“Ælfred thinks there will be war. A union either way could harm us here. I must have time.”
She said next what she had felt for years, useless conjecture though it was. “If I were a man, I could stay here at Four Stones all my life.” It pained her the greater that she was Yrling’s offspring, he who had won Four Stones in the first place.
It was no bitter jest; her mother and brother heard the sorrow behind it. Hrald made a movement of his shoulders, and tried to smile. “If you were a man, you would be Jarl. You are older than me.”
“Yet God marked you to be a woman,” her mother observed. Her tone was mild, yet not without a hint of rue for her daughter’s just complaint. “He has some work for you, some task perhaps equally great to what a man may accomplish.”
Ashild’s head dropped forward, as if to ward off these words.
Hrald spoke again, and was now unable to hide the hurt in his voice. “What…what will we tell Ceric…?” His large hands had turned towards the slip of parchment, awaiting answer.
His sister said the only thing she could. “The truth,” she pressed. “We must not be rushed. We shall write it together, you and I.”
None at that small table were content with this, least of all she who had spoken.
Three sets of eyes turned to her.
“Forgive me, all of you,” she pleaded. “I must do what I think is best. I must have time.”
Her mother saw a strong maid close to breaking, and this too was what Hrald saw. Asberg saw the strain in the girl’s face, but saw too the resolve. She was cast from the same mould as Yrling, that was certain.
A tapping was heard at the door, followed by Mul’s voice sounding at the box-lock. “Lady Ashild,” he summoned. “Your mare. The foal is coming.”
Hrald had joined his sister in the stable. The place was dim, and thick with the warm smell of horses, and the odour of birth. The tiny colt was now standing on wobbling legs, and had found its mother’s teat. The mare was charcoal-black, her son the same, now that his mother’s tongue had washed him.
The foal’s coming had taken longer than most, the mare growing more and more restless as she circled her box stall, head tossing. When the first pair of minute hooves had appeared Ashild had clapped her hands in relief, and Mul’s eyes had crinkled above his deep grin. After the foal dropped to the straw they let the new mother begin the washing process, poking and prodding the little one as she warmed it. Once it stood and had its first suckle they both entered the stall, Mul going to the mare’s head to soothe her, while Ashild took the chance to run her hands all over the wet foal’s small body, squatting down to clasp it in her embrace, stroking the fine little face, slipping her fingers lightly into the flaring nostrils so that the creature might know her scent. It was the first step in gentling a horse, and one of the most vital.
Now she stood with her brother outside the stall, looking in on this new member of Four Stone’s herd. They had spent some time speaking of the foal and his handsome mother, and were both grateful to have their minds so occupied. The dusk had deepened in the stable, and soon the hall would be gathering to sup.
Before Hrald turned to leave her he would ask one thing.
“Those priests. The letter. We must write it soon.”
She nodded. “In the morning, if you like. Though they will welcome the rest of a day or two before they are sent back.”
“I will give them escort,” Hrald said. “We can spare three men to ride with them to the border.”
This was a great distance, but hearing the tales the men of cloth had told about having been apprehended so many times in Anglia made up his mind. It should take no more than three heavily armed warriors of Four Stones to make certain they arrived back in Wessex with the answering letter. They would be on their own from there, having to cross Wessex to reach Kilton, but any of Ælfred’s men would aid them.
Hrald’s eyes were trained on the black foal, now folding its legs to fall upon the straw. He watched his sister’s face, looking on the young creature, and saw the joy she gleant from her horses. He thought of the huge white stallion, outside in the paddock, that Thorfast had brought her, and thought too of the fifty horses he had pledged if she chose him.
Ashild too was thinking of Thorfast. She looked up at her brother and asked a question.
“What – what was the bride-price you set for me?”
She watched Hrald swallow, the knob in his throat slightly moving. She knew he had set her dowry at fifty of Four Stone’s best horses, but did not yet know what Hrald had asked in return.
“I did not set it. Thorfast made offer. It was a price so great, we could say nothing.”
Her lips had parted, but her question remained, there in her dark eyes.
“It was your weight in silver,” he admitted.
Her breath sounded through her lips.
It was a huge sum, but it was not only that. There was about it a crudeness that shook her. Brides were bought, yes, but to be bought by the hundred-weight seemed akin to selling her soul. Her mind flashed on how her mother must have received this offer. But her mother had depths of strength she had only guessed at.
Another came to her mind: Yrling. It was like a ploy her own father might have played. And Ælfwyn had come to care for Yrling, in the end.
She made herself smile.
“My weight in silver?”
She had tried, and failed, to playfully repeat the terms.
He could not bear the pain in those light words. “Ashild,” he said, and put his hand on her arm.
She met his eyes, but could not answer.
“I am sorry,” he said. “Mother and I…we want you to wed Ceric. You know how I feel about him, what we have shared. He is my best friend.” He lifted his hand, and looked now back into the stall. “And in Wessex you will be safe.”
She could hear in the rasp of his voice, how much he wished to believe this last.
But she had made at least half of her decision, and would tell him, and now.
“That is why I cannot go.”
