44. The Cold Rebirth
XLIV
THE COLD REBIRTH
Snow drifted low across the hills as the Thornwyck bailey filled with the lords and landholders of Mortlande for the church’s feast of Candlemas. They came early by invitation. Their retainers brushed frost from their cloaks as they surveyed Thornwyck keep with a wary eye.
David sat on the seat of honor beneath Thornwyck’s banner in the keep’s great hall, with Commander de Bramber standing behind him in solemn guard. Father Osbert stood before him, facing the aisle.
The young Marcher Lord's shoulders were squared, his hands calm upon the arms of the chair. He did not glance at Seren, veiled and seated on the first bench, nor at the nobles who clustered in rows. He looked only at the man who had protected his mother.
Erik knew Seren did not dare glance back, but kept her eyes forward as a mourning wife should.
He, pale but upright, stepped from the shadows of the corridor under the weight of many eyes.
There was no mistaking the warrior's bearing in his stride.
He wore a simple tunic of dark wool, and at his side walked Ragnar, freshly shaven, clad in a fitted jerkin of Norman cut.
Both had cloaks clasped at the shoulder, the ends swept back to showcase their lack of weaponry as they approached David.
The footfalls of their boots came in unison down the wooden aisle.
David rose when they came before his seat. The boy Erik held as an infant, cast aside by the father who didn’t want to hear his cries, now stood before him, granting him a new life, a life of choice and freedom. He had never imagined such a day in his dark existence.
"Erik Bjornsson, whom my father named Payen de Montfort,” he said, voice ringing clear across the stone wall and gaze sweeping the audience.
"You have held this land as if it were your own, though no name or writ bound it to you.” His eyes fell to Erik.
“You bled for my father and for my mother.
You bled for my sisters and for me. And by your blood, peace holds in Mortlande. "
A murmur moved through the crowd. Erik remained still, head bowed slightly.
"You took no oath," David continued, "yet you served as no man has ever served my father."
He descended the steps of the dais, a scroll in his hands.
"By the right of my inheritance," David said, "and the peace you have bought with blood and faith, I name you, upon your baptism under the Church, Baron of Fellmere, its keep now called Montfort Keep, to hold in my name, to guard the western march, and to take your place among the highest noble houses of Mortlande. Do you accept baptism under the Church and the land with my blessing?”
Erik’s blue eyes found Seren's beneath her veil, dangerous for him to do so, but he hoped that with the title, he could have her hand in marriage three days before the next Twelfthtide, when her mourning was complete. He glanced at Ragnar, who nodded. It was just as he had persuaded Henry to keep Ragnar alive, trained, and loyal to his son. It cost Seren’s blood, but at least, they had all survived in Henry’s wake.
There was a bond between them all forged under Henry’s torment that would not likely break, though if David gave Seren to another in marriage, he wasn’t sure what beast he would unleash.
Erik stepped forward, kneeled, and laid his palm flat on the floor before David.
“I accept your blessing and the gift of baptism, Lord David,” Erik said, speaking the memorized line clearly.
“Then let the name Payen be buried as it was given in mockery of your pagan faith. Choose now your name in Christ,” David said.
“The name Payen dies with my servitude and my pagan past,” Erik said as he’d rehearsed.
"I am Erik Bjornsson—but let the realm know me henceforth as Lord Erik de Montfort, by oath and by land.
" He wanted his name, the name of his father, Bjorn, but the Normans and their enemies knew the name, Montfort.
They knew the reputation of Montfort. Bjornsson was no one to them.
It was better for Ragnar, Seren, and her children to keep the name Lord Henry gave him.
David placed his hand upon Erik's crown. "Then rise in the sight of men and God, Lord Erik de Montfort, Baron of Fellmere.”
Erik stood.
David turned to Ragnar. "And you, Ragnar Eriksson, who stood beside me when my blood did not, who fought for the keep and kept your father alive—You will be baptized under the Church and take the name Robert de Montfort, heir of Montfort Keep and Baron of Fellmere.”
Ragnar gave a single nod with a pressed smile.
The great hall filled with murmurs and astonished looks, but no one protested. David had named his allies, and none would dare challenge a man who bled for the seat and rose with its heir.
