Death of Kings st-6

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘They would say that.’

  ‘And Lord Edward is betrothed.’

  ‘Betrothed?’

  ‘I went to the ceremony, lord. He’s going to marry the Lady Ælflæd.’

  ‘The ealdorman’s daughter?’

  ‘Yes, lord. She was the king’s choice.’

  ‘Poor Edward,’ I said, remembering Father Willibald’s gossip that Alfred’s heir had wanted to marry a girl from Cent. Ælflæd was daughter to Æthelhelm, Ealdorman of Sumorsæte, and presumably Alfred had wanted the marriage to tie Edward to the most powerful of Wessex’s noble families. I wondered what had happened to the girl from Cent.

  Sigurd had gone back to his lands from where, in petulance, he sent raiders into Saxon Mercia to burn, kill, enslave and steal. It was border war, no different from the perpetual fighting between the Scots and the Northumbrians. None of his raiders touched my estates, but my fields lay south of Beornnoth’s wide lands and Sigurd concentrated his anger on Ealdorman Ælfwold, the son of the man who had died fighting beside me at Beamfleot, and he left Beornnoth’s territory unscathed, and that I thought was interesting. So in March, when stitchwort was whitening the hedgerows, I took fifteen men north to Beornnoth’s hall with a new year’s gift of cheese, ale and salted mutton. I found the old man wrapped in a fur cloak and slumped in his chair. His face was sunken, his eyes watery, and his lower lip trembled uncontrollably. He was dying. Beortsig, his son, watched me sullenly.

  ‘It’s time,’ I said, ‘to teach Sigurd a lesson.’

  Beornnoth scowled. ‘Stop pacing around,’ he ordered me, ‘you make me feel old.’

  ‘You are old,’ I said.

  He grimaced at that. ‘I’m like Alfred,’ he said, ‘I’m going to meet my god. I’m going to the judgement seat to find out who lives and who burns. They’ll let him into heaven, won’t they?’

  ‘They’ll welcome Alfred,’ I agreed, ‘and you?’

  ‘At least it will be warm in hell,’ he said, then feebly wiped some spittle from his beard. ‘So you want to fight Sigurd?’

  ‘I want to kill the bastard.’

  ‘You had your chance before Christmas,’ Beortsig said. I ignored him.

  ‘He’s waiting,’ Beornnoth said, ‘waiting for Alfred to die. He won’t attack till Alfred’s dead.’

  ‘He’s attacking now,’ I said.

  Beornnoth shook his head. ‘Just raiding,’ he said dismissively, ‘and he’s pulled his fleet ashore at Snotengaham.’

  ‘Snotengaham?’ I asked, surprised. That was about as far inland as any seagoing ship could travel in Britain.

  ‘That tells you he’s not planning anything other than raids.’

  ‘It tells me he’s not planning seaborne raids,’ I said, ‘but what’s to stop him marching overland?’

  ‘Perhaps he will,’ Beornnoth allowed, ‘when Alfred dies. For now, he’s only stealing a few cattle.’

  ‘Then I want to steal a few of his cattle,’ I said.

  Beortsig scowled and his father shrugged. ‘Why prod the devil when he’s dozing?’ the old man asked.

  ‘Ælfwold doesn’t think he’s dozing,’ I said.

  Beornnoth laughed. ‘Ælfwold’s young,’ he said dismissively, ‘and he’s ambitious, he asks for trouble.’

  You could divide the Saxon lords of Mercia into two camps, those who resented the West Saxon dominance of their land and those who welcomed it. Ælfwold’s father had supported Alfred, while Beornnoth harked back to earlier times when Mercia had its own king and, like others of his mind, he had refused to send troops to help me fight Haesten. He had preferred his men to be under Æthelred’s command, which meant they had garrisoned Gleawecestre against an attack that had never come. There had been bitterness between the two camps ever since, but Beornnoth was a decent enough man, or perhaps he was so close to death that he did not want to prolong old enmities. He invited us to stay for the night. ‘Tell me stories,’ he said, ‘I like stories. Tell me about Beamfleot.’ That was a generous invitation, an implicit admission that his men had been in the wrong place the previous summer.

