"You can't mean that!" I cried. The idea that my wife would take her own life was alien to everything I understood of Lisbet.

The messenger stood in front of me, mute, impassive, his heavy cloak and tunic wet through, his boots mud-spattered. He was a youth still, but already he wore the dispassionate expression that messengers develop after years of delivering startling or painful news to unprepared recipients.

I reached into my scrip for a coin. "Here's a half penny for your trouble. You have no idea why she would have done such a thing?"

"No. The sheriff told me to tell ye this, and that she may not be alive."

"Where is she? Is she still in our cot?" I stood up from the stool where I had been sitting, and glared at the lad, as though to search out the answers to my questions from his face, even from the very clothes he wore.

"Aye, she is sir." He backed away from me towards the door. His movement loosed a fresh patter of water from his cloak.

"Brother Jerome will show you to the guest house, where you can dry yourself, and spend the night," Abbot John said. The lad bowed his way out of my cell.

I stood facing the door, glaring at the spot where the messenger had been. Abbot John grasped my shoulder with a steady hand. "Do you wish to sup with us before you go?"

"No."

"Then, I will tell the brothers you are leaving us." He made the sign of the cross over my head.

* * * * *

A knout of anger has followed me about all my life, whipping my passions to frenzy pitch at every turn. It is as large and heavy as any boulder I've had to wield as a stone mason. My life, and the lives of everyone I cared about were made foul by men who saw us only as obstacles in the way of satisfying their greed. And I cannot rest; no, I cannot rest, until the ache and burn of losing so many good people I cared about has abated.

I came to Fountains Abbey eight years ago, to bury myself behind its walls, away from the world and the myriad unanswerable claims it makes on a man's soul. So torn in spirit was I, I had to turn my back on family, friends and everyone I knew. I did not live here as a monk, merely a servant of monks. For eight years, I got up with them, and prayed with them seven times a day; and every day I heard their chants fill the chapel with the old rhythms and cadences my father used to utter. Between whiles, I baked bread in their refectory, and tended their orchards.

I told the Abbot when I first came there, "I will never lift another stone. Never! I've had to bury too many good men crushed by stones." And he understood, assigning me to the softer labors I have here described.

Only seldom has he come to me to say, "Kennet, what of your wife and grandson?" Each time I have stared him down, and he has answered, "God will heal your wounds, my son," and left me to my thoughts.

I knew that life was harsh for Lisbet after I left her, but I stayed in the cocoon I made for myself at the abbey, and do not suppose I understood how much she was suffering. Nor had I realized how much I needed to know she was well and happy, in order to be able to continue my life as an oblate.

Even though the greater part of this day was spent, I set out for home leaving the monastery and its beguiling comforts behind without a backward thought. A fine drizzle welcomed me, as Brother Luke closed the outer gate behind. I stepped forth with a sense of resolution I had not experienced for years. My road took me past fields, brown and solemn, and through woods where no man dwelt. The rain continued, unabated.

I had left Lisbet to fend for herself so long ago, but now I was all in a swivet over her being alone. The irony of this did not even tickle at my consciousness until nightfall and it was obvious I would be bedding on the ground. "Well and good," I thought to myself. I had slept in the wilds so many times before that damp earth was more familiar to me than bed straw. With my need to do penance for having left Lisbet, spending the night out in the rain seemed only just. Though it was not heavy, it was constant, and it soaked through my cloak and dripped onto my face. Sleep came uneasily to me that night, crouched as I was against an outcrop of rock for the protection it could offer.

* * * * *

Bitter memories assailed me with the rain. For more than thirty years, until 1080, when my Lisbet was born, the Scots King Malcolm and the Norman King William took it in turn to send their troops down to trample our crops to ruins, and burn our homes; as they would each claim our land as theirs. My father ran for the hills with the rest of the townspeople several times over, in order to stay alive and help others live. The last time this happened was when King William sent his troops up through our fields of hay and corn, to Scotland, to force Malcolm to swear fealty to Normandy. After that, Malcolm stayed in Scotland and we lived with the Norman yoke about our necks.

Our good monks, my da among them, lived here in the old way for many years. Each of them had his own tiny cot and tended his spot of garden. And though some of them had wives and families of their own, they all set examples of righteous lives, and everyone respected them. Many people in our village believed it was good some of our monks had families, as it made the men more easily understand our human foibles.

My mother died when I was born and my da continued to care for me. He worshiped the Christ as he saw fit, and he considered himself well blessed with the small comforts this world does at times bestow on a joiner.

Walcher was appointed Bishop over Durham by King William in 1071. I was a lad of two summers at the time, but I've heard and seen too much of the evil Walcher brought down on our heads to be able to forget. He made it his first business to humiliate and harass our monks, who had been living among us as long as anyone could remember. First he ordered them beaten till they nearly died, for being so unGodly as to have families of their own. They said a monk should have no family save the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Trinity. After their beatings, those monks who refused to disown their families were thrown into the castle dungeon, my da with them. There the Norman conquerors chained them to the wall, as though they were wild beasts.

My da told me later how the men in that dungeon would howl for food and light. Many of them starved to death in the darkness. 'T was whilst our good monks were in prison, Bishop Walcher replaced them with his Norman minions. We despised him for that; but our hate could not rid us of that cursed Bishop and his tribe.

When our people chafed under, and mourned the changes Walcher made in our lives, we were roundly punished. He taxed our crops down to nothing. Families starved. But if a man dared steal or hide a bit of food to feed his family, he, or the Chancelor Gilbert, decreed one of that man's hands should be cut off. Any man, woman, or child who did not speak the Norman tongue as Walcher's men decreed we should, would get his tongue pierced with an iron spike, so that he could never speak again. The Normans exacted more cruelties than these, but listing them here would make me ill.

Edwin and his wife, Enna, who had both been friends of my da's since they were all children, took me in and cared for me as though I were their own, whilst my da was held captive. Enna always said, "'T is only natural we should. Did I not suckle you with my Aelfric, till you were both ready to be weaned? You're as much mine as any child could be." Thus, their son Aelfric was my milk brother, and we were close in all we did.

Edwin said, "I have too much respect for yer da to let ye wander homeless." He saved my life, Edwin did.

More than seventeen of our monks had families with children, before Bishop Walcher's arrival. But by the time I had eight summers, I was the only one of those innocent waifs still alive. I had seen Gilbert's men kill all of them, on one pretext or another.

Gilbert came to our cot one afternoon, when Edwin and Enna were off working the Bishop's fields. An uglier piece of goods, I never saw. As a child, I could not help but think there was something worm-like about the man; something that would have been more at home deep in the earth, crawling about on its belly, than walking on two legs as men do. He was short and thin, and with his oily leather jerkin and stockings, rather slimy looking.

Aelfric and I had stayed home to tend the cook fire, and we were not at all pleased to let him in. But in he came, sat himself down on one of the only two stools we owned, and commenced picking lice from his beard. He stared at Aelfric and me for a moment, as we fidgeted with a mess of turnips for our stew, and said, "Tell Edwin you're both to be apprenticed to Master Lewen, the stone mason. "Then he got himself up and left without another word to either of us.

We were sturdy lads, old enough to be apprenticed to a good master. But we had always believed Edwin would be teaching us his trade of wood joinery. Aelfric looked at me, and I at him, and neither of us knew what to make of this. We were too frightened at this turn of events to say aught of it to anyone.

That evening, Edwin dragged in on weary feet, and Enna staggered behind. They were too exhausted to eat the soup of gruel and vegetables we had for them. Enna would have fallen asleep on the floor by the fire, if Edwin hadn't helped her to bed. Tired as he was, he turned to us and said, "Tomorrow, ye both set to work in my shop."

"Huzza!" Aelfric and I shouted. We danced a jig round the great room of our cot, scattering dust and rushes everywhere, in our joy over not being sent off to Master Lewen's.

"Quiet now, the both of ye!" Edwin shouted at us, as he fell into the bed beside Enna.

But Aelfric and I spent the night whispering and laughing in the rushes by the fire. We were that glad to be staying home with Edwin, whom we knew cared for us. We would have forgotten all about Chancellor Gilbert's visit, if he had not come over the next morning before Edwin could get to his work.

"I want you all to know," Gilbert rasped at us in his high pitched voice, "Kennet and Aelfric are to be apprenticed to Master Lewen, to learn the stone-cutter's trade." I wanted him to leave, for he had brought a mass of fleas with him.

"What?" Edwin stared at the chancellor as though he wished the earth would open and swallow the man. "The boys, they work with me now, to cut the wood."

"'T is no secret to any of us, your Kennet is Eardulph's son. Were it not for the kindness of the Church, you would all be in the dungeon. That spawn Kennet should have been killed long ago!" Gilbert's eyes blazed and his hands shook. I wished I had been somewhere, anywhere else but there, hearing him spew such venom. Was Chancellor Gilbert really about to kill me and send my family to the dungeon? My gaze fell on one of the stones circling the fire near where I was sitting. If he had dared touch any of us, I would surely have lobbed that stone at his head. So far though, all he had done was talk.

Edwin groped for his cudgel, propped in the corner where he stood. "No!" Enna whispered when she saw this. "Don't, Edwin! 'T would only make more trouble!" At least, Edwin was thinking much the way I was. If he had taken up his cudgel, I knew my stone would hit its mark, and Gilbert would surely die.

Edwin spat on the rushes at Gilbert's feet. "Get out! Get out now!"

Gilbert turned to leave, prancing to avoid stepping on a chicken that scuttled across the floor in front of him. But he stopped at the door to say, "I am not leaving till the two lads come with me to Lewen's." Three stout monks, armed with pikes, stood outside our door waiting on Gilbert's orders. I had not seen them till the door was opened. They must have been waiting nearby for his signal all the while.

"And why must these boys be learning the stone trade?" Edwin shouted at him. Aelfric and I dared not move. Would this morning mark the end of our lives? Three strong men could easily overpower us. We had seen what the Norman Monks did to some of our neighbors, when they offered any sort of resistance to the Chancellor's orders. I watched and listened to all they said and did, whilst fear clenched the pit of my belly into hard knots.

"The Bishop wants a fine big church, the like of which has not been seen in these parts."

"Never was a thing wrong with the churches here," Edwin grumbled. Looking up, he saw the largest monk had raised his pike to Enna's chest, where she stood by the fire. Edwin blanched, clenched and unclenched his fist, and said at last, "Aye, go on, lads. The Normans'll get our last drop of blood, one way or another!"

"Edwin, we should fight this!" I wanted to say. But my tongue would not move, and when I tried to stand, my legs would not obey me. It was Aelfric's coming over to stand beside me which gave me courage to get up.

Stolid Edwin sat down on the stool and folded his arms on the rough wooden table in front of him. Nothing more would he say and he dared not move from where he sat. I stared dumbly at his shoulders as they heaved and shook.

Enna quickly wrapped a bite of bread and cheese for our dinner in a clean linen rag. As soon as she handed it to Aelfric, we two scampered for our lives after Gilbert. His henchmen followed behind, poking us with the iron points of their pikes if we did not step smartly. Aelfric's teeth chattered noisily, every time any of the monks prodded him this way. I think the sight of his so obvious fear had me feeling superior, for I walked steadily beside him, whistling a roundelay.

Master Lewen met us at the door with his arms folded across his burly chest and glared balefully at sight of Gilbert. Lewen's heavy, worn tunic fell only to his knees, and his legs were bound in trews like any peasant's, but he stood tall grandly stepping aside to let the Chancellor in. Aelfric and I followed close behind. "What is it, my Lord Gilbert?"

Gilbert hopped up and down in front of Master Lewen, like a bantam cock. "The Church, in her benevolence, has seen fit to grant ye two new apprentices. Teach them well. Spare not the rod when they disobey."

"I have an excellent apprentice. What need have I for two more?"

"Bishop Walcher has decreed he will build a magnificent cathedral, all to do homage to your Saint Cuthbert. There will be work enough for any man who can lift a stone, and even more for those who understand how to cut them!" Gilbert nosed up to Master Lewen, and Master Lewen stared down on him. Neither of them budged, till Gilbert said, "Ye know well, the fate of any man who defies the benevolent and righteous Bishop Walcher." At these words, the three monks entered Master Lewen's cot and aimed their pikes at his chest. Lewen stood solid, unmoving, whilst Aelfric and I trembled, waiting to see him be killed.

'T was Aelfric spoke first, saying, "W...we'll do all ye say, Master Lewen."

