Lords of the North s-3

by Bernard Cornwell

  “She’s married to Ælfric?” I asked as if I had not heard that news, “she’s married to that whore-born piece of lice-shit?”

  Aidan gave one of the warriors beside him a hard nudge, and the man drew his sword. The other did the same, and I smiled at them, then very slowly drew Serpent-Breath.

  “This is a house of God!” Abbot Eadred protested. “Put your swords away!”

  The two young men hesitated, but when I kept Serpent-Breath drawn they kept their own blades ready, though neither moved to attack me. They knew my reputation and, besides, Serpent-Breath was still sticky with the blood of Kjartan’s men.

  “Uhtred!” This time it was Beocca who interrupted me. He burst into the church and pushed past Ragnar’s men. “Uhtred!” he called again.

  I turned on him. “This is my business, father,” I said, “and you will leave me to it. You remember Aidan?” Beocca looked confused, then he recognized the steward who had been at Bebbanburg during all the years that Beocca had been my father’s priest. “Aidan wants these two boys to kill me,” I said, “but before they oblige him,” I was looking at the steward again, “tell me how Gisela can be married to a man she’s never met?”

  Aidan glanced across at Guthred as if expecting help from the king, but Guthred was still motionless, so Aidan had to confront me alone. “I stood beside her in Lord Ælfric’s place,” he said, “so in the eyes of the church she is married.”

  “Did you hump her as well?” I demanded, and the priests and monks hissed their disapproval.

  “Of course not,” Aidan said, offended.

  “If no one’s ridden her,” I said, “then she’s not married. A mare isn’t broken until she’s saddled and ridden. Have you been ridden?” I asked Gisela.

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “She is married,” Aidan insisted.

  “You stood at the altar in my uncle’s place,” I said, “and you call that a marriage?”

  “It is,” Beocca said quietly.

  “So if I kill you,” I suggested to Aidan, ignoring Beocca, “she’ll be a widow?”

  Aidan pushed one of the warriors toward me and, like a fool, the man came, and Serpent-Breath slashed once, very hard, and his sword was knocked away and my blade was at his belly. “You want your guts strewn across the floor?” I asked him gently. “I am Uhtred,” I said, my voice hard and boastful now, “I am the Lord of Bebbanburg and the man who killed Ubba Lothbrokson beside the sea.” I prodded my blade, driving him back. “I have killed more men than I could count,” I told him, “but don’t let that stop you fighting me. You want to boast that you killed me? That piece of toad-snot, Ælfric, will be pleased if you did. He’ll reward you.” I jabbed again. “Go on,” I said, my anger rising, “try.” He did nothing of the sort. Instead he took another faltering backward step and the other warrior did the same. That was hardly surprising, for Ragnar and Steapa had joined me, and behind them was a bunch of war-Danes who were dressed in mail and carrying axes and swords. I looked at Aidan. “You can crawl back to my uncle,” I said, “and tell him he has lost his bride.”

  “Uhtred!” Guthred had at last managed to speak.

  I ignored him. Instead I walked across the church to where the priests and monks huddled. Gisela came with me, still holding my arm and I gave her Serpent-Breath to hold, then stopped in front of Jænberht. “You think Gisela is married?” I asked him.

  “She is,” he said defiantly. “The bride-price is paid and the union solemnized.”

  “Bride-price?” I looked at Gisela. “What did they pay you?”

  “We paid them,” she said. “They were given one thousand shillings and Saint Oswald’s arm.”

  “Saint Oswald’s arm?” I almost laughed.

  “Abbot Eadred found it,” Gisela said drily.

  “Dug it out of a pauper’s graveyard, more like,” I said.

  Jænberht bristled. “All has been done,” he said, “according to the laws of man and of the holy church. The woman,” he looked sneeringly at Gisela, “is married.”

  There was something about his narrow, supercilious face that irritated me, so I reached out and grasped his tonsured hair. He tried to resist, but he was feeble and I jerked his head forward and down, then brought my right knee up hard so that his face was smashed into the mail of my thigh.

  I hauled him upright and looked into his bloody face. “Is she married?”

  “She is married,” he said, his voice thickened by the blood in his mouth, and I jerked his head down again and this time I felt his teeth break against my knee.

