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

  “I want you,” he said again. “I want you for my own.”

  I would have tried to rise but did not wish the eyes of the hall to be upon us. Instead I shrank back as much as I could on the bench, and pulled my hand. He did not resist, but let it slide from his, and I leaned back and took a deep breath. I wanted to leave but did not dare, fearing that he might try to stop me.

  He made no move to take my hand, but said quietly, “I do not want you as Toki wants you; I want you for my wife.”

  Now I opened my mouth to speak, but he went on.

  “Do not speak yet. Hear me first.” He glanced down for a moment, and then looked back to me. “We are much alike, you and I. More alike then you can know, for you are younger and a woman and have not seen the world as I. In one thing only we differ. You are as beautiful as Freyja, and I as ugly as the Trickster. But in all other things we are as one. You said I was a better man than Toki, and I can see that for all her virtues you are a better woman than your Lady. Yet just as you are second to her in this place, so am I second to Toki. But it will not always be so. One day soon I shall be first, and someday surpass Yrling himself. This I know.”

  He paused, and I thought again to speak, but he silenced me with a check of his head and went on. “With me you will lack nothing. I am richer even than Toki. Only Yrling has more treasure than I. One day I will command more than even he. I will have a greater hall, more men to fill it, and greater fame. You will have all you desire.”

  Now he leaned forward again, and lowered his voice to a whisper, and there was an urgency in it which frightened me. “I will be good to you, shield-maiden. Never before have I wanted a woman as I want you.”

  Finally he stopped. I felt helpless and unable to speak. A hundred things turned in my brain at once. I only wanted to get away.

  “I must go now,” I said hurriedly, as I pushed myself up from the table. I walked as quickly as I could across the floor, trying not to break into a run as I headed for the passageway that led to the stairs. I felt all eyes must be on me but I could not raise my head to look.

  Chapter the Twenty-sixth: The Work of Each

  THE chamber never seemed as small to me as it did that night. I paced from one end to the other as the noise of the hall below rose up and filled my unwilling ears. The day had held too much; Toki had tried to snatch me on the road and now Sidroc had said he wanted me for his wife. I knew that at least at this I should feel honoured; a man of high rank had chosen me. But instead of feeling honoured I felt merely preyed upon.

  Burginde came up, full of gossip from the kitchen, and took no note of all this. “Dobbe said they would be up all this night, roasting and baking,” she said as she locked the door. “Something be going on, but we know not what. And the Lady asks if you be well. She saw you leave the hall and feared something had made you ill. But Sidroc told her you were weary and felt you must lie down.”

  “Yes, he was right,” I mumbled.

  In the morning Ælfwyn did not come up to us. As Burginde and I dressed we heard by the great commotion beneath us that the hall was filling with men, and decided we should go down.

  The door of the hall was open, and men were passing in and out. Before us three Danes shouldered bulging hide packs which they lowered onto the trestle tables that now filled the centre of the hall. Upon the tables was piled a vast array of packs, sheepskins, and hides. On these lay leathern tunics, and some too of hammered rings, swords sheathed and unsheathed, spear shafts and spear points, saddles and bridles, knives and helmets. Amongst all this I saw for the first time the broad-bladed axe, the skeggox, which the Danes alone used in their warfare. We regarded all this, and those who moved amongst these things. Perhaps twenty men were there, opening packs, looking at swords, tightening buckles and straps, polishing the dull iron of their helmets. They all called and laughed to each other as they went about this, and paid us no mind.

  A look told us that the table we normally sat at was not in place, and that neither Ælfwyn nor Yrling was in the hall. The door to the treasure room was shut.

  I turned to Burginde, but she spoke first. “Dobbe will have us some broth and a bite to eat; ‘twill be but a moment to fetch it, and you can up to the chamber again and eat in peace until my Lady appears.” She turned and skirted the tables and went through the kitchen passage.

