Alvar the Kingmaker

by Annie Whitehead

  “Oh, you see it too. We think alike, so you will understand when I swear that no-one will gain from this match more than I shall, and that I will have many more children.” She raised her voice. “I will need friends in the king’s house, Lord Alvar. Can I know that you are one of them?”

  He flashed a grin. “Lady, I was yours the first day I laid eyes on you.”

  She returned his smile, and for the first time that day the smile lifted high enough to return the sparkle to her eyes.

  He gave a deep bow, backed away, and turned to greet his brother.

  Brock had pushed his way through the crowd, his elbows out to the sides to protect the drinks in his hands. He handed a cup to Alvar. The noise in the hall rose and fell as shouts of laughter broke out periodically above the general hum of conversation. Brock nodded and reached up to speak nearer Alvar’s ear. He said, “They are badly matched for height; I would say that she is taller by more than a hair.”

  Edgar had come to stand by his new wife. His blond curls licked round his gold coronet and caught at the soft bristles on his jaw. He stood a hip’s width behind her so that his leg pressed against hers.

  Alfreda turned her head and looked at Alvar. Her smile had gone.

  Edgar’s head was positioned such that he appeared to be whispering into his wife’s ear. She gazed straight ahead and continued to stare at Alvar. Edgar’s hand slid round her waist and stroked upwards almost to her breast and down almost to her thigh. He stepped away from her side, reaching for her hand. He led her through the crowded hall and most of the witnesses smiled their indulgence, for no man needed to have heard Edgar’s words to know what was on his mind. Only Archbishop Dunstan glowered as they walked past him.

  Alvar said, “I wonder if he is thinking right now of the day of the Fairchild’s king-making?”

  Brock rubbed his chin. “You could be right. This will be the second time he has lost out to a king’s woman. Edgar the love-sick husband will not yield to Dunstan’s bidding the way Edgar the youth has done.”

  Alvar looked again at the archbishop. Alfreda had thought to protect herself with this wedding, but ironically ran the risk of becoming the target of more hatred. If she was aware that Dunstan rarely gave up without a fight, then she was playing a dangerous game.

  Dunstan stood up from his seat on the dais, and began to make his way across the room.

  Brock gave his empty cup to a serving-boy and took two more drinks from him, this time choosing the specially prepared ceremonial mead drink known as bride-ale. He held the cups aloft, sloshing the contents, and offered one to Alvar.

  Alvar clasped his brother’s shoulder and said, “I find the mead too heavy in my belly this day. Find me some ale, I will be back soon.”

  Alvar elbowed his way through the crowd, impeded by the squash of bodies. He felt a foot under his shoe, but in the crowd could not direct an accurate apology. He followed Dunstan to the back of the hall. Away from the fire at the far end of the room, though the air was less smoke-filled, it was darker here and there were only a few couples, who, like Alvar, wished to stay in the shadows and not be seen. When he arrived, he wiped spilt ale from his sleeve and kept close to the wall, while the archbishop walked up to the door of the king’s private chamber and waved away the door-thegn. The man hesitated, but was not brave enough to speak out against the wishes of the archbishop of Canterbury. All had seen the king leave the hall with his bride and knew his intent, and so it occurred to Alvar that they might not have barred the chamber door. Dunstan obviously thought so too, and reached out to push it open.

  The royal couple had moved beyond the doorway only as far as it had taken to kick the door shut. Alfreda was standing, with her skirts gathered in her hands. The king was kneeling in front of her, his face between her thighs.

  Alvar leaped forward to stand behind Dunstan and block the view from the rest of the hall. Dunstan’s head turned as he looked from the motionless couple to the empty bed, still made and strewn with flowers. He must have envisaged that his admonishment would interrupt a coupling under the covers of the royal bed. Alvar leaned forward and looked past Dunstan’s reddening neck. Alfreda remained as she had been when the door crashed open, her head turned towards the archbishop, whose ear-tips were now purple.

  “F-f-fornicators!” he spat the Latin in his pulpit voice. When the echo died away he swept round and tried to quit the chamber. He pushed at Alvar, barely giving him a glance, but the earl was slow to move out of the way.

