Finan half smiled, but said nothing. We were riding through hovels that had sprung up on the edges of the marshlands beside the Temes. Many of the folk who lived here were slaves who had escaped their Danish masters in East Anglia, and they made a living by scratching through the refuse of the city, though a few had planted tiny fields of rye, barley, or oats. The meager harvest was being gathered and I listened to the scrape of blades cutting through the handfuls of stalks.
“No one in Lundene is to know we’re sailing,” I told Finan.
“They won’t,” the Irishman said grimly.
“Battle-ready,” I told him again.
“They’ll be that, so they will.”
I rode in silence for a while. People saw my mail and scuttled out of our way. They touched their foreheads or knelt in the mud, then scrambled when I threw pennies to them. It was evening and the sun was already behind the great cloud of smoke rising from Lundene’s cooking fires, and the stench of the city drifted sour and thick in the air. “Did you see that ship blocking the channel at Beamfleot?” I asked Finan.
“I took a squint at her, lord.”
“If we attacked her,” I said, “they’d see us coming. They’d be behind that raised sheerline.”
“Almost a man’s height above us,” Finan agreed, revealing that he had done more than just take a squint.
“So think how we might get that ship out of the channel.”
“Not that we’re thinking of doing that, lord, are we?” he asked slyly.
“Of course not,” I said, “but think on it anyway.”
Then a squeal of ungreased hinges announced the opening of the nearest gate and we rode into the city’s gloom.
Alfred had been waiting for us, and messengers had already informed him of our return so that, even before I could greet Gisela, I was summoned to the high palace. I went with Father Willibald, Steapa, and Finan. The king waited for us in the great hall that was lit with the high candles by which he reckoned the passing time. Wax ran thick down the banded shafts and a servant was trimming the wicks so that the light stayed steady. Alfred had been writing, but he stopped as we entered. Æthelred was also there, as were Brother Asser, Father Beocca, and Bishop Erkenwald.
“Well,” Alfred snapped. It was not anger, but worry that made his voice so sharp.
“She lives,” I said, “she is unharmed, she is treated with the respect due to her rank, she is properly and well guarded, and they will sell her back to us.”
“Thank God,” Alfred said, and made the sign of the cross. “Thank God,” he repeated, and I thought he was going to drop to his knees. Æthelred said nothing, but just stared at me with serpent eyes.
“How much?” Bishop Erkenwald demanded.
“Three thousand pounds of silver and five hundred of gold,” I said, and explained that the first metal had to be delivered by the next full moon and the balance was to be taken downriver one month later. “And the Lady Æthelflaed will not be released until the last coin is paid,” I finished.
Bishop Erkenwald and Brother Asser both winced at the amount of the ransom, though Alfred showed no such reaction. “We will be paying for our own destruction,” Bishop Erkenwald growled.
“My daughter is dear to me,” Alfred said mildly.
“With that money,” the bishop warned, “they will raise thousands of men!”
“And without that money?” Alfred turned to me, “what will happen to her?”
“Humiliation,” I said. In truth Æthelflaed might have found happiness with Erik if the ransom was not paid, but I could hardly say as much. Instead I described the fate that Haesten had suggested so wolfishly. “She’ll be taken to every place where Northmen live,” I said, “and she will be shown naked to mocking crowds.” Alfred winced. “Then,” I went on remorselessly, “she’ll be whored to the highest bidders.”
Æthelred gazed at the floor, the churchmen were silent. “It is the dignity of Wessex that is at stake,” Alfred said quietly.
“So men must die for the dignity of Wessex?” Bishop Erkenwald asked.
“Yes!” Alfred was suddenly angry. “A country is its history, bishop, the sum of all its stories. We are what our fathers made us, their victories gave us what we have, and you would make me leave my descendants a tale of humiliation? You want men to tell how Wessex was made a laughing stock to howling heathens? That is a story, bishop, that would never die, and if that tale is told then whenever men think of Wessex they will think of a princess of Wessex paraded naked to pagans. Whenever they think of England, they will think of that!” And that, I thought, was interesting. We rarely used that name in those days; England. That was a dream, but Alfred, in his anger, had lifted a curtain on his dream and I knew then he wanted his army to continue north, ever north, until there was no more Wessex, no more East Anglia, no more Mercia, and no more Northumbria, only England.
