The Empty Throne (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 8)

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘Then went away? Why?’

  ‘The first rumour, lord, said that Sigtryggr would stay here. That he’d help us take more land.’

  ‘And then he changed his mind?’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘So where is his fleet going?’

  ‘They said north, lord,’ Berg said vaguely, though he was trying to be helpful. ‘They said we’d all be sailing north.’

  Sigtryggr had been sent to find a place where his father’s forces could safely retreat if their Irish enemies became too strong. He had looked at Rognvald’s miserable settlement and thought of using his forces to carve it into a larger kingdom, but he had also explored northwards, and then suddenly returned and persuaded Rognvald to abandon Abergwaun and help him conquer some other place. Some other place to the north. A better place, a richer prize.

  Ceaster.

  And we later learned that the Welsh word for preacher was nothing like godspellere. ‘We might say efengylydd,’ Father Anwyn told me, ‘but certainly not godspellere. That’s your barbarous tongue.’

  I gazed at the boat and wondered about Eardwulf, as his sister made a pad of honey and cobwebs and strapped it to the wound she had opened.

  And there was no pain.

  Next day I could bend, swing a sword, twist my body, even heave on a steering-oar, and there was no pain. I moved slowly, cautiously, always expecting the agony to return, but it was gone.

  ‘It was an evil trapped in your body,’ Eadith explained again.

  ‘A spirit,’ Finan reckoned.

  ‘And the sword was charmed,’ Eadith said.

  ‘She did a good job, lord,’ Finan said earnestly, and Eadith smiled at the compliment.

  ‘But if the sword had a spell on it,’ I asked, frowning, ‘why didn’t it just add to the evil when you stabbed me?’

  ‘I didn’t stab you, lord,’ she said, ‘I stabbed the evil spirit.’

  We were aboard the Ðrines again. Sihtric had brought her back to the dragon’s mouth and Hywel had sent men to greet her. Gerbruht had ridden with them, and he gave Sihtric my orders to wait overnight while Hywel feasted us, which he did with the supplies captured from Rognvald’s ships, though the feast had been far from festive. The memory of those tortured bodies hung over the settlement like the smell of burning.

  Hywel had been eager to talk, and asked a lot about Æthelflaed. Was her reputation of being a good Christian true?

  ‘It depends,’ I had said, ‘what Christian you ask. Many call her a sinner.’

  ‘We are all sinners,’ Hywel had answered.

  ‘But she is a good woman.’

  He had wanted to know her thoughts about the Welsh. ‘If you leave her alone,’ I answered, ‘she will leave you alone.’

  ‘Because she hates the Danes more?’

  ‘She hates pagans.’

  ‘Except one, I hear,’ he had said drily. I ignored that. He smiled, listening to the harpist for a moment, then, ‘and Æthelstan?’

  ‘What of him, lord?’

  ‘You want him to be king, Lord Æthelhelm doesn’t.’

  ‘He’s a boy,’ I said dismissively.

  ‘But one you judge worthy to be a king. Why?’

  ‘He’s a good, strong lad,’ I said, ‘and I like him. And he’s legitimate.’

  ‘He is?’

  ‘The priest who married his parents is in my service.’

  ‘How very inconvenient for Lord Æthelhelm,’ Hywel said, amused. ‘And what about the boy’s father? You like him too?’

  ‘Well enough.’

  ‘But Æthelhelm rules in Wessex, so what Æthelhelm wants will happen.’

  ‘You must have good spies in the West Saxon court, lord,’ I said, amused.

  Hywel had laughed at that. ‘I don’t need spies. You forget the church, Lord Uhtred. Churchmen write endless letters. They send news to each other, so much news! Gossip too.’

  ‘Then you know what Æthelflaed wants,’ I said, turning the conversation back to her. ‘She’ll ignore Æthelhelm and his ambitions, because all she cares about is driving the Danes from Mercia. And when she has done that, to drive them out of Northumbria.’

