Death of Kings

by Bernard Cornwell

  He made a mewing noise.

  ‘Let go of your sword,’ I snarled, and this time he obeyed me. ‘Was it your father’s gift?’ I asked him. He said nothing. ‘It isn’t your day to die,’ I told him again, ‘but it is a day I want you to remember. The day you challenged Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’ I held his gaze for a few heartbeats, then slashed Serpent-Breath fast, using my wrist rather than my arm, so that the tip of her blade sliced into his sword hand. He flinched as the blood spurted, then I stepped away, stooped and picked up his sword. ‘Tell his father I spared the pup’s life,’ I told Haesten. I wiped Serpent-Breath’s point on the hem of my cloak, tossed the boy’s sword to Oswi, my servant, than hauled myself back into the saddle. Sigurd Sigurdson was clutching his mangled hand. ‘Give my greetings to your father,’ I told him, then spurred away. I could almost hear Haesten’s sigh of relief that the boy still lived.

  Why did I let him live? Because he was not worth killing. I wanted to provoke his father, and the boy’s death would certainly have achieved that, but I did not have the men to fight a war against Sigurd. To do that I needed West Saxon troops. I had to wait until I was ready, until Wessex and Mercia united their forces, and so Sigurd Sigurdson lived.

  We did not stay at Ceaster. We did not have enough force to capture the old fort, and the longer we stayed the more likely it was that Sigurd would arrive with overwhelming numbers, and so we left Merewalh to screen the fortress and we went back to Æthelflaed’s estate in the valley of the Temes from where I sent a messenger to Alfred telling him that Haesten had sworn allegiance to Sigurd and that Ceaster was now fully garrisoned. I knew Alfred would be too sick to take much note of that news, but I assumed that Edward, or perhaps the Witan, would want to know. I received no answer. Summer slid into autumn and the silence from Wintanceaster was worrying me. We learned from travellers that the king was weaker than ever, that he scarcely left his bed these days and that his family was in constant attendance. I heard nothing at all from Æthelflaed.

  ‘He could at least have thanked you for thwarting Eohric,’ Finan grumbled to me one night. He meant Alfred, of course.

  ‘He was probably disappointed,’ I said.

  ‘That you lived?’

  I smiled at that. ‘That the treaty never happened.’

  Finan stared moodily down the hall. The fire in the central hearth was unlit because the evening was warm. My men were quiet at their tables, the dogs sprawled on the rushes. ‘We need silver,’ Finan said bleakly.

  ‘I know.’

  How had I become so poor? I had spent most of my money on that foray north to Ælfadell and Snotengaham. I still had some silver, but nowhere near enough for my ambition, which was to retake Bebbanburg, that great fortress by the sea, and to take it I would need men, ships, weapons, food and time. I needed a fortune, and I was living on borrowed money in a shabby hall on Mercia’s southern edge. I was living on Æthelflaed’s charity, and that seemed to be turning cold because I received no letter from her. I supposed she was under the baleful influence of her family and their busy priests who were ever ready to tell us how to behave. ‘Alfred doesn’t deserve you,’ Finan said.

  ‘He has other things on his mind,’ I said, ‘like his death.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be alive now if it wasn’t for you.’

  ‘For us,’ I said.

  ‘And what has he done for us?’ Finan demanded. ‘Jesus and his saints, we destroy Alfred’s enemies and he treats us like dog shit.’

  I said nothing. A harpist was playing in the hall’s corner, but his music was soft and plangent to match my mood. The light was fading and two servant girls brought rushlights for the table. I watched Ludda slide his hand up a skirt and wondered that he had remained with me, though when I had asked him he had said that fortunes rise and fortunes fall and he sensed mine would rise again. I hoped he was right. ‘What happened to that Welsh girl of yours?’ I called to Ludda. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Teg, lord. She turned into a bat and flew away.’ He grinned, though I noted how many men made the sign of the cross.

  ‘Maybe we should all turn into bats,’ I said unhappily.

  Finan scowled at the table top. ‘If Alfred doesn’t want you,’ he said uneasily, ‘then you should join Alfred’s enemies.’

  ‘I swore an oath to Æthelflaed.’

  ‘And she swore one to her husband,’ he said savagely.

  ‘I won’t fight against her,’ I said.

