The Pagan Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘She has a head filled with feathers,’ her mother said harshly.

  ‘But very pretty feathers.’

  ‘And she knows that,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘and she behaves like a fool. I should have given birth to sons.’

  ‘I’ve always liked Ælfwynn.’

  ‘You like all pretty girls,’ she said disapprovingly.

  ‘I do, yes, but you’re the one I love.’

  ‘And Sigunn, and a half-dozen others.’

  ‘Only half a dozen?’

  She pinched me for that. ‘Frigg is pretty.’

  ‘Frigg,’ I said, ‘is beautiful beyond words.’

  She thought about that, then gave a grudging nod. ‘Yes, she is. And Cnut will come for her?’

  ‘He’ll come for me.’

  ‘You’re such a humble man.’

  ‘I’ve wounded his pride. He’ll come.’

  ‘Men and their pride.’

  ‘You want me to be humble?’

  ‘I might as well hope to see the moon turn somersaults,’ she said. She tilted her head and kissed my cheek. ‘Osferth is in love,’ she said, ‘it’s rather touching.’

  ‘With Ingulfrid?’

  ‘I’d like to meet her,’ Æthelflaed said.

  ‘She’s clever,’ I said, ‘very clever.’

  ‘So is Osferth, and he deserves someone clever.’

  ‘I’m sending him back to your brother,’ I told her. Osferth had come north after taking his message to Edward, and Edward had sent him on to Gleawecestre to order Æthelflaed back to Wessex, a command she had predictably ignored. Osferth had arrived in Gleawecestre just hours before the Danes landed south of the city, and now he needed to go back to spur the West Saxons to haste. ‘Is your brother mustering his army?’

  ‘So Osferth says.’

  ‘But will he bring it north?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘He has to,’ Æthelflaed said bleakly.

  ‘I’ll tell Osferth to kick Edward’s arse,’ I said.

  ‘Osferth will do no such thing,’ she said, ‘and he’ll be glad to go back to Wessex. He left his lady in Wintanceaster.’

  ‘And I left mine in Gleawecestre,’ I said.

  ‘I knew you’d come back.’ She stirred beside me, a small hand stroking my chest.

  ‘I thought about joining Cnut,’ I told her.

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘He wanted me to be an ally,’ I said, ‘but instead I have to kill him.’ I thought of Ice-Spite, Cnut’s sword, and of his famed skill, and felt a shiver in the night.

  ‘You will.’

  ‘I will.’ I wondered whether age had slowed Cnut. Had it slowed me?

  ‘What will you do with the boy?’

  ‘Ingulfrid’s son? Sell him back to his father when I’ve settled Cnut.’

  ‘Osferth said you very nearly captured Bebbanburg.’

  ‘Nearly isn’t enough.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. What would you have done if you’d succeeded? Stayed there?’

  ‘And never left,’ I said.

  ‘And me?’

  ‘I’d have sent for you.’

  ‘I belong here. I’m a Mercian now.’

  ‘There won’t be a Mercia,’ I said truthfully, ‘until we’ve killed Cnut.’

  She lay in silence for a long time. ‘What if he wins?’ she asked after that long silence.

  ‘Then a thousand ships will come from the north to join him, and men will come from Frisia, and every Northman who wants land will bring a sword, and they’ll cross the Temes.’

  ‘And there’ll be no Wessex,’ she said.

  ‘No Wessex,’ I said, ‘and no Englaland.’

  How odd that name sounds. It was her father’s dream. To make a country called Englaland. Englaland. I fell asleep.

  PART FOUR

  Ice-Spite

  Eleven

  The Danes decided not to leave Gleawecestre.

  It was not Bjorgulf’s decision, at least I thought not, but he must have sent a messenger eastwards in search of orders or advice because, next morning, a delegation of Danes rode towards Gleawecestre’s walls. They came on horseback, their stallions picking their way through the ruins of the houses that had been dismantled beyond the ramparts. There were six men, led by a standard-bearer who carried a leafy branch as a signal that they came to talk and not to fight. Bjorgulf was one of the six, but he hung back and left the talking to a tall, heavy-browed man with a long red beard that was plaited, knotted and hung with small silver rings. He was dressed in mail, had a sword at his side, but wore no helmet and carried no shield. His arms were bright with the rings of war, and a chain of heavy gold links hung at his neck. He motioned for his companions to stop some twenty paces from the ditch, then rode forward alone until he reached the ditch’s edge where he curbed his horse and stared up at the ramparts. ‘Are you Lord Uhtred?’ he called to me.

