Kings of the North

by Kings of the North (retail) (epub)

  Aethelstan was part of it too, this spinning, this quickening whirl of power, around a center he could not see.

  Some other men followed them, a few in mail but most in rich fur-trimmed coats. The Saxons were as clothes proud, he thought, as the Greeks. People around Raef were saying names – Sigeferth, Uhtred, Morcar – but he knew nothing of them: Saxon lords. Then came a dozen men who were clearly Normans, beardless, their hair close cropped to fit under their helmets, many in mail coats. Their horses were strapping southern stock. The crowd subsided as they approached and was quiet, even sullen, while watching them pass.

  Then another cheer went up; the King was coming. Suddenly through all the buffeting racket of the city, the itchiness and the panic, an unforgettable stench reached Raef’s nose, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  The King of the English was riding toward him, a broad, handsome man of middle age, dressed in sumptuous dark velvet trimmed with spotted fur. His horse was black with white socks, gold threads braided into its mane and forelock. Beside him on a little dun mule rode his new Queen, the Norman girl, Emma. As Raef looked at her she turned her gaze on him, and from her there went out a blast of power that he felt down to his heels.

  It was she, the Lady, inhabiting the Queen.

  He backed away, stunned. The King and Queen rode by him, the King booming loud and massive, the girl short and plump. Her coif and her gown were white with gold laces, her furs white. Her face inside the hood of fur trembled and glimmered in a chaos of change. She went by him without turning, smiling straight ahead, small beside her great boar of a King. Raef realized he was holding his breath.

  He lowered his gaze. He came back to himself. Beside him, a woman stood, her head wrapped in a dirty coif. It was Arre, wearing the same long stained apron and clog shoes as the night before. He wondered how long she had been there, watching him. He lifted his head, the shock of seeing the Lady still rippling through him.

  Arre said, “You saw the Queen? She makes my blood bubble.”

  Raef laughed, shaky. He thought, That is the center, and in his mind he saw the mill storm of war and murder spreading out around her, England already caught; Denmark, Norway, and the rest of the North beginning to fall, as well as Normandy now; everything sucked into destruction in a whirling chaos. The last of the royal retainers were swarming by, and the crowd was hurrying to follow, leaving him and Arre behind.

  He realized that Arre was talking to him. She was apologizing for the way her husband had treated him the night before. “The King suspects everybody. He’s threatened to charge Euan with some made-up crime and throw him into a dungeon, and Euan’s out of his mind with worry.”

  Raef said, “What you did made it right. We are in your debt.” He had seen she was wary, even out here, of being seen. The crowd was boisterous, many drunken, and it was shoving out onto the road to follow the King and Queen and their retainers up to the hall. Up there a line of Norman knights swung out behind the royal party to hold the crowd back.

  Laissa still stood by the road with Leif, watching the procession but not following the crowd. Raef called to them. From the crowd in the road there went up a loud, angry bellow at the Normans holding them back.

  Arre said, “This would not be Martinmas in London without one good street fight.” She brushed back a tendril of her hair that had escaped her coif. “We cannot do more than talk, and that only a few moments. I only wish you good journey. You are on your way to Jorvik?”

  “Yes.” He was in a fever to get away. He had to protect Laissa, whom he had drawn into this. He had to get out of London, find somewhere he could collect himself.

  Arre said, “Uhtred of Bamburgh thinks he rules Jorvik. But the place is ruined, hardly anyone lives there anymore.” Her broad, shrewd face was seamed with worry; her eyes darted from side to side, keeping watch. Her voice tightened like a drawn wire. “Here comes a page. Take care.”

  A boy in royal colors trotted up to them, his long hair in his eyes. Two knights on horseback followed. The page bowed down before Raef and said, “The King and Queen request your presence before them at court. You and your wife.”

  Raef straightened, his eyes going toward the noisy swarm growing smaller in the distance. “I am unknown to them.”

  “You are known; your name goes on before you, they say.”