  ‘And I won’t leave you,’ Finan said, and I knew he meant it, ‘but not every man here will stay through a hungry winter.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ‘So let’s steal a ship,’ he urged, ‘and go Viking.’

  ‘It’s late in the year for that,’ I said.

  ‘God knows how we survive a winter,’ he grumbled. ‘We have to do something. Kill someone rich.’

  And just then the guards on the hall door challenged a visitor. The man arrived in mail, helmeted, and with a sheathed sword at his waist. Behind him, dim in the fast gathering darkness, was a woman and two children. ‘I demand entry!’ he shouted.

  ‘God alive,’ Finan said, recognising Sihtric’s voice.

  One of the guards tried to take the sword, but Sihtric angrily slapped the man aside. ‘Let the bastard keep his sword,’ I said, standing, ‘and let him come in.’ Sihtric’s wife and two sons were behind him, but they stayed at the door as Sihtric paced up the hall. There was silence.

  Finan stood to confront him, but I pushed the Irishman down. ‘It’s my duty,’ I told Finan quietly, then walked around the high table’s end and jumped down to the rush-covered floor. Sihtric stopped when he saw me approaching. I had no sword. We did not carry weapons in hall because weapons and ale mix badly and there was a gasp as Sihtric drew his long blade. Some of my men stood to intervene, but I waved them down and kept walking towards the naked steel. I stopped just two paces from him. ‘Well?’ I demanded harshly.

  Sihtric grinned and I laughed. I embraced him, and he returned the embrace, then held the hilt of his sword to me. ‘Yours, lord,’ he said, ‘as it always was.’

  ‘Ale!’ I shouted to the steward. ‘Ale and food!’

  Finan was gaping as I walked Sihtric to the high table with my arm about his shoulder. Men were cheering. They had liked Sihtric and had been puzzled by his behaviour, but it had all been planned between us. Even the insults had been rehearsed. I had wanted Beortsig to recruit him, and Beortsig had snapped up Sihtric like a pike attacking a duckling. And I had ordered Sihtric to stay in Beortsig’s employment until he had learned what I needed to know, and now he had come back. ‘I didn’t know where to find you, lord,’ he said, ‘so I went to Lundene first and Weohstan said to come here.’

  Beornnoth was dead, he told me. The old man had died in the early summer, just before Sigurd’s men crossed his estates to burn Buccingahamm. ‘They stayed the night at the hall, lord,’ he told me.

  ‘Sigurd’s men?’

  ‘And Sigurd himself, lord. Beortsig fed them.’

  ‘He’s in Sigurd’s pay?’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ he said, and that was no surprise, ‘and not only Beortsig, lord. There was a Saxon with Sigurd, lord, a man Sigurd treated with honour. A long-haired man called Sigebriht.’

  ‘Sigebriht?’ I asked. The name was familiar, lurking at the back of my memory, but I could not place him, though I remembered the widow in Buchestanes saying that a long-haired Saxon had visited Ælfadell.

  ‘Sigebriht of Cent, lord,’ Sihtric said.

  ‘Ah!’ I poured Sihtric ale. ‘Sigebriht’s father is Ealdorman of Cent, isn’t he?’

  ‘Ealdorman Sigelf, lord, yes.’

  ‘So Sigebriht is unhappy that Edward was named King of Cent?’ I guessed.

  ‘Sigebriht hates Edward, lord,’ Sihtric told me. He was grinning, pleased with himself. I had planted him as a spy in Beortsig’s household and he knew he had done his work well, ‘and it isn’t just because Edward is King of Cent, lord, it’s because
of a girl. The Lady Ecgwynn.’

  ‘He told you all this?’ I asked, astonished.

  ‘He told a slave girl, lord. He rutted her and he has a loose tongue when he’s rutting, and he told her and she told Ealhswith.’ Ealhswith was Sihtric’s wife. She was sitting in the hall now, eating with her two sons. She had been a whore and I had advised Sihtric not to marry her, but I had been wrong. She had proved to be a good wife.

  ‘So who is the Lady Ecgwynn?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s Bishop Swithwulf’s daughter, lord,’ Sihtric explained. Swithwulf was Bishop of Hrofeceastre in Cent, that much I knew, but I had not met the man, nor his daughter. ‘And she preferred Edward to Sigebriht,’ Sihtric went on.

  So the bishop’s daughter was the girl who Edward had wanted to marry? The girl he had been ordered to abandon because his father disapproved. ‘I heard that Edward was forced to give the girl up,’ I said.

