She had placed her hand over his. “I take happiness in your own,” she told him, with warm truthfulness. Burginde, off at her shoulder, pressed her lips together, but gave her head a firm nod just the same.
His next words were more uncertain. “I want to see her now, but first… I saw Ashild when I rode in, and she spoke to me.”
His mother’s sudden intake of breath said much. He looked about them. They were still at the foot of the stairs. Both his aunt and little sister would likely be up at work in the weaving room. They needed privacy. He lifted his hand to the treasure room which he had just quitted, and a moment later unlocked the door again.
After he closed the door he spoke.
“She told me. About her coming child. Ceric’s child,” he felt need to add.
“She also said she will remain here.”
Burginde had clicked her teeth, and did not attempt to stifle her sigh. “She be a mule, that girl.” She tilted her round chin a moment, as if thinking on her own words. “Prances like that big white beast of hers, but she be a mule, at heart.”
Hrald had let his eyes roll upward at this. Burginde was abetting Ashild’s behaviour by devising stories around the coming child. The look he gave her prompted the tartness of the nurse’s next words. “I need not agree with all she says and does, to want to aid and protect her.”
He could not gainsay this. Ashild’s natural forthrightness made it hard not to help her, even when he disagreed with her. Mention of the stallion Thorfast had presented his sister with pushed Hrald to consider the dead man’s cousin whom he was about to wed.
“I will see Dagmar now, and tell her that Haward and I have come to terms.” He glanced down a moment. “The other matter… it can wait.”
“As well it must, Hrald,” his mother said. Her earnestness was gentle, but real. “It is Ashild’s life, and her child. She will tell Dagmar in her own time.”
Ælfwyn had another thought. It was hardly seemly that the bridegroom brought word that his suit had been accepted; this was news told by the prospective bride’s parents or guardian. She herself fulfilled that role while Dagmar was under her roof and yet unwed. She wanted to spare both young people any awkwardness over this.
“Let me tell her your gladsome news,” Ælfwyn proposed.
Approaching the house which Dagmar now inhabited, Ælfwyn gave thought to something Ceridwen had told her years earlier. When she had arrived at the burh of Kilton, bringing Gyric seemingly back from the dead with her, his mother had greeted her in singular fashion, naming her at once “daughter.” No such woman awaited Ælfwyn at Four Stones when she entered its gates as a bride. But she could offer that same heartfelt welcome to the maid her son chose as his wife.
The door to the small house opened at once to her knock. Dagmar stood there, a look of hopeful expectation on her face, which changed but little when she saw who stood there.
“My daughter,” Ælfwyn said in greeting. She opened her arms to embrace her.
Dagmar gave a small gasp, but readily returned the embrace. The generosity of these words surprised her. “My lady,” she answered.
Ælfwyn smiled and lifted her hand as if to wave this off. “We shall be much closer than that, Dagmar. Hrald has just returned with the happy tidings that your cousin and he have agreed on bride-price and dowry.”
The Lady of Four Stones gave a mirthful laugh, which allowed Dagmar to do the same. Ælfwyn took her hand and led her to the bench at the little table set before the sleeping alcoves.
“Hrald wishes the ceremony to be held as soon as Oundle can prepare for it,” she went on. “I will write to Sigewif today, asking her to make ready.”
Ælfwyn had already given thought on this. A Summer hand-fast was greatly to be desired. Women made mothers then had the benefit of harvest abundance, giving their Spring-born babes a strong start. No woman of Four Stones’ hall nor village lacked grain or other essentials, but fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs and butter and cheese in plenty could only be enjoyed before the onset of the cold.
Dagmar nodded, half afraid that Hrald’s mother would ask her to append her own note to the letter she would write. She did not. As a mother herself, Ælfwyn’s thoughts were travelling in quite another direction.
“We must tell your mother,” she said next, “and though your bride-price has been settled between your cousin and this hall, I will send her a gift of silver. Hrald will send escort to bring her to witness.”
Dagmar’s sudden intake of breath was matched by the look of dismay on her face.
“Nej,” she answered quickly. She took a breath in attempt to calm herself, and went on. “No.”
