In the Heart of the Garden

Also by Leah Fleming

The Olive Garden Choir

The Wedding Dress Maker

The Daughter of the Tide

IN THE HEART OF THE GARDEN

Leah Fleming

www.headofzeus.com

First published in the UK in 1998 by Hodder and Stoughton, a division of Hodder Headline PLCThis edition published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright © Leah Fleming, 1998

The moral right of Leah Fleming to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A catalogue record for this book is available fromthe British Library.

ISBN (PBO): 9781789543278

ISBN (E): 9781789543384

Images: © Shutterstock

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Contents

Also by Leah Fleming

Welcome Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One: The Clearing at Fritha’s Well

Into the Forest

The Search

Strangers

Miracles

Strange Harvest

By the Water’s Edge

Part Two: The Priory

The Hut By The Well

The Spider Brusher

The Bequest

The Warrior Wind

The Priory

The Ghost Garden

Part Three: Within These Walls

Rumours

The Michaelmas Market

Face to Face

A Mystery

In The Rose Garden

Part Four: The New House

Staying On

The Knot Plot

The Century Oak

Down The Path

Part Five: Fridewell Garrison

Arrivals

Under Sufferance

Harvest Home

Bitter Seeds

The Circle of Flame

The Tipsy Hedge

Part Six: The School

Secrets

The Water Gardens

The Shed Garden

Part Seven: The Shed Garden

A Chime Hour Child

Percy’s Patch

In the Heart of the Garden

Part Eight: Friddy’s Piece

Arrivals

English Lessons

The Paprika Moon

Goodnight

Acknowledgements

About the Druin Burch

An Invitation from the Publisher

For David and that corner of the world, above all others, which holds a smile for us.

‘This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England’

—Richard II, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Prologue

For Sale.

The sign is fixed above the gate post. The deed is done. Miss Iris Bagshott takes a deep breath to mark her decision, gulping in the green silence outside. It’s a Samuel Palmer evening, bronzed and enamelled with gold around the edges, one of many in this Vaughan Williams folk song of a summer, haunting, harmonic, memorable. Why should she be feeling so agitated when the pipistrelles are darting into the shadows and the bees drone and the night air smells of stocks and honeysuckle? Time to take the tour. That might ease all her misgivings. Time to do the nightly inspection of sunshine borders and shade corners, water in her seedlings, let the dog stretch its legs in the fields beyond now the sheep have been shifted from the meadow…

Slow down, Iris, follow the golden rule, slowly, don’t rush the tour or you’ll miss something. It’s not that difficult these days to creep at a snail’s pace.

The sign above the gate should please that blessed builder. Now he can make me a generous offer, stop pestering me to sell up and downsize… what sort of word is that? If Arthur Devey’s a cutting off the old stock he won’t be able to spell it either! What about buying one of his new bungalows indeed! He keeps harping on about the value of a cherry orchard with planning permission, the premium of having such an ancient barn suitable for redevelopment, the size of my cottage for just one old lady and her dog. Well now, let’s see if he puts his money where his mouth is. How dare he think that at eighty-five I don’t know the stairs are getting steeper and narrower, and that two acres of garden is a bit too much for arthritic knees? Really… I can still remember flaying his dad’s backside with a slipper when he was a nipper in my classroom. The Deveys are mere Johnny cum latelys to Fridwell village while Bagshotts are rooted in its soil like the oaks in the forest. Some say we’ve been here since Domesday.

Miss Bagshott sips from the smooth rim of her china mug as she surveys her kingdom from the bench seat by the kitchen door. The tour always begins at the homely end of the garden where the salmon pink rose, Albertine, climbs up the warm wall and the studded oak door looks out on the oldest part of her kitchen patch, with not a square inch of its soil vacant. Nothing seems more simple or more beautiful to her at that moment than a well-stocked kitchen garden where even the brick path sprouts seedlings, lemony thyme and velvet moss amongst the weeds.

Into the rows of green lettuces, spinach, chard, cabbages and carrot ferns, chickweed, thistle and couch grass muscle in like thugs but in such well-manured red soil anything will grow. What a riot of plants for the pot stuffed into beds edged with alpine strawberries, glistening in the moonlight like a Sultan’s rubies, mixed with bronzy sage leaves, lobelia and any stray herbs which can grab a spot. Silver-green foliage, blues and pinks all spilling out over the path in front of her favourite peonies whose heads flop like ballerinas curtseying in pink tutus.

