The Empty Throne (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 8) Page 9

  ‘They say you can look into hell,’ he said, frowning, ‘so why not into this life too?’

  ‘I’d like to know what happens,’ I said. I supposed the roads would disappear, and the fields on either side would be overgrown with hazel saplings, and after them the thorny brambles would shroud the old paths. Is that what I would see from Valhalla? And was some Roman gazing at Cirrenceastre even now and wondering how it had turned from honey-coloured stone and white marble to damp thatch and rotted timbers? I knew I was making Finan uncomfortable, but I knew too that the Norns, those grim women who control our lives, were fingering my thread and wondering when to slice it with their sharp shears. I had feared that cut for so long, yet now I almost wanted it. I wanted an end to the pain, to the problems, but I also wanted to know how it would all end. But does it ever end? We had driven the Danes back, but now a new fight loomed, a fight for Mercia.

  ‘Here’s Father Cuthbert,’ Finan announced, and I was startled from my thoughts to see Osferth had brought the priest safely from Fagranforda. That was a relief. Cuthbert’s wife, Mehrasa, was with him. ‘You’re going north now,’ I told Osferth.

  ‘Lord!’ Cuthbert called, recognising my voice. He had been blinded by Cnut, and his face quested around as if trying to find where I was.

  ‘North?’ Osferth asked.

  ‘We all are,’ I said. ‘Families too. We’re going to Ceaster.’

  ‘Lord?’ Cuthbert said again.

  ‘You’re safe,’ I told him. ‘You and Mehrasa, you’re safe.’

  ‘From what, lord?’

  ‘You’re the only living witness to Edward’s first marriage,’ I told him, ‘and there are men in Wessex who want to prove that wedding never happened.’

  ‘But it did!’ he said plaintively.

  ‘So you’re going north to Ceaster,’ I told him, ‘both of you.’ I looked at Osferth. ‘You’ll take all the families north. I want you to leave by tomorrow. You can take two carts from Fagranforda to carry food and belongings, and I want you to travel through Alencestre.’ There were two good roads to Ceaster. One went close to the Welsh border and I encouraged my men to use it to prove to the Welsh that we did not fear them, but the road through Alencestre was safer because it lay much farther from the frontier lands. ‘You can take ten men as guards,’ I said, ‘and you wait for us at Alencestre. And you take everything valuable. Money, metal, clothes, harness, everything.’

  ‘We’re leaving Fagranforda for good?’ Osferth asked.

  I hesitated. The answer, of course, was yes, but I was not sure how my people would respond to that truth. They had made their homes and were raising their children in Fagranforda, and now I was moving them to Mercia’s northernmost frontier. I could have explained that by saying we needed to defend Ceaster against the Norse and Danes, and that was true, but the larger truth was that I wanted Ceaster’s stone walls about me if I had to defend myself against Eardwulf’s spite and Æthelhelm’s ambitions. ‘We’re going north for a time,’ I said evasively, ‘and if we’re not at Alencestre in two days then assume we’re not coming. And if that happens you must take Æthelstan and his sister to Ceaster.’

  Osferth frowned. ‘What would stop you arriving?’

  ‘Fate,’ I said too glibly.

  Osferth’s face hardened. ‘You’re starting a war,’ he accused me.

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘Æthelhelm wants the boy,’ Finan explained to Osferth, ‘and he’ll fight to get him.’

  ‘Which means he starts the war,’ I said, ‘not me.’

  Osferth’s grave eyes flickered between me and Finan. Finally he scowled, looking astonishingly like his father, King Alfred. ‘But you’re provoking him,’ he said disapprovingly.

  ‘You’d rather Æthelstan was dead?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘So what would you have me do?’ I demanded.

  He had no answer to that. Instead he just grimaced. ‘It will be Saxon against Saxon,’ he said unhappily, ‘Christian against Christian.’

  ‘It will,’ I responded harshly.

  ‘But …’

  ‘So we’d better make sure the right Christians win,’ I said. ‘Now get ready to leave.’

  ‘For Ceaster?’ Finan asked.

  ‘Osferth goes to Alencestre,’ I said, ‘but you and me are going to Gleawecestre. We have a wedding to stop.’

  And a war to provoke.

  My daughter refused to ride with Osferth and the families. ‘I’m coming to Gleawecestre,’ she insisted.

