Leaning back he murmured to his cousin, “Well, Basil, what think you? She is more than your equal though I would not have believed it possible.”
“Nor would I,” came back the soft reply. “She is pure perfection, Constans.”
“Sire,” said the eunuch in charge of their presentation, “may I present to you the lady Eada of Aelfleah and her daughter, the lady Mairin.”
Mother and daughter bowed thrice to Byzantium’s ruler, who said, “We welcome you to Constantinople, my lady. Your beautiful child’s reputation is, to our amazement, truth.”
“True beauty, sire, does not show. It is goodness of heart and true Christian charity,” replied Eada quietly. “I would wish that for my daughter, and I hope she will be remembered, if she is remembered at all, for those qualities rather than the beauty of her face.”
Aldwine was surprised by the length of his wife’s speech, but pleased by the wisdom she spoke.
The priests standing below the throne nodded their heads and murmured their assent at Eada’s words. The church was an enormous power in Byzantium. Their goodwill was paramount to the success of the English negotiations. Eada’s speech had pleased them, and they would now look with favor upon the diplomatic efforts for new trade between the two countries.
“Come to me, my child,” the emperor commanded Mairin, “I admit to being as curious as any of my subjects with regard to your incredible hair.” He smiled encouragingly at her, and offered her his hand.
Shyly Mairin moved up the steps to the emperor’s throne. Although his attire and his surroundings were incredibly magnificent, Constantine himself was a friendly-looking man of medium height with tired blue eyes. He was not an unattractive man, but neither did he have any distinguishing features save a too-long and somewhat narrow nose that almost ended in a point. His hair was bobbed, and he had bangs across his forehead. Its color, like his neatly trimmed beard, was a graying brown.
Constantine smiled again as he cupped Mairin’s face in his hand and looked into her purple eyes. With his other hand he removed her circlet with its veil, handing them to a servant. Then he caressed her beautiful red-gold hair, and capturing a lock between his thumb and first two fingers he gauged its texture. “It is as soft as thistle-down. If my daughters had had your beauty, and this hair,” he acknowledged, “I could have ruled the entire world, my child.”
Mairin blushed at so unexpected, and extravagant, a compliment. The emperor chuckled and released his hold upon her. “I think you must be magic, my child. Certainly such loveliness is an enchantment of sorts.” He drew a ring from his finger. It was a large diamond that blazed an orange-gold fire deep within the stone. “Take this in remembrance of me, my child,” he told her. “It is said to be a perfect stone. If that indeed be the truth, then it belongs with a perfect beauty. When you are an old woman you may show this jewel to your grandchildren. Tell them that once in your youth you captured the heart of the greatest ruler in all Christendom, and it was he who gave you this token to remember him by.”
Overwhelmed, Mairin stammered her gratitude, backing nervously down the steps to where her mother awaited her. She was trembling, and to her surprise she thought she might cry. She didn’t remember leaving the emperor’s audience chamber, becoming only fully aware once they were back out in the gardens. The diamond ring was clutched tightly in her hand.
“You are a very fortunate girl,” Eada told her. “You should feel honored to have gained the emperor’s attention.”
“Perhaps now you will understand,” said Aldwine to his wife, “why I have not yet made a match for Mairin. I know that all these years you have believed it mere paternal pride upon my part, but it was not. Mairin is special. Her beauty makes her so. It is true we have raised her as our own, but her lineage is far nobler than ours. Her birth mother was royal. I will have a fine husband for her if we are clever, and patient, and willing to bide our time.”
“A Norman husband, you mean,” said Eada quietly.
“Aye! A Norman, and why not? With William our next king, the Normans will be favored. It will not hurt our daughter to be the wife of a powerful and wealthy Norman lord. Her beauty will help us to secure a great name. It cannot hurt our son either. Perhaps we will find him a Norman wife. Brand has but one great love, Aelfleah. A Norman wife with a fat dowry may help him to add to our lands one day. Somewhere there is a rich man with a beloved bastard daughter he wants respectably wed. We have a good name and much land. I shall see both our children well settled.”
