The Edge of Light (23 page)

“It is that to Elswyth the manor folk are all individuals,” Alfred replied. His smile was gone; he was utterly serious. “The rest of us, we see the groom and the beekeeper and the goose girl. Elswyth sees Oswald and Wulfstan and Ebbe. Free or unfree, it makes no difference to her. All are individuals. And they know that. It is why they love her, would do anything for her. Even in the few short months she had been at my own manors of Wantage and Lambourn, I can see this. It is her great gift, this ability to see the person and not just the rank.”

Ceolwulf was looking at his brother-by-marriage, his gray eyes a little puzzled. Then he shrugged, finding his own solution. “She has ever been a strong-minded brat. From the time she was five years old, she had her way of Athulf and of me.” He smiled wryly. “It was not so difficult to get her way of me, perhaps, but Athulf is another story. Yet rarely could he stand against her. I think the manor folk felt the same.”

Alfred grinned again. “Very likely.”

They had reached the door of the small hall where Ceolwulf was lodged. He sighed once more. “Well, Prince, I wish you a good night.”

Alfred responded pleasantly and went toward the bower, his stride quickening noticeably as he approached the door. The benches in the small bower hall were empty, as the maids slept in the attic room above. There was a light showing under the door of Elswyth’s sleeping room, and it was but a few long strides until Alfred could push it open and go in to his wife.

She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, a blanket draped over her thin linen undershift, her long hair tied at the nape of her neck with a strip of embroidered tapestry. There was an oil lamp lit on the table beside the bed, and she was throwing dice on the bedcover. She looked up when he came in, smiled, and remarked, “What a gloomy wedding. Poor Athulf. I will wager you that his path and my mother’s rarely cross again.”

“Your mother is not exactly what I would call a jolly person,” Alfred agreed. He unbuckled his belt and began to pull his tunic over his head. Elswyth scooped the dice up, put them on the table, and leaned back against her pillow, watching him. “I think I ought to go to Tamworth with Ethelred,” he said, his voice a little muffled as it came from beneath the blue wool of his tunic, His head emerged and he began to fold the tunic to put it on top of the clothes chest. Next he began to take off his shirt.

“Do you?” she responded almost lazily.

“Yes,” He came back to the bed and sat down to take off his soft leather shoes. She reached out and laid a hand on the warm, smooth skin of his back. The muscles flexed under her hand as he reached to push his shoes under the bed. “It is important that Wessex and Mercia continue to hold together.” He straightened, turned, and looked down at her. “I had another thought too. What if we found a West Saxon girl for Ceolwulf to wed? If Ethelred is appointed ealdorman, and if Ceolwulf is bound to Wessex by marriage, that will be two more Mercians inclined to assist us.”

“Hmm.” She clasped her hands around her updrawn knees and regarded him thoughtfully. “We could do that, I suppose. But, Alfred, I would caution you not to expect too much from Ceolwulf. He is my brother, and I am fond of him, but Ceolwulf will ever take the easiest way.” She shrugged. There was pity in her eyes, and the faintest trace of contempt. “He cannot help it. It is his nature.”

“Still,” Alfred said, “if we make ours the easiest way …*’

She shrugged again. “It is worth a try, certainly.”

“We must find him a nice docile girl who will not threaten his peace,” Alfred said. Now there was laughter in his eyes. “Someone like you.”

“True.” She smiled at him sweetly. “Ceolwulf and I have ever got along well.”

“That is because you have him thoroughly intimidated,” her husband retorted. He reached out to pull the ribbon from her hair and watched as the shining blue-black mass slid over her shoulders like a silken cloak. “Poor man, after you and your mother, a sweet-natured West Saxon girl will seem like an angel from heaven to him.”

Elswyth’s blue eyes flashed. She sat up straight as a spear. “Do not compare me to my mother! We are not at all alike.”

“You both have wills of iron.” He was pushing her back against the pillow, stretching out beside her.

She tried to draw away. “Alfred, take that back, I am not like my mother.”

He took a fistful of her hair and held her still. “You are not like your mother,” he repeated, imitating her Mercian drawl.

She laughed unwillingly and reached out to pretend to push him away. “If I am such a shrew, you can scarcely wish to sleep with me.”

