The Edge of Light (17 page)

“My lord,” she said in her high clear voice as he came to a halt on the ground before her and looked up to where she stood above him on the steps. “You are most welcome. Will you be pleased to come in and partake of some refreshment?”

“Thank you.” His mouth was very dry. “It is good to see you, Roswitha,” he said, and let her lead him inside the familiar hall.

Roswitha tried very hard not to show her triumph as she took him into the small hall of her home and sent for ale and bread and cheese. She sat beside him on the bench as he was served and, choosing a safe topic, asked him about his dogs. She did not listen to his reply, however; instead she was remembering that time two years before when Alfred had come to Millbrook for the first time.

She had seen him first at Southampton manor, at a lawday he had held for his brother. She had presented a case having to do with her rights to firewood in the king’s forest. He had heard the case, and ruled in her favor, and after, in the courtyard, he had sought her out. The next day he had come to Millbrook.

She sat now at her carved wooden table and watched his long ringed fingers wielding his knife, and remembered.

It had been she who had had to make the first move. He was younger than she, by nearly four years, and inexperienced. He had known, however, what he wanted; and when she had laid her hands upon his shoulders and tilted up her face, he had put his mouth on hers, hard, and drawn her close.

He had held to her alone for two long years, and she had even begun to hope that one day he might marry her. Then, last winter, he had come home from Tamworth promised to marry the daughter of a Mercian ealdorman.

Roswitha had been crushed, though she had striven not to show it. If only she had been able to give him a child! But she had miscarried twice, and though he had been all care and concern for her, she knew now that the miscarriages were what had sounded the death knell of her hopes. No great lord, let alone a prince, would marry a woman who could not bear.

His betrothal had been a bitter blow, but she had held her tongue. She had known then that she would have to settle for the part of his life that he could give her, and she had schooled herself to accept that. He had been engrossed all winter with the coming confrontation with the Danes, and in the time they had been together she had never once brought up the future. As long as he seemed to assume that she would always be there, she would assume so too. She could make herself accept his marriage. What she could not accept, would never accept, was that she had lost him.

She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman; she knew that. Her birth had not been as good as the simple thane’s who had married her, yet he had been glad to do so. She could marry again if she wished; there were men enough of her own order who would take her, and her golden hair, and her ripe warm body, and her five hides of land, and count themselves lucky. But she did not want those men. She wanted Alfred.

He put down his knife, giving up any pretense of eating. “Alfred,” she said softly, and leaned nearer. “I have missed you.”

A muscle jumped in his cheek.

What was wrong? she thought. He was so tense. She could see the tendons standing stark in his wrist.

A horrible thought smote her. He was not going to tell her farewell?

No!
she thought in panic. She stared at him, at the tawny gold long hair, at the chiseled, almost delicate lines of his profile. He looked so remote … then he turned to look at her and she saw his eyes. They were fire-gold with an emotion she recognized very well, and the panic in her heart subsided.

It was going to be all right.

“We should not see each other like this, Roswitha,” he was saying, in direct contradiction to the message she read in his eyes. “Not now that I am wedded.”

So that was it. She ran her tongue around her lips and saw how his eyes watched. She smiled and reached up to untie the headband from around his forehead. “What is between you and me is between you and me,” she said softly. “It cannot hurt anyone else.”

Still he sat, his eyes going from her mouth to her soft white throat, but his body still held aloof. She put the headband down on the table. “Alfred,” she said, and pulling off the net that confined her own luxuriant hair, she laid it next to the headband. “My dearest.”

He was staring now at the fine golden net that lay before him. Roswitha picked up one of the thin strong hands that lay so near the net and placed it on her breast.

It closed instantly, in a caress. She heard the sudden sharp intake of his breath.

“Roswitha.” She saw his lips move, though no sound came forth. She leaned toward him, still holding his hand to her breast, and then, finally, his mouth was coming down on hers.

Thank God,
she thought, felt the intense pleasure of his mouth, of his hand on her breast, and then all thinking stopped.

Alfred remained at Southampton for a month, leaving only when word came from Ethelred that the king was back in Wessex. Alfred went to meet him at Winchester.

