The Last Kingdom sc-1

by Bernard Cornwell

  “I shall lie, of course,” Alfred said. Ælswith blinked at him, but the bishop mumbled that the lie would be for God and so forgivable.

  I had no intention of going to Winburnan. That was not because I was suddenly avid to be a Dane, but it had everything to do with SerpentBreath. I loved that sword, and I had left it with Ragnar’s servants, and I wanted her back before my life took whatever path the spinners required of me and, to be sure, I had no wish to give up life with Ragnar for the scant joys of a monastery and a teacher. Brida, I knew, wished to go back to the Danes, and it was Alfred’s sensible insistence that we be removed from Ba um as soon as possible that gave us our opportunity.

  We were sent away the next morning, before dawn, going south into a hilly country and escorted by a dozen warriors who resented the job of taking two children deep into the heartland of Wessex. I was given a horse, Brida was provided with a mule, and a young priest called Willibald was officially put in charge of delivering Brida to a nunnery and me to Abbot Hewald. Father Willibald was a nice man with

  an easy smile and a kind manner. He could imitate bird calls and made us laugh by inventing a conversation between a quarrelsome fieldfare with its chackchack call and a soaring skylark, then he made us guess what birds he was imitating, and that entertainment, mixed in with some harmless riddles, took us to a settlement high above a softflowing river in the heavily wooded countryside. The soldiers insisted on stopping there because they said the horses needed a rest. “They really need ale,” Willibald told us, and shrugged as if it was understandable.

  It was a warm day. The horses were hobbled outside the hall, the soldiers got their ale, bread, and cheese, then sat in a circle and threw dice and grumbled, leaving us to Willibald’s supervision, but the young priest stretched out on a halfcollapsed haystack and fell asleep in the sunlight. I looked at Brida, she looked at me, and it was as simple as that. We crept along the side of the hall, circled an enormous dung heap, dodged through some pigs that rooted in a field, wriggled through a hedge, and then we were in woodland where we both started to laugh. “My mother insisted I call him uncle,” Brida said in her small voice, “and the nasty Danes killed him,” and we both thought that was the funniest thing we had ever heard, and then we came to our senses and hurried northward. It was a long time before the soldiers searched for us, and later they brought hunting dogs from the hall where they had purchased ale, but by then we had waded up a stream, changed direction again, found higher ground, and hidden ourselves. They did not find us, though all afternoon we could hear the hounds baying in the valley. They must have been searching the riverbank, thinking we had gone there, but we were safe and alone and high.

  They searched for two days, never coming close, and on the third day we saw Alfred’s royal cavalcade riding south on the road under the hill. The meeting at Ba um was over, and that meant the Danes were retreating to Readingum and neither of us had any idea how to reach Readingum, but we knew we had traveled west to reach Ba um, so that was a start, and we knew we had to find the river Temes, and our only two problems were food and the need to avoid being caught. That was a good time. We stole milk from the udders of cows and goats. We had no weapons, but we fashioned cudgels from fallen branches and used them to threaten some poor old man who was patiently digging a ditch and had a small sack with bread and pease pudding for his meal, and we stole that, and we caught fish with our hands, a trick that Brida taught me, and we lived in the woods. I wore my hammer amulet again. Brida had thrown away her wooden crucifix, but I kept the silver one for it was valuable.

  After a few days we began traveling by night. We were both frightened at first, for the night is when the sceadugengan stir from their hiding places, but we became good at traversing the darkness. We skirted farms, following the stars, and we learned how to move without noise, how to be shadows. One night something large and growling came close and we heard it shifting, pawing the ground, and we both beat at the leaf mold with our cudgels and yelped and the thing went away. A boar? Perhaps. Or perhaps one of the shapeless, nameless sceadugengan that curdle dreams. We had to cross a range of high, bare hills where we managed to steal a lamb before the shepherd’s dogs even knew we were there. We lit a fire in the woods north of the hills and cooked the meat, and the next night we found the river. We did not know what river, but it was wide, it flowed beneath deep trees, and nearby was a settlement where we saw a small round boat made of bent willow sticks covered with goatskin. That night we stole the boat and let it carry us downstream, past settlements, under bridges, ever going east.

