Shieldwall

by Justin Hill

  ‘Why go back?’ she said at last.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked her.

  She sat up then, spoke loudly enough for the men in the hall to hear. ‘They will kill you, that is why,’ she said.

  Wulfnoth did not answer. An image came to him: a meadow in flower, a clear and stony stream, a fisherman staking his reed fish-trap into the salmon-brimming water, and his mother’s voice calling him home at the end of the day.

  All men die, he thought, and he had lived in exile long enough.

  That night as Wulfnoth lay in bed, he tossed and turned and tried to sleep, but the room began to spin a little and he could feel cold sweat upon his forehead. His hands were dry but the rest of his body sweated. He sat up and felt his stomach churn, up and down, like making butter. He raised himself over the body of the girl, his blind hands fumbling for his cloak which he threw around his shoulders, felt for the door latch stepped out into the smoky dark of the hall.

  He could hear his men breathing; from the dull red ember’s light could make out their sleeping forms, lined like corpses along the floor. He wiped the sweat from his lip again, cursed the beer and the stink of Dyflin; the war and Ethelred, and the fate that had brought him to this moment: leaning on this rented doorpost, the cold night air on his face, ragged night-clouds being chased past a gibbous moon – and he puked out of the doorway of the rented barn.

  Wulfnoth bent double to vomit again, gagged and spat a long string of saliva from his mouth. He drooled like a dog, knew that more was coming, but rather than wait he opened his mouth gannet wide and put his hand in, two fingers searching for the back of his throat. He knew the spot, behind his tonsils, could taste his own skin and the dirt under his nails, the black hairs on the back of his hands rough against the roof of his mouth. He gagged again. Spat more. He slid his fingers back inside and his stomach heaved in response and he pulled out his hand, pulled the hem of his cloak up as his stomach clenched like a fist, emptied itself of beer and lumps of half-chewed bread and pork and parsnips in an impossibly long stream.

  Wulfnoth thought this would ease the sweat on his skin, but he heaved again. The third time he gagged, nothing came from his gut, but his stomach squeezed a fourth time and he could taste foul black bile.

  When he had finished, Wulfnoth poured water on his pale and hairy shins, swilled the backsplash from his skin.

  His feet were still wet when he fumbled his way back into bed. He wanted to wake the girl, but he could smell the vomit on himself and knew he was drunk and tried to wipe himself down with the lining of his cloak. She moved a little to make room for him, but he liked to sleep on the usual side and clambered over her again, careful not to rouse her.

  But he could not sleep. The room did not spin, but his body still sweated. Wulfnoth opened his eyes to the night black. It was still raining. A puddle had formed somewhere on the mud floor of the chamber. The sound was very intense in the silence. He could hear the drip, drip, drip marking the long and sleepless watches of the night.

  The next morning Wulfnoth woke and found that the slave girl was up already, sitting on a milking stool by his bedside, washing the dirt from his cloak.

  ‘You were sick,’ she said, and Wulfnoth remembered.

  He closed his eyes and put his hands to his head as if he could massage away the pain inside.

  ‘You talked of your son,’ the slave girl said. He winced and pushed himself up from the bed, saw the puddle on the floor and the long-dripping roof.

  He stood up, felt a little light-headed, pulled on his trousers and tunic, strapped his belt on tight. The men would not want to see an old drunk come stumbling forward into the day. They had sworn him oaths and shared his food, but there was no tighter bond than respect and love, and after a night like last night Wulfnoth felt he must give them an entrance to admire.

  He could feel his slave girl watching him as he put his hand to the door-latch.

  ‘Wait,’ she said, and stood up from the three-legged stool. The hem of her dress was wet. Her hands were white and wrinkled from the washing water; they reached up to his throat and the skin on his back shivered for a moment, as if they were the wet hands of a drowned corpse.

  ‘Here,’ she said, and he closed his eyes and let his breath out. She straightened his clothes. She said something in her own language, pulled dried lumps from his beard.

  ‘You look like a Dane,’ she said, her voice soft and rebuking.

  ‘I should shave it off,’ he said.

  She looked at him. She took one of the grey hairs between her fingers and pulled quickly.

  He winced as the lichen-grey hair wrenched free from his skin.

