“‘You say, look, a greedy man and a drinker!’” Alfred finished the words for me. “You are right, Uhtred, right to chide me. Glory to God! Christ was accused of spending his time in taverns, and I forgot it. It is in the Scriptures!”
The gods help me, I thought. The man was drunk on God, but he was no fool, for now he turned on me like a snake. “And I hear you spend time with my nephew. They say you distract him from his lessons.”
I put my hand on my heart. “I will swear an oath, lord,” I said, “that I have done nothing except dissuade him from rashness.” And that was true, or true enough. I had never encouraged Æthelwold in his wilder flights of fancy that involved cutting Alfred’s throat or running away to join the Danes. I did encourage him to ale, whores, and blasphemy, but I did not count those things as rash. “My oath on it, lord,” I said. The wordoath was powerful. All our laws depend on oaths. Life, loyalty, and allegiance depend on oaths, and my use of the word persuaded him. “I thank you,” he said earnestly, “and I should tell you, Uhtred, that to my surprise the Bishop of Exanceaster had a dream in which a messenger of God appeared to him and said that you should be made commander of the fleet.”
“A messenger of God?” I asked.
“An angel, Uhtred.”
“Praise God,” I said gravely, thinking how Eanflæd would enjoy discovering that she was now an angel.
“Yet,” Alfred said, and winced again as pain flared in his arse or belly. “Yet,” he said again, and I knew something unexpected was coming. “I worry,” he went on, “that you are of Northumbria, and that your commitment to Wessex is not of the heart.”
“I am here, lord,” I said.
“But for how long?”
“Till the Danes are gone, lord.”
He ignored that. “I need men bound to me by God,” he said, “by God, by love, by duty, by passion, and by land.” He paused, looking at me, and I knew the sting was in that last word.
“I have land in Northumbria,” I said, thinking of Bebbanburg.
“West Saxon land,” he said, “land that you will own, land that you will defend, land that you will fight for.”
“A blessed thought,” I said, my heart sinking at what I suspected was coming. Only it did not come immediately. Instead he abruptly changed the subject and talked, very sensibly, about the Danish threat. The fleet, he said, had succeeded in reducing the Viking raids, but he expected the new year to bring a Danish fleet, and one much too large for our twelve ships to oppose. “I dare not lose the fleet,” he said, “so I doubt we should fight their ships. I’m expecting a land army of pagans to come down the Temes and for their fleet to assault our south coast. I can hold one, but not the other, so the fleet commander’s job will be to follow their ships and harry them. Distract them. Keep them looking one way while I destroy their land army.”
I said I thought that was a good idea, which it probably was, though I wondered how twelve ships were supposed to distract a whole fleet, but that was a problem that would have to wait until the enemy fleet arrived. Alfred then returned to the matter of the land and that, of course, was the deciding factor that would give me or deny me the fleet. “I would tie you to me, Uhtred,” he said earnestly.
“I shall give you an oath, lord,” I said.
“You will indeed,” he responded tartly, “but I still want you to be of Wessex.”
“A high honor, lord,” I said. What else could I say?
“You must belong to Wessex,” he said, then smiled as though he did me a favor. “There is an orphan in Defnascir,” he went on, and here it came, “a girl, who I would see married.”
I said nothing. What is the point of protesting when the executioner’s sword is in midswing?
“Her name is Mildrith,” he went on, “and she is dear to me. A pious girl, modest, and faithful. Her father was reeve to Ealdorman Odda, and she will bring land to her husband, good land, and I would have a good man hold that good land.”
I offered a smile that I hoped was not too sickly. “He would be a fortunate man, lord,” I said, “to marry a girl who is dear to you.”
“So go to her,” he commanded me, “and marry her”—the sword struck—“and then I shall name you commander of the fleet.”
“Yes, lord,” I said.
Leofric, of course, laughed like a demented jackdaw. “He’s no fool, is he?” he said when he had recovered. “He’s making you into a West Saxon. So what do you know about this miltewærc?”
Miltewærc was a pain in the spleen.
“Mildrith,” I said, “and she’s pious.”
“Of course she’s pious. He wouldn’t want you to marry her if she was a legspreader.”
“She’s an orphan,” I said, “and aged about sixteen or seventeen.”
“Christ! That old? She must be an ugly sow! But poor thing, she must be wearing out her knees praying to be spared a rutting from an earsling like you. But that’s her fate! So let’s get you married. Then we can kill some Danes.”
