Alvar the Kingmaker

by Annie Whitehead

  The boy handed him a written message, but it lay unopened, unnecessary, in Alvar’s hands, as Wulfgar stumbled the few steps back to them.

  “It is Helmstan’s. It is Helmstan who is dead.”

  Cheshire

  “He all but fell from his horse after riding from Peterborough that night. It was hard for him to breathe and when we got him to his bed, we found that two of his ribs were broken. We bound him tight, and he lay abed all through winter, and we thought that he would heal come springtime. It was a hard winter, as you know. Many folk starved.” Káta looked up. “We lost Burgred. And Brunstan.”

  She lowered her head again and stared at her hands. “We took care that our lord did not go hungry. But he never regained his strength. His breathing grew hoarse, even though we gave him cheese with dry bread to help his weak chest. Then the fever came to Ashleigh.” She fidgeted in her chair. “So many were sick with it, and we did not let them near our lord but he had no strength. A cough came that would not be soothed, not even with honey and dill seed, and it worsened, and brought with it so much blood…”

  Siferth reached forward and took her hand. “There is no more to tell, Uncle.”

  Alvar swallowed to shift whatever was stuck in his throat. He blinked and turned away. The hall was full of more bundles and belongings than there were people, and it seemed that as well as the house staff, many villagers had been finding comfort from sleeping in the hall since the death of their lord.

  He took a steadying breath and turned back to Káta. “My lady, what can I say to ease your hurt?” Helmstan had bequeathed most of his lands to her, knowing that Siferth would be gifted his own by the queen, and there might be some comfort in the realisation that she was wealthy enough to take care of all their dependants. But when would she surrender to personal grief?

  “I did worry, because I should have burned the crop when he died; folklore says that in this way the house and those who still dwell within will be safeguarded.” She looked up at him. “But my folk were hungry.”

  “Lady, you fed your folk. You are wise enough to know when folklore is wrong and when it is right. Look to yourself now. Your folk will not mind.”

  She gave the smallest of smiles. “I know that. I thank you for your kind words. I did not know what to do. You have ever been so… And Helmstan was always… It is harder than I thought to be on my own after so many years.”

  He counted on his fingers but she stopped him.

  “Twenty, my lord. We were wed the year after you were gifted your earldom.”

  “For almost all those years he was my steadfast thegn. And he was a friend for even longer. You are right, Lady, it is hard to be without him.”

  They sat together by the fire. The light from the windows sank away and the hearth-fire lit the evening.

  Siferth was the first to break the silence. “I think I liked best the tales of Offa and how he fought off the Welsh. You would have liked those too, Uncle. Then there was Penda, who fought the Northumbrians and all Christians. And I liked the tales of the lady of the Mercians and her husband, the lord Ethelred. Father said to me many times that he hoped that Lord Æthelred would become as strong a leader as his namesake. And there was the Greybeard, my father’s lord. How saddened Father was to lose his lord…”

  Káta offered no memories to share. Instead, she stared into the fire and smiled. “Yes, he liked that.”

  Alvar sat forward. “My lady?”

  She shook her head and settled her hands in her lap. Her head moved first one way and then the other. She gave a small laugh and said, “That was ever his way.”

  Alvar pushed his chair back. Though the hall was full, Káta was somewhere on her own and he felt he should not be watching. He did not wish to add to her misery and he searched his memory for a harmless anecdote, one which would not initiate fresh pain. He slapped his hands on his thighs. “Wales. Did I ever tell you? One time by the fire, he told me that I must have a soft arse if I had a need to sit so near the heat and leave him to freeze behind me. That was after he had stepped in the path of a wounded boar and put his sword through it before it could kill me. Once he found a finch, dropped from a nest, and he kept it warm in his great hands all night. And he was the only one who did not whinge about the cold wind at Peterborough…” The next word felt solid and would not pass his throat. Alvar, like Siferth before him, fell silent.

  “I find myself thinking,” Káta said, “How I never minded when he was so often away from home. So to stop the weeping, I play a game, that he is away again now and that any time I will hear him riding in, but it does not work, for I know in my heart that he is gone.”

