The Chosen Queen (6 page)

‘Mama,’ Edyth warned urgently, reaching over Edwin to shake Meghan’s knee.

Meghan paled.

‘Alfgar,’ she murmured, ‘Alfgar, no.’ But her husband did not even look their way.

‘Why?’ he demanded loudly.

The crowd silenced in an instant. Someone tittered. Everyone strained forward.

‘Why?’ the king asked coldly. ‘Do you question my judgement, my lord?’

‘Is that not a councillor’s role, Sire?’

The crowd sucked in its breath but Edward simply dipped his head.

‘In the privacy of the chamber, yes.’

‘But this matter was not debated in the privacy of the chamber.’

‘Because, Earl Alfgar, the decision was between myself and God.’

‘And God chose this . . . this trumped-up youngster to rule all Northumbria?’

‘Leo,’ Godiva muttered urgently under her breath and, as if hearing his wife across the arena, Earl Leofric rose to try and tug his son back. Alfgar, however, had stepped closer to
his king and was not within his father’s reach. Edward looked down at him.

‘Do you believe, my lord, that you better understand God’s wishes for my kingdom than I, his anointed representative?’

Alfgar faltered.

‘No, Sire, of course not, but I just wonder if you’ve considered this fully. An earl owes a duty of care to his people and it takes time and wisdom to understand that. Lord Torr is
young and untried whereas I have served you for many years and have proved myself a fine leader in East Anglia.’

‘As I hope you will continue to do.’

Edward’s voice was tight with warning. The crowd licked its lips.

‘But . . .’

‘Take your seat, Earl Alfgar. You are disrupting council business. Your birthright is in Mercia and you will serve the crown – and, as an only son, your family – best in
central England. Lord Torr was fostered to Earl Ward for several years and knows the lands well. I am confident he will rule them wisely.’

He lifted a hand to where Torr was stood, feet planted wide and handsome head held high. Alfgar looked across. Behind him Earl Leofric reached out but, as if stung by his father’s touch,
Alfgar sprang away with a strangled roar.

‘Time and again I am slighted.’ He paced the dais, glaring at his fellow councillors. ‘Time and again I am set aside for that family.’

He spat into the dust at Torr’s feet and the crowd below him ooh-ed encouragement. Edyth felt Lady Godiva quiver beside her and a chill crept up through her feet. She clutched at the
warmth of Morcar’s hand and sneaked an arm around Edwin’s back. They’d all seen their father like this. His temper was roused by the slightest matter and the best thing to do was
to hunker down and wait for it to blow itself out. The king, however, did not know that and neither, Edyth was certain, would he care.

‘I was only made Earl of East Anglia when that upstart . . .’ Alfgar swung round to point wildly at Harold, ‘was exiled and as soon as he came back – came back, note you,
at sword point!’ He drew his sword from its scabbard and the crowd gasped. ‘I was ordered to give it back.’

‘Perhaps rightly so, my lord, if you know not how to respect responsibility.’

It was Torr, his voice rigidly calm as he indicated the flailing sword. Only councillors were allowed to enter the moot-point armed and that was expressly for the purpose of defending the
king’s person. Placing himself deliberately before Edward, Torr reached out for Alfgar’s weapon but Alfgar, incensed to new heights, sprang away, pointing it straight at his rival. To
Edyth’s left her mother was moaning again, a low, keening sound that tore at Edyth’s heart. She wanted to leap up and call out to her father to stop but she knew it would do no good. He
would not hear her through the roar of his own rage; he would not hear anyone.

‘Earl Alfgar!’ Edward’s voice rang round the hushed crowd. ‘Lay down your weapon immediately.’

He doesn’t know, Edyth thought. The king did not know that her father was deaf to reason. How could he? And now he was moving forward and Alfgar was turning his sword tip instinctively
away from Torr and towards . . .

