Hrald was looking down at the grass they trod. He was giving silent thanks to God that he had been stopped from asking such a question of Ceric, and just a few hours after his friend had arrived.
“Já. Yes,” he answered, turning his thoughts. “That happened the year after you and I came back from Gotland.”
Ceric thought back on what would occasion this; Hrald would have been only about Edwin’s age then, thirteen years.
Hrald read his friend’s face, and went on.
“It was the year that marked five since my father had vanished,” he explained.
Ceric understood at least a part of it then. He knew that if any man or woman was gone for five years, the marriage they had entered into could be dissolved by law. Yet Hrald’s mother had not taken another husband. Ceric counted to himself. She had been unto a widow for nine years now.
“I think…it was part of how mother, and my Uncle Asberg too, saw my…” Hrald paused so long, as if searching for the right words, that he had slowed. Ceric slowed too, at his side.
“My becoming one who could someday lead Four Stones,” he finished.
Hrald’s memory of that night was as clear as if it were last week. It had been St Mary’s Day, that day nearing the end of Summer which nonetheless could be the hottest part of it. The day before St Mary’s had been the day on which Hrald’s father had ridden away as escort to Ceric’s mother, and never returned. It was not a loss that, year-to-year, had been marked in any open way at the hall; yet he felt his mother was ever aware of it. That day had come round with the wheel of the year four more times without real mention. But this day she had spoken to him about it.
“Hrald,” she called him as he came in through the side door from the stable yard. She was there just within, as if she had been waiting for him. He was a little late for the evening meal, the hall already crowded with men and women. He could smell the savour of browis with shredded pig-meat in it, and with it the warm scent of crusty loaves lately taken from their iron baking pans. The serving folk were massed in the passageway and at the end of the big table where he sat with his mother and uncle and the chief men of the place, Jari and the others.
“Walk with me to the table,” his mother was telling him. “Your uncle awaits you. He will take your father’s shield from the table, and give it you. You will hold it up a moment, then turn and hang it on the peg you will find on the wall behind you. Then turn to the hall – a moment will do. Take your seat.” She paused just a moment in her instruction. “Your father’s chair. You will sit there now.”
He had no warning of this, but by the hushed seriousness of her tone knew he must do as he was bid. They stepped forward together over the floor of red and white stone, moving between trestle tables filled with those hungry for their supper. The sound of the hall was that of every night, voices raised in laughter or in calling out, riding above the rolling undercurrent of ringing cups and rattling salvers. From one of the benches his friend Gunnulf leant out to speak to him, asking a question about a colt they were training together, but Hrald knew to keep going.
Sure enough his uncle, Asberg, stood there at the centre-point of the big table, right at the spot at which he had five years earlier placed the shield of Sidroc, as reminder of that Jarl. It was odd seeing him there, standing and waiting; ordinarily he would be seated on Hrald’s right side, the big chair his father had sat in empty between them. Now his uncle stood and watched him come, and Jari, seated where he ever sat, watched him too. Hrald became aware that those behind him must be seeing this, for the noise of the hall began to fall away somewhat.
When he and his mother reached the table, she went to stand behind the chair at which she sat. He moved closer to Asberg, who met his eyes. Then his uncle leant over the table and took up the red and black painted shield from its surface, handing it to Hrald so that he would take it by the rim edges and hold it, face first, before him.
It was awkward, but he did it. He held it aloft a moment, the bottom rim of it just clearing his eyes as they looked upon the folk of the hall of Four Stones. They were all looking back. Their noise had ebbed to a droning hum, a noise that thinned as he turned his back on them.
He lowered the shield, his arms near trembling, and saw the thick wooden peg that had been pounded in on the plank wall behind where he sat. He turned the shield, found the leathern shoulder strap, hooked it up and over the peg. The shield hit the wall as it settled, ringing out a dull and solid-sounding clang.
