Death of Kings

  Mehrasa was the central angel. Her dark skin, black hair and jet eyes made her mysterious, and Ludda had added to the mystery by pasting some raven feathers among the white. All three girls were simply robed in white linen, while the dark Mehrasa had a chain of gold about her neck. Men gazed in awe, and no wonder, for the three girls were beautiful. The two Franks were both very fair-haired with wide blue eyes. They were visions in that dark tomb, though both, Ludda told me, were prone to bouts of giggling when they should have been at their most solemn.

  The visitor probably never noticed the giggles. A strange voice, Ludda’s, seemed to come from the solid rock. Ludda chanted that the visitor had come before the angel of death and the two angels of life, and that they should address their questions to all three and wait for an answer.

  Those questions were all important because they told us what men wanted to know, and most of that, of course, was trivial. Would they inherit from a relative? What was the prospect of the harvest? Some were heartbreaking pleas for the life of a child or a wife, some were prayers to be helped in a law suit or in a quarrel with a neighbour, and all those Ludda dealt with as best he could while the three girls crooned their soft, low and plangent melody. Then came the more interesting questions. Who would rule Mercia? Would there be war? Would the Danes come south and take the land of the Saxons? The whores, the feathers and the tomb were a net and we caught some interesting fish there. Beortsig, whose father had paid money to Sigurd, had come to the tomb and wanted to know if the Danes would take over Mercia and place a tame Mercian on the throne and then, more interesting still, Sigebriht of Cent had crawled up the dim stone passage that was pungent with the smell of burning incense, and had asked about Æthelwold’s fate.

  ‘And what did you tell him?’ I asked Ludda.

  ‘What you ordered me to tell him, lord, that all his hopes and dreams would come true.’

  ‘And did they come true that night?’

  ‘Seffa did her duty,’ Ludda said with a straight face. Seffa was one of the two Franks. Æthelflaed glanced over at the girl. Ludda, Father Cuthbert and the three angels were living in the Roman house at Turcandene. ‘I like this house,’ Father Cuthbert had greeted me, ‘I think I should live in a large house.’

  ‘Saint Cuthbert the Comfortable?’

  ‘Saint Cuthbert the Content,’ he said.

  ‘And Mehrasa?’

  He gave her an adoring look. ‘She really is an angel, lord.’

  ‘She looks happy,’ I said, and so she did. I doubted she fully understood the strange things she was asked to do, but she was learning English fast and she was a clever girl. ‘I could find her a wealthy husband,’ I teased Cuthbert.

  ‘Lord!’ He looked hurt, then frowned. ‘If I have your permission, lord, I would take her as my wife.’

  ‘Is that what she wants?’

  He giggled, he really giggled, then nodded. ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘So she’s not as clever as she looks,’ I said sourly. ‘But she must finish here first. And if she gets pregnant I’ll seal you up with the other bones.’

  The tomb was doing exactly what I had wished it to do. The questions men asked told us what was on their minds, thus Sigebriht’s anxious enquiries about Æthelwold confirmed that he had not abandoned his hopes of becoming King of Cent if Æthelwold were to topple Edward from the throne. The angel’s second task was to fight the rumours that came south from Ælfadell’s prophecies that the Danes would gain the overlordship of all Britain. Those rumours had dispirited men in both Mercia and Wessex, but now they heard a different prophecy, that the Saxons would be the victors, and that message, I knew, would encourage the Saxons, just as it would intrigue and irritate the Danes. I wanted to goad them. I wanted to defeat them.

  I suppose that one day, long after I am dead, the Danes will find a leader who can unite them, and then the world will be consumed by flames and the halls of Valhalla will fill with the feasting dead, but so long as I have known, loved and fought the Danes they have been quarrelsome and divided. My present wife’s priest, an idiot, says that is because God has sown dissension among them, but I have always thought it was because the Danes are a stubborn, proud and independent people, unwilling to bend their knees to a man simply because he wears a crown. They will follow a man with a sword, but as soon as he fails they drift away to find another leader, and so their armies come together, fall apart, and then reform. I have known Danes who almost succeeded in keeping a mighty army together and leading it to complete triumph, there was Ubba, Guthrum, even Haesten, all of them tried, yet in the end they all failed. The Danes did not fight for a cause or even for a country and certainly not for a creed, but only for themselves, and when they suffered a defeat their armies vanished as men went to find another lord who might lead them to silver, women and land.

