The Last Kingdom (21 page)

Not that the meetings went on all day. Alfred insisted they could not start until he had attended church, and he broke at midday for more prayer, and he finished before sundown so that he could return to the church. How that man prayed! But his patient bargaining was just as remorseless, and in the end Halfdan agreed to evacuate Wessex, but only on payment of six thousand pieces of silver and, to make sure it was paid, he insisted that his forces must remain in Readingum where Alfred was required to deliver three wagons of fodder daily and five wagons of rye grain. When the silver was paid, Halfdan promised, the ships would slide back down the Temes and Wessex would be free of pagans. Alfred argued against allowing the Danes to stay in Readingum, insisting that they withdraw east of Lundene, but in the end, desperate for peace, he accepted that they could remain in the town and so, with solemn oaths on both sides, the peace was made.

I was not there when the conference ended, nor was Brida. We had been there most days, serving as Ravn’s eyes in the big Roman hall where the talking went on, but when we got bored, or rather when Ravn was tired of our boredom, we would go to the bath and swim. I loved that water.

We were swimming on the day before the talking finished. There were just the two of us in the great echoing chamber. I liked to stand where the water gushed in from a hole in a stone, letting it cascade over my long hair, and I was standing there, eyes closed, when I heard Brida squeal. I opened my eyes and just then a pair of strong hands gripped my shoulders. My skin was slippery and I twisted away, but a man in a leather coat jumped into the bath, told me to be quiet, and seized me again. Two other men were wading across the pool, using long staves to shepherd Brida to the water’s edge. “What are you…” I began to ask, using Danish.

“Quiet, boy,” one of the men answered. He was a West Saxon and there were a dozen of them, and when they had pulled our wet naked bodies out of the water they wrapped us in big, stinking cloaks, scooped up our clothes, and hurried us away. I shouted for help and was rewarded by a thump on my head that might have stunned an ox.

We were pushed over the saddles of two horses and then we traveled for some time with men mounted behind us, and the cloaks were only taken off at the top of the big hill that overlooks Ba
um from the south. And there, beaming at us, was Beocca. “You are rescued, lord,” he said to me, “praise Almighty God, you are rescued! As are you, my lady,” he added to Brida.

I could only stare at him. Rescued? Kidnapped, more like. Brida looked at me, and I at her, and she gave the smallest shake of her head as if to suggest we should keep silent, at least I took it to mean that, and did so. Then Beocca told us to get dressed.

I had slipped my hammer amulet and my arm rings into my belt pouch when I undressed and I left them there as Beocca hurried us into a nearby church, little more than a wood and straw shack that was no bigger than a peasant’s pigsty, and there he gave thanks to God for our deliverance. Afterward he took us to a nearby hall where we were introduced to Ælswith, Alfred’s wife, who was attended by a dozen women, three of them nuns, and guarded by a score of heavily armed men.

Ælswith was a small woman with mouse-brown hair, small eyes, a small mouth, and a very determined chin. She was wearing a blue dress that had angels embroidered in silver thread about its skirt and about the hem of its wide sleeves, and she wore a heavy crucifix of gold. A baby was in a wooden cradle beside her and later, much later, I realized that the baby must have been Æthelflaed, so that was the very first time I ever saw her, though I thought nothing of it at the time. Ælswith welcomed me, speaking in the distinctive tones of a Mercian, and after she had enquired about my parentage, she told me we had to be related because her father was Æthelred who had been an ealdorman in Mercia, and he was first cousin to the late lamented Æthelwulf whose body I had seen outside Readingum. “And now you,” she turned to Brida, “Father Beocca tells me you are niece to the holy King Edmund?”

Brida just nodded.

“But who are your parents?” Ælswith demanded, frowning. “Edmund had no brothers, and his two sisters are nuns.”

“Hild,” Brida said. I knew that had been the name of her aunt, whom Brida had hated.

“Hild?” Ælswith was puzzled, more than puzzled, suspicious. “Neither of good King Edmund’s sisters are called Hild.”

“I’m not his niece,” Brida confessed in a small voice.

“Ah.” Ælswith leaned back in her chair, her sharp face showing the look of satisfaction some people assume when they have caught a liar telling an untruth.

“But I was taught to call him uncle,” Brida went on, surprising me, for I thought she had found herself in an impossible quandary and was confessing the lie, but instead, I realized, she was embroidering it. “My mother was called Hild and she had no husband but she insisted I call King Edmund uncle,” she spoke in a small, frightened voice, “and he liked that.”

“He liked it?” Ælswith snapped. “Why?”

“Because,” Brida said, and then blushed, and how she made herself blush I do not know, but she lowered her eyes, reddened, and looked as if she were about to burst into tears.

“Ah,” Ælswith said again, catching on to the girl’s meaning and blushing herself. “So he was your…” She did not finish, not wanting to accuse the dead and holy King Edmund of having fathered a bastard on some woman called Hild.

“Yes,” Brida said, and actually started crying. I stared up at the hall’s smoke-blackened rafters and tried not to laugh. “He was ever so kind to me,” Brida sobbed, “and the nasty Danes killed him!”

Ælswith plainly believed Brida. Folk usually do believe the worst in other folk, and the saintly King Edmund was now revealed as a secret womanizer, though that did not stop him eventually becoming a saint, but it did condemn Brida because Ælswith now proposed that she be sent to some nunnery in southern Wessex. Brida might have royal blood, but it was plainly tainted by sin, so Ælswith wanted her locked away for life. “Yes,” Brida agreed meekly, and I had to pretend I was choking in the smoke. Then Ælswith presented us both with crucifixes. She had two ready, both of silver, but she whispered to one of the nuns and a small wooden one was substituted for one of the silver crucifixes and that one was presented to Brida while I received a silver one which I obediently hung about my neck. I kissed mine, which impressed Ælswith, and Brida hurriedly imitated me, but nothing she could do now would impress Alfred’s wife. Brida was a self-condemned bastard.

