The Oath

by A. M. Linden

  “A fair!” Although Annwr’s voice was only a shade above a whisper, it carried, and the boys dashed up to see for themselves.

  Catching hold of Arddwn’s tunic to keep him from scrambling over the edge and down the path, Caelym asked through gritted teeth, “And a ‘fair’ is . . .?”

  “A fair”—Annwr sighed and rolled her eyes in the particularly annoying way she had when she was telling him for the first time about something that he had no reason to know—“is a gathering of sellers. Like a market, only with games and dancing and festivities, something like the playful parts of our rites only not a part of their Christian rituals, as their god does not approve of fun.”

  While Annwr was explaining the difference between markets and fairs to Caelym, Lliem stared wide-eyed at them both.

  In the short time since his rescue from Barnard’s kitchen, Lliem had come to believe that his father was both magical and omnipotent. How could he—how could anyone—not know the difference between a market and a fair when even Lliem, as little as he was and knowing practically nothing compared with everyone else around him, knew that a market was rows of stalls selling ordinary, everyday things, while a fair was drums and flutes and dancing and singing and acrobats leaping through the air and the smells of wonderful things cooking! Not that Lliem had ever gotten anything to eat, except for the crusts he and Arddwn had been able to snatch up off the ground before the crows did when Barnard took them along to carry all the things he got for himself, but even Barnard could not stop him from smelling the aromas or hearing the music or catching glimpses of the entertainers. And once he had seen a man breathing fire like a dragon.

  Unaware of his younger son’s bewildered disillusionment, Caelym shook his head at the idea of wasting rites on a god who didn’t believe in fun and returned to his point.

  “With so many of our enemies gathered together in one place, we must skip this village and try for the next.”

  “Noooo,” Arddwn and Lliem pleaded together.

  “No!” Annwr said in what for her was a cheerful tone of voice. “This is better than I had hoped! With the crowds of outsiders, we will be able to buy everything we need without anyone being any the wiser.”

  While it was at least possible that Caelym could have held out against either Annwr’s assertion or the boy’s entreaties, the combination of the two was overpowering. Determined to win some compensation for his surrender, he stood up straight, crossed his arms, and said, “So if we are to venture into this Saxon citadel, it is with the condition that I am allowed to speak if the need arises.”

  “All right, then.” Reluctantly realizing there was no hope of Caelym holding his tongue altogether, Annwr settled for fussing at him in the same tone she used to remind the boys to tie up the laces of their boots and keep their fingers out of the hot fire. “As long as you remember you are to be a Christian monk and say nothing but the Latin prayers that Ales—I mean, that Ethelwen taught you!”

  After giving Annwr his huffy assurance that he knew “how to behave as a monk,” Caelym took a long look at the wisps of white clouds drifting across the horizon of an otherwise clear sky and did a careful count of the swallows that swooped across the path ahead of them. Deciding there were no obvious portents of impending disaster, he took up his staff, tucked his wooden bowl under his arm, and stepped boldly forward, leading their way through the pines and oaks, across the bridge, and up onto the road to join the other foot travelers hurrying along in between wagons loaded with traveling players and goods for the fair.

  Chapter 57

  Caelym’s Tribute

  The village of Girdlestone hardly counted as a citadel. Consisting of the cluster of stone and timber buildings that Caelym and Annwr had seen from the opposite ridge, along with a few dozen cottages and farmsteads spread out along the valley floor, its usual population (depending on recent births and deaths) hovered around a hundred. This number more than tripled when it played host to the increasingly popular Girdle-stone Fair.

  Living on a side spur off the only passible wagon road between Atheldom and Derthwald—and beyond Derthwald through the high mountain passes to the western coast—the inhabitants of Girdlestone were more used to strangers coming and going than most rural villagers. Far from objecting to the raucous mix of visitors that descended on their otherwise quiet hamlet, they’d come to depend on the brief but reliable economic boom afforded by the fair. They helped the traveling players unload their carts and set up their tents, put out their own wares to sell alongside the visiting vendors, and told anyone who asked that the best place to stay was at Ealfrid’s Inn at the east end of the village.

