by Tamara Leigh
“The light ahead,” she whispered, having stood in awe of Godfroi’s grace over the loss of his brother whose death, he assured Maël, was not to be borne upon his son’s shoulders.
A smile returning to his lips, he said, “As for the ladies interrupting us, it is no concern of theirs that you are no longer a maiden, especially since already we break with the tradition of hanging out the sheets for all to bear witness to consummation.”
Mercia had been relieved she would not suffer that display since the fewer who knew of their marriage, the less likely any would draw a connection between Maël d’Argent and the Maël de Chanson he was to become.
Further relieved this morning belonged to husband and wife the same as the night past, she said, “Well then, be thorough, Husband.”
“Wife,” he groaned.
But no sooner were her lips upon his than a knock sounded, causing a growl to escape Maël, a mewl Mercia.
“I do not believe I could have been clearer my wife requires no tending this morn,” he grumbled, then eased her onto her back, turned the coverlet over her, and rose.
Mercia knew it unseemly to stare at him as he sought to recover his cast-off clothing, but though she flushed when he glanced at her, she did not avert.
Another knock.
Maël dropped the tunic and chausses he had snatched from beneath her chemise and instead retrieved his mantle from the chair. Sweeping it around his shoulders, he strode to the door.
It was Lady Robine, and she had not come to look upon the sheets but to deliver viands and drink. If she tried to hide her amusement at seeing her nephew, attired in a mantle above bared calves, falter when she extended the platter, she failed. “For modesty’s sake, best I carry it inside, Maël.”
He stepped back.
“Good morn, Lady Mercia,” the woman said as she glided forward.
“And to you, my lady.”
As Robine set the platter on the table between bed and window, the scent of freshly baked bread stirred Mercia’s appetite.
“That will sustain you a while,” the lady said. “Do you not come down for the nooning meal, I shall bring another platter—and one for supper, if need be.”
“We thank you, Aunt,” Maël said.
Robine patted his arm in passing.
When he closed the door behind her, Mercia tossed back the covers. Clothed in her own mantle fashioned of hair, she stepped to the platter and picked from it a thick slice of bread whose crust glistened with butter—and honey, she discovered when she sank her teeth into it.
Looking to her husband, she beckoned with a bob of eyebrows and stepped to the window to gaze out upon the new day.
Maël halted behind her. “But for your hair, you are bare, my lady,” he said and opened his mantle and drew her inside its folds. “Lest one of those patrolling the walls looks up when he ought to be looking out.”
“Forbid,” she said and settled her back against his chest, took another bite, and reached the bread over her shoulder.
They finished it and another slice, then stared out across the castle and land, a view husband and wife would cease to share when Maël left her and returned to England to recover Nicola and Theriot.
Caressing his arm around her waist, exploring the muscles evidencing its strength, she said, “I am not afeared.”
He lowered his head alongside hers. “Of what are you not afeared?”
“Of you leaving. I know you will come back to me. When you do, we will make a life together and, I pray, children.”
“So we will.”
“When do you depart?”
“If not the morrow, the day after. Once I meet with my uncle and cousins, we shall determine the best course. God willing, within a month I shall take you from here.”
From here to where? she wondered. Flanders was a possibility, Chanson’s brother having offered his nephew the keeping of a portion of his lands. Then there was Paris and the more distant possibility of Ireland where Normans were beginning to settle and one rumor held Queen Alditha had taken her son.
“Have you thought more on where we will go?” Mercia asked as she watched a bird launch itself off the outer wall.
“I have. Though Flanders appeals most since it is near enough Normandy it will be easiest to discreetly remain in contact with my family, Southern Italy may be safer.”
Where his people had also begun settling. “That is very far,” she said. “Though perhaps safer where William is concerned, what of the unrest there?”
“That is a problem, since I will not be made part of another conquest by Normans.”
“Then not Italy.” She smiled when she saw another bird spread its wings and follow the first.
Maël sighed, drew her nearer. “What remains of our time together is short. Let us speak of other things.”
Certain he meant to resume what Lady Robine had interrupted, she laughed softly.
But he said, “Gytha’s missive.”
Yet tucked within the psalter alongside the one that began her journey to him.
She peered over her shoulder. “I will not read it, nor ask you to reveal its contents. Even if you are taken from me, still I shall know who I am.” She turned back to the window, jutted her chin. “You see that bird flying free of these walls?”
“I do.”
“That feels me, Maël.” Moments later, the second swooped into sight, and she added, “With you.”
“With me,” he said with wonder.
She turned, slid her arms around his neck, and against his lips said, “Your love. That is all I need ever be.”
Epilogue-Excerpt-Prologue
Wulfen Castle
England, 1352
My love, my heart, the half and whole of me, soon I leave you. Forgive me for being absent from you in all the years I pray to come as you welcome the first of our children’s grandchildren into this unlovely world you made beautiful for me. As my light flickers, soon dims, becomes smoke wending heavenward, hold my hand, kiss my brow, and let me go knowing this is not our end but a space between the life we made and when we shall hold each other again. Psalm 31:1.
