The Circle of Ceridwen: Book One of The Circle of Ceridwen Saga Read online

  The Circle of Ceridwen is the first book in The Circle of Ceridwen Saga by Octavia Randolph.

  Copyright 1995 Octavia Randolph. This electronic version 2014

  ISBN 978-0-9854582-0-1

  Bookcover design: DesignForBooks.com

  Photo credits: Castle, iStockphoto©vcstimeless, swords: iStockphoto©foolonthehill. Textures, graphics, photo manipulation, and map by Michael Rohani.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests beyond this, write to the author, addressed “Attention: Permissions” at [email protected]

  Pyewacket Press

  Illustrations by Marta Roselló copyright 2005

  The Circle of Ceridwen Saga employs British spellings, alternate spellings, archaic words, and oftentimes unusual verb to subject placement. This is intentional. A Glossary of Terms will be found at the end of the novel.

  List of Characters

  Ceridwen, daughter of a dead warlord of the Kingdom of Mercia, aged fifteen

  Ælfwyn, a lady of Wessex residing in Lindisse, now controlled by the Danes

  Yrling, a Dane

  Toki, a Dane, nephew to Yrling

  Sidroc, a Dane, nephew to Yrling

  Gyric, son of Godwulf of Kilton in the Kingdom of Wessex

  Cadmar, once a warrior of Wessex, now a monk

  Godwin, Gyric’s older brother

  Modwynn, Lady of Kilton, mother to Gyric and Godwin

  Godwulf, Lord of Kilton, an ealdorman of Wessex, husband to Modwynn

  Edgyth, wife to Godwin

  Ælfred, King of Wessex

  List of Illustrations by Marta Roselló

  Ceridwen

  Sidroc

  Ælfwyn

  Gyric

  By the lake

  Map of Britain 871 AD

  Contents

  List of Characters

  List of Illustrations by Marta Roselló

  Map of Britain 871 AD

  Preface

  Chapter the First: What I Saw and Lived

  Chapter the Second: The Priory

  Chapter the Third: The Artful One

  Chapter the Fourth: Dawn Into Day

  Chapter the Fifth: The Bride of Four Stones

  Chapter the Sixth: Looking Forward and Back

  Chapter the Seventh: Choose Well

  Chapter the Eighth: Dwellings of the Dead

  Chapter the Ninth: The Escort

  Chapter the Tenth: The End of the Road

  Chapter the Eleventh: The Keep of Four Stones

  Chapter the Twelfth: All That’s Left

  Chapter the Thirteenth: The Trophy of the Danes

  Chapter the Fourteenth: Dobbe’s Tale

  Chapter the Fifteenth: Jarl and Lord

  Chapter the Sixteenth: Of the Tribute

  Chapter the Seventeenth: The Tribute Dinner

  Chapter the Eighteenth: Shuttle and Sword

  Chapter the Nineteenth: Lord and Lady

  Chapter the Twentieth: Valerian for Sweetness

  Chapter the Twenty-first: The Lady of Four Stones

  Chapter the Twenty-second: The Weaving of Life

  Chapter the Twenty-third: The Meeting on the Road

  Chapter the Twenty-fourth: Fright and Fight

  Chapter the Twenty-fifth: Dusk Grows to Dark

  Chapter the Twenty-sixth: The Work of Each

  Chapter the Twenty-seventh: Lightning

  Chapter the Twenty-eighth: The Offering

  Chapter the Twenty-ninth: Departure

  Chapter the Thirtieth: To Bear the Truth

  Chapter the Thirty-first: There Will Be Linen

  Chapter the Thirty-second: Hard Questions

  Chapter the Thirty-third: The Village and its Secret

  Chapter the Thirty-fourth: The Danish Rider

  Chapter the Thirty-fifth: The Return

  Chapter the Thirty-sixth: Of the Ambush

  Chapter the Thirty-seventh: Valuable for Ransom

  Chapter the Thirty-eighth: The Golden Fleece

  Chapter the Thirty-ninth: No Bargains

  Chapter the Fortieth: Unrest Within

  Chapter the Forty-first: Death of a King

  Chapter the Forty-second: Everything Changes

  Chapter the Forty-third: A Man of Wessex

  Chapter the Forty-fourth: The Last Day

  Chapter the Forty-fifth: Darkness Into Dawn

