Prologue

W agon clatter and thumps of heavy hoofs ricocheted through a narrow mountain pass cut high by prehistoric forces in overlaying a trail of thick red bed that indicated ancient cataclysmic shifts. Emerging from a steep incline at the mouth of the pass were two black, powerful, sure-hoofed Belgians drawing a large covered hoop-wagon with elegantly crafted spoke wheels. Despite the heavy dusting of travel and curious, makeshift patches covering each side of its richly leather covered hoops, the wagon still courted a soft gloss of black-stained oak underside, unlike any other for its time. The Wagoner gathered the reins in one hand to tip back his cap with the other and to wipe his forehead and eyes in his sleeve. Then he scratched his graying stubble while looking down at a horseman in a travel cloak and hood reining in a chestnut warhorse alongside.

The Wagoner heaved, "Well, my liege, at last! And I don't mean it for myself—the infant, you know."

"Aye, I know," said the horseman, "it's been a grueling journey—and were it not for your wife," gesturing to the wagon cover, "an impossible one," His bearded jaw dropped as he warily eyed smoke billowing from a castle on a foothill across a crescent plain with low-lying fog. "Why the smoke?"

"Over anxious cook, I imagine." The Wagoner chuckled as he held the reins taut in readiness for the descent.

The draft horses picked up speed as they began their descent down to the foggy sunken belly and slowly ascended the gradual rise out of the listless fog toward the castle. The horseman spurred past the tired team of ancestral Belgians, then raised his hand for the driver to come to a stop. The hazy sun, burning through leaden clouds, emblazoned his crested shield fastened to the saddle. On the upper left of the shield was a bursting star across a field of black and on the lower right a spiked wheel with flowers entwining its spokes. The escutcheon’s reflected rays alighted on the rider's closely trimmed beard, which matched the chestnut of his steed. He brought the spirited steed to a halt. His drawn face grew even more elliptic in viewing the lifeless scene. Vultures circled above smoke rising from behind the towering bailey wall. They continued on the inclining trail and held up at the foot of the moat’s embankment. Lifeless, slumping bowmen pocked the parapet crenels. Several bodies lay impaled over the dense palisade that fringed the outer edge of the moat. High above, dying flames were tonguing the loopholes of the smoking keep. The bridge was down and he saw that the portcullis was up most of the way. He swung round his destrier and headed back to the wagon. Dismounting, he hauled himself up behind the driver and opened the leather flap. The woman inside stirred and covered her breasts, while the infant continued suckling. His face flushed. "I'm sorry, Hagar, I didn't know,...but we have a serious problem up ahead."

"Oh, no, not the dreaded Nordic highwaymen!" she whimpered, holding the infant closer.

"Nay, you two slept through the morning. We are at the castle. It has been raided," he clarified, reaching for a heavy bundle on the richly cushioned facing seat.

She gasped and brought a veiny hand to her cheek. "By Zeus, we're cursed!—oh, this cannot be!" She tried to maneuver the baby and herself toward the open flap to look out.

"Stay, let's not jump on this just yet." He counseled, letting the flap fall. He looked up at the Wagoner. "Maél, help me into my hauberk."

"That bad, is it?" asked Maél. "My eyes aren’t what they used to be," he added, getting down from the seat. "Oh, do be careful, my lord. God help us if something should happen to you!" Maél went on as he helped his master into the heavy coat of chain-links.

