For a long moment Eada stared in amazement. Now that she was cleaned up, the child was a glorious beauty. “Sweet Jesu,” Eada breathed softly. “I have never seen anyone like you before in my entire life!” Eada took one of Mairin’s long curls and fingered it gently. “No wonder your stepmother was jealous of you, child.” Then realizing that Mairin was apt to catch her death of cold unless she was dressed, Eada stood up and walking over to a small trunk, opened it. For a minute she gazed down and found herself again in danger of weeping, but then she bent and drew forth several garments. “These were my Edyth’s,” she said quietly. “I meant to give them to my brother’s wife for her daughter, but somehow . . .” Her voice trailed off, and without another word she began to dress Mairin.
She slipped a long undertunic of pale yellow silk over the child’s head followed by an outer tunic of copper-colored light wool which fell halfway between Mairin’s knee and her ankle, and revealed the undertunic beneath. The outer tunic had wide, long sleeves with black embroidery at both the wrists and the modestly buttoned round neck of the garment. Digging back into the trunk Eada brought forth soft leather shoes that followed the shape of the foot. Although they had been made for Edyth they fit Mairin almost perfectly. Eada then girded a narrow leather belt with a bronze-green buckle about the little girl’s waist. Lastly she fitted a little green ribbon band about her forehead.
Suddenly up the stairs and into the solar came a young boy. Dressed in a blue-green tunic with matching hose, he had dark red hair like Eada’s. His haughty glance took in Eada and Mairin, and then he demanded arrogantly, “Where is this child that my father has decided will be my new sister?” Hostile blue eyes fixed themselves upon Mairin. “Is this she? I will not accept her! No one can take Edyth’s place, and besides—her hair is an outrageous color!”
Like a small kitten accosted by a noisy young dog Mairin narrowed her eyes, and hissed fiercely. “Come no closer, rude boy, lest I turn you into a frog!”
Aldwine, arriving in time to hear the whole exchange, burst out laughing, and admonished his son, his face suddenly serious. “Beware, Brand! Mairin has threatened to turn you into a frog if you do not treat her in a more kindly fashion.” Over his son’s head his eyes twinkled at his wife.
“Hah!” the boy mocked scornfully. “She cannot do that!” Then he turned his gaze back upon the little girl whose glance was so fierce that he amended nervously, “She can’t really? Can she, father?”
“I do not know, my son, but if it were I, I do not think that I should take the chance. It is indeed possible that Mairin knows how to turn you into a frog. She is a Celt from Brittany, and the Celts are people of magic. Yes,” he considered, “she could indeed turn you into a frog, but as she is very young, she might not know how to turn you back.”
Brand paled and moved closer to his father.
Eada laughed softly, admonishing her husband gently, “Fie, my lord! You must not tease Brand so.”
“But I do not, lady,” came the serious reply. “If I were Brand, I should be kind to Mairin who has now come to live with us. She will be a daughter to us, and a sister to him.” He put an arm about his son. “I am not trying to replace Edyth either in our hearts or our minds, Brand, but she is gone from us forever. We have lost her even as Mairin has lost her mother and father. In each of our lives there is an empty space. God often works his will in a manner not fully understood by mortal men. Look at your mother, my son. There is a smile upon her lips for the first time in months. I have long prayed to our Blessed Lady to ease my Eada’s sorrow. Now that prayer has been answered.”
Brand’s eyes turned to his mother, and he saw the truth of his father’s words. The boy looked properly shamefaced as Aldwine continued, “Now, my son, greet your foster sister kindly and bid her welcome to our home. Use your best Norman French for she does not yet understand our tongue.”
Brand turned to face the little girl who stood glowering at him. Her lovely hair billowed red-gold fire about her slender young shoulders. Secretly he liked the way she had defied him so bravely. Although she had not understood his words she had known by his tone and his manner that he was not being friendly. Courage was something Brand understood and admired. Looking down on Mairin he could see that she was far prettier than Edyth had ever been. In fact if he were honest with himself he had to admit that she was beautiful. He wondered if she would be one of those prissy creatures who hated getting dirty, and disdained roughhousing. Or was she a girl who liked to ride and hawk? An encouraging look from his father spurred him onward.