Alfred returned from Ba
um after nightfall and I had to accompany him to church where the prayers and praises went on forever. Four monks chanted, their droning voices half sending me to sleep, and afterward, for it did eventually end, I was invited to join Alfred for a meal. Beocca impressed on me that this was an honor, that not many folk were asked to eat with the king, but I had eaten with Danish chieftains who never seemed to mind who shared their table so long as they did not spit in the gruel, so I was not flattered. I was hungry, though. I could have eaten a whole roasted ox and I was impatient as we ceremonially washed our hands in basins of water held by the servants and then as we stood by our stools and chairs as Alfred and Ælswith were conducted to the table. A bishop allowed the food to cool as he said an interminable prayer asking God to bless what we were about to eat, and then at last we sat, but what a disappointment that supper was! No pork, no beef, no mutton, not a thing a man might want to eat, but only curds, leeks, soft eggs, bread, diluted ale, and barley boiled into a gelid broth as palatable as frogspawn. Alfred kept saying how good it was, but in the end he did confess that he was afflicted with terrible pains in his belly and that this paplike diet kept the agony at bay.

“The king is a martyr to meat,” Beocca explained to me. He was one of the three priests at the high table, another of whom was a bishop who had no teeth and mashed his bread into the broth with a candlestick, and there were also two ealdormen and, of course, Ælswith who did much of the talking. She was opposing the notion of allowing the Danes to stay in Readingum, but in the end Alfred said he had no choice and that it was a small concession to make for peace, and that ended the discussion. Ælswith did rejoice that her husband had negotiated the release of all the young hostages held by Halfdan’s army, which Alfred had insisted on for he feared those young ones would be led away from the true church. He looked at me as he spoke about that, but I took little notice, being far more interested in one of the servants who was a young girl, perhaps four or five years older than me, who was startlingly pretty with a mass of black-ringleted hair and I wondered if she was the girl who Alfred kept close so he could thank God for giving him the strength to resist temptation. Later, much later, I discovered she was the same girl. Her name was Merewenna and I thanked God, in time, for not resisting temptation with her, but that lies far ahead in my tale, and for now I was at Alfred’s disposal or, rather, at Ælswith’s.

“Uhtred must learn to read,” she said. What business it was of hers I did not know, but no one disputed her statement.

“Amen,” Beocca said.

“The monks at Winburnan can teach him,” she suggested.

“A very good idea, my lady,” Beocca said, and the toothless bishop nodded and dribbled his approval.

“Abbot Hewald is a very diligent teacher,” Ælswith said. In truth Abbot Hewald was one of those bastards who would rather whip the young than teach them, but doubtless that was what Ælswith meant.

“I rather think,” Alfred put in, “that young Uhtred’s ambition is to be a warrior.”

“In time, if God wills it, he will be” Ælswith said, “but what use is a soldier who cannot read God’s word?”

“Amen,” Beocca said.

“No use at all,” Alfred agreed. I thought teaching a soldier to read was about as much use as teaching a dog to dance, but said nothing, though Alfred sensed my skepticism. “Why is it good for a soldier to read, Uhtred?” he demanded of me.

“It is good for everyone to read,” I said dutifully, earning a smile from Beocca.

“A soldier who reads,” Alfred said patiently, “is a soldier who can read orders, a soldier who will know what his king wants. Suppose you are in Northumbria, Uhtred, and I am in Wessex. How else will you know my will?”

That was breathtaking, though I was too young to realize it at the time. If I was in Northumbria and he was in Wessex, then I was none of his damned business, but of course Alfred was already thinking ahead, far ahead, to a time when there would be one English kingdom and one English king. I just gaped at him and he smiled at me. “So Winburnan it is, young man,” he said, “and the sooner you are there, the better.”

“The sooner?” Ælswith knew nothing of this suggested haste and was sharply suspicious.

“The Danes, my dear,” Alfred explained, “will look for both children. If they discover they are here they may well demand their return.”

“But all hostages are to be freed,” Ælswith objected. “You said so yourself.”

“Was Uhtred a hostage?” Alfred asked softly, staring at me. “Or was he in danger of becoming a Dane?” He left the questions hanging, and I did not try to answer them. “We must make you into a true Englishman,” Alfred said, “so you must go south in the morning. You and the girl.”

“The girl doesn’t matter,” Ælswith said dismissively. Brida had been sent to eat with the kitchen slaves.

“If the Danes discover she’s Edmund’s bastard,” one of the ealdormen observed, “they’ll use her to destroy his reputation.”

“She never told them that,” I piped up, “because she thought they might mock him.”

“There’s some good in her then,” Ælswith said grudgingly. She helped herself to one of the soft-boiled eggs. “But what will you do,” she demanded of her husband, “if the Danes accuse you of rescuing the children?”

“I shall lie, of course,” Alfred said. Ælswith blinked at him, but the bishop mumbled that the lie would be for God and so forgivable.

I had no intention of going to Winburnan. That was not because I was suddenly avid to be a Dane, but it had everything to do with Serpent-Breath. I loved that sword, and I had left it with Ragnar’s servants, and I wanted her back before my life took whatever path the spinners required of me and, to be sure, I had no wish to give up life with Ragnar for the scant joys of a monastery and a teacher. Brida, I knew, wished to go back to the Danes, and it was Alfred’s sensible insistence that we be removed from Ba
um as soon as possible that gave us our opportunity.