“Your mother must come,” Ælfwyn prompted. Her tone was low, but not without a note of surprise at Dagmar’s reaction.
“My lady, my mother – she… I fear her meeting you.”
“Dagmar, why?”
She named stared at Ælfwyn. Dagmar felt her eyes begin to fill. She must say it. Only the truth would suffice, as ugly as it was.
“She did not take well to being set aside by my father. She spends much of each day with a mead cup in her hand. I am fearful that if Hrald sees her, the shame I feel will rob us of our happiness.” The tears she tried to blink back were now escaping down her cheeks. “I do not want her here, either for my hand-fast, or ever.”
Ælfwyn felt true pity. Her own parents had been praiseworthy in their habits, and to be shamed by the behaviour of your mother would be a burden difficult for a young bride to bear.
“I understand,” she murmured, and again took Dagmar’s hand. Guthrum had put away Dagmar’s mother when she was yet young, and moved on to the mother of Inkera. There had been other wives, both before and after. And Guthrum had left nothing to his daughters, and likely nothing to a discarded wife. She would be in need of silver. But she understood and honoured Dagmar’s request that she not be present.
“We will suggest the dangers of travel are too great,” Ælfwyn posed. “And send her gifts,” she promised.
Dagmar did not like to deny the open-heartedness of this feeling, but could not stop her next words.
“Please to keep your gifts,” she breathed.
“We must at least send her silver,” Ælfwyn said, “so she may share our joy in your union.”
“She will drink up your silver, just as she drinks up my own.”
How terrible an admission for a daughter to make of her own mother, thought Ælfwyn.
Ælfwyn nodded her head, but her sense of justice propelled her forward. “Yet she must have a share in your bride-price, widowed as she is.”
Dagmar shook her head, almost helplessly. “Anything you send she will change to drink.” She wiped her tears away with her hands, and took a breath. “I pray do not make it much, for it will end up in her cup.”
Ælfwyn took thought. It was clear Dagmar had told Hrald nothing of this, else she would not have reacted in such fear of discovery. Yet the shame was not Dagmar’s, but her mother’s. Ælfwyn found herself sighing inwardly. Dagmar seemed at more disadvantage than either she or Hrald knew. Fatherless, dower-less, and with a burdensome mother.
She could not in good conscience deny sending the woman something in acknowledgement of the upcoming nuptials; every mother, flawed as she might be, had the right to know her daughter would be well taken care of. Ælfwyn need not tell Dagmar of this, but her daughter-in-law must allow her own mother to know of her changed estate.
“I will send word to her, telling her of your wedding, but offering no escort,” she assured her.
Dagmar’s head had dropped, and her hand went to her brow. This offer, kind as it was, was not enough. She looked at Ælfwyn, a direct, even piercing look of entreaty. “My lady,” she asked, “could you not wait until I am already wed?” Her eyes moved about the small house, seeking answers. “Perhaps there will be less reason for her to try to come, if you wait until then.”
Ælfwyn’s heart moved in pity for the girl’s desperation. What dreadful sce
nes had the drunken woman subjected her daughter to, that she fear her arrival like this.
“Very well,” Ælfwyn agreed. “I will wait to send word until you are wed.” She would send the woman a small sum; she must. She thought of what more she could say to reassure Dagmar.
“Also offer our regrets that travel from Headleage was too dangerous to undertake.”
That same day Ashild went to visit Dagmar as the latter was preparing for the evening meal. Dagmar invited her in, and Ashild stepped inside the same small timber house in which for years she had lived with her aunt and uncle. She took it in once more. Æthelthryth and Asberg were bound to stay at Turcesig, and run it. Perhaps I will live here, with my child, Ashild thought. She looked at Dagmar, whose sleeping chamber would soon be the treasure room.
“Hrald told me,” she began, and then tried to temper the clumsy abruptness of this. “I am happy for you. Both.”
She leant forward and gave her future sister-in-law a kiss on her cheek, as Dagmar murmured her thanks.
“I have news as well,” Ashild went on.
