Far Traveler

by Rebecca Tingle

  “Ha’pence,” I said, holding out my hand to the man. “You can rest your horse here and hire another if you need to. I’ve got to move on.”

  Without answering me, the driver jerked the oiled cloth off of the load, heaved a sack to his shoulder, and stumped toward the building.

  “I have to leave,” I said, louder this time. “I need my money and my horse.” The man knocked at the door, waited a moment, then pounded a fist on the shuttered window, rattling the latch.

  “Owe you?” he said, still not looking at me. “I’ll owe you a beating if you give me any more trouble. You rested your feet in my cart these many miles, didn’t you? Now get away from here. Out of my sight!” I jumped back as he swung out to cuff me with his free hand. Then he turned back to the window and pounded on the shutters once more.

  What could I do? I was shivering again in the cold. I’d been a fool, and now there was nothing for it but to take my horse and disappear from this burgh as quickly as possible. I ran back to where Winter stood, and began fumbling with the harness straps.

  “Hi, hands off there! Get away from my horse,” growled the driver’s voice behind me. I turned around to see that he had followed me. Now he stood menacingly close with the heavy bag still slung over his shoulder.

  “Your horse,” I repeated, frozen in place.

  “Looks like we’ve been lugging a thief,” the man snarled at his partner, who was also coming nearer with a nasty expression on his face. Suddenly the shutters barring the nearby window came open with a crash, and a man’s face smudged with flour peered out.

  “Come with our grain at last?” he said querulously. “Took you long enough.”

  The two carters turned around at the sound, and I had a second to think. A beating was all I was going to get here. Winter shifted in his harness, restless from the shouting. He was always too much horse for me, anyhow. No one will believe he really belongs to a bedraggled boy. But he was mine—Mother’s gift! Suddenly, I had an idea.

  “My lord expects us by tomorrow,” I spoke up, raising my voice so that all three of the men would be sure to hear. “He’ll send a party of searchers if his favorite battle horse isn’t back in our stables by next evening.” The two drivers froze, and the man at the window shot me a cool glance.

  I watched as the lead driver’s eyes roved across Winter’s finely muscled body, took in the sleek sides of a well-fed, valuable animal. Then, throwing one more poisonous look at me, he turned and stomped ferociously with his load to the door of the hut, which now stood open. His partner heaved up a sack and did the same.

  I wasted no more time watching them unload their goods, but ran to Winter and began tearing at the tethering straps of his harness. When he stood free, I gripped his mane, clucking to him and tugging until I got him close enough to the bed of the cart that I could reach the bridle. Winter stood patiently as I dragged the bridle clumsily over his head and threw the heavy saddle across his back. I tried to tighten and secure the saddle girth as I had seen the stableman do, but I had to dodge the elbows and knees of my evil-tempered driver as he passed back and forth between the cart and the hut, so cinching the girth took several tries. As soon as I felt there was a good chance that the saddle would stay on Winter’s back if he moved a few steps, I led him a little way off and resumed my fumbling.

  The carters were nearly finished with their job by this time, and in a moment I heard the lead driver cursing, and looked up to see him shifting the harness of his remaining horse so that the horse could pull the empty cart alone. Before I could complete my frantic preparations, the men were sitting behind their horses again, urging them on a course that would have them pass directly in front of me.

  They’re coming to get me, after all! I pressed my body against Winter’s mud- and sweat-stiffened coat, trying to force him back, desperate to move both of us farther from the oncoming carts. Maybe I could scramble up into the saddle, I thought, grabbing for a handhold. But the saddle shifted almost as soon as I put weight on it. I’d fall off if I tried to mount.

  The carters had stopped. They were so close I could feel the heat of their horses’ breath and bodies. I cringed, expecting the men to jump down and deliver the beating they had promised earlier.

