The Unsung Past

Chapter Two

A School Is Founded

"That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself

And falls on th'other."

-Macbeth, William Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'

Upon his return home, Godric's reservations concerning his friend and his secretive behavior dissipated into an intense impatience to be home again. There was one person in particular that he wished to see very much. He hesitated at the gate of his family's estate in fear that Salazar's fate would become his.

He was the one person whom Godric thought luck was always smiling upon.

But Helga had rejected him, married another when she was promised to him.

Would the one occupier of his thoughts do to him the same? He would like to think he could not handle the pain half so well as Salazar had. But then, he thought, it seemed Salazar was intent on marrying Helga's sister just to spite her.

He wondered if the founding of the school would stand such a rivalry as they were brewing between the two of them, Helga and Salazar.

But she was waiting for him.

He could see her upon the battlements of the old Norman fortification that stood at the mouth of the harbor on the cliff.

She looked out over the road but he was sure she had not seen him yet.

Rose.

A cousin by the marriage of his mother's sister and a knight of Sarum. They held an estate further up the Avon, a sizable piece of land that was successful in wool production and had a fulling mill upon the river to process it.

And there was no other that would make Godric as happy as she had.

Presently she turned from the road to look out over the harbor and the port. From the light of the red afternoon sun her hair seemed amber and he stopped his horse for a moment on the road to watch as it was caught by a light breeze.

He and Apollonius came to the stable where a boy took the horse and greeted him solemnly but courteously.

Wasting little time, Godric moved through the empty rooms of the castle and up to the battlements to greet his love whom he had not seen for seven years. They had been children when he last looked on her.

Careful to keep the hinges of the heavy oak door from creaking, he had taken care to remove his chain mail gloves and his sword so that she would not hear him as he approached. It was a game they had always played as children. A game he most often lost for having not her graceful and quiet way of moving about.

Just behind her, Godric resisted the overwhelming urge to reach out to her. Instead he spoke:

"Orfeo was a king

In England, a high lording.

Orfeo most of anything

Loved the delight of harping," he said, repeating the words of her favorite Arthurian legend. It was a tale of Orpheus and his lady, Dame Euridice. They had spoken the words often to each other in youth. His favorite pastime was blundering with the wording and sending the usually even tempered Rose into a rage.

She turned and faced him with a sad smile now. Her brown hair and eyes to match looked on him with fondness and she continued the ballad:

"Where'ere thou be thou wilt be fetched

And torn apart your limbs be all

None can help you, no one shall

Tomorrow, lady. We shall call."

It was a bittersweet poem, made even more so by the mournful tone of her voice. Godric's heart sank to look on her and he could tell she was unhappy.

The story of Euridice and Orpheus was a sad one. She lay asleep in an orchard one day when in a dream she was told that she would be stolen away from her love. In telling him this, frightened as she was she took comfort that he would stop this and protect her, come what may. Guards were placed around her night and day to ensure the safety of his love. Orpheus could, indeed, do no more than that.

"They formed in ranks on every side

And said with her they would abide

And die there for her, every one

Before the queen be from them gone

And yet the midst of that array

By magic she vanished away."

Godric paused. He wanted to speak, to ask her what her troubles were now that he was back. How could she have any at all if she still loved him? He finished the poem in tradition instead.

Sir Orfeo had lost his love. He became a beggar, spending his wealth and his life on trying to find her. He saw at last one day, hunting in the forest, the faery king with his lords and ladies. The ragged Sir Orfeo sees among the ladies, by chance alone, his own lost wife.

"Then he beheld her, and she him too

And neither to other a word did speak;

She for pity, to see him so,

Who had been a king, now so weak.

And then a tear fell from her eye:

And the other women a tear did spy

And made her swiftly ride away."

He had stopped when she ceased to hold his gaze but looked to the ground and brushed at her cheek. He wondered to see her cry and his dread mounted worse than any terror he had ever experienced in the fray of a far away and ungodly land.

