The Edge of Light (30 page)

“The Danes can live by raiding the countryside,” Alfred said bitterly to Elswyth one rainy March night as they sat together before the fire in the princes’ hall at Wilton. “Ethelred cannot so prey upon his own people. It gives the pagans a distinct advantage.”

“That it does.” She stretched her feet to the warmth of the fire and wiggled her toes, She could hear the sound of the rain as it beat against the wooden walls of the hall. Elswyth loved the sound of rain at night.

Alfred was silent, his somber gaze fixed on the fire. He had been like a caged wildcat all this last month, Elswyth thought. There was nothing to do but wait for the Danes to make their next move, and he hated inaction. It was also Lent, and the general darkness of the season and the liturgy was not contributing any lightness to his spirit.

“The world lies sunk in gloom, waiting for Our Lord to be risen,” he said now, eerily echoing his wife’s thoughts. “Appropriate, Elswyth. Only, where is the savior for Wessex?”

He really was in a black mood. Elswyth herself was feeling much more cheerful. Today she had had her first good long gallop since the baby, and her muscles felt pleasurably sore. It had felt so good to be outdoors on a horse. To feel her body light and free once again. The gloomy weather and the gloomy season were as nothing compared to this exhilarating sense of freedom. She felt a flicker of annoyance with Alfred. Things were not as bad as all that.

“You have done very well, I think,” she said now, consciously reasonable. “You have held your own against the Danes each time you met them, and at Ashdown you actually took the victory. I see no reason for things to change.”

“They can wear us down,” he said. “For how long can we go on calling up the fyrds, letting them go home, then calling them up again? Our men will weary of it, Elswyth. And the Danes … they will just go on.”

“Then why don’t you surrender now and get it over with?”

He had been slumping in his chair, and at her words his spine straightened and his head snapped up, “What?”

“Since all is so hopeless and gloomy, why don’t you just surrender? What is the point in fighting if you are bound to lose in the end?”

Glittering hawk eyes stared at her. “I did not say we were bound to lose!”

“Well, that is what I thought I was hearing.”

“I never said we would lose. I said it would be … difficult.”

“Oh.” She looked at him out of wide-stretched eyes that were as dark a blue as the night sky. Her cheeks were faintly flushed with rose from the warmth of the fire. “I must have misheard you.”

He gave her a reluctant grin. “You did not mishear me. But I was only talking.”

“I know.” She leaned over, grasped his hand in her own, and squeezed it. “But you are so depressing! You are spoiling all my pleasure in the sound of the rain.”

He became instantly somber. “I doubt the men on guard at Reading take quite the same pleasure in it.”

She wiggled her toes again. “I am sure they don’t. The most pleasurable part is the knowledge that it is cold and wet and miserable out and you are safe and warm and dry within.” She stared dreamily into the fire. “When I was a little girl I used to wrap myself in a blanket and stand on the porch to watch the night rain. When my mother wasn’t around, that is.”

He looked at her, and this time the smile reached his eyes. He asked, “Do you want to do it now?”

She gave him a delighted look. “Go out on the porch and watch the rain?”

“The thanes will think we are mad, but why not?”

She grinned. “The thanes already think I am mad, but I would hate to ruin your standing.”

“Get the blankets,” he said.

Two minutes later, giggling like children, the Prince of Wessex and his lady, wrapped in blankets, crept out onto the porch of the princes’ hall and stood there huddled together to watch the rain.

The Danes had spent the winter making brief forays into the countryside around Reading, raiding food for their men and fodder for their animals. They also gathered as much information as they could about these unexpectedly warlike West Saxons. One of the chief of their scouts that winter had unexpectedly turned out to be young Erlend.

Despite his small size, Erlend had proved himself a worthy son of his father in the Wessex campaign. But Erlend possessed two other skills that the rest of the Danes did not: he was a skilled harper and he spoke the Saxon language fluently.

“A Saxon harper stayed one whole winter at Nasgaard the year that I was twelve,” Erlend had explained to his curious uncle when Guthrum questioned him about his abilities. “He taught me many of his songs and I learned somewhat of his language as well.”

