The Ritual

Mother Ruth peered through the gaps in the converted storeroom door at the girl chosen for the ritual. Mara, clad only in her night shift, her hair still loose, knelt before the simple, wooden altar lighted by a lone candle, beeswax not tallow. An older version of the girl Ruth had once killed. Had it been real? She no longer remembered. That night had been nearly a lifetime ago. Before she’d donned the white and been touched by the goddess’s light.

Bitterness like sour smoke rolled off the girl as she prayed, to god or goddess Ruth did not know. Mara was a near stranger to her, although by rights she shouldn’t be. Abducting her had been risky.  When her mother discovered her missing, there was bound to be a reckoning. At dawn, Ruth would commend her soul into the hands of the goddess for the good of the village. After that, it wouldn’t matter. Every year, her order tried to disrupt the village’s ancient ritual and supplant it with their own. Only once had they succeeded.

The villagers called her order the Night Ravens, sometimes worse when they thought none were within earshot. An epithet meant to convey that they would all be the better plucked and roasted. Not that any of them would dare lay hands upon a priest.

“Mother,” Brother Dawid shuffled up the drafty, torchlit hall as quickly as he could without running, keeping his voice low as decorum dictated. “A crowd has gathered outside the gate.”

Ruth turned away from the door. “Tell them to return after morning prayers,” she said, tucking her hands within her felted sleeves.

Brother Dawid’s robes were still mud spattered from the nocturnal errand she’s charged him with. She wondered how many others he’d pressed into service. No more than a handful. Too many were locally born and would take a dim view of her actions despite their vows to set aside their former lives.

Brother Dawid ducked his head and hunched his shoulders in an unconscious act of subservience, a habit she abhorred as much as she valued his surprising loyalty given he, too, had family in the village. “They threaten violence if you do not speak with them.”

Ruth sighed. “Then I suppose I must. Keep an eye on the girl until I return. No one is to interrupt her prayers.”

“Yes, Mother.” He cast his eyes toward the floor. “I’ll see to it myself.”

Ruth strode down the stonework hall, her sandaled feet no more than a whisper as she passed the arches to the galleries where the monastery stored apples, root vegetables, cheeses and honey wine along with the granaries filled with freshly harvested seeds for sowing next spring. At the wrought iron gate that led to a stair up and out of the cellar, she pulled a silver chain through the neck of her robe until she clutched a brass key in hand. It rattled in the lock as she turned it until the heavy latch clanked free. The gate sighed open. In her time as Mother, Ruth insisted on proper maintenance throughout the monastery. If cleanliness brought the siblings closer to the goddess then maintaining her property brought them closer to her order.

Ruth locked the gate behind her. To her left lay the entrance to the whisper chamber beneath the nave with its adjacent niches and chapels where the order’s many martyrs lay entombed. Instead, she turned right and ascended the stair to the covered passage near the cellarer’s office. Brother Dawid’s office. His and hers were the only cellar keys.

She emerged just in time to see a novice whose name escaped her rushing across the cloister, frantically scanning the portico until she spotted Ruth. Ruth paused and let the girl come to her. Only at the last minute did the girl remember her station and slow her pace from a near run. And still she arrived breathless.

“Mother…” she started then remembered again to bow her head and wait to be acknowledged.

Ruth stood silent a moment before responding to allow the girl to catch her breath. She couldn’t be but maybe a year older than the girl locked away in the cellar. “What is so urgent my child that it pushes you to the edge of decorum when all the novices should be abed?”

“There is a mob outside the gate. They threaten to break it down…”

“Slower, my child,” Ruth calmly interrupted her. “Start at the beginning.”

“Sorry, Mother.” The girl kept her eyes upon the flagstones as she mastered her composure before she recited what she’d been told. “The Night Vigil heard a pounding on the church doors. When he opened the eye hole, he was confronted by an angry mob that accused us of kidnap of a village daughter and demanded her return. He woke the Sacrist who summoned all the novices to reinforce the west range gate where the mob now gathers. She sent the Cellarer to find you.”

“And so he has,” Ruth replied. “Go tell the Sacrist to inform the villagers I will address them from the porch above the gate.” A hollow boom reverberated through the stone passage that led to the west range gate as if the mob truly meant to break it in. When the girl stood rooted, Ruth added. “Now you may move with the purpose of my authority.”

Wide-eyed, the girl turned and fled toward the gate, her white robes flying behind her like the trailing remnants of a ghost. The night was prime for such apparitions, a misty cold bordering on first frost.

Ruth strove to maintain her own composure as she strode around the perimeter of the cloister toward the passage where the girl had disappeared. Gate was not much of a misnomer. Compared to the ancient god reborn, the goddess had not long resided in north. The local populace accepted her presence uneasily. The monastery remained her only fortified outpost. The mission had been here for decades yet had met with only limited success. The villagers stubbornly clung to the old ways even where outlawed by their recently converted king. This deep in the marches, they only begrudgedly recognized his authority anyway, usually under duress. Her order was determined to save them from themselves and their backward ways no matter how many lives it took.

The blue moon hung just over the slate rooftop of the western range. The Betrayer’s Moon. The eastern sky had not yet begun to lighten with even the false dawn. A long time to delay the mob outside but she knew she must. Only when the sun had breached the horizon could Mara be committed to the goddess. Then she would be beyond the reach of the angry villagers forever.

Ruth stared at the stake in the center of the cloister where the ritual would be performed. To either side twin stacks of firewood had been laid crosshatched for the bonfires. The fires that would burn the girl’s sins away and leave her pure before the goddess. The girl knew she had done wrong. The ritual was her only way to atone.

As Ruth approached the covered passageway across the cloister from where she’d emerged, she saw the Sacrist rallying the novices to reinforce the bars and braces on the west range gate. The mission walls were thick and high, its doors heavy and reinforced. The goddess had received an uneasy welcome when her followers had first arrived in the north. The intervening decades had been long and sometimes bloody with martyrs beatified on both sides.