"Just a precaution, my loyal servant. Would that I be so lucky to cross swords with any one responsible for this, but the scene seems too grimly complete for marauders to be in the vicinity," he said dismally while putting on his headpiece of chain mail. Maél held out the surcoat of armorial bearing. The knight slid into it, which matched the crest on the shield. He then girded his sword. He enjoined the Wagoner climbing back up to the driver's seat, "Wait here awhile till I signal you." Remounting, he cantered along the moat and palisade to the apron of the drawbridge where each side of the palisade bent back to the moat into which tall thick spiked posts were driven into the bottom of the murky waters, thereby serving the dual purpose of defense and supporting the bridge when down. He turned in his saddle and raised his arm in a forward motion; then Maél lightly snapped the team's quarters. The tall knight passed a burnt out break in the palisade. Judging from the number of bodies with foreign dress and battle gear, he derived that the invaders obviously chose this as their point of incursion. He reared back his horse, turned and motioned to the wagon some hundred feet back to halt. The knight crossed the drawbridge, looking over its sides to see still more bodies floating in the moat. He sighed lament that most were Alexandrian. Riding under the portcullis he could see it had not been rammed. In the expansive outer ward of the bailey, rats were feasting on the remains of slaughtered sheep. Futilely, he waved and clutched at swarms of flies gathering to glut and hatch as he passed ashen bodies stripped of their clothing strewed about the commoners' outer ward. The tall figure, looking drawn, dismounted near a cluster of bodies and lightly poked his immense cutting sword to no avail for signs of life. Remounting, he trotted to the stable. The enormous destrier whinnied from the enveloping smoke. The noble figure ducked under the thatched overhang and saw there was not a horse in sight. The storehouse too, he reasoned, had been looted before set to flames. He continued the trot through the gate of another bailey wall into nobility's inner ward to the manor or keep itself. By the heavy doors that had been battered ajar, a squire lay dead with a knight's sword in hand. He gathered that the youth had taken up the sword of his felled master to defend the lady of the keep. Having touched the body and noting it was barely cold, he ascended one of the towers. Its winding steps were smoke-free but slippery with the blood of several guardsmen who lay dead with their spears by their side. He pushed against the door into a spacious but modest room. A castle guardsman sat eerily against the door, stony eyes cast to eternal darkness, his own castle spear through his heart. The knight nervously stepped up to a platform bed whose draperies had been torn from a rack above and tossed in a heap across the mattress lumped with down. Hesitating for a moment, he pulled off the heap of drapery, whose crest of lilies wreathed on the spokes of a spiked wheel was distorted in the tangles of the bloody folds. He recoiled in seeing the woman, once so youthful even in her middle-age, lying in a ripped, bloody night dress. The violated woman in wrinkled shock from a mortal wound in the abdomen was staring at the torn canopy through half opened eyes. Rolling her head to the side, revealing a bruised and swollen cheek, she admitted a light of relief and recognition through the slits of her eyes that had so recently seen untold torment. She smiled though painfully. Her puffed lips quivered, her eye-lids scarcely stretched above the pupils and her half moon eyes of green brightened for a moment, then turned to glass. She tried to raise her small wavering hand. He saw that her usually long clean nails were jagged and covered in blood. He took her hand in his, pressing it to his beard; with his other hand he covered her breasts with remnants of her torn dress. He cried and murmured, "Oh, what unspeakable tragedy again has struck my heart! Dear mother, what lawless devils have descended upon your home?" He already knew as his eyes landed on a Viking twin horn-helm by the pillow.

The dying woman could scarcely part her lips and murmured weakly, "Who else?...but Kire’s...those savages wrapped in animal rage and blind to our light of law?...No time, my king,...I feel cool death more now than the warmth of life...Kiss my daughter...tell her my soul to heaven goes to await the knell for hers...though long hence, I pray....Take care of her, and child, good king. So sweet,..." Somehow her wit was in reserve for this dying stage; for she stretched her swollen lips and smiled. "alas....peppered with irony...that thou shouldst come personally to me and spread the news of birth — a son, I trust, to carry long and far thy mighty line?"

He choked, "Aye, Mother Catherine," then turned his eyes away, lest she read a tale of woe into them.

However her lips smarted, one more time she smiled and braved the pain round her eyes, which flashed bright green and sparked with amber to a portrait on the wall; she then clutched the gaping wound below her breast and gasped with a trailing whisper to the image of her beautiful daughter, "Sweet Alexa, thou too art a mother;...love thy infant as I have thee and on the anvil of Alexander, fire in thy royal son our proud heritage." Death thus invaded and laid its shroud upon the noble woman.

The tall figure folded her hands, brushed back the fall of her graying blonde hair, then kneeled by the bed and prayed sobbingly for her soul—and that of another even dearer — for an interminable spell. Finally he lifted her into his arms to carry the battered body out of the room. He descended the stairs with caution and respect for the bodies of the guardsmen and into the inner ward toward the chapel.

