by Alexa Aston
Her brown hair was matted in a nest of knots, wrapped around her face from the wind outside. She wore a red cloak that was also twisted around her body and her leather boots were caked with snow. She looked like a wee lass. She probably wouldn’t reach past the middle of his chest. There was a green wool blanket in her arms and she clung to it with everything she had, like the most valuable thing in her world resided within its warmth. When the bundle moved and a small leg peaked out from beneath, Jeoffrey realized it was indeed the most precious thing to this woman. She carried a wee child.
Gripping the child even tighter with one arm, she used her free hand to swipe her disheveled hair away from her face. Jeoffrey’s heart sank to his toes. His blood ran cold and his stomach churned. Those same ocean blue eyes that had been haunting him just a moment ago…and more often than he cared to admit over the last four years, searched the crowd in a panic as she stepped forward and grabbed onto the first man she saw. “You must help me! Please!”
Alastar shot up out of his chair and laughed. He always laughed at the most inappropriate times. “I think the gods are trying to tell you something, mate.”
The hall had gone silent and Alastar’s lone voice seemed to boom and linger in the still air. Her eyes shot straight to them and she stilled when her gaze landed on Jeoffrey. Instinctively, she clutched her child tighter to her body and gasped, “Jeoffrey?”
Of all the women in all the clans in all of Alba…why did his former intended bride, the one who had ripped his heart out of his chest and run off with his cousin, literally come storming into his life again?
“Clarice.”
About the Author
Mia is a full-time wife and mother of two rowdy boys, residing in the SF Bay Area. As a child, she often wrote stories about fantastic places or magical things, always preferring to live in a world where the line between reality and fantasy didn’t exist.
In High school she entered writing contests and had some stories published in small newspapers or school magazines. As life continued, so did her love of writing. So one day, she decided to end her cake decorating business, pull out her laptop and fulfill her dream of writing and publishing novels. And she did.
When Mia isn’t writing books or chasing her sweaty children around a park, she loves to drink coffee by the gallon, get lost in a good book, hike with her family and drink really big margaritas with her friends! Her happy place is the Renaissance Faire, where you can find her at the joust, rooting for the shirtless highlander in a kilt.
Connect with Mia!
FB
facebook.com/miaprideauthor
Twitter
twitter.com/mia_pride
Newsletter
bit.ly/2vSChr1
Instagram
instagram.com/mia_pride_author
Book Bub
bookbub.com/profile/mia-pride
Amazon
amazon.com/Mia-Pride/e/B01M6VEWGX
Pinterest
pinterest.com/miapride
Website
www.miapride.com
Blog
miapride.wordpress.com
Email
[email protected]
Acknowledgements
As always, I have so many people to thank for the creation of my story!
I need to thank my husband for always bearing with me when I have deadlines to meet and don’t do much more than write on some days! He only ever encourages me to continue!
To my children: Even though I will never allow them to read my stories, everything I do, is for love of them.
To my Editor Vicki McGough and my proofreader Bethannee Witczak, your time, attention, and insight into my stories LITERALLY makes this possible and I appreciate your efforts tremendously!
To Kathryn Le Veque, Thanks for allowing me to be a part of this wonderful world with you! It has been a grand adventure!
To my mom, who literally shares every post on social media and never stops raving about me, even though I am certain she is blinded by love. Her undying support means more than words can say!
And NEVER LAST or LEAST… my READERS! I am NOTHING but a fool wasting away behind a laptop if not for you! Your messages of encouragement keep me doing this every single day and I cannot express my appreciation more. I have the best readers in the world! XOXOXO
Brábanter’s Rose
A Novella
of the
BALLADS OF THE ROSES
Màiri Norris
Books by this Author
To Dream of Langston
An Edwardian Christmas Tale: Loft At 22nd Street
Ballads of the Roses
Rose of Hope
For Love of the Rose
The Trouble With Roses
The Yule Rose (Novella)
Brábanter’s Rose (Novella)
Viking Brothers Saga
Viking Sword: A Fall of Yellow Fire – The Stranded One
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my gratitude to Kathryn le Veque for the use of her de Wolfe Pack Kindle world. It’s a wonderful and inspiring place to visit. For those curious about Estienne de Wolfe’s father, Gaetan de Wolfe, mentioned in this book, his story is Warwolfe by Kathryn le Veque, coming in November 2016.
