*He wanted to know how the story ended,' I said. *I'd like to know that too.'

*Ours ends here,' Finan said, and made the sign of the cross with the hilt of his sword.

And the Danes came again.

They came slowly. Men do not want to die at the moment of victory. They want to enjoy the triumph, to share the wealth that winning brings, and so they came steadily, keeping their shields tight-locked.

Someone in our ranks began to sing. It was a Christian song, perhaps a psalm, and most of the men took up the tune, which made me think of my eldest son, and what a bad father I had been, and I wondered if he would be proud of my death. The Danes were beating blades and spear-hafts against their shields. Most of those shields were broken, axe-split, splintered. Men were bloodied, blood of the foemen. Battle in the morning. I was tired, and looking up at the rain clouds, thought this was a bad place to die. But we do not choose our deaths. The Norns do that at the foot of Yggdrasil and I imagined one of those three Fates holding the shears above my thread. She was ready to cut, and all that mattered now was to keep tight hold of my sword so that the winged women would take me to Valhalla's feasting-hall.

I watched the Danes shouting at us. I did not hear them, not because I was out of earshot, but because the world seemed strangely silent again. A heron came out of the mist and flew overhead and I distinctly heard the heavy beat of its wings, but I did not hear the insults of my enemies. Plant your feet square, overlap the shield, watch the enemy's blade, be ready to counter-strike. There was pain on my right hip, which I only just noticed. Had I been wounded? I dared not look because the Danes were close and I was watching the two spear tips, knowing they would strike the right-hand side of my shield to force it back and let Sigurd come from my left. I met Sigurd's eyes and we stared at each other and then the spears came.

They hurled dozens of spears from their rear ranks, heavy spears arcing over their front ranks to crash hard into our shields. At that moment a man in the front rank must crouch to let the shield protect him, and the Danes charged as they saw us go down. *Up!' I shouted, my shield heavy with two spears. My men were screaming in rage, and the Danes beat into us, shrieking their war cries, hacking with axes, and we pushed back, the two lines locked, heaving. It was a pushing match, but we were only three ranks and the Danes were at least six, and they were driving us back. I tried to skewer Wasp-Sting forward, and her blade struck a shield. Sigurd was trying to reach me, screaming and shouting, but the flow of men forced him away from me. A Dane, open-mouthed and with a beard riddled with blood, hacked an axe at Finan's shield and I tried to slide Wasp-Sting over my own shield into his face, but another blade deflected mine. We were being forced back, the enemy so close we could smell the ale on their breath. And then the next charge came.

It came from our left, from the south, horsemen crashing up the Roman road with spears levelled and a dragon banner flying. Horsemen from the small mist, horsemen who screamed their challenge as they spurred into the rearward ranks of the enemy. *Wessex!' they shouted, *Edward and Wessex!' I saw the close-packed Danish ranks judder and shift under the impact, and the second rank of the oncoming horsemen had swords that they hacked down at the enemy, and that enemy saw yet more horsemen coming, bright-mailed horsemen in the dawn, and the new flags showed crosses and saints and dragons and the Danes were breaking, running back to the protection of the ditch.

*Forward!' I shouted, and I felt the pressure of the Danish attack ease and I bellowed at my men to thrust into them, to kill the bastards, and we screamed like men released from death's valley as we charged them. Sigurd vanished, protected by his men. I hacked at the bloody-bearded Dane with Wasp-Sting, but the pressure of men swept him off to my right and the Danes ahead were breaking, horsemen among them, swords falling, spears striking, and Steapa was there, huge and angry, snarling at his enemy, using his sword like a butcher's cleaver, his stallion biting and kicking, wheeling and trampling. I guessed Steapa's force was small, maybe no more than four or five hundred men, but it had panicked the Danes by attacking their rear ranks, yet it would not be long before they recovered and came back to the assault.

*Get back!' Steapa roared at me, pointing his red sword south. *Go back now!'

*Fetch the wounded!' I shouted at my men. More horsemen came, helmets bright in the grey daylight, spear-blades like silver death, swords striking down at running Danes. Our men were carrying the wounded south, away from the enemy, and in front of us were the bodies of the dead and dying, and Steapa's horsemen were reforming their ranks, all but one, who put spurs to his stallion and galloped across our front and I saw him crouching low over the beast's black mane, and I recognised him and dropped Wasp-Sting to pick up a fallen spear. It was heavy, but I launched it hard and it flew between the horse's legs and brought it down, and I heard the man scream in fright as he thumped onto the wet grass and the horse was thrashing its legs as it tried to stand, and the rider's foot was caught in the stirrup. I drew Serpent-Breath, ran to him and kicked the stirrup free. *Edward is king,' I said to the man.

*Help me!' His horse was in the grasp of one of my men, and now he tried to stand, but I kicked him down. *Help me, Uhtred,' he said.

*I have helped you all your life,' I said, *all your miserable life, and now Edward is king.'

*No,' he said, *no!'

