The Oath

by A. M. Linden

Aleswina bit her lower lip and looked for a way to escape.

  With the heat of the burning brazier adding to the unseasonable warmth of the day, the door to the courtyard had been left ajar. Acting with cautious deliberation, Aleswina took off her sandals and tiptoed across the room, keeping her eyes on the abbess’s stiff back. Reaching the door, she sucked in her ribs and her stomach and slipped out. Ducking behind one bush and dashing to the next, she made her way across the courtyard. Once through the garden gate, she paused to take some gasping breaths and tie her sandals back on. Then she darted through the hedges and around to the back of the shrine.

  Caelym had spent the last of the daylight hours fending off the tedium of his wait by tossing makeshift dice and moving small stones around a track he’d drawn in the dirt. Having promised to wait for Aleswina and not expecting her until well past the evening bells, he’d returned to the sunken chamber at sunset in order to continue his game by candlelight, leaving the door open for fresh air. He was deep in thought over the best strategy with which to counter his last move against himself and was startled into drawing his knife at Aleswina’s sudden silent arrival.

  If Aleswina noticed the dagger in Caelym’s hand, she ignored it. “The guards are back, they’re in the abbey and outside too,” she whispered, and didn’t wait for him to grab his pack, snuff out the candle, and close the chamber door behind him before hurrying to open the entryway in the wall and waving at him to follow.

  He squeezed his way out. Assuming she meant to shut the opening behind him and return to her convent, he turned back to thank her for her hospitality and assure her he’d carry her final words of farewell to Annwr, but she pushed him out of the way, crawled through, and closed the entrance from the outside.

  “Go back inside before—”

  His warning was lost in the clatter of oncoming hooves.

  “Get down!” He grabbed her arm and dove forward into the tall grass, bringing her with him, just as a mounted guard came trotting around the corner.

  They were saved by the darkness and the stupidity of the Saxon guard, whose horse had to sidestep around them while its rider only spurred it on without looking down.

  Slowly, cautiously, Caelym lifted his head and shifted his eyes—first to the left to watch the horse take the turn at the far corner and then back to the right to be sure the way was clear in both directions. Valiantly resolved to see Aleswina safely back inside her convent walls, whatever the risk to himself, he turned to where she’d just been cowering next to him.

  She wasn’t there.

  Somehow, in the moments he’d looked away, she’d scurried to the edge of the woods, leaving him with no choice but to dash after her, following the fluttering of her gray veil around the bends and curves of the narrow path to Annwr’s cottage.

  Chapter 22

  I’m Coming With You

  Annwr had spent most of the past week cleaning up the wreckage the king’s guards left behind. She’d dug a pit and buried the remnants of Betrys and the geese first, then staked up the plants that hadn’t been pulled up by the roots. That done, she’d salvaged what she could of the broken furniture, burning what she couldn’t repair in the hearth. While the kettle was heating with water to scrub the floor, she’d rehung the cupboard doors and shaken the dirt off the blankets.

  The guards’ ransacking had been more violent than thorough. By the time Annwr had finished picking things up and sorting them out, she had a week’s worth of provisions stacked next to a cooking pot, a pouch with flints and tinder, two cups, two bowls, two spoons, two blankets, two walking poles, a knife, a sewing kit, a rope, and a monk’s robe—and she had only had to venture into the village once.

  There hadn’t been time to find out from Caelym how long the trip was going to be, but between her own murky memories and his melodramatic account of mountains, valleys, rivers, and swamps, she guessed she’d need at least two changes of clothes, her warmest cloak, and as much food as they could carry.

  She put her personal things into the smaller of two packs she’d found—scuffed but otherwise undamaged—and then, muttering to herself that Caelym could just make himself useful for something besides reciting poetry, piled the bulk of the food and gear into a larger one.

  Annwr had just finished planting over the animals’ grave when Aleswina arrived early that afternoon. After she left, Annwr had poured a bucket of water over the new starts and gone back inside, closing and barring windows and the front door before retrieving Aleswina’s precious gift out of its hidden cache and tucking the heavy little pouch deep into the pack she planned to carry.