  He raised his eyes to the two knights who had come with the page. It was in his mind to run, but there was Laissa. He looked over his shoulder at Arre, who made the sign of the cross at him and slipped away, looking like a peasant wife in her dirty apron. He turned to Laissa and Leif. “Come with me.”

  “Just two of you,” the page said. “My lady the Queen bade me that expressly, only you and your wife.”

  Leif took a step back, looking relieved. He said, “I’ll meet you in London,” and went off down the road. Raef took hold of Laissa’s hand, and they followed the page.

  * * *

  Emma sat beside her King, smiling, her eyes forward. Inside this shell the Lady churned with rage.

  She had long known Raef was coming, and she had recognized him at once there in the crowd, even in his manifest body, tall, stooped, his white-yellow hair in braids down his back. At least, she thought, he no longer had the hawk to guide him.

  She should have known what he was years before, when he was only a worm in his mother’s belly.

  She had suspected when Gunnhild escaped that the Danish witch intended to thwart her. Gunnhild had freed her of the loathsome imprisonment in Hedeby, and the Lady would have absorbed her, but, before she could turn, something warned Gunnhild, who broke loose and fled, and the Lady had had to leap quickly into another, lesser body.

  Since then the Lady had gathered in many souls, but none so strong and broad as Gunnhild’s. Many Christian souls had no power at all of their own, having given it to their god. Emma was only just satisfactory, pliant and stupid, and inhabiting her meant putting up with Ethelred.

  Now the loss of Gunnhild had turned back on her, and the Lady had come face-to-face with the one creature who could do her damage.

  She should have killed him when his mother had been in her hands. She had tried. She had given Mav powerful drinks to wash him early from the womb, plotted to seize him when he came out, to drown him before he drew breath. Mav had forestalled it all, loving her son, in her greatness of soul loving even the product of a rape.

  The Lady did not know exactly how he could harm her, but the urgency grew in her steadily to get rid of him.

  He was still only a man, ignorant, bumbling. He hardly knew more of himself than he had in the womb. If she killed him now, he would crumble away like a dry leaf. She had to keep him out of Jorvik, where he would be strong even beyond her reach, and where he would grow. But keeping him from Jorvik seemed easy enough. And there was the wife, the pretty little wife. The Lady coiled herself in Emma’s body, waiting.

  * * *

  Only a narrow creek separated the minster’s island from the hall of the King of the English. It was a well-built wooden hall with a roof of slates; the walls were hung with weavings, and the floor covered with rushes scented with rosemary. Crowds of men in fur-trimmed coats stood around talking, as at any court; Raef had seen half the courts in Christendom, and they all reminded him of swarms of flies buzzing over a pile of shit. He followed the page up before the raised platform at the end. On the wall behind it was a broad red banner, figured with a golden serpent, and in front of it two thrones stood.

  On one was the King of the English, bluff and massive. The red banner behind them on the wall was his, blazoned with the winged dragon of his house. On the other throne was a swirling, stinking madness wrapped in a plump whey-faced girl-child. Raef faced the King.

  He said, “I greet the King of the English, whose name is known as far as Freising and even Rome.”

  He did not bow. Behind Ethelred stood a row of men with swords, and Raef kept part of his attention always
on them.

  Ethelred said, “You have heard me spoken of in Rome.” He turned to look behind him, to make sure everybody else was as impressed with this as he was. He leaned on the great carved arm of his throne. His wide face was dark from the sun, his beard sun crisped. The skin over his cheekbones was coarse and pocked. When he smiled it was only with his mouth, a twitch of his meaty lips.

  Half Raef’s mind was bent to hold off the blast of rage from his right hand; he spoke to Ethelred in a clumsy voice, halting.

  “It is known what enemies you face. And England is far famous for her wealth.”

  Ethelred beat his fist once on the arm of the throne. “I am glad to hear it. You have come recently from lands to the east, I have heard.”

  “Yes,” he said. He was burning with a horrible itch. His gaze flicked toward the Queen, sitting among her waiting women. Emma had called Laissa up before her, first in Saxon and then in French. “Yes.” He cast another instant’s glance that way and saw Laissa kneel, her eyes turned down, at the Queen’s feet.

