Far Traveler (22 page)

“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 FIRE
LIGHT, “as our visitor said, it is written in the Mercian Chronicle that the winter after Lady Æthelflæd's death her daughter, 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.

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?