Sword of Kings by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780008183899
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-09-24T05:00:00+00:00

‘The church,’ Father Oda said to me when we reached the bottom of the two stairways, ‘does not condone slavery, lord.’

‘Yet I’ve known churchmen own slaves.’

‘It is not seemly,’ he said, ‘yet the scriptures do not forbid it.’

‘What are you telling me, father?’

He flinched as another scream sounded, this one more terrible than any that had assaulted our ears as we came downstairs. ‘Well done, girl,’ Finan muttered.

‘Vengeance must belong to God,’ Father Oda said, ‘and only to God.’

‘Your god,’ I said harshly.

He flinched again. ‘In his epistle to the Romans,’ the priest said, ‘Paul tells us to leave revenge to the Lord.’

‘The lord took his time revenging Benedetta,’ I said.

‘And the fat bastard deserves it, father,’ Finan put in.

‘I don’t doubt it, but by encouraging her,’ he was looking at me now, ‘you have encouraged her to commit a mortal sin.’

‘Then you can shrive her,’ I said curtly.

‘She is a fragile woman,’ Oda said, ‘and I would not burden her fragility with a sin that separates her from Christ’s grace.’

‘She’s stronger than you think,’ I said.

‘She is a woman!’ he said sternly. ‘And women are the weaker vessels. I was at fault,’ he paused, plainly disturbed, ‘and I should have stopped her. If the man deserved death then it should have been at your hands, not hers.’

He was right, of course. I did not doubt that Gunnald deserved death for a multitude of crimes, but what I had just unleashed in the slaver’s attic was cruel. I had condemned him to a long, terrible, and painful death. I could have satisfied justice with a swift killing, as swift as the one I had given Halfdan so many years before, but I had chosen cruelty instead. Why? Because I knew that choice would please Benedetta. Another scream sounded, faded, grew again. ‘It is not seemly,’ Father Oda repeated, ‘that you have put that woman’s mortal soul at risk!’ He spoke fervently and I wondered if the Danish priest was attracted to Benedetta and that thought gave me a pulse of jealousy. She was beautiful, undeniably beautiful, but there was a darkness in that beauty and an anger in her soul. I told myself she was ridding herself of that shadow with Wasp-Sting.

‘You pray for her, father,’ I said dismissively, ‘and I’m going to look at the ship that will take us home.’ I led Finan into the early sunlight. Gunnald’s screams had faded and the loudest noise came from the gulls fighting over a carcass stranded on the mud at the far side of the Temes. A small breeze, too small to be of any use to a sailor, rippled the river. Gunnald, while he still lived, owned two wharves, both protected by walls of wooden staves. His ship was on the left-hand wharf, a long, big-bellied ship, made for distant voyages. She looked heavy. Her timbers were dark, almost pitch-black, and weed was thick at her waterline. A sail was furled on the yard, but its ragged cloth was crusted with bird droppings.

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