Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [68]
‘I know,’ he said.
‘So let her be a sinner, father, if that is what makes Wessex safe.’
‘Am I supposed to tell the king that?’
I laughed. ‘You’re supposed to tell Edward that. And tell him more. Tell him to kill Æthelwold. No mercy, no family sentimentality, no Christian guilt. Just give me the order and he’s dead.’
Beocca shook his head. ‘Æthelwold is a fool,’ he said accurately, ‘and most of the time a drunken fool. He flirted with the Danes, we cannot deny it, but he has confessed all his sins to the king and been forgiven.’
‘Forgiven?’
‘Last night,’ Beocca said, ‘he shed tears at the king’s bedside and swore allegiance to the king’s heir.’
I had to laugh. Alfred’s response to my warning had been to summon Æthelwold and believe the fool’s lies. ‘Æthelwold will try to take the throne,’ I said.
‘He swore the opposite,’ Beocca said earnestly, ‘he swore on Noah’s feather and on the glove of Saint Cedd.’
The feather had supposedly belonged to a dove that Noah had released from the ark back in the days when it rained as heavily as the downpour that now drummed on the roof of the Two Cranes. The feather and the saint’s glove were two of Alfred’s most precious relics, and doubtless he would believe anything that was sworn in their presence. ‘Don’t believe him,’ I said, ‘kill him. Or else he’ll make trouble.’
‘He has sworn his oath,’ Beocca said, ‘and the king believes him.’
‘Æthelwold is a treacherous earsling,’ I said.
‘He’s just a fool,’ Beocca said dismissively.
‘But an ambitious fool, and a fool with a legitimate claim to the throne, and men will use that claim.’
‘He has relented, he has made confession, he has been absolved, and he is penitent.’
What fools we all are. I see the same mistakes being made, time after time, generation after generation, yet still we go on believing what we wish to believe. That night, in the wet darkness, I repeated Beocca’s words. ‘He has relented,’ I said, ‘he has made confession, he has been absolved, and he is penitent.’
‘And they believe him?’ Æthelflaed asked bleakly.
‘Christians are fools,’ I said, ‘ready to believe anything.’
She prodded me hard in the ribs, and I chuckled. The rain fell on Saint Hedda’s roof. I should not have been there, of course, but the abbess, dear Hild, pretended not to know. I was not in that part of the nunnery where the sisters lived in seclusion, but in a range of buildings about the outer courtyard where lay folk were permitted. There were kitchens where food was prepared for the poor, there was a hospital where the indigent could die, and there was this attic room, which had been Æthelflaed’s prison. It was not uncomfortable, though small. She was attended by maidservants, but this night they had been told to make themselves beds in the storerooms beneath. ‘They told me you were negotiating with the Danes,’ Æthelflaed said.
‘I was. I was using Serpent-Breath.’
‘And negotiating with Sigunn too?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and she’s well.’
‘God knows why I love you.’
‘God knows everything.’
She said nothing to that, but just stirred beside me and pulled the fleece higher about her head and shoulders. The rain beat on. Her hair was golden in my face. She was Alfred’s eldest child and I had watched her grow to become a woman, had watched the joy in her face fade to bitterness when she was given as wife to my cousin, and I had seen the joy return. Her blue eyes were flecked with brown, her nose was small and upturned. It was a face I loved, but a face that now had lines of worry. ‘You should talk to your son,’ she said, her voice muffled by the fleece bedcover.
‘Uhtred spouts pious nonsense to me,’ I said, ‘so I’d rather talk to my daughter.’
‘She’s safe, and your other son too, in Cippanhamm.’
‘Why is Uhtred here?’ I asked.
‘The king wanted him here.’
‘They’re turning him into a priest,’ I said angrily.
‘And they want to turn me into a nun,’ she said just as angrily. ‘They do?’
‘Bishop