Avalon (11 page)

He was, however, forced to look at her, because when the choir commenced the antiphon of the Anointing "Zadok the Priest . . ." and Dunstan led the King behind a screen held up by four bishops, Ethelred suddenly began to whimper and clutch at his middle. Young Edward had never moved since the ceremony began except to kneel. He stood sturdily, his feet far apart, gazing rapt at his father. He did not move now, while Ethelred's whimpers grew louder.

"Be quiet!" hissed Alfrida, shaking her son's shoulder.

"I can't!" he cried, thrashing his arms to escape from her. "It's hot in here. Besides I've a bellyache!''

His voice shrilled through the reverent silence.

Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, frowned over the corner of the anointing screen. Rumon had turned at the commotion and met Alfrida's imploring eyes, while Ethelred began to wail and thrash more violently.

There were of course no housecarls or even thanes near them in the sanctuary, nobody to deal with this disruption.

Rumon did not hesitate. He scooped up the struggling, malodorous child and ran out with him through the choir entrance into the cloisters.

A lay brother was spading the cloister garth. Rumon went towards the man and dumped Ethelred on the ground. "Here, take charge of this little wretch. Beat him if you like. And cleanse him, for he has obviously soiled himself!"

The monk looked puzzled, then his face cleared. He seized Ethelred by the arm,

"You daren't touch me!" the boy quavered, twisting in the monk's stolid grasp, and staring at Rumon with fearing disbelief. 'TmtheAtheling!"

"You're not the Atheling," said Rumon. "And you act like the most \ailgar of serfs. I cannot conceive how you sprang from such a mother — or father either," he added after a second.

"The lad is still very young, sir," said the lay monk, unexpectedly. "I've a brother like him at home. Soils himself when he's nervous. I'll tend to him."

Into Ethelred's round blue eyes came confusion. He was used to inspiring fear, anger, annoyance, indulgence, occasionally praise. He had never encountered the voice of simple kindness before. "I want to be in the Coronation — I'm supposed to be," he said tentatively, looking from Rumon to the monk.

"And so you may," said Rumon, who had also noticed the gardener's kind tone. "After you're cleaned, and if you can behave yourself." He turned to the lay brother. "Bring him to the Abbey, later."

Rumon hurried back into the sanctuary, and took up his stand near Alfrida, who gave him a long look of gratitude — gratitude, and something else which sent a shiver down Rumon's spine.

The King had reappeared from behind the screen, and was now dressed in cloth of gold, accepting from Dunstan the insignia of investiture handed up by the premier earls — the gold ring with Chrisms Rex enameled on it; the jeweled sword which had been his father's, King Edmund's; the scepter topped by a

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cross; the rod of Equity topped by a dove. Then, at Dunstan's gesture, the King sat down on his throne. Dunstan walked to the altar and fetched the crown which was lying before the tabernacle.

The Archbishop — an expert goldsmith — had made the crown himself. It was square (for the four-square city of God), each angle was surmounted by an elaborately chased trefoil (for the Trinity), and along the high band of gold were studded all the gems mentioned in Revelations as pertaining to the heavenly Jerusalem. Emerald, chrysolite, sapphire, topaz, amethyst, and the others, blazed in the taper light. It had taken many years to collect these jewels.

The congregation held its breath as Dunstan lowered the sparkling crown onto Edgar's head; then when Dunstan cried out in a great voice — "Will ye have King Edgar to be your liege lord forever?" the Abbey resounded with shouts of "Aye, we will! Long live the King!" while the monks chanted, "Vivat! Vivat! Rex!"

The choir burst out in another triumphant Te Deimi, during which Edgar turned and beckoned to Dunstan. "Alfrida?" he whispered. The Archbishop nodded, concealing his reluctance. He walked over to her and led her by the hand to a small throne lower and to the right of the King's.

Alfrida's ceremony was brief. Dunstan anointed her with the holy oil on forehead, cheeks, and breast. He invested her with the Queen's ring, on which was enameled an image of the Blessed Virgin. And when Lady Hilde had removed the chaplet of lilies, the Archbishop placed on the bowed head a small croA^^n studded with little pearls and crystals, while praying aloud that she would "be a faithful, dihgent consort to her lord, tender mother to his children, and a queenly example of mercy, graciousness, chanty and virtue to all Christian subjects."

Alfrida kept her head modestly inclined while cheers burst forth again, and cries of "Long live Alfrida." Nor did she raise her lovely head throughout the ensuing ceremony of homage.

