Talk:War Lord (novel)

Epilogue - the Last Days

Durham 23rd May 2021

Archaeologists from the University of Durham have released a preliminary translation of the remarkable document discovered last year in a grave excavated in the grounds of Bamburgh Castle. The parchment manuscript, written in Northumbrian Old English, had been sealed in a lead casket and is believed to date from the 10th century.

I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred, son Uhtred. It has been so ever since my ancestor Ida first followed the whale road across the cold grey sea and took the great rock of Bebbanberg upon which he built his fortress.

I and my son, another Uhtred, live here yet, and still hold and rule the lands that Ida took. We will do so until we in turn reach the end of our days, or until the gods begin the last battle and bring about the world’s end at Ragnarok.

When my father was drunk he sometimes claimed that Ida was descended from Odin himself. Perhaps it was true. It is certainly true that Christians claim that my father had a devil’s blood flowing through his veins. I have had similar thoughts myself. How else could a man live so long and survive so much?

But now he is dead.

I put my father into the care of the Abbey two years ago. His body had begun to fail him. But worse his mind had begun to wander. He needed care and a place of safety.

Safety mostly from himself. At his great age none of his enemies remained alive.

I paid of course. Generously.

The gold bought me peace of mind. It also bought me my father’s memories. Or it would eventually. I charged the Abbot to have written down whatever my father could recall of his long life on those increasingly fewer days that his mind was not lost in dreams of battles yet to come and of women not yet pleasured.

A young novice cared for my father at his end. I paid him gold too. Gold in gratitude and gold in exchange for writing down what he remembered of those final days.

In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti and with my hand upon the Holy Bible I swear that the account I shall now give will be the whole and complete truth regarding the last days of my late Lord Uhtred before his ascent unto Heaven. Requiescat In Pace.

Yet I know Lord Uhtred cared nothing for Father, Son or Holy Ghost. Still less that he hoped to rest in the eternal peace of God’s love.

No wonder that the Abbot did not like him. The Abbot disliked me too.

It was just after Yule, on my first day at the Abbey, on my first day as a novice, that the Abbot beat me with a hazel rod. I was a clumsy oaf he told me. And indeed I was, for in my nervousness I had tripped as I attempted to serve him during the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord and spilt his dinner over his ample stomach and his fine robe.

In his fury the Abbot said I was fit only to clean latrines. And to serve pagans.

I knew about latrines. I did not know about pagans. Cleaning the latrines was unpleasant. But meeting the Lord Uhtred was terrifying.

The Abbot had dragged me outside by the ear and along the snow-whipped cloister. We reached the necessarium. The smell alone was enough to ensure that the brothers could have found the place even in the dark.

“Your first task each morning is to clean in there. Will you remember boy”?

I tried to nod that I understood. But to make sure that the memory did not leak out of my foolish brain the Abbot helpfully attempted to tie a knot in the ear he was already twisting. May Our Lord bless him for the pains he took with my education.

And thence upstairs to the floor which housed the choir monks’ dormitory. A brother, a rosary in his hands, sat on a chair in the corridor outside a closed door. The Abbot dismissed him with a gesture.

“One word of advice, boy” the Abbot hissed as we stopped outside the door. “Never, ever, disagree with Lord Uhtred.”

I had no chance to respond before we entered the cell beyond the door. It was empty.

Empty of an occupant that is. The small room contained a wooden chest, a table, a chair and a cot.

“Yours.” the Abbot said as he led me to the opposite wall and to another door.

With a sharp knock the Abbot opened the second door dragging me beside him.

The room was furnished exactly like the first. But with one difference.

On the cot lay a man. An old man. He was asleep. As I looked at his face the sickly stench of age filled my nostrils. He was very old. Perhaps a thousand years old I thought.

And why not? The Lord Our God had blessed Methuselah the son of Enoch with a span of more than nine hundred years. Perhaps Satan might grant one of his own a similar gift.

Lord Uhtred had not lived a thousand years. But he was very, very old. And very, very wicked.

The Abbot coughed. Then coughed again. The second time louder than the first.

The old man’s eyes, half-hidden beneath brows like brambled thickets, opened. For a moment they glittered with a malice so intense it made me shudder. And then with a blink the evil I had seen was gone.

