Sword Song: The Battle for London

by Bernard Cornwell

  He shrugged as if to tell me he did not understand the decision. “Ordered me to come here,” he said, “but when I arrived he wouldn’t see me. He was sick.”

  “Something serious, I hope?”

  A half-smile flickered and died on Egbert’s face. “He was vomiting, I’m told. Probably nothing.”

  My cousin had taken the palace at the top of Lundene’s hill as his quarters, while I stayed in the Roman house by the river. I liked it. I have always liked Roman buildings because their walls possess the great virtue of keeping out wind, rain, and snow. That house was large. You entered through an arch leading from the street into a courtyard surrounded by a pillared arcade. On three sides of the courtyard were small rooms that must have been used by servants or for storage. One was a kitchen and had a brick bread oven so large that you could bake enough loaves to feed three crews at one time. The courtyard’s fourth side led into six rooms, two of them big enough to assemble my whole bodyguard. Beyond those two big rooms was a paved terrace that overlooked the river and at evening time that was a pleasant place, though at low tide the stench of the Temes could be overwhelming.

  I could have gone back to Coccham, but I stayed anyway and the men of Berrocscire’s fyrd also stayed, though they were unhappy because it was springtime and there was work to do on their farms. I kept them in Lundene to strengthen the city’s walls. I would have gone home if I thought Æthelred would have done that work, but he seemed blithely unaware of the sad state of the city’s defenses. Sigefrid had patched a few places and he had strengthened the gates, but there was still much to do. The old masonry was crumbling and had even fallen into the outer ditch in places, and my men cut and trimmed trees to make new palisades wherever the wall was weak. Then we cleared the ditch outside the wall, scraping out matted filth and planting sharpened stakes to welcome any attacker.

  Alfred sent orders that the whole of the old city was to be rebuilt. Any Roman building in good repair was to be kept, while dilapidated ruins were to be pulled down and replaced with sturdy timber and thatch, but there were neither the men nor the funds to attempt such work. Alfred’s idea was that the Saxons of the undefended new town would move into old Lundene and be safe behind its ramparts, but those Saxons still feared the ghosts of the Roman builders and they stubbornly resisted every invitation to take over the deserted properties. My men of the Berrocscire fyrd were just as frightened of the ghosts, but they were still more frightened of me and so they stayed and worked.

  Æthelred took no notice of what I did. His sickness must have passed for he busied himself hunting. Every day he rode to the wooded hills north of the city where he pursued deer. He never took fewer than forty men, for there was always a chance that some marauding Danish band might come close to Lundene. There were many of those bands, but fate decreed that none went near Æthelred. Every day I would see horsemen to the east, picking their way through the desolate dark marshes that lay seaward of the city. They were Danes, watching us, and doubtless reporting back to Sigefrid.

  I got news of Sigefrid. He lived, the reports said, though he was so crippled by his wound that he could neither walk nor stand. He had taken refuge at Beamfleot with his brother and with Haesten, and from there they sent raiders into the mouth of the Temes. Saxon ships dared not sail to Frankia, for the Northmen were in a vengeful mood after their defeat in Lundene. One Danish ship, dragon-prowed, even rowed up the Temes to taunt us from the churning water just below the gap in the broken bridge. They had Saxon prisoners aboard and the Danes killed them, one by one, making sure we could see the bloody executions. There were also women captives aboard and we could hear them screaming. I sent Finan and a dozen men to the bridge and they carried a clay pot of fire, and once on the bridge they used hunting bows to shoot fire-arrows at the intruder. All shipmasters fear fire, and the arrows, most of which missed altogether, persuaded them to drop downriver until the arrows could no longer reach them, but they did not go far and their oarsmen held the ship against the current as more prisoners were killed. They did not leave until I had assembled a crew to man one of the captured boats tied at the wharves, and only then did they turn and row downriver into the darkening evening.

  Other ships from Beamfleot crossed the wide estuary of the Temes and landed men in Wessex. That part of Wessex was an alien place. It had once been the kingdom of Cent until it was conquered by the West Saxons and, though the men of Cent were Saxons, they spoke in a strange accent. It had always been a wild place, close to the other lands across the sea, and ever liable to be raided by Vikings. Now Sigefrid’s men launched ship after ship across the estuary and pillaged deep into Cent. They took slaves and burned villages. A messenger came from Swithwulf, Bishop of Hrofeceastre, to beg for my help. “The heathen were at Contwaraburg,” the messenger, a young priest, told me gloomily.

