The Edge of Light (24 page)

“We should have fought them at Nottingham! We had them there.”

“Have you seen their swords?” Ceolwulf asked. “I came by one this winter. They are more efficient weapons than ours, Elswyth. Stronger and easier to wield.”

“You must show it to Alfred,” Elswyth said immediately. “Perhaps he can have it copied.”

“If Alfred thinks he can fight the Danes,” Ceolwulf said, “he is wrong.”

But Elswyth would never tolerate criticism of Alfred. “You are beaten before ever you have fought,” she told her brother contemptuously. “You make me ashamed of my blood. Do all in Mercia feel like you?”

He shrugged, not dismayed by her disdain. “Young Ethelred of Hwicce is like Alfred, all afire for Edmund to fight.”

“I hope to God he does,” said Elswyth.

“If he does,” returned her brother, “I hope you will pray for his soul.”

All through the early fall, the Danes ravaged and burned the monasteries of East Anglia. Then the Danish leader, Ivar the Boneless, sent a messenger to the young East Anglian king demanding that Edmund yield to the Danes a considerable part of East Anglia’s wealth, and reign henceforth under Ivar’s own overlordship.

The demand made clear to all, Edmund included, that this time the Danes would not be bought off. They wanted what they had won in Northumbria, a subject kingdom. From his manor of Hoxne in Suffolk, Edmund replied to Ivar that as a Christian king he had no such love of this life on earth that he would submit to a pagan lord.

Ivar roared with pleasure when he heard the reply, and set off immediately with his army to meet Edmund at Hoxne. The East Anglian fyrd rallied to its king, and the two forces met and clashed on the fields near the king’s royal manor. The East Anglians were crushed and their king, Edmund, was taken prisoner alive.

In November 869 Ivar the Boneless, leader of the Danish Great Army, performed the blood eagle on Edmund, King of the East Angles, the last successor of the Wuffingas of Sutton Hoo. With the martyrdom of their king, all resistance in East Anglia collapsed. For the rest of the autumn and for all of the following year, the Danes remained at Thetford in East Anglia, living on the harvests and farms of the country.

Northumbria was gone. East Anglia was gone. Now there were but two independent Anglo-Saxon states left in England: Mercia and Wessex.

“Which of us will be next?” Ethelred asked Alfred as they gathered for a grim Christmas at Dorchester.

“It will be Wessex,” Alfred answered somberly. “Mercia lies too far from the sea to be easy of access, and those parts of Mercia most easily reached, in the north and east near to Nottingham, have been recently plundered. Wessex, on the other hand, has been untouched for years; and we are easily reached from East Anglia by the Icknield Way. We must prepare ourselves, Ethelred. The Danes will come to Wessex next.”

“I think you are right,” Ethelred said. His kind brown eyes regarded his brother for a long quiet minute. “You were right in Nottingham, as well. We should have fought then, while the advantage was ours.”

Alfred’s mouth set. “No point in regrets. We had best keep scouts posted on the Icknield Way. We do not want the Danes in our courtyard before we have had a chance to call up the fyrd.”

“I shall send to Burgred to see what assistance he can render us.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“No.” Ethelred gave him a strained smile. “Your child is due to be born shortly. You must stay with Elswyth. I shall send someone else.”

Elswyth’s child was born in the deep cold of a January afternoon, when the snow lay thinly over the halls and barns and fences of Dorchester, where she and Alfred had remained ever since Christmas. It was a long labor, and a silent one. Alfred alternately prayed and paced the floor of the princes’ hall, refusing all the distractions that a kindhearted Ethelred tried to offer. Cyneburg herself was attending Elswyth, and would periodically come out into the hall to reassure the nervous husband that all was going well.

“It is taking so long!” Alfred said to Ethelred for perhaps the hundredth time. “She started with pains during the night. Why is it taking so long?”

“The first child is often long in coming,” Ethelred answered, with all the wisdom of a man who was a father five times over. “Cyneburg says Elswyth is in no danger. There is no need to fret yourself so. You will end up with a headache if you continue thus.”

“She is so young, Too young. This is all my fault.” Alfred continued his prowl, reminding Ethelred of nothing so much as a great golden cat stalking within the confines of a cage.