It was winter. We had spent the Christmas feast at Cippanhamm, and that was no Yule, and now we rode south through frost and rain and wind. Father Willibald accompanied us, for he was still priest to the fleet, and my plan was to reach Defnascir, do what was grimly necessary, and then ride straight to Hamtun to make certain the winter work on the twelve boats was being done properly. It is in winter that ships are caulked, scraped, cleaned, and made tight for the spring, and the thought of ships made me dream of the Danes, and of Brida, and I wondered where she was, what she did, and whether we would meet again. And I thought of Ragnar. Had he found Thyra? Did Kjartan live? Theirs was another world now, and I knew I drifted away from it and was being entangled in the threads of Alfred’s tidy life. He was trying to make me into a West Saxon, and he was half succeeding. I was sworn now to fight for Wessex and it seemed I must marry into it, but I still clung to that ancient dream of retaking Bebbanburg. I loved Bebbanburg and I almost loved Defnascir as much. When the world was made by Thor from the carcass of Ymir he did well when he fashioned Defnascir and its shire next door, Thornsæta. Both were beautiful lands of soft hills and quick streams, of rich fields and thick soil, of high heaths and good harbors. A man could live well in either shire, and I could have been happy in Defnascir had I not loved Bebbanburg more. We rode down the valley of the river Uisc, through welltended fields of red earth, past plump villages and high halls until we came to Exanceaster, which was the shire’s chief town. It had been made by the Romans who had built a fortress on a hill above the Uisc and surrounded it with a wall of flint, stone, and brick, and the wall was still there and guards challenged us as we reached the northern gate.
“We come to see Ealdorman Odda,” Willibald said.
“On whose business?”
“The king’s,” Willibald said proudly, flourishing a letter that bore Alfred’s seal, though I doubt the guards would have recognized it, but they seemed properly impressed and let us through into a town of decaying Roman buildings amid which a timber church reared tall next to Ealdorman Odda’s hall. The ealdorman made us wait, but at last he came with his son and a dozen retainers, and one of his priests read the king’s letter aloud. It was Alfred’s pleasure that Mildrith should be married to his loyal servant, the ealdorman Uhtred, and Odda was commanded to arrange the ceremony with as little delay as possible. Odda was not pleased at the news. He was an elderly man, at least forty years old, with gray hair and a face made grotesque by bulbous wens. His son, Odda the Younger, was even less pleased, for he scowled at the news. “It isn’t seemly, Father,” he complained.
“It is the king’s wish.”
“But…”
“It is the king’s wish!”
Odda the Younger fell silent. He was about my age, nineteen, goodlooking, black haired, and elegant in a black tunic that was as clean as a woman’s dress and edged with gold thread. A golden crucifix hung at his neck. He gave me a grim look, and I must have appeared travel stained and ragged to him, and after inspectin
g me and finding me about as appealing as a wet mongrel, he turned on his heel and stalked from the hall.
“Tomorrow morning,” Odda announced unhappily, “the bishop can marry you. But you must pay the brideprice first.”
“The brideprice?” I asked. Alfred had mentioned no such thing, though of course it was customary.
“Thirtythree shillings,” Odda said flatly, and with the hint of a smirk. Thirtythree shillings was a fortune. A hoard. The price of a good war horse or a ship. It took me aback and I heard Leofric give a gasp behind me. “Is that what Alfred says?” I demanded.
“It is what I say,” Odda said, “for Mildrith is my goddaughter.”
No wonder he smirked. The price was huge and he doubted I could pay it, and if I could not pay it then the girl was not mine and, though Odda did not know it, the fleet would not be mine either. Nor, of course, was the price merely thirtythree shillings, or three hundred and ninetysix silver pence, it was double that, for it was also customary for a husband to give his new wife an equivalent sum after the marriage was consummated. That second gift was none of Odda’s business and I doubted very much whether I would want to pay it, just as Ealdorman Odda was now certain, from my hesitation, that I would not be paying him the brideprice without which there could be no marriage contract.
“I can meet the lady?” I asked.
“You may meet her at the ceremony tomorrow morning,” Odda said firmly, “but only if you pay the brideprice. Otherwise, no.”
He looked disappointed as I opened my pouch and gave him one gold coin and thirtysix silver pennies. He looked even more disappointed when he saw that was not all the coin I possessed, but he was trapped now. “You may meet her,” he told me, “in the cathedral tomorrow.”
