The Edge of Light (39 page)

“If he will go to you,” Elswyth answered doubtfully. But she stopped and Erlend did the same, holding out his arms for the child. No fear of Edward being delicate, he thought as the considerable weight of Alfred’s son was put into his arms,

Edward looked from his mother to the strange man who was now holding him. It was astonishing, Erlend thought, how so small a face could yet be so distinctively male. Erlend smiled at the baby and walked forward again, saying to Elswyth, “He is no lightweight!”

She laughed. “Alfred says in fifteen years’ time he is sure to be looking up at Edward. I think he is right.”

Edward had apparently decided that Erlend was an acceptable substitute for Elswyth, for he put an arm around Erlend’s neck and said something utterly indistinguishable.

“He likes you,” Elswyth said, and Erlend felt an absurd thrill of pride.

The Lady of Wessex was greeted in the kitchen like an old friend. The huge kitchen fire was roaring, and Elswyth, Erlend, and the children settled down in the fragrant warmth and were given some porridge and bread left over from breakfast.

Edward fed himself and made an utter mess of it. His mother smiled at him and absently wiped his face with the edge of his cloak. One of the serving girls mopped up the scarred wooden table in front of the baby, and the women went on talking.

Flavia looked into every nook and cranny of the kitchen. Erlend was afraid she was going too near to the fire, but Elswyth replied tranquilly, “Oh, no. Flavia knows the fire is dangerous. She won’t touch it,” and went back to gossiping with the serving maids. Edward began to bang his spoon against the table and sing to himself.

Erlend was amazed by the informality that prevailed between the lady of the manor and her underlings. One of the cooks, a buxom matron of some forty years, was instructing her young mistress in the remedies for teething. Elswyth listened with rapt attention. Edward finished banging his spoon against the table and one of the maids took his hand and walked him around the room, showing him things. The room was wonderfully warm and redolent with the smell of cooking. Erlend could not remember ever being so comfortable.

After almost an hour, Elswyth rose to go. As she was fastening the children’s cloaks around their shoulders once more, Flavia asked, “Where we go now, Mama?”

“To visit the lambs.”

Two small faces lit like candles. “Oh, good! We go to see the lambs, Edward!” Flavia said to her brother, and the baby echoed, “Ambs, ambs!”

Elswyth laughed and Erlend bent to shoulder the burden of Edward once more.

The month-old baby lambs held the children’s attention for nigh on half an hour. Elswyth leaned on the fence of the pen within which the lambs and her children were contained, and watched her young splashing in the mud.

“Where have you been these last months, Erlend?” she asked the harper, who was leaning beside her.

He gave her the answer he had given Brand. She nodded. A wisp of hair had come loose from her single thick braid and was blowing across her cheek. She pushed it back behind her ear and said, “We have need of a harper. Alfred’s harper has grown old; his fingers are bent and it is difficult for him to pluck the strings these days. He will stay with us, of course, for as long as he likes, but he cannot play more than a song or two.” She turned to look at him, “You are a fine harper, Erlend. I would like you to stay.”

He stared back into the blue eyes of Alfred’s wife. He had never before seen such eyes, he thought, and he came from a land of blue-eyed people. They were so dark. So dark and yet so blue. He said, “I am no highborn thane, my lady. My birth was simple, my folk poor.”

She shrugged. “What matter, Erlend? You are a fine harper.” She flashed him a smile. “I like you. If you would care to stay with us, we will be happy to have you. You will find that Alfred is a generous lord.”

She never referred to her husband as “the king.” It was always “Alfred.”

It was far more than ever he could have hoped for. A permanent place in the household of his enemy. How Guthrum would roar with laughter when he heard.

Why, then, did he feel so uncomfortable? Why did he find it so difficult to meet those forthright blue eyes?

He said, “It is all right with the king if I stay?”

“Of course.” She sounded surprised. “You are a good harper and I have told him that I like you.”

“That is right,” Erlend said, remembering. His small pale face was turned toward the children in the pen. “He said I must know horses.”

Within the pen Edward sat down suddenly in the mud. His mother laughed. Erlend said in a strange voice, “I would have gotten a beating if I came home looking like that.”