“Lord King,” Erkenwald said with unnatural humility, “I do not know if there will be a Wessex if we pay the pagans to raise an army.”
“Raising an army takes time,” Alfred said firmly, “and no pagan army can attack until after the harvest. And once the harvest is gathered we can raise the fyrd. We will have the men to oppose them.” That was true, but most of our men would be untrained farmers, while Sigefrid would bring howling, hungry Northmen who had been bred to the sword. Alfred turned on his son-in-law. “And I will expect the fyrd of southern Mercia to be at our side.”
“It will be, lord,” Æthelred said enthusiastically. There was no sign on his face of the sickness that had assailed him the last time I had seen him in this hall. His color was back, and his jaunty confidence seemed undiminished.
“Maybe this is God’s doing,” Alfred said, speaking again to Erkenwald. “In His mercy He has offered our enemies a chance to gather in their thousands so that we can defeat them in one great battle.” His voice strengthened with that thought. “The Lord is on my side,” he said firmly, “I will not fear!”
“The word of the Lord,” Brother Asser said piously, making the sign of the cross.
“Amen,” Æthelred said, “and amen. We shall defeat them, lord!”
“But before you win that great victory,” I said to Æthelred, taking a malicious pleasure in what I was about to say, “you have a duty to perform. You are to deliver the ransom in person.”
“By God, I will not!” Æthelred said indignantly, then caught Alfred’s eye and subsided back into his chair.
“And you are to kneel to Sigefrid,” I said, twisting the knife.
Even Alfred looked appalled at that. “Sigefrid insists on that condition?” he asked.
“He does, lord,” I said, “even though I argued with him! I appealed, lord, and I argued and I pleaded, but he would not yield.”
Æthelred was just staring at me with horror on his face.
“Then so be it,” Alfred said. “Sometimes the Lord God asks more than we can bear, but for His glorious sake we must endure it.”
“Amen,” I said fervently, deserving and receiving a skeptical look from the king.
They talked for as long as it took one of Alfred’s banded candles to burn through two hours’ worth of wax, and it was all wasted talk; talk of how the money was to be raised, and how it was to be transported to Lundene and how it was to be delivered to Beamfleot. I made suggestions while Alfred wrote notes on the margin of his parchment, and it was all useless effort because if I was successful then no ransom would be paid and Æthelflaed would not return and Alfred’s throne would be safe.
And I was to make it all possible.
In one week’s time.
ELEVEN
Darkness. The last light of day was just gone, and a new darkness now shrouded us.
There was moonlight, but the moon was hidden so that the cloud edges were silvered, and beneath that vast sky of silver, black, and starlight, the Sea-Eagle slid down the Temes.
Ralla was at the steering-oar. He was a far better seaman than I could ever hope to be, and
I trusted him to take us around the river’s sweeping bends in the blackness. Most of the time it was impossible to tell where the water ended and the marshes began, but Ralla seemed unconcerned. He stood with legs spread and one foot tapping the deck in time to the slow beat of the oars. He said little, but now and then made tiny course corrections with the oar’s long loom and never once did a blade touch the shelving mud at the river’s margins. Occasionally the moon would slither out from behind a cloud and the water would suddenly gleam a glittering silver before us. There were red sparks on the banks that came and went, small fires in the marsh hovels.
We were using the last of the ebb to take us downriver. The intermittent sheen of moon on water showed the banks going ever farther apart as the river widened imperceptibly into the sea. I kept glancing northward, waiting to see the glow in the sky that would betray the fires in and around the high camp at Beamfleot.
“How many pagan ships at Beamfleot?” Ralla suddenly asked me.
“Sixty-four a week ago,” I said, “but probably nearer eighty by now. Maybe a hundred or more?”