“Upon your acceptance, we shall now witness your rebirth with water,” David said and ordered everyone who wanted to witness the baptism of their brothers in Christ to the bailey chapel.
Erik and Ragnar went first. They said nothing to each other during the long walk until they reached the chapel steps.
Ragnar snorted a laugh. “Lord Robert.”
Erik glanced at him with a sad smile. Ragnar was too foreign a name to keep. He threw an arm around his boy’s shoulders and whispered, ”Name your children how you see fit. Maybe the next generation will be kinder to those with foreign names.”
Stone arches, cold to the touch, rose overhead like outstretched wings. Candles flickered in the apse, casting wavering light across the baptismal pool—an old, cross-shaped basin sunk into the floor, fed by the wellspring beneath the chapel.
He and Ragnar stripped down to a tunic and trousers. They had made Erik wear gloves to cover the tattoos on his hands so as not to cause discomfort or scandal among his new noble family.
Once the nobility and witnesses had settled into the chapel’s benches, more comfortably spaced than within the keep, Father Osbert led the processional down to the pool. The ornately carved rim was worn smooth by time.
Erik was the first to go. Standing at its edge, barefoot on the stone, he looked down into the water.
The surface was black with shadow, the faintest ripple breaking against the edges.
It looked deep enough to drown a man. His toes hung over the edge as he tried to ignore the chill’s pang up his leg from the splash of the ripple breaking.
Seren and David sat in their private alcove, watching him. David held the scroll in his hand.
Erik’s future.
Father Osbert entered the pool by the steps at the head of the cross, and Erik followed. His hands hung at his sides, the skin callused and pale with healing scars. The water inside was cruelly cold and somehow called holy.
Father Osbert took a silver bowl with a spout, filled it with water from the pool, and blessed it again.
The rites he murmured were lost on Erik, even with the three weeks of instruction Erik received in the Lord’s ways prior.
Father Osbert stepped closer, his voice echoed for all to hear.
“Do you renounce the gods you once served?”
Erik’s jaw clenched.
This was the moment that would divide his life.
Not raids, not wounds and scars, not obedience under threat of Ragnar’s torturous death—this—a confession, a half-lie.
Frostbitten nights beneath foreign stars, and of the man he had been before survival stripped him to the bones of his soul, entered his mind.
Envisioned nights of listening to his mother’s song of Odin’s ravens carved into shields rang in his ears. The god’s spear image burned on his skin, as with the great serpent of fate encircled it, with Seren’s star now in the center.
Seren took his attention once more, where she sat still and veiled, her face hidden from him by mourning black, with hands folded in her lap.
He would not renounce them for her deity. He renounced them because the world they now belonged to had no place for her or Ragnar or even himself.
"Do you renounce the old gods?" the old priest asked again.
The murmur in the audience was enough for Erik to decide with finality what he was doing for the life that waited beyond the basin.
This was death by vow.
"I renounce what no longer holds me,” he said.
The murmur stirred again.
Father Osbert, a good man as Erik had come to know him, pressed on despite his half-hearted answer, quieting the room.
“And do you receive this baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost for the forgiveness of your sins and the rebirth of your soul?”
Erik swallowed.
He had been wrong. This was the death. Not of his belief, but of his isolation. He would be accepted into society again with a noble title in hand. He could have a sanctioned marriage to the woman he loved.
"I do,” he said.
The water struck his brow, shockingly frigid, running into his eyes, down his face, soaking his hair and chest. For a moment, the world narrowed to sensation—stone, breath, ache, water.
He bowed his head as Father Osbert murmured a Latin rite and pushed two fingers on Erik’s shoulder, commanding Erik to dip, so Erik sank.
The cruelly cold water embraced his body, rushed over his head, and filled his soul. The cold seemed to warm, but when he rose again, the air chilled the water on his skin even more than it had been before.
Father Osbert gave the final blessing, raising a crucifix over Erik’s head.
Beneath the words meant for heaven, Erik whispered his own—too low for anyone to hear.