  I took a few steps toward the stair, but then stopped and watched the Danes. Each man was sorting and sifting through his weapons and war-kit, and doing it with the cheerful talk and laughter which men about to face death use. It was not strange to me; again I saw the timber hall of Cedd, and the open faces of his ceorls as they thus equipped themselves. What was strange was this: that each ring tunic, each spear, each saddle, each sword, that each and all of them before me now was of far greater make and worth than that my kinsman’s ceorls or Cedd himself had known.

  I looked at the men themselves, young and tall and hale. Very few had lost fingers; fewer still bore any limp or haltness from injury. The scarred arms or chipped ears amongst them were worn well, as the signs of fierce battle; they were all strong, and proud in their strength. I remembered the thegns of Ælfsige, Ælfwyn’s father, who had brought us to Four Stones, and that they were fine men, the finest I had then seen. Now a veil had dropped from my eyes and I thought with a tremble that the power in those thegns of Wessex could not withstand the power of these Northmen who aimed to conquer for themselves all which they saw.

  I closed my eyes for one moment, and the noise and bustle before me grew distant. Then a sound behind me made me turn, and there was Sidroc, walking with Toki through the open door, both laden with hide packs and laughing with each other in their own flat-sounding tongue.

  Toki made a mocking gesture of respect to me and passed on and dumped his pack on the joined tables. Sidroc stopped before me, and lowered his pack to his feet. Over his arm was hung a baldric of red-dyed leather, worked all over with silver bosses. From it a black wood and leathern sheath held a long sword with broad iron guard. The only decoration was on the grip of wood, deeply and skilfully carved.

  The laughter was gone from his face, and he spoke to me easily, even kindly.

  “I will not make you run from the hall again,” he said, and the directness of this made me look down. His voice was light, and I could not tell if he had given up his pursuit of me. I felt confused, almost as much as I had when I had fled the hall.

  A long moment passed, and I could find no words to meet his. I simply nodded. He turned towards the activity of the hall.

  “I must go now,” he said, and started to lift his pack.

  “Wait,” I said, and laughed a little, for it seemed bold of me to so stop him. “I only mean, can you tell me what is happening? You are preparing for a siege?”

  “A siege?” He laughed too. “No, not a siege, or anything like it.”

  His easy manner gave me great relief. “Then what is all this?” I asked.

  “Nothing of concern. Yrling will take a few men, fifteen or twenty, and go to meet our brothers of whom I spoke last night.”

  I nodded. “And fix the mistakes that were made,” I said.

  “Yes, but you should not call it that, since only I believe that they were mistakes.” He looked around. “It no longer matters.”

  Again I knew not of what he spoke. “Will the men go far into Wessex?” I asked. “All are arming as if for battle.”

  “We do not expect any battle at all, but only fools leave their swords sheathed. We control lands for only the distance of a three days’ ride.” He paused for a moment. “Also, one always finds opportunities on the road.”

  I knew by this he meant they would take whatever they could along the way. But I did not dwell on it; a new thought came into my mind. “If you all three go, who will command Four Stones?”

  “We will not all go. Yrling will choose whether Toki or I will stay. But he will not tell us until the last moment.”

  I thought of this
. “Why?” was all I could ask. “Surely he trusts you.”

  He looked at me, and gave a little snort. “Of course he does not trust us.”

  “O,” I said, feeling more stupid than ever I had.

  “We will not leave until tomorrow night, so I will see you again,” said Sidroc, and then he turned and joined the others.

  I walked slowly back to the stairs, turning all this over in my mind. Nothing surprised me more than Sidroc saying that Yrling did not trust him. He had said it with real impatience, as if a small child had asked the question.

  Still, I was glad to learn that there would not be a siege, or even, if all went well, a battle. I was not long in our room when Burginde came up with a bronze platter and ewer.

  “The kitchen be upside down. Eomer says the Danes are taking a waggon and going off somewhere. Dobbe had already sent food into my Lady and the Dane, and had this all ready for you,” she said, setting it down before me.

  There were several newly baked wheaten loaves, and some hen’s eggs, broken open and boiled in broth. I fell to and Burginde pulled up her stool.

  “I saw Sidroc downstairs, and he said fifteen or twenty men would leave tomorrow for Wessex,” I said.

