The Pale Horseman s-2

by Bernard Cornwell

  'Yes, lord,' I said.

  'It will be a chance to discover your wife and child,' Alfred said. There was a sting there. As the winter rains fell the priests hissed their poison into Alfred's ears and he was willing enough to hear their message, which was that the Saxons would only defeat the Danes if God willed it. And God, the priests said, wanted us to be virtuous. And Iseult was a pagan, as was I, and she and I were not married, while I had a wife, and so the accusation was whispered about the swamp that it was Iseult who stood between Alfred and victory. No one said it openly, not then, yet Iseult sensed it. Hild was her protector in those days, because Hild was a nun, a Christian, and a victim of the Danes, but many thought Iseult was corrupting Hild. I pretended to be deaf to the whispers until Alfred's daughter told me of them.

  Æthelflaed was almost seven and her father's favourite child. Ælswith was fonder of Edward, and in those wet winter days she worried about her son's health and the health of her newborn child, which gave Æthelflaed a deal of freedom. She would stay at her father's side much of the time, but she also wandered about Æthelingaeg where she was spoiled by soldiers and villagers. She was a bright ripple of sunlight in those rain-sodden days. She had golden hair, a sweet face, blue eyes and no fear. One day I found her at the southern fort, watching a dozen Danes who had come to watch us. I told her to go back to Æthelingaeg and she pretended to obey me, but an hour later, when the Danes had gone, I found her hiding in one of the turf-roofed shelters behind the wall.

  'I hoped the Danes would come,' she told me.

  'So they could take you away?'

  'So I could watch you kill them.'

  It was one of the rare days when it was not raining. There was sunshine on the green hills and I sat on the wall, took Serpent-Breath from her fleece-lined scabbard and began sharpening her two edges with a whetstone. Æthelflaed insisted on trying the whetstone and she laid the long blade on her lap and frowned in concentration as she drew the stone down the sword. 'How many Danes have you killed?' she asked.

  'Enough.'

  'Mama says you don't love Jesus.'

  'We all love Jesus,' I said evasively.

  'If you loved Jesus,' she said seriously, 'then you could kill more Danes. What's this?' She had found the deep nick in one of Serpent-Breath's edges.

  'It's where she hit another sword,' I said. It had happened at Cippanhamm during my fight with Steapa and his huge sword had bitten deep into Serpent-Breath.

  'I'll make her better,' she said, and worked obsessively with the whetstone, trying to smooth the nick's edges. 'Mama says Iseult is an aglaecwif.' She stumbled over the word, then grinned in triumph because she had managed to say it. I said nothing. An aglaecwif was a fiend, a monster. 'The bishop says it too,' Æthelflaed said earnestly. 'I don't like the bishop.'

  'You don't?'

  'He dribbles.' She tried to demonstrate and managed to spit onto Serpent-Breath. She rubbed the blade. 'Is Iseult an aglaecwif?'

  'Of course not. She made Edward better.'

  'Jesus did that, and Jesus sent me a baby sister.' She scowled because all her efforts had made no impression on the nick in Serpent-Breath.

  'Iseult is a good woman,' I said.

  'She's learning to read. I can read.'

  'You can?'

  'Almost. If she reads then she can be a Christian. I'd like to be an aglaecwif.'

  'You would?' I asked, surprised.

  For answer she growled at me and crooked a small hand so that her fingers looked like claws. Then she laughed. 'Are those Danes?' She had seen some horsemen coming from the south.

  'That's Wiglaf,' I said.

  'He's nice.'

  I sent her back to Æthelingaeg on Wiglaf's horse and I thought of what she had said and wondered, for the thousandth time, why I was among Christians who believed I was an offence to their god. They called my gods dwolgods, which meant false gods, so that made me Uhtredarwe, living with an aglaecwif and worshipping dwolgods. I flaunted it, though, always wearing my hammer amulet openly, and that night Alfred, as ever, flinched when he saw it. He had summoned me to his hall where I found him bent over a tall board. He was playing against Beocca, who had the larger set of pieces. It seems a simple game, tall, where one player has a king and a dozen other pieces, and the other has double the pieces, but no king, and then you move the pieces about the chequered board until one or other player has all his wooden pieces surrounded. I had no patience for it, but Alfred was fond of the game, though when I arrived he seemed to be losing and so was relieved to see me.

  'I want you to go to Defnascir,' he said.

  'Of course, lord.'

  'I fear your king is threatened, lord,' Beocca said happily.

  'Never mind,' Alfred said irritably. 'You're to go to Defnascir,' he said, turning back to me, 'but Iseult must stay here.'

  I bridled at that. 'She's to be a hostage again?' I asked.

  'I need her medicines,' Alfred said.

  'Even though they're made by an aglaecwif?'

  He gave me a sharp look. 'She is a healer,' he said, 'and that means she is God's instrument, and with God's help she will come to the truth. Besides, you must travel fast and don't need a woman for company. You will go to Defnascir and find Svein, and once you've found him you will instruct Odda the Younger to raise the fyrd. Tell him Svein must he driven from the shire, and once Odda has achieved that, he is to come here with his household troops. He commands my bodyguard, he should be here.'

