The Edge of Light

by Joan Wolf

  Winter came again, the season of safety in Wessex, when the Vikings returned home to their own lands and the snug warmth of their own firesides. With the coming of December, Alfred once more began to spend his afternoons poring over books with Judith.

  Ethelred could not understand him.

  “Judith makes me feel so stupid,” Alfred confessed when his brother expressed astonishment that Alfred was not going hunting yet again. “Do you know she can read Latin and French, and she is teaching me to read Saxon?”

  “You are not stupid.” Ethelred looked angry. “Why, I remember the time Mother promised a book to the first one of her children who learned to read it, and you, the youngest by far, were the one to win it!”

  “I did not learn to read, though.” There was color in Alfred’s cheeks that had not come from the heat of the fire. “I took the book to one of the monks from the minster and got him to read it to me a dozen times in one afternoon. I learned the words and when to turn the pages.” A quick golden glance flicked toward Ethelred’s face. “Then I took the book to Mother and recited it by heart. She thought I had read it, but I hadn’t.”

  Ethelred was grinning. “Little devil.”

  “Judith would never have done that,” Alfred said. “Judith would have learned to read the book.”

  “Judith is a girl. Girls do not have so many claims on their time as boys do,” Ethelred answered lightly.

  “Judith’s father has a palace school, Ethelred.” Alfred and his brother were standing together before the hearthplace in the royal hall of Eastdean while their father’s thanes gathered their hunting gear in preparation for a day in the forest. “Judith went to school when she was but five,” Alfred said. “She says that in France all of the palace children must go to school, must learn to read and write.” His small face set. “We should have a palace school in Wessex.”

  But Ethelred did not agree. “It is enough that a king can write his name, Alfred, so that he can sign royal charters. And every man should know the Latin of the Mass. But I fail to see the necessity of turning all the children of the royal household into clerks.”

  “Judith says it is the only way to learn wisdom.”

  “ ‘Judith says’! You are beginning to sound like Judith’s echo, Alfred.” Ethelred’s brown eyes were bright with annoyance. “Now, are you coming hunting with us today or no?”

  Alfred looked at the men behind him, so busy assembling their gear. The household dogs were running around the great room, sniffing among the rushes, excited at the prospect of going out. One of them came over and pushed his head under Alfred’s hand. He looked from the hound’s head to his brother, and grinned. “I am coming hunting.”

  “Good lad,” said Ethelred, and reached out to ruffle Alfred’s bright hair.

  In early January Ethelwulf fell ill. At first it did not seem serious, just a chill that would be cured by warmth and bed rest. Then he began to cough and lose weight. In less than a week it became clear that the illness was likely to prove mortal.

  The Bishop of Winchester, Ethelwulfs old friend Swithun, came to shrive him. His three youngest sons also gathered around his bedside, and in the presence of Bishop Swithun they promised once again to support and hold to each other for the good of Wessex.

  Ethelbald did not come, nor was he sent for.

  Ethelwulf died in the small hours of a wild and rainy January morning. As soon as the rain had slowed somewhat, they put his coffin on a wagon. Before and behind the tapestry-draped coffin rode a phalanx of the thanes of Ethelwulfs hearthband. Behind the thanes came a procession of mourners: Judith, Ethelbert and his wife, Ethelred, Alfred. The king’s family escorted his body to Winchester, where he had asked to be buried.

  Alfred rode beside Ethelred as their horses plodded stoically forward and, like the rest of the funeral party, he huddled in his cloak and under his hood. In order to reach Winchester they had to pass through the Weald, one of England’s greatest forests, but even the trees failed to give the riders protection from the driving rain.

  His father was dead. He would never see Ethelwulf again, never again hear Ethelwulf call him a gift from God, and smile that warm and loving smile… ,

  Tears welled in Alfred’s eyes and mixed with the rain on his cheeks. His head hurt and his stomach churned.

  Before him, he saw Judith raise her hand to pull her hood more closely over her head.

