The Betrothed Sister

by Carol McGrath

  Why has Grandmother Gytha sent me her favourite amber ring? Thea removed it from her finger and laid it on the nearest birch tablet. She drew three letters from the casket.

  Trembling with excitement, she arranged the letters in the order in which she would read them. First, there was a letter from Grandmother Gytha, folded and sealed with her dragon seal. Next there was a letter with a seal she did not recognise. She scrutinised it. The seal appeared to show a small trading vessel. It is more modest than King Sweyn’s seal. Finally, there was a third letter sealed with a blob of yellow wax bearing the imprint of a coin, possibly a dirham, pressed into it. Padar, it is his.

  She opened Gytha’s letter first, unfolding it carefully. Laying it out on the table, she bent over it, anxious to hear her grandmother’s voice speak to her. She read it slowly.

  Thea, my granddaughter, by the Grace of God in this summer of 1071, I send you greetings. There is not much time left. What is time but a chimera marked with great happiness and much sorrow. My life has been long and I shall depart it content in the knowledge that you are soon to make a great marriage. You will conduct yourself honourably and enter your new life with pride and honour.

  It was a surprise when one who links our past to our present arrived this summer at St Omer, after a long journey from the north. With great joy, I say that I am pleased that the skald has married at last, and with our own little golden Gudrun. May the Virgin look over them and bring them safely back to your lands.

  Your mother, Elditha, resides comfortably in Canterbury. My daughter Edith and your sister Gunnhild are at Wilton. Godwin has decided to remain in Ireland until he regains his kingdom. He was betrayed by Sweyn who has now granted ships and support to the Aetheling Edgar. Sweyn is not to be trusted and, by the Norns, he will never get a portion of England. He has backed the wrong prince. May the sisters who weave our lives confound his fate. Edmund is a merchant princeling, I hear. That is well since he must earn a living.

  As my life reaches the end of its spinning, my great sadness is that my youngest son Wulfoth and your little brother Ulf remain hostages in the Norman court at Falaise. May the saint of travellers, Christopher, protect them and bring them home safely to their own land.

  I send you my blessing and my ring. Remember me in your prayers and in your thoughts. And, my child, I have a final request. Name your first male child Harold, for no other name will do for the grandson of my greatest son.

  Gytha, Countess of Wessex

  When she came to the end of Grandmother Gytha’s letter, Thea’s heart was heavy for she loved her grandmother. Swallowing her sobs, she laid out her second letter. Glancing through it she saw it was from her brother, Edmund.

  My sister, may God protect you in the foreign land where you now dwell. I hope to travel to Rus lands in the springtime with Earl Connor who has lived some months since in Roskilde. We have wool for Constantinople and many objects of great value to sell in the Byzantine markets. I have another mission in Kiev of which, at this time, I may not speak but which we may discuss when we meet again.

  Edmund, son of Harold, once King of the English

  Outside darkness had gathered. Thea could hear voices carrying through the corridors and up the stairways of Holy Trinity. Soon the refectory bell would ring for the final meal of the day, a supper of bread, kvass and honey. She must hurry. She broke the small seal on Padar’s letter. It had been scribed several days after Gytha had written to her.

  The Norns have woven the end threads of Countess Gytha’s life. She has gone to the angels some days since. She requested that I write to you after her death and that I send her letter to you. Both letters will travel with us to Denmark where we shall find one whom we can trust to carry them safely to the Convent of the Holy Trinity.

  Your Aunt Hilda attended her mother’s passing. The great Countess Gytha was buried here on Saturday with great ceremony. May her soul rest in peace.

  At her request, I enclose her favourite silver ring. She asked me to say that other jewels will, in the fullness of time, travel to England as a dowry for your sister, Gunnhild.

  The Countess Gytha of Wessex will dwell in our prayers and thoughts always. Perhaps it is reassuring that your Aunt Hilda has taken vows, as has the countess’s dedicated companion, Lady Margaret. They remain for what time on this earth is theirs, in the Abbey of St Omer.

  Lady Thea, may I intrude on your sadness at these grave tidings with our news? It is a joy to us that Gudrun is with child. We shall return to the Rus lands in the spring. I shall establish new business interests in Kiev where I hope for Prince Vsevolod’s goodwill and kindness.

