Shieldwall

by Justin Hill

  Godwin did not know.

  Edmund sent emissaries to the Walsh and Scots, the men of Cumbraland and Ealdseaxum the Flems and Britons. ‘Half defence is diplomacy,’ his father had told him, and for once Ethelred was not wrong. The people had hope in King Edmund because he had proven himself a great warrior, and his first priority was setting the defence of Wessex in good order.

  Godwin and Edmund spent most of November in Oxeneford. On the 20th they celebrated the Feast of St Edmund the Martyr with a mass. The mass had a special significance, and the monks wept as they welcomed the king and his entourage. Outside the abbey gates, a great crowd had arrived to see their young king.

  Edmund had tears in his eyes. He trembled as the great crowd stood before him. He remembered the angry men who had shouted at his father but for him there was a hush, then one by one the crowd knelt before him.

  ‘No king ever did more to help his people,’ they called out.

  Edmund lifted them gently to their feet.

  ‘Will you lay hands on us?’ one sick woman called.

  Edmund felt God within him. He moved to the woman and stretched out his hand, and she flinched at his touch, just as the man who was possessed by Legion flinched at Christ’s hand.

  ‘Thank you, lord,’ she said, and Edmund looked Christ-like as he stood and touched the long line of sick people, who limped and crawled and hobbled or were carried towards him.

  ‘Enough!’ Godwin said after a long time, but Edmund laid hands on each one, then blessed them.

  Edmund was keen to proclaim his law codes and he sent for Archbishop Wulfstan, who knew the laws of all the old kings, and wrote all four codes that Ethelred published. Godwin sat with him and talked of how they would enforce the law.

  ‘Hold courts each time you stay at a manor. Show the people that you will enforce the law on all and sundry. If any resist …’ Godwin paused. There were many options. He did not feel quite comfortable imposing exile or outlawry, but it was necessary.

  Edmund patted him. ‘No one will resist. Not for a while at least. When it comes, let us decide what to do.’

  Godwin and Edmund decided that the king would hold a great Christmas feast at Wincestre, where he would be enthroned again in peace and proclaim his law code for all the folk of Wessex.

  But there were rumours of men seizing the lands of men who had died at Assandune and Edmund took Godwin aside. ‘I want this put to an end before Christmastide. Take men, return to Sudsexe and see that all is in order.’

  Godwin nodded, but he had a bad feeling about the trip.

  ‘I have no one else, Godwin. But fear not: I will not take Eadric back.’

  Edmund smiled. It took Godwin back to a younger, more carefree time.

  ‘It is as you have always told me. I am king now. I need men who will help govern the shires when I am away. I want you to help me. You are loved by all the men in Sudsexe. Set the land in order. Here, take my seal.’

  Edmund took the ring from his finger. Godwin weighed it in his palm. It fit his third finger.

  ‘Keep it on,’ Edmund said. ‘You deserve to wear it.’

  Edmund listed all the things he wished to be done and Godwin committed them to memory. Godwin was charged with setting Sudsexe to order and riding to Canturburie and Lundenburh to ensure that Archbishop Wulfstan and Queen Emma were brought safely to the feast.

  ‘Eadwig is already on his way. Make sure Edward and Alfred are brought, by force if need be,’ Edmund said. ‘Make sure my men are holding the treasury. Who’s the mint master there?’

  ‘Godric.’

  Edmund nodded. ‘He’s a good man.’

  ‘Do you think he can resist the White Queen?’

  ‘I don’t see Emma marrying a moneyer. She won’t sit quiet. We ought to get rid of her somehow. She’s no maid, but she’s a few child-bearing years left to her. There must be some prince in Saxony we can send her to. She can pour all her ambition into a couple of Saxon whelps.’

  Godwin nodded. There was a lot to do, and they could not risk civil war, or Queen Emma trying to take advantage of Edmund’s weakness.

  It was a gloomy and misty morning when Godwin and his men mounted up. The air was still – the migrating birds had all left – and the thistle heads were white in the fields.

  ‘Ride hard!’ Edmund said. ‘I shall see you at Wincestre. It will be the most magnificent feast. I shall send the finest huntsmen to start catching hind.’

