by Martin Lake
And then she wept. Tears welled from her and fell upon Ulf’s face and neck. She could not stop them and, no matter how fast she wiped them away, still they flowed. They were not tears of sorrow, nor of pain, nor joy or regret. They were the tears of life itself. Tears allowed to her by the weavers of fate and destiny.
And she helped Ulf weave anew the pattern of his life.
Had she known for sure the pattern being made she might have fled from his side. Even then, even at that moment, a part of her knew, a part of her wondered. Would his life be the best or the worst? And how would he be viewed by his friends and by his enemies?
Suddenly Ulf reached out and grasped her hand, gripping it tightly.
‘I’m a berserker,’ he gasped. ‘Like father.’
He began to weep.
‘I’m cursed by an uncontrollable rage.’
INGA PONDERS
Inga walked in a daze. She paid no attention to the crowds of hurrying people, no heed to where she placed her feet. She knew only that she had to get away from the camp, where wounded warriors lay groaning on rush-beds, some making slow recovery from their wounds, many getting worse and others slipping into the arms of death.
A little later she found herself on the river bank. It was as if, daughter of a watery world as she was, she had been led home.
To her left the high walls of the old Roman city reared above her. Was Ketil in there she wondered. Had he survived the battle and retreated to the safety of its walls? She tried to dismiss the thought of him from her mind. Ketil was an enemy, a man who would have welcomed news of the King’s defeat. And, she realised, of her brothers’ deaths. Yet, try as she might, she was unable to banish the thought of him, unable to bury her concern.
She scolded herself for her stupidity and turned her back on the walls, gazing instead at the settlement of Ludenwic half a mile west along the strand. People still lived there, although she had noticed that many of the buildings had fallen into disrepair. It was a gloomy, drear place and she had no yearning to walk there.
She found a willow tree by the side of the river and settled her back against it. A few boats sailed upstream, ferrying men and materials to the English camp. But they were far away and she could sit here undisturbed and unnoticed, the only creatures near scores of ducks and water-fowl and a handful of swans.
Her heart felt cold and hard. She had never seen Ulf so distressed, never seen him lose all spark of life and zest. He had suffered no visible injury on the battlefield but it seemed that he had been terribly wounded. It was almost as if a part of him had died there.
Hot tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. She shared his agony, felt his despair and desolation. Yet in some ways it felt worse for her. She had to contend not only with his suffering but with her fears for him as well. And then there was Osgar. How must he be feeling? A part of her was angry at him, for putting himself into peril and so endangering Ulf. A bigger part was even angrier at how he was treating Ulf now. Why was he not grateful? Why did he blame and deride his brother?
She wiped away the tears and pulled her knees tight against her chest, circling them with her arms as protective as a mother with her babe.
And what about the chanting?
She tried to fix her mind on what had happened at Ulf’s beside but the memory proved elusive and uncertain.
She remembered her mind winging to her home in Somerset, to the marshlands and isles. She recalled calling on the wise-woman Ymma for help.
A sudden heat had seized her hand. And then came the chanting, the strange words, the chill and haunting melody. Her lips had moved, her voice had spoken although she had not willed it.
She tried to recall the words, tried to recapture them, but only a few came back to her. And none of them made any sense, none of them were words that she had uttered or heard before. Yet, in a curious way, they seemed to have a substance of their own. Almost as if they were live things, creatures shadowy but alive.
I’m not frightened, she realised. I’m not scared. Perhaps the words were from the demon world, the speech of witches and sprites. But it doesn’t alarm me.
She smiled. Her brothers had always laughed at her for her belief in faeries, believing she was a silly girl or just pretending. But she was not. She had seen a faerie once, a little woman who blew a kiss at her. Only Ymma had believed her until that day. The day she had told the little daughter of the king.
Aethelflaed had believed her also. And it was she who, with the grave certainty of a child, had decided that the kiss was a sign, that the faerie had blessed her and given her the gift of speaking with the other realm.
Perhaps this explains the chanting. Perhaps it was a song of the faeries, sent to me to heal my brother.
