Sword Song

‘I did, lord, yes.’

‘There are laws in Wessex,’ he said sternly.

‘And if the burh isn’t built,’ I said, ‘then there will be no Wessex.’

‘You like to defy me,’ he said mildly.

‘No, lord, I swore an oath to you. I do your work.’

‘Then hang no more men without a fair trial,’ he said sharply, then turned and stared across the river to the Mercian bank. ‘A king must bring justice, Lord Uhtred. That is a king’s job. And if a land has no king, how can there be law?’ He still spoke mildly, but he was testing me, and for a moment I felt alarm. I had assumed he had come to discover what Æthelwold had said to me, but his mention of Mercia, and of its lack of a king, suggested he already knew what had been discussed on that night of cold wind and hard rain. ‘There are men,’ he went on, still staring at the Mercian bank, ‘who would like to be King of Mercia.’ He paused and I was certain he knew everything that Æthelwold had said to me, but then he betrayed his ignorance. ‘My nephew Æthelwold?’ he suggested.

I gave a burst of laughter that was made too loud by my relief. ‘Æthelwold!’ I said. ‘He doesn’t want to be King of Mercia! He wants your throne, lord.’

‘He told you that?’ he asked sharply.

‘Of course he told me that,’ I said. ‘He tells everyone that!’

‘Is that why he came to see you?’ Alfred asked, unable to hide his curiosity any longer.

‘He came to buy a horse, lord,’ I lied. ‘He wants my stallion, Smoca, and I told him no.’ Smoca’s hide was an unusual mix of grey and black, thus his name, Smoke, and he had won every race he had ever run in his life and, better, was not afraid of men, shields, weapons or noise. I could have sold Smoca to any warrior in Britain.

‘And he talked of wanting to be king?’ Alfred asked suspiciously.

‘Of course he did.’

‘You didn’t tell me at the time,’ he said reproachfully.

‘If I told you every time Æthelwold talked treason,’ I said, ‘you’d never cease to hear from me. What I tell you now is that you should slice his head off.’

‘He is my nephew,’ Alfred said stiffly, ‘and has royal blood.’

‘He still has a removable head,’ I insisted.

He waved a petulant hand as if my idea were risible. ‘I thought of making him king in Mercia,’ he said, ‘but he would lose the throne.’

‘He would,’ I agreed.

‘He’s weak,’ Alfred said scornfully, ‘and Mercia needs a strong ruler. Someone to frighten the Danes.’ I confess at that moment I thought he meant me and I was ready to thank him, even fall to my knees and take his hand, but then he enlightened me. ‘Your cousin, I think.’

‘Æthelred!’ I asked, unable to hide my scorn. My cousin was a bumptious little prick, full of his own importance, but he was also close to Alfred. So close that he was going to marry Alfred’s elder daughter.

‘He can be ealdorman in Mercia,’ Alfred said, ‘and rule with my blessing.’ In other words my miserable cousin would govern Mercia on Alfred’s leash and, if I am truthful, that was a better solution for Alfred than letting someone like me take Mercia’s throne. Æthelred, married to Æthelflaed, was more likely to be Alfred’s man, and Mercia, or at least that part of it south of Wæclingastræt, would be like a province of Wessex.

‘If my cousin,’ I said, ‘is to be Lord of Mercia, then he’ll be Lord of Lundene?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then he has a problem, lord,’ I said, and I confess I spoke with some pleasure at the prospect of my pompous cousin having to deal with a thousand rogues commanded by Norse earls. ‘A fleet of thirty-one ships arrived in Lundene two days ago,’ I went on. ‘The Earls Sigefrid and Erik Thurgilson command them. Haesten of Beamfleot is an ally. So far as I know, lord, Lundene now belongs to Norsemen and Danes.’

For a moment Alfred said nothing, but just stared at the swan-haunted floodwaters. He looked paler than ever. His jaw clenched. ‘You sound pleased,’ he said bitterly.

‘I do not mean to, lord,’ I said.

‘How in God’s name can that happen?’ he demanded angrily. He turned and gazed at the burh’s walls. ‘The Thurgilson brothers were in Frankia,’ he said. I might never have heard of Sigefrid and Erik, but Alfred made it his business to know where the Viking bands were roving.

‘They’re in Lundene now,’ I said remorselessly.

