The Edge on the Sword (14 page)

With great delicacy the letter was returned—the Mercians would simply think the journey had loosened the seal. Ethelred would come as requested. For now, thought the figure, fingering the knife with regret, this messenger must be allowed to live.

“D
EFEND
YOUR
OPEN
SIDE
,” R
ED
BARKED
. H
E
REWARDED
Flæd’s distraction with a slap from the flat of the dull practice blade. Flæd set her jaw and came at her warder again. With surprise, she felt him return her attack with a vicious sweep which knocked her off her feet. She grasped the hand he offered and hauled herself up, breathing hard.

“You will never be as strong as a larger man you meet in battle,” Red said to her as she rubbed the stinging fingers which had held her sword. “That poem you read in the marsh, what does it say about the woman-monster?”

Flæd tried to recall the lines. “The poem says, ‘Her strength—the battle-strength of a woman—was less than a male, whose sword can shear through a helmet.’ “

“But she was still terrible,” Red said.

Flæd nodded. “She was cunning. She attacked when they did not expect her, and later she fought in her own lair, a place she knew well.”

Red leaned on his sword. “I’m stronger. You’re smaller, quicker, and lighter. Now, find a way to beat me with a sword.”

They readied their weapons. Three times more Flæd found herself thrown on her back by Red’s hard, direct strokes. The fourth time, Flæd dropped to the ground just before their blades met, rolling under Red’s slash and scrambling to her feet behind him as he stumbled to find his balance. Before he could turn she had touched the blunted edge of her blade against his neck. “Good,” was all her warder said. And then, “Again.”

Flæd’s bones still ached from the lesson when she was prodded awake by a serving woman the next morning. She listened groggily to the instructions her mother had sent. She was not expected at the scriptorium today, or in the practice field. It was time to choose the gifts she would take to Ethelred. More preparations for going away, Flæd thought, burying
her face in her pillow. But after breakfast she dutifully found her mother in the buildings where the burgh’s dry stores were kept.

Ealhswith had come before her, and was kneeling in the center of a room filled with draped and folded cloth. Before her stood little Ælf, her hair a bright tangle around her shoulders, wearing a nearly finished gown of dark blue.

“Flæd!” her little sister cried, and started to come toward her.

“No, no, stay here, little one.” Her mother stopped the girl with a hand on her wrist. “We must shorten this, or you will catch your new shoe on the hem and fall.” Ealhswith bent to her measurements again, but Ælf twisted her head around to speak to Flæd over her shoulder.

“I do have new shoes, Flæd.” She thrust one out from under the skirt and held her foot out for her older sister to admire its oiled leather slipper.

“Ælf,” the queen chastened, “two feet on the ground. We’re almost finished.”

Flæd knelt down in front of her youngest sister and listened to a flurry of excited words as the little girl told her about the new clothing they had chosen that morning. A fresh shift and tunic for play, this blue dress for feasting days, stiff new shoes which did not crimp the toes like the old ones…. Flæd let Ælf’s high, quick voice patter on, realizing how little time she had spent with her sisters since the spring. At meals she was always in a hurry, rushing to her lessons, or to practice with Red. When she returned to their quarters her sisters were often already sleeping. Even if Dove and Ælf were awake, Flæd usually fell into her own bed too tired for anything more than cuddling the little ones beside her until the serving women took them back to their pallets. She had begun to lose her sisters even before she left the burgh, Flæd thought mournfully.

“Flæd!” Dove came running from behind a stack of cloth. “Look at
my
new gown.” Flæd inspected the thin figure, who plucked up the sides of her dress and held them out for her older sister’s admiration. The rich cloth of the gown was dark brown, trimmed at the neck and sleeves with a braided cord of even darker wool. It was very much like the clothing of the nuns Dove admired, Flæd could not help noticing.

“This new gown covers those tiny bird ankles of yours at last,” Flæd said, tweaking Dove’s braid before her sister disappeared again among the stacks of cloth. Ealhswith shook her head.

“You’d think her a novice in training among the abbey’s sisters already,” the queen said, “were she a few winters older.” Ealhswith bent to the hem of the blue gown one last time, and then quickly stripped the dress over the head of her smaller daughter, who squeaked with surprise and then giggled to find herself standing clad only in new shoes and a white
shift. “Put on your other tunic and go play with Dove,” her mother told her. “Flæd and I must look at some cloth.”

