‘He’s a churchman,’ I whispered, ‘does that worry you?’
‘In the dark, lord, all cats are black.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Leave him to me,’ the Irishman said again.
‘Then let’s go to church,’ I said, and the three of us crossed the street and I knocked hard on the door. I knocked three times, gave a single rap, then knocked three times again.
It took a long time for the door to be opened, but at last the bar was lifted and the door was pushed outwards. ‘They’ve started,’ a robed figure whispered, then gasped as I seized his collar and pulled him into the street where Finan hit him in the belly. The Irishman was a small man, but had extraordinary strength in his lithe arms, and the robed figure bent double with a sudden gasp. The door’s inner curtain had fallen across the opening and no one inside the church could see what happened outside. Finan punched the man again, felling him, then knelt on the fallen figure. ‘You go away,’ Finan whispered, ‘if you want to live. You just go a very long way from the church and you forget you ever saw us. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ the man said.
Finan tapped the man on the head to reinforce the order, then stood up and we saw the dark figure scrabble to his feet and stumble away downhill. I waited a brief while to make sure he had really gone, then the three of us stepped inside and Finan pulled the door shut and dropped the bar into its brackets.
And I pushed the curtain aside.
We were in the darkest part of the church, but I still felt exposed because the far end, where the altar stood, was ablaze with rushlights and wax candles. A line of robed men stood facing the altar and their shadows shrouded us. One of those priests turned towards us, but he just saw three cloaked and hooded figures and must have assumed we were more priests because he turned back to the altar.
It took me a moment to see who was on the altar’s wide shallow dais because they were hidden by the priests and monks, but then the churchmen all bowed to the silver crucifix and I saw Æthelred and Aldhelm standing on the left-hand side of the altar while Bishop Erkenwald was on the right. Between them was Æthelflaed. She wore a white linen shift belted just beneath her small breasts and her fair hair was hanging loose, as if she were a girl again. She looked frightened. An older woman stood behind Æthelred. She had hard eyes and her grey hair was rolled into a tight scroll on the crown of her skull.
Bishop Erkenwald was praying in Latin and every few minutes the watching priests and monks, there were nine of them altogether, echoed his words. Erkenwald was dressed in red and white robes on which jewelled crosses had been sewn. His voice, always harsh, echoed from the stone walls, while the responses of the churchmen were a dull murmur. Æthelred looked bored, while Aldhelm seemed to be taking a quiet delight in whatever mysteries unfolded in that flame-lit sanctuary.
The bishop finished his prayers, the watching men all said amen, and then there was a slight pause before Erkenwald took a book from the altar. He unwrapped the leather covers, then turned the stiff pages to a place he had marked with a seagull’s feather. ‘This,’ he spoke in English now, ‘is the word of the Lord.’
‘Hear the word of the Lord,’ the priests and monks muttered.
‘If a man fears his wife has been unfaithful,’ the bishop spoke louder, his grating voice repeated by the echo, ‘he shall bring her before the priest! And he shall bring an offering!’ He stared pointedly at Æthelred who was dressed in a pale green cloak over a full coat of mail. He even wore his swords, something most priests would never allow in a church. ‘An offering!’ the bishop repeated.
Æthelred started as if he had been woken from a half-sleep. He fumbled in a pouch hanging from his sword belt and produced a small bag that he held towards the bishop. ‘Barley,’ he said.
‘As the Lord God commanded it,’ Erkenwald responded, but did not take the offered barley.
‘And silver,’ Æthelred added, hurriedly taking a second bag from his pouch.
Erkenwald took the two offerings and laid them in front of the crucifix. He bowed to the bright-gleaming image of his nailed god, then picked up the big book again. ‘This is the word of the Lord,’ he said fiercely, ‘that we take holy water in an earthen vessel, and of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take, and he shall put that dust in the water.’
The book was put back on the altar as a priest offered the bishop a crude pottery cup that evidently held holy water, for Erkenwald bowed to it, then stooped to the floor and scraped up a handful of dirt and dust. He poured the dirt into the water, then placed the cup on the altar before taking up the book again.
‘I charge thee, woman,’ he said savagely, looking from the book to Æthelflaed, ‘if no man hath lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness with another man instead of thy husband, then be thou free of the curse of this bitter water!’
‘Amen,’ one of the priests said.
‘The word of the Lord!’ another said.
