Daughter of Mercia
Dr Anna Petersen Mysteries #1
By Julia Ibbotson
Publication Date: June 6th, 2025
Series: Dr Anna Petersen Mysteries
Publisher: Archbury Books
Pages: 301 ebook / 392 pb
Genre: Medieval Dual-Timeline Mystery Romance
A brand-new Anglo-Saxon time-slip full of mystery and romance.
Echoes of the past resonate across the centuries as Dr Anna Petersen, a medievalist and runologist, is struggling with past trauma and allowing herself to trust again. When archaeologist (and Anna's old adversary) Professor Matt Beacham unearths a 6th century seax with a mysterious runic inscription, and reluctantly approaches Anna for help, a chain of events brings the past firmly back into her present. And why does the burial site also contain two sets of bones, one 6th century and the other modern?
As the past and present intermingle alarmingly, Anna and Matt need to work together to solve the mystery of the seax runes and the seemingly impossible burial, and to discover the truth about the past. Tensions rise and sparks fly between Anna and Matt. But how is 6th century Lady Mildryth of Mercia connected to Anna? Can they both be the Daughter of Mercia?
For fans of Barbara Erskine, Elena Collins, Pamela Hartshorne, Susanna Kearsley and Christina Courtenay.
Praise for Daughter of Mercia:
“Ibbotson’s prose immerses you in the vivid world of the Anglo-Saxon era, richly layered with sensory detail that brings both the past and present timelines to life. I could feel the atmosphere—the cold stone and the wind on the hills. Her writing weaves the two eras seamlessly, connecting people across time and creating a mysterious, slow-building tension that keeps you turning the pages.”
~ Alis Page, Reviewer, 5*
~ Alis Page, Reviewer, 5*
Excerpt
In the mead hall feasting where Lady Mildryth is entertaining the stranger, Theowulf
535 AD
She was perfectly aware that there was speculation and that Theowulf was considered an intruder in their midst. She glanced sideways at him and saw his frowning hesitation as he stared at the food that the serving serfs offered him. He cautiously took the venison pieces onto his wooden platter with the knife she had given him, but he shook his head at the spicy sauce, his nose wrinkled up and his eyes narrowed. He was beginning to annoy her with his pickiness. He must surely be some great thegn to be so choosy. It seemed that he did not understand the quality of her table.
“No, look,” she said, irritation rising in her voice. “This is good. It is to make the meat taste better at this time of year.” She showed him again how to eat with the knife, how to dip the meat in the communal sauce bowl, how to break the bread and mop up the juices. What was the matter with him that he looked as if he had never sat at the mead table before? Did the Saxons not have their evening meal like this, together in the hall. Surely they ate the same sort of food with the same knives to eat with? Where in God’s truth did he come from? What manner of settlement was he raised in?
Theowulf’s first bite appeared to satisfy him and soon he was eating hungrily, salting his mutton and beef rather more generously than she would have liked, although she had told him that salt was rare and he must be careful. Had he understood her? Maybe not. She signalled the table serf to remove the salt pot from his reach.
The bowls of nuts and berries from the hedgerows he must have recognised as he nodded and ate with no hesitation. Mildryth was aware that he was drinking copiously from his mead-cup. The women cup-bearers were kept busy refilling his cup as they scurried around with the thegns’ mead flagon and the communal ale-bowl. Out of the corner of her eye, Mildryth watched his strong hands with their long fingers reach for his mead-cup and lift it to his lips, sipping cautiously at first, then gulping thirstily as if he savoured a new taste. Did the Saxons not have mead? Such a big muscular man and yet he ate and drank like a child. She could not help but smile at him and he grinned back at her, his piercing blue eyes searing into her soul. Her heart fluttered strangely and she turned down her mouth at the corners.
“My lady.” Aelfric appeared before her, indicating that the ceorls were ready to light the flares to flame in their sconces on the walls, and soon the hanging cressets were shedding an oily light. The fire pit in the middle of the hall flaming up, licking towards the roof, black choking smoke clouding the air as it rose to the thatch. Her thegns at the long trestle tables down each side of the hall took on a ghoulish appearance in the gloom but as the flames steadied the red sweaty faces came into focus.
Clearly, a great deal of mead had been consumed and her drunken guests rolled against each other, so that Mildryth thought that Theowulf must wonder if they were embracing or fighting. One swept his hand wildly across the table, knocking over his goblet and spilling golden liquid to drip onto the herb-strewn wooden floor. Another fell backwards from the bench and clutched the rich gold-embroidered wall tapestry hanging behind him in a desperate attempt to gain his balance.
