Both girls felt it, a vibrant waiting hush that had settled over the silvery lake and all its surroundings. They had started out laughing and lighthearted, but the hush of this summer's afternoon had stilled their voices, and now they found themselves almost tiptoeing through the trees.
“Why don’t we visit Fox Elve?” suggested Wend, who had a wayward sense of humor that went well with her liery hair. Perhaps the ghost of the Viking Lord will rise up and snatch at our ankles!’’
Charlotte, immersed in the haunting unreal somnolence of the countryside, nodded and followed Wend down the steep path that led to the tiny isolated hollow known as Fox Elve. Everyone around there knew the legend of the Viking Lord who on some long-ago raid had been left for dead by his men when their dragon ship had departed for distant fjords. A local girl had found him, so the story went, and had nursed him back to health there by the spring at Fox Elve. But this was no ordinary girl. Her hair sprang pure gold from her head and she rode a white horse and carried a long magic sword that she could wield as well as a man. Perhaps she pitied him, this Golden Maiden. Anyway she gave him back his life there by the spring at Fox Elve. And when he was well again she kissed him on the lips and bade him depart back to the deep fjords of the north from whence he came.
But the Viking Lord had lain in her arms and felt her witchery, and he refused to go—unless she accompanied him. “Why can you not go with me?” he had demanded.
The Maiden, who was strong and beautiful, had stuck the point of her long two-edged sword into the ground and leant upon the hilt. She had looked down at him sadly from her blue eyes.
“Because twas I who brought you down,” she told him simply, “although in the heat of battle perhaps you did not know that it was I. And because you were the trophy of my own blade, none interfered when I chose to give you back your life. But if I left this place with you, we would be pursued, for I and my Magic Sword are Luck Bringers to Battles and I am considered a great prize in my village. Besides, I am promised to our chieftain. He would never let me go. He would bring a war party charging after us and they would bring you down. ”
“I care nothing for that,” scoffed the Viking Lord, who had recovered his strength and with it his bravado. "We will steal a boat and be off before the wind!"
“No,” sighed the Maiden. “But tonight I will bring you wine and lie with you one more time. Tonight—but you depart on the morrow. "
This did not suit the Viking Lord at all, and that afternoon he found some herbs in the forest, and when the Golden Maiden came with her wine sack and her sad, determined face, he managed to slip some of the herbs into her wine, whereupon she fell to the ground in a deep sleep.
And while she was sleeping he lifted her upon her white horse and rode away with her toward the sea. And as they rode, dark clouds began to drift across the sky.
They never reached the coast. The village chieftain had set spies upon them and he and a party of his men were waiting to pounce upon them before ever they reached the northernmost reaches of the lake. With his way barred, the Viking Lord wheeled his horse back the way he had come. He rode at breakneck speed, carrying his goldenhaired burden in her trailing white gown until at last he made his stand at Fox Elve, where he had first fallen and where he had been given back his life.
There in the gathering storm, with thunder rolling down from the distant hills, he laid his comely burden down. And there, surrounded, the Viking Lord called hoarsely upon his Norse gods for aid. He called upon Odin, the God of Battle, for victory, and upon Thor, the God of Thunder, to bring down his mighty hammer upon his foes.
As his encircling attackers sprang at him, he brandished above his head the Golden Maiden s magical two-edged sword, and Thor gave forth his thunderous answer. A bolt of lightning sprang from the dark sky overhead, but not to the foe—it was the upraised sword the lightning struck. The circle of attacking warriors fell back, watching in awe as the sword turned fiery red and melted and the Viking Lord was himself consumed by the flame and turned into ashes.
There were several endings to the legend that had come down, told over campfires and before crackling winter hearths, and they were all sad. But Charlotte, wanting a happy ending for the lost lovers, had supplied her own. In her version the Golden Maiden had risen on her long white legs and waved away her chieftain. She had claimed the ashes of the Viking Lord as her own, since it was her blade that had originally brought him down. He was hers. Hers forever.
