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  After his mother had vanished while departing Four Stones to return to Kilton, all her treasures were carefully kept, taken by Ceric’s grandmother Modwynn to her own bower house in hope of her return. When Ceridwen’s letter arrived, carried by Worr, telling all at Kilton that Ceric would stay the year on Gotland with her, it also asked Modwynn to distribute her 5,000 coins of silver between her two sons. Two thirds were to be given to Ceric, and one third to the younger Edwin, made Godwin and Edgyth’s child through adoption.

  Ceridwen’s other belongings she bade Modwynn dispose of as she felt just. Ceridwen had been her beloved second son Gyric’s wife, and the reason he had survived to return, maimed as he was, to Kilton; and Modwynn had loved Ceridwen for her own sake, seeing in her spirit and courage the makings of a woman well-formed to one day be Lady of Kilton. That Fate had led, even driven her from this path had not caused Modwynn’s hand to waver above the store of treasure Ceridwen left behind. She placed all aside for Ceric, gemstones and ornaments of silver and of gold, and two gowns of heavy shimmering silk. They were of green and of yellow, the match in beauty of the two of red and blue which Ceridwen had presented to Modwynn on the day she first arrived at Kilton so many years past.

  It was the yellow Ceric chose to take to Ashild. When they had first met as toddling babes Ashild’s hair had been the flaxen shade of Lady Ælfwyn’s hair, her mother. When Ceric saw Ashild again, they both had nine Summers, and he saw it had darkened to a honey hue. The last time he had seen her, on his and Hrald’s return from Gotland, it was the colour of old oak, a rich light brown enlivened with ashy strands where the Sun had left its mark. It suited her eyes, which were of a dark blue-grey, eyes which Ceric had seen storm often enough in their childish games together. The gown of yellow silk was that shade of a hen’s yolk, a strong and vibrant gold. He pictured her darker hair coming down from underneath her linen head-wrap and falling upon the sleeves.

  “This is a gown fit for a Queen,” Modwynn had told him, as she lifted it from a chest and handed it to him. His request to carry it with him to Four Stones had taken her quietly aback, yet it was her grandson’s to give. She watched him shake the dazzling thing out in front of them.

  “Or a bride,” she added.

  His cheek coloured then, and his eyelashes dropped over his green eyes.

  “Lucky the maid who will wear it,” she went on, her thoughts running ahead. She had known all about the costly ring-shirt Ceric was having made for his friend Hrald, who would soon rule Four Stones. But of Ashild Modwynn knew little. This gift was telling her much.

  As an alliance it could hardly be bettered; she saw that at once. Ceric’s abiding friendship with Hrald had been valuable enough to have made Ælfred give his eager assent to Ceric making the journey. The Peace forged between the King of the Saxons and that of the Danes was fraying, and word was that Guthrum was ailing. The Danish war chief had been canny enough to unite a myriad of war-bands into an army so formidable that the division of Kingdoms, and the paying of much tribute, was the only road to the cessation of hostilities. In return Guthrum and his chief men had taken baptism, become Christian, at least in name, and had permitted the return and even flourishing of priests, nuns, and monks in the lands they now controlled. If Guthrum should die soon, all of East Anglia could disintegrate into vying war-chiefs, eager to be called King, or content to resume raiding.

  The daughter of Four Stones coming as bride to Ceric of Kilton would serve as a powerful bond between Saxons and Danes. The distance between Kilton and Four Stones was great enough that such travelling as Ceric was about to commence could not be undertaken lightly, perhaps not again for years. And Danes would also vie for the hand of such a maid; Modwynn knew this well. Yet Ceric had only eighteen years. Such an age was fine for a bride, but too young to make a settled and responsible husband.

  The Lady of Kilton stood looking at her grandson. He had seen bloody violence and travelled, at his young age, far further than any but the most wandering of Holy Men – or Danish raider. Yet he was untested. His own father had died when he was but a small child, and his uncle when he was twelve. She and Godwin's widow Edgyth had done what they could in raising him. Cadmar, an old retainer of her father's turned monk, had guided and trained the boy, as had the trusted Worr. And she fully knew the awkwardness of Ceric's position. Four years older than his younger brother Edwin, he was but second in line at Kilton; if Edwin lived to manhood he would almost assuredly be named ealdorman of the great burh, not Ceric. A match between Edwin and Ashild of Four Stones would be one she or any other counsellor of Edwin's would not only consider, but welcome.

