'Finish what now?' Harald asked.
'Your king,' Odda said the last word sarcastically, 'ordered Steapa and Uhtred to fight to the death.
Yet both live! So your king's orders have not been obeyed.'
'There is a truce!' Harald protested.
'Either Uhtred stops interfering in the affairs of Defnascir,' Odda said forcefully, 'or I shall have Defnascir kill Uhtred. You want to know who is right? Alfred or me? You want to know who will be king in Wessex, Æthelwold or Alfred? Then put it to the test, Harald. Let Steapa and Uhtred finish their fight and see which man God favours. If Uhtred wins then I shall support you, and if he loses …' He smiled. He had no doubt who would win.
Harald stayed silent. I looked at Steapa and, as on the first time I met him, saw nothing on his face.
He had promised to protect me, but that was before he had been reunited with his master. The Danes looked happy. Why should they mind two Saxons fighting? Harald, though, still hesitated, and then the weary, feeble voice sounded from the doorway at the back of the hall.
'Let them fight, Harald, let them fight.' Odda the Elder, swathed in a wolf-skin blanket, stood at the door. He held a crucifix. 'Let them fight,' he said again, 'and God will guide the victor's arm.'
Harald looked at me. I nodded. I did not want to fight, but a man cannot back down from combat.
What was I to do? Say that to expect God to indicate a course of action through a duel was nonsense?
To appeal to Harald? To claim that everything Odda had said was wrong and that Alfred would win? If I had refused to fight I was granting the argument to Odda, and in truth he had half convinced me that Alfred was doomed, and Harald, I am sure, was wholly convinced. Yet there was more than mere pride making me fight in the hall that day. There was a belief, deep in my soul, that somehow Alfred would survive. I did not like him, I did not like his god, but I believed fate was on his side.
So I nodded again, this time to Steapa. 'I do not want to fight you,' I said to him, 'but I have given an oath to Alfred, and my sword says lie will win and that Danish blood will dung our fields.'
Steapa said nothing. He just flexed his huge arms, then waited as one of Odda's men went outside and returned with two swords. No shields, just swords. He had taken a pair of blades at random from the pile and he offered them to Steapa first who shook his head, indicating that I should have the choice. I closed my eyes, groped, and took the first hilt that I touched. It was a heavy sword, weighted towards its tip. A slashing weapon, not a piercing blade, and I knew I had chosen wrong. Steapa took the other and scythed it through the air so that the blade sang.
Svein, who had betrayed little emotion so far, looked impressed, while Odda the Younger smiled.
'You can put the sword down,' he told me, 'and thus yield the argument to me.'
Instead I walked to the clear space beside the hearth. I had no intention of attacking Steapa, but would let him come to me. I felt weary and resigned. Fate is inexorable.
'For my sake,' Odda the Elder spoke behind me, 'make it fast.'
'Yes, lord,' Steapa said, and he took a step towards me and then turned as fast as a striking snake and his blade whipped in a slash that took Odda the Younger's throat. The sword was not as sharp as it could have been, so that the blow drove Odda down, but it also ripped his gullet open so that blood spurted a blade's length into the air, then splashed into the fire where it hissed and bubbled.
Odda was on the floor-rushes now, his legs twitching, his hands clutching at his throat that still pumped blood. He made a gargling noise, turned on his back and went into a spasm so that his heels drummed against the floor and then, just as Steapa stepped forward to finish him, he gave a last jerk and was dead.
Steapa drove the sword into the floor, leaving it quivering there.
'Alfred rescued me,' he announced to the hall. 'Alfred took me from the Danes. Alfred is my king.'
'And he has our oaths,' Odda the Elder added, 'and my son had no business making peace with the pagans.'
The Danes stepped back. Svein glanced at me, for I was still holding a sword, then he looked at the boar spears leaning against the wall, judging whether he could snatch one before I attacked him. I lowered the blade.
'We have a truce,' Harald said loudly.
'We have a truce,' I told Svein in Danish.
Svein spat on the bloody rushes, then he and his standard-bearer took another cautious backwards pace.
