She cursed him for the loss of the fat cat. Her old body creaked as she crouched in hiding. Her stomach rumbled with hunger. Again she thought of roasted cow meat, its juices dripping over a fire. She must have food. Clasping her hands together she prayed for the man to go away and leave her to her scavenging. When at last he emerged from the house, he carried a bundle wrapped in cloth. She thought it looked big enough to be a whole ham or a side of bacon. The certainty that it was food burned into her brain, and again she cursed the warrior. If only she had arrived sooner, that ham, or whatever it was, would be hers now. But what could it be; smoked pig meat, a salted side of mutton? What was this arrogant thief stealing from her?
The man lowered the bundle to the ground and hurried back into the house. He re-emerged carrying a spade. Ettith watched him choose a spot of earth near a small shrine to Eostre, the spring goddess. He poked the spade at the ground a few times and then dug it in deep, piling his weight behind it.
"Food, he's burying the food," she told herself, before doubts dismissed the notion. No, not food, she thought, but what? She stared at the bundle, trying to make sense of the swaddled shape. Is it a little child? She shuddered as the idea that it could be grew in her mind. It could be a bairn – perhaps his own. She smoothed her palms over her cheeks and stood up, watching him work. Sadness chilled her like shadows. She pitied him. Despite her years of trouble and loss, the sight of this lone warrior digging a grave for his small child struck her deeply. She stepped out of hiding and hobbled towards him, determined to offer whatever comfort she could.
Startled, the man spun round to face her, wide eyed. "Oh gods, mother!" he said. "You scared the marrow out o' me. I didn't think there was anybody here."
She was about to reply when, from the corner of her eye, she caught a slight movement in the swaddled bundle. "It's alive!"
"Aye, just about. It's the mother who's dead. The bairn seems right enough," he said, sweat dripping off his nose and vanishing into the wilderness of his whiskers. He studied Ettith for a moment then asked, "You're not their kin are you? I don't remember seeing you before."
"No."
"Aagh — pity. She died just now while I was in there. You'd have thought she was waiting for me. She just handed me the bairn and died - never made a sound."
Ettith eyed him closely. "So, you're not kin either?"
"No, but I knew 'em. Not her so much as her man. He was a comrade, a blood sworn friend," he said. "It's the least I can do for him. He was killed."
He began digging again, but with a fierce energy. Ettith watched him, wondering where such strength came from. After a while he stopped and mopped his brow. "I know these parts well, but don't recall seeing you, old mother."
"No, I'm just passing," Ettith said, adding hopefully. "Have you any food?"
He waved a hand in the direction of his pony. "Aye, there's a pack on the horse. I brought it for the woman. Her man was killed alongside me in the shield wall. I promised him. She'll not need it now. I brought her that damned cow too. It's slower than winter honey. Can you take it off me? I've urgent duties. I can't be slowed by a stubborn cow."
Ettith could hardly believe her luck. The pack was full of such food as she had only dreamed of in months; bread, salt pig, cheese, a sack of dried white beans, some coarse flour, a block of salt, honey and a skin of ale. She sat beneath the horse's belly, stuffing her mouth as fast as she could; afraid she may be dreaming and might wake up before she'd had her fill.
When the grave was finished, the man carried out the body of the child's mother and gently lowered it into the ground. Ettith stood beside him looking down at the scrawny corpse wound in a sheet.
"She were a real beauty in her day," he said, his voice thickened by emotion. "You'd not think so now, would you?"
"Huh, so was I, once upon a time," said Ettith.
The man inspected her, unconvinced. "Aye well, that's the way of things I suppose." He shovelled earth over the corpse leaving the face until last.
Ettith left him to his task and wandered towards the dead woman's house, pausing for a closer look at the child sleeping in its bundle of cloths. It was a little girl about three years old. A pretty child, even though her tear-stained face was thin and drawn. Her tiny hands were slender and delicate. A leather thong, shiny with wear curled around one hand and threaded through a hole in a purple gemstone, about as big as a pigeon's egg. Ettith handled it, admiring its colour and river-polished smoothness.
"Is she all right?" the man called from the grave side.