Sir Orfeo did not give up so without his love and rode back to the faery castle and played his harp before the faery king. The Faery King out of pleasure for the song offered Orfeo a reward.

Rose looked up a moment later and continued:

"'Sir,' he said, 'I beseech thee

That thou wouldest give to me

That fair lady that I see

That sleeps under the orchard tree'"

He approached her and gently raised one of her delicate pale hands to his lips and said, "I would have wandered a hundred years to find you. Please, lady, tell me why I find you so, weeping as I return?"

She looked pityingly at him and said, "Godric, your father is dying."

Rowena sat by herself on the short meadow grass that covered the sloping hill all the way up to the new site. She came to watch the workers nearly every day and counted them as neither Godric nor Salazar returned. They had not said how long they would be, but she had thought it barbarous of both of them to take leave when there was so much left to be considered for their pet scheme.

She took it upon herself to hire the team of masons, architects and builders that would design and construct the site and building. Work was going remarkably well. The below ground recesses of the school were near complete now that she looked on them. Massive beams extended into the air and crossed each other at right angles. The lofty castle would stretch half as high into the heavens as the great cathedral at Salisbury. No buildings save those of the house of God, Rowena reasoned, should scrape His majestic clouds. She hoped Salazar and Godric approved...but mostly Salazar, as this was his most cherished dream first of all.

She looked upon everything, their plans, dreams, visions, and prayed that she would not be the cause of its failure. Indeed, this place could last forever, well past the memory of all of them.

She smiled to think what the students of these halls might think of them, the Founders, hundreds of years from now. Would they be known as great promoters of learning? Tyrants? Hypocrites?Would her colored past return to plague the school? This is what she feared the most.

Lying down upon the grass, she proposed to herself not to think on it any longer. Helga, her confidante for sometime now, would keep her secrets and scandals and tell no one. There was only one other who could ruin it all. She thought on him little, but when he did come unbidden to mind, the memory of him tore at her heart and made her curse her own fallibility. But for all that, he had given her two very dear children. But he had rejected them for having possessed her "ungodly" qualities. She thought nothing of that. Her boys were angels.

When the school was built she would move them here. It was a place that would more widely accept them.

But for now, her boys remained in Eire and she missed them terribly.

"Lady," came a gruff man's voice.

Rowena sat up and looked around.

A messenger, she guessed, stood above her and held a bit of folded parchment with a seal. He was backlit by the afternoon sun and so she failed to discern his face.

She recognized the seal in burgundy wax and affixed with a gold ribbon, seal of a lion on a field of French lilies. It was from Godric.

She nodded, dismissing the messenger, taking the parchment from him as he departed.

Quickly she broke the seal, forgetting all of her previous thoughts.

She gasped at the contents.

"Poor Godric," she whispered as she read.

His father was failing fast. Salazar was with him at Christchurch...and he was married.

Rowena blinked at this bit of news.

She had no time to think on that, however. She made to get up from her lazy spot and headed out to the woods. The Hufflepuff chapel lay beyond and she made for it. She prayed for the soul of the valiant Godefroi. He had always been kind to her and had come between her and disaster on more than one occasion.

He felt a stirring in his heart that he mistook for nerves.

It was not as if he mistrusted advice from beyond the grave, for that was his trade. It was his own feelings that were alien and prone to lead him in the wrong direction. Helga seemed to be the prime example. He could not remember a moment before his journey to Jerusalem and back when he had doubted that the rest of his years would be spent with Helga at his side.

It was her boldness. She was unlike any woman that he had ever known. Strong. Able to do for herself. She had a self-possession that attracted him automatically. Indeed, as he watched her again upon his return, he was thrown by how cool she had been when breaking his heart. There was at least one part of her that was unrecognizable to him. But, he reasoned, seven years is a long time. And no one is constant.

A lifetime had passed and the people inhabiting it.

He was learning to live in this changed world.

But he would live for the inanimate stone, marble halls of his school and leave love forgotten. He would marry as his mother had instructed. But love...that was another time that had passed him by.

