The Empty Throne

The dangerous Eardwulf was in a coat of mail, polished to a bright shine, and wearing a dark blue cloak edged with otter fur. He was bare-headed and his dark hair was oiled sleekly back to be tied by a brown ribbon. His sword, a heavy blade, was scabbarded in soft leather trimmed with gold. He was flanked by a pair of priests and by a half-dozen of his men, all wearing Æthelred’s symbol of the white horse. He smiled when he saw us. I saw his eyes flick towards Æthelflaed’s standard as he sauntered towards us. ‘Going to market, Lord Uhtred?’ he asked.

‘Slaves, armour, swords, spears, axes,’ I said, ‘do you want to buy?’

‘And him?’ He jerked a thumb towards Haki.

I twisted in my saddle. ‘Haki, a Norse chieftain who thought to make himself rich from Mercia.’

‘Are you selling him too?’

‘Hanging him,’ I said, ‘slowly. My lady wanted us to hang him right here.’

‘Your lady?’

‘Yours too,’ I said, knowing that would annoy him, ‘the Lady Æthelflaed.’

If he was annoyed he did not show it, instead he smiled again. ‘She has been busy,’ he said lightly, ‘and is she planning to be here as well?’

I shook my head. ‘She has work in the north.’

‘And I thought she would be here for the Witan in two days,’ he said sarcastically.

‘Witan?’ I asked.

‘It’s none of your business,’ he said tartly. ‘You are not invited.’

But the Witan, I noted, was to be held on Saint Cuthbert’s feast day and that was surely why Æthelflaed had wanted us to arrive before the great men of Mercia met in council. She was reminding them that she fought their enemies.

Eardwulf walked to Haki, looked him up and down, then turned back to me. ‘I see you fly the Lord Æthelred’s banner.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘And in the skirmish where you captured this creature,’ he nodded towards Haki, ‘did you fly it there too?’

‘Whenever my lady fights for Mercia,’ I said, ‘she flies her husband’s banner.’

‘Then the prisoners and the plunder belong to Lord Æthelred,’ Eardwulf said.

‘I’m ordered to sell them,’ I said.

‘Are you?’ He laughed. ‘Well now you have new orders. They all belong to Lord Æthelred so you will give them to me.’ He gazed at me, daring me to contradict him. I must have looked belligerent because his men half lowered their spears.

Father Fraomar had reappeared and darted to the side of my horse. ‘No fighting,’ he hissed at me.

‘My Lord Uhtred would not dream of drawing a sword against Lord Æthelred’s household warriors,’ Eardwulf said. He beckoned to his men. ‘Take it all inside,’ he ordered, indicating carts, plunder, Haki, and the slaves, ‘and do thank the Lady Æthelflaed,’ he was looking at me again, ‘for her little contribution to her husband’s treasury.’

I watched his men take the plunder and slaves through the gateway. Eardwulf smiled when it was done, then gave me a mocking smile. ‘And the Lady Æthelflaed,’ he asked, ‘has no desire to attend the Witan?’

‘She’s invited?’ I asked.

‘Of course not, she’s a woman. But she might be curious about the Witan’s decisions.’

He was trying to discover whether Æthelflaed would be in Gleawecestre. I half thought of saying I had no idea what she planned, then decided to tell the truth. ‘She won’t be here,’ I said, ‘because she’s busy. She’s making a burh on the Mærse.’

‘Oh, a burh on the Mærse!’ he repeated, then laughed.

The gates closed behind him.

‘Bastard,’ I said.

‘He had the right,’ Father Fraomar explained, ‘the Lord Æthelred is the husband of the Lady Æthelflaed, so what is hers is his.’

‘Æthelred’s an unwiped pig-sucking bastard,’ I said, staring at the closed gates.

‘He is the Lord of Mercia,’ Father Fraomar said uneasily. He was a supporter of Æthelflaed, but he sensed that her husband’s death would strip her of both power and influence.

‘Whatever the bastard is,’ Sihtric put in, ‘he won’t offer us any ale.’

‘Ale is a good idea,’ I growled.

‘The redhead at the Wheatsheaf, then?’ he asked, then grinned. ‘Unless you’re going to learn more about farming?’

I grinned back. My father had given me a farm north of Cirrenceastre, saying I should learn husbandry. ‘A man should know as much about crops, pasture and cattle as his steward knows,’ my father had growled to me, ‘otherwise the bastard will cheat you blind.’ He had been pleased at the number of days I spent at the estate, though I confess I had learned almost nothing about crops, pasture or cattle, but I had learned a great deal about the young widow to whom I had given the farm’s great hall as her home.