Peonies shouldn’t really be in a kitchen patch but I like it when plants find their own place in the sun. The sweet peas dance up the cane tepees alongside an arch of scarlet blossoms from the runner beans. They give height and interest to the bed.

Her eyes drift beyond the boundary wall where the rhubarb has gone to seed and spirals of golden heads lighten the shade. Why shouldn’t some of her umbellifers stick their feathery heads in the air and feed the hoverflies? It takes away the regimented look from the borders, gladdens the eye as it rises over the wall up to the Chase. Here the great oaks sleep in the dusk on the high ridge, silent witnesses to centuries past silhouetted against a marigold sky.

Nothing like trees to cut you down to size, outliving each generation in the end, and Miss Bagshott wonders: Is it true, do her ancestors really stretch as far back as the forest itself? Who cleared this piece and chose this blessed plot to feed themselves?

Then she hears the soft trickle of water over stones. The stream which meanders through her patch is so much a part of her garden that she scarcely gives it a thought. Now, in the silence of evening, amidst the perfume of newly mown grass cuttings on her compost heap, Miss Bagshott smiles. Human kind never strays far from the source and giver of life and Fridwell spring must have been named in someone’s honour. But who and why?

PART ONE

THE CLEARING AT FRITHA’S WELL

AD 912

‘All things pass away, so may this’

—Deor’s Lament, The Exeter Book

‘The Peony

The roots are held to be of more virtue than the seed; the root is also effectual for women that are not sufficiently cleansed after childbirth, and such as are troubled with the mother; for while likewise the black seed beaten to powder… is also available’

Into the Forest

The buzzard circled and coiled high over the forest, patrolling above the treetops, sweeping the air with upturned wings dark against the lavender sky of late spring. The roosting birds hid deep under the branches, wary and silent, until danger passed over. The wolves, like grey shadows, crouched under cover of scrub, watching the lambs graze in a terraced clearing.

The bird was joined by its mate. They swooped down into the vale of the silver river which coiled like a snake, glistening in the moonlight; down to the dark earth clearings and the smoke of man, spiralling up to greet them from holes in thatched rooftops.

The sun was setting low over the thick forests of the west, rays of pink and orange promising a settled spell of weather. To the east lay the grey swamps of the Minster church clearing; more sloping terraces fallen to the foe of woodland, the plough. Further afield stood the earthworks of Tamworthig, open land no longer the domain of wolf or eagle. The buzzards soared back to their roost among the oaks.

Underground, moles were turfing and digging to the surface, pushing through the bracken fronds. Worms were churning and sucking down the rotten autumn leaves. They could feel the thunder of heavy ox hooves and the rumble of cart wheels. Men were on the move.

The dusk creatures darted into the hazel scrub, but the little spring still gushed and bubbled out from the deep rock, dancing over the pink boulders, carving a path through the thicket downwards to the brook and river beyond. The Forest of Canok was alive, watchful, waiting, while mankind trundled trek-weary over the faint track. Finally the sparse procession of covered wagons ground to a halt before fording the stream.

‘Stop right here! I’m not going another foot tonight. This’ll do, Baggi. There must be a wellspring ahead – we can rest up here, feed the stock. Me bum’s nailed to the boards.’

Fritha jumped from the cart, stretched her stiff joints, shook out her dark braids and the skirt of her tunic and waved to the other cart. There was a scent of bluebells on the dusk air. They were on the edge of a forest and somewhere close by a spring was trickling into this shallow stream. It would be an ideal spot to rest their weary bones.

For two days the travellers had struggled on in heavy rain, ploughing through the mud with restless livestock tethered to the cart, reluctantly dragging their hooves. The rain had lashed on to their covered wagon, everything was soaked, even the boards they sat on. The children were sodden, hungry and tired out.

She lifted her son, a flaxen-haired babe of two summers, from the back of the cart and shook him awake but he lay draped like a mantle over her shoulder. His sister slept, curled up with the hound, whining at being roughly woken.

