“Yes?”
He turned. She was standing with her arms wrapped across her chest, her hands hugging her upper arms.
He stood, swaying, and smiled at her. “How are you?”
She waved her hand as if it were not important. She spoke quickly. “I am glad that I have seen you. My son, Siferth…”
“I know his name.”
“Wishes to be a king’s thegn when he becomes fourteen. It seems that the queen has won his heart.”
“Tell him to come to me.” He suppressed a belch.
“That is the thing, though, my lord. He does not know you well enough to ask such a thing.”
He scratched his head. “Not know me? He knows me right well…”
“Would you know him? Could you pick him out from among the many men in that hall?”
“I could never forget those looks.” The boy looked too much like his mother.
She said, “You have not been these five summers gone.”
He winced. “No, you reckon wrongly. It was only… Yes, it has been. It was… The right thing to do. I took something which was not mine.”
She slapped her hands down by her sides and moved forward, and he took an involuntary step back.
She raised her face to his. “Is that it? You dull-witted man! All this time you have kept away because of that? And I thought that you were playing with me, that it meant naught to you. Now you tell me that you felt guilty?
He shook his head. “I am sorry, lady, I am in my cups. If you could speak a little more slowly?”
She took another step towards him and jabbed his chest with her finger as she spoke. “You took naught. A gift is not theft.” She walked off and left him gaping like a landed fish.
She blended into the world of other people, while he stayed behind in the silence that she had left. As he stood there, still swaying, someone knocked into him on their way past, but he did not look round, and dismissed the apology with a wave of his hand.
Siferth glanced up when his mother hurried back to her seat. “Mother, you look red. I thought you went outside to cool down?”
Káta arranged her skirts beneath her. “I spoke to the lord Alvar.”
Siferth wriggled on his seat. “What did he say?”
“He said that you should speak with him but it would be better, I think, to leave it until a time when all are not drunk.”
Helmstan laughed and said, “It might take some time before the men in this room are sober once more. I … What is Kenneth doing?”
Siferth craned his neck and sat up in his seat. He pointed at the dais. “Father, is that the Scottish…?”
“Ssh.” Helmstan cupped his ear.
Káta looked around. Others, further along the bench, who had also seen the movement, had stopped talking, but as Kenneth swaggered to the edge of the dais he had to shout for quiet. The noise of the chatter swelled like a wave and receded.
“I was wondering,” said Kenneth, in dramatic tones worthy of a scop, “Whether you good folk of England like it, or like it not, that your king is such a short-arse?”
The quiet became absolute. Helmstan’s hand was on his scabbard, moved there by instinct even though his, like every other sword in the room, had been hung up. Around the hall, thegns and earls leaned forward, one hand on the table, ready to leap up. The women looked on open-mouthed and the guards at either side of the doors moved closer together. The group of dancers, halfway through their tumbling routine, came to a standstill in front of the dais. They looked to their left and right and sat down on the floor, hugging their knees to their chests. Káta was afraid to breathe, lest she be the only one. She brought her hand up to her mouth, but withdrew it when she saw one of the churchmen staring at her. In the scandal of the moment, she had forgotten how distasteful some folk found her scar. She let her hand fall slowly, lest it make a sound in the middle of the awful silence.
King Edgar rose cat-like from his chair and moved to stand next to Kenneth. He turned to face him only after he had looked out at the crowd. He held out his hand and gestured towards the door. “I see that you are indeed fearless, King Kenneth. But though I know that every man believes it, I would have my folk see it too. Would you like to fight me outside, or shall I ask these folk to stand aside and we can fight here, before them all, in this hall?”
The Scotsman was the first to break eye contact. Káta dared to breathe again. Kenneth looked around once more and nodded to the men whom she had seen flanking him earlier in the day. “My lords Beorn and Wulf, it was kind of you to bring me here, but I think that I will make my own way back, and I think that I will leave now.” With a perfunctory bow to Edgar, Kenneth left the hall. In the quiet he left behind, the echo of his footsteps rang round the high space of the roof timbers.
Then the din erupted like dogs after sniffing the scent, and Siferth had to raise his voice. “Father, Edgar is so strong and fearless. But what of the queen, is she in need?”
Helmstan shook his head and Káta said, “I tell you for the last time, the lady has enough men slavering around her; you do not need to worry.”
Alvar approached the doorway to find his way barred. At sight of him, the guard lowered his sword and they both had to stand aside for Kenneth who hurtled through the door as if he had left all his courage behind him in the room. Alvar stared as the Scotsman retreated. He said, “Was our malted ale not to his liking?”
The door-thegn tested a grin and rolled his eyes.
Alvar chuckled and made his way back into the hall. At first sight, all was as he had left it. But if Kenneth had gone, then there must have been a scuffle at least. All his men had resumed their drinking but he knew that, to a man, the Mercians would have put their hands to their empty scabbards, ready instinctively to fight. He was about to go and congratulate them whilst squeezing them for information, but Dunstan came and stood in front of him.
“You are to blame for this. You are t-too proud, my lord. What were you thinking, to talk the king into taking such risks? The ceremony at Bath was enough. This was your doing and you left our dear king open to threat.”
