The Edge on the Sword

by Rebecca Tingle

  A thought passed into Flæd’s mind, and she went very still. “You are getting older …” Was it possible that her parents had begun to discuss a betrothal for her? But her lessons had only begun—she had just started to see how little she knew, how much more she needed to study. They would not make promises which would take me away from my lessons and away from home, she insisted to herself. Not yet.

  “What does my father need me to do?” Flæd asked out loud, slumping down a little and feeling the pull of the plait at the back of her head. She forced her thoughts away from the alarming possibility of betrothal, turning her mind doggedly to her brother again. I may be the king’s first child, but Edward, not I, must prepare to rule after him. “I might be able to help Edward,” she said aloud. “We talk about his reading sometimes. He has a good memory.”

  “Edward has a quick mind, like yours,” her mother agreed as she bound the leather thong around the end of the finished braid. “But Æthelflæd, you have duties, too.”

  “Edward will be important to all the West Saxon people,” Flæd said deliberately, holding her empty bowl on her knees.

  “You will be important to many people. Flæd,” she said, turning her daughter to face her in the lamplight, “I was a Mercian aldorman’s child who played in the hills among our sheep. Now I am a queen. A queen who knows how to weave.”

  What will I be, Flæd wondered, making a face. Probably a weaver who knows how to be a queen. Could her mother be warning her to think of her own marriage and the changes such a thing would bring? With hands less sure than they had been a few moments before, she moved to organize the first weft threads.

  “No, no, Flæd.” The queen gently pushed away her daughter’s hands. She gazed at Flæd for a long moment, then seemed to surrender to the girl’s reluctance to talk of the future. “Off to sleep with you now.” Ealhswith stood with Flæd, embraced her, and went with her to the door. “Take this dusty thing”—she handed Flæd her cloak—”and get to bed.”

  Ealhswith’s shadow stretched out into the street as she watched Flæd go. The girl took only a few steps further along the narrow street to reach the doorway of her own chamber, whose roof nearly touched the thatch of the queen’s dwelling. On the threshold of her quarters Flæd glanced again at the queen, who stood still, waiting to see her child step safely inside. She still doesn’t like to think of me being alone at night, Flæd thought, her feeling of warmth and comfort creeping back. Pushing aside the cloth which hung across the doorway, Flæd went in.

  Another pair of eyes watched the girl step through the doorway, watched the queen retreat to her room. From this vantage point in the shadows between a pile of discarded building stones and the king’s council chamber, the watcher reviewed the evening. Several things had become clear. The royal quarters across the little passageway were well attended by serving people, and the narrow street itself was frequented by armed retainers, whose habits would require careful observation. Also, the girl had speed and woodcraft—certain moments tonight had not gone as planned….

  But there would be other opportunities, other careless moments. In the darkness by the wall, the figure settled back against the stones to wait.

  3

  Midnight

  QUIETLY FLÆD ENTERED THE ROOMS SHE SHARED WITH HER two younger sisters. Æthelgifu, ten, and Ælfthryth, who had lived eight winters, had been sent to their beds before her. A serving woman waited there, sitting beside a single rush-lamp. Flæd moved silently about the room, which was warm with the slow breath of the sleeping girls. She washed the dirt from her feet and legs and changed her tunic and undergown for a linen shift, pinching dead the lamp before she curled beneath her own blankets.

  When she awoke later in the dark, Flæd could hear a faint creaking of boards, as if another wakeful person were pacing back and forth across a wooden floor. Coming from across the way, she decided as she lay there, listening. From Father’s council chamber, she thought. Flæd sat up and wound herself in the brown woolen blanket from her bed. Slipping past the serving woman asleep near her door, she padded outside and crossed the narrow street to her father’s threshold. The single guard posted there gave her a little bow, and Flæd stopped to listen again. Yes, there were the sounds of footsteps she had heard. Her father must be awake and walking the length of his room. Putting her palm against the door frame, the girl tapped softly.

  “It’s Flæd, Father.”

