The hospital at the palace was presided over by a monk from Aquitaine – a man as calm, plain and grey as the habit he wore – called Father Thiebault. But Father Thiebault was too sober and holy to gain much traction on the court gossip mill so I knew very little about him. Not so Meghan of Caerphilly. A woman! A young woman only a few years older than myself, working in a hospital! Who ever heard of such a thing. Not only that but she had come here, it was said, at the request of Alfred himself, or his brother the king. She was influential, of that there could be no doubt.
What Father Thiebault had thought of being asked to take on a female assistant in his hospital no-one dared ask, but since Alfred’s brother – who was king in the time before Alfred’s accession – had acquiesced in Meghan’s appointment to the infirmary, there was nothing to be done.
As usual, when nobody knew the truth, the truth was invented. She was a witch – OK, a reasonably good-looking one; she was a whore who apparently found time to be in the prince’s bed every night despite working a seventeen-hour shift at the hospital; she was a princess saved by Prince Alfred from some maddened old warlock who had locked her in a tower somewhere.
Meghan must have heard snippets of the complete rubbish that was talked about her. In such a closed community as ours it was impossible not to hear things, but she concentrated on her work, did it well and seemed undisturbed by what others thought.
I came to know Meghan and the hospital building quite well because I was carried there myself after I collapsed the night of the fire.
A few days later, when I had the energy to notice, I saw it was a long, low L-shaped building away from the main palace. A reasonably pleasant place surrounded by meadows, the main ward where I was placed had two rows of six beds facing each other, only four of which were currently occupied: one by me, one by a soldier who had broken a leg in training, or so he told me, another by a clerk who had stabbed himself accidentally with a paper knife and the last by a dragon with a damaged wing.
I lay on my pallet and watched shadows on the ceiling of the long, thin room. I was used to being outside and found this incarceration difficult but I had no choice. I amused myself by planning meals of hare and venison that I would certainly never eat. It would be spring soon, I told myself. A few brave snowdrops had appeared in the grounds of the palace. But spring meant more than flowers; it meant fresh green leaves such as dandelion and chickweed and a break from eating winter supplies of dried beans and root vegetables. My imaginary recipes multiplied, but only succeeded in making me hungrier.
Meghan the witch, or not-witch, depending on your point of view, walked up and down the ward in her long gown covered with an apron. ‘That fire was the devil’s own business,’ she said, as she took my two very raw hands gently in her own fine tapered fingers and turned them back and forth. ‘I hear you saved some horses.’ She said this last as though it was a foolish thing to have done. ‘At the risk of your own life and that of Prince Alfred!’
I was shocked. I’d got a bit used to everyone thinking I was a hero, yet here was Meghan criticising me and implying that I wasn’t!
‘I saw you,’ I said lamely. ‘The night of the fire. I saw you by the stable block.’
She looked at me as one might look at a pile of dirty rags. ‘Did you now?’
She moved to a side table and I turned to watch her grind leaves in a pestle and mortar and strain the resulting mush through a square of muslin. Heaven knows what any of it was. I was cross with her for not thinking me a hero – everyone else did – but I had to admit she looked very lovely, tall with deep-set green eyes – I think they were green or maybe with gold bits in them – and black hair that peeped from beneath the linen headcovering she habitually wore.
In the bed opposite me, the soldier with the broken leg was chatting on to anyone who would listen. ‘The damnedest thing,’ he said, ‘we were practising jumping from hay bales and my leg just went crack, just like that! I heard it. Would you believe it? And not a Viking in sight. The damnedest thing!’
The dragon kept silent. The talkative soldier whispered to me about a wing injury. I didn’t pay much attention then; the draconic races were still plentiful in the land. Like people, some were friendly, some not. From his colouring this one was an Orcadian red, green with ochre-ish tinges and green-gold eyes. This breed were considered peaceable and learned, booklovers and songsters. We had other enemies to concern us a great deal more.
Meghan had prepared something for me that looked utterly disgusting, like minced slugs. She dabbed whatever it was onto my sore hands and bandaged them over with clean cloths. I felt nauseous, more from the thought of the horrible goo than from the pain, although that didn’t help either.
‘I cannot carry out my tasks bandaged like this,’ I complained, holding up my hands, which were now like great bandaged paws. ‘How can I deal with the horses like this?’
‘You should have thought of that before running into a burning building and picking up pieces of flaming timber with your bare hands,’ Meghan replied, not unreasonably. ‘Even when you leave here you will need to take painkilling medication four times daily and rest. This is saxifrage,’ she said, ‘it will help lower your fever.’ She handed me a small glass phial containing a dark liquid. ‘Drink!’
