Lady of the Lake (7 page)

“We four survived the journey overland and the voyage, lord,” said the father.

“Who showed you where your holding was and gave you leave to burn your fields today?”

“Asgart of Wolverton rode out to the woodland with us and said we could plow from the top of the hill to the first stream behind the village. It was all the land there was to spare. He said to burn the cottages in our way, for the people inside were only squatters.”

“We didn’t want to burn them out, Lord Edon.” The eldest son finally spoke in his own defense. “Lord Asgart told my father to burn the huts or else to move north to York and ask for a hide of land from someone else.”

Edon was not surprised by that answer. He turned to Rig and said, “Send Thorulf to fetch Asgart. I will deal with him.”

These men were being used, victimized, as were the Mercian thralls in the quarry. Edon’s quarrel was not with them. Still, they had started a fire that cost a village, and someone must pay. Edon glared at all four of them and
came to a summary judgment on the spot. “My man Maynard has surveyed the shire and parceled it as to my orders. There is good land, cleared and ready for planting, east of the quarry. Three of you may farm there beginning on the morrow. You, Ranulf, will pay for the damage done the village of Wootton by two months service to my general, Rig. Give your axe to your father. You will have no need of a weapon until you are released to your father’s house at the end of your duty.”

Edon turned to the father, asking, “Have you a longhouse, Archam the Bent?”

“Nay, we sleep under the stars. We will build a longhouse when we have land.”

“Rig, take the father to Maynard. You will go to my man, Maynard the Black. He will show you the fields you may work and issue you seed to plant in your field. Do not fell any trees that you cannot use for your longhouse. I will tolerate no more fires in this shire, is that clear?”

Gratitude was not a common virtue displayed among Vikings, but these men were clearly grateful for Edon’s leniency. Archam and his sons were not the type of Vikings that had gone out seeking fortunes and land forty years ago with Edon’s grandfather, Ragnar Lodbok. These Vikings had been farmers all their lives. If it came to battling with axe and sword they would be hard-pressed to defend their own, much less be of good service to Edon in a war.

That was the reason he took the healthiest son into his household to be trained in weapons and fighting by Rig. Instinctively, Edon knew where the real challenge to his authority came from: Asgart, Embla’s man.

It was time for the jarl of Warwick to assert his authority. Sighing, Edon dismissed the offenders. He went up to his keep and visited with his ladies and conferred with Theo, allowing him to use his mazer bowl on this occasion.

“I wish to know when it will rain and where I may find
the princess of Learn, Theo. Do not distract me with unnecessary communications from your playful spirit guides.”

Theo’s fingers ran lightly around the rim of the gold cup, which hummed in a pure, sweet tone. Theo’s strange, colorless eyes gazed, as they always did, off into the distance. All at once his fingers ceased circling and he dipped the tips of two into the quavering wine, silencing the melodious sound.

“Your princesses of Leam are in King Offa’s hunting lodge on the bank of their lake. There are four of them. The eldest is your lady, Tala. I see her quite clearly. She is pacing back and forth and contemplates a journey. I cannot see where. She has sacrificed her torque, and her sisters are greatly distressed by that. Ah, I have it. Tala ap Griffin goes to the abbess at Loytcoyt.”

“And the atheling?” Edon probed.

Theo shook his head. “I cannot see the atheling. Nor do I see any rain. Not for a long time to come.”

Edon kept his fingers from drumming a staccato on the trestle top. So Tala went to the abbess at Loytcoyt, did she? Did she intend to throw herself upon the mercy of Alfred’s church and beg sanctuary of the nuns? What good would that do her? Edon had no qualms about removing her from a Christian church any more than he had qualms about taking a pagan princess of Leam to wife.

“Are you certain she goes to the abbey?”

“Aye.” Theo nodded, then frowned. “But….”

“Well…out with it, man!”

“King Alfred comes to see her wed.”

“So now the king of Wessex comes to Warwick? Why not Guthrum as well?” Edon scoffed.

