“Wil,” I said.
It was Wil. When I spoke he went completely still. His hair and beard were well trimmed again, I saw—not the wild black tangle I remembered from Cirenceaster—but I think I’d have recognized that glower even if he’d shaved and painted himself blue like a northern pagan. Then he slid down from his horse and took three strides to where I stood.
“Why the devil can’t I know you when I see you?” he demanded, then broke off, running his eyes over my clothes and hands. “Are you a slave here, Lady?” he exclaimed. “Has Edward rewarded your loyalty so poorly?”
“No, no.” His quick anger almost made me smile, although I was trembling with the surprise of seeing him. “I chose a muddy chore for myself today, that’s all. I am kept at Sceaftesburh very comfortably.”
“Kept at Sceaftesburh,” he responded. “Yes. I had heard that.” He reached out a hand, then let it fall to his side. “I had heard that,” he muttered.
“Where ... what are you doing at Sceaftesburh?” I faltered. “You’re headed for the abbey, you said? To see my aunt?”
“To see Abbess Æthelgifu?” Wil snorted. He stepped back a pace. “Your king wouldn’t welcome me in this country, Lady. I’m not about to announce my visit to his sister.”
“So you came to—to ...”
“I came to find Widsith, that beggar,” Wil said, rubbing his forehead. “You may remember that the last time I saw him was outside Osgar’s hall, where I wished him luck for his performance. For a year now I’ve wanted to know why Widsith thought it was a good idea not to tell me everything he knew about Lady Ælfwyn of Mercia.” There was bitterness in his voice, and I hung my head.
“I—I was running. I wasn’t sure whom to trust. I thought it might make things worse for you, if you knew.”
“And ignorance was much better, of course! I bring every man and weapon I possess to wreak vengeance on the king and force his hand against Rægnald. You step into the hall and lo, my martyred lady is restored! You then remind us why, after all, we should trust King Edward to deal with the trouble in Northumbria in his own way, and I’m left to run with the few who will still follow me, away from Cirenceaster, possessing only what we have in our saddle-bags, wondering how long we have before the king hears who we are, and sets his riders on our track.”
“But he had made a treaty with Rægnald already! And I didn’t tell Uncle Edward anything about you,” I protested desperately. “I promise you, I said nothing!”
“Indeed, no riders followed us,” Wil said in a gentler tone. “I guessed that we had you to thank for that. And you were right. Rægnald had already sworn fealty to Edward, as everyone now knows.” The wind was coming up, blowing my dress until it twisted around my legs. Wil kept talking. “I haven’t heard tell of any new scop at Sceaftesburh,” he said in the same kind voice.
“I don’t play or sing here,” I mumbled. “Sometimes I write. I finished my English Judith. I think it might be a good poem. Aunt Dove—Abbess Æthelgifu, I mean—is sending it to the king.”
“And what do you hope will come of that gift?” Wil wanted to know.
“I ... I hope he will remember me. I hope he will think of my mother’s loyalty and service to him,” I replied listlessly.
“He should remember your loyalty and service,” Wil said with force. “If not for you, he would have faced enough rebellion at Cirenceaster to badly weaken his Mercian claims. And I will say this: Under my guidance Eoforwic still belonged to the Danes, but thanks to the treaty with Rægnald, Edward rules north of the Humber at last.” Wil shook his head wonderingly. “I would not have guessed that it could be so. But you saw it, Lady? How?”
“I only saw the brother whom Lady Æthelflæd had served and trusted all her life, and opposite him a man I had learned to ... to admire very much. I didn’t want either of you to destroy the other,” I replied with difficulty. I looked into Wil’s face. “Are you still angry with me?”
Wil didn’t answer at once, and I couldn’t read his expression. “Last month I went into Northumbria, secretly,” he spoke at last. “The Norse took farmland from my people after I was driven out, but as I rode through the countryside, I saw Norse and English and Danish settlers beginning to live side by side, to share a few things with each other. There is even talk of the archbishop returning to Eoforwic Minster before the end of this year ...” He trailed off.
In the plowed field nearest to the pasture where we stood, the monks had halted their oxen and were pointing at the sky. Spring storm rising. Time to stop. Time to take the tools and animals in. One of the brothers was shading his eyes, peering in our direction.
“I think they’ve seen you,” I told Wil. “You’d better not ...” Why was it so hard for me to say these words? “You’d better not stay.”
“I haven’t really told you why I came to Sceaftesburh,” he said, ignoring what I’d said.
“To question Widsith—isn’t that what you said?” I responded uncertainly, but Wil waved dismissively.
“First of all, I came to bring you your horse,” he told me.
“My horse?” I turned around to stare at the riderless mount again. “Winter!”
“When his cold-weather coat started to grow in—all those long white hairs coming through the dun—it took a month for me to figure out what you’d done.” Winter was still softly mottled with brown and dirty from traveling. I rubbed his arched neck.
“Thank you. But I can’t keep a horse at Sceaftesburh,” I said. “The king won’t allow ...” I glanced over my shoulder again—now all of the monks were staring at us. “Wil, in another moment they’ll be coming. You—you can’t stay here, talking like this. You’ve got to leave now!”
“I don’t intend to leave Winter with you at Sceaftesburh,” Wil said, gazing at me.
“You don’t?” One of the brothers had begun walking toward us.
