Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [67]
‘He loves you,’ I said, ‘and you’ve served him well.’
‘I have served God and the king,’ Beocca said, then let me guide him to a seat beside the fire in the great room of the Two Cranes. ‘He took some curds this morning,’ Beocca told me earnestly, ‘but not many. Two spoonfuls.’
‘He doesn’t want to eat,’ I said.
‘He must,’ Beocca said. Poor dear Beocca. He had been my father’s priest and clerk, and my childhood tutor, though he had abandoned Bebbanburg when my uncle usurped its lordship. He was low-born and ill-born, with a pathetic squint, a misshapen nose, a palsied left hand and a club foot. It was my grandfather who saw the boy’s cleverness and had him educated by the monks at Lindisfarena, and Beocca became a priest and then, following my uncle’s treachery, an exile. His cleverness and his devotion had attracted Alfred, whom Beocca had served ever since. He was old now, almost as old as the king, and his straggly red hair had turned white, his back was bent, yet he still had a keen mind and a strong will. He also had a Danish wife, a true beauty, who was the sister of my dearest friend, Ragnar.
‘How is Thyra?’ I asked him.
‘She is well, thanks be to God, and the boys! We’re blessed.’
‘You’ll be blessed and dead if you insist on walking the streets in this rain,’ I said. ‘No fool like an old fool.’
He chuckled at that, then made a small impotent protest when I insisted on taking his sopping wet cloak and placing a dry one around his shoulders. ‘The king asked me to come to you,’ he said.
‘Then the king should have told me to go to you,’ I said.
‘Such a wet season!’ Beocca said. ‘I haven’t seen rain like this since the year Archbishop Æthelred died. The king doesn’t know it’s raining. Poor man. He strives against the pain. He can’t last long now.’
‘And he sent you,’ I reminded him.
‘He asks a favour of you,’ Beocca said, with a touch of his old sternness.
‘Go on.’
‘Fagranforda is a great estate,’ Beocca said, ‘the king was generous.’
‘I have been generous to him,’ I said.
Beocca waved his crippled left hand as if to dismiss my remark. ‘There are presently four churches and a monastery on the estate,’ he went on crisply, ‘and the king has asked for your assurance that you will maintain them as they should be maintained, as their charters demand, and as is your duty.’
I smiled at that. ‘And if I refuse?’
‘Oh please, Uhtred,’ he said wearily. ‘I have struggled with you my whole life!’
‘I will tell the steward to do all that is necessary,’ I promised.
He looked at me with his one good eye as if judging my sincerity, but seemed pleased with what he saw. ‘The king will be grateful,’ he said.
‘I thought you were going to ask me to abandon Æthelflaed,’ I said mischievously. There were few people I would ever talk to about Æthelflaed, but Beocca, who had known me since I was a stripling, was one.
He shuddered at my words. ‘Adultery is a grievous sin,’ he said, though without much passion.
‘A crime too,’ I said, amused. ‘Have you told that to Edward?’
He flinched. ‘That was a young man’s foolishness,’ he said, ‘and God punished the girl. She died.’
‘Your god is so good,’ I said caustically, ‘but why didn’t he think to kill her royal bastards as well?’
‘They have been put away,’ he said.
‘With Æthelflaed.’
He nodded. ‘They kept her from you,’ he said, ‘you know that?’
‘I know that.’
‘Locked her away in Saint Hedda’s,’ he said.
‘I found the key,’ I said.
‘God preserve us from wickedness,’ Beocca said, making the sign of the cross. ‘Æthelflaed,’ I said, ‘is loved in Mercia. Her husband is not.’
‘This is known,’ he said distantly.
‘When Edward becomes king,’ I said, ‘he will look to Mercia.’
‘Look to Mercia?’
‘The Danes will come, father,’ I said, ‘and they’ll begin with Mercia. You want the Mercian lords fighting for Wessex? You want the Mercian fyrd fighting for Wessex? The one person who can inspire them is Æthelflaed.’
‘You can,’ he said loyally.
I gave that statement