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

Pyrlig and Osferth left before dawn, using two horses out of the many we had captured in Lundene. I walked around the circuit of the walls as the sun rose, noting those places that still needed repair. My men were standing guard. Most were from the Berrocscire fyrd, which had fought under Æthelred the previous day, and their excitement at their apparently easy victory had still not subsided.

A few of Æthelred’s men were also posted on the walls, though most were recovering from the ale and mead they had drunk through the night. At one of the northern gates, which looked towards misted green hills, I met Egbert, the elderly man who had yielded to Æthelflaed’s demands and had given me his best men. I rewarded him with the gift of a silver arm ring I had taken from one of the many corpses. Those dead were still unburied and, in the dawn, ravens and kites were feasting. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘I should have trusted you,’ he said awkwardly.

‘You did trust me.’

He shrugged. ‘Because of her, yes.’

‘Is Æthelflaed here?’ I asked.

‘Still at the island,’ Egbert said.

‘I thought you were guarding her?’

‘I was,’ Egbert said dully, ‘but Lord Æthelred had me replaced last night.’

‘Had you replaced?’ I asked, then saw that his silver chain, the symbol that he commanded men, had been taken from him.

He shrugged as if to tell me he did not understand the decision. ‘Ordered me to come here,’ he said, ‘but when I arrived he wouldn’t see me. He was sick.’

‘Something serious, I hope?’

A half-smile flickered and died on Egbert’s face. ‘He was vomiting, I’m told. Probably nothing.’

My cousin had taken the palace at the top of Lundene’s hill as his quarters, while I stayed in the Roman house by the river. I liked it. I have always liked Roman buildings because their walls possess the great virtue of keeping out wind, rain and snow. That house was large. You entered through an arch leading from the street into a courtyard surrounded by a pillared arcade. On three sides of the courtyard were small rooms that must have been used by servants or for storage. One was a kitchen and had a brick bread oven so large that you could bake enough loaves to feed three crews at one time. The courtyard’s fourth side led into six rooms, two of them big enough to assemble my whole bodyguard. Beyond those two big rooms was a paved terrace that overlooked the river and at evening time that was a pleasant place, though at low tide the stench of the Temes could be overwhelming.

I could have gone back to Coccham, but I stayed anyway and the men of Berrocscire’s fyrd also stayed, though they were unhappy because it was springtime and there was work to do on their farms. I kept them in Lundene to strengthen the city’s walls. I would have gone home if I thought Æthelred would have done that work, but he seemed blithely unaware of the sad state of the city’s defences. Sigefrid had patched a few places and he had strengthened the gates, but there was still much to do. The old masonry was crumbling and had even fallen into the outer ditch in places, and my men cut and trimmed trees to make new palisades wherever the wall was weak. Then we cleared the ditch outside the wall, scraping out matted filth and planting sharpened stakes to welcome any attacker.

Alfred sent orders that the whole of the old city was to be rebuilt. Any Roman building in good repair was to be kept, while dilapidated ruins were to be pulled down and replaced with sturdy timber and thatch, but there were neither the men nor the funds to attempt such work. Alfred’s idea was that the Saxons of the undefended new town would move into old Lundene and be safe behind its ramparts, but those Saxons still feared the ghosts of the Roman builders and they stubbornly resisted every invitation to take over the deserted properties. My men of the Berrocscire fyrd were just as frightened of the ghosts, but they were still more frightened of me and so they stayed and worked.

Æthelred took no notice of what I did. His sickness must have passed for he busied himself hunting. Every day he rode to the wooded hills north of the city where he pursued deer. He never took fewer than forty men, for there was always a chance that some marauding Danish band might come close to Lundene. There were many of those bands, but fate decreed that none went near Æthelred. Every day I would see horsemen to the east, picking their way through the desolate dark marshes that lay seawards of the city. They were Danes, watching us, and doubtless reporting back to Sigefrid.

I got news of Sigefrid. He lived, the reports said, though he was so crippled by his wound that he could neither walk nor stand. He had taken refuge at Beamfleot with his brother and with Haesten, and from there they sent raiders into the mouth of the Temes. Saxon ships dared not sail to Frankia, for the Northmen were in a vengeful mood after their defeat in Lundene. One Danish ship, dragon-prowed, even rowed up the Temes to taunt us from the churning water just below the gap in the broken bridge. They had Saxon prisoners aboard and the Danes killed them, one by one, making sure we could see the bloody executions. There were also women captives aboard and we could hear them screaming. I sent Finan and a dozen men to the bridge and they carried a clay pot of fire, and once on the bridge they used hunting bows to shoot fire-arrows at the intruder. All shipmasters fear fire, and the arrows, most of which missed altogether, persuaded them to drop downriver until the arrows could no longer reach them, but they did not go far and their oarsmen held the ship against the current as more prisoners were killed. They did not leave until I had assembled a crew to man one of the captured boats tied at the wharves, and only then did they turn and row downriver into the darkening evening.

Other ships from Beamfleot crossed the wide estuary of the Temes and landed men in Wessex. That part of Wessex was an alien place. It had once been the kingdom of Cent until it was conquered by the West Saxons and, though the men of Cent were Saxons, they spoke in a strange accent. It had always been a wild place, close to the other lands across the sea, and ever liable to be raided by Vikings. Now Sigefrid’s men launched ship after ship across the estuary and pillaged deep into Cent. They took slaves and burned villages. A messenger came from Swithwulf, Bishop of Hrofeceastre, to beg for my help. ‘The heathen were at Contwaraburg,’ the messenger, a young priest, told me gloomily.