  I did not tell the whole story. Instead, in his hall, when the great fire lit the beams red and the ale had made men boisterous, I told how the elder Ælfwold had died. How he had charged with me and how we had scattered the Danish camp, and how we rampaged among the frightened men at the hill’s edge, and then how the Danish reinforcements had counter-charged and the fighting had become bitter. Men listened intently. Almost every man in the hall had stood in the shield wall, and they knew the fear of that moment. I told how my horse had been killed, and how we made a circle of our shields and fought against the screaming Danes who had so suddenly outnumbered us, and I described a death that Ælfwold would have wanted, telling how he killed his enemies, how he sent the pagan foemen to their graves, and how he defeated man after man until, at last, an axe blow split his helmet and felled him. I did not describe how he had looked at me so reproachfully, or the hatred in his dying words because he believed, falsely, that I had betrayed him. He died beside me, and at that moment I had been ready for death, knowing that the Danes must surely kill us all in that blood-reeking dawn, but then Steapa had come with the West Saxon troops and defeat had turned into sudden, unexpected triumph. Beornnoth’s followers hammered the tables in appreciation of the tale. Men like a battle-tale, which is why we employ poets to entertain us at night with tales of warriors and swords and shields and axes.

  ‘A good story,’ Beornnoth said.

  ‘Ælfwold’s death was your fault,’ a voice spoke from the hall.

  For a moment I thought I had misheard, or that the comment was not spoken to me. There was silence as every man wondered the same.

  ‘We should never have fought!’ It was Sihtric speaking. He stood to shout at me and I saw he was drunk. ‘You never scouted the woods!’ he snarled. ‘And how many men died because you didn’t scout the woods?’ I know I looked too shocked to speak. Sihtric had been my servant, I had saved his life, I had taken him as a boy and made him a man and a warrior, I had given him gold, I had rewarded him as a lord is supposed to reward his followers, and now he was staring at me with pure loathing. Beortsig, of course, was enjoying the moment, his eyes flicking between me and Sihtric. Rypere, who was sitting on the same bench as his friend Sihtric, laid a hand on the standing man’s arm, but Sihtric shook it off. ‘How many men did you kill that day through carelessness?’ he shouted at me.

  ‘You’re drunk,’ I said harshly, ‘and tomorrow you will grovel to me, and perhaps I will forgive you.’

  ‘Lord Ælfwold would be alive if you had a scrap of sense,’ he yelled at me.

  Some of my men tried to shout him down, but I shouted louder. ‘Come here, kneel to me!’

  Instead, he spat towards me. The hall was in uproar now. Beornnoth’s men were encouraging Sihtric, while my men were looking horrified. ‘Give them swords!’ someone called.

  Sihtric held out his hand. ‘Give me a blade!’ he shouted.

  I started towards him, but Beornnoth lunged and caught my sleeve in a feeble grip. ‘Not in my hall, Lord Uhtred,’ he said, ‘not in my hall.’ I stopped, and Beornnoth struggled to his feet. He had to grip the table’s edge with one hand to stay upright, while his other hand pointed shakily towards Sihtric. ‘Take him away!’ he ordered.

  ‘And you stay away from me!’ I shouted at him. ‘And that whore wife of yours!’

  Sihtric tried to break away from the men holding him, but they had too tight a grip and he was too drunk. They dragged him from the hall to the jeers of Beornnoth’s followers. Beortsig had enjoyed my discomfiture and was laughing. His father frowned at him, then sat heavily. ‘I am sorry,’ he grunted.

  ‘He’ll be sorry,’ I said vengefully.

  There was no sign of Sihtric next morning and I did not ask where Beornnoth had him hidden. We readied ourselves to leave, and Beornnoth was helped out to the courtyard by two of his men. ‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that I’ll die before Alfred.’<
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  ‘I hope you live many years,’ I said dutifully.

  ‘There’ll be pain in Britain when Alfred goes,’ he said. ‘All the certainties will die with him.’ His voice faded. He was still embarrassed by the previous night’s argument in his hall. He had watched one of my own men insult me, and he had prevented me from giving punishment, and the incident lay between us like a burning coal. Yet both of us pretended it had not happened.

  ‘Alfred’s son is a good man,’ I said.

  ‘Edward’s young,’ Beornnoth said scornfully, ‘and who knows what he’ll be?’ He sighed. ‘Life is a story without an end,’ he said, ‘but I’d like to hear a few more verses before I die.’ He shook his head. ‘Edward won’t rule.’