“The geld is paid and the Danes are bound once more for York,” Ethelred told his brother as the two men talked together in the privacy of the king’s sleeping chamber shortly after Alfred’s arrival in Winchester.

“With shiploads of Mercian geld.” Alfred did not seek to hide the bitterness in his voice.

Ethelred agreed firmly, “With shiploads of Mercian geld.”

Alfred’s fingers played nervously with the cup of ale he was holding. “The Danes did no destruction?” he asked after a minute.

“No. They held to their word.” Ethelred’s hands were quiet and relaxed on the arms of his chair.

“For now,” said Alfred.

Ethelred replied, still in the same firm tone of voice he had used earlier, “Perhaps they will be content with what they have won thus far. It is not inconsiderable, Alfred: all of Northumbria, as well as a goodly amount of Mercian geld.”

“And all won so easily,” Alfred pointed out. “If I were Ivar the Boneless, I should be inclined to see if the other Saxon kingdoms would pay as handsomely for peace as Mercia has done.”

“Perhaps it was worth it to pay,” Ethelred said. “Perhaps Northumbria wishes now that it had paid rather than fought. Certainly Mercia is in better condition than Northumbria. It is still an independent kingdom … no monasteries have been burned …” But the resolute firmness of the king’s voice was beginning to waver. Alfred had not spoken, but Ethelred suddenly found it impossible to meet the look in his brother’s eyes. He stared at Alfred’s ale cup and said, “You do not agree, I see.”

“No.” The crisp voice offered no compromise. “I agree that the Danes will gladly take our geld to cry a peace. But what happens, Ethelred, when they come back the next time? What happens when there is no more geld in the kingdom with which to pay them?”

Ethelred said stubbornly, “Perhaps then they will go away.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. “Perhaps,” Alfred replied at last. The door opened and Ethelred’s wife, Cyneburg, came into the room, her infant son in her arms. She smiled when she saw Alfred, and he went immediately to give her the kiss of peace.

“A handsome boy,” he said, admiring his small nephew cradled in Cyneburg’s embrace.

“He is a good baby,” Cyneburg said placidly. On the instant, as if to prove her false, the infant began to cry. Cyneburg laughed, shifted him to her shoulder, and began to pat his back. “But where is Elswyth?” she asked Alfred. “I am longing to meet your wife, Alfred. It was a great disappointment to me that I was unable to attend your wedding.”

“She is at Lambourn,” Alfred answered readily.

“She will be missing you.” The baby had stopped crying, but Cyneburg continued gently to rub the tiny back with one hand while she supported the insecure head with the other.

“I doubt it.” Alfred’s face was perfectly serene. “I am sure she is quite happy having Lambourn to herself.”

Cyneburg’s high-arched brows rose even higher and she looked to Ethelred. Her husband’s brown eyes met hers and, very faintly, he shrugged.

The baby began to cry again.

“He’s hungry,” Cyneburg said,

Alfred moved toward the door. “I shall get out of here, then, so you can feed him.”

His hand was on the door latch when Cyneburg said, smilingly, “Perhaps one day soon you will have a son of your own, my brother.”

With his hand still on the latch, Alfred turned to look at her. “Not for a while, I fear. Elswyth is still but a child herself.”

Cyneburg assumed an expression of great surprise. “I did not realize … I understood she was fifteen.”

“No, she is but fourteen.”

“Fourteen when you became betrothed,” Cyneburg said gently. “When is her birthday?”

He was standing with perfect courtesy, waiting for her to release him. “I am not certain. Sometime in November, I think.”

“Well, then,” said Cyneburg with a teasing smile, “I am not so far wrong, Alfred. November is but one week away.”

She saw his eyes widen in surprise. “So it is,” he said then, slowly.

“You must bring her to meet me.” And Cyneburg turned to carry the baby to a chair. Released from her attention, Alfred murmured a polite response, pushed open the door, and went out into the hall.

Cyneburg and Ethelred looked at each other. “I hear he has been one month at Southampton,” she said.

Ethelred sighed. “You learn things more quickly than I, Cyneburg.”

She sat in the chair and began to unfasten her gown. “What is the matter with this girl he has married?” she asked. “I was certain he must love her. He took her so quickly, and he had been so adamant in refusing all the girls you and I proposed for him.”