He raised his chin and entered the shadowy confines of the modest convent in the valley of the river Avon. The cathedral at Salisbury lay about a mile behind him and he approached with the blessing of the church for his institution. He was no more deserving in fortune than to have this.

He expected no more.

The abbess was surprised to see him when he came to meet her in the small chapel.

"Have we business, Lord Slytherin?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered her solemnly. He produced the magnificent script that had accompanied him on his journey from Scotland. For three hundred years his family had guarded this one treasure jealously. Even as a child it was his greatest pleasure to look at the delicate and colorful illuminations for hours.

He was a bit distressed at the price his wife would be bought. He was stunned when his mother had suggested that he give this precious possession over to the convent (which was undoubtedly where it belonged). It was a jeweled cover with the saint Peter portrayed on it. From the monastery island off the coast of Northumbria there was at one time a fine school of illumination from which this book had been produced. His father's father and before had preserved its artistry with care ever since the destructive days of the Vikings.

He set it in front of her.

A look of astonishment and delight painted her plain face and she blinked, looking up at him in an unspoken question.

"Yes," he answered. "You may open it. It belongs to this convent once again."

In January of 878 a sudden attack took the Saxon people by surprise. This very convent was cleared of its nuns and valuables (of which there was a considerable amount. Convents and Monasteries possessed much of the kingdom's wealth in this period). Among those noble thanes that had evacuated the convent with precious little time to spare, the Slytherin family had a hand. They had succeeded in floating most of the precious possessions of the convent down the river to safety. Of the four loads that sailed, three were later accounted for. The thane Slytherin spent a great portion of the next year tracking the raiding party north through the devastated kingdom. The book was recovered and remained in the custody of that family until this day.

Catching the abbess' look of complete gratification, Salazar smiled.

"Is the nun Verina at this convent?" he asked.

The abbess blinked. "What do you want with sister Verina?" she asked not unkindly.

"She is the daughter of a neighboring estate. I merely inquire after her health," he replied.

"Yes, of course," the abbess said with a smile. "She is in the priory, at prayer."

Salazar nodded and left the old abbess with her returned treasure.

He saw only one lady as he entered the priory, unfastening his cloak and unbuckling his sword from his waist. He knew that it was not her. This lady was too tall. The Verina he remembered was childlike and fidgeted constantly, awkward and shy.

This woman was unmoving and at peace.

She heard his footfalls and noted their ceasing at the doorway.

He had nearly vacated the doorway to leave her in peace when she turned and recognized him.

He did not recognize this woman.

"You have returned," she said simply.

"Verina?" was all he could manage by way of a reply.

Stunned, he let the silence linger as he strove for more words. She did not assist, but let him languish in the awkward pause.

She continued to stare sternly, expectantly.

The lily and the young rose when they appear in the summer are surpassed by the beauty of this woman, he thought.

Her skin was whiter than the hawthorn flower.

In his travels he had remembered thinking that none could compete with the beauty of the love that awaited him at home. He had been mistaken in Helga. Her beauty, though decidedly attractive on the outside was hindered by her wavering heart.

He could not be sure of Verina.

He did not know her. She had been a girl when he left. The woman before him was breathtaking and he longed for her sweet voice to speak again. But he did not know her heart.

"I am quite surprised to see you. Indeed, Lord Slytherin, I did not expect to see you again," she said, getting up from her knees.

Her hair swept back from her face in her strict habit of white showed her noble forehead beautifully and drew attention to her clear blue eyes. She looked on him expectantly.

"You doubted I would return from the crusades?" he asked.

"No," she said instantly. "I never anticipated that you would think on me or ever pay a visit to this convent."

"I had business with the abbess," he said.

"And my sister has no doubt informed you of my decision to take my vows? I stand for them in a month's time," she said.

He said nothing.

"I trust you have met her family?" she asked.

"I have. She is very happy. Why have you come here?" he asked.