  “Is she married?” I asked. He said nothing this time, so I yanked his head down again and felt his nose being crunched on my mail-clad knee. “I asked you a question,” I said.

  “She is married,” Jænberht insisted. He was shaking with anger, wincing with pain, and the priests were protesting at what I was doing, but I was lost in my own abrupt rage. This was my uncle’s tame monk, the man who had negotiated with Guthred to make me a slave. He had conspired against me. He had tried to destroy me and that realization made my fury ungovernable. It was a sudden blood-red anger, fed by the memory of the humiliations I had suffered on Sverri’s Trader, so I pulled Jænberht’s head toward me again, but this time, instead of kneeing his face, I drew Wasp-Sting, my short-sword, and cut his throat. One slash. It took a heartbeat to draw the sword, and in that instant I saw the monk’s eyes widen in disbelief, and I confess that I half disbelieved what I was doing myself. But I did it anyway. I cut his throat and Wasp-Sting’s steel scraped against tendon and gristle, then sliced through their resistance so that blood sheeted down my mail coat. Jænberht, shuddering and bubbling, collapsed onto the wet rushes.

  The monks and priests shrieked like women. They had been appalled when I had hammered Jænberht’s face, but none had expected outright murder. Even I was surprised by what my anger had done, but I felt no regret, nor did I see it as murder. I saw it as revenge and there was an exquisite pleasure in it. Every pull on Sverri’s oar and every blow I had taken from Sverri’s crewmen had been in that sword-cut. I looked down at Jænberht’s dying twitches, then up at his companion, Brother Ida. “Is Gisela married?” I demanded of him.

  “Under church law,” Ida began, stammering slightly, then he paused and looked at Wasp-Sting’s blade. “She is not married, lord,” he went on hurriedly, “until the marriage is consummated.”

  “Are you married?” I asked Gisela.

  “Of course not,” she said.

  I stooped and wiped Wasp-Sting clean on the skirts of Jænberht’s robe. He was dead now, his eyes still showing the surprise of it. One priest, braver than the rest, knelt to pray over the monk’s corpse, but the other churchmen looked like sheep confronted by a wolf. They gaped at me, too horrified to protest. Beocca was opening and closing his mouth, saying nothing. I sheathed Wasp-Sting, took Serpent-Breath from Gisela and together we turned toward her brother. He was staring at Jænberht’s corpse and at the blood that had splashed across the floor and onto his sister’s skirts, and he must have thought I was about to do the same to him, for he put a hand to his own sword. But then I pointed Serpent-Breath at Ragnar. “This is the Earl Ragnar,” I said to Guthred, “and he’s here to fight for you. You don’t deserve his help. If it were up to me you’d go back to wearing slave shackles and emptying King Eochaid’s shit-pail.”

  “He is the Lord’s anointed!” Father Hrothweard protested. “Show respect!”

  I hefted Wasp-Sting. “I never liked you either,” I said.

  Beocca, appalled at my behavior, thrust me aside and offered Guthred a bow. Beocca looked pale, and no wonder, for he had just seen a monk murdered, but not even that could put him off his glorious task of being the West Saxon ambassador. “I bring you greetings,” he said, “from Alfred of Wessex who…”

  “Later, father,” I said.

  “I bring you Christian greetings from…” Beocca tried again, then squealed because I dragged him backward. The priests and monks eviden
tly thought I was going to kill him, for some of them covered their eyes.

  “Later, father,” I said, letting go of him, then I looked at Guthred. “So what do you do now?” I asked him.

  “Do?”

  “What do you do? We’ve taken away the men guarding you, so you’re free to go. So what do you do?”

  “What we do,” it was Hrothweard who answered, “is punish you!” He pointed at me and the anger came on him. He shouted that I was a murderer, a pagan, and a sinner and that God would take his vengeance on Guthred if I were allowed to remain unpunished. Queen Osburh looked terrified as Hrothweard screamed his threats. He was all energy and wild hair and spluttering passion as he shouted that I had killed a holy brother. “The only hope for Haliwerfolkland,” he ranted, “is our alliance with Ælfric of Bebbanburg. Send the Lady Gisela to Lord Ælfric and kill the pagan!” He pointed at me. Gisela was still beside me, her hand clutching mine. I said nothing.

