He clenched his fist about it, as if he would crush it. He thrust it in his pack. He would give it to the treasury of Oundle. Unlike the chalice which he had been granted as a portion of his wife’s dowry and then given to the abbey, this he would ask to be melted down to serve the poor.
When he opened the door he saw Jari, fast asleep at the high table, his still-ruddy hair tumbled over his hunched shoulders. Jari and his wife had their own small house, but his faithful body-guard had eschewed it to spend the night outside Hrald’s door. This show of paired devotion and concern stopped Hrald in his tracks. He went to the older man and spoke his name. When Jari raised his head, blinking and blear-eyed, Hrald spoke.
“I will go to Oundle; two nights at the most.”
Jari began to roll his shoulders as he answered. “I will get ready to ride,” he said.
“No, Jari,” Hrald told him. “With Asberg at Turcesig you must stay here in command.” Jari moved his massive head, taking this in. When Kjeld and Ashild had been left in charge, it had been but for a few hours.
“Then I will ride with you, as escort, and return here,” Jari decided. “In three days I will come back for you.”
Hrald must agree to this, if only to repay his body-guard’s act of staying the night near him.
“Wake Kjeld,” Hrald said next. “Ask him to tell my mother and Ashild where I am going, and that I will be back after two nights. I will go to the stable and get our horses.”
Jari would not press him to take more of an escort. After what Hrald had been through, he counted himself lucky that Hrald had even awakened him, and allowed a single guard to ride with him.
Early as it was, Mul was astir in the stable. All the yard knew that their Jarl had put away his wife, and the fact that she had ridden off behind another warrior gave damning reason. When Hrald appeared with a small pack Mul nodded as he ever did when Hrald asked for his bay. Hrald heard a stall door open, though Mul had yet to move. He heard next the familiar nicker of his stallion, and then Bork was before them both, coming from the dusk of the stable depths. The boy was leading the animal with only his hand upon the bay’s broad chest, as he was too small to slip a lead rope over his neck.
Mul took the stallion as Hrald looked down at the boy. The child was now fed and kindly cared for, but in his haunted eyes lay a deep loneliness.
“Would you like to see Oundle,” Hrald asked of him. Bork stared, open-mouthed, and nodded his head. “If Mul can spare you a few days,” said Hrald, looking to the stable man. Mul bobbed his consent.
Hrald asked for Jari’s horse, and began slipping bridle and saddle on his own. Jari appeared. In the kitchen yard the bakers had been long at work, but now the other cooking folk began to emerge, though the hall itself was still quiet. Those upon the rampart of the palisade looked down at their Jarl and his body-guard, and the men at the gate readied to swing it open.
When they were both horsed, Mul lifted Bork up behind Hrald. With the boy’s thin arms around his waist, Hrald nudged his horse out of the yard. Folk were afoot in some of the village crofts, whose cooking-ring fires blazed under cauldrons of warming oats.
As they left the gates behind Hrald’s eyes fell upon the thick yew tree border of the burial ground. The snow-flecked grassland around the yews was a ghostly base to their darkness. That burial ground was where he had won consent from Dagmar. The trees looked black in the little light. He turned his head away and urged his stallion on. He had won her as wife by a place of death, a realization as bitter as the poison of the yew fruit.
It was mid-morning when they reached Oundle. Hrald had thirty warriors resident there, a handful of whom had met them on the road and escorted them to the gates. Once inside Hrald went to the brothers’ hall, and with Jari and Bork were offered food and drink. Hrald had eaten nothing since the morning of the prior day, and had taken but a cup of mead his mother pressed on him in the treasure room. Now, handed a wooden bowl of boiled oats and a small loaf, Hrald took the food gratefully into his mouth. A serving boy brought ale, and lifting the crockery cup Hrald found comfort knowing Bova had brewed it. Bork, at his side, watched all with wide eyes as he spooned his porridge. The brothers’ hall was not as large as that of the nuns’, but to a child who had never been within the hall proper of Four Stones, it seemed huge. The dark brown surplices of the men who greeted and served them occasioned wondering stares from the boy.
