Conqueror

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘It will be a hungry summer.’

  ‘Yes. And there has been treachery. Aethelwold has allied with the Danes.’ Aethelwold, another ealdorman, was Alfred’s nephew, the son of one of his dead brothers. ‘And there is news of another Danish Force, under Ubba, coming from the west.’

  To Cynewulf this was scarcely believable. ‘Another?’

  ‘A thousand men or more, judging by the number of ships. Evidently Ubba and Guthrum mean to crush Alfred and Wessex between the two of them. Ealdorman Odda is preparing to stand against them. But ...’

  But if even Alfred’s nephew had deserted him, nobody could be relied on; Ordgar left this conclusion unsaid.

  Ordgar sheathed his sword. ‘I will bring you to the King. But be careful how you behave. It is not only Danes who have tried to slaughter the King, but English too, men of our blood, who have sold their souls. It is a dangerous time, and men are cautious.’

  They rode further west, into the half-drowned land. A mist lingered, even in the middle of the day, a low clinging dampness that stank of rot. At last they came to a place where open water glimmered in pale sheets, and the only scraps of dry land were islands that thrust out of the murk. Punts had been hauled up out of the water on to the dry land.

  Here Ordgar had them dismount. ‘That’s the end for the horses,’ he said.

  They clambered into punts, Cynewulf and Aebbe together in one, Arngrim and Ibn Zuhr in a second, each with one of Ordgar’s men. Two more punts followed them, so they were a little flotilla with no less than nine armed men, including Arngrim. Cynewulf had never liked water, and he clung to the sides of the punt as the thick green marshwater lapped into the low hull, and reeds scraped against the bottom. But even the Danes’ famous shallow-draught ships could not penetrate this clinging morass.

  The light was already fading when Aethelingaig loomed out of the mist. Cynewulf saw punts and other shallow boats coming and going from the island. He imagined them carrying instructions from the King to his supporters in the country, and bringing back information about the movements of the Danes. As they neared the island a huge crane flapped from the still water into the darksome sky.

  In the weeks Cynewulf had been away, Alfred had managed to organise his burh a little better. He had added to the natural protection of the flooded landscape with a ditch, an earthen bank and a palisade. Even before they got to the ditch they passed pits filled with sharpened stakes, and others stuffed with dried reeds which could be set alight in case of attack.

  Inside the camp there seemed to have been some effort to drain the land, for the ground was firmer underfoot. Leather tents sat in rows, and there were even a few permanent buildings, posts stuck in the ground with walls of mud and reed thatches. There were some women and children around, including, presumably, the family of the King himself. But most of the men wore mail shirts and carried swords and axes, and more weapons and shields were stacked up near the fence. This was a place ready for combat; no matter how devious the Danes were, they would not find Alfred unprepared again.

  Cynewulf felt his spirits rise a bit. This was scarcely Eoforwic, as Arngrim remarked dryly. But in this burh, this fortified place, there was no sense of the panic of that night of flight.

  But Ibn Zuhr sniffed at air that stank of pond rot. ‘So this petty island is all that is left of England.’

  ‘It is enough,’ Arngrim snapped. ‘I’ll hear no more from you, Moor. Fetch us food, fresh clothes, find us somewhere to rest. And then we would talk with the King. Organise it.’

  The Moor, his eyes downcast, obeyed.

  XI

  Alfred, King of Wessex, sat on his giving-throne, priests and clerks at his elbow. He was reading a book. As always his clerks recorded everything that came to pass, and the priests murmured prayers.

  Cynewulf, with Arngrim, Aebbe and Ibn Zuhr, sat on a mead bench and waited for the King’s attention. Cynewulf saw how Alfred picked out the letters in his book with a moving finger, and mouthed the words. Orphaned young, his education neglected by the older brothers who raised him, this most scholarly of kings had been almost grown before he learned to read English or Latin.

