All I could do was nod. Shuddering, I pulled my own cloak even tighter over my woman’s clothing. Somehow no one, not even Dunstan, had glimpsed the fine gown underneath, but little good that would do me a few moments from now. Unless I could find another chance to escape, I would have to enter the hall.
Furtively, I glanced around the yard as Dunstan’s men busied themselves dragging off and concealing the fallen sentries. Something on the ground caught the light from the crack between the hall doors. Swiftly I grabbed the object and resumed my stance.
A silver penny—the busy steward must have missed his purse, and the servants bustling past afterward had trodden it into the ground. If I did ever manage to get away, I’d need this money, I thought, looking at King Edward’s profile on the face of the coin. The words EDWARD REX shone out plainly—it was a new penny, barely worn. Gingerly, I turned the disk over with my bruised fingers, then felt every muscle go taut as I read the name of the mint-town: EOFORWIC.
Eoforwic? If they were minting English money in Eoforwic, that must mean ... Edward already had some agreement with Rægnald—some treaty that would soon be well known, I guessed, remembering the king’s carefree use of this coin. Suddenly I thought of Wil, whose plan was to force the king to send an army to Eoforwic against the Norse. But King Edward had not ignored Rægnald, he had bent him to his own purposes somehow! And if Edward had already won Rægnald’s fealty, then Wil’s actions would not save Northumbria tonight. They would only condemn him to death.
I had to tell Wil somehow, I thought, clutching the coin. In a moment Osgar’s servants would let me go into the hall ... and I would go in, I resolved. I would walk to the high table, and try to say or do something, I didn’t know what—anything to save Wil and my friends.
Shouts and cheers had begun to fill the hall on the other side of the doors. I jumped in panic as the doors swung inward, and one of Osgar’s serving people gestured to show me that I should step inside. This is madness. Dressed as a woman, all my words blown away— But I had made up my mind. Dunstan kept close by my side as I entered the hall, then he backed into the shadows at the wall. I waited as the doors closed behind me. The bright clothing of feasters surrounded me. So many faces, and every one of them seemed strange to my frightened eyes.
But there was Osgar, at the high table. And Edward beside him, his face haggard, his expression inscrutable. Numbly I recognized Edward’s queen, Eadgifu, and then found Aldwulf. The old fighter looked confused. Gytha beside him seemed stricken—she looked as if she might be sick.
“Thane,” Osgar demanded in a loud voice, addressing Wil, “is this the boy scop you brought before? Call him forward. My guests are expecting entertainment, a song. ...”
The blood was rushing to my face, but before Wil had to summon me, my feet began to step toward the high table again. Through the tunnel of my hood I saw Wil’s eyes glittering at me. Perhaps he noticed that I carried no harp, for he scowled, then bent and whispered to Kenelm, who sat beside him.
I saw the stool where a scop should sit to sing and play. Well, I thought, clutching my cloak around me and coming to a halt beside it, this scop would stand instead. And say—what? My mouth was dry. My hand pulsed more and more painfully where it hung by my side, gripping the penny.
“Listen!” The word burst from my throat. Everyone was staring at the little hooded scop who spoke so abruptly. Wil sat forward. I ran my tongue over parched lips, then struggled on. “I have heard tell that in Gleawceastershire people remember Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians.” Wil’s eyes were blazing now, but Edward still sat, impassive. “So tonight I wanted to sing you verses, composed in Lady Æthelflæd’s honor. ...” My voice was barely strong enough to be heard beyond the high table, but Mother’s name had caught everyone in the room by surprise.
Everyone but Wil. He must have seen how nervous I was and decided not to wait for me. He signaled to his men, for all at once I saw Kenelm drawing his short sword. Cries erupted all around the hall as he and the others from Wil’s camp scrambled from their places and threw themselves at the thanes nearest the king. Wil seized Edward’s arm and produced a dagger. Æthelstan, wielding only the little knife he’d brought for eating, lunged forward to grapple with Wil. The queen was screaming. Osgar was on his feet, enraged, calling for his own guards. But when I turned to look behind me, I saw Dunstan shoving open the doors and his renegades filling the doorway.