He kicked open the doors and gently placed her body on the altar step and slid the heavy sacrament table. The young king pushed open a stone door to a tomb. He picked her up and entered, placing her on a slab next to the enshrouded dusty remains of her husband. Brushing the dust off a folded shroud, he unfolded it and carefully tucked it round the fragile body. He made the sign of the cross. "Join thy daughter in peace, wise and noble Catherine," passed his lips brokenly. As he turned to leave, he glanced over at a statue, almost as tall as he, outlined in the shadows. Impulsively he approached it and with his hand swept away the thick dust. He was not surprised to see the face of Athena. She was sculpted wearing her familiar helmet and the heralded aegis across her breast, but instead of this breastplate bordered with serpents and in bas-relief the fearful Medusa, it blazoned with olive wreaths and lilies. Modified too was the absence of a spear and in its place in her other hand was a scroll with an engraving: intellectus agens. Running his finger over the scroll, he smiled, looking up to a chink high above through which tongued the gray ray of this lifeless day "Aye, just as I should expect to oversee the undying dead, from the once enduring Catherine line,...eh, Alexa?" He then slid back the heavy table to seal the tomb.

Examining more bodies in the inner ward, he found no life. He went into an immense stone kitchen to find more of the servants dead. Not a trace of food was left, except for some bones of pheasant and venison that had evidently been recently picked at and carelessly strewn about the flagged floor. A young page lay by shivering in a pool of blood. He clutched a parchment in his hand but freed a finger to caress the document's fleecy surface. Several rats were poised ready to devour until the intruder stamped his riding boot; they scurried away to a fat cook's corpse sitting up against a far wall. The tall king lifted the boy to a huge table and set him down gently. Withdrawing his sword, he swished off the fly-infested food scraps near the boy. He then took a greasy cloth from the end of the table and dipped it into a giant cauldron hanging over the vast hearth. Though the fire was out, the water was warm to the touch and he dipped the cloth to rinse. He washed the blood from the boy's face. The boy looked at him with a feeling of some relief and sighed. Suddenly large hazel eyes popped open, and he struggled with his weakness in trying to sit up.

The king quieted him and eased him down again. In a dying scratchy voice the lad groaned, "Do my eyes play tricks to taunt me with false fortune that I should see my king...before I depart to the darkness of the other side?...Then, true,...the dark tales that tell of hellish creatures that clothe themselves in angel garb and don gold wings only to raise the hope then fly us into hell!....Oh, agent of the prince of darkness, have mercy before wheeling me to doom, and read to me my sweet angel's words!" He raised his hand for the king to take the parchment, which released the gaping wound gushing out hot blood.

The king's jaw dropped when he saw the fatal wound, then quickly pressed the cloth on it. He brushed back the page's bangs and said kindly, "Fear not, brave lad, you do in truth look upon your king....And here before your untarnished soul assure you to heaven you will go."

"Oh, thank God and you; for in truth the Lord will heed my king!" he rasped and mustered a weak smile. "But just in case He is not here right now, would you, your majesty, read my teacher's words before I go? For—I mean no offense, my lord—if there is anyone, though she treads earthy soil, great God will bend an ear to, it is to the highest angel of them all, my dearest queen."

While opening the blood-stained parchment disclosing his wife's handwriting, dual tears streaked the king's face from the courage of this boy and his reference to his dear Alexa. In a thick, heavy voice—though the lad heard only the echo of his queen's sweet voice—the king read:

"Remember, these words, my dearest pupils: I leave 'tis true to be the queenly wife of my dear Justin and your reverent king. Yea, what you see in this very space before your eyes will indeed vacate to move to another space, the very heart of our civilization—our own dear city of Anselm. Yea, where the body goeth it must indeed take all of it. But as each and every one of thee doth know—I trust all have done their lessons well—the spirit of the body goeth where it pleaseth, like the gods with the wind, and the soul on its chariot of eternal journey, I thus vow my thoughts be with ye."

The king wiped his cheeks. He could almost touch the tender hand that wrote the words and hear her soft, sonorous voice speaking thus.

The lad sighed. "Oh, my king, my little life is now complete. Forgive me, king but I heard the words but not your voice—I swear my queen did speak to me. He smiled, sighed. A spread of dim blue light intruded on the dingy kitchen. The boy's eyes brightened, he smiled fully and pitched a weak shrill, "First my king and now my dearest queen, her promised spirit, doth come to take me to the land of blissful knowledge....Oh, truly I've been blest!" And from the hemorrhaging body, he exhaled the last of life as it is known.

