Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [105]
He giggled, he really giggled, then nodded. ‘Yes, lord.’
‘So she’s not as clever as she looks,’ I said sourly. ‘But she must finish here first. And if she gets pregnant I’ll seal you up with the other bones.’
The tomb was doing exactly what I had wished it to do. The questions men asked told us what was on their minds, thus Sigebriht’s anxious enquiries about Æthelwold confirmed that he had not abandoned his hopes of becoming King of Cent if Æthelwold were to topple Edward from the throne. The angel’s second task was to fight the rumours that came south from Ælfadell’s prophecies that the Danes would gain the overlordship of all Britain. Those rumours had dispirited men in both Mercia and Wessex, but now they heard a different prophecy, that the Saxons would be the victors, and that message, I knew, would encourage the Saxons, just as it would intrigue and irritate the Danes. I wanted to goad them. I wanted to defeat them.
I suppose that one day, long after I am dead, the Danes will find a leader who can unite them, and then the world will be consumed by flames and the halls of Valhalla will fill with the feasting dead, but so long as I have known, loved and fought the Danes they have been quarrelsome and divided. My present wife’s priest, an idiot, says that is because God has sown dissension among them, but I have always thought it was because the Danes are a stubborn, proud and independent people, unwilling to bend their knees to a man simply because he wears a crown. They will follow a man with a sword, but as soon as he fails they drift away to find another leader, and so their armies come together, fall apart, and then reform. I have known Danes who almost succeeded in keeping a mighty army together and leading it to complete triumph, there was Ubba, Guthrum, even Haesten, all of them tried, yet in the end they all failed. The Danes did not fight for a cause or even for a country and certainly not for a creed, but only for themselves, and when they suffered a defeat their armies vanished as men went to find another lord who might lead them to silver, women and land.
And my angels were a lure to persuade them that there was reputation to be made in war. ‘Have any Danes visited the tomb?’ I asked Ludda.
‘Two, lord,’ he said, ‘both merchants.’
‘And you told them?’
Ludda hesitated, glanced at Æthelflaed, then back to me. ‘I told them what you ordered me to tell them, lord.’
‘You did?’
He nodded, then made the sign of the cross. ‘I told them you would die, lord, and that a Dane would earn great renown by slaying Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’ Æthelflaed drew in a sharp breath and then, like Ludda, made the sign of the cross. ‘You told them what?’ she asked.
‘What Lord Uhtred told me to tell them, lady,’ Ludda said nervously.
‘You’re risking fate,’ Æthelflaed told me.
‘I want the Danes to come,’ I said, ‘and I need to offer them a bait.’
Because Plegmund was wrong, and Æthelhelm was wrong, and Edward was wrong. Peace is a fine thing, but we only have peace when our enemies are too scared to make war. The Danes were not quiet because the Christian god had silenced them, but because they were distracted by other things. Edward wanted to believe they had abandoned their dreams of conquering Wessex, yet I knew they would come. Æthelwold had not abandoned his dream either. He would come, and with him would come a savage horde of sword-Danes and spear-Danes, and I wanted them to come. I wanted to get it over. I wanted to be the sword of the Saxons.
And still they did not come.
I never did understand why it took the Danes so long to take advantage of Alfred’s death. I suppose if Æthelwold had been a more inspirational leader instead of being a weak man then they might have come sooner, but they waited so long that all Wessex was convinced that their god had answered their prayers and made the Danes peaceable. And all the while my angels sang their two songs, one to the Saxons and one to the Danes, and perhaps they made a difference. There were plenty of Danes who wanted to nail my skull to their gable,