Alaïs ran down the dark corridor and out into the courtyard without drawing breath, seeing ghosts and demons in every shadow. Her head was spinning. The old familiar world seemed suddenly a mirror image of its former self, both recognisable and utterly different. The package concealed beneath her dress seemed to be burning a hole in her skin.
Outside the air was cool. Most people had retired for the night, although there were still a few lights shining in the rooms overlooking the Cour d'Honneur. A burst of laughter from the guards at the gate-house made her jump. For a moment, she imagined she saw a person silhouetted in one of the upper rooms. But then a bat swooped in front of her, drawing her gaze, and when she looked again the window was dark.
She walked faster. Her father's words were spinning around in her head, all the questions she should have asked and had not.
A few more steps and she started to feel a prickling at the back of her neck. She glanced over her shoulder.
'Who's there?'
Nobody answered. She called out again. There was malice in the darkness, she could smell it, feel it. Alaïs walked faster, certain now she was being followed. She could hear the soft shuffle of feet and the sound of heavy breathing.
'Who's there?' she called again.
Without warning, a rough and calloused hand, reeking of ale, clamped itself over her mouth. She cried out as she felt a sudden, sharp blow on the back of her head and she fell.
It seemed to take a long time for her to reach the ground. Then there were hands crawling all over her, like rats in a cellar, until they found what they wanted.
'Aqui es.' Here it is.
It was the last thing Alaïs heard before the blackness closed over her.
BLOODFEUD
Richard Fletcher
Anglo-Saxon England
Northumbria was governed, under the King, Ethelred II, by an earl named Uhtred. He belonged to one of the great magnate families of northern England, had held his office of earl for at least ten years, was famed for his military prowess, and was the lord of extensive acres and many retainers. What is more, he was connected by marriage to the royal family: his third and current wife, in 1016, was a daughter of King Ethelred II. Earl Uhtred was, thus, a figure of immense wealth, power and prestige; quite simply, the most important man in the north of England. It was essential for Canute to secure his submission and gain his loyalty.
[...]
Earl Uhtred came to the meeting accompanied, as a great nobleman should be in a display of status, by an escort of military retainers - forty of them, we are told, and though the figure be both round and biblical we are not required to disbelieve it. As befitted a ritual exchange of peace, and given the guarantee of safe-conduct, weapons and body-armour would have been left with the horses outside, in the care of grooms and servants. Uhtred and his men entered the hall and stood in a body before Canute. If it were one of those brightly sunny days that you sometimes get in northern England in early spring they would have needed time for their eyes to accustom themselves to the gloomy interior.
Treachery was afoot. Another northern magnate, an old enemy of Uhtred's named Thurbrand, had perpared an ambush with Canute's connivance. Suddenly, armed and mailed men sprang out from concealment behind the hangings and slaughtered Uhtred and his men, every one. After a desperate and bloody mêlée which lasted perhaps only a few minutes, forty-one corpses lay among the rushes on the floor.
This act of treachery and slaughter set in motion the chain reaction of counter-violence and yet further violence, a bloodfeud that lasted for three generations and almost sixty years, which is the subject of this book.
As at Camelot, Merlin lived apart from the great hall in a humble dwelling, a cottage with a thatched roof and wattle and daub walls. He could have had a whole stone fortress to himself had he asked the King for it, but this was where he chose to stay. It was an ordinary enough looking place in the day, but Geraint knew that it was no more an ordinary house than Merlin himself was an ordinary man.
[...]
Merlin himself sat in a carved and cushioned chair. A great book, bigger even than the bishop's scripture, was spread out before him. He looked up, his face mild and unsurprised as Geraint entered, and he shut the tome before Geraint could make any sense of the runes and pictures written there.
'And what would you with Merlin, Sir Geraint?' inquired the sorcerer.
Geraint stood there for a moment. Until he had walked through the door, he had thought he knew what he was coming here for, but now, faced with Merlin's lined and ancient visage and his deceptivekly clear eyes, he was suddenly uncertain.
'What has happened to the Lady Elen? he asked finally.
Merlin ran his hands over the tooled leather binding of his book. 'I do not know for certain. She is held captive. Something prevents her from speaking plainly. If it is Morgaine, it is most certainly a binding or curse that holds her.'