  “Mother, can you not try to get some rest?”

  Alvar said, “You look as if you have had many sleepless nights. You do not look well. Will you have a nap?”

  She nodded and stood up. “If I can. You will bide here a while?”

  Alvar looked at Siferth.

  “Uncle and I have to ride to a witenagemot, Mother. We must leave at morning light and even then we will be late getting there.”

  “The queen will be waiting for you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I must thank you all the more for making time to come when you have so little of it, my lord.”

  He reached for her hand. She tightened her fingers around his and he covered them with his other hand. “How could I not?”

  Kirtlington, Oxfordshire

  It was dusk when they arrived, but all around were the signs of a settlement swollen to twice its size. Tents were flapping in the breeze, pitched next to new buildings with unfinished roofs. Horses had been tethered too close together outside the stables. Alvar said, “I will warn you now that all the men of the witan will ask you about your father but do not worry, for I have not forgotten what it was like to lose my mother when I was fifteen. I will not leave your side.”

  They rode through the gateway and Alvar put his head to one side. “That is not the din of a merry gathering. He looked about him and said, “It looks as though you will be spared the ordeal of speaking about your father. Something is not right here.”

  They handed their horses to a groom, and Alvar waylaid a monk scurrying across from the church to the hall. “What is going on, Brother?”

  The monk stopped, looked at Alvar’s fine clothes, and gave a deep bow. “My lord, at midday the bishop of Crediton fell down dead.”

  “Sideman? Good God, that was unforeseen. Edward will be heartbroken to have lost his teacher.”

  “The king is more, how shall I say, wroth, than upset, my lord. Forgive me.” The monk hurried inside.

  Alvar and Siferth followed him. Inside the cramped hall, the air was warm. Most of the onlookers were pressed against the walls, seeking to distance themselves from the argument. King Edward was standing on the dais, red in the face as he shouted at Dunstan, who was standing with his head bowed.

  “I am the king, do you not understand that? I say it will be Abingdon.”

  “I hear you, my lord, but the g-good man’s bishopric was, after all, Crediton.”

  Alvar spotted Wulfgar amongst the reluctant witnesses and went to stand next to him. “What was the taper that sparked this fire?”

  “It is barely believable,” Wulfgar said, turning his head as if looking for a means of escape. “They are fighting like hounds over the bishop’s bones.”

  “What is there to fight about?”

  “From what I can gather, Sideman wished to be buried at Crediton, but, and here we can only wonder why, Edward has said that his body should be taken to Abingdon. Dunstan seeks to make him think otherwise.”

  Alvar shook his head. “This is not a worthy…” He was distracted by the frantic look of despair on the archbishop’s face. Dunstan stared at him as if in silent appeal, and Alvar knew that they were both recalling the incident so many years ago, when the then bishop had fought with the Fairchild over the bones of the late king, the Fairchild’s uncle. Nothing that had happened in the interven
ing years had loosened Alvar’s notion of right and wrong, and if Dunstan needed his help to ensure that the bishop was buried in the spot he had requested, then so be it. If Dunstan was finally realising that he could not manipulate every king, Alvar was not in the business of gloating.

  Siferth said, “His folk are hungry, fighting for their old-rights. Many things lie rotting for need of settlement by law, and look how the lord Edward whiles away his time.”

  Alvar grunted his agreement and stepped forward, intending to make his way to the dais.

  But Queen Alfreda came to stand beside them. “My stepson was in a sore temper anyway; this afternoon he shouted at me so loudly I thought my ears would burst.”

  Little Æthelred clutched her hand and said, “It frightened me.”

  Alvar looked once more at the dais and he laid a hand on Alfreda’s arm. “What did Edward say to you?”

  She shuddered. “He sought me out when the bishop died and told me about the night two years ago, when they came to tell him that his father was dead, and how once he heard that he was to be king, he knew that he had no more to fear from me or mine. But then he put his mouth right near to mine and cursed me, saying that I oft-times came into his sleep, even now.” She shook her head. “My son is no longer a threat to him and he knows this, so I do not understand what he meant about his dreams.”