“I am Brand,” he said slowly, uncomfortable with the language of the Normans which his father insisted he learn. “Could you really turn me into a frog?”
Mairin’s eyes lightened as her anger departed. She had not understood one word of what had passed between Brand and his parents, but she knew instinctively that Aldwine had given her stature in the boy’s eyes. Her mouth turned up into a half smile. “Perhaps,” she admitted, aware that the doubt was a far more potent weapon than a definite yes.
Brand was not certain if he believed her or not, but as his father had warned him, it was not wise to tempt her anger. “Father says you are to be my new sister. Mairin is a pretty name. Is it Norman?”
“I am not a Norman, I am a Breton. My name is Celtic. My mother was a princess of Ireland.” Her violet eyes scanned him thoughtfully. “I have never had a brother before. My father’s second wife, the lady Blanche, is expecting a baby. She does not carry a male child. I know.” Mairin paused a moment, and then said, “Do you have a horse? I had my own pony at Landerneau, but the lady Blanche would not let me have Parnella when she sent me away.”
As the two children conversed the thegn softly translated their words so his wife might understand them. When Mairin spoke of her lost pony Eada looked at her husband with such distress that Aldwine knew just how right he had been to bring Mairin to his wife.
“I have a horse,” Brand continued. “He is gray with a black mane and tail. I call him Thunderbolt. I also have a dog. She has just whelped six pups.”
“Puppies!” Mairin’s eyes were round with envy. “I have never had a dog,” she said, the longing in her voice quite plain.
“Would you like one of Freya’s?” Brand offered nonchalantly.
“Ohh, yes!” she breathed. Her small face was ecstatic.
“You will have to take care of it properly,” he warned her. “I will show you how, and you must promise not to turn me into a frog, Mairin. Do you agree?”
“If I am allowed the pick of the litter,” she counter-offered, “and I get to choose!”
“Done!” said Brand. He grinned. Mairin grinned back. They had come to an understanding with one another, and now they would be friends.
Aldwine and Eada smiled at each other over their children’s heads. Each had the same thought. Edyth’s death had taken something away from them, from their family. Whatever that intangible something had been, little Mairin’s presence restored it. They were once more a whole family.
Mairin slipped into life at Aelfleah as if she had always been a part of it. Within weeks she was speaking the English tongue as if she had been born speaking it. Aldwine, however, would not allow her to lose her Norman French. A Norman would be England’s next king. It was possible that his beautiful new daughter might make a Norman marriage.
Autumn deepened and became winter. Winter lingered until pushed aside by an insistent spring which was in its turn forced to give way to the summer. A year passed, and five more followed as easily. Those who had known Edyth Aldwinesdotter for the brief span of her life soon forgot that she had existed as Mairin’s strong and healthy presence wiped from their consciousness the memory of the other child.
Brand swiftly discovered that Mairin was not a sister to sit by the fire. A fat black-and-white pony named Vychan, Welsh for “small one,” came to live in the manor stables for several years, to be replaced when Mairin was ten by a dainty white mare called Odelette. Mairin was an
excellent rider with a firm seat and light hands. Brand soon learned she was every bit as bold as any boy, galloping her mount at full speed over the estate, and jumping anything in her path that did not move out of the way.
“You’re going to break your neck one day,” he grumbled good-naturedly at her on one occasion when she had beaten him home by jumping Odelette across a narrow rocky streambed that they usually picked their way across.
Mairin had laughed at him, saying, “You must learn to anticipate your opponent, Brand, else you’ll never win in life!”
Sometimes, he thought, she seemed older than he was, and he was four years her senior. As maddening as she could be he had quickly grown to love her, and she gave back that love. He was her adored big brother who took her hunting and hawking with him and who always seemed to have time to talk with her when she was troubled. She was his first love, and it pained him to think they would one day lose her to a husband.
