Brunanburh, 27th October 937
A man staggered forward and fell into the mud. Beside him, another knelt, nursing his head in his hands.
Around them, though a victory for Aethelstan, though a defeat for the Northern Alliance, men, covered in muck and filth and mud, rain running over bodies that were not joining in the dying screams, as if the heavens wanted to wash away the shame of the day.
Finan beag, some way off, was also kneeling, fending off sporadic lunges from Saxons, before scooping up the older man, his brother of sorts, before sinking back down in the mud, cradling Cellach mac Constantine Ui Alpin.
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Osthryth was standing still, as the battlefield emptied of life. On the horizon, illumunated by the setting sun, square sails were retreating.
A man staggered towards Osthryth, his battle-mind upon him, tore towards her, his axe raised, his feet bogged down in the mud. She didn't see him, lost as she was in her thoughts, fatigue on her limbs, pain in her shoulder. It was beginning to ache now.
Osthryth did not see when someone despached him, for she was making her way, wearily, for the man on the floor. Beside him, not too far away, she glanced the face of Cellach, Constantine's and Mairi's son. She had not been able to save him as she had saved his father.
She looked back to Domnall, then spoke to her son, who looked up to Osthryth, his arm shaking from the effort of holding a shield.
"Where is...Constantine?"
"He...he has fled, Mhathair, with Anlaf. They have...gone."
Osthryth knelt to her son and squeezed at his shoulder, tapping it in a vague way of someone who felt they had to take charge despire being in shock. Domnall was not crying out in pain as he lay dying. His banner, carried in heart, carried in spirit, once adorning the stone which Domhnall had brought from Tara, part of the Lia Fail to sit on the boundary between Dal Riata and Pictland, bore no hint of white on the cloth now, as fingers clutched the flag as those on the flag clasped the cross of Christ.
But she did not go to her dower-husband immediately: there was someone else who she needed to be beside first.
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"I knew you could not resist." Finan stood over her as she knelt beside Domnall. Osthryth began to cry. Evan after everything he knew she had been through, Finan had never known her to cry. She knelt beside Uhtred, whose eyes did not look as if they were looking at her. Or anyone.
"You are not the brother I wamted you to be," Osthryth began, pushing Finan away as she held his face, "But you are my brother, my big brother, who I saw outside Bebbanburg, who swore to take it back."
Uhtred closed his eyes, and then opened them, looking to Finan, then back to Osthryth. His breathing seemed to have steadied, even though it was steadily slower.
"So you, fought?"
"I fought," Osthryth confirmed.
"Am I dying?"
"You've recovered from worse," Finan replied, when Osthryth said nothing. "This?" He glanced to the stomach wound, "Is nothing but a scratch." He moved so Osthryth would not see. It was death; it could be nothing else.
"Anlaf is gone," Osthryth told him, "Constantine too. And Cellach." The facts were coming out evenly, stoically, though her eyes could not contain the tears that were re-forming behind her yees.
"Cellach," he repeated, and Osthryth wondered whether her brother was remembering the time he had taken the boy as hostage to the surety of Constantine not invading Northumbria, or Bebbanburg lands, at least. He had kept that promise, Osthryth told herself.
"And Ildubh?" Uhtred asked. And this time, Osthryth said nothing. Finan took her hand.
"He fled with Anlaf," she said eventually, then knelt back, watching Finan's eyes as he saw the stub of arrow sticking out of her shoulder, resisting the urge to dig out more. Uhtred looked angry -not just the battle anger - but the look of angry disappointment that he always saved for her.
"Did you get what you wanted sister? Will Constantine take Bernicia to the wall as Aethelstan takes the rest?"
"I fought beside you, in case you didn't notice!" Osthryth shot back, with familiar venom. "I sent your son from the field and took his place! I fought for Bebbanburg.!"
"That is not what I wanted," Uhtred told her, scathingly.
"And what I wanted was my brother, who came with the head of the man who murdered his adoptive parents, to fight that day and take back your fortress! I wanted to be free of Aelfric, not to have to flee for my life!" But she did not move - she could not. He was her brother, and she his sister, whether he wanted that nor not. "I am..a disappointment to you."
