The Pagan Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  Nine men. My son was one. Then there was Osferth, faithful Osferth who would have been a king had his mother been married to his father. I often thought Osferth disapproved of me, just as his father Alfred had, but he had stayed loyal when so many others had scurried away in fear. There was one other Saxon. Swithun was a West Saxon, named for one of their favourite saints, though this Swithun was anything but saintly. He was a tall, cheerful, quick-tempered young man with a mass of fair hair, innocent blue eyes, a ready laugh, and the swift fingers of a thief. He had been brought to me for justice by villagers tired of his crimes. They wanted me to brand him, maybe cut off a hand, but he had challenged me to fight instead and, amused, I gave him a sword. He was easy to beat, because he was untrained, but he had been strong and almost as fast as Finan, and I had pardoned his crimes on condition he swore loyalty and became my man. I liked him.

  Rolla was a Dane. He was tall, sinewy and scarred. He had served another lord, one he never named, and he had fled that service, breaking his oath, because the lord had sworn to kill him. ‘What did you do?’ I asked him when he came and begged to give me his oath.

  ‘His wife,’ he said.

  ‘Not a clever thing to do,’ I had said.

  ‘But enjoyable.’

  He was weasel-fast in a fight, vicious and merciless, a man who had seen horrors and become accustomed to them. He worshipped the old gods, but had taken himself a plump little Christian wife who was with Sigunn in Lundene. Rolla frightened most of my men, but they admired him, and none more than Eldgrim, a young Dane whom I’d discovered drunk and naked in a Lundene alley. He had been robbed and beaten. He had a roundly innocent face and thick brown curls, and women adored him, but he was inseparable from Kettil, the third Dane who rode with me that day. Kettil, like Eldgrim, was perhaps eighteen or nineteen and thin as a harp string. He looked fragile, but that was deceptive because he was quick in a fight and strong behind a shield. A handful of my more foolish men had mocked Kettil and Eldgrim for their friendship, which went far beyond mere liking, but I had placed the hazel rods in Fagranforda’s yard and incited the mockers to fight either of them, sword on sword, and the hazel rods had gone unused and the mockery had died.

  Two Frisians rode from Bedehal to Bebbanburg. Folcbald was slow as an ox, but stubborn as a mule. Put Folcbald behind a shield and he was immovable. He was hugely strong and very slow of wit, but he was loyal and worth any two other men in a shield wall. Wibrund, his cousin, was excitable, easily bored and quarrelsome, but he was useful in a fight and unwearying behind an oar.

  So we nine, accompanied by Blekulf, went to Bebbanburg. We followed the track that led north from Bedehal, and to our right were sand dunes while to our left was soggy farmland stretching to the dark inland hills. The rain was heavier, though the wind was dying. Osferth spurred his horse to ride beside me. He was wearing a heavy black cloak with a hood that concealed his face, but I saw the wry smile he offered me. ‘You promised life would be interesting,’ he said.

  ‘I did?’

  ‘All those years ago,’ he said, ‘when you rescued me from the priesthood.’ His father had wanted his bastard son made into a priest, but Osferth had chosen the way of the warrior.

  ‘You could finish your training,’ I suggested, ‘I’m sure they’d make you into one of their wizards.’

  ‘They’re not wizards,’ he said patiently.

  I grinned; it was always so easy to tease Osferth. ‘You’d have been a good priest,’ I told him, no longer teasing, ‘and probably a bishop by now.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, perhaps an abbot, though?’ He grimaced. ‘An abbot of some remote monastery, trying to grow wheat in a swamp and saying prayers.’

  ‘Of course you’d be a bishop,’ I said savagely, ‘your father was a king!’

  He shook his head more forcibly. ‘I am my father’s sin. He would have wanted me far out of the way, hidden in that swamp where no one could see his sin.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘I’m the child of sin, lord, and that means I’m doomed.’

  ‘I’ve heard madmen make more sense than you,’ I said. ‘How can you worship a god who condemns you for your father’s sin?’

  ‘We can’t choose gods,’ he said gently, ‘there is only one.’

