River of Destiny. Barbara Erskine

woman.’

      ‘Edith!’ The sudden call at the door was accompanied by the thudding of a fist on the thick wood. ‘What are you doing in there? Why have you barred the door?’ The latch rattled up and down. ‘Edith?’ It was a woman’s voice.

      ‘Open it.’ Edith whispered. ‘Open it now.’

      Hrotgar looked taken aback. With a scowl he turned on his heel and walked towards it, pulling the bar free and throwing it on the ground, then pulling open the door to let the fresh air and wind sweep in. ‘Come in, goodwife. What is all the noise about?’ he growled. ‘What I discuss with the smith’s woman is nothing to do with anyone else.’ He swept past her out into the darkness.

      Edith’s neighbour, Gudrun, the wheelwright’s wife, stood staring after him, then she ducked in through the doorway and pushed the door shut behind her. ‘What was he doing here, with the door barred?’ she said suspiciously. ‘I don’t trust that man.’

      ‘No more do I.’ Suddenly Edith was shivering. She moved closer to the fire. ‘He came with a message from my husband.’

      Gudrun bustled about lighting the lanterns and the candle which stood on the table. ‘Why aren’t you up at the hall?’

      ‘I didn’t feel well.’

      ‘And he came to find out why?’

      Edith shook her head. ‘No.’ But of course he had noticed her absence. Why else had he come here?

      ‘So, what is wrong with you? You’re not breeding at last?’

      Edith gave a wry smile. ‘I’m not sure. I wondered if it was possible. I feel sick. But perhaps it is just that my head hurts. I have been working on Eric’s jerkin after the light has gone for too many evenings. I just wanted to sit quietly and rest my eyes. There will be noise and celebration enough when he has finished the sword and we take it up to the hall for the Lord Edbert.’

      Gudrun was looking at her closely. She gave a knowing smile. ‘I think there will be reason for noise and celebration in this house if I read your signs right, neighbour mine.’ She smiled. ‘But we’ll say nothing yet. Not till you are sure. Eric will be so pleased. As for the celebrations up at the hall, I doubt if that day will happen.’ She shook her head.

      ‘Why? It will be the best sword he ever made!’ Edith bridled with indignation.

      ‘No, no, I’m not doubting his skill, it is the Lord Egbert I’m thinking of.’ The older woman sighed sadly. ‘He hasn’t been seen for weeks now and rumours fly round the hall that he is dying, if he isn’t dead already. His sons and his brother wrangle and fight like dogs over a bone, and the warriors are taking sides ready to jump this way or that. They say the ealdorman will ride over from Rendlesham and the king’s reeve might come himself. Lady Hilda is white as a sheet and looks exhausted, and that man,’ she ducked her head towards the door, ‘is in the thick of all the gossip.’

      ‘And I have been missing it all.’ Edith grimaced.

      ‘Do you know how long it will be before the sword is finished?’ Gudrun pulled up a stool and sat down close to the fire, holding her hands out to the embers.

      Edith gave a wry smile. ‘He wouldn’t tell me, even if I had seen him,’ she said.

      Gudrun looked up at her, then back towards the fire. A log slipped and a flame lit up the lazy spiral of smoke rising towards the blackened underside of the thatch, before making its way out into the night. ‘I know he’s been home. I saw him.’

      ‘Then you should mind your spying eyes, madam,’ Edith scolded good-humouredly. ‘He didn’t come, you understand, and anyone who says different is a liar. He told me nothing anyway.’

      ‘And the message Hrotgar brought?’

      ‘Is not your business.’ Edith shook her head with mock exasperation. ‘Fetch that jug of ale from the sideboard, and we’ll have a sup to wet our whistles. I’m feeling better, thanks to you.’

      It was a great deal later that Edith, wrapped in a dark cloak, let herself out into the night. Gudrun had long gone and the village was silent. She crept towards the forge, stopping dead for a moment as a dog barked from somewhere behind the church, then she moved on. Under the hood of her cloak her hair was loose.

      The forge was in darkness, the smokeholes cold. She paused, wondering what to do, then she crept closer. Eric often slept there; he had been doing so for the last month or more. Even the thought of him so close, lying, perhaps naked, wrapped in one of the furs she had seen stacked in the corner of the workshop, made her body tense with longing. She waited, her ear to the oak door slats, listening. There was no sound from inside. Cautiously she put her hand to the latch and silently began to slide it up. The hinges creaked and she stopped, her heart thudding, gazing round in the darkness. It wasn’t her husband she feared, it was the other man, the lord’s reeve, with his lustful eyes and his leering face and his power to intercede between Eric and the warriors for whom he worked.

      The door wasn’t barred. After another protesting squeak it eased open and she peered in. ‘Eric?’ she whispered. She could smell the charcoal, the leather, the very scent of the iron, the oil with which he worked and then, suddenly she could smell him, his skin, the rough smokiness of his hair. ‘Where are you?’

      ‘I thought I forbade you to come here, Edith.’ She still couldn’t see him, but his voice was close. She imagined him waiting, poised to see who was trying to gain entry to the forge in the dark of the night, and for a moment she pictured the knife he probably held in his hand. The thought frightened her even as it gave her a strange frisson of excitement.

      ‘Hrotgar came to the house; he said you needed a hair from my head for your sword magic,’ she whispered. She was still poised on the threshold, knowing better than to try to set foot over it without invitation. ‘I wouldn’t give it to him. He frightens me. But if it’s what you need you can have every hair on my head.’ She pushed back the hood and shook her head gently, feeling the weight of her long hair on her shoulders, wondering if he could see her against the starlight.

      She heard a smothered groan. ‘Edith! Sweet wife, but I miss you!’

      ‘Then why do you stay away from me?’

      ‘I have to. You know I have to. Lord Egbert directed every stage in the making of this sword according to the ancient rule. I knew nothing about when it was first spoken of, but he was right. It was a true memory of past traditions. I sensed that here.’ He thumped his chest with his fist. ‘Something which should never be forgotten. It is too important. And part of that tradition is that I forbid you my bed until it is finished.’

      She narrowed her eyes, trying to see him, overwhelmed with a sudden suspicion. ‘Was it Lord Egbert himself who told you all this, or his reeve?’

      The silence which greeted her question might have been answer enough, but suddenly he was at her side. ‘It was Hrotgar. You are right. I never discussed this with the thegn himself. He has been too ill for too long. All I was told has come from his reeve. But it was right, Edith –’

      ‘And did you ask for a hair from my head?’

      ‘No.’

      There was a long silence.

      ‘It may be that the magic is real, Eric. I wouldn’t want to profane your work, but outside under the stars, can there be weakness for the sword in that?’

      He was so close to her now she could see his bulk. But still he hadn’t touched her.

      ‘The blade is finished,’ he said huskily. ‘It needs no hair from anyone’s head. It is tempered and polished and gleams like silver. It is the best I have ever made, ready for the king’s service against the enemy host. All it needs is the crosspiece and hilt.’ He glanced behind him at the work table where the beginnings of the hilt lay beneath a linen cloth.

      ‘Then can we celebrate together?’ At last she reached out towards him, touching him lightly on