Lady of the Lake (13 page)

“How old were you? Nine winters?”

“Nine when the ship sailed to Constantinople.”

“Were you frightened?”

“I don’t think I had sense enough to be frightened. I did miss my mother terribly at first, but it became a great adventure. It was a wonder that I wasn’t washed into the sea on my first voyage. The truth was I was well cosseted by all the old warriors my father sent to train me in Viking ways. I remember that when we first arrived in Constantinople, after months at sea, the emperor refused to accept me as Halfdan’s son because I look like my Irish mother.”

“What changed the emperor’s mind?”

“Ah, well.” Edon ducked his head and smiled. “My audacity. I think I threatened to skewer his balls with my eating dagger for daring to name me a bastard before his court. A Viking son can be a real terror when he wants to prove his manhood.”

“At age ten?” Tala laughed.

“Nine,” Edon corrected, tweaking her nose lightly.
“You’ll learn what I mean in time, when you give me sons, my lady.”

Tala settled comfortably in the bend of his arm, her fingers resting against the warmth of his naked chest. “I should like to have many sons, and I do know of what you speak…regarding the pride of a son. Raising Venn has not been all that easy of a task. He…” She grew quiet, holding back her thoughts.

“He needs a man’s guidance.” Edon stepped in, speaking where she didn’t want to reveal her private thoughts. “It can’t have been easy for you, trying to raise an atheling under these circumstances, Tala. Be truthful with me. There is no reason for you to hold back from me—you will be my wife in a few days. Your brother would not have found himself in danger tonight had you brought him to my hall when first we met. Embla has true animosity toward him.”

Tala considered his words. “I am aware of that. It gives all the more reason to keep Venn away from Warwick.”

“He will remain at Warwick now, just as you will,” Edon said without preamble. “You need not worry for his safety or your own. I have men assigned to protecting both of you.”

“That is kind of you,” Tala replied with downcast eyes. It
was
kind, but he did not take into consideration that their safety was something she and her own loyal vassals had always seen to in the past. “We do not wish to become a burden.”

“Burden?” Edon scoffed. A frown creased his brow. He felt the urge to shake her gently, just as he’d felt the urge to throttle her when she’d thrown herself on her knees before him in supplication for her brother’s life. Her reserve frustrated him, but he could see that her trust wasn’t something he could gain with a kiss or a word of reassurance. He sighed over her resistance to further intimacy.

“You are no burden to me, Tala ap Griffin.” Having
gotten his wind back, Edon rose from the bed and got a wet cloth from the basin. “Here, let me tend the injury of our mating. I fear I have hurt you.”

Tala drew a sheet over her body as she tried to sit up. “It was not unnecessary, lord.”

“Be quiet.” Edon pressed her onto her back and drew away the sheet purposefully. “You will allow me to tend you, else I cannot know when you will be healed enough for us to enjoy another bedding.”

Tala shivered as he put the wet cloth against her sore flesh. It felt comforting, but she didn’t need it and would have preferred not to dilute the physical feelings at all.

Curious how she had always kept her physical hungers separate from her spiritual needs. Edon confused the barriers. His hand and her heat warmed the cloth between her legs.

“You have some blood,” he remarked dispassionately as he folded the cloth and laid a clean side against her. Again he held it in place with the palm of his hand.

Tala rose up on her elbows, watching him. “Does that signify?”

“Aye, it does. I shall have to go gently on you, love. Much as I may want to make love to you again this very moment, I will not.”

He was a man whose will ruled his life. Tala did not need more evidence of that truth. “Then how do we spend the rest of this night together, Edon?”

He gathered up the thin sheet, which was more than enough covering for this unusually hot summer, and settled beside her, drawing her against his body once more. He smoothed her long hair out of the way and kissed the sweet white flesh beneath her ear.

“We sleep, my lady.” he assured her. “But be warned, I will make no attempt to control myself as I am doing now when the cock crows. Close your eyes and rest.”

Tala yawned and stretched. So much had happened this
day. She was tired, but thrilled by these changes in her life. She settled, cradled by his warm body so close to hers. She slept deep and long, waking to the sound of the lark singing on the windowsill.

