What secrets was their father keeping from his sons?
‘He will marry again,’ Edmund had said flatly, when they had discussed it among themselves.
Ecbert had guffawed in disbelief, but Athelstan was inclined to agree with Edmund. Their father was not a young man, but he was vigorous and hale, and his carnal appetites were an open secret among the nobles of his court. The bishops, certainly, would urge him to marry.
Such a step could have momentous consequences for the æthelings, and the fact that Athelstan and his brothers were not privy to their father’s deliberations gnawed like a canker. Even as he turned his face up to the pale light of the winter sun, Athelstan’s thoughts were as cold as the wind that blew at their backs.
He urged his horse up a gentle rise, towards an ancient stone that stood black against the sky. It marked the final leg of this morning’s quest, a journey that had been suggested by Ecbert, half in seriousness and half in jest. He had heard tell of a crone living alone in a fold of the hills, a wisewoman who could read events far in the future.
‘We should seek her out,’ he had urged last night, as he faced Edmund across the tafl board, deliberating his next move. ‘She might tell us something to our advantage.’
Athelstan and Edmund had both scoffed at their brother’s suggestion, but Ecbert had persisted.
‘The local folk swear that she has the Sight,’ he insisted. ‘Even the prior from the abbey hereabouts has been known to visit her cottage.’
‘Probably to persuade her to leave her pagan ways,’ Athelstan said drily, from where he sat watching their play.
‘They say that she knows things,’ Ecbert persisted, ‘that she can decipher men’s hearts.’
‘You might want to ask her for advice on how to win at tafl,’ Edmund said, making a move that captured Ecbert’s king and ended the game. ‘That is your third loss, man. You are utterly hopeless tonight.’
The normally genial Ecbert threw up his hands in frustration.
‘I am bored, Edmund! I am fed up with waiting here like a kennelled dog. If the weather is fine tomorrow, I shall ride out to consult the old woman. Athelstan, will you come with me? Who knows? She may be able to tell us what is in the mind of the king.’
Athelstan thought that unlikely. Nevertheless, the journey, at least, might not be such a bad idea. He glanced around the hall, where men clustered in small groups over games of dice or nodded over cups of ale. They were all of them bored and not a few of them surly. They would be at each other’s throats soon if he did not find something to occupy them.
He nodded briskly to Ecbert.
‘It can do no harm,’ he said, ‘and the men and horses will benefit from the exercise, fair weather or no.’
And so they had set out mid-morning, following landmarks that a local man pointed out as he led the way – a tree blasted by lightning, an abandoned mill, an ancient mound that the folk thereabouts called the Devil’s Barrow. They had arrived at last at a long, low ridge where the snow lay less thick than it did on the surrounding countryside, and where the standing stone, its edges scored in primitive runes, pointed skyward.
Athelstan checked his horse beside the ancient, lichen-covered stone. Gazing into the shallow vale beyond, he caught his breath at what he saw: a circle of what he guessed must be a hundred standing stones, each one the height of a man or a little more, mushroomed from the valley floor. Like monstrous, deformed fingers, black against the blanket of snow, the stones cast long shadows that speared, ominously, straight at him.
They might not be as massive as the giants on Sarum’s plain, he thought, but there were far more of them, and they had the same menacing power. He did not like it, and he felt his gut begin to churn.
Ecbert and Edmund came up beside him, and he watched their faces as they surveyed the scene before them. From their stricken expressions it was clear that they were having second thoughts about this venture – as was he. There were enough dark things in this world. One needn’t seek them out.
‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked Ecbert.
‘No,’ Ecbert muttered, ‘but it would be stupid to turn back now.’ He flicked a glance at Athelstan. ‘You go first, though.’
Athelstan scowled at him, then peered into the valley again, looking for signs of life. The stone circle was fringed by moss-bearded oaks, and on its far side he could see a small croft sheltering among the trees, its thatching frosted with snow. He realized with a shock that what he had taken for another stone, standing in the gloom near the hut, was a living figure staring back at him.
She had been waiting for them, then. He was certain of it, although he could not say how he knew. There was something else he was certain of as well, and it added to his anxiety. He was meant to go down there. Ecbert was right. There was no turning back now.
He led the way down into the grove, threading his horse through the trees towards the croft, purposely avoiding the clearing and its hulking, glowering stones. As they neared the cottage he saw that the figure waiting there was swathed in layers of coarse, black wool, her head covered by the folds of a shawl so thick that the old woman’s face, if it was a woman, was all but invisible.
‘God be with you, my lord,’ she called.
The voice was surprisingly deep and harsh – roughened, Athelstan guessed, by wood smoke and disuse. He dismounted and went towards her, Ecbert and Edmund trailing behind him.
‘God be with you, mother,’ he said. ‘It must be hard faring for you this winter, living so far from your neighbours as you do. Will you accept a small gift, some supplies to replenish your larder against lean times?’ He gestured to one of his men, who placed a large sack filled with cheese, bread, and pulses beside the hut and then hastened back to his mount.
The eyes watching Athelstan showed neither surprise nor gratitude.
‘What would you have of me?’ she asked. ‘You have come far from your appointed road, for you are bound north, I think. The herepath lies that way.’
She gestured to the west, where the old road built by the Roman legions, the Fosse Way, ran from Exeter in the southwest to Jorvik in the north. Presumably, whenever Ealdorman Ælfhelm arrived to lead them to Northumbria, they would, indeed, follow that same northward road.
Still, Athelstan reassured himself, it did not take second sight to hazard that a group of armed men wearing the badge of the ealdorman of Northumbria would likely be headed that way.
‘Perhaps you have already given me what I seek,’ he said, ‘if you can predict nothing more for me than a road that leads north. But it is my brother here,’ he motioned to Ecbert, ‘who wishes to consult you.’
She peered up at him then, and he saw the gleam of shrewd eyes from within the folds of her shawl.
‘Nay, lord,’ she said, shaking her head slowly. ‘You are the one who has need of guidance. Will you give me your hand?’
He hesitated, brushed by a whisper of foreboding. The knowing eyes fixed on his, though, flashed a challenge that he could not ignore, and he placed his hand within her outstretched palms. Her fingers felt thin and clawlike, as roughened and calloused as his own.
She peered at his palm, and for some time she was silent while Athelstan’s disquiet grew. The standing stone on the ridge, the menacing stone circle, the skeletal touch of the old woman’s hands – all of it was forbidden, pagan magic. He felt a wild urge to flee, but in the next moment she spoke, and in a voice far different from the one with which she had greeted him. Now it was vibrant, full and feminine. The timbre of it pulsed through him in the