When Jari arrived at Oundle to ride back with Hrald, his first words were of the son Ashild had borne, and that both lived and were well. The welcome news of the safe delivery of the child served as needed distraction for Hrald. His thoughts went to Ceric, who he knew must be again in the field with Eadward. Ceric had once been entrusted to ride to Four Stones on behalf of Ælfred; perhaps he would again be sent, that he might see Ashild and hold his child.
Hrald rode into the hall yard, his whistled return a signal to Ashild. She wished to present her son to his uncle in the treasure room, as doing so would preserve the female sanctuary which was her mother’s bower house. Just as important in Ashild’s eyes was the significance of her son being admitted to the stronghold of weaponry and treasure which served as much of the basis of Four Stones’ power. The babe was not Hrald’s, but this child was of the hall, and positive reminder of its continuance. And there was another, more poignant reason. Ashild knew that her brother discovering the falseness of his wife within had sullied that preserve. Seeing this babe there might dispel this, and restore some small part of the joy of which Hrald had been so recently robbed.
The priest of Four Stones was also listening for the whistle telling that Hrald was returned. Wilgot, uncertain as to the exact status of the child’s parents, and fearing the worst, wished to baptise the boy as quickly as possible, as if his hastening the ceremony would somehow assure the relationship was one affirmed. To this end he had approached Ælfwyn the very evening of the child’s birth, suggesting that the babe be carried to his house so he might administer the sacrament. Ashild, hearing this, demurred. She wanted Hrald to serve as godfather.
“The treasure room, and when Hrald returns,” she told her mother in answer. “It is as holy a place as the priest’s house, and he can bring his water and oil there.” She looked at her little sister Ealhswith, who had been called in to meet her tiny nephew.
“You and Hrald will be his godparents,” she told the girl, which wreathed Ealhswith’s pretty face in smiles.
By the time Hrald returned Ashild had still not revealed the babe’s name. Ælfwyn had pondered this, wondering if Ashild, granted a boy, might choose the name of her own father, Yrling. But she also wondered if she might choose to name her boy Hrald, to honour her brother. Then again, Ælfwyn recalled Ashild as a child being told by Sidroc the name of her own grandsire, Hroft, and the girl saying how much she liked the name. And it sounded well with Hrald.
When Ashild, her mother, and Burginde went to the hall, Wilgot and Ealhswith awaited them, the priest holding a silver tray topped with a linen covering. Hrald was ready. He unlocked the treasure room and they filed in. He kissed his older sister on her brow, just above the golden circlet she had placed there for the occasion, and smiled down on the swaddled babe, asleep in her arms. Ashild, looking up into Hrald’s face, was glad for both kiss and smile. But the change wrought in her brother was all too clear. It was there about his mouth and eyes, a subtle alteration inflicted by the pain he knew. He looked almost bruised to her, bruised and older. Something beyond reclaiming was gone out of that boyish face.
Wilgot placed the tray upon the table and revealed the shallow basin of blest water, and the vial of holy chrism. Ashild placed the babe into the arms of a beaming Ealhswith. Wilgot made the sign of the cross above all, and gestured Ealhswith closer, the infant’s head above the basin.
“The child’s name,” Wilgot prompted, looking at the babe’s mother.
Ashild did not hesitate.
“Cerd.”
Cerd, for his father’s grandsire. It was the name of Ceridwen’s father.
It was a Mercian name, a name of Angle-land.
Ælfwyn found her eyes filling. Bestowing this name on the child was a most unexpected gift. It was honour to Ceric, and to Ceric’s mother Ceridwen, a woman who Ælfwyn knew Ashild must have guarded feeling for, and even resentment of.
Yet Ashild’s own better nature had risen. It might be the one thing she could present to Ceric, to acknowledge him and his own mother in this way, but to Ælfwyn it spoke reams of the nobility of her daughter’s heart.
Chapter the Tenth: To the Mouth of Hell
The Year 895
CERIC had twice attempted to send a letter from Kilton to Four Stones. Even during the Peace the sending of letters had been rife with hazards, and their arrival always doubtful. Common brigands could seize travellers and goods; weather could delay attaining the destination, causing an abandonment of the effort; sickness or accident could overtake the bearer.
