“He doesn’t look like a scholar.” The onion-breathed woman was back, echoing Osana’s own thoughts. “He’s so tall and strong. I wonder if the rumors are true though … that he’s never had a woman.”
That got Osana’s attention. She swiveled around, eyes wide. “Really?”
Delighted the ealdorman of Hagustaldes’s wife was finally giving her some attention, the woman—presumably the wife of one of the king’s thegns—grinned. “Aye—I’d like to be the one to show him the way of the furs … a fine-looking man like that. Wouldn’t you?”
Feeling her face warm, Osana turned back to see a slender figure sheathed in rose and gold glide across the floor toward the king.
Cuthburh of Wessex had arrived.
Raedwulf, damn him, had been right—she really was a beauty. Pale skinned and delicate-featured, Princess Cuthburh looked radiant with her white-blonde hair spilling over her slender shoulders.
Osana’s thoughts shifted back then to the question posed by the woman beside her. Truthfully, her answer was no—she had no wish to show Aldfrith how to bed a woman. As attractive as the new king was, she could not think of anything she would like less. She had a husband with the sexual drive of a ram and did not welcome the thought of any man touching her these days. Sometimes she wished Raedwulf would never lay a hand on her again.
Her husband met her eye now and grinned. “I told you so,” he mouthed before winking at her.
Osana cast him an exasperated look and shifted her attention back to where the princess had just stopped at Aldfrith’s side. Their gazes met, and the king smiled.
Osana’s chest constricted then, as she remembered her own handfasting.
How nervous she had been and how handsome Raedwulf. The feasting and revelry had lasted late into the night before Raedwulf had carried her off to the furs and claimed her as his. It had hurt, as her mother had warned her it would, but she had found that first night wondrous, exciting. How she wished she still felt that way.
Osana’s vision blurred as she continued to watch the couple.
They stood surrounded by the grandeur of the Great Hall of Bebbanburg: walls of red stone, a high ceiling, and flickering oil-filled cressets. Shields, axes, and swords hung from the pitted walls, all trophies from past victories and campaigns.
A tall, spare man with hawkish features and a receding hairline, dressed in fine purple robes, an iron cross around his neck, stood before Aldfrith and Cuthburh.
This must be Bishop Wilfrid, newly returned from exile, Osana reflected. She had heard tales about this man. The stories went that King Ecgfrith had banished him from Northumbria after the bishop had helped Ecgfrith’s first wife run away to a convent. However, with Ecgfrith’s death a few months earlier, Wilfrid had returned to the north, where he had taken up residence at Inhrypum, a town to the south of Bebbanburg.
The bishop’s voice droned on while he began the ceremony, outlining the responsibilities of man and wife. He wrapped a ribbon around the couple’s joined hands as he spoke.
Osana blinked rapidly. She was far too sentimental at these gatherings; she always got weepy at handfastings. Ridiculous really, when her own marriage had not turned out as she had hoped.
Yet her reaction surprised her, for it showed that there was still a tiny part of her remaining that believed in love. She believed there could be a happy union between man and wife, only that belief was not for her, but for others.
Chapter Three
The Feast
“a quail egg?”
Aldfrith held up a platter and smiled at his bride. The bishop had not lied, she was indeed comely. Although now he was seated next to her, the girl seemed incredibly young.
Cuthburh daintily took the egg. “Thank you, milord.”
“Please call me Aldfrith,” he replied. “Or you can call me Flann, if you like … for that was the name my mother gave me.”
A startled expression flitted across those blue eyes, and her smile tightened. “As you wish, milord.”
Aldfrith’s smile slipped. She was hiding it well, but he sensed the unhappiness that bubbled just beneath the surface. Just that one brief exchange told him that she did not welcome this match.
Picking up his golden cup studded with garnets, Aldfrith took a sip of sloe wine. Around him, voices thundered off the stone walls. The king and his chief retainers feasted at a long table upon the high seat, while the other folk within the hall sat at tables that formed squares around the tower’s four massive hearths.
He and Cuthburh sat at the head of the king’s table, upon carven chairs. Bishop Wilfrid sat to the queen’s right, his stern gaze surveying all. Oswald, the priest who had accompanied Aldfrith from Iona, had taken his place next to the bishop. The young man did not look entirely happy with the seating arrangement; the priest seemed to visibly wilt every time the bishop swung his gaze in his direction.
Aldfrith’s mouth curved in a half-smile. He had gotten to know Oswald quite well on the journey home and had learned a little about his half-brother Ecgfrith during that journey too. It seemed that Ecgfrith had sired a bastard daughter, a woman who had once been his seer but now lived with the Picts.
Oswald had been nervous of revealing too much about Ecgfrith’s reign at first. Yet the journey from Iona to Bebbanburg had taken a few days, and by the time they spied the fort on the horizon, Aldfrith felt he knew enough about the politics of this place to be able to hold his own here.
