Don’t look at me like that, Oslac. You wanted to hear our story, didn’t you? Well, this is it, and I’ll tell it just as I promised. Maybe I’m not as good at this as you are, but I’m going to do it my way.
I was already in my nineteenth summer when I arrived at Heldeby, not that I wanted to go. My mother was the one who made the arrangements, or rather it was Eadmer really, since he was lord, but she was behind it all. I think he would have been content to let me live out my days however I chose. He was my only surviving sibling. Our elder brothers had both died when we were still young, one in a hunting accident and the other in a fall. Eadmer was five years younger than me, but we’d always been close, maybe because we had both survived when the others hadn’t. He enjoyed my company and my conversation, and I enjoyed his. But he was still coming to terms with what it meant to be a thegn and a master of men, a giver of silver and a receiver of oaths, and he was easily swayed. Our father had taken ill during the snows only a few months earlier, you see, and fallen into a fever so terrible that no one could do anything for him: not the wise woman nor the priest nor the pedlar who came with his mule and cart bearing ointments made from herbs and spices from distant lands to the east. None of us was expecting it; he’d always been strong, both in body and in spirit, and it was painful to see him laid so low. But day by day, hour by hour, his strength left him, until eventually during that night when the millpond froze he died, leaving Eadmer, fourteen and only just a man, to become lord in his place.
The burden was too heavy for him, young as he was and weighed down with grief at our father’s passing. Our father, who had always been kind, who had always provided, who had vowed to do whatever was necessary to keep us safe from the Frenchmen and their so-called king, Wilelm. All those duties were now Eadmer’s. He had to learn to be a lord even as he was still learning to be a man, and the only person he could turn to for counsel and help was our mother. She’d hear the monthly pleas in the manor court and administer justice; she understood when to be firm and when it was better to show clemency. She knew how much grain we could expect to reap if the weather stayed fine throughout the summer and how much if it was wet, and how much we would have left over and how much we might sell that for at market, and which fields should be set aside next year. She was more than fifty in years by then, but had lost none of her vigour and was still as wilful as she had ever been. She was the one who made the decisions in those early months after our father’s death, and Eadmer was happy to let her.
One of those decisions was that I should be married. Our father had indulged me too much, she said. By resisting her pleas to find me a husband and allowing me to remain unwed, she claimed he’d done me a disservice, making me lose sight of a woman’s place in the world. He’d always laughed off such remarks, and I knew this irked her. It was his wish that I should marry only when I felt I was ready and even then to a man I myself had chosen.
Of course I realise now that she was only trying to do what she thought was best for me. She was thinking that so many young thegns had already lost their lives fighting against the Normans in the wars in the south of the kingdom; she was worried that if I waited much longer there might not be anyone left for me. She herself had been lucky, so she would tell me often, for she was past twenty-five when my father took her to their marriage bed. Almost turning grey, I remember he’d once joked, or maybe it wasn’t a joke, because even in my earliest memories I remember noticing in her hair a few strands behind her ear that were paler than the rest. I don’t suppose it could have mattered to him, because he always used to tell me that when he first laid eyes upon her he thought her as beautiful as any girl ten years younger, and he said that if I turned out anything like her then I needn’t worry about finding a good husband even if I was thirty before I decided I was ready. In the meantime he encouraged me to practise my letters and to read the teachings of the Church Fathers and to learn the different tongues of these isles. He found me a tutor, a young priest named Leofa who had travelled widely across Britain and had even been as far as Rome, and who was well known for the breadth of his learning.
But then he died that winter – my father, I mean, not Leofa. He died and everything changed. My mother took it upon herself to find me a man, and Eadmer didn’t stop her. I think he was reluctant to get involved, in case he ended up upsetting either one of us. He had no wish to foist upon me a husband I didn’t want, but at the same time he needed our mother’s guidance. The last thing he wanted was to drive a wedge between them. In the end it was easier for him to give his consent and to let events take their course.