The Forever Queen

by Helen Hollick

For a full minute Athelstan said nothing. He had ridden into Thorney not half an hour since from Kent, with the news that Thorkell had occupied Sandwich, and what was his father going to do about it? His nostrils were flaring, his breath quickening. Rage was twisting inside him, threatening to boil over and burst in a fountain from his mouth. His fists clenched, the nails dug into his palms as he forced himself to remain calm, willing his hands not to clutch round that scraggy neck of his father’s and squeeze the miserable life from it.

  “I have no desire to stay within spitting distance of you, even were you to beg me, but do not expect me to leave England, sir. Do not expect me to turn my back on those who will one day be my people. Unlike you, I honour my ancestors and my responsibilities. I will go from your court, but I will be going into the villages and the shires, the towns and the burghs. I will be gathering men to me, all those who can no longer stomach your indifference and incompetence. Expect to see me again, Father—at the head of an army!” He made no further acknowledgement, but turned on his heel and, with his cloak billowing behind him, swept from the hall.

  Edmund, tears weeping from his eyes, met him in the stables, his grabbing hand staying his brother from setting the saddle on his stallion’s back. “Athelstan! Please, do not do this! Go back to Papa, apologise, beg forgiveness! Please!”

  “I cannot do that, Edmund. Things have gone beyond repentance and clemency.”

  “Then wait a few minutes, allow me time to saddle my horse. I will ride with you.”

  “No!” It came out harsher than Athelstan intended. He repeated himself, gentler. “Nay, lad, as much as I would like it, you cannot come with me. Not to where I am going.”

  “But…”

  “No, Edmund. Father has declared me nithing, an outcast. We cannot both ride the same path. From here, you must follow your own fortune.”

  “Papa did not mean it. Give him a day around, and he will change his mind. He always does. Always has before.”

  “Not this time, Brother. And even if he does realise his folly, I am not going to forgive him. He has stretched too far; the insult is not merely to me, but to all England.”

  There was no point in arguing, Edmund could see that. “Then take care of yourself. And I vow, on the love I have for you, that when you have need of me I shall be ready.”

  Athelstan squeezed his brother’s hand. “That is a vow I shall be glad to hold you to.”

  The stable door was flung open, making the two lift their heads sharply. Emma.

  “Is what I hear true?” she asked, coming into the stables and standing in the pooled light of the lantern. Not caring that her house shoes trod in the horse dung on the unswept floor.

  “That you no longer have to fear my presence?” Athelstan retorted. “Aye, it is true. But I warn you, I shall be taking the crown as soon as I am able; I shall not be standing aside to wait for your brat to come of age.”

  Emma gave a sharp, impatient gesture with her hand. “I was talking of more immediate issues. Is it true what I am hearing about Wulfnoth and Sandwich? The one is dead, and the other is lost?”

  “Both are true. Eadric’s brother pursued Wulfnoth with eighty of our warcraft. All eighty were sunk in a storm to the southwest of the Island of Wight, along with Wulfnoth and many of his men. Left undefended, Thorkell occupied Sandwich and is now ransacking the Kent coast.”

  His tone had been harsh, scathing, as angry as he had been when telling his father all this. What a senseless, pointless waste! To his surprise, Emma uttered a curse beneath her breath. “The fool, the incompetent fool!” She paused, sat on a pile of empty sacks, her head dropping wearily into her hands. “Has Godwine been told?”

  “I have not had opportunity to find him,” Athelstam admitted, keeping to himself that the thought had not occurred to him.

  Composing herself, wiping her fingers across tear-wet cheeks, Emma straightened her shoulders, stood. “I shall find him and tell him. Thegn Wulfnoth was a good man; he was more than once kind to me when I was in desperate need of friendship. I shall take it upon myself to look after Godwine now that you cannot do so.”

  “And why would you be doing that for me, eh?” Athelstan said.