  ‘But she ran away with him,’ Sihtric told me, ‘that’s what Sigebriht said.’

  ‘Ran away!’ I grinned. ‘So where is she now?’

  ‘No one knows.’

  ‘And Edward,’ I said, ‘is betrothed to Ælflæd.’ There must have been some harsh words spoken between father and son, I thought. Edward had always been presented as the ideal heir to Alfred, the son without sin, the prince educated and groomed to be the next King of Wessex, but a smile from a bishop’s daughter had evidently undone a lifetime’s preaching from his father’s priests. ‘So Sigebriht hates Edward,’ I said.

  ‘He does, lord.’

  ‘Because he took the bishop’s daughter away. But would that be enough to make him swear loyalty to Sigurd?’

  ‘No, lord.’ Sihtric was grinning. He had kept his biggest news back. ‘He’s not sworn to Sigurd, lord, but to Æthelwold.’

  And that was why Sihtric had returned to me, because he had discovered who the Saxon was, the Saxon whom Ælfadell had told me would destroy Wessex, and I wondered why I had not thought of it before. I had considered Beortsig because he wanted to be King of Mercia, but he was insignificant, and Sigebriht probably wanted to be King of Cent one day, but I could not imagine Sigebriht having the power to ruin Wessex, yet the answer was obvious. It had been there all along and I had never thought of it because Æthelwold was such a weak fool. Yet weak fools have ambition and cunning and resolve.

  ‘Æthelwold!’ I repeated the name.

  ‘Sigebriht is sworn to him, lord, and Sigebriht is Æthelwold’s messenger to Sigurd. There’s something else, lord. Beortsig’s priest is one-eyed, thin as a straw, and bald.’

  I was thinking about Æthelwold, so it took a moment for me to remember that far-off day when the fools had tried to kill me and the shepherd had saved me with his sling and his flock. ‘Beortsig wanted me dead,’ I said.

  ‘Or his father,’ Sihtric suggested.

  ‘Because Sigurd ordered it,’ I guessed, ‘or perhaps Æthelwold.’ And it suddenly seemed so obvious. And I knew what I had to do. I did not want to do it. I had once sworn I would never return to Alfred’s court, but next day I rode to Wintanceaster.

  To see the king.

  Æthelwold. I should have guessed. I had known Æthelwold all my life and had despised him all that time. He was Alfred’s nephew, and he was aggrieved. Alfred, of course, should have killed Æthelwold years before, but some feeling, perhaps affection for his brother’s son or, more likely, the guilt that earnest Christians love to feel, had stayed his hand.

  Æthelwold’s father had been Alfred’s brother, King Æthelred. Æthelwold, as eldest son of Æthelred, expected to be King of Wessex, but he was still a child when his father died and the Witan, the king’s council of leading men, had put his uncle, Alfred, onto the throne instead. Alfred had wanted that and had worked for it, and there were men who still whispered that he was a usurper. Æthelwold had resented the usurpation ever since, but Alfred, instead of murdering his nephew as I had often recommended, indulged him. He let him keep some of his father’s estates, he forgave his constant treachery, and doubtless prayed for him. Æthelwold needed a lot of prayer. He was unhappy, frequently drunk, and perhaps that was why Alfred tolerated him. It was hard to see a drunken fool as a danger to the kingdom.

  But Æthelwold was now talking with Sigurd. Æthelwold wanted to be king instead of Edward, and to make himself king he had plainly sought the alliance of Sigurd, and Sigurd, of course, would like nothing better than a tame Saxon whose claim to the throne of Wessex was every bit as good as Edward’s, indeed better, which meant Sigurd’s invasion of Wessex would have the spurious gloss of legitimacy.

  Six of us rode south through Wessex. I took Osferth, Sihtric, Rypere, Eadric and Ludda. I left Finan in command of the rest of my men, and with a promise. ‘If there’s no gratitude in Wintanceaster,’ I said, ‘then we go north.’

  ‘We must do something,’ Finan said.

  ‘I promise,’ I told him. ‘We’ll go Viking. We’ll thrive. But I must give Alfred one last chance.’

