Alvar the Kingmaker (18 page)

Swytha tried again. “The child Edward has wind griping in his belly. I told Lady Wulfreda that she should put him high on her shoulder to bring it forth, but she will not heed me and sticks to rubbing his belly with her hand. Which do you think is best?”

Alfreda looked round the little group and smiled. “My firstborn was trouble-free. He was never full of wind and slept long hours. Oh, but with my next…”

Alvar was content to listen to the mellow voice whatever the topic of conversation, but even as an uncouth man, he detected the change in the tenor of that voice when she began to speak of her children. Swytha was smiling, evidently relieved to have hit upon a subject which drew the widow to speak out, and the two women continued to exchange stories of child-rearing.

One of the king’s thegns came to stand next to their bench. “Alvar, Brock, Abbot, it is good to see you. Lady Alfreda, the king asks that he might renew your friendship.” He held out his hand and she stood up.

The thegn led her to the dais and Alvar watched them go.

Brock nudged Alvar. “Your mouth is hanging open, Brother.”

Alvar turned to his brother and grinned. “Well, it is not often I lay eyes on one who is so…” He glanced up at the group on the dais. “Ah, but look up there. What heartbreak does that foretell; Edgar’s eyes open with lust, and Wulfreda’s narrowed with sourness?” He shook his head. Perhaps Elwood had been right to keep his wife away from Edgar.

Abbot Athelwold said, “It is a shame that young Edgar has not learned to quench his fires with worship, or if not that, then a grope of a seamstress or some such. Lady Alfreda has had a hard life thus far, and she might not have the necessary strength to become one of the king’s playthings.”

Alvar raised an eyebrow. “How is that so?”

His brother said, “You spoke once of how Elwood never brought her to the king’s house. Yes, Edgar lusted after her, but the truth is more that Elwood did not want the world to see his fist marks on her cheeks and eyes.”

“Truly? How could any man…”

“I am sad to say that it is true,” the abbot said. “Even as a child, Elwood had a temper, but his fear of his father meant that he kept it fettered. After the Half-king went to Glastonbury it was not the same tale, but one of strong drink not held well.”

Alvar said, “So that is why he would not drink in the mead-hall. He feared that he would lose his grip on his wrath in front of witnesses?”

Athelwold nodded. “She has two little boys but I hardly need say that her sons were not begotten through love.” He looked again at the dais. “It is no small thing to be loved by a king. Stronger women than she have been broken by it.” He sighed. Wulfreda was continuing to serve Edgar his drinks but her smile was painted and her eyes were dull as she followed the king’s gaze to the end of the table, where the young widow sat with her chin up, eyes focused on some distant point at the far end of the hall.

Swytha said, “She has her nose in the air. I hope that it is only to mask her shyness and hide her suffering, and not because she believes herself better than the rest of us.”

The piper dropped his flute and it rolled along the floor, coming to rest by their feet. He scrabbled after it and said, “I am sorry, my lords, it is not the beckoning to the board that you are wont to hear, but I hope it will do.” He snatched up his instrument and returned to the other musicians in the corner behind the king’s table. The song of the harp, whistle, and pipe rose with the smoke to the high ceiling and the glee-men turned somersaults and took up their positions in front of the dais.

Alvar said, “They make me giddy. And I have lost my will to eat. I will come back later, to help you wipe pig grease from your fat chin.”

He ducked a playful punch and wandered to the far end of the hall, where the grey-bearded lord of Chester was nursing a cup of ale and looked content to sleep in his seat.

Chester opened one eye as Alvar approached. “Well youngling, I thought you were keeping away from your fellow northerners tonight?”

Alvar laughed and clutched a make-believe chest wound. “Stinging words, from one so dear to me. But you forget that I hold lands in the south, too.”

The Greybeard grinned. “I, forget? How can I, when you tell me every time I see you?” He sat up and shuffled along the bench. “Sit. I would hear your thoughts on the new earl.”

