Sword Song (20 page)

“Lord King,” Gisela spoke softly, checking Alfred’s departure, “how is your daughter? I saw her yesterday and she was bruised.”

Alfred’s gaze flickered to the river where six swans rode the water beneath the tumult of the broken bridge. “She’s well,” he said distantly.

“The bruising…” Gisela began.

“She was always a mischievous child,” Alfred interrupted her.

“Mischievous?” Gisela’s response was tentative.

“I love her,” Alfred said, and there could have been no doubt of that from the unexpected passion in his voice, “but while mischief in a child is amusing, in an adult it is sinful. My dear Æthelflaed must learn obedience.”

“So she learns to hate?” I asked, echoing the king’s earlier words.

“She’s married now,” Alfred said, “and her duty before God is to be obedient to her husband. She will learn that, I am sure, and be grateful for the lesson. It is hard to inflict punishment on a child you love, but it is a sin to withhold such punishment. I pray God she comes to a state of good grace.”

“Amen,” Father Erkenwald said.

“Praise God,” Beocca said.

Gisela said nothing and the king left.

I should have known that the summons to the palace on top of Lundene’s low hill would involve priests. I had expected a council of war and a hard-headed discussion on how best to scour the Temes of the
brigands who infested the estuary, but instead, once I had been relieved of my swords, I was shown into the pillared hall where an altar had been erected. Finan and Sihtric were with me. Finan, a good Christian, made the sign of the cross, but Sihtric, like me, was a pagan and he looked at me with alarm as though he feared some religious magic.

I endured the service. Monks chanted, priests prayed, bells were rung, and men genuflected. There were some forty men in the room, most of them priests, but only one woman. Æthelflaed was seated beside her husband. She was dressed in a white robe, gathered at her waist by a blue sash, and her corn-gold hair had speedwell woven into its bun. I was behind her, but once, when she turned to look at her father, I saw the purplish bruise around her right eye. Alfred did not look at her, but stayed on his knees. I watched him, watched Æthelflaed’s slumped shoulders, and thought about Beamfleot, and how that wasps’ nest could be burned out. First, I thought, I needed to take a ship downriver and see Beamfleot for myself.

Alfred suddenly stood up and I assumed the service was at last over, but instead the king turned to us and delivered a mercifully brief homily. He encouraged us to ponder the words of the prophet Ezekiel, whoever he was. “‘Then the heathen that are left round about you,’” the king read to us, “‘shall know that I the Lord build the ruined places, and plant that which was desolate.’ Lundene,” the king put down the parchment with Ezekiel’s words, “is again a Saxon city, and though it is in ruins, with God’s help we shall rebuild it. We shall make it a place of God, a light to the pagans.” He paused, smiled gravely and beckoned to Bishop Erkenwald who, draped in a white cape hung with red strips on which silver crosses had been embroidered, stood to deliver a sermon. I groaned. We were supposed to be discussing how to rid the Temes of our enemies, and instead were being tortured with dull piety.

I had long learned to ignore sermons. It has been my unhappy fate to hear many, and the words of most have passed over me like rain
running down newly laid thatch, but some minutes into Erkenwald’s hoarse harangue I began to take notice.

Because he was not preaching about remaking ruined cities, nor even about the heathen who threatened Lundene, instead he was preaching to Æthelflaed.

He stood by the altar and he shouted. He was ever an angry man, but on that spring day in the old Roman hall, he was filled with a passionate fury. God, he said, was speaking through him. God had a message, and God’s word could not be ignored or else the brimstone fires of hell would consume all mankind. He never used Æthelflaed’s name, but he stared at her, and no man in the room could doubt the message that the Christians’ god was sending to the poor girl. God, it seemed, had even written the message down in a gospel book, and Erkenwald snatched a copy from the altar, held it up so that the light from the smoke-hole in the roof caught the page, and read aloud.

“‘To be discreet, ‘”he looked up to glare at Æthelflaed, “‘chaste! Keepers of the home! Good! Obedient to their husbands!’ Those are God’s own words! That is what God demands of a woman! To be discreet, to be chaste, to be home-keepers, to be obedient! God spoke to us!” He almost writhed in ecstasy as he said those last four words. “God still speaks to us!” he gazed up at the roof as if he could glimpse his god peering through the ceiling. “God speaks to us!”