  Alvar whispered into Dunstan’s ear. “It looks as if the king no longer wishes to wear his hair shirt,” he said, before he bowed low and stood aside to let him pass.

  Alfreda did not move, but stared at Edgar. He was still on his knees; he looked up at her and said, “No man owns me. I will have you.”

  Edgar lowered his head once more, hands reaching to grab her buttocks, pulling her nearer his face, and Alvar stepped forward to close the door for them. As the door swung, the queen shuddered and bit her lip. Alvar secured the latch and walked back to the feasting tables, unable to shake the notion that Alfreda, at the moment of exquisite pleasure, had been smiling out into the hall; not at Edgar’s head, but at Dunstan’s back.

  Alvar took his seat at the witan meeting and looked across at the queen. Her face was flushed but it was not from any warm afterglow. He had seen the look before, on the faces of men who had fought and survived their first battle.

  She gave a tiny nod and he twitched the flicker of a smile. He turned at the touch of a hand on his shoulder.

  “Here I am, come to take my seat amongst all the doughty lords of the kingdom. I hope they will be gentle with me.” Beorn of Northumbria sat down beside him.

  Alvar grinned. “They can see how tall you are, and I have told them how skilfully you wield a sword. I think you will have no trouble from them, Earl Beorn.”

  Beorn gave a shy smile in response to the use of his new title. “It still sounds odd to my ears.” He reached up to move his hand over his shiny baldness. “It sounds odd to some others, too, given that I was not born in Northumbria.”

  Alvar chuckled. “Welcome to the mind of our king. He flatters the Northumbrians by giving them a lord who has lived amongst them, but he made you earl of York because you were not born there. He means to show your folk that his word is law in the north, and that they would do well to remember it.”

  “If he truly wants to keep his name in the minds of the north folk, do you think he might like to go there once in a while? I have a sore arse from riding all this way.”

  “Edgar knows how far away it is, my friend, which is why he sends me so often in his stead. Even I cannot say for sure where Northumbria ends.”

  Beorn folded his arms across his bulky chest. “I wish the Scots could say the same, but they seem sure that the border is much further south. Let us hope that Edgar’s fleet and my weapon-men are enough to keep them away. The Greybeard of Chester shares my concerns, and I wanted to speak to him further, but I see that he is not here today.”

  Alvar looked around the hall. “No, neither is his thegn, Helmstan,” he said. He scanned the room again, once more along every bench, and into every corner, and cursed his brain for not believing what his eyes had told him five times that day already.

  Beorn continued. “The Greybeard has been unwell. He says that either the Scots or another winter will be the end of him; in the cold, his feet and legs redden and swell so that he cannot walk. Ah, here comes the king.” He sought confirmation of Alvar’s earlier instruction. “Wide awake?”

  “Oh yes,” Alvar said. Many a time he had watched as various members of the witan had fallen asleep and he would willingly have followed them into unconscious oblivion, but dared not, in case anyone wished to hear the opinion of the leading earl. The trick was to find something to engage the attention and focus intently upon it.

  The archbishop was sitting next to Edgar, making a supreme effort not to look directly at his king, and Alvar would have granted away
all of Shropshire to hear Dunstan’s shrift that day. The older man flicked glances around the room, but he also avoided looking at the queen. Alvar had no such compunction and was rewarded by a flirtatious smile whenever he made eye contact with Alfreda. This, he decided, would be his distraction today.

  Brandon, too, had difficulty keeping his eyes still. He sat up in his seat and stared at the doorway, only to slump down whenever anyone walked through it. Only when Bishop Oswald stalked into the meeting hall did the East Anglian allow his shoulders to settle and he sat back, relaxed, into his seat.

  With Oswald’s arrival the witan was complete. Edgar kissed his wife on the lips before he turned to address his audience in formal tones. “My kingdom is like a ploughed field.” He nodded and his blond hair, curling wildly underneath his coronet, swished to and fro as he moved his head. “The oxen keep it furrowed, but the oxen need to be fed if they are to work strongly.”

  Alvar was tempted to make a joke about feeling the weight of the yoke, but he thought better of it.