  “Come in.”

  At one end of the room candles shone down on a table covered with sheets of parchment, quills, and books in their leather-strung wooden bindings. Her father was just seating himself at the table as she entered. Thin brown hair curled around his long face, softening its bony starkness and mingling with his short beard.

  “Flæd, you should be resting.”

  “I thought I heard you.”

  Her father sat back, holding out his hand for her to come closer. “Well, it’s good you came. I was getting tired of pacing alone,” he said, drawing her to a stool beside his chair. “Alone except for these.” He gestured wearily toward the piles on the table. “A daughter is far better company than silent pages. Tell me how you passed your day.”

  And so Flæd told the king how Æthelweard the baby had tried to follow Edward and Wulf to the woods that morning, running on his short legs until his nurse pulled him back. She described how at the noon meal, when her smaller sister, Ælfthryth, had broken a wooden spoon as she beat out a rhythm for a song, pious Æthelgifu (called “Dove” after the holy bird) had tried not to laugh. “And tonight I went across the meadow to meet Edward. I…we missed the chapel service. Edward almost missed the evening meal.” She bit her lip.

  “Your absence was noted,” her father said. He gazed at her intently for several seconds, then spoke again. “Flæd, I settled our family not at the largest of our estates, but in this quiet place because I wanted freedom for my children. You have given up some of that freedom, I know, since beginning your lessons. But now a time is coming”—he propped an elbow against the table and let his fingers crease his brow into furrows—“when you, and Edward, too, will have to leave more of your freedoms behind.”

  Flæd froze. What had her mother said? “Your father may speak to you about something.” But what exactly did the king mean by “…leave more of your freedoms …”? Perhaps—Flæd let the idea loose again, her panic rising—perhaps she had been right before. Maybe she had guessed correctly as she sat in her mother’s room, wondering if her parents might be considering betrothal and marriage for their oldest daughter. No, a voice inside her shouted, there must be something else—a blunder Father has discovered, a mistake in my lessons, or my deception of Bishop Asser when Edward was with us Desperately, she searched for an alternative: her most recent secret, that must be it. He must know she’d touched the valuable book in the scriptorium.

  “Please, Father,” she burst out, “let me finish the poem with the monsters and the great hero. The hero will follow them to their lair and—”

  Her father’s gentle laughter stopped her, “You missed prayers tonight, Flæd, but not confession, I see. If you have been reading our great book of poetry, your lessons are too easy.”

  No, the king had not known about the manuscript, after all. Head spinning, Flæd tried to respond to what her father had said. In her mind she compared the plain religious passage she had copied that afternoon with the echoing sounds that made the poem beautiful, even when its images were terrible: Grim and greedy, the death-spirit grasped him. “Yes, my lessons are too easy,” she faltered.

  “I wonder if you have heard a story, a true one, about my childhood,” her father said. “One afternoon my brothers and I sat with your grandmother queen Osburh, listening to her read English poems from a small and beautiful book. My brothers were restless, so Mother tried to make a game of it. Whoever could learn the book fastest, she said, could have it. I took the book and ran to find our priest. All I could think of was that the book could be mine if …” He paused.
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  “If you could read it quickly enough?” Flæd asked, her mind still churning with uncertainties.

  “If someone could read it to me,” her father finished. “My father’s court was a busy place—the wars already troubled our kingdom—and no one had found time to teach the king’s fifth son, his sickly son, to understand writing. This is why I ran to the priest.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Thirteen. Edward’s age. The priest helped me memorize the book.” His daughter cocked her head. “Mother had said whoever could learn the book first could have it. I recited every word. Look.” He rummaged among the books and scattered pages on his desk, and drew out a small leather-bound booklet which could be held comfortably in two hands. He passed it to Flæd. “It is not very useful here, but I like to keep it nearby.”

  She held the soft edges and spine of the fine little book, worn by much handling. “Did you covet the book for its appearance?” she asked doubtfully.