They both contemplated the wet, muddy, thoroughly happy children cavorting among the lambs. “Children should be dirty,” Elswyth said. Then, shooting him the sidelong look of a conspirator: “The best part of having children, Erlend, is that one gets to do all the things one wanted to do as a child, and couldn’t.”

He laughed. “I’ll wager little stopped you from doing what you wanted to do, my lady,” he found himself saying. It simply was not possible to be formal with Elswyth.

The King of Wessex’ wife said, “After I put the children down for their naps, I will show you Copper. Then we shall have to find you a horse of your own, Erlend. You ride, do you not?” She sounded perfectly confident.

“Yes, my lady,” Erlend said. “I do.”

“I have found us a new harper,” Elswyth said to Alfred as he changed his clothes from the hunt in preparation for supper that evening.

“I knew you must have something on your mind when you did not come hunting today,” her husband said. “Erlend?”

“Yes. And I found him a horse from among the ones you stole from the Danes. He is a good rider, Alfred. He has nice light hands.”

There was a little silence as Alfred untied the laces on his shirt. Then he said, “Where, I wonder, did such a boy learn to ride with nice light hands?”

Elswyth had been changing her own gown, and she turned now to look at him, clad only in her linen undershift, her long hair streaming down her back. “You asked him a similar question once before and he said he had worked as a stableboy.”

“Stableboys groom horses; they don’t ride them. You know that.”

She sat down on the bed and stared at him. “You are not usually so suspicious.”

“I know.” He had removed his headband and now he ran his fingers through the loose hair on his brow. “But there is something about the boy that does not ring quite true, Elswyth. I feel it,” He pulled the shirt over his head.

“The dogs like him,” she said. “Edward likes him. I like him.”

“Oh, well,” he said, and dropped the shirt on the clothes chest. “Perhaps I am just jealous.” And he crossed the room to where she sat on the bed and put his hands on her shoulders.

She looked up at him. He was bare from the waist up save for the medal he always wore on a gold chain about his neck. Even in winter his smooth skin was faintly golden. He looked sleek and strong, and a familiar hunger began to stir within her. His fingers on her shoulders moved caressingly. Their eyes met and held. “You are not jealous,” she said.

“Am I not?” His hands moved from her shoulders to her neck and then her face. Long fingers traced the line of her lips, then came to rest in a gentle curve about her chin and cheeks. “I never have you to myself,” he murmured. “Even at night we seem always to have one child or another in the bed with us.”

Her breathing was slightly hurried. “Not to mention the dogs,” she said. She ran her tongue around winter-dry lips. “We are alone now.”

His eyes were very serious, very intent. “So we are,” he said, and straightened away from her. He did not bother with his shirt, but went straight to the door. Elswyth heard him telling one of the thanes that he was not to be disturbed and then he reclosed the door behind him and fastened the bolt. The men in the hall would all know what their king and his wife were doing, but Elswyth did not care. She lay back on the bed and watched him come to her.

The royal household remained in Wantage for the remainder of February, then removed to Lambourn, a few miles to the south. Erlend had been in Lambourn the previous year, and the folk of the manor remembered the itinerant harper with pleasure. In fact, Erlend would have thought himself living well were it not that it was the Christian season called Lent.

He did not understand half of what Lent was about, and since he was supposed to be Christian himself, he could not ask. He did know that he was always much hungrier than he expected to be in a rich household such as Alfred’s. Nor did the king try to escape from any of the burdens the lesser folk had to bear: endless Masses in the cold morning air, and endless meals of fish. Alfred, who was not fond of fish, visibly lost weight. Erlend could not understand it at all.

One thing Erlend was able to do during the long cold hungry days of Lent was cultivate the acquaintance of Athelwold. He found what he learned of the red-haired thane to be extremely interesting.

Athelwold had been reared in a part of Wessex called Dorset, the shire from which his mother’s family came. He had been but four when his father died, and had no memory of him, but he knew very well that his father was Ethelwulfs eldest son. His mother had kept ties with this Cenwulf, her husband’s dearest friend and Athelwold’s godfather, and it was Cenwulf who had put it into Athelwold’s head that he and not Alfred should be the King of Wessex after Ethelred. When that attempt failed, it had been Cenwulf who brought Athelwold to join Alfred’s household.