With his rival turned to ashes, the chieftain had readily acquiesced and turned away, unwilling to bear the grief in his golden lady’s eyes.
And after that . . . After that, with her magic she had brought the Viking Lord to life again and they had ridden away together on some highway to the stars—so Charlotte dreamed.
The two girls had almost reached Fox Elve now, silent and breathless. Charlotte had been there many times. She knew there was naught at Fox Elve except a little copse surrounding a spring, and the tiny stream that rippled from it, and a stone cairn that some claimed had been piled up as a memorial to the Golden Maiden who had seized her chieftain’s blade in her despair and plunged it hilt-deep into her heart. And nearby, a sunken grave that perhaps held the body of the chieftain, who had taken the same dagger, still warm with his beloved’s blood, and—to join her in some netherworld—had dispatched himself with it. Or, some said—and superstitious Wend was one of these— the “sunken grave” was no real grave at all, but a gravelike hole burnt into the ground when the bolt of lightning had immolated the Viking Lord—a hole from whence his ghostly hands might reach up and out and snatch at the ankles of the unwary to drag them down to hell.
Charlotte had never liked any of those suggestions and refused to believe them. She preferred to think that the cairn was a memorial raised to commemorate a love that had defied time and death and that the sunken grave had been dug for someone else long after.
The story of the Viking Lord and the Golden Maiden had always haunted Charlotte, and now that she and Wend were padding silently down into the copse where, legend had it, the long-ago drama had taken place, she was once again spinning fanciful dreams about it.
They were under the trees now, shadowed by the branches, their bare feet making no sound on the soft grass, in an unreal other-world. The haunted cairn of piled-up rough stones was ahead of them over a little rise, and just behind that, the sunken grave lay half-hidden, festooned with blue myrtle and ivy.
Wend headed for that ivied grave and the cairn behind it, with Charlotte in her wake, when, as one, both their young bodies jerked to a violent halt—so suddenly that they almost toppled forward.
There before them a woman s long shapely naked leg was rising from the sunken grave.
The Golden Maiden! was Charlotte s first wild thought. She's come back!
Life was certainly there. That disembodied single leg was arching upward with a splendidly luxurious air. Impudently and indecorously it waved before them. As they watched, fascinated, the bare foot twirled around, toes curling to the accompaniment of a high gurgling giggle and a man's low laugh.
The two girls exchanged startled glances. Charlotte opened her mouth to speak, to whisper, "Come away, Wend"—and closed it again as another voice, slightly slurred and female, filled the air.
"Ohh, Tom ..." murmured that dreamy voice. Then, more urgently, "Ohhhh, Tom!" on a rising inflection. And then an ecstatic moan.
Charlotte gave Wend's arm a tug, but Wend was loath to go. Bright-eyed and overcome by curiosity to see who was in there moaning so joyously, Wend leaned closer, and to do so, took a single step.
A twig snapped beneath her foot.
"Come away!" entreated Charlotte.
With her words, the white leg came abruptly down. As it disappeared from view, a man's head and naked shoulders shot up, his face looking startled and indescribably wrathful. Charlotte would never forget how he looked then, his intense green eyes vivid in his tanned face and that shock of pale hair shining almost white as
the sun caught it in dappled light through the branches. Beside him now popped up a girl’s tousled butter-yellow curls, and then, as she struggled higher, her upper torso was revealed, displaying an unlaced bodice and a pair of round full naked breasts peeking out unleashed. At the sight of Wend and Charlotte, standing there with ludicrous expressions, she broke into a cascade of wild giggles.
“Shut up, Maisey,” muttered the man, frowning ferociously at the two young interlopers. Charlotte saw from his shoulder motion that he was clutching at something— very possibly his trousers. He waved a commanding arm. “Be off with you now!”
“Yes, go along with you, Wend,” chimed in Maisey irrepressibly. “And take that brat with you. And don’t you be telling my James you saw me here!”
Overcome with embarrassment, her face feeling hot enough to fry eggs on, Charlotte gave Wend a solid push. “Oh, do go on, Wend,” she cried desperately. “Can’t you see they want to be alone?”
