For Me Fate Wove This

by Octavia Randolph

  “I will wed her daughter,” Ceric told them. He proclaimed this before both monks, and Eadward too, as they sat over their wooden bowls of thin barley browis the first night. They all looked at him. The Prince knew of Ceric’s plan, and of his own father’s endorsement of it. He also knew almost two years had passed since Ceric had journeyed to wed the girl. Whether his failure to do so then had been a lucky escape for Ceric or a damaging loss to the cause of peace, Eadward could not guess.

  Just declaring his intent to others made the goal more attainable to Ceric. The monks both nodded and smiled, and Wulgan commented on Heavenly Providence bringing them into the others’ ken.

  “Will you carry a letter for me, to give to Abbess Sigewif? She will see it gets to Four Stones.”

  “Indeed we shall, my son,” answered Wulgan. “And may Berhtwald and I have the honour of meeting the maid’s mother, Lady Ælfwyn.”

  Ceric had nothing upon which he could write, but in the Prince’s baggage waggon there was a small store of used parchment, one of which Eadward granted him. It was a trimming from a larger leaf, and had a few random lines upon it, delineating a map of some kind, but the blank reverse was just as smooth. Next morning Ceric set the parchment on a slat of wood on his lap, and cut a new nib from a goose quill which was already old and cracking. The pottery vial of ink the Prince offered smelt ill and was close to spoiling, but for his hurried letter all would suffice. Easter was just past. He dated his letter:

  Near the Octave Day of Easter

  HRALD – MY BROTHER

  Would this scrap of parchment be me myself. Know that I am well and at Eadward’s side. Hearing you and Four Stones are whole would be my greatest boon. All my effort is for Wessex, Kilton, and Ashild. May we be granted Peace between our halls, forever.

  CERIC OF KILTON

  That night before he slept Ceric came to Eadward’s tent. That of the monks’ was pitched nearby, and both were within, and Ceric thought, asleep. The next day they would come as close to the border of Anglia as they might, and they would see the holy brothers off. Since giving Wulgan his letter, Ceric could not stop thinking of the hardship and difficulty the journey to Oundle presented. Mounted on asses, entirely unarmed, carrying no valuables save for their healing recipes and their own souls, they would go forth. When Eadward gestured him within his tent, Ceric tilted his chin towards the tent which held the monks.

  “I would go with them.”

  Eadward looked at him, his expression as blank as the tone of his response. “To your own death. No. You are needed here.”

  Ceric’s head dropped, but he nodded, as he must.

  In the morning they parted with the monks at a stream which would lead them north across the border. Wulgan and Berhtwald raised their hands in blessing to their escort, and with cheerful mien turned the shaggy heads of their grey asses along the cress-clad bank. The animals’ long and tufted ears swiveled back at the whicker of Eadward’s stallion, and then pricked forward to face the journey ahead.

  “God go with them,” Ceric murmured.

  The Prince’s response was less hopeful.

  “I fear they will see His face long before they see Oundle.”

  Then began the most trying four months of Ceric’s life. Daily hunger was a constant. Coming across an isolated farm and its several buildings, Eadward would halt his men and approach at a distance with two or three of his body-guard, one carrying the standard of Wessex, that golden dragon banner. A man might appear, spear in hand, terror on his face as the Prince asked if he had grain to spare so they might make browis. At this point the form of a woman and likely children would crowd the door as well, hunger and fear marking all of their countenances. Eadward was well supplied with silver, and could offer this rare commodity to them, but coinage profited little when there was no grain for which to bargain.

  While on the march, discovering the eggs of birds, wild berries, apples, lambs’ lettuce, watercress, the fat buds of butterbur or any other edible bounty occasioned a brief frenzy of feeding. Unripe nuts made them sick with their bitterness, but little was beyond their trying. One man found a bee hive in a tree, and helmeted, gloved, and his face caked with mud as protection, suffered the stings of outraged bees as he dug out ladleful after ladleful of dripping comb honey.

