Conqueror

by Baxter, Stephen

  Cynewulf closed his eyes and smiled. ‘The value of history - the value of reading, novice. Once the Emperor Constantine, faced by barbarian threats, developed a similar sort of deep defence. And now we do it again.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  And of all the burhs, none was greater than Lunden.

  Cynewulf clapped Saberht on the shoulder. ‘Somewhere in there, right now, the King is holding court. And that is where we’re going.’

  ‘We’re going in there? Inside the walls?’ Saberht touched his throat and muttered.

  Cynewulf took the young man’s wrist and pulled it smartly back. Around his neck Saberht wore a small crucifix, carved of wood. Cynewulf knew immediately that it wasn’t the Christian cross that comforted Saberht but the wood itself.

  ‘Oh, Saberht,’ Cynewulf said. ‘A wooden charm to protect you from cities of stone?’

  ‘Yes, Father. I mean—’

  ‘Never mind. We’ll discuss this during your confession. For now we will complete our journey, and I want no more superstitious twitching from you.’

  ‘No, Father.’

  Side by side priest and novice rode down from the higher ground, towards the gates of Lunden.

  XX

  Cynewulf and Saberht sat cautiously on a mead bench at the feet of the King. It was not the first time Alfred had kept Cynewulf waiting, while he worked through business with his clerks.

  The royal hall was unimpressive. Like many of the new buildings of Lundenburh, overshadowed by mightier ruins, it was a simple framework of oaken posts, so new you could smell the drying mud of the walls. But, floored by reused Roman roof tiles and with a fire blazing in the big central hearth, it was warm and well-lit, and its walls were adorned with tapestries and bosses of silver and gold.

  Alfred himself sat on a handsome giving-throne that looked as if it had been carved out of a single massive trunk. On his head was the crown he had worn in the field that day at Ethandune. He still had his taste for display; his tunic, a rich purple, looked like silk from Constantinople. Flanked by clerks, he was working his way through a mound of papers, signing, hastily amending lines here and there with a pen adorned by a handsome jewel. But Alfred’s skin was sallow, his tall frame was skeletal, and he habitually held a handkerchief to his mouth. Yet he laboured steadily. The years had been much harder on Alfred than on Cynewulf, who now felt ashamed of his own self-pity.

  One of Alfred’s famous candle-clocks burned down on a table. It was a row of six candles, each marked with four lines to map the hours, and connected to the others by lengths of wick, so that the burning-down of one would light the next. Invented by the King himself, it was a way of keeping track of time without reference to the sun. In this as in all things Alfred liked order, control, and records.

  At last Alfred shooed away his clerks, like chasing away geese. ‘It is good to see you, priest. I have my hearth-companions look out for veterans of those days at Aethelingaig and Ethandune.’

  ‘I’d hardly call myself a veteran—’

  ‘You did your part, Cynewulf. You and that enigmatic prophecy of yours. And you still have your reward?’

  Cynewulf lifted up his arm so that his silver ring showed. Saberht gaped. He hadn’t known that this feeble old priest owned such a ring, a gift from a king.

  ‘I like to see those left alive,’ Alfred said, ‘so that I can refresh my memory of those who fell. Like your cousin Arngrim. His men gave him a ship burial, you know. On a tub we captured from the Danes.’

  ‘Yes. Arngrim lived and died a pagan, and there was nothing I or any priest could do about that.’

  Alfred laughed, but it was a harsh sound that coarsened into a cough. ‘We were glad of it at the time. But it’s an irony that I see more of my old adversary Guthrum than I do of those who fought with me against him. We pray together, you know. We even sing psalms - though his singing voice makes Arngrim sound like the Arch Cantor.’

  ‘I’m glad the Danish king’s Christianity has stuck.’

  Alfred smiled. ‘Isn’t cynicism a sin, priest?’

  ‘I’ll have to ask my bishop.’

  Saberht blurted, ‘Lord. Everybody asks why you deal with the Danes at all. You had the Danes on the run at Ethandune. Why give them half the country? Why not just push them back into the sea?’