  What would happen to Judith now that his father was dead? He had heard Ethelbert and Ethelred talking about her the night their father had died, They had said that now her husband was dead, Judith would have to go back to France.

  He did not want Judith to go back to France.

  He did not want his father to be dead.

  A sob rose in his throat and he choked it back down. He would not cry. He was eight years old, almost a man. He would bear his losses like a man. Bravely, like Ethelred.

  He wished his head did not hurt so much.

  Ethelred endured the wet and the cold in stoic silence and, like Alfred, considered the future.

  The death of the gentle Ethelwulf would change little in Wessex. Ethelbald would be formally crowned, and Ethelbert would be named secondarius and take up the rule in Kent in Ethelwulfs stead.

  Judith would be sent back to her father in France. Doubtless Charles would have her married off within the year to further some other of his dynastic or financial schemes. Ethelred, who had a kind heart, felt a twinge of pity for the young girl who had been his father’s wife, Poor lass. But there was no place for her now in Wessex.

  As they were riding in through the gates of Winchester, the rain abruptly ceased. Ethelred turned to Alfred, who had been silent for quite some time, to say something heartening. He stopped when he saw the child’s face. “What is wrong?” he asked sharply.

  “Ethelred …” Alfred’s face, the skin of which was always faintly golden even in winter, looked very pale in the gray light. “My head hurts,” he said.

  Ethelred frowned and leaned over to put a hand on his brother’s brow. He was cold, not hot, “Where does it hurt?” he asked.

  “Here.” Alfred pointed to his forehead.

  “You are probably tired,” Ethelred said comfortingly, “This has been a difficult journey for you. Once you are warm and fed, you will feel better,”

  Alfred gave him a shadowy smile, but as he walked beside him to the princes’ hall, Ethelred noticed that Alfred held his head very still. Ethelred made him get into bed in one of the hall’s private sleeping rooms, where it would be quiet, and told him to rest.

  An hour later Alfred was in excruciating pain. Ethelred sat by his bed and held his hand and prayed that he would be all right. “It’s as if a hammer is beating and beating and beating …” the child whispered. He stared up at his brother and at Judith, who had come to stand beside Ethelred’s chair. “Am I going to die?” His eyes were very dark; his eye sockets looked bruised.

  “Of course you’re not going to die!” Judith was the one to answer. She spoke in Saxon and she sounded appalled. Alfred’s heavy, pain-filled eyes turned to Ethelred.

  “No, Alfred,” he said, and strove to make his voice matter-of-fact and calm. “You are not going to die.”

  “But when is it going to stop?”

  “I don’t know. Soon.” God, it had to stop soon. “Here,” Ethelred said, taking a cold cloth from Judith and holding it to Alfred’s forehead. “This will help.”

  The headache lifted, almost miraculously, an hour later. One minute Alfred was suffering and the next he looked at Ethelred out of dazed and wondering eyes and said, “It is gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Yes. No more hammering. It’s … gone.”

  “Thanks be to God,” Ethelred said fervently,

  “Yes,” said Alfred again. He lifted his head from the pillow as if to test that it no longer hurt, then placed it carefully back. His golden hair spread behind him like a halo.

  The door opened and Judith came in, carrying more cloth
s.

  “I’m better, Judith,” Alfred said immediately. “The headache is gone.”

  “Thanks be to God,” said Judith, in unconscious echo of Ethelred.

  Alfred looked from his father’s wife to his brother. “But … what caused it? I have never had a pain like that before.”

  Ethelred reached over and put a large hand on Alfred’s small one where it rested on the yellow wool rug that covered the bed. “It is not easy,” he said, “being made an orphan.” He added very gently, “I will take care of you, little brother. Never fear.”

  The child’s long, gold-tipped lashes fluttered, for a moment, hiding his eyes.

  “Are you tired?” Ethelred asked. “Could you sleep for a little?”

  Alfred nodded. Ethelred thought he looked very young and very fragile, and he bent over and kissed his little brother’s forehead gently, as if his head were as tender as a newborn babe’s. Alfred’s lashes lifted and he smiled.