  “I am not doing it for you. I do it for Godwine and for Wulfnoth.” She retraced her steps to the door, mindful of the dung this time, paused in the doorway, silhouetted against the fading light of dusk. “And I do it for the simple fact that I have no more respect for your father than do you. England is in desperate need of a strong King. Given the right assurances for my future, Athelstan, I would be as pleased as you to be rid of the present useless one.”

  42

  September 1009—Sandwich

  Thorkell was immensely pleased with himself. Nor could he believe his good fortune. In the first week of September, Sandwich, apart from the residents and a handful of rearguard wastrels, had been deserted, and the Danish sea host had swept into harbour on a high night tide, their ships illuminated by the eerie light of a silver, three-quarter-full moon. After two days the land for five miles around had been secured, with minimal loss of life or blood on the raiders’ side. Hemming, Thorkell’s younger brother, who commanded half of the three-hundred-strong fleet, was forced to admit the landing had been easier than he had anticipated. Their luck would not hold, though; there was bound to be an English army awaiting them soon. But then Hemming was noted for his pessimism.

  “Canterbury will not fall so easily to us,” he said, his short, stubbed fingers automatically touching the Hammer of Thor pendant suspended from a thong at his neck. It was a special talisman, for it was made of an iron that possessed the magic power of Odin himself. If held aloft it would spin round and around, then settle, with its pointed tip always towards the North Star. No matter how often or where he tried it: a clouded night, daylight, during storms, or in perfect weather; without fail it located the direction north.

  His folded arms set comfortably on the top rung of the closed gate, Thorkell remained quiet in his contemplation. Hemming had been foretelling danger since before they had set sail. There were some who said he was predicting doom from the day he fell out of his mother’s womb, too early by a full month.

  “That it may not,” Thorkell eventually answered his brother’s bald statement evenly. “But we did not come here believing we would face nothing more enterprising than an afternoon stroll.”

  Resting his own arms on the gate, Hemming stared into the field. Most of the ponies were happily grazing; only a few remained unsettled, their heads up, ears back, ready to squeal and kick, unsure of each other and this unfamiliar territory. A few more days together as a herd and they would relax, once the squabbling for supremacy was established. Hemming grinned to himself. Were animals any different from men? Gather together a group of strangers, and always there was bickering and snarling until one among them proved his capability as a leader. For the ponies, it looked like the dun mare with the four white socks and the white face was to become the matriarch. She was a madam if ever there was one! Thorkell had claimed her for his own three days past, after they had taken her and several other ponies from that farm back down the valley. What they had not wanted they had killed or destroyed, the farmsteader and his sons included. A pity there had been no women, but any man of sense would have ensured the vulnerable were hidden away out of danger when Danes were within marching distance. Personally, if Hemming had farmed that steading, he would have sent that mare off with the women, too. His grin quirked higher. In the case of his own nag-tongued, prune-faced wife, he would have sent only the mare and not bothered with the woman!

  “Have you decided?” he asked, reaching down for a grass stalk to chew. “Do we march direct to Canterbury?”

  Deliberately, Thorkell avoided the question, for no other reason than he was uncertain what to do to retain this best advantage. He had been expecting more resistance, to have faced the Æthelred and his army head-on, soon after landing. All he had met so far were frightened villagers and farmsteaders inten
t on saving their property. Poor bastards. What chance had they against Thorkell’s host?

  Instead, he commented, “We will need more ponies if we are to raid further afield than Kent. I will not have the men march on foot, for we can too easily be separated from our ships.”

  “We will get the ponies.” Hemming casually flicked his left hand at the grazing animals. “We’ve not done so bad this far with our acquisitions.” He turned his head, refusing to be ignored. “Canterbury?”

  “Canterbury will surrender before we reach its walls.”

  “You are certain?” To Hemming’s mind, Canterbury would hold fast, if not for the English King, then for the English God. Sincerely hoped his brother had not misjudged things.

  Dusk was enfolding the Kent countryside, the sky blending from a cornflower blue into a lazy purple, the meandering river, over to their right, a lavender ribbon of reflected mallow. Thorkell pointed at the far bank, directing Hemming’s attention to the ghostly white shape of a barn owl hunting on silent, gliding wings. It disappeared into a copse, the men listening for a while for its call. Nothing. Was her hunting successful? If not, was this a sign? Men, like ponies, were sometimes uneasy in strange terrain, and the owl was the messenger bird of the gods.

