Sword of Kings (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 12)

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘The chapel!’ she sounded surprised.

  ‘He probably wants to pray.’

  ‘Just kill the pup,’ Egil put in cheerfully.

  ‘I think he’ll talk,’ I said. We had learned much from the other prisoners. The small fleet of four ships had been assembled at Dumnoc in East Anglia and was crewed by a mix of men from that port, other East Anglian harbours, and from Wessex. Mostly from Wessex. The men were paid well and had been offered a reward if they succeeded in killing me. The leaders of the fleet, we learned, had been Father Ceolnoth, the boy Wistan and a West Saxon warrior named Egbert. I had never heard of Egbert, though the prisoners claimed he was a famed warrior. ‘A big man, lord,’ one had told me, ‘even taller than you! A scarred face!’ the prisoner had shuddered in remembered fear.

  ‘Was he on the ship that sank?’ I had asked. We had not captured anyone resembling Egbert’s description so I assumed he was dead.

  ‘He was on the Hælubearn, lord, the small ship.’

  Hælubearn meant ‘child of healing’, but it was also a term the Christians used for themselves, and I wondered if all four ships had carried pious names. I suspected they did because another prisoner, clutching a wooden cross hanging at his breast, said that Father Ceolnoth had promised every man that they would go straight to heaven with all their sins forgiven if they succeeded in slaughtering me. ‘Why would Egbert be on the smallest ship?’ I had wondered aloud.

  ‘It was the fastest, lord,’ the first prisoner told me. ‘Those other boats are pigs to sail. Hælubearn might be small, but she’s nimble.’

  ‘Meaning he could escape if there was trouble,’ I had commented sourly, and the prisoners just nodded.

  I reckoned I would learn nothing from Father Ceolnoth, but Wistan, I thought, was vulnerable to kindness and so, when the meal was over, Eadith and I took the boy to Bebbanburg’s chapel, which is built on a lower ledge of rock beside the great hall. It is made of timber like most of the fortress, but the Christians among my men had laid a flagstone floor which they had covered with rugs. The chapel is not large, maybe twenty paces long and half as wide. There are no windows, just a wooden altar at the eastern end, a scattering of milking stools, and a bench against the western wall. Three of the walls are hung with plain woollen cloths that block the draughts, while on the altar is a silver cross, kept well polished, and two large candles which are permanently lit.

  Wistan seemed bemused when I led him inside. He glanced nervously at Eadith who, like him, wore a cross. ‘Lord?’ he asked nervously.

  I sat on the bench and leaned against the wall. ‘We thought you might want to pray,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a consecrated space,’ Eadith reassured the boy.

  ‘We have a priest too,’ I added. ‘Father Cuthbert. He’s a friend and he lives in the fortress here. He’s blind and old and some days he feels unwell and then he asks the priest from the village to take his place.’

  ‘There’s a church in the village,’ Eadith said. ‘You can go there tomorrow.’

  Wistan was now thoroughly confused. He had been taught that I was Uhtred the Wicked, a stubborn pagan, an enemy of his church and a priest-killer, yet now I was showing him a Christian chapel inside my fortress and talking to him of Christian priests. He stared at me, then at Eadith, and had nothing to say.

  I rarely carried Serpent-Breath when I was inside Bebbanburg, but I had Wasp-Sting at my hip and now I drew the short-sword, turned her so that the hilt was towards Wistan, then slid the blade across the flagstones. ‘Your god says you must kill me. Why don’t you?’

  ‘Lord …’ he said, then had nothing more to say.

  ‘You told me you were sent to rid the world of my wickedness,’ I pointed out. ‘You know they call me Uhtredærwe?’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ he said, scarce above a whisper.

  ‘Uhtred the priest-killer?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘I have killed priests,’ I said, ‘and monks.’

  ‘Not on purpose,’ Eadith put in.

  ‘Sometimes on purpose,’ I said, ‘but usually in anger.’ I shrugged. ‘Tell me what else you know about me.’

  Wistan hesitated, then found his courage. ‘You are a pagan, lord, and a warlord. You are friends with the heathen, you encourage them!’ He hesitated again.

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘Men say you want Æthelstan to be king in Wessex because you have bewitched him. That you will use him to take the throne for yourself!’

  ‘Is that all?’ I asked, amused.