  ‘You’ll go with Osferth,’ I told her.

  She was rummaging through Æthelflaed’s clothes, which Brice and his men had piled untidily in the courtyard. She pulled out a precious dress made from rare silk the colour of thick cream and embroidered with strips of oak leaves. ‘This is pretty,’ she said, ignoring my order.

  ‘And it belongs to Æthelflaed,’ I said.

  She held the dress to her shoulders and peered down to see if it fell as far as her feet. ‘Do you like it?’ she asked me.

  ‘It probably cost more than a ship,’ I said. Silk was one of those rarities that could be found in Lundene where it was sold by traders who claimed it came from some country far to the east, where it was woven by strange people, some with three legs, some with the heads of dogs, and some with no heads at all. The stories differed, but men swore they were all true.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Stiorra said wistfully.

  ‘It’ll go north with Osferth,’ I said, ‘and with you.’

  She folded the dress over one arm and pulled a white linen cloak from the pile. ‘This will look well with the dress,’ she said.

  ‘He’s taking all the families north,’ I explained. ‘He’s taking two wagons, so you can ride in one of them.’

  ‘Father,’ she said patiently, ‘I can ride a horse. And draw a bow. This one will be better,’ she pulled another white cloak free, ‘because it has a hood. Oooh! And a silver brooch, see?’

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ I growled.

  ‘Of course, father. And we can pick some stitchwort, can’t we?’

  ‘Stitchwort?’ I asked.

  ‘To wear in my hair.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ I asked. ‘You’re going north with Osferth. Why would you want flowers in your hair?’

  ‘Because it’s too early for apple blossom, of course.’ She turned and gazed at me, and for a moment she looked so like her mother that the breath caught in my throat. ‘Father,’ she said in a patient tone, ‘how do you propose to reach Ælfwynn?’

  ‘Reach her?’

  ‘She’ll be in Lord Æthelred’s palace. To get married she just has to walk through the gate to Saint Oswald’s church next door, and I suppose there will be guards along the path, and in the church as well. You can’t just ride in and pick her up. So how will you reach her?’

  I stared at her. In truth I had no idea how I was to find Ælfwynn. Sometimes it is impossible to make plans, you just reach the battlefield and snatch whatever chance presents itself. Which, I thought ruefully, was the mistake Brice had made, and now I was planning to do exactly the same.

  ‘She’s my friend!’ Stiorra said when it was plain I had no answer.

  ‘I’ve seen you with her,’ I acknowledged grudgingly.

  ‘I like her. Not everyone does, but I do, and it’s the custom for girls to go with the bride to the wedding.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘So you give me two of your young men and we go to Lord Æthelred’s palace with a bridal gift.’

  ‘And they arrest you,’ I said flatly.

  ‘If they know who I am, maybe? But I’ve only spent a few days in Gleawecestre, and I’ve no wish to go into the great hall, just to the outer courtyard where Ælfwynn’s rooms are.’

  ‘So you go to the courtyard. What then?’

  ‘I’ll say I’ve come with a gift from Lord Æthelfrith.’

  That was shrewd. Æthelfrith was the wealthy Mercian ealdorman whose lands lay next to Lundene. He di
sliked Æthelred and refused to travel to Gleawecestre. He might have been an ally for Æthelflaed, except that his real loyalty was to the West Saxons. ‘And what gift?’ I asked.

  ‘A horse,’ she said, ‘a young mare. We groom her and plait ribbons in her mane. I’m sure they’ll let Ælfwynn see the gift.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘She’ll be guarded,’ Stiorra said patiently.

  ‘And she just mounts the mare and rides away with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the guards at the gate don’t stop you?’ I sneered.

  ‘That’s the task for your men,’ she said.

  ‘Suppose she doesn’t want to ride away?’

  ‘Oh, she does,’ Stiorra said confidently, ‘she doesn’t want to marry Eardwulf! He’s a pig!’

  ‘A pig?’

  ‘There isn’t a maid in Gleawecestre who’s safe from him,’ Stiorra said. ‘Lady Æthelflaed tells me that no man can ever be trusted, though some can be trusted more than others, but Eardwulf?’ She shuddered. ‘He likes to beat women too.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Oh, father!’ She smiled at me pityingly. ‘So you see? I’m riding with you to Gleawecestre.’