When Jari rose to leave, Bork jumped up as well, uncertain as to what to do. Hrald placed the boy in the care of one of the brothers he knew, telling him of Bork’s service in the stable, but offering him for any task of cooking or serving where he might also be useful.
Then Hrald walked with Jari to the paddock where his horse was resting, and saw him off. After the gate closed behind his body-guard Hrald turned back to face the gardens. The snow which had fallen last night was almost all melted away, with only scant ridges of it piled up against the bottom of fences, or whitening the bare soil beneath the stone benches. The wind, even behind the encircling palisade, was sharp, and Hrald pulled the heavy wool of his dark mantle more firmly about him. The brothers’ hall had been warm with fire, but he did not wish to be inside. Far less did he wish to visit the church; he felt no call to prayer. He walked instead into the brothers’ side of the garden.
The gravel paths there led him through the beds of mostly withered herbs, and dark and sodden furrows from which vegetables had once flourished. The apple and pear trees, laden with ripening fruit on his first visit here with Dagmar, were skeletal. He found himself clutching the mantle even tighter about his shoulders. He looked over the rose bushes, blasted by Winter’s cold. Stripped and bare, their thorns were foremost, those thorns which in Summer hid beneath pale and tender blossom and green leaves. He stared at the roses, achingly aware of the duplicity of blossom and thorn. Beads of water hung from the largest thorns, dropping like single tears to the wet gravel path.
He released the hold on his cloak, and let the next gust of wind flap it open to the cold. He wished to rage, to destroy things, and howl out his pain. He could not stay at Four Stones and do so. He had hoped that the calming atmosphere of Oundle would drive such impulses away. In the brothers’ hall he would be under a temporary vow of silence for much of the duration of his stay. Silence is what he sought. Anything to still the turbulence churning in his breast was welcome.
He turned his back on the garden. The doors to the barn were open, and he could see his bay stallion within, a double rope tie tethering his halter to opposite walls. Bork was on tiptoe on a stool, comb in hand, smoothing the long black mane from forelock to withers. Hrald watched the boy take a handful at a time as he worked, and the way the boy leant forward to speak to the horse as he did so.
Kolb is dead, he found himself thinking, naming that man of his who this boy’s father had killed. And I have Bork in return. As he stood musing on this he became aware of movement from the tail of his eye. A novice was at the border of the garden, her light grey gown covered by a cloak of darker grey. She smiled in a way that let him know she bore a message.
He walked to her. Abbess Sigewif requested his presence after Sext, or mid-day prayer. Hrald nodded he would come.
After the Abbess returned from the church she found Hrald waiting by the door of the nuns’ hall. This was only the second visit Hrald had made here unannounced, and both times his distress was clear. Sigewif embraced him as always, and led him in silence to her writing chamber. She closed the door, and before she could invite her guest to sit, Hrald pulled something from under his mantle and set it on the nearest table.
It was a cup of silver, footed, and deeply incised with flowing and graceful design. At first she thought it another gift, just as after Hrald’s wedding ceremony he had presented the treasury with a fine silver chalice. Then Sigewif saw the inscription on the lip of the cup. She lifted the cup to read it. Dagmar.
She placed it down again. Hrald’s face told much, but she must hear more.
“I ha
ve cast her from my hall. She left yesterday, with the man who was her lover before we met.”
Sigewif’s intake of breath was deep, but quiet. Hrald went on.
“Wilgot… Wilgot named the marriage invalid. I returned to her all her bridal goods.
“She was not what I thought she was,” he ended.
The Abbess studied him. This strapping young man stood before her, bodily whole. Only the dark and glistening eyes conveyed how deep ran his wound. The pity she felt for him, for his loving mother, and his wild-hearted sister, was immense. As was the pity she felt for Dagmar.
“We humans rarely are,” she answered. “In our frailty, we disappoint. God does not. He may puzzle or even confound us, but in his ultimate wisdom and eternal goodness we can trust.”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Her cup… I would have you melt it, and use it for the poor.”
