Page 131 of The Thornwyck Rose

“The name Payen dies with my servitude and my pagan past,” Erik said as he’d rehearsed. "I am Erik Bjornsson—but let the realm know me henceforth as Lord Erik de Montfort, by oath and by land." He wanted his name, the name of his father, Bjorn, but the Normans and their enemies knew the name, Montfort. They knew the reputation of Montfort. Bjornsson was no one to them. It was better for Ragnar, Seren, and her children to keep the name Lord Henry gave him.

David placed his hand upon Erik's crown. "Then rise in the sight of men and God, Lord Erik de Montfort, Baron of Fellmere.”

Erik stood.

David turned to Ragnar. "And you, Ragnar Eriksson, who stood beside me when my blood did not, who fought for the keep and kept your father alive—You will be baptized under the Church and take the name Robert de Montfort, heir of Montfort Keep and Baron of Fellmere.”

Ragnar gave a single nod with a pressed smile.

The great hall filled with murmurs and astonished looks, but no one protested. David had named his allies, and none would dare challenge a man who bled for the seat and rose with its heir.

“Upon your acceptance, we shall now witness your rebirth with water,” David said and ordered everyone who wanted to witness the baptism of their brothers in Christ to the bailey chapel.

Erik and Ragnar went first. They said nothing to each other during the long walk until they reached the chapel steps.

Ragnar snorted a laugh. “Lord Robert.”

Erik glanced at him with a sad smile. Ragnar was tooforeign a name to keep. He threw an arm around his boy’s shoulders and whispered, ”Name your children how you see fit. Maybe the next generation will be kinder to those with foreign names.”

Stone arches, cold to the touch, rose overhead like outstretched wings. Candles flickered in the apse, casting wavering light across the baptismal pool—an old, cross-shaped basin sunk into the floor, fed by the wellspring beneath the chapel.

He and Ragnar stripped down to a tunic and trousers. They had made Erik wear gloves to cover the tattoos on his hands so as not to cause discomfort or scandal among his new noble family.

Once the nobility and witnesses had settled into the chapel’s benches, more comfortably spaced than within the keep, Father Osbert led the processional down to the pool. The ornately carved rim was worn smooth by time.

Erik was the first to go. Standing at its edge, barefoot on the stone, he looked down into the water. The surface was black with shadow, the faintest ripple breaking against the edges. It looked deep enough to drown a man. His toes hung over the edge as he tried to ignore the chill’s pang up his leg from the splash of the ripple breaking.

Seren and David sat in their private alcove, watching him. David held the scroll in his hand.

Erik’s future.

Father Osbert entered the pool by the steps at the head of the cross, and Erik followed. His hands hung at his sides, the skin callused and pale with healing scars. The water inside was cruelly cold and somehow called holy.

Father Osbert took a silver bowl with a spout, filled it with water from the pool, and blessed it again.

The rites he murmured were lost on Erik, even with the three weeks of instruction Erik received in the Lord’s ways prior.

Father Osbert stepped closer, his voice echoed for all to hear.

“Do you renounce the gods you once served?”

Erik’s jaw clenched.

This was the moment that would divide his life.

Not raids, not wounds and scars, not obedience under threat of Ragnar’s torturous death—this—a confession, a half-lie.

Frostbitten nights beneath foreign stars, and of the man he had been before survival stripped him to the bones of his soul, entered his mind.

Envisioned nights of listening to his mother’s song of Odin’s ravens carved into shields rang in his ears. The god’s spear image burned on his skin, as with the great serpent of fate encircled it, with Seren’s star now in the center.

Seren took his attention once more, where she sat still and veiled, her face hidden from him by mourning black, with hands folded in her lap.

He would not renounce them for her deity. He renounced them because the world they now belonged to had no place for her or Ragnar or even himself.

"Do you renounce the old gods?" the old priest asked again.

The murmur in the audience was enough for Erik to decide with finality what he was doing for the life that waited beyond the basin.