There are some parts they changed, some bits I'm glad they padded out. What do you think?
Thank you to you all who have favourited this story and added reminders. I am sorry I have not updated recently, I was trying to get another fic finished.
I am trying out a new format, the narrative intersecting at two different, pivotal points in the chapters. I don't know how it will work, or whether, as readers, you like it like that - please tell me!
I am sorry that Aedre has had to miss the Battle of Edington and pretty much all of the action of the first three "Saxon Stories" books, because she was too young, nine or ten years younger than Uhtred. But there's one heck of a journey ahead of her.
I have read the books several times as well as tying in with the TV series.
What are your thoughts on the series? Who is your favourite character? Is there anything the series should have done that the books missed?
Let me know and I'll tell you mine next chapter.
Here we are, Chapter 3...
88888888 3. Spring 877 Aedre sat at the centre of the boat packed full of pilgrims. So many of them had stayed at the Holy Island that it had been difficult to find a place for her to sleep.
She had sat on the steps of the monastery, looking out towards St. Cuthbert's Isle, wondering whether it would be safer for her to find a cave until first light until the monk, that Aedre believed to be suspicious of her circumstances, found a pile of straw and a cloak under which she could sleep above the horses along with a family who had travelled from Lincoln.
The mother had fussed her, on hearing that she had been left behind by her family and made her welcome beside her three daughters. But Aedre had barely slept.
Lindisfarne was land which the monks paid tribute to their landowner, Aedre knew. And the landowner was Bebbanburg and the lord to whom they must pay coin was her Uncle Aelfric. So there was little sleep for Aedre that night as she listened for sounds that her identity might be known and that she was about to be hurried off back to to her old fortress home, clutching her father's sword in its scabbard to her body.
Her presence would probably even now be reported to her uncle, Aedre thought as the grey-gold light of the early morning pushed through the gaps in the masonry while the Lincolnshire family slept.
But she had done all she could to act the part of poor, lost girl. She was from Seahuises, she had said. Her family were merchants. She had been taught her letters and her father was pious: he had taught her Latin, and with it, the bible.
It wasn't much of a lie: Father Beocca had taught her Latin and English, and had indeed told her stories of God's greatness: of His punishment of His people with floods and plagues, and His mercy on the occasion of His sending down his only son to Earth. He could be classed as her father, for he was Father to all at Bebbanburg.
In the morning, when all had been bright and fresh on the holy island, as if the night had washed clean the sins of the day before, the abbot who had been suspicious of her landing and her injury.
A monk, Beadda, had taken her down to the quay, where a fleet of five dip-sailed boats were being filled with people, families, all pilgrims desperate to get to St. Cuthbert's Isle and feel the awe-some presence of God.
"You will be with your family soon," Beadda soothed, handing a a chunk of bread. Aedre reached up for it gratefully: it had been a long time since her breakfast the day before and the rowing had tired her. It had been Beadda who had held her on his lap as another monk, a healer, had carefully removed the arrowhead.
"This will hurt," he had said.
"I'll be brave," Aedre had played, pretence with tears and fear doing the job. And it had hurt, and she had shed real tears. And the Beadda had bathed it and dressed it, telling her in soft tones, "We will find your family. Get some rest and we will find it. Your father will know his sword." And Aedre had been allowed to keep it, as a form of identification.
"Girl," Beadda's voice called her to her senses. "The boats are to leave. Will you come?"
And with God's help, as the monk lifted her over the edge of the boat, the tide rushing them out away from the island, she would be deep into Pictland before news of her having reached Lindisfarne had been sent to Bebbanburg.
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The shoal of boats leaving Lindisfarne were heading north-west into Pictland's Moray river. The wide headland ahead stood out against the sky, its green-blue land growing ever bigger as the sun insisted on rising and shining right down on them, as if pointing out their boats, Aedre's boat, and then her. Sitting as she was by the young daughter of the Lincolnshire family, she slid to the planked bottom of the boat, wrapping her arms around her legs and pressing her face to her knees, her warm blonde hair spilling over her shoulders like a curtain.
The woman of the family leaned over and touched her shoulder, muttering kind words about knowing how she must miss her family. The father eyed Aedre's father's sword greedily and when he tried to move it out of her reach, no doubt to keep it, she held onto its handle with all its might.
"It was her father's", the monk Beadda said, who was sitting on the starboard bench a few people down. "I think she means to take it to him."
Whether by the holy man's words, or that there were a few people watching the potential act of a man taking the property of a child, the Lincolnshire man cleared his throat, and leaned back, holding his wife's shoulders and looking out at the sea-scape.
Aedre glimpsed at all of this through her hair and vowed, though the monks had put her with this family in the belief it would keep her safe, to be clear of the pilgrims just as soon as they landed.
Dusk came just as the headland of the Dee came into view. Aedre, who was now sitting next to the mother of this family, feigning acceptance, had beenrewarded witha handful of bread.