  Pushing himself from the gate, Thorkell checked the latch was secure. He laughed. “Hemming the doubter! Canterbury will not resist us. I wager you my new dun mare it will not.”

  Without hesitation, his younger brother spat on the palm of his right hand, thrust it out for Thorkell to take.

  Three days later, Thorkell kept his mare. And the three-thousand-pound weight of silver that Canterbury prudently paid to see the í-víkings host pass in peace.

  43

  26 September 1009—Dunmail Raise, Cumberland

  The people of the northern land of lakes and mountains began the long climb up the crag known locally as the Lion and the Lamb. It seemed a fitting place to conduct the Church-ordained ceremony of penance, perhaps the most fitting in all England. Even slaves, for these next three special days of prayer and fasting, were, throughout the land, exempted from their work in order to attend Mass.

  Religious hysteria was mounting; the coming of Thorkell the Tall in the South, his plundering, killing, and burning the sign that had opened the sluice gates and released the flood of fear. This was it. The apocalypse had come in the form of a Viking army. God was nigh and was about to bring an end to those who had sinned. Evening had come upon the world, and there would be no tomorrow.

  In the North, the motivation to seek God’s forgiveness had been slower to gather momentum, for the majority of farmsteaders were of Norse origin. Even the names of their settlements reflected their ancestry: Birkerthwaite, Dalegarth, Rosgill, Rydal, Threlkeld, Torver. The very hills themselves had lost their British calling of bryn, replaced by the Norse fjall, fell. Only a handful of the people who went further back into the past than the Saxons remained. They were the Wealas, the British of the old Brigantia and Strathclyde, but they were few and were scattered into lonely bothies.

  What possible threat was a raiding party wreaking havoc more than three hundred miles away? Among the mountains and the lake-shimmering valleys, existence was from hand to mouth, every day was a struggle. If God ever remembered this harsh and craggy landscape, then He soon forgot it again. Only the sturdy mountain sheep and the copper mines were an asset up here.

  Fear, however, was not bound by reason or distance. Archbishop Wulfstan was a man who clung to his conviction that the Antichrist had arisen and was peddling his evil. When the end came, Wulfstan would not be caught bowed by sin, and he saw it his untiring duty to ensure all others were equally ready to meet God.

  In the meantime, there was the practical matter of funding his programme of repentance. Defence, whether against invading armies or unseen devils, drained coffers of gold and silver like water leaking from a holed bucket. A wide-held Church-engendered belief was that the wealthy saw to the poor, lame, and sick, while God saw to the wealthy. Wulfstan was different from his peers in that he was not so naive as to rely solely on God’s charity. Regular and appropriate finance came from taxation, and taxation came from labour. Honest or otherwise.

  How much of the spreading fear was orchestrated? How much ran wild of its own generated accord? Thorkell was leaving behind him a trail of blood and murder in Kent, his eyes and spears set towards Hamp-Shire. Æthelred was barricaded in his Thorney Island palace, his various Ealdormen as resolute for their own domains. Only the cynical, men such as Athelstan, and Wulfnoth before he had died, queried the tally of things.

  The coin minted after the spring council at Enham—a small, thin silver disc with the distinctive symbols of a dove on one side and a lamb on the other—had provided a great boost to a struggling economy. The Church’s command of three days of especial Christian worship was carried along with a compulsory levy for charitable Church purposes. Thorkell might be creating Hell in Kent, the devil could be riding with black cloak flying and red mouth agape over the entirety of England, but neither Crown nor Church would be suffering financially.

  Wulfstan was also astute with the choosing of his suggested period of mass prayer. With crops and livestock to tend, matters of religious welfare often came a poor second, particularly if the weather and the crops were good, but September was a sublime month if all went well. The harvest was in and the barns were full. If ever there were a period of leisure, then late September fitted well. In theory, it was also the month when raiders sailed for home and the fyrd could put away their weapons until the next spring. Thorkell seemed to be ignoring the rule.