Alvar grunted. “He is a mouse where his brother was a fox, and he has lived his life in the shadow of the barn while his brother was in the hen-house. You know it and the others in the witan know it. But he has land and he has Oswald…” He held his hands out, as if the point were well enough made. “Now, I wish to speak instead of a man who roars like a boar and is never frightened to say what he thinks. Where is your thegn, my old friend Helmstan?”

“I told him not to ride all this way, but to bide at home. He is now a father, for his wife bore a child not long back. He told me a dreadful tale of how she fell into a swoon from which she would not wake and the child was weakened, for her womb had… My lord, where are you going?”

The girl had a name, but he had not asked to hear it. She had stilled her tongue, crying out but twice, the second time when he dropped the silver pennies in her lap afterwards. He dozed on the hay, with no desire other than to listen to the snorts of the horses, but she stroked his chest and moved her hands lower.

“I can feel that the night is not yet fully over, my lord. Shall I slide under you again, if you have nowhere else that you need to be?”

He reached to move her hand away. “Where is it that you think I should be? Wooing a high-born lady to earn her love? Begetting some high-born sons to leave my lands to?”

“I am sorry, my lord. I did not mean to make you wroth.” She sat up and straightened her clothes.

“No, bide where you are, for then I can bring you no nearer to the ground.” He pulled her back down and rolled towards her. “God curse that wizened old Dane, for he is right. This is where I belong.”

Chapter Seven AD963

South Yorkshire

With little wind to carry the rain clouds forward, it was easy enough to outrun them, and in moments the group was riding on firmer ground, and the men had the warmth of the early summer sunshine once more on their backs. On either side of the lane the hawthorn blossom showed the way, flanking the road with pillows of delicate white. Even though there was always a warm welcome waiting for him in Yorkshire, Alvar was glad to be travelling south where, usually, the weather was better and the air less damp. On this occasion, his leaving had been made easier, because he had not ridden away alone.

He turned and smiled at his friend Beorn riding alongside him, ahead of their small company made up of men from both Mercia and Northumbria. “We should reach Dinnington soon. I rested here last year on my way south; Thegn Brihtric is a good man and a better host. We will be made to feel welcome.”

Beorn nodded, but his smile faded. He rubbed his smooth head. “It is not the welcome of the thegns hereabouts that worries me.” His voice, deep and doleful at the best of times, rang unusually morose as he spoke the last two words.

Alvar leaned over as if to land a playful punch on his friend’s arm. “Not this again. I have told you; Edgar is keen to meet you and to show you how grateful he is for the loyalty that you and yours have shown since he became king.” He could see from Beorn’s expression that he remained unconvinced. “You will believe me when you read the new law which is even now being drafted.” Alvar was no scholar, nor an expert in legal matters, having come but lately to the world of politics. But even he couldn’t fail to notice the difference between the old laws of  the famous King Athelstan, who spent his whole reign fighting and whose charters were full of threats and curses, and Edgar’s, which were written in the same tone as his speech, assured, confident. There was no pleading or coercing, merely the recognition of existing ways and customs, and a granting of rights and privileges commensurate with the support and loyalty which had already been forthcoming. “So it is that we are riding through the Danelaw. He will not alter the name, or the laws by which the folk here abide.”

They slowed their pace to pass through a cluster of homesteads huddling beside a small chapel. It was an old building with timbers faded and weathered, and the roof was in need of new thatch. The parish priest was sitting on the grass outside the church doorway, with a small child perched on his lap. Reaching round the child’s tiny form, he was whittling a wooden flute. Occasionally the child would reach out and touch the instrument and the priest took care to lift his knife well away from the tiny chubby fingers. Alvar said, “There is yet another thing that should be left well alone.”

Beorn raised an eyebrow in enquiry.

“The Church might well be a rotting body, but it is the head and not the feet which needs lopping off.” He chewed the inside of his lip. The dispossession of canons continued, the jurisdiction of the earls was gradually being eroded, and now a tithe tax had been introduced. Devotion to God and the rule of St Benedict was no doubt laudable, but the reforms seemed to overlook one fundamental role of the Church. Away from the cathedrals and monasteries, tending the flock was the most important function of the clergy, and the parish priests were doing a fine job. “Why sharpen a blade that is already keen?”