This mother was kind, Aedre thought. She had her two little children tucked right by her, and had spent a good hour as the boat negotiated the wide estuary, to the landing opposite an isle on which a monastery stood. Indeed, the boat that had piloted them in had come from the small harbour. Clearly, thought Aedre, the monks knew one another, and helped one another and indeed, with the lateness of the hour, their little fleet were guided towards the monastery.
A conversation was being conducted, as the pilgrims huddled closer to shield themselves from the biting wind, between the abbot and the monk Beadda, who had tended her wounds.
Instinctively, Aedre bent her head next to the family's younger children and sheltered near to the mother, who stood close to her husband. Eyes like blue chips of ice rested on Aedre's father's sword for a moment, as the dimming setting sun highlighted the curling wave patterns in the blade.
Aedre never knew the name of the sword, for her father had died before she was born, but rather a luckless, nameless blade she had revovered from the armoury, appropriated by Seobhridht and recovered by her in her hand than his. Buried in his stomach if he tried to steal it.
If Aedre had had any cause to remember her thoughts on that dull, cold night, there could be any number of things to choose from: her first thought on deliberate murder, which might be very concerning in a ten-year-old.
It might have been the monastery of Culdees itself, a dull, turreted, grey stone building, somewhere money had been poured to afford the richness of its construction. Somewhere where the doors were flanked by no less than a dozen monks waiting for the pilgrins. Somewhere Aedre would get very familiar with in the future.
Or it could be that, she thought, as she sheltered into the arms of the woman into whose family she had been thrust, an arrow wound to her hand, she could not trust those in authority to help her - more likely that news of her disappearance would gave reached the community here already.
Like just now, as the abbot rested his eye on Aedre's face, his gaze lingering for a moment too long. When the time was right, she would have to make a run for it, and there would be no better opportunity than the next day, when they would cross the Forth. For the next part of their journey, their walk into Dal Riada territory, to the west coast until they reached the sea, then out, to Iona itself, would vegin at first light. Plenty of opportunities to lose herself, and find her own way. Especially as she had wealth, tucked flat into her jerkin.
"You don't have to be afraid," whispered the woman, against whose arm she had huddled. "You may come with us to Iona, to find your family."
The man and the woman were shown a room off the main hall of the monastery where they could sleep, and, like the rest of the pilgrims, were charged a silver piece for food and lodging for the night. The man of the family paid dutifully, before Beadda, the monk from Lindisfarne, escirted them to the central hall of the monastery where they were given bread and weak ale.
Aedre sat eating her bread, ignoring the weevils falling from it as she continued to pretend she was one of the family when she noticed, from the corner of her eye, that Beadda was in animated conversation with the abbot, his gesticulation once or twice in her direction.
Was he telling the man how she was discovered rowing towards the monastery with a hand wound? Did they know of her uncle? Had he raised the alarm of her disappearance and these holy men knew of it already?
Aedre ducked lower again, hoping she was being seen to be penitent and humble. But her mind raced: she must be free of the pilgrim party, and soon.
In the cavernous antechamber the monks were at work, fetching and carrying to accommodate their unexpected, lucrative guests. Groups of people were ushered here and there, and the Abbot, Beidinn, spoke to the father of Aedre's temporary foster-family. He held out an old, wrinkled hand firmly to one side of the man, who grudgingly counted four coins into the abbot's hands.
"Five", corrected the abbot, raising his eyebrows to three children. At the slight hesitation, the man looked at Aedre, his eyes narrowing, before flicking to the face of his wife, who bobbed her head for a moment.
"Five," agreed the man, reluctantly, before the abbot declared his thanks, stepping deftly across the granite flagstone floor.
They were led up a set of spiral steps, which opened out into a wide chamber, already filling up with pilgrims from the boats that had been piloted in to the monastery that evening. A lot of people sat in groups of twos and threes, huddled together, eating, or sleeping. Some, with small children, were nursing them or feeding them.
The abbot picked his way through the people, the man and his family in tow. Aedre scanned the people for space - where would they be going? She couldn't see a place empty enough for all five of them. But the abbot of Culdees was not taking them to a space in this room, instead he was striding to a door at the far side of the room. Hand on the iron ring of the latch, he turned it.
"It has space for you all, my lord," the abbot said deferentially, his voice soft. The man looked taken a-back.
"Thank you," he murmured, not correcting the man as he ushered his family inside, his eye coming to rest on Aedre's face again.
A bed, set to one side of a larger one was where the two children were to sleep. The young boy, aged about five, struggled and wriggled in his mother's arms as tiredness overcame him. His sister took his arm and led him to the bed, speaking silent, soft words to him.
Aedre sat next to the girl, and looking between the woman amd kan for signs that she had done the right thing. But the nan and tbe woman were now standing by an arched window that looked down in tbe darkness onto the grounds of the monastery below, and further, onto the river, and the jorthern bank of the Forth. Next to the girl, her father's sword beside her, Aedre lay, and closed her eyes.
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A noise, like a tiny beast scratching its way in the dark on the hunt for food, awoke Aedre. Blinking into the darkness, she wondered what she shape was ahead of her, that of a shield which, upon its surface, as black as rocks that her uncle had once gifted her, were painted shimnering white dots.
