Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [59]
I frowned at him. ‘What is your name?’ I asked. ‘You remind me of someone. He was a Welsh earsling, a rat-like little shit, but I killed him, so you can’t be the same man.’
‘Lord Uhtred,’ Bishop Erkenwald said tiredly, ‘please do not insult us.’
Erkenwald and I were not fond of each other, but in his time as Bishop of Lundene he had proved an efficient ruler and he had not stood in my way before Beamfleot, indeed his skills as an organiser had contributed mightily to that victory. ‘What do you want explained?’ I asked.
Archbishop Plegmund pulled a candle across the table to illuminate the parchment. ‘We have been told of your activities this summer,’ he said.
‘And you want to thank me,’ I said.
The cold, sharp eyes stared at me. Plegmund had become famous as a man who denied himself every pleasure, whether it was food, women or luxury. He served his god by being uncomfortable, by praying in lonely places, and by being a hermit priest. Why folk think that admirable, I do not know, but he was held in awe by the Christians, who were all delighted when he abandoned his hermit’s discomfort to become archbishop. ‘In the spring,’ he said in a thin, precise voice, ‘you had a meeting with the man who calls himself Jarl Haesten, following which meeting you rode north into the country possessed by Cnut Ranulfson where you consulted the witch, Ælfadell. From there you went to Snotengaham, presently occupied by Sigurd Thorrson, and thereafter to the Jarl Haesten again.’
‘All true,’ I said easily, ‘only you’ve left some things out.’
‘Here come the lies,’ Asser sneered.
I frowned at him. ‘Was your mother straining at stool when you were born?’
Plegmund slapped the table again. ‘What have we left out?’
‘The small truth that I burned Sigurd’s fleet.’
Osferth had been looking increasingly alarmed at the hostility in the room and now, without a word to me, and without any demurral from the clerics at the linen-covered table, he edged back to the door. They let him go. It was me they wanted. ‘The fleet was burned, we know,’ Plegmund said, ‘and we know the reason.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It was a sign to the Danes that there can be no retreat across the water. Sigurd Thorrson is telling his followers that their fate is to capture Wessex, and as proof of that fate he burned his own ships to demonstrate that there can be no withdrawal.’
‘You believe that?’ I asked.
‘It is the truth,’ Asser snapped.
‘You wouldn’t know the truth if it was rammed down your throat with an axe-handle,’ I said, ‘and no northern lord will burn his ships. They cost gold. I burned them, and Sigurd’s men tried to kill me when I did.’
‘Oh, no one doubts that you were there when they were burned,’ Erkenwald said.
‘And you do not deny consulting the witch Ælfadell?’ Plegmund asked.
‘No,’ I said, ‘nor do I deny destroying the Danish armies at Fearnhamme and at Beamfleot last year.’
‘No one denies that you have done past service,’ Plegmund said.
‘When it suited you,’ Asser added acidly.
‘And do you deny slaying the Abbot Deorlaf of Buchestanes?’ Plegmund asked.
‘I gutted him like a plump fish,’ I said.
‘You don’t deny it?’ Asser sounded astonished.
‘I’m proud of it,’ I said, ‘and of the other two monks I killed.’
‘Note that!’ Asser hissed at the clerk-priests who hardly needed his encouragement. They were scribbling away.
‘Last year,’ Bishop Erkenwald said, ‘you refused to give an oath of loyalty to the ætheling Edward.’
‘True.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m tired of Wessex,’ I said, ‘tired of priests, tired of being told what your god’s will is, tired of being told that I’m a sinner, tired of your endless damned nonsense, tired of that nailed tyrant you call god who only wants us to be miserable. And I refused to give the oath because my ambition is to go back north, to Bebbanburg, and to kill the men who hold it, and I cannot do that if I am sworn to Edward and he wants something different of me.’
That might not have been the most tactful speech, but I was not feeling tactful. Someone, I assumed Æthelred, had done