“Three already, Flæd!” The girl jumped at the voice. Caught up in her thoughts, she had hardly noticed as she and Red approached the riverbank where Edward sprawled in the afternoon sun. Now the boy held up a stick with three fish strung along it through the gills, one almost the length of his forearm. “And look.” He pointed to the tangle of bushes on the opposite bank. Flæd saw a flash of green and blue plummet from a branch overhanging the water. Only a ripple, quickly swallowed by the eddying water, showed where the strike had happened, and back on its branch a bright, crested bird raised its beak to swallow the small fish it had captured.
“Kingfisher.” Flæd grinned at her brother. It was a sign of luck to see the little bird. As she seated herself beside Edward, she stole a glance at her warder, who had found his own seat beside a knob of rock upon which he had balanced her copy of the Chronicle. It would take all the luck she could muster, Flæd knew, to make another escape from Red.
9
Mercia Bested
“YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT EARTHWORK DEFENSES.” Father John tapped the open page of Flæd’s Chronicle thoughtfully. “I am not a fighting man, but I have spoken to some who went against the Danes at Readingas. I can tell you what I learned.” Flæd folded her hands and tried to adopt a look of simple curiosity. She had come to her lessons with this question prepared, but her tutor must not guess that she had a special reason for asking. The young priest went on.
“You understand that ‘earthwork’ means a protection built by digging up the ground and piling it high on one side of the pit left by the digging.” Flæd nodded. “The defenders then have a wall overlooking a trench. They can watch their enemies approaching—on a plain such as the one at Readingas, the Danes could see the West Saxon armies coming long before they were close enough to begin combat. When the attackers reach the earthwork, they are slowed by the trench and often halted by the wall. The defenders then have another advantage of height: Their blows and missiles come down upon the enemy, while the attackers must climb and strike upward. Even a smaller force can win a battle with the help of an earthwork defense.”
“The earthwork at Readingas, it was on a plain, by a river?”
“On a plain between two rivers,” Father John corrected her. “The thanes I asked about the battle told me that on some mornings the Danes remained entirely concealed as your father and his brother led their army into the place of battle. An empty rise was all the West Saxons saw, until the Danes chose to show themselves.” Just as I imagined, thought Flæd, feeling a further spark of excitement which she was careful not to reveal to her tutor.
“Of course, there are other earthworks in your father’s holdings, and in the Danelaw,” the priest continued. “Some dykes the men of Rome built when they conquered these lands long before any Saxons made their home here. Many hundreds of years ago a great king of the Mercians also made a vast earthwork between his own kingdom and the territory of the Welsh princes to the west. When he can, your father tries to use these ancient defenses to strengthen his own borders. And he has a new interest, I understand, in another sort of earthwork….”
“Another sort?” Flæd repeated, cocking her head.
“Yes,” John answered, drawing a wax tablet and stylus toward him. “A kind of fortress designed—I think this is the best way to describe it—like an earthwork wall, only built in a ring.” As the priest spoke, he began to sketch. “The earth from the encircling trench would be piled in the center, here, until the workers had made a hill, a hill which appeared flat at the summit. In fact that even-looking crest was the wall around the rim of a fortress, within which were shelters for people and animals. In times of war folk who farmed the land around such a fortress could bring their families and their beasts into the high fortress for safety. I believe your father has found and occupied several of these places, and is strengthening them for his own army’s defense.”
Flæd looked at the flat-topped hill her tutor had drawn in the wax. My face will betray me now, she thought with a flush. But how could she ignore the way Father John’s picture suggested the natural shape of a hill which figured in her own plans?
Late that afternoon Flæd stood again at the edge of the meadow. She took a few steps out into the open space and raised two fingers to her mouth, making the loud whistle she had seen some townsfolk use to call their animals. For a moment she waited anxiously, looking out into the pasture. Then she saw the little herd of horses coming at a trot. Flæd was ready for them this time, carrying a leather pouch filled with oatcakes she had taken from the kitchen that morning, and a handful of wrinkled brown apples from a basket she had found among the burgh’s winter stores. She fed the horses bits of oatcake and apple, talking to them and stroking them, until her pouch was nearly empty. The horses began to drift away into the pasture one by one, until only two were left standing beside her, eyeing the pouch as she dangled it by the strings.
