Chapter 3 - Saxons and Danes


'A little wild,' Beorhtric had called Godric.

He certainly had scant regard for either study or rules, and he loved to be out-of-doors, running with the hounds or flying his hawk. His home, he told me, was far in the west, where moor and forest stretched for miles and few settlements were to be found, which perhaps explained his dislike of being fenced in. He hated to be still, and his constant activity and chatter was a little tiring to me, accustomed as I was to only Abu's company. Despite this, Godric and I got on surprisingly well. I found that, beneath the surface, he was not really so very wild. In fact, he sometimes made me laugh, with his strict code of honour, and his expectation that everyone else would abide by his rules too. In his home, I suppose they did. But I do not think he would have lasted long on the streets of Burgos.

During our stay there, however, he did teach me certain things. He taught me the ways of the English countryside, how to fly a hawk and track a hare, and he even began to teach me the rudiments of swordplay. I had never held a sword before and I was clumsy with it, but I took to hunting easily enough. Keen to impress, I taught Godric some of my own fighting techniques, which involved less playing by the rules and more hidden weapons. The first time I got the best of him by pulling my knife in a fight, he protested that it was not fair because he had not known that I was carrying a knife. I pointed out that if it had been a real fight he would be dead, fair or not, and so I had still won. He was unconvinced, but still keen to learn my methods.

I, for my part, enjoyed having a playmate who was my equal. Abu was busy with Beorhtric, and with other wizards who came and went, and although he frequently called on me to watch or assist him, I had more free time than I had had before, and passed a pleasant few months in that wooden Saxon hall. Our parting, when it came, was a reluctant one. We swore to each other that we were brothers, and as such would meet again. I had never had a brother, and found that I liked the idea. Godric had once had two, but one was dead and he did not think much of the other.

"You make a better brother than Eamon," he told me. "Someday you will come and visit my father's house, and see the Dartmoor, and meet my sisters."

My heart full, I promised that one day I would.

Beorhtric and Godric stood outside the enclosure as Abu and I rode away, just the two of us upon the road once more. I kept looking back over my shoulder until we rode over a rise and they were hidden from view.

It would be some years before I saw Godric again.

I missed him, and travelling with Abu seemed duller than it had before. I think he knew it, for he was kind to me, and kept me busy. Summer was underway, and the woods and fields were full of useful potion ingredients. Abu taught me to recognise them – how he knew the English plants and animals so well I do not know, but Abu's head held many, many secrets, more than he ever told me – and how to find them, then how to prepare and use them.

We travelled east once more, along green roads where we occasionally met other travellers. Some were friendly, others less so, but Abu was a match for any would-be bandits. Every night, before we slept, he cast protective spells around us, our horses and baggage, and once, when we were set upon in broad daylight, he drew his wand, and with a flash of green light the thieves lay dead upon the ground. It was not the first time I had seen death, but I was shocked nonetheless.

"They would have cut our throats without a second thought, young Salazar," he told me, seeing my face.

"I know," I said at once. I would not let him think me frightened, nor yet soft-hearted. "But I wish you had let me fight one of them."

He laughed.

"With your wand, or with that little blade of yours? I'll wager you'd have come off badly, whichever you used. Wait a while, boy – you'll get your chance when you're a little older."

We passed many strange sights on that road. In one place, we saw a great white carving of a horse, etched into the hillside. In another, there was a ring of great stones, with more in the middle, arranged in some strange pattern. Abu stopped, and told me that the stones had been set there by wizards, many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago.

"Why?" I asked curiously. "What are they for?"

"Nobody knows," he replied. "These are not civilised lands like those to the south and east. They are wild, and no record has been kept for the most part."

After some days, we turned a little north, and went on until we came into lands riddled with lakes and waterways. Most of the land itself was marsh, and the roads were few, and treacherous to those who did not know them. Abu, though, had been to this place before, for here was another friend of his.


Torhild of the Fen lived in one of the most far flung parts of the region, upon a piece of land that was almost an island, for it had only one ridge of solid ground leading to it. She was a woman of great age, and it was said that she had been born in a land of snow and ice in the far north of Sweden. The story had it that she had come to this land with the muggle king Ivar, who is called the Boneless, in the wake of his great scourge of England. That had happened more than a hundred years before I came to the fen country, but whether true or not, she had certainly been there a very long time.

Torhild served no muggle king, however. She had never married, though she had once born a daughter (by Ivar himself, it was rumoured, though I doubt the truth of that), and for most of her life she had lived entirely alone, with only her servants, who were a mixture of humans and the creatures they call House Elves. I do not know how Abu came to know her; when I asked him, he merely smiled enigmatically and said that he had travelled widely and met many people during his life.

