The Last Kingdom Page 28

  “Nothing?”

  “If I do nothing,” he said earnestly, “then the bastard might die. He’s always ill! He can’t live long, can he? And his son is just a baby. So if he dies I’ll be king! Oh, sweet Jesus!” This blasphemy was uttered because two priests had entered the tavern, both of them in Æthelwold’s entourage, though they were more like jailers than courtiers and they had come to find him and take him off to his bed.

  Beocca did not approve of my friendship with Æthelwold. “He’s a foolish creature,” he warned me.

  “So am I, or so you tell me.”

  “Then you don’t need your foolishness encouraged, do you? Now let us read about how the holy Swithun built the town’s East Gate.”

  By the Feast of the Epiphany I could read as well as a clever twelve-year-old, or so Beocca said, and that was good enough for Alfred who did not, after all, require me to read theological texts, but only to decipher his orders, should he ever decide to give me any, and that, of course, was the heart of the matter. Leofric and I wanted to command troops, to which end I had endured Beocca’s teaching and had come to appreciate the holy Swithun’s skill with trout, seagulls, and broken eggs, but the granting of those troops depended on the king, and in truth there were not many troops to command.

  The West Saxon army was in two parts. The first and smaller part was composed of the king’s own men, his retainers who guarded him and his family. They did nothing else because they were professional warriors, but they were not many and neither Leofric nor I wanted anything to do with them because joining the household guard would mean staying in close proximity to Alfred, which, in turn, would mean going to church.

  The second part of the army, and by far the largest, was the fyrd, and that, in turn, was divided among the shires. Each shire, under its ealdorman and reeve, was responsible for raising the fyrd that was supposedly composed of every able-bodied man within the shire boundary. That could raise a vast number of men. Hamptonscir, for example, could easily put three thousand men under arms, and there were nine shires in Wessex capable of summoning similar numbers. Yet, apart from the troops who served the ealdormen, the fyrd was mostly composed of farmers. Some had a shield of sorts, spears and axes were plentiful enough, but swords and armor were in short supply, and worse, the fyrd was always reluctant to march beyond its shire borders, and even more reluctant to serve when there was work to be done on the farm. At Æsc’s Hill, the one battle the West Saxons had won against the Danes, it had been the household troops who had gained the victory. Divided between Alfred and his brother, they had spearheaded the fighting while the fyrd, as it usually did, looked menacing, but only became engaged when the real soldiers had already won the fight. The fyrd, in brief, was about as much use as a hole in a boat’s bottom, but that was where Leofric could expect to find men.

  Except there were those ships’ crews getting drunk in Hamtun’s winter taverns and those were the men Leofric wanted, and to get them he had to persuade Alfred to relieve Hacca of their command, and luckily for us Hacca himself came to Cippanhamm and pleaded to be released from the fleet. He prayed daily, he told Alfred, never to see the ocean again. “I get seasick, lord.”

  Alfred was always sympathetic to men who suffered sickness because he was so often ill himself, and he must have known that Hacca was an inadequate commander of ships, but Alfred’s problem was how to replace him. To which end he summoned four bishops, two abbots, and a priest to advise him, and I learned from Beocca that they were all praying about the new appointment. “Do something!” Leofric snarled at me.

  “What the devil am I supposed to do?”

  “You have friends who are priests! Talk to them. Talk to Alfred, earsling.” He rarely called me that anymore, only when he was angry.

  “He doesn’t like me,” I said. “If I ask him to put us in charge of the fleet, he’ll give it to anyone but us. He’ll give it to a bishop, probably.”

  “Hell!” Leofric said.

  In the end it was Eanflæd who saved us. The redhead was a merry soul and had a particular fondness for Leofric, and she heard us arguing and sat down, slapped her hands on the table to silence us, and then asked what we were fighting about. Then she sneezed because she had a cold.

  “I want this useless earsling,” Leofric jerked his thumb at me, “to be named commander of the fleet, only he’s too young, too ugly, too horrible, and too pagan, and Alfred’s listening to a pack of bishops who’ll end up naming some wizened old fart who doesn’t know his prow from his prick.”