  “Is it true that the emperor is dead?”

  “The true Emperor, in New Rome, he may live forever. The Emperor of the West is truly dead, Otto the Saxon.” Laissa, he thought, Be careful. His mind roiled, trying to pitch his thoughts into the girl. Tell her nothing. Do not touch her. “I have heard his cousin will be emperor, but they are still fighting over it.” When the Queen beckoned to a page to offer Laissa something to eat, Raef had to grip his hands together to keep from reaching out and knocking the dish away.

  Laissa shook her head at the food. Ethelred was saying, “And the Pope.”

  “Sylvester is dead. There’s another pope, but he belongs to the Roman strongman.” Glad, he saw through the corner of his eye that Laissa was too frightened even to look at the Queen. The other waiting women, all dressed in white, had drawn back behind the throne, leaving Laissa alone at Emma’s feet. Emma leaned toward her, but Laissa would not even lift her eyes.

  To Ethelred, Raef said, “And the new pope anyway is hardly what Sylvester was.” He had liked Gerbert d’Aurillac.

  “What happened to Sylvester’s brazen head?” Ethelred said. “Was that not some instrument of the devil?”

  Raef laughed. He had heard this before, and since he had seen the actual head and heard wise, mad Gerbert talk to it, a deep place formed in his mind, and for an instant, sinking down into memory, he was beyond the reach of dread. He saw, for an instant, Laissa white as a candle flame before the Queen, and the swirling black lust of the Queen, and the women behind her like candles with their flames blown out.

  Then he rose to the surface, and the commonplace shuffling and stink and noise of the court around him flooded in again. The dread came back, a cramping nausea in his guts. Other people were pushing up closer around him, trying to catch Ethelred’s eye. Raef backed up into their midst. “It was just a piece of brass. I think it was buried with him.” He let a burly man with a thick black beard shove by him. “My lord,” he said to the King, “my wife is ill. I would have leave to get her somewhere quieter.”

  Ethelred waved his hand. “Go. I see no harm in you.”

  * * *

  “They have heard of me in Rome,” Ethelred said to his wife.

  The Queen was staring after the tall stranger and his wife. She turned to him and gave him her pretty smile. His heart swelled with love; he bent and kissed her cheek.

  She said, “You are the greatest king in Christendom, my lord.”

  He laughed. This he knew was not true, but her adoration of him was delightful, and he meant to keep it. He had few such pure pleasures. He had foreign enemies on all sides, and, even in his own kingdom, men conspired against him. They always had, since he was only a little boy, the junior King. He still remembered when his older brother was murdered. He had thought then, This will happen to me, someday, and since then he had been working to prevent that.

  Now again the evil of conspiracy was coiling around his court. The kingdom was infested with Danes and half Danes and even some Saxons and Angles who preferred the Danes, and until they were gone he would not be the true King even here. He glanced over his shoulder at the men standing behind him, his guards. Eadric Streona stood among them, clean shaven and close cropped, and the King met his eyes. Streona smiled at him. He shared his mind on this. Streona would be his sword. They had made plans. They had talked through everything, and now the moment was coming; at Ethelred’s word, Streona would lead Ethelred’s men against all his enemies. Wipe the kingdom clean. He looked down the hall for the tall white-haired wanderer. He was likely a Dane too somehow. If not, better to be sure. He took Emma’s hand in his.

  “My dear lord.” She lifted her eyes to him. “The girl who was just here – she seemed so sweet to me; I would see her again.”

  He lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them and, turning, beckoned Streona to him. “It shall be done, my dear child.” All would soon be done.

  Chapter Seven

  Outside the hall, Raef said, “You did that very well.”

  “I did nothing.”

  “Yes, very well.”

  “She scares me.”

