Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [75]
‘He wants Æthelflaed in his hall or else locked away in a convent,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Edward said, ‘that’s what he wants.’ He stared down at the road from where the horn had sounded a second time. ‘But they want me,’ he said, looking to where Father Coenwulf waved towards us. I could see a couple of Steapa’s men galloping towards the vanguard. Edward dug in his spurs and we cantered to the head of the column where we discovered the two scouts had brought in a priest who half fell from his saddle to kneel before the king.
‘Lord, lord King!’ the priest gasped. He was out of breath.
‘Who are you?’ Edward asked.
‘Father Edmund, lord.’
He had come from Wimburnan where he was the priest and he told how Æthelwold had raised his banner in the town and declared himself King of Wessex.
‘He did what?’ Edward asked.
‘He made me read a proclamation, lord, outside Saint Cuthberga’s.’
‘He’s calling himself king?’
‘He says he’s King of Wessex, lord. He’s demanding that men come and swear allegiance to him.’
‘How many men were there when you left?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, lord,’ Father Edmund said.
‘Did you see a woman?’ Edward asked. ‘My sister?’
‘The Lady Æthelflaed? Yes, lord, she was with him.’
‘Does he have twenty men?’ I asked. ‘Or two hundred?’
‘I don’t know, lord. A lot.’
‘He sent messengers to other lords?’ I asked.
‘To his thegns, lord. He sent me. I’m supposed to bring him men.’
‘And you found me instead,’ Edward said warmly.
‘He’s raising an army,’ I said.
‘The fyrd,’ Steapa said scornfully.
Æthelwold was doing what he thought wise, but he had no wisdom. He had inherited wide estates from his father, and Alfred had been foolish enough to leave those estates untouched, and now Æthelwold was demanding that his tenants come with weapons to make an army that he presumably believed would march on Wintanceaster. But the army would be the fyrd, the citizen army, the labourers and carpenters and thatchers and ploughmen, while Edward had his royal bodyguard, who were all trained warriors. The fyrd was good for defending a burh, or for impressing an enemy with numbers, but to fight, to face a sword-Dane or a raving Northman, a warrior was needed. What Æthelwold should have done was stay in Wintanceaster, murder all Alfred’s children, and then raise his standard, but like a fool he had gone to his own home and now we rode there with warriors.
The day was dying as we neared Wimburnan, the sun was low in the west and the shadows long on the rich slopes where Æthelwold’s sheep and cattle had their grazing. We came from the east and no one tried to prevent us reaching the small town that lay cradled between two rivers that joined close to where a stone church loomed above the shadowed thatch of the roofs. King Æthelred, Alfred’s brother and Æthelwold’s father, lay buried in that church, and beyond it, and surrounded by a tall palisade, was Æthelwold’s hall where a great flag flew. It showed a prancing white stag with fierce eyes and two Christian crosses for antlers, and the low sun was catching the linen that was spread by a small wind and the banner’s dark red field seemed to smoulder like boiling blood in the late daylight.
We rode north around the town, crossing the smaller river and then climbing a shallow slope that led to one of those forts that the ancient people had built all across Britain. This fort had been hacked out of a chalk hilltop, and Father Edmund told me it was called Baddan Byrig and that the local people believed the devil danced there on winter nights. It had three walls of heaped chalk, all overgrown with grass, and two intricate entrances where sheep grazed, and it overlooked the road that Æthelwold must take if he wanted to go north to his Danish friends. Edward’s first instinct had been to block the road to Wintanceaster, but that town was protected by its walls and garrison and I persuaded him that the greater danger was that Æthelwold would escape Wessex altogether.
Our army spread along the skyline beneath its royal banners. Wimburnan lay