‘The Wheatsheaf for now,’ I said and kicked Hearding down the street. And tomorrow, I thought, I would ride to my widow.

The tavern’s sign was a great wooden carving of a wheatsheaf and I rode beneath it into the rain-soaked courtyard and let a servant take the horse. Father Fraomar, I knew, was right. The Lord Æthelred did have the legal right to take whatever belonged to his wife because nothing belonged to her that was not his, yet still Eardwulf’s action had surprised me. Æthelred and Æthelflaed had lived for years in a state of warfare, though it was war without fighting. He had the legal power in Mercia while she had the love of the Mercians. It would have been easy enough for Æthelred to order his wife’s arrest and captivity, but her brother was the King of Wessex, and Mercia only survived because the West Saxons came to its rescue whenever enemies pressed too hard. And so husband and wife hated each other, tolerated each other, and pretended that no feud existed, which was why Æthelflaed took such care to fly her husband’s banner.

I was daydreaming of taking revenge on Eardwulf as I ducked through the tavern’s door. I was dreaming of gutting him or beheading him or listening to his pleas for mercy while I held Raven-Beak at his throat. The bastard, I thought, the snivelling, pompous, grease-haired, arrogant bastard.

‘Earsling,’ a harsh voice challenged me from beside the Wheatsheaf’s hearth. ‘What rancid demon brought you here to spoil my day?’ I stared. And stared. Because the last person I had ever expected to see in Æthelred’s stronghold of Gleawecestre was staring at me. ‘Well, earsling,’ he demanded, ‘what are you doing here?’

It was my father.

PART ONE

The Dying Lord

One

My son looked tired and angry. He was wet, covered in mud, his hair was like a damp haystack after a good romp, and one of his boots was slashed. The leather was stained black where a blade had pierced his calf, but he was not limping so I had no need to worry about him, except that he was gaping at me like a moonstruck idiot. ‘Don’t just stare at me, idiot,’ I told him, ‘buy me some ale. Tell the girl you want it from the black barrel. Sihtric, it’s good to see you.’

‘And you, lord,’ Sihtric said.

‘Father!’ my son said, still gaping.

‘Who did you think it was?’ I asked. ‘The holy ghost?’ I made room on the bench. ‘Sit beside me,’ I told Sihtric, ‘and tell me some news. Stop gawping,’ I said to Uhtred, ‘and have one of the girls bring us some ale. From the black barrel!’

‘Why the black barrel, lord?’ Sihtric asked as he sat.

‘It’s brewed from our barley,’ I explained, ‘he keeps it for people he likes.’ I leaned back against the wall. It hurt to bend forward, it hurt even to sit upright, it hurt to breathe. Everything hurt, yet it was a marvel that I lived at all. Cnut Longsword had near killed me with his blade Ice-Spite and it was small consolation that Serpent-Breath had sliced his throat in the same heartbeat that his sword had broken a rib and pierced my lung. ‘Christ Jesus,’ Finan had told me, ‘but the grass was slippery with blood. It looked like a Samhain pig slaughtering, it did.’

But the slipperiness had been Cnut’s blood, and Cnut was dead and his army destroyed. The Danes had been driven from much of northern Mercia and the Saxons gave thanks to their nailed god for that deliverance. Some of them doubtless prayed that they would be delivered from me too, but I lived. They were Christians, I am not, though rumours spread that it was a Christian priest who saved my life. Æthelflaed had me carried in a cart to her home in Cirrenceastre and a priest famed as a healer and bone-setter tended me. Æthelflaed said he pushed a reed through my ribs and a gust of foul air came from the hole. ‘It blew out,’ she told me, ‘and stank like a cesspit.’ ‘That’s the evil leaving him,’ the priest had explained, or so she said, and then he plugged the wound with cow dung. The shit formed a crust and the priest said it would stop the evil getting back inside me. Is that true? I don’t know. All I know is that it took weeks of pain, weeks in which I expected to die, and that some time in the new year I managed to struggle to my feet again. Now, almost two months later, I could ride a horse and walk a mile or so, yet I had still not regained my old strength, and Serpent-Breath felt heavy in my hand. And the pain was always there, sometimes excruciating, sometimes bearable, and all day, every day, the wound leaked filthy stinking pus. The Christian sorcerer probably sealed the wound before all the evil left and sometimes I wondered if he did that on purpose because the Christians do hate me, or most of them do. They smile and sing their psalms and preach that their creed is all about love, but tell them you believe in a different god and suddenly it’s all spittle and spite. So most days I felt old and feeble and useless, and some days I was not even sure I wanted to live.

