by M J Porter
“Excellent,” Leofric grumbled as he walked away from his sister to the bathing area he could use. “Nothing like being damned either way,” but his sister merely stuck her tongue out at him as she handed him a towel and a set of clean clothes.
“Your only loyalty is to the king, Earl Godwine owes you nothing, the queen will be obligated to you, but it’s the king who needs to keep his word and you need to do the same. Who cares why Godwine is angry. He’s the king’s earl. He needs to do exactly as he’s commanded, or he’ll lose the king’s trust.”
Leofric welcomed his sister’s logic but it didn’t make waking up any easier, and as he bathed away the stink of his journey on horseback from Portsmouth and his night of sleeping in his clothes, he tried to re-orientate his thinking to that of his sister’s. As accustomed as she was to life at the king’s court, and her desire for her family to prosper, her viewpoint had narrowed to reflect only the wishes of the queen and her king. Leofric wished he could think in the same way, but he always needed to consider more than just the ruling family, especially because he was still only a sheriff, as both the king and queen had made clear in their brief discussions with him, and he needed the respect of the people whose justice he presided over just as much as he needed the king and queen.
His role was an appointed one, but if his judgments weren’t heeded, he’d become ineffectual and the king would be forced to remove him. He needed people to believe he carried no bias at all and if he sided with the king over his earl, some would interpret that to mean that he would always act with the king’s best interests and not for the good of the people he helped to officiate over. His impartiality was important to him.
Once bathed, dressed and almost awake, he escorted his sister to the royal hall.
“What time is it?” he asked moodily.
“Midday,” she offered and he frowned at her. How could she have let him sleep for as long as he had? Nearly a day had gone by while he’d snored and perspired.
His stomach grumbled loudly and she arched an eyebrow at him.
“It seems it’s an opportune moment for you to seek out the queen anyway. She’ll be pleased to ensure you’re fed once more.”
“Tell me what Earl Godwine says,” he asked in a hushed voice as they walked closer and closer to the hall and the flood of people surrounding them increased.
“The queen has asked him when he’ll be leaving but his answers are vague. He’s made no effort to call in his retainers or have supplies sent on ahead to Portsmouth. I’m assuming you left the ships there?” this she asked as a second-thought but he nodded all the same.
“The queen believes that Cnut means to act quickly, to try and stop Olaf and Anund Jacob from gathering too great a following. She believes that Godwine and his men could provide invaluable support but he’s arguing that he’ll be too late, if that’s the case, and that he should stay here and continue to provide his support to her.”
“And what will Earl Hakon do when he arrives?”
“Who knows? He was coming anyway. The queen had summoned him to hear an accounting of events in Mercia and Northumbria. He’ll be walking into the argument. I imagine he’ll support the king, but he might simply offer to go himself, and Emma says the king was adamant that shouldn’t happen.”
“Perfect, so Earl Hakon wants to go and can’t and Earl Godwine’s doesn’t want to go but must.”
“Yes, oh and Leofric, Harthacnut has done little but talk about you since he woke this morning. He thinks your ship is the fastest ship he’s ever been on, that your shipmen are the best trained and that you take him seriously as the king’s heir. Every time he speaks about you, Godwine’s face glowers darker and darker.”
“I feel as though I’ve slept for a week, not for a day,” he moaned afresh.
“You needed to sleep, that’s all that’s important. Now you need to support the king and the queen and ensure that everyone observes your words. If Godwine chooses to ignore the king’s instructions then he’ll have the king to contend with on his return, not you, but you need to make him go before the court erupts in sedition.”
“All in a day’s work then,” he muttered to himself, but he couldn’t deny the thrill he felt at finally being at the heart of the king’s court and political intrigues.
The hall was more than half full when he entered from the bright daylight. The smell of good meat cooking had roused most of his men and he greeted them as he walked past them on the way to the queen, which is where his sister was guiding him, even though she was trying to make it appear as though he accompanied her by having him hold her arm in a courtly manner.
He would have smiled at her single-mindedness only he had no time to consider her intent fully and he feared that her reasoning might not be as sound as his own if he’d just had a moment to think. He swallowed back his fear. Whatever happened here, he would win himself an ally in the queen, or an outspoken enemy in Earl Godwine, and possibly both.
Godwine, unlike the day before, wasn’t sat with the queen, but rather with a small collection of his own followers, and also with some of the churchmen who were at court. The queen was with her son and daughter, and even Leofric noted how Harthacnut’s face lit up when he saw him. On the other hand, Godwine glowered at him, and the heat of his gaze burned his back as he walked to greet the queen. He had no idea what his sister wanted him to say to the queen but thought he should thank her for her hospitality once more and then see what happened.
As the day before, she was well dressed, her hair intricately braided, a thin coronet lacing through her blond hair. She looked both regal and approachable, and Leofric wondered how she managed to express her position at the center of the court so easily without inspiring fear. But then, he thought, she’d been queen almost his entire life. She’d had time to learn how best to project herself within her own orbit.
“Good day my queen,” he began but she shushed him aside and bid him to sit beside her. It was a great honor and one that earned him a delighted smile from Harthacnut and a scowl from Godwine. His sister curtseyed to the queen and then sought her own place with the queen’s other favored ladies. It seemed he would have to handle this conversation on his own.