He was not denying his cousin's kingship, but the threat of my sword. I shuddered with anger as I drove Serpent-Breath down. I drove it at his breast and that great blade tore through his mail, forcing the shattered links down through his breastbone and ribs and right into his rotten heart that exploded under the steel's thrust. He screamed still, and still I plunged that blade down, and the scream dribbled away to a gasp and I held Serpent-Breath there, watching his life leak away into the East Anglian soil.

So aethelwold was dead, and Finan, who had rescued Wasp-Sting, plucked my arm. *Come, lord, come!' he said. The Danes were shouting again, and we ran, protected by the horsemen, and soon there were more horsemen in the mist and I knew Edward's army had come, but neither he nor the leaderless Danes wanted a fight. The Danes had the protection of the ditch now, they were in their shield wall, but they were not marching on Lundene.

So we marched there instead.

Edward wore his father's crown at the Christmas feast. The emeralds glinted in the firelight of the great Roman hall at the top of Lundene's hill. Lundene was safe.

A sword or axe had cut into my hip, though I had not realised it at the time. My mail coat was being mended by a smith, and the wound itself was healing. I remembered the fear, the blood, the screams.

*I was wrong,' Edward told me.

*True, lord King,' I said.

*We should have attacked them at Cracgelad,' he said, then stared down the hall where his lords and thegns were dining. He looked like his father at that moment, though his face was stronger. *The priests said you couldn't be trusted.'

*Maybe I can't,' I said.

He smiled at that. *But the priests say that God's providence dictated the war. By waiting, they say, we killed all our enemies.'

*Almost all our enemies,' I corrected him, *and a king cannot wait on God's providence. A king must make decisions.'

He took the reproof well. *Mea culpa,' he said quietly, then, *yet God was on our side.'

*The ditch was on our side,' I said, *and your sister won that war.'

It had been aethelflaed who delayed the Danes. If they had crossed the river during the night they would have been ready to attack earlier and they would surely have overwhelmed us long before Steapa's horsemen came to the rescue. Yet most of the Danes had stayed in Huntandon, held there by the threat to their rear. That threat had been the burning halls. aethelflaed, ordered by her brother to ride to safety, had instead taken her Mercian troops north and set the fires that had frightened the Danes into thinking another army was behind them.

*I burned two halls,' she said, *and one church.'

She sat on my left, Edward on my right, while Father Coenwulf and the bishops had been pushed to the ends of the high table. *You burned a church?' Edward asked, shocked.

*It was an ugly church,' she said, *but big, and it burned bright.'

Burned bright. I touched her hand, which rested on the table. Almost all our enemies were dead, only Haesten, Cnut and Sigurd remained alive, yet to kill one Dane is to resurrect a dozen. Their ships would keep coming across the sea, because the Danes would never rest until the emerald crown was theirs, or until we had crushed them utterly.

Yet for the moment we were safe. Edward was king, Lundene was ours, Wessex had survived, and the Danes were beaten.

Wyrd bi ful raed.

Historical Note.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles are our best source for the events of the period during which the Angles and Saxons dominated Britain, but there is no single chronicle. It seems probable that Alfred himself encouraged the creation of the original text, which offered a year by year summary of events beginning with Christ's birth, and that first manuscript was copied and distributed to monasteries who, in turn, kept updating their copies so that no two versions are alike. The entries can be maddeningly obscure and are not always reliable. Thus, for the year AD 793, the Chronicles record fiery dragons in the skies above Northumbria. In 902, the Chronicles record a battle at *the Holme', a place that has never been identified though we know it was somewhere in East Anglia. A Danish army led by King Eohric and by the claimant to the throne of Wessex, aethelwold, invaded Mercia, crossed the Thames at Cracgelad (Cricklade), harried Wessex and then retreated. King Edward followed them into East Anglia and took his revenge by ravaging Eohric's land. Then comes the Chronicles' tantalising account of the battle: *When he (Edward) meant to leave there, he had it announced to the army that they would all leave together. The Kentish stayed on there against his command and seven messages he had sent to them. The force came upon them there, and they fought.' The entry then gives a list of the most notable casualties, among them aethelwold, King Eohric, Ealdorman Sigelf, his son Sigebriht, and Beortsig. *On either hand,' the Chronicles tell us, *much slaughter was made, and of the Danes there were more killed, though they had the battlefield.' That suggests the Danes won the battle, but in winning, lost most of their leaders. (I am using a translation of the Chronicles by Anne Savage, published by Heinemann, London, 1983.) What is most tantalising in that brief account is the puzzling refusal of the Kentish forces to withdraw, and my solution, that Ealdorman Sigelf was trying to betray the West Saxon army, is pure invention. We neither know where the battle was fought, nor what really happened there, only that there was a battle and that aethelwold, Edward's rival for the throne of Wessex, was killed. The Chronicles tell us about aethelwold's rebellion in a long entry for the year 900 (though Alfred's death was in 899). *Alfred, son of aethelwulf, passed away, six nights before All Saints Day. He was king over all the English, except for that part which was under Danish rule; and he held that kingdom for one and a half years less than thirty. Then his son Edward received the kingdom. aethelwold, his father's brother's son, took over the manors at Wimbourne and at Christchurch, without the leave of the king and his counsellors. Then the king rode with the army until he camped at Badbury Rings near Wimbourne, and aethelwold occupied the manor with those men who were loyal to him, and had barricaded all the gates against them; he said that he would stay there, alive or dead. Then he stole away under the cover of night, and sought the force in Northumbria. The king commanded them to ride after, but he could not be overtaken. They captured the woman he had seized without the king's leave and against the bishop's command, because she was hallowed as a nun.' But we are not told who the woman was, or why aethelwold kidnapped her, or what became of her. Again my solution, that it was aethelwold's cousin, aethelflaed, is pure invention.

