My mother had been an elite archer who fought for Wulf, the last king in the Wessex bloodline. She had died at his side fighting the Mercians when I was a very small child.
The altar, covered with a gold-embroidered frontal, held a silver and gold chalice [my mother] had commissioned in East Anglia: around its rim fantastic birds interlaced so cleverly that you could hardly tell where one began and the other ended. Her father had bought the imposing altar cross of gold and precious stones from a Byzantine trader. In its center a tiny vial contained a drop of St. Etheldreda’s blood. My eye came back to the chancel arch—its grappling angels and demons carved by a sculptor my mother had brought in from Kent—then was pulled to the center of the choir where, in darkness beneath the floor, lay my mother.
In Courting Trouble a young warrior is eager to prove himself. He goes in search of conquest. Along the way, he is directed to an encha...