  “Which bishops?” Eanflæd wanted to know.

  “Scireburnan, Wintanceaster, Winburnan, and Exanceaster,” I said.

  She smiled, sneezed again, and two days later I was summoned to Alfred’s presence. It turned out that the Bishop of Exanceaster was partial to redheads.

  Alfred greeted me in his hall, a fine building with beams, rafters, and a central stone hearth. His guards watched us from the doorway where a group of petitioners waited to see the king, and a huddle of priests prayed at the hall’s other end, but the two of us were alone by the hearth where Alfred paced up and down as he talked. He said he was thinking of appointing me to command the fleet. Just thinking, he stressed. God, he went on, was guiding his choice, but now he must talk with me to see whether God’s advice chimed with his own intuition. He put great store by intuition. He once lectured me about a man’s inner eye and how it could lead us to a higher wisdom, and I dare say he was right, but appointing a fleet commander did not need mystical wisdom, it needed finding a raw fighter willing to kill some Danes. “Tell me,” he went on, “has learning to read bolstered your faith?”

  “Yes, lord,” I said with feigned eagerness.

  “It has?” He sounded dubious.

  “The life of Saint Swithun,” I said, waving a hand as if to suggest it had overwhelmed me, “and the stories of Chad!” I fell silent as if I could not think of praise sufficient for that tedious man.

  “The blessed Chad!” Alfred said happily. “You know men and cattle were cured by the dust of his corpse?”

  “A miracle, lord,” I said.

  “It is good to hear you say as much, Uhtred,” Alfred said, “and I rejoice in your faith.”

  ”It gives me great happiness, lord,” I replied with a straight face.

  “Because it is only with faith in God that we shall prevail against the Danes.”

  “Indeed, lord,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, wondering why he did not just name me commander of the fleet and be done with it.

  But he was in a discursive mood. “I remember when I first met you,” he said, “and I was struck by your childlike faith. It was an inspiration to me, Uhtred.”

  “I am glad of it, lord.”

  “And then”—he turned and frowned at me—“I detected a lessening of faith in you.”

  “God tries us, lord,” I said.

  “He does! He does!” He winced suddenly. He was always a sick man. He had collapsed in pain at his wedding, though that might have been the horror of realizing what he was marrying, but in truth he was prone to bouts of sudden griping agony. That, he had told me, was better than his first illness, which had been an affliction of ficus, which is a real endwerc, so painful and bloody that at times he had been unable to sit, and sometimes that ficus came back, but most of the time he suffered from the pains in his belly. “God does try us,” he went on, “and I think God was testing you. I would like to think you have survived the trial.”

  “I believe I have, lord,” I said gravely, wishing he would just end this ridiculous conversation.

  “But I still hesitate to name you,” he admitted. “You are young! It is true you have proved your diligence by learning to read and that you are nobly born, but you are more likely to be found in a tavern than in a church. Is that not true?”

  That silenced me, at least for a heartbeat or two, but then I remembered something Beocca had said to me during his interminable lessons and, without thinking, without e
ven really knowing what they meant, I said the words aloud. “The son of man is come eating and drinking,” I said, “and…”

  “‘You say, look, a greedy man and a drinker!’” Alfred finished the words for me. “You are right, Uhtred, right to chide me. Glory to God! Christ was accused of spending his time in taverns, and I forgot it. It is in the Scriptures!”

  The gods help me, I thought. The man was drunk on God, but he was no fool, for now he turned on me like a snake. “And I hear you spend time with my nephew. They say you distract him from his lessons.”

  I put my hand on my heart. “I will swear an oath, lord,” I said, “that I have done nothing except dissuade him from rashness.” And that was true, or true enough. I had never encouraged Æthelwold in his wilder flights of fancy that involved cutting Alfred’s throat or running away to join the Danes. I did encourage him to ale, whores, and blasphemy, but I did not count those things as rash. “My oath on it, lord,” I said.

