Late Spring, 928
She should return to Berric, Osthryth knew. God in heaven, she should not have left. But how was Osthryth meant to know that Aeswi was on the way to her? And as she looked across at the fortress that Osthryth had called home for so many years, a good part of her felt that she never should have left
It had been two Norse guards outside Dunnottar who had challenged Osthryth when she got to the front gate but she was not in the mood to talk to them.
"Do you wish to die?" Osthryth asked them when one held a sword out in front of her, which she wrestled off the man and pointed to his chest.
"Who goes there?" was called from above.
"Osthryth of Berric!" she called back
"Mhathair!" The cry came from, of course, Aedre, who Osthryth had not seen since she had married Anlaf. Calls that Osthryth was there headed around the castle and, after a few minutes there was a creaking at the gate.
"There now," Osthryth said to the man she had disarmed, before looking at the other, unable to hide his fear as MaelColm, Domhnall's son, pulled open the gates.
She embraced Aedre, who had come running to her, a young woman, full of the same life that Osthryth knew, enthusing about her move to Mon, and how she was looking forward to being queen there.
And Osthryth ate, in the kitchens with the ancient Glymrie as she spoke to the two children who were her nephew and niece, Stiorra and Sygtryggr's children who had been brought to Dunnottar when plague had come to Eoforwic, and no attempt had been made to give them back. "They are Anlaf's kin," Aedre had said, and had been spending a lot of time with little Gisela and Ragnar, teaching them, telling them of their Norse and Danish ancestry.
They had come out with Aedre and had stood by her side, and from what Osthryth remembered of both people after whom the children had been named, Gisela, with her long, thin face, and Ragnar, with his fair features looked like their grandmother and great-uncle.
"Domnall is out on the Trinity, and Aeswi is gone to you, to tell you about Aethelstan coming," MaelColm told Osthryth as they sat together in the kitchens. "Uncle is out, for there was a skirmish over out towards Stirling, Cellach with him."
"I came at an unfortunate time," Osthryth told him, and went on to tell MaelColm that she suspected that Aethelstan was going to come north.
"Uncle thinks he will," MaelColm told her. "And we are to be prepared, ha!" He looked to Osthryth, as he picked up an ale jug, and to all the world, he looked just like his father. His manner, too, was like the only man Osthryth thought of as king, and he nodded, sagely, when he listened to Osthryth's reasons for coming.
"Stay," MaelColm told her, "Leave tomorrow, take some more guards with you. Be with Aedre - I know she had been delighted you have come home."
Home, Osthryth thought. Dunnottar was home, to her. And felt a little ashamed that she had come all the way to tell Constantine about Aethelstan.
"What did you promise him? In terms of a tribute?" Constantine asked her, coming to her chamber that night. Osthryth had been asleep, so very asleep in her old bed at the back of the kitchens that she had not woken until she had felt warmth next to her. A body. At first, she had thought it was Finan, but very quickly her senses told her that she was not at Berric, and that the body was clothed. She sat up, pulling her shirt over her when she realised it was Constantine. He smiled in the half-light, and took her hand.
"I promised to match your tribute," Osthryth told him sleepily, glancing uncertainly to the king of Alba. He was not the young boy, the young man she had one known: he was Godly, and did not make to touch her. Nevertheless, she reached for her cloak and pulled it around her shoulders.
"Aethelstan will have noticed you went, will see it as a slight. What will you do?" he asked.
"Continue to serve my people," Osthryth replied. "Keep them safe, help them thrive. Do what I can to avert a war that might kill them."
"And Finan?" Constantine asked.
"He has an oath to fulfil," she told him. "He will be with me when he is not with my brother."
"He has an oath to fulfil to you," Constantine reminded her, and sat next to Osthryth until the morning.
Constantine had known, of course, that Aethelstan was coming. So, not now, but soon. Osthryth knew there would be a war at some time. But when? Anlaf had the promise of Eoforwic and Cumbraland, the Gwyneddians so desperate to be independent of Hywel that they would look to Osthryth. He had Guthfrith, battered and bruised from Eoforwic still, yet bringing Norse in to Englaland down the Maerse still, past Aethelstan's nose at Ceastre.
And if Eoforwic and Cumbraland together was too much for Anlaf, then there were Sygtryggr and Storra's children, Osthryth's niece and nephew. Anlaf and Aedre were caring for them, and the young Ragnar, though only ten, could well be moulded into king in his own right, to follow his father. What better than a child who had grown up in Alba, under Constantine's watchfulness? The north of Englaland could well fall back to being Northumbria, Aethelstan's force could be limited to Mercia again.
"I am glad Finan beag chose to return with Finan" Constantine told her, in the morning. He was standing, now, in the kitchen, as Osthryth got up, startling Ealasaid and Glymrie with his unexpected presence.
"How could he not, when Uhtred chose to claim him," Osthryth replied, "Because Finan chose to claim him. It could have caused a rift, a dispute and I did not want to see any of our men at odds with one another over that."
"He would have seen that," Constantine told her
"I wish him to be in service be with his father," Osthryth reiterated, and she noticed in the early mornnig light Constantine flinch. She knew he believed Young Finan to be his child, yet Osthryth knew he had to go be Finan's. She had also been taunted about this by Uhtred so many times that the words were beginning to stick. He spoke Gaelish, Norse and Anglish with an Gaelish accent. He did have a resemblance to Constantine, yet, so did Finan, for they were very distantly related.
Yet what mattered was what Finan believed, and Osthryth knew deep down he believed Young Finan was his.
"He is on the border, with my men," Constantine said. Osthryth nodded. "In my land," Constantine said, deliberately. He claimed to the Wall - all knew this. So, it could be said that, if he believed young Finan to be is son, that his son was already within the land that was rightfully his.
