The Empty Throne

  He wanted Æthelstan.

  Æthelstan was a boy, just ten years old as far as I could remember, and his mother had been a pretty Centish girl who had died giving birth to him. But his father was alive, very much alive, and his father Edward, son of King Alfred, was now the King of Wessex himself. Edward had since married Æthelhelm’s daughter and fathered another son, which made Æthelstan an inconvenience. Was he the eldest son? Or was he, as Æthelhelm insisted, a bastard? If he was a bastard then he had no rights, but there was a persistent rumour that Edward had married the Centish girl. And I knew that rumour was true because Father Cuthbert had performed the marriage ceremony. The people of Wessex pretended to believe that Æthelstan was a bastard, but Æthelhelm feared those persistent rumours. He feared that Æthelstan could be a rival to his own grandson for the throne of Wessex, and so Æthelhelm had plainly decided to do something about that. According to Penda he had sent twenty or more men to Cirrenceastre where Æthelstan was living in Æthelflaed’s house, but my absence meant that the boy was protected by only six household warriors. Would Æthelhelm dare kill him? I doubted that, but he would certainly dare capture him and have him removed far away so that he could not threaten the ealdorman’s ambitions. And if Penda was right then the men sent to take Æthelstan had a day’s start on us. But Æthelhelm had plainly been frightened I was going to Cirrenceastre, or perhaps Fagranforda, which suggested his men might still be there, and that was why I had muttered the nonsense about dying on the hills. When I die I want it to be in a girl’s warm bed, not on some rainswept Mercian hilltop.

  I dared not hurry. People watched us from the walls of Gleawecestre, so we travelled painfully slowly, as if the men did not want to jolt a wagon in which a man lay dying. We could not abandon that pretence until we reached the beech woods on the steep slope that climbed to the hills where sheep would keep the pale grass short all summer, and once among those trees and thus safely hidden from curious eyes, I climbed off the cart and onto my horse’s back. I left Godric Grindanson, my son’s servant boy, to bring the cart, while the rest of us spurred ahead. ‘Osferth!’ I called.

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Don’t stop in Cirrenceastre,’ I told him. ‘Ride on with two men and make sure Father Cuthbert’s safe. Get the blind bastard out of bed and bring them both to Cirrenceastre.’

  ‘Them? Out of bed?’ Osferth could be slow to understand sometimes.

  ‘Where else will they be?’ I asked, and Finan laughed.

  Father Cuthbert was my priest. I did not want a priest, but he had been sent to me by King Edward and I liked Cuthbert. He had been blinded by Cnut. He was, I was constantly assured, a good priest, meaning he did his work well enough. ‘What work?’ I had asked Osferth once and had been assured that Cuthbert visited the sick and said his prayers and preached his sermons, but every time I visited his small house beside Fagranforda’s church I had to wait while he dressed. He would then appear smiling, dishevelled and flustered, followed a moment later by Mehrasa, the dark-skinned slave girl he had married. She was a beauty.

  And Cuthbert was in danger. I was not certain that Æthelhelm knew that it had been Father Cuthbert who had married Edward to his Centish love. If he did know, then Cuthbert would have to be silenced, though it was possible Edward had never revealed the priest’s identity. Edward was fond of his son, and he was fond of Cuthbert too, but how far did that affection reach? Edward was not a weak king, but he was a lazy one, happy to leave most of the kingdom’s affairs to Æthelhelm and to a pack of diligent priests who, in truth, ruled Wessex fairly and firmly. That left Edward free to hunt and to whore.

  And while the king hunted deer, boars, and women, Æthelhelm gathered power. He used it well enough. There was justice in Wessex, and the burhs were kept in repair, and the fyrd practised with weapons, and the Danes had finally learned that invading Wessex led only to defeat, and Æthelhelm himself was a decent enough man except that he saw a chance to be the grandfather of a king, and a great king at that. He would guide his grandson as he guided Edward, and I did not doubt that Æthelhelm’s ambition was the same dream that had haunted Alfred. That dream was to unite the Saxons, to take the four kingdoms and make them one. And that was a good dream, but Æthelhelm wanted to be sure it was his family that made the dream come true.

  And I would stop him.

  If I could.