"So ye shall," Master Lewen answered. "Put yer blessed pikes down. I've work to do this day."

Gilbert practically danced out of the cot, waving his men to follow after him. My respect for Lewen climbed high that day, seeing him stand up to Gilbert and his monks as he had.

Two days later, when Aelfric and I went back to our old cot to visit and hear the news, Enna was all in a temper. "That Gilbert! I'd like to hang him from the tallest tree and set fire to it!"

"Enna... Enna... Don't take on so." Edwin patted her shoulder, where she knelt by the fire.

"Five gold pieces he demanded of us. I've never seen so much coin together in all my life! We'll be in debt till the end of our days." She stirred the meager contents of the pot viciously, scraping them off the bottom and nearly knocking their dinner into the fire.

"What do ye mean, Mum?" Aelfric asked.

"The fee, to pay Master Lewen, to teach ye the stone craft." Enna pulled at a wisp of hair that had come unbound from her hennin.

"The fee?" I asked.

"Aye. Gilbert charged us with it, as 't was the Church found ye the place with Master Lewen." "Enna sat back on her heels, and wiped the sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her gown.

"Peace, Enna. We'll pay it. Don't worry."

"That debt will be the killing of ye, Edwin!"

"Now, now. We'll manage. We always have. And by the look of it, Aelfric and Kennet will both be able to set themselves up well." Edwin smiled hopefully at us as he continued to pat Enna's shoulder.

"We can only pray something good comes of this!"

"It will, Mum. We work really hard, and Master Lewen's right proud of us, so he says," Aelfric said.

I chimed in with, "We'll make all of ye proud, Enna."

Somehow, by dint of hard labor, Edwin did manage to pay the debt. But he was paying on it till the day he left us.

Master Lewen never saw a farthing of that gold, for it all went into the building of the cathedral. Nor did he ask for aught from Edwin. Far from it; he went to Edwin a number of times saying, "They are two good lads ye sent me, even though I know it wasn't in your plans to do so. I'll help ye pay what Gilbert says ye owe the Church."

"No, never. Why should I burden ye with my troubles?"

"We're all in this together, man. Ye can't deny that."

"You're a good friend, Lewen, and I want to keep it so. Now, go on with ye. I'll manage this alone."

Unbeknownst to Edwin, Lewen gave the Church a penny here and a penny there, all in Edwin's name, so the debt would be paid sooner, rather than later.

* * * * *

Lyulph was head man in our village those years, and everyone honored him including, we all thought, Bishop Walcher. The Bishop used to consult with him on every decision he had to make. This went on for so long, some of the townspeople grumbled that Lyulph was become more Norman than good Angle.

Except the sly Gilbert, chancellor to the Bishop. Gilbert was jealous, believing the Bishop trusted Lyulph's judgement more than he did his chancelor's. Time, and again, Lyulph went to the Bishop to protest the cruel treatment our people were receiving from his Norman men. Treatment His Lord High Chancellor, Gilbert, decreed we deserved. Walcher at last said he would deal with the man, and make him stop the many cruelties. But Gilbert could not endure this to happen, so in the middle of the night, he stole into Lyulph's home, and killed the man and all his family whilst they slept in their beds.

This was the very last indignity any of us in Durham Town could bear. Three years, Aelfric and I had been learning with Master Lewen, when Gilbert did his deed. We were busy in his shed early the morning after, marking the days stones for shaping, when Edwin came to my master's shop, bringing the news of Lyulph's death.

Lewen calmly dusted himself off, put away his hammer and chisels, and ordered us to do the same.

"It's time and past we pushed those Normans out of here," Lewen said. "Peaceful ways have not worked. Lyulph's death is the end of it. There will be no cutting of stones this day. Aelfric, get ye the pitchforks from behind the shop, and Kennet, bring me the torch."

But Edwin's voice cut through, "Kennet, Aelfric, you'll not march with the men today. Enna has been in a stew ever since she heard what Gilbert did. She wants to know you're safe."

"They shouldn't have to go home because a pregnant woman is fearful," our master said. He was a great, brawny man and he stood head and shoulders over Edwin.

"Lewen, ye know what I think on the matter. I want those boys at home this day!" Edwin said.

"But Da." Aelfric bobbed up and down in front of him.

"Home now, the both of ye," Edwin said.

Aelfric's tall, slender form and my shorter, broader one followed dejectedly behind Edwin as he made his way back to the cot with us.

Enna met us at the door, nearly doubled over in pain. Her hennin had come unbound from her head, and she leaned heavily on the door post. "Edwin, get ye the midwife! My time is come."

Edwin dashed away, leaving Aelfric and me to help her back to bed, where she lay panting and groaning. Not knowing aught else to soothe her, I ran off to get a rag soaked in cold water, which I slopped over her face.

"Get that away, ye good for nothing!" In her agitation, she kicked the brychan off the bed. Aelfric pulled it up to cover her again, which only upset her more. "Oh! just be off with the both of ye!" she shrieked in a voice I seldom heard her use.

Aelfric was all for leaving right then, as he intended to join the men in their revolt against Bishop Walcher. But I stayed him, saying, "Go do what ye will, but I'll not leave till your da brings the midwife!"

"Why do ye have to be right on this, of all days?" Aelfric said, peering out the door. We could hear people yelling drunkenly to each other, calling their mates to join them, and we could see hordes of them headed to the Gateshead Church following Bishop Walcher. Gilbert rode at the head of the mob, standing in a tumbrel, his hands lashed behind his back. I saw him fall over as the tumbrel turned round a bend in the road. Everyone who saw it laughed at his struggles to right himself. He managed to worry himself up to his knees, but with his hands bound behind, he could rise no further. People jeered at him, throwing stones, clods of dirt and offal at him.

Gilbert tried to spit on the face of an old hag who shouted up at him, "Lyulph and his kin weren't the only lives ye took! Ye kilt my son, ye did!" The mob shouted with her.

Just down the road from our own cot, we saw a band of drunken revelers, armed with pitchforks and torches, gathered round the tavern, yelling and shouting. This tavern was owned by a Norman family whom people suspected of selling watered down mead and ale in exchange for good coin.

From our doorway, I saw a man throw a lit torch onto the inn's roof. Two other torches followed his. I have never seen torches lit so quickly, or thatch burn so well. Smoke blew into our doorway. From our cot we heard shrieks and shouts from men, women, and children as they joined in one throng or another, all of them out to do as much mischief against the Normans as they could.

"What's happening?" Enna called from her bed. "Who have they killed?"

"No one, yet, Mum," Aelfric said, going over to see how she fared.

"They will... They will... And we can only watch and wait for God's curse to fall on all our heads! There will be no escaping it! None!" She thrashed about on the bed, nearly throwing herself on the floor in her pain and agitation.

"Enna, don't fuss," I said. "The midwife comes. See?" I pointed to the threshold, where Edwin and Elfhilde at last appeared.

"The mob was thick and frenzied down at the other end of the road," he said, depositing her inside the house.

"Now, you boys be off. This is no place for pestering menfolk," Elfhilde said, on her way to the bed where Enna lay.

That was all Aelfric and I needed to hear. Off we ran to the Gateshead Church where most of the men were gathered. We were just in time to see Bishop Walcher usher Gilbert into the church. Dozens of us pressed forward to witness the outcome and have our say.

But Walcher said, "Wait. This is God's house. Let Him decide," and firmly barred the door, keeping all of us outside where our anger simmered in the sun. In the distance we could hear the bells for sext ring. But for long moments all was silent within the church. Then, the Bishop's voice began to rise and fall in prayer, and groans could be heard coming from Gilbert. We hoped the Bishop was torturing the man. All of us would have been delighted to see Gilbert's blood spill out from under the door.

After a time, the rumble of prayer coming from Walcher began to take on meaning. He was heard to say, "In Nomine Patris, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctum, thou, Gilbert of Troyes, art forgiven of thy sins. Go thou, and sin no more!"

Gilbert had done too much damage in our town for any of us to be able to accept this. Too many good lives had been ruined, or ended over trifles due to Gilbert's influence. There was no forgiving him, as far as any of us were concerned. Lewen shouted, "Enough is enough! The Bishop should die!" More voices clamored for his death.

Aelfric heard our master and began to chant, "Good rede, short rede, slay ye the Bishop. Slay ye the Bishop!" We all shouted with him.

Several men together rammed the door in. Someone else set fire to the church with his torch. Ten more jumped to add their torches to the conflagration.

Walcher saw the church falling down in flames about his head and, seeing there was no other way to appease us, he murdered Gilbert, slashing his chancellor's neck with Gilbert's own sword of office: The same sword, it was said, which had been used to kill Lyulph and his family.

Walcher then came out on the steps of the church with the smoke and flames rising about him, and cried, "Gilbert will trouble ye no more," or so some few of us thought he said. There are not many left who might remember. We fell on the Bishop and murdered him where he stood. Our rioting continued. We killed over a hundred of the Bishop's men that day.

After the uprisings, I found blood stains turned brown on my tunic, and knew not how they had got there.

II Kennet

Sleep evaded me all night as I wallowed in the muck of rain and earth. The rain had me up and on my way well before the sky lightened to a dirty haze. I shivered with cold. The road ahead lay deep in mire, but I slogged on towards Durham, hoping the activity would ease the ache in my bones.

The only people I met this day were a haggle of gaunt and raggedy women with their near naked children, trekking through the mud on their way to God knew where. I stood a moment, staring in disgust at their abject poverty.

One among their number, taller and stronger than the others, stopped in front of a young girl to swing at her with a cudgel. "How could ye dare let the brat go? Ye insolent, good for nothing hussy!" She brought the cudgel down hard on the girl's shoulder. I thought I heard bone crack. I know I saw blood fly. But the girl stood her ground.

"Susannah! I didn't do it! I really didn't!" she said. Blood from her shoulder spread over her gown, and dripped onto the ground with the rain.

"I'll deal with ye later!" the woman called Susannah growled at her, and turned about to lead her train of followers down the road.

By then, the drizzle had become a pelting shower, complete with flashes of lightning and thunder crashes. The rag-tag crew turned their way into the woods I had just left, and I gave them no more thought as I sloshed on.

But the evening was, if anything, colder and wetter than the day had been. Thoroughly soaked, weary and bedraggled, I stopped at a lonely inn for a bite of supper and a dry place to sleep. The good wife minded me of the old midwife of Durham, Elfhilde, as they were both short and round. But this woman was slovenly, where Elfhilde had been work-worn.

When I had paid her for a flagon of mead and a loaf of bread, she said, "Where would ye be going on this dreary night?"

I slowly swallowed a mouthful of bread, took another leisurely bite, and swallowed that one too.

Again, she said, "Where are ye going this night?"

At last, I said, "Home to Durham Town."

I didn't like the look of her, and didn't want to talk, but she persisted. "Did ye know the Bishop in Durham is huntin witches? They say he had two of them in his dungeon, but then they flew away one night, and no one knows whither they went!" She cackled as she said this, and I could see half her teeth missing. Her breath, as did everything about her, stank. I turned away in disgust.

"Too bad for the Bishop," I said, wishing him dead. I picked a flea from my tunic, and crushed it between my fingers, smearing the drop of blood he'd sucked onto my sleeve.

"Aye well. Ye'd best watch you're step, or ye may find you're the next witch moldering in his dungeon!" Drool and spittle flew from her mouth as she spoke.

"He's that desperate now, is he?" I said, and said no more, letting her chatter wind itself down, with no help from me.

Once she had disappeared behind some drapery or other, I bedded in the straw on the floor near the fire in the center of her great room. At least the straw was abundant, and my cloak had a chance to dry before I started my third day's trek.

The rain was still coming down when I set out again. It had settled to a drizzly gray that did not appear as though it would ever stop. I tramped up the last hill, and off in the distance I could see the cathedral high on its escarpment, with a few thatch roofs of the town poking through the rain haze. It put me in mind of a great mythical bird of prey surrounded by its chicks. No, those brown, thatched roofs; they were not the bird's chicks, they were the vermin trapped by the bird, waiting to be picked dry. The people in that cluster of cots would far rather this avian wonder had never come for them.

Staring at that castle put me again in mind of the siege. We held the castle a mere four days, after killing Bishop Walcher. We were determined to make Durham Town free of every last Norman for all time. Aelfric and I ran ourselves ragged those few days, digging up ammunition and food for our men, and staying up every night of that siege, on guard with them, lest anyone try to escape.

