The Forever Queen

by Helen Hollick

  34

  February 1007—Avebury

  For their sins, God had deserted the English and released a scourge upon them. The Danes had not gone away, but had over-wintered in the sheltered harbours of the Island of Wight. Then, after the Yule feasting, in an unexpected move, they broke camp and marched inland across Hamp-Shire and up into Berk-Shire as far as Reading, which they looted and burnt to the ground.

  Armies do not march in winter. Winter was not the season for fighting. Mud bogged down cart wheels, ponies’ hooves, and men’s boots alike; rain soaked through clothing, wind froze skin to the bone. Snow and ice hampered progress, life, and the gathering of food in the same proportion. None of that bothered Swein Forkbeard. He was from a land of winter snow and ice, born and bred to cold conditions.

  Reluctant to fight? Unprepared? Certain the Danes would take heed of the banks of approaching storm clouds and return south to their ships? For whatever reason or excuse, the English were not summoned to stop them. Or perhaps it was a calling of a bluff? One King attempting to outwit another? If so, Æthelred was a poor player in the game. No English army would have stayed in the field; the militias would have melted away like the scattering of a light snow in the reluctant warmth of a pale winter sun. The Danes, however, were not Englishmen.

  Cuckhamsley Knob, where the three borders of the shires met, was a place revered for its ancient holy origin. For more generations than any dared remember, from long before the rule of Alfred’s ancestors, councils had met there to discuss matters of mutual need. Æthelred, responsible for inaugurating the system of the shires in order to improve and stabilise the annual collection of taxes, had implicitly honoured the three boroughs by promoting their joint meetings to the status of King’s council.

  Swein was clever. To occupy Cuckhamsley Knob would cause outrage throughout southern England and would shame Æthelred as effectively as any ignominious clench-fisted gesture.

  No one, from Æthelred down, had expected Swein Forkbeard to reach Cuckhamsley. No Englishman had expected the Danes to march so easily and swiftly inland. No war horns had boomed along the rain-flooded, mud-sucking valleys and trackways to resist him; instead, men cowered in their farmsteadings, protecting their families and livestock as well they might, and hoped the Danish would pass on by.

  After three days of occupied encampment, Swein countered the apathy with his own boast: no Englishman had the balls to approach a Dane seated before a hearth-fire blazing on the brow of Cuckhamsley Knob. He had made his point, shown his skill, determination, and bravado, and as quickly as they had arrived, the Danes broke camp and, following the great curve of the Ridge Way, headed south.

  God and their King may have deserted them, but the Thegns and Lords of the Three Shires had no stomach for choking down humiliation.

  Near to where the sweep of the Ridge Way crossed the River Kennet, the English fighting men waited for the Danes, fought them, and were slaughtered. Even Thorkell, named the Tall, Swein’s second in command, was appalled by the bloodbath of destruction.

  He stood at the centre of what had been the village of Avebury, his sealskin cloak pulled tight at his neck against the sting of lashing rain, his eyes narrowed, heart heavy. The poor bastards had been cut down like harvested wheat. A man, his finely woven tunic smeared with mud and blood, lay face down, his skull split in two, the brain congealed with matted strands of hair that had once been fair. A woman, her skirt thrown over her head, her womanhood exposed, bloody and torn after she had been repeatedly used. Before or after death, Thorkell could not tell. If he were to pull down her dress, cover her modesty, what would he find? Wide, frightened eyes? A mouth open in a death-frozen scream?

  Children lay dead among the carcasses of dogs and horses, the girls used, regardless of age. Some of the boys, too. Nothing had been left alive or untouched. He stared down at his boots, mud-caked, blood-splashed, the grass beneath his feet churned, stained, and gouged.

  To his left a collective shout went up, half cheer, half warning, as the chapel roof caved in to the belch of flames devouring its burning walls. If there had been anyone inside, they would have been long dead, but no one would have risked taking shelter within such a small timber-and-wattle building. Save, perhaps, the priest.