  We did not know it, but the river was the Temes, and so we came safe to Readingum.

  Rorik had died. He had been sick for so long, but there were times when he had seemed to recover, but whatever illness carried him away had done so swiftly and Brida and I reached Readingum on the day that his body was burned. Ragnar, in tears, stood by the pyre and watched as the flames consumed his son. A sword, a bridle, a hammer amulet, and a model ship had been placed on the fire, and after it was done the melted metal was placed with the ashes in a great pot that Ragnar buried close to the Temes.

  “You are my second son now,” he told me that night, and then remembered Brida, “and you are my daughter.” He embraced us both, then got drunk. The next morning he wanted to ride out and kill West Saxons, but Ravn and Halfdan restrained him.

  The truce was holding. Brida and I had only been gone a little over three weeks and already the first silver was coming to Readingum, along with fodder and food. Alfred, it seemed, was a man of his word and Ragnar was a man of grief. “How will I tell Sigrid?” he wanted to know.

  “It is bad for a man to have only one son,” Ravn told me, “almost as bad as having none. I had three, but only Ragnar lives. Now only his eldest lives.” Ragnar the Younger was still in Ireland.

  “He can have another son,” Brida said.

  “Not from Sigrid,” Ravn said. “But he could take a second wife, I suppose. It is sometimes done.”

  Ragnar had given me back SerpentBreath, and another arm ring. He gave a ring to Brida too, and he took some consolation from the story of our escape. We had to tell it to Halfdan and to Guthrum the Unlucky, who stared at us darkeyed as we described the meal with Alfred, and Alfred’s plans to educate me, and even griefstricken Ragnar laughed when Brida retold the story of how she had claimed to be King Edmund’s bastard.

  “This Queen Ælswith,” Halfdan wanted to know, “what is she like?”

  “No queen,” I said. “The West Saxons won’t have queens.” Beocca had told me that. “She is merely the king’s wife.”

  “She is a weasel pretending to be a thrush,” Brida said.

  “Is she pretty?” Guthrum asked.

  “A pinched face,” Brida said, “and piggy eyes and a pursed mouth.”

  “He’ll get no joy there then,” Halfdan said. “Why did he marry her?”

  “Because she’s from Mercia,” Ravn said, “and Alfred would have Mercia on his side.”

  “Mercia belongs to us,” Halfdan growled.

  “But Alfred would take it back,” Ravn said, “and what we should do is send ships with rich gifts for the Britons. If they attack from Wales and Cornwalum then he must divide his army.”

  That was an unfortunate thing to say, for Halfdan still smarted from the memory of dividing his own army at Æsc’s Hill, and he just scowled into his ale. So far as I know he never did send gifts to the Britons, and it would have been a good idea if he had, but he was distracted by his failure to take Wessex, and there were rumors of unrest in both Northumbria and Mercia. The Danes had captured so much of England so quickly that they had never really subdued their conquest, nor did they hold all the fortresses in the conquered land and so revolts flared like heathland fires. They were easily put down, but untended they would spread and become dangerous. It was time, Halfdan said, to stamp on the fires and to cow the conquered English into terrified submission. Once that was done, once Northumbria, Mercia, and East Ang
lia were quiet, the attack on Wessex could be resumed. The last of Alfred’s silver came and the Danish army released the young hostages, including the Mercian twins, and the rest of us went back to Lundene. Ragnar dug up the pot with his younger son’s ashes and carried it downstream on Wind-Viper. “I shall take it home,” he told me, “and bury him with his own people.”

  We could not travel north that year. It was autumn when we reached Lundene and so we had to wait through the winter, and it was not till spring that Ragnar’s three ships left the Temes and sailed north. I was fifteen then, and growing fast so that I was suddenly a head taller than most men, and Ragnar made me take the steering oar. He taught me to guide a ship, how to anticipate the buffet of wind or wave, and how to heave on the steering oar before the ship veered. I learned the subtle touch, though at first the ship swayed drunkenly as I put too much pressure on the oar, but in time I came to feel the ship’s will in the long oar’s shaft and learned to love the quiver in the ash as the sleek hull gained her full speed.

