7
SAINT OSWALD’S BONES
TWO DAYS LATER THEY BURIED MY MOTHER AT THE EAST END OF St. Oswald’s Minster in the vast square vault where my father also lay. The abbot began chanting the last words of the Latin service, but I hardly heard him. I stood beside my uncle the king, whose features were as rigid as the carved faces of the saints. Today it was hard to see any clear sign that Edward had cared personally for my mother. But the year the minster was finished, I remembered, Uncle Edward had raided Lincylene to bring Mother the relics of their holy ancestor Saint Oswald of Northumbria. In tribute to Mother’s work, Edward had said, Saint Oswald’s bones would ever rest at Gleawceaster.
Now the gesture seemed little more than a show of the king’s strength, I thought miserably as I stood hunched beside him. The saint’s bones proved that Edward would take whatever he wanted—even the body of a holy man—and distribute such possessions where it pleased him. Am I his possession, as well?
Not even Gytha was with me now. She had been gone without a word when I had awakened this morning. To whom could I look? On my other side Æthelstan rubbed his jaw as he shot a glance at me, then looked away unhappily. No, I found little comfort in Æthelstan’s presence now.
With a grinding heave the monks slid the broad stone slab over the vault. Mother! The king strode forward flanked by his guards, and Æthelstan and I followed him past the abbot, past the abbess, and along the line of Mercian nobles who had been permitted inside the chapel for their lady’s burial. At the doors the king let his escort go ahead, and then led Æthelstan and me out into the minster’s courtyard.
Rain was falling on the crowd of Gleawceaster townspeople and other Mercians who had gathered from the surrounding burghs and countryside. The crowd seemed restless—they jostled each other, and a few began to shove against the royal attendants near me. I heard a shout, and then another, closer this time. All at once a figure in a muddy cloak and hood pushed past the guards and lunged at me, grabbing my arm.
“They buried the lady without me!” the person wailed. “Why was I turned away?” With a cry of panic I tried to pull free. Æthelstan raised his hand to cuff back my assailant when, suddenly, I recognized the stranger.
“Don’t touch her!” I shrieked, blocking my cousin’s blow. Still clinging to my clothes, the figure slipped weakly to the ground. I knelt and pushed back the hood of the cloak.
It was Edith. But the neat, sharp-tongued Edith I knew appeared completely undone. Her greying hair had fallen down around her shoulders and stuck to her cheeks in wet hanks.
“They buried her without me,” she moaned again. “They would not let me in.” I stared at her in horror. Edith had come all the way from Lunden to Gleawceaster, and no one had even told me she was here.
More shouts were ringing out across the courtyard. It was a woman’s voice again. I looked up to see two guards struggling with another cloaked form. I saw a flash of red hair.
“That’s Gytha! My companion Gytha!” I cried out. “Let her go!” I saw the guards drop their hands in surprise as I turned back to Edith. A second later Gytha shouldered in beside me, breathing heavily, and took her mother’s cold hands in hers.
“I met her outside the minster this morning when I went to get more food,” she told me between gasps. “She rode from Lunden to Tameworthig, and then came here without stopping. The guards wouldn’t let us come to you.”
“What is all this?” King Edward’s voice was angry, growing louder as he strode toward us. “Who disrupts us, with no respect for Lady Æthelflæd?” I stood up and half faced my uncle as Gytha helped her mother sit up.
“This ... this is Edith, mother of my companion Gytha”—I faltered—“and daughter of Red, a thane who gave his life to serve Lady Æthelflæd. She was kept outside by the guards.” The king looked at the women behind me, and recognition flashed in his eyes.
“Pardon, Lady,” said King Edward to Edith. “I—I knew your father when I was a boy. My guards should not have kept you outside. And this is your daughter? Ælfwyn’s companion?” He pointed at my friend. Edith nodded.
The king turned to Gytha: “Take your mother into the abbey. Give her dry clothing, food, and rest. She is our honored guest.” With a nod Gytha moved to obey the king. But Edith was already struggling to her feet.
