by M J Porter
Leofric’s eyes narrowed as he spoke. The king thought he was doing them a favour? He was incredulous that the deceit they’d proliferated had proved to be so successful that even the king could not see through it. Why had Northman not spoken out?
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Oscetel giving hasty instructions to his father’s household troops and his own. Everyone had by now been roused from his or her beds. He hoped that someone was even now racing to the home that Northman had built and shared with his wife and children. They’d need protecting from any repercussions. It was more than ironic that only in the last two months had she even moved away from his father’s home to live on her own. It had seemed the end of the strife now that Cnut was king.
“When is it to take place?” Leofric asked, his voice barely containing his anger.
“With all haste my Lord,” the messenger offered, his eyes downcast but his stance belying his affected deference. He was enjoying this. He apparently thought that Northman’s family would luxuriate in it as well. How wrong he was.
At the very same time that Leofric was trying to process what he should do and what the man was telling him, another messenger arrived at the gate, and a further cry was heard from the heavily guarded gates. Whoever it was gained much easier access and suddenly he was faced with another of Horic’s son’s, Olaf. His face was distressed, and Leofric knew that he must have come from Northman to tell of his plight.
“My Lords,” he stuttered, not caring how he looked or that it was so early it could still be called the middle of the night and yet everyone was awake.
“I come with grave tidings of Northman. He’s been taken from Eadric’s stronghold and taken by force to face trial for his actions.”
Leofric clasped his brother’s oldest friend.
“We were just being told by the king’s messenger.”
Only then did Olaf notice the other man, his tired and angry eyes alighting with some interest on the other man.
“When did this happen?” Leofric asked.
“Early yesterday morning. I’ve ridden with all haste on the orders of the Lady Edith.”
“My thanks, old friend,” Leofric said, handing Olaf a drinking horn and a chunk of bread. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he couldn’t have stopped to see to his comfort, not to make it to them so quickly from Eadric’s home on the border with the Welsh.
“We must go to London,” Leofwine suddenly said, standing decisively. “I must speak with the king, inform of the error his way.”
Olaf’s face contorted in pain.
“I think it’ll be too late my Lord. I think Godwine will be too keen to carry out his instructions. I fear that even now Northman may have gone to meet his God.”
Leofwine growled angrily at the words of Olaf and his brother’s friend blanched under the onslaught of rage clearly seen on his face.
“We’ll go,” Leofwine rumbled, as though he spoke with the voice of a hundred men, “and we’ll talk to the king and apprise him of his error in judgement. My son is no traitor and never has been. Oscetel, get the horses ready. We must go now, with all speed.”
The king’s messenger was watching events with wide-eyed curiosity.
“But my Lord,” he stuttered, confusion evident on his face, “you have often said that Northman was a traitor to your family. The king thought you would welcome the news.”
Leofwine flashed his angry eyes at the unfortunate messenger,
“The king knows nothing and thinks even less. When did you leave London?”
A guilty look spread over the messenger’s face at the question.
“Yesterday morning my Lord,” he muttered, and Leofwine glowered once more.
“And where have you been since then?”
“Apologies my Lord, but I … lost my way on more than one occasion.”
Leofric watched the messenger when he spoke and knew that he lied. Dismissing him from his thoughts he moved precisely through the hall, gathering together the supplies he needed, and thinking to stoop and kiss his mother where the servant women were comforting her. Æthelflæd grabbed his arm, her expression serious,
“Keep your father safe,” she commanded, and Leofric nodded in agreement, only realising when he was on his horse and riding through the gate in the grey morning light that his mother hadn’t mentioned his brother. She must already think him dead. He spurred his horse onwards. He would not allow it.
Chapter 44
AD1017
Northman
Shropshire
Northman watched the men work with a dispassion he didn’t feel. It was feigned from beginning to end, and he was struggling to hold his composure together.
That bastard Eadric had done it again! Pissed all over everything and now Northman knew, although Eadric still seemed to be a little delusional about the whole thing, that this time, he’d taken things too far. His cockiness and arrogance had tested the new king, and he’d found Eadric wanting.
Cnut was no fool. He had never been. He could read men as he did the waves and while he’d been sucked in temporarily by Eadric’s bluff and his profession of innocence, he’d soon tired of listening to him apologise for mistakes he felt no remorse for.
Cnut had sent his personal household troops to collect Eadric and himself. They were all Danish, every single one of them, apart from Godwine and he was more than half Danish by now. He didn’t see a friendly face amongst them. Not one. He was torn with indecision. What should he do? To save himself he should appeal to the king, appeal to these men. He should let the wolves have Eadric but not himself.
He held on to the hope that his father would have word of what had happened and that he’d race to his defence and confront the king. All these years of deceit and lies, all for nothing. He knew that Olaf had been dispatched to Deerhurst on Edith’s orders. He’d seen it happen but had been unable to speak to his oldest friend.
