The assault on the church by the Danes is well recorded. The invaders were not Christians and saw no reason to spare churches, monasteries and nunneries from their attacks, especially as those places often contained considerable treasures. Whether the concerted attack on the northern monastic houses happened is debatable. The source is extremely late, a thirteenth-century chronicle written by Roger of Wendover, but what is certain is that many bishoprics and monasteries did disappear during the Danish assault, and that assault was not a great raid, but a deliberate attempt to eradicate English society and replace it with a Danish state.
Ivar the Boneless, Ubba, Halfdan, Guthrum, the various kings, Alfred’s nephew Æthelwold, Ealdorman Odda and the Ealdormen whose names begin with Æ (a vanished letter, called the ash), all existed. Alfred should properly be spelt Ælfred, but I preferred the usage by which he is known today. It is not certain how King Edmund of East Anglia died, though he was certainly killed by the Danes and in one ancient version the future saint was indeed riddled with arrows like Saint Sebastian. Ragnar and Uhtred are fictional, though a family with Uhtred’s name did hold Bebbanburg (now Bamburgh Castle) later in the Anglo-Saxon period, and as that family are my ancestors I decided to give them that magical place a little earlier than the records suggest. Most of the major events happened; the assault on York, the siege of Nottingham, the attacks on the four kingdoms, all are recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or in Asser’s life of King Alfred which together are the major sources for the period.
I used both those sources and also consulted a host of secondary works. Alfred’s life is remarkably well documented for the period, some of that documentation written by Alfred himself, but even so, as Professor James Campbell wrote in an essay on the king, ‘arrows of insight have to be winged by the feathers of speculation’. I have feathered lavishly, as historical novelists must, yet as much of the novel as possible is based on real events. Guthrum’s occupation of Wareham, the exchange of hostages and his breaking of the truce, his murder of the hostages and occupation of Exeter all happened, as did the loss of most of his fleet in a great storm off Durlston Head near Swanage. The one large change I have made was to bring Ubba’s death forward by a year, so that, in the next book, Uhtred can be elsewhere, and, persuaded by the arguments in John Peddie’s book, Alfred, Warrior King, I placed that action at Cannington in Somerset rather than at the more traditional site of Countisbury Head in north Devon.
Alfred was the king who preserved the idea of England, which his son, daughter and grandson made explicit. At a time of great danger, when the English kingdoms were perilously near to extinction, he provided a bulwark which allowed the Anglo-Saxon culture to survive. His achievements were greater than that, but his story is far from over, so Uhtred will campaign again.
THE PALE
HORSEMAN
BERNARD CORNWELL
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2005
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2005
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Ebook Edition © July 2009 ISBN: 9780007338825
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Version: 2019-02-26
THE PALE HORSEMAN
is for
George MacDonald Fraser,
in admiration
Ac her forlo berað; fugelas singað, gylleð grœghama.
For here starts war, carrion birds sing,
and grey wolves howl.
From The Fight at Finnsburh
CONTENTS