Death of Kings Read online

  ‘He’ll not have my help,’ I promised Hild.

  ‘Just bring her back,’ Hild said, and we rode to do just that.

  A small army went westwards. At its heart was Steapa and the king’s bodyguard, and every warrior in Wintanceaster who possessed a horse joined in. It was a bright day, the sky clearing of the clouds that had brought so much rain. Our route took us across the wild lands of southern Wessex where the deer and wild ponies ranged across forest and moor and where the hoof-prints of Æthelwold’s band were easy to follow because the ground was so damp. Edward rode a little behind the vanguard, and with him was a standard-bearer flying the white dragon banner. Edward’s priest, Father Coenwulf, his black skirts draped on his horse’s rump, kept pace with the king, as did two ealdormen, Æthelnoth and Æthelhelm. Æthelred came too, he could hardly avoid an expedition to rescue his wife, but he and his followers stayed with the rearguard, well away from where Edward and I rode, and I remember thinking that we were too many, that a half-dozen men were enough to cope with a fool like Æthelwold.

  Other men joined us, leaving their halls to follow the king’s standard, and by the time we left the moorland we must have numbered over three hundred horsemen. Steapa had sent scouts ahead, but they sent no news back, which suggested Æthelwold was waiting behind his hall’s palisade. At one point I spurred my horse off the road and up a low hill to look ahead and Edward pointedly joined me, leaving his guard behind. ‘My father,’ he said, ‘told me I can trust you.’

  ‘Do you doubt his word, lord King?’ I asked.

  ‘While my mother says you can’t be trusted.’

  I laughed at that. Ælswith, Alfred’s wife, had always hated me, and it was a mutual feeling. ‘Your mother has never approved of me,’ I said mildly.

  ‘And Beocca tells me you want to kill my children,’ he spoke resentfully.

  ‘That isn’t my decision, lord King,’ I said, and he looked surprised. ‘Your father,’ I explained, ‘should have slit Æthelwold’s throat twenty years ago, but he didn’t. Your worst enemies, lord King, aren’t the Danes. They’re the men closest to you who want your crown. Your illegitimate children will be a problem for your legitimate sons, but it isn’t my problem. It’s yours.’

  He shook his head. This was our first moment alone together since his father’s death. I knew he liked me, but he was also nervous of me. He had only ever known me as a warrior and, unlike his sister, he had never been close to me as a child. He said nothing for a while, but watched the small army file westwards beneath us, its banners bright in the sun. The land gleamed from all the rain. ‘They’re not illegitimate,’ he finally spoke softly. ‘I married Ecgwynn. I married her in a church, before God.’

  ‘Your father disagreed,’ I said.

  Edward shuddered, ‘He was angry. So was my mother.’

  ‘And Ealdorman Æthelhelm, lord King?’ I asked. ‘He can’t be happy that his daughter’s children won’t be the eldest.’

  His jaw tightened. ‘He was assured I didn’t marry,’ he said distantly.

  So Edward had surrendered to his parents’ anger. He had agreed to the fiction that his children by Lady Ecgwynn were bastards, but it was apparent that he was unhappy with that surrender. ‘Lord,’ I said, ‘you’re king now. You can raise the twins as your legitimate children. You’re king.’

  ‘I offend Æthelhelm,’ he asked plaintively, ‘and how long do I stay king?’ Æthelhelm was the wealthiest of Wessex’s nobles, the most powerful voice in the Witan, and a man much liked in the kingdom. ‘My father always insisted that the Witan could make or unmake a king,’ Edward said, ‘and my mother insists I listen to their advice.’

  ‘You’re the eldest son,’ I said, ‘so you’re king.’

  ‘Not if Æthelhelm and Plegmund refuse to support me,’ Edward said.

  ‘True,’ I agreed grudgingly.

  ‘So the twins must be treated as though they’re illegitimate,’ he said, still unhappy, ‘and stay bastards until I have the power to decree otherwise. And till then they must be kept safe, so they’re going to my sister’s care.’

  ‘To my care,’ I said flatly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He looked at me searchingly. ‘So long as you promise not to kill them.’

  I laughed. ‘I don’t kill babies, lord King. I wait till they grow up.’

  ‘They must grow up,’ he said, then frowned. ‘You don’t condemn me for sin, do you?’

  ‘Me! I’m your pagan, lord,’ I said, ‘what do I care about sin?’

