The Empty Throne. Bernard Cornwell
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was married to Æthelred, the Lord of Mercia, but everyone in Wessex and in Mercia knew she had been my father’s lover for years. It was Æthelflaed who had brought her men north to reinforce Ceaster’s garrison, and Æthelflaed who had devised the trap that now had Haki on his knees in front of her horse.
She looked at me. ‘You did well,’ she said, almost grudgingly.
‘Thank you, my lady,’ I said.
‘You’ll take him south,’ she said, gesturing at Haki. ‘He can die in Gleawecestre.’
I thought that a strange decision. Why not let him die here on the pale winter grass? ‘You will not go back south, my lady?’ I asked her.
It was plain she thought the question impertinent, but she answered anyway. ‘I have much to do here. You will take him.’ She held up a gloved hand to stop me as I turned away. ‘Make sure you arrive before Saint Cuthbert’s Day. You hear me?’
I bowed for answer, then we tied Haki’s hands behind his back, mounted him on a poor horse, and rode back to Ceaster where we arrived after dark. We had left the Norsemen’s bodies where they fell, food for ravens, but we carried our own dead with us, just five men. We took all the Norse horses and loaded them with captured weapons, with mail, with clothes and with shields. We rode back victorious, carrying Haki’s captured banner and following Lord Æthelred’s standard of the white horse, the banner of Saint Oswald, and Æthelflaed’s strange flag which showed a white goose holding a sword and a cross. The goose was the symbol of Saint Werburgh, a holy woman who had miraculously rid a cornfield of marauding geese, though it was beyond my wits to understand why a job any ten-year-old could have done with a loud voice was considered a miracle. Even a three-legged dog could have rid the field of geese, but that was not a comment I would have dared make to Æthelflaed, who held the goose-frightening saint in the highest regard.
The burh at Ceaster had been built by the Romans so the ramparts were of stone, unlike the burhs we Saxons built that had walls of earth and timber. We passed under the high fighting platform of the gateway, threading a tunnel lit by torches and so into the main street that ran arrow straight between high stone buildings. The sound of horses’ hooves echoed from the walls, then the bells of Saint Peter’s church rang out to celebrate Æthelflaed’s return.
Æthelflaed and most of her men went to the church to give thanks for the victory before gathering in the great hall that stood at the centre of Ceaster’s streets. Sihtric and I put Haki into a small stone hut, leaving his hands tied for the night. ‘I have gold,’ he said in Danish.
‘You’ll have straw for a bed and piss for ale,’ Sihtric told him, then we shut the door and left two men to guard him. ‘So we’re off to Gleawecestre?’ Sihtric said to me as we went to the hall.
‘So she says.’
‘You’ll be happy then.’
‘Me?’
He grinned toothlessly. ‘The redhead at the Wheatsheaf.’
‘One of many, Sihtric,’ I said airily, ‘one of many.’
‘And your girl in the farm near Cirrenceastre too,’ he added.
‘She is a widow,’ I said with as much dignity as I could muster, ‘and I’m told it’s our Christian duty to protect widows.’
‘You call that protecting her?’ he laughed. ‘Are you going to marry her?’
‘Of course not. I’ll marry for land.’
‘You should be married,’ he said. ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-one, I think.’
‘Should be long married, then,’ he said. ‘What about Ælfwynn?’
‘What about her?’ I asked.
‘She’s a pretty little mare,’ Sihtric said, ‘and I dare say she knows how to gallop.’ He pushed open the heavy door and we walked into the hall that was lit by rushlights and by a huge fire in a crude stone hearth that had cracked the Roman floor. There were not enough tables for both the burh’s garrison and for the men Æthelflaed had brought north, so some ate squatting on the floor, though I was given a place at the high table close to Æthelflaed. She was flanked by two priests, one of whom intoned a long prayer in Latin before we were allowed to start on the food.
I was scared of Æthelflaed. She had a hard face, though men said she had been beautiful as a young woman. In that year, 911, she must have been forty or more years old, and her hair, which was golden, had pale grey streaks. She had very blue eyes and a gaze that could unsettle the bravest of men. That gaze was cold and thoughtful, as if she was reading your thoughts and despising them. I was not the only person who was scared of Æthelflaed. Her own daughter, Ælfwynn, would hide from her mother. I liked Ælfwynn, who was full of laughter and mischief. She was a little younger than I was and we had spent much of our childhood together, and many people thought the two of us should be married. I did not know whether Æthelflaed thought that a good idea. She seemed to dislike me, but she seemed to dislike most people, and yet, for all that coldness, she was adored in Mercia. Her husband, Æthelred, Lord of Mercia, was acknowledged as the ruler of the country, but it was his estranged wife people loved.
‘Gleawecestre,’ she now said to me.
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘You’ll take all the plunder, all of it. Use wagons. And take the prisoners.’
‘Yes, my lady.’ The prisoners were mostly children we had taken from Haki’s steadings during the first days of our raiding. They would be sold as slaves.
‘And you must arrive before Saint Cuthbert’s Day,’ she repeated that command. ‘You understand?’
‘Before Saint Cuthbert’s Day,’ I said dutifully.
She gave me that long, silent stare. The priests flanking her gazed at me too, their expressions as hostile as hers. ‘And you’ll take Haki,’ she went on.
‘And Haki,’ I said.
‘And you will hang him in front of my husband’s hall.’
‘Make it slow,’ one of the priests said. There are two ways of hanging a man, the quick way and the slow agonising way. ‘Yes, father,’ I said.
‘But show him to the people first,’ Æthelflaed ordered.
‘I will, my lady, of course,’ I said, then hesitated.
‘What?’ She saw my uncertainty.
‘Folk will want to know why you stayed here, my lady,’ I said.
She bridled at that, and the second priest frowned. ‘It is none of their business …’ he began.
Æthelflaed waved him to silence. ‘Many Norsemen are leaving Ireland,’ she said carefully, ‘and wanting to settle here. They must be stopped.’
‘Haki’s defeat will make them fearful,’ I suggested carefully.
She ignored my clumsy compliment. ‘Ceaster prevents them using the River Dee,’ she said, ‘but the Mærse is open. I shall build a burh on its bank.’
‘A good idea, my lady,’ I said and received a look of such scorn that I blushed.
She dismissed me with a gesture and I went back to the mutton stew. I watched her from the corner of my eye, seeing the hard jawline, the bitterness on the lips, and I wondered what in God’s name had attracted my father to her and why men revered her.
But tomorrow I would be free of her.
‘Men follow her,’ Sihtric said, ‘because other than your father she’s the only one who’s ever been willing to fight.’
We were travelling south, following a road I had come to know well in the last few years. The road followed the boundary between Mercia and Wales, a boundary that was the subject of constant argument