Another resounding boom echoed across the cloister as wood collided with iron-bound wood. The villagers must have crafted a makeshift ram. The Sacrist shot Ruth a pleading look as dust danced in the torchlight of arched passageway. Ruth instructed two novices to retrieve torches from the wrought iron wall sconces and follow. She turned to ascend the nearby stairs.

She emerged onto a porch high above the west range gate. She motioned her torchbearers to remain beside the door. As she waited for their light to draw the villagers’ attention, she surveyed the scene below.

A small sea of torches greeted her as she approached the waist-high parapet. The villagers were arrayed in full rebellion, most armed with simple three-pronged hayforks and threshing flails. At points like polestars interspersed within the crowd, torchlight flickered off the blades of scythes, billhooks, and makeshift glaives. A small cadre of woodcutters near the fore encircled a matronly woman whose righteous anger rivaled the firebrands lighting her familiar face. Horpa. Beside her a pale, sickly young man Ruth knew to be a fyrdman for the local lord leaned against rude crosspiece-lashed ladder. Malon. Horpa’s son, the girl’s brother. No aid would be forthcoming from that quarter.

Directly below, eight sturdy field hands swung a fresh-felled timber as big around as a child’s waist against the west range gate. Without a frame for leverage, it created a mere grumble of their discontent. In the pasture behind the fishpond, just beyond the siblings’ cemetery, a conical bonfire had been laid. It remained as yet unlighted.

Ruth folded her hands within her sleeves as she waited. When that moment stretched toward discomfort at the single-minded focus of the mob, she beckoned her torchbearers to the corners of the parapet encasing the platform. The light finally lifted the villagers’ eyes. The stentorian voice of their battering ram fell silent.

When the mob fully settled, Ruth called down, “Why do you disturb the night offices of this holy enclave? Disperse and we will receive you after our laudatory prayers.”

“You know full well why we’ve gathered, sister,” the matron called back up. “Your goatsuckers stole my daughter under the mantle of darkness. We come to claim her back.”

Ruth saw no point in denying the girl was inside. That much the villagers surely knew. “Mara is reflecting with us on her future of her own accord, Horpa. Return at dawn and receive her decision with the rest of us.”

“She made her decision at the Eastern Rising,” Horpa spat. “When she chose to lie with the god reborn, she chose the ancient ways.”

“You and I both know no girl chooses for herself,” Ruth replied. Only years of discipline kept her eyes from narrowing as she remembered that night so long ago. “That choice is only made by beldams like you.”

“Better rebirth in the threefold cleansing than a permanent death with you.” Horpa turned her back on the monastery, raising her arms, seeking the crowd’s assent which came in a wave of brandished weapons and torches accompanied by angry exclamations. She faced Ruth again, smiling smugly. “That we cannot permit.”

“The king has declared your ritual outlaw.” Ruth stood unmoved. “To defy his will borders on treason as well as heresy.”

“Chilion has never crossed the river,” called up Malon from beside Horpa. “He wastes away in his castle, an tired old man trying to bribe his way into paradise with whichever gods will listen. His edicts carry no coin here.”

“You claim to be the light-bringers,” Horpa said. “Stand against us and we will put your endurance of it to the test.” With her nod, a torch sailed over the lay siblings’ dormitory. At worst it might light one of the pre-laid bonfires on the cloister. The mission roofs were slate, the walls stone. As a threat, fire was less than immediate.

Yet still Ruth flinched. Only the memory of the goddess’s light soothed her like a balm. She knew she must stand firm or risk seeing generations of work undone.

“You dare assault the goddess in her own house?” she called down upon the peasant farmers. “If we withhold her seed, how many of you will starve?”

“Those stores are ours by right and privilege,” Horpa responded. “Who will stand against us should we choose to liberate them? You? Your goatsuckers?”

“The first of you who trespass inside these walls shall see the granaries set alight. If you survive the winter, you’ll have nothing to sow come spring. Your god reborn will starve before the next Eastern Rising. Then what shall you reap?”

Autumn’s chill had begun to coalesce the air. Each word of Ruth’s threat hung before her like the smoking prelude of the dragon’s breath. The villagers exchanged uncertain glances. Only the faint crackling of their torches broached the descending shroud of silence.

Horpa appeared undaunted. “You always were a dedicated believer, sister.”

Ruth didn’t know what to say to that so she merely waited, knowing more would be forthcoming.

“Or so our mother thought when you were chosen,” Horpa continued after a momentary pause. “Didn’t you vow to faithfully serve the god reborn when you lay with him that night? Before you embraced cowardice and crafted a new vow with your goddess. So then tell me, sister, which of those vows is false?”

“With my vow broken, wasn’t it your duty to assume my place, sister?” Ruth shot back. “Yet I still see you standing before me casting stones. Perhaps your god reborn is more angry with your breach of faith than mine. Perhaps you are why his power wanes.”

Ruth felt the mob’s support begin to waver. And yet Horpa’s confidence remained undimmed.

“I offered up my own daughter to reconcile my sin,” she called up. “Any woman worthy of the title mother understands how much harder it is to sacrifice her child.”

“Any pledge I made to the god reborn was coerced. Only my freely given word to the goddess matters. The same is true for Mara.”

“I see you remain defiant in your faith,” Horpa answered. “I expected no less. It’s time to see if all your siblings share your resolve.”

She made a quick gesture with her hand. Her knot of axmen dispersed within the crowd. Ruth sensed a trap closing around her though she couldn’t quite outline its contours.

The axmen reconvened around a maiden with a pleasant face, perhaps thirteen, standing near her elderly parents. As the axmen wrestled the girl into the torchlight around Horpa, Ruth recognized her. Naomi. Dawid’s sister.

