The Edge of Light (2 page)

Perhaps it was not built of stone, Alfred thought loyally as he surveyed the room before him, but it was every bit as grand as Judith’s father’s palace had been. Best of all, it was home.

Ethelwulf was summoning a serving woman to take Judith to one of the two private sleeping rooms at the far end of the hall, but Judith said, “Alfred will show me.”

Alfred was dismayed and looked to his father. He did not want to go with Judith; he wanted to stay here and listen to his father and his brothers talk. But Ethelwulf only said, “I am certain Alfred will be glad to show you, my dear.”

Princely courtesy forced Alfred to walk forward to Judith’s side and say, “This way, my lady. The room on the left.”

It had been his mother’s room, and he stopped at the door to stare at the unchanged setting before him. The bed was spread with a beautifully woven cover depicting a golden dragon, the symbol of their house. It had taken his mother over a year to weave that cover; she had done it all herself. The clothes chest was bound with polished brass and the stone floor was covered with the same colorful rugs that had always been there. There was a table with a chest for jewelry, now standing empty, There were two other tables holding oil lamps. Beside each table was a wicker chair, made comfortable with cushions.

“What a lovely room,” said Judith. Alfred could clearly hear the surprise in her voice.

“It was my mother’s,” he said.

A little silence fell. Then Judith said gently, “I hope you do not mind my using it.”

He thought about that. “I was surprised when you married my father,” he admitted. He added with the brutal candor of childhood, “He is old and you are young.”

Judith’s lovely face was very still. “The match was made by my father. He deemed it a good idea to ally our two countries in this bitter time of Viking invasion.”

“Then you do not mind going away from your home and your people?” Alfred was genuinely curious. When she did not immediately reply, he added, “I would not like it.”

“No one asked me if I minded or no,” Judith replied at last, and even a seven-year-old could distinguish the bitterness in her voice. A coldness seemed to come across her delicate features. “I am a princess of France; therefore I must marry where I am told. Such is the way of the world.”

Alfred was horror-stricken. “You were not asked?”

“Princesses are never asked, Alfred.” The coldness had crept into her voice as well.

“What of princes?” With the ruthless egocentricity of childhood, Alfred immediately related her situation to his. “Could I be married like that, away from my family and into a foreign land?” His eyes were huge, his voice appalled.

“No, Alfred.” Judith’s face softened and she came to put an arm about his shoulders. “Do not concern yourself, my dear. Such a thing could never happen to you. You are a boy. You will have some say in whom you marry.”

His eyes searched her face. “Are you sure?”

“I am sure.” She smiled.

“But Judith …” Now that his own fear had been laid to rest, he could think once more of her. “That is not fair,” he said.

“No.” The coldness was back in her face and voice. “It is not. But it seems it is only small boys and young girls who feel thus.”

He did not know what to say to comfort her. She looked so … bleak. “Judith,” he said softly, tentatively, “I am very happy that you are to have my mother’s room.”

Something glinted in her eyes. He hoped, anxiously, that it was not tears. “Thank you, Alfred,” she said. “You are a good friend.”

He smiled up at her engagingly and offered the biggest treat he could think of. “Perhaps tomorrow you can come hunting with me and Ethelred.”

“We shall see,” she said. “But I thank you for inviting me.”

“If we get to go hunting, that is,” he muttered, following her across the floor toward the clothes chest. “Bother Ethelbald and his rebellion!”

The talk in the royal hall was only of Ethelbald’s rebellion, and soon the ealdormen and chief thanes of the shires east of Selwood began to pour into Winchester in order to take counsel with the king.

Alfred discovered that one of the causes of the rebellion was his father’s marriage to Judith.

“But Judith is nice!” Alfred protested to Ethelred when he first learned this upsetting news. “Why should Ethelbald be against her?” He thought of something further. “She is Charlemagne’s great-granddaughter, Ethelred. I heard that is partly why Father married her, to link our line to the line of Charlemagne.”

“Ethelbald’s objection has to do with Judith’s being crowned and anointed Queen of Wessex when she married Father,” Ethelred explained. “No queen has ever been anointed before, Alfred; not in Wessex and not in the empire. Anointing is for kings, not for queens. In fact, none of the West Saxon thanes is pleased about the anointing. We do not have queens in Wessex. Mother was the king’s wife; she was never called queen.”

