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Arthur crept lowly into the hall amongst the churning flow of his people, heavy cloak swishing around his ankles. It had dragged the floor when he left, but he’d managed to gain about two inches since that time, and now the chill breeze of the late autumn lowlands nipped at his heels. The rainsoaked air, the most faithful dog he’d ever have, swirled in his wake.
His youthful appearance made it simple to skirt around the adult’s longer legs. He had a report to give—a report on information that he alone had been entrusted to search for—and he would carry out these orders well, for his beloved king who had been so dedicated to routing the last of the Danes from his borders. The hall was warm with regard for him.
England loved Alfred. Would always love Alfred. The best of his fathers. Retaking Londonium, feeling it fit back into his beating heart, was lightning in his soul. He would chase that feeling forever.
It felt good to do this for him, as only one such as Arthur would have been able to cross from Danish Northumbria into the last fragments of the land held by the Angles. The slight stature of a child with the wisdom of centuries made for the perfect spy. He’d have liked to see hulking Alba do half as well with such a covert imperative.
He frowned at the throng of people, the dim light of the hall at night making it difficult to decide where he ought to look for his king, and then set off once again. He had a report to give.
His footsteps were muffled by the rush-straw floor as he slipped up to the King’s side.
“Hwæt—I shall tell you of my travels, my king,” Arthur began. Tension rippled through King Alfred, before he looked down at Arthur and recognized the piping voice of his boy-kingdom. “It was a simple matter, though fraught with danger. I have returned to you in one piece, with the news that the Danelaw is more disorganized than we thought, given their recent exodus from the kingdom of the Franks. Excellent news, for it likely means we’ll have peace for the next few years at least.”
Alfred nodded his understanding, then grimaced. “But that wasn’t all you were tasked with, Wessex. Speak of Northumbria. Were you able to find him amongst the heathen carnage?”
“Dead as well, my lord.” Arthur bowed his head as he spoke, knowing that if he met the eyes of his King he would reveal himself. Sweet crimson lines scored his teeth and pooled in the back of his mouth, and he swallowed blood and bile both.
King Alfred ran his hands through his beard, the thatch of hair full and hearty with his thirty-eight years, and sighed. “With Mercia and Northumbria both passed—I have begun to lose hope for Anglia.”
Arthur hoped as well, though for something very different than his king.
Northumbria, his northernmost doppleganger, with his lofty ambitions and his twice-deposed kings, wasn’t the first. Mercia had been first. Mercia, who had been happy to see him. Who had thought him a liberator from the ruthless hands of the Danes.
Northumbria had known, somehow, what Wessex had come to do. Unlike Mercia, who had been taken by surprise. Like when he’d realized Burgred had abandoned him for Rome. The good relations between their kingdoms fell away for desperate bloodletting as Wessex’s sharp teeth closed around Mercia’s throat.
He and Mercia were identical, from teeth to toes, and all between. It makes it easier, in a way. Wessex hated his own reflection. And with enough blood on the battlefield that long-ago day, no one questioned the red smeared across his face when he returned to Alfred’s struggling campaign to liberate his new duchy. The warriors hadn’t looked askance at the oddly shaped knucklebones he’d thrown during the games after dinner.
Wessex had abstained. He wasn’t feeling hungry.
In comparison, Northumbria slipped away like the sea ate at the cliffs of Dover. There was no battle to conceal his deeds, but Osberht and Aelle had filled him with reeking confidence before splintering his kingdom. Northumbria had fought him. A wild thing, run down by his time under the Danes, Northumbria had fought him until he struggled weakly, limply, under the rake of Wessex’s nails as the hunter felled his prey once and for all.
Wessex cracked the bones for marrow. He’d need all the strength he could muster for the journey back across the Danelaw to his Mercian lands. Perhaps he would stop in and visit Cymru along the way—his brother had been all too dismissive of his ventures and the allegiance Alfred had wrung from the princes. At the least, Cymru would be forced to look him in the eye.
He wasn’t surprised if none of their other brothers thought to look for them. All four of them had been nothing but Sasainns and Saesoniaid from those they shared the isle with, the words heaping them together and treating them interchangeably from their beginnings, when Mother had still cradled them and shown her favor to none. Neither Cymru nor Alba nor even distant Éire would care—none of Britannia’s eldest children would wonder what had happened. Wessex wasn’t convinced that they knew they had more than one youngest brother. They would never need to know.
And all across the larger isle now, what was not his was Danish. If one considered it at all, his actions would be revealed as mercy. He doubted Denmark would suffer them to live. Wessex certainly hadn’t.
Arthur’s head remained tipped firmly toward the floor, and he clasped his hands beneath his chin. A parody of piety, but his weak attempts at playing faithful never failed to assuage any of Alfred’s doubts as to his honesty.
“I can only pray that they rest with the Lord, my king.”
Alfred sighed, and clasped England’s shoulder. “You do your brothers great service, Wessex, remembering them so. It gladdens my heart. I will pray that the Danes abandon our shores quickly, that we might at least save one of them.
Arthur kept his smile pinned firmly away from the corners of his lips, looking up with mournful eyes. “I will carry their memory within me.”
Only a few years after Arthur broke the news on Northumbria, Alfred proclaimed himself King of all Anglo-Saxons. And years after that, as the man lay on his deathbed, England finally heard his true name from the lips of his most beloved King. Arthur was named for the once-and-future king.
And now he is the once-and-future kingdom.