It was nothing more than a statement of fact, no emotion, no plea for empathy. But still, Uhtred persisted, "You want Constantine to have to the wall."
"No!" This time Osthryth shouted the rebuttal, and might have tried to attack him in her protest, had she not been injured, had he not been dying on the field of battle. "I want what you want: an independent Northumbria, free of Alba and Mercia and Wessex! If Anlaf returns with a plan for a kingdom of Jorvik again, I will support him as claimant!"
There was a pause. Finan held himself stiff, as if resisting with all his might to rush at Osthryth or at Uhtred.
"Little chance," Uhtred breathed. " Aethelstan is still a young man, and he is followed by brothers and cousins.
"Yet one day in centuries to come, Alfred's line will only be continued when a king of the Scoti takes both thrones."
Where that had come from, Osthryth did not know. But, as she said the words, she felt the Morrigan leave her, for the last time.
Uhtred tried to laugh. "The Scoti! You backed tbe wrong horse with the Scoti." He turned his head and fixed his eyes on Finan.
"And you with tbe Danes!" Osthryth retorted, feeling the battle-emptiness be replaced with sorrow. "Yet we will all live on this island our descendents will be pushing and shoving one another until time ends."
"I believe you are right."
And then Osthryth felt tears come to her eyes again and she flung her arms around Uhtred. Not Finan, nor young Uhtred, who had crossed the field, his own burden to share, could, or even tried to stop her. "You are my brother," she sobbed into his chest, "And I love you for being my brother, no matter who you are, or where!"
Slowly, very slowly, Osthryth unpeeled herself from her brother, as two priests came to take Uhtred back to Ceastre, she supposed - others were being taken from the battlefield in stretchers, back to carts, struggling in the mud and the rain.
Uhtred looked past Finan, then took someone, flung an arm over his shoulder, taking the injured man towards the Maerse. Finan ran to young Finan and put two blood-stained hands to his face. "I have a son!" he declared. "I have a son!"
The flag of the Ailech, of Ulster, was now trailing in the decay as the body of Domnall mac Aed Ui Neill was being carried away. Unlike Uhtred, he was still. And yet, would the priests have made such an effort with a man already dead?
"Stop!" Osthryth shouted. One of the priests slowed, and then the other. Osthryth ran and siezed his hand. He was alive. Her heart quickened when Domnall's hand wrapped around hers.
"You saved my - life - Osrit," Domnall told her, his still grey-blue eyes fixing on hers, his words breathed weightily and with effort, as if there were a tax on them.
"You - " Osthryth began, not knowing any that she could say, now, after all that had happened that day.
"Osrit - I saw you -fight - " he broke off, blood appearing at the corners of his mouth. "I turned - my - men- from you." She made to shush him, but he waved his other hand towards her, not letting go of her hand with the other. "You fought - like a sidhe...like the - Morrigan - herself...
It had begun, for them, when she had arrived in Doire, at the court of Mael Muire, his mother, and Aed Findliath, his father. He had loathed and despised her, scorned her, had been intrigued by her, and been her friend for the time ever after.
And, for Domnall and Osthryth, it ended like this.
"Come to - Eireann - to - Doire - " he tried, blood pooling in his mouth and trickling down the side of his mouth. An internal injury, organ damage. Lungs, probably. There would be nothing that could be done for him.
"I will find you," Osthryth promised. "I will find Donnchada - and you." Osthryth saw Domnall glance at her face, and his features seemed younger, like the face she had once known. He then looked beyond Osthryth and she turned, to see who Domnall was looking at, his expression seeming to indicate that he knew the person but it was from so long ago he could not place it.
It was Finan. Osthryth looked back to Domnall.
"Where is this man's sword?" Osthryth demanded to know. She made a grab for one of the priests, who gave her a terrified look. She screwed up her face and made to lunge at the second, who gave a shrill little start. "Where?" Osthryth shouted. No-one answered. No-one knew.
She withdrew Buaidh, the blade she had won, all those years ago, from Domnall's servant, at the fair at Tara. Osthryth took the hilt then as Domnall closed his eyes, speaking quickly in Gaelish, "Ar n'Athair ata a neamh, go naofar d'ainim..."
