The Last Kingdom

  Ragnar drew his sword and laid it on the sand and touched the blade with his right hand. “If it is the last thing I do,” he swore, “I shall kill Kjartan, kill his son, and all his followers. All of them!”

  “I would help,” I said. He looked at me through the flames. “I loved your father,” I said, “and he treated me like a son.”

  “I will welcome your help, Uhtred,” Ragnar said formally. He wiped the sand from the blade and slid it back into its fleece-lined scabbard. “You will sail with us now?”

  I was tempted. I was even surprised at how strongly I was tempted. I wanted to go with Ragnar, I wanted the life I had lived with his father. But fate rules us. I was sworn to Alfred for a few more weeks, and I had fought alongside Leofric for all these months, and fighting next to a man in the shield wall makes a bond as tight as love. “I cannot come,” I said, and wished I could have said the opposite.

  “I can,” Brida said, and somehow I was not surprised by that. She had not liked being left ashore in Hamtun as we sailed to fight. She felt trammeled and useless, unwanted, and I think she yearned after the Danish ways. She hated Wessex. She hated its priests, hated their disapproval, and hated their denial of all that was joy.

  “You are a witness of my father’s death,” Ragnar said to her, still formal.

  “I am.”

  “Then I would welcome you,” he said, and looked at me again.

  I shook my head. “I am sworn to Alfred for the moment. By winter I shall be free of the oath.”

  “Then come to us in the winter,” Ragnar said, “and we shall go to Dunholm.”

  “Dunholm?”

  “It is Kjartan’s fortress now. Ricsig lets him live there.”

  I thought of Dunholm’s stronghold on its soaring crag, wrapped by its river, protected by its sheer rock and its high walls and strong garrison. “What if Kjartan marches on Wessex?” I asked.

  Ragnar shook his head. “He will not, because he does not go where I go, so I must go to him.”

  “He fears you then?”

  Ragnar smiled, and if Kjartan had seen that smile he would have shivered. “He fears me,” Ragnar said. “I hear he sent men to kill me in Ireland, but their boat was driven ashore and the skraelings killed the crew. So he lives in fear. He denies my father’s death, but he still fears me.”

  “There is one last thing,” I said, and nodded at Brida who brought out the leather bag with its gold, jet, and silver. “It was your father’s,” I said, “and Kjartan never found it, and we did, and we have spent some of it, but what remains is yours.” I pushed the bag toward him and made myself instantly poor.

  Ragnar pushed it back without a thought, making me rich again. “My father loved you, too,” he said, “and I am wealthy enough.”

  We ate, we drank, we slept, and in the dawn, when a light mist shimmered over the reed beds, the Wind-Viper went. The last thing Ragnar said to me was a question. “Thyra lives?”

  “She survived,” I said, “so I think she must still live.”

  We embraced, he went, and I was alone.

  I wept for Brida. I felt hurt. I was too young to know how to take abandonment. During the night I had tried to persuade her to stay, but she had a will as strong as Ealdwulf’s iron, and she had gone with Ragnar into the dawn mist and left me weeping. I hated the three spinners at that moment, for they wove cruel jests into their vulnerable threads, and then the fisherman came to fetch me and I went back home.

  Autumn gales tore at the coast and Alfred’s fleet was laid up for the winter, dragged ashore by horses and oxen, and Leofric and I rode to Wintanceaster, only to discover that Alfred was at his estate at Cippanhamm. We were permitted into the Wintanceaster palace by the doorkeeper, who either recognized me or was terrified of Leofric, and we slept there, but the place was still haunted by monks, despite Alfred’s absence, and so we spent the day in a nearby tavern. “So what will you do, earsling?” Leofric asked me. “Renew your oath to Alfred?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Don’t know,” he repeated sarcastically. “Lost your decision with your girl?”

  “I could go back to the Danes,” I said.

  “That would give me a chance to kill you,” he said happily.

  “Or stay with Alfred.”

  “Why not do that?”

  “Because I don’t like him,” I said.

  “You don’t have to like him. He’s your king.”