This eastern part of the country had, after Ivar's rampages, been part of the Danelaw, that part of Britain ruled by the Danes. When Abu and I came to it, with the year nearing midsummer, it had been back in the hands of the Saxons for many years, but there were still a large number of Danes among the population, as there still are today, though now they speak English and are nearly indistinguishable from the Saxons.

I thought it a bleak, lifeless place when we arrived, which only shows my ignorance, for the fen country is bursting with life. However, it can certainly be a strange and eerie place, especially to a stranger, and the day we arrived was overcast and still, with a heavy threat of rain hanging in the air. The house of Torhild was wooden, as all houses were then, even the houses of the great and wealthy, but in no other way did it resemble Beorhtric's cheery hall. It was far smaller, and it stood almost alone on its island, save for a few small shacks for animals. The roof was made of rushes, the wood was dark and water-stained, and it appeared to have sprung up out of the marshes, and to be made of the same stuff as them. A smell of peat smoke hung on the air.

However, gloomy though it appeared, I was glad to arrive, for I was heartily sick of the road. A manservant came out of the house to meet us, and he and Abu spoke, but I could understand nothing of what they said, for it was in a language I later learned was Old Norse. Even then, and even in the old Danelaw, Old Norse was rarely heard spoken, but Torhild liked tradition.

The man took our horses, ad gestured towards the house.

"Come," Abu said to me, and led the way to the door.

It was dark inside, the great fire in the centre burning with the low glow of peat, and there were only two torches, one on each end wall. After the daylight, I could see nothing clearly, and stood in the doorway blinking. Abu, however, murmured the Arabic spell for light, which sprang up at the end of his wand, and he marched forwards. At the far end of the room, seated on a high carved wooden chair, was Torhild herself, wrapped in a woollen cloak, her long white hair falling over her shoulders. Two men, whom I took to be her servants, stood either side of her, and on a stool at her feet sat a girl who looked to be no older than myself. Up close, in the light from Abu's wand and from the torch behind the group, I could see them well enough. One of the men was fair-skinned, like most of the Saxons I had met so far, fair-haired and with the stooped shoulders of a scholar, and the other was tall, broad-backed and dark, much darker than either I or Abu. The girl's face, being closer to the ground, was still in shadow, but from what I could see, she appeared to resemble the second man, and her hair was made of tight curls.

"You are expected, Master Potioneer," the old woman said, in English. After all the time I had spent with Godric, my understanding of English was much improved, and I had no difficulty knowing what she said, but I could tell that her accent was even thicker and stranger than the accents of the west.

"Am I indeed?" Abu gave a small chuckle. "Do you have spies on the road, or is there a scryer in your midst?"

"Perhaps both," Torhild replied. Her eyes fixed upon me, and I felt as though she were seeing further into me than she should, as if she could see all the things I had tried for months to hide, by imitating Godric's ways of talking and walking, by trying to take on the voice and manner of a Saxon thegn's son. I shifted from foot to foot, sure that the old woman with the high cheekbones and weather-worn skin knew immediately of the hovel and of Burgos, and my mother and the barefoot, hungry days.

"So this is the boy," was all she said.

"Aye, he is Salazar of Burgos," Abu replied.

I looked away from her piercing gaze and stared at the floor, unhappy with the introduction. I did not want to be Salazar of Burgos. Burgos was behind me.

She asked no more questions about me, and indeed did not appear to be much interested in me. Neither did she introduce the other people in the room. Instead, she summoned a slave girl and had us shown to a chamber that opened off a long hallway to the right of the great hall. This intrigued me, for I had never been in a house with so many separate chambers. Even Abu's house in Aquitaine had only had the one private room for Abu himself. I had never known of guests being given their own sleeping quarters.

"Torhild has her own ways," Abu told me, when I commented on this. "She is a very great witch, and has lived an unusual life. Treat her with great respect, Salazar, for she could probably kill you without moving or saying a word."

"Did you come here to talk to her about potions?" I said, for I was at a loss to see why we had come to this bleak place to visit this woman.

Abu looked at me for a long moment, as if weighing something in his mind.

"I think I may trust you enough to tell you that I came because she summoned me," he said at last. "I do not yet know why, so be on your guard. Torhild of the Fen makes a good friend, but I think she would make a bad enemy, and she is both secretive and manipulative. Do not say more than you have to, and keep your ears open. She speaks Arabic, but not Castilian."

He said no more, but from this I understood that he did not trust Torhild, though he had great respect for her.

At supper, I found myself placed beside the girl who had been with Torhild earlier, which surprised me for I had taken her for a servant, but she sat at Torhild's own table, and so did the two men who had been there. There were also several younger children at the table, who made a great deal of noise.

