Death of Kings

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘What they should do, of course,’ I said, ‘is strangle the little bastards.’

  ‘Lord!’ Osferth said, shocked.

  ‘But they won’t. Your family was never ruthless enough.’

  It had begun to rain harder, the drops beating on the tile and thatch of the palace roofs. There was no moon, no stars, only clouds in darkness and the hard rain teeming and the wind sighing about the scaffolded tower of Alfred’s great new church. I went to Saint Hedda’s. The guards were gone, the alleyway dark, and I beat on the convent door till someone answered.

  Next day the king and his bed had been moved to the larger hall where Plegmund and his colleagues had thought to condemn me. The crown was on the bed, its bright emeralds reflecting the fire that filled the high chamber with smoke and heat. The room was crowded, stinking of men and the king’s decay. Bishop Asser was there, as was Erkenwald, though the archbishop had evidently found other business to keep him from the king’s presence. A score of West Saxon lords were there. One of them was Æthelhelm whose daughter was to marry Edward. I liked Æthelhelm, who now stood close behind Ælswith, Alfred’s wife, who did not know which she resented more, my existence or the strange truth that Wessex did not recognise the rank of queen. She watched me balefully. Her children flanked her. Æthelflaed, at twenty-nine, was the eldest, then came her brother, Edward, then Æthelgifu and lastly Æthelweard who was just sixteen. Ælfthryth, Alfred’s third daughter, was not there because she had been married to a king across the water in Frankia. Steapa was there, looming above my dear old friend, Father Beocca, who was now stooped and white-haired. Brother John and his monks sang softly. Not all of the choir were monks, some were small boys robed in pale linen and, with a shock, I recognised my son Uhtred as one of them.

  I have been, I confess, a bad father. I loved my two youngest children, but my eldest who, in the tradition of my family, had taken my name, was a mystery. Instead of wishing to learn sword-craft and spear-skill, he had become a Christian. A Christian! And now, with the other boys of the cathedral choir, he sang like a little bird. I glared at him, but he resolutely avoided my gaze.

  I joined the ealdormen who stood at one side of the hall. They, with the senior clerics, formed the king’s council, the Witan, and they had business to discuss, though none did it with any enthusiasm. A grant of land was given to a monastery, and payment authorised for the masons who were working on Alfred’s new church. A man who had failed to pay his fine for the crime of manslaughter was pardoned because he had done good service with Weohstan’s forces at Beamfleot. Some men looked at me when that victory was mentioned, but no one asked if I remembered the man. The king took little part, except to raise a weary hand to signify his assent.

  All this while a clerk was standing behind a desk where he wrote a manuscript. I thought at first he was making a record of the proceedings, but two other clerks were clearly doing that, while the man at the desk was mainly copying from another document. He seemed very conscious of everyone’s gaze and was red in the face, though perhaps that was the heat from the great fire. Bishop Asser was scowling, Ælswith looked ready to kill me with anger, but Father Beocca was smiling. He bobbed his head to me and I winked at him. Æthelflaed caught my eye and smiled so mischievously that I hoped her father had not seen it. Her husband was standing not far away from her and, like my son, he studiously avoided my gaze. Then, to my astonishment, I saw Æthelwold standing at the back of the hall. He looked at me defiantly, but could not hold my stare and stooped instead to talk with a companion I did not recognise.

  A man complained that his neighbour, Ealdorman Æthelnoth, had taken fields that did not belong to him. The king interrupted the complaint, whispering to Bishop Asser who gave the king’s judgement. ‘Will you accept the arbitration of Abbot Osburh?’ he asked the man.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And you, Lord Æthelnoth?’

  ‘Gladly.’

  ‘Then the abbot is charged with discovering the boundaries according to the proper writs,’ Asser said, and the clerks scratched his words, and the council moved on to discuss other matters and I saw Alfred look wearily towards the man copying the document at the desk. The man had finished, because he sanded the parchment, waited a few heartbeats and then blew the sand into the fire. He folded the parchment and wrote something on the folded side, then sanded and blew again. A second clerk brought a candle, wax and a seal. The finished document was then carried to the king’s bed, and Alfred, with great effort, signed his name and then beckoned that Bishop Erkenwald and Father Beocca should add their signatures as witnesses to whatever it was he had signed.

