The Flame Bearer

  I took Brunulf aside. ‘Tell your men to go south to the Gewasc,’ I told him, ‘and to stay there for three days. You know where it is?’

  ‘I do, lord.’

  I had thought about taking their horses to slow their journey, but they outnumbered us by more than three to one, and if any had decided to resist I would lose the subsequent argument. ‘You’re coming with me,’ I told Brunulf. I saw he was about to protest. ‘You owe me your life,’ I told him harshly, ‘so you can give me three or four days of that life as thanks. You and Father Stepan both.’

  He half smiled in rueful acknowledgement. ‘As you say, lord,’ he agreed.

  ‘You have a second-in-command?’

  ‘Headda,’ he nodded towards an older man.

  ‘He’s to keep those men prisoner,’ I pointed towards the survivors of Brice’s troops, ‘and go to the Gewasc. Tell him you’ll join him in a week or so.’

  ‘Why the Gewasc?’

  ‘Because it’s far from Ledecestre,’ I said, ‘and I don’t want Lord Æthelhelm to know what happened here. Not until I tell him.’

  ‘You think Lord Æthelhelm is at Ledecestre?’ He sounded nervous.

  ‘The last I heard,’ I said, ‘was that King Sigtryggr was meeting the Lady Æthelflaed at Ledecestre. Æthelhelm won’t be far away. He wants to make certain their negotiations fail.’

  So we would ride to Ledecestre.

  And afterwards I would go home.

  To Bebbanburg.

  Headda led Brunulf’s chastened men southwards and we rode east to Lindcolne where I snatched a few moments with my daughter. ‘You can go back to Eoferwic,’ I told her, ‘because there won’t be a war. Not this year.’

  ‘No? What did you do?’

  ‘Killed some West Saxons,’ I said, and then before she could tear me limb from limb, explained what had happened. ‘So they won’t invade this year,’ I finished.

  ‘Next year?’ Stiorra asked.

  ‘Probably,’ I said bleakly. We stood on the high Roman-built terrace and watched storm clouds move north across the countryside. Great grey swathes of rain showed in the far distance. ‘I must go,’ I told her, ‘I have to reach Æthelhelm before he does more damage.’

  ‘What will you do if there’s war?’ she asked, meaning how would I resolve my love for her with my oath to Æthelflaed.

  ‘Fight,’ I said shortly, ‘and hope to live long enough to settle in Frisia.’

  ‘Frisia!’

  ‘Bebbanburg’s lost,’ I said. I did not know if she believed me, but it would do no harm for Stiorra to spread that rumour too.

  We rode south on the great Roman road that led to Ledecestre, but a few miles down that road a merchant travelling north told me that the great lords of the Saxon lands were all met at Godmundcestre instead. The merchant was a Dane, a gloomy man called Arvid who traded in iron ore. ‘There’s going to be war, lord,’ he told me.

  ‘When is there not?’

  ‘The Saxons have an army at Huntandun. Their king is there!’

  ‘Edward!’

  ‘Is that his name? His sister too.’

  ‘And King Sigtryggr?’

  Arvid sneered. ‘What can he do? He has not enough men. All he can do is fall to his knees and ask for mercy.’

  ‘He’s a fighter,’ I said.

  ‘A fighter!’ Arvid was scornful. ‘He made peace with the woman. Now he has to make peace with her brother. And Jarl Thurferth has already made peace! He gave up Huntandun and took the cross.’ Jarl Thurferth was one of the Danish lords who had refused to swear loyalty to Sigtryggr. He owned vast tracts of farmland on what was now the border between Danish and Saxon territories, and if the West Saxon armies marched north then Thurferth’s estates would be among the first to fall, and if Arvid was right then Thurferth had preserved that property by yielding his burh at Huntandun, by being baptised and by swearing allegiance to Edward. Thurferth had never been a great warrior, but nevertheless his surrender to Edward surely meant that other Danish jarls in southern Northumbria would follow his lead and so expose Sigtryggr to attack. All that preserved Sigtryggr was his fragile peace treaty with Æthelflaed, a treaty that Ealdorman Æthelhelm was determined to shatter.