Speaking loudly the Abbot addressed the man. “Lord Uhtred I bring you a new servant. He will serve you until Brother Joseph returns from the Infirmary”.

The prone figure made no response.

We waited. And waited. But when still no reaction came the Abbot inclined his head then turned to leave. Though not before speaking softly to me: “Remember boy. Do all that he asks. Obey him in all things. Above all never disagree with Lord Uhtred. Brother Joseph disagreed with him.”

Then he left. And I was alone with the pagan.

He stared at me. And I looked back at him.

Then his lips moved. “What is your name boy?”

I told him.

“No, your name boy. Not what you are, but who you are. And speak up.”

I explained.

“Nefis my Lord. I am novice Nefis”.

“Nevis! Nevis?” He spat. “You’re a Scottish bastard then?”

“A bastard yes my Lord” I stammered “But Scottish no. I am from Cumbraland, and my name is Nefis not Nevis. It means Heaven in the old tongue, because my mother said I was a gift from Heaven. I am novice Nefis”.

The old man began to shake. His hands shook. His shoulders shook. His head shook. I feared he was suffering some kind of fit. Then it dawned on me that he was laughing.

“Less likely a gift from the Heavens” he eventually gasped “More likely the passing gift of an arseling of a Scotsman”.

“Tell me novice Nefis, have you ever killed a man? Have you ever pleasured a woman until she begged you to stop for fear that she would die?”

I confessed that I had done neither. Indeed I had never pleasured any woman, let alone pleasured one to the brink of death. Although all too often I had imagined such a thing, and had prayed to be forgiven for the sinfulness of such dreams.

“Well don’t just stand there. Help me up you Scottish turd” Lord Uhtred barked. And I did.

I did not attempt to correct him. I remembered Brother Joseph.

It was fortunate that I had met the pagan on a good day.

There would be good days, and better ones. And bad days too.

On that first day I felt like the boy David meeting Goliath. When I had helped Lord Uhtred to his feet I realised that the old man dwarfed me. He was a giant. My head barely reached his armpit.

But it was a good day. He did me no harm.

The good days, like all days, began the same way. I rose just before dawn. It was thanks to the Abbot that I could sleep so late. I was excused Matins, and then, whilst the brothers attended Lauds, I attended to my duties in the necessarium.

The brothers’ souls were surely as clean as those of angels. They seemed to have left all that might have polluted their souls, and their bodies, in the latrines.

I said my own prayers at Prime. As the sun began rising each morning I asked God to bless his vicar, the Abbot, for providing me with my daily lesson in humility. And for permitting me to sleep so long.

Lord Uhtred did not rise before dawn.

He usually slept late. And on good days, after he had eaten, washed and attended to his bodily needs, we wrote.

Or rather I wrote.

On those good days Lord Uhtred lay upon his cot and told me his tales. And I wrote them down as quickly as I could. Happily his mind often began to wander and he repeated himself. It helped.

But on his best days my Lord, the pagan, would sit at his table and write himself.

His hand shook, and he wrote like a child. But I could read his writing. Just.

On bad days however I would feel less like David and more like Daniel in the Lions’ Den. On those days Lord Uhtred could rage and roar. He would call down curses on God and on all his saints. Or he might remain silent and motionless for hours before suddenly striking out at anyone who came near him.

On the very worst of days two of the strongest brothers had to help me tie Lord Uhtred to his bed.

Yet the bad days and the worst provided me with the opportunity to catch up on my main task – to make fair copy of Lord Uhtred’s stories.

I wrote them in Latin. It was as well that I did.

His language was often vulgar beyond shame. Simply hearing his descriptions of women and the things he had done with them made me blush with embarrassment. His thoughts about the church were shocking.

And his memory of events was doubtful.

The Abbot said that it was all lies. Filthy lies. Treasonable lies. Blasphemous lies.

I thanked God that I had the wit and skill to write in Latin. The language of the Holy Scriptures enabled me to gentle the worst of Lord Uhtred’s words. And to omit or modify the most wicked of his ravings about the church and churchmen. But I knew nothing of times long past – so I did not change that which I neither knew about nor understood.

Yet despite my best efforts the Abbot said it was still all lies. The lies of a pagan. The lies of a pagan who at the moment of his death would go straight to Hell and to eternal damnation.

“Pray daily that you can forget what you have been obliged to write” the Abbott instructed me. “And let no one but me see this filth. Keep it well away from the eyes of others”.