  He had not been looking at me, but now raised his eyes to gaze into mine. ‘They say you killed Æthelhelm the Elder and that you forced his daughter to marry your son. That she was raped! Here, in your fortress.’ He had anger on his face and tears in his eyes and, for a heartbeat, I thought he would snatch up Wasp-Sting.

  Then Eadith laughed. She said nothing, just laughed, and her apparent amusement puzzled Wistan. Eadith was looking quizzically at me, and I nodded. She knew what the nod meant and so went into the windswept night. The candles fluttered wildly as she opened and closed the door, but they stayed lit. They were the only illumination in the small chapel, so Wistan and I spoke in near darkness. ‘It’s a rare day when there’s no wind,’ I said mildly. ‘Wind and rain, rain and wind, Bebbanburg’s weather.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, still sitting beside the chapel wall, ‘how did I kill Ealdorman Æthelhelm?’

  ‘How would I know, lord?’

  ‘How do men in Wessex say that he died?’ He did not answer. ‘You are from Wessex?’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ he muttered.

  ‘Then tell me what men in Wessex say about Ealdorman Æthelhelm’s death.’

  ‘They say he was poisoned, lord.’

  I half smiled. ‘By a pagan sorcerer?’

  He shrugged. ‘You would know, lord, not me.’

  ‘Then, Wistan of Wessex,’ I went on, ‘let me tell you what I do know. I did not kill Ealdorman Æthelhelm. He died of the fever despite all the care we gave him. He received the last rites of your church. His daughter was with him when he died, and she was neither raped nor forced into marriage with my son.’

  He said nothing. The light of the big candles flickered their reflection from Wasp-Sting’s blade. The night wind rattled the chapel door and sighed about the roof. ‘Tell me what you know of Prince Æthelstan,’ I said.

  ‘That he is a bastard,’ Wistan said, ‘and would take the throne from Ælfweard.’

  ‘Ælfweard,’ I said, ‘who is nephew to the present Ealdorman Æthelhelm, and is King Edward’s second oldest son. Does Edward still live?’

  ‘Praise God, yes.’

  ‘And Ælfweard is his second son, yet you claim he should be king after his father.’

  ‘He is the ætheling, lord.’

  ‘The eldest son is the ætheling,’ I pointed out.

  ‘And in the eyes of God the king’s eldest son is Ælfweard,’ Wistan insisted, ‘because Æthelstan is a bastard.’

  ‘A bastard,’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ he said stubbornly.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said, ‘I’ll introduce you to Father Cuthbert. You’ll like him! I keep him safe in this fortress, do you know why?’ Wistan shook his head. ‘Because many years ago,’ I went on, ‘Father Cuthbert was foolish enough to marry the young Prince Edward to a pretty Centish girl, the daughter of a bishop. That girl died in childbirth, but she left twin children, Eadgyth and Æthelstan. I say Father Cuthbert was foolish because Edward did not have his father’s permission to marry, but nevertheless the marriage was consecrated by a Christian priest in a Christian church. And those who would deny Æthelstan his true inheritance have been trying to silence Father Cuthbert ever since. They would kill him, Wistan, so that the truth is never known, and that is why I keep him safe in this fortress.’

  ‘But …’ he began, and again he had nothing to say. For his whole life, which I guessed was about twenty years, he h
ad been told by everyone in Wessex that Æthelstan was a bastard, and that Ælfweard was the true heir to Edward’s throne. He had believed that lie, he had believed that Æthelstan was whelped on a whore, and now I was destroying that belief. He believed me, and he did not want to believe me, and so he said nothing.

  ‘And you believe your god sent you to kill me?’ I asked.

  He still said nothing. He just gazed at the sword that lay by his feet.

  I laughed. ‘My wife is a Christian, my son is a Christian, my oldest and closest friend is a Christian, and over half my men are Christians. Wouldn’t your god have asked one of them to kill me instead of sending you? Why send you all the way from Wessex when there are a hundred or more Christians here who can strike me down?’ He neither moved nor spoke. ‘The fisherman you tortured and killed was also a Christian,’ I said.

  He started at that and shook his head. ‘I tried to stop that, but Edgar …’

  His voice tailed away to silence, but I had noted the very slight hesitation before the name Edgar. ‘Edgar isn’t his real name, is it?’ I asked. ‘Who is he?’

  But the church door creaked open before he could answer, and Eadith led Ælswyth into the wind-fluttering candlelight. Ælswyth stopped as soon as she entered, she stared at Wistan, and then she smiled with delight.

