The Edge of Light

by Joan Wolf

  It was summer and the days were warm, with the light lasting long into the evening. The ealdormen had sworn to see to the readiness of the shire fyrds, and the ealdormen would be the first to hear the law cases that had arisen in the local folk moots during their absence in Mercia. Alfred thought that he could fairly devote a month to putting his own affairs in order at Wantage. The manor reeve, Renfred, was efficient and honest, but there were decisions that only the manor lord could make.

  The haymaking began shortly after Alfred’s arrival at Wantage, and all the folk of the manor, both men and women, were busy working in the fields from dawn to dusk. Even hunting was curtailed, as the houndsmen and huntsmen were always pressed into service to help bring in the hay. For a small space of time Alfred found himself with little to do, and he decided to show Elswyth the Downs.

  Elswyth was perfectly happy at Wantage. She loved the clutter of harness and animals that always filled the great hall of the manor. Her mother would never have tolerated it, but Elswyth did not at all mind the dogs that ran underfoot, or the saddles and bridles that had been brought in to be mended and somehow ended up reposing on the benches for days on end. The reeve and his wife saw that the important things that kept a house clean and comfortable were well-attended-to: the rushes on the floor were changed regularly, the linen on the bed was fresh, the food was well-cooked and well-served. Elswyth saw no necessity to meddle with perfection.

  Alfred’s companion thanes and other household retainers heartily appreciated the way their lord’s new lady fit so easily into their comfortable household. All agreed that the prince could scarcely have found himself a wife better suited to the needs of his people.

  Alfred and Elswyth rode out together one July morning during the haymaking, with three dogs following along at their horses’ heels. They were alone this day, and Elswyth was dressed in the cross-gartered trousers that she found so comfortable for riding. Alfred had promised to show her the Blowing Stone, a fond memory, he said, from his childhood.

  Elswyth immediately loved the Downs. As Alfred pointed out, she was seeing them at their most beautiful. The summer turf was lushly green, the hay fields like golden stretches of sand, the plowed chalk almost snowy in its misty whiteness, and the elms richly dark above the green corn. They had been to White Horse Vale the day before, and Elswyth had found the ancient figure of the strangely wrought horse, so high above the world, so brilliantly white against the lush green turf, an object of wonder and awe. They were taking a slightly different road today from the one they had ridden yesterday to White Horse Vale. The Blowing Stone was to the north of the horse, on the top of another very high hill, and Elswyth and Alfred tethered their horses and climbed the last part of the heights on foot, the dogs scampering ahead of them.

  “This is it,” Alfred said, placing his hand on a block of brown, ironlike sarsen stone. It stood on end, and it did indeed have what looked like a mouthpiece, a small roundish entrance to a funnel through the stone, which emerged as a larger hole down at the back. “Watch,” he said and, bending, he blew.

  A booming sound rang out over the hill and into the valley. The dogs howled and Elswyth jumped. Alfred straightened and laughed at her expression. “It is said to carry five miles, if blown long enough,” he told her. “Would you like to try it?”

  She did, but with less success than he. “I have not so much wind as you,” she said regretfully.

  “Just as well.” He quirked an amused eyebrow. “Come over here and look.”

  She stood beside him and let him point out the various places of interest visible from the hill they stood upon. “That is Lambourn over that way,” he said finally. “I have a manor there too. It is much smaller than Wantage, but I think you’ll like it.”

  “I’m sure I shall.” She had been shading her eyes with her hands and now she looked away from the view and up into the face of the man beside her.

  The summer sun had burned his skin to a deep tan and bleached his hair a lighter color. Her own skin was too fair to tan; all she had to show for her hours outdoors was a faint peach-colored bloom in her cheeks. Alfred turned, looked down, and met her eyes. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

  They had brought bread and cheese in their saddlebags, and Elswyth unpacked the food while Alfred spread out the saddle rugs for them to sit on. “It is so peaceful here,” she said almost dreamily when the bread and cheese had been consumed. “On a day like this it is hard to believe in the Danes.”

  He sighed. “I know.” He had been putting the remnants of their meal back into the saddlebags and now he came to drop down beside her. He stretched his length comfortably on the saddle rug, leaning up on one elbow. He reached for a stalk of grass and began absently to chew it. The sun shone bright on his summer-light hair, held so neatly off his face by its blue headband. “But they are real, unfortunately,”

  Their horses peacefully cropped grass at a little distance. The dogs were stretched out in the sun, sleeping. The only sound besides the horses eating and the dogs snoring was the cry of birds in the blue sky. Elswyth clasped her arms around her knees and said, “If I were still at Croxden, my mother would be making me spin wool.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Or embroider a hanging.”

  He smiled faintly, but the preoccupied look on his face told her his thoughts were elsewhere.

  I should not have mentioned the Danes, she thought, annoyed with her own stupidity. Now I have spoiled his peace.

  “We should be doing something,” he said suddenly. He sat up and threw away the stalk of grass he had been chewing. “It is folly for us just to wait, as we are doing, for the Danes to come down on us. We should be preparing.”

