The Forever Queen

by Helen Hollick

  Alfred was swarming down from the tree and running to Edward, who was sitting, ashen-faced, his stomach heaving. The boys crowded close, some kicking at the dead man with their boots or spitting on him; others stood, thumping Edward between his shoulders, impressed.

  “You have killed him, Edward,” Alfred said proudly, scarce believing the evidence of his eyes. “Well done, brother, well done!”

  His hands shaking and stinging, Edward could not take it all in. He was going to be sick again any minute. He had killed someone, killed a man. Oh, God’s wonder, what if it was Cnut himself? What would Edmund or his mother say to that? He would be a hero, they would write poems and sagas about him; the monks would write his name in the chronicles they so industriously kept. “In this year, Edward, Ætheling, son of Æthelred, did slay the invader Cnut, with one stone, as did David slay Goliath.” How England would cheer and praise him. And best of all, if this was Cnut, how his mother would love him. The hugs, the kisses, the devotion. All he had ever wanted, and all for the throwing of one stone!

  It was not until later, when the men came wearily back to camp, many of them wounded, as many left dead down by the river, that Edward realised the truth. It had not been Cnut. Cnut had gone, had sailed on upriver. Depleted of so many, Edmund had not been able to follow; the end would have to come another day.

  The man Edward had killed had been a rough-necked nobody, a whore-born deserter who had fled from his Danish army with the idea of taking what he could carry and getting as far away as possible. Tired men praised Edward, some ruffled his hair; Edmund squeezed his shoulder, said he would make a fine warrior some day. Beyond that, nothing. They were all too damned weary to notice, and his mother, Emma, was never told of it.

  22

  September 1016—Otford, Kent

  After a great effort and some brilliant successes, Edmund failed to pursue the fleeing Danes, because he did not have the men to make that final demanding push. Too many years of apathy, too cynical a view of leadership, had soured the English from Ealdorman to churl. No one was willing to drop everything, take up their weapons, and come out and fight beyond the service of their compulsory duty.

  He could have followed Cnut up the Thames, trapped him in the shallower waters, and dealt with him there. Could have, but his men were dead on their feet. He had to let them go, bid them return to their farms and their villages of Essex and Hertford-Shire, to rest, recover, gather in the harvest, and join him again at the next meeting with these poxed Danes.

  Cnut had blessed God for the reprieve. He had moored his ships as far up the Thames as they could sail, had fortified a camp, and settled there to lick his wounds. But before mid-July, he found the audacity to squat outside London again, renewing his uncompleted siege. Within the week, had realised, dismally, it was a mistake to attempt to pick up where he had left off, for the strategy was untenable.

  With one last, valiant effort, he had thrown all he had into an attack on the city by land and river combined. He failed. Realising the inevitable, as the first dainty edge of morning crept timidly into the eastern sky, his ships had quietly sailed away under London Bridge, the Londoners, this time, allowing them to go.

  Instead, he turned to East Anglia to obtain all the supplies he needed—food, beer, horses, weapons—then sailed for the Medway River and Kent, where he waited, hoping to draw the English King Edmund Ironside to him. The prospect of victory, so golden at the start of the year, was rapidly diminishing. Edmund was winning, but all was not lost. As far as Cnut was concerned, the fighting would go on until either he or Edmund lay dead. To the ordinary people—the farmers, the peasants, those who only wanted to bring in and enjoy their harvest—there was little care over which one would win during those dry, balmy days when summer drifted into the first early stirrings of autumn. It only mattered, or so it seemed, to the two leaders themselves, to Cnut and Edmund. And to Emma and Eadric Streona, who had their own reasons for wanting victory.

  After skirmished fighting at Otford, where Edmund had managed, somehow—God alone knew how—to overtake Cnut’s Danes and defeat them yet again, the end appeared closer. With a mighty effort, Edmund had driven Cnut’s ships into Sheppey, and he looked, for all the world, as if he was going to achieve the ultimate victory.

  Others certainly thought so.

  Godwine skidded into Edmund’s tent, his heel scooping up a divot of the worn grass. “We have a visitor, Edmund. Come quick. Now!”

