Communion of Darkness & Light » Sigtryggr || The Last Kingdom

Bad News from Wessex

The finished pieces of parchment were weighted down with small stones in the courtyard to dry in the summer air. Aelfwynn smoothed her smock over her skirts. Thick, honey brown hair tumbled down her back from under her head scarf. Sometimes she liked to imagine that she was already in the convent and had taken up the sacred veil. Smiling to herself, she quelled her nervous excitement to maintain her outward peace. 

Of course, she wouldn't be sitting in the grass at the convent as she did in her father's courtyard. But the sun had finally emerged after days of rain. Even Brother Godwin had insisted that she go outside to finish her copying. Though she loved the smokey air of the scriptorium filled with the gentle scratching of pen to paper, it was pleasant to be out in the fresh air.

Closing her eyes and lifting her face toward the sun, she smiled.

"Thank You, Father God," she breathed aloud.

The sisters at the convent of her choice in Wessex had been spared the spread of the sickness and then the invasion of Danes that had taken Winchester. Her father helped King Edward win back his city. They had been successful, she knew that much. But her father had frowned when her eldest brother Eohric began to speak of the cost. Guthrum wanted to protect her from the most brutal of reports.

But the look of concern Guthrum had passed to her older brothers stayed with her in the days since their return. She still didn't know the extent of what happened. All the Danes seemed the same to her, except for her father. Guthrum was special. He had been chosen and anointed by God and been risen above his former comrades. 

"No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day," Aelfwynn repeated the scripture aloud to herself as she returned to her paper.

Guthrum had been drawn to the Lord from the brutality of his youth. What he had been before his baptism didn't matter. It didn't matter to Aelfwynn. She had long rejected that part of her lineage. She was neither Dane nor Saxon, only a child of the Most High. And that was all that mattered.

A hand fell over her eyes. Aelfwynn grasped the calloused palms and whipped around. Brother Osferth crouched behind her with a teasing grin on his strong features. With nimble fingers, he perched a bright sprig of yellow cowslip over her ear.

"I was surprised not to find you hunched over your studies in the scriptorium," he laughed as Aelfwynn threw her arms around him.

King Alfred's bastard son had come into his own since Guthrum first took a liking to the boy. It had surprised most. Their friendship was keen. Osferth had come to see Guthrum as a father in the previous years, especially as Aelfwynn's older brothers became more sinful in their ways. Osferth was no saint, fighting for a heathen like Uhtred of Coccham, but there was no mean streak in him. 

"What are you doing here?" She asked excitedly. "Have you heard news from the Lady Aelswith about my petition to the Abbess at Bollhill?"

Wetting his thin lips, the warrior monk smoothed a sword worn hand over his square jaw and squinted towards the ramparts beyond the courtyard. "Much has happened since that time, Wynnie."

His use of her childhood nickname made her pause. "What do you mean? Didn't Father Beocca speak to her as well?" His expression fell into a frown, a wrinkle puckering between his eyebrows, at Beocca's name. "What's wrong? Did you come bearing bad news? We've already heard of what happened at Winchester, of the near defeat at the hands of the heathen."

"I had wanted your father to be the one to tell you these things. I can only stay a moment. I am on my way to Eoferwic."

"Tell me what? Why are you going to Eoferwic? Is the Lady Aethelflaed sending you to help bring about order since she won it back from the Danes? And where is Beocca?" When his frown grew even deeper, Aelfwynne's heart sped up. "You're scaring me, Osferth. What has happened?"

"Much," Osferth said with a sigh and held out his hand to her. "Come, we'll go to your father so we can discuss these things together."

Shaking a little, Aelfwynne rose to her feet. Brushing the dry grass from her skirt, her eyes lifted to one of the nearby alcoves beyond the sunny courtyard. A shadowy figure stood with arms crossed, leaning against the stone. It was a man, that much she could tell by the broad, square shoulders and height. Long hair and a long gait as he pushed away from the alcove and strode away, disappearing down a dim corridor. 

Whoever it was had been watching her.

"My lady," Osferth insisted, offering her his arm once more.

Aelfwynne took it with a shaky smile. "Thank you. I've missed you, Osferth."

"I've missed you too, Winnie."

As they ambled through the courtyard, the knot in Aelfwynne's stomach loosened. Osferth always had that effect on her. Though she was committed entirely to the goal of being a bride of Christ, she couldn't help thinking that Osferth would have made a wonderful husband. He was probably the only man that she could ever have seen herself marrying, if he was not a monk and she not destined for the veil.

Marriage was something to be avoided at all costs. Even the men who claimed to be Christian were sorely lacking in her eyes. Lady Aelswith, King Alfred's wife, had said that Aelfwynne possessed one of the purest faiths that the pious queen had ever seen. It was a great compliment coming from someone like Aelswith, who would have made a fine Abbess had God not had other plans for her.

As they walked towards her father's library, Aelfwynne felt her trepidation fade. Whatever was to happen next was in God's hands. God would give her the strength to bear any bad news that Osferth brought with him.