  This ‘hall’ was a hovel constructed of the skinny trunks and limp branches of willow trees, plastered with marsh-bottom mud. But the King put on an impressive show. The walls were draped with hangings that glittered with golden thread. The King’s giving-throne had been loaned to him by his sound supporter Aethelnoth. Alfred himself was dressed in leather and a mail shirt, but he glistened with jewellery, shoulder-brooches and pendants and rings and arm bands.

  For a king, image was all. And so he wore his jewels and said his prayers, here in the middle of the bog, even while the Danes skulked through the thickets to assassinate him.

  Cynewulf, whispering, remarked on this to Arngrim.

  Arngrim bluffly murmured, ‘Oh, I believe in Alfred. He may babble on about God, but he is the descendant of Woden after all, and he has a deeper wisdom than any priest. Think about his name.’

  Alfred - Aelf-red - the wisdom of the elves.

  Cynewulf was startled. He hissed, ‘Arngrim, the Menologium. There is a line in the ninth stanza that talks of elf-wisdom—’

  ‘Not now,’ Arngrim said.

  Despite the finery the foetid stink of the swamp penetrated even this royal cabin. Alfred looked shrivelled, and as he tired he coughed into a handkerchief, which Cynewulf saw was spotted with blood.

  Ibn Zuhr murmured to his master, ‘The King is ill.’

  ‘Is there anything you can do for him, Moor?’

  Ibn Zuhr shook his head. ‘It is the foul air,’ he said softly. ‘If he could get away from that, perhaps his condition would improve.’

  The King looked up, disturbed by their talk. He closed his book with a sigh. ‘I’m sorry for keeping you waiting, Arngrim. It’s just that I get lost in words.’ He held up the book. ‘We are short of parchment, you know. Some of my thegns would have me tear up my books to keep the orders flowing out of here. Books, sacrificed to the needs of war - a terrible thing. But not this one; next to the Bible it is the one book I could not live without, I think. De Consolatione Philosophiae - The Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius. Have you heard of it?’

  ‘I’m not what you would call a book-reader, lord,’ Arngrim growled.

  Ibn Zuhr coughed. ‘Master, if I may?’

  Cynewulf was astonished at the gall of a slave daring to speak before a king. But Alfred waved for the Moor to speak.

  Ibn Zuhr said clearly, ‘Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius. A Roman scholar who died some four centuries ago. He was a senator, indeed a consul. But he lived through the expulsion of the last western emperor, and served under Theodoric the Ostrogoth, King of Italy. He translated Aristotle. He wrote extensively on the Arian heresy ...’

  Arngrim rumbled like a wolf. ‘Lord, I am not sure if the frozen thoughts of a long-dead Roman are much help to us now.’

  ‘That is the fallacy of the illiterate,’ Alfred snapped. ‘And it is why, dear Arngrim, I hold you no closer.’

  Cynewulf could sense Arngrim’s irritation.

  ‘How did Boethius die, slave?’

  Ibn Zuhr said, ‘He was executed. I believe he was suspected of intriguing with the East Roman Emperor against King Theodoric.’

  ‘Yes, yes. And while he was in prison, even while he waited for death, he wrote this, his masterwork. What a consolation Boethius’s philosophy is to me now, with his talk of grades of being beyond the human, and his dream of a summum bonum, a highest good that controls and orders the universe. Even in an age of catastrophe - even while waiting for his own unjust execution at the hands of a barbarian king - he kept working. Perhaps this is the course I should take, do you think? Perhaps I should go into exile, like the wretched King Burghred of Mercia. Or I should lock myself away in a monastery, and write like Bede. For I sometimes think it is books I love above all else, save my children.’

  This talk of giving up, delivered in a feeble voice
by an ill man, alarmed Cynewulf. Perhaps they hadn’t come a moment too soon.

  Arngrim apparently felt the same way. He said carefully, ‘You speak of Rome’s catastrophe in Boethius’s time. If you were to turn away from your duty now, lord, it would be an English catastrophe of no less magnitude.’