“But such a beautiful shrew,” he murmured, sliding his leg over hers to hold her down. She was under him now, her hair spilled like an ebony halo on the pillow around her face.

He could see her wondering if she would be strong enough to push him off. He let her try. Then, when she fell back again against the pillow, her breath coming a little short: “And I would find a sweet-natured West Saxon girl so tedious.”

“You are a devil,” she said. But the struggle had heated her blood; he could see that from the glitter in her eyes.

“Elswyth,” he said. The teasing note had quite gone from his voice. “God Almighty. Elswyth.” And he set his mouth against hers.

Her arms came up instantly to draw him close. “I love you,” she said after a while, her husky voice close to his ear. He pushed up her shift to get it out of his way, and she ran her hands up and down his smooth naked torso. He touched her and she shuddered.

Athulf and his new bride were asleep long before Alfred and Elswyth that night.

Alfred and Elswyth returned to Wessex at the end of April, Alfred well-pleased with the naming of Ethelred as new Ealdorman of Hwicce. The Danes remained in York. Alfred collected his food rents, the seed was sown, the lambs and piglets and calves were born. June came and the sheep were sheared and the fleeces gathered into the barns to be combed and spun into wool by the women. Fences were built and repaired and new fishing weirs were constructed. Then the summer was upon them.

Elswyth stood without the door of the hall at Wantage one light summer night late in July and breathed in the cool evening air. It had been hot during the day and the heat still lingered within the hall. The courtyard was empty, but she could hear the sound of music and laughter coming from the far side of the stockade fence. The manor folk were having a dance this night, to celebrate the conclusion of the haymaking.

Alfred was not at Wantage this week, having ridden to Mercia on business for his brother. Elswyth was near four months gone with child, and though she was feeling better now, she had been ill in the mornings for the first few months. She had decided to forgo the long ride to Tamworth and back in favor of remaining at Wantage and working with her filly while still she could ride.

Ethelred had sent Alfred into Mercia in response to Burgred’s most recent message that the Danes were making ready to leave York. For all this past year the Mercians had kept watch on York, and now the dreaded signs at last were visible. Actually the Danish army had remained in the north for longer than anyone had dared hope; they must have eaten the land bare these last six months.

Elswyth crossed her arms on her breast and shivered a little in the cool night air. She had been so happy these last six months with Alfred. She had clung fast to the joy of the moment and refused to let her happiness be marred by the uncertainties of the future. It was one faculty of childhood she still retained, that ability to live in the present.

But their peace was over. She felt it this night, as she stood in the solitude of her safe courtyard and listened to the mirth of the manor folk floating on the soft summer air. The Danes were once more on the move. Whither would they march next?

The music was still playing when Elswyth turned back to the hall to seek her lonely bed. She did not sleep, however, until long after the last merrymaker had fallen into his cot and lay deep in the sodden slumber of the weary and the drunk.

In August the Danish army came pouring down the old Roman road that led from York directly into the monastery-rich fen country of East Anglia. Monasteries that had been centers of civilization since the time of Saint Guthlac gleamed as rich prizes before a Viking army which had fallen on lean times at York this last year.

It was Elswyth’s brother Ceolwulf who brought Alfred the news of the Danish move into East Anglia. Ceolwulf had been sent as messenger by Burgred and had ridden straight through from Tamworth to Lambourn, where Alfred and Elswyth were housed this time of year. He stopped to see Alfred first, since Ethelred, Wessex’s king, was further to the south and the east, in Sussex.

“All the fen country is afire,” Ceolwulf said as he sat with his sister and her husband in the hall at Lambourn. Ceolwulf was eating as he talked, having barely halted for food on his ride south. “Farms, manors, monasteries—all within the path of the pagan march is going up in smoke.”

“What monasteries?” Alfred asked bleakly.

“Crowland, for one.” Ceolwulf swallowed the ham in his mouth. “One of their novices, a boy who is half Mercian, escaped the blaze and made it to Tamworth. The story of Crowland is just one example of what is happening all over East Anglia.”

“What happened at Crowland?” Elswyth asked.