  “Did they kill the archbishop?” I asked cheerfully.

  “He was not there, lord, thank God.” The priest made the sign of the cross. “The pagans are everywhere, lord, and no one is safe. Bishop Swithwulf begs your help.”

  But I could not help the bishop. I needed men to guard Lundene, not Cent, and I needed men to guard my family too for, a week after the city’s fall, Gisela, Stiorra, and a half-dozen maids arrived. I had sent Finan and thirty men to escort them safely down the river and the house by the Temes seemed to grow warmer with the echoes of women’s laughter. “You might have swept the house,” Gisela chided me.

  “I did!”

  “Ha!” she pointed to a ceiling, “what are those?”

  “Cobwebs,” I said, “they’re holding the beams in place.”

  The cobwebs were swept away and the kitchen fires were lit. In the courtyard, under a corner where the tiled arcade roofs met, there was an old stone urn that was choked with rubbish. Gisela cleaned the filth out, then she and two maids scrubbed the outside of the urn to reveal white marble carved with delicate women who appeared to be chasing each other and waving harps. Gisela loved those carvings. She crouched beside them, tracing a finger over the hair of the Roman women, and then she and the maids tried to copy the hairstyle. She loved the house too, and even endured the river’s stench to sit on the terrace in the evening and watch the water slide by. “He beats her,” she told me one evening.

  I knew of whom she spoke and said nothing.

  “She’s bruised,” Gisela said, “and she’s pregnant, and he beats her.”

  “She’s what?” I asked in surprise.

  “Æthelflaed,” Gisela said patiently, “is pregnant.” Almost every day Gisela went to the palace and spent time with Æthelflaed, though Æthelflaed was never allowed to visit our house.

  I was surprised by Gisela’s news of Æthelflaed’s pregnancy. I do not know why I should have been surprised, but I was. I suppose I still thought of Æthelflaed as a child. “And he hits her?” I asked.

  “Because he thinks she loves other men,” Gisela said.

  “Does she?”

  “No, of course she doesn’t, but he fears she does.” Gisela paused to gather more wool that she was spinning onto a distaff. “He thinks she loves you.”

  I thought of Æthelred’s sudden anger on Lundene’s bridge. “He’s mad!” I said.

  “No, he’s jealous,” Gisela said, laying a hand on my arm. “And I know he has nothing to be jealous about.” She smiled at me, then went back to gathering her wool. “It’s a strange way to show love, isn’t it?”

  Æthelflaed had come to the city the day after it fell. She traveled by boat to the Saxon town, and from there an ox cart had carried her across the Fleot and so up to her husband’s new palace. Men lined the route waving leafy green boughs, a priest walked ahead of the oxen scattering holy water while a choir of women followed the cart, which, like the oxen’s horns, was hung with spring flowers. Æthelflaed, clutching the cart’s side to steady herself, had looked uncomfortable, but she had given me a wan smile as the oxen dragged her over the uneven stones inside the gate.

  Æthelflaed’s
arrival was celebrated by a feast in the palace. I am certain Æthelred had not wanted to invite me, but my rank had given him little choice and a grudging message had arrived on the afternoon before the celebration. The feast had been nothing special, though the ale was plentiful enough. A dozen priests shared the top table with Æthelred and Æthelflaed, and I was given a stool at the end of that long board. Æthelred glowered at me, the priests ignored me, and I left early, pleading that I had to walk the walls and make certain the sentries were awake. I remember my cousin had looked pale that night, but it was soon after his vomiting fit. I had asked after his health and he had waved the question away as though it were irrelevant.

  Gisela and Æthelflaed became friends in Lundene. I repaired the wall and Æthelred hunted while his men plundered the city for his palace’s furnishings. I went home one day to find six of his followers in the courtyard of my house. Egbert, the man who had given me the troops on the eve of the attack, was one of the six and his face showed no expression as I came into the courtyard. He just watched me. “What do you want?” I asked the six men. Five were in mail and had swords, the sixth wore a finely embroidered jerkin that showed hounds chasing deer. That sixth man also wore a silver chain, a sign of noble rank. It was Aldhelm, my cousin’s friend and the commander of his household troops.

