The Flame Bearer by Bernard Cornwell
But I never discovered all who betrayed me, nor did my enemies ever discover all who betrayed them.
I spent good money on my own spies, just as my enemies spent gold to spy on me. I had all those men who served Edward in Wintanceaster, and I had a wine-steward, a clerk, and a blacksmith who were in Æthelhelm’s employment. I had no one in my cousin’s service. I had tried to find a man or woman who could tell me what happened inside Bebbanburg, but my efforts were never successful, though I did hear a great deal of my cousin’s doings from folk scattered up and down the east coast, and even from across the sea in Frisia. The same harbour taverns brought me news from Scotland because, again, I had no spies in Constantin’s court.
My cousin, I was sure, had someone watching me. Perhaps it was one of my own men? Or a priest in Eoferwic? Or a merchant in Dunholm? I did not know who, but I knew such men existed. And he had folk listening to rumours as I did. Christians had the strange habit of confessing their worst behaviour to their sorcerers, and many of those priests sold what they learned, and my cousin took care to donate money to churches and churchmen. I doubted that Cuthbert, my blind priest, took my cousin’s money. Cuthbert was loyal, and took a relish in passing me scraps he heard from such confessions. ‘Would you believe it, lord? Swithun and Vidarr’s wife! I’m told she’s ugly.’
‘Not truly ugly, but spiteful.’
‘Poor boy, he must be desperate.’
Not every man or woman who sent me news was a spy. Priests, monks, and nuns constantly exchanged letters, and many were happy to share what they had learned from some faraway abbey, and merchants were always keen to pass on gossip, though inevitably much of that information was wrong, and almost always it was long out of date by the time it made its way to Northumbria.
But now, in the days following the meetings at Hornecastre, I also had Æthelstan’s spies on my side. They did not know that. They probably thought they were keeping the young prince supplied with news while he suffered the ordeal of being my hostage, but Æthelstan promised to pass on much of what they told him. He was a Christian, of course, and was accompanied by three priests as well as six servants, four of whom were plainly warriors just pretending to be servants. ‘Do you trust them?’ I asked him as we hunted for deer in the hills north of Dunholm. It was a week since I had arrived back from Eoferwic, and, to bolster the rumour that I was leaving for Frisia, I had ordered my servants to start packing our goods.
‘I trust them with my life,’ Æthelstan said. ‘They’re all Mercian warriors, given to me by the Lady Æthelflaed.’
‘And the priests?’
‘I don’t trust Swithred, but the other two?’ He shrugged. ‘They’re young and full of noble ideals. I asked them to be my priests, they weren’t imposed on me.’
I smiled at that. Æthelstan was about twenty-two or twenty-three in that year, no older than the two young priests. ‘And Father Swithred was imposed on you?’ I asked.
‘By my father. Maybe he just sends news to him?’
‘And any letters he sends,’ I said, ‘will be read by the king’s clerks, who might be in Æthelhelm’s pay.’
‘So I assume,’ he said.
Swithred was an older man, maybe forty or even fifty, with a scalp as bald as an egg, sharp dark eyes, and a perpetual frown. He resented being among pagans and let the resentment show. ‘Have you noticed,’ I had asked him as we journeyed north, ‘that at least half my men are Christians?’
‘No Christian can serve a heathen lord,’ he had answered gruffly, then reluctantly added, ‘lord.’
‘You mean by serving me they cease to be Christians?’
‘I mean that they place themselves in dire need of redemption.’
‘They have their own church in Dunholm,’ I had told him, ‘and a priest. Would you provide the same for pagans in Wessex or Mercia?’
‘Of course not!’ he had said. He had been riding a tall grey horse, a fine beast, and he rode it well. ‘Might I ask,’ he had said, then seemed to think better of his question.
‘Ask,’ I had said.
‘What arrangements will be made for Prince Æthelstan’s comfort?’