  From experience Thorkell knew these men were loath to leave the sanctity of their post, preferring to die within sight of God. He was not a devout man to his own gods; Odin and Thor did not particularly draw him to their ways, nor had they, despite his many offerings and sacrifices, ever helped him. Freya had not answered his plea when his wife had laboured those long hours to bring their dead child into the world; the goddess had not cared to save either of them. Watching the fallen roof beams burn, Thorkell wondered whether this English Christ would have intervened and delivered her safe and well through childbirth. He was a caring God, so Thorkell had heard, just and wise.

  He puffed his cheeks, lifted his weary face to the fall of rain that had, this last half-hour, turned resolutely cold. They must have thrown oil on the walls to get that chapel to burn so well. Where had this Christ been for these people?

  “The fools were barely armed. A few rusted swords, hoes, and pitchforks. Does this Æthelred not possess an army worth my while to fight?”

  Thorkell brought his right fist up to his left shoulder in salute as Swein approached, a grin of white teeth showing clear through the blackened grime of his face. Even if the men were poorly equipped, the fighting had been fierce.

  “Has there been much of value found among the debris?” he asked. Men had to be paid. Especially men who had marched through the discomforts of winter.

  “Enough to keep them satisfied.” Swein pointed towards the sacked village and the used women. He grinned, his eyes bright with pleasure. “And we still have a geld to claim. After this day, Æthelred shall not refuse to pay what I demand.”

  That was something to ease a whispering conscience. If the English had paid the demand last autumn, this death would not have happened. The burden, then, lay with Æthelred, not the Danes.

  “Then can we go home?” Thorkell asked. He had a new wife now, plump and rounded. The child would have been born a month past. Had he a son or a daughter? Was it well? Was his wife?

  Swein Forkbeard slapped his friend between the shoulder blades. He could read Thorkell as if he were a fresh footprint made clear in the snow.

  “When Æthelred pays for his mistake, you can go home to that woman of yours.”

  Silent for a while, Swein surveyed the dead. Regret did not prick his conscience as it had Thorkell’s. “We lost a few of our men,” he said finally, twirling the end of his beard through his fingers, a thing he often did when pleased. “With Thor’s blessing I can now secure my hold on Norway and have plenty of gold left to plan our next campaign here in England.” He gave a short bark of laughter and again thumped his bear paw of a hand onto Thorkell’s shoulder. “Another year or so, my friend, and I shall have my empire, eh? What do you think? Swein, King of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and England. Shall we try for Ireland next? Scotland, too, perhaps? Or look eastwards to Kiev?”

  Thorkell returned the laughter, nodding, smiling, feigning enthusiasm. He kept his eyes from the crumpled bodies of two children lying close by. A young girl clinging in desperation to her elder brother. A spear shaft had gone clean through both of them.

  35

  March 1007—Winchester

  The second day of March. A pewter sky hung low, brooding over a shrouding mist that sidled along the banks of the River Itchen and clung, wraithlike, to the clusters of alder and ash. Their shapes shifted and moved as the mist slithered through the trunks and oozed across the winter-bare ground; if spring was coming, it was a long way off. No bud showed on branch or bush; no fresh young shoots poked shyly up through the brown earth. It was as if everything alive was gone forever and the mist had come to claim its own for the Other World. Sound was distorted, noises hollow and disorientating. Was that dog near the town’s wall, or did hi
s barking come from a distant farmsteading?

  Emma clutched her bear-fur mantle tighter, her shiver not from the cold alone. They were coming. She knew it as certain as she knew it was the mist creeping forward, not the gnarled old oak it encircled. The Vikings were headed straight for Winchester, and she was alone, with only her cnights and the solid-hearted folk of the town to die with her. Where were Ealdorman Ælfric and the fyrd? He was Lord of eastern Wessex, was he not? Why had he not sounded the war horns and come to her aid? Why? Because Æthelred had summoned the fyrd into Kent and along the South Ridge and the Weald, to protect him should Swein Forkbeard swing that way after slaughtering his Queen and his youngest children.