Edon awoke to the same song. He lifted his head, blinked and said with a chuckle, “Now that, my little Mercian witch, is an omen I can live with.”

Tala snuggled her cheek against Edon’s chest as the little bird sang so sweetly at their window. She opened her eyes in time to see the lark take flight.

But as it flew off into the red glow of an angry, dustchoked sunrise, a hawk swept across the strange, glowing sky and struck the little bird a deadly blow. A more ominous portent of evil to come Tala had never witnessed in her life.

Embla stalked the wet stones of the dungeon, barely containing her fury.

“This is all your fault,” she screamed at the badly battered man chained to the rock wall. “I was going to poison them all, but there’s no chance of doing that now.”

In his delirium, Harald Jorgensson could barely raise his head to acknowledge his wife’s shrill charge. She marched before him, shaking her sword in her fist, ranting in a paroxysm of temper.

“You could have killed the son of a bitch ten years ago. You had your chance, but no! You were a coward then, just as you are now!”

She sheathed her sword, made her hand into a fist and struck Harald in his blackened face.

“Like everything else, I’ll just have to see to it myself, won’t I?” she sneered at the man’s dangling head.

In truth, there was little pleasure to be had from abusing him anymore, since he no longer had the wits to fight back. Disgusted by the twisted body that hung limply from the chains attached to the wet stone wall, Embla turned away.
She kicked the bucket of stale food Eric the Tongueless periodically brought down to the dungeon.

Enough slop spilled out of it to satisfy her ire for the moment. Then she stalked out, determined to do away with Edon Halfdansson once and for all.

Gwynnth ap Griffin finally cried herself to sleep in old Anna’s arms. Not that the servant could do anything to console the princess this night.

Tegwin paced back and forth between the ramp leading to the temple and the yard of King Offa’s hunting lodge, stamping his blackthorn staff repeatedly in the dust. “I shall summon a plague of locusts to drive off the Vikings on Lughnasa,” he vowed.

“Ha!” cackled Mother Wren. “You, Tegwin, couldn’t cast a spell potent enough to raise mayflies off the reeds in the fens. Stop talking nonsense. Our princess needs us!”

“Aye,” Selwyn agreed. His thick braid bobbed against his naked, tattooed back. Even the bald spot at the top of his head was tattooed, bearing a triumphant hawk in full flight onto his forehead. “It is time for a show of force and unity. That is the only thing Danes understand.”

Tegwin sputtered, hating the way old Mother Wren always argued with him in front of the other elders of their clan. She was as stupid as Embla Silver Throat, always challenging his authority and refusing to recognize his importance. He held the atheling in the palm of his hand. Therein every woman in the shire made their mistake where Tegwin was concerned. This was a man’s world. “I do so know how to summon the locusts. I’ll show you.”

“Oh, be quiet, you old fool.” Mother Wren shushed him again. “You trained as a bard, not a druid, and I’m old enough to remember the difference. But I’m not so old that I have forgotten how to cast a spell that will turn you into a bullfrog if you will not mind your tongue in front of these children!”

“Now listen here, you old witch.” Tegwin rattled the gold-tipped bones and shells draped around his neck. “I’ve been the only druid this clan has had for sixty years, I have.”

Angered, Wren raised her hand, making the most powerful hex of all—the sign of the cross. Tegwin hastened behind Selwyn in case the old woman did try to turn him into a frog. All the people of the forest knew there was no witch more powerful than one who had converted to the Christ.

“What we need is a plan.” Ignoring the squabbling between the two old combatants, Stafford shook his full white head, speaking gravely. “There must be order to our actions.”

“‘Tis market day,” Anna said plainly. “I say we gather our baskets and go up the hill. Together we can distract the Vikings and free the atheling. Wren, you must leave go of your new principles and cast a counterspell to free our prince from the chains of the whipping post.”

“Best we rely upon iron to cut iron, not spells.” Selwyn stroked the handle of his axe fondly. A decade had passed since he’d used it for anything but cutting wood. “Our prince will not remain captive long.”

“Ah!” Wren said, warming to Anna’s idea. “That’s it! “We will go together, all of us. Anna, wake the princesses. We must get them ready. First we will find our Tala. She will know exactly what we should do.”