Behind her, Finan joined in. When the "Lord's Prayer" had been said, Osthryth made to withdraw her hand, but found that, amongst only a few other things in her life, that it was one of the hardest things she had ever had to do.
Then, when she was about an inch away, and the priests were about to lift him up again, Domnall opened his eyes.
"Osrit," he breathed. "I am sorry that - " He looked at Finan, then back to Osthryth. "The - Ulaid prince has loved ye - " he breathed, "Since the first moment he saw you - in Doire. Longest of - all of us. I give ye - to him - "
And Osthryth saw that young Finan was standing not far away, watching them. Osthryth got to her feet and pushed against the mud, stumbling towards their son.
"Take him to Iona," she instructed him. "He is a king of the Eireann; he needs to be with his kin." From her jerkin and ignoring the pain in her shoulder, Osthryth found some coins, which sparkled silver in the dimming light. She pushed them towards young Fnan, aware that several other people were watching them, not least Edmund, the aethling, and Eadred both a little further back than Aethelstan, all watching with repsect.
"I will take him." A voice came out of the rain. It was Maelcolm. He turned to young Finan and spoke a few words to him. "Ildubh will take his brither, Cellach and I will take our cousin." He looked to Domnall and then back to Osthryth. "They will be buried beside my father, and Constantine's eldest son."
And Osthryth remembered that a different Ildubh lay at Iona, a boy, Aedre's favourite, Constantine and Mairi's firstborn. Young Finan turned to MaelColm and then bowed his head, then strode to Finan and took hand, put his lips to the back of it for a moment, before letting it go, a gesture she had once seen Domnall give to Aed Findliath. He then strode over to the stretcher that the priests were carrying and dismissed them to other people, taking up Domnall Ui Neill for the last time.
But it was not to be. Not a truce or an amnesty, then, were the West Saxon princes and the Englaland King, for a circle closed MaelColm and young Finan's path. Edmund, Eadred, Aethelstan, and his household warriors prevented them from moving any further.
"No."
Osthryth turned, and was astonished to see Uhtred on his feet. "You have your victory, Aethelstan," Uhtred continued, upright, and with his sword in his hand, his other clamped to his stomach. "The Saxons will never leave these lands, and those surrounding the Saxon lands will never again attempt such a thing again."
It was not a suggestion, it was a fact, deduced from the observable evidence of the day. Anlaf and Constantine had thrown all they had at Aethelstan's Englaland and it had not been enough.
Without a word, Aethelstan stood aside, and allowed the future king of Alba to leave with his kin.
And all Osthryth wanted to do was to cry out, cry out for news of Aedre, of Anlaf's wife, and of their children and adopted children, about their wellbeing and their safety, in the hope that Thyra, her mother, would hear her and be pleased that Osthryth had done what she had for her daughter.
For it was true: in her heart, Osthryth knew that it was Northumbria - and Bebbanburg - for her, as it had always been.
"Finan of tbe Ulaid," MaelColm nodded, before he began to walk again. "Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Osthryth of Berric."Then he looked to Osthryth, glancing down to the body of Domnall before looking back to her.
"You are welcome at Dunnottar at any time, Osthryth of Berric," MaelColm told her. And with that, MaelColm mac Domhnall Ui Alpin and Osthryth and Finan's son turned and staggered away with the body of their kin, from their humiliating defear.
Finan took Osthryth's shoulders for a moment. But whatever might have happened then did not, for Uhtred was standing before them, with two men under sword point. Osthryth was too exhausted, too astonished to speak, for the men under threat were none othr than Caltigar and Beann.
"You were supposed to take my sister back to Berric," he told them, the blade close to the jugular of Beann. "Why was she on the battlefield?"
But before Uhtred could reply, he turned to Osthryth, and reached out a hand to her, saying to her suddenly, "You look like her, like Gytha. I am sorry what happened to her."
And then, the lord of Bebbanburg crumpled onto the ground, and the heavens opened once more.
