The Edge on the Sword Read Online Free PDF

had said whoever could
learn
the book first could have it. I recited every word. Look.” He rummaged among the books and scattered pages on his desk, and drew out a small leather-bound booklet which could be held comfortably in two hands. He passed it to Flæd. “It is not very useful here, but I like to keep it nearby.”
    She held the soft edges and spine of the fine little book, worn by much handling. “Did you covet the book for its appearance?” she asked doubtfully.
    “I might well have loved the look of it,” her father said, amused. He took the book from her and opened it on the table between them in the candlelight. Beneath Flæd’s eye spread a little mosaic of red and purple and green and gold. Long-bodied animal shapes wove around the gilt lines of a finely drawn initial capital letter which occupied more than a third of the small page. The faces of the colorfully twisting forms peered out at her—she saw a lion’s heavy jaw, the rolling eye of a goat beneath a delicate forelock and curling horns. The lines of the letter itself formed a conjoined
A
and
E
.
    “It’s an
æsc
,” Flæd said, pronouncing the name like the tree,
ash
, from which they took the strong wood to make spears.
    “Yes, an
æsc
, the first letter the priest would teach me. The first letter of the first poem in this, my first book. And the first letter of my oldest child’s name. The book reminds me how I felt as a boy, how my trickle of interest in a poem could become a flood of learning.” The king looked at his daughter with a smile. “A noble flood, Æthelflæd.”
    Then the king sighed. “But I cannot keep all my precious firsts.” He reached out and took her hand. “Before poetry distracted me, we were speaking of new responsibilities. Edward must return from the woods to his schooling. And you, too, must prepare for a change. Flæd, at the end ofthe summer you will marry Ethelred of Mercia, my friend and ally. Today I have received this acceptance from him.”
    Flæd sat fixed upon her stool as the king took a sheet of parchment from the table and gave it to her. She hardly felt the page as she took it between her fingers. As she stared at it, instead of seeing the words, she only heard the name her father had pronounced, echoing in her head.
Ethelred of Mercia
…a man she had never met. She could put no face to the name. Why now, she wondered dumbly. Why tonight?
    A flurry of thoughts passed through Flæd’s mind. She found herself grasping at moments of the evening she had just spent with Edward, of other evenings, days, and years spent here at the heart of her family’s life together. But she could not keep these scenes in her head—her father’s announcement crowded them aside. Of course she had known that after the passing of another season she would be sixteen, a marriageable age. Still, Flæd had never given serious thought to her own betrothal, and she knew almost nothing about Ethelred the chief aldorman of Mercia except that he was the king’s friend, a man as old as her father.
    Another memory flashed into Flæd’s consciousness. Her grandfather had married his second wife, Judith, daughter of the Prankish king, when she was only thirteen. She had been even younger than Alfred when she became his stepmother, taking the place of the mother who had given Alfred the book of poems. Judith the Frankish princess, marrying the widowed West Saxon king with his six adult children….
    Flæd’s father still held her hand, but she withdrew it now. With unsteady fingers she placed the parchment page on the table between them.
    “Flæd?” Alfred’s gentle tone made her meet his eyes. “I can no longer allow you to go about alone, even within the boundaries of the estate. There are enemies who would injure this alliance by injuring my daughter.”
    Still she said nothing. “You will have a personal guardian,” she heard her father say, “who will always be with you. You may go to the scriptorium or the