The Wanderer and the Way 7
Lady of the Village
This is Chapter 2 of The Wanderer and the Way
Whatever time he could spare from the pretence of dedicating himself to his uncle’s business, Theodemir attempted to spend with Agnes. Agnes, however, showed no sign that she relished his company. He treated her with courtesy and kept the custody of his eyes, at least when he believed that she was aware of his presence. He also spent long periods gazing at her from a distance, which he believed she was unaware of. When he did this, his mind was divided between astonished admiration for her beauty and the vexing puzzle of how his vocation towards her was to be fulfilled. He quickly learned her habits and discovered that she arrived at the villa early each morning, sang morning prayer, and kept the gate and greeted visitors until the heat of the day prostrated her, and Lubbo or one of the other servants would come and insist that she go and sit beneath the willow until the heat broke. She took her midday meal with the servants in the kitchen, and it soon became clear to him that every servant of the estate, man or woman, adored her. It was while spying on these meals that he discovered that Fatima and Sakina, and the several other small brown girls, whose labors were confined to the kitchens, except when Witteric had friends to entertain, were not at all the silent and expressionless creatures that they became in the dining room and bedrooms of the villa. Rather, they chattered affectionately among themselves and did each other spontaneous kindnesses. He sensed an air of melancholy over the whole gathering but could not decide whether he was projecting that feeling onto the scene as one that seemed fitting to him, given how the small brown girls were used, or whether it was indeed the prevailing mood of Witteric’s servants. Or perhaps it was a mood that they had learned from Agnes, in whom he perceived a great melancholy, though one he came firmly to believe was the very reverse of her natural character.
At the end of the day, Agnes would return to the village of the young Anglish women beside the river. One day he asked her if he might accompany her to the village and be introduced to its inhabitants.
“It is not my place to say that you should not visit, lord,” was the best answer he got. He knew it to be Agnes’s answer rather than Elswyth’s. As wife of the chief of the Northmen, it was indeed Elswyth’s place to say, in the absence of her husband, if he should or should not visit. But since she had not refused him, he waited until she began her walk back to the village and fell in beside her.
“I thought the heat was less oppressive today,” he said, attempting to dispel the silence that seemed to fold around Agnes like a veil.
She made no reply to this, so he pressed on. “Did you find it easier to bear?”
“A little,” she said. It was not in her custom or manner to ignore a question entirely, but her answer did nothing to invite further inquiry.
Theodemir waited for a few steps, giving her every opportunity to begin a conversation of her own choosing, but the veil of silence seemed only to wrap itself more firmly about her shoulders.
“I am looking forward to meeting your husband when he returns,” he said.
This was not a question, and it elicited no answer.
“I understand that he had been gone longer than his usual habit,” he ventured.
There was indeed a question implicit in these words, but it was not grammatically in the form of a question and, therefore, it seemed, did not create in her the obligation to craft an answer.
“Have you any thought as to why he should be gone so long?”
“A sailor’s life is governed by chance and opportunity,” she said as if she were repeating something she had been told.
“Do the other young women miss their husbands?”
“They have their children to consider,” she replied listlessly.
“But you do not.”
Again, it was not a question, and again, it was not answered.
Their path along the river led them to the village, which was a collection of small square mud and wattle huts with low thatched roofs. Their only notable architectural feature was the extension of the front roof poles above the ridge, forming an X. This particular feature was also the highlight of a central hut that was a little wider but much longer than the others, and which he supposed must be the central hall of the community.
The young women of the place gathered in silence as the two of them passed among them, their children either in their arms or clutching their skirts. The uniformity of their age and appearance was striking. The Anglish cast of their features, being unfamiliar to him and nowhere to be found in Agnes or in Witteric’s small brown girls, nor yet in the girls he had known in Rome, nor even in the women of Visigothic heritage, impressed him far more than any individual difference of feature or coloring. There was uniformity in their dress as well. Each wore a linen shirt of natural hue and over it a woolen apron dress dyed either brown or green and attached above the bosom by round brooches. Though they were all married women, their heads were bare and their hair was bound in braids which hung on either side of their heads and down over their shoulders. The crown of their uniformity, however, was their similarity of age, for to his eye it seemed that not one was younger than nineteen or older than twenty-one. Similarly, with the children, none looked more than two or three, and every one of the women had either a babe in arms or a very round belly. There was only one exception among them, and her difference was not in her age or in her manner of dress or in her possession of both a child – the same child he had rescued from the river – and a round belly, but only in that she was a small brown girl, more apt to be found in the villa than in the village. This, he recognized, must be the Northman’s concubine.
Anges entered the longhouse, holding up a hand to indicate that he should not follow her. He stood for several minutes, silent under the silent gaze of the Anglish women and their children. Then Agnes emerged from the longhouse. Her simple linen dress and wimple were gone, and she was dressed after the same fashion as the rest, except that the apron dress she wore was dyed a deep red, the belt about her waist was inlaid with silver, and the brooches that fastened her dress gleamed with silver and jewels. She lacked the long braids that every other woman, even the small brown concubine, displayed, for her hair was too short for them. However, she wore on her head a leather circlet decorated with entwining copper and silver wires and in the center a silver boss with a red jewel in its center.
