Death of Kings (20 page)

He closed his eyes momentarily. He lay so still that for a few heartbeats I feared he was dying, but then he opened his eyes again and frowned towards the smoke-blackened rafters. He tried to suppress a moan, but it escaped anyway and I saw the pain pass across his face. ‘That is so hard,’ he said.

‘There are potions that help with pain, lord,’ I said helplessly.

He shook his head slowly. ‘Not pain, Lord Uhtred. We are born to pain. No, fate is difficult. Is all ordained? Foreknowledge is not fate, and we may choose our paths, yet fate says we may not choose them. So if fate is real, do we have choice?’ I said nothing, letting him puzzle that unanswerable question for himself. He looked at me. ‘What would you have your fate be?’ he asked.

‘I would recapture Bebbanburg, lord, and when I find myself on my deathbed I want it to be in Bebbanburg’s high hall with the sound of her sea filling my ears.’

‘And I have Brother John filling my ears,’ Alfred said, amused. ‘He tells them they must open their mouths like hungry little birds, and they do.’ He put his right hand back on Osferth’s hand. ‘They want me to be a hungry little bird. They feed me thin gruel, Lord Uhtred, and insist that I eat, but I don’t want to eat.’ He sighed. ‘My son,’ he meant Osferth, ‘tells me you are a poor man. Why? Did you not capture a fortune at Dunholm?’

‘I did, lord.’

‘You wasted it?’

‘I wasted it in your service, lord, on men, mail and weapons. On guarding the frontier of Mercia. On equipping an army to defeat Haesten.’

‘
Nervi bellorum pecuniae
,’ Alfred said.

‘Your scriptures, lord?’

‘A wise Roman, Lord Uhtred, who said that money is the sinews of war.’

‘He knew what he was talking about, lord.’

Alfred closed his eyes and I could see the pain cross his face again. His mouth tightened as he suppressed a groan. The smell in the room grew ranker. ‘There is a lump in my belly,’ he said, ‘like a stone.’ He paused and again tried to stifle a groan. A single tear escaped. ‘I watch the candle clocks,’ he said, ‘and wonder how many bands will burn before,’ he hesitated. ‘I measure my life by inches. You will come back tomorrow, Lord Uhtred.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘I have given my,’ he paused, then patted Osferth’s hand, ‘my son,’ he said, ‘a charge.’ He opened his eyes and looked at me. ‘My son is charged with converting you to the true faith.’

‘Yes, lord,’ I said, not knowing what else to say. I saw the tears on Osferth’s face.

Alfred looked at the great leather panel that showed the crucifixion. ‘Do you notice anything strange about that painting?’ he asked me.

I stared at it. Jesus hung from the cross, blood streaked, the sinews in his arms stretching against the dark sky behind. ‘No, lord,’ I said.

‘He’s dying,’ Alfred said. That seemed obvious and so I said nothing. ‘In every other depiction I have seen of our Lord’s death,’ the king went on, ‘he is smiling on the cross, but not in this one. In this painting his head is hanging, he is in pain.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Archbishop Plegmund reproved the painter,’ Alfred said, ‘because he believes our Lord conquered pain and so would have smiled to the end, but I like the painting. It reminds me that my pain is as nothing compared to his.’

‘I would you had no pain, lord,’ I said awkwardly.

He ignored that. He still gazed at the agonised Christ, then grimaced. ‘He wore a crown of thorns,’ he said in a tone of wonderment. ‘Men want to be king,’ he went on, ‘but every crown has thorns. I told Edward that wearing the crown is hard, so hard. One last thing,’ he turned his head from the painting and raised his left hand, and I saw what an effort it took to lift that pathetic hand from the gospel book. ‘I would have you swear an oath of loyalty to Edward. That way I can die in the knowledge that you will fight for us.’

‘I will fight for Wessex,’ I said.

‘The oath,’ he said sternly.

‘And I will give an oath,’ I said. His shrewd eyes stared at me.

‘To my daughter?’ he asked, and I saw Osferth stiffen.

‘To your daughter, lord,’ I agreed.

He seemed to shudder. ‘In my laws, Lord Uhtred, adultery is not just a sin, but a crime.’

‘You would make criminals of all mankind, lord.’

He half smiled at that. ‘I love Æthelflaed,’ he said, ‘she was always the liveliest of my children, but not the most obedient.’ His hand dropped back onto the gospel book. ‘Leave me now, Lord Uhtred. Come back tomorrow.’