Thus urged forward, Wend took a reluctant step away and Charlotte had a last embarrassed glimpse of Maisey’s convulsed countenance and the young man’s lowering departing glance as the two girls stumbled away.
Not till they had gone a hundred yards from Fox Elve did Wend speak.
“Do you know who that was?” she demanded in a breathless voice.
“No,” said Charlotte prayerfully, hoping in her heart that whoever he was, she would never lay eyes on him again—it would be too embarrassing. After all, she and Wend had caught him actually . . . doing it!
“That was Tom Westing,” Wend informed her importantly (Wend prided herself on knowing everything about everybody). “Down from somewheres near Carlisle, they say. Good-looking, isn’t he?” She gave Charlotte a roguish look. “I wouldn’t have minded being in Maisey’s shoes myself.”
“She wasn’t wearing any,” pointed out Charlotte in a stifled voice. She was still red with embarrassment, but she agreed in her heart that there was no doubt that Tom Westing—for all the lowering looks he had shot at them— was certainly good-looking.
"Or probably much else/’ was Wend's comment. She cast a glance back the way they had come. "Fancy them there in that hollow grave together. Makes a nice narrow bed, doesn’t it? I ll have to remember that.” She chuckled.
“Wend!” reproved Charlotte, shocked.
Wend flounced along for another couple of steps. ‘‘Maisey’s James will be having words with Tom Westing if he hears about this!” Her crinkly eyes sparkled with anticipation.
"Oh, Wend, you aren’t going to tell?” protested Charlotte. Surely it was bad enough to have stumbled upon the lovers accidentally without babbling about what they had seen to all and sundry.
Wend shrugged airily. "Well, I might not—and then again, I might,” she admitted, tossing her head. "I’ll think about it.”
They were in sight of home now. They had been walking downhill toward the lake. Now before them, dark against the silvery mirror of the Derwent Water, rose the steep roof slates of Aldershot Grange, which had been Charlotte’s home for the last three of her fifteen summers.
The house was sturdily built of stone, and large—though not as large as medieval Castle Stroud, which lay out of sight through the trees to the north along the lakeshore. Nor was it Blade’s End in the other direction. Still, Aldershot Grange was comfortable. Charlotte had a big bedchamber on the second floor and the house was manned by a skeleton staff of servants—but Charlotte would never consider it home.
Home lay far, far to the south beyond Land’s End in the Scillies—and it was forever lost to her.
Aldershot Grange was Uncle Russ’s home. Charlotte had never met her uncle until he arrived one day, all the way from London, to bring a suitor to visit her mother.
"Cymbeline,” Uncle Russ had argued when the suitor was out of earshot (although Charlotte, lurking nearby, was not), "John Foster is the right man for you. He is still young and you are not getting any younger/'
"And . . . ?” asked her mother.
"And he has a house in London and a handsome patrimony in Hampshire/' he added in a sulky voice.
"So you will be able to borrow money from him if I wed him,” her pretty mother had guessed shrewdly.
Uncle Russ had blustered a bit at that, and her mother had laughed, knowing she had hit the nail on the head. But Cymbeline had liked the attractive ginger-haired John Foster for himself and had at last agreed to marry him. The year was 1727.
Charlotte, then twelve, had realized excitedly that this remarriage of her mother's would bring great changes into her life. For one thing, they would leave the isolated summertime beauty of the Scillies for the bustle and excitement of London. London! She thrilled to the thought. For another, she would have young people about, for John Foster, a widower, claimed to have both a son and a daughter near Charlotte's age.
But lovely fragile Cymbeline had been growing ever more frail that summer of 1727. Although she never complained, Charlotte had seen her clutch her heart and pause to lean against the warm stones of the garden wall. The excitement of the wedding preparations had been too much for her and she had gasped out her last breath almost on the eve of her wedding. How vividly Charlotte remembered that last day. . . .
