Bernard Cornwell - The Empty Throne

She dismissed me with a gesture and I went back to the mutton stew. I watched her from the corner of my eye, seeing the hard jawline, the bitterness on the lips, and I wondered what in God’s name had attracted my father to her and why men revered her.

But tomorrow I would be free of her.

‘Men follow her,’ Sihtric said, ‘because other than your father she’s the only one who’s ever been willing to fight.’

We were travelling south, following a road I had come to know well in the last few years. The road followed the boundary between Mercia and Wales, a boundary that was the subject of constant argument between the Welsh kingdoms and the Mercians. The Welsh were our enemies, of course, but that enmity was confused because they were also Christian and we would never have won the battle at Teotanheale without the help of those Welsh Christians. Sometimes they fought for Christ, as they had at Teotanheale, but just as often they fought for plunder, driving cattle and slaves back to their mountain valleys. Those constant raids meant there were burhs all along the road, fortified towns where folk could take refuge when an enemy came, and from where a garrison could sally out to attack that enemy.

I rode with thirty-six men and Godric, my servant. Four of the warriors were always ahead, scouting the road margins for fear of an ambush, while the rest of us guarded Haki and the two carts loaded with plunder. We also guarded eighteen children, bound for the slave markets, though Æthelflaed insisted we display the captives before the folk of Gleawecestre first. ‘She wants to put on a show,’ Sihtric told me.

‘She does!’ Father Fraomar agreed. ‘We have let the people in Gleawecestre know that we’re defeating Christ’s enemies.’ He was one of Æthelflaed’s tame priests, still a young man, eager and enthusiastic. He nodded towards the cart ahead of us that was loaded with armour and weapons. ‘We shall sell those and the money will go towards the new burh, praise God.’

‘Praise God,’ I said dutifully.

And money, I knew, was Æthelflaed’s problem. If she was to build her new burh to guard the River Mærse she needed money and there was never enough. Her husband received the land-rents and the merchants’ taxes and the customs payments, and Lord Æthelred hated Æthelflaed. She might be loved in Mercia, but Æthelred controlled the silver, and men were loath to offend him. Even now, when Æthelred lay sick in Gleawecestre, men paid him homage. Only the bravest and wealthiest risked his anger by giving men and silver to Æthelflaed.

And Æthelred was dying. He had been struck by a spear on the back of the head at the battle of Teotanheale and the spear had pierced his helmet and broken through his skull. No one had expected him to survive, but he did, though some rumours said he was as good as dead, that he raved like a moonstruck madman, that he dribbled and twitched, and that sometimes he howled like a gutted wolf. All Mercia expected his death, and all Mercia wondered what would follow that death. That was something no one spoke of, at least not openly, though in secret they spoke of little else.

Yet to my surprise Father Fraomar spoke of it on the first night. We were travelling slowly because of the carts and prisoners and had stopped at a farmstead near Westune. This part of Mercia was newly settled, made safe because of the burh at Ceaster. The farm had belonged to a Dane, but now a one-eyed Mercian lived there with a wife, four sons, and six slaves. His house was a hovel of mud, wood and straw, his cattle shed a poor thing of leaking wattles, but all of it was surrounded by a well-made palisade of oak trunks. ‘Welsh aren’t far away,’ he explained the expensive palisade.

‘You can’t defend this with six slaves,’ I said.

‘Neighbours come here,’ he said curtly.

‘And helped build it?’

‘They did.’

We tied Haki’s ankles, made sure the bonds on his wrists were tightly knotted, then shackled him to a plough that stood abandoned beside a dung-heap. The eighteen children were crammed into the house with two men to guard them, while the rest of us found what comfort we could in the dung-spattered yard. We lit a fire. Gerbruht ate steadily, feeding his barrel-sized belly, while Redbad, another Frisian, played songs on his reed-pipes. The wistful notes filled the night air with melancholy. The sparks flew upwards. It had rained earlier, but the clouds were clearing away to show the stars. I watched some of the sparks drift onto the hovel’s roof and wondered if the thatch would smoulder, but the moss-covered straw was damp and the sparks died quickly.

‘The Nunnaminster,’ Father Fraomar said suddenly.

‘The Nunnaminster?’ I asked after a pause.

The priest had also been watching the drifting sparks fade and die on the roof. ‘The convent in Wintanceaster where the Lady Ælswith died,’ he explained, though the explanation made me no wiser.

‘King Alfred’s wife?’

‘God rest her soul,’ he said and made the sign of the cross. ‘She built the convent after the king’s death.’

‘What of it?’ I asked, still puzzled.

‘Part of the convent burned down after her death,’ he explained. ‘It was caused by sparks lodging in the roof-straw.’

‘This thatch is too wet,’ I said, nodding towards the house.

‘Of course,’ the priest was staring at the sparks settling on the thatch. ‘Some folk say the fire was the devil’s revenge,’ he paused to cross himself, ‘because the Lady Ælswith was such a pious soul and she’d escaped him.’

‘My father always told me she was a vengeful bitch,’ I ventured.

Father Fraomar frowned, then relented to offer a wry smile. ‘God rest her soul. I hear she was not an easy woman.’

‘Which one is?’ Sihtric asked.

‘The Lady Æthelflaed won’t wish it,’ Fraomar said softly.

I hesitated because the conversation was now touching on dangerous things. ‘Won’t wish what?’ I finally asked.

‘To go to a nunnery.’

‘Is that what will happen?’

‘What else?’ Fraomar asked bleakly. ‘Her husband dies, she’s a widow, and a widow with property and power. Men won’t want her marrying again. Her new husband might become too powerful. Besides …’ his voice died away.

‘Besides?’ Sihtric asked quietly.

‘The Lord Æthelred has made a will, God preserve him.’

‘And the will,’ I said slowly, ‘says his wife is to go to a nunnery?’

‘What else can she do?’ Fraomar asked. ‘It’s the custom.’

‘I can’t see her as a nun,’ I said.

‘Oh, she’s a saintly woman. A good woman,’ Fraomar spoke eagerly, then remembered she was an adulterer. ‘Not perfect, of course,’ he went on, ‘but we all fall short, do we not? We have all sinned.’

‘And her daughter?’ I asked. ‘Ælfwynn?’

‘Oh, a silly girl,’ Fraomar said without hesitation.

‘But if someone marries her …’ I suggested, but was interrupted.

‘She’s a woman! She can’t inherit her father’s power!’ Father Fraomar laughed at the very idea. ‘No, the best thing for Ælfwynn would be to marry abroad. To marry far away! Maybe a Frankish lord? Either that or join her mother in the nunnery.’

The conversation was dangerous because no one was certain what might happen when Æthelred died, and that death must surely be soon. Mercia had no king, but Æthelred, the Lord of Mercia, had almost the same powers. He would dearly have loved to be king, but he depended on the West Saxons to help him defend Mercia’s frontiers, and the West Saxons wanted no king in Mercia, or rather they wanted their own king to rule there. Yet, though Mercia and Wessex were allies, there was little love between them. Mercians had a proud past, now they were a client state, and if Edward of Wessex were to proclaim his kingship there could be unrest. No one knew what would happen, just as no one knew who they should support. Should they give allegiance to Wessex? Or to one of the Mercian ealdormen?