  The council fell silent as this was done. I assumed the document was the king’s will, but once the wax had been impressed with the great seal, the king beckoned to me.

  I went to his bedside and knelt. ‘I have been granting small gifts as remembrances,’ Alfred said.

  ‘You were ever generous, lord King,’ I lied, but what else does one say to a dying man?

  ‘This is for you,’ he said, and I heard Ælswith’s sharp intake of breath as I took the newly written parchment from her husband’s feeble hand. ‘Read it,’ he said, ‘you can still read?’

  ‘Father Beocca taught me well,’ I said.

  ‘Father Beocca does all things well,’ the king said, then moaned with pain, which caused a monk to go to his side and offer him a cup.

  The king sipped, and I read. It was a charter. The clerk had copied much of it, for one charter is much like another, but this one took my breath away. It granted me land, and the grant was not conditional, like that which Alfred had once used to give me an estate at Fifhiden. Instead it conveyed the land freely to me and to my heirs or to whoever else I chose to grant that land, and the charter laboriously described the boundaries of the land, and the length of that description told me that the estate was wide and deep. There was a river and orchards and meadows and villages, and a hall at a place called Fagranforda, and all of it in Mercia. ‘The land belonged to my father,’ Alfred said.

  I did not know what to say, except to utter thanks.

  The feeble hand stretched towards me and I took it. I kissed the ruby. ‘You know what I want,’ Alfred said. I kept my head bowed over his hand. ‘The land is given freely,’ he said, ‘and it will give you wealth, much wealth.’

  ‘Lord King,’ I said, and my voice faltered.

  His feeble fingers tightened on my hand. ‘Give something back to me, Uhtred,’ he said, ‘give me peace before I die.’

  And so I did what he wanted, and what I did not wish to do, but he was dying, and he had been generous at the end, and how can you slap a man who is in his last days of life? And so I went to Edward and I knelt to him, and I put my hands between his and I swore the oath of loyalty. And some in the hall applauded while some stayed resolutely silent. Æthelhelm, the chief adviser in the Witan, smiled, for he knew I would now fight for Wessex. My cousin Æthelred shuddered, for he knew he would never call himself king in Mercia so long as I did Edward’s will, while Æthelwold must have wondered if he would ever take Alfred’s throne if he had to fight his way past Serpent-Breath. Edward pulled me to my feet and embraced me. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. That was Wednesday, Woden’s Day, in October, the eighth month of the year, which was 899.

  The next day belonged to Thor. The rain did not stop, coming in huge swathes that swept across Wintanceaster. ‘Heaven itself is weeping,’ Beocca told me. He was crying himself. ‘The king asked me to give him the last rites,’ he said, ‘and I did, but my hands were shaking.’ It seemed Alfred received the last rites at intervals through the day, so intent was he on making a good end, and the priests and bishops vied with each other for the honour of anointing the king and placing a piece of dry bread between his lips. ‘Bishop Asser was ready to give the viaticum,’ Beocca said, ‘but Alfred asked for me.’

  ‘He loves you,’ I said, ‘and you’ve served him well.’

  ‘I have served God and the king,’ Beocca said, th
en let me guide him to a seat beside the fire in the great room of the Two Cranes. ‘He took some curds this morning,’ Beocca told me earnestly, ‘but not many. Two spoonfuls.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to eat,’ I said.

  ‘He must,’ Beocca said. Poor dear Beocca. He had been my father’s priest and clerk, and my childhood tutor, though he had abandoned Bebbanburg when my uncle usurped its lordship. He was low-born and ill-born, with a pathetic squint, a misshapen nose, a palsied left hand and a club foot. It was my grandfather who saw the boy’s cleverness and had him educated by the monks at Lindisfarena, and Beocca became a priest and then, following my uncle’s treachery, an exile. His cleverness and his devotion had attracted Alfred, whom Beocca had served ever since. He was old now, almost as old as the king, and his straggly red hair had turned white, his back was bent, yet he still had a keen mind and a strong will. He also had a Danish wife, a true beauty, who was the sister of my dearest friend, Ragnar.