Sigewif looked at the beautiful thing. To him only purifying fire would render it fit for this higher use. She nodded assent.
She reached her hand to his and covered it with her own. “Thank you for coming to us, in your need,” she told him.
Hrald answered none of many calls to prayer rung out throughout the day. Vespers and Compline came and went, and he did not place his foot on the broad step of the church entrance. He did not even speak to Bova, though she once caught sight of him and flashed her shy smile. It was some balm to be away from the crowded and noisy hall of Four Stones, to need speak to no one, make no decisions. On prior visits to Oundle he had slept in a simple alcove in the hall as the junior brothers did. This time he was shown to a private cell, that of a monk who had recently died. Like all the nuns’ and monks’ cells, it had its own door, and was built along the back side of their respective halls. Between walking about the garden, a single foray on foot outside the wall, and the hours spent lying on the narrow cot in the cell, he was alone and silent much of the time. Meals, taken twice a day with the priests, monks, and brothers in the men’s hall, were eaten to the accompaniment of a reading from Scripture. The sudden spareness of his life and narrow confines of his transit gave comfort. When he returned to his needful responsibilities as Jarl he must feign indifference to the hurt he suffered, something he could not do yet, and need not do here.
Before Jari arrived Hrald went to bid thanks and fare-well to the Abbess. He had Bork with him, and Sigewif, regarding the child, gestured him and Hrald into her writing chamber. She had seen Bork about the barn and garden, and been told he spent most of his time grooming Hrald’s stallion and the foundation’s two cart horses stabled with him. There were children about the place, the sons and daughters of the lay folk who served there, but Bork spent little time with them. He looked a quiet child, by nature, to Sigewif’s eyes.
Now she led the boy to the narrow table between the casements, upon which lay several bound volumes. She opened the first, a movement that surprised the child. He had never encountered a book, nor seen its hinged action.
“This is writing,” she told him.
Bork had come to Four Stones speaking only Norse, but had readily picked up the tongue of Anglia. He screwed up his eyes, looking at the tiny rounded lines filling the cream-hued leaf. The Abbess saw he knew not what lay before him.
“They are words, fixed here, for as long as this parchment lasts.”
He looked up at her. His fingers went to the dark squiggles.
“Words?” he wondered.
His face scrunched in thought. Words were something that came out of your mouth, and went into your ear. They were sound. But these too were words.
After watching this, Sigewif asked Hrald if the boy was of the hall of Four Stones, or its village.
Hrald would not here rehearse how Bork came to be his dependent.
“No,” he simply said. “He is new to Four Stones. He is living with our stableman, and his family.”
So the boy was alone. The Abbess often took in foundling children, to save them from starvation or slavery. They became useful serving and yard folk to the abbey, and a gifted few who showed inclination and aptitude had even become sisters and monks. She wondered for a moment if Hrald was offering the boy to her.
But the way the child stepped closer to Hrald’s leg as she looked down at him made her smile.
“I think you should teach him to read,” she said.
Ashild awoke in the bower house. A gush of fluid between her legs made her try to push herself up. The sound escaping her lips was one of surprise. She felt no twinge, just the warmth of the wetness telling her the long wait was nearly at an end. From the bed against the wall she heard her mother stir, pull on a shift and come to her. Ælfwyn held a few twisted straws to the still-glowing charcoals in one of the braziers, and touched it to the linen wick of a taper on the table. As the light hit her face Burginde snorted awake.
By the time the Sun rose much was in readiness. Hrald was absent at Oundle, but Burginde had early awakened Jari. He had sent a rider to Turcesig, so that Æthelthryth might come and lend her aid. When she arrived by waggon at noon, Ashild’s birthing pangs were well advanced. Besides her mother and aunt and Burginde, serving women made frequent calls within, carrying broth and food, bringing hot water for washing and ever more towelling. The small house, warmed by the constant replenishing of the charcoal in the braziers, fairly steamed as the women took turns walking with Ashild across the planked flooring. Fired by the heat of her own bodily exertion she felt stifled. She begged for coolness, but clad as she was in only a shift she was overruled again and again.
