‘Valhalla,’ I said.
‘I think he’s just moaning,’ a man said close by.
‘He’ll never know he killed Cnut,’ another man said.
‘He will know!’ Æthelflaed said fiercely.
‘My lady …’
‘He will know!’ she insisted, and her fingers tightened on mine.
‘I do know,’ I said. ‘I cut his throat, of course I know.’
‘Just moaning,’ the man’s voice said very close by. A cloth with rough weave was wiped across my lips, then there was a gust of colder air and the sound of people entering the room. A half-dozen people spoke at once, then someone was close by my head and a hand stroked my forehead.
‘He’s not dead, Finan,’ Æthelflaed said softly.
Finan said nothing. ‘I killed him,’ I said to Finan. ‘But he was fast. Even faster than you.’
‘Sweet Jesus,’ Finan said, ‘I can’t imagine life without him.’ He sounded heartbroken.
‘I’m not dead, you Irish bastard,’ I said, ‘we have battles yet to fight, you and I.’
‘Is he speaking?’ Finan asked.
‘Just groaning,’ a man’s voice answered, and I was aware that more folk had come into the room. Finan’s hand went away and another took its place.
‘Father?’ It was Uhtred.
‘I’m sorry if I was cruel to you,’ I said, ‘but you’re good. You killed Sigurd! Men will know you now.’
‘Oh dear God,’ Uhtred said, then his hand went away. ‘Lord?’ he said.
‘How is he?’ That was King Edward of Wessex. There was a rustle as men went to their knees.
‘He can’t last long,’ a man’s voice said.
‘And Lord Æthelred?’
‘The wound is grievous, lord, but I think he will live.’
‘God be praised. What happened?’
There was a pause as if no one wanted to answer. ‘I’m not dying,’ I said, and no one took any notice.
‘Lord Æthelred was attacked by a group of Danes, lord,’ a man said, ‘at the end of the battle. Most were surrendering. These tried to kill Lord Æthelred.’
‘I see no wound,’ the king said.
‘The back of his skull, lord. The helmet took most of the blow, but the tip of the spear went through.’
The back of his skull, I thought, it would be the back of his skull. I laughed. It hurt. I stopped laughing.
‘Is he dying?’ a voice close by asked.
Æthelflaed’s fingers gripped mine hard. ‘He’s just choking,’ she said.
‘Sister,’ the king said.
‘Be quiet, Edward!’ she said fiercely.
‘You should be at your husband’s side,’ Edward said sternly.
‘You boring little fart,’ I told him.
‘I am where I wish to be,’ Æthelflaed said in a tone I knew well. No one would win an argument with her now, and no one tried, though a voice muttered something about her behaviour being unseemly.
‘They’re rancid shit-wits,’ I told her, and felt her hand stroke my forehead.
There was silence except for the crackle of the burning logs in the hearth. ‘Has he been given the rites?’ the king asked after a while.
‘He doesn’t want the rites,’ Finan said.
‘He must have them,’ Edward insisted. ‘Father Uhtred?’
‘His name isn’t Uhtred,’ I snarled, ‘he’s called Father Judas. The bastard should have been a warrior!’
Yet to my surprise Father Judas was weeping. His hands shook as he touched me, as he prayed over me, as he administered the death rites. When he finished he left his fingers on my lips. ‘He was a loving father,’ he said.
‘Of course I wasn’t,’ I said.
‘A difficult man,’ Edward said, though not unsympathetically.
‘He was not difficult,’ Æthelflaed said fiercely, ‘but he was only happy when he was fighting. And you were all frightened of him, but in truth he was generous, kind and stubborn.’ She was crying now.
‘Oh, do stop it, woman,’ I said, ‘you know I can’t bear weeping women.’
‘Tomorrow we go south,’ the king announced, ‘and we shall give thanks for a great victory.’
‘A victory Lord Uhtred gave you,’ Æthelflaed said.
‘That he gave us,’ the king agreed, ‘and that God allowed him to give us. And we shall build burhs in Mercia. There is God’s work to do.’
‘My father would want to be buried at Bebbanburg,’ Father Judas said.
‘I want to be buried with Gisela!’ I said. ‘But I’m not dying!’
I could not see, not even the glow of the fire. Or rather I could only see a great vault that was both dark and light at the same time, a cave shot through with strange lights, and somewhere in the far recesses of that glowing darkness were figures and I thought Gisela was one, and I gripped Serpent-Breath as the pain tore through me again so that I arched my back and that made the pain worse. Æthelflaed gasped and clung to my hand and another hand closed about the grip I had on Serpent-Breath, holding me tight to her.
‘He’s going,’ Æthelflaed said.
‘God take his soul.’ It was Finan who was holding my hand to Serpent-Breath’s hilt.
‘I am not!’ I said. ‘I am not!’ And the woman in the cave was alone now and it really was Gisela, lovely Gisela, and she was smiling at me, holding her hands towards me, and she was speaking though I could not hear her voice. ‘Be quiet, all of you,’ I said, ‘I want to hear Gisela.’
‘Any moment,’ a voice said in a hushed tone.
A long pause. A hand touched my face. ‘He still lives, God be praised,’ Father Judas said uncertainly.
Then there was another silence. A long silence. Gisela had faded and my eyes stared at misted nothingness. I was aware of people around the bed. A horse neighed and out in the dark an owl called.
‘Wyrd bið ful āræd,’ I said, and no one answered, so I said it again.
Wyrd bið ful āræd.
Historical Note
AD 910. This year Frithestan took to the bishopric of Wintanceaster; and the same year King Edward sent an army both from Wessex and Mercia, which very much harassed the northern army by their attacks on men and property of every kind. They slew many of the Danes, and remained in the country five weeks. This year the Angles and the Danes fought at Teotanheale; and the Angles had the victory.
