The Abbot's Tale

by Conn Iggulden

  Those voices turned into running feet, coming closer. I let him go as they reached my little forge. I put the tongs back to heat again and the monks who came with cudgels heard Skinner screaming in agony as he ran away into the darkness.

  ‘Who was that? What was that?’ they demanded.

  ‘The devil,’ I told them in my fury. As I’d once been carried by an angel, I began another tale attached to my name, one that has stood the test of time more than any other part of my works and the years granted to me. The devil came for Dunstan and the abbot took him by the nose with red-hot tongs. It has a life of its own, that. Yet in a sense, it was true. Skinner had threatened me. I made him regret it. I am not proud of the truth, nor how it was twisted around me, against my will or my intention.

  31

  My harp played itself. Now, yes, it was the wind, but saying that as if it explains all is not the half of it. Mere wind unclothed can howl around eaves and whistle like a beggar, but it does not make a chord or a tune. It sings not, it plays not, it only moans. I tuned my harp strings to make music – and the wind brought forth the notes. It was a wonder. King Eadred was certainly entranced by it, so that I made it a gift to him. If the abbey was my first great work, the harp was my second. I had made a dozen of them over the years, but that was my last. I had mastered the craft and I had no more interest.

  It was around that time that Archbishop Oda asked me to create a robe for him to celebrate Mass.

  As the priest stands with his back to the congregation, the only thing they have to rest the eye upon is the long stole he wears. It can be the work of years to embroider scenes from the Bible or the lives of the saints in rich colour. I had seen the vestments King Æthelstan had given to the tomb of St Cuthbert, rich with gold and silk and filled with colour. I could not do less. I will not hide my light under a bushel. As I said to Wulfric once when he remarked on it, ‘Where would I find a bushel big enough?’ It was in jest, of course, but also a great truth.

  It helped that we were not at war. If I’d known then what was to come, I might not have spent so long learning English embroidery.

  I remained the royal treasurer, and as I entered my thirties, I was well known at court, in Winchester and in London. The sheer weight of coin that came from my efforts to root out corruption made me a favourite every time King Eadred spent time in his treasury. I did not travel much beyond those places, as I had my workshops and my libraries there. I was also illuminating a Rule of St Benedict then, in fine gold, blues and red. I had ground the very best encaustum ink and overseen vellum so well cured and dried as to last a millennium.

  If perhaps I have a tendency towards pride, it is humbling to think of my greatest works being read long after I am gone.

  King Edmund’s sons had grown into strong lads in the years of their uncle’s reign. Their mother had fallen into sickness early on, snatched away in the night with some female ailment. I was not called to tend her, which is why she died. The two boys looked to King Eadred as a parent, but of course that poor man had spent half his reign out hunting raiders and burners.

  I will say the oldest of those two boys was spoiled by all, as an apple can rot at the heart though the skin is clean. Edwy was an orphan, yes, deserving of our compassion, but there was a spitefulness in him, a slyness. Becoming the darling of the court only allowed that side of him to grow. I did not like him then. I cannot say I ever grew to.

  In part, it was his confidence that grated on me. From his days of playing with wooden soldiers, he knew he would be king. I smiled at first to see him placing real guards in a great hall, marching them up and down and ordering them about like a general in his high, childish voice.

  The knowledge of power to come is what corrupted him. It is too much for some, so that they learn no curb, no character from being refused. Edwy was never refused, in anything. Whenever I stopped him racing past me at full cry, or snapped at him for pissing in a corner rather than leaving the room to find a pot, he looked at me with a little smile on his face, as if he alone knew what lay ahead. I have to say he quite unnerved me as he grew older.

  Part of the problem was that he was as fair as the devil himself. There was an almost unnatural beauty to that boy. His teeth were white, his skin unmarked by pock or pit. His features were very regular and his hair was as blond as his father’s had been. The young ladies of the court sighed at his passing when he was still only a child, fanning themselves and rolling their eyes like Jezebel, telling one another what a dashing young prince he was.

