by Katy Moran
But Essa did not hear. Not letting go of her hand, he went and shifted the saddle so it sat true on Melyor’s back. Lark tightened the straps and he handed her up into the saddle as she carefully cradled the child, Hild’s little daughter. Once they were safe, he got up behind them.
It was time to go. Time to leave, go to Elfgift. There was so much he had to tell her. He leaned forward, breathing in the scent of Lark’s hair, drinking in the warmth of her body as she sat before him, holding the sleeping baby close to her breast.
He was free again now, as he had been with Cai when he was a child. There was nothing but the sky above them.
The earth was theirs.
Historical note
BRITAIN as we know it would be almost unrecognizable to Essa: there were no such places as England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, just a collection of much smaller warring tribes or kingdoms. There is endless argument about the people who lived here – had all the native British been killed or pushed into the western hills by invading Anglo-Saxon tribes from mainland Europe, or was there a more gradual settlement? To this day, no one knows for sure, but I think there was probably a mixture of invasion and more peaceful immigration. Maybe it depended on what the harvest had been like and how much food there was to go around. At such a great distance from Britain as it was then, it is hard to know precisely what happened and when, and so I have had to make a few guesses about the exact years in which Cai might have left Essa with the Wixna, and Mercia marched on the Wolf Clan.
In the year 731, about a hundred years after Bloodline is set, a monk called Bede finished writing the first ever history of the English, a sign that the tribes in part of Britain were starting to see themselves as one kingdom, united by Christianity. Bede describes how King Penda’s Mercian warriors attacked East Anglia, whose king rode into battle armed only with his faith in God. It’s worth remembering, though, that there were gaps in Bede’s knowledge, so we can’t trust everything he says – and history is always coloured by the opinions of the person writing it. Penda is not the only character in Bloodline to have made his way into recorded history – others did, too, although a few names have been changed. Some Anglo-Saxon names seem to have had literal meanings, and so I have translated a handful of them (badly, no doubt!) into modern English. Elfgift, from Ælfgifu, is an example, and hopefully these translations help to create a sense of what Essa’s world was like.
When the last Roman legions left Britain in about AD 410, most people were Christian, but because the incoming Angles, Saxons, Jutes and other tribes could not write about what they believed in, we don’t know much about how they saw the world. The names of a few gods and goddesses survive in the days of the week – Tiw’s Day, Woden’s Day, Thor’s Day and Frejya’s Day. It’s likely that people whose lives were ruled by sun, rain and harvest worshipped the earth itself, sure that the animals, trees and streams around them were deeply connected to the spirit world: the realm of the elvish. Similar beliefs are still held in many corners of the world from Russia to the Amazon, where spirit-men and women are known as shamen. Many of these ancient traditions lived on in Britain long after Christianity had taken hold again – Essa has his serpent spirit-guide, and until relatively recently people believed that the witch had her familiar: an animal-spirit in the shape of a cat or perhaps a bird who would do her bidding.
There are places in Essa’s story that still exist, much changed, to this day. The once-great hall at Ad Gefrin is long gone, but if you visit Northumbria and hike to the top of Yeavering Bell, you’ll look out on the hills patrolled by Godsway and his brother The Fox. Bedricsworth monastery is now buried under the cathedral town of Bury St Edmunds, and there must have been many small tribes like the Wixna who had the bad luck to find themselves settled in a kind of no-man’s land between bigger, warring clans like the Mercians and the Wolf Folk. (The East Anglian royal family were known as the “wuffings”, which is believed to translate as something like “little wolves”.)
A lot has changed, but out in the countryside you might find a place where the sound of the motorway has faded and there are no houses in view, no electricity pylons, no cars; a place where the grass is long and the sky is high and wide above you. These places are rare and getting harder to find, but it’s here that we’re closest to the past.
Acknowledgements
MY GRATEFUL thanks to all at Felicity Bryan and Walker, especially Catherine Clarke, Denise Johnstone-Burt, Chris Kloet, Ellen Holgate and Claire Elliot, to Dr David Hill and Helen Caffrey for their historical expertise, to Clare Purcell for sharing her horse-knowledge with me, and to Sam and Karen Llewellyn for their encouragement. I would also like to thank Kim Siddorn, for his excellent advice about Anglo-Saxon fight-craft, and Jeanne Feasey, who suggested the historical bit was best. Bloodline would have been very different were it not for a truly brilliant work of history by Rowland Parker, The Common Stream, which showed me how much the story of this island has been shaped by people who left barely anything behind but the changes wrought on the land by their spades. Needless to say, though, any mistakes are entirely my own fault. Thanks are due as well to my erstwhile colleagues – particularly Marion, Elv and Amanda – for all their support, and to Willie, James, Mart and Sophie for putting up with me the rest of the time.
About the author
KATY MORAN began writing Bloodline, her first novel, whilst she was still at university in Manchester. The manuscript was never finished and lay hidden in a drawer for many years until a friend read it and told her she should finish it. She is an author with a unique ability for capturing the atmosphere of the times and places she describes, which she attributes to the strong connection she felt to the landscape around her when she was growing up. A former editor at Scholastic, Katy is now a full-time writer, and works from the garden shed of her London home.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
First published 2008 by Walker Books Ltd
87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ
This edition published 2013
Text © 2008 Katy Moran
Cover photograph: Martin Beddall / Alamy
The right of Katy Moran to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-4063-4890-3 (ePub)
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