“So you’ve not learned from any scop,” Wil said, shaking his head, “and you were surprised when Osgar didn’t want you?” I hung my head. “Do you want to know why he sent you away?” Wil snapped. This question brought my head up with a jerk. I bit my lip, and after a moment I nodded.
“Wil, it’s late for this kind of talk tonight,” Kenelm interrupted mildly. “Perhaps we ought to offer the boy a bed first, and scold him later.”
“Mmm,” Wil said with a quick nod of his dark head, “probably you’re right. We’ve had enough talk tonight.” He did look tired, his eyes red, the skin sagging on his face like that of a man older than he was. The men began to get to their feet. “You can have a place in our camp, if you like, while we’re at Cirenceaster,” Wil offered gruffly.
“I thank you. I’d like to stay—for a little while,” I responded.
“You haven’t even asked him his name yet, have you, Wil?” said one of the thanes good-naturedly. “And you’re giving him a bed in our camp, did I hear? Next thing you’ll be calling the boy to our council circle.”
“It’s Widsith—Widsith’s my name, I mean,” I told Wil quickly, half-afraid he’d change his mind.
“Widsith”—he glowered at me—“a good name for a traveler. You’ve no family?”
“Lost,” was what I said out loud. Lost through death, and through betrayal.
“Mine is lost, too,” Wil said savagely. I stepped back, alarmed at the sadness and anger filling his voice. I bowed, trying not to let Wil shake me any further, and headed for the door to find some place outside to sleep.
“No, boy.” Wil pointed to a pile of blankets. “Wrap yourself in one of those. You can sleep inside with us.”
“Good night, Widsith.” It was Kenelm passing on his way to his own bed, polite as ever. He still showed no sign of recognizing me.
“Good night,” I replied, comforted, and went to find a corner where I could sleep.
I was one of the first in the tent to wake the next morning. I’d never been an early riser, but since I’d left my uncle’s court I’d had only cold, hard beds, as well as the racing heart of a fugitive.
I crept outside and went to check on Winter. Wil found me there just as the rising sun touched the field.
“Your horse faring well?” he asked.
“I think so,” I answered timidly. Winter was tearing at the grass and showing me the white of his eye, warning me not to lead him away from his breakfast unless I wanted trouble.
“Fine animal,” Wil said with a yawn. “He’s got an ugly color to him, though—what would you call it, brown dapple? But that’s a good short back, clean legs. Has the horse got a name?”
“Winter,” I replied, then added hastily when I saw his quizzical look, “they told me he was born in wintertime.”
“You’re a strange lad,” Wil said in a quiet voice. “What made you try to be a scop, without any training?”
“I told you, I’ve read things, learned some stories and poetry. ...”
“But knowing a tale and telling one are two different things,” Wil broke in impatiently. “Hi, you!” he called out to the sentry posted with the horses, who had been at Osgar’s hall the night before. “The story this scop told last night,” Wil demanded, “have you heard it before?”
“Aye,” the man replied, coming closer, “I remembered hearing some of it before.”
“So what was wrong with the way the boy did it?” Wil wanted to know.
“Well,” the man considered, “he said the words all right. I thought there might be something Osgar didn’t like. It was when the scop said something slow, and the lord kind of wrinkled his forehead, as if he wasn’t happy with what he heard. It was just a line about two men who—what was it, now?—who won a battle over their enemies, I think. ‘Hewed them down at Heorot’ was the way the scop said it.” He turned to me. “It wasn’t a bad show, boy, for such a young one as you.”
“Why did you choose to make that line so clear for Osgar’s ears, Widsith?” Wil pressed.
“Because of the hall,” I admitted. “I saw the hart horns Osgar had hung up, and I thought maybe he knew Heorot from the poem. I don’t know why I thought he would. It was stupid.”
“Yes, stupid,” Wil replied quickly. “Osgar did understand the line, and you didn’t.”