Reluctantly I obeyed but made a fuss. ‘The Danes land daily on our eastern shores. We are short of horses and workmen because all able-bodied men are needed to fight. Since the night of the fire, Nuadhan, Alfred’s horse, won’t let anyone near him except the prince and myself. And you want me to take medication four times daily and rest!’
‘Correct,’ she said.
I didn’t argue. Whatever was in the dark liquid might have been laudanum.
I was already falling asleep and dreaming weird dreams about dragons and ladies with interchangeable green/gold eyes.
*
I remained for a couple of weeks in the hospital before being well enough to get out of bed. I found ways to try to be useful by cutting strips of cloth for bandages and cleaning around, talking to the other patients and serving soup. Anything to stay near her with whom I was now officially in love. It worked for a bit, but then Meghan got wise to me and sent me back to work.
I had been only two weeks out of hospital when Prince Alfred had decided he did not care for his own melancholic company and requested me to ride out with him.
The late spring storms had abated. Cowslips, oxeye daisies and buttercups were beginning to carpet the meadows. ‘We will take a picnic, what do you think, Perceval?’ the prince said. In Alfred-speak this meant ‘Please go and arrange a picnic now, Perceval, within the next five minutes.’
I knew cook would be unimpressed with the idea of producing an instant picnic even if it was for the prince. She had an army to feed. Luckily for me it was Sunday, a holy day, and in May the spring fair would be coming to Chippenham. Many of the staff had a half-day holiday. The kitchen was left empty, vulnerable to being raided on Alfred’s behalf. I crept towards the storage larder, knowing exactly where it was from my days of working in the kitchens there, but suddenly I stopped. I thought I heard footsteps echoing in the corridor just beyond. I swung round to look to the doorway but saw no-one. My heart was hammering. It’s only my guilty conscience. In the stores, I quickly found cheese, bread, a game pie and best of all some fresh-baked honey cakes. Oh, the glory of those honey cakes. I still remember the taste. And a flask of wine. That was all I could carry. I concealed my ill-gotten gains as well as I could in a cotton sack beneath my riding cape and tunic. I was just congratulating myself on this success when, like an unlooked-for ghoul – and when are ghouls ever really looked for? – Oswin the overseer appeared at my side. Why did all overseers seem to be black-eyed and hewn from the rock?
‘Good day to you, Oswin,’ I stammered.
‘What ails you, boy? You look white! And guilty! And what in all the days of the blessed Saint Cuthbert are you doing in the kitchen mid-morning?’
I could feel the stolen bread and pie bulging under my tunic. He must notice, surely! Would Prince Alfred stand up for me?
‘I’m… er… I’m to ride out with Prince Alfred,’ I stuttered. ‘The prince requested… an apple, sir. Just getting an apple…’
‘An apple?’
‘Sir!’
‘And where are the apples stored?’
‘Cellars, sir.’
‘Yes. Cellars. So why are you in the kitchen?’
‘Cellars… of course. Yes… forgot… sorry.’ I backed out of the room like some servile ninny.
‘Fool!’ Oswin’s eyes, which now I had had leisure to notice them more closely seemed to be even blacker, watched as I retrieved one single apple from the store – to take two would be pushing my luck.
I managed to escape the cellar, the kitchen and Oswin’s glare. He stood there threatening my every retreating step but said nothing more. Thankful for my escape, I ran back to the stables and crammed the stolen food into a saddle bag.
Our picnic duly thieved, I thought my problems were over. But only now did it occur to me that Alfred was expecting me to actually ride a horse. I had thought we would take one of the carts or something. I couldn’t ride – at least, not very well – and my hands, although healed, were still quite sore. There was nothing for it but to own up, which I did.
‘I cannot ride, sire.’
‘What? How do you work in the stables if you cannot ride?’ said the prince, astounded.
‘Well… I…’
‘Enough! You will learn. Maerwynn will do for you to start, I think.’ The quietest and most courageous of the mares, who had been the first to follow Nuadhan the night of the fire, was brought out and saddled for me, reluctantly, by Edwin, forced by the presence of Prince Alfred to hide his disdain for this my sudden and unworthy rise to prominence. Edwin obviously thought he should be the one to accompany the prince since he was a natural horseman who had ridden since early childhood.