On the fourth day, we broke through the last line of defense, and overran the castle, plundering it much as the Normans had plundered our town before. I had never seen such riches as were stored therein. There was no time to admire the luster of the golden candle sticks, or the inlay work of the chests, or the fine jewels on the covers of the psaltries, or the fantastic designs within, illuminating every page, for in their drunken revelry, the men destroyed most of those things. Only one or two of those treasures were successfully hidden away, to be taken home and savored.

On we trooped down to the dungeons. By the time I got there, the guards had either fled in terror or been killed. I was not thinking of such things then, only of freeing the prisoners. I tramped through the dungeons holding my torch aloft, whilst hoards of men and women swarmed around me, banging prison cell doors open through which no fresh air had blown for years. We had to coax the skeletal remains, long chained in their lairs, to falter up on knobby, misshapen legs, and follow us down stone passages out to the courtyard, where at last the light of day could shine on their deprivations.

My da was one of them. It was amazing to all of us he was still alive. He came out a mere wraith of the man he had been; pale, broken and starved. But I loved my da with a fierceness which surprised everyone. Once he was home, I ran hither and yon, ready to jump for his every need. I tortured myself, knowing I could not ease his pain.

A pedlar, wandering through ended our victory with news that Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and half brother to King William, was sending his armies to punish us for daring to upset the Norman authority. We hid my da far up in the hills, over a league distant from town, where the Norman soldiers would not care to look for him. As many of the women and children as could leave quickly came with us.

Every day Aelfric and I clambered down as close to the fighting as we dared. We could see cottages in flames and hear women and children, who had not been able to leave in time, scream. They screamed as soldiers ransacked homes, murdering and plundering everyone in sight. Screamed as soldiers raped them. Screamed harder as they saw their children killed by those Norman fiends. We saw smoke rise from our town and knew our cot and the homes of all our friends were gone. It took years to rebuild what was destroyed by Bishop Odo's men. He had destroyed our families, and those could never be brought back or replaced.

Enna knew, perhaps better than anyone else, the loss and destitution we would face, for our short-lived insurrection. She could not forgive the Normans for hurling all the destruction down on her family, nor could she forgive us for arousing the Norman anger. But she could not vent her anger on the former, nor could she blame the latter. Lisbet was the most innocent one there, and therefore the easiest to blame for all our miseries. So Enna insisted Lisbet was cursed for being born on the day we killed Bishop Walcher.

She took Lisbet, when she was still quite a little girl, to see the pile of rubble that was left of the Gateshead Church. "Look well, daughter. This is why you are cursed." Lisbet looked at the fire-blacked stones, and burst into tears.

Sure, I'd taken part in the fighting, and lost friends, too. But I still could not understand why Lisbet should be cursed. I asked my da once, and he said, "She is no more cursed than the rest of us." But Enna insisted her daughter was, and she was not a woman to contradict.

"King William was mad when he put that wretched Bishop Walcher in power," so my da used to say. "He and his henchmen tore all our lives to shreds!"

We were rich in anger, with no place to spend it. I heard my da's stories of rage over the Norman injustices every day, from the day we freed him from the dungeon till the day I left with the crusaders. Many evenings, his tongue would loosen over a flagon of mead, and stories of the old days would pour out of his mouth. I heard them so many times, they became part of my blood and bones. Over and over, he told of the invasions of our land, first by the Scots King Malcolm and then by the Norman King William, now known as the conqueror, for we are indeed conquered.

I had a full twenty-two summers, in 1093, the year the cornerstone for the cathedral was laid. The old Scots King, Malcolm, came to see it set in place. Fully half the town celebrated, and hoped and prayed Malcolm would free us of the Norman yoke, whilst the rest cringed in fear lest he again send his troops down to pillage our town for Scotland.

My father turned white with anger when he saw Malcolm bow low to Bishop William of Carileph. Carileph had been Bishop over us for the last two years then, and he was far worse than Walcher had ever been. But most of us dared not rise up against him, after Bishop Odo's massacre.

"Malcolm bowing to a Norman!" And the way my father said Norman it was as though he swore. From my da's mouth, the appellate 'Norman' was the lowest insult.

Aelfric and I had long left Master Lewen. He had settled in with his family, and I had built a cot near the edge of town, where I hoped my da and I could live the last years of his life in peace. Aelfric and I had earned the title of Master Stone Mason, and had already put years of our lives into building this Cathedral. Oh yes. The Normans said it was to honor our own Saint Cuthbert, but it was obvious to all of us that cathedral was being built to honor the Normans.

Prior Turgot came to our cot, one evening, in the spring of my twenty-sixth year. My da was asleep when he came, and I did not wish to wake him. I had to let the Prior in, or there would be trouble. He gingerly sat himself down on one of our two stools, and stretched his legs close to the fire. Still, it did not take long for him to come to the point of his visit.

"Think on it, my son. Was it not due to the Church's leniency you were not murdered when Bishop Walcher first came here? You owe us your life, Kennet."

I owe the Church my life? I thought not. I wanted to say the Church owed me the lives of all the good people it had taken from me. But, I dared not say a word.

"If it had not been for the Church and its doings here, you might still be laboring as a Journeyman in the joiners craft. What more, your father might still be blaspheming the whole of Christendom, calling himself a monk and living in sin!"

He brought to mind Chancellor Gilbert, whom I remembered with loathing. More than anything, I wanted him out of my sight. But, I restrained myself, and merely said, "Your crusade means less than nothing to me! I'm to be wed soon, as you well know." Lisbet had been pledged to me for over a year, and I was long ready to settle in and begin my own family.

"Think on this, Kennet. If you do not go, you and your father may find yourselves in my dungeon, where you can both rot till Judgement Day." How I longed to crush his sniveling nose beneath my fist, but forced myself instead to stand still. "You are a pious man. I know you'll see the right."

Arguing with the Prior never brought good for anyone. He was, after all, of the conquerors. So, against everything I believed in, I pledged two years of my life to the crusader's cause.

Aelfric was harder to convince than I, for he was secretly planning another uprising against the Normans. Even then, I knew his plot was hopeless, as the Normans were too many and too powerful, and we too few, too weak. But I would have gladly fought by Aelfric's side, just the same. Looking back on it now, I believe Prior Turgot wanted to get as many of Durham's hot-bloods as he could, marching on crusade so they would not be home to cause problems for him.

* * * * *

It took most of the day to climb down to the outskirts of town. When at last I arrived at my old cot, chilled through, wet and miserable, no one was about. I tramped from the great room, where I found the fire out and cold, to my old shop, and on to the back room where my grandson Aidan's bed and our sacks of corn and peas used to be, shouting at the top of my lungs throughout. No one answered my call.

I found Lisbet alone in the solar, unconscious, lying on the great bed that had once been our marriage bed. Pale and thin she looked, her hair tangled on the pillow, and her left arm bound with an old bloodstained rag. But, she was still breathing. The nearest neighbor was less than ten rods away, so I tramped over to find out the whyfore of Lisbet's being alone.

I pounded on Cerdic's door. Was no one there either? At last, Hildegarde answered.

"Is it really ye, Kennet? Ye're here after all these years? I never thought to see ye again!"

"Aye, 't is me."

"Cerdic is tending the Bishop's fields. Let me get ye some mead. Sit down. Sit down!" she said, fluttering about, stirring the fire up so it would burn higher, and drawing a stool closer to the flame. "It's been chill and wet all day. Bishop Galfrid ordered the men to be out in the fields no matter what the weather. Cerdic'll catch his death, like as not!"

"Why is no one with Lisbet?" I stood at the open door, wanting an immediate answer, so I could go back home and tend to my wife.

"Oh, come in, Kennet. Yer draught'll put the fire out. Sit down, I'll tell ye all I know." Plump little Hildegarde, her gown frayed at the hem where it dragged in the rushes on the floor, and the linen bound round her hair hanging askew, half over one eye, scuttled out from behind the fire and dropped a stumbling curtsey in front of me.

I did come in, after staring angrily about her cot. A gust of wind slammed the door shut and nearly blew the fire out, as Hildegarde feared it might.

"Cerdic'll be home soon, cold and wet, like ye. I have some good broth and bread, baked only three days ago."

"Why is no one with Lisbet?" I shouted and the cot echoed with my passion.

"She... she..."

"She what, Hildegarde?"

"Oh, here's Cerdic," she cried as the door banged open and Cerdic staggered in, to collapse on the bench by the fire, whilst Hildegarde dashed behind him to close the door.

"Here, dry yerself off a bit, and I'll get ye a cloak," she said, handing him a dry tunic.

I could not stop Hildegarde to make her talk, so at last I sat down on the stool next to the fire. Cerdic started in coughing long and hard. I stood up and pounded his back. He was trembling like an old man, and he'd seen at least ten fewer winters than I.

"Tomorrow is the last day of this seven for the Bishop. After that I'm staying in bed," he said, gasping for air. The fever flush had risen to his face. I had no heart to quiz him of Lisbet, but I must learn what happened to her.

"Hildegarde," I said, as she passed by with a pitcher of mead.

"I know. I know. Lisbet. Sit ye down, Kennet. Let me get a brychan for Cerdic."

"Mayhap we should get him to bed." So saying, I helped him to his feet and supported him across the room to their bed. Once he was dry and covered, with a bowl of broth in front of him, I again turned to Hildegarde. "Now, tell me of Lisbet."

"I didn't want to have to tell ye, Kennet."

I waited whilst she composed herself on the bench with her wool and spindle. "Aye?"

"Bishop Galfrid had her prisoner in the tower with Rothwinna. They two were accused of witchcraft. He announced he would have them both burned. And then they weren't. I don't know where Anselm and Rothwinna are, nor even Aidan. They all disappeared. Probably conscripted to fight the Bishop's wars with Scotland," she prattled on. "I went to yer cot expecting to find it empty, but there was Lisbet on the bed, blood spilling from her arm onto the floor. What was I to think? I ran for the herb woman, as she'd be the only one who would come in to such a cursed place. We all knew Lisbet's curse. She stanched the flow of blood, Then I fetched the sheriff. 'Poor woman. Couldn't live with her sins, I suppose. She must have tried to kill herself,' he said. That was six days ago. I go over myself every day to keep her clean and try to feed her."

"Every day?"

"Sometimes twice or three times, if no one is about to see."

"If no one sees." Everyone I cared about, my son, his wife and my grandson were gone, no one knew where. I sat dazed, listening to her.

"Aye, she sleeps most of the time, and when she is awake, she talks to people who aren't there. Generally, 't is Aidan she speaks to, sometimes Anselm, though nothing she says makes sense. 'T would seem she dreams with her eyes open."

"She dreams?" My thoughts were spinning round in my head, and I could do little more than repeat what she was saying.

"With her eyes open, aye. The women say she should have burned, so I tend her in secret."

I listened, and wanted to murder his fine Holiness, the newly installed Bishop Galfrid. "She was accused of witchcraft?"

"Ye didn't know? We all thought ye had left to be well away from her curse."

I could not sit still any longer, but got up, wrapped my cloak about me, and headed for the door.

"Oh, here. Take a bite of sup with ye," she called, dashing to fill a bowl with broth, and wrapping a loaf of bread in a clean rag. I wanted to refuse her offer, but years on crusade had taught me never to turn food down.

When I returned home, the cot was cold and smelled dank, as though no one had stirred in it for a long time. I built the fire up and climbed the stairs to the solar. There I sat for a time watching my wife breathe, and ruminating on these events.

It is now the evening of the fourteenth of November, in the year 1130. This three-day walk has been a form of penance for me, for with every step I have pondered over all I knew of our lives and the things that shaped them, and castigated myself that I left Lisbet alone here in Durham.

Even my grandson, Aidan, is missing. My son, his wife and the two women who were with them are gone as well. No one has seen or heard from them, and I am torn between wanting to search the hillsides for them or staying here with Lisbet until she either comes to her senses, or dies.

It may be best I stay the night with her as dark byways are better suited for robbers and cutthroats than for an old man. Besides, I would be wandering aimless, having no idea where anyone has gone. This leaves me with little choice but to pace back and forth, in anger and worry, wondering if my Lisbet will die this night.

She is no longer young. Perhaps I should let her go. But I would like to tell her I love her one last time, and let her be shriven before she dies.

Lisbet stirs... No, she yet sleeps. I'd best cover her, as the wind is rising and it gets colder. If I keep writing everything down this way, I will need pages more of this parchment. Wait, Lisbet has a cache of it here. It must have cost her at least three pence, enough to buy her a good ewe lamb, that. When did she take up writing?

