* * *
Godwine remembered the weight of the mail shirt; he admired Edmund for that more than anything else, for wearing that iron. Getting the girl out, that had been good too, although it meant now Edmund spent much time with her and less with Godwine himself, Edmund’s friend. But now they had gone on a patrol. The hard riding was a relief, being with Edmund a pleasure. Godwine drew back with the other carls, watching Edmund ride forward to meet the little group of villagers.
The prince and his men had ridden over thirty miles east of Lark Hill to Ermine Street for this meeting. The great road stretched from London to the Humber, sometimes broad and straight, sometimes narrow, through the forests and the lowlands and the fens and now and then a village. Edmund was looking for spies among the local people to keep watch on Thorkel the Tall, who had an army somewhere farther on. So far, little had come of this, but Edmund was patient. Godwine hooked one leg around the pommel of his saddle, his horse shifting under him.
He was not patient. He did not want to attack Thorkel; he wanted to go after Ethelred. Ethelred had outlawed his father, had seized his inheritance and driven him into the forest. Edmund had this big, vague notion of England and of saving the country’s honor. Godwine just wanted revenge. And the lands restored, of course. He liked the feel of this, the balance of it: revenge for wrongs, the world made right again.
Edmund had turned up there, was beckoning him, and Godwine straightened his leg down to the stirrup and, leading the four other carls, went out after the prince, on south down Ermine Street.
“They say—” As they left the village, Edmund turned, looking back, and with his voice and his look brought Godwine up beside him, stirrup to stirrup. Godwine wished briefly he were as good a rider as Edmund. “The villagers have seen sign of the Jomsvikings within a day’s ride of here.” He shook his head. “I think. They spoke such rude Saxon, I could barely understand – and they me too, of course.”
Godwine said, “Did they know who you are?”
“They know of Alfred. Of the Aethelings.” Edmund said. He reined in so that all the carls came up around him. He gave Godwine a sideways look. “Do you mean, would they say the same things to anybody, including Thorkel? Yes, likely, what choice do they have? Thorkel is supposed to be my father’s man. But he seems to be operating pretty much on his own.” He turned to the other carls. “Someone needs to ride scout. Warn us of anything ahead.”
The other men all called out, asking to be chosen, and Edmund took two of them and sent them up front. The other two he set out to ride off to either side of the road, as much as possible. Godwine could see he was trying to figure this out even as he gave the orders. He was learning how to command even as he commanded them. They started off again at the center of the broad wedge of the scouts.
They moved on through the forest. Godwine thought again of the evils done him and his family. Maybe being with Edmund was taking him out of his proper course. He meant to kill Ethelred himself if he could. He imagined this often, standing face-to-face with the King, swords drawn. This would not only avenge him but also settle the balance of the world. Whatever happened was either right or wrong: you did the one and avenged the other. He glanced at Edmund. The heavy mail made him look bigger, and he rode a stout horse to carry the weight.
Godwine thought, I will get a mail coat.
They went on through deep oak woods, the trees so thick overhead there seemed no daylight, only a pattern of shadow. The old road was thick in leaf drift and dirt, rutted here and there, but under it was stone, like all these roads. He let his mind wander into his one-sided argument with Edmund again.
The trouble was, Edmund was too high thinking. He had never been run out, homeless, afraid. Godwine still remembered when the decree against his father came. His foster father had sent him off at once. No one would take him in; he had gone up to the ancient manor of his house and lived with the crofters in a mud hut.
Edmund had never really been on the outside. Godwine wanted only to be back in the middle, safe again. For that he needed to belong to some power, and so far Edmund was all he had. And there was the mail shirt. He would stay with Edmund until something better appeared. Maybe he would stay with Edmund forever.
* * *
Ealdgyth watched the old steward turn the key; she was reminded uneasily of the monastery. The old man said, “There is no barley now, but soon.” He pushed the door open. A stale, sweet aroma gusted out at her. She looked into the broad, dim room. The vats where the barley would be soaked until it sprouted lay on their sides along the walls. She wondered how it was dried. She backed up, let him shut the door again, and took the key.
Every key was more control. She hung it on her big hoop of a ring.
“The barley is green now,” the steward said. “We shall see a good harvest in June, God willing.” He crossed himself.
She copied him. They were going along the top row of the gardens, where the onions and cabbages grew. She looked all around the place. People went about their chores, sweeping and cleaning and paring and chopping. The maids were out spreading bedclothes to air on the bushes around the hall. At the gate two men were bringing in a cartload of wood. She said, “Pray God my lord will soon come home.”
The steward said, “Amen.” His voice was intense. “God bless our good prince Edmund.”
She felt light with satisfaction at that. Edmund, her prince, her husband. They loved him, these people, another key for her ring. She let him show her ricks of hay, saddle rooms, even the dung heap. She thought, I am Edmund’s wife.
She had done some thinking about this, now that she was in a safe place and was calmer. He was the Aetheling. Of this she knew only what the old tales told her, but it was enough: when his father died, he would be King. She saw no reason for his rebellion. He talked to her sometimes of England and of honor and of justice, but these were phantoms.