This, he saw at once, was Elswyth, and though she was of one flesh, Elswyth and Agnes were different creatures. The women and children certainly treated her so. The children who were old enough to have the use of their legs ran to her, and she squatted down among them, smiling and laughing and giving them small treats of nuts, dried fruits, and pieces of honeycomb. Chatter sprung up among the women and as Elswyth gently sent the children away, the women gathered around her, chattering about the news of the day and asking if there was any news from the villa as to when their husbands might return. And Elswyth herself was lively and smiling and chatted with them and exclaimed in delight at the smallest reported accomplishments of their children. And if Theodemir had known in his heart that Agnes was his vocation, he became, in that moment, deeply and ardently in love with Elswyth.
The Northman’s concubine, however, held back from the throng around Elswyth, though she did not hold back her child from claiming his share of the treats she offered. Was this because she knew that Elswyth resented her, he wondered. Or was she considered a slave, not to presume to converse with any unless spoken to? But then he realized that all the conversation was in Anglish, a tongue that has some similarities with his rusty Visigothic but must be entirely foreign to the small dark concubine whose only tongue would be either the Latin common to the place or perhaps the Arab tongue if she were a Moor.
“Deliciae meae salve,” he said to her.
“Salve domine,” she replied.
“I have met your son, lady,” he said. “He is a fine boy.”
“Thank you, lord,” she said.
“His father is proud of him, I am sure.”
“He says so, lord.” There was a touch of pain, of reservation in the way she said this. The Northman, he supposed, was indeed proud of the son that the concubine had borne him. But he wanted a son got on Elswyth, and the concubine’s son would be of no account to him if Elswyth should ever give him the child of his heart’s desire.
“Are you his only slave?” he asked, looking about, for still he saw no one but the women and their children.
“I am the second wife,” she protested proudly. “He has promised me a slave of my own when he returns.”
“It is the way of the Northmen that a man may have two wives?” he asked.
“It is his way,” she said.
“It is not the Christian way.”
“When I was a Christian, I was a slave. When I was a Moor, I was a slave. Now I am Norsk, I am a second wife, and I will have a slave of my own when my husband returns.”
“As second wife, do you answer to the first wife, Elswyth?”
“We all answer to her,” she replied.
“But you are an equal to the other wives?”
She made no answer to this.
“You do not speak their language?” he asked. “Do they not speak Latin to you?”
“Only Elswyth and Odelinda have any Latin, lord. And only Elswyth speaks it well.”
“You have not learned Anglish?”
“I am to learn Norsk. It is his command. But when he is away, there is no one to learn it from. Except Elswyth. She speaks it, and tries to teach it. But by day she is Agnes. The others have learned some of it from their husbands. But they are so often away. And when they are gone, they speak Anglish.”
“You must be lonely, then.”
“I have my son, lord.”
“There are women at the villa who speak Latin,” he said.
“I am not to go there, lord. Only Elswyth is permitted.”
“Does Lord Witteric visit you?” he asked. She was a small, dark girl and much to his uncle’s taste.
“No,” she said. “But Agnes visits him.”
Something in the way she said this surprised him.
“Agnes is not Lord Witteric’s concubine,” he said.
She looked at him expectantly.
“Nor mine,” he said indignantly. “She is chaste.” He wondered if she knew that the Northman did not lie with Elswyth. If any here knew, surely it must be her.
He had no opportunity to inquire further into her circumstances for Elswyth now beckoned him to come and enter the circle that had formed around her outside the door of the long house. She smiled at him now, as the lady of the village welcoming a guest. She then introduced him to the young women one by one. They were all too much alike in their appearance, and their names were too foreign to his ear for him to remember who was who. Only Odelinda, the contented wife of the ill-favored Hogni, stood out sufficiently for him to attach her name to her face, and it was her shyness and downcast eyes that marked her out. Like several of her sisters, she was great with child, and had another child attached to her skirts, whose hair she smoothed constantly as a token of reassurance.
Elswyth invited him to join them for the meal, apologizing that it would be simple fare compared to what was served in the villa. He accepted gladly and was seated in the guest’s place at the right hand of the lady. It was a simple meal indeed, roasted fish with bread and some boiled roots and herbs, but their ale was strong, and the company was comely and courteous. Elswyth was lively and talkative, and to see her in this seeming merry mood only added to her beauty. Why, he asked himself, if Elswyth was so merry and so at ease in this company, did she not spend her days here, for Agnes was, by contrast, a much more melancholy figure? Which, he asked himself, was the real woman, and which the mask? He wished with all his heart that the real woman should be Elswyth, for it was Elswyth he wished to win and to make his own, if something could only be done to redeem her from the Northman. But as he made his way back to the villa in the failing light of the evening, he heard a sweet, high voice from the village begin the evening prayer. Remembering that all the wives of the Northmen had been stolen from a nunnery, he wondered if he would hear other voices join with hers. But no. She sang alone. Even though she wore Elswyth’s dress and took her place in the Northmen’s village, the voice of Agnes came clear across the field.
Could this be the vocation he was called to, to make Elswyth and Agnes one again? Or could it be that he was to tear away and discard Agnes, leaving only Elswyth behind? Or perhaps, he considered, with a sinking heart, he was to tear away Elswyth, leaving only Agnes behind.
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