As he was jostled onto a horse, his hands tied behind his back and his balance all to pieces because of the beating he’d just endured, he allowed a few tears to fall down his face. He felt truly desperate. Would he never see his wife and sons again? Would he never see his father and his mother? Would he never receive any recognition for the sacrifices he’d made?
The men spoke in the Danish language in the belief that neither of the two prisoners could understand what was being said to them. Pity that Northman had spent so much time with Horic and his sons when he’d been a youth. He could understand everything, and as Godwine finally met his eye, he realised that he’d not warned the men about speaking so openly in front of them. He couldn’t decide if it was because Godwine was a bastard or whether he thought he was being compassionate in ensuring that he knew what was going to happen to him.
A spark of hope flared inside him. If he spoke to the men in their language, if he explained what had happened, then surely they’d listen to him. But he bit back his first words for he was listening to what was being said.
“Men, we have instructions to take the traitors to Cnut at London, but he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to face these traitorous pieces of scum. We’ll pretend we’re carrying out his wishes, but at some point, we’ll stop, maybe to water the animals, and we’ll end their miserable existences there and then. When we get to Cnut, we’ll explain that they put up a fight, that they both had weapons on them and tried to attack me. You might have to beat me up a bit Hrafn, to make it look authentic but I don’t mind for a good cause.” Godwine grinned as he spoke and Northman’s hopes all fled. Clearly, Godwine was being a bastard.
And with that Godwine mounted his horse and signalled that they should lead on. There were wails from the men and women watching their Lord being taken away as no more than a prisoner, sentenced to death, but other than Eadric’s sons, none looked too distressed, and Edith could even be said to be happy. Not at Northman’s going, but at her husband’s.
She’d frantically tried to speak to Northman when she’d first realised what the men’s intentio
ns were but she’d been removed from his presence, and instead had sent one of the small boys from the hall to speak to him. He was a pure soul, happy with a field mouse in his hand, and as he played with the animal, chasing it and catching it in equal measure, he was able to speak to Northman without the warriors thinking him a menace.
“My Lady asks if she can do anything my Lord?” he said, his voice singsong like as though he spoke to the mouse in his hand and not to the disgraced king’s thegn.
Northman had been thinking about his last wishes since he’d been trussed up and discarded in a corner. Eadric hadn’t been quite so violently dealt with and could still be heard arguing his case, not that it was having an effect on the emotionless face of Godwine who’d been sent to retrieve the errant ealdorman.
“Please take this for me,” he said, trying to lift over his head the small cross he carried, a perfect replica of his family’s cross that had been gifted to Olaf, and then re-gifted back, and then gifted once more to a very young Cnut. “Your Lady will see that it gets to my wife.”
The lad nodded and reached out to help Northman. His arms had been beaten black and blue, and it was an effort to move them. Instead, he felt the warmed metal rise over his head under the guiding hand of the lad, and he watched with a tear stained eye as he skipped out of view, his cross concealed under his clothing.
Edith’s eyes found his. She’d watched the interchange, thankfully, the boy was known to be a little forgetful, and later, when he was gone, she’d take the trinket from him and pass it on. She knew whom it would be for.
With the comforting weight of home gone from around his neck, he knew he was starting to say goodbye. He wasn’t as big of a fool as Eadric to think that this time, he’d be talking his way out of this turn of events.
Eadric had played everyone in the last four years. First one king and then another, fighting for one side of the two and then the other. He’d pissed off just about everyone, and when Cnut had thought to give him one more chance, he’d wasted it, his twisted and warped mind too used to trying to have it all, to be happy with the new opportunity he’d been given.
No, the king had set him a task, a simple task as well. To rally the Mercian heartlands to Cnut’s cause. To ensure that the beginning of his reign wasn’t riddled with the problems that had beset the previous kings. With all the king’s family connections through his handfasted wife and his son with her, there’d still been the areas near the border with the Welsh that had been too slow to show their full-scale support for the new Danish king and Eadric had been sent to rally them to the cause.
He hadn’t done what he’d been asked. Instead, he’d used the promise of riches and access to the king to build himself an enclave on the border, to make himself the contact for all who wished to see the new English king and in that way, hold more power than Cnut could have hoped to in such a short space of time.
Northman had sent word of Eadric’s intentions to his father, and they’d apparently been relayed to the king. Somehow, and he couldn’t blame his father for this because he’d maintained their angry relationship for too many years now, his father had done such an excellent job of protecting his spy in the enemy camp that Northman was being blamed as fully as Eadric. Not that Northman had gained anything from Eadric’s machinations. Rather, he’d been forced to watch, incredulous, that the man could act so irresponsibly.
Eadric had been self-assured in his belief that whatever he did would be excused by Cnut. Even now, he could hear his words of denial and beguiling being uttered to an unimpressed Godwine.
Godwine was a man grown in the new king’s confidence. He’d gambled when Æthelred had returned to England, and he’d sided with Cnut. That gamble was paying off now. He wore jewels aplenty, and his armour and weaponry were some of the finest that Northman had ever seen, and he’d seen a lot. He tried to catch Godwine’s eye, but the man was studiously ignoring him. Did he know? Northman wondered. Had his father ever spoken to Godwine about Northman’s position within Eadric’s household? He would have thought he had, but now he doubted that.
