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

‘But Aldhelm says that if my father has to worry all the time about a horde of pagans in the Temes estuary, then he might not notice what happens in Mercia.’

‘Where my cousin will declare himself king?’ I guessed.

‘It will be the price he demands,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘for defending the northern frontier of Wessex.’

‘And you’ll be queen,’ I said.

She grimaced at that. ‘You think I want that?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘What I want is the Danes gone from Mercia. I want the Danes gone from East Anglia. I want the Danes gone from Northumbria.’ She was little more than a child, a thin child with a snub nose and bright eyes, but she had steel in her. She was talking to me, who loved the Danes because I had been raised by them, and to Gisela, who was a Dane, but Æthelflaed did not try to soften her words. There was a hatred of the Danes in her, a hatred she had inherited from her father. Then, suddenly, she shuddered and the steel vanished. ‘And I want to live,’ she said.

I did not know what to say. Women died giving birth. So many died. I had sacrificed to Odin and Thor both times that Gisela had given birth and I had still been scared, and I was frightened now because she was pregnant again.

‘You use the wisest women,’ Gisela said, ‘and you trust the herbs and charms they use.’

‘No,’ Æthelflaed said firmly, ‘not that.’

‘Then what?’

‘Tonight,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘at midnight. In St Alban’s church.’

‘Tonight?’ I asked, utterly confused, ‘in the church?’

She stared up at me with huge blue eyes. ‘They might kill me,’ she said.

‘No!’ Gisela protested, not believing what she heard.

‘He wants to be sure the child is his!’ Æthelflaed interrupted her, ‘and of course it is! But they want to be sure and I’m frightened!’

Gisela gathered Æthelflaed into her arms and stroked her hair. ‘No one will kill you,’ she said softly, looking at me.

‘Be at the church, please,’ Æthelflaed said in a voice made small because her head was crushed against Gisela’s breasts.

‘We’ll be with you,’ Gisela said.

‘Go to the big church, the one dedicated to Alban,’ Æthelflaed said. She was crying softly. ‘So how bad is the pain?’ she asked. ‘Is it like being torn in two? That’s what my mother says!’

‘It is bad,’ Gisela admitted, ‘but it leads to a joy like no other.’ She stroked Æthelflaed and stared at me as though I could explain what was to happen at midnight, but I had no idea what was in my cousin’s suspicious mind.

Then the woman who had led us to the pear tree garden appeared at the door. ‘Your husband, mistress,’ she said urgently, ‘he wants you in the hall.’

‘I must go,’ Æthelflaed said. She cuffed her eyes with her sleeve, smiled at us without joy, and fled.

‘What are they going to do to her?’ Gisela asked angrily.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Sorcery?’ she demanded. ‘Some Christian sorcery?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said again, nor did I, except that the summons was for midnight, the darkest hour, when evil appears and shape-shifters stalk the land and the Shadow-Walkers come. At midnight.

Eight (#ulink_bea5aeae-a034-5b85-946d-09c502dd0d11)

The church of Saint Alban was ancient. The lower walls were of stone, which meant the Romans had built it, though at some time the roof had fallen in and the upper masonry had crumbled, so that now almost everything above head height was made of timber, wattle and thatch. The church lay on the main street of Lundene, which ran north and south from what was now called the Bishop’s Gate down to the broken bridge. Beocca once told me that the church had been a royal chapel for the Mercian kings, and perhaps he was right. ‘And Alban was a soldier!’ Beocca had added. He always got enthusiastic when he talked about the saints whose stories he knew and loved, ‘So you should like him!’

‘I should like him simply because he was a soldier?’ I had asked sceptically.

‘Because he was a brave soldier!’ Beocca told me, ‘and,’ he paused, snuffling excitedly because he had important information to impart, ‘and when he was martyred the eyes of his executioner fell out!’ He beamed at me with his own one good eye. ‘They fell out, Uhtred! Just popped out of his head! That was God’s punishment, you see? You kill a holy man and God pulls out your eyes!’

‘So Brother Jænberht wasn’t holy?’ I had suggested. Jænberht was a monk I had killed in a church, much to the horror of Father Beocca and a crowd of other watching churchmen. ‘I’ve still got my eyes, father,’ I pointed out.

‘You deserve to be blinded!’ Beocca had said, ‘but God is merciful. Strangely merciful at times, I must say.’

I had thought about Alban for a while. ‘Why,’ I had then asked, ‘if your god can pull out a man’s eyes, didn’t he just save Alban’s life?’

‘Because God chose not to, of course!’ Beocca had answered sniffily, which is just the kind of answer you always get when you ask a Christian priest to explain another inexplicable act of their god.

‘Alban was a Roman soldier?’ I had asked, choosing not to query his god’s capriciously cruel nature.

‘He was a Briton,’ Beocca told me, ‘a very brave and very holy Briton.’

‘Does that mean he was Welsh?’

‘Of course it does!’

‘Maybe that’s why your god let him die,’ I said, and Beocca had made the sign of the cross and rolled his good eye to heaven.

So, though Alban was a Welshman, and we Saxons have no love for the Welsh, there was a church named for him in Lundene, and that church appeared as dead as the dead saint’s corpse when Gisela, Finan and I arrived. The street was night black. Some small firelight escaped past the window shutters of a few houses, and a tavern was loud with singing in a nearby street, but the church was black and silent. ‘I don’t like it,’ Gisela whispered, and I knew she had touched the amulet around her neck. Before we left the house she had cast her runesticks, hoping to see some pattern to this night, but the random fall of the sticks had mystified her.

Something moved in a nearby alleyway. It might have been nothing more than a rat, but both Finan and I turned, swords hissing out of our scabbards, and the noise in the alleyway immediately stopped. I let Serpent-Breath slide back into her fleece-lined scabbard.

The three of us were wearing dark cloaks with hoods so, if anyone was watching, they must have thought we were priests or monks as we stood outside Saint Alban’s dark and silent door. No light showed past that door’s edges. I tried to open it, pulling on the short rope that lifted the latch inside, but the door was apparently barred. I pushed hard, rattling the locked door, then beat on its timbers with a fist, but there was no response. Then Finan touched my arm and I heard the footsteps. ‘Over the street,’ I whispered, and we crossed to the alleyway where we had heard the noise. The small, tight passage stank of sewage.

‘They’re priests,’ Finan whispered to me.

Two men were walking down the street. They were momentarily visible in the small light cast by a loosely shuttered window and I saw their black robes and the glint from the silver crosses they wore on their breasts. They stopped at the church and one knocked hard on the barred door. He gave three knocks, paused, gave a single rap, paused again, then knocked three times more.

We heard the bar lifted and the creak of hinges as the door was swung open, then light flooded into the street as a curtain inside the doorway was pulled aside. A priest or monk let the two men step into the candlelit church, then peered up and down the roadway and I knew he was searching for whoever had rattled the door a few moments earlier. A question must have been called to him, for he turned and gave an answer. ‘No one here, lord,’ he said, then pulled the door shut. I heard the locking bar drop and, for an instant, light showed about the doorframe until the curtain inside was pulled closed and the church was dark again.

‘Wait,’ I said.

We waited, listening to the wind rustle across the thatched roofs and moan in the ruined houses. I waited a long time, letting the memory of the rattled door subside.

‘It must be close to midnight,’ Gisela whispered.

‘Whoever opens the door,’ I said softly, ‘has to be silenced.’ I did not know what was happening inside the church, but I did know it was so secret that the church was locked and a coded knock was needed to enter, and I also knew that we were uninvited, and that if the man who opened the door made a protest at our arrival then we might never discover Æthelflaed’s danger.