Alvar the Kingmaker (24 page)

When he reviewed their conversation that morning, it was a condensed version. Two comments, which he knew had originally been separated by time and context, now sat together in his memory and would not shift.

‘It must be hard to love a woman who is wed to another. Harder still, when they are not from the same rank.’

‘It is I who envies you and Helmstan, but you know this.’

Káta walked back to her seat, the recalcitrant Siferth waving his arms and legs about, deploying the only defence available to a small child being lifted from the ground. She looked at the group on the dais once more and when she smiled, her blue eyes flashed like a glint of sunlight upon the water. When her smile was directed at him, Alvar felt the hot light as if a candle shone upon his face, but found that when she turned away, she took the flame with her and he was thrust back into the cool of the shadow. Down by the river, though, her smiles had been for him…

“My lord?”

“Hmm?”

Helmstan grinned. “I must thank you again for this heriot. I am proud to hold this smooth new helm, and this linden shield with not a dimple on it.” He paused. “My lord, nay, friend, is something worrying you? Your thoughts seem to be in a place far from this hall.”

Helmstan was wrong. Alvar’s thoughts were very much in the hall, although they might as well be flying around outside, for they were un-catchable, nonsensical. But, whatever rope of sense these twisted threads of ideas eventually made, one thing was certain; there was naught to be done. Whatever his destination, all paths were blocked with tree-falls. “Naught is wrong, my friend. All is as it should be.”

Helmstan waved at Káta as they moved across the crowded hall. He said, “My lord, after all these years of friendship, it means a great deal to me to swear as your thegn. I loved the Greybeard well, but you know, I hope, that you will always find me at your side, ready to do your bidding. Ask me aught or ask me naught, I will…”

Alvar fiddled with his arm ring. “I thank you for your words, but there is no need.”

“But I want to have it said. I know that you will look after these folk well, and that you and I will stand by each other through thick and through thin…”

“Enough, man.” Alvar ran a finger around his neckline to loosen his tunic. Either he was getting fat like his brother, or the room was too airless. He stared around the room and his gaze alighted on a small figure, hunched in a chair near the door. “Ah, there is the Greybeard’s widow; I should speak with her on this day.”

He walked away with only as much haste as was seemly, pausing on the way to receive words of congratulations from thegns already bound to him, and those who had knelt before him that day.

Brihtmær, a thegn of Chester, slapped him on the back and said, “Well, my lord, Mercia is yours. What else can you yet wish for?”

Alvar managed a grin. “I crave only to walk through this green field of life without stepping in any cow shit, though I fear it is not a wish that God will grant me. Come, let us find a drink.”

Chapter Ten AD966

Cheshire 

In the brew-house, Káta was checking the progress of the latest batch of ale. “With Helmstan away, we will need no wine from Chester and can make do with our own ale for a few weeks,” she said.

Young Haward ran in, flushed and panting. “Lady, my mother sent me to ask for some newly churned butter. My sister’s fever has cooled and she would like a little to eat.”

“Run and find Siflæd in the churning room. Take what you need of the newest butter, and tell your mother to give your sister some barley bread, too. It will help to rebuild her strength.”

From the brew-house Káta made her way down to the river and called on Wyne the miller to enquire about grain stores.

“Some of the older bags were worm-riddled, my lady, but we have enough to see us to next harvest. I must warn you though that it might not grind too well.”

“Lord Helmstan is away so we do not need it ground so finely. Sift and sieve, and we will make the best of what we have. But tell me if you find any more weevils. Once the crop barns are empty we must see to it that they are clean for when the sheaves come in.”

Beyond the mill, Burgred the herdsman’s youngest daughters were standing in the river while they washed their clothes, and Káta dropped down beside them on the bank to help.

The elder of the two, Wulfflæd, said, “We have been laughing about old mother Leofwaru. She has lost her wits altogether now, my lady.”

Edith, the youngest, said, “She upped and kissed the priest, full on the mouth; said he was her long-dead husband.” She giggled again as she splashed the kirtle back into the water.

Káta wrung out an undershirt and left it on the stones by the water’s edge. “I wish I could stay longer, for it is good to be outside with friends, but…” She hauled herself up the bank and walked with heavy feet through the fields to the hall.

“Gytha? Gytha? Where is she… Oh there you are. We will go to Oakhurst tomorrow. Hild’s bairn is due soon and it is a while since I have called on old Goda.”

“He cannot see you; why worry?”

“That is not kind,” Káta said. “When I have spoken to Leofsige about our food, I will do my sewing, and then we must set to on that loom.” As she walked out of the room she said without turning, “And do not wrinkle your brow; you know it has to be done.”

In the morning, they took the path through the woods to Oakhurst. At the edge of the village they stood aside for the slaughter-man, who was moving on from the hillside settlement, having butchered their animals for them and been paid with a few cuts of meat which he could then sell on. They held their noses and made faces until his wagon of carcasses was out of smelling range.

In Oakhurst the villagers waved and shouted their greetings. Among the cluster of small dwelling houses, women were grinding corn in the sunshine that penetrated the clearing while their children played beside them, skilled in the art of avoiding the quern stones. Old blind Goda, propped up against a wooden sheep pen, was talking to the youngsters and directing them in their game as if he could see what they were doing. An older woman, her sleeves pushed up, prodded a tub full of woollen cloth with a wooden pole and stirred to ensure that the red dye from the madder root took hold. “It is hard going this time, my lady.”

Gytha stepped forward and peered at the mixture. “When I lived in Northampton, we used stems of ladies’ bed-straw to turn the cloth red. It takes well, and if you use it there is no need for the first salt-boil.”

Káta said, “Or we can buy some more madder root from Chester. The best comes from over the sea and seems to work better. Let me know if you want me to get you some.”

