Juliana Garnett

ALSO BY JULIANA GARNETT

The Quest
The Magic

The maid of woven tresses
Smote the fierce hearted
with bloodstained blade
.

Judith
, from B
EOWULF
Ninth Century

Prologue

May, 1067

I
F YOU ARE
too cowardly to defy the Normans, I will go fight in your place.”

The words hung in the suddenly still air like drawn swords: a challenge. All motion and conversation ceased; eyes turned toward the slender blond woman standing in the center of the hall. She stood steadfast, chin firm, ice-blue gaze steady beneath a sweep of insolently long brown lashes. No errant thrum of lute or lyre by careless minstrel, no casual comment, could be heard in the hall awash with light from lamp and torch. Those perched on benches or leaning against stone walls seemed to hold their collective breath. Ceara, daughter to the Saxon lord of Wulfridge, waited with nervous defiance for her father’s reply.

Some would like to see her fall, she knew well enough. Fah, she did not care what they thought. Their anticipation was as pungent as the sharp scents of burning pine knots and oil lamps. But all that mattered to her now was vengeance and pride—for ’twas all she had left.

Wulfric is dead, and with him have gone laughter and hope
.…

She saw rage in the pinpoint flames that lit Lord Balfour’s
bright blue eyes. She did not look away. Their gazes were almost level, for she was as tall as most men—even the Norman foes who raped their lands.

Ceara lifted her chin and her long, loose hair drifted over a bared shoulder, cool and soft against her skin. The gunna and kirtle she wore were her own style—pagan some said, though not usually the men who eyed her shortened attire with sly appreciation. Lecherous fools. Around her waist, instead of a gold-linked or woven girdle, she wore a sword; no mere eating dagger, but a lethal Roman gladius—taken, the tale went, by a long-dead Celtic ancestor from a legionnaire. The weapon had been handed down through her family for hundreds of years. And she could use it most agilely, so that no man dared approach her without good reason.

A sword clinked against stone. Someone coughed, and a slight mutter was quickly silenced. Drifts of smoke lazed across the hall, carried by an errant breeze that stirred flame and bright woven wall hangings indiscriminately. Light from a flickering torch gilded her father’s hair with silver and played across his craggy features. Had he always had such deep creases in his face?

“I swore an oath to William.” Lord Balfour’s aged voice had the hoarse sound of a grindstone. “I do not forswear my oaths.”

“Oaths given under duress are not meant to be kept.”

“And what would a woman know of fealty?” His mouth twisted in an ironic smile that brought heat to Ceara’s cheeks.

“More than most men, I daresay, though ’tis not a woman’s lot to decide her own fate.” She dragged in a deep breath that tasted of smoke and incense and the residue of a thousand evening meals, her cold gaze riveted on her father though her heart had begun to thump against her ribs. “Must it always come to this with us? Can you not listen to
my
counsel as you did to Wulfric’s?”

Balfour leaned forward. “Nay. I cannot. You are not Wulfric. He is dead, and I am left with a daughter who is more willful than obedient. You have barely sixteen winters to you, Ceara.
Surely, you did not think
you
could replace Wulfric’s wise counsel.”

The softly spoken words fell on her like harsh blows. As she answered, her own voice shook slightly, but she steadied it with fierce resolve, her nails digging deeply into the palms of her hands. “Nay, of course I cannot. Wulfric is—was—a man, while I am only a witless female, meant to sit at cooking pots and looms instead of war councils.”

“Aye, but you seem to have forgotten that.”

“Nay, not for a moment have I forgotten how you wish to keep me in a corner, unnoticed and unheard. Yet in days of old, women’s voices were heeded as well as the men’s. Now, the Normans have done more damage than the Romans or even the Vikings. They have laid waste to the entire country and made us into curs groveling at their heels, yet you prate of fealty to their bastard king as if it is a matter of honor to lay down our arms and do his bidding like tamelings!”

When she paused, anger making her tremble as if with a chill, her father lifted a hand to beckon two of his thralls forward. They flanked her swiftly. Her chin lifted at this insult, but she made no move to flee.

“You will be escorted to your chamber until you have reconsidered your hasty words,” Balfour said coolly, but flames lit his eyes with the heat of a hundred torches.

Ceara met his gaze steadily. Cowards. All of them. Including Balfour, though he was her father and lord of their lands.
Wulfric would never have yielded
.… Yea, but Wulfric was gone, she reminded herself. And by all that was sacred, no man would force her to swear a loyalty she did not feel.

Raking the two thralls with a scathing glance, Ceara crossed her arms over her chest. Her mocking smile stretched into a taut grimace. “I shall grow old and withered in my chamber before I will consider yielding to the bastard duke of Normandy.”

Fine white lines etched Balfour’s eyes as he glowered at her; he turned suddenly on his heel and moved away. He wore the
tunic and fur-lined robes of a baron—a Saxon lord—though since the coming of the Normans, the fur was not as thick, the robes increasingly threadbare. Balfour crossed the beautiful tiled floor slowly, the once vibrant pattern of moon and stars beneath his feet now faded. He stepped onto the dais to take his customary seat in the high-backed stone chair made comfortable with bolsters of stuffed feathers and fur.

“You are insolent, my daughter.”

Ceara allowed a faint smile to touch her mouth. “Yea, my lord, I learned insolence at your knee. But you know I am right as well as insolent.”

Balfour studied her narrowly. “You would have me flee to Malcolm for succor? I am to yield to the king of the Scots what the Norman king has not yet taken? What, then, is the difference, I ask you?”