  Annwr had been to fairs in Derthwald put on by much the same set of traveling players and felt sure that even as oddly assorted a group as theirs would not stand out in the crowd so long as Caelym contained his compulsion to show off. Busy with finding the right size tunics for the boys and bartering with vendors over what their goods were actually worth, she failed to notice when he suddenly turned down a different row of stalls and wandered off on his own.

  As he made his way through the bustling crowd, Caelym nodded absently at the fairgoers who approached him, and recited random bits from Aleswina’s psalms as they dropped tribute into his bowl. As the coins mounted up, a new idea took shape in his mind. Well aware that Annwr had purposely not given him any of their hoard, because she had no trust in his ability to do the bartering for which she had so praised Aleswina, he now saw the opportunity to prove himself as capable of conducting business as any Saxon princess.

  Casting around for something to buy that Annwr wouldn’t have thought of, he saw a stall nearby selling hunting and battle gear, from child-size toys to massive lances meant to bring down wild boars. Impressed by the rows of bows and arrows and the shelves of knives for flaying anything from a mouse to a bear, he ventured, for the first time in his life, to exchange money for things. With no clear notion of what the various coins in his bowl were worth, he simply held the bowl out to the arrow smith and pointed to what he wanted.

  Among the varied but mostly good-humored fairgoers there were a few—either more intensely devout or more thoroughly gullible— who put together the mysterious monk’s otherworldly good looks and floating, graceful walk with his blithe indifference to the world around him and began to whisper that they were seeing an angel in disguise. As the rumor spread through the crowd, more and more of the faithful added their coins to Caelym’s plate and told him their names as they did, hoping to have someone to speak in their favor at the entrance to the Gates of Heaven when the time came.

  Hlother, the arrow smith and armorer, was neither devout nor gullible, but he knew that most of his customers were one or the other, and he knew an opportunity when it looked him in the face. Ostentatiously adding a handful of coins to Caelym’s bowl, he took the well-made hunter’s bow and the two smaller boys’ training bows off the pegs that he’d pointed to, added extra arrows to the matching quivers, and commended the sainted brother on his choice in a voice loud enough to be heard a dozen stalls away. As Caelym strode off, Hlother turned back to deal with the throng of customers lining up to get the bows and arrows that were good enough for an angel.

  Emboldened by his success, Caelym turned down another row, following the sound of flutes, and found a stall selling musical instruments. He walked away with a splendid little harp and a still fuller begging bowl.

  Preoccupied with composing a saga of how he’d entered the enemy’s camp, deceived them all, and escaped unscathed with armloads of booty, Caelym did not at first notice that he’d acquired a bevy of wide-eyed admirers whispering to each other about miracles and visions. But as the prickling sense of being followed brought him back to the present, he started paying attention.

  Much of the mumbling about seraphim and cherubim made no sense to him but when a voice broke through the rest, insisting, “Well, he’s no ordinary monk,” it was time to take evasive action. Turning back into the crowd, he darted first one way an
d then another through the confused, milling throng before ducking into a narrow alleyway between a line of sheds and animal pens. He emerged from the other end with his hood pulled down over his face and the bows, arrows, harp, and bowl of coins tucked under his cloak.

  With Aleswina and the boys helping, Annwr had managed to find a place under a tree to stack their goods and supplies. As she heaped up her morning’s purchases, she decided they’d have to make arrangements for a room at the local inn where they could get packed up and organized away from the curious stares of passersby. Having that settled in her mind, she looked around to see where Caelym was just as he popped around a corner, grinning like Rhedwyn just returned from a successful cattle raid. Refusing to reward whatever foolish nonsense he’d been up to with any remark at all, she snapped at him to add his toys to the rest of their goods while she figured out what to do next.

  “What about our toys?” Arddwn demanded.