In the late morning of the next day Hrald and Ashild seated themselves at the long table where Wilgot did his writing. The Lady of Four Stones had invited her priest and the two visitors to her bower garden for refreshment. The priest was now taking Tatwine and the monk on a tour of the healing herbs that flourished under the Lady’s care.
Lying before Hrald and Ashild on Wilgot’s table was a piece of lambskin parchment, which the priest had ready-ruled, his faint pin-scratches marking lines to be inked upon. The table was well-lit, with three bronze oil cressets, easy to position where the letter-writer needed them. There was a small pot of freshly made ink, smelling darkly of the gall it contained. There were as well a number of goose-quills, trimmed but for the final cut, making the ink-bearing point finer or blunter, as the writer preferred. A scraper, sharp as any razor, lay nearby, its blade sheltering in a split piece of wood. It would only be needed if a drop of errant ink should spoil a word, or the writer decide on a new arrangement of expression.
Hrald began.
CERIC, MY BROTHER, MY FRIEND
You look for Ashild and receive nought but this letter, and the regard of all at Four Stones. I pray that time will find me sending happier news. I look forward to our soon meeting, and with peace between our lands. Until then you will be riding, I think, with Ælfred or his son, and know you will win your way to his right hand. I rejoice that Worr is ever at your side.
I embrace you.
HRALD OF FOUR STONES
When Hrald had finished writing, he spent a moment reading what he had put down. It said so little, but Ashild must write the important part. He slid the letter to his sister. She paused, letting the ink dry, reading it herself. She felt more restive than usual, and not able to focus on Hrald’s few words. A dull ache was in the small of her back; her Moon-flow would soon be coming.
She had already trimmed a quill with the final cut,
making it short, giving her the broad stroke she liked. She rolled the stiff point of the feather in her hand and thought.
She did not know who other than Ceric would read this letter. Perhaps he might keep it wholly to himself, or perhaps it might be passed amongst the family of Kilton. She had not forgotten the greeting on the letter he had left for her: My Ashild.
She decided to begin as if all might see it. She dipped her quill-point in the pot of ink.
CERIC OF KILTON
All at Four Stones are grateful for your esteem, and the beneficence of Ælfred, great King of Wessex.
– She stopped and looked at this; it was so formal that Ceric would think she had dictated an outline to a trained scribe. She glanced at the two lines and checked that thought; no scribe would write so poorly as she. She had some confidence in her spelling, but her letters looked crude next to Hrald’s large and well-formed ones. She lowered her head again over the parchment.
I cannot leave Four Stones. Your King himself knows the unsettled nature of our Kingdoms.
– And I will not let Hrald send fifty of our horses with me, far from Four Stones where they may be sorely needed, she told herself. She had not asked Hrald what he intended to settle as her dowry, but feared he would name that which he had set if she accepted Thorfast. She was not now willing for any such treasure to leave her home.
The danger is too great to all I love. I cannot now leave.
– She had drawn a circle around those she loved, and Ceric was not within it. She looked at that line again. To scrape it out would be a lie, yet it was not the full truth. She felt the stirrings of affection for Ceric, had missed him since he had left, desired his company with her and Hrald, just as she had desired his company when they were young. She did not know how to say this, and let the line stand.
Please forgive
ASHILD OF FOUR STONES
She spent so long laboring over these words that Hrald had risen to stretch his long legs, which had been crammed beneath the priest’s too-low table. When she raised her head she saw him looking out the single window they had opened to allow light.
“Will this do?” she asked, summoning him over.
He read the few lines. It was so little, yet reading it again he saw it conveyed all of importance. The only thing missing was word of Thorfast, and the suit he pressed; and she could not tell Ceric that. Nor could he. Learning another man was pursuing Ashild would cause Ceric needless pain, a pain that he could not act upon, denied as he was from coming to Lindisse.
“It is good,” he said, with no heartiness.
It would, he knew, stun his friend. He could not look forward to how Ceric’s face would change while reading what they each had written.
“If you – accept Thorfast, will you write to Ceric again,” he now found himself asking.
She grimaced, and he went on, “In friendship, will you tell him?” It was almost a plea.
“You will write him,” she deferred. She felt of a sudden chilled, and wanted to go to the weaving room and lie down, with her mother and sister and aunt around her. Burginde would bring her hot broth from the kitchen yard, and rub her back…
“Já, I will write him,” she corrected, seeing the pain in her brother’s eyes. Refusing Ceric was refusing Hrald; Hrald and her mother both.
Chapter the Sixteenth: The Raven of the Danes
The Year 893
ASHILD cut the length of linen from her loom. It had taken a full week to weave, and before that an entire month to spin for, working at it as much as she could. Her thread was not of the finest; it had ever been full of lumps since girlhood, but she had felt the importance of the entire piece being of her own hands. She had dyed the spun thread a pale blue, using the leaves of woad from her mother’s garden.
