The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Stories, #1)

by Bernard Cornwell

“What are you thinking?” Leofric asked me. We were riding through a valley that was pink with flowers. “I thought you were going to Exanceaster,” I said. “I am, but I’m going to Cridianton first, then taking you on to Exanceaster. So what are you thinking? You look gloomy as a priest.” “I’m thinking about a harp.” “A harp!” He laughed. “Your head’s full of rubbish.” “Touch a harp,” I said, “and it just makes noise, but play it and it makes music.” “Sweet Christ!” He looked at me with a worried expression. “You’re as bad as Alfred. You think too much.” He was right. Alfred was obsessed by order, obsessed by the task of marshaling life’s chaos into something that could be controlled. He would do it by the church and by the law, which are much the same thing, but I wanted to see a pattern in the strands of life. In the end I found one, and it had nothing to do with any god, but with people. With the people we love. My harpist is right to smile when he chants that I am Uhtred the Gift-Giver or Uhtred the Avenger or Uhtred the Widow-Maker, for he is old and he has learned what I have learned, that I am really Uhtred the Lonely. We are all lonely and all seek a hand to hold in the darkness. It is not the harp, but the hand that plays it.