  I would stop him because I knew Æthelstan was legitimate. He was the ætheling, the king’s eldest son and, besides, I loved that boy. Æthelhelm would stop at nothing to destroy him and I would do anything to protect him.

  We did not have far to go. Once on the hilltops we could see the smear of smoke that marked Cirrenceastre’s hearth fires. We were hurrying and my ribs hurt. The land either side of the Roman road belonged to Æthelflaed, and it was good land. The first lambs were in the fields, guarded by men and dogs. The wealth of the land had been granted to Æthelflaed by her father, but her brother could take it away, and Æthelhelm’s unexpected presence in Gleawecestre suggested that Edward was siding with Æthelred, or rather that Æthelhelm was making the decisions that would dictate Mercia’s fate.

  ‘What will he do to the boy?’ Finan asked, evidently thinking much the same thoughts as those in my head. ‘Cut his throat?’

  ‘No. He knows Edward likes the twins.’ Æthelstan had a twin sister, Eadgyth.

  ‘He’ll put Æthelstan into a monastery,’ my son suggested, ‘and little Eadgyth into a convent.’

  ‘Like enough.’

  ‘Somewhere far away,’ my son went on, ‘with some bastard abbot who beats the shit out of you every two days.’

  ‘They’ll try to make him into a priest,’ Finan said.

  ‘Or hope he falls ill and dies,’ I said, then winced as my horse came down heavily on a rough patch of stone. The roads decayed. Everything decayed.

  ‘You shouldn’t be riding, father,’ my son said reprovingly.

  ‘I’m in pain all the time,’ I said, ‘and if I gave into it then I’d do nothing.’

  But that journey was painful and by the time I came to Cirrenceastre’s western gate I was almost weeping with agony. I tried to hide the pain. I sometimes wonder whether the dead can see the living? Do they sit in Valhalla’s great feast-hall and watch those they left behind? I could imagine Cnut sitting there and thinking that I must join him soon, and we would raise a horn of ale together. There is no pain in Valhalla, no sadness, no tears, no broken oaths. I could see Cnut grinning at me, not with any pleasure at my pain, but rather because we had liked each other in life. ‘Come to me,’ he was saying, ‘come to me and live!’ It was tempting.

  ‘Father?’ My son sounded worried.

  I blinked and the shadows that had clouded my eyes drained away and I saw we had reached the gate and one of the town guards was frowning up at me. ‘Lord?’ the man said.

  ‘Did you speak?’

  ‘The king’s men are in my lady’s house,’ he said.

  ‘The king’s men!’ I exclaimed, and the man just stared at me. I turned to Osferth. ‘Keep going! Find Cuthbert!’ His route to Fagranforda lay through the town. ‘The king’s men?’ I asked the guard again.

  ‘King Edward’s men, lord.’

  ‘And they’re still there?’

  ‘So far as I know, lord.’

  I spurred on. Æthelflaed’s house had once belonged to the Roman commander, or I assumed it had been the commander’s house because it was a lavish building that lay in a corner of the old Roman fort. The fort’s walls had been pulled down, except for the northern side, which was part of the town’s ramparts, but the house was easily defended. It was built about a large courtyard, and the outer walls were of honey-coloured stone and had no windows. There was a pillared entrance facing south, and Æthelflaed had made a new gateway from her stable yard through the town’s northern wall. I sent Sihtric with six companions to guard that northern entrance while I rode with thirty men to the small square that faced the southern door. There was a crowd of curious
folk in the square, all wondering why King Edward of Wessex had sent armed men to Cirrenceastre. The crowd parted as our horses’ hooves sounded loud in the street behind them, then we were in the open space and I saw two spearmen beside Æthelflaed’s door. One was sitting on a stone urn that held a small pear tree. He stood and snatched up his shield as we arrived, while the other rapped on the closed door with the butt of his spear. Both men were in mail, they wore helmets, and their round shields were freshly painted with the dragon of Wessex. There was a small hatch in the door and I saw it slide to one side and someone peered out at us. Two boys were guarding horses on the eastern side of the square beside Æthelflaed’s tall wooden church. ‘Count the horses,’ I told my son.

  ‘Twenty-three,’ he answered almost at once.

  So we outnumbered them. ‘I don’t expect a fight,’ I said.

  Then a scream sounded from inside the house.

