The Empty Throne (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 8)

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Except King Edward.’

  ‘He’s not a member of the Mercian Witan, you numbskull,’ I told him. ‘He’s a West Saxon.’

  ‘He wants to be invited,’ Stiorra said.

  ‘To the Witan?’ my son asked.

  ‘To take the crown,’ she said patiently. ‘If he’s here it will look as if he just took it. It’s better to be invited.’

  ‘And he will be invited,’ I added. ‘That’s why Bishop Wulfheard and Lord Æthelhelm are here. To make sure he is.’

  ‘And Æthelflaed?’ Stiorra asked. ‘What happens to …’ She abruptly fell silent as Eadith came nervously into the room, pausing at the door. Her hair was piled on her head and held by ivory combs, but strands had escaped to fall raggedly about her face. The green dress looked crumpled.

  ‘Make room for Lady Eadith,’ I told Æthelstan who was sitting beside Stiorra. ‘You can sit beside Prince Æthelstan,’ I told Eadith. ‘It’s all right,’ I looked back to the boy, ‘she’s decided not to kill you after all.’

  ‘I’m not hungry, lord,’ Eadith said.

  ‘Yes you are. Sit down. Stiorra will pour you ale. You were asking,’ I had turned to my daughter, ‘what will happen to the Lady Æthelflaed? They’ll try to put her in a nunnery.’

  ‘And you’ll stop them,’ my son said.

  ‘No, you and the Lady Eadith will.’

  ‘I will?’ Uhtred asked.

  ‘By finding me that priest. Now! Go! Bring him here.’

  My son left. As he opened the door I could see it was raining harder. ‘And what will I do, lord?’ Eadith asked quietly.

  ‘Whatever I tell you,’ I said brusquely, ‘and you’ll go to the funeral with Stiorra. Not in that dress, though. Find her a black cloak,’ I added the last words to my daughter, ‘with a hood.’

  ‘A hood?’

  ‘A big one,’ I said, ‘so no one can see her face and tell her to leave the church.’ I turned as Finan barged through the door.

  He swore, took off a piece of sacking he was wearing as a cape, and flung it onto a stool. ‘There’ll be more floods if this goes on,’ he grumbled. ‘Raining like the devil’s piss, it is.’

  ‘What’s happening out there?’

  ‘Nothing. Bastards are all in bed. Best place to be.’

  The great bell tolled on. Rain hammered the thatched roof and dripped through to puddle on the stone floor. The house had been roofed with tiles once, now the old rafters were covered by straw thatch in need of repair, but at least the fire in the hearth burned bright and there was a plentiful supply of wood.

  Father Penda arrived after an hour or so. He looked miserable and indignant, forced to walk through the downpour that had soaked through his long black robe, but he nodded to me guardedly. ‘Lord,’ he said. He was puzzled that so many people were in the room, and even more puzzled when he saw Eadith. His loyalty to me was supposed to be a secret, and he did not understand why I had fetched him into company.

  So I explained it to him. ‘Father,’ I said respectfully, ‘I want you to baptise me.’

  He just stared at me. They all did. My son, who had returned with the priest, opened his mouth to speak, but found nothing to say and so closed it again.

  ‘Baptise you?’ Father Penda managed to ask.

  ‘I have seen the wickedness of my ways,’ I said humbly, ‘and I wish to return to God’s church.’

  Father Penda shook his head, not in refusal, but because his wits were rain-soaked and scattered. ‘You are sincere, lord?’ he asked.

  ‘I am a sinner, father, and seek forgiveness.’

  ‘If you are sincere …’ he began.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You will have to confess your sins,’ he said.

  ‘I shall.’

  ‘And a gift to the church will show your sincerity.’

  ‘Consider it given,’ I said, still speaking with humility. Stiorra was gazing at me in shock, the rest were just as astonished.

  ‘You truly desire this?’ Father Penda asked. He was suspicious. I was, after all, the most prominent pagan in Saxon Britain, a man who had been forthright in my opposition to the church, a killer of priests, and a notorious heathen. Yet the priest was also hopeful. My conversion and baptism would make Penda famous.

  ‘I desire it with all my heart,’ I said.

  ‘Might I ask why?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It is sudden, lord. Did God speak to you? Did his blessed Son appear to you?’

