They had doubted that she would attend Byrhtnoth’s burial. She did not expect them to. Half of Folkward still remembered the day she had thrown his bride-gift at his feet as if it were yesterday. Yet as she approached the mound, the murmurs of the crowd turned to silence. The men and women of Folkward—crofters and shepherds, miners and weavers—parted to let her pass.
Nóthhere had prepared her as best he could. In his words, Byrhtnoth had sustained a dire injury in Sedgebury to the west. Instead of riding back to Folkward, he had lain in the bed of a wagon. Rumors had swarmed around him like a flock of crows around a carcass. The late Thane had been renowned for the strength of his sword-arm; a washerwoman told Saethryd that Byrhtnoth’s strength had dwindled each day until he sweltered and died. From a healer’s apprentice she heard that his blood was still tainted even after they had severed his infected limb. Now she had to see it for herself.
As Byrhtnoth had no close kin remaining, his old friends had lowered him into the earth with his spear, shield, and seax at his side. Other grave-gifts were piled around him: mead and wine, golden rings, combs of bone and horn. All would join him in the long home beneath the earth. Saethryd knew he had always preferred youth and beauty to duty and loyalty; she thought it was fitting to see him surrounded with treasures. His ancestral sword rested by his right hand. Its golden guard remained untarnished, pommel adorned with chambers of wire framing inlaid garnets dark as blood.
The folk of Folkward watched Byrhtnoth’s sword gleam in the sun as the town’s oldest minstrel set down his harp to speak of the proud and unbroken bloodline which had claimed both blade and burh for hundreds of years. Saethryd’s thoughts returned to sweet Saebald, who would have inherited the sword on his wedding day if only he had lived to see it. He would have made a good husband to any woman. She had wanted nothing more than to see him become a knight, a father, a lord in his own right, taller and nobler than his father had been. Cruel fate could have stolen anything from her: her vigor, her wealth, her station. It had stolen Saebald instead. His life’s thread had been severed on the muddy banks of the Isen, where he was cut down before his prime. Saethryd’s eyes stung as she realized that her son had received no such lordly funeral. If he had lived, the seat of Folkward would not have passed to a stranger.
Although she cared little for his paeans, the minstrel’s thin, tremulous voice drew Saethryd out of her reverie. Byrhtnoth’s body had been dressed in a rich blue tunic trimmed with tablet-woven bands she had made herself. No finery could hide that he had withered to a shadow of the man she had once called husband; the blue only brought out the livor of his bloodless face. He had been too weak to wear his armor in the last days of his life, but his byrnie still glimmered beside him in the dark earth. His helm had been polished until it shone. Saethryd caught a glimpse of her reflection in its surface, peering at the silver hairs that twisted through the black, reminders of why the Thane’s affections had strayed.
“Byrhtnoth was a bold defender of the Westfold.”
The mourners’ voices were hazy and vague to her, as if they were speaking from far away rather than standing shoulder to shoulder.
“We honor him with the best we have to give.”
If they truly knew him for who and what he was, she thought, they would give him a maid, for her eternal company in death. She could not say it aloud. The thought alone prompted her to rebuke herself for her cruelty.
Her eyes stung as Byrhtnoth’s friends began to cover him with earth. Green shoots, killed by a sudden frost, had wilted around his barrow. As a tide of wailing rose around her, it occurred to her that the people of Folkward might have wanted her to mourn him as if she were his widow. I will not cry for Byrhtnoth. She was Saethryd daughter of Sigeric, and she owed him no tears.
Originally written on 5/6/21, revised for Laurelin Archives.
