Бернард Корнуэлл: War Lord

‘As you command,’ I said and took the sword gratefully. I could not put her in the scabbard till she was cleaned, so I tossed away my borrowed sword and held Serpent-Breath as we rode back down the long road in the gathering dark. Women were searching the dead, using long knives to kill those close to death before plundering the bodies. The first fires pricked the early dark.

It was over.

Epilogue

I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred, who was the son of Uhtred, and his father was also called Uhtred, and they were all lords of Bebbanburg. I am that too, though these days folk call me the Lord of the North. My lands stretch from the wind-beaten North Sea to the shores facing Ireland and, though I am old, my task is to stop the Scots coming south into the land we have learned to call Englaland.

I have imposed peace on Cumbria. I did it by sending my son and Egil to punish those who would cause trouble. They hanged some, burned steadings, and gave land to men who had fought on the heath at Wirhealum. Much of Cumbria is still occupied by Danes and Norsemen, but they live in peace with the Saxons, and their children have learned to speak the Saxon tongue and some now worship the nailed god of the Christians. We are proud to be Northumbrians, yet we are all Ænglisc now and Æthelstan is called the King of Englaland. His shattered sword hangs in his great hall at Wintanceaster, though I have not travelled south to see it. He was generous to me, rewarding me with gold and silver taken at the field on Wirhealum where so many men lie buried.

There was a feast three days after the battle. Æthelstan had wanted it on the night of the battle, but men were too tired, there were too many injured who needed care, and so he waited until he could gather his leaders in Ceaster. There was more ale than food, and what food there was did not taste good. There was bread, some hams, and a stew that I suspected was horse-flesh. Maybe a hundred and twenty men gathered in Ceaster’s great hall after Bishop Oda held a service in the church. A harpist played but did not sing, because no song could match the slaughter we had endured. It was called a victory feast, and I suppose it was, but until the ale had loosened men’s tongues, it felt like a funeral. Æthelstan gave a speech in which he lamented the loss of two ealdormen, Ælfine and Æthelwyn, but then spread praise among the men listening from the benches. He raised a cheer when he singled out Steapa, who had taken a spear thrust in his shield arm when his horsemen had shattered Anlaf’s shield wall. He named me too, calling me the warlord of Englaland. Men cheered.

Englaland! I remember first hearing that name and finding it strange. King Alfred had dreamed of an Englaland and I had been with him when he marched from the marshes of Sumersæte to assault the great army led by Anlaf’s grandfather. ‘We were supposed to die at Ethandun,’ Alfred had once said to me, ‘but God was on our side. There will always be an Englaland.’ I had not believed him, yet over the long years I had fought for that dream, not always willingly, and now Alfred’s grandson had conquered the northern alliance and Englaland stretched from the Scottish hills to the southern sea. ‘God gave us this country,’ Æthelstan declaimed in Ceaster’s hall, ‘and God will keep it.’

Yet Æthelstan’s god allowed both Anlaf and Constantine to escape the slaughter of Wirhealum. Anlaf is in Dyflin, muttering that he will return, and perhaps he will because he is young, ambitious, and bitter. I am told that the king of the Scots has relinquished his throne and gone to live in a monastery and that his realm is now ruled by Indulf, his second son. There are still cattle raids across my northern border, but fewer, because when we find the raiders we kill them and nail their heads to trees to warn others what awaits them.

The dragon and the star did not lie. The danger came from the north, and the dragon died on the heath of Wirhealum. Domnall and Cellach died there. So did Anlaf Cenncairech who was known as Scabbyhead. He was King of Hlymrekr in Ireland, forced to fight at Wirhealum by his conqueror whose name he shared. Owain of Strath Clota fell too, cut down by Sihtric’s men amidst his blackshields. Gibhleachán, King of the Suðreyjar islands, was speared from behind as he tried to flee. The poets say seven kings died, and perhaps they did, but some were mere chieftains who just called themselves kings. I rule more land than some kings, but call myself the Lord of Bebbanburg and that is the only title I have ever wanted, and it will belong to my son and to his son. I sometimes sit on the terrace outside the great hall and look at the men and women who serve me, and then I gaze at the endless sea, at the clouds building over the inland hills, at the walls I have made higher, and I murmur thanks to the gods who have looked after me for so long.

Benedetta sits with me, her head on my shoulder, and sometimes she looks towards the hall I built at the fortress’s northern end and she smiles. My wife lives there. Æthelstan insisted on the marriage, sometimes I think to mock me, and so Eldrida the piglet became my wife. I had thought Benedetta would be enraged, but she was amused. ‘Poor child,’ she said, and has ignored her ever since. Eldrida is scared of me and even more scared of Benedetta, but she delivered me her lands in Cumbria, and that was her purpose. I try to be kind to her, but all she wants is to pray. I built her a private chapel and she brought two priests to Bebbanburg and I hear their prayers whenever I go near the Sea Gate. She tells me she prays for me, and perhaps that is why I still live.

Finan also lives, but he is slower now. So am I. We must both die soon. Finan asks that his body be taken to Ireland to sleep with his ancestors, and Egil, who has a Norseman’s endless desire to be at sea, has promised he will fulfil that wish. My only request is to die with a sword in my hand, and so Benedetta and I share our bed with Serpent-Breath. Bury her with me, I tell my son, and he has promised that my sword will go to Valhalla with me. And in that great hall of the gods I will meet so many men that I once fought, who I killed, and we shall feast together and watch the middle-earth beneath us and see men fight as we once fought, and so the world will go on till Ragnarok’s chaos engulfs it.

And until the day when I shall go to the hall of the gods I shall stay in Bebbanburg. I fought for Bebbanburg. It was stolen from me, I recaptured it, and I have held it against all my enemies, and whenever I sit on the terrace I wonder if, a thousand years from now, the fortress will still stand, still unconquered, still brooding over the sea and the land. I think it will remain until Ragnarok comes, when the seas will boil, the land shatter and the skies turn to fire, and there the story will end.

Wyrd bið ful ãræd.

Never before in this island was there such slaughter.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , AD 938, on the Battle of Brunanburh

Historical Note

The Battle of Brunanburh was fought in the autumn of AD 937. Æthelstan, monarch of the kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia, defeated an army led by Anlaf Guthfrithson, King of Dyflin in Ireland, and by Constantine of Scotland. They were joined by the men of Strath Clota, by the Norse warriors of what are now the Orkneys and the Hebrides, and by sympathetic Northmen from Northumbria. They were defeated. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle broke into verse to celebrate the victory, noting ‘never was there such slaughter in our islands’. For years afterwards it was simply known as ‘the great battle’.

It was undoubtedly a great battle and a terrible slaughter, and it was also one of the most important battles ever to have been fought on British soil. Michael Livingston, who is surely the greatest expert on Brunanburh, notes in his book, The Battle of Brunanburh: A Casebook , that ‘the men who fought and died on that field forged a political map of the future that remains with us today, arguably making the Battle of Brunanburh one of the most significant battles in the long history not just of England, but of the whole of the British Isles … in one day, on one field, the fate of a nation was determined’.