The Rose of the Heptarchy

Chapter 2

Ella gripped the rotted remains of a broken wooden fence to keep from keeling over. She dragged in a breath, trying to engage her rational mind: I’m a historian. I’ve studied the Old English, the law codes, the agricultural techniques of this era. But another voice lashed back, venomous and immediate: You know the medieval world of manuscripts, not the real thing. You can trace every interlaced pattern on the Sutton Hoo helmet, but do you know how to milk a sheep, strike a flint, or face a man who views you as chattel?

Just as her mind wavered on the brink of the abyss, a coarse shout carried from the direction of the manor house. She jerked around. Two horsemen were bearing down on her, horses hammering through the muck at a terrifying clip. Ella’s heart nearly seized—she was uninvited, and under ancient law, trespass on a thegn’s land could earn the lash, the loss of a hand, or the rope. She spun to run on pure instinct, but the rough wool skirt snagged her ankles, and the jelly-legged weakness of panic sent her stumbling. She managed only a few lurching steps before the riders boxed her in.

The lead rider commanded a tall, deep-chestnut warhorse. He wore a byrnie of mail, a broad-bladed longsword hanging at his hip, his dark hair wind-torn and wild. Yet his face was startlingly young—mid-twenties perhaps, with a jaw cut from granite and eyes the pale, killing blue of winter lakes, raking over her with frigid precision. Behind him trailed a bearded, older warrior in boiled-leather armor, holding a short spear, his face like a mask of gloom.

“Who are you? Why do you wander alone on Lord Blackwood’s land?” The young warrior’s voice bore the cadence of Old English, flavored with a rural West Saxon burr, but Ella could just barely parse it. Her mind sped. She replied as slowly and carefully as she could, approximating the vocabulary and phonetics she knew: “I—I am lost. I do not know how I came to be here.”

His brows knitted together—her accent and phrasing had definitely aroused his suspicion. He swung down from the saddle, his mail shirt whispering with a metallic hiss, one hand never leaving his sword pommel as he closed the distance. “Lost?” The word dripped with scorn. “You wear the rough kirtle of a Saxon churl, yet your hands have never known toil, and your tongue is foreign. Where do you come from?” Ella forced herself to hold his gaze, though the pressure of those blue eyes nearly stopped her breath. She noted that under the brutal planes of his face, his mouth retained a trace of unburned youth—a cockiness not yet ground out of him. She spun her lie quickly. “I am called Ella. I come from the north. Our village was put to the torch by riders. I fled. I have walked for many days.” She tried to inject a quaver into her voice, anything to sell the story.

He shot out a hand, calloused knuckles clamping her jaw and tilting her face up. The domination in the gesture sent ice through Ella’s limbs—her reflex almost lashed out to knock the hand aside, but reason crushed the impulse. Striking an armed warrior here was a death sentence.

He studied her for a long moment, then turned and fired a rapid stream of Old English at the older man—the dialect too thick for her to follow, though she caught the words “Saxon”, “bring her to the hall”, and “the lord will question her”. The companion grunted and unlashed a coil of rough hemp rope from his saddle.

“You lie.” He released her, delivering it as a verdict, yet the corner of his mouth twitched upward—some dangerous curiosity kindled. “No cottar’s wife meets my eyes thus. I see no terror in you, only reckoning. Who are you, truly?” He paused, jerking his chin toward his companion. “Bind her. The lord’s mood is black today. He will welcome a novelty to break his gloom.”

Ella did not struggle. The coarse hemp sawed into her wrists, and she bit down hard against the pain. The warrior hoisted her onto the horse’s back, then swung up behind her. His mail-clad arm enclosed her waist to grip the reins, caging her against the solid wall of his chest. The horse fell into a slow walk toward the wooden enclosure, his breath heated against her nape, redolent of leather, rust, and some sharp, medicinal herb. “You had better pray, girl,” his voice rumbled above her, shifting to a clearer, more deliberate Old English. “Or the rats in the pit will loosen your tongue before you do.”

Ella said nothing. She only stared at the settlement drawing near—a timber hall raised on an earthen motte, ringed by a palisade of raw, towering logs, a shallow ditch beyond it spanned by a heavy plank bridge. Scrawny, ill-clad servants scurried across the yard; spearmen drilled beneath a lean-to. These were images she had known only from Anglo-Saxon illuminations in the British Museum, now flowing into vivid, stinking life around her. She had passed through time. And this was simply the beginning. As the great oak doors groaned inward, she cast one final look at the wilds behind her: still no white light. No way back. Then the cold rain began to fall, a thin, needling drizzle.

The icy rain stung her face, smearing her last look back into gray nothingness. Ella was hauled roughly from the horse and forced to trudge through the muddy courtyard. Behind her, the heavy oak doors were heaved shut by two servants with a grinding shriek of iron and timber, sealing the outside world with a dull, definitive thud. Her bare feet sank into cold slurry and rotted straw; the rough rope bit raw grooves into her wrists. The enclosure was larger than it had appeared from without: dead ahead, the long hall stretched some thirty paces, its roof covered with turf, strings of dried fowl hanging beneath the eaves. To the sides, low wooden sheds leaked the grunts of pigs and the ring of iron on iron. The air remained full of woodsmoke, manure, and wet wool—thick, animal, and true, utterly unlike the chemical sterility of the sealed display cases she had breathed in at the Met.

The young warrior—she now knew his name was Wulfric, for the spearman had barked it at him once during the ride—walked at her side, one fist still closed around the lead of her binding, as if she were a stubborn heifer. He did not speak again, but Ella could feel that glacial scrutiny never leave her.

She was marched into the long hall. Inside, the light was mean and amber, fed by a low fire-pit of smoking coals at the center, smoke coiling upward to lick at the soot-blackened rafters. Along the walls stood crude benches and trestle tables; round shields and a massive hunting bow hung from the posts. At the far end, upon a high-backed wooden chair, sat a thickset man of perhaps thirty years, dressed in an indigo-dyed woolen robe, a silver disc-brooch pinning his shoulder. He held a drinking horn and was speaking to a thin, tonsured man at his side who had the look of a priest. When the intrusion came, his gaze swept toward them like a drawn blade.

“Wulfric.” The lord’s voice sounded a quiet rasp, yet it cut the hall into silence. “You interrupt my supper. It had better be worth the bother.”