Alvar the Kingmaker (16 page)

The abbot bowed and moved off and the Half-king smiled. “To rest? Or to see where your gold might next be of some use to the abbot? Since I have been living here I have heard many tales of your generosity towards this abbey. Indeed, the only man whom they praise as much as you is Dunstan. If only you and he could have found a way to… Never mind; let me say merely that I might have been too hasty in my condemnation.” He touched Alvar’s arm. “You look full of woe, Lord Alvar. Walk with me in the gardens and tell me your tale. Once, I was a man who could mend many things. Perhaps I still have a small bit of thread to stitch with.”

The Half-king took him through the herb garden by the monks’ kitchens and listened with, “I see,” and, “Yes, I had heard it was so.”

The monks tending the plants remained on their knees and kept their heads down, making no apology for their presence, yet respecting the noblemen’s privacy. The walled garden was small, but as they turned the last corner Alvar said, “And that is my tale; it does not take so long in the telling the second time.”

The Half-king smiled. “I think the tale you have given me might be tamer than the one that others have heard.”

“The thing that irks is that all this was done while I was away doing the king’s business in Northumbria.”

“I do not envy you. And I am glad I came to this place before Oswald turned up at my hall at Ramsey. Tread lightly when you walk near the bishop; I think he is not to be trusted. But as Edgar’s foster-father I had many years to learn how his mind works, and he will use Oswald if he can. Edgar will do whatever he feels he needs to, and make use of whomever he needs to. If a deed is done when your back is turned, it does not mean that Edgar thinks to betray you.”

Alvar gave a wry laugh. He was already familiar with Edgar’s lack of scruples. He pushed open the gate for the Half-king and followed him down the path to the pond.

The older man said, “Edgar grew up with my sons, but he is a stronger man than any of them. Elwood is a bitter man and that is my fault, but Brandon was the ivy to Edgar’s tree, and he was lost when Edgar went to London. If he has wound himself onto Oswald’s robes then it will take a keen blade to loosen him. They grew up with Edgar, but he favours you, and for that you have earned their hatred.” He patted Alvar on the back. “But it is not all grim news. Last week a monk came from Abingdon with words of greeting to me and mine from our old friend Abbot Athelwold.”

As they walked, the Half-king spoke at length, evidently glad for the company, and Alvar wondered how often any of his sons came to visit.

“And he sent me a gift of two books, Hucbald’s
De Harmonica Institutione
and King Alfred’s translation of Pope Gregory’s
Cura Pastoralis
. I knew of Alfred’s work, but not the other. Athelwold is keen that I should learn of this monk who wrote about music, but I confess it is not to my taste.”

“At least Athelwold keeps his head in his books. A holy man’s thoughts should not tilt too much towards earthly things. Dunstan wants to bring the kingdom together as one under God, but the English speak with more than one tongue, and put great faith in the old folk-ways.” Alvar bent to scratch an itch and adjusted his leg-binding, and then stood up and stretched his back. “And as for Oswald, how does it please God to throw those who till the soil off their lands?” He was unaware of his clenched fist until the Half-king laid a hand on his arm.

“Come,” the older man said, “I will show you the bees and the winery, though I think I know which one will better lift your mood.”

Chapter Six AD962

Cheshire 

“You should not even think of stepping out today; it is too cold. On days like this the flocks are in their pens and the shepherds bide in their huts. Learn from them.”

Káta put down the loaf of bread. “Was it Leofsige who told you I was in here?” She turned and leaned her bottom against the cook-house table. “I am not ill; I am with child.”

Helmstan stepped forward and covered her shoulders with his hands. He bent his head so that his gaze could meet hers. “You must take care. After the last time…”

“And you must not worry. The women have told me that all the spewing was a good thing, for it means that the bairn is set fast. I often feel him kicking when I am on my errands…” She clamped her mouth shut, but too late. She looked down at the floor and wriggled away from his grip.

“My love,” he ducked from the herbs hanging from the roof and followed her round the table, “I already knew that you have been out every day in this bad weather.”

Káta looked at Gytha, standing by the wall. The older woman stared at the floor. “Hmm,” Káta said, “I wonder who told you.” She turned back to her husband. “It has not been that bad.”