“Judith’s mother is called queen,” Alfred said.

“That is the way of the Franks. It is not our way.”

Alfred brightened. “Perhaps Father can send Judith home. She would like that.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t think she is very happy here, Ethelred. She doesn’t speak our language and she is so far away from her home. …”

But Ethelred was shaking his head. “Marriage is for life, Alfred. Father cannot send Judith home.”

“Oh.”

“Father has sent for Ethelbald to come to Winchester to parley,” Ethelred said next.

Alfred was surprised. “Will he come?” he asked after a moment. “Everybody is so angry with him here.”

“No one knows what he will do,” Ethelred said.

Alfred’s fair brows were drawn together. “I cannot remember Ethelbald,” he confessed.

“He was at your christening.” Ethelred ruffled his little brother’s hair. “But I suppose you cannot remember that.”

Alfred pulled away from his brother’s hand. “Of course I cannot remember that!” He stared at Ethelred in outrage. “I was only a baby!”

“That is true,” Ethelred replied gravely. “But that is probably the only time you have ever met Ethelbald. He has always lived with his foster father in the west.”

“Ethelred, why did Ethelbald have a foster father?” This was a question that had been puzzling Alfred for several days. “None of the rest of us had a foster father. We all stayed at home with our own father. Why was Ethelbald sent away?”

“When they were children, Atheistan and Ethelbald were at constant odds with each other,” Ethelred replied. “Ethelbald resented the fact that Atheistan was Father’s heir even though he was not Mother’s son but the son of a concubine. Eventually, to keep the peace, Father sent both Atheistan and Ethelbald to be fostered. That is why Ethelbald was reared by Eahlstan.”

“Oh.” Alfred’s next question introduced a new thought, “Does Ethelbald look like me?”

“No. He looks like our grandfather, King Egbert. Father always said that of all his children it was only Ethelbald who had inherited the famous coloring of the West Saxon royal house.”

“I look like Mother,” Alfred said dismally.

“You are a lucky boy to look like Mother,” Ethelred said. “She was a very lovely lady,”

“She was a girl.”

Ethelred’s mouth twitched. “True. But you do not look like a girl, little brother.”

“They said in Rome that I looked like a little angel.” Alfred sounded utterly disgusted.

Ethelred coughed. “Angels are boys,” he said after a minute.

Alfred brightened. “That is true.”

“Perhaps you will have a chance to see Ethelbald soon,” Ethelred said. “Father has sent a messenger to Sherborne. We must wait for the reply.”

The answer came more quickly than anyone had expected. Four days after the king’s messenger had departed, Ethelbald himself came riding into Winchester, Alfred had been returning from Mass in the minster when the party from Sherborne arrived, and he saw his brother as Ethelbald dismounted from his great bay stallion in the courtyard.

His first thought was that Ethelbald was big. Bigger than Ethelred. Bigger than Alfred’s father. He was bareheaded, with a blue headband holding his shoulder-length hair off his face. And his hair was the color of moonlight.

Alfred watched with pounding heart as his brother, flanked by eight of his thanes, strode up the steps of the royal hall to the great door and disappeared.

Two hours later, the king sent for his three youngest sons and told them of his decision.

“Father, you’re mad!” Ethelbert was white with outrage. “You cannot give in to him like this.”

“My mind is made up.” The king’s usually gentle face was set like granite. “I will resign the greater part of Wessex to Ethelbald and take up the rule in Kent.”

Alfred looked worriedly from his father’s face to his brothers’, then back to his father’s again.

“Kent and the rest of the shires won for Wessex by our grandfather are but a subkingdom. The rule of Kent is traditionally given to the heir,” Ethelbert was saying. “It will be humiliating for you to become a subking under the rule of your own son, Father!”

Ethelwulf closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds. Alfred jumped to his feet and went to the table in the corner to pour his father a cup of mead. There was silence in the room as he carried it carefully across the floor to the king’s chair. Ethelwulf smiled at his youngest and accepted the mead.

