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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © Patricia Bracewell 2013
Map © Matt Brown 2013
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Cover photography © Richard Jenkins
Patricia Bracewell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the authorâs imagination.
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Source ISBN: 9780007481767
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007481750
Version: 2015-09-29
The English Court, 1001â1005
Ãthelred II, Anglo-Saxon king of England
Children of the English king, in birth order:
Athelstan
Ecbert
Edmund
Edrid
Edwig
Edward
Edgar
Edyth
Ãlfgifu (Ãlfa)
Wulfhilde (Wulfa)
Mathilda
Leading Nobles and Ecclesiastics
Ãlfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria
Ufegeat, his son
Wulfheah, his son (Wulf)
Elgiva, his daughter
Ãlfric, ealdorman of Hampshire
Ãlfgar, his son
Hilde, his granddaughter
Ãlfheah, bishop of Winchester
Godwine, ealdorman of Lindsey
Leofwine, ealdorman of Western Mercia
Wulfstan, archbishop of Jorvik and bishop of Worcester
The Norman Court, 1001â1005
Richard II, duke of Normandy
Robert, archbishop of Rouen, brother of the duke
Judith, duchess of Normandy
Gunnora, dowager duchess of Normandy
Mathilde, sister of the duke
Emma, sister of the duke
Swein Forkbeard, king of Denmark
Harald, his son
Cnut, his son
A.D. 978 In this year was King Edward slain at even-tide, at Corfe-gate, on the fifteenth before the kalends of April, and he was buried at Werham without any royal honours. Nor was a worse deed than this done since men came to Britain ⦠Ãthelred was consecrated king. In this same year a bloody sky was often seen, most clearly at midnight, like fire in the form of misty beams. As dawn approached, it glided away.
â The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Eve of St Hildaâs Feast, November 1001
Near Saltford, Oxfordshire
She made a circuit of the clearing among the oaks, three times round and three times back, whispering spells of protection. There had been a portent in the night: a curtain of red light had shimmered and danced across the midnight sky like scarlet silk flung against the stars. Once, in the year before her birth, such a light had marked a royal death. Now it surely marked another, and although her magic could not banish death, she wove the spells to ward disaster from the realm.
When her task was done she fed the fire that burned in the centre of the ancient stone ring, and sitting down beside it, she waited for the one who came in search of prophecy. Before the sun had moved a fingerâs width across the sky, the figure of a woman, cloaked and veiled, stood atop the rise, her hand upon the sentinel stone. Slowly she followed the path down through the trees and into the giantsâ dance until she, too, took her place beside the fire, with silver in her palm.
âI would know my ladyâs fate,â she said.
The silver went from hand to hand, and against her will, the seer glimpsed a heart, broken and barren, that loved with a dark and twisted love. But the silver had been given, and at her nod, a lock of hair was laid upon the flames. She searched for visions in the fire, and they tumbled and roiled until they hurt her eyes and scored her heart.
âYour lady will be bound to a mighty lord,â she said at last, âand her children will be kings.â
But because of the darkness in that heart across the fire, she said nothing of the other, of the Lady who would journey from afar, and of the two life threads so knotted and tangled that they could not be pulled asunder for a lifetime or for ever. She did not speak of the green land that would burn to ash in the days to come, nor of the innocents who would die, all for the price of a throne.