But what is a king? My ancestors had been the kings of Bernicia, a kingdom that no longer exists, but which once stretched from the River Foirthe in what is now Alba to the River Tesa. Why were they kings? Because they were the wealthiest, nastiest and most brutal warriors in northern Britain. They had power and they made yet more power by conquering the neighbouring kingdom of Deira and calling their new country Northumbria, and they held that power until a still more powerful king unseated them. So was that all kingship demanded? Brute power? If that was all kingship required then I could have been a king in Northumbria, but I had never pursued that throne. I did not want the responsibility, the need to control ambitious men who would challenge me, and, in Northumbria, the duty to subdue the chaos that ruled in Cumbria. I had wanted to rule Bebbanburg, nothing more.
The road led on through the mist and drizzle. In places the track had almost disappeared, or else crossed slopes of shale. We still climbed through a wet, silent world. Finan rode beside me, his grey stallion jerking its head up with every other step. He said nothing, I said nothing.
And kingship, I thought, was not just brute power, though for some kings that was enough. Guthfrith relished the power of kingship and kept it by bribing his followers with silver and slaves, yet he was doomed. That was clear. He did not have enough power and if Constantine did not destroy him, then Æthelstan surely would. Or I would. I despised Guthfrith, knew him to be a bad king, but why was he king? For no other reason than family. His brother had been king and so Guthfrith, lacking nephews, had succeeded him and so custom had given Northumbria a bad king just when it most needed a good king.
And Wessex, I thought, had been more fortunate. At its lowest moment, when it seemed that Saxon rule was doomed and the Northmen would conquer all Britain, Alfred had succeeded his brother. Alfred! A man racked by sickness, bodily weak, and passionate about religion, law, and learning, and still the best king I had known. And what had made Alfred great? Not his prowess in war, nor his sallow appearance, but his confidence. He had been clever. He had possessed the authority of a man who saw things more clearly than the rest of us, who was confident that his decisions were the best for his country, and his country had come to trust him. There was more than that, much more. He believed his god had made him king, that he had been given the duty of kingship, and that duty carried with it a heavy responsibility. Once, talking with him in Wintanceaster, he had opened a great leather-bound gospel book, turned its creaking pages, and used a jewelled pointer to show me some crabbed lines written in black ink. ‘You don’t read Latin?’
‘I can read it, lord, but I don’t know what it means,’ I had said, wondering what dull words he was about to read from his scripture.
He had pulled one of his precious candles closer to the book. ‘Our Lord,’ he had said, gazing at the book, ‘tells us to give food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless, clothes to the naked, and care to the sick.’ He had plainly recited from memory because, despite the pointer and the candle, his eyes had not moved. Then those sombre eyes had looked up at me. ‘That describes my duty, Lord Uhtred, and it is a king’s duty.’
‘It doesn’t say anything about slaughtering the Danes?’ I had asked sourly, which made him sigh.
‘I have to defend my people, yes.’ He had put the jewel on the table and carefully closed the gospel book. ‘That is my most important duty and, strangely, the easiest of all! I have mastiffs like you who are only too eager to inflict the necessary slaughter.’ I had begun to protest, but he had abruptly waved me to silence. ‘But God also demands that I care for his people, and that is a task that never ends and cannot be won by battle-slaughter. I have to give them God’s justice. I must feed them in times of scarcity. I have to care for them!’ He had looked at me and I had almost felt sorry for him.
Now I did feel sorry for him. He had been a good man and a kind one, but his duty as king had forced him to be a savage man too. I remembered him ordering a massacre of Danish prisoners who had raped and plundered a village, I saw him condemn thieves to death, and I had followed him into battle often enough, but he did those necessities regretfully, resenting them because they interrupted his god’s duty. He had been a reluctant king. Alfred would have been happiest as a monk or a priest, working with ancient manuscripts, teaching the young, and caring for the unfortunate.
Now his grandson, Æthelstan, was king, and Æthelstan was clever, he was kind enough, and he had proved himself to be a fearsome warrior, but he lacked his grandfather’s humility. As I rode the mist-shrouded hills I thought of him and came to understand that Æthelstan had something his grandfather had never possessed; vanity. He was vain about his appearance, he wanted his palaces to be glorious, he dressed his men in matching