  And my angels were a lure to persuade them that there was reputation to be made in war. ‘Have any Danes visited the tomb?’ I asked Ludda.

  ‘Two, lord,’ he said, ‘both merchants.’

  ‘And you told them?’

  Ludda hesitated, glanced at Æthelflaed, then back to me. ‘I told them what you ordered me to tell them, lord.’

  ‘You did?’

  He nodded, then made the sign of the cross. ‘I told them you would die, lord, and that a Dane would earn great renown by slaying Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’ Æthelflaed drew in a sharp breath and then, like Ludda, made the sign of the cross. ‘You told them what?’ she asked.

  ‘What Lord Uhtred told me to tell them, lady,’ Ludda said nervously.

  ‘You’re risking fate,’ Æthelflaed told me.

  ‘I want the Danes to come,’ I said, ‘and I need to offer them a bait.’

  Because Plegmund was wrong, and Æthelhelm was wrong, and Edward was wrong. Peace is a fine thing, but we only have peace when our enemies are too scared to make war. The Danes were not quiet because the Christian god had silenced them, but because they were distracted by other things. Edward wanted to believe they had abandoned their dreams of conquering Wessex, yet I knew they would come. Æthelwold had not abandoned his dream either. He would come, and with him would come a savage horde of sword-Danes and spear-Danes, and I wanted them to come. I wanted to get it over. I wanted to be the sword of the Saxons.

  And still they did not come.

  I never did understand why it took the Danes so long to take advantage of Alfred’s death. I suppose if Æthelwold had been a more inspirational leader instead of being a weak man then they might have come sooner, but they waited so long that all Wessex was convinced that their god had answered their prayers and made the Danes peaceable. And all the while my angels sang their two songs, one to the Saxons and one to the Danes, and perhaps they made a difference. There were plenty of Danes who wanted to nail my skull to their gable, and the song of the tomb was an invitation.

  Yet they hesitated.

  Archbishop Plegmund was triumphant. Two years after Edward’s coronation I was summoned to Wintanceaster and had to endure a sermon in the new great church. Plegmund, stern and fierce, claimed that God had conquered when all the swords of man had failed. ‘We are in the last days,’ he said, ‘and we see the dawning of Christ’s kingdom.’

  I remember that visit because it was the last time I saw Ælswith, Alfred’s widow. She was retiring to a convent, driven there, I heard, by Plegmund’s insistence. It was Offa who told me that. ‘She supports the archbishop,’ Offa said, ‘but he can’t stand her! She nags.’

  ‘I pity the nuns,’ I said.

  ‘Oh Lord alive, she’ll have them hopping,’ Offa said with a smile. He was old. He still had his dogs, but he trained no new ones. ‘They’re companions now,’ he told me, stroking the ears of a terrier, ‘and we’re growing old together.’ He sat with me in the Two Cranes tavern. ‘I’m in pain, lord,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘God will take me soon,’ he said, and in that he was right.

  ‘Have you travelled this summer?’

&n
bsp; ‘It was hard,’ he said, ‘but yes, I went north and I went east. Now I’m going home.’

  I put money on the table. ‘Tell me what’s happening.’

  ‘They’re going to attack,’ he said.

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Jarl Sigurd is recovered,’ Offa said, ‘and boats are coming across the sea.’

  ‘Boats are always crossing the sea,’ I said.

  ‘Sigurd has let it be known there will be land to possess.’

  ‘Wessex.’

  He nodded. ‘And so the crews are coming, lord.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘They’re assembling at Eoferwic,’ Offa said. I had already heard that news from traders who had been in Northumbria. New ships had come, filled with ambitious and hungry warriors, but the traders all claimed that the army was being assembled to attack the Scots. ‘That’s what they want you to think,’ Offa said. He touched one of the silver coins on the table, tracing his finger over the outline of Alfred’s head. ‘It’s a clever thing you’re doing at Natangrafum,’ he said slyly.

  I said nothing for a moment. A flock of geese was driven past the tavern and there were angry shouts as a dog barked at them. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, a feeble response.

