and it makes no damn sense to me. And I’m not a lord, am I? Not even a thegn. I’m just a slave’s son who happens to know how to kill the king’s enemies, but that’s not good enough for Alfred. He says I can assist,’ he said that word as if it soured his tongue, ‘one of his Ealdormen, but I can’t lead men because I can’t read, and I can’t learn to read.’
‘I can,’ I said, or the drink said.
‘You take a long time to understand things, Earsling,’ Leofric said with a grin. ‘You’re a damned lord, and you can read, can’t you?’
‘No, not really. A bit. Short words.’
‘But you can learn?’
I thought about it. ‘I can learn.’
‘And we have twelve ships’ crews,’ he said, ‘looking for employment, so we give them to Alfred and we say that Lord Earsling is their leader and he gives you a book and you read out the pretty words, then you and I take the bastards to war and do some proper damage to your beloved Danes.’
I did not say yes, nor did I say no, because I was not sure what I wanted. What worried me was that I found myself agreeing with whatever the last person suggested I did; when I had been with Ragnar I had wanted to follow him and now I was seduced by Leofric’s vision of the future. I had no certainty, so instead of saying yes or no I went back to the palace and I found Merewenna, and discovered she was indeed the maid who had caused Alfred’s tears on the night that I had eavesdropped on him in the Mercian camp outside Snotengaham, and I did know what I wanted to do with her, and I did not cry afterwards.
And next day, at Leofric’s urging, we rode to Cippanhamm.
I suppose, if you are reading this, that you have learned your letters, which probably means that some damned monk or priest rapped your knuckles, cuffed you around the head or worse. Not that they did that to me, of course, for I was no longer a child, but I endured their sniggers as I struggled with letters. It was mostly Beocca who taught me, complaining all the while that I was taking him from his real work which was the making of a life of Swithun, who had been Bishop of Wintanceaster when Alfred was a child, and Beocca was writing the bishop’s life. Another priest was translating the book into Latin, Beocca’s mastery of that tongue not being good enough for the task, and the pages were being sent to Rome in hopes that Swithun would be named a saint. Alfred took a great interest in the book, forever coming to Beocca’s room and asking whether he knew that Swithun had once preached the gospel to a trout or chanted a psalm to a seagull, and Beocca would write the stories in a state of great excitement, and then, when Alfred was gone, reluctantly return to whatever text he was forcing me to decipher. ‘Read it aloud,’ he would say, then protest wildly. ‘No, no, no! Forliðan is to suffer shipwreck! This is a life of Saint Paul, Uhtred, and the apostle suffered shipwreck! Not the word you read at all!’
I looked at it again. ‘It’s not forlegnis?’
‘Of course it’s not!’ he said, going red with indignation. ‘That word means …’ he paused, realising that he was not teaching me English, but how to read it.
‘Prostitute,’ I said, ‘I know what it means. I even know what they charge. There’s a redhead in Chad’s tavern who …’
‘Forliðan,’ he interrupted me, ‘the word is forliðan. Read on.’
Those weeks were strange. I was a warrior now, a man, yet in Beocca’s room it seemed I was a child again as I struggled with the black letters crawling across the cracked parchments. I learned from the lives of the saints, and in the end Beocca could not resist letting me read some of his own growing life of Swithun. He waited for my praise, but instead I shuddered. ‘Couldn’t we find something more interesting?’ I asked him.
‘More interesting?’ Beocca’s good eye stared at me reproachfully.
‘Something about war,’ I suggested, ‘about the Danes. About shields and spears and swords.’
He grimaced. ‘I dread to think of such writings! There are some poems,’ he grimaced again and evidently decided against telling me about the belligerent poems, ‘but this,’ he tapped the parchment, ‘this will give you inspiration.’
‘Inspiration! How Swithun mended some broken eggs?’
‘It was a saintly act,’ Beocca chided me. ‘The woman was old and poor, the eggs were all she had to sell, and she tripped and broke them. She faced starvation! The saint made the eggs whole again and, God be praised, she sold them.’
‘But why didn’t Swithun just give her money?’ I demanded, ‘or take her back to his house and give her a proper meal?’
‘It is a miracle!’ Beocca insisted, ‘a demonstration of God’s power.’
‘I’d like to see a miracle,’ I said, remembering King Edmund’s death.
‘That is a weakness in you,’ Beocca said sternly. ‘You must have faith. Miracles make belief easy, which is why you should never pray for one. Much better to find God through faith than through miracles.’
‘Then why have miracles?’
‘Oh, read on, Uhtred,’ the poor man said tiredly, ‘for God’s sake, read on.’
I read on. But life in Cippanhamm was not all reading. Alfred hunted at least twice a week, though it was not hunting as I had known it in the north. He never pursued boar, preferring to shoot at stags with a bow. The prey was driven to him by beaters, and if a stag did not appear swiftly he would get bored and go back to his books. In truth I think he only went hunting because it was expected of a king, not because he enjoyed it, but he did endure it. I loved it, of course. I killed wolves, stags, foxes and boars and it was on one of those boar hunts that I met Æthelwold.
Æthelwold was Alfred’s oldest nephew, the boy who should have succeeded his father, King Æthelred, though he was no longer a boy for he was only a month or so younger than me, and in many ways he was like me, except that he had been sheltered by his father and by Alfred and so had never killed a man or even fought in a battle. He was tall, well-built, strong and as wild as an unbroken colt. He had long dark hair, his family’s narrow face, and strong eyes that caught the attention of serving girls. All girls, really. He hunted with me and with Leofric, drank with us, whored with us when he could escape the priests who were his guardians, and constantly complained about his uncle, though those complaints were only spoken to me, never to Leofric whom Æthelwold feared. ‘He stole the crown,’ Æthelwold said of Alfred.
‘The witan thought you were too young,’ I pointed out.
‘I’m not young now, am I?’ he asked indignantly, ‘so Alfred should step aside.’
I toasted that idea with a pot of ale, but said nothing.
‘They won’t even let me fight!’ Æthelwold said bitterly. ‘He says I ought to become a priest. The stupid bastard.’ He drank some ale before giving me a serious look. ‘Talk to him, Uhtred.’
‘What am I to say? That you don’t want to be a priest?’
‘He knows
