The Lost Tales of Mercia (27 page)

He let this sink into his siblings’ ears,
both of them growing paler as it did. After a short while Aydith
said, “Weren’t there any specifics?”

“They lowered their voices after that,” said
Edmund. “Which means it must have been bad! So I tried to get
closer, and hid myself around the corner of the tavern.”

“What else did you hear?” said Aethelstan,
his voice heavy with desperation.

“Only bits and pieces. They talked about
Saint Brice’s Day coming up. They spoke of the food that would be
served. Oh—and then a third person joined in! But I didn’t see his
face.”

“Alfric!” breathed Aydith.

Edmund nodded grimly. “I did hear them call
him Alfric.”

“There are lots of Alfrics,” said Aethelstan
grumpily.

Aydith came to Edmund’s rescue. “There
aren’t many Alfrics who would be plotting something with two Danish
nobles,” she hissed. “He has had trouble getting Father to forgive
him for his last offense, and I am sure he is eager to avenge the
death of his son.”

“Yes,” said Edmund, grateful now that Aydith
had come along, after all. “That’s exactly what I thought!”

Aethelstan now wore a deeply-set frown.
“What else did they say about the food?”

“They said, ‘Think of how many people will
be eating it.’ As if the more people they poisoned, the
better.”

Aydith held up her hand and shook her head
firmly. “Wait. Did you ever hear them say ‘poison’?”

“Well ... no.”

She grunted. “Then this is all
speculation.”

“Who the hell cares?” cried Edmund. “They’re
obviously up to something!”

They scowled and looked to Aethelstan for
help, whose frown only deepened. He heaved a sigh, then at last
said, “We must go to Father. We’ll speak to him tomorrow during
breakfast.”

Aydith turned a deep shade of red. “But we
need more information before we go to Father. Otherwise—”

“Hush, Aydith.” Edmund was not very pleased
with Aethelstan’s solution, either, but it was a plan, voiced by
someone of authority, and at least now Edmund knew he could go to
bed without tossing and turning all night. The burden no longer lay
completely on his own shoulders. “Aethelstan’s right. We’ll talk to
Father tomorrow.”

Aydith scowled so fiercely that Edmund
actually moved back a step. But she saw that her brothers had made
up their minds, and wisely pinched her lips together to avoid
arguing anymore. “Very well,” she said at last. “Good luck with
that!”

She turned and stormed out.

The brothers exchanged weary looks, then
retired gladly to their own beds.

*

In the morning, Edmund at last got his
father’s attention. Most of his wise men had not yet arrived for
the ongoing witenagmot, so the palace and dining hall remained
mostly empty.

Nonetheless, addressing his father was no
easy feat. King Ethelred seemed to suffer from wine-poisoning and
lack of sleep. He chewed grimly upon his morning meal, waving away
most of the people who yapped for his attention, the curls of his
beard bouncing rhythmically as he struggled to chew away his
breakfast. He yanked at the cloak and brooches around his neck as
if they were choking him.

Edmund addressed his father with a timid
voice, seeing little reaction in Ethelred’s gray eyes despite the
urgency of his voice. “I have something very important to tell
you.” Ethelred just grunted, but at least that meant he was
listening. Aethelstan sat nearby, nodding his encouragement. Edmund
leaned close to their father, his fine linen sleeves crushing the
crumbs of the table. “The Danes are plotting against you.”

Ethelred’s eyes turned sluggishly towards
his son. Beyond this, he did not seem taken aback at all. “Yes,
and?”

Edmund drew back, blinking rapidly with
surprise. “And you should
do
something!” His blood roared in
his ears, deafening. Here was his chance to tell his father
everything, and he was ruining it.

Aethelstan came to his rescue, speaking in
calm and reassuring tones to the king. “Edmund doesn’t mean just
the Vikings, Father. He means there are Danes living nearby who
wish to do you harm.”

Ethelred looked from one young teen to the
next, drool collecting on his lips as he delayed chewing. “And this
is news to you both? For heaven’s sake, the Danes try to cut my
throat every chance they get. Edmund—tell me how your sword lessons
have been going. Have you improved your parrying skills yet?”