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"And once you have given him his last rites to send him to heaven, see to it that he has a pagan funeral, as he saw your mother had," Osthryth told young Uhtred. They were in Bishop Oswald's chambers, the lifeless body of her brother still and calm. "They need to be together."
Young Uhtred looked as if he was about to say something, when the door opened. Benedetta swept in, looking to no-one but Uhtred. She knelt by his side, and resisted any attempt to get her to leave. When the priests came to take his armour from him and treat his wounds, the Italian woman insisted on preparing him herself. Finan, having carried Uhtred with young Uhtred, stood to one side, his eyes not leaving the body of his friend.
"Was she like Gisela?" Young Uhtred asked Osthryth, more because he didn't want to tell her what he could hardly believe herself.
"Gisela was brown haired thin, Benedetta is small, shapely." Osthryth looked to her brother, feeling her words, though accurate, were woefully inadequate.
"He is still alive." Benedetta told Osthryth, looking over her shoulder.
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A ship sailed west, carrying the body of Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Waves gently lapped at its sides. Osthryth stood at the stern, feeling the Trinity's planks.
"He liked sailing, he liked the sea." It was Sihtric, a man of few words, who had come to tand bt her. By contrast, by her former husband had barely looked at her since the battle. Sihtric took up her hand and he patted it, before returning to Aelfburh and looking back at the ship.
Osthryth stood on the beach and watched Uhtred's funeral boat carried by the waves east, to where long ago their ancestor, Ida, of the Amgles had come, setting foot on the very beach they now stood and claimed this rock and built his fort.
"He will be with Gisela now." Finan's words were low, level. Osthryth glanced to him as he slipped his hand into hers. At least Uhtred never knew that Bishop Oswald, his first born son - with Gisela - had been slain - Beann and Caltigar had tried to stop him, but could not. He had, according to her Berricers, been the man who had stopped Osthryth from being cut down.
Time passed - indeterminate time.
Trinity was soon far out to sea. But neither of them turned to go, watching the orange flames lick the timber and consume his body.
His body, but not his heart. At the cebtre of Bebbanburg, dug by all of them, Benedetta placed his heart, which she alone had carved from his body. It could have been any one of them, Finan, or Egil, or Sihtric.
But it was right that it was this woman, whose love for Uhtred had been pure, had been genuine. She wanted nothing more than him; she had given him confort, had been the person who held him when he was frightenef, listened to him when he was joyful, tended him when he was wounded. You never found many people who were everything. Uhtred had found two.
Clouds played across the sun until the light, grey-yellow, stretched behind them, as if the west, the traditional destination for the dead, was reaching over the British Isles to grasp at what it had been cheated of.
The light shimnered in the far off sea, like the sun at high summer and it looked for all the world that Uhtred of Bebbanburg was headed straight towards it.
When she could no longer see the boat, Osthryth reached out and instinctively felt for Finan's hand. They stayed together, hand in hand, eyes fixed on the horison just a little longer until at last her fingers curled around his before, eventually, turning and striding the sand back to the fortress of Bebbanburg.
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In the days to come, Osthryth would discover more deaths in that great battle. Constantine had escaped, but many nobles had not. King Owain of the Strathclyde Cymric had been slaughered in the field and worse, his two sons, Eochaid and Dyfnwal, had been blinded. A rumour had spread - as did rumours spread in days after battles, that Constantine had done it in order to annexe Strathclyde - he had appointed Ildubh - young Finan - to act as king in his place, for the line had ended for the Hen Ogledd, at least through Owain.
"You were right," young Uhtred told her, one morning, as sea birds "ca'ad" in the highest points of Bebbanburg. Osthryth drew her eyes from the lone figure, black-hair blustering in a black cloud around her head.
"About what?"
"Bernicia regaining Lothian to Dun Eidyn." Osthryth smiled at her nephew.
"It is not the defensive position I would have chosen and Constantine left it vulnerable." More news had come in the last month: MaelColm was now king of Alba for Constantine had abdicated to live a life of quiet reflection at Culdees.
"Are you happy to come?"
"To see my son's coronation? I would not miss it." It would be at Glaschu, Dumbarton rock, with the whole of Dal Riata to the north, the land of the Scoti, the Picts to the east and Northumbria to the south. Young Finan would be a caretaker, with the notion that the Strathclyde Cymric would secede to Alba properly.