The Archbishop of Canterbury did homage first, kneehng before the King, placing his hands between Edgar's, kissing him on the brow, and intoning, "Your liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship ..." The Archbishop of York followed him, and all the bishops. Then Kenneth, King of the Scots, seeming dazed by the magnificence around him. After him the athelings, for Ethelred had returned in time to see his mother crowned. He was subdued, and did not even try to elbow Edward out of the way as that prince went first to pay homage to their father. Rumon came next. He had noted the procedure in regard to Alfrida. Dunstan had decreed that it was not homage which should be paid a woman, only a bended knee in token of respect.

Rumon was glad that he need not touch her; as it was, while he bowed, her nearness and her flowery perfume made his head swim. He retreated quickly, and stood in his former place watching the earls from all over England, and the Danelaw, and Northumbria each pledge to Edgar their allegiance and the allegiance of those who lived in their particular domains.

The Coronation ended with High Mass in which Edgar himself offered bread and wine, and made his personal oblation — a heavy ingot of gold.

The procession re-formed, and filed slowly out of the Abbey.

Dunstan was exultant as he stepped into the sunhght. In the entire history of England there had never been such a Coronation, not one in which heaven had also participated, and endowed the King with the divine right to rule. Edgar was now a Holy Christian Emperor, and great triumphs were still ahead. They would proceed to Chester next week where the seven western kinglets of Cumbria, the Isle of Man, and the various parts of Wales would all be gathered to swear allegiance to Edgar.

Ah, Dunstan thought, my vision has come true through God's grace. He thought of the angelic voice he had heard on the night of Edgar's birth. It had said, "Peace to England as long as this child shall reign, and our Dunstan survives." He murmured a prayer of thanksgiving.

Alfrida too was exultant, though the tenor of her thoughts were unlike Dunstan's. At last she had achieved the highest glory open to a woman. At last her power was secure, and she need no longer be quite so careful. A consecrated and anointed queen could not be put away on a pretext as Eneda had been. Not that she feared any loss of her hold on Edgar — it was rather that she need not respond so slavishly to his ardors, and that she might now pursue certain plans of her own. She smiled as she thought of this, and the populace who were kneehng and avidly watching the royal procession to the banquet hall murmured admiration. One ragged old beggar woman broke from the crowd crying, "God Bless our beautiful Queen!" and clutched at the hem of Alfrida's white robe. The housecarls rushed up to beat off the old woman, but Alfrida stopped them.

"I thank you for your blessing," she said smiling again, and tearing one pearl off her mantle, put it in the woman's withered hand.

She breathed deep at the cheers which rose on all sides. Though the pearl was not worth a penny, the old beggar slobbered her gratitude.

All the mob had cause for gratitude today. Twenty oxen were a-roasting at open fires, tuns of ale were being broached. Even the lowliest slave would be fed from the King's bounty.

Alfrida ghded into the Banquet Hall where her table was set across the Hall from the King's. Dunstan had arranged this too. At a Coronation banquet the King must entertain the lords, both spiritual and temporal. To the Queen fell the lesser folk — the ladies including abbesses, and a stray abbot or two for whom there wasn't room at the High Table.

Alfrida took care to wave charmingly across the room to her liege lord, and to murmur a pleasant word to Wulfrid, the Abbess of Wilton, who was seated at her right. That Wulfrid had once long ago been Edgar's mistress, and borne him a daughter, Edith, did not in the least disturb Alfrida. Whatever attractions had awakened Edgar's lust were gone now. Wulfrid was

fat, pompous, and thoroughly satisfied by her position as Abbess of England's most fashionable nunnery — an honor she owed to Edgar's conscience. She grunted some polite reply to the Queen's remark, and thereafter applied herself to the spiced venison slices which had been laid on her trencher of thick white bread.

Nor had Alfrida need to concern herself long with the lady on her left. This was Alfhere's wife, Godleva, and a most unfitting mate for the robust, resplendent Earl of Mercia. Godleva was sickly, a trait inherited by her daughter, Britta. Godleva had headaches and a perpetual cough. She was terrified of strangers and spent her life sipping broths in a darkened apartment in Shrewsbury Castle. Only her husband's threats had brought her here for the Coronation. She sat silent, lost in a fog of headache and timidity, while picking nervously at a roast woodcock.