‘But if thou hast gone aside to another man,’ Erkenwald spat the words as he read them, ‘and be defiled, then the Lord shall make thy thigh to rot and thy belly to swell.’ He put the book back on the altar. ‘Speak, woman.’
Æthelflaed just stared at the bishop. She said nothing. Her eyes were wide with fear.
‘Speak, woman!’ The bishop snarled. ‘You know what words you must say! So say them!’
Æthelflaed seemed too frightened to speak. Aldhelm whispered something to Æthelred who nodded, but did nothing. Aldhelm whispered again, and again Æthelred nodded, and this time Aldhelm took a pace forward and hit Æthelfaed. It was not a hard blow, just a slap around the head, but it was enough to force me to take an involuntary step forward. Gisela snatched my arm, checking me. ‘Speak, woman,’ Aldhelm ordered Æthelflaed.
‘Amen,’ Æthelflaed managed to whisper, ‘amen.’
Gisela’s hand was still on my arm. I patted her fingers as a signal that I was calm. I was angry, I was astonished, but I was calm. I stroked Gisela’s hand, then dropped my fingers to Serpent-Breath’s hilt.
Æthelflaed had evidently spoken the right words because Bishop Erkenwald took the earthen cup from the altar. He raised it high in front of the crucifix, as if showing it to his god, then he carefully poured a little of its dust-fouled water into a silver chalice. He held the pottery cup high again, then ceremoniously offered it to Æthelflaed. ‘Drink the bitter water,’ he ordered her.
Æthelflaed hesitated, then saw Aldhelm’s mailed arm ready to strike her again and so she obediently reached for the cup. She took it, held it poised by her mouth for a brief moment, then closed her eyes, screwed up her face and drank the contents. The men watched intently, making certain she drained the cup. The candle flames flickered in a draught from the smoke-hole in the roof and somewhere in the city a dog suddenly howled. Gisela was clutching my arm now, her fingers tight as claws.
Erkenwald took the cup and, when he was satisfied that it was empty, nodded to Æthelred. ‘She drank it,’ the bishop confirmed. Æthelflaed’s face glistened where her tears reflected the wavering light from the altar on which, I now saw, was a quill pen, a pot of ink and a piece of parchment. ‘What I do now,’ Erkenwald said solemnly, ‘is in accordance with the word of God.’
‘Amen,’ the priests said. Æthelred was watching his wife as if he expected her flesh to start rotting before his eyes, while Æthelflaed herself was trembling so much that I thought she might collapse.
‘God commands me to write the curses down,’ the bishop announced, then bent to the altar. The quill scratched for a long time. Æthelred was still staring intently at Æthelflaed. The priests also watched her as the bishop scratched on. ‘And having written the curses,’ Erkenwald said, capping the ink pot, ‘I wipe them out according to the commands of Almighty God, our Father in heaven.’
‘Hear the word of the Lord,’ a priest said.
‘Praise his name,’ another said.
Erkenwald picked up the silv
er chalice into which he had poured a small amount of the dirty water and dribbled the contents onto the newly written words. He scrubbed at the ink with a finger, then held up the parchment to show that the writing had been smeared into oblivion. ‘It is done,’ he said pompously, then nodded at the grey-haired woman. ‘Do your duty!’ he commanded her.
The old, bitter-faced woman stepped to Æthelflaed’s side. The girl shrank away, but Aldhelm seized her by the shoulders. Æthelflaed shrieked in terror, and Aldhelm’s response was to cuff her hard around the head. I thought Æthelred must respond to that assault on his wife by another man, but he evidently approved for he did nothing except watch as Aldhelm took Æthelflaed by her shoulders again. He held her motionless as the old woman stooped to seize the hem of Æthelflaed’s linen shift. ‘No!’ Æthelflaed protested in a wailing, despairing voice.
‘Show her to us!’ Erkenwald snapped. ‘Show us her thighs and her belly!’
The woman obediently lifted the shift to reveal Æthelflaed’s thighs.
‘Enough!’ I shouted that word.
The woman froze. The priests were stooping to gaze at Æthelflaed’s bare legs and waiting for the dress to be lifted to reveal her belly. Aldhelm still held her by the shoulders, while the bishop was gaping towards the shadows at the church door from where I had spoken. ‘Who is that?’ Erkenwald demanded.
