The Wanderer and the Way 11
The King’s Cross
This is Chapter 11 of The Wanderer and the Way. The full book is now available for preorder on Amazon for release on March 10.
The king left about noon the next day. Theodemir’s time was mostly taken up with the king’s scribe, who burdened him with documents and instructions. The caravan that would escort him to Aachen was to be assembled in the churchyard of Santa Maria of Iria Flavia one week hence where Quendulf would celebrate a mass for the success of the journey and would personally hear the confessions of every member of the party. Theodemir was strictly instructed that he was the king’s ambassador and legate but not in any way or by any right commander of the caravan, which would be led by a captain of the king’s household by the name of Hathus. In all things pertaining to the conduct of the caravan he was to obey Hathus without question. Theodemir got the impression that this was a matter on which serious misunderstanding had arisen on some previous occasion, which the scribe was particularly anxious should be avoided on this mission. All this he accepted with simple acquiescence, which, far from reassuring the scribe, seemed to make him anxious that he was not being rightly understood or that Theodemir was not taking the injunction seriously. Perhaps this was why, when the king was taking his leave, he pulled Theodemir aside and reiterated the same point. “Hathus is charged with your safety. As ambassador, you are indispensable. The warrior code may say that a man should be first to put himself in the front of battle. But you are not a warrior now, but a diplomat. Allow Hathus to protect you and obey him in all things.”
“I will, highness,” Theodemir said, finding, somewhat to his surprise, that he felt no shame in being told to shrink from a fight and let others guard his life.
“Good lad,” the king said, mounting his horse. He saluted him then, and Witteric in his turn. As he passed through the gate, he saluted Agnes, with a solemnity that he had not shown in saluting Theodemir or his host. He acknowledges her perfection, Theodemir said to himself. Yet he does so without desire. Therefore he does not wound her with his gaze. Could he ever so master his nature as to be able to do the same?
Witteric smiled after the gates had closed behind the last of the king’s party. Bishop Quendulf had departed also, but several other guests remained, and Witteric was now free to conduct their entertainment after his own taste. “Come lad, join us,” he said jovially to Theodemir. “Now the chaste and the pious have departed, we shall have more wine, more women, and a little less song and dance.”
Remembering the king’s warning, and finding he had no desire for the proffered Bacchanal, Theodemir found himself unmoved by the curled lip of disdain on his uncle’s face as he turned away from him.
The afternoon grew hot. Seeking distraction from the shrieks and grunts and laughter that periodically erupted from the terrace, Theodemir began to puzzle over Quendulf’s copy of the letter of Beatus, which, it turned out, the Bishop had happened to bring with him to the gathering. Indeed, the copy was a brand new one, the ink still redolent and the parchment new, suggesting that the Bishop had had it copied specifically for this purpose. Quendulf, therefore, had had some notice of the king’s intention and instructions on how to prepare for it. The reasoning in the letter was dense, and he was lacking the document that Beatus was refuting, which made the argument all the harder to follow. The chorus Bacchanalia did nothing to improve his concentration, and he found himself in agony trying to determine if the female exclamations that formed its descant were expressions of pleasure or pain, or of pleasure feigned by one in pain. Unable to continue his study, he did as he had done in Rome when his head grew tired: he went in search of a woman.
The woman he sought this time was Agnes. He knew that in this heat he was sure to find her under the willow tree by the bank of the river, and there indeed he found her. As he approached, however, and before she was aware of his presence, he stopped, for he heard her singing. This was not the wonderful, clear, full-throated song with which she had filled and enchanted the hall on the first night of the king’s visit, but neither was it the Divine Office. Rather, it was a song that she had sung at the feast, an Anglish song that she had said was the favorite of an Anglish king, but now she was singing it softly, fondly, yet wistfully, imparting to it a note of melancholy that in no way fit the matter or the tune, but was, in her voice, a revelation.
He had wondered, seeing her so merry at the feast, after having seen her so desolate before it, if Agnes and Elswyth had become entirely sundered in her mind. But here was Agnes singing Elswyth’s song with Elswyth’s voice, albeit with Agnes’s melancholy and a wistfulness which he guessed both women, who were one woman, shared.
The last notes of the song died away, and he waited a while to see if she would sing another. But she remained still and silent beneath the tree, exhausted by the heat. He resumed his approach, and when he brushed aside the branches to enter into the cool haven under the tree, she heard him and turned to look, hastily dabbing at her eyes as she did so.
“May I stay, lady?” he asked.
“It is your right to stay or to go as you please,” she replied, “Or to command me to go or to stay as you will.”
