Dunstan

by Conn Iggulden

  I conducted the marriage service in Winchester and sat near the king’s right hand at the great feast afterwards. I raised a cup in toast to the happy couple and they both smiled and were pleased. Perhaps I was a coward not to speak out, but as I say, I liked him.

  It was not long before Edgar’s second queen was heavy with child. Audrey spent her days in the comfort of the royal estate at Winchester, waited on hand and foot and enjoying rather more status than she would have known as wife of Allwold. Still, even then I sometimes felt she was a strange bloom. There was no doubting her beauty. Her neck was long and slender, so that it always reminded me of a swan. The line of her jaw grew on me, somehow, so that over time it became more pleasurable to gaze upon her, rather than less. I do not know how that can be, as most things dim and jade through use.

  When the gravid state was well advanced, I came to the palace to ask for a loan from the king – one I hoped he would simply grant as a gift, if I am honest – for the Irish marble I wanted to use at Canterbury. It had to be the first church in England, so the materials could not be poor stock. There was peace still, so ships sailed between us with trade goods rather than armed men, but the prices were extraordinary. As I explained to the king, a cathedral on that scale was the labour of eight or twelve years, but it would stand for a thousand, admired by all. It would impress all those foreign lords who visited the court. What price can be put on prestige of that nature?

  Edgar was in his private rooms on that particular day. Even I would not sweep into those without some warning. I announced myself and waited for Edgar to be told I was there. As I stood in restful silence, reciting prayers to ease my mind, the door crashed open. A little boy came staggering through, almost falling, weeping and red-faced.

  Before my eyes, I saw the queen erupt from the same doorway with a switch in her hand. Audrey was stronger than Prince Edward even in her state. I watched open-mouthed as she grabbed hold of the boy and beat wildly at him for a long time.

  At last, he squirmed free and went away wailing down the corridor. Now, do not mistake me. Boys need to be beaten, or they grow snide and weak in spirit. Yet it must be done in stern reproof, not for enjoyment. It is not a pleasure to be savoured, but a reluctant duty to be endured!

  I saw flushed triumph on her face as she looked after him, only turning to me when she felt my gaze. She was breathing hard and her dimensions reminded me rather of the apse I had designed at Canterbury. Lost for words, I almost said so and bit my lip.

  ‘He said I was not his mother,’ she told me.

  She was still angry, but also bright-eyed and thrilled with herself. I felt a pang of dislike for her, despite her beauty. She seemed to me to be a plum too long on the branch, for all she had clearly been plucked.

  ‘He did not know his mother, the lady Fæltha, of course,’ I murmured. ‘I imagine he longs for some comfort he cannot name. All boys need discipline, my lady … but also kindness.’

  I do not know why I said the last. The queen was preening at my agreement, but then I had to spoil it, so that a hard look came into her eye. Men did not correct her, I realised.

  ‘Are you here to see my husband, the king?’ she asked, as if I might have forgotten his title. ‘He is not here today.’

  I stared, unsure what to say to that. I knew the guard had gone to ask Edgar if he might receive me. She raised her chin a fraction and I wondered if I wanted to make an enemy. The idea was quite intriguing, like ashes stirred for embers.

  ‘I believe I shall wait,’ I said.

  She pursed her lips at me and glared, but I had not said she lied. I only looked peaceably at her, with one eyebrow raised in gentle question.

  Without another word, she went back inside. A servant closed the door behind her and I was left with a single guard, a man very careful not to meet my eye. I was interested to see if the queen might let me win a small victory, or somehow interfere with his companion when he came back.

  The other guard did not return, so I knew he had been stopped and sent somewhere else. What an interesting woman she was, to take such pains over something so small! I found myself humming an old tune as I walked away.

  I left a written note to be passed to Edgar – rather than allow his wife to spin whatever tale she chose into his ear. Yet I was careful in the words I used. It does not do to come between a husband and his wife, still less a king and his queen. I only had to think of poor Allwold’s fate to know that.