“I brought your horse for you to ride,” Wil said, his eyes fixed on my face, “away from Sceaftesburh, west, and then north, with me.” Now I was staring back at him. “There is a little church,” Wil was saying quickly, “in the Welsh mountains, where almost no one goes except the priest who comes to pray with the half-pagan folk there. A few—only a few—of the people in the village know anything about the stranger who has come to live in the stone house just outside the churchyard. Mostly they don’t ask questions.” He drew a breath. “You could come with me, Ælfwyn. I have the house, some land, and there are a few men who work my fields. Some of our friends have come to live nearby, establishing their own holdings. Kenelm is one who has found a place among the Welsh—I see him sometimes—and Dunstan may be coming. It’s green and cool there beside the mountain chapel.” The words tumbled out of him now. “The fields follow the curve of the hills. There’s a stand of beech-wood just beyond my house—tall, graceful trees ...” His voice trailed off.
When Wil spoke again his voice was very soft, and his breath warmed my cheek as he leaned close to say, “I learned a poem once, written as if a scop were telling stories in his own voice. In one tale he sang about how two lovers, a noble man and woman, could think of nothing but each other, until love reft them of all sleep. I have thought of you, Ælfwyn of Mercia,” Wil whispered, “until I am reft of all sleep.”
I know that poem, I wanted to tell him. Mother taught me to hear the scop’s voice in those words written so perfectly on parchment, to think of a singer and an audience, not just letters in straight lines. Deor is the scop’s name, I opened my lips to say.
And instead I kissed him, tangling my muddy fingers in his dark hair.
“They’re coming, Lady,” Wil said when I let him go.
I was already hauling myself onto Winter’s back, tugging at his lead rope to turn his head westward, certain as we lifted into a gallop that Wil would be right behind me.
“SO,” THE LADY FINISHED, CRADLING HER CHILD IN THE FIRELIGHT, “as our visitor said, it is written in the Mercian Chronicle that the winter after Lady Æthelflæd’s death her d
aughter, Ælfwyn, was bereft of all authority among the Mercians, and taken by King Edward into Wessex. No other mention of Ælfwyn appears in Mercia’s Chronicle, nor in any West Saxon history.
“But listen: Once a traveler, unwelcome where she’d been born, found a resting place in the mountains where the Welsh kings rule. The man who brought her there was an honorable lord—he cared for his lands and his household, fought when he had to, and the two of them lived quietly in that green place.
“And any mountain wanderer who asks to pass the night with this lady and lord will find a pleasing welcome. The visitor’s mount, if he has one, is turned out to pasture with an old white warhorse who, the lady will mention, learned to pull a plow, but now grows lazier and rounder each day with his nose buried in the hillside grass. Inside the villa the guest will have a place near the fire, good food, a comfortable chair. The lord and lady will ask him where he has been and what he has seen. If he has a tale to tell, they will gladly hear it, and reward him with a gift or a coin for the telling.
“But if the traveler sits mute and weary, the lady herself may take up her harp. She knows the story of a captured princess, and a tale of separated lovers. She can sing the lament of a scop who lost the favor of his king. She will watch the listener consider these misfortunes alongside his own. And she will know what to say to ease the pain of whatever he has lost.
“That passed away. So may this.”
HISTORICAL NOTE
Sometimes history leaves you hanging. At the height of her powers Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, suddenly died. Did her only daughter, Ælfwyn, mourn her mother’s death? Did she expect to rule Mercia after Æthelflæd? The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles don’t tell us, nor do they mention Ælfwyn again after her uncle Edward, the West Saxon king, removes her from Mercia a few months later. Ælfwyn simply disappears.
What might have happened to her? When I looked at some of the roles open to Anglo-Saxon noblewomen, I was hard pressed to decide. Ælfwyn might have been a freothuwebbe—a peace weaver—strengthening an alliance through her marriage. Or she might have become a nun, fully committed to the church and her religious vows. Did she inherit land, and have to manage an estate and tenants? In light of her family’s famous dedication to reading and education, it seemed likely that Ælfwyn knew how to read and write—maybe she even translated and composed poetry like her grandfather Alfred.
Maybe ... but all the historical record can offer is a sigh of regret for this orphaned and dispossessed child of a famous leader. It made me think: Some Anglo-Saxon poet, some scop, ought to have composed tragic lines in memory of Ælfwyn. In Old English literature some of the most melancholy voices belong to wandering scops who lament the loss of their homes and loved ones. Ælfwyn’s case reminded me of older stories in poems like Deor, Beowulf, or Wulf and Eadwacer, where noble heirs fall prey to the ambitions of their relatives. A scop might have shaped Ælfwyn’s tale into verses, and then sung them in Mercian feasting halls.
The idea of letting Ælfwyn herself become such a scop interested me for several reasons. A few Old English poems seem like they might be spoken by a woman’s voice. And we know there were literate women in Anglo-Saxon society who valued poetry: Saint Hild of Whitby, the greatest British abbess, nurtured the talents of Cædmon, whose creation poem remains one of the most important compositions in English.
But most important for my story, Ælfwyn the scop and writer would be able to speak on her own behalf. An Anglo-Saxon carving may show you what one of their ships looked like, but it doesn’t communicate how it felt to sail on such a vessel. On the other hand, when the speaker of the Old English poem we call The Seafarer says, “My soul amid the sea-flood wanders wide over the whales’ land,” we catch a vivid glimpse of his experience of a sea voyage, just for a moment. What I craved for Ælfwyn was a voice like these ancient poetic ones I sometimes encounter in Old English writing. At last, I thought, she’d have a chance to tell us how it felt to be Lady Æthelflæd’s daughter, and then to lose her, and to carry on afterward. Who could do that better than a scop?
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