  ‘I am Uhtred.’

  ‘I am Geirmund Eldgrimson,’ he said.

  ‘I have heard of you,’ I said, and that was true. He was one of Cnut’s battle-leaders, a man with a reputation for fearlessness and savagery. His estates, I knew, were in northern Northumbria, and he had earned his fame by fighting against the Scots, who were forever coming south to rob, rape and ravish.

  ‘The Jarl Cnut sends you greetings,’ Geirmund said.

  ‘You will return my greetings to him,’ I said, just as courteously.

  ‘He heard you were dead.’ Geirmund stroked his horse’s mane with a gloved hand.

  ‘I heard the same.’

  ‘And he regretted that news.’

  ‘He did?’ I asked in surprise.

  Geirmund offered me a grimace that I supposed was meant to be a smile. ‘He had wanted the pleasure of killing you himself,’ he explained. He spoke mildly, not wanting to provoke an exchange of insults. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘Then he will be as pleased as I am that I live,’ I said just as mildly.

  Geirmund nodded. ‘Yet the jarl sees no need to fight against you,’ he said, ‘and sends you a proposal.’

  ‘Which I shall hear with great interest.’

  Geirmund paused, looking left and right. He was examining the walls, seeing the ditch and the stakes, and estimating the number of spears that bristled above the high Roman parapet. I let him stare because I wanted him to see just how formidable these defences were. He looked back to me. ‘The Jarl Cnut offers you this,’ he said, ‘if you return his woman and children unharmed then he will return to his own lands.’

  ‘A generous offer,’ I said.

  ‘The jarl is a generous man,’ Geirmund replied.

  ‘I do not command here,’ I said, ‘but I shall talk with the city leaders and bring you their answer in one hour.’

  ‘I advise you to accept the offer,’ Geirmund said. ‘The jarl is generous, but he is not patient.’

  ‘One hour,’ I repeated, and stepped back out of his sight.

  And that was interesting, I thought. Had Cnut really made such an offer? If so then he had no intention of keeping to its terms. If I handed over Frigg and her children then we had lost what small hold we had on Cnut and as a result his savagery would double. So the offer was a lie, of that I was sure, but did it even come from Cnut? My suspicion was that Cnut and his main army were on the other side of Mercia, waiting to pounce on Æthelred’s smaller force as it left East Anglia, and if that suspicion was right then there was no possibility that a messenger could have reached him and returned to Gleawecestre in the one day since my arrival. I suspected Geirmund had invented the offer.

  Bishop Wulfheard, of course, believed otherwise. ‘If Cnut returns to his own land,’ he said, ‘then we have gained the victory we desire without the shedding of blood.’

  ‘Victory?’ I asked dubiously.

  ‘The pagans will have left our land!’ the bishop explained.

  ‘And left it ravaged,’ I said.

  ‘There must be compensation, of course.’ The bishop saw my point.

  �
�You’re a nose-picking idiot,’ I said. We had gathered in the hall again where I had told the assembled thegns and churchmen of the Danish offer. I now told them it was a ruse. ‘Cnut is miles away,’ I explained. ‘He’s somewhere on the East Anglian frontier, and Geirmund didn’t have time to send him a messenger and get a reply, so he invented the offer. He’s trying to trick us into returning Cnut’s family, and we have to persuade him to leave Gleawecestre.’

  ‘Why?’ a man asked. ‘I mean if they’re here we know where they are, and the city is strong.’

  ‘Because Cnut has his fleet here,’ I said. ‘If things go badly for him, and I plan to make things go very badly for him, then he’ll withdraw towards his boats. He doesn’t want to lose a hundred and sixty-eight ships. But if we burn those ships then he’ll withdraw northwards, and that’s where I want him.’

  ‘Why?’ the man asked again. He was one of Æthelred’s thegns, which meant he disliked me. All of Saxon Mercia was divided between those who followed Æthelred, and the supporters of his estranged wife, Æthelflaed.

  ‘Because right now,’ I said angrily, ‘his army is in between Æthelred’s forces and King Edward’s army, and as long as he’s there those two armies cannot join together, so I have to move him out of the way.’

  ‘The Lord Uhtred knows what he is doing,’ Æthelflaed chided the man mildly.