  Chapter the Forty-sixth: I Want You to Live

  Chapter the Forty-seventh: Awake in the Dark

  Chapter the Forty-eighth: We Tell Our Tales

  Chapter the Forty-ninth: Leave-taking

  Chapter the Fiftieth: Following the Sun

  Chapter the Fifty-first: I Explain Myself

  Chapter the Fifty-second: What We Had to Do

  Chapter the Fifty-third: You Have Not Seen Us

  Chapter the Fifty-fourth: The Work of My Hands

  Chapter the Fifty-fifth: Thick Woods and Little Comfort

  Chapter the Fifty-sixth: Danger Met, and Boldness Shown

  Chapter the Fifty-seventh: Flowing Waters

  Chapter the Fifty-eighth: Blood

  Chapter the Fifty-ninth: The Gifts of the House

  Chapter the Sixtieth: Alone and Together

  Chapter the Sixty-first: The Well

  Chapter the Sixty-second: The Soil of Wessex

  Chapter the Sixty-third: I Know Love

  Chapter the Sixty-fourth: I Bind Myself to You

  Chapter the Sixty-fifth: Treasure Like This

  Chapter the Sixty-sixth: The Welcoming

  Chapter the Sixty-seventh: This Belongs to You

  Chapter the Sixty-eighth: Of My First Night in the Hall

  Chapter the Sixty-ninth: The Oath of Vengeance

  Chapter the Seventieth: More Like a Woman

  Chapter the Seventy-first: What I Began

  Chapter the Seventy-second: The Fulfiller of Oaths

  Chapter the Seventy-third: As We Expected It

  Chapter the Seventy-fourth: Ælfred, King

  Calendar of Feast Days mentioned in The Circle of Ceridwen

  Anglo-Saxon Place Names, with Modern Equivalents

  Glossary of Terms

  Historic Veracity

  About the Author

  The Circle of Ceridwen

  Octavia Randolph

  Preface

  I was born in 856, a time when the Island of Britain was divided into many Kingdoms. As I was later taught, the very first people of Britain were the Old People, the small, dark-haired folk who survive in the wilds of Gwynedd and the lands North of Northumbria. Later came the raving, red-haired Lovers of Stones, who drove the Old People into the fastnesses they still occupy. Then came the many swift ships of Cæsar, and in the year 43 his warriors conquered much of Britain. The people of the Cæsars were great builders, and most learned, and for 400 years the folk of Britain prospered. Then my own people, the fair-haired and light-eyed Angles and Saxons, came from their marshy lands across the North Sea. My folk were fierce and war-like, and burnt the cities of the Cæsars. We lived instead off the rich Earth of Britain, for the forests ran with deer and pig, and the soil yielded up every good thing to our ploughs. We ruled almost all o
f Britain, and the greatest of our warriors became our Kings. But peace was rare, for these Kings fought always with each other.

  Then, within our grandsire’s memory, a new people began to visit our shores. They were seamen unlike any we had ever seen, and raiders so skilled they took whatever they wanted and fled before our warriors could catch them.

  These were the Danes.

  Chapter the First: What I Saw and Lived

  I was daughter to two men, but no woman claimed me as hers. My dead sire was an ealdorman, the chief of our shire. He had long fallen in a skirmish with the wild Welsh beyond our river Dee, and his stony lands taken by the same. I was thus alone when I was wee, and Cedd, brother of my father Cerd, took me. Cedd became ealdorman, for my father had no son, and his ceorls, his armed men, came and pledged to him, and he gave them rings and bracelets to seal their love. Cedd had also freeborn cottars and slaves to farm his land, as an ealdorman should. Cedd’s wife had died in childbed with her firstborn, and he had not taken another wife. So he took me as his daughter to the hall of upright timber he had built as a young man, and I lived with him until my ninth Summer.