  Alfred snorted. ‘I would think you were flattering me, Arngrim, if I did not respect you too much.’

  ‘It is sincere, lord.’

  ‘And, lord,’ Cynewulf said, rising nervously, ‘the reason we have asked to speak to you today is that we have proof - proof that you must fight on. Proof that you must win.’

  Alfred glared at him. ‘Cynewulf, is it? You bring me a prophecy, I hear. You should know me better, if you believe you can deflect me with hints of the wyrd. I have plenty of half-converted pagans in my court muttering auguries in my ear.’

  ‘I am a priest,’ Cynewulf said defiantly. ‘What I bring you is, I believe, a revelation of God’s providence.’

  The King snapped, ‘Show me, then.’

  Cynewulf sighed. ‘I cannot show you, lord. But I can tell you.’ He turned to Aebbe.

  Here was another moment of high tension. Aebbe had not spoken a word since Eoforwic. If she refused to speak now, all would be lost.

  But to his immense relief she stood, faced the King, and, in a clear but harsh voice, began to recite the Menologium of Isolde:

  These the Great Years/of the Comet of God

  Whose awe and beauty/in the roof of the world

  Lights step by step/the road to empire

  An Aryan realm/THE GLORY OF CHRIST ...

  Alfred listened for a few lines. Then he ordered the girl to begin again, so he could be sure his clerks wrote down the words accurately. He always had two clerks working together, who took down alternate sentences and then compiled a composite account later.

  When she had done, Alfred nodded. ‘And this is what you have brought me, this doggerel?’

  Arngrim said dryly, ‘It’s not its poetic qualities that the priest thinks are worth your attention, lord, but its scrying.’

  ‘It does sound oddly precise,’ Alfred said. ‘All those lists of months! Can these “Great Years” be translated into Bede’s system, Cynewulf, into Years of Our Lord?’

  ‘They can,’ said Cynewulf firmly, and he explained how the chronology of the Menologium had been established by scholars in the past. ‘It is a matter of simple adding-up to work out the dates - simple, but laborious, it takes a computistor to do it. And the coming of the comet, whose irregular returns mark the passage of the Great Years, has appeared in the sky exactly as predicted in the stanzas of the Menologium.’

  ‘Then this Menologium does not speak of the whole future. It is founded in the past.’

  ‘Yes. If you follow the list of Great Years through, we are currently in the middle of the sixth - and it refers to your reign, lord.’

  ‘Really?’ Alfred asked sceptically.

  ‘And for the earlier Years, some of the events it has predicted have already come to pass.’

  But to his chagrin the King didn’t seem impressed. ‘That proves nothing. This poem could have been knocked up this morning for all I know. Believe me, as a buyer of books I have been presented with enough forgeries in my time. All the “lost works of Aristotle” for instance, which you may pick up for a clipped penny in the markets of Rome—’

  Ibn Zuhr, to everybody’s surprise, spoke up again. ‘Lord, it is unlikely the priest will be able to convince you of the prophecy’s authenticity. What is “proof” after all? But perhaps, for now, faith might suffice. As the priest said it is the sixth stanza, describing the sixth Great Year, which refers to your own past, and future. Aren’t you curious about that?’

  Alfred stared at him. ‘I’m amazed how much latitude you allow this slave, Arngrim.’

  Amgrim was embarrassed, and furious. ‘Only because what he says has proven useful, lord. So far.’

  Alfred smiled. ‘Very well. Shall we grant you a little faith, priest, as this soulless Moor suggests?’ He turned to his clerks. ‘Read me the sixth stanza.’

  The two inky clerks read their own scribbled handwriting, haltingly, in turn:

  The Comet comes/in the month of February.

  Deny five hundred months five./Blood spilled, blood mixed.

  Even the dragon must lie/at the foot of the Cross.

  Nine hundred and five/the months of the sixth Year ...

  Alfred seemed irritated. ‘Enigmatic hokum, like all auguries.’