Aedre blinked, and this time, realised that the dots were not paint, and the shield was, in fact, the outline of the window of the room to which she had been led, with the family she had been given to.
She stared at the stars before a shiver brought her to her feet. By the lice-riddled straw was her father's sword, where she had lain it as the mother of the family tucked a thin, wool blanket around her arms.
Swords had names, Aedre knew, but this sword had belonged to the father she had never known. It had hung between two iron brackets at the back of the armoury. She had never known her uncle touch it, or use it. But it had been Seobhridht who had, for a joke, placed the sword in her hand one weak-rayed, autumn morning and had knelt to her, calling her, "My lady."
They had guffawed and snorted at her with the sword in hand, taller as it was than herself. And, at the same time that she was being mocked by the guards, Aedre had felt a warmth, a rightness from the smooth, iron hilt in her hand.
But she had never known it's name. To her it was "Faedersword" and, at the times her uncle would hit her, for not eating her food, for not learning to sew, for creeping out of her room at night to sit above the chapel and look at the stars...for when not even Father Beocca had a kind word for her, she would hold it, swing it - clumsily - feel its weight; feel it's ambition, belonging to the father she had never known.
It wasn't his first sword, of course. That had been the one he had lost in battle when he had lost his life. When her brother gad been lost to them, when she was just a mere baby. Second of everything. It suited her. Second sword, for a second-hand girl, raised for the second purpose in dynasties: a marriage contract.
But her brother had been second-hand too: Father Beocca had once told her how her father's eldest son, called Uhtred, had gone to fight against invading danes and had lost his head. Her mother, who herself was second-hand to Aelfric and had to deny Aedre's existence, had, once Uhtred the Elder had died, insisted Osbert should be re-baptised as Uhtred to meet his father's demand that his name be changed. Osbert became Uhtred, the brother she knew almost like a fairy-tale, a legend.
"I held him under a little too long," Father Beocca had told Aedre with a chuckle. Your mother was most distressed.
Oh, that Father Beocca was there now to comfort her; Aedre knew she would endure his whacks for her disobedience knowing his strong words would eventually melt to softness.
Aedre found that her left hand was pulsing now, and stretched it, to ease the cramp in it. Beadda had treated her hand again, with the same pungent, sweet-smelling ointment when the boat's passengers set foot before the gates of the monastery. It was healing.
More scratching nearby focused Aedre's thoughts to her situation. An archway of stone framed a field of stars, which stopped abruptly around an umknown shape in the background. In the foreground, the stone parapet that was the front of Culdees monastery blocked out more.
Pulling the wool blanket to her shoulders, Aedre moved across the straw-covered boards. Beyond the monastery ships disrupted the reflected star field of the river.
She would be over there tomorrow, over the river, for the monks were to take them to the castle at Dunkeld before taking the path of the river, and another that would lead them west. Beadda had been discussing it on the boat that day and she, as fugitive from Bebbanburg, had listened with interest.
There was a clatter behind her. Aedre tensed and swung round. A glint of moonlight played on a pattern of waves, a pattern she knew in her dreams.
A tall, vast figure was there, crouching a litttle as if in triumph, crouching in delight with what he now possessed.
Faedersword.
At once, Aedre leapt. The man with whose family she had been placed held the sword aloft. Moonlight reflected his pleasure at her anger.
"It's mine!" Aedre shouted, not thinking to care if she awoke the rest of the family, nor indeed, the rest of the monastery. "Give it back! You're stealing!"
"Just like you did, with this!" thundered the man, pushing her away. "This can't be yours, or your father's, you coming from Seahuises. Yer must have stolen it!"
Aedre made to keap at the man, to get back her father's sword; to recover it. But the words this brute of a man, still pushing her away, remained in her mind. She had come from Seahuises. Of course she had, so she had told Beadda. So she would never likely be in genuine possession of a blade as fine as that. If anyone were to think her noble, then they might start asking questions.
A shudder as her mind told her the name Sven Kjartansson passed through Aedre's body. She wpuld have to be cunning never to e
A crunch and a scraping of wood confirmed that someone had heard their disturbance. Aedre looked quickly towards the door towards the large sleeping hall. Yes, someone was coming in.
"Unless," the man suggested, a slow smile creeping over his face. "The size of it, this took a long time. "...you come from a noble family - why are you running - who missed you?" He leered closer, his eyes widening. "How much will they pay for your safe return?"
Aedre said nothing, but jerked her head towards the door, behind which metalware was beginning to be unbolted.
The big man followed her stare. It was enough. In a trice, Aedre leapt towards him, bearing down as hard as she could with his teeth. At once, the man dropped the sword, which thudded onto the straw. He roared in pain, swiping out towards Aedre, who missed most of the blows, though one hand caught the side of her face.
She had it! Just as the door opened, the man staggering around after her, Aedre ran to the window. It wasn't much higher than the turret tower at Bebbanburg, although it was the middle of the night and she would barely be able to see where she was going. That was if the walls of the monastery were not smooth - if they were, she was done for.