“I heard your song, lady,” he said. “You must pardon me for spying, but it was by accident that I heard it, and then you had me entranced.”
“I should not have sung it if I had known,” she replied. “I want no man entranced by me. It only leads to bloodshed.”
“I fear you are doomed to disappointment in this, lady. Even Alphonso the Chaste was enchanted by you, if chastely so.”
She reached under the collar of her dress and drew out a slim gold chain on which there was a glittering cross of gold encrusted with jewels. She pulled the chain over her wimple and held it out to him. He sat beside her cross-legged on the grass and took it into his hand. Despite the heat of the day, it felt vaguely warm from her bosom.
“Why would he give me something like this?” she asked him.
The cross was a wonderful piece, the size of his palm, and finely wrought. A very rich gift.
“It is the gift of a king to the lady of the hall,” he said.
“But he didn’t give it to her,” she said. “In the hall he gave this to Elswyth.” She pulled out a beautifully made decorated comb, an instrument of no use to her since she kept her hair so short but which she had been keeping in her sleeve. But then she put it away and pointed to the cross again. “He gave this to me. To Agnes. Not in the hall, but by the gate. What is the meaning of it?”
“Agnes is a nun, or wishes to be,” he said. “This is a nun’s gift.”
“The gift for an abbess of a great house, perhaps,” she protested. “Not for a gatekeeper’s postulant.”
“Perhaps one day you will be the abbess of great house,” he said. His heart felt cold as he said this. It was not the fate that he desired for her. “Kings sometimes see in their subjects what they will be, rather than what they are.”
“He hardly knows me,” she protested.
“I have eaten the feast in many halls and heard many ladies sing,” he said. “And you outshine them all. The king remarked on it himself.”
“Oh, that’s just Elswyth,” she said. “She’s good at that.” She said this as if it were a gift of no account, like the ability to balance a pebble on one’s nose.
He handed the cross back to her, and when she reached for it, impulsively took her hand in his. She looked up at him but did not pull back and for a moment let him hold her hand.
“You are Elswyth, lady,” he said to her earnestly and with hope.
“Only when I must be,” she said, pulling her hand away gently. “Sometimes she saves me,” she said. “Sometimes she damns me. But I am not Elswyth anymore. I might have been her if Eric had not killed Gwynneth. I meant to be, for him. I was willing. But it was because of Elswyth that he came to Whitby, and so it was because of Elswyth that he killed Gwynneth. So I will not be Elswyth for you. And I will not be Elswyth for the king. She is just a piece of mummery now. The heart of her is gone. I am Agnes.”
“Then the cross must mean that the king sees that too and that he affirms it,” he said. “That would explain his gift.”
“Agnes is not worthy of such a gift.”
“I would say, lady, that the gift is not worthy of Agnes, but it may have been all that the king had to give.”
She did not respond to this with her usual annoyance. It was not, he perceived at once, that she had come to accept his praise of her but that it had become so tiresome that she was now choosing to ignore it. She reached under her collar again and pulled out another chain, this of silver and much plainer than the one that held the king’s cross. There was a small strip of fabric that came up too, tangled in the silver chain. The silver chain held a modest silver cross, smaller than the king’s cross and without jewels, though it was engraved with interlaced patterns that might have been flower stems or serpents. She put the two crosses side by side on her hand.
“This is Cuthbert’s cross,” she said, indicating the silver. The cross was symmetrical, with flared ends, as if it had been carved out of a perfect circle. At the center was a circular boss, and the curve of the arms seemed to be formed of segments of the same circle. It was very different from the Asturian cross, which was formed of two straight pieces, with an upright that was longer below and shorter above the intersecting arms. It was without a central boss, and there were three points in the shape of flower buds on each end. “Why are they so different, do you suppose?” she asked.
He wished that he could give a learned answer to this question. “I have not seen one like yours before,” he said. “It is less like the figure of a real cross on which a man may be executed, for such a cross must be taller because of the length of the body. But I like very much that yours fits within to orbit of a circle. This expresses something, I think, though I lack the wit to read the whole meaning of it.”
“Take it,” she said, handing the Asturian cross to him.
“No, lady,” he said, holding up his hand. “I have done you no service that merits such a gift. I would for all the world deserve it, but I do not.”
“But what am I to do with it?” she asked. “It is too much for Agnes. And Elswyth cannot wear it. Eric will not permit us to be Christians in his presence. If he saw this, he would have it remade into the hammer of Thor.”
“But he permits you to wear Cuthbert’s cross?” he asked.
“He does not know I have it still,” she said. “I keep it hidden here and put it on each morning when I come.”
“What is this that clings to it?” he asked her.