If he was still alive, I thought. I knelt to him, then Osferth and I left. We walked in silence to a cloistered courtyard where the last roses of summer had dropped their petals on the damp grass. We sat on a stone bench and listened to the mournful chants echoing from the passageway. ‘The archbishop wanted me dead,’ I said.

‘I know,’ Osferth said, ‘so I went to my father.’

‘I’m surprised they let you see him.’

‘I had to argue with the priests who guard him,’ he said with a half-smile, ‘but he heard the argument.’

‘And called you to see him?’

‘He sent a priest to summon me.’

‘And you told him what was happening to me?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And you made your peace with Alfred?’

Osferth gazed unseeing into the dark. ‘He said he was sorry, lord, that I am what I am, and that it was his fault, and that he would intervene for me in heaven.’

‘I’m glad,’ I said, not sure how else to respond to such nonsense.

‘And I told him, lord, that if Edward were to rule, then Edward needed you.’

‘Edward will rule,’ I said, then I told him about the Lady Ecgwynn and the twin babies hidden away in the nunnery. ‘Edward was only doing what his father did,’ I said, ‘but it will cause problems.’

‘Problems?’

‘Are the babies legitimate?’ I asked. ‘Alfred says not, but once Alfred dies then Edward can declare otherwise.’

‘Oh, God,’ Osferth said, seeing the difficulties so far in the future.

‘What they should do, of course,’ I said, ‘is strangle the little bastards.’

‘Lord!’ Osferth said, shocked.

‘But they won’t. Your family was never ruthless enough.’

It had begun to rain harder, the drops beating on the tile and thatch of the palace roofs. There was no moon, no stars, only clouds in darkness and the hard rain teeming and the wind sighing about the scaffolded tower of Alfred’s great new church. I went to Saint Hedda’s. The guards were gone, the alleyway dark, and I beat on the convent door till someone answered.

Next day the king and his bed had been moved to the larger hall where Plegmund and his colleagues had thought to condemn me. The crown was on the bed, its bright emeralds reflecting the fire that filled the high chamber with smoke and heat. The room was crowded, stinking of men and the king’s decay. Bishop Asser was there, as was Erkenwald, though the archbishop had evidently found other business to keep him from the king’s presence. A score of West Saxon lords were there. One of them was Æthelhelm whose daughter was to marry Edward. I liked Æthelhelm, who now stood close behind Ælswith, Alfred’s wife, who did not know which she resented more, my existence or the strange truth that Wessex did not recognise the rank of queen. She watched me balefully. Her children flanked her. Æthelflaed, at twenty-nine, was the eldest, then came her brother, Edward, then Æthelgifu and lastly Æthelweard who was just sixteen. Ælfthryth, Alfred’s third daughter, was not there because she had been married to a king across the water in Frankia. Steapa was there, looming above my dear old friend, Father Beocca, who was now stooped and white-haired. Brother John and his monks sang softly. Not all of the choir were monks, some were small boys robed in pale linen and, with a shock, I recognised my son Uhtred as one of them.

I have been, I confess, a bad father. I loved my two youngest children, but my eldest who, in the tradition of my family, had taken my name, was a mystery. Instead of wishing to learn sword-craft and spear-skill, he had become a Christian. A Christian! And now, with the other boys of the cathedral choir, he sang like a little bird. I glared at him, but he resolutely avoided my gaze.

I joined the ealdormen who stood at one side of the hall. They, with the senior clerics, formed the king’s council, the Witan, and they had business to discuss, though none did it with any enthusiasm. A grant of land was given to a monastery, and payment authorised for the masons who were working on Alfred’s new church. A man who had failed to pay his fine for the crime of manslaughter was pardoned because he had done good service with Weohstan’s forces at Beamfleot. Some men looked at me when that victory was mentioned, but no one asked if I remembered the man. The king took little part, except to raise a weary hand to signify his assent.

All this while a clerk was standing behind a desk where he wrote a manuscript. I thought at first he was making a record of the proceedings, but two other clerks were clearly doing that, while the man at the desk was mainly copying from another document. He seemed very conscious of everyone’s gaze and was red in the face, though perhaps that was the heat from the great fire. Bishop Asser was scowling, Ælswith looked ready to kill me with anger, but Father Beocca was smiling. He bobbed his head to me and I winked at him. Æthelflaed caught my eye and smiled so mischievously that I hoped her father had not seen it. Her husband was standing not far away from her and, like my son, he studiously avoided my gaze. Then, to my astonishment, I saw Æthelwold standing at the back of the hall. He looked at me defiantly, but could not hold my stare and stooped instead to talk with a companion I did not recognise.

