Far Traveler (17 page)

Like a cornered animal, I lifted my eyes and glanced around the circle of listening faces. The men were waiting, I saw. Simply waiting, not disappointed—not yet.
Mother used to listen to the scops who came to our hall like this: as if she simply hoped they would play well.
With determination I struck up my song anew. This time my words came with the music, and I offered Wil's men the hall, and the sparrow, and the storm.

There was no sound when my music died away, none of the good-natured teasing that had followed the story of my journey with Wil, or my riddles. Only silence.

I had done my best, but it looked as if my performance had failed to interest them. I pressed a hand against my strings as I started to get up, not wanting to draw a single sound from them, hoping only to creep away into the dark and hide myself somewhere.

“That's as much as any of us can see, isn't it?” Kenelm spoke up gruffly. “Only the moments behind us, and ahead of us, like that sparrow in the hall.”

I froze, seeing nods in the firelight and, unbelievably, one rough-faced man drawing the back of his huge hand across his eyes. I looked at Wil in amazement, but he didn't seem surprised. Somehow I had made the right choice.

Osgar still did not recognize me when Wil brought me back to his hall for the third time. “My scop will perform for your pleasure,” Wil told him, and a look of bored politeness remained on Osgar's face until he saw that I intended to sing
and
play. Then his expression brightened.

This time I sang with no hesitation, and afterward Osgar raised his voice with the others in my praise. He gave me five silver pennies, leaving me astonished at my sudden wealth. Then Wil was called forward, and Osgar smiled and bowed.

“Bring your scop again, any time you come,” he told my lord. And instead of returning to our bench, Wil was led by the steward to a seat at the high table.

I went back to my place at our smaller table with Wil's men. From there I could still see Wil talking with Osgar. They laughed together, and then, for just a moment, Wil's gaze found mine. His brief look told me he was happy with me and with what I had done, and with a sweet, distressing lurch, I found myself wishing he would never look away.

SOMETIMES I THINK THAT THOSE SUMMER DAYS BETWEEN MY first and second performances in Osgar's hall were like the sparrow's flight in the song I'd made. For a while, all pursuers and threats seemed distant. It was a space of existence, scarcely longer than a few wingbeats, spent in warmth and good company: out of the storm.

But Wil was still a man who'd lost his land, and whatever else I felt about him, I knew he was preparing to fight back. That night, following my performance, I was invited to attend a council meeting, and what I heard as I sat there quietly near the tent wall confirmed what I had guessed about Wil's former life in Eoforwic.

After Rægnald's invasion, Wil had gathered up a handful of surviving retainers faithful to him and ridden south on borrowed and stolen horses. Some of the Mercians who had intended to aid Eoforwic left their holdings in the care of their wives and servants and quietly came to join his camp, too. Kenelm was one of these. All of them, as far as I could tell, were bound together by their hatred of two people: Rægnald the Norse invader, and King Edward of Wessex.

There was rage in the voice of one former thane of Eoforwic who spoke up in the council circle that evening. “We sit here camped at Cirenceaster eating barley bread and drinking stale water while Rægnald prepares to take in all the harvest of our farmlands in a few weeks' time. He has our goods, our estates—the church has lost its gold and the minster library is at the Norsemen's mercy. And what does Edward do? What he has always done! He sits idle, strengthening his own fortresses, and leaves the English in the north to be Rægnald's slaves!”

“Why
do
we wait here?” This was Kenelm. “Friendship with Osgar will help our cause—you've told me that, Wil, but I still don't understand exactly how. Every week or so he feeds us better than we feed ourselves, but beyond that I hardly see—”

“We will talk about Osgar's usefulness tonight,” Wil interrupted. His stern tone reminded everyone in the circle that he was a large, strong man with the kind of battle experience that would serve him well in a brawl. Kenelm took a step back, although Wil had uttered no threat or warning, and I settled deeper into my shadowy spot to hear what our leader would say next.

“In Gleawceastershire loyalty to Edward runs shallower than in most other parts of his kingdom. The Lady of the Mercians and Aldorman Ethelred are buried there; people here remember them. I have even heard”—Wil looked grim—“that Edward tried to take Lady Æthelflæd's daughter on the very day of the lady's burial, and that the Mercians in Gleawceaster prevented it for Æthelflæd's sake.

“So in Gleawceaster we have friends who bring pledges of loyalty,” he continued, “who would fight against Rægnald, in spite of King Edward's neglect of Northumbria.”

“But we have tried this before, Wil, in Lunden,” called out another of the Northumbrian thanes, “and Edward spoiled all our Mercian alliances simply by taking the girl. ...”

It was chilling to hear my true name spoken among my new companions. Wil pounded his fist against his thigh. “Ælfwyn of Mercia was a friend to Eoforwic, and none of us was there to stop King Edward when he finally took her by force at Christmastide last!” He scowled. “We should all feel as guilty about that as do the Mercian thanes who visit my tent, and who sometimes even stay”—he looked pointedly at Kenelm—“hoping to find a way to make right the quarrels and distrust that ruptured our friendships after the lady's daughter was taken. We should have prevented Edward from taking her at all costs. We should have acknowledged to each other, and to Ælfwyn, that it was her blood—her mother's memory living in her—that kept us together as long as she was in Mercia.” Wil paused a moment, then went on in a quieter voice. “I have had word from Dunstan. No one can say where the girl is. Even the noblewoman who went into Wessex as her companion does not know what Edward has done with her now. She can't be found in Wintanceaster, we know. She may be dead.” Fiercely, he looked around the circle of faces. “Friends, what we begin at Cirenceaster, we will finish, unlike our attempt last year. And we will do it for the sake of Lady Ælfwyn, as much as for our own cause.”

