The Edge of Light (3 page)

And so the West Saxon witan had acquiesced in the request of Ethelwulf to name Ethelbald the new King of Wessex.

There was to be no formal coronation, however. While one anointed king yet lived, the church had refused to anoint another. Ethelbald had not insisted. He had the power; he could wait for the rest.

Instead of a crowning, Ethelwulf had suggested a feast for all the great nobles of the kingdom. “If we do not hold together, then we will fall to the Danes piecemeal,” he said to counter the objections from some of his stauncher supporters. “Do you want that?”

No one wanted that, and so the feast went forward. It was held in Winchester two weeks after the witan, giving time for the king’s thanes from west of Selwood to come into the capital.

On the night of the feast, Ethelwulf and Ethelbald shared the honor of the high seat; two kings, the old and the new, presiding over the packed hall and the cautious festivity.

Alfred sat between Judith and Ethelred and listened to the scop singing
The Battle of Deorham,
an ancient battle song of his people.

“Like a great silver eagle, Ceawlin swoops on his foes,” the harper chanted, and Alfred’s eyes flew to the figure of his eldest brother. Ceawlin, he thought, must have looked like Ethelbald.

His eyes went next to his own slim, childish arms and legs. He would never look like Ethelbald. He had been told too often that he looked like his mother.

Suddenly he saw that Ethelbald was beckoning to him. Alfred scrambled to his feet and went to stand before the high seat. He had not yet done more than exchange a simple greeting with this stranger-brother of his.

“Would you like to bear the mead cup around the hall, youngster?” Ethelbald asked in his deep voice.

Alfred stared up into his brother’s eyes. They were not blue in color, nor were they green, he thought, but a mix of the two. There was a fractional pause. Ethelbald was offering him a great honor, but Alfred feared that doing such a service for his brother might be a betrayal of his father.

His father’s gentle voice said, “Do as your brother bids you, my son.” Alfred turned to find Ethelwulf smiling at him, and then he reached his hands up and took the golden mead cup from Ethelbald. Balancing it carefully, he bore it with solemn-faced grace to the man seated on Ethelbald’s left. Slowly Alfred made his way from thane to thane around the hall.

Alfred had almost finished his task when he felt the first pangs of queasiness begin to stir in his stomach. He should not have eaten the spiced meat, he thought with apprehension. He had known he should not, but it had looked so good… .

Perhaps if he ignored the sickness it would go away.

He returned the cup to Ethelbald and received a quick, genial smile from his brother’s blue-green eyes. He forced a return smile and walked steadily back to his own bench place. Five minutes later he turned to the brother he loved. “Ethelred,” he said in a low voice, “I don’t feel well. I think I had better go back to the princes’ hall.”

Ethelred gave him a hard look and said instantly, “I’ll go with you,”

Alfred nodded and watched as his brother murmured something into their father’s ear. Ethelwulf looked sharply at Alfred, then nodded to Ethelred. Alfred’s weak stomach was well known to his family.

He was sick in the courtyard, then sick again once they had reached the hall. He felt wretched and weak and horribly inadequate. No one else ever got ill when they ate spiced food. Only him.

He lay down on one of the hall benches and closed his eyes. He was sweating but he felt very cold. “Are you all right?” Ethelred asked.

“Yes.” He forced a grin. “I shall be fine, Ethelred. You can go back to the banquet now.” His teeth began to chatter.

“You’re chilled,” Ethelred said and went to fetch another cover. He asked again, after he had piled all his own blankets on Alfred, “Are you sure you will be all right?”

“Quite sure,” said Alfred.

“There is a serving man at the door. Send him to the great hall if you need me.”

“All right.”

After Ethelred had left Alfred opened his eyes and lay still, looking at the fire. The great log was smoldering under a heap of ash. The doors of the hall were all shut fast. It was very quiet.

Ethelred was never sick, Alfred thought. Nor was Ethelbert. And Ethelbald … the image of his eldest brother was very clear to Alfred’s mind. He would wager that Ethelbald had never been sick a day in his life.

What must it be like, he wondered, to be Ethelbald? To be as tall as a tree and as strong as an ox. To be a warrior all men held in awe. Never to have a doubt, a fear. Ethelbald did not look as if he knew the meaning of the word fear.

Alfred was afraid. He was afraid of being sick. He was afraid of being weak, He was afraid he would never grow to be as strong as his brothers.

Nausea rose again in his throat. He got to his feet and stumbled once more to the door and out into the cold dark air. It was best not to fight the nausea, to get up all that was so upsetting his stomach.

There was a disgusting taste in his mouth and he felt weak in the knees and very chilled when finally he crept back into the hall and into the nest of blankets on his bench.

He wanted his mother. Osburgh had been dead for three years, and in many ways she was but a dim memory, but at times like this he remembered vividly the touch of her hand on his forehead, the sound of her soft voice in his ear. Tears came to his eyes and he set his teeth and forced them down again.

He would not be a baby. He was eight years of age. He would pray to St. Wilfred to make him brave and strong like his brothers. His stomach heaved and he shut his eyes, curled into a small ball, and began to say his prayers.

Two days after the feast Alfred, along with his father, Judith, and two of his brothers, left Winchester for Kent, where Ethelwulf once more took up the rule he had held for so many years under his own father. The following months went by peaceably enough, although the news from France was distressing. The cities and monasteries of the Seine and the Loire were being burned and plundered by the northmen, and it seemed that Judith’s father, Charles the Bald, was helpless to stop the pagan’s rampage.

Judith occupied herself that winter with teaching Alfred to read. The Prankish princess had been horrified by the devastation of learning in Wessex, and the burning monasteries in France only spurred her determination to spread the blessing of her own excellent education as best she could. In Alfred she discovered a thirst for learning that not one member of his own family had known existed, and the two young people spent many long winter’s afternoons with their heads happily bent side by side over a book.

Spring arrived and the coasts of Sussex and Kent were quiet. No long ships, with their terrifying carved prows and their even more terrifying cargoes of Viking warriors, appeared out of the channel mists to disturb the peace of ceorl, thane, or elderly king.

The coast of western Wessex was not so peaceful. In June, Norse raiders from Ireland came up the Bristol Channel, burning and looting. But Ethelbald was at his manor of Wedmore and immediately called up the Somersetshire fyrd to drive the raiders off. They sailed back across the sea to Dublin and were not seen again that year.

Instead, the Danes continued to concentrate their attacks on France. Deserted by most of his nobles, Judith’s father was forced to stand by helplessly as the Vikings burned his city of Paris. Of all the glorious churches on the Seine, only four were left standing by summer’s end.

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.