  ‘You told them you would kill the children if they didn’t leave.’ The speaker was one of Wulfheard’s priests.

  ‘An empty threat,’ I said.

  ‘Empty?’ The bishop sounded angry.

  ‘I know this will astonish you,’ I said, ‘but I have a reputation for not killing women and children. Maybe that’s because I’m a pagan, not a Christian.’

  Æthelflaed sighed.

  ‘But we still have to get the Danes away from Gleawecestre,’ I went on, ‘and unless I do slaughter one of the twins, Geirmund won’t move.’

  They understood that. They might not have liked me, but they could not dispute my reasoning. ‘The girl, then,’ Bishop Wulfheard said.

  ‘The girl?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s the least valuable,’ he said and, when I did not respond, he tried to explain, ‘she’s a girl!’

  ‘So we just kill her?’ I asked.

  ‘Isn’t that what you suggested?’

  ‘Will you do it?’ I asked him.

  He opened his mouth, discovered he had nothing to say, so closed it again.

  ‘We do not kill small children,’ I said. ‘We wait till they’re grown up and then we kill them. So. How do we persuade Geirmund to go away?’ No one had an answer. Æthelflaed was watching me warily. ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘Pay him?’ Ealdorman Deogol suggested weakly. I said nothing and he looked around the hall seeking support. ‘We guard the Lord Æthelred’s treasure,’ he said, ‘so we can afford to pay him.’

  ‘Pay a Dane to go away,’ I said, ‘and they come back next day to be paid again.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ Deogol asked plaintively.

  ‘Kill the girl, of course,’ I said. ‘Bishop,’ I looked at Wulfheard, ‘be useful. Talk to the city’s priests and discover if a small girl has died in the last week. She needs to be six or seven years old. If she has, dig her up. Tell the parents she’ll become a saint, or an angel, or whatever else will make them happy. Then bring the body to the ramparts, but don’t let the Danes see it! Merewalh?’

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Find me a piglet. Take it to the ramparts, but keep it below the parapet so the Danes don’t know it’s there. Finan? You’ll bring Frigg and the twins to the walls.’

  ‘Piglet,’ Bishop Wulfheard said in a scornful tone.

  I stared at him, then held up a hand to check Merewalh, who was about to leave the hall. ‘Maybe we don’t need a piglet,’ I said slowly, as if an idea was just coming to me. ‘Why waste a baby pig when there’s a bishop available?’

  Wulfheard fled.

  And Merewalh fetched the piglet.

  Geirmund was waiting, though now he had been joined by almost twenty other men. Their horses were picketed a hundred paces from the ditch, while the Danes were much closer, and all in a cheerful mood. Servants had brought ale, bread and meat, and there were half a dozen boys, presumably the sons of the warriors who had joined Geirmund to witness his confrontation with Uhtred of Bebbanburg whose reputation did not stretch to the slaughter of women and children. Geirmund was chewing on a goose-leg when I appeared, but he tossed it away and strolled towards the ramparts. ‘You have come to a decision?’ he called up to me.

  ‘You forced me to a decision,’ I said.

  He smiled. He was not a man accustomed to smiling, so it looked more like a snarl, but at least he tried to smile. ‘As I told you,’ he said, ‘the jarl is merciful.’

  ‘And he will leave Saxon Mercia?’

  ‘He has promised it!’

  ‘And he will pay compensation for the damage he has done to Lord Æthelred’s land?’ I asked.

  Geirmund hesitated, then nodded. ‘There will be compensation, I’m sure. The jarl is not an unreasonable man.’

  And you, I thought, are a lying bastard. ‘So,’ I asked, ‘the jarl will pay us gold and return to his own land?’

  ‘That is his wish, but only if you return his family unharmed.’

  ‘They have neither been harmed nor molested,’ I assured him, ‘I swear it by Thor’s spittle.’ I spat to show the sincerity of that promise.

  ‘I am glad to hear it,’ Geirmund said, and spat to show that he accepted my promise, ‘and the jarl will also be glad.’ He tried to smile again because Frigg and her two children had just appeared on the high rampart. They were escorted by Finan and five men. Frigg looked scared and exquisitely beautiful. She was wearing a linen dress lent to her by Æthelflaed. The dress was dyed palest yellow, and the twins clung to the pretty garment’s skirts. Geirmund bowed to her. ‘My lady,’ he said formally, then looked at me. ‘Would it not be better, Lord Uhtred,’ he suggested, ‘if you were to allow the lady and her children to leave by the gate?’