“I will stay with Lady Ælfwyn.” Edith’s voice was louder and steadier now, though her body still trembled with cold. “Mercia is her home, and mine. We would be ashamed”—her voice echoed across the listening courtyard—“if you were not our guests in our own country.”
The crowd pressed closer as Edith spoke, and when she had finished, there was a murmur as her words were passed back to those who had not heard. The townspeople had drawn near enough that I could smell the wet wool of their clothes. I could see their faces harden as they heard Edith’s words. Our own country, she had called Mercia, as if the king had no claim upon it.
Nervously, I looked for the king’s guards. They were nowhere near us. Somehow a group of laborers had pushed past them, shoving their way farther between me and the rest of the royal company. Across the sea of bodies, I saw Edward motion furiously to Dunstan, who immediately rode over to the wall where Edward and his men had been forced. I noticed that Dunstan’s men, also on horseback, were positioned at regular intervals around the crowd. They seemed to form a kind of semicircle. Was I mistaken, or had I seen the members of my mother’s guard urge their horses forward a step or two—all at the same time?
King Edward was speaking rapidly to Dunstan. This Mercian crowd was clearly challenging his authority here. Æthelstan, standing beside him, had gone white and silent.
Now the king was gazing at me with a kind of calculation in his eyes. He flung a sharp order at Dunstan, who dismounted and handed his reins to Edward. The king swung up onto Dunstan’s horse and began pushing through the crowd alone, toward me.
“Ælfwyn,” he barked above the din, “my men and I must return north. We can’t stay here in Gleawceaster”—he looked hard at Edith—“as your guests.”
Surely with a word he could have driven the crowd off. But not on the lady’s funeral day, I thought with a lump in my throat. The love and honor my mother had won in her lifetime still meant something. The king’s final words seemed to prove me right.
“Æthelstan will visit Mercia to bring us news of your welfare. And I promise you, girl,” King Edward finished with a sentence that was as much threat as promise—“Wessex will not forget Mercia.”
I stared at his fierce face looking down at me, and I nodded.
The king rode to the edge of the crowd, dismounted, and threw the reins to Dunstan. Without a backward glance he left. Æthelstan and the members of the West Saxon royal guard followed.
At my side, Edith was suddenly full of vigor, glaring after the king with her fists planted on her hips. Relief flooded me, and then anguish. I buried my head on her shoulder.
“Edith, I thought the king was going to take me to Wessex,” I said into the sodden wool of her cloak. “Why did he leave me here instead?”
“Edward thought Mercia died with Æthelflæd,” Edith muttered. “We showed him he was wrong.”
8
STRANGERS
MY FRIENDS BROUGHT ME BACK TO LUNDEN, AND FOR NEARLY two months I kept to my chamber, at first only crying and sleeping, and sometimes trying to eat a little of the food Gytha and Edith brought me. It was Grimbald who drew me out at last.
“I won’t have her wasting her days like this,” he had fumed, speaking to Edith as I huddled beneath the bedclothes. “Seven years I’ve taught her, at first because it was the lady’s wish, but later because Ælfwyn was a fair student.” He paused. “In truth, she was one of my best,” he continued at last, sounding even angrier. I felt his bony hand on my shoulder as he gave me a little shake. “I’ll expect you in the scriptorium tomorrow morning, girl,” he said sharply. “Your mother would have wanted it.”
Despite his strong words, Grimbald look
ed a little surprised when I shuffled into the scriptorium the next day. “See that you come before the third hour rings next morning,” he said curtly, but there was an unaccustomed gentleness in his manner as he brought the books and arranged them in front of us on the slanted table. I caught my breath as he removed a tiny volume from a battered leather pouch.
“Mother’s handbook,” I whispered. Grimbald nodded.
“Edith brought it back from Gleawceaster, with the lady’s other things. She gave it to me for the abbey library, but I thought perhaps you should keep it for now.” My fingers trembled as I touched the plain binding. Mother had always carried her book with her. Inside it she had copied charms, riddles, battlesongs, bits of histories and saints’ lives—any favorite readings she wanted to keep close by to read again at her leisure. Grimbald reached around me and opened the book, leafing through it until he found the page he wanted.