  ‘No, father, but he did send an angel.’

  ‘An angel!’

  ‘She came in the night,’ I said, ‘and she had hair like flames of fire and eyes that glowed like emeralds and she took away my pain and replaced it with joy.’

  Stiorra choked. Father Penda looked at her and she quickly lowered her head into her hands. ‘I’m crying for happiness,’ she said in a strangled voice. Eadith was blushing deeply, but Father Penda did not notice her. ‘Praise God,’ Stiorra managed to say.

  ‘Praise him indeed,’ Father Penda said faintly.

  ‘I believe,’ I said, ‘that you baptise converts in the river here?’

  He nodded. ‘But in this rain, lord …’ he began.

  ‘God’s rain,’ I said, ‘has been sent to cleanse me.’

  ‘Hallelujah,’ he said. What else could he say?

  So we took Penda to the river and there he ducked me, and that was the third time I had been baptised. I was too young to remember the first time, but later, when my elder brother died and my father gave me the name Uhtred, my stepmother insisted I was washed again in case Saint Peter did not recognise me at heaven’s gate, and so I had been dunked in a barrel of North Sea water, but this third baptism was in the chill waters of the Sæfern, though before Father Penda could perform the rite he insisted that I kneel and confess all of my sins. I asked whether he really meant all, and he nodded enthusiastically, so I began with childhood, though it seemed stealing freshly churned butter was not what he wanted to hear. ‘Lord Uhtred,’ he said carefully, ‘did you not tell me you were raised a Christian? So did you not confess your sins as a child?’

  ‘I did, father,’ I said humbly.

  ‘Then we don’t need to hear them again.’

  ‘But I never confessed about the holy water, father,’ I said ruefully.

  ‘Holy water? You didn’t drink it, surely?’

  ‘I peed in it, father.’

  ‘You …’ he seemed incapable of further speech.

  ‘My brother and I had a peeing contest,’ I said, ‘to see who could piss the highest. You must have done the same as a boy, father?’

  ‘Never into holy water!’

  ‘I regret that sin, father.’

  ‘It is dire, but go on!’

  So I confessed to the women I had slept with, or at least those to whom I was not married, and despite the rain Father Penda demanded more details. He whimpered once or twice, especially when I talked of rutting a nun, though I took care not to name Hild. ‘Who was she?’ he demanded.

  ‘I never knew her name, father,’ I lied.

  ‘You must have done! Tell me!’

  ‘I only wanted to …’

  ‘I know what sin you committed!’ he said sternly, and then, rather hopefully, ‘is she still alive?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, father,’ I said innocently. In truth Hild was alive and well and feeding the poor and healing the sick and clothing the naked. ‘I think she was called Winfred,’ I said, ‘but she moaned so much it was hard to hear her properly.’

  He whimpered again, then gasped as I confessed to the churchmen I had killed. ‘I know now how wrong that was, father,’ I said, ‘and worse, father, I took pleasure from their deaths.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘When Brother Jænberht died,’ I said humbly, ‘I enjoyed it.’ And I had enjoyed it too. The bastard had conspired to send me into slavery, and killing him had been a pleasure, just as it was a pleasure to kick Father Ceolberht’s teeth into his throat. ‘And I have att
acked priests, father, like Ceolberht.’

  ‘You must apologise to him.’

  ‘Oh, I will, father. And I have wished to kill other priests, like Bishop Asser.’

  Father Penda paused. ‘He could be difficult.’

  I almost laughed at that. ‘But there is one sin that lies most heavily on my conscience, father.’

  ‘Another woman?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘No, father. It was I, father, who discovered the bones of Saint Oswald.’

  He frowned. ‘That is no sin!’

  So I told him how I had faked the discovery by concealing the bones where I knew they would be found. ‘He was just a body in a graveyard, father. I ripped off an arm to make it look like Saint Oswald.’

  Penda paused. ‘The bishop’s wife,’ he said, obviously referring to Wulfheard’s grim woman, ‘suffered from a plague of slugs in her garden. She sent Wulfheard a gift of fine linen for the saint and the slugs went! This was a miracle!’

  ‘Do you mean …’ I began.

  ‘You thought you deceived the church,’ Penda said enthusiastically, ‘but miracles have happened at the shrine! Slugs were banished! I think God guided you to the true bones of the saint!’