  And so she was, because I could think of no better plan. In my mind I had half thought of waylaying Ælfwynn as she walked to the church, but Stiorra was right, the short walk would be well guarded by Æthelred’s men. Or I could have gone into the church itself, but that would have been desperate because the big building would be filled with Æthelred’s allies. I did not like putting my daughter in danger, but till I arrived in Gleawecestre I could see no better idea.

  I had thought to arrive in Gleawecestre that day, but finding carts took time, and giving men careful instructions took more time, and so we were delayed until shortly after dawn on Saint Æthelwold’s feast day. I had also hoped to have six carts, but we had found only three in Cirrenceastre and those three would have to be enough. I had sent them westwards the night before. The men driving the carts would have to spend an uncomfortable night waiting for the town gates to open, but by the time we left Cirrenceastre two of those three wagons should be inside the walls. They were all loaded with hay, and the men were instructed to tell the gate guards that it was fodder for Lord Æthelred’s stables.

  It was a typical March day. The sky was grey as iron and the wind cold off the hills behind us. Osferth had taken his ten men back to Fagranforda, where they would load their two wagons with belongings, and, accompanied by Father Cuthbert, set off northwards with my men’s families. Æthelstan travelled with them. The wagons would make their journey slow, perhaps too slow, and ten men were hardly enough to protect them if they found trouble, but if all went well I would catch up with them before nightfall.

  If we survived the next few hours.

  Stiorra rode beside me, swathed in a great brown cloak. Beneath it she wore cream silk and white linen, silver chains and amber brooches. We had chosen a young mare, and brushed the animal, combed her, polished her hooves with wax, and woven blue ribbons in her mane, but the road was staining the hooves, and nasty spits of rain bedraggled the carefully tied ribbons. ‘So,’ I asked her as we rode down from the hills, ‘you’re a pagan?’

  ‘Yes, father.’

  ‘Why?’

  She smiled from beneath her cloak’s thick hood, which hid the stitchwort that made a coronet about her black hair. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you were raised Christian.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why.’ I growled at that response and she laughed. ‘Do you know how cruel the nuns are?’ she asked. ‘They hit me and even burned me because I was your daughter.’

  ‘Burned you!’

  ‘With a spit from the kitchen fire,’ she said, and pulled up her left sleeve to show me the scars.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I demanded.

  ‘I told Lady Æthelflaed instead,’ she said calmly, ignoring my anger, ‘so of course it didn’t happen again. And then you sent me Hella.’

  ‘Hella?’

  ‘My maidservant.’

  ‘I sent her to you?’

  ‘Yes, father, after Beamfleot.’

  ‘I did?’ There had been so many captives taken at Beamfleot that I had forgotten most of them. ‘Who is Hella?’

  ‘She’s behind you, father,’ Stiorra said, twisting in the saddle to nod at her maid, who followed us on a placid gelding. I winced with pain when I turned to see a snub-nosed, round-faced girl who looked nervous when she saw me stare at her. ‘She’s a Dane,’ Stiorra went on, ‘and a little younger than I am, and a pagan. She told me stories about Freya and Idunn and Nanna and Hyrokin. Sometimes we sat up all night and talked.’

  ‘Good for Hella,’ I said, then rode in silence for a few paces. I did not know my own daughter. I loved her, but I did not know her, and now I had thirty-three men with me, thirty-three men to wreck a wedding and escape a town full of vengeful warriors, and I was sending my daughter into that wasps’ nest? What if she was caught? ‘Christians don’t like pagans,’ I said, ‘and if Æthelred’s men catch you they’ll hurt you, persecute you, hound you. That’s why you were raised Christian, so you wouldn’t be in danger.’

  ‘I might worship your gods,’ she said, ‘but I am not noisy about it.’ She opened the cloak and showed me the silver cross hanging over the pretty silk dress. ‘See? It doesn’t hurt me and it keeps them quiet.’

  ‘Does Æthelflaed know?’

  She shook her head. ‘As I said, father, I am not noisy.’

  ‘And I am?’

  ‘Very,’ she said drily.

  And an hour later we were at the gates of Gleawecestre, which had been decorated with leafy boughs in honour of the wedding. Eight men guarded the eastern gate where a crowd was trying to enter the city, but they were being delayed as the guards searched a line of wagons. One of my wagons was there, but those men were not trying to enter. They had parked the big cart with its load of hay just to one side of the road. They ignored us as we pushed through the waiting crowd, which, because we were mounted and armed, made way for us. ‘What are you searching for?’ I asked the guard commander, a big man with a scarred face and a black beard.

