Avalon (48 page)

"Bar the door, madame," said the Queen to Merewyn. "The King's premiere reine etait Danoise ... he may now vish to massacre also the Normans."

Merewyn barred the door. "I think not," she said dully. "He will get over the madness, and repent. All his life he's had fears and rages, but never like this . . ."

"Dieu me console," whispered the little Queen, and fell to praying on her carved ivory prie-dieu. Her ladies clustered around her, also devoutly praying. Merewyn could not pray. She stood by the Bower window and looked down on Winchester where now many fires were burning, and in the smoke which came down the chimney and seemed to seep through crannies, there was the smell of roasting flesh.

At twilight, there was a knock on the door, and Merewyn heard Wulfric's voice calling to her, and crying, "Open up, ladies. 'Tissafe!"

Merewyn drew the bolt cautiously and peered through the door. Wulfric was alone. She let him in. "I've come to fetch ye," he said as he bent his knee towards the Queen. " 'Tis a

dreadful thing's been happening." His ruddy face was drawn, liis little eyes were distressed, as she had never imagined they could be.

"By the grace o' God I've been four days hunting in New Forest, they couldn't find me, or I'd've had to go out wi' the other King's thanes —" He warmed his hands at the fireplace. "I've just seen the King." Wulfric spoke a trifle incoherently. "He's sobbing in the Council Chamber. He is blaming it all on the Earl of Mercia."

" 'Sobbing,' " the Queen interrupted sharply. "Qu'est-ce que c'est?"

Merewyn made a hopeless but exphcit gesture with sounds. "II pleure . . ." said the Queen. "Ha! But vat 'as 'appened, vraiment, messire," she said to Wulfric. "Exphquez-moi!"

Wulfric told them what he had learned. Ethelred had called an emergency meeting of the Witan; only of those nearby and whom the Earl of Mercia controlled. Ethelred had said that he was in imminent danger of assassination by the Danes in his kingdom, and that when he died the Witan would be murdered too. Therefore he was going to send secret messages to all trustworthy English earls and thanes. They were commanded to exterminate every Dane they could get at on St. Brice's Eve. And this was to be a lesson to the traitors.

" 'Ow many 'ave died?" asked Emma quietly.

"I don't know, Lady. Hundreds, I suppose. And I think it a great pity, aye — I think it dangerously dishonorable —" He paused; his nose grew redder at the thought of criticizing the King to whom he had sworn fealty. He went on, '''Dishonorable, to have slaughtered the royal Danish hostages."

"So they are dead," whispered Merewyn. "We saw their house burning. Earl Pallig ... the boy . . . and Gunhild of Denmark ..."

"They are dead," said Wulfric, crossing himself. "I saw the bodies as I rode into town. Cut-off heads next to bits of the bodies. From the stink I judge they were burning the bodies."

He turned to the Queen, and began, "Lady, if you can spare Merewyn now, I'd like to take her home . . ." He stopped in consternation, as he saw that the Queen was vomiting into a chamber pot. Yet she finished very soon, and wiping her mouth on a linen cloth, said, "Take Madame Merewyn — Messire, she 'as taught me much English, I shall know 'ow to deal vit a king who ees 'sobbing' and 'as made the vorst crime I ever 'eard of — nor le bon Dieu non plus!"

Merewyn looked back at the valiant little Queen. "Ethelred is not all bad," she said with difficulty. "He has too many fears and too much power. His mother gave him both — God forgive her. You are not only strong, Lady Emma, but I know that you are good. You can rule your husband, if you can force yourself not to draw away from him, nor leave him to villains —" she chose the word carefully, knowing that Emma would understand it, "likeCildAelfricor—"

"Hush, Merewyn!" said Wulfric, glancing back towards the stairs. "Have done!"

Queen Emma stood very still. She had understood most of Merewyn's speech. "You are wise, madame," she said. "You speak for the man you've known since child'ood, the man who 'as done 'orrible thing — non — pas lui, 'e did not, 'e vas 'idden in a chamber whilst others did it."

"God will punish him," said Merewyn.

