The Pagan Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  They had been beautiful vessels. They had appeared to rest weightless on the ocean, and when their oars dug into the waves they skimmed the water. Their prows and sterns curled high and were tipped with gilded beasts, with serpents and dragons, and on that far-off summer’s day I thought that the three boats danced on the water, propelled by the rise and fall of their silver winged oar banks. I had stared entranced. They had been Danish ships, the first of the thousands that came to ravage Britain.

  ‘The devil’s turds,’ my father had growled.

  ‘And may the devil swallow them,’ my uncle had said. That was Ælfric, and that had been a lifetime ago. Now I sailed to meet my uncle again.

  And what did Ælfric see on that morning when the storm was still grumbling and the wind whipping about the wooden ramparts of his stolen fortress? First he saw a small trading ship struggling southwards. The ship was under sail, but it was a sail torn to shreds and tatters that streamed off the yard. He saw two men trying to row the heavy hull, and every few moments they needed to stop rowing to bail water.

  Or rather Ælfric’s sentries saw the Reinbôge struggling. The current was against her and the ripped sail and twin oars were fighting against it. The men watching from Bebbanburg must have thought she was a tired, battered ship, low in the water and lucky to be afloat, and we made it look as if we were trying to round the shallows off Lindisfarena to bring her safe into the shelter of the shallow harbour behind the fortress. The sentries would have seen that attempt fail, and watched as the wind drove us southwards down the coast, past the high ramparts and through the treacherous gap between the shore and the bird-shrieking Farnea Islands, and all the time the foundering ship came closer to land where the sea exploded in high shattering foam until she vanished behind the southern headland. All that they would have seen, and those men watching from Bebbanburg would have guessed that the Reinbôge was being shipwrecked close to Bedehal.

  That is what they saw. They saw two men struggling with long oars and a third man steering the ship, but they did not see the seven warriors hidden down with the cargo, all of whom were covered by cloaks. They would have seen plunder, not peril, and they were distracted because, not long after the Reinbôge passed their stronghold, they saw a second ship, the Middelniht, and she was far more dangerous because the Middelniht was a warship, not a trading craft. She too was struggling. Men were bailing water, others were rowing, and the men on the high ramparts would see she had a depleted crew, that she only had ten oars, though those ten were enough to bring her safe around Lindisfarena and across the ragged water to the shallow entrance of the harbour behind Bebbanburg. So perhaps an hour after the Reinbôge disappeared, the Middelniht slid into Ælfric’s harbour.

  So Ælfric’s men saw two ships. They saw two survivors of a terrible storm. They saw two ships seeking shelter. That was what Ælfric’s men saw, and that was what I wanted them to see.

  I was still on board Reinbôge, while Finan commanded Middelniht. He knew that once inside Bebbanburg’s haven he would be questioned, but he had his answers ready. He would say they were Danes going south to East Anglia and were prepared to pay the Lord Ælfric for the privilege of shelter while they repaired their ship from the storm’s ravages. The story would suffice. Ælfric would not question it, but doubtless he would demand a high payment, and Finan had gold coins ready. I did not think Ælfric would want anything more than money. He lived among Danes and, though they were his enemies, he gained nothing by provoking their anger. He would take the gold and lie quiet, and all Finan had to do was tell his tale, pay the coin, and wait. He would have anchored as close to the fortress entrance as he could, and his men would be sprawled in apparent weariness. None wore mail, none had a sword, though both mail and swords were close to hand.

  So Finan waited.

  And I let the Reinbôge drive up onto the beach south of Bedehal’s headland and waited too.

  It was now up to Ælfric, and he did just what I expected him to do. He sent his reeve to the Middelniht and the reeve took the gold coins and told Finan he could stay three days. He insisted that no more than four men could go ashore together, and none must carry weapons, and Finan agreed to it all. And while the reeve was dealing with Middelniht, my uncle would send men southwards to find the shipwrecked Reinbôge. Shipwrecks were profitable; there was timber, cargo, cordage and sailcloth to be had, and though any villagers nearby would be hungry for such a windfall they knew better than to interfere with the privileges of the man who ruled the great nearby fortress and who would claim the salvage rights.

  So I waited in the stranded Reinbôge, touched the hammer about my neck and prayed to Thor, asking for success.