  Abbot Eadred, who now looked as old as the dead Saint Cuthbert, tried to bring calm to the church. He held his hands aloft till there was silence, then he thanked Ragnar for killing Kjartan’s men. “What we must do now, lord King,” Eadred turned to Guthred, “is carry the saint northward. To Bebbanburg.”

  “We must punish the murderer!” Hrothweard intervened.

  “Nothing is more precious to our country than the body of the holy Cuthbert,” Eadred said, ignoring Hrothweard’s anger, “and we must take it to a place of safety. We should ride tomorrow, ride north, ride to the sanctuary of Bebbanburg.”

  Aidan, Ælfric’s steward, sought permission to speak. He had come south, he said, at some risk and in good faith, and I had insulted him, his master, and the peace of Northumbria, but he would ignore the insults if Guthred were to take Saint Cuthbert and Gisela north to Bebbanburg. “It is only in Bebbanburg,” Aidan said, “that the saint will be safe.”

  “He must die,” Hrothweard insisted, thrusting a wooden cross toward me.

  Guthred was nervous. “If we ride north,” he said, “Kjartan will oppose us.”

  Eadred was ready for that objection. “If the Earl Ragnar will ride with us, lord, then we shall survive. The church will pay Earl Ragnar for that service.”

  “But there will be no safety for any of us,” Hrothweard shouted, “if a murderer is permitted to live.” He pointed the wooden cross at me again. “He is a murderer! A murderer! Brother Jænberht is a martyr!” The monks and priests shouted their support, and Guthred only stopped their clamor by remembering that Father Beocca was an ambassador. Guthred demanded silence and then invited Beocca to speak.

  Poor Beocca. He had been practicing for days, polishing his words, saying them aloud, changing them, and then changing them back. He had asked advice on his speech, rejected the advice, declaimed the words endlessly, and now he delivered his formal greeting from Alfred and I doubt Guthred heard a word of it, for he was just looking at me and at Gisela, while Hrothweard was still hissing poison in his ear. But Beocca droned on, praising Guthred and Queen Osburh, declaring that they were a godly light in the north and generally boring anyone who might have been listening. Some of Guthred’s warriors mocked his speech by making faces or pretending to squint until Steapa, tired of their cruelty, went to stand beside Beocca and put a hand on his sword hilt. Steapa was a kind man, but he looked implacably violent. He was huge, for a start, and his skin seemed to have been stretched too tight across his skull, so leaving him incapable of making any expressions other than pure hatred and wolfish hunger. He glared around the room, daring any man to belittle Beocca, and they all stayed silent and awed.

  Beocca, of course, believed it was his eloquence that stilled them. He finished his speech with a low bow to Guthred, then presented the gifts Alfred had sent. There was a book which Alfred claimed to have translated from Latin into English, and maybe he had. It was full of Christian homilies, Beocca said, and he bowed as he presented the heavy volume that was enclosed in jeweled covers. Guthred turned the book this way and that, worked out how to unclasp the cover and then looked at a page upside down and declared it was the most valuable gift he had ever received. He said the same of the second gift, which was a sword. It was a Frankish blade and the hilt was of silver and the pommel was a chunk of bright crystal. The last gift was undoubtedly the most precious, for it was a reliquary of the finest gold studded with bright garnets, and inside were hairs from the beard of Saint Augustine of Contwaraburg. Even Abbot Eadred, the guardian of Northumbria’s holiest corpse, was impressed and leaned forward to touch the glittering gold. “The king means a message by these gifts,” Beocca said.

  “Keep it short,” I muttered, and Gisela pressed my hand.

  “I would be delighted to hear his message,” Guthred said politely.

  “The book represents learning,” Beocca said, “for without learning a kingdom is a mere husk of ignorant barbarism. The sword is the instrument by which we defend learning and protect God’s earthly kingdom, and its crystal stands for the inner eye which permits us to discover our Savior’s will. And the hairs of the holy Augustine’s beard, lord King, remind us that without God we are nothing, and that without the holy church we are as chaff in the wind. And Alfred of Wessex wishes you a long and learned life, a Godly rule, and a safe kingdom.” He bowed.

  Guthred made a speech of thanks, but it ended plaintively. Would Alfred of Wessex send Northumbria help?

  “Help?” Beocca asked, not sure how else to respond.