Yet during that lost Peace Ceric could have entrusted a rolled parchment or single flat leaf to a visiting merchant who would be next crossing into Anglia to sell his goods. Or he might have sent his missive to Witanceaster, with the request that it be given to some of the King’s couriers carrying revised trade agreements for Guthrum’s approval. Now, with the Peace and its protections no longer acknowledged, the travel of merchants or royal couriers to Anglia was no longer possible.
One class of travellers only hazarded such trips. Priests, monks, and even nuns intent on reaching distant religious foundations remained undeterred. These men and women did not travel blindly; they knew the chances of arriving at church, convent, or monastery in Anglia or Northumbria were slight. Yet a few were granted dispensation to leave their home foundations on errands considered pressing enough to warrant the risk. Even within the borders of Wessex and Mercia travel was dangerous. The repeated incursions of Haesten and those Danes both contesting his claims and joining with him made forays in one’s own kingdom fraught with peril. To enter Anglia proper, now under no real governance but controlled by Danes, could rightly be compared to seeking martyrdom. Yet those of the cloth who hoped to serve many more years in the service of the Church would go. They rode, and sometimes walked off toward their destinations, in the hope those Danes they came across would respect their persons and scant property.
Many of the Danes within Anglia now professed the Christian faith; at least a number had been baptised into it, though all knew the degree to which they followed its precepts was uneven. In this past twelve-month Ceric had handed his letters to monks, but without any return. He had no way of knowing if the parchments had reached Four Stones, or if the monks he had entrusted them to had been cut down but a few days after leaving Kilton’s boundaries.
During that year he had served two more tours of duty in Prince Eadward’s fyrd, both of the prescribed length of three months, interspersed with a three months’ return home following each campaign. While with the Prince he and Worr and the rest of Ceric’s men had ridden west to help secure the borders of Wales following a great action centred in Powys headed by Eadward’s brother-in-law Æthelred, Lord of Mercia, and a number of Welsh princes. Since then they had patrolled uncertain enemy boundaries, chased looting Danes from destroyed hamlets, guarded the passage of supply waggons and once, a number of nuns forced to flee from one convent to another. They had fought almost numberless skirmishes.
Little of this had resulted in decisive return. Haesten and his followers still ranged about the countryside heedless of borders, endlessly on the move, harrowing Wessex and Mercia as they went. Other than the massed assault on Exanceaster in Defenas which had laid waste to so much of that place, and the pitched battle at Powys, in which the forces of Æthelred and the Welsh princes won the field, most of the action was a wearying cat and mouse game of pursuit with little reward.
Much of their effort was directed at keeping the Danes from scouring the countryside for food. And in fact, hunger drove both armies. The King and his son were used to stop at any burh for shelter and meat; it was part of that service due the royal family for the protection their warriors provided. But the predations of roving Danes and a long spell of wet weather which left decaying grain stalks pooled in water made for little surplus. Eadward and his men took advantage of every opportunity to hunt, snare birds, and set up overnight weirs in swift flowing streams where fish might be dipped up. It was never enough.
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br /> Ceric had ridden off from Kilton on this latest tour fronting forty warriors, twenty mounted and twenty on foot. His ranks had been replenished by the young men trained by Cadmar, aided by his brother Edwin’s chief body-guards Eorconbeald and Alwin. Together these three had readied a mix of thegns’ sons of sword-bearing age, and a number of worthy young ceorls from the village eager to march as foot-men with the mounted thegns. The thegns, as professed warriors, were fulfilling their pledge to defend Kilton, and would win silver, arms, horses and even land if they distinguished themselves doing so. The free-born cottars vied for the chance to join their ranks. More than a few of the better warriors in Kilton’s ranks had been ceorls, starting as boys as sling-throwers hurling river stones at the enemy, or as youths as archers or spear-throwers. Any boy of village or hall yard could aspire to win notice of his lord, and be trained and armed by him. To win a place in the hall as one of his lord’s men meant leaving a life of mere ploughing and herding behind, to take up with honour a spear and become part of the shield-wall of defence and attack.