He meant what arrangements would be made for his own comfort, but I pretended to believe that his concern was solely for the prince. ‘He’s a hostage,’ I had told him, ‘so we’ll probably keep him in a cattle byre or maybe in a pig shed, fasten his ankles with chains and feed him slops and water.’
Æthelstan, who had been listening, laughed. ‘Don’t believe him, father.’
‘And if even one West Saxon crosses the frontier,’ I had continued, ‘I’ll cut his throat. And yours too!’
‘This is not amusing, lord,’ Father Swithred had said sternly.
‘He will be treated as the prince that he is,’ I had assured him, ‘with honour, with comfort, and with respect.’
And so he was. Æthelstan feasted with us, hunted with us, and worshipped in the small church inside Dunholm’s walls. He had become more pious as he grew into manhood. He still had his fierce joy in life, a hunger for activity, and an appetite for laughter, but now, much like his grandfather Alfred, he prayed every day. He read Christian texts, guided by the two young priests he had brought with him to Dunholm. ‘What changed you?’ I asked as we waited on the edge of some woodland. We were armed with hunting bows. I was never a good archer, but Æthelstan had already killed two fine beasts with an arrow apiece.
‘You changed me,’ he said.
‘Me!’
‘You persuaded me I could be king, and if I’m to be king, lord, then I must have God’s blessing.’
I raised the bow and notched an arrow as leaves sounded loud in the wood, but no beast appeared and the noise subsided. ‘What’s wrong with having Thor and Woden on your side?’
He smiled at that. ‘I’m a Christian, lord. And I try to be a good one.’ I made a grumbling noise, but said nothing. ‘God won’t reward me,’ he said, ‘if I do evil.’
‘The gods have looked after me,’ I said truculently.
‘By sending you to Frisia?’
‘Nothing wrong with Frisia.’
‘It isn’t Bebbanburg.’
‘When you become king,’ I said, watching the trees as I spoke, ‘you’ll discover that some ambitions can be fulfilled and some cannot. The important thing is to recognise which is which.’
‘So you won’t go north to Bebbanburg?’ he asked.
‘I told you, I’m going to Frisia.’
‘And when you reach,’ he paused, then stressed the next word, ‘Frisia, will there be fighting?’
‘There’s always fighting, lord Prince.’
‘And this fighting in,’ again the slight pause, ‘Frisia will be fierce?’
‘Fighting always is.’
‘Then you will allow me to fight alongside you?’
‘No!’ I spoke more vehemently than I had intended. ‘The fight will be none of your concern. The enemies I fight will not be your enemies. And you’re my hostage, so I have a duty to keep you alive.’
He was gazing at the tree line, waiting for prey, his bow half drawn, though the arrow was still pointing to the ground. ‘I owe you a lot, lord,’ he said. ‘You have protected me, I know that, and one way to repay you is to help you in your battles.’
‘And if you die in battle,’ I said brutally, ‘then I’ve just done Æthelhelm a favour.’
He nodded, accepting that truth. ‘The Lord Æthelhelm,’ he said, ‘wanted me to command the troops he sent to Hornecastre. He asked my father to appoint me, but father sent Brunulf instead.’
‘Urias Hetthius,’ I said.
He laughed at that. ‘You were well educated!’
‘By Lady Æthelflaed.’
‘My clever aunt,’ he said approvingly, then took his hand off the bow’s cord to make the sign of the cross, doubtless saying a silent prayer for her recovery at the same time. ‘Yes, Æthelhelm thought he could arrange my death in battle.’
Urias Hetthius was a soldier
‘Unlucky?’
‘He was married to a beautiful woman,’ Cuthbert had told me wistfully, ‘one of those girls you look at and you can’t look away!’
‘I’ve known a few,’ I had said.
‘And you married them, lord,’ Cuthbert had said with a grin. ‘Well David wanted to bounce on the bed with Uriah’s wife, so he sent a message to Uriah’s commander and told him to put the poor man in the front rank of the shield wall.’
‘And he died?’
‘Oh he did, lord! Poor bastard was cut to pieces!’
‘And David …’ I had begun.