  “You are preparing,” she said reasonably. “The ealdormen are seeing to the fyrds …”

  But he was clenching and unclenching his fist. “Everything in Wessex is so spread out, Elswyth. I cannot put my hand on anything. And the Danish army is all together.”

  “But what can you do?” she asked. “You cannot call up an army just in case the Danes might attack. Who would work the land if you did that?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I wish to God I did. I just do not think that we are going about our defense in the right way.”

  “You summoned a great army to come to the aid of Mercia,” she said. “Surely you will not do less if Wessex itself should be attacked.”

  “That is true. I suppose.”

  “Of course it is true.” She spoke very firmly. “Your trouble is that you hate inaction. But would you really prefer to see the Danes sitting at the doors of Wantage?”

  He laughed reluctantly. “No, of course not.”

  “SO.” She reached out and with her forefinger smoothed the line that had etched itself between his brows. “You worry too much, Alfred.” she said.

  He caught her hand as she was withdrawing it, and her fingers turned immediately to curl around his. “Enjoy the summer,” she said, her face very serious. “Who knows when we will get another.”

  Their eyes held for a minute; then he smiled ruefully. “You are right.” He lay back down, still with her hand caught fast in his, and squinted up at the sky. “I said you would be good for me, Elswyth.”

  “You are good for me too.” Her husky voice was very low.

  “Mmm.” His eyes had closed. She stayed very quiet, and within minutes he was asleep.

  In August they moved their household to Lambourn. It was a much smaller manor than Wantage, as Alfred had said, and the main hall was crowded when the trestle tables were put up for supper, but the manor’s setting on the Lambourn Downs was particularly beautiful. One of the main features of Lambourn manor was the separate living hall that Alfred’s father had built for the manor’s lord. This living hall had but a single bedchamber, however, so Alfred gave it to Elswyth and her women while he slept in the bedchamber of the great hall that had formerly belonged to the reeve.

  This upheaval was not popular with the reeve, whose name was Godric, no
r with Godric’s wife, both of whom had to move into the loft. However, as Alfred had never remained at Lambourn long, the inconvenience was likely to prove temporary and so tolerable.

  The law cases Alfred heard during the course of the summer were mostly simple ones. Godric had been reeve at Lambourn for many years, and he had always upheld the law in the neighborhood with great success. Rarely had the king been forced to listen to a dispute from the environs of Lambourn. The most disruptive event Alfred had to deal with all summer was a feud that developed between two of his own companion thanes over a local girl. The feud ended up in a fistfight of heroic proportions, which was finally broken up, at some cost to himself, by one of Alfred’s closest companion thanes, Brand. Alfred handed out the prescribed fines of eight shillings for a front tooth and four shillings for a back tooth, then banished the thanes back to their own homes for a month, a punishment they felt much more deeply than they did the fines.

  In September, while Ethelred was still in Mercia, a lawsuit of more serious proportions, one that required the attention of the king or the king’s substitute, arose. The king’s reeve who had charge of the royal manor of Southampton had sought to extend the pastures of his swine beyond the limits of the woodland the manor had, by ancient custom, used in the past. The Abbot of Netley, who owned the woods in question, protested to the king that the abbey had always used two-thirds of the woods and that the king had ever been entitled to mast, or forage, for three hundred swine only.

  Alfred went to Southampton to hear the case. He left Elswyth behind at Lambourn.

  During the last month in particular, the truth of his brother Ethelred’s words on the eve of his wedding had been brought home most forcefully to Alfred. His body, deprived of the outlet it had become accustomed to, was in increasing rebellion at its enforced abstinence. Alfred had actually got to the point where he was not sleeping at night when the summons came from Southampton.

  He thought of Roswitha constantly as he rode along the familiar old Roman road, lined for so much of the way by wild cherry trees. He stayed overnight in Winchester, leaving early in the morning to continue on toward Southampton. He would see her, he thought. He would have to see her. He could not, in courtesy, refuse to see her.

  But he was married. Carnal relations with another woman would be adultery, a mortal sin.

  He was married, but married to a child. Elswyth was a thoroughly delightful little comrade, no question, but …

  What would Roswitha do when she saw him? Would she feel as he did, that his marriage had changed all between them? She had never said a word to him about the marriage all of last winter, had acted always as if nothing would be different. Had she spoken, perhaps he would have reconsidered …

  By the time Alfred reached Southampton, he was in a torment of indecision.

  He and his following of twenty companions rode into Ethelred’s manor at three in the afternoon. At four he was in the saddle of a fresh horse and on his way to the small manor of Millbrook, some three miles north of the royal holding, where he would hear the law case on the morrow.

  His intention was only to pay a call upon Roswitha. That was all. He would see her, assure himself that she was well, then return to Southampton. That was his intention.

  She would know he was coming. He had sent messengers ahead to make sure the royal manor would be prepared to feed the men he was bringing, and one of the messengers had been instructed to ride over to Millbrook. She would be expecting him.

  She was, in fact, standing on the front steps of her small hall when he rode in through the wattle fence that surrounded the domestic enclave of Millbrook. The late sun caught the bright gold of her hair, bundled carelessly into a net. He could not see her eyes but he knew well that they were gray. He dismounted and a man came running to take the reins of his horse.