  Now Cynewulf prepared to deliver what he believed his clinching argument. ‘But, lord, there is nothing enigmatic about the numbers of the months.’ He described how converting the Great Year months to calendar years had delivered a date of February, 837 AD, for the beginning of the sixth Great Year.

  Alfred frowned. ‘And five hundred months denied five, that is four hundred and ninety-five-’

  ‘Forty-one years and three months. Lord, the sixth stanza refers to events that will take place in May - this year - three months from now.’ Alfred’s jaw dropped, and Cynewulf couldn’t resist driving his advantage home. ‘Can you see it now? The stanza can tell of nothing less than your coming conflict with the Danes - and your triumph!’

  XII

  The King rose from his throne and paced restlessly, although his movements were more nervous than energetic. He had his clerks read the key lines over and over: ‘Blood spilled, blood mixed./Even the dragon must lie/at the foot of the Cross ...’

  ‘The reference to the dragon is surely clear enough,’ Alfred said rapidly. ‘The Northmen with their dragon ships - the dragon is the Dane, his Force. And if he is to lie at the foot of the Cross, then he will be destroyed by a Christian power.’

  ‘Yes! That is surely the correct reading, lord—’

  ‘Actually the dragon will submit, but he will not be destroyed,’ Ibn Zuhr pointed out quietly.

  Arngrim growled, ‘Be still, Moor!’

  Ibn Zuhr dropped his eyes, immediately humble.

  Alfred sighed. ‘He does have a point. The line does seem to imply that we will defeat the Dane but we won’t be rid of him. And what was that about “blood spilled, blood mixed”?’ Nobody replied, and Alfred snapped, ‘Speak up, slave! You seem to have all the answers.’

  Ibn Zuhr said calmly, ‘Perhaps it is telling us that after the wars are over, the blood of the Danes and English will mingle. A new race will emerge, neither one nor the other, but something fused. Something greater.’

  Arngrim snorted. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘But we saw it ourselves,’ said Ibn Zuhr. ‘In Jorvik, in the northern country. Where even the languages are merging. Then,’ he went on relentlessly, ‘there is the rest of the prophecy.’ He turned to Cynewulf. ‘I read your notes. This is what a previous commentator on the Menologium, Boniface, has argued. The prophecy sets out a course, step by step, by which an empire of the “Aryans” in the future, a new Rome, will be established.’

  ‘Who are these Aryans?’ Alfred asked.

  ‘Nobody knows,’ Ibn Zuhr said. ‘Perhaps they will arise from the blood of the Danes and the English. But you see, lord, your victory over the Danes may be partial, but it is a necessary step in the programme - a step in the founding of the ultimate empire.’

  Cynewulf was astonished to hear this analysis, mortified he hadn’t worked it out for himself - and furious at the slave for showing him up.

  Alfred shook his head. ‘So I must save my kingdom but spare those who threaten it.’ He glared at the priest. ‘Is this what you have brought me to stiffen my morale, Cynewulf?’

  The priest said, hotly embarrassed, ‘I hadn’t thought it through this far, lord.’

  ‘No, I’m sure you hadn’t. Which is why I am a king and you are a mere priest, no doubt.’ The King threw himself down on his throne and coughed explosively. ‘Prophecies, prophecies. Is there room in the universe for such things?’ He picked up his copy of the Consolations and thumbed through it. ‘What do we human
s know of history? We are as worms who tunnel in the dark, knowing nothing of the shape of the whole round world. But Boethius writes of other perceptions of time than the linear human experience. Boethius would argue, I think, that God is atemporal - outside time, as I am outside the pages of this book - and so free to intervene in past and future as He pleases.’ He leafed through the book, jabbing his finger at random at the pages. ‘Just as I may change a letter here, a word there, in the narrative. And if I accept that, then I suppose I can believe that God, or a pious servant of God, might indeed have found a way to send a warning, or a promise, from the future, back into time.’ He glanced at Cynewulf. ‘Is this blasphemy, priest?’