Far Traveler

by Rebecca Tingle

  Suddenly the haven I’d made for myself in Wil’s camp vanished. A murmur ran around the council circle. Wil kept speaking.

  “Osgar, who is Edward’s loyal thane, will host a great feast to welcome the king and those who come with him. And he will invite us, the landless northerners, hoping we will admire his friendship with King Edward and agree to join his house-band. Osgar will also be pleased to have our scop play for Edward that night, and when Widsith plays ...”

  I didn’t hear what he said next. Wil wanted me to play for Uncle Edward in Osgar’s hall. If I hadn’t been terrified, I would have laughed out loud.

  “... the only way to make him act on behalf of English people in the north. We have friends who will gather outside the hall, and there will be enough of us inside to hold the king at Cirenceaster until he sends an army to Eoforwic to drive back the Norse!”

  The talk swelled up again, and I crouched in my dark corner unnoticed. In Lunden we had verged on treason when we’d mustered Mercian arms and men without Edward’s consent. But to hold the king by force in Cirenceaster ... it was a desperate act, and it could very likely mean the death of every person in this tent tonight.

  “Widsith!” Wil had skirted the crowd to find me. “The song for the royal visit—I want it to be something no one has heard before. Our friends will be gathering while you entertain, you see? And every eye and ear in the hall must be fixed on you. Do you know such a poem?”

  I looked at Wil, who fairly brimmed with all the force of his plans. Wil, whose opinion I’d come to cherish, and whose idea was terribly dangerous for reasons he could never guess. What in the name of all creation should I say?

  “I ... I think maybe I can make one,” I heard myself answer.

  19

  JUDITH

  THEY’D GIVEN ME FOURTEEN DAYS TO COMPOSE A POEM THAT would distract King Edward and his men while Wil’s thanes surrounded them. I suppose I could have run away right then, but where? At the very least I would have both Edward’s and Wilfrid’s men looking for me, for Wil would not easily let me go now that I knew his plans. I would be alone again, and I knew now how vulnerable that made me. I would be clinging to a warhorse I could hardly ride as I galloped away ... no, I would stay at Cirenceaster, and try to discover what I had to do.

  For a day Wil left me alone, but then he came asking about what I was planning to sing. “A poem this time, Widsith?” he said in a tone that was half-question, half-request.

  Yes, I assured him, though my heart was racing as I said it. I had decided to use the story of a hero, I said to Wil: a tale I’d learned in Latin, although my poem would be in English. This news seemed to satisfy him, for he pressed me no further, and when I asked for parchment and something to write with, he sent Kenelm to the market in Cirenceaster to get them for me. When I asked for a quiet place, a table, and a rushlight for nighttime writing, I was given those as well. When I asked if there was any way I could see a Bible, Wil gave a snort of astonishment, but two days later I found a fine leather-bound Vulgate on my table. I worried that he had robbed a monastery.

  Still, I needed that Bible, and I opened it to the Book of Judith. There were the lines I’d read with Grimbald and Mother that last day, before she rode to Tameworthig. My eyes raced over the words. Judith the valiant Israelite widow, by herself deceiving and beheading Holofernes the Assyrian general, and then rallying her people to drive off the entire invading army. Slowly I began to translate the lines from Latin into English—into English poetry.

  Now I wish to urge each man among you,

  Burgh-dwellers and shield-warriors,

  To ready yourselves with haste for battle.

  My pen moved more and more confidently as I wrote. Judith’s people had faced an enemy as fierce as the Danish jarls who came raiding into Mercia—as fierce as the Norsemen who had overrun Eoforwic. I could put such terrors into English words! And above all there was Judith, the hero. In my lifetime I had known only one woman as forceful as Judith. I was beginning to believe I could write about her, too.

  Days passed. My back ached from bending over the book and my pages. My eyes burned from peering in sunlight and through smoky rushlight alike at the words I wrote. The fingers of my writing hand were stained with ink again for the first time since I’d left Lunden, and it felt right, somehow, to see it. Still, each time I sat down to my work, I could feel my stomach churning with the danger of what I had agreed to do, and with worry for my friends. Wil was making a desperate attempt of his own, but he had no idea what he had risked by including me in his plans.