In parting, I have a request, beloved Mercia, though you ought honor it only if it speaks well to you. As ever, the missive you wished never to look upon resides in my clothes chest. If even in my absence still you care not for its tale, I would not have you read it. I would have you give it into the keeping of our eldest son with instructions it be passed through our line lest there come a day he or any other wishes to know more of the woman who helped me find the heart lost to me.
Certes, what your grandmother wrote is not you, but be it truth or lie in the black of her ink, it is part of you for having made your light shine brighter. There my argument, and now I return to our bed and pray I awaken beside you come morn. Do I not, open wide our window, look out across the land, and there you will find what feels me flying free of these walls. Waiting for you. ~ Your Maël, in the year of our Lord, 1111
Hector Wulfrith, trainer of the worthiest protectors of the realm, considered the writing that had been no easy thing to read. Not only did it appear penned by an unsteady hand, evidencing the author’s many years, but numerous misspellings indicated he was ill-schooled in written English. Either little effort had been given his studies, else the language was not native to him.
The latter, Hector guessed, as much due to the parchment being delivered by foreigners as the intellect required to write something so near poetry it tugged at a warrior mostly immune to tugs.
Lowering the aged scroll to the table, he settled back in his chair and looked to the tallest of those opposite. “This is supposed to mean something to me, boy?” he asked in French the sooner to be understood and rid of his visitors.
The one who spoke for both, much strain in his accented voice to sound nearer a man, said with what sounded disappointment, “The names, Maël and Mercia, are unknown to you?”
Though the first had stirred his memory, he was too weary from a do
zen hours spent on the training field and too eager to send these two away to delve it. Of greater reason to ignore what might or might not be familiar was the futility of such claims of kinship. Though the third King Edward decreed only those of English birth receive training at Wulfen, this boy was not the first to come across the sea seeking such, several having attempted to enter here by professing kinship to the Wulfriths by way of one or another line of Normans who aided Duke William of Normandy in conquering England three hundred years past.
Hector shook his head. “Both unknown to me.”
The lines of the youth’s brow deepening, he nodded at the parchment. “As told, that is only a beginning.” Moistening his lips, once more he raised the lid of the cask perched on the table’s edge.
Something about the nervous show of tongue disturbed, and more thoroughly Hector searched the young man’s face, then that of the boy. Upon returning to the first, he was certain of what poor lighting and impatience to be finished with this business had caused him to overlook. And ground his teeth.
Though more angered with himself than the perpetrators, were they men—and certainly they were not—they would be fortunate to suffer mere bruises for their trespass. As for the temptation to send them away with loud, harsh words, one of numerous lessons taught the stubborn of him slammed to mind.
Allow not wrath to command your actions nor your words, young Hector, Sir Owen had instructed time and again, else never will you prove worthy of your great commission—indeed, may be denied it altogether.
Hector would honor his name and the great commission nearly lost to him, but he had another incentive for remaining in control—that this ruse caused what had barely interested to beg interest. He would set these two aright, but only after he knew the whole of the promised tale.
He shifted his gaze to Squire Gwayn who stood across the hall with his back to the fire. The young man who should have sought permission to grant these two admittance to Wulfen Castle raised his eyebrows. Lessons were due him, but they could wait.
“My Lord,” ventured the one who, said to be the boy’s cousin, had given the name Sévère, “here not only further proof Mace is Wulfrith kin but descended from a great line of English nobility.”
Hector looked to the slender hand that once more offered a parchment drawn from the cask, next that one’s face framed by a woolen cap, then to the boy of seven or eight years. Though there was no visible silver in that one’s dark hair, that did not disqualify him since rarely did more than one child of each generation present thus and more rarely did the silvering appear before the age of ten.
He shifted to Mace’s eyes. They were bright, it seemed as much due to their intense green as the polished steel in their depths.
As of one torn from childhood, Hector reflected and began to consider which of his knights would best set the boy on the path to knighthood. In the next instant, he stifled a grunt of disgust. Even absent the deception, there could be no place for him at Wulfen.
“My lord?” Sévère handed the parchment nearer, providing the opportunity to look closer on that one’s face.
After further verifying what he knew, Hector reached his scarred hand forward and took the parchment that was either not as well preserved as the first or more greatly aged. Though once it had been a scroll, not only was it creased from being folded flat as parchment ought not be, but it was brittle, deeply discolored, and evidenced shrinkage.
It was good Hector’s near vision was sharp. Though the words written on this parchment were well drawn, they were exceedingly small and of great number.
“It is dated forty years ere the one written by Maël to Mercia,” Sévère said. “It would be of benefit—” That one’s voice cracked, requiring much throat clearing to once more sound near a man. “It would be of benefit do you first look to the name of she who wrote it.”
He lowered his gaze to the final lines and read, Countess Gytha, wife of Godwine, mother of King Harold, grandmother of Lady Mercia, great grandmother of England’s future king, here sets these words in the year of our Lord, 1070.