  Some folk had appeared among the dunes to the north of the beach where the Reinbôge had driven ashore. There was a weather-beaten village at the sea’s edge, inhabited mostly by fishermen whose small boats were sheltered from storms by a rill of rock that ran south from Bedehal’s low headland, and some of those villagers watched, doubtless puzzled, as we unfastened the leather line that ran from the masthead to the Reinbôge’s stern. They could only see three of us. They watched as we lowered the mast, letting it fall across the boat with its ragged sail still attached. The tide was low, but rising, and the Reinbôge kept shifting and lurching up the beach as the waves pounded in.

  Poor Blekulf was agonised over his boat, fearing that every impact on the sand would spring another leak or enlarge an existing one. ‘I’ll buy you another ship,’ I said.

  ‘I built her,’ he answered gloomily, suggesting that no boat I bought him could ever be half as good as the one he had crafted himself.

  ‘Then pray you built her well,’ I said, and then told Osferth, who was hidden low in the Reinbôge’s hold, to take command. ‘You know what to do.’

  ‘I do, lord.’

  ‘You stay here with Osferth,’ I told Blekulf, then ordered Rolla, a vicious Dane, to choose his weapons and follow me. We jumped off the boat’s stem and trudged up the beach and into the dunes. I carried Serpent-Breath. I knew the men coming from the fortress would arrive soon and that meant Serpent-Breath’s moment was coming. The villagers must have seen us carry the swords up the beach, but they made no move towards us, nor towards the horsemen who came fast from the north.

  I peered through wind-whipped dune grass and saw seven men on seven horses. They were all in mail, wore helmets and carried weapons. Their speed and the spiteful wind raised the seven riders’ cloaks and blew the sand thrown up by the hooves. They were cantering, eager to get their errand done and so back to the fortress. It was beginning to rain, a stinging rain blown from the sea, and that was good. It would make the seven men even more eager to finish the business. It would make them careless.

  The seven rode onto the beach. They saw a stranded ship with a fallen mast and a wind-ragged sail flapping uselessly. Rolla and I were moving now, crouching behind the dunes as we hurried northwards. No one could see us. We ran to the place where the horsemen had come through the dunes, the same path they would take back to the fortress, and we waited there, swords drawn, and I edged up a sandy slope and peered over the summit.

  The seven horsemen reached Reinbôge, curbing their stallions just short of the seething waves that ran up the beach past the canted hull. Five of them dismounted. I could see them calling to Blekulf, who was the only man visible. He could have warned them, of course, but his son and crewman were both on board Middelniht and he feared for his boy’s life and so he said nothing to betray us. Instead he told them he had been shipwrecked, nothing more, and the five men waded towards the ship. None had a drawn sword. The two horsemen waited on the beach, and then Osferth struck.

  Seven of my men suddenly appeared, leaping over the Reinbôge’s bows with swords, axes and spears. The five men went down with appalling speed, hacked savagely with axe blows to the neck, while Osferth rammed a spear at the nearest horseman. That man turned away, escaping the thrust and spurred away from the sudden massacre that had left blood spreadin
g in the swirling wave-froth. His companion dug in spurs and followed. ‘Two of them,’ I told Rolla, ‘coming now.’

  We crouched, one on either side of the path. I heard the hoofbeats coming nearer. Serpent-Breath was in my hand and anger in my soul. I had gazed at Bebbanburg as the Reinbôge had struggled past and I had seen my inheritance, my fortress, my home, the place I had dreamed of since the day I left, the place stolen from me, and now I would take it back and slaughter the men who had usurped me.

  And so I started my revenge. The leading horseman came into sight and I leaped at him, sword swinging, and his horse reared and twisted sideways so that my cut missed the rider entirely, but the horse was falling, its hooves throwing up gouts of sand, and the second horse crashed into the first and it too was going down and Rolla was gritting his teeth as his blade lunged up into the rider’s chest. The horses, eyes white, struggled to their feet and I seized one set of reins, placed my foot on the fallen rider’s chest and put Serpent-Breath at his throat.

  ‘You fool,’ the man said, ‘don’t you know who we are?’

  ‘I know who you are,’ I said.