It was Brand who had taken Mairin into The Forest for the first time, and shown her the paths that he knew. She in turn had shown him how to find and follow animal trails, and which mushrooms and berries were safe to eat and which weren’t. He had been amazed by her knowledge of plants, and their healing abilities. Her knowledge seemed to him a special thing.
The Forest. That deep and dark preserve of ancient rumor and legend quickly became Mairin’s realm. She seemed to have no fear of what lurked within its depths. There were those who dreaded the unknown, and the unseen, but Mairin was not one of them. She knew she was protected from any evil, but how she knew it, even she did not comprehend.
Eada soon learned not to fear each time her daughter wandered off, for Mairin was resourceful for all she was a child. Then, too, Dagda was never far behind his small mistress, particularly in those early days at Aelfleah. It was he who generally carried home the injured creatures that Mairin found and brought back to the manor house to treat and heal.
Then one day she used one of her special poultices to heal a kitchen serf who had punctured the heel of her hand with a knife. The wound seemed to mend itself in a miraculously short time for such a deep cut. Another injury was presented to her for treatment, and another, and suddenly it was Mairin, not Eada, who was responsible for curing Aelfleah’s sick and injured.
“She is naught but a child,” said Eada, amazed, “and yet she has the gift of healing.”
“Then let her,” said Aldwine Athelsbeorn, and he was secretly pleased. This talent of Mairin’s for doctoring only confirmed his belief in her intelligence. When Mairin had first come to them he had proposed that she study with Brand.
Brother Bayhard, Brand’s tutor, had not been enthusiastic about adding the daughter of the house to a schoolroom where the son and heir was so impossible to teach. In this he was supported by Eada.
“Women,” he loftily told Aldwine Athelsbeorn, “have not the intelligence to understand languages, geography, philosophy, and higher mathematics. It is better that they tend to their gardens and their looms as God intended.”
The thegn of Aelfleah had persisted, and Mairin had joined the schoolroom. Within days the good Brother Bayhard, who for all his high ideals was intelligent, realized that the true scholar in the household was not the son, but rather the daughter.
Having done what he could to insure that his patron’s heir would not be a total dunce, Brother Bayhard concentrated his energies on Mairin. She was like a sponge, sopping up and learning everything that he might teach her. He instructed her in Greek and Latin. She learned mathematics so that she might one day oversee the bailiff should her husband not be there to do so. She learned to read and write in all the languages she spoke. Her handwriting was as fine as any monk’s, her tutor proudly declared.
In his excitement at having a pupil who constantly asked him questions, who challenged answers that didn’t suit her, and who in six months had learned everything that he had struggled over the last five years to teach Brand, Brother Bayhard added history to their program of studies. He quickly forgot all his previous beliefs regarding the minds of women. He was willing to admit that he had been wrong if only he might continue to teach this marvelous young mind of Mairin’s.
Brand gratefully left the schoolroom at twelve, Aldwine accepting the fact that his son was no scholar. He was satisfied that the boy could read enough to understand any document that might come his way, sign his name legibly, speak the tongue of the Normans decently, and comprehend enough mathematics to know he wasn’t being cheated. Brother Bayhard, however, remained to continue the education of the daughter of the house.
Eada protested Mairin’s hours in the schoolroom. “You are wasting her time, my lord. She needs none of the skills you are having her taught.”
Aldwine stubbornly shook his head. “We do not know what she will need,” he said to his wife. “Besides, Mairin is a child who must be kept at challenging things. Surely you have noticed she grows restless when bored. Left to herself, my love, who knows what mischief she might get into.”
Eada secretly agreed with his assessment, but she nonetheless pressed her own case. “Mairin needs to know how to cook, and supervise the serfs, and tend the kitchen garden. She must know how to salt meats and fish, how to preserve and dry fruits for winter, how to make soap, conserves, and candles. She needs practical skills to be a good wife.”
“You will teach them to her,” he said agreeably, “but she will also know the things I wish her to know. I want a fine marriage for our daughter, Eada. Mairin is not for some Saxon boy. Her beauty will gain her an important match, but when that beauty fades as does all beauty, she will hold her husband with her clever mind.” He kissed his wife reassuringly and gave her a pat. “The times are changing, and it is Mairin and Brand’s generation who will bear the brunt of that change.”
