Bernard Cornwell - War of the Wolf

Æthelflaed, Alfred’s daughter, and ruler of Mercia. Dead now. Her corpse was decaying in a cold stone vault. I imagined her dead hands clutching a crucifix in the grave’s foul darkness, and remembered those same hands clawing my spine as she writhed beneath me. ‘God forgive me,’ she would say, ‘don’t stop!’

And now she had brought me back to Ceaster.

And Serpent-Breath was about to kill again.

Æthelflaed’s brother ruled Wessex. He had been content to let his sister rule Mercia, but on her death he had marched West Saxon troops north across the Temes. They came, he said, to honour his sister at her funeral, but they stayed to impose Edward’s rule on his sister’s realm. Edward, Anglorum Saxonum Rex .

Those Mercian lords who bent their knee were rewarded, but some, a few, resented the West Saxons. Mercia was a proud land. There had been a time when the King of Mercia was the most powerful ruler of Britain, when the kings of Wessex and of East Anglia and the chieftains of Wales had sent tribute, when Mercia was the largest of all the British kingdoms. Then the Danes had come, and Mercia had fallen, and it had been Æthelflaed who had fought back, who had driven the pagans northwards and built the burhs that protected her frontier. And she was dead, mouldering, and her brother’s troops now guarded the burh walls, and the King of Wessex called himself king of all the Saxons, and he demanded silver to pay for the garrisons, and he took land from the resentful lords and gave it to his own men, or to the church. Always to the church, because it was the priests who preached to the Mercian folk that it was their nailed god’s will that Edward of Wessex be king in their land, and that to oppose the king was to oppose their god.

Yet fear of the nailed god did not prevent a revolt, and so the fighting had begun. Saxon against Saxon, Christian against Christian, Mercian against Mercian, and Mercian against West Saxon. The rebels fought under Æthelflaed’s flag, declaring that it had been her will that her daughter, Ælfwynn, succeed her. Ælfwynn, Queen of Mercia! I liked Ælfwynn, but she could no more have ruled a kingdom than she could have speared a charging boar. She was flighty, frivolous, pretty, and petty. Edward, knowing his niece had been named to the throne, took care to have her shut away in a convent, along with his discarded wife, but still the rebels flaunted her mother’s flag and fought in her name.

They were led by Cynlæf Haraldson, a West Saxon warrior whom Æthelflaed had wanted as a husband for Ælfwynn. The truth, of course, was that Cynlæf wanted to be King of Mercia himself. He was young, he was handsome, he was brave in battle, and, to my mind, stupid. His ambition was to defeat the West Saxons, rescue his bride from her convent, and be crowned.

But first he must capture Ceaster. And he had failed.

‘It feels like snow,’ Finan said as we rode south towards the city.

‘It’s too late in the year for snow,’ I said confidently.

‘I can feel it in my bones,’ he said, shivering. ‘It’ll come by nightfall.’

I scoffed at that. ‘Two shillings says it won’t.’

He laughed. ‘God send me more fools with silver! My bones are never wrong.’ Finan was Irish, my second-in-command, and my dearest friend. His face, framed by the steel of his helmet, looked lined and old, his beard was grey. Mine was too, I suppose. I watched as he loosened Soul-Stealer in her scabbard and as his eyes flicked across the smoke of the campfires ahead. ‘So what are we doing?’ he asked.

‘Scouring the bastards off the eastern side of the city,’ I said.

‘They’re thick there.’

I guessed that almost two thirds of the enemy were camped on Ceaster’s eastern flank. The campfires were dense there, burning between low shelters made of branches and turf. To the south of the crude shelters were a dozen lavish tents, placed close to the ruins of the old Roman arena, which, even though it had been used as a convenient quarry, still rose higher than the tents above which two flags hung motionless in the still air. ‘If Cynlæf’s still here,’ I said, ‘he’ll be in one of those tents.’

‘Let’s hope the bastard’s drunk.’

‘Or else he’s in the arena,’ I said. The arena was built just outside the city and was a vast hulk of stone. Beneath its banked stone seating were cave-like rooms that, when I had last explored them, were home to wild dogs. ‘If he had any sense,’ I went on, ‘he’d have abandoned this siege. Left men to keep the garrison starving, and gone south. That’s where the rebellion will be won or lost, not here.’

‘Does he have sense?’

‘Daft as a turnip,’ I said, and then started laughing. A group of women burdened with firewood had stepped off the road to kneel as we passed, and they looked up at me in astonishment. I waved at them. ‘We’re about to make some of them widows,’ I said, still laughing.

‘And that’s funny?’

I spurred Tintreg into a trot. ‘What’s funny,’ I said, ‘is that we’re two old men riding to war.’

‘You, maybe,’ Finan said pointedly.

‘You’re my age!’

‘I’m not a grandfather!’

‘You might be. You don’t know.’

‘Bastards don’t count.’

‘They do,’ I insisted.

‘Then you’re probably a great-grandfather by now.’

I gave him a harsh look. ‘Bastards don’t count,’ I snarled, making him laugh, then he made the sign of the cross because we had reached the Roman cemetery that stretched either side of the road. There were ghosts here, ghosts wandering between the lichen-covered stones with their fading inscriptions that only Christian priests who understood Latin could read. Years before, in a fit of zeal, a priest had started throwing down the stones, declaring they were pagan abominations. That very same day he was struck down dead and ever since the Christians had tolerated the graves, which, I thought, must be protected by the Roman gods. Bishop Leofstan had laughed when I told him that story, and had assured me that the Romans were good Christians. ‘It was our god, the one true god, who slew the priest,’ he had told me. Then Leofstan himself had died, struck down just as suddenly as the grave-hating priest. Wyrd bið ful āræd.

My men were strung out now, not quite in single file, but close. None wanted to ride too near the road’s verges because that was where the ghosts gathered. The long, straggling line of horsemen made us vulnerable, but the enemy seemed oblivious to our threat. We passed more women, all bent beneath great burdens of firewood they had cut from spinneys north of the graves. The nearest campfires were close now. The afternoon’s light was fading, though dusk was still an hour or more away. I could see men on the northern city wall, see their spears, and knew they must be watching us. They would think we were reinforcements come to help the besiegers.

I curbed Tintreg just beyond the old Roman cemetery to let my men catch up. The sight of the graves and thinking of Bishop Leofstan had brought back memories. ‘Remember Mus?’ I asked Finan.

‘Christ! How could anyone forget her?’ He grinned. ‘Did you …’ he began.

‘Never. You?’

He shook his head. ‘Your son gave her a few good rides.’

I had left my son in command of the troops garrisoning Bebbanburg. ‘He’s a lucky boy,’ I said. Mus, her real name was Sunngifu, was small like a mouse, and had been married to Bishop Leofstan. ‘I wonder where Mus is now?’ I asked. I was still gazing at Ceaster’s northern wall, trying to estimate how many men stood guard on the ramparts. ‘More than I expected,’ I said.

‘More?’

‘Men on the wall,’ I explained. I could see at least forty men on the ramparts, and knew there must be just as many on the eastern wall, which faced the bulk of the enemy.