“Remember the scop’s poem?” he asked. I stiffened, recalling the night a traveling singer had entertained us after supper. Grimbald had been seated nearby that evening. He must have overheard me tell my mother that a scop’s entertainment could never be as fine as the poems I’d been learning to read. Then Mother had taken out her handbook.
“She showed me this lament,” I mumbled.
“Yes,” Grimbald replied, touching the words written in Mother’s own hand, “a lament written by a scop.”
I read aloud, following Grimbald’s finger:I wish to say something about myself.
That I was a scop dear to my lord—Deor was my name. For many winters I held this good office, and had a gracious ruler. But now Heorrenda, a song-skilled man, has got the landright that was once given to me. That passed away. So may this.
My voice trailed off. I could read no farther.
“Ælfwyn”—Grimbald’s fingers closed over mine—“this will pass, too.”
I kept coming to study after that morning. Somehow it was possible to leave my bed, to leave my room, knowing I was going to lessons with Grimbald just as I had for so many years. But in my time away from the classroom, I wondered what would happen to Mercia and to myself. I had never given much attention to the governing of my mother’s lands, but I knew she had ruled Mercia with the widespread approval of her people. She had been both just and courageous. She had ridden with her army, sometimes even carrying a sword, which she knew how to use. I could never do what she had done, no matter how much Edith and others hoped I might be my mother’s heir. It was only a matter of time before King Edward found his own use for me, and I dreaded the day he would “remember Mercia.”
At the height of summer a message did come for me from beyond Mercia, but it was not the summons from King Edward I had been expecting.
A guard brought me the battered piece of parchment, saying that a monk (a Benedictine, they had guessed by his humble dress) had appeared at the north gate asking for the lady’s daughter. Thanking and dismissing the guard, I opened the creased page and read:Greetings, child of the lady.
A warrior there is in the world, wonderfully born, brought forth brightly from two dumb things. Full strong he is, but a woman may bind him. He serves whomever serves and feeds him fairly, but grimly he rewards those who let him grow up proud.
True friends of your mother have news for Mercia’s heir.
Look north at vespers.
Wrinkling my brow, I read the note again, and then a third time. Here was a strange, riddling message, one that greeted me in my mother’s name. The riddle’s first and last lines were written in good Latin, and the rest in English, as if the author knew that Æthelflæd’s daughter was something of a scholar, as if the writer could trust me to puzzle out the sense of the words.... I folded the note, and went to find Dunstan.
“A night meeting. I don’t like it,” Edith said as she helped me secure the leather armor Dunstan had said I must wear beneath my tunic.
“Dunstan said he would take me just outside the tun,” I responded, “where we will quickly have defenders if we need them.”
“But the two of you are going alone?”
“Dunstan says that two riders will likely go unnoticed tonight. They called themselves friends,” I added.
“Yes, well, perhaps you will pass through a Lunden gate without much notice, but that won’t help if you are set upon outside the walls by these ‘friends.’ Your mother studied war both in books and from the back of a horse while she was still a girl,” snapped Edith, “but you, you scribble and moon about. Reading poetry with Grimbald and my Gytha has not prepared you for fighting.” She smoothed my clothes. “You can’t even ride well, Ælfwyn.”
I hung my head. Edith was saying aloud all the things I had thought myself.
“I can stay on a horse,” I muttered. “Maybe I can begin to learn to ride the way my mother did.”
“Your mother learned her earliest lessons at the cost of my father’s life, and almost at the cost of her own,” Edith said sadly. “Take Lady Æthelflæd’s dagger with you tonight.”
Dunstan’s eyes widened when he met me outside the stable.
“You rode Winter?” he said under his breath. “Do you think that pale animal won’t turn heads as he goes?”
“There are other white horses in Lunden,” I mumbled as my heart sank. I had screwed up my courage to ride Winter tonight, but I hadn’t considered his light coat. With a sigh Dunstan tugged my hood farther over my face and we set off.
“Mmff.” I stifled a yelp as the hilt of my mother’s knife dug into my side beneath my armor. I shifted in the saddle, trying awkwardly to find the rhythm of Winter’s trot. Winter was still too spirited for my poor skills, but I had wanted to bring my mother’s gift horse with me. Stupid girl.