I didn’t know what to say. I just stared at Wil. He began to quote the lines from my performance:Hrothwulf and Hrothgar kept peace together
After they gained victory over the invading horde Hewed them down at Heorot.
“You say you mentioned Heorot, the golden hall, to win Osgar’s favor by comparing it to his own feasting place,” Wil repeated, “but you don’t know who Hrothwulf and Hrothgar were, do you?”
I shook my head, abashed.
“Hrothgar was a Danish king,” Wil explained, his dark eyes fixed on me, “and Hrothwulf his brother’s son. Together they beat back the invaders at Heorot, it is true, but there is more to their story. Heorot burned in that battle, and later Hrothwulf took the throne from Hrothgar’s two young sons, killing one of them. So, boy, you may have meant to flatter your host, but instead you compared his hall to a site of ruin and treason.”
“I haven’t read about that anywhere!” I protested.
“Those stories aren’t written, boy. They’re told, and sung,” Wil retorted. “Did you never hear a passable scop perform the story in the household where you were raised?” he asked querulously.
I shook my head. “I—I didn’t listen to them very well, I guess.”
Wil snorted. “All my life I’ve rubbed shoulders with Danes in the north country, and sometimes fought with them and with Norsemen, none of whom could read a word—men who would scrape the gold from a decorated page and use the parchment to clean a cooking pot. Still, those men could tell a tale.
“The last night I spent in one of the Norse camps, I was bound and bashed on the head so I could hardly stand.” His voice was quiet now, and the guard leaned in, listening as intently as I. “I could hear one Norseman boasting about his skill in battle that day. He said he’d fought against one opponent until both their swords broke, and they struggled hand to hand until a stone, a gift from the gods, appeared beneath his fingers in the mud. He picked it up and with the rock in his hand felled the other man with a single blow that cracked his helmet.” One of Wil’s hands came up unconsciously to rub his temple. “My head ached like a rotten tooth as I lay on my side where they’d thrown me in the mud. But there I lay, listening to the man talk, so taken with his story that only as he finished did I realize that I was the very opponent the Norseman spoke of. He’d improved the tale so I hardly recognized myself.”
The guard burst out laughing at this. Wil waited until he quieted to add, “That night after I worked free of my bonds, I let that man sleep on safely with his companions, and I left the camp. Anyone who could make a story like that out of our clumsy fight deserved at least one more night in this life.”
“You probably didn’t want to bring the whole Norse camp down on you just so you could pay him back that blow with the rock,” said the guard, standing up to return to his post, and laughing again at his leader’s reluctant grin. Then Wil left, too, but not before he’d told me where I could get some breakfast.
A strange, argumentative man, I thought as I sat a few moments longer watching Winter crop grass. That long black hair, the wild beard—I still couldn’t tell if he’d invited me here out of pity, or just because he couldn’t bear to let my poor performance stand without correction.
I stood up. It was really no surprise that Wil of Eoforwic made me feel this way. He and I had vexed each other from the first night we’d met, almost exactly a year ago in the fields outside Lunden, when he’d still been Wilfrid, the Northumbrian king, and I was Ælfwyn of Mercia.
16
A JOURNEY CHARM
AFTER MORE THAN A WEEK IN THEIR COMPANY, I WAS NO closer to knowing what Wil and his twenty-odd companions were doing in Cirenceaster
. I had food enough, and I felt safe for the first time since I’d become a small and vulnerable person alone in the world. But I was not invited to any more meetings in the red tent, and so I kept wondering.
Each morning an assortment of strangers rode into camp and entered the red tent to meet with Wil. All of these were English thanes, as far as I could tell, but I could not guess who the visitors might be, nor what they might want with a man who had once been King of Eoforwic. Still, I kept my eyes and ears open, hoping to learn something.
And Wil kept his eye on me. No later than the time of the midday meal, he would emerge and shout my name. He needed to look over the horses, he’d tell me, or search out a pair of boots sent to be mended and not returned yet. Sometimes he’d just announce that he needed to clear his head. “Walk with me, boy,” he would order, and I’d half trot along beside him as he strode off on whatever errand he’d named.