  I smiled. ‘He may have other ideas.’

  ‘The prophecy has spoken, Lord Uhtred,’ he said solemnly.

  I was momentarily taken aback. ‘The prophecy?’

  ‘There’s a sorceress,’ he said, ‘and she sees the future.’

  ‘Ælfadell?’ I asked. ‘You saw her?’

  ‘Beortsig did,’ he said, looking at his son who, hearing Ælfadell’s name, made the sign of the cross.

  ‘What did she say?’ I asked the sullen Beortsig.

  ‘Nothing good,’ he said curtly, and would say no more.

  I climbed into my saddle. I glanced around the yard for any evidence of Sihtric, but he was still concealed and so I left him there and we rode home. Finan was puzzled by Sihtric’s behaviour. ‘He must have been drunk beyond drunkenness,’ he said in wonder. I answered nothing. In many ways what Sihtric had said was right, Ælfwold had died because of my carelessness, but that did not give Sihtric the right to accuse me in open hall. ‘He’s always been a good man,’ Finan went on, still puzzled, ‘but lately he’s been surly. I don’t understand it.’

  ‘He’s becoming like his father,’ I said.

  ‘Kjartan the Cruel?’

  ‘I should never have saved Sihtric’s life.’

  Finan nodded. ‘You want me to arrange his death?’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly, ‘only one man kills him, and that’s me. You understand? He’s mine, and until I rip his guts open I never want to hear his name again.’

  Once home I expelled Ealhswith, Sihtric’s wife, and her two sons from my hall. There were tears and pleas from her friends, but I was unmoved. She went.

  And next day I rode to lay my trap for Sigurd.

  There was a tremulousness to those days. All Britain waited to hear of Alfred’s death, in the certain knowledge that his passing would scatter the runesticks. A new pattern would foretell a new fortune for Britain, but what that fortune was, no one knew, unless the nightmare sorceress did have the answers. In Wessex they would want another strong king to protect them, in Mercia some would want the same, while other Mercians would want their own king back, while everywhere to the north, where the Danes held the land, they dreamed of conquering Wessex. Yet all that spring and summer Alfred lived and men waited and dreamed and the new crops grew and I took forty-six men east and north to where Haesten had found his lair.

  I would have liked three hundred men. I had been told many years before that one day I would lead armies across Britain, but to have an army a man must have land and the land I held was only large enough to keep a single crew of men fed and armed. I collected food-rents and I took customs dues from the merchants who used the Roman road that passed Æthelflaed’s estate, but that was scarcely a sufficient income and I could only lead forty-six men to Ceaster.

  That was a bleak place. To the west were the Welsh, while to the east and north were Danish lords who recognised no man as king unless it were themselves. The Romans had built a fort at Ceaster, and it was in the remnants of that stronghold that Haesten had taken refuge. There had been a time when Haesten’s name struck fear into every Saxon, but he was a shadow now, reduced to fewer than two hundred men, and even they were of dubious loyalty. He had begun the winter with over three hundred followers, but men expect their lord to provide more than food and ale. They want silver, they want gold, they want slaves, and so Haesten’s men had trickled away in search of other lords. They went to Sigurd or to Cnut, to the men who were gold-givers.

  Ceaster lay on the wild edge of Mercia and I found Æthelred’s troops some three miles to the south of Haesten’s fort. There were just over one hundred and fifty men whose job was to watch Haesten and keep him weak by harassing his foragers. They were commanded by a youngster called Merewalh, who seemed pleased by my arrival. ‘Have you come to kill the sorry bastard, lord?’ he asked me.

  ‘Only to look at him,’ I said.

  In truth I was there to be looked at, though I dared not tell anyone my whole purpose. I wanted the Danes to know I was at Ceaster, and so I paraded my men south of the old Roman fort and flaunted my wolf’s head banner. I rode in my best mail, polished to a high shine by my servant Oswi, and I went close enough to the old walls for one of Haesten’s men to try his luck with a hunting arrow. I saw the feather flickering in the air and watched as the small shaft thumped into the turf a few paces from my horse’s hooves.

  ‘He can’t defend all those walls,’ Merewalh said wistfully.