"I could not live among her and her schemes," Verina answered simply.

"Pray, what does that mean?" he asked.

She paused to adjust her words. "I did not mean to sound cruel. I attended you mother's sick bed," she explained. "She was so distressed for the pain you would feel upon your homecoming. Her last thoughts were of you."

"You left because my mother died?"

"No, my lord."

"Please, Verina. We are friends still I hope. Please call me Salazar," he insisted.

"Very well. My sister is kind. She did not mean to distress your mother. Nor did she mean to hurt you. She did what she had to do to save the lands that were entrusted to her. I do not blame her. But I did not agree either. So I left."

"These are hard times. I do not blame her either," Salazar said.

"By Christ, I am relieved to hear you admit it," she said with a smile. "Have you been from the east long?"

"About a month. I heard you had come here and I wondered if there was any way that I could persuade you not to take your vows," Salazar replied.

She stood silent for a moment. "Whyever not?"

His heart was pacing faster than it ever had before. He felt sure that it would drop out of his chest in an instant if she were to reject it. He realized now that he would accept the love of no other. To be without her would be a pain beyond endurance.

"Lovely one," he said, a fleeting feeling of failure as she blinked in shock at the address. "If it please you, if such joy might be mine that you would love me, there is nothing you might command that I would not do, whether foolish or wise."

"Forget me," she said in a trembling voice. "My heart is for God. You are in love with my sister and I will not be your revenge for her scorn."

She began to walk away. She turned her back on him with a look that expressed deep hurt and disappointment.

Her back turned to him, a hand on the door, about to leave him,Salazar knelt and let his heart speak the words that his reserve had heretofore guarded jealously within him.

"I will be your everlasting.

I will be your sword and shield." His voice held a tremor that attested to his fear of her leaving.

She was too compassionate not to hear it.

She turned slowly and looked down at him where he knelt in the aisle of the priory. "What did you say?" she asked, breathless.

He swallowed and continued:

"I will be your sword

I will be your shield

When the ocean starts to dry

When the air is sick with smoke

Just when the statues start to cry

And fallen angels they lay broken

I will be there

I will be the smallest piece in everything

And I would lose my life

Before I break this promise to you."

She neared him cautiously, hands folded in front of her, guarded. "Was it on your travels that you have acquired the skills of a poet?"

"Your beauty inspires the words that are locked fast in my heart." He stood and looked into her clear blue and unflinching eyes. "I mean every single pledge that I have made to you, Verina."

"What am I supposed to say to that?" she asked, defeated.

"Say you want me to be all of those things."

"I do," she said with a smile.

Helga watched the masons.

She loved watching the gods representing their crafts take form out of blocks of fine marble. The face of Hermes smiled up at her as the master mason chiseled his eyes and wide, intelligent brow. He was to be a ceiling boss in the entryway. Others would soon join him in his endless effort to hold the walls of learning in place for, what she hoped was, centuries to come. The patron of science and learning, Hermes and the other gods that had once been thought to bestow powers of the supernatural would inspire the learning of thousands. It was a thought that left her giddy with anticipation.

The divinity par excellence of the craft of witches, Persephone and the great ancient goddess Hecate were finished and waiting for their moment to be placed.

But Helga longed most of all to see the master craftsman's depiction of the moon goddess Selene and Apollo, god of the Delphic Oracle and master over the arts of divination.

She thought how glorious the school would one day be. One day soon.

Thanks to Godric's skills with the building materials the job would be done in a quarter of the time that the greatest cathedrals took. But still she was impatient for progress. Even through magical processes, this school could not be built fast enough for her.

Under Hermes, the sculptor was etching the words ta physika, science.

Each piece would represent an element of learning in this institution. She marveled at the craftsman and the life he gave to the piece.