  The boys had, by any reasonable standard, been exceptionally good. They’d hardly whined at all about standing still to get their new clothes fitted, stayed where they were supposed to stay, and helped to carry things that didn’t seem nearly so exciting now that all the sounds and smells of the fair called to them from the other side of the stands. Annwr smiled at them and said, “You have been very good boys! You’ve helped me get all the things we need for our travels and you have not gone off and gotten lost or done anything foolish”—here she cast a sharp glance at Caelym—“so now you have earned your reward. Codric will go with you to the fun part of the fair. He will get you some treats to eat and take you to watch a puppet show and see the jugglers, and you may each pick out one toy, and if”—here she looked at the child-sized bows and arrows Caelym had under his arm—“it is not anything sharp or dangerous, Codric will buy it for you.”

  “I will—” Caelym finally managed to say, getting exactly two words in edgewise before Annwr finished for him, “Brother Cuthbert will help me carry our new things to the inn, and we will take a room there so we can sleep in nice warm beds tonight. After he and I have arranged for our room and put our things away, we will come and find you and see the toy you have each chosen.”

  After a final reminder for the boys to stay with “Codric” and not to speak to anyone else, Annwr handed Aleswina the coin pouch and waved them off.

  By the time Caelym rejoined them, Annwr had managed to get everything except his satchel and a last basket of provisions stuffed into their new packs. She’d also gotten directions to the local inn, which she’d been assured was a clean place where you could count on getting beds with blankets that were washed two or even three times a year.

  Of course Caelym had to argue, fussing that it was too dangerous to risk taking a room in a Saxon tavern and that they should be off into the hills before anyone started asking why an old woman, a young monk, and three boys, their clothes in tatters and with a single small bag between them, should have pouches of silver and gold sufficient to buy up half the goods on the market. This from a man who’d gone traipsing through the crowds dropping who knew what hints about his real identity!

  Aware that their conversation was beginning to attract attention, Annwr gave Caelym a stifling look before saying in a voice loud enough to be overheard by anyone passing by, “I am a well-endowed widow taking my orphaned grandsons to live with kin on the western coast before retiring to a Celtic convent. We were traveling on a boat that sank, taking all of our baggage with it, save for the small satchel holding the last of my worldly possessions. As you, along with your serving boy, are on a mission from the bishop that takes you to the coast as well, you have in Christian goodness and charity agreed to see us safely to our destination!” After the loiterers had moved on to attend to their own business, she lowered her voice to a softer tone—as if she were calming a cranky child—and reassured him that the inn was run by a man of mixed parentage, as much a Briton as a Saxon.

  “Splendid,” muttered Caelym. “He can betray us in two languages.”

  “Only if we talk too much!”

  With that, Annwr shouldered her own pack and collected the basket and the boys’ bags, leaving Caelym to grapple with the rest as she trudged up the roadway toward Ealfrid’s Inn.

  Chapter 58

  Ealfrid’s Inn

  The proprietor of Ealfrid’s Inn was actually named Gothreg, but he’d agreed to keep the inn’s original name when he took it over from his wife’s uncle, and it was easier to answer to “Ealfrid” than to explain that a dozen times a day.

  Glancing out his front door and seeing Annwr and Caelym approaching, Gothreg did some quick mental calculations. News of the wealthy widow buying whatever struck her fancy for herself and her entourage had reached him early that afternoon, and he’d been wondering if they’d be turning up and where he’d put them if they did. The inn had more rooms empty than not during most of the year, but for the days of the fair in the spring and fall, every spare room, shed, and closet was filled.

  A moderately devout Christian, Gothreg wasn’t about to evict Father Wulfric and the two traveling friars from the room he kept for itinerant clergy. Yes, he could squeeze the monk and his boy in there, but the wealthy widow was another matter. Seeing the bulging packs the widow and monk were carrying made up his mind for him—he and his wife would join the hired help on bed-rolls in the kitchen if the widow made it worth his while.

