A Hero's Throne (An Ancient Earth) (11 page)

“Of course. It would be a joy,” Ealdstan said, although he stood the whole time at the back of the church.

When the short daytime office ended, they emerged and started walking aimlessly along the outer paths of the burh. Ælfred said, “I am meeting with my councillors when I return. Would you speak of your desires with them?”

“I would not. I have need of stonemasons.”

“Stonemasons? What do you need stonemasons for now?”

Ealdstan told him.

“How many?”

“A great many. As many as you can muster, for a very long time.”

“How long?”

“You would never see them again.”

Ælfred shook his head. “We need to continue to build England’s defenses. Even a modest stone fortress is preferable to the strongest one of wood, especially in the outlier burhs.”

“There is peace with the Vikings, King Ælfred. They are cowed
from their defeats and submissive since institution of the treaty. They have lands now; they are sated.”

“They never wanted our
land,
Ealdstan. Guðrum died this winter; did you know that? God’s truth, I miss him more as a brother than a leader, but more men than I may feel the loss of his kingship in the days to come. While he lived, the Norsemen were pleased to look on the northern settlements as their own and overlook the settlements there. But with him gone . . . ? I wist we have not long to wait before another war band arrives.
Meotodes Meahte
,” he said quietly. “Where do they get their energy from? They crash upon us as inexhaustibly as waves on the beach. In the name of heaven, what do they eat up there?”

“This talk is not for now,” Ealdstan said with a flit of his hand. “These are maybe-fights and perhaps-battles. I look forward to the inevitable battle that will decide the outcome of eternity.”

“That battle is already won,” Ælfred said.

“But it has yet to be fought!” Ealdstan insisted, banging his staff upon a rock. “We have discussed this at length, and I felt you had been made to understand me.”

“It is a thought I continually turn over in my head and discuss with the Almighty much in my prayers. I’ve received no conviction in the spirit that my present course is incorrect. My bishops support me in this.”

“They support your indecision, is what you say. I care not for the grumblings of bishops and abbots, nor those of a king who trusts more to pens and pendulums than to swords and fire. I was ancient when your father was young. I taught Bede his letters; I watched the boats of the
Lædenware
depart from this island. Of these isles I was the first disciple of the new faith. Do not presume to school me on spiritual matters, young Ælfred.”

The colour rose in Ælfred’s cheeks. “Watch yourself, wizard.
I am not so old that my writing hand has forgotten how to grip a blade. The Lord gave this earth to mortals.”

“Great king,” Ealdstan purred in a low voice, “after so much already done, do you still question? So much persuading and convincing by me, and of all the work that we have already done—of the warriors already laid to rest, and provisions already made—why would you not ensure the protection of these costs and lend me enough stonemasons to hew a stronghold underground, a secret place of safety for the hidden ones, to ensure they are able to return at the right time?”

Ælfred rubbed his chin and then crossed his arms. “You may take from the land all whom you can persuade to your cause. But this is the last debt to you that I will honour. Consider yourself paid in full.”

Ealdstan nodded and without any more words between them, he departed, never to be seen by Ælfred again. Some months later the first reports of stoneworkers gone missing came to him. Some vanished along with their families, others not, and Ælfred assured those asking after them that they were completing vital work for the safety of the kingdom, for there was little else that could be done. Soon, stonemasons could not be found for love or money, proving that Ealdstan had done his persuading very well.

^{_____________________}
II
^{_____________________}

Freya’s eyes snapped open and her head jerked back. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes as she tried to remember where she was and what she was doing. The Langtorr, her mission, Aunt Vivienne, and the device gradually rolled back to her, like waves of the tide.

She yawned. She felt like she’d just woken from a very deep and satisfying sleep. Ealdstan and King Ælfred—had she really
seen them as they were? That had to be the most vivid dream she’d ever had in her life if she hadn’t. It felt like she’d remembered real voices, real conversations. Like she could close her eyes and see the burh, like she could close her eyes and see the vague image of a room she had just left.

