41

If there had not been the first stirrings of peace, I don’t think Edward would have hunted within a hundred miles of his mother. Corfe fortress in Dorset had become her refuge when the Witan rejected her offer. She might have lived a quiet life there, raising Ethelred to manhood. He could have become a powerful earl for his half-brother, a prince at the court.

The queen had done her best to bribe and pluck up Edward’s enemies against him. Yet as I have said, in that third year, her plans were failing. Edward had made peace with East Anglia. Some said a truce would follow on its heels with Mercia as well. I gave him advice when he asked for it, which was often. I am proud to say he trusted me. I asked him once if he remembered the time I’d spoken to him in Winchester, when I’d found him by the gates, in tears. He looked at me then with the strangest expression – part pain, part sadness – and said, ‘Of course I do.’

Despite his youth, Edward was no fool – and all men still remembered his father. He called on their oaths of fealty to King Edgar and his descendants. There are always a few for whom oaths mean nothing, but for most, they are the thread that binds, the cup that quenches thirst. Without our oaths, after all, without our faith, we are no more than beasts. I think Edward would have restored his father’s peace in just another year or two.

He left the Dorset hunt as it ran west, when he realised he was just a few miles from Corfe. Over rough ground, hunters ride alone for miles at a time, finding their own way. I don’t suppose it was more than a whim that turned him from the sound of dogs and horns.

There is a line of chalk hills around Corfe – the name itself means a cut in the land. The fortress there had a fine defensive wall, though it was all wood. Edward had sat the throne for three years without once seeing his younger brother. I suspect that was the heart of it. He may have wanted to greet the dowager queen, the woman his father had loved. I know Edward wanted peace, in his household and his kingdom. He was always a kind lad.

Now, his father would have surrounded the fortress and burned it to the ground if that woman had stood against him. Never mistake the peace of Edgar for gentleness.

Yet Edward was a forgiving son – and I think, a rather lonely one. I’d seen it in the years of his youth when his father had been besotted with the new wife. I’d seen it in the years since. Edward had no friends of the sort who could clap him on the back and mock his moods. He trusted me, but if I pressed too close, he would look out into the distance, or become guarded. I’d know then he was thinking of them – and particularly his little brother.

Edward felt a responsibility there. They’d played together, of course, with Edward carrying Ethelred around Winchester on his back. The thought of that little boy alone and far away troubled the king. I knew he’d sent messengers to Corfe, making some offering of peace and forgiveness. She had never answered.

It was late in the day, almost at twilight, when he came to her gate alone. Edward sat a very fine stallion that was yet as meek as milk for him. There was always danger on the roads, so Edward wore mail and a surcoat, with a good sword on his hip and two spears lashed alongside his leg. It was madness to have left his hunt. He had scores of brave men willing to die for him, but they were crashing through the undergrowth after boar and deer, miles from their master.

He was sixteen and the bulky strength and savagery of a warrior had not yet come upon him. He was brave, though – reckless, to be there at all. I know Edward still thought hatred could be turned aside with a word or an open hand. He trusted me when I told him so and he was the closest to a son I have ever known. I delay, I delay, because it hurts me so.

The dowager queen had a dozen guards on her wooden wall, as many servants to tend her. I think she had around eighty hides of land there. She did not want for food or comfort in that place, even without the gold she had brought away with her.

She would not open the gate to him. In her suspicions, she could not imagine the young king might have come on his own. She feared some trap, some trick to get her to come out. Queen Audrey climbed the stairs to the walkway by the outer wall instead, so that she appeared above and looked down on the king. Her son had come with her and stood holding her hand, then nine years old with a mop of black hair and wide, dark eyes, an innocent.

As I heard it, Ethelred cried out with pleasure at seeing his brother. They had been three years apart, but the little boy remembered. He tried to pull away from his mother, but she held him hard enough to hurt.

‘What do you want here, Edward?’ she called.

‘Only to see you, to raise a cup. To greet my brother. May I enter as your guest?’

‘No. Though I will throw down a cup and a skin of wine.’

She gestured to one of her men and the man appeared with those things, lobbing them down. Edward caught them both and laughed. Perhaps he feared poison then, I do not know. It would have been an odd thing to have tainted wine waiting.

He poured the cup full and tossed the skin back, then raised the cup.

‘I give you honour as my father’s queen. You too, brother. I have missed you.’

He had not heard the man who crept up behind his horse. As Edward drank, he stiffened and gave a cry of pain. The cup fell to the ground, and on the battlement, Ethelred shrieked his name.

Edward twisted in the saddle to see what had bitten at him. He saw a man still there, clinging to him, ramming a punch dagger through a hole in his mail over and over into his lower back.

The king heaved on his reins and kicked in, making his horse scramble to a run, leaving his tormentors behind. He rode a dozen miles or so before he fell. His horse was wet with blood and he had grown pale without it, his eyes bruised dark.

I heard it all later on. How the queen thrashed little Ethelred on that walkway, for showing weakness in his tears, for his wailing. She was the one who had made him weak, but all she could do was scorn him and show him her contempt. She ruined two kings in all, I think.

The Witan had no choice but to choose Ethelred. There was no one else, and though I spoke against it, no one could say for certain that King Edward had been killed at her order. Audrey claimed it was a brigand, a thief on the road who had tried to steal a gold cup.

The man was never found. I know, because I sought him out for years – and spent a fortune learning every word and whisper about that day. I did not want to see her triumph, but there it was, even so.

I did make sure the story spread, of King Edward the Martyr. I would not let his tale be forgotten. We are all dust, but he was a good boy.

I was born the son of a thane of Wessex. I will die an archbishop. I have raised an abbey and a cathedral – and a king to manhood. I have made England Benedictine, in all honour.

The Vikings have come in force this year, so they say. I only wonder how King Ethelred and his mother will deal with those crow armies, those violent men. Perhaps they will meet the same end as Edward, I do not know. Ethelrœd means ‘noble counsel’, but I tell you he is unrœd – ‘badly advised’. His was a great vine and I can hardly bear to see it fail. I weep too easily in old age – for my youth, for my father and mother, for all those I have lost. I shall see them again. In the name of Christ, I will.

Dunstan