‘How did you get here, lord?’ Sihtric asked me.

‘I rode, of course, how do you think?’

That was not entirely true. It was not far from Cirrenceastre to Gleawecestre, and I had ridden for some of the journey, but a few miles short of the city I climbed into a cart and lay on a bed of straw. God, it hurt climbing onto that cart’s bed. Then I let myself be carried into the city, and when Eardwulf saw me I groaned and pretended to be too weak to recognise him. The slick-haired bastard had ridden alongside the cart telling silky-tongued lies. ‘It is sad indeed to see you thus, Lord Uhtred,’ he had said and what he meant was that it was a joy to see me feeble and maybe dying. ‘You are an example to us all!’ he had said, speaking very slow and loud as if I were an imbecile. I just groaned and said nothing. ‘We never expected you to come,’ he went on, ‘but here you are.’ The bastard.

The Witan had been summoned to meet on Saint Cuthbert’s feast day. The summons had been issued over the horse-seal of Æthelred and it demanded the presence in Gleawecestre of Mercia’s leading men, the ealdormen and the bishops, the abbots and the thegns. The summons declared that they were called to ‘advise’ the Lord of Mercia, but as rumour insisted that the Lord of Mercia was now a drivelling cripple who dribbled piss down his legs it was more likely that the Witan had been called to approve whatever mischief Eardwulf had devised. I had not expected a summons, but to my astonishment a messenger brought me a parchment heavy with Æthelred’s great seal. Why did he want me there? I was his wife’s chief supporter, yet he had invited me. None of the other leading men who supported Æthelflaed had been called, yet I was summoned. Why? ‘He wants to kill you, lord,’ Finan had suggested.

‘I’m near enough dead already. Why should he bother?’

‘He wants you there,’ Finan had suggested slowly, ‘because they’re planning to shit all over Æthelflaed, and if you’re there they can’t claim no one spoke for her.’

That seemed a weak reason to me, but I could think of no other. ‘Maybe.’

‘And they know you’re not healed. You can’t cause them trouble.’

‘Maybe,’ I said again. It was plain that this Witan had been summoned to decide Mercia’s future, and equally plain that Æthelred would do everything he could to make certain his estranged wife had no part in that future, so why invite me? I would speak for her, they knew that, but they also knew I was weakened by injury. So was I there to prove that every opinion had been aired? It seemed strange to me, but if they were relying on my weakness to make sure that my advice was ignored then I wanted to encourage that belief, and that was why I had taken such care to appear feeble to Eardwulf. Let the bastard think me helpless.

Which I almost was. Except that I lived.

My son brought ale and dragged a stool to sit beside me. He was worried about me, but I brushed away his questions and asked my own. He told me about the fight with Haki, then complained that Eardwulf had stolen the slaves and plunder. ‘How could I stop him?’ he asked.

‘You weren’t meant to stop him,’ I said and, when he looked puzzled, explained. ‘Æthelflaed knew that would happen. Why else send you to Gleawecestre?’

‘She needs the money!’

‘She needs Mercia’s support more,’ I said, and he still looked puzzled. ‘By sending you here,’ I went on, ‘she’s showing that she’s fighting. If she really wanted money she’d have sent the slaves to Lundene.’

‘So she thinks a few slaves and two wagon-loads of rusted mail will influence the Witan?’

‘Did you see any of Æthelred’s men in Ceaster?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘And what is a ruler’s first duty?’

He thought for a few heartbeats. ‘To defend his land?’

‘So if Mercia is looking for a new ruler?’ I asked.

‘They’ll want someone,’ he said slowly, ‘who can fight?’

‘Someone who can fight,’ I said, ‘and lead, and inspire.’

‘You?’ he asked.

I almost hit him for his stupidity, but he was no longer a child. ‘Not me,’ I said instead.

My son frowned as he considered. He knew the answer I wanted, but was too stubborn to give it. ‘Eardwulf?’ he suggested instead. I said nothing and he thought a moment longer. ‘He’s been fighting the Welsh,’ he went on, ‘and men say he’s good.’

‘He’s been fighting bare-arsed cattle raiders,’ I said scornfully, ‘nothing else. When was the last time a Welsh army invaded Mercia? Besides, Eardwulf isn’t noble.’

‘So if he can’t lead Mercia,’ my son said slowly, ‘who can?’

‘You know who can,’ I said, and when he still refused to name her, I did. ‘Æthelflaed.’