She looked up at Vivienne, who was coiling the leather strap around the top again.

“How long was I in a . . . ?” Freya searched her mind for the right word. “Trance?”

“Oh, several hours, at least.”

“Hours?” Freya moved her tongue around her mouth. It was fairly dry and tasted stale. “I saw Ealdstan, and King Ælfred. They were talking about—”

“I know, you wrote it all down,” Vivienne said.

“I did?” Freya looked at the table and saw that she had a large notebook in front of her that contained her handwriting on about ten pages. She flipped back through them and read some of what she wrote. It was all there—everything she’d seen.

“Ready to go again?” Vivienne asked.

“What? No. Let me—”

Vivienne pulled the strap, and the room melted.

^{_____________________}
III
^{_____________________}

Winchester

1019 AD

The messenger thanked her and departed. She lay in bed and savoured the warmth for a long moment and then rose just as three of her maids entered and started bustling about her. It was late—some hours already past vespers—but not only candles were lit, the fire in the hearth stirred and fed back into life. She pointed into the open wardrobe.

“That one, there. The green.”

The servant drew it from the wardrobe and held it out to her handmaid. Between them, they held it open so she could step into it.

“Just drape it over me,” she instructed, hoisting herself up. “Don’t concern about the fastenings. I said don’t. Stop that; I mean it.” She swatted at her handmaid, who should know better, at least by now. The child inside of her was puffing her body out beyond her own recognition and made all of her clothes uncomfortably binding.

“A blanket too. One of the scarlets. There. That one. There. There.
There.
”

A finely woven cloth was draped across her shoulders.

“That’s fine. That will do. Take me to him.”

The maids turned and led her from the room.

As they processed along the corridors, she tried to stop the spring of anticipation from welling up inside of her and overwhelming her thoughts and actions. It had taken many years of planning, preparation, and patience to reach this day, with no guarantee that it would ever come. But if the messenger was to be believed, and she could scarce allow herself to do so, then a spark could be lit this night that would set the whole island ablaze.

They came to the large hall, where the fires were always burning. Standing in front of the flames and throwing a shadow across the hall was a thin, slight man hunching over his staff. He was only slightly taller than herself, and his hair was long and an unimpressive grey. She had expected a large, giant man, as old and virile as the hills, not this shrivelled character. She found herself scanning the room for another, or at least some sort of entourage.

She gestured to her serving girls. “Await me here,” she ordered.

She cleared her throat and approached. “You are Ealdstan?” she asked in English.

His head turned and dark eyes sparkled in the low, orange light of the room.

“Queen Ælfgifu. Greetings.”

“Emma.”

“Pardon?”

“That is what the
other one
is called. It is also what”—she could not stop her top lip from curling—“my first husband’s first wife was called. I’m always the next choice after an Ælfgifu.”

“And yet you are said to be fast becoming his favourite.”

Her lips spread into a smile this time. “Of course. And why not?”

Ealdstan returned the smile and inclined his head.

“You keep an ear to the sounds of the world above, it seems. Remarkable for a man as removed as you—or should I say, for a man who has removed
himself
as far as you have? Do you know, nearly every single man of learning I consulted insisted you were a legend? If it wasn’t for my husband—my first husband . . .”

“King Æþelred,” Ealdstan supplied.

“The last English king of England,” Emma said, staring into the fire.

The dark eyes continued to gaze. “But ‘Emma’ is not English. Nor Danish, I wist.”

“It is a Norman name.”

“Norman?”

“My people. My father’s family descended from the Northland to the plains that lie south, across from these waters.”

Ealdstan frowned.
Northlanders,
he thought.
Again, the Northlanders.

“My mother is direct of that line.”

“And now Cnut, son of the foreign conqueror, sits on the throne of England. Is the old English world passing?” His eyes shifted and he looked around the hall at the sparse and sleepy serving staff. “The Dane tongue is a hard one for me to speak.”