  Rolla had taken the second horse and now finished off its rider with a short, hard stab that sprayed the sand with blood. I looked back towards Reinbôge and saw that Osferth had captured the remaining five horses and that his men had hauled the corpses out of the shallow water and were stripping them of their mail, cloaks and helmets.

  I bent down and unbuckled my captive’s sword belt. I tossed it to Rolla, then told the man to stand. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Cenwalh,’ he muttered.

  ‘Louder!’

  ‘Cenwalh,’ he said.

  It began to rain harder, a malevolent heavy rain driving off the disturbed sea. And suddenly I laughed. It was insane. A small group of wet, desperate men against the grimmest fortress in Britain? I jabbed Serpent-Breath, driving Cenwalh back a pace. ‘How many men in Bebbanburg?’ I asked.

  ‘Enough to kill you ten times over,’ he snarled.

  ‘That many? And how many is that?’

  He did not want to answer, then thought he could deceive me. ‘Thirty-eight,’ he said.

  I flicked my wrist so that the tip of Serpent-Breath’s blade broke the skin of his neck. A bead of blood showed there, then trickled down beneath his mail. ‘Now try the truth,’ I said.

  He put a hand to the trickle of blood. ‘Fifty-eight,’ he said sullenly.

  ‘Including you and these men?’

  ‘Including us.’

  I judged he was telling the truth. My father had kept a garrison of between fifty and sixty men and Ælfric would be reluctant to have more because each housecarl had to be armed, given mail, fed and paid. If Ælfric had warning of real danger then he could summon more men from the land Bebbanburg ruled, but raising that force would take time. So we were outnumbered by about two to one, but I had expected nothing less.

  Osferth and his men reached us, leading the five horses and carrying the clothes, mail, helmets and weapons of the men they had killed. ‘Did you notice which man was riding which horse?’ I asked him.

  ‘Of course, lord,’ Osferth replied, turning to look at his men and their captured horses, ‘brown cloak on the brindled stallion, blue cloak on the black gelding, leather jerkin on the …’ He hesitated.

  ‘On the piebald mare,’ my son carried on, ‘the black cloak was on the smaller black stallion and …’

  ‘Then change,’ I interrupted them, and looked back to Cenwalh. ‘You, undress.’

  ‘Undress?’ He gaped at me.

  ‘You can take your clothes off,’ I said, ‘or we can strip your corpse. You choose.’

  There had been seven horsemen, so the guards on Bebbanburg’s gate must see seven horsemen return. Those guards would be totally familiar with the seven men, they would see them and their horses day after day, and so when we rode to the fortress those guards must see what they expected to see. If Cenwalh’s brown and white striped cloak was draped over the rump of the wrong horse then the guards would sense something was wrong, but if they saw that cloak on a rider mounted on Cenwalh’s tall chestnut stallion they would assume life was going on as it always did.

  We changed clothes. Cenwalh, reduced to a woollen shirt that hung to his arse, shivered in the cold wind. He was staring at me, watching as I put a stranger’s pale blue cloak over my mail coat. He saw me push Thor’s hammer beneath the mail to hide it. He had heard Osferth call me ‘lord’, and he was slowly realising who I was. ‘You’re …’ he began, then paused. ‘You’re …’ he started again.

  ‘I am Uhtred Uhtredson,’ I snarled, ‘the rightful Lord of Bebbanburg. You want to swear loyalty to me now?’ I hung a dead man’s heavy silver cross around my neck. The helmet would not fit me, it was far too small, so I kept my own, but the cloak had a hood that I pulled up over the silver wolf that crested my helmet. I strapped my own sword belt round my waist. It would be hidden by the cloak and I wanted Serpent-Breath as my companion.

  ‘You are Uhtred the Treacherous,’ Cenwalh said tonelessly.

  ‘Is that what he calls me?’

  ‘That and worse,’ Cenwalh said.

  I took Cenwalh’s sword from Rolla and drew it from the scabbard. It was a good blade, well kept and sharp. ‘My uncle lives?’ I asked Cenwalh.

  ‘He lives.’

  ‘Lord,’ Osferth chided Cenwalh, ‘you call him “lord”.’

  ‘Ælfric must be old,’ I said, ‘and I hear he is sick?’

  ‘He lives,’ Cenwalh said, stubbornly refusing to call me lord.

  ‘And he ails?’