  “She should.” He towed her on through the thick of the people waiting at the cold end of the hall, going toward the door where they had come in. Mailed knights stood all along the walls. Normans. He twisted his head once to look back over his shoulder, toward the Queen. He wondered how far he had to run to get away from this creeping, stinking heat, the scum of fear she cast over him. He turned to Laissa.

  “Do you feel that?”

  She looked wildly at him. “What’s the matter? You look so strange.” She clutched him. “What is it?”

  “Where’s Leif?” He realized he was panicking, spreading the dislocated terror the Lady bred in him. “We have to find Leif and get out of here.”

  They went out the door and through a busy dooryard, where horses stamped and an important-looking man stood by the hall step keeping people out, and through the broad, open gate onto the road. Leif had gone toward London. Raef could find him there easily enough. Laissa cried, breathless, “Don’t go so fast – I can’t keep up,” and he slowed down, the road hard under his feet.

  He had Laissa by one hand, and she took his arm with the other and said, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Be careful,” he said. “The Queen – Don’t let her near you. Don’t let her touch you—” Then the long-haired page who had brought them there in the first place ran up, out of breath.

  Panting, he bowed down before Raef, again; the passersby divided to walk around them. A few men on horseback were coming slowly up from the direction of the hall. The boy said, “My lady the Queen would have the wife of Raef Corbansson attend her in her bower.”

  Raef gripped Laissa and pulled her behind him. “No. She is not well—”

  Laissa cried, “I have no fit gown, don’t make me,” and then from either side horsemen were lunging at them.

  Raef wheeled, dodging a blow from behind that whistled over his head, and banged up against the horse there; he got the man in the saddle by the arm, on the swordsman’s return stroke, and yanked him off the skittering horse. Laissa was screaming. They were hauling Laissa away. He shouted her name and lunged after her. Another horse smashed into him from the side, and something struck him on the head. He went down on hands and knees on the road. For an instant he could see nothing. But he could feel the sword coming, and he lurched up. Weaving under the swing he got the man by the wrist and twisted the blade from his grip. The sword clanged on the road.

  The knight shouted a French oath, grabbing for something else to kill him with. Raef reached for the sword on the ground and stuck upward, taking the Norman through the skirt of the hauberk. He hauled the blade free, and the body fell.

  People were yelling. He wheeled around. On the ground, the other man was getting to his feet, and Raef kicked him down again. There had been more than two. They were gone now, and they had taken Laissa. People we
re watching, were gathering; soon another crew of knights would come.

  He knew where they had taken her. He knew what he had to do now. He sprinted down the crowded road toward London.

  * * *

  Leif sat outside the tavern in the sun, a can of ale on the table at his elbow, watching a juggler flipping a stream of colored balls through the air. The juggler was not as good as he could have been, and, when he dropped a ball, Leif joined the other men around the front of the tavern hooting at him and throwing whatever came to hand. A few people threw stones. The juggler hurried off, leaving a red ball behind on the pavement before the tavern. Leif sat back, reaching for his ale.

  Someone had come up beside him and was standing there, and now, turning, Leif saw him and recognized him for one of the Saxon lords from the court. He wore the gold-trimmed and fur-lined fancy Saxon clothes, but he was short haired and clean shaven, like a Norman. A little crinkle of alarm went down Leif’s back. He took the can of ale and found it had been filled up again.

  “Good day to you,” said the Saxon. First he used his own language, which Leif waved off; and then French, which Leif also refused; and finally dansker, with a look on his face as if he knew all along it would come to this.

  “Good day,” Leif said. The ale was crisp and bright, and he drank the whole can down. “So,” he said. “You are Eadric Streona.”

  The Saxon looked surprised. He was younger than Raef, square headed, with thick curly brown hair; the hood of his black cloak was down like a big cowl around his shoulders. He said, “You know me.”

  Leif said, “I have heard of you. You are the King’s axeman. What do you want with me?”

  The Saxon turned and signaled for more ale. He sat on the bench beside Leif. When the alewife came to fill his can and Leif’s, Streona looked down the front of her bodice. She was used to this and gave him a little flirt with her tits.