'But tomorrow,' Harald said, 'there will be no truce, and we shall come to kill you.'
The Danes rode from Ocmundtun. And next day they also went from Cridianton. They could have stayed if they wished. There were more than enough of them to defend Cridianton and make trouble in the shire, but Svein knew he would be besieged and, man by man, worn down until he had no force at all, and so he went north, going to join Guthrum, and I rode to Oxton. The land had never looked more beautiful, the trees were hazed with green and bullfinches were feasting on the first tight fruit buds, while anemones, stitchwort and white violets glowed in sheltered spots. Lambs ran from the buck hares in the pastures. The sun shimmered on the wide sea-reach of the Uisc and the sky was full of lark song beneath which the foxes took lambs, magpies and jays feasted on other birds' eggs, and ploughmen impaled crows at the edges of the fields to ensure a good harvest.
'There'll be butter soon,' a woman told me. She really wanted to know if I was returning to the estate, but I was not. I was saying farewell. There were slaves living there, doing their jobs, and I assured them Mildrith would appoint a steward sooner or later, then I went to the hall and I dug beside the post and found my hoard untouched. The Danes had not come to Oxton. Wirken, the sly priest of Exanmynster, heard 1 was at the hall and rode a donkey up to the estate. He assured me he had kept a watchful eye on the place, and doubtless he wanted a reward.
'It belongs to Mildrith now,' I told him.
'The Lady Mildrith? She lives?'
'She lives,' I said curtly, 'but her son is dead.'
'God rest his poor soul,' Wirken said, making the sign of the cross. I was eating a scrap of ham and he looked at it hungrily, knowing I broke the rules of Lent. He said nothing, but I knew he was cursing me for a pagan.
'And the Lady Mildrith,' I went on, 'would live a chaste life now. She says she will join the sisters in Cridianton.'
'There are no sisters in Cridianton,' Wirken said. 'They're all dead. The Danes saw to that before they left.'
'Other nuns will settle there,' I said. Not that I cared, for the fate of a small nunnery was none of my business. Oxton was no longer my business. The Danes were my business, and the Danes had gone north and I would follow them.
For that was my life. That spring I was twenty-one years old and for half my life I had been with armies. I was not a farmer. I watched the slaves tearing the couch-grass from the home fields and knew the tasks of farming bored me. I was a warrior, and I had been driven from my home of Bebbanburg to the southern edge of England and I think I knew, as Wirken babbled on about how he had guarded the storehouses through the winter, that I was now going north again. Ever north. Back home.
'You lived off these storehouses all winter,' I accused the priest.
'I watched them all winter, lord.'
'And you got fat as you watched,' I said. I climbed into my saddle. Behind me were two bags, ripe with money, and they stayed there as I rode to Exanceaster and found Steapa in The Swan. Next morning, with six other warriors from Ealdorman Odda's guard, we rode north. Our way was marked by pillars of smoke, for Svein was burning and plundering as he went, but we had done what Alfred had wanted us to do. We had driven Svein back to Guthrum, so that now the two largest Danish armies were united. If Alfred had been stronger he might have left them separate and marched against each in turn, but Alfred knew he had only one chance to take back his kingdom, and that was to win one battle. He had to overwhelm all the Danes and destroy them in one blow, and his weapon was an army that existed only in his head. He had se
nt demands that the fyrd of Wessex would be summoned after Easter and before Pentecost, but no one knew whether it would actually appear. Perhaps we would ride from the swamp and find no one at the meeting place. Or perhaps the fyrd would come, and there would be too few men. The truth was that Alfred was too weak to fight, but to wait longer would only make him weaker. So he had to-fight or lose his kingdom. So we would fight.
Elev
e en
e
'You will have many sons,' Iseult told me. It was dark, though a half-moon was hazed by a mist.
Somewhere to the north-east a dozen fires burned in the hills, evidence that a strong Danish patrol was watching the swamp. 'But I am sorry about Uhtred,' she said.