“And just us, eh?” he asked, amused.
“Just us,” I agreed.
“And there’ll be more ships up the coast,” Ralla said. “I heard they were making a camp at Sceobyrig?”
“They’ve been there a month now,” I said, “and there’s at least fifteen crews there. Probably thirty by now.” Sceobyrig was a desolate spit of mud and muddy land a few miles east of Beamfleot and the fifteen Danish ships had landed there and made a fort of earth walls and wooden posts. I suspected they had chosen Sceobyrig because there was scarcely any room left in Beamfleot’s creek anymore, and because their proximity to Sigefrid’s fleet offered them his protection. Doubtless they paid him silver, and doubtless they hoped to follow him into Wessex to snap up what plunder they could. On the banks of every sea, and in camps upriver, and all across the Northmen’s world, the news was spreading that the kingdom of Wessex was vulnerable and so the warriors were gathering.
“But we’re not going to fight today?” Ralla asked.
“I hope not,” I said, “fighting’s very dangerous.”
Ralla chuckled, but said nothing.
“There shouldn’t be any fighting,” I said, after a pause.
“Because if there is,” Ralla pointed out, “we have no priest aboard.”
“We never do have a priest aboard,” I said defensively.
“But we should, lord,” he remonstrated.
“Why?” I asked belligerently.
“Because you want to die with a sword in your hand,” Ralla said reprovingly, “and we like to die shriven.”
His words chided me. My duty was to these men, and if they died without the benefit of whatever a priest did to the dying, then I had failed them. For a moment I did not know what to say, then an idea sprang unbidden into my head. “Brother Osferth can be our priest today,” I said.
“I will,” Osferth said from a rower’s bench, and I was pleased with that reply because at last he was willing to do something I knew he did not wish to do. I later discovered that, as a man who had only ever been a failed novice monk, he had no power to administer the Christian sacraments, but my men believed he was closer to their god than they were and that, as it turned out, was good enough.
“But I don’t expect to fight,” I said firmly.
A dozen men, those closest to the steering platform, were listening. Finan was with me, of course, and Cerdic and Sihtric and Rypere and Clapa. They were my household troops, my house carls, my companions, my blood brothers, my oath-men, and they had followed me to sea this night and they trusted me, even though they did not know where we sailed or what we did.
“So what are we doing?” Ralla asked.
I paused, knowing the answer would excite them. “We’re rescuing the Lady Æthelflaed,” I finally said.
I heard gasps from the listening men, then the murmur of voices as that news was passed up the benches to the Sea-Eagle’s bows. My men knew this voyage meant trouble, and they had been intrigued by my savage imposition of secrecy, and they must have guessed that we sailed in connection with Æthelflaed’s plight, but now I had confirmed it.
The steering-oar creaked as Ralla made a slight correction. “How?” he asked.
“Any day now,” I said, ignoring his question and speaking loudly enough for every man in the boat to hear me, “the king starts to collect the ransom for his daughter. If you have ten arm rings, he will want four of them! If you have silver hoarded, the king’s men will find it and take their share! But what we do today could stop that!”
Another murmur. There was already a deep unhappiness in Wessex at the thought of the money that would be forced from landowners and merchants. Alfred had pledged his own wealth, but he would need more, much more, and the only reason the collection had not already begun was the arguments that raged among his advisers. Some wanted the church to contribute because, despite the clergy’s insistence that they had no treasure, every man knew that the monasteries were stuffed with wealth. The church’s response had been to threaten excommunication on anyone who dared touch so much as one silver penny that belonged to God or, more particularly, to God’s bishops and abbots. I, even though I secretly hoped that no ransom would be necessary, had recommended raising the whole amount from the church, but that wise advice, of course, had been ignored.
“And if the ransom is paid,” I went on, “then our enemies will be rich enough to hire ten thousand swords! We will have war all across Wessex! Your houses will be burned, your women raped, your children stolen, and your wealth confiscated. But what we do today could stop that!”