  It had been the local priest’s idea to hold a Mass on the summit of Helm Crag, an idea that received approval throughout his scattered community and the personal blessing of York’s Archbishop. A bold, detached hill, Helm Crag rose above the Grass Mere, its sentinel rocks high on its summit looking for all the world as if carved by God, for, from whichever direction, the larger hump resembled a crouching lion with, between its paws, the unmistakable form of a lamb. God and Christ manifest among the majesty of His mountains.

  Clouds were obscuring the brilliance of sunshine and darkening the crag to a sombre blue-grey patchwork of shadow. Most of the inhabitants of the valleys had come, many from a prevailing fear of an uncertain future, a few from curiosity, most because it was reason for holiday. They gathered beside the shore of the lake, their chatter as high as their expectation. Several had camped in the valley overnight, would sleep there throughout the days of designated prayer. Leather and canvas tents dotted the water meadows, the blue smoke of hearth-fires fading as the wood burnt down to ash. Some, those who knew of it, making use of the wide-mouthed cave over the far side of the Rydal Water. Children walked with their parents and grandparents. Men, women, young, old, their voices raised in song as the priest lifted his staff and began the long climb, the procession of people snaking in his wake.

  No Viking raiding party would bother with these people—the mountains were too high, the passes too steep, the reward too low—but Wulfstan’s word had been persuasive and insistent. If God no longer looked at the lakes and valleys, then perhaps it was because He was ashamed of their burden of sin. Thorkell might be many miles away, but the sheep still had lambs to birth each spring, the winter snows still brought death and hardship. For everyone, throughout all England, there were personal reasons to pray for salvation.

  The sun went from the landscape, and a veil of rain swept with hissing speed across the forested slope of Helvellyn, skimming quickly down the raise and stinging across the surface of the lake, sending it shimmering and dancing as if it were a boiling pot. No one noticed the downpour, save for a few of the women who carried young babes in their arms, but even they merely pulled their shawls tighter and trudged on.

  The path wound up the crag in a zigzag pattern, some places steep, others easier to tread. A beck, bridged by flat stones of slate, ran down through the mossy grass, eager and chattering, swelling and rushing fas
ter from the sudden torrent of rain. In the distance, over towards the saddle-shaped ridge of Blencathra, thunder grumbled. In answer, the priest at the head of the column raised his voice higher in robust hymn.

  As suddenly as it started, the rain ceased. Those at the head of the procession had reached the top of the crag, and there before them rose the black, towering solidity of the Lion with the Lamb tucked safe between his paws. From up close, the shape was not so convincing, but too many were familiar with its impression to notice or care. Below, a burst of sunlight illuminated the lake, and as the wind dropped away, the water reflected everything in its sudden calm surface, soft vertical bands of greens and browns shadowed by the dark grey of ghostly clouds.

  And across the wide valley of Dunmail Raise, as if in tribute to the forgiving love of God, three rainbows arched, brilliant in their vivid, breathtaking beauty. God had not forgotten His flock.

  44

  November 1009—Bath

  AEthelred was forced to swallow his pride and recall Athelstan to court. Worse, he had to be civil to him. Either that, or lead the fyrd himself; of the two evils, enforced civility offered the better option. Eadric Streona urged its doing, and Æthelred had formed a habit of following Eadric’s advice.

  Aside, ordering Athelstan’s return could prove a suitable opportunity to teach the boy a lesson in humility. Graciously, Æthelred gave command of an army to his eldest son, with the specific order to send Thorkell and his Danes either back to their ships or to their gods. The fact that Athelstan had already raised a fair-sized army, he overlooked.

  “Let him get on with it,” Eadric advised as he sat with his King, drinking the best imported wine. “Let him see it is one thing to brag and boast within the confines of a comfortable hall, and quite another out there, when winter is closing in.” Æthelred did not observe that his companion did more than his share of the bragging and boasting from within doors.