“Every man feels thus at such a time,” Ethelred assured his brother. His brown eyes were very faintly amused. “You will feel differently when you hold your son in your arms.”

Alfred did not reply, but continued pacing. A serving man came to add a log to the fire, and Alfred suddenly said, “I am going back to the church.”

Ethelred sighed but made no move to stop him.

Outside, the sky was steel gray. It would snow again before nightfall, Alfred thought. He crossed the frozen courtyard and made his way to the church, a walk of some five minutes. It was bitterly cold within the wooden church, but he knelt and prayed until he was so stiff with the cold that he could scarcely rise again to his feet.

Surely all would be well, he thought as he walked down the narrow aisle toward the wooden door. Elswyth was young and healthy, She had made the journey from Wantage to Dorchester with no ill effect. Alfred had wanted to remain at home, but she had insisted on traveling to Dorchester for Christmas and the birth.

“Dorchester has special memories for me,” she had said with a faint intimate smile. “I would like to spend Christmas there once again.”

Alfred had agreed, principally because he thought Elswyth wanted to have Cyneburg near when her time came due. Elswyth was not on close terms with many women of her own order, but she and Cyneburg had ever seemed to get on well. Alfred, too, had been relieved at the thought of having his brother’s wife in attendance when Elswyth gave birth. And he knew he would be glad to have Ethelred. So they had made the arduous winter journey to Dorchester, and now the time had come.

The wind caught the church door as Alfred was trying to close it, and slammed it against the building. He had to push hard to close it against the wind, and as he turned away toward the path that would take him back to the hall, he was struck with a sudden memory: the morning of his father’s death. He had been in the church when it happened, he remembered. He had gone back into the hall and . , . Abruptly he began to run.

He was out of breath and his chest hurt from the cold air when he pushed open the hall door violently and almost crashed inside. The atmosphere in the hall was different. He felt it immediately. His heart began to pound so loudly he could hear it in his head. He could not speak.

Then Ethelred was coming toward him. It took a moment before Alfred saw that his brother was smiling. “Felicitations,” Ethelred said. “You have a daughter.”

At first all Elswyth could feel was gratitude that it was over. She had known childbirth would be painful, but still she had not been prepared for the reality. All she could do was set her teeth and endure in hard silence. When Cyneburg recommended that she scream to ease the strain, she only gritted her teeth even harder and shook her head. There was no privacy, the women were handling her body at will, her pride was in the dust, but she could at least keep silence.

When they told her the child was a girl, all she felt was surprise. She had never once thought it would be a girl. She lay passive with fatigue all the while the women washed her and brushed her hair.

Then Cyneburg put the baby into her arms.

Elswyth had anticipated being fond of this child. Of course she would be fond of Alfred’s son. He would have his nurses to take care of him, and when he grew a little older she would play with him for some part of each day. Alfred would like to have a son.

Elswyth looked now for the first time into her daughter’s face. It was tiny, amazingly tiny, and the fair skin was mottled red and white. The small head was fuzzy with dark gold hair. The eyes were a very pale blue. The baby moved her lips and began to cry.

“I think she is hungry,” Elswyth said to Cyneburg anxiously.

“You will have to nurse her,” Cyneburg said. “I’ll show you how.”

Alfred came in just as Elswyth was finishing nursing the baby. Cyneburg shooed the other women out of the room and then left the new mother and father alone.

“Isn’t she wonderful?” Elswyth breathed, her eyes on the small fuzzy head at her breast.

Alfred stared in awe. “She is so small.”

“I know.” She cradled the baby in the crook of her arm so that Alfred could see his daughter’s face. “She has your hair, Alfred. But look at the color of her eyes!”

“They will probably change,” said Alfred, the knowledgeable uncle. “Babies’ eyes often do.”

Silence fell as they both stared with fascination at the small, perfect face of their daughter. She yawned. Her parents exchanged a look of mutual wonder and delight.

Then Elswyth said very softly, “She is tired.”

Alfred looked from his daughter to the rapt face of his wife. The women had combed her long hair and it hung now in a sheet of shining ebony over the clean white linen of her fresh undergown. There were dark shadows under her eyes and her cheeks looked hollow. “You should sleep also,” he said, and his usually clipped voice was soft with tenderness. “It was a long labor.”