“A Norman king is what you mean,” said Eada wisely. “Oh, Aldwine, I know you have Norman blood in you, but why has King Edward chosen Duke William for his heir?”
“Who else is there?” replied her husband. “The king himself is half Norman and has no children of his own.”
“But William the Bastard?”
“Would you have Harold Godwinson, that spawn of the devil himself, to rule England?” he asked her angrily. “Or perhaps another Dane or Norwegian?”
“There is Edgar Atheling,” Eada ventured. “He is of the line of Cedric.”
“Yes,” Aldwine agreed, “but he is a weak boy. He has lived most of his life in Hungary. What can he really know of England and her people? England needs a strong king if she is to survive the coming years, and William of Normandy is that king. There is no other logical choice, and King Edward having seen it wisely designated William as his heir. He will be king, Eada. Make no mistake about it. It has been promised him, and he will have it. Those who oppose Duke William will suffer the consequences of his wrath. That is why I prepare Mairin for a Norman marriage. The Norman women may not be as free as our Anglo-Saxon women, but their men like them with wit and intelligence as well as household skills.”
“My mother taught me that men did not like women who were mannish, my lord.”
Aldwine laughed heartily. “There is nothing including a little knowledge that will ever make our Mairin appear masculine for she is the most feminine of creatures. She will soon surpass your talents at the loom, my dear, which is no mean feat, and her embroidery is excellent thanks to your clever tutelage.”
Eada bloomed beneath his compliments. She was a simple, loving woman. In her entire life she had never been further than twenty miles from the house in which she had been born. Her entire life and world consisted of family and familial duties, first in her father’s house, and then in her husband’s. Housewifery was her talent, and she was justly proud of her skills. For Aldwine to praise those skills, and those of their foster daughter, was high acclaim.
Aldwine was correct in his observations of Mairin. She was as swift to boredom as she was to the pursuit of knowledge. She was nothing at all like Edyth who had been
a sweet and placid girl, nor did she even try to be, which was perhaps what made it so easy for them to accept her. Eada smiled to herself. Mairin was clever at the loom. The cloth she was currently weaving was intertwined with delicate strands of gold and silver threads. It was work of the finest quality, but once having mastered the technique, Mairin became weary of it. Perhaps, thought Eada on reflection, her husband was right in having Mairin study with Brand. Eada had never known a woman who enjoyed learning, but Mairin certainly did.
If Mairin had been a happy addition to Aelfleah, so too was Dagda. His skill with horses assured his usefulness, for none of the serfs had quite his knowledge. His good nature assured he would never be lonely, for the women were drawn to Dagda like flies to manure and he adored them all, never playing favorites, and somehow managing to get away with it. The women of Aelfleah understood that Dagda’s love and loyalty belonged to Mairin.
Eada could see that it was not easy for the Irishman to relinquish his authority and control over Mairin who had been his charge since her birth, but for the child’s sake he had tried his best. Eada, sensing the deep love between the two, deferred to the gentle giant as often as she might.
Aldwine Athelsbeorn was a careful man where Mairin’s status was concerned. In exchange for some future service to the king he had obtained from Edward a writ acknowledging Mairin as his and Eada’s daughter, with all the rights and privileges thereof. She would be dowered generously. In the unlikely event of Brand’s death and the absence of other heirs of his and Eada’s body, Mairin would inherit the manor of Aelfleah.
Brand was now sixteen years old, and at slightly over six feet in height, he was powerfully strong. In the past two years he had developed a healthy appetite for women and with his handsome face and merry manner his advances were rarely refused.
Eada began to worry that it would soon be time to settle her son with a wife. They would have to go bride hunting, despite the fact that they were so isolated in their little valley without any near neighbors. Eada considered the possibility of visiting her family after all these years. “My brothers have daughters,” she said. “Perhaps one would be suitable for our son.”
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