“Men who wished to break me and call me a heathen gave the name Montfort. But I am Erik Bjornsson. Let this God know me as such.”
Erik let the water from his hair run down his face.
It felt like death and birth, both. As if one part of him dissolved and another took its place.
As if the stubborn hold of ages past finally let go, but he didn’t feel holy.
He felt claimed again by land and by oath, but also by the fragile, dangerous hope of a future he had chosen for himself.
Erik exited, his clothes clung to him, revealing the pagan stains they had so hoped to cover.
An acolyte quickly wrapped his cloak over his shoulders.
Erik fastened the brooch himself. Its woolen warmth hid the shiver in his body as he looked out at the Mortlande nobles and wondered if they would think his baptism a fraud.
Ragnar entered the pool next.
Where Erik had hesitated, his son did not.
Ragnar spoke the vows clearly, fervently, the way boys raised between altar and psalter did. Father Osbert and Seren had raised Ragnar in the Lord’s service, and Erik had let Odin and the other gods drift away to memory.
When the water touched Ragnar’s brow, Erik felt the tension ease in his chest. If one of them believed without question, perhaps that was enough for the realm to honor David’s grant.
Father Osbert rose from the pool after Ragnar and anointed both of their heads with holy oil across the brow. The congregation erupted in solemn song, after which Father Osbert led a prayer and blessed the assembly.
At the end of the rites, David stepped forward.
"Let it be known, before Church and crown,” the young lord declared, "that Erik de Montfort is noble in name, in blood, and in God’s service, as is his heir.”
As the last “Amen” echoed in the chapel, Seren approached him in the candlelight. He bowed to her, and she dipped her chin as was custom. Then she did the same to Ragnar.
The Candlemas feast lasted long into the night, and when sweet wine had taken over most of the guests, Erik approached Seren from behind, taking a stance beside her and brushing her hand with his.
It had been a long day of conversing with people of the church, bearing congratulations and jealous sneers. His hair was still damp, and he hadn’t been allowed to wipe away the oil.
Erik whispered, "I mostly did this for you.”
She wrapped her small finger around his. He suppressed a smile, though his lips twitched.
“You’ve given me everything, including my life,” she said. “I only hope that if you do not receive what you desire, you and your descendants will be better off as nobility in the Norman empire.”
“All of the Marcher Lords are married, milady,” Erik said, understanding the reason behind her words. “And now I am one of the highest nobles of Mortlande and have no wife.”
Seren lifted her chin. The candlelight flickered against her skin through the translucent black veil.
“Marcher Lords somehow always get what they want, Lord Erik, and every Marcher Lord wants a Welsh noblewoman, especially one whose prayers are so timely answered by God. I would expect to attend a vigil for a Marcher Lord’s wife come December. ”
A pit opened in Erik’s stomach. Henry had done the same; four wives had outlived their usefulness. But Erik wouldn’t have it. Not after wanting for so long.
Fellmere was on the border of Mortlande and Wellenford with a forested valley to the north where Erik first pushed back the raids under Henry’s banner.
Blood soaked the plains of Fellmere, named for being a savage lake, but after Seren’s marriage to Henry, it was all but forgotten.
Perhaps, he could make a case to keep her there to stave off any Welsh riots from the northern chiefdoms, a boon for both Mortlande and Wellenford.
Seren glanced up at him. “So you see, Lord Erik, it is easier to endure when you do not give in to wanting.”
Erik leaned over and whispered even more softly than before, “Do you want me, Seren?”
Seren’s eyes glistened from behind the veil. “I mustn’t desire anything or anyone until three days before Twelfthtide, but after that . . . I want to be by your side as your wife.”
Her head drooped as she pulled her finger away from his. “I also want no scandal, Erik. David is young, and until tonight, you were not of the Church, and you were also my rumored lover. My prayer did not diffuse the rumor as much as I’d hoped beyond Thornwyck’s walls.”
“Of course, milady,” Erik said. “I have a year to prove myself to the Marcher Lords and Mortlande nobles.” He glanced around and found no one looking at them except Margot and Isolde, so he leaned lower and whispered in her ear, “And I promise I will not be empty-handed when your time of mourning is complete.”