“It was horrible,” she answered honestly. “But I thought of you, and how you endure.” She looked up, her eyes meeting and holding his. “And you don’t have the joy of this at the end.”

But he was looking angry. “There can be no comparison between my stupid headaches and what you underwent this day!”

“It is so humiliating,” she said.

His frown smoothed out. His mouth curved downward wryly. “Yes,” he said with resignation. “It is.”

The baby smacked her lips in her sleep and they stared at her in speechless admiration. Then Cyneburg was coming back into the room,

“It is time that Elswyth slept,” she said to Alfred practically, and bent to take the baby from Elswyth’s arms.

“Alfred too,” said his wife, looking at his face with knowing eyes.

He did not answer, but bent his head and kissed her on the mouth. Then, under the stern eye of Cyneburg, he reluctantly quitted the room.

II

THE STORM BREAKS

A.D. 871, The Year of Battles

When Erlend Olafson rode into the Danish camp at Thetford the middle of one cold damp November afternoon in 870, it was plain by the bustle of purposeful activity that something of importance was at hand. Grooms and horses were everywhere, and a train of store wagons was being loaded with extra arrows and food supplies. The boy and his small following of three men had little trouble finding someone to direct them to his uncle Guthrum’s quarters. It was slightly more difficult gaining access to his uncle, who was in council with the kings and jarls who comprised the Danish army command in England. Finally Erlend convinced Guthrum’s followers to let him wait in his uncle’s hut.

The day was chill and there was no fire within the temporary wooden hut that was Guthrum’s. Erlend looked around the bleak bare room and struggled to keep his courage high. Suddenly this journey of his from Denmark to England seemed a mad undertaking. Suddenly he wished he were safe at home in Jutland. What troll had prompted him to cross the sea on such a wild venture as this?

Erlend answered his own question immediately. The troll’s name was Asmund, his mother’s second husband, and it was because of Asmund that Jutland was no longer safe for Erlend. To the contrary, it had become chillingly clear these last months that Asmund had decided that the neatest way to take for himself Erlend’s father’s estate of Nasgaard would be to ensure that Erlend himself was no longer alive to claim it.

The cramp of horror in Erlend’s stomach had never quite left him since the day he first understood what was afoot at Nasgaard, the day he had first realized what all those strange accidents befalling him must mean.

He had gone immediately to his mother. Even now he could not bear to remember the look that had crossed her face when he had told her. He would not believe that she had aught to do with Asmund’s schemes, but she would not intervene. He had seen that clear enough in the quick flash of her green eyes before they had lowered to her lap. Asmund was her husband now, the father of the child she carried, and she would not step between him and the son of a former marriage.

Nor was there anyplace in Denmark outside of Nasgaard where he could turn for justice. There was no high king in Denmark these days, not since Horik had been killed in the invasion led nearly twenty years since by Erlend’s own grandfather. Since Horik’s demise, the petty kings had done as they would; there was no longer any strong central power to redress the wrongs done by the overgreedy. It was a wolves’ den in truth in Denmark these days, with every man reaching for what he could get. Those who could not prosper in Denmark must seek their fortunes elsewhere.

Erlend’s father’s brother Guthrum had sought his fortune with the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok in England. When Erlend had begun to seek in his mind for someone who would help him in his feud with Asmund, his thoughts had turned to Guthrum. Erlend had no recollection of ever meeting this uncle, who had been ten years younger than Erlend’s father; but surely, he thought, surely Guthrum would not wish to see one of the greatest estates in Jutland stolen away from his kindred.

Bjorn had agreed with him. Bjorn had been husband to Ragnfrid, the foster mother who had nursed Erlend and whom he had ever loved more than his own mother, Eline. Bjorn had no power, but Erlend trusted him, and when Bjorn advised him to get away, Erlend had not hesitated.

So here he sat in this strange room in this strange land waiting for this strange kinsman to decide his fate. If Guthrum should turn him away … But he did not think Guthrum would do that. Erlend represented Nasgaard, and Nasgaard was too rich a prize for any man, particularly a Viking like his uncle, to turn his back upon.