  “I shall make you my second son,” Ragnar told me on that voyage. I did not know what to say.

  “I shall always favor my eldest,” he went on, meaning Ragnar the Younger, “but you shall still be as a son to me.”

  “I would like that,” I said awkwardly. I gazed at the distant shore that was flecked by the little dun sails of the fishing boats that were fleeing from our ships. “I am honored,” I said.

  “Uhtred Ragnarson,” he said, trying it out, and he must have liked the sound of it for he smiled, but then he thought of Rorik again and the tears came to his eyes and he just stared eastward into the empty sea. That night we slept in the mouth of the Humber.

  And two days later came back to Eoferwic.

  The king’s palace had been repaired. It had new shutters on its high windows and the roof was freshly thatched with golden rye straw. The palace’s old Roman walls had been scrubbed so that the lichen was gone from the joints between the stones. Guards stood at the outer gate and, when Ragnar demanded entry, they curtly told him to wait and I thought he would draw his sword, but before his anger could erupt Kjartan appeared. “My lord Ragnar,” he said sourly.

  “Since when does a Dane wait at this gate?” Ragnar demanded.

  “Since I ordered it,” Kjartan retorted, and there was insolence in his voice. He, like the palace, looked prosperous. He wore a cloak of black bear fur, had tall boots, a chain mail tunic, a red leather sword belt, and almost as many arm rings as Ragnar. “No one enters here without my permission,” Kjartan went on, “but of course you are welcome, Earl Ragnar.” He stepped aside to let Ragnar, myself, and three of Ragnar’s men into the big hall where, five years before, my uncle had tried to buy me from Ivar.

  “I see you still have your English pet,” Kjartan said, looking at me.

  “Go on seeing while you have eyes,” Ragnar said carelessly. “Is the king here?”

  “He only grants audience to those people who arrange to see him,” Kjartan said. Ragnar sighed and turned on his erstwhile shipmaster. “You itch me like a louse,” he said, “and if it pleases you, Kjartan, we shall lay the hazel rods and meet man to man. And if that does not please you, then fetch the king because I would speak with him.”

  Kjartan bridled, but decided he did not want to face Ragnar’s sword in a fighting space marked by hazel branches, and so, with an ill grace, he went into the palace’s back rooms. He made us wait long enough, but eventually King Egbert appeared, and with him were six guards who included oneeyed Sven who now looked as wealthy as his father. Big too, almost as tall as I was, with a broad chest and hugely muscled arms.

  Egbert looked nervous but did his best to appear regal. Ragnar bowed to him, then said there were tales of unrest in Northumbria and that Halfdan had sent him north to quell any such disturbances. “There is no unrest,” Egbert said, but in such a frightened voice that I thought he would piss his breeches.

  “There were disturbances in the inland hills,” Kjartan said dismissively, “but they ended.” He patted his sword to show what had ended them.

  Ragnar persevered, but learned nothing more. A few men had evidently risen against the Danes, there had been ambushes on the road leading to the west coast, the perpetrators had been hunted down and killed, and that was all Kjartan would say. “Northumbria is safe,” he finished, “so you can return to Halfdan, my lord, and keep on trying to defeat Wessex.”

  Ragnar ignored that last barb. “I shall go to my home,” he said, “bury my son, and live in peace.”

  Sven was fingering his sword hilt and looking at me sourly with his one eye, but while the enmity between us, and between Ragnar and Kjartan, was obvious, no one made trouble and we left. The ships were hauled onto shore, the silver fetched from Readingum was shared out among the crews, and we went home carrying Rorik’s ashes.

  Sigrid wailed at the news. She tore her dress and tangled her hair and screamed, the other women joined her, and a procession carried Rorik’s ashes to the top of the nearest hill where the pot was buried. Afterward Ragnar stayed there, looking across the hills and watching the white clouds sail across the western sky.