These parchments I have with me may be all I have left of my family. Brother Ignatius Martin wrote them. The brothers who went through his effects the day he died thought it would be best to bury this chronicle in their library and not mention it to anyone. But I was there.

"Those pages appear to be my business, more than anyone else's," I said, wondering why Brother Martin would have written so much about my family.

The good Abbot calmly studied them a few moments, and handing them to me said, "You may be right, Kennet." The two or three monks who were with us offered little protest.

It never occurred to me such an interest would awaken in him towards my family when I introduced him to Lisbet. He must have had a greater longing for a hearth, a wife, and children of his own than I anticipated. My wife, my eldest son and his wife, so touched his fancy this past year, that he has faithfully recorded the events of their lives as they were told him. Perhaps, in a symbolic way, he made my family his as any of his own were denied him.

I thought I had succeeded in forgetting all my past, until I saw those pages. I had just taken them to my cell and begun to peruse them when the good Abbot brought the messenger to me with the sheriff's news that my wife tried to kill herself.

I suppose I am lucky to be alive at all. The years I spent on crusade should have guaranteed I would be dead and gone before a single gray hair appeared on my head. Stone masons breathe the dust of the stones they work with day after day, and many of them die early of lung cough. The cathedral itself took its toll of lives and mine could easily have been among them. Yet, alive I am. Why, I do not know. Far better men than I have been lost, their names forgotten.

Now the leaves of parchment are spread on the table in the solar I built for Lisbet so many years ago, and between pacing the room in worry and watching her slumber, I am studying the record Brother Martin left. Perhaps I'll find some answers within it.

Leaf I

Lisbet

My husband, Kennet, fought the Saracens. But that was many years ago. He was full of laughter and good feelings towards everyone before he went off as a crusader. His father and mine had pledged us to be wed, and I felt lucky indeed this kind man would be my husband. He had long been Master Stone Cutter and our fathers had been friends for as long as I could remember, so our betrothal seemed right and as it should be.

I grew up always knowing him. He and his father, Eardulph, were like family to us. The two of them often ate with us, and my mother would treat Kennet as though he were her own son, and brother to Aelfric, my brother.

Kennet was not so tall and perhaps he was a little stocky, but he was strong and well knit for all that. His eyes were blue, like a clear sky on a spring day, and he left his hair long, down to his shoulders. It was brown and darker than mine, and with the sun shining on him, he had a look of grandness about him.

As soon as I knew my father would pay the dower, Kennet was indeed exciting to me, and the bits of time we could have together were eagerly seized and treasured. Both of us were ready enough to wed, so my father said, and my mother said it had best be done soon. My family planned to seek the priest's blessing for our union by the end of the summer.

We would meet on Sundays after vigils had been said, just as the sun was rising over the hills across the river, and go for long walks together round the fields, out past the village and down the cart path to the woods. There everything was deliciously quiet, but for the birds playing amongst the trees and an occasional hare, or sometimes a hart glimpsed running so quickly through the woods it seemed almost to be flying.

Kennet had long been a man, and I was just fourteen, all bubbly with the thought of having him to myself for one or two short hours, even though I had known him all my life. He taught me to swim that year. He could do anything he wanted in the water, like a fish he was. My ungainly splashing made him laugh, and then he'd show me what to do again so I would not sink. I never did learn the easy sureness he had, but I loved those times with him.

But less than a month before we were to be wed, our village began to buzz with a terrible noise. It became like a fever; as though there had not been fighting going on for years, and probably would for many more. Most of the men were persuaded to go off to fight for the Holy Land. There was nothing at all new about warfare. Only for me who had given little mind to talk of sieges and campaigns, it seemed sudden and cruel.

"Know all ye good men, the Pope in Rome has declared that we should remove the infidels from the Holy Land, and claim it back as our own," the priest in our little church announced on Sunday morning. I was only half-listening to him as his words rolled over my head.

"Prior Turgot has declared that any man of you who risks life and limb on this most holy of quests will be guaranteed a sure and certain place in Heaven, next to our Lord Jesus. All your sins will be forgiven. The quest to take the church in Jerusalem back from those infamous Moslems, so it can be the great Christian church it should always have been, is the highest, most holy quest a good Christian might ever consider dedicating his life to perform. Those cruel and sinful heathens, the Moslems, have had the church in their clutches these past three hundred years and more, and they have defiled it almost beyond recognition. Our Good Virgin Mother is crying to have it back. Christ in heaven is begging us to bring His church back to Him!" I was sore tempted to get up and leave. His words made no sense to me.

"What was the prior talking of? It shouldn't concern our town, we have enough troubles here," I said to Kennet, after mass.

He did not answer; merely walked home with me in silence. A few fateful evenings later, after he and his father had supped with us, Kennet led me out to the garden so we could be private with each other.

"Lisbet, Prior Turgot spoke with me today." He took both my hands in his, and looked so serious I was certain something was very wrong.

"It wasn't to talk of his crusade, was it?" In frustration I pulled my hands free. "Everyone's been talking of nothing but his crusade!"

"It isn't just his crusade. You know the Pope has ordered it." Kennet gently smoothed a stray bit of hair back from my face with his fingertips.

"It's not fair!" I wanted to shout my fury to the heavens, but instead I stood trembling like a dolt.

"What isn't fair?"

"Asking you to go off to fight and kill. It's not!"

"I'm sorry, Lisbet, but I must go. I've pledged two years." He looked to me as though he had accepted a fate he knew he could not change. His hands hung limp at his sides and his lip quivered as if to weep.

"When are you going, Kennet? We are to be wed in less than a month!"

"That will have to wait. I could not risk leaving you with child and I will not risk making you a widow!"

"No, please don't go!" I grasped his hands, not wanting to ever let them go.

"It's my duty, Lisbet."

There were myriads of stars that night, glittering like silver shot through black velvet, far more perfect than a jeweler could make. But they all became a blur as tears filled my eyes.

"Lisbet, we must defeat the Infidels. Prior Turgot says they mutilate and murder Christian children in their wretched ceremonies, and poison wells so that whole towns of Christians die off, just by drinking the water! And I've heard they desecrate our churches, making them places of pagan idolatry."

I listened but could not believe people would do such things. I wanted to yell and shout at him, tell him he should not go, that he would be foolish to go. But I held my tongue instead.

He kissed the tears as they streamed down my face and said, "I won't be gone long. You'll see, and then we will be wed, well and truly."

I thought then that my betrothed felt he would prove himself a man if he went; as though one could not see for looking on him that he was! Even though every fibre of me wanted to beg him to stay at home, I did not wish to appear foolish, so I said what I thought was expected of me, "Be brave, and fight like a warrior," which was even more foolish.

Later that evening after Kennet and Eardulph had returned home, I grumbled to my father, "Why do Christians have to fight the infidels?"

"The Pope has said they are evil." I always knew my father as a simple man. For him a thing either was so, or it was not.

"The Pope is too far away to know!" I threw my spindle down in disgust.

"It is said the Holy Father gets his thoughts from God alone,"

"But, Da, how could he? He listens not to the King or the Emperors?" He had no answer for this.

"Are you thinking of holding Kennet back now?" my good mother said.

"You knew he would go?" I shouted. It hurt that they had known and had not tried to stop him, and worse yet, had not told me. The wool I was spinning had become snarled when I threw the spindle down and I was irritably untangling it.

"His father told us while the two of you were in the garden." My mother sat across from me, placidly carding some wool.

"But I don't want him to go -- he may never come back!" I banged my spindle hard on the bench, cracking it. "What could God want with good men going off to distant lands to kill and be killed? The crops will soon need to be harvested!" The spindle no longer spun true, and so there would have to be a new one made. Another proof of my inferiority, this.

"Peace," my da answered. "Ye are only a girl. Such things are beyond your understanding."

Balding and stoop-shouldered he was, with gnarled and work-hardened hands. Edwin could look formidable, when he had a mind to, but he was ever a gentle man, and for all my strong words with him, I loved him dearly. Though what he said this day did nothing to soothe me; only made me angry.

"Years ago now, a woman I knew named Mathilde prevented her man from going off to war, and they were able to have a right fine family of children just the same," Edwin said.

"That was before the Normans came here, to show us the wrongness of our ways." My mum spat into the fire. "Lisbet's curse could bring the whole church down on our heads."

"Enna," my da said. "Don't be so hard on the lass."

"You don't know the power of curses as I do," she said. My da sat in silence the rest of the evening, leaving me to deal with my anxiety without his help.

* * * * *

Ever since I can remember, my mother has impressed on me that I am cursed. Cursed for being born on a day of bloodshed, the day of the last real uprising here in Durham. It was a day when tempers rose so high that more pain and loss came down on our heads than any of us had bargained for. Because of all those things, I was baptized with shame, merely for being alive.

Odo, half brother to King William, brought down the last great destruction on our heads when he came through with his soldiers soon after I was born. They killed everyone in sight, burned crops and homes and all the food stored against the winter. He and his wicked, wicked men left nothing untouched. The only people who survived were those who stayed hidden in the woods. So few of us were left to do the building, it was heartbreaking.

To atone for this, my mother insisted everything I did must be perfect in the eyes of God, in order to counter the curse she said I carried. For if the very Devil himself were out dancing in the streets the day I was born, the labor of my life must be an offering to God to counter the ill men did on that wretched day. Every act of mine must be one of purification and atonement. The chickens I cared for must be the fattest ones in the village, or they simply were not good enough. The cheeses I made had to be the very best of anyone's, or they were not fit to put on the table. My mother would feed them to our goats instead. The linen thread I spun must be of the finest and strongest or she would not let it be used for aught but rags. All my life I thought I had to push myself to the limit of my endurance, in order to oppose the curse dating from my birth.

I never heard my good mother say the words I so much longed to hear, "Well done, Lisbet." Instead, she would look at whatever I did with a sharp, critical eye, and more often than not, I would have to do it over again. The notion has always been with me that nothing I can do is ever enough. I could never be as other people were, or feel as other people do.

It was Eardulph's kindly words kept the counter thought in my head that perhaps I was not cursed. He was the one who said, "She's just a child, Enna. No more cursed than you or I may be." But, my good mother's words always meant more to me than anyone else's, and the words she spoke to me were seldom kindly.

The priest came to call on us one evening when I was a lass with hardly more than seven summers growth, to tell my parents, "You could pledge her to the cloister. Her prayers there would help ensure all of you a place in heaven."

My mother stamped her foot and strode forth to open the door, holding it wide, all the while staring pointedly at the priest.

My father tried to placate him, saying, "We will think on it. We will give your words much thought."

When once the priest had wrapped himself in his cloak and gone, my mother said, "What could there be to think on? Good Christians we are, but Normans we are not, nor have we ever been. I don't trust their Church."

"Enna, please. Be still. Someone might hear you talking this way."

My mum stood at the open door, shouting for all the world to hear, "I will not be still! The child needs strong discipline, or we will all suffer for her weakness!"

* * * * *

Aelfric, who had been hard at work cutting stone for the cathedral walls that day, did not come home till well past compline. My mum and da were already in bed when he came in. I put my spindle away, and scurried about to get him a warm bowl of broth. We had good coney in it then, as I recall, and some new baked bread to eat with it.

He dropped his tools by the door, not even bothering to put them into their chest, as was his wont, and slumped down on the stool. He would not look at the broth I set in front of him. Usually he ate with hearty appetite, but this night he would not touch his food.

"Aelfric, are you ill?"

"No, I'm alright. Go on to bed, Lisbet."

"Something's wrong. I can feel it."

"It can wait till morning. Go to bed."

I went to my corner to sleep, but I could see Aelfric in the moonlight, still sitting with the bowl of broth in front of him, untouched. "Aelfric," I called. "Kennet told me tonight, he's going off on crusade."

"Oh? Prior Turgot must have talked to him too, I suppose. Then we'll be together in this as well."

"Aelfric! No! I couldn't stand it if ye both went!"

"We must, child. There's no getting out of it. Now go to sleep." But it was too late for that. My mum and da were already up. We none of us slept the rest of the night.

Kennet and Aelfric were both going off to a war that would take them far away from me, to places I knew only as names overheard in conversations. The occasional traveler passing through our village would sometimes stop at the inn and talk of things and places that sounded only like minstrel's tales to my ears.

