Dunstan

by Conn Iggulden

  ‘What herbs are you using to stain the air so?’ she said to me.

  I mentioned meadowsweet and lavender, though I knew she was covering her grief with rudeness, as some will. I saw her gaze flicker over her husband’s corpse and she nodded to herself once, as if closing a book.

  I do believe she was loyal to him in her fashion, but as soon as Edgar was gone, she was about her own plans and designs. Her loyalty vanished at the instant of his death. I believe she was cold at the heart, somehow, as if all she did was in mimicry of life. If I had not seen her blood on the cloths of childbirth, I might have believed she was a succubus – those demons of female form that have no kindness in them and will drain the life from a man until he is just a husk. She was certainly beautiful enough. Even there, as she leaned over her dead husband and drifted so close to his face I thought she might kiss his lips, I was struck by the perfection of her. She was the fairest woman I have ever encountered, though she was rotten within.

  Ah me, I do not want to tell this part. It is too recent and too raw a pain for me. Perhaps I should end this packet of papers on the river at Chester, with eight kings rowing Edgar to be crowned. It was my triumph and his – just getting those proud men to that place, with feasts for days and every manner of diversion. It is my hilltop, my harp, my lamp in the dark. Yet it is not the end. The end rushes upon me.

  I have known seven kings in all. Three were brothers: Æthelstan, Edmund and Eadred. Two were sons of Edmund: rash Edwy and Edgar the Peaceful. The last were two sons of Edgar: Edward and Ethelred. I am an old man. It breaks my heart.

  As I had done once with Edwy, Queen Audrey spoke before the Witan. With her stepson watching her, with all men watching her, she said Edgar’s first wife had been taken quickly, leaving only memories. Did anyone even remember her name? She should not have asked that. It was but one small part of her misjudgement, though I delighted in it. Prince Edward was no coward. I felt my heart leap as he stood up.

  ‘I remember it. My mother’s name was Fæltha. She was a daughter of Strathclyde and her father bent the knee to mine. She was a queen.’

  He sat down again and I saw the lady pause in the lamplight, marshalling her thoughts after that misstep.

  ‘She was, as I am now,’ Audrey said softly.

  There was no noise and her voice was almost a whisper, I recall, as if the rest of us held our breath. Whatever else she was, she was indeed queen. That could not be denied. To my delight, Edward rose again in challenge, thirteen then and red-faced, but of all of us, perhaps the only one unmoved by her fair form.

  ‘As I am king, my lady. There, we have named ourselves. Now, will you yield the floor, so that my Witan can vote?’

  ‘You are still a child, Edward,’ she said, coldly. ‘Will you bluster so when Vikings land on our coast? When armies march? I have ruled at my husband’s side for years. I have seen every treaty and deal and punishment King Edgar ordered. Half the men in the Witan owe their seats to my judgement!’

  There was a mumble, though whether of dissent or astonishment, I could not say. From me, it was certainly dissent.

  She glared at us in the gloom and the shadows, and I had to struggle not to grin. If she’d ever had it, she had lost the tide of the room. There is a moment in the affairs of men where they can be swayed. I knew better than most how persuasive women could be – but not in anger. The moment she grew angry, I knew she had lost. There is just something comical about anger without the threat of an attack.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘I tell you all what you already know. Some of those days of peace came from my decisions, made for the highest stakes. King Edgar, whose reign was sixteen years without war, trusted me. I ask only that the Witan trusts me in turn, that they consider my son Ethelred as heir to the throne. That if they will have Edward as king, they also demand an oath of celibacy from him, as Æthelstan took before. I am willing to guide Ethelred until he is fully grown. Let me be his guide, as I guided his father before him.’

  As she had guided poor Allwold to an early death, I thought to myself. Someone made a scornful sound, as if the very idea she proposed was amusing. The same man chuckled in derision. I had to look away when she turned to seek the source.