  The word oath was powerful. All our laws depend on oaths. Life, loyalty, and allegiance depend on oaths, and my use of the word persuaded him. “I thank you,” he said earnestly, “and I should tell you, Uhtred, that to my surprise the Bishop of Exanceaster had a dream in which a messenger of God appeared to him and said that you should be made commander of the fleet.”

  “A messenger of God?” I asked.

  “An angel, Uhtred.”

  “Praise God,” I said gravely, thinking how Eanflæd would enjoy discovering that she was now an angel.

  “Yet,” Alfred said, and winced again as pain flared in his arse or belly. “Yet,” he said again, and I knew something unexpected was coming. “I worry,” he went on, “that you are of Northumbria, and that your commitment to Wessex is not of the heart.”

  “I am here, lord,” I said.

  “But for how long?”

  “Till the Danes are gone, lord.”

  He ignored that. “I need men bound to me by God,” he said, “by God, by love, by duty, by passion, and by land.” He paused, looking at me, and I knew the sting was in that last word.

  “I have land in Northumbria,” I said, thinking of Bebbanburg.

  “West Saxon land,” he said, “land that you will own, land that you will defend, land that you will fight for.”

  “A blessed thought,” I said, my heart sinking at what I suspected was coming.

  Only it did not come immediately. Instead he abruptly changed the subject and talked, very sensibly, about the Danish threat. The fleet, he said, had succeeded in reducing the Viking raids, but he expected the new year to bring a Danish fleet, and one much too large for our twelve ships to oppose. “I dare not lose the fleet,” he said, “so I doubt we should fight their ships. I’m expecting a land army of pagans to come down the Temes and for their fleet to assault our south coast. I can hold one, but not the other, so the fleet commander’s job will be to follow their ships and harry them. Distract them. Keep them looking one way while I destroy their land army.”

  I said I thought that was a good idea, which it probably was, though I wondered how twelve ships were supposed to distract a whole fleet, but that was a problem that would have to wait until the enemy fleet arrived. Alfred then returned to the matter of the land and that, of course, was the deciding factor that would give me or deny me the fleet. “I would tie you to me, Uhtred,” he said earnestly.

  “I shall give you an oath, lord,” I said.

  “You will indeed,” he responded tartly, “but I still want you to be of Wessex.”

  “A high honor, lord,” I said. What else could I say?

  “You must belong to Wessex,” he said, then smiled as though he did me a favor. “There is an orphan in Defnascir,” he went on, and here it came, “a girl, who I would see married.”

  I said nothing. What is the point of protesting when the executioner’s sword is in midswing?

  “Her name is Mildrith,” he went on, “and she is dear to me. A pious girl, modest, and faithful. Her father was reeve to Ealdorman Odda, and she will bring land to her husband, good land, and I would have a good man hold that good land.”

  I offered a smile that I hoped was not too sickly. “He would be a fortunate man, lord,” I said, “to marry a girl who is dear to you.”

  “So go to her,” he commanded me, “and marry her”—the sword struck—“and then I shall name you commander of the fleet.”

  “Yes, lord,” I said.

  Leofric, of course, laughed like a demented jackdaw. “He’s no fool, is he?” he said when he had recovered. “He’s making you into a West Saxon. So what do you know about this miltewærc?” Miltewærc was a pain in the spleen.

  “Mildrith,” I said, “and she’s pious.”

  “Of course she’s pious. He wouldn’t want you to marry her if she was a leg-spreader.”

  “She’s an orphan,” I said, “and aged about sixteen or seventeen.”

  “Christ! That old? She must be an ugly sow! But poor thing, she must be wearing out her knees praying to be spared a rutting from an earsling like you. But that’s her fate! So let’s get you married. Then we can kill some Danes.”

  It was winter. We had spent the Christmas feast at Cippanhamm, and that was no Yule, and now we rode south through frost and rain and wind. Father Willibald accompanied us, for he was still priest to the fleet, and my plan was to reach Defnascir, do what was grimly necessary, and then ride straight to Hamtun to make certain the winter work on the twelve boats was being done properly. It is in winter that ships are caulked, scraped, cleaned, and made tight for the spring, and the thought of ships made me dream of the Danes, and of Brida, and I wondered where she was, what she did, and whether we would meet again. And I thought of Ragnar. Had he found Thyra? Did Kjartan live? Theirs was another world now, and I knew I drifted away from it and was being entangled in the threads of Alfred’s tidy life. He was trying to make me into a West Saxon, and he was half succeeding. I was sworn now to fight for Wessex and it seemed I must marry into it, but I still clung to that ancient dream of retaking Bebbanburg.

