by Joan Wolf
“And your wife?” Erlend asked tightly.
“Elswyth will never leave me. You know her well enough to know that.” Alfred’s still profile was unreadable. Then he turned. “Should something happen to me,” he said, “I want you to promise me you will see her safe. Will you do that, Erlend Olafson?”
“I . . .”
“I can face whatever Guthrum may have in mind for me,” Alfred said. His face was stark. “But not Elswyth. Erlend, promise me you will see her safe.”
“Nothing will happen to Elswyth,” Erlend said. “I would die for her. You know that.”
Alfred nodded and turned away, hiding the naked emotion that had been exposed much too clearly on his face.
“You will not leave yourself.” It was a statement, not a question, but Alfred answered it anyway.
“I cannot.” Alfred was intently watching his dogs. Then, clearly feeling he owed the Dane more of an explanation: “You see, I am not just a king, Erlend. I am a Christian king. And to me Guthrum represents the darkness.” Still Alfred watched his dogs as his voice went on evenly and firmly, “He is the darkness of ignorance, of cruelty, of wealth abused and power misused. He represents everything my Christian faith tells me to abhor.”
Finally Alfred turned his head and looked once more at Erlend. “I must oppose him,” he said. “While there is breath left in my body, I must oppose him.”
Erlend looked back into those steady eyes and suddenly found he did not have enough air in his lungs to speak. Silence fell while he struggled with himself. Finally: “You have nothing to oppose him with.”
He watched in stupefaction as Alfred smiled. “I have just been reading some words of the apostle Paul,” the king said. His voice was quiet. “It is a passage I have read and reread many times in these last months. Would you like to hear it?”
Erlend looked at the book in Alfred’s work-stained, ringless hands. “All right,” he said grudgingly.
The king opened the worn leather pouch, spread the page, and, after the briefest of pauses, began to read. “ ‘If you are to resist the Evil One, you must put on the armor of God. Do all that your duty requires, and hold your ground. Stand fast, with the truth as the swordbelt around your waist, justice as your coat of mail, and zeal to propagate the gospel of peace as your footgear. In all circumstances, hold Faith up before you as your shield. It will help you extinguish the fiery darts of the Evil One.’ “ Alfred began to close up the book, still reciting, obviously by heart, “ ‘Take up the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God.’ “
Erlend said harshly, “The East Anglian king, Edmund, he whom Guthrum spitted for the kill like an eagle, he thought the same.”
“Edmund died a martyr for Christ,” Alfred replied. He finished folding the book and looked toward Erlend. His eyes were wide and clear and absolutely dedicated. “If I must die, so be it. I will go to God, where we shall all find peace at last.”
“You are very sure of this god of yours,” Erlend said. For some reason, his whole body was beginning to shake.
“Very sure.” Alfred attached his book to his belt, and then his hand came up to touch Erlend’s shoulder. He said, “Christ came for the Danes also, Erlend. Think you of that sometimes.”
The strong thin fingers closed briefly in a gesture of encouragement and friendship, and then Alfred took his hand away. Without another word or a backward look, the king strode off in the direction of the camp.
Erlend stood stock-still and watched until the shabby figure that yet moved with such light-footed elegance was lost in the trees, Then, slowly, he put his hand on his own shoulder, over the exact place that Alfred’s fingers had touched. He was shivering all over, like a leaf in a high wind. Abruptly he sat down on the deserted log and buried his face in his shaking hands.
* * *
Chapter 35
February was going out in a relentless deluge of icy winter rain. Balked of their day’s hunting, the thanes at Athelney clustered within the single small hall to pass the cold wet afternoon. Men lined the wall benches, feet thrust toward the warmth of the fire, fingers busy mending leather gear and tools and carving in wood. The deep rumble of male voices drowned out the sound of the rain.
The king sat among his men this afternoon, Edgar on one side of him and Brand on the other. There was no high seat in the hall at Athelney, just the simple benches. The weather had forced them to close the smoke hole in the roof, and consequently the air in the crowded room was thick with smoke.
Alfred had been sitting in silence for some time when Brand finally turned to speak to him. The king returned only an absent nod and continued to stare unseeing at the deer roasting on the fire. Nor did Alfred see the worried look Brand gave him before the thane turned back to his conversation with Erlend, who was seated on his other side.
Alfred’s preoccupation did not lift even when the dogs came in from the wet yard and shook themselves all over two of the thanes seated by the door. He did not even hear the laughter. He saw only how dirty and ragged were the men who jammed the benches, how filthy and muddy were the rushes that covered the hall floor. The stink of wet wool and leather and unwashed human flesh, of wood smoke and roasting meat, assaulted his nose.
God in heaven, he thought as his nostrils quivered in involuntary disgust, what am I going to do?
Erlend had been right yesterday, Alfred thought with deep and unusual bitterness. He was beaten. Only a fool would not be able to recognize that. Guthrum was King of Wessex. Alfred was king of twenty-four acres of swamp.
He shifted restlessly on his seat. That conversation with Erlend had kept him awake for most of the previous night, had forced him to confront his present situation squarely and evaluate it. For months now he had been living from day to day, concentrating on survival alone, with little thought of the future beyond the morrow.