“I wouldn’t worry. Everyone in the land speaks in the Angles’ tongue still. The farmers in the fields. The priests in the pulpits. Even the merchants in the marketplace still speak it when in their homes and at table. Old queens use it when speaking to old men. Indeed, it allows one to question how much further the Dane rule extends past the Dane tongue.”

“But still, it may pass in generations,” Ealdstan said. “Alas.”

“Alas, indeed,” Emma scolded, her tone hot. “You come too late to save a tongue. The time for help passed the moment you refused my husband’s—Æþelred’s—entreaties to rouse your warriors and chase the Viking invaders back into the mists and oceans that spat them out. You failed him then. You failed us all then.”

A piece of still-wet wood popped in the fireplace and sent sparks up into the air.

“I am sorry for your loss, and the loss of the kingdom. Æþelred was an able king.”

“That he was. He was a strong king. He simply had bad counsel.” Emma pulled the scarlet covering tighter across her shoulders. “Do you know, even in the last he believed he would receive aid from you and your stronghold of warriors? And when it failed to come—failed again and again—he panicked and fell back on ill-advice.” He did not meet her furious gaze. “Can you blame him for turning to others? When we suffered constant invasions from a hostile, foreign enemy? Every day my husband hoped the ground beneath our feet would crack open like the shell of an egg and Ealdstan’s warriors would chase the Danes out forever.”

Emma lowered herself onto a bench. “Yet here we are. He is dead, and I am married to a barbarian king. Where were you?”

The fire continued to crack as Ealdstan turned to face her. “I thought that prayers and counsel might be enough.”

“The women of this land know the strength of prayer in preventing their loved ones from being slaughtered.”

“Yet here we find ourselves. What is to be done?”

Emma massaged her right leg. “You are deeply invested in this land; at one time you had the kings under your hand, and now they will not let you in the door. And you sit like a dog, shut out in the cold, waiting to be allowed back into the warmth, or at least thrown a bone.”

Ealdstan’s face did not change, and yet she fancied something burned underneath his skin.
Good,
thought Emma.
Let him burn.

“And the only reproach I have against my husband, and all of his fathers back to Æþelstan, is that they didn’t take a stick to your hind legs and beat you out of the door.”

Ealdstan hardened his jaw and tilted his head back. “You drew me here to insult me, is that it? Abuse your betrayer?”

Emma grinned. “We are all of us traitors now. All of us left standing. Betrayal has become the price of life today. Do I chide? No, I show you plain the world around you.”

“I need not schooling,” Ealdstan said, rising. “I need not—”

“I drew you here to deal,” Emma said, breaking in. “I believe you seek to make reparation—so do I. The song of this land has not yet been sung and it can be made great again. I see this isle as the seat of an Empire of the North, an empire that unites several strong races together against all the heathen who would stand against us.”

“A great dream. An ambitious dream. How do you see me in this dream?”

“You shall be the power behind the throne—a guiding hand for the ages. The commander of an army of light against the world of darkness.”

Ealdstan’s eyes turned downward and Emma fancied she saw some emotion ripple across his forehead, but it could simply have been the firelight.

“The Norsemen are strong,” she continued, “but their heads are easily turned. They are not the stuff that empires are made
of. The army that defeated this land have been paid off and are gone—drinking the long nights away back in Sweden and Norway, where there is infighting and threat from all the kingdoms around them. They have no desire to rule, only to fight.”

“So why then shall—”

“But the
Normans
, on the other hand, are strong leaders—strong rulers. My sons, Ælfred and Eadweard, are in Normandy now, with my relatives. They are creating bonds of trust and goodwill that will nourish the seeds that will grow this great nation into a might to rival even Karolus Magnus’s new Roman Empire.”

“Can they yet stand against kings?”

Emma tilted her head. “Not yet; the storm will rage but awhile longer before their time comes to stand. And in this time of uncertainty, others shall try their footing and invariably fall, to be caught beneath the waves . . . But their downward turn will offer us an upward turn.”

Ealdstan stroked his beard and pondered on this. When his eye turned fully upon her again, the sharp flash was in them once more. “I feel I should apologise. I feel I have judged you awrong,” he said.