  Edmund muttered an oath. He had been asleep, dreaming of some pleasant, appreciable thing; he forgot entirely what it was now that he was so abruptly awake. Groaning, he opened his eyes, did not otherwise move from his cot. He was bone weary. Had he been asleep? It did not feel as if he had. All these months of marching, riding, fighting—thinking. That was as tiring as the physical stuff, the mental energy required, the necessity always to be alert, ready, expecting the unexpected. The one consolation for his aching, throbbing temples: Cnut was probably feeling as numbed as he was.

  “Who is it? If it is Emma, send her back to Canterbury; I will not be seeing her. The two boys have returned to her care, and that is final. I will not read another of her letters of protest, nor listen to one more of her sent messengers. Nor to her.” He turned over, pulled the blanket up to his ears, and tried to reach the sleep he had been disturbed from.

  Godwine was across the tent in three strides, pulling the blanket away. “Ach, man, it is not the Queen! It is Eadric. Eadric Streona is outside the camp looking sheepish and waving a green branch about his head, hoping we will not shoot an arrow straight through his throat before he has chance to grovel before you.”

  Edmund was up on his feet, lacing his tunic. “Streona? Here? God Almighty, are you serious?”

  Godwine fetched Edmund’s boots.

  “I’ll hang the bastard.” Edmund threatened, buckling on his sword belt. “I will flay him alive, roast him on a spit. Behead him.”

  “What, all at once?” Godwine laughed. “And before you hear what he has to say?”

  “I do not wish to listen to one word that dog turd cares to mutter. He can explain himself to God, not to me.” Edmund ducked out of the tent, was striding towards the shuttered gateway.

  Catching up to him as he took the steps to the rampart walkway two at a time, Godwine said, “Not even if he has come to offer you Mercia?”

  That stopped Edmund. “I would have Mercia, but not Streona.”

  Godwine spread his hands, half apologetic, half sympathetic. “It is a sorry fact, my Lord King, you may not be able to have the one without the other.”

  Edmund walked to the palisade, looked out and over at the solitary man sitting astride his horse beyond arrow range before the gate. Eadric had not come alone, but, prudently, he had left his men arranged in a semicircle some distance behind. They all carried the green-leafed branch of peace, appeared weaponless. Withdrawing behind a pillar, Edmund ordered a servant who had come trotting up behind him to fetch his crown. “And my best mantle. Hurry.”

  It was not often he had the chance to parade dressed for a crown-wearing as befitted his status. Since the opportunity had arisen, he would take full advantage of it.

  Suitably attired, he stepped out to where Eadric could see him, stood, arms folded, Godwine to his right with his axe provocatively poised over his shoulder.

  “So, Eadric, the dog returns to his vomit. What have you to say to me that I ought listen to? I can think of nothing.”

  “I come in peace to talk peace. To admit I have been wrong and am ashamed of what I have done.”

  “Bloody liar,” Godwine whispered.

  Edmund scowled, then shrugged. “It sticks in my throat to talk to this bastard, Godwine, but as you say, I do so desperately need Mercia.”

  “Then order him to call out the fyrd in the name of Edmund Ironside, King of England. Mayhap somewhere along the line, after Cnut is dead and England has started to settle into a new prosperity, Eadric can meet with an accident. While out hunting, perhaps?
” Godwine’s reference was pointed, referring to Alfhelm’s murder.

  Edmund agreed, his face as passive as his friend’s. A sensible idea, but if it was sensible, why did he not like it?

  There was one wholly unexpected advantage to welcoming Eadric back as a King’s Ealdorman, however. The Queen sent no more letters or messengers to Edmund about Edward and Alfred, beyond one curt missive: “I will not, under any circumstances, trust the life of my sons while that man is in your company. Be warned. Blood stains his hands.”

  Edmund never expected to be grateful to Eadric Streona for something.

