The Last Kingdom sc-1

by Bernard Cornwell

  “You are sons of Lothbrok?” Alfred continued.

  “Indeed,” the interpreter answered.

  “And you have a brother? Halfdan?”

  “Tell the bastard to shove his writing up his arse,” Ivar snarled, “and to shove the quill up after it, and then the ink until he shits black feathers.”

  “My lord says we are not here to discuss family,” the interpreter said suavely, “but to decide your fate.”

  “And to decide yours,” Burghred spoke for the first time.

  “Our fate?” Ivar retorted, making the Mercian king quail from the force of his skull gaze. “Our fate is to water the fields of Mercia with your blood, dung the soil with your flesh, pave it with your bones, and rid it of your filthy stink.”

  The discussion carried on like that for a long time, both sides threatening, neither yielding, but it had been the English who called for the meeting and the English who wanted to make peace and so the terms were slowly hammered out. It took two days, and most of us who were listening became bored and lay on the grass in the sunlight. Both sides ate in the field, and it was during one such meal that Beocca cautiously came across to the Danish side and greeted me warily. “You’re getting tall, Uhtred,” he said.

  “It is good to see you, father,” I answered dutifully. Ragnar was watching, but without any sign of worry on his face.

  “You’re still a prisoner, then?” Beocca asked.

  “I am,” I lied.

  He looked at my two silver arm rings which, being too big for me, rattled at my wrist. “A privileged prisoner,” he said wryly.

  “They know I am an ealdorman,” I said.

  “Which you are, God knows, though your uncle denies it.”

  “I have heard nothing of him,” I said truthfully.

  Beocca shrugged. “He holds Bebbanburg. He married your father’s wife and now she is pregnant.”

  “Gytha!” I was surprised. “Pregnant?”

  “They want a son,” Beocca said, “and if they have one…” He did not finish the thought, nor did he need to. I was the ealdorman, and Ælfric had usurped my place, yet I was still his heir and would be until he had a son. “The child must be born any day now,” Beocca said, “but you need not worry.” He smiled and leaned toward me so he could speak in a conspiratorial whisper. “I brought the parchments.”

  I looked at him with utter incomprehension. “You brought the parchments?”

  “Your father’s will! The land charters!” He was shocked that I did not immediately understand what he had done. “I have the proof that you are the ealdorman!”

  “I am the ealdorman,” I said, as if proof did not matter. “And always will be.”

  “Not if Ælfric has his way,” Beocca said, “and if he has a son then he will want the boy to inherit.”

  “Gytha’s children always die,” I said.

  “You must pray that every child lives,” Beocca said crossly, “but you are still the ealdorman. I owe that to your father, God rest his soul.”

  “So you abandoned my uncle?” I asked.

  “Yes, I did!” he said eagerly, plainly proud that he had fled Bebbanburg. “I am English,” he went on, his crossed eyes blinking in the sun, “so I came south, Uhtred, to find Englishmen willing to fight the pagans, Englishmen able to do God’s will, and I found them in Wessex. They are good men, godly men, stalwart men!”

  “Ælfric doesn’t fight the Danes?” I asked. I knew he did not, but I wanted to hear it confirmed.

  “Your uncle wants no trouble,” Beocca said, “and so the pagans thrive in Northumbria and the light of our Lord Jesus Christ grows dimmer every day.” He put his hands together as if in prayer, his palsied left hand quivering against his inkstained right. “And it is not just Ælfric who succumbs. Ricsig of Dunholm gives them feasts, Egbert sits on their throne, and for that betrayal there must be weeping in heaven. It must be stopped, Uhtred, and I went to Wessex because the king is a godly man and knows it is only with God’s help that we can defeat the pagans. I shall see if Wessex is willing to ransom you.” That last sentence took me by surprise so that instead of looking pleased I looked puzzled, and Beocca frowned.

  “You didn’t hear me?” he asked.

  “You want to ransom me?”

  “Of course! You are noble, Uhtred, and you must be rescued! Alfred can be generous about such things.”

  “I would like that,” I said, knowing it was what I was supposed to say. “You should meet Alfred,” he said enthusiastically. “You’ll enjoy that!”

