The Last Kingdom Series Books 1–8: The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, The Lords of the North, Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings, The Pagan Lord, The Empty Throne

The coughing ended. The boy was crying now, a gasping, grating, pitiful crying, and Alfred covered his ears with his hands.

‘Give him to Iseult,’ I said.

‘A pagan!’ Alewold warned Alfred, ‘an adulteress!’ I could see Alfred was tempted by my suggestion, but Alewold was having the better of the argument. ‘If God will not cure Edward,’ the bishop said, ‘do you think he will let a witch succeed?’

‘She’s no witch,’ I said.

‘Tomorrow,’ Alewold said, ignoring me, ‘is Saint Agnes’s Eve. A holy day, lord, a day of miracles! We shall pray to Saint Agnes and she will surely unleash God’s power on the boy.’ He raised his hands to the dark sky. ‘Tomorrow, lord, we shall summon the strength of the angels, we shall call heaven’s aid to your son and the blessed Agnes will drive the evil sickness from young Edward.’

Alfred said nothing, just stared at the swamp’s pools that were edged with a thin skim of ice that seemed to glow in the wan moonlight.

‘I have known the blessed Agnes perform miracles!’ the bishop pressed the king, ‘there was a child in Exanceaster who could not walk, but the saint gave him strength and now he runs!’

‘Truly?’ Alfred asked.

‘With my own eyes,’ the bishop said, ‘I witnessed the miracle.’

Alfred was reassured. ‘Tomorrow then,’ he said.

I did not stay to see the power of God unleashed. Instead I took a punt and went south to a place called Æthelingæg which lay at the southern edge of the swamp and was the biggest of all the marsh settlements. I was beginning to learn the swamp. Leofric stayed with Alfred, to protect the king and his family, but I explored, discovering scores of track-ways through the watery void. The paths were called beamwegs and were made of logs that squelched underfoot, but by using them I could walk for miles. There were also rivers that twisted through the low land, and the biggest of those, the Pedredan, flowed close to Æthelingæg which was an island, much of it covered with alders in which deer and wild goats lived, but there was also a large village on the island’s highest spot and the headman had built himself a great hall there. It was not a royal hall, not even as big as the one I had made at Oxton, but a man could stand upright beneath its beams and the island was large enough to accommodate a small army.

A dozen beamwegs led away from Æthelingæg, but none led directly to the mainland. It would be a hard place for Guthrum to attack, because he would have to thread the swamp, but Svein, who we now knew commanded the Danes at Cynuit, at the Pedredan’s mouth, would find it an easy place to approach for he could bring his ships up the river and, just north of Æthelingæg, he could turn south onto the River Thon which flowed past the island. I took the punt into the centre of the Thon and discovered, as I had feared, that it was more than deep enough to float the Dane’s beast-headed ships.

I walked back to the place where the Thon flowed into the Pedredan. Across the wider river was a sudden hill, steep and high, which stood in the surrounding marshland like a giant’s burial mound. It was a perfect place to make a fort, and if a bridge could be built across the Pedredan then no Danish ship could pass up river.

I walked back to the village where I discovered that the headman was a grizzled and stubborn old man called Haswold who was disinclined to help. I said I would pay good silver to have a bridge made across the Pedredan, but Haswold declared the war between Wessex and the Danes did not affect him. ‘There is madness over there,’ he said, waving vaguely at the eastern hills. ‘There’s always madness over there, but here in the swamp we mind our own business. No one minds us and we don’t mind them.’ He stank of fish and smoke. He wore otterskins that were greasy with fish oil and his greying beard was flecked by fish scales. He had small cunning eyes in an old cunning face, and he also had a half-dozen wives, the youngest of whom was a child who could have been his own granddaughter, and he fondled her in front of me as if her existence proved his manhood. ‘I’m happy,’ he said, leering at me, ‘so why should I care for your happiness?’

‘The Danes could end your happiness.’

‘The Danes?’ He laughed at that, and the laugh turned into a cough. He spat. ‘If the Danes come,’ he went on, ‘then we go deep into the swamp and the Danes go.’ He grinned at me and I wanted to kill him, but that would have done no good. There were fifty or more men in the village and I would have lasted all of a dozen heartbeats, though the man I really feared was a tall, broad-shouldered, stooping man with a puzzled look on his face. What frightened me about him was that he carried a long hunting bow. Not one of the short fowling bows that many of the marshmen possessed, but a stag killer, as tall as a man, and capable of shooting an arrow clean through a mail coat. Haswold must have sensed my fear of the bow for he summoned the man to stand beside him. The man looked confused by the summons, but obeyed. Haswold pushed a gnarled hand under the young girl’s clothes then stared at me as he fumbled, laughing at what he perceived as my impotence. ‘The Danes come,’ he said again, ‘and we go deep into the swamp and the Danes go away.’ He thrust his hand deeper into the girl’s goatskin dress and mauled her breasts. ‘Danes can’t follow us, and if they do follow us then Eofer kills them.’ Eofer was the archer and, hearing his name, he looked startled, then worried. ‘Eofer’s my man,’ Haswold boasted, ‘he puts arrows where I tell him to put them.’ Eofer nodded.

‘Your king wants a bridge made,’ I said, ‘a bridge and a fort.’