Now she understood the danger. Ruth stepped back from the parapet. Fishing the cellar key from beneath her robe, she motioned to one of the novices.

“Take this to the Sacrist at the gate. Tell her to retrieve the girl from the cellar and bring her to the cloister at once. We will perform the ritual immediately.” She pressed the cold brass into the boy’s hand. When he stood gazing at it an instant too long, Ruth added, “Fly, boy, if you ever hope to see a sibling’s robes.”

As the boy’s sandals slapped against the stone stairs, Ruth turned back to the edge of the balcony. She paused a moment to compose herself. She needed to buy the Sacrist time. Everything else lay within the goddess’s hands.

Once again, she stepped forward to confront Horpa and her mob. The axmen had begun to bind Naomi to the fyrdman’s ladder already planted in the ground. The girl didn’t struggle. Her face looked blankly angelic as she turned her eyes toward heaven. Ruth knew she would feel honored to be so chosen. Too bad she hadn’t been selected before the Eastern Rising.

“You know the god reborn will recognize this girl is not his bride,” Ruth called down. “How angry will he be with those who seek to deceive him?”

“Then spare us all his wrath and return his bride to me,” Horpa shot back. “You have no right to interfere.”

“No right?” Ruth spat. “At thirteen, I was chosen as his torchbearer. A year later I was to be his bride. I know exactly what these girls go through. I think that gives me every right.”

“Naomi was chosen as his torchbearer. Now, she’ll serve as his surrogate bride a year early. That is but one of the duties of his handmaidens. Or have you forgotten, sister?”

Ruth still shuddered at the torchbearer’s first duty. Handmaiden, torchbearer and bride were a progression of honors in every young girl’s dreams. Only the constant reinforcement of their pride at being chosen could see them through the horrors of what each entailed. Better that the goddess burn those sins away.

“No matter that she is my Cellarer’s sister? The man whose actions stained our family? Now you seek to redeem his slight with your daughter’s life. Don’t think I missed the envy in your eyes when mother pushed me forward instead of you. Your jealousy was always as naked as your rage. But this girl has no part in it. Have mercy on her. Leave her life aside.”

“If you value her life so well, send my daughter back and we will cut her free. You have my word.”

When Ruth made no move comply, Horpa uttered one word to her fyrdman son loud enough to lay her plan bare.

“Wood.”

The villagers began piling fuel from the pre-laid bonfire around the girl until her ankles then her knees were obscured. Ruth had no doubt that Horpa meant to make good upon her threat. Her leadership was ill-conceived, her ritual a corruption.

What was taking the Sacrist so long? She should have sent word by now that the girl was ready on the cloister. Once they lit the bonfires and threw open the gates, the crowd outside would see Horpa’s extortion was in vain. Ruth knew most of the villagers were good people, misguided but not vindictive. In the face of futility, the mob would drift away.

As if summoned by Ruth’s thoughts, someone burst through the door behind her. She turned to find the Sacrist leaning heavily against its frame. Her temple oozed a bloody trail that meandered down her neck and stained her white collar before it disappeared inside. She only managed to hold Ruth’s eyes for an instant before she dropped her gaze and ruefully shook her head.

Even as Ruth pieced together the tale of what must have happened belowground, an anguished cry erupted from the church doors to her right. 

“No,” Brother Dawid howled like a banshee, his white robes aflutter as he ushered Mara across the greensward by an arm. The girl followed freely, her bitterness blossoming into enrapturement at her answered prayers. A triumphant cheer erupted from the crowd.

True to her word, Horpa cut Naomi from the ladder. The axmen then tied a willing Mara in her place. Malon barred Dawid with an arm when Horpa extended a torch to Naomi. Before the girl could perform the duty demanded of her, Ruth turned away.

She descended the stone stairs back toward the cloister, the Sacrist following, the novice sealing the door behind. Shielded against the celebratory sound and fury beyond the wall, Ruth paused in the archway at the threshold of the cloister.

“What should we do when Brother Dawid returns,” asked the Sacrist, daubing her temple with the hood of her robe. The pristine white came away a red that in the torchlight bordered on black. 

“Allow the girl sanctuary,” Ruth replied, her surficial calm restored, “but bar the door against him. With his betrayal, he has chosen darkness over light.”

Even as she said the words, she was saddened by her decision. She remembered too much of that same darkness the night Dawid had saved her from Mara’s fate. She had misjudged him, misjudged the siren song of blood over beliefs. Perhaps she had misjudged herself in thinking she could harvest both and redeem her sister’s sin.

Ruth stared at the stake set between the twin laid bonfires that dominated the cloister. The stake meant to serve as her niece’s salvation. The thrown torch lay dead in a pool of blackened grass just short of the post’s base. She had envisioned Brother Dawid standing beside her, watching Mara die between the fires only to be reborn into the white once fully cleansed by the goddess’s light. Just as he had watched a younger girl so many years ago as the stain of her sins as handmaiden and torchbearer slowly burned away. The girl she’d murdered. The girl she once had been.


© 2016 Edward P. Morgan III

To Slay the Dragon

"Forgive me father for I have sinned."

"When was the day of your last confession?"

"One year past, but I have never confessed this crime."

"And what is the nature of your sin?"

"I killed a man."

"Many men have killed in battle, my son."

"I didn't kill him in battle, father. I killed him while he slept."

---

Men think of me as a soldier. I am no soldier. My father was, but I am not half the man as he. That day, I had no sword, no axe, no hauberk, not even a spear, except the one I'd stolen. Only a leather jerkin and my ever-present saex. Back then, I wasn't a kingsthane, just a smuggler. Until yesterday, men followed me because they thought I'd killed the Dragon. In that, they are right. I killed him. But not in the way they sing.

You must remember, father, this was a score of years ago, half a lifetime past. Before the Danes set fire to Lindesfarne. Before King Offa had completed his dyke. Before he went mad and began killing all his kin.

