The Lost Tales of Mercia (11 page)

Yes, Canute had just lost his father. She
had lost her father many years ago, and it had changed her life
irrevocably. This would bind her to Canute, she thought, and form a
permanent connection. She would be able to help him in a moment of
weakness; she would be able to understand what he was going through
better than most. She would be able to gain his trust.

And once she gained his trust, she would be
able to turn him against Eadric Streona.

*

“What do you mean, he is busy?”

“He’s busy,” repeated the thick-skulled
housecarl, gulping from a horn of mead.

“This is unacceptable,” hissed Alfgifu. “I
have brought him two hundred pounds. I have brought him horses, and
cloaks, and fine blades, and—”

“These are very good gifts, my lady.” The
warrior nodded approvingly while running his calloused finger over
one of the blades in discussion. “I think he will actually like
them, more than most of the gifts he has received. But … Canute is
busy.”

“He cannot be too busy to see
me
.”
She straightened as tall as she could, her chest swelling, her chin
thrusting high. But this movement felt like a mistake once the
housecarl’s eyes began roving her body. He did not seem pleased by
what he saw, and this only made her tremble with more fury. People
had always told her she possessed a “boyish” figure. She was
skinny, her chest flat, her limbs lanky, and on top of all that her
face was very square. She could only hope that this would keep the
housecarl from thinking about her womanhood, so she forced herself
to stand secure and not wither under his gaze. “I am Alfgifu of
Northampton. I am the daughter of Alfhelm, who once ruled as
Ealdorman of York—”

“And our king just died, so I don’t care who
the hell you are, you stupid bitch; go away.”

“
Just
died?” She looked around
curiously at the soldiers lounging in streets and lodges they had
taken over. The place was filthier than it should have been, she
realized: a sign that the army had been here for some time without
moving. The men and women labored through their daily chores with
sloth and boredom. How long had it been since these Vikings were
mobile, she wondered? Had this whole army stayed here since the
death of their last king, doing nothing, even though the king of
the Anglo-Saxons had left his own country for a short while? She
could hardly believe it. “But Canute has been your king for almost
two months,” she observed aloud.

“I said
go away!
”

He shoved her, so hard that she tripped on
her skirts, and then she fell into the mud.

She should have been furious. She should
have been overwhelmed with shame and outrage. Here, in the filthy,
stinking dirt, she faced utter humiliation, which she feared more
than death itself. And yet faced with it, she overcame it. She felt
as if she had just been pushed off a cliff. Where once the view
dizzied her and prevented her progress, she now realized that she
would survive the fall to the bottom. She heard men laughing at
her, but this only fed her determination to prove them wrong. It
gave her the strength to pull herself from the filth. Silent,
expressionless, she flapped the muck off her dress and lifted her
chin again. The men grew quiet, watching her curiously. She stared
back at them, her gray eyes as solid as stone.

She had control of her emotions, though it
was not about to seem so. She gathered them all in the pit of her
belly. She let them rise up and make her chest swell. Some of it
overflowed slightly, making her blood boil and her hands squeeze
into such tight fists that her nails pierced the skin of her palms.
But when she let it out of her throat, all the rest was worth it.
She let out a sound that was more than a scream; it was also the
roar of a lion, the howl of a wolf. It was a cry of pain and
sorrow—but also of strength.

When it was over she closed her mouth and
listened to her own cry echo through the hills. Her vision swam
with the exhilaration of her release. The men all around her were
dumbstruck, and their eyes were filled with terror. She felt a
small smirk on her lips.

She could not say for how long she waited
for a reaction. The time passed on and on, but she was in a state
of calm, so she did not measure it. She only took note when a
distant door swung open: the door of Canute’s own hall. Surely he
resided there, for it was the biggest building in sight, and it was
guarded by men wearing rings of gold and silver: men who were
probably his personal guards, or as the Danes called them,
housecarls.

A man peered from the door. She had never
seen Canute before, but she did not think this was him. This man
looked too old and—in any case—she simply sensed that if it was
Canute, she would know it. He only peered at her a moment, then
returned inside.