“Stop,” I whispered, forgotten in the middle of the hall. Æthelstan was reaching for Wil’s throat with one bloodied hand. Aldwulf, shoving Gytha behind him, grabbed at Kenelm’s bright tunic with one hand and gripped his sword arm with the other.
“Stop! You have to stop!” I screamed, but still no one heard.
The benches were emptying as guests ran, a few going to the king’s aid, most rushing for the doors, where Dunstan and his cohort waited with weapons drawn. Suddenly I saw the way to the high table clear in front of me. They’ll listen if I’m closer, if I can just make them hear me! I dashed forward, flung my weight onto the table, and swung my legs up. In another moment I was on my feet, standing only an arm’s length away from Wil and Uncle Edward. I tore at the brooch beneath my chin, ripping it free, and let my cloak drop from my shoulders.
“Listen!” I howled down from the tabletop. “Listen to me! I have something to say!”
Maybe it was my voice, ringing with a scop’s strength from that height. Maybe it was the borrowed dress, a rich gown of light blue wool, revealed like a bright piece of sky in front of their eyes. The fighters stopped, let their hands drop, took a few steps back, gaping at me.
“Who are you?”
It was Wil who asked, and when I looked at him, I flinched away from his expression. He sees Widsith’s face atop a woman’s body. I knew Wil must be thinking of everything he had said to me, of everything he had revealed, realizing how much I had concealed. The look of peevish affection he’d shown me ever since I came into his camp had disappeared completely.
“She is Ælfwyn of Mercia,” King Edward answered, startling every other person in the hall. “Let her speak.”
A wave of exclamations swept the room. I swallowed hard, looking at my uncle, whose gaze was no gentler than Wil’s. But the fighting had stopped. My friends still lived. I opened my mouth.
“I want to say ...” The words caught in my throat. There were Wil’s black eyes, fixed on me. I would not see him again after tonight, even if I saved him. “I ... I want to say,” I quavered, “that my mother, Lady Æthelflæd, learned from the kings of Wessex—from her father, and then from her brother—to meet her enemies with might and honor. All her life she was a friend and partner to King Edward. Her lands, her wealth, her armies, and even her family she pledged to him.” I seized one of Wil’s hands and looked back at him with a glare as intense as his own. “Anyone who has ever considered himself an ally of Æthelflæd must understand this. And anyone”—I turned to throw the words back over my shoulder toward Dunstan standing by the door—“who calls himself a friend of Ælfwyn of Mercia must understand it, too. Anyone in this room”—now I made the words ring out through the entire hall—“who says they love the lady’s daughter, Ælfwyn, but will not swear fealty to Edward of Wessex, should find a new lord or lady to serve. Get out!” I shouted. “There is no place for you here!”
The hall was completely silent as I turned to Edward. I took a step toward him, then another. Suddenly footsteps sounded behind me.
“No!” I exclaimed, whirling to confront Dunstan, who was striding closer and closer. “No, old friend,” I whispered. Dunstan stopped in his tracks. Then with a groan he turned and ran, bursting out through the hall doors.
The hall erupted with shouts. I looked back over my shoulder at Wil, frozen where he stood. Please, just leave, I wanted to call out to him. Take the others and go quickly, before Osgar has time to stop you. I wished I could tell him I was sorry. Wil. Tears started down my face as I forced my eyes away.
“Ælfwyn.” The king sai
d my name in a tone I’d heard him use just once before, when he’d tried to leave me with a few words of comfort in my mother’s death chamber. King Edward was holding out his hand to me. All my freedom, my friends ... Wil would still be watching—I had to make him go. I took the king’s hand in both of mine. Then, desolate, I knelt and touched his fingers with my lips.
22
AWAY
“ÆLFWYN!”
I squeezed a clod of dirt between my fingers. The earth was still dense and wet. Seeds would take hold and send out roots, I thought, if we had enough sun during the next week. I reached for one of the little cloth sacks I’d laid out beside me.
“Ælfwyn! Where are you?”
Bag of seeds in hand, I stood up. “Here, in the garden,” I called back.
