The Fourth Lost Tale of Mercia: Athelward the Historian Page 4

stood on top of his stool now, grabbing Athelward’s shoulder for balance as he reached.

  Before the ealdorman could help it, the quill had been plucked from his grip. Eadric held it then teetered forward, falling off the stool and towards the table.

  “No!” cried Athelward. He watched his bottle of ink tilt sideways, directly over a stack of freshly written pages. A large jolt went through the table as Eadric landed, making the wood shudder, the candles flicker, and the bottle fall.

  As Athelward dove forward to catch it, his heart beat uncontrollably, his blood roared in his ears, and his thoughts raced so fast they made him dizzy. As his fingertips clutched for the slippery clay surface of the container, his mind rushed ahead, watching as the ink spilled out and obscured all of his hard work, all of his carefully navigated streams, drowning everything in a blinding flood like the one God gave Noah, destroying the world so that it could all start anew. He imagined this, and then he realized that he was imagining it, so maybe none of it would happen, and he would stop the ink from spilling in time.

  But by then it was too late.

  The rush of black ink spilled forth, instantly soaking his pages through, and he was too frozen with horror to do anything about it. He heard the little boy’s cries ringing in the air, as if from a distant chamber.

  “Oh no! My lord? My lord!”

  Little Eadric did what he could to belittle the damage of the flood he had unleashed; he grabbed the pages and flung them into the air, away from the spreading black deluge. But it was still too late: all of the pages had been touched. Even if the words were still legible, the beautiful artistry and cleanliness of them had been ruined; they would look like the work of a sorry layman trying to be a scribe, but failing miserably. It would be a confirmation to everyone who had ever doubted him that they were right to do so: that God never wanted an ealdorman to chronicle history, and He especially did not want one to do so in Latin.

  It was like a sign from the Lord that all of Athelward’s hard work was meaningless; that his dedication had been nothing but a conceited fancy. In the end, he was a failure.

  When sensation returned to him, he felt himself trembling from head to foot. He could hardly find the strength to speak. The little boy was cowering before him, eyes filled with tears again, guessing the horribleness of what he had done.

  “Will I … will I still find out what happened at the Battle of Ethandun?”

  “Get out,” rasped Athelward. He took a deep breath, but still he struggled to raise the volume of his voice, which trembled with the exhaustion of utter despair. “Get. Out.”

  Eadric obeyed.

  In the little boy’s absence, the room that had once been his sanctuary felt suddenly like the darkest, loneliest, and emptiest place on earth.