  I had no wish to meet Alfred, certainly not after listening to him whimper about a servant girl he had humped, but Beocca was insistent and so I went to Ragnar and asked his permission. Ragnar was amused. “Why does the squinty bastard want you to meet Alfred?” he asked, looking at Beocca.

  “He wants me to be ransomed. He thinks Alfred might pay.”

  “Pay good money for you!” Ragnar laughed. “Go on,” he said carelessly, “it never hurts to see the enemy close up.”

  Alfred was with his brother, some distance away, and Beocca talked to me as he led me toward the royal group. “Alfred is his brother’s chief helper,” he explained. “King Æthelred is a good man, but nervous. He has sons, of course, but both are very young…” His voice trailed away.

  “So if he dies,” I said, “the eldest son becomes king?”

  “No, no!” Beocca sounded shocked. “Æthelwold’s much too young. He’s no older than you!”

  “But he’s the king’s son,” I insisted.

  “When Alfred was a small boy,” Beocca leaned down and lowered his voice, though not its intensity,

  “his father took him to Rome. To see the pope! And the pope, Uhtred, invested him as the future king!”

  He stared at me as if he had proved his point.

  “But he’s not the heir,” I said, puzzled.

  “The pope made him heir!” Beocca hissed at me. Later, much later, I met a priest who had been in the old king’s entourage and he said Alfred had never been invested as the future king, but instead had been given some meaningless Roman honor, but Alfred, to his dying day, insisted the pope had conferred the succession on him, and so justified his usurpation of the throne that by rights should have gone to Æthelred’s eldest son.

  “But if Æthelwold grows up,” I began.

  “Then of course he might become king,” Beocca interrupted me impatiently, “but if his father dies before Æthelwold grows up then Alfred will be king.”

  “Then Alfred will have to kill him,” I said, “him and his brother.”

  Beocca gazed at me in shocked amazement. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “He has to kill them,” I said, “just like my uncle wanted to kill me.”

  “He did want to kill you. He probably still does!” Beocca made the sign of the cross. “But Alfred is not Ælfric! No, no. Alfred will treat his nephews with Christian mercy, of course he will, which is another reason he should become king. He is a good Christian, Uhtred, as I pray you are, and it is God’s will that Alfred should become king. The pope proved that! And we have to obey God’s will. It is only by obedience to God that we can hope to defeat the Danes.”

  “Only by obedience?” I asked. I thought swords might help.

  “Only by obedience,” Beocca said firmly, “and by faith. God will give us victory if we worship him with all our hearts, and if we mend our ways and give him the glory. And Alfred will do that! With him at our head the very hosts of heaven will come to our aid. Æthelwold can’t do that. He’s a lazy, arrogant, tiresome child.” Beocca seized my hand and pulled me through the entourage of West Saxon and Mercian lords. “Now remember to kneel to him, boy, he is a prince.” He led me to where Alfred was sitting and I duly knelt as Beocca introduced me. “This is the boy I spoke of, lord,” he said. “He is the ealdorman Uhtred of Northumbria, a prisoner of the Danes since Eoferwic fell, but a good boy.”

  Alfred gave me an intense look that, to be honest, made me unco
mfortable. I was to discover in time that he was a clever man, very clever, and thought twice as fast as most others, and he was also a serious man, so serious that he understood everything except jokes. Alfred took everything heavily, even a small boy, and his inspection of me was long and searching as if he tried to plumb the depths of my unfledged soul. “Are you a good boy?” he finally asked me.

  “I try to be, lord,” I said.

  “Look at me,” he ordered, for I had lowered my eyes. He smiled when I met his gaze. There was no sign of the sickness he had complained of when I eavesdropped on him and I wondered if, after all, he had been drunk that night. It would have explained his pathetic words, but now he was all earnestness.

  “How do you try to be good?” he asked.

  “I try to resist temptation, lord,” I said, remembering Beocca’s words to him behind the tent.

  “That’s good,” he said, “very good, and do you resist it?”

  “Not always,” I said, then hesitated, tempted to mischief, and then, as ever, yielded to temptation. “But I try, lord,” I said earnestly, “and I tell myself I should thank God for tempting me and I praise him when he gives me the strength to resist the temptation.”