  Whatever part I may or may not have played, I think the dowager queen had misjudged the earls and thanes and reeves of the Witan. It was true Edward was young, but in speaking so to her, he showed that was a weakness that would pass in time. He had the will to rule, which is no small thing and not given to all, by any means. That will had made his father so feared that others would not dare to rebel. It had meant Æthelstan could keep thousands of men on the field when they wanted to run. Edward had that in his blood.

  As the guests and observers filed out, Queen Audrey among their number, I remained as archbishop, to cast my vote. We did so by raising our hands, as soon as we were alone. Of the ninety-six landowners and two archbishops in that place, forty-eight chose Edward. Seven abstained like the lickspittle cowards they were, and forty-three voted to make Ethelred king.

  I do not know what promises she had made before the council sat to get so many votes. I was pleased to see the archbishop of York raising his hand with me, though we had discussed it before the meeting. Oda’s nephew Oswald had been my choice, though he was not long back from Rome then. It was my way of paying a debt of friendship to the old Dane. Either way, the church must be unified in such things. I had learned that much from the disaster with Edwy.

  It had been closer than I’d have liked, but it was settled. I told myself I would be damned if I ever let that exquisite harpy any closer to the throne than that.

  She did not take the news particularly well, as I heard it. A rumour went around Winchester that the queen had smashed plates and broken chairs, then gathered up a vast fortune from the royal treasury and taken herself away with her son to one of her husband’s fortresses. If I had been treasurer, she would have been sent away with a tin penny.

  I do not think she feared murder or some retribution. I imagine her husband’s death had simply come too soon for her plans and ambitions. If her son had been sixteen, he’d have had a much better chance of standing before the Witan on his own. For a time, Audrey took herself away from the world, and I am afraid I thought little of her, or the king’s second son.

  The peace we had known came to a sudden end. I cannot say for certain that Audrey was behind it, but there were rebellions in favour of her son in East Anglia and Mercia. Two earls of the Witan rose up, both of whom had voted for her cause. They hanged their shire reeves and marched armed men through the towns, with torches and spears. Worse, they pillaged Benedictine monasteries from one end of the country to another, taking gold and relicts, throwing my monks out into the snow.

  It was a brutal time and there was murder everywhere, so that the roads were impassable. Each town had to fend for itself and we felt that isolation even in Winchester. Every messenger who risked his life to make it through brought worse news: from the north, from the east, even on the borders of Wales.

  I advised the king as best I could, but the truth was I had never been a man of war. I had relied on thanes and tacticians to know when to ride out, when to build walls and retreat. It seemed like chaos, and sometimes in the evenings, I could see red light in the sky from many miles off, as some home or fortress burned.

  As I say, I cannot be sure she was behind it, though I think, like Eve, she could have made those men rise. She had always been persuasive. What matters is that she benefited from the unrest, so that the whole country knew King Edward’s reign would not be as peaceful as his father’s had been. Thanes and ealdormen began to lay in the stores for a war – in spears and mail, in shields and axes. Coin that had gone on cutting new land from the forest or on merchant stock, now vanished into weapons and the furnaces of smiths.

  The lords who had voted against Edward in the Witan were not shy, or unwilling to suggest we might have chosen the wrong son. Again, I wonder how much gold she spent to make their t
ongues wag so. I’d have had them torn out of those faithless men.

  King Edward summoned a levy, and most of his lords brought men to his banners, though there were some who failed to attend. He rode the length and breadth of the country and found only charred timbers and peaceful men willing to kneel and praise him. Yet as soon as his army had gone back to farms and homesteads, the bonfires would be seen again. There are some generations who need no Vikings to bring destruction.

  For two years, it was the same, so that no one knew if murderers might creep in from the woods to kill, rape and steal what righteous working men had made, or monks had built with their own hands.

  It was a time for savagery and I wondered aloud if Edward might forgive taxes in exchange for their heads, as his father had done with wolves in Wales. He refused, though I think that was a mistake. Every town has its bodies by the roadside or in the marketplace, swinging as a warning. Every child has been taken to an execution or a branding. My father made me watch a man struck dead, and it stayed with me for years as I tried to sleep, keeping me firmly on the path of good works.