I was there the day Offa conquered Scropp's Fort for Mercia. With that victory his westward expansion was almost complete. We thought he was destined to be the High King of all the Angles and Saxon that day. All that remained was Northumbria and consolidation. The Severn would form part of the boundary between his kingdom and the foreigners.

Foreigners, that was what we called them, though it was our boats that had landed on their shores generations ago. We built our kingdoms as we pushed them toward the setting sun. For their part, the foreigners called us after our ever-present knives. Saex in our tongue. Saesneg in their own. They had become intimately familiar with them when Offa granted a bounty on the ears of any foreigner found within his territory without his permission. In retaliation, they killed our Saex-wielding men wherever they were found. Not for money, but for joy.

Or so the story goes.

Where our leaders and warriors call them heathens, I know better. They had converted to the one true faith generations before we arrived. Unlike our people, a few of whose grandfathers still remember the old gods' ways, hammer, sword and sacrifice.

In those days, I didn't care about another man's language or religion. The color of his coin told all I needed of the tale his character. The foreigners had goods my people wanted. I am not a brave or ambitious man by nature. Bartering was easier than stealing. Sneaking goods across the border cheaper than paying tax or toll. The true reckoning wasn't with Offa's easily bribed ealdormen, but with the ever-shifting alliances of these temperamental foreign kings. They called themselves dragons.

It wasn't the dragon of Powys whose seat of power King Offa had stolen that worried me the day Scropp's Fort fell, but the dragon who dwelled in the dark hills of Gwynedd farther north, bordering the sea.

His was an ancient line. Six generations past, Caradog, one of his great-grand sires, had captured a noble Christian maiden named Gwenffrewi, sister-daughter of a local saint. He threatened to ravage her if she would not submit willingly. When she resisted and fled for sanctuary, Caradog struck her head from her body in a rage. Where her shining tresses came to rest, the earth wept in sorrow at the foreshortening of her beauty. Our Lord paid her wergild with a bounty of his tears. A holy, healing well sprang forth, consecrated by her uncle, Beuno, God's own venerated overseer, whose piety made her whole and returned her to this life.

At least that is the tale the foreign bards sing for the pilgrims drawn to Holywell, or Treffynnon as they call it. I suspect the truth is much less noble. It often is.

That day, another Caradog sat atop Gwynedd's throne, one with a son with a cruel reputation they simply called the Draig. The Norns told me our world would be a better place without him.

When Scropp's Fort fell, I was in the midst of a bargain, Anglic cattle, Saxon silver and Kentish tin for a like quantity of Gwynedd copper and Irish gold, with some local honey wine thrown in for equal measure. The mead was my true interest, the one part of the deal that would turn a profit when traded farther south and east.

The King of Powys thus believed I had betrayed him, leading Offa's thanes to the hall where we were to negotiate our exchange. I was as surprised by Offa's actions as he was. Had my sister not been in Scropp's Fort that day, I simply would have dismissed the failed venture as God's will.

As soon as I heard Offa's men were on the move, I ran to get her out. Too late. Winifred had wisely fled the market at the first news of Offa's approach. From there, she made her way to a farmstead tun near a ford on the Severn where I had been gathering cattle for our trade. Straight into the teeth of a retaliatory raid. The Norns had conspired against me.

Ours was a three-party deal brokered by the King of Powys between he and I and the Draig of Gwynedd. Scropp's Fort was our exchange point and Powys' hall, Amwythig in their tongue. It was the ancient seat of his people's power, his last stronghold east of the Severn. What had begun as a negotiating raid by Offa to intimidate Powys into paying tribute had ended with all the foreigners retreating across the river to protect their amassed trade treasure from being seized. Offa quickly found himself in control of the hilltop motte, as surprised as anyone. How he had found out about our trade, or whether he knew at all, I do not know.

All that mattered was the foreigners thought I had betrayed them. The Mercians put any stragglers to the sword that day, with the women given to the warriors for sport. Powys was too busy trying to hold the fords and keep the Offa's axemen on the east side of the river to deal with me. The Draig wasn't so constrained. He had no border to defend and fifty household guards accompanying him, all cousins, to see his bounty safely home. Which is what he meant to do, in trade or no. I now believe Caradog betrayed us both, Powys and myself, to escape Offa's wrath, weaken his southern rival and profit a small herd of Anglic cattle at my expense. I suspect that Offa knew, or at least turned a blind eye, as I had not sought his permission before initiating the trade from within his lands.

I lathered my horse getting back to the farmstead. The tun, as its name implies, was enclosed but its walls and manor were meant to hold against small bands of raiders not an attack by fifty warriors who knew both the land and their profession. A mile away, the rising smoke foretold that I had not ridden hard or fast enough. Though if I had, I would have shared the villeins' fate.

The manor house was still smoldering as I watched it from the wood. I saw no sign of either work hands or foreign warriors. With the exception of the roof collapsing, the tun was as quiet as an open grave. When the wind shifted, only smoke watered my eyes, not the hint of rancid bacon left too long by the fire. For a moment, hope swelled my heart.

Had anyone hidden safely in the wood, they should have spotted me and signaled. I told myself a tale that they all had fled to a neighboring farmstead and would return again come morning. I sniffed around the ruined manor, reluctant enter. The smoke still smelled clean, as it did from the smaller buildings that had also been set alight. Then, I noticed the thatched-roofed cow byre still standing, well away from the house. My dread grew as I approached. Any hope I'd felt earlier died forlorn.

The byre doors stood open. The smell of rotting compost assaulted me from within. Inside, I found all the men along with every boy above the age of ten. The sound of the ropes and rafters creaking beneath their combined weight continues to haunt my dreams. They swayed in the noontide breeze like a dozen ripened sheaves of hops or malt over-wintering to dry, their faces contorted by blood, their bowels and bladders empty.