  “He’s not my king,” I said. “I’m a Northumbrian.”

  “So you are, earsling, a Northumbrian ealdorman, eh?”

  I nodded, demanded more ale, tore a piece of bread in two, and pushed one piece toward Leofric. “What I should do,” I said, “is go back to Northumbria. There is a man I have to kill.”

  “A feud?”

  I nodded again.

  “There is one thing I know about blood feuds,” Leofric said, “which is that they last a lifetime. You will have years to make your killing, but only if you live.”

  “I’ll live,” I said lightly.

  “Not if the Danes take Wessex, you won’t. Or maybe you will live, earsling, but you’ll live under their rule, under their law, and under their swords. If you want to be a free man, then stay here and fight for Wessex.”

  “For Alfred?”

  Leofric leaned back, stretched, belched, and took a long drink. “I don’t like him either,” he admitted, “and I didn’t like his brothers when they were kings here, and I didn’t like his father when he was king, but Alfred’s different.”

  “Different?”

  He tapped his scarred forehead. “The bastard thinks, earsling, which is more than you or I ever do. He knows what has to be done, and don’t underestimate him. He can be ruthless.”

  “He’s a king,” I said. “He should be ruthless.”

  “Ruthless, generous, pious, boring, that’s Alfred,” Leofric spoke gloomily. “When he was a child his father gave him toy warriors. You know, carved out of wood? Just little things. He used to line them up and there wasn’t one out of place, not one, and not even a speck of dust on any of them!” He seemed to find that appalling, for he scowled. “Then when he was fifteen or so he went wild for a time. Humped every slave girl in the palace, and I’ve no doubt he lined them up, too, and made sure they didn’t have any dust before he rammed them.”

  “He had a bastard, too, I hear,” I said.

  “Osferth,” Leofric said, surprising me with his knowledge, “hidden away in Winburnan. Poor little bastard must be six, seven years old now? You’re not supposed to know he exists.”

  “Nor are you.”

  “It was my sister he whelped him on,” Leofric said, then saw my surprise. “I’m not the only good-looking one in my family, earsling.” He poured more ale. “Eadgyth was a palace servant and Alfred claimed to love her.” He sneered, then shrugged. “But he looks after her now. Gives her money, sends priests to preach to her. His wife knows all about the poor little bastard, but won’t let Alfred go near him.”

  “I hate Ælswith,” I said.

  “A bitch from hell,” he agreed happily.

  “And I like the Danes,” I said.

  “You do? So why do you kill them?”

  “I like them,” I said, ignoring his question, “because they’re not frightened of life.”

  “They’re not Christians, you mean.”

  “They’re not Christians,” I agreed. “Are you?”

  Leofric thought for a few heartbeats. “I suppose so,” he said grudgingly, “but you’re not, are you?” I shook my head, showed him Thor’s hammer, and he laughed. “So what will you do, earsling,” he asked me, “if you go back to the pagans? Other than follow your blood feud?”

  That was a good question and I thought about it as much as the ale allowed me. “I’d serve a man called Ragnar,” I said, “as I served his father.”

  “So why did you leave his father?”

  “Because he was killed.”

  Leofric frowned. “So you c
an stay there so long as your Danish lord lives, is that right? And without a lord you’re nothing?”

  “I’m nothing,” I admitted. “But I want to be in Northumbria to take back my father’s fortress.”

  “Ragnar will do that for you?”

  “He might do it. His father would have done it, I think.”

  “And if you get back your fortress,” he asked, “will you be lord of it? Lord of your own land? Or will the Danes rule you?”

  “The Danes will rule.”

  “So you settle to be a slave, eh? Yes, lord, no, lord, let me hold your prick while you piss all over me, lord?”

  “And what happens if I stay here?” I asked sourly.

  “You’ll lead men,” he said.

  I laughed at that. “Alfred has lords enough to serve him.”

  Leofric shook his head. “He doesn’t. He has some good warlords, true, but he needs more. I told him, that day on the boat when he let the bastards escape, I told him to send me ashore and give me men. He refused.” He beat the table with a massive fist. “I told him I’m a proper warrior, but still the bastard refused me!”