  But the men stayed seated. Glowering, the lead driver nodded to the other man, who took out a heavy-bladed knife with one hand, and with the other reached into a pouch at his waist. I put up an arm to shield myself—then a tiny glint caught my eye, and slowly I lowered my guard. The man had taken out a silver penny. As I watched, he placed it on the heavy wooden boards of his seat and pressed his knife-edge across the soft metal. He held up the two pieces, squinting at them. One he put back into the pouch. The other he flung out into the air. I watched it land in the mud near my feet.

  “You were well paid by the men you let hire your master’s horse. Tell that to your lord,” the man snarled.

  “And tell him to send someone man enough to ride his nag next time,” the lead driver said. Casually, he cleared his throat and spat into the mud inches from where the coin lay. Then he jerked his horse aside and rolled back along the road we had taken.

  I didn’t move until the creaking of cart wheels had faded into silence. Stiffly, I bent down and picked up the muddy fragment of coin, careful of its sharp edge. It was quite a new penny, showing my uncle Edward’s profile. The carter’s knife had sliced neatly through the king’s neck and half of his crown. Part of Edward’s name and the word REX were still legible on this side of the coin, and when I turned it over, I could make out the name of the mint-town: WINTANCEASTER.

  As I crouched there I felt the hilt of Mother’s dagger digging into my ribs. I hadn’t even remembered it was there.

  “Paid you for your trouble, did they?” I jumped, half drawing my weapon this time, but it was only the man who had received the grain, and I quickly hid my knife beneath my cloak before he saw it. He was indeed a baker, judging from his flour-smeared face. “They’re a bad lot, but we need the grain. It’s a hungry time of year.”

  The scent of new bread twisted my stomach into knots. I nodded, wondering why he was talking to me.

  “Did your master never show you how to saddle a horse properly?” the baker asked me, sounding dubious. I could think of no answer this time. “Let me help,” the man said to my surprise, stepping past me and reaching for the girth strap. He began to put the saddle to rights, then stood back and looked at his blackened hands. “Dirt under the saddle. That’s bad. You shouldn’t ride him like that—he’ll be sore an hour farther down the road.” The man did not look pleased. “Your master’s horse needs tending, boy. Don’t you see that?”

  It was true. Winter needed tending, and I needed rest. A part of me still fearfully resisted the thought of stopping—we were only three days out of Wintanceaster; I wasn’t even sure how far we had come, although I thought we’d been traveling north. But then I looked again at patient, dirty Winter, at his crooked saddle, and then at the half-circle of silver in my filthy hand.

  “Is there a place we could stay?” I asked, showing him my money.

  “Not with me,” the man said, but he was still eyeing Winter, and in a moment he spoke again. “If you think your master’s horse could do another task, I’ll show you a place where someone might let you stay.” I must have looked instantly grateful, for the man burst out laughing. “I was going to say, ‘and give you something to eat,’ before I noticed that we’d already struck a bargain,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t worry, boy.” He slapped my shoulder as I drooped. “If the horse is up to the job, you’ll have bread and shelter both.”

  What the baker needed was Winter’s strong back to carry a load of wheat to the mill on the riverbank. The carters would never travel down the steep bank for fear of breaking a wheel, or even overturning the entire cart, he explained, so it was up to the people who lived in the burgh to bring whatever grain they had. It was a punishing load he bound onto my horse’s back: nearly a third of the sacks from one
cart. Winter bore it sturdily, however, and together the baker and I carefully walked him down the footpath to the miller’s door.

  The miller was a tall, silent man with grey-streaked hair and huge, rough hands. He barely spoke as we unloaded the sacks of wheat, though he did grunt a little when he seized two corners of a sack I had begun to lift and found himself carrying most of the load instead of sharing it. After we had moved the grain indoors, the baker haggled for a few minutes over the price of grinding the new flour. He looked satisfied when he set off to climb the footpath back to the burgh, leaving the miller a basket of new bread, in addition to a sack of flour.

  I don’t know what the baker said to the miller about me, but after he had gone, the miller heaved off Winter’s loose saddle, took the reins, and motioned for me to follow him to the very edge of the river. There he washed my horse until Winter’s coat was clean. I was too tired to protest.