  A scream to pierce the ears with all the force of a well-made spear striking through the willow boards of a shield.

  ‘Sweet God,’ Finan said.

  And the screaming stopped.

  Two

  The door to Æthelflaed’s house opened.

  Brice appeared.

  I knew Brice. Not well, but inevitably our paths had crossed in the long years we had struggled to push the Danes farther northwards. I had seen him in encampments, had even exchanged a word or two before battle, and he was a veteran of many battles, a man who had stood in the shield wall time after time, and always under Ealdorman Æthelhelm’s banner of the leaping stag. He was skilled with weapons, strong as a bull, but slow of wit, which is why he had never risen to command one of Æthelhelm’s larger companies. Yet today, it seemed, Brice had been put in charge of the men sent to find Æthelstan. He strode towards us, a warrior in his formidable war-glory, but I had too often dressed in the same way to be impressed by the display.

  His mail was good and tight, probably from Frankia, but it had been cut in a half-dozen places where new rings showed against the duller metal. He wore tall boots of dark leather, while his sword belt, buckled tight about the bright mail, was decorated with silver lozenges. His sword was long and heavy, scabbarded in a red sheath criss-crossed with silver bands. A silver chain hung at his neck. A dark-red cloak was spread by his wide shoulders, clasped at his throat by an ornate brooch studded with garnets. He wore no helmet. His red hair was longer than most Saxons liked to wear it, framing a face that had seen many enemies. He had gouged a cross onto his right cheek then rubbed the wound with soot or dirt to leave the dark mark that proclaimed him a Christian warrior. He was a hard man, but what else would he be? He had stood in the shield wall, he had watched the Danes come to the attack, and he had lived. He was no youngster. His beard was grey and his dark face deep-lined. ‘My Lord Uhtred,’ he said. There was no respect in his voice, instead he spoke sourly as though my arrival was a tedious nuisance which, I suppose, it was.

  ‘Brice.’ I nodded to him from my saddle.

  ‘The king sent me,’ he said.

  ‘You serve King Edward now?’ I asked. ‘What happened? Did Lord Æthelhelm tire of your stench?’

  He ignored the insult. ‘He sent me to fetch the boy bastard,’ he said.

  I looked up at the wooden tower that crowned Æthelflaed’s church. A bell that had cost her a heavy chest of silver hung there. She had been so proud of the bell, which had been made by Frisian craftsmen and brought across the sea. It carried an inscription about its skirt: ‘Æthelflaed, by the grace of God and by the blessing of Saint Werburgh, had this bell made’, and by the grace of God the bell had cracked the very first time it was struck. I had laughed when it happened, and ever since the bell had not rung to summon folk to church, instead it just hurt the sky with its harsh noise.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Brice demanded.

  I took my time to turn from the cracked bell, then I looked Brice up and down. ‘Which boy bastard?’ I finally asked.

  ‘You know who,’ he said.

  ‘I should buy the Lady Æthelflaed another bell,’ I said to Finan.

  ‘And she’d like that,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe I’ll have “the gift of Thor” written on the thing.’

  ‘And she won’t like that at all.’

  ‘Lord Uhtred!’ Brice interrupted our nonsense.

  ‘You’re still here?’ I asked, pretending surprise.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Where is who?’

  ‘The bastard Æthelstan,’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know a bastard called Æthelstan. Do you?’ I asked Finan.

  ‘Never heard of him, lord.’

  ‘The boy Æthelstan,’ Brice said, struggling to restrain his temper, ‘King Edward’s boy.’

  ‘He’s not home?’ I pretended surprise again. ‘He should be at home or else at school.’

  ‘He’s not here,’ Brice said curtly, ‘and we looked in the school. So find him.’

  I took a deep breath, then dismounted. It took an effort to hide the pain and I had to hold onto the horse for a moment as the agony drained from my side. I even wondered whether I could walk without support, but then managed to let go of the saddle. ‘That sounded like a command,’ I said to Brice as I took a few slow steps towards him.

  ‘From the king,’ he said.

  ‘The King of Wessex?’ I asked. ‘But this is Mercia.’

  ‘The king wants his son returned to Wessex,’ Brice said flatly.

