The Very Best of Kate Elliott by Kate Elliott

Author:Kate Elliott [Elliott, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Collections & Anthologies
ISBN: 9781616961794
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Published: 2014-11-11T13:00:00+00:00

WITH GOD TO GUARD HER

Preface

NOW IN THOSE DAYS it was not unknown for a man of high birth to put aside one wife, with whom he had become dissatisfied, and marry another. Indeed, when kings indulged in such behavior, then dukes and counts might choose to emulate them. But what seems permissible in the world, God may well judge more harshly, as I shall relate.

One

At this time a man of free birth worked fields adjoining the estate of Duke Amalo, near the River Marne. With him in his house lived his mother, Theudichild, his wife Ingund, his two young sons and a daughter, and a few servants. The daughter was called Merofled.

It so happened that the duty of paying the tax to the church fell one month to Merofled.

She was a girl of good stature, having always been granted good health, and was now old enough to marry. Her family bore a respectable name and they had nothing to be ashamed of in their ancestors. Her mother’s father was a canon at Vitry and it was said that his great-grandfather was dedicated in martyrdom in Lyons.

But she had not yet married, nor had her father betrothed her to any man. Some said her father and mother favored her excessively, making her too proud to wish to submit to another man’s lordship, others that she was too pious to wish to marry. A few had been heard to whisper that her grandmother, Theudichild, an irascible old tyrant, preferred Merofled’s sewing to that of any of her servants or even to that of her daughter-in-law’s, and would not allow the girl to leave her father’s house so that the vain old woman would not have to do without the luxury of finely sewn garments.

On this day, Merofled received the pot of candle wax from one of the servants and, with only a young serving girl as attendant, walked down the road to deliver the wax to the church. In this way, with each household paying its portion of the tax, candles always burned at the altar.

The two young women were forced to move off the road when a great entourage rode by. The serving girl bent her head and knelt at once, but Merofled neither knelt nor looked down.

First walked clerics in their vestments, and after them the kinsmen, friends, and vassals of the Duke, for Merofled realized that this must be the retinue of Duke Amalo. They came in a crowd, kicking up a wide swathe of dust.

She had never seen the Duke except at a distance and so did not recognize him at once when suddenly a rider pulled to a halt and stared straight at her. He was tall, finely dressed, and rode a horse with silver harness and a saddle trimmed with gold. The rest of the column pulled up beside and behind him.

“Who is this girl?” the Duke asked one of his attendants, a certain Count Leudast.

“I do not know,” said Leudast, and he turned to another man and ordered him to speak to Merofled.

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