Persephone lay completed with the inscription vis naturae medicatrix, the healing power of nature. Hecate bore the creed gnosis, knowledge. Selene, once in her form, would proclaim artes mathematicae, astrology, and Apollo agathodaimon, or guardian angel. These, to Helga, caught the spirit of their vision. Like Christ who was imbued with talents of healing of the Father in heaven, they would use the gifts that they had been giving to increase mankind. And, like Christ, they would do this not to promote themselves, but to give to mankind the benefits of their qualities as healers, wizards and witches.

She was lost in thought on this when Rowena approached her very much distressed.

"Where have you come from?" Helga asked, startled.

Rowena produced a letter. "I have been praying for the failing father of our friend. Read this, Godric wished to warn you before their return."

Helga took the letter with concern and eyed her friend confusedly.

Rowena pointed to the parchment and urged her to look at it.

She read and at the end paled.

The last line was to tell them of Salazar who had been married in the priory on the grounds of the Gryffindor estate.

"Married to whom?" Helga said, looking up from the parchment with a vacant stare. "I knew this day would come. But I am taken by surprise at his urgency."

Rowena answered smartly, "He has been gone for quite a while. He has no family left and he has lands to think about. He needs an heir to pass them on to, does he not? And part ownership in this school."

Helga nodded distractedly and folded the paper.

Taking her friend's hand, Rowena kissed her cheek warmly and smiled. "I am off tonight. Give my condolences to Godric upon his return and to Salazar my happiest congratulations. I must meet the Cistercians on my island to see if we can strike a compromise. You will write to me about the foundation ceremony and the dedication?"

Helga smiled, still distracted. "We would not forget you for anything."

"And when I return," Rowena grinned happily. "You shall meet my boys."

"I look forward to that day. And I shall have another for you to meet as well," Helga answered.

Rowena squeezed her hand and let it go. "Take care of yourself, friend."

Godric, shocked at the news he had received upon his homecoming, allowed Rose to lead him to the chamber where she had been attending the deathbed of his father.

The old man had seen her first and reached out for her.

"Uncle," she said. "Take care you save your strength. Look who has come home."

It was hard to tell what the old man's reaction had been. His eyes were nearly lifeless, his faculties of speech having deserted him sometime ago.

Godric stepped into the room partially and stared at his diminishing father.

"No son of mine will desert his station for some silly quest. Any son of mine would have more sense." Those were the last words his father had spoken to him before he had ridden off to join Salazar and a hundred other young knights with a religious zeal. He had deserted his family in favor of a land that he foolishly thought God would give over to them as conquering heroes.

He realized now that there was more at stake than heroism.

His father would die and the last words they had spoken were spoken in anger.

Rose came to him and placed a hand on his arm.

"Speak to him. He can still hear you," she instructed.

"He does not want to hear me."

Old Godefroi choked and became so distressed that Rose left Godric to return to his side, holding him up from his pillow so that he could more easily breathe.

He extended a hand to his son.

Surprised, Godric moved tentatively forward and took the skeleton-like hand offered him. He knelt at Rose's feet and leaned close to his father in her arms. "I am sorry that I was not what you wanted me to be."

More distressed and attempting to fight for words, Godfroit touched his son's cheek and shook his head slowly, feebly. Then the hand fell away and the old man was finally at long last in peace.

He looked to Rose, still clutching to his father's hand. She was crying as she held him to her. He had been more of a father to her than her own had been. He had been more her father than his. He ached for her loss. And somewhere deeper he ached for his own lost father.

He was buried on a misty morning high on the hill that overlooked the shore. His father had remarked the day that they had buried his mother that it would be the ideal place for rest. "Do not worry, my son," he had said to Godric that day. Godric had been a small boy when his mother died but he could remember it with clarity. "She will not want for anything here. She has the oak for company and can watch the ships come and go in peace. She is happy here."

His father had longed to join his wife.

Now they lie under their oak together and watch the ships pass out of sight and to the end of the earth.

Turning to Rose who was weeping silently at his side he heard her say, "We have all waited so long for you to return."

"It was selfish of me to go," he admitted. "I should not have left you here to care for him on your own. It must have been difficult."