Then he turned back to the hall. Some of those he looked at cocked their heads in question, or glanced from him to Asberg or his mother, but none called out. A few nodded at him, and at what they had just seen. He looked at Asberg, at his mother. Their faces said he had done well. He began to move to the bench next his mother, checked himself, and stepped to the high backed-chair next to hers. It had already been pulled out enough for him to slip his slight frame in without making it scrape across the hard stones of the floor. He stood there a moment, until his mother began to sit. Then he lowered himself in his father’s vacated chair.
“You have sat there for two years now,” Ceric was summing.
Hrald nodded.
“Now you have your sword,” Ceric went on. He thought on something he and the bailiff had spoken about, on the way here. “In three more years Guthrum is sure to name you Jarl.”
Hrald again nodded. “So they say. There has been no trouble here amongst the men, thanks to Asberg and Jari. Guthrum has come a few times himself to see us.”
“He must be well pleased, how you have held your lands and men,” Ceric offered. “And the other things – your moving to the high seat at table, choosing your sword yourself – these were steps along the way to the day your King Guthrum names you true Jarl.”
Hrald listened to his friend ticking off these benchmarks. Ceric looked and sounded like a man. Hrald had never felt the two years between them as sharply as he did at this moment. He felt himself a boy, with a boy’s confusion.
I did not choose my sword myself, Hrald was saying silently. I chose that which my father had named a good one. I carried his shield to the wall and hung it there because my mother had told me to do so. I felt a traitor to him in moving it, but then he had betrayed me in not coming home –
He stopped himself, looked up. They had walked to the Place of Offering. The shallow pit which had once received the glitter of sacrificed weapons was clogged with drying grass. At the right end of it the wooden figure of Odin still stood. Dry-rot had cost him most of his face, and only a few spots on his tree-trunk body showed where the wood had been smoothed and once painted in bright pigments. Lichen grew over much of it. He had seen his father kill animals here, though he be Christian; Hrald had watched him in secret. He recalled the last time he had watched his father do so. He knew his father’s act was wrong, but could neither try to stop him nor look away. He feared his father would burn in Hell for coming here, killing the piglet, and leaving it as Offering.
And he knew his father loved him, but that he was also somehow outside of his father’s love, in this, and in other things.
Ceric was looking at the old beech tree at the other end. Its toothed and splaying leaves were at their fullest extent; it would be a few more weeks before they would begin to show any crinkle at their edges. Even so, he caught a dull glimmer of something hanging from one of the branches, dropping straight down in the greenish light. It was a silver necklace, left to the Old Gods. He knew that; he had seen it on past trips here with Hrald. The necklace was tarnished, but in the late afternoon Sun some brightness glittered from within its links. He wondered who had hung that necklace there, and why.
Chapter the Fourth: The Reflection in the Silver Disc
THE relief Ælfwyn felt at how well the feast was going was fully matched by the happiness she knew in having Ceric back again. She had only to look at Hrald to see his own joy in his friend’s nearness. Her boy sat in the great carved chair, Ceric on the bench a
t his right hand, their heads often together as they talked and laughed together. Asberg and Æthelthryth were next along the benches, and then Jari, sitting with his wife Inga. On Ælfwyn’s left sat the bailiff of Defenas, and then Worr. Wilgot the priest in his dark robes came next; he had sat at the high table since his arrival in the second year of her marriage to Hrald’s father.
The table was filled out with those men who had always taken their places there, the most favoured of the warriors of Four Stones, who had helped win the place with Yrling, and then rode with Sidroc to its palisade walls to back him in his claim for it against his cousin Toki. Those who were wed sat with their wives at their sides. The four thegns from Kilton had been placed at the next table down, interspersed with some of the younger men of Four Stones; both Ælfwyn and Worr were keeping an eye on them, gauging their comfort, which seemed considerable, given the abundant food and drink.
For they were hungry. The seven who had ridden from Kilton had made camp anew each night, doing so without the benefit of a supply waggon and cook. They had carried salted and dried pig, and sacks of oats and barley. The small round loaves of bread and pots of soft cheese from Kilton’s ovens and spring house were quickly consumed, giving way to the steady fare of grain browis boiled over a hastily laid camp-fire. Water from streams had been the drink of their horses, and theirs too, save for the time near the border they had been given ale.
