Free Enchantress Mine by Bertrice Small

land did not belong to the serf, and could not be passed on to another generation. It was merely loaned to the serf by his lord in exchange for his labor.
    Although the miller, the priest, the blacksmith, the bailiff and the baker were freemen, the majority of people living at Aelfleah were serfs belonging to the manor. They could not leave the manor without the consent of their lord. The head of each family worked three days out of every week for his master. He was required to do whatever his lord might bid him, and neither he nor any in his family could marry without the lord’s consent. Serfs were usually poor, oppressed and miserable. Those who lived at Aelfleah were well-cared-for, generally content and prosperous for their class.
    The manor house was to all appearances typical of the time. Inside, however, major differences were apparent. Aldwine Athelsbeorn was quite eccentric in his architectural tastes. Constructed of dark gray stone, the house stood two stories high. The main floor of the building had once been a huge aisled hall subdivided by two lines of posts which supported its roof. The second story of the building had been built over part of the hall, and contained a large room called a Great Chamber which was a bed-sitting room for the lord and his family.
    The only means of heating available to the house had been a firepit in the hall, an extremely unsatisfactory arrangement as the windows, although few, were not particularly tight. The smoke from the firepit had exited the building through the thatched roof of the hall which when the wind blew from a certain direction merely directed the smoke back down into the room to choke its inhabitants and cover the meager furnishings with soot. The Great Chamber had been too cold in winter, stifling in summer, and damp when it rained.
    As his father’s second son Aldwine Athelsbeorn had not expected to inherit Aelfleah. To earn his way in the world, he had hired out his military skills as many a hot-blooded young Anglo-Saxon did. His prowess with sword and battleax had given him his surname, Athelsbeorn: meaning Noble Warrior. Unlike other young men, however, he had not confined himself to England. He had instead traveled to Scandinavia, to Byzantium, and disguised as a Moorish soldier, he had even seen the Holy Land. Now that the army of the Prophet controlled Jerusalem, Christians were not readily welcome.
    The world fascinated Aldwine for his was not a closed mind, and the blood of his Norman grandmother, herself a descendant of Rollo, ran thickly in his veins. He loved the color, the excitement, the sights, the smells, and the sounds of other lands, other cultures. There was a strong possibility that he would have never returned to England had not the unexpected deaths of both his elder and younger brothers recalled him. He had been about to embark for Sicily with some distant Norman cousins when his father’s message came, and a sense of filial duty he thought long dead had risen within him, and he had gone.
    In accordance with his father’s wishes he had gotten himself a wife, and brought her home to Aelfleah, but it was still his father’s house. If after his exposure to other places Aldwine found it less than comfortable it was certainly not his place to say so. His father was an Anglo-Saxon of the old traditions. He would not distress his sire in his old age with useless complaints.
    What he found most intolerable was the dreadful lack of privacy. It didn’t seem to bother the others of his race, and once had not bothered him. Now, however, even with the curtains drawn he could not feel at ease in bed with his wife when just beyond those curtains, his wheezing and snoring almost rocking the room, lay his father, and three body servants, and more often than not, some visitor. He knew Eada shared his feelings, but they spoke with no one else on the matter for they would have been considered odd to desire their privacy. Privacy was not Anglo-Saxon.
    When