  ‘How is Thyra?’ I asked him.

  ‘She is well, thanks be to God, and the boys! We’re blessed.’

  ‘You’ll be blessed and dead if you insist on walking the streets in this rain,’ I said. ‘No fool like an old fool.’

  He chuckled at that, then made a small impotent protest when I insisted on taking his sopping wet cloak and placing a dry one around his shoulders. ‘The king asked me to come to you,’ he said.

  ‘Then the king should have told me to go to you,’ I said.

  ‘Such a wet season!’ Beocca said. ‘I haven’t seen rain like this since the year Archbishop Æthelred died. The king doesn’t know it’s raining. Poor man. He strives against the pain. He can’t last long now.’

  ‘And he sent you,’ I reminded him.

  ‘He asks a favour of you,’ Beocca said, with a touch of his old sternness.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Fagranforda is a great estate,’ Beocca said, ‘the king was generous.’

  ‘I have been generous to him,’ I said.

  Beocca waved his crippled left hand as if to dismiss my remark. ‘There are presently four churches and a monastery on the estate,’ he went on crisply, ‘and the king has asked for your assurance that you will maintain them as they should be maintained, as their charters demand, and as is your duty.’

  I smiled at that. ‘And if I refuse?’

  ‘Oh please, Uhtred,’ he said wearily. ‘I have struggled with you my whole life!’

  ‘I will tell the steward to do all that is necessary,’ I promised.

  He looked at me with his one good eye as if judging my sincerity, but seemed pleased with what he saw. ‘The king will be grateful,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you were going to ask me to abandon Æthelflaed,’ I said mischievously. There were few people I would ever talk to about Æthelflaed, but Beocca, who had known me since I was a stripling, was one.

  He shuddered at my words. ‘Adultery is a grievous sin,’ he said, though without much passion.

  ‘A crime too,’ I said, amused. ‘Have you told that to Edward?’

  He flinched. ‘That was a young man’s foolishness,’ he said, ‘and God punished the girl. She died.’

  ‘Your god is so good,’ I said caustically, ‘but why didn’t he think to kill her royal bastards as well?’

  ‘They have been put away,’ he said.

  ‘With Æthelflaed.’

  He nodded. ‘They kept her from you,’ he said, ‘you know that?’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Locked her away in Saint Hedda’s,’ he said.

  ‘I found the key,’ I said.

  ‘God preserve us from wickedness,’ Beocca said, making the sign of the cross. ‘Æthelflaed,’ I said, ‘is loved in Mercia. Her husband is not.’

  ‘This is known,’ he said distantly.

  ‘When Edward becomes king,’ I said, ‘he will look to Mercia.’

  ‘Look to Mercia?’

  ‘The Danes will come, father,’ I said, ‘and they’ll begin with Mercia. You want the Mercian lords fighting for Wessex? You want the Mercian fyrd fighting for Wessex? The one person who can inspire them is Æthelflaed.’

  ‘You can,’ he said loyally.

  I gave that statement the scorn it deserved. ‘You and I are Northumbrians, father. They think we’re barbarians who eat our children for breakfast. But they love Æthelflaed.’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘So let her be a sinner, father, if that is what makes Wessex safe.’

  ‘Am I supposed to tell the king that?’

  I laughed. ‘You’re supposed to tell Edward that. And tell him more. Tell him to kill Æthelwold. No mercy, no family sentimentality, no Christian guilt. Just give me the order and he’s dead.’

  Beocca shook his head. ‘Æthelwold is a fool,’ he said accurately, ‘and most of the time a drunken fool. He flirted with the Danes, we cannot deny it, but he has confessed all his sins to the king and been forgiven.’

  ‘Forgiven?’

  ‘Last night,’ Beocca said, ‘he shed tears at the king’s bedside and swore allegiance to the king’s heir.’

  I had to laugh. Alfred’s response to my warning had been to summon Æthelwold and believe the fool’s lies. ‘Æthelwold will try to take the throne,’ I said.

  ‘He swore the opposite,’ Beocca said earnestly, ‘he swore on Noah’s feather and on the glove of Saint Cedd.’

