The Last Kingdom Series Books 4-6: Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings

Æthelred is a hero now. I hear tales of him, tales told by firelight in Saxon halls the length of England. Æthelred the Bold, Æthelred the Warrior, Æthelred the Loyal. I smile when I hear the stories, but I do not say anything, not even when men ask if it is true that I once knew Æthelred. Of course I knew Æthelred, and it is true that he was a warrior before sickness slowed and stilled him, and he was also bold, though his shrewdest stroke was to pay poets to be his courtiers so that they would make up songs about his prowess. A man could become rich in Æthelred’s court by stringing words like beads.

He was never King of Mercia, though he wanted to be. Alfred made sure of that, for Alfred wanted no king in Mercia. He wanted a loyal follower to be the ruler of Mercia, and he made sure that loyal follower was dependent on West Saxon money, and Æthelred was his chosen man. He was given the title Ealdorman of Mercia, and in all but name he was king, though the Danes of northern Mercia never recognised his authority. They did recognise his power, and that power came from being Alfred’s son-in-law, which was why the Saxon thegns of southern Mercia also accepted him. They may not have liked Ealdorman Æthelred, but they knew he could bring West Saxon troops to confront any southward move by the Danes.

And on a spring day in Wintanceaster, a day bright with birdsong and sunlight, Æthelred came into his power. He strutted into Alfred’s big new church with a smile across his red-bearded face. He ever suffered from the delusion that others liked him and perhaps some men did like him, but not me. My cousin was short, pugnacious and boastful. His jaw was broad and belligerent, his eyes challenging. He was twice as old as his bride, and for almost five years he had been commander of Alfred’s household troops, an appointment he owed to birth rather than to ability. His good fortune had been to inherit lands that spread across most of southern Mercia, and that made him Mercia’s foremost nobleman and, I grudgingly supposed, that sad country’s natural leader. He was also, I ungrudgingly supposed, a piece of shit.

Alfred never saw that. He was deceived by Æthelred’s flamboyant piety, and by the fact that Æthelred was always ready to agree with the King of Wessex. Yes, lord, no, lord, let me empty your night soil bucket, lord, and let me lick your royal arse, lord. That was Æthelred, and his reward was Æthelflaed.

She came into the church a few moments after Æthelred and she, like him, was smiling. She was in love with love, transported that day to a height of joy that showed like radiance on her sweet face. She was a lithe young woman who already had a sway in her hips. She was long-legged, slender, and with a snub-nosed face unscarred by disease. She wore a dress of pale blue linen sewn with panels showing saints with haloes and crosses. She had a girdle of gold cloth hung with tassels and small silver bells. Over her shoulders was a cape of white linen that was fastened at her throat with a crystal brooch. The cape swept the rushes on the flagstone floor as she walked. Her hair, gold bright, was coiled about her head and held in place with ivory combs. That spring day was the first on which she wore her hair up, a sign of marriage, and it revealed her long thin neck. She was so graceful that day.

She caught my gaze as she walked towards the white-hung altar and her eyes, already filled with delight, seemed to take on a new dazzle. She smiled at me and I had to smile back, and she laughed for joy before walking on towards her father and the man who was to be her husband. ‘She’s very fond of you,’ Gisela said with a smile.

‘We have been friends since she was a child,’ I said.

‘She is still a child,’ Gisela said softly as the bride reached the flower-strewn, cross-burdened altar.

I remember thinking that Æthelflaed was being sacrificed on that altar, but if that was true then she was a most willing victim. She had always been a mischievous and wilful child, and I did not doubt that she chafed under her sour mother’s eye and her stern father’s rules. She saw marriage as an escape from Alfred’s dour and pious court, and that day Alfred’s new church was filled with her happiness. I saw Steapa, perhaps the greatest warrior of Wessex, crying. Steapa, like me, was fond of Æthelflaed.

There were close to three hundred folk in the church. Envoys had come from the Frankish kingdoms across the sea, and others had come from Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia and the Welsh kingdoms, and those men, all priests or nobles, were given places of honour close to the altar. The ealdormen and high reeves of Wessex were there too, while nearest to the altar was a dark herd of priests and monks. I heard little of the mass, for Gisela and I were in the back of the church where we talked with friends. Once in a while a sharp command for silence would be issued by a priest, but no one took any notice.

Hild, abbess of a nunnery in Wintanceaster, embraced Gisela. Gisela had two good Christian friends. The first was Hild, who had once fled the church to become my lover, and the other was Thyra, Ragnar’s sister, with whom I had grown up and whom I loved as a sister. Thyra was a Dane, of course, and had been raised in the worship of Thor and Odin, but she had converted and come south to Wessex. She dressed like a nun. She wore a drab grey robe with a hood that hid her astonishing beauty. A black girdle encircled her waist, which was normally as thin as Gisela’s, but now was plump with pregnancy. I laid a gentle hand on the girdle. ‘Another?’ I asked.

‘And soon,’ Thyra said. She had given birth to three children, of whom one, a boy, still lived.

‘Your husband is insatiable,’ I said with mock sternness.

‘It is God’s will,’ Thyra said seriously. The humour I remembered from her childhood had evaporated with her conversion, though in truth it had probably left her when she had been enslaved in Dunholm by her brother’s enemies. She had been raped and abused and driven mad by her captors, and Ragnar and I had fought our way into Dunholm to release her, but it was Christianity that had freed her from the madness and made her into the serene woman who now looked at me so gravely.

‘And how is your husband?’ I asked her.

‘Well, thank you,’ her face brightened as she spoke. Thyra had found love, not just of God, but of a good man, and for that I was thankful.

