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

settling into an old fort did not sound like a savage invasion. Brunulf and his men, I decided, were in Hornecastre as a provocation, designed to make us attack them and so start a war we would lose. ‘Sigtryggr wants me to join him,’ I told Olla.
    ‘If he can’t talk them out of the fort then he’s hoping you’ll scare them out,’ he said flatteringly.
    I tasted the fish stew and discovered I was ravenous. ‘So why is the price of ships going up?’ I asked.
    ‘You won’t believe this, lord. It’s the archbishop.’
    ‘Hrothweard?’
    Olla shrugged. ‘He says it’s time the monks went back to Lindisfarena.’
    I stared at him. ‘He says what?’
    ‘He wants to rebuild the monastery!’ Olla said.
    There had been no monks on Lindisfarena for half a lifetime, not since marauding Danes had killed the last of them. In my father’s time it had been the most important Christian shrine in all Britain, surpassing even Contwaraburg, attracting hordes of pilgrims who came to pray beside Saint Cuthbert’s grave. My father had profited because the monastery was just north of the fortress, on its own island, and the pilgrims spent silver buying candles, food, lodging, and whores in Bebbanburg’s village. I had no doubt that the Christians wanted to rebuild the place, but right now it was in Scottish hands. Olla jerked his head eastwards along the bank. ‘See that pile of timber? It’s all good seasoned oak from Sumorsæte. That’s what the archbishop wants to use. That and some stone, so he needs a dozen ships to carry it all.’

    ‘King Constantin might not approve,’ I said grimly.
    ‘What’s it got to do with him?’ Olla asked.
    ‘You hadn’t heard? The damned Scots have invaded Bebbanburg’s land.’
    ‘Sweet Christ! Truly, lord?’
    ‘Truly. That bastard Constantin claims Lindisfarena is part of Scotland now. He’ll want his own monks there, not Hrothweard’s Saxons.’
    Olla grimaced. ‘The archbishop won’t like that! The damned Scots in Lindisfarena!’
    I had a sudden thought and frowned as I considered it. ‘You know who owns most of the island?’ I asked Olla.
    ‘Your family, lord,’ he said, which was a tactful answer.
    ‘The church owns the monastery ruins,’ I said, ‘but the rest of the island belongs to Bebbanburg. Do you think the archbishop asked my cousin’s permission to build there? He doesn’t need it, but life would be easier if my cousin agreed.’
    Olla hesitated. He knew how I felt about my cousin. ‘I think the suggestion came from your cousin, lord.’
    Which was exactly what I had suddenly suspected. ‘That weasel shit,’ I said. From the moment that Sigtryggr became King of Northumbria my cousin must have known that I would attack him, and he had doubtless made the suggestion to Hrothweard so that the church would support him. He would turn the defence of Bebbanburg into a Christian crusade. Constantin had at least ended that hope, I thought.
    ‘But before that,’ Olla went on, ‘the mad bishop tried to build a church there. Or he wanted to.’
    I laughed. Any mention of the mad bishop always amused me. ‘He did?’
    ‘So Archbishop Hrothweard wants to stop that nonsense. Of course you never know what to believe about that crazy bastard, but it was no secret that the fool wanted to build a new monastery on the island.’

    The mad bishop might have been mad, but he was no bishop. He was a Danish jarl named Dagfinnr who had declared himself the Bishop of Gyruum and given himself a new name, Ieremias. He and his men occupied the old fort at Gyruum, just south of Bebbanburg’s land on the southern bank of the River Tinan. Gyruum was part of Dunholm’s holdings, which made Ieremias my tenant, and the only time I had met him was when he had dutifully come to the larger fortress to pay me rent. He had arrived with a dozen men, who he called his disciples, all of them mounted on stallions except for Ieremias himself, who straddled an ass. He wore a long grubby