“No? Let me see…” Helmstan put his finger to his chin in an exaggerated gesture. “The Yuletide snow was still lying thick on the ground at lambing time, and Burgred told me that the lambs born overnight were freezing to death. Now the worry is that the seeds might not grow up through the frozen ground. Yet still you go on your rounds?”

Káta folded her arms. “You are wrong. There have been sunny days.” She cast her mind back. One bright day, she and Gytha had scrambled up the slope past the church but yes, they had been caught in a shower and the ground froze again straight afterwards. The following day brought a cloudless sky, but even in the late afternoon with the sun at their backs, it had shone on blue-white frost which clung to the slopes, and the ground under their feet remained rutted and frozen. February had brought rain, with a wind so strong that it made their eyes water and the paths, saturated by all the sudden water, became all but unusable. She smiled and clapped her hands. “There was one time when I sent Gytha out by herself and it must have been sunny, because I remember that the gate was steaming as the sun dried the rain off the wood and there was a rainbow…” But then the snow had come again. It had begun as a few flurries, but as the day progressed the flakes grew larger, until by noon the fields were devoid of all contours as the flat light reflected off the blanket of snow and levelled the landscape. He was right; it had been a harsh, prolonged winter, but that only meant that there was a greater need to distribute what little food they had.

He folded his arms. “So, if Gytha can be sent alone, then you do not need to go out yourself?”

She opened her mouth and shut it again. He looked so triumphant that it put her in mind of the cats who licked their lips with satisfaction when the dairy maids left the lids off the milk buckets and inadvertently left them a treat to steal. She pointed a finger at him. “Do not smirk. It makes you look old.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth and brushed a kiss across her fingers. “I might be older than you, my love, but I am right. Now, will you heed my words and stay at home?”

“Oh, if it will soothe your mind.” She shrugged off her cloak. “Gytha, come take the bread and fetch the salted meat and cheese. You must take enough for all those who have none left.” She turned to examine her store of dried herbs, ticking them off on her fingers. “Chervil, dill, feverfew, oh and have we peppercorns and garlic?”

Gytha put the last of the bread into the baskets and scanned the table near the door. “Yes, Lady,” she said, and left for the dairy.

Helmstan moved up behind Káta and put his arms around her waist as far as they would reach. He nestled his mouth near her hair and said, “Thank you, my love. I would not rest for worrying about you.”

She turned round and moved in as close as her belly would allow. She reached up to kiss him.

“I spoke only out of love for you.” He patted her stomach. “Both of you.”

With her arms around his neck, she rested her heaviness against his body. He put his hand to her cheek. Someone out in the yard walked across the doorway and as the shadow passed across her face she found herself wondering, as she occasionally did, about the feel on her skin of another, more slender-fingered hand. She kissed Helmstan, hard and quickly. “I have work to do, Husband.” 

It was not until the middle of March that the rains came in earnest to melt the snows, but it remained cold, so that walking became a struggle over slippery ice. Káta, already confined within the boundary fence of the manor, was forced to stay indoors for a week, waiting for the thaw proper. She watched Gytha go out and welcomed her back as she stamped the slush off her shoes.

“Gytha, I have been penned in for seven days. I need to walk; I cannot say why, but I know I must not keep still today.”

Gytha nodded. “Some say it is like this when the bairn is ready to come. Where is Lord Helmstan?”

Káta stopped pacing. “He is with the shoe-smith in the horse stalls. I do not want him to think that I have gone against his wishes but…”

“Come then, Lady. It is not so bad; the sne, sorry,
snow
, has nearly melted away. And young Haward is sick again. Maybe you can make him feel better?”

Káta stepped outside and stood in front of the doorway. She lifted her cheeks and breathed in the sweet, odourless air until her nostrils tingled from the cold and she was forced to breathe through her mouth. “I feel a little better now.”

But she found little springtime cheer. Three lambs, born overnight, lay dead in the fields, and on the path in front of the woods a chaffinch was pecking at a lump on the ground. When they got closer, it flew away. Káta put her hands up and sucked in a breath. “Oh, Gytha, it was eating another of its own kind.”

Gytha shrugged. “It has been cold. It is not only the folk who feel it.”

