The Edge on the Sword (3 page)

Edward’s eyebrows made a little crease above his nose. “A happy and rich guardian? That’s not me.”

Flæd shrugged. “A name is sometimes like a riddle,” she said. “At first you don’t see the sense of it. But you keep thinking about it, and maybe later you start to understand what it really means.”

Edward looked at the letters with the sparks dying among them like tiny jewels. “The pictures you describe help the letter shapes mean something to me,” he said slowly, “but you’re right, my name is a riddle I don’t understand yet.”

In the fading light the two of them sat for a time without speaking. Beneath Wulf’s shaggy coat Edward’s finger moved, tracing the forms that still showed on the earth before him.

Flæd watched the smoke winding up into the darkness. She felt almost unreasonably happy at these little signs from her brother. Pulling her cloak close around her, Flæd began to relax for the first time that night. She let her mind wander away from Edward, from the fire which had almost gone out, to the dog whose rough fur warmed her back. Wulf. She stroked the beard of wiry hairs beneath his chin. He was still alert, she could see, with his ears swiveled back toward the forest behind them.

For the second time since she had reached the clearing, Flæd turned to stare into the woods beyond the dim firelight. What was that? For a moment she had almost believed that one of the forest’s shadows, a shape darker than the others, had moved furtively out in the blackness. Narrowing her eyes, Flæd strained to see, but no shape appeared again. Nothing, it was nothing, she soothed herself. Just the story and its monsters, making me nervous.

“E
DWARD
.” F
LÆD
SUDDENLY
SHOOK
HER
BROTHER
. “L
ISTEN
! The birds on the meadow lake have gone to sleep. We’ve stayed too late.”

Quickly the two of them buried the coals with handfuls of earth, and the letters of Edward’s name disappeared between their fingers. Flæd laced her shoes onto her dusty feet and pulled her hood forward as she followed Edward and Wulf out of the clearing. She turned to peer behind them once, but in the shifting patterns of the wood, she could see nothing unusual. When Wulf lagged, raising his nose to test the air, Edward tugged at his collar.

“No rabbits,” Edward told him. “We’re in a hurry.” Yes, it had probably been nothing more than that, Flæd decided. They circled the meadow, keeping to a route among the trees.

To the east the moon was rising. It poured its light across the black lake, waking some of the birds who grated sleepily to each other. Streaking her imagination with silver, the moonlight twined among the figures in Flæd’s mind. It chased the poem’s monsters and the night’s odd shadows into a back corner. It played among the letters of Edward’s name, glinting on their straight lines. It found another word, and ran its silver fingers curiously over the different symbols. “Æthelflæd,” the girl whispered, saying her own full name. My name-riddle, she thought. The first part,
æthel
, meant noble and good.
Flæd
, that sounded something like the word for flowing water,
flod
—it could mean the sea, or a river. A noble river? I am like Edward, she decided. My name seems strange to me.

Flæd and Edward left the trees and crossed an open space before they slipped through a gap in the partly finished stone wall that surrounded the settlement. Their father, Alfred, had planned this burgh with broad, unpaved streets, and as Flæd and Edward stepped into the road that ringed the settlement just inside the defensive wall, they could see that it was a
quiet night. Only a few of the burgh’s people were out along the settlement’s main way.

The brother and sister ducked quickly into a parallel street—one which would take them to the burgh’s center without passing directly in front of the abbey. Alone, they stole along this less public route, keeping a little distance between themselves and the abbey’s stone chapel, scriptorium, and adjoining dwelling places for the religious orders. Soon, as they passed thatched wooden dwelling places and the shuttered workshops of craftspeople, Flæd could make out the bulky outline of the great hall, around which her family’s own group of buildings clustered.

“Flæd,” Edward said in a small voice as the two of them scuttled around the sunken, mud-daubed huts of the empty marketplace, “they will be angry with us for being out so late alone and for missing prayers.”

“We were careless.” Flæd lifted her chin resolutely in the shadow of her hood. “We deserve their anger…if they find out,” she added.

“Wulf would have protected you,” Edward said with dignity.

