Fulke (died 875) was the Warden of Relics of the Order of the Ancients during the late 9th century AD. She was killed by the Viking warrior Eivor at the Siege of Portchester in 875 AD.
Biography[]
Born to a fishwife in Bruges, Fulke grew up in a colorful environment quickened by far-reaching trade. Fulke drank in the tales of merchants from as far away as the Baltic Sea and longed for a life of adventure. She taught herself to read and absorbed any text she came across, leading to a curious mixture of beliefs and certainties.
She discovered references to Isu artifacts and pursued these with a passion, bringing her into the orbit of the Order of the Ancients. Despite her odd beliefs, her talents were recognized, and she soon rose from the rank of Palatinus to Maegester, though she retained the honorific Paladin for purposes known only to her.
In 874 AD, she was imprisoned by Lady Eadwyn of Oxfordshire for her heretical views, and she was held in a cage in the crypt of St. Albans monastery in Hertfordshire, England. She had been preaching that Jesus did not come to Earth to redeem humanity's sins, but to teach them about the supernatural world, and she claimed that the demiurge ("Saklas" or "Ialdabaoth") had corrupted the Roman Catholic Church and misled its teachings and its followers. She was rescued from the monastery by the Norwegian Vikings Sigurd Styrbjornson and Eivor and the Hidden Ones member Basim ibn Ishaq during their raid on St. Albans, and Sigurd, in exchange, wished to know about a rare artifact she possessed, which she called the "Saga Stone". She tried to take the three men to the stone, which had been stored with her acolyte Paul of Oxford at the Evinghou Tower in the Chiltern Hills, but she found that Paul had been murdered and the stone stolen by Eadwyn's soldiers. She decided to help Eivor sabotage Eadwyn's power in the region, helping him ambush one of Eadwyn's supply columns at Eatun Barn and later fighting alongside him in the Siege of Cyne Belle Castle.
When King Alfred the Great of Wessex arrived outside the castle with his army and agreed to a parley with the Norse, Fulke interrupted the meeting to greet Alfred, whom she saluted as the head of the Order in England. She then foiled Basim's plan to volunteer himself as Alfred's peacetime hostage, instead suggesting that he take Sigurd, who was the son of a king. She used this as an excuse to experiment on Sigurd and attempt to discover if he was descended from the old gods, torturing him and sending a letter to Eivor at Ravensthorpe to gloat about Sigurd's torture.
When, in 875 AD, Eivor and Basim received word that Fulke had recently been in Kent, they partnered with Abbot Cynebert of St. Hadrian's Priory to track her down. After (albeit unsuccessfully) helping Cynebert kidnap Ealdorman Tedmund of Kent, the Hidden Ones persuaded Cynebert to lure Fulke into a trap by inviting her to dinner at the monastery. Fulke intercepted the letter and murdered Cynebert, and she briefly confronted Eivor and Basim at the priory and taunted them before telling her men to kill them and then report to her at her sanctum in Canterbury. Eivor and Basim escaped and later infiltrated Fulke's sanctum, where they found Sigurd's severed arm, left behind for them as a gift. They also found a map of Fulke's fortress at Portchester, so they marshalled up an army to take her on. In the meantime, Fulke continued to torture Sigurd, eventually convincing him that he was a god, and transforming Sigurd's mental state into one focused squarely on "destiny" and divinity rather than his human past.
Death[]
Fulke's body
In late 875, the allied Danish-Saxon army began its siege of Portchester, cutting off Fulke's supply lines to prevent her from digging in and withstanding the siege. When Eivor decided to begin the assault, Fulke taunted him from the ramparts, telling him that, if he wanted to find Sigurd, all he need do was follow his screams. During the assault, Eivor chased Fulke to her keep, and then to the church, where he and Basim found a wounded Sigurd. Basim tended to Sigurd as Eivor chased Fulke into the catacombs, where he shot her full of flaming arrows, severely wounding her. During the fight, Fulke bragged about how she had succeeded in making Sigurd aware of his "true self", but Eivor said that she had only given him pain. He then chased her up a ladder and into the cemetery, where Fulke was surrounded by Eivor's men. Eivor had them stand by as he duelled her, and Fulke plucked a wooden cross from the ground for use as a weapon. Eivor ultimately disarmed her, forced her onto her knees, and stuck his axe into the side of her neck, nearly decapitating her and killing her.