On Moorstead

The reign of Edward the Confessor, the year 1051, England (Fifteen years before the Norman invasion of William the Conqueror)

Prologue

The hunting party was gaining on Avice.

To the well-trained hounds, she was quarry, differing not at all from the hare or the fox. If the vicious pack caught up to her, the dogs would bring her to ground. Rip her apart, limb-by-limb, too - should the order for blood-spill be given by the mastiffs' owner.

Gralam of Normandy.

Begging for charity from the warlord would do her little good. The noble beastmaster who gave chase here today had no understanding of mercy. In his jaundiced opinion, she amounted to sport, a respite from his courtly ennui. And citing her virtue would only earn her his royal ridicule as one and all raped her. Mayhap, the assault would end a few violations short of actually killing her. Then again, most likely not.

Nobles were perverted pigs. Swill-eating swine, the lot of them. Boars rutting in the mud owned more decency than those snout-whiskered brutes.

Avice held a hand to the achy stitch in her side. Why, oh, why had she taken it into her head to go walking alone at cockcrow?

She should have piggin' known better. Venturing outside her little cottage whilst the new warlord entertained visitors up at his tower fortress amounted to naught short of a fool's folly. Just as surely as rats nested in thatched roofs, Gralam of Normandy had spied her strolling through the woodlands. Straightaway, he had put aside his quest for red deer in favor of pursuing her rosy tail.

Well, no wide-eyed doe was she. No common trull for the taking. Neither jaw-snapping dogs nor their cruel royal owner would find her easy pickings.

Avice hunched her shoulders and rounded low. She wore a scratchy wool gunna the same hue as dirt. The hunting party would be less apt to see if she remained close to the spongy earth, where carking bindweed had choked out all vegetation save for a few tenacious betony plants. Taking care not to get tripped up in the vines, she jumped a tumbled-down fieldstone wall. The lichen-covered rocks were all that remained of a once prosperous farm, marauding Danes having burnt everything else to the ground long ago.

Tyranny and neglect had almost obliterated the moor folk. One invader after another had plundered the land and enslaved its populace. This current influx of Norman nobles - all friends of King Edward the Confessor - was more of the same.

Bugger them all. No man enslaved her.

Sweat beaded her upper lip. Avice swiped it away. Narrowly avoiding an unearthed tree root here, a bent sapling there, she cast her sights to the horizon.

A brook twisted and turned up ahead, its watery depths dividing fallow pasturelands from overgrown woodlands. If she braved the stream's fierce currents, the lead dog might lose her scent. The noblemen who pursued her would have to scratch their pox-riddled bollocks to alleviate their boredom, then.

For all that the aequinoxium had come and gone a fortnight since, spring had yet to awaken the dormant earth and thaw the ice-jammed waters. No help for it, Avice gritted her teeth and took the plunge.

Ack. The frigid waters chilled even her hot witch's blood.

Sopping wet to the skin and shivering to the bone - courting ague for sure - she emerged on the opposite side.

And the snarling hounds, tracking the acrid smell of her fear, kept coming. The hunting party was too close, much too close for her to shift her shape now.

The moors. She must reach the heaths and heathers. Every rabbit warren, every foxhole, every rotted-out tree stump was familiar to her there. As a child, she had often squirreled herself away in their musty enclosures to daydream. Those hidey-holes promised her sanctuary now.

Doubts assailed her. What if she stumbled? Fell? What if the peat bogs remained forever beyond her reach? What then, what then? Dear goddess, what then?

No choice then. Save death.

Avice snickered to herself. Not her own death, of course. If there was a mortal choice to be made this new morn, the barons, not she, would bear the brunt of it.

Though - the high-ranking stink of all those rotting corpses might prove difficult to explain, as well as deadly to others.

Due to the mysterious circumstances surrounding the kill, the Confessor would blame witches. In a quest to root out heretics, the king would send inquisitors from court to their tiny village. Descending on the moors like locusts, these inquisitors would torch every hut in their search for justice, the guiltless inhabitants within incinerated by royal decree.