  Cynewulf made to apologise, but Alfred held up his hand. ‘You are fiery for one of the cloth, aren’t you, boy? Your tonsure is a little ragged too, you ought to take more care over that. The truth is, and hard though it is even for my thegns to accept it, we did not defeat the Danes at Ethandune. We defeated the remnant of one army. If I had pursued the Danes to Eoforwic I would have won myself some glory, but at the risk of losing everything when the next assault came. Instead I have spent my energies in making England impregnable.’

  ‘Not England,’ Saberht said, despite Cynewulf’s glares. ‘Half of England, dominated by Wessex. And what about the rest?’

  ‘I have sons,’ said Alfred. ‘I need to leave them something to do. And in the meantime I have my books to write.’

  Alfred, whose life had been dominated by the war with the Danes, had always had larger goals. He was designing a written code of law, assembled from the wisdom of the old English kingdoms - a programme inspired by the example of the east Roman emperor Justinian. And to make his country literate again he was having books translated, from the Latin to the English. He had begun with his favourite Boethius, and with histories, including Bede’s famous work.

  ‘I intend to leave an England rebuilt on surer foundations,’ he said. ‘An England united under God and a just law. An England where the King’s writ extends into every shire, every hundred, every man’s home. An England which maintains a fyrd, properly organised and equipped, ready to be called at any time to deter any aggressor. An England where a free man may read the word of God in his own tongue … One must take a long view.’

  ‘And none,’ Cynewulf said, ‘takes a longer view than you, lord.’

  Alfred warned, ‘Like all kings I am a fool, but not one who responds to flattery.’

  ‘It was meant sincerely.’

  ‘But what of you, Cynewulf? Still a priest, at your time of life? Didn’t I offer you a bishopric?’

  ‘You did, and I was honoured. But it wasn’t for me. After Ethandune I had had enough of history. I concluded I could best serve God’s will by remaining a humble priest.’

  ‘And by binding souls to Christ.’ Alfred nodded. ‘You see, we are alike, you and I. Always thinking of the longer term. What of your companion, the girl who knew the Menologium?’

  ‘Aebbe? She has long gone. After her treatment by the Danes she couldn’t bear children, the doctors told her. Well, she wasn’t one for the convent. And so she left. I haven’t heard from her since.’

  ‘Many savageries were committed in those days,’ Alfred said. ‘One must fix what one can fix, and put aside the rest.’ He glanced at his clerks, who were waiting patiently with more documents.

  Cynewulf knew it was time to leave. He stood, pulling Saberht up with him. ‘Lord, may I ask one more thing? The prophecy. Did it truly guide your decisions, in those days?’

  Alfred stroked that long chin, now grizzled with grey stubble. ‘I don’t know, priest. That’s the truth. The prophecy was and is a strand in my thinking - but so is Bede, so are the lives of the Caesars, and so above all is the Word of God.’ He smiled. ‘But if the task of our generation was to save a corner of England we’ve succeeded, haven’t we? We must leave oceanic empires to another age.’

  ‘Do you still have the Menologium?’

  ‘My clerks made copies. The remaining stanzas speak of the far future, you know - many of your Great Years, hundreds of months. It will take centuries for the rest of it to unfold, though nobody in my court can add up numbers well enough to tell me exactly how long. And so it is the task of the future to deal with it - and, therefore, of my own dynasty. Which, let me remind you, springs from Cerdic himself, if not from Woden, and
ought therefore to persist as long as there is an England.’ He winked at the priest. ‘I could scarcely believe otherwise, could I?’ He glanced at his clerks. ‘Now, where were we? …’

  Cynewulf never saw the King again. Nor did he see Aebbe. But he did learn of her fate - in, astonishingly, a letter from the runaway slave and murderer, Ibn Zuhr.

  XXI

  Five years had passed since Cynewulf’s last meeting with Alfred when the letter found him.

  ‘I was impelled to write to you, Fr Cynewulf, for I knew you to be a good man, and always respected your intellect - though I believe that intellect to be wasted on your immature theology. I have no doubt you think ill of me, but perhaps you can understand how it was for a man like me to be condemned to a life of slavery under a man like Arngrim.

  ‘In any case I do not write for your forgiveness, but to satisfy my own longing to tell you my news.’

  And that news, Ibn Zuhr said, concerned the fate of Aebbe - and the meaning of the Menologium of Isolde.