  I found his younger brother Edgar much more amenable, a boy of quiet prayer and kind disposition. The Witan had placed him in the home of an ealdorman in Worcester, an old Mercian family. Those two boys had been our kingdom’s main assets while Eadred ruled. It was an old practice to keep them apart, though as a result, they could not have been more different.

  When I went to visit Edgar, I found him serious and charming, the opposite of his laughing brother. He asked for stories of his father Edmund and I told him a dozen, over and over. Edgar had inherited his father’s sense of duty, without which all the talent in the world can be wasted. That was what his brother never understood.

  If only Edgar had been born before Edwy. So much would be different. Archbishop Oda agreed with me about the pair – that one was mere dross, while the other bore the signs of his noble father. Only one could be king, and as Eadred’s health worsened, we felt that day rushing upon us, closer every month. At least we knew it was coming, so we had time to prepare.

  I do not think Eadred was ever truly well, in all the years I knew him. His stomach ate him up from the inside and became, in the end, his master. He was always in pain.

  Eadred asked me to be bishop of Worcester when that post came free and I could not refuse him a second time. From the start, he had raised me up and seen my worth – and I loved him for it.

  In the ninth year of his reign, I was dosing Eadred with mugwort every day, though it hardly eased his poor ulcerated stomach. He was thirty-two years old. He could not bear even beef juice then, never mind solid food of any kind. I saw him mark his little cloth with blood sometimes when he coughed, so that he had to change them twice or three times a day. As he could not eat, he lost weight alarmingly. It was not long before the whole court knew he was fading. His nephew Edwy would be king before the year’s end.

  The boy learned it himself, of course. He had many servants and thanes who saw their futures entwined with his. At first, they only whispered in his ear and hoped for favours. As his uncle began to fail, they were more open in their support of him.

  In a different lad, the prospect of great responsibility might have tempered him, at least while his uncle slipped away in agony. Instead, that fifteen-year-old bantam cock strutted about Winchester. He rode to hunt rather than keeping a modest demeanour. While the court whispered and waited for the passing of a beloved king, Edwy roared with laughter and drank until he vomited with his coarse friends, eyeing the maids and noble ladies who fluttered at them. Doing a lot more than merely eyeing them as well, if half the rumours were true.

  In contrast, young Edgar came to Winchester in a great riding party of Mercian lords, rushing in with the smell of wind and earth on him to his uncle’s bedside. There was no laughter in him, no wildness – only solemnity and dignity as he gave honour.

  I made a promise then, in the vault of my private thoughts, as Edgar knelt and prayed for his uncle’s return to health. He would make a better king.

  Edgar’s prayers would be disappointed. His uncle had ruled for a few months shy of ten years and he was a gasping, withered thing at the end. He asked to be buried in the Old Minster at Winchester.

  ‘Or perhaps Glastonbury, Your Highness,’ I murmured to him. ‘Where your beloved brother Edmund has his wonderful tomb.’

  Eadred turned a look on me, I remember, that was full of indignation. Death steals our strength, but also our authority.

  ‘I said Winchester and I meant it,’ he said. Pain too
k him away for a time and he was silent. In all that ending, I do not recall him weeping or crying out, though death clutched at his face and buried its claws in his gut.

  ‘Where is Archbishop Oda?’ Eadred said at last, when he could speak again.

  The archbishop stepped forward from the servants arrayed around the king’s bed. Kings die in a crowd. Never alone, even if they wish to be.

  ‘Here, lord,’ Oda said. ‘Would you like me to administer the last blessing and confession now?’

  Eadred breathed out and out. I thought he had gone, but it was merely acceptance. The worst of the pain seemed to leave him as he gave way to it.

  Oda said the last rites over him. We waited a long time for the end. When it came, I closed the king’s eyes. As the news was carried away from his rooms, I felt the return of old fears.

