Dunstan

by Conn Iggulden

  It was not the right mood. Whatever Leofa had intended, it all went wrong before my very eyes.

  On such occasions there are always hundreds who wish to be introduced, so that they can say ‘I met the king’ to their grandchildren, or ‘This hand shook a king’s hand’. As a result, Edmund was surrounded by well-wishers as he moved through the feast, his champion John Wyatt looming over all. Edmund had only to comment on the gardens and there would be a ripple of laughter from those who hung on his words. He had only to raise a cup to have a servant push through to fill it once again.

  In the middle of the evening, the crowds had spilled right across the grounds, roving everywhere, inside and out. The mood was light and people were merry and clasping each other by the shoulders. There was some singing nearby as Edmund passed within a few feet of Leofa and looked right at him. I saw the king recognise a man he had banished, scorning him at his own feast. I saw Edmund’s rage come.

  If he had been less a fighting man, or twice the age he was, Edmund would have sent John Wyatt to lay hands on the impudent thane. Returning from banishment mocks the king and the law equally. Edmund was within his rights to have Wyatt strike the fellow’s head from his shoulders right there, in the gardens.

  Yet the king was twenty-three years old and at his greatest strength and vigour. Of course he did not summon his champion, or send a servant. Of course he went himself. Leofa turned away as he saw Edmund coming towards him. I think perhaps he wanted to hand his great jug of ale to one of the others, but it might have looked as if he turned his back on the king.

  Edmund laid his hand on Leofa, yanking him round. As well as his quart pot, Leofa had been eating some piece of fowl, his hands greasy with chicken – and his knife held in his right, to cut the meat. As Edmund heaved at him, the thane reacted as he might have done to a cutpurse, coming round with his knife out straight and hard, a punching blow. The ale pot crashed into pieces on flagstones at their feet.

  I could only stare as Edmund went stiff. I saw enough of Leofa’s horrified expression to know he had not planned it that way. His hand fell from the hilt of his knife and the king took a step back, his mouth opening in pain and surprise and hurt.

  John Wyatt came through then, bellowing. He had been within arm’s reach of Edmund, though no one could have stopped the king suddenly stepping forward and grabbing someone. We all froze as Wyatt brought his axe around in a huge sweep. It snatched Leofa from the world, so that he was there and then gone in an instant. The blow took Leofa’s head off, with most of his right shoulder, going on to sink deep into the gravel and remain.

  Edmund went down to one knee. I could see he was struggling by then, his face showing fear. I went forward to tend him, though I almost died for it as Wyatt reached to block me with a seax knife as long as my forearm.

  ‘Let me through, you fool,’ I said, though I’d thought I was done and my voice was a croak. Wyatt bared his teeth at me in his distress. No doubt he was afraid of his own fate for allowing the king to be struck.

  I knelt by Edmund and he made no move to stop me as I felt for the knife’s hilt. He heard my intake of breath and his eyes turned to me.

  ‘Would you pull it out, please?’ he whispered to me. ‘I cannot … bear it much more.’

  I saw him glance up at the crowd gathered around us and I realised the king’s champion could still be of use.

  ‘Master Wyatt, the king wishes to be alone here. Can you move this crowd away?’

  The big man bent slowly to retrieve his axe, with Leofa’s bright blood on it. Some of those who heard me speak were already moving when they saw him reach for that weapon. Wyatt raised himself up and put the axe on his shoulder.

  ‘Leave,’ he said to them all. ‘Give the king room.’

  It was crude enough, but it worked. Hundreds backed slowly away, their faces pale and stupid in their concern. Every one of them looked the same, wide-eyed and gaping upon us.

  ‘Your Highness, the blade is in your heart,’ I whispered to Edmund. ‘The iron can seal its own wound for a time, but if you move sharply … or if I pull it out, you will be gone.’

  He looked at me, that young man, breathing slowly. He understood at last and his eyes took on a sheen.

  ‘I see. Would you fetch my wife for me?’ he said in short breaths.