  May Christ and his Holy Angels protect you, my lady.

  I remain your servant, Padar

  Thea’s heart felt as if a stone had lodged in it. She did not know how she could attend supper but she must. It was good news that Padar and Gudrun were safe and that her companion was with child and that soon they would travel to Kiev. They linked her past to her present and she had wondered if she would ever see either of them again.

  She folded the letters back into the box, locked it and slipped the key onto the silver chain from which the cunning woman’s tiny swan dropped between her breasts. She did not return the amber ring to the pine box. Instead, she slipped Gytha’s ring into her jewel box. She placed the pine box amongst others that included the bone-plated casket which her mother had given her long ago and which contained the Godwin christening gown.

  The air stilled. She felt a strange peace descend. She wiped away the tears that had gathered in her eyes. It felt as if Grandmother Gytha was in the chamber, flesh and bone, breathing life into everything around her. And it was as if Grandmother Gytha’s spirit was hovering with her own, guiding her and protecting her. Plucking her sable-trimmed mantle from the clothing pole, she slipped it about her shoulders. Softly closing her chamber door, she descended the stairway to the refectory.

  As Thea ate her supper that evening in the monastery’s customary silence, half an ear tuned to the sister who was reading, she felt as if shaken by an imagined jolt; what was Edmund planning? Her grandmother was dead and her heart was breaking because of it, yet she could not speak of this here. She desperately wanted to connect with her past tonight. She could write a letter to Elditha. There was just a whisper of a chance that one day it would reach her. She would also send Gudrun her greetings and suggest that her dearest friend return to Russia in time for her wedding to Prince Vladimir in the Great Cathedral of St Sophia in Kiev.

  By candlelight she scratched out her letters on birch wood. She wrote deep into the night until her fingers were too cold to write another word.

  Her letter to Elditha was short. She scribed,

  My Lady Mother, by the grace of the Lady Mary, Queen of Heaven, I pray that you are in good health and in a place of safety as surely the nunnery at Canterbury remains. I am to be married to Prince Vladimir of Kiev. If we have a son we shall call him Harold for my father. May God and his Holy Angels protect you and may the Holy Spirit be with you. Although our lives have separated as lightening splits a tree in a storm, you dwell forever in my heart.

  Your loving daughter, Thea.

  To Gudrun and Padar she wrote that she hoped they would reach Kiev by Eastertide. She laid down her stylus and felt her eyes gather tears. I wanted a prince and a home, Grandmother, but in truth my home was with you, she said softly, thinking that perhaps her grandmother’s soul would catch hold of her words.

  She knew that she would forever hold her grandmother’s memory in her heart.

  The candle had burned down to a stump. Daylight was a long way off yet and she could hear the bells ring for Matins. In the morning she would insist that before the winter ice gathered the abbey priest would send her letters by Dimitri’s ship to their destination.

  23

  April 1072

  Gudrun stood by Padar’s shoulder, peering over the long narrow stretch of parchment he had pinned with stones onto the table. Below them, she cou
ld hear the clanking of pots, trestles dragged into place in the inn’s common room and the distant babble of men and women speaking in various tongues: Russian, Slavic, Polish, German, Norse, English and French. A cradle nestled in the corner of their bedchamber where Edith, their baby, slept peacefully.

  Edith was a happy baby, born in St Omer, and loved by all the women of the monastery, who had been delighted to see Padar again when he had trailed in through the abbey gates, exhausted from a long overland journey from Novgorod. The women of St Omer were even happier that he had married Gudrun and their happiness at Edith’s birth was only marred by the Countess Gytha’s death.

  Gudrun and Padar set out one early spring day filled with scudding clouds and a good southerly wind. Their ship slowly lagged northwards hugging land as near as they dared until they reached a small port near Hamburg. There, their vessel turned south-east, sailing along the wide snaking Vistula River through Poland. A short overland journey brought them to Lublin where there was a great market where Padar hoped to purchase salt and alum. From Lublin they planned to travel overland to Kiev with four packhorses, a comfortable wagon, the faithful boys from Novgorod and a substantial guard of thirty Danes.

