why i love bernard cornwell
i am: present and accounted for
listening to: the a/c cranking - it hasn't stopped in days
drinking: raspberry lemonade
Every lord has a harp in the hall. As a child, before I went to Ragnar, I would sometimes sit by the harp in Bebbanburg's hall and I was intrigued by how the strings would play themselves. Pluck one string and the others would shiver to give off a tiny music. "Wasting your time, boy?" my father had snarled as I crouched by the harp one day, and I suppose I had been wasting it, but on that spring day in 877 I remembered my childhood's harp and how its strings would quiver if just one was touched. It was not music, of course, just noise, and scarcely audible noise at that, but after the battle in Pedredan's valley it seemed to me that my life was made of strings and if I touched one then the others, though separate, would make their sound. I thought of Ragnar the Younger and wondered if he lived, and whether his father's killer Kjartan, still lived, and how he would die if he did, and thinking of Ragnar made me remember Brida and her memory slid on to an image of Mildrith, and that brought to mind Alfred and his bitter wife, Ælswith, and all those separate people were a part of my life, strings strung on the frame of Uhtred, and though they were separate they affected one another and together they would make the music of my life.
Daft thoughts, I told myself. Life is just life. We live, we die, we go to the corpse hall. There is no music, just chance. Fate is relentless.
"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.
today's reading: just finished my reread of bernard cornwell's the last kingdom. haven't decided if i'll continue on with the series, since i did a reread earlier in the year. depends on how much time i stand staring at my bookshelves later, trying to decide.
listening to: the a/c cranking - it hasn't stopped in days
drinking: raspberry lemonade
Every lord has a harp in the hall. As a child, before I went to Ragnar, I would sometimes sit by the harp in Bebbanburg's hall and I was intrigued by how the strings would play themselves. Pluck one string and the others would shiver to give off a tiny music. "Wasting your time, boy?" my father had snarled as I crouched by the harp one day, and I suppose I had been wasting it, but on that spring day in 877 I remembered my childhood's harp and how its strings would quiver if just one was touched. It was not music, of course, just noise, and scarcely audible noise at that, but after the battle in Pedredan's valley it seemed to me that my life was made of strings and if I touched one then the others, though separate, would make their sound. I thought of Ragnar the Younger and wondered if he lived, and whether his father's killer Kjartan, still lived, and how he would die if he did, and thinking of Ragnar made me remember Brida and her memory slid on to an image of Mildrith, and that brought to mind Alfred and his bitter wife, Ælswith, and all those separate people were a part of my life, strings strung on the frame of Uhtred, and though they were separate they affected one another and together they would make the music of my life.
Daft thoughts, I told myself. Life is just life. We live, we die, we go to the corpse hall. There is no music, just chance. Fate is relentless.
"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.
today's reading: just finished my reread of bernard cornwell's the last kingdom. haven't decided if i'll continue on with the series, since i did a reread earlier in the year. depends on how much time i stand staring at my bookshelves later, trying to decide.