  Modwynn saw in her grandson's gift the import of his feelings towards the maid. In surrendering their newborn son to Godwin, her son and daughter-in-law had surrendered too their elder son's claim as heir. She would not let Ceric lose the woman he wanted to Edwin as well.

  Ceric still held the golden gown in his hands, though he had dropped his arms. She moved to him, picked up the skirts of it now resting on the wooden planks of her bower house floor, made to fold it up again.

  “And so you have decided on her?” she asked Ceric, her tone matter-of-fact, her eyes lowered upon the shimmer of silk as she turned it in her hands.

  The slightest intake of air from her grandson made her lift her eyes back to his face.

  “I like her – well,” he said at last.

  Modwynn had memory of the yellow curls of the toddling Ashild, and also of the two babes tussling together in the herb beds, of them sleeping nestled next to each other in the broad ox-drawn waggon the Lady Ælfwyn had arrived at Kilton in.

  For a moment she thought of he who was that lady's husband then. She had with her own hands filled the cup of that scarred Dane who would years later cut down her eldest. She checked herself an instant later; she had known when she first saw Ashild that her real father was dead, slain by Godwin himself. If it had been otherwise, if Ceric sought to wed the natural daughter of the man who had killed his uncle – yes, such marriages were made, but she found it hard to countenance her welcoming of such a bride. Yet here was Ceric, perhaps already decided upon her, a maid left fatherless through Godwin's act of revenge.

  Modwynn was not one to run from conclusions she had drawn. She finished folding the gown and laid it aside on the white wool coverlet of her bed.

  “Ceric,” she cautioned. “I would not have you wed at so young an age. If Ashild of Four Stones is to be your wife, if you are to seek her hand, far better it be in three years, or at least two. There is much to consider, treasure to be exchanged, her bride price to be set, argued over, and accepted. And would Guthrum – if he still lives then – look kindly on such a match?”

  She paused a moment, watching his face change as he listened to her words, then went on. “These are only a few of the questions to be resolved.” The furrows in her brow had deepened, recounting all this.

  Of a sudden Ceric felt trapped, as if a door he had not known he had stepped through had slammed shut behind him.

  His eyes swept over the bundle of silk on his grandmother's bed. “I bring a gown to her, that is all…” he said in excuse, his words trailing off in the stillness her conditions had created.

  Her answer was calm, but the firmness in her voice forced his eyes back to her. He took in her face, one lined with years but not without the comeliness Ceric had been taught to see in his elders. In form she was still straight and tall, her hands strong and expressive. He had never known her as less than a commanding figure of a woman.

  “You take a gift of a silken gown to her, a gift not only of great richness, but of intimate nature,” she corrected.

  He saw that now; bringing a maid a piece of silk from which she would cut and sew her own gown was somehow less personal than the gift of one made up, a gown which he had grasped in his hands, imagined her in, even held to his chest.

  He lowered his eyes again. Women were always surprising him, but none surprised him more tha
n his grandmother, who he thought he knew best.

  “Will…will she find offence in this?” he managed to ask.

  She studied his cheek, still rounded, the faint freckles dotting his nose, the tumble of beautiful reddish curls that fell from his brow.

  “She will find delight in it,” she said at last, and let herself smile.

  She did not add that the gift would return a portion of the treasure Ælfwyn had forced upon Ceridwen. Ceric was not thinking of that, and there was at this moment no reason for him to. He saw only his own desire to give the richest gift he could to a girl he pursued.

  It was early Summer, the roads dry, and rivers easy to ford. The troop from Kilton had made good time and would arrive next day. They had stopped a shepherd driving his flock across the road, and once the man had got over his fright he could tell them Four Stones was near. They made camp early that day, gauging they would reach Four Stones at midday. As they rode on in the morning they would meet a ward-corn or watch-man of some kind, and perhaps in this way those at Four Stones would have some little warning of their arrival, if a man of the place was sent ahead to tell them. When Worr and Ceric had ridden this way with Godwin that was what had happened, and they had not only a wary escort through the countryside and to the palisade walls, but another man who had found horse and ridden fast ahead of them.

