The Warrior Chronicles

by Bernard Cornwell

  Æthelwold was braver than I thought. He had made his alliance with the Danes, yet was brazen enough to come to his dying uncle’s court. ‘Is he still drunk?’ I asked.

  ‘Not that I know of. He hasn’t been in here. They say he spends his time praying,’ he spoke scornfully, and I laughed. ‘We’re all praying,’ he finished glumly, meaning that everyone worried about what happened when Alfred died.

  ‘And Saint Hedda’s?’ I asked. ‘Is it still Abbess Hildegyth?’

  ‘She’s a saint herself, lord, yes she’s still there.’

  I took Osferth to Saint Hedda’s. The rain was spitting, making the streets greasy. The convent lay on the northern edge of the town, close by the earthen bank with its high palisade. The only door to the nunnery lay at the end of a long, muddy alley that, just like the last time I had visited, was crowded with beggars who were waiting for the alms and food that the nuns distributed morning and evening. The beggars shuffled out of our way. They were nervous because Osferth and I were both in mail and both carrying swords. Some held out hands or wooden bowls, but I ignored them, puzzled by the presence of three soldiers at the nunnery door. The three wore helmets and carried spears, swords and shields, and as we approached they stepped away from the door to bar our path. ‘You can’t go inside, lord,’ one of them said.

  ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘You’re the Lord Uhtred,’ the man said respectfully, ‘and you can’t go inside.’

  ‘The abbess is an old friend,’ I said, and that was true. Hild was a friend, a saint, and a woman I had loved, but it seemed I was not allowed to visit her. The leader of the three soldiers was a well-set man, not young, but with broad shoulders and a confident face. His sword was sheathed, and I did not doubt he would draw it if I tried to force my way past him, but nor did I doubt that I could beat him down into the mud. Yet there were three of them, and I knew Osferth would not fight against West Saxon soldiers who guarded a convent. I shrugged. ‘You can give the Abbess Hild a message?’ I asked.

  ‘I can do that, lord.’

  ‘Tell her Uhtred came to visit her.’

  He nodded, and I heard the beggars gasp behind me and turned to see even more soldiers filing up the alley. I recognised their commander, a man called Godric who had served under Weohstan. He led seven helmeted men who, like those guarding the convent, had shields and spears. They were ready for battle. ‘I’m asked to take you to the palace, lord,’ Godric greeted me.

  ‘You need spears to do that?’

  Godric ignored the question, gesturing back down the alley instead. ‘You’ll come?’

  ‘With pleasure,’ I said, and followed him back through the town. The people in the streets watched us pass in silence. Osferth and I had kept our swords, but we still looked as though we were prisoners under escort and, when we reached the palace gate, a steward insisted we give up those weapons. That was normal. Only the king’s bodyguards were allowed to carry weapons inside the palace precincts and so I handed Serpent-Breath to the stewards, then followed Godric past Alfred’s private chapel to a small low thatched building.

  ‘You’re asked to wait inside, lord,’ he said, indicating the door.

  We waited in a windowless room that was furnished with two benches, a reading desk and a crucifix. Godric’s men stayed outside and, when I tried to leave, spears barred my way. ‘We want food,’ I said, ‘and ale. And a bucket to piss in.’

  ‘Are we under arrest?’ Osferth asked me after the food and bucket had been brought.

  ‘It looks that way.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I ate the bread and hard cheese and then, though the room’s earth floor was damp, I lay down and tried to sleep.

  It was dusk before Godric returned. He was still courteous. ‘You’ll come with me, lord,’ he said, and Osferth and I followed him through familiar courtyards to one of the smaller halls where a fire burned bright in the hearth. There were painted leather hangings on the wall, each showing a different West Saxon saint, while at the hall’s high end, at a table spread with a blue-dyed cloth, sat five churchmen. Three were strangers to me, but I recognised the other two and neither was a friend. Bishop Asser, the poisonous Welsh priest who was Alfred’s closest confidant was one, while Bishop Erkenwald was the other. They flanked a thin-shouldered man whose tonsured hair was white above a face as lean as a starving weasel’s. He had a blade for a nose, intelligent eyes and pinched, narrow lips that could not hide his crooked teeth. The two priests at either end of the table were much younger and each had a quill, an ink pot and a sheet of parchment. They were there, it seemed, to take notes.