Aedre tossed her father's sword out if the window. It disapoeared into the pitch black of the night, but the commotion in the room as voices were raised, the man's own sharp and indignant above all the rest.
Aedre felt the masonry with her foot, stretching down lower with her left as she held tightly to the windowsill. Nothing.
She couldn't very well go back up; her arms, for one thing, felt very tired, and Aedre doubted that they would pull her back up.
She lowered herself down to her arm's fullest length. Surely, there must be something. Above her, shouts.
"She must he there, somewhere!"
"Well, someone find her!"
"Let us hope she is safe! I put her with you because I thought she would be." That was Beadda, his soft, cool voice remonstrating with the man.
Aedre's arms began to weaken as her legs sought purchase with the monastery wall as she fought with her mind to stop her from shouting out.
Beadda would help her, Aedre's mind beguiled. Talk to Beadda. But if she did that, she risked being returned to Bebbanburg.
Scrabbling desperately at the vertical stone wall Aedre felt liquid ooze from her hand. Pain throbbed down her arm as her healing arrow wound pressed against the windowsill. She couldn't hold on much longer.
And then, a ledge, thin, but long, long enough to reach down to grasp.
With ease, Aedre pulled herself into the night while the man, who had roused the abbot, stormed about his bite, the voices dimming as she climbed down.
Her hand was in agony once she reached the last twenty feet, the moon illuminating the ground, the part-built abbey church towering to her right.
More voices now as more people were being alerted to her absence, more hastily-shared conversations; more glimmers of candlelight.
There was nothing for it, Aedre knew, but to make a jump for it. Whatever lay below her would either cushion her fall, or kill her.
It was the former. Spiky hawthorn scratched Aedre as she landed part way through it and she painfully pulled herself out of it.
She would have to run, sonewhere - lights from candles were growing brighter as people made their way towards the abbey's courtyard.
It was cold. Aedre shivered as she got to her feet. She stumbled, bruising her foot. But the noise of her impact with the object did not go un-noticed in her mind: the clatter meant metal.
She scrambled in the darkness for the object, her hand first pulling at something soft, then resting on...yes, metal. Her father's sword, wrapped as it had been, when she first threw it down, in her blanket.
Taking it up, Aedre stalked towards the entrance, the gates bolted. A man ran from the abbey gates, then another, noth heading towards them. Aedre slunk backwards, her back pressed to the imcomplete church walls.
Light from the candle showed the man - the abbot now addressing the monk on watch in an animated fashion.
And then Aedre saw it, just for a moment, as the abbot swung around and strode back towards the monastery - her way out. There was a gap, not two feet wide, on the north side of the monastery walls, presumably to aid the masons who were building the monastery's church. She took her chance.
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It was morning when Aedre opened her eyes. Grey skies and grey cliffs formed together in her mind. Her back ached and she stretched her arms from underneath the boat's planked seating.
It hadn't been the best plan in the world to hide in tbe pilgrim boats the night before. But she had to go somewhere, sonewhere else, somewhere she could make a bid to safety.
And just as she was considering what to do next there it was: the bag she had left behind, hidden under at the back of the seat on which she had sat the day before with the mother and the two children, discreetly secreted as they disembarked.
A skein of geese honked overhead as they flew past, defining the sky from the cliffs. Where could she go? There was nothing here, Aedre thought. The monastery was on an island. Her only hope was to get across the mile stretch of water yo the mainland and there consider her options.
Aedre's mind drifted to food as the grey sky was illuminated from behind by the sun, making the grey clouds paler and brighter. Could she sneak back to the monastery amd find the kitchen, steal something.
Leaving the silver bag back where shevhad found it, Aedre jumped down onto the hard, wet sand, the movement if the estuary pushing the water about the fast boats, looking to her left, where she noticed the monastery gates now open. Perhaps if she -
"I have found your daughter!" A shout went up from Aedre's right and the Abbot Beidinn, who had sold the family the room, taking her firmly hy the shoulder.
"My child!" he exclaimed when he saw her appearance: straggly salt-encrusted hair from the rain in the night, damp clothes, dirty face.
From out of the gates of the monastery the family came: the mother and her two boys first, the father looming like a cliff, face angry. The woman, seeing he had spied Aedre, put her hand on his arm.
"You - where have you been?"
"Waiting here." Aedre hoped she sounded penitent.
"We missed you so much!" declared the mother, who was now trying to keep up the pretence that she was their daughter.
"He's not my father!" Aedre cried, as the gulls below mocked her petulant cry.
"I am her guardian, as well she knows," said the man, eyeing the sword with envy. Aedre hid it behind her back, looked beseechingly at the woman, trying to make out that she was innocent. She looked uncertainly at her husband, who was nursing his leg.
Bur whatever had been the outcome of the conversation between Abbot Blathmac and the man in whose company she had been obliged to keep, she was back in theur possession.
Then, from out of her unresisting grasp the abbot then wrenched her father's sword. He took it and handed it to the advancing man, who pulled the blade from its skin, his eyes gleaming in greed.
