Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [26]
‘They would say that.’
‘And Lord Edward is betrothed.’
‘Betrothed?’
‘I went to the ceremony, lord. He’s going to marry the Lady Ælflæd.’
‘The ealdorman’s daughter?’
‘Yes, lord. She was the king’s choice.’
‘Poor Edward,’ I said, remembering Father Willibald’s gossip that Alfred’s heir had wanted to marry a girl from Cent. Ælflæd was daughter to Æthelhelm, Ealdorman of Sumorsæte, and presumably Alfred had wanted the marriage to tie Edward to the most powerful of Wessex’s noble families. I wondered what had happened to the girl from Cent.
Sigurd had gone back to his lands from where, in petulance, he sent raiders into Saxon Mercia to burn, kill, enslave and steal. It was border war, no different from the perpetual fighting between the Scots and the Northumbrians. None of his raiders touched my estates, but my fields lay south of Beornnoth’s wide lands and Sigurd concentrated his anger on Ealdorman Ælfwold, the son of the man who had died fighting beside me at Beamfleot, and he left Beornnoth’s territory unscathed, and that I thought was interesting. So in March, when stitchwort was whitening the hedgerows, I took fifteen men north to Beornnoth’s hall with a new year’s gift of cheese, ale and salted mutton. I found the old man wrapped in a fur cloak and slumped in his chair. His face was sunken, his eyes watery, and his lower lip trembled uncontrollably. He was dying. Beortsig, his son, watched me sullenly.
‘It’s time,’ I said, ‘to teach Sigurd a lesson.’
Beornnoth scowled. ‘Stop pacing around,’ he ordered me, ‘you make me feel old.’
‘You are old,’ I said.
He grimaced at that. ‘I’m like Alfred,’ he said, ‘I’m going to meet my god. I’m going to the judgement seat to find out who lives and who burns. They’ll let him into heaven, won’t they?’
‘They’ll welcome Alfred,’ I agreed, ‘and you?’
‘At least it will be warm in hell,’ he said, then feebly wiped some spittle from his beard. ‘So you want to fight Sigurd?’
‘I want to kill the bastard.’
‘You had your chance before Christmas,’ Beortsig said. I ignored him.
‘He’s waiting,’ Beornnoth said, ‘waiting for Alfred to die. He won’t attack till Alfred’s dead.’
‘He’s attacking now,’ I said.
Beornnoth shook his head. ‘Just raiding,’ he said dismissively, ‘and he’s pulled his fleet ashore at Snotengaham.’
‘Snotengaham?’ I asked, surprised. That was about as far inland as any seagoing ship could travel in Britain.
‘That tells you he’s not planning anything other than raids.’
‘It tells me he’s not planning seaborne raids,’ I said, ‘but what’s to stop him marching overland?’
‘Perhaps he will,’ Beornnoth allowed, ‘when Alfred dies. For now, he’s only stealing a few cattle.’
‘Then I want to steal a few of his cattle,’ I said.
Beortsig scowled and his father shrugged. ‘Why prod the devil when he’s dozing?’ the old man asked.
‘Ælfwold doesn’t think he’s dozing,’ I said.
Beornnoth laughed. ‘Ælfwold’s young,’ he said dismissively, ‘and he’s ambitious, he asks for trouble.’
You could divide the Saxon lords of Mercia into two camps, those who resented the West Saxon dominance of their land and those who welcomed it. Ælfwold’s father had supported Alfred, while Beornnoth harked back to earlier times when Mercia had its own king and, like others of his mind, he had refused to send troops to help me fight Haesten. He had preferred his men to be under Æthelred’s command, which meant they had garrisoned Gleawecestre against an attack that had never come. There had been bitterness between the two camps ever since, but Beornnoth was a decent enough man, or perhaps he was so close to death that he did not want to prolong old enmities. He invited us to stay for the night. ‘Tell me stories,’ he said, ‘I like stories. Tell me about Beamfleot.’ That was a generous invitation, an implicit admission that his men had been in the wrong place the previous summer.
I did not tell the whole story. Instead, in his hall, when the great fire lit the beams red and the ale had made men boisterous, I told how the elder Ælfwold had died. How he had charged with me and how we had scattered