It was clear that for Wil, Ælfwyn of Mercia had become a regretful memory around which to rally a movement against my uncle. Fascinated, I moved a little closer into the circle.

“Let me tell you what I learned tonight from another visitor in Osgar's hall—one who came especially to give me this message,” Wil continued. “The thing we have been waiting for—the possibility that brought us to Cirenceaster as summer began—has happened. King Edward's court will travel here in a fortnight.”

Suddenly the haven I'd made for myself in Wil's camp vanished. A murmur ran around the council circle. Wil kept speaking.

“Osgar, who is Edward's loyal thane, will host a great feast to welcome the king and those who come with him. And he will invite us, the landless northerners, hoping we will admire his friendship with King Edward and agree to join his house-band. Osgar will also be pleased to have our scop play for Edward that night, and when Widsith plays ...”

I didn't hear what he said next. Wil wanted me to play for Uncle Edward in Osgar's hall. If I hadn't been terrified, I would have laughed out loud.

“... the only way to make him act on behalf of English people in the north. We have friends who will gather outside the hall, and there will be enough of us inside to hold the king at Cirenceaster until he sends an army to Eoforwic to drive back the Norse!”

The talk swelled up again, and I crouched in my dark corner unnoticed. In Lunden we had verged on treason when we'd mustered Mercian arms and men without Edward's consent. But to hold the king by force in Cirenceaster ... it was a desperate act, and it could very likely mean the death of every person in this tent tonight.

“Widsith!” Wil had skirted the crowd to find me. “The song for the royal visit—I want it to be something no one has heard before. Our friends will be gathering while you entertain, you see? And every eye and ear in the hall must be fixed on you. Do you know such a poem?”

I looked at Wil, who fairly brimmed with all the force of his plans. Wil, whose opinion I'd come to cherish, and whose idea was terribly dangerous for reasons he could never guess. What in the name of all creation should I say?

“I ... I think maybe I can make one,” I heard myself answer.

THEY'D GIVEN ME FOURTEEN DAYS TO COMPOSE A POEM THAT would distract King Edward and his men while Wil's thanes surrounded them. I suppose I could have run away right then, but where? At the very least I would have both Edward's and Wilfrid's men looking for me, for Wil would not easily let me go now that I knew his plans. I would be alone again, and I knew now how vulnerable that made me. I would be clinging to a warhorse I could hardly ride as I galloped away ... no, I would stay at Cirenceaster, and try to discover what I had to do.

For a day Wil left me alone, but then he came asking about what I was planning to sing. “A poem this time, Widsith?” he said in a tone that was half-question, half-request.

Yes, I assured him, though my heart was racing as I said it. I had decided to use the story of a hero, I said to Wil: a tale I'd learned in Latin, although my poem would be in English. This news seemed to satisfy him, for he pressed me no further, and when I asked for parchment and something to write with, he sent Kenelm to the market in Cirenceaster to get them for me. When I asked for a quiet place, a table, and a rushlight for nighttime writing, I was given those as well. When I asked if there was any way I could see a Bible, Wil gave a snort of astonishment, but two days later I found a fine leather-bound Vulgate on my table. I worried that he had robbed a monastery.

Still, I needed that Bible, and I opened it to the Book of Judith. There were the lines I'd read with Grimbald and Mother that last day, before she rode to Tameworthig. My eyes raced over the words. Judith the valiant Israelite widow, by herself deceiving and beheading Holofernes the Assyrian general, and then rallying her people to drive off the entire invading army. Slowly I began to translate the lines from Latin into English—into English poetry.

My pen moved more and more confidently as I wrote. Judith's people had faced an enemy as fierce as the Danish jarls who came raiding into Mercia—as fierce as the Norsemen who had overrun Eoforwic. I could put such terrors into English words! And above all there was Judith, the hero. In my lifetime I had known only one woman as forceful as Judith. I was beginning to believe I could write about her, too.

Days passed. My back ached from bending over the book and my pages. My eyes burned from peering in sunlight and through smoky rushlight alike at the words I wrote. The fingers of my writing hand were stained with ink again for the first time since I'd left Lunden, and it felt right, somehow, to see it. Still, each time I sat down to my work, I could feel my stomach churning with the danger of what I had agreed to do, and with worry for my friends. Wil was making a desperate attempt of his own, but he had no idea what he had risked by including me in his plans.

I should leave, I told myself at least ten times each day as I wrote. And still I stayed in Wil's camp, working toward his foolish, dangerous goal. What was really keeping me there? Weakness, perhaps. I was used to the regular food, and going to my bed in the same place each night. At last I had duties here that occupied all my time. These things made the dangers seem more distant than they really were, I think. But there was something more: Wil's company, the sight of his cross face in the morning when he came from an argument with his advisers to ask me how the writing progressed, the approving hand he laid on my shoulder when I sang well in the evening. It was harder and harder for me to think of not seeing and feeling and hearing him each day. Stupidly, necessarily, I stayed in his camp.

It didn't help at all when King Edward came to Cirenceaster three days earlier than anyone expected. I had run out of ink on the afternoon it happened, and Wil had sent me to the market by myself. “To keep you from shriveling into a blind and crooked old man—you've been bent over that poem too long,” he told me. After I bought my ink, I accidentally tipped the little clay pot the merchant had handed to me and dribbled a stream of the acidic liquid across my wrist. Before I was clear of the
tun
walls I'd had to stop, put down the pot, and scrub at the stinging stain with my sleeve. My fingers were tough, used to the bite of ink. The skin farther up my arm was not.