Two families combined the stones of what had been left of their cottages after the Normans overcame us, and built a hall, or inn, near the Crossgate Road. There was not much left to either of those families--an old grandsire from one, and a young man and his wife from the other. There Hilde, the wife, could sell her ale. What few travelers came through spent the night sleeping on benches along the walls, or rolled in the brychans and cloaks they'd brought with them, in the rushes on the floor round the fire. It was a place to sit and talk, and share the gossip with our neighbors. I was generally too busy to be able to spend much time there, but even my good mum liked to gossip there for an hour or so on a long summer evening.

Two or three old men, who had seen the cities of the infidels, met there. My friends and I didn't believe what they said of those places, so we paid them no mind. But once the two men I loved most had pledged themselves to go, I listened every chance I could. I remember sitting in a corner with my spinning, where the firelight barely penetrated, quiet as a shadow on the wall. I feared if I made even a pinch of sound, they would stop talking and I would never learn where Kennet and Aelfric were going.

"I hated to burn that city. Such a beautiful one it was, with domes that shone white in the sunlight!" an old man with rheumy eyes said.

To be answered with, "Aye, and I remember lights in all the streets, they had, burning all night long!"

"But the tongues they spoke, the Devil had to have taught them such sounds!" the first one said, pounding the floor with his staff to add force to his words.

"Bishop says the Devil taught them their tongues along with their habit of bathing every day!"

"Does he now?"

The Moors, as they were called, surely must have traded with the Devil to do the things the old men described. But all my life I'd heard too much of the destruction caused by men who called themselves good Christians, not to believe there wasn't trafficking with the Devil on both sides. I would far rather have let those heathens do whatever they would, than have to see my betrothed and my brother go off to try to kill them, perhaps to be killed themselves.

Towards morning, my mum stopped begging Aelfric to stay, though I knew she would likely die of heartbreak once he was gone. We were silent and sad after this. We all mourned my brother's leaving, long before he left.

My da worked long hours for the blacksmith in exchange for many flattened pieces of iron, punched with holes. My mum and I worked long into the night, for many nights after, stitching them into a heavy padded tunic for Aelfric, one we hoped would protect him from the blows of battle.

"You'll be a good soldier," I said to Kennet when I saw him again, and wept in my heart where I hoped only God could see. My good mother had told me so many times of the troubles my curse would cause if I begged Kennet to stay home that I did not dare say anything at all of my true feelings.

"God is on our side, Lisbet. You'll see.

He trembled as with some great emotion, when he said this.

I made a fine cloak for Kennet of good heavy wool, in a brown color so rich it looked almost purple. It cost me all my egg pence -- the coins I had saved whenever anyone bought my eggs and cheese. There were not many, only three, as most of them had gone to my father for our household.

The merchant who sold me that cloth said it was fit for a prince, and worth far more than I gave him. But I did not have a farthing more to bargain with, so I heaved a tremendous sigh of relief when he said the cloth was mine.

"Why, that was Odo the merchant," my father said when I told him later of my bargain. "Aye, his grandsire fought bravely against the Normans, and died in battle with them. Odo's father and mother? Killed or carted off to prison, I suppose, like so many other good people."

"Kennet better not die in this war!" I said through gritted teeth.

My father said nothing, but looked long and sadly on me. His staring that way made me feel itchy, so I got up to work outside a while, to be away from it.

Kennet's father had an old suit of chain which had been given him by his father, and he had it mended and fitted to Kennet's frame. Then Kennet set about cleaning and polishing it. He sewed it up in a leather bag filled with sand, and he and his friends tossed the chain back and forth between them. It's a sight I'll never forget. The bag with its chain mail and sand was so heavy those burly young men knocked each other over with every toss! But I rejoiced to have him home those several months it took for the men to prepare what they had to take with them. And, I knew that every day Aelfric continued home, was another day we could know he was safe.

Kennet at last broke the stitching and pulled the chain out of the bag, spread it on the table in his father's cottage and carefully brushed the sand out of it. When this job was done, I could hardly lift it to help him put it on, it was that heavy. How he ever managed to stand and walk about in all its weight, and then fight, I'll never know.

We had a helm of tough leather fashioned for his head, and one for Aelfric as well. I have Kennet's with me yet, and it looks nearly as gruesome as it did the first time I saw it. I feared to look at either my betrothed or my brother when they wore those helmets, for the thought was with me they would die in them.

"Steady! Stand firm," I called to Kennet, as he tottered across the meadow, where the abbey sheep were often turned out to graze. The weight of the chain made him clumsy, and he was half blinded by the flaps of his helm. Aelfric fumbled about in his armored tunic. I prayed it would be strong enough to shield him from the blows he would face. It was nearly as heavy as Kennet's chain, and made him look twice as big as he really was. They were both fearsome sights. But Aelfric stumbled over a tuft of grass and fell to the ground.

Kennet picked up a fallen tree branch and whirled it round over his head, yelling, "Victory! Victory to the Saxon warriors!"

Aelfric pushed himself up onto his feet, and slammed into Kennet's back, knocking them both down. They rolled over and over on the ground, laughing like children.

I joined in the fun, dancing round them, clapping my hands and singing of how mightily they had fallen, how brave they would be, and how the Infidels had better be conquered by their fearsome looks, for those two warriors stood no chance of conquering any other way!

By the time all was ready, winter snow was falling thick and heavy and their captain deemed it best if the men should wait till spring to travel.

Perhaps Kennet and I could have wed that winter, when he was forced to stay at home. Would he have gone if we had? There is no knowing after all these years. But I do not believe he would have left a mother and child alone. It's a thought I never dared entertain that winter. Certainly not with my mother saying, "You cannot wed Kennet, now. If you do, your curse will bring the wrath of God down on the both of you."

Just as the trees were coming into bud and most of the birds had returned, they went. Nearly eighty men tramping off together. A very few of them had horses as Kennet did. Aelfric rode a fine donkey. Most of the rest were on foot. Few of them had more than bits of armor, and many had only leather shields to protect themselves. Some of these brave warriors were old men who should have stayed home near their fires. Others were mere boys, who had run away from their masters. Several intrepid souls marched off with naught but their pitchforks to defend them. I had known most of these men all my life, and I hated to see them go.

I stood with my family near the Crossgate Road to wave the troops on their way. The whole town was out, laughing and cheering. Fully half the people were drunk. I could smell sweat and other filth on the people jostling round us.

"Those boys'll walk till their shoes fall off," my father said, shaking his head.

"And what then?" I hoped they might all be sent home again. How innocent I was. Even though I had gone barefoot most of my life, everyone had assured me that shoes were a necessity for a soldier.

"They'll keep on walking. I pray your Kennet can keep his mount." He put his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes from the sun. "Look at all those men who have none. Aye, his father was a fool to send him off with it!"

"He was not!" I said.

"Lisbet," my mother said. "Calm yourself. Remember your curse."

I bit my tongue hard, for I did not want to hear her say any more on it.

Kennet looked nearly as fine as a knight, riding past in his chain link, so straight and proud, on the best horse his father could get for him. A sandy-colored mare she was, bred for the plow. My brother looked solemn and tall, riding beside him on his grey donkey. As soon as they passed by, my mother turned about, and would not look at the rest of the men marching off. "Too many of them will never come home. They are marching to their graves."

"Let them be strong and true and courageous," I prayed as they plodded past. But I wanted to curse Prior Turgot and the priests who had talked them all into serving as soldiers.

I climbed to the top of the promontory where the monks were building their cathedral, and watched till all the men had marched down the road and out of sight. From there, had I cared to look, I would have seen the horseshoe curve of the River Wear, as it wound round the base of the hill. Farther downstream was where the old men liked to fish, and beyond there, the women did their washing.

The Crossgate Road on which Kennet and his fellows marched out went south. But the road most of us lived along, the one going to Gates Head, went north. A few cots straggling along its dusty length marked our village.

Both those roads were said to have been left by the Romans. Some of the men round about liked to say they were descended from them. Who were the Romans? Kings? Some people said they must have been giants. But, I believe they were simply proud men. Every man likes to be proud, though. Watching these men march down the road, I wondered if the Romans, who had marched up here to build their roads and bridges, had looked at all like them.

I was a month short of seventeen, that spring of 1096, when Kennet and my brother left, and my heart was bitter. But, I had already shed tears for so many nights alone in my bed, that I stood dry-eyed and unblinking until the dust from their tramping feet had settled and the road was again quiet.

* * * * *

Back home I went, to the monotony of spinning and sewing and tending the garden whenever I could, which at least had me outside a while. I used to like on occasion to work out in the fields. It was easy to like, when I did not have to do it all the time. But work became endless and food scarce, as few young men had stayed home to tend the crops, and those who had were kept busy building the cathedral and monastery round it. The town was desolate without the men who had gone.

The years Kennet was gone were hard for me. And, Aelfric's being away left a terrible void in all our lives. The work he had so willingly done to fulfill the Bishop's tax fell to my da and me. Peasant farmers have to work three days out of every seven in the abbey fields. Their own rows of corn and peas always come last.

My mother became ill with a wasting sickness that first winter, and could not get well. Luckily, father believed himself too old for such foolishness as war, or I would have been alone with my poor mother to tend. Even so, I complained over having to keep house for him and take care of her as well. Age was coming on him and he could be as loud and nearly as messy as a mule.

That first summer my days started with work in our garden behind our cottage. I saw the sun come up and watched the mist rise from the river below countless times as I tilled that garden. There I grew turnips, lettuces and herbs for the pot. We had a few chickens, which nested in our great room. It was my lot to have the care of them. We also had two nanny goats, and I made cheeses of their milk. When my father could get us some honey, I brewed mead of it for us to drink. Until she was too ill to do it, my mother made most of our meals inside, but after that first summer, I had to do almost all of the cooking.

I did our washing in the River Wear, when the weather was fine, and spread the clothes out on bushes to dry in the sun. The walk to the river was less than half a league from our cottage in the village. Even so, with heavy bundles of clothes to carry both ways, it was long enough. Usually there were a number of women out doing their washing and we would entertain each other with gossip and stories.

I seldom had time to sit down, and when I did, it was with the spindle, which I used almost constantly to make enough thread to keep us clothed. My father traded for wool at the Abbey when he could. The thread my mother and I spun went to the weaver's shop in town and there, in exchange for eggs, or cheese, or some of the thread we had spun, the weaver would make our cloth.

My father still went out to tend our row of corn in the great field, though it was getting harder for him to do this work. Especially as his skill as a joiner was much needed on the building of the cathedral. The monks compelled the men of our village to work on it whether they wished to or no. Whilst Edwin's eyes were still clear and blue, his hair was become hoary, and his step faltering, much as I did not like to admit it then. Thus, I had to spend long hours taking care of our row, and working the Bishop's field as well. I was the only one there who could spare him the hours of labor in the Bishop's fields, when he worked all day on the Bishop's Cathedral and monastery.

Leaf II

Lisbet

One Sunday morning, soon after the men had marched off, I pulled the linens I'd been able to save for my wedding out of my chest to air in the sunshine. "Lisbet," my mother said, when she saw them spread on the bushes in our garden. "What with that curse of yours, you'll be a widow before you're wed." She stood in the doorway, leaning on her walking stick, and looked so frail, as though the least puff of wind would knock her over.

I hated her then. "That curse! That abominable curse!" I shouted, and angrily grabbed the hoe from behind the door to tend our garden.

"Take heed, girl, or God will send destruction on all of us, when you're not watching!" she called as I marched off to the garden.

"I am not cursed!" I muttered with every swing of my hoe. "I am not cursed!" I said over, and over again. The anger was rising in me. "Of course, Kennet will come home! Aelfric too! I am not cursed!" I cried, swinging the hoe harder in my frustration. I was halfway down the second row when my swinging and hacking became over-wild, and I banged the hoe into my right foot, cutting it deeply.

"I am not cursed!" I said, hopping down the row, as my foot was bruised and bleeding.

"Lisbet," my mother said when she saw it. "You know you must be more careful than other people, or your curse will blight everything you do." I gritted my teeth in pain as, with shaking hands, she washed and bound my sore foot. But, the pain was more from being reminded of my curse and because of it the possibility that the men I cared about most might never come home, than it was from my foot.

It took days to heal, but I hobbled about as best I could. Occasionally, when I had a few moments, I toddled off to the river to soak it in the cool water, and bind it with a fresh comfrey poultice. All the while I told myself, "I am not cursed... I am not cursed..."

