The Lost Tales of Mercia
Read The Lost Tales of Mercia Online
Authors: Jayden Woods
Tags: #romance, #adventure, #short story, #england, #historical, #dark ages, #free, #medieval, #vikings, #anglosaxon, #mercia, #ethelred, #lost tales, #athelward, #eadric, #canute, #jayden woods, #thorkell, #historicalfiction, #grasper, #golde
The Lost Tales of Mercia
Jayden Woods
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Jayden Woods
Edited by Malcolm Pierce
*
Read the Lost Tales in any order
you’d like, whether before or after reading
Eadric the Grasper
, or completely
alone as quick glimpses into an ancient world ...
Eadric’s mother thinks she escaped her past until it
comes riding to her doorstep. A dangerous ealdorman has just
betrayed his people to Viking invaders and now he wants Golde’s
support.
The Second Lost Tale of
Mercia:
A boy becomes king at eleven years of age, but the
cost of the crown is bloodshed.
A stubborn young aetheling searches futilely for
respect until she finds it in the company of a doting hearth
companion named Hastings.
The Fourth Lost Tale of
Mercia:
Golde beseeches an eccentric historian to help her
son, but it’s up to young Eadric to win the man’s respect.
Alfgifu believes that Eadric Streona murdered her
father. To obtain her revenge, she will go to the new Viking king
for help.
A royal hearth companion named Hastings entertains
unrealistic notions of how his mistress, Aetheling Aydith, might
reward him for his devotion.
The Seventh Lost Tale of
Mercia:
Plagued by hunger and a cruel monk, poor Hildred has
little choice but to accept the help of a rising thegn named
Eadric.
The Eighth Lost Tale of
Mercia:
When Prince Canute develops an unexpected
relationship with another Jomsviking, he must decide to what
religion he feels most loyal.
Runa leaves her life in the woods to enter a
traditional marriage with Thorkell the Tall, but at a very high
cost to them both.
Young prince Edmund suspects a plot against his
father’s life, but he and his siblings can find no one they trust
to subvert it.
*
The
First Lost Tale of Mercia:
GOLDE
THE MOTHER
(Or go back to
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
)
“
And this year the king and all his witan decreed
that all the ships which were worth anything should be gathered
together at London, in order that they might try if they could
anywhere betrap the army from without. But Aelfric the ealdorman,
one of those in whom the king had most confidence, directed the
army to be warned; and in the night, as they should on the morrow
have joined battle, the selfsame Aelfric fled from the forces; and
then the army escaped.”
—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Entry For Year 992
*
WORCESTERSHIRE
993 A.D.
Even the lazy pigs stirred to life when
Alfric and his men came riding over the hills. The hogs rolled and
squealed, bobbing up and down on stubby legs as they ran around in
mass confusion. The dog barked, lifting wiry haunches from the dirt
to point his muzzle and boom his howl of alert. The horizon
undulated as the ealdormen’s cavalry sliced black silhouettes
against the iron gray clouds. Chills raked down Golde’s skin as she
watched, though the breeze brushing her pale hair blew with the
warmth of spring.
“Hunwald?” she called. “Hunwald!”
She heard no response from the swineherd:
only the thunder of Alfric’s men galloping closer. Then, over the
cacophony of thudding hooves, grunting pigs, and barking dogs, she
heard a child yelling.
“Mother!”
She turned just as his little hands struck
her skirt, pulling and tugging. She looked down at his big blue
eyes, unable to be mad at him even though she wished that right
now, he would simply disappear. “Eadric, find Hunwald and tell him
to put up the pigs.”
“I’ll do it myself.”
Golde shook her head helplessly at the
boisterous seven-year-old. Only yesterday, one of the hogs had
flattened him in the mud and nearly crushed his chest. Already, he
seemed to have forgotten the incident. His thick yellow curls
lashed against his face in a visage of defiance. “No,” said his
mother, “you’ll
help
him, and then you’ll feed the pigs
yourself while Hunwald joins me inside. Can you do that?”
“I suppose.” As if noticing them for the
first time, Eadric stared at the war-horses riding closer. Even in
the fading sunlight, the chainmail and weaponry of the riders
glinted brightly. “What’s this?” The little boy sounded more
exasperated than afraid.
“
Off
with you!” She kicked his
departing rump with too much force to be playful. Sometimes she
wondered whether she had sheltered the little boy too successfully
from the horrors of the world he lived in. He seemed oblivious to
pain and danger.
All too soon, the riding men reached her,
flinging dirt onto her dress as they reined their horses to a
sudden stop. Despite their intimidating approach, there must have
been only a dozen of them, most of them wounded and weary. Foam
bubbled from their horses’ mouths and salt whitened their flanks.
She squinted disapprovingly as she searched the score of
dismounting men for the one she knew to lead them.
He was not a hard man to find. He had a head
of such thick, golden curls that he could have been a second sun
rising from the east as he pulled off his helm. He wore a blue
mantle, though now it was stained with filth and blood, and a tunic
of crushed diamond twills in flax covered his mail. It was a
garment any outlaw would risk his life to obtain, so Golde thought
he was a fool to wear it. He jangled from the weight of his weapons
and jewelry as he blundered towards her.
