Hereward now looked down at her. She wasn’t the beautiful princess of the sagas, that was for sure. Her dark hair spoke of her Frankish ancestry, for her grandmother had been sister to Charles, King of the Franks. Her build was on the square side. She was not fat, far from it, but she had wide shoulders and hips and the effect was exaggerated by her shortness of stature. She had a pleasant face with lively green eyes and a ready smile. Hereward enjoyed her company. He sensed a deep-rooted strength in her. It was no less than he would expect from the first-born child of his King.
He knew all about the impending marriage. Ælfred could be impetuous. Æthelred of Mercia had suggested closer ties between their Kingdoms. Hereward wasn’t sure that the Mercian entertained any hopes of marriage to the King’s daughter but it fell out thus. Hereward was rarely surprised by the King these days, having been an almost constant companion since the dark days on Athelingaig, but he was taken aback by the speed of Ælfred’s promise. “Of course,” he had said to Æthelred, “You are quite right. You shall marry my daughter, Æthelflaed.” And the matter was decided.
Ælfred was quite unprepared for his daughter’s reaction. She had gone very pale and still on being told the news. Then she had said, “How little you must think of me, Father,” and walked away, back straight and head held high. Ælfred had tried to explain, to justify his decision but Æthelflaed refused to be drawn. All she would say was “It shall be as you command, My Lord.” It was to Ælfred’s great sadness that she never called him ‘Father’ thereafter. Now, the day had come when she must leave Wessex and travel to Tamoworthig in Mercia to be married. Hereward had begged the King for command of her escort. He felt she might need a friend’s company on such a journey.
It was early summer and the weather stayed fair as they travelled northwards. Æthelflaed was withdrawn and reserved for the most part. Hereward had imagined that she would be nervous, unsure of what to expect. She was, after all, only just sixteen. But Æthelflaed showed no outward signs of nerves. What Hereward could not see was the anger blazing deep within her soul. He tried to make light conversation, riding beside the wagon in which she rode, but she answered him with monosyllables, refusing further dialogue.
They made slow progress, stopping each night in a town or larger village and lodging with the local nobles. Æthelflaed was always gracious and polite to her hosts but always made some excuse to withdraw early, leaving Hereward to explain her absences as due to the fatigue of travel. So it was they came to the King’s camp at Tamoworthig and it was with something like relief that Hereward was able to turn his charge over to Æthelred’s household.
He tried once more to talk to her before he left but she rebuffed him gently. “My father sent me here to be his pawn,” she said. “This, I shall never be. I was a Princess of Wessex, now I shall be a Queen of Mercia. Hereward, you have always been a good friend but you are my father’s man, for good or ill. Tell him, then, that I shall do my duty.” Hereward bowed and made his farewells. It was a sadly puzzled man that rode away.
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Æthelflaed had been raised in the Court of a King at war. For as long as she could remember, her father and his House Ceorls had been on the move, fighting or planning for the next fight. In the absence of the men, she had enjoyed, perhaps, a greater freedom than that which was normally afforded to a Saxon noble’s daughter. Her mother was devout and spent much time closeted with her priest. Æthelflaed had been left to her own devices and she had taken the opportunity to acquire an education normally the preserve of male offspring. She had insinuated herself into the Abbey schoolroom and proved an apt pupil.
King Ælfred had attracted men of learning from all over Christian Europe and, while at first they may have found her a curiosity, they came to recognise that she was the possessor of a fine inquiring mind. She took full advantage of what was on offer. She soon mastered both Latin and Greek and read every precious book she laid hands on. Attempts to confine her to religious tracts were countered with a fierce determination. The teacher-monks soon realised that here was spirit as dauntless as that of Ælfred himself.
It could be said that the young Æthelflaed became too used to having her own way. Had she been of a different character, she may have well have become an unbearable little prig. As it was, that fate was reserved for her brother Edward, the King’s heir. Edward was barely more than a year her junior and ever conscious of his position. Æthelflaed was by far his intellectual superior and he constantly found cause for personal affront when she bested him in any task set by their tutors. It was only in the matter of physical challenges that Edward could crow his superiority; but even here, Æthelflaed contrived to beat him.
