Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [69]
I pulled her head out from under the fleece. ‘They really tried?’
‘Bishop Erkenwald and my mother.’
‘What happened?’
‘They came here,’ she said in a very matter-of-fact voice, ‘and insisted I went to the chapel, and Bishop Erkenwald said a great deal of angry Latin, then held a book to me and told me to put my hand on it and swear to keep the oath he’d just said.’
‘And you did?’
‘I told you what I did. I spat at him.’
I lay in silence for a while. ‘Æthelred must have persuaded them,’ I said.
‘Well I’m sure he’d like to put me away, but Mother said it was Father’s wish I took the vows.’
‘I doubt that,’ I said.
‘So then they went back to the palace and announced I had taken the vow.’
‘And put guards on the gate,’ I said.
‘I think that was to keep you out,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘but you say the guards are gone?’
‘They’re gone.’
‘So I can leave?’
‘You left yesterday.’
‘Steapa’s men escorted me to the palace,’ she said, ‘then brought me back here.’
‘There are no guards now.’
She frowned in thought. ‘I should have been born a man.’
‘I’m glad you weren’t.’
‘And I would be king,’ she said.
‘Edward will be a good king.’
‘He will,’ she agreed, ‘but he can be indecisive. I would have made a better king.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you would.’
‘Poor Edward,’ she said.
‘Poor? He’ll be king soon.’
‘He lost his love,’ she said.
‘And the babies live.’
‘The babies live,’ she agreed.
I think I loved Gisela best of all the women in my life. I mourn her still. But of all those women, Æthelflaed was always the closest. She thought like me. I would sometimes start to say something and she would finish the sentence. In time we just looked at each other and knew what the other was thinking. Of all the friends I have made in my life, I loved Æthelflaed the best.
Sometime in that wet darkness, Thor’s Day turned into Freya’s Day. Freya was Woden’s wife, the goddess of love, and for all of her day the rain continued to fall. A wind rose in the afternoon, a high wind that tore at Wintanceaster’s thatch and drove the rain in malevolent spite, and that same night King Alfred, who had ruled in Wessex for twenty-eight years and was in the fiftieth year of his life, died.
The next morning there was no rain and little wind. Wintanceaster was silent, except for the pigs rooting in the streets, the cockerels crowing, the dogs howling or barking and the thud of the sentries’ boots on the waterlogged planks of the ramparts. Folk seemed dazed. A bell began to toll in mid-morning, just a single bell struck again and again, and the sound faded down the river valley where floods sheeted the meadows, then came again with brutal force. The king is dead, long live the king.
Æthelflaed wanted to pray in the nuns’ chapel, and I left her in Saint Hedda’s and walked through the silent streets to the palace where I surrendered my sword at the gatehouse and saw Steapa sitting alone in the outer courtyard. His grim, skin-stretched face that had terrified so many of Alfred’s enemies was wet with tears. I sat on the bench beside him, but said nothing. A woman hurried past carrying a stack of folded linens. The king dies, yet still sheets must be washed, rooms swept, ashes thrown out, wood stacked, grain milled. A score of horses had been saddled and were waiting at the courtyard’s farther end. I supposed they were for messengers who would carry the news of the king’s death to every corner of his kingdom, but instead a troop of men, all in mail and all helmeted, appeared from a doorway and were helped up into their saddles. ‘Your men?’ I asked Steapa.
He gave them a sour glance. ‘Not mine.’
They were Æthelwold’s men. Æthelwold himself was the last to appear and, like his followers, he was dressed for war in a helmet and mail. Three servants had brought the troops’ swords from the gatehouse and men milled about in search of their own blade, then strapped the swords and belts about their waists. Æthelwold took his own long-sword, let a servant buckle the belt, then was helped up onto his horse, a big