Of the women and maidens, including Winifred, I found no sign even as I stirred the ashes in the manor house and other ruined buildings. I knew their fate, driven back across the river with the cattle. The wives would become slaves or chattel, the maidens rewards for the Draig's warriors, or prizes sailed across the Irish Sea. That was the way of these foreigners. No wonder Offa ordered his thanes to take the ears of any foreigners they found east of the Severn. Not that they needed much encouragement. Mercians still say these foreigners are as barbaric as the Danes who raided Lindesfarne. More so because they purport to be Christian.

When the wind swung around again, I found two infants and a toddler along with a resistant mother in a burned out cottage beyond the enclosure wall. The moment I saw their twisted, blackened bodies, I knew as a true Christian man exactly what I must do. Kill the Draig. And retrieve any of the women that remained in his possession.

As I said, father, then I was no warrior. I had no army of housecarls ready to ride at my command. The Draig and I had never looked each other in the eye, had never seen each other face to face. I would use that to my advantage. As a prince of Gwynedd, he would be simple to find, harder to approach. There would be no help from Offa, whose ambitions were sated for the moment. I had to craft a cunning plan, plotting in secret, biding my time alone.

Discretely, I met with my trading contacts, careful not to betray my desire for revenge. I sent children into the tuns, baileys and market fairs to gather rumors. As today, orphans were everywhere and largely went unnoticed. Between the berry harvest at Lammas and the Feast of St. Matthew in the fall, a plan slowly emerged in my mind.

At first, I thought about a pilgrimage to St. Winefride's at Holywell. I had heard the Draig would pay tribute there on her feast day, two days after the celebration of All Saints', in thanks for his successful raid.

But there wasn't where I planned my confrontation. I knew the ways of these foreigners, knew their superstitions. On the eve of All Saints' Day there would be an ancient festival, disguised to fool the church. That night he would sacrifice one of my cattle grown fat on summer grasses before he gave away his captives as rewards the next day. Dark spirits were said to roam from house to house that night. I intended to be one of them.

I also knew that Caradog did not abide by the old ways in the same way as his son. He would have nothing to do with the ancient rites, at least in public. Which meant the Draig would have to go elsewhere. My urchin network said he would celebrate on his way to Holywell, in a manor near a church village called Llan Sean Ior. There, I would intercept him.

A month before All Saints' Day, I began my journey. For a week, I'd planted rumors in the Scropp's Fort market that I was chasing a new deal in Kent. I made certain to be seen hurrying away southeast down Watling Street one morning with a donkey loaded for a long journey. Three days later, near the village of Wall, beyond the haunted, stone ruins of Wroxeter said to be a foreign capital more ancient than Scropp's Fort, I abandoned the old road in favor of the forest paths and trading tracks I knew so well leading deep into the archdiocese of Lichfield. Ten days after that, I exchanged the donkey for penitent's clothes at a small, isolated chapel outside of Chester. Then, I drifted toward that ancient fortress settlement on the River Dee with the handful Saxon pilgrims bound for Holywell to make offerings and draw a little healing water. From Chester, I crossed into Gwynedd unnoticed, hidden among the diseased and lame that no one wanted to look upon in their dark, Anglic wool.

Here, my journey became more perilous. Outside of Holywell, I was forced to give up my first disguise. People would notice a pilgrim moving in the wrong direction along the ancient road paralleling the stormy sea. I had little knowledge of the lands or terrain I traveled through. I spoke some of their foreign tongue but it always felt like gravel in my mouth. I would be quickly marked as an outsider. So I darkened my hair and made myself into a mendicant tinker, a skill I had become acquainted with through trading metal for many years. It didn't take me long to establish a reputation of passable mediocrity as I seeded the story of working my way to Deganwy for the itinerant beggars' bounty to be found at Caradog's generous hand on All Saints' Day. Only I knew I would never see his court. I just hoped I would arrive at Llan Sean Ior in time to rescue Winifred from whichever foreign lord or warrior was destined to be her fate.

Winifred was both young and pretty, desirable qualities to these foreigners in a second wife or servant. And a virgin, which gave her greater worth as a reward. My deals and trades in recent years had been focused on accumulating her a dowry, to make her an attractive match, perhaps to a housecarl or ealdormen, even a foreign lordling, anyone who could improve our family's fate. Both hers and her children's through a good marriage, and mine through better contacts for trade. I wasn't picky on which side of the border Winifred was wed. Upon the death of our parents, responsibility for her upkeep had fallen to me. I intended to be repaid. I would not be denied the benefit she would bring. No foreign prince was going to milk my cow for free.

For two weeks, I meandered toward the Draig's manor house as autumn crept toward the harvest moon. Along the way, I found work as a laborer on days when my meager tinker skills would not keep me fed. I paralleled the old road that itself paralleled the coast. The land was as foreign as the language I was forced to speak. The woods dark and untamed. These foreigners raised more sheep than barley and even those on hillsides ringed by trees. In the distance to south each day foreboding mountains loomed, some already frosted with snow like the thinning hair atop an old man's head. The foreigners called them aeries, the nesting places of their noble eagles, hidden strongholds too formidable to approach. I prayed Winifred hadn't been spirited away to one already or she would be beyond my reach forever. On days when the north wind sliced through my peasant's wool and worn leather jerkin, I could almost smell the Irish Sea.

I stalked the Draig along uncleared, hilly tracks overshadowed by ancient trees between remote villages. Squat, round towers were nestled like griffin eggs abandoned amongst the forest glens. I was as miserly with the miles I traveled each day as a dragon spending its horde of gold. Along the way I learned the Draig was in residence in his manor at Llan Sean Ior. I reached my destination just hours before sunset on the eve of All Saints' Day.