The Queen inclined her pretty and determined dark head. "Le bon Dieu vill punish Englandy'' she said. "Of that I am sure."

chapteR fifteen

Terrified excitement over the St. Brice's Day Massacre died down by Yuletide. To be sure, a few hundred Danes in the southern shires had been killed. This was justified in English thinking by the many Viking raids from Norse countries which England had endured. Even the slaughter of the Danish royal hostages was generally condoned. After all, King Sweyn had been paid 24,000 pounds to depart with his fleet, and if he were foohsh enough to leave some of his family behind, that was his lookout.

Nobody had ever found the Danes who infiltrated south from the Danelaw, or Northumbria, particularly obnoxious. Many of them had intermarried with the English of Mercia, Wessex, or Kent. Nonetheless, one did not question a king's commands, and if, as was understood, he had been physically threatened, well, there wasn't much to do but get rid of the foreigners.

By Yule, such reasoning was also Wulfric's. Merewyn said nothing. Even when her husband remarked that they were lucky to live under such a vigorous king, she said nothing. But she thought about little Emma with sympathy, and listened eagerly to the gossip the servants brought back from Winchester.

She was not summoned to Winchester Court again. The King and Queen seemed to be constantly on the move around England. Merewyn was not sure if Emma had been offended by the speech about Ethelred she had felt bound to make. But it looked as though the Queen were pumping some energy into Ethelred.

Merewyn did not succeed as well with Wulfric.

Life at the Manor was comfortable, but dull and Merewyn found herself drifting into a flirtation with one of the housecarls. An enterprise so aimless and humiliating that Merewyn soon cut it off.

In March there came news that the Queen had given birth to a lusty boy, named Edward, and produced him in Oxfordshire. Wulfric and Merewyn were not invited to the christening, which took place at Ely. Merewyn was disappointed. Wulfric was glad; he was never inclined to go anywhere, unless it was for hunting, and even this no longer interested him as much. He had hurt his back by a fall in December, and whiled away the long winter by dice-throwing and listening over and over to his bard — Merewyn got very tired of the "Lay of Beowulf" — or by playing at darts with his retainers. Merewyn tried to busy herself with the peasants of their village, but there was little hardship amongst them, nor did they seem particularly grateful to receive the Lady of the Manor.

On Ashley Manor the serfs and a few free cotters lived their own Hves, though they went to the village church on Sundays and enjoyed the May Day and Yuletide feasts Wulfric provided. They paid to Wulfric their quarterly fees — Wulfric's bailiff saw to that — paid over certain bushels of corn, or geese or a lamb, or plowing days' work, or the produce of a certain field, or even pennies. They paid as had their forefathers, because that was the way things were done. They had great attachment to the land they did not own, but Merewyn at last understood that they felt little interest in their feudal lord, or his lady. The gulf was too wide. She finally took to sending a house servant with the gifts she continued to make at times. And her spirits gradu-

ally grew very low. There seemed nothing to get out of bed for in the mornings. She would lie there for hours, staring at a strange mark in the wood of one of the rafters. Sometimes it looked like a grinning face, and sometimes it looked like a cross.

She lost her appetite, and began to get thin. She scarcely noticed this, but Wulfric did. He worried about her when he was not worrying about the health of his best gelding.

She enjoyed in a remote way the coming of spring again. The green shoots pushing through the brown earth, the catkins hanging from the alders and hazels, the anemones and primroses starring under the trees in the copse by the house. Then the drift of bluebells.

She saw all these things through a glaze. They could not quite reach her. Even Foss seemed remote. She cuddled him, and let him lick her hand, but she did not tend his coat as carefully as she had. Everything was unimportant. Once on an evening of particular depression she spoke to their chaplain. Examine her conscience as she did, there never seemed to be much to confess. She had made the most of her flirtation with the housecarl, but that was finished, and she had done penance.

"Father," she said, "I don't know what's the matter with me. Nothing seems worthwhile."

The priest was a local man who had been ordained at Winchester. He enjoyed his sinecure at the Manor, thought of little but the good food the Thane provided, and did the minimum of his duties as a shepherd of souls. "Perhaps, you should pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary," he said.

"I have," she answered forlornly.

"There couldn't be any sin on your conscience," said the priest, looking eagerly out the chapel window towards the Manor where the dinner bell would presently ring. "You've made full confessions, I'm sure."

Merewyn was silent. Supposing she said that she had actually committted adultery with the housecarl. Would that disturb this smug Httle priest? But she had not. It would be a lie. A lie . . .

She got up. "I hope you enjoy your dinner, Father — I believe I ordered roast kid and saffron pastries."