Finan met Osthryth as she got to the pack horse bridge that spanned the Tuide. He was alone, and looked as if he had been waiting for some time.
"I went to tell Constantine what had happened here," Osthryth told him, when her horse crossed, and they rode back to their farm together.
"I did not ask," Finan told her.
And they rode together, back to their home, for six years of peace, more or less. Mercians came to stay with them, ostensibly guarding Berric, as the Alba warriors did. All rubbed along together, and were sorry to leave when they were replaced with new warriors and guards, sometimes bringing greetings and food, sometimes bringing news.
Aldhelm returned to Mercia a year later, but arrived back not long after to tell of a plot that Aethelstan had been attacked with the intent of blinding him again and sieze the throne for himself. Merewalh and Aelfkin told her that his younger brother, Edwin, had been accused of the plot and been cast out to sea, and had not been heard of again.
It was an old punishment, one which put the punishment in the hands of God. That this punishment had happened during a stormy season in the summer seemed to have limited God's clemency towards the prince. That he had not survived meant that, by this ancient method, Edwin had indeed been declared to be the usurper.
And in 931, Aethelstan called for the kings of Cymru, of Strathclyde and Cumbraland, Bebbanburg and of Alba, to kneel to him at Cirencester, on the border between Wessex and Mercia.
"King Morgan Hen of Glywysing, and Gwent submitted to the overlordship of King Athelstan of England," her son told her, after he had returned from the ceremony with his father and uncle. "Owain was there, for Strathclyde, Tewdwr ap Griffri of Brycheiniog and Hywel Dda of Deheubarth was there and his son, Idwal Foel of Gwynedd."
"Idwal Foel?" Osthryth asked.
"I knew you would ask, Mhathair," young Finan told her. "Prince Cynddylan also came and then, on the morning of the ceremony, was seen riding away back to Aberffrau. It is thought that he was making sure that Hywel's son was there, in Cirencester, before staging the overthrow of the south Cymru and taking back of his father's throne."
So that was it, Osthryth thought, as she stood in the fields watching her farmers gather the harvest for yet another year. The north Cymru were still holding out for independence and, presumably, the hope that Queen Gwythelth would lead this for them.
"And tribute?" Osthryth asked, wondering what her tithe bill was going to be. Whatever Constantine paid, she had promised Aethelstan, and she would not renege on it, even if she had to go and riever herself to steal it. "What did Constantine bring?" After a few moments, Osthryth realised that her son was staring at her. "What?" she asked.
"You don't know?" young Finan asked.
"No," Osthryth said, slowly. "Humour me, son."
"There was no tribute paid by Alba. Constantine did not come to bow to Aethelstan in Mercia."
"No Constantine?" Osthryth asked, her heart sinking. Young Finan shook his head. She felt a jolt in her stomach. It was going to begin, now, she thought. Not very long, and Aethelstan would be marching into her land again. Constantine must feel very confident with his allegiances that he had rejected Aethelstan's overlordship.
She must post watchers on her southern borders, Osthryth told herself - Beann's family's farm was over that way - she would get the young man to organise this, he knew the land the best.
"And what about you?" Osthryth asked, putting an arm around her son's shoulders. "Now your uncle and your father have returned to Bebbanburg?"
"What about me?"
"You will be twenty one in December? Uhtred can only claim you until you are twenty one, if he could claim you at all." She watched as her son turned his head towards the Tuide and Bernicia's higher hills.
"I have learned a good deal at Bebbanburg," Young Finan told her. "Young Uhtred and I fight well together." This is what Osthryth had heard, when her husband had last visited.
"So I will stay," Young Finan told her. "When I am twenty one, and should my uncle give me the choice. I would stay at Bebbanburg with my father."
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"In the year 934," wrote the monks in the Winchester monastery that oversaw the keeping of King Alfred's chronicles, "The English king Æthelstan invaded Scotland by land and sea with a large force. The Norse king of Dublin who had briefly ruled Northumbria had died resulting in insecurity amongst the Danes and the Norse."
In Eireann, Murchada, High King of Eireann, read the words that his monks at Clonmacnoise from a report prepared by his cousin, Domnall mac Aed, that a great leader had been subdued in northern Northumbria.
Subdued, yes, but not dead. Uhtred of Bebbanburg had merely distanced himself from the fury that was the condensing and fortifying of Aethelstan's Englaland army, and would let him pass unchallenged through his lands, to Domnall's amazement as he watched the whole scene happen at sea, before he himself was ambushed by Aethelstan's fleet and was made to flee north in retreat. What Domnall actually said about Uhtred's betrayal, the monks chose not to commit to parchment.
But this was yet to happen. At the beginning of the year 934, no army had convened at Winchester, no fleet had been gathered at Hamptun.
And he was not alone. Osthryth would wonder whether her conversation and agreement with Hywel had not been a mistake, a mistake to agree to be queen to the Gwyneddians. Had it been a ploy, to use as evidence against her? To use as a reason to have the Mercians and West Saxons under Aethelstan's banner, march to Aberffrau and reinstate Idwal Foel as king of Gwynedd? Unheard of, before that time, that Anglish and Saxon warriors would be chosen by one Cymric king to ally with against another.
For, with Aethelstan and the Englaland army and navy, marching beside Aethelstan, was Hywel and the newly-reinstated Idwal Foel, Morgan ap Owain and Tewdwr ap Griffri, remeniscent of the days long past, where Mercia was allied with some of the Cymric on the occasions of invasions into Northumbria, against Aethelfrith, against Edwin and Oswald, Oswy and Ecgfrith.
But this was yet to happen. January began with deep snow and thick furs and Osthryth in the arms of Finan Mor, her husband, with every reason to be very, very happy.