  “Go to sleep, my dear,” Judith said from behind Ethelred, and the lashes lowered once again. Ethelred and Judith looked at each other, then walked together softly out of the room.

  Alfred listened to the familiar Latin of the Mass and bent his head so that his hair would swing forward to screen his face. He was standing between Judith and Ethelred, and he did not want them to see that he was crying.

  It was wrong of him to be so sad, he thought, desperately trying to stifle the tears. His father was with God. His father was happy. It was selfish of him to be so unhappy. It showed a lack of proper faith.

  He bent his head a little further forward. All he could see of Judith beside him was her hand resting on the kneeler before her. On the far side of Judith, unseen at the moment, was Ethelbald.

  Ethelbald had been kind to him about his headache. He had even given Alfred one of his own headbands to wear—”to ward off the evil,” he had said with a laugh.

  Ethelbald was the true king now. A warrior-king, in the great tradition of their house.

  But Ethelwulf had had his own kind of greatness, Alfred thought loyally. He would always remember his father’s words upon resigning his kingdom to his importunate son: “A true king is one who ever sets the good of the kingdom above his own personal ambition.”

  The tears threatened again. Never, Alfred thought desolately, never had he felt so alone. Not even when he had been sent to Rome for the first time, at the age of three, a standin to fulfill his father’s pledge to go on pilgrimage.

  Then Ethelred was putting an arm around his shoulder and drawing him nearer. Do not worry, his brother’s touch seemed to say. I am here.

  For a moment Alfred leaned gratefully against the hard warmth of Ethelred, and then, resolutely, he straightened away. Ethelred gave him an approving look before both turned once more to the altar where Bishop Swithun was celebrating the funeral mass for their father.

  Two days after the funeral, Ethelwulf’s will was read before the witan. The witenagemot went on for quite a long time. Alfred sat with Judith in her sleeping chamber, trying to concentrate on a Latin poem and ignore the rumble of male voices from the hall.

  Judith was nervous. Alfred could tell from the way she prowled the room; she, who was never restless, today could not seem to remain still.

  “What is it, Judith?” he asked finally, when she crossed behind him for the dozenth time in as many minutes.

  She halted by the brazier, and he turned to look at her. Her back was to him and her voice was muffled as it came over her shoulder, “I suppose it’s just that I am beginning to realize that I must return to France.”

  “I have been thinking about that,” he said, his small face very earnest. “My father has bestowed several manors upon you.” Alfred knew this because he had heard a number of West Saxon thanes complaining about the alienation of West Saxon royal property to the Franks. He leaned forward a little. “You can live on your own property here in Wessex, Judith, and I will come and live with you!”

  She turned to look at him. “I will have to spend some time with Ethelred, too,” he added conscientiously. “He would miss me if I did not.”

  Tears glinted in Judith’s great brown eyes. “Oh, Alfred, I wish we could do that.”

  “But why could we not do that, Judith? You are a grown-up. You can do as you wish.”

  Her eyes were luminous with unshed tears. “I am not just any grown-up, my dear. I am a princess of France, and my father will never allow me to remain a widow.” She looked down at her slender hands, then linked them together at her waist. “A daughter is a valuable pawn when you are a king.” She raised her eyes to Alfred once more. “Look at your own sister, Alfred. Ethelswith is twenty years younger than Burgred of Mercia. Do you think, left to herself, she would have chosen to marry him?”

  He stared at her and did not answer.

  “God knows whom my father will choose for me next,” Judith said bitterly.

  Alfred was upset. “I do not think it is fair that girls should have so little say in the matter of whom they are to marry.”

  Her reply was drowned out by the sudden burst of noise in the hall. The witenagemot apparently was over. Alfred began to gather up his books. He would seek out Ethelred to discover what had happened. Then a knock came at Judith’s door.

  “Alfred …” Judith’s face was very pale. “Will you open the door, please?”

  He cast her a puzzled look, but went obediently to do as she wished. Outside the door was his brother Ethelbald.