  I should leave, I told myself at least ten times each day as I wrote. And still I stayed in Wil’s camp, working toward his foolish, dangerous goal. What was really keeping me there? Weakness, perhaps. I was used to the regular food, and going to my bed in the same place each night. At last I had duties here that occupied all my time. These things made the dangers seem more distant than they really were, I think. But there was something more: Wil’s company, the sight of his cross face in the morning when he came from an argument with his advisers to ask me how the writing progressed, the approving hand he laid on my shoulder when I sang well in the evening. It was harder and harder for me to think of not seeing and feeling and hearing him each day. Stupidly, necessarily, I stayed in his camp.

  It didn’t help at all when King Edward came to Cirenceaster three days earlier than anyone expected. I had run out of ink on the afternoon it happened, and Wil had sent me to the market by myself. “To keep you from shriveling into a blind and crooked old man—you’ve been bent over that poem too long,” he told me. After I bought my ink, I accidentally tipped the little clay pot the merchant had handed to me and dribbled a stream of the acidic liquid across my wrist. Before I was clear of the tun walls I’d had to stop, put down the pot, and scrub at the stinging stain with my sleeve. My fingers were tough, used to the bite of ink. The skin farther up my arm was not.

  Then I heard the shouting.

  I sometimes wonder if things would have been different had I not spilled the ink in the market that day.

  I saw the royal guards first, and Uncle Edward riding with Æthelstan beside him. In the next seconds I caught sight of the women riding in the first of a sumptuous train of wagons behind the king. There was the queen, Eadgifu—Edward’s third wife and Æthelstan’s stepmother, whom I had seen but never spoken with in Wintanceaster. I was already raising an arm to cover my face, but when I saw who sat beside the queen, I turned, scooped up my pot of ink, and ran. It was Gytha. And alongside the queen’s wagon, on a splendid warhorse that could only have been a gift from King Edward’s own stables, rode Aldwulf, Earl of East Anglia.

  “They’ve all come,” said Kenelm that night. “The king and queen, and their youngest son and daughter, and Lord Æthelstan—”

  “And a beauty with hair red as fire, I’ve heard,” laughed another man.

  “She’s promised to old Aldwulf,” said the stocky thane who sat closest to my little table, “so forget about that lovely face.”

  So Gytha was promised to Aldwulf. He had always wanted her loveliness, and now he could have it, along with my uncle’s favor. I hadn’t guessed that my leaving Wintanceaster might affect my friend that way. Gytha—she’d had no choice.

  “Widsith, are you well?” It was Wil, leaning over my table. “I need you for tomorrow night, boy.” He looked at my pages anxiously. “Osgar’s sent word that he’ll welcome Edward with a feast tomorrow evening. Our allies will be ready. Will you be prepared?”

  I gazed at my writing. The poem was nearly done, but how could I learn the lines by heart in such a short time? I raised my eyes to Wil’s, saw what he needed me to say.

  “I’ll be ready,” I lied.

  When Wil had gone, I put my head down on my arms. My mother had been Lady Æthelflæd, praised and honored by her people. She had known how to speak with men, how best to quell enemies and please friends. She would have known what to do now, but she wasn’t here to tell me.

/>   After a moment I made myself sit up. I dipped my pen and set to work writing the last lines of my poem.

  The enemy had lost their leader.

  Distraught in mind,

  They threw down their weapons, weary-hearted,

  Hastened away in flight ...

  When the poem was done, I sat staring at my rushlight. The flame drank up the last of the oil, then slowly consumed the wick until it disappeared into the empty bowl that held it.

  There had been a night, three years ago, when word came to Lunden that my mother had taken a party into Wales to avenge the death of a slain abbot called Ecgberht who had been dear to her. I’d thought of Judith then, as I listened to Edith tell me how Mother broke across the Welsh dyke and took thirty-four prisoners captive, including the wife of the offending king. “Avenge now, mighty Lord, that which is so grievously in my mind, so hot in my heart.” Those were Judith’s words, but they might just as well have been my mother’s.