  ‘The gate?’ I asked, pretending not to understand.

  ‘You can’t expect them to swim that filthy ditch?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ll throw them to you.’

  ‘You’ll …’ he began, then went silent because I had seized the girl, Sigril, and now held her in front of me. She screamed in terror and her mother lunged for her, but was restrained by Finan. I had my left arm around Sigril’s throat, pinning her, and drew a knife from my belt with my right hand.

  ‘I’ll throw her to you in bits,’ I called to Geirmund, and grasped Sigril’s long black hair. ‘Hold her,’ I ordered Osferth and while he held her I cut the hair, sawing through the strands and tossing them over the wall to be caught by the wind. The girl was screaming wonderfully as I forced her down to the stones where the parapet hid her from Geirmund. I clapped a hand over her mouth and nodded to the man concealed behind the parapet, and he stabbed a knife into the piglet’s neck. It gave a shriek and blood spattered and flew. The Danes, beyond the wall, would just see the blood and hear the terrified squealing, then they saw Rolla slam down an axe.

  The dead child was yellow, waxen and stinking. Rolla had chopped off a leg, and the smell was like the stench of the Corpse-Ripper’s lair. Rolla bent down, smeared the severed leg in the piglet’s blood, then tossed it over the rampart. It splashed into the ditch, and he cut down again, this time taking an arm.

  ‘Oh, sweet mother of God,’ Osferth said faintly. Frigg was struggling, her mouth opening and closing in terror, her eyes wide. Her pretty dress was spattered with blood, and to the watching Danes it must have seemed she was seeing her daughter being butchered before her eyes, but in truth it was the horror of watching that half-decayed, liquid-oozing corpse being disjointed that was scaring her. Her son was screaming. I still had my hand over Sigril’s mouth and the little bitch bit me hard enough to draw blood.

  ‘Her head next,’ I called
to Geirmund, ‘then we kill the boy, and after that we’ll take the mother back for our amusement.’

  ‘Stop!’ he shouted.

  ‘Why? I’m enjoying myself!’ I used my free hand to throw the dead child’s remaining foot over the wall. Rolla raised the axe that had been smeared with piglet blood. ‘Chop her head off,’ I ordered loudly.

  ‘What do you want?’ Geirmund called.

  I held up a hand to check Rolla. ‘I want you to stop telling me lies,’ I said to Geirmund. I beckoned to Osferth and he knelt beside me and put his hand on Sigril’s mouth. She managed a yelp as my bloodied hand left her lips and before Osferth’s palm clamped down, but none of the Danes seemed to notice. They just saw Frigg’s terrible distress and the boy’s utter fear. I stood in the piglet’s blood and stared down at Geirmund. ‘You had no promise from Cnut,’ I said, ‘and he sent no message! He’s too far away!’ Geirmund said nothing, but his face betrayed that I had told the truth. ‘But you will send him a message now!’ I was shouting, so that all Geirmund’s companions could hear me. ‘Tell Jarl Cnut that his daughter is dead, and his son will be dead too if you’re not gone from here in one hour. You leave! All of you! You go now! You go up to the hills and far away. You leave this place. If I see one Dane anywhere near Gleawecestre one hour from now then I shall feed the boy to my wolfhounds and whore his mother for my men’s pleasure.’ I took hold of Frigg’s arm and pulled her to the parapet so that the Danes could see that pretty dress with its pattern of blood spots. ‘If you’re not gone within one hour,’ I told Geirmund, ‘then Jarl Cnut’s woman becomes our whore. You understand? You go east, up into the hills!’ I pointed that way. ‘Go to Jarl Cnut and tell him his wife and son will be returned unharmed if he goes back to Northumbria. Tell him that! Now go! Or else watch Cnut Cnutson’s body being eaten by dogs!’

  They believed me. They left.

  And so, in that next hour as a pale cloud-shrouded sun climbed towards its noon height, we watched the Danes leave Gleawecestre. They rode east towards the Coddeswold hills, and the horsemen were followed by a crowd of women, children and servants on foot. The dead child’s leg had drifted to the ditch’s bank where two ravens came to feast. ‘Bury the child again,’ I told a priest, ‘and send the parents to me.’