The queen turned to Flæd. “Come see what has just arrived.” She led Flæd to a place near the door of the room, where morning sunlight streamed in under the lintel. The light formed a patch of glowing red on the table where a fine cloth had been unfolded for inspection. “This is wool spun, dyed, and woven by a woman I knew in Wintanceaster,” Ealhswith told her, “when we lived there just after your birth. See, it is very fine. And what color!”

“A royal color,” Flæd agreed, fingering the dense, even threads. “It will make fine robes for the king.”

“She sent this to us,” Ealhswith replied, “after the announcement of your betrothal. It is a royal gift, but not for Alfred.”

Flæd withdrew her hand from the beautiful stuff. “It would look as wrong on me as—as scarlet feathers on a sparrow,” she said darkly.

“Perhaps you could wear it,” Ealhswith said, drawing her daughter close, “for the woman who made the cloth. She held you when you were born, and sends this in tribute to the babe who has grown up worthy of such a gift.” Ealhswith turned to face Flæd. “You might wear this red in Mercia,” she said, “for the sake of a good West Saxon weaver, and in memory of the royal West Saxon family she seeks to honor.”

Flæd looked at the bright cloth a moment longer, then nodded. With her mother she also chose a dark green wool, and added a cloth the color of ripe wheat for other gowns. These they gave to the woman who would make the garments in the coming weeks. Ælf and Dove had spread a length of coarse linen between the tables, and Ealhswith and Flæd left them whispering in their tent, attended by a servant who began measuring out Flæd’s new cloth nearby.

From the royal family’s stores Flæd and her mother picked out carved wooden bowls, leather bottles of wine, a polished horn for drinking, and a bright golden cup not as large as the silver one Alfred passed to his guests, but intricately decorated with interlacing branches which seemed to grow from the vessel’s slender stem. They chose a heavy ring with a smoothly polished green gem for the hand of Ethelred of Mercia. Three chests filled with silver coins bearing Alfred’s image would come from the treasury, as well. Last of all, they stood in the blacksmith’s rooms and examined the linked rings of the armor that hung there, the clean blades of the swords the craftsman had forged. “How tall is the Mercian aldorman?” the smith asked, but they didn’t know. They would have to come back another time, the queen said.

It was late in the day when they had finished, and Flæd walked with her mother to the door of the queen’s quarters. Ealhswith stopped outside and looked at Flæd, smoothing the hair back from her daughter’s face.

“Still sad, little bird?” she asked. A lump rose in Flæd’s throat as her mother used the name she had called her when she was a very small girl.

“Ethelred…I don’t even know—” She could not finish, but the queen seemed to understand.

“It is hard, the waiting,” her mother said.

“Did you want to come here, to be a queen?” Flæd asked her mother in a rush.

“I hoped that I would find a peaceful place, a quiet life in Wessex,” Ealhswith replied evenly. “I hoped that Alfred would help bring peace to Mercia through our marriage. The Danes had made my home dangerous.”

“Then you were not like me,” Flæd choked. “I already had a quiet life, with my books, our weaving, before the betrothal—before those men tried to take me.”

“Your father has worked to keep your home peaceful, but he has been at war every year of his kingship until this last one.” Her mother shook her head. “Alfred loves contemplation and the solace of his books, just as you do. Do you remember what I told you at the end of the winter, just before your betrothal was announced?”

“‘We do not know what we may become,”’ Flæd murmured.

“Your father, who would rather have been a scholar, became a warrior, and a good king.” The queen took Flæd’s face between her hands. “What will you become, I wonder, now that you must give up your quiet life?” For a long moment Ealhswith stood gazing into her daughter’s troubled eyes. “You chose well today, Æthelflæd,” she said at last. “If I must part with my eldest daughter, it makes me glad to send her back to the place of my own birth with treasure. May you find happiness there,” the queen finished, kissing Flæd on the cheek and withdrawing into her rooms.

Happiness, thought Flæd, wanting to take comfort in her mother’s words. A man who is a stranger, and a place I have never seen—if I can’t imagine these, how can I imagine happiness?

