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The cry of a man in abject agony assailed his ears. Dunstan Chase forced himself to grin; this dark chamber was no place to show weakness in front of his thegns. The two thegns flanked him, Brand Buckley with hand on sword showing enough fear for all three of them, and Frelaf Helton wearing an expression that Dunstan found, much to his own increased discomfort, manically elated.
The chamber, which was little more than part of a complex of caves accessible through a longhouse which had been built abutting to the cave mouth, had lost none of its otherworldliness and if anything, smelt far worse than on his last visit two years previously. Dunstan ground his teeth while maintaining a grin.
‘Godwin! That maggot-riddled barrel of rancid tallow.’ Dunstan spoke under his breath, but Frelaf had the ears of an owl.
‘Hold, my lord,’ he hissed. ‘Lest you cause us all to have our heads struck off.’
Dunstan seemed not to hear. ‘That I should take my orders from a mere thegn,’ he spat, the grin finally replaced by a twisted look of fury barely contained.
‘King’s thegn, my lord. In theory, as an ealdorman you outrank him, but only in theory. Godwin is no common breed of the herd. None is closer to the king’s ear.’
The cry of a poor tortured soul came again and Dunstan stopped in his tracks. Up ahead the cave narrowed and then opened into a second chamber. Dunstan recalled, through there the prisoners were kept, and there they were tormented or left to rot. He felt no pride that he had brought prisoners to this place for Godwin to use as he saw fit. He remembered the two boys …
Before the full revulsion of recalling his part in the grizzly murder of innocents overwhelmed him, a bare-chested ceorl came from the next chamber and drew up with a start. His muscular torso was slick with sweat and blood, the sweat his own, the blood not. Quickly recovering his composure he gave a slight bow of the head; a little too slight, thought Dunstan. Such impudence shrieked for just reward.
‘Ealdorman Chase, is it?’ the ceorl asked without due deference. ‘My lord Godwin is impatient for your attendance.’
Ealdorman Dunstan Chase strode towards the next chamber, his thegns close at heel. Dunstan paused to land a firm back-hander across the ceorl’s jaw.
The surly confidence fled from his eyes and he whimpered. He quickly recovered and scowled. ‘Lord Godwin will –‘
Dunstan struck him again, this time with balled fist. With loosened teeth and a split lip the ceorl landed heavily against the stone wall and before he could right himself Dunstan took him by the neck and slammed him once, twice into the rock. ‘Your Lord Godwin will receive his full due from me. And be you his man or no, you will also receive what you deserve if your manners are lacking.’ Dunstan turned from the chastised man as of no further consequence. For his troubles Frelaf gave him another slap in passing, and Brand delivered up his best but rather unconvincing look of contempt. The ceorl fell in step several yards behind them, proper respect for his betters fully restored.
By his tonsured scalp the prisoner was easily placed as a holy brother, but by no other mark or peculiarity of dress. He wore only his linen-clothes, and these were shredded and stained with blood. In his agonies he had soiled himself, and the stench was almost as unbearable as the sight of his broken body and the gobbets of unidentifiable flesh in which he kneeled. His eyeballs had been burst with a spike and his face beaten until it was a bruised and bloody thing with little resemblance to any creature of this earth. The poor man was in that state just before death when fully resigned to it, and without hope of reprieve, the body begins to close down.
Dunstan stared and was caught between revulsion, pity and mounting anger. Anger won sway when he noticed the ceorl’s cruel smile. The ceorl stood between him and the prisoner, who lay crumpled and chained to the irregular cave floor.
Dunstan drew his sword and strode towards the ceorl who yelped like a scolded pup and scurried out through the further tunnel. Dunstan knew it led to Godwin’s chamber, and he became aware of the discomfort of his two thegns. He held the hilt of his sword in both hands and with a quick downward thrust to the monk’s neck close to the skull, he put the unfortunate man past all further torments, unless God had other’s waiting for him. ‘May the Lord have mercy upon me,’ Dunstan whispered and he fingered the silver cross at his neck.
