The Earl of Mercia by M J Porter

Author:M J Porter [Porter, M J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-28T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Summer AD1027

Northampton

As usual the roads were crammed with the carts and temporary market stalls of the men and women who’d come to sell their goods to the people of Northampton. On any other day, Leofric would have been entertained and entranced by the spectacle of the skilled athletics and the vast array of goods for sale, but today his head pounded and he felt a pulse of rage rushing through his body.

King Cnut was still absent from England and despite the more positive news coming from Denmark, Leofric was angry that Cnut thought only of expanding his empire and not of protecting what he already had.

England was peaceful in and of itself, but just as Earl Hakon had foreseen, the two women in Cnut’s life were making it increasingly difficult to remain neutral in their escalating attempts to win support for their sons and Leofric was finding his patience tested on an almost daily basis.

That his wife was firm in her intention to support only Ælfgifu meant that even his home life was disturbed and that infuriated him even more. He wasn’t sure he wished to make any overt show of support for either of the women, after all, that wasn’t what Hakon had asked him to do, no, he’d asked to do something far more difficult. He’d asked him to keep the peace. Whether he’d known or appreciated just how far Ælfgifu was prepared to extend her reach was something that plagued Leofric. Had he once more been put in an unwinnable situation by somehow he’d mistaken for a friend?

He shook his head angrily as he guided his horse through the throngs of people. He wanted to be careful and injure no one, but at the same time, he wanted to get his meeting with Lady Ælfgifu over and done with. He had a good idea of whom she’d been talking with and he felt it was his duty to caution her.

As much as she might believe that Cnut had given her his blessing to do whatever she must to make her sons powerful men in their own right, when the time came, he doubted that Cnut would welcome her interference in her father’s old earldom of Northumbria.

No, he needed to speak with her and tell her to leave the status quo as it was. When Cnut returned, and it had to be sometime soon, he’d be displeased if he found Northumbria in open revolt against his kingship. Not that it took the old northern kingdom much to rise in revolt against anyone’s kingship, but with the old and cantankerous king Malcolm II of Scotland hovering on the border, prepared to take advantage of any sign of weakness, Leofric knew that Ælfgifu wasn’t being careful enough.

She could incite some of the older families to support her, those who remembered her father and her brothers blinding by Eadric, and despite the change in kingship since then, she’d still be able to call upon that old, and by now, misplaced loyalty.

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