He fell silent again, and I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that the Temes is our road to other kingdoms, to the rest of the world, and if the Danes and the Norse block the Temes, then Wessex was cut off from much of the world’s trade. Of course there were other ports and other rivers, but the Temes is the great river that sucks in vessels from all the wide seas. ‘Do they want money?’ he asked bitterly.

‘That is Mercia’s problem, lord,’ I suggested.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ he snapped at me. ‘Lundene might be in Mercia, but the river belongs to both of us.’ He turned around again, staring downriver almost as though he expected to see the masts of Norse ships appearing in the distance. ‘If they will not go,’ he said quietly, ‘then they will have to be expelled.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘And that,’ he said decisively, ‘will be my wedding gift to your cousin.’

‘Lundene?’

‘And you will provide it,’ he said savagely. ‘You will restore Lundene to Mercian rule, Lord Uhtred. Let me know by the Feast of Saint David what force you will need to secure the gift.’ He frowned, thinking. ‘Your cousin will command the army, but he is too busy to plan the campaign. You will make the necessary preparations and advise him.’

‘I will?’ I asked sourly.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you will.’

He did not stay to eat. He said prayers in the church, gave silver to the nunnery, then embarked on Haligast and vanished upstream.

And I was to capture Lundene and give all the glory to my cousin Æthelred.

The summons to meet the dead came two weeks later and took me by surprise.

Each morning, unless the snow was too thick for easy travel, a crowd of petitioners waited at my gate. I was the ruler in Coccham, the man who dispensed justice, and Alfred had granted me that power, knowing it was essential if his burh was to be built. He had given me more. I was entitled to a tenth part of every harvest in northern Berrocscire, I was given pigs and cattle and grain, and from that income I paid for the timber that made the walls and the weapons that guarded them. There was opportunity in that, and Alfred suspected me, which is why he had given me a sly priest called Wulfstan, whose task was to make sure I did not steal too much. Yet it was Wulfstan who stole. He had come to me in the summer, half grinning, and pointed out that the dues we collected from the merchants who used the river were unpredictable, which meant Alfred could never estimate whether we were keeping proper accounts. He waited for my approval and got a thump about his tonsured skull instead. I sent him to Alfred under guard with a letter describing his dishonesty, and then I stole the dues myself. The priest had been a fool. You never, ever, tell others of your crimes, not unless they are so big as to be incapable of concealment, and then you describe them as policy or statecraft.

I did not steal much, no more than another man in my position would put aside, and the work on the burh’s walls proved to Alfred that I was doing my job. I have always loved building and life has few ordinary pleasures greater than chatting with the skilled men who split, shape and join timbers. I dispensed justice too, and I did that well, because my father, who had been Lord of Bebbanburg in Northumbria, had taught me that a lord’s duty was to the folk he ruled, and that they would forgive a lord many sins so long as he protected them. So each day I would listen to misery, and some two weeks after Alfred’s visit I remember a morning of spitting rain in which some two dozen folk knelt to me in the mud outside my hall. I cannot remember all the petitions now, but doubtless they were the usual complaints of boundary stones being moved or of a marriage-price unpaid. I made my decisions swiftly, gauging my judgments by the demeanour of the petitioners. I usually reckoned a defiant petitioner was probably lying, while a tearful one elicited my pity. I doubt I got every decision right, but folk were content enough with my judgments and they knew I did not take bribes to favour the wealthy.

I do remember one petitioner that morning. He was solitary, which was unusual, for most folk arrived with friends or relatives to swear the truth of their complaints, but this man came alone and continually allowed others to get ahead of him. He plainly wanted to be the last to talk to me, and I suspected he wanted a lot of my time and I was tempted to end the morning session without granting him audience, but in the end I let him speak and he was mercifully brief.

‘Bjorn has disturbed my land, lord,’ he said. He was kneeling and all I could see of him was his tangled and dirt-crusted hair.

For a moment I did not recognise the name. ‘Bjorn?’ I demanded. ‘Who is Bjorn?’

‘The man who disturbs my land, lord, in the night.’

‘A Dane?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘He comes from his grave, lord,’ the man said, and I understood then and hushed him to silence so that the priest who noted down my judgments would not learn too much.

I tipped up the petitioner’s head to see a scrawny face. By his tongue I reckoned him for a Saxon, but perhaps he was a Dane who spoke our tongue perfectly, so I tried him in Danish. ‘Where have you come from?’ I asked.