So I did as the Abbot instructed. The manuscripts piled up in the chest in my cell, on top of others that had been written before my arrival.

And so to the end.

The leaves were turning to gold by the time Lord Uhtred began telling me of his part in The Great Battle. That was not an ancient tale lost almost beyond memory. It was only yesterday. Or almost yesterday. No more than four years ago.

I knew men who had been there. Men who had witnessed Æthelstan the Lord our King defeat the King of the Scots. And of the Irish. And of the Norsemen.

The battle at Brunanburh fought in the Year of Our Lord nine hundred and thirty-seven had been the greatest slaughter in the history of the world. Or so men said.

They said that King Æthelstan of blessed memory had been a new Joshua, a Christian king, whom God himself had sent to punish heathens and rebels alike.

But, unlike our blessed king, Uhtred the Lord of Babbenburg was a heathen. So could he, would he, have really fought beside Æthelstan at Brunanburh?

It was hard for me to believe that the wizened ancient whom I had served these ten months could have ever sat astride a horse, let alone have once stood-fast in a shield wall.

And yet.

And yet. His words had the ring of truth about them. And if he told the truth about the Great Battle then what of his tales of times long-gone? Were they all nought but lies and blasphemies as the Abbot said?

I pondered upon that question.

Though I did not have long to ponder.

In the afternoon on the second day of November I was sat at my table. Just as I was putting the finishing touches to my fair copy of Lord Uhtred’s account of the Great Battle, I heard a crash from his cell.

Lord Uhtred had fallen. The noise I had heard was his chair being overturned.

I tried to lift him from the floor and onto his cot, but his weight was too great for me.

Outside in the corridor I found two brothers. One came to help me. The other I sent to fetch the Abbot.

That evening after Vespers, whilst Lord Uhtred lay sleeping in his cell, I was in the Infirmary.

The Abbot had summoned me. He sat on a chair beside the fire that burned night and day to help keep warm the sick in that place. Next to the Abbot stood a brother to whom the Abbot introduced me. As the red and yellow firelight flickered across his face I saw that Brother Joseph appeared to have been kicked by a horse at some time in the not too distant past. His nose was broken, his front teeth were missing and his jaw was oddly aligned. He was smiling. Or at least his face contorted in what I took to be a smile.

Between us stood the wooden chest from my room. The Abbot had instructed that it and its contents to be carried down to the Infirmary.

“Burn them.” the Abbot ordered.

And with that, Brother Joseph with enthusiasm, and I with reluctance, began piling manuscript after manuscript upon the open fire.

Long before the bell rang for Compline the hard work of months was gone; reduced to naught but ashes.

But it was necessary. The Abbot had explained it to me after he had been to see Lord Uhtred.

“Heresies and blasphemies must be destroyed” he said. “It is simple. They and those who utter them must be purged with fire. And forgotten forever. They have no place in Christ’s world. And if by chance you should ever be asked about them you should say that they never existed. Say that Lord Uhtred was too ill ever to utter a word that made sense enough to be written down.”

Foolishly I wondered aloud if that might not require me to commit the sin of telling a lie.

“A small untruth novice,” the Abbot responded “one to be uttered in the service of the one great truth, that of God’s love for all of us”. And with that he grasped my ear and twisted it to remind me of my duty to God. I was grateful for his guidance.

But there was another thing too.

“His swords, Nefis” the Abbot went on. “When he is dead bring me his swords. They must be kept from the wrong hands. There are still heathens and pagans who would pay handsomely in gold and silver to own those swords. It is my Christian duty, your Christian duty, our Christian duty, to ensure that never happens.”

For a moment I thought I saw a glint of something like avarice in the Abbot’s eyes. But I was surely mistaken. And then I was given yet another instruction.

“Do not in any circumstances put a sword in his hand” the Abbot continued. “He may beg. He may plead. He may implore you. But as you value your soul do not comply. It would be a terrible sin to give a pagan false hope that his destiny lies anywhere other than the eternal fires of Hell. Never, whilst he lives, ever place a sword in his hand. Do you understand me boy?”

I did my best to nod in agreement, but an extra twist to my ear made the attempt impossible. The Abbot, may God bless him, took my squeal of discomfort as sufficient acknowledgement of my understanding.