His voice startled her, scattering her thoughts. "Oh, aye she's fine. She just needs a few good meals." She tucked the child in its soiled rags and left her sleeping to go and peer into the open door of the house. Of course, she did not dare enter. It was a house of death. Spirits would still be lurking inside hoping to catch another unwary soul.
The warrior finished his sad work and tossed the spade aside. Wiping his hands on his front, he approached Ettith, stopping on the way to pick up the sleeping child. Ettith watched with trepidation as he tried to gather up the infant. His clumsy struggle to balance the child safely woke her up. She began to howl with such a voice that its echo bounced around the village like the wail of some other-worldly creature. With a pained look the man came close to Ettith. "Do you want to come with me, or stay here? I'll leave you the cow if you're staying. Only, I must travel quickly. I don't want it slowing me down again. Treat her kindly and she'll milk well. Milk's better than meat in these times, old mother."
Ettith thanked him, praising him ecstatically as he mounted his pony. He barely heard her as he struggled to calm the screaming child in his arms. At the forest edge, Ettith stopped and watched him disappear into the enveloping green. A wave of apprehension swept her. Perhaps she should go with him? What was she to do? The solitude and secrecy of her life had become open and complicated. She now had a cow and a great pack of food to protect. Instead of being free to wander she would have to stay put, at least until the food ran out, or the cow died or wandered off. As she reviewed her new situation, she looked around the empty village. Its oppressive silence bore down, intensified by the distant, fading sounds of the warrior's departure.
She was alone now, but for her cow munching contentedly at the living turf roof of one of the houses. The silence heightened her sense of dread. She thought of yoking the cow beneath the pack of food and chasing after the warrior, and was on the point of doing so when a new sound chipped at the emptiness. It was a feeble cry, like a kitten's mewing. With relief, she remembered the cat and looked about for it. Now it could be company, not food.
Again, she heard the sound, but this time it did not seem quite so feline - more like a gurgling cough. It came from the dead woman's house.
"Spirits!" She backed away in terror. "Oh Holy Mother Frigg spare me," she cried, falling to her knees.
The sound grew louder, becoming unmistakably an infant's cry. Something deep inside her awakened, transforming her fears for herself into concern for the mysterious, unseen child. She edged towards the house, trembling at the realisation that she must go inside that place of death. She chipped a handful of salt from her newly acquired supply, and summoning courage, hobbled to the house. As she stepped over the threshold she scattered the sacred charm before her. Her courage stiffened as the charm did its work. Inside the large single room she met not even one lurking spirit.
It was a well-to-do house with many of the trappings of prosperity. There was a sturdy oak table with a bench and stools drawn up to it. A large bed had embroidered curtains. Against the walls were two elm-plank coffers, a shrine to the goddess Frigg, and a standing loom. Beside the loom a finely carved, ash-wood mydercan caught her eye. Beneath its polished lid she found sewing yarns, needles and pins. This she realised explained how two hangings of extraordinary quality, such as only a wealthy thegn might own, dressed one of the room's lime-washed walls. Taken with the loom and the mydercan, Ettith could see that this was the house of a succes
sful seamstress, a woman whose work adorned the houses of the rich.
The child's crying stopped, jerking her from her thoughts. She looked about with a start. In a corner she saw a wooden crib. The babe inside it was a girl of about a year and a half. She was painfully thin, her little bones pushed against her skin. Ettith's old heart went out to her. "Oh my little love, how could he have missed seeing you?" she said. "Trust a man to do only half a thing."
She reached to pick up the child, but stopped herself on noticing that she still clutched the leather thong and its bluish purple gemstone in her hand. Panic gripped her. She had not meant to keep it. It belonged to the little girl. She must give it back. Rushing from the house, as fast as her old legs would carry her, she went after the warrior, calling out for him.
It was too late. He had gone.
….…
Chapter Two
Mercian England 633 AD
The longhouse shuddered, its timbers groaning as a tree, torn from the earth for a battering ram, smashed again into the wattle wall. Scabs of plaster broke away, revealing the coarse weave of hazel lath on oak studding beneath. Smoke rippled down through the thatched roof, smothering beam and rafter. Wynflaed watched it ooze menacingly above her. It swelled and barged, gathering bulk, before flopping down the wall and splashing towards her across the earthen floor.