‘King?’ Haswold stared about the village. ‘I know no king. If any man is king here, ’tis me.’ He cackled with laughter at that and I looked at the villagers and saw nothing but dull faces. None shared Haswold’s amusement. They were not, I thought, happy under his rule and perhaps he sensed what I was thinking for he suddenly became angry, thrusting his girl-bride away. ‘Leave us!’ he shouted at me. ‘Just go away!’

I went away, returning to the smaller island where Alfred sheltered and where Edward lay dying. It was nightfall and the bishop’s prayers to Saint Agnes had failed. Eanflæd told me how Alewold had persuaded Alfred to give up one of his most precious relics, a feather from the dove that Noah had released from the ark. Alewold cut the feather into two parts, returning one part to the king, while the other was scorched on a clean pan and, when it was reduced to ash, the scraps were stirred into a cup of holy water which Ælswith forced her son to drink. He had been wrapped in lambskin, for the lamb was the symbol of Saint Agnes who had been a child martyr in Rome.

But neither feather nor lambskin had worked. If anything, Eanflæd said, the boy was worse. Alewold was praying over him now. ‘He’s given him the last rites,’ Eanflæd said. She looked at me with tears in her eyes. ‘Can Iseult help?’

‘The bishop won’t allow it,’ I said.

‘He won’t allow it?’ she asked indignantly. ‘He’s not the one who’s dying!’

So Iseult was summoned, and Alfred came from the hut and Alewold, scenting heresy, came with him. Edward was coughing again, the sound terrible in the evening silence. Alfred flinched at the noise, then demanded to know if Iseult could cure his son’s illness.

Iseult did not reply at once. Instead she turned and gazed across the swamp to where the moon rose above the mists. ‘The moon gets bigger,’ she said.

‘Do you know a cure?’ Alfred pleaded.

‘A growing moon is good,’ Iseult said dully, then turned on him. ‘But there will be a price.’

‘Whatever you want!’ he said.

‘Not a price for me,’ she said, irritated that he had misunderstood her. ‘But there’s always a price. One lives? Another must die.’

‘Heresy!’ Alewold intervened.

I doubt Alfred understood Iseult’s last three words, or did not care what she meant, he only snatched the tenuous hope that perhaps she could help. ‘Can you cure my son?’ he demanded.

She paused, then nodded. ‘There is a way,’ she said.

‘What way?’

‘My way.’

‘Heresy!’ Alewold warned again.

‘Bishop!’ Eanflæd said warningly, and the bishop looked abashed and fell silent.

‘Now?’ Alfred demanded of Iseult.

‘Tomorrow night,’ Iseult said. ‘It takes time. There are things to do. If he lives till nightfall tomorrow I can help. You must bring him to me at moonrise.’

‘Not tonight?’ Alfred pleaded.

‘Tomorrow,’ Iseult said firmly.

‘Tomorrow is the Feast of Saint Vincent,’ Alfred said, as though that might help, and somehow the child survived that night and, next day, Saint Vincent’s Day, Iseult went with me to the eastern shore where we gathered lichen, burdock, celandine and mistletoe. She would not let me use metal to scrape the lichen or cut the herbs, and before any was collected we had to walk three times around the plants which, because it was winter, were poor and shrivelled things. She also made me cut thorn boughs, and I was allowed to use a knife for that because the thorns were evidently not as important as the lichen or herbs. I watched the skyline as I worked, looking for any Danes, but if they patrolled the edge of the swamp none appeared that day. It was cold, a gusting wind clutching at our clothes. It took a long time to find the plants Iseult needed, but at last her pouch was full and I dragged the thorn bushes back to the island and took them into the hut where she instructed me to dig two holes in the floor. ‘They must be as deep as the child is tall,’ she said, ‘and as far apart from each other as the length of your forearm.’

She would not tell me what the pits were for. She was subdued, very close to tears. She hung the celandine and burdock from a roof beam, then pounded the lichen and the mistletoe into a paste that she moistened with spittle and urine, and she chanted long charms in her own language over the shallow wooden bowl. It all took a long time and sometimes she just sat exhausted in the darkness beyond the hearth and rocked to and fro. ‘I don’t know that I can do it,’ she said once.

‘You can try,’ I said helplessly.

‘And if I fail,’ she said, ‘they will hate me more than ever.’

‘They don’t hate you,’ I said.

‘They think I am a sinner and a pagan,’ she said, ‘and they hate me.’

‘So cure the child,’ I said, ‘and they will love you.’

I could not dig the pits as deep as she wanted, for the soil became ever wetter and, just a couple of feet down, the two holes were filling with brackish water. ‘Make them wider,’ Iseult ordered me, ‘wide enough so the child can crouch in them.’ I did as she said, and then she made me join the two holes by knocking a passage in the damp earth wall that divided them. That had to be done carefully to ensure that an arch of soil remained to leave a tunnel between the holes. ‘It is wrong,’ Iseult said, not talking of my excavation, but of the charm she planned to work. ‘Someone will die, Uhtred. Somewhere a child will die so this one will live.’

‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

‘Because my twin died when I was born,’ she said, ‘and I have his power. But if I use it he reaches from the dark world and takes the power back.’

Darkness fell and the boy went on coughing, though to my ears it sounded feebler now as though there was not enough life left in his small body. Alewold was praying still. Iseult crouched in the door of our hut, staring into the rain, and when Alfred came close she waved him away.