The Last Kingdom Series Books 1-6

‘So no one lives there?’ I asked.

‘Some folk do,’ he said, ‘but the dead have their houses there.’

‘Do they have wealth as well?’

‘Your ships have taken it all,’ he said. This was after he had promised me that Peredur would be more generous, though he did not know how generous, but he said the king was willing to pay far more than a hundred silver coins for our help, and so we had him shout to his ship that they were to lead us around the coast to Peredur’s settlement. I did not let Father Mardoc go back to his ship for he would serve as a hostage if the tale he had told us was false and Peredur was merely luring us to an ambush.

He was not. Peredur’s home was a huddle of buildings built on a steep hill beside a bay and protected by a wall of thorn bushes. His people lived within the wall and some were fishermen and some were cattle herders and none was wealthy, though the king himself had a high hall where he welcomed us, though not before we had taken more hostages. Three young men, all of whom we were assured were Peredur’s sons, were delivered to Fyrdraca and I gave the crew orders that the three were to be killed if I did not return, and then I went ashore with Haesten and Cenwulf. I went dressed for war, with mail coat and helmet polished, and Peredur’s folk watched the three of us pass with frightened eyes. The place stank of fish and shit. The people were ragged and their houses mere hovels that were built up the side of the steep hill that was crowned with Peredur’s hall. There was a church beside the hall, its thatch thick with moss and its gable decorated with a cross made from sea-whitened driftwood.

Peredur was twice my age, a squat man with a sly face and a forked black beard. He greeted us from a throne, which was just a chair with a high back, and he waited for us to bow to him, but none of us did and that made him scowl. A dozen men were with him, evidently his courtiers, though none looked wealthy and all were elderly except for one much younger man who was in the robes of a Christian monk, and he stood out in that smoke-darkened hall like a raven in a clutch of gulls for his black robes were clean, his face close-shaven and his hair and tonsure neatly trimmed. He was scarcely older than I, was thin and stern-faced, and that face looked clever, and it also carried an expression of marked distaste for us. We were pagans, or at least Haesten and I were pagans and I had told Cenwulf to keep his mouth shut and his crucifix hidden, and so the monk assumed all three of us were heathen Danes. The monk spoke Danish, far better Danish than Father Mardoc. ‘The king greets you,’ he said. He had a voice as thin as his lips and as unfriendly as his pale green eyes. ‘He greets you and would know who you are.’

‘My name is Uhtred Ragnarson,’ I said.

‘Why are you here, Uhtred Ragnarson?’ the priest asked.

I contemplated him. I did not just look at him, but I studied him as a man might study an ox before killing it. I gave him a look which suggested I was wondering where to make the cuts, and he got my meaning and did not wait for an answer to his question, an answer which was obvious if we were Danes. We were here to thieve and kill, of course, what else did he think a Viking ship would be doing?

Peredur spoke to the monk and they muttered for some time and I looked around the hall, searching for any evidence of wealth. I saw almost nothing except for three whalebones stacked in a corner, but Peredur plainly had some treasure for he wore a great heavy torque of bronze about his neck and there were silver rings on his grubby fingers, an amber brooch at the neck of his cloak and a golden crucifix hidden in the cloak’s lice-ridden folds. He would keep his hoard buried, I thought, and I doubted any of us would become rich from this alliance, but in truth we were not becoming rich from our voyage either, and at least Peredur would have to feed us while we haggled.

‘The king,’ the monk interrupted my thoughts, ‘wishes to know how many men you can lead against the enemy.’

‘Enough,’ I said flatly.

‘Does that not depend,’ the monk observed slyly, ‘on how many enemy there are?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It depends on this,’ and I slapped Serpent-Breath’s hilt. It was a good, arrogant reply, and probably what the monk expected. And, in truth, it was convincing for I was broad in the chest and a giant in this hall where I was a full head taller than any other man. ‘And who are you, monk?’ I demanded.

‘My name is Asser,’ he said. It was a British name, of course, and in the English tongue it meant a he-ass, and ever after I thought of him as the Ass. And there was to be a lot of the ever after for, though I did not know it, I had just met a man who would haunt my life like a louse. I had met another enemy, though on that day in Peredur’s hall he was just a strange British monk who stood out from his companions because he washed. He invited me to follow him to a small door at the side of the hall and, motioning Haesten and Cenwulf to stay where they were, I ducked through the door to find myself standing beside a dung-heap, but the point of taking me outside had been to show me the view eastwards.

I stared across a valley. On the nearer slope were the smoke-blackened roofs of Peredur’s settlement, then came the thorn fence that had been made along the stream which flowed to the sea. On the stream’s far side the hills rose gently to a far off crest and there, breaking the skyline like a boil, was Dreyndynas. ‘The enemy,’ Asser said.

A small fort, I noted. ‘How many men are there?’

‘Does it matter to you?’ Asser asked sourly, paying me back for my refusal to tell him how many men I led, though I assumed Father Mardoc had made a count of the crew while he was on board Fyrdraca, so my defiance had been pointless.

‘You Christians,’ I said, ‘believe that at death you go to heaven. Isn’t that right?’

‘What of it?’