  We stayed home all the rest of that year. There were crops to grow, hay to cut, a harvest to reap and to grind. We made cheese and butter. Merchants and travelers brought news, but none from Wessex where, it seemed, Alfred still ruled and had his peace, and so that kingdom remained, the last one of England. Ragnar sometimes spoke of returning there, carrying his sword to gain more riches, but the fight seemed to have gone from him that summer. He sent a message to Ireland, asking that his eldest son come home, but such messages were not reliable and Ragnar the Younger did not come that year. Ragnar also thought of Thyra, his daughter. “He says it’s time I married,” she said to me one day as we churned butter.

  “You?” I laughed.

  “I’m nearly thirteen!” she said defiantly.

  “So you are. Who’ll marry you?”

  She shrugged. “Mother likes Anwend.” Anwend was one of Ragnar’s warriors, a young man not much older than me, strong and cheerful, but Ragnar had an idea she should marry one of Ubba’s sons, but that would mean she would go away and Sigrid hated that thought and Ragnar slowly came around to Sigrid’s way of thinking. I liked Anwend and thought he would make a good husband for Thyra who was growing ever more beautiful. She had long golden hair, wide set eyes, a straight nose, unscarred skin, and a laugh that was like a ripple of sunshine. “Mother says I must have many sons,” she said.

  “I hope you do.”

  “I’d like a daughter, too,” she said, straining with the churn because the butter was solidifying and the work getting harder. “Mother says Brida should marry as well.”

  “Brida might have different ideas,” I said.

  “She wants to marry you,” Thyra said.

  I laughed at that. I thought of Brida as a friend, my closest friend, and just because we slept with each other, or we did when Sigrid was not watching, did not make me want to marry her. I did not want to marry at all. I thought only of swords and shields and battles, and Brida thought of herbs. She was like a cat. She came and went secretly, and she learned all that Sigrid could teach her about herbs and their uses. Bindweed as a purgative, toadflax for ulcers, marsh marigold to keep elves away from the milk pails, chickweed for coughs, cornflower for fevers, and she learned other spells she would not tell me, women’s spells, and said that if you stayed silent in the night, unmoving, scarce breathing, the spirits would come, and Ravn taught her how to dream with the gods, which meant drinking ale in which pounded redcap mushrooms had been steeped, and she was often ill for she drank it too strong, but she would not stop, and she made her first songs then, songs about birds and about beasts, and Ravn said she was a true skald. Some nights, when we watched the charcoal burn, she would recite to me, her voice soft and rhythmic. She had a dog now that followed her everywhere. She had found him in Lundene on our homeward journey and he was black and white, as clever as Brida hers
elf, and she called him Nihtgenga, which means nightwalker, or goblin. He would sit with us by the charcoal pyre and I swear he listened to her songs. Brida made pipes from straw and played melancholy tunes and Nihtgenga would watch her with big sad eyes until the music overcame him and then he would raise his muzzle and howl, and we would both laugh and Nihtgenga would be offended and Brida would have to pet him back to happiness.

  We forgot the war until, when the summer was at its height and a pall of heat lay over the hills, we had an unexpected visitor. Earl Guthrum the Unlucky came to our remote valley. He came with twenty horsemen, all dressed in black, and he bowed respectfully to Sigrid who chided him for not sending warning. “I would have made a feast,” she said.

  “I brought food,” Guthrum said, pointing to some pack horses. “I did not want to empty your stores.”

  He had come from distant Lundene, wanting to talk with Ragnar and Ravn, and Ragnar invited me to sit with them because, he said, I knew more than most men about Wessex, and Wessex was what Guthrum wished to talk about, though my contribution was small. I described Alfred, described his piety, and warned Guthrum that though the West Saxon king was not an impressive man to look at, he was undeniably clever. Guthrum shrugged at that. “Cleverness is overrated,” he said gloomily. “Clever doesn’t win battles.”

  “Stupidity loses them,” Ravn put in, “like dividing the army when we fought outside Æbbanduna.”

  Guthrum scowled, but decided not to pick a fight with Ravn, and instead asked Ragnar’s advice on how to defeat the West Saxons, and demanded Ragnar’s assurance that, come the new year, Ragnar would bring his men to Lundene and join the next assault. “If it is next year,” Guthrum said gloomily. He scratched at the back of his neck, jiggling his mother’s goldtipped bone that still hung from his hair. “We may not have sufficient men.”