As Bécc talked, his voice sounded clearer and the tension in his face seemed to relax a bit and he did not cough. And then he finished and he laid his head back, and Finnian could see the man’s exhaustion. It had a finality about it.
“And it was all for naught,” Bécc said. “All my sins, and yet the heathens sailed away.”
“No, Brother, no,” Finnian said. “I was on the beach at Beggerin. I watched the heathens sail. The Lord drove them from the harbor, swept them out to sea. They could not have lived in such a storm. God himself finished the work you started.”
Bécc’s head rolled over and he looked up at Finnian. “Truly?”
“I swear on my hope of heaven, I saw the heathens swept out to sea,” Finnian said in a tone that conveyed the truth of his words. He saw what he thought was a trace of a smile on Bécc’s tortured face. And he could see the peace as well. He reached over and made the sign of the cross on Bécc’s forehead.
“The Lord forgives you your sins,” he said softly. He reached down and picked up the small silver dish that Father Niall had left. A few crusts of the Holy Eucharist lay in the bottom. Finnian lifted one and placed it gently in Bécc’s mouth, and he was relieved to see Bécc slowly chew and swallow. And then he closed his eyes.
The door opened behind him and he heard soft steps on the stone floor. He looked up. Father Niall was there. His eyes were red and the trails of his tears were visible on his cheeks.
“How…” he began, and then stopped.
“He’s gone,” Father Finnian said. “He was a hard man, but now he rests in the arms of God.”
The sun rose and revealed more and more of the beach at Swanage. As Nothwulf and Leofric and the men-at-arms with them rode out over the sand they could see the blackened and still smoldering pits where the fires had been, a scattering of animal bones with the meat gnawed off, a couple of shields too shattered to be of any use. They could still see the V-shaped gouges in the sand where the bows of the longships had been pulled ashore.
They stared out to sea, slowly running their eyes from the north to the south, scanning every bit of ocean that was visible to them. There were no ships to be seen.
Nothwulf swiveled around in his saddle. “Bryning,” he snapped at the man behind him. “Take a couple of men and get up on those cliffs.” He pointed toward the high, jagged cliffs at the north end of the beach. “Look for those damned ships, see where they’ve gone.”
Bryning nodded, called for a few men and rode off. They rode fast. Bryning knew better than to dawdle just then.
“So,” Nothwulf said, turning back to Leofric. He could feel that panic rising. Much as he felt he should be in command of this situation, he was in the wilderness. “What do we do now?”
“We don’t go back to Sherborne, not empty-handed,” Leofric said. “That much is certain. If the king’s still there then Cynewise will make a great show of her disappointment in our failure.”
Nothwulf nodded. Leofric was kind to refer to it as their failure, but in truth he, Nothwulf, would bear the entire load. “So…?”
“So we hope that Bryning can see those damned ships and tell where they’re bound. If they’re heading to sea we return and declare our victory. If they’re going to sack some poor town or monastery…Christchurch, perhaps…then we wait for the fyrd to arrive and then we attack. In any event we do not go back to Sherborne until we have a good tale to tell.”
“There’s no other choice,” Nothwulf agreed. He understood that Leofric had ulterior motives for giving this advice. This was his land, Swanage and Christchurch were his holdings. He was both obligated and motivated to defend them, and having the help of the shire’s fyrd and Nothwulf’s men would be a great advantage.
But that was all right, because once again their interests aligned.
There was little point in remaining on the beach, so Nothwulf and Leofric led the mounted soldiers back up the path to the camp above. They had their breakfast and soon after Bryning returned and told them that he had been able to see nothing of the longships from the high cliffs to the north.
“What do you think, Leofric?” Nothwulf asked. “Do we dare hope the heathens have sailed off?”
“We can hope,” Leofric said, “but we’d better be damned certain of it before we start telling them so in Sherborne. You will not want to tell the king you’ve driven them off only for him to find you’re wrong.”
Nothwulf agreed with that. He and Leofric picked their smartest and most reliable men and sent them out in every direction, to Wareham and Poole and Christchurch Priory and Metcombe Regis. They were charged with finding out where the damned heathens had gone.
Neither Nothwulf nor Leofric expected an answer for a few days at least, but that did not make the waiting any less intolerable. Happily the men of the fyrd began to arrive soon after the scouts had left, and the logistical nightmare that they represented helped take the men’s minds from their other concerns.
The fyrd arrived in tens and twenties, reluctant and wary men who just days before had been tending their farms and now were trudging to the coast through lands they had never seen, carrying shields and spears. Some came with their own food and ale, but most did not, and that meant that Nothwulf and Leofric had to send others to gather what they could from the countryside, and dole out their own silver to get it.
By the time the scouts began to return, the army under Nothwulf’s command had swollen to more than three hundred men, enough to overwhelm the heathens with numbers, even if they lacked the Northmen’s prowess in battle.
But they still had nowhere to go, because the scouts who returned from Wareham and Poole and other points west had nothing to report. No heathens, no sign of heathens, not even a rumor of the bastards.
