Embers (34 page)

"Will you keep any of the books?"

"Just one."

Brand shifted the weight of their son against his chest.

"Even if it gets into your head and stays there forever?"

"Why do you think I had another copy made of Boethius?"

Boethius who wrote not of transience but of the permanent joys of the spirit

The firelight flickered in the Bernician air but it was nothing to Brand's warmth.

"Because you are happy?"

"Aye."

Alina leaned her head against his shoulder and the peace stole through her heart. The circle was complete.

The northern English kingdom of Northumbria
lived dangerously. Its sporadic fights were internal, as well as with neighbouring kingdoms such as that of the Picts (northeastern Scotland) and the Mercians (English midlands).

King Cenred reigned two years before being replaced by Osric, brother of his predecessor and rival, King Osred. But a compromise must have been hammered out because Osric named Cenred's brother Ceolwulf as his heir.

Ceolwulf managed to hold the throne (with one interruption) for nine years and was immortalized as "most glorious" by that most famous Anglo-Saxon historian, Bede.

Bede believed that if history recorded good things of good men, the thoughtful hearer would be encouraged to imitate what was good.

Arts such as the writing, copying and reading of books flourished in Northumbria with a success that defied political turmoil.

Apart from the kings, all the characters in the book are imaginary. The background against which they struggled and triumphed is as real as the author can make it

* * * * *

Sometimes we meet another person by chance and sometimes we seem to meet a special stranger by fate.

I wanted to create a story for a woman who finds just such a magic stranger at a desperate crisis of her life.

The lady Gemma knows the danger of helping the unconscious man lying at the forest eaves, but she will not leave him to die. As the wounded man recovers, her faith seems justified. But the stranger hides secrets. He is a man trapped between two worlds, belonging nowhere.

Ash lives under the taint of disloyalty, haunted by a past he can share with no one, least of all with a lady, a skilled goldsmith dedicated to her task of creating beauty. He is a warrior, sworn to the service of a king who stands alone against the invading Viking armies.

But Gemma and her captive brother face danger. Ash stands at the crossroads, between the demands of his mission and keeping faith with the woman whose trust he would win above all others. The prize is beyond hope—the kind of love that would bring him home.

The king to whom Ash swore faith was real. Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, finally turned back the sweeping invasion of the Viking forces. I hope you enjoy
A Fragile Trust
, the first of my tales that cele-brate the spirit of the men and women who kept faith with their king in those dangerous times.

Helen Kirkman

A FRAGILE TRUST

by Helen Kirkman

Coming in April 2005 from HQN Books

Chapter Excerpt

The Mercian border, England

Spring, 872
a.d.

"Stop," shrieked Gemma. "The man is alive."

The horse and cart lurched to a halt so abrupt it nearly threw her.

Gemma's gaze fixed on the heap of rags beside the track. She could make out the startling breadth of the man's shoulders under the torn wool, glimpse the bare thickness of a muddied thigh.

She leaped down while the cart was still rocking.

"Don't! Lady, stop. There could be others, waiting for you to go near the trees—"

But she would not stop. The figure of the man drew her. She watched the dark shape: motionless, damaged, infinitely mysterious. The pale gleam of uncovered flesh.

The naked skin belonged to the strong sinuous length of his leg stretched out in the damp bracken beside her. She stared at the gaping cloth, the taut swell of muscle exposed beneath; at the blackened slashing line of what could only be a sword cut.

Naught about him was what she had expected. She had thought him one of the poor, starving wretches who haunted the countryside in the wake of the Viking raids. Heaven knew there were enough of them.

But swelling muscles did not belong to starving men and while his wounds could be those of a robber's helpless victim, she felt in her bones that this man had fought. And there had been a skirmish, quite recently, which the Vikings had won. She had heard their boasts.

He was filthy. He was completely alone.

He was lying facedown. The broad battered width of his hand was wrapped, nay clamped, round a tree root, as though if he could no longer walk forward, he would crawl.

A warrior's hand.

She despised warriors.

The temptation to give in to good sense was almost overwhelming. The battered man was a stranger, worse, a soldier. For all she knew he could be Danish, some Viking ambushed in revenge, set upon and left for dead.

She let go of the man's sleeve, wiping her hand clean. Dried leaves shed cold and dampness against her skin. Mud and…blood.

What if he died?

She could not tear her gaze from the stranger, from the heavy, outstretched warrior's hand.

Her own hand slid forward, reaching out until her fingers touched the stranger's flesh. She could feel each separate knuckle of that fierce grip. His skin was freezing. She could not pry his fingers free.

"I cannot leave him." She scarce knew whether she had spoken aloud.

In that moment, the stranger moved.

His eyes were the colour of the forest, dun shadows and green light, so deep they did not seem to belong to a world dweller but to a spirit, a
wood-wose
. Deep beyond imagining.

Sudden fire seemed to erupt around her, despite the cold—wild, fast forest fire. The wood-dark eyes burned into hers. The spine-crawling silence of the air beat against her ears.

"Who are you?" The English words, deep as the earth's fastness, seemed not to break the tingling silence, but to be part of it. His voice demanded an answer. Yet it hurt him to speak. She could tell that from the tautness of his mouth, the heaviness of his breath. His speech was not Danish. It was as Mercian as hers.

That did not take away one iota of the danger.

"I am Gemma."

"A jewel, then."

His gaze held hers. The strange wildfire inside her kindled, coursing through her veins, making her whole body burn, so that sight and feeling and sense dizzied with the power of it. It was like the rush of the strongest mead.

The mysterious male creature under her hand had made her feel that.

Beside her the lifeless fronds of last year's bracken crackled and the sharp snap of winter-hard twigs broke the spell.

A kind of panic leaped inside her. She was mad to linger here beside the dark bulk of the forest filled with outlaws and thieves and the bitter dispossessed.

"Lady, come away."

The hazel gaze flickered past her to the grimness of her escort's face before turning back to her. All at once, the strained face seemed not that of an otherworldly spirit, but man-kindred, human, and therefore vulnerable despite its evident will.

He would ask for her aid. He must. She knew, with a startling completeness, that she would not refuse him. The urge to reassure him, to respond to the humanness that she saw, to tell him he was not alone, cut through mind and flesh.

"It is all right. I will not leave you. I will help you—"

"Nay." The word was forced out of him, like an act of will, and she understood what she should have known the moment she had seen his hand. He would not beg for anything.

"You must leave me—"

Not a reproach, not a plea. It was a command.

"No—"

"You must go. I will bring you danger."

Danger
. Her skin, the very air around her, shivered with it.

"
No
." She tried to hold the shifting brightness of his eyes, to tell him without words what the breath-less tingling air told her. Things she did not know herself. That there was more to this than a chance meeting of strangers, that a bond had been made, of what kind or how was beyond her understanding. It was just there.

But the forest-green gaze slid beyond her to fasten on her escort.

"See her away—"

"No…" she began, but the gaze was gone, far beyond both of them, into some realm she could not follow. She watched the thick brown lashes drift closed, cutting her off. She could not hold his gaze, could not hold him. She let go of his hand.

She could not afford to upset her Viking masters. She could not bring an unknown and dangerous fighting man into the camp, an Englishman.

She looked at the cut on the muddied swell of his thigh. He was not her responsibility. She had more responsibility than she knew how to endure. She should leave this man, this stranger, this warrior creature to his own fate.

Even the stranger had seen the truth of that.

She knew what her decision was. She straightened up.

She would have to be quick. Very, very quick.