Spotlight: The Oath by A.M. Linden
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Publication Date: June 15, 2021
She Writes Press
Paperback & eBook; 336 pages
Series: The Druid Chronicles, #1
When the last of members of a secretive Druid cult are forced to abandon their hidden sanctuary, they send the youngest of their remaining priests in search of Annwr, their chief priestess’s sister, who was abducted by a Saxon war band fifteen years ago. With only a rudimentary grasp of English and the ambiguous guidance of an oracle’s prophecy, Caelym manages to find Annwr living in a hut on the grounds of a Christian convent.
Annwr has spent her years of captivity caring for the timid Aleswina, an orphaned Saxon princess who was consigned to the cloistered convent by her cousin, King Gilberth, after he assumed her father’s throne. Just as Caelym and Annwr are about leave together, Aleswina learns that Gilberth, a tyrant known for his cruelty and vicious temper, means to take her out of the convent and marry her. Terrified, she flees with the two Druids–beginning a heart-pounding adventure that unfolds in ways none of them could have anticipated.
Excerpt
In this except from Chapter 3, “The Novice,” Aleswina, one of the story’s three main characters, is looking out of window of her convent unaware that another of the protagonists, a Druid priest on a secret mission, is lurking outside the abbey’s walls.
The Abbey of Saint Edeth the Enduring was a cloistered convent in the northeastern corner of the Kingdom of Derthwald. A dense forest surrounded the abbey, and a narrow clearing around its outer wall was all that separated the nuns and novices inside from the wilderness so there was a strict rule that all of the doors and all of the windows had to be kept closed and latched at night.
Shy, high-strung, and fearful, Sister Aleswina was an unlikely delinquent, but she’d eased herself out from under her blankets, tip-toed over to the window, and opened the shutters. While Caelym had been looking up at her window, Aleswina was looking at the horizon, as if by staring hard enough she could make the dawn come faster. A breeze wafted in carrying the enticing scent of spring and she gripped the window’s ledge, almost overcome with longing to have her trowel in her hand. If she had dared, she would have gone out in the dark to start digging her beds and planting her seeds.
***
Although there was not much in her dress or in her features to distinguish her from any of a dozen pale, blond Saxon nuns, Aleswina was different from the other women at the convent in three ways—her passion for growing plants, her deep love for the servant who had once been her nursemaid, and in being the cousin of the king of Derthwald. An unspoken deference to her royal status did more than save her from open reproach over the length of time it was taking her commit to her final vows, it gave her two unusual privileges within the abbey. She was allowed to work by herself in the convent’s garden, and she was allowed to keep her servant, Anna, in a cottage on the edge of the convent’s grounds.
When they were packing to leave the royal palace for the convent, Aleswina had entrusted Anna with a substantial cache of coins and jewels and as soon as it was safe, Anna bribed a traveling tinker to cut a secret door into the back wall of the convent garden, so that Aleswina did not really work in the garden by herself. It was against the rules and, cousin to the king or not, Aleswina would have faced untold days of penance if the abbess ever found out, but every day weather allowed, Anna slipped in through their secret entrance to work along with her. It promised to be exceptionally warm and balmy for so early in the year, and Aleswina was as anxious to see Anna as she was to start spreading seeds.
“Not our wishes, but the Lord’s!” was what the abbess would say if Aleswina told her how much she wanted to tend her plants instead of singing or praying. She’d tried that once and been confined in her room to pray and reflect for the rest of the day.
It was a lesson she’d taken to heart. She’d spent those long, lonely hours terrified the abbess would send someone to the garden in her place, Anna would be caught and their secret door discovered. Whether it was the Lord Jesus or the Mother Goddess who heard her frantic prayers, Aleswina never said another word to the abbess about anything that really mattered to her ever again.
Now she leaned as far out of the window as she dared, savoring the smell of fresh night air until the bells rang for the sunrise service. Closing shutters—careful not to let them clatter—she realized she waited too to change into her daytime habit. Snatching her wimple off its hook, she pulled it on as she felt under her bed for her sandals and was just on time to open her door and take her place in between Sister Erdorfa and Sister Idwolda as they filed past her door.
***
While the passageway between the dormitory and the chapel was a space where the Abbey’s rule of silence was waived and the nuns and novices could speak to each other with words instead of hand signals, they usually went to the first office of the day in sleepy silence. That morning the women around Aleswina were wide awake, whispering, “Did you hear?” “Killing babies and drinking their blood!” “Raping virgins!” “Coming for us!” Before she could ask who was killing babies and raping virgins, they reached the chapel, and the whispering changed to shushes as they filed into their places.
After they sang the opening hymn and recited the designated psalms, the abbess stepped up to the altar, but instead of reading from the gospels, she announced that the rumors were true.
“A Druid sorcerer has been sighted near Strothford, just across the River Bense.”
About the Author
Ann Margaret Linden was born in Seattle, Washington, but grew up on the East Coast before returning to the Pacific Northwest as a young adult. She has undergraduate degrees in anthropology and in nursing and a master’s degree as a nurse practitioner. After working in a variety of acute care and community health settings, she took a position in a program for children with special health care needs where her responsibilities included writing clinical reports, parent educational materials, provider newsletters, grant submissions and other program related materials. The Oath is the first installment of The Druid Chronicles, a five-volume series that began as a somewhat whimsical decision to write something for fun and ended up becoming a lengthy journey that involved Linden taking adult education creative writing courses, researching early British history, and traveling to England, Scotland, and Wales. Retired from nursing, she lives with her husband, dogs, and cat.
