"Harrison, Harry - Hammer 2 - One King's Way" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

frames and rough clothes of slaves that Alfred had freed and churls he had promoted. They
were now here to take the word back to their towns and villages: the word that there was no
doubt, no doubt at all that Alfred Atheling was now Alfred King of the West Saxons and of
the Mark, by all the laws of man and of the Christian God.
Also in the first row, towering over those around him, sat the Marshal of Wessex, the
man chosen by custom as the most notable warrior of the kingdom hand-to-hand. The
Marshal, Wigheard, was indeed an imposing sight, nearer seven foot than six and twenty
English stone if an ounce in weight; he carried the king's state sword at arm's length as
effortlessly as a twig, and had already shown uncanny ability to fence with a halberd as if it
were a willow-wand.
There was one man in Shef's group, sitting immediately to his left, who had difficulty
following the ceremony, who glanced again and again at the Champion. This was the giant
Brand, himself champion of the men of Halogaland, still wasted and shrunken from the
belly-wound he had taken in his duel on the gangplank with Ivar the Boneless, but slowly
regaining strength. Brand, shrunken as he was, still seemed the bigger man of the two. His
bones were almost top big for his skin, with knuckles like rocks, and ridges jutting out over
his eyebrows like armor. Brand's fists, Shef had once noted by careful comparison, were
bigger than a pint pot: not just huge, but disproportionate even to the rest of him. "Men
grow big where I come from," was all that Brand would ever say.
The noise of the congregation died as Alfred, now thoroughly blessed and prayed
over, turned to face them to take his oaths. For the first time Latin was abandoned and the
service broke into English as Alfred's senior alderman asked the solemn question: "Do you
grant us our rightful laws and customs to be held, and do you swear after your power to
grant rightful dooms and defend the rights of your people against every enemy?"
"I do." Alfred looked round the packed Minster. "I have done so, and I will do so
again." A rumble of assent.
Now a trickier moment, Shef thought as the alderman stepped back and the senior
bishop stepped forward. For one thing the bishop was startlingly young -- and for good
reason. After Alfred's dispossession of the Church, his excommunication by the Pope, the
Crusade against him and his final declaration of non-communion with Rome, every senior
cleric in his kingdom had left. From the Archbishops of York and Canterbury down to the
least bishop and abbot. Alfred's response was to promote ten of the best remaining junior priests and tell them the Church in England was in their hands. Now one of them, Eanfrith
Bishop of Winchester, six months before priest of a village no-one had heard of, came
forward to ask his question.
"Lord King, we ask you to grant to us protection for Holy Church and due law and
rightfulness for all those who are members of it."
Eanfrith and Alfred had been days working out the new formula, Shef recalled. The
traditional one had asked for confirmation of all rights and privileges, tithes and taxes,
ownerships and possessions -- all of which Alfred had in fact taken away.
"I grant protection and due law," Alfred replied. Again he looked round, again added
words beyond tradition. "Protection to those within the Church and without it. Due law to
members of it and to others."
The highly trained choristers of Winchester, choir-monks and choirboys together,
burst into the anthem of Zadok the Priest, Unxerunt Salomonem Zadok sacerdos, as the
bishops prepared for the solemn moment of blessing with the holy oil, after which Alfred
would be literally the Lord's Anointed, against whom rebellion was also sacrilege.
Shortly, thought Shef, would come the difficult moment for him. It had been explained
to him very carefully that Wessex, ever since Queen Eadburh of wicked memory, never had
a Queen, and that the King's wife could have no separate coronation. Nevertheless, Alfred
had said, he was insistent that his new wife should be accepted by him in front of the