  She did.

  That business done, Gothreg cleared a table close to the hearth and laid out dinner for the widow and monk while his wife gathered up their things and moved them out of the two adjoining rooms they usually kept for themselves.

  While his rooms were full, his dining room was empty, and likely to remain that way with both locals and visitors off to the food stands at the fair, so Gothreg, who was usually too busy to breathe at this time of day, made small talk about the weather as he unloaded his tray.

  Before Annwr could say that he’d taken an oath of silence, Caelym spoke up, answering questions Gothreg hadn’t asked.

  “I am, as you see, a monk, and am on a mission to the western coast. I have promised Mistress Columbina that I will take her and her orphaned grandsons with me to find the kin with whom they, the grandsons, will live forever after, while she will enter a Christian convent, and I will go on to fulfill my sacred oath to the Bishop, which can be delayed no longer than this.”

  Pleased that he could now speak English in phrases as long and flowing as any he’d ever spoken in Celt, Caelym went on to cleverly lay out the specifications Annwr was demanding for the Aleswina’s new convent.

  “Having done things in her younger days of which she now wishes to repent, Mistress Columbina seeks her final sanctuary among other nuns of her own race in a Christian convent that is sufficiently secluded to assure that she will not be disturbed by anyone out of her past.”

  This was nowhere close to the most incriminating revelation Gothreg had received in his tenure as an innkeeper, and he answered without so much as raising his eyebrows, “Oh, you’d be looking for the Abbey of Saint Agnedd . . . Britons in it mostly . . . and if it’s withdrawing from the world she wants, then that’s the place for it.” (Here Gothreg paused to find the right phrase, since ‘to hell and gone again’ wasn’t something that he could say to a monk and an elderly widow on her way to entering a convent.) “It’s a fair bit off the main road on the far side of the fourth pass going west, but still this side of the big mountains, with nothing nearby besides a hamlet called Woghop, only—”

  “Only?” Caelym leaned forward attentively.

  “Only it’s still a grueling journey to the coast, with brigands and bandits to worry about, and not one for the mistress to take back without your protection.”

  “That is no problem,” Caelym said quickly, before Annwr could put in her opinion about who was protecting who. “If you will kindly give us the direction to this Agnedd’s Abbey, I will see her safely settled there and take her grandsons on to the kin that wait for them afterward.”
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  “Well, there is another problem—”

  “And that is?” Caelym was beginning to suspect the innkeeper was playing games with them.

  But he wasn’t.

  “The Sisters of the Abbey of Saint Agned are holier than most,” Gothreg explained, “and they recuse themselves completely for the forty days following the anniversary of the day their saint was martyred, opening their gates to no one—not for the pope himself, even if he were to kneel at their door wearing a woman’s wig—until the last of those forty days is up.”

  “And when might that be?” Caelym’s fund of patience for things Christian, never great in the first place, was evaporating.

  Surprised that he’d have to teach a monk about martyrs, especially one as well-known as Saint Agned, Gothreg counted a few rounds on his fingers and said, “Well, as she was done in on the first day of March, they’d be opening up again in another twelve days—that would be the fifth of May, if I’m counting it right.”

  He wasn’t but was close enough as to make no practical difference.

  “So then, what we will do is to travel to the village there, and Mistress Columbina will take a room and wait for them to open their door and welcome her in while the rest of us go on as I have promised”—Caelym allowed himself a distinct pause before finishing—“the Bishop.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t be finding any inn in Woghop. It’s a smallish bit of a place, and those that live there don’t have the accommodations we do here.”

  Here again Gothreg was choosing his words to fit the company, not saying bluntly that the best he’d ever hear of Woghop was that it was a filthy, stinking little pigsty where you couldn’t tell the men from the hogs. Sensing Caelym’s growing tension and sympathizing, since he wouldn’t have wanted to be caught between the widow and the Bishop either, he offered the best alternative he could think of on the spur of the moment.