  They would reach Kiev in time for the wedding, which they had heard from Katya’s father would take place after Easter. Padar had unfolded this map, provided by Earl Connor, to help them find their way from Lublin east to the Russian capital. He tapped the section that showed Lublin to be a town with a fortress and a market, then sliding his finger down the parchment close to a small river and what seemed to Gudrun to be mountain slopes painted with scree. After that, the trail seemed to pass through miniature fields of rye and barley, into woodland and on towards Kiev, which was marked by the Church of St Sophia.

  Gudrun scrutinised the map. Here and there churches were named in mysterious letters. Villages were marked but unnamed. Only groups of small houses and churches were witness to the existence of humankind. There were no great towns between Lublin and Kiev, not on this route. On the edges of the map the mapmaker had inked-in not only crows, ravens and hawks but also tall, thin-legged storks, deer, beavers, boar, a grey wolf and a lynx. Gudrun hoped they did not encounter danger. She prayed that wolves, lynxes and great boars stayed in the depths of the forests.

  ‘How can this guide us?’ she asked touching the parchment, a frown creasing her forehead above her nose, just below her veil. ‘There is no sense of distance.’

  ‘You are right. It is only a list to help us. Tomorrow I shall hire a guide in the Thursday market, one who speaks Norse and Rus.’

  ‘One we can trust?’ Gudrun asked with doubt creeping into her voice. She had heard from her maid that the region was full of bandits.

  ‘That is a risk we take.’ Padar rolled the scroll back into its long wooden case.

  Footsteps clattered up the stairs. Their maid, Lette, moved the curtain aside. The scent of frying bacon competed with that of baking bread. She peeped in. ‘My lady, Mistress Katerina has sent me for you and the master to come and eat dinner. I think it is pork meat again.’

  ‘Go, Lette,’ Gudrun said. ‘We shall follow in a moment.’

  Padar had found Lette in Lund, chained to others. She was a slave and he had purchased her, freeing the girl before they had set sail on the Vistula. Gudrun had insisted and knew that she was right to insist. Lette had been a devoted companion to her mistress, happy because she was travelling through lands she knew, since Lette had been born in a village not far from Lublin.

  When they arrived in Lublin Gudrun asked her servant, ‘Do you wish to return to your village? Have you people there?’

  ‘No, mistress, no. Bandits killed my father. They took all the women and children from my village as slaves. May I stay?’

  ‘I am glad to have you, Lette.’ Gudrun hugged her maid and was relieved that she did not have to look for a new servant.

  Padar tossed his satchel across his shoulder. ‘Come, Gudrun.’ He smiled at his wife. ‘We have been fortunate here. Dinner smells good. And at least Mistress Katerina keeps a clean house. I have not been bitten by too many fleas.’ He lifted the door latch. ‘We have sacks of salt stored away for the journey, but after dinner, I have one last task or two before setting out for Kiev.’

  ‘What task?’

  ‘Just a trip to the market place, to purchase alum, and find us a trustworthy guide.’

  ‘We shall all be pleased to reach Kiev, Padar.’

  ‘And we are not far away now.’ Padar let the latch fall again. He hugged her. She hugged him back. The baby gurgled. She unpeeled his arms. Swooping up the drowsy Edith, Gudrun tucked her into a linen sling which she arranged so the baby was nestling against her breast. When he lifted the latch again, she stepped after him down the stairs to the inn’s common chamber, happy in the knowledge that they would soon be in Kiev.

  Two days later their cavalcade had reached the borderlands between Poland and Russia. Lette called out, ‘I see shadows up in the rocks above us, mistress. I don’t like it.’ She lowered her voice and said nervously, ‘This pass is perfect for a bandit attack.’

  Gudrun followed her maid’s upward look. ‘There is nothing there,’ she said as she scanned the horizon. She had been enjoying her reverie. The baby was asleep and Gudrun was drowsily dreaming of a steamy bath, attended by a Turk – she could not bring herself to ever use the word slave – to scrape the dirt off her flea-ridden, dust-covered limbs. Lette was just overly nervous.

  ‘There is, I tell you. And we are lost.’