  “I need spears,” Guthred said, though how he thought he could last long enough for any West Saxon troops to reach him was a mystery.

  “He sent me,” I said in answer.

  “Murderer!” Hrothweard spat. He would not give up.

  “He sent me,” I said again, and I let go of Gisela’s hand and went to join Beocca and Steapa in the nave’s center. Beocca was making small flapping motions as if to tell me to go away and keep quiet, but Guthred wanted to hear me. “Over two years ago,” I reminded Guthred, “Ælfric became your ally and my freedom was the price for that alliance. He promised you he would destroy Dunholm, yet I hear Dunholm still stands and that Kjartan still lives. So much for Ælfric’s promise. And yet you would put your faith in him again? You think that if you give him your sister and a dead saint that Ælfric will fight for you?”

  “Murderer,” Hrothweard hissed.

  “Bebbanburg is still two days’ march away,” I said, “and to get there you need the Earl Ragnar’s help. But the Earl Ragnar is my friend, not yours. He has never betrayed me.”

  Guthred’s face jerked at the mention of betrayal.

  “We don’t need pagan Danes,” Hrothweard hissed at Guthred. “We must rededicate ourselves to God, lord King, here in the River Jordan, and God will see us safe through Kjartan’s land!”

  “The Jordan?” Ragnar asked behind me. “Where’s that?”

  I thought the River Jordan was in the Christians’ holy land, but it seemed it was here, in Northumbria. “The River Swale,” Hrothweard was shouting as if he addressed a congregation of hundreds, “was where the blessed Saint Paulinus baptized Edwin, our country’s first Christian king. Thousands of folk were baptized here. This is our holy river! Our Jordan! If we dip our swords and spears in the Swale, then God will bless them. We cannot be defeated!”

  “Without Earl Ragnar,” I told Hrothweard scornfully, “Kjartan will tear you to pieces. And Earl Ragnar,” I looked at Guthred again, “is my friend, not yours.”

  Guthred took his wife’s hand, then summoned the courage to look me in the eye. “What would you do, Lord Uhtred?”

  My enemies, and there were plenty of those in that church, noted that he called me Lord Uhtred and there was a shudder of distaste. I stepped forward. “It’s easy, lord,” I said, and I had not known what I was going to say, but suddenly it came to me. The three spinners were either playing a joke, or else they had given me a fate as golden as Guthred’s, for suddenly it did all seem easy.

  “Easy?” Guthred asked.
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  “Ivarr has gone to Eoferwic, lord,” I said, “and Kjartan has sent men to stop you reaching Bebbanburg. What they are trying to do, lord, is to keep you a fugitive. They will take your fortresses, capture your palace, destroy your Saxon supporters, and when you have nowhere to hide they will take you and they will kill you.”

  “So?” Guthred asked plaintively. “What do we do?”

  “We place ourselves, lord, in a fortress, of course. In a place of safety.”

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Dunholm,” I said, “where else?”

  He just stared at me. No one else spoke. Even the churchmen, who only a moment before had been howling for my death, were silent. And I was thinking of Alfred, and how, in that dreadful winter when all Wessex seemed doomed, he had not thought of mere survival, but of victory.

  “If we march at dawn,” I said, “and march fast, then in two days we shall take Dunholm.”

  “You can do that?” Guthred asked.

  “No, lord,” I said, “we can do it.” Though how, I had not the slightest idea. All I knew was that we were few and the enemy numerous, and that so far Guthred had been like a mouse in that enemy’s paws, and it was time that we fought back. And Dunholm, because Kjartan had sent so many men to guard the Bebbanburg approaches, was as weak as it was ever likely to be.

  “We can do it,” Ragnar said. He came to stand beside me.

  “Then we shall,” Guthred said, and that was how it was decided.

  The priests did not like the notion that I would live unpunished, and they liked it even less when Guthred brushed their complaints away and asked me to go with him to the small house that were his quarters. Gisela came too and she sat against the wall and watched the two of us. A small fire burned. It was cold that afternoon, the first cold of the coming winter.

  Guthred was embarrassed to find himself with me. He half smiled. “I am sorry,” he said haltingly.

  “You’re a bastard,” I said.

  “Uhtred,” he began, but could find nothing more to say.

  “You’re a piece of weasel-shit,” I said, “you’re an earsling.”