the Norman Conquest of England, revealing the origins of the Wulfrith family of the AGE OF FAITH series. Releasing early winter 2020/2021.
CHAPTER ONE
Northumberland, England
Late Summer, 1069
Her mother was dead. A year dead. Dear Lord, the passing of four seasons! And no word had they sent nor warning given this day.
Having just enough breath to firm her feet so she not topple as they would have her do, Marguerite stared at the slab of rotting wood into which her own name was crudely carved and naught else—as if the woman beneath weed-infested earth had been no one’s daughter, wife, mother, and friend.
She told herself it was wrong to hate the three standing with her. Wrong and yet it felt right, just as it had a year past when last she was here and the woman who birthed her had looked ten years older than she ought.
I should have come sooner, she silently bemoaned, should have paid mother no heed.
“Dropped the firewood, clutched her chest, and landed on the hearth,” her grandsire said in heavily-accented Norman-French, then sighed. “Nothing for it but to dig a hole.”
“May you die without warning,” his son spoke the curse cast at those one wished given no time to prepare for death, it believed lacking confession and absolution, ever the fallen would be separated from God.
“Without warning,” concurred one of three cousins, this one half a dozen years older than she.
The effort not to scream and scratch out eyes with the nails jabbed into her palms caused something in Marguerite’s head to pop. Real or imagined, she did not know. What she knew was she could not stay here. Hopefully, when Edgar the Aetheling who had been granted sanctuary at the King of Scots’ court returned to England to wrest York from the Normans, he would pause here and—
“Nay,” she whispered and dropped her chin. “Even to think it is evil.”
“Do not speak that foul language,” snarled her uncle who was now thirty to what would have been her mother’s thirty and six years.
Marguerite longed to speak further in the tongue she knew as well as her mother’s, but more than it delaying her departure, she feared it would provoke a clash between her escort and kin. Throat pained, she swallowed hard and looked to the man who was her grandfather only for having sired her mother.
“We shall depart now,” she said in Norman-French, of which he would approve, though still he would find fault with an accent tempered by her sire’s language.
Papa, she sent heavenward as she started back toward her escort, I have no one now mama is with you and my brothers. No one.
Raising her skirts to sooner traverse long grass the last of summer had sucked dry of its green, she saw the plump figure standing center of her escort hasten forward.
Though Cannie could not see the lone grave to which her mistress was led, doubtless she understood the elder Marguerite was laid to rest in a field beyond the massive timber house raised twenty-five years past when her grandfather crossed the channel with Edward who was summoned home to accept the crown of this island kingdom.
Comfort would be had in the older woman’s arms and beneath hands stroking head and back. It would not be enough, but it would hold together Marguerite the younger.
Hungering more for that than food or drink though greatly she had anticipated sitting at table with her mother and filling an emptiness far different from this one, she yanked her skirts higher and ran. Into a darker, violent nightmare.
Breathy whistles sounded, and beyond her escort she saw what looked streaks of dark rain traveling horizontally, then the ten warriors handpicked by King Malcolm lurched forward.
“Nay!” she screamed. But they fell, and as Cannie snapped her head around, she dropped, an arrow protruding from her back the same as her countrymen—eleven straight, feathered saplings refusing to bend in the breeze swaying the grass.
“Cannie!” Marguerite fell to her knees beside the shuddering woman who was more friend than maid, reached to the head turned opposite, and grasped only air when she was yanked upright by the back of her gown.
“They fouled your blood, but they are not your people,” her uncle growled.
Marguerite wrenched around, and as she raked nails down his face, saw her grandfather and cousin stood to the side, letting happen what happened.
Her uncle knocked her hand away, named her something foul, and as she reached to claw with her other hand, gripped her throat. Digging his fingers