“Why not now?” I asked.
“Because she is at her prayers,” the ealdorman said, and with that he dismissed us. Leofric and I found a place to sleep in a tavern close to the cathedral, which was the bishop’s church, and that night I got drunk as a spring hare. I picked a fight with someone, I have no idea who, and only remember that Leofric, who was not quite as drunk as me, pulled us apart and flattened my opponent, and after that I went into the stable yard and threw up all the ale I had just drunk. I drank some more, slept badly, woke to hear rain seething on the stable roof, and then vomited again.
“Why don’t we just ride to Mercia?” I suggested to Leofric. The king had lent us horses and I did not mind stealing them.
“What do we do there?”
“Find men?” I suggested. “Fight?”
“Don’t be daft, earsling,” Leofric said. “We want the fleet. And if you don’t marry the ugly sow, I don’t get to command it.”
“I command it,” I said.
“But only if you marry,” Leofric said, “and then you’ll command the fleet and I’ll command you.”
Father Willibald arrived then. He had slept in the monastery next door to the tavern and had come to make sure I was ready, and looked alarmed at my ragged condition. “What’s that mark on your face?”
he asked.
“Bastard hit me last night,” I said, “I was drunk. So was he, but I was more drunk. Take my advice, father. Never get into a fight when you’re badly drunk.”
I drank more ale for breakfast. Willibald insisted I wear my best tunic, which was not saying much for it was stained, crumpled, and torn. I would have preferred to wear my coat of mail, but Willibald said that was inappropriate for a church, and I suppose he was right, and I let him brush me down and try to dab the worst stains out of the wool. I tied my hair with a leather lace, strapped on SerpentBreath and WaspSting, which again Willibald said I should not wear in a holy place, but I insisted on keeping the weapons, and then, a doomed man, I went to the cathedral with Willibald and Leofric. It was raining as if the heavens were being drained of all their water. Rain bounced in the streets, flowed in streams down the gutters, and leaked through the cathedral’s thatch. A brisk cold wind was coming from the east and it found every crack in the cathedral’s wooden walls so that the candles on the altars flickered and some blew out. It was a small church, not much bigger than Ragnar’s burned hall, and it must have been built on a Roman foundation for the floor was made of flagstones that were now being puddled by rainwater. The bishop was already there, two other priests fussed with the guttering candles on the high altar, and then Ealdorman Odda arrived with my bride. Who took one look at me and burst into tears.
What was I expecting? A woman who looked like a sow, I suppose, a woman with a poxscarred face and a sour expression and haunches like an ox. No one expects to love a wife, not if they marry for land or position, and I was marrying for land and she was marrying because she had no choice, and there really is no point in making too much of a fuss about it, because that is the way the world works. My job was to take her land, work it, make money, and Mildrith’s duty was to give me sons and make sure there was food and ale on my table. Such is the holy sacrament of marriage. I did not want to marry her. By rights, as an ealdorman of Northumbria, I could expect to marry a daughter of the nobility, a daughter who would bring much more land than twelve hilly hides in Defnascir. I might have expected to marry a daughter who could increase Bebbanburg’s holdings and power, but that was plainly not going to happen, so I was marrying a girl of ignoble birth who would now be known as Lady Mildrith and she might have shown some gratitude for that, but instead she cried and even tried to pull away from Ealdorman Odda.
He probably sympathized with her, but the brideprice had been paid, and so she was brought to the altar and the bishop, who had come back from Cippanhamm with a streaming cold, duly made us man and wife. “And may the blessing of God the Father,” he said, “God the son, and God the Holy Ghost be on your union.” He was about to sayamen, but instead sneezed mightily.
“Amen,” Willibald said. No one else spoke.
So Mildrith was mine.
Odda the Younger watched as we left the church and he probably thought I did not see him, but I did, and I marked him down. I knew why he was watching.