The churchyard was marked by a low, stone wall, a graveyard separated inside by another wall and a gate. The church itself was a chapel of dark stone, as small and durable as a minor fortress. A furlong outside the churchyard gate, stalls and trestles packed a market festival. Outlying villagers and itinerant craftsmen sold everything from copper pots to dyed woolens to roots ready for winter storage to sharp steel knives to salt gathered from the sea to glowing spoons and bowls of yew to pouches of medicinal herbs to small charms of ivy and hoops of wild roses to turnips carved into candle lanterns with wicked, evil faces. The air was full of the scent of roast mutton still crackling from the fire, and of speckled bread fresh from the sanctioned brickwork ovens. These foreigners liked raisins and currants in their bread instead of just plain, hearty barley. Or maybe it was a local specialty baked just for this occasion. Other stalls sold freshly churned butter by the brick or by the knifeful, and honey by the pot or spoon.

I had collected enough local coin over the previous fortnight that I could afford to eat well. They had little brown ale but cups of the honey wine that should have been mine in trade were in the hands of almost all the men and several of the women. These foreigners liked their celebrations sweet. As I ate from a crusty bread trencher, I made certain my saex was safely tucked beneath my shirt, inside my jerkin, as it had been since I crossed the borderlands. To be caught as a Saxon and a Mercian this close to the Draig's court would surely mean the rope once they determined who I was.

Such a revelation seemed unlikely. When they weren't eating mutton and drinking mead, the foreigners were singing and dancing to unfamiliar tunes laid upon a harper's strings. Unlike the son of a Saxon king, the Draig didn't hide from his people on feast days. He wandered amongst the crowd, silver cup in hand, laughing, singing and dancing, slipping coppers to the children and peasants, including me, who he didn't treat much like Offa did his villeins.

All afternoon and evening, I nursed my mead cup like my hatred, making certain my face revealed no such emotion. Others weren't so stingy with their coin for drink. As I watched the revelry approach drunkenness, of Winifred I saw no sign. I thought she and the other captives would be held at the Draig's manor house awaiting his court tomorrow where they would be given away after morning mass.

As the sun broke through the leaden sky late in the afternoon, the Draig hung seven criminals from a sturdy gallows near the long shadows of the woods before the cheering crowd. Thankfully, I recognized not a man among them, though I could see several were Saxon. I wanted to kill the Draig then, to drive my saex deep into his heart. But that would not free my sister. So, I had to wait. In that moment I felt what drove Offa to unite our people and conquer these tribes of foreigners hiding in the hills.

At dusk, two huge bonfires were lit and left to rage as shadows danced on the gnarled trees beyond their flames. People paraded between them as an act of purification. They drove the cattle through next. My cattle. The Draig slaughtered not one but two as a sacrifice to his people. Later, their bare bones were cast upon the flames. All the other fires in the village and manor were extinguished to be relighted tomorrow from a common flame. Only the church did not accede.

As the gloaming deepened toward full night, the foreigners began to make small offerings to a fey queen and the spirits of their dead. The name of each person in the village had been inscribed on separate stones placed upon a special fire that was allowed to burn down. The owners of any stones that went missing by the morning would die within the year. Or so the people said.

Once the women and children were safely abed, the Draig's young warriors, dressed in white tunics with masks or blackened faces, stalked the other celebrants, who mocked fighting them with spears. By midnight tales were told of a dread black boar roaming the darkness in search of unwary children to devour, of a headless woman on the prowl through the forest, of tailors stitching bewitching spells into the garments of unsuspecting people with needle and magic thread.

Unlike the other men, I was as still as sober as a boy before his first feast day. Though as a Saxon trader, I knew how to pretend to be much drunker than I was. As the mead loosened men's tongues, I listened at the edges of their conversations. Talk soon turned to the captive women to be awarded the next day. I quickly learned they were not in the Draig's manor hall, but within the sanctity of the stone chapel, guarded by the village priest. Men avoided the churchyard that night as they thought it a place where spirits gathered, along with stiles and crossroads. I knew then how Winifred and I would escape. If I could steal one of the Draig's horses, so much the better.

One by one the foreigners lay down and fell asleep near the warmth of the dying bonfires. None, including the Draig, sought the shelter of either house or hall, despite the night having turned clear and cold. As the full moon climbed the silent sky without the barest breath of wind, the clearing became as still and quiet as a barrow at midwinter. I feigned sleep awhile, until the volume of their snores allayed my fear and uncertainty.

Quiet as a cat in a churchyard, I rose and looked around. No one stirred. The night cut through my peasant wool like the north wind through the cracks of a villein's rough-cut door, barely pausing at my tinker's jerkin. I knew if I started shivering, I would give myself away. Near the ashes of the fire with the naming stones, I spied a white, woolen tunic one of the youths had discarded. A plan formed within my mind. On padded feet, I crept toward it. First, I donned the wool and immediately felt warmer. Perhaps it was the only the proximity of the now dead fire. Cautiously, I scooped my hands into the ashes, wary of any lingering embers but finding none. I laved my hands in soot then rubbed them over my face and hair. That quickly I had transformed myself from a peasant tinker into a spirit of the dead.

Slowly, slowly I searched among the stones for a name. While I can no more read or write than any respectable warrior or trader, I had seen the Draig, like all vain men, made certain his naming stone was larger and more unusual than any of the others. Careful not to clink one against another, I searched the pile until I found the oblong stone, a rampant dragon carved into its surface by the type of craftsmen these foreigners favored to decorate even the items of their daily use. Quietly, I tucked the token inside my shirt. It further warmed my heart, which I took as a sign from God. A good omen.