“So you are the greediest pair,” she scolded, scratching the nearest one beneath his forelock as he nudged at the pouch. In fact they were a matched pair, Flæd could see, dappled grey with lighter grey manes and tails. Their hooves were pale, veined with tiny black streaks, and both had a white stocking on the off hind foot. Flæd remembered these two horses now, twin foals born three winters ago and put to harness just last autumn. She felt sure that both had also felt the weight of a rider during their training.
“Oat,” she named the one who snorted at the last pippin she offered him, but nibbled the cake delicately from her hand. “Apple,” she called his brother, who happily took the fruit and stood swishing his tail as she hung the empty pouch around her neck. These horses were taller and heavier than the pony she and Edward used to share, but Flæd twisted her fingers in Oat’s mane, kilted up her tunic, and took the two running steps she had learned to use when mounting from the ground. As she threw her leg across the horse’s broad back, Oat heaved his sides in a sigh and looked around at her. He lowered his head to the grass, as if protesting the end of his long winter of liberty. But Flæd clucked to bring his head up and pressed her knees together, sending him forward.
She rode Oat along the wall, with Apple tagging curiously beside them. They turned back in the direction from which they had started, and Flæd saw that Red had stepped forward. She nodded to him as she passed with the two horses, and he folded his arms across his chest. Flæd rode Oat in a circle, then made a looping figure, changing his direction by shifting her weight to one side, then the other. Finally she brought him to a stand by settling back and softly giving the command a driver uses to halt a team. She patted the horse’s neck and glanced sideways at the Mercian. He ran his fingers through his short brush of hair with an unreadable expression on his hard face. Then he went back to his seat beside the wall.
The next afternoon Flæd called the herd again, but this time fed only the matched pair. She rode Apple, and found his trot a little harder, and his canter a little longer than Oat’s. But both horses had the same willing response to her weight upon their backs and her quiet words, even without saddle or bridle. “You have sold your freedom,” she lectured them after the ride, “for a bit of sweet food and a scratch behind the ear.” With a slap on Apple’s rump, she sent them off.
Flæd came to the pasture every day after her lessons, and every day she rode a little further into the meadow. She found she could ride either horse in a variety of positions: crouched on the withers, stretched out along its back, or even with her arms clasped awkwardly around the horse’s neck, as long as she continued to urge it forward. The horses took no notice of any amount of mane-pulling, she had discovered as she wrapped her hands in the long hair to steady herself at a gallop, or to ease herself to the ground when their ride had finished. Oat and Apple were tall, and she would have to hang briefly, suspending almost her whole weight from the mane as she brought her right leg over the horse’s back and then dropped two-footed onto the ground.
She hesitated for a moment as she was dismounting one afternoon, h
anging from the mane and keeping one toe hooked across Oat’s back. A person on the other side of the horse, where Red is sitting, could hardly see me, she thought to herself, and slipped a little lower, thinking about this odd position. Impatient, Oat took a few steps forward, and Flæd swung wildly for a second, bringing her other foot up to hook the back of her left big toe around the bones at the base of Oat’s neck. Now I am truly a foolish sight, Flæd thought in some confusion as she hung almost upside down on one side of her horse. Why didn’t I dismount? Then she had a thought which made her lower her feet and drop to the ground very quickly in the hope that Red had not seen her hanging there, and not because she feared his opinion of her foolishness. If her idea worked, she had found a way around the final obstacle to her scheme.