  ‘Bishop Erkenwald,’ I greeted him, then looked at Asser, ‘I don’t think I know you.’

  ‘Take that hammer from his neck,’ Asser said to Godric.

  ‘Touch that hammer,’ I told Godric, ‘and I’ll dump your arse in the fire.’

  ‘Enough!’ the starving weasel slapped the table. The ink pots jumped. The two clerk-priests were scratching away. ‘I am Plegmund,’ the man told me.

  ‘High sorcerer of Contwaraburg?’ I asked.

  He stared at me with obvious dislike, then drew a sheet of parchment towards him. ‘You have some explaining to do,’ he said.

  ‘And no lies this time!’ Asser spat. Years before, in this same hall, I had been tried by the Witan for offences of which, in truth, I was wholly guilty. The chief witness of my crimes had been Asser, but I had lied my way out and he had known I had lied and he had despised me ever since.

  I frowned at him. ‘What is your name?’ I asked. ‘You remind me of someone. He was a Welsh earsling, a rat-like little shit, but I killed him, so you can’t be the same man.’

  ‘Lord Uhtred,’ Bishop Erkenwald said tiredly, ‘please do not insult us.’

  Erkenwald and I were not fond of each other, but in his time as Bishop of Lundene he had proved an efficient ruler and he had not stood in my way before Beamfleot, indeed his skills as an organiser had contributed mightily to that victory. ‘What do you want explained?’ I asked.

  Archbishop Plegmund pulled a candle across the table to illuminate the parchment. ‘We have been told of your activities this summer,’ he said.

  ‘And you want to thank me,’ I said.

  The cold, sharp eyes stared at me. Plegmund had become famous as a man who denied himself every pleasure, whether it was food, women or luxury. He served his god by being uncomfortable, by praying in lonely places, and by being a hermit priest. Why folk think that admirable, I do not know, but he was held in awe by the Christians, who were all delighted when he abandoned his hermit’s discomfort to become archbishop. ‘In the spring,’ he said in a thin, precise voice, ‘you had a meeting with the man who calls himself Jarl Haesten, following which meeting you rode north into the country possessed by Cnut Ranulfson where you consulted the witch, Ælfadell. From there you went to Snotengaham, presently occupied by Sigurd Thorrson, and thereafter to the Jarl Haesten again.’

  ‘All true,’ I said easily, ‘only you’ve left some things out.’

  ‘Here come the lies,’ Asser sneered.

  I frowned at him. ‘Was your mother straining at stool when you were born?’

  Plegmund slapped the table again. ‘What have we left out?’

  ‘The small truth that I burned Sigurd’s fleet.’

  Osferth had been looking increasingly alarmed at the hostility in the room and now, without a word to me, and without any demurral from the clerics at the linen-covered table, he edged back to the door. They let him go. It was me they wanted.

  ‘The fleet was burned, we know,’ Plegmund said, ‘and we know the reason.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It was a sign to the Danes that there can be no retreat across the water. Sigurd Thorrson is telling his followers that their fate is to capture Wessex, and as proof of that fate he burned his own ships to demonstrate that there can be no withdrawal.’

  ‘You believe that?’ I asked.

&nb
sp; ‘It is the truth,’ Asser snapped.

  ‘You wouldn’t know the truth if it was rammed down your throat with an axe-handle,’ I said, ‘and no northern lord will burn his ships. They cost gold. I burned them, and Sigurd’s men tried to kill me when I did.’

  ‘Oh, no one doubts that you were there when they were burned,’ Erkenwald said.

  ‘And you do not deny consulting the witch Ælfadell?’ Plegmund asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘nor do I deny destroying the Danish armies at Fearnhamme and at Beamfleot last year.’

  ‘No one denies that you have done past service,’ Plegmund said.

  ‘When it suited you,’ Asser added acidly.

  ‘And do you deny slaying the Abbot Deorlaf of Buchestanes?’ Plegmund asked.

  ‘I gutted him like a plump fish,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t deny it?’ Asser sounded astonished.

  ‘I’m proud of it,’ I said, ‘and of the other two monks I killed.’

  ‘Note that!’ Asser hissed at the clerk-priests who hardly needed his encouragement. They were scribbling away.