  ‘Then care for my children,’ he said.

  ‘I will, lord King,’ I promised.

  ‘And tell me what I do about Æthelred,’ he said.

  I stared down at my cousin’s troops, who rode together as the rearguard. ‘He wants to be King of Mercia,’ I said, ‘but he knows he needs Wessex’s support if he’s to survive, so he won’t take the throne without your permission, and you won’t give that.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Edward said. ‘But my mother insists I need his support too.’

  That wretched woman, I thought. She had always liked Æthelred and disapproved of her daughter. Yet what she said was partly true. Æthelred could bring at least a thousand men to a battlefield, and if Wessex were ever to strike against the powerful Danish lords to the north, then those men would be invaluable, but as I had told Alfred a hundred times, it was always best to reckon that Æthelred would find a thousand excuses to keep his warriors at home. ‘So what is Æthelred asking of you?’

  Edward did not answer directly. Instead he looked up at the sky, then westwards again. ‘He hates you.’

  ‘And your sister,’ I said flatly.

  He nodded. ‘He wants Æthelflaed returned to…’ he began, but then stopped speaking because a horn sounded.

  ‘He wants Æthelflaed in his hall or else locked away in a convent,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ Edward said, ‘that’s what he wants.’ He stared down at the road from where the horn had sounded a second time. ‘But they want me,’ he said, looking to where Father Coenwulf waved towards us. I could see a couple of Steapa’s men galloping towards the vanguard. Edward dug in his spurs and we cantered to the head of the column where we discovered the two scouts had brought in a priest who half fell from his saddle to kneel before the king.

  ‘Lord, lord King!’ the priest gasped. He was out of breath.

  ‘Who are you?’ Edward asked.

  ‘Father Edmund, lord.’

  He had come from Wimburnan where he was the priest and he told how Æthelwold had raised his banner in the town and declared himself King of Wessex.

  ‘He did what?’ Edward asked.

  ‘He made me read a proclamation, lord, outside Saint Cuthberga’s.’

  ‘He’s calling himself king?’

  ‘He says he’s King of Wessex, lord. He’s demanding that men come and swear allegiance to him.’

  ‘How many men were there when you left?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, lord,’ Father Edmund said.

  ‘Did you see a woman?’ Edward asked. ‘My sister?’

  ‘The Lady Æthelflaed? Yes, lord, she was with him.’

  ‘Does he have twenty men?’ I asked. ‘Or two hundred?’

  ‘I don’t know, lord. A lot.’

  ‘He sent messengers to other lords?’ I asked.

  ‘To his thegns, lord. He sent me. I’m supposed to bring him men.’

  ‘And you found me instead,’ Edward said warmly.

  ‘He’s raising an army,’ I said.

  ‘The fyrd,’ Steapa said scornfully.

  Æthelwold was doing what he thought wise, but he had no wisdom. He had inherited wide estates from his father, and Alfred had been foolish enough to leave those estates untouched, and now Æthelwold was demanding that his tenants come with weapons to make an army that he presumably believed would march on Wintanceaster. But the army would be the fyrd, the citizen army, the labourers and carpenters and thatchers and ploughmen, while Edward had his royal bodyg
uard, who were all trained warriors. The fyrd was good for defending a burh, or for impressing an enemy with numbers, but to fight, to face a sword-Dane or a raving Northman, a warrior was needed. What Æthelwold should have done was stay in Wintanceaster, murder all Alfred’s children, and then raise his standard, but like a fool he had gone to his own home and now we rode there with warriors.

  The day was dying as we neared Wimburnan, the sun was low in the west and the shadows long on the rich slopes where Æthelwold’s sheep and cattle had their grazing. We came from the east and no one tried to prevent us reaching the small town that lay cradled between two rivers that joined close to where a stone church loomed above the shadowed thatch of the roofs. King Æthelred, Alfred’s brother and Æthelwold’s father, lay buried in that church, and beyond it, and surrounded by a tall palisade, was Æthelwold’s hall where a great flag flew. It showed a prancing white stag with fierce eyes and two Christian crosses for antlers, and the low sun was catching the linen that was spread by a small wind and the banner’s dark red field seemed to smoulder like boiling blood in the late daylight.