  Brandon cleared his throat and said, “Do you mean that we are not all pulling as we should, my lord?”

  The others examined their nails, stared out of the window, or gazed at their knees, and Alvar chuckled.

  Edgar smiled and adopted the tone which Alvar had heard him use in the nursery when talking to his son. “Far from it, far from it. I am blessed to have the wisest and most hard-working witan. Indeed I often hear of your tireless work in East Anglia, Foster-brother.”

  Brandon’s shoulders came down and he looked across at Oswald, who nodded and smiled.

  “No, my lords, it is time to feed you all once more and I think there is none so hungry as my lord of middle Mercia.”

  Alvar, distracted by the silent exchange between Oswald and his pet, now sat upright and looked at Edgar.

  The king said, “The Scots are snarling, and the lord of Chester is old and ill. I need strong leadership on the northern edges of our lands and so I gift northern Mercia to Lord Alvar. And henceforth, he and Earl Beorn answer to no man other than me.”

  Alvar sat still and breathed hard as he tried to suppress a grin. He looked across at Beorn, and gave him a nod so tiny that it was little more than a downward movement of his eyes before he looked back up again.

  Brandon’s mouth gaped like that of a landed fish.

  Edgar waved his arm and mouthed the word “Wine”, and one of his thegns moved from the doorway. The thegn dispatched a slave-boy to the kitchen, then moved to the scribes’ table.

  Edgar said, “I have the new law code to show you all.” He waited while the thegn collected a pile of documents from the scribe and handed one copy each to Alvar, Beorn, Brandon, Dunstan and Oswald.

  Alvar scanned the charter. The prologue mentioned Edgar’s desire to remedy the effects of the recent pestilence and famine. After laying out several measures to that effect, and making nationwide provision for the protection of property and the prosecution of thieves, the new law code stated clearly, as Alvar had promised Beorn, that the Danes would retain their own laws because of ‘your loyalty, which you have always shown me.’ Alvar would look more fully at the content when he had more time to study the document, but it seemed to be a measured and considered response to the problems which beset the folk of England, and it acknowledged fully the debt owed to the northerners. In the last clause, Edgar even managed to smooth Brandon’s feathers, for, immediately after the command for Beorn to enforce this new law in the north, the final instruction was for copies to be given to Alvar and Brandon for distribution throughout England. They were the only three noblemen mentioned by name.

  Edgar paused long enough for his ministers to read the salient points, then he cleared his throat. “Now, my lord Archbishop, how goes the work at Muchelney Abbey?”

  The sudden change of subject caused everyone to look at Dunstan, just as the slave-boy came back with the wine. The door banged open and the archbishop flinched.

  With a flicker of a smile, Edgar said, “My lord, be still; it is but a door opening loudly. What is there to fear from that?”

  Alvar knew that this time, there was no need for the punishment of exile. This teasing remark was an assertion of Edgar’s confidence to run his own affairs, and that he would not be cowed by the archbishop. This was all that would be said on the matter, ever. Alvar looked at the queen, who smiled and raised a perfectly arched eyebrow.

  Dunstan gave his shoulders a slight shake and took a deep breath. “The work at M-Muchelney shows the piety of the m-m-monks of Glastonbury, my lord, and the fastness with which they cleave to God’s word. They have wrought true wonders, with the abbot’s house an outstanding sight. The rooms are flooded with light; the d-drawings on the walls are dyed with…”

  “You are glad then. Good.” Edgar held up a hand to silence Dunstan and directed his next question to Athelwold. “And at Winchester, my lord Bishop?”

  Athelwold lifted his head, his features illuminated by a childlike smile. He had lost none of his enthusiasm for his reforms. “Well, although it has been less than a year since I became bishop at Winchester, we have sent away all the secular clergy and put in their stead monks from my beloved Abingdon…”

  Alvar’s attention had begun to wander as soon as Dunstan had started to expound on the delights of the decoration at Muchelney. He looked across at the queen, watching as she took a sip from her gold cup and made a show of licking her lips slowly before setting the cup down, and letting her hand slide down the stem before she let go.

  “Winchester is now run wholly by monks, my lords.”

