The Last Kingdom Series Books 1-6. Bernard Cornwell
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‘we shall prove by oaths.’ He lowered the parchment, gave me a look of pure loathing, then walked back to the edge of the dais.
‘He’s lying,’ I snarled.
‘You will have a chance to speak,’ a fierce-looking churchman sitting beside Alfred said. He was in monk’s robes, but over them he wore a priest’s half cape richly embroidered with crosses. He had a full head of white hair and a deep, stern voice.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked Beocca.
‘The most holy Æthelred,’ Beocca said softly and, seeing I did not recognise the name, ‘Archbishop of Contwaraburg, of course.’
The archbishop leaned over to speak with Erkenwald. Ælswith was staring at me. She had never liked me, and now she was watching my destruction and taking a great pleasure from it. Alfred, meanwhile, was studying the roof beams as though he had never noticed them before, and I realised he intended to take no part in this trial, for trial it was. He would let other men prove my guilt, but doubtless he would pronounce sentence, and not just on me, it seemed, because the archbishop scowled. ‘Is the second prisoner here?’
‘He is held in the stables,’ Odda the Younger said.
‘He should be here,’ the archbishop said indignantly. ‘A man has a right to hear his accusers.’
‘What other man?’ I demanded.
It was Leofric, who was brought into the hall in chains, and there was no outcry against him because men perceived him as my follower. The crime was mine, Leofric had been snared by it, and now he would suffer for it, but he plainly had the sympathy of the men in the hall as he was brought to stand beside me. They knew him, he was of Wessex, while I was a Northumbrian interloper. He gave me a rueful glance as the guards led him to my side. ‘Up to our arses in it,’ he muttered.
‘Quiet!’ Beocca hissed.
‘Trust me,’ I said.
‘Trust you?’ Leofric asked bitterly.
But I had glanced at Iseult and she had given me the smallest shake of her head, an indication, I reckoned, that she had seen the outcome of this day and it was good. ‘Trust me,’ I said again.
‘The prisoners will be silent,’ the archbishop said.
‘Up to our royal arses,’ Leofric said quietly.
The archbishop gestured at Father Erkenwald. ‘You have oath-makers?’ he asked.
‘I do, lord.’
‘Then let us hear the first.’
Erkenwald gestured to another priest who was standing by the door leading to the passage at the back of the hall. The door was opened and a slight figure in a dark cloak entered. I could not see his face for he wore a hood. He hurried to the front of the dais and there bowed low to the king and went on his knees to the archbishop who held out a hand so that his heavy, jewelled ring could be kissed. Only then did the man stand, push back his hood and turn to face me.
It was the Ass. Asser, the Welsh monk. He stared at me as yet another priest brought him a gospel-book on which he laid a thin hand. ‘I make oath,’ he said in accented English, still staring at me, ‘that what I say is truth, and God so help me in that endeavour and condemn me to the eternal fires of hell if I dissemble.’ He bent and kissed the gospel-book with the tenderness of a man caressing a lover.
‘Bastard,’ I muttered.
Asser was a good oath-maker. He spoke clearly, describing how I had come to Cornwalum in a ship that bore a beast-head on its prow and another on its stern. He told how I had agreed to help King Peredur, who was being attacked by a neighbour assisted by the pagan Svein, and how I had betrayed Peredur by allying myself with the Dane. ‘Together,’ Asser said, ‘they made great slaughter, and I myself saw a holy priest put to death.’
‘You ran like a chicken,’ I said to him, ‘you couldn’t see a thing.’
Asser turned to the king and bowed. ‘I did run, lord king. I am a brother monk, not a warrior, and when Uhtred turned that hillside red with Christian blood I did take flight. I am not proud of that, lord king, and I have earnestly sought God’s forgiveness for my cowardice.’
Alfred smiled and the archbishop waved away Asser’s remarks as if they were nothing. ‘And when you left the slaughter,’ Erkenwald asked, ‘what then?’
‘I watched from a hilltop,’ Asser said, ‘and I saw Uhtred of Oxton leave that place in the company of the pagan ship. Two ships sailing westwards.’
‘They sailed westwards?’ Erkenwald asked.
‘To the west,’ Asser confirmed.
Erkenwald glanced at me. There was silence in the hall as men leaned forward to catch each damning word. ‘And what lay to the west?’ Erkenwald asked.
‘I cannot say,’ Asser said. ‘But if they did not go to the end of the world then I assume they turned about Cornwalum to go into the Sæfern Sea.’
‘And you know no more?’ Erkenwald asked.
‘I know I helped bury the dead,’ Asser said, ‘and I said prayers for their souls, and I saw the smouldering embers of the burned church, but what Uhtred did when he left the place of slaughter I do not know. I only know he went westwards.’
Alfred was pointedly taking no part in the proceedings, but he plainly liked Asser for, when the Welshman’s testimony was done, he beckoned him to the dais and rewarded him with a coin and a moment of private conversation. The Witan talked among themselves, sometimes glancing at me with the curiosity we give to doomed men. The Lady Ælswith, suddenly so gracious, smiled on Asser.
‘You have anything to say?’ Erkenwald demanded of me when Asser had been dismissed.
‘I shall wait,’ I said, ‘till all your lies are told.’
The truth, of course, was that Asser had told the truth, and told it plainly, clearly and persuasively. The king’s councillors had been impressed, just as they were impressed by Erkenwald’s second oath-maker.
It was Steapa Snotor, the warrior who was never far from Odda the Younger’s side. His back was straight, his shoulders square and his feral face with its stretched skin was grim. He glanced at me, bowed to the king, then laid a huge hand on the gospel-book and let Erkenwald lead him through the oath, and he swore to tell the truth on pain of hell’s eternal agony, and then he lied. He lied calmly in a flat, toneless voice. He said he had been in charge of the soldiers who guarded the place at Cynuit where the new church was being built, and how two ships had come in the dawn and how warriors streamed from the ships, and how he had fought against them and killed six of them, but there were too many, far too many, and he had been forced to retreat, but he had seen the attackers slaughter the priests and he had heard the pagan leader shout his name as a boast. ‘Svein, he was called.’
‘And Svein brought two ships?’
Steapa paused and frowned, as though he had trouble counting to two, then nodded. ‘He had two ships.’
‘He led both?’
‘Svein led one of the ships,’ Steapa said, then he pointed a finger at me. ‘And he led the other.’
The audience seemed to growl and the noise was so threatening that Alfred slapped the arm of his chair and finally stood to restore quiet. Steapa seemed unmoved. He stood, solid as an oak, and though he had not told his tale as convincingly as Brother Asser, there was something very damning in his testimony. It was so matter-of-fact, so unemotionally told, so straightforward, and none of it was true.
‘Uhtred led the second ship,’ Erkenwald said, ‘but did Uhtred join in the killing?’
‘Join it?’ Steapa asked. ‘He led it.’ He snarled those words and the men in the hall growled their anger.
Erkenwald turned to the king. ‘Lord king,’ he said,