So Nothwulf sat in camp and waited and watched his silver disburse around the countryside as he bought more and more food and ale. He considered his options, what he might do if the heathens were never found, what he might say to King Æthelwulf to make it clear to the old man that he, and not that simpering pretender Cynewise, should sit in the chair of the ealdorman of Dorset. And he worried until his stomach ached.
Then, three days after they had found the beach empty, riders returned from the east, from Christchurch Priory. And they had a different tale to tell, exactly the one Nothwulf so wished to hear.
“Bryning! Get these whore’s sons on their feet! Break the camp, get ready to march!” Nothwulf shouted. It was just a moment or two after the scout had finished telling of the people he had met fleeing from Christchurch, the longships he had seen from a distance pulled up on the beach. The heathens had been discovered, and now Nothwulf had men enough under his command to crush them and march his prisoners back to the king.
It did not take long to get the army on the move, though it was longer than Nothwulf would have liked. The fyrd was stretched out in a long line on the road, with part of the mounted warriors leading the way and some coming up behind. Nothwulf, with Leofric at his side, took the lead as they moved out, a slow-moving, grim parade marching through the fine summer day.
Nothwulf was jubilant, his spirit singing. He had been in battle often enough and he liked it, which was one of the many things that marked him as a leader where his brother had not been. And Cynewise certainly was not.
“What say you, Leofric?” he said. “A few days we should have this taken care of, the situation in hand.”
“Should do,” Leofric said in a tone so lacking in enthusiasm that Nothwulf looked over with concern.
“What is it? You’re concerned?”
Leofric shrugged. “I have no reason to be concerned,” he said. “We know where the heathens are, and we have reason to believe we’re more powerful than them. It’s just that…”
“Yes?”
“Nothing has been as it seems,” Leofric said. “The devil is in this business. There are people arrayed against us, and we don’t even know who they are. Cynewise, sure, but who are the others? Are there others? It’s just
a bad business, and I’m thinking this campaign will not be the simple matter that it seems.”
“I see,” Nothwulf said, though he was not sure he did. It seemed simple enough to him. The heathens were at Christchurch Priory and he and his army were marching to fight them and kill them. Simple. But Leofric was right as well. There were forces of which Nothwulf was not aware, plots unfolding that he had not seen before.
Who else, what else, might be part of this whole affair? What unexpected thing might happen next to render his situation even more desperate? Nothwulf felt his buoyant mood wilt like a cut flower under the summer’s sun.
Epilogue
Hail, thou who hast spoken! Hail, thou that knowest!
Hail, ye that have hearkened! Use, thou who hast learned!
The Song of Spells
The fighting done, the surviving enemies secured, plunder gathered, the Northmen stayed at Christchurch Priory for breakfast. And then they stayed for dinner and for supper and then they bedded down for the night, with sentries posted along the low stone wall and guards surrounding the prisoners in the church.
But no one came to disturb their rest, and the prisoners did not make any attempt to leave their confines. So the following morning they had breakfast once again.
They ate outside in the open ground that had been their battlefield and was still marked with dark patches of blood, soaked into the earth. They pulled chairs and benches and tables out of the many buildings scattered around the monastic grounds. They ate outside because it was warm and the sun was shining and a soft breeze was blowing and it felt good.
“Been here in Engla-land…what? Five days?” Godi said. “And we haven’t seen a drop of rain since the storm that brought us here.”
“It’s not Ireland, that I can tell you,” Gudrid said. “Another week of this and we might finally dry out.”
Thorgrim nodded and said nothing. But it had occurred to him that, so far, Engla-land seemed to have much to offer. The monastery was stuffed with food and ale and the plunder had been very good. There were no women, save for the largely unappealing wives of the tradesmen, but other than that, this place seemed all but ideal.
Breakfast certainly was excellent: fresh bread and fresh meat and cheese and decent ale. The Northmen ate their fill and then saw to it that the prisoners ate as well, if not as heartily. That done, it was time to attend to the dead.
With Gudrid translating, Thorgrim ordered the tradesmen who were being held prisoner, along with a dozen of the English soldiers, to lend a hand. They were marched under guard from the dim interior of the church, blinking in the sunlight and shielding their eyes. In the aftermath of the battle, the dead had been moved off to the side of the open ground and covered with whatever cloth could be found. Now men were sent for wagons, and when they returned the cloth was pulled aside to reveal the bloated, gray corpses underneath.
The prisoners were set to work stacking the dead in the wagons, English in one wagon, Northmen in the other. Only eleven Northmen, Thorgrim was glad to see. But among them was Olaf Thordarson, a good man, one of the few left who had sailed with them from Norway under Ornolf the Restless. They had been shoulder to shoulder in the shieldwall many times, and Thorgrim was sorry indeed to lose him.
You are feasting with Odin now , Thorgrim thought, and you’ll be there to welcome me to the corpse hall.
With the dead loaded, Thorgrim called to Failend and Louis de Roumois. “For these English to bury their dead proper, what do they need?” he asked.
“A few of the priests in the church,” Louis said. “They’ll need a book of scripture, but there are some there, I saw. The covers are ripped off, as you heathens do, but the books are there.”
Thorgrim nodded. Louis used the Irish word to refer to the bundle of papers so beloved by the Christians. There was no word in the Northmen’s language that meant exactly that, but Thorgrim knew what he meant.