  Burginde clucked her tongue. “Ach! What if they fight in Cirenceaster, and break so soon the Peace Ælfsige made!” She shook her head. “I do not know if my lamb could bear that, having sacrificed so much.”

  “I do not think Yrling is that bold. Sidroc said they sought other Danes who had lost a battle far from Cirenceaster.” I thought about what Sidroc had told me. “I do not believe they will seek a battle with anyone. At least if Yrling is only taking twenty men he will not.”

  We heard a woman’s step on the stair outside, and both rose and went to the door. It was Ælfwyn, wearing her yellow gown, but with her hair tied back in her silk head-dress in a way I had never seen before.

  She greeted us and said, “Burginde, I would bathe now. Do you go and draw me water.” Burginde took both our large buckets and went down the stairs with them.

  “Your hair,” I said to Ælfwyn.

  She went to the wall where we had hung a large bronze mirror. She regarded herself in it for a moment, and touched the way her head-dress was tied about her head. “I do not like it, do you?” she asked, turning to me. “Yrling says it is the way married women tie their hair in his homeland.”

  “Hmmm,” I said.

  “He must have got it wrong,” she said, turning this way and that in the mirror. “This makes me look like a cottar’s daughter.”

  “You could never look like a cottar’s daughter,” I said in protest.

  “I do with my hair tied up like this. I cannot think that the wife of a jarl would wear a wrap in so crude a way.”

  “Their tastes are different from ours, perhaps.” I remembered the coloured designs on Yrling’s bare arms. “Yrling has blue and red serpents pricked into the skin of his arms.”

  “Yes,” agreed Ælfwyn, and she began to loosen her clothes. “But that is different; he is a man, and he told me they honour the strength of He who fought the world serpent.”

  “Yes, Thor, who’s hammer he wears,” I said.

  “That is right,” she answered, “for he told me about it.” She untied her head-dress and shook out her hair. “Even tho’ it be the style of his homeland, I do not think I will wrap my hair this way.”

  I brought out our large brass tub and took linen towels from chests. “Burginde said the kitchen is busy; it may be a bit until she can come with the water.”

  She stopped undressing and we both sat down. “I am glad Yrling told you of the hammer he wears,” I said, eager to hear more.

  “He wears it all the time,” she said, “even when he - wears nothing else.” She was blushing, but her voice was steady. “Last night I asked him about it, for I wanted to know why he had placed it around my neck when we Hand-fasted.” She swallowed and looked down, but she was smiling. “He said it was to make rich my womb, so that we might have many children.”

  She went on, but no longer smiled. “He said the hammer was a powerful protection to both men and women. Then he raised it to his lips and kissed it, and held it to me, and I - kissed it too. I suppose it was a dreadful sin, but just then it did not seem so. And it made Yrling more pleased than I have ever seen.”

  She looked up at me. “You were raised by the Black Monks. Do you think I will go to Hell for that?”

  I tried to think before I spoke, yet I wished to speak quickly, for I could see she was in some distress. “No,” I said, “although I do not know what the Prior might say.”

  Here I began falsely, for I knew most exactly what the Prior would say, that it was all sin and error to honour the Gods in this way, for he thought all that was of the Gods should be not honoured but destroyed. But this I could not say, perhaps because this I could not believe.

  “No,” I went on, “I do not think there was real error in this, for you only meant to please your husband, which the Black Monks say always is the first duty of the married woman, so if by this small honouring of his God you have pleased your pledged husband, then who could find it amiss?”

  Her face was hopeful. “Good,” she said, “I am easier now in my mind about this. It did trouble me, yet as I said it made Yrling more pleased with me than I have yet seen.” She combed her fingers through her hair and went on. “He said he does not care if I am a Christian, and that I might even have a priest come live here, as long as I do not pray and cry to make him and his men get baptised.” She smiled as if at the memory of this.

  “A priest? Then there might be learning, and books, and sums, and many other good things at Four Stones,” I began.