During the months of carrying the child Ashild had worn neither her small golden cross nor the hammer of Thor which had been her father’s. Anything hanging about her neck had felt vexingly irksome. Her mother now fetched the golden cross from where it sat at the base of the crucifix on the weaving room wall, and bade Ashild wear it, for protection.
“For your babe’s sake, as well as your own,” Ælfwyn asked, and indeed, Ashild, looking at her mother’s caring face, could not refuse so small a petition.
As the pangs deepened, Ashild stopped in her walking and held on to the upright timber roof support in the centre of the floor. She lifted her head and glared up at the dark underside of the roof, her jaw clenching with every roiling pang.
“Scream. Scream, you must scream,” urged Burginde.
“I… will… not… scream…” gasped Ashild.
Sweat beaded her face, both from the demands of withstanding the dark waves of her travail, and from the warmth of the room. The cries of a labouring woman had always been one of the hallmarks of helplessness to Ashild. The pain was intense, worse, if she be truthful, than she had imagined, but she had resolved to resist showing it. As her mother daubed her face with cool linen and her aunt held her about the shoulders, she would allow herself no more than panting grunts in rhythm to the spasms wrenching her belly.
“Screaming brings the babe faster,” Burginde admonished, rising off her knees with the help of a low stool to push herself up with. She had been peering between Ashild’s legs and saw it would not be long now. Ashild gave but another grunt in answer and gritted her teeth.
Then Ashild’s legs buckled, so great was the tightening pang contracting her body. Guided by her mother and aunt, her knees touched the floor. Burginde was ready with linen and birthing straw. For a moment Ashild, freeing herself from the arms that held her, seemed to try to lean forward over her heaving belly. She bit her lip; her face was both white and red. Finally she gave as mighty a yell as had ever been sounded, an ear-splitting war-cry to do honour to the loudest of warriors. Not even Asberg, with his distinctive two-part whoop, could top it. Kitchen folk scouring pots with handfuls of ashes raised their heads to it; the watch-men upon the palisade ramparts whirled towards the sound, and those within the hall, shut up tight against the chill, heard it and came forth into the grey afternoon, some with spears in hand.
Burginde was right; it did free the babe. The nurse was ready. Into her waiting hands s
lid the weight of new life, warm, wet, and red.
“A boy, a boy,” she laughed.
That night Ashild lay in her bed bolstered by cushions, her son under her arm. Her body felt a sense of weary use she had rarely known, a kind of aching soreness throughout. But her babe was perfect. Strong as she was, she would soon heal, even those deepest parts of her which felt torn and numb. What mattered was this child she had brought forth.
Ælfwyn, sitting next the bed and smiling on both mother and babe, could not stop the prayer of thanksgiving whispering within her breast. A healthy child had been born to the hall, in the midst of sudden sorrow of loss. She wanted Hrald here, that his grief might be allayed by the advent of this child; and even more so did she wish for Ceridwen’s son, the tiny one’s father. Ceric was not here to cast loving eyes upon Ashild, to take their fine and lusty son upon his knee and proclaim him truly his. He did not even know their night together had yielded such fruit.
The fear that Ceric might die in battle, or from sickness or accident stemming from the rigours of riding with the Prince, clouded Ælfwyn’s brow a moment. He must live, so that he might know this child. Ashild had passed from maiden to mother, and no change was as great as this. Now, loving her child as Ælfwyn guessed she would, she might at last choose to be true wife as well, and go with the man who loved her to Kilton and there build a life.
Her thoughts strayed to another of Wessex, that man of Defenas whom she herself loved. She could name it thus, it was love. And she knew Raedwulf loved her, wanted her to wife, hoped even that she might be brought to childbed as her own daughter had, and bring the joy of a son or daughter into their later years.
The babe mewled. Ashild lifted the linen from her breast. Her son’s tiny fingers had reached out and closed about the golden cross about her neck. His rosebud mouth was seeking, and she shifted to allow it to find the nipple it sought. She looked upon the downy head, a smile of mixed amazement and content on her lips.
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