‘He would surely have had no mercy if you left His servant to suffer,’ Frelaf said.
‘Let us hope that Godwin is equally merciful,’ Brand added.
The ceorl’s excited jabbering came indistinctly from the last chamber.
‘Busy telling tales,’ Frelaf said.
Dunstan beckoned his retainers into a close huddle and spoke very low. ‘Brand. Frelaf. I have made a decision and you must decide where you stand, for if Godwin has called me here to bring about my ruin, I shall not submit. If I die with that sluggard’s guts wound round my blade, I shall die a happy man.’
‘And the ceorl is mine,’ Frelaf said gleefully.
Brand Buckley looked from Dunstan to Frelaf while his mind groped for a suitable answer.
‘Have no fear, loyal Brand. I give you leave to walk back to the sunlight. You will lose neither my love nor your own honour.’
Brand smiled uncertainly. ‘We … we must all die sooner or later, so let’s to it and die with our teeth at the enemy’s throat.’ Surprised, and rather pleased with his own brave words, Brand’s smile became firm and grim.
Two of Godwin’s thegns came from the chamber. Dunstan, Brand and Frelaf were dressed for the road with woollen tunics, close-woven hose and warm cloaks. And of course no man would travel unarmed, but Godwin’s thegns were equipped as if for war. Each wore a burnished byrnie of iron rings with interwoven yellow metal wire polished to look like gold. They wore identical helmets of polished iron with inlaid patterns of bronze and their tunics, of the best cloth, were uniform in colour and design, and each bore the same woven pattern. In any other setting either one of these men would be taken for an atheling. Here, they were no more than Godwin’s lackeys.
One of them bowed low and passed on the compliments of his lord. Godwin would receive Dunstan in his chamber, but the thegns must wait outside.
Reluctant to leave his men behind but finding himself with little choice, Dunstan ducked his head to avoid the low natural ceiling and proceeded with one glittering thegn to the fore and the other following up behind. If ever he had been more vulnerable, he could not recall the time.
Dunstan Chase was of average height, but well set up, broad shouldered and without the slightest hint of a paunch. He wore his brown beard trimmed short and his hair to collar length. He considered himself well proportioned for a fighting man. Frelaf was tall and wiry, surprisingly strong for one so light of limb, but the attributes of his body carried over to his features giving him a weasel-like face sprouting a straggly beard. Dunstan thought Brand too heavy in the gut, but even he was a sylphlike being when compared to the loathsome Godwin.
The king’s thegn was taller than Dunstan, but also much bulkier. He usually strutted about either fully armed or in the most fine and colourful clothes, but this time he was dressed in a monk’s habit and hooded cowl. That he had not taken holy orders was evident only from the axe he wore at his belt and a full head of hair.
King’s thegn or not, Ealdorman Dunstan Chase was not about to show any deference. ‘A gift from our unfortunate brother?’ Dunstan asked and waved a hand which encompassed Godwin’s attire.
Godwin’s round face was close-shaved which exposed his cleft chin and full lips. It was most common for him to smile throughout any audience, but this time he was not smiling.
‘The brother whom you have just slain? Shame on you Ealdorman to take such liberties in my house.’
‘Shame on me? Godwin, if you had less of the king’s ear I would happily skewer you as a heretic. To ill-use such as that poor brother, you are truly as odious as you appear.’ And then Dunstan remembered the two boys, who were more innocent still.
‘It is no heresy to prosecute enemies of the king, and that wayward monk was Ethelred’s enemy.’ Godwin stoked his bald chin and smirked. ‘Are you an enemy of the king, Dunstan Chase?’
A cold shiver passed through Dunstan. ‘Indeed, I am his most loyal servant, as I have shown time and again. Now, I am here not to wait upon you, but to receive the king’s command. So out with it, and I may be about the king’s business.’
‘I have other business to attend, concerning your handling of my free man here.’ Godwin laid a hand upon the ceorl’s shoulder. ‘Is it right for one born to nobility to chastise a man who has risen to his position by nothing but hard work and good service?’
‘The man forgot his manners. I reminded him of them.’