Guthrum, like most of the Danes, had only some basic Saxon words, and Erlend’s ability to speak in full sentences impressed him greatly. “Could you pass as a Saxon?” he asked his nephew, and Erlend could tell from the gleam in his uncle’s eyes that he had some scheme in mind.

“No,” Erlend replied promptly. Then, thoughtfully, his eyes intent upon Guthrum’s face, “But I could pass as a Frank. My Frankish is better than my Saxon, and these men of Wessex would scarcely realize that I was speaking with a Danish accent.”

And so Erlend was not surprised when he was called before Halfdan one day and asked to go out among the West Saxons in the guise of a wandering harper.

“No one would suspect you,” the Danish leader had said, his eyes raking the small thin figure of the heir to Nasgaard. “You do not look Danish at all.”

“What would you want me to discover, my lord?” Erlend asked, his voice neutral, his face expressionless.

“I have need to know all you can learn about this West Saxon king, Ethelred,” Halfdan said to the boy. “I have need to know about his army. My other scouts say to me that they have disbanded, but I find that difficult to believe.” Halfdan frowned so that his bushy graying eyebrows met together over the bridge of his broad nose. “In short, son of Olaf, I want to know all the information you can glean. Nothing is too unimportant to be of interest to me. Leave us for a month, go and play your harp among these West Saxon villages and manors, then come and report to me all you have learned.”

Erlend had looked from the craggy face of Halfdan to the bright blue eyes of his uncle, then back again to Halfdan. It would not be a poor idea to win the respect of Halfdan, Erlend thought before he answered. One day he very well might find himself in need of an ally against his own present ally, Guthrum.

And so Erlend had agreed to Halfdan’s proposal and taken to the roads and byways of Wessex in the guise of a wandering harper. Such musicians were not an uncommon sight in the countryside, and no one seemed to find the Dane at all suspicious. Erlend played in villages and farmsteads, and one night even found him within the walls of the royal manor of Lambourn. Alfred was not in residence, but the folk of the manor gave Erlend a fine welcome and he played his harp for them for half the night.

The talk among the manor folk in Lambourn was little of the king and all of the prince. Many of the Lambourn men had been at Ashdown, and it was from them that Erlend learned the story of Ethelred’s refusing to take up arms until Mass was finished.

Two brothers of such differing temperaments, Erlend thought as he listened to the tale. There could scarcely be much love between them. “Has Ethelred sons?” he asked casually, strumming a few careless notes on his harp.

“Ethelred’s sons are too young to take up the kingship as yet,” came the ready answer. “Should aught happen to the king, Alfred would be his heir.”

Erlend raised his eyebrows in astonishment. “How young are the sons?” he asked.

“One is a mere babe. The eldest, Ethelhelm, is ten or eleven. Too young to lead the country in such a time as this.”

Not so young, Erlend thought, as he smiled agreement with the man who had answered him. For certain an eleven-year-old would not relish his kingship being usurped by an uncle. And where there was discontent among royalty, there were always nobles ready to take advantage.

Should the West Saxons become embroiled in a war over the succession, the way would lie open for the Danes. It was an intriguing thought that Erlend stored away to repeat to Halfdan upon his eventual return to Reading.

Meanwhile, back in Reading, Halfdan was not idle. Over the winter he had sent to one of his brothers in Denmark for reinforcements to replace the men he had lost at Englefield and Reading and Ashdown. In early March came reply that a new army would reach Reading in mid-April, at the start of the season the Danes called Cuckoo Month. This was good news for the Danish war council, which met in discussion one day toward the middle of March, shortly after Erlend’s return from his wanderings.

“The conquest of Wessex can begin in earnest once we have increased our numbers,” Halfdan said to his men as they met within the confines of one of the wooden booths the Danes had erected for shelter at Reading. “Cuckoo Month and Lamb’s Fold Month are ill times for a farmer to be away from his land. From what Erlend Olafson has reported, Ethelred may have difficulty summoning an army at that time of the year.”

“And even if he does, he cannot keep it long.” Guthrum’s white teeth flashed briefly. “He cannot feed so many men without despoiling his own land. As Erlend has also reported.” It had been Guthrum’s idea to send his nephew out as a spy, and he was not at all loath to take credit for Erlend’s accomplishments.

