The Edge on the Sword

by Rebecca Tingle

  “Will you come closer,” she almost whispered. The young woman stepped to the center of the room, and Flæd could see that she was not mistaken. “He did not know if you were alive,” she told the woman. “He said no one could tell him what had become of you or your sister.”

  “My sister did not live long after we were taken north,” said the woman whose red hair shone above her drab gown. She spoke a little hesitantly, as if the English words formed awkwardly on her tongue. But her gaze was direct, almost defiant, despite her subdued voice.

  “Your father saved my life,” Flæd said to her. “I was not always a good companion to him, but he was generous and faithful. We tried to bring his body to Mercia for burial, but—” Flæd broke off, filled with remorse. She went to the corner where her knife belt lay, and untied a little bundle she had secured to it. “When I knew him,” she said, unwrapping a piece of cloth which her sisters had once filled with seeds, “your father still wore his slave rings. On the day we made his grave, I could not let him wear them—I wanted him to rest with honor.” She placed the cloth with its broken iron circles into the woman’s hands. “I will miss him very much,” she finished, swallowing painfully. For several seconds the redhaired young woman said nothing. When she began again, she might almost have been speaking to herself.

  “The chief aldorman’s spies freed me and brought me to Lunden only a week ago. Ethelred said my father would be coming from Wessex. I would have seen him again,” she said bleakly. “I could have shown him my little girl, his granddaughter. He would have loved her, even though her father was a Dane.”

  Flæd studied the familiar, square features of the young woman’s face. Something lay beneath the austerity of her visitor’s manner. Flæd felt a flash of pity as she realized that she was facing a person even more lonely than herself.

  “Where will you go now?” she asked Red’s daughter.

  “Ethelred has recovered my father’s lands, and has cared for them.” The noblewoman studied the mark around her own wrist. “I have been a rich man’s child, a Danish man’s slave, and now I am wealthy again, and free.” She raised her eyes. “I do not know what I will do,” she said. “I need to see my family estate. Tomorrow I will go home, and take these with me.” With great care she wrapped the rings again.

  A thought had come to Flæd, and for a moment she was silent, wondering if she should say more to this person. The red-haired woman bowed in a graceful, practiced way and turned to go.

  “Lady,” Flæd said abruptly, “you and your daughter would be welcome in my household.” The woman turned to stare at Flæd, who lowered her eyes, embarrassed now. “I—I am newly come to Mercia,” Flæd explained. “At home I had my mother, my sisters, other women who kept our rooms and stayed with us. But I brought no women with me as companions.”

  For the first time a trace of a smile appeared on the woman’s lips. “Thank you, Lady Æthelflæd,” she said softly. “I will consider this on my journey.” She bowed one more time, and proceeded to the doorway. Here she looked back once more. “My name is Edith,” she said, “and my daughter is called Gytha.”

  When Edith had gone, Flæd stood, feeling her own loneliness creep back. She heard footsteps and voices approaching her room, and soon more servants appeared carrying armfuls of her belongings. After the serving people had left the room, Flæd inspected the little piles they had made. Atop a neat heap of her clothes she found the flat leather pouch that Edward had given her. She carried it to the little writing desk, where she spread out Edward’s letter and sat looking again at the blotted letters of his short message. Finally she took up a quill, inked it, and began to write on a clean sheet.

  To my brother Edward, son of Alfred, King of the West Saxons. I have reached Lunden, and tomorrow Ethelred and I will marry. Tonight I want to write something about our teacher and guardian, the Mercian envoy, who fell in battle on the journey. Tell our family that Red saved me. He preserved our father’s retainers. He even saved my horses. I know he would be glad to be remembered as our protector.

  Flæd looked at what she had written. Then she added one more sentence.

  “And his people said that he was the gentlest and kindest of men, most considerate of his people, and eager to be remembered well.”

  She wondered if Edward would remember the last words of the great poem they had shared, its elegy for the monster slayer. Soon he would be able to read the poem for himself, she thought. Then, surely, he would understand what she had meant.

  In the morning Flæd sat before a mirror of polished metal. She wore the bright red gown her mother had fashioned from the Wintanceaster cloth. Around her waist Flæd had fastened the belt of linked golden rings Ethelred had given her, and his betrothal necklace encircled her throat. A serving woman was twisting Flæd’s brown hair into an intricate mass high on her head like a crown. Flæd watched as each coiled strand was secured with a jeweled pin. Then the woman settled Ethelred’s third gift, the golden circlet, on Flæd’s brow.