  My mother was dead, said my kinsman; or nameless, said his serving-women; I heard both tales. Cedd became as father to me, and each night I sat at his left at the great oak table in his hall. My father’s brother was tall, and in his arms was still much force and brawn, but he could no longer walk aright. During the same skirmish where my father had been killed Cedd had been grievously wounded, and his knees still carried the scars of the spear-thrusts. In the damp Winter he would drink and drink again to dull their ache, and still throw down his cup and howl with rage at his Fate. At these times I was scarce, for he could not be comforted. But I did not fear him, for he was my kinsman, and good to me.

  In early Fall when the woods ran with game, Cedd would mount his best and boldest horse and ride out at dawn with his ceorls, their horses stamping, bits jingling, and return at dusk laughing and shouting with stag or boar to fill the firepit. The men would join together in the timber hall, and place at rest against the wall their iron-tipped, barbed spears. The torches in their iron stands would blaze out, casting their light upon the gold rings and silver bracelets and arm-rings the men wore, and the light glittered also from bronze cup to cup. The hall would fill with the smells of smoke and the singeing of meat, and the sounds of the spitting fat flying into the coals. My kinsman, his ceorls about him, would tell of the hunt just run, and of the hunt before, and of the hunt of many seasons past. And tho’ child as I was, I would sit blinking in the brilliant torch light and feel that the Gods had blest no place so much as this snug warm hall.

  At other times Cedd would lift me up upon his saddle, and we would ride out to the trackway that bordered his lands, and skirt the grove and river marshes that made up the boundaries. These were my favourite times, sitting before him, gladsome and proud; his thick strong arm about me. Beyond his lands lay the village, and so came my first memory of it, seeing from over the horse’s mane the round huts of willow wattle and daub with their bushy thatch.

  In the village centre stood the stone preaching cross where the Prior spoke to the villagers. The cross was old, older than Cedd’s memory, and had on both sides figures carved in the runes of our people. One side told stories of the Holy Book, of which I was yet ignorant. The other bore a tale of the hero Weland, weapon-smith of the Gods, which I knew well. Cedd would stop and point out the marks to me, and tell me again the tale of the great warrior, and in this way did I first learn the runes.

  Beyond the village lay the Priory of the Black Monks, as we called the raven-clothed Benedictines. Sometimes on our ride we would come across the Prior himself. Cedd would call out to him, laughing, and in reply the grave thin-lipped Prior would turn and look up. He would sometimes speak to Cedd, gesturing to me as he did, but my father’s brother would only laugh the more and turn our horse and trot off.

  But the time came when Cedd did not ride out to hunt, and stayed in his hall. He walked about but little, and grasped at his chest and throat in pain. Came the day when he did not rise from his pallet, and his ceorls went to him and did not leave. For two days the hall was filled with his groans, and I was kept away. All grew quiet, and at noon I was at last brought to him. Tho’ it was high Summer, the firepit was bright with flame, for the ceorls had brought Cedd’s pallet before it, that he might be kept warm. There I looked upon the face of my kinsman for the last time. His breath came in gasping sighs, and his staring eyes looked far beyond the hall. His brow was damp, and his hand when I touched it, cold. Thus we sat, the ceorls and a serving woman and I, until the room grew still of Cedd’s breathing; and as the dusk came on, the life left him. I was led away, dry-eyed but hollow within.

  Then it was night, but there was no sleep in the house, for all through the dark hours I heard the voices of the ceorls and the movement of the serving people. At dawn the ceorls rode out to the grove, and cleared the heart of it of trees, and with the help of the cottars rolled stones the size of sheep into a circle. Within this circle they laid a mass of charcoal, and then cut boughs from every tree which grew in the grove, save lady willow; from oak, beech, elder, and apple was the needfire built.

  Then at dusk a wain was driven, pulled by a horse and carrying the body of Cedd. And the ceorls came after it, bearing torches which they thrust into the ground to make a circle of light against the darkening sky. They carried off the body of Cedd from the wain, and as they lifted the pallet I saw my kinsman wore his ring shirt and fine helmet, and that across his chest was placed his sword, for he had no son to wield it and learn its name and ways. The ceorls lay the pallet upon the pyre, and placed by my kinsman’s side his round shield of alder wood, and his iron-tipped ash spear. They placed also at his side bronze drinking cups. I stood watching this with the serving women, and behind us were the slaves that were Cedd’s, and beyond them the gathering cottars of the village.