A reaction was expected of him, and so greatly was it felt it required extensive control to withhold it from those who watched. Were this parchment genuine, and that was questionable considering how false the one who passed it to him, perhaps training reserved for the English was more the boy’s due than the other claimants come before. But as for kinship with the Wulfriths…
He considered Mace again, and those green eyes peered into ones less bright for the grey shot through the same as nearly all those of Wulfrith blood.
“As Maël requested of his wife,” Sévère said with more accent and less depth than before, “that has been in the possession of Mace’s family for nearly three hundred years—its words as true now as then.” A nod. “Pray, attend to it, Lord Wulfrith.”
He required no prompting, but he gave a grunt of impatience before angling the parchment toward torchlight and settling eyes upon its words.
Blood of my blood, if this you read, you have done your duty. You, Mercia, are a Saxon strong of mind, body, and spirit. True to the blood, the bone, the marrow. More, you are a Godwine.
I trust you approve of your husband, Canute. More than he is young and of good blood, face, and figure, one day he may succeed his sire to become King of Denmark and, God willing, King of England. If ever you are queen, it will be because your grandmother had a care for her son’s daughter. See, Mercia, I make all things right.
Now that you are bound to our kinsman, here I shall keep the promise made by setting down the truth for all, foremost our countrymen, to ensure they rally to King Sweyn’s side once it is known his son has taken a Godwine wife.
Though told you were illegitimate, that is not entirely true on one side of it, nor entirely false on the other. Long this mother of a king has borne a tale whose threads were picked and pulled out and rolled into a ball thought never to be woven together again, but for our people and the babes you shall bear, here I weave it.
Over a score and five years gone, one of my sons believed himself in love with a woman beneath his station. Ida was the only daughter of a Mercian thane who, admirably, fathered six sons. However, as her sire was of minor holdings and small reputation, I told my son nay. He defied me but, blessedly, did not bind himself beneath the eyes of the Church but in the Danish custom of handfasting. When I learned of his folly, I ordered the handfasting dissolved. Unfortunately, already you were in Ida’s womb. I prayed you a girl lest my son be moved to do again what was undone, and the Lord answered my prayers beyond all hope.
No son did Ida bear, and so greatly she bled that after you were placed in her arms and she named you Mercia, with the last of her breath she begged me to care for you. I wanted to send you away and forget you, but weak in that moment, I gave my word. Though I longed to make a lie of it, your eyes were my son’s, the dimple in your chin the cleft in his. Hence, I took you into my household and made a nursemaid of a slave whose babe had died.
Many knew who sired you, but they were commanded never to speak of it and did not, though my son showed interest in his daughter despite being forbidden to draw near. That problem resolved once he was handfasted to a Godwine-worthy lady. Though he had sworn not to love again, even better he loved the one chosen for him, and mostly he forgot about you.
For years, all was well, then the one at whose breast you had suckled revealed to my son’s wife it was he who sired you. Trouble there, I sent away the babe growing into a girl and made an example of servants who speak where they ought not. As was due the woman you adored, I sold her across the sea to satisfy the appetites of coarse men.
Thereafter, on occasion I visited you at the abbey where you would have made your profession were it not necessary for my son, Harold, to set aside his wife and wed another to secure the throne King Edward left without an heir. Harold was not happy to part with his Edith, but he did his duty and wed the sister of the earls Edwin and Morcar. As never did I trust that family, I to
ok you from the convent and gave you to be Queen Alditha’s companion and keeper of the wardrobe so you could report behavior unbecoming a Godwine wife.
Alditha gave you less to report than the goings-on upon Wulfenshire, but I was right to mistrust her family. Of what use were her brothers to Harold at Hastings? None, though the cowards’ absence from the battlefield was of much use to the usurping William who reduced them to earls in name only. Alas, neither has Queen Alditha been of use, refusing my protection and going to ground with my infant grandson. Though one rumor spews she is with me in Denmark, she is not. Another rumor tells she dwells in Ireland, and that is possible. Only the Lord knows what will become of Harold’s heir, but as the boy is not yet four, England cannot wait on him.
Though I have gone the long way around naming which of my sons sired you, and surely now you have guessed it was not Tostig, Gyrth, or Leofwine, be it known to all henceforth and evermore, your father was a young and foolish Harold. Twice handfasted, once to a woman beneath him, once to a woman of good standing, the second handfasting was undone for love of England to set the worthiest of kings upon the throne.
For this, daughter of King Harold, you have been chosen to aid the king of Denmark in tearing the crown from the usurper’s head. As I know you will not fail me, your husband, nor your people, at last your place in my affections is secure. ~ By God’s grace, Countess Gytha, wife of Godwine, mother of King Harold, grandmother of Lady Mercia, great grandmother of England’s future king, here sets these words in the year of our Lord, 1070.
Something agreeably sharp and warm, not unlike the thrill of unexpectedly encountering a worthy opponent, sprang through Hector as he reflected on the missive’s contents. Alongside that written by a husband whom death would soon part from a much-loved wife, it seemed a fit for another tale told him long ago, which was the reason the name, Maël, was distantly familiar. And now Mercia.