Dagmar was ready for the hall, a fresh apron panel pinned to her pearl-studded brooches, her thick and glossy hair neatly combed and falling from beneath the head-wrap she had lavished such fine thread-work upon. But Ashild must stay her, and got it out all at once.
“I will have a child in Spring. The father is of Wessex.”
The sudden movement of Dagmar’s head showed her startle. Hrald told her Ashild had been courted a long time, but had not added this result.
“Ceric, he of Kilton,” Dagmar supplied.
The moment she said it she saw by Ashild’s face that a confidence had been breached. Dagmar knew of this man who pursued Hrald’s sister. She smiled as warmly as she could and said the next.
“Hrald told me of his courtship of you, that Ceric is a great friend of his.” She thought what more she could say of these unforeseen tidings. “Hand-fast and babe both. There is much for which to congratulate you.”
Ashild nodded. She could scarce be angry at Hrald for mentioning Ceric to his future bride, not when he wanted the union between them. But the sense of having been talked about stung. At least her coming babe was a surprise.
Dagmar felt off balance enough to inwardly confront her need for frankness. Ashild lacked beauty or grace, yet possessed an attraction through the force of her character that intimidated her. She was not used to any woman making her feel such, and as different as they were, both Ashild and Abbess Sigewif sparked this emotion within her. It was uncomfortable, and made her feel at a loss. It led to her next, heartfelt words.
“I want to be your friend,” she hoped aloud.
Ashild gave thought to this statement. Friendship, in Ashild’s ken, was a privilege allowed a few, and proximity and even relationship could not impose it. It was always earned, not granted. Still, she must then earn it herself, in return.
“As I hope to be yours,” Ashild answered.
“We have much in common, you and I,” Dagmar now offered.
“Já. Hrald, and Four Stones.”
Ashild’s switch to Norse seemed to confirm this, yet the bluntness of her reply forced Dagmar’s lips into a brief smile.
“More than that,” Dagmar went on. “I meant… we are like each other. You dress as a Dane.”
“My father was Yrling.” Ashild’s words were low pitched, and voiced in the same solemn tone Dagmar might use to report that her sire had been Guthrum, King. It was a received dignity that affirmed its own authority.
Dagmar, her eyes fixed on Ashild’s face, nodded. This woman before her had every right to her pride, more so perhaps than Dagmar herself, as Ashild’s self-esteem was seated not only in her rich war-lord father, but in her own heroic action defending one of the fruits of his treasure, Oundle.
Dagmar asked the next question with the gravity it deserved.
“He died in battle?”
Ashild gave a single nod of her head. “At my mother’s home of Cirenceaster. Other Danes tried to lay claim to it.”
Dagmar took a moment to reflect on this. “May he who struck him down be denied a place in Asgard.”
It forced a rueful smile from Ashild. “He was Christian, who slew my father.” She could see Dagmar’s puzzlement, attempting to compass a Christ-believing Dane who had been at that battle.
“A Saxon, of Wessex,” Ashild said next, relieving Dagmar of her wonderment. There was no need to say more than this, to name him or his burh.
Dagmar paused a moment. The death of such a war-lord as Yrling would have ready avengers.
“He who avenged him won the regard of many,” she offered.
It was Ashild’s turn to reflect. “It was Hrald’s father, Sidroc, who did so.”
It was meet that vengeance should be wrought by kin, and Dagmar’s next words conveyed this. “All the more honour upon your hall,” she murmured.
Ashild’s eyes traced the lines of Dagmar’s face. Her brother loved this woman, one possessed of notable beauty. Hrald’s joy in winning her could not help but touch her own heart, one which she knew she sometimes willfully held closed. The change wrought in her from her coming babe, that softening and blossoming which she could not fight, swelled within her now. It gave Ashild the chance to extend her hand to Guthrum’s daughter, and more than her hand.
“Our hall,” she answered, taking Dagmar’s hand in her own.