  ‘Ah,’ the king had said, ‘she wants Englaland!’ We had eaten outside, under the smoke-smeared stars. ‘Englaland,’ Hywel had said again, savouring the unfamiliar name as he stared into one of the big fires around which we sat. A bard was singing, and for a time the king listened to the words, then began to talk. He had spoken softly, ruefully, gazing into the flames. ‘I hear the name Englaland,’ he had said, ‘but our name for it is Lloegyr. The lost lands. They were once our lands. Those hills and valleys, those rivers and pastures, they were ours and they carried our names and the names were the stories of our people. Every hill had a tale, every valley a story. The Romans came and the Romans went, but the names remained, and then you came, the Saxons, and the names vanished like this smoke. And the stories went with the names, and now there are only your names. Saxon names. Listen to him!’ He had gestured towards the bard who was chanting his song, hard-striking the rhythm of his words on a small harp. ‘He sings the song of Caddwych and how he slaughtered our enemies.’

  ‘Our enemies?’ I asked.

  ‘How we slaughtered you, the Saxons,’ Hywel admitted, then laughed. ‘I told him not to sing of dead Saxons, but even a king can’t command poets, it seems.’

  ‘We sing songs too,’ I said.

  ‘And your songs,’ the king said, ‘will tell of Englaland, of slaughtered Danes, and what happens then, my friend?’

  ‘Then, lord?’

  ‘When you have your Englaland? When the pagans are gone? When Christ rules all Britain from the south to the north? What then?’

  I had shrugged. ‘I doubt I’ll live to see it.’

  ‘Will the Saxons be content with their Englaland?’ he had asked, then shaken his head. ‘They will look at these hills, these valleys.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘So we must be strong. Tell your Æthelflaed that I will not fight her. I’ve no doubt some of my folk will steal your cattle, but young men must be kept busy. But tell her that I have a dream like her father’s dream. A dream of one country.’

  I had been surprised, but why? This was a clever man, as clever as Alfred, and he knew that weakness invited war. So just as Alfred dreamed of uniting the Saxon kingdoms into one strong country, so Hywel was dreaming of uniting the Welsh kingdoms. He ruled the south, but to the north was a patchwork of little states, and little states are weak.

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘your Æthelflaed will hear of war in our land, but assure her it is not her business. It is ours. Leave us alone and we will leave you alone.’

  ‘Until you don’t, lord,’ I said.

  Again he smiled. ‘Until we don’t? Yes, one day we must fight, but you will make your Englaland and we will make our Cymru first. And we will probably both be long dead, my friend, before those shield walls meet.’

  ‘Cymru?’ I had asked, stumbling over the strange word.

  ‘You call it Wales.’

  And now we left Cymru, blown by a south-westerly wind, the sea seething at the Ðrines’s bow and the wake spreading white and fretful behind us. I had liked Hywel. I knew him for such a short while and met him on only a few occasions, yet of all the kings I have met in my long life he and Alfred impressed me the most. Hywel still lives and now he rules over much of Wales and grows stronger every year, and one day, no doubt, the men of Cymru will come to take back the stories that we Saxons stole from them. Or we shall march to destroy them. One day. Not now.

  And we sailed northwards to save Æthelflaed’s kingdom.

  I could have been wrong. Perhaps Sigtryggr was looking for new land in Scotland, or on the rugged coast of Cumbraland, or perhaps in Gwynedd, which was the northernmost of all the Welsh kingdoms, but I somehow doubted it.

  I had sailed Britain’s western shore and it is a cruel coast, rock-bound, wave-battered, and tide-swirl
ed, yet north of the Sæfern there is one soft place, one spread of land where the rivers invite a ship to go deep inland, where the soil is not steep and rock-strewn, where cattle can graze and barley grow, and that place was Wirhealum, the land between the River Mærse and the River Dee. Ceaster was there, and it had been at Ceaster that Æthelflaed had led her men against the Norse. The capture of that city and of the rich lands around it had been because of Æthelflaed’s insistence, the achievement that had persuaded men to trust her with Mercia, but now, if my suspicions were correct, more Norsemen were going to Wirhealum. A new fleet was sailing with new warriors, hundreds of warriors, and if Æthelflaed was to begin her rule by losing Ceaster, if that great swathe of newly conquered land was to be lost, then men would say it was the Christian god’s revenge for appointing a mere woman to rule over them.

  The safe thing was to return to Gleawecestre. We could have made the voyage quickly enough, helped by the wind, which blew from the south-west two days out of three, but once there we would still be a week’s hard march from Ceaster. I reckoned Æthelflaed would have stayed in Gleawecestre, where she was appointing clerks and scribes and priests to administer the lands she now ruled, but I knew she had already sent at least fifty men north to reinforce the garrison at Ceaster. Those were the men Sigtryggr would fight, if indeed he was heading for the land between the rivers.