Hild came from behind one of the buildings. She walked with the side-to-side gait that came with the last stage of pregnancy and leaned heavily on the ever-present blackthorn stick. “As you can see my lady, this bairn is in no mood to be born yet awhile,” she said.

Káta said, “You must be weary. I know you were hoping to have it weaned before harvest.”

Hild shrugged. “It would not be the first time that I have brought a bairn to the fields with me.” She lowered her voice. “It should be here by week’s end, and yet it does not kick as much of late.”

Káta exchanged glances with Gytha. “What you need is red-berry leaves, boiled up in water,” she said. “I have some dried among my healing leaves; I will bring them next time and help you make the drink, then I will stay with you all day to help you.”

“All day?”

One of the other women looked up and sat back from the quern stone. “I think our lady is like us, and needs to keep busier than ever when her man is away.”

The midwives and the other women stared at Káta, dread blanching their faces. “My lady, what have you done?”

Káta looked at each of them in turn. “We have all prayed to Christ, and left gifts for the goddess Freyja too. It is nearly three weeks over the time and the bairn is not moving as it should. We all know this is not good. This was all I could think of to do.”

She had not told them where she was going, but when she came back from the heart of the forest with the hagtesse they had hissed at her and crossed themselves.

“I know that she stinks. I know that she looks like she lives in a hedge. I know, too, that every one of you thinks that she is a witch. But how can any of us know what it means to live on your own, with no kin or neighbours nearby? Who among us would wish to live beyond the warmth of the hall-hearth? We need someone who is skilled at helping with childbearing and…” She looked at their anxious faces. Adherence in the villages to the folk-ways was not as fixed as the fear of pure evil. They had every right to defy her; they could report her to the priest, or to the reeve.

The women looked at each other, and when a low moan inside the house rose to a wrenching scream, they looked back to Káta. Mawa, the eldest, stepped forward and took Káta’s hand. “You speak the truth, Lady. The folk-ways are older than any of us here standing and we need this woman’s help. We only wish that we were as fearless as you are. We cannot know what the priest will do…”

“I will go to mass with no guilt in my heart. I brought this woman here for the sake of Hild. I do what I need to do for my folk; all the gods that ever were should know this.” Káta took a deep breath. “On my soul be it, then.” She stepped back into Hild’s house.

The old woman was standing with her arms folded and her chin up, but with her gaze turned towards the sick woman, who no longer squirmed, but lay still, moaning weakly.

Káta said, “Do what you must.”

Káta waited for the priest outside his church. She stood under the ancient yew that must have been a sapling before the Christians ever built their church on the holy land, and she thought wearily about the day’s events. After all her travails, Hild had been delivered of a dead baby, and soon there would be a fresh mound of earth in the churchyard close by the walls of the church. The old woman had said her spells, and worked to stave off the infection which threatened to send the mother the same way as the child. The hagtesse had told the women that she could do no more; that the Wyrd sisters, or the Norns as Káta’s mother would have known them, would weave the fate as they willed.

The sinking sun cast long shadows across the churchyard. One of them moved; the priest was behind her. Unable to meet his gaze, she said, “Hild has borne a dead bairn.” She sighed, but it became a shudder as she struggled to keep the sob from her throat. “She might soon follow the child into the next world. Please do what you can for her and her child.” She looked up at him, waiting for his response.

The priest expressed no surprise. Death, particularly that of a newborn or its mother, was no rarity, but nevertheless he frowned. She had expected him to. The babe had not drawn a single breath, and thus had died without being baptised. Priest Wulfsige was a good man, always driven by vocation to provide succour to his parishioners. But he was not a brave man. She was confident that he would agree to bury the infant in the small reserved area under the eaves of the church, but with every such request Wulfsige grew more reluctant, aware that he was breaking the law. She reached out and pressed her hand on his arm. She could feel him shaking. “Hild might not live. It would comfort her greatly if she could go to God with the knowledge that her bairn lies in the eaves-drip.”

Priest Wulfsige chewed his lip, plainly struggling to reconcile his duty with his conscience. “Do you really believe it?”

It did not matter what she believed. It was the way things had always been done. In the end, despite their prayers and best efforts, God had chosen to take the babe. None of them wanted to think of that small soul in purgatory, so why not give it the chance to be washed with drops of water from the church roof? It might just serve as enough of a baptism to send the child to God. She said, “What harm can it do?”

Wulfsige gave a little whimper of a laugh. “You have not met the bishop of Lichfield, my lady. The laws are clear…”

She released his arm. “Please,” she said, “Hild needs you.” She left him to gather what he needed, confident that he would find the courage to minister where it was most needed. She stepped from the churchyard out onto the lane that would take her back to Ashleigh. Any hand-wringing over the day’s events would have to wait; the hagtesse would be safer if she had an escort back to her home in the forest, Hild’s children would need food, and it was Káta’s duty to oversee the arrangements.

Gloucestershire

“I never thought so see you attending so many hundred-moots, my lord. Not when you have the right to send others in your stead.”

Alvar glanced at Thegn Wulfgar’s twisted profile, and stared out ahead. “I must watch the bishop, or let him be a wolf in the fold. The man sticks to me closer than my own shadow.” Not for the first time, he recalled Edgar’s words. ‘
Dunstan is my confessor…
I cannot call off his hound.’

“It must be goading to you, my lord.”

Alvar grunted. “And you, too, I should have thought.” Wulfgar’s cheerfulness was so ingrained that he seemed able to forget that Oswald was a thorn in his own side, too. Wulfgar’s folk were descended from an ancient tribe, older than the Mercians, and possessed of the independent sense of identity so hated by the bishop.