Ross Lawhead - A Hero's throne

?lfred rubbed his chin and then crossed his arms. “You may take from the land all whom you can persuade to your cause. But this is the last debt to you that I will honour. Consider yourself paid in full.”

Ealdstan nodded and without any more words between them, he departed, never to be seen by?lfred again. Some months later the first reports of stoneworkers gone missing came to him. Some vanished along with their families, others not, and?lfred assured those asking after them that they were completing vital work for the safety of the kingdom, for there was little else that could be done. Soon, stonemasons could not be found for love or money, proving that Ealdstan had done his persuading very well.

Freya’s eyes snapped open and her head jerked back. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes as she tried to remember where she was and what she was doing. The Langtorr, her mission, Aunt Vivienne, and the device gradually rolled back to her, like waves of the tide.

She yawned. She felt like she’d just woken from a very deep and satisfying sleep. Ealdstan and King?lfred-had she really seen them as they were? That had to be the most vivid dream she’d ever had in her life if she hadn’t. It felt like she’d remembered real voices, real conversations. Like she could close her eyes and see the burh, like she could close her eyes and see the vague image of a room she had just left.

She looked up at Vivienne, who was coiling the leather strap around the top again.

“How long was I in a. .?” Freya searched her mind for the right word. “Trance?”

“Oh, several hours, at least.”

“Hours?” Freya moved her tongue around her mouth. It was fairly dry and tasted stale. “I saw Ealdstan, and King?lfred. They were talking about-”

“I know, you wrote it all down,” Vivienne said.

“I did?” Freya looked at the table and saw that she had a large notebook in front of her that contained her handwriting on about ten pages. She flipped back through them and read some of what she wrote. It was all there-everything she’d seen.

“Ready to go again?” Vivienne asked.

“What? No. Let me-”

Vivienne pulled the strap, and the room melted.

Winchester

1019 AD

The messenger thanked her and departed. She lay in bed and savoured the warmth for a long moment and then rose just as three of her maids entered and started bustling about her. It was late-some hours already past vespers-but not only candles were lit, the fire in the hearth stirred and fed back into life. She pointed into the open wardrobe.

“That one, there. The green.”

The servant drew it from the wardrobe and held it out to her handmaid. Between them, they held it open so she could step into it.

“Just drape it over me,” she instructed, hoisting herself up. “Don’t concern about the fastenings. I said don’t. Stop that; I mean it.” She swatted at her handmaid, who should know better, at least by now. The child inside of her was puffing her body out beyond her own recognition and made all of her clothes uncomfortably binding.

“A blanket too. One of the scarlets. There. That one. There. There. There. ”

A finely woven cloth was draped across her shoulders.

“That’s fine. That will do. Take me to him.”

The maids turned and led her from the room.

As they processed along the corridors, she tried to stop the spring of anticipation from welling up inside of her and overwhelming her thoughts and actions. It had taken many years of planning, preparation, and patience to reach this day, with no guarantee that it would ever come. But if the messenger was to be believed, and she could scarce allow herself to do so, then a spark could be lit this night that would set the whole island ablaze.

They came to the large hall, where the fires were always burning. Standing in front of the flames and throwing a shadow across the hall was a thin, slight man hunching over his staff. He was only slightly taller than herself, and his hair was long and an unimpressive grey. She had expected a large, giant man, as old and virile as the hills, not this shrivelled character. She found herself scanning the room for another, or at least some sort of entourage.

She gestured to her serving girls. “Await me here,” she ordered.

She cleared her throat and approached. “You are Ealdstan?” she asked in English.

His head turned and dark eyes sparkled in the low, orange light of the room.

“Queen?lfgifu. Greetings.”

“Emma.”

“Pardon?”

“That is what the other one is called. It is also what”-she could not stop her top lip from curling-“my first husband’s first wife was called. I’m always the next choice after an?lfgifu.”

“And yet you are said to be fast becoming his favourite.”

Her lips spread into a smile this time. “Of course. And why not?”

Ealdstan returned the smile and inclined his head.

“You keep an ear to the sounds of the world above, it seems. Remarkable for a man as removed as you-or should I say, for a man who has removed himself as far as you have? Do you know, nearly every single man of learning I consulted insisted you were a legend? If it wasn’t for my husband-my first husband. .”

“King??elred,” Ealdstan supplied.

“The last English king of England,” Emma said, staring into the fire.

The dark eyes continued to gaze. “But ‘Emma’ is not English. Nor Danish, I wist.”

“It is a Norman name.”

“Norman?”

“My people. My father’s family descended from the Northland to the plains that lie south, across from these waters.”

Ealdstan frowned. Northlanders, he thought. Again, the Northlanders.

“My mother is direct of that line.”

“And now Cnut, son of the foreign conqueror, sits on the throne of England. Is the old English world passing?” His eyes shifted and he looked around the hall at the sparse and sleepy serving staff. “The Dane tongue is a hard one for me to speak.”

“I wouldn’t worry. Everyone in the land speaks in the Angles’ tongue still. The farmers in the fields. The priests in the pulpits. Even the merchants in the marketplace still speak it when in their homes and at table. Old queens use it when speaking to old men. Indeed, it allows one to question how much further the Dane rule extends past the Dane tongue.”

“But still, it may pass in generations,” Ealdstan said. “Alas.”

“Alas, indeed,” Emma scolded, her tone hot. “You come too late to save a tongue. The time for help passed the moment you refused my husband’s-??elred’s-entreaties to rouse your warriors and chase the Viking invaders back into the mists and oceans that spat them out. You failed him then. You failed us all then.”

A piece of still-wet wood popped in the fireplace and sent sparks up into the air.

“I am sorry for your loss, and the loss of the kingdom.??elred was an able king.”

“That he was. He was a strong king. He simply had bad counsel.” Emma pulled the scarlet covering tighter across her shoulders. “Do you know, even in the last he believed he would receive aid from you and your stronghold of warriors? And when it failed to come-failed again and again-he panicked and fell back on ill-advice.” He did not meet her furious gaze. “Can you blame him for turning to others? When we suffered constant invasions from a hostile, foreign enemy? Every day my husband hoped the ground beneath our feet would crack open like the shell of an egg and Ealdstan’s warriors would chase the Danes out forever.”

Emma lowered herself onto a bench. “Yet here we are. He is dead, and I am married to a barbarian king. Where were you?”