  That is such nonsense! How can one god look after the whole world? One god for every plover, kingfisher, otter, wren, fox, lapwing, deer, horse, mountain, spinney, perch, swallow, weasel, willow or sparrow? One god for every stream, every river, every beast or every man? I had said as much to Father Beocca once. Poor Father Beocca, dead now, but like Pyrlig, another good priest. ‘You don’t understand! You don’t understand!’ he had answered excitedly. ‘God has a whole army of angels to take care of the world! There are seraphim, cherubim, principalities, powers and dominions all around us!’ He had waved a crippled hand. ‘There are unseen angels, Uhtred, all about us! God’s winged servants watch over us. They even see the smallest sparrow fall!’

  ‘And what do the angels do about the falling sparrow?’ I had asked him, but Beocca had no answer to that.

  I hoped the low dark clouds and beating rain would hide Bebbanburg from any watching angels. My uncle and cousin were Christians, so the angels might protect them, if such magical winged creatures even exist. Perhaps they do. I believe in the Christian god, but I do not believe he is the only god. He is a jealous, sullen, solitary creature who hates the other gods and conspires against them. Sometimes, when I think about him, I see him as being like Alfred, except Alfred had some decency and kindness, but Alfred never stopped working or thinking or worrying. The Christian god also never stops working and planning. My gods like to loll in the feasting-hall or take their goddesses to bed, they are drunk, dissolute and happy, and while they feast and fornicate, the Christian god is capturing the world.

  A gull flew across our path and I tried to judge whether its flight was a good or a bad omen. Osferth would have denied any omen, but he was deep in gloom. He believed that because he was a bastard he was beyond his wretched god’s salvation, and that the curse would last through ten generations. He believed it because the Christian’s holy book preached it. ‘You’re thinking about death,’ I accused him.

  ‘Every day,’ he said, ‘but today more than most.’

  ‘You have omens?’

  ‘Fears, lord,’ he said, ‘just fears.’

  ‘Fears?’

  He laughed grimly. ‘Look at us! Nine men!’

  ‘And Finan’s men,’ I said.

  ‘If he gets ashore,’ Osferth said pessimistically.

  ‘He will,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps it’s just the weather,’ Osferth said. ‘It’s hardly cheerful.’

  But the weather was on our side. Men keeping watch from a fortress grow bored. Standing guard is to endure day after day after yet another day of little happening, of the same coming and goings, and a man’s senses grow dull under the weight of such a routine. It is worse at night, or in foul weather. This rain would make Bebbanburg’s sentinels miserable, and cold wet men make bad sentries.

  The road dropped slightly. To my left were stacks of hay piled in a small pasture and I noted with approval the thick layer of bracken beneath each stack. My father used to get angry with the ceorls who did not use enough bracken beneath their haystacks. ‘You want rats, you fart-brained idiots?’ he would shout at them. ‘You want the hay to rot? You want silage instead of hay? Do you know nothing, you piss-for-brains fools?’ In truth he knew little about farming himself, but he did know that a foundation of bracken stopped the damp rising and deterred the rats, and he enjoyed displaying that small scrap of knowledge. I smiled at the memory. Perhaps, when I ruled again from Bebbanburg, I could afford to get angry about haycocks. A small black and white dog barked from a hovel, then ran at the horses who, evidently accustomed to the animal, ignored it. A man put his head through the hovel’s low opening and snarled at the dog to be silent, then bowed his head in acknowledgement of our presence. The road climbed again, only
a few feet, but as we reached the crest there, suddenly, was Bebbanburg.

  Ida, my ancestor, had sailed from Frisia. Family lore said he brought three boats of hungry warriors, and he had landed somewhere on this wild coast and the natives retreated to a wooden-walled fort built atop the long rock that lay between the bay and the sea, and that was the rock that became Bebbanburg. Ida, who was called the Flamebearer, burned their wooden wall and slaughtered them all, soaking the rock in blood. He piled their skulls to face the land as a warning to others what would happen if they dared attack the new fortress he made on the bloody rock. He had captured it, he kept it, and he ruled all the land within a day’s hard riding from its new high walls, and his kingdom was called Bernicia. His grandson, King Æthelfrith, scourged all of northern Britain, driving the natives to the wild hills, and he took a wife, Bebba, after whom his great fortress was named.

