To move from the history of Wessex in the late ninth century to that of Northumbria is to pass from light into confusing darkness. Even the northern regnal lists, which provide the names of kings and the dates they ruled, do not agree, but soon after Ethandun a king named Guthred (some sources name him as Guthfrith) did take the throne at York (Eoferwic). He replaced a Saxon king, who was doubtless a puppet ruler, and he ruled into the 890s. Guthred is remarkable for two things; first, though Danish, he was a Christian, and second, there is a persistent story that he was once a slave, and on those slender foundations I have concocted this story. He was certainly associated with Abbot Eadred who was the guardian of Cuthbert’s corpse (and of both the head of Saint Oswald and the Lindisfarne Gospels), and Eadred was eventually to build his great shrine for Cuthbert at Cuncacester, now Chester-le-Street in County Durham. In 995 the saint’s body was finally laid to rest at Durham (Dunholm) where it remains.
Kjartan, Ragnar, and Gisela are fictional characters. There was an Ivarr, but I have taken vast liberties with his life. He is chiefly notable for his successors who will cause much trouble in the north. There is no record of a ninth-century fortress at Durham, though it seems to me unlikely that such an easily defensible site would have been ignored, and more than possible that any remnants of such a fort would have been destroyed during the construction of the cathedral and castle which have now occupied the summit for almost a thousand years. There was a fortress at Bebbanburg, transmuted over time into the present glories of Bamburgh Castle, and in the eleventh century it was ruled by a family with the name Uhtred, who are my ancestors, but we know almost nothing of the family’s activities in the late ninth century.
The story of England in the late ninth and early tenth centuries is a tale which moves from Wessex northwards. Uhtred’s fate, which he is just beginning to recognise, is to be at the heart of that West Saxon reconquest of the land that will become known as England and so his wars are far from over. He will need Serpent-Breath again.
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
Harper
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2006
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2006
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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SWORD SONG
Sword Song
BERNARD CORNWELL
Sword Song is voor Aukje,
mit liefde:
Er was eens …
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Place-names
Map
Prologue
Part One: THE BRIDE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Part Two: THE CITY
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Part Three: THE SCOURING
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Historical Note
Copyright
PLACE-NAMES
The spelling of place names in Anglo Saxon England was an uncertain business, with no consistency and no agreement even about the name itself. Thus London was variously rendered as Lundonia, Lundenberg, Lundenne, Lundene, Lundenwic, Lundenceaster and Lundres. Doubtless some readers will prefer other versions of the names listed below, but I have usually employed whichever spelling is cited in either the Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names or the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names for the years nearest or contained within Alfred’s reign, AD 871–899, but even that solution is not foolproof. Hayling Island, in 956, was written as both Heilincigae and Hæglingaiggæ. Nor have I been consistent myself; I should spell England as Englaland, and have preferred the modern form Northumbria to Norðhymbralond to avoid the suggestion that the boundaries of the ancient kingdom coincide with those of the modern county. So this list, like the spellings themselves, is capricious.
Æscengum Eashing, Surrey
Arwan River Orwell, Suffolk
Beamfleot Benfleet, Essex
Bebbanburg Bamburgh, Northumberland
Berrocscire Berkshire
Cair Ligualid Carlisle, Cumbria
Caninga Canvey Island, Essex
Cent Kent
Cippanhamm Chippenham, Wiltshire
Cirrenceastre Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Cisseceastre Chichester, Sussex
Coccham Cookham, Berkshire
Colaun, River River Colne, Essex
Contwaraburg Canterbury, Kent
Cornwalum Cornwall
Cracgelad Cricklade, Wiltshire
Dunastopol Dunstable (Roman name Durocobrivis), Bedfordshire
Dunholm Durham, County Durham
Eoferwic York, Yorkshire
Ethandun Edington, Wiltshire
Exanceaster Exeter, Devon
Fleot River Fleet, London
Frankia Germany
Fughelness Foulness Island, Essex
Grantaceaster Cambridge, Cambridgeshire
Gyruum Jarrow, County Durham
Hastengas Hastings, Sussex
Horseg Horsey Island, Essex
Hothlege River Hadleigh, Essex
Hrofeceastre Rochester, Kent
Hwealf River Crouch, Essex
Lundene London
Mæides Stana Maidstone, Kent
Medwæg River Medway, Kent
Oxnaforda Oxford, Oxfordshire
Padintune Paddington, Greater London
Pant River Blackwater, Essex
Scaepege Isle of Sheppey, Kent
Sceaftes Eye Sashes Island (at Coccham)
Sceobyrig Shoebury, Essex
Scerhnesse Sheerness, Kent
Sture River Stour, Essex
Sutherge Surrey
Suthriganaweorc Southwark, Greater London
Swealwe River Swale, Kent
Temes River Thames
Thunresleam Thundersley, Essex
Wæced Watchet, Somerset
Wæclingastræt Watling Street
Welengaford Wallingford, Oxfordshire
Werham Wareham, Dorset
Wiltunscir Wiltshire
Wintanceaster Winchester, Hampshire
Wocca’s Dun South Ockenden, Essex
Wodenes Eye Odney Island (at Coccham)
PROLOGUE
Darkness. Winter. A night of frost and no moon.