  I loved Bebbanburg and I almost loved Defnascir as much. When the world was made by Thor from the carcass of Ymir he did well when he fashioned Defnascir and its shire next door, Thornsæta. Both were beautiful lands of soft hills and quick streams, of rich fields and thick soil, of high heaths and good harbors. A man could live well in either shire, and I could have been happy in Defnascir had I not loved Bebbanburg more. We rode down the valley of the river Uisc, through well-tended fields of red earth, past plump villages and high halls until we came to Exanceaster, which was the shire’s chief town. It had been made by the Romans who had built a fortress on a hill above the Uisc and surrounded it with a wall of flint, stone, and brick, and the wall was still there and guards challenged us as we reached the northern gate.

  “We come to see Ealdorman Odda,” Willibald said.

  “On whose business?”

  “The king’s,” Willibald said proudly, flourishing a letter that bore Alfred’s seal, though I doubt the guards would have recognized it, but they seemed properly impressed and let us through into a town of decaying Roman buildings amid which a timber church reared tall next to Ealdorman Odda’s hall.

  The ealdorman made us wait, but at last he came with his son and a dozen retainers, and one of his priests read the king’s letter aloud. It was Alfred’s pleasure that Mildrith should be married to his loyal servant, the ealdorman Uhtred, and Odda was commanded to arrange the ceremony with as little delay as possible. Odda was not pleased at the news. He was an elderly man, at least forty years old, with gray hair and a face made grotesque by bulbous wens. His son, Odda the Younger, was even less pleased, for he scowled at the news. “It isn’t seemly, Father,” he complained.

  “It is the king’s wish.”

  “But…”

  “It is the king’s wish!”

  Odda the Younger fell silent. He was about my age, nineteen, good-looking, black haired, and elegant in a black tunic that was as cl
ean as a woman’s dress and edged with gold thread. A golden crucifix hung at his neck. He gave me a grim look, and I must have appeared travel stained and ragged to him, and after inspecting me and finding me about as appealing as a wet mongrel, he turned on his heel and stalked from the hall.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Odda announced unhappily, “the bishop can marry you. But you must pay the bride-price first.”

  “The bride-price?” I asked. Alfred had mentioned no such thing, though of course it was customary.

  “Thirty-three shillings,” Odda said flatly, and with the hint of a smirk.

  Thirty-three shillings was a fortune. A hoard. The price of a good war horse or a ship. It took me aback and I heard Leofric give a gasp behind me. “Is that what Alfred says?” I demanded.

  “It is what I say,” Odda said, “for Mildrith is my goddaughter.”

  No wonder he smirked. The price was huge and he doubted I could pay it, and if I could not pay it then the girl was not mine and, though Odda did not know it, the fleet would not be mine either. Nor, of course, was the price merely thirty-three shillings, or three hundred and ninety-six silver pence, it was double that, for it was also customary for a husband to give his new wife an equivalent sum after the marriage was consummated. That second gift was none of Odda’s business and I doubted very much whether I would want to pay it, just as Ealdorman Odda was now certain, from my hesitation, that I would not be paying him the bride-price without which there could be no marriage contract.

  “I can meet the lady?” I asked.

  “You may meet her at the ceremony tomorrow morning,” Odda said firmly, “but only if you pay the bride-price. Otherwise, no.”

  He looked disappointed as I opened my pouch and gave him one gold coin and thirty-six silver pennies. He looked even more disappointed when he saw that was not all the coin I possessed, but he was trapped now. “You may meet her,” he told me, “in the cathedral tomorrow.”

  “Why not now?” I asked.

  “Because she is at her prayers,” the ealdorman said, and with that he dismissed us.