The Last Kingdom Series Books 1–8: The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, The Lords of the North, Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings, The Pagan Lord, The Empty Throne. Bernard Cornwell

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      ‘Tomorrow,’ Iseult said firmly.

      ‘Tomorrow is the Feast of Saint Vincent,’ Alfred said, as though that might help, and somehow the child survived that night and, next day, Saint Vincent’s Day, Iseult went with me to the eastern shore where we gathered lichen, burdock, celandine and mistletoe. She would not let me use metal to scrape the lichen or cut the herbs, and before any was collected we had to walk three times around the plants which, because it was winter, were poor and shrivelled things. She also made me cut thorn boughs, and I was allowed to use a knife for that because the thorns were evidently not as important as the lichen or herbs. I watched the skyline as I worked, looking for any Danes, but if they patrolled the edge of the swamp none appeared that day. It was cold, a gusting wind clutching at our clothes. It took a long time to find the plants Iseult needed, but at last her pouch was full and I dragged the thorn bushes back to the island and took them into the hut where she instructed me to dig two holes in the floor. ‘They must be as deep as the child is tall,’ she said, ‘and as far apart from each other as the length of your forearm.’

      She would not tell me what the pits were for. She was subdued, very close to tears. She hung the celandine and burdock from a roof beam, then pounded the lichen and the mistletoe into a paste that she moistened with spittle and urine, and she chanted long charms in her own language over the shallow wooden bowl. It all took a long time and sometimes she just sat exhausted in the darkness beyond the hearth and rocked to and fro. ‘I don’t know that I can do it,’ she said once.

      ‘You can try,’ I said helplessly.

      ‘And if I fail,’ she said, ‘they will hate me more than ever.’

      ‘They don’t hate you,’ I said.

      ‘They think I am a sinner and a pagan,’ she said, ‘and they hate me.’

      ‘So cure the child,’ I said, ‘and they will love you.’

      I could not dig the pits as deep as she wanted, for the soil became ever wetter and, just a couple of feet down, the two holes were filling with brackish water. ‘Make them wider,’ Iseult ordered me, ‘wide enough so the child can crouch in them.’ I did as she said, and then she made me join the two holes by knocking a passage in the damp earth wall that divided them. That had to be done carefully to ensure that an arch of soil remained to leave a tunnel between the holes. ‘It is wrong,’ Iseult said, not talking of my excavation, but of the charm she planned to work. ‘Someone will die, Uhtred. Somewhere a child will die so this one will live.’

      ‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

      ‘Because my twin died when I was born,’ she said, ‘and I have his power. But if I use it he reaches from the dark world and takes the power back.’

      Darkness fell and the boy went on coughing, though to my ears it sounded feebler now as though there was not enough life left in his small body. Alewold was praying still. Iseult crouched in the door of our hut, staring into the rain, and when Alfred came close she waved him away.

      ‘He’s dying,’ the king said helplessly.

      ‘Not yet,’ Iseult said, ‘not yet.’

      Edward’s breath rasped. We could all hear it, and we all thought every harsh breath would be his last, and still Iseult did not move, and then at last a rift showed in the rain clouds and a feeble wash of moonlight touched the marsh and she told me to fetch the boy.

      Ælswith did not want Edward to go. She wanted him cured, but when I said Iseult insisted on working her charms alone, Ælswith wailed that she did not want her son to die apart from his mother. Her crying upset Edward who began to cough again. Eanflæd stroked his forehead. ‘Can she do it?’ she demanded of me.

      ‘Yes,’ I said and did not know if I spoke the truth.

      Eanflæd took hold of Ælswith’s shoulders. ‘Let the boy go, my lady,’ she said, ‘let him go.’

      ‘He’ll die!’

      ‘Let him go,’ Eanflæd said, and Ælswith collapsed into the whore’s arms and I picked up Alfred’s son who felt as light as the feather that had not cured him. He was hot, yet shivering, and I wrapped him in a wool robe and carried him to Iseult.

      ‘You can’t stay here,’ she told me. ‘Leave him with me.’

      I waited with Leofric in the dark. Iseult insisted we could not watch through the hut’s entrance, but I dropped my helmet outside the door and, by crouching under the eaves I could just see a reflection of what happened inside. The small rain died and the moon grew brighter.

      The boy coughed. Iseult stripped him naked and rubbed her herb paste on his chest, and then she began to chant in her own tongue, an endless chant it seemed, rhythmic, sad and so monotonous that it almost put me to sleep. Edward cried once, and the crying turned to coughing and his mother screamed from her hut that she wanted him back, and Alfred calmed her and then came to join us and I waved him down so that he would not shadow the moonlight before Iseult’s door.

      I peered at the helmet and saw, in the small reflected firelight, that Iseult, naked herself now, was pushing the boy into one of the pits and then, still chanting, she drew him through the earth passage. Her chanting stopped and, instead, she began to pant, then scream, then pant again. She moaned, and Alfred made the sign of the cross, and then there was silence and I could not see properly, but suddenly Iseult cried aloud, a cry of relief, as if a great pain was ended, and I dimly saw her pull the naked boy out of the second pit. She laid him on her bed and he was silent as she crammed the thorn bushes into the tunnel of earth. Then she lay beside the boy and covered herself with my large cloak.

      There was silence. I waited, and waited, and still there was silence. And the silence stretched until I understood that Iseult was sleeping, and the boy was sleeping too, or else he was dead, and I picked up the helmet and went to Leofric’s hut. ‘Shall I fetch him?’ Alfred asked nervously.

      ‘No.’

      ‘His mother …’ he began.

      ‘Must wait till morning, lord.’

      ‘What can I tell her?’

      ‘That her son is not coughing, lord.’

      Ælswith screamed that Edward was dead, but Eanflæd and Alfred calmed her, and we all waited, and still there was silence, and in the end I fell asleep.

      I woke in the dawn. It was raining as if the world was about to end, a torrential grey rain that swept in vast curtains from the Sæfern Sea, a rain that drummed on the ground and poured off the reed thatch and made streams on the small island where the little huts crouched. I went to the door of Leofric’s shelter and saw Ælswith watching from her doorway. She looked desperate, like a mother about to hear that her child had died, and there was nothing but silence from Iseult’s hut, and Ælswith began to weep, the terrible tears of a bereaved mother, and then there was a strange sound. At first I could not hear properly, for the seething rain was loud, but then I realised the sound was laughter. A child’s laughter, and a heartbeat later Edward, still naked as an egg, and all muddy from his rebirth through the earth’s passage, ran from Iseult’s hut and went to his mother.

      ‘Dear God,’ Leofric said.

      Iseult, when I found her, was weeping, and would not be consoled. ‘I need you,’ I told her harshly.

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