I am also indebted to my editor, Laura Kitchell, who caught a typo I would never have lived down—
Disclaimer
Everything possible has been done to insure this book is free of [unintentional] grammatical, typographical and formatting errors [despite the helpful efforts of my kitties]. Please forgive those few that may have slipped past the many eyes that searched for them.
Author’s Notes
The words Brabáncon and Brabánter are the names used to describe mercenaries from the region of Brabant, located in modern day Netherlands. Among the elite fighting corps of their time, Brábanter warriors were greatly feared and so highly prized for their fighting skills only kings and wealthy nobles could afford to hire them. They fought for William I during the Conquest, and later made up a healthy percentage of the trained soldiers participating in William’s two “harrowings” of northeastern England.
In 1080, control of northern England was divided between England, with the Bishop of Durham holding Northumberland and Durham for King William, and Scotland, with King Malcolm III, Canmore sovereign over Cumberland [Cumbria] in the west. The struggle between the two nations for control of this region continued for centuries.
The people of Tamescombe are loosely based on the indigenous Celtic Brythons [Britons], who called themselves Pretani, of the post or sub-Roman period (early 5th c. – late 7th c.) in British history, today considered something of a ‘lost’ era. Much of what comes down to us from that time is hotly debated. Not much is known of their kingdoms, but by the end of the 5th c. they inhabited what is today southwestern Scotland and Cumbria, Wales and Cornwall. Their language is all but vanished. For this story, I drew from elements of the Roman-era Brythonic culture, Dark Ages Celtic culture and what little is known of Brythonic remnant descendants during the Anglo-Saxon period (including the wedding ceremony). To create the name of the fictional isolated valley that became home to Elrik and Yrsa, I blended the Cumbric Brythonic word tamesis (dark) with the Old English word combe (valley).
In chapter five, I used the word ‘liberty’ to describe what is today Durham shire (county). In 1080, Durham, in northeastern England was not counted a shire. Rather, it was the “Liberty of Durham”, under the control of the powerful Bishop of Durham/Earl of Northumbria.
In this context, a liberty was an ancient English land unit, an area in which the right of the king to levy income from sees (ecclesiastical jurisdictions) where the leadership position was unoccupied, did not apply. Prior to the Conquest and apparently under King William I, the concept of the liberty held true for most religious institutions. However, William II (Rufus) was accused of deliberately keeping the leadership of some bishoprics, abbeys and monasteries vacant in order to sequester their income
for himself. Upon his ascension in 1100, King Henry I issued the Charter of Liberties, or Coronation Charter, a document designed to prevent further abuses of royal authority in this and other matters.