  So that, I thought, was what the argument had been about. “Why did he refuse you?” I asked.

  “Because I can’t read,” Leofric snarled, “and I’m not learning now! I tried once, and it makes no damn sense to me. And I’m not a lord, am I? Not even a thegn. I’m just a slave’s son who happens to know how to kill the king’s enemies, but that’s not good enough for Alfred. He says I can assist”—he said that word as if it soured his tongue—“one of his ealdormen, but I can’t lead men because I can’t read, and I can’t learn to read.”

  “I can,” I said, or the drink said.

  “You take a long time to understand things, earsling,” Leofric said with a grin. “You’re a damned lord, and you can read, can’t you?”

  “No, not really. A bit. Short words.”

  “But you can learn?”

  I thought about it. “I can learn.”

  “And we have twelve ships’ crews,” he said, “looking for employment, so we give them to Alfred and we say that Lord Earsling is their leader and he gives you a book and you read out the pretty words, then you and I take the bastards to war and do some proper damage to your beloved Danes.”

  I did not say yes, nor did I say no, because I was not sure what I wanted. What worried me was that I found myself agreeing with whatever the last person suggested I did; when I had been with Ragnar I had wanted to follow him, and now I was seduced by Leofric’s vision of the future. I had no certainty, so instead of saying yes or no I went back to the palace and I found Merewenna, and discovered she was indeed the maid who had caused Alfred’s tears on the night that I had eavesdropped on him in the Mercian camp outside Snotengaham, and I did know what I wanted to do with her, and I did not cry afterward.

  And next day, at Leofric’s urging, we rode to Cippanhamm.

  NINE

  I suppose, if you are reading this, that you have learned your letters, which probably means that some damned monk or priest rapped your knuckles, cuffed you around the head, or worse. Not that they did that to me, of course, for I was no longer a child, but I endured their sniggers as I struggled with letters. It was mostly Beocca who taught me, complaining all the while that I was taking him from his real work, which was the making of a life of Swithun, who had been Bishop of Winchester when Alfred was a child, and Beocca was writing the bishop’s life. Another priest was translating the book into Latin, Beocca’s mastery of that tongue not being good enough for the task, and the pages were being sent to Rome in hopes that Swithun would be named a saint. Alfred took a great interest in the book, forever coming to Beocca’s room and asking whether he knew that Swithun had once preached the gospel to a trout or chanted a psalm to a seagull, and Beocca would write the stories in a state of great excitement, and then, when Alfred was gone, reluctantly return to whatever text he was forcing me to decipher. “Read it aloud,” he would say, then protest wildly. “No, no, no! Forlian is to suffer shipwreck! This is a life of Saint Paul, Uhtred, and the apostle suffered shipwreck! Not the word you read at all!”

  I looked at it again. “It’s not forlegnis?”

  “Of course it’s not!” he said, going red with indignation. “That word means…” He paused, realizing that he was not teaching me English, but how to read it.

  “Prostitute,” I said, “I know what it means. I even know what they charge. There’s a redhead in Chad’s tavern who…”

  “Forlian,” he interrupted me, “the word is forlian. Read on.”

  Those weeks were strange. I was a warrior now, a man, yet in Beocca’s room it seemed I was a child again as I struggled with the black letters crawling across the cracked parchments. I learned from the lives of the saints, and in the end Beocca could not resist letting me read some of his own growing life of Swithun. He waited for my praise, but instead I shuddered. “Couldn’t we find something more interesting?” I asked him.

  “More interesting?” Beocca’s good eye stared at me reproachfully.

  “Something about war,” I suggested, “about the Danes. About shields and spears and swords.”

  He grimaced. “I dread to think of such writings! There are some poems.” He grimaced again and evidently decided against telling me about the belligerent poems. “But this,” he tapped the parchment, “this will give you inspiration.”

  “Inspiration! How Swithun mended some broken eggs?”

  “It was a saintly act,” Beocca chided me. “The woman was old and poor, the eggs were all she had to sell, and she tripped and broke them. She faced starvation! The saint made the eggs whole again and, God be praised, she sold them.”