  As the weeks and then months wore on Ceric learnt to almost make friends with his hunger, to learn not to fear it. The shifting quality of his craving for food was a wave ebbing and flowing. It would recede when he acknowledged it and then, having no means to satisfy it, dismissed it. Every spoonful of oats or rye he savoured. Learning just how little he could make do with bestowed a new mastery over his senses. If he sat at the high table at Kilton again, he would feast; but he would never eat thoughtlessly again.

  In these months time itself seemed to change for Ceric. He had been away from Kilton so long that the rhythm of the field was all he knew. Ordinary tasks fell away, and ordinary comforts which filled his days at home were far removed from either waking or sleeping hours. His comb broke, and in trying to make one for himself he gained new appreciation for the woman in Kilton’s village who carved them. Labouring over it he thought of the dead wood from the pear trees she was allowed to gather, so she might with her fine-toothed saw and skillful hands make something of both utility and beauty, not the gap-toothed and clumsy product of his knife. For a moment he remembered Begu, and the comb he had presented her with long ago, and wondered if she still used it, or if Edwin had brought her one new.

  He lost his razor – a costly item, and one not to be replicated, however poorly, on the road – when the bottom seam of one of his saddle bags split, rotted out from having been too long wet from fording rivers, and the near-continual damp of dew and rain. The razor had been a gift from his grandmother, given when the first downy hairs sprouted upon his lip. It was housed in a small box of wood which Modwynn had a woodcarver decorate with chisel and scoring knife, and carve his name upon as well. He felt its loss, then only shook his head and laced the leathern bag up as well he could. He used the small shears he still had after that, to cut short his beard.

  Remaining to him was the silver disc, highly polished, which he had used for shaving. When he looked at himself now, he saw his cheeks, so round as a boy, were deeply hollowed. There was no excess flesh anywhere on his body; he was all muscle, sinew, and drive.

  His clothing fell apart, sweat-stained and worn from exertion. The three pair of leggings went first, torn and snagged by brambles and reaching undergrowth. He could not trade with his own men or any others for tunics and leggings or boots; they were as thread-bare as he. After any skirmish in which they won the field, he was forced for the first time to strip the bodies of the Danes he had killed for their very clothing. Actions which had once been abhorrent became commonplace, even life-sustaining. At night, wrapped in a tattered wool blanket within his cramped tent of hide, ignoring the gnawing hunger in his belly, flea-bitten, immune to his own stench, the only thing that brought to him any true comfort was the truth of the gold he carried. His sword with its pommel and hilt chased in that bright metal always lay next him, within ready reach. Uttering a brief prayer before he fell into sleep his hand would close about the golden cross with its garnet heart upon his chest. It had been his father’s, yes; a man of whom he had almost no memory; but it had been given to Gyric by a young Ælfred, and then presented to him by his grandmother. The line of continuity in this, from his father to him, ran as strongly as did that of his sword, from his grandsire Godwulf to him.

  What brought him greatest consolation was the smallest piece of that precious metal, the ring of gold upon the little finger of his left hand. It was that confirmation ring of his grandsire, which would become his wedding ring for Ashild. The ring was a special emblem. Golden-hilted sword and golden cross were legacies, things of the past. The ring held the promise of a happier, and shared, future.

  The peak of Summer had passed. A week after the grain harvest time of Hlafmesse, Eadward’
s small fyrd, emerging from a wood, came upon two shepherds guiding their flock across a road of pounded clay. The sudden appearance of three score heavily armed men was answered by wide-eyed alarm in the shepherds’ faces. While in Wessex the Prince always rode with at least one golden dragon pennon flying, so that all might at once see he was of the King. This reassurance notwithstanding, the men stood stock still in their fright, their animals bumping and swirling about them. One of the Prince’s body-guards called out his question.

  “What are we near?”

  “Welingaford,” came the answer. Both men pointed up the road.