  Judith. Æthelflæd. Would my audience understand? And would I really be able to stand and sing in front of Edward, Æthelstan—all the members of the traveling court—without giving myself away and imperiling Wil? I bit at a fingernail, grinding it to the quick.

  But maybe there was another possibility—one person I could seek out for help now, when I most needed it. But to go and ask might well be the most dangerous thing I could possibly do.

  20

  HOT BLOOD

  QUIETLY THE NEXT MORNING I LEFT CAMP AND, TROTTING along on foot in the predawn light, made my way into the burgh. A wattled fence marked the edge of Osgar’s properties in Cirenceaster, and I sat down with my back against it until I saw servants beginning to bustle around the main buildings.

  “You have royal guests today,” I said to a young serving woman who came to fling the contents of a wooden pail over the fence and into the road. She twitched her thick plait of hair back over her shoulder.

  “You’d think there were twice as many of them, with all the work they’ve made for us.” She pursed her lips peevishly. “The king and a few others were ready for their breakfast half an hour before the kitchens had planned, but some of the ladies are only just waking.”

  “That beauty with the red hair who rode with the queen yesterday ...”

  “Still in her chamber. Only just awake, I’d guess.” The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not the first to ask about her, boy. She’s promised to Aldwulf, so you can tell your master, whoever he is, that she’s—”

  “My master’s not wooing the lady. I was called here to play for her, whenever she wants me.” I flipped back the cover of my satchel to show the woman the harp I carried inside. “From what you tell me, I suppose I’ll have a long wait.”

  The serving woman planted the bucket on one hip and stared at me. “You’re that boy scop who played in the hall, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Mmm.” I nodded.

  “Who sent you to wait here?”

  “Someone in Lord Osgar’s household.” I shrugged. “They said to come for the lady’s pleasure, should she need entertainment this morning.”

  The woman wrinkled her brow. “Entertainment this morning? Well, I’ll tell them you’re here.” She tromped back toward the busy grounds, and I settled down to wait some more. Please let Gytha be as curious as ever. Let her wonder about a scop sitting outside the fence.

  They came to fetch me to Gytha’s chamber after just one peal of midmorning bells. A door and a window were open in her room, but the other windows remained shuttered to preserve cool air inside. I slipped gratefully into a shadow as soon as I crossed Gytha’s threshold.

  “Who are you?” Her voice! She was sitting in the shadows, too, I could dimly make out as my eyes adjusted to the indoor light. A lump filled my throat at the sight of my friend.

  “A scop, sent to play for you, Lady,” I said huskily.

  “You say Osgar sent you. The servants here have heard nothing of that.” I cleared my throat, steadied my voice.

  “They told you it was Osgar?” I pretended to be surprised, then changed my lie, hoping fervently she would believe what I said. “Oh, no, my lady. My master is another of the lord’s guests, who has pledged my skill to the service of Lord Osgar and all his household. My own master sent me.”

  For the space of a few breaths she and I and the two serving women who were with her stayed perfectly still. She will throw me out, or have me seized and taken away. Such a stupid thing to come here, to risk so much just to see Gytha and trade a few words with her....

  “It’s all right,” Gytha said at last to the women standing by. “He can stay.” With a nod to the other servant, one of the women slipped through the door. The remaining woman settled herself on a stool in the corner, keeping her eyes on the two of us. I began to fumble with my satchel. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “I don’t know if I really want music this morning, boy,” came Gytha’s voice again as I rested the harp against my arm and chest. She sounded very tired. “Our journey only ended yesterday,” she explained. “Rest, not entertainment, was what I had in mind.”

  It was hard to make myself speak up again, but I had to. “I ... I don’t have to sing, nor must I play, Lady. I have some words a traveler might appreciate, though.” Would she say yes?

  “Well, yes then. Tell them to me, young scop.”