  Ibn Zuhr, perhaps understandably, said little of himself. After the death of Arngrim he had escaped out of Wessex into Mercia and then, following the roads he had once travelled with Cynewulf and his master, he had made for Eoforwic-Jorvik. Cynewulf understood; this man of the cities of al-Andalus had sought the nearest to a city that Britain had to offer.

  Among the Danes and English of Jorvik the Moor stood out, of course, but there were many traders from the southern lands in Jorvik. And in the bustling, open economy of the Danish town he had soon managed to scrape a living from his medicinal knowledge. ‘Perhaps my exotic appearance helps reassure my patients of my healing powers,’ he noted dryly.

  He had always intended to earn enough money to get himself out of the country and back home to al-Andalus, and perhaps some day he would. ‘But I was such a young man when I was stolen from my home, and so much must have changed about it - and about me - that perhaps only disappointment would follow were I to travel back.’ And besides, as Jorvik grew and prospered, Ibn Zuhr found he rather liked his new life. He found the fusion of cultures fascinating. ‘Danish women spin all winter to make sails of English wool …’

  But he had never forgotten Arngrim, ‘the only man I ever killed’ or so he claimed. And through contacts with patients and traders he followed the fates of the leaders of the Force that had once assaulted Cippanhamm.

  He learned that Egil, the Beast of Cippanhamm, nemesis of Arngrim, ‘and co-murderer with me of my master’, had come to Jorvik to end his days in the hall of his brother, a ship-owner called Ulfjlot, ‘just as brutal as his brother, though in possession of both his arms, and indeed all his teeth and an intact nose’.

  Not long after Egil’s return, Ulfjlot died of ‘heathen excess’, wrote the Moor. And Egil and his family mounted a lavish funeral rite to ease the passage of Ulfjlot into the pagan otherworld. Ibn Zuhr described what occurred at this rite, as relayed to him by an eye-witness, he said, but in such detail that Cynewulf wondered if he himself had not attended the rite.

  As is the custom of these people, the slaves of the dead man were asked which of them would die with his master. A young English woman who called herself Aelfflaed put herself forward. The other slaves, of course, made themselves scarce. This Aelfflaed, ageing, scarred but comely enough - for that would be important in what followed - would do.

  So she was taken, and put in charge of two young women of the household, who waited on her for ten days. She ate, drank and indulged in any pleasure they could provide.

  Meanwhile Ulfjlot’s finest ship was dragged on to the river bank and placed on a wooden scaffold, under which firewood was heaped. Amidships a tent of sail-cloth was set up over a couch. Ulfjlot’s brothers and their men set up tents for themselves close around the ship; there were seven of them, including Egil.

  All this time Ulfjlot’s unlovely corpse had been rotting in a temporary grave. Now they dug it up, dressed it in fine clothes and furs, and placed it in the tent on the ship, propped up with cushions on the couch. They piled up food and drink at its feet, and weapons and armour at its side. Animals - a dog, a rooster, two horses and two cows - were slaughtered and their butchered parts put in the ship.

  The slave’s ten days of pleasure were done; now only duty remained. She went from tent to tent, and Ulfjlot’s men had intercourse with her. Each of them ritually told her, ‘I do this out of love for your master. Tell your lord this.’ It went hard on her, for these types love roughly, and by the time the brute Egil had used her she could barely walk. But my witness noticed that the men did not seem comfortable in themselves afterwards.

  With that grubby duty performed she was taken to a kind of doorway, a wooden arch. She was held up on the men’s palms (only one hand provided by Egil!), and she looked through the frame and said, ‘I see my lord in the Upperworld. Send me to him.’

  So the seven of them took her into Ulfjlot’s tent on the ship and laid Aelfflaed out by the side of her dead master. Their men gathered around the ship and yelled and banged their shields, so that the other slaves would not hear what happened.

  Two of them got her by the feet, two by the hands, while two others held the ends of a rope wrapped around her neck. You must imagine the scene, Father: the poky sail-cloth tent stinking of salt, the rotting corpse in its finery, the brutish men like animals huddled over Aelfflaed.

