The Warrior Chronicles

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘I think you had better hear what the dead man says,’ Gisela spoke gravely.

  ‘If they send for me,’ I promised, ‘I will.’ And so I would, because a dead man was speaking and he wanted me to be a king.

  Alfred arrived a week later. It was a fine day with a pale blue sky in which the midday sun hung low above a cold land. Ice edged the sluggish channels where the River Temes flowed about Sceaftes Eye and Wodenes Eye. Coot, moorhen and dabchicks paddled at the edge of the ice, while on the thawing mud of Sceaftes Eye a host of thrush and blackbirds hunted for worms and snails.

  This was home. This had been my home for two years now. Home was Coccham, at the edge of Wessex where the Temes flowed towards Lundene and the sea. I, Uhtred, a Northumbrian lord, an exile and a warrior, had become a builder, a trader and a father. I served Alfred, King of Wessex, not because I wished to, but because I had given him my oath.

  And Alfred had given me a task; to build his new burh at Coccham. A burh was a town turned into a fortress and Alfred was riveting his kingdom of Wessex with such places. All around the boundaries of Wessex, on the sea, on the rivers and on the moors facing the wild Cornish savages, the walls were being built. A Danish army could invade between the fortresses, but they would discover still more strongholds in Alfred’s heartland, and each burh held a garrison. Alfred, in a rare moment of savage elation, had described the burhs to me as wasps’ nests from which men could swarm to sting the attacking Danes. Burhs were being made at Exanceaster and Werham, at Cisseceastre and Hastengas, at Æscengum and Oxnaforda, at Cracgelad and Wæced, and at dozens of places between. Their walls and palisades were manned by spears and shields. Wessex was becoming a land of fortresses, and my task was to make the little town of Coccham into a burh.

  The work was done by every West Saxon man over the age of twelve. Half of them worked while the other half tended the fields. At Coccham I was supposed to have five hundred men serving at any one time, though usually there were fewer than three hundred. They dug, they banked, they cut timber for walls, and so we had raised a stronghold on the banks of the Temes. In truth it was two strongholds, one on the river’s southern bank and the other on Sceaftes Eye, which was an island splitting the river into two channels, and in that January of 885 the work was nearly done and no Danish ship could now row upstream to raid the farms and villages along the river’s bank. They could try, but they must pass my new ramparts and know that my troops would follow them, trap them ashore and kill them.

  A Danish trader called Ulf had come that morning, tying his boat at the wharf on Sceaftes Eye where one of my officials prodded through the cargo to assess the tax. Ulf himself, grinning toothlessly, climbed up to greet me. He gave me a piece of amber wrapped in kidskin. ‘For the Lady Gisela, lord,’ he said. ‘She is well?’

  ‘She is,’ I said, touching Thor’s hammer that hung around my neck.

  ‘And you have a second child, I hear?’

  ‘A girl,’ I said, ‘and where did you hear of her?’

  ‘Beamfleot,’ he said, which made sense. Ulf was a northerner, but no ships were making the voyage from Northumbria to Wessex in the depth of this cold winter. He must have spent the season in southern East Anglia, on the long intricate mudflats of the Temes estuary. ‘It isn’t much,’ he said, gesturing at his cargo. ‘I bought some hides and axe blades in Grantaceaster and thought I’d come upriver to see if you Saxons have any money left.’

  ‘You came upriver,’ I told him, ‘to see whether we’d finished the fortress. You’re a spy, Ulf, and I think I’ll hang you from a tree.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ he said, unmoved by my words.

  ‘I’m bored,’ I said, putting the amber into my pouch, ‘and watching a Dane twitch on a rope would be amusing, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘You must have been laughing when you hanged Jarrel’s crew then,’ he said.

  ‘Was that who it was?’ I asked. ‘Jarrel? I didn’t ask his name.’

  ‘I saw thirty bodies,’ Ulf said, jerking his head downstream, ‘maybe more? All hanging from trees and I thought, that looks like Lord Uhtred’s work.’

  ‘Only thirty?’ I said, ‘there were fifty-three. I should add your miserable corpse, Ulf, to help make up the numbers.’

  ‘You don’t want me,’ Ulf said cheerfully, ‘you want a young one, because young ones twitch more than us old ones.’ He peered down at his boat and spat towards a red-haired boy who was staring vacantly across the river. ‘You could hang that little bastard. He’s my wife’s oldest boy and nothing but a piece of toad gristle. He’ll twitch.’