  “I might well have loved the look of it,” her father said, amused. He took the book from her and opened it on the table between them in the candlelight. Beneath Flæd’s eye spread a little mosaic of red and purple and green and gold. Long-bodied animal shapes wove around the gilt lines of a finely drawn initial capital letter which occupied more than a third of the small page. The faces of the colorfully twisting forms peered out at her—she saw a lion’s heavy jaw, the rolling eye of a goat beneath a delicate forelock and curling horns. The lines of the letter itself formed a conjoined A and E.

  “It’s an æsc,” Flæd said, pronouncing the name like the tree, ash, from which they took the strong wood to make spears.

  “Yes, an æsc, the first letter the priest would teach me. The first letter of the first poem in this, my first book. And the first letter of my oldest child’s name. The book reminds me how I felt as a boy, how my trickle of interest in a poem could become a flood of learning.” The king looked at his daughter with a smile. “A noble flood, Æthelflæd.”

  Then the king sighed. “But I cannot keep all my precious firsts.” He reached out and took her hand. “Before poetry distracted me, we were speaking of new responsibilities. Edward must return from the woods to his schooling. And you, too, must prepare for a change. Flæd, at the end of the summer you will marry Ethelred of Mercia, my friend and ally. Today I have received this acceptance from him.”

  Flæd sat fixed upon her stool as the king took a sheet of parchment from the table and gave it to her. She hardly felt the page as she took it between her fingers. As she stared at it, instead of seeing the words, she only heard the name her father had pronounced, echoing in her head. Ethelred of Mercia…a man she had never met. She could put no face to the name. Why now, she wondered dumbly. Why tonight?

  A flurry of thoughts passed through Flæd’s mind. She found herself grasping at moments of the evening she had just spent with Edward, of other evenings, days, and years spent here at the heart of her family’s life together. But she could not keep these scenes in her head—her father’s announcement crowded them aside. Of course she had known that after the passing of another season she would be sixteen, a marriageable age. Still, Flæd had never given serious thought to her own betrothal, and she knew almost nothing about Ethelred the chief aldorman of Mercia except that he was the king’s friend, a man as old as her father.

  Another memory flashed into Flæd’s consciousness. Her grandfather had married his second wife, Judith, daughter of the Prankish king, when she was only thirteen. She had been even younger than Alfred when she became his stepmother, taking the place of the mother who had given Alfred the book of poems. Judith the Frankish princess, marrying the widowed West Saxon king with his six adult children….

  Flæd’s father still held her hand, but she withdrew it now. With unsteady fingers she placed the parchment page on the table between them.

  “Flæd?” Alfred’s gentle tone made her meet his eyes. “I can no longer allow you to go about alone, even within the boundaries of the estate. There are enemies who would injure this alliance by injuring my daughter.”

  Still she said nothing. “You will have a personal guardian,” she heard her father say, “who will always be with you. You may go to the scriptorium or the kitchens, to the woods or to the chapel, moving wherever you like, but always with this warder. He will sleep by your door. He will watch and keep you safe, always. You are dear to me, and to the West Saxon kingdom. We must not lose you, Æthelflæd.”

  He stood, and drew her up from the stool, leading her toward the door. “These are heavy things—I am sorry. But tomorrow morning when your guardian arrives, you will understand. I think it was right to tell you now.”

  Flæd went out, barefoot again in the crumbling dust of the road. The moon made a dwarf girl-image on the ground next to her, and numbly she watched it trudging along with each of her steps. Beside her own doorway Flæd paused: No guardian sat there yet. After a moment she walked on, faster, until she had passed the last of the silent buildings and stood again at the edge of the meadow. The dark water moved a little with the night wind, glinting here and there. Between Flæd and the water lay a narrow strip of unflooded pasture where a group of horses stood with their heads lowered to the grass.

  It seemed to Flæd as if a door, heavy and ironbound like the ones at the entrance of her father’s great hall, had crashed shut in her face. Edward, her parents, the little ones—she was calling them, pounding against the door, fighting against a man’s hands that captured hers and held her, helpless. She had been given in marriage. “At the end of the summer you will marry Ethelred of Mercia….” She had been given away. “You are dear to me. …” She had been given to a man she had never seen.