  “Yes,” she laughed, “and think how Sidroc and Toki would enjoy teasing him! We will have to find a special priest, one who was once a warrior, to stand up well in this place.”

  I thought of the watery-eyed Watcher, unlettered, ignorant, but devout, who had been rounded up by Sidroc to bless Ælfwyn. Such as he would bring no learning nor letters to Four Stones.

  We heard Burginde at the bottom of the stair, and I went down to help her, and we filled up the brass tub with the two buckets of hot water and Ælfwyn bathed with lavender oil in her water.

  “So you two know all that’s going on?” asked Burginde, as she dried her mistress off.

  Ælfwyn laughed, and I did too. “We have not yet spoken about it,” she said.

  “What?” asked Burginde in real surprise. “Not spoken about it, when the whole keep’s torn up with preparation, and the hall be filled with blood thirsty Danes sharpening their swords, and Dobbe cooking for three days’ worth of adventuring?”

  “Calm down, nurse, and let me tell you what I know. I tried to speak to Yrling; it is not easy, for we often times barely say anything to each other. He seemed glad to hear me speak, and tho’ at times it was hard, he spoke to me as well.”

  She paused so long that Burginde urged her on. “I am remembering what he said, that is all. He is angry at some Danes for fighting a battle. I think he is angry because they broke an agreement with other Danes. They also broke a treaty with an ealdorman of Wessex, which one I do not know, but this does not seem to trouble Yrling much. When I saw this, I questioned him, for I said, You have made a Peace with my father and grandsire, and I want to think that you will honour their pledges to you. And he saw how grave it was to me, and he said he did and would honour the Peace as long as my father and grandsire did; but I felt fearful that he said that only because he would be good to me last night.”

  She stopped, and both Burginde and I were silent, waiting for her to go on. I had been braiding her hair, and brought her my small mirror so that she might see my work. “That is good, for he admires our braids. Now he will not miss the jarl’s wife’s head wrap.” And she smiled at me.

  “There is not much else. He said he was sorry to leave me so soon, but that he would return within two weeks or so.”


  She looked troubled. We were silent for a time, thinking of these things. Then she said, “I do not know how to feel. I am angry and upset that some Danes have been at battle, and I wish soundly for their defeat. But my own husband is a Dane who is, I think, going to aid these same men. And he is a warrior and has done many cruel things to my grandsire’s people and to the folk of Lindisse. For this a part of me hates him. And he has cost my father and mother great worry and great wealth. Now they feel in some degree secure that their lands will be left in peace. They wish me joy in this marriage.” She sighed and looked down at her hands. “And Yrling himself is not cruel to me, but kind, and has given me great treasure in jewels.”

  Ælfwyn finished speaking and sat quietly. I looked at her, and my heart was filled with love for her courage, and love too of her great goodness, for she did not once speak of what this marriage had cost her in grief, but was resolute in her desire to fulfil her parent’s bidding and do all she could for the good of her people.

  She turned to me. “What would happen if Wessex fell? It would become as Lindisse.”

  She shook her head as if to drive this thought away. But it would not be banished so easily, for it was the thought of all three of us.

  Burginde spoke now, and as often, brought good counsel with her words. “And such a one as you,” she scolded, turning from the clothes chests to her mistress, “brought up in the finest hall, with the wisest father and most sensible mother, would be believing the boasts of a tribe as blustering and noisy and lying as the Danes? Goose!”

  Ælfwyn nodded and smiled a bit. “Mother used to say that the men who boasted loudest had the most need of it,” she remembered.

  But I do not think any of the three of us thought the Dane’s boasts to be empty.

  We sat at the table for a time, and then Ælfwyn said, “I suppose we should begin the weaving today,” but she did not go to the looms, nor even look at them.

  The noise of the men in the hall rose up to us, and as we women sat there it was easy to guess what they were about. We heard the rhythmic pounding as the spear points were hammered onto shafts of ash wood. We heard too the hollow thud of the alder shields, as the men tried them with mock blows to see if they were sound. Beneath all this we heard the steady scraping hiss of the whetstone as the men drew their blades over it.