  ‘But the saint only had one arm,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Another miracle! Praise God! You were his instrument, Lord Uhtred! It is a sign!’

  He gave me absolution, extracted another promise of gold, then led me into the river. The water was cold, stabbing into my wound like a dagger of ice, but I endured the prayers and praised the nailed god after Father Penda had thrust my head down into the duckweed. He did it three times, once for the father, again for the son, then for the holy ghost.

  Penda was happy. He had made his famous convert, and he had Finan and my son as his witnesses and as my godfathers. I took Finan’s big silver cross and hung it about my neck, giving him my pagan hammer in exchange, and after that I put my arm about Father Penda’s narrow shoulders and, still dressed in nothing but a sopping wet shirt, led him up the river bank to the shelter of a willow where we had a quiet discussion. We talked for a few minutes. At first he was reluctant to tell me what I wanted, but he yielded to persuasion. ‘You want a knife between your ribs, father?’ I asked him.

  ‘But, lord …’ he began, then his voice faded away.

  ‘Who frightens you more,’ I asked him, ‘me or Bishop Wulfheard?’ He had no answer to that, but just looked up at me with a miserable expression. He was frightened of my violence, I knew, but he was equally scared that Wulfheard could condemn him to a lifetime of being a priest in some miserable village where there was no chance of enrichment or advancement. ‘You want to be a bishop yourself?’ I asked.

  ‘If God wills it, lord,’ he said unhappily, meaning that he would sacrifice his own mother for the chance of a diocese.

  ‘I’ll make it happen,’ I said, ‘if you tell me what I want to know.’

  So he told me, then I dressed, made sure the cross was hidden beneath my cloak, and went to a funeral.

  Someone had paid mourners to screech and wail, the noise as cacophonous as blades on shields in battle. The hired women stood at the sides of the church, beating their fists on their heads as they shrieked their pretend misery, and meanwhile a choir of monks tried to be heard above the clamour, and every now and then a priest shouted something, though no one seemed to take any notice.

  The church was full, with maybe four hundred men and a few women standing between the high wooden pillars. They talked among themselves, ignoring mourners, choir, and clerics, and it was not till Bishop Wulfheard climbed onto a wooden platform beside the high altar and began to hammer his lectern with a shepherd’s staff that the sound died into silence, though not before the silver crook had fallen from the staff and clattered across the flagstones to come to rest beneath Æthelred’s coffin, which stood on a pair of trestles and was draped with his flag of the prancing white horse. A few of the paid mourners went on moaning, but a pair of priests scurried along the walls and told them to end their damned noise. One of the women gasped for air and I thought she was half choking to death, but then she fell to her knees and vomited. A brace of hounds rushed to gobble up the unexpected treat.

  ‘We are in God’s house!’ Bishop Wulfheard bellowed.

  The sermon that followed must have lasted the best part of two hours, though it seemed like four or five. Wulfheard extolled Æthelred’s character, his bravery and wisdom, and even managed to sound convincing. ‘We lay a good man to his eternal rest this day,’ the bishop proclaimed, and I thought the sermon must be ending, but then he demanded that one of his priests hand him a gospel book and he flipped the heavy pages to find the passage he wanted and read it in a forbidding tone. ‘If a kingdom be divided that kingdom cannot endure!’ he read, then slammed the heavy book shut. What followed was a thinly disguised plea to unite the crowns of Mercia and Wessex, a plea we were told was the nailed god’s will.