‘Æthelflaed,’ he repeated the name and then just shook his head. I knew he was wary of her and probably frightened of her too, and I knew she was scornful of him, just as she scorned her own daughter. She was her father’s child in that way; she disliked flippant and carefree people, treasuring serious souls who thought life a grim duty. She put up with me, maybe because she knew that in battle I was as serious and grim as any of her dreary priests.

‘So why not Æthelflaed?’ I asked.

‘Because she’s a woman,’ he said.

‘So?’

‘She’s a woman!’

‘I know that! I’ve seen her tits.’

‘The Witan will never choose a woman to rule,’ he said firmly.

‘That’s true,’ Sihtric put in.

‘Who else can they choose?’ I asked.

‘Her brother?’ my son suggested, and he was probably right. Edward, King of Wessex, wanted the throne of Mercia, but he did not want to just take it. He wanted an invitation. Maybe that was what the Witan was supposed to agree? I could think of no other reason why the nobility and high churchmen had been summoned. It made sense that Æthelred’s successor should be chosen now, before Æthelred died, to avert the squabbling and even outright war that sometimes follows a ruler’s death, and I was certain that Æthelred himself wanted the satisfaction of knowing that his wife would not inherit his power. He would let rabid dogs gnaw on his balls before he allowed that. So who would inherit? Not Eardwulf, I was sure. He was competent, he was brave enough, and he was no fool, but the Witan would want a man of birth, and Eardwulf, though not low-born, was no ealdorman. Nor was there any ealdorman in Mercia who stood head and shoulders above the rest except perhaps for Æthelfrith who ruled much of the land north of Lundene. Æthelfrith was the richest of all Mercia’s noblemen after Æthelred, but he had stood aloof from Gleawecestre and its squabbles, allying himself with the West Saxons and, so far as I knew, he had not bothered to attend the Witan. And it probably did not matter what the Witan advised because, in the end, the West Saxons would decide who or what was best for Mercia.

Or so I thought.

And I should have thought harder.

The Witan began, of course it began, with a tedious service in Saint Oswald’s church, which was part of an abbey built by Æthelred. I had arrived on crutches, which I did not need, but I was determined to look more sickly than I felt. Ricseg, the abbot, welcomed me fulsomely, even trying to bow which was difficult because he had a belly like a pregnant sow. ‘It distresses me to see you in such pain, Lord Uhtred,’ he said, meaning he would have jumped for joy if he was not so damned fat. ‘May God bless you,’ he added, sketching a plump hand in the sign of a cross, while secretly praying that his god would flatten me with a thunderbolt. I thanked him as insincerely as he had blessed me, then took a stone bench at the back of the church and leaned against the wall, flanked there by Finan and by Osferth. Ricseg waddled about as he greeted men, and I heard the clatter of weapons being dropped outside the church. I had left my son and Sihtric out there to make sure no bastard stole Serpent-Breath. I leaned my head on the wall and tried to guess the cost of the silver candlesticks that stood at either side of the altar. They were vast things, heavy as war axes and dripping with scented beeswax, while the light from their dozen candles glinted from the silver reliquaries and golden dishes piled on the altar.

The Christian church is a clever thing. The moment a lord becomes wealthy he builds a church or a convent. Æthelflaed had insisted on making a church in Ceaster even before she began surveying the walls or deepening the ditch. I told her it was a waste of money, all she achieved was to build a place where men like Ricseg could get fat, but she insisted anyway. There are hundreds of men and women living off the churches, abbeys, and convents built by lords, and most do nothing except eat, drink and mutter an occasional prayer. Monks work, of course. They till the fields, grub up weeds, cut firewood, draw water and copy manuscripts, but only so their superiors can live like nobles. It is a clever scheme, to get other men to pay for your luxuries. I growled.

‘The ceremony will be over soon,’ Finan said soothingly, thinking that the growl was a sign of pain.

‘Shall I ask for honeyed wine, lord?’ Osferth asked me, concerned. He was King Alfred’s one bastard and a more decent man never walked this earth. I have often wondered what kind of king Osferth would have made if he had been born to a wife instead of to some scared servant girl who had lifted her skirts for a royal prick. He would have been a great king, judicious and clever and honest, but Osferth was ever marked by his bastardry. His father had tried to make Osferth a priest, but the son had wilfully chosen the way of the warrior and I was lucky to have him as one of my household.

