The King's Hounds (The King's Hounds series Book 1)

by Martin Jensen

  The woman’s gait slowed. Then she stopped altogether and looked around. She began walking again, and turned right abruptly onto a wider street, which, much to my surprise, led us back toward the square between the church and the Hall. Had she noticed me? Did she now want to return to a more crowded area?

  No, that wasn’t it. She continued across the square, where a group of noblemen were lined up in front of the Hall, which was now being guarded by quite a few more housecarls than before. Cnut apparently wanted to address the witan in private, and he was not going to make it easy for any English enemies to attack.

  Once across the square, the woman stopped and carefully studied the buildings on either side of the street, then nodded to herself, and walked on at a steady pace.

  I suddenly understood: She was not familiar with Oxford, had taken the wrong road, realized this, and found her way back to the church to start again from a familiar location.

  Sure enough, she was once again walking with purpose, looking neither left nor right.

  Her grief at Osfrid’s burial had appeared genuine. If she hadn’t been bidding farewell to a lover who had promised her a golden future as a nobleman’s wife, then what had caused her tears?

  When the woman stopped in front of a post-and-plank house guarded by heavily armed men, I had my explanation: Her future was indeed dead, but not because she had been promised gold and green woodlands as Osfrid’s future bride. She had to have been his mistress—perhaps of many years—and she had just buried the only financial security she had ever had in the world.

  If that was the case, she had less reason than anyone to want Osfrid dead and buried. However, she might know something that would help Winston’s and my investigation.

  Men often speak more freely with the women they choose as mistresses than with the ones who share their tables and beds before God and the world, because a wife is not chosen for love. Spouses’ hands are tied at the altar to advance a family’s interests and its hunger for land. A mistress, by contrast, is usually a woman the man truly loves but whom the family refuses to acknowledge with a bridal crown.

  Isn’t that precisely what people suspected of King Cnut? Rumor had it that he actually loved his first wife, Ælfgifu, and that he had only married Emma for her connections to her brother and her strong Saxon affiliations. The same rumor held that he only found his way into Emma’s bed to produce an heir—but that he made his way into Ælfgifu’s bed any way he could.

  And now here I was, following a woman who has been forced to accept a life in the shadows as a nobleman’s secret lover. Osfrid had evidently not been the man Cnut was, brazen enough to be openly married to two women.

  As the woman walked up to the door of the sturdy building, two guards snapped to attention and opened it for her. Once she had entered and the door closed behind her, I casually walked up to it.

  Neither of the guards made any move to open it for me.

  Their eyes were cold, their faces expressionless.

  “What do you want?” one of them asked dismissively.

  “It’s important that I speak with the lady who just went inside.” I intentionally relaxed my lips so that my Saxon sounded more southern, more like the guard’s dialect.

  “Oh, it is, is it?” the guard retorted.

  Neither guard showed any sign of movement.

  “So, if you would either let me in or let her know,” I urged.

  “The lady, you said. Don’t you know her name?” the guard asked.

  “Unfortunately not. But perhaps you could enlighten me?” I smiled politely.

  They exchanged sarcastic smiles.

  “Get lost,” he said.

  I was going to have to get serious.

  “My name is Halfdan, and I am acting on behalf of King Cnut,” I announced.

  The guard on the left, who still hadn’t uttered a word, spat on the ground. The spokesman curled his lips in a mocking smile and said, “Free Saxons live here. Cnut can order Danes around, but he has no authority over Saxons.”

  I considered my options. I had no chance on my own. And I knew that Cnut’s housecarls wouldn’t forcibly enter a home that was openly hostile to the king’s authority. Cnut was striving to create harmony throughout his kingdom; his soldiers forcing their way into a Saxon home definitely would not help.

  So I shrugged and strolled away, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible.

  As soon as I’d rounded the nearest corner, I stopped, waited a bit, and then slipped back onto the street, making my way to a stone archway across the street from the house. From here, I could keep an eye on the building without being seen.

