The Edge of Light by Joan Wolf Page B

mead.
    Ethelred accepted a cup and drank deeply. A little color seemed to come back to his face. Then he said to Burgred, who had followed his example with the mead, “What does Mercia think the Danes will do next?”
    Burgred stretched his neck, as if he found his collar too confining. It was very hot in the hall even with the door open. “My information is that they are still in York,” he answered. “Perhaps they will stay there.” Burgred took another drink of mead and the sweat stood out on his forehead,
    “Alfred does not think so.” Ethelred looked from Burgred to his brother, who was sitting in the chair beside him empty-handed, having refused the mead.
    “Why not?” Burgred too looked at his young brother-by-marriage.
    “They have had too easy a time of it thus far, my lord,” Alfred replied to Burgred. His manner was polite, correctly deferential, but he spoke with all the easy confidence of one who is accustomed to having his words heeded. Ethelswith noted that he alone of all the group did not look hot. “Edmund of East Anglia did not resist them,” Alfred continued. “Edmund allowed them to winter in his land, to raid his people’s horses. Now Northumbria has fallen. I would be greatly surprised if Ivar the Boneless did not try to see what the temper of Mercia and Wessex might be.”
    In the chair on the other side of her husband, Ethelswith could see Athulf nodding. She knew that the young ealdorman had been telling Burgred much the same thing since news of the Northumbrian defeat had come to them,
    “Mercia and Wessex are far stronger than East Anglia and Northumbria,” Burgred said. “All of Europe does know that. These Northmen must know it too.”
    Alfred said, still in that polite, deferential tone, “There has not been a battle of any size in Wessex since my father and my brother Ethelbald beat the Danes at Aclea, and that was sixteen years since, my lord. And Ethelbald is dead. As far as the Danes are concerned, the leaders of Wessex and Mercia are untried in battle.” Alfred looked briefly at Ethelswith, then back to Burgred. His clipped voice, though still polite, was yet unmistakably authoritative. “I think they will come against us.”
    There was a heavy silence. Ethelswith stared consideringly at Alfred’s fine-boned face. He was so young, she thought, hardly more than a boy. Ethelred was eleven years his senior, Burgred old enough to be his father. Why should these two older kings listen so seriously to what a boy had to say? Out of the corner of her eye she could see Athulf staring at the slender young prince in slight puzzlement, as though he too were trying to understand this mystery.
    “I could be wrong, of course,” Alfred said. “But that is what I think.”
    Ethelred sighed and said gloomily, “I am trying to remember the last time you were wrong.”
    Burgred grunted. “In any case, it will be well for us to be prepared.” He gave Ethelred a sour look. “I do not know about you, brother, but I have no desire to be sacrificed to a Viking god.”
    Ethelred’s returning look was wry. “I can think of ways I would rather pass my time,” he said. And Alfred laughed.

    The storm that had been building all day broke late in the afternoon, while servants were setting up the trestle tables in the great hall for the evening meal. Alfred and Ethelred were in their room in the guest hall when they heard the first booms of thunder rolling up the valley of the Tane.
    Ethelred was lying on the bed in the sweltering room, resting. He put his hands behind his head and said, “Thank God. Now perhaps the heat will break.” Lightning flashed. “Close the shutters, will you, Alfred?” he added.
    “The room will be hot as fire,” Alfred answered, but left off what he was doing to go close and fasten the shutters of the room’s single window. Then he turned to look at Ethelred stretched out on the bed. “I cannot find my stomach medicine,” he said. “I think I left it in