I found Wil’s conversation an irksome mixture of barbs and useful information. My poor horsemanship was a favorite theme. Wil often mentioned that I needed to sit farther forward when the horse lifted from a trot into a canter. What Wil should have said was “stop being terrified of falling off,” or maybe even “give your warhorse to someone who can really ride.”
There were other things Wil wanted to talk about—things I hoped I might actually be able to learn. Almost always our conversations touched upon the skills of a good scop. Sometimes Wil would talk about other singers he’d heard—English and Danish scops who’d told tales during his days in Eoforwic. I always sat and absorbed these lessons with an ear pricked to hear how much he would say about his former life, or possibly his future plans. I was always disappointed.
I tried to make myself useful around camp in those first days, although no one had asked me to do anything in particular. One afternoon I screwed up my courage and went out to the field where the horses were kept. I asked the guard, whose name was Swithulf, if he needed my help.
“That one needs a fresh picket,” Swithulf grunted, nodding toward an underfed black mare—not much more than a pony, really—who had cropped every inch of grass in the circle around her picket stake. She’s a lot smaller than Winter, I reassured myself, gulping. All I had to do was grab her picket line, pull up the stake, and walk calmly a few yards farther out into the pasture where I could tamp the stake down again.
When I touched her rope, the mare jerked her head up and stood stock-still. She made no other movement as I worked the stake loose, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I gathered in the slack and gave her a little tug forward.
“Come on, girl,” I said, keeping my voice low and steady. She took a step toward me, then another.
And then suddenly she was snaking her head sideways to nip at the nearest horse, squealing as she danced in a half-circle, and I saw that she was getting ready to aim a kick in my direction. With a yelp of my own I stamped the picket stake down into the turf right where I was standing and dashed out of her reach. Behind me I heard Swithulf laughing.
“I’ve waited to move her all day,” he admitted. “Meanest one of the bunch. C’mon. We’ll do it together.” We did, although it was clear to me that Swithulf could have done the job himself, since all I did was pull up my weakly fixed stake and put it in the ground again where he told me to. He watched the mare and kept one hand casually on the rope with just enough tautness to keep her under control. Afterward he let me try lugging buckets from the nearby stream to water the horses, but after the third one was overturned by an anxious nose or a nervous hoof, he told me not to bother.
“We’ll just lead them down to the stream to drink,” Swithulf said. He caught me by the wrist as I stepped back toward the herd. “No, boy, not now. We take them in threes, and you couldn’t ...” He broke off, and then finished politely, “You just water your own horse. That’s all the help I need.”
They never let me do much more in the pasture after that. I did some fetching and carrying for the camp cooks, lugged firewood a few times each week, but found little else to do except eat, sleep, sit in the shade, practice my riding, and wait for Wil to call me.
On the evening of my seventh day in camp, Wil and his men headed to Osgar’s hall again for another meal. I stayed behind, saying I was too tired to go, but in truth not wanting to show my face in the hall after my lackluster performance. Alone except for the three guards Wil had left behind, I huddled down in the shadow of one of the smaller tents and gnawed on the handful of sour plums they’d given me to eat.
I felt restless. At least with the farmers, we had been progressing along the road every day. Remaining in Wil’s camp had seemed all right a few days back when hunger and homelessness had seemed unbearable. But now I began worrying again that the king’s men were surely still searching for his missing niece.
Maybe I should leave, I thought to myself, spitting a plum stone into a clump of grass. Keep moving. I bit into the next fruit and felt my mouth twist into a painful pucker—it was the sourest plum of the lot. A richer patron might feed me better, at least....
“... isn’t what I planned for this week, but if the thanes from eastern Mercia need to see us, I think we have to make the journey.” It was Wil’s voice, and the sound was coming closer. I crouched down, keeping absolutely still.