  ‘Last year,’ Bishop Erkenwald said, ‘you refused to give an oath of loyalty to the ætheling Edward.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m tired of Wessex,’ I said, ‘tired of priests, tired of being told what your god’s will is, tired of being told that I’m a sinner, tired of your endless damned nonsense, tired of that nailed tyrant you call god who only wants us to be miserable. And I refused to give the oath because my ambition is to go back north, to Bebbanburg, and to kill the men who hold it, and I cannot do that if I am sworn to Edward and he wants something different of me.’

  That might not have been the most tactful speech, but I was not feeling tactful. Someone, I assumed Æthelred, had done their best to destroy me and had deployed the power of the church to do that and I was determined to fight the miserable bastards. It seemed I was succeeding, at least in making them even more miserable. Plegmund was grimacing, Asser making the sign of the cross, and Erkenwald’s eyes were closed. The two young priests were writing faster than ever. ‘Nailed tyrant,’ one of them repeated slowly as his quill scratched on the parchment.

  ‘And who had the clever idea to send me to East Anglia so Sigurd could kill me?’ I demanded.

  ‘King Eohric assures us that Sigurd went without his invitation, and that had he known he would have launched an attack on those forces,’ Plegmund said.

  ‘Eohric is an earsling,’ I said, ‘and in case you didn’t know, archbishop, an earsling is a thing like Bishop Asser that is squirted out of an arse.’

  ‘You will be respectful!’ Plegmund snarled, glaring at me.

  ‘Why?’ I demanded.

  He blinked at that. Asser was whispering in his ear, the sibilance urgent and demanding, while Bishop Erkenwald tried to discover something useful from me. ‘What did the witch Ælfadell tell you?’ he asked.

  ‘That the Saxon would destroy Wessex,’ I said, ‘and that the Danes would win and Wessex would be no more.’

  All three were checked by that. They might have been Christians, and important Christians at that, but they were not immune to the real gods and their magic. They were scared, though none made the sign of the cross because to have done so would have been an admission that the pagan prophetess might have some access to the truth, a thing they would want to deny to each other. ‘And who is the Saxon?’ Asser hissed the question.

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is what I came to Wintanceaster to tell the king.’

  ‘So tell us,’ Plegmund demanded.

  ‘I’ll tell the king,’ I said.

  ‘You snake,’ Asser said, ‘you thief in the night! The Saxon who will destroy Wessex is you!’

  I spat to show my derision, but the spittle did not reach the table.

  ‘You came here,’ Erkenwald said wearily, ‘because of a woman.’

  ‘Adulterer!’ Asser snapped.

  ‘That is the only explanation for your presence here,’ Erkenwald said, then looked at the archbishop, ‘sicut canis qui revertitur ad vomitum suum.’

  ‘Sic inprudens qui iterat stultitiam suam,’ the archbishop intoned.

  I thought for a moment they were cursing me, but little Bishop Asser could not resist demonstrating his learning by providing me with a translation. ‘As the dog returns to its vomit, so the fool returns to his filth.’

  ‘The words of God,’ Erkenwald said.

  ‘And we must decide what to do with you,’ Plegmund said, and at those words Godric’s men moved closer. I was aware of their spears behind me. A log cracked in the fire, shooting sparks onto the rushes that began to smoke. Normally a servant, or one of the soldiers, would have rushed forward to stamp out the tiny fire, but no one moved. They wanted me dead. ‘It has been demonstrated to us,’ Plegmund broke the silence, ‘that you have been consorting with our king’s enemies, that you have conspired with them, that you have eaten their bread and taken their salt. Worse, you have admitted to slaying the holy Abbot Deorlaf and two of his brethren and…’

  ‘The holy Abbot Deorlaf,’ I interrupted him, ‘was in league with the witch Ælfadell, and the holy Abbot Deorlaf wished to kill me. What was I supposed to do? Turn the other cheek?’

  ‘You will be silent!’ Plegmund said.