  'You want me to give Odda orders?' I asked, partly in surprise, partly with scorn.

  'I do,' Alfred said, 'and I order you to make your peace with him.'

  'Yes, lord,' I replied.

  He heard the sarcasm in my voice. 'We are all Saxons, Uhtred, and now, more than ever, is the time to heal our wounds.'

  Beocca, realising that defeating Alfred at tall would not help the king's mood, was taking the pieces from the board. 'A house divided against itself,' he interjected, 'will be destroyed. Saint Matthew said that.'

  'Praise God for that truth,' Alfred said, 'and we must be rid of Svein.' That was a greater truth.

  Alfred wanted to march against Guthrum after Easter, but he could scarcely do that if Svein's forces were behind him. 'You find Svein,' the king told me,' and Steapa will accompany you.'

  'Steapa!'

  'He knows the country,' Alfred said, 'and I have told him he is to obey you.'

  'It's best that two of you go,' Beocca said earnestly. 'Remember that Joshua sent two spies against Jericho.'

  'You're delivering me to my enemies,' I said bitterly, though when I thought about it I decided that using me as a spy made sense. The Danes in Defnascir would be looking out for Alfred's scouts, but I could speak the enemy's language and could pass for one of them and so I was safer than anyone else in Alfred's force. As for Steapa, he was from Defnascir, he knew the country and he was Odda's sworn man, so he was best suited for carrying a message to the Ealdorman.

  And so the two of us rode south from Æthelingaeg on a day of driving rain.

  Steapa did not like me and I did not like him and so we had nothing to say to each other except when I suggested what. Path we take, and he never disagreed. We kept close to the large road, the road the Romans had made, though I went cautiously for such roads were much used by Danish bands seeking forage or plunder. This was also the route Svein must take if he marched to join Guthrum, but we saw no Danes. We saw no Saxons either. Every village and farm on the road had been pillaged and burned so that we journeyed through a land of the dead.

  On the second day Steapa headed westwards. He did not explain the sudden change of direction, but doggedly pushed up into the hills and I followed him because he knew the countryside and I supposed he was taking the small paths that would lead to the high bleakness of Daerentmora. He rode urgently, his hard face grim, and I called to him once that we should take more care in case there were Danish forage parties in the small valleys, but he ignored me. Instead, almost at a gallop, he rode down
into one of those small valleys until he came in sight of a farmstead.

  Or what had been a farmstead. Now it was wet ashes in a green place. A deep green place where narrow pastures were shadowed by tall trees on which the very first haze of spring was just showing.

  Flowers were thick along the pasture edges, but there were none where the few small buildings had stood. There were only embers and the black smear of ash in mud, and Steapa, abandoning his horse, walked among the ashes. He had lost his great sword when the Danes captured him at Cippanhamm, so now he carried a huge war axe and he prodded the wide blade into the dark piles.

  I rescued his horse, tied both beasts to the scorched trunk of an ash that had once grown by the farmyard, and watched him. I said nothing, for I sensed that one word would release all his fury. He crouched by the skeleton of a dog and just stared at the fire-darkened hones for a few minutes, then reached out and stroked the bared skull. There were tears on Steapa's face, or perhaps it was the rain that fell softly from low cloud.

  A score of people had once lived there. A larger house had stood at the southern end of the settlement and I explored its charred remains, seeing where the Danes had dug down by the old posts to find hidden coins. Steapa watched me. He was by one of the smaller patches of charred timbers and I guessed he had grown up there, in a slave hovel. He did not want me near him, and I pointedly stayed away, wondering if I dared suggest to him that we rode on. But he began digging instead, hacking the damp red soil with his huge war axe and scooping the earth out with bare hands until he had made a shallow grave for the dog. It was a skeleton now. There were still patches of fur on the old bones, but the flesh had been eaten away so that the ribs were scattered, so this had all happened weeks before.

  Steapa gathered the bones and laid them tenderly in the grave.

  That was when the people came. You can ride through a landscape of the dead and see no one, but they will see you. Folk hide when enemies come. They go up into the woods and they wait there, and now three men came from the trees.

  'Steapa,' I said. He turned on me, furious that I had interrupted him, then saw I was pointing westwards.

  He gave a roar of recognition and the three men, who were holding spears, ran towards him. They dropped their weapons and they hugged the huge man, and for a time they all spoke together, but then they calmed down and I took one aside and questioned him. The Danes had come soon after Yule, he told me. They had come suddenly, before anyone was even aware that there were pagans in Defnascir.

  These men had escaped because they had been felling a beech tree in a nearby wood, and they had heard the slaughter. Since then they had been living in the forests, scared of the Danes who still rode about Defnascir in search of food. They had seen no Saxons.

  They had buried the folk of the farm in a pasture to the south, and Steapa went there and knelt in the wet grass. 'His mother died,' the' man told me. He spoke English with such a strange accent that I continually had to ask him to repeat himself, but I understood those three words. 'Steapa was good to his mother,' the man said. 'He brought her money. She was no slave any more.'

  'His father?'