I wept for him then. I do not know why the tears had taken so long to come, but suddenly I was overwhelmed by the thought of his helplessness, his sudden smile and the pity of it all. Both my half-brothers and my half-sister had died when they were babies and I do not remember my father crying, though perhaps he did. I do remember-my stepmother shrieking in grief, and how my father, disgusted by the sound, had gone hunting with his hawks and hounds.
'I saw three kingfishers yesterday,' Iseult said.
Tears were running down my cheeks, blurring the misted moon. I said nothing.
'Hild says the blue of the kingfisher's feathers is for the virgin and the red is for Christ's blood.'
'And what do you say?'
'That your son's death is my doing.'
'Wyrd bib ful araed,' I said. Fate is fate. It cannot be changed or cheated. Alfred had insisted I marry Mildrith so I would be tied to Wessex and would put roots deep into its rich soil, but I already had roots in Northumbria, roots twisted into the rock of Bebbanburg, and perhaps my son's death was a sign from the gods that I could not make a new home. Fate wanted me to go to my northern stronghold and until I reached Bebbanburg I would be a wanderer.
Men fear wanderers for they have no rules. The Danes came as strangers, rootless and violent, and that, I thought, was why I was always happier in their company. Alfred could spend hours worrying about the righteousness of a law, whether it concerned the fate of orphans or the sanctity of boundary markers, and he was right to worry because folk cannot live together without law, or else every straying cow would lead to bloodshed, but the Danes hacked through the law with swords. It was easier that way, though once they had settled a land they started to make their own laws.
'It was not your fault,' I said. You don't command fate.'
'Hild says there is no such thing as fate,' Iseult said.
'Then Hild is wrong.'
'There is only the will of God,' Iseult said, 'and if we obey that we go to heaven.'
'And if we choose not to,' I said, 'isn't that fate?'
'That's the devil,' she said. 'We are sheep, Uhtred, and we choose our shepherd, a good one or a bad one.'
I thought Hild must have soured Iseult with Christianity, but I was wrong. It was a priest who had come to Æthelingaeg while I had been in Defnascir who had filled her head with his religion. He was a British priest from Dyfed, a priest who spoke Iseult's native tongue and also knew both English and Danish. I was ready to hate him as I hated Brother Asser, but Father Pyrlig stumbled into our hut next morning booming that he had found five goose eggs and was dying of hunger.
'Dying! That's what I am, dying of starvation!' He looked pleased to see me. 'You're the famous Uhtred, eh? And Iseult tells me you hate Brother Asser? Then you're a friend of mine. Why Abraham doesn't take Asser to his bosom I do not know, except maybe Abraham doesn't want the little bastard clinging to his bosom. I wouldn't. It would be like suckling a serpent, it would. Did I say I was hungry.'
He was twice my age and a big man, big-bellied and bighearted. His hair stuck out in ungovernable clumps, he had a broken nose, only four teeth, and a broad smile.
'When I was a child,' he told me, 'ever such a little child, I used to eat mud. Can you believe that?
Do Saxons eat mud? Of course they do, and I thought I don't want to eat mud. Mud is for toads, it is.
So eventually I became a priest. And you know why? Because I never saw a hungry priest! Never! Did you ever see a hungry priest? Nor me!'
All this tumbled out without any introduction, then he spoke earnestly to Iseult in her own tongue and I was sure he was pouring Christianity into her, but then he translated for me.
'I'm telling her that you can make a marvellous dish with goose eggs. Break them up, stir them well and add just a little crumbled cheese. So Defnascir is safe?'
'Unless the Danes send a fleet,' I said.
'Guthrum has that in mind,' Pyrlig said. 'He wants the Danes in Lundene to send their ships to the south coast.'
'You know that?'
'I do indeed, I do indeed! He told me! I've just spent ten days in Cippanhamm. I speak Danish, see, because I'm clever, and so I was an ambassador for my king. How about that! Me, who used to eat mud, an ambassador! Crumble the cheese finer, my love. That's right. I had to discover, you see, how much money Guthrum would pap us to bring our spearmen over the hills and start skewering Saxons.
Now that's a fine ambition for a Briton, skewering Saxons, but the Danes are pagans, and God knows we can't have pagans loose in the world.'
