“Not going back,” answered Shef. “You’ll see.”
Chapter Seven
Burgred, king of Mercia, one of the two great kingdoms of England still unconquered by the Vikings, paused at the entrance to his private chambers, dismissed the crowd of attendants and hangers-on, doffed his mantle of martenfur, allowed his snow-soaked boots to be removed and replaced by slippers of soft whittawed leather, and prepared to enjoy the moment. By command, the young man and his father were waiting for him, as was the atheling Alfred, there to represent his brother Ethelred, king of Wessex—the other surviving great English kingdom.
The issue before them was the fate of East Anglia. Its king dead with no successor, its people demoralized and uncertain. Yet Burgred knew well that if he marched an army to take it over, to add it to Mercia by force, the East Angles might well fight, Englishmen against Englishmen, as they had so often before. But if he sent them a man of their own, he calculated—one of noble blood, one who nevertheless owed absolutely everything, including the army he led with him, to King Burgred—well, that they might swallow.
Especially as this particular noble and grateful young man had such a very useful father. One who, so to speak—Burgred allowed himself a grim smile—carried his anti-Viking credentials with him. Who could fail to rally to such a figurehead? A figure-head and -trunk, indeed. Burgred blessed, silently, the day the two ponies with their leaders and their slung stretcher had brought him in from York.
And the beautiful young woman too. How affecting it had been. The young man, fair hair swept back, kneeling at his father’s feet before ever they had unstrapped him from his litter, and begging forgiveness for having married without his father’s consent. The pair might have been forgiven for more than that after all they had been through, but no, young Alfgar had been the essence of propriety all through. It was the spirit that would one day make the English the greatest of all nations. Decency, mused Burgred: gedafenlicnis.
What Alfgar had really muttered as he knelt at his father’s feet had been: “I married Godive, father. I know she’s my half sister, but don’t say anything of it, or I’ll tell everyone you’re mad. And then an accident could happen to you. Men with no arms smother easily. And don’t forget, we’re both your children. If we succeed, your grandsons could still be princes. Or better.”
And after the first shock, it had seemed well enough to Wulfgar. True, they had committed incest, “sibb-laying,” as the English called it. But what did a trifle like that matter? Thryth, his own lady, had committed fornication with a heathen Viking, and who had done anything about that? If Alfgar and Godive had an incest child like Sigemund and his sister in the legends, it could be no worse than that gadderling brat he, Wulfgar, had been fool enough to rear.
As the king of the Mercians strode into the room, the men in it rose and bowed. The one woman, the East Anglian beauty with the sad face and the brilliant eyes, rose and made her courtesy in the new style of the Franks. Two attendants—they had been arguing quietly about the right thing to do—lifted Wulfgar’s padded box to the vertical before leaning it back against the wall. At a gesture they resumed their seats: stools for all but the king and the heimnar. Wulfgar too was lifted into a highseat with wooden arms. He could not have balanced himself to sit on a stool.
“I have news from Eoforwich,” began the king. “Later news than you brought,” with a nod to Wulfgar. “And better news. Still, it has decided me to act.
“It seems that after the surrender by the Church of the town and of King Ella—”
“Say, rather,” cut in the young atheling from Wessex, “the disgraceful betrayal of King Ella by those he had protected.”
Burgred frowned. The young man, he had noticed, had little sense of respect to kings, and none at all for senior members of the Church.
“After the surrender of King Ella, he was unhappily put to death in vile manner by the heathen Ragnarssons, and especially the one called the Boneless. Just as happened to your master, the noble Edmund,” he added, nodding again to Wulfgar.