"There is no difficulty in caring for those you love," she answered. "It was only so when I had thought you would never appear."

"You knew I would come back for you, Rose."

She nodded. "I knew. I think I always knew."

They turned to walk down from the hill and saw an approaching rider. It was Salazar, Godric announced, eager to introduce his faithful friend to his Rose. They went down to meet him presently.

The year of Our Lord 1282 was a blessed year, for it saw the founding of the dream of four visionaries in the village above the town of Greenhill.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was to be dedicated that spring and to give its blessing the Bishop of Canterbury would make the long and perilous trip north in the middle of a war between the Kingdom of England and Wales and the nation of bickering clans, Scotland.

Also during this occasion much bleaker events colored this joyous one with troubling clouds and omens of the blackest kind.

The Jews, long-suffering at the hand of the king, Edward I, saw a worsening of their state. An edict was passed stating that all Jews wear what was known as a tabula, a sign that proclaimed a Jew for all to separate and discriminate plainly against. Colored bright yellow and considerably larger than the symbol had been in the earlier years of the reign, this tabula kept Jews from trading in the open markets and forbade them from practicing their chief trade in money-lending and setting them apart as the sole contributors to an exorbitant tax for the king's wars in France. It was seen by most God-fearing subjects as a triumph over the infidel by a king that had harbored a long-standing hatred for their kind.

To worsen the case of these Jews, a child's body had been found that winter in the church yard of St. Benet's. Some of those concerned made the preposterous claim that a Hebrew inscription had been cut into the flesh of the murdered child. Absurd as this may seem, the canons of St. Paul's Cathedral chose to believe this claim. The corpse of the little boy was buried in a place of honor beside the altar as a martyr.

This was exactly what the king had been waiting for. The Jews, in his mind, must be guilty and so he fined them even more; a great levy (the largest ever taken before: twelve times the annual rate--sixty thousand marks or forty thousand pounds). The once flourishing Jewish community was now in 1282 nearly broken.

It was then, the day before the dedication ceremony of the new school that Joshua approached Helga and asked for a conference with her. She suggested that he wait and let her fetch the other co-founders so that he may meet with them all, assuming that this was an entirely financial matter to do with the school.

He declined immediately and said that this was in reference to his daughter's schooling alone.

She kindly permitted him to come in. No matter the preposterous claims against his people, Helga would always hold a warm spot in her heart for the man that had made their school a reality.

"I hope you have been well," Helga said, cradling her newest child sleeping in her arms. She noticed the tabula he wore and thought on it with disgust. It was a brand, a mark to set them apart as different. She wondered who would bear the mark next, perhaps Scots like her.

Joshua nodded distractedly, though he did not look well. It had been twelve years since he had come to her and Rowena with his daughter Rebecca and she had been surprised by his altered state. He no longer smiled, but looked sadly and pensively at her child. He said slowly, "I pray that times will change so that he may know a better kingdom than the one that rules us now."

Helga merely nodded and smiled.

"What is his name?" Joshua asked.

"Mungo," Helga answered. "He has two brothers and a sister around here somewhere."

"Children are a blessing," Joshua said with a falling expression. "This one is marked as special."

"Do you think so?" Helga said intrigued. "I had a dream a night or two before he was born. A voice told me that he would have the gift of healing with his touch."

"He will grow to be a holy man," Joshua said. He smiled genuinely at the child.

Helga would remember this scene with Joshua and the enchanted look upon his face when he beheld Mungo for the rest of her days.

"How is your child?" she asked.

"She is the reason I have come to speak to you."

"I had thought that you would have come about the money you lent us to build the school. I will pay you twice the interest you originally asked for."

Joshua looked shocked but not offended. "No. I am a man of my word. Though I am nearly ruined now, I would not ask for more than we first agreed upon. Times are not so bad as all that...just yet anyway. I can still provide for my family. But I wanted your word that my daughter still has a place at your school when it is dedicated."

"Of course she does. Whyever not?"