So much Erlend learned directly from Athelwold. In fact, an odd and twisted kind of rapport had sprung up between the two young men during that dark and hungry Lent of 872. It could not be called friendship, for neither man particularly liked the other. But there was a deep and subterranean understanding that, in some ways, they were very much alike.

They most resembled each other in their dislike of the king. It was a dislike they both kept well-hidden from the rest of Alfred’s court, but each recognized in the other the reflection of his own resentment.

Athelwold was a good dissembler. Erlend did not think anyone else suspected how bitterly Athelwold resented Alfred’s popularity, Alfred’s secure hold on the kingship that Athelwold thought should be his. Nor did Alfred’s refusal to name Athelwold as his heir help to mollify his nephew’s animosity.

It was not unreasonable for Athelwold to ask to be named his uncle’s heir. Athelwold was the oldest male member of the house of Wessex after Alfred. Under similar circumstances, and considering the youthful ages of his own sons, Ethelred had named Alfred to succeed him. But Alfred had brushed aside Athelwold’s request. Alfred had no secondarius. To all intents and purposes, his formal heir was still his one-year-old son, Edward.

The king had given no reason for refusing to name Athelwold secondarius. Nor had anyone, Athelwold included, dared to press him too hard. Alfred was the most amiable and approachable of kings, but when he did not wish to discuss a matter, one simply did not discuss it.

Erlend sometimes wondered if there was perhaps one other person—the king himself—who was aware of Athelwold’s bitterness. Erlend was never quite sure what was going on behind the pleasant smile and masked golden eyes that Alfred most often turned upon the world.

The royal household was moving to Wilton in order to celebrate Easter. Before they left Lambourn, however, Erlend managed to slip away for a few days to ride to London. There was a girl, he told Elswyth, shuffling his feet in pretended discomfort. He wanted to see how things went with her, perhaps leave her some of the gold he had won for his harping.

Elswyth had laughed and sent him on his way. Erlend was always comfortable dealing with Elswyth. The king, however, was a different story. More and more Erlend was beginning to wonder just how much the king saw. Alfred was always courteous to him, always generous. But there was a look in his eyes sometimes that told Erlend that Alfred did not trust him the way Alfred’s wife did. Of that Erlend was becoming uncomfortably certain.

“The king’s harper!” Guthrum’s blue eyes blazed with a mixture of triumph and amusement. “Name of the Raven, youngster, but you have pulled off a feat!”

“Things have fallen well for us,” Erlend replied. He looked around the comfortable house wherein Guthrum was established in London. “How goes the tribute collection?” he asked.

“Well enough.” Guthrum shouted to the back of the house for some ale. “Burgred delivered the first installment two days since. He has had to milk the whole of his kingdom to pay what Halfdan asked.”

A girl came into the room carrying the ale cups. She was not a girl Erlend had seen before. She gave a cup to Guthrum and bore the other one to Erlend. Erlend took it, looked into her face, and saw that she was young and very fair. The girl did not meet his eyes, but ducked her head and left the room quickly.

“That was a new face,” Erlend said to Guthrum.

The Dane grunted. “London has provided more than geld,” he said. “A nice change from the usual camp followers.”

“She is Mercian, then.”

Guthrum drank some ale. “If you want her tonight, you can have her.” He wiped his mouth and grinned. “The king’s harper deserves some sort of reward. Now, tell me, what have you learned? …”

Half an hour later, Erlend was saying, “I must leave tomorrow. They will be suspicious if I stay away longer.”

Guthrum said, “There may be trouble in Northumbria.”

Erlend’s triangular eyebrows rose in a question.

“Apparently there is a rebellion being raised against our client king, Egbert. We shall have to see how successful it proves.”

“What if it is successful? What will Halfdan do?”

“We will have to go north again. But it will not be for long. More and more I am coming to the conclusion that the key to England is Wessex.” Guthrum frowned. “I do not like the news that Alfred is building ships. I do not like that news at all.”

“He is clever,” Erlend said, as he had said before. Then, almost reluctantly: “His people like him well, Guthrum. They will follow him again if he asks it.”