"Your name is Salazar?" the girl asked me in English, eyeing me with interest as I took my seat.

"Yes." I did my best to keep any hint of Burgos out of my accent.

"Are you a Moor, like the potioneer?" she went on.

I did not like her speaking about Abu like that, as if he was just any potioneer, but I shook my head.

"No." Abu had told me not to say more than I had to, but I was desperately curious to know who this girl was and why she sat at Torhild's table, when Abu had said that Torhild lived alone. Furthermore, although I had seen several people of her skin colour in England, it was not so common as further south, and I wondered if she too had come over the sea. "Have you always lived here?" I asked her.

A shadow passed over her face for a moment, but then she laughed.

"No, we arrived here just three weeks ago. Torhild is my grandmother's grandmother. My father is a farmer, and we lived much further north, where there are hills and valleys, not all this flat water."

So she was a Dane, or at least descended from them. And of a line of skilled witches, going by what Abu had said of Torhild. I looked at her with more interest.

"How long will you stay here for?" I asked.

She made a gesture with her hands that implied she did not know.

"Torhild has been good to us. We are kin, so we may stay as long as we need. My mother is abed with a new baby, and..." She hesitated. "We no longer have a farm."

"Oh." I did not quite know what to say to this. I wanted to ask what had happened to the farm, but did not think we knew each other well enough to ask questions like that.

"What is your name?" I asked instead.

Her face, which had been sad for a moment, cleared again and she smiled at me.

"Helga. My name is Helga."


The following morning, Abu took me with him to consult with Torhild, in yet another small chamber. From the outside, the house did not look large enough to contain so many rooms, but I realised that powerful enchantments must lie upon it. Torhild had not been in the great hall when we broke our fast, but the man whom I now knew as Helga's father, husband to Torhild's great-granddaughter, told Abu that she wished to see him, and led us to the room.

The room was unlike any I had seen before. It was a small chamber, mostly taken up by a large table in the centre. Around the walls were shelves, containing more books than I had ever seen in my life before. There were also shelves of what looked like potions ingredients in wood and horn containers, and other, more disturbing, things. The heads of three hares, preserved but for their eyes, which were merely empty sockets, stared down from a shelf. What looked like a human foot floated in a big jar made entirely of glass, and on the wooden walls, between the shelves, were chalked many symbols and diagrams I did not understand.

In the middle of it all stood Torhild of the Fen. She was a small woman, not a great deal taller than I was, but she stood very straight, and the only signs of her age were the thousands of lines, both deep and shallow, that laced across her skin, and the pure whiteness of her hair, which was long and straight and hung loose past her waist.

"Welcome, Master Sadiq," she said as we entered. Her eyes flickered over me, but with little interest. "I am sorry," she went on, "to have summoned you so far from your warm southern lands. I expect you are wondering what it is all about."

Abu made a small inclination of the head that could have meant yes or no. "Well, it was not much of an inconvenience to me," he said. "I had already planned to travel to Britain this year."

I remained silent, listening intently and hoping to learn something. My own interest lay not so much in the reason for Torhild's summons (for it seemed only natural that Abu should be in great demand) but in Abu's reason for responding to it. He was a great and respected wizard; why should he obey the word of this old crone?

"Tell me," the old woman went on, almost as if Abu had not spoken. "Have you ever seen the like of this?"

She produced from a drawer in the table a roll of thick, ancient vellum and passed it to Abu. He took it, unrolled it, and scanned down it, a frown appearing on his face.

"Where did this come from?" he asked at last.

"It was found not far from here," she replied. "In the house of a wizard even older than I. He is dead now, and some of the local petty witches and wizards – common folk, with little skill and no training – would have taken the contents of his house for their own. When I realised what the contents had among them, I collected them myself. Such things should not be handled by the ignorant. But tell me what you think of it." She fixed Abu with a piercing look from her blue eyes, an almost eager expression on her face.

"What is there to think? It is very old – and alone, does not seem of much significance. An account of a legend, nothing more. Unless you have something else to show me."

I thought I saw a smile cross Torhild's face, but it was so fleeting I might have imagined it.

"Potioneers. Always such cautious people," she said. "There is more. Here." This time she handed him a much newer-looking parchment. "This is a translation," she went on. "The original has been in my possession for a very long time, but it is in Norse, and I do not think you understand that."

Abu did not reply, but read in silence. When he had finished, he looked up at her.

"Why are you showing me this? What does it have to do with me?"

Torhild took a step forwards so that she was standing very close to Abu, directly in front of him. She barely came to his chest, but there was something about her that spoke of a powerful magic, and I would not have wanted her so close to me. Abu did not flinch or move backwards.