“They both will attend the vows, Lord Edon.” Theo picked up the goblet and consumed every drop of the white wine in its bowl, ending his reading.

Lady Eloya had remained quiet and still for the reading.
Now she rose to her feet from the bench at the end of the trestle and moved behind Edon’s chair, placing her hands upon his shoulders. “Lord Edon, if you could see your face, you would be terrified by your own expression. I pity the princess when you find her.”

As Eloya’s hands soothed the taut muscles in Edon’s neck he made a concerted effort to staunch the flow of bile churning in his stomach. He knew of the abbey at Loytcoyt. It had been built upon the bloodiest battleground he had ever seen with his own two eyes. The bodies of hundreds of Celts had formed the rubble for the abbey’s foundation. The bones belonged to pagans who had refused to convert to the new religion. Heathens like Edon himself had been up till now.

Periodically this new church that preached a gospel of peace and love stirred its believers into a furor and led them in a holy war to slay all nonbelievers. Edon had escaped from Loytcoyt with his life, but not so many unbaptized Mercians of Arden Forest.

On his foreign travels, amid people like Eli and Theo and Rashid, Edon had found his own philosophy, reinforcing his core belief that life continued in spirit after death. Unlike his brother Guthrum, Edon was not quite ready to replace his host of childhood gods—Odin, Freya, Thor and Loki—for the Christian’s Christ. But his travels had brought him to the point where he recognized his capricious Viking gods were not the Supreme Being. And he was pragmatic enough to keep an open mind, particularly when it was politically expedient to do so.

He reached up and patted Eloya’s hand. “Thank you, love, for soothing me. I have duties to attend. Rashid, we will need your services in the ward shortly.”

“Edon?” Eloya kept her hands on his shoulders. “Do not set out tracking the lady like she is a doe to be brought to ground. Give Tala time to accept her fate. She will come to love you as we all have, each in our own way.”

“Eloya,” Edon said impatiently, “I know what I am about. Do not tutor me as though I were still a boy in your father’s court, lacking all manners or intelligence.”

He stood and gathered his weapons from the sideboard, where they lay gleaming from the polish Eli had applied to them. “I will take Sarina with me,” he said to his servant.

“Do you think that truly wise?” Eloya gently insisted.

“Eloya!” Edon said sharply. She gave him a chiding look, then turned to her husband, impatience with Edon radiating from her slanted sloe eyes. “Rashid, it is past time that you do something about your interfering wife,” Edon continued.

Rashid paused over the medicines and unguents in his physician’s casket. He, too, cast a disapproving glance at his wife of twenty years.

Eloya shrugged a pretty shoulder, undaunted by either man’s scolding. “The princess will not thank you for hunting her like prey in the woods. You will want her to love Sarina in the future, not hate her.

Moving on to a more feminine task, that of sewing a smock for the new baby, Eloya settled in a chaise beside Rebecca. She ignored the men up to the point when they were armed and prepared to exit the hall.

“We will have dinner at the usual time, my lords. See that you are not late.”

Edon did not go out tracking Tala ap Griffin. There were too many other things that had to be done to get his holding started on the road to prosperity and civility.

Edon reestablished the guard, replacing all of Embla’s captains with men of his own. The first Viking who resisted—Asgart—paid for that foolhardy transgression against Edon’s authority with his life.

Edon had other reasons to slay Asgart besides his stupidity in challenging him before the assembled Vikings inside the walls of Warwick. There was the village of Wootton that had been torched—deliberately. Asgart admitted he’d ordered the burning as a sly means of flushing the princess of Leam out of hiding.

After besting Asgart in a bloody contest of swords, Edon pressed his blade to his throat and gave the man one last chance to redeem himself. “Where is the body of my nephew, Harald Jorgensson? Tell me where his bones are buried and I will spare your life.”

“He is not dead yet, Jarl, but you are!” Asgart lunged sideways and plunged his sword at Edon’s heart. Deflecting the blow with a powerful swing, Edon sliced the thane’s head off his shoulders and sent it rolling in the dust of the ward.