  He was right. The Roman fort at Ceaster was a vast place, almost a town in itself, and Haesten’s few men could never garrison the whole stretch of its decrepit ramparts. Merewalh and I might have combined our forces and attacked at night and maybe we would have found an undefended stretch of wall and then fought a bitter battle in the streets, but our numbers were too equal with Haesten’s to risk such an assault. We would have lost men in defeating an enemy who was already defeated, and so I contented myself with letting Haesten know I had come to taunt him. He had to hate me. Just a year before he had been the greatest power among all the Northmen, now he was cowering like a beaten fox in his den and I had reduced him to that plight. But he was a cunning fox and I knew he would be thinking how he might regain his power.

  The old fort was built inside a great curve of the River Dee. Immediately outside its southern walls were the ruins of an immense stone building that had once been an arena where, so Merewalh’s priest told me, Christians had been fed to wild beasts. Some things are just too good to be true and so I was not sure I believed him. The remnants of the arena would have made a splendid stronghold for a force as small as Haesten’s, but instead he had chosen to concentrate his men at the northern end of the fort where the river lay closest to the walls. He had two small ships there, nothing more than old trading boats, which, because they were obviously leaky, were half pulled onto the bank. If he were attacked and cut off from the bridge then those ships were his escape across the Dee and into the wild lands beyond.

  Merewalh was puzzled by my behaviour. ‘Are you trying to tempt him into a fight?’ he asked me the third day that I rode close to the old ramparts.

  ‘He won’t want a fight,’ I said, ‘but I want him to come out and meet us. And he will, he won’t be able to resist.’ I had paused on the Roman road that ran straight as a spear shaft to the double-arched gate that led into the fort. That gate was now blocked with vast baulks of timber. ‘You know I saved his life once?’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘There are times,’ I said, ‘when I think I’m a fool. I should have killed him the first time I saw him.’

  ‘Kill him now, lord,’ Merewalh suggested, because Haesten had just appeared from the fort’s western gate and now came slowly towards us. He had three men with him, all mounted. They paused at the fort’s south-western corner, between the walls and the ruined arena, then Haesten held out both hands to show he only wanted to talk. I turned my horse and spurred towards him, but took care to stop well out of bowshot of the ramparts. I took only Merewalh with me, leaving the rest of our troops to watch from a distance.

  Haesten came grinning as though this meeting was a rare delight. He had not changed much, except he now had a beard that was grey, though his thick hair was still fair. His face was misleadingly open, full
of charm, with amused bright eyes. He wore a dozen arm rings and, though the spring day was warm, a cloak of seal-skin. Haesten always liked to look prosperous. Men will not follow a poor lord, let alone an ungenerous one, and so long as he had hopes of recovering his wealth he had to appear confident. He also appeared overjoyed to meet me. ‘Lord Uhtred!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Jarl Haesten,’ I said, making the title as sour as I could, ‘weren’t you supposed to be King of Wessex by now?’

  ‘The pleasure of that throne is delayed,’ he said, ‘but for now let me welcome you to my present kingdom.’

  I laughed at that, as he had meant me to. ‘Your kingdom?’

  He swept an arm around the bleak low valley of the Dee. ‘No other man calls himself king here, so why not me?’

  ‘This is Lord Æthelred’s land,’ I said.

  ‘And Lord Æthelred is so generous with his possessions,’ Haesten said, ‘even, I hear, with his wife’s favours.’

  Merewalh stirred beside me and I held up a cautionary hand. ‘The Jarl Haesten jests,’ I said.

  ‘Of course I jest,’ Haesten said, not smiling.

  ‘This is Merewalh,’ I said, introducing my one companion, ‘and he serves the Lord Æthelred. He might find favour with my cousin by killing you.’

  ‘He’d gain a great deal more favour by killing you,’ Haesten said shrewdly.

  ‘True,’ I allowed, and looked at Merewalh. ‘You want to kill me?’

  ‘Lord!’ he said, shocked.

  ‘My Lord Æthelred,’ I said to Haesten, ‘wishes you to leave his land. He has enough dung without you.’

  ‘Lord Æthelred,’ Haesten said, ‘is most welcome to come and drive me away.’

  This was all as meaningless as it was expected. Haesten had not left the fort to listen to a string of threats, but because he wanted to know what my presence meant. ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘the Lord Æthelred has sent me to drive you away?’

  ‘And when did you last do his bidding?’ Haesten asked.

  ‘Perhaps his wife wants you driven away,’ I said.

  ‘She’d rather I were dead, I think.’