  'He died long time back. Long time.'

  I thought Steapa was going to dig up his mother, so I crossed and stood in front of him. 'We have a job to do,' I said.

  He looked up at me, his harsh face expressionless.

  'There are Danes to kill,' I said. 'The Danes who killed folk here must be killed themselves.'

  He nodded abruptly, then stood, towering over me again. He leaned the blade of his axe, and climbed into his saddle. 'There are Danes to kill,' he said and, leaving his mother in her cold grave, we went to find them.

  Ten

  We rode south. We went cautiously, for folk said the Danes were still seen in this part of the shire, though we saw none. Steapa was silent until, in a river meadow, we rode past a ring of stone pillars, one of the mysteries left behind by the old people. Such rings stand all across England and some are huge, though this one was a mere score of lichen-covered stones, none taller than a man, standing in a circle some fifteen paces wide. Steapa glanced at them, then astonished me by speaking.

  'That's a wedding,' he said.

  'A wedding?'

  'They were dancing,' he growled, 'and the devil turned them to stone.'

  'Why did the devil do that?' I asked cautiously.

  'Because they wed on a Sunday, of course. Folk never should wed on a Sunday, never! Everyone knows that.' We rode on in silence, then, surprising me again, he began to talk about his mother and father and how they had been serfs of Odda the Elder. 'But life was good for us,' he said.

  'It was?'

  'Ploughing, sowing, weeding, harvest, threshing.'

  'But Ealdorman Odda didn't live back there,' I said, jerking my thumb towards Steapa's destroyed homestead.

  'No! Not him!' Steapa was amused I should even ask such a question. 'He wouldn't live there, not him! Had his own big hall. Still does. But he had a steward there. Man to give us orders. He was a big man! Very tall!'

  I hesitated. 'But your father was short?'

  Steapa looked surprised. 'How did you know that?'

  'I just guessed.'

  'He was a good worker, my father.'

  'Did he teach you to fight?'

  'He didn't, no. No one did. I just learned myself.'

  The land was less damaged the farther we went south. And that was strange, for the Danes had come this way. We knew that, for folk said the Danes were still in the southern part of the shire, but life suddenly seemed normal. We saw men spreading dung on fields, and other men ditching or hedging. There were lambs in the pastures. To the north the foxes had become fat on dead lambs, but here the shepherds and their dogs were winning that ceaseless battle.

  And the Danes were in Cridianton.

  A priest told us that in a village huddled near a great oak-covered hill beside a stream. The priest was nervous because he had seen my long hair and arm rings and he presumed I was a Dane, and my northern accent did not persuade him otherwise, but he was reassured by Steapa. The two talked, and the priest gave his opinion that it would be a wet summer.

  'It will,' Steapa agreed. 'The oak greened before the ash.'

  'Always a sign,' the priest said.

  'How far is Cridianton?' I broke into the conversation.

  'A morning's walk, lord.'

  'You've seen the Danes there?' I asked.

  'I've seen them, lord, I have,' he said.

  'Who leads them?'

  'Don't know, lord.'

  'They have a banner?' I asked.

  He nodded. 'It hangs on the bishop's hall, lord. It shows a white horse.'

  So it was Svein. I did not know who else it could have been, but the white horse confirmed that Svein had stayed in Defnascir rather than try to join Guthrum. I twisted in the saddle and looked at the priest's village that was unscarred by war. No thatch had been burned, no granaries emptied and the church was still standing. 'Have the Danes come here?' I asked.

  'Oh yes, lord, they came. Came more than once.'

  'Did they rape? Steal?'

  ‘No, lord. But they bought some grain. Paid silver for it.'

  Well-behaved Danes. That was another strange thing.

  'Are they besieging Exanceaster?'

  I asked. That would have made a sort of sense. Cridianton was close enough to Exanceaster to give most of the Danish troops shelter while the rest invested the larger town.

  'No, lord,' the priest said, 'not that I know of.'

  'Then what are they doing?' I asked.

  'They're just in Cridianton, lord.'

  'And Odda is in Exanceaster?'

  'No, lord. He's in Ocmundtun. He's with Lord Harald.'

  I knew the shire-reeve's hall was in Ocmundtun that lay beneath the northern edge of the great moor. But Ocmundtun was also a long journey from Cridianton and no place to be if a man wanted to harry the Danes.

  I believed the priest when he
said Svein was at Cridianton, but we still rode there to see for ourselves. We used wooded, hilly tracks and came to the town at mid afternoon and saw the smoke rising from cooking fires, then saw the Danish shields hanging from the palisade. Steapa and I were hidden in the high woods and could see men guarding the gate, and other men standing watch in a pasture where forty or fifty horses were grazing on the first of the spring grass.

  I could see Odda the Elder's hall where I had been reunited with Mildrith after the fight at Cynuit, and I could also see a triangular Danish banner flying above the larger hall that was the bishop's home. The western gate was open, though well guarded, and despite the sentries and the shields on the wall the town looked like a place at peace, not at war. There should be Saxons on this hill, I thought, Saxons watching the enemy, ready to attack. instead the Danes were living undisturbed.