  When I had sealed my note and passed it to a steward I knew well, I went out into the open air. I had put aside the afternoon to spend with the king and I was free. It was pleasant to feel no other work looming for once. I exchanged a few light words with the guards on the gate and stepped out onto the street. There, I found the heir to the throne and royal prince leaning against the wall like any urchin of Winchester. Edward was perhaps six years old then, as blond as his father and, on this occasion, dirty with dust and the trails of tears.

  ‘Ah, Prince Edward, I was looking for you,’ I said, though it was not true. ‘I was worried you were lost somewhere. I don’t know what I would have done, what I would have said to your father if I’d lost you.’

  ‘He doesn’t care. All he cares about is her now.’

  He didn’t need to explain. It was true to a degree. King Edgar had somewhat devoted himself to his new wife, though that is not uncommon, especially in young men. I could hardly explain that to the son of his first marriage, however.

  ‘King Edgar has … a lot of duties,’ I said, dropping into a crouch at his side. ‘His own father was king for just a short time and left a lot of work undone. Did you know that?’ The boy shook his head. ‘And his brother Edwy kept making bad choices, so he left a great deal undone as well. Your father feels the weight of all of that on his shoulders – as well as being a husband to a new wife whom he loves.’

  ‘He doesn’t love me,’ the boy said.

  ‘No. No, I won’t have that, Edward Aetheling! He adores you and he has said so to me, many times. I am his friend, Father Dunstan, and I do not lie. Is that understood? Why, I am the archbishop of Canterbury. I cannot lie!’

  He sniffed and rubbed his face, taking some comfort from my words. I knocked on the door and ushered him in past the shocked stares of the guards there.

  ‘Take heart, sunshine,’ I called to him. ‘You are very young, but you know, one day, you will be king.’

  I saw his smile return at that thought as the door closed once more.

  She gave birth to a son, of course, calling him Edmund. He did not live beyond his first years and died of some pox rash before he could speak or walk. The queen took that rather badly, I thought, growing somehow harder, more a woman than a girl, though if anything, more beautiful. It was said of her that a troop of soldiers could not ride past where she stood without at least one of them falling or crashing into another. She made men fools to themselves, which is not such an achievement as it sounds, I sometimes think.

  It was not long before Queen Audrey was great with child once more, this time blessed and washed with holy water on a daily basis to protect the child from disease. Her husband had been on the throne for ten years then and I sometimes felt like an old man, though my cathedral was not yet finished and had proved to be a task even greater than my abbey.

  Even so, I was at the height of my strengths. It should not have been a surprise that King Edgar came to me to organise his coronation, at last. It seemed his wife wanted to see him crowned. She had plans for how it might go, with a grand ceremony and small kings from all over England, Wales and Scotland coming down to honour the high king and acknowledge him as their lord. He would be anointed by the Church, by me.

  While his queen was confined to give birth, Edgar called me to his side. He had a slightly harried look, I remember, as all husbands have at such times. The crown I had made for him was in his hand and he was staring at it as I came into the petition hall in Winchester. I looked around and saw only a few guards at the doors, so that we we
re about as alone as it was possible for him to be.

  ‘I could crown you now, if you like,’ I said lightly.

  He looked thoughtful.

  ‘I have never worn it, father. Not once.’

  ‘Truly? There is no law that says you may not, Your Highness. Not that I know. If you wish, I will place it on you today.’

  ‘As archbishop?’ he asked. His face was in shadow, his head bowed.

  ‘As a friend, if you wish,’ I said. I could not understand his reluctance.

  ‘You are kind, father. But I think I will wait. I have waited a long time.’

  A king does not have to give up secrets. He cannot be made to speak by any man, or even any woman. In the bedroom or before the Witan, he can say: this is my concern alone – and all questions cease on that instant.

  I’d wondered a thousand times why there had been no coronation. His brother had been crowned within weeks of becoming king, his father also. I’d wondered if it had something to do with those men, of course. I’d even asked the question, twice, over the years. Both times, Edgar had just pursed his lips and looked away, as if a shadow had fallen over him. I hadn’t tried to force an answer. A king will not be forced.