A man complained that his neighbour, Ealdorman Æthelnoth, had taken fields that did not belong to him. The king interrupted the complaint, whispering to Bishop Asser who gave the king’s judgement. ‘Will you accept the arbitration of Abbot Osburh?’ he asked the man.

‘I will.’

‘And you, Lord Æthelnoth?’

‘Gladly.’

‘Then the abbot is charged with discovering the boundaries according to the proper writs,’ Asser said, and the clerks scratched his words, and the council moved on to discuss other matters and I saw Alfred look wearily towards the man copying the document at the desk. The man had finished, because he sanded the parchment, waited a few heartbeats and then blew the sand into the fire. He folded the parchment and wrote something on the folded side, then sanded and blew again. A second clerk brought a candle, wax and a seal. The finished document was then carried to the king’s bed, and Alfred, with great effort, signed his name and then beckoned that Bishop Erkenwald and Father Beocca should add their signatures as witnesses to whatever it was he had signed.

The council fell silent as this was done. I assumed the document was the king’s will, but once the wax had been impressed with the great seal, the king beckoned to me.

I went to his bedside and knelt. ‘I have been granting small gifts as remembrances,’ Alfred said.

‘You were ever generous, lord King,’ I lied, but what else does one say to a dying man?

‘This is for you,’ he said, and I heard Ælswith’s sharp intake of breath as I took the newly written parchment from her husband’s feeble hand. ‘Read it,’ he said, ‘you can still read?’

‘Father Beocca taught me well,’ I said.

‘Father Beocca does all things well,’ the king said, then moaned with pain, which caused a monk to go to his side and offer him a cup.

The king sipped, and I read. It was a charter. The clerk had copied much of it, for one charter is much like another, but this one took my breath away. It granted me land, and the grant was not conditional, like that which Alfred had once used to give me an estate at Fifhiden. Instead it conveyed the land freely to me and to my heirs or to whoever else I chose to grant that land, and the charter laboriously described the boundaries of the land, and the length of that description told me that the estate was wide and deep. There was a river and orchards and meadows and villages, and a hall at a place called Fagranforda, and all of it in Mercia. ‘The land belonged to my father,’ Alfred said.

I did not know what to say, except to utter thanks.

The feeble hand stretched towards me and I took it. I kissed the ruby. ‘You know what I want,’ Alfred said. I kept my head bowed over his hand. ‘The land is given freely,’ he said, ‘and it will give you wealth, much wealth.’

‘Lord King,’ I said, and my voice faltered.

His feeble fingers tightened on my hand. ‘Give something back to me, Uhtred,’ he said, ‘give me peace before I die.’

And so I did what he wanted, and what I did not wish to do, but he was dying, and he had been generous at the end, and how can you slap a man who is in his last days of life? And so I went to Edward and I knelt to him, and I put my hands between his and I swore the oath of loyalty. And some in the hall applauded while some stayed resolutely silent. Æthelhelm, the chief adviser in the Witan, smiled, for he knew I would now fight for Wessex. My cousin Æthelred shuddered, for he knew he would never call himself king in Mercia so long as I did Edward’s will, while Æthelwold must have wondered if he would ever take Alfred’s throne if he had to fight his way past Serpent-Breath. Edward pulled me to my feet and embraced me. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. That was Wednesday, Woden’s Day, in October, the eighth month of the year, which was 899.

The next day belonged to Thor. The rain did not stop, coming in huge swathes that swept across Wintanceaster. ‘Heaven itself is weeping,’ Beocca told me. He was crying himself. ‘The king asked me to give him the last rites,’ he said, ‘and I did, but my hands were shaking.’ It seemed Alfred received the last rites at intervals through the day, so intent was he on making a good end, and the priests and bishops vied with each other for the honour of anointing the king and placing a piece of dry bread between his lips. ‘Bishop Asser was ready to give the
viaticum
,’ Beocca said, ‘but Alfred asked for me.’

‘He loves you,’ I said, ‘and you’ve served him well.’

‘I have served God and the king,’ Beocca said, then let me guide him to a seat beside the fire in the great room of the Two Cranes. ‘He took some curds this morning,’ Beocca told me earnestly, ‘but not many. Two spoonfuls.’