“Oh, Golde!” he cried.
Before she could stop him, he fell against
her and wrapped her in an embrace. He probably intended it as an
embrace, at least, but it felt more like he simply threw his weight
against her and expected her to hold him up.
“I’m done
for—disgraced—humiliated—finished!” He clutched her fiercely, his
whole frame trembling.
“You’re … pathetic!” She put her hands
against his chest and pushed him back with all her might. He
staggered, sapphire gaze splintered by fury and sorrow. She noted
with some amusement that he had tried to grow a beard, though it
was more of a vague yellow haze over his mouth and chin.
“You—you—you dare touch me like that? You
miserable wench, I am an
ealdorman!
”
“Not for long, by the sounds of it. And in
any case, I’ve touched you in worse ways than that, Lord
Alfric.”
Even in their wearied and frantic state,
some of the men chuckled. Alfric looked around uncertainly, unable
to smile himself. Behind her own defiant expression, Golde gulped.
Alfric was almost always a nervous wreck, but she had never seen
him so anxious as this.
The skies growled above them, darkening with
a fresh billow of gray clouds.
“Won’t you invite us in?” said Alfric
miserably.
Golde could only shake her head in disbelief
at the man who was a proud ealdorman one moment and a cowering
victim the next. “I have room for you at my table,” she said, “but
not the others. I’m afraid they’ll have to shelter in the
barn.”
“With the pigs?” one man complained.
“Or you can stay outside in the rain, if
you’d like.” Her blue eyes flashed at Alfric. “Follow me.”
The ealdorman nodded to his men. “Go on
then, you spoiled sods—you’ve seen worse!”
And so with great reluctance, Golde led
Alfric, the tentative ealdorman of Mercia, into her humble
home.
*
She lived in a simple shack, certainly no
grander than the average churl’s, but she had never thought of it
as impoverished until Alfric entered and curled his lip with
disgust. She noticed the poor state of the floorboards, dank with
the smell of the salted foods they’d been storing all winter in the
sunken pit below. She realized that the lodge seemed smaller inside
than it looked outside, crowded by three meager cots, a rickety
table, and an ashy brazier. The shutters over the windows squeaked
as the wind battered against them.
With a weary huff, Alfric sank onto a stool
next to the table. “Ale,” he said.
Biting back her anger, she rummaged through
their stores for a canister of ale. They did not have much left,
and saved it for special occasions, but she supposed this occasion
was as special as any. She grabbed a cup made of alder wood to pour
it in, though she was certain he was accustomed to smooth dishes
gilt with precious metals. This frugality, at least, seemed to miss
his attention; blindly he upturned the goblet and drank deeply,
smashing it back down with a sigh.
“Oh Golde,” he said, blue gaze fading into
empty space. “The horrors I’ve seen!”
She withheld her judgment as she went to
stir the pottage over the brazier. “You may tell me of them, if you
wish.”
“They would give you nightmares.”
She gritted her teeth and waited, certain he
would describe them, anyway. Outside, the rain began to fall with a
gentle whisper. The sound of Hunwald’s horn echoed through the
watery curtain, calling the pigs to his side. She hoped little
Eadric would stay in the barn and do as he was told. If Alfric were
to see him …
“My fleet and I were in the River Thames,
next to Lundenburg.” Alfric’s voice was soft, delicate. She paused
mid-stir to listen to hear him over the purring rainfall. “So were
the Danes.” He shuddered.
A soft mist drifted in through the shutters,
lifting bumps along Golde’s skin. She resumed stirring, her ears
alert.
“You should have seen their vessels in the
river. At twilight, the prows of their ships looked like a horde of
demons. There were dragons, and bulls, ravens … their eyes seemed
to pierce the darkness and find me no matter where I hid, peering
out over the black water.”
She wondered if he knew how ridiculous he
sounded. Apparently not. “Were you not put in command of all King
Ethelred’s fleet?” she asked.
He did not respond, his mind too far-gone in
his grisly memories to hear her. Either that, or he was too
unwilling to admit the extent of his failure. “King Ethelred wanted
our fleet to catch them by surprise. He thought we would corner
them in a port and take the advantage. An advantage over the
Vikings!” He cackled. “Foolishness. King Ethelred is a fool, just
as the monks foretold at his coronation.”
“Alfric!” Her heart fluttered. In truth she
agreed with him, but she had never heard a man of his station
insult the king so openly. Of course, this man was Alfric: a man
that the king had already exiled once for treachery, but afterwards
forgiven. Surely enough, Ethelred was a fool.
Her discomfort only seemed to encourage him.
“An idiot,” he snarled, “who would have led us all to our deaths. I
was not going to let it happen, Golde. I knew we would not win over
the Vikings, but I was not going to let myself be a lamb led to the
slaughter.”
She gripped the hot bowl beneath her, her
blood already boiling. “What did you do?”
“I did what I had to do. I escaped.” His
knuckles turned white as he gripped his empty goblet. “More ale,
woman.”
Her hands trembled as she poured more into
his cup. Then the door swung open and Hunwald stepped in, kicking
water from his boots.