Ælfweard looked up but said nothing. His hands were shaking.

Æthelstan smiled. ‘Come, brother,’ he said and held out his left hand to help Ælfweard to his feet, then gave him the crown. ‘Wear it proudly! It was our father’s gift to you.’

Ælfweard had looked astonished, but now, grinning because he believed he would be King of Wessex still, albeit in submission to Æthelstan, he put the crown on his head. ‘I will be loyal,’ he promised his half-brother.

‘Of course you will,’ Æthelstan said gently. He looked at one of the guards. ‘Your sword,’ he commanded, and when he had the long blade in his hand, he pointed it at Ælfweard. ‘Now you will swear an oath to me,’ he said.

‘Gladly,’ Ælfweard bleated.

‘Touch the sword, brother,’ Æthelstan said, still gently, and when Ælfweard put a tentative hand on the blade Æthelstan just lunged. One straight, savage lunge that shattered his half-brother’s ribcage, drove him back with Æthelstan following, and then the sword pierced Ælfweard’s heart. Some men gasped, a serving girl screamed, Father Oda made the sign of the cross, but Æthelstan just watched his brother die. ‘Take him to Wintanceaster,’ he said when the last blood had pulsed and the last twitch ended. He tugged the blade free. ‘Bury him beside his father.’

The emerald-encrusted crown had rolled under the table where it struck my ankle. I retrieved it and held it for a few heartbeats. This was the crown of Wessex, Alfred’s crown, and I remember the dying king telling me it was a crown of thorns. I placed it on the linen cloth that covered the board and looked at Æthelstan. ‘Your crown, lord King.’

‘Not until Archbishop Athelm consecrates me,’ Æthelstan said. The archbishop, who had been held in the palace as a privileged prisoner, sat at the high table. He looked confused, his hands shaking as he ate and drank, but he nodded at Æthelstan’s words. ‘And you will come to the ceremony, Lord Uhtred,’ Æthelstan demanded, meaning that I should attend the solemn moment when the Archbishop of Contwaraburg placed the royal helmet of Wessex on the new king’s head.

‘With your permission, lord King,’ I said. ‘I would go home.’

He hesitated a moment, and then nodded abruptly. ‘You have my permission,’ he said.

I was going home.

In time we heard that Æthelstan was crowned. The ceremony was performed at Cyningestun, on the Temes, where his father had been given the royal helmet of Wessex, but Æthelstan refused the helmet, instead insisting that the archbishop place the emerald crown on his gold-threaded hair. The ealdormen of three kingdoms acclaimed the moment, and Alfred’s dream of one Christian kingdom thus came one step nearer.

And now I sat on Bebbanburg’s high rock, the flame-lit hall behind me and the moon-silvered sea before me, and I thought of the dead. Of Folcbald, killed by a spear thrust in the shield wall by the Crepelgate. Of Sigtryggr, felled by fever and dying in his bed with a sword in his hand. Of his two children, my grandchildren, both dead. Of Eadith who had gone to Eoferwic to care for the children and had caught their plague and now was buried.