  I could see his efforts to control the pain as he screwed his eyes closed. Tears ran from them, but it was awareness of death, not fear.

  I looked up as a shout sounded and Wyatt stirred beside us, raising his axe. Yet it was not the king’s wife but his brother Eadred who came running across the grounds. He skidded to a halt and looked down on us and the bloody pieces of Leofa.

  ‘Who was it?’ he demanded.

  I heard Edmund’s breath catch and I turned back to the king. His life was fading, but not quickly. His youth and strength held him there, though the pain built. He tried to pull the blade out. I had to grip his right hand in mine and I found myself weeping, unable to believe this was happening.

  With a start, I remembered my responsibilities. I leaned closer to hear the king’s last confession, though every word dragged slowly out of him. I made the sign of the cross on his forehead and anointed him with oil from a tiny silver box. I wept as I did so. I have not had many friends.

  ‘Edmund!’ came a shriek. His wife seemed to fly over the grass and she collapsed by his side, her dress billowing. To my surprise, Edmund smiled for her. He made a huge effort to speak in his normal voice, though the pain bit and tore at him.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought we had longer.’

  I could only stare as she looked into his eyes, an intimacy of such power it made me turn my own gaze. Her hands trembled as she raised them to his neck, curling her fingers inward, so that she touched him with the backs of her hands. It was a strange gesture, almost like a child and not one I had seen before. She kissed him then and he groaned as they touched.

  ‘Pull the knife, Dunstan,’ he hissed at me, looking over. ‘It is too much. I must have it out.’

  ‘It will kill you if I do,’ I said. ‘Please don’t ask me.’

  ‘It hurts …’ He coughed and made a sound of pain that was cruel even to hear.

  His brother Eadred reached down with no warning and pulled the knife from his brother’s heart, throwing it to the ground then, as if it had stung his hand.

  ‘Go to God, Brother,’ he said.

  Edmund nodded and smiled, and did as he was told.

  I found myself wracked with sobs, though I had not cried like that since my youngest years of childhood. His wife cradled her dead husband in her arms as I rose and looked aghast at the slick of royal blood on my hands.

  The king was dead. I looked at Eadred as he brought out his cloth and coughed into it. My thoughts were dust in sunlight, spinning, falling. Edmund’s eldest son was barely three years old; the other was still on mother’s milk. It would fall to Eadred to keep the throne warm, I knew it in that moment. The Witan had no other choice, no cousin or half-brother worth the name. Yet I wondered if such a weak and sickly creature, such a very youngest brother, could ever be up to the task.

  It made me weep again a day later to hear that Edmund had left instructions to be buried in Glastonbury Abbey. He’d assumed it would be long finished by then, of course, not the enormous worksite it still was. He was instead entombed in the same churchyard as my father, though we would not let him rest there. My Glastonbury needed kings as well as saints.

  A week after Edmund’s funeral, a huge wall fell at Glastonbury, killing poor Brother Guido. The boatman was crushed into the earth, every bone made dust by the massive weight of stone. Cracks appeared below another arched window and Master Justin called a halt to the work.

  It seemed almost fitting, that my beloved abbey broke in the same year Edmund fell. My friend should have ruled for decades, like his father.

  In some ways I blamed myself, for Leofa, though I still think it was mere accident rather than evil. When death c
omes so quickly, it leaves mysteries. Caesar pulled his robe over his head when he saw Brutus. Was it cowardice? Was it despair, or contempt? It did not stop those who wished him dead, and we’ll never know. Did Leofa want to come home, to be reconciled? Perhaps he whispers it in hell. Who knows how the old enemy strikes at all that is good? However it came about, that year was a time of sorrow and of mourning – and the cost is still with us.

  26

  For a season, we were without a crowned king. No country is at ease then, just as sheep will cluster in the corners of fields and grow fearful if the shepherd fails to appear. Eadred may have wished to avoid any ill will and barbed comments about him leaping into his brother’s shoes while they were still warm. Or perhaps it was because he was unmarried and did not want to make an oath as Æthelstan had done. His brother Edmund had fathered two sons, ahead of him in line. It was only their youth that prevented them.

