The Edge on the Sword Read Online Free PDF Page A

beard.
    “Flæd, you should be resting.”
    “I thought I heard you.”
    Her father sat back, holding out his hand for her to come closer. “Well, it’s good you came. I was getting tired of pacing alone,” he said, drawing her to a stool beside his chair. “Alone except for these.” He gesturedwearily toward the piles on the table. “A daughter is far better company than silent pages. Tell me how you passed your day.”
    And so Flæd told the king how Æthelweard the baby had tried to follow Edward and Wulf to the woods that morning, running on his short legs until his nurse pulled him back. She described how at the noon meal, when her smaller sister, Ælfthryth, had broken a wooden spoon as she beat out a rhythm for a song, pious Æthelgifu (called “Dove” after the holy bird) had tried not to laugh. “And tonight I went across the meadow to meet Edward. I…we missed the chapel service. Edward almost missed the evening meal.” She bit her lip.
    “Your absence was noted,” her father said. He gazed at her intently for several seconds, then spoke again. “Flæd, I settled our family not at the largest of our estates, but in this quiet place because I wanted freedom for my children. You have given up some of that freedom, I know, since beginning your lessons. But now a time is coming”—he propped an elbow against the table and let his fingers crease his brow into furrows—“when you, and Edward, too, will have to leave more of your freedoms behind.”
    Flæd froze. What had her mother said? “
Your father may speak to you about something
.” But what exactly did the king mean by “…
leave more of your freedoms
…”? Perhaps—Flæd let the idea loose again, her panic rising—perhaps she had been right before. Maybe she had guessed correctly as she sat in her mother’s room, wondering if her parents might be considering betrothal and marriage for their oldest daughter. No, a voice inside her shouted, there must be something else—a blunder Father has discovered, a mistake in my lessons, or my deception of Bishop Asser when Edward was with us Desperately, she searched for an alternative: her most recent secret, that must be it. He must know she’d touched the valuable book in the scriptorium.
    “Please, Father,” she burst out, “let me finish the poem with the monsters and the great hero. The hero will follow them to their lair and—”
    Her father’s gentle laughter stopped her, “You missed prayers tonight, Flæd, but not confession, I see. If you have been reading our great book of poetry, your lessons are too easy.”
    No, the king had not known about the manuscript, after all. Head spinning, Flæd tried to respond to what her father had said. In her mind she compared the plain religious passage she had copied that afternoon with the echoing sounds that made the poem beautiful, even when its images were terrible:
Grim and greedy, the death-spirit grasped him.
“Yes, my lessons are too easy,” she faltered.
    “I wonder if you have heard a story, a true one, about my childhood,” her father said. “One afternoon my brothers and I sat with yourgrandmother queen Osburh, listening to her read English poems from a small and beautiful book. My brothers were restless, so Mother tried to make a game of it. Whoever could learn the book fastest, she said, could have it. I took the book and ran to find our priest. All I could think of was that the book could be mine if …” He paused.
    “If you could read it quickly enough?” Flæd asked, her mind still churning with uncertainties.
    “If someone could read it to me,” her father finished. “My father’s court was a busy place—the wars already troubled our kingdom—and no one had found time to teach the king’s fifth son, his sickly son, to understand writing. This is why I ran to the priest.”
    “How old were you?”
    “Thirteen. Edward’s age. The priest helped me memorize the book.” His daughter cocked her head. “Mother