  In that quiet hall, with Edgar dangling his crown from his fingers like a child’s hoop, I wondered if I might hear why we were so many years into a peaceful reign but had somehow avoided a coronation.

  ‘When I became king, it was in tragedy. My brother dead after just three years, his wife killed. I ruled half England, father. I had no desire to rule the rest as well.’

  He looked up at me, but I know when to be silent. I heard him sigh.

  ‘You asked for their crown to be remade and I gave it to you, in part so that I did not have to put it on. I was not ready then. I was, what, sixteen? I would have had to pad the band just to wear it. My father’s crown, my brother’s crown. No. And if there was a perfect moment to be crowned, it went by. I was king! The realm was under threat and I spent years forming alliances, breaking faithless lords, taking heads and oaths to keep the great peace.’

  He smiled suddenly and looked up at me from under his brows.

  ‘I had a gift for it.’

  It was true and I felt a glimmer of tears come to my eyes as he spoke. What a strange creature, to have tears drawn from me with just a word and a smile! I rode to war, once. I made a harp that played itself. I did not expect strong emotion, just in echo of his old insecurity.

  ‘My first wife brought me pain – but gave me a son. I know, Dunstan, you have your bishops, your abbots – you are father to them all. You have done well, with all I gave to you. Yet I had a boy in the world – and I saw him grow, as once I did. And I thought, if I wear that crown, it will all end. If I wear that crown, I will die. It fixed in me, somehow, for years. I did not want to speak of it, even. I had so much to lose and it could have ruined me. So I was harsher with those who broke their word – and I drew iron on them, where once I would have laughed. I clung too hard to the crown, do you see? So that it hurt me.’

  I could only blink at him. I heard the words and the revelation that it had been more important in his life than I had known – and that I had missed that deep current in him, seeing only the good king, the friend.

  ‘Why now?’ I asked softly.

  He smiled, almost as a man will when he is in pain and cannot bear to move.

  ‘Because she asks me to. Because I told her I would, if she bore another son. Because I am king and I do not need a crown, but I will not be afraid.’

  I reached out.

  ‘It would be my honour to crown you, Your Highness.’

  ‘It might not happen yet, father,’ he said with a grin. ‘I have prayed, but perhaps there’ll be no answer. Perhaps the child will die again, before we bring my lords to one place.’

  I sensed great pain in him, more than I could understand. Children died all the time. He would have other sons, other daughters, other wives if he needed them. Yet I patted him on the arm and spoke to him, an older man offering comfort to a younger one. We are sinners, all, but we can be kind.

  39

  She bore the king a son and they named him Ethelred. I was given the task of organising a coronation for a king who had ruled for what seemed an age of peace. Some men will talk of Alfred the Great, for his navy and his works of valour, or perhaps Æthelstan for bringing all Britain under one throne. Without Edgar’s reign, it would have fallen apart once more and been lost. He was Augustus to Julius Caesar – the long years of peace and growth and trade that meant, by the end, we were England and not Wessex or Cumbria.

  To put a crown on such a man is not the work of an afternoon. In the end, it took me almost two years to bring it about, and though I should not take too much pride in such worldly endeavours, I hold it dear in my memory, as my fifth great work. No mere pressing of a crown on a royal brow, this! It was to be a culmination of an age and a promise for the future. I had no limit on my purse and you may be sure I did not stint. My cathedral was finished in Canterbury, so that choirs sang day and night in constant prayer for the realm and the king. I made a crown for Edgar’s queen as they sang, so that my hammering became the rhythm of the world.

  My brother Wulfric died a few months into that year, in March. I had expected him to outlive me, as the younger of us, though I knew his old wounds and the loss of his arm made that less likely. Such things wear on a man. I’d wanted a fine tomb in Glastonbury for him, but his wife refused and I chose not to overrule her. Instead, we held a simple family service in Baltonsborough and he was put in the ground next to our father and mother.