The next day Flæd rode Oat out far enough that she could barely see her warder in his place against the yellow wall. She walked her horse with his near side—the side on which he had been trained to let a rider mount—toward the river, and his other side toward the burgh. Softly she repeated the command to go forward and slipped halfway down on the left side, as if dismounting. Oat balked, but at her insistence kept walking, and Flæd brought her other foot up to his withers as she had the day before. This was awkward, but not impossible, not even very difficult, she thought as she swung along, her braid brushing the grass beside Oat’s feet. She clucked to him, urging him into a trot, but at the first jounces of the new gait she felt her fingers slipping in the mane, and with a grunt she fell, rolling to keep away from the horse’s hooves. She lay there looking up at the sky, breathing hard and feeling slightly bruised as Oat came back and lowered his nose to the familiar pouch on its string around her neck. He nibbled at the leather. Apple, always close behind, joined them, staring at the prostrate human. At least Red didn’t see, Flæd thought.
Through the remainder of the week Flæd experimented with the strange new riding stance, and found that if she wove a knot into the horse’s mane she could slip to the side during a canter or a gallop, and even pull herself back up again without the difficulty the jarring trot gave her. Far from the wall she practiced, first tucking the end of her braid between her teeth and urging her mount into a gallop, and then slipping down to cling to the horse’s flank. Afterward she would trot with her dappled pair back to the burgh wall, where Red was always waiting. Dismounting with a last word of praise for the greys, she would go back through the narrowing gap in the wall, Red close behind her, and pass through the streets on her way to evensong and supper.
On one such night she met Asser and her father. “Æthelflæd,” the king smiled as he caught sight of her, “you have been in the wind on the meadow, I see. Your head is as shaggy as the horses’ winter coats.” Flæd tucked the strands of hair behind her ears.
“Their coats are almost smooth now,” she told him.
“I see,” Alfred said, turning her around, “that you have decided to wear their winter dress for them.” Her clothes were covered with long grey hairs. “We will not send these clothes with you to Mercia,” Alfred said thoughtfully. “Ethelred will hardly expect his bride to arrive in a hair shirt.”
Flæd could not reply—the joke reminded her painfully of a journey she refused to contemplate. She brushed at her tunic, and felt her father’s light hand upon her head for a moment before he and Asser continued on.
“My lady,” Asser said as he passed, “how go your lessons ? Have you learned some new skill since last we spoke?”
Flæd considered several answers she could give to such a question. “My writing on parchment is much improved,” she said with a solemn nod.
That night Flæd stared at the moon through the open window above her bed. She had believed that she had surmounted every challenge in the way of her plan, but tonight she had to face one last quandary. A part of her felt sure that carrying out her scheme would betray her unspoken agreement with Red, as well as her understanding with her father. They trust me, she thought. Then she remembered Red’s compromise at the marsh: He had let her go in again, without knowing exactly where she would hide herself. Is my plan for tomorrow so different, Flæd wondered. She turned the dilemma over in her mind until the half-circle of moon climbed higher into the sky, and she slept.
Flæd stood at the edge of the meadow and raised ink-stained fingers to her mouth to whistle for the horses. My writing has improved, she thought, inspecting the black marks on her skin. Now I blot my hands more than the page. Apple and Oat trotted up alone—the other horses stayed nose-deep in the sweet grass.
Flæd mounted Apple and cantered out into the meadow with Oat close behind them. She passed the limit of her previous rides and rode further still. Looking back, she thought she could see Red leave the wall and come toward her at a quick walk. She would have to act now, or not at all.
Flæd urged her mount into a gallop, riding crouched at the withers. Her guardian would not be able to reach her on foot, she confirmed with another backward glance at his struggling shape. At her bidding, the two grey horses veered around and headed toward the little knoll where the herd had gathered as usual. With her mount’s other side toward her warder, Flæd slipped down on the near side as she had practiced, urging Apple forward until he had crested the hill, which slowed him to a canter. All at once Flæd released her hold on Apple’s mane and dropped into the dusty hollow. She rolled away, speaking one final command, which sent the pair a little further on before they slowed to a trot and turned back to join the grazing herd. Flæd crept to the edge of the little bowl and lay still while her breathing quieted, listening.
She heard Red’s footsteps when he reached the foot of the hillock, heard him talking softly to the horses as he moved among them and found the greys, but not their rider. Chin pressed to the ground, she peered through the short grass and saw Red stroking Apple’s wet neck, and swinging up onto his back. Her warder looked right and left, searching the flat land for some sign of his charge. Then he turned the horse toward a cluster of trees beside the river, the only cover nearby. As he rounded the foot of the rise Flæd could hear him speaking under his breath, “Stupid slave. Still a stupid slave.”