No matter how much I said that, I still felt as though I was. I struggled even more to be vigilant in everything I did, and with all my prayers, so that people I loved would be safe from it.

Every morning and every evening, when we were alone together, my good mother told me, "Pray long and hard, Lisbet, that your curse don't keep those men from coming home again." I didn't even want to believe in that curse, but her words stayed with me, no matter where I was or what I was doing. I tried to be away from her as much as I could.

Work, for some people, can be an ease in time of sorrow, and I knew some women who found comfort in the constant round of chores. But my mind would rattle on, no matter what my hands were about, perhaps because I was so young. I worried about my brother and Kennet, and whether my curse really would keep them from coming home.

* * * * *

It was spring of the third year, when Aelfric came back. We had all feared we'd never see him again. But, there he was, and we rejoiced, at first. His left arm was gone. Just the stump of it was left on his shoulder, and that was sore and festering. He was pale and thin and feverish from it. People said he came back through God's tender mercy. But, what kind of God would bring my brother home more dead than alive? He took to his bed as soon as he stumbled through the door of our cot, and never left it again.

I sat by the hour, changing the dressing on his wound, washing the sweat from his face, and trying to get him to eat. When I wasn't with him, our mother was. Most of the time, he knew not where he was. The stump of his arm grew fearsomely swollen, and then turned black. This blackness spread up his shoulder and down his neck and chest. It made our whole cot, from the back wall of our store room to the door of our great room, which I kept open for him, stink of death.

I knew 'twas my curse killing him. Hadn't I been told every day of my life that it would kill all of us? My prayers were going for naught. All my labor meant nothing in the eyes of the Lord, as Aelfric was so obviously dying. Yet, I didn't stop hoping. I redoubled my labors, staying up most nights in vigil, after working endless hours all day.

The last day, he seemed to know where he was more than he had before. I asked him then of Kennet. All he said was, "Antioch was so fierce, I don't know." He raved on about the battle as though he were still in the thick of it.

My good mother rushed to his bedside and, beating my head and shoulders with her spindle, shouted, "Get out of here! You are killing my son! Can't you see that?"

I ran out the door, through the meadow behind our cot, and up to the other end of town to find Eardulph. He was sitting under a chestnut tree in front of his cot, sharpening his lathe on a grindstone. He was so intent on his work I became shy of interrupting him. So, I sat on a large stone he had outside his door, and watched him work.

"Don't ye have aught to do, Lisbet?" he said, looking up from his work.

"Not this day. Me mum chased me out the cot. Told me to stay away from Aelfric." I was so exhausted, the world seemed cockeyed. A crow flying low appeared to fly right through Eardulph's head. A crow like that can be an omen of death, but I was too weary, even to care.

"Looks as though ye need to rest. It be hard for all of us, seein yer brother so." Eardulph continued running his lathe against the grindstone, as though nothing had happened. I must have dreamt that bird in my weariness.

"Aye, I don't want him to die. Me mum says 't is my curse killing him."

"If he dies, child, it will have naught to do with your curse. Every battle takes its toll of men. Even your mother knows this."

"But he's my brother! I don't want to lose him!" I closed my eyes, and let the dream continue.

"God knows that, Lisbet. He knows your heart." His words gave me a sense of comfort. The scraping of Eardulph's lathe across his stone, blended with all the other sounds of the day and the warmth of the sun shining on me. In my exhaustion, I dozed off and didn't waken till Eardulph shook my shoulder, saying,"'T is gettin late. They'll be lookin for ye to home."

I stretched the crook out of my back and neck, from sleeping sitting by his door, and stood up. "Thank you for letting me rest. I needed that."

My brother died whilst I was sitting with Eardulph. The next day was a blur of activity and grief. We must prepare for the vigil and the burial. Sweet bread must be baked, along with several fat conies in pasty coffins. My good mother spent the day in her bed, leaving me to dash about from one task to another. My da had to work the Bishop's field, and didn't come home till long after the bells for compline had rung, when he stumbled into bed looking as though he would never be able to get out of it again.

Everyone who had known Aelfric sat vigil with us, the night before we buried what was left of his body. Some people brought stools to sit on. Many, especially the younger ones, sat in the rushes on the floor with the children. My mum and da were on the bench, nearest the coffin, which was propped in the corner open for all to see Aelfric inside. When I wasn't passing mead and sweet bread to everyone, I sat on a stool and tended the fire. It was the only light we had. All night long, they told stories of my brother when he was a lad. Most of their stories included Kennet, for those two had worked and played together all their lives.

Aelfric and Kennet. Kennet and Aelfric. They had been together through everything. Were they together in death as well? The chills climbed up and down my back, for I felt as though we could well be sitting vigil for both of them. I couldn't bear the thought my curse had killed Kennet as well. It was horrible enough, with the grief and emptiness we all felt, knowing Aelfric was gone.

My mother told a long and involved tale of the both of them when they were still but lads. She went on about how they tried to run away together to be 'bandits,' and live in the forest. Listening to it, my fears mounted. From where I sat, the body in the coffin looked as much like Kennet's as it did Aelfric's, and the flickering light made it appear even more like Kennet's. I stared round at all the faces in the room, and then back at the coffin. I was certain I saw the face of my betrothed!

"Is Kennet dead too? Must they all die? No! No!" I screamed, and ran out the door.

The air outside was cool and fresh, and with the gentle moonlight, it soothed my spirit. I stopped near a large old oak tree, and there choked out my sobs and fears.

"Lisbet. What ails ye, child?" my mother called, tottering after me with her staff. "Don't worry none, it's her curse makes her be so," she said to another woman who had followed her.

"Lisbet," my mother said, coming closer. "What do ye mean, acting like this?"

"I couldn't sit there any longer. I kept seeing Kennet in that coffin!" I sobbed, beating my fists against the tree trunk.

"Then perhaps you'd best prepare yourself for his dying," she said, prodding my shoulder with her finger. "Go on to your prayers."

"Mother!" I shouted at her, stiff with passion. "This isn't because of my curse! Aelfric shouldn't be dead in that coffin, and Kennet should be here, now!" Tears were streaming down my face, and the women all stood round staring at me.

Dear old Elfhilde, an herb woman who lived alone on the edge of our village, walked up to me with halting step, and held her arms out, saying, "There, there, Lisbet."

But before she could reach me, my mother shouted, "Lisbet, ye'll apologize to all of us, and go beg God for forgiveness!" She nearly tipped over in her passion.

I dared not disobey her. I apologized, but my mother never let me live it down. She used my folly as an excuse to berate me when she was tired and peevish, until the very day she died. My curse had disgraced us at my brother's wake. My seeing Kennet in the coffin; was it an omen? I could not know for certain, and in my distracted state, I took all her words to heart.

The intensity of my mother's mourning made me feel as though Aelfric had been her only child. She never wore a new gown after he died. It was long months before she would even let me change the hennin on her head. I've known many women to mourn this way, wearing the last gown their loved one saw them in, day after day, year in, year out. But it saddened me dreadfully, seeing my mother who had always been so neat about her person insist on being dirty this way.

"Mother, you put me to shame. Your gown's all in tatters, and people are talking. I made this one especially for you. It's good linen, and your favorite blue," I said, taking the gown I'd made for her the winter before from her chest.

"You needn't have bothered, Lisbet. What I have on is good enough." She turned her back to me, and wouldn't even look at it.

"But why, Mother? It's over a year since you wore anything fresh." I let the gown fall to my lap.

"Don't ask, Lisbet. Ye know why." I could see her fumble with her spindle. It fell to the floor, where she let it lie.

The flax I had used was dear, and preparing it to spin was a work of many hours. Spinning the spools of linen necessary to weave a length of fabric for a gown had been an endless task. Setting the spindle going like a top, as the length of flax slid through my fingers, stopping the spindle to wind the newly twisted flax on to it, then setting it to spin again, and again, until my fingers were raw and sore. I could not understand her refusal to wear the gown I'd labored to make for her. "Is it because of my curse you won't touch this gown?" It fell from my lap to the floor, and I cared not.

She would not answer; merely sat with her shoulders heaving as though she were weeping. I was distraught. My mother had again rejected my labor. I was too despondent to want the gown for myself. My love was not good enough for her. Let the thing go for rags. I put it up on the shelf, and returned to spinning wool.

The sun was far to the west, and the fire was burning low. It had become hard to see what we were doing. Still, we sat spinning, as Da had not yet come home. Much as I missed Aelfric, and knew my mother ached over losing her son, Kennet was constantly on my mind. Would he ever come home? If he did, what condition would he be in? "Will Kennet have to lose an arm or a leg, or worse?" I fretted as we sat spinning.

"Pray on it, Lisbet, so your curse doesn't make it so," she said, pushing her hennin up on her head. It had become greasy and soiled like the old one. I had not been able to prevail on her to let me wash it these last three months.

"I don't want him to be like Cedd who lost his legs!"

"Aye, that was harsh." Tears were still streaming down her face from our confrontation over the gown. But she talked on bravely enough. "The Normans cut them off him for escaping their prison. Bathilde was a good woman, taking care of him for so long. Four years was it?" At my nod she added, "Your father used to carry him from his bed to a chair outside their cot. But after a time Cedd would not leave his bed, and no man had the heart to force him."

"I hate fighting and killing. Kennet and Aelfric shouldn't have had to go!"

We sat on with our eternal spinning. The wind changed direction, and smoke filled our great room. I gagged and choked, and my eyes burned.

"Lisbet, you need patience. You'd best pray for your sins." My stomach churned over these words. Was I really the only person who needed patience? I loved Kennet dearly. But, would I have the patience to care for him if he came home hurt like that? I prayed to the Virgin that I would, and prayed even more that I would never have to; that Kennet would be well and strong when he came home.

* * * * *

Kennet's father died the winter of 1100, well past the time of the Christmas feast. The land was ice bound, and Eardulph was alone in his cot. Edwin had gone that bitter morning to see how he fared. We knew he was getting old and tired, but none of us expected him to be dead.

"He was out only yesterday chopping wood for his fire, hale as the day I met him! The bells for sext rang and we said our prayers together. If I had only known it would be our last time," my father lamented when he came home with the news. "Now he's gone! He went to bed last night with a chisel still in his hand, and never awakened. Lord knows, I'll miss the man!" He flopped down on the bench by the fire, and hardly moved the rest of the day.

My mother and I went out through the snow, across the village to his cot, to ready Eardulph for burial. It was so cold it hurt to breathe. The cold bit through our cloaks within moments of our stepping out the door. Ice was everywhere, coating all the trees and bushes. Normally I would have been glad of its beauty, for when the sun shines on so much ice, it's like a great garden of jewels. But this day was too sad for us, and we tramped through it with hardly a look at all its bright beauty. Every step my mother took, she leaned crazily on her staff, whilst I half supported her.

The light was dim and the air chill inside the cot. The rushes on the floor were rimed with frost, even with the fire Edwin had left for us.

We did not look about, but went straight to the bed where Eardulph lay, took his old tunic off him, and washed the soil from his body. Death held him tight, making our task difficult, as his arms and legs could not be bent to our needs.

"Oh, Kennet," I sighed to myself, as we were putting Eardulph's best tunic on over his stiff arms. "I wish you were home!"

Mother heard, and said, "Girl, he has troubles enough now, I'm sure. You can tell him when he's here again."

When we had finished getting Eardulph ready, my mother sat down on the chest by the door, whilst I busied myself putting his cot to rights. She was winded; everything tired her, then.

One small room was the whole of his cot, with the fire kept in the middle of the floor, and smoke let out a hole in the roof, much as ours and most everyone else's was in our town. Sometimes, when the wind blew a certain way, the heat seemed to be sucked right out that hole, and sometimes the wind would blow the smoke down into all our faces. The walls had been finished in white plaster, but smoke colored them dark gray, and the beams under the roof were all smoke-blacked. Eardulph's bed was along one wall, and a table with a bench and stool to sit on along another. There was but one window and it was shuttered tight against the cold. I had seen windows with glass in them, but they were rare and costly. No one in our village knew the secret of making it, so our windows were not finished that way. It's best to let the fresh air in anyway. There was naught on his walls save a large, heavy looking cross of dark wood hanging over his bed. He had a great chest in the corner near the door, where he kept the tools of his work. He had been a joiner, and a right good one too.

It was only after I looked about to straighten the cot for the neighbors who would be coming to sit vigil with him, that I really saw what it was Eardulph had been working on the day before. 'T was a chest, taking up nearly the whole of his table.