Ceolwulf put down his knife. His gray eyes were very somber. He said, “It is an ugly story, my sister.” Then, when no one spoke: “From what the boy told us, they had sufficient warning that the Danes were coming. They could see the fires in the towns around them, you see.” Alfred and Elswyth nodded their understanding. Ceolwulf began to play with his knife. “Well, the abbot and the monks first buried most of their treasure—the sacred vessels and the gold.” Ceolwulf turned the knife over and over in his fingers. “Then the abbot said Mass for all the folk of the monastery. They were still in the church when the Danes burst through the monastery gates. Most of the monks tried to hide, but the pagans hunted them through all the maze of the monastery buildings. Hunted them down and killed them.”

There was a pause as Ceolwulf put down his knife and then looked up. His handsome face was very pale. “This boy had remained in the church with the abbot. They were both within the vestry, the abbot still clothed in his sacred vestments, when the hounds out of hell broke into the church and cut the priest down.” He looked at his brother-by-marriage. “In his own church, Alfred! Almost before his own altar!”

The flesh around Alfred’s mouth and nostrils was lividly pale; the line of his jaw stood out whitely. The only color about his face was the burning gold of his eyes. “Go on,” he said to Ceolwulf.

“They killed them all, save this one boy. Then, when they could not find the gold, they were so angered that they piled all the dead bodies up in one heap and set fire to them, together with the church and all the buildings.”

“May God damn their souls to hell,” Alfred said, through his teeth.

“Why did they spare this one boy?” Elswyth demanded.

Ceolwulf’s smiled was crooked. “Because of his beauty. And he is a beautiful creature, my dear. All big eyes and delicate bones. Luckily for him.”

“Where in the name of God is Edmund?” Alfred still sounded as if he were talking through his teeth. “England cannot afford to lose centers of learning like Crowland!”

“It is not just Crowland,” Ceolwulf returned. “From what this boy said, the Danes were going on to Medeshamsted.”

“And thence to Bardeney and thence to Ely.” Alfred’s eyes were slitted and glittering, hawk eyes. “Ceolwulf,
where
is East Anglia’s king?”

Ceolwulf could not meet those eyes. He looked at his ale cup. “I do not know.” He took a sip. “But he made peace with the Danes when first they landed in East Anglia. Perhaps he can do so again.”

“Make peace with them?”

Ceolwulf flinched

“You must be mad,” Elswyth said incredulously. “How can one make peace with such as these?”

“Burgred did,” Ceolwulf said. “You were there, Alfred—”

“I was there and I thought he was wrong. But the Danes did not burn down half of Mercia before Burgred consented to make peace!”

“Sometimes,” said Ceolwulf stubbornly, “it is better to make peace and take what one can get, rather than fight and risk losing all.”

“I do not agree,” Alfred said. His voice was like ice.

Ceolwulf ran his hand through his light brown hair. “Edmund is still young—” he began.

“Then should he have some fire in his belly.” There was fire enough in Alfred’s belly, to judge by the fire that blazed in his eyes. “I shall ride with you to Sussex,” he told his wife’s brother. Then, to Elswyth: “Ceolwulf and I will leave at dawn tomorrow. I’ll go now and give orders for the thanes and the horses.”

“All right,” she said in reply, and managed to keep from begging to be allowed to accompany them. Alfred would be riding hard, and in her present condition she would only hold him up. She watched her husband leave the hall and knew by his leopard’s stalk that he was furious. She turned slowly back to her brother. His gray eyes, turning from the door that had closed so firmly behind Alfred, were hurt.

Poor Ceolwulf, Elswyth thought with the familiar mixture of pity and scorn, Ever the peacemaker. Unfortunately, the time for the peacemaker was long since passed.

Ceolwulf looked back at her. “This is not a raiding party, Elswyth,” he said. Very quietly. “This is an army of seven thousand men. An army on horseback. An army that does not have to till the fields or keep the swine or cut the timber. An army of pagans, with no Christian scruples or concerns. We cannot stand against them. It is as simple, and as fearful, as that.”

Ceolwulf the peacemaker, she thought again. But Ceolwulf was not stupid. Alfred had often said many of the same things. The difference between the two men was that Alfred would seek for a way to negate the Danish advantages, while Ceolwulf would simply give up. But she had a fondness for Ceolwulf, who had always been kind to her. “What does Athulf say?” she asked instead.

He shrugged. “Athulf has the heart of a fighter. But he sees the reality too.”