On the track ahead I saw a little company of ox-drawn wagons and a few folk on foot, taking goods to market, I guessed, or trading along the way to the next settlement. I set my jaw and urged Winter into a fast trot. Somehow I managed to stay in the saddle, and in a few minutes we had caught up with them. I looked them over quickly. These men did not have the greedy look of the carters I’d met. In their wagons were cloth woven by their wives and daughters, baskets and wood carving probably done during the long winter months. They were farmers, I guessed. I swallowed hard, then made myself call out to them, “Can I ride with you?”
The men had seen me coming, and were already talking about me among themselves.
“If your warhorse can walk slowly,” one of them called back, “you’re welcome. It’s not safe to travel alone in these lean times. D’you have a sword, to go along with the horse?”
I blushed. “Just my knife,” I replied timidly. After a second’s thought, I cleared my throat. Gripping Winter’s mane to hide my trembling fingers, I made myself call out to the man again. “I do have a story or two I can tell beside your fire tonight, if it would please you.” I could hear the tremor in my voice; I only hoped they couldn’t. The man had stopped, staring at me. What else should I say? “I—I can sing a little, too.”
“A scop!” the man shouted over his shoulder to his companions. “And a fine one, if that horse is anything to judge by,” he muttered, nudging the man on the wagon seat next to him. “It must have been a gift from some rich lord who liked how well the fellow sang.” Then he grinned at me, a true, welcoming grin. “Aye, ride with us, boy, and tonight we’ll hear you sing, and tell a tale.”
It had worked. I’d expected them to laugh, at best, or to turn me away with even less kindness. But now they’d asked me to join them!
“What’s your name, scop!” another man yelled from the wagon behind us, and everyone listened to hear what I would say.
Lady Æthelflæd’s daughter. King Edward’s niece. Fugitive. Wanderer. Far traveler.
“Widsith,” was my answer.
13
FAR TRAVELER
MY FIRST DAYS ON THE ROAD HAD BEEN MUDDY, COLD, AND miserably damp. Now I learned what traveling in sunny weather meant: my face burned, my leather leggings and tunic became uncomfortably hot, shrinking even closer to my skin as they dried completely, and then stretching out as my sweat softened them again. Although I did not have the full hips and breasts of many women, I still depended on my cloak to shroud my slightly curving figure. But after several sweltering hours, I slipped away, tore a long strip from the hem of the wadded-up gown, and bound my small breasts flat beneath my clothes. “Wis-sith”—wise traveler—they called me when I rode up again in cool shirtsleeves, with my cloak rolled and tied to Winter’s saddle.
“Here, take this,” one of the men said, handing me a woven straw hat. I smiled nervously and put the hat on, tugging it low over my eyes. No one guessed my secret.
On my first evening in the farmers’ camp I sat on the ground outside the firelight. The others were eating, but I kept to myself and hoped desperately that no one would remember my claim to be a storyteller.
“Ho, boy! Widsith!” someone called out. My heart sank as I heard it. “Let’s have a tale from our scop.” All around the camp other people mumbled encouragement:
“Aye, a tale from the scop.”
“Just like a pack of noblemen, we are, traveling with our own singer. ...”
“Widsith! Where are you, boy?”
They’d make me leave as soon as they heard what I could really do, I was sure of it. They’d throw me out of camp into the dark, where men like those carters would find me again. ...
But another part of my mind was moving slowly. There was a poem in my stolen book that I’d read last night at the miller’s dwelling—another of Aunt Dove’s “poems about lost people.” How had it begun? “A wanderer on earth—one who had seen hardship, violent foes, the death of loved ones—spoke out ...” I thought that was the way it went. But there was no time to take out the book and read anything right now, and anyhow, I didn’t want the churls to see me reading. Clerics read, not scops. My companions might begin to guess that I had secrets, and I didn’t trust a gathering of jovial men to keep quiet about much of anything.