For the truth of it, which surprised me, was that Mildrith was desirable. That word does not do her justice, but it is so very hard to remember a face from long ago. Sometimes, in a dream, I see her, and she is real then, but when I am awake and try to summon her face I cannot do it. I remember she had clear, pale skin, that her lower lip jutted out too much, that her eyes were very blue and her hair the same gold as mine. She was tall, which she disliked, thinking it made her unwomanly, and had a nervous expression, as though she constantly feared disaster, and that can be very attractive in a woman and I confess I found her attractive. That did surprise me, indeed it astonished me, for such a woman should have long been married. She was almost seventeen years old, and by that age most women have already given birth to three or four children or else been killed in the attempt, but as we rode to her holdings that lay to the west of the river Uisc’s mouth, I heard some of her tale. She was being drawn in a cart by two oxen that Willibald had insisted garlanding with flowers. Leofric, Willibald, and I rode alongside the cart, and Willibald asked her questions and she answered him readily enough for he was a priest and a kind man.
Her father, she said, had left her land and debts, and the debts were greater than the value of the land. Leofric sniggered when he heard the worddebts. I said nothing, but just stared doggedly ahead. The trouble, Mildrith said, had begun when her father had granted a tenth of his holdings as ælmesæcer, which is land devoted to the church. The church does not own it, but has the right to all that the land yields, whether in crops or cattle, and her father had made the grant, Mildrith explained, because all his children except her had died and he wanted to find favor with God. I suspected he had wanted to find favor with Alfred, for in Wessex an ambitious man was well advised to look after the church if he wanted the king to look after him.
But then the Danes had raided, cattle had been slaughtered, a harvest failed, and the church took her father to law for fa
iling to provide the land’s promised yield. Wessex, I discovered, was very devoted to the law, and all the men of law are priests, every last one of them, which means that the law is the church, and when Mildrith’s father died the law had decreed that he owed the church a huge sum, quite beyond his ability to pay, and Alfred, who had the power to lift the debt, refused to do so. What this meant was that any man who married Mildrith married the debt, and no man had been willing to take that burden until a Northumbrian fool wandered into the trap like a drunk staggering downhill. Leofric was laughing. Willibald looked worried.
“So what is the debt?” I asked.
“Two thousand shillings, lord,” Mildrith said in a very small voice. Leofric almost choked laughing and I could have cheerfully killed him on the spot.
“And it increases yearly?” Willibald asked shrewdly.
“Yes,” Mildrith said, refusing to meet my eyes. A more sensible man would have explored Mildrith’s circumstances before the marriage contract was made, but I had just seen marriage as a route to the fleet. So now I had the fleet, I had the debt, and I had the girl, and I also had a new enemy, Odda the Younger, who had plainly wanted Mildrith for himself, though his father, wisely, had refused to saddle his family with the crippling debt, nor, I suspected, did he want his son to marry beneath him. There is a hierarchy among men. Beocca liked to tell me it reflected the hierarchy of heaven, and perhaps it does, but I know nothing of that, but I do know how men are ranked. At the top is the king, and beneath him are his sons, and then come the ealdormen who are the chief nobles of the land and without land a man cannot be noble, though I was, because I have never abandoned my claim to Bebbanburg. The king and his ealdormen are the power of a kingdom, the men who hold great lands and raise the armies, and beneath them are the lesser nobles, usually called reeves, and they are responsible for law in a lord’s land, though a man can cease to be a reeve if he displeases his lord. The reeves are drawn from the ranks of thegns, who are wealthy men who can lead followers to war, but who lack the wide holdings of noblemen like Odda or my father. Beneath the thegns are the ceorls, who are all free men, but if a ceorl loses his livelihood then he could well become a slave, which is the bottom of the dung heap. Slaves can be, and often are, freed, though unless a slave’s lord gives him land or money he will soon be a slave again. Mildrith’s father had been a thegn, and Odda had made him a reeve, responsible for keeping the peace in a wide swath of southern Defnascir, but he had also been a thegn of insufficient land, whose foolishness had diminished the little he possessed, and so he had left Mildrith impoverished, which made her unsuitable as a wife for an ealdorman’s son, though she was reckoned good enough for an exiled lord from Northumbria. In truth she was just another pawn on Alfred’s chessboard and he had only given her to me so that I became responsible for paying the church a vast sum. He was a spider, I thought sourly, a priestly black spider spinning sticky webs, and I thought I had been so clever when I talked to him in the hall at Cippanhamm. In truth I could have prayed openly to Thor before pissing on the relics of Alfred’s altar and he would still have given me the fleet because he knew the fleet would have little to do in the coming war, and he had only wanted to trap me for his future ambitions in the north of England. So now I was trapped, and the bastard Ealdorman Odda had carefully let me walk into the trap.
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