  I think Edward should have sent his judges and his army to take the heads of every lord in rebellion against him – and pinched the vein closed by doing so. The churls would have thanked him. A king must be feared – and rough men fear only soldiers. I will turn the other cheek, but I prefer my enemies to be dead when I do, so they cannot strike at me.

  In the third year of his reign, King Edward turned sixteen. He was the image, not of his father, but of his grandfather Edmund. That winter had been quieter and he’d received lords from East Anglia and made some sort of peace with them.

  It is the last drop that brims and spills the wine, not all the ones before. I’d warned Edward his stepmother had played a part in the rebellions. Though I had no proof, I’d seen the names were those who had voted for her. I’d heard her own whispered.

  He did not believe me, or if he did, he didn’t take that threat seriously. Instead, he worked, to pour oil on troubled waters, to break the backs of traitor lords, to bring calm to a troubled kingdom. Yet it was not all milk and honey. He sent a dozen men to murder one stubborn lord, I recall, taking the old fool in his bed. The whole realm was at stake, remember. Edward may not have decided on mass burnings and slaughter, but neither was he a weak child, not any longer. Yet he was still too trusting, too innocent.

  He had been crowned immediately he was king, you may be sure. He wanted to be seen, a younger version of his father. It was true he lacked that man’s hard stare, but it would have come in time. If I had been younger, I would have spent more days at his side, but my eyes and legs had grown weak and I’d never ridden well. When a sixteen-year-old king summons up a great hunt in the spring, he does not want old men like me trailing around and panting in his wake.

  Royalty is first and foremost about youth. No one feels his heart beat hard at the sight of some thin and wrinkled king. No, we see them flashing gold in their strength, clear-eyed warriors charged with the safety of the flock. God bless them all, those brave young men.

  I delay, I delay. He was the age I was when first I came to court. I do not want to cross that bridge again. I was not there, I was not there. I heard it all from servants and from her.

  41

  If there had not been the first stirrings of peace, I don’t think Edward would have hunted within a hundred miles of his mother. Corfe fortress in Dorset had become her refuge when the Witan rejected her offer. She might have lived a quiet life there, raising Ethelred to manhood. He could have become a powerful earl for his half-brother, a prince at the court.

  The queen had done her best to bribe and pluck up Edward’s enemies against him. Yet as I have said, in that third year, her plans were failing. Edward had made peace with East Anglia. Some said a truce would follow on its heels with Mercia as well. I gave him advice when he asked for it, which was often. I am proud to say he trusted me. I asked him once if he remembered the time I’d spoken to him in Winchester, when I’d found him by the gates, in tears. He looked at me then with the strangest expression – part pain, part sadness – and said, ‘Of course I do.’

  Despite his youth, Edward was no fool – and all men still remembered his father. He called on their oaths of fealty to King Edgar and his descendants. There are always a few for whom oaths mean nothing, but for most, they are the thread that binds, the cup that quenches thirst. Without our oaths, after all, without our faith, we are no more than beasts. I think Edward would have restored his father’s peace in just another year or two.

  He left the Dorset hunt as it ran west, when he realised he was just a few miles from Corfe. Over rough ground, hunters ride alone for miles at a time, finding their own way. I don’t suppose it was more than a whim that turned him from the sound of dogs and horns.

  There is a line of chalk hills around Corfe – the name itself means a cut in the land. The fortress there had a fine defensive wall, though it was all wood. Edward had sat the throne for three years without once seeing his younger brother. I suspect that was the heart of it. He may have wanted to greet the dowager queen, the woman his father had loved. I know Edward wanted peace, in his household and his kingdom. He was always a kind lad.

  Now, his father would have surrounded the fortress and burned it to the ground if that woman had stood against him. Never mistake the peace of Edgar for gentleness.