Apple’s hoofbeats faded, but Flæd kept watching until Red, Apple, and Oat, who tagged along after them, had disappeared among the branches of the distant trees. When she was sure they had gone for good, Flæd rolled onto her back to look at the soft clouds that had covered the afternoon sky. She considered what she had done. She had strained the limits of duty. She had used her family’s horses and her father’s battlefield history to deceive a man devoted to her protection. Flæd knew these things, but at this moment, alone and unwatched by any other person, she closed her eyes and felt satisfied.
What were the strange words Red had said? Still a stupid slave. Flæd had not understood this, and now she decided that she didn’t care. She listened to the horses as they moved about the little hill, hearing their soft breath and the swish of their tails. One trotted past the edge of the hollow where she lay, and she opened her eyes as the hoofbeats thumped up. The colt was rolling its eye so that the white showed. Silly thing, she thought, arching her neck to see it go. Several other horses nearby tossed their heads and followed.
“Don’t be nervous,” she murmured. “You know me, remember? This is our safe place, our own earthwork.”
She never saw the heavy sack as it descended over her head. She heard her own strangled screams as the cloth was pressed firmly against her face. She struggled weakly against the deft hands that bound her arms, her ankles. Someone was wadding the sacking into her mouth and pushing up her lower jaw so that almost no sound could escape her heavily muffled mouth. Soon it was all she could do to keep from suffocating. A thong bound the gag in place. Her shoulders were lifted, then her ankles. At least two of them, she registered through her panic, taking me away…where is Red?
10
Treachery
THE WOOLEN SACK RASPED AGAINST FLÆD’S CHEEK AS IT WAS jerked away from her face. Cool forest air poured over her a
s she lay on the ground. She flailed onto her side and tried to scream again, but a powerful hand clamped across her mouth. Her chin was wrenched up and the point of a blade touched the hollow of her throat.
“No. Do not call.” The words were spoken in strangely accented English. Flæd grew still, and after a moment the hand was removed, although the dagger remained. The jolting run from the pasture had seemed to take forever as her captors roughly bundled her along with them, but now she guessed that not much time had passed—the sun coming through the trees still stood high in the afternoon sky. She lay stretched out on the ground in a thicket. The man who had spoken was no longer looking down at her, although his dagger never left her neck. His head was cocked, as if he listened for some sound. Two other men crouched nearby, looking out toward the meadow and speaking quietly to each other in a language Flæd didn’t understand. They were strongly built, and Flæd could see that they were dressed in a light, leather armor like the kind her warder wore. These men were prepared for combat.
One of them addressed the person holding the knife, who then turned his dark, bearded face back to Flæd.
“You walk. Hide us from the thane.” He gestured to include all four of them, then stared at Flæd until she nodded. These men have been watching me, she realized with a fresh burst of horror. They have learned that I know these woods better than they do, and better than the “thane”—my warder. Holding his dagger between his teeth, her captor began loosening the bonds at her ankles until she could take hobbled steps. The three men took up positions around her, and with the knife against her spine, they set off.
Flæd stumbled forward, her mind teeming with ways these men might intend to hurt her. My fault, my fault, a voice inside of her repeated. My fault for leaving Red. How will he find me? How will anyone find me? Tears of shame and terror blinded her as she tramped on, goaded by a rough hand on her elbow, the prick of the knife on her back. Gradually her jolting steps focused her attention back on the path. She saw a familiar group of rocks, then a tree she knew. A memory rose up among her crippled thoughts. Red walking back with her from the marsh. “Would your father leave your sisters, your youngest brother, or Edward in danger?…A king must take care of his people as well as your father takes care of his children, the way we all try to protect our families.” Red would fight to protect anyone entrusted to his care. He will not stop looking, Flæd suddenly felt sure. Trying to ignore the scrape of the blade against her clothes, she began to make a plan.
The Edge on the Sword Page 7
