The Tenth Lost Tale of Mercia: Edmund the Aetheling Page 2

  *

  In the morning, Edmund at last got his father’s attention. Most of his wise men had not yet arrived for the ongoing witenagmot, so the palace and dining hall remained mostly empty.

  Nonetheless, addressing his father was no easy feat. King Ethelred seemed to suffer from wine-poisoning and lack of sleep. He chewed grimly upon his morning meal, waving away most of the people who yapped for his attention, the curls of his beard bouncing rhythmically as he struggled to chew away his breakfast. He yanked at the cloak and brooches around his neck as if they were choking him.

  Edmund addressed his father with a timid voice, seeing little reaction in Ethelred’s gray eyes despite the urgency of his voice. “I have something very important to tell you.” Ethelred just grunted, but at least that meant he was listening. Aethelstan sat nearby, nodding his encouragement. Edmund leaned close to their father, his fine linen sleeves crushing the crumbs of the table. “The Danes are plotting against you.”

  Ethelred’s eyes turned sluggishly towards his son. Beyond this, he did not seem taken aback at all. “Yes, and?”

  Edmund drew back, blinking rapidly with surprise. “And you should do something!” His blood roared in his ears, deafening. Here was his chance to tell his father everything, and he was ruining it.

  Aethelstan came to his rescue, speaking in calm and reassuring tones to the king. “Edmund doesn’t mean just the Vikings, Father. He means there are Danes living nearby who wish to do you harm.”

  Ethelred looked from one young teen to the next, drool collecting on his lips as he delayed chewing. “And this is news to you both? For heaven’s sake, the Danes try to cut my throat every chance they get. Edmund—tell me how your sword lessons have been going. Have you improved your parrying skills yet?”

  Edmund could not even come up with a response, so confused was he by the turn of conversation. His lips flapped open and shut, but no words escaped.

  Aethelstan made another attempt at salvaging the conversation. “Father, Edmund overheard one of your most trusted men, Lord Egil ...” He looked to Edmund for approval, and Edmund nodded. “Lord Egil seemed to be plotting something wicked, Father, on Saint Brice’s Day.”

  “Wicked? How?” asked Ethelred. But now his eyes were darting about, infused at last with energy. They fixed on Edmund. “What did you hear?”

  Edmund gulped. Should he say that he heard them planning to poison Ethelred? But what if he was wrong? And what if he sent his father into a senseless panic, before anything useful might be done? “They were … talking about the food, Father,” he whispered. “And … and how many people were going to be eating it.”

  Ethelred stared at him a long, long time. He didn’t move at all. His nose turned red from the cold air and lack of blood circulation.

  Edmund could not guess what was going on behind the king’s petrified expression. Was he convinced? Or did he need something more? “And ... they were talking about all this to none other than Alfric of Mercia!” he blurted.

  Ethelred dropped his dirk with a tremendous clatter. His elbows sank onto the table and his head fell between them. Edmund sensed victory and exchanged a look of excitement with Aethelstan; but when they looked back at their father, they found him trembling violently.

  “Father?” Edmund reached out a hand to the king, but dared not touch him.

  “I think I’m going to be sick.” Ethelred got up suddenly, his chair falling behind him. He turned, fell to his knees, and retched upon the floor.

  Edmund turned away, cringing with disgust as the royal breakfast of sausages and eggs plopped from Ethelred’s mouth into the rushes. Once the king’s hacking and spitting spent itself, Ethelred got up and groaned, “Well, clean this up!” A few servants rushed uncertainly forward to do what they could with their woolen washcloths.

  King Ethelred returned to his chair with a resounding thump.

  Edmund and Aethelstan sat in a state of suspended wincing as they stared upon their father’s drooping face. He exhaled heavily, and Edmund resisted turning from his foul breath.

  “Alfric has been well-behaved lately, and very helpful to me,” said Ethelred. “I think that he regrets the wrong-doings of his past, and he’s full of fresh ideas for the future.” Edmund could hardly believe he was hearing such words. Had Alfric already worked his way back into the king’s good graces? “As for Egil,” the king continued relentlessly, “I like him. I like him a lot.”

  He surprised them by looking up and fixing Edmund’s eyes with his own. Life flared briefly from deep within the wells of the king’s gaze. “Tell me, Edmund: are you certain that he means me harm? Would you put your hand on a holy relic and swear that Egil is working with Alfric to kill or otherwise dethrone me?”

  Edmund had not expected this. He realized, with much surprise, that he had not really expected to get through to his father at all. All of his huffing and heaving had been a desperate attempt to get his father’s attention. Now that he had it—now that Ethelred took him seriously—he could not bring himself to say, Yes, I swear. He just couldn’t.

  He could not even sustain his father’s gaze. He looked down into the wood of the table. He couldn’t look at his brother, either. He wondered if Aethelstan was disappointed in him. He knew without a doubt that Aydith would be.

  “Just as I thought,” Ethelred sighed. “You boys are becoming as fearful as I often feel. Why should I trust anyone these days? I don’t. And yet I have to.” A servant gave him a new goblet of water. He picked it up and downed it in a few gulps, loosing silver streams down his beard and necklaces. He lifted a hand to push back his frizzy hair, but this small movement betrayed a violent tremor in his arm. “I live from one day to the next, my sons. Sometimes that is all we can do. It’s all we can do.”

  Edmund no longer felt upset or angry. He did not even feel very anxious. He simply felt depressed.

  “What would you have me do?” Ethelred looked up as if poising the question to God Himself. Edmund and Aethelstan might as well have left the room. This was now between the king and the only power greater than himself. “Have Egil beheaded or exiled without reason? Think of what they’ll say of me then. ‘Paranoid.’ ‘Cowardly.’ Bah! Perhaps I should just declare war on the Danelaw. What do you think of that?” He drained down another goblet of water, as if it was ale that could wash away his sorrows. But it gave him no such relief. When he next spoke, the coarseness of his voice brought bumps to Edmund’s skin. “‘The sin of thy mother shall not be washed out but by much blood of the kingdom’s wretched inhabitants; and such evils shall come upon the English nation as they have never suffered from the time they came to Engla-lond until then.’ Hm.”

  Then he stared out the window, and seemed to forget that anyone else was present.

  Despite the warmth of his clothes and the glow of a nearby hearth-fire, Edmund felt cold to his core. He drew away from the table, his appetite gone, again.

  He could not think of anything else to say, and Ethelred no longer seemed in the mood to listen, anyway.

  So he turned and left the hall.