  Athelwold’s voice penetrated his thoughts and at the mention of a monastic cathedral Alvar sat forward. “What about the clerks who were there before?”

  Edgar allowed no time for an answer but turned to speak to Oswald. “What of the work at Westbury-on-Trim?”

  Oswald licked his lips. “The building of the new church goes well and the abbot teaches the monks thoroughly. We work more slowly than Bishop Athelwold but I tell God what we need and…”

  Alvar drummed his fingers on the table.

  Oswald stared at him as though he were an irksome insect. “Is there something wrong, my lord of Mercia?”

  Alvar said, “A new monastery at Westbury is no worry to me, my lord Bishop. But if any more of the clerks at Worcester were to go the same way as those here at Winchester…”

  Edgar raised his hands for silence and stood up. “My good bishops, my heart sings to hear of your good work. A strong Church is a sign of a kingdom at one with itself. Who amongst us would not welcome that?” He looked round the room and made eye contact with each of them, but he allowed his gaze to linger a little longer on Alvar. “And so we are all glad.” He held out his hand to Alfreda. “My lady, I think we are done here.”

  The scrape of chairs on the wooden floor drowned out lone voices. Brandon gyrated on his feet like a child fighting a full bladder. He spoke out loudly against the background noise. “My lord? My lord King? If I might speak?”

  Edgar turned to listen. He lifted his fingers to cover the hand that Alfreda had slipped through the crook of his arm.

  “The lord of Chester is not the only one who is ailing. The lord known as the Red Lord is not a young man, and his lands once belonged to my father.” He looked down at the floor.

  Alvar clenched and unclenched his fists. “The lands of which you speak are in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and they belong to Mercia. Your kin never held them by right.”

  Alfreda looked up at Alvar, raised her free hand and put her finger to her lips. She tugged the king’s arm. “My lord, if you are all done here?”

  Brandon shot a look at his elder brother, Thetford, who was lurking by the door, and then he tried once more. “But my lord, I was the only one who was not given any more lands.”

  Edgar opened his mouth but Alfreda said, “Dear husband, I should be tired after such a day as this, but I find I am not sleepy. Yet, I feel I should lie down for a while. Shal
l we, my lord?”

  Alvar suppressed the urge to laugh. Edgar might feel the pull of loyalty to his foster-family, but if his cock led him in one direction, not even familial duty would turn him and make him go in another.

  Alfreda led the king away, and Brandon left the room and went straight to his brother. They conferred, heads low.

  Alvar rubbed his hands together and walked out of the room. As he passed the East Anglians he said, “What is wrong, my lord Brandon? I cannot believe that this is the first time you have been bested by a lady.”

  Thetford straightened up. “Have a care my lord, for we East Anglians do not forgive our foes.”

  “No? Neither, it seems, does the queen.”

  Alvar left the hall still smiling, but it was a brief and hollow respite. He had not yet overcome his aversion to the scheming and politicking of the court, and although Alfreda had persuaded Edgar to overlook Brandon’s request, the victory was not complete as long as Edgar continued to allow the eviction of clerics. But another facet had been added to the long list of Alvar’s duties, and for once it would not be the least bit odious; his new responsibilities would send him to Cheshire and he had no desire to linger at court any longer.

  The light in the scriptorium was better than in some of the other outbuildings, but Brandon’s mood would have darkened the brightest space. Dunstan allowed him to pace the floor a number of times and hoped that, by watching him, he could relieve some of his own frustration. The day’s events had left him feeling as if he had been asked to swallow a drink made from hemlock. He waited while Brandon completed a few more circuits of the small building, and then swept his arm out to indicate the chair in front of him. Brandon sat down untidily, slumping forward and scattering the equipment from the writing desk onto the floor. Dunstan, torn between indulgence for his friend’s mood and his abhorrence of any defacement of tomes of learning, stepped forward and knelt down to rescue the wax tablets and writing styli. A pestle and mortar, used for grinding the mineral pigments, had disgorged its fine powdery contents which could not be scooped up for reuse without contamination from bits of grit and dust. The ink pots had, fortunately, been empty, and Dunstan picked them up and laid them carefully back on the table.