To my embarrassment, I had to climb the mounting block in the courtyard in order to haul myself into Maerwynn’s saddle – a convenience normally reserved for ladies. This caused huge merriment among the other grooms, which even Prince Alfred’s presence did little to mute. Alfred himself leapt into Nuadhan’s saddle and set off at a trot. Maerwynn followed behind the great black horse, just as she had done the night of the fire. Embarrassed, jolting along behind my future king, I felt my bones all rattling and shaking in my body. It was miles before I finally learned to rise to the trot and then hang on grimly at the canter, which was smoother but more terrifying. I was already exhausted. And the day had only just begun.
*
‘Where shall we ride to, sire?’ I asked when Maerwynn’s jolting allowed me to speak.
‘To the River Severn!’ came the reply.
My heart sank. I knew the Severn of old. It was a long river but the sounds of its running waters had accompanied the first seventeen years of my life, my orphanhood, and my almost-hanging.
That would be a lot of jolting from Chippenham.
We rode for what felt like days, passing through Pucklechurch and Thornbury before coming to a hillside within sight of the ferry crossing at Aust, where we dismounted, but by this time I could hardly stand I was so stiff. And we still have to ride all the way back. Why could Alfred not have chosen one of the other grooms for this jaunt, most of whom were excellent horsemen?
In the distance the river sparkled and sulked under intermittent sunlight. The prince jumped down from the saddle. ‘Here, I think, don’t you, Perceval? No… wait…’ He moved a short distance away and Nuadhan wandered after him. ‘The grass is flatter here and the view better. Here, I think!’
There was nothing for it but to smile and bear it. I unpacked bread, cheese and a game pie, as well as a flask of wine from my saddlebags. The bread smelled glorious as only new-baked bread can. I served the prince but despite my exhaustion and the exercise I was not hungry. I was feeling worryingly unwell, with an increasingly severe headache behind my eyes. Not now. Not today.
‘Cook is generous today,’ said Alfred, gazing appreciatively at the pie and the bread and tucking into them with gusto.
I hope she never finds out how generous she has been. ‘Yes, sire.’
I sipped some wine to bolster my courage but regretted it as the pain extended behind my eyes to encompass my whole head. If I could just sleep for a moment. Alfred lay back in the grass but the king-in-waiting showed no sign of wanting to sleep. He was talkative. Not only that but he seemed to require my counsel. ‘You know what, Perceval? I’m glad to have this chance of a talk with you. I am always busy. There never seems to be time to think. But you, you have plenty of time to think, no? Too many wars, constant negotiations, never a moment’s peace.’
Who wants to be a king? Not me.
Sleep threatened to overwhelm me but I managed a response: ‘Kingship is your destiny, sire. It is coming whether you want it or not.’ I thought that sounded rather good, actually, considering the state I was in.
Then I thought I saw something, or rather a double shadow, blurring round the edges. Disturbed vision. A sure sign of a seeing.
Not now, for God’s sake. Not now. I stood up, trying to distract myself, took up the flask of wine to serve the prince but my hand started to shake. My voice came out weird and about an octave lower than normal. ‘And men shall call you Great!’
There was an awkward silence, accompanied only by the buzzing of a few early insects and the distant cries of gulls over the river. ‘I’ll take that, shall I?’ the prince said, relieving my shaking hands of the flask of wine ‘Before you spill the rest.’
Alfred was looking at me strangely as if I was part leper, part saint. ‘Is that one of your scurrilous predictions?’ he asked but not unkindly. ‘Great, eh? Well, I don’t mind that. But that would mean… that I shall be king. Which I won’t be because of my older brothers.’
He seemed to expect an answer but I had none. Words were gathering in front of me but I couldn’t reach them. I felt nauseous. Don’t throw up over the prince. Just don’t.
‘Besides, “Great” sounds like a lot of work,’ Alfred said. ‘I’ll settle for being good enough. Perhaps, Perceval, you should sit – before you fall over.’
‘I only see what is there to be seen, sire’ I muttered, as I flopped down on the ground. Let them hang me; who cares?
‘Sometimes I think your visions are more trouble than they are worth,’ Alfred said, more irritably now that he had satisfied himself I was not about to die on him. ‘My brother Ethelbert is king… And, after him, Ethelred is in the royal line. Do you understand?’
Yes, I understood. I understood very well. But I also understood better than Alfred did how fragile life was in this embattled land. It would not be long before Alfred inherited this throne of Wessex that he didn’t want. I also knew that his domain would be deeper, wider and greater than that of his father and brothers. But I would not say any of that. For Alfred, in this brief time of freedom, there was a kind of desperation – a sense of the preciousness and brevity of time and the ease with which freedom is lost. The prince reassured himself his older brother controlled Wessex. And, after him, another brother, Ethelred, would inherit the title. He thought himself safe from the responsibilities of power. He was wrong.