  I lowered my harp onto the floor and clasped my hands in front of me. Let her remember our lessons on Bede. Let her see that no ordinary scop would know this tale. “This present life,” I said softly, “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.” I told her about the sparrow, the hall, the moment of flight. I was afraid to look at her while I recited, but when I fell silent again, and I knew a quaver in my voice could not betray me, I did look up and try to see her reaction.

  “A storm outside the hall,” Gytha murmured. “All the bird knows for certain is what it can see before and behind it for the moment it flies beneath the roof’s shelter.” She stood up. “An odd entertainment for a summer’s morning, scop, but it was well spoken,” she said flatly. She turned to the serving woman in the corner. “Will you go and ask the earl if we may reward the boy with a few coins?” The woman hesitated; it was a strange request. Surely a noblewoman like Gytha would have had some money about her own person.

  “Will you go?” Gytha’s voice was sharper this time, and the woman quickly got up and went out. As soon as she had gone, Gytha flew across the room and drew the cloth curtain across the door.

  “Ælfwyn!” she hissed, catching me in a crushing embrace. “Hair lopped off, dirty boy’s clothes, but Ælfwyn, underneath, spouting our childhood lessons. Where have you been!” she demanded in my ear.

  “Hiding,” I whispered back, tears blinding me, “on the road. Here. They think I’m a boy scop. I play for Lord Osgar sometimes. I ...” There was too much to tell her, and no time to say it.

  “What can I do?” she said, holding me out at arm’s length and searching my face. “They’re still looking for you, you know. The king thinks that his enemies took you and will try to use you against him. He’s worried about the alliances your mother once ensured for him.”

  “Is your marriage to Aldwulf meant to ensure that friendship, at least?”

  Gytha held up her hands helplessly. “Aldwulf wanted me. Everyone thought he would shout betrayal and treachery when you disappeared. Instead, he asked for my hand, as if that would satisfy him as much as wedding the king’s own niece.” She grimaced, fighting her own tears. “Maybe I should have run, like you, Wyn. But I thought maybe”—she caught her breath in a sob and embraced me again—“maybe I could have a child, an heir for my family’s lands. Aldwulf will be made aldorman of East Anglia, I’m told. I’m a Danish raider’s bastard, everyone knows, but now my child could have as much honor in Wessex as my grandfather once had in Mercia.” All at once she gripped me by the shoulders. “They’ll
be coming back in a minute, Wyn. What do you want me to do for you? Tell me what I can do!”

  “They want me to play for the king at the feast this evening,” I told her. “I don’t see how I can stay—”

  “Edward would recognize you, just as I did.” Gytha was already running to a chest in the corner of her room, pulling out clothing: a dress, metal ornaments, fine leather shoes, a wimple and veil.

  “There’s one serving woman I trust,” Gytha said as she rushed back to me, her arms full of clothes. “The two of us can hide you in our company—why would anyone look for you in the king’s own household? We’re going east to Aldwulf’s burgh when we leave Cirenceaster. We’ll get word to Mother, so she can find some friend along the way who can shelter you.” A sound of voices and footsteps came through the door hanging. “It’s Aldwulf, coming with the servant!” she whispered frantically, shoving the clothes into my satchel as I grabbed it from the floor. “He might know you, as I did! Go out the far window, Wyn, he’s coming the other way!” I was already scrambling over the sill, trying not to rattle the open shutters. I dropped to the ground, then straightened up as quickly as I could. I had come out fast enough that perhaps no one had noticed me. Now I had to look as if I were just passing by.

  “Come back before tonight,” came Gytha’s voice, barely audible. “I’ll do whatever I can, Wyn.”

  I walked briskly until another building hid me from Gytha’s quarters, and then I made myself slow down. I more than half expected to hear the sound of feet and voices pursuing me—my back prickled with the anticipation of a chase—but none came. Gytha had explained it all somehow.

  Farther from Osgar’s grounds I began to relax a little. If I could find some place to change, I could creep back and hide there just as Gytha had suggested. No one would look for the boy scop in women’s dress. No one would look for Ælfwyn in plain sight of my uncle. I felt the soft bulge of the clothes in the satchel under my arm and beneath it the unyielding circle of my harp.