Kings of the North Read online

  The bridge looked new, with big timbers lashed in clusters sunk down into the riverbed and layers of planks set across to make the road. All along the rails on either side people stood calling out wares, baskets at their feet full of nuts and apples. The bridge went flat across the river, which boiled through the narrow gaps between the posts: Raef thought it was here as much to stop ships going upstream as to let people get across. He led the others across the long span and into the swarming heart of the city.

  “What’s the name of this place?” Leif asked.

  Raef was looking around them. “London.” He was trying to feel his way through the tumult of the city. He had met Euan Woodwrightsson long before, and given this connection he thought he should be able to feel out his house, but the space around him seemed packed, airless, deafening. His nerves itched. “Come on.”

  They went off along the road that led by the riverbank. Stubs of old piers stood in the water, boats moored among them. A brook came down into the river, stinking of offal and carrying garbage, and Raef turned to go up alongside it toward a bridge on the higher ground. He was still struggling just to keep the city’s chaos from flooding in on him when he realized Euan Woodwrightsson’s house was off to his right. In his mind it stood like a big yellow beacon in a churning of vapors and screams. He led the other two up through narrow lanes.

  Laissa said, “What are we doing here?”

  Raef stood looking up at the tall house, the bottom section made of stone, the upper story of wood, the massive roof of slates; as if they hung like beans in a soup of wood and stones and air, he could feel the people inside, the servants and slaves and hangers-on, and at the center of them Euan Woodwrightsson, the very rich man.

  Now also he was beginning to make out something larger, a spinning top of power, a furious, enormous motion. Euan Woodwrightsson was part of it, Richard of Normandy another part, and he himself, entwined around and around some terrible purpose. He looked around him. The itching along his nerves was getting stronger.

  He led the others around to the back of Euan’s house. The claim of kinship should get them at least some place to stay the night. They waited in the wood yard until someone came in, and in his newfound Saxon he sent that someone for someone else in the big house, who came back to the yard and took a message: Your kinsman Raef Corbansson is outside.

  They waited awhile. A man carried a sack of cabbages into the kitchen, and another came by with a basket of bread. The sun was going down. Raef fretted; Laissa needed a place to stay, and the porch of a church wasn’t good enough anymore. He could feel Leif’s gaze on him, the Icelander wondering what he was doing.

  Then a kitchen boy came out from the backdoor and stood on the step above him and said, “My master commands you leave at once, or he will attack you with dogs.”

  Raef turned and walked off, his teeth gritted together. He burned with humiliation, but he should have foreseen this. Laissa said, “Where are we going?”

  They went back down the slope toward the busy part of the city. “I’m hungry,” Leif said. “Let’s go spend those farthings.” Raef said nothing, his head down; he wanted to go back to throttle Euan. The deeper they went into the churning city, the more edgy he was, confused, angry.

  The Lady of Hedeby was somewhere nearby. That was the itch. And if he could sense her even within the barricades of his body, then she was very close. She could be anybody. His gaze swept the crowd around him. Any woman. Corban had seen her as a merchant woman, old but strong. She could be any of the women in the street, with their white coifs wrapped around their hair and their broad-brimmed hats and long dark skirts, although it was hard to see how a woman carrying a basket of bread could overturn the world. Then suddenly someone came up and caught hold of his arm and said, “Let me see you.”

  He wheeled, his arm cocked back ready to strike, the heat of her touch like a brand. She stepped away, saying, “Hold. Hold, Raef, do you not know me?” She laughed.

  He lowered his fist. The laugh resounded in his memory. She was a big woman, round and well plumped, her red-brown hair escaping from the confines of a crumpled white coif. She wore big wooden clogs like a peasant, but she was no peasant; she gave off a shine of strength, and, poor as she wore them, her clothes were richly made.

  She had direct, dark brown eyes, and it was the eyes that brought her name to him. “Arre,” he said. “Arre.”

  She laid her hands on his arm. “Yes, I am your aunt, somehow, close to, anyway. It is you, Raef; you have come back.” Then she lowered her hands and cast her gaze swiftly around her, almost furtively. “And none too soon. Now, listen. I know you tried to get help from Euan, but he is a lost fish here. Trust me. We must meet. There is – something you must see. Tomorrow, the King and Queen will ride out, after Mass. They go to the minster, down around the curve of the river to the south. The King has a hall there. Here.” She was going. Now he saw a servant hovering a little way down the street, his hat pulled down, waiting for her. Looking back over her shoulder, she held something out to Raef. “Tomorrow.” She ran off. The servant scuttled along with her.

  Raef looked down; she had given him a little leather purse, which jingled. He turned to Leif and said, “Do you think we can find an inn?”

  “The city is packed,” Leif said. “They’re having some festival. Those farthings won’t be enough.”

  “This is enough,” Raef said, hefting the purse.

  * * *

  Yet in the end all they could find for any price was a storeroom in a stable behind an inn. The straw was warm, and the space dry, but the dark and the reek of horses drove them out again before they slept, into the boisterous city.