  Ælswyth is my daughter-in-law, the daughter of my enemy, and sister to his son, who hates me as much as his father did. Her father, Æthelhelm the Elder, planned to make her a queen, to exchange her beauty for some throne in Christendom, but my son gained her first and she had lived at Bebbanburg ever since. To look at her was to think that no girl so wan, so pale and thin could survive the harsh winters and brutal winds of Northumbria, let alone the agonies of childbirth, yet Ælswyth had given me two grandsons and she alone in the fortress seemed immune to the aches, sneezes, shivers, and coughs that marked our winter months. She looked frail, but was as strong as steel. Her face, so lovely, lit with joy when she saw Wistan. She had a smile that could melt the heart of a beast, but Wistan did not smile back, instead he just gaped at her as if shocked.

  ‘Æthelwulf!’ Eadith exclaimed and went towards him with open arms.

  ‘Æthelwulf!’ I repeated, amused. The name meant ‘noble wolf’ and the young man who had called himself Wistan might look noble, yet he looked anything but wolflike.

  Æthelwulf blushed. He let Ælswyth embrace him, then looked at me sheepishly. ‘I am Æthelwulf,’ he admitted, and in a tone that suggested I should recognise the name.

  ‘My brother!’ Ælswyth said happily. ‘My youngest brother!’ It was then she saw Wasp-Sting on the stone floor and frowned, looking to me for an explanation.

  ‘Your brother,’ I said, ‘was sent to kill me.’

  ‘Kill you?’ Ælswyth sounded shocked.

  ‘In revenge for the way we treated you,’ I continued. ‘Weren’t you raped and forced into an unwanted marriage?’

  ‘No!’ she protested.

  ‘And all that,’ I said, ‘after I had murdered your father.’

  Ælswyth looked up into her brother’s face. ‘Our father died of the fever!’ she said fiercely, ‘I was with him through the whole illness. And no one raped me, no one forced me to marry. I love this place!’

  Poor Æthelwulf. He looked as if the foundations of his life had just been ripped away. He believed Ælswyth of course, how could he not? There was joy on her face and enthusiasm in her voice, while Æthelwulf looked as if he was about to cry.

  ‘Let’s go to bed,’ I said to Eadith, then turned to Ælswyth. ‘And you two can talk.’

  ‘We shall!’ Ælswyth said.

  ‘I’ll send a servant to show you where you can sleep,’ I told Æthelwulf, ‘but you do know you’re a prisoner here?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘An honoured prisoner,’ I said, ‘but if you try to leave the fortress, that will change.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ he said again.

  I picked up Wasp-Sting, patted my prisoner on the shoulder, and went to bed. It had been a long day.

  So Æthelhelm the Younger had sent his youngest brother to kill me. He had equipped a fleet, and offered gold to the crew, and placed a rancid priest on the ships to inspire Æthelwulf with righteous anger. Æthelhelm knew it would be next to impossible to kill me while I stayed inside the fortress and knew too that he could not send sufficient men to ambush me on my lands without those men being discovered and slaughtered by Northumbria’s warriors, so he had been clever. He had sent men to ambush me at sea.

  Æthelwulf was the fleet’s leader, but Æthelhelm knew that his brother, though imbued with the family’s hatred for me, was not the most ruthless of men, and so he had sent Father Ceolnoth to fill Æthelwulf with holy stupidity, and he had also sent the man they called Edgar. Except that was not his real name. Æthelhelm had wanted no one to know of the fleet’s true allegiance, or to connect my death to his orders. He had hoped the blame would be placed on piracy, or on some passing Norse ship, and so he had commanded the leaders to use any name except their own. Æthelwulf had become Wistan, and I learned that Edgar was really Waormund.

  I knew Waormund. He was a huge West Saxon, a brutal man, with a slab face scarred from his right eyebrow to his lower left jaw. I remembered his eyes, dead as stone. In battle Waormund was a man you would want standing beside you because he was capable of terrible violence, but he was also a man who revelled in that savagery. A strong man, even taller than me, and implacable. He was a warrior, and, though you might want his help in a battle, no one but a fool would want Waormund as an enemy. ‘Why,’ I asked Æthelwulf the next morning, ‘was Waormund in your smallest ship?’

  ‘I ordered him into that ship, lord, because I wanted him gone! He’s not a Christian.’

