Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [231]
It was done. Aelfwald and the others witnessed the charter. Port had lost his hands, but regained a portion of his ancient ancestral territory.
When it came to Aelfwald’s turn, Alfred had a special gift: an inscribed ring and a small jewelled casket. To accompany these personal mementoes, he added a fine new farm.
The farm of Shockerlee lay just to the north west of Wilton, on the wooded slopes of the small ridge that rose between the two broad valleys of the Wylye and the Nadder rivers, and which was known as Grovely Wood.
Like many new farms, it had been carved out of the edge of the woodland, as its name – meaning the sheaves of corn, shocker, in the wood, lee – implied. It was excellent, well drained land.
When the king had passed on to the next thane, Aelfwald turned to Aelfstan and Aelfgifu and told them:
“You both fought bravely together. In my will, when Aelfric inherits the lands at Avonsford, you shall jointly own Shockerlee.”
At the end of the granting of lands, Alfred addressed those present:
“Remember,” he said with a smile, as his pale blue eyes searched them out one by one, “when you look at your estates in times to come, that they were won when we saved the kingdom of Wessex, at Edington.”
There was one other memorial to that day however, which the king did not plan.
Two days later, Aelfstan and a group of young men were riding over the high ground near the battlefield and the young Saxon’s thoughts returned to the extraordinary events of those recent months, and to the battles, side by side with his sister. In later times, he thought, who would believe the part that Aelfgifu had played.
“She should have a memorial,” he cried aloud.
As he gazed up at the bare turf on the hillside above him, he saw what he should do; and calling to his friends he told them what he planned.
All that day, and for two more afterwards, the party of young men worked busily; and when they had finished, carved in the chalk hillside where they had cut back the turf and staring proudly over the valley below, there was a fine white horse, forty feet across.
Aelfstan looked at it with pride.
“That’s for Aelfgifu, and our victory,” he told them; and feeling that he had done a fine thing, he returned to the camp more contented than he had been for many months.
The chalk had been well dug. The white horse on the hillside remained.
Only one other surprise awaited the thane when he returned to Athelney.
Tostig had disappeared.
He had gone one night, taking one of the boats loaded with valuables with him. He had departed without warning and left even his family behind. At first the thane supposed he had gone for some legitimate reason; but he had not.
He was never seen again.
The kingdom of Wessex was by no means free of its troubles. There were still many battles to be fought and accommodations to be made with the Vikings on the island. There were also personal disappointments for the king, as when Earldorman Wulfhere, a little after Edington, suddenly and unexpectedly defected to the Vikings in the Danelaw.
But never again would the kingdom of Wessex be in danger of extinction. The burghs were fortified, new monasteries and schools were built, the nunnery where Edith remained at Wilton was re-established even more splendidly than before; and despite his many campaigns, Alfred found time, as he had always hoped, to translate his chosen classics into the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
During the rest of his reign and those of his successors, the influence and rule of Wessex was gradually extended over the Danelaw; the Scandinavian raiders mostly settled and were even converted to Christianity; and the process by which the Anglo-Saxon and Danish people gradually became fused into a single island kingdom continued steadily.
Although, for a short period before the Norman Conquest, the island came to be ruled as part of a larger Scandinavian confederacy by the great King Canute, it was no longer in doubt that the kingdom of England was a single whole, and its people English.