  Both Beocca and Alfred stared at me as if I had sprouted angel’s wings. I was only repeating the nonsense I had heard Beocca advise Alfred in the dark, but they thought it revealed my great holiness, and I encouraged them by trying to look meek, innocent, and pious. “You are a sign from God, Uhtred,”

  Alfred said fervently. “Do you say your prayers?”

  “Every day, lord,” I said, and did not add that those prayers were addressed to Odin.

  “And what is that about your neck? A crucifix?” He had seen the leather thong and, when I did not answer, he leaned forward and plucked out Thor’s hammer that had been hidden behind my shirt. “Dear God,” he said, and made the sign of the cross. “And you wear those, too,” he added, grimacing at my two arm rings that were cut with Danish rune letters. I must have looked a proper little heathen.

  “They make me wear them, lord,” I said, and felt his impulse to tear the pagan symbol off the thong,

  “and beat me if I don’t,” I added hastily.

  “Do they beat you often?” he asked.

  “All the time, lord,” I lied.

  He shook his head sadly, then let the hammer fall. “A graven image,” he said, “must be a heavy burden for a small boy.”

  “I was hoping, lord,” Beocca intervened, “that we could ransom him.”

  “Us?” Alfred asked. “Ransom him?”

  “He is the true ealdorman of Bebbanburg,” Beocca explained, “though his uncle has taken the title, but the uncle will not fight the Danes.”

  Alfred gazed at me, thinking, then frowned. “Can you read, Uhtred?” he asked.

  “He has begun his lessons,” Beocca answered for me. “I taught him, lord, though in all honesty he was ever a reluctant pupil. Not good with his letters, I fear. His thorns were prickly and his ashes spindly.”

  I said that Alfred did not understand jokes, but he loved that one, even though it was feeble as watered milk and stale as old cheese. But it was beloved of all who taught reading, and both Beocca and Alfred laughed as though the jest were fresh as dew at sunrise. The thorn, , and the ash,æ, were two letters of our alphabet. “His thorns are prickly,” Alfred echoed, almost incoherent with laughter, “and his ashes spindly. Hisb ’s don’t buzz and hisi ’s—” He stopped, suddenly embarrassed. He had been about to say myi ’s were crossed, then he remembered Beocca and he looked contrite. “My dear Beocca.”

  “No offense, my lord, no offense.” Beocca was still happy, as happy as when he was immersed in some tedious text about how Saint Cuthbert baptized puffins or preached the gospel to the seals. He had tried to make me read that stuff, but I had never got beyond the shortest words.

  “You are fortunate to have started your studies early,” Alfred said to me, recovering his seriousness. “I was not given a chance to read until I was twelve years old!” His tone suggested I should be shocked and surprised by this news so I dutifully looked appalled. “That was grievously wrong of my father and stepmother,” Alfred went on sternly. “They should have started me much earlier.”

  “Yet now you read as well as any scholar, my lord,” Beocca said.

  “I do try,” Alfred said modestly, but he was plainly delighted with the compliment.

  “And in Latin, too!” Beocca said. “And his Latin is much better than mine!”

  “I think that’s true,” Alfred said, giving the priest a smile.

  “And he writes a clear hand,” Beocca told me, “such a clear, fine hand!”

  “As must you,” Alfred told me firmly, “to which end, young Uhtred, we shall indeed offer to ransom you, and if God helps us in that endeavor then you shall serve in my household and the first thing you will do is become a master of reading and writing. You’ll like that!”

  “I will, lord,” I said, meaning it to sound as a question, though it came out as dull agreement.

  “You will learn to read well,” Alfred promised me, “and learn to pray well, and learn to be a good honest Christian, and when you are of age you can decide what to be!”

  “I will want to serve you, lord,” I lied, thinking that he was a pale, boring, priestridden weakling.

  “That is commendable,” he said, “and how will you serve me, do you think?”

  “As a soldier, lord, to fight the Danes.”

  “If God wishes it,” he said, evidently disappointed in my answer, “and God knows we shall need soldiers, though I pray daily that the Danes will come to a knowledge of Christ and so discover their sins and be led to end their wicked ways. Prayer is the answer,” he said vehemently, “prayer and fasting and obedience, and if God answers our prayers, Uhtred, then we shall need no soldiers, but a kingdom always has need of good priests. I wanted that office for myself, but God disposed otherwise. There is no higher calling than the priestly service. I might be a prince, but in God’s eyes I am a worm while Beocca is a jewel beyond price!”