Káta blew on her hands. “It was sad to see his passing, but I thank God that we buried only old Seaxferth last month and none of the children. I see they have been busy, though, for all that they are near starving.” In the far end of Burgred’s field, the youngsters’ snow sculptures were standing, still upright, but less defined. On the ground the remains of the decoration, sticks for limbs and an old cap, were lying where they had fallen after the thaw released them from the statues. Káta clapped her hands. “These are wonderful. Did you give them that?”

Gytha giggled, picked up the cap and stuffed it into her basket. “Yes, Lady, I helped to build them.” She stopped laughing when her mistress gasped. “You should not bend over like that, Lady; what are you doing? Oh, I see. Is it broken?”

Káta’s brooch had fallen onto the path, and now she rubbed the mud from it and turned it over to examine the clasp. “No, I think not. Bad enough that it should unfasten, but worse yet that I then trod on it.” She inhaled sharply. “Oh, now I have pricked my finger.”

Gytha pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. “Or is it elf-shot, Lady?”

Káta squeezed the blood and sucked her finger. “What? Oh Gytha, you must not tease. Young Haward was earnest in his belief that the elves had pricked him with their little arrows.”

“So will you leave meat on Elfshill as payment for them to take away his aches?”

Káta smiled. “No. Why would the elves have any reason to be wroth with one as small as Haward? The brew I gave him should be enough to ease his bellyache.”

Gytha counted them off on her fingers and grimaced. “Wormwood, henbane, bishop’s wort; a good thing you put fennel in to make it sweeter. I think I would retch on it.”

Káta gave the smile that Gytha was expecting, but she continued to rub at the scratches on the brooch, visible now that the mud had been cleaned. It could have been worse; the ground was slushy enough to swallow it forever. A gift from Helmstan, brought back from a recent visit to London, it was the only one she had which was made in such a way. She stroked the enamel. “I will see if Grim can shine it for me. We could go past the smithy on our way home. I… Oh.”

“Lady?”

Káta stared at the ground, where a small patch of snow was dissolving in the warm liquid trickling down her legs. “Gytha, should there be blood in the waters?”

Gytha put down her basket and linked her arm through Káta’s. She steered her back along the path to Ashleigh. As Káta stepped through the gateway into the yard her womb tightened and she gasped and put a hand to her belly. Gytha put her free arm around her lady’s back and guided her towards the hall. She shouted to Siflæd in the bake-house. “Siflæd, look lively. Lady Káta needs our help.”

London 

The last time Alfreda had packed her chests for travelling was when she left her father’s estates in Devon to journey to East Anglia, a bride at sixteen. Since then, she had been no further than the various houses of her husband and his kin, the most frequent of the visits being to Huntingdon, Ipswich, and Bedford. It was her husband who told her that she may accompany him, but surely the trip to London was a gift from God. And as she had whirled about her bower, selecting clothes suitable for appearances at the king’s court, she knew that God gave naught for free, and her giddy thrill was sobered by the knowledge that her sons must remain at home with their nurse.

The separation had been fretful, but the mounting sensation of freedom had increased with every mile of the journey as they left behind the dank wet swamps of the fenland and progressed into the land of the old East Saxons and finally to London. The big skies of the flatlands shrank behind the buildings of the town, but Alfreda had never felt so unfettered.

But it was her first and last glimpse of cosmopolitan life. For five weeks she had been cooped in the house that her husband used when in London, a grand building with a whole upper floor, to which he returned at the end of the day’s business, and from which he left her every morning. And here, as elsewhere, she learned to turn a haughty cheek from the stares of pity from the household servants who learned very quickly the nature of the lord’s temper. With no estate lands to wander and no weaving sheds to offer occupation and distraction, she had nothing to do but sew. Now, the incarceration was all the more bitter, for Elwood had fallen prey to the plague which, she was told by a lucky serving-girl who was allowed outside, was sweeping through London faster than a Viking fleet could sail up the Thames. Instead of spending the day alone with her thoughts and nursing her bruises, she was forced to minister to her abuser, who, whilst he could no longer use his strength against her, was still a challenging patient. In his lucid moments he threw plenty of insults and when gripped by the fever, he gave her no choice but to stay by his side, pressing cool cloths to his head and stripping or covering him, depending on whether he was sweating or shivering. In rare moments of quiet, she would apologise to God for wishing herself ill, that she might die and make her escape to a better place.