  The Prince and Ceric were riding side by side, surrounded by Eadward’s body-guard. Eadward looked to Ceric, who could read in his commander’s face the satisfaction this news brought. Welingaford was a burh on the Thames, and true to its name, at a good fording place. It was heavily fortified, as it held one of Ælfred’s mints. As such it would be a rich target if the Danes knew of the store of silver kept in such places. Eadward dismissed the shepherds with a wave of his hand, and called to another of his men as they moved forward.

  “Signal my approach,” ordered the Prince.

  The man put a small brass horn to his lips and sounded the Prince’s call. As the troop rode forward he repeated it at intervals. The fourth time it was sounded six mounted men appeared, three from either side of the wood they passed through.

  “I am Eadward, Prince,” he told them. The startle of the watch-men was only slightly less than that of the shepherds. They had no word of a royal approach, and though the horn blast was that of the Prince, the mud-splattered horses and begrimed men upon them were more befitting a large and failed hunting party.

  “Yes, my Lord,” replied the head of the guards. He left four of his brethren behind and with the fifth took up their role as escort to the Prince, fronting the long columns as they neared Welingaford.

  As they gained the settlement Ceric saw a village larger than that of Kilton. It had, it seemed, remained untouched, the crofts trim, the long rows of vegetables untrampled. The common pastures held scores of cows and goats, and the sheep they had passed were proof that their herds and flocks had remained unharassed. All before him promised that soon the Prince and all his men would be sitting down to full bowls of hearty fare.

  The palisade of upright timbers surrounding the garrison was nearly as tall as that of Witanceaster, giving the watch-men upon its ramparts a long view over village and countryside. Eadward’s signal horn kept sounding, and the approaching troop was near enough to see the heads of more men pop up above that rampart, craning to see the Prince.

  The doubled gates were swung wide to admit them. Entering the burh of Welingaford was a military entrance, and Ceric and the other men who owned them put on their helmets and war-caps.

  The Lord of Welingaford stood within to meet his guests. He was young enough that his brown hair showed only the first streaks of gray, set off by long drooping moustaches of still-rich auburn. His burh’s central location, and its lord’s abilities had brought him early to the King’s notice. Welingaford was under Ælfred’s direct command, but the King would not deprive so vital a burh of its leader, nor require any of its men to join him in the field.

  As they rode in Ceric could not but note the deferential interest in the eyes of the men who watched them. Many of the warriors within were young, and guarding the minting works as they must, were of necessity untried by the active warfare those filing in had seen. Here was the King’s son, a leader of great repute, fronting a body of warriors who looked as though they followed him to the mouth of Hell and had yet returned. Those youths of Kilton who Ceric had asked to stay on to serve were tempered by combat and the hardships of months of rough living. The same was true of all the warriors Eadward led.

  With his clothes in tatters Ceric thought he appeared almost a beggar. His weapons gave the lie to that, not just his sword, but the bright seax of Merewala, spanning his belly. His blackened helmet with its incised designs upon cheek pieces and sides, and the blackened mass of his still-sound ring shirt also gave testament to the wealth of he who bore them. The men in the work yards who studied him missed none of this. As ragged and worn as they all were, those of Welingaford looked on them all with a kind of awe.

  As a royal mint Welingaford had a hall set aside for the King’s visits, in which Eadward and his men were lodged. For Ceric to again sleep in an alcove and under a sheet of linen rather than in his own clothes on the hard ground gave as much ease to the mind as to the body. It was but another reminder of all he had at Kilton, and what he fought for.

  They spent four days there, their weary horses at pasture cropping the long and lush grasses, and Eadward’s men at last eating their fill. To drink ale again, to have their browis enriched with shredded pig or cow’s meat, to bring to their mouths fresh bread dripping with sweet butter or spread with sheep’s cheese – these pleasures, commonplace at their home burhs, were savoured as unexcelled luxuries. The use of the bathing shed and its hot water meant that grime never fully removed from immersion in lakes or a hasty wash in cold-flowing streams could now be scrubbed off with soft lye soap. And with scores of warriors garrisoned there the men could be clothed, and shod in new shoes. All Eadward’s men had won silver for which to trade for such things, and Ceric, after re-supplying himself with leggings, tunics, a woollen blanket and linen towelling, was not alone in flinging his torn and filthy togs into one of the rubbish-burning fires. As befit its importance Welingaford had a priest. Ceric availed himself of his presence, for he would not miss the chance to be shriven of his sins, though they be not beyond that common to all fighting men, the taking of life.