"We can go aboard, and wait," the woman said hastily, hoisting her son and daughter over the taffrail. "You too."
Aedre, hurried over to the seating under which the previous metals, coins and documents. She huddled over to the very edhe of the seat, curling herself up to protect against the wind, glowering at the man, who was revelling in his new found fortune. Aedre's eyes fell upon the monastery doors again, open now for the pilgrims, who were beginning to priceed to their boats in groups, twos and threes, shouldering packs and weapons and children.
Next to her, the man grumbled thanks to the abbot for reuniting his family, and crushed Aedre hard against the side of the boat, her father's sword across his lap.
Aedre felt resentful, and was feeling hungry. Her hand ached, and she lowered her head, folding it towards her body. The woman, as if reading her mind, handed her a rather large piece of greying bread, which fell apart in her hands, having been partially consumed by insects, several of which dropped out and into her lap.
The boats cast off and it was clear they were crossing the Dee and heading to the northern shore. Aedre sat motionless, looking at the water, the sporadic sunlight glinting on the undulations every so often as she thought. Get away from this family, Aedre knew. Get right away. Get her father's sword, if she could.
The boats were swift. Already, the monk Beadda, in a craft ahead of them, was on his feet by the pilot, gauging the flat piece of earth ahead of them, where they would land.
Aedre wriggled, giving a helpless look to the woman. But she looked away, instead fussing over her own children, deliberately avoiding Aedre's eye. Faedersword pushed painfully into her leg.
What was his plan? Aedre thought. If it was to rape her, he would have done it by now. He had been insistent on continuing the lie that she, Aedre, was his daughter, and in the whole endeavour of leaving, the details of her arrival at Lindisfarne had been overlooked.
Then, a thought occurred to Aedre. If it was so, then maybe she could use it to her advantage. She could pretend she was frightened, pretend she wanted to be with this family, and then no-one would remember her mysterious arrival, and any enquiries sent from Bebbanburg.
With renewed hope, Aedre looked beyond the mud jetty, to the landscape beyond, and to the castle beyond and realised she had seen it before.
In a sketch in the back of one of Bebbanburg's holiest of manuscripts, the Life of Saint Oswald, Dunkeld Castle was drawn, as if the artist had sat on the very monastery bank behind them and drawn it to scale.
It was home to the Pictish Royal Family, Father Beocca had told her. "Those people long occupying the land in the north," he had said, his jaw set, and his mouth thin. "They are the first peoples of this land, and they owned Northumbria too, until the Romans built the Great Wall." She had asked how he knew this. Beocca had explained that the Romans had written all of this down and, miraculously, when Rone had fallen to the Barbarian, tbe documents had miraculously escaped destruction.
"So, the Picts are Barbarians," Aedre had asked. Father Beocca had narrowed his eyes.
"They are Christians, as are we. They neighbour the Dal Riadans, who brought Saint Columba's Christian teachings to Lindisfarne."
"So, they are not enemies?" Aedre had pressed.
"They are enemies when they choose, or us."
Aedre's mind filled with her beloved Father Beocca as their boat was dragged to the shore. One of the monks she recognised from the evening before put out a long, broad arm to help her out. The man thrust Faedersword across her stomach, which caused her to lose her reach and she was thrust back against the seat She looked down, humbly. Clearly, if she was going to play along being part of this family she had to be submissive.
The other eight pilgrims passed in front of Aedre as the monks helped them out, followed next by the mother and children of the family.
"Wait here!" growled the man, pulling up his arm with which he had pinned Aedre to her seat, and he proceeded to help his family up the bank, using the bescabbarded sword for support.
"We are going on," the monk, who had tried to help her said, looking down kindly to Aedre. "Your father is - " he broke off, apparently not knowing how to finish the sentence as the family strode off after the pilgrims. "Perhaps - "
"He is very protective of me," Aedre offered, reaching under the bench boards. The bag was still there. Could she run? The monk held out his habd to haul her up. She took it. "He wants to make sure we - "
But Aedre, too, did not finish her sentence. Behind the monk a roar, like the loudest storm Aedre had ever heard.
She looked up, expecting the downpour. Ahead of her, on the dry road ahead, a castle loomed, like a sea eagle, the turrets to either side of the main gateway spreading out over the countryside as if predating it.
The monk turned, in pursuit of the rest of the pilgrim party. Aedre took a few steps towards him. Then froze. The ground shook as the hooves of hundreds of horses skirted out from the side of Dunnottar Castle, making a whooping, screeching sound.
She looked at the monk, who had dropped low to the ground, the skein of pilgrims still as they watched the riders approach, before scattering and fleeing, to the hillocks near the estuary; towards the castle; back towards the boats.
That had been a mistake. Those shambling back towards Aedre were being scooped up and hacked down by axes and swinging metal fixed to poles. She stumbled back. Just a few feet from the boat now, and she scrabbed for the reeds to help her back in.
Now the gate of the castle was opening, a gate banging open. More men poured out and Aedre could see that they were dressed similarly to her uncle's troops - plain helmet and leather clothing tight fitting, spilling out behind the rider qt the front, arraying out to engage the others who had appeared on the field of battle first. They must be Norse, Aedre reasoned - their clothing was made of animal skins, their fair hair in elaborate braids.