We floated on the River Temes, and beyond the boat’s high bow I could see the stars reflected on the shimmering water. The river was in spate as melted snow fed it from countless hills. The winterbournes were flowing from the chalk uplands of Wessex. In summer those streams would be dry, but now they foamed down the long green hills and filled the river and flowed to the distant sea.
Our boat, which had no name, lay close to the Wessex bank. North across the river lay Mercia. Our bows pointed upstream. We were hidden beneath the leafless, bending
branches of three willow trees, held there against the current by a leather mooring rope tied to one of those branches.
There were thirty-eight of us in that nameless boat, which was a trading ship that worked the upper reaches of the Temes. The ship’s master was called Ralla and he stood beside me with one hand on the steering-oar. I could hardly see him in the darkness, but knew he wore a leather jerkin and had a sword at his side. The rest of us were in leather and mail, had helmets and carried shields, axes, swords or spears. Tonight we would kill.
Sihtric, my servant, squatted beside me and stroked a whetstone along the blade of his short-sword. ‘She says she loves me,’ he told me.
‘Of course she says that,’ I said.
He paused, and when he spoke again his voice had brightened, as though he had been encouraged by my words. ‘And I must be nineteen by now, lord! Maybe even twenty?’
‘Eighteen?’ I suggested.
‘I could have been married four years ago, lord!’
We spoke almost in whispers. The night was full of noises. The water rippled, the bare branches clattered in the wind, a night creature splashed into the river, a vixen howled like a dying soul, and somewhere an owl hooted. The boat creaked. Sihtric’s stone hissed and scraped on the steel. A shield thumped against a rower’s bench. I dared not speak louder, despite the night’s noises, because the enemy ship was upstream of us and the men who had gone ashore from that ship would have left sentries on board. Those sentries might have seen us as we slipped downstream on the Mercian bank, but by now they would surely have thought we were long gone towards Lundene.
‘But why marry a whore?’ I asked Sihtric.
‘She’s …’ Sihtric began.
‘She’s old,’ I snarled, ‘maybe thirty. And she’s addled. Ealhswith only has to see a man and her thighs fly apart! If you lined up every man who’d tupped that whore you’d have an army big enough to conquer all Britain.’ Beside me Ralla sniggered. ‘You’d be in that army, Ralla?’ I asked.
‘Twenty times over, lord,’ the shipmaster said.
‘She loves me,’ Sihtric spoke sullenly.
‘She loves your silver,’ I said, ‘and besides, why put a new sword in an old scabbard?’
It is strange what men talk about before battle. Anything except what faces them. I have stood in a shield wall, staring at an enemy bright with blades and dark with menace, and heard two of my men argue furiously about which tavern brewed the best ale. Fear hovers in the air like a cloud and we talk of nothing to pretend that the cloud is not there.
‘Look for something ripe and young,’ I advised Sihtric. ‘That potter’s daughter is ready to wed. She must be thirteen.’
‘She’s stupid,’ Sihtric objected.
‘And what are you, then?’ I demanded. ‘I give you silver and you pour it into the nearest open hole! Last time I saw her she was wearing an arm ring I gave you.’
He sniffed, said nothing. His father had been Kjartan the Cruel, a Dane who had whelped Sihtric on one of his Saxon slaves. Yet Sihtric was a good boy, though in truth he was no longer a boy. He was a man who had stood in the shield wall. A man who had killed. A man who would kill again tonight. ‘I’ll find you a wife,’ I promised him.
It was then we heard the screaming. It was faint because it came from very far off, a mere scratching noise in the darkness that told of pain and death to our south. There were screams and shouting. Women were screaming and doubtless men were dying.
‘God damn them,’ Ralla said bitterly.
‘That’s our job,’ I said curtly.
‘We should …’ Ralla started, then thought better of speaking. I knew what he was going to say, that we should have gone to the village and protected it, but he knew what I would have answered.
I would have told him that we did not know which village the Danes were going to attack, and even if I had known I would not have protected it. We might have shielded the place if we had known where the attackers were going. I could have placed all my household troops in the small houses and, the moment the raiders came, erupted into the street with sword, axe and spear, and we would have killed some of them, but in the dark many more would have escaped and I did not want one to escape. I wanted every Dane, every Norseman, every raider dead. All of them, except one, and that one I would send eastwards to tell the Viking camps on the banks of the Temes that Uhtred of Bebbanburg was waiting for them.