  Godwin paused to lean down from the horse and embrace Edmund. Then he waved and urged his horse to follow the rest of the company, who were already disappearing into the fringes of the winter forest.

  Something made Godwin turn to look back. King Edmund Ironside, bravest and most resolute of English kings, stood in his hall door, hand raised in farewell.

  As Godwin caught his men up, he saw a fat old hare was sunning itself on a rock. As Godwin approached the hare hopped slowly back into the bushes. If I had hawk or hound, Godwin thought, but the thing was too old to roast.

  So Godwin left Edmund, with peace in his heart. He wished for nothing more than a quiet year or two: hunting with hounds; marriage perhaps, to some good catch that Edmund nudged his way. The thought depressed him a little. If Kendra had been a fine-born girl he would have married her. But marriage was political. Love was saved for mistresses.

  Godwin would do his best. He would raise a hall in Wincestre, provide for all the families of the men who had died. He could raise children and hunt where Alfred had hunted. He imagined Edmund coming up to Mykelhal. He could see them both sitting in his grand hall, feet stretched out towards the fierce blaze, fine ale in hand, and good meat with plenteous spices, remembering the good days.

  The next morning dawned damp and still foggy. No note of bird, no motion, except deep in the thickets, and stillness except for the drip of trees, like tears.

  There was rain in the hills and the ford into Hamtunscir was flooded and matted with fallen trees. Godwin and his men found a hall to rest, and Godwin lay down, stretched out, pulled his hood over his face and closed his eyes.

  He closed his fingers on the king’s gold signet ring and clutched it as he slept.

  Edmund woke and stretched both arms over his head. Ealdgyth had arrived that morning with fifty of her family. Their loyalties had been strangely divided, but it seemed an odd irony that Alderman Elfhelm, from beyond the grave, had conspired to have two of his womenfolk – Knut’s wife Elfgifu and Edmund’s Ealdgyth – married to the kings of a divided England.

  ‘They’re delighted,’ Ealdgyth said. ‘They are falling over themselves. Men take them seriously now. Eadric does not have long. Knut will wring his scrawny neck.’

  Edmund laughed. He liked this brusque northern woman with her fair hair and broad shoulders and clear blue eyes. Baby Edward was in fine health. Ealdgyth was pregnant again, five months gone.

  ‘You’ve a fertile womb,’ he told her.

  Ealdgyth laughed. ‘Sigeferth was married to me for three years and I never bore him a child. I am married to you for barely two years and bang’ – she clapped her hands together – ‘I bear two children.’

  That night the hall was quiet. Edmund sent his men to their beds. He sat with Ealdgyth and a scop came to sing to them. Edmund called for a pot of wine. It was sweet and dark in the candlelight. Edmund filled a horn with unwatered wine and took a long drink.

  Baby Edward lay in a cot on the table. His nursemaid stood ready in case he should wake.

  Edmund and Ealdgyth stood over their son. The boy was now a toddler who said ‘Mama’ and ‘Dada’, and ‘kinga’ as well.

  Edmund left his son on the table, next to his horn of wine. He needed to use the privy, and he took a lantern and held it aloft as he stepped out into the night. The stars were clouded over. The moon hid her face. She could not watch.

  Edmund held the lantern, a pale light against such great darkness, as he strode to the privy. It was a royal privy, with seat and bucket of lime to throw down to dampen d
own the stink of the midden pit.

  Edmund pulled the door open. He hung the lantern on the peg and it filled the small space with a soft yellow light and the lamp-shadows swung back and forth.

  Waiting in the stink below, a killer stood, spear in hand, his nose bunged up with oily rags. The midden door opened and a man came in. The killer peered up and saw the king’s face as he unbuckled his belt and pushed his trousers down, lifted his kirtle as he lowered himself.

  The spearman winced as he was splattered with royal shit and Edmund let out a long, slow fart.

  He gripped his spear. One blow would do it. The lantern cast just enough light for him to see his target. God save our souls, he thought, and drove the spear upwards.

  The scream woke Baby Edward.

  A single eerie scream, like a vixen bark, but it was no fox. Ealdgyth’s skin goose-pimpled. She shot to her feet.