  ‘You’re a good warrior,’ I told Brice. ‘I’d welcome you into any shield wall, but I wouldn’t trust you to empty my piss pot. You’re not clever enough. That’s why you don’t command Æthelhelm’s household troops. So no, you don’t serve the king because the king wouldn’t want you. So who did send you? Lord Æthelhelm?’

  I had annoyed him, but he managed to bite back his anger. ‘The king,’ he said slowly, ‘wants his son, and you, Lord Uhtred, will find the boy and bring him here.’

  ‘You might find it strange,’ I said, ‘but I don’t take orders from you.’

  ‘Oh, you will,’ he said, ‘you will.’ He thought he was hiding his nervousness by belligerence, but I could see he was confused. He had orders to fetch Æthelstan and the boy had gone missing and my warriors now outnumbered his, but Brice did not have the sense to abandon his mission, instead he would tackle it as he did every other problem, by savage directness. He turned his head towards the house. ‘Bring her!’ he called.

  The house door opened and a man brought Stiorra into the sunlight. A murmur sounded through the crowd because my daughter’s face was smeared with blood and she was clutching her torn robe to her breasts. Finan leaned from his saddle and put a hand on my arm, restraining me, but I had no need of his gesture. I was angry, yes, but I was no fool. I was too weak to attack Brice, and besides, my anger was cold. I was going to win this confrontation, but not by brute force. Not yet. Brice, meanwhile, was certain I had no choice but to obey him. ‘You bring me the boy,’ he said with a sneer, ‘and your daughter is freed.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  He shrugged. ‘You’ll find out, won’t you?’

  I turned and jerked my head at my son. ‘Come here.’ I waited till Uhtred had dismounted and joined me. ‘Where is he?’ I asked quietly. If anyone knew where Æthelstan was hiding it would be my son.

  He glanced at Brice, then half turned his back on the West Saxon. ‘He spends time at the smithy,’ he told me.

  ‘The smithy?’

  ‘Godwulf’s smithy. He’s got friends there.’ He spoke too low for Brice to hear what he was saying. ‘Godwulf’s son and daughter. He goes to see her, really.’

  ‘He’s just ten!’

  ‘Nine, I think. And she’s twelve.’

  ‘He likes older women, does he?’ I asked. ‘So go and find the little brute and bring him here, but take your time. Don’t hurry.’

  He nodded and left, pushing through the sullen crowd. ‘Where’s he going?’ Brice demanded.

/>   ‘To fetch the boy, of course,’ I said.

  He was suspicious, but not clever enough to think beyond the next step, though he must have thought that step was a good idea. ‘Tell your men to leave,’ he demanded.

  ‘Leave?’ I pretended to be as stupid as Brice.

  ‘Leave!’ he snarled. ‘I want them out of sight, now!’

  He thought he was ridding himself of their threat, though in truth he was demanding just what I wanted him to demand. ‘Take the men onto the city wall,’ I told Finan quietly, ‘and when I give the signal go in through the stable roof.’

  ‘What are you telling him?’ Brice wanted to know.

  ‘To wait in the Barley inn,’ I said, ‘the ale’s good there, much better than the stale muck they serve in the Muddy Goose.’ I nodded to Finan and he led my men away, vanishing into one of the narrow alleys that opened from the church square. I waited till the sound of their hooves had faded, then walked slowly towards my daughter. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the man holding her.

  ‘Hrothard,’ he said.

  ‘Quiet!’ Brice snarled at him.

  ‘If you hurt her, Hrothard,’ I said, ‘you will die very slowly.’

  Brice took two fast paces to stand in my face. ‘Hrothard will do what I tell him to do,’ he said and I smelt his rotten breath, but then he could probably smell the filthy pus that was seeping from my wound.

  ‘And you’ll tell him to let her go when I bring you Æthelstan,’ I said, ‘isn’t that what you want?’

  He nodded. He was still suspicious, but too stupid to see the trap. May the gods always send me stupid enemies. ‘You know where the boy is?’ he asked.

  ‘We think so,’ I said, ‘and, of course, if the king wants his son then who am I to stand in his way?’

  He thought about that question for a few heartbeats and must have decided that I had yielded altogether to his demands. ‘The king asked Lord Æthelhelm to fetch the boy,’ Brice said, trying to shade his lies into truth.