‘Bounced the pretty wife, lord, probably from dawn to dusk and back to dawn again. Lucky man!’
And Æthelhelm had wished that fate on Æthelstan. He had wanted him isolated deep in Northumbria in the hope that we would slaughter him. ‘So if you think I’m going to risk your life in battle,’ I told Æthelstan, ‘you’re dreaming. You’ll stay well away from any fighting.’
‘In Frisia,’ Æthelstan said pointedly.
‘In Frisia,’ I repeated.
‘So when do you leave?’ he asked.
But that I could not answer. I was waiting for news. I wanted my spies or Æthelstan’s informants to tell me what my enemies planned. Some folk wondered why I did not march straight to Bebbanburg, or, if they believed the rumours, sail directly to Frisia. Instead I lingered at Dunholm; hunting, practising sword-craft, and feasting. ‘What are you waiting for?’ Eadith asked me one day.
The two of us were riding in the hills west of Dunholm, hawks on our wrists, trailed by a dozen men who guarded me whenever I left the fortress. None of those men were in earshot. ‘I can take fewer than two hundred warriors to Bebbanburg,’ I told her, ‘and my cousin has at least that many behind his ramparts.’
‘But you’re Uhtred,’ she said loyally.
I smiled at that. ‘And Uhtred knows the ramparts of Bebbanburg,’ I said, ‘and I don’t want to die under those walls.’
‘So what will change?’
‘My cousin is getting hungry. One of his granaries burned. So he’ll be negotiating for someone to help him, someone to bring him food. But the coast is guarded by Einar’s ships, so whoever takes the food north will need a fleet because they’ll have to fight their way to the Sea Gate.’ For a time I had suspected Hrothweard, but my daughter assured me that the archbishop was neither collecting food nor recruiting shipmasters, and my own meeting with the man had convinced me that she spoke the truth.
‘And when that fleet sails,’ Eadith began, then paused as she saw what I intended. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘I see! Your cousin will be expecting ships!’
‘He will.’
‘And one ship looks much like another!’ She was a clever woman, as clever as she was beautiful.
‘But I can’t put to sea,’ I said, ‘until I know where that fleet is and who commands it and when it will sail.’
It was a time of waiting for news. I knew much of what happened on Bebbanburg’s land because I sent scouts to watch Constantin’s men, and they reported that Domnall, Constantin’s commander, was still content to starve the fortress into submission. Scottish troops had garrisoned two of the forts on the Roman wall. Both garrisons were small because Constantin had other worries; there were aggressive Norsemen in the far north of his country and the ever troublesome kingdom of Strath Clota to the west. Both needed troops to contain them, so his men on the wall were simply there to enforce his claim to Bebbanburg’s land and, of course, to warn him if we brought an army north. He would be alarmed when he heard that the truce between the Saxons and Sigtryggr had been renewed for over a year, and my fear was that he would order an assault on Bebbanburg’s ramparts to forestall any attempt by Sigtryggr and myself to drive him away, but his spies would be reassuring him that Sigtryggr was strengthening the walls of Lindcolne and Eoferwic, readying himself for the inevitable attack that would come when the truce ended. There would be no hint of any preparations to attack Constantin’s men, and common sense would convince him that Sigtryggr would not want to lose men in a war against Scotland when he was about to face a larger war against the southern Saxons. Constantin was willing to wait, knowing that the fortress would eventually starve. And perhaps Constantin even believed my tale of going to Frisia. He had to be contemplating an assault on Bebbanburg’s walls, but he knew how slaughterous that attack would be, and the news he received from the south suggested he did not need to sacrifice scores of his men to gain a prize that would eventually be given to him by hunger.
