Far Traveler (16 page)

We'll make Osgar notice you ...
What had Wil meant by that? I thought about it all day, and by the time I sat on Winter's back with the band that had gathered to go into the
tun,
I was still turning the question over in my mind. I sighed. Whatever his reasons, I wouldn't say no to Wil. The riders began to move out, and with a flap of my arms and legs, I urged Winter along beside them.

Wil was right. The steward spotted me as our party passed into the hall—I saw his eyes flick across my face and clothing when I walked by. But he said nothing, and as far as I could tell, Osgar remained ignorant that a certain mediocre young scop had returned for another meal.

I ate well that night, better than my first night in Osgar's hall, for now I was elbow to elbow with invited guests, and the servants made sure there was always food in front of us. I speared what meat I could reach onto the end of my mother's little dagger, ate the good wheat bread eagerly after days of modest barley-flour cakes in Wil's camp, and tried not to let the others see that I drank only a little ale.

In spite of my care, I must have drunk more than I could hold. Kenelm sat on one side of me, and I found myself smiling at his laughter even though I could not hear the jokes that prompted it. A little farther down the table I could make out Wil. He was speaking intently with the man on his left, a man whom I did not recognize as anyone from Wil's usual group of followers.

Wil saw me watching him, and tipped his head toward the steward. He was leading a tall, plainly dressed man who walked toward the very stool they had offered to me on my first night here.

The scop bowed to Osgar and the other nobles, then turned and bowed formally to the rest of us. I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly feeling alone and a little cold, even though it was a warm night and I sat in a bright and crowded room.

The man took out a little bundle wrapped in oiled cloth and as he opened it, a murmur of appreciation rose from the nobles at the high table and spread around the crowd. He had brought a harp. From where I sat it appeared to be a ring of seasoned wood, darkened by many evenings spent in the smoke of great halls. It was much older than the harps I used to practice playing in Lunden, and much more beautiful. A delicate tracery of bright inlaid metal (perhaps it was even gold) glittered on either side of the strings, which were wound on wooden pegs above and below the central opening. The outer rim of the harp was about as wide across as the length of the scop's forearm, but it must not have been especially heavy, for he picked it up with one hand and braced it in the crook of his arm. With the other hand he touched the strings, and at the same time, he began to sing.

At first the plaintive tone of the scop's song was all I could understand. The words he sang—of danger, of isolation—didn't seem to make a story. They only stirred up a sense of dread inside me.

But then some of his words began to make pictures in my head. I saw a person alone, beset by enemies, yearning for a distant lover. And suddenly, I knew the song:

These were verses I had read in the months after I'd lost Mother, verses that seemed to echo the grief I carried with me everywhere during those days. The scop sang of rain.
Rain on the day they took her body away, rain and tears.
I hung my head as tears streamed down my face. By then the scop was finishing: “ ‘A person easily severs what's not united: our song together.' ”

The verse lingered in the hall, along with the last note of the harpstrings. Then there was silence, except for the snarling of two dogs fighting over a pork knuckle beneath one of the tables. Someone growled out a warning to the dogs, and the bone was kicked away. By now the crowd was talking again. Furtively, I wiped my cheeks—no one must see these tears, least of all Wil.

Osgar was pleased with the night's performance. He called the scop over and gave him something. I saw a bright gleam, something silver and heavy. It was a rich armband, perhaps, or even a necklace—much more than Osgar had offered me. I leaned my head into my hands.

“He's done this more times than you, but that was no better than the riddles you gave us last night, Widsith.” A hand pounded my back and I had to grip the table to keep my balance. It was Kenelm speaking more loudly than he ought. The ale had gone to his head just as it had to mine.

“Our host liked it well enough,” I responded quietly. I missed Mother, I regretted my failure, and I was also starting to feel quite sick. Maybe the cooler air outside the hall would calm my stomach. I swung my legs over the bench and stood up, but before I took a step toward the door someone touched my shoulder.

“Slowly now, Widsith. A guest shouldn't go storming out.” Wil had come up behind me and now he drew me back down to sit beside him on the bench I had just left.

“It's the drink. I need some air. Please.” I pulled away from him. “I need to go.”

Wil caught me again gently, as easily as he might confine an unruly puppy. “Can you slip out softly, boy, and wait for us outside while I give our thanks to Osgar and apologize for not staying to hear the scop's second song?”

“You're leaving now, too?”

“I've heard news tonight that I need to discuss privately, and as soon as possible.” Wil looked over his shoulder at Osgar. “Our host likes the new singer. He won't mind that we have to go early.”

“That's a scop like a hundred others!” Kenelm leaned in toward us, nearly shouting. “We've heard you trying to teach our Widsith how best to tell a story, but see, all he needs is a harp, and Osgar will take him for a hearth-companion.”