  You have to understand our kingdom is a flame in a storm gale, guttering, flickering, struggling to survive. To the west, we still had the Vikings who had made their fiefdoms in Ireland. To the east and north, we had the might of all those small kings who saw our coast as a challenge – the Danes, the Swedish kings, the savage Norse. To the south, all along the coast of old Gaul, more Norsemen gathered, peering across at us. They waited all around us then. We had no chance to survive, some said. Yet we fought even so, whenever they came. Some men will.

  We fought, because not to fight was to be destroyed, but also because we’d glimpsed something in the land, in the rivers. Our fathers and grandfathers had found a good place, a sweet valley, with wolves on every hill all around us, just watching. We were farmers and soldiers and princes and priests. They were mere cruelty.

  When a king died, they came howling down the hills. So I was afraid, not least because I knew Edwy would be king – and he was no friend of mine. My star had risen with Edmund and Eadred. It fell with Edwy. More, it crashed to earth.

  PART FOUR

  Behold, a Prince of the Church AD 954

  ‘A bee of genius, that flies over divine meadows.’

  Vita S. Dunstani

  32

  I went along when the Witan gathered. They came in dark colours for the king’s funeral, showing mourning and giving him honour. Yet they came also to choose a new king. When the funeral was over and Eadred had been placed in his tomb in the minster, his Witan walked in procession to the great hall, taking their seats around the central aisle.

  Prince Edwy and Prince Edgar took places on the benches there, with every noble earl and thane from Winchester to Scotland. Both young men wore black and bore swords at their waist. Edwy stared around with one eyebrow raised, as if we bored him, as if he owned us.

  I was there as royal treasurer, but also as witness, bishop and abbot. I had no proper seat on the Witan as I had not been elected to one. As a result, I had no vote that day, though I could still address the gathering and play a part. We were without a king. The whole country waited for the good word to come out of that meeting.

  We all knew the Danes would hear in a month or two, if they had not already. I am sure they had spies in that hall. There are always some whose honour can be purchased. No one else had any great desire to see the Vikings return. If they did come, we needed a king on the throne to lead our men to battle. A man of the line of Alfred and Æthelstan.

  Yet it was not so simple. Edwy was the oldest boy, but he was neither warrior nor scholar, nor man of God. He was just a minstrel gadabout, and I will not say worse of him, though I could.

  Before King Eadred was in his tomb, I had visited Archbishop Oda at his private home in Winchester. He’d welcomed me to a study that contained models of ships, to my slight surprise. I examined them closely and he explained how he had made them from memory, recreating the vessels he had known as a boy. He had food and wine brought and settled himself to hear me. All priests are familiar with men and women seeking them out, overborne with some great problem. It is part of our role as shepherds, and he expected something like that from me.

  ‘You are the foremost man of the Church in England, Your Grace,’ I said to him – for archbishops and cardinals are addressed as princes, and given the same courtesies when they travel to a foreign court. I was a mere bishop of Worcester, though I still hoped for a position in London or even Winchester.

  ‘Your Grace, this cockscomb prince, this headstrong boy, has no real faith, no desire to rule well, beyond his lusts and his greed. I have met a hundred men and found not a single one willing to speak well of Edwy.’

  ‘Truly?’ Oda asked. He tutted in dismay as I confirmed it.

  ‘If there was no other, Your Grace, I would say it was God’s will, but we do have a better son, in Edgar.’

  ‘He is too young,’ Oda said immediately.

  I shrugged.

  ‘He is fourteen – older than I was when my father took me to the abbey at Glastonbury. Older than you when you came to England. The Mercians speak well of the lad and he has impressed me. They would follow him and that . . . that is what matters. The king does not have to wield a sword if he has the confidence of his lords. Edwy cannot command that confidence.’

  ‘Yet Edwy will be king,’ Oda said.