She stood calmly and patiently. Her heart
scrambled and thumped in her chest, but otherwise she reined in her
feelings. After all, she had just released her emotions in the most
powerful scream of her entire life. She could relax now.

After a moment the man walked out of
Canute’s hall again. Her heart surged, this time with eagerness. He
made his way through the mud to the housecarl who had pushed her,
and who now wore a very abashed look on his face.

“What the hell is going on, Gunnlaug?”

Alfgifu answered for him. “I am Alfgifu of
Northampton. I brought gifts for King Canute, and this
man—Gunnlaug—pushed me into the ground for my trouble.”

The king’s man looked warily from one of
them to the other. Gunnlaug seemed torn between surliness and
guilt. “She insisted on seeing Canute.”

Canute’s housecarl surprised them both by
reaching out and grabbing Alfgifu’s arm. “Then she’ll see him.” And
he started to pull her away.

“Hey!” Alfgifu squirmed until at last she
escaped his grip. But he kept walking, and she was forced to
scramble after him, feeling humiliated once more. She wanted to
insist on bringing her hearth companions along, but if he refused
her, it would only increase her embarrassment. Besides, she told
herself, she wouldn’t need them.

Any remaining fight in her drained from her
bones as they walked past a group of freshly captured slaves. They
were Anglo-Saxons, captured on raids no doubt, and they were mostly
women. Their dresses were ripped, their hair disheveled, and they
were so weary and hopeless that they were not even tied up. They
were guarded by men who reached out and fondled them, and before
her very eyes one of the Vikings pulled one up and dragged her
away.

Alfgifu stared after them curiously a
moment, then turned her eyes ahead once more. They were nearly to
Canute’s hall.

Before they entered, the housecarl stopped
her forcefully and searched her with his hands. She gritted her
teeth and endured it. For another rare moment, she felt grateful
for possessing a body that most men found unattractive. His hand
struggled to find her small breasts, and then it did not linger.
When he was done, finding nothing of interest beyond her small
table dirk, he released her and said, “Go on in.”

It was strangely calm inside the hall, and
she paused at the entrance to let herself adjust. The air was thick
and stuffy with smoke and old wood, but this was softened by the
aromas of warm bread and meat, and what appeared to be fresh, clean
rushes covering the floor. Nonetheless she felt enveloped by an
uncomfortable heat as she continued moving forward, and she
wondered if she imagined it, along with the unnatural red glow that
seemed to cover everything. The fire in the hearth was low and
calm, hardly a source for such a hellish visage. Altogether the
hall was very quiet, though occupied by at least a dozen men and
women: jarls, housecarls, and the best of the female captives, she
suspected.

Alfgifu felt unexpectedly jealous as she
watched these women sit on the men’s laps, whispering in their ears
or listening to their conversations. These captives had settled
more comfortably into their new roles than the ones outside. They
were also beautiful, and clean, and had even been given nice linens
to wear. But did any of them realize what power they possessed by
being here, in this hall? How easily it had come to them, not even
of their own will, and yet they wasted it, doing what was expected
of them until the time passed. They probably cried themselves to
sleep at night, wishing they were back on their old farms tending
cows and chickens. Her jealousy turned into resentment, and then to
complete hatred. Fools, all of them! They deserved to go back to
their little lodges and live the dull, isolated lives from which
they’d been plucked. But they would never be able to recognize what
was reward and what was punishment, for they were all idiots.

Then, quite unexpectedly, she saw
Canute.

She doubted her instincts at first, because
he sat all alone, and he looked even younger than she’d imagined.
He was not yet twenty years old, if even nineteen yet. He was thin
and lanky, though his shoulders were of a sturdy width, and it
looked like he would stretch to be quite tall when he stood. But
all that was difficult to determine as he was hunched over the
table, gripping a gilded goblet, staring through his own mess of
thick, jagged hair. Almost everything about him, she thought, was
jagged: from the edges of his joints, to his jutting chin, and even
to the corners of his eyes, narrowed and squinting as he peered
through them.

When he turned to look at her, she struggled
not to tremble with fear.