He wondered when his progression within the court had become reliant on the good wishes of a child and the needs of a queen.
He watched the boy closely; seeing how he seemed comfortable in the presence of so many adults, all of whom he could, if the whim took him, command with the weight of his father’s position behind him. Would it turn the child into a power-crazed king? Would he become a king in the same mold as Æthelred, another boy who’d gained power at an early age following the early death of first his father and then his elder half- brother in suspicious circumstances?
Despite Leofric’s worries, all he saw in the boy was a lad far from full grown with his future before him and more than that, a lad who was no older than his own son. He wore the clothes of a king, but they were cut to his exact size. On many it would have looked ridiculous but Harthacnut seemed to know how to move within the clothes to counter the magnificent of them and to make them flow with his body movements.
His face was also bright and alert, his eyes the colour of his mother’s deep blue ones, but the rest of the face the image of his father’s, right down to mole that dotted his left cheek.
When Leofric looked at him he saw only a boy, but knew that at the same age he would have resented any adult who thought him too childish to know his own mind. He would need to step carefully with Harthacnut. He seemed to be every bit his father’s son.
“Sheriff Leofric,” the queen said, her own eyes bright with joy and excitement at having her son returned to her. Leofric couldn’t imagine that it would be a permanent change, not if Cnut triumphed over Anund Jakob and Olaf Haraldsson, but he wasn’t about to mention that to the queen. Not now that he seemed to be firmly in her favor.
“We hope you slept well. It was clearly much needed.” Her voice was filled with warm humor a
nd Leofric chuckled in a self-depreciating way. He knew this was what was expected of him.
“You slept well Harthacnut?” he asked the young prince and the boy responded with an enthusiastic nod, sitting a little taller on his chair, because Leofric had spoken to him.
“He didn’t sleep quite as long as you did, but has been busily telling me about his journey here in your ship and about the men you have on board with you. He seems quite taken with the whole idea of living his life on a ship. Although, he also said his aunt, Estrid, had two children so he had many more friends in Denmark than there seem to be here.”
For a moment the queen did look baffled as she surveyed the hall before her, filled mostly with the men of her household troop, and Leofric’s own shipmen as well, but with very few children, unless she counted the few that her own women had. Leofric looked with her and he saw the same. There were few children of Harthacnut’s age and in fact, Leofric struggled to think of any within the hall who might have children of his age and could be called to court, apart from his own son of course, and he was far too slight a child to be any sort of playmate for the sturdy Harthacnut.
The years before Harthacnut’s birth had been difficult and fraught, many families had apart rather than together and it seemed to have left a hole in the birthing of the next generation.
Harthacnut, at nearly eight was a large child for his age, and filled with an assertiveness that few children his own age would be able to contend with. They’d be more likely to resent his more adult ways than the adults would his occasional childish outbursts.
Even his own sister, Gunnhilda, was too petite and pampered to be a playfellow for her brother. He’d probably knock her down and think nothing of it, not even appreciating that it might hurt.
“Ah, I see the problem. Perhaps he could spend some time training with the new recruits for the household troops.” He was remembering a long ago story that Wulfstan had alluded to between the then queen, Ælfgifu, Æthelred’s mother, and his own grandfather regarding his father’s fostering, and also the memory of his brother, Northman, going off to be raised by Eadric at the command of the king. He wasn’t about to deprive his wife of her time with their son, and so he thought frantically of other solutions to the problems.
“In Denmark,” Harthacnut began, “all the boys in Hedeby and Ribe would play with me. It didn’t matter if they were a king’s son or the son of a fisherman.” He looked a little rebellious as he spoke to his mother, but Leofric found he approved of the solution. Young lads were always young lads. They needed friends to be rough with, and enemies to learn to hate, even at such a tender age. He hoped the queen understood his desire to do those things here.
He’d only been out of England for three years, but at his juvenile age, that was a long time and Leofric suddenly doubted that he even remembered much of England, let alone the children he might once have played with. But the thought of training with the household troop was an appealing one for the prince.
“I would like to train with the men,” he offered, a little slyly, perhaps knowing that his mother wouldn’t want him to but being desperate to all the same. With anyone else he might speak his mind, but with his own mother he might have to use some childish guile. “I sometimes trained with the men when Estrid allowed it.” His voice was pleading as he spoke, and Leofric refrained from smirking at his adoption of the oldest trick to make a parent do what you wanted, alluding to another parent allowing it.
Yet it seemed the queen was keen to do anything to keep her son happy and didn’t offer any refusal.
“Leofric, would you take Harthacnut and introduce him to the commander of the household troop. If he thinks it’s a good idea, and that he has someone about the same size as Harthacnut, then I think he should train with the men. It’ll be good practice for him and will please his father.”
Leofric nodded smartly, his act of reaching for some of the fine pork before him, arrested by her words. Harthacnut, with no such need to be courteous, was busily loading his own portion of food and grinned at Leofric with his mouth full and bulging.
