I started forward, then stopped.
Four of the men who stood on the platform with Æthelstan were young warriors, their necks and arms bright with the gold of success. I recognised Ingilmundr who was smiling, and the sullen face of Ealdred, though the remaining two were strangers. And with the warriors were two priests, which was no surprise. Bishop Oda was in the place of honour at Æthelstan’s right and he, like both the king and Ingilmundr, was smiling at me in welcome.
But the priest to Æthelstan’s left was not smiling, he was scowling, and he was no friend of mine; indeed he hated me.
He was my eldest son.
I had stopped in astonishment when I recognised my son. Astonishment and disgust. I was tempted to turn and walk away. Instead I looked back to Æthelstan and saw his smile had faded to an expression that mingled challenge and amusement. He had wanted this confrontation, there must be purpose in it, and I was beginning to suspect that my eldest son’s famous hostility towards pagans was a part of that purpose.
Æthelstan owed me. Back in Lundene, on the day when the road by the Crepelgate was soaked with West Saxon blood, he had acknowledged his debt to me. I had given him the city, and with the city came the crown of three kingdoms; Mercia, East Anglia, and Wessex. But in the years since he had ignored me. It made sense now. Æthelstan had his advisers; warriors like Ingilmundr and Ealdred, and he had his priests like Oda, and now he had another; Father Oswald. And Father Oswald hated me, and suddenly I remembered what the Welsh priest Anwyn had said the night before, that Bishop Oswald was preaching. My son was a bishop, and a close adviser to Æthelstan.
He had been named Uhtred at his birth. That is the tradition of our family. My elder brother was named Uhtred, but then a Dane took his head and threw it down in front of Bebbanburg’s Skull Gate. My father had renamed me on that day and I have been Uhtred ever since.
I had also named my eldest son Uhtred, but he had ever been a disappointment. He had been a nervous and fussy child, frightened of the mail-clad warriors in my household, and unwilling to learn sword-skill. I confess I was a bad father, as my father had been too. I loved my children, but I was away at war and after Gisela died I had small time for them. Alfred had put the boys into a school at Wintanceaster where Uhtred had sucked greedily on Christian teats and I remembered my horror at seeing him dressed in white robes and singing in a choir. Both boys became Christians and only my beloved daughter followed my older gods.
My younger son, now called Uhtred, might be a Christian, but he took to the warrior’s life. He learned the craft of the sword, of the spear, and of the shield, but my eldest followed a different road, a road that led to his becoming a Christian priest. I disowned him that day. I called him Father Judas, a name he embraced for a while before settling on Oswald as his new name. I forgot him, except on the few occasions he appeared in my life. He was with me on the day that my younger son killed Sigurd Ranulfson, and Sigurd’s brother, Cnut, almost killed me. Father Oswald had stalked our shield wall that day, praying and encouraging us, but we did not reconcile. He hated pagans and I hated that he had rejected my family’s fate.
Then Brida, that hell-bitch who hated Christians and who had once been my lover and had come to hate me in turn, had captured Father Oswald and gelded him. She died too, gutted by my daughter, and Father Oswald’s grievous wound had healed. I had cared for him, saw him healed, but was still resentful that he had abandoned Bebbanburg. We had not spoken since those days, but sometimes in the dark of night, as the sea wind about Bebbanburg’s roofs kept me awake, I would remember him, but never with affection. Only with regret and anger. He had betrayed the duty of our family, which was to hold Bebbanburg until the final chaos roils the earth, until the oceans boil and the gods fall in blood.
And here he was. A bishop too? He was staring at me hard-faced from the platform, standing next to his king in a place of honour. ‘Come, lord!’ Æthelstan said again, smiling again. ‘Welcome! Come!’
Gratitude, my father had always said, is a disease of dogs. So I climbed the platform to discover if Æthelstan had any trace of the sickness left and whether my eldest son, who resented me, was working for the destruction of my life’s ambition, which was to hold Bebbanburg for ever.
Wyrd bið ful ãræd
Fate is inexorable.
Five
I ate little, drank less. Æthelstan sat me at the place of honour, to his right, moving Bishop Oda down the bench to make room for me. The king offered me wine, ham, cheeses, fresh bread, and almonds he said were a gift from the King of the Franks. He asked after my health and enquired of Benedetta. ‘I heard she was living with you,’ he said, ‘and of course I remember her from my father’s court.’
‘Where she was a slave,’ I snarled.
‘And I remember her as a most beautiful woman,’ he ignored my tone, ‘and yes, a slave too. Is that why you haven’t married her, lord?’
‘Certainly not,’ I said curtly, then decided some explanation was needed. ‘She’s superstitious about marriage.’
‘As am I,’ Æthelstan said with a smile.
‘But you should marry, lord King,’ I said. ‘Your kingdoms need an heir.’
‘They have