A shudder shook Avice from head to heel, and back up again. Someday, she might indeed meet her fate on the faggots, but never would she take innocent lives with her. This situation called for a more discreet use of her powers. An alternative she had best come up with right quick.

A single steed approached at a steady cantor. No ordinary moor rouncey was this. The animal closing in on her was a warhorse, a charger trained to do his rider's bidding unto death.

Her heaving chest fit to burst, her breaths shallow and ragged, Avice whirled about and looked the lone courser directly in the eye.

Discharge your rider, Equus!

At her unspoken command, the dark steed reared and bucked, unseating his equally dark rider...

...just as a hedgehog appeared from out of nowhere and darted across the trail.

Its duty to her done, the spiny creature then scurried away. After proving an excuse for the mishap, Avice released the steed from her mind-connection.

Your task here is finished, Equus. Go, and take my thanks with you.

Empty-saddled, the destrier bolted, presumably galloping for the stables up at the tower-fortress, and Avice gave over her attention to the fallen nobleman.

Gralam of Normandy, himself.

To hide her identity, Avice quick showed him her back.

"The hunting party arrives any moment, and they will expect amusement," the new overlord of the moors said from behind her. "Strip off. Bare to the skin."

Like piggin' hell!

Avice dove for the trees.

A whoosh split the air and came with a dagger attached. The throw's mighty force slammed her into a gnarled oak, leaving her unscathed, but deftly pinned at the drooping shoulder of her too large gunna. A fur mantle sailed past her nose and dropped at her feet.

Gralam of Normandy rasped, "The coins within the cloak are yours. For the inconvenience."

Inconvenience! Is that what the new overlord called rape?

Whether freely given or harshly stolen, a forfeited maidenhead left a woman naught with which to barter for marriage. Along with carrying the taint of promiscuity, she also faced the very real possibility of growing a big belly. With no way to feed a hungry babe, save the age-old one, many a good maiden ended up on her back.

And the Norman thought a few miserly coins would compensate for that lifetime of misery?

Avice stared at the rich fox cloak, luxurious fur garb signifying noble wealth and lordly prerogative, and something inside her snapped. Just. Snapped.

On a surge of defiance, she stepped out of her run-down boots. A rip and a pull freed her threadbare wool gunna and thin linen tunica from the pinning knife. Save for the coif covering her hair, she stood naked.

And proud. Eat dung and die, Norman.

The new overlord had other ideas.

"Don the fur and run, wench."

Gralam of Normandy thought to garb her as a fox for the amusement of his hunting party, did he?

The Norman's cruelty tasting like a bitter herb in her mouth, she bent over. Mooning the new overlord full on, she reached for the cloak. The coins - the price of her maidenhead, the payment for her inconvenience - rattled.

The clinking of precious metal did little to drown out a decidedly male groan.

Not a groan of carnality. A groan of suffering. After dodging many a groping hand and tending more than a few hurting moor folk, she knew the difference between the two.

Bundled up in the mantle, the deep hood disguising her face, Avice turned to consider Gralam of Normandy.

Agony had bleached his swarthy skin and contorted his handsome enough features. The unnatural angle of his left leg told of a broken the bone, the ragged whiteness of which jutted out from the skin. If ever he walked again, his gait would contain a pronounced limp. At best, he would go through the rest of his days pain-wracked and shuffling, a vestige of his former self.

Unless she interceded on his behalf.

After administering a sleeping draught of mandrake, poppy and vinegar, she could pull the broken leg straight. Set properly on a stout oak splint, the bone would knit as strong as before. He would walk again, run again, ride again -

Rape again, too.

Nay!

As barking hounds crashed through the trees, she silently moved her lips.

Softhearted witches burnt at the stake, cruel nobles burnt elsewhere, and only a piggin' idiot would heal someone who would condemn her for her troubles.

After laying a curse on the Norman's head, Avice took off at a run, leaving the overlord lying there, crumbled and broken on the ground.