"The Wanderer and the Way" by G. M. Baker - a Blog Tour / Book Excerpt Event

BOOK EXCERPT

Theodemir thanked Lubbo and made his way down to the riverbank where a large age-bent white willow trailed it branches over the water. Beneath its low canopy was one of the coolest places on the estate on a warm day, and there he found her, her back leaning against the trunk of the tree while a small child tottered about on unsteady feet, picking up sticks and fallen leaves and starting at them studiously before putting them in its mouth and then throwing them to the ground in annoyance before repeating the process with the next piece of detritus it found. The sight of the child alarmed him. If she was in possession of a child as well as a husband, his God-granted vocation seemed wholly purposeless. But then, he had no notion what he was called to do; only that she was at the heart of it.

As he pushed his way into the coolness beneath the branches, she turned her head looked at him. Her face seemed listless and enervated, though this in no wise deprived it of any part of her loveliness. It occurred to him in that moment that he was perhaps making a fool of himself. She was a beauty, certainly. Everyone he had spoken to that day had remarked on her beauty with enthusiasm. But no woman could be quite as lovely as she seemed in his eyes. No, coming has he had, weary and in pain, to his uncle’s door, she had won his heart – no, say his infatuation – with acts of simple kindness that, combined with an uncommon but human beauty, had made her for a moment seem angelic to him.

“Your pardon for disturbing you, Lady Elswyth,” he said, turning to withdraw and reconsider his wits, his heart, and his vocation.

“I am Agnes,” she said, simply and flatly.

The sound of her voice called him back and he turned to her again. “Lubbo tells me you are also the Lady Elswyth of Northumbria.”

“Not of Northumbria,” she replied, a look of pain coming across her face. “Not of all Northumbria. Just of one small village, a thegn’s estate. I am a lady of Twyford. That is all. Or I was. Not the lady, but the lady’s daughter. I am Agnes now.”

“But Lubbo calls you ‘the Lady Elswyth,’” he said.

“They will not let me be Agnes,” she replied. “They know I am not properly one of them, and so they call me Lady Elswyth. It was the same in …” But here she trailed off sadly and did not name the place in which, if he understood her complaint, the servants had failed to accept her as one of their own but had thrust her upward again when she sought to bow down.

He was too intrigued now to leave her so he went and took a knee before her slumped figure, that they might speak as equals. “Even if you wish to lay down the rank of your birth,” he said, “surely you must bear your husband’s rank. And so I think I must call you Lady Elswyth all the same.”

“I am Agnes,” she said, dully, turning away from him.

“The child is very bonny, lady,” he said. “I see something of your look in him.”

“He’s not mine,” she said.

His heart leapt up.

Her eyes turned to the child for a moment and a fond smile crossed her face. It was a small thing, that smile of affection, but in that moment his vision returned to him again, and with it his vocation and his adoration.

“It is my husband’s child,” she said. “By his concubine.”

This startled Theodemir, for he could not imagine why any man married to a woman such as this would ever wish for a concubine. But he had wit enough to know that he should not say this to her.

“His first?” he asked.

“First child or first concubine?” she asked. “Anyway, he is both.”

She said this all so flatly, without any hint of jealousy or opprobrium, that he wished to ask if pagan ways had become accepted among the Christian people of Northumbria. But it did not seem to him that the question would please her.

“You have no child of your own then, lady?” he asked.

She turned her face to him and looked into his eyes for a moment, then something seemed to go slack in her, much as a warrior who has held a position through a long and weary fight might suddenly conclude that it was untenable to hold it longer, or that the tide of battle had in any case passed it by, making his courage moot, and would suddenly shrug, put up his sword, and walk away.

“I could not have a child of my own,” she said, “I am a virgin.”

He frowned at this, once again fearing that she was making game of him.

“Do you mean,” he asked, “that while Lady Elswyth is a wife, Agnes is a virgin.”

She smiled listlessly. “I am not a madwoman, sir,” she said. “I may give myself two names, but I am of one mind and one flesh. Yes, Agnes is a virgin. And Elswyth is a virgin also.”

“But,” he said gently, not entirely trusting her declaration of sanity. “Lady Elswyth is a wife, and Agnes is a nun.”

“Not quite,” she replied. “Elswyth is not quite a wife, and Agnes is not quite a nun. I am a woman torn in two. I have had two husbands, yet I have never been a wife.”

“Two husbands, and yet a virgin?” he asked. “Lady, I have heard it said that the Anglish people have a great love of riddles, but I had not thought to find one who was a riddle in the flesh.”

“I suppose that is what I am,” she said. “A riddle in the flesh.”