Kilton now had nearly five score men trained in arms, the more than fifty always at the hall with his brother Edwin, and those forty who had set out with Ceric. After these two latest tours of service with Eadward, the men remaining with Ceric numbered one and thirty. Men had been lost in direct action, by poisoned blood after taking wounds, and sheer misadventure. One had been killed by the rear hooves of a kicking horse, another by falling from a tree he had climbed to espy the countryside ahead. The hazards of service were many and remedies few.
The Prince commanded the leaders and men of five burhs, Witanceaster, his own home; Wedmore, Meretun, Englafeld, and Kilton. As the first three months of this most recent tour with Eadward were drawing to a close, he called the leaders of the other four burhs together. It was a misty Spring morning, just after an Easter which had gone uncelebrated by all before him. Eadward stood outside his tent, the cow hides that acted as fly providing just enough shelter as the men crowded under it.
His message was as unwelcome as it was unusual. Eadward was not himself returning to Witanceaster, but would stay in the field, continuing his drive north and east after Haesten’s raiding troops. He had pressing need for men, and asked those of his followers who were unwed to stay on with him. Those with wives and children should return to their home burhs where they were needed, but any who could remain with him would be regarded with special favour.
Eadward then looked at the familiar faces around him, and called out their names. Of the five war-leaders, four were wed, with growing families, and one had even grandchildren awaiting him. Eadward dismissed these, asking that they go to their men and make his offer for him. Then he turned to Ceric.
“Will you stay?” he asked, in simple query.
Thoughts of Kilton weighed heavily in the minds of its men; Ceric knew this. Worn as he felt, he knew the newest of his warriors, those youngest of the thegns and the foot-men, unused to the hardships of short rations and constant travel in all weather were weary indeed. He was being asked to send many of his better, older men home, and continue on with few exceptions with the least seasoned.
Ceric looked back at Eadward, little more than a year older than he, and with a wife and child awaiting him in Witanceaster.
“I will of course remain, my Lord,” he answered.
He went at once to Worr. As was his wont as horse-thegn of Kilton, his friend was amongst those animals. Ceric had brought two of his own, his chestnut stallion and a big bay gelding he used for pack. Only the lords of burhs travelled thus, with two animals. The second horse kept their own mount fresher, as it was not burdened with kit as well as rider. Worr was checking an abrasion the second horse had developed from an ill-fitting pack frame when Ceric neared.
“You will take him with you when you go,” Ceric said, as way of greeting.
Worr gave the bay’s thick neck a pat. “They will all be eager to see Kilton’s green pastures,” he answered. The horse-thegn gave a laugh. “As will we.”
Ceric nodded. “I am staying on with the Prince,” he said.
Worr’s head swung round from the horse’s shoulder.
“Staying on?’
“Eadward is not returning to Witanceaster. All unwed men are asked to stay on.” Ceric paused a moment. Worr was wed and had three small boys at Kilton. Like Ceric he had been away half the year already.
“You will lead the rest of our men home to Kilton.”
Worr’s mouth opened. He shook his head. “I am not leaving you.”
“You have no choice. Those who are wed, especially those with young at home – you must return to them.”
Ceric turned his eyes to the tents dotting Kilton’s encampment. Men sat in the mouths of some, savouring the rare day of rest, while others made for the nearby stand of wood, bows in hand, quivers at their hips, hoping for small game to shoot.
“You must lead them home, and this fellow too,” Ceric said, nodding toward the bay.
Worr could only protest. He had known Ceric since this eldest son of Kilton had been a babe. Worr had ridden with his father, and then his uncle, Godwin. He had taught Ceric to ride as a boy, helped train him in arms, and been at his right in every engagement since his sword-bearing. Eager as he was for rest, for Wilgyfu and his boys, he was not leaving now.
“Ceric, this is wrong-headed.”
Ceric looked at him. Then with a smile, he answered.
“Do as I say.”
It was something that Worr had told him many times when they entered danger, when the older man insisted on placing himself in the greater peril they faced. It was also as mild a command as any had ever heard. And Worr was forced to oblige.