He preached for over an hour. His spittle spun through the ray of sunlight cast through the smoke-hole. He cringed, he shouted, he shuddered. And time and again he went back to the words in the gospel book that wives must be obedient to their husbands.

“Obedient!” he shouted, and paused.

I heard a thump from the outer hall as a guard rested his shield.

“Obedient!” Erkenwald shrieked again.

Æthelflaed’s head was held high. From my view behind her it seemed as if she were staring straight at that mad, vicious priest who was now the bishop and ruler of Lundene. Æthelred, beside her, fidgeted, but the few glimpses I got of his face showed a smug, self-satisfied look. Most of
the men there looked bored and only one, Father Beocca, seemed to disapprove of the bishop’s sermon. He caught my eye once and made me smile by raising an indignant eyebrow. I am certain Beocca did not dislike the message, but he doubtless believed it should not have been preached in so public a manner. As for Alfred, he just gazed serenely at the altar as the bishop ranted, yet his passivity disguised involvement because that bitter sermon could never have been preached without the king’s knowledge and permission.

“Obedient!” Erkenwald cried again, and stared up at heaven as though that one word was the solution to all mankind’s troubles. The king nodded approval, and it occurred to me that Alfred had not only approved Erkenwald’s rant, but must have requested it. Perhaps he thought that a public admonition would save Æthelflaed from private beatings? The message certainly matched Alfred’s philosophy, for he believed that a kingdom could only thrive if it was ruled by law, was ordered by government, and was obedient to the will of God and the king. Yet he could look at his daughter, see her bruises and approve? He had always loved his children. I had watched them grow, and I had seen Alfred play with them, yet his religion could allow him to humiliate a daughter he loved? Sometimes, when I pray to my gods, I thank them fervently that they let me escape Alfred’s god.

Erkenwald at last ran out of words. There was a pause, then Alfred stood and turned to face us. “The word of God,” he said, smiling. The priests murmured brief prayers, then Alfred shook his head as though clearing it of pious matters. “The city of Lundene is now a proper part of Mercia,” he said, and a louder murmur of approval echoed through the room. “I have entrusted its civil government to Bishop Erkenwald,” he turned and smiled at the bishop, who smirked and bowed, “while Lord Uhtred will be responsible for the defense of the city,” Alfred said, looking at me. I did not bow.

Æthelflaed turned then. I think she had not known I was in the room, but she turned when my name was spoken and stared at me. I winked at her, and her bruised face smiled. Æthelred did not see the wink. He was pointedly ignoring me.

“The city, of course,” Alfred went on, his voice suddenly ice cold because he had seen my wink, “falls under the authority and rule of my beloved son-in-law. In time it will become a valuable part of his possessions, yet for the moment he has graciously agreed that Lundene must be administered by men experienced in government.” In other words Lundene might be part of Mercia, but Alfred had no intention of allowing it out of West Saxon hands. “Bishop Erkenwald has the authority to set dues and raise taxes,” Alfred explained, “and one third of the money will be spent on civil government, one third on the church, and one third on defending the city. And I know that under the bishop’s guidance and with the help of Almighty God we can raise a city that glorifies Christ and His church.”

I did not know most of the men in the room because they were almost all Mercian thegns who had been summoned to Lundene to meet Alfred. Aldhelm was among them, his face still black and bloodied from my hands. He had glanced at me once and twisted fast away. The summons had been unexpected and only a few thegns had made the journey to Lundene, and those men now listened politely enough to Alfred, but almost all were torn between two masters. Northern Mercia was under Danish rule, and only the southern part, which bordered Wessex, could be called free Saxon land and even that land was under constant harassment. A Mercian thegn who wished to stay alive, who wished his daughters safe from slavers and his livestock free of cattle-raiders, did well to pay tribute to the Danes as well as pay taxes to Æthelred who, because of his inherited landholdings, marriage, and lineage, was acknowledged as the most noble of the Mercian thegns. He might call himself king if he wished, and I had no doubt he did so wish, but Alfred did not, and Æthelred without Alfred was nothing.