  ‘So who’s in Lundene these days?’ I asked.

  ‘Earl Haesten’s in and out,’ Ulf said, ‘more in than out.’

  I was surprised by that. I knew Haesten. He was a young Dane who had once been my oath-man, but who had broken his oath and now aspired to be a warrior lord. He called himself an earl, which amused me, but I was surprised he had gone to Lundene. I knew he had made a walled camp on the coast of East Anglia, but now he had moved much closer to Wessex, which suggested he was looking for trouble. ‘So what’s he doing?’ I asked scornfully, ‘stealing his neighbours’ ducks?’

  Ulf drew in a breath and shook his head. ‘He’s got allies, lord.’

  Something in his tone made me wary. ‘Allies?’

  ‘The Thurgilson brothers,’ Ulf said, and touched his hammer amulet.

  The name meant nothing to me then. ‘Thurgilson?’

  ‘Sigefrid and Erik,’ Elf said, still touching the hammer. ‘Norse earls, lord.’

  That was something new. The Norse did not usually come to East Anglia or to Wessex. We often heard tales of their raids in the Scottish lands and in Ireland, but Norse chieftains rarely came close to Wessex. ‘What are Norsemen doing in Lundene?’ I asked.

  ‘They got there two days ago, lord,’ Ulf said, ‘with twenty-two keels. Haesten went with them, and he took nine ships.’

  I whistled softly. Thirty-one ships was a fleet and it meant the brothers and Haesten together commanded an army of at least a thousand men. And those men were in Lundene and Lundene was on the frontier of Wessex.

  Lundene was a strange city back then. Officially it was part of Mercia, but Mercia had no king and so Lundene had no ruler. It was neither Saxon nor Dane, but a mix of both, and a place where a man could become rich, dead, or both. It stood where Mercia, East Anglia and Wessex met, a city of merchants, tradesmen and seafarers. And now, if Ulf was right, it had an army of Vikings within its walls.

  Ulf chuckled. ‘They’ve got you stopped up like a rat in a sack, lord.’

  I wondered how a fleet had gathered and ridden the tide upstream to Lundene without my finding out long before it sailed. Coccham was the nearest burh to Lundene and I usually knew what happened there within a day, but now an enemy had occupied the city and I had known nothing about it. ‘Did the brothers send you to tell me this?’ I asked Ulf. I was assuming that the Thurgilson brothers and Haesten had only captured Lundene so that someone, probably Alfred, would pay them to go away. In which case it served their interest to let us know of their arrival.

  Ulf shook his head. ‘I sailed as they arrived, lord. Bad enough having to pay you duty without giving half my goods to them.’ He shuddered. ‘The Earl Sigefrid’s a bad man, lord. Not someone to do business with.’

  ‘Why didn’t I know they were with Haesten?’ I asked.

  ‘They weren’t. They’ve been in Frankia. Sailed straight across the sea and up the river.’

  ‘With twenty-two ships of Norsemen,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘They’ve got everything, lord,’ Ulf said. ‘Danes, Frisians, Saxons, Norse, everything. Sigefrid finds men wherever the gods shake out their shit-pots. They’re hungry men, lord. Masterless men. Rogues. They come from all over.’

  The masterless man was the worst kind. He owed no allegiance. He had nothing but his sword, his hunger and his ambition. I had been such a man in my time. ‘So Sigefrid and Erik will be trouble?’ I suggested mild
ly.

  ‘Sigefrid will,’ Ulf said. ‘Erik? He’s the younger. Men speak well of him, but Sigefrid can’t wait for trouble.’

  ‘He wants ransom?’ I asked.

  ‘He might,’ Ulf said dubiously. ‘He’s got to pay all those men, and he got nothing but mouse droppings in Frankia. But who’ll pay him ransom? Lundene belongs to Mercia, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It does,’ I said.

  ‘And there’s no king in Mercia,’ Ulf said. ‘Isn’t natural, is it? A kingdom without a king.’

  I thought of Æthelwold’s visit and touched my amulet of Thor’s hammer. ‘Have you ever heard of the dead being raised?’ I asked Ulf.

  ‘The dead being raised?’ He stared at me, alarmed, and touched his own hammer amulet. ‘The dead are best left in Niflheim, lord.’

  ‘An old magic, perhaps?’ I suggested. ‘Raising the dead?’

  ‘You hear tales,’ Ulf said, now gripping his amulet tightly.

  ‘What tales?’

