Part 4
“This was your father’s land?” Eulalia echoed uncertainly. “But is it not his land now?”
Candida looked close to tears. “If that woman is running the household, then I fear that he is dead.”
Eulalia wished her hands were free, so she could put her arms round her friend and give her some comfort.
“Is she not one of your family?”
Candida looked stricken. “She is Ealdgyth, my aunt.”
“But, surely your aunt would not keep you as a slave. At least she will set you free.”
“I don’t know,” Candida said miserably. “My father didn’t understand how his brother could marry such a cold, cruel woman. And their son, my cousin Osred, he is just like his mother, or even worse.”
“What about your other family, brothers, sisters?”
“My mother died giving birth to me. I had an older brother, but he went to fight the Danes and I don’t know where he is, or even if he lives.”
The cart was now in sight of a large earth bank, which Eulalia expected would prove to be the defences for the settlement that Candida’s father had presided over. If they were going to escape, they would have to make a move soon.
“If we climb over the back of the cart and hang on, we’ll be able to release the chains, jump down and run. By the time they see we’re gone, we’ll have found a place to hide. But we must untie one another’s hands first.”
She turned her back towards Candida, but the frightened girl refused to move. “No!” she said adamantly. “Look at the land, it is flat and bare. Where would we hide? They would find us and make us wish we were dead. Whatever we do, we mustn’t make them angry.”
Eulalia thought they might wish they were dead anyway, but Candida was paralysed with fear and nothing would induce her to attempt an escape.
The cart trundled through heavy wooden gates set into the earth bank. Inside, a large, thatched, timber-framed hall formed one side of a courtyard with other similar, but smaller structures. There were people going about their business, some children playing on the damp earth and a couple of mangy dogs scavenging in a midden pit. The cart stopped outside the hall and the two young men helped the lady down from her seat. They came and lifted the two slaves over the back and released the chains from the hooks.
The woman only said “Come!” and hurried towards the hall, leaving the men to lead the slaves behind her by their chains. The hall was divided into two dark rooms, connected by an open doorway. There was a fire burning in the middle of the first room and tapestries hanging on the walls. Against the far wall, a large wooden chair stood on a dais. In front of it, long, heavy tables and benches completed the furnishings.
In the far corner of the room, a group of men were discussing something, but Eulalia couldn’t hear anything they were saying.
“Osred!”, Ealdgyth called in a loud, strident voice. “Look what I have found for you.”
A young man detached himself from the group and strode eagerly across the floor.
“Mother,” he said, embracing her affectionately. “You were gone a long time, I was worried something had happened to you.”
Ealdgyth took Candida’s chain and pulled her towards her son. “Do you not recognise Hwita? I found her in the market, being sold by Danish slavers. Of course, I had to pay them, but I was sure you would think her worth the price.”
“Hwita, of course I remember her,” Osred smiled, looking into Candida’s eyes and gently stroking her cheek. “Welcome back to Goltho. It has been a long time. You have blossomed while you have been away; I think the monastic life has been good for you.”
Candida’s face remained white with fear, but she managed a polite curtsey. “Thank you, cousin,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed on the floor.
“But such a waste, to keep you locked away as a nun,” Osred went on. “So, Medesham has fallen and you were taken by the Danes. They didn’t … ravish you?”
“I am still a virgin, cousin,” Candida replied, turning a little red as she avoided answering the question.
“Good, good. But, they have put you in chains. Come, untie her hands and take her to the blacksmith, my cousin cannot be kept like a slave.”
As Candida was being untied, Osred’s attention turned to Eulalia. “And who is this?” he demanded.
“She is called Aelf,” Candida said. “She was with me at Medesham, she is my friend.”
“Send her to the kitchen,” Ealdgyth told her son. “She can work there, or in the fields. They always need more slaves.”
“Can she not stay with me?” Candida pleaded. “I would be glad of her company.”
“You, my sweet,” Ealdgyth leered, “will be too busy to waste time with friends. Since your father is dead, Osred is your guardian now. He will find you a husband, the sooner the better. In the meantime, you can occupy yourself with weaving or embroidery.”
“My father is dead? When? How?” Candida asked, tears welling in her eyes as she fell to her knees.
“He and my father foolishly stood against the Danes,” Osred replied unfeelingly. “They were both killed. Now, I am Ealdorman, with the blessing and protection of Halfdan Ragnarsson.”
“Get up, girl,” Ealdgyth said, pulling Candida to her feet. “You should not weep for your father, he was a fool and the one that sent you away. Take her to the blacksmith, Siward, have him get her out of these chains.”
“And the slave,” Osred added. “Take her to the blacksmith too. She cannot work the kitchen like that.”
The two young men led the girls out of the hall and turned left, along the edge of the courtyard. They did not, however, drag them by their chains, but guided them gently, one on either side.
“I am Siward,” the one beside Candida said cheerfully, “and this is Ranulf. We were captured by the Danes, like you.”
“And sold to the lady Ealdgyth,” Ranulf continued. “You could say we have replaced her husband.”
“She has the bower,” Siward said with a smile, “so she can do what she likes, without Osred knowing.”
They arrived at a small yard at the end of the hall, where the blacksmith was working. This time, the rivets had to be bashed out of the shackles with a hammer and punch, which Eulalia thought was worse than when they were put in. But, it was good not to have the weight of the iron around her neck and ankles.
