Read Enchantress Mine for Free Online Page A

passed Cap de la Hague, and she saw him carefully set his course across La Manche for England—the land of the Angles and the Saxons. Almost immediately thereafter it became foggy. So foggy that they could see neither where they had come from, nor where they were going.
    “What are they like?” she asked Dagda. “What are the people in this England like?”
    “They are brave men,” said Dagda. “That I can vouch for having fought against them. Other than that, child, they are very much like people in Brittany, like people everywhere. They struggle to survive. They live. They die.”
    “Do they speak our language?” Mairin spoke a Celtic Breton tongue.
    He shook his head in the negative. “They have their own tongue, but I understand it, and soon you will also.”
    “Are we going to stay in England then, Dagda?”
    “Aye,” he whispered to her softly, “but Fren does not know it. He has other plans for you, my little lady, but they are not plans that either your sainted mother or your noble father would approve. You are my sole responsibility. It is I who must see to your safety.”
    “Can we not go to my mother’s family in Ireland, Dagda?”
    “I had thought of that, my little lady, but it is a long and dangerous journey. Alas, I have no coin to ease our way, and we shall need money for food and for our passage to Ireland. Perhaps in a few years, but not now. First we must depart Fren’s company. It should not be too difficult.” Dagda had considered leaving Fren within the Forest of the Argoat, but on reflection realized that he might use the slaver to help them escape Brittany, which was no longer a safe place for Mairin, and Dagda did not doubt for a moment that had it been possible the lady Blanche would have killed the little girl. At least this way the child was alive, and in Fren’s company half their journey would be completed. Dagda was not certain what he would do once they reached England, but he would think of something.
    The winds were light, the fog thick, and the seas calm as a millpond. It took them almost three days to cross the water separating England from the mainland of Europe. Ashore Dagda was impressed to find that Fren had carts waiting to transport human cargo up the road called Stane Street to the city called London. Dagda would not allow his charge to ride in the cart with the women. Instead he took her up upon his horse with him as he had in Brittany. He did not want Mairin asking those women the questions she had asked him the previous night when she had awakened suddenly to see Fren and his two assistants using the three women who were docilely bent over the railing of the vessel, their skirts hiked over their hips, meekly accepting the obscene pumping of the men.
    She had tugged at Dagda to awaken him, and then asked, “Are they mating?”
    He nodded.
    “Are they married to those women?”
    “Nay, child.”
    “Then why are they mating with them?” she demanded innocently.
    He moved them to another part of the deck, and sitting back down again he said, “What they do is wrong, my little lady. Put it from your mind, and go back to sleep,” and silently cursing the lustful Fren and his two randy assistants, he cradled the child to his broad chest, encouraging her to slip once more into sleep. The sooner he could remove her from Fren’s wicked grasp the better. The child was too young to be faced with such worldliness. He had to find a safe place for her.
    Dagda had been to Dublin once, but nothing had prepared him for this London of the Saxons. To his eyes it was a noisy, smoky, dirty sprawl of a city; its buildings jammed too close together; its population too great. They entered it early in the morning just as the city awoke, and Fren’s assistants had already found them a choice spot in the main market by the river with its great bridge.
    Quickly the market became alive, and little Mairin who had never seen anything like it was goggle-eyed. To the right of their