  And now it was mine. We no longer had a kingdom, because Bernicia, like other small kingdoms, had been swallowed into Northumbria, but we still had Bebba’s great fortress. Or rather Ælfric held the fortress, and on that cold, grey, dark, wet morning I rode to retake it.

  It loomed, or perhaps that was my imagination because the image of the fortress had been in my heart since the day I left it. The rock on which Bebbanburg is built runs as a ridge north and south, so from the south it does not look vast. Closest to us was the outer wall made of great oak trunks, but where the wall was most vulnerable, in places where dips in the rock allowed men to get close, the lower portion had been remade in stone. That was new since my father’s day. The Low Gate was an arch with a fighting platform above, and that gate was Bebbanburg’s best defence because it could only be approached along a narrow path that followed the sandy spit from the mainland. The spit was wide enough, but then the dark rock erupted from the sand and the path became narrow as it climbed to that massive gateway, which was still decorated with men’s skulls. I do not know if they are the same skulls that Ida the Flamebearer had flensed of flesh in a cauldron of boiling water, but they were certainly ancient and they bared their yellow teeth in a warning to would-be attackers. The Low Gate was Bebbanburg’s most vulnerable place, but it was still daunting. Hold that Low Gate and Bebbanburg was safe unless men landed from the sea to assault the higher walls, and that was a daunting prospect because the rock was steep and the walls high, and the defenders could rain spears, boulders and arrows down onto the attackers.

  Yet even if an assault took the Low Gate they would still not have captured the fortress because that skull-hung arch led only to the lower courtyard. I could see the roofs above the wall. There were stables, storerooms and the smithy in that lower courtyard. Dark smoke came from the smithy, blowing inland with the rain-heavy wind. Beyond it the rock loomed again, and on its summit was the inner wall, higher than the outer, reinforced with great stone blocks and pierced by another formidable gateway. Beyond that High Gate was the fortress proper where the great hall was built and where more smoke showed above the hall roof over which the banner of my family flew. The wolf standard flapped sullen in that wet wind. That banner made me angry. It was my standard, my emblem, and my enemy was flying it, but I was the wolf that day and I had come back to my lair.

  ‘Slouch!’ I told my men.

  We must ride like tired, bored men, and so we slumped in our saddles, letting the slow horses find their own way on a path they knew better than any of us. I knew it, though. I had spent my first ten years here and I knew the path and the rock and the beach and the harbour and the village. The fortress reared above us, and to its left was the wide and shallow sea-lake that was Bebbanburg’s harbour. That harbour was entered by a channel north of the fortress, and, once inside, a boat had to take care not to be stranded. I could see Middelniht now. There were a half-dozen smaller boats, fishing craft, and two ships as large or larger than Middelniht, though none of those boats appeared to have any crew aboard. Finan would have seen us by now.

  Beyond the harbour, where the hills rose, was the small village where fishermen and farmers lived. There was a tavern there, and another smithy, and a shingle beach where fires smoked beneath racks of drying fish. As a small child I had been given the job of chasing the gulls away from the fish-racks, and I could see children there now. I smiled, because this was home, and then stopped smiling because the fortress was close now. The path divided, one branch going west to circle the lower harbour to reach the village, the other climbing towards the Low Gate.

  And that gate was open. They suspected nothing. I guessed the gate was always open in daylight, just like a town gate. The sentries would have plenty of time to see an approaching threat and close the massive gates, but all they saw on that wet morning was what they expected to see and so none of them moved from the high fighting platform.

  Finan and three men jumped off the Middelniht’s bow and started wading to the shore. So far as I could see they had no weapons, though that did not matter as we all carried our own and the ones we had captured. I assumed, rightly, that Finan had been told how many men could come ashore at any time, and that such men must be unarmed. I wished for more than four, because now we were thirteen, not counting Blekulf, and thirteen is a bad omen. Everyone knows that, and even the Christians allow that thirteen is bad. The Christians claim that thirteen is unlucky because Judas was the thirteenth guest at the last supper, but the real reason is that Loki, the malevolent murdering trickster god, is the thirteenth deity in Asgard.