Glossary and Place Names
Guide to the Old Language Words Used in This Story
OLD ENGLISH [AND OTHERS]
baothaire—[Gaelic] simpleton
Carleol—Carlisle, England
combrogi—[Brythonic] fellow-countrymen;
Cumbra-land—Cumbria, England
Cymru/Cymry—[Welsh] early medieval/modern name for Wales, England and the Welsh people
cyrtel—Saxon female undergarment, floor and wrist length
Din Eidyn—[Common Brythonic]; possible 11th c. name, Edinburgh, Scotland
Derlinton—Darlington, England
Dorsete—Dorset, England
Eastsæxe—Essex, England
hearth companion—a warrior of a Saxon nobleman’s household troops, loyal to him for life
Iras Sea—Irish Sea
Northymbre—Northumberland, England
Penrhudd—Penrith, England
scop—Saxon poet/minstrel
Sea of Germania—North Sea
syrce—Saxon female over-garment, knee and elbow length; gathered at the waist by a girdle
Toresbi—Thursby, England
OLD FRENCH
bricon—rascal; knave
Duresme—Durham, England
fantosme—ghost, spirit, phantom
lichieres pautonnier—evil person; one who commits evil deeds
OLD NORSE
draugum—ghosts; the ghosts
Jorvick—York, England
Lithasblót—Norse harvest feast celebrated July 31-August 01; accompanied by sacrifice [blot] of animals or food
OLD DUTCH
Uut Trecht—Utrecht, the Netherlands
witte wieven—“white women”; spirits of females who died of grief because their husbands were unfaithful; their souls lingered on earth, dwelling in the white mists of the land; they brought mischief upon travelers, especially philandering husbands
Chapter One
For Your Reading Pleasure, A Glossary of Old Language Words Used in This Story is Provided in the Opening Pages
Ottham – A Small Village Three Leagues Northwest of Derlinton, England
Third Week of July – the Month of Mowing – 1080
Intent on decapitating the lone female in front of him, Elrik of Breda stalked across the packed clay floor of the cottage, all the while wondering if there was truth to the notion that a man who had sold his soul in blood could buy it back with enough gold.
The idea was a legendary hope among certain men of his ilk, only voiced in hushed tones in the darkest and loneliest hours of the night. Privately, he considered it a fool’s dream, since the gold was also purchased with blood.
Not that it mattered. He had a task to finish.
He halted an arm’s length from his quarry. Young and fae-like, as if not quite of the same world as the rest of them, she awaited his killing blow without cowering. Dainty of form, she looked as if she rarely got enough to eat. In the pallid illumination from the door and window, her skin appeared nigh translucent. Thick hair, loosely secured in a braid that dropped to her waist, shone the palest of yellows, like cream melted with rich butter. One long strand caught his eye. It draped over her shoulder to cling to a small but perfectly formed breast, a shadowy outline beneath the thin and tattered wool of her cyrtle. A scattering of light freckles danced down the line of her neck where it met her shoulder to disappear beneath her undergarment. He wanted naught so much as to set his mouth to those tiny flecks and taste them.
He blinked and shook off the surge of lust. He once had a sister he loved. For her sake, he chose not to rape.
The female’s demeanor confused him. In naught but the cyrtle, she faced him as if he had come to share with her the evening meal. No fear. Why had she not fled? She had plenty of time. The men of his company had obeyed their liege lord’s command to kill everything in the hamlet of Ottham save livestock, and burn the rest. This girl remained the last alive. They almost missed her tiny home, hidden in a thick copse on a rise overlooking the dale, isolated from the rest of the village and surrounded by pastureland and hilly terrain. Did she seek death?
He almost shrugged, but restrained the motion. ’Twas of no real interest to him why she stayed.
In no hurry, he set his stance for a quick, effortless kill. The muscles of his upper body barely bulged as he lifted his sword and angled it for the strike. The power of the blow would slice through her slender neck as cleanly as a knife through an overripe pear. Silent, motionless, she watched him with soft, dove-grey eyes, dark with some emotion he could not name.
Expectation? Anticipation?
The hair at his nape stood up.
Accustomed to resignation, pleading, arguing, or pitiful attempts to fight, he was unnerved by her air of breathless expectancy. He hesitated as his blade began its lethal sweep. The sidewise motion of his sword faltered, the sharp, gore-tainted edge ceasing its stroke a mere breath from the vein that pulsed with her lifeblood.
He stilled, dumbfounded. His gaze remained locked with hers. Ice slithered along his spine, freezing his thoughts. Never before had he questioned his orders, never stayed his hand when once he determined to kill. That he did so now was as shocking as if the woman had morphed into a dragon before his eyes and flown out the hut’s door.