Edmund could not even come up with a
response, so confused was he by the turn of conversation. His lips
flapped open and shut, but no words escaped.

Aethelstan made another attempt at salvaging
the conversation. “Father, Edmund overheard one of your most
trusted men, Lord Egil ...” He looked to Edmund for approval, and
Edmund nodded. “Lord Egil seemed to be plotting something wicked,
Father, on Saint Brice’s Day.”

“Wicked? How?” asked Ethelred. But now his
eyes were darting about, infused at last with energy. They fixed on
Edmund. “What did you hear?”

Edmund gulped. Should he say that he heard
them planning to poison Ethelred? But what if he was wrong? And
what if he sent his father into a senseless panic, before anything
useful might be done? “They were … talking about the food, Father,”
he whispered. “And … and how many people were going to be eating
it.”

Ethelred stared at him a long, long time. He
didn’t move at all. His nose turned red from the cold air and lack
of blood circulation.

Edmund could not guess what was going on
behind the king’s petrified expression. Was he convinced? Or did he
need something more? “And ... they were talking about all this to
none other than Alfric of Mercia!” he blurted.

Ethelred dropped his dirk with a tremendous
clatter. His elbows sank onto the table and his head fell between
them. Edmund sensed victory and exchanged a look of excitement with
Aethelstan; but when they looked back at their father, they found
him trembling violently.

“Father?” Edmund reached out a hand to the
king, but dared not touch him.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” Ethelred got
up suddenly, his chair falling behind him. He turned, fell to his
knees, and retched upon the floor.

Edmund turned away, cringing with disgust as
the royal breakfast of sausages and eggs plopped from Ethelred’s
mouth into the rushes. Once the king’s hacking and spitting spent
itself, Ethelred got up and groaned, “Well, clean this up!” A few
servants rushed uncertainly forward to do what they could with
their woolen washcloths.

King Ethelred returned to his chair with a
resounding thump.

Edmund and Aethelstan sat in a state of
suspended wincing as they stared upon their father’s drooping face.
He exhaled heavily, and Edmund resisted turning from his foul
breath.

“Alfric has been well-behaved lately, and
very helpful to me,” said Ethelred. “I think that he regrets the
wrong-doings of his past, and he’s full of fresh ideas for the
future.” Edmund could hardly believe he was hearing such words. Had
Alfric already worked his way back into the king’s good graces? “As
for Egil,” the king continued relentlessly, “I like him. I like him
a lot.”

He surprised them by looking up and fixing
Edmund’s eyes with his own. Life flared briefly from deep within
the wells of the king’s gaze. “Tell me, Edmund: are you certain
that he means me harm? Would you put your hand on a holy relic and
swear that Egil is working with Alfric to kill or otherwise
dethrone me?”

Edmund had not expected this. He realized,
with much surprise, that he had not really expected to get through
to his father at all. All of his huffing and heaving had been a
desperate attempt to get his father’s attention. Now that he had
it—now that Ethelred took him seriously—he could not bring himself
to say,
Yes, I swear
. He just couldn’t.

He could not even sustain his father’s gaze.
He looked down into the wood of the table. He couldn’t look at his
brother, either. He wondered if Aethelstan was disappointed in him.
He knew without a doubt that Aydith would be.

“Just as I thought,” Ethelred sighed. “You
boys are becoming as fearful as I often feel. Why should I trust
anyone these days? I don’t. And yet I have to.” A servant gave him
a new goblet of water. He picked it up and downed it in a few
gulps, loosing silver streams down his beard and necklaces. He
lifted a hand to push back his frizzy hair, but this small movement
betrayed a violent tremor in his arm. “I live from one day to the
next, my sons. Sometimes that is all we can do. It’s all we can
do.”

Edmund no longer felt upset or angry. He did
not even feel very anxious. He simply felt depressed.