Chapter the Sixth: The New Lady of Four Stones
THE date of the joining of hands of Hrald, Jarl of Four Stones and Dagmar, daughter of Guthrum had yet to be announced. As Oundle was to be the site of the wedding, Abbess Sigewif was the determiner of when the liturgical calendar and the foundation’s harvest needs could best accommodate this event. The ceremony was to be small, given the bride’s lack of kin and the difficulty of travel, and quiet as well, so that none outside those immediately concerned knew that Hrald and his chosen would be that day at the more lightly defended Oundle rather than the stronghold of Four Stones. Hrald only hoped it might be upon the Feast of St Matthew. That Feast, marking equal day and night, lay at the apex of the final harvest, and seemed in every way of good omen.
Dagmar had remained at Four Stones. She wished her sister Inkera might be with her, but his reluctance when she asked her cousin Haward if he could send for her forced her to forgo this hope. Such a distance would require him to send at least four men to fetch her, and he would not expose either his own men nor Inkera to the hazards of the journey.
Yet unbeknownst to Dagmar riders had been sent.
“My men will be returning from Headleage soon,” Hrald told her one wet morning after the hall had broken its fast. Dagmar was sitting at the women’s table, and he had come over to her. Ashild was rarely there in the morning, and Burginde had risen to attend to her own duties before ascending the stair to the weaving room. Of late Dagmar had joined her future mother-in-law and kin there, happy to sit amongst them with her own hand work, or to aid Ælfwyn in the finishing of the new linens for the treasure room.
“Headleage?” she repeated. Her heart had almost missed a beat at the mention.
“My mother and I sent silver, to your own mother. Also they will tell Inkera that you will soon be my wife.”
“Word was sent now, before our wedding,” she said. It was neither question nor answer, and was uttered more to herself than to him. She did not wish to believe this.
“Yes. My mother bid me not to bring your own here; I hope you will forgive her that. Even with my escort she felt the trip too dangerous. But she wanted to send silver to her there at Headleage. As I did. She wished to wait until after we were wed, but I would give my men the benefit of the longer days so they might travel the faster. So I sent them three days ago, instead.”
Dagmar nodded mutely. Hrald’s blithe reporting of his actions made clear that he knew nothing of her fears about her mother’s untoward appearance. And the Lady of Four Stones had not betrayed her confidence, not in that. If Ælfwyn was to i
nsist upon a gift for her own mother, she could hardly resent such open-handedness, though Dagmar feared its result.
Dagmar was staring straight ahead, seeing nothing. She was still sitting, and now rose.
“I would we could wed now. Today,” she said.
Early that afternoon Dagmar came down from the weaving room into the hall. She had been working the morning amongst the women there, rehemming a linen shift of hers. She had not spoken to Ælfwyn about the men Hrald had sent to Headleage, and indeed was not even sure she knew he had sent them early. But the strain of anticipation was great. Hrald’s men may have found Bodil in a drunken stupor, or a fit of rage, or collapsed in tears. She may have received them as haughtily as a queen from the Sagas, or been as coquettish as a milk maid. Her mother had many moods, and Dagmar never knew which she might find her in. She feared what the returning couriers might tell her husband-to-be, and her fear was even greater that perhaps Bodil had persuaded them to take her with them to Four Stones. Thinking on all this made it hard to focus on her sewing, and even harder to be good company. At last she told Ælfwyn her head ached from the close work, and asking her pardon, excused herself to go to her small house and lie down.
The rain had only increased, but she had a length of boiled wool Burginde had handed her. Held above her head it would serve as proof against the wet as she crossed the hall yard.
She walked down the wooden stair, noting the creak of the third tread, and came into the hall proper. All the trestle tables were away, and the place quite empty, save for some movement in the dim kitchen passage, where two women who had finished sweeping the stone floor were now hanging their birch brooms.
As Dagmar began to cross the floor, the door of the treasure room opened. Hrald stepped out, and looking down as he was, was yet unaware of Dagmar’s presence. He placed the key in the lock to secure it and it clicked in response. He turned, key in hand, to see her there.
The smile on his face spread from his mouth to his eyes. She was forced to smile back, to take pleasure in his own at seeing her. He made a slight motion, enough that she read it as a gesture to approach. She went to him.
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