by M J Porter
“Edmund, say as little as you can. Keep your younger brothers safe, and don’t, whatever is said or whatever Eadric’s men do, defend Morcar and Sigeforth. To survive this, you need to earn enough of the king’s trust that you can leave here and return to your home. It’s imperative that you don’t alert him of any involvement you might have had with the two men. Nothing.”
Edmund turned and opened his mouth to speak, but Leofwine shushed him.
“No, we can discuss this at a later date. For now, deny and act horrified. Speak out against those who try to destabilise the king and those who would talk about his death. Protect yourself.”
Leofwine watched the younger man carefully and happy that he wasn’t going to ask any more questions he signalled to everyone that they should run to the king’s hall. Better to arrive flushed and out of breath than calm and composed. Their appearance would be looked at and noted by Eadric and the queen, if as he suspected, she was as involved in this as Eadric was.
The king’s palace was in upheaval. Northman was positioned on the gate, and he shouted as they approached, his voice a little strained, but the gate opened quickly enough as soon as he saw Cyneweard and his father.
“Where is the king?” Leofwine called a little imperiously, and Northman responded in the same tone.
“In the hall. He’s been roused from his bed, and the bodies brought before them.”
That gave Leofwine pause for thought. Why would the bodies be on display if it weren’t to scare and terrify the king’s followers?
The hall was, surprisingly, not as full as Leofwine thought it would be. The other ealdormen were there, Uhtred, Ulfcytel, Ælfric and of course Eadric, but other than that, there were only a handful of the king’s thegns, the king and the queen. The entire contingent of the king’s household troop stood to attention, armed and battle ready. Guards, but for whom?
Leofwine entered in a rush and bowed immediately to the king, his eyes passing briefly over the corpses on the floor, the blood from the dead men pooling around their heads. It was a grim sight.
“You are unharmed my Lord?” he asked loudly into the nearly silent room, his voice filled with equal parts concern and anger.
“Yes, yes,” Æthelred said a little tiredly, “I am well. It is Ealdorman Eadric who found his life threatened.”
Turning immediately to where Eadric was being tended by a servant woman who was wiping at some scratches on his neck and arms, Leofwine managed to keep the same amount of concern and horror in his voice as he asked.
“My Lord Eadric, you are well?”
Eadric’s eyes blazed brightly with the dissipating adrenalin of what he’d either just been put through or had been a party to.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, a few scratches, a little bit of blood. I’m just pleased that the men attacked me and not the king. In fact, I’m pleased the king asked me to question them and did not do it himself. I dread to think what would have happened if they’d turned on Æthelred while he still recovers from his illness.”
Leofwine managed to keep his face filled with shock as he absorbed Eadric’s lies.
“I share your relief entirely and my thanks, my Lord, for killing the traitorous bastards. We can’t allow men who plot against the king to live.”
“You seem well informed of events?” Eadric asked with a sneer that quickly lifted when Edmund began to speak.
“I went to Ealdorman Leofwine, father. As the only one of your men not staying within your palace I thought it necessary to inform him of the terrible threat to your life.”
Edmund’s face was flushed, his breathing a little too uneven, and that all worked in his favour. For once Æthelred smiled on his oldest surviving son with understanding.
“My thanks for your concern for me Edmund.”
Beside him, a brief grimace swept over Emma’s face, disappointing Leofwine once more. He couldn’t understand her fierce antipathy towards her older stepson. All the boys of Æthelred’s first marriage had treated her with respect from the moment she married their father, and all she’d done was to repay their kindness with contempt and suspicion.
“What do you plan to do now my Lord?” Leofwine pressed, curious to see how the king would turn this to his advantage.
“I will seize their land and their goods as if they were still alive and being punished for their traitorous activities. I don’t plan on allowing any of their families to continue to benefit from the positions the men held. Everything they had will become mine. I'll send a firm message across my kingdom that no one can expect to use violence against me and live to tell the tale.”
Leofwine glanced at the bodies then, taking a little more notice of them, and using what he saw to fuel his anger.
“May I look at the bodies?” he asked, already walking towards them.
“Of course my Lord, if you must, but please do it quickly so that my Lady does not see.”
Cloaks had covered the men, their own or other men’s Leofwine was unsure. He bent to the first body and angling his own so that Eadric couldn’t see his facial expression he lifted the cloak and looked at the greying body.
There was only one wound on the body, a clean slice of the neck. Other than that Morcar’s body was untouched without even the hint of a defensive cut to his fingers or hands. He’d had no idea what was coming. Had Eadric really been such a coward that he’d had him killed from behind? Leofwine bowed his head in grief at the sight of such brutality.
Turning, he also ran his eyes over Sigeforth’s body and noted that he also only had one injury to the neck. Despite his hopes, he knew what he saw. Eadric had executed the two men under the pretext of extending the hand of friendship to them. The king was no doubt aware of what had happened; Eadric wouldn’t have had the audacity to act without the king’s permission, and that sickened Leofwine further.