  I spent a little time wishing I had been more courteous to Eadred over the few years I’d been at court. I thought back to the conversations I’d had and, yes, if I’d known he would be king, I would have been more pleasant, more patient. One or two of those who had been rough or rude with him made themselves scarce and were not seen again in Winchester, as you can imagine.

  My main concern was for the great cracks that had appeared in the walls at Glastonbury. I examined every part of the site to see if the walls had somehow shifted, but they were sound, the ground dry. It took me a month to have the lads dig down to the foundations in a dozen places. It was back-breaking work and all for nothing. We found no weak part, no new river come from beneath to wear all away, just our beds of broken oyster shells, more than stars in the sky, packed in by their own weight until they were almost brick. I even wondered if we should have built on the great Tor, but the wind howled up there, blowing hard and cold on a spring day. The winters would have been a misery.

  In the end, I should be ashamed how long it took me to see what I needed to. The Roman arch is in every aqueduct and bridge, every window and door, every church and stone guildhall. I learned early on how they built their arches in equal sides, then lowered in the capstone, so that mere bricks became as strong as any natural shape, as an egg is hard to break in the hand. Those Roman curves could almost rival Atlas for weight borne from above. Yet they were not strong enough for the height and weight of our walls.

  Windows are always a weakness, as any child can see. They pierce a solid wall and allow forces to act that have no place there. As I worked through one night to the dawn, I drew narrow windows, with a sharper curve that produced half the force to each side of a Roman arch. I took out my pair of compasses and drew arcs with the lead, spinning them around in growing excitement. When there was light enough to extinguish my lamp, I rolled up my sheets and raced across the yard to where Master Justin still slept with a dozen other monks, all exhausted. I banged on the door and roused them.

  The master mason was wearing a black robe, I noticed. In the grey light, Justin saw my surprised expression and smiled, embarrassed.

  ‘My own clothes were too scratched and torn,’ he said. ‘It made no sense to be having new ones made when there were robes here of good wool.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. I was impatient for him to see what I had done, so that I missed the signs of conversion in him. Within the year, Justin would take an oath and my abbey would have brought another soul to God – and denied one more to the old enemy.

  I shifted from one foot to the other as Master Justin looked over my sketches, raising his eyebrows. I saw a great stillness come upon him as he understood.

  ‘There are secrets here I have seen before … known only to the most senior members of my order,’ he said. ‘Even I have not learned all there is. Yet … you have come upon them on your own.’

  I felt his reaction like a slap. I had thought I might have been the first to see the strength of the shape, but I covered my disappointment with impatience.

  ‘So will it stand, then? Will it hold? It seems to, when I add the forces, there, and there – where I have arranged them in columns.’

  I pointed at the vellum. He looked at me and I could not explain the expression of awe on his face.

  We discussed the new stone we would need as the sun rose over the site – and of course it would all cost a fortune. None of the stones already shaped with chisel and hammer would fit the new pointed arches. Justin strode across the yard to pick one up from a pile of balanced things, turning it in the light and talking in a torrent. I saw happiness in him and excitement. Like me, he wanted to build something for the ages, something that would stand long after we were gone. That abbey was our prayer and our mark.

  Yet theories must be tested, or they are no more than wind. Lads ran with barrows of flint, sand, ash and lime, stirring great vats of the mortar, while others dropped the plumb lines and built us a wall. At the end of each day we had all worked until our backs and hands were sore and our red eyes peered from faces thick with dust. The lines of stone dried slowly over night and we ate like dogs, gulping down whatever our kitchen made, then falling into sleep as if we had been struck by a falling block.

  I still woke for the Night Office in my exhaustion – and Master Justin came with me, to sing and chant the responses with more fervour than many of the monks who did so by rote, with all true feeling lost over decades.