“How many men will you take with you?” It sounded like the voice of a ginger-haired thane named Eadwine who often acted as one of Wil’s close advisers. “It would not help our cause if Osgar saw most of us ride off immediately after suggesting we pledge our loyalty to him.”
“That’s right.” The footfalls stopped. I guessed that Wil and Eadwine stood just on the opposite side of the tent where I was lurking. Anyone would take me for a meddler, a spy, should they find me listening. I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could disappear but wanting to know more. “I’ll take only the boy from Osgar’s hall. And we’ll be back in under a week—perhaps we can make the journey in five days, with my horse rested and better fed than it used to be.”
“The fledgling scop?” Eadwine sounded incredulous. “I didn’t think you’d decided to trust the lad yet. He’s not even allowed in our council—”
“I have a plan for the boy, Eadwine. I could use the trip to learn more about him, to make sure he has or learns the skills necessary.”
Wil wanted to take me along? So there was a reason why he had invited me to stay. The footsteps had begun again, and the voices were moving away from me. A short journey, I thought, alone with Wil. ...
“Widsith!” Wil was calling me, and from far enough away, I judged, that he would not guess that I’d been almost close enough to touch him a few minutes earlier. “Widsith!” I scrambled up and took off toward the sound at a run, reminding myself to look surprised when Wil made his proposal.
We left the next morning, going east. It was to be a fast ride, I’d been told, but not until we’d covered the first day’s ground did I understand that we would spend almost every daylight hour in the saddle. It was a steady and grinding pace for mount and rider alike, much faster than the leisurely rate my party of churls had set for themselves when I’d traveled with them a few weeks earlier, but one that the horses could keep up almost indefinitely with enough food, water, and overnight rest.
That evening I slid down from the saddle, exhausted. Winter seemed well enough after the long day’s ride, and when he was grazing contentedly, I hobbled over to the level spot where Wil was making camp. He seemed quite fresh, I thought. Obviously his body understood how to ride at a trot without jarring the bones with every jounce.
“Got your supper with you, scop?” Wil asked, chewing at a strip of dried meat he held.
“My supper? I ...” He had expected me to bring my own food? “I ... I didn’t—” Stupid! What made you think he’d just keep feeding you? In five days’ journey you’ll begin to starve! You’ll have to look for a settlement, buy something with one of your coins. Wil was laughing at me, I finally noticed. With a sheepish grin, I caught the strip of meat and hunk of fl
at bread he tossed my way, and I sat down to eat.
After we’d finished our meal, I crawled to my pile of gear and slumped against it in the dusk. My eyes were closing.
“Widsith! It’s time to pay me for that fine meal I just fed you!” Wil said loudly. I jerked upright. “I want a song tonight, and I’ve paid for it with a day’s ration. You’ll give me a song before we bed down.”
A song. Yes, I nodded, I’d sing for him. Stiffly I moved a little closer to where he sat in the darkness. Didn’t I know a charm? Yes, something I’d recited once to one of my tutors in Lunden. I thought it through, trying to match the words with a tune I used to hear in the marketplace when I’d go with Gytha—music a beggar used to play on a wooden pipe of some sort. I began, singing softly:With this rod I protect myself,
Against the wounding blade or blow, against all fear upon the land.
A charm of vanquishing I chant; a rod of vanquishing I carry.
Winning by word, winning by deed,
No nightmare possess me, nor belly distress me,
Nor fear for my life arise.
It was hard to remember the middle part of the charm, which was filled with the names of apostles and prophets meant to ward off evil on a journey. I hummed the tune through again as I searched my memory quickly for an ending. There had been something about leading and protecting, and Matthew for a helmet, Mark for a shield, and then the conclusion: let me meet with friends ... something like that. No, first forth I go—
Forth I go: let me meet with friends.
I call upon God to give me good journey,
And gentle winds along the shore.
I have heard how the winds have rolled back the waves,
Hmm, a charm for sea travel wasn’t exactly what we needed; maybe Wil would just remember the other parts.
Steadily saved men from all their enemies.
Far Traveler Page 10