  ‘He’s a pagan?’

  ‘He’s a beast. It was Waormund who tortured the captives. I tried to stop him.’

  ‘But Father Ceolnoth encouraged him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Æthelwulf nodded miserably. We were walking on Bebbanburg’s seaward ramparts. The sun glittered from an empty sea and a small wind brought the smell of seaweed and salt. ‘I tried to stop Waormund,’ Æthelwulf went on, ‘and he cursed me and he cursed God.’

  ‘He cursed your god?’ I asked, amused.

  Æthelwulf made the sign of the cross. ‘I said God would not forgive his cruelty, and he said God was far more cruel than man. So I ordered him into Hælubearn because I couldn’t abide his company.’

  I walked on a few paces. ‘I know your brother hates me,’ I said, ‘but why send you north to kill me? Why now?’

  ‘Because he knows you swore an oath to kill him,’ Æthelwulf said, and that answer shocked me. I had indeed sworn that oath, but I had thought it was a secret between Æthelstan and myself, yet Æthelhelm knew of that oath. How? No wonder Æthelhelm wanted me dead before I attempted to fulfil the oath.

  My sworn enemy’s brother looked at me nervously. ‘Is it true, lord?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but not until King Edward dies.’

  Æthelwulf had flinched when I told him that brutal truth. ‘But why?’ he asked. ‘Why kill my brother?’

  ‘Did you ask your brother why he wanted to kill me?’ I retorted angrily. ‘Don’t answer, I know why. Because he believes I killed your father, and because I’m Uhtredærwe the Pagan, Uhtred the Priest-Killer.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Your brother has tried to kill Æthelstan,’ I said, ‘and he’s tried to kill me, and you wonder why I want to kill him?’ He said nothing to that. ‘Tell me what happens when Edward dies?’ I asked harshly.

  ‘I pray he lives,’ Æthelwulf said, making the sign of the cross. ‘He was in Mercia when I left, lord, but had taken to his bed. The priests visited him.’

  ‘To give him the last rites?’

  ‘So they said, lord, but he’s recovered before.’

  ‘So what happens if he doesn’t recover?’

  He paused, unwilling to gi
ve the answer he knew I did not want to hear. ‘When he dies, lord,’ he made the sign of the cross again, ‘Ælfweard becomes King of Wessex.’

  ‘And Ælfweard is your nephew,’ I said, ‘and Ælfweard is a sparrow-witted piece of shit, but if he becomes king, your brother thinks he can control him, and he thinks he can rule Wessex through Ælfweard. There’s just one problem, isn’t there? That Æthelstan’s parents really were married, which means Æthelstan is no bastard, so when Edward dies there’ll be civil war. Saxon against Saxon, Christian against Christian, Ælfweard against Æthelstan. And long ago I swore an oath to protect Æthelstan. I sometimes wish I hadn’t.’

  He stopped in surprise. ‘You do, lord?’

  ‘Truly,’ I said, and explained no further. I drew him on, pacing the long rampart. It was true I had sworn an oath to protect Æthelstan, but increasingly I was not certain that I liked him. He was too pious, too like his grandfather, and, I also knew, too ambitious. There is nothing wrong with ambition. Æthelstan’s grandfather, King Alfred, had been a man of ambition, and Æthelstan had inherited his grandfather’s dreams, and those dreams meant uniting the kingdoms of Saxon Britain. Wessex had invaded East Anglia, it had swallowed Mercia, and it was no secret that Wessex wished to rule Northumbria, my Northumbria, the last British kingdom where men and women were free to worship as they wished. Æthelstan had sworn never to invade Northumbria while I lived, but how long could that be? No man lives for ever, and I was already old, and I feared that by supporting Æthelstan I was condemning my country to the rule of southern kings and their grasping bishops. Yet I had sworn an oath to the man most likely to make that happen.

  I am a Northumbrian and Northumbria is my country. My people are Northumbrians, and Northumbrians are a hard, tough people, yet we are a small country. To our north lies Alba, full of ambitious Scots who raid us, revile us, and want our land. To the west lies Ireland, home to Norsemen who are never satisfied with the land they have, and always want more. The Danes are restless across the eastern sea, and they have never relinquished their claim to my land where so many Danes have already settled. So to the east, to the west, and to the north we have enemies, and we are a small country. And to the south are Saxons, folk who speak our language, and they too want Northumbria.