“Leave me alone!” she wailed.
“It’s St. Lucy’s Day,” Father coaxed. “You’ll be the most important person in the village.”
“I’m already the most important person in the village.”
“The very idea!” Mother said. “More important than the Bard or Brother Aiden or the chief? You need a lesson in humility.”
“Ah, but she’s really a lost princess,” Father said fondly. “She’ll look so pretty in her new dress.”
“I will, won’t I?” said Lucy, condescending to rise.
Jack went back down the ladder. It was an argument Mother never won. She tried to teach Lucy manners, but Father always undermined her efforts.
To Giles Crookleg, his daughter was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him. He was forever cursed with lameness. Both he and his wife, Alditha, were sturdy rather than handsome, with faces browned by working in the fields. No one would ever mistake them for nobility. Jack knew he would be just like them when he grew up. But Lucy’s hair was as golden as afternoon sunlight and her eyes were the violet blue of an evening sky. She moved with a bright grace that seemed barely to touch the earth. Giles, with his lumbering, shambling gait, could only admire her.
Jack had to admit, as he stirred up the hearth for one last burst of heat, that Lucy had been through much in the past year. She had seen murder and endured slavery in the Northland. He had too, but he was thirteen and she was only seven. He was willing to overlook most of her annoying habits.
He heated cider and warmed oatcakes on the stones next to the fire. Mother was busy dressing Lucy in her finery, and Jack heard complaints as the little girl’s hair was combed. Father came down to drink his cider.
The cock crowed again. Both Jack and Father paused. It was said in the old days that a golden rooster lived in the branches of Yggdrassil. On the darkest night of the year he crowed. If he was answered by the black rooster that lived under the roots of the Great Tree, the End of Days had come.
No cry shook the heavens or echoed in the earth. Only the north wind blustered against the walls of the house, and Jack and Father relaxed. They continued to sip their drinks. “I wish we had a mirror,” came Lucy’s petulant voice. “I don’t see why we can’t buy one from the Pictish peddlers. We’ve got all that silver Jack brought home.”
“It’s for hard times,” Mother said patiently.
“Oh, pooh! I want to see myself! I’m sure I’m beautiful.”
“You’ll do,” Mother said.
In fact, Jack had more silver than his parents knew. The Bard had advised him to bury half of it under the floor of the ancient Roman house, where the old man lived. “Your mother has good sense,” the Bard had said, “but Giles Crookleg—excuse me, lad—has the brain of an owl.”
Father had spent some of his share on Brother Aiden’s altar and a donkey for Lucy. The rest was reserved for that glorious day when she would marry a knight or even—Father’s hopes rose ever higher—a prince. How Lucy would meet a prince in a tiny village tucked away from any major road was a mystery.
The little girl climbed down the ladder and twirled to show off her finery. She wore a long, white dress of the finest wool. Mother had woven the yellow sash herself, dying it with the pollen-colored washings from her beehives. The dress, however, had been imported from Edwin’s Town in the far north. Such cloth was beyond Mother’s ability, for her sheep produced only a coarse, gray wool.
Lucy wore a feathery green crown of yew on her golden hair. Jack thought it was as nice as a real crown, and only he understood its true meaning. The Bard said the yew tree guarded the door between this world and the next. On the longest night of the year this door stood open. Lucy’s role was to close it during the need-fire ceremony, and she needed protection from whatever lay on the other side.
“I know what would go with this dress—my silver necklace,” Lucy said.
“You are not to wear metal,” Mother said sharply. “The Bard said it was forbidden.”
“He’s a pagan,” Lucy said. She had only just learned the word.
“He’s a wise man, and I’ll have no disrespect from you!”
“A pagan, a pagan, a pagan!” Lucy sang in her maddening way. “He’s going to be dragged down to Hell by demons with long claws.”
“Get your cloak on, you rude child. We’ve got to go.”
Lucy darted past Mother and grabbed Father’s arm. “You’ll let me wear the necklace, Da. Please? Please-please-please-please-please?” She cocked her head like a bright little sparrow, and Jack’s heart sank. She was so adorable, all golden hair and smiles.
“You can’t wear the necklace,” Jack said. Lucy’s smile instantly turned upside down.
“It’s mine!” she spat.
“Not yet,” Jack said. “It was given into my keeping. I decide when you get it.”
“You thief!”
“Lucy!” cried Mother.
“What harm can it do, Alditha?” said Father, entering into the argument for the first time. He put his arm around the little girl, and she rubbed her cheek against his coat.
“Brother Aiden says this is St. Lucy’s Day. Surely we honor the saint by dressing her namesake in the finest we have.”
“Giles—” began Mother.
“Be still. I say she wears the necklace.”
“It’s dangerous,” Jack said. “The Bard says metal can poison the need-fire because you can’t tell where it’s been. If it’s been used as a weapon or for some other evil, it perverts the life force.”
Father had treated Jack with more respect since his return from the land of the Northmen, but he was not going to be lectured by his son. “This is my house. I am the master,” Giles Crookleg said. He went to the treasure chest with Lucy dancing at his side.
Father took the iron key from the thong around his neck and unlocked the chest. Inside were some of the things Mother had brought to the marriage: lengths of cloth, embroidery, and a few items of jewelry. Underneath were a heap of silver coins and a gold coin with the face of a Roman king that Father had found in the garden. Wrapped in a cloth was the necklace of silver leaves.
It gleamed with a brightness that was strangely compelling. Jack could understand Lucy’s desire for it. It had been looted in a Northman raid, claimed by Frith Half-Troll, and had come to Thorgil the shield maiden. Thorgil fell in love with it, and this was most unusual because she scorned feminine weaknesses such as jewelry and baths. Then Thorgil, who valued suffering even more than silver, had given her beloved necklace to Lucy.
From the very beginning, the little girl had reacted badly to this generous gift. She claimed it came from Frith, who—Lucy insisted—had treated her like a real princess. And she became hysterical when Jack reminded her of the truth, that the evil half-troll had kept her in a cage and planned to sacrifice her. Jack had taken charge of the necklace then.
“Ooh!” cried Lucy, putting it on.
“Now we really have to go,” said Father, locking the chest. He had lit two horn lanterns for the journey. Mother had packed several of her precious beeswax candles in a carrying bag. Jack poured water over the hearth, and smoke and steam billowed up. The light in the room shrank down to two brownish dots behind the panels of the horn lanterns.
“Be sure it’s out,” whispered Mother. Jack broke up the coals with the poker and poured on more water until he could feel only a fading heat in the hearthstones.
Father opened the door, and a blast of icy wind swept in. The rooster groaned in his pen, and a cup rolled along the floor. “Don’t dawdle!” Father commanded, as though Jack and Mother had been responsible for the delay. Snow lay everywhere, and they could see only a few feet ahead by the dim lantern light. The sky was shrouded with clouds.