And indeed I did understand.

The swords. Lord Uhtred’s swords. I knew them. I had seen them. I had touched them. They lay in the wooden chest in his cell. They had names: a short sword, a seax called Wasp-Sting. And a long-sword named Serpent-Breath.

They must have been sixty years old, perhaps much more. Yet they still gleamed. And beneath their glittering surface were shimmering smoky patterns, almost invisible, yet seeming to writhe and wriggle within the steel. They were the swords of a warrior. And the swords of a pagan, the swords of a Hell-bound heathen.

Yes I knew them. And I knew why neither should ever be placed in Lord Uhtred’s hands.

The pagans believe that in order to gain a place in their imaginary Heaven, which they call Valhalla, they must die with a sword in their hands. There, in the pagans’ perverted vision of the afterlife, dead warriors fight all day and feast all night. Madness. The Abbot was right, it would be foolish, wrong, cruel even, to give false hope to a dying man whose soul was destined only for the torment of everlasting fire.

For three days I tended to Lord Uhtred.

His left side was paralysed. That side of his face sagged like a pigs’ bladder which had leaked half its air.

On the first day he struggled to speak, but speak he did. Just. One word: “Sword”.

I shook my head in sorrow. The Abbot had been right. And I would not disobey him.

On the second day I washed Lord Uhtred. I used clean rags and warm water. I blessed the Abbot for assigning me my early morning work. It had taught me a lesson: nothing was beneath me or beyond me.

Hung on a cord around Lord Uhtred’s neck, hidden under his robe, I found a tiny hammer. It was the symbol of Thor, the pagans’ god of thunder.

I touched the crucifix hanging from my own neck and uttered a brief prayer in the hope that my soul would not be polluted by the mere sight of that horrid object.

Lord Uhtred’s time-ravaged body astonished me. So many scars. How had he lived through so many injuries? Truly Satan must have watched over him. One ancient scar in particular drew my eye: a long-healed wound in his side. It brought to mind the wound which Saint John tells us a soldier with a lance inflicted upon Our Lord as he hung upon the Cross.

I shuddered at my impiety in just thinking the thought. Another sin for God to mark against my name.

On that second day Lord Uhtred spoke once more. Again it was that same whispered word: “Sword”. And again I shook my head. From the look in his eyes I could tell that he knew that I had understood him. He beckoned me closer and spoke again, though I had to put my ear almost to his lips to hear him. But still I would not, could not, comply.

On the morning of the third day, the last day, he was too weak even to speak.

Lord Uhtred could only gesture with his right hand towards the wooden chest.

But I would not disobey the Abbot. Sorrowfully I shook my head yet again.

Then Lord Uhtred breathed his last and was gone from this world.

I did what I could for him before leaving his cell. In my own room I knelt by my cot and prayed. I prayed for Lord Uhtred’s soul. And I prayed to God asking him to forgive me for my own sinfulness.

I was still on my knees when the Abbot entered. “Is he dead yet?” he asked.

“Yes” I replied “but…” The Abbot didn’t stop to hear me. “The swords” he said, striding through the inner doorway and shutting the door behind him.

His shout of fury came even sooner than I expected.

For I had sinned.

The Abbot, his face livid with anger, burst back into my cell, his thick robe falling open as he stepped forward. As he did so I saw his fine embroidered-linen undershirt with its edge of red flannel lining stretched tight over his bulging belly. He looked ridiculous. Fool that I was, I laughed at the sight.

Then he hit me full-force across the face with his great beef-fed slab of a hand.

My head rang with the blow. And something snapped. I lunged forward and grabbed hold of the Abbot by his ear.

“You arseling!” I screamed. “You great, fat, ugly, evil, stinking sack of weasel shit.”

And then I twisted his ear. Hard. I do not know what had come over me.

Nor do I know what I expected to happen next. But I did not expect the Abbot to stop and stand stock-still.

Instead of fighting me he simply looked down. And my eyes followed his. As we watched the line of crimson cloth down the centre of his undershirt began to widen, then it tore. Just as Moses parted the Red Sea so the Abbot’s stomach opened. At first slowly and then in a rush.

It reminded me of watching a calf being born.

Just as though he was a cow giving birth to some obscene monster the Abbot’s entrails erupted from his body and fell down past his knees. Red blood dripped from the gory slithering ropes of flesh and splattered onto the floor of my cell.