They were still calling out for me. There was no way to get out of the camp, or to hide. With a burst of effort I made myself stand up. I moved into the firelight, and stood there, my heart thudding in my ears. Opening my mouth, I tried to force my tongue to form the words of the poem I remembered.
“A ... a wanderer ...”
That was all. No more would come. I could hear my own breath rasping in my throat as I stood there, frozen and mute. These men had been friendly to me all day. Now I waited to see disappointment and anger fill each face turned expectantly toward me. Say something! They’ll leave me in the road to be robbed and used—
A humming sound started in my chest. It could have been the beginning of a moan or a sob, but then it continued, a low note. Once more I opened my mouth, and I began to sing, “Rest, babe, sleep, babe ...” It was something Edith had sung to me from as far back as I could remember—a song to quiet the restless limbs of a little child. My voice dropped to a whisper as I finished the song, then stopped.
What was I doing? Singing a lullaby to noisy men who’d asked for entertainment, a tale? I glanced around furtively. Surely my companions were unhappy.
“Sounds like what my mother used to sing over me,” I heard one man mutter.
“What my wife sings to our babe,” grunted another.
Only the men closest to me had clearly heard the song, but soon a murmur ran through the camp about what I’d done.
“Have you got anything more for us, scop?” someone called. “Something we didn’t hear with mother’s milk still in our mouths?”
“Widsith is your name, did you say? Where in your long travels did you hear that song, then, boy? On a journey between your mother’s knee and your mother’s hearth, I’ll swear, creeping on hand and knee!”
These were good-natured jabs, I realized with relief. I’d been holding my breath, and I took in a great lungful of air before I answered as loudly as I could manage, “No, on a journey to the land of sleep.”
And they all laughed. They wanted me to succeed, I saw from their open, willing expressions. They were ready to enjoy what I could offer. Suddenly I truly wanted to give them something, just as I had with the miller, not because I desired their kindness, but because they’d already been kind, and words were all I had to give in return. I decided to try again when they quieted.
“ ‘A wanderer on earth—one who had seen hardship, violent foes, the death of loved ones—spoke out ...’ ”
The poem I’d chosen described a solitary traveler. Fate had left him alone and wandering. He lamented the things that had passed away. “ ‘Where has the warhorse gone? The ring-giver? The pleasures of the hall? Alas for the mail-clad fighter, and the glory of the king! Here riches pass away, friends pass away, a man and all his kin pass away, and the whole earth is laid waste.’ ”
I let my voice die away with the poem’s final pronouncement. I wasn’t sure if I’d remembered it all perfectly, but it didn’t matter. Something had happened to me as I spoke. Beneath my fear, I’d truly felt the things the speaker of the poem described. His story was like my own.
There I stood in the firelight, all my words spent, for the moment not caring what the farmers would say or do. The poet’s words had expressed my own feelings so exactly—something I’d never experienced before. The camp was silent except for the crackling of the fire.
“First the land of sleep, now the land of death. Haven’t you traveled any place in our own Mercia, Widsith? Like Lunden, maybe?” someone finally spoke out. There were answering guffaws.
Mercia. So I’d crossed out of Wessex some time in the past couple of days.
“We’ve got ourselves an elf-singer,” said a man beside me. “H
e looks like a beardless boy, but his spirit’s old.”
“And tired!” someone yelled out.
“And maybe thirsty!” came another voice, and there was laughter all through the camp. Hands grabbed me, patting my shoulders, thumping my back, and pulling me down to a comfortable seat on blankets near the fire. Someone pressed a drink into my hand, and then others gave me food. They were going to let me stay.
Widsith—far traveler. I earned my name during the days that followed. I bumped along in the saddle, fighting with Winter, who was fit and happy to be out of the stable. He was friskier than in those first rainy days on the road, and wanted to shy at anything that moved at the edge of his sight. I learned from watching the farmers how to rub Winter down at the end of the day: to wash his legs when we stopped near water, to check his feet for sharp pebbles that could catch inside the hoof, and to scrub his sweaty back and neck with grasses or with more cloth secretly stripped from the remnants of my old gown. I even traded an extra song one night for a roughly carved bone comb to help untangle Winter’s mane and tail.