Around the side of the wooden house with its steep thatched roof Aunt Dove appeared, carrying a basket. She leaned over the fence that stood between the house and the garden where I’d been working. “I thought you might want some of Sister Wulfrun’s bread today, with Edith gone, and you alone.” She frowned at my faded dress stained with mud at the hem, my dirt-blackened hands, the wimple I’d taken off and hung behind me on the gatepost. “Edith most certainly is away,” she said with a little smile. Since Edith had been allowed to join me here at Sceaftesburh, she had fussed over my appearance almost as much as she had when I was a little girl. But Edith was gone to East Anglia now, fretting over Gytha, who would soon bear her first child. “The old wolf’s whelp,” Edith liked to say in a sour tone, but her face could not entirely hide the pleasure she felt at the coming of her grandchild. She would be gone for half the spring, I expected, and during that time I intended to grow a yardful of early vegetables.
I brushed off my hands and squinted in the direction of the sun where it glowed behind the clouds that covered the sky. It must be a little past midmorning—Aunt Dove would have finished the midday offices, and maybe she could sit down with me for a talk.
“Will you eat with me if I promise to wash before I come inside?” I asked her.
“With that promise, yes, I can stay for a short while,” she said, turning to stroll back to the door of my little house.
I shook the loose dirt from my dress. A meal in my house with Aunt Dove. A year ago would I have guessed that, come another spring, I’d still be shut up here at Sceaftesburh, forbidden to venture out of sight of the abbey? With a sigh, I went to dip a few handfuls of water from the trough inside our stable.
There were no horses here now: King Edward had permitted me to come to this cottage outside the abbey walls with the provision that neither I nor any companion who joined me here would keep a horse. When Edith left for East Anglia two days ago, she went in an oxcart sent specially from Wintanceaster—that was the only way for us to come and go. I splashed my cheeks and straightened up, looking at my fingernails. Most of the black had washed away. Hoping my face was clean, too, I headed in.
“I have some news for you,” my aunt said as I entered the house and joined her at the table where she’d laid out a few things for us to eat. “This morning I had a visit from Bishop Frithustan.” My eyes widened, and I glanced up from the soft cheese into which I’d begun to dip a piece of the new bread. Frithustan? The bishop of Wintanceaster had come here? But I had no opportunity to ask questions. “He began,” my aunt was saying testily, “by reminding me that some churchmen continue to argue that all men and women of holy orders must keep entirely apart, that they should never even occupy the same abbey, as the monks and nuns at Sceaftesburh do.” My aunt shook her head. “The men and women in my care have separate quarters for sleeping, and do not eat or pray beside each other—that has always been sufficient in the past. And which of them should I turn out? My monk John, who can heal an ox of any injury this side of death? Sister Wulfrun, the baker’s widow, who makes this excellent bread?” She brandished the round loaf. “I need every one of my brothers and sisters at Sceaftesburh. Together we do God’s work well.”
“Did you wave bread at Bishop Frithustan?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No.” She scowled, replacing the loaf on the table. “I listened while he gave me other news, which you should hear.” Aunt Dove’s voice, which had risen with indignation, suddenly grew quiet and serious. “King Rægnald, the bishop tells me, has indeed accepted Edward as his lord, as have all who live in Northumbria—English, Danish, Norse—everyone.” She fell silent, looking at me intently to see how I would take the news.
So it was finally well known, this thing I had guessed when I saw Uncle Edward’s coin in Cirenceaster. Everyone north of the Humber, even Rægnald, who calls himself their king. “Do you think,” I said in a soft voice, “that Edward would let me go back to Lunden, now that matters in Northumbria are resolved?”
Aunt Dove’s face was sorrowful as she shook her head. “Not to Lunden, dear. You mustn’t hope that he will ever consider that.” She took one of my hands in hers. “There are still too many people who would use you, he fears, to challenge the West Saxon throne. He might consider marriage for you, to an ally across the sea, perhaps.”
“But I have pledged my loyalty to King Edward and Wessex for everyone to see!” I protested. “I have lived here quietly for well over a year, speaking to no one but you and Edith. Will nothing convince him that I am not a threat?”