  They struck their final camp and made ready, brushing down their horses well, wiping the dust from their saddles and packs, and for Ceric, dressing in a fresh linen tunic and leggings. They slung their shields upon their backs, swung into their saddles, and began.

  Now that he was so close, Ceric found it hard to think of his goal, growing ever nearer. He had spent part of everyday thinking on Hrald, imagining his grin, watching his face when he opened the heavy pouch that held the ring-tunic. He knew Hrald would be tall, but he had grown in height himself, and hoped the gap between them was not laughable.

  He had found it harder to think of Ashild, to imagine her now, and almost impossible to think of what he would say when he gave her his gift. He could picture doing so alone with her, but not in front of all, which he knew he must do; they would not be left alone and together now they were older. He was aware he was almost holding his breath, and was seeing nothing of the ripening field of rye before him.

  He brushed this from his mind, steadied himself. He shifted the reins. His right hand rose to his sword hilt, and he let his fingers curl around it.

  The metal they closed around was gold. The sword he bore was the golden-hilted one of Godwulf, his dead grandsire, the great ealdorman of Kilton. That few inches of bright metal, as bright as Ceric's hair, stood out against his dark clothing. The blade of the sword was buried in a new scabbard, one dark and almost plain, the leather embossed with subtle whorls of spirals, with only a narrow bar of gold at its mouth, and gold again as a chape at its tip. But the sword itself was old.

  Godwulf had been laid out with this sword on his chest when he died, that and all his war-kit surrounding him, and his thegns had circled the oak table which bore their lord's body and mourned aloud his passing from this Earth. But as a good Christian the revered warrior had been lowered into the ground beneath the stone floor of the little chapel with nothing more than the linen binding sheet Modwynn had woven and embellished for the task. His seax, spear, and shield had been taken by his widow and packed away, as had the sword of wonder he had worn since a young man. It had been a gift from Ælfred's own father, Æthelwulf, when he was King of Wessex, and was old even then, it was said.

  This sword of Ceric’s grandsire had been placed into his hands three years ago, and by the ealdorman’s widow, Modwynn. He had turned fifteen, and a man, and Modwynn held a true symbel for his sword-bearing ceremony. Cups were raised to the young man, oaths of fidelity sworn, and on his behalf Modwynn bestowed rich gifts to those men who now became Ceric’s pledged own. These were the thegns of Kilton who pledged their warrior arms to defend and support him, in battle and in life. Twenty of the five-and-sixty thegns of Kilton had been asked by the young man to be his; Worr and Cadmar had helped him make up the roll. All had accepted.

  There were two tall and heavy carved oak chairs on the stone dais in the hall of Kilton, ordered made by Godwulf when he took the young Modwynn to wife. His was massive, hers less so, and both were covered in cleverly-wrought chiseled designs of circling beasts and soaring birds with ensnaring tails. These were the chairs at which they sat at table, yes, but when Godwulf’s was set alone upon the dais it became the gift-stool, that seat of power in which he gave out gifts of treasure to his men. It was from this chair Godwulf had presented his elder son Godwin with his weapons at his sword-bearing ceremony.

  The night after the old lord’s death Godwin had lowered himself into it for the first time, and he had done so with the respect worthy of so hallowed a seat. He sat there each night he was at Kilton. Then Godwin sailed to reclaim the lost Ceridwen, and never returned. The oak chair with its now-smooth arm rests stood empty these past four years. But for his symbel Modwynn had the chair brought forward, and there she herself took her place for the night.

  Cadmar carried the sword to her before all, holding it aloft so that the shining blade caught and threw the flickering light from the flames in the fire-pit. All eyes were on it; it had been wrapped away in the treasure room for nearly the length of Ceric’s entire life. Cadmar laid it down across the lap of the Lady of Kilton and stepped to one side. Ceric stood before her, and at his right stood Worr, and at his left his aunt, Edgyth, who had nurtured the boy with loving kindness; and standing before Edgyth, her hands upon his shoulders, was Ceric’s younger brother Edwin, who had then eleven years.

  Behind them stood all the thegns of Kilton, and all their wives, and all their children, arrayed each of them in the finest clothes they owned, and Ceric in a newly-made tunic of sky blue, woven and sewn by his aunt, with silver wire and coloured thread stitched into the neck opening and hem.