“I never realized before how ambitious you are, my lord,” said Eada with faint disapproval in her voice.
“The times are changing, my wife. England will never again be as it was. Those who do not see that are doomed to extinction. I do not want to see my line end; my lands lost to strangers who will not love and care for our people as we do. If we are to survive, Eada, we must change with the times.”
“I will not let you give Mairin to anyone who will make her unhappy, my lord.”
“I think, lady, that you know me better than that,” he chided her.
Eada sighed so deeply that a shudder ran through her frame. “I am no longer certain of anything,” she said. “We are so far from England. I miss Brand. I miss Aelfleah.” Then catching hold of herself she looked up at him smiling wryly. “I do not think this traveling agrees with me, my lord. I was happier with myself when I was naught but the wife of a simple Mercian thegn.”
He put a protective arm about her. “Perhaps you would have been happier had I left you at home, Eada, but it will be at least two years before we can return to England. I could not have borne being apart from you for so long a time. I know it was selfish of me.”
“It is the city that frets me,” she said. “It is so big and crowded! So noisy and dirty! What will I do while you and the others negotiate your treaties? I am not comfortable to sit idly.”
Mairin, recovered and listening to this exchange between her parents, spoke up. “We will explore the city, mother. There is so much to see and do here! We shall not be bored for a minute, I promise you!”
“How can we move about the city when the very sight of your hair draws crowds?” replied Eada irritably.
“I shall braid my hair up, and hide it beneath a coif, mother.”
Eada smiled, and gave her daughter a hug. “You know,” she said, “I believe you are right. I should have seen it myself. You are growing up, Mairin.”
Her cheerful words belied the ache in her heart, and Aldwine knew it. Perhaps he had been thoughtless in taking her from her safe and familiar world. He let his eyes roam over the imperial gardens and across the Bosporus to the green hills beyond. It might be possible to rent a villa away from the city, away from the palace, somewhere where Eada would feel more comfortable.
Aldwine looked to his daughter. Tomorrow was October 31st, Samhein, Mairin’s birthday. He wondered where his daughter would light her fire, for Mairin still observed the four high holy days of the old Celtic religion. It was a part of her past that she refused to relinquish although she had become an Anglo-Saxon maiden in every other way. Neither Aldwine nor Eada had felt that they had the right to interfere, but here in Constantinople the thegn of Aelfleah wondered how his daughter would accomplish what she considered her duty to the old ways. Amid all the excitement of the trip he wondered if she even remembered.
Mairin did indeed remember. Though she had been raised a Christian she respected the ancient religion of her people. The feast of Samhein marked the end of the Druidic calendar, and it was considered the most powerful spiritual night of the year. It was believed that on Samhein night the gates between the human world and the spirit world were wide open, and either might visit the other. The Christians called it All Hallows’ Eve. At the very moment that the sun dipped below the earth’s horizon the Samhein fires leapt skyward, symbolizing that light of the human spirit which never dies. It was considered a time for thanksgiving.
Being born on Samhein had been considered a
wonderful omen among Maire Tir Connell’s people. The baby had been thought to be blessed by the old Gods. Perhaps she was, thought Dagda with a quiet smile as he watched Mairin preparing the wood for her fire. Aldwine Athelsbeorn might have been surprised, but Dagda was not when Mairin had announced that she had found a perfect spot in the Imperial Palace gardens facing west in which to light her Samhein fire.
Dagda had been even less surprised when Mairin drew a small leather bag from her tunic holding three wooden chips. She reverently placed them atop the carefully laid fire.
“Oak?” he asked her, knowing the answer she would give. Oak was sacred to the Druids.
“From the grove in The Forest. I did not know how long I would be gone from England, but I have brought thirty chips of oak with me. The fire just wouldn’t be right without oak, Dagda.”
He nodded. It was like Mairin to remember small details.
“I wonder,” she mused, “if Constantinople has ever seen a Samhein fire before.”
“It is said that our people came out of the darkness and across the steppes to the north of here to migrate across the face of Europe. I have never, however, heard of Celts in Byzantium.”