Scratching his head, Alvar said, “He looks all right to me.” He weaved his way through the press of people, who were still on their feet and boastful of all the things they would have done had they been required to fight. Beorn told him what he had missed.
Alvar let out a low whistle. “Now we know what Oswald was up to. He poked Kenneth until he barked, and it was done to make me look bad. Dear God, how much they must truly hate me, if they were willing to let Kenneth fight Edgar, whom they claim to love.” And now they would hate him all the more, because Edgar had emerged looking invincible, having appeared to find the incident amusing.
But Oswald was not, for once, shooting looks of hatred at him. No, indeed, he was smiling. That in itself was enough to send a chilling shiver down Alvar’s back, but when Oswald looked away he followed his gaze to find the old crow staring at Káta. With deliberate exaggeration, Oswald continued to stare at her whilst making a show of pulling his sleeve down to cover his hand in an elaborate mime, a parody of her self-effacing habit. Alvar felt the sweat cooling on his spine. Oswald knew; knew who she was, and how valuable she was. To both of them.
Beorn had been speaking. “At least we have moved on from the days when the kingship was being fought over by spitting youths. Edgar’s kingdom is so strong that there will be no need to split it upon his death, which is a good thing. Not like when he and his brother were young. And when you have done scratching your arse, you will see what I mean.”
Alvar ripped his gaze away from Oswald. “What?”
“I say thank God that Edgar is strong. His sons, unlike him and the Fairchild, are only half-brothers and even less likely to love one another. And look at them; young Edward is grimmer than a whipped thrall, while Æthelred looks as if he has yet to stop sucking the queen’s tits.”
Chapter Fifteen AD974
Near Rhuddlan, North Wales
He felt no pai
n at the time of impact, just a forceful blow such as a man might inflict with a powerful punch. The hurt was only to his dignity, to be on his arse in the Welsh mud, and he twisted round, aware that his mount might not have been so lucky. His thwarted attempt to stand upright forced him to look down; his thigh was skewered on the same fallen tree branch which had sent his horse sprawling.
Wulfgar knelt at his side. He nodded at the nearest man, drew his finger across his own neck and pointed to the horse. He turned back to Alvar and said, “My lord, this must be pulled out.”
Now the pain arrived, late but potent. It came in throbbing waves and drove deep into his thigh muscle. It clutched at his breath. “Would you… Have me… Bleed to death?”
“My lord, we cannot leave you stuck to this tree.”
Alvar closed his eyes and jammed his teeth together as the pain stirred a fire at the site of the wound. He said, “I will not die here. Pull it out then, but get me back to Mercia before I breathe my last.”
His fate lay in the hands of others and he surrendered. He knew that his leg must at least be free of the branch, for he was now lying on a litter. Dragged, pummelled, across country, he gave thanks that they had been out of the mountains and on their way home when the accident happened. He could not tell daylight from dark, for his vision was cloudy even when he strayed over the border between sleep and wakefulness. He thought he heard Wulfgar joke that, “You can die now if you wish, my lord,” and reasoned that if he heard true then they must be back in England.
He smelled wood smoke, from a makeshift camp or a settlement. He listened, waiting for the sounds which would tell him which it was.
Wulfgar said, “Your father told us to come; he says that your mother has some skill at healing.”
A youth, whose voice Alvar did not recognise, said, “Where is my father now?” His tone wobbled with the erratic squeaks and falls that marked him as no longer a child and not yet a man.
“He is still at Rhuddlan and will ride on after he has met Prince Hywel there.”
“We have had no word all summer; my mother would be grateful for news.”
“It has been hard, but Hywel has fought off his uncle. Although we sometimes went into the hills they call Eryri, we left it mostly to the Welsh, for we found the land hard, wet and unforgiving. We helped Hywel by keeping Iago running hither and thither, so that he always had two foes to fight. But the Welsh have a liking for playing smite, run, hide, and they played that game on us a little to the west of Rhuddlan. We had to ride at speed through thickly wooded land, and that can harbour its own threats, as my lord found out.”
“My mother will be glad to know that my father is unharmed.”
Unseen hands lifted Alvar from the litter and laid him on a more comfortable surface. He closed his eyes and heard nothing more.
A woman was weeping quietly. In a tone suggesting desperate prayer, she said, “I could not bear it if he were dead.”
“Where am I?” He could not move, nor see her.
“You are in my bed.”
“Then I must truly be in heaven, for there is nowhere sweeter.”
He opened his eyes. He was, indeed, in a bedchamber. The room had bare walls, but the scent of dried herbs floated up from the floor. On a bedside table, a plate was piled high with chunks of barley bread and new butter. He smelled it without interest. Furs lay piled on the bed despite the season and Káta, seated beside the bed, fussed with the covers to straighten them. She leaned across him to prop his pillows and he caught a waft of lavender. As she sat back, a tress of soft blonde hair brushed his cheek.
His mouth was dry. He swallowed several times and attempted speech. “My hand is stinging.”
“That will be where I smote you,” she told him. She sniffed, and moisture glistened on her cheeks.
“Was I…Was I speaking aloud?”
“You were.”
