The Silver Witch(105)

She tries a different search, using the words slave, Cymru, Aethelflaed and trading. Reams more of irrelevant data unscrolls in front of her. A page detailing the queen’s origins catches her eye. Aethelflaed was the daughter of Alfred the Great, and originated in the south of England. She lived there until she entered her arranged marriage into the Mercian dynasty.

Which means she would have had strong connections with the area. Probably relations still living down there too.

She shifts the region of her search to Wessex, the ancient collection of counties that included the city of Winchester, where Alfred came from. An essay on the family of the famous English king shed some light—there were certainly several cousins from the same generation as Aethelflaed, and they lived on in Wessex. A small, slightly clunky Web site run by a group of Alfred enthusiasts and reenactors snags her attention. There is an account of a household near the city, known to have royal connections, giving an insight into the everyday lives of the highborn of the time. Tucked away in all the data regarding births, marriages, wars and burials, there is a seemingly insignificant account of a party of visitors arriving from Mercia.

Bingo!

A small file, summarizing a change of ownership attached to four slaves, sent as a gift from the queen to her cousin in Wessex. In 918 AD, less than two years after the attack on the lake settlement, she sent a present of a handful of young slaves to Egberta of Wessex, who had a home midway between Winchester and London. Tilda squints at the screen, her eyes smarting now, blurring her vision slightly.

‘Here it is! “One young man, with red beard; one boy not yet fifteen, but strong…”’

There is a fizzing sound and the screen goes blank.

‘No!!’ She looks up. The power is still on, but the lights flicker and stutter. ‘Not now!’ She takes a deep breath, knowing she must not get upset, must stay steady and calm, but it is so hard to do so.

I need to know who else was on that list! For God’s sake, just a few more moments!

Thistle gets up from her bed, coming to nudge Tilda’s leg.

‘I can’t keep it working! I can’t keep the fucking thing working!’ She stands up, gritting her teeth. ‘Okay. If that’s what I have to do…’ She picks up the torc and quickly pushes the heavy loop of gold onto her wrist. She waits. Nothing happens. Everything is quiet.

Too quiet.

It is the in-breath before the scream.

The room is filled with the roaring of a fierce wind, a sound from nowhere, a cacophonous noise that makes Tilda throw her hands over her ears. Thistle dives beneath the table. Tilda can feel the force of a gale against her face, but sees that this time nothing in the kitchen is being disturbed. Everything remains still. No cups crash to the ground, no books fly from the shelves, even the undrawn curtains do not so much as flutter. And yet she is painfully aware of a brutal force pushing against her, a pressing down, a buffeting and pounding. But it is only she who feels it. Only she who finds herself pulled this way and that, the breath all but knocked from her, the shrill sound growing inside her head. And then come the faces. Two, three, ten, dozens of faces, flashing before her, some old, some laughing, others crying, all with eyes staring intently at her, into her, questioning, probing. And their voices, mangled words and utterances in many languages, all gabbling and spitting at her, demanding of her, though she cannot understand what it is they are saying, what it is they want. She fears she will go mad, will finally lose her mind. She lurches forward, the whole room spinning, or is it she who spins? Nausea threatens to swamp her. A dizziness begins to take hold. In desperation she grasps the torc, ready to pull it from her arm. But then she sees another face among the many. A face she knows. Pale, and beautiful, and steady, returning her own gaze, unfaltering, knowing, strong.

Tilda chokes down panic and forces herself to let go of the torc. She pushes against the table, making herself stand upright, straight, using the power of her strong body to hold herself steady.

‘Enough!’ she shouts into the maelstrom. ‘I’ve had enough!’

It is as if all the air has been sucked from the room. There is a dazzling flash of whiteness. And then nothing. Silence. Everything as it was. Except that the laptop beeps gently back to life.

Tilda slumps onto the kitchen chair and frantically clicks points on the screen, searching for the document she was reading, dreading that it will somehow be lost.

‘No! Here it is, here! “… a boy not yet fifteen but strong and with green eyes; a woman past thirty but with good teeth; and a girl child, no more than three years, very pale, with hair clear as glass and eyes to match…”’ Tilda leans back in her seat, a tearful smile tugging at her mouth. ‘Found you,’ she says quietly. ‘I’ve found you.’