  It was not hard to explain. Alvar said, “You took his mother’s place and he knew that he should loathe you, but you are lovely to look upon. You are all that is needed to fill a man’s sleep with yearning. He will not have known which was strongest; his hatred of you or his longing for you.”

  “No, that cannot be. Truly, do you think that he felt…?”

  “I do not know why you wonder at it. He is not the only man in the witan to think of you in that way.”

  Alfreda tilted her head and patted Alvar’s arm. “I have always known that some…” She looked up and her smile faded. She released her hold on him. “My lord, you are not yourself this night.”

  Siferth was leaning against Alvar as if he would fall if he stood alone. Alvar reached round and dropped his arm over the boy’s shoulder. “My lady, forgive me. We have come here at the saddest of times.”

  Alfreda looked from one to the other. “Indeed you look like you share a sadness that is deep and dear to you both.” Her gaze flicked over both of their faces once more. “No, it cannot be. Siferth is not… Is not your son… Do you have a wife elsewhere?” Her mouth creased as her face shrank into a frown. “I wonder that you have the time, Lord Alvar.” In even terser tones she said, “Although I understand now why you have been so long away from court these past two years, when we have needed you here.”

  Wulfgar turned his head, wrenching his gaze from the spectacle on the dais to look at Alvar. Siferth broke free from Alvar’s grip and stood with his chin raised in front of the man he called ‘Uncle.’ Alfreda squinted as if in expectation of a powerful blow.

  Alvar looked at them all in turn and said, “No, my lady. For the last two years I have been in the saddle. But I only wish that I could say yes, for the truth is that this youth’s father was the most steadfast, stalwart, and hard-working man that ever lived and he rightly loved his son, for he knew the man that he would become. I would be proud to call Siferth my son.”

  Wulfgar lowered his shoulders and exhaled. Alfreda inclined her head and left them to their grief.

  Siferth smiled and said, “Those were kind words, Uncle.”

  “It was but the truth, youngling. You know me, I always speak the…”

  Edward’s shout was now a screech. “I am your lord King and I will speak the king’s words. For once in my life I will not be told what to do by a churchman, living or dead!”

  Alvar glanced around the hall at the other men of the witan. They were either looking at their shoes or had developed a sudden interest in their ale cups. He was sure he spoke the thoughts of many of them when he said, “Holy Jesus, he is not yet sixteen. Can we only hope that he goes the way of his forebears and decides against living to an old age?”

  Chapter Nineteen AD978

  Calne, Wiltshire

  Bishop Athelwold looked up, his eyes swimming milky with age. “You swore to me in the winter of last year that there would be no more of this. Now here we are with only two weeks until Easter-month and all is far from well.” His old friend met his gaze with a small smile that wrenched Alvar’s guts more than any knife blade. “Edgar’s was a peaceable reign but, free from Viking raids, you all turned in on yourselves. Now, without Edgar, it falls to you to put a stop to all the wrangling.”

  Alvar looked around the dingy hall at the assembled witan members. Many thegns had come, not just from the local area, as was usual, but from all over the country. It was a visible demonstration of the strength of feeling throughout the land, but it made for a crowded meeting hall. Some grimaced as they sat down on wobbly chairs, while others ran their hands across badly planed table-boards. Some late arrivals came to the top of the stairs and squinted in the poor light of the upstairs chamber. Few of them spoke.

  Alvar turned back to the bishop and said, “I gave you my oath that there would be no more fighting, but there is still much unrest. I seek only to calm it.” He waved his arm in a wide sweep and said, “Look at them; they are in a grim mood indeed. Here are men who have watched starvation kill their kin, their friends, and their thralls, while all the time food-tolls must be paid to the monasteries, and they have come to ask Edward to put it right.”

  “You have stirred them up.”

  “No. They came to me.” Alvar shook his head. “This was not of my doing, I swear to you. In Edgar’s day, men sought me out, knowing that I had the king’s ear. Edward will listen to no man but Dunstan, but men with grievances still come to me because they know that I will not sit idly by. I have served kings all my life. I wish to do so again but…” He held his hands up and let them fall to his sides.

