Bernard Cornwell - Death of Kings

‘I know that.’

‘Locked her away in Saint Hedda’s,’ he said.

‘I found the key,’ I said.

‘God preserve us from wickedness,’ Beocca said, making the sign of the cross. ‘Æthelflaed,’ I said, ‘is loved in Mercia. Her husband is not.’

‘This is known,’ he said distantly.

‘When Edward becomes king,’ I said, ‘he will look to Mercia.’

‘Look to Mercia?’

‘The Danes will come, father,’ I said, ‘and they’ll begin with Mercia. You want the Mercian lords fighting for Wessex? You want the Mercian fyrd fighting for Wessex? The one person who can inspire them is Æthelflaed.’

‘You can,’ he said loyally.

I gave that statement the scorn it deserved. ‘You and I are Northumbrians, father. They think we’re barbarians who eat our children for breakfast. But they love Æthelflaed.’

‘I know,’ he said.

‘So let her be a sinner, father, if that is what makes Wessex safe.’

‘Am I supposed to tell the king that?’

I laughed. ‘You’re supposed to tell Edward that. And tell him more. Tell him to kill Æthelwold. No mercy, no family sentimentality, no Christian guilt. Just give me the order and he’s dead.’

Beocca shook his head. ‘Æthelwold is a fool,’ he said accurately, ‘and most of the time a drunken fool. He flirted with the Danes, we cannot deny it, but he has confessed all his sins to the king and been forgiven.’

‘Forgiven?’

‘Last night,’ Beocca said, ‘he shed tears at the king’s bedside and swore allegiance to the king’s heir.’

I had to laugh. Alfred’s response to my warning had been to summon Æthelwold and believe the fool’s lies. ‘Æthelwold will try to take the throne,’ I said.

‘He swore the opposite,’ Beocca said earnestly, ‘he swore on Noah’s feather and on the glove of Saint Cedd.’

The feather had supposedly belonged to a dove that Noah had released from the ark back in the days when it rained as heavily as the downpour that now drummed on the roof of the Two Cranes. The feather and the saint’s glove were two of Alfred’s most precious relics, and doubtless he would believe anything that was sworn in their presence. ‘Don’t believe him,’ I said, ‘kill him. Or else he’ll make trouble.’

‘He has sworn his oath,’ Beocca said, ‘and the king believes him.’

‘Æthelwold is a treacherous earsling,’ I said.

‘He’s just a fool,’ Beocca said dismissively.

‘But an ambitious fool, and a fool with a legitimate claim to the throne, and men will use that claim.’

‘He has relented, he has made confession, he has been absolved, and he is penitent.’

What fools we all are. I see the same mistakes being made, time after time, generation after generation, yet still we go on believing what we wish to believe. That night, in the wet darkness, I repeated Beocca’s words. ‘He has relented,’ I said, ‘he has made confession, he has been absolved, and he is penitent.’

‘And they believe him?’ Æthelflaed asked bleakly.

‘Christians are fools,’ I said, ‘ready to believe anything.’

She prodded me hard in the ribs, and I chuckled. The rain fell on Saint Hedda’s roof. I should not have been there, of course, but the abbess, dear Hild, pretended not to know. I was not in that part of the nunnery where the sisters lived in seclusion, but in a range of buildings about the outer courtyard where lay folk were permitted. There were kitchens where food was prepared for the poor, there was a hospital where the indigent could die, and there was this attic room, which had been Æthelflaed’s prison. It was not uncomfortable, though small. She was attended by maidservants, but this night they had been told to make themselves beds in the storerooms beneath. ‘They told me you were negotiating with the Danes,’ Æthelflaed said.

‘I was. I was using Serpent-Breath.’

‘And negotiating with Sigunn too?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and she’s well.’

‘God knows why I love you.’

‘God knows everything.’

She said nothing to that, but just stirred beside me and pulled the fleece higher about her head and shoulders. The rain beat on. Her hair was golden in my face. She was Alfred’s eldest child and I had watched her grow to become a woman, had watched the joy in her face fade to bitterness when she was given as wife to my cousin, and I had seen the joy return. Her blue eyes were flecked with brown, her nose was small and upturned. It was a face I loved, but a face that now had lines of worry. ‘You should talk to your son,’ she said, her voice muffled by the fleece bedcover.

‘Uhtred spouts pious nonsense to me,’ I said, ‘so I’d rather talk to my daughter.’

‘She’s safe, and your other son too, in Cippanhamm.’

‘Why is Uhtred here?’ I asked.

‘The king wanted him here.’

‘They’re turning him into a priest,’ I said angrily.

‘And they want to turn me into a nun,’ she said just as angrily. ‘They do?’

‘Bishop Erkenwald administered the oath to me, I spat at him.’

I pulled her head out from under the fleece. ‘They really tried?’

‘Bishop Erkenwald and my mother.’

‘What happened?’

‘They came here,’ she said in a very matter-of-fact voice, ‘and insisted I went to the chapel, and Bishop Erkenwald said a great deal of angry Latin, then held a book to me and told me to put my hand on it and swear to keep the oath he’d just said.’

‘And you did?’

‘I told you what I did. I spat at him.’

I lay in silence for a while. ‘Æthelred must have persuaded them,’ I said.

‘Well I’m sure he’d like to put me away, but Mother said it was Father’s wish I took the vows.’

‘I doubt that,’ I said.

‘So then they went back to the palace and announced I had taken the vow.’

‘And put guards on the gate,’ I said.

‘I think that was to keep you out,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘but you say the guards are gone?’

‘They’re gone.’

‘So I can leave?’

‘You left yesterday.’

‘Steapa’s men escorted me to the palace,’ she said, ‘then brought me back here.’

‘There are no guards now.’

She frowned in thought. ‘I should have been born a man.’

‘I’m glad you weren’t.’

‘And I would be king,’ she said.

‘Edward will be a good king.’

‘He will,’ she agreed, ‘but he can be indecisive. I would have made a better king.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you would.’

‘Poor Edward,’ she said.

‘Poor? He’ll be king soon.’

‘He lost his love,’ she said.

‘And the babies live.’

‘The babies live,’ she agreed.

I think I loved Gisela best of all the women in my life. I mourn her still. But of all those women, Æthelflaed was always the closest. She thought like me. I would sometimes start to say something and she would finish the sentence. In time we just looked at each other and knew what the other was thinking. Of all the friends I have made in my life, I loved Æthelflaed the best.

Sometime in that wet darkness, Thor’s Day turned into Freya’s Day. Freya was Woden’s wife, the goddess of love, and for all of her day the rain continued to fall. A wind rose in the afternoon, a high wind that tore at Wintanceaster’s thatch and drove the rain in malevolent spite, and that same night King Alfred, who had ruled in Wessex for twenty-eight years and was in the fiftieth year of his life, died.

The next morning there was no rain and little wind. Wintanceaster was silent, except for the pigs rooting in the streets, the cockerels crowing, the dogs howling or barking and the thud of the sentries’ boots on the waterlogged planks of the ramparts. Folk seemed dazed. A bell began to toll in mid-morning, just a single bell struck again and again, and the sound faded down the river valley where floods sheeted the meadows, then came again with brutal force. The king is dead, long live the king.