"Many people are closing their doors to us," he pointed to his badge as he said this. "We can no longer trade openly. We are forced to live disgraced. I would not have that for my daughter."

"You and your family are always welcome here, Joshua. And Rebecca still has a place in our school if she will still have it."

"I thank you," Joshua said bowing his gratitude and with one last look at the sleeping child he left with more confidence than when he had arrived.

Helga watched him go with a sinking heart and wondered how much further he would have to be oppressed before it would finally break his spirit, the spirit of his people.

She caught the dark look of Salazar as he entered the hall of her manor and glared at her.

"Was that the Jew Joshua that I saw leaving?"

"That was my friend Joshua whom you saw leaving," she said coldly. Their friendship had been reduced to chill civility upon his return with her sister as his wife.

Helga had taken this action as a personal affront and would not hear Verina when she insisted that she had married for love and not for spite of her. The argument had ended in unpleasant words, Verina stating that Helga had been angry at her own decision and not at Verina's. They had not spoken since. Ten years had passed with silence between them. Verina had had two children by Salazar; a boy named Eomer that was near Aaron's age (her first child) and a girl that was nearer the age of Mungo. Her name was Eowyn and she made her father proud. He had said often that she was beautiful like her mother. He had a particular way of saying it that wounded Helga severely.

"He means to enroll his daughter in our school," she continued.

Salazar took a deep calming breath. "I cannot caution you more strongly against this, Helga. It is dangerous to admit Jews into the school. I mean to say that associating with them will bring unwanted attention to our school. What if we are one day denounced as heretics? Our position with the church is precarious. It stands on the edge of a knife. One move in the wrong direction could be the end of us all."

He had raised his voice to such a pitch that the baby stirred and began to cry.

She gave him a withering look and exited the hall.

Rowena was on the road from York to Greenhill.

She was eager to see the school completed but other issues weighed heavier on her mind and competed for attention.

She had been to see the order of Cistercians on her land. Her husband, a high-ranking noble among those that served one of the kings of Eire, was pressing his rights to her lands and had frightened the abbot of the monastery that she had so faithfully contributed to. She had no more faith with those monks and could feel her husband's sway over them.

She was returned the cross gilt in gold and precious jewels that her grandfather had donated to them so many years ago and the abbot kindly refused any more patronage from her or her family in the future. She felt that it was pointless to ask anything further from the once loyal monks and so left the school out of their brief conversation altogether.

Never should she have left for Scotland when Helga's letter had reached her saying that Godric and Salazar had returned from the crusades. She should have stayed here and watched over her lands and never given her husband the opportunity to get a foothold in. But for her friends she would do anything. And now it seems she was part of a school that she could not contribute to in the smallest way. Her monks refused to staff it as she had hoped and her lands were threatened.

"Mother," her oldest son Theoderic said, pulling her out of her hopeless thoughts.

"Yes, my love," she said, brushing the golden brown hair out of her younger son's face as he slept with his head upon her lap.

"Is Scotland much like our island?" Theoderic asked. He was fourteen and full of questions.

"Why dear?" Rowena asked sadly. "Do you miss home already?"

Theoderic hesitated and then said finally, "Will we live here now because father doesn't want us?"

Rowena could not answer this. She smiled at him and said, "We will live here for the time being. I have an obligation to my friends and I need your help for I am supposed to teach the art of reading the stars. Do you remember how I taught you?"

"Yes, mother," he said, looking out over the rocky terrain sadly.

Galahad remained asleep in her lap.

She reached a hand up to touch Theoderic's cheek and he moved away from her.

Saying nothing, she let the moment pass blaming herself for his unhappiness, for all of their unhappiness.

She arrived in Greenhill and came straight away to Helga's estate where she met a nearly grown Hugo and the astonishingly beautiful girl Azria, both with their father's red hair. Among Helga's two step children of her husband's previous marriage Helga had had two sons of her own. They, of course, also possessed Sir Guy's red hair, a boy her youngest son's age, Aaron and one that was about a year old, Mungo.