We made our way through the streets without attracting particular notice. But the guards at the north gate recognized us, greeted us by name, and waved us through.
“What did I tell you?” Dunstan groused. Nothing was going well so far. But I thought I knew the answer to the riddle, at least.
“Do you see what you thought you might, girl?” Dunstan asked, circling back to ride beside me.
“Not yet.” I peered out into the dusky countryside. The breeze that blew across the fields from the river Lea brought the scent of wet earth, and of leaves and straw from the fields.
Dunstan looked back over his shoulder to the wall, which would soon be out of sight if we continued to ride. “ ‘Look north,’ it said,” he growled. “If we go much farther we’ll be alongside the river, too far from the gate to call for help. I want to take you back, Ælfwyn. Even at this distance, an attack ...”
“Wait. Look there,” I replied in a small voice. Somewhere out in front of us—nearly at the riverbank, I thought—there was a spark of light. “Please,” I said, “that’s the place. I know it is.”
“It isn’t safe.” Dunstan shook his head. He was in no trusting mood.
“But the riddle—the answer is there.” We had almost reached the riverbank. There, on a patch of earth scraped down to the bare ground, burned a lone campfire. Across the river two riders were descending from a cut in the steep bank. As they got closer I could see that the first man wore a shirt of ring mail, an iron-banded helmet, and a sword. His companion wore no armor and his feet, I saw with surprise, were bare. They stopped their horses in front of us.
“She comes to us on a horse as pale as a dove,” said the barefoot man with no prelude. “A good sign.” He spoke in a flat northern accent, and I could see now that he wore clerical garb—the rough robe of a monk of low rank. The man’s tonsured head glowed in the dusk as he turned to his companion. “Those are her mother’s eyes, don’t you think? Lighter hair like the father. But brow, eyes, chin ... yes, Æthelflæd’s face.”
The other man said nothing, only quieted his horse. He kept his right hand near his sword, I noticed. Dunstan’s hand also rested upon his thigh, ready to grip his weapon.
It seemed that it was up to me to speak next. “Fire,” I began hesitantly, “I mean, fi
re was the answer to your riddle.”
“Indeed,” the monk replied with a little bow and a smile on his sun-weathered face. “The warrior brought forth from two dumb things.”
“Two dumb things—those would be the stone and metal that make a spark,” I said in a soft voice, and the monk nodded again from the back of his horse.
“A woman may bind fire—on her hearth, and in her rushlamps and candles,” he continued. “And if he grows up too proud, too bright, well”—he pointed at the campfire—“you see how careful we were to keep our fire small.”
Dunstan shuffled impatiently. “This game,” he said, “I’ve had enough of it. Why did you call Ælfwyn here?” The monk smiled again.
“Your retainer does not recognize me,” he responded, “but I have met Dunstan before.” Dunstan’s eyes narrowed. “You visited me with Lady Æthelflæd, at Eoforwic ... ,” the cleric prompted. My retainer looked harder at the man’s face, then drew in his breath sharply.
“Archbishop!” Hastily, Dunstan dropped his head in a bow of his own. Archbishop? I dipped my own head, confused.
“My lord archbishop,” I said, resolving to trust Dunstan’s eyes, and struggling to compose my thoughts, “welcome to Mercia, welcome to Lunden. Please, come under the roof of my house. We will have a feast in our hall to honor you. ...”
“It is better,” the archbishop replied, “that heaven be our roof tonight, Lady, and that only God, who knows all, should hear our secrets. We have serious matters to discuss,” he said as he settled himself on the ground. His guard and Dunstan sat down, too.
“You remember our talk in Eoforwic with Lady Æthelflæd,” the archbishop began, “five years back, when we spoke of a threat from Northumbria’s northeastern coast? We can now put a name to that enemy. He is called Rægnald—a Norseman who draws nearer to Eoforwic with every skirmish,” he said, looking from Dunstan to me. “Rægnald wishes to rule Northumbria, to take the throne at Eoforwic.”
Far Traveler Page 4