  ‘From the far north, lord. From the land of ice and birch. Strange things happen there. They say men can fly in the darkness, and I did hear that the dead walk on the frozen seas, but I never saw such a thing.’ He raised the amulet to his lips and kissed it. ‘I reckon they’re just stories to scare children on winter nights, lord.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, and turned as a boy came running along the foot of the newly raised wall. He jumped the timbers that would eventually make the fighting platform, skidded in a piece of mud, clambered up the bank and then stood, panting too hard to be able to speak. I waited until he caught his breath. ‘Haligast, lord,’ he said, ‘Haligast!’

  Ulf looked at me quizzically. Like all traders he spoke some English, but haligast puzzled him. ‘The Holy Ghost,’ I translated into Danish.

  ‘Coming, lord,’ the boy gasped excitedly and pointed upriver. ‘Coming now!’

  ‘The Holy Ghost is coming?’ Ulf asked in alarm. He probably had no idea what the Holy Ghost was, but he knew enough to fear all spectres, and my recent question about the living dead had scared him.

  ‘Alfred’s ship,’ I explained, then turned back to the boy. ‘Is the king on board?’

  ‘His flag’s flying, lord.’

  ‘Then he is,’ I said.

  Ulf pulled his tunic straight. ‘Alfred? What does he want?’

  ‘He wants to discover my loyalties,’ I said drily.

  Ulf grinned. ‘So you might be the one who twitches on a rope, eh, lord?’

  ‘I need axe-heads,’ I told him. ‘Take your best ones to the house and we’ll discuss a price later.’

  I was not surprised by Alfred’s arrival. In those years he spent much of his time travelling between the growing burhs to inspect the work. He had been to Coccham a dozen times in as many months, but this visit, I reckoned, was not to examine the walls, but to find out why Æthelwold had come to see me. The king’s spies had done their work, and so the king had come to question me.

  His ship was coming fast, carried by the Temes’s winter flow. In the cold months it was quicker to travel by ship, and Alfred liked the Haligast because it enabled him to work on board as he journeyed along the northern frontier of Wessex. The Haligast had twenty oars and room enough for half Alfred’s bodyguard and the inevitable troop of priests. The king’s banner, a green dragon, flew from the masthead, while two flags hung from the cross spar, which would have held a sail if the ship had been at sea. One flag showed a saint, while the other was a green cloth embroidered with a white cross. At the ship’s stern was a small cabin that cramped the steersman, but provided Alfred a place to keep his desk. A second ship, the Heofonhlaf, carried the rest of the bodyguard and still more priests. Heofonhlaf meant bread of heaven. Alfred never could name a ship.

  Heofonhlaf berthed first and a score of men in mail, carrying shields and spears, clambered ashore to line the wooden wharf. The Haligast followed, her steersman thumping the bow hard on a piling so that Alfred, who was waiting amidships, staggered. There were kings who might have disembowelled a steersman for that loss of dignity, but Alfred seemed not to notice. He was talking earnestly with a thin-faced, scrape-chinned, pale-cheeked monk. It was Asser of Wales. I had heard that Brother Asser was the king’s new pet, and I knew he hated me, which was only right because I hated him. I still smiled at him and he twitched away as if I had just vomited down his robe, bending his head closer to Alfred who could have been his twin, for Alfred of Wessex looked much more like a priest than a king. He wore a long black cloak and a growing baldness gave him the tonsured look of a monk. His hands, like a clerk’s, were always ink-stained, while his bony face was lean and serious and earnest and pale. His beard was thin. He often went clean-shaven, but now had a beard streaked thick with white hairs.

  Crewmen secured the Haligast, then Alfred took Asser’s elbow and stepped ashore with him. The Welshman wore an oversized cross on his chest and Alfred touched it briefly before turning to me. ‘My lord Uhtred,’ he said enthusiastically. He was being unusually pleasant, not because he was glad to see me, but because he thought I was plotting treason. There was little other reason for me to sup with his nephew Æthelwold.

  ‘My lord King,’ I said, and bowed to him. I ignored Brother Asser. The Welshman had once accused me of piracy, murder, and a dozen other things, and most of his accusations had been accurate, but I was still alive. He shot me a dismissive glance, then scuttled off through the mud, evidently going to make certain that the nuns in Coccham’s convent were not pregnant, drunk or happy.