“It is our intention,” Alfred said, “to rid Mercia of its pagan invaders. To do that we needed to secure Lundene and so put a stop to the Northmen’s ships raiding up the Temes. Now we must hold Lundene. How is that to be done?”

The answer to that was obvious, though it did not stop a general
discussion that meandered aimlessly as men argued about how many troops would be needed to defend the walls. I took no part. I leaned against the back wall and noted which of the thegns were enthusiastic and which were guarded. Bishop Erkenwald glanced at me occasionally, plainly wondering why I did not contribute my grain of wheat to the threshing floor, but I kept silent. Æthelred listened intently and finally summed up the discussion. “The city, lord King,” he said brightly, “needs a garrison of two thousand men.”

“Mercians,” Alfred said. “Those men must come from Mercia.”

“Of course,” Æthelred agreed quickly. I noted that many of the thegns looked dubious.

Alfred saw it, too, and glanced at me. “This is your responsibility, Lord Uhtred. Have you no opinion?”

I almost yawned, but managed to resist the impulse. “I have better than an opinion, lord King,” I said, “I can give you fact.”

Alfred raised an eyebrow and managed to look disapproving at the same time. “Well?” he asked irritably when I paused too long.

“Four men for every pole,” I said. A pole was six paces, or thereabouts, and the allocation of four men to a pole was not mine, but Alfred’s. When he ordered the burhs built he had worked out in his meticulous way how many men would be needed to defend each, and the distance about the walls determined the final figure. Coccham’s walls were one thousand four hundred paces in length and so my household guards and the fyrd had to supply a thousand men for its defense. But Coccham was a small burh, Lundene a city.

“And the distance about Lundene’s walls?” Alfred demanded.

I looked at Æthelred, as though expecting him to answer and Alfred, seeing where I looked, also gazed at his son-in-law. Æthelred thought for a heartbeat and, instead of telling the truth which was that he did not know, made a guess. “Eight hundred poles, lord King?”

“The landward wall,” I broke in harshly, “is six hundred and ninety-two poles. The river wall adds a further three hundred and fifty-eight. The defenses, lord King, stretch for one thousand and fifty poles.”

“Four thousand, two hundred men,” Bishop Erkenwald said immediately, and I confess I was impressed. It had taken me a long time to discover that number, and I had not been certain my computation had been correct until Gisela also worked the problem out.

“No enemy, lord King,” I said, “can attack everywhere at once, so I reckon the city can be defended by a garrison of three thousand, four hundred men.”

One of the Mercian thegns made a hissing noise, as though such a figure was an impossibility. “Only one thousand men more than your garrison in Wintanceaster, lord King,” I pointed out. The difference, of course, was that Wintanceaster lay in a loyal West Saxon shire that was accustomed to its men serving their turn in the fyrd.

“And where do you find those men?” a Mercian demanded.

“From you,” I said harshly.

“But…” the man began, then faltered. He was going to point out that the Mercian fyrd was a useless thing, grown weak by disuse, and that any attempt to raise the fyrd might draw the malevolent attention of the Danish earls who ruled in northern Mercia, and so these men had learned to lie low and keep silent. They were like deerhounds who shiver in the undergrowth for fear of attracting the wolves.

“But nothing,” I said, louder and harsher still. “For if a man does not contribute to his country’s defense then that man is a traitor. He should be dispossessed of his land, put to death, and his family reduced to slavery.”

I thought Alfred might object to those words, but he kept silent. Indeed, he nodded agreement. I was the blade inside his scabbard and he was evidently pleased that I had shown the steel for an instant. The Mercians said nothing.

“We also need men for ships, lord King,” I went on.

“Ships?” Alfred asked.

“Ships?” Erkenwald echoed.

“We need crewmen,” I explained. We had captured twenty-one ships when we took Lundene, of which seventeen were fighting boats. The others were wider beamed, built for trading, but they could be
useful too. “I have the ships,” I went on, “but they need crews, and those crews have to be good fighters.”

“You defend the city with ships?” Erkenwald asked defiantly.

“And where will your money come from?” I asked him. “From customs dues. But no trader dare sail here, so I have to clear the estuary of enemy ships. That means killing the pirates, and for that I need crews of fighting men. I can use my household troops, but they have to be replaced in the city’s garrison by other men.”