  Run, Flæd spoke in her mind to the black forms in the meadow. “Run,” she said to the horses in a whisper. Waking, one horse moved its lips over the short blades of grass in front of its feet, and then was still again. Run! she cried inside herself, but then, slowly, she turned to go back along the road to her father’s burgh.

  The figure which had followed Flæd to the pasture did not return to the burgh with her. It had been a stroke of luck to see the girl leave her own room in the dead of night. She had come very close to the pile of discarded stones—only the presence of the guard had preserved her then—but even this proved fortunate. Behind the mound of rubble the watcher had pressed an ear to the council chamber wall, the better to hear the conversation between the king and his daughter.

  Afterward, even though it had been maddening to leave the girl untouched as she wandered out alone beyond the walls of the burgh, the figure had simply trailed her, knowing that King Alfred’s words to his daughter had changed things. Others would need to hear of this new development before any action could be taken. The dark shape crept between the horses, which began to mill about. One, unable to escape, rolled its eyes at the strange rider swinging up onto its back. Practiced hands subdued the horse, and the gallop north began.

  4

  Red

  “THAT’S MY SHOE!”

  “It’s too big for you, Ælf. Give it back!”

  Jerked out of a shallow sleep, Flæd squeezed her eyes shut as the memory of her father’s announcement settled over her again. “Ethelred of Mercia…at the end of the summer…” If she pretended to be asleep, the women who had come to dress her quarreling sisters might take them to prayers and leave her alone. Flæd listened as the argument moved toward the entrance of their chamber. Abruptly, the little girls’ voices broke off, and Flæd heard only the pat of leather-shod feet across the wooden floor, and then the soft swish of the cloth hanging as it fell back across the doorway.

  They were gone. Flæd opened her eyes and pushed back the blanket, shivering in her linen shift. Rain tapped against the wooden shutters above her bed. It was a dismal day. Had the rain ended her sisters’ argument, she wondered listlessly as she sat up.

  In the entrance to her room, just inside the heavy fabric which hung across the door’s opening, a man was
sitting down on the floor. He leaned back to rest his shoulders heavily against one side of the doorway. Droplets of water had beaded along the short hair above his brow, and one larger drop clung to his nose. Flæd sat frozen among her bedclothes. She watched the man raise a hand to wipe his face. Behind him the weak morning light shone through the cloth, outlining the slumping squareness of his frame, illuminating his blunt facial features and heavy clothing. He showed no sign that he had noticed she was awake. On her threshold he sat and dripped and looked at the damp leather of his boots.

  “Tomorrow morning when your guardian arrives, you will understand.” Thoughts of her betrothal had overshadowed these words last night, but now the shock of the stranger’s presence brought them back. This must be the warder her father had described—his arrival must have silenced her sisters. Flæd felt last night’s whisper to the horses batter up inside her again. Run.

  Instead she sat up and put her feet on the cold wood floor. This time the man in the doorway lifted his head. Flæd kept her eyes on the wall opposite her.

  “Stand outside the door,” she said stiffly. “I will dress to go out.” For a few seconds both of them were still. Then her warder got to his feet again and stepped out into the drizzle.

  Flæd found the clothes which the serving women had laid out for her and put them on. Cold water on face. Hands twisting and plaiting hair. Leather shoes bound stiffly onto feet. The attendants had shaken the dust from her cloak and had hung it beside her bed. She wrapped it around her, hunched up her shoulders, and went outside.

  Flæd cringed as she stepped out into the rain and hurried past the man standing there. In a moment she was flailing to keep her balance as her feet slipped among wheel ruts and deep, pocklike hoofprints. The edge of her gown grew heavy with mud and slapped against her ankles, and rain ran into the folds of the grey cloak. She ducked inside the kitchen building just as the first trickle ran down her neck.