  Together we rubbed Winter down. Then the still silent miller led me to a little cavelike barn dug into the riverbank. With a nod, he left me alone with Winter, a cow, a big yearling calf, and a few goats.

  I made Winter as snug as I could, draping my own cloak over his damp back. Winter had drunk at the river, and in the barn I found a rack of winter hay that still showed a little green goodness in its stems. I threw down an armful and as Winter dropped his head to eat, I pulled down another pile upon which I curled up. I’d watch until the horse was satisfied, then go and ask for food myself.

  How had I come to be feeling so safe here, I wondered, when just an hour earlier I’d nearly been robbed and beaten and left helpless in the road? What would I have done? I’d have tried to go back to the king, said a little voice in my head. I’d have crawled to Uncle Edward’s doorstep, accepted whatever punishment he gave me, married his choice of husband, or taken holy vows if he wanted, because I’d no longer have believed I could survive on my own. I was still here simply because a baker and a miller had decided to be kind to me.

  A large hand woke me, shaking me by the shoulder. I’d been dreaming of King Wilfrid, of his sword-hardened hand gripping mine in the shadows of a Lunden street. When I opened my eyes it was nearly dark, and the miller stood over me.

  “I—I gave my horse some of your fodder. I’ll pay.”

  The miller dismissed my words with a wave. “Horse earned his supper. Now come have yours.” Still sleep-befuddled, I followed him. I had expected no more than a bed in the stable for the night, and something to eat in the morning before I left, but the taciturn miller took me inside to his own table, where he gave me bread and fresh milk and a little bowl of dried plums. I couldn’t stop eating until every scrap was gone. The miller, whose meal lay only partly eaten in front of him, handed his half-round of flat bread to me. This time I forced myself to eat slowly, and the miller watched me, sipping his own bowl of milk.

  When we had both finished, the miller took away the bowls. He returned, carrying a rushlamp and a stick of elmwood. He set the lamp on the table between us, and taking a short knife from his belt, began to strip the bark from the green branch.

  “What is it for?” I asked him after the stick was peeled white, and he had squared it and had begun cutting off finger-lengths.

  “The mill-works,” he replied. “I mended a part today, and I’ve no pegs left. Best cut these and let them harden before the next mending job.” It was the most I’d heard him say— maybe the darkness had loosened his tongue. In a few moments he spoke again.

  “There are better ways to change the color of a white horse than covering him in mud.”

  My heart began to beat very fast. “The roads were wet. It was a long ride, with him kicking up clods—”

  “Not underneath his saddle blanket, he didn’t. Someone’s hand put mud there, I’d say.”

  My mouth snapped shut. If the miller had seen through my attempt to disguise Winter, would he also guess that I concealed a girl’s body beneath a boy’s bulky leather tunic? Could he tell that no hint of a beard grew beneath the grime on my face? I gripped my knees beneath the table, waiting to see what he would say next.

  “What you must do is boil acorns in water, and wash your horse with it, then wash him with vinegar, if you can get him to stand still for it. His coat won’t show clear white again until the winter hairs grow. We can do it together in the morning, if you like.”

  After that, the miller bent to his work, and the only sound for many minutes was the scrape of his knife. Gradually, I relaxed. This man had guessed that I had secrets, but he had spoken of them only to offer his help. What made one person act this way toward a stranger, while others behaved as greedily as the two-faced carters?

  I wanted to show the miller my gratitude in some way, however small. The satchel I had carried with me from Wintanceaster was still slung across my chest, and I quietly took it off and began to rummage through my things. I touched the fabric of the dress I had hidden there after leaving the stable. It was made of fine cloth, but what use would the solitary miller have for such a thing? At one edge of the bag I touched the silver halfpenny. The man had already refused my money, and I did need it desperately myself.

  Then my hand slid across Mother’s handbook. I had not thought about this possession since I pushed it into my satchel in Wintanceaster. Maybe I should give it to the miller, I thought miserably. That would probably be wiser than keeping it, or trying to sell it later. A fine book in a ragged boy’s hands would turn far too many heads.