But before her mind could reckon on what to do next, to seize the boat, or to hide, her eye was drawn to a pair of riders who were charging at a small group near the narrow strand next to the estuary, one if them holding aloft a sword inexpertly and failing to do any damage or deflect any blow. Aedre strained upwards behind large clumps of grass that were between the castle and the boats
It was the family she had fallen in with. The father was wielding Faedersword as he was cut down, his wife and children next.
Could she get to the sword? Even now, with the castle soldiers in pursuit raining blows on horses legs and mouths and on Norse bodies, the army was being drawn.
It couldn't - they couldn't - have been any more than a hundred yards from Aedre. But a drawn army was still dangerous. If it had continued fighting somewhere else it could just as easily come back.
But...her father's sword...
Keeping low, she skittered across the mud and gravel to the corpse of tbe father, trying her best to look at him as she got the sword over his already stiffening fingers. A shout and a low scream drew her attention and she grasped at the sword as she scanned the horrifying picture around her.
The scream came again, this tine much closer. From the thin, wispy shore grass tore a figure, that of a child with a Norseman behind. The rider raised his arm, the battleaxe in his grasp raised high in order to inflict a deadly blow to the child.
Aedre tore forwards, upsetting a rolled up pack lost, no doubt, by an unfortunate from her party. The contents, some books and scrolls, and several apples, rolled out. The horse skittered on them, then reared back on its hind legs. The Norseman lost his balance and was thrown. The child tore towards her.
Aedre grabbed his hand, pulling him faster than his legs wanted to carry him, until his legs were sore from the rough soil and grass.
Down to the water line Aedre tore, still holding fast to the child. She searched for her boat, the one Aedre had the silver on.
After a minute or so of frantic searching, Aedre he spied it, the craft that had brought her, under which had having pulled and pushed itself between the others.
She stepped forward. But the little boy suddenly dropped her hand. Aedre turned. The child whose life she had just saved was foldingvhis arms, imperiously.
"You have to come with me!" Aedre insisted. She grabbed out at the boy, who wriggled out of her grasp, a look of indignation on his face.
"Come on!" Aedre insisted, looking over the tussock "They're going to kill you - and me if we don't moce!" As she spoke, a horsed rider was bearing down on them. Aedre got up.
"Come on!" She repeated, taking the boy's forearm. She began to run, the boy tumbling after her, but the child slipped on the wet grass, his leather boots flailing as he went down.
There was nothing for it. Too late, this rider - this Norseman, was closing down on them, an axe raised. And then Aedre looked again. As the boy flailed, it was clear the warrior was closing down on him.
He hadn't seen her. The warrior, in single-minded pursuit of the boy, who had now stopped still, staring at his end, had not seen Aedre, staring at him.
Aedre moved. Why, she never did know. But it was the start of her many battles, fear dissolving about her as she stepped out from the grassy hillock, withdrawing the sword once belonging to her father, its wisps and curls, birthmarks of manufacture, catching the morning sunlight. And ran.
She had no real idea what she was doing. Sword blazing into action, Aedre ran at the rider, slashing her arm from left to right. And the rider had still not seen her.
But the horse had. Whether newly-trained or simply fearful of danger, it had seen the figure brandishing a weapon and charging towards it. It reared to its hind hooves, its rider tumbling off. And all the time the boy had simply been staring.
Aedre bore down on the warrior. Mad, crazy, that idea was, a ten-year-old girl with a geavy sword preparing to attack a Norseman. But the man was dazed, scrabbing for his axe. No thoughts passed through Aedre's mind now as she raised her arm, the metal of the sword blade making inaccurate incisions into the man's face and chest.
"Come on!" This was the boy now, stirring himself into voice, calling Aedre away, and she was brought back to the present, the roar of battle behind them.
Not stopping to clean the blade, Aedre stumbled towards him. They had been going to the boats, she recalled. Pulling the boy by the arm, who seemed much more willing to go with her this, Aedre searched the estuary bank for the boats - specifically, her boat.
A crescendo of noise behind them caused her to run faster, ignoring now the pain in her hand caused by the pressure of holding the sword. Throwing it into the one which was hers, she took the terrified boy by the woollen shouldrrs of his tunic. Perghahs if her mind had been at ease, she might have noticed the significance of this. But it wasn't. Warriors now were pouring in their direction.
"Under the seat!" Aedre yelled, as the boy skittered around on the boards at the bottom, then she, too, launched herself into it, scrabbling herself under the bench on which she had sat not half an hour before, reaching out for the sword.
The horses came to a standstill. Aedre waited, listening, trying not to breathe as the the horses huffed while their riders waited. She looked across to the bench at the other side of the boat: she could not see the boy: he was well tucked under in there. Aedre shifted her leg. Must be still. Must - be -
Voices drew Aedre's attention. She didn't know how long they had been there: the light betrayed no shadow, and the gentle lulling of the water had caused her to close her eyes.
