The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 10) by Bernard Cornwell Page B

banner to our destruction. ‘Your royal chaplain, born of a sow,’ I spoke to Brunulf, though I was still watching the fort, ‘says he has proof. What proof?’

    ‘Father Stepan?’ Brunulf passed my question to the nervous younger priest.
    ‘In the year of our lord 875,’ the second priest answered in a high, unsteady voice, ‘King Ælla of Northumbria ceded this land in perpetuity to King Oswald of East Anglia. King Edward is now the ruler of East Anglia and thus is the true and rightful inheritor of the gift.’
    I looked at Brunulf and had the impression that here was an honest man, certainly a man who did not look convinced by the priest’s statement. ‘In the year of Thor 875,’ I said, ‘Ælla was under siege from a rival, and Oswald wasn’t even the King of East Anglia, he was a puppet for Ubba.’
    ‘Nevertheless—’ the older priest insisted, but stopped when I interrupted him.
    ‘Ubba the Horrible,’ I said, staring into his eyes, ‘who I killed beside the sea.’
    ‘Nevertheless,’ he spoke loudly as if challenging me to interrupt him again, ‘the grant was made, the charter written, the seals impressed, and the land so given.’ He looked to Father Stepan, ‘is that not so?’
    ‘It is so,’ Father Stepan squeaked.
    Herefrith glared at me, trying to kill with his eyes. ‘You are trespassing on King Edward’s land, earsling.’
    Brunulf flinched at the insult. I did not care. ‘You can produce this so-called charter?’ I asked.
    For a moment no one answered, then Brunulf looked at the younger priest. ‘Father Stepan?’
    ‘Why prove anything to this sinner?’ Herefrith demanded angrily. He spurred his horse forward a pace. ‘He is a priest-killer, hated by God, married to his Saxon whore, spewing the devil’s filth.’

    I sensed my men stirring behind me and raised a hand to calm them. I ignored Father Herefrith and looked at the younger priest instead. ‘Charters are easy to forge,’ I said, ‘so entertain me and tell me why the land was given.’
    Father Stepan glanced at Father Herefrith as if looking for permission to speak, but the older priest ignored him.
    ‘Tell me!’ I insisted.
    ‘In the year of our lord 632,’ Father Stepan said nervously, ‘Saint Erpenwald of the Wuffingas came to this river. It was in flood and could not be crossed, but he prayed to the Lord, struck the river with his staff, and the waters parted.’
    ‘It was a miracle,’ Brunulf explained a little shamefacedly.
    ‘Strange,’ I said, ‘that I never heard that tale before. I grew up in Northumbria, and you’d think a northern lad like me would have heard a marvellous story like that. I know about the puffins that sang psalms, and the holy toddler who cured his mother’s lameness by spitting on her left tit, but a man who didn’t need a bridge to cross a river? I never heard that tale!’
    ‘Six months ago,’ Father Stepan continued, as if I had not spoken, ‘Saint Erpenwald’s staff was discovered on the river bed.’
    ‘Still there after two hundred years!’
    ‘Much longer!’ one of the monks put in, and received a glare from Father Herefrith.
    ‘And it hadn’t floated away?’ I asked, pretending to be amazed.
    ‘King Edward wishes to make this a place of pilgrimage,’ Father Stepan said, again ignoring my mockery.
    ‘So he sends warriors,’ I said menacingly.
    ‘When the church is built,’ Brunulf said earnestly, ‘the troops will withdraw. They are here only to protect the holy fathers and to help construct the shrine.’
    ‘True,’ Father Stepan added eagerly.
    They were telling lies. I reckoned their reason to be here was not to build some church, but to distract Sigtryggr while Constantin stole the northern part of Northumbria, and perhaps to provoke a second war by goading Sigtryggr into an assault on the fort. But why, if that is what they wanted, had they been so unprovocative? True, Father Herefrith had been hostile, but I suspected he was a bitter and