‘You must surely welcome such a fate?’ I asked. ‘To be near your god?’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘I don’t threaten vermin,’ I said, enjoying myself. ‘How many men are in that fort?’

‘Forty? Fifty?’ He plainly did not know. ‘We can assemble forty.’

‘So tomorrow,’ I said, ‘your king can have his fort back.’

‘He is not my king,’ Asser said, irritated by the assumption.

‘Your king or not,’ I said, ‘he can have his fort back so long as he pays us properly.’

That negotiation lasted until dark. Peredur, as Father Mardoc had said, was willing to pay more than a hundred shillings, but he feared we would take the money and leave without fighting and so he wanted some kind of surety from me. He wanted hostages, which I refused to give, and after an hour or more of argument we had still not reached an agreement, and it was then that Peredur summoned his queen. That meant nothing to me, but I saw the Ass stiffen as though he were offended, then sensed that every other man in the hall was strangely apprehensive. Asser made a protest, but the king cut him off with an abrupt slice of his hand and then a door at the back of the hall was opened and Iseult came to my life.

Iseult. Finding her there was like discovering a jewel of gold in a midden. I saw her and I forgot Mildrith. Dark Iseult, black-haired Iseult, huge-eyed Iseult. She was small, thin as an elf, with a luminous face and hair as black as a raven’s feathers. She wore a black cloak and had silver bands about her neck and silver bracelets at her wrists and silver rings at her ankles and the jewellery clinked gently as she walked towards us. She was maybe two or three years younger than me, but somehow, despite her youth, she managed to scare Peredur’s courtiers who backed away from her. The king looked nervous, while Asser, standing beside me, made the sign of the cross, then spat to ward off evil.

I just stared at her, entranced. There was pain on her face, as if she found life unbearable, and there was fear on her husband’s face when he spoke to her in a quiet, respectful voice. She shuddered when he talked and I thought that perhaps she was mad, for the grimace on her face was awful, disfiguring her beauty, but then she calmed and looked at me and the king spoke to Asser.

‘You will tell the queen who you are and what you will do for King Peredur,’ Asser told me in a distant, disapproving voice.

‘She speaks Danish?’ I asked.

‘Of course not,’ he snapped. ‘Just tell her and get this farce over.’

I looked into her eyes, those big, dark eyes, and had the uncanny suspicion that she could see right through my gaze and decipher my innermost thoughts. But at least she did not grimace when she saw me as she had when her husband spoke. ‘My name is Uhtred Ragnarson,’ I said, ‘and I am here to fight for your husband if he pays what I am worth. And if he doesn’t pay, we go.’

I thought Asser would translate, but the monk stayed silent.

Iseult still stared at me and I stared back. She had a flawless skin, untouched by illness, and a strong face, but sad. Sad and beautiful. Fierce and beautiful. She reminded me of Brida, the East Anglian who had been my lover and who was now with Ragnar, my friend. Brida was as full of fury as a scabbard is filled with blade, and I sensed the same in this queen who was so young and strange and dark and lovely.

‘I am Uhtred Ragnarson,’ I heard myself speaking again, though I had scarcely been aware of any urge to talk, ‘and I work miracles.’

Why I said that I do not know. I later learned that she had no idea what I had said, for at that time the only tongue she spoke was that of the Britons, but nevertheless she seemed to understand me and she smiled. Asser caught his breath. ‘Be careful, Dane,’ he hissed, ‘she is a queen.’

‘A queen?’ I asked, still staring at her, ‘or the queen?’

‘The king is blessed with three wives,’ the monk said disapprovingly.

Iseult turned away and spoke to the king. He nodded, then gestured respectfully towards the door through which Iseult had come. She was evidently dismissed and she obediently went to the door, but paused there and gave me a last, speculative look. Then she was gone.

And suddenly it was easy. Peredur agreed to pay us a hoard of silver. He showed us the hoard that had been hidden in a back room. There were coins, broken jewellery, battered cups and three candleholders which had been taken from the church, and when I weighed the silver, using a balance fetched from the market place, I discovered there was three hundred and sixteen shillings’ worth, which was not negligible. Asser divided it into two piles, one only half the size of the other. ‘We shall give you the smaller portion tonight,’ the monk said, ‘and the rest you will get when Dreyndynas is recovered.’

‘You think I am a fool?’ I asked, knowing that after the fight it would be hard to get the rest of the silver.

‘You take me for one?’ he retorted, knowing that if he gave us all the silver then Fyrdraca would vanish in the dawn.

We agreed in the end that we would take the one third now and that the other two thirds would be carried to the battlefield so that it was easily accessible. Peredur had hoped I would leave that larger portion in his hall, and then I would have faced an uphill fight through his dung-spattered streets, and that was a fight I would have lost, and it was probably the prospect of such a battle that had stopped Callyn’s men attacking Peredur’s hall. They hoped to starve him, or at least Asser believed that.

‘Tell me about Iseult,’ I demanded of the monk when the bargaining was done.

He sneered at that. ‘I can read you like a missal,’ he said.

‘Whatever a missal is,’ I said, pretending ignorance.

‘A book of prayers,’ he said, ‘and you will need prayers if you touch her.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘She is evil,’ he said vehemently.

‘She’s a queen, a young queen,’ I said, ‘so how can she be evil?’