The king too had seen the sapphire cast and magically sensed her presence. He made the sign of the cross over the lad. He turned to leave and suddenly the soft blue light hovered over the boy. The king blest himself; then carried the boy out of the kitchen building. Gently he lifted the little body over the saddle, led his steed through the courtyard and back over the drawbridge, signaling the Wagoner to follow him down the roadway toward the village homes of Catherine’s villeins and freemen. He looked to the castle pasture along one side of the bailey and saw the remains of hastily butchered livestock.

The destrier cantered through a grove and came upon burnt out thatched homes. In their tiny common pasture more livestock had been butchered. Men, agéd women, and male children were left to the buzzards. He shuddered when he looked over and saw an infant's head set in the bowl of a tithestone. He was sick at heart and literally sick in the stomach and walked toward the grove to meet the lumbering wagon. Briefly glancing up at the driver, the tall knight then directed his attention to inside the cabin to the woman holding the infant, "Oh, my friends and loyal servants, horrible fate has befallen the queen's mother and her villagers—all are dead, horribly dead, but for the fair daughters of the lot. I now must find another course, after which, I pledge, my Royal Marches will avenge this atrocity by crushing these heathens from the north and liberating our women and children." The woman shrieked, "Oh, no, sweet Catherine too — my life now torn to utter shreds!" and she wept uncontrollably; the infant stirred and also cried.

He motioned to the faithful driver to get down. Maél understood and reached under the seat to retrieve a shovel. Wolf cries could be heard coming from the foothills north of the castle. The king and the driver buried the brave little page while the woman recited prayers over him, but mainly the prayers were for the duchess of Alexandria. Just then out of some trees from the far side of the palisade, two horsemen in sheepskin surcoats, one stocky, unhelmeted and not as tall in the saddle, galloped toward the fresh grave.

The king drew his sword and ordered the driver to four-gait down the roadway and ascend the mountain slope. He spurred his powerful horse bravely to meet the two heathens who were wildly screaming their cries of battle, the stocky one wielding a fearsome heavy hammer, the taller one, a huge sword. With one true swoop of his own heavy sword the king unhorsed the heathen swordsman whose horned helm rolled in the turf, forecasting his fate. Then he whirled the chestnut destrier and charged the other combatant who crushed the heavy hammer against the king's shield, the impact of which unhorsed the king. Meanwhile, the swordsman had recovered himself and charged, both now on foot. The king adroitly parried then turned and partially beheaded the assailant as a tree topples before the axe completes its cut.

The king signaled his loyal battle charger and remounted just as the other, his flaming red hair bouncing off thick, broad shoulders, came upon him again, brandishing madly his weapon of destruction. The fearless king, however, mindful that his sword might snap from a blow of the menacing hammer, jumped off the destrier to fall below the whirling plane and thrust his blade upward into the armpit of the heathen who shrieked in pain and fell from his much smaller horse; whereupon the king leaped at him and held the blade over the raider's throat, condemning him: "You murderous swine, attack helpless people, will you? Only to find you are no match for the avenging wrath of royalty. You go to the deadly halls of Odin, knowing it is but a short while that your tribal warriors will join you!" He was about to thrust the blade into the assailant's throat when the red-haired youth pleaded for his life.

"Oh, sire, what glory for the lowly likes of me to think that I shall be honored in Valhalla having died bravely in mortal combat with a king!"

"Bah, bravely! An unskilled opponent such as you without skills?" the knight scoffed. "Why your gods will have a hearty laugh."

"Then at you as well—for sending such a pathetic warrior to his death!" the youth countered. "They will wonder why you failed to prove to me your promise to attack our tribe? If you indeed vow revenge, then let me live to relate your boast and to see—though glorious to me—that terrible day when your men are destroyed trying to slaughter my people."

"In truth, as here you have brutally done to my unsuspecting people, you devil—nay, you are no match for Willish skill! I thirst for the blood of that day like a hungry wolf."

"Then spare me till then—unless, of course, you just boast and won't return. If so, then thrust true that I may swiftly to Valhalla go."