"What if I told you that I had discovered the secret those texts speak of, and that it was right here in the fens?"

There was a short silence in the room. I had not the smallest idea what was going on, but I was desperately curious. Thus, I was very annoyed when Abu turned to me and said, "Salazar, I think this is not for your ears. Take yourself outside."

If it had been Abu alone I might have tried to cajole him, but Torhild made me nervous. Hoping to convey to Abu that I was not happy, I said nothing, merely glared at him, then turned and marched out of the room.

Outside, the sun was shining, a stark contrast with both the darkness of the interior and the misty gloom we had arrived in the previous day. I stood a little way from the house and examined my surroundings. Torhild's home stood on a very slight rise in the ground, but the land all around us was almost entirely flat. It was not as empty and uninhabited as I had imagined, however. On the other side of a winding river, I could see a cluster of cottages, and even a small group of people busy by the water's edge, cutting reeds. Further away, across the marshes, was another set of houses, blue smoke rising from their roofs into the still air.

"Salazar!" A voice called my name, and I turned to see Helga and the two brothers next to her in age, playing by the side of a stream that ran down to the river. She waved when I turned around, and beckoned me to come over to them.

I hesitated, then strolled over. She smiled at me, her brothers busy piling rocks in the stream.

"Good morning!" she greeted me cheerfully.

"Good morning," I returned, although the morning did not seem very good to me, despite the sun.

"What did Torhild want?" she asked.

I shrugged, not wanting to admit my ignorance. "To ask Abu about some old texts. About potions," I added, though this was a guess. Why else, though, would Torhild have wanted to talk to Abu specifically, so much that she would ask him to come all the way from Spain? Nobody knew more of potions than Abu al-Sadiq.

"Oh." Helga looked disappointed that it was not something more exciting. "Well, anyway. These are my brothers, Eirik and Oskar."

The slightly larger of the two boys, who must have been around six years of age, glanced up at the sound of his name.

"Come and help us, Helga!" he said, then gave me a brief smile. "You as well, if you want."

He immediately went back to what he was doing, but Helga looked at me, a question in her expression.

"What are they doing?" I asked.

"Building a dam. Come, we'll show you how to do it."

To my surprise, she took my hand and tugged me towards the water. I cast a last look up at the house, where Abu was presumably hearing secrets, then gave myself up to the task of learning how to stack rocks in a stream.

Being not yet eleven years old, I found entertainment in the childish game, and almost forget my bad temper in the face of Helga and her brothers' merriness. The boys, once they had accepted me as a playmate, asked even more questions than their sister, and I found myself telling them all about my travels with Abu, about our long journey through Frankia, about the ways I made myself useful to him, about Beorhtric's home, and my friend Godric, who had taught me to hunt.

"A Saxon?" one of the boys – I had not worked out which one was Eirik and which Oskar – asked, wrinkling his nose.

"Yes," I agreed, uncertain why this should have elicited such a reaction.

"Saxons are nothing but rats!" the other boy announced.

"Ssh! Quiet, moss-brain!" Helga commanded, giving her brother a light clip on the back of his head. "That's not true." She turned to me, her face anxious. "Ignore him. He doesn't know what he's talking about."

"I do!" the little boy said. "The Saxons burnt our farm and all our beehives!"

"Some Saxons did that. Not all of them. The same as not all Danes go raiding the coast." Before he could say any more, she looked once more at me. "What is it like where you come from, Salazar?"

I hesitated before answering.

"It's very green. With hills and valleys and wide rivers and lots of trees. Not like here."

I was describing Aquitaine, not Burgos. Placing my point of origin a little closer to where I had come to. Helga did not seem to notice my hesitation, and smiled delightedly.

"It sounds like our home. Our farm was in a valley, between two great green hills. There was no wide river, though, just a little rushing one, falling over the rocks."

The subject of Saxons was over, but it left me feeling vaguely disturbed.

A short time later, we were interrupted by the sound of horses' feet, and looking up, we saw Abu, with the fair-hired man who had stood with Helga's father at Torhild's side the night before, riding out. When he spotted me, Abu slowed his horse and called to me.

"I shall be back before we sup. You may do as you please until I return, Salazar."

And the horses moved on, leaving us behind. I stared after him, once more filled with resentment at being shut out.

Helga stood beside me, also gazing after them.

"I wonder where they're going," she said.

I made no reply.

"You should be careful if your master is working with Torhild," she said quietly, after a pause.

I turned to look at her, but she was still watching the disappearing horses.

"Why?"

She gave a small shrug. "Torhild is a very great witch, but she's tricky. She doesn't ever say what she means. And she uses some very strange magic. My father doesn't like the things she does. You should be careful – and so should the potioneer."