But she was wide awake now, her body stiff as she listened as a rustle and a thud vibrated through the boat's wood. Her first thought was of the boy adjacent. Was he still there or had he gone? She could not tell. She stretched out her arm, carefully, her fingers touching the bag Seobhridht had placed in the tiny rowing boat she had piloted to the Holy Island two days before. Curling her hand around it, Aedre pushed it far into her tunic, the coins jostling for position.
And then froze again. Voices were even nearer now: could it be the man she had stabbed? It was true, she hadn't the strength to skewer deeper. A foot stepped onto the boat, and then another. To Aedre's horror she could see the trail of blood spots, faint but still obvious, from the deck, over the taffrail and back out onto the grass, where they glittered like rubies, betrayed by the sun.
Knees covered feet. Whoever had found his way into the boat had noticed them too. Aedre tried to hold her breath, noticing something opposite: the boy's leg flashed forward, for just a second.
It had not been seen by the Knees. And yet, he was not gone either.
"Ceinid!" The man called out, towards the bank, his muffled cry answered with another pair of feet stepping into the boat.
And then, Aedre was pulled out by the ankle with a huge hand. She screamed as she was pulled upright, expecting the face to be that of the Norse she had just stabbed. But he wasn't Norse! This warrior was shorter and slighter, long black hair contrasting against his pale face. He shook Aedre hard by the shoulder. Aedre felt the money clinkle slightly under her tunic.
"I...I..." Aedre gasped.
"We saw you with the King's nephew! The heir to the throne!" The warrior called Ceinid snarled at her, then noticed her fathet's sword? Even on the scabbard, it had dried blood.
"Ye have killed him? Speak, lad, lest ye burn on a fire, as happens to all that are traitors!" He picked her up painfully by the shoulder. Others were gathered on the bank now, clad as this man was, in dark leather bands over their shoulders, staring through their close-fitted helmets at her.
Was this the end? Was she going to be beaten, or worse?
"I'm here!" A voice behind the warrior sounded, clear and bright. It would be a voice Aedre would come to recognise as well as her own. Ceinid swung his head round, his long, black braid down his back whipping shortly after him.
"It's Constantine!" A shout went up as the man Ceinid crouched lower to inspect the child. Aedre stared too. It was the boy who Aedre had pulled with her. He had been hiding under the seet all the time.
"Go, off with you," the man growled, then stared at Aedre. "You too."
Constantine was helped to the bank by the onlookers. Aedre still had the coins in her shirt, which tinkled as she walked, as she followed the boy, who came to a halt in front of a man, taller than the rest, giving the impression to Aedre herself, that he was the raptor-bird who nested in the imposing castle looming behind him.
The tall man stood little way above them, on higher ground, his backdrop a concluded battle of massacred people, men and horse corpses littering the scene. The man looked down to the boy but said nothing for a time.
The man Ceinind took some steps towards the tall man, saying something for a considerable amount of time to him.
He looked at the boy again, and then his piercing eyes fixed on Aedre before addressing Ceinid. He stood by the boy, around them sream coiled upwards from the dead bodies of the dead: of men and women. And children. It was clear the Norse were bent on extermination of all on this plain.
Aedre could see the bodies of the two young children belonging to the womam who had been so kind to her, both huddling together, their bodies run though. She shudderex.
"You found my nephew," he intoned, not taking his eyes off Aedre.
"Yes, my king." It was Ceinid who answered.
"And you?" He spoke to Aedre now, his face fixed, but his eyes, rather than inviting her to respond, seemed to fix her mouth closed.
"He rescued me, Uncle Aed," the boy answered for her. "He found me on tbe battlefield."
"And you say you found him, General Ceinid?"
"Hiding in a boat." He held aloft Aedre's father's sword. So, this was the king, Aedre thought. They were in Pictish territory so he must be king of the Picts. Yet, with his long black hair, like that of his general and his set leather dattle dress he looked more like a Gael, like the ones she had seen in the books she was not supposed to read by the Lindisfarne monks who had charted the histories of the peoples of Alba, which she had found one day in Bebbanburg's chapel and read voraciously.
Did he recognise her? It was possible that ge would recognise her father's sword, soiled with te red liquor of the enemy. Her father had been the Lord of Northumbria: perhaps this king had met him, treated with him; done battle against or alongside him.
"That is my father's sword!" Aedre's voice sang over the picturesque landscape - if the picture was one of destruction, annhilation and devastation.
King Aed took slow steps towards Aedre, the sullied weapon in his hand. But it was the boy next to him, whose life she had saved who spoke.
"What is your name?" He looked keenly at her, as if eyeing a particularly interesting stone found on a beach. Aedre did not answer immediately. It was folly to confide her real name of course. Her mind ranged through many. And then, as if thunderstruck, her kind rested on a name from records in Bebbanburg chapel.
"Osthryth," said Aedre.
"Your family?"
"There." She pointed past King Aed, to the dead Lincolnshire family. "We were going to Iona."
"No-one us going to Iona," said the king's general, softly. "There is no-one left, child. You will come with us."