Eighteen of Kilton’s men remained with Ceric, several of them beardless youths. Twelve, headed by Worr, set off next morning on a southwesterly track.
Eadward was left with sixty men. Ceric became second in command simply by the fact of his presence. The eldest son of Kilton made quick reckoning of his remaining men. None of them owned helmets, but all were equipped with war-caps of shaped and hardened leather, strapped over with iron bars for strength. Likewise he alone owned a costly ring shirt. Two of his men were pledged thegns and bore swords, which at Kilton he had presented them with, as well as spears. The rest were spear-men and archers. Of the other men left with the Prince, less than half of them were fully pledged thegns, some owning swords, not all; but good spear-men every one.
“With sixty we will travel faster, and our food needs are the smaller,” Eadward told him, as they prepared to saddle up.
They had not moved far along the path they followed when a blast from a horn caused them to rein up. It was the Prince’s own call, a summons to him. Soon a few men from the newly-dismissed burh of Wedmore appeared. They rode as escort to two cassock-clad monks, riding grey asses.
Gaining the Prince they explained that as they reached the path to Wedmore, the two brothers had appeared. It was all they could do to try to catch Eadward before he was lost to their efforts.
The older of the monks addressed the Prince. He was of a burly, even stout build, grey-stubbled, and when he pulled back the hood of his brown cassock his carefully shaved tonsure showed a perfect circle of pink bald head. The second monk was young, small and lively-looking, with hair of swarthy hue beneath his own tonsure, and wiry dark hair upon the backs of his quick hands.
“Your presence is indeed Heaven-sent, Prince Eadward. I am Wulgan and my brother monk, Berhtwald. We are come from Ælthelinga, and our goal is the abbey at Oundle.”
“Oundle!” This was Ceric, on hearing the name.
Wulgan looked to him. “Indeed, Sir. We carry a leech-book of healing recipes to the Reverend Mother of that place, Sigewif. And God willing, we shall return to Ælthelinga with a copy of her own collection of remedies, which she has long promised to prepare for us.”
Eadward could not suppress his sigh. Ælthelinga was one of two monasteries founded by his father, part of the King�
�s life-long attempt to reestablish holy foundations throughout Wessex. It was in answer to the many convents and monasteries sacked by Danes and left in ruins. The two he had created and endowed were his father’s foothold for learning and righteousness. The King must know these monks rode towards almost certain death. Yet so great was the desire for the continual exchange of knowledge the risk was deemed acceptable. His father, so often struggling against his own bleeding illness, took special interest in the healing arts.
“And you need escort to the Anglian border,” Eadward posed.
The monk’s benign smile did not fully mask the strength of his intent. “We would be grateful to ride with you, as far as you are headed in that way.”
Ceric could scarce believe their goal. Here were two monks risking their lives to carry a book to Abbess Sigewif. He would ask them to carry a message that far. Within two or three days they could get these holy men as near to the Anglian border as they dared.
He must wait for the Prince to grant them escort.
Eadward had but little choice. His father had built Ælthelinga, and these monks were under the King’s direct protection, and by inference, his own. “We are going as far as Fullanham before turning south. You are welcome to ride with us.”
Wulgan and Berhtwald were with them two days. The leech-book they carried was shown to Eadward and Ceric, hanging in a linen pouch from the older monk’s neck, safe from detection under his cassock. Its height was no more than a man’s hand, and its breadth not much more than a palm’s width, but the parchment leaves were wondrously decorated. Every page bore the painting of a plant or root, outlined in dark ink and coloured in by brush in inks of blue, green, and red. The tiny and copious text was in both the speech of Rome and that of Wessex, so that more could make use of the wisdom compiled within. The binding was plain brown cow hide, a modest garment for a work of subtlety and measureless worth.
The monks proved good company, and Ceric was happy for their presence in their own right. Wulgan had travelled to Oundle years before, and from the founding of Ælthelinga well knew the effort demanded in creating an abbey from almost nothing. He had not upon that first visit met the Lady of Four Stones, but knew of that great benefactress. “Ælfwyn of Cirenceaster,” the older monk murmured, in acknowledgment of that rich lady’s generosity.
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