She closed her eyes, content to think this.
When she opened them she found herself looking at Aethelflaed.
‘Don’t creep up on me,’ she said with a gasp. ‘You startled me.’
‘I didn’t creep up on you,’ Aethelflaed answered. ‘I’ve been here a while now, watching you. I even called your name.’
Inga shook her head in confusion. ‘I didn’t realise.’
‘You seemed in a dream. Far away.’
Inga gave a fleeting smile. ‘I think I was. But I didn’t know it.’
‘Tell me,’ Aethelflaed said, sitting beside her.
And so Inga told her everything. About how she had feared that Ulf would die, at her futile attempts to cool him. About her final plea to Ymma for help and how she had immediately begun the strange, mysterious chant. And then how Ulf had awoken from his stupor. And yet remained injured, still maimed, still far from her reach.
Inga finally fell silent and Aethelflaed took her hand in hers.
‘Do not fear,’ she said quietly. ‘Remember the little faerie you told me about? Perhaps she helped you. Perhaps she taught you a healing song.’
Inga looked surprised at her words. ‘I’ve just been wondering the same thing,’ she said.
Aethelflaed nodded as if this were proof enough.
‘Well if it was the faerie then it worked,’ Inga said, her voice soft and wondering. ‘But not entirely. I wish she would teach me a second song. About how to make Ulf whole again.’
Aethelflaed squeezed her hand more tightly. ‘Perhaps this is as whole as he will ever get. And who knows, maybe it will be the best for him. Maybe he is not destined to be a man of war.’
Inga began to weep. ‘In some ways, I hope that. But Ulf would not, so I cannot hope it too much.’
‘Only time will give us the answer,’ Aethelflaed said.
Inga managed a little laugh. ‘How did you get so wise, child?’
Aethelflaed shook her head. ‘I don’t know. My father said I was born wise. That I was destined for great things.’
‘Destiny,’ Inga said. ‘I have heard too much about destiny and the secret weavers of our fate.’
‘Yet you believe it, I think.’
Inga turned and gazed at the river. ‘Oh yes, I believe it,’ she said at last.
She fell silent, and then the certainty took hold of her. A wonderful certainty, and a terrible one.
She took Aethelflaed’s hand, struggling to find the words.
‘Today, now, this moment, I perceive it was the weavers who lent their voices to me, the weavers who taught me the chant, the weavers who made Ulf’s fate anew.’
Aethelflaed held her tight, and felt in her own heart a pattern she could not quite comprehend.
DOUBTS AND FEARS
Ulf sat in front of the tent in the warm sunshine. He felt weary, wearier than he had ever felt in his life.
He stared at the meat Inga had brought him on a thick bread trencher. He did not feel hungry but he put the meat to his mouth and took a bite. It seemed to have no taste and he put it back on the trencher. The blood oozed from the meat, staining the bread a dirty, brownish red. He frowned, unable to recognise whether it was beef, mutton or pork. Meat, he thought. Only meat.
; ‘You’re not a berserker,’ Inga said, quietly.
Ulf did not answer, could not even look at her. He was ashamed of his rage, ashamed at the way he had exulted in slaughter.
Inga knelt in front of him and took his hands in hers.
‘You are like father in this respect,’ she said cautiously. ‘Like him you fight to protect your loved ones. You fought to protect our brother.’
He raised his eyes to look at her. Her face was tight with distress.
‘But my rage,’ he said. ‘I had no control over it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just wanted to kill, to maim, to harm.’ He paused. ‘If one of my friends had stood in my path I would have killed him with as little concern as I killed the heathens.’
She shook her head. Was it a gesture of disagreement or of sorrow?
‘I had no control,’ he murmured.
‘It was a battle, Ulf.’
‘Even in a battle a good warrior knows what he is doing. If he doesn’t he is a danger to himself and to his friends. If he can’t master his anger then he is worse than useless.’
He closed his eyes. ‘I am worse than useless.’