  It seemed that the guards at the door hadn’t noticed me, as neither one made any move to come over and shoo me away. Instead, like their colleagues posted at the corners of the building, they behaved like proper soldiers, not given to slacking off or chitchatting with each other. They remained vigilant, their hands hovering just above their sword hilts.

  I kept well in the shadow of the archway, smiling amiably at anyone walking by who stopped to look at me in an effort to give the impression that I was entitled to be there.

  The sun drifted steadily across the sky, and the door across the street remained shut. I’d begun yawning from boredom when I spotted a nobleman walking up the street accompanied by four guards.

  He stopped outside the post-and-plank house and looked around, which enabled me to see his face before he walked up to the door. The guards opened it promptly without asking him a single question.

  I was wide awake now and remained so until Osmund stepped back out onto the street.

  I was torn. Should I follow Osmund and ask him to explain what he was doing in the house where his dead brother’s mistress was staying, or should I stay here and hope for an opportunity to speak with her?

  I chose the latter. We already more or less knew what Osmund was up to, and, since noblemen are not in the habit of discussing their relatives’ personal business with strangers, he would probably refuse to answer any questions about the woman anyway.

  Then a thought struck me. Osmund and Tonild must have expected the mistress to have enough class to stay away from Osfrid’s funeral. The cold look she had gotten from Tonild made that very clear. And yet Osmund showed up here now. Why? I saw two possibilities: Either he wanted to scare Osfrid’s mistress away, or he wanted to pay her off so that she would leave.

  I had no doubt the woman was quite alone in the world. Though she obviously had enough money and connections to secure accommodations in a nobleman’s house like the post-and-plank building across the street from me—a building whose owner I hadn’t yet identified—she was nonetheless lowly enough to walk through Oxford without so much as a boy to attend to her.

  The door across the street opened again, and a young, nobly dressed man stepped out. He nodded to the guards and disappeared down the street.

  After that, nothing happened for quite a while, and I started thinking about going in search of Winston to give him my report. However, I thought that Osmund’s visit might prompt the woman to come out again before nightfall, so I stayed put.

  My patience paid off.

  When the woman finally stepped out, I was surprised to see that she wasn’t dressed for travel. She was wearing the same outfit as before, and wasn’t carrying a duffel bag or even a knapsack. She nodded to the guard, and I suddenly realized I might have a problem. If she headed down the street to my right, I was going to have to walk past the guards to follow her, and I doubted they would let me do so without intervening.

  I held my breath and cursed under my breath when she headed right. I looked around, and my eyes fell on a wide-bladed grain shovel hanging in the archway. I grabbed it and held the blade up in front of my face, then twisted my sword belt to move my weapon around to my right side. I hunched forward slightly, and walked slowly past the guards, who watched indifferently as I passed.

  Once I was a fair way down the street, I tossed the shovel aside, moved my
sword back into place on my left hip, and surveyed the street ahead of me. Luck was with me. I spotted the woman and began to follow her.

  Something caught my eye over the twig fence to my left. It was the nobly dressed young man who had left the house before the woman. He appeared to be bickering with a couple of Vikings in the yard. I didn’t have time to stop and help some nobleman’s brat, and since four broad-chested housecarls had just turned onto the street, I decided to leave it to them to protect the boy from getting the beating he seemed to be itching for. I hurried on after my prey.

  When she stopped in front of a merchant’s stall under a wide canvas awning and started examining the wares for sale, I approached her.

  “My lady,” I said, “you don’t know me, but it’s important that I speak to you.”

  She turned around, confused, and furrowed her brow when she saw my unfamiliar face.

  I gave her my best smile. “I’m sorry for your grief, my lady, but perhaps I can help to assuage it. My name is Halfdan, and King Cnut has asked me and my companion to investigate the murder of your beloved.”

  Her gray eyes widened, until they were absolutely round. “My beloved?”

  I nodded. “Lord Osfrid, the Saxon.”