Again, I surveyed the sleeping men until I found the Draig curled upon his side in a place of honor near the warmth of both bonfires, silver goblet near one hand, the other loosely curled around his spear. I crept upon him between the fires, using their dwindling flames and heaps of glowing embers to shield me from all but a few eyes should any open. Carefully, I removed my saex from hiding before taking those final steps. I knew I should do the deed quickly. Every moment was one in which a warrior or a peasant might arise to drain his bladder or go in search of a warmer bed. Instead, I couldn't help but watch this young man sleep, so peacefully, unaware that the Norns were about to snip short the skein of his fate. As I said, father, at this point in my life, I had never killed a man. Even the necessary slaughtering of livestock I usually left to others.

The Draig breathed heavily but evenly. The sleep of the drunken, the innocent or the just. I knew he was neither of the latter two. A part of me wasn't certain how to go about it, how to kill this sleeping man in cold, cold blood. So I stood a moment, watching him breathe, watching his chest slowly rise and fall. I stood transfixed so long that I began to detect the pulse in his neck, just beside his Adam's apple. Something in that rhythmic beating echoed within my head until all I heard was rushing blood, his or mine I am uncertain. That brought a series of quick visions from the byre, visions of men I’d known each fighting for his life and breath at the end of a rope, as the prisoners' shadows had danced against the ancient trees earlier that evening. How did this man deserve to live after what he had caused to befall men whose only crime was where they lived by happenstance?

Without thinking, I bent over to study my foe. My saex, unbidden, descended until its point hovered bare inches above his pulsing neck, the fires flickering along its blood groove in perfect time as if thirsty for his blood. The same light glinted off the rings of a hauberk shirt at his collar like the scales of a true dragon concealed beneath his tunic. Only a man afraid slept in mail, a man constantly wary and wondering about others seeking vengeance for his sins. I became that dark, avenging angel, that spirit of death the night's celebration had been meant to ward away.

I aligned the point of my saex a hairsbreadth above his throbbing neck vein. Deliberately, I positioned my other hand over the bone-work pommel so that I might use my weight to drive my blow home. Still, I hesitated, momentarily uncertain. Until I saw an eyelid flutter. Then, I did nothing but react, as any man would, my right hand guiding my saex as my left forced my full weight behind it, like a man separating a leg of mutton at the joint.

The point of my saex sprayed blood high and hard in a noisy, damp arc against my chest like a young man relieving himself of the past night's ale just before dawn. The blade's razor edge sliced outward as I pushed my weight upon the point, cutting through flesh and vein, windpipe and sinew, a second vein, and out the other side, biting deep into the dirt. Blood then ceased to spatter but pooled on the ground like a black mirror, one reflecting a face I did not know back up at me in the moonlight. A mask contorted by fear and rage with huge, white eyes. A face that still haunts my dreams these nights a score of years later. Only as I glanced away did I hear the faint gurgling from the wound as the Draig stared up at me, his eyes fully recognizing the spirit that had spun open the tap of his life to spill upon the ground.

Weakly, he fumbled with his leaf-blade spear, desperately trying to bring it to bear, a warrior to the end. I gently removed it from his hands, shaking my head in silence. He no longer struggled. His lips moved as a he mouthed Our Lord's Prayer. A moment later, his eyes went glassy as the sounds from his open throat ceased and he stared to his fate beyond this world somewhere in the sky. Heaven or hell, I neither knew nor cared.

I levered my saex from the dirt, rocking it back and forth to free it from its earthen sheath. I wiped the blade upon his tunic before restoring it to hiding. For some reason, I kept his spear with me. Perhaps I thought it would complete my disguise. Perhaps it was a trophy marking my first kill. Perhaps I thought I would need it to intimidate the priest. Or perhaps, I just needed to lean upon it. I also slipped his silver goblet inside my shirt and cut the purse strings to his coin pouch, which quickly followed, scant wergild for the men he'd murdered at the farmstead tun.

I arose like a ghost, a spirit no longer completely anchored to this world. I felt I was drifting and detached. The world, though dark, seemed bright and sharp at the edges, each tiny sound crisp and clear. As I picked my way through the sleeping bodies toward the churchyard, I began to feel giddy, as though long suppressed laughter were welling up inside me. I fought hard not to let it out.

Like a man in a dream, I slipped into the churchyard, avoiding the front door to the chapel that I knew would be barred. The back door opened after a few soft wraps of my knuckles upon the solid wood. I supposed the priest thought he had a penitent come to confess his evening's sins. I know not what he thought as he peered out cracked the door with a candle lantern in hand and found my blood-spattered visage awaiting him. His face went pale. He mumbled something in either the priest's or his foreign tongue. He made the sign of the cross and tried to close the door. He hesitated just long enough for me to easily block his effort with my spear haft, then kick the door open with a foot. Eyes wide and full of fear, he slowly backed away.

The priest caused me no trouble. I said only three words to him that night, all in the foreign tongue. The first was their word for maiden. He pointed to a room behind the sanctuary. I gestured with my spear, which he understood meant I did not intend to let him out of sight. Though from his expression, I doubt he had the courage to brain me with a candlestick. I must have looked the very image of death to him that night, black face, wild eyes, white tunic heavily clotted with blood.

He opened the door. I motioned him to awaken the half dozen maidens sleeping on straw pallets upon the floor, huddled together against the cold. Of the older women, there was no sign. But I could tell by the size of the building that there was no place else to hide them, except in the priest's quarters. I didn't put it past him. "All?" I questioned, narrowing my eyes for intimidation. I needn't have bothered. He just nodded quickly, hoping his cooperation would spare him the fate of whomever was splashed upon my chest. He needn't have feared unless he fought me. He was a priest. I am no Dane.

When he awakened the women, they were frightened, on the edge of tears and crying out. Until I called Winifred's name and spoke to them in their native Saxon, telling them I had come to set them free. What that meant, neither they nor I knew. In truth, I cared what happened to none of them but Winifred. I told them to raid the priest's quarters for cloaks and anything they needed. I reached inside my shirt and handed the eldest the Draig's coin purse. I told her to lead the others east through the woods for many days until they crossed the river and wished them luck. That was all I had to offer.

