A Love Unexpected

Bertha's Tale: A Novel - episode 10

These twice-monthly instalments of my serialised historical fiction novel are just for my members only. The beauty of early Anglo-Saxon history, for fiction writers, is that the surviving written record is so tiny that we can create these stories suggesting what their lives might have been like. To access this content, you can subscribe below and join our wonderful community of like-minded souls. We’d love to have you!

Bertha’s voice
Canterbury, Kent
c. A.D. 580

I hadn’t expected to fall in love when I first heard the plans for my arranged marriage.

Receiving the news in my quiet Parisian home, I’d been heartbroken, devastated. To marry the prince would mean leaving almost everything behind: my home, my friends, my family…

I think I’d always known, deep down, that this would be my fate. So many of the girls I’d grown up with, my sisters and cousins, had been sent far away to marry princes or kings they’d never met, and that had often been the last I’d seen of them. I’d heard bits of news here and there, when one produced an heir or another’s husband had died unexpectedly. Very occasionally, maybe once or twice, one would visit the Parisian court with their husbands when there was business to be done amongst the men. But really, once they married, they were gone from our lives.

I guess I’d allowed myself to dream, after my father’s fall from grace and then his death, that I might have escaped this future. That no one would want me. That I’d be allowed to live out my days as a spinster princess or royal abbess instead. I couldn’t see any value, for anyone, in marrying the daughter of a dead excommunicated king, who’d only really ruled a part of Francia anyway.

I’d allowed myself to dream, perhaps ill-advisedly, and then watched as my dreams came crashing down around me, piece by piece.

I didn’t want to be a queen. I’d seen what that did to the women in my family: jealousy, selfish ambition, even death for some.

I didn’t want to leave Paris. I’d been comfortable there, happy with the little life I’d built for myself as a royal recluse.

I didn’t want to marry a barbarian. I’d heard tales of the wild pagans who lived across the water and had no desire to live among them.

I’d not had a choice in the decision, however: very rarely do us royal women get a say in what happens to us. So, I’d packed my things and was ready to leave just seven short days after hearing that I was to be wed, sure that I would never be back here again. I’d sobbed the whole journey, across land and sea, from Paris to Kent, so certain was I that something awful was going to happen to me.

Today, though, I’m not crying. Oh no. Today, I am delighted to be marrying the prince.