"Maybe," Gareth replied. "But at the moment, I couldn't give a damn. Come, we're going home."

"Just leaving, milord!" Miranda exclaimed in mock horror. "Just like that!"

"Just like that," Gareth said firmly. "We'll take a wherry and leave-the barge for the others."

"But what of Chip? He's waiting in the barge."

"You don't really believe he won't find us?" Gareth's eyebrows rose in mock astonishment. "As it happens, I'm perfectly resigned to his company." He took her hand and taking a leaf from Henry's book began to walk swiftly toward the river.

"Fortunately, Chip seems perfectly resigned to you, milord," Miranda said sweetly, hanging back with a mischievous gleam in her eye.

"Oh, believe me, I'm aware of how fortunate that is. Now, march! I grow impatient." Miranda chuckled and marched.

A shaft of moonlight piercing the interwoven leaves of the ancient oak in the now-deserted arbor caught the glow of pearl, the glitter of gold, the luster of emerald, amid the oak's moss-encrusted roots.

In the Beginning…

The alchemist watched the liquefied gold swirl like mercury in the flat iron skillet. He tilted the pan over the flames of the hearth and the precious metal rolled in on itself to form a tube. He drew the pan off the fire and plunged it into the tub of water beside his stool. The water hissed and boiled as if it would spit out the thing that it had engulfed. When the alchemist raised the pan the gold was solidifying.

He took the pan to the table and dropped the gold onto its surface. A ray of sunlight fell through the chimney hole in the roof of the wattle-and-daub hut and the gold glittered. The alchemist took up his tools: the fine needle, sharp as a dagger point, the flat file. He began to shape the gold, using his fingers to begin with, and the serpentine coils appeared in rough form. Then with needle and file he created the serpent. Within each sinuous curve he embedded a pearl and the living gold, "took the gem into itself, hardening around it, enclosing it with its shape.

The serpent's head, its mouth, took form beneath the alchemist's tools. He worked deftly but quickly, before the gold could harden. And when the head was formed to his satisfaction, he took the one pearl that was left… a great, glowing, translucent, living gem… and inserted it into the serpent's mouth.

Then the alchemist surveyed his work. Day had given way to night and the light of the evening star now filled the chimney hole. He held the bracelet in the palm of his hand. It was a gift of love. A gift worthy of Eve. A gift to bind a woman for eternity.

So enraptured was he, he didn't hear the shouts from beyond the hut, the screams from the beach. He was aware of nothing until the first burning brands were thrown through the doorway. He ran from the conflagration. The Norsemen surrounded the village, their longboats pulled up on the sand. Flames leaped into the sky. The screams of women, the weeping of babies, the moans of the dying, filled his ears before the ax brought his own death.

The Norsemen left the village at daybreak, taking with them the spoils of their raid. Women, a few children, what material goods they had found in this isolated village in Anglia. As they rowed away from devastation, the flames subsided, the village smoldered. Nothing lived in the ashes but the dull glimmer of gold, the glow of pearl.

The serpentine bracelet emerged untouched from the flames of destruction.