Conqueror

XIX

Cynewulf saw Alfred only once more. The King summoned him to Lunden, won back from the Danes.

It was nine years after Ethandune.

'And it will be,' Cynewulf remarked, as his patient horse bore him along the broken Roman road towards Lunden, 'a meeting I would never have imagined could take place, in the darkest hours at Aethelingaig.'

'What's that, Father?' asked Saberht, who rode at his side.

'Oh, nothing, boy, nothing,' Cynewulf said. 'Just talking to myself.'

The novice scratched his tonsure, raggedly cut in a head of thick black hair. Of course, his ma

Cynewulf wiped the sweat of an unseasonably warm April day from his brow, and tried to master his irritation. After all, it wasn't the boy's fault he was growing old. The novice, not yet twenty, was as lithe as a stoat, and as randy, as his lurid confessions proved. But he was a good boy who did his best to take care of Cynewulf, even if he did treat the priest as if he were Methuselah's twin.

Of course forty years was well short of the three-score-years-and-ten promised in the Bible. But life was hard in these fallen times, and bodies wore out, even those of priests. In particular Cynewulf's knees ached constantly, no doubt a relic of the long hours he spent on them each day. He embraced such suffering and dedicated it to God.

But in a sense he had been spared. Most of Cynewulf's boyhood friends were dead and gone, and he knew very few people older than himself. Suddenly he found himself lost in a world full of youthful i

Why, Saberht didn't even fear the Dane. To him the Dane was a spent force who had been defeated by Alfred and now, in the King's latter years, was being beaten steadily back. Oh, the Dane clung on in the north-east, but what was there to fear? So quickly the generations turned, Cynewulf thought, so quickly the past was forgotten.

But Cynewulf had not forgotten, and nor had Alfred.

So Saberht was unafraid of the Dane – but, oddly, he was wary of Lunden.

On this last day of travelling, coming down towards Lunden from the north-through lands taken under Alfred's sway from the Danes just a year ago – they crossed over a ridge of high ground, and Lunden and its river opened up before them. Cynewulf pulled up his horse, breathing hard, and Saberht slowed beside him.

The river snaked lazily across a broad valley, its waters shining like beaten iron. The Roman wall was a great ellipse that hugged the north bank. The city had been abandoned so long ago that mature oak trees sprouted from the foundations of ruined office buildings. But today, smoke rose up from a hundred fires burning within the walls and gathered in a pall. For centuries the English had shu

'Now look,' Cynewulf instructed Saberht. 'What a magnificent sight. And there are layers of histories, visible to us even from here.'

'Yes, Father,' Saberht mumbled passively.

'Once the Romans called this place Londinium, and it was the capital of their province, one of the greatest cities of the western empire. Now it is ours, and we call it Lundenburh.' Fortified Lunden.

Alfred had planted his burhs, his new towns, across his half of an England partitioned between Wessex and the Danes. The burhs had been based on the remains of Roman cities, or older hill-forts, or where necessary had been built from scratch, like Wealingaford. The streets were pla

Cynewulf closed his eyes and smiled. 'The value of history – the value of reading, novice. Once the Emperor Constantine, faced by barbarian threats, developed a similar sort of deep defence. And now we do it again.'

'Yes, Father.'

And of all the burhs, none was greater than Lunden.

Cynewulf clapped Saberht on the shoulder. 'Somewhere in there, right now, the King is holding court. And that is where we're going.'

'We're going in there? Inside the walls?' Saberht touched his throat and muttered.

Cynewulf took the young man's wrist and pulled it smartly back. Around his neck Saberht wore a small crucifix, carved of wood. Cynewulf knew immediately that it wasn't the Christian cross that comforted Saberht but the wood itself.

'Oh, Saberht,' Cynewulf said. 'A wooden charm to protect you from cities of stone?'

'Yes, Father. I mean-'

'Never mind. We'll discuss this during your confession. For now we will complete our journey, and I want no more superstitious twitching from you.'

'No, Father.'

Side by side priest and novice rode down from the higher ground, towards the gates of Lunden.

XX

Cynewulf and Saberht sat cautiously on a mead bench at the feet of the King. It was not the first time Alfred had kept Cynewulf waiting, while he worked through business with his clerks.

The royal hall was unimpressive. Like many of the new buildings of Lundenburh, overshadowed by mightier ruins, it was a simple framework of oaken posts, so new you could smell the drying mud of the walls. But, floored by reused Roman roof tiles and with a fire blazing in the big central hearth, it was warm and well-lit, and its walls were adorned with tapestries and bosses of silver and gold.

Alfred himself sat on a handsome giving-throne that looked as if it had been carved out of a single massive trunk. On his head was the crown he had worn in the field that day at Ethandune. He still had his taste for display; his tunic, a rich purple, looked like silk from Constantinople. Flanked by clerks, he was working his way through a mound of papers, signing, hastily amending lines here and there with a pen adorned by a handsome jewel. But Alfred's skin was sallow, his tall frame was skeletal, and he habitually held a handkerchief to his mouth. Yet he laboured steadily. The years had been much harder on Alfred than on Cynewulf, who now felt ashamed of his own self-pity.

One of Alfred's famous candle-clocks burned down on a table. It was a row of six candles, each marked with four lines to map the hours, and co

At last Alfred shooed away his clerks, like chasing away geese. 'It is good to see you, priest. I have my hearth-companions look out for veterans of those days at Aethelingaig and Ethandune.'

'I'd hardly call myself a veteran-'

'You did your part, Cynewulf. You and that enigmatic prophecy of yours. And you still have your reward?'

Cynewulf lifted up his arm so that his silver ring showed. Saberht gaped. He hadn't known that this feeble old priest owned such a ring, a gift from a king.

'I like to see those left alive,' Alfred said, 'so that I can refresh my memory of those who fell. Like your cousin Arngrim. His men gave him a ship burial, you know. On a tub we captured from the Danes.'

'Yes. Arngrim lived and died a pagan, and there was nothing I or any priest could do about that.'

Alfred laughed, but it was a harsh sound that coarsened into a cough. 'We were glad of it at the time. But it's an irony that I see more of my old adversary Guthrum than I do of those who fought with me against him. We pray together, you know. We even sing psalms – though his singing voice makes Arngrim sound like the Arch Cantor.'