  That done, she’d set both packs by the door to the back entry, with a walking pole by each and the hooded monk’s robe folded neatly over the bigger one. She’d eaten a cold supper and washed and dried her cup and bowl, and she was putting them away when she heard the outer back door bang open.

  There was barely enough time to turn around before Aleswina burst in, Caelym only a step behind her.

  “You’re early, Dear Heart—”

  Her startled greeting was cut off as Aleswina flung herself into her arms, clinging to her and trembling like she had fifteen years before—except that then she’d made not so much as a whisper of sound, and now she gabbled between ragged, gasping breaths, “We have to go! The guards are coming! I’m coming with you!”

  Caelym, equally out of breath, sputtered, “She is not!”

  “I am too!”

  “She is not!”

  “I am! Tell him, Anna! Make him listen!”

  “She isn’t! Tell her she has to go back to her convent!”

  Caelym was stamping his foot on the floor, his voice raised to a pitch almost as shrill as Aleswina’s so that Annwr could hardly make out what either of them was saying.

  “Hush, both of you! Caelym, go sit down!”

  He didn’t, but he at least stopped stamping and shouting. Annwr pried Aleswina’s arms loose and pressed the girl’s trembling hands between her own. “Now, Dear Heart, you know that I must go to my people, and you must stay with yours, take your sacred vows as a high Christian priestess, and—”

  “There aren’t going to be any vows! They’re going to send me back and make me marry Gilberth!”

  Annwr stiffened. “No.”

  “Yes! Olfrick told the abbess so—and she’s letting him! As soon as the evening service is over, they’ll know I’ve gone! They’ll come here after me! Please, please, please, don’t let them get me!”

  “We won’t!” She gave Aleswina a brisk hug and told Caelym to change his clothes and get his pack.

  Caelym stood where he was. “Enough of this foolishness, Annwr! You are going, and I am going, and she is staying here— taking this ‘Gilberth’ as her consort, if she will, or giving him some courteous refusal if she wouldn’t!”

  Annwr’s answer sounded halfway between hiss of a goose and the growl of a bear. “I am going and she is going and you may join us—or stay here to deliver her courteous refusal to the king’s guards, who, I’m sure, will be glad you waited for them!”

  For a long, tense moment, Annwr and Caelym glared at each other, neither of them speaking.

  Finally, Caelym lowered his eyes and grumbled, “We’ll decide what to do with her once we’re safely away.” Looking at the two packs and guessing which one Annwr meant for him to carry, he stuffed his own satchel inside the already bulging bag and heaved it up on his shoulders. Then he snatched up the coarse brown monk’s robe in one hand and the longer of the two walking sticks in the other and stamped out of the door, muttering too low for Annwr to hear what he was saying.

  Annwr took up her pack, which was heavy enough that Caelym didn’t need to be moaning about his, took hold of Aleswina’s hand, and followed Caelym out into the garden, where he stood dithering, looking at the goose pond as if he expected Solomon’s ghost to appear and tell him what to do.

  Instead of getting out of her way when Annwr told him to, he swung around and snapped at Aleswina, “Did th
ese guards have hounds?”

  Aleswina’s voice quivered as she stammered, “I—I—don’t know. . .”

  Before Caelym could frighten the girl further, Annwr snapped back at him, “There are plenty of hounds in the village if the guards want them.”

  “There is a stream out of that pond?”

  “So what if—” getting his point, she shifted midsentence to, “there is! And it runs from here to the river.”

  “We’ll take that way out, then, and maybe have a chance of leaving the hounds behind.” Having somehow decided that he was the one now in charge, he went on issuing orders. “Go, then, and open the gate so it looks as if you left that way!”

  There was no more time to waste arguing. Annwr took Aleswina along with her as she hurried to unlatch the gate and shove it open. As they turned back around, Aleswina gasped and buried her face in Annwr’s cloak.