  She pulled another one out. And another. They were like slaps to the face, waking him up.

  ‘There,’ she said, and nodded towards the door, as if to tell him he was free to go.

  Wulfnoth had once held court with the finest of the land and had, when that dread time came, buckled on mail shirt and sword, taken up his spear and shield, and led his men in battle. Shield of his people, he’d earned a great name in fighting the Danes: Wulfnoth Cild, the king had named him – the ‘Young Hero’ – and, as he strode out and greeted each man in turn, he was Wulfnoth Cild again.

  ‘Someone should teach the Irish to brew decent ale,’ Wulfnoth said, clapping Beorn on the back. The big man smiled; his crooked teeth gave him a fearsome look. ‘So you think you have more scars than me? Not yet, young Beorn!’ he boomed. ‘A good night indeed! Caerl, how is the wind?’

  ‘She has shifted a little to the south,’ Caerl told him.

  ‘Good,’ Wulfnoth laughed. ‘Good! The gale cannot last all winter. Soon it will relent and blow us home.’

  Wulfnoth grew sicker. He hid his pain and spoke in a fine and expansive mood as he gave orders to his men to sell this and buy that, to bring in loans that had been given to men in the city, to prepare the boat for the crossing to Sudsexe.

  That night Wulfnoth did not sleep well. His mind raced and his stomach rumbled; he tossed and turned and feared his son might now be drowning on an Irish beach. He dreamt of a high green wave washing over a floundering ship. He woke with a start.

  When news came that a ship had foundered in the gales two days before. Wulfnoth was sure his son Godwin had drowned. Words would not sway him; he insisted on riding out to see the place. The gale had calmed and the sky was clear and blue and wind-scrubbed as Wulfnoth and his men took their horses, spears and shields, and rode to the bay. The tide was ebbing and the waves were gentle, almost apologetic, as they nudged the wreckage ashore. Sand and surf swirled; the broad beach was littered with scraps of timber and sacking and the shattered sea-chests of the crew.

  Caerl stuck his tongue into his cheek and looked at the capsized ship. She lay on her side about three furlongs from where he stood, her barnacled timbers turned up to the sky. A barrel of arrows had burst and the sodden bushels now made the high-water mark, while in the shallows a few seaweed-tangled corpses, stripped by locals, lapped the shore with each nudging wave.

  ‘This is an English ship,’ Wulfnoth said. ‘That is English oak. And look, this cross is an English cross.’

  ‘Come,’ Beorn shouted, ‘let us take our countrymen from the shore and give them a decent burial.’

  The soil was light and sandy, and it did not take long to dig a hole deep enough for the bodies. One of the corpses was a tall and handsome fellow with long blond hair. Beorn felt the man’s skull and the head swung up at a gruesome angle; the man’s throat had been cut almost to the bone.

  Beorn looked about him. Poor soul, he thought. He could picture the man staggering ashore only to be met by the local shipwreckers. But now there was nothing but the wind and the grasses, and the stranded arrows.

  ‘No sign of your son,’ Caerl said to Wulfnoth.

  Wulfnoth stared over the grey sea. The ‘whale road’, men called it, and there the great beasts were, rising like hillocks from under the waves, wandering through the cold grey water, breaking the sur
face in turn, strange voyagers hurrying to the ends of the earth.

  *

  That afternoon the pot was just starting to steam when one of the men handed Wulfnoth a bowl of dark beef broth. Wulfnoth took it in both hands, felt the warmth come slowly through the hand-polished wood. His stomach cramped as he watched Beorn airing the sheepskins that would keep off the damp; Wulfnoth gritted his teeth while the pain eased.

  ‘Lord,’ a soft voice said. His slave girl was standing next to him. The hall was almost empty. It was dark and cold and quiet. His men had all gone out on their errands. It was still raining softly; the light was thin and dull, he could not tell how long he had slept, just saw the raindrops dripping onto the ground outside, counting.

  Wulfnoth shivered and shut his eyes.

  ‘Would you like me to sing?’

  Wulfnoth shook his head. There was a pain low down in his gut. He did not want music today. ‘I will sleep. Wake me if the wind changes,’ he said and pulled his cloak tighter to him. He rested his chin on his chest, thought of Contone and his wife and son, and that long-lost feeling of contentment and joy.