  So we hurried on south, no longer on our way to Ledecestre, but following the wider Roman road that eventually led to Lundene. The burh at Huntandun guarded a crossing of the Use, and it had always been a bastion protecting Northumbria’s southern frontier. Now it was gone, surrendered to Edward’s forces. I touched the hammer at my neck and wondered why the old gods surrendered so cravenly to the nailed god? Did they not care? The Saxons and their intolerant religion crept ever nearer to Eoferwic and to capturing Northumbria, and one day, I thought, the old religion would vanish and the nailed god’s priests would pull down the pagan shrines. In my lifetime I have seen the Saxons beaten back to a husk, clinging for existence in a stinking bog, and then fighting back until now the great dream of a single country called Englaland was temptingly close. So Sigtryggr’s truce would eventually end and Wessex would attack, and then what? Eoferwic could not be held. The walls were stout and well-maintained, but if a besieging army was willing to accept the casualties then they could attack in a half-dozen places, and they would eventually cross the ramparts and carry their swords into a terrified city. The Christians would rejoice, while those of us who loved the more ancient gods would be driven away.

  If we wanted to survive the Christian onslaught, then the price for their victory had to be too high. That was why I wanted Bebbanburg, because the cost of capturing that fortress was exorbitant. Constantin would not have succeeded yet. His best hope was still to starve my cousin out, but that might take months. If he tried an assault then his Scottish warriors had only one narrow approach, and they would die on that path. Their bodies would pile beneath the ramparts, the ditch would stink of their blood, ravens would feast on their guts, widows would weep in Constantin’s hills, and the white bones of Alba’s warriors would be left as a warning to the next attacker.

  And Frisia? I wondered, as we hurried southwards, how far the nailed god had captured that land. I had heard that some folk still worshipped Thor and Odin across the sea, and there were times when I was genuinely tempted to go there and establish my own realm, to be a sea-lord beside the grey sea. But to lose Bebbanburg? To abandon a dream? Never.

  Before we left Lindcolne I had sent Berg and his companions north towards Eoferwic. I gave the young Norseman a purse of gold and told him again all that I wanted. I made the men scrape the wolf’s heads from their shields so that no one would think they were my followers. ‘But my cheeks!’ Berg had said, worried. ‘I wear your badge on my face, lord!’

  ‘I don’t think it matters,’ I said, not wanting to tease him that the inked patches looked more like drunken pigs than savage wolves. ‘We’ll run that risk.’

  ‘If you say so, lord,’ he had said, still worried.

  ‘Let your hair hang over your face,’ I suggested.

  ‘Good idea! But …’ He had suddenly looked aghast.

  ‘But?’

  ‘The girl? Olla’s daughter? She might think it strange? My hair?’

  Not nearly as strange as pigs on his cheeks, I thought, but again I spared him. ‘Girls don’t worry about things like that,’ I assured him, ‘just so long as you don’t smell too bad. They’re oddly fussy about that. Now go,’ I had said, ‘just go! Buy me three ships and wait in Eoferwic till you hear from me.’

  He rode north, and we were riding south taking Brunulf, Father Herefrith, and Brice with us. Brice and the priest had their hands tied and wore ropes about their necks, the ropes’ bitter ends held by my men. Brice just glowered for most of the journey, but Father Herefrith, realising how many of my men were Christians, promised that the fury of the nailed god would be unleashed on them if they did not release him. ‘Your children will be born dead!’ he shouted on the first day of our journey. ‘And your wives will rot like spoiled meat! Almighty God will curse you. Your
skin will be purulent with boils, your bowels will leak watery filth, your cocks will shrivel!’

  He went on shouting such threats until I dropped back to ride beside him. He ignored me, just glaring at the road ahead. Gerbruht, a good Christian, was holding the rope that led to the priest’s neck. ‘He has a mouth, lord,’ Gerbruht said.

  ‘I envy him,’ I said.

  ‘Envy him, lord?’

  ‘Most of us have to lower our trews to shit.’

  Gerbruht laughed. Herefrith just looked even angrier.

  ‘How many teeth do you have left?’ I asked him, and, as I expected, he did not answer. ‘Gerbruht? You have pincers?’

  ‘Of course, lord,’ he patted a saddlebag. Many of my men carried pincers in case a horse half cast a shoe.

  ‘Needle?’ I asked him. ‘Thread?’

  ‘Not me, lord,’ Gerbruht said, ‘but Godric always has a needle and thread. So does Kettil.’

  ‘Good!’ I looked at Herefrith. ‘If you don’t keep your filthy mouth shut,’ I told him, ‘I’ll borrow Gerbruht’s pincers and pull out every tooth you have left. Then I’ll sew your mouth shut.’ I smiled at him. He shouted no more threats.