But still she tried. He could even come today, she brooded the next morning. A wagon trip to Lunden might take two or three days, but for a rider on horseback, the journey might be as short as one. Knowing this, Flæd found herself peering out toward the river, looking out over the buttercups scattered amid the long grass like golden coins. A messenger will arrive to tell us Ethelred of Mercia is coming. What will Ethelred look like? What will he say? How will he look at me?

When the messenger comes, she decided, I will wash the dust out of my hair, and put on a new gown so that I am ready to greet Ethelred when he follows. I will try to remember what Father John has told me about Mercia.

We gave Cenwulf a good horse. A messenger will soon be on his way….

Then Ethelred will come.

A
T
TWILIGHT
THE
M
ERCIAN
MESSENGER
ARRIVED
. S
ITTING
ON
her bed Flæd heard the far-off sentries loudly hail a rider, and with a hammering in her chest she listened until the sound of tired hoofbeats passed not far from her door. A day and a half for the messenger to ride to Lunden—Flæd quickly tallied the time—a day of discussion between Ethelred and his thanes, and then the messenger’s swift journey back to say that Ethelred is coming. Her heart was still racing when Red spoke softly into the room.

“Lady, we should cross to your father’s council chamber.” Flæd glanced at her sleeping sisters, and then inspected her own plain clothing. She had been patching a hole in her leather shoe by rushlight, at a place where her toe had worn through the slipper in the rough footing of the meadow. Her shabbiness wouldn’t matter for this meeting with the rider from Mercia—she and Red would stand off in a corner to hear what news the man had brought of Ethelred’s plans. Then they would come back here for sleep, that was all. Quietly she pulled on the half-mended shoe and its mate, and put out her lamp.

Light spilled out onto the street from the entryway to Alfred’s council chamber, and the sentry by the door motioned Flæd and her warder inside. The king was speaking with the messenger, and he broke off to greet Flæd as she and Red came in.

“Æthelflæd, this rider brings word that your letter was welcome to the people of Lunden. It seems that Ethelred began his journey almost as soon as our message reached him. The chief aldorman of Mercia is at our gates.”

Flæd felt her stomach knotting. She looked quickly at Red, who had already inclined his ear to the doorway. Sounds of a large party approaching had begun to echo in from the street. Bishop Asser and Father John, speaking quietly to each other, entered the council chamber and came to stand beside the king. The noise of hooves and jingling gear of
many horses came closer, until Flæd could see movement just beyond the light of the entryway. One man’s voice called out a command to halt, and the noise changed, as horses snorted and booted feet dropped to the ground.

Swiftly Flæd stepped back beside her warder into the shadowy corner by the door just as the sentry spoke his first words to the party of newcomers. She could not quite make out the sentences they exchanged, but a moment later the sentry’s mailed shoulders filled the doorway.

“Ethelred, Chief Aldorman of Mercia, greets King Alfred,” the guard announced. He stepped back, and the Mercian aldorman strode into the room, accompanied by four other men who arranged themselves behind him when he stopped in front of Alfred.

“Ethelred,” Alfred said with a smile, coming forward to clasp the aldorman’s forearm in greeting, “we bid you welcome to our burgh.”

“Burgh!” Ethelred exclaimed, opening his mouth in a laugh. “From the look of the wall we passed, I’d call this a king’s
tun
.” Ethelred used the word for heavily fortified settlements which defended whole communities when enemies threatened.

“Nonsense, my friend,” Alfred responded with a laugh of his own. “This is only a humble burgh, where my family enjoys peace and simple living.” Flæd could see Ethelred’s profile as he drew breath for another retort. The Mercian aldorman looked a few years younger than her father, but was less finely drawn than the king. He had removed his helmet before he entered Alfred’s rooms, and Flæd could see that his hair was light brown, almost a bronze color in the candlelight of Alfred’s council chamber. His face looked broad and square from Flæd’s vantage, and the wrinkles of a smile appeared at the corner of his eye as he spoke again.

“You may call this king’s
tun
a burgh if you wish. Certainly we have come here from Mercia with no other thought than to greet your royal daughter in the beautiful West Saxon countryside.”