Instantly the councillors were on their feet. Swords flashed from scabbards and in a heartbeat Alfgar was surrounded. He looked about, fury turning to bewilderment, and Edyth felt her heart
bleed as surely as if her father had slashed it through himself. Someone – Earl Harold, Edyth thought – took her father’s sword gently from his now limp hand and he stood,
defenceless and hunched, before his king.

‘Earl Alfgar, turning a sword on the king is treason.’

‘Sire, I didn’t mean . . .’

‘Treason. There can be no mercy. You must consider yourself
nithing
.’

‘Nithing. Nithing!’ The crowd of common folk took up the word with vicious glee, delighted to have been party to such a dramatic spectacle. ‘Nithing.’ Nothing; below
notice in law.

The king raised his hands and spoke above their hissed chorus:

‘You and your family must leave this land until such time as you are deemed fit to hold office once more.’

‘Sire?’

Alfgar looked as confused as an old man rattled from sleep and the king placed a hand on his shoulder.

‘You must think, my lord. You must dwell on what it is to rule, to hold men’s lives in your hands.’

‘I will. I will, Sire.’ Alfgar was gabbling now. ‘I can do that, truly. I will retreat to my lands in East Anglia and . . .’

‘Alfgar, you have no lands. You are nithing.’

Again the echo and now even the lords and ladies were on their feet and pressing forward to hear the final judgement.

‘No!’ Edyth clutched her brothers tighter as her father fell to his knees. ‘No, please.’

‘This gives me no pleasure, Alfgar, but I cannot let such behaviour pass. You are exiled.’

The word fell like a hammer blow on Edyth’s head and she rocked beneath it. Exiled? What had Torr said last night?
It’s desperate in exile, far away from all you know and
love.
Had he known what would happen here? Had he looked for it?

Her eyes found him, stood slightly aside and to her horror she saw that he was looking straight at her. She felt his hand on her waist as surely as if he had stretched out across the crowd to
draw her in and let everyone know she had been party to this humiliation.

‘We must go.’ She tore herself away and reached for her older brother. ‘We must go, Brodie – now!’

‘Quite right, my dear,’ Lady Godiva said calmly, then she leaned close and added, ‘Stay safe, Edyth – and stay strong. I know you, at least, can do that.’

Edyth looked at her grandmother in surprise but nodded gratefully and then turned as Brodie also drew himself up tall. Clutching their mother to him, he began to fight his way out of the arena
but the large woman Meghan had earlier denied seating space stood in his way.

‘Decided to let someone else have your place?’ she taunted. ‘How kind.’ Around them people cackled and, encouraged, the woman added: ‘Some people need to learn how
to comport themselves.’

More laughter.

‘Keep going, Brodie,’ Edyth urged but it was as if everyone was pressing in on them, prodding them, testing them like apple-pickers seeking rot. All her innards crawled beneath their
touch but she pushed her head up and fought on.

‘I would not be so quick to judge,’ she challenged. ‘Fortune turns fast.’

‘Too fast, indeed, for mortals,’ a deep voice agreed. ‘Let them through please, let them through. Show mercy in God’s eyes.’

The crowds parted as if Moses himself had spoken and Edyth saw Harold Godwinson step forward as she shepherded her family through the welcome gap.

‘God bless you, my lord,’ she said when they reached him.

‘And you, Lady Edyth. We will escort you.’

He turned a little and the Lady Svana stepped up at his side. She was dressed in a soft grey gown that swirled like mist as she walked but she was as solid as rock at Edyth’s side as they
made for the compound gates.

‘Where will we go?’ Edyth asked her.

‘I know not, but your father will keep you safe.’

‘As he has done this morning?’ Edyth caught herself. ‘He will. I know it. I’m just . . .’ She dropped her voice. ‘Fearful.’

‘Of course you are. I was so fearful when Harold was exiled that I was sick for weeks.’

‘Truly?’

‘Truly, but it was well in the end.’

They reached the bridge leading off the island and Harold stopped.

‘You must see your brother invested,’ Edyth said carefully to him.

He bowed.

‘It brings me little pleasure.’

Edyth started but already Harold was stepping back, his eyes wary, and she grabbed at Svana’s arm.