  23

  17 October 1016—Ashingdon, Essex

  As Emma had warned, there was reason not to trust Eadric Streona, but Edmund needed him now that the Danes had once again found the audacity to enter the Thames estuary. This ring-around of to-and-fro advance and retreat had to be ended. Cnut had to be stopped with a final confrontation, but so much depended on a concerted, united effort, and with men like Streona at his back, Edmund could not feel easy with that dependence. All the same, he could not allow Cnut to entrench himself somewhere, well supplied, for the winter. He would have preferred to have more proof of Eadric’s new-found sense of regret, but then what higher proof could the man give than to fight in battle for his acknowledged King?

  With misgivings, that same King sent out the war call, and, to his relief, southern England responded to the mournful booming of the war horns, Eadric, with typical effrontery, informing anyone who cared to listen that the fyrds had rallied because of his expression of faith in Edmund. On hearing the boasting for himself, Edmund, tactfully, had made no comment. Godwine, not so level-tempered and coming very close to connecting his fist with Eadric’s mouth, consoled himself by telling himself that he could do whatever he wanted to the cursed man later. After Ashingdon.

  It was as good a place as any to fight a last battle. Ashingdon was nothing more than a hamlet of two farmsteadings, three peasant bothies, and a chapel. Beyond the settlement a long, low hill projected into the flat country between the Rivers Crouch and Thames. Although Edmund had not taken Cnut by surprise—the Dane had become too wary for that—he had managed to come up on him quicker than expected. The English numbers were impressive, and they had among them a leader who knew all there was to know about tactics: Ulfkell of East Anglia. Men anxious to repair loss of face had also responded to Edmund’s call, among them the man branded as coward, Ælfric of Hamp-Shire, although his presence was, as ever, questionable. There were more than a few men sitting around the campfires that star-bright night, laying wagers on how soon Ælfric’s stomach sickness would recur and take him running to squat, groaning, beneath the hedgerows. Edmund had wisely countered any doubt by ensuring that the man fought in the King’s wing and that his men were under the King’s command, not their Ealdorman’s. If Ælfric wanted to spend the day puking somewhere, then let him. Edmund needed the men of his fyrd, not him.

  The enemy camp was in full view, no more than one and a half miles away, towards the next, larger settlement of Canewden, their distant fires looking like a meadow scattered with clumps of white daisies. If it were not for their own noise, Danish voices could have been heard across the quiet waiting of the tense, breath-held darkness.

  Sharing his meagre supper of mutton stew with his Ealdormen, Godwine, the Bishop of Dorchester-on-Thames, and the Abbot of Ramsey Abbey, Edmund forced himself to be pleasant in manner and conversation with the two men whom he doubted, Eadric and Ælfric.

  “He will not run in the darkness, do you think?” Ælfric asked, referring to Cnut, gathering his mantle tighter. He was starting to shiver, did not want anyone to assume his shaking was from fear.

  “No, I am sorry to disappoint you; he will not be running,” Edmund answered, giving the Ealdorman a friendly, sympathetic pat on his shoulder.

  “No, no, do not get me wrong,” the man answered quickly. Too quickly. “I am eager for a fight, I just thought…”

  “You just thought it would save your stomach a lot of bile if Cnut were to pack up camp and sail quietly away.” Eadric Streona’s comment was acerbic. “We well know your past history, Ælfric.”

  Edmund could not hold in the retort that sprang to his mouth, did not even try. “But then you are not exactly clean and shining behind the ears yourself, are you, Eadric?”

  “I have never run from a battlefield in my life!” Eadric protested vehemently. The fact he had only fought in minor skirmishes was tactfully not mentioned. It was not what Edmund had meant anyway, and Eadric well knew it. Edmund however, prudently did not pursue the matter. Here, now, was not the place to quarrel.

  “Cnut is in a position where he will have to fight,” Ulfkell explained, ignoring the squalled flurry of tension as he stretched his long legs toward the crackling fire. “He is laden with spoil; if he were to attempt an escape by land, he would be obliged to leave behind all he has looted and abandon his ships. Alternatively, it would be foolhardy to attempt an embarkation with us so close; he could never put up an adequate defence. Therefore, on the morrow we fight.” For his part, Ulfkell was looking forward to the affray. On behalf of Thetford, he had his own score of honour to settle with these Danes.