Now they grasped deep cups in their fists. Ælfwyn had poured out for the high table, and Ashild, seated at the first woman’s table, poured for the table which held the thegns and Four Stone’s warriors of the second rank. Burginde also sat with Ashild, as did Ælfwyn’s sister Eanflad, young Ealhswith, and a number of other unmarried women of the hall. Serving folk carried jugs amongst the rest of the trestles. Ælfwyn’s guests at her own table all drank from the same stemmed goblets of silver they had taken their greeting-ale with. The thegns contented themselves with the large flared-wall cups of bronze she had been counting when they arrived.
She had not had time enough to do all she wished, but felt pride at what the kitchen yard had produced all the same. The leavened goodness of newly baked bread and the sweetness of butter would be what men on the road most craved, that and fresh meat. Two half-grown piglets had been basted in tangy verjuice dotted with crushed and resinous rosemary needles, then split and roasted until the skin was brown and crackling. Eggs were ever hard to come by on the road, and there were boiled hen’s eggs, shelled and rolled in flaked salt and the tiny feathered leaves of green and pungent dill. A barley browis enlivened with fresh cress rounded out the meal, ladled steaming into deep pottery bowls.
Only one thing disturbed Ælfwyn’s content, and that was the man seated at her left. Raedwulf of Defenas seemed distracted, almost ill at ease. He praised his hostess for her food and drink, but not in the smooth and practiced manner she might expect of a man of his rank and background. He did not attempt to impress her with tales of Ælfred’s court, or display his familiarity with the leading families of Wessex by sharing seemingly private incidents for her amusement. Perhaps he did not feel his hunger with the acuteness of the younger men he had travelled with, for he ate and drank with notable restraint. She wondered if it were mere restlessness; he had delivered his King’s gift to her, and perhaps was eager to be off. She did not yet know how long Ceric meant to remain with them, and could not in courtesy inquire how long the bailiff intended to stay; it could not be long, she assumed, a few days’ rest for his horse and he would start back, with at least two of the thegns, she imagined.
“I must thank you again for bringing so precious a gift from Ælfred, King, to me,” she said.
She had just offered the bailiff a small salver on which new apples, their juices sweetened by quick seething in butter, lay sliced. He reached for a crescent of fruit, then stopped himself with a jerk of his head.
“Forgive me. There is a second part to the King’s gift to you, which lies still within my packs.” He glanced up and across the crowded hall. The night was drawing to its close, and she must be as tired as he.
“It, like the book of Psalms, was created at the monastery Ælfred has founded at Athelney. It is the first such religious house to be created by the King; after so much destruction of our holy houses it gives him joy to have raised it up, and now to be able to commission gifts from it.
“If I may, I will present it on the morrow,” he ended.
“Of course,” she assented. “Although how the Psalter could be bettered, I cannot imagine.”
Her smile was warm and sincere. It was for the book, he knew, but aimed at him. He saw how blue her eyes were, bright even by the glow of the tapers ranged about the table in front of them. Those blue eyes shifted to the left, as if she were thinking.
“Nor,” she went on after a moment, “can I guess why the King so honours me with this gift, as grateful as I am to have it.”
“Your benefactions to the foundation at Oundle are well-known to Ælfred,” he answered. “Oundle alone has kept God’s word alive in Lindisse these past many years, and you are largely responsible for this.”
She demurred. “It is the work of Abbess Sigewif,” she returned, lifting her hand slightly as if pushing away his praise. “If I have aided her with my treasure, I am grateful. But it is her work, her vision, that created and sustains Oundle.”
“You undervalue your contribution. You must not do so, you who have done so much.”
It was not just idle praise. There was some little strength in his words, and he ducked his chin as if he had heard the force in it, and would excuse himself.
“The bringing of the True Word to the heathen is a vital part of the Peace,” he went on, in way of explanation. “King Æthelstan taking baptism, forsaking his idols, set a standard for his men, one which brings them closer to our own ways.”