  “Yes, lord,” I said, for want of anything else to say. Beocca tried to look modest. Alfred leaned forward, hid Thor’s hammer behind my shirt, then laid a hand on my head. “God’s blessing on you, child,” he said, “and may his face shine upon you and release you from your thralldom and bring you into the blessed light of freedom.”

  “Amen,” I said.

  They let me go then and I went back to Ragnar. “Hit me,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Thump me round the head.”

  He glanced up and saw that Alfred was still watching me, so he cuffed me harder than I expected. I fell down, grinning. “So why did I just do that?” Ragnar asked.

  “Because I said you were cruel to me,” I said, “and beat me constantly.” I knew that would amuse Ragnar and it did. He hit me again, just for luck. “So what did the bastards want?” he asked.

  “They want to ransom me,” I said, “so they can teach me to read and write, and then make me into a priest.”

  “A priest? Like the squinty little bastard with the red hair?”

  “Just like him.”

  Ragnar laughed. “Maybe I should ransom you. It would be a punishment for telling lies about me.”

  “Please don’t,” I said fervently, and at that moment I wondered why I had ever wanted to go back to the English side. To exchange Ragnar’s freedom for Alfred’s earnest piety seemed a miserable fate to me. Besides, I was learning to despise the English. They would not fight, they prayed instead of sharpening their swords, and it was no wonder the Danes were taking their land. Alfred did offer to ransom me, but balked at Ragnar’s price that was ludicrously high, though not nearly so steep as the price Ivar and Ubba extracted from Burghred. Mercia was to be swallowed. Burghred had no fire in his big belly, no desire to go on fighting the Danes who got stronger as he grew weaker. Perhaps he was fooled by all those shields on Snotengaham’s walls, but he
must have decided he could not beat the Danes and instead he surrendered. It was not just our forces in Snotengaham that persuaded him to do this. Other Danes were raiding across the Northumbrian border, ravaging Mercian lands, burning churches, slaughtering monks and nuns, and those horsemen were now close to Burghred’s army and were forever harassing his forage parties, and so Burghred, weary of unending defeat, weakly agreed to every outrageous demand, and in return he was allowed to stay as King of Mercia, but that was all. The Danes were to take his fortresses and garrison them, and they were free to take Mercian estates as they wished, and Burghred’s fyrd was to fight for the Danes if they demanded it, and Burghred, moreover, was to pay a vast price in silver for this privilege of losing his kingdom while keeping his throne. Æthelred and Alfred, having no part to play in the discussions, and seeing that their ally had collapsed like a pricked bladder, left on the second day, riding south with what remained of their army, and thus Mercia fell. First Northumbria, then Mercia. In just two years half of England was gone and the Danes were only just beginning.

  We ravaged the land again. Bands of Danes rode into every part of Mercia and slaughtered whoever resisted, took whatever they wished, then garrisoned the principal fortresses before sending messages to Denmark for more ships to come: more ships, more men, more families, and more Danes to fill the great land that had fallen into their laps.

  I had begun to think I would never fight for England because by the time I was old enough to fight there would be no England. So I decided I would be a Dane. Of course I was confused, but I did not spend much time worrying about my confusion. Instead, as I approached twelve years old, I began my proper education. I was made to stand for hours holding a sword and shield stretched out in front of me until my arms ached, I was taught the strokes of the blade, made to practice with throwing spears, and given a pig to slaughter with a war spear. I learned to fend with a shield, how to drop it to stop the lunge beneath the rim, and how to shove the heavy shield boss into an enemy’s face to smash his nose and blind him with tears. I learned to pull an oar. I grew, put on muscle, began to speak in a man’s voice, and was slapped by my first girl. I looked like a Dane. Strangers still mistook me for Ragnar’s son for I had the same fair hair that I wore long and tied with a strip of leather at the nape of my neck, and Ragnar was pleased when that happened though he made it plain that I would not replace Ragnar the Younger or Rorik. “If Rorik lives,” he said sadly, for Rorik was still sickly, “you will have to fight for your inheritance,” and so I learned to fight and, that winter, to kill.