The stench of smoke from blazing structures permeated the air. Cries of satisfaction from the others at a task completed reached his hearing, but his sight remained fixed upon the small female who so fearlessly held his gaze.
A nearby shout jarred the air. It goaded him to action.
He did not think, simply grasped her forearm and jerked her toward the door.
“Keep silent.” He growled the command from low in his throat. He dragged her out of the hut past a tiny, thriving garden, across a clearing and into the trees beyond and shoved her down amid the undergrowth in an angle formed by two fallen logs. “Move or make a sound, and you forfeit your life.”
Without waiting for acknowledgment, he raced to the hut. Inside, he rummaged through a small chest with a broken lid and withdrew what appeared the female’s only other garment, a syrce as threadbare as her cyrtle. He used it to clean his blade. Sheathing the weapon, he held the hem of the syrce in the embers of the fire pit until the fabric caught, then with it, set afire her bedding and pallet. He lit a rushlight, stepped outside, and thrust the torch into the roof thatch, only to leap back when the dry, crumbly stuff exploded into an inferno. Moments later, the entire structure blazed.
Yrsa of Ottham knelt among the leaf litter as her cottage, along with what little she could call her own, turned to ash. Despite the dire nature of her present situation, she could not help the burst of mirth that accompanied the warrior’s abrupt leap backward when the thatched roof burst into flame. He hastily beat out the sparks that attached to his clothing and cast a furtive glance in her direction, as if he somehow heard the quickly squelched laughter.
Tears stung her eyes, but only because smoke from the burning village billowed into the sky and a gentle breeze funneled it up the rise to merge with the fumes from her cottage. Nay, she cried not for the destruction. Her small hut had never been a home but a barren and lonely prison, a place of loss and banishment.
Nor did she weep for Ottham. For too many years the village held naught for her of good, and roots of bitterness had delved deep into her soul. Since the death of Old Truda six months before, grief, loneliness and constant hunger had haunted Yrsa daily.
If only the people, those she once believed friends, had found the backbone to stand up to Ottham’s brute of a headman, Bercthun, and Eanfled, his jealous, self-righteous wife. In her heart, she believed the people’s cruelty first to Valgertha, her gentle mother, and then to the equally blameless Old Truda, brought this tragedy upon them.
Hurt and angered
by the betrayal of the same people in whose homes she and Valgertha had once been welcome, she first gave thought to keeping silent when came the dream vision of the impending attack.
Faithless cowards. Let them die.
But Freya gave the gift of foreseeing for a reason, and that not to satisfy her hunger for vengeance. Did she choose to use it for so base and wrong a purpose, the gift might in future be withheld. Nor did she wish her own heart, like that of Eanfled, to end torn and ruined by hate.
Defying Eanfled’s decree never again to set foot in the village, she hastened there to warn of the coming calamity. The people, their eyes filled with fear and dread, listened as they had once before—and been saved—but Bercthun mocked. Eanfled reviled not only the gift, but also Freya, the giver of the gift. Ottham’s people chose not to defy them.
They died.
Only for the innocent did she hold regret.
If only—She shook her head. Foreseeing dreams served no purpose if no one gave them heed.
But the raider, aye, he was as the dream revealed, a man in his prime, tall and broad in the shoulders and a powerful warrior. Beneath the grime of battle, he shone golden from the cropped strands on his head and the sun-gild of his skin to the glimmers of gold in long lashed eyes as gray in hue as her own. Hard in eye and heart, aye, but not so ruthless or irredeemable as he believed. The darkness in his soul held not a permanent grip. With the right incentive light would vanquish it. ’Twas her purpose to offer to him that gift, though why Freya granted to her that privilege she could not guess. The choice to accept lay with him, but she would not fail. He was her destiny.
Annoyed, Elrik grimaced and slapped his hands over the hot embers burning holes in his tunic. He threw a glance toward where the female hid, hoping she did not see, then ran a questing fingertip across one eyebrow. Only slightly scorched.