She squeezed his hands more tightly. His pain coursed through her, she felt it as acutely as he did. And now, because of this, she could find no more words to use to argue with.
‘Leave me, sister,’ he said. ‘I need to be alone. I need to think about what to do.’
Reluctantly she got to her feet. She stared at him, her twin, her soul-mate, the person she loved as much as herself. For the past five years, he had been so proud of being one of the King’s men. And now this pride seemed dashed to the ground, trampled and forgotten.
She touched him briefly on the cheek and walked in the direction of the river. She too needed to be alone. And she wanted to be as far from the dead and wounded as was possible.
Ulf’s hand fumbled for the cup of ale on the stool in front of him. He took a gulp. That had taste at least. He emptied the cup in one long swallow.
‘You have recovered,’ said a familiar voice.
He tried to rise but Edgwulf pushed him gently back into his seat. He sat on the stool and looked at Ulf.
‘We have won a great victory,’ the Horse-thegn said.
‘I know. Holdwine and Grimbold have told me so.’
‘You played an important part in this victory,’ Edgwulf said. ‘Perhaps the greatest part.’
‘How can that be? I was unconscious for most of the battle.’
‘But your attack on the Danes. It put the fear of all gods in them. They were agog at sight of it, unable to think or fight. I saw our chance. I attacked them. I was able to throw them back.’
Ulf frowned. Holdwine had told him this but he had not really believed it, thought that his friend had only said it to make him feel easier about himself. But now that the Horse-thegn said the same, he realised that Holdwine had spoken truly.
‘It would have been better if I had been awake to join you in the battle,’ he said at last.
Edgwulf shook his head. ‘If you had not attacked the Danes as you did I would not have been able to break them.’ He leaned closer to Ulf. ‘It was the decisive moment, Ulf.’
Ulf shook his head.
‘I am not saying this to make you feel good about yourself,’ Edgwulf said, his voice now a little harder. ‘I’m telling you because I want you to know how battles are lost or won, how to shape them, how to seize advantage.’
‘Why do you want me to know this, Edgwulf? I’m only a King’s-thegn. And a useless one.’
‘Stop feeling so sorry for yourself,’ Edgwulf said. He gripped Ulf’s arm tight. ‘You’re young and you make a young man’s mistakes —’
‘But that was no mistake,’ Ulf cried. ‘I lost myself, lost myself as a man. I was like a foul berserker. Like the worst of the heathens.’
‘You’re young and make a young man’s mistakes,’ Edgwulf repeated, his voice now much lower. ‘And you will continue to do so. But the King and I have marked you out as someone with great intelligence and boldness. We have need of you.’
‘But I’m a berserker. Like a follower of Odin. It’s terrible.’
Edgwulf leaned closer, his face an inch from Ulf’s. ‘Who says that the heathens have sole claim to wild courage? Who says that they alone should have warriors who fight with skill and boldness and reckon not the danger?’
‘I say it.’
‘And I say not.’
He got to his feet. Ulf did likewise and this time Edgwulf did not stop him.
‘Rest now, Ulf,’ he said. ‘And do not be troubled by this one incident.’
He made to walk off and then stopped and returned. ‘And one word of warning. Don’t ever dare to interrupt me again.’
THE LORDS DEBATE
Alfred strode into his tent, followed by Edgwulf, Ethelnoth and Wulfric.
They remained silent while a servant filled their cups with ale, silent until she had left the tent. They immediately resumed a discussion they had been having for an hour.
‘Ulf fought with the greatest courage,’ Ethelnoth said.
Alfred slumped into a chair and rubbed his forehead wearily. ‘The boy’s a berserker.’
‘It had a part in winning us the battle,’ Edgwulf said, quietly.
Alfred did not reply for a while. ‘He’s a berserker,’ he said finally. His voice grew quiet and troubled. ‘Like the worst of our enemies.’
The silence hung heavily about them.
‘He got enraged,’ said Wulfric at last. ‘God knows I have felt the same often enough, we all have in the heat of battle.’