“Erlend has done very well,” Halfdan grunted. Then, rubbing the side of his face with his hand: “The number of Saxons on guard here at Reading is small. We can break through easily enough anytime. And I think it will be well to venture further afield before the summer army arrives, to test the waters to the west of Reading. There are roads that will take horses with little trouble.”

There were grunts of assent from the jarls of the war council. Over the winter, Reading had become too confining for most of the Danes.

Guthrum spoke up. “I have been thinking, my lord, that in both Northumbria and East Anglia the defense of the country collapsed with the death of the king. And from what my nephew has reported, these West Saxons might well find themselves embroiled in a dispute over the succession, should Ethelred die. There is Alfred, but there is also a near-grown royal prince.”

Halfdan smiled, his broken and stained teeth almost hidden in the bushiness of his mustache. “I have thought on that also, Guthrum. It would be well for us, should the West Saxons begin to fight among themselves. Then could we come at their throats with ease, and set up our own king, as we have done in Northumbria.” The Danish king’s smile grew. “I give this charge into your hands, Guthrum. If the West Saxons rise to meet us, see that you either take or kill their king.”

Guthrum’s eyes were vividly blue as he answered with real zest, “My lord, I will.”

On March 17 the Danes marched out of Reading, this time in full numbers. “Not a raid,” a thane from Ealdorman Ailnoth reported to Ethelred at Wilton. “There were too many of them, my lord, for us to attack. Ailnoth says to call up the fyrds. We will keep track of them and bring news of their destination.”

Within an hour horses were galloping out of Wilton, flying to the west and to the east, bearing word to Somersetshire and Wiltshire and Hampshire and Essex and Sussex and Kent and Surrey that the shire ealdormen must call up their fyrds and march immediately to join the king at Wilton.

On March 20 the Somersetshire and Wiltshire and Hampshire fyrds marched into Wilton. Late in the afternoon of the twentieth, one of the men from the Berkshire fyrd, which was keeping watch on the Danish army, rode in to tell Ethelred that the Danes had marched to the west, up the Ridgeway toward Chippenham. Early the following morning, without waiting for the other shire fyrds to arrive, the West Saxons marched out of Wilton and headed toward the old Roman road that led from Winchester to Marlborough.

The road was in poor repair and mired deep in mud. The marching was not pleasant, but the men of the fyrds tramped along doggedly. There was not a man of them following under the banner of his lord who did not understand the danger of this Danish thrust to the west.

They camped beside the road and continued onward with the early-morning light. While they were yet ten miles to the south of Marlborough, the Berkshire scouts found them.

“The Danes are at Meretun, my lord, but two miles to the north of you,” the leader of the scouting party told Ethelred and his council. “They know you are coming and are ready to fight.”

“Well,” said Ethelred grimly, “so are we.”

When the West Saxons came upon the Danes an hour later, they found the scene at Meretun not unlike that at Ashdown two months since. The village lay at the place where the Ridgeway intersected the Roman road, and once again the Viking army had divided into two wings and straddled the Ridgeway. Also as before, the West Saxons divided their forces to oppose them. The Danes looked to be larger in number, but not overwhelmingly so. It was high noon when the initial charge was made, and the two armies locked in bitter combat.

Guthrum was not fighting with the other jarls this day, but under the command of Halfdan in the king’s column. As expected, the West Saxon king had taken the opposing command, and as the battle raged on, Guthrum kept the Golden Dragon banner of Wessex ever in his eye. He had picked a few of his own following to stay by him throughout the day until their mission was accomplished, and he was pleased to see the faces he needed still around him when, after nearly two hours of almost evenhanded fighting, Halfdan gave the order to begin a retreat. The battle was still holding steady, so all the Danes understood what was meant by the order. Halfdan would feign a retreat, lure the West Saxons into a pursuit, and when once the enemy had broken their lines, the Danes would reform and attack the now-disorganized and vulnerable West Saxons, and slaughter them.

Before he retreated, however, Guthrum was going to kill Ethelred. He looked around at his men and saw they understood. Then, as the Danes began to melt back and the West Saxons to press forward, Guthrum began
to move
toward his prey.