  ‘An old man’s ailments,’ Cenwalh said dismissively.

  ‘And his sons?’ I asked.

  ‘The Lord Uhtred has the command,’ Cenwalh said. He meant my cousin, Uhtred, son of Ælfric and father of yet another Uhtred.

  ‘Tell me of Ælfric’s son,’ I said.

  ‘He looks like you,’ Cenwalh replied, making it sound an ill fortune.

  ‘And what would he expect of you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Expect of me?’

  ‘He sent seven of you. To do what?’

  He frowned, not understanding the question, then flinched as I brought the blade close to his face. He glanced towards the Reinbôge, which was still being pounded by surf as the rising tide drove her up the beach. ‘We came to look at her,’ he said sullenly.

  ‘And you found us instead,’ I said, ‘but what would you have done if we hadn’t been here?’

  ‘Secured her,’ he said, still looking at the stranded ship.

  ‘And emptied her cargo? Who would have done that? You?’

  ‘Plenty of men in the village,’ he said.

  So Cenwalh would have made certain the Reinbôge was properly stranded at high tide, then forced the villagers to empty her cargo. That meant he would have left men to make sure the work was done properly and that none of the valuables was stolen, and that in turn meant that the fortress would not expect to see seven men returning. I thought for a few moments. ‘And if she was carrying nothing but ballast?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Depends whether she’s worth saving. She looks well built.’

  ‘In which case you’d secure her, then leave her till the weather calms?’

  He nodded. ‘And if Lord Ælfric doesn’t want her? We would break her up, or sell her.’

  ‘Now tell me about the fortress,’ I said.

  He told me nothing I did not know. The Low Gate was approached by a road that snaked over the narrow neck of land and climbed steeply to the big wooden arch, and beyond that gate was the wide space where the stables and blacksmith’s forge were built. That outer yard was protected by a high palisade, but the inner space, which occupied the high rocky summit, had another wall, even higher, and a second gate, the High Gate. It was there, on the peak of the rock, that Ælfric had his great hall and where smaller halls served as living quarters for the housecarls and their families. The key to Bebbanburg was not the Low Ga
te, formidable though it was, but the High Gate.

  ‘The High Gate,’ I asked, ‘is it kept open?’

  ‘It’s closed,’ Cenwalh said defiantly, ‘it’s always closed, and he’s expecting you.’

  I looked at him. ‘Expecting me?’

  ‘The Lord Ælfric knows your son became a priest, he knows you were outlawed. He thinks you’ll come north. He thinks you’re mad. He says you have nowhere to go so you’ll come here.’

  And Ælfric was right, I thought. A gust of wind brought a hard spatter of heavy rain. The surf seethed around Reinbôge. ‘He knows nothing,’ I said angrily, ‘and won’t know it till my sword is in his gullet.’

  ‘He’ll kill you,’ Cenwalh sneered.

  And Rolla killed him. I nodded to the Dane who was standing behind the shivering Cenwalh, who knew nothing of his death until it surprised him. The sword took him in the neck, a massive, killing, merciful blow. He crumpled to the sand.

  ‘Mount,’ I growled at my men.

  Seven of us were mounted, three others would walk as though they were prisoners.

  And so I went home.

  Five

  There will be an end to the killing.

  That is what I told myself as I rode towards Bebbanburg, towards my home. There will be an end to the killing. I would slaughter my way into the fortress, then close its gates and let the world squabble its way to chaos and back, but I would be at peace inside those high wooden walls. I would let the Christians and pagans, Saxons and Danes fight each other till there was not one left standing, but inside Bebbanburg I would live like a king and persuade Æthelflaed to be my queen. Merchants travelling the coast road would pay us taxes, ships passing would pay for the privilege, and the coins would pile up and we would let life slip by.

  When hell freezes over.

  Father Pyrlig was fond of that saying. I missed Pyrlig. He was one of the good Christians, even though he was a Welshman, and after Alfred’s death he had returned to Wales where, for all I knew, he still lived. He had been a warrior once, and I thought how he would have relished this impudent attack. Nine men against Bebbanburg. I did not count Blekulf, the owner of Reinbôge, though he walked with us. I had given him the choice of staying beside his beloved and beleaguered ship, but he feared the villagers and feared for his son and so he walked behind the horses.