  The feather had supposedly belonged to a dove that Noah had released from the ark back in the days when it rained as heavily as the downpour that now drummed on the roof of the Two Cranes. The feather and the saint’s glove were two of Alfred’s most precious relics, and doubtless he would believe anything that was sworn in their presence. ‘Don’t believe him,’ I said, ‘kill him. Or else he’ll make trouble.’

  ‘He has sworn his oath,’ Beocca said, ‘and the king believes him.’

  ‘Æthelwold is a treacherous earsling,’ I said.

  ‘He’s just a fool,’ Beocca said dismissively.

  ‘But an ambitious fool, and a fool with a legitimate claim to the throne, and men will use that claim.’

  ‘He has relented, he has made confession, he has been absolved, and he is penitent.’

  What fools we all are. I see the same mistakes being made, time after time, generation after generation, yet still we go on believing what we wish to believe. That night, in the wet darkness, I repeated Beocca’s words. ‘He has relented,’ I said, ‘he has made confession, he has been absolved, and he is penitent.’

  ‘And they believe him?’ Æthelflaed asked bleakly.

  ‘Christians are fools,’ I said, ‘ready to believe anything.’

  She prodded me hard in the ribs, and I chuckled. The rain fell on Saint Hedda’s roof. I should not have been there, of course, but the abbess, dear Hild, pretended not to know. I was not in that part of the nunnery where the sisters lived in seclusion, but in a range of buildings about the outer courtyard where lay folk were permitted. There were kitchens where food was prepared for the poor, there was a hospital where the indigent could die, and there was this attic room, which had been Æthelflaed’s prison. It was not uncomfortable, though small. She was attended by maidservants, but this night they had been told to make themselves beds in the storerooms beneath. ‘They told me you were negotiating with the Danes,’ Æthelflaed said.

  ‘I was. I was using Serpent-Breath.’

  ‘And negotiating with Sigunn too?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and she’s well.’

  ‘God knows why I love you.’

  ‘God knows everything.’

  She said nothing to that, but just stirred beside me and pulled the fleece higher about her head and shoulders. The rain beat on. Her hair was golden in my face. She was Alfred’s eldest child and I had watched her grow to become a woman, had watched the joy in her face fade to bitterness when she was given as wife to my cousin, and I had seen the joy return. Her blue eyes were flecked with brown, her nose was small and upturned. It was a face I lo
ved, but a face that now had lines of worry. ‘You should talk to your son,’ she said, her voice muffled by the fleece bedcover.

  ‘Uhtred spouts pious nonsense to me,’ I said, ‘so I’d rather talk to my daughter.’

  ‘She’s safe, and your other son too, in Cippanhamm.’

  ‘Why is Uhtred here?’ I asked.

  ‘The king wanted him here.’

  ‘They’re turning him into a priest,’ I said angrily.

  ‘And they want to turn me into a nun,’ she said just as angrily. ‘They do?’

  ‘Bishop Erkenwald administered the oath to me, I spat at him.’

  I pulled her head out from under the fleece. ‘They really tried?’

  ‘Bishop Erkenwald and my mother.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They came here,’ she said in a very matter-of-fact voice, ‘and insisted I went to the chapel, and Bishop Erkenwald said a great deal of angry Latin, then held a book to me and told me to put my hand on it and swear to keep the oath he’d just said.’

  ‘And you did?’

  ‘I told you what I did. I spat at him.’

  I lay in silence for a while. ‘Æthelred must have persuaded them,’ I said.

  ‘Well I’m sure he’d like to put me away, but Mother said it was Father’s wish I took the vows.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ I said.

  ‘So then they went back to the palace and announced I had taken the vow.’

  ‘And put guards on the gate,’ I said.

  ‘I think that was to keep you out,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘but you say the guards are gone?’

  ‘They’re gone.’

  ‘So I can leave?’

  ‘You left yesterday.’

  ‘Steapa’s men escorted me to the palace,’ she said, ‘then brought me back here.’

  ‘There are no guards now.’

  She frowned in thought. ‘I should have been born a man.’

  ‘I’m glad you weren’t.’

  ‘And I would be king,’ she said.

  ‘Edward will be a good king.’