  From up here on the rampart walkway, the view was usually spectacular: the roll of hills northwards, the rise of high ground to the east, the meander of the river winding its way down to the sea. The woods, the fields. Cattle grazing, men ploughing or sowing or reaping, depending on the need of the season. This still, malevolent March morning, Emma was discovering there was more to being a Queen than having a favourite town or admiring a view; was meeting, firsthand, the difficult side of responsibility. Within one or two hours, no more than that, Winchester might cease to exist. The gates and walls could be torn down, the children, nuns, the women, Queen included, left dead and raped in the streets to feed the crows. The mist, feeling its way ever closer, would breach the ruined gaps and come slinking inside, ready to swallow up the wreckage.

  Except Emma had no fear of abuse by a man. She had already suffered it, and standing here, up on this walkway, waiting for the Danes, she suddenly discovered the power of her strength.

  Below, the women were huddled in their houses, shielding their children, fearful for the men gathered beneath the walls, tense, anxious, and waiting. Let Ælfric be a coward, let Æthelred skulk behind the walls at Thorney! Winchester was her town; these were her men, who would fight to their last breath to defend her and the babes in their cot within the royal palace. Let the Danes come! Let them destroy and kill; at least she would go to God knowing she had not failed her people in courage and determination. Unlike her wretched husband.

  She turned, walked with care to the edge of the rampart, and looked down at the anxious grey faces staring back up at her.

  “Listen to me!” she called, raising her arms. “I am Emma Ælfgifu, your Queen, and I am not frightened of this poxed, bearded rabble which threatens us! We may not have a comfortable number of fighting men to defend us, but we do have among us the best bowmen in all England, or so your reeve, Godric Osgodsson, tells me. He is an honest and a good man. I have no reason to doubt him!”

  Whether it was a true statement or not, she did not care. The cheer they rewarded her with counted for more worth than accuracy.

  “Will we see or hear them first?” Emma asked Godric, standing beside her. A reliable man, experienced and of practical sense.

  “In this mist it is hard to tell, ma’am. If they are marching in open formation, we shall probably hear their approach first, or they may choose to come close with stealth, in which case we shall not know they are here until Swein Forkbeard launches his attack.” He glanced over his shoulder at the preparations being completed below. Buckets of water and sand made ready to douse fire arrows, hides being soaked with water for the same purpose. Fire was always the fear, with timber walls and reed-thatched roofs; only the Minsters, Old and New, the nunnery church, and the town’s arched gateways were of stone. The gates themselves, two inches thick, studded with iron nails and bolts, were of seasoned oak.

  “Do you think it true they have fire-throwing engines, battering rams, and siege towers with them?” she asked.

  “You are remarkably acquainted with the weapons of war, Lady,” Godric said, adding with honesty, “I cannot say. I doubt they would have dragged such stuff up to Reading and the Ridge Way, but there are plenty of trees a’tween there and here, and the Danes are no less skilled with woodcraft and the building of necessities than are we.”

  It was better to talk, it took the edge off the waiting.

  “My father and brother often discussed tactics; I found it interesting to listen.” What would Richard make of laying siege to a town like Winchester? Emma wondered as she gazed into the crawl of eerie whiteness. Under Richard’s command, Winchester would fall within hours. Was this Swein of Denmark as capable as her brother?

  “There! Beyond the trees—look!” A young lad, no more than fourteen summers of age, pointed to a distant copse of birch. His helmet was too big for him, his chain-linked mail too loose—his father’s armour, Emma wondered, or an uncle’s? All the men and boys of the town had turned out to defend their own, dressed for war as well they could. Most had nothing except leather over-tunics or aprons. Many did not carry weapons beyond the everyday tools of pitchforks and chopping axes. Few outside those who served within the fyrd possessed the mighty death-bringer axes. Men to Emma’s right lifted their heads and, on Godric Osgodsson’s command, raised their bows, notched an arrow.

  “Hold hard, lads,” Godric growled, raising his arm, palm outspread. “We do not want to be killing them all too soon.”

  One of the men grinned, lowered his bow. “We wait ’til we see the whites of their eyes, eh, sir?”

  “Na, mate,” his companion chided, “the coloured part of their eyes—more like the centre mark on our practice targets!”

  “Aye, you’re right there—an’ the three of us can hit that every shot!”

