Bernard Cornwell - War of the Wolf

‘Seventy-four, lord.’

‘Then tell Gruffudd of Gwent,’ Æthelstan said, and each time he repeated the name he invested it with more scorn, ‘that he and his seventy-four men are free to cross the river and go home. I will not stop them.’ And that, I thought, was the right decision. There was no point in picking a quarrel with a defeated force. If Æthelstan had chosen to kill Gruffudd and his Welshmen, which he was surely entitled to do, the news of the massacre would spread through the Welsh kingdoms and provoke retaliation. It was better to provoke gratitude by allowing Gruffudd and his men to crawl back to their hovels. ‘But they may travel with nothing more than they brought with them,’ Æthelstan added. ‘If they steal so much as one goat I will slaughter all of them!’

Father Bledod showed no concern at the threat. He must have expected it, and he knew as well as Æthelstan that the threat was a formality. Æthelstan just wanted the foreigners gone from Mercia. ‘Your goats are safe, lord,’ the priest said with sly humour, ‘but Gruffudd’s son is not.’

‘What of his son?’

The priest gestured towards the arena. ‘He is in there, lord.’

Æthelstan turned and stared at the arena, its blood-red walls lit by fire and half obscured by snow. ‘It is my intention,’ he said, ‘to kill every man inside.’

The priest made the sign of the cross. ‘Cadwallon ap Gruffudd is a hostage, lord.’

‘A hostage!’ Æthelstan could not hide his surprise. ‘Are you telling me that Cynlæf doesn’t trust Gruffudd of Gwent?’ Æthelstan asked, but the priest did not answer, nor did he need to. Gruffudd’s son had clearly been taken hostage as a surety that the Welsh warriors would not desert Cynlæf’s cause. And that, I thought, meant that Gruffudd must have given Cynlæf cause to doubt the Welshmen’s loyalty.

‘How many of your seventy-four men still live, priest?’ I asked.

Æthelstan looked annoyed at my intervention, but said nothing. ‘Sixty-three, lord,’ the priest answered.

‘You lost eleven men assaulting the walls?’ I asked.

‘Yes, lord.’ Father Bledod paused for a heartbeat. ‘We put ladders against the northern gate, lord, we took the tower.’ He meant one of the two bastions that flanked the Roman gate. ‘We drove the sais from the rampart, lord.’ He was proud of what Gruffudd’s men had achieved, and he had every right to be proud.

‘And you were driven from the gate,’ Æthelstan remarked quietly.

‘By you, lord Prince,’ the priest said. ‘We took the tower, but could not keep it.’

‘And how many sais ,’ I used Bledod’s word for the Saxons, ‘died with you on the gate?’

‘We counted ten bodies, lord.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I want to know how many of Cynlæf’s men died with you.’

‘None, lord,’ Father Bledod could not hide his scorn, ‘not one.’

Æthelstan understood my questions now. Cynlæf had let the Welshmen lead the assault and had done nothing to support them. The Welsh had done the fighting and the Saxons had let them die, and that experience had soured Gruffudd and his men. They could have resisted our arrival the previous day, but had chosen not to fight because they had lost faith in Cynlæf and his cause. Æthelstan looked at the warriors lined behind the priest. ‘What can Gruffudd,’ he asked, ‘give me in return for his son’s life?’

The priest turned and spoke with the short, broad-chested man who wore the gold chain about his neck. Gruffudd of Gwent had a scowling face, a grey tangled beard, and one blind eye, his right eye, which was white as the falling snow. A scar on his cheek showed where a blade had taken the sight from that eye. He spoke in his own language, of course, but I could hear the bitterness in the words. Father Bledod finally turned back to Æthelstan. ‘What does the lord Prince wish from Gruffudd?’

‘I want to hear what he will offer,’ Æthelstan said. ‘What is his son worth? Silver? Gold? Horses?’

There was another brief exchange in the Welsh language. ‘He will not offer gold, lord,’ the priest said, ‘but he will pay you with the name of the man who hired him.’

Æthelstan laughed. ‘Cynlæf hired him!’ he said. ‘I already know that! You waste my time, father.’

‘It is not Cynlæf,’ it was Gruffudd himself who spoke in halting English.

‘Of course it was not Cynlæf,’ Æthelstan said scornfully, ‘he would have sent someone else to bribe you. The devil has evil men to do his work.’

‘It is not Cynlæf,’ Gruffudd said again, then added something in his own language.

‘It was not Cynlæf,’ Father Bledod translated. ‘Cynlæf knew nothing of our coming till we arrived here.’

Æthelstan said nothing for a few heartbeats, then reached out and gently took his cloak from Father Bledod’s shoulders. ‘Tell Gruffudd of Gwent that I will spare his son’s life and he may leave at midday tomorrow. In exchange for his son he will give me the name of my enemy and he will also give me the gold chain about his neck.’

Father Bledod translated the demand, and Gruffudd gave a reluctant nod. ‘It is agreed, lord Prince,’ Bledod said.

‘And the chain,’ Æthelstan said, ‘will be given to the church.’

‘Earsling,’ I said again, still too low for Æthelstan’s ears.

‘And Gruffudd of Gwent,’ Æthelstan went on, ‘will agree to keep his men from raiding Mercia for one whole year.’ That too was agreed, though I suspected it was a meaningless demand. Æthelstan might as well have demanded that it did not rain for a whole year as expect that the Welsh would end their thieving. ‘We will meet again tomorrow,’ Æthelstan finished.

‘Tomorrow, edling ,’ Gruffudd said, ‘tomorrow.’ He walked away, followed by his men and by Father Bledod. The snow was falling harder, the flakes whirling in the light of the campfires.

‘I sometimes find it difficult,’ Æthelstan said as he watched them walk away, ‘to remember that the Welsh are Christians.’

I smiled at that. ‘There’s a king in Dyfed called Hywel. You’d like him.’

‘I’ve heard of him.’

‘He’s a good man,’ I said warmly, and rather surprised myself by saying it.

‘And a Christian!’ Æthelstan was mocking me.

‘I said he was good, not perfect.’

Æthelstan crossed himself. ‘Tomorrow we must all be good,’ he said, ‘and spare the life of a Welshman.’

And discover the name of an enemy. I was fairly sure I already knew that name, though I could not be certain of it, though I was certain that one day I would have to kill the man. So a Welshman must live so that a Saxon could die.

Edling , a Welsh title, the same as our ætheling, meaning the son of the king who would be the next king. Gruffudd of Gwent, who I assumed was a chieftain of some kind, even maybe a minor king himself, had used the title to flatter Æthelstan, because no one knew who would succeed King Edward. Æthelstan was the oldest son, but malicious rumour, spread by the church, insisted he was a bastard, and almost all the ealdormen of Wessex supported Ælfweard, Edward’s second son, who was indubitably legitimate. ‘They should make me King of Wessex,’ I told Æthelstan next morning.

He looked shocked. Perhaps he was not fully awake and thought he had misheard. ‘You!’

‘Me.’

‘For God’s sake, why?’

‘I just think the best-looking man in the kingdom should be king.’

He understood I was joking then, but he was in no mood for laughter. He just grunted and urged his horse on. He led sixty of his warriors, while I led all of mine who were not already guarding the arena where Father Bledod was waiting for us. I had told the Welsh priest to join us. ‘How else will we know who Gruffudd’s boy is?’ I had explained. Away to our left, many of Cynlæf’s defeated men were already walking eastwards with their wives and children. I had sent Finan with twenty men to spread the news that they should leave or else face my warriors, and Finan’s small force had met no opposition. The rebellion, at least in this part of Mercia, had collapsed without a fight.