I was teaching myself to move and act like a boy. I also tried to cultivate more boldness as I entertained the group. Most unexpectedly, I had begun to earn my keep with my memory. Still afraid to look in my book for stories and songs, I dredged up all sorts of things I remembered from my life so far.
“A warrior there is in the world ... ,” I began, and let my companions puzzle out the archbishop’s fire riddle. I told the farmers a story of a hero who slew a dragon, and then died himself—lines from a poem my mother used to quietly recite some nights to Æthelstan and me in our great feasting hall in Lunden. I spoke maxims: wise sayings about the proper patterns of life. I retold exempla, and that story of my mother’s about a nun who accidentally swallowed a little devil made even the dourest man in our company smile.
“Hi, Widsith! Dust in your throat tonight?” someone far from the fire yelled when I sang too softly one night.
“Give him a drink!” came another shout, and a sloshing wineskin was passed from hand to hand until it reached me. I poured a swallow of whatever it was—something biting and quick-brewed—into my mouth, coughed as it went down, then continued in a tone somewhere between a shout and a growl.
“... long had the monster haunted the fens, a bloody outcast ... then through the mists, like darkness itself, he crept toward the hall ...”
Every eye and ear in camp was fixed upon me. I learned to speak out, so that the watchman bedding down among the horses could hear my performance as easily as the man beside me. I was becoming a real scop.
Our pace was slow, and though I was still eager to get as far from Wintanceaster as possible, I kept riding with my new companions. My few days alone on the road had taught me the value of being prized and protected as a member of a larger group.
It was almost a fatal mistake, feeling safe with these men. We were following a major road and tended to encounter other travelers each day, so at first I paid little heed to the sound of hoofbeats behind us one afternoon. But Winter began tossing his head, and I realized that two riders were coming at a gallop. I had only enough time to swing Winter around to the side of the road before they came plunging into our company.
“We are messengers,” shouted the foremost rider, “from the king’s court at Wintanceaster! Have you seen a group of noble riders, one of them a lady on a pale horse?”
“A lady?” the leader of our group asked, puzzled. “Y’mean like the ones who travel shut up in fancy wagons? Never seen the face of such a one on the road. An’ I’ve never known a fine lady to straddle a horse.” He spoke sincerely, but some of our men laughed at the thought and the messenger’s face darkened.
“We search under King Edward’s orders,” he said, snapping a gesture to the other rider, who urged his horse into a trot and circled our slow-moving band, eyeing us carefully. “You’ve kept to this road for how long?” The first man addressed our leader again.
“The last seven nights. Today makes our eighth on the road,” the freedman answered him, reining in his horses as the rest of the company creaked to a halt around him. “Haven’t seen anyone highborn.”
“Have any of you others?” the messenger called, and the churls shook their heads.
“We all come together,” someone told him. I held myself still as a statue on Winter’s back, wishing he were some shaggy, scrawny nag, knowing I should never have left my wooded route for the open road. Then the words I dreaded rang out: “Except Widsith. He joined us after the river crossing.”
The two messengers were at my side in an instant.
“Boy,” the spokesman demanded, “where’d you come from?”
I’d say as much truth as I could—that had worked before. “Stayed with the miller at the last settlement,” I made myself reply, my chest tight with the terrible risk I was facing.
“And before that?” I could see they were sizing up my mount, suspicion growing in them as they tried to match the fine horse with the ragged horseman. They might not know who I was, but they could see that something was different about me, something wasn’t right.
“That’s the scop. That’s Widsith,” the lead farmer’s voice broke in. “He’s a young ’un, but he’s been all over, I expect.” The messenger seized my arm, his horse jostling roughly against Winter.
“Where have you been?” he asked, his voice dangerously low. I had to answer him this time. What could I say? My mind careened. What in all this world under heaven could I say to make him turn aside and let me go?