  “Caelym, what are you doing?” Annwr stared at him, putting her hands on her hips and shaking her head in exasperation.

  “If I must be going into the water on a cool night, I’d just as soon my clothes are dry to put on when I get out.”

  He finished stripping to the skin and stuffed his clothes and sandals into his backpack. Pushing them down to make room for the monk’s cloak, he added, “If either of you are coming with me, you’d best be doing the same.”

  Stifling a sigh, Annwr started to undress as well.

  “Anna?” Aleswina whispered in a tiny, desperate voice.

  Annwr stroked her cheek. “It’s only for a little while, Dear Heart, and we’ll keep your under-shift on and tuck it up a bit to keep it dry while we go wading.”

  Aleswina lifted her arms and let Anna pull her habit off over her head, just as she’d done as a little girl when Anna was her nurse and it was just the two of them, safe in her nursery.

  Annwr packed up their clothes, then Aleswina obediently took her hand and walked with her into the pond, barely aware of Caelym, who followed after them, stepping backwards and using his pole to rub out the tracks they left in the mud.

  Wading in the dark, their feet slipping on stones and sinking into soft muck, they did not make good time and were not even halfway to the river when they heard the hounds baying.

  Aleswina gripped Annwr’s hand, unable to tell where the sounds were coming from or which way to run. Caelym came up from behind and herded them forward to a bend where the stream had undercut the bank and carved out a deeper pool beneath it. The water came up to Aleswina’s waist.

  “Get down!” Caelym’s order was barely louder than the gurgle of the current passing them, but Aleswina heard him and did as she was told, sinking down into the water until she was submerged to her chin. Annwr crouched on one side of her and Caelym on the other. Both of them bent over, keeping their heads and the packs on their backs above water, and they looked so much like a pair of oversized turtles that Aleswina felt the impulse to giggle—an urge that vanished when the next round of howls rang out, followed by yapping and shuffling in the bushes on the bank above them.

  Men joined the dogs, crashing through the undergrowth, shouting back and forth. Then one voice rose over the others. It was Olfrick, cursing at the dogs and screaming orders to his men to find the bloody goddamned princess or else. Either because they’d caught an interesting scent or were fleeing Olfrick’s rage, the dogs took off into the woods, howling in a single voice. The shouts of the guards followed them, fading away until even Olfrick’s bellowing was too dim to make out what he was saying.

  It wasn’t until the last of the hounds’ wails died away that Caelym stood up and started on down the stream once more. By then, Aleswina was numb to everything except for the grip of Annwr’s hand. Picking one foot up and putting it in front of the other one, she sloshed along, head down.

  After an eternity, they reached the river and came to a halt. Caelym and Anna began a hushed conversion in Celt while Aleswina, who’d long since forgotten the language Anna had spoken to her in their first years together, looked around, dazzled by the brilliance of the moon’s reflection off the seemingly motionless expanse of water that curved in a broad arch around them.

  PART IV

  The River

  The moon, waning but still three-quarters full, hung above the treetops, admiring her reflection on the shimmering river. The few faint stars that had dotted the horizon as they left Annwr’s backyard to wade their way through the forest had since multiplied and spread so it now seemed that the earth had donned a night cloak made of diamonds.

  Caelym put his hand out to keep Annwr and Aleswina behind him in the protective shadows of the trees and stood still, listening. The nearby sounds were reassuring—owls hooting, bats fluttering, and the occasion call of a thrush sounding—but in the distance, coming from downstream, there was a dim clanging of bells that was more likely calling on the villagers to wake and join in the hunt than summoning the Christian nuns to their nightly prayers.

  A tangle of brush swept past on the far side of the river, its speed warning him of just how strong a current flowed underneath the river’s deceptively smooth surface. He had dived into this same river in his desperation to escape the horde of pursuing Saxons, and he knew its strength. Neither Annwr nor Aleswina would have any chance against it.

  “You packed an axe, did you?” With dogs hunting them, Caelym knew they had no choice but to stay in the water. Given the weight of the pack on his back, he felt a surge of hope that was immediately deflated by Annwr’s caustic rejoinder “No, I did not! Would you be thinking of gathering wood for a bonfire to save the guards the trouble?”