‘Perhaps the high and mighty should be reminded of their places from time to time,’ Godwin said, and then turning to the ceorl, ‘Go take the high and mighty ealdorman’s sword.’
The ceorl needed no second telling and he closed the gap between himself and Dunstan and reached out for the hilt.
Dunstan slapped the man’s hand away. ‘You’ll not disarm me, Godwin.’
Godwin’s eyes narrowed and his face hardened. ‘The king commands it!’ he bellowed, the sound echoing back from the next chamber. The house-thegns half-drew their own swords and came a step closer.
Dunstan’s resolve to die fighting melted away. Such odds made the notion ridiculous. He drew his sword slowly and handed it to the ceorl who received it with unconcealed contempt.
‘Now, my good man. You know what must be done?’
‘I do, my lord. Chase must die, but is it your command that I should run him through, or rather must I strike off his head?’
Godwin feigned a look of shock and surprise. ‘No, no, no, no! Whatever are you thinking? You are not to attack a man whom you should have greeted with humble compliments. Indeed not! What I had in mind is that you should fall upon the sword, as was once the fashion with patricians of Rome. A noble death for a lowly fellow.’
The ceorl went white with fear and his jaw flapped soundlessly.
‘Come, come! We haven’t all day to wait upon your compliance,’ Godwin said as if he were hurrying a young novice to matins. ‘Do it … now!’
The ceorl looked from Godwin and then to Dunstan with pleading eyes.
‘I tire of this,’ Godwin said impatiently. ‘You have the space of twenty heartbeats to end yourself in whatever fashion you find most acceptable, otherwise you will suffer an identical fate to our late and dearly missed brother-in-Christ.’
‘Please,’ was all the ceorl could manage.
With a subtle signal from Godwin, his thegns advanced upon the ceorl, and knowing all too well the agonies he could expect he squealed and then fell on the sword. It was a clumsy show and his screams filled the cavern, for the blade had failed to pierce his heart and only made a butchered mess of his intestines. Dunstan drew a small seax and for the second time in the half-hour sent a man to his maker.
He wiped the blades of seax and sword on the dead man’s hose and sheathed them, though he would as soon have plunged either into Godwin’s bulk. ‘Sometimes it seems to me I’ve seen more blood shed in this place than on the field of battle.’
‘And yet, by my actions I have curtailed the need for many battles and saved the lives of hundreds,’ Godwin said.
‘If that’s how you choose to see it.’
‘It is, and now to the reason for your presence.’ Godwin bade Dunstan sit at the oaken table that occupied the centre of the small cavern. The cave was lit by oil lamps in niches about the wall and a ring of candles set in an iron band and suspended from a chain directly above the table.
Dunstan made himself as comfortable as possible on a stool while Godwin sat on a throne of a wooden chair with fleeces for cushions.
‘It seems, dear Dunstan, that there is another little elf to put out of harm’s way.’
Another boy? Dunstan hoped not. ‘The late King Elfwald has a third surviving son?’
‘He has, and as you were so efficient in ending the last two …’
‘It was you who slew Elf and Elfwine. Don’t put their blood on my hands, Godwin.’
Godwin spread his palms sideways and assumed a look of innocence. ‘And you brought them to me because you thought I intended to feast them upon ale and pies?’
If another man in the wide world was the more the devil on earth than Godwin, Dunstan hoped they would never meet. ‘Listen! I know full well that in time lads grow broad shoulders fit to match the measure of royal mantles, but there are means, and there are means.’
Godwin nodded sagely as if weighing Dunstan’s words. Dunstan knew better than to be taken in.
‘I should have banished them? A lad can travel the world over and return, perhaps with a fyrd under his banner. Imprison him then? But no, prisoners by their mere presence call out for daring rescue and ruinous restoration.’
Dunstan sighed. ‘You could have dealt them a merciful death, and yet you humiliated them and drew out their agonies. Tell me Godwin, was it King Ethelred’s command that they be tortured to death?’
‘The King cares nothing for detail. It was by my command and occasionally by my hand that the elf boys suffered. We all hope for a swift death, but a slow and painful one sends out such a powerful message, don’t you think?’