  I saw fear, despair, and—to my surprise—amusement flit across her eyes.

  “Osfrid, my beloved?” she repeated.

  I gave her another nod and an encouraging smile.

  “You seem to be mistaken,” she said, her mouth twitching and her lips narrowing. “I’m Estrid, Osfrid’s sister.”

  Chapter 17

  The last time I had felt so dumb was many years before, when my father—with barely concealed glee—dismissed a farm girl’s claim that I was supposedly the father of the baby she was expecting.

  After grilling me thoroughly, he laughed the girl out the door, telling her that it wasn’t going to be that easy to get her hands on a nobleman’s silver. Then he chewed me out in front of Harding and several of his pals for not knowing that cuddling with a girl is not enough to get her pregnant.

  “Open your eyes, boy!” my father said condescendingly. “You’ve seen bulls and stallions and boars and dogs. You ought to know that unless the cock really plunges in properly, there’s not going to be a calf, foal, pig, or puppy.”

  I was only sixteen winters old, with nothing more than peach fuzz on my face, when my father and brother had mocked me for not knowing how a man lies with a woman. I had just been thoroughly trounced once again, standing before this Saxon lady, and my ears were every bit as red now as they had been then.

  “My … my lady …” I stammered. “Forgive my blunder.”

  Her gray eyes shone, not from tears, as I had feared at first, but evidently from amusement. Her bosom rose and fell the way it would in someone doing everything they could to keep themselves from laughing.

  “Maybe things would have turned out better if I had been his mistress,” she said, reaching up and wiping her eyes with a pale hand.

  “My lady?” I asked, trying with all my might to recover from my own foolishness.

  She didn’t respond. Instead, she stared attentively at me and then asked, “The king asked you to investigate my brother’s murder?”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” I sighed. “You and your family are convinced that Cnut ordered Osfrid’s death.”

  “I don’t really care what my family thinks,” she said, her voice suddenly surprisingly steely. “As far as I’m concerned, my brother is dead and that’s the end of it.”

  It occurred to me that a conversation with Osfrid’s sister might be just as helpful as one with his mistress, so I looked around for somewhere we could talk. The stall before us appeared to be much better stocked than Alfred’s—obviously not all merchants were being charged the large share of the heregeld that Alfred was. Behind the stall, I spotted three tables with benches.

  “Let me buy you a drink to make up for putting my foot in my mouth,” I offered.

  Estrid eyed me, her amusement only barely concealed. “Or in exchange for information.”

  “My lady,” I said, holding out my hand to her. “I would gladly buy you a tankard for both of those reasons.”

  She raised her own soft hand, gave mine a squeeze, and then—to my astonishment—led the way and sat down at an empty table. A stooped carpenter, his apron strewn with wood shavings, was seated at one of the other two tables with a young man who I guessed was probably his son or apprentice, because his clothes were also covered with sawdust. At the third table, three housecarls each clutched his tankard in silence.

  I asked Estrid what she would like to drink, and she replied that a cup of mead would do her good. I walked over to the counter, a sturdy oaken plank resting on three sawhorses. Behind it stood a colorfully dressed bristle-haired man, whose belt held a knife with a nicely carved bone handle next to a heavy leather purse.

  When he opened his mouth, I understood why his stall was so richly stocked compared to Alfred’s. He spoke Danish, not English, and judging from his accent, he was a relatively new arrival from the old homeland east of the sea, not a third-generation Dane from the Danelaw, in northern and eastern England.

  The mead he served was a golden-honey color and smelled sweet and strong. The enticing scent of malt wafted up from my ale. Both drinks were poured almost to overflowing.

  “My lady!” I said, raising my tankard to her. “Would you allow me to start from the beginning?”

  She looked downright jovial now. “By all means, Halfdan Who-Serves-the-King.”

  I briefly explained how Winston and I had been in Cnut’s Hall when Tonild burst in with the news of her husband’s death, how Winston had made some observations at the scene where the body was found, and how the king had put us on the case.