At the end of April there were disquieting rumors. It was said that King Sweyn had returned, had landed in Devonshire with an enormous fleet, and was devastating the countryside. Wulfric refused to beheve it — the peasants and churls were always spreading rumors which flew upward to his servants and then to housecarls.

"I think it very likely, Wulfric," said Merewyn in a weary voice. "Don't you think Sweyn might want to avenge his sister?"

"His sister . .. ?" repeated Wulfric, frowning. It took him a moment to understand. "Oh, you mean St. Brice's Day? But that Danish King got twenty-four thousand pounds. He wouldn't bother to come back here just to avenge a sister." Wulfric was fingering a new Norman spear he had bought. It seemed more deftly made than the English ones. Better balance, and the hasp tightened in a different way. Wulfric's back had improved and he was looking forward to hunting again.

"I think he might," Merewyn said.

Wulfric did not listen; he was thinking about his new hobby — a falcon mews. He had bought several peregrines, and ordered one of the great white gyrfalcons from the North. From Iceland maybe, Merewyn thought, and felt the familiar inner shrinking.

Wulfric gave her an absentminded pat on the shoulder, and went out to inspect his mews and consult with the new falconer.

At dusk there was a banging on the great portal. Merewyn was in the Hall doing needlework. Her head ached and her eyes strained to find the right colors for the hunting scene Wulfric had requested. It was to be of St. Hubert, patron of the hunt, with a crucifix shining between the stag's antlers. It would grace the chapel if she could ever finish it.

A housecarl came in, looking flustered. "There's a man at the portal, m'lady," he said. "Porter told me. Man wants to see you. But he looks like one o' they Danes to me. Has a helmet on."

Merewyn became very still. "Did the man say his name?"

"Orm, m'lady — I think it was."

"Let him in," said Merewyn. While she waited, the Hall spun around her. She tried to stand up, then sat down again.

Orm came striding in. He was bigger and blonder than ever. He wore chain mail and a helmet. There was a great double-edged sword hanging from his hips. She saw at once that he had a scarcely healed scar on his chin.

"Elsknan min —" she cried, rushing towards him, and falling on his chest, began to weep.

"So . . . Mother, so . . . Mother," said Orm, hugging her and speaking as though to soothe a restive horse. "I wasn't so sure you'd be glad to see me."

"Not sure?" she said between sobs. "When these years since you left, I've been wondering, waiting, praying. I thought you might be dead."

"I nearly was once or twice," said Orm with a certain rehsh. "Good fighting. But I'm here now with Sweyn. We've overrun the western shires. Sweyn's camp is near here in Wiltshire. I received permission to visit my mother for the evening." He examined her. "You've grown a bit thinner. Hasn't that Httle Thane you married been taking good care of you?"

"Oh yes," she said distractedly. "Orm — are you safe here? I don't mean Wulfric, he'd never assault a guest, but the house-carls might rise, they're English. They've not forgotten St. Brice's Day."

"Nor have we," said Orm, his young mouth hardening. "That's why we're here. You're supposed to be Christians, oozing justice, honor, and mercy for all. Instead, the murder of harmless Anglo-Danes, and especially the murder of royal hostages — the worst deed ever done by the feckless English."

"Yes, I know," she said, "and almost as bad a deed was done at Corfe, when Edward was murdered to get Ethelred on the throne."

"Perhaps so," said Orm, who was not interested in English

events before his birth. "Mother, in this great Manor you must have food and drink. I need some. And don't worry about my safety. I assure you I've learned to defend myself."

"Please," she whispered, "take off your helmet in the Guardroom, hide the chain mail, and leave your sword behind — you can put it in my Bower ..."

"My dear mother . . ." said Orm. He was twenty-two now, and much more mature in every way than when she had seen him last. He was even able to understand Merewyn a little. He reached down and kissed her on the cheek. "So you are still playing the old game," he said. "Poor Mother," he added, "I don't want you to be anxious. I'll leave my helmet in the Guardroom, I'll cover my chain mail with my sark, but I'll keep my sword with me. I call it Ormstunga, and I got it off a great big German when we were raiding up the Elbe."

"You killed him," she stated.

"To be sure, it was a battle." Orm looked surprised. "And what better name for this wonderful sword than 'Serpent's tongue' since you named me Orm."