  ‘I’ve told no one,’ Offa said.

  ‘You’re dreaming, Offa,’ I said.

  He looked at me and made the sign of the cross on his skinny chest. ‘I promise you, lord, I told no one. But it was clever, I salute you. It annoyed Jarl Sigurd!’ He chuckled, then used the bone handle of a knife to crack open a hazelnut. ‘What did one of your angels say? That Sigurd was a small man, badly endowed.’ He chuckled again and shook his head. ‘It annoyed him a lot, lord. And maybe that is why Sigurd is giving Eohric money, a great deal of money. Eohric will join the other Danes.’

  ‘Edward says he has a pledge of peace from Eohric,’ I pointed out.

  ‘And you know what Eohric’s pledges are worth,’ Offa retorted. ‘They’re going to do what they should have done twenty years ago, lord. They’re going to unite against Wessex. All the Danes, and all the Saxons who hate Edward, all of them.’

  ‘Ragnar?’ I asked. Ragnar was my old dear friend, a man I thought of as a brother, a man I had not seen in years.

  ‘He’s not well,’ Offa said gently, ‘not well enough to march.’

  That saddened me. I poured ale and one of the tavern girls hurried over to see if the jug was empty, but I waved her away. ‘And what about Cent?’ I asked Offa.

  ‘What about Cent, lord?’

  ‘Sigebriht hates Edward,’ I said, ‘and he wants his own kingdom.’

  Offa shook his head. ‘Sigebriht is a young fool, lord, but his father has reined him in. The whip has been used and Cent will stay loyal.’ He sounded very certain.

  ‘Sigebriht isn’t talking to the Danes?’ I asked.

  ‘If he is, I haven’t heard a whisper,’ Offa said. ‘No, lord, Cent is loyal. Sigelf knows he can’t hold Cent by himself, and Wessex is a better ally for him than the Danes.’

  ‘Have you told Edward all this?’

  ‘I told Father Coenwulf,’ he said. Coenwulf was now Edward’s closest adviser and constant companion. ‘I even told him where the attack will come from.’

  ‘Which is?’

  He looked at my coins on the table and said nothing. I sighed and added two more. Offa drew the coins to his side of the table and made a neat line of them. ‘They’ll want you to believe their attack will come from East Anglia,’ he said, ‘but it won’t. The real attack will be from Ceaster.’

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’ I asked.

  ‘Brunna,’ he said. ‘Haesten’s wife?’

  ‘She’s a real Christian,’ he said.

  ‘Truly?’ I asked. I had always believed the baptism of Haesten’s wife was a cynical ploy to deceive Alfred.

  ‘She has seen the light,’ Offa said in a mocking tone. ‘Yes, lord, truly, and she confided in me.’ He looked at me with his sad eyes. ‘I was a priest once and perhaps you never really stop being a priest and she wanted to make confession and receive the sacraments and so, God help me, I gave her what she wanted, and now, God help me, I have betrayed the secrets she told me.’

  ‘The Danes will make an army in East Anglia?’

  ‘You’ll see that happening, I’m sure, but you won’t see the army gathering behind Ceaster, and that’s the army that will march south.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘After the harvest,’ Offa spoke confidently, his voice so low that only I could hear. ‘Sigurd and Cnut want the biggest army seen in Britain. They say it’s time to end the war for ever. They will come when they have the harvest to feed their horde. They want the largest army ever to invade Wessex.’

  ‘You believe Brunna?’

  ‘She resents her husband, so yes, I believe her.’

  ‘What is Ælfadell saying these days?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s saying what Cnut tells her to say, that the attack will come from the east and that Wessex will fall.’ He sighed. ‘I wish I could live long enough to see the end of this, lord.’

  ‘You’re good for another ten years, Offa,’ I told him.

  He shook his head. ‘I feel the angel of death close behind me, lord.’ He hesitated. ‘You’ve always been good to me, lord.’ He bowed his head. ‘I owe you for your kindness.’

  ‘You owe me nothing.’

  ‘I do, lord.’ He looked up at me and, to my surprise, there were tears in his eyes. ‘Not everyone has been kind to me, lord,’ he said, ‘but you have always been generous.’