  ‘Folcbald!’ I called.

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘When we reach the gate you’re to stay under the arch with Blekulf.’

  ‘I’m to stay …’ He did not understand. He expected to fight and I was telling him to stay behind. ‘You want me to …’

  ‘I want you to stay with Blekulf!’ I interrupted him. ‘Keep him under the arch until I tell you to join us.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ he said. Now we were twelve.

  Finan was ignoring me. He was some fifty paces away, trudging slowly towards the fortress. We were closer to the Low Gate, much closer, and our horses began to climb the shallow slope and the vast skull-hung arch was looming now. I kept my head down and let my stallion amble. Someone called something from the gatehouse summit, but the wind and rain snatched the words away. It sounded like a greeting and I just waved a tired hand in answer. We left the sandy track and the hooves clattered on the path that had been cut through the dark rock. The hoofbeats sounded loud, like a great war-rhythm. Still the horses ambled and I slouched in the saddle and kept my head low and then the gloom of the day was suddenly darker still and the rain no longer beat on my hooded cloak and I glanced up to see that we were in the gate tunnel.

  I was home.

  I was carrying Cenwalh’s sword concealed beneath the heavy cloak, but now I let it drop so that Finan would have a weapon. My men did the same, the weapons falling loud on the stone roadway. My horse shied from the sound, but I caught him and ducked my head beneath the heavy wooden beam that formed the inner arch.

  The Low Gate had been left open, but that made sense because there would be constant coming and going in the daytime. A heap of baskets and woven bags lay just inside the gate, left there for the villagers who brought fish or bread to the fortress. The gate would be closed at dusk, and guarded day and night, but the High Gate, Cenwalh had told me, was kept closed. And that made sense too. An enemy could capture the Low Gate and all the courtyard beyond, but unless he could take the High Gate and its formidable stone-reinforced rampart he would still be no nearer to capturing Bebbanburg.

  And as I rode out from beneath the inner arch I saw that the High Gate was open.

  For a heartbeat I did not believe what I saw. I had expected a frantic and sudden fight to capture that gate, but it was open! There were guards on the platform above it, but none in the archway itself. I felt I was in a dream. I had ridden into Bebbanburg and not one man had challenged me, and the fools had left the inner gate wide open! I checked my horse and Finan caught up with me.r />
  ‘Get the rest of the crew ashore,’ I told him.

  Off to my right there was a group of men practising shield drill. There were eight of them under the command of a squat, bearded man who was shouting at them to overlap their shields. They were youngsters, probably boys from the local farms who would be required to fight if Bebbanburg’s land was attacked. They were using old swords and battered shields. The man teaching them glanced our way and saw nothing to alarm him. In front of me was the wide open High Gate, just a hundred or so paces away, while to my left was the smithy with its dark smoke. Two guards armed with spears slouched by the smithy door. A man called down from the gate above me. ‘Cenwalh!’ he called, and I ignored him. ‘Cenwalh!’ he called again, and I waved a hand, and that response seemed to satisfy him because he said nothing more. It was time to fight. My men were waiting for the signal, but for a moment I seemed suspended in disbelief. I was home! I was inside Bebbanburg, and then my son spurred his horse beside me.

  ‘Father?’ he asked, sounding worried.

  It was time to unleash the fury. I touched my heels to the horse, which immediately went to the left, following its regular path to the stables that lay close to the smithy. I pulled the rein, heading it for the High Gate.

  And the dogs saw me.

  There were two of them, great shaggy wolfhounds who were sleeping under a crude wooden shelter where hay was stored beside the stables. One saw us and uncurled himself and loped towards us with his tail wagging. Then he stopped, suddenly wary and I saw his teeth bared. He snarled, then howled. The second dog woke fast. Both were howling now and racing towards me, and my horse shied away violently.