  “This,” Aldhelm answered. He was standing by the urn that Gisela had cleaned. It served now to catch rainwater that fell from the roof, and that water was sweet and clean-tasting, a rarity in any city.

  “Two hundred silver shillings,” I told Aldhelm, “and it’s yours.”

  He sneered at that. The price was outrageous. The four younger men had succeeded in tipping the urn so that its water had flowed out and now they were struggling to right it again, though they had stopped their efforts when I appeared.

  Gisela came from the main house and smiled at me. “I told them they couldn’t have it,” she said.

  “Lord Æthelred wants it,” Aldhelm insisted.

  “You’re called Aldhelm,” I said, “just Aldhelm, and I am Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg, and you call me ‘Lord.’”

  “Not this one,” Gisela spoke silkily. “He called me an interfering bitch.”

  My men, there were four of them, moved to my side and put hands on sword hilts. I gestured for them to step back and unbuckled my own sword belt. “Did you call my wife a bitch?” I asked Aldhelm.

  “My lord requires this statue,” he said, ignoring my question.

  “You will apologize to my wife,” I told him, “and then to me.” I laid the belt with its two heavy swords on the flagstones.

  He pointedly turned away from me. “Leave it on its side,” he told the four men, “and roll it out to the street.”

  “I want two apologies,” I said.

  He heard the menace in my voice and turned back to me, alarmed now. “This house,” Aldhelm explained, “belongs to the Lord Æthelred. If you live here it is by his gracious permission.” He became even more alarmed as I drew closer. “Egbert!” he said loudly, but Egbert’s only response was a calming motion with his right hand, a signal that his men should keep their swords scabbarded. Egbert knew that if a single blade left its long scabbard there would be a fight between his men and mine, and he had the sense to avoid that slaughter, but Aldhelm had no such sense. “You impertinent bastard,” he said, and snatched a knife from a sheath at his waist and lunged it at my belly.

  I broke Aldhelm’s jaw, his nose, both his hands, and maybe a couple of his ribs before Egbert hauled me away. When Aldhelm apologized to Gisela he did so while spitting teeth through bubbling blood, and the urn stayed in our courtyard. I gave his knife to the girls who worked in the kitchen, where it proved useful for cutting onions.

  And the next day, Alfred came.

  The king came silently, his ship arriving at a wharf upstream of the broken bridge. The Haligast waited for a river trader to pull away, then ghosted in on short, efficient oar strokes. Alfred, accompanied by a score of priests and monks, and guarded by six mailed men, came ashore unheralded and unannounced. He threaded the goods stacked on the wharf, stepped over a drunken man sleeping in the shade, and ducked through the small gate in the wall leading to a merchant’s courtyard.

  I heard he went to the palace. Æthelred was not there, he was hunting again, but the king went to his daughter’s chamber and stayed there a long time. Afterward he walked back down the hill and, still with his priestly entourage, came to our house. I was with one of the groups making repairs to the walls, but Gisela had been warned of Alfred’s presence in Lundene and, suspecting he might come to our house, had prepared a meal of bread, ale, cheese, and boiled lentils. She offered no meat, for Alfred would not touch flesh. His stomach was tender and his bowels in perpetual torment and he had somehow persuaded himself that meat was an abomination.

  Gisela had sent a servant to warn me of the king’s arrival, yet even so I arrived at the house long after Alfred to find my elegant courtyard black with priests, among whom was Father Pyrlig and, next to him, Osferth, who was once again dressed in monkish robes. Osferth gave me a sour look, as if blaming me for his return to the church, while Pyrlig embraced me. “Æthelred said nothing of you in his report to the king,” he murmured those words, gusting ale-smelling breath over my face.

  “We weren’t here when the city fell?” I asked.

  “Not according to your cousin,” Pyrlig said, then chuckled. “But I told Alfred the truth. Go on, he’s waiting for you.”