“Ah, you mean Oswald and the reformers. There is no such nonsense going on in the north, thank God. Tell me again why it is a good idea for me to come south?”

Alvar chuckled. “There are other newcomers apart from Oswald who are more pleasing to the eye.”

“Oh yes? Is this why my sister looked elsewhere for a husband?”

“Hah! She would never have wed me, knowing as she does that she is far too good a woman for me.” Even so, he was not about to insult Beorn by telling him any more about the beautiful widow from East Anglia, who had the delicious habit of tilting her head down before she looked up at a man through the darkest eyes, and stopped just short of giving him a full smile, so that the tiniest suggestion of amusement or even pleasure hovered as a hint around her carmine lips.

“Shall we turn west and go by way of Cheshire?”

He was shaken from his reverie as abruptly as when the cockerel shouted him from his slumber. “What? No, there is naught to be gained from going that way. We will keep to this road. South of Dinnington we will go west, into the Corringham wapentake, cross the river at East Ferry and then on to Lincoln. From there we have a straight ride down the old Ermine Street to London.” Why had he been so quick to demur? And why was the notion of going to Cheshire the more repugnant for having broken into his thoughts about Alfreda? He fixed his gaze on the road ahead and contrived to turn his mind to more mundane matters.

They passed from the cleared land of the hamlet and lost the light of the sun when the path took them towards a wood, where the trees on the approach were taller and more closely spaced. Further into the wood, the temperature dropped. The path became less easy to follow and Alvar tried to remember from his last journey south roughly how long it would be before they emerged into the bright heat of the day once more. The track narrowed still further and the riders had no choice but to go forward in a single column. Alvar began to feel a sense of unease which had not troubled him when he first came this way. He leaned out first left and then right from his saddle, listening.

Behind him, Beorn said, “What is it?”

Alvar shook his head. “Naught. I thought that maybe…”

The distinctive song of the spear ended with a dull thud as the point penetrated a tree trunk six feet in front and to the right of him. On or off the battlefield, in or out of the shield wall, the spear throw always meant the same thing:
the fight is on
.
Alvar leaped from the saddle, pulling his spear from its bindings and ducking down by the horse’s flank. Crouching, he reached up with his free hand, twisted his shield from its resting place on the back of his shoulder, and brought it to a defensive position in front of his body. He craned his neck to see if Beorn and the others in their group were similarly prepared. Beorn had mirrored his every move and remained in a squat, his long legs folded beneath him, shield and spear ready.

While they waited for their assailants to show themselves, Alvar wondered what nature of foe they were about to face. Who could have known that he and Beorn were headed this way? Although they were obviously a party of lords and their retainers, they were nevertheless but a small band, with no baggage carts or visible sign of wealth, other than their personal gear. Had they been incorrectly targeted, either by English warring locally with Danes, or vice versa? A cry went up and a ball of sound rolled out from the trees, containing the scuffle of men’s boots, the rustle of leaves, shouts of aggression, the clatter of spears, and axes thumping onto shields. Alvar slapped his stallion on the rump, sending the beast running further along the path; he would round him up later. If, indeed, ‘later’ came.

Beorn and the next handful of men behind him all followed suit, and they moved close to Alvar to form an impromptu shield wall. A baby-blond-haired man with ragged clothes and a battered shield ran towards him and Alvar held his spear up. He used gravity to bring the spear point to his opponent’s face, taking a step forward as he thrust, and he felt from the flexible yet unyielding wall that Beorn was doing the same. Alvar’s spear ripped through the flesh of the blond’s cheek, slicing down and embedding into his shoulder. Alvar tugged hard to release the weapon and the baby-haired man fell back. Another, shorter, darker man took his place but Alvar could see in his peripheral vision that the line of attackers was, at any time, only one or two deep. They were not outnumbered and although they had been caught by surprise, this would be as fair a fight as any.