‘Are we here?’ she yawned, staring up at the net of black branches overhead.

‘Just another stop over, Wyn. It’s almost dark, time for supper,’ Fritha soothed, hoping to humour the child.

‘Can me and Ranulf go rooting?’ Wyn jumped up and down, her dark plaits flying. Once awakened she would want to scamper and play, race about and get under everyone’s feet. Her father, Baggi, shouted from the other side of the cart.

‘Pee in the bushes but stay close by, do you hear? There may be bears, wild boars or wolves lurking in the scrub. We don’t know this track and any noise from us may make them edgy. Mam’ll light us a fire and get the kale pot on the boil to warm yer innards with broth.’

He turned to untether the goats and the other beasts, moving them on to graze as best they could. He led the animals to the wider verge by the stream, waiting for his younger brother in the cart behind to lift his heavy wife down from the back where she had lain wearily all afternoon. She needed watching that one, not like his woman who was already at her chores.

Fritha took the wooden bucket to draw water. It was still light enough to trace the source, which could not be far, for the stream was still weak. She followed the bank where primroses and purple violets, chickweed and watercress, edged the water. The garlicky scent of ramsons wafted down from under the taller trees in the distance. It was a beautiful setting in which to lie down and rest, with plenty of bracken to stuff a plump mattress. Soon she came to a hidden bank, out of which water bubbled from the rock. This was a sacred spring, of that she was sure, and Fritha squatted to draw the water into her bucket, first sipping it from her cupped hand. It was soft and sweet to her parched tongue. Above her the birds were making their evening noises, piping and chattering, oblivious to her presence. She sat down to enjoy a moment of quietness.

What a bunch of moonstruck idiots they were, striking out to find a new life for themselves with hopes as tall as spears! Beorn’s woman, Lull, looked exhausted, too close to her time to be travelling for three weeks over rough tracks and deserted stone roads. They rattled and bumped, became stuck in ruts and boggy, swampy tussocks, pushed, shoved and struggled to keep moving on to a better site, lighter soil, higher ground. A hard journey for families with young.

Baggi promised he would know when they found the right place to settle but Fritha was bone-weary. All I want is a bed of ferns amongst the bracken, some tree shelter and a fire to keep the wild beasts from attacking our livestock. This place will do, she thought.

It was good to be deep in a forest away from the open stone way of the ancient folks, where ghosts marched with the blood of her ancestors on their swords. They had kept the old east to west street in sight as a guide on their great trek to find new land to clear, a better living for their childer, away from the troubles, away from warring thanes and the Dane folk; savage warriors who skinned folk alive and carried off the women to satisfy their lust. Now they were heading northwards from the old stone street, through dense forest with only the tracks of animals and packmen to follow, rising higher on to ridges with a better view.

Holding the bucket in one hand and a bunch of kindling sticks under the other, she shouted to her childer on her way down from the well to gather more brushwood for the fire. Fritha busied herself setting a circle of firestones, striking the flint and tinder, boiling water in their kale pot for the rootings. The children also gathered cress from the stream and any first spring growth they could find for the pot. Wynfrith was a helpful lass in that way, but disobedient and wilful when the moon was in the other direction.

There were still oats in the leather bag and a few of her dried herbs to add flavour to the broth. The chickens in the wooden cage had not laid an egg for days and were eating up the last of their meal. How she wished she could wring their necks! It was weeks since they had tasted meat. If the hens were let out they would soon disappear into the undergrowth for a fox’s feasting.

Lull sat with her back hunched, rubbing her belly, looking low in spirits. For a moment Fritha felt a flash of annoyance at her laziness. Beornwulf was already making up a shelter for her to rest in. If only she were not so swollen in those legs and ankles. It was not a good sign.

‘We shall have to stop soon, Baggi, or Lull will drop the bairn in the cart,’ whispered Fritha to her husband. He was always the more cheerful, hale and hearty of the two brothers, full of schemes and dreams. It had been his idea to strike out for some better land for the two families. Baggi was always the one who listened to the packmen’s gossip that there were rich pickings in the northern kingdom of Mercia, where no thanes had cleared land and the holy men lived in hermit’s cells deep in the forests.