Flæd smiled. “And you would have protected both of us—our good guardian. Now hurry!” The time for prayers had long since ended, and sounds of conversation flowed out with the soft glow of rushlight spilling through doorways. “Run to the kitchens and find something for yourself and Wulf to eat,” Flæd told him. “They might not realize you weren’t back earlier.”

“You come with us, Flæd,” Edward said. “Aren’t you hungry?” Flæd felt herself warming with happiness again. This was something Edward would have said before their long weeks apart. But she could not join him tonight.

“Mother expects me, and I’m already late.” She pushed him gently between the shoulder blades. “Go on, Edward. You can creep in like the monsters, and run away with what you want.”

Edward turned in mock annoyance. “I will walk in like a warrior, a hunter warrior who
asks
for food for himself. And for his companions,” he added to Wulf skulking beside him. Flæd smiled again as she watched the pair go off among the royal family’s buildings in the direction of the kitchens. By habit they veered into the shadows as they turned to skirt the great hall.

He will probably creep, after all, thought Flæd to herself, shaking her head as she started for her mother’s quarters. Strange, solitary Edward. And strange, solitary me, she added. Years of wandering with her brother had left her little inclined to find other acquaintances in the burgh. She had no friends outside her family members, she acknowledged glumly to
herself, and now that lessons filled her days, she scarcely even spent time with them.

If at that moment Flæd had looked back one last time, she might have seen a slinking shape that was neither her brother nor Wulf. The figure had drawn much closer after the dog turned aside to go with the boy. But Flæd did not look back.

Moonlight fell around her as she, too, crossed the empty street. It touched the round silver brooch which fastened the grey cloak at Flæd’s neck, making the jewelry shine whitely like a tiny copy of the disk in the sky. Flæd was tall, with long legs and thin arms. She walked without clinging to the burgh’s concealing angles as her brother had done, but she held her wraps close and let her shoulders slope together, neither awkward nor graceful. In a few steps, like Edward, she had reached the group of spacious, single-roomed structures where her family lived. Silently she entered the passageway which ran between the king’s council chamber and the buildings made to shelter the queen and the royal children.

Home, Flæd thought as she halted at her mother’s threshold. To her right stood the thatched quarters she shared with her sisters; to the left was the boy’s hut—the building where Edward slept with little Æthelweard, the youngest child. Between the children’s chambers rose the fine wooden dwelling her father had made for the comfort of his queen. Flæd stood there outside her mother’s door, chewing one finger. Edward was right—I’m hungry, she realized as her stomach gave a twist. I should have run to the kitchens with him. A pair of royal guards sauntered into the street from the great hall’s entrance, picking their teeth after the evening meal and hailing Flæd as they passed. She considered dashing into the hall to claim her supper. Too many people would notice her, and might wonder where she had been, she concluded. And she had kept her mother waiting too long already. At last she shook back her hood and entered the queen’s chamber.

“Flæd, you’ve come so late.” Queen Ealhswith straightened beside the loom frame where she had been kneeling. She pushed back a loose strand of pale hair from her face. “And you’re very dusty,” she added, as her daughter unfastened her cloak. “Go wash, and then come help me hang the warp.”

Without a word, Flæd went to scrub her hands and face at the nearby clay basin. She considered the mud she had tried to brush from her legs by firelight. Her undergown nearly reached her feet, and she still wore her shoes. That grime could wait, she decided, joining her mother at the wooden frame which leaned against the wall.

Vertical threads, called the warp, hung from the top of the loom toward the floor. Her mother’s tall form was bent over to fasten red clay rings to the ends of these fine woolen strands, weighting them to hang straight toward the ground against the horizontal weft threads that would be woven across them.

“Look at this fine spinning,” her mother said as Flæd knelt beside her and combed her fingers among the hanging filaments to separate them. “It will make a flannel as thick as the stuff of that dustcloud cloak you brought in.” Flæd’s cloak and Edward’s matching one had come from this loom in their mother’s quiet room.

Flæd nodded. She had not wanted to speak as she absorbed the warmth of her mother’s room, and felt the calm order of the task in front of them. Now she preserved that silence as together they bunched neat handfuls of thread and tied them to the remaining rings.