  We rode north around the town, crossing the smaller river and then climbing a shallow slope that led to one of those forts that the ancient people had built all across Britain. This fort had been hacked out of a chalk hilltop, and Father Edmund told me it was called Baddan Byrig and that the local people believed the devil danced there on winter nights. It had three walls of heaped chalk, all overgrown with grass, and two intricate entrances where sheep grazed, and it overlooked the road that Æthelwold must take if he wanted to go north to his Danish friends. Edward’s first instinct had been to block the road to Wintanceaster, but that town was protected by its walls and garrison and I persuaded him that the greater danger was that Æthelwold would escape Wessex altogether.

  Our army spread along the skyline beneath its royal banners. Wimburnan lay just a couple of miles south and east of us and we must have looked formidable to anyone watching from the town. We were sunlit by the low rays that reflected the glint of our mail and weapons and that made the bare chalk patches of Baddan Byrig’s walls glow white. That low sun made it difficult to see what was happening in the small town, but I glimpsed men and horses by Æthelwold’s hall and could see people gathered in the streets, yet there was no shield wall defending the road that led to that great hall. ‘How many men does he have?’ Edward asked. He had asked that question a dozen times since we had met Father Edmund, and a dozen times he had been told we did not know, that no one knew, and that it might be forty men or it might be four hundred.

  ‘Not enough men, lord,’ I said now.

  ‘What…’ he began, then abruptly checked. He had been about to ask what we should do, then had remembered that he was the king, and was supposed to supply the answer himself.

  ‘Do you want him dead or alive?’ I asked.

  He looked at me. He knew he must make decisions, but did not know what decision to make. Father Coenwulf, who had been his tutor, began to offer advice, but Edward cut him short with a wave of his hand. ‘I want him to stand trial,’ he said.

  ‘Remember what I told you,’ I said. ‘Your father could have saved us a lot of trouble by just killing Æthelwold, so why don’t you let me go and slaughter the bastard?’

  ‘Or let me, lord,’ Steapa volunteered.

  ‘He must stand trial before the Witan,’ Edward decided. ‘I do not wish to begin my reign with slaughter.’

  ‘Amen and God be praised,’ Father Coenwulf said.

  I gazed into the valley. If Æthelwold had raised any kind of army, it was not in evidence. All I could see was a handful of horses and an undisciplined rabble. ‘Just let me kill him, lord,’ I said, ‘and the problem will be solved by sundown.’

  ‘Let me talk to him,’ Father Coenwulf urged.

  ‘Reason with him,’ Edward said to the priest.

  ‘Do you reason with a cornered rat?’ I demanded.

  Edward ignored that. ‘Tell him he must surrender to our mercy,’ he told Father Coenwulf.

  ‘And suppose he decides to kill Father Coenwulf instead, lord King?’ I asked.

  ‘I am in God’s hands,’ Coenwulf said.

  ‘You’d be better in Lord Uhtred’s hands,’ Steapa growled.

  The sun was just above the horizon now, a dazzling red globe suspended in the autumn sky. Edward looked confused, but still wanted to appear decisive. ‘The three of you will go,’ he announced firmly, ‘and Father Coenwulf will do the talking.’

  Father Coenwulf lectured me as we rode downhill. I was not to threaten anyone, I was not to speak unless spoken to, I was not to touch my sword, and the Lady Æthelflaed, he insisted, was to be escorted back to her husband’s protection. Father Coenwulf was pale-skinned and stern, one of those rigid men that Alfred had loved to appoint as tutors or counsellors. He was clever, of course, all Alfred’s favoured priests were sharp-witted, but all too ready to condemn sin or, indeed, to define it, which meant he disapproved of me and of Æthelflaed. ‘Do you understand me?’ he demanded as we reached the road, which was little more than a rutted track between untrimmed hedges. Wagtails flocked in the fields and far off, beyond the town, a great cloud of starlings wheeled and faded in the sky.

  ‘I’m not to threaten anyone,’ I said cheerfully, ‘not to speak to anyone and not to touch my sword. Wouldn’t it be easier if I just stopped breathing?’

  ‘And we shall restore the Lady Æthelflaed to her proper place,’ Coenwulf said firmly.

  ‘What is her proper place?’ I asked.

  ‘Her husband will decide that.’

  ‘But he wants her in a nunnery,’ I pointed out.

  ‘If that is her husband’s decision, Lord Uhtred,’ Coenwulf said, ‘then that is her fate.’