  “Can you read, boy?”

  I clutched at Mother’s book. What harm could come from telling at least one truth to this honest man?

  “Yes.”

  “What’s in that book? Stories? Sermons?” Clearly the miller had encountered books before, maybe in the hands of whatever priest administered to the burgh.

  “Lots of things,” I said at last. “Mostly poems in English.” The miller rested his knife on the tabletop. All evening he had spoken to me offhandedly, the way one cautiously approaches a shy animal. Now he looked me straight in the eye.

  “We had books here in our burgh, before the Danish raiders came.” He dug his knife into the elmwood, not watching his hands work. “At that time the whole burgh was here by the river, all around this place where the mill stands. But Danes came up along the river, some riding, some in stolen boats. They killed our priest, burned the church and the few books in it, took our livestock, took what young men and women they could capture without a death-fight, probably sold them in the Danelaw.” The man lowered his gaze to his work. “No thanes reached us in time. We built again—what we could build—up above the river, so we could run next time. The mill had to stay where it was, and I said I’d stay with it. I ran away before. I won’t again.”

  The miller paused, as if all these words had been too much for him. But there was one more thing he wanted to say. “Long time since anyone read in this burgh. Will you read to me, boy?”

  I opened the book. “It’s a worldly thing, full of poems about lost people”—isn’t that what Aunt Dove had said? I turned the pages until I found them: a gathering of three elegies. One was the lament of a thane, a wanderer on earth, who had lost his lord, his lands, and his position. The next described a seafaring man’s perilous life.

  But it was the third I chose to read aloud that night for the miller. A scop’s voice told this poem, a scop who had seen scores of kings and lords, and who had traveled to many more lands than the lines of his brief poem could list.

  “ ‘Widsith spoke forth,’”Isaid, reading the poem’s first words from the page, “ ‘unlocked his word-hoard.’ ” Widsith. Far Traveler, the name meant. “ ‘I have been with the Huns, and with the renowned Goths, with the Swedes, the Danes, the Saxons, the Greeks, and with Caesar, who held power over all the empire of Rome.’ ” The scop’s list continued, until scarcely a corner of the earth remained unnamed. Good rulers and gracious queens, brave warriors and entire armies paraded through Widsith’s poem, earning his praise. He had been everywhere, seen ever
ything. He had received honor and gifts for his performances: “ ‘Many people of good repute said they had never heard finer singing,’”Iread.

  And then came the poem’s conclusion: “ ‘Thus scops are fated to wander. They meet generous people, eager to make a good name for themselves with heroic deeds’ ”—I paused for emphasis—“ ‘and gift-giving, folk who appreciate a fine song, and who have as their reward glory, and a good reputation under heaven.’ ” My words died away in the quiet, lamplit room. Then the miller gave a rumbling laugh, startling me—it was an unexpected sound to be coming from my sober host.

  “You’re brash,” he said to me, and still smiling, he left the table and came back with something pinched between two fingers. Into my palm he dropped a whole silver penny. “For your performance,” he said.

  “No! I didn’t mean ... already your kindness ...”

  “Will earn me a good reputation under heaven. The penny’s yours, young scop. I appreciate a fine song.”

  The next morning the sun warmed my right side as Winter and I returned to the road just outside the burgh. Instead of a light grey horse, this morning I rode a dirty-looking buckskin that smelled faintly of vinegar. In my satchel two round loaves of bread and a small cheese tied in sackcloth knocked against my book, and beneath it all nestled my silver penny and halfpenny.

  What would Gytha and Edith think of their lady’s bookish daughter if they could see me now? Missing them, I wondered whether Gytha had returned to Edith after my escape, if the two of them might both have fled Edith’s landhold in Mercia. And Dunstan—had he gone to Eoforwic in the face of King Edward’s actions? If so, maybe Dunstan had been with the king when Rægnald attacked. Who could say?

  I feared for my loved ones, and for myself. This journey I was taking—was it the right choice?