Baggi and Beorn were freemen. Poor though they were, they still had the right to leave their thane’s service and seek other dwellings. Beorn was happy to strike out, too, but Lull was not. There was a restless streak in the elder brother which made Baggi push them on and on but even he knew it was time to stop for a while, to see Lull’s birthing through. They must settle, make a clearing and plant out before the summer’s end if they were not to starve or be destroyed by the winter darkness.

The wooden carts were mud-splattered, wheels splintered and in need of repair. Baggi must not risk another upset load. They were worn, crammed with tools, and the precious plough took up most of Beorn’s cart. Baggi had brought everything they could barter, buy or make for the life ahead. Strapped to the sides with leather thongs were dry seasoned oak beams for the hut-making.

Nothing was left behind but the tears of the old ones, too afeared to make the journey. Their well-loved voices still rang in Fritha’s ear, the parting touch of kin, all the fare-thee-wells stuck inside her chest. It would be the last she would ever see of all of them, as solemn a parting as at the graveside. Her heart held hundreds of misgivings.

Would the provisions last? There was flour, meal, hard cheese, honey combs, dried apple rings, mead in the cask, seeds in the dryest purse, amongst the skins and precious roots and plantings wrapped in damp straw, a bucket of barley sproutings for the ale-making, a gift of salt for curing – all that well wishers could spare for them. Fritha fingered her grandmother’s amulet around her neck, a necklace of beads carved from the root of the peony flower; her trusted charm against evil and sorcery, sickness and bad spirits. For extra measure she had a string of peony seeds and her own store of sacred herbs safe in a leather purse tied to her waist girdle. She was taking no chances.

Sometimes as she lay beside Baggi she felt such foreboding. As if by leaving the settlement they would attract evil spirits to follow in the shadows, setting them around with obstacles and mists, luring them into bogs and swamps to be swallowed whole and sucked down into the blackness. Perhaps if she made a wooden cross piece and hung it around her neck as many now did for protection, calling on the High God of Heaven as the priests and hermits taught, that might help them find a fertile spot.

They were baptised in the Christian faith but Fritha preferred the old ways, the runes, the spells and charms, learned by rote at her own mother’s knee. The old gods were more sympathetic to womankind, for Erce was the Mother of the earth and growing things. Fritha always carried the nine sacred herbs: thyme and fennel, full of power; mayweed against skin rot; plaintain, the mother of herbs; stime to fight pain and poison; mint, sage, wormwood and the blessed rue.

She stirred the pot dreamily, wondering as she gazed over at the others, busy about their tasks, if they too had misgivings about striking out alone, without other company to make a stouter band of travellers. They would be easy pickings for brigands and marauding Danes from the northlands.

Poor Lull, little more than a child bride, now so swollen and fearful. Fritha could never tell how a birthing would go. Each of hers had been different. She was glad she had plenty of peony seeds to make a brew for the labour. Lull was a strange, silent girl, friendly and helpful sometimes, then lost in a mist of moods, distant, forgetful.

Beorn would not dream of letting his brother travel alone and forced his woman to leave their hut. It would perhaps have been better if the girl had stayed. She was holding them back by her feebleness. Little Wynfrith at five was more of a helpmate to her mother than this dreamy girl. Wyn would have to mind the baby so that the new mother might spin and weave cloth for them from the hedge rovings they were gathering along the track. In the sack was madder root, woad and onion skins to dye the wool yam, a task which Fritha enjoyed above all others. How she loved to mix the colours! But it would be many weeks before they were settled enough even to think about fancy stuff. There would be so much else to do if they were ever to fill their bellies. Everything looked so grey and drab and unpromising at dusk.

When it was almost pitch black, night calls echoing across the treetops, they sat round the circle of firestones to draw breath and sup their stew with relish. The moon was high and bright; the wellspring gurgled in a soothing sort of way.

The night was calm and mild and Ranwulf slept where he ate. Baggi lifted him on to the mat of ferns and covered him with a thick overmantle. Soon Wyn was asleep and Lull moved closer to her own wagon with Beorn. Baggi stoked the embers thoughtfully.

‘It takes some out of you, all this travelling. I’ll need no rocking tonight. Tomorrow we’ll get a good start. Take the day fresh, keep heading north-west.’