‘There are those who deserve to die in agony,’ Dunstan said while thinking that one such was close at hand. ‘Those innocent lads did not.’
‘Not so innocent! They were bloodied in battle. They’d both known women. Each of them was more man than lad and warming right quickly to the pleasures and intrigues of court. And then there is the little matter of their First Born status.’
‘They were just fifteen and seventeen years old, and innocent of any treachery. As to being First Born, it is but a childish nonsense.’
‘Perhaps, but they were the sons of our king’s enemy. Let us be content that they suffered for the sins of their father, no matter that they had yet to achieve a man’s full bulk or make much use of the shaving blade. Why so squeamish, Dunstan?’
‘Level no womanly ways at me, Godwin. I would gladly have slain them myself, but I find no pleasure, neither any necessity in torture.’
‘Then it will please you to learn I want only the head of Elf and Elfwine’s little brother. You are free to kill him as swiftly and as painlessly as you may, but you will bring me his head.’
Dunstan nodded. ‘And where might I find his head?’
‘Why, still upon his shoulders, good fellow!’ Godwin laughed at his own jest until he noticed that Dunstan found no amusement in his wit. His laughter trailed off and he told Dunstan that the lad whose life was to be taken was called Elfgar. He gave him a none-too-recent description and told him of his last known whereabouts, although that was several years ago. Then he acquainted Dunstan with the last curious detail.
‘Now Dunstan, this may be to your advantage. The last of the little elf lads has no reason to fear the knife in the dark. You see, he is ignorant of the fact that he is an atheling. He has no idea at all that he is a son of Elfwald the pious, Elfwald the good, Elfwald the once and never to be again king.
‘Then why …?’
‘Why kill him? He may not know who he is, but others may come to know, as I have, and there are those who would seek to make use of him against the interests of King Ethelred. So, you have my command, which is by way of saying, you have the command of Ethelred, King of Northumbria.’
Once Godwin was certain that Ealdorman Dunstan Chase had committed his instructions to memory, he made it known that failure to kill the boy and make a trophy of his head would make it very likely that Dunstan’s own head would be forfeit.
Then the audience was over. Dunstan found himself being ushered back towards the cave mouth with his thegns and thence to the longhouse which acted as an antechamber to the natural caverns.
‘I see you admire the arms of my thegns,’ Godwin said.
Dunstan was keen to be gone, and did not feel inclined to inform Godwin that far from admiring their garish equipment, he thought it unfit for battle and rather unmanly.
‘A gift from King Charles of the Franks,’ Godwin boasted with a wide grin. ‘A personal gift you understand, and not by way of our king.’
‘Godwin, you never cease to impress me. You are plainly the equal of kings and emperors, entirely wasted in your present position.’
Godwin pretended to preen at the compliment, although Dunstan’s sarcasm was far from lost on him. Godwin always knew that one day Dunstan would go too far, and now he had. He smiled at his cleverness, for he had already sent out a party of his own men to track down the atheling boy, and if they caught him first, he would have the excuse he needed to destroy Chase. As usual, everything was proceeding quite according to plan.
Once out of the longhouse Dunstan and his thegns mounted sturdy, shaggy-legged ponies and rode out of Godwin’s burgh. The ealdorman remained silent in his saddle until the wooden walls of the fortified town were out of sight, and then Frelaf could control his curiosity no more.
‘If it pleases your lordship, might we know our commands?’
Dunstan held his reply until Frelaf became worried that he had spoken out of turn.
‘It’s another young atheling,’ Dunstan said at length. ‘Just when I should be taking note of the Mercian king and looking to our coastal defences, I am commanded to seek out and slay another little boy.’
‘What coastal defences?’ Brand asked.
‘Precisely! We have none, and it is King Offa’s belief that the Northmen spoil for adventure. Spies tell us their lands are full and they seek new ones.’
Frelaf chuckled. ‘Do you mean those long-bearded heathen fellows who trade in trinkets and furs? Do they really believe they are the equal of the king’s fyrd? Or yours for that matter?’
