Moyra Caldecott by Etheldreda Read Free Book Online Page B

watched anxiously as the girl took the necklace. She hesitated for a long time, turning it over and over in her fingers. But at last she looked up, and met the young queen’s eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said in a low voice, her face expressionless.
    Saxberga kissed her on the cheek and rode off to find her husband. It had not been easy to part with her mother’s necklace and she had thought Eanfleda would have been more pleased to receive it.
    The entourage started to move forward.
    Eanfleda turned her back on her mother and her home and all that she had known and loved. She lifted her chin and set her eyes on the horizon.
    So be it. It was God’s will.

Chapter 5

Oswin
    When Etheldreda had been six years at the school at Dunwich, her studies ranging from logic and arithmetic to metaphysics, astronomy and theology, she received a message from her father requesting that she return home to take her place at court.
    At first she was determined to refuse, instructing the messenger to declare that she wanted to become a nun like her eldest sister Ethelberga, her step-sister Sathryd, and her aunt Hereswith, thinking that in this way she would be allowed to pursue her studies uninterrupted. But the messenger told her on his own account that it was her mother who really needed her and that without her she would surely die.
    Startled she looked at him.
    ‘I have received no news that my mother is ill.’
    ‘No, my lady.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘She did not want you to worry, my lady.’
    ‘But,’ cried Etheldreda, ‘surely my father…’
    The messenger looked uncomfortable. He had already exceeded his licence and was afraid to say more.
    ‘What is it? What ails my mother?’
    ‘She… she is with child my lady, but…’
    Etheldreda’s face darkened. Over the past few years the queen had had several miscarriages, each one leaving her paler and weaker. Why could her father not leave her alone, Etheldreda thought angrily. Surely he could control himself if he really loved her.
    She told the messenger that she would return with him, and called for Heregyth. Together they started packing; Heregyth attending to her clothes, Etheldreda to the vellum pages of the half-finished psalter she was making for herself, and the pens, brushes and pigments her teachers were allowing her to take with her.
    ‘“Make me understand the way of thy precepts, and I will meditate on thy wondrous works” [1] ,’ she murmured as her eye fell on the words she had written that morning. How difficult to reconcile what actually happened in the world with how she expected it to be as the ever-present kingdom of God. Her father was a good man, yet he was destroying his wife.
    ‘My lady,’ Heregyth interrupted the train of her thought. ‘Shall I keep the blue cloak out for travelling, or the brown?’ Her eyes were bright and her heart was light. She had never been happy at Dunwich, though she had tried to make the best of it for Etheldreda’s sake. She was delighted that they were going back to Rendilsham and all the bustle of the great hall.
    ‘You decide,’ Etheldreda said abstractedly, and looked sadly out of the window at the long low buildings that had been such a haven for her these last years.

    One night, a few weeks later, when Etheldreda and her father were watching together beside her mother’s bed, she found it increasingly difficult to hold back her feelings of resentment.
    ‘Why, father. Why?’ she asked at last, fixing him with her accusing young eyes.
    He did not answer for so long she wondered if he had heard her. He sat hunched with grief, a big man, his eyes clouded beneath bushy eyebrows, the downward droop of his lips hidden in his full beard.
    ‘One day you’ll understand,’ he said at last in a low and broken voice.
    ‘I want to understand now,’ the girl said, an edge of hardness to her voice.
    ‘I love your mother.’
    ‘I know you do, but love is protective and caring, not destructive.’
    ‘What do you know of