So all of us in Britain were waiting for news. It was a time of rumours, of whispered tales that were designed to mislead and that sometimes were true. A merchant selling fine leather promised me that the town reeve of Mældunesburh, Æthelhelm’s home town in Wiltunscir, had told him the ealdorman planned to invade Northumbria with or without King Edward’s help. A priest in far-off Contwaraburg wrote that Edward was making an alliance with Constantin whereby both men would invade Northumbria and divide the land between them. ‘I swear this,’ the priest wrote, ‘on the holy blood of Christ Himself, and assure you that the battles will begin on the Feast Day of Saint Gunthiern.’ Saint Gunthiern’s feast was already past when the letter reached Archbishop Hrothweard in Eoferwic, but still one of his clerks copied the words and gave them to my daughter, who, in turn, sent them to me.
In the end the news I wanted came from Merewalh who commanded Æthelflaed’s household warriors. Merewalh was an old friend and a loyal supporter of Æthelflaed, who, he wrote, had commanded him to tell me that supplies were being sent to the East Anglian port of Dumnoc where a fleet was being assembled. ‘She has this on the authority of Father Cuthwulf, who is mass priest to Lord Æthelhelm, and she prays you will not reveal his name, and Father Cuthwulf moreover tells her that if God wills it then the Lord Æthelhelm’s fleet will put to sea after the feast of Saint Eanswida.’
And that made sense. Saint Eanswida’s feast day was at the end of the harvest, a time when food was plentiful, and, if a man wanted to supply a besieged fortress with the food that would enable it to hold out for another year, then the late summer was the time to act. And of all the men in Britain who hated me, who wanted revenge on me, Æthelhelm was the most dangerous. I had always thought him the likeliest man to help my cousin, but I could not be sure until Merewalh’s letter arrived.
And so, leaving Sihtric and eighteen men to hold Dunholm, I moved the rest of my followers with all their wives, children, servants, and slaves to Eoferwic. We were going to Frisia, I told them, and then I took three men and went to Dumnoc instead.
I chose three Saxon Christians as my companions because I suspected that Dumnoc, an East Anglian town that was newly conquered by the West Saxons, might be in a vengeful mood against both Northmen and pagans. I took Cerdic, one of my older men who was slow of wit but loyal to a fault. Oswi was much younger, and had served me since he was a boy. Now he was a lithe and eager fighter. The third was Swithun, a West Saxon who looked angelic, had a quick smile and a ready laugh, but also had the sly instincts and nimble fingers of a thief.
The four of us took passage on a West Saxon ship that had berthed in Eoferwic with a cargo of Frankish glassware and was now returning to Lundene with her belly full of Northumbrian hides and silver bars. The shipmaster, Renwald, was glad of the gold we paid him and for our long knives, though he doubted I would be of much use in a fight. ‘But you other three look useful,’ he said.
Swithun grinned at him. ‘Grandpa can fight,’ he said, ‘I know he don’t look much, but he’s a scoundrel in a scrap. Aren’t you, grandpa!’ he shouted at me, ‘you’re a right old bastard in a bundle!’
Since I had received the news about Dumnoc I had stopped shaving. I no longer bothered to comb my
‘Mind you,’ Renwald went on, ‘if we’re attacked by anything larger than a fishing boat, then your knives won’t make much difference.’ None of us carried swords or seaxes, only knives, because I did not want to announce to the men in Dumnoc that we were warriors.
‘Are there pirates?’ I mumbled.
‘What did he say?’
‘Speak up, grandpa!’ Swithun shouted.
‘Are there pirates?’ I half shouted back, making sure I dribbled into the white stubble on my chin.
‘He wants to know if there are pirates,’ Swithun told Renwald.
‘There are always pirates,’ Renwald said, ‘but they’re mostly small craft these days. I haven’t seen any Danish longships since King Edward captured the rest of East Anglia. God be praised.’
‘God be praised,’ I echoed piously, and made the sign of the cross. For this journey and for this cause, I was pretending to be a Christian, and even wore a crucifix instead of a hammer. I was also pretending that Swithun was my grandson, a pretence he had taken up with indecent enthusiasm.
Renwald, naturally, wanted to know where we had come from and why we were travelling, and Swithun spun a story about being driven from our land north of the wall. ‘It was the Scots,’ he said, spitting over the side of the ship.