  ‘The king!’ she said, and ran to the door.

  Men were shouting. The privy door fell heavily open and Edmund staggered out, his legs bare, fell to the floor, rolled on to his back, one arm falling outwards, the other remaining folded on his chest. And then he lay, with his eyes still open, as if catching the last glimpse of the precious world, or looking for a friend, or a kind word to soothe his going.

  Edmund was dead before the first man reached him. Ealdgyth put her hand to her mouth. ‘Cover him!’ she cried.

  Someone saw the killer running through the gloom, stinking wet footsteps betraying his path.

  Doom caught up with him before he reached the manor walls. Swords rang out, the blades shone in the moonlight.

  Ealdgyth ran inside the hall, grabbed a naked sword and stood over her child as the hearth’s flames licked red and yellow, one over another, and the dry wood crumbled.

  ‘Search the place!’ she told the king’s men. ‘There may be another. Let the dogs out. And bring his body in. I will clean it.’

  She sat abruptly down. There was so much to think of.

  ‘We need Godwin,’ she said. She took off her brooch, a fine piece of silver and gold knotwork. ‘Here! Take this token. Godwin will recognise it. Tell him what horrible fate has befallen us. Tell him to come with all speed.’

  As soon as the words left her mouth Ealdgyth worried. Could she trust Godwin? She saw murder and manslaughter everywhere, but a sane voice spoke to her: ‘Do not fear, Ealdgyth. You can trust Godwin.’

  *

  Godwin stopped on the borders of Hamtunscir and stared at the flooded river. The river remained in spate. Godwin looked at the swirling waters and laughed that Nature should conspire to keep him away from home. He would have to ride north. Perhaps he would head to Lundenburh first and work his way back round through Sudsexe.

  The Downs rose up against the flat grey sky. There was no sun, not even a rook’s harsh call to break the stillness. But as he stood and looked into the brown and swirling waters, Godwin heard the sound of galloping hooves.

  The sound stood out against the silent country. Godwin listened to it. A single horse, riding fast. His skin prickled with alarm. No one rode so hard to bring good news. Eadric has invaded, he thought. Knut has broken his oaths already.

  I will not live through another battle, Godwin thought. The spark of life was too low within him. Another battle would claim his soul, and even knowing this Godwin knew that he would fight.

  Godwin turned his horse. He stood in the middle of the road and waited. He did not know the horseman, but the man was waving madly.

  It took the man’s horse twenty paces to slow down, and it almost collided with Godwin’s. It came so close, stamping and snorting.

  ‘What haste?’

  The boy waved a brooch at Godwin, but he seemed to have lost his senses, as if shocked by the news he carried.

  ‘He is dead!’ he gasped. ‘Edmund is dead!’

  ‘Do not speak so!’ Godwin said.

  ‘It is true. Edmund is dead!’

  Godwin struck the boy across the cheek as if he were a fool.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am one of Elfhelm’s folk. We arrived with Ealdgyth two days ago. This is her brooch.’

  Godwin took it.

  ‘What is your news?’

  ‘The king is dead,’ the boy said. His eyes welled up with shame and despair. ‘He has been most foully murdered.’

  *

  Godwin rode hard back along the land he had come. The boy rode after him, but he did not turn or speak to him, and when Godwin arrived at the manor where he had left Edmund, he jumped from the horse and it staggered ten steps forward, then fell to the ground and lay breathing weakly. No one could get it back to its feet and it died before sunset.

  Godwin strode across the yard mud. He threw open the doors, strode inside, looked for the one he loved, saw other faces but they were all a blur. Only Ealdgyth could talk sense to him.

  ‘He is here,’ she said. ‘Inside this room.’

  There were three men on guard at the door. Godwin looked at them. He did not know them. Who were these people, what had happened?

  ‘They’re my people,’ Ealdgyth said.

  Edmund lay on the table. He was dressed in fine robes, a sword belt about his waist, his hair neatly combed, his moustache trimmed, his mouth bound with a cloth, silver coins – ETHELRED REX – weighted down his eyelids. The stillness was palpable. Everyone in the room was breathing, except King Edmund. He lay like stone, cold and quiet and absent.