‘You will, of course, call the child Uhtred if it’s a boy,’ I said sternly.

‘If the king permits it,’ Thyra said, ‘we shall name him Alfred, and if she’s a girl then she will be called Hild.’

That made Hild cry, and Gisela then revealed that she was also pregnant, and the three women went into an interminable discussion of babies. I extricated myself and found Steapa who was standing head and shoulders above the rest of the congregation. ‘You know I’m to throw Sigefrid and Erik out of Lundene?’ I asked him.

‘I was told,’ he said in his slow, deliberate way.

‘You’ll come?’

He gave a quick smile that I took to be consent. He had a frightening face, his skin stretched tight across his big-boned skull so that he seemed to be perpetually grimacing. In battle he was fearsome, a huge warrior with sword skill and savagery. He had been born to slavery, but his size and his fighting ability had raised him to his present eminence. He served in Alfred’s bodyguard, owned slaves himself, and farmed a wide swathe of fine land in Wiltunscir. Men were wary of Steapa because of the anger that was ever-present on his face, but I knew him to be a kind man. He was not clever. Steapa was never a thinker, but he was kind and he was loyal. ‘I’ll ask the king to release you,’ I said.

‘He’ll want me to go with Æthelred,’ Steapa said.

‘You’d rather be with the man who does the fighting, wouldn’t you?’ I asked.

Steapa blinked at me, too slow to understand the insult I had offered my cousin. ‘I shall fight,’ he said, then laid a huge arm on the shoulders of his wife, a tiny creature with an anxious face and small eyes. I could never remember her name, so I greeted her politely and pushed on through the crowd.

Æthelwold found me. Alfred’s nephew had begun drinking again and his eyes were bloodshot. He had been a handsome young man, but his face was thickening now and the veins were red and broken under his skin. He drew me to the edge of the church to stand beneath a banner on which a long exhortation had been embroidered in red wool. ‘All That You Ask of God,’ the banner read, ‘You Will Receive if You Believe. When Good Prayer Asks, Meek Faith Receives.’ I assumed Alfred’s wife and her ladies had done the embroidery, but the sentiments sounded like Alfred’s own. Æthelwold was clutching my elbow so hard that it hurt. ‘I thought you were on my side,’ he hissed reproachfully.

‘I am,’ I said.

He stared at me suspiciously. ‘You met Bjorn?’

‘I met a man pretending to be dead,’ I said.

He ignored that, which surprised me. I remembered how affected he had been by his meeting with Bjorn, so impressed indeed that Æthelwold had become sober for a while, but now he took my dismissal of the risen corpse as a thing of no importance. ‘Don’t you understand,’ he said, still gripping my elbow, ‘that this is our best chance!’

‘Our best chance of what?’ I asked patiently.

‘Of getting rid of him,’ he spoke too vehemently and some folk standing nearby turned to look at us. I said nothing. Of course Æthelwold wanted to be rid of his uncle, but he lacked the courage to strike the blow himself, which is why he was constantly seeking allies like me. He looked up into my face and evidently found no support there, for he let go of my arm. ‘They want to know if you’ve asked Ragnar,’ he said, his voice lower.

So Æthelwold was still in contact with Sigefrid? That was interesting, but perhaps not surprising. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t.’

‘For God’s sake, why not?’

‘Because Bjorn lied,’ I said, ‘and it is not my fate to be king in Mercia.’

‘If I ever become king in Wessex,’ Æthelwold said bitterly, ‘then you had better run for your life.’ I smiled at that, then just looked at him with unblinking eyes and, after a while he turned away and muttered something inaudible that was probably an apology. He stared across the church, his face dark. ‘That Danish bitch,’ he said vehemently.

‘What Danish bitch?’ I asked, and, for a heartbeat, I thought he meant Gisela.

‘That bitch,’ he jerked his head towards Thyra. ‘The one married to the idiot. The pious bitch. The one with her belly stuffed.’

‘Thyra?’

‘She’s beautiful,’ Æthelwold said vengefully.

‘So she is.’

‘And she’s married to an old fool!’ he said, staring at Thyra with loathing on his face. ‘When she’s whelped that pup inside her I’m going to put her on her back,’ he said, ‘and show her how a real man ploughs a field.’

‘You do know she’s my friend?’ I asked.

He looked alarmed. He had plainly not known of my long affection for Thyra and now tried to recant. ‘I just think she’s beautiful,’ he said sullenly, ‘that’s all.’

I smiled and leaned down to his ear. ‘You touch her,’ I whispered, ‘and I’ll put a sword up your arsehole and I’ll rip you open from the crotch to the throat and then feed your entrails to my pigs. Touch her once, Æthelwold, just once, and you’re dead.’

I walked away. He was a fool and a drunk and a lecher, and I dismissed him as harmless. In which I was wrong, as it turned out. He was, after all, the rightful King of Wessex, but only he and a few other fools truly believed he should be king instead of Alfred. Alfred was everything his nephew was not; he was sober, clever, industrious and serious.

He was also happy that day. He watched as his daughter married a man he loved almost like a son, and he listened to the monks chanting and he stared at the church he had made with its gilded beams and painted statues, and he knew that by this marriage he was taking control of southern Mercia.

Which meant that Wessex, like the infants inside Thyra and Gisela, was growing.

Father Beocca found me outside the church where the wedding guests stood in the sunshine and waited for the summons to the feast inside Alfred’s hall. ‘Too many people were talking in the church!’ Beocca complained. ‘This was a holy day, Uhtred, a sacred day, a celebration of the sacrament, and people were talking as if they were at market!’

‘I was one of them,’ I said.