Asgart’s thanes looked at Edon with new respect when he calmly handed Rig his sword and walked off the field of contest to the bathhouse. The thanes gathered quickly after the fight ended, talking among themselves, deciding what they should do.

As Edon came out of the bathhouse they confronted him in the stronghold’s ward.

“Jarl Edon.” Their spokesman stepped forward, dropped his knee to the ground and extended the hilt of his long sword. “I am Carl Redbeard of York. Jarl Harald came to York before Lammas past and promised my men and I land and fair treatment for all Danes willing to risk’ the frontier.

“Your nephew, Jarl Harald Jorgensson, was a good man. He was not here when we arrived with our wives and children at Samhain. We are loyal men of Guthrum of the Danelaw. None of us know what became of the jarl. We are strong warriors as well, but we will not fight without just cause.”

Edon studied the man before him, then put his hand on the hilt of the Viking’s sword. “Do you swear never to raise your arm against me or mine, Carl of York?”

“Aye, Wolf of Warwick. On the blood of my three sons, I am yours to command,” the soldier swore.

“Then rise, Carl of York, and go about your business. Report to my captain, Thorulf, in the morning for any change in your duties. The same applies to the rest of your men. We are at peace in Warwick and shall remain so unless King Guthrum declares otherwise. Good night.”

Edon retired to his keep to take his supper.

Embla rode into the ward from the far fields at sunset and found a new order established within Warwick. New guards manned the gates of the palisade. A new captain saluted her, and the thrall who took her horse and stabled it she had never laid eyes upon before. Asgart’s body lay
upon a bier on the muddy bank of the Avon. Her captain’s head rested on his shield.

Shaken, she charged into Edon’s hall breathing fire. She found the lazy wretch at his damned board, devouring a chicken at his leisure.

“How dare you!” she shouted. “By what right do you come here, changing my guard at the gates in the middle of the day, ordering my men about, killing my soldiers? How dare you!”

She got as far as drawing her blade from her sheath before Rig jumped from his seat at Edon’s table and knocked the sword cleanly from her hand with one sweep of his mighty fist. “Lady, you will curb your tongue before the jarl of Warwick,” he commanded in a low, feral voice, “else get you to your hut and your loom.”

Embla’s breath hissed between her teeth. “You will pay for that, Rig of Sunderland.” But her venom was saved for Edon. “Come, you mincing coward, I will fight you for this land Guthrum has promised me. I will show you who is the better between us.”

Edon casually dropped a bone onto a porcelain platter and drew in a weary breath. “Let her go, Rig. She’s just making empty threats. She has come to her senses, haven’t you, niece of Guthrum of the Danelaw?”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Embla shouted. “You have no real power in this shire. Listen, all of you. I have been wronged. My captain, Asgart, was a good man, loyal and true, worth the value of ten soldiers. You killed him, Edon of Warwick, and for that you must pay me a wergild.”

“Ah, so such things mean something to you, do they, Embla of the Silver Throat?” Edon wiped his fingertips with a fine linen cloth, dampened with scented water. Then he rose to his feet and waited as his body servant, Eli, handed him his shield and his sword to put in his scabbard. He tested the weight in his bare hand, then looked coldly
at his niece by marriage. “What value do you place on a Mercian thrall?”

“Mercian thralls have no value. They are dust beneath our feet. We are Vikings—Danes! Only freemen deserve wergild in the Danelaw.”

“Very well then. Give me your value for a freeman in the Danelaw,” Edon demanded as he slotted the sword in its sheath with a snap.

Embla’s lip curled in disgust at Edon’s Viking trappings—sword and shield, crossgartered boots and breeks sheathing his hips and thighs like a second skin. His bare chest glistened with power. His fierce face and dark coloring spoke of foreign savagery unseen in the Danelaw, but inside he was a coward, a peacemaker, a man of words, not action. Did he think her stupid? She would play his game and best him.

