Bernard Cornwell - The Burning Land

The king had joined me on Æscengum’s eastern rampart. He had arrived with his usual entourage of priests, but had waved them away so he could talk with me privately. He stood for a moment just staring at the distant dull glow of fires where Harald’s men had sacked villages and I knew he was lamenting all the burned churches. ‘Is he an impulsive fool?’ he enquired mildly.

‘You tell me, lord,’ I said.

‘He’s savage, unpredictable and given to sudden rages,’ the king said. Alfred paid well for information about the northmen and kept meticulous notes on every leader. Harald had been pillaging in Frankia before its people bribed him to leave, and I did not doubt that Alfred’s spies had told him everything they could discover about Harald Bloodhair. ‘You know why he’s called Bloodhair?’ Alfred asked.

‘Because before every battle, lord, he sacrifices a horse to Thor and soaks his hair in the animal’s blood.’

‘Yes,’ Alfred said. He leaned on the palisade. ‘How can you be sure he’ll go to Fearnhamme?’ he asked.

‘Because I’ll draw him there, lord. I’ll make a snare and pull him onto our spears.’

‘The woman?’ Alfred asked with a slight shudder.

‘She is said to be special to him, lord.’

‘So I hear,’ he said. ‘But he will have other whores.’

‘She’s not the only reason he’ll go to Fearnhamme, lord,’ I said, ‘but she’s reason enough.’

‘Women brought sin into this world,’ he said so quietly I almost did not hear him. He rested against the oak trunks of the parapet and gazed towards the small town of Godelmingum that lay just a few miles eastwards. The people who lived there had been ordered to flee, and now the only inhabitants were fifty of my men who stood sentinel to warn us of the Danish approach. ‘I had hoped the Danes had ceased wanting this kingdom,’ he broke the silence plaintively.

‘They’ll always want Wessex,’ I said.

‘All I ask of God,’ he went on, ignoring my truism, ‘is that Wessex should be safe and ruled by my son.’ I answered nothing to that. There was no law that decreed a son should succeed his father as king, and if there had been then Alfred would not be Wessex’s ruler. He had succeeded his brother, and that brother had a son, Æthelwold, who wanted desperately to be king in Wessex. Æthelwold had been too young to assume the throne when his father died, but he was in his thirties now, a man in his ale-sozzled prime. Alfred sighed, then straightened. ‘Edward will need you as an adviser,’ he said.

‘I should be honoured, lord,’ I said.

Alfred heard the dutiful tone in my voice and did not like it. He stiffened, and I expected one of his customary reproofs, but instead he looked pained. ‘God has blessed me,’ he said quietly. ‘When I came to the throne, Lord Uhtred, it seemed impossible that we should resist the Danes. Yet by God’s grace Wessex lives. We have churches, monasteries, schools, laws. We have made a country where God dwells, and I cannot believe it is God’s will that it should vanish when I am called to judgement.’

‘May that be many years yet, lord,’ I said as dutifully as I had spoken before.

‘Oh, don’t be a fool,’ he snarled with sudden anger. He shuddered, closed his eyes momentarily, and when he spoke again his voice was low and wan. ‘I can feel death coming, Lord Uhtred. It’s like an ambush. I know it’s there and I can do nothing to avoid it. It will take me and it will destroy me, but I do not want it to destroy Wessex with me.’

‘If it’s your God’s will,’ I said harshly, ‘then nothing I can do nor anything Edward can do will stop it.’

‘We’re not puppets in God’s hands,’ he said testily. ‘We are his instruments. We earn our fate.’ He looked at me with some bitterness for he had never forgiven me for abandoning Christianity in favour of the older religion. ‘Don’t your gods reward you for good behaviour?’

‘My gods are capricious, lord.’ I had learned that word from Bishop Erkenwald who had intended it as an insult, but once I had learned its meaning I liked it. My gods are capricious.

‘How can you serve a capricious god?’ Alfred asked.

‘I don’t.’

‘But you said. …’

‘They are capricious,’ I interrupted him, ‘but that’s their pleasure. My task is not to serve them, but to amuse them, and if I do then they will reward me in the life to come.’

‘Amuse them?’ He sounded shocked.

‘Why not?’ I demanded. ‘We have cats, dogs and falcons for our pleasure, the gods made us for the same reason. Why did your god make you?’

‘To be His servant,’ he said firmly. ‘If I’m God’s cat then I must catch the devil’s mice. That is duty, Lord Uhtred, duty.’

‘While my duty,’ I said, ‘is to catch Harald and slice his head off. That, I think, will amuse my gods.’

‘Your gods are cruel,’ he said, then shuddered.

‘Men are cruel,’ I said, ‘and the gods made us like themselves, and some of the gods are kind, some are cruel. So are we. If it amuses the gods then Harald will slice my head off.’ I touched the hammer amulet.

Alfred grimaced. ‘God made you his instrument, and I do not know why he chose you, a pagan, but so he did and you have served me well.’

He had spoken fervently, surprising me, and I bowed my head in acknowledgement. ‘Thank you, lord.’

‘And now I wish you to serve my son,’ he added.

I should have known that was coming, but somehow the request took me by surprise. I was silent a moment as I tried to think what to say. ‘I agreed to serve you, lord,’ I said finally, ‘and so I have, but I have my own battles to fight.’

‘Bebbanburg,’ he said sourly.

‘Is mine,’ I said firmly, ‘and before I die I wish to see my banner flying over its gate and my son strong enough to defend it.’

He gazed at the glow of the enemy fires. I was noticing how scattered those fires were, which told me Harald had not yet concentrated his army. It would take time to pull those men together from across the ravaged countryside, which meant, I thought, that the battle would not be fought tomorrow, but the next day. ‘Bebbanburg,’ Alfred said, ‘is an island of the English in a sea of Danes.’

‘True, lord,’ I said, noting how he used the word ‘English’. It embraced all the tribes who had come across the sea, whether they were Saxon, Angle or Jute, and it spoke of Alfred’s ambition, that he now made explicit.

‘The best way to keep Bebbanburg safe,’ he said, ‘is to surround it with more English land.’

‘Drive the Danes from Northumbria?’ I asked.

‘If it is God’s will,’ he said, ‘then I will wish my son to do that great deed.’ He turned to me, and for a moment he was not a king, but a father. ‘Help him, Lord Uhtred,’ he said pleadingly. ‘You are my dux bellorum , my lord of battles, and men know they will win when you lead them. Scour the enemy from England, and so take your fortress back and make my son safe on his God-given throne.’

He had not flattered me, he had spoken the truth. I was the warlord of Wessex and I was proud of that reputation. I went into battle glittering with gold, silver and pride, and I should have known that the gods would resent that.

‘I want you,’ Alfred spoke softly but firmly, ‘to give my son your oath.’

I cursed inwardly, but spoke respectfully. ‘What oath, lord?’

‘I wish you to serve Edward as you have served me.’

And thus Alfred would tie me to Wessex, to Christian Wessex that lay so far from my northern home. I had spent my first ten years in Bebbanburg, that great rock-fastness on the northern sea, and when I had first ridden to war the fortress had been left in the care of my uncle, who had stolen it from me.