"At Scone," young Uhtred went on. And Osthryth marvelled Domhnall. "He was more of a genius than I gave him credit for."
The ships were ready, and they were down at the strandline sooner than Osthryth expected. Saxons were sailing north to Alba again - this time, however, by invitation.
"Race you to the next - oh!" She heard Alaina cry, exclaiming at her defeat when young Uhtred got to the first boat before her. Osthryth looked up - Lindisfarne was just before them - they would sail beyond it, past Berric, where she and Finan had returned to live, and up into the mouth of the Forth.
"Send me back to the Ulaid land when I die," Finan told Osthryth, who could not have sat closer to her in the stern of the boat if he tried. "Go back with my body; fulfil your promise to Domnall."
"Truly?" Osthryth turned and Finan caught her surprised look with a kiss on the lips.
"Yes."
Under Donnchada, Eireann's Ui Neill had come to some agreement about the land, and the northern Ui Neills, at Doire, and the southern Ui Neills at Midhe, Tara, had re-established as separate kingdoms again.
Osthryth looked to young Uhtred, captaining this boat, taking them north. He was alive, thanks to the no small part that Osthryth had played. He favoured his father, being large framed, his bright, blonde hair and beard blowing in the whipping sea-breeze, as did Donnchada, resembling as his did his father, Flann Sinna.
He had even taken on poor Gormlaith after Niall Glundubh's death. Strict, but king hearted, like his father had been. And, like his father, had pursued the policy of zero tolerance against the Norse, to great effect.
"And Uhtred, what would he have thought?" It had been a long time before Osthryth had dared to bring up the subject of her brother, directly, by name.
"He would have thought us fine strategists: his blood sits on the throne of Strathclyde and one day, will sit on the throne of Alba." Osthryth reached over and kissed Finan back on the lips. "Young Uhtred owns Bernicia's land to the Forth; an independent Northumbria is rising. Though Edmund will soon crush down Bloodaxe, even if he jas got support of the Archbishop." Osthryth stopped and let Finan put his arms around her. "I regret the tine I missed with him. Besides," she leaned over and kissed Finan on the lips, "I may die before you."
"Never, Osthryth Lackland!" Then bent Finan bent his head towards her, and said by her ear, "Never Aedre of Bebbanburg."
"Would he have come with us?"
"He would have protested, would have slandered you, and gone out fighting. Or got drunk. Or found someone to hump." Finan nuzzled Osthryth's neck. "Did I ever tell you about the time, when Uhtred..."
But Osthryth wasn't listening. Before an Irish king Osthryth had once knelt, promising her fealty to the line of Àlpin, from Domhnall, Constantine and whoever came after. And, who came after was her own son, Uhtred's blood, raised in the Gaelish royal family and who had would receive oaths at the red stone at Scone so carefully placed there by Domhnall mac Caustin. While Uhtred's line continued at Bebbanburg up to the Forth, it continued, into Alba, and beyond, forever after.
And when, in the years to come, Finan and Osthryth stood beside one another, as Ildubh, son of Constantine, was crowned king of Alba, when Northumbria had been claimed - twice by Eirik Bloodaxe, who Osthryth had harboured at Berric and had allowed an invasion to begin in her her lands, only to be overthrown by Anlaf and Aedre's son, Finan kissed her neck and asked, "Would you have liked to have been queen of Cumbria?"
"It's where St. Patrick came from," Osthryth replied, "And my mother, of the Britons. People get on with life. I would't be much of a queen. It is better off in Aedre's hands." They watched young Finan, ahead of them, Faedersword in hand. "A kingdom for our son?"
"He is a poet, a story teller," Finan replied, "He will ride by me until I die, then find his path. He will tell the you, and me and his cousins, and all of Bebbanburg, of Northumbria abd this thing called Englaland.
And he held out his hand, which Osthryth took, as thsy rode south east towards the Forth, towards the Tuide and past their own front door of Berric, to give young Uhtred the news that his cousin was now the king of Alba.
Back to Bebbanburg, to where it had all begun.