The Rose of the Heptarchy

Chapter 5

The west. She quickly made the judgment in her mind. If this were the eastern part of Wessex, closer to Sussex, Blackwood wouldn’t have used “impossible to reach in two days” as a source of conflict. This estate lay in western Wessex, which explained why it was so far from the northeastern border.

But she couldn’t show that she had just realized this.

“I didn’t say I left Oakley two days ago,” Ella said, her voice clearer than she had expected. “My lord, I traveled for many days on the run. Most of the time, I hid during the day and moved at night to avoid the northerners’ patrols. I’m not sure exactly how long it’s been.”

It wasn’t a perfect answer, but it left a logical possibility. Blackwood stared at her, his look narrowing slightly. Ella could feel him measuring her every word in his mind, like a merchant weighing a silver coin of dubious purity.

“What places did you pass on the way?” the monk asked. His tone was gentler than the lord’s, but the question was just as sharp.

Ella quickly recalled what she knew of seventh-century English geography. Oakley lay to the north of Wessex. If she had fled from northeastern Wessex south toward western Wessex, she would have passed through...

“I avoided the Mercian settlements,” she said. “I didn’t dare travel on the main roads. I only remember crossing several rivers. One of them was wide, with brown water and willows on both banks. After that I passed through a large forest. It took me about three days to come out of it.”

She was describing a route roughly from northeast to southwest. The river could have been the Trent or the Avon. The forest could have been a remnant of the ancient Arden Forest or woodlands on the edge of the Cotswolds. She knew that these place names wouldn’t appear on any map in this era, but the geographical features existed.

“A brown river.” The monk nodded pensively.

Lord Blackwood didn’t speak. He walked a few steps away and stopped before the altar, his back to the others. Candlelight threw moving shadows on his dark russet tunic.

“Monk,” he finally said, “take her to your scriptorium. Have her copy a passage of Latin. If she can copy,” he turned, his gaze passing over the monk’s shoulder to Ella, “let her stay and work in the chapel. Until I send someone north to verify her story clearly.”

Verify. That word was like a pebble dropped into the lake of Ella’s heart. Send men on horseback to the northern border to inquire whether a village called Oakley really existed, whether it had truly been attacked by northerners, whether there really was a woman who spoke Latin—how many days would the round trip take? Two weeks? Three weeks? By then, her lie would vanish like frost under the sun.

But she had no other choice. Every extra day was a chance to stay alive, and in this strange and dangerous world, these brief chances were the only wealth she could accumulate.

“I will make every effort to copy,” Ella said, lowering her head and letting an appropriate trace of gratitude and obedience enter her speech.

The monk gave a slight bow to the lord, then gestured for Ella to follow him. Wulfric started to follow as well, but was stopped by the lord at the chapel door.

“Wulfric, have men patrol the village and the surrounding area,” Blackwood said. “There have been escaped slaves recently. If anyone is hiding them, I want to know.”

“Yes, my lord.”

While Ella followed the monk out of the chapel, she passed by Wulfric. His blue eyes rested on her face for a moment, then shifted away as he strode off toward the stables.

The monk’s scriptorium was behind the chapel, a narrow little stone building with a thick turf roof and a window opening in the wall barely larger than a hand. Inside there was only a slanted wooden desk, a three-legged stool, and several wooden chests. On the desk lay a partially completed manuscript, held down by smooth stones to keep the vellum from curling. The inkpot was made of cow horn, with several goose-quill pens stuck inside. On a small wooden shelf in the corner, a few bound books were arranged neatly with their covers facing outward—a method of storage more careful than in many places of the time.

“Sit,” the monk said, pointing to the stool.

Ella sat down, her look involuntarily drifting over the incomplete manuscript on the desk. It was a copy of a patristic work, perhaps Augustine or Gregory the Great—the script was a neat Insular minuscule, the ink color even, the line spacing consistent, clearly the work of an experienced hand. In the margin, there was a note in a slightly lighter ink, in a more hurried script: the monk’s own handwriting.

“You need to grind the ink first,” the monk said, placing an ink stick and a small stone mortar in front of her, and pouring a little clear water. “Do you know how?”

Ella nodded. She had learned to make ancient inks in the museum—oak gall, gum arabic, iron salts—but in this era, ink recipes varied from place to place. She picked up the ink stick, added a small amount of water to the mortar, and began to grind in circles. The sound of the ink stick rubbing against the stone mortar was monotonous and steady, like a meditative ritual.

The monk stood to the side, his eyes watching her movements.

“Your way of grinding ink,” he said, “doesn’t look like that of someone who only learned to copy scriptures. You grind very evenly, with just the right strength—this kind of technique is usually only found with people who have worked in a scriptorium for a very long time.”

Ella’s hand paused for an instant, then continued its circles. “The old priest taught me very carefully,” she said. “He had me grind ink for him for several years.”

The monk didn’t press further, but from his silence, Ella could sense that this lean middle-aged man hadn’t put aside his doubts. He had simply chosen to store them away for the moment, like putting a coin that needed testing into a separate pocket.

The ink was ground, of a proper thickness, radiating with a dark sheen in the daylight. The monk handed her a goose-quill pen and a wax tablet for practice, but after a moment’s thought, he took back the tablet and instead brought out a scrap of vellum with uneven edges—likely an offcut from trimming a manuscript.

“Copy this passage.” He turned a page in the manuscript on the desk and pointed to a particular passage.

It was the opening of Psalm 51: “Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam...” (Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy...).

Ella grabbed the goose-quill pen, dipped it in the ink, and began to copy onto the scrap of vellum. She deliberately slowed her pace, making the letters' vertical strokes slightly unsteady and the curves a bit shaky. She knew that after years of professional training, her Latin handwriting was very fluent; she had to purposely create a sense of rustiness.

But she couldn’t write too poorly. If someone who could read Latin wrote like a beginner, it would likewise arouse suspicion. She needed to find a balance between “trained” and “not professional.”

The nib scratched across the surface of the vellum, leaving warm, dark strokes of ink. She wrote about six lines, then stopped and handed the monk the piece of vellum.

The monk took the scrap, moved closer to the light coming through the window opening. He looked at it for a long time, so long that Ella’s palms began to sweat. Then he lowered the scrap and looked at her.

“There is a mistake in your spelling here.” He pointed to a word on the page. “Here, misericordiam—you spelled it misericordia. You left out the last m.”