  Finan did not much care which side we fought for, so long as we were fighting profitably, and I understood how he felt. If my ambition was to one day retake Bebbanburg, his was to return to Ireland to take revenge on the man who had destroyed his wealth and family, and for that he needed silver as much as I did. Finan, of course, was a Christian, though he never allowed that to interfere with his pleasures, and he would have happily used his sword to attack Wessex if, at the end of the fighting, there was money enough to equip an expedition back to Ireland. I knew he believed my journey to Wintanceaster was a waste of time. Alfred did not like me, Æthelflaed appeared to have distanced herself from me, and Finan believed I was going to beg from folk who should have shown gratitude from the start.

  And there were times on that journey when I thought Finan was right. I had fought to help Wessex survive for so many years now, and I had put so many of her enemies beneath the ground, and to show for it I had nothing but an empty purse. Yet I also had a reluctant allegiance. I have broken oaths, I have changed sides, I have scrambled through the thorns of loyalty, yet I had meant it when I told Osferth that I wanted to be the sword of the Saxons instead of the shield of Mercia, and so I would make one last visit to the heart of Saxon Britain to discover whether they wanted my sword or not. And if not? I had friends in the north. There was Ragnar, closer than a friend, a man I loved as a brother, and he would help me, and if the price I had to pay was eternal enmity for Wessex, then so be it. I rode, not as the beggar that Finan thought I was, but vengefully.

  It rained as we neared Wintanceaster, a soft rain on a soft land, on fields rich with good earth, on villages that showed prosperity and had new churches and thick thatch and no gaunt skeletons of burned house-beams. The halls grew larger, because men like to have their land near power.

  There were two powers in Wessex, king and church, and the churches, like the halls, grew larger as we neared the city. No wonder the Northmen wanted this land, who would not? The cattle were plump, the barns full and the girls were pretty. ‘It’s time you got married,’ I told Osferth as we passed an open-doored barn where two fair-haired girls winnowed grain on a threshing floor.

  ‘I’ve thought of it,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘Just thought?’

  He half smiled. ‘You believe in destiny, lord,’ he said.

  ‘And you don’t?’ I asked. Osferth and I were riding a few paces ahead of the others. ‘And what does destiny have to do with a girl in your bed?’

  ‘Non ingredietur mamzer hoc est de scorto natus in ecclesiam Domini,’ he said, then gave me a very sombre look, ‘usque ad decimam generationem.’

  ‘Both Father Beocca and Father Willibald tried to teach me Latin,’ I said, ‘and they both failed.’

  ‘It comes from the scriptures, lord,’ he said, ‘from the book of Deuteronomy, and it means a bastard isn’t allowed into the church and it warns that the curse will last for ten generations.’

  I stared at him in disbelief. ‘You were training to be a priest whe
n I met you!’

  ‘And I left my training,’ he said. ‘I had to. How could I be a priest when God bans me from his congregation?’

  ‘So you can’t be a priest,’ I said, ‘but you can be married!’

  ‘Usque ad decimam generationem,’ he said. ‘My children would be cursed, and their children too, and every child for ten generations.’

  ‘So every bastard is doomed?’

  ‘God tells us that, lord.’

  ‘Then he’s a bloody-minded god,’ I said savagely, then saw that his distress was real. ‘It wasn’t your fault that Alfred played piggyback with a servant girl.’

  ‘True, lord.’

  ‘So how can his sin affect you?’

  ‘God is not always fair, lord, but he is just within his rules.’

  ‘Just! So if I can’t catch a thief I should whip his children instead and you’d call me just?’

  ‘God abhors sin, lord, and what better way to avert sin than threaten it with the direst punishment?’ He edged his horse to the left side of the road to allow a string of packhorses to pass by. They were travelling northwards, carrying sheepskins. ‘If God didn’t punish us severely,’ Osferth went on, ‘then what is to stop sin spreading?’

  ‘I like sin,’ I said and nodded to the horseman whose servants led the packhorses. ‘Does Alfred live?’ I asked him.

  ‘Scarcely,’ the man said. He made the sign of the cross and nodded thanks when I wished him a safe journey.

  Osferth frowned at me. ‘Why did you bring me here, lord?’ he asked.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You could have brought Finan, but you chose me.’

  ‘You don’t want to see your father?’

  He said nothing for a while, then turned to me and I saw there were tears in his eyes. ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘That’s why I brought you,’ I said, and just then we turned a bend in the road and Wintanceaster was beneath us, its new church rearing high above the huddle of roofs.