Well, he had survived. The question was, for what?
The words that had kept him from sleep all night sounded once more in his brain. “Let me assess the situation for you,” Erlend had said. “You have been deserted.”
Suddenly Alfred could bear the smells of the hall no longer. He said to Brand, “I am going outside for some air,” almost leapt to his feet, and began to walk toward the hall’s single door. He was so accustomed to being watched that he scarcely noticed all the eyes that followed him as he crossed the filthy rush-strewn floor.
He closed the heavy door behind him and stood for a moment in the shelter of the wooden porch that fronted the hall. Out here the sound of the rain was clearly audible. Alfred could hear it beating like pellets onto the roof of the porch and into the mud of the courtyard. The front of the porch was not enclosed and the wind blew drops of heavy stinging rain into Alfred’s face. He threw back his head and inhaled, long and deep. The wet and icy air felt good to his suffocated lungs.
His mind went back to its bitter conversation with itself. He had spoken fine words to Erlend yesterday, he thought. Fighting words, words of fire. But words were no good unless they were backed by deeds.
I am not beaten until I am dead.
Brave words, but empty. He was beaten, all right, and this bleak desolate February afternoon, as he stood before the miserable accommodation wherein he had packed his men, he knew it.
Let me assess the situation for you. You have been deserted.
Ubbe would land on the coast, bringing new recruits to the aid of Guthrum’s already-victorious army. Thus reinforced, the Danes would be invincible.
The yard looked to be knee-deep in mud. If the weather turned cold enough to freeze, the footing would be treacherous.
Let me assess the situation for you. You have been deserted.
Where in the name of God were his ealdormen? Where were the shire fyrds? How had it been possible for Guthrum to quell Wessex without even one single battle?
Alfred frowned and moved to the very edge of the porch. There looked to be movement in the courtyard. Then, suddenly, horses appeared like
ghosts out of the thick rain and mist. It took Alfred but a second to recognize one of the riders, and his heart leapt in his chest with fear and with joy. “Elswyth!” he said out loud, and jumped off the porch to run into the rain and mud of the courtyard to meet his wife.
“Is everything all right?” he asked as he set his hands about her waist to lift her down from Silken’s back. “The children?”
“Everything is fine,” she assured him, and at the sound of her husky voice his heart leapt again, this time from joy alone. They remained thus for the briefest of moments, he with his hands about her waist, she still seated on her horse, looking down into his face. She reached out to touch him briefly on his wet cheek. “I just decided I wanted to see you. So I came.”
He lifted her into his arms, and instead of setting her down in the yard, he waded back through the mud to the porch. “You are drenched,” he said as he put her on her feet. “It was mad to ride out in such weather as this,”
“I am wearing a lot of clothes,” she replied. For the first time she smiled. “Aren’t you pleased to see me?”
He stared hungrily into her rain-streaked face. There were raindrops hanging off her long black lashes and dripping from the tip of her haughty nose. Her translucent skin was flushed with rose from the cold. He bent his head and kissed her cold wet lips. Hard. “I am very glad to see you,” he said fiercely.
She smiled again and said, “You had better tell my men where to put the horses.”
He did so, and then he took her into the hall. All talking stopped as the thanes looked to see who it was coming in with the king. Then, from almost all the throats in the hall, there rose a loud shout of welcome.
Elswyth looked around the packed benches and grinned. “You stink,” she informed the hallful of her husband’s men, and they roared with delighted laughter.
The bleak and desolate afternoon was suddenly transformed. Alfred took his wife into the small cluttered bedchamber so she could remove her wet outer clothing, and ordered a measure of carefully hoarded ale for everyone in the hall.
The ale had been poured by the time the king and his wife returned to the hall, and a place had been made for Elswyth on the bench next to Alfred. Then Erlend brought out his harp.
“What would you like to hear, my lady?” he asked, running his fingers enticingly over the strings.
Alfred looked at his wife, seated so close beside him on the bench. Her damp hair was plaited into a single braid as thick as his wrist, and her cheeks were still flushed with color from her ride. She smiled at Erlend and said definitely, “The Battle of Deorham.”
Erlend nodded, and a sigh of satisfaction went up from around the hall. The harp sounded again; then Erlend’s clear voice began to chant the words all West Saxons learned in babyhood:
Ceawlin the King
Lord among Earls
Bracelet-Bestower and
Giver of Gifts,
He with his son
Crida the Aetheling
Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle
Slew with the sword-edge
There at Deorham
Brake the shield-wall,
Hewed the lindenwood,
Hacked the battleshield,
Coinmail, Condidan, Farinmail
Lords of the Welsh
Alfred looked around the hall as Erlend sang this song of one of the greatest of his ancestors’ most famous victories. The firelight flickered on the intent faces of his thanes, bright now from within as well as from without. The song continued:
Many a carcass they left to be carrion,
Many a livid one, many a sallow-skin—
Left for the white-tailed eagle to tear it, and
Left for the horny-nibbed raven to rend it, and
Gave to the garbaging war-hawk to gorge it, and
That gray beast, the wolf of the weald.
