The Price of Blood. Patricia Bracewell

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       Chapter Ten

       July 1006

       Cookham, Berkshire

      The midsummer sun was at its height as Athelstan rode with Edmund and a dozen of their hearth guards along the Camlet Way towards the royal manor at Cookham. The road here, just north of the bridge that crossed the Thames near Shaftsey, cut through a forest of oaks, and he was grateful for the cooling shade. As they neared the river the trees thinned, and a horn blared from the walls of the burh that guarded the crossing.

      Good, he thought, the guards are vigilant. He counted fifteen of them on the palisade. His bannermen, riding at the head of his company, signalled to them, they signalled back, and the wail of the horn faded. Casting a critical eye on the fortified structure perched on the island midriver, he noted that two new watchtowers had been added since last he was here.

      ‘It looks like Ealdorman Ælfric has been strengthening the shire’s defences,’ he said to Edmund. His brother made no reply, and Athelstan, irritated, scowled at him. ‘Edmund, something’s been eating at you all day. Are you going to tell me what it is, or are you going to continue to keep me in suspense?’

      Edmund scowled back at him, but finally he broke his sullen silence.

      ‘How much will you tell the king about what you’ve been doing?’

      It was a fair question, and one that Athelstan had been asking himself for weeks as he met with thegns all through the Midlands in an effort to stem their outrage over Ælfhelm’s murder. He had told them that Ælfhelm had been consorting with men close to the Danish king. He had done what he could to convince them that his father had been forced to move against the ealdorman, but he had not been able to defend the king’s tactics – the ruthless butchery of Ælfhelm and his sons. When pressed he had vowed that if he were on the throne, he would be far more open and even-handed in his dealings with his nobles than his father had been.

      It was a promise not likely to endear him to the king, should he hear of it.

      ‘Are you afraid that I will end up like Wulf and Ufegeat?’ he asked Edmund. Poor devils. They had been mere pawns in their father’s dangerous game, yet they had died miserably in a dank and fetid stone cell, their wounds, it was rumoured, gone untreated. Siferth and Morcar, it seemed, had been granted possession of the ravaged bodies of their kinsmen for burial, and they had borne witness to the consequences of the king’s wrath. Word of it had spread through the realm like wildfire.

      ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ Edmund turned the question back at him.

      ‘Yes,’ he growled, ‘I am. The king sees enemies everywhere and I am hardly invisible. But if he demands an accounting from me, I will give an honest answer. Someone has to speak openly to him about the uncertain temper of his nobles.’

      Edmund was silent for a few moments. Then he said, ‘The king’s enemies are everywhere. Our northern border is under attack by the Scots, and the king’s spies have warned that the Danes will strike before summer’s end – God alone knows where. I think he was right to make an example of Ælfhelm. He has made it clear that he will punish treachery and disloyalty. It used to be that gold and lands and preferment were enough to keep men loyal. No longer, though. In times such as these, fear of punishment may be the only thing that will compel men to cleave to their king.’

      ‘But he is a weak king, Edmund, and no warrior. If the men inside his realm turn against him, it is because they fear he cannot protect them from the enemies who press us from outside. Mark me, there is a storm coming and we are ill prepared to meet it. Jesu, with Ælfhelm dead there is no longer an ealdorman in Northumbria or in Mercia. Who will organize the defence if the Danes strike the towns along the Trent or the Ouse?’

      ‘Eadric of Shrewsbury, judging by the trust the king has placed in him lately.’

      ‘Eadric!’ Athelstan snorted. ‘He is a henchman, not a warrior.’

      ‘Warrior or not, he is better than no leader at all,’ Edmund countered.

      As to that, Athelstan had his doubts. What they needed was time – time to consult over the leadership of the northern shires, time to bring in the harvest, time to prepare and stock the burhs for defence. He had begged the churchmen he had spoken with to pray for time so that they could gather strength to meet their enemies.

      But as Edmund said, there was already fighting along the border with the Scots, and he feared there was an ill wind blowing across the Danish sea. The one thing that the people of England did not have was time.

      They were over the bridge now, the island behind them, and the gates of the palace rose ahead, reinforced, he noted, by a triple guard. Within the walls all was clamour and mayhem, far surpassing the everyday comings and goings of servants, retainers, and men-at-arms. He had difficulty guiding his mount past men sorting through piles of arms and equipment, women and children scurrying from building to building weighed down with bundles, and grooms loading horses and pack mules.

      The king’s household was preparing to move, but there was nothing orderly or methodical about these preparations. Something was wrong, something more pressing than the Scots’ invasion of far-off Northumbria.

      He and Edmund dismounted, tossed their reins to a groom, and went into the hall. Here, too, all was chaos, except for a table full of scribes who sat writing furiously on wax tablets. Instructions from the king to his royal thegns, Athelstan guessed. He paused to address a steward who was hurling curses at a trio of slaves that was frantically packing silver candlesticks and goblets into chests.

      ‘What is amiss?’ he asked.