"They've torched the roof!" she cried, bridled fear cracking her voice. She pressed a kerchief to her nose and tightened her grip on Buhe's hand.
Buhe's father beckoned. Like a rock in a sea storm, he stood amidst the chaos of his burning hall calmly directing his terrified household. "Come by me, you two," he said. "They'll soon be through the wall and the thatch'll go up like a marsh devil when the air gets to it."
Though he tried to appear calm, Wynflaed sensed his apprehension. She allowed herself and Buhe to be ushered away from the fiercest burning, pretending not to see the old thegn's fearful, secret glances at his smouldering roof.
"Pull that table against the wall - get under it," he said, inserting his fist into the iron boss of his lime-wood shield.
Spears punctured the wall. Cold air rushed in, feeding the hot, glutinous smoke. The under-thatch was aglow, as red as sunset. It burst into flame, sucking the breath from Wynflaed's lungs. Noise crashed in through the broken wall, dragging men with swinging swords and axes behind it. In their refuge beneath the table Wynflaed and Buhe clung grimly to each other. Between them and certain death stood Buhe's father, the old warrior, magnificent in his battle harness — though it no longer fitted. He stood his ground, exchanging blows with the raiders, mocking them as smoke and the unexpected ferocity of the heat shrivelled their thirst for blood, driving them back through the shattered wall in scrambling disarray.
The old man pressed them, prodding and slashing as they fell back. "Cowards!" he yelled. "You came to kill Uhtred. Well, I'm here. Come and fight me, you scum."
As the last frenzied raiders retreated ignominiously, Buhe scrambled from beneath the table and ran to her father. She was sobbing, but more from love and pride in him than from any sense of fear for herself. She threw her arms around him and stretched up to kiss his bearded cheek. "Father, we must get out" she said, tugging on his shield arm. "I'd rather be fleshered by an axe than fried like pig meat."
Startled, the old thegn gazed into her soot-stained face, as if trying to remember who she was. He looked around his hall at the faces of his frightened servants and then back at Buhe. In her blue eyes, so painfully scoured by smoke and tears, he saw her fear. He gathered her gently behind his shield and kissed her forehead.
"Think of Wynflaed and Luffa and the others," Buhe said. "They might not kill the servants. We have to get them out to give them a chance."
"You're right, little mother," he said. "It's better we die out there where the gods can see us." He took a short dagger from his belt and pressed its handle into her palm looking at her with tear-glossed eyes. "You'd better take this," he said. "You mightn't think yourself quite a woman yet, my sweet Buhe, but those men out there ..."
Buhe looked at the knife, then at her father. Despite her youth, she needed no further explanation. "What about Flaedy?" she asked, glancing towards her friend.
"I'm all right," Wynflaed cried, scrambling out from beneath the table. She brandished a small boning knife and forced a pugnacious smile. "They'll get some of this if they touch me."
Uhtred chuckled and held out his sword arm to encircle her as she joined them. "That's it then," he said, hugging the two. "We're ready. Let 'em do their worst."
Turning to his household, he summoned them to follow him. Flames now barred escape by the door, so he led them to the broken wall, his shield held aloft to fend off flaming gobs of thatch and pitch dripping from the burning roof. Buhe followed then Wynflaed and the other servants, jostled into line by old Luffa the senior house woman. Gasping for air in the smoke and heat, they clung to each other like a string of blind beggars at a harvest fair.
Outside in the chill night a ring of cruel, eager faces, lit as bright as lamp-drawn moths, confronted them. Uhtred rushed at the nearest man and felled him with a single blow. Astonishment still showed on the dead raider's face as Uhtred advanced over the corpse.
Coughing and choking, Wynflaed struggled out blindly. She stumbled over smouldering debris, gasping as fresh air drenched her face, stripping stinging threads of smoke and heat from her eyes and lungs. Her ankle turned on something round and hard as her bare feet probed for safe footing. It was the head of a corpse, almost severed from the neck. Trying to focus, she peered with tear veiled eyes and recognised a friend. Her legs faltered. She swayed on the brink of collapse. Instinctively she reached for Buhe's arm. "Look what they did, Buhe," she sobbed. "They killed Quiet Eadie."