Had no one known? Not even Cnut?
Eadric’s hall had been filled with the king’s men, a whole troop of nearly fifty men sent to retrieve but two. Northman thought it an overreaction but then, he wasn’t the king and hadn't just been informed of the treachery afoot within his only recently, and very fiercely won new kingdom. Neither did he have an entire contingent of shipmen at his beck and call. Northman knew that sooner of later the English would be taxed to pay the men off, but until then, they were Cnut’s to command and rumour had it, they were all bored and keen to do anything that would relieve the tedium of their win.
He watched with hooded eyes as the young lad ran round and round the hall with his mouse in his hand, as a baby cried, as food was prepared and set to cook over the open hearth, and all this he watched with the eyes of a dead man. He thought it would be his last day on this Earth and he prayed as he watched, extolling God for a pain-free death, for the souls of his family and even for the king. He wished him no ill will.
He closed his eyes against the pain in his upper body, and a smirk crossed his mouth. He almost pitied the king. When his father learnt of his execution, he’d ensure that Cnut paid heavily for the wound inflicted upon his family. For the man who’d had his life blighted by the new king’s father, and who’d endeavoured to hold faithful to all his oaths to all the kings, his son’s death at the hands of an ungrateful king would prove too great a wound to heal. If Cnut knew only one thing, it was that despite what he believed to be the truth about Northman, he very much needed the honourable father to retain his place on the English throne.
Leofwine, with his years of service to the king and the crown, was just about the only part of the new king’s Witan that legitimised Cnut’s kingship, that and a treaty made with a dying king. Leofwine’s acceptance of Cnut as king made other people accept Cnut. No matter that Eadric had supported the king, and that he also had the support of Godwine, an English man turned half Danish; it had been Leofwine that others had followed. Even the men of the Church had followed where Leofwine had led.
Now Northman sat upon his trusty old horse, at least they’d given him one last ride on him, and he thought of all he’d lost and what he needed to do. But he knew it was useless. The men had no intention of taking him before the king and therefore, they were already judge and executioner. No matter what words he managed to pull from deep within him. No matter what truths he now told, they would think them all lies, and they would kill him anyway, and dress it up as the king’s orders.
Eadric, still not understanding the severity of the situation was shouting demands to Edith where she stood in the doorway watching her despised husband, and her husband’s accomplice. She was nodding and pretending that she would do all that he asked, but Northman knew there was no need for her to send on his beautiful clothes, and his favourite cloak and new boots. There was no point. They’d be dead before the day was done and would be in no need of clothes or footwear.
She glanced at him, the sorrow she felt evident in her frightened eyes, although she stood proudly between the growing boys she’d delivered for an ungrateful husband. She had no illusions about Eadric, but she’d become a friend to Northman, and he’d shared his secret with her one day when he’d been forced to intervene in one of Eadric’s rampages against his wife.
As he’d held her in his arms and she’d sobbed and sobbed, she’d asked him how he could tolerate him? How he could do what, her husband demanded, and he’d explained it all, and ever since then, she’d been stronger in her tolerance of her husband, aware that if Northman could work for some higher purpose, that she could do the same.
And so she laboured to raise her sons to be far better men than their bastard of a father, and whenever she could, she waved Eadric on his way. This home in Shropshire would be hers and her heirs from now on. The king didn’t want it back, and he saw no threat to his fledgeling dynasty by allowing her sons to li
ve, a living embodiment to the previous dynasty. That much he’d heard from Godwine so that finally she’d have some peace.
As the horses began to file out of the small gated enclosure, the mud thick around their legs, Edith walked towards him, and with a glance to ensure that no one was paying too much attention; she reached out and ran her hand up Northman’s strong arm, as far as it would go.
“Go with God,” she uttered, her voice broken. “I will let your father know and your wife as well.”
And then she was gone into her home, and Northman knew that he’d never see another sunrise.
Chapter 45
AD1017
Leofwine
London
He knew his movements were too slow, his horse too laboured beneath him. He called to Leofric to go on without him. He was holding the lad and his household troops back, and he knew it. The lad and his troops raced ahead, only Leofric turning a stricken eye his way before he kicked his horse into greater action. He didn’t want to leave his father, but now was not the time to be slow if he could go faster. Speed was of the essence.
It was raining, and the ground was a living stream of twisting branches and trampled leaf litter. It was treacherous for his old horse and dangerous for him too.
If only he were younger. Years and years younger.
If only he’d never agreed to … this!
At his side, Oscetel was his constant companion, silent and pale-faced, his expression murderous. Leofwine only hoped that they didn’t have cause to use the pent up rage that was driving two old men through the worst winter storms on record.
His thoughts turned to his errand, and then they clamped down tightly.
He couldn’t even think about his failure, couldn’t contemplate it. Not Northman. Never Northman. All these years and all his loyalty may well lie in tattered ruins if he ever reached the bloody king.