  ‘Just taxes, lord,’ he said. Merchants sometimes hid valuable goods beneath piles of cheap cloth or untreated hides and so cheated towns of the proper payments. ‘And the city’s busy,’ he grumbled.

  ‘The wedding?’

  ‘And the king being here.’

  ‘The king!’

  ‘King Edward!’ he said, as if I should have known. ‘Him and a thousand others.’

  ‘When did he come?’

  ‘Yesterday, lord. Make way for Lord Uhtred!’ he used his long spear to push people aside. ‘I’m glad you’re alive, lord,’ he said when the gate arch was unobstructed.

  ‘I am too,’ I told him.

  ‘I was with you at Teotanheale,’ he said, ‘and before that.’ He touched the scar on his left cheek. ‘Got that when we fought in East Anglia.’

  I found a coin in my pouch and handed it to him. ‘What time is the wedding?’

  ‘They don’t tell me, lord. Probably when the king gets his royal arse out of bed.’ He kissed the shilling I had given him. ‘Poor girl,’ he added in a lower voice.

  ‘Poor?’

  He shrugged as if his comment needed no explanation. ‘God bless you, lord,’ he said, touching the rim of his helmet.

  ‘I’m not here,’ I said, adding a second coin.

  ‘You’re not …’ he began, then looked at the armed men following me. ‘No, lord, you’re not here. I haven’t set eyes on you. God bless you, lord.’

  I rode on, ducking beneath a great spread hide that was hung above a leather shop. Edward was here? That made me angry. Edward had always expressed a fondness for Æthelstan and his sister. He had put them under Æthelflaed’s protection, just as he had placed Father Cuthbert under mine, and I thought he had done that to protect them from those men in Wessex who resented their existenc
e. Yet if Edward had come for this wedding it could only mean that he had given way to Æthelhelm completely.

  ‘He recognised you,’ Finan said, jerking his head towards the guard at the gate, ‘suppose he sends warning?’

  I shook my head. ‘He won’t,’ I said, hoping I was right. ‘He’s not loyal to Eardwulf.’

  ‘But if Eardwulf knows you’re here?’ Finan said, still worried.

  ‘He’ll set more guards,’ I suggested, but still pulled the hood of my cloak further over my head to shadow my face. It had begun to rain more persistently, puddling the filth-caked street which had lost most of its old paving stones. The main gate to the palace was straight ahead, not far, and spearmen were sheltering beneath its arch. The church was to the left, hidden by the thatched houses and shops. We splashed over a cross street and I saw one of my big wagons half blocking the road to the right. The third one should be waiting near the palace.

  The city was crowded, which was hardly a surprise. Every man who had attended the Witan was still here, and they had brought house-warriors, wives, and servants, while folk from a dozen nearby villages had come to Gleawecestre in hope of sharing the feast offered by the bride’s father. There were jugglers and magicians, tumblers and harpists, and a man leading a massive brown bear on a chain. The marketplace had been cleared of stalls, and a heap of firewood showed where an ox was to be roasted. The rain fell harder. A greasy-haired priest harangued the passers-by, shouting that they should repent before Christ returned in glory, but no one seemed to be listening to him except for a mangy dog that barked whenever the priest paused for breath.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ I growled.

  ‘What don’t you like?’ Stiorra asked.

  ‘You going into the palace. It’s too dangerous.’

  She gave me a patient look from beneath her cloak’s hood. ‘So you’ll just ride in yourself, father? Ride in and start a fight?’

  ‘You sound like your mother,’ I said, and did not mean it as a compliment. But of course she was right. I could not ride in without being challenged and recognised, and then what? I would fight my way into Æthelred’s palace and find his daughter? There were not only Æthelred’s warriors in the palace, but Æthelhelm’s, and King Edward’s men too, and it was probably the presence of the West Saxon king that made the guards on the gate so watchful. They had seen us approaching, and two of them moved to block the archway with massive spears, but stepped back when we sheered away into the street that ran alongside the palace wall, close to where my third wagon was parked. ‘So what will you do?’ I asked Stiorra.