Lady Mildryth rose abruptly and raised her arms, the wide sleeves of her velvet over-robe falling to her upper arms. “Enough!”
The boisterous din gradually quietened, with only the odd inebriated voices from a few dazed thegns cutting across the hall to the benches opposite. The ladies at the benches turned to glare at their partners and slap their bloated cheeks, remonstrating with them piously. All faces turned accusingly to the miscreants, despite their owners having added to the raucous din a few moments before.
Aelfric knocked his seax against the top table three times, and all fell silent. Mildryth slowly shook her head. “My thegns, you are all well aware that I do not allow drunkenness and foul behaviour in my mead hall at feasting. Any guest from outside our settlement would think we are barbarians.”
A murmur of denial growled across the hall. But as Lady Mildryth turned briefly to Theowulf, they seemed to grasp that their cūning might perhaps be referring to the stranger sitting to her right. She saw their frowns and much shaking of heads. She knew exactly what they were thinking: who is this newcomer, this outsider who narrowed his sharp blue eyes at them so arrogantly?
But they kept their peace and bit their lips as their lady signalled to Aelfric with a sweep of her hand to summon the scōp. He arrived with an expansive spreading of his arms, his dark cloak falling like the wings of some great bird, his long white hair and beard glowing in the firelight. He stood in the centre of the hall turning around to acknowledge the applause of the thegns and in response they banged the hilts of their seaxes against the trestles.
Mildryth swivelled round at the sound beside her, and saw that Theowulf had bent forwards over the table, his sleeves almost sopping up the remains of the cream and blackberry concoction before him. He was staring intently at the scōp, eyes widened. How odd, she was sure that the Saxons had similar entertainment at their feasts, from what she had heard. Their practices were not so very different from their own, surely. Yet Theowulf looked … what could she say? … wondrous, fascinated, as though he had never seen a poet story-teller before.
The scōp bowed to Lady Mildryth as she asked him where he was from, as was the custom, and how far he was travelling that moon-journey, and whether the chamber they had set aside for his rest that night was acceptable. With the formalities done, the poet embarked upon his tale, a saga of warriors’ heroism and of dragons, with the names of Mildryth and her father Cnebba of Mercia and of most of their cyth and cyn slipped in to the well-known narrative.
Mildryth settled back to hear the tale, although in truth she had heard it many times before; yet it never ceased to fill her with the comfort of knowing that it was her tradition, her family, her heritage. And all the time, throughout the whole heroic poem, although many of the thegns fell to sleep in a drunken stupor, their heads resting on the tables or propped up by their ladies, she was aware that Theowulf sat to attention, as if caught entranced by every word that fell from the old man’s mouth.
She watched him out of the corner of her eye and saw that his lips moved with the scōp’s words, silently repeating them … and not always repeating them, but sometimes speaking them along with the poet. So he knew some of her Angeln words! And, even more strangely, he seemed to know this poem. How could that be, if he were not Angeln? She remembered that he had spoken her name and rank when she first saw him in the lock-up, but hesitantly as though he was unsure of them or was trying them out aloud for sound.
And so he had heard the story-teller before. Or at least he had heard the same poem recited elsewhere. Maybe not by this scōp but by someone else at some other feast in some other mead hall in some other settlement. How intriguing. If only he would speak to her so that she could understand his words. For those that fell from his lips were strange and the sounds he made were incomprehensible.
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Julia Ibbotson
Julia Ibbotson is fascinated by the medieval world and the concept of time. She is the author of historical mysteries with a frisson of romance. Her books are evocative of time and place, well-researched and uplifting page-turners. Her current series focuses on early medieval time-slip / dual-time mysteries.
Julia read English at Keele University, England, specialising in medieval language / literature / history, and has a PhD in socio-linguistics. After a turbulent time in Ghana, West Africa, she became a school teacher, then a university academic and researcher. Her break as an author came soon after she joined the RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme in 2015, with a three-book deal from Lume Books for a trilogy (Drumbeats) set in Ghana in the 1960s.
She has published five other books, including A Shape on the Air, an Anglo-Saxon timeslip mystery, and its two sequels The Dragon Tree and The Rune Stone. Her latest novel is the first of a new series of Anglo-Saxon dual-time mysteries, Daughter of Mercia, where echoes of the past resonate across the centuries.
Her books will appeal to fans of Barbara Erskine, Pamela Hartshorne, Susanna Kearsley, and Christina Courtenay. Her readers say: ‘Julia’s books captured my imagination’, ‘beautiful story-telling’, ‘evocative and well-paced storylines’, ‘brilliant and fascinating’ and ‘I just couldn’t put it down’.
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