At dinner that night over the lines of Lanval read by one of the monks of the nearby monastery, she met Salazar's family, Verina (whom she knew previously) and their two children Eomer and his younger sister Eowyn. She could tell that they both made him very happy. She secretly blessed his good fortune though it gave Helga pain and she hoped all of the best for him in the future.

Godric had also married. But she was the object of his childhood obsession and Rowena was not surprised in the least by their match. Rose and Godric had been blessed with a son of about Eomer and Aaron's age, Isaiah and a new baby girl named Isaidore.

She smiled and blessed them all and secretly wished that she had been blessed with a successful marriage, but said nothing of this. None of them new of her misfortunes, save Helga and she knew very little.

It was with great pains though that she informed them simply that the Cistercians that she had placed so much hope in would not support their school here.

Salazar frowned and stared at her for the longest time before Helga directed his scrutinizing gaze at herself with a comment about Joshua's visit to her that morning.

Their esteemed guest, the bishop stared as well. So did his vast entourage.

Godric shrugged and answered simply, "The Dominicans would do just as well, though I am sorry for you. You had your heart set on those monks."

She nodded and retired early to bed, lodged in a room in Helga's spacious manor. Theoderic, though graciously enough spoke to his hostess in polite yet short answers, would not say a word to her and pretended to be asleep when she went in to check on him.

She lay staring up at the ceiling and held Galahad closely to her. He was still her little angel and she had hoped that he always would be.

"Mother?" he asked startling her.

"What, my lamb?" she asked in a whisper.

"Why do you stare at the ceiling?" he asked whispering as well.

She smiled to herself. "Because I cannot see the stars," she answered.

He expelled an audible breath and said, "There should be stars painting the ceiling at night."

She thought on this all night. He had given her the idea of a great contribution to the school and its dedication tomorrow.

He saw the angry glances that Salazar and Helga periodically shot at each other. Rose beside him said, "He does not agree with her inviting Joshua."

"He is worried about the message that it will send to the bishop, whose blessing is the foundation that our school stands on. But Joshua's child deserves to attend just as much as anyone."

The child that they spoke of, Rebecca, was not even really a child but a stunning young woman of middle height, an intelligent face and a calm personage. She stood proudly next to her father and both tried to ignore several glances that were marking them and the tabulas that both wore plainly on their cloaks.

"Does he possess the same sort of animosity for those who do not practice magic at all?" Rose whispered as the bishop took his spot behind an altar placed in front of the steps of the school.

Godric smiled at Rose.

He knew that, though his friend marked a difference between those who practiced and those who did not possess the ability of magic, Rose was beloved by everyone just the same. And on top of all, Salazar was his very best friend and surely respected Rose on that aspect alone.

The Bishop of Canterbury, the very voice of the church's seat in England, stood and solemnly read from the Testament of Solomon.

The masses that had come for this historic occasion were silent as he spoke.

"God gave me true knowledge of things, as they are: an understanding of the structure of the world and the way in which elements work, the beginning and the end of eras and what lies in between, the cycles of the years and the constellations, the thoughts of men, the powers of the spirits, the virtues of roots, I learned it all, secret or manifest." The bishop looked out over the crowd and smiled at the four founders of this one of a kind school. "Like Solomon, God shares the knowledge of these things with his faithful. And so let it be that this day in the year of Our Lord twelve-hundred and eighty-two that the school for the arts of witchcraft and wizardry be opened for learning here in Greenhill in the territory of Scotland."

There was much cheering that only ceased in sheer amazement as Rowena did something truly remarkable in turning the ceiling of the Great Hall into a vast mirror reflecting the changing moods of the heavens onto the stunned onlookers below. It would stand this way forever.

And so marked the founding of a school for the arts of witchcraft and wizardry.

* The highly eloquent speech that Salazar made to Verina is sadly not my own genius but (oddly enough) comes from a Sister Hazel song called 'Sword and Shield'. I know, it sounds like a ballad, huh?