  Flæd found that she was trembling. This morning the strangeness of everything that was happening to her seemed to strike with full force. Far from the place she knew as her home, she was on the verge of marrying a man who was almost as foreign to her as he had been on the day she first learned of their betrothal. Worst of all, hundreds of other Mercian strangers had gathered to greet their ruler’s West Saxon bride. Flæd knew that they would find her unremarkable. “Your message was most gladly received in Lunden,” Ethelred had once told her. But surely the folk who thronged the streets could know little of the lady Æthelflæd, even if they had heard a messenger read the words of her letter. When at last they caught a glimpse of her, they would see a plain girl when they had hoped for someone like a queen.

  The serving woman helped Flæd rise from her chair. She led her out of the room and along a stone passageway to the building’s entrance, where Ethelred and his retainers were waiting. Flæd dragged her feet over the cold floor as she approached the group. Before she rose this morning the West Saxons healthy enough to ride had departed with her letter. Edith, the only Mercian she knew apart from Ethelred, had left Lunden for the present. The serving woman stepped aside and Flæd was left to stand alone before the aldorman’s company. With a boldness she did not feel, she surveyed the crowd of unfamiliar thanes, and with a leap of surprise saw Dunstan standing there.

  “You are glad to see the West Saxon thane,” Ethelred observed, taking her hand. “Dunstan has asked if he may join our household as a member of your guard. If Alfred sends his approval, he is welcome to stay.” Confused with gratitude, Flæd did not know what to do. At last she bowed to her friend, and Dunstan returned a low bow of his own.

  “Now I must thank the person who discovered what none of. Alfred’s counsellors could see, and who ended Siward’s treachery.” Ethelred bent before Flæd. “Your men have told us how you brought them here. They would have chosen you to lead them home, if they could.” Flæd looked directly at the man who would be her husband, and saw that he was regarding her not with solicitude, or amusement, or even surprise, but with respect. “Shall we go to meet the bishop of Wiogoraceaster?” Ethelred asked with a smile. Tightening her fingers where they rested in his large palm, Flæd nodded.

  As Flæd walked beside the chief aldorman through the streets of Lunden, she felt the press of curious faces all around them. Mercian noble folk and craftspeople, servants and even slaves had come to see their leader wed the daughter of the great West Saxon king Alfred. The noise of their voices rose up on either side of the procession. Flæd kept her eyes straight ahead, feeling the blood come to her face with the shouting all around her. They are mocking this red dress, laughing at these golden ornaments on an ordinary girl. Flæd forced herself to keep walking, but she wanted to slip back and disappear into the group of nobles and guards who accompanied them. She squeezed her fingers around Ethelred’s hand and closed her eyes for a moment, imagining her escape. She could dodge into some building as they passed. She wou
ld have to find other clothes, and then make a run for the stable, where Oat and Apple would be waiting, well fed and fit enough for a long journey. But where would she go? Home in disgrace? North, where her father’s enemies with their strange tongue and customs held the land? Flæd closed her eyes more tightly as she felt tears burning their way to the surface. She could not run. Mercia was her home now.

  “…outnumbered them four to one, but she fought off the Danes, and brought the men the rest of the way herself, they say …”

  “…killed their leader with her own hand!”

  Flæd opened her eyes. She turned her head slightly, looking toward the voices she had overheard. She had expected skeptical, appraising stares from the Mercian throng all around her, but instead she saw smiling faces.

  “…the thane betrayed by Burgred, he taught her, I’m told …”

  “…no wonder, for her mother is a Mercian, after all …” More snatches of conversation reached her ear, and now she looked openly at the scene surrounding them. Children ran alongside the wedding company, laughing and shouting. Men and women waved, cheering their leader and his bride. Flæd felt her spirits begin to lift, like a bird clinging to a bowed rush, poised to spring into the sky. Ethelred raised his free hand to the crowd as they went, and the happy noise increased.