  After a week, we reached the height above that narrow window that had cracked the previous one. I stood before it, watching line after line of heavy flints added, cut and shaped. On scaffolds, more men poured rubble in from barrows.

  The arch held. Justin and I stood before it as if we were certain it would stand for a thousand years. I brushed dust from my hands.

  ‘There. It will do now,’ I said.

  I bowed my head and offered thanks to God, then returned to Winchester. It had not escaped my notice that the coffers were almost empty once again, with the whole project set back a year or longer by the fallen walls. The abbey community sold its goods all over the country by then, from silver cups to pork sausages. Yet the costs were immense and Wulfric was in despair whenever I broached the subject with him. We needed more funds, ideally in the form of rents from more land – and there was only one place I would find that.

  In May of the year of our Lord 946, Prince Eadred was crowned king by Archbishop Oda of Canterbury, as Rome had made him. I grew to like Oda the Good, despite his Danish ancestors and strange customs. For all his faith, I think that squat and bearded fellow would have murdered his own mother for a plate of tripe, especially the sort so pungent that it curled the hairs on your arms and made strong men weak. I have never had any desire to chew on a cow’s bunghole, but Oda seemed to relish it as a taste of childhood. I will admit he had fine strong teeth, well suited to the task. Yet despite his country ways, Oda was no one’s fool and even rather lorded it over Archbishop Wulfstan, who had come down from York then for the coronation. Some men called Oda ‘the Good’, as I have done, while others called him ‘the Harsh’. Which name you favoured depended on whether you had ever crossed him or not.

  The same gold band that Æthelstan and Edmund had worn became the cock’s plume on the brow of King Eadred, the third brother to wear it. As Eadred was smaller than either Æthelstan or Edmund, there was a rumour that the royal goldsmith had to put a crimp in it. I once ran my hand all along the edge when I saw it in the royal treasury and I do not think that was true, or if it was, it was polished smooth afterwards.

  When I’d come to Æthelstan’s court, I’d been very young, little more than a child and still feeling my way in the world. I’d grown into my strength with Edmund, as one of the same age and a friend. With Eadred, I saw for the first time how it might be when a younger king looked to me as one more experienced. I had found my role as abbot and priest.

  The new king took his entire court from town to city to town in a great procession, so that his judges and his Witan might hear the voices of all England. Though it meant leaving Glaston
bury once more, I went with him. Edmund had been my friend and I would not leave his brother to be overborne by others, not when he trusted me.

  I’d seen that clamour of voices and outstretched hands once before, with half the country trying to reach the king or his officers, writing letters and calling out in their pitiful misery. Honestly, it was most vexing. Wealthy earls and thanes made offers of gold, actual gold, for me to secure a meeting with Eadred! Yet if I had done so, I would have lost a trust that was far more valuable. No, those close to the king could not ask him for anything – that was my rule. He had enough petitioners.

  He summoned me while we rested in York, that faithless harlot of a city. Eadred had insisted we travel by road, though half the stones had been stolen and some of it was just marsh. Yet he would not go by sea and river as I’d suggested, saying he had to see the dust of the land he ruled. It was fine and stirring stuff, though I suspect he regretted it after the first few days. He could still have taken a boat then, but Eadred was stubborn – and proud.

  Archbishop Wulfstan was hosting a feast that evening, with promises of some extraordinary acrobats from Constantinople. My suspicion was that they only claimed to have come so far, but we would see. If they had truly known the New Rome, I’d be delighted to meet them. I could only dream of such places then, though I suppose our York and Winchester were as strange to those who came so far.

  Anyone who entered the king’s presence was searched for weapons, though it was more a nuisance than anything useful. They left me with my eating knife, for example, no smaller than the blade that had killed Edmund in the gardens. The new king gave that up within a year and things went back to what they had been.

  I noticed John Wyatt was still in Eadred’s service. I’d half-expected the huge warrior to have lost his head, or perhaps been banished himself. It seemed Eadred did not blame him, which was the sort of simple good sense I came to think of as typical.