He stared at the ceiling and tried to recall. “I am sorry; I thought it was the speech one hears only in sleep. You were right not to stand for it.”
She sniffed again and stood up to fetch a cup of water from the table. With her back to him she said, “This is the second time you have come to me thinking that I will put you back together. Do not think to keep doing it.”
He said, “But I saw how skilled you were all those years ago, when that herdsman hurt his leg in a similar way. Where else would I go to have my wounds tended?”
She came back to the bed, lifted his head with her hand, and held the cup to his lips. “That was such a long time ago. You are older and I am wiser.”
His head flopped back against the pillow. The liquid soothed his parched throat and sent a cooling sensation travelling down the inside of his chest. “Lady, your words wound me more than any Welsh tree. But tell me; this pillow is soft and it feels like I am lying on laths made from silk, not ash. Am I truly in your bed?”
“You are. We never put the roof on the new bower-house after you stopped coming to see us, so there was nowhere else to put you. And that youngling, Wulfric, who fetched us that day to Brunstan when his leg was bad, is the full-grown man who heaved you into it.” She lifted the covers to look at his bandage. “When they brought you, it seemed that you would not live out the night. We made you as restful as we could. I even ground up dried horse dung and put it on a linen cloth over the wound to bind it. At last we stopped the bleeding, but not before you had soaked all of my bed sheets.”
“I can only thank you for letting the horse-shit dry; many would have thrown a steaming turd on me and left me to rot. You, at least, have a good heart.”
“Yes. And as I hear from those words that you are truly yourself again, we need no longer speak of things…” She stood up.
He reached for her hand but missed. “No, Lady, let us speak of them, for once and for all time.”
She went to the table at the side of the room.
He slid his hands under the blankets. “We cannot keep running from this.”
Káta picked up a wash cloth and dipped it into a water bowl. She wrung it out and said, “Well, you cannot run, and that is the truth.”
He moved his head from side to side and beat his hands on the bed under the covers. “Oh, if I could only…” His voice was low; his words little more than a mumble. “I love you.”
She stopped wringing the cloth, but stood with her back to him, so still that he could not be sure she was breathing. It was the moment when, if she had not heard, he could pretend it was never said.
With the slowest of hand movements, she placed the cloth back in the bowl, wiped her hands on her skirt, and turned around to face him. “What did you say?”
The moment of safety gone, he blundered on. “You are the woman I crave. It is a good thing I never took a wife, for she would have suffered. I love you; I think I have loved you from the day I first saw you. But you are Helmstan’s woman and I will never do aught to mar that.”
Her tears fell again. She did not smile, but there were no lines on her brow, and she tilted her head as if to welcome the wash of tears on her cheeks. “I am Helmstan’s wife, and I will love him and ever be true to him.”
What a fool. “Oh God, forgive me, I should not have said…” He held out his arms, but punched the bed again.
She took a step forward, but kept one hand on the table behind her. “No, my lord, hear me out. If it could be any other way I would hold you now and keep you from ever leaving me again. If I could be yours, I would.”
He raised one arm and she came to him, holding her right hand out until her fingertips brushed his, but she came no nearer.
“Then it is said, and it is known.” Exhausted, he closed his eyes and slept.
“Come at me again, and go at my left leg, to get under my shield if you can. Then we will learn some more downward blows to the head and shoulders.”
“And then can I do it with an iron sword?”
Propped against the wooden fencing of the paddock, Alvar shifted his weight until his leg was comfort
able again. He nodded at Siferth. “You might as well learn how to wield a man’s blade, although not one that has been near a whetstone. But for now, this will keep your mother from becoming wroth with us.”
“Is that what you think?”
Alvar, caught out in clear breach of the rules of his rehabilitation, put on what he thought was his most endearing smile, with little hope of success.
Siferth stopped his run up and scraped to a halt in the frozen mud. “Mother, it is only made of wood.”
Káta put her hands on her hips. “It could be woven cloth for all I care. Your uncle Alvar is a sick man and you should not be asking him to come out in this weather to play fighting games with you.” She exhaled through her mouth and pointed at the breath-cloud. “It is too cold today.”
Siferth lifted his chin, an act of defiance less meaningful now that he stood a head higher than his mother. He had his father’s build and his mother’s looks and Alvar waited to see who would win the battle of wills.
“Uncle Alvar tells me he is well enough, and I believe him.”
“Oh yes? Did he tell you how he needs to get his strength back after losing so much blood? Did he tell you how long it would take for the wound to heal? And then does he know how long it will be before his leg is as strong as it was?” She turned to Alvar. “When I stopped you leaving before the first snow, it was not so that you could do this instead.”
He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I am barely putting any weight on it, I swear to you. And the youngling wishes to learn these new skills. He will need them.”
“You see, Mother, Uncle Alvar is right. I must learn how to do these things, and I must learn it from the best.”
She turned round again. “Oh, you have him eating out of your hand.” To her son she said, “When are you thinking you will need these skills? And why?”
“So that I can keep the queen from harm.”
“Oh; her.”
Siferth made a few thrusts through the air with his wooden sword. “I know that you like her not, Mother.”
Alvar the Kingmaker Page 27