‘Must we? Lull can’t go much further. She looks off to me, yonderly, as if her time’s coming. Why don’t you scout around with Beorn, check out the forest edge? Give us all more time to come to, clean ourselves up a bit. I could bake some stone bread, make milk porridge for a change if the goat will drop some milk. Don’t you think?’

Fritha touched his leathern arm and smiled her gap-toothed grin. Baggi scratched his head and in his straw-coloured hair and rough wool tunic. Beneath the straps of his leather sandals his feet were black.

‘We’re all flea-bitten, dust-covered and mud-caked it’s true. Go on then, you’ve twisted my arm. But only the one day, mind. I’ll rise at first light and give this place the once over.’

‘Thanks. You’re a good man, Bagwulf. Even if you’re a slave driver, moon-touched and as restless as the sea tide!’

Fritha supped from the mead beaker. She was proud that her man wanted more for his family than sharing a cramped hut with his kin; thought more of himself than to spend his nights at the ale bench. The two brothers had sawn and hammered and fashioned tools, sometimes until cock crow. She was touched by the quality of his handiwork. With this soothing thought, her eyelids began to drop.

The travellers slept soundly, undisturbed until the cockerel stretched its neck in the cage and crowed. Fritha woke with a start. Baggi was gone, Beorn still snoring. Wynfrith and Ranulf were nowhere to be seen. Trust them to tag along with Baggi. His little henchmen, he called them. It was turning into a beautiful sunrise, everywhere decked in spring green, that special freshness of new growth. The dew sparkled on the leaves and the scent of the forest bed was as good as a feast to her nostrils.

Fritha built up the fire to get the stones hot for baking and searched in the cart for the flour cask. When she turned round Baggi had returned dangling a cock pheasant, its bright plumage brilliant in the sunshine. ‘Look what I’ve found for us. It fell into my path.’ He laughed. ‘Get that in your stewpot before any one sees it.’ He turned towards the stream. ‘Where’re the bairns?’

‘With you… I thought you’d taken them with you?’

‘No, they were fast asleep, dead to the world when I left. They must have gone rooting for you downstream. Our Wyn is good at finding mushrooms. They won’t have gone far. The hound must be with them too.’ Baggi smiled but it was a thin smile and he struck out along the path briskly. ‘Wyn! Ranulf! Come and break your fast… now!’ There was no response.

Fritha ran to the other cart and shook the couple inside roughly awake. ‘Quick! Rise up… the kids have gone off the track somewhere. Just wait ’til I get hold of that little mischief… she’ll get such a wallop! I told her not to wander.’ But Fritha felt an icy coldness in her heart.

‘Don’t worry, they won’t have gone far. Their bellies will guide them back. You’ll see.’ Lull tried to be a comfort but Fritha was having none of it.

‘You stay here and keep shouting. I’m going back the way we came. Perhaps they’ll be laiking downstream. Little Ran loves to splash about in water.’

She headed down to the ford, grasping her overcloak around her. Suddenly the sky was overcast and the chill wind bit into her face.

‘Come on, childer, come back now! This is no time for hide and seek,’ she called desperately.

*

By the second nightfall there was still no sighting of child or hound. All day Beorn and Baggi combed through the undergrowth, beating with sticks, calling out, penetrating further and further into the thick forest, leaving runic carvings on tree trunks as sign posts back to the carts. Only the scattering of birds disturbed the air, and black ravens watched silently from high in the branches.

Lull paced round and round the fire, reciting the old charm and adding new exhortations:

Erce, Erce, find each child, fetch the childer,

Bind those rascals tight and bring them safe back.

No ground shall keep them stuck or hidden.

No dragon’s feast are they.

Whosoever steals them shall never thrive.

May they wither as fire withers wood,

As bramble and thistle hurt the thigh.

Show us thy power, thy skill to protect.

Thrice round the fire I go…

She felt sick in the stomach but kept up her vigil. Soon they would stroll back hand in hand, unaware of the anguish they had caused. They would be beaten soundly for their naughtiness by Baggi, though he was tearful with thanks for their return. Then they would set off and leave this cursed place and journey onwards. Soon they would laugh at their fear. That was how it must be. But as the shadows lengthened and the weary men returned, fearful now of the worst, only Fritha remained hopeful.