I exaggerated a little, but not by much. The ransom could certainly raise five thousand more spears, axes, and swords and that was why the Vikings were gathering in the estuary of the Temes. They smelled weakness, and weakness meant blood, and blood meant wealth. The longships were coming south, their keels plowing the sea as they headed for Beamfleot and then for Wessex.
“But the Northmen are greedy!” I continued. “They know that in Æthelflaed they have a girl of high value, and they are snarling at each other like hungry dogs! Well, one of them is ready to betray the others! At dawn today he will bring Æthelflaed out of the camp! He will give her to us and he will accept a much lower ransom! He would rather keep that smaller ransom all to himself than take a share of the larger! He will become wealthy! But he will not be wealthy enough to buy an army!”
That was the story I had decided to tell. I could not return to Lundene and say I had helped Æthelflaed run away with her lover, so instead I would pretend that Erik had offered to betray his brother and that I had sailed to assist that treachery, and that Erik had then betrayed me by breaking the agreement we had made. Instead of giving me Æthelflaed, I would claim he had just sailed away with her. Alfred would still be furious with me, but he could not accuse me of betraying Wessex. I had even brought a big wooden chest aboard. It was filled with sand, and locked with two great hasps secured with iron pins that had been hammered into circles so that the lid could not be opened. Every man had seen the chest brought onto the Sea-Eagle and there stowed under her steering platform, and they would surely think that big box carried Erik’s price.
“Before dawn,” I went on, “the Lady Æthelflaed will be taken to a ship! As the sun touches the sky’s edge, that ship will bring her out! But in their way is a blocking ship, a ship chained so she lies from shore to shore across the creek’s mouth. Our job is to clear that ship out of the way! That is all! We just have to move that one ship and the Lady Æthelflaed will be free, and we shall take her back to Lundene and we’ll be celebrated as heroes! The king will be grateful!”
They liked that. They liked the thought that they would be rewarded by the king, and I felt a pang because I knew we would only provoke Alfred’s anger, though we would also save him the necessity of raising the ransom.
“I did not tell you this before,” I said, “nor did I tell Alfr
ed, because if I had told you then one of you or one of the king’s men would have got drunk and blabbered the news in a tavern and Sigefrid’s spies would have told Sigefrid and we would reach Beamfleot to find an army waiting to greet us! Instead they’re asleep! And we shall rescue Æthelflaed!”
They cheered that. Only Ralla was silent and, when the clamor ended, he asked a soft question. “And how do we move that ship?” he asked. “She’s bigger than us, her sides have been raised, she carries a fighting crew, and they won’t be asleep.”
“We don’t do it,” I said. “I do it. Clapa? Rypere? You two will help me. The three of us will move the ship.”
And Æthelflaed would be free, and love would win, and the wind would always blow warm, and there would be food all winter, and none of us would ever grow old, and silver would grow on trees, and gold would appear like dew on grass, and the lovers’ bright stars would dazzle forever.
It was all so simple.
As we rowed on eastward.
Before leaving Lundene we had taken down the Sea-Eagle’s mast that now lay in crutches along the ship’s centerline. I had not put her beast-heads on her stem or stern because I wanted her to lie low in the water. I wanted her to be a black shape against blackness, and with no rearing eagle’s head or high mast to show above the horizon. We came in stealth before the dawn. We were the Shadow-Walkers of the sea.
And I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt and felt no tingle there, no singing, no hunger for blood and I took comfort from that. I thought we would open the creek and watch Æthelflaed sail to freedom and that Serpent-Breath would sleep silently in her fleece-lined scabbard.
Then, at last, I saw the higher glow in the sky, the dull red glow that marked where fires burned in Sigefrid’s hilltop encampment. The glow grew brighter as we rowed through the slack water of high tide, and beyond it, on the hills that slowly fell away to the east, were more reflections of fire on clouds. Those red glows marked the sites of the new encampments that stretched from high Beamfleot to low Sceobyrig. “Even without the ransom,” Ralla remarked to me, “they might be tempted to attack.”
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