  Godwin put his hand to Edmund’s brow and flinched at the touch.

  ‘He is dead,’ he said.

  The others looked at him as if he were mad.

  Godwin put his hand out again. He touched Edmund’s shoulder.

  ‘He is dead.’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Edmund, how is it that you are dead?’

  Ealdgyth had to pull Godwin away from the body. ‘Godwin, he is dead,’ she said. ‘He is dead. But his son lives. And his child lives yet inside my womb. His son lives. I stood guard. His son lives, but they will come for him.’

  ‘Who did this?’ Godwin demanded.

  They took him to see the murderer’s body, but there was little to see: he had been hacked into meat and offal; his corpse was stripped naked; his genitals had been cut off and the remains were smeared in the midden filth.

  Godwin turned the head over with the toe of his shoe.

  The gory face that looked up at him was unrecognisable.

  ‘I do not know him,’ he said.

  ‘It was Eadric,’ Ealdgyth said.

  Godwin didn’t answer.

  Open doth stand the gap where he stood

  Woeful the breach where grief floods in

  Godwin led the honour guard who escorted the coffin that contained Edmund’s body. Edmund’s favourite horse was brought forward and stood silent and quiet as the coffin was lashed to her back.

  ‘Where shall we take him? The alderman of Hamtunscir has already sent word to Knut to welcome him as king,’ one of the men said.

  Godwin paused. ‘We cannot take Edmund to Lundenburh,’ he said. ‘And he should not lie in Wincestre. Hamtunscir men were not loyal to him when he lived, so why should he honour them with his bones.’ Godwin stood still for a moment, then took the reins of Edmund’s horse, and the stallion stood by his side as if in solidarity.

  Godwin remembered a ride he had taken long ago, his first summer with Edmund and Athelstan, when they had ridden along the Ridgeway and looked out from that ancient pathway.

  ‘Glastonbury,’ Godwin said at last. ‘We shall bury him in St Dunstan’s Abbey. Edmund will lie happily there.’

  The coffin was loaded onto a cart, and when men knew who lay in that box they came out in silent crowds. Some wept and stretched out their hands, lamented his passing as if he was their own son.

  Godwin carefully took Edmund’s coffin across the Temese and up into the Berroscire downs. The Ridgeway was a set of rambling and interweaving tracks that followed the high ground straight across the bel
ly of England. It was the road of farmers and drovers and invaders and conquerors. Alfred himself had fought his greatest battle here, and today it was the path that led Edmund to his resting place, in hallowed ground.

  The grass grew tall on the humps and barrows of forgotten warriors. The wind blew stronger, the air was cleaner; where the grass had worn through, the chalk paths were white as old bone and the wind whistled softly through the dry winter grass and brittle thistles.

  The sun touched the land with gold, and all the creatures of the downs came out to watch the passing of their mighty king. Deer, hares, foxes and feathered birds came close, or sat vigil. In the distance, spare and elegant, was the White Horse of Offentone, galloping over the hillside: a white horse on a field of green, like the ancient flag of the Wessex kings, staring proudly north towards the Mercian enemies.

  Godwin paused there. To north and south and east and west there were fine views over the old heartland of Wessex. ‘Look at your kingdom, Edmund the Undefeated, Edmund Ironside, dearest of lords!’

  When they had first come here, Edmund and Godwin had been boys and they had spent the night in Wayland’s Smithy, waiting for the dwarf to come to the tomb of stone. But no one came, and they strode down in the morning alive and proud of besting the night shadows and the darkest fears of their imagination.

  Godwin could not face going back up there now; instead he followed the path down over the folds of the hillsides and camped in the ring pit, where men said the White Horse came to sleep at night.

  His men’s eyes were sad with reflected firelight. They stood and stared and looked for leadership, but Godwin was empty of words. He shook hands, pressed his cheek against other men’s, clenched his jaw shut, embraced weeping warriors, and when they reached Glastonbury at the last, Godwin and three others shouldered the heavy load: eight legs swinging as they carried the king’s coffin into the abbey, where it lay in state the night before the funeral.

  The monks filed past, and when they sang that evening, their songs were as sweet as angel’s voices.

  Godwin sat all night and stared at the coffin.