“My Lord,” Ulfcytel said from his place near the front of the hall, “this disturbs me, this attempt by the men to facilitate Cnut’s return. Should we not do something about the wife and the child? Shouldn’t we bring them before you? Or expel them? Anything to stop giving him an excuse to return to England.”
The king was watching Leofwine with narrowed eyes that Leofwine chose to ignore. Instead, he stood and returned to the conversation taking place at the front of the hall.
“Is that what the men were doing? Plotting to bring Cnut back?”
The king was nodding now and pointing towards Eadric.
“Eadric, tell the hall what you’ve already told me. Let everyone here know what you suspected and what they did when you approached them.”
Eadric remained seated, looking at the dead bodies and then turning to glare at Ulfcytel.
“I heard that the two were allying themselves with the family of the girl, Ælfgifu of Northampton, a woman you will all know is part of a family that the king has already punished once during this reign. One of the men has married a relative of Ælfgifu recently, and my people told me that there’d been much activity at the home of Ælfgifu. I feared it meant that Cnut was returning to celebrate the birth of his son. I spoke to the king of my fears, and he asked me to talk to the two men, they are after all thegns dwelling within my Mercian lands, only when I did so, in my room and unarmed, they attempted to attack me with their weapons which they carried with them.”
Leofwine stayed silent. He knew that neither of the men had been armed because they didn’t have their sword belts on. He was curious to see how far Eadric would take his lie.
“Luckily, I had a knife in my room, one I frequently use for eating with, and I was able to defend myself from their attack with it. Sadly, I killed them both. I regret that. It would have been better to keep them alive and question them.”
Eadric flickered his gaze at the king then, hoping he’d said enough.
“Then we must ready ourselves for a possible attack,” Leofwine said, directly and not asking for the matter to be debated. “If Cnut plans on coming back this year then the country needs to be r
eady. My Lord King, you’ll ask Thorkell to amass his men around the eastern coasts?”
The King jumped a little at the suggestion, more demand than a question, making Leofwine wonder what else he didn’t know, but he waited for the king to answer.
“Yes, Thorkell is already returning to his ships. I fear,” and here he laughed a little, “that he may need a huge geld to turn his fleet to my needs but if it must be done, it must be paid for.”
“And the fyrds, will you call them out as well?” Leofwine pressed. If the king wanted to use these deaths as an excuse for all-out war against a foe who wasn’t yet even on English soil, Leofwine wanted to know just how far he’d push it. The answer came quickly.
“The fyrd, no I think not. The household troops of my ealdormen can be on alert, especially Eadric’s, but other than that, we should wait until Cnut arrives in England. If he arrives.” The King said that darkly and Leofwine wondered what he might know that others did not. Had Cnut been in contact with the king? Had they made an agreement? Leofwine’s mind spun with possibilities as he focused on the atmosphere in the room.
Eadric joined the conversation then.
“There’s no need to call out the fyrd. I agree with the king, and certainly not in the Western provinces, Wessex or your lands Leofwine. If Cnut comes, it’ll be from the east.”
“So you will arm your men?”
“No, not yet. I think it would be presumptuous.”
Leofwine held his temper in check. Here they both were accusing Morcar and Sigeforth of conspiring with Cnut and yet their lack of proactive actions showed it all to be a lie. If Morcar and Sigeforth had allied with Cnut and Æthelred and Eadric had known about it, then all the fyrds would have been summoned, and the king would have spent the day demanding a geld for Thorkell’s ship-army. But Leofwine knew not to press the point any further. Not right now. What mattered was getting through the rest of this difficult night and ensuring the survival of Edmund. He might well have sworn an oath to Swein to make Cnut king, but that was before Cnut had fled the country, leaving in his wake a man who would make an excellent king if he survived to do so.
“So there is nothing more to fear tonight then?”
“No, I think not. My men and Eadric’s are all guarding the palace. Obviously, if you wish to stay here then I can have a room made available for you.”
Leofwine saw a challenge in the king’s face then, but he chose to ignore it.
“No, my Lord, but my thanks for your offer. I’ll return to the house in Oxford where I stay. It’s somewhere I feel safe and able to get around well with my hound.”
With that, he bowed his way from the king’s presence and returned with as much haste as he could to the gate. He hoped to have a quiet word with Northman, but his son was somewhere else, no doubt being put to use by Eadric on another task. He thought of asking after him but knew that his enquiries would be reported to Eadric with all haste, and with the bloodthirsty coward already covered in the life force of innocent men he didn’t want to place his son in any further danger.
The king had, without a doubt, acted irrationally, and vindictively, the very things that he’d sworn not to do when he was granted his crown back by the men of the Witan. It did not bode well for the future.
Chapter 25
June AD1015
Northman
Oxford
He didn’t sleep that night, not even for a moment. Eadric had him running around on guard duty all night even though there was nothing to defend against apart from two corpses. Northman had shed a tear of remorse for the two men. No, he’d not known them well but if he’d known what Eadric had planned he would have prevented their death by any means he could.