And then I knew.
“Before, I was in East Anglia, attending Earl Aldwulf’s court.”
The messenger’s face fell, and he released my arm. “He says he’s been in the northeast, with Aldwulf,” he said to his companion. “They said the lady wouldn’t have gone that way. Let’s keep on.” And they put their heels to their horses’ sides and were gone.
Our leader waited until the dust had settled a little, then clucked to his ox team to start us moving again. Still shaking, I sent Winter forward at a gentle walk.
“Aldwulf give you that horse, boy?”
I jumped at the question, but the driver beside me was looking at us with only mild interest.
“Uh, yes. I—I pleased him with ... with a tale.” I could barely speak. No one could believe I was an accomplished enough performer to win such a rich prize.
“It wasn’t for your singing, that’s certain.” And the men around us laughed. Even I pretended to smile, but my terror did not begin to subside for several hours, and for the next three days I could not stop squinting down the road ahead of us, worrying that the king’s searchers would return.
Then I heard the name of the tun where we were headed: Cirenceaster. I had seen from the sun that we were still traveling north, and I had tried to figure out how far our pace might be taking us each day, but I had not suspected this. Cirenceaster was even closer to the old border between Mercia and West Saxony than Gleawceaster, where we had buried my mother—I had hoped that we would be well within Mercia by now.
This was a fine place for the fugitive daughter of the Lady of the Mercians to have fled, I thought bitterly, gripping Winter’s reins until he tossed his head in annoyance. Even if there were renegade nobles here who would take me in, and even defend me against the king, weren’t such caretakers as likely to use me as to protect me if the king came looking? I ought to be much farther away.
But I still needed to keep myself fed and sheltered, and these farmers would return to their lands in the next day or so. Well, for now, the best thing I could do was to continue to take care of myself. I would keep my new name and boy’s clothes, and try not to be noticed. I would try to find a place in Cirenceaster where I could belong, at least until I could afford to travel farther. Ælfwyn of Mercia could not have done it. Widsith might have a chance.
14
WORDS IN THE HALL
AS WE DREW CLOSER AND CLOSER TO CIRENCEASTER, I LISTENED to the churls talk abou
t what they would do here, and how they would return home afterward. They hoped to sell everything they had brought, even the carts they rode in and the oxen who pulled them. Then, if they could find carters driving back toward their burgh, my friends would ask to be taken along at a tiny price. With their plain clothes, and without their wagonloads of goods, they would appear poor enough to drive such a bargain. If all went well, they would bring home almost every penny they had earned, and keep their families prosperous for another year.
“And what will you do, Widsith, my boy?” asked the man driving the wagon nearest to me. I tried to look careless as I answered him:
“Oh, find a wealthy thane, sit in his hall, and tell him the stories I’ve been telling you.”
It was a response I had thought of as I lay rolled in the blanket someone had lent me, my head pillowed on my bundled-up cloak, worrying about what would happen to me when we reached the tun. My time with these freemen had given me some confidence in my disguise, and had shown me that, for them at least, I could perform. Although at Cirenceaster I would face a more demanding audience and might even be recognized, I had to eat. And Winter—we could not count on the tender grass he cropped these days to last past harvest time. I would have to feed him, too, come late autumn and winter. And by then surely I would need shelter, and probably new clothes. And so I had little choice. The wagon driver nodded his approval of my plan.
“Osgar’s hall is the place you should try. He’s a rich lord, and generous to those who please him. He welcomes highborn travelers to his hall once in every seven days’ time. When we get to the marketplace, I’ll show you the way to his home.”
The market at Cirenceaster had the familiar sounds of animals crying out and people calling, and the mingled smells of dung and bread, meat and straw, earth, cheese, leather, beer. The men I had traveled with were soon occupied in deciding where to set up their goods. But the driver who had spoken with me, true to his word, took my shoulder and with his other hand pointed to where a street cut away from the open market.
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