  So I set my course northwards. Ahead of us were Sigtryggr’s ships, which meant over twenty crews to make an army of at least five hundred men. Five hundred hungry men seeking land. And how many men did Æthelflaed have at Ceaster? I called my son back to the steering-oar and asked him.

  ‘There were just over three hundred when I was there,’ he said.

  ‘Including your men?’

  ‘Including thirty-eight of us,’ he said.

  ‘So you left, and Æthelflaed also took thirty-two men south. So Ceaster was garrisoned by what? Two hundred and fifty men?’

  ‘Maybe a few more.’

  ‘Or a few less. Men get sick.’ I stared at the distant shore and saw unfriendly hills beneath heaping clouds. The wind was fretting the waves, shivering them with whitecaps, but also driving our ship hard north. ‘We know she’s just sent fifty men north, so there should still be around three hundred men there. And Merewalh commands.’

  My son nodded. ‘He’s a good man.’

  ‘He’s a good man,’ I agreed.

  My son heard the hesitation in my voice. ‘But not good enough?’

  ‘He’ll fight like a bull,’ I said, ‘and he’s honest. But does he think like a wildcat?’ I liked Merewalh, and trusted him. I had no doubt that Æthelflaed would raise him, maybe make him an ealdorman, and I had even thought of Merewalh as a husband for Stiorra. That might still happen, I supposed, but for now Merewalh had to defend Ceaster, and his three hundred men should be more than enough for that task. The burh’s walls were made of stone, and its ditch was deep. The Romans had built well, but I assumed Sigtryggr knew of Ceaster’s strength and my fear was that the young Norseman had a wildcat’s cunning. ‘So what was the Lady Æthelflaed doing when you left Ceaster?’ I asked Uhtred.

  ‘Making a new burh.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On the bank of the Mærse.’

  That made sense. Ceaster was a fortress that guarded the Dee, the southernmost river, but the Mærse was an open path. Put a burh there, and enemies could not use the river to pierce deep into the heartland. ‘So Merewalh needs men to finish the new burh,’ I said, ‘and to garrison it, and he needs more men to protect Ceaster. He can’t do all that with three hundred men.’

  ‘And Osferth is going there with the families,’ my son said grimly.

  ‘With Stiorra too,’ I said, and felt a pang of guilt. I have been a careless father. My eldest son was an outlaw to me because of his damned religion, Uhtred had turned out well, but none of that was my doing, while Stiorra was a mystery to me. I loved her, but now I had sent her into danger.

  ‘The families,’ my son said, ‘and your money.’

  Fate is a bitch. I’d sent Osferth north because Ceaster had seemed a safer destination than Gleawecestre, but unless I was wrong about the Norsemen, then I had sent Osferth, my daughter, our families, and all our fortune straight towards a horde of enemies. And worse. Eardwulf might have joined Sigtryggr, and I was certain that Eardwulf was as sly as a spinney of wildcats.

  ‘Suppose Eardwulf goes to Ceaster,’ I suggested. My son looked at me in puzzlement. ‘Do they know he’s a traitor?’ I asked.

  He understood my fear. ‘If they don’t know yet …’ he said slowly.

  ‘They’ll open the gates to him,’ I interrupted.

  ‘But they will know by now,’ my son insisted.

  ‘They’ll know about Eardwulf,’ I agreed. The reinforcements Æthelflaed had sent from Gleawecestre would have carried that news. ‘But do they know all his followers?’

  ‘Oh God,’ he said, thinking about what I had said and realising the danger. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Much help he is,’ I snarled.

  The Ðrines slammed into a steeper wave, drenching the deck with cold spray. The wind had been freshening all day and the waves were now fierce and quick, but as night fell the wind died and the sea settled. We had lost sight of the land because we were crossing the vast bay that is the west coast of Wales, though I feared the northern side of that bay, which juts like a rocky arm to trap unwary ships. We lowered the sail, took to the oars, and steered by the infrequent glimpses of the stars. I took the oar and headed the ship slightly west of north. We rowed slowly, and I watched the water sparkle from the strange glowing lights that sometimes twinkle in the sea at night. We call them Ran’s jewels, the eerie glitter of the precious stones that are draped around that jealous goddess’s neck.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Finan asked me some time in the jewelled darkness.

  ‘Wirhealum.’

  ‘North or south?’