“There are Celts in Byzantium now,” she said softly. Her eyes fixed themselves upon the horizon where the sun, now tired from its journey across the sky, prepared to sink away into its molten bed of scarlet and gold.
Dagda knelt by the small lamp that they had brought with them. He had the harder task. He must keep his own eyes upon the sun while putting fire to the girl’s brand at the proper instant. She never doubted for a moment his ability to do it, and as always Dagda’s timing was flawless. The lamp touched the torch. Without even gazing downward Mairin knew it was lit. As the sun collapsed below the horizon she touched her fire to the wood, and the flames leapt upward.
There was not a sound to be heard at that moment in the imperial gardens. Not a leaf stirred upon any of the trees. It was as if the whole world had suddenly gone silent. Even the waters of the Marmara were still. Dagda and Mairin stood respectfully, eyes closed as they prayed. Then suddenly the fire crackled with a loud snap and several noisy pops.
Dagda opened his eyes, and looked at the girl. “In all my years,” he said, “I have never known such silence as when you light your fires. Especially this night. Your birth-time remembrance.”
She smiled up at him. “I have never really understood it, Dagda, but there is something about the fires . . .” she said, then paused and shrugged. “I cannot explain it,” she finished.
“It is in your blood,” he told her. “It was not so long ago that we Celts worshiped the Mother and the Father, and all of their children. We still know despite the Christian teachings that there are spirits belonging to the trees, the waters, the animals, and all living things. The Christ did not forbid us those spirits, but those who rule this church are a jealous lot who demand a single dedication of their followers. It is best to nod our heads in agreement, then go our own way, my lady.”
Above them the sky had quickly grown velvety dark. A royal-blue evening punctuated by one bright cold star directly overhead. Mairin watched the orange blaze of her Samhein fire, and her mind drifted easily away in the almost hypnotic swirl of the flames. She drew a long deep breath, and with the expelling of air from her slender frame she felt herself beginning to drift slowly upward and away from her body. In just a moment she would be free to soar above the fire as she did each year.
For an instant she remembered the first time she had done it. She was barely a toddler, and her father had been so proud that she possessed the power of the old ones, a power that had grown with the aid of Dagda, and old Catell; a power that allowed her to see truth or falsehood within others. It gave her the gift of healing, and sometimes offered her sight beyond that of most mortals. That part of the gift she feared, for since leaving Brittany she had had no one to teach her and Dagda’s knowledge was limited. Mairin wisely kept her fears to herself for though she worked her powers only for good there were those who knowing her secrets would fear her. They would call her enchantress, or witch. Then as her sweetly soaring spirit was about to attain freedom from her mortal body she was drawn sharply back by a harsh voice saying, “In the emperor’s name!”
Mairin’s eyes flew open and her demeanor was that of a young doe startled. Into what she had imagined her own private and secret domain had come a troop of Varangian Guards. Angrily she said, “How dare you intrude upon me!”
“Nay, wench, ’tis you who intrude. These are the imperial gardens, and you trespass,” came the quick reply. “Identify yourself! You do not, I suspect, have the right to be here.”
Before she might reply a man stepped from the shadows and said quietly, “This is the lady Mairin, captain. Daughter of the English trade envoy. I am surprised that you did not recognize her by her fiery hair which is the talk of the city. She is permitted to be here. You may go.”
“Your pardon, lady,” said the captain of the Varangian Guards. “I but did my duty.” He saluted her smartly. Then turning, he led his men from the area.
Mairin turned to look at the man who had championed her. Dagda, she noted, had disappeared, but she knew he was not far. “Thank you, my lord,” she acknowledged her knight. “Have we met?” She wondered who this man might be that the captain of the Varangian Guards had obeyed him so swiftly, and without question. The flames from the fire lit his image, and looking closely at him for the first time Mairin felt her breath catch sharply in her chest. The man before her was the most incredibly beautiful man she had ever seen. Handsome, she thought, was a word one usually applied to a man, but this man was more than that. The only word that might indeed apply was “beautiful.”