  I was embarrassed. ‘You’ve been very useful,’ I muttered.

  ‘So in respect for you, lord, and in gratitude to you, I give you my last advice.’ He paused and to my surprise pushed the coins back towards me.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Give me the pleasure, lord,’ he said. ‘I want to thank you.’ He pushed the coins still closer to me. A tear rolled down his cheek and he cuffed it away. ‘Trust no one, lord,’ he said softly, ‘and beware Haesten, lord, beware the army in the west.’ He looked up at me and dared touch my hand with a long finger. ‘Beware the army at Ceaster, and don’t let the pagans destroy us, lord.’

  He died that summer.

  Then the harvest came, and it was good.

  And after it the pagans came.

  Ten

  I worked it out later, though the knowledge was small consolation. A war-band rode to Natangrafum and because so many of the warriors were Saxons no one thought their presence strange. They arrived on an evening when the tomb was empty, because by then the peace had lasted so long that the angels rarely appeared, but the raiders knew exactly where to go. They rode directly to the Roman house outside Turcandene where they took the handful of guards by surprise and then killed fast and efficiently. When I arrived the next day I saw blood, a lot of blood.

  Ludda was dead. I assumed he had tried to defend the house, and his eviscerated body lay sprawled across the doorway. His face was a grimace of pain. Eight others of my men were dead, their bodies stripped of mail, arm rings and anything else of value. On one wall, where the Roman plaster still clung to the bricks, a man had used blood to make a crude drawing of a flying raven. The drips had run down the wall and I could see the print of the man’s hand beneath the raven’s savagely hooked beak. ‘Sigurd,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘His symbol, lord?’ Sihtric asked me.

  ‘Yes.’

  None of the three girls was there. I supposed the attackers must have taken them, but they had failed to find Mehrasa, the dark girl. She and Father Cuthbert had hidden in some nearby woods and only emerged when they were certain it was my men who now ringed the slaughterhouse. Cuthbert was crying. ‘Lord, lord,’ was all he could say to me at first. He fell to his knees in front of me and wrung his big hands. Mehrasa was steadier, though she refused to cross the house’s blood-reeking threshold where the flies buzzed around Ludda’s opened gut.

  ‘
What happened?’ I asked Cuthbert.

  ‘Oh God, lord,’ he said, his voice quavery.

  I slapped him hard around the face. ‘What happened?’

  ‘They came at dusk, lord,’ he said, his hands shaking as he tried to clasp them, ‘there were a lot of them! I counted twenty-four men,’ he had to pause, he was shaking so much and when he next tried to speak he just made a mewing noise. Then he saw the anger on my face and took a deep breath. ‘They hunted us, lord.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They searched around the house, lord. In the old orchard, down by the pond.’

  ‘You were hidden.’

  ‘Yes, lord.’ He was crying and his voice was scarce above a whisper. ‘Saint Cuthbert the Cowardly, lord.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ I snarled, ‘what could you do against so many?’

  ‘They took the girls, lord, and killed everyone else. And I liked Ludda.’

  ‘I liked Ludda too,’ I said, ‘but now we bury him.’ I did like Ludda. He was a clever rogue and he had served me well, and worse, he had trusted me and now he was cut from the groin to the ribs and the flies were thick about his entrails. ‘So what were you doing while he died?’ I asked Cuthbert.

  ‘We were watching the sunset from the hill, lord.’

  I laughed without mirth. ‘Watching the sunset!’

  ‘We were, lord!’ Cuthbert said, hurt.

  ‘And you’ve been hiding ever since?’

  He looked around at the red mess and his body shook with a sudden spasm. He vomited.

  By now, I thought, the two angels would have confessed the whole deception and the Danes were laughing at us. I looked north and east for smoke in the sky, the sure sign that a war had broken out, but I saw none. The temptation was to assume that the killers had been a small raiding party who, their revenge taken, had headed back to safer land, but was the raid just that? A revenge for the ships of Snotengaham? And if it were such a revenge, how did the raiders know the angels were my idea? Or was Plegmund’s peace breaking into a thousand bloody pieces? The raiders had not fired the Roman building, suggesting they did not want to draw attention to their presence. ‘You say there were Saxons among the war-band?’ I asked Cuthbert.