The Lords of the North (42 page)

That is the Christian sorcerer, Hrothweard!' I shouted. 'He attacked King Guthred with
spells, with the magic of corpses, but we have found him out and we have taken the spells away
from King Guthred! So now I ask you what we should do with the sorcerer!'

There was only one answer to that. The Danes, who knew well enough that Hrothweard had been
Guthred's adviser, wanted him dead. Hrothweard, meanwhile, was kneeling on the grass, his
hands clasped, staring up at Guthred. 'No, lord!' He pleaded.

'You're the thief?' Guthred asked. He sounded disbelieving. 'I found the relic in his
baggage, lord.' Finan said, and held the golden pot towards Guthred.

'It was wrapped in one of his shirts, lord.'

'He lies!' Hrothweard protested.

'He's your thief, lord,' Finan said respectfully, then made the sign of the cross, 'I
swear it on Christ's holy body.'

'He's a sorcerer!' I shouted at Ivarr's Danes. 'He will give your cattle the staggers, he
will put a blight on your crops, he will make your women barren and your children sickly! Do
you want him?'

They roared their need of Hrothweard, who was weeping uncontrollably.

'You may have him,' I said, 'if you acknowledge Guthred as your king.'

They shouted their allegiance. They were beating swords and spears against their shields
again, but this time in acclamation of Guthred, and so I leaned over and took his reins. Time
to greet them, lord.' I told him. 'Time to be generous with them.'

'But.' he looked down at Hrothweard.

'He is a thief, lord,' I said, 'and thieves must die. It is the law. It is what Alfred would
do.'

'Yes.' Guthred said, and we left Father Hrothweard to the pagan Danes and we listened to
his dying for a long time. I do not know what they did to him, for there was little left of his
corpse, though his blood darkened the grass for yards around the place he died.

That night there was a poor feast. Poor because we had little enough food, though there was
plenty of ale. The Danish thegns swore their allegiance to Guthred while the priests and
monks huddled in the church, expecting murder. Hrothweard was dead and Jaenberht had been
murdered, and they all expected to become martyrs themselves, but a dozen sober men from
Guthred's household troops were enough to keep them safe. 'I shall let them build their shrine
for Saint Cuthbert.' Guthred told me.

'Alfred would approve of that.' I said.

He stared across the fire that burned in Cetreht's street. Ragnar, despite his crippled
hand, was wrestling with a huge Dane who had served Ivarr. Both men were drunk and more and drunk
men cheered

them on and made wagers on who would win. Guthred stared, but did not see the contest. He
was thinking. 'I would never have believed he said at last, puzzled, 'that Father
Hrothweard was a thief.'

Gisela, sheltering under my cloak and leaning on my shoulder giggled. 'No man would
ever believe that you and I were slaves lord,' I answered, 'but so we were.'

'Yes,' he said in wonderment, 'we were.'

It is the three spinners who make our lives. They sit at the foot of Yggdrasil and there
they have their jests. It pleased them to make Guthred the slave into King Guthred, just as it
pleased them to send me south again to Wessex. While at Bebbanburg, where the grey sea never
ceases to beat upon the long pale sands and the cold wind frets the wolf's head flag above the
hall, they dreaded my return.

Because fate cannot be cheated, it governs us, and we are all its slaves. 

Lords of the North opens a month or so after Alfred's astonishing victory over the
Danes at Ethandun, a tale told in The Pale Horseman. Guthrum, the leader of the defeated
army, retreated to Chippenham where Alfred laid siege to him, but hostilities came to a
swift end when Alfred and Guthrum agreed to a peace. The Danes withdrew from Wessex and
Guthrum and his leading earls all became Christians. Alfred, in turn, recognised Guthrum as
the king of East Anglia. Readers of the two previous novels in this series will know that
Guthrum hardly had a sterling record for keeping peace agreements. He had broken the truce
made at Wareham, and the subsequent truce negotiated at Exeter, but this last peace
treaty held. Guthrum accepted Alfred as his godfather and took the baptismal name of
Æthelstan. One tradition says he was baptised in the font still to be seen in the church at
Aller, Somerset, and it seems that his conversion was genuine for, once back in East
Anglia, he ruled as a Christian monarch. Negotiations between Guthrum and Alfred
continued, for in 886 they signed the Treaty of Wedmore which divided England into two
spheres of influence. Wessex and southern Mercia were to be Saxon, while East Anglia,
northern Mercia and Northumbria were to fall under Danish law. Thus the Danelaw was
established, that north-eastern half of England which, for a time, was to be ruled by
Danish kings and which still bears, in place-names and dialects, the imprint of that era.

The treaty was a recognition by Alfred that he lacked the forces to drive the Danes out of
England altogether, and it bought him time in which he could fortify his heartland of
Wessex. The problem was that Guthrum was not the king of all the Danes, let alone the
Norsemen, and he could not prevent further attacks on Wessex. Those would come in time, and
will be described in future novels, but in large part the victory at Ethandun and the
subsequent settlement with Guthrum secured the independence of Wessex and enabled
Alfred and his successors to reconquer the Danelaw. One of Alfred's first steps in that
long process was to marry his eldest daughter, Æthelflaed, to Æthelred of Mercia, an
alliance intended to bind the Saxons of Mercia to those of Wessex. Æthelflaed, in time, was
to prove a great heroine in the struggle against the Danes.