Alfrida, seeing that further courtesies on either side of her were unnecessary, gave herself up to various pleasing thoughts.

The realization of power was far more intoxicating than the wine from Burgundy which filled her gold cup. Power to get certain material things she had long wanted. Lands of her own — Edgar could no longer put her off "until after the Coronation." Those rich grants in Dorset and Hampshire she had asked for. And then she wanted an ermine cloak — fine as the one they said was worn by the Holy Roman Empress. Too there was the rebuilding and furnishing of the rickety royal palace at Winchester. And she must have a suitable crown, not this trumpery little thing of base gold and the quartz called "Scotch diamond." It had been ordered by Dunstan, of course.

Dunstan, Alfrida looked across the Hall at him, sitting next to Edgar — of course. The Archbishop was smiling in a smug way, Alfrida thought, like a well-fed hound. What a pleasure it would be to eliminate that smile forever, to eliminate this meddlesome autocratic old man, and his ever-present influence on Edgar. That was one of the uses of power — to pay ofi^ old

scores. Her violet eyes moved slowly down the High Table until their gaze rested on another — the Earl Oslac of North-umbria. Here was a man she also hated. An ugly, grizzle-haired Dane, hand in glove with the Monastic party — with Dunstan, Oswald, Ethelwold, and the rest of the sour churchmen who were rapidly turning England into a land of penances, mortifications, and celibacy. Though it was not so much for his ecclesiastical policy that Alfrida hated the Earl. There were more personal reasons, which had been reported to her, jestingly by her brother. Oslac had tried to dissuade Edgar from marrying her, from putting aside Eneda. Worse than that — Oslac did not think her beautiful.

Alfrida's easygoing brother, Lord Ordulf, had thought this a great joke and had chuckled while he repeated a remark of Oslac's which he had happened to overhear. "Alfrida's a scheming wench, and / don't see why such a pother is made about her looks. Why, you can find a hundred yellow-haired lasses just like her in London or York any day of the week."

The remark was made nine years ago, when Alfrida was newly widowed. She had never for a moment forgotten it, though she had never mentioned Oslac's name to Edgar. Oslac seldom visited the South, and when he did Alfrida kept out of his way. Someone else shall be appointed Earl of the North, she thought. Aye, indeed — someone else. And why not Thored?

She turned her gaze on Thored — a dark middle-aged Dane who already ranked second in those murky northern lands, and whose wife was Lady Hilde. Fortunately, Alfrida had not been forced to accept one of Oslac's womenfolk as attendant, since he had none.

Alfrida nodded to herself, and took a sip of wine. And the Bower Ladies. There would certainly be changes there, and at once. Elfled must go. That stupid Wulfsiga of Kent must go. Britta would certainly have gone, except that she was the daughter of Alfhere. And he was an ally. More than an ally — a would-be lover. . . . Aye, probably a good lover, she thought.

examining the Earl of Mercia as he hfted his beaker to receive more wine from his weedy young son Cild Aelfric who was acting as his table thane. The Earl was a big, lusty man with a knowing eye and a note in his voice which always made one feel naked and desired. A strong crafty man who might well provide adventures in bed which the unimaginative Edgar would never dream of.

She shook her head and took another sip. That kind of thought was still too dangerous. And there was another matter of the Bower Ladies to decide. The matter of Merewyn. The Abbess Merwinna should not have her. Of that there was no question. Let the Abbess take that sniveling Elfled to Romsey instead of Merewyn, Alfrida thought, and was so amused at this neat switch that she gave a sudden laugh.

Wulfrid went on eating her way through a saffron pasty, but Godleva jumped, her frightened eyes stared at the Queen. "You spoke. Lady?"

"No," answered Alfrida. "Ah, look! The gleemen are coming. That's why I laughed."

A troop of jugglers and a bearward cavorted into the Hall.

Alfrida watched the bouncing balls, the balanced knives, the performing bear for a moment, she tapped her fingers to the rhythm of the tabor, but she went on thinking.

She looked across at the athehngs, noting that Edward was seated nearer to the King than Ethelred. This must be altered from now on. Edward would retire from Court, send him on a pilgrimage to Rome perhaps, and Ethelred would be proclaimed Edgar's rightful heir. Then there must be a betrothal — a more ambitious match than Edgar or these stupid clerics would think of. A Prankish princess? A German one? He's not too young for betrothal, she thought, and he is such a pretty lad. He has my looks.