Queen of the Summer Stars by Persia Woolley Read Free Book Online

King, her majesty and greatness of spirit put the needs of her subjects first from then on.
    That is, of course, what queens are expected to do, and I counted myself lucky to have two such fine examples before me. It didn’t ease the pain of losing Igraine, however, so Ettard and I spent a mournful, silent day in the litter.
    ***
     
    On the second morning Igraine’s companion began to talk a little between snuffles of grief.
    “She was like a mother to me.” The girl’s voice was light and childish. “Took me in the first day I came to the convent, and me an orphan with neither future nor hope.”
    I nodded silently, wondering if it was the loss of her own children that had given Igraine a particular talent for comforting motherless youngsters.
    With a little encouragement Ettard began to tell me about her early life. Her story was not an uncommon one. Raised on a steading near a river, she was twelve when a high-prowed ship came gliding up the watercourse. The men of her family were away fighting in the Great Battle, so the Saxon pirates made quick work of overpowering the women’s defenses.
    “I tried to hide in a hayrick while the raiders swarmed over the farm, but no matter how deep I burrowed, I could still hear the screams of my mother and sisters…raped and ravaged and finally spitted like sheep for roasting over a fire.”
    Her voice was flat, as though the memory no longer touched her heart, but the very idea made my stomach turn.
    “I might have been killed, too,” she went on, “but it was a young man who saw my sleeve poking out from the hay, and he didn’t give me to the leader, but kept me for himself in return for my not screaming.”
    Ettard blushed suddenly, having confided more than she had intended.
    “You poor thing,” I consoled her, putting an arm around her shoulder and letting her snuggle in against me.
    “I stayed on after the sea wolves left,” she whimpered, “hiding in the burnt-out husk of the barn by day and foraging for berries and roots at night. The Saxons didn’t come back, but as I’d nowhere to go, I would have starved to death. Or frozen in winter. Then, in late autumn, a wandering holy man found me and took me to the convent. I didn’t go there to take vows, M’lady,” she added hastily, “only to find refuge. My mum raised us all to honor the Old Gods, and the nuns took me in without even asking if I’d been baptized. I don’t know what would have happened if they hadn’t, for I have no family left in all this world.”
    She paused and I thought how lost a person is without kin to claim their own. There are few ways for a man to survive alone, with the woods being full of beasts and outlaws and so many of the cities deserted—for a woman it’s doubly difficult.
    “From now on we’ll be your family,” I assured her.
    Ettard stared up at me, her eyes shining with gratitude. Although I was only a few years her senior, she clearly seemed to view me as her guardian.
    As we neared Silchester she plied me with questions about the people she’d met last year, when Arthur and I had wed. Yes, Vinnie, who had come south as my chaperon, was still with us, as was my foster-sister, Brigit. No, Nimue and Merlin were gone, traveling to Lesser Britain on a kind of honeymoon. But both Bedivere and Cei, the foster-brothers from Arthur’s early life, were with him in Wales, quelling the last of the Irish insurgence.
    “And Morgan le Fey?”
    I stiffened. Arthur’s half-sister and I were not on the best of terms, for I had accidentally come upon her in the midst of a lovers’ tryst and she had flown into a rage, claiming I was no better than the “goody-goody Christians” and would no doubt spread the story of her affair throughout the Court. No amount of reasoning could calm her, even though I too was raised in the tradition of Celtic queens bedding whomever they wished, provided it did no harm to their people. Instead, she and her lover had packed off to her