  With the feast day almost on them, the city was filled with people there to celebrate. Torches burned on posts at every corner, and crowds milled through the streets, drinking and singing and calling out. Laissa clung close to Raef, unused to all these strangers. Across the crowd they saw a parade of horsemen going by – six men wearing fine dark coats and peaked hats and riding fine, prancing horses.

  As they went, the people shouted and called, and one of the men turned, sweeping off his cap in response. His long blond hair tumbled over his shoulders. The call rose again: “Aethelstan! Aethelstan!”

  Laissa stood on her toes to watch them ride by. They were her age, all but one younger boy. Her gaze fell on the handsome blond-haired Aethelstan. I am married now. She took hold of Raef’s arm.

  Leif said, “Who are those lordlings?”

  “Aethelstan,” Raef said. “The King’s eldest son. From the old wife, the Saxon, not the Norman duke’s sister.” He glanced around him; he was hot, his cheeks ruddy, his eyes piercing. Laissa could feel the surge of his blood through his wrist, where she held him.

  “So the new wife is a Norman,” Leif said. “Maybe she can help us.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He did.”

  “He got us out of his way.” Under his breath, Raef said, “But it’s all connected. I just don’t see how.”

  They went on down the broad street along the river, where the vendors were selling food and drink, charcoal and candles. Eating sausage and cheese, they went by the young English princes again, clustered at a tavern doorway, lesser men around them in a ring. At their center the handsome fair-headed Aethelstan was laughing, his head thrown back.

  They came to the filthy stream, winding down toward the mucky bank of the river, and went to the bridge and crossed, crowding through a constant stream of people coming the other way. Just beyond that was the bear pit. The torchlight did not quite reach into the bottom, and she knew the bear was there only by the restless stirring and rumbling of the shadows.

  Leif stood watching the bear, and Raef pulled Laissa off and down below the shoulder of the bridge, by the brook, where nobody could see them, and leaned her against the pier. She put her hands behind her, arching her body toward him. She loved this attention, this homage. He pulled her skirts up and rubbed his hands over her, hol
ding her close against him, filling her crevices with his heat. She coiled her arms around his neck.

  “Not here.” She licked the skin above his collarbone. “Everybody can see us. Let’s go back to the stable. Leif can catch up.” She led him back toward the quiet and the straw.

  * * *

  Edmund Aetheling followed his older brother Aethelstan into the tavern. After the quiet of his grandmother’s house in Wessex, the noise and confusion of London was overwhelming. He was fourteen, almost grown up, and now he was to attend his father’s court, but in this strange place he felt like a child again, and he stayed close to his big brother. He loved Aethelstan best, anyway, and always had, golden Aethelstan, one day to be his king, deserving of all his loyalty.

  Inside the crowded tavern, at the sight of them, a cheer went up; but he knew it was for Aethelstan.

  Aethelstan’s carls went ahead of them, clearing the way. Then another man came up through the crowd.

  “Prince Aethelstan. Thank you for coming. Will you join us in the back room?”

  Aethelstan swept his hat off. He was taller than anyone else in the common room and drew all eyes to him, handsome and high headed. “What’s this about, my lord Morcar?” His clear voice sounded through the sudden hush.

  “Please,” the other man said. He was in middle age, with a long face, a bulbous nose, eyelids that drooped at the corners like a hound’s. “We should talk out of the common earshot.”

  Aethelstan looked around. His gaze lighted on Edmund, and he said, “Come on, little brother. The rest of you stay here.”

  Edmund was glad to be chosen. He followed Aethelstan into the back of the tavern, to a door that opened into a small room with no windows. Here at a table sat four other men, who leaped to their feet when the princes came in. The hound-faced Morcar, who Edmund remembered was a thegn of the Five Burhs, shut the door behind them. His seat was Derby, north somewhere, in Mercia. Edmund was pleased with himself for knowing that.

  He wondered what this was about. Something to do with the Martinmas feast, probably, everything else was.

  The other men around the room were also high Saxon lords. He recognized them from the court, but he did not remember their names. This must be some part of the court festival. Nobody told him anything.

  “You know my brother Edmund,” Aethelstan said.

  These men only glanced at Edmund, muttered greetings, and turned back to the crown prince. “My lord,” Morcar said. “I pray you, sit down with us. We have heavy words to say.”

  Aethelstan folded his arms across his chest. “I’ll stand. What’s this about?”

  The other men glanced at one another, shifting their feet. They could not sit while the prince stood, and they seemed uncertain now how to begin. Edmund saw how his brother had taken control of this. The other men hemmed, their eyes lowered. Finally Morcar said, “You know that Aweard of Bath was murdered last summer. Stabbed to death in his own dooryard.”

  Edmund licked his lips. This was not about Martinmas. This was something bad. He glanced at his brother and saw Aethelstan frowning.

  “Yes. An old feud caught up to him. I don’t know what it has to do with us.”

  “And Maer Longnose, of Avon, before that,” another man said. “Drowned crossing a river, they said.” He gave a humorless harrumph of disbelief. The others growled.