  It was a good question and I did not know the answer. If we used the Dee, the southern river, we could row almost to Ceaster’s gates, but if Sigtryggr had made the same choice then we would simply find ourselves facing his men. If we chose the northern river, we would beach the ship a fair way from Ceaster and in all likelihood avoid Sigtryggr’s fleet, but it would take us much longer to reach the burh. ‘I’ll guess Sigtryggr wants to capture Ceaster,’ I said.

  ‘If he’s gone to Wirhealum, yes.’

  ‘If,’ I said sourly. Instinct is a strange thing. You cannot touch it, feel it, smell it, or hear it, but you must trust it, and that night, as we listened to the slap of the waves and the creak of the oars, I was as certain as I could be that my fears were justified. Somewhere ahead of us was a fleet of Norsemen intent on capturing Æthelflaed’s city of Ceaster. But how would he do it? My instinct was not giving me an answer. ‘He’ll want to capture the city quickly,’ I suggested.

  ‘He will,’ Finan agreed. ‘If he delays, then the garrison only gets stronger.’

  ‘So he’ll take the faster route.’

  ‘The Dee.’

  ‘So we’ll go north,’ I decided, ‘to the Mærse. And in the dawn we take that damned cross off the prow.’

  The cross on the Ðrines’s high bow proclaimed us to be a Christian ship and invited any Dane or Norseman to attack us. A Danish ship would have a proud figure at the bows, a dragon or a serpent or an eagle, but such carvings could always be lifted off the prow timber. The carved and painted beasts were never displayed in home waters, for those waters were friendly and did not need the threat of the beast to tame the unfriendly spirits, but the threat was always needed off enemy coasts. But the cross on the Ðrines’s bow was fixed. The upright was simply the prow timber extended a few feet above the deck which meant my men would have to use axes to cut the thing down, but once it was gone we would no longer be inviting attack. I was sure there were no Christian ships ahead of us, only enemies.

  The axes did their work in the grey light of a limpid dawn. Some of the
Christians flinched when the big cross finally splashed overboard, bumped hard against the hull, and was left behind. A flutter of wind rippled the sea and our sail was hoisted again, the oars shipped, and we let the small wind carry us northwards. Far off to the east I saw a scatter of dark sails, and guessed they were Welsh fishing craft. A cloud of gulls whirled about the ships, which, seeing us, hurried back towards the land, and that land showed an hour or so after dawn.

  And so we sailed. But to what? I did not know. I touched the hammer hanging about my neck and prayed to Thor that my instincts were wrong, that we would reach the Mærse and find nothing but peace.

  But my instincts were not wrong. We sailed towards trouble.

  Next night we sheltered against the northern Welsh coast, anchored in a cove while the wind howled above us. Rain pelted down. Lightning struck ashore, each flash showing gaunt hills and sleeting rain. The storm came fast and passed quickly. Long before dawn it had gone, a sudden anger of the gods. What it meant I did not know and could only fear, yet by dawn the wind was calm again, the clouds had scattered, and the rising sun was flickering from the settling waves as we hauled the stone and thrust oars into tholes.

  I took one of the oars. There was no pain, though after an hour my body ached from the exertion. We chanted the song of Beowulf, an ancient song telling how that hero swam for a whole day to reach the bottom of a great lake, there to fight Grendel’s dam, the monstrous hag. ‘Wearp ðā wunden-mæl,’ we bellowed as the oar blades bit, ‘wrættum gebunden,’ as we hauled on the looms, ‘yrre oretta, þæt hit on eorðan læg,’ as we dragged the hull through the glittering sea, ‘stið ond styl-ecg,’ as we recovered the oars and swung them back. The words told how Beowulf, realising his sword could not bite through the monster’s thick hide, had hurled the blade away, had hurled away his blade which had smoke-like curling patterns traced through its steel, just as Serpent-Breath did, and instead he had wrestled with the hag, forcing her to the floor. He took her blows and returned them, and finally snatched one of her own swords, a brutal blade from the days when giants strode the earth, a sword so heavy that only a hero could wield it, and Beowulf chopped the blade into the monster’s neck and the shrieks of her dying echoed to the roof of the sky. It is a good tale, taught to me by Ealdwulf the smith when I was a child, though he chanted the old version, not the new one that my men bellowed as the Ðrines clove the morning sea. They shouted that ‘Hālig God’ gave Beowulf the victory, but in Ealdwulf’s telling it had been Thor, not holy God, who gave the hero the strength to overcome the vile creature.