“I don’t know what his feelings are,” Ethelred replied. Then: “Elswyth is certainly … unusual.” He began to rub his right eyebrow with his finger. “She has little in the way of courtly manners, Cyneburg. In truth, she is a wild thing, wearing boy’s clothes and riding out to hunt with the men. I cannot imagine what ever induced Alfred to offer for her. Were it any other man, I should say he was swayed by her family’s name and connections; but not Alfred.”

“No, not Alfred,” Cyneburg agreed.

“I have always thought he would seek to marry a woman like Judith of France,” Ethelred confided. “He admired Judith enormously. They still correspond with each other.”

“This Elswyth is not like Judith?”

“Not at all.” Ethelred was quite positive. “Judith was very beautiful, but it was more than just physical beauty. There was a serenity about Judith. A woman like that would be good for Alfred. I always thought he realized that himself.”

The baby was now nursing vigorously. “Elswyth is not beautiful?” Cyneburg asked.

“She is beautiful, but in a haughty kind of way. Nothing like Judith. It was restful to look upon Judith. There is nothing restful about Elswyth.”

Cyneburg was looking thoughtful. “Certainly she does not sound like the ideal wife for Alfred. But he must have seen something in her to his liking, Ethelred, else he would never have offered for her.”

“I suppose that is true. But I mislike this news of his being at Southampton.” He added with grim reluctance, “It is Roswitha who reminds me of Judith.”

“Do you know for certain that he has taken up with Roswitha again?”

“Not for certain,” Ethelred replied. “No one of his companion thanes will ever speak a word against him, not to me, not to anyone. You know how fanatically loyal they all are to Alfred. But, Cyneburg, why else would he have stayed for one month at Southampton?”

Cyneburg took the baby from her breast and put him on her shoulder again to pat his back. “There is no other reason.” She put her lips to the fuzzy baby head. “Well,” she said practically, “Alfred of all people has the brain to sort matters out for himself. We shall have to leave it to him, Ethelred.”

Ethelred went over to drop a kiss on his wife’s brown-blond head. “Not every man can be as fortunate as I,” he said. She looked up into his kind face and smiled.

It was a day of half-mist, half-sunlight, the day Alfred returned to Lambourn after an absence of more than six weeks. The ripe scent of harvest hung heavy and sweet on the late-autumn air as his cavalcade of riders wound along the local road that followed beside the Lambourn River. The cornfields had been well-cleared of the wheat and barley crop, and Alfred saw with approval that the sheep had been turned into the stubble of the grain fields to glean what they could from the leavings.

It had been a fine autumn, and a fine harvest, Alfred thought with satisfaction as he sniffed the warm, mellow air. The storage barns would be full.

“A fine harvest, my lord,” said the thane who was riding beside him.

Alfred turned to give him a friendly smile. “That was my very thought, Edgar. Godric knows his job well.”

“He does.” A shout from one of the fishermen along the river caught their attention and they turned to look. The sun glinted off the shining river water and the scales of the new-caught fish gleamed silver in the hands of the fisherman.

Alfred said, “It will be good to get home.”

Half an hour later he and his party were riding into the small courtyard of Lambourn manor. Serving men came running to hold their horses, and Godric himself held Alfred’s bridle while the prince dismounted. Once Alfred’s feet were on the ground, the reeve turned his horse, Nugget, over to a groomsman and cried loudly, “Welcome, my lord, welcome!” The skin over the man’s sharp cheekbones was creased with his wide smile. “We received your message and I am happy to report that all is in order to receive you.”

“I am pleased to hear that,” Alfred replied. Then, laying a gold-ringed hand upon the reeve’s shoulder, he said, “The harvest looks to have been a good one.”

“Indeed it was, my lord. I think you will be pleased to see how well we have done.”

Next Alfred said, looking around, “Where is the Lady Elswyth?”

The reeve’s face thinned to knifelike sharpness. “Out somewhere on the Downs, my lord. She is away from the manor for hours at a time, with only the company of Brand, my lord.”

Godric sounded distinctly disapproving. Alfred felt a flicker of impatience with Elswyth. He had enough to worry about without having his reeves scandalized by their new mistress’s careless behavior.