Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [88]
The twins were with Æthelflaed, who was building her convent in Cirrenceastre, a town not far from my new estate. Cirrenceastre had been a great place when the Romans ruled in Britain and Æthelflaed lived in one of their houses, a fine building with large rooms enclosing a pillared courtyard. The house had once belonged to the older Æthelred, Ealdorman of Mercia and husband to my father’s sister, and I had known it as a child when I fled south from my other uncle’s usurpation of Bebbanburg. The older Æthelred had expanded it so that Saxon thatch was joined to Roman tile, but it was a comfortable house and well protected by Cirrenceastre’s walls. Æthelflaed had men pulling down some ruined Roman houses and was using the stone to make her convent. ‘Why bother?’ I asked her.
‘Because it was my father’s wish,’ she said, ‘and because I promised to do it. It will be dedicated to Saint Werburgh.’
‘She’s the woman who frightened the geese?’
‘Yes.’
Æthelflaed’s household was loud with children. There was her own daughter, Ælfwynn, and my two youngest, Stiorra and Osbert. My oldest, Uhtred, was still at school in Wintanceaster from where he wrote me dutiful letters that I did not bother to read because I knew they were filled with tedious pieties. The youngest children at Cirrenceastre were Edward’s twins who were just babies. I remember looking at Æthelstan in his swaddling clothes and thinking that so many problems could be solved with one plunge of Serpent-Breath. I was right in that, but wrong too, and little Æthelstan would grow into a young man I loved. ‘You know he’s legitimate?’ I asked Æthelflaed.
‘Not according to Edward,’ she said tartly.
‘I have the priest who married them in my household,’ I told her.
‘Then tell him to keep his mouth shut,’ she said, ‘or he’ll be buried with it open.’
We were in Cirrenceastre, which lay not that far from Gleawecestre where Æthelred had his hall. He hated Æthelflaed, and I worried he would send men to capture her, then either simply kill her or immure her in a nunnery. She no longer had the protection of her father, and I doubted Edward frightened Æthelred nearly as much as Alfred had, but Æthelflaed dismissed my fears. ‘He might not be worried by Edward,’ she said, ‘but he’s terrified of you.’
‘Will he make himself King of Mercia?’ I asked.
She watched a mason chip at a Roman statue of an eagle. The poor man was attempting to make it look like a goose, and so far had only managed to make it resemble an indignant chicken. ‘He won’t,’ Æthelflaed said.
‘Why not?’
‘Too many powerful men in southern Mercia want Wessex’s protection,’ she said, ‘and Æthelred really is not interested in power.’
‘He’s not?’
‘Not now. He used to be. But he falls ill every few months and he fears death. He wants to fill what time he has with women.’ She gave me a very tart look. ‘He’s like you in some ways.’
‘Nonsense, woman,’ I said, ‘Sigunn is my housekeeper.’
‘Housekeeper,’ Æthelflaed said scornfully.
‘And terrified of you.’
She liked that and laughed, then she sighed as an unwise blow of the mason’s mallet knocked off the sad chicken’s beak. ‘All I asked for,’ she said, ‘was a statue of Werburgh and one goose.’
‘You want too much,’ I teased her.
‘I want what my father wanted,’ she said quietly, ‘England.’
In those days I was always surprised when I heard that name. I knew Mercia and Wessex, and I had been to East Anglia and reckoned Northumbria was my homeland, but England? It was a dream back then, a dream of Alfred’s, and now, after his death, that dream was as vague and faraway as ever. It seemed likely that if ever the four kingdoms were to be joined then they would be called Daneland rather than England, yet Æthelflaed and I shared Alfred’s dream. ‘Are we English?’ I asked her.
‘What else?’
‘I’m Northumbrian.’
‘You’re English,’ she said firmly, ‘and have a Danish bedwarmer.’ She prodded me hard in the ribs. ‘Tell Sigunn I wish her a good Christmas.’
I celebrated Yule with a feast at Fagranforda. We made a great wheel from timber, more than ten paces wide, and