  Yet Edward was a forgiving son – and I think, a rather lonely one. I’d seen it in the years of his youth when his father had been besotted with the new wife. I’d seen it in the years since. Edward had no friends of the sort who could clap him on the back and mock his moods. He trusted me, but if I pressed too close, he would look out into the distance, or become guarded. I’d know then he was thinking of them – and particularly his little brother.

  Edward felt a responsibility there. They’d played together, of course, with Edward carrying Ethelred around Winchester on his back. The thought of that little boy alone and far away troubled the king. I knew he’d sent messengers to Corfe, making some offering of peace and forgiveness. She had never answered.

  It was late in the day, almost at twilight, when he came to her gate alone. Edward sat a very fine stallion that was yet as meek as milk for him. There was always danger on the roads, so Edward wore mail and a surcoat, with a good sword on his hip and two spears lashed alongside his leg. It was madness to have left his hunt. He had scores of brave men willing to die for him, but they were crashing through the undergrowth after boar and deer, miles from their master.

  He was sixteen and the bulky strength and savagery of a warrior had not yet come upon him. He was brave, though – reckless, to be there at all. I know Edward still thought hatred could be turned aside with a word or an open hand. He trusted me when I told him so and he was the closest to a son I have ever known. I delay, I delay, because it hurts me so.

  The dowager queen had a dozen guards on her wooden wall, as many servants to tend her. I think she had around eighty hides of land there. She did not want for food or comfort in that place, even without the gold she had brought away with her.

  She would not open the gate to him. In her suspicions, she could not imagine the young king might have come on his own. She feared some trap, some trick to get her to come out. Queen Audrey climbed the stairs to the walkway by the outer wall instead, so that she appeared above and looked down on the king. Her son had come with her and stood holding her hand, then nine years old with a mop of black hair and wide, dark eyes, an innocent.

  As I heard it, Ethelred cried out with pleasure at seeing his brother. They had been three years apart, but the little boy remembered. He tried to pull away from his mother, but she held him hard enough to hurt.

  ‘What do you want here, Edward?’ she called.

  ‘Only to see you, to raise a cup. To greet my brother. May I enter as your guest?’

  ‘No. Though I will throw down a cup and a skin of wine.’

  She gestured to one of her men and
the man appeared with those things, lobbing them down. Edward caught them both and laughed. Perhaps he feared poison then, I do not know. It would have been an odd thing to have tainted wine waiting.

  He poured the cup full and tossed the skin back, then raised the cup.

  ‘I give you honour as my father’s queen. You too, brother. I have missed you.’

  He had not heard the man who crept up behind his horse. As Edward drank, he stiffened and gave a cry of pain. The cup fell to the ground, and on the battlement, Ethelred shrieked his name.

  Edward twisted in the saddle to see what had bitten at him. He saw a man still there, clinging to him, ramming a punch dagger through a hole in his mail over and over into his lower back.

  The king heaved on his reins and kicked in, making his horse scramble to a run, leaving his tormentors behind. He rode a dozen miles or so before he fell. His horse was wet with blood and he had grown pale without it, his eyes bruised dark.

  I heard it all later on. How the queen thrashed little Ethelred on that walkway, for showing weakness in his tears, for his wailing. She was the one who had made him weak, but all she could do was scorn him and show him her contempt. She ruined two kings in all, I think.

  The Witan had no choice but to choose Ethelred. There was no one else, and though I spoke against it, no one could say for certain that King Edward had been killed at her order. Audrey claimed it was a brigand, a thief on the road who had tried to steal a gold cup.

  The man was never found. I know, because I sought him out for years – and spent a fortune learning every word and whisper about that day. I did not want to see her triumph, but there it was, even so.

  I did make sure the story spread, of King Edward the Martyr. I would not let his tale be forgotten. We are all dust, but he was a good boy.

  I was born the son of a thane of Wessex. I will die an archbishop. I have raised an abbey and a cathedral – and a king to manhood. I have made England Benedictine, in all honour.