“Listen, my sons,” he said after he had taken a drink from the goblet, and Alfred strained to understand what had caused his father to do such a strange thing as relinquishing his kingdom. “I have been King of Wessex for nigh on eighteen years,” Ethelwulf said, “and before that I ruled Kent for my own father. For all those years I have ever done what was best for the kingdom, best for the people. We face now perhaps the greatest threat to civilization ever seen in England. The cruel and pagan Danish hordes sweep down on our coasts and harry our people, as the wolf does the unprotected sheep. It is the time for a young king; it is the time for a warrior. Ethelbald is both those things.”

“He is a heartless, ruthless bastard.”

Alfred stared in horror at Ethelbert. Even his brother’s lips were white-looking.

But Ethelwulf was not angry. “Your brother has ever reminded me of my own father,” he said in reply, looking not at his sons but at the golden mead in the gold-engraved cup he held. “He looks like my father, and he is like him in character as well. He was a hard man, Egbert of Wessex, and ruthless. But none can deny that he was a great king,”

Alfred could not understand. “But, Father … if Ethelbald is bad, how can he be like Grandfather, who was a great king?”

“I have never said Ethelbald is bad, Alfred,” Ethelwulf answered. “He is ambitious. So was my father. So was Cerdic, the first king of our line, and Ceawlin, and Ine … all the great kings of Wessex.” He looked from Alfred to Ethelbert and then to Ethelred. “Ethelbald is perhaps not the king I would choose if we were at peace. Peace demands virtues he does not possess. But we are not at peace, and I think he is the man to deal with the Danes. He fought with me at Aclea, remember. I have seen Ethelbald in battle, and there can be no doubt that he is a warrior.”

Ethelbert made a movement as if he would protest, but the king held up his hand. “I do this for the kingdom,” Ethelwulf said. “Remember that, my sons, if ever you come to rule. A true king is one who ever sets the good of the kingdom above his own personal ambition.”

“Ethelbald will never do that,” said Ethelred bitterly.

Alfred took a step closer to Ethelred and looked, wide-eyed, into his brother’s face.

“Perhaps not,” Ethelwulf answered his son. “But I am yet the sworn and consecrated king, and that is what I intend to do. I will not have this country torn apart by civil war.”

“There will be no war, Father.” Ethelbert dropped to his knees and clutched his father’s arm in his passion. We will drive him out, him and all his west-country followers!” The blue eyes he raised to Ethelwulf were fiercely bright.

“No, Ethelbert.” Alfred had never heard his father speak in such a voice. He took another step closer to Ethelred.

“I am determined,” the old king continued slowly and with emphasis. “I shall resign the kingdom to Ethelbald. But I have also made an agreement with him that when I die, you are to reign after me in Kent. And if he should die and leave no son old enough to take up the rule, the whole of the kingdom will pass to you. So rest assured, Ethelbert, that I have protected your interests in this matter. Your interests and those of your brothers. The rule of Wessex in this time of peril! must never be given into the keeping of a child.” Now the king looked from one face to the other, making certain he had their absolute attention. “You are to succeed each other, should the necessity arise,” he said. “That I will ask all of you to swear.”

Ethelbert slowly straightened to his feet and Alfred saw that his expression had altered. Why, Alfred thought, suddenly enlightened, Ethelbert is afraid for his own inheritance! That is why he is so opposed to giving Ethelbald the rule.

“I see that I cannot dissuade you,” Ethelbert said.

“You cannot, my son.”

A small silence fell. Alfred lowered his eyes and stared at the brown wool of his tunic. Ethelred placed a warm, reassuring hand upon his shoulder and he heard his father say, “All will be well, my sons. I promise you, all will be well.”

The council of West Saxon nobles, the witan, met the following morning at the request of the king. The kings of Wessex had never been autocrats and had always ruled with the guidance of the witan. Yet, as all men knew, some kings were more dominant than others. Ethelwulf had ever been a man willing to submit his plans to the council of ealdormen and thanes and bishops of the West Saxon nobility.

But this day it was Ethelwulf who prevailed.

The reasons were two-fold, as Ethelred tried to explain to Alfred after the meeting of the witan, the witenagemot, had broken up. First, Ethelbald was the prince who was most likely to succeed his father anyway. Athelstan’s son was too young, and would be too young for near fifteen more years, to take up the leadership of a country imperiled by the Danes.

Second, many of the thanes present had fought at Aclea. They knew that though the nominal leader of the West Saxon fyrd for that notable victory against the Danes had been Ethelwulf, the true leader had been his son Ethelbald.