The Lords of the North
Page 34
‘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.
Historical Note
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 Bamburgh 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.
By the same Author
The SHARPE novels
(in chronological order)
SHARPE’S TIGER
SHARPE’S TRIUMPH
SHARPE’S FORTRESS
SHARPE’S TRAFALGAR
SHARPE’S PREY
SHARPE’S RIFLES
SHARPE’S HAVOC
SHARPE’S EAGLE
SHARPE’S GOLD
SHARPE’S ESCAPE
SHARPE’S BATTLE
SHARPE’S COMPANY
SHARPE’S SWORD
SHARPE’S ENEMY
SHARPE’S HONOUR
SHARPE’S REGIMENT
SHARPE’S SIEGE
SHARPE’S REVENGE
SHARPE’S WATERLOO
SHARPE’S DEVIL
The GRAIL QUEST Series
HARLEQUIN
VAGABOND
HERETIC
GALLOWS THIEF
STONEHENGE: A NOVEL OF 2000 BC
The STARBUCK Chronicles
REBEL
COPPERHEAD
BATTLE FLAG
THE BLOODY GROUND
The WARLORD Chronicles
THE WINTER KING
THE ENEMY OF GOD
EXCALIBUR
THE LAST KINGDOM
THE PALE HORSEMAN
About the Author
Born in London, Conn Iggulden read English at London University and worked as a teacher for seven years before becoming a full-time writer. He is the author of the number one bestselling Emperor series and co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys. Conn Iggulden lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and their children.
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Copyright
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2006
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Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2005
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actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
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ePub edition June 2008 ISBN-9780007236879
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