That was one of the entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 910. Another recorded Æthelred’s death, prematurely, though some historians believe Æthelred was wounded so gravely at Teotanheale that the injury brought on his death in 911.
Teotanheale is now Tettenhall, a pleasant suburb of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. Readers familiar with the area might protest that the River Tame does not run near Tettenhall, but there is evidence that it did in the tenth century AD, long before it was diked, channelled and diverted to its present course.
We know there was a battle at Tettenhall in AD 910, and we know that it was fought by a combined army of Wessex and Mercia that decisively defeated the marauding Danes. The two Danish leaders were killed. Their names were Eowils and Healfdan, but rather than introduce two new names to the story and promptly kill them, I decided to use Cnut and Sigurd, who feature in some of the earlier novels about Uhtred’s adventures. We know very little, indeed next to nothing, of what happened at Tettenhall. There was a battle and the Danes lost, but why or how is a mystery. So the battle is not fiction, though my version is entirely invented. I doubt that the Danes precipitated the search for Saint Oswald’s bones, though that too happened when Æthelred of Mercia sent an expedition into southern Northumbria to retrieve the bones. Oswald was a Northumbrian saint, and one theory holds that Æthelred was attempting to solicit the support of those Saxons living under Danish rule in Northumbria. The bones were discovered and taken back to Mercia where they were interred at Gloucester, all but for the skull, which remained in Durham (four other churches in Europe claim to possess the skull, but Durham
seems the likeliest candidate), and the one arm that was at Bamburgh (Bebbanburg), though, centuries later, that was stolen by monks from Peterborough.
The first Latin quote in Chapter Eleven, moribus et forma conciliandus amor, which is incised on the Roman bowl that Uhtred reduces to hacksilver, is from Ovid; ‘pleasant looks and good manners assist love’, which is probably true, but was undoubtedly rare in Saxon Britain. The second quote, on the bridge at Tameworþig, is quoted from the magnificent Roman bridge at Alcántara in Spain: pontem perpetui mansurum in saecula, which means ‘I have built a bridge which will last for ever.’ The Saxons lived in the shadow of Roman Britain, surrounded by the ruins of their great monuments, using their roads, and doubtless wondering why such magnificence had decayed to oblivion.
The battle at Tettenhall has long been forgotten, yet it was an important event in the slow process that created England. In the ninth century it seemed as if Saxon culture was doomed and that the Danes would occupy all of southern Britain. There would probably have been no England, but a country called Daneland instead. Yet Alfred of Wessex stemmed the Danish advance and fought back to secure his country. His essential weapon was the burh, the series of fortified towns that sheltered the population and frustrated the Danes, who had no taste for sieges. Wessex then becomes the springboard for the campaigns that will reconquer the north and create a unified country of the English-speaking tribes: England. By the time of Alfred’s death in AD 899, the north, all but for impregnable Bebbanburg, is under Danish rule, while the centre of the country is split between Danes and Saxons. Yet slowly, inexorably, West Saxon armies advance northwards. That process was far from over in 910, but by winning the decisive victory at Tettenhall, the West Saxons drive the Danes out of the Midlands. New burhs in the conquered territory will consolidate the gains. Yet the Danes are far from beaten. They will invade again, and their hold on the north is still powerful, but from this point on they are mostly on the defensive. Edward, Alfred’s son, and Æthelflaed, Alfred’s daughter, are the driving forces behind this process, yet neither will live to see the final victory, which results, at last, in a country called England. That victory will be won by Æthelstan, Edward’s son, and Uhtred will be there to witness it.
But that is another story.
About the Author
Bernard Cornwell was born in London, raised in Essex and worked for the BBC for eleven years before meeting Judy, his American wife. Denied an American work permit, he wrote a novel instead and has been writing ever since. He and Judy divide their time between Cape Cod and Charleston, South Carolina.
www.bernardcornwell.net
Also by Bernard Cornwell
The WARRIOR Chronicles
The Last Kingdom
The Pale Horseman
The Lords of the North
Sword Song
The Burning Land
Death of Kings
Azincourt
The GRAIL QUEST Series
Harlequin
Vagabond
Heretic
1356
Stonehenge: a novel of 2000 BC
The Fort
The STARBUCK Chronicles
Rebel
Copperhead
Battle Flag
The Bloody Ground
The WARLORD Chronicles
The Winter King
The Enemy of God
Excalibur
Gallows Thief
By Bernard Cornwell and Susannah Kells
A Crowning Mercy
Fallen Angels
THE SHARPE SERIES
(IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)
Sharpe’s Tiger (1799)
Sharpe’s Triumph (1803)
Sharpe’s Fortress (1803)
Sharpe’s Trafalgar (1805)
Sharpe’s Prey (1807)
Sharpe’s Rifles (1809)
Sharpe’s Havoc (1809)
Sharpe’s Eagle (1809)
Sharpe’s Gold (1810)
Sharpe’s Escape (1810)
Sharpe’s Fury (1811)
Sharpe’s Battle (1811)
Sharpe’s Company (1812)
Sharpe’s Sword (1812)
Sharpe’s Enemy (1812)
Sharpe’s Honour (1813)
Sharpe’s Regiment (1813)
Sharpe’s Siege (1814)
Sharpe’s Revenge (1814)
Sharpe’s Waterloo (1815)
Sharpe’s Devil (1820–21)
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2013
Map © John Gilkes 2013
Family tree © Colin Hall 2009
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © September 2013 ISBN: 9780007331949
Version: 2013-08-27
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