‘How long?’ she asked urgently. ‘How long did it take for him to return?’

Svana swallowed.

‘A year.’

‘A year? A whole year? What will I do for that long?’

Svana leaned forward and whispered a kiss across her forehead.

‘Write to me.’

‘You wouldn’t want . . .’

‘Write to me, Edyth, really. Now, look there.’

Edyth turned to where she pointed and saw her father between two guards, his knees dipped and his head low.

‘Papa!’

All else forgotten, she ran to him, bundling the sheepish guards aside. ‘You will need to support your father,’ Lord Torr – Earl Torr now – had said to her last night and
the words swirled tauntingly in her head. How dare he? How dare he ever assume, for even a moment, that she would not?

‘I’m so sorry,’ Alfgar said, pulling them all into his shaking arms. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

‘No matter,’ Edyth told him. ‘We will make things well, Father. We will make things well together. Now come.’

Lady Godiva had said she could be strong and she would prove it. Setting her chin, she took Alfgar’s arm and led her family away from Westminster, away from the crowds, and away from the
court.

North Wales, May 1055

‘
H
ere we will rebuild our power, Edyth.’ Alfgar let go of his reins to throw his hands wide. ‘Here we will be
safe.’

‘Safe,’ Edyth echoed obediently, though in truth it was not the word that sprang to mind.

They had been riding for days and she was tired and saddle-sore. Morcar had complained most of the way, tugging on his hazel curls and blinking up at the maids, becoming increasingly cross when,
for once, his sparkling eyes did not get him his own way. Edwin in contrast had become more and more silent, retreating behind his blond hair and barely even eating enough to sustain his skinny
frame. This morning he had not spoken a single word, but then none of them had found much to talk about until now.

‘Safe,’ she said again, testing the validity of the word; it still didn’t ring true.

She scanned the vast landscape before them. They were on the ridge of a considerable hill and could look out across rolling grasslands, dotted with endless sheep, and on down to the distant sea.
And what a sea! Brought up in her grandfather’s central province of Mercia, Edyth was used to tumbling streams and stretching lakes but not this vast expanse of ocean. Even after her father
had been made Earl of East Anglia they had kept to the inland areas around Thetford and Nazeing and avoided the exposed eastern coast. She knew the tidal Thames of course, and she’d sometimes
ridden out to Southampton from court gatherings at Winchester, but the sea there was narrow and tame compared to this rugged Welsh water.

It was spring. That much was clear in the green of the grass and the buttery yellow of the daffodils trumpeting joy from every verge. Yet the young rays of the sun did not seem able to penetrate
the determined chill of the sea breeze or to draw any colour into the choppy waves. To Edyth, shivering in her saddle, this sea looked like a hunk of raw iron enclosing the helpless land like a
vice. A flotilla of long, dark boats was at anchor just offshore but other than that the water was a relentless stretch of nothing. Her father was staring eagerly at her, as if he had provided some
sort of banquet, but it was hard to respond.

‘It does not look all that safe to me, Father,’ she finally admitted.

‘Pah!’ He tossed his head and she felt the stab of his disappointment. ‘This is Rhuddlan, girl, palace of the Red Devil himself, King Griffin of Wales. Believe me it is very
safe – as long as you are on his side!’

He laughed heartily at his own jest and Edyth glanced across to Brodie. Her gangly older brother was grinding his teeth as he always did when he was afraid and that made her bolder.

‘And
are
we on his side, Father?’

‘Of course, of course. What d’you think I am, a simpleton? I have tracked King Griffin’s rise to power these last ten years. I first took notice when we were residing in Mercia
but even from East Anglia’ – his chin went up at the thought of his lost earldom – ‘I have had friends stay close to him.’

‘Spies, Father?’

‘
Friends
, Edie. A man needs alliances if he is to stay afloat at court. I have worked to make them and now that work is coming to fruition. Griffin is but newly returned from a
great victory in south Wales and will be looking for ways to further his political stability.
I
am one of those ways.’