To move from the history of Wessex in the late ninth century to that of Northumbria is
to pass from light into confusing darkness. Even the northern regnal lists, which provide
the names of kings and the dates they ruled, do not agree, but soon after Ethandun a king named
Guthred (some sources name him as Guthfrith) did take the throne at York (Eoferwic). He
replaced a Saxon king, who was doubtless a puppet ruler, and he ruled into the 890s. Guthred
is remarkable for two things; first, though Danish, he was a Christian, and second, there is
a persistent story that he was once a slave, and on those slender foundations I have
concocted this story. He was certainly associated with Abbot Eadred who was the
guardian of Cuthbert's corpse (and of both the head of Saint Oswald and the Lindisfarne
Gospels), and Eadred was eventually to build his great shrine for Cuthbert at Cuncacester,
now Chester-le-Street in County Durham. In 995 the saint's body was finally laid to rest at
Durham (Dunholm) where it remains.

Kjartan, Ragnar, and Gisela are fictional characters. There was an Ivarr, but I have
taken vast liberties with his life. He is chiefly notable for his successors who will cause
much trouble in the north. There is no record of a ninth-century fortress at Durham, though
it seems to me unlikely that such an easily defensible site would have been ignored, and
more than possible that any remnants of such a fort would have been destroyed during the
construction of the cathedral and castle which have now occupied the summit for almost a
thousand years. There was a fortress at Bebbanburg, transmuted over time into the present
glories of Hamburgh Castle, and in the eleventh century it was ruled by a family with the
name Uhtred, who are my ancestors, but we know almost nothing of the family's activities
in the late ninth century. The story of England in the late ninth and early tenth centuries
is a tale which moves from Wessex northwards. Uhtred's fate, which he is just beginning to
recognise, is to be at the heart of that West Saxon reconquest of the land that will become
known as England and so his wars are far from over. He will need Serpent-Breath again.

PLACE NAMES

The spelling of place names in Anglo Saxon England was an uncertain business, with no
consistency and no agreement even about the name itself. Thus London was variously
rendered as Lundonia, Lundenberg, Lundenne, Lundene, Lundenwic, Lundenceaster and
Lundres. Doubtless some readers will prefer other versions of the names listed below, but
I have usually employed whichever spelling is cited in either the Oxford Dictionary of
English Place-Names or the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names for the years
nearest or contained within Alfred's reign, 871-899

AD, but even that solution is not foolproof. Hayling Island, in 956, was written as both
Heilincigae and Haeglingaiggae. Nor have I been consistent myself; I should spell
England as Englaland, and have preferred the modern form Northumbria to Nordhymbralond to
avoid the suggestion that the boundaries of the ancient kingdom coincide with those of the
modern county. So this list, like the spellings themselves, is capricious.

Athelney, Somerset Alclyt Bishop Auckland, County Durham Badum (pronounced Bathum)
Bath, Avon

Bebbanburg Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland

Berrocscire Berkshire

Cair Ligualid Carlisle, Cumbria

Cetreht Catterick, Yorkshire

Cippanhamm Chippenham, Wiltshire

Contwaraburg Canterbury, Kent

Cumbraland Cumbria

Cuncacester Chester-le-Street, County Durham

Cynuit Cynuit Hillfort, nr Cannington,

Somerset

Defnascir Devonshire

Dornwaraceaster Dorchester, Dorset

Dunholm Durham, County Durham

Dyflin Dublin, Eire

Eoferwic York

Ethandun Edington, Wiltshire

Exanceaster Exeter, Devon

Fifhidan Fyfield, Wiltshire

Gleawecestre Gloucester, Gloucestershire

Gyruum Jarrow, County Durham

Hamptonscir Hampshire

Haithabu Hedeby, trading town in southern

Denmark

Heagostealdes Hexham, Northumberland

Hedene River Eden, Cumbria

Hocchale Houghall, County Durham

Horn Hofn, Iceland

Hreapandune Repton, Derbyshire

Kenet River Kennet

Lindisfarena Lindisfarne (Holy Island),

Northumberland

Lundene London

Onhripum Ripon, Yorkshire

Pedredan River Parrett

Readingum Reading, Berkshire

Scireburnan Sherborne, Dorset

Snotengaham Nottingham, Nottinghamshire

Strath Clota Strathclyde

Sumorsaete Somerset

Suth Seaxa Sussex (South Saxons)

Synningthwait Swinithwaite, Yorkshire

Temes River Thames

Thornsaeta Dorset

Thresk Thirsk, Yorkshire

Tine River Tyne

River Tweed

Wiire River Wear

yiltun Wilton, Wiltshire

Wiltunscir Wiltshire

Wintanceaster Winchester, Hampshire