  “I have come to see the queen, youngster,” Ethelbald said to Alfred in his deep voice.

  Alfred turned to Judith. “It is the king, my lady.”

  “Come in, my lord,” Judith replied. Alfred stared at her. She sounded strange.

  Ethelbald walked in and the room suddenly shrank. Alfred stared with envy at his brother’s wide shoulders. He realized that Ethelbald and Judith were staring at each other, and said, a little uncertainly, “Shall I leave, Judith? Or do you want me to stay?” The glitter in his brother’s eyes as he looked at Judith was making Alfred feel apprehensive.

  Ethelbald raised an eyebrow at Judith, and she said, “You may go and find Ethelred, Alfred. I know that is what you want to do.” She smiled at him and looked a little more like her usual self. He smiled back, picked up his book, and went out the door, leaving Judith alone with Ethelbald.

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  The January afternoon was cold and clear, and when Alfred finally found Ethelred, his elder brother suggested a ride along the Itchen. Alfred was agreeable, and, as he rode alongside Ethelred, his fat short-legged pony jogging to keep up with his brother’s bigger horse, he was content to hold back his questions, content simply to enjoy the thin winter sunshine and his brother’s companionship, and let Ethelred choose the time to say whatever it was he wanted Alfred to hear.

  Ethelred waited until the walls of Winchester were well behind them. Then he said, “Ethelbald is going to marry Judith.”

  The shock of his brother’s words rocked Alfred as forcefully as if the blow had been physical.

  “What?”

  “I said that Ethelbald is going to marry Judith,” Ethelred repeated. “That is what we were discussing at the witenagemot all the morning.”

  Alfred stared at his brother in stunned surprise. “Ethelbald can’t marry Judith,” he said. “Judith was married to Father.”

  “In the normal way of things, you are right,” Ethelred said. “The church will not allow a man to marry his stepmother. But the situation here is … unusual.”

  The surprise was beginning to wear off a little, and Alfred considered Ethelred’s words. “How is it unusual?” he asked.

  “It seems, Alfred, that the marriage between Father and Judith was never consummated.”

  Alfred stared at Ethelred’s profile. “What does ‘consummated’ mean?”

  Ethelred sighed. “I knew you were going to ask that.”

  “But what does it mean, Ethelred?”

  “It mea
ns,” Ethelred replied carefully, “that Father and Judith did not live together as man and wife,”

  “Yes, they did,” Alfred said, still puzzled.

  Ethelred said, even more carefully than before, “They did not sleep together, Alfred. They did not have babies together. They were not like Ethelbert and Ebbe.”

  There was a little silence. “Oh,” Alfred said at last.

  “You see, little brother,” Ethelred went on, “the church has a rule that if a marriage is not consummated then that marriage is not valid. Or at least, so Archbishop Hincmar of Reims, Judith’s own metropolitan and an acknowledged authority on canon law, has stated recently. And if Judith was not truly married to Father, then there is nothing to stop her from marrying Ethelbald.”

  “But does Judith want to marry Ethelbald? Has anyone asked her?”

  “That is what Ethelbald was going to do when he went to see her this morning.”

  “She will have to agree,” Alfred said a little belligerently. “I will not allow anyone to make her do what she does not want to do.”

  Ethelred smiled into Alfred’s determined eyes, “Nor will I.”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, the only sound the clicking of their horses’ hooves on the frozen dirt of the road. Then Alfred said, “If the thanes were not pleased when Father married Judith, why are they willing to see her wedded to Ethelbald?”

  “A good question, little brother,” Ethelred said approvingly. “It has to do with wanting to keep Judith’s bride portion in the hands of the West Saxons. If Judith weds Ethelbald, then the manors left to her by Father will go to her children. If Judith goes back to her father in France, Charles the Bald will doubtless sell the manors to increase his own coffers. No one wants to see either the manors, or West Saxon geld, fall into the hands of the Franks.”

  Silence fell once again, a longer one than before, Then Alfred said, “Ethelbald is splendid-looking. And he is young. Perhaps Judith will want to marry him.”