“There, that’s finished,” said Ealhswith, securing the last weight. She stood, smoothing the folds of her plain gown, and surveyed her daughter again. “You came straight from the trees, didn’t you?” she asked, removing a twig from Flæd’s thick brown hair. “And missed your supper?” Flæd nodded again. “Have a bowl of milk then, and let me untangle that horsetail hanging down your back.”

From her mother’s hands, Flæd took a carved wooden bowl. The girl sat down beside the little hearth. She inhaled the rich tang of goat’s milk as she raised the bowl to her mouth.

“You are very quiet,” came Ealhswith’s voice behind her. Her fingers loosened the strip of leather binding her daughter’s hair. “Tell me where you were tonight.”

“I was with Edward at one of our places in the wood,” Flæd admitted. “I was telling him a story. We didn’t notice how late it was.”

“A wild thing, that’s what you are sometimes,” her mother said, spreading Flæd’s hair over her shoulders, “and Edward is wilder.” Flæd felt the comb’s teeth picking at the tangles low on her back. As a small girl she had loved to hold it and look at the sea animals carved along its handle. Fish played with watery monsters who plunged their strange long bodies in and out of the ivory water. A walrus raised his tusked bulk at each end of the comb, which had once been a walrus’s long tooth.

“We only made a fire and sat for a little while,” Flæd said.

“You missed evening prayers.” Ealhswith lifted a handful of her daughter’s hair to her face and sniffed. “The smell of wood smoke will not go.” The queen paused, and for a moment she seemed to struggle with some thought. What is it? Flæd thought. Is Mother so unhappy that I was late? But Ealhswith went on, choosing her words carefully.

“Flæd, you are getting older. Look how tall you are.” She straightened Flæd’s stooped shoulders gently. “Your father may speak to you about something….”

“About missing prayers tonight?” Flæd blurted. Suddenly her concerns about her brother came rushing to her tongue. “Then shouldn’t he speak to Edward, too?” Flæd twisted around to look at her mother. “Edward will be king, and he doesn’t know—he doesn’t like…learning a king’s duties.”

“Your father should call Edward back to his lessons,” her mother agreed, understanding what Flæd was trying to say. “He has thought that Edward should have a little freedom. But now his oldest son must study. And the king will ask his oldest daughter,” Ealhswith added, “to take up new responsibilities also.” The queen divided Flæd’s hair into three sections and began smoothing and plaiting the strands.

A thought passed into Flæd’s mind, and she went very still.
“You are getting older
…” Was it possible that her parents had begun to discuss a betrothal for her? But her lessons had only begun—she had just started to see how little she knew, how much more she needed to study. They would not make promises which would take me away from my lessons and away from home, she insisted to herself. Not yet.

“What does my father need me to do?” Flæd asked out loud, slumping down a little and feeling the pull of the plait at the back of her head. She forced her thoughts away from the alarming possibility of betrothal, turning her mind doggedly to her brother again.
I may be the king’s first child, but Edward, not I, must prepare to rule after him.
“I might be able to help Edward,” she said aloud. “We talk about his reading sometimes. He has a good memory.”

“Edward has a quick mind, like yours,” her mother agreed as she bound the leather thong around the end of the finished braid. “But Æthelflæd, you have duties, too.”

“Edward will be important to all the West Saxon people,” Flæd said deliberately, holding her empty bowl on her knees.

“You
will be important to many people. Flæd,” she said, turning her daughter to face her in the lamplight, “I was a Mercian aldorman’s child who played in the hills among our sheep. Now I am a queen. A queen who knows how to weave.”

What will I be, Flæd wondered, making a face. Probably a weaver who knows how to be a queen.
Could
her mother be warning her to think of her own marriage and the changes such a thing would bring? With hands less sure than they had been a few moments before, she moved to organize the first weft threads.

“No, no, Flæd.” The queen gently pushed away her daughter’s hands. She gazed at Flæd for a long moment, then seemed to surrender to the girl’s reluctance to talk of the future. “Off to sleep with you now.” Ealhswith stood with Flæd, embraced her, and went with her to the door. “Take this dusty thing”—she handed Flæd her cloak—”and get to bed.”