He spoke here of Guthrum, King of the Danes in Angle-land. As part of the Peace he had submitted to baptism, and been given the Christian name Æthelstan. The younger Ælfred had served as his god-father.
Ælfwyn had no ready answer for this. She had perhaps seen Guthrum more often than Raedwulf. And Sidroc, who had been there at Guthrum’s side, had told her about it.
Guthrum was a shrewd and careful leader, well able to judge what would matter to his opponent in a peace treaty. Both sides must make concessions. The donning of a new linen tunic, presented as gift by his sponsor, Ælfred, and the sprinkling of water on Guthrum’s head was important to the King of Wessex. Guthrum would agree to this, as would his chief men. He had tried in one final push to win all of Angle-land for himself, tried and failed. This young Ælfred had come from the marshes he had been driven into and somehow rallied men enough to beat his trained and hardened warriors.
It was the will of the Gods. Guthrum had made an earlier vow to Ælfred, made it with his own blood and the blood of his best men, on a great arm-ring of silver. Then he had broken that vow, felt forced to by the growing unease amongst those men of his who wanted more still. But he had angered the Gods, Odin and Tyr most deeply, in the oath-breaking. When the raven banner the Danes carried into the final battle fell, Guthrum knew his quest to rule all was over.
Keeping what he had already won became the goal. As part of the terms Ælfred asked that he accept a new God. As a demand it was slight enough, and besides Guthrum had his own curiosity about this God who had so aided his foe.
Ælfwyn did not think Guthrum’s Christianity ran any deeper than this; like the white tunic he had been given on his baptismal day, he could take it off and put it on. And perhaps the bailiff of Defenas agreed with her. He had seen enough of the Danes, she was certain, to hold no illusions, though here with her now he must say the right and hopeful thing. At any rate, what was most important about the Danes accepting Christ was the new protection afforded nunneries and monasteries. These had been easy targets for the raiders, with their altars adorned as they were with silver and sometimes gold. Monks and priests had bee
n slaughtered, and women consecrated as brides of Christ ravished, even carried off. With the taking of a new God the Danes understood His temples must not be desecrated, His holy men and women left in peace.
She had been attending to these thoughts, and glanced now at Raedwulf. His own eyes had travelled to the women’s table, to rest on Ashild. The cressets lighting her table cast a flickering sheen on the deeper yellow of her gown. The bailiff seemed captivated by this play of light, and she spent a moment looking at him as he watched it. Then Ælfwyn saw Burginde looking fixedly back at him. She seemed to be studying the bailiff, and by her puckered lips Ælfwyn knew her brain was turning. An instant later Burginde’s own gaze was broken by Ealhswith, pulling at the old nurse’s sleeve, wanting her attention.
Ceric too was looking at the women’s table, and also at Ashild. He had forgot that she would not be sitting there with them, but be away at her own table. Other than a nod and smile at him when she sat down, he had no contact with her.
She was wearing the golden gown he had brought her, and as she had entered the hall he had the pleasure of seeing her in it. She had combed out her hair so that it did indeed fall upon the shoulders of the gleaming fabric. The head-wrap she donned that night was as fine as the thin veils her mother favoured, and around Ashild’s neck lay, as it ever did, the small cross of gold she had been given as a child. To this had been added a single round brooch, alight with the red of garnets, pinned near her neckline.
Ceric had taken ale twice at Four Stones, and not yet from Ashild’s hand, as he had imagined on the road here. During the meal she had only risen once to pour out for the men at the second table; after this a serving woman had done so. But he had seen his thegns smile at her, seen that her sleeve of heavy silk had brushed the sleeve of one of them, and seen too the chaffing banter exchanged between her and the men of Four Stones she served. Gunnulf made her laugh with something he said about her gown; he could tell by the way she touched the neckline of it with her hand as she answered him. Of the men of the place he could do nothing, but he felt a thrill of envy towards his own pledged men, who held their cups before her as she dipped the bronze ewer their way. He tried to stifle this in his breast; he had never spoken of her to any of them, and they had no way of knowing that one day she would sit next him at the table upon the stone dais at Kilton.
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