The queen, unaware of the interplay between the two until that moment, rolled her eyes at Leofric and gestured for him to eat. He did so with gusto, while at his side Harthacnut continued to tell his sister stories of all of their Danish cousins. It was clear that she was only partly interested, and her hands kept dancing to the side of her dress where she wore a belt similar to her mother’s, with her own set of house keys and other important items for a women of her status.
Emma caught Leofric watching her and she smiled.
“They’re a new gift and she’s proud of them,” she offered.
“So she should be,” he agreed and allowed himself to relax. For all that there was a steady hum of conversation in the hall from the swell of men and women there, he felt comfortable with the queen. As though he was in his own home and not one of hers.
Although he’d believed he’d had the ear of the king after his initial journey to Denmark a few years ago, he’d since felt that he’d lost all the goodwill he’d earned, mostly because of the death of his father. He deemed Leofwine’s death had knocked Cnut’s confidence in his right to rule in England because Leofwine had been a close link to his father. Then for it to be followed in short order by the death of Earl Erik had compounded the problem. Now the knowledge that his enemies had killed Earl Thorkell had made a bad situation untenable. Every death had made Cnut less likely to rely on anyone new, as though he feared to lose anymore of his close friends in too short a time.
The debacle concerning Earl Ulfr, Eilifr and Earl Godwine had already made Cnut suspicious, now he was distrustful as well.
Yet for the moment Leofric felt as though he might be quickly regaining his lost position, as though Cnut had handed him not so much a poisoned chalice with his demand that he meet with Olaf Haraldsson and Anund Jakob, but rather a means to re-gain the support of the queen by allowing him to bring her son home. While Cnut was off fighting his sea war with Olaf and Anund Jakob, as he should, for he was the man who wanted control of the lands they currently claimed, not to mention vengeance for the death of Thorkell, Leofric had an opportunity to bask in the queen’s praise.
Unfortunately, before Leofric could become too content in his meal and his favored position, Earl Godwine approached the queen. Even his posture was angry and Leofric bit down on a groan of dismay. He didn’t much want to tangle with Godwine, not at the moment, even though that was what his sister had brought him here to do.
Godwine, for all his obvious unhappiness, made a point of addressing Harthacnut and Gunnhilda, commenting on her new belt and key set and complimenting Harthacnut on his height since he’d last seen him, words he could have said yesterday but which he clearly hadn’t thought necessary.
Gunnhilda preened under Godwine’s words, but Harthacnut seemed bored by the conversation, cutting the earl short and turning to speak to Leofric about his possible training session. Leofric decided he daren’t look at Godwine’s face at the rebuff for fear he might enjoy the spectacle of seeing him unhappy and so turned his full attention to Harthacnut, only catching the odd stray word that Godwine and the queen exchanged.
It quickly became clear that Godwine was trying to worm his way out of fulfilling the king’s wishes, just as Leofric’s sister had said, but it was also clear that Emma was adamant he do as his king had commanded. Furious, Earl Godwine stalked away and Emma watched him go with passion in her eyes, but held her tongue. It seemed she didn’t trust Leofric enough to vent her true feelings before him.
Harthacnut still spoke avidly about his plans and how good he was with the wooden swords he and his cousins had played with, but while Leofric listened to the boy, it was the queen that he watched. It seemed unlikely that this was the first time the pair had spoken about Godwine’s departure to Denmark that morning and that their argument was already an old one, worn smooth by the use of the same words, the same attempts to persuade and dissuade. Leofric was dism
ayed that Godwine would question her authority quite so openly, and also worried that the queen wouldn’t have the wherewithal to compel Godwine to act as he’d been commanded by his king. That would cause problems for her in the future.
If the king had given the instruction directly to Godwine, he’d had leapt at the opportunity to please his king, but it seemed that the distance and the thought of risking everything he’d managed to accomplish were too much for Godwine. He’d been to Denmark, he had a Danish wife, half Danish children with Danish names, and yet he didn’t want to advance his king’s claims there, secure the greater empire for him against those who’d taken advantage of his early years as a ruler to claim control of kingdoms that weren’t there’s by right. No, it seemed that Godwine’s interest was in England now, and no matter what the queen said to him, he didn’t want to leave her shores to avenge the death of a man he’d perhaps always been in awe of. Perhaps he was pleased that Thorkell was dead? Certainly it meant there was a power vacuum that Godwine could exploit in the East Anglian lands.
Leofric could sense that discord was spreading through the court in Cnut’s absence and he thought that the king should perhaps spend more time ensuring the loyalty of his earl than in trying to claim more land to rule when his hold on England could be cut all too easily. He replayed the king’s words to him. Cnut had thought his claim on England was secure, it was apparently not so.
He considered the matter for much of the afternoon, as he directed Harthacnut to speak with the commander of the household troop, a man that Leofric knew quite well for he’d been with Cnut since the beginning of his tenure in England, although he’d only come to prominence in recent years.
Brothor was as Danish as he could be, a born warrior, his stature towering above the small lad, but he was also pleased to share his skills with him, and no sooner had Leofric explained what the boy wanted to do, than Brothor had his men formed up and ready for an impromptu training session, with quite a lot of sparring involved.