“What would you have me do?” Ethelred looked
up as if poising the question to God Himself. Edmund and Aethelstan
might as well have left the room. This was now between the king and
the only power greater than himself. “Have Egil beheaded or exiled
without reason? Think of what they’ll say of me then. ‘Paranoid.’
‘Cowardly.’ Bah! Perhaps I should just declare war on the Danelaw.
What do you think of that?” He drained down another goblet of
water, as if it was ale that could wash away his sorrows. But it
gave him no such relief. When he next spoke, the coarseness of his
voice brought bumps to Edmund’s skin. “‘The sin of thy mother shall
not be washed out but by much blood of the kingdom’s wretched
inhabitants; and such evils shall come upon the English nation as
they have never suffered from the time they came to Engla-lond
until then.’ Hm.”

Then he stared out the window, and seemed to
forget that anyone else was present.

Despite the warmth of his clothes and the
glow of a nearby hearth-fire, Edmund felt cold to his core. He drew
away from the table, his appetite gone, again.

He could not think of anything else to say,
and Ethelred no longer seemed in the mood to listen, anyway.

So he turned and left the hall.

*

Aydith found him dragging his feet through
the courtyard, kicking occasionally at the frosty mud. A group of
chickens squawked and scattered away from him. A few royal
retainers loitered nearby, watching him reluctantly.

When he saw her approaching, he sighed with
dismay, then steeled himself.

Unexpectedly, she did not release a torrent
of anger upon him. She looked just as sad and miserable as he did.
And for awhile, she simply stood there next to him, not saying a
word.

“What do we do?” Edmund surprised himself by
being the first to speak, and asking such an important question
while doing so.

Aydith’s lips twisted from side to side as
she considered this. It amazed Edmund whenever he saw his sister do
child-like things, for she was so mature that she often seemed like
a grown woman. “First, we need to figure out exactly what Egil is
up to.”

“Oh, forget about Egil! Father
likes
him,” he sneered, “and I was probably just being
paranoid!
”
He picked up a stick and threw it at an unsuspecting hen, who
attempted to escape by flapping her flimsy wings.

Aydith fixed him with a level stare. “I
don’t think you’re paranoid,” she said. “I believe you completely.
Even if he’s not out to poison the entire witenagemot, I think Egil
would do something against Father if he had the chance.”

“You
think
,” said Edmund. “But do you
know?
”

“Yes!”

“How?”

Her little nose pinched as she restrained
her frustration. “I just … do.”

“See? You’re as bad as the rest of us.
Forget it. Forget everything.”

“Edmund.” A tone of pleading entered her
voice. “Maybe we could get Father to do something so we didn’t have
to. It just needs to be something … definite. But also something
non-confrontational.”

“Oh
enough!
” It all sounded even more
ridiculous coming from his sister’s childish mouth. He wanted to
laugh about it but he couldn’t. All he could do was walk away.

“Edmund!”

He heard the
chinks
of shifting metal
as his companions moved to follow him, but he whirled on them
quickly. “Leave me alone. All of you!”

He hurried away, and it came as both a
relief and a disappointment that no one bothered to follow him,
after all.

He spent most of his morning hacking at a
dummy with his sword, practicing his techniques and stances, but
mostly just hacking. He pretended that it had a real face, and that
face took the shape of various people he knew, like Egil, or
Alfric, or even his father.

Once he’d exhausted himself with the sword,
his stomach growled desperately, so at last he went to the kitchens
and ate. Then he paced about the palace for a long while, and even
tried listening in on the witenagemot. He did not get far. The
doors were shut tight, and the retainers around the area gave him
warning glances. Edmund scowled back. He could have attended the
witenagemot from the start if he really wanted to, but if so he
would not have been allowed to leave, just as he could not now
interrupt them. The thought of listening to the wise men’s useless
quibbling all day made him sick to his stomach.

He decided to walk to town again, even
though it was a strange time to do so. He knew he would get strange
looks from people who saw a young teen strolling the streets alone
wearing fancy clothes, but today he did not even care. He yearned
for a sense of normalcy beyond the stifling walls of the
palace.

He had not gone very far when he ran
suddenly into Alfric.

He didn’t recognize the man at first. Edmund
had only seen him as a young boy, after all, and one of his most
striking features—his hair—had been largely removed, chopped clean
off his head. Edmund would have passed him by without a second
thought, but Alfric was not about to let that happen.