‘You evil bastards,’ I said as I walked forward, my steps echoing from the stone walls, ‘you filthy earslings.’ I remember my anger from that night, a cold and savage fury that had driven me to intervene without thinking of the consequences. My wife’s priests all preach that anger is a sin, but a warrior who does not have anger is no true warrior. Anger is a spur, it is a goad, it overcomes fear to make a man fight, and I would fight for Æthelflaed that night. ‘She is a king’s daughter,’ I snarled, ‘so drop the dress!’
‘You will do as God tells you,’ Erkenwald snarled at the woman, but she dared neither drop the hem nor raise it further.
I pushed my way through the stooping priests, kicking one in the arse so hard that he pitched forward onto the dais at the bishop’s feet. Erkenwald had seized his staff, its silver finial curved like a shepherd’s crook, and he swung it towards me, but checked his swing when he saw my eyes. I drew Serpent-Breath, her long steel scraping and hissing on the scabbard’s throat. ‘You want to die?’ I asked Erkenwald, and he heard the menace in my voice and his shepherd’s staff slowly went down. ‘Drop the dress,’ I told the woman. She hesitated. ‘Drop it, you filthy bitch-hag,’ I snarled, then sensed the bishop had moved and whipped Serpent-Breath around so that her blade shimmered just beneath his throat. ‘One word, bishop,’ I said, ‘just one word, and you meet your god here and now. Gisela!’ I called, and Gisela came to the altar. ‘Take the hag,’ I told her, ‘and take Æthelflaed, and see whether her belly has swollen or whether her thighs have rotted. Do it in decent privacy. And you!’ I turned the blade so that it pointed at Aldhelm’s scarred face, ‘take your hands off King Alfred’s daughter, or I will hang you from Lundene’s bridge and the birds will peck out your eyes and eat your tongue.’ He let go of Æthelflaed.
‘You have no right …’ Æthelred said, finding his tongue.
‘I come here,’ I interrupted him, ‘with a message from Alfred. He wishes to know where your ships are. He wishes you to set sail. He wishes you to do your duty. He wants to know why you are skulking here when there are Danes to kill.’ I put the tip of Serpent-Breath’s blade into the scabbard and let her fall home. ‘And,’ I went on when the sound of the sword had finished echoing in the church, ‘he wishes you to know that his daughter is precious to him, and he dislikes things that are precious to him being maltreated.’ I invented that message, of course.
Æthelred just stared at me. He said nothing, though there was a look of indignation on his jaw-jutting face. Did he believe I came with a message from Alfred? I could not tell, but he must have feared such a message for he knew he had been shirking his duty.
Bishop Erkenwald was just as indignant. ‘You dare to carry a sword in God’s house?’ he demanded angrily.
‘I dare do more than that, bishop,’ I said. ‘You’ve heard of Brother Jænberht? One of your precious martyrs? I killed him in a church and your god neither saved him nor stopped my blade.’ I smiled, remembering my own astonishment as I had cut Jænberht’s throat. I had hated that monk. ‘Your king,’ I said to Erkenwald, ‘wants his god’s work done, and that work is killing Danes, not amusing yourself by looking at a young girl’s nakedness.’
‘This is God’s work!’ Æthelred shouted at me.
I wanted to kill him then. I felt the twitch as my hand went to Serpent-Breath’s hilt, but just then the hag came back. ‘She’s …’ the woman started, then fell silent as she saw the look of hatred I was giving Æthelred.
‘Speak, woman!’ Erkenwald commanded.
‘She shows no signs, lord,’ the woman said grudgingly. ‘Her skin is unmarked.’
‘Belly and thighs?’ Erkenwald pressed the woman.
‘She is pure,’ Gisela spoke from a recess at the side of the church. She had an arm around Æthelflaed and her voice was bitter.
Erkenwald seemed discomfited by the report, but drew himself up and grudgingly acknowledged that Æthelflaed was indeed pure. ‘She is evidently undefiled, lord,’ he said to Æthelred, pointedly ignoring me. Finan was standing behind the watching priests, his presence a threat to them. The Irishman was smiling and watching Aldhelm who, like Æthelred, wore a sword. Either man could have tried to cut me down, but neither touched their weapon.
‘Your wife,’ I said to Æthelred, ‘is not undefiled. She’s defiled by you.’
His face jerked up as though I had slapped him. ‘You are …’ he began.