  ‘The Witan chooses the king who will be best for the land,’ I said patiently. ‘Not always the eldest of the line – just as Eadfed wore the crown while these boys grew. They chose King Æthelstan only because he gave an oath not to marry. Edmund was their first choice. Father, Your Grace, we have one chance here, to turn the path of history. If we say nothing, if we do nothing, a spiteful, cocky boy will wear the crown for fifty years. Yet if you and I speak for Edgar, the Witan will be forced to listen. To me, as abbot and bishop, but more to you, as archbishop of Canterbury. You are the voice of the Church in England. They will not turn away from you.’

  ‘Who will Wulfstan support, do you think?’ Oda asked. The archbishop of York had spent some time in prison under Edmund and learned some valuable lessons from the experience. We’d heard nothing from him after that.

  ‘He will not speak,’ I said, though I did not know. ‘You and I can persuade the Witan, together, no other. If you agree Edgar is the right choice.’

  ‘I will pray on it,’ he promised, but I knew even then. Oda too had seen Edwy’s lies and thefts and cruel games. An old hound, half-blind, had snapped at the prince a year before. Edwy had kicked it to death in rage for that slight hurt. No one cared about one old cur, but the public temper, the childish, spitting fury, had disturbed many.

  Oda needed only the faintest push to be persuaded. He had wanted to hear what I had to say.

  The Witan was made of earls and thanes and shire reeves and old members of the court, elected when a place came free, which was rare. England had more than a million souls, so they said. In representing such a number, the Witan was a great gathering – the voice of the subjects. When those men came together as they did that evening, their greatest and most sacred role was to choose the king to rule them.

  Edwy was smiling to himself, I saw, like a sly cat almost, with his head half dipped and his blond curls catching the last rays of the sun. Perhaps that beauty was what ruined him. There is honesty in ugliness, I have observed. An ugly woman is often a faithful one, with no temptations to draw her from the path.

  I had made up my mind to stand between Edwy and the crown. Though I could feel my heart beating so hard as to make me faint, I signalled my desire to speak. The room fell silent. I drew myself to my feet and, though they were all around me, I could feel Edwy’s gaze.

  ‘It is my understanding, as one who has counselled kings, that the Witan chooses the best of the bloodline to serve the land. That is our way, from older courts than this, to times our fathers and mothers would not recall. We choose who rules us – and that is their power over us all, that they know they were chosen. It is our honour, bound into one decision and never challenged again until death or betrayal.’

  I looked around at them all and a part of me was surprised at how closely they listened. In some ways, I still thought of
myself as a callow youth, but the truth was I had advised kings, especially Eadred. All men there knew me, and most respected my judgement. I had assumed I needed Oda in support, but to my pleasure, I realised that I might not. Somehow, through some combination of mere age and the seam of my talent, I had become a man to whom others listened. It was a moment of giddiness in that place and I gripped the bridge of my nose and took a slow breath.

  ‘A king must have strength and wisdom – or the seeds of both, in two candidates so young.’

  A stir went around the room at that. Until that moment, Edwy had been the heir apparent, unchallenged. I had not even told Edgar of my intention to speak. I could almost feel Edwy’s smile slip, replaced by a scowl in the gloom.

  ‘I fought at their father’s side at Brunanburh,’ I said. ‘I have known battle in all its blood and noise. I saw the greatness in Prince Edmund then – and I guided him until he was taken from us as king. I saw then how the trials of the north wore at King Eadred and how much of his strength he bartered away, to kill those who tried to steal the land. I have known kings – and I know now what makes a good one. I see that strength in one son of King Edmund, but not the other.’

  The stir was louder then and a few called for me to sit down and be quiet, no doubt the defenders and friends of Edwy making themselves heard. I had to wait for a time before they were still, or close enough to it for me to say what I had come to say.

  ‘I have witnessed weakness and spite in one son, dignity and honour in the other. Therefore, I urge the Witan to choose Prince Edgar over his brother.’

  There was pandemonium for a while, as if they’d all drawn in a breath just to howl at me. When I sat down it was to a great roar of noise. Yet when it died away, both Archbishop Oda and Edwy himself were on their feet.