  Estrid listened in silence, with one hand under her heavy chin and her eyes attentively on my face. When I’d finished, she sipped her mead and asked how she could help. I answered that I was glad she was willing to help.

  “Halfdan!” she said, sounding vaguely weary, as though she had been trying to convince me of something for a long time. “My brother is dead. Do you somehow think I want him to lie unavenged in his grave?”

  “Well, good,” I said, leaning forward as though speaking in confidence. “Why did you say it would have been better if you had been his mistress?”

  Her mouth hardened, then she replied, “A man makes sure that his mistress is provided for after his death.”

  I stared at her. What had Winston said earlier? That Tonild wouldn’t care if Osfrid had a mistress as long as the mistress didn’t inherit anything. Estrid obviously thought more highly of noblemen. On the other hand, Tonild had claimed that she was Osfrid’s sole heir, after the monastery got its share.

  “My lady,” I said. I hadn’t taken my eyes off her. “English law does not allow a daughter—let alone a sister—to be left without some accommodation. And English law does still apply, does it not?”

  There was no trace of jollity in her eyes now. “For the time being. But that only holds true if the daughter and sister are full-blooded.”

  “Oh,” I said, already suspecting what I was about to hear. “Please do tell.”

  It was an oft-told tale of a nobleman who “forgot” to make provisions for his mistress’s children, and then the legitimate children refuse to recognize the rights of the natural-born children.

  “And your mother? I mean, you just said—” I began.

  “I know what I said.” Estrid’s eyes filled with tears. “My mother was named as an heir, but she died before my father. When he died, my half brothers refused to recognize that I had any claim. I wasn’t even mentioned.”

  Something didn’t add up.

  “So, am I to understand that Osfrid trampled on your rights and refused to recognize your claim to any inheritance from your father, but you still want to avenge his death?”

  Estrid’s eyes welled up again as she explained, “After our father died, Osmund convinced Osfrid to i
gnore my inheritance rights. But Osfrid was an upstanding man, and he nonetheless took it upon himself to provide for me.”

  “So Osfrid was supporting you,” I said, taking a drink. The ale was strong and I decided not to overdo it. I could quench my thirst later with the usual brew.

  Estrid nodded. “It was thanks to Osfrid’s first wife—Oslaf’s mother. She was a God-fearing woman and she convinced her husband to do right both by me and by the Lord.”

  I remembered the look Tonild had given Estrid by the grave. “And Osfrid’s second wife?”

  A flicker of hatred gleamed in Estrid’s eyes, so fleeting that I almost missed it. “Tonild doesn’t want Osfrid to have a past—no first wife, no son, and no sister.”

  “So Tonild convinced Osfrid to stop supporting you?”

  “You didn’t know him,” Estrid said, shaking her head reproachfully. “Osfrid kept his word. Though Tonild didn’t like it, he made sure that I received a sum of money each year.”

  I scooted in to let the exiting carpenter and his young assistant past. The young man was supporting the older one, who wasn’t going to last long if he habitually drank so much in the middle of the day that he needed help walking, I thought. No one wants to pay for crooked carpentry.

  “So Tonild is both a gold digger and jealous of her husband’s past?” I asked.

  Estrid laughed, a frank laugh that made the housecarls turn around in surprise.

  “Tonild’s father was one of the wealthiest of the Saxon nobles. He refused to pledge his fealty to Cnut, a stance for which he paid with his life.”

  Tonild had already told Winston and me that. But then I realized what Estrid was saying.

  “You mean the king seized his land and property?” I asked. Estrid nodded.

  “When Osfrid married Tonild,” she said, “he was marrying into an expected fortune. Tonild was Wighelm’s only child, you see, and she used to really lord her wealth over Osfrid. She was an extremely wealthy young woman when she entered into the marriage. But less than two years later—after her father refused to follow Cnut and was killed and the land and properties had been seized—she was far less eager to discuss who had brought the most into the marriage.”