  I took two steps forward and ground out the burning rushes with my boot. One of Godric’s soldiers, thinking I was about to attack the clergymen, had drawn back his spear and I turned and looked at him. Just looked. He reddened and, very slowly, the spear went down. ‘I have fought your king’s enemies,’ I said, still gazing at the spearman, but then turning towards Plegmund, ‘as Bishop Erkenwald well knows. While other men cowered behind burh walls I was leading your king’s army. I stood in the shield wall. I cut down foemen, I reddened the soil with the blood of your enemies, I burned ships, I took the fort at Beamfleot.’

  ‘And you wear the hammer!’ Asser’s voice was shrill. He was pointing at my amulet with a shaking finger, ‘it is the symbol of our enemies, the very sign of those who would torture Christ again, and you wear it even in the court of our king!’

  ‘What did your mother do?’ I asked. ‘Fart like a mare? And there you were?’

  ‘Enough,’ Plegmund said tiredly.

  It was not hard to guess who had dripped poison in their ears; my cousin Æthelred. He was the titular Lord of Mercia, the closest thing that country had to a king, yet every man knew that he was a puppy on a West Saxon leash. He wanted that leash cut, and when Alfred died he would doubtless look for a crown. And for a new wife, the old being Æthelflaed who had added horns to his leash. A leashed and horned puppy who wanted revenge, and wanted me dead because he knew there were too many men in Mercia who would follow me rather than him.

  ‘It is our duty to decide your fate,’ Plegmund said.

  ‘The Norns do that,’ I said, ‘at Yggdrasil’s root.’

  ‘Heathen,’ Asser hissed.

  ‘The kingdom must be protected,’ the archbishop went on, ignoring both of us, ‘it must have the shield of faith and the sword of righteousness, and there is no place in God’s kingdom for a man of no faith, a man who could turn against us at any moment. Uhtred of Bebbanburg, I must tell you…’

  But whatever he was about to tell me went untold because the door at the hall’s end creaked open. ‘The king wants to see him,’ a familiar voice said.

  I turned to see Steapa standing there. Good Steapa, commander of Alfred’s household troops, a peasant slave who had risen to become a great warrior, a man daft as a barrel of loam and strong as an ox, a friend, a man as true as any I have known. ‘The king,’ he said in his stolid voice.

  ‘But…’ Plegmund began.

  ‘The king wants me, you snaggle-toothed bastard,’ I told him, then looked at the spearman who had threatened me. ‘If you ever point a blade at me again,’ I promised him, ‘I’ll rip your belly open and feed your entrails to my dogs.’

  The Norns
were probably laughing, and I went to see the king.

  PART TWO

  Death of a King

  Six

  Alfred lay swathed in woollen blankets and propped against a great cushion. Osferth sat on the bed, his hand held by his father. The king’s other hand lay on a bejewelled book, I assumed a gospel book. Just outside the room, in a long passageway, Brother John and four members of his choir were singing a doleful chant. The room stank, despite the herbs scattered on the floor and the great candles that burned in tall wooden sticks. Some of them were Alfred’s prized candle clocks, their bands marking the hours as the king’s life leaked away. Two priests stood against one wall of Alfred’s chamber, while opposite them was a great panel of leather on which the crucifixion was painted.

  Steapa pushed me into the room and shut the door on me.

  Alfred looked dead already. Indeed, I might have thought him a corpse if he had not pulled his hand away from Osferth, who was in tears. The king’s long face was pale as fleece, with sunken eyes, sunken cheeks and dark shadows. His hair had thinned and gone white. His gums had pulled back from his remaining teeth, his unshaven chin was stained with spittle, while the hand on the book was mere skin-covered bones on which a great ruby shone, the ring too big now for his skeletal finger. His breath was shallow, though his voice was remarkably strong. ‘Behold the sword of the Saxons,’ he greeted me.

  ‘I see your son has a loose tongue, lord King,’ I said. I went onto one knee until he feebly gestured for me to stand.

  He looked at me from his pillow and I looked at him and the monks chanted beyond the door and a candle guttered to spew a thick twist of smoke. ‘I’m dying, Lord Uhtred,’ Alfred said.

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘And you look healthy as a bullock,’ he said with a grimace that was meant to be a smile. ‘You always had the capacity to irritate me, didn’t you? It isn’t tactful to look healthy in front of a dying king, but I rejoice for you.’ His left hand stroked the gospel book. ‘Tell me what will happen when I’m dead,’ he commanded me.