Far Traveler

by Rebecca Tingle

  Wil saw me watching him, and tipped his head toward the steward. He was leading a tall, plainly dressed man who walked toward the very stool they had offered to me on my first night here.

  The scop bowed to Osgar and the other nobles, then turned and bowed formally to the rest of us. I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly feeling alone and a little cold, even though it was a warm night and I sat in a bright and crowded room.

  The man took out a little bundle wrapped in oiled cloth and as he opened it, a murmur of appreciation rose from the nobles at the high table and spread around the crowd. He had brought a harp. From where I sat it appeared to be a ring of seasoned wood, darkened by many evenings spent in the smoke of great halls. It was much older than the harps I used to practice playing in Lunden, and much more beautiful. A delicate tracery of bright inlaid metal (perhaps it was even gold) glittered on either side of the strings, which were wound on wooden pegs above and below the central opening. The outer rim of the harp was about as wide across as the length of the scop’s forearm, but it must not have been especially heavy, for he picked it up with one hand and braced it in the crook of his arm. With the other hand he touched the strings, and at the same time, he began to sing.

  At first the plaintive tone of the scop’s song was all I could understand. The words he sang—of danger, of isolation—didn’t seem to make a story. They only stirred up a sense of dread inside me.

  But then some of his words began to make pictures in my head. I saw a person alone, beset by enemies, yearning for a distant lover. And suddenly, I knew the song:Wulf, my Wulf! My longing for you

  Has made me sick—your absence,

  My mournful mind—

  These were verses I had read in the months after I’d lost Mother, verses that seemed to echo the grief I carried with me everywhere during those days. The scop sang of rain. Rain on the day they took her body away, rain and tears. I hung my head as tears streamed down my face. By then the scop was finishing: “ ‘A person easily severs what’s not united: our song together.’ ”

  The verse lingered in the hall, along with the last note of the harpstrings. Then there was silence, except for the snarling of two dogs fighting over a pork knuckle beneath one of the tables. Someone growled out a warning to the dogs, and the bone was kicked away. By now the crowd was talking again. Furtively, I wiped my cheeks—no one must see these tears, least of all Wil.

  Osgar was pleased with the night’s performance. He called the scop over and gave him something. I saw a bright gleam, something silver and heavy. It was a rich armband, perhaps, or even a necklace—much more than Osgar had offered me. I leaned my head into my hands.

  “He’s done this more times than you, but that was no better than the riddles you gave us last night, Widsith.” A hand pounded my back and I had to grip the table to keep my balance. It was Kenelm speaking more loudly than he ought. The ale had gone to his head just as it had to mine.

  “Our host liked it well enough,” I responded quietly. I missed Mother, I regretted my failure, and I was also starting to feel quite sick. Maybe the cooler air outside the hall would calm my stomach. I swung my legs over the bench and stood up, but before I took a step toward the door someone touched my shoulder.

  “Slowly now, Widsith. A guest shouldn’t go storming out.” Wil had come up behind me and now he drew me back down to sit beside him on the bench I had just left.

  “It’s the drink. I need some air. Please.” I pulled away from him. “I need to go.”

  Wil caught me again gently, as easily as he might confine an unruly puppy. “Can you slip out softly, boy, and wait for us outside while I give our thanks to Osgar and apologize for not staying to hear the scop’s second song?”

  “You’re leaving now, too?”

  “I’ve heard news tonight that I need to discuss privately, and as soon as possible.” Wil looked over his shoulder at Osgar. “Our host likes the new singer. He won’t mind that we have to go early.”

  “That’s a scop like a hundred others!” Kenelm leaned in toward us, nearly shouting. “We’ve heard you trying to teach our Widsith how best to tell a story, but see, all he needs is a harp, and Osgar will take him for a hearth-companion.”

  Wil frowned. “Go on now,” he told me, “but wait for us outside, mind.” He looked at Kenelm, who was holding up his drinking bowl, calling out to a servant carrying a skin of ale. “Take him with you,” he added, and stumped off toward the high table.

