Brunanburgh

    King Athelstan sat quietly for a while and began to think what he would say to the men who were starting to gather outside the little wood and stone church. He gazed through the darkness at the altar and felt a little tired. No different from how he had been feeling for the last five years. He had the place to himself and for a moment his mind wandered as he thought how far this journey had brought him. The words inside his head began to form and speak to him. They had done on so many occasions as he remembered his increasingly tired life.

    “How I hate these people” he mused, “the Danes, the Saxons, the Britons, and the Angles most of all. People are starting to call the damned country after them. Why didn’t God make me a Frank and king of a civilised country? A country with some real Roman heritage would have been nice, but the Romans just seemed to have passed through here just leaving a few walls behind, the odd building, a fort or two.....”

    “What about the roads?”  The voice came out of his past.

    “Oh yes, the roads, most of them go nowhere now!”

    “There's lots of stone about for people to use. A few good forts. Some town walls. That bath place with a warm spring in the south west. Your Auntie liked it.”

    He remembered then his time fighting with the Franks, his visit to Rome as a young man and meeting the bishop, and all the friends he had made. He had always thought of it as an uncomplicated life until his father Edward decided he wanted him back home when his reputation as a warrior became apparent. Even in a backwater like Winchester, even though he was still then a young man, people then began to notice him.

    “For almost the first time in his life he thought about me and considered I could be some use to him. It was Auntie Ethelfreda constantly reminding him that did it. What a woman! Give me a wapentake of Ethelfredas and I won’t need an army! Grandad was right to marry her off to Uncle Ethelred. It was a surprise to everyone how much he loved her as well, even though she seemed to breathe fire at him most of the time.  Dad was lucky the Witangemot didn’t invite them to become King and Queen in his place. What a match, what a couple! If I never had much else going for me as a child, being fostered by them was the best thing ever happened to me. They taught me all I know... How I loved them both!  Oh, how I miss them!”

    Athelstan nearly allowed himself to laugh and cry in church at that thought. Edward had a new king created under his nose and had the decency to die early leaving the Witan nearly no choice but to chose him as king over Edmund his half brother who was still a child and the one or two other useless pretenders who were now safely despatched.

    “This country always needs a warrior, Lord Athelstan,” they said and those words constantly rang in his ears. He felt he had never been anything else and always claimed he could remember his grandfather Alfred giving him his first sword. In reality Auntie Ethelfreda had told about the occasion so many times, but he never lost the importance of it. It was the stewardship of the kingdom his Grandfather had rescued from the Danes. To Athelstan all the other kings in Britain were trying to rob the family of their birthright. It had handed it to him for safekeeping.

    The voice in his head said. “Well, they got their warrior and a bit more than some bargained for. You had better keep it that way!”

    There was no doubt that someone was needed to complete the work of unifying the land of the Angles and Saxons, the Danes and the Britons. The work of his Father and Grandfather and most of all Auntie Ethelfreda was always in Athelstan’s mind. He would constantly remind people how it was their duty to support him in this. It was to him a rebuilding of the Roman Empire in Britain. He had designs on the rest of the country where the Romans had never succeeded, the far north and across the western sea to conquer the Irish, even if he only dreamed. Athelstan was good at dreaming and occasionally managed to get some of his followers to share his dreams, especially the one about unity in the southern bit of the larger British Isle. They had a bit of difficulty with the bigger picture. In the happy part of his life, he sat with Auntie Ethelfreda discussing the detail. To Athelstan she never lost the picture or the plot. She always could comprehend the enormity of the task and played her part.