“They’ll need holy water, too,” Failend said.
“Holy water? Where do they get that?”
“They can turn any water into holy water. They bless it.”
“Bless it? They use some magic to change the water into something else?” Thorgrim asked. He found the idea that the Christ priests had that sort of power unsettling.
“Not magic,” Failend said. “They…just bless it.”
“Is it still water after they do this?” Thorgrim asked.
“Yes…no… It’s Holy Water. Something different,” Failend said.
Thorgrim nodded. It was clear this blessing was some sort of Christian magic, though Failend said it was not. It made no sense to Thorgrim, but little of what the Christians believed did, so he let it go.
“All right,” he said. “I want you two to take a dozen of our men and go with the Christians to bury their dead. Let them get priests and this magic water and whatever else they need. Shovels and men to dig. You see they don’t get up to any mischief.”
Failend and Louis nodded. Thorgrim suspected they were relieved to not have to take part in the Northmen’s heathen ceremony.
The wagon bearing the dead Christians rolled off toward the graveyard outside the monastery walls, and soon after the wagon with the Northmen followed, turning away from the cemetery and toward the edge of the water where the longships were hauled up and anchored on shore. There the Northmen, living and unwounded, pulled out shovels and set to work digging graves deep enough that the bodies of their fellows could rest undisturbed.
When the graves were dug, the dead men were laid carefully at the bottoms, swords and seaxes and spears by their sides, shields across their chests. Two cows, liberated from a nearby field, were sacrificed on the edge of the graves. The blood that flowed from their slit throats was collected up in wide bowls held by the dead men’s comrades.
Thorgrim held a small oak sapling, leafed out in its summer foliage, and he dipped the leaves in the bowls of blood and sprinkled the blood liberally on the dead men in their graves while he called on the gods and the Valkyrie to see them borne swiftly away to Valhalla. And then they covered the men with English soil and returned to the monastery to feast and think on the men who now joined generations of warriors at Odin’s eternal feast.
They remained the rest of that day, behind the walls of the monastery, eating and drinking ale and wine and enjoying their idleness. There seemed to be no armies gathering to retake the place from the heathen marauders, so they stayed another night as well. Sentries were posted and still they had nothing to report.
But Thorgrim had been around far too long, and knew far too much about luck, to think it could go on much longer. And he knew that nothing would make a man’s luck end quicker than his counting on it to remain. So he called Starri and a half dozen other men, and asked Jorund to pick some of his men who would be good at scouting and he sent them out on horseback in various directions to see if there were any armies on the move, any threat they would have to counter soon. And then he went to bed.
This cannot go on , Thorgrim mused. It was dawn the following morning and he was lying under a blanket in a bed in a house that must have belonged to one of the chief priests, because it was big and had rugs on the floor and tapestries on the wall and a long oak table and chairs. For all his wealth, Thorgrim had never enjoyed an excess of luxury, but he was enjoying this now. Beside him, Failend breathed softly in her sleep. They had made love the night before, something they had not done in some time, and that only added to his sense of peaceful comfort.
No, this cannot go on , he thought again. Regardless of what the scouts discovered, they could not remain there much longer. He had no idea of how remote this Christchurch was, but he doubted it was so far from anything else that their presence would go unnoticed for long. He had personally seen many people fleeing before them as they came ashore, and they would have carried word of the coming of the heathen raiders.
Sweartling had not been much help in telling them what towns if any were close by, since he apparently did not know either,
though he believed that the ealdorman’s home at Wimborne was not so far away.
Ealdorman… Thorgrim thought. That was a word strange to him. It had taken Sweartling and Gudrid some time, back and forth, to come to an understanding of what it meant. It was, apparently, the English word for a jarl, or as close as the English came to such a thing. It was a man of high rank, in any event. A man who would have warriors under his command.
Once they had eaten their breakfast Thorgrim called his chief men together for a council of war. Jorund joined them, as did the captains of the other ships and Godi and Harald. He asked Louis de Roumois as well, thinking Louis, as a Frank, might know more about Engla-land than the Northmen did. Starri for once did not join them, being still out on his scouting mission.
“There are some choices for us to make,” Thorgrim said as the men settled in a circle of chairs and benches. They were outside still, enjoying the sun and the warmth. “And those choices are about when we leave here, and what we do with the prisoners.”
The others nodded. No one spoke.
“With the prisoners, there are three things we can do. We can take them to the slave market, in Frisia, I suppose. We can hold them as hostages and see if any will pay for them. Or we can sail today and leave them here.”
The others nodded again and looked from one to the other. Jorund spoke first.
“Leaving them here is like throwing silver into the ocean,” he said. “They’re worth a lot. As slaves they’re worth a lot.”
That was true. After silver and gold, slaves were the most valuable plunder of all. And slaves were more abundant and easier to come by than silver and gold.
Asmund, commander of Oak Heart , spoke next. “Slaves are of great worth, but they’re a great problem as well. We’ll have to feed them all, and give them water for the voyage. And we don’t know how many day’s sail we are from Frisia.”
A Vengeful Wind: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 8) Page 37