“A freeman is valued at five marks if he holds a tenancy, ten if he is a skilled craftman, iron worker or smith. Fifteen if he serves as a warrior to a thane, twenty if he is a Viking and mans his own oar.”

“So…” Edon sighed ever so casually. He looked at his fingertips, as if thinking they needed cleaning. Embla’s sneer became a growl.

“I have a claim laid before me for twenty such freemen,” he said, looking up at her. “Lo and behold, I found every man at the quarry. Men who until this very evening were chained thralls in
my
quarry. I have also freed their wives and children. In fact, there are no longer any slaves in Warwick. None.”

“You can’t do that!” Embla shouted.

“It is already done,” Edon countered without raising his voice. “The wives are gathering in my lower hall as we speak, reunited with their husbands. Do you care to go below with me, Embla Silver Throat, and listen to these men give testimony to my scribes? They are freely accounting for their crimes. Crimes that caused the forfeiture
of their livelihoods and the loss of their homes, the enslavement of their wives and the murder of their children.”

“There are only outlaws from Mercia in my quarry,” Embla cried in fury.

Edon’s jaw set as he glared at the woman. She didn’t get it. Perhaps she never would.

“You are a fool,” he declared tersely.
“We are in Mercia,
damn you! Watling Street is five leagues east of Warwick! You are the one who has broken the law, angered the kings, and
I
am the one who must pay the blood price for your stupidity. Get out of my sight, before I change my mind and slit your throat!”

Embla’s mouth tightened. She breathed harshly, returning the angry jarl’s glare. “Who would you pay a wergild to, Lord Edon? There are no thanes of Leam remaining to lay claim to the fee. They are all dead.”

With lethal sarcasm, Edon told her, “Correct. You have wisely slain all of your enemies save one, the atheling of Learn, Prince Venn ap Griffin, ward of Alfred of Wessex.”

“No!” Embla shook her head vehemently. “The boy is dead. He was sacrificed by the druid, Tegwin. On the first of May, when the fires were lit on the hilltops, the druids slew him, as a gift to their gods to bring the spring rains to the land.”

“Has it rained since?” Edon asked bluntly.

“Nay, it has not rained in nearly a full year,” Embla argued desperately. She had paid the druid good coin to slay the boy. Now this jarl intimated that the job had not been done. Had she walked into a pit of snakes? The jarl was a Viking who would not act like a Viking. What did he care for thralls or athelings, dead or alive?

“Then it is obvious, is it not?” Edon thundered, staggering Embla with the power he unleashed in his voice. “That prince was not sacrificed. Odin help me, but you are a stupid cow if you can’t have reasoned that much out The wergild will be paid, but take care, niece, I am yet of
a mind to take the cost of it out of your hide. Good day, Embla. Do as Rig commands—confine yourself to the looms in your longhouse—and
do not meddle in my affairs again.”

From the cliff overlooking the quarry, Edon could see the hidden lake in the forest only at precisely high noon. The glint of water in the distance was the closest he got to Tala ap Griffin. He had no way to relieve himself with the certain knowledge that she was indeed all right after the fire at Wootton except to go to the lake itself.

The body of water cast a sparkling reflection up into the oaks that surrounded the lake. That made them shimmer and a curious golden glow radiate from the dark, distant woods.

Even with that proof before them, not one thrall—or more specifically, not one of Embla’s thralls—would admit to there being any significance to the lake. To a one they pleaded ignorance of any holy well or sacred pool in the vicinity.

Edon knew that for a lie. Ten years ago he had wandered these woods and found the lake and its myriad of springfed pools. He remembered a hunting lodge on the lake’s bank and a mysterious, fairylike temple of stunning beauty.

All he’d cared for at the time was that the fishing had been good and the water cool and refreshing for bathing and swimming. Back then, when he was a young man of ten and nine, he would have given a year of his life to have had a desirable woman with him at that lake. He would have spent the whole day lolling in the water and making love.

Edon also remembered Arden Wood as being splendidly managed. Its undergrowth had been well trimmed, the trees coped, and the trails and pathways were clear of brush.