  Tentatively, Flæd raised her own hand to salute their well-wishers. “The lady!” several voices cried out. “Lady Æthelflæd!” Flæd felt a little smile start on her face. She was welcome, in spite of her fears. “Æthelflæd! Æthelflæd!” echoed all around her now, and then “Æthelflæd! Our lady! Lady of the Mercians!”

  Historical Note

  ÆETHELFLÆD OF MERCIA IS THE GREATEST WOMAN IN OLD English military history. Although I have imagined this year of her early life, we know much more about her accomplishments as a grown woman. Mercian records show that the people of Mercia readily accepted Æthelflæd as Ethelred’s wife. In fact, she filled her role so skillfully that she was able to assume her husband’s duties when Ethelred became unwell. After Ethelred’s death when Æthelflæd was around forty years of age, she continued to govern Mercia alone. She was known as Lady of the Mercians, and she showed a steady loyalty to her brother Edward, who had become king when Alfred died in 899. Working together, Edward and Æthelflæd built and restored fortresses, drove the Danish invaders further into the north, and unified England south of the Humber River under the rule of the West Saxon royal house.

  As Red explains to the girl Flæd in my story, Mercia had at one time been a great kingdom governed by rulers as powerful as Alfred himself. By the time of King Alfred’s struggle against the Danes, Mercian independence had dwindled, practically disappearing when King Burgred fled from the Danes. During Æthelflæd’s lifetime, however, Mercia seemed to regain some of its former strength. Æthelflæd’s neighbors to the north—Scots and Picts, Angles and Britons, even Danish settlers in Northumbria—made alliances with her when they were threatened by Norwegian attackers. The Welsh kings, traditionally hostile toward Mercia, tolerated Æthelflæd’s fortresses along their borders, and for the most part respected her military decisions.

  In 918 Æthelflæd’s personal direction of an important battle led her allies to victory over their common enemy the Norwegians. Then suddenly, in June of that same year, Æthelflæd died leaving just one child, a daughter named Ælfwyn. Perhaps Æthelflæd, who was always her brother’s faithful partner, guessed that her death would signal the end of Mercia. King Edward let his niece Ælfwyn remain as Mercia’s leader for only six months before he carried her off into Wessex and demanded the submission of all Mercians. Still, even after Mercia all but disappeared into Edward’s holdings, Æthelflæd’s reputation survived. In the memory of her own people she was the Lady of the Mercians, their last commander. And in Welsh and Irish records, which mark the passing of neither Alfred nor Edward, Æthelflæd of Mercia appears as famosissima regina Saxonum—“most renowned queen of the Saxons.”

  As I thought about the sort of girlhood Æthelflæd might have led, it seemed appropriate to make poetry and history a part of her upbringing. We know from Bishop Asser’s Life of Alfred that the king educated all of his children, and that Alfred himself was a great reader and translator of books. You may have recognized that the poem which Flæd and Edward secretly share is Beowulf, the famous Old English epic. In her lessons with Father John, Flæd reads parts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which has survived in a number of manuscripts still read by today’s scholars.

  Flæd and Father John also know a number of Old English poems about strong women. Elene, the story of Saint Helen, who conquered Jerusalem and discovered the true cross, still exists in a tenth-century collection of poetry known as the Vercelli Book. The wrestling girl-saint Juliana, whom Flæd remembers as she thinks about her marriage to Ethelred, survives for us in another such collection called the Exeter Book. John mentions the apocryphal tale of Judith to Flæd, although the Old English version of this story was probably composed after Æthelflæd’s death. We know that Judith existed in Latin from the fourth century on, and I like to think Flæd and her teacher might have encountered it in that language. It has the kind of plot a person like Æthelflæd would have enjoyed: A young woman leads Israel to victory over the Assyrians by slaying the enemy leader.

  If these poems suggest brave deeds a king’s daughter might attempt, the Old English maxims Flæd reads would have taught her the proper order of things, and the pattern of a well-lived life. The Exeter Book Maxims include a list of honorable behavior for ladies and lords, from which I took the words written in Flæd’s handbook. And at the end of this same manuscript I found the maxim Red uses to encourage Flæd shortly before he dies. The poem begins with that sensible advice concerning shields, spears, and sharp-edged swords. It ends with words particularly appropriate for the Lady of the Mercians: “To the hardy person belongs endurance, to the bold a helmet, and always to a coward’s soul the smallest reward.”