  “And on the morrow we win!” Godwine raised his ale tankard high, slopping some of it over the rim in his enthusiasm, the others cheerfully following suit. The Bishop of Dorchester endorsing the optimism with a loud “Amen” and forming the sign of the cross in the air, a gesture echoed by them all. He, like the Abbot and several other men of God, were not permitted to shed blood, but that did not stop them from entering a fight of a magnitude such as this. The clergy would stride into battle with their cassocks girded high and solid, wooden clubs tight-clasped in their hands. The damage such a weapon could do to a man’s skull was formidable.

  Later, when the men had settled into their cloaks or dozed where they sat, Edmund found he could not sleep. He had not sought his bed until after midnight had passed, and dawn now would not be far away. His thoughts kept returning to his wife and son, to the child she would be birthing soon. When was it due? Mid-November? His first son was a bonny lad, with bright, interested eyes and a grip as firm as a mastiff’s jaws. Ædward. He prayed to God the three of them would be kept safe, had asked Godwine to ensure it, as he had asked Emma, too, but he doubted she would keep her word, not with her own Edward and Alfred to consider. He supposed he could not blame her.

  He rolled onto his back, put his hands behind his head, and stared up into the darkness that was the low leather roof of his tent. What was it Ulfkell had said once, long ago, when Edmund was a child and he had asked him about combat? “It is a thing you do, boy, without thought or question, because it is a thing that has to be done. You go into battle knowing you have put an edge to cut the wind on your axe and sword, knowing you have done your best to learn how to use them, and knowing your comrades beside you, all those men to left and right, are as scared as you are.”

  Edmund puffed his cheeks. There was something else Ulfkell had said, not when he had asked as a boy, but at Æthelred’s funeral, in that hour of waiting between his father’s burial and his own coronation. “Success, whether it be as a sovereign on a throne or a peasant farmer fighting in battle, is based on trust. You have to trust those next to you to do their best, in whatever it is you are expecting them to do. And to trust these other men, you must trust your own judgement.”

  That was the rub. How to trust his own judgement? Edmund sighed, shut his eyes. There was one thing for certain: one of them, either Cnut or himself, tomorrow—no, today—would not be leaving Ashingdon alive, or at least would not be living long after it.

  He must have dozed, for Godwine was shaking him awake. “Dawn, my Lord. The Danish camp is already astir.”

  Edmund swung his legs from his cot, called for his mail hauberk.

  24

  18 October 1016—Ashingdon

  Eadric Streona was appalled at what was happening in front of him and at his own st
upidity. This was something he had not anticipated, had never imagined, not even when listening to the stories the harpers told. How in God’s name were they going to defeat so many? How in all the fires of Hell was any one of them going to emerge alive?

  A slight rise on the Danish side of the field meant Cnut had managed to move forward without losing any of the advantage of the high ground. Edmund, taking the advice of Ulfkell, had deployed into three divisions: Wessex, under his own command, at the centre; Ulfkell’s East Anglians to the left flank; and Eadric on the right.

  The sight of so many, rank upon rank of Danes standing facing him had churned Eadric’s stomach. The noise was dreadful, the shouting, the jeering, the clashing of spear or axe on shield—and no advance had yet been made; there was not yet any close fighting. What would it be like then, when the two armies met together? Streona’s palms felt sticky, the axe haft in his hand slippery; the felt padding beneath his mail was sodden and heavy from the sweat soaked up from his back. He regretted now mocking Ealdorman Ælfric’s fear. He looked to his left. Ælfric was standing thirty or so yards from Edmund, not in the forefront of things but near enough for Eadric to know he would be fighting, not merely observing. And he had done this before? Had faced this monstrous prospect? No wonder the man had previously feigned illness and refused to fight!

  The sun was well risen; noon would be less than two hours away. Were they just going to stand here all day, shouting profanities at each other? God’s truth, Eadric hoped so! He damned, bloody hoped so!