  “But why didn’t Swithun just give her money,” I demanded, “or take her back to his house and give her a proper meal?”

  “It is a miracle,” Beocca insisted, “a demonstration of God’s power!”

  “I’d like to see a miracle,” I said, remembering King Edmund’s death.

  “That is a weakness in you,” Beocca said sternly. “You must have faith. Miracles make belief easy, which is why you should never pray for one. Much better to find God through faith than through miracles.”

  “Then why have miracles?”

  “Oh, read on, Uhtred,” the poor man said tiredly, “for God’s sake, read on.”

  I read on. But life in Cippanhamm was not all reading. Alfred hunted at least twice a week, though it was not hunting as I had known it in the north. He never pursued boar, preferring to shoot at stags with a bow. The prey was driven to him by beaters, and if a stag did not appear swiftly he would get bored and go back to his books. In truth I think he only went hunting because it was expected of a king, not because he enjoyed it, but he did endure it. I loved it, of course. I killed wolves, stags, foxes, and boars, and it was on one of those boar hunts that I met Æthelwold.

  Æthelwold was Alfred’s oldest nephew, the boy who should have succeeded his father, King Æthelred, though he was no longer a boy for he was only a month or so younger than me, and in many ways he was like me, except that he had been sheltered by his father and by Alfred and so had never killed a man or even fought in a battle. He was tall, well built, strong, and as wild as an unbroken colt. He had long dark hair, his family’s narrow face, and strong eyes that caught the attention of serving girls. All girls, really. He hunted with me and with Leofric, drank with us, whored with us when he could escape the priests who were his guardians, and constantly complained about his uncle, though those complaints were only spoken to me, never to Leofric whom Æthelwold feared. “He stole the crown,” Æthelwold said of Alfred.

  “The witan thought you were too young,” I pointed out.

  “I’m not young now, am I?” he asked indignantly. “So Alfred should step aside.”

  I toasted that idea with a pot of ale, but said nothing.

  “They won’t even let me fight!” Æthelwold said bitterly. “He says I ought to become a priest. The stu
pid bastard.” He drank some ale before giving me a serious look. “Talk to him, Uhtred.”

  “What am I to say? That you don’t want to be a priest?”

  “He knows that. No, tell him I’ll fight with you and Leofric.”

  I thought about that for a short while, then shook my head. “It won’t do any good.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” I said, “he fears you making a name for yourself.”

  Æthelwold frowned at me. “A name?” he asked, puzzled.

  “If you become a famous warrior,” I said, knowing I was right, “men will follow you. You’re already a prince, which is dangerous enough, but Alfred won’t want you to become a famous warrior prince, will he?”

  “The pious bastard,” Æthelwold said. He pushed his long black hair off his face and gazed moodily at Eanflæd, the redhead who was given a room in the tavern and brought it a deal of business. “God, she’s pretty,” he said. “He was caught humping a nun once.”

  “Alfred was? A nun?”

  “That’s what I was told. And he was always after girls. Couldn’t keep his breeches buttoned! Now the priests have got hold of him. What I ought to do,” he went on gloomily, “is slit the bastard’s gizzard.”

  “Say that to anyone but me,” I said, “and you’ll be hanged.”

  “I could run off and join the Danes,” he suggested.

  “You could,” I said, “and they’d welcome you.”

  “Then use me?” he asked, showing that he was not entirely a fool.

  I nodded. “You’ll be like Egbert or Burghred, or that new man in Mercia.”

  “Ceolwulf.”

  “King at their pleasure,” I said. Ceolwulf, a Mercian ealdorman, had been named king of his country now that Burghred was on his knees in Rome, but Ceolwulf was no more a real king than Burghred had been. He issued coins, of course, and he administered justice, but everyone knew there were Danes in his council chamber and he dared do nothing that would earn their wrath. “So is that what you want?” I asked. “To run off to the Danes and be useful to them?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He traced a pattern on the table with spilled ale. “Better to do nothing,” he suggested.