Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [56]
‘It comes from the scriptures, lord,’ he said, ‘from the book of Deuteronomy, and it means a bastard isn’t allowed into the church and it warns that the curse will last for ten generations.’
I stared at him in disbelief. ‘You were training to be a priest when I met you!’
‘And I left my training,’ he said. ‘I had to. How could I be a priest when God bans me from his congregation?’
‘So you can’t be a priest,’ I said, ‘but you can be married!’
‘Usque ad decimam generationem,’ he said. ‘My children would be cursed, and their children too, and every child for ten generations.’
‘So every bastard is doomed?’
‘God tells us that, lord.’
‘Then he’s a bloody-minded god,’ I said savagely, then saw that his distress was real. ‘It wasn’t your fault that Alfred played piggyback with a servant girl.’
‘True, lord.’
‘So how can his sin affect you?’
‘God is not always fair, lord, but he is just within his rules.’
‘Just! So if I can’t catch a thief I should whip his children instead and you’d call me just?’
‘God abhors sin, lord, and what better way to avert sin than threaten it with the direst punishment?’ He edged his horse to the left side of the road to allow a string of packhorses to pass by. They were travelling northwards, carrying sheepskins. ‘If God didn’t punish us severely,’ Osferth went on, ‘then what is to stop sin spreading?’
‘I like sin,’ I said and nodded to the horseman whose servants led the packhorses. ‘Does Alfred live?’ I asked him.
‘Scarcely,’ the man said. He made the sign of the cross and nodded thanks when I wished him a safe journey.
Osferth frowned at me. ‘Why did you bring me here, lord?’ he asked.
‘Why not?’
‘You could have brought Finan, but you chose me.’
‘You don’t want to see your father?’
He said nothing for a while, then turned to me and I saw there were tears in his eyes. ‘Yes, lord.’
‘That’s why I brought you,’ I said, and just then we turned a bend in the road and Wintanceaster was beneath us, its new church rearing high above the huddle of roofs.
Wintanceaster was, of course, the chief of Alfred’s burhs, those towns fortified against the Danes. It was surrounded by a deep ditch, flooded in places, beyond which was a high earthen bank topped by a palisade of oak trunks. There are few things worse than assaulting such a place. The defenders, like Haesten’s men at Beamfleot, hold all the advantage and can rain weapons and stones on the attackers, who have to struggle through obstacles and try to climb ladders that are being hacked apart by axes. Alfred’s burhs were what had made Wessex safe. The Danes could still ravage the countryside, but everything of value would be pulled inside the burh walls and the Danes could only ride around those walls and make empty threats. The surest way to capture a burh was to starve its garrison into submission, but that could take weeks or months, and for all that time the besiegers would be vulnerable to troops coming from other fortresses. The alternative was to throw men at the walls and watch them die in the ditch and the Danes were never profligate with men. The burhs were strongholds, too strong for the Danes, and Bebbanburg, I thought, was tougher than any burh.
The northern gateway to Wintanceaster was now made of stone and guarded by a dozen men who barred the open arch. Their leader was a small grizzled man with fierce eyes who waved his troops away when he saw me. ‘It’s Grimric, lord,’ he said, obviously expecting to be recognised.
‘You were at Beamfleot,’ I guessed.
‘I was, lord!’ he said, pleased that I remembered.
‘Where you did great slaughter,’ I said, hoping it was true.
‘We showed the bastards how Saxons fight, lord, didn’t we?’ he said, grinning. ‘I keep telling these lily boys that you know how to give a man a real fight!’ he jerked a thumb at his men, all of whom were youngsters pulled away from their farms or shops to serve their term of weeks in the burh’s garrison. ‘They’re still wet with mama’s milk, lord,’ Grimric said.
I gave him a coin