  One of Padar’s boys, Bryn, was driving their wagon. He flicked his stick anxiously at the two mules yoked to it as their wagons rattled along a stony track that twisted along a river path. Gudrun shook her head. Lette was nervous and now Bryn, who liked the maid, was making her worse by whipping the mules forward. So far the map was helpful. And, just as the map had been, their guide had so far been reliable. They were not lost, just travelling through a desolate territory. She patted Lette’s knee and said as much.

  As she looked up again, Gudrun noticed how the rocky heights merged with the sky, becoming a mountain range that stretched far beyond the visible horizon.

  ‘Really, there is nothing there, Lette. Only rocks and sky.’

  The boy scanned the rocks. ‘I see nothing.’ He added, ‘But that guide, mistress, up front with Padar …’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I don’t trust him.’

  Lette nodded. ‘See, Bryn believes me.’

  ‘It is not the guide’s fault if there is someone up there,’ Gudrun said, hoping she was right and the guide trustworthy.

  Padar had ridden ahead with the guide. Around half of his fighting men rode with them. These swordsmen and archers had accompanied them from Denmark hoping to sell their skill at the court of Prince Vsevolod. They had weapons, seaxes, swords and shields. Padar knew most of them to be strong fighters who could dismount and throw up a formidable shield wall anywhere in most circumstances, but this was formidable territory, and he hoped as he rode with a fast-flowing river to his left that they were not in any danger here.

  Padar glanced back past his mercenaries to see Gudrun seated beside Bryn chattering and holding Edith in her sling. His eyes scanned the wagon. It looked safe. It bumped along but the wheels were strong, important in terrain where the ground was rough and rutted. He glanced at Gudrun again. She was now staring at an outcrop of boulders. Lette too, appeared to be watching the mountains and pointing. Bryn flicked the mules with his whip. Their upward gaze made him feel uneasy. He, too, looked up as they continued forward. There was nothing untoward up above the ravine. Yet, the rocks above were without doubt concealing. They needed to get over the river soon, before darkness fell like a trap. They needed a ford.

  ‘The ford?’ he said to his guide.

  ‘Not far, by sunset,’ the man said.

  ‘I hope that is so. It is the third hour already.’

  ‘Soon, master.’

  None the less, as h
e trotted along, keeping close to his guide, Padar was thinking, I hope we get through this stretch safely and do ford that river soon. His hand instinctively slid down to his scabbard and to his sword, Gabriel.

  A rear guard led by Gunor, the same warrior who had come with them to Denmark from Flatholm, followed the wagon. Also following the wagon were their five pack animals laden with sacks of precious salt and alum destined for Kiev’s marketplace. The final half-dozen Danes rode at the rear.

  Padar trotted back a little to check that the baggage train was secure, hoping now that the sacks were not leaking as the mules bumped along the rocky path. He nodded to Gunor. Gunor raised his hand to acknowledge Padar as he rode by. Padar thought that nothing looked amiss.

  ‘There is no one there,’ Gudrun said to Lette a little later, as she shaded her eyes again and scanned the rocks above. ‘Do you see any creature or person, Gunor?’ she remarked to the Dane who had ridden up on her left.

  Gunor edged his mount forward in front of the wagon and scrutinised the heights above. Stepping his stallion back, he said quietly, ‘No, but it feels too silent. I don’t like it. There isn’t even birdsong.’

  ‘There’s a bird.’ The boy jerked his reins. As he looked up, one of the mules neighed. Two long, lean Danish hounds, guard dogs, that always stayed close, raced in front of Gunor, and set up their barking. A hawk had taken wing and was careering across the sky just above them. It circled, dipped into the scree-covered foothills, then rose again and disappeared behind a rocky outcrop.

  ‘I shall send one of the men forward to warn Padar,’ Gunor said, his hand already on his sword hilt. ‘The dogs sensed something other than a hawk. Could be shepherds.’

  Lette said, anxiety creeping into her voice. ‘If they were only shepherds they would show themselves.’

  ‘Maybe, they are frightened of us. We are well-armed. Mutton for dinner would be very tasty,’ Gunor said with a grin on his face. ‘Don’t you think so, little Lette?’ he teased.

  ‘No.’ Lette looked away. Gunor rode forward for a while.