While Siward took Candida back to the hall, where her aunt was waiting to dress her in more suitable clothes, Ranulf led Eulalia to the kitchen, in one of the buildings opposite the hall. Two pigs were roasting on spits over a fire and water in a large cooking pot was being heated to take a pile of vegetables from the table. There she was introduced to Burgwynn, a large, red-faced woman who was in charge of all the cooking and preparation of food, and to Breca and Iola, the slave girls who helped her.
“So Hwita’s back,” Burgwynn said by way of welcome. “Some homecoming, poor cow, finding her father’s dead and now she’s at the mercy of that cur Osred and his whore mother. You were nuns, you say?”
“Novices,” Eulalia answered.
“Then you’ll know how to feed pigs. Take those buckets, Breca will show you where.”
Eulalia picked up the two wooden buckets, full of vegetable peelings and scraps that looked very like the basis of the stew they had been given by the Danes. She followed Breca to a field behind the kitchen, where the pigs had stirred the ground up into a stinking mixture of mud, piss and shit.
“I’ll wait here,” Breca said, stopping on the last patch of firm ground. “Only your legs will get dirty, so long as you don’t fall over.”
In fact the monastery had only had a few goats for milk and feeding pigs was a new experience for Eulalia. She stepped carefully across the slippery ground, trying to find a route where she wouldn’t sink too far into the mire. The pigs, however, were delighted to see anyone with food and rushed to meet her, pushing and shoving to get first pickings. As Eulalia tried to tip the swill out, a large sow bashed into her legs and then she was down in the stinking mess, crawling on her hands and knees to retrieve the, by now, empty buckets.
As she struggled to get back onto her feet, Eulalia saw a man’s boot step in front of her face and felt another press down hard between her shoulders. Forced back down into the mire, she felt the filth on her lips and tasted it in her mouth. A hand grabbed her hair and pulled her out of the mud, holding her in strong arms and groping her breasts through the sodden tunic.
“Well, well,” her captor growled. “What have we here?”
The man who now dragged her to firmer ground was not young. His face was craggy, scarred and well worn, with sandy hair falling around his shoulders. Even so, he was tall and muscular, someone you would be pleased to have on your side in a fight. Eulalia looked for Breca, but the girl had gone. The man thrust one of his hands between Eulalia’s legs and explored around her slit.
“You’d be a pretty wench, if you were cleaned up,” he leered. “Good to fuck, I’ll wager and, with a lot of beatings, maybe you’d even learn how to feed pigs.”
“Renweard,” a female voice called, as Burgwynn emerged from the kitchen door and ran towards them. “Leave the girl alone. If you want her as your slave, you’ll have to buy her from Osred.”
“Well,” Renweard replied grumpily, pushing Eulalia towards the cook, “I might just do that. But she’ll have to be cleaned first, she stinks. I’ll leave that to you.”
As Renweard stomped off, Burgwynn dragged Eulalia back towards the kitchen. She stopped by a hole in the ground, threw a bucket into it on the end of a rope and hauled it back up. The irate woman took the bucket and emptied it over Eulalia, drenching her in cold water.
“Get that tunic off,” she snapped, “and give it to me.”
Another bucket of murky water came up from the well and Eulalia stood naked and shivering as Burgwynn used the rough smock to scrub the mud and pig shit off her body. That done, she was taken, still soaking wet, to the wall beside the kitchen door.
“Hands on the wall,” Burgwynn ordered, “bend forwards, legs apart.”
Standing where she had been placed, Eulalia saw the cook fetch a bundle of birch twigs.
“This is how slaves are punished in my kitchen, for disobedience, or mistakes, it makes no difference. Six strokes, since it’s your first time. Don’t move till I say you can.”
Eulalia remembered the flogging with knotted rope that had been her introduction to monastic life and the whipping at the hands of Father Burhtred. With that experience behind her, a thrashing from the matronly cook would surely be easy to bear.
It wasn’t. Burgwynn certainly carried some fat, but years of heavy lifting and carrying around the kitchen and the farm, had given her the arm and shoulder muscles of a warrior. The first stroke smashed into Eulalia’s backside with all the power and weight that Burgwynn could give it.
The half dozen rods in the bundle sent a line of seering pain across the slave-girl's cold and damp buttocks. Eulalia let out a surprised and shocked “Ahhhhhh!!”, as she realised this would be far worse than she imagined.
The second lash layered more pain on top of the first and the third left her crying and screaming for mercy. Burgwynn waited till the sobs and cries subsided, before delivering the fourth, fifth and sixth strokes in quick succession. Released at last from the punishment stance, Eulalia collapsed onto her knees, hugging herself and crying, not daring to touch her red and lacerated rump.
Burgwynn gripped the sobbing girl’s arm tightly and pulled her to her feet. “Now, I suppose I’ll have to find you something clean to wear. Stop your bleating and come with me.”
Back in the kitchen, Eulalia was grateful for the warmth of the fires. The other two slaves gave her sly, pitying glances as the cook dragged her naked, shivering captive into a small enclosure at the back of the kitchen.
“This is where you all sleep,” she said, as she took a short grey woollen smock off a hook on the wall and held it out. “You can have this one.”
“Thank you,” Eulalia said, reaching out for it, but Burgwynn snatched it away.
“Just remember, you may be Hwita’s friend, but to anyone else here you’re just a slave. You’ll feed the pigs and do all the other filthy jobs I give you. You can have this smock and the one you were wearing. Keep them and yourself clean and stay away from the men.”
With that, she thrust the smock into Eulalia’s hand and walked away, leaving her to dress and wonder what this latest change in her life was going to bring.