  As I stood there, looking down into a hole that held the boy who had run and leaped and wept at old enemies, I was surprised to feel his wife touch my arm.

  ‘He was always grateful to you,’ Alice said.

  I looked at her, trying not to squint to see the young girl she had been. It was too hard, with so many years passed. Alice blessed me for the life I had given him, which was only right. She did not mention my time of exile, of course. Families have secrets and perhaps that was ours.

  I had made my peace with them. I had been given time to. When I think of the young boy who fell through open air with Encarius, full of hate and rage, I am pleased I was not taken then. Age softens and that is not a bad thing. There were times in my youth when I might have chosen death, when I might even have welcomed it. I would have been wrong, each and every instance.

  We chose Chester for Edgar to be crowned, where the king had a fine royal estate. There was a great river there and a huge crowd lined the banks, standing and cheering by the thousand. Edgar was rowed across the river Dee by eight kings and princes that morning, all in their finery, all willing to bend the oars to show he was the high king, whose reign had been a summer’s gold. It makes me weep to think of it now. King Kenneth of Alba was there, Malcolm of Cumbria, Donald of Strathclyde, Magnus of Man and the Isles, Iago, Hywel, Ithel and Siferth, all of Gwynedd. The sun shone and the waters were calm as they rowed Edgar to where I waited on the bank. The ground was thick with meadowsweet, while flags and tents and carts made a field like a county fair for miles all around us. A choir of six hundred sang harmonies so fine they shamed the birds.

  I put my crown on Edgar and I said Mass, with heads bowed as far as I could see. I anointed him with holy oil, as Æthelstan and Roman emperors had been before him. At his request, I anointed and crowned Queen Audrey at his side, so that they stood together.

  I do not think anyone who was there will ever forget it. It remains in my mind in every detail, so that I can close my eyes and hear the trumpets blast and see the reflection of the royal barge in the waters, a golden shadow.

  It was the culmination of my life, and when I look back, I wish I had been taken then, struck down at that moment of happiness. Yet I had one more tragedy ahead, one great error. If I have lived a life of five great works, some have had their own shadows. For my abbey, I have my sin with Beatrice. For my vengeance upon Edwy’s quee
n, I made my cathedral at Canterbury. For the glorious coronation of a high king, perhaps I engaged the attention of the old enemy of mankind. It was a moment of perfection, and such things are a challenge to him. This is a world of flaw and dust. I think it brought about his hatred of me, the petty, childish spite of Lucifer, of Samael. He saw what I had done and he had always been a creature of envy.

  Of course, the queen was at the heart of it. If I am to be judged on one mistake, I pray it will not be that one. I saw her beauty and I did not truly know what it concealed.

  Part Five

  * * *

  BEHOLD THE DEATH OF INNOCENCE

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  ‘And I am old and grayheaded; and, behold, my sons are with you. I have walked before you from my childhood unto this day.’

  1 Samuel 12:2

  40

  King Edgar died, as all men will, though he was younger than me. He stayed out one night in the deep woods to hunt deer and went to bed on his return, complaining of aches and pains in his joints. Some fever had its birth around the ponds of stagnant water where he had lain in wait and it got into him. He was scratched and scraped as well from briars, which became fat with lymph and pus as his agues took a grip. He was thirty-two years old and it was just two years after his coronation.

  I prayed over him on his deathbed, and his son Edward stayed at my side the whole time. That boy was only twelve himself. He tried to be brave, but in the end, he crumpled. He wept and sobbed and took up his father’s hand in his. I saw the last breath leave Edgar and the great stillness come. I knelt to him. I was the first to tell Edward he was king.

  The Witan would be summoned, of course, but for once, there could be no doubt. His younger brother Ethelred was barely six years old.

  As I promised Edward I would crown him, Queen Audrey came into that chamber, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the smell of sickness. I think she heard me speak to her stepson.