‘Wyn is a sensible lass. She’ll find shelter in a cave or hollow, give Ranulf water from the stream. With water they will live and the nights are not cold. And the hound will guard them. He’s old but his teeth can still draw blood.’

She sat hugging her knees, half in a dream, letting the fire go cold, watching the water bubbling from the spring. We must wait by this spring until they return.’ She refused to see the worried looks of the two men. Two lost bairns and now a mad wife, that was all they needed.

No one slept that night, taking it in turns to pace around the fire. They could hear the howl of a she wolf, the screech of a vixen, but not the sound of children crying to be found. By the third day Fritha had eaten nothing. She tied strips of hemp cloth to the branches of the wellspring as votives to the water spirits to help in the search.

The men circled and recircled, each time taking another direction, hearing only the echo of their voices in the valley. Until finally, to their joy, a voice called back up to them.

Baggi tore excitedly through the bracken and found a wattle and mud hut, a hermit’s cell, where a hoary old man stinking of rancid neglect stood with staff upraised, ready to defend himself.

‘Peace, brother! Why such a rush on such a beautiful morn?’

‘Have you seen our childer, a boy and a maid, this high? They wandered off from our cart. I heard you calling… thought ’twas them.’ Baggi sagged with disappointment.

‘Nay, brother, my eyes are misty. I see no one but scent the air like a deer. I will pray for their souls and safety. How long did you say they’ve been gone?’

‘For three moons since dawn.’ All the strength was seeping out of him as he saw Fritha waving frantically from the high bank, waiting for a response, hoping with every breath for good news. How could he share what was in his heart, the fear that his bairns were lost, never to be found? That some cruel fate had lured them into the depths of the forest and it was all his fault.

‘Fret not about what has befallen them. Search and ye shall find. Trust in the Lord Jesu and His Saints, pray to the Blessed Chad for a miracle. He will find them else bring you consolation. You must bear what must be borne. Travelling is a mighty dangerous thing even in the summer months. Perhaps someone from the clearings high in the far forest has found them – the shepherd or the woodburners. They are kindred folk. Word will travel down with the pedlars and packmen, holy men will pray for them and pass the word. Stay awhile until you have proof of their fate.’

The hermit made signs of blessing but Baggi took no heed. He plodded back up to the ridge with a heavy heart.

‘Who’s that down there? What news? Is there hope?’

‘There is always hope, Fritha, while we have breath.’ He sighed, trying to hide his fears from her. How he cursed himself for risking this trek. It was all his idea. He had forced the pace, bullied them into this madness. How could he ask them to move on now?

Fritha’s cheeks were hollow, her bony figure hunched and suddenly shrunken. She was his helpmate, his breadmaker and latchkeeper, following him so trustfully. He had torn her from her kinfolk, and now something had torn her bairns from her hearth. He could not look her in her grey starved face. He could not face those burning dark eyes. She was of British stock, had the knowing without words, that gift of truth-divining as if she was feeling his thoughts.

‘Are they are lost to us?’ she croaked in a thin broken voice.

‘The holy man says we must pray to the Saviour God for help. Our bairns may be safe in a sheep clearing with the wool gatherers. The forest is holy land, a wilderness of heath and scrublands stretching far to the west. We are still in Mercia. Over the big river is Dane law. We will not be welcome there. You must be brave.’

‘Are you telling me to stop the search? That all is lost and we must leave our bairns to the mercy of the wolves, for the ravens to peck their unburied bones? Bagwulf, I’ll not move one inch from this spot until I know their fate. Go on yourself but don’t expect me to get in the cart. What’s the point of making a homestead if there’s no son to plough it after we’re dust? Don’t think I’ll go on another measure. I’m rooted here where you brought us all and here I must stay.’

Baggi crumpled at her words as if stabbed by spears. Fritha stood dry-eyed and ice cold in her fury. ‘Time enough for tears when we find their bones but I’ll never come with you. I make my homestead here.’