  The next day I sat in a corner of Wil’s camp beside the pots and clay vessels they used to prepare food. I still didn’t know what news had sent Wil galloping back to the red tent where he had shut himself up for the rest of the night with his closest advisers, and of course no one told me. After seeing last night’s scop, I felt like a failure. The scop had a rare gift. My mother had once spoken to me of the great poet Cædmon’s gift. I shut my eyes.

  “Your teacher will give you Cædmon’s poetry when you’re ready, Wyn, but I want to tell you Cædmon’s own story. Cædmon was only a poor cowherd, and he had never learned reading or writing, as you are learning now, little one.” She stroked my cheek. “He couldn’t even sing with his friends when they gathered to entertain themselves with stories and song.”

  “Was he afraid?” I wanted to know.

  “Maybe he was. He hadn’t yet discovered his gift.”

  “What do you mean, his gift?”

  Mother drew me close—I remember the smell of her clean linen sleeve close to my face, a soft braid of her hair unbound for night, brushing against my neck. “One night Cædmon crept away from his friends, ashamed that he could not sing. He went to sleep with the animals, who would not care about his lack of skill. And that night in the barn, he dreamed of a man who spoke up and said, ‘Cædmon, sing me something.’ ”

  “But Cædmon couldn’t, didn’t you say?” I breathed.

  “Yes,” Mother answered, “that’s what he believed, and he told the dream man so, but the man only replied, ‘Nevertheless, you can.’ ”

  “And then what happened?”

  Mother shrugged. “Cædmon saw that he had to try, so he opened his mouth and out came beautiful verses.”

  “He couldn’t do it before, and then suddenly he could?” I must have sounded doubtful.

  “It was his gift,” Mother told me. “He found it when he tried.”

  I couldn’t remember what she’d said after that.

  “The fever took her, girl”—Dunstan’s broken voice.

  I leaned my head against a tall clay jar, hugging my knees to my chest.

  One easily severs what was never united ... I wanted to whimper, to wail ... our song together.

  “Can you play?”

  “Uh?” I scrambled to my feet, brushed away my tears. Mother. Cædmon. That scop from last night and his cursed song! Wil was standing in front of me. He was holding a harp—a smaller instrument than the one Osgar’s scop had used, and made of bright new maple.

  “Are you well, boy?”

  I nodded. “Just the ale from last night,” I mumbled, rubbing my head.

  “I’ve had three of my men looking for you since the midday bell,” he said crossly, “and you’ve been here all the time?” I nodded. Wil threw up his hand. “Well, can you play? That’s what I’m asking.”

  Warily, I nodded again.

  “Good. When you go into Osgar’s hall again, you’ll play this, and I’m sure you’ll please him as much as the man we heard last night.”

  “But—but why?” was all I could think to say in my confusion. Wil planted his hands on his hips.

  “If you succeed, we can talk about why. When can you be ready? A week?”

  I only stared at him.

  “Widsith, can you not hear me? How long will it take you to prepare? A week?” I looked away from him, trying to think. Cædmon found his gift when he tried. That’s what Mother told me.

  “A week, Widsith?”

  “Two,” I finally agreed, with a heavy heart.

>   I had to find a story, and although I ransacked the stolen book of poetry, nothing seemed right. In desperation, I lay on my back in the browning, end-of-summer grass, and searched my memory for something—the right thing—for this task Wil had assigned.

  There was one possibility: a story I’d read over and over, translated from Latin to English and back again, and discussed with Gytha ad nauseum. On my own, there in the tall grass not far from where the horses grazed, I tried out its familiar words. I repeated them until each one came to my tongue almost before I thought about it. As I recited, I considered the things Wil had been saying to me about how a scop ought to perform. I remembered how, in the dusk with my company of farmers, I had let myself sing and speak easily. Maybe these words would draw a noble audience along in that same way.

  A few nights before our next meal in Osgar’s hall, Wil called me to him and asked me to recite what I had prepared. I stood in front of him, hands at my sides, trying not to show my nerves.