Her shears snipped through the final warp strings. The piece now measured a full ell, that being the distance of a man’s outstretched arm from shoulder to fingertips, but she determined that her woman’s arm would serve just as well. She left the weaving room with it and her work-basket, and went across the short passage outside its door to the small drying-room, which they used when the wet of outdoors forbade the hanging of laundry. She had carted a small table up there. She smoothed the linen down upon the surface, pinning each corner with brass pins. Thus made taut, she took a piece of sharpened charcoal in her right hand, and began her design.
It was a raven she drew upon the hand-spun linen, a raven in arrested flight, wings outstretched, beak gaping, claws extended and ready to grasp.
She finished her drawing, released the brass pins. She should hem it first; she could almost hear her mother telling her so. She threaded up a needle with a long strand of the light blue linen, folding the edges over, holding them close in her finger pads as her needle pierced the cloth, giving her a finished edge. She used no thimble for this task. Her hands were hard from riding anyway, and the spear-work she was doing with Hrald had further toughened them.
When both raw edges were hemmed she took a broader-eyed bone needle, and looped a length of black wool through it. She began to outline the raven, starting with the gaping beak. Her drawing was large, the size almost of a real raven. This outline must be firm, her stitches small. So absorbed she became that she scarcely heard her mother and Burginde coming up the stairs. They passed by her closed door and into the weaving room, without suspecting she was within. Each stitch became another step in the outline, each short length of black wool laid down leading her closer to the back of the head, the flaring wing-tip, the breast, the spread talons, the second wing-tip.
Her shoulders hunched and her eyes burned, but she would not stop. She would complete the outline today, so that on the morrow she could begin the work of filling in the body.
She began singing a song to herself, an old tune in the Norse tongue, taught to her by
Jari’s aged and now-dead mother-in-law, who had taught Ashild the drawing of bind-runes, and those things of magic the old woman thought a clever maid should know. It was she who, when Ashild was but a girl, showed her how to throw a curse, thumbs forward, on any tormenter; the same curse she had thrown at Ceric in the woods as he ran from her. This song however, Ashild had forgot the meaning of. Falling from her lips it sounded half-lullaby, half-lament. She went on, drawing her hand-spun thread over and over through her fabric, the needle rising and then vanishing as it pulled the black line, encircling her raven. Her intent was such it felt an act of devotion, almost an act of prayer.
Spring had come, and with it no end to the uncertainty. Haesten had completed his camp at Middeltun. From the mass of men who had landed at Apulder no single leader had emerged, and Haesten took pains to convince the chief men there that he was fittest to head all. Apart from a few supply raids into Wessex he had kept his combined troops close. The Winter had been wet and cold, but now with the breaking of bad weather, movement was to be expected, either West into Wessex or North into Anglia. Yet no riders came to Four Stones with message from the Dane.
Younger men on active patrol at Four Stones were always in training. But those warriors who had fought and won Four Stones with Yrling were older, and farming now, and had not the need to keep up their skills. Now, with the landing of this great force, all of them were actively training, and hard.
The yards within the palisade yielded some room for smaller groups to practice, but with near to two hundred men the greensward without the gates was pressed into service. There in the shadow of the tall stone preaching cross men flung spears at targets thrown up against the wooden walls, and paired off to spar. Villagers looked up from crofts and barley patch to see lines of men run towards each other, spears foremost, or stand shield to shield in steady advance, swords at the ready. This last was not the chosen way of the Danes to fight; they much preferred the quick scramble through woods to surprise and overtake a lightly-guarded target, snatching what they could before retreating. But the warriors of Wessex fought in the way of Angle-land, tightly fo
rmed lines of men with shields almost locked, their war-chief behind them, shouting commands and encouragement, the line forming and reforming as men were felled. The pitched battles the Danes had been forced to fight over the past decades had been mostly of this kind.
Near the end of the session today Hrald sheathed his sword and walked to the water barrel. After a long sparring session with three other men he was left breathless, his body as wet from sweat as his mouth was dry. He drank of the cool contents in the copper dipper, his eyes watching the men still at their fighting. Jari was ever in demand as a sparring partner, and Hrald watched him take on two younger men at once, the whole time calling out a mixed stream of admonishing counsel and taunting insults. One had gotten in a touch at Jari’s body, but the other Jari had felled with the flat of his sword, giving the older man victory. Asberg had joined in now, relieving the two, to face Jari alone, a change that was met with goading shouts from the men who circled them. Asberg’s two young sons stood amongst them; they had been sparring together, though not yet sword-age, and had paused to cheer their father on.
After a few blows were exchanged Hrald saw that Gunnulf too had stopped in his practice to watch his older brother spar with Hrald’s uncle.
Hrald found himself looking at his friend, and not at the contest beyond him. He missed Gunnulf. Since the day at the stream when Gunnulf had touched him they had spent no time together. Nor had they chosen to face each other in sparring, as they always had in the past. He did not think anyone else noticed this, none but he and Gunnulf. Now, with the sparring ended between Jari and Asberg, he saw Gunnulf turn and see him. Hrald still stood at the water barrel, and Gunnulf now walked to him, and it.
Gunnulf nodded greeting as he approached, and spurning the dipper, threw handfuls of the water over his own heated face, then lowered his mouth to the sloshing surface and drank deeply.
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