"Mother, look!" I called to her. "See the brass work of the hinges, and there's a 'K' for Kennet, inlaid in rose wood on the lid." I knew Eardulph had been clever with his hands, but this was the most beautiful chest he had ever made. The wood glowed buttery yellow in the dying firelight. My mother had to choke back the tears as she looked on it. A fine big one it was. Eardulph had chiseled roses going down the sides of it, and a vine over the front with a tiny imp climbing through it.

Our walk home was solemn. We had to step carefully, for ice made the paths slippery, and wooden patens on ice like that can be treacherous. So again, I helped my mother over the hard spots. She was afraid of falling, and the cold was taking all her strength. But we said not a word, for our minds were too full with Eardulph's death.

When we got home, I settled her on the bench, with a cushion at her back, and a brychan over her lap, right next the fire, so she could get warm, and then prepared our supper. I thought on Eardulph whilst I chopped a mess of turnips into the pot. It was easier to hope Kennet would be all right, knowing Eardulph had hoped, putting his love into the labor of making that fine chest for him.

"He was a good man, Eardulph was. We'll all miss him," my da said when we told him about the chest that evening.

* * * * *

"I remember telling him, 'You should take ye another wife," my da said, when we sat up with all the neighbors for Eardulph's wake. "'Never,' Eardulph shouted at me, 'so long as these Normans rule! I can't marry again!' 'But you're not a monk now,' I said to him. 'In my heart, I'm always a monk,' Eardulph answered. I think now he was a holy man, if anyone can make that claim. He was steadfast in his beliefs."

We all had crowded into Eardulph's tiny cot. People were sitting on his bed, on the floor, and on every available chest. "Aye, he was that," an old man, who'd known us many years, said. "Ever kind and generous to those who had less than he did. Eardulph insisted on living in poverty, 'as Christ's example bade us,' so he said. He was able to earn a fair living with his craft. Few men can carve a piece of wood as he did. But after he had taken care of his own needs and his son's, he gave the rest away to those who had little or nothing." The last chest Eardulph had made was in the place of honor, beside the casket where he was propped. At these words we all turned to look at it. I had to pause as I tramped to fill the mead jug, to wipe the tears from my face.

"If it had not been for Eardulph, my children would have starved last winter," more than one poor woman chimed in.

"There was naught wrong with the way he lived with his wife. He was a good man, always," someone else said.

But, Eardulph had lived the old way when many monks believed it was not wrong for them to have a family. The Norman priest, who said monks could only be celibate, would not give him the honor most of us thought he deserved. So, after the Norman priest's hurried blessing at the burial, men who had lived and worked with him as monks gave another blessing with us.

* * * * *

I thought our mourning for Eardulph would never end. He was tied in my mind with Kennet, and I wondered all the more how Kennet was. Somehow Eardulph's being gone, along with Aelfric's death, had me all the more fearful Kennet would never be home again. But, fear and hope dwelt side by side in me, and I searched the faces of every young man who wandered into our village that year. When they proved not to be Kennet's, my fears mounted. Still, hope kept me searching. This went on from the day Eardulph was buried till the day Kennet did at last return, more than a year later.

III Kennet

King William destroyed our way of life seven times over in my father's time. He and his henchmen took from us nearly everything we cared about, and on that endless march to the land of the Saracens, I hated myself for defending those conquerors who had overtaken all we held dear.

"You are defending the Church," Radwill, the priest who marched with us, said. "The one true Church of God. He will richly bless you for fighting His battles." I wanted to close my ears to his exhortations, but he was always with us, making a pest of himself. It was Prior Turgot who had sent Father Radwill with us, and the little priest was so proud of the trust the prior had placed on him, I wanted to knock him flat every time I saw him.

I believed in my heart that if the Norman Church were a good Church it would never need to be defended by armed men, ready to kill whoever stood in their way. I had more than four long years to curse Prior Turgot for threatening my father's life and my own, if I did not join with the crusaders. I didn't want to leave Durham, and I didn't want to leave Lisbet when I went to fight the pagans. 'T was in part Lisbet's own words, "Fight like a warrior," that kept me marching with the crusaders when I would have gladly parted company with them. I might have left that throng of men and boys, and settled somewhere far from Prior Turgot's influence, but for those words of hers.

By the time we reached the shores of the English Channel, there were over a hundred of us marching south to kill pagans. Men had joined our motley band along the way. Most of them were strays having spent the bulk of their lives begging for their bread. No doubt the villages they came from were glad to see many of them go. But some few were men of conviction who truly believed in what they were doing. They had left hearth and family behind, and would be missed by all who knew them.

The sea wind hit us full and hard. I for one, had never been so near the ocean, though I'd heard plenty of stories about it. Stories of men lost far out at sea, never to come home again. I had never imagined anything so vast and strong as this sea was, its waves rising high and cold as they crashed on the shore.

We crossed in three wooden boats, each of them smaller than a one room cottage. There was a tent-like enclosure on the center of each, where we stored what baggage, food, and animals we had with us.

We had only enough provision with us for the one day, as the ship's captain believed we would be making shore well before the end of the first day. But luck was not riding with us, as fog enclosed our ship well before sext. We drifted far off course.

The sea was surging round us, rocking our boats first one way, and then another. We all were made ill by it, and men puked what little food they had eaten over the sides. Some poor souls were not able to make it to the side in time. The deck was soon slick with vomit round where they stood. The very smell of it made the rest of us want to puke, even when the sea was calm.

When it rained, everything was soaked. When the sun shone, we baked. We were packed so thoroughly in those boats there was no room to lie down, and at night we had to sleep squatting where we stood by day.

We only spent a seven-day on those boats, so I suppose our journey wasn't as harsh as it might have been. Come morning of our second day out, Father Radwill was again haranguing us. "God sees your suffering and blesses you for it. Pray for your sins, that we may find our way to Jerusalem."

Not only must we be hungry, wet, and seasick, we must listen to his noise as well. I poked Aelfric in the ribs. "If we leave off this Popish nonsense, how long do you think we'd have to wait for another boat back to England?"

"Do ye have the two pence necessary for the return trip? I have but half a penny here," and he showed me his one coin.

"I have only one penny. Think-we could be going home soon, but for the lack of a half penny!"

"I don't have any either," said a tall youth, showing us his empty pouch, though I could hear coins chink in the lining of his cloak where he'd stitched them.

"Ye speak of going home, friend? So do I," said a gnarled old man. "They don't have enough ale here to keep me happy."

"Ale ye will have in plenty," Father Radwill chimed. "In Jerusalem, when once we have brought that fair city back to Christ, the streets will be flowing with ale. Wait and see." I scowled at the priest, a toady little man with hair sticking out his nose and ears. Not one word did he utter that wasn't meant to curry favor with Prior Turgot and Bishop William, who weren't even with us. I turned my back on him and hoped he'd fall into the sea. Sadly, he didn't.

But the thought of going home, and doing so with plenty of money, stayed on my mind, especially as every time the tall youth turned or fidgeted, I could plainly hear the chink of metal from his cloak. And he wasn't wearing chain to clink like that.

I poked Aelfric in the ribs again, and pointed to the lad. He winked to show me he understood. "How much you betting this ship sinks in the sea before we make shore?" Aelfric called out.

"Two farthings," Garth, the man who wanted ale, answered.

"Three!" another called.

"One penny she makes it across!" the youth with the chinking cloak yelled.

"I knew he had money," I whispered to Aelfric.

"Aye, indeed," he answered.

The betting created a lively diversion, till Garth brought forth from his pouch a spinning top with Roman numerals painted on its sides. "Bet yer number and see if she comes up!" he shouted.

Soon there was a tight circle of sweaty men round us, all of them looking for a bit of action. Calls of high five and low three dominated the air. Father Radwill stood next to Garth watching the play mount up, as men bet one after another of the few possessions they had brought with them on the spinning top. The boat continued to heave and wallow and the fog had all of us wet through and nasty-tempered. But the betting gave us something to think on besides our wallowing stomachs, and the fact that not even the boat's captain knew where we were.

Peter of the chinking cloak got too involved with the betting for his own good, for he bet his cloak against Beorn's purse. Father Radwill, who had been avidly watching the game, pounced on the chance and shouted, "Such a beautiful cloak and purse should go to the Church. I bet this staff, blessed by the Good St. Hilde, the Holy Trinity comes up and captures them both!" Meanwhile, I had already lost everything I cared to bet. All I could do was watch in disgust.

Garth spun the top, and men followed it closely with their eyes, for by then nearly all of them were aware of the bright metallic chink in Peter's cloak every time he moved. Beorn's pouch hung full and heavy from his belt, and he gave it a tantalizing shake to let everyone know it contained good silver.

The spinning top appeared to stop at number two, when the toe of Father Radwill's boot shot out and nudged it so that it tipped over and number three came up. "The cloak and purse are God's!" he shouted, plucking the much desired cloak triumphantly from Peter's back and holding out his hand for the purse.

"Cheat!" I shouted. "You moved that top with your foot!"

"I did not! I merely stepped over to keep from falling!"

Cries of "cheat!" and "here, here!" came from all round us. Everything Father Radwill had said or done since the beginning of our journey served to rouse my anger. I picked him up, to the gleeful shouting of the men, and swung him over my shoulder. They happily moved aside, as I strode purposefully to the railing and trailed him far over the water below. "How many of you say Radwill cheats?"

"He cheats! Duck him!" a dozen or more voices shouted. I would have dropped him into the waves, but Wulf had made his way to where I stood and firmly grasped my arm.

"I know he needs a bath, son. But not here. It would only be trouble." He stared me calmly in the eye, and as I looked at him, the wrath slowly ebbed from my heart. I placed the squirming and pleading Father Radwill back on deck, where he spat at Wulf and me, and pointing a shaky finger at us both, he shouted, "God will make you pay for your impiety!"

Wulf plucked the cloak off the railing, where it had fallen, and gave it back to Peter. The pouch he gently pried from the Father's grasping hand, and gave back to Beorn. "We'll save the gambling for when we have something to gamble with."

Most of the men grumbled and turned away in disgust, whether for not seeing Father Radwill ducked in the brink, or for being told not to gamble, I was not certain. Only a few voices called, "Aye, Captain, and grudgingly at that. Garth quietly put his top away.

I was young then, so by the end of that second day the motion of the boats on the water no longer made me ill, though many of the others did not fare as well. Horses pitched and neighed and nearly knocked us all overboard whenever the sea rolled high. But it still seemed a fine adventure to tell everyone, should I return home again. My da would surely like to hear all the tales I would have to tell, someday.

The rest of our journey was uneventful, but for the fact that tempers rode high. Rations were light, and men threatened each other, but thankfully, no one was hurt, we thought. Father Radwill, at last seeing he could not evoke our good-will with his false piety, stayed quiet, and mostly to himself. Though he did make certain Peter of the chinking cloak was never far from his sight, and he cozied up to Beorn of the full pouch wonderfully. We often saw him whispering one thing or another in the man's ear. Beorn tried to stay out of the Father's way, but Radwill persisted in buzzing round him like an offensive gnat.

When land at last was sighted, we were all so weakened from hunger we could hardly stand. I noticed the men lurching about like drunken fools when they stepped off the gang-plank onto land. Father Radwill nearly fell flat on his face, and I burst out laughing. But when my turn came, and I had to lead my horse ashore, the ground seemed to heave and roll under my feet even more than the boat had for the last seven-day, and my horse panicked. It took several moments to get her calmed. We smelled worse than a midden heap come to life. Women held rags over their noses and wouldn't speak to us. Children threw stones at us. We stood about on the beach in disconsolate clumps, waiting to be told what to do next.

All of us were hopeful of obtaining a good supper, and cleaning up the worst of our travel stains, when Wulf called from the ship, Peter is dead! Most of us were too weary to respond. Except for Father Radwill, who immediately turned his back on us and headed for the nearest inn. I thought I saw a very smug look on his face as he did so.

Aelfric made his way back to the boat we had just left, to see if there was aught he could do to help. He and Captain Wulf wrapped Peter's body in a tattered brychan and carried it ashore.

Aelfric came back looking more weary and disgusted than he had when he got off the boat the first time. Poor Peter was lying smothered in his own cloak, behind the water barrels. What coins may have been in the cloak, are gone."

"Gone?" I was still too dazed from our journey to be able to respond with any sense.