  The chiefest of the ceorls lit a new oil torch and turned to face the pyre, and held the torch uplifted in salute. Then did he walk about the needfire, thrusting the torch between the branches. Smoke came, and more smoke, and there was no sound save the sudden crying of a rook watching in an oak tree. I raised my head to his call, and then of an instant did the flames spring forth from the needfire, licking at the pallet in its hunger. The flames burnt with brilliant light against the Summer night sky, and the ash of the sacred fire mixed with the ash of the dead. Then the ceorls began to walk in circle around the pyre, chanting the praises of he who was dead, and they did not cease praising my kinsman until the ashes were cold with the dawn.

  For a little time after that I lived alone at the hall with the serving people. Then the Prior made appeal to the King that my kinsman’s land, which was Folkland, and held in Cedd’s own right, should now be made Bookland and given to the Priory for its maintenance. And it was made so, and the ceorls went away, and the household dispersed, and the hall that was once bright with fire and the voices of men was turned into a granary for the Prior. And the Prior took me to live with him in that, my ninth Summer, and I was baptised.

  Chapter the Second: The Priory

  SO my life changed greatly after this, for the Prior was a grave man and not given to laughter. And tho’ I did not rise in the black of night for Matins or spend the days in ceaseless prayer and work as the monks did, I was kept much occupied, for the Prior said the work of redemption was ceaseless.

  The place where the Priory stood was old out of mind, worshipped by the Lovers of Stones, and the huge circles of rock still thrust up their faces to keen at the Moon and Sun. The Prior planted his crops around them, and in their shade the scraggy sheep nibbled the grasses. The land went to marsh towards the river, the forests rose up behind, and in the narrow margin between Spring flood and dark wood the Priory scraped out such a living as it might.

  At the Priory I was well treated, and I got sums and chanting, and chart-reading from the hands of the Prior himsel
f, for he was fond of such things, and kept a roll of map parchments carefully from damp and rot. These showed upon them the great roads of cut stone built by the Cæsars, and also the tracks of rivers, so that travellers might pass from shire to shire, and in times of peace, from Kingdom to Kingdom. I looked upon these lines with wonder, thinking of all the other folk that lived at the ends of those slender lines on parchment. But my greatest learning was to read, and then to write, most surely in my own tongue, but a little also of the Holy Tongue of Rome, for by far the greater number of books at the Priory were in this sacred speech. And the Prior did not disallow it, for the Black Monks are great for learning; and besides, I knew it would increase my bride-price, which the Prior would collect, when I was wed.

  From Sulla the serving woman I learnt the womanly tasks of yarn-spinning and weaving, for that is always woman’s first task, high born or low. She and I spent much of each morning at spindle or loom. But the arts of fine stitching with needle and coloured thread I taught myself, for I had few adornments and always marvelled over any bits of fancy work the Prior might receive to dress the blessed altar. In this way I made bright many linens to cover the holy books, and made for myself gay designs of fanciful beasts and birds upon my gowns and sashes. Likewise I was given to braiding and plaiting my long hair in all manner of designs of my devising, until Sulla said never horse had witch’s knots woven in its mane as I wove in mine.

  The Prior had always said that after I reached my fifteenth Summer - for I was a Summer’s child - I would come into my portion, and what was left of my father’s fortune would be mine. Since the night the Prior told me this, already in my thirteenth Summer, and just become a woman by Nature’s curious ways, I lived every hour for my fifteenth birthday. That I might take the veil had been his first wish, but I had no calling: it was clear in my heart, and clear, too to the Prior when he looked into my green eyes. Neither would I wed the few choices I might have amongst ceorls, young or old, in the shire. For I was restless, and wished for more, and it rankled. I chafed, and walked at times in anger in the woods, and stood at night gazing speechless at the heavens, where starry messengers streaked and were gone. Like them, I desired to quit the place of my raising.