Now he was gone, off on one of his long, searching rides. Soon he would be back, and, when he was, she would give him such reasons he might never leave. She would make him love her. She would make him happier with her than his dreams, and he would defend her, not the phantoms.
* * *
Half a day’s ride south on Ermine Street the broad-standing oaks gave way to more open ground, and the road went down a slope onto the edge of a long stretch of bog, green as a meadow in the open sun. The scouts had to come into the road, because the only way across the bog was an old causeway. They slowed their horses, watching for holes, but the long, thin corridor was stout enough. The berm of the causeway was stone, and Edmund guessed the work was very old. Roman. He thought of Aethelstan and crossed himself. O Lord, keep him from the monsters. The bog stretched off on either side into the distance, islands of grass in the still water scattered with half-dead pine trees and scrawny birch. At the far end of the causeway the road climbed another short, easy slope into an open stand of trees, and there, by the road, was a building.
Or the beginning of one. A pile of stones stood beside a square marked out with wooden posts, and more stones stood in two sides of a footing. But one post had fallen down out of its hole, and the stones were knocked out of line; whoever had been making this had given up. Edmund dismounted and went to where the ground had been turned and touched it, trying to make a good guess how long ago it had been broken.
Godwine said, “Jomsvikings?”
“Maybe.” Edmund straightened and walked up the road to look back at the causeway. “This is a good place to hold; everybody has to come down the road there.” He frowned, wondering if Thorkel had begun this, and, if so, why he had given it up.
Godwine said, “Maybe we could build it, then. This is the road to London.”
Edmund knew Godwine wanted only to get at Ethelred; he had no good idea of the whole of this. They certainly could hold no place so far from Lark Hill, not with the men he had now. If Thorkel had begun it, then maybe something had happened to cause him to give this place up, something Edmund should know of. He turned to
his horse and gathered his reins.
He thought of Ealdgyth. His wife was always at the edge of his mind now, always a dream of her. As an excuse to go back he thought also of the men he had sent out to scout in other directions.
“Let’s get home,” he said to Godwine.
The boy gave him a sly sideways look. “Miss her?”
Edmund grunted at him and swung up onto his horse. “Just keep up, will you?” He cantered off, back onto the causeway, heading north.
Chapter Nineteen
Knut had been in Jorvik for years, and he was still finding new things: the stone rings of ancient towers, old money, wild things. Snakes lived along the foot of the wall, and lizards in its cracks. Parts of the walls themselves were so old they seemed to have grown there. In the sway behind the hall where Raef kept his horses, tall, slender mushrooms sprouted after the rain that made him drunken when he ate them. Nut trees and apples dotted the higher ground. He found the rusted flake of a spearhead on the hillside, so old it crumbled in his hands. He thought sometimes of running away from the hall and living as an outlaw, pillaging these people.
He liked going into the old, empty houses, although new people were always moving in and rebuilding them, which annoyed him. He sneaked into houses with people in them too, like Goda’s new house by the river; he liked the risk of being caught. The only place in Jorvik he could not go was the old ruined hall behind the high street.
The one time he got courage to go in, he took three strides into the thick dark, turned, and rushed out. His top half outran his legs somehow, and he toppled into the street and ate a mouthful of dust. In the moment he had stood there lapped in the churning of the air, he had felt something wrapping around his ankles and dragging him down.
Otherwise he went everywhere, as he willed. He did nothing he was told to do. Raef tried to make him sit under the oak tree, where he gave law to the ordinary people, but Knut argued with everybody, and Raef was glad to see him go. When he refused to fetch and carry for her, Laissa railed at him that he was useless. Leif took him out hunting and sometimes fishing, but Leif was Raef’s man and showed it. Only Gemma loved him, his little sister, and he loved only her.
Raef had learned how to get him to work. “Go to the woodshed; don’t come out until you’ve cut and stacked all that wood.” Knut had given up refusing this when he saw that starving himself to death in defiance would serve Raef just as well.
He chopped wood; he hunted; otherwise, he ran loose. He had collected eight or ten boys his age, showed them how to fight, and led them around the streets at night attacking the other gangs in Jorvik, the Green Stray Boys and the Cross River Boys. This often got him hauled up in front of the oak tree for Raef to rail at; this was why he was in the woodshed now. This time, he thought, he might have gone too far.
* * *
Gemma sat on the bottom step that led down into the woodshed, watching Knut with the axe. She loved him. She had told him so and made him promise to marry her when she grew up. She loved how tall he was and his yellow hair, darker than hers, and how he faced her father, straight on, brave as a hero.
She said, “I hate Papa when he’s like that to you.”
Knut drove the axe down through a log and the halves bounced onto the ground. “He’s a slow, soft old slug. He’s not even a real King.” He put another log on the block and hoisted the axe. “Be careful, Gemma. These things fly.”
She said, “If you run away, will you take me with you?”
He laughed. He lowered the axe against the block and came up to her and took her face between his two hands.
“You are a dear one, Gemma. But I couldn’t take you with me. You’re too young yet. You need your mother.” He kissed her forehead and went back to the axe.