  Alfred, followed by Egwine, who now commanded the household troops, and by six of those troops, walked along my new battlements. He glanced at Ulf’s ship, but said nothing. I knew I had to tell him of the capture of Lundene, but I decided to let that news wait until he had asked his questions of me. For now he was content to inspect the work we had been doing and he found nothing to criticise, nor did he expect to. Coccham’s burh was far more advanced than any of the others. The next fort west on the Temes, at Welengaford, had scarcely broken ground, let alone built a palisade, while the walls at Oxnaforda had slumped into their ditch after a week of violent rain just before Yule. Coccham’s burh, though, was almost finished. ‘I am told,’ Alfred said, ‘that the fyrd is reluctant to work. You have not found that true?’

  The fyrd was the army, raised from the shire, and the fyrd not only built the burhs, but formed their garrisons. ‘The fyrd are very reluctant to work, lord,’ I said.

  ‘Yet you have almost finished?’

  I smiled. ‘I hanged ten men,’ I said, ‘and it encouraged the rest to enthusiasm.’

  He stopped at a place where he could stare downriver. Swans made the view lovely. I watched him. The lines on his face were deeper and his skin paler. He looked ill, but then Alfred of Wessex was always a sick man. His stomach hurt and his bowels hurt, and I saw a grimace as a stab of pain lanced through him. ‘I heard,’ he spoke coldly, ‘that you hanged them without benefit of trial?’

  ‘I did, lord, yes.’

  ‘There are laws in Wessex,’ he said sternly.

  ‘And if the burh isn’t built,’ I said, ‘then there will be no Wessex.’

  ‘You like to defy me,’ he said mildly.

  ‘No, lord, I swore an oath to you. I do your work.’

  ‘Then hang no more men without a fair trial,’ he said sharply, then turned and stared across the river to the Mercian bank. ‘A king must bring justice, Lord Uhtred. That is a king’s job. And if a land has no king, how can there be law?’ He still spoke mildly, but he was testing me, and for a moment I felt alarm. I had assumed he had come to discover what Æthelwold had said to me, but his mention of Mercia, and of its lack of a king, suggested he already knew what had been discussed on that night of cold wind and hard rain. ‘There are men,’ he went on, still staring at the Mercian bank, ‘who would like to be King of Mercia.’ He paused and I was certain he knew everything that Æthelwold had said to me, but then he betrayed his ignorance. ‘My nephew Æthelwold?’ he su
ggested.

  I gave a burst of laughter that was made too loud by my relief. ‘Æthelwold!’ I said. ‘He doesn’t want to be King of Mercia! He wants your throne, lord.’

  ‘He told you that?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘Of course he told me that,’ I said. ‘He tells everyone that!’

  ‘Is that why he came to see you?’ Alfred asked, unable to hide his curiosity any longer.

  ‘He came to buy a horse, lord,’ I lied. ‘He wants my stallion, Smoca, and I told him no.’ Smoca’s hide was an unusual mix of grey and black, thus his name, Smoke, and he had won every race he had ever run in his life and, better, was not afraid of men, shields, weapons or noise. I could have sold Smoca to any warrior in Britain.

  ‘And he talked of wanting to be king?’ Alfred asked suspiciously.

  ‘Of course he did.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me at the time,’ he said reproachfully.

  ‘If I told you every time Æthelwold talked treason,’ I said, ‘you’d never cease to hear from me. What I tell you now is that you should slice his head off.’

  ‘He is my nephew,’ Alfred said stiffly, ‘and has royal blood.’

  ‘He still has a removable head,’ I insisted.

  He waved a petulant hand as if my idea were risible. ‘I thought of making him king in Mercia,’ he said, ‘but he would lose the throne.’

  ‘He would,’ I agreed.

  ‘He’s weak,’ Alfred said scornfully, ‘and Mercia needs a strong ruler. Someone to frighten the Danes.’ I confess at that moment I thought he meant me and I was ready to thank him, even fall to my knees and take his hand, but then he enlightened me. ‘Your cousin, I think.’

  ‘Æthelred!’ I asked, unable to hide my scorn. My cousin was a bumptious little prick, full of his own importance, but he was also close to Alfred. So close that he was going to marry Alfred’s elder daughter.

  ‘He can be ealdorman in Mercia,’ Alfred said, ‘and rule with my blessing.’ In other words my miserable cousin would govern Mercia on Alfred’s leash and, if I am truthful, that was a better solution for Alfred than letting someone like me take Mercia’s throne. Æthelred, married to Æthelflaed, was more likely to be Alfred’s man, and Mercia, or at least that part of it south of Wæclingastræt, would be like a province of Wessex.