Alvar the Kingmaker Read Free

swept away with a besom.” Alvar shook his head and said, “I have taken an earldom from him and yet I cannot help but feel he is too shiftless to be a good king.”
    Brock said, “Then we must both teach him.” He clasped his younger brother by the shoulders and patted Alvar’s arm ring. “To me, he is a whelp who will need to be taught, but to you he is a great gift-giver, eh my lord?” Brock emphasised the last word and gave a mock bow.
    Alvar stroked the ring. He rubbed his finger over the smoothness of the inlaid garnets and traced the pattern of the gold filigree. Would his father’s lands in the shires of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester, and the title that went with them, have even passed to him if his elder brother were not already richly rewarded and occupied in the role of steward? He said, “I have much to live up to. You have worked so hard and served three kings now and I have yet to…”
    “Make your mark?”
    Alvar raised his eyebrows as Brock once again finished his thought for him. Sixteen when Alvar was born, Brock seemed sometimes to know him better than he knew himself.
    Brock said, “Yes, I was the first to follow where our father trod and you think I have become rich and esteemed. You, on the other hand, never had to work for anything. One grin and our mother, God rest her soul, would look at your beseeching grey eyes and she would melt like butter in the sunshine.”
    Alvar laughed. It was true. Their mother often said that all he had to do was stare at her with eyes so like her own and she would believe his every tale. Brock, as the eldest, had to learn everything and all Alvar had to do was copy him. No wonder he felt that, even though he was now twenty years old, the earldom had come to him like a tame hound onto his lap. Their father was a man about whom hearth-tales were told, up and down the land. His boots were bigger than Alvar’s feet and Alvar wondered how he would ever fill them.
    Brock slapped him on the back. “Too much thinking addles the brain, little brother. You wield a sword better than any man I know. The Fairchild could not have picked a better man to protect the western marches and keep the Welsh away from our ale and women. Speaking of which, we should be away inside now.”
    Alvar squeezed the hilt of his new sword, reminded that now the ceremony was over, he would be obliged to hang the weapon up inside the hall. The hilt was decorated with the familiar threaded pattern that represented the winding and interwoven strands of life, unbroken between this world and the next. It was a trapping of his investiture that had quickly begun to hang heavily by his side, but its decoration represented continuity. Worthy or not, he should be prepared, as its new owner, to act accordingly and uphold the sovereignty of kingship, whoever the king might be.
    In the dim light inside the hall it was still easy to spot his friend Helmstan, for even when he was sitting down his height ensured that his shoulders were level with the heads of his companions. Those shoulders were heaving up and down as the big Mercian showed his hearty appreciation of some lewd joke or riddle. On the tables below the hearth, where the servants did not go, the men from Gloucester and Herefordshire, now under Alvar’s protection, laughed and talked as they passed the food and drink around the table. The Cheshire thegns sitting near them shared an aurochs drinking horn; unable to set it down, they had to pass it continuously or else spill the ale.
    Alvar hung his sword on the nail nearest to where his shield lay propped against the wall. He walked over to the Mercian tables, patting Helmstan’s shoulder before he swung his legs over the bench to sit down.
    Helmstan turned at the touch and his smile stretched even wider. His dog-brown eyes peered out from under a shaggy fringe and then he pulled his features into a mock frown. “I had wondered if you were too good to sit with us plain folk, now that you