‘Poor souls,’ Ralla muttered. To the south, through the tangle of black branches, I could see a red glow that betrayed burning thatch. The glow spread and grew brighter to lighten the winter sky beyond a row of coppiced trees. The glow reflected off my men’s helmets, giving their metal a sheen of red, and I called for them to take the helmets off in case the enemy sentries in the large ship ahead saw the reflected glimmer.
I took off my own helmet with its silver wolf crest.
I am Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg, and in those days I was a lord of war. I stood there in mail and leather, cloaked and armed, young and strong. I had half my household troops in Ralla’s ship while the other half were somewhere to the west, mounted on horses and under Finan’s command.
Or I hoped they were waiting in the night-shrouded west. We in the ship had enjoyed the easier task, for we had slid down the dark river to find the enemy, while Finan had been forced to lead his men across night-black country. But I trusted Finan. He would be there, fidgeting, grimacing, waiting to unleash his sword.
This was not our first attempt in that long wet winter to set an ambush on the Temes, but it was the first that promised success. Twice before I had been told that Vikings had come through the gap in Lundene’s broken bridge to raid the soft, plump villages of Wessex, and both times we had come downriver and found nothing. But this time we had trapped the wolves. I touched the hilt of Serpent-Breath, my sword, then touched the amulet of Thor’s hammer that hung around my neck.
Kill them all, I prayed to Thor, kill them all but one.
It must have been cold in that long night. Ice skimmed the dips in the fields where the river had flooded, but I do not remember the cold. I remember the anticipation. I touched Serpent-Breath again and it seemed to me that she quivered. I sometimes thought that blade sang. It was a thin, half-heard song, a keening noise, the song of the blade wanting blood; the sword song.
We waited and, afterwards, when it was all over, Ralla told me I had never stopped smiling.
I thought our ambush would fail, for the raiders did not return to their ship till dawn blazed light across the east. Their sentries, I thought, must surely see us, but they did not. The drooping willow boughs served as a flimsy screen, or perhaps the rising winter sun dazzled them because no one saw us.
We saw them. We saw the mail-clad men herding a crowd of women and children across a rain-flooded pasture. I guessed there were fifty raiders and they had as many captives. The women would be the young ones from the burned village, and they had been taken for the raiders’ pleasure. The children would go to the slave market in Lundene and from there across the sea to Frankia or even beyond. The women, once they had been used, would also be sold. We were not so close that we could hear the prisoners sobbing, but I imagined it. To the south, where low green hills swelled from the river’s plain, a great drift of smoke dirtied the clear winter sky to mark where the raiders had burned the village.
Ralla stirred. ‘Wait,’ I murmured, and Ralla went still. He was a grizzled man, ten years older than I, with eyes reduced to slits from the long years of staring across sun-reflecting seas. He was a shipmaster, soldier and friend. ‘Not yet,’ I said softly, and touched Serpent-Breath and felt the quiver in the steel.
Men’s voices were loud, relaxed and laughing. They shouted as they pushed their prisoners into the ship. They forced them to crouch in the cold flooded bilge so that the overloaded craft would be stable for its voyage through the downriver shallows, where the Temes raced across stone ledges and only the best and bravest shipmasters knew the channel. Then the warriors
clambered aboard themselves. They took their plunder with them, the spits and cauldrons and ard-blades and knives and whatever else could be sold or melted or used. Their laughter was raucous. They were men who had slaughtered, and who would become rich on their prisoners and they were in a cheerful, careless mood.
And Serpent-Breath sang soft in her scabbard.
I heard the clatter from the other ship as the oars were thrust into their rowlocks. A voice called out a command. ‘Push off!’
The great beak of the enemy ship, crowned with a monster’s painted head, turned out into the river. Men shoved oar-blades against the bank, pushing the boat farther out. The ship was already moving, carried towards us by the spate-driven current. Ralla looked at me.
‘Now,’ I said. ‘Cut the line!’ I called, and Cerdic, in our bows, slashed through the leather rope tethering us to the willow. We were only using twelve oars and those now bit into the river as I pushed my way forward between the rowers’ benches. ‘We kill them all!’ I shouted. ‘We kill them all!’
‘Pull!’ Ralla roared, and the twelve men heaved on their oars to fight the river’s power.
‘We kill every last bastard!’ I shouted as I climbed onto the small bow platform where my shield waited. ‘Kill them all! Kill them all!’ I put on my helmet, then pushed my left forearm through the shield loops, hefted the heavy wood, and slid Serpent-Breath from her fleece-lined scabbard. She did not sing now. She screamed.
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