Osana listened, her chest constricting. She had to admit that Wilfrid was a far better speaker than poor Godwin. His voice was powerful, full of conviction.
Wilfrid stepped back then, turned, and nodded to the king. Aldfrith left the edge of the crowd and approached the riverbank. Then he removed a jeweled seax from his belt and placed the ornate fighting dagger upon the bier, next to Raedwulf. He then murmured something and bowed his head.
A few moments later Aldfrith turned, his heavy fur mantle billowing, and strode back toward the crowd, toward where Osana stood a few feet in front of the other mourners.
For an instant, their gazes met, and then he nodded. It was now Osana’s turn to pay her last respects. Feeling the weight of the crowd’s stares upon her, she walked down to the longboat. Standing before it, she reached up and removed the single bronze armring she wore upon her left arm.
It had been Raedwulf’s morgen gifu—morning gift—all those years ago. She remembered him giving it to her, as she stirred in the furs on the morning after their handfasting. She had felt queasy, for she had consumed far more mead than she was used to the night before. Yet her gaze had misted when her handsome young husband had knelt before her and handed her the armring.
It symbolized the bond between them, but it would go with Raedwulf to his watery grave.
Osana placed the armring upon the bier, her gaze resting one last time upon her dead husband’s face.
She felt nothing but a yawning chasm of emptiness.
“Go in peace, Raedwulf,” she whispered before stepping back from the boat.
A heartbeat later her husband’s men, his brother Deogol among them, brushed past her and waded into the water, pulling the longboat away from the banks. They heaved the craft into the current of the Tyne before returning to the shore.
Then Deogol took up his longbow and lit the end from a brazier that burned upon the shore. Her brother-by-marriage was a skilled bowman, the best in Hagustaldes. It was fitting that he would send Raedwulf off.
Silence settled upon the riverbank, the rain falling in a fine mist around them. Deogol drew his bowstring back, his brow furrowing in concentration as he marked his target. The longboat was drifting lazily out toward where the current flowed more swiftly.
The fiery arrow flew, arching high into the air and dropping onto the pile of dry straw encircling Raedwulf’s body. A long pause followed, and then the dry tinder ignited with a whoosh.
Osana watched it. She was vaguely aware that the king stood near her, as did Deogol, but she paid neither of them any mind. Instead, her gaze remained upon the flames that now roared high into the misty air.
Fourteen years she had been wedded to that man, and now she was a widow. Osana had been lonely through most of her marriage. She never felt understood by her husband. His liking for other women had driven a wedge between them, as had her barren womb, but he had been her rock in a hostile world.
Without him, she was truly alone.
Chapter Ten
Choices
ALDFRITH WATCHED THE ealdorman’s wife.
The cowled cloak she wore hid most of her face from view and cast a shadow over her eyes, yet there was a quiet dignity in her presence, in the way she held herself.
He had not forgotten their conversation in the orchard that morning two years earlier. She and her husband had left Bebbanburg the following day, and so he had been unable to talk to her again. But that brief conversation had stayed with him.
She had understood how he felt and revealed the loneliness in her own marriage.
He wondered what she was feeling now. There were no tears on her cheeks, although the air of melancholy shrouding her did not seem feigned.
A dozen yards away, Raedwulf’s pyre burned upon the river, a dark plume of smoke now lifting into the sky.
The mourners gathered along the riverbank, and Aldfrith noted one or two of the women weeping. One woman, in particular, a comely female with thick auburn hair tied back in messy coils from her face, looked beside herself.
She stood next to a tall blond warrior who bore a striking resemblance to the dead ealdorman. This must be Deogol, Raedwulf’s brother, and the new ealdorman of Hagustaldes. The weeping woman must have been his wife.
Another woman was crying nearby, a slender blonde girl who looked no older than eighteen winters. A fair-haired boy clung to her skirts as she sobbed.
Aldfrith took in the scene with interest before his attention shifted back to the widow.
He realized now why she did not weep.
Raedwulf’s household put on a great feast after his funeral, to honor his memory.