‘It is not the same,’ Alfred said. ‘He was a danger to himself, and worse, a danger to his friends and our cause.’
The others did not answer. They could see how troubled Alfred was and knew that now was not yet the time to venture an opinion uninvited.
They sat and drank in silence until the king flung his hand in the air angrily.
‘Well, what do you think? I’ve not brought you here merely to drink ale.’
‘The boy clearly lost control,’ Edgwulf said thoughtfully. ‘But he fought bravely, heroically. And he walked back to the shield-wall once his frenzy had passed.’
‘But he lost control, Horse-thegn,’ Alfred said.
The others swallowed deep breaths at his use of Edgwulf’s title and not his name.
‘He is like his father,’ Alfred continued. ‘And we all witnessed Brand’s rage back in Athelney.’
Edgwulf nodded. ‘But for good reason —’
‘Whatever the reason, the man lost his mind. He has passed on the weakness to his son.’
A new thought struck him. ‘Do you think Brand is a Dane?’
‘He’s from Somerset, from Athelney,’ said Edgwulf. ‘He’s as much a Saxon as you or me.’
‘Why all this talk of Danish blood anyway?’ said Ethelnoth. ‘The Danes are first cousins to the Angles and the Jutes. The Jutes are already part of Wessex and we all know that you have dreams of incorporating the Mercians into your kingdom.’
Alfred held up his hand to indicate he should lower his voice.
‘For goodness sake,’ Ethelnoth continued, ‘you wed a Mercian and your children are half Angle.’
‘But they’re still English.’
‘Yes they are,’ said Edgwulf. ‘But don’t you think some time in the future, after your sons have conquered Mercia, that they will need to turn their attention to East Anglia where the Danes hold sway? There will come a time, Alfred, when your heirs are Kings of the Danes as much as you are King of the Saxons. And then who will be able to tell Dane from Angle and Angle from Saxon?’
Alfred sighed. ‘You may be right.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But that is not the point at issue today. We are discussing what to do with Ulf.’
‘I think we do the boy a disservice,’ Wulfric said, speaking more into his cup than to the king. I think we should give him another chance.’
‘I’m not sure I want to take the r
isk,’ Alfred said. ‘In the battle he slaughtered Danes and Norsemen. But in the future? In his frenzy he might be as likely to turn his sword on his friends.’
‘He is young,’ Ethelnoth said. ‘We were all young once.’ He jabbed his finger at Alfred. ‘And I recall a time, at the battle of Ashdown, when you lost all patience and led your men on a rampaging attack uphill against the Danish sword-wall. We all thought it was madness but followed you, nonetheless.’
‘I knew what I was doing,’ Alfred said coldly. ‘I had not lost my wits.’
Nobody argued although Ethelnoth’s left eyebrow rose in astonishment.
Alfred straightened his shoulders, having made his decision. ‘I cannot risk my other warriors by having Ulf in a shield-wall…’
And his words faltered. He glanced up at his friends and saw in their eyes that the same thought had struck them at the same time as him.
He, Alfred, King of Wessex, had lost his wits on too many occasions. His face burned with the memory of it, burned with shame. The strange smell, the flashing lights, the sense of flying out of the world as ponderous as an ox and as swift as an eagle. And then the collapse to the ground and the terrifying, uncontrollable, frenzied shaking which he had been told about but never witnessed.
He closed his eyes. This realisation made his decision an agony. Could he condemn the boy for a frenzy so very like his own? Yet he knew that once the fit was on him there was no chance of him doing harm to anyone else. But Ulf? They had all witnessed how powerful his rage had been.
‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Alfred said at last. ‘Ulf can no longer fight beside my other warriors. Send for him. I must tell him he can no longer be a King’s-thegn.’
Ulf managed to fight back his tears.
‘Is it because I’m a ceorl?’ he asked. ‘Because my father was one?’
Alfred looked astonished. ‘Of course not.’
Ulf stared into his eyes and saw no flicker of deceit there.
‘I value a man not for where he was bred but for his heart.’