  His old friend nodded. “I understand. Some say that Dunstan might be rueing the day that he set the king-helm on Edward’s head.”

  “Will he heed us now, do you think?”

  Athelwold sighed and put his arms out, palms up, lifting one then the other like weighing pans. “He feels he must stand true to the man he made a king, but he also knows that Edward would leave him like a lamb before the wolves.”

  “That is all I can ask for; that he might listen to what we have to say.”

  Athelwold shook his head. He stood up and leaned on his wooden staff. “I have given you more hope than I meant to. The archbishop would rather hold hot coals than stand before you all and tell you that he was wrong.”

  “I thought last year that I had felt the frost begin to thaw.”

  “Then you were mistaken. And whilst you might have blunted Oswald’s teeth, you have not stilled his tongue. He sends many letters from Worcester outlining his wishes, and Dunstan reads them all.”

  Alvar said, “Then I must keep on listening to what my heart tells me.”

  Dunstan and the other bishops entered the chamber and Athelwold went to join them.

  The other witan members made their way to their places. One said, “I should not be climbing stairs with my old weary legs. Why has Edward brought us here? Can anyone remember the last time a moot was held here?”

  His companion said, “It is so dim in here that I can barely see my way to my seat. And it stinks.”

  Alvar looked around him. The straw on the floor was clean but not evenly spread. “I do not think the household knew we were coming until yesterday.”

  Edwin, the new young earl of Kent, tugged at a warped shutter but it stuck fast. He banged it with his flat palm and swore. “By the holy bloody rood...”

  Alvar said, “It is a shame it is so stiff; you look as if you would like to shut someone’s head in it. Tell me; are the Rochester monks still cursing you to hell?”

  Edwin walked over to him, bending low to avoid a beam.

  Alvar looked at the
younger man’s spotty chin, and circled his aching shoulders; the shutter was not the only thing grown stiff with age.

  Edwin said, “I was as even-handed as I could be at that hundred-moot last year, but the monks were so sure of my finding in their favour that they were cross when I did not. All of a sudden, I was accused of stealing their land. It was a little unforeseen, to tell you the truth.”

  Alvar smiled at the understatement. “You are not the first to come to me with such a tale. I only wish I could say that you will be the last, but that rests with the archbishop and whether he will heed us.”

  Edwin grinned. “You have a way of getting men to see things your way…” He closed his mouth and bowed low.

  Alvar turned round. Edward shuffled past them, his newly acquired broadness of shoulder dragging his body into a hunch; a puppy trying to control its adult body. In the small room, chairs collided as men scraped them back. When Edwin of Kent sat down, he put his elbows on the table and it rocked on uneven legs. Wulfgar tried to stretch his legs out and only succeeded in kicking Alvar. Alvar said, “Get a window open before we all choke for want of clean air.”

  Wulfgar waved to a serving-boy. The lad could not get through the jumbled mass of tables, so Wulfgar pointed to the window and mimed the action.

  Dunstan remained on his feet and as the coughs and murmurs subsided, he looked round the room and focused on Alvar. “My lords, I would have all words spoken out loudly this day, not whispered in dark corners.”

  Alvar nodded and stood up. “As you ask, so shall it be. Every man here knows my thoughts on the theft of Mercian land and my rights therein, so there is naught new to tell about that. But other men, from beyond Mercia, have come to me seeking redress. Leofric of Ramsey reports how Archbishop Oswald ate and drank like a king there, while outside the abbey, the folk starved. My own thegn, Wulfgar of Munford, has kin from Worcester who were made homeless by the archbishop’s own kin from the east. Thegn Ethelnoth’s lands were taken from him and given to the abbot of Malmesbury these three years gone.” He took a deep breath and swallowed, but the musty air stuck in his throat. He coughed. “I also hear of folk whose land at Taunton was taken from them and given to the bishop of Winchester, and that even though our good queen, the lady Alfreda, spoke on their behalf, they are still homeless and hungry.”