‘A thief can come in the night if the door is left unbarred and unguarded. Such is Northumbria’s coast; little but an open door with not so much as a brush to put across the frame. But the thief must come and do as he will, for we are commissioned to hunt for the blood of a royal whelp.’
‘A canker on the Northmen,’ Brand said. ‘Tell us of the boy. Where must we go, and is he as devoid of defences as our rugged coast?’
Brand’s answer had to wait until the ponies had negotiated a steep bank and a shallow stream. They clambered up the opposite bank and joined a woodland path. Sunlight slanted through the broadleaved trees. It was still warm, but the chill of evening would soon be upon them.
Before Dunstan could make answer, they came upon a brace of ceorls who were about despoiling a dead man’s marker. Before Dunstan could challenge them, he noticed the inscription.
‘Elf-Latin,’ Brand spat as if the sight of it has soured his spittle, and then crossed himself with the sign of Christ.
‘Not so,’ Dunstan said. ‘The letters are liken to elf-Latin but see, it is the common tongue.’
The ceorls had broken the stone into three and had loaded two parts upon a cart, but the cart was not sturdy enough to take all three parts, and in any case, the base was still buried in the ground and showed no sign of yielding. Dunstan challenged them. Their reply did not surprise him.
‘Our lord Godwin will not suffer such stones to be upon his King’s lands, and so we are charged with their removal.’
‘Very good,’ Dunstan said. ‘Be about your business.’ He turned his pony to continue but not before he had read the inscription. So this is where the murdered boys had been put to earth. Was Godwin so cruel that he denied them even their resting place? Dunstan needed no answer and kicked his mount’s flank.
Dunstan told his men what he knew of their new quarry; his name, his lineage and that the boy was ignorant of his royal blood.
‘And how should we find him, my lord,’ Frelaf asked.
‘Well, as to his looks, he has red hair, straight legs and is likely of uncommon elevation. When he was thirteen it is said he had the face of an angel, but like as not the passing years have left him pock-marked and hunger-pinched. As to his whereabouts, when he was young he was taken under the tutelage of Alcuin of York in the court of King Charles. But now he is seventeen and probably a bawdy-house tap-boy in a burgh somewhere between the Forth and the Humber, selling stale beer and giving his arse freely when all the whores are all taken. In short, nothing is known about him these last four years except he came back to Northumbria and that he yet lives and gives our noble lord and king many sleepless nights.’
Brand’s pony stumbled and he let out a squeak. Regaining his seat, he reined in close to Dunstan. ‘If he was taught by Alcuin, it is possible he is now a holy brother.’
‘Very good, Brand. Your thoughts and mine are one, and so tomorrow we begin a long ride to York, a veritable warren of little brothers.’
‘Not just an atheling, but also a holy brother,’ Frelaf said. ‘This commission is rapidly losing its appeal.’
‘We’ll do what we are commanded, and then have Higbald or another bishop shrive us. We have our duty, and it was never written that duty must be pleasurable.’
Brand looked very unhappy. ‘Can we be compelled to murder by such as the likes of Godwin, or even the king himself?’
Dunstan grinned mirthlessly. ‘When it’s do murder or be the victim of it, the niceties of law become a little blurred.’
Brand let out a long sigh. ‘So we set out to find and slay a lad by nothing more than the colour of his hair and the chance that he may be a monk.’
‘Not quite,’ Dunstan said. ‘There is something about him that time cannot erase. Under his throat about the place where the collar bone meets above the breast, he has a small needled wode-mark like unto the symbol of our Lord Jesus Christ.’
‘A cross pricked under the skin?’ Frelaf said. ‘I think that most apt for a brother, if he is to be marked at all.’
‘Not the cross,’ Dunstan said. ‘I talk of the earlier symbol.’
‘The fish?’ asked Brand.
‘Yes Brand. The young atheling is marked with the fish sign of Christ’s earliest followers, and by that mark we shall know him.’
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"Never look down on a man unless you're helping him up." Jessie Jackson
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