'Why not?'
'It's just a fancy of mine,' he said, 'just a fancy.' He stabbed his finger into a tiny pot of butter, then licked it. 'It isn't really sour,' he told Iseult, 'not very, so stir it in.' He grinned at me. 'What happens when you put two bulls to a herd of cows?'
'One bull dies.'
'There you are! Gods are the same, which is why we don't want pagans here. We're cows and the gods are bulls.'
'So we get humped?'
He laughed. 'Theology's difficult. Anyway, God is my bull so here I am, telling the Saxons about Guthrum.'
'Did Guthrum offer you money?' I asked.
'He offered me the kingdoms of the world! He offered me gold, silver, amber and jet! He even offered me women, or boys if I had that taste, which I don't. And I didn't believe a single promise he made. Not that it mattered. The Britons aren't going to fight anyway. God doesn't want us to. No! My embassy was all a pretence. Brother Asser sent me. He wanted me to spy on the Danes, see? Then tell Alfred what I saw, so that's what I'm doing.'
'Asser sent you?'
'He wants Alfred to win. Not because he loves the Saxons, even Brother Asser isn't that curdled, but because he loves God.'
'And will Alfred win?'
'If God has anything to do with it, yes,' Pyrlig said cheerfully, then gave a shrug.
'But the Danes are strong in men. A big army! But they're not happy, I can tell you that. And they're all hungry. Not starving, mind you, but pulling their belts tighter than they'd like, and now Svein's there so there'll be even less food. Their own fault, of course. Too many men in Cippanhamm!
And too many slaves! They have scores of slaves. But he's sending the slaves to Lundene, to sell them there. They need some baby eels, eh? That'll fatten them up.'
The elvers were swarming into the Saefern Sea and slithering up the shallow waterways of the swamp where they were being netted in abundance. There was no hunger in Æthelingaeg, not if you gorged on elvers.
'I caught three basketfuls yesterday,' Pyrlig said happily, 'and a frog. It had a face just like Brother Asser so I gave it a blessing and threw it back. Don't just stir the eggs, girl! Beat them! I hear your son died?'
'Yes,' I answered stiffly.
'I am sorry,' he said with genuine feeling, 'I am truly sorry, for to lose a child is a desperate hard thing. I sometimes think God must like children. He takes so many to him. I believe there's a garden in heaven, a green garden where children play all the time. He's got two sons of mine up there, and I tell you, the youngest must be making the angels scream. He'll he pulling the girls' hair and beating up the other boys like they were goose eggs.'
'You lost two sons?'
'But I kept three others and four daughters. Why do y
ou think I'm never home?' He grinned at me.
'Noisy little things they are, children, and such appetites! Sweet Jesus, they'd eat a horse a day if they could! There are some folk who say priests shouldn't marry and there are times I think they're right. Do you have any bread, Iseult pointed to a net hanging from the roof. 'Cut the mould off,' she told me.
'I like to see a man obeying a woman,' Father Pyrlig said as I fetched the loaf.
'Why's that?' I asked.
'Because it means I'm not alone in this sorry world. Good God, but that Ælswith was weaned on gall juice, wasn't she? Got a tongue in her like a starving weasel! Poor Alfred.'
'He's happy enough.'
'Good God, man, that's the last thing he is! Some folk catch God like a disease, and he's one of them. He's like a cow after winter, he is.'
'He is?'
'You know when the late spring grass comes in? All green and new and rich? And you put the poor cow out to eat and she blows up like a bladder? She's nothing but shit and wind and then she gets the staggers and drops down dead if you don't take her off the grass for a while. That's Alfred. He got too much of the good green grass of God, and now he's sick on it. But he's a good man, a good man. Too thin, he is, but good. A living saint, no less. Ah, good girl, let's eat.' He scooped some of the eggs with his fingers, then passed the pot to me. 'Thank God it's Easter next week,' he said with his mouth full so that scraps of egg lodged in his huge beard, 'and then we can eat meat again. I'm wasting away without meat. You know Iseult will be baptised at Easter?'
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