Buhe caught her hand. She was sobbing, her sooty face riven with tear-washed lines. She clung to Wynflaed's hand as the pair gazed about the longhouse garth, seeing for the first time the bloodied corpses of Uhtred's ingas, his slaves, servants and tenants; friends and neighbours she had been raised with. At the far side of the enclosure, huddled in the smith's compound, the few who had so far survived, mostly women and children, cried out to their master as they saw him.
The raiders had begun wrenching open the doors of Uhtred's great barn. Others were driving his oxen, horses and mules from their stalls and harnessing them to carts, yokes and pack-harness to haul away their plunder.
Wynflaed watched them, the true worth of all that the barn contained impressing itself upon her. Years of work and planning had yielded a good harvest. The villagers had thanked the gods and feasted around a bonfire. They had sacrificed a sheep to Nerthus the Earth Mother, and placed flowers and fruit on the little shrines to Frigg in the fields and lanes, to thank her for the magic of fertile seed. In Thunner's glade virgins had danced naked around his oak, praising him for restraining his anger and granting them soft rains and fine weather. Now it was all to be lost in a single night. There would be nothing left - and nothing to replace it.
Desperately wondering what she could do Wynflaed gazed around her. She saw two raiders squaring up to the old thegn. Others milled around him like snarling dogs, eager to jump in should their comrades fail to cut him down. The hopelessness of their situation struck home even deeper, bathing her in cold sweat. Something snapped like a bowstring inside her brain. She found herself running, blind to danger. She leapt between the posturing men and threw her arms around Uhtred's neck, placing her slim body between him and his attackers.
"No - no stop! Please don't hurt him," she cried. She had not an idea in her head, except that she must stop them killing Uhtred. She would not allow it. She would not let them slaughter this kind old man, her father in all but blood. Twelve years earlier Uhtred had saved her, a helpless orphan no more than three-years-of-age. Now she would save him. It was not bravery. What she did was pure impulse, the blind reaction of one much loved and loving.
Despite being a widower, the old thegn had brought her
up like his own. Whatever his daughter Buhe had, so had she. The girls had studied, eaten, slept and played together. Each had borrowed clothes and toys from the other. Never was there a hand-me-over, or make-do-and-mend that they did not both endure. Uhtred had never done a thing to make Wynflaed feel unwanted. She would not see him killed.
The lightning slash of a knife flashed from the hand of one of the raiders. Uhtred spun away, following his out-thrown shield as though borne up by a powerful gust of wind. Blood spurted from his neck, salting Wynflaed's lips. She turned on the attacker. "Stop! Stop!" she screamed, flinging herself to her knees and wrapping her arms around the startled raider's legs. The man gaped down at her, an odd look of embarrassment and confusion smoothing the murderous creases from his brow. His comrades too seemed baffled. For a moment they lowered their axes, glancing nervously at each other and laughing in bewilderment.
An officer approached and stood between his men and the wounded thegn. His eyes flicked from one to the other. In all the chaos and sickening confusion, a strange calm enveloped them. It was as though Wynflaed, by some magic in her actions, had drawn an enchanted circle around them driving out chaos and violence.
The silence spread to the horde, honouring the officer's raised hand and his steady gaze along their churning ranks. In the enjoining quiet, Uhtred's groans and curses seemed harsh above the crackle and hiss of burning and the choral murmur of quieting voices. Buhe fussed beside her father, overlooked by old Luffa, fat and wheezing tearfully. Wynflaed watched the officer, her heart pounding, stomach sick with anxiety.
He was tall and broad at the shoulder. His chest was heaving from exertion beneath silver studded armour of dark red leather. Blood bespattered his scarred, muscular forearms. He wore brecs of dark green wool and boots of soft leather, bound to the calf. Wynflaed returned his gaze, annoyed to see that he seemed to find the situation amusing. "I'm commander here," he said, his sword seeking out a silver trimmed scabbard at his belt.