Suddenly the Abbot’s legs buckled; then he fell forward face-down on the floor.

Then I kicked him, as hard as I could. But the Abbot had already passed beyond feeling anything that I, or anyone, might ever do to him again. May God forgive me for what I did.

For I had sinned. Twice.

Kicking the Abbot was not my only fault that day. I had disobeyed him too. In spirit if not in word.

Three times Saint Peter had denied Our Lord. And likewise I had thrice denied Lord Uhtred the comfort of a sword. Yet when he had passed beyond this life I had opened the wooden chest, taken out the seax Wasp-Sting and placed it in his still-warm hand.

I told myself that I was not disobeying the Abbot. I had only been instructed by him never to place a sword in Lord Uhtred’s hand whilst he lived. Why I chose to do so once he was no longer of this world I cannot explain.

Now the Abbot lay dead on the floor of my cell. I stepped around him and through the door into Lord Uhtred’s room.

He lay as I had left him. He was just as dead as when I had last seen his body. The fingers of his right hand still curled around the hilt of his short sword, exactly as I had placed them. Nothing had changed. Except for one thing. Blood was dripping from Wasp-Sting’s blade. It was a miracle.

I remember nothing more until I awoke in the Infirmary the next day. The brothers said that I had been found sobbing and shaking, slumped in the corridor outside my cell. I recall nothing of that. And I have nothing more to tell.

These are the true words of novice Nefis, written on the instruction of the Lord of Bebbanburg in the Year of Our Lord nine hundred and forty-one.

Was the novice’s tale true? Men lie. Skalds inflate the valour of those whose praises they sing. Even the gods deceive us. And priests are the worst of all. The suspicion crossed my mind that the novice’s brain was addled; that young Nefis had killed the Abbot himself then given my dead father all credit for the deed.

Or that for some inexplicable reason the Abbot had killed himself.

The monks did not believe that. They say he was a martyr. They say that the Abbot is to become one of their saints: Saint Lunca of Northumbria.

But truth is whatever men choose to believe. I have no doubt that Nefis believes his account to be true. And I choose to believe him.

I like young Nefis. He was the only person from the Abbey who had volunteered to accompany my warriors bringing my father’s body home.

After he had told me his story I gave him gold.

And not just gold.

I had a Scottish slave. A rare creature from the mountains of the far north. She had red hair and was called Dearg, which means red in the language of Alba.

Her hair was like fire. It was matched by the fire between her thighs, a fire which burned like a furnace, its flame fierce enough to warm a man’s hands at a hundred paces.

Late at night I ushered Dearg into the room where Nefis slept. And barred the door.

It was a small reward. But one I know he will remember long after the gold is gone.

The following day we buried my father.

In the hills behind Bebbanberg, within sight our fortress, and of the sea beyond, my men had dug a great pit. They had lined it with stone.

Many men deserve honour. But some deserve the greatest of honours.

Two of my warriors led a fine black warhorse down into the pit. On my signal one raised a poleaxe and slew the animal. The horse sank to floor and lay still. And then my own dog, a wolfhound, my favourite, followed the stallion into the next world.

Four men carried my father’s bier down into the grave and set it between the two dead beasts.

He was wrapped in a bearskin cloak. And on his head was his wolf-tailed war helm.

I looked at Nefis. He held my father’s swords. I took them from him and climbed down to stand at my father’s feet.

Both Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting I laid gently upon my father’s breast.

Then two of my men brought the Scots girl Dearg to my side. And I cut her throat.

My father will enjoy her company. And enjoy pleasuring her even beyond the point of death.

Young Nefis was weeping when I looked up. He must have cared dearly for my father.

I think I shall keep him. The wooden chest in which the swords were kept also contained all that my father had written himself, and all of the notes that Nefis had written as my father told him his stories. Nefis can entertain us on winter evenings, reading them to us in our own Northumbrian tongue.

Even if he is a fool.

“What were my father’s last words?” I had asked him, and the still-almost-a-boy had pulled out a piece of parchment on which he had written them down. “Fata Omnia Est” he read.

“What nonsense is that?” I roared at him. But then I understood. I had no need to translate Nefis’ Latin. I knew what my father had said: ‘Wyrd bið ful aræd’ – fate is everything.

END