Free The Briton by Catherine Palmer

came to the river—afloat with rotted vegetables and rags—two men waited with a small 68
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    fishing boat. Once they were settled, the men set to with their oars.
    The gentle rocking of the boat as it pulled upstream against the sluggish current lulled Bronwen’s body and soothed her troubled mind. Before long she fell asleep on Enit’s shoulder and stirred only when the boat bumped against a wooden pier at their journey’s end.
    Rubbing her eyes, she looked up into a sky filled with towering gray clouds. Outlined against them stood the imposing battlements of Warbreck Castle. The dizzying height of the keep that rose behind the stone wall took her breath away.
    “Look, child!” Enit cried out. “Rooms built one on top of another.
    “Imagine that.” Bronwen’s private chambers at Rossall had been on a higher level than that of the hall, but certainly not on top of it. She had never thought such a thing possible.
    “Welcome, Haakon, son of Olaf Lothbrok.” A mail-clad guard saluted as the party approached the keep. When he spoke, Bronwen realized that Viking warriors must have inter-married with their conquered Briton populace some generations ago. Though their tongue was different from her own in many ways, she understood it well enough.
    “Where is my lord?” the guard asked. “And the snekkar? ”
    Haakon related the details of the storm and its consequences.
    “And this,” he said, pointing a thumb at Bronwen, “is the bride.”
    To her satisfaction, the guard knelt before her. She bade him rise and lead her to the keep.
    “Such a great number of men,” Enit said under her breath as they passed through the wall’s gate into the courtyard.
    “Look at ’em standing at post and walking about the perimeters of the wall. They’re everywhere.”

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    “This holding is far more heavily guarded than Rossall,”
    Bronwen returned in a low voice. “I fear we are surrounded.”
    Ahead of them, Haakon pushed open the heavy oaken door of the great hall and led them inside. Though a large log blazed in the center of the room, its high stone walls were cold and desolate.
    “They have a dais,” Bronwen whispered to Enit.
    “But no musicians’ gallery above it. Perhaps these barbarians don’t even have music.”
    Bronwen elbowed her nurse to silence as Haakon pointed out the servitors gathered before her. “These are your personal attendants,” he said. “Most speak some form of your vulgar tongue.”
    Bronwen pasted on a smile as she studied the motley group, though she wondered dismally if they would be as difficult as Haakon. A small woman with flaming red hair and ruddy skin beckoned, leading Bronwen out of the hall and up a steep flight of stone stairs. Enit puffed along behind, muttering good riddance to Haakon, boats and stormy seas.
    At the top of the stairs a guardroom was filled with spears, swords, bows and arrows. In its center, coals from the night’s fire glowed, while a heap of blankets and furs indicated that this was also a sleeping room.
    “So many weapons, Enit,” Bronwen murmured as they picked their way across the room.
    To her surprise, the red-haired woman responded. “Your husband’s lands are hard pressed by Normans to the south and by Scotsmen to the northeast. He often travels to aid his neighboring allies and strengthen his borders.”
    The women crossed the guardroom to a door on the far wall. It opened into a small chamber with a sagging wooden bed in one corner and a narrow slit for a window. Thick layers 70
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    of rotting rushes on the floor sent up a dank musty odor.
    “Your chamber, my lady.”
    Bronwen turned to Enit, who stood aghast. “This?” Enit muttered. “This room is fit only for pigs.”
    “Enough,” Bronwen snapped. “Our trunks are aboard the snekkar, and I need a clean, dry tunic. See what you can find.” She turned to the other woman. “I must have a fire, and send at once for the rush strewers. I’ll not