As if to prove my thought the prince said, ‘When Wessex is secure, I shall be free to concentrate on studying Latin, reading poetry… courting ladies and… whatever else princes do. What else do princes do?’
I thought that Alfred was in a far better position to answer that question than me. But, since he again expected an answer, I summoned what little energy I had and tried to clear my head. What did princes do?
‘Sire, they order banquets, the roasting of pigs; they demand complicated menus involving venison, mead, honey and wheaten cake; they grant lands, then fight to get them back; they take beautiful women to their beds to beget beautiful princes and princesses. And so on, and so forth. Then the whole thing begins over.’
‘Is that all?’ Alfred asked.
‘All, sire? It sounds quite a busy enough curriculum to me.’ I was sure I was going to be sick.
My head swam, my legs ached. I was a swan gliding on the surface of reality, while frantically paddling beneath. Saving horses from burning buildings began to seem a modest activity compared with princely picnics. Alfred had chosen this moment to have an existential crisis and looked to me for counsel.
But I was having my own crisis. An earlier episode of ‘seeing’ is what had got me strung up in Brogan’s rope. Visions of Alfred were becoming a little costly for me. I had seen a great battle but knew not which battle it was nor when it would come. Nor had I seen the outcome. I only knew that, at the time of such battle, Alfred would be king, and it would be sooner rather than later.
‘If I must govern,’ he said, ‘I will be a leader of men – and women – a statesman, not a warrior. It is not enough just to rule and fight. Animals do that. There must be justice and lawgiving. What about education? Those are the things that interest me.’
He really isn’t going to let this go, I thought. Are there not learned statesman and counsellors with whom he can discuss these matters?
There are but none of them are his own age. That’s the trouble. Alfred, aged seventeen, is surrounded by old people. I am the only one the same age. Maybe that was also the reason he saved me.
‘Sire,’ I said, ‘my point being this. When you have sifted through the Celts, defeated the Picts, sharpened your blade on a few hundred thousand Danes and Norsemen, then there will be time for administering justice and such other things. And time to think of marriage. When there is peace – if there ever is – you will be free to oversee the learning of Latin in the realm and you’ll be wed to some Frankish princess or other… and raise fine sons and train them to do the same.’
Alfred glumly pulled the heads of a couple of daisies and cast the petals to the breeze. He chewed the last of his apple and threw the core away. ‘Frankish princess? Heaven help me, Perceval. Have you seen any? They all look like… like horses. I can hardly bring myself to wield my sword in defence of such tedium! Besides,’ he added, ‘Perceval of the Hangman’s Rope… how do you know so much about statecraft?’
‘I know nothing about statecraft… but I do know a bit about people.’
‘Pah! It’s the same thing.’ Alfred suddenly leapt up and brushed grass and seeds from his clothing, whistling for his horse grazing a short distance away. ‘No princess for me, Frankish or otherwise. And I am already in love… but of this you must say nothing.’ He swung himself into Nuadhan’s saddle and looked back at me mock stern. ‘If you gossip I shall have you cast into a dungeon. Come, hurry up!’ said the prince. ‘We should leave. We still have a long ride back and duty awaits.’
Wearily I packed up the remains of our stolen picnic. Maerwynn, the grey mare, seemed taller, faster and, sensing home and stable, even less biddable than she had when we rode out.
But at least on the return journey my mind was kept occupied with things other than my physical discomforts. Namely, rumours were that Alfred had personally gone to Caerphilly to persuade the beautiful Meghan of Caerphilly to come to court. The rumour mill (principally based around the servants in the kitchen) had it that Meghan’s father had been reluctant to allow her to go, despite the no doubt many pecuniary and social advantages of having a daughter at court. If this was true, could it be that Meghan was the mysterious love Alfred had referred to? It seemed to fit. Not only was Meghan beautiful and a gifted healer, but I knew her to be highly interested in many of the things that interested Prince Alfred such as education.
It was dark when we arrived back at the palace. A steady, soaking rain on the return ride had ensured a swishing splashing arrival and muddy, tired horses. Alfred dismounted from Nuadhan and threw me the reins, then strolled off whistling towards his apartments and a hot supper. I still had the horses to clean, feed and water. Also I had missed the servants’ meal as the grooms normally ate earlier.
It was hours before I could take myself to my own bed. Once there, I usually liked to lie on my back and imagine myself travelling to distant places like Gwynedd or Ynys Mon. But that night I pulled a woollen blanket over myself (it officially belonged to one of the horses but I reckoned my need was greater) and was asleep before my head hit the hay.