She had been in her mother's big airy bedchamber helping her select a wedding gown, and the feather bed with its lace coverlet was strewn with clothes. The casements were open onto a sunny day of blue skies and soft white clouds that floated across them like white swans upon a blue lake.
"I had so wanted to wear something light and festive for the ceremony—like this!” Wistfully her mother had held up a fluttery pale yellow gown, hooped and flounced and decorated with delicate seed pearls sewn into ivory satin rosettes. "With ivory kid gloves embroidered in pale yellow silk. And a wreath of yellow roses for my hair. ”
“Then why don’t you?” wondered Charlotte.
Her mother sighed. “John’s sister has written to me— and oh, she is sure to arrive tomorrow and disapprove of everything—that I must remember that I am a widow and not some young virgin and she thinks black would be most appropriate!” Cymbeline sounded indignant. “I told John that I simply refuse to be married in mourning, no matter what his sister thinks, and he suggested dark brown or indigo or possibly a deep purple. ” She sighed again.
“Wear this one and face her down,” suggested Charlotte the irrepressible rebel, cheerfully indicating a simple white gown of thin rippling silk. “You look wonderful in it.”
“Oh, then she’ll accuse me of creating a scandal by making it appear that I am ‘being married in my shift !” Cymbeline’s ready laughter pealed.
Twelve-year-old Charlotte was well aware of the prevalent belief that if a bride wore only a single long white garment to be wed her husband could never be held responsible for her debts. “Perhaps you should run away and be married?” she suggested raptly. “Then you could wear what you like. ”
“Oh, that would be fun and I know it is the fashion, but really, where would I run?” her mother countered lightly. “Gretna Green is far away and so is Fleet Street! No, I must try to get off to a good start with my in-laws—I’ll wear this.” She picked up a rustling indigo silk with jet tassels and held it up to herself and stood thoughtfully before the mirror.
Then abruptly her face had lost its color and her lips turned blue. “I don’t . . . feel so well,” she gasped.
Before nightfall she was dead and the rustling indigo silk had become her funeral gown.
Uncle Russ had seemed to feel no grief at his young sister’s loss.
Only Charlotte felt this blinding grief for her laughing young mother. Bereft of his bride-to-be, John Foster had promptly disappeared from Charlotte’s life. And Uncle Russ, her mother’s bachelor brother, simply arrived from the north and took over. He had himself appointed Charlotte’s guardian, stripped the house in St. Mary’s and sold everything, and swept twelve-year-old Charlotte and her few personal possessions north to his own home of Aldershot Grange near the Scottish
border.
Charlotte s first winter there was bleak. With clothing far too thin for the biting cold, she had shivered in the big drafty house, wrapped herself in shawls, and hovered by the hearth. Hopelessly she had watched freezing rain and sleet chatter down on the roof, and snow and ice storms obscure the gray landscape. Like her mother, she was a child of the sunshine, and this land of cold gray mists and frosty air depressed her.
Sometimes that winter she had felt she would die at Aldershot Grange, alone and unloved, for her uncle had simply brought her home and left her there and gone down to London, leaving her with an unsuitable wardrobe in the company of servants. Remembering the warmth and gaiety of the palm-fringed house in the Scilly Isles, Charlotte had night after night cried herself to sleep.
She was to learn in the next three years that her uncle was rarely in residence at Aldershot Grange, that he spent almost all his time carousing in London. And on the few occasions when he was home, he was cold and harsh and in the main ignored her. He seemed to think she needed nothing save food and shelter, and gave her so small an allowance that she could barely buy pins with it. It was fortunate that she had learned to read and write and do sums in the Scillies, for schooling was now out of the question. Gradually Charlotte’s clothes wore out, and she would have been left in tatters had not she and Wend one rainy day decided to explore the large attics of Aldershot Grange. Tucked away in a dusty corner, festooned with cobwebs, they found an old forgotten trunk, and when Wend pried open its curved lid, they both gasped. There, carefully packed away in lavender, were some dresses Charlotte’s mother had worn as a girl—and left here long ago when she married and moved away.
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