"Indeed. Wulf has gone to speak with the inn keeper about making arrangements for our supper and Peter's burial."

"Supper. Aye, let's go to the inn and see what Wulf has to say."

I lead my horse along the sandy path behind Beorn, Aelfric, and several of the others. It wasn't until we reached the inn, Beorn felt for the pouch he always had hanging at his belt, and cried out in dismay, "My pouch is gone!"

"Gone?" My mind groped its way unsteadily through a fog of hunger and fatigue, to comprehend what was happening.

"Aye, gone it is, and it was with me until now." I could see Garth's excitement mounting.

Aelfric laid a hand on Garth's shoulder. "I didn't see it with ye when we left the ship. In fact, I wondered if ye had hidden it from the blessed Father."

"I didn't. Where could I put it that would be safer than under my hand?"

"Whoever took it, had to cut it off your belt when you weren't looking," I said.

I entered the inn with the others, disconsolate over being there and not at home. I could see Wulf in a corner, huddled over a flagon of mead with the innkeeper, but he called out when he saw us, "We'll make camp here. M. Fleurie here said the town would feed us once. Tomorrow, we bury Peter and then we'll be on our way."

That evening, after we had eaten our fill of bread and cheese, Garth took his complaint to Wulf at the inn. "I cannot be watching over all your belongings," Wulf told him. "I like Father Radwill no more than you, but I cannot risk our mission by accusing him of petty thievery and possible murder. But the man does bear watching. We'll see what we can."

Peter's body was laid to rest well before sext the next day. Father Radwill presided at the burial. He spoke in wonderfully unctuous tones of Peter's innocence and generosity. "This young man has given his life with no thought of personal gain. His only goal has been to further the mission of Christ's Church. God's angels are now rejoicing to have him in their midst." Father Radwill did his best to look everywhere but at what was happening round him. He would not look any of us in the eye, nor did he even once look at the casket as it was lowered into the ground, but stared off into the trees growing nearby. His hands shook over his breviary, and he almost fell into the grave meant for Peter, when he threw his handful of dirt onto the casket. I could only stare at the man, wondering the earth didn't open up and swallow him into its depths, for all the lies he spoke.

Within the hour we began our march south and east through Gaul, where the peasants were trod hard under the heels of their overlords, and what was left was trod on by the Church.

As we toiled our way south, some men joined us for a day or so, and then turned about to go to their homes, as if only a few days walking with the holy crusaders would be enough to insure heaven's blessings on them and theirs. Every time I saw a man turn his back to us and head north or west, I wanted to go with him, not with these Normans.

Of the crusaders who stayed with us, I had never seen so many people amassed with one goal in mind; killing pagans. Though most of the men who stayed with us were shoeless and weaponless peasants, they all expected to kill pagans. Aye, if they lived, they would go home in glory, and the priests told them they would each and every one be sitting on the right hand of Christ in heaven; if they died whilst killing Pagans. I wondered, if we all died in battle, would we have to take turns sitting by Christ's side? With so many men lining up to sit beside Him, I doubted any of us would have much opportunity for it.

Father Radwill waxed eloquent on this, saying, "Christ in heaven is commanding you to wrest the holy cities from the filthy clutches of the Saracen Turks. You will know them by their works, for all they do is of the Devil." Aye well, by then I believed Father Radwill's works were of the Devil. But Wulf had said he would not countenance an accusation against the man.

We joined with Bishop Raymond du Toulouse's forces in a village near Cleremont. Wulf said it was a blessed day when we met them. I thought not. Joining forces with a Norman Bishop was the last thing I wanted to do. I would have turned about and marched back home right then, but fear of what Prior Turgot would do to my father kept me with the crusaders.

Once we joined the men of Raymond du Toulouse, our company consisted of more men than I had ever seen before in one place. We now had divers Bishops, who wore glittering chain mail and carried weapons just as the Knights did, and more priests than I cared to count. These marched with the knights and Bishops to intercede with God for the Church. Those priests expected they would keep the spirits of the troops up with their piety and humility. Father Radwill marched proudly with them, his nose high in the air as though he were a Bishop in disguise, and not a lowly priest from a see on the outskirts of nowhere, far in the north of England. Then there were countless yeomen such as I, some of us mounted, many of us not, and even more foot soldiers. Most of us had almost no armor, and seldom carried much by way of weaponry, but I soon learned we were expected to do the bulk of the fighting.

And there were women. When I first saw them I thought me of Lisbet, who would gladly have marched anywhere to stay with me. Some of those women were with us because they didn't want to be separated from their men. Most of them were not attached to any one man, but slept with any who came their way. For this, and many other reasons, I was soon glad Lisbet was not with us.

Where there are women, there are inevitably children. These pitiable mites had to march with the rest of us, and when food ran short, they starved with the rest of us. If nights were cold, they often had to give up a warm bed for any man demanding the comfort of a woman.

We had wagons, pulled by pack animals, but they were loaded with weapons and tents for the knights and Bishops. Those of us who did not have a horse or donkey walked. At night, we slept on the open ground, wrapped in our cloaks.

The town where we met Raymond du Toulouse was a prosperous one. Most of the cottages I saw were snugly-built, and well cared for. Even the peasants wore more colorful gowns than I was used to seeing, as they dyed their woolens in bright shades of blue and yellow and even red. Since the Conquest, we in Durham seldom bothered coloring our tunics. We had too much to do simply to survive from one day to the next, to bother with such niceties.

I hadn't seen olive trees before coming here. Their fruit was so bitter, I had no idea why people prized them until I tasted the oil from them. Nor had I seen grapes growing in such variety and profusion. The wine these people made from their grapes tasted horribly sour to me. I could not understand why anyone would drink it. Now, I remember the wine with pleasure. It's one of the few good memories I have of the crusades.

I thought I surely had Father Radwill, when I spied him one day sitting at the opposite end of the table from me at the inn. He was crouched over his drink, and I saw him pull a coin out from a pouch the strap of which was cleanly cut through, to pay the innkeeper for a pitcher of wine. I got up from where I sat and went to the priest to question him on it. "'T is a penance I keep, carrying my worldly belongings in a pouch with a broken strap," he said.

Wulf was there. He must have seen my ready fist, as he would let me question the man no further. As soon as Wulf interrupted us, Father Radwill scurried out of the inn as fast as his legs would carry him. "Our survival as a fighting troop depends on keeping the Normans' good will. That we will not do if we are seen to be murdering our priest." He held my arm in his nearly iron grip, as we watched the priest scamper down the path to camp.

"You should have let me drop him in the ocean when I had him. He'd be well out of the way, now!"

"And risk your eternal soul over the killing of that insect? He's not worth it!" Wulf's reasoning did not sit well with me, but there was naught I could do but swallow my pride and continue to seethe every time Father Radwill crossed my path.

Summer was beginning to set in, and the heat of the day, followed with sleeping outdoors on piles of leaves or grass, conspired to make my chain-mail impossibly uncomfortable. I was for taking it off and leaving it where it lay. But Wulf would not allow it. "Be thankful ye have it, lad, and never take it off."

"What? Never take it off? It'll grow fast to my skin!" When the sun shone, sweat poured down my back, and the weight of the chain on the padded tunic I wore under it ground into my flesh unmercifully.

"You'll be a walking fortress with your shell."

"More like an over-grown insect, all gooey under my carapace."

"You can bathe when we get to Jerusalem."

"Jerusalem," I howled. "I may never see Jerusalem!"

"You may be surprised over what you do see."

It was true, those of us who had chain seldom took it off, even to sleep, as doing so could leave us all the more vulnerable to the enemy.

The farther south we went, the more I discovered our enemy was everywhere, even among the good Christian peasants. They had good reason to attack us, when we stole their hard earned stores of corn, and destroyed their crops as we marched south. It mattered little to our troops whether those peasants were Christian or no. Hungry bellies were king.

A heart-breaking weariness our march became. Our food ran short, as well it might. Carrying enough for all of us over leagues and leagues was impossible, so we had to forage for what we needed. Through England and much of Gaul, people had given us supplies willingly enough. But the farther south we went, the angrier people were. As we left Gaul, and entered the Kingdoms of Hungary, and Servia, our kind were not welcome even by the good Christians, whom we had vowed to free from the infidel's yoke.

Aelfric, slender of build and lively of temper, knew how to make us all laugh when our spirits were low, for he had a mischievous mind that could never accept a thing as it was given without first testing to see how it could be made different. Much as he hated the Normans, he marched along with us, whistling and singing bawdy songs. At the end of the day, when the rest of us were too weary to hold our heads up, he would sit with the children, telling stories and playing games. And for the women, he always had a kind word or two. Aye, Aelfric was a favorite with everyone.

He even knew how to find food for the lot of us in places where there seemed none to be found, and everyone looked up to him for that. "Aelfric, where did you get this flour, ready milled at that?" I asked when my friend came back to camp one evening carrying two large sacks over his shoulders, just after the sun had gone down.

"You don't want to know."

He was right, I didn't want to know, for stealing a peasant's food was repugnant to me. Aelfric had always been the one to initiate mischief when we were boys. But I did not want to resort to sneaking it out of someone's larder, as these sacks appeared to have been. I knew too well the labor of the soil, and had vowed I would never fight for stores which the peasants had carefully laid by for their own families. These skirmishes too easily became pitched battles against the very Christians we had come so far to free.

At last, even Aelfric's magic had its limits. We went for what must have been days with not a morsel to eat. But I was still too proud to take what was not mine. By the time we reached Sclavonia, even the Knights and Bishops with us were starving. Aelfric had at times been able to barter some labor for food until we left Gaul, but as we marched south, the tongues we encountered were so new to us few men could barter aught he had for even a crumb.

Desperation made thieves of all of us. And the Sclavs retaliated in kind, killing off any straggling members of our band they could reach, including women, who usually were not armed and were often clumsy with what weapons they had, and children, who only had their poor wits to defend themselves. A few old men, who had thus far survived the march, were also picked off by the Sclavonians. The old men died believing they would go straight to heaven. I hope they did. The women died with cries over the injustices they had been dealt. The children simply died. The memory of those deaths hangs about me like a miasma.

As we marched through Sclavonia, Bohemond, The Bishop of le Puy who was supposed to be setting a good example to us, would ride off to the nearest town and hobnob with whomever he found there. Some of us thought 't was to bargain with the local officials for food and safe passage through their lands. But he seldom made his way back to camp before cock's crow, and then he would be stinking with wine and singing bawdy songs. 'Twas the Bishop's singing had us up most mornings by daybreak. When the rest of us were rising to be about our work, he would fall into a stuporous slumber and rumble of the fine wenches he'd enjoyed the night before.

One evening, after sleeping off his stupor, the Bishop left his wagon, telling his squire he knew he could find better lodgings for the night elsewhere. He rode into the town on his donkey, and unknown to any of us, he was seized by four Sclavonian ruffians defending the honor of their women, just as he reached the western gate.

The following morning, a number of us were gathered round a common cook fire where we could begin the gossip of the day, and ease the chill out of our bones, garnered from sleeping on the ground the night before.

"Bohemond is after me head, he is." A scruffy woman, who could have been any age between twenty and seventy, accosted me with these words.

"Oh? Why?"

"Me little girl, Mathilde she is. Was knocked over by his fine horse, and can't walk now. I'm with him, because he said he wants me here. I didn't ask to come. Not me."

"Oh aye! None of us is here cause we asked to come," Aelfric chimed in, to the laughter of everyone round the fire.

"Me sister and me were content where we were. We shouldn't have come. But Mathilde is his, don't ye see. I went to him to ask his help for her." She spat a gob of well chewed weeds into the fire where it spattered and sizzled. Most of us were so hungry we even tried to eat the grasses the cattle grazed on. Little enough nourishment did we glean from that.

"Did he offer any help?" I asked.

"All he did was glare at me like, and say I was a sniveling wretch who had no business bothering him with me problems. He had more important things to think on, so he said. Told me if he caught me sniveling round him again, he'd have me flayed. So of course I went to him again, last night. But he wasn't there. He was off doing what ever it is he does at night, now. I stole some of his lordship's fine miniver lined robe, so's my little one would have something soft to bed her in. Only took half, don't ye see? But now, he'll know I took it. Sooner than I care to think on't he'll know."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said, patting her shoulder. 'Twas obvious she needed to unload her troubles.

"I think we can all guess what Bohemond's been doing at night," Aelfric said, stirring the fire round to put it out, as there was very little wood, and we needed