  “This present life,” I began shakily, “is such a thing as when you sit a-feasting with aldormen and thanes in wintertime, the fire burning in the hall, the rains and storms and snows outside. Then in comes a little sparrow, and flies swiftly through the hall. He comes in through one door, and departs through another on the other side. During the time he’s inside, he’s not touched by the winter’s storm. But that’s just the blink of an eye, the smallest space of time, and then the bird is out in the storm again. That’s as much of life as anyone can see—what a sparrow sees when he’s in the hall, briefly out of the storm, but just about to fly back into it.”

  That was all—every word of the story I’d been preparing for nearly a fortnight. Anxiously I waited, standing there. How would Wil react? Probably the words I’d picked wouldn’t be to his taste, I suddenly realized. And it wasn’t even a real poem, just a part of a story I knew. Why hadn’t I chosen a longer passage of well-known verse instead? Even one of those childhood songs I used to sing for my company of simple freemen might have been better....

  “That notion of a sparrow’s flight is found in Bede’s writing,” was what Wil said, “among the words that helped convert the first Christian king north of the Humber.”

  And he was right. I’d taken the story from a lesson about the conversion of the pagan king Eadwine. But I didn’t have much time to feel surprised that he knew the text.

  “Can you do it with the harp?” he was already asking. I had devised a plaintive little tune during my days of practice, and so I sang the words, with Wil listening intently.

  “The first time was better,” Wil pronounced when I was through, “but Osgar likes a singer. You’ll use the harp.”

  The next evening Wil insisted I play my harp and sing the song in our camp for the first time.

  “Our scop has something new for you tonight,” Wil announced, and conversation quieted. Taking a deep breath, I plucked my first note—but then the beginning words of my song stuck in my throat and would not come. My fingers kept moving, and I played the tune through with my heart pounding hard enough to shake my whole body, and the taste of fear and failure rose bitterly in my mouth.

  Like a cornered animal, I lifted my eyes and glanced around the circle of listening faces. The men were waiting, I saw. Simply waiting, not disappointed—not yet. Mother used to listen to the scops who came to our hall like this: as if she simply hoped they would play well. With determination I struck up my song anew. This time my words came with the music, and I offered Wil’s men the hall, and the sparrow, and the storm.

  There was no sound when my music died away, none of the good-natured teasing that had followed the story of my journey with Wil, or my riddles. Only silence.

  I had done my best, but it looked as if my performance had failed to interest them. I pressed a hand against my strings as I started to get up, not wanting to draw a single sound from them, hoping only to creep away into the dark and hide myself somewhere.

  “That’s as much as any of us can see, isn’t it?” Kenelm spoke up gruffly. “Only the moments behind us, and ahead of us, like that sparrow in the hall.”

  I froze, seeing nods in the firelight and, unbelievably, one rough-faced man drawing the back of his huge hand across his eyes. I looked at Wil in amazement, but he didn’t seem surprised. Somehow I had made the right choice.

  Osgar still did not recognize me when Wil brought me back to his hall for the third time. “My scop will perform for your pleasure,” Wil told him, and a look of bored politeness remained on Osgar’s face until he saw that I intended to sing and play. Then his expression brightened.

  This time I sang with no hesitation, and afterward Osgar raised his voice with the others in my praise. He gave me five silver pennies, leaving me astonished at my sudden wealth. Then Wil was called forward, and Osgar smiled and bowed.

  “Bring your scop again, any time you come,” he told my lord. And instead of returning to our bench, Wil was led by the steward to a seat at the high table.

  I went back to my place at our smaller table with Wil’s men. From there I could still see Wil talking with Osgar. They laughed together, and then, for just a moment, Wil’s gaze found mine. His brief look told me he was happy with me and with what I had done, and with a sweet, distressing lurch, I found myself wishing he would never look away.

  18

  INTO THE STORM

  SOMETIMES I THINK THAT THOSE SUMMER DAYS BETWEEN MY first and second performances in Osgar’s hall were like the sparrow’s flight in the song I’d made. For a while, all pursuers and threats seemed distant. It was a space of existence, scarcely longer than a few wingbeats, spent in warmth and good company: out of the storm.