  Aethelstan said sharply, “What are you getting at?”

  “My lord,” Morcar said, “I will say it bluntly. It is the King.”

  “What!”

  “The King is killing us all off, one at a time, and now there is a rumor going around that he means to sweep England free of all his enemies at one stroke. Every man here fears for his life.”

  Edmund froze. He switched his astonished gaze to Aethelstan.

  “The King.” Aethelstan’s jaw was set like a ledge. His glittering eyes turned from one to the other. “You blame this on the King. You think you see some great scheme of Ethelred’s in this.”

  “Not by his own hand,” said another man, balding, heavy-set. “It is Eadric Streona who carries out his will. The King sets this upstart and the Normans against his own countrymen. Everybody knows Streona wields the axe for the King.”

  Aethelstan said, “This is foul and fearful gossip. You start at shadows. Nightmares. You can prove nothing of this. My father is no such man as that, much less such a king as would do that. I will hear no talk against him, do you understand me?” He turned to Edmund. “Go on out, little brother – I would not have brought you if I knew they meant to say this.”

  Edmund said, “I—”

  Aethelstan said, harshly, “Edmund, go.”

  Edmund turned and went out the door, his hands shaking. In the big, crowded room beyond, stinking of ale and bodies, alone, he stood with his heart hammering, wondering what to do. These men were speaking treason against his father. They were trying to turn his brother against their father. This was what it meant to come to court, he thought, to learn such things. Then the door behind him opened, and the big, balding man he had seen inside came out and took him by the arm and led him to a quieter corner.

  “Now, boy,” he said, “you should not have heard that. Put it from your mind.”

  “Put it from my mind!” Edmund said. He kept his voice low; he was shaking. “Everybody always blames my father for everything.” He was still shocked, and now he was angry.

  “Well,” the older man said, “Aethelstan does not. Even now he is ripping Morcar up and down like a hung deer.” He lifted his hand, and an alewife came toward them with cups. “You must keep this secret, Edmund.”

  Edmund swallowed. If he said nothing, was that not a kind of treason? The other man was watching him narrowly. In the silence, the alewife held out a cup to him, and he shook his head.

  The balding man took the cup and waved the woman away. When she was gone, he said, “I am Sigeferth, Morcar’s brother, and thegn of the Burhs.” He held his hand out.

  Edmund ignored it, and after a moment Sigeferth lowered his hand. The prince wondered what to do. He knew who Sigeferth was: Like Morcar, his holding was in Mercia, and this Streona whom they had called the King’s henchman had lately become overlord of Mercia.

  He clutched at that. That must be what was going on here. The feuding of the Saxon lords was legendary. They would say anything in pursuit of their interests.

  He said, “I have to do what is right.” That sounded stupid.

  The big man watched him cooly. He said, “If word of this meeting gets out, it will look bad for Aethelstan, you see. You see?”

  Edmund did not see it. He did not know what to think. Before he could speak, the door in the back opened, and Aethelstan came out again. He was not smiling. He clapped his hat on his head. With a wave he summoned his carls to him. “Edmund,” he called. “Let’s go.” He shot a fierce glare at Sigeferth. Edmund went gratefully after him, into the street.

  There Aethelstan turned to him. “What did he say to you?”

  Edmund shook his head. There was no use in telling him. It was all surely lies. But his spine tingled. “Nothing,” he said, and followed Aethelstan down the street.

  * * *

  In the corner the little man saw them go and wondered who was in the back room. He didn’t bother to find out. Streona would pay him for this news, and he would pay more if the men in the back room were Danes, so they were Danes. He hurried out to the street, down toward the King’s hall, to find his master, Streona.

  Chapter Six

  The next day, Raef and Laissa and Leif went down the road out of London to the new minster, around the southern bend in the river and across another bridge, to meet Arre. Hundreds of other people had also come and lined the road all the way to the porch of the low wooden church. The day was bright and the sun warmed them; they had left their fur cloaks hidden in the stable. Leif beside him, Raef let Laissa stand in front so she could see, and they could protect her from the buffets of the crowd.

  He laid his hands on h
er shoulders, though; he had noticed how she had looked at Prince Aethelstan.

  Now the doors of the church cracked open, and out came a steady parade of people. First were men with long brass-bound horns, all dressed in bright tunics, who blew shrieking blasts on their instruments as if the noise would open a corridor ahead of them. Raef shook himself; his body was crazed, as if every nerve stirred, and an icy panic went through him in waves. He wondered if it was only the huge city around them, overwhelming his senses. He was drowning in noise and color.

  After the horn players, half a dozen children in very rich clothes ran by, casting bits of money and nutmeats to either side. Meanwhile, as the poor scrabbled for these alms, grooms were leading horses to the porch. First mounted up were the royal princes; Raef recognized Aethelstan again, with his long fair hair. When the princes came down the road, the crowd cheered them so loudly that Aethelstan stopped his horse and swept his hat off and saluted them. He had done this the night before, Raef remembered. He was their favorite, and he meant to stay so.