The Copper Sign

Text copyright © 2006 by Verlagsgruppe Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG,

Bergisch Gladbach

English translation copyright © 2012 by Chadeayne Associates

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

The Copper Sign
by Katia Fox was first published in 2006 by Bastei Lübbe in Köln, Germany, as Das kupferne Zeichen.

Translated from the German by Lee Chadeayne.

First published in English in 2012 by AmazonCrossing.

Published by AmazonCrossing

P.O. Box 400818

Las Vegas, NV 89140

ISBN: 978-1-61109-034-5

Dear Readers,

I invite you to follow me on a trip through England and France during the Middle Ages and meet both the fictional characters of the book as well as the Norman knights who actually lived at the time: Baudoin de Béthune, Thomas de Coulonces, and Adam d’Yqueboeuf, for example, but above all Guillaume (pronounced
giyome
) le Maréshal, known in the English-speaking world as William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. He is regarded still today as the best, the greatest knight of all times, and has captured my heart from the very first moment I met him in a history book.

With warmest wishes,

Katia Fox

“Good Lord, Ellenweore, if only you were a boy!” Despite his harsh words, Osmond looked at his daughter proudly, wiping the anvil with his hand in order to remove the tinder. “What an awful shame—I have a son who sneaks off as soon as I turn my back, while my little girl is a born blacksmith.” He gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder. Osmond did not often speak so approvingly of her.

Ellen felt a happy sense of warmth, and blood rushed to her cheeks. “Aedith!” she said, with a quiet sigh, when her sister flung the heavy wooden door open and stood at the threshold to the workshop.

As always, Aedith refused to enter the smithy, afraid of soiling her fine clothing. Kenny, her little brother and Osmond’s youngest child, kept tugging at her arm, but the more he persisted, the harder she dug her fingers into his little wrist. Suddenly she grabbed him by the ear and pulled him up. Kenny stretched as far as he could and stopped squirming.

“Mother told me to bring him out here to you,” Aedith said with contempt in her voice, pushing her little brother into the smithy. She motioned with her chin toward her older sister. “And Mother wants Ellen to go and fetch water and gather wood.” Aedith stood at the door, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other. “Come on, Ellen,” she scolded, “hurry up! You don’t think I have all day, do you?”

Osmond was clearly finding it hard to remain silent. The striker who helped him with the bigger jobs had been sick for a week, and he needed Ellen for the next step. Kenny was still too young and not of any real help yet, but Ellen knew very well that Osmond wouldn’t contradict his wife. He had never done that, and he wouldn’t do it this time either. With a deep sigh, she put down the tongs, slowly took off her beloved apron, and stooped over to tie it around her little brother. The leather apron reached down to his ankles, and the belt was so long that Ellen had to wrap it twice around his thin little waist.

Osmond watched her in silence. Not until she looked up at him did he nod, a bit peeved.

“Did you want to say something?” her sister sneered.

Ellen shook her head and followed Aedith to the house. Shoving the heavy iron bolt aside, she pushed the door open and entered.

“Haven’t I told you a thousand times to stop pestering your father in the shop?” Leofrun scolded.

“Yes, Mother, but…”

“Don’t always contradict me, you impertinent thing,” her mother interrupted harshly. “You know Kenny’s supposed to be helping Osmond in the smithy. You are the eldest and your job is to take care of the house, whether you like to or not. Now get to work!”

A resounding slap caught Ellen by surprise. She raised her head and turned away with a burning cheek. But not for anything in the world would she have let her mother see how much it hurt. She wouldn’t allow either her mother or Aedith to savor such a triumph. Early in life she had gotten used to bearing the pain of beatings. This was exactly what she did best—defying her mother by neither crying nor giving in. But it wasn’t so easy to swallow the bitter and angry feelings. Did she have to do all these boring things just because she was a girl? Any idiot could go and get water, gather wood, clean the house, do the wash— even Aedith, she thought with condescension. She knelt down at the fireplace, swept the ashes into a little pile, and when she closed her eyes, it almost smelled like being in the smithy again.

Kenny would be a smith someday, but she couldn’t, although as far back as she could remember, she had spent most of her time in the smithy with Osmond. That was a place where she felt safe and secure, maybe because Leofrun never once set foot in there. As soon as she was on her own little feet, Ellen had started sorting the coal by size for Osmond to use. When she was five or six she cleaned the hearth for the first time. For the last three winters she had been allowed to use the bellows and hold the iron in the tongs while her father hammered it. And last spring, when she got to use a hammer for the first time herself, she could feel the power metal had in it.

Hammering a hot iron made a dull sound, as the metal drew strength from your arm and took shape. On a cold anvil though, the sound of metal rang clear, and the hammer sprang back all on its own. This rhythm—three or four blows on the iron, then one on the anvil—saved strength and sounded like music. Ellen took a deep breath. It just wasn’t fair! But there was no point in arguing with her mother. Leofrun hated her more than anything, that was sure, and never missed a chance to let her know. Ellen picked up the two leather buckets, poured all the water left in them into the kettle beside the hearth, and quickly left. Outside, next to the house, her youngest sister Mildred was kneeling in the vegetable garden, patiently picking hungry caterpillars off the cabbage.