  But Wil was still a man who’d lost his land, and whatever else I felt about him, I knew he was preparing to fight back. That night, following my performance, I was invited to attend a council meeting, and what I heard as I sat there quietly near the tent wall confirmed what I had guessed about Wil’s former life in Eoforwic.

  After Rægnald’s invasion, Wil had gathered up a handful of surviving retainers faithful to him and ridden south on borrowed and stolen horses. Some of the Mercians who had intended to aid Eoforwic left their holdings in the care of their wives and servants and quietly came to join his camp, too. Kenelm was one of these. All of them, as far as I could tell, were bound together by their hatred of two people: Rægnald the Norse invader, and King Edward of Wessex.

  There was rage in the voice of one former thane of Eoforwic who spoke up in the council circle that evening. “We sit here camped at Cirenceaster eating barley bread and drinking stale water while Rægnald prepares to take in all the harvest of our farmlands in a few weeks’ time. He has our goods, our estates—the church has lost its gold and the minster library is at the Norsemen’s mercy. And what does Edward do? What he has always done! He sits idle, strengthening his own fortresses, and leaves the English in the north to be Rægnald’s slaves!”

  “Why do we wait here?” This was Kenelm. “Friendship with Osgar will help our cause—you’ve told me that, Wil, but I still don’t understand exactly how. Every week or so he feeds us better than we feed ourselves, but beyond that I hardly see—”

  “We will talk about Osgar’s usefulness tonight,” Wil interrupted. His stern tone reminded everyone in the circle that he was a large, strong man with the kind of battle experience that would serve him well in a brawl. Kenelm took a step back, although Wil had uttered no threat or warning, and I settled deeper into my shadowy spot to hear what our leader would say next.

  “In Gleawceastershire loyalty to Edward runs shallower than in most other parts of his kingdom. The Lady of the Mercians and Aldorman Ethelred are buried there; people here remember them. I have even heard”—Wil looked grim—“that Edward tried to take Lady Æthelflæd’s daughter on the very day of the lady’s burial, and that the Mercians in Gleawceaster prevented it for Æthelflæd’s sake.

  “So in Gleawceaster we have friends who bring pledges of loyalty,” he continu
ed, “who would fight against Rægnald, in spite of King Edward’s neglect of Northumbria.”

  “But we have tried this before, Wil, in Lunden,” called out another of the Northumbrian thanes, “and Edward spoiled all our Mercian alliances simply by taking the girl. ...”

  It was chilling to hear my true name spoken among my new companions. Wil pounded his fist against his thigh. “Ælfwyn of Mercia was a friend to Eoforwic, and none of us was there to stop King Edward when he finally took her by force at Christmastide last!” He scowled. “We should all feel as guilty about that as do the Mercian thanes who visit my tent, and who sometimes even stay”—he looked pointedly at Kenelm—“hoping to find a way to make right the quarrels and distrust that ruptured our friendships after the lady’s daughter was taken. We should have prevented Edward from taking her at all costs. We should have acknowledged to each other, and to Ælfwyn, that it was her blood—her mother’s memory living in her—that kept us together as long as she was in Mercia.” Wil paused a moment, then went on in a quieter voice. “I have had word from Dunstan. No one can say where the girl is. Even the noblewoman who went into Wessex as her companion does not know what Edward has done with her now. She can’t be found in Wintanceaster, we know. She may be dead.” Fiercely, he looked around the circle of faces. “Friends, what we begin at Cirenceaster, we will finish, unlike our attempt last year. And we will do it for the sake of Lady Ælfwyn, as much as for our own cause.”

  It was clear that for Wil, Ælfwyn of Mercia had become a regretful memory around which to rally a movement against my uncle. Fascinated, I moved a little closer into the circle.

  “Let me tell you what I learned tonight from another visitor in Osgar’s hall—one who came especially to give me this message,” Wil continued. “The thing we have been waiting for—the possibility that brought us to Cirenceaster as summer began—has happened. King Edward’s court will travel here in a fortnight.”