The Last Kingdom Series Books 4-6: Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings. Bernard Cornwell
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he talked about the saints whose stories he knew and loved, ‘So you should like him!’
‘I should like him simply because he was a soldier?’ I had asked sceptically.
‘Because he was a brave soldier!’ Beocca told me, ‘and,’ he paused, snuffling excitedly because he had important information to impart, ‘and when he was martyred the eyes of his executioner fell out!’ He beamed at me with his own one good eye. ‘They fell out, Uhtred! Just popped out of his head! That was God’s punishment, you see? You kill a holy man and God pulls out your eyes!’
‘So Brother Jænberht wasn’t holy?’ I had suggested. Jænberht was a monk I had killed in a church, much to the horror of Father Beocca and a crowd of other watching churchmen. ‘I’ve still got my eyes, father,’ I pointed out.
‘You deserve to be blinded!’ Beocca had said, ‘but God is merciful. Strangely merciful at times, I must say.’
I had thought about Alban for a while. ‘Why,’ I had then asked, ‘if your god can pull out a man’s eyes, didn’t he just save Alban’s life?’
‘Because God chose not to, of course!’ Beocca had answered sniffily, which is just the kind of answer you always get when you ask a Christian priest to explain another inexplicable act of their god.
‘Alban was a Roman soldier?’ I had asked, choosing not to query his god’s capriciously cruel nature.
‘He was a Briton,’ Beocca told me, ‘a very brave and very holy Briton.’
‘Does that mean he was Welsh?’
‘Of course it does!’
‘Maybe that’s why your god let him die,’ I said, and Beocca had made the sign of the cross and rolled his good eye to heaven.
So, though Alban was a Welshman, and we Saxons have no love for the Welsh, there was a church named for him in Lundene, and that church appeared as dead as the dead saint’s corpse when Gisela, Finan and I arrived. The street was night black. Some small firelight escaped past the window shutters of a few houses, and a tavern was loud with singing in a nearby street, but the church was black and silent. ‘I don’t like it,’ Gisela whispered, and I knew she had touched the amulet around her neck. Before we left the house she had cast her runesticks, hoping to see some pattern to this night, but the random fall of the sticks had mystified her.
Something moved in a nearby alleyway. It might have been nothing more than a rat, but both Finan and I turned, swords hissing out of our scabbards, and the noise in the alleyway immediately stopped. I let Serpent-Breath slide back into her fleece-lined scabbard.
The three of us were wearing dark cloaks with hoods so, if anyone was watching, they must have thought we were priests or monks as we stood outside Saint Alban’s dark and silent door. No light showed past that door’s edges. I tried to open it, pulling on the short rope that lifted the latch inside, but the door was apparently barred. I pushed hard, rattling the locked door, then beat on its timbers with a fist, but there was no response. Then Finan touched my arm and I heard the footsteps. ‘Over the street,’ I whispered, and we crossed to the alleyway where we had heard the noise. The small, tight passage stank of sewage.
‘They’re priests,’ Finan whispered to me.
Two men were walking down the street. They were momentarily visible in the small light cast by a loosely shuttered window and I saw their black robes and the glint from the silver crosses they wore on their breasts. They stopped at the church and one knocked hard on the barred door. He gave three knocks, paused, gave a single rap, paused again, then knocked three times more.
We heard the bar lifted and the creak of hinges as the door was swung open, then light flooded into the street as a curtain inside the doorway was pulled aside. A priest or monk let the two men step into the candlelit church, then peered up and down the roadway and I knew he was searching for whoever had rattled the door a few moments earlier. A question must have been called to him, for he turned and gave an answer. ‘No one here, lord,’ he said, then pulled the door shut. I heard the locking bar drop and, for an instant, light showed about the doorframe until the curtain inside was pulled closed and the church was dark again.
‘Wait,’ I said.
We waited, listening to the wind rustle across the thatched roofs and moan in the ruined houses. I waited a long time, letting the memory of the rattled door subside.
‘It must be close to midnight,’ Gisela whispered.
‘Whoever opens the door,’ I said softly, ‘has to be silenced.’ I did not know what was happening inside the church, but I did know it was so secret that the church was locked and a coded knock was needed to enter, and I also knew that we were uninvited, and that if the man who opened the door made a protest at our arrival then we might never discover Æthelflaed’s danger.
‘Leave him to me,’ Finan said happily.
‘He’s a churchman,’ I whispered, ‘does that worry you?’
‘In the dark, lord, all cats are black.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Leave him to me,’ the Irishman said again.
‘Then let’s go to church,’ I said, and the three of us crossed the street and I knocked hard on the door. I knocked three times, gave a single rap, then knocked three times again.
It took a long time for the door to be opened, but at last the bar was lifted and the door was pushed outwards. ‘They’ve started,’ a robed figure whispered, then gasped as I seized his collar and pulled him into the street where Finan hit him in the belly. The Irishman was a small man, but had extraordinary strength in his lithe arms, and the robed figure bent double with a sudden gasp. The door’s inner curtain had fallen across the opening and no one inside the church could see what happened outside. Finan punched the man again, felling him, then knelt on the fallen figure. ‘You go away,’ Finan whispered, ‘if you want to live. You just go a very long way from the church and you forget you ever saw us. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ the man said.
Finan tapped the man on the head to reinforce the order, then stood up and we saw the dark figure scrabble to his feet and stumble away downhill. I waited a brief while to make sure he had really gone, then the three of us stepped inside and Finan pulled the door shut and dropped the bar into its brackets.
And I pushed the curtain aside.
We were in the darkest part of the church, but I still felt exposed because the far end, where the altar stood, was ablaze with rushlights and wax candles. A line of robed men stood facing the altar and their shadows shrouded us. One of those priests turned towards us, but he just saw three cloaked and hooded figures and must have assumed we were more priests because he turned back to the altar.
It took me a moment to see who was on the altar’s wide shallow dais because they were hidden by the priests and monks, but then the churchmen all bowed to the silver crucifix and I saw Æthelred and Aldhelm standing on the left-hand side of the altar while Bishop Erkenwald was on the right. Between them was Æthelflaed. She wore a white linen shift belted just beneath her small breasts and her fair hair was hanging loose, as if she were a girl again. She looked frightened. An older woman stood behind Æthelred. She had hard eyes and her grey hair was rolled into a tight scroll on the crown of her skull.
Bishop Erkenwald was praying in Latin and every few minutes the watching priests and monks, there were nine of them altogether, echoed his words. Erkenwald was dressed in red and white robes on which jewelled crosses had been sewn. His voice, always harsh, echoed from the stone walls, while the responses of the churchmen were a dull murmur. Æthelred looked bored, while Aldhelm seemed to be taking a quiet delight in whatever mysteries unfolded in that flame-lit sanctuary.
The bishop finished his prayers, the watching men all said amen, and then there was a slight pause before Erkenwald took a book from the altar. He unwrapped the leather covers, then turned the stiff pages to a place he had marked with