“Ælfwyn,” my aunt said, and it seemed to me that she spoke with some difficulty, “for your own protection, as well as his, he wants you in a safe place. And you have been happy here, haven’t you?” She squeezed my hand. “You have had me, and Edith, and your books, and your writing. I’m going to send your poem back to Wintanceaster with Bishop Frithustan,” she added. “I told him the king should see it.”
“The king doesn’t care about poetry,” I muttered.
“The bishop will tell the king what I said, and Edward will read your poem,” Aunt Dove responded with certainty. “Listen to me, Wyn. I see how your poem honors my sister Æthelflæd. Judith is indeed as valiant and as loyal to her people as we always found Æthelflæd to be. But Ælfwyn, your Judith worries about what she has to do. She says, ‘Sorely now is my heart heated and my gloomy mind much afflicted with misery.’ I find your Judith more like ... more like you, Ælfwyn. You doubt yourself—I see it—but in the face of your fears, you still try. When Edward reads your poem, in Judith he will see Æthelflæd, the sister he trusted all his life. But I hope he will also see Ælfwyn, who has pledged her own fealty to the crown, and ought not ...” She trailed off.
“And ought not be confined against her will,” I finished bleakly. I sat, staring at a bit of bread crust in front of me as the pause lengthened. “So Rægnald will remain enthroned at Eoforwic, promising loyalty to King Edward,” I spoke at last. “And the English and Danes and Norse there are satisfied with that?”
“They trust Wessex to keep peace in Northumbria,” Aunt Dove answered. “For now, that is enough.”
We were both silent after that, until with another sigh Aunt Dove pushed herself back from the table and stood up. “I’m needed in the scriptorium, they tell me, to supervise the new scribes for an hour or two. We have two nuns who are just completing their training here with us, and a brother who has come all the way from Italy to learn the English way of writing and decoration. Men and women working within sight of each other—what would Bishop Frithustan have to say about that?” She rolled her eyes impatiently, then returned her gaze to me. “Will I see you there this afternoon, Ælfwyn?”
“I’ve spent most of the past year writing in your scriptorium and reading in your library, Aunt Dove,” I replied. “Today I’m going to blacken my fingers with dirt instead of ink.” She nodded, and together we went to the doorway.
“You’ll be in your garden, then?” she asked as we stopped on the threshold.
“I thought I’d walk to that rocky field where we found rosemary growing. I’d like a plant near the house.” Aunt Dove nodded and stepped outside. “The bishop will take my poem to the king?” I b
lurted out before she could go any farther.
“He’ll take it”—she reached back and hugged me close to her—“and the king will see that he need not fear Ælfwyn of Mercia.”
Following a well-traveled path, I set out that afternoon, going past the wooden buildings of the abbey and out into the partly tilled fields where a few of the holy brothers from Sceaftesburh were plowing. At least I could walk a little distance away from the settlement by myself, which was better than it had been in Wintanceaster, I tried to comfort myself. A year and a half ago, wouldn’t I have been more than content to live at some distance from my uncle’s court, well supplied with books and the leisure to read them, and free of the threat of marriage to someone chosen by the king? A year and a half ago that would have felt like an escape. Now it did not.
No one was plowing the stony pasture when I reached it, of course—it had never been worth the bother. Early wild-flowers waved, white and yellow on their stems. I found a silvery, fragrant rosemary plant small enough that I could dig it out with the wooden trowel I’d brought. I pressed soil around its roots, lifted it onto the cloth I’d brought to wrap it in, and pushed myself up from where I’d been kneeling.
That’s when a movement caught my eye. A horseman was riding up to the edge of my field—or were there two of them? No, it was a man on a dark bay leading a packhorse. They were already quite close, and I started to hear the clink of the horses’ gear. The rider raised his arm.
“Ho, woman!” He was coming nearer and nearer. I dropped my trowel. “You there! I see the abbey over that way. Will this path lead me to it?” He was reining in his horse now, just a few paces from where I stood. “Answer me, will you?” the man insisted. “Does this path go to Sceaftesburh?”
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