It was Beorn who broke the silence, hearing their raised voices shouting, blaming, punishing each other. ‘I didn’t want to have to speak of this yet but on my last circle far out… there was fur and blood, the remains of a hound – a grey hound with brown streaks. I saw nothing else. I didn’t want to dash your hopes that the hound was still guarding them. The ground is torn, he must have fought to the death… with something.’

‘Let’s see it, show me! Up where?’ cried Fritha, suddenly alive, tearing at his grey woollen sleeve to drag him away.

‘Stay, lass, there’ll be nothing to see now. The ravens were waiting to finish their feast. Come sit with Lull. She fears her pains are coming. Help her bring new life to us all. The shock of this has let down the birthing waters. Please, Fritha, we’ll not give up hope yet. Baggi and I must build a shelter round the fire.’

‘This is no place to build a homestead.’ Baggi shook his head, all the strength leaking out of his belly.

‘Brother, you’ve had your say long enough. Here we stop for the summer at least. This will clear well enough for me. It’s high, away from swamps, the ground is solid, there’s water and sun from the south. Scrub is always easier to clear at the edge of a forest. I’ll travel no further with you and Fritha is too heavy in heart to move on. Get the tools out of the cart while I gather sticks. We can plait some walls, build up the firestones.

‘It’s better to be busy and doing. Better than roaming the forest on a fruitless chase. I’m sorry but you know what I fear. I wanted to shield you from the truth.’

For the first time in his twenty summers, Beornwulf felt he was in charge, making the decisions for all of them. Cruel fate had stopped them on this trek. Here was where they were meant to stay. If he wished to go on Baggi must travel alone and that, he was sure, his brother would never do.

*

Fritha was sitting hidden from the others by the wellspring, her wellspring. Her prayers hung in tattered rags on the overhanging branches of the willow tree, the water spirit deaf to her pleas. Her heart was filled with yearning for her kids. In her imagination she was clasping them to her bosom, feeling their hot breath, the soft down of hair on Ran’s head. Never to see them again… Her heart was numb with shock. She could see no colour only darkness and trees. Heavy was the wound she bore, like a knife thrust in her side. Soft sounds of a lullaby stuck in her throat as she rocked her empty arms. Gazing deep into the water she thought she could see their faces glimmering up at her. She cried out and turned away.

Suddenly there came another cry. The groan of a woman straining in labour. Fritha turned from her hidey hole as if in a trance. She was living in a half-remembered dream, a tale sung by the minstrel with the lyre in the mead hall. The cries grew louder, pulling her back, and she made for the cart to aid Lull.

This was a good sign surely, thought the two men as they nodded together. Now they must set to work on their homestead. By sunset with a bit of luck a wattle hut would be raised, a fire lit and a new bairn would be at Lull’s breast. How Fritha would react to that, did not bear thinking of.

The Search

In the days following their fruitless search Baggi and Beorn gathered staves and prop posts, cut and lopped down branches, plaited wattle walls, fixed them into a ditch of stone footings, criss-crossed the roof and wove in heather and ling to thatch over the roof, leaving a hole in the centre for the smoke to escape. Lull nursed her baby daughter whom they sprinkled with dew, raised to the moon and named Hilde. It was a strong name for a girl but any baby would need to be tough to survive here. The bairn was swaddled in tightly to its mother in a makeshift sling, close to her breasts. Lull was afraid to let the child out of her sight.

Fritha took no interest in the baby once it was delivered safely. She could hardly bear to look into the soft pink face and blinking blue eyes. Every waking moment she busied herself with a hundred tasks and the rest of the time roamed alone over the tracks, searching, searching, for her lost children. Once she saw a traveller, rushing upon him like a mad beast and badgering him to tell her if he had heard of any children rescued from the forest in other clearings. He was almost scared to reply that he had not.

As the moon waxed and waned and high summer burned through the leafy branches on to the clearing, her spirits sank deeper into hopelessness. She withdrew into a sullen silence but worked like an ox, following the plough as it churned over the dark red soil, picking out and clearing away stones, gathering furze and kindling for the fire, tying them into thick prickly bundles. She scooped up the precious dung for the midden to feed the winter soil, letting it stink and dry in the open air. No wonder she fell asleep on her feet as she stirred the supper pot.

The men chopped down trees, split the timbers and loaded them on the cart, trundling the wood off to harden and dry