The pair had been set the problem of raising a number of stone blocks set in the Abbey cloister. The object was to lift the lumps of masonry from the ground to the level of the parapet on the curtain wall. Edward, of course, tried by main force to lift the heavy stones. Strong as he was for a lad of only twelve summers, the weight proved too much. Æthelflaed recognised instantly that she would fare no better. Instead, she constructed a kind of crude seesaw. She attached a stone block to one arm and a large leather bucket to the other. Mounting a ladder, she proceeded to fill the bucket with water. After several trips, the weight of the water in the bucket was greater than the stone block and it swung upwards to the desired location.
The monks were delighted and heaped praise on her ingenuity; this damned Edward by comparison. Having been mastered in the one area where he felt himself to be his sister’s, the young Prince flew into a rage and struck his sister, knocking her to the ground. Punishment was swift and harsh and ever after, relations between the two royal siblings were scarcely cordial.
Now Æthelflaed found herself facing a challenge for which she felt totally unprepared. It is true that she expected marriage but had always imagined it would be to a younger man than Æthelred of Mercia. She somehow envisaged herself marrying for love, having the time to indulge her passion for learning and, at some point, having children on whom she could dote. Instead, she was in a strange land surrounded by an embittered people who saw her native Wessex as almost as great a threat as the hated Danes. Her husband-to-be was dull, unimaginative and, by her lights, crude.
This was unfair to Æthelred. True, he lacked any great spark of personality but he was a brave warrior and was utterly committed to the cause of his land and people. There were few in England who could stand close comparison with Ælfred, the scholar-King. Æthelflaed’s horror was complete when she discovered there were only three books in the whole of Æthelred’s establishment and that the monks of the Abbey at Tamoworthig were ill educated, aside from matters religious. There was no formal schooling and many of the Household could neither read nor write. Had she been more disposed towards the King of Mercia, she would have admitted that such was the situation in Wessex scarcely a generation before. The difference, of course, was Ælfred.
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They were married on the First day of July; the Bishop of Liccidfeld conducted the nuptials and if the rejoicing was somewhat muted, there were many who viewed the marriage as a shrewd move by Æthelred to strengthen his ties with Wessex. For Æthelflaed, the reluctant bride, the wedding ceremony was like the slamming of a gaol door, leaving her imprisoned; her hopes and aspirations stranded on the other side of the bars.
The wedding feast and subsequent bedding – where the newly married couple were escorted to the bedchamber, accompanied by much bawdy advice and exhortation – proved an even greater trial. Æthelred had consumed a great quantity of old ale and he hid his own nervousness in a brusque and clumsy mounting that put Æthelflaed in mind of a rutting boar. She watched him in silence as he heaved and sweated above her. The pain was bearable; the humiliation was not. She felt only relief when he stiffened, grunted and collapsed beside her to start snoring almost immediately.
This set a pattern for their married life. It seemed that Æthelred could not come to her sober. She would lie unmoving, enduring. His visits became less and less frequent as the months went by and Æthelflaed found no cause for regret in this. At first, she hoped that pregnancy would give her the excuse to curtail their trysts. In the event, she remained singularly barren and Æthelred seemed to lose all but the most passing interest in her. Æthelflaed decided she could tolerate his intrusions. A bigger enemy by far was her own boredom.
She could not spend her days happily in spinning or weaving. She did not have her mother’s devout nature to pass her time in the company of priests in contemplation of the Almighty. After six or so months of enforced idleness, she determined to take matters into her own hands. Æthelflaed decided to start a school. First, she wrote to Asser, her father’s friend and adviser, to beg the services of an educated monk to help with the endeavour. Next, she approached her husband, Æthelred.
“My Lord, I wish to found a school for the education of the children of your Household. I cannot spend another day in dreary idleness.”
“You take no pleasure in the company of the ladies?”