She showed him. Attached to the frayed ribbon there was a small square of linen on which was embroidered a tightly curled serpent. It was a simple thing, but every stitch was perfect, and though it was stained and dulled with sweat from long wear, he could see that the colors had once been exquisitely chosen so that it seemed almost a thing alive.
“It is a token of my sister, Hilda,” she said. “She sent it to Mother Wynflaed as a sampler, and Mother gave it to me to remember by.” Her hand moved up and smoothed tears from her silken cheeks. She stuffed the sampler back beneath her dress as if it were a relic too precious to permit profane eyes to gaze long upon it.
“Please take the king’s cross,” she said. “It can only bring me trouble. I am to be no more than I am. It is not safe for me to seem more than that.”
“That song you were singing when I approached,” he said, allowing the king’s cross to remain in the hand that proffered it to him, “you said in the hall that it was a favorite of an Anglish king. How did you come to learn it?”
“He sang it to me once as he rowed me in a boat on a river,” she said in a faraway voice.
“You have been the consort of a king, lady?” It seemed only fitting that she should have been.
“He courted me,” she said absently.
“But you did not marry?” he asked. If any other woman had told him that she had been courted by an Anglish king, he would have laughed at her. But with Elswyth, the knowledge seemed like the answer to a puzzle.
“I thought I was not free,” she said. “And when I learned that I had been free, Eric had me, and again I was not free.”
“Was it Agnes or Elswyth that he courted?” he asked.
She frowned at this, then said, “It was Elswyth using Agnes’s name.”
“You loved him?” he asked.
“It does not matter now,” she replied.
“You love him still?”
Again, she said, “It does not matter now.”
He hung his head, for a great fear had come over him that he had stumbled upon the true nature of his vocation.
“I have to go away,” he said. “The king is sending me to Aachen as an ambassador to the court of Charles, King of the Franks.”
“He must have great faith in you,” she said.
“I may take anyone I like as my companions,” he said.
She was silent a moment, but then she said, “You should choose men who love you. Men who are faithful to their oaths no matter what trials may come.”
He rose to his feet and dusted off the dirt and fallen leaves that had clung to his trousers. “I am your servant, lady,” he said. “Whatever you ask of me, I will accomplish. You have only to say the word.”
She looked up at him and smiled, a smile so wistful that it broke his heart. “I thank you, sir,” she said, “but there is nothing you can do for me.”
He saluted her and walked away. When he came to the place where the boughs of the willow dipped down to the ground, he turned to her and said, “The king gave you the cross, lady, so that you would have something you could sell to raise the money you would need if you choose to escape this place. Do not give it away. Hide it or bury it against the day of your need.”
“It is not want of money that binds me to this place,” she replied.
“A day may come when other bonds are broken,” he said. “When that day comes, call on me if I am near. And if not, sell the cross and go.”
He turned away at once, allowing the willow branches to fall into place behind him, and hurried off before she could speak a refusal.
He ate alone that night, seated on the veranda, looking out over the water. Witteric and his friends continued their Bacchanal well into the evening. As the light was dying, though, Witteric came and found him, still sitting staring at the water, his empty plate and cup beside him, attracting flies.
“You asked her to go with you, didn’t you?” Witteric asked. His steps were slow and stumbling, but his tongue and his mind were as sharp as ever.
“She will not leave this place,” he replied wearily.
“A woman faithful to her oaths,” Witteric said. “For that alone, she is a pearl. And by heaven, she is a pearl.”
“She waits for her husband’s return, as a good wife should,” Theodemir said.
“Oh, she’ll wait long for that,” Witteric said.
“He is long past due already,” Theodemir replied.
A smile crossed Witteric’s face. “He is a useful man, my pirate,” he said. “And I have made good use of him. But he is an ambitious man, a proud man, and he wears no master’s yoke easily.”
“A man like yourself, Uncle,” Witteric said. He did not suppose that Witteric would take offence at this.
“There comes a time where two such men must either part or come to blows,” his uncle continued. “So I have struck first.”
Sleepiness vanished from Theodemir’s head. He was suddenly all attention.
“I sent him up the Douro,” Witteric continued, “to a soft place, lightly armed. But before he left, I had already sent warning of him to the Moorish governor in Porto. Time enough has passed now to be sure the trap was sprung. The Northmen will not return.”
“But what of their wives and children?” Theodemir asked, careful not to think of Agnes alone.
“Surplus,” Witteric replied. “But there is a good market for Anglish women. As for your Elswyth, she will be here when you return, well broken in and ready for your use.”
The Wanderer and the Way is now available for preorder on Amazon for release on March 10.
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