  “My lord,” she said in her high clear voice as he came to a halt on the ground before her and looked up to where she stood above him on the steps. “You are most welcome. Will you be pleased to come in and partake of some refreshment?”

  “Thank you.” His mouth was very dry. “It is good to see you, Roswitha,” he said, and let her lead him inside the familiar hall.

  Roswitha tried very hard not to show her triumph as she took him into the small hall of her home and sent for ale and bread and cheese. She sat beside him on the bench as he was served and, choosing a safe topic, asked him about his dogs. She did not listen to his reply, however; instead she was remembering that time two years before when Alfred had come to Millbrook for the first time.

  She had seen him first at Southampton manor, at a lawday he had held for his brother. She had presented a case having to do with her rights to firewood in the king’s forest. He had heard the case, and ruled in her favor, and after, in the courtyard, he had sought her out. The next day he had come to Millbrook.

  She sat now at her carved wooden table and watched his long ringed fingers wielding his knife, and remembered.

  It had been she who had had to make the first move. He was younger than she, by nearly four years, and inexperienced. He had known, however, what he wanted; and when she had laid her hands upon his shoulders and tilted up her face, he had put his mouth on hers, hard, and drawn her close.

  He had held to her alone for two long years, and she had even begun to hope that one day he might marry her. Then, last winter, he had come home from Tamworth promised to marry the daughter of a Mercian ealdorman.

  Roswitha had been crushed, though she had striven not to show it. If only she had been able to give him a child! But she had miscarried twice, and though he had been all care and concern for her, she knew now that the miscarriages were what had sounded the death knell of her hopes. No great lord, let alone a prince, would marry a woman who could not bear.

  His betrothal had been a bitter blow, but she had held her tongue. She had known then that she would have to settle for the part of his life that he could give her, and she had schooled herself to accept that. He had been engrossed all winter with the coming confrontation with the Danes, and in the time they had been together she had never once brought up the future. As long as he seemed to assume that she would always be there, she would assume so too. She could make herself accept his marriage. What she could not accept, would never accept, was that she had lost him.

  She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman; she knew that. Her birth had not been as good as the simple thane’s who had married her, yet he had been glad to do so. She could marry again if she wished; there were men enough of her own order who would take her, and her golden hair, and her ripe warm body, and her five hides of land, and count themselves lucky. But she did not want those men. She wanted Alfred.

  He put down his knife, giving up any pretense of eating. “Alfred,” she said softly, and leaned nearer. “I have missed you.”

  A muscle jumped in his cheek.

  What was wrong? she thought. He was so tense. She could see the tendons standing stark in his wrist.

  A horrible thought smote her. He was not going to tell her farewell?

  No! she thought in panic. She stared at him, at the tawny gold long hair, at the chiseled, almost delicate lines of his profile. He looked so remote … then he turned to look at her and she saw his eyes. They were fire-gold with an emotion she recognized very well, and the panic in her heart subsided.

  It was going to be all right.

  “We should not see each other like this, Roswitha,” he was saying, in direct contradiction to the message she read in his eyes. “Not now that I am wedded.”

  So that was it. She ran her tongue around her lips and saw how his eyes watched. She smiled and reached up to untie the headband from around his forehead. “What is between you and me is between you and me,” she said softly. “It cannot hurt anyone else.”

  Still he sat, his eyes going from her mouth to her soft white throat, but his body still held aloof. She put the headband down on the table. “Alfred,” she said, and pulling off the net that confined
her own luxuriant hair, she laid it next to the headband. “My dearest.”

  He was staring now at the fine golden net that lay before him. Roswitha picked up one of the thin strong hands that lay so near the net and placed it on her breast.

  It closed instantly, in a caress. She heard the sudden sharp intake of his breath.

  “Roswitha.” She saw his lips move, though no sound came forth. She leaned toward him, still holding his hand to her breast, and then, finally, his mouth was coming down on hers.

  Thank God, she thought, felt the intense pleasure of his mouth, of his hand on her breast, and then all thinking stopped.

  Alfred remained at Southampton for a month, leaving only when word came from Ethelred that the king was back in Wessex. Alfred went to meet him at Winchester.

  “The geld is paid and the Danes are bound once more for York,” Ethelred told his brother as the two men talked together in the privacy of the king’s sleeping chamber shortly after Alfred’s arrival in Winchester.

  “With shiploads of Mercian geld.” Alfred did not seek to hide the bitterness in his voice.

  Ethelred agreed firmly, “With shiploads of Mercian geld.”

  Alfred’s fingers played nervously with the cup of ale he was holding. “The Danes did no destruction?” he asked after a minute.

  “No. They held to their word.” Ethelred’s hands were quiet and relaxed on the arms of his chair.

  “For now,” said Alfred.

  Ethelred replied, still in the same firm tone of voice he had used earlier, “Perhaps they will be content with what they have won thus far. It is not inconsiderable, Alfred: all of Northumbria, as well as a goodly amount of Mercian geld.”

  “And all won so easily,” Alfred pointed out. “If I were Ivar the Boneless, I should be inclined to see if the other Saxon kingdoms would pay as handsomely for peace as Mercia has done.”