such a distance, not with Anglia in turmoil, Wessex under sporadic attack, and certainly not with her being with child as she was now. It could not be risked. And the escort she would need would deplete his forces at a time when every man counted.

  “Já,” he nodded. “Not now. Not until it is safe.”

  She gave her head a shake to correct him.

  “I will not go to Kilton. It will not end well if I do.”

  Her words jarred him. They brought to mind his father’s words at Saltfleet, when Ælfred, King, was urging him to stay in Anglia. His father had answered that disaster would follow if he remained. And it was Hrald who believed his father, and released him to go, without regrets, he hoped.

  In dealing with his sister Hrald had need of deeper resources, and summoned the words of Raedwulf, the Bailiff of Defenas. He had in this same room told both Ceric and him that Ashild perhaps preferred a peacetime rather than a wartime alliance, and that once peace was again attained she might indeed go to Ceric. He must believe the bailiff.

  “When there is peace,” Hrald said, recalling the words of Raedwulf, “when there is peace, then you will go.”

  “It will not end well for me if I do,” she answered, but quietly.

  What voice was she listening to, her brother wondered, that made her speak so? It was nearly the same words used by his father, there at Saltfleet.

  She had not heard that speech, and had moved on with her own thoughts. These were of practical nature, for she knew the importance of her role in enriching his holdings.

  “Hrald, I know I should bring as my bride-price a treasure to fill more chests in this room.” She dropped her voice to say the next. “It is all the more pressing, as Dagmar can bring you so little. Yet I would have you keep the fifty head of horses, or any sum of silver and gold you would send me off with. So I do not think I have left Four Stones the poorer.

  “I have no shame in this child,” she ended. “But I will live my life here at Four Stones.”

  He stood listening to her, shaking his head at her words, the decision of which he could not accept. “Then you leave Ceric with nothing. You know he loves you, but he can have neither you, nor the coming child.”

  The starkness of his words struck her. Her brother was right.

  She saw the naked justness of this, but had answer for it. “I did not wish for this. But I accept it. Welcome it, even. I could have rid this child and did not.”

  Hrald winced. It forced her to touch his arm.

  “I do not see the end of this, Hrald. Only what I must do now.”

  “But all that you forgo, all that you will lose…”

  She felt her selfishness, and her confusion. Yet she saw what she had won, in accepting Ceric that night, and now this babe. She could not know why this happened on her first night of love, but felt there was greater reason for it. She would have a woman’s joy in her child, but like a man, be able to stay at the home she was raised in and felt sworn, by her very presence, to protect. That was what mattered to her. Yet the strain of standing there before her brother, with his shocked and almost wounded face, had her near tears.

  Hrald’s eyes shifted from her face to the roof rafters above their heads. Ashild’s news, all of it, was proving hard to compass.

  “Ceric considers you his wife,” he told her.

  “I know, I know,” she murmured.

  “And you are wed in the eyes of nature,” he went on.

  “Já. That is true as well,�
� she admitted, “having given ourselves freely, as we did.”

  “If the babe is born here…” he wondered aloud. For the first time it struck him how this would be received, not only by his men and folk, but by Wilgot the priest. “I should tell all here that you are wed to him.”

  Her lips curved in a quick smile, the first in a long time. “No need. Burginde is at work already, in the kitchen yard. She says all will expect a secret wedding had taken place, owing to Ceric’s long courtship of me.”

  Hrald’s relief allowed for the smoothing of his brow. “Good.” It did not cover what came after this, but it was a start.

  He thought now of Dagmar. He, or Ashild herself, or perhaps their mother, would need to tell her of this. Dagmar must hear it from them, not from the prattle of the yard. Would she be shocked, he wondered, and think less of her new sister-in-law. He gave his head a shake to clear it, and forced a smile at his sister. She would relent and go to Kilton, he told himself. When it was safe for her, her babe, and the treasure she brought Ceric to travel, she would go to Kilton.

  Hrald had just put his foot on the first step of the wooden stairway leading to his mother’s weaving room when he heard the door above open. The Lady of Four Stones appeared on the upper landing. She smiled down at him, and his initial elation at his betrothal resurfaced. She came down to meet him, Burginde just behind her.

  His mother gave his cheek a kiss, and he nodded at her, unable to keep from smiling.

  “We are agreed,” he said. “Ten swords, twenty spears. Dagmar will bring silver with her.” He remembered the lot upon the table which her cousin had revealed. “Nothing of great value, but there is a cup, a chalice, of good size amongst it.”

  Another chalice, his mother silently marvelled, from the store house of a Dane. Ælfwyn at times wondered how any church or monastery had yet any sacred silver; so much had been swept off like this. At least once in their keeping it could be restored to its former use. Perhaps Hrald would present it to Oundle as his marriage gift.