Wil frowned. “Go on now,” he told me, “but wait for us outside, mind.” He looked at Kenelm, who was holding up his drinking bowl, calling out to a servant carrying a skin of ale. “Take him with you,” he added, and stumped off toward the high table.

 

The next day I sat in a corner of Wil's camp beside the pots and clay vessels they used to prepare food. I still didn't know what news had sent Wil galloping back to the red tent where he had shut himself up for the rest of the night with his closest advisers, and of course no one told me. After seeing last night's scop, I felt like a failure. The scop had a rare gift. My mother had once spoken to me of the great poet Cædmon's gift. I shut my eyes.

I couldn't remember what she'd said after that.

I leaned my head against a tall clay jar, hugging my knees to my chest.

One easily severs what was never united ...
I wanted to whimper, to wail
... our song together.

“Can you play?”

“Uh?” I scrambled to my feet, brushed away my tears.
Mother. Cædmon. That scop from last night and his cursed song!
Wil was standing in front of me. He was holding a harp—a smaller instrument than the one Osgar's scop had used, and made of bright new maple.

“Are you well, boy?”

I nodded. “Just the ale from last night,” I mumbled, rubbing my head.

“I've had three of my men looking for you since the midday bell,” he said crossly, “and you've been here all the time?” I nodded. Wil threw up his hand. “Well, can you play? That's what I'm asking.”

Warily, I nodded again.

“Good. When you go into Osgar's hall again, you'll play this, and I'm sure you'll please him as much as the man we heard last night.”

“But—but why?” was all I could think to say in my confusion. Wil planted his hands on his hips.

“If you succeed, we can talk about why. When can you be ready? A week?”

I only stared at him.

“Widsith, can you not hear me? How long will it take you to prepare? A week?” I looked away from him, trying to think.
Cædmon found his gift when he tried. That's what Mother told me.

“A week, Widsith?”

“Two,” I finally agreed, with a heavy heart.

 

I had to find a story, and although I ransacked the stolen book of poetry, nothing seemed right. In desperation, I lay on my back in the browning, end-of-summer grass, and searched my memory for something—the right thing—for this task Wil had assigned.

There was one possibility: a story I'd read over and over, translated from Latin to English and back again, and discussed with Gytha ad nauseum. On my own, there in the tall grass not far from where the horses grazed, I tried out its familiar words. I repeated them until each one came to my tongue almost before I thought about it. As I recited, I considered the things Wil had been saying to me about how a scop ought to perform. I remembered how, in the dusk with my company of farmers, I had let myself sing and speak easily. Maybe these words would draw a noble audience along in that same way.

A few nights before our next meal in Osgar's hall, Wil called me to him and asked me to recite what I had prepared. I stood in front of him, hands at my sides, trying not to show my nerves.

“This present life,” I began shakily, “is such a thing as when you sit a-feasting with aldormen and thanes in wintertime, the fire burning in the hall, the rains and storms and snows outside. Then in comes a little sparrow, and flies swiftly through the hall. He comes in through one door, and departs through another on the other side. During the time he's inside, he's not touched by the winter's storm. But that's just the blink of an eye, the smallest space of time, and then the bird is out in the storm again. That's as much of life as anyone can see—what a sparrow sees when he's in the hall, briefly out of the storm, but just about to fly back into it.”

That was all—every word of the story I'd been preparing for nearly a fortnight. Anxiously I waited, standing there. How would Wil react? Probably the words I'd picked wouldn't be to his taste, I suddenly realized. And it wasn't even a real poem, just a part of a story I knew. Why hadn't I chosen a longer passage of well-known verse instead? Even one of those childhood songs I used to sing for my company of simple freemen might have been better....

“That notion of a sparrow's flight is found in Bede's writing,” was what Wil said, “among the words that helped convert the first Christian king north of the Humber.”

And he was right. I'd taken the story from a lesson about the conversion of the pagan king Eadwine. But I didn't have much time to feel surprised that he knew the text.

“Can you do it with the harp?” he was already asking. I had devised a plaintive little tune during my days of practice, and so I sang the words, with Wil listening intently.

“The first time was better,” Wil pronounced when I was through, “but Osgar likes a singer. You'll use the harp.”

The next evening Wil insisted I play my harp and sing the song in our camp for the first time.

“Our scop has something new for you tonight,” Wil announced, and conversation quieted. Taking a deep breath, I plucked my first note—but then the beginning words of my song stuck in my throat and would not come. My fingers kept moving, and I played the tune through with my heart pounding hard enough to shake my whole body, and the taste of fear and failure rose bitterly in my mouth.