“Keep a few for me to put in Aedith’s bed,” whispered Ellen to her, grinning.

Mildred looked up, surprised, and smiled bashfully. She was the quietest and best behaved of Leofrun’s children. Ellen walked listlessly down the stony path to the brook that wound its way through the meadows behind the smithy. She took off her shoes, gathered up her skirt, and waded into the cool, sparkling water where it was easier to fill the buckets. Suddenly a form emerged sputtering from the water and squirted a mouthful of water at her.

“I don’t have any time, I’ve got to fetch water,” she snapped at her friend Simon before he could say a word.

“Oh, come on, first take a swim. It’s so hot today.”

Ellen filled her bucket and worked her way back to shore. “Besides, I don’t want to,” she lied sullenly, and sat down on a rough, grey rock. In reality, she envied Simon, and except for working in the smithy, there was hardly anything she liked more than to go swimming with him. Even so, she had turned him down with one excuse after the other this year. When Simon ducked underwater again, she folded her arms across her chest. Last summer she could still go swimming without her chemise, but all that had changed within the last few months. She felt with embarrassment the little bumps that had begun to grow under her smock. They were firm and sometimes a bit tender. “It’s stupid being a girl,” she grumbled. Had she come to the world as a boy it would have been a lot better—that’s exactly what Osmond thought, too!

Simon waded ashore. “Do you know what I’d like now more than anything?”

Ellen shook her head. “No, but since you have a bottomless pit for a stomach, I expect it has something to do with eating.”

Simon grinned, nodded vigorously, and licked his lips. “Blackberries!”

“What about the water?” said Ellen, pointing at the two buckets she had filled. “And I still have to go and get wood.”

“We’ll do that later.”

“If I’m gone too long, Mother will hit me again. I don’t know if I can take that again today and not fight back.”

“If we do it together we’ll be finished faster, and she won’t even notice we took a little time for fun.” The drops of water on his shoulders sparkled in the sun. He shook himself like a dog, and the water flew off in all directions. Then he pulled on his dirty grey shirt. “The biggest, juiciest blackberries are out by the old cottage at the edge of the forest, and they taste soooo good!” He rolled his eyes in anticipation. “Come on, let’s go!”

“Are you crazy?” Ellen tapped her forehead. “Old Jacoba was a witch, and goblins live in her house!” Ellen felt the hair standing up on her arms and all down her back.

“Oh, that’s nonsense. Goblins live in the forest, not in cabins,” Simon replied with a boastful swagger. “Besides, I was in the house, and I didn’t see any goblins there, really.” He tilted his head to the side and looked at Ellen out of the corner of his eye. “So tell me, since when have you been such a scaredy cat?”

“But I’m not!” Ellen replied angrily. There was no way she could let that criticism stand, so she followed Simon across the meadow that lay between the river and the forest. Most of the dry grass had been stripped bare by the sheep. The only spot the sheep hadn’t chewed up yet was the dry grass on the hill on the west side of the field. The grass here was almost chest high, hiding dense patches of prickly thistles that scratched their legs and stinging nettles that raised smarting, red welts on bare skin. Ellen wanted to turn back, but then Simon would have said again that she was a coward. Arriving at the top of the hill, she looked along the forest’s edge, blinking in the bright sunlight. There, behind a few birches, stood the ramshackle cottage. On the left, only a stone’s throw away, a sturdy horse with a gleaming reddish-brown coat was peacefully grazing in the shadows. Ellen ducked behind the foliage.

Instinctively, Simon did the same. “What’s the matter?” he whispered, surprised.

“What’s that horse doing here?” she said, pointing at it. “It’s Sir Miles who rides that sorrel.”

Shortly after being named Lord Chancellor by King Henry II, Thomas Becket was granted an income from the County of Eye, to which Orford belonged. Sir Miles was a member of Becket’s household, but he acted as if Orford belonged to him. Everyone knew how unscrupulous he was in filling his own pockets, and they feared his bad temper. The only ones who openly admired him were her mother and Aedith—they found him elegant and stately. They cackled like geese whenever Sir Miles came to the smithy, where he treated Osmond like dirt.

“Oh, him,” Simon said with contempt as he stood up.

Simon won’t simmer down until his belly is full
, Ellen thought to herself, and followed him cautiously. She looked around, but there was nobody to be seen. All was calm and peaceful—yet the forest seemed to have eyes. The summer sun was hot. Honeybees and bumblebees took advantage of the fair weather to collect nectar, and the air was humming with their busy comings and goings. Ellen was just about to go over to Simon when out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure moving silently out from the other side of the forest, heading toward the cottage. Her heart missed a beat. Was this place haunted by goblins after all? She squinted and looked carefully again. The figure was too large for a goblin. She breathed a deep sigh of relief. It was just a woman in a simple blue linen dress. Ellen couldn’t see who she was because of the brown scarf wrapped around her head. After looking anxiously in the direction she had come from, the woman slipped into the cottage.

Now with hesitant steps, Ellen went over to Simon. She didn’t know what troubled her more: the goblins that might be hiding in the underbrush and watching her, or the presence of Sir Miles and the strange woman. She kept looking over at the cabin, but nothing was stirring there.