‘Why did she go?’ I had asked my son.
‘She thought you would want her to go.’
I had said nothing, just felt guilt. The plague had not reached as far north as Bebbanburg. My son had barred the roads, threatening travellers with death if they tried to come onto our land, and so the sickness had ravaged the land from Lindcolne to Eoferwic, and then spread through the great vale of farms that surrounded the city, but it had been kept from Bebbanburg. The plague had died itself by the time we reached Eoferwic on our journey north.
And Guthfrith was king there, his election supported by the Danish jarls who still ruled much of Northumbria. I had met him briefly. Like his brother Sigtryggr he was a thin, fair-haired man with a handsome face, but unlike Sigtryggr he was sour and suspicious. The night I met him, when he reluctantly feasted me in his great hall, he had demanded my allegiance, had demanded that I swear an oath to him, but he had not demanded it instantly, suggesting that when the feast was over there would be time enough for that brief ceremony. Then he had drunk mead and ale, had demanded more mead, then cheered raucously when one of his men bent a serving girl over a table. ‘Bring her here!’ he shouted. ‘Bring the bitch here!’ But by the time the girl had been dragged to the platform where we ate, Guthfrith was vomiting into the rushes and he slept soon after. We left in the morning, mounted on horses taken from Æthelhelm’s beaten army, and I had sworn no oath.
I had ridden home with my men. With Finan, an Irishman, with Gerbruht, a Frisian, with Immar, a Dane, with Vidarr, a Norseman, and with Beornoth and Oswi, both Saxons. We were seven warriors, but we were brothers too. And with us rode the children we had rescued in Lundene, a dozen of the slaves we had freed from Gunnald’s ship, and Benedetta.
And Eadith was dead.
And I was at home at last, where the sea wind swept across the rock and where I thought of the dead, where I thought of the future, and where I thought of the three kingdoms that were now one and wanted a fourth.
Benedetta sat beside me. Alaina, as ever, was near her. The child crouched, watching as Benedetta took my hand. I gripped hers, maybe too hard, yet she did not complain or take it away. ‘You did not want her dead,’ she said.
‘But I did,’ I spoke softly and bleakly.
‘Then God will forgive you,’ she said, and leaned her head on my shoulder. ‘He made us,’ she added, ‘so He must take us as we are. That is His fate.’
I had come home.
Historical Note
Edward the Elder, as he is now known, died in July 924. He had reigned for twenty-five years, succeeding his father, Alfred, as King of Wessex in 899. In the regnal lists he is usually followed by Æthelstan, but there is plenty of evidence that Ælfweard, half-brother to Æthelstan, ruled Wessex for about a month following his father’s death. If that is true, as for fictional purposes I have plainly assumed it is, then Ælfweard’s death was extremely convenient for Æthelstan who thereby became the king of the three southern kingdoms of Saxon Britain: Wessex, East Anglia, and Mercia.
Much of the novel is fictional. We do not know how Ælfweard died, and his death probably took place at Oxford rather than Lundene, and it took another month before the West Saxons accepted Æthelstan as their new king. He was crowned at Kingston upon Thames that same year and was the first king to insist on being invested with the crown rather than with a helmet. Much of the reluctance to accept Æthelstan as king surely arose from the rumour that Edward had not married his mother, that he was indeed a bastard.
Edward’s reign left much of southern England free of the Viking scourge. King Alfred’s strategy of building burhs, which are heavily fortified towns, had been adopted by Edward and by his sister Æthelflaed in Mercia. East Anglia, which had been a Danish kingdom, was conquered and its towns fortified. Edward built more burhs along the Welsh border and in the north of Mercia to deter raids from western Northumbria where there were powerful Norse settlements. Sigtryggr, a Norseman, was King of Northumbria, ruling from York, and for purely fictional purposes I have brought his death forward by three years.
King Alfred undoubtedly dreamed of a united England, or Englaland, which would be one realm of everyone who spoke the ‘Ænglisc’ tongue. That sounds simple, though in truth an inhabitant of Kent would have found the English speech of a Northumbrian difficult to comprehend and vice versa, but nevertheless it was the same language. Nor was that ambition restricted to language. Alfred was famously pious, a man dedicated to the church, and all Christian folk, whether Saxon, Dane, or Norse, were included in his dream. Conversion was just as important as conquest. Æthelstan, when he assumed the throne of his father, inherited a much wider realm, a kingdom that included most English speakers, but there was still that awkward kingdom to the north, a kingdom that was part Christian and part pagan, part Saxon and part settled by Danes and Norsemen; the kingdom of Northumbria. That country’s fate must wait for another novel.
Æthelstan ruled for fifteen years and completed the unification of the English-speaking peoples. He never married and so left no heirs and was succeeded first by Edmund, the eldest son of Edward and Eadgifu, then by Edmund’s younger brother, Eadred. I have set the battle at the end of the novel at the Crepelgate, Cripplegate, and though the name does stretch back to Saxon times I invented Alfred’s decree allowing the severely handicapped the right to beg at that gate.
Sword of Kings is fiction, yet I hope it echoes a process that is little known; the creation of a country called England. Its birth is still some time off, and will prove bloody, but Uhtred will live to see it.
About the Author
Bernard Cornwell was born in London, raised in Essex and worked for the BBC for eleven years before meeting Judy, his American wife. Denied an American work permit, he wrote a novel instead and has been writing ever since. He and Judy divide their time between Cape Cod and Charleston, South Carolina.
www.bernardcornwell.net
/bernardcornwell
Also by Bernard Cornwell
The LAST KINGDOM Series
(formerly The WARRIOR Chronicles)
The Last Kingdom
The Pale Horseman
The Lords of the North
Sword Song
The Burning Land
Death of Kings
The Pagan Lord
The Empty Throne
Warriors of the Storm
The Flame Bearer
War of the Wolf
Azincourt
The GRAIL QUEST Series
Harlequin
Vagabond
Heretic
1356
Stonehenge
The Fort
The STARBUCK Chronicles
Rebel
Copperhead
Battle Flag
The Bloody Ground
The WARLORD Chronicles
The Winter King
The Enemy of God
Excalibur
Fools and Mortals
Gallows Thief
A Crowning Mercy
Fallen Angels
(Originally published under the name Susannah Kells, the pseudonym of Bernard Cornwell and his wife, Judy.)
Non-Fiction
Waterloo: The History of Four Days,
Three Armies and Three Battles
The SHARPE series
(in chronological order)
Sharpe’s Tiger (1799)
Sharpe’s Triumph (1803)
Sharpe’s Fortress (1803)
Sharpe’s Trafalgar (1805)
Sharpe’s Prey (1807)
Sharpe’s Rifles (1809)
Sharpe’s Havoc (1809)
Sharpe’s Eagle (1809)
Sharpe’s Gold (1810)
Sharpe’s Escape (1811)
Sharpe’s Fury (1811)
Sharpe’s Battle (1811)
Sharpe’s Company (1812)
Sharpe’s Sword (1812)
Sharpe’s Enemy (1812)
Sharpe’s Honour (1813)
Sharpe’s Regiment
(1813)
Sharpe’s Siege (1814)
Sharpe’s Revenge (1814)
Sharpe’s Waterloo (1815)
Sharpe’s Devil (1820-1821)
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Sword of Kings (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 12) Page 36