  Now a woman they called ‘The Angel of Death’ entered the tent, and, as the two men pulled the cord tight, she stabbed Aelfflaed again and again in the chest, until there was no life in her. Then they all withdrew from the tent.

  Egil, chief mourner, stood before the ship. Naked, one-armed, his face a ruin, what a sight the Beast of Cippanhamm was! With his one remaining hand he held a burning brand, and he set fire to the bonfire. Within an hour the ship was gone, destroyed by the fire, taking Ulfjlot to his brutish paradise.

  But after this uninteresting heathen nonsense, Cynewulf, one by one, the seven men who had mourned Ulfjlot fell ill. Even at the funeral feast they were vomiting, and soon acidic bile hosed from between their hairy buttocks. Within a day the vomit and stools turned bloody - I saw this, as I was brought in to examine them.

  It took most of them two or three days to die. Egil was stronger than the rest and it took him seven. He was conscious to the end, as the substance of his body drained out of his arse.

  I think you can guess my conclusion, Cynewulf. The slave who died with Ulfjlot was surely Aebbe, who, her body and life wrecked by Egil, devoted herself to plotting her revenge. I seem to recall that Aelfflaed was the name of the great-grandmother of Lindisfarena she admired. Of course she still bore the scars Egil left her with. Perhaps she covered them over. Or perhaps Egil could not remember inflicting them. Perhaps he has hurt so many women in this way the memories blurred together. It seems he did not recognise her.

  And as each of Ulfjlot’s men lay with her that day, she infected them with the disease that killed them. I have some small knowledge of medicine. I have heard talk of such foul contagions emanating from the jungles in the south of Africa. She might have administered it through a seed pod, delivered in a kiss.

  Is revenge a sin in your faith, priest? I am sure murder is. If so Aebbe is surely laughing in Hell, even now …

  Ibn Zuhr closed with some excitable speculations on the Menologium, which he had managed to memorise on hearing it read to Alfred. ‘This strange prophecy-poem came into my life lodged in Aebbe’s head, and is now stuck in my own …’ He had scrawled some ideas about the enigmatic stanzas of the future, but he added a wry note: ‘I am not qualified to be an oracle.’

  He had been able to make sense of the Great-Year numbers embedded in the Menologium. Using the strange arithmetic of the Moors, which made adding large totals easy, he had summed forward all the Great Year months. With the sixth stanza’s prophecy of Alfred’s victory as an anchor he had calculated the date of the dawn of the ninth Year, when, said the Menologium, the final battle would be fought, and the earthly paradise
of the Aryans would be founded.

  ‘You will see that your Menologium reaches beyond the Christian millennium,’ he noted dryly. ‘Will the world still exist to see this come to pass? Well, neither of us will live to find out; we are mere footnotes in the Menologium’s long story.

  ‘I offer this to you, priest, for what it is worth, in the hope that it will satisfy some sliver of curiosity of your own. As for me, I will go to my grave wondering about the true intentions of the Weaver, if he exists …’

  The year of the final battle would be the 5070th since the creation of the world, the 1819th since the founding of Rome, and the 487th year of the Islamic calendar. As for the Christian system, the date Ibn Zuhr had written down boldly was, in Roman numerals:

  MLXVI

  And in the Moorish system:

  1066

  IV

  CONQUEROR

  AD 1064-1066

  I

  Orm Egilsson didn’t even notice the bog until his horse went down under him. The animal screamed in agony as its legs snapped like twigs, and Orm was sent flying out of his saddle and came down face-first in the mud.

  Winded, he pushed up to his knees, and scraped cold black dirt from his eyes and mouth. His mail coat was a mass of heavy iron on his shoulders. His horse lay prone, a steaming mass, and silent. Orm could see its head was bent back impossibly far; it was a mercy that the horse had died instantly.

  But that left Orm stranded, on his knees in the middle of this muddy bog.

  He glanced back the way he had come, to the north. He could see the Norman raiders, a thousand of them, galloping under the June sky across a burning landscape. This adventure into Brittany included a party of English, and Orm could see the bright red-and-gold Fighting Man standard of Earl Harold, where he rode alongside William of Normandy. Sensibly, the leaders were avoiding the copse where Orm had got himself tripped up.