  Father Stepan looked distressed, I assumed at my harshness, but then, when he was out of earshot of the scowling Father Herefrith, he surprised me. ‘Saint Apollonia had her mouth sewn shut, lord,’ he said.

  ‘You’re saying I’m making the bastard a saint?’

  ‘I don’t know if the story is true,’ he went on, ‘some say she just lost all her teeth. But if you have toothache, lord, you should pray to her.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  ‘But she did not preach like Father Herefrith, and no, I do not think he is a saint.’ He crossed himself. ‘Our God is not cruel, lord.’

  ‘He seems so to me,’ I said bleakly.

  ‘Some of his preachers are cruel. It is not the same thing.’

  I had no taste for a theological discussion. ‘Tell me, father,’ I said, ‘is Herefrith really a chaplain to King Edward?’

  ‘No, lord, he is chaplain to Queen Ælflæd, but,’ the young priest shrugged, ‘it is perhaps the same thing?’

  I snorted at that. The West Saxons had never honoured the king’s wife by calling her queen, I do not know why, but evidently Æthelhelm’s daughter had taken the title, no doubt at her father’s urging. ‘It’s not the same thing,’ I said, ‘if the rumour about Edward and Ælflæd is true.’

  ‘Rumour, lord?’

  ‘That they’re on bad terms. That they don’t speak to each other.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, lord,’ he said, reddening. He meant he did not want to gossip. ‘But all marriages have their tribulations, is that not so, lord?’

  ‘They have their pleasures too,’ I said.

  ‘Praise God.’

  I smiled at his warm tone. ‘So you’re married?’

  ‘I was, lord, but only for a few weeks. She died of the sweat. But she was a sweet woman.’

  We halted a day’s march north of Huntandun, where I summoned two of my Saxon men, Eadric and Cenwulf, and sent them ahead equipped with shields we had taken from Brice’s men. They were not the shields they had used to ambush Brunulf, but two that had been left in the fort, and each showed a leaping stag. The standard that had been removed from the rampart on the day I first went to Hornecastre had shown the same badge, Æthelhelm’s badge. Brice had recognised me that day, which is why he and a companion had turned back from the meeting and taken down the flag. He might be dumb as an ox, but he had the sense to know I would have smelled trouble if I had seen Æthelhelm’s emblem. ‘Find the biggest tavern in Huntandun,’ I told Eadric, ‘and drink there.’ I gave him coins.

  He grinned. ‘Just drink, lord?’

  ‘If you have trouble entering the town,’ I said, ‘say you’re Æthelhelm’s men.’

  ‘And if they question us?’

  I gave him my own gold chain, though I took the hammer from it first. ‘Tell them to mind their own damned business.’ The chain would mark him as a man of authority, far outranking any guards on Huntandun’s gates.

  ‘And once we’re there we just drink, lord?’ Eadric asked again.

  ‘Not quite,’ I said, then told him what I wanted, and Eadric, who was nobody’s fool, laughed.

  And next day we followed him south.

  We never reached Huntandun, nor needed to. Some few miles north of the town we saw a mass of horses grazing in pastureland to the east of the road and, beyond them, the dirty white roofs of tents above which gaudy standards flapped in a fitful wind. The dragon of Wessex flew there, as did Æthelflaed’s weird goose flag, and Æthelhelm’s banner of the leaping stag. There were flags showing saints, and flags flaunting crosses, and flags showing both saints and crosses, and hidden among them was Sigtryggr’s banner of the red axe. This was where the lords were meeting, not in the newly surrendered Huntandun, but in tents erected around a solid-looking farmstead. A harried-looking steward saw us approach and waved us towards a pasture. ‘Who are you?’ he called.

  ‘Sigtryggr’s men,’ I answered. We were not flying my banner, but carrying the red axe flag that Brice and Herefrith had used in their attempt to deceive Brunulf.

  The steward spat. ‘We weren’t expecting any more Danes,’ he said in apparent disgust.

  ‘You never expect us,’ I said, ‘that’s why we usually beat the shit out of you.’

  He blinked at me and I gave him a smile. He took a pace back and pointed to a nearby pasture. ‘Leave your horses there,’ he sounded nervous now, ‘and no one is to carry weapons, no one.’

  ‘Not even Saxons?’ I asked.

  ‘Only the guards of the royal household,’ he said, ‘no one else.’