I unleashed the anger then. I was much taller and broader than my cousin, and I bullied him back from the altar to the side wall of the church, and there I spoke to him in a hiss of fury. Only he could hear what I said. Aldhelm might have been tempted to rescue Æthelred, but Finan was watching him, and the Irishman’s reputation was enough to ensure that Aldhelm did not move. ‘I have known Æthelflaed since she was a small child,’ I told Æthelred, ‘and I love her as if she was my own child. Do you understand that, earsling? She is like a daughter to me, and she is a good wife to you. And if you touch her again, cousin, if I see one more bruise on Æthelflaed’s face, I shall find you and I shall kill you.’ I paused, and he was silent.
I turned and looked at Erkenwald. ‘And what would you have done, bishop,’ I sneered, ‘if the Lady Æthelflaed’s thighs had rotted? Would you have dared kill Alfred’s daughter?’
Erkenwald muttered something about condemning her to a nunnery, not that I cared. I had stopped close beside Aldhelm and looked at him. ‘And you,’ I said, ‘struck a king’s daughter.’ I hit him so hard that he spun into the altar and staggered for balance. I waited, giving him a chance to fight back, but he had no courage left so I hit him again and then stepped away and raised my voice so that everyone in the church could hear. ‘And the King of Wessex orders the Lord Æthelred to set sail.’
Alfred had sent no such orders, but Æthelred would hardly dare ask his father-in-law whether he had or not. As for Erkenwald, I was sure he would tell Alfred that I had carried a sword and made threats inside a church, and Alfred would be angry at that. He would be more angry with me for defiling a church than he would be with the priests for humiliating his daughter, but I wanted Alfred to be angry. I wanted him to punish me by dismissing me from my oath and thus releasing me from his service. I wanted Alfred to make me a free man again, a man with a sword, a shield and enemies. I wanted to be rid of Alfred, but Alfred was far too clever to allow that. He knew just how to punish me.
He would make me keep my oath.
It was two days later, long after Gunnkel had fled from Hrofeceastre, that Æthelred at last sailed. His fleet of fifteen warships, the most powerful fleet Wessex had ever assembled, slid downriver on the ebb tide, prope
lled by an angry message that was delivered to Æthelred by Steapa. The big man had ridden from Hrofeceastre, and the message he carried from Alfred demanded to know why the fleet lingered while the defeated Vikings fled. Steapa stayed that night at our house. ‘The king is unhappy,’ he told me over supper, ‘I’ve never seen him so angry!’ Gisela was fascinated by the sight of Steapa eating. He was using one hand to hold pork ribs that he flensed with his teeth, while the other fed bread into a spare corner of his mouth. ‘Very angry,’ he said, pausing to drink ale. ‘The Sture,’ he added mysteriously, picking up a new slab of ribs.
‘The Sture?’
‘Gunnkel made a camp there, and Alfred thinks he’s probably gone back to it.’
The Sture was a river in East Anglia, north of the Temes. I had been there once and remembered a wide mouth protected from easterly gales by a long spit of sandy land. ‘He’s safe there,’ I said.
‘Safe?’ Steapa asked.
‘Guthrum’s territory.’
Steapa paused to pull a scrap of meat from between his teeth. ‘Guthrum sheltered him there. Alfred doesn’t like it. Thinks Guthrum has to be smacked.’
‘Alfred’s going to war with East Anglia?’ Gisela asked, surprised.
‘No, lady. Just smacking him,’ Steapa said, crunching his jaws on some crackling. I reckoned he had eaten half a pig and showed no signs of slowing down. ‘Guthrum doesn’t want war, lady. But he has to be taught not to shelter pagans. So he’s sending the Lord Æthelred to attack Gunnkel’s camp on the Sture, and while he’s at it to steal some of Guthrum’s cattle. Just smack him.’ Steapa gave me a solemn look. ‘Pity you can’t come.’
‘It is,’ I agreed.
And why, I wondered, had Alfred chosen Æthelred to lead an expedition to punish Guthrum? Æthelred was not even a West Saxon, though he had sworn an oath to Alfred of Wessex. My cousin was a Mercian, and the Mercians have never been famous for their ships. So why choose Æthelred? The only explanation I could find was that Alfred’s eldest son, Edward, was still a child with an unbroken voice and Alfred himself was a sick man. He feared his own death, and he feared the chaos that could descend on Wessex if Edward took the throne as a child. So Alfred was offering Æthelred a chance to redeem himself for his failure to trap Gunnkel’s ships in the Medwæg, and an opportunity to make himself a reputation large enough to persuade the thegns and ealdormen of Wessex that Æthelred, Lord of Mercia, could rule them if Alfred died before Edward was old enough to succeed.
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