His intensity amazed her, and frightened
her, and excited her all at once. In a sense he did not look at all
as she’d expected him to, but at the same time he seemed everything
she could have hoped for. He was not handsome in the typical sense,
for he had a somewhat long, hooked nose, and his eyes were so high
and narrowed. But from those eyes, a gaze shot from his youthful
face like barbed arrows, transfixing her. He seemed to her like a
hawk, peering far into the distance, seeing further than anyone
else could see.

He looked her up and down, and her skin
bristled with bumps as she wondered what he saw in her.

“You,” he said. His voice was somewhat
high-pitched and soft, but it rang through the room like a bell.
“You’re the one that made that sound?”

“Yes, my king.” She felt she could not bear
his gaze much longer, and looked down at herself. But then she felt
horrified, for she remembered that she was covered with mud. “I am
Alfgifu of Northampton. My father was—”

“I thank you for your gifts,” he said, and
she realized he had no more interest in her identity than he had
for a single thread of his tunic. “I will take them and use them to
conquer Engla-lond, and that is how I will repay you. Unless there
is something else you want, you should go.”

He released her from his fierce gaze and
turned back to his food. Even though she felt as if she had just
been freed from a harsh grip, she trembled with frustration. She
had not come this far so that he could dismiss her. He had heard
something in her scream, that roar in which she had bared her soul;
otherwise he wouldn’t have called her in here. “My father also died
before his time, my lord.”

He seemed to pause, only for a moment,
before responding smoothly. “That is unfortunate for you, perhaps.”
He tossed back a drink from his goblet, swaying slightly as he did.
Either he had already drunken a great deal, or it did not take much
to intoxicate him, for the effect of the spirits seemed to hit him
quite suddenly. “My father’s death, however, made me a king.
Fortunately for
me.
”

This made her grind her teeth together and
glare at him with a gaze almost intense enough to match his own.
But now he did not even notice; now he only seemed to have eyes for
the pretty cup in his hand. “That’s a very pretty goblet,” she
hissed. “Someone else’s gift to you?”

His fingers played thoughtfully over the
ornate decorations of the rim. “A gift to my father, from Ealdorman
Eadric Streona.”

The name seemed to flip a switch in her.
Eadric Streona. The man who changed her entire life. The man who
took everything from her. The man who killed her father.

The man she had come here to destroy.

She swept in closer to Canute, planting her
hands on the table, lowering her voice. “Your father’s death may
have made you a king in name,” she hissed. “But do your men think
of you as one?”

He paused, going terribly still.

“The man outside, Gunnlaug, he said his king
had just died. You have had two months to establish yourself—two
months in which King Ethelred was
gone
from Engla-lond, no
less—and yet they still think of your father as the king. You have
squandered a golden opportunity to overtake Engla-lond.”

“Tread carefully,” he said.

She lowered her voice, but continued to
speak relentlessly. “You miss him, don’t you?”

“Of course,” he snapped. “Now shut your
mouth.”

Instead, she sat down next to him and leaned
in closer. He tensed, slender fingers tightening around his
disgusting prize of a cup. “Were you ready for your father to die,
Canute? Were you ready to become king?”

He inhaled sharply, but said nothing.

“It’s all right, you don’t have to answer. I
understand. I know what it’s like to think that you are unshakable,
and then discover that you’re not.”

He turned to look at her, slowly this time,
the pale discs of his eyes snaking to the edge of his lids. “Do I
look shaken to you?” He sounded genuinely curious.

“No, you don’t look it. But I think you are
good at hiding it. Just as I am.”

At that, he chuckled, and the sound of his
high-pitched chortles made her stomach turn. “No you’re not. You’re
practically blue with fear, woman.”

She pulled back, anger stinging her tongue.
“And
you
—you’re even more afraid than I am. If you were
ready to be a king you would already have a plan. You would have
mobilized your men while Ethelred was away, and while the
Anlgo-Saxons thought your Vikings were weakened by their unexpected
loss—rightfully so! You could have proved to everyone that you’re
all the man your father was. Instead you are sulking here in the
safety of the Danelaw, getting fat with Easter feasting!”