  I ignored most of it. I watched Stiorra who stood with Eadith. I had seen Eadith bow her head and hold a hand to her shadowed face, and I assumed she was crying. Æthelstan was near me at the back of the church, surrounded by my warriors. No man could carry a sword into the church, but I was certain that all the men guarding Æthelstan had seaxes hidden beneath their cloaks, just as I was certain that Æthelhelm had men looking for a chance to seize the boy. Æthelhelm himself was at the front of the church, nodding vigorously at Wulfheard’s rant. With him was his daughter Ælflæd, King Edward’s wife. She was a little thing, her fair hair plaited and wrapped around her head on which she wore a small black cap with a long trail of black ribbons hanging past her plump rump. She had a small sulky mouth and looked thoroughly unhappy, but that was hardly surprising, as she was forced to endure two hours of Wulfheard’s nonsense. Her father kept a hand on her shoulder. He and I were both taller than most men and he caught my eye during one of the bishop’s more impassioned passages, and we exchanged wry smiles. He knew a fight was coming, but he was confident of winning it. His daughter would soon be Queen Ælflæd of Mercia, and that meant she could be called a queen in Wessex too, and I had no doubt Æthelhelm wanted his daughter to be called Queen Ælflæd. I had never understood why Wessex did not extend that courtesy to the king’s wife, but they could hardly withhold it from Ælflæd if she was Mercia’s queen. And if Æthelhelm could just rid himself of the nuisance of Æthelstan, he would be the father of a queen and the grandfather of kings. Wulfheard was still expounding his text about a divided kingdom, shouting now, and Æthelhelm caught my gaze again, jerked his head almost imperceptibly towards Wulfheard and rolled his eyes in exasperation, and I had to laugh.

  I had always liked Æthelhelm, but till now we had always been on the same side and his ambitions and energy had been devoted to causes I fought for. Now, however, we were enemies, and he knew it, and he would use his wealth and position to crush me. I would use guile, and hoped that Sihtric had succeeded in the task I had given him.

  The bishop finally ran out of words. The choir began chanting again, and six of Æthelred’s warriors picked up the coffin and carried it to the tomb that had been opened beside the altar. They were struggling, probably because there was a lead coffin inside the wooden casket that was sumptuously carved with saints and warriors. My cousin was to be buried as close as possible to the bones of Saint Oswald, or rather close to the bones of whoever really was encased in the silver reliquary. On the day of judgement, the bishop had preached, Saint Oswald would miraculously leap from his silver prison and be whisked to heaven, and Æthelred, being close by, would be swept up by the saint. No one doubted that the bones were the real relics. The priests and monks all claimed that miracles occurred in the church, that the cripples walked, and the blind saw, and all because of the bones.

  The bishop watched the coffin being lowered into the tomb. Æthelhelm and his daughter stood beside him, while on the far side of the gaping hole Æthelflaed stood in a dress of black silk that shimmered when she moved. Her daughter �
�lfwynn was beside her, and managed to look sad. When the heavy coffin was at last settled in the crypt I saw Æthelhelm stare at Æthelflaed, and the two locked their eyes. They stood thus for a long time, then Æthelhelm turned away and led his daughter out of the church. A maidservant handed Æthelflaed a heavy cloak, which she draped over her shoulders and walked into the rain.

  And so my cousin Æthelred passed from my life.

  The Witan was held the next day. It began not long after dawn, an early hour, but I reckoned that was because Æthelhelm wanted the business over so he could start for home. Or, perhaps more likely, so that Edward could be summoned from wherever he was waiting to make a formal entry into the chief city of his new kingdom. And it all should be done swiftly, or so they thought. The men who had attended Æthelred’s funeral were, as expected, those nobles who had supported him, and very few of Æthelflaed’s men were in Gleawecestre. The Witan would hear what Æthelhelm wanted, they would vote it by acclamation, and Wulfheard and Æthelhelm would earn the gratitude of the new King of Mercia.

  Or so they thought.

  The Witan began, of course, with a prayer from Bishop Wulfheard. I thought, after his endless sermon of the previous day, he would keep the prayer short, but no, he had to harangue his god endlessly. He begged the nailed god to give the Witan wisdom, which was not a bad idea, then instructed his god to approve whatever the bishop was about to propose. The prayer dragged on for so long that the ealdormen, thegns, and high churchmen began shuffling their feet or scraping the benches on the tiled floor until finally Æthelhelm cleared his throat noisily and the bishop hurried to his prayer’s end.

  Æthelred’s throne stood on the wooden platform. It had been draped with a black cloth on which sat an ornate helmet. In times past kings were never crowned, they were given a royal helmet instead, and I did not doubt that everyone in the hall knew what the helmet signified. To the left of the throne, as we looked at it, there was a lectern probably carried from the church, while on the right was a simple deal table and two chairs. The twin priests, Ceolberht and Ceolnoth, sat at the table with quills ready. They would record the Witan’s proceedings, which began with a statement from the bishop.