The Chronicles give us the bare bones of history, but without much detail or even explanations for what happened. Another mystery is the fate of the woman Edward might, or might not, have married; Ecgwynn. We know she gave him two children and that one of them, aethelstan, would become immensely important to the creation of England, yet she vanishes from the record entirely and is replaced by Ealdorman aethelhelm's daughter, aelflaed. A much later account suggests that Edward and Ecgwynn's marriage was not considered valid, yet in truth we know very little of that tale, only that the motherless aethelstan will, in time, become the first king of all England.

The Chronicles note that Alfred was *king over all the English', but then adds the cautious and crucial caveat, *except for that part which was under Danish rule'. In truth most of what would become England was under Danish rule; all of Northumbria, all East Anglia, and the northernmost counties of Mercia. Alfred undoubtedly wanted to be king of all the English, and by the time of his death he was by far the most notable and powerful leader among the Saxons, but his dream of uniting all the lands where English was spoken had not been realised, yet he was fortunate in having a son, a daughter and a grandchild who were as committed to that dream as he was himself, and in time they would make it happen. That story is the story behind these tales of Uhtred; the story of England's creation. It has always puzzled me that we English are so incurious about our nation's genesis. In school it sometimes seems as if Britain's history begins in AD 1066, and all that went before is irrelevant, but the story of how England came to exist is a massive, exciting and noble tale.

The father of England is Alfred. He might not have lived to see the land of the Angelcynn united, but he made that unification possible by preserving both the Saxon culture and the English language. He made Wessex into a stronghold that withstood assault after assault from the Danes, and which was strong enough, after his death, to spread northwards until the Danish overlords were overcome and assimilated. There was an Uhtred involved in those years, and he is my direct ancestor, but the tales I tell of him are pure invention. The family held Bebbanburg (now Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland) from the earliest years of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain almost until the Norman Conquest. When the rest of the north fell to Danish rule, Bebbanburg held out, an enclave of Angelcynn among the Vikings. Almost certainly that survival was due as much to collaboration with the Danes as to the immense natural strength of the family's fortress. I separated the Uhtred of this tale from Bebbanburg so he can be closer to the events that will create England, events that begin in the Saxon south and slowly move to the Angle north. I wanted him close to Alfred, a man he dislikes almost as much as he admires.

Alfred is, of course, the only British monarch to be called *the Great'. There is no Nobel-like committee to award that honorific, which seems to spring out of history by consent of the historians, yet few people would argue with Alfred's right to the title. He was, by any measure, a most intelligent man, and he was also a good man. Uhtred might be inimical to a Christian society ruled by law, but the alternative was Danish rule and continuing chaos. Alfred imposed law, education and religion on his people, and he also protected them from fearsome enemies. He made a viable state, no small achievement. Justin Pollard, in his wonderful biography Alfred the Great (John Murray, London, 2005), sums up Alfred's achievements thus: *Alfred wanted a kingdom where the people of each market town would want to defend their property and their king because their prosperity was the state's prosperity.' He made a nation to which people felt they belonged because the law was fair, because aspiration was rewarded and because government was not tyrannical. It is not a bad prescription.

He was buried in Winchester's Old Minster, but the body was later moved to the New Minster, where the tomb was sheathed in lead. William the Conqueror, wanting to dissuade his new English subjects from venerating their past, had the lead-encased coffin moved to Hyde Abbey just outside Winchester. That abbey, like all the other religious houses, was dissolved under Henry VIII, and became a private home and, later, a prison. In the late eighteenth century Alfred's tomb was discovered by the prisoners, who stripped it of lead and then threw away the bones. Justin Pollard surmises that the remains of the greatest Anglo-Saxon king are probably still in Winchester, scattered in the topsoil somewhere between a car park and a row of Victorian houses. His emerald-studded crown fared no better. It survived until the seventeenth century, when, so it is said, the wretched Puritans who ruled England after the Civil War prised out the stones and melted down the gold.

Winchester is still Alfred's town. Many of the property lines in the old city's heart are those laid out by his surveyors. The bones of many of his family lie in stone boxes in the cathedral that replaced his minster, and his statue stands in the town centre, burly and warlike, though in truth he was sick all his life, and his first love was not martial glory, but religion, learning and the law. He was indeed Alfred the Great, but in this tale of England's making his dream has not yet come true, so Uhtred must fight again.

end.