But when he came down from the heights of Warwick Hill and began trekking through the enormous wood,
searching for the lake, he spent most of a beastly hot afternoon wandering in hopeless circles.

Arden Forest was no longer a hunter’s delight. It was an eerie, vast, overgrown and untended copse. Omens abounded and swung from its canopy—skulls and crossbones and evil eyes that warned away intruders. Traps and snares were set to capture the unwary. Whole sections had become impenetrable because of the density of briars and thorn bushes. The purpose of such devices was obvious: intruders were not welcome.

Inside the forest depths, Edon found it impossible to pick a direction, to locate a path, to march straight in or out or to find the lake at the center. That was a humbling, frustrating and baffling experience for him. Edon of Warwick had sailed all the known seas and navigated his way through relentless storms. He’d stood on the paved streets of Athens and walked in the shadow of the great pyramids of Cleopatra’s ancestors. But he could not find the lake in the center of his own home wood.

Not even Sarina with her sensitive nose could track the princess’s trail beyond the first beck crossing Fosse Way outside the stockade at Warwick. Edon needed a piece of the lady’s clothing to fix the woman’s scent in Sarina’s capable brain. Foiled and frustrated, he returned to Warwick at sundown in a foul mood.

Rashid and Eli greeted him in the lower hall, which had become a gathering point for Edon’s soldiers and captains.

“Any luck, my lord Wolf?” Eli asked, offering Edon a towel to wipe the sweat from his face and throat and a goblet of fruited wine to quench his thirst.

“None,” Edon admitted, wearily handing Sarina’s lead to Rashid. The wolfhound was tame and loyal, but she made the children of Warwick anxious, so Edon leashed her at the gates.

He drank the cool drink, finishing it at once, and then wiped his face and neck with the towel. “It is miserable
in the forest,” he said to his men. “The gallflies swarm and bite most viciously. A host of stinging ants inhabit the grasses. Every fifth step there is a rotting limb hidden under the blanket of ferns, lying in wait to break a leg. That forest has changed greatly since I last walked it ten years ago. And I believe the changes have been deliberately made.”

“I thought as much.” Rashid stood fast against Sarina’s front paws pressing on his shoulders, ruffling her ears and scratching the thick mat of gray fur at her throat. On her hindquarters, the wolfhound stood as tall as the man loving her, her busy tail whacking the flagstones in pleasure. “Down, Sarina. You have cockleburs and stickers in your fur. I shall have to bathe and brush you, eh?”

Edon stooped to pick a handful of burrs from between the lacing of his crossgarters. “What of the bathhouse? Have we one adequate for our use yet?”

“Nay, lord,” Eli replied. “Maynard is working on the aqueduct with all due haste. But the river is so low it will be another day before the water can be diverted from it. I have drawn fresh water, heated and toted it upstairs, and the wooden tub is full and awaits your leisure.”

Edon shed his sweat-soaked tunic and used the towel to wipe his chest and back. “I fear I smell as foul as a lathered warhorse. Words cannot describe how beastly the heat is in those woods. The steamy air presses down on you leaching all the salts in your body. To whit, I got lost. North was south, east became west I couldn’t see even a scrap of the sky.”

“So you didn’t find the lake.” Rashid walked Sarina to the steps and released her with a command to go upstairs.

“I never came close enough to smell mud,” Edon admitted.

“Perhaps you started from the wrong point,” Rashid mused.

“What point do you suggest I try? For I have limited
days to bring a princess to heel before King Alfred arrives to witness the ceremony. He will be here Saturday.” Edon sat and began unlacing his leggings.

“At the wadi,” Rashid replied. “It is dry, yes, but it once ran full of water. It seems logical that the dry river should lead you to the lake.”

“Assuming that the lake is the source of the river, yes. Suppose it isn’t?” Edon reasoned. “What then? Cut a straight line through the forest, chop my way to the heart of it by slashing down the trees? How long will that take? More days than I have, I’m certain.”