  Wulfnoth slept for three more hours, drifted on the dreams of a man who yearns for kinfolk but cannot steer his ship homeward. As he slept he could hear voices outside.

  He called for Kendra.

  ‘Who is that?’ he asked when she came hurrying.

  ‘Men from Sudsexe. The winds have turned to the east.’

  ‘Any news?’

  She shook her head and Wulfnoth put his head back to his rolled-cloak pillow.

  As he slept again, the temperature dropped and a thick winter mist rose from the river. It steadily filled the streets till the roofs were like islands in a sea of white. Trees loomed up like the weird figures of giants. Men groped their way home, the dark shapes of buildings and wicker walls looming closer and darker and more sombre. The fog kept rising till it began to feel its way down through the smoke hole, making the fire cough and splutter.

  Wulfnoth had a dream that he was underwater and woke with a start. He pushed back a blanket that had been spread over his legs and threw the door open to the clawing fog. A wall of white faced him. He felt his way along the narrow walkway along the side of the hall to the privy.

  When it was over Wulfnoth used a handful of moss to rub himself clean. But he was back half and hour later, with the same urgent need, but with nothing coming.

  Wulfnoth sat in the outhouse for more than ten minutes, and when he came back to bed, he asked his slave girl to bring in a bucket.

  ‘You’re sick?’ she said.

  ‘Cheap beer,’ he told her, but he knew it wasn’t just the beer that made him feel light-headed and faint and he was up many times in the night.

  When morning came, he was so hot and feverish that the slave girl threw the covers off, opened the high shutters to let the smell out and the thin winter light in.

  She bent to pick up the bucket and carried it out through the hall. It was only when she was out of the hall door and picking her way through the puddles that she saw what was inside. She tried not to breathe – held her breath till after she had tipped the contents out – and then threw the bucket after it.

  No one would use it now. Not after what she had seen.

  She hurried back, splashing through the puddles this time, and opened her mouth and heaved in a great gasp of air. She washed her hands and lingered at the chamber door, as if the whole room had become infected.

  Wulfnoth lay on his side, his arm curled under his head, one white foot sticking out from the bedclothes. His breathing was slow and regular. She touched her hand to his forehead, felt the fire that burnt inside.

  She had seen this sickness before. His bowel movements had not produced anything brown or liquid or familiar, but clots of blood floating in a translucent gruel of mucus. She knelt next to the bed and clasped her hands and prayed: Forgive me, Lord, and forgive Wulfnoth for the sins we have committed. She prayed for mercy and hope and for Him to cast a forgiving eye on her master.

  After a long while, when the men were already up and talking in loud morning voices, Wulfnoth opened an eye and saw her kneeling next to his bed.

  ‘What’s wrong, child?’

  She looked at him and did not know what to say.

  He shut his eyes and smiled.

  ‘Praying for me already?’ he said.

  She blushed.

  ‘How is the wind?’

  ‘Fair.’

  ‘And Swanneck? Is she ready to sail?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Good. When this has passed, we shall go down and push her off the shore,’ he said, but the next day his cheeks were sunken and he spoke fitfully.

  ‘I saw my son,’ Wulfnoth said, and she saw a feverish light in his blue eyes. ‘I saw my lad and he opened his arms to me, welcomed me back home.’ Wulfnoth closed his eyes for a moment, then said in the quiet, ‘No, not yet. Don’t get the monks yet.’

  Kendra knelt for a little while and wondered if he would keep sleeping.

  ‘I saw my son. I saw Godwin,’ Wulfnoth whispered after a while, but his eyes stayed shut and she sat and watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, took his hand, was reassured when he squeezed her fingers in reply.

  Beorn filled a jug with ale, set two cups before him and waited by the hearth for his lord to come out. But Wulfnoth did not come. Beorn grimaced, filled his own cup and emptied it, refilled it and kept drinking. He grew quiet and then gloomy and took out his sword, Doomgiver, and polished her till she gleamed red in the firelight.

  ‘Does he not value our jokes any more?’ he said.

  ‘He is sick,’ Caerl told him.

  There was nothing they could do. It tested them both.

  ‘Another cup?’