  I left most of my men guarding our horses, along with our discarded swords, spears, axes, and seaxes, then led Finan, Brunulf, my son, and our two captives towards the farmstead. Smoke rose thick from cooking fires that burned between the tents. A whole ox was being spit-roasted on one fire, the spit’s handle turned by two half-naked slaves while small boys fed the roaring blaze with newly split logs. A huge man, the size of Gerbruht, rolled a barrel towards a nearby tent. ‘Ale,’ he shouted, ‘make way for ale!’ He saw the barrel was rolling straight towards me and tried to stop it. ‘Whoa!’ he shouted. ‘Sorry, lord, sorry!’

  I skipped safely aside, then saw Eadric and Cenwulf waiting close to the farmstead’s huge barn. Eadric grinned, evidently relieved to see me, and held out my gold chain as I approached. ‘They’ve strapped King Sigtryggr to a sawhorse, lord,’ he said, ‘and now they’re chopping his bits off, bit by bit.’

  ‘That bad, eh?’ I hung the chain around my neck again. ‘So it worked?’

  He grinned. ‘It worked well, lord. Maybe too well?’

  ‘Too well?’

  ‘They want to march north tomorrow. They just can’t decide who gets the pleasure of killing you, and how.’

  I laughed. ‘They’re going to be disappointed then.’

  I had sent Eadric and Cenwulf to spread a rumour in Huntandun that Æthelhelm’s treachery had worked. They had told a tale of my betrayal, how I had attacked Brunulf and his followers, how I had ignored a flag of truce and slaughtered priests and warriors. The rumour had evidently done its work, though doubtless Æthelhelm was wondering where it came from and why he had heard nothing from any of the men he had sent north to start a war. He would still be content. He was getting what he wanted.

  For the moment.

  The meeting was being held in the vast barn, an impressive building larger than most mead halls. ‘Who owns the barn?’ I asked a guard standing at one of the big doors. He wore the badge of Wessex, carried a spear, and was evidently one of Edward’s household troops.

  ‘Jarl Thurferth,’ he said, after glancing at us to make sure none of us carried weapons, ‘and now we own him.’ The guard made no attempt to stop us. I had spoken to him in his own language, and, though my cloak was a poor and threadbare thing, beneath it he
could see I wore a golden chain of nobility. Besides, I was older and grey-haired, and so he just assumed both my rank and my right to be present, though he did frown slightly when he saw Brice and Herefrith with their hands tied.

  ‘Thieves,’ I explained curtly, ‘who deserve royal justice.’ I looked at Gerbruht. ‘If either of the bastards speak,’ I told him, ‘you can bite their balls off.’

  He bared his dirty teeth. ‘A pleasure, lord.’

  We slid into the back of the barn. As I entered I pulled the hood of the shabby cloak over my head to shadow my face. There were at least a hundred and fifty men inside the barn, which, after the day’s sunlight, seemed dim, the only light coming through the two great doorways. We stood behind the crowd looking towards a crude platform that had been constructed at the barn’s further end. Four banners were hung on the high wall behind the platform, the dragon of Wessex, Æthelflaed’s goose, a white banner with a red cross, and, much smaller than the others, Sigtryggr’s flag with its red axe. Beneath them six chairs were set on the platform, each draped with a cloth to add dignity. Sigtryggr sat in the chair furthest left, his one eye downcast and his face suffused with gloom. Another Northman, I assumed he was a Northman because he wore his hair long and had inked patterns on his cheeks, sat furthest to the right, and that had to be Jarl Thurferth who had supinely surrendered his lands to the West Saxons. He was fidgeting. King Edward of Wessex was in one of the three chairs that had been elevated above the others by a short stack of planks. He had a thin face and, to my surprise, I saw his hair was going grey at the temples. To his left and on a slightly lower chair was his sister, Æthelflaed, and her appearance shocked me. Her once beautiful face was drawn, her skin pale as parchment, and her lips were clamped together as if she tried to subdue pain. She, like Sigtryggr, had her eyes lowered. The third raised chair, on Edward’s right hand, was occupied by a sullen-looking boy who had a moon face, indignant eyes, and wore a golden circlet about his unkempt brown hair. He could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen, and he sprawled in his seat, looking disdainfully at the crowd beneath him. I had never seen the lad before, but assumed he was Ælfweard, Edward’s son, and Ealdorman Æthelhelm’s grandson.