The king indecisively hovered with the sword, then jammed his boot into the barbarian's chest. Suddenly he sliced the redhead's cheek with the point of the blade and growled, "And you better be there waiting to do battle or I'll hunt you down as a dog after a red fox!" He yanked up the stocky, barrel-chest youth by the collar of his sheepskin and looked down at the youth of medium height and took exception to the youth’s inference. "My men are knights of honor; we do not raid cowardly without warning. Therefore, prepare your vicious tribe that they may pray to their heathen gods. And pray not tonight to your useless bag of godly warriors instead thank my God that I today am all too filled with death and that in truth is why you live."

He then mounted while wolves howled and caught up with the wagon, leaving the barbarian to his wounds whereupon the youth cried out with shrieking fear, "Gallant knight, you must not leave me to the wolves!"

The rider glanced back and laughed, then proceeded on, chuckling through the outburst of profanities from the youth. The King then led its passengers, retracing the trail back to Anselm. After the eight day journey they camped outside the city. The king paced and pondered till night fall whence he decided to skirt the city and avoid the coastline.

Rotating a rabbit over a fire, Maél looked at his wife perplexedly while the king retrieved the destrier he had let to pasture.

"Blind obedience, my husband, is the safer way. You have only to serve your king and I my queen."

"In time, you too shall know." She held up the infant to him. "Is not this darling reason enough? Therefore be glad that we have her to replace our own dead darling."

"But why would the queen on her death bed give up such a prize? And why would the king agree to it—has he no heart?...Can a boy have been that important?"

"Be patient, husband....And please, do not infer that our loving royalty have no heart."

"Oh, you women from Catherine's castle—you're all so mysterious!" he chuckled. He scratched his beard and then added, "And the king is just as bad. Where is he taking us? It grieves me to leave old Anselm. And frightens me to leave me with a bad sign in letting that fiery youth live."

"It matters not—take comfort that what we do and where we go is important to the crown."

The king led them back just outside the central city to a wide bridge spanning a strait that pinched the city’s bay, and scarcely the width of three galley lengths. They made a sharp right from a ramp to the city and continued on a rugged, lonely road along a deteriorating ancient wall and the edge of the strait that reopened up the bay. After an hour the road narrowed and inclined to a mountainous trail. Two more days of lumbering travel to the southwest led them to an abrupt end of the chain by the bay again narrowing to an inlet that merged with a channel to the south. The king looked across to the west, then turned to Maél and pointed down the rocky slope to a tiny island that horseshoed round a tiny cove. "There good friend, will be your home."

"Home, your majesty? It seems so desolate,..." Maél then motioned to the south, observing, "especially with that marsh across the channel."

The king chuckled, "For a while perhaps, but you three will soon put life into it." He spurred down the trail and the wagon, carefully maneuvered, followed.

Hagar flipped up a leather flap of the wagon's side aperture and eyed the channel. A large double humped hogback caught her eye well beyond the moor. It seemed like it was grazing in a field of glowing wheat. She looked down at the blonde pate of the infant and rubbed it lightly. The horseman dismounted and cleared some rocks from the shoreline trail before the wagon could continue. When directly opposite the island, the knight dropped off the trail to a small cave into which inlet water lapped. He waded into the watery cave. Maél gaped when the king returned paddling a boat. He got down from the wagon seat and waded in and both men beached the heavy boat.

"Oh, my king, I had no idea you were into magic to pluck a boat out of a cave!" Maél said perplexedly with raised brows.

"Oh, Maél,...then what would you say if I were to make another appear?...However, I’ll leave that to you when the time comes that you may need another; for there in the cave is its mate tied up."

The king helped the woman holding the infant into it while her husband got down the baggage to load the crude boat. Then the two men rowed across toward the cove.

The Wagoner kept looking over his shoulder at the desolate moor that stretched along the channel’s southern shore to its narrow point at the isle where it gouged both shores. He breathed freely as they eased into the protective cove. The couple was delighted when the king took them over a sloping trail from the beach and led them to a modest cottage, barely visible from the overgrowth. The king took from his chain belt a key and not without some effort opened the rusty padlock. He leaned his shoulder to the swollen plank door, and it creaked open. The small party entered an orderly room but for thick cobwebs, which both men cleared for Hagar to pass through to an adjoining room. She trailed down a dusty coverlet. She tapped the mattress; satisfied that it was clean, she placed the sleeping infant in the big bed. Returning, she suggested, "My husband, after suitable rest, you must build a cradle."