The Silver Witch

The realization comes to her. She is not wearing the torc. She hurries into the kitchen and fetches it from her bedside table.

‘Right, Thistle,’ she says as she passes the dog on her way back to the hall, ‘hold on to yourself.’ With a determined step, she goes straight to the fuse box, clutching the torc tightly in one hand, and throws the switch a second time. The power is restored. She nods.

Good. That’s good. Okay.

Back at her computer she is uncertain as to how best to hold the piece of jewelry and type at the same time. She is reluctant to put it down, feeling the need for direct contact with it, but at the same time she doesn’t want to put it on again. She can’t imagine trying to search the Internet in the midst of the magic released by the torc. She settles for resting the thing in her lap as she works. Within minutes, she has found a plethora of historical Web sites dealing with early ninth-century Britain.

So much information! Getting through this lot could take forever.

With a sigh, she ploughs on, scrolling through document after document, frustrated by wrong turns and details that seem to duplicate themselves. She reads on, her eyes watering a little at the unfamiliar brightness of the screen. Half an hour passes. An hour. She makes a second cup of tea and works on, encouraged by the fact that the power has remained stable, but daunted by the size of the task she has undertaken. She returns to her seat and continues. She learns more and more about the people who lived around the lake in the early years of the tenth century. About how hard their lives were. About how they lived, and what dangers they faced from warring armies, harsh winters, and disease. She reads about how they dressed, what manner of music they made, and their beliefs. She has just reached a file containing information regarding the final attack on the prince’s dwelling on the little island when the lights flicker ominously.

No, not now! Not yet.

She reads on. She finds the extract from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles that the professor had marked for her, telling of the prisoners taken from the crannog.

‘Thirty-four, plus the princess,’ she reads out to a slumbering Thistle. ‘Yes, I know, I know, but who were those prisoners? Were any of them children?’ She reads on, but can find nothing. The same dead end she came up against at the museum. Nothing more. She leans back in her chair, the hard wood beginning to make her back ache. Setting her mind to the problem, she pictures the small group of villagers as they were taken away from their homes. She knows they would have been a pathetic collection of people. People who had just lost everything. Many would have seen their loved ones slaughtered. Some might have been injured. Their lives were in chaos. They were being dragged away. But how long did they spend at the court of the Mercian queen?

Basically, they were slaves, and slaves get sold. So where did they go next? Who was trading with Aethelflaed? Where would she have got a good price for them? I just need to look in the right place.

She tries a different search, using the words slave, Cymru, Aethelflaed and trading. Reams more of irrelevant data unscrolls in front of her. A page detailing the queen’s origins catches her eye. Aethelflaed was the daughter of Alfred the Great, and originated in the south of England. She lived there until she entered her arranged marriage into the Mercian dynasty.

Which means she would have had strong connections with the area. Probably relations still living down there too.

She shifts the region of her search to Wessex, the ancient collection of counties that included the city of Winchester, where Alfred came from. An essay on the family of the famous English king shed some light—there were certainly several cousins from the same generation as Aethelflaed, and they lived on in Wessex. A small, slightly clunky Web site run by a group of Alfred enthusiasts and reenactors snags her attention. There is an account of a household near the city, known to have royal connections, giving an insight into the everyday lives of the highborn of the time. Tucked away in all the data regarding births, marriages, wars and burials, there is a seemingly insignificant account of a party of visitors arriving from Mercia.

Bingo!

A small file, summarizing a change of ownership attached to four slaves, sent as a gift from the queen to her cousin in Wessex. In 918 AD, less than two years after the attack on the lake settlement, she sent a present of a handful of young slaves to Egberta of Wessex, who had a home midway between Winchester and London. Tilda squints at the screen, her eyes smarting now, blurring her vision slightly.

‘Here it is! “One young man, with red beard; one boy not yet fifteen, but strong…”’

There is a fizzing sound and the screen goes blank.

‘No!!’ She looks up. The power is still on, but the lights flicker and stutter. ‘Not now!’ She takes a deep breath, knowing she must not get upset, must stay steady and calm, but it is so hard to do so.