  “I would be thinking of making a raft so your Saxon princess could ride down the river instead of swimming, which I don’t suppose she can.”

  “And you don’t think a boat would be better?”

  Looking up and down the bank for a floatable log, Caelym replied irritably, “It would be much better, only I think I’d not be wanting to go into the town just now, knocking on doors and asking whether some kind Saxon might have one to lend.”

  Annwr’s answer was equally snide. “And I’d not be expecting you to do anything so useful, but if you’d like rowing over swimming, then I’ll do what I can about it.”

  Dragging Aleswina along behind her, she plunged her pole into the current and started upstream.

  Caelym splashed after her and came up alongside Aleswina, who, just as he’d predicted, was floundering like a drowning kitten. Grumbling the strongest invectives a priest of his rank might use in the presence of a priestess who was sister to the highest of all priestesses, he shifted his pole to his left hand and took hold of Aleswina’s arm with his right to join with Annwr in keeping her upright and moving forward.

  Chapter 23

  Not A Word

  As they fought their way against the current, Annwr relented enough to explain how she planned get the boat. “There’s an old man who works on the river, carrying freight and buying and selling boats. He has more boats than he needs, and he owes me one of them for all the times I’ve nursed him through hangovers. He’ll be asleep now, and too drunk to notice if we took his bed out from underneath him.”

  With nothing better to suggest and no reason to think that Annwr would listen to him if he did, Caelym waded on, his shoulder and arm throbbing from the strain of keeping Aleswina’s head above water. He was too proud to complain about the weight of his overloaded pack or to remind Annwr that he’d only recently recovered from an almost fatal arrow wound.

  It was his pride against the current, and the current was on the verge of winning when they rounded a broad bend and Annwr gave a self-satisfied grunt and pointed with her staff.

  Caelym’s mental picture of the boathouse she’d promised was based on the only boathouse he knew—the one on the bank of the sacred lake in Llwddawanden, a fastidiously kept pier with a neat line of sleek boats tucked under the cover of a post-and-beam boat shed, each with its perfectly matched oars leaning against the wall behind it.

 
; What he saw now was a teetering wharf, its docks battered and buckled and a clutter of boats in all states of repair crammed together under a shabby roof. On the upstream side, a heap of river debris was piled halfway up the boathouse wall. The downstream bank was littered with the skeletons of wrecked hulls. On the bank above and behind the boathouse he saw what could have been a heap of smoldering rubbish but was actually, he guessed, the thatched roof of the hovel where the boatman was, hopefully, as sound asleep as Annwr had promised.

  While Caelym was taking this in, Annwr forged on. She was about to help Aleswina climb the rickety ladder when he hissed at her to keep her hands off it and keep the girl away.

  “The dogs will be set on her scent and yours too!”

  “And what about yours?” she hissed back as he edged past her and gave the flimsy railing an experimental tug to see if it would take his weight along with that of his overloaded pack.

  “It’s the two of you they’ll be after, so we’ll just hope a small whiff of me won’t catch their interest.” He heaved himself up, wrestled off his pack, and walked gingerly along the creaking dock into the boathouse.

  On a darker night or with a better repaired roof, he would have needed to risk lighting a torch to see what he was doing. As it was, the moonlight streaming down through the gaps in the moldering thatch was enough to see by. Of the dozen boats that jostled against each other, six were half sunk, two lacked oarlocks, and three of the remaining four were meant for hauling cargo and were far longer than they needed. That left one, a small, solidly built craft with two sturdy-looking oars already set in place. He untangled its tie rope and pulled it to the end of the dock where Annwr stood waist deep, holding Aleswina against her and glowering at him.

  “Give your pack here!” As he’d expected, Annwr’s pack was half the weight of his and the boat barely shifted as he wedged it into the prow. His own was more of a struggle, but he managed to get it over the edge of the dock and shoved back against the stern.