  Modwynn looked into the eyes of Ceric, and then down at the gleaming blade spanning her lap. The long fingers of her slender hands rose, and she touched the sword, hilt and naked blade both, and then looked back at her oldest grandson. Her words rang out, filling the ears of the eager listeners ranged under Kilton’s peaked roof.

  “Ceric of Kilton,” she called. “Here is the sword of Godwulf.

  “On its hilt he passed me the golden ring I wear to this day as his wife. With it he fought and won battles that brought him fame, and with it in hand he answered the call of five Kings. I give it now, into your hands and into your trust. With it may you serve Christ, Ælfred, and Kilton.”

  With a nod she gestured him forward. The words she spoke as she passed the weapon to Ceric were for him alone.

  “It has rested long enough, my boy,” she told him, her voice a murmur. “May bearing it give you the long life granted to Godwulf.”

  Thus came the sword of Godwulf to Ceric. And this was how he thought of it: The sword of Godwulf. That it was now his was the act of God and the often unfathomable and twisting ways of Fate. The bond he felt with it was as intense as that which any young warrior ever formed with his life-taking and life-preserving weapon. That first night he had not been able to leave it hang upon the wall inside his alcove, and found himself unashamedly taking the sheathed blade into his bed.

  He thought back on that day, riding now far from home with his hand closed around the hilt. He had no memory of his grandsire, but he knew – he had been told – that Godwulf delighted in his long-awaited grandson, had held him, dandled him, tested the babe’s strong grip upon his knotty finger.

  And the bond went back even further than that; his mother had told him what the old lord had said to her, when he learnt she was with child: ‘From today I know my name will live, and not die with this aged flesh of mine.’

  Godwulf said this thinking the boy to be born would be his heir. And so Ceric knew himself to be. He felt somehow anointed by Godwulf, as much as if t
he old lord had lived long enough to lay his gnarled hands upon Ceric’s head and bless him as he knelt before him.

  He would not be ealdorman of Kilton and its Lord; his younger brother Edwin had been picked out for that. But Ceric had this sword. Through it he felt himself to be his grandsire’s true heir.

  He had come to see that Godwulf, and his weapon, were of far greater importance than either his Uncle Godwin, or his father Gyric. Godwin had been a warrior of renown, then thrown his life away in single combat on a distant island. His father, Gyric – his sword was taken from him, lost somewhere in a Dane’s treasure room. Godwulf, father of them both, was the greater warrior.

  And this sword had never failed Godwulf. There was power in its history, he who wielded it, the warriors who rallied round it, the folk it was raised to defend, the foes who fell before it. Ceric felt this. Godwulf had used the hilt of this sword to wed Modwynn, a vow on his warrior’s worth to her. Oaths had been sworn upon its blade of dancing rippled steel. If Godwulf had been the symbol of Kilton and its wealth and might and valour, then this sword was the symbol of that great man himself, celebrated and recalled in his cherished weapon.

  Now it was in Ceric’s possession. It was Fated to be his, laid by and saved for him by Modwynn, Lady of Kilton, destined to be hung upon his chest. Now it was Ceric's hand that closed about it, a hand he prayed would be worthy of the honour, and the task.

  Chapter the Second: Two Women

  Four Stones in Lindisse

  RAEDWULF, the bailiff of Defenas, rode steadily by Ceric’s left side. He was the oldest of any of the men there by a decade, and was in fact the father of Wilgyfu, who had almost four years ago wed Worr, the horse thegn of Kilton. His girl had left him then, gone north and to the sea to Kilton, a place which had suited her well, for she had already presented Worr with two healthy boys.

  Raedwulf rarely saw his grandsons, and the thought that he had been so blessed took some getting used to. His own wife had died in childbed after their daughter’s birth, and he had raised Wilgyfu with the help of his nearby married sister. He and his daughter had travelled up to Kilton often enough to be noticed by Worr, who even as a youth had become a vital part of the household. Worr’s ability with horses had led him to be set in charge of all the herd kept by Godwin, and the beasts’ training, breeding, and care placed largely in his hands. That Worr was a stalwart fighter and superior at tracking only enhanced his value. His long-time attachment to Godwin’s younger brother Gyric marked him nearly as close as kin, and when Gyric had returned, blind and weakened, from the treachery he had suffered it was Worr who became his steadfast companion.