  During the days of rest Eadward had sent riders ahead to seek out his father, who the Lord of Welingaford knew had been heading north up the Thames, above the populous trading town of Lundenwic. The riders returned with the King’s message, summoning Eadward to join him in protecting the reaping of the grain crop which fed Lundenwic.

  This was a more than two day ride, almost due east, but the dry Summer weather now blessing the fields combined with the new fullness of the supply waggon made it almost a jaunt. It also sounded the lightest duty Eadward and his men had known in a long time, patrolling the borders of the fields so that reapers could safely gather the early crop.

  The King had thrown up his headquarters on the banks of the River Lyge north of Lundenwic. The town itself had been built by the Caesars, and was still clad in some of that greatness. It had fallen years ago to the Danes, and Ælfred had won it back again, and rebuilt the walls of stone the Caesars’ men had erected. Then he had awarded the town to his son-in-law Æthelred, Ealdorman and Lord of Mercia.

  As Eadward’s fyrd made their way, they were escorted in turns by men from Welingaford, and then Lundenwic. These last brought them to the field in which stood Ælfred’s tent. Hundreds of men had been gathered here; the sheer numbers of tents made it clear. The small oiled-linen and hide structures were pitched in rows over the greensward, fanning out like the rays of the Sun. The eye was led to the tent centred in these rows, that of the King. To one side an expansive field kitchen, almost ringed with supply waggons, was set nearest the river flow, granting all the water needed for cooking and washing up. The horn-man of the Prince signalled Eadward’s arrival, and as the body of his men halted, Eadward and Ceric approached.

  The King’s tent was a large one, topped with a doubled peak, its oiled roof high enough so that the tallest man could enter and stand without stooping. It was flanked by two royal standards, set into the ground on long poles, bearing the golden dragon of Wessex flying upon banners of linen. The front flap of the tent was open to the fine weather, and held up as a fly. Rush matting formed a ground cloth under this, and two small benches were set upon it. They saw the King come forth from within the tent, and Eadward and Ceric swung off their horses.

  “Sire,” said Eadward, bowing his head.

  A father’s affection showed on the King’s face, but
his personal greeting and embrace of his son would need to wait. Ceric touched one knee to the ground in reverence.

  As he lifted his eyes he saw a second man come from the tent. It was Raedwulf, the Bailiff of Defenas, so often with the King. His ink stained fingers showed he had been at work with quill, and in the recess of the tent Ceric could see a trestle table set with writing implements.

  Ceric had begun to grin with pleasure at seeing Raedwulf. The bailiff too began to smile. His eyes then shifted, looking beyond Ceric to those men who followed him. The older man’s brow furrowed. Ceric understood at once and blurted out the answer to relieve Raedwulf’s anxiety.

  “Worr – he is at Kilton, God willing.”

  The bailiff nodded in relief to hear his son-in-law lived, and Eadward took up the story. “I ordered all men who were wed to return home. The excellent Worr was one I was sorry to see go,” he said to Raedwulf.

  “Those without wives and children, I asked to stay on with me.” Eadward now looked to his father. “Ceric of Kilton has in the past amply repaid my trust in him, and has done so again.” The Prince glanced at Ceric before looking back to the two older men before him.

  “He and all of my men have been in the field for nearly seven months.”

  The King gave his head a shake at this. Since the arrival of Haesten three years ago Ælfred travelled almost ceaselessly from burh to burh, from conflict to conflict. He must; he was King. To ask the scion of a great hall like Kilton, and the thegns and ceorls that followed him to suffer the same privation was proof of the depth of his Kingdom’s need. If they could not stand fast now, the steady attrition inflicted by Haesten’s hordes would topple all.