  Caerl shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, then rested a hand on Beorn’s shoulder. ‘But drink one for him.’

  Caerl went down to the muddy Dyflin quayside, where the tethered boats sat low in the water, their reflections close round them like uneasy sheep. He climbed aboard, stood at the prow and watched the other crews casting off. He threw back his cloak and rubbed his eyes clear. The boats were loaded and ready; all they needed was Wulfnoth’s word.

  But Wulfnoth was almost past giving orders.

  Caerl listened to the lapping water along the ships’ flanks, the departing sound of the morning’s sailings, the crews working quietly, with only the occasional voice drifting through the morning calm. As each ship readied, they pushed off and rowed out, the long oars dripping. They rounded the end of the harbour, then unfurled the sails and caught the wind and the river current and the ebbing tide.

  Caerl hated being left behind, even by strangers’ boats. He always had this feeling when watching other boats leave, the tug of the wanderer. He tried to keep himself busy, to keep his mind off thoughts of the many journeys they had been on together. He stayed at the boat all morning, going through the hundred little tasks that keep crews busy: checking and coiling ropes, inspecting sails, oiling oarlocks, trying to foresee anything that might break or fail at sea.

  ‘Look!’ Caerl shouted, and aimed a blow at the boy, who was stitching the blue-striped wool sail with a sturdy whalebone needle. ‘You need to pull this tighter.’ He slipped his fingers into the hole and ripped the boy’s stitching wide open.

  The boy said nothing, and Caerl thought about explaining but said nothing. Idiot, he thought, remembered hard gales that had torn sails from top to bottom, the shreds clearing the deck in a berserker’s fury.

  He left the boy for a few minutes, checked that the provisions of salt pork and hard-baked barley bread were not getting damp under their oilskin tarpaulin, then came back and watched over his shoulder. The lad was biting his lip. His cheeks were pink. He held up his stitching and Caerl tugged it. It gave a little, but not enough to make a fuss about.

  ‘Better,’ he said, and walked over to the other side of the ship and leant on a stretch of sealskin rigging, felt it give a little under his w
eight. The boy was a fool, he thought, then shook his head. No, it wasn’t the boy, he told himself. It was the death of his lord, waiting like twilight in the evening woods.

  When Caerl returned, he met an Irish blood-letter carrying a covered vessel out of the hall. His monk’s robes were soiled around the hem, his head shaved in the Irish fashion, with a long tuft running over the top. There was a razor and a leather strap crossed over the bowl, and blood on the man’s hands. He smiled, but Caerl gave him a wide berth.

  The slave girl was mopping his brow and Wulfnoth’s eyes were closed. A cloth had been wrapped round the forearm wound. His face gleamed with a light covering of sweat.

  ‘How is he?’ Caerl asked.

  ‘Weak,’ she said. She looked tired and busy and smiled in a way that told him all he needed to know. ‘But he is comfortable.’

  Caerl nodded and stood and watched for a long time. Lif is læna – life was only lent to us, to do as well as we could manage, before returning our body to the soil, and our soul to Heaven.

  Beorn stumbled in. His smile was unsure. ‘Where is he? Still abed? Wait till he hears what I have to tell.’ His face was flushed and his eyes bloodshot, but the sight of Wulfnoth drained the colour from his cheeks. ‘What is wrong with him? Why is he no better?’

  Kendra sat down and let out a long sigh. His lord was not sick, he was dying.

  ‘It is the flux,’ she said.

  Beorn nodded. Kendra looked at Caerl and an understanding passed between them. ‘How long?’ he said.

  She let out another tired sigh. ‘Not long,’ she said, walking back and forth, performing little jobs to keep her busy.

  Beorn belched. Caerl said nothing. The Three Wyrd Sisters, who wove men’s fates, were readying the shears.

  A church bell began to ring for evensong. Wulfnoth lay in his bed and heard the same ringing, summoning the faithful. He heard the words of the Magnificat in his head; his lips moved for the final blessing: Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto – felt another bowel movement, was too weak to climb out of bed. He wanted to sit up, but the girl was there. She pressed him back down into the bed and he struggled to push her away. He understood then how weak he had become. This hand, which once held a sword, was now too weak to fight off a serving girl.