  Alfred was on the river terrace. His guards stood behind him, lined against the house, while the king was seated on a wooden chair. I paused in the doorway, surprised because Alfred’s face, usually so pallid and solemn, had an animated look. He was even smiling. Gisela was seated next to him and the king was leaning forward, talking, and Gisela, whose back was to me, was listening. I stayed where I was, watching that rarest of sights, Alfred happy. He tapped a long white finger on her knee once to stress some point. There was nothing untoward in the gesture, except it was so unlike him.

  But then, of course, maybe it was very like him. Alfred had been a famous womanizer before he was caught in the snare of Christianity, and Osferth was a product of that early princely lust. Alfred liked pretty women, and it was obvious he liked Gisela. I heard her laugh suddenly and Alfred, flattered by her amusement, smiled shyly. He seemed not to mind that she was no Christian and that she wore a pagan amulet about her neck, he was simply happy to be in her company and I was tempted to leave them alone. I had never seen him happy in the company of Ælswith, his weasel-tongued, stoat-faced, shrike-voiced wife. Then he happened to glance over Gisela’s shoulder and saw me.

  His face changed immediately. He stiffened, sat upright, and reluctantly beckoned me forward.

  I picked up a stool that our daughter used and heard a hiss as Alfred’s guards drew swords. Alfred waved the blades down, sensible enough to know that if I had wanted to attack him then I would hardly use a three-legged milking stool. He watched as I gave my swords to one of the guards, a mark of respect, then as I carried the stool across the terrace flagstones. “Lord Uhtred,” he greeted me coldly.

  “Welcome to our house, lord King.” I gave him a bow, then sat with my back to the river.

  He was silent for a moment. He was wearing a brown cloak that was drawn tight around his thin body. A silver cross hung at his neck, while on his thinning hair was a circlet of bronze, which surprised me, for he rarely wore symbols of kingship, thinking them vain baubles, but he must have decided that Lundene needed to see a king. He sensed my surprise for he clawed the circlet off his head. “I had hoped,” he said coldly, “that the Saxons of the new town would have abandoned their houses. That they would live here instead. They could be protected here by the walls! Why won’t they move?”

  “They fear the ghosts, lord,” I said.

  “And you do not?”

  I thought for a while. “Yes,” I said after thinking about my answer.

  “Yet you live he
re?” he waved at the house.

  “We propitiate the spirits, lord,” Gisela explained softly and, when the king raised an eyebrow, she told how we placed food and drink in the courtyard to greet any ghosts who came to our house.

  Alfred rubbed his eyes. “It might be better,” he said, “if our priests exorcise the streets. Prayer and holy water! We shall drive the ghosts away.”

  “Or let me take three hundred men to sack the new town,” I suggested. “Burn their houses, lord, and they’ll have to live in the old city.”

  A half-smile flickered on his face, gone as quickly as it had showed. “It is hard to force obedience,” he said, “without encouraging resentment. I sometimes think the only true authority I have is over my family, and even then I wonder! If I release you with sword and spear onto the new town, Lord Uhtred, then they will learn to hate you. Lundene must be obedient, but it must also be a bastion of Christian Saxons, and if they hate us then they will welcome a return of the Danes, who left them in peace.” He shook his head abruptly. “We shall leave them in peace, but don’t build them a palisade. Let them come into the old city of their own accord. Now, forgive me,” those last two words were to Gisela, “but we must speak of still darker things.”

  Alfred gestured to a guard who pushed open the door from the terrace. Father Beocca appeared and with him a second priest; a black-haired, pouchy-faced, scowling creature called Father Erkenwald. He hated me. He had once tried to have me killed by accusing me of piracy and, though his accusations had been entirely true, I had slipped away from his bad-tempered clutches. He gave me a sour look while Beocca offered a solemn nod, then both men stared attentively at Alfred.

  “Tell me,” Alfred said, looking at me, “what Sigefrid, Haesten, and Erik do now?”

  “They’re at Beamfleot, lord,” I said, “strengthening their camp. They have thirty-two ships, and men enough to crew them.”

  “You’ve seen this place?” Father Erkenwald demanded. The two priests, I knew, had been fetched onto the terrace to serve as witnesses to this conversation. Alfred, ever careful, liked to have a record, either written or memorized, of all such discussions.