I closed my eyes. Monks were chanting and one of the sorcerers was wafting a metal bowl on the end of a chain to spread smoke through the church. I sneezed, and it hurt, then there was a sudden commotion at the door and I thought it must be Æthelred arriving, but when I opened one eye I saw it was Bishop Wulfheard with a pack of fawning priests at his heels. ‘If there’s mischief,’ I said, ‘that tit-sucking bastard will be in the middle of it.’

‘Not so loud, lord,’ Osferth reproved me.

‘Tit-sucking?’ Finan asked.

I nodded. ‘That’s what they tell me in the Wheatsheaf.’

‘Oh no! No!’ Osferth said, shocked. ‘That can’t be true. He’s married!’

I laughed, then closed my eyes again. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that,’ I told Osferth.

‘Why not, lord? It’s just a foul rumour! The bishop is married.’

‘You shouldn’t say it,’ I said, ‘because it hurts so much when I laugh.’

Wulfheard was Bishop of Hereford, but he spent most of his time in Gleawecestre because that was where Æthelred had his deep coffers. Wulfheard hated me and had burned down my barns at Fagranforda in an effort to drive me from Mercia. He was not one of the fat priests, instead he was lean as a blade with a hard face that he forced into a smile when he saw me. ‘My Lord Uhtred,’ he greeted me.

‘Wulfheard,’ I responded churlishly.

‘I am delighted to see you in church,’ he said.

‘But not wearing that,’ one of his attendant priests spat, and I opened my eyes to see him pointing at the hammer I wore about my neck. It was the symbol of Thor.

‘Careful, priest,’ I warned the man, though I was too weak to do much about his insolence.

‘Father Penda,’ Wulfheard said, ‘let us pray that God persuades the Lord Uhtred to cast away his pagan trinkets. God listens to our prayers,’ he added to me.

‘He does?’

‘And I prayed for your recovery,’ he lied.

‘So did I,’ I said, touching Thor’s hammer.

Wulfheard gave a vague smile and turned away. His priests followed him like scurrying ducklings, all except for the young Father Penda who stood close and belligerent. ‘You disgrace God’s church,’ he said loudly.

‘Just go away, father,’ Finan said.

‘That is an abomination!’ the priest said, almost shouting as he pointed at the hammer. Men turned to look at us. ‘An abomination unto God,’ Penda said, then leaned down to snatch the hammer away. I grasped his black robe and pulled him towards me and the effort sent a stab of pain through my left side. The priest’s robe was damp on my face and it stank of dung, but the thick wool hid my agonised grimace as the wound in my side savaged me. I gasped, but then Finan managed to wrestle the priest away from me. ‘An abomination!’ Penda shouted as he was pulled backwards. Osferth half rose to help Finan, but I caught his sleeve to stop him. Penda lunged at me again, but then two of his fellow priests managed to grasp him by the shoulders and pull him away.

‘A silly man,’ Osferth said sternly, ‘but he’s right. You shouldn’t wear the hammer in a church, lord.’

I pressed my spine into the wall, trying to breathe slowly. The pain came in waves, sharp then sullen. Would it ever end? I was tired of it, and perhaps the pain dulled my thoughts.

I was thinking that Æthelred, Lord of Mercia, was dying. That much was obvious. It was a wonder he had survived this long, but it was plain that the Witan had been called to consider what should happen after his death, and I had just learned that the Ealdorman Æthelhelm, King Edward’s father-in-law, was in Gleawecestre. He was not in the church, at least I could not see him, and he was a difficult man to miss because he was big, jovial, and loud. I liked Æthelhelm and trusted him not at all. And he was here for the Witan. How did I know that? Because Father Penda, the spitting priest, was my man. Penda was in my pay and when I had pulled him close he had whispered in my ear, ‘Æthelhelm’s here. He came this morning.’ He had started to hiss something else, but then he had been pulled away.

I listened to the monks chanting and to the murmur of the priests gathered around the altar where a great golden crucifix reflected the light of the scented candles. The altar was hollow and in its belly lay a massive silver coffin that glinted with crystal inserts. That coffin alone must have cost as much as the church, and if a man bent down and looked through the small crystals he could dimly see a skeleton lying on a bed of costly blue silk. On special days the coffin was opened and the skeleton displayed and I had heard of miracles being performed on folk who paid to touch the yellow bones. Boils were magically healed, warts vanished, and the crippled walked, and all because the bones were said to be those of Saint Oswald, which, if true, would have been a miracle in itself because I had found the bones. They had probably belonged to some obscure monk, though for all I knew the remains might have come from a swineherd, though when I’d said that to Father Cuthbert he said that more than one swineherd had become a saint. You cannot win with Christians.