The abbot of Evesham Abbey, Father Bedwin, had learned the hard way to keep a vigilant lookout posted on Fosse Way. Three times Vikings from Warwick had overrun Evesham. The last attack had emptied the abbey cellars of all of their surplus wine.

For a whole year, Bedwin had been forced to celebrate the mass with a very unpalatable brew made from water and raisins as a substitute for the traditional wine.

The gentle monks had no other choice. There was no wine to be bartered or traded from any abbey or priory in the land. Because of the drought, wine, grain—all commodities—were in short supply, both in Britain and on the Continent.

Evesham, luckily, had grapevines of its own, well-established vines over a century old. Cistercian monks had tended those vines as lovingly as they tended each season’s crops. Though decades had passed without a single grape ever ripening, this year’s harvest would be substantial.

The unending heat and relentless sun that scorched barley and oats made grapes flourish as they had never done in Mercia before. Britain had not the clime for good wine. This was one of those years that would fill the cellars at Evesham Abbey to capacity and then some.

Father Bedwin capped his daily prayers with a plea for the Almighty to allow the hot weather to continue until the last grape was harvested at Lammas. Midsummer was well behind them.

Today the abbot walked the vineyard, humbly displaying the huge, hanging clusters of nearly purple fruit to King Alfred.

“I am surprised to see such a bounty of grapes,” said the king as he mopped his brow with a linen handkerchief. “Little else flourishes in this heat.”

Abbot Bedwin gravely agreed with the king. Here at the abbey the monks managed by periodically flooding their fields with water diverted from the Avon.

“And how goes your efforts to teach the farmers how to build terraces and aqueducts?” asked the king.

Alfred’s curiosity was boundless. He was an exceptional ruler, concerned with promoting all the arts that made a kingdom thrive, be that animal husbandry, management of the forests or the study of Latin and Greek. His library at Winchester rivaled the Pope’s. Alfred knew every book on his shelves by memory. He had another army—that of
scribes, who scurried about all the land, writing down local tales and history known only by the bards of the old oral tradition. Abbot Bedwin had great respect for the king.

“We have had much success teaching our methods to the farmers south and west of the Avon, Your Majesty,” Father Bedwin answered humbly. “My brothers have traveled all through the Midlands, showing the people how to build aqueducts and slope their fields so that the crops can be irrigated. I have inspected many of the farms here-abouts. We will bring in our crops, for the most part. The rivers have not dropped below ten feet anywhere in the shire.”

“Devon and Dorset are in good shape, for it has rained there twice in the past month,” Alfred reported. “But I fear for Kent and Sussex. The east is tinder dry, the fields barren. They will yield nothing, not even winter grass for the cattle to graze upon unless August comes in a deluge.”

“We are in trying times, my king. All we can do is pray and hope the peace with the Danelaw continues. I heard there was rain north of Watling Street, near Lincoln.”

“Aye, I heard the same rumor, but have had no confirmation of that from my friend King Guthrum. I am anxious to parley with him at Warwick. We have much to discuss and compare.”

At the mention of Warwick, Abbot Bedwin sputtered. “You would not risk personally visiting Warwick, would you, Your Majesty?”

“Yes, I do risk it. We have agreed, Guthrum and I, to meet there on Lammas Day. We have a wedding to oversee, and I fear it will take the power of both of us to effect it. There has not been more trouble from that direction of late, has there?”

Father Bedwin displayed the palms of his callused hands, then tucked both serenely back inside the deep folds of his brown habit “I am not one to complain about my neighbors. You know of the pagans of Arden Wood and
the Vikings that raid from Warwick Hill. We do what we can in the shadow of such danger to Christianity, but I sincerely regret the last raid. We had ample warning of the barbarian attack, so we lost none of our brethren, only the wine in our cellars.”

“Embla Silver Throat.” King Alfred put a name to the berserker that continued to terrorize all the abbeys in Warwickshire.

“A most bitter cross to bear is that warrior woman.” Father Bedwin made a sign of the cross, in an effort to forgive the woman’s cruelties, which were legion.

“She will be one of the topics of discussion between King Guthrum and me at our conference. Do you know what became of her husband, Harald Jorgensson, Abbot Bedwin? Please do not mince words or spare me any of the unpleasant details you may know.”