‘Did they kill the archbishop?’ I asked cheerfully.

‘He was not there, lord, thank God.’ The priest made the sign of the cross. ‘The pagans are everywhere, lord, and no one is safe. Bishop Swithwulf begs your help.’

But I could not help the bishop. I needed men to guard Lundene, not Cent, and I needed men to guard my family too for, a week after the city’s fall, Gisela, Stiorra and a half-dozen maids arrived. I had sent Finan and thirty men to escort them safely down the river and the house by the Temes seemed to grow warmer with the echoes of women’s laughter. ‘You might have swept the house,’ Gisela chided me.

‘I did!’

‘Ha!’ she pointed to a ceiling, ‘what are those?’

‘Cobwebs,’ I said, ‘they’re holding the beams in place.’

The cobwebs were swept away and the kitchen fires were lit. In the courtyard, under a corner where the tiled arcade roofs met, there was an old stone urn that was choked with rubbish. Gisela cleaned the filth out, then she and two maids scrubbed the outside of the urn to reveal white marble carved with delicate women who appeared to be chasing each other and waving harps. Gisela loved those carvings. She crouched beside them, tracing a finger over the hair of the Roman women, and then she and the maids tried to copy the hairstyle. She loved the house too, and even endured the river’s stench to sit on the terrace in the evening and watch the water slide by. ‘He beats her,’ she told me one evening.

I knew of whom she spoke and said nothing.

‘She’s bruised,’ Gisela said, ‘and she’s pregnant, and he beats her.’

‘She’s what?’ I asked in surprise.

‘Æthelflaed,’ Gisela said patiently, ‘is pregnant.’ Almost every day Gisela went to the palace and spent time with Æthelflaed, though Æthelflaed was never allowed to visit our house.

I was surprised by Gisela’s news of Æthelflaed’s pregnancy. I do not know why I should have been surprised, but I was. I suppose I still thought of Æthelflaed as a child. ‘And he hits her?’ I asked.

‘Because he thinks she loves other men,’ Gisela said.

‘Does she?’

‘No, of course she doesn’t, but he fears she does.’ Gisela paused to gather more wool that she was spinning onto a distaff. ‘He thinks she loves you.’

I thought of Æthelred’s sudden anger on Lundene’s bridge. ‘He’s mad!’ I said.

‘No, he’s jealous,’ Gisela said, laying a hand on my arm. ‘And I know he has nothing to be jealous about.’ She smiled at me, then went back to gathering her wool. ‘It’s a strange way to show love, isn’t it?’

Æthelflaed had come to the city the day after it fell. She travelled by boat to the Saxon town, and from there an ox cart had carried her across the Fleot and so up to her husband’s new palace. Men lined the route waving leafy green boughs, a priest walked ahead of the oxen scattering holy water while a choir of women followed the cart, which, like the oxen’s horns, was hung with spring flowers. Æthelflaed, clutching the cart’s side to steady herself, had looked uncomfortable, but she had given me a wan smile as the oxen dragged her over the uneven stones inside the gate.

Æthelflaed’s arrival was celebrated by a feast in the palace. I am certain Æthelred had not wanted to invite me, but my rank had given him little choice and a grudging message had arrived on the afternoon before the celebration. The feast had been nothing special, though the ale was plentiful enough. A dozen priests shared the top table with Æthelred and Æthelflaed, and I was given a stool at the end of that long board. Æthelred glowered at me, the priests ignored me, and I left early, pleading that I had to walk the walls and make certain the sentries were awake. I remember my cousin had looked pale that night, but it was soon after his vomiting fit. I had asked after his health and he had waved the question away as though it were irrelevant.

Gisela and Æthelflaed became friends in Lundene. I repaired the wall and Æthelred hunted while his men plundered the city for his palace’s furnishings. I went home one day to find six of his followers in the courtyard of my house. Egbert, the man who had given me the troops on the eve of the attack, was one of the six and his face showed no expression as I came into the courtyard. He just watched me. ‘What do you want?’ I asked the six men. Five were in mail and had swords, the sixth wore a finely embroidered jerkin that showed hounds chasing deer. That sixth man also wore a silver chain, a sign of noble rank. It was Aldhelm, my cousin’s friend and the commander of his household troops.

‘This,’ Aldhelm answered. He was standing by the urn that Gisela had cleaned. It served now to catch rainwater that fell from the roof, and that water was sweet and clean-tasting, a rarity in any city.

‘Two hundred silver shillings,’ I told Aldhelm, ‘and it’s yours.’

He sneered at that. The price was outrageous. The four younger men had succeeded in tipping the urn so that its water had flowed out and now they were struggling to right it again, though they had stopped their efforts when I appeared.

Gisela came from the main house and smiled at me. ‘I told them they couldn’t have it,’ she said.

‘Lord Æthelred wants it,’ Aldhelm insisted.

‘You’re called Aldhelm,’ I said, ‘just Aldhelm, and I am Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg, and you call me “Lord”.’

‘Not this one,’ Gisela spoke silkily. ‘He called me an interfering bitch.’

My men, there were four of them, moved to my side and put hands on sword hilts. I gestured for them to step back and unbuckled my own sword belt. ‘Did you call my wife a bitch?’ I asked Aldhelm.

‘My lord requires this statue,’ he said, ignoring my question.

‘You will apologise to my wife,’ I told him, ‘and then to me.’ I laid the belt with its two heavy swords on the flagstones.

He pointedly turned away from me. ‘Leave it on its side,’ he told the four men, ‘and roll it out to the street.’