  A general flurry of laughter, a shifting of position as everyone straightened, straining to look where the boy had pointed.

  The mist was moving, wavering, rippling outwards like the wash of a boat. No noise, no sound, just the mist rolling, being pushed aside. Then it came, a steady thrum of rhythm, the stamp of feet, the creak of leather, the jingle of metal. From out of the trees covering Saint Giles Hill, rising up through the mist, men appeared carrying banners that lay limp and unwavering in the damp, heavy air. It did not matter; no one waiting on those Winchester ramparts needed to see the banners unfurled to know one of them was the black raven of Denmark and the golden Hammer of Thor.

  Many of the Danes rode ponies, their winter coats thick, soaked with sweat, muddied, and tired. Ponies stolen from farmsteadings, inns, and fields. Several of them were lame, near collapse.

  What had Emma expected of Swein’s army? Great giants? Godlike warriors? Proud men brandishing their weapons, swaggering in their arrogance? These Danes, emerging from the track, running under the steep wooded slope of the hill, rode two abreast, those without a mount trudging in between in twos and threes, some holding on to a pony’s mane or tail. They were indeed tall men; they wore armour and carried shield, sword, and axe, but they were of no greater stature than the men of Normandy. They looked no stronger than some of these waiting, expectant, and ready up here along the top of Winchester’s walls.

  As they marched nearer, following the river, taking the track called Chesil Street which ran along the far bank, she saw more detail, the smaller things. Some were wounded, some with arms in slings or with bloodied tunics or leaning on rough-made crutches. Many had grimed faces and damaged mail, cracked shields and broken spears. This was no rampaging army, no vast, unstoppable force! These were tired men returning the quickest way possible to their ships. God in Heaven, and Æthelred was letting them pass unmolested? If the fyrd had been called together, had been waiting for them here on this Winchester road…

  Drawing level with the walls, a man riding a tired chestnut pony drew rein, his hand going up to halt the column. Impetuous, his finger twitching, one of the men close to Emma let loose an arrow. It sailed outwards, lonely in its solitary flight, arched down and thrummed, harmless, into the cold, silver-grey of the river.

  “You ought to withdraw,” Godric whispered, his hand on Emma’s elbow, urging her to step back.

  “If our arrows cannot reach them, then they cannot reach me,” she answered, practical, calm.

  The man on the chestnut was
reaching up to his head, removing his war cap, his gaze studying the walls and the men arrayed along the top. He had no need to identify himself; from his stance, his very presence and quality of armour Emma knew him to be Swein Forkbeard. Did he realise who she was? That he had the Queen of England standing before him?

  “Fetch my banner up here, quickly,” Emma ordered suddenly. “I would have him know that a Queen of England is not afeared to outface him.”

  A boy fetched it, running down the steps, jumping the last three. He hurtled through the archway into the inner courtyard of the palace, snatched up the banner and raced back to the wall, almost tripping as the material unravelled and caught between his legs.

  “You have no need to fear us this time, people of Winchester!” Swein’s voice boomed, in English, across the river, hitting the town with all the might of a mangonel. “We return to our ships with the geld your King Æthelred has obligingly paid. You may go back to your hearth-fires, but I would advise you to keep a sharp edge on your blades, for I will not be gone long from Engla Lond.”

  The boy reached Emma’s side, and she ordered the banner unfurled, a man grabbing for the linen, spreading wide the embroidered emblem of a crowned, rampant lioness.

  “I do not fear you, Swein Forkbeard. The blood that runs through my veins is more noble than yours.”

  “My Lady,” Forkbeard answered with a laugh and a slight bow, “I was not aware you were resident. Had I known, I might have decided to take you with me back to Denmark, but as it is, I must pass, for the tide awaits.”

  “Step foot inside my city, Forkbeard, and you will be going nowhere except to Valhalla.”

  “An honourable place, ma’am, but as I have no wish to go there quite yet, I bid you farewell.” He laughed again, saluted with a careless gesture, and returned his war cap to his head. Kicking his pony forward, he spoke to the person riding beside him, who turned his face to stare up at Emma.