  ‘I think you’ll learn,’ I said mildly, ‘that the lady has a mind of her own. She might not do what any man wants.’

  ‘She will obey her husband,’ Coenwulf insisted and I just laughed at him, which annoyed him. Poor Steapa looked confused.

  There were half a dozen armed men at the outskirts of the town, but they made no attempt to stop us. There was no wall, this was no burh, and we plunged straight into a street that smelt of dung and woodsmoke. The folk in the town were worried, and silent. They watched us, and some made the sign of the cross as we passed. The sun had gone now, it was twilight. We skirted a comfortable-looking tavern, and a man sitting with a horn of ale raised it to us as we rode past. I noted that few men had weapons. If Æthelwold could not raise the fyrd in his own home town, then how could he hope to raise the county against Edward? The gate to Saint Cuthberga’s nunnery opened a crack as we came near and I saw a woman peer out, and then the gate slammed shut. There were more guards at the door to the church, but again they made no effort to stop us. They just watched us pass, their faces sullen. ‘He’s already lost,’ I said.

  ‘He has,’ Steapa agreed.

  ‘Lost?’ Father Coenwulf asked.

  ‘This is his stronghold,’ I said, ‘and no one wants to defy us.’

  At least no one wanted to defy us until we reached the entrance to Æthelwold’s hall. The gate was decorated with his flag and guarded by seven spearmen and blocked by a pathetic barricade of barrels on which two logs had been placed. One of the spearmen strode towards us and levelled his weapon. ‘No further,’ he announced.

  ‘Just take away the barrels,’ I said, ‘and open the gate.’

  ‘State your names,’ he said. He was a middle-aged man, solidly built, grey-bearded and dutiful.

  ‘That’s Matthew,’ I said, pointing at Father Coenwulf, ‘I’m Mark, he’s Luke and the other fellow got drunk and stayed behind. You know damn well who we are, so open the gate.’

  ‘Let us in,’ Father Coenwulf said sternly, after giving me a foul look.

  ‘No weapons,’ the man said.

  I looked at Steapa. He had his long-sword at his left side, his short-sword on the right, and a war axe looped across his back. ‘Steapa,’ I asked hi
m, ‘just how many men have you killed in battle?’

  He was puzzled by the question, but thought about his answer. In the end he had to shake his head. ‘I lost count,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ I said, and looked back to the man who faced us. ‘You can take the weapons from us,’ I told him, ‘or you can live and let us through the gate.’

  He decided he wanted to live and so ordered his men to remove the barrels and logs, then pull the gates wide, and we rode into the courtyard where torches had just been lit and their wild flames cast fluttering shadows from saddled horses that waited for riders. I counted about thirty men, some in mail and all armed, waiting with the horses, but not one challenged us. Instead they looked nervous. ‘He’s getting ready to flee,’ I said.

  ‘You are not to talk here,’ Father Coenwulf said testily.

  ‘Be quiet, you dull priest,’ I told him.

  Servants came to take our horses and, as I expected, a steward demanded that Steapa and I give up our swords before we went into the great hall. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘My sword stays,’ Steapa said menacingly.

  The steward looked flustered, but Father Coenwulf just pushed past the man and we followed him into the great hall that was lit by a blazing fire and by candles arrayed on two tables between which was a throne. There was no other word to do justice to that great chair, which reared high above the massed candles and in which Æthelwold sat, though the moment we appeared he jumped to his feet and strode to the edge of the dais on which the throne had pride of place. There was a second chair on the dais, much smaller and pushed to one side, and Æthelflaed sat there, flanked by two men carrying spears. She saw me, smiled wryly and raised a hand to indicate that she was unharmed. Over fifty men were in the hall. Most were armed, despite the steward’s efforts, but again no one threatened us. Our appearance seemed to have caused a sudden silence. These men, like those in the courtyard, were nervous. I knew a few of them and sensed that the hall was in two minds. The youngest men closest to the dais were Æthelwold’s supporters, while the older men were his thegns, and they were the ones who were plainly unhappy at what was unfolding. Even the dogs in the hall looked whipped. One whined as we entered, then slunk to the hall’s edge, where he then lay shivering. Æthelwold was standing at the dais’s edge with folded arms, trying to look regal, but to me he seemed as nervous as the dogs, though a fair-haired young man beside him was full of energy. ‘Take them prisoner, lord,’ the young man urged Æthelwold.