“I am Prince Basil Ducas, the emperor’s cousin,” said her protector, “and no, we have not met formally, but having seen you yesterday I knew that we must meet.”
“Y-you saw me yesterday?” The stumbling words sounded stupid to her own ears, and she was furious with herself.
“I was standing just to the right behind my cousin’s throne,” he answered. “I am not surprised you did not see me. The Throne of Solomon is a fascinating contraption particularly when one is seeing it for the very first time.” He was endeavoring to put her at ease. “Tell me,” he asked her, “why are you burning this fire?”
“It is a Samhein fire, my lord. When my people worshiped the Mother and the Father it was their custom to celebrate four great feasts each year. Imbolc which notes the lengthening of the days, the drawing to a close of winter, and the coming of spring. Beltaine which celebrates the planting and a return of life; Lugnasagh on August 1st to give thanks for a successful growing season and the harvest; and tonight, Samhein, our year’s-end festival.”
“These are not Christian customs,” he said. “I thought that the Anglo-Saxons were of the Christian faith.”
“The Anglo-Saxons are, my lord, as are my people, the Celts. There is no harm in what I do. It honors the customs of my Celtic ancestors.”
“I was given to understand that your father, Aldwine Athelsbeorn, is an Anglo-Saxon lord.”
“Aldwine Athelsbeorn is my adoptive father, my lord. My father was Ciaran St. Ronan, a nobleman of Brittany. My mother, Maire Tir Connell, was a princess of Ireland. Both are Celtic peoples, and I revere their ancient customs. Besides, Samhein is my birthday. Dagda says that I burst into the world with a head like the Samhein fire.” Her eyes were twinkling as she spoke.
“And who is Dagda?” he asked.
“Dagda is a mighty warrior that my kingly grandfather entrusted with the care of my mother. When she died shortly after my birth she put me into his keeping. Where I go, my lord, he goes.”
“Your hair is like the flame,” the prince murmured, his voice low. “You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”
Her cheeks grew warm, but whether from the heat of the fire or the heat of his words she knew not. “I thank you for your compliment, my lord,” she said slowly. “Byzantines
use the word ‘beautiful’ with ease it seems. It is a word I have heard often since arriving in Constantinople.” Dagda stepped back into the circle of the fire, and Mairin finished, “I must go now, my lord. Thank you for your kindness.”
The prince was not so easily dismissed. “Let your dragon tend to the fire,” he said. “I will personally escort you back to your parents in the Garden Palace.”
Her mirth bubbled forth. “Dagda, a dragon?” she giggled.
“Does he not guard the fair maiden, and keep her safe from the evils of the world?”
“I do, my lord,” said Dagda quietly in his deep voice. “I would give my life for my lady.”
The prince nodded, saying, “I will see her safe, Dagda.” Then taking Mairin’s hand he led her away from the fire into the evening darkness of the garden which was now half-lit by the rising moon. Her slender hand was warm. He could feel her trembling slightly as they walked. She was very young, he thought, and very innocent. He believed she had never been approached seriously by a man before. Something about her reached out and touched him and he remembered his careless words to the emperor only yesterday that if she were as beautiful as he was then he should wed with her, and they would create beautiful children.
Perhaps it was not such an idle remark after all. He must eventually marry, and there were none among the women he had known all his life who attracted him enough that he would marry one of them. In his thirty years he had many lovers both male and female. He was fonder of his current inamorato than most of those who had come to his bed, but the actor was extremely jealous of anyone who took the prince’s attention. Basil smiled to himself in the darkness. He did not think Bellisarius would like Mairin.
“Have you seen much of the city?” he inquired as they walked along.
“Not a great deal, my lord. The people follow me seeking to touch my hair. I have promised my mother I will braid it up and hide it beneath a veil so we may visit in the city. My mother is lonely for England and I feel I must divert her from her sadness. She is a gentle lady who has never before traveled so far from her home. I think she is overwhelmed by the greatness of Constantinople.”
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