Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn: Chapter 8

Chapter 8

She had no tears to shed, no word to say, nor was there any sense of
grief at her loss. She had loved him--once upon a time; she had always
admired him for his better qualities; even his excessive pride and
ostentation had been pleasing to her; finally she had been more than
tolerant of his vices or weaknesses, regarding them as matters beneath
her attention. Nevertheless, in their eight years of married life they
had become increasingly repugnant to her stronger and colder nature. He
had degenerated, bodily and mentally, and was not now like that shining
one who had come to her at Wherwell Castle, who had not hesitated to
strike the blow that had set her free. The tidings of his death had all
at once sprung the truth on her mind that the old love was dead, that it
had indeed been long dead, and that she had actually come to despise
him.

But what should she do--what be--without him! She had been his queen,
loved to adoration, and he had been her shield; now she was alone, face
to face with her bitter, powerful enemy. Now it seemed to her that she
had been living in a beautiful peaceful land, a paradise of fruit and
flowers and all delightful things; that in a moment, as by a miracle, it
had turned to a waste of black ashes still hot and smoking from the
desolating flames that had passed over it. But she was not one to give
herself over to despondency so long as there was anything to be done.
Very quickly she roused herself to action, and despatched messengers to
all those powerful friends who shared her hatred of the great
archbishop, and would be glad of the opportunity now offered of wresting
the rule from his hands. Until now he had triumphed because he had had
the king to support him even in his most arbitrary and tyrannical
measures; now was the time to show a bold front, to proclaim her son as
the right successor, and with herself, assisted by chosen councillors to
direct her boy, the power would be in her hands, and once more, as in
King Edwin's day, the great Dunstan, disgraced and denounced, would be
compelled to fly from the country lest a more dreadful punishment should
befall him. Finally, leaving the two little princes at Corfe Castle, she
travelled to Mercia to be with and animate her powerful friends and
fellow-plotters with her presence.

All their plottings and movements were known to Dunstan, and he was too
quick for them. Whilst they, divided among themselves, were debating and
arranging their plans, he had called together all the leading bishops
and councillors of the late king, and they had agreed that Edward must
be proclaimed as the first-born; and although but a boy of thirteen, the
danger to the country would not be so great as it would to give the
succession to a child of seven years. Accordingly Edward was proclaimed
king and removed from Corfe Castle while the queen was still absent in
Mercia.

For a while it looked as if this bold and prompt act on the part of
Dunstan would have led to civil war; but a great majority of the nobles
gave their adhesion to Edward, and Elfrida's friends soon concluded that
they were not strong enough to set her boy up and try to overthrow
Edward, or to divide England again between two boy kings as in Edwin and
Edgar's early years.

She accordingly returned discomfited to Corfe and to her child, now
always crying for his beloved brother who had been taken from him; and
there was not in all England a more miserable woman than Elfrida the
queen. For after this defeat she could hope no more; her power was gone
past recovery--all that had made her life beautiful and glorious was
gone. Now Corfe was like that other castle at Wherwell, where Earl
Athelwold had kept her like a caged bird for his pleasure when he
visited her; only worse, since she was eight years younger then, her
beauty fresher, her heart burning with secret hopes and ambitions, and
the great world where there were towns and a king, and many noble men
and women gathered round him yet to be known. And all these things had
come to her and were now lost--now nothing was left but bitterest
regrets and hatred of all those who had failed her at the last. Hatred
first of all and above all of her great triumphant enemy, and hatred of
the boy king she had loved with a mother's love until now, and cherished
for many years. Hatred too of herself when she recalled the part she had
recently played in Mercia, where she had not disdained to practise all
her fascinating arts on many persons she despised in order to bind them
to her cause, and had thereby given cause to her monkish enemy to charge
her with immodesty. It was with something like hatred too that she
regarded her own child when he would come crying to her, begging her to
take him to his beloved brother; carried away with sudden rage, she
would strike and thrust him violently from her, then order her women to
take him away and keep him out of her sight.

Three years had gone by, during which she had continued living alone at
Corfe, still under a cloud and nursing her bitter revengeful feeling in
her heart, until that fatal afternoon on the eighteenth day of March,
978.

The young king, now in his seventeenth year, had come to these favourite
hunting-grounds of his late father, and was out hunting on that day. He
had lost sight of his companions in a wood or thicket of thorn and
furze, and galloping in search of them he came out from the wood on the
further side; and there before him, not a mile away, was Corfe Castle,
his old beloved home, and the home still of the two beings he loved best
in the world--his step-mother and his little half-brother. And although
he had been sternly warned that they were his secret enemies, that it
would be dangerous to hold any intercourse with them, the sight of the
castle and his craving to look again on their dear faces overcame his
scruples. There would be no harm, no danger to him and no great
disobedience on his part to ride to the gates and see and greet them
without dismounting.

When Elfrida was told that Edward himself was at the gates calling to
her and Ethelred to come out to him she became violently excited, and
cried out that God himself was on her side, and had delivered the boy
into her hands. She ordered her servants to go out and persuade him to
come in to her, to take away his horse as soon as he had dismounted, and
not to allow him to leave the castle. Then, when they returned to say
the king refused to dismount and again begged them to go to him, she
went to the gates, but without the boy, and greeted him joyfully, while
he, glad at the meeting, bent down and embraced her and kissed her face.
But when she refused to send for Ethelred, and urged him persistently to
dismount and come in to see his little brother who was crying for him,
he began to notice the extreme excitement which burned in her eyes and
made her voice tremble, and beginning to fear some design against him,
he refused again more firmly to obey her wish; then she, to gain time,
sent for wine for him to drink before parting from her. And during all
this time while his departure was being delayed, her people, men and
women, had been coming out until, sitting on his horse, he was in the
midst of a crowd, and these too all looked on him with excited faces,
which increased his apprehension, so that when he had drunk the wine he
all at once set spurs to his horse to break away from among them. Then
she, looking at her men, cried out: Is this the way you serve me? And no
sooner had the words fallen from her lips than one man bounded forward,
like a hound on its quarry, and coming abreast of the horse, dealt the
king a blow with his knife in the side. The next moment the horse and
rider were free of the crowd and rushing away over the moor. A cry of
horror had burst from the women gathered there when the blow was struck;
now all were silent, watching with white, scared faces as he rode
swiftly away. Then presently they saw him swerve on his horse, then
fall, with his right foot still remaining caught in the stirrup, and
that the panic-stricken horse was dragging him at furious speed over the
rough moor.

Only then the queen spoke, and in an agitated voice told them to mount
and follow; and charged them that if they overtook the horse and found
that the king had been killed, to bury the body where it would not be
found, so that the manner of his death should not be known.

When the men returned they reported that they had found the dead body of
the king a mile away, where the horse had got free of it, and they had
buried it in a thicket where it would never be discovered.

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