He felt sick and light headed as he struggled to sit still and remain awake during the continuation of the Witan the morning after the killings. No matter what spin the king or Eadric put on the situation, Northman knew the men had been killed in cold blood, and he thought that many others knew it as well. If the atmosphere the day before had been tense, today it was toxic.
The king was sluggish in his movements and his speech. The excitements of the night before had been detrimental to his slow recovery from illness, and the ealdormen were tired too and angry as well. And yet no one spoke up for the murdered thegns. He thought that Edmund would have liked to, but he hoped his father had talked him out of any public demonstration. It would only hurt his cause with his father were he to be seen as an ally of the men.
Neither, and this was perhaps the most worrying thing of all, did anyone demand justice for the king or an end to the constant rumour mongering. It was as though those that mattered knew all about the king’s actions and being unable to speak out about them, were simply going to let them happen.
Northman had hopes that the end of the Witan would pass peacefully, and he almost had his wish. Until the end of the day, when the fidgeting of the tired men and women had given way to a lethargic hope that it would just end, nothing untoward happened. Then the king stood before the assembly and spoke the words that he’d apparently wanted to say all day long.
“I wish it to be known that those who plot against me will be punished, severely. As of today, I am the Lord of the land that previously belonged to the two dead men. All their land and all their dues will now fall to me. Their families are cast out, and any who give them support will be punished as well. I will not allow traitors to keep land that they don’t deserve and neither will their families.”
Northman watched Eadric poorly containing his happiness at the turn of events, and he silently fumed with anger. Bloody Eadric. Why did he always have to push the king to make such a fool of himself? There was no need for such action and no need for it to be such a public pronouncement. It was impossible for all but the most apologetic of the king’s men to put any spin on this that didn’t amount to barefaced theft of the dead men's land. As yet there had been no evidence given of the men’s crimes, and still, the king had condemned them and their family.
Leofwine didn’t react to the news, and neither did the other ealdormen, but the other men of the Witan did. There were calls for more details from some brave individual at the back of the hall, and yet another voice demanded a trial and to hear the evidence. The king didn’t invite the men to speak, instead of signalling the end of the Witan and walking sedately through the mass of men who helped him rule the land of the English.
Northman watched him with the narrowed eyes of a disappointed man. He’d always tried to stay as open minded as he could about Æthelred and his faults, trying to emulate his father’s calming acceptance of whatever the King did or didn’t do, but this was too much. Both Eadric and the king were treading a dangerous path and anyone who could string the current series of events together would see it for what it was, a vindictive attack on two men who’d done nothing to support Cnut. In fact, and as he knew, Morcar and Sigeforth were allies of Edmund, not Cnut. If anything, they wanted Cnut to stay away even more than Æthelred did.
Chapter 26
September AD1015
Leofwine
Deerhurst
He paced his hall in frustration and annoyance. He had three messengers before him, and they all told him something he didn’t want to know. All of them.
The first had arrived with the cock crow, come directly from northern Mercia where Edmund had gone to claim the land of Morcar and Sigeforth and at the same time take Sigeforth’s wife as his own.
That was all his message said.
Simple and to the point.
No hint of treachery about it. And why had he done so? Well that was what the second messenger had come to tell him.
Arriving at mid-morning, and with the dust of his journey all around him, the second messenger had come from archbishop Wulfstan. The king had demanded that Sigeforth’s pregnant wife be confined to a nunnery and had sent Ealdorman Eadric to retrieve her. Putting the two messages together, Leofwine had decided that Edmund must have heard of the king’s intentions and de
cided to rescue the girl from what would ultimately be her’s and her child’s early death at Eadric’s hands. The messenger apologised for his delay. His horse had gone lame on him, and he’d been forced to walk for extended portions of the journey until he’d been able to replace the poor beast.
Still trying to determine what this all meant for the future a third messenger had arrived in the afternoon, and he carried two items from the king that were deeply unwelcome. Firstly the King was dangerously ill at Cosham and secondly, Cnut had been sighted at Sandwich with a full ship army and the king, from his sick bed, was demanding that the fyrd be called out, even so, late in the season.
The men and women were preparing to harvest their crops not to fight an enemy who hadn’t yet made landfall. His temper grew with each step he took. He could feel the eyes of his men and also his wife watching his every move and that further infuriated him.
It was his wife who spoke first.
“What do you think the king wants you to do?” she asked, and she asked because she wanted him to think about what was making him so angry. He understood that.
“What he wants me to do, as he always does, is to make everything alright for him without him lifting a finger. He wants me to defeat Cnut, get the girl in a nunnery and have Eadric take all the credit.” He tugged his hair in frustration and stooped to apologise to the hound of his grandson whose tail he’d accidentally stood on, causing the poor beast to yelp in pain.
Æthelflæd’s laughter had him staring at her in disbelief. How could she laugh at a time like this?
“Have you heard yourself,” she said when she was composed again.
“What do you mean?” he asked roughly in annoyance.
“Even the Lord, our God, couldn’t accomplish all that and yet you berate yourself and fret because you can’t find an easy solution to these three insurmountable problems.”