Alfred thought: Wessex gone, without even a fight. How could it have happened? What would his ancestor Ceawlin have thought, if he learned of such a shameful capitulation?
The song was soaring high now, Erlend’s voice thrilling out above the ringing notes of the harp:
We the West Saxons,
Long as the daylight
Lasted, in companies
Troubled the track of the host that we hated,
Grimly with swords that were sharp from the grindstone,
Fiercely we hacked at the fliers before us.
Alfred had spoken yesterday to Erlend of his Christian faith, but right now what he felt thrilling in his veins was the warrior blood of his pagan ancestors.
He looked around the hall once more, at the blazing faces of his men. His loyal men. We the West Saxons, he thought. We are not beaten. Not these men ringing his hall this day, nor the thanes of his shires, nor his ealdormen. We have lost a battle, he thought. Well, we have lost battles before. And risen to fight again.
The song was ended and the men began to stamp their feet and to call for another. Alfred stretched his legs out before him, leaned his shoulders against the wall, picked up Elswyth’s hand, and rested their linked fingers on his thigh. He could feel her arm pressing against his.
How had she known to come? He had seen her only once since he had left her and the children at Glastonbury nearly two months before, and that was when he had ridden to the monastery to see them. She had never before tried to visit him in any of his fugitive camps.
He bent his head until his mouth was near her ear. “How did you know to come?” he asked.
Her mouth curled down at the corner. “I don’t know,” she replied, her voice so low only he could hear. “When I woke up this morning I just felt you needed me. So I came.”
The grip of his fingers tightened on hers, but otherwise he did not reply,
* * * *
Erlend sang, ate, then sang again until he was hoarse. Even the thanes who did not like Elswyth had to admit that they were glad she had come. No one could remember the last time they had seen the king as light-hearted as he was this night.
“He will be all right now,” Brand remarked to Erlend as the men prepared to bed down for the night. “There is no one who can cheer Alfred so well as Elswyth can.”
Erlend was spreading his blanket upon the bench and just grunted in reply.
Brand checked the sword that lay under his bench beside his shield and his byrnie. “It must be a grand thing to have a marriage like that,” he said, sitting down to pull off his shoes now that he had made sure his sword was safe.
“You could marry, Brand,” Erlend said. “Alfred is a generous lord. You have won enough treasure to buy a manor of your own and settle down.”
“Perhaps, but I have no wish to do so, Harper. I like my life the way it is, thank you.”
“You would not have to leave Alfred’s service. There are some married thanes among the king’s hearthband.”
Brand bunched up his cloak to make a pillow for his head, then settled himself on the hard bench, pulling a blanket up over him for warmth. Erlend did the same. The two of them were lucky to have the bench; half of the men were sleeping on the floor or in the lofts over the barns.
“A woman is fine in your bed at night,” Brand said. “In fact, I would not mind one here right now. But marriage . . . that is another thing altogether.”
“Just one minute ago you weresinging the praises of marriage,” Erlend protested.
“A marriage such as Alfred has,” Brand said.
Erlend put his hands behind his head and stared upward into the darkness of the hall. “There is not another like Elswyth in all the world,” he said, his voice very quiet.
The reply to that was prompt. “Even if there was, she would not be the wife for me.” Brand gave a sleepy chuckle. “If I were married to Elswyth, she would end up doing my breathing for me. A situation neither of us would like overmuch.” There came the distinct sound of a yawn. Then, drowsily: “In truth, I doubt if it is in me to feel strongly for any woman.”
“I know.” Erlend’s voice was perfectly awake, perfectly sober. “Why is that, do you think, Brand?”
“All our love is spent on Alfred,” came the devastatingly simple reply. A minute crept past and Brand began to snore.
Erlend lay awake for a long time, listening to the sound of the rain on the roof.
* * * *
The single bedchamber at Athelney had never been planned to accommodate a king and his appurtenances. There was little floor space, and what was there was now taken up by the chests that contained the West Saxon treasury. The treasury always traveled with the king, a custom that had proved its wisdom when Guthrum had almost caught Alfred at Chippenham. The king might be a fugitive, but at least he was not a penniless fugitive.
Elswyth sat on the quilt in the middle of the bed, combing her hair. Alfred stood in the narrow space at the bed’s foot watching her. One of her hands held the comb; the other hand held a strand of her hair near to the scalp so that the comb would not hurt when it pulled. The long ebony tresses flowed around her like a mantle, shining like silk in the flickering light of the bedside candle. She finished with the lock she was working on and lifted her eyes to Alfred’s face.
“You look so strange in a beard,” she said. “I shall have to get used to it.”
A faint look of disgust crossed his face. “I hate it,” he said. “I have always hated the feel of a beard. That is why I never grew one.” He shrugged. “I have little choice these days, however. The niceties of good grooming are not precisely a matter of prime concern.”
She put the comb down beside her on the quilt. “What happened?” she asked.
For a long moment he did not answer, just looked back into the unveiled blue of her eyes. I just felt you needed me, she had said. He ought not to be surprised. He had always known that when it came to him, Elswyth understood with her blood and her bones and her flesh. She did not need words to know how he was feeling.