The Rose of the Heptarchy

Chapter 4

By the time the cold morning sunshine squeezed through the gaps in the shed boards, Ella had been awake for hours. Her neck was stiff and sore from leaning against the wooden post, and moldy hay had left gray-green streaks across her linen dress. She worked her fingers through her tangled hair, trying to look less wretched—in this age, appearances sometimes swayed people’s judgments more than words ever do.

Footsteps sounded outside the shed, more than one person. The wooden bar lifted, and the gate creaked open. Wulfric stood in the doorway, flanked by two soldiers and a thin boy in a dark woolen robe—likely the monk’s assistant. The boy held a wax tablet and a stylus to his chest, his eyes timid, stealing glances at Ella as she were some strange creature.

“Out.” Wulfric’s tone was more businesslike than it had been the night before. “The monk waits for you in the chapel.”

Ella rose, swept off the straw from her skirt, and walked out of the shed with her back straight. The early air after the rain was fresh as spring water, holding the scent of earth and damp firewood. The manor yard was already coming to life—servants drawing water at the well, a stable boy leading two chestnut horses through the muddy courtyard, the distant clink of a hammer hitting iron out there beyond.

Wulfric walked on her left, his hand resting on his sword hilt, part escort and part guard. Ella noticed he had changed into a dry, deep-blue tunic, his wet hair tied back, exposing a faint old scar across his forehead. He sensed her look, turned his head, and glanced at her, saying nothing.

The chapel was a mixed stone-and-timber structure on the east side of the manor. Compared to the rough-hewn long hall, it carried an air of deliberate solemnity. The lintel was carved with interlaced vine patterns, and from within drifted the smells of beeswax and frankincense. When Ella crossed the threshold, her eyes needed a moment to adjust to the gloom. A few thin beams of sunlight slanted down from high, narrow windows, falling on the rushes covering the stone floor, on the plain wooden altar, and on the two men conversing beside it.

Lord Blackwood had exchanged last night’s woolen robe for a dark russet tunic, fastened at the shoulder with a silver brooch shaped like a falcon with wings spread. He stood against the stone wall with his arms crossed, his face half-lit via the interplay of candle-flame and sunlight. Beside him stood the monk, his graying hair cut in the distinctive coronal tonsure, hands folded within his sleeves, the knuckles slightly deformed from years of scribal work. His eyes were a pale green, and when they turned to Ella they held no hostility—only the careful, curious scrutiny of a scholar faced with an undeciphered text.

“Come closer.” The monk spoke in Latin.

Ella stopped about five or six paces from them and lowered her head a little, striking a properly submissive pose. She did not curtsy—a peasant girl, as she claimed to be, would not know such niceties—but merely clasped her hands before her and waited in silence.

The monk studied her for a moment, then drew a small book from his sleeve. Its cover appeared of dark brown leather, the page edges blackened from frequent handling, bound with two leather thongs. He untied them, turned to a certain page, and handed the book to the boy beside him.

“Read this passage.” He continued in Latin, his green eyes steady on Ella.

The boy held the book up before her. Ella looked down at the open pages, where neat columns of Caroline minuscule covered the parchment. No—in this era, it would still be the insular script in transition toward Caroline forms. The letters were cramped and angular, thick with abbreviations. She recognized a passage from the Vulgate Psalms.

“Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea; quem timebo?” Ella read the first line, her voice composed but not fluent, deliberately pausing over the longer words as if she needed to decipher them. She knew she could not read too smoothly; after all, a woman who had learned Latin in a border village should not read with the speed of a scriptorium monk.

“Continue,” said the monk.

She finished the passage, her fingers drifting lightly over the parchment’s surface, feeling that familiar texture. In another world, in the halls of the Metropolitan Museum, she had turned far older codices while wearing white gloves, measuring the chemical composition of inks, studying the weave of binding threads. Now those pages lay below her bare fingertips, alive and warm, supple with the particular resilience of vellum and the scent of beeswax.

The monk took the book back and shared a look with the lord. Blackwood’s jaw remained tight, but his brows drew together slightly, as if he were recalculating something.

“Who taught you to read?” The monk switched to Old English. His pronunciation carried a northern lilt, slightly different from the speech of Blackwood’s people—Ella guessed he might have come from some monastery in Northumbria.

“The old priest in our village,” Ella answered, also in Old English. “When I was a child, he saw that I learned quickly, so he taught me Latin, saying that someday I might help him copy scriptures.”

“What is your village called?”

“Oakley.”

“In which shire?”

“Near the border between Mercia and Wessex,” she said. “On the Wessex side.” Would such a vague answer pass?

“Oakley.” Blackwood spoke suddenly, his tone like a whetstone scraping iron. “You say you came from Oakley, fled south after a northern raid.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Blackwood pushed back from the wall and stepped before her. He stood a full head taller, his shoulders broad enough to block a doorway. When he looked down at her, his eyes showed not anger but something more dangerous—the look of a man accustomed to controlling information who had just discovered a c***k in it.

“Oakley,” he repeated. “If I am not mistaken, that lies on the northeastern border of Wessex, near Sussex.”

Ella’s heart skipped a beat.

“Then tell me,” Blackwood’s voice was calm, almost casual, “how did you walk from the northeastern border to here in less than two days?”

The air went suddenly still. The flame on the altar candle flickered, casting the monk’s gaunt shadow against the stone wall. Ella’s mind raced. She did not know her own location. In the long hall last night, she had only been able to confirm that she was within Wessex, because Blackwood’s banner bore the Wessex arms. But she did not know which part of Wessex this was—east near Kent, south near the coast, or west toward Dumnonia?

And the lord’s words had just revealed a key piece of information: no ordinary person could walk from the northeastern border of Wessex to this place in two days. That meant Blackwood’s estate was located in Wessex, far indeed from where Oakley would reasonably be situated.