"No!" Aedre screamed, more for herself, than any of the destruction around her. Culdees would surely correspond with Lindisfarne about this massacre - some of its monks were dead too - and being walled up inside a Pictish castle would be a fast way of her uncle locating her.
"Then, you can go, girl," Ceinid said, dismissively. A weight lifted from Aedre's shoulder. But, Constantine rushed to her.
"No!" Constantine shouted. "No!"
"Then you come with us," Aed declared. "You mean something to the boy, I dare say. Stay with him, for now. You are to live in the kitchen - we can never have many maids." He nodded to Ceinid to indicate she shoukd be taken with them. When my nephew desires your company, you will find you.
"Here." Aed handed Aedre back the bloody sword that was once her father's, bestowing on her the job of her life. "You are to defend him."
88888888
30th October 899
It was raining still as Osthryth hauled her aching body towards the thick, heavy gates which guarded the fortress-palace of Dunnottar, the seat of the King of Alba.
Had it been mild, had she arrived in daylight, fresh, energetic and no newborn within her clothing Osthryth may have been inclined to reminisce. But rain was pouring down her back and the lanolin-coated fleece was protecting the child from a drenching.
Osthryth looked up and, because her hand was cold from the downpour, trembled as she reached for the door.
"Who is it that demands audience with the king?" The guard at the gates of the fortress and royal palace demanded and, on seeing her, laughed.
Under Aedre's tunic, under her shirt, the bairn shifted in her sleep, sighing quietly into her chest. Asleep, thought Osthryth, contented. Osthryth's mind flicked immediately to her mother as she thought about the events of the last week: Uhtred threatening to tell Edward that she had been seen at Cripplegate; the threat of job loss.
"He's a bastard," Finan had said, stroking her hair. Had it only been three days ago? It was the last time they had slept together; she felt content when she was with Finan, somehow all gathered in, like an autumn harvest, and now here she was, leaving him again.
She had given the boat captain the silver, Finan's silver, the piece he had once given her to help her go north. And Osthryth had gone north, up the coast of East Anglia and of Northumbria. They passed Bebbanburg, and Lindisfarne, had arrived at Culdees, then crossed to Dunnottar.
Her knocking had brought the attention of someone, a guard, whose face glowered through the wooden hatch guarded with metal bars shot open. He looked as drenched as Aedre felt.
"I say you are nothing but a peasant woman begging for crusts for your bastard," the guard began. He eyed her appearance: smutted face, burnt hair and singed clothes. It was true; she hadn't had time to wash. But she had had time to take her silver and gold. That had got them this far. Osthryth's hand flexed around the hilt of her sword. Not Faedersword; not his best: that had been lost in a on the field of battle on the day he died and Uhtred was lost. But her sword, earned truly. It sang well.
"I am Aedre," she said, whispering sharply now. The guard strained to hear.
"Eedree?" the man repeated, glowering over her.
"Constantine's companion. I saved the his life from the Danes when St Cuthbert was brought," she added, then narrowed her eyes. "You were there, I recall."
The guard shifted, uncomfortably, then asked, "Who should I say calls, my lady?"
Aedre looked up. Twenty two years had not been enough for this predator-bird-like fortress. And she was here, fleeing to the one man who wad more like her brother than Uhtred. Or, given their past, perhaps not.
She waited, as the cold, October rain leaked through every gap it could. The baby girl beneath her jerkin was awake now and on the hunt for food.
Osthryth, of the Idings. She had learned about this princess, of the family of Oswald, the lost saint, who married Coelred in Mercia. The Mercians had always believed she was a spy, and was killed on suspicion of being such.
She gave her life to Mercia. It had been over a hundred years ago. Osthryth still remembered when Beocca told her about the princess, sitting as he had been on a low stool near a warming fire, on a night not much different to the one which was soaking her through now. Princess Osthryth had been loyal, and misunderstood, Beocca had explained.
But it had been Osthryth who had buried her uncle Oswald's body, having revovered as much of it as she could after it had been dismembered in battle against the Mercian king Penda near Welsh border, and sacrilege performed upon it.
Osthryth had taken it to Lincolnshire, to the monks at Bardney. It was long believed that if his body was recovered it would begin the process of creating a united Saxon realm.
"I am Osthryth. Tell the king - " she rushed to the grille, glaring at the guard. "Tell King Domhnall that it is Osthryth who requests to - "
To...what was she going to request. She loosened her jerkin straps as the baby wriggled, letting the leather buckles hang beside her. The baby rooted, and her tiny mouth hit its target.
" - to resume my role as decreed by his Royal Highness." The guard sneered. Osthryth slammed her feet onto the ground and bore down on the door.
"Osthryth of Bebbanburg!" Osthryth clarified. "Tell the kin I have come to make him a land bargain," she added, as the guard slid the panel across with force.
For, a bag of silver would not keep a child 'til she was an adult: Osthryth knew she needed a home for young Aedre. So there was only one more thing that she could offer. Something that King Domhnall mac Caustin Uí Àlpin wanted dearly.