Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [49]
‘I’m tired,’ I said, ‘and I’m not moving the boat.’ I smelt Lundene’s familiar stench, the mix of smoke and sewage, and thought of Gisela strewing lavender on the tiled floors. The thought of her gave me the usual pang of loss and waste. She had become fond of this house that had been built by the Romans, with its rooms edging a large courtyard and its great chamber facing the river.
‘You can’t go in there!’ the priest said sternly as I walked past him, ‘it belongs to Plegmund.’
‘Plegmund?’ I asked, ‘does he command the garrison here?’ The house was given to whoever commanded Lundene’s garrison, a job that a West Saxon called Weohstan had inherited from me, but Weohstan was a friend and I knew he would welcome me beneath his roof.
‘The house was granted to the archbishop,’ the priest said, ‘by Alfred.’
‘Archbishop?’ I asked, astonished. Plegmund was the new Archbishop of Contwaraburg, a Mercian, famously pious, a friend of Alfred’s and now the evident possessor of one of Lundene’s finer houses. ‘Did a young girl come here?’ I asked. ‘Or an Irishman? A warrior?’
The priest blanched then. He must have remembered either Sigunn or Finan coming to the house, and that recollection told him who I was. ‘You’re Uhtred?’ he asked.
‘I’m Uhtred,’ I said and pushed the house door open. The long room, which had been so welcoming when Gisela lived here, was now a place where monks copied manuscripts. There were six tall desks on which ink pots, quills and parchments lay. Two of the desks were occupied by clerks. One was writing, copying a manuscript, while the other was using a ruler and a needle to prick lines on an empty parchment. The pricked lines were a guide to keep the writing straight. The two men glanced at me nervously, then went back to their copying. ‘So did a girl come here?’ I asked the priest. ‘A Danish girl. Slight and pretty. She’d have had a half-dozen warriors escorting her.’
‘She did,’ he said, uncertain now.
‘And?’
‘She went to a tavern,’ he said stiffly, meaning he had rudely turned her away from the door.
‘And Weohstan?’ I asked. ‘Where’s he?’
‘He has quarters by the high church.’
‘Is Plegmund here in Lundene?’ I asked.
‘The archbishop is in Contwaraburg.’
‘And how many boats does he own?’ I asked.
‘None,’ the priest said.
‘Then he doesn’t need this damned dock, does he? So my boat stays there till I sell it, and if you touch it, priest, if you so much as lay one damned finger on it, if you have it moved, if you even think about moving it, I’ll take you to sea and teach you to be Christ-like.’
‘To be Christ-like?’ he asked.
‘He walked on water, didn’t he?’
That trivial confrontation left me dispirited because it was a reminder of how the church had placed its clammy grip on Alfred’s Wessex. It seemed that the king had granted Plegmund and Werferth, who was the Bishop of Wygraceaster, half of Lundene’s wharfage. Alfred wanted the church to be rich and its bishops to be powerful men because he relied on them to spread and enforce his laws and, if I helped spread Wessex’s grip northwards, so those bishops and priests and monks and nuns would follow to impose their joyless rules. Yet I was committed now, committed because of Æthelflaed, who was now in Wintanceaster. Weohstan told me that. ‘The king asked his family to gather,’ he said gloomily, ‘ready for his death.’ Weohstan was a stolid, bald, half-toothless West Saxon who commanded Lundene’s garrison. Lundene was supposedly Mercian, but Alfred had ensured that every man of power in the city held allegiance to Wessex, and Weohstan was a good man, unimaginative but diligent. ‘Except I need money to repair the walls,’ he grumbled to me, ‘and they won’t give it to me. They send coin to Rome to keep the pope in ale, yet they won’t pay for my wall.’
‘Steal it,’ I suggested.
‘Not that we’ve seen a Dane in months,’ he said.