Gemma sat with her forehead glowing, her cheeks warm from the touch of his hands, and in her mind lopped off most of what he had said. She sat watching him split wood. She thought, I am the princess, you must save me from the demon. The idea was so intense she found herself turning her head slightly to be kissed.
Then she heard someone call her name, up in the hall.
“That’s supper,” she said. “I’ll bring you some.” She sprang up the steps and in through the door.
* * *
A little while later the door opened, and his foster father came in. Knut straightened, the axehead on the floor and his hands crossed on the butt, and waited. Raef sat down on the steps, just as Gemma had. Sitting down, he folded like a stork, a long, skinny, white-haired man, homely as the log butt. His lone ear jutted out of his hair like a sail.
He looked nothing like a king. He had no crown, no ceremony. He wore no gold, no mail, no emblems, only clothes his wife patched, baggy hose, and a faded, long shirt he had gotten years before in some far eastern city of myth, where he had learned his magic. Knut stirred, uneasy. Or whatever it was he had learned.
Raef said, “He broke your bow.”
“He did it on purpose,” Knut said hotly. “He waited until I was in the sweathouse and chopped it in half with an axe.”
“So you dragged him outside the walls and nailed him naked to a tree.”
“I wanted to hurt him.” Knut remembered the other boy’s screams with some pleasure.
“He may still die. Then you’ll have to pay wergeld. You’ll be chopping wood all winter.” The blazing blue eyes pierced him.
“Wergeld!” Knut said. “He’s a common churl, and I’m the son of a King—”
“Yes,” Raef said. “That’s always your excuse. You don’t see there’s something going the other way. If you had brought this to the oak tree, you’d have gotten a new bow, and the right man would be punished, but you’re too damn dumb to see that.”
Knut glared at him. “That’s not honor. The law’s just what you say it is, anyway, since you’re King.”
“Kings go in and out with the tide,” Raef said. “The law is what matters. And if he dies, you’re no better than an outlaw that anybody can kill. What’s so kingly in that?” He said, deliberately, “You’d be no better than Thorkel.”
Knut jerked all over; to seem anything like Thorkel stung him to the marrow. Raef’s eyes glittered with amusement. Knut knew that Raef had used Thorkel’s name just to taunt him, this so-called King who talked so much about justice and then turned Knut’s own mind against him.
“Listen, Raef,” he said. “There is nothing good between us. There never will be. I want to go. Let me go, with my war band, and we can find glory and gold, as men should, and not rot here.”
Raef snorted. He was sitting on the top step so that they were eye to eye. His long arms hung over his knees, his hands slack; the fingers of his bad hand curved like a hook. He said, “Your war band. You mean those rag boys you lead around the streets here?”
Knut said, “You don’t fight wars. You don’t even have warriors. How am I to make a name for myself? I’m a younger son.”
Raef shook his head. “Who knows? Why do you think you and your gang – I’m sorry, your war band – would even make it as far as the Humber?”
Knut swelled at this, as if at the stroke of a whip. Raef stood up. “Get this wood cut. Hope that fool doesn’t die.” He went on out of the woodshed. Knut turned back to the next log, and hit it as hard as he could.
* * *
Laissa and Miru had made the church beautiful, Gemma thought. They had cleaned and swept it, gotten Leif and some other men to repair the altars, and woven new clothes for the altars and to hang on the walls. Now they were fixing the Jesus, painting his eyes with a goo made of egg white and chalk. Gemma kneeled down behind them, crossed herself, and prayed to God to love her and to let her marry Knut.
Laissa had taught her the Great Prayer, and she said that over and over, because Miru had said the more times God heard it, the happier He was. When she came to the place about forgiving trespass, she said it slowly and carefully. She thought that was the important thing. As long as she forgave everybody else, God would forgive her.
She sat with her mother in the back of the church; the other women were talking about bringing in a priest. Gemma did not understand where some stranger priest fit into this. She said, “Mama, all power comes from God, doesn’t it?”
“Everything comes from God, dear one.” Laissa put an arm around her and told her the story of the beginning, how God made the world and everything in it, but when He made Adam, some of his angels were angry, and He had to throw them out of heaven, and they fell all the way to hell, where they became devils.
“Some of them,” she said. “Some made it only as far as Jorvik.” She and Miru both laughed. Gemma knew what they meant.
When they went back, she sat by the fire, playing with Edith’s baby. She glanced continually up at her father, on his high seat.
She knew he was watching her. He had always watched her from somewhere inside her own head, and at first she had not minded, but now she saw this was wicked. Only God should watch her like that. In her mind she made a wall, smooth and round against him. After a while she looked toward the high seat, and he was looking in the other direction.
* * *
It was not so much what she thought she had done as that she wanted to do it that made Raef low; he avoided the girl now, where before he had always been dancing with her or playing the riddle games she loved. She spent all the day with Laissa, helping with the hall work or at the church, and at night she slept on her mother’s side of the bed.
* * *
Leif had gone to Mainland and bought two keels, both from ships that had traveled to Vinland, and he brought them back to Jorvik lashed to either side of a knarr. He was standing there on the gravel bar watching the shoremen carry them up to the shipworks when Raef found him.
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