I turned back to the priest and uttered my last foreign word to him. "Horse." He said something long and quick in the foreign tongue of which all I caught was “plowshare.” I prodded him out the back to show me where with Winifred in tow, shivering in her kirtle against the frigid night. Outside, I pulled the bloody, white tunic over my head, turned it inside out and put it over hers. It helped stop her shivering. I was too anxious and afraid to notice the cold. We needed to put many miles behind us before anyone awoke and raised the alarm.

The priest guided us to a small, open shelter where they kept the parish plow horse. He wouldn't be fast, but was well suited to my purpose. He would have to carry both of us for several days until we reached Mercia. Once again, I felt God had provided for his righteous.

I left Winifred to bridle him and get him ready. There was no saddle, but she managed to conjure up a horse blanket before I returned. I took the priest back to the chapel and locked him with the sacramental wine. The other women had disappeared as if they, too, had been nothing more than spirits on this night, existing only in my dreams. It would be another month before I learned their fate. On my way back to the horse byre, I stole bread and cheese, and scooped another handful of ashes from the cold kitchen hearth, which I rubbed on Winifred's face and hair as soon as I returned, much to her confusion and disgust.

Our ride was long and hard that night. As I'd predicted, the crossroads were all clear owing to superstition. I set off for the old road to the north instead of the hilly track by which I'd come. Upon reaching it I set the horse to a steady canter, galloping through each village astride the road. At the first stream we crossed, I threw the stone from my shirt far beyond the ford. I kept the spear in case we had to ride someone down. We rode throughout the night, walking when we had to, seeking shelter only as dawn bloodied the eastern sky.

We repeated the pattern for two more days. We outpaced the news to Chester, arriving on St. Winefride's feast day. I traded the silver goblet and last of my coin for some decent food and clothing. Again, I kept the spear, my only prize or token from that night. After resting a day, we wended our way back to Scropp's Fort, uncertain of our welcome.

By the time we reached the outer embankment, the news had overtaken us. All of Gwynedd was in chaos. Caradog was left without an heir. Wild tales accompanied the death of the Draig, each more fantastic than the last. Not believing the foreigners' stories of a headless woman riding through the villages on a demon horse driven by a dark, avenging spirit, Offa had quietly offered a rich reward to whoever had performed the deed. Gold, not silver.

At the gate to Scropp's Fort, we were met by Offa's housecarls and accompanied to his hall. He heard my tale but remained unconvinced that I, a minor smuggler and Saxon trader, could have slain such a mighty warrior. I have always been a storyteller, so I embellished my tale, just a bit, replacing my sturdy saex with the Draig's own spear. I was ashamed at having slit a man's throat like a thief common to the night. Offa noted the dragon etched into my spear blade. I wished I hadn't sold the silver goblet or thrown the Draig's naming stone into the river. My sister confirmed what I said, but still he could not decide whether to credit it or not. He sent his spies to find proof my words were true. For a time, my sister and I were entertained as guests of his winter hall, which was just a warmer, better-fed word for prisoners.

Our status changed when one of his scouts rode in to Scropp's Fort several weeks later leading two bedraggled, young women. While I stood silently to one side, they told their tale of a cattle raid on their farmstead tun the day Scropp's Fort fell, of how they were taken prisoner by a foreign prince, of how the older women and younger girls were sold as servants, of how they were held in a stone chapel to be given to away as prizes. Of how they were rescued on All Saints’ Eve by a man covered in blood with a spear who freed them to the woods and took one of their number with him. They both swore my sister was that maiden. When asked if they knew the man who had rescued them, they each pointed a trembling finger at me.

That was the day my fortunes finally changed. The two women were quickly married off to men far away in East Anglia. Winifred was given to an ealdorman in Kent, complete with a dowry of silver from the gold that Offa paid me. I was made an ealdorman myself and given a manor on lands formerly belonging to the foreigners, complete with a small herd of Anglic cattle of my own. Warriors, good, strong men, flocked to my hall, eager to serve as housecarls of the man who had slain the Dragon with nothing but a spear.

As the years has passed, the story grew embellished with each retelling until I rode a horse for war across the long border in a polished mail hauberk with a shield and saex and spear, and slew a scaly, green dragon in single combat, rescuing a maiden from its lair and claiming its glittering horde of gold. Now, even the foreigners tell the tale of such a dragon being slain, though they prefer to credit the killing to St. George rather than a Saxon.

Only now do I suspect how much Offa knew the day Scropp's Fort fell. A year before his death, after a night of heavy drinking, he confided in me how much he had longed for Gwynedd to be heirless on the day Caradog died. At Rhuddlan Marsh he got his wish, though much too late to exploit it. Now that Offa's son is also dead, both kingdoms lay in ruin. I played no small part in the suffering that will cause.

Looking back now as a warrior, I can see the Draig was only defending his father's realm against foreigners intent on stealing his lands and ravishing his women. I know because I have repaid the foreigners a hundredfold for any evil done to me. The Draig was a warrior prince and a better Christian than I fear I'll be when I see Death's wild eyes staring down upon me, dying with a prayer upon his lips.

I, too, will die soon, father. These wounds have done their work. I feel God's hand upon me now. Only I, and now you, know the truth of what happened that All Saints' Day Eve, and how much braver the Dragon was than I.

---

"Can I be forgiven, father?"

The priest sat quietly at the man's bedside a moment, wondering if he had finished or was just pausing to catch his ragged breath, wondering how such a man could think that God would sanction such a noble deed. He would never understand such men. Surely, he knew God was on their side, whatever reversals Mercia might have suffered since Offa's death.

When the silence endured until he was certain the man was waiting for an answer, he said, "May God grant you peace and pardon, my son. I absolve you from your sin. And by the sanctity of the confessional, your secret dies with me."


© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III