I ducked straight down, the sword whipped above my head, and I stood again with my rusty blade pointing skywards, and the Norseman, still coming forward, impaled himself on Renwald’s old sword. The point slid into his chin, through his mouth, up behind his nose, into his brain, and then jarred against the top of his skull. He seemed frozen suddenly, head-pierced, and his hand suddenly lost its force and his sword clattered onto the Rensnægl’s deck. I let go of my blade, pushed him away from me, and snatched up his good weapon. I slashed at the stern mooring line, cutting it with three blows, then tossed the sharp blade to Cerdic. ‘Cut the bow line!’ I shouted. ‘Then the spring! Quick!’
Cerdic picked up the sword and used his huge strength to cut the two lines with two strokes, thus freeing Rensnægl, and the tide immediately drifted us away from the pier. A third Norseman had seen what had happened, he could see one of his comrades lying on our cargo, his body in spasms and the sword still jammed in his skull. The man jumped onto the boat we had been lashed against and he shouted angrily at us, but the flooding tide was running strong and we were already out of his reach.
We were also in danger of running aground. Swithun had seen that the dying Norseman was wearing a fine scabbard plated with silver, and was now trying to unbuckle the belt. ‘Leave it!’ I snarled. ‘Get an oar! Cerdic, an oar! Hurry!’
Cerdic, usually so slow, was quick to seize an oar and used it to thrust the Rensnægl off the glistening mudbank that loomed to our left. I dragged the rusty sword free of the dying man’s head and used it to cut at the lines holding the awning that was suspended above the ship’s stern and which obstructed the helmsman’s platform. ‘Get a steering-oar!’ I called to Renwald. ‘And put your men at the oars! And get the sail up!’
I put the rusty sword onto the dying man’s hand. He was making choking noises, his eyes flicking left and right, but he seemed incapable of moving his arms or legs. I retrieved the good sword from the Rensnægl’s bows, checked that the poor youngster still had the old sword lying on his palm, then put him out of his misery. Blood welled and spilled across the cargo of hides, and just then a flare of light erupted to my right. One of Æthelhelm’s ships had caught fire and the flames leaped up the tarred shrouds and spread along the yard. Renwald’s crew, who had seemed too stunned to move when the Norsemen attacked us, now scrambled to push oars through the holes in the Rensnægl’s side-strakes. ‘Row!’ Renwald shouted. He may have been confused by the dawn’s panic and slaughter, but he was seaman enough to grasp the danger of running aground. I dropped the sword and unhanked the halliard that was secured to the mast base, then dropped the yard until it was just above the deck where Oswi, standing on the dead man’s belly, used a knife to cut the lashings that were holding the furled sail tight. The dark brown canvas dropped and I hauled the yard back up as one of Renwald’s crewmen seized the steerboard sheet and pulled it taut. Another man tightened the bæcbord sheet, and I felt the boat steady herself. The wind was behind us, coming from the south-west, but the tide was running strongly against us, and we needed both oars and sail to make headway. Renwald had managed to slide the steering-oar into place and pulled its loom so that the Rensnægl slowly turned and slowly gathered way and slowly drew away from the gleaming mud towards the river’s centre.
And in Dumnoc’s harbour there was slaughter.
Nine
The Rensnægl lived up to her name by creeping with painful slowness across the river, her bluff bows slapping irritably against the incoming tide. That flood tide would end soon and there would be slack water, and then the river’s current would help carry us to sea, but till then it was hard work to make even small progress. On shore there was killing, while on the two piers ships were burning. Some of those ships had been cut loose and were drifting upstream. The sun was above the horizon now and I could see men forming a shield wall in the open space in front of the Goose. They would soon charge the smaller Norse walls barring the piers, but it was already too late to save most of the ships. Only the few tethered to the wharf built along the river bank had been spared, among them Æthelhelm’s own craft, the Ælfswon. I could see men crowded aboard her, some holding long oars ready to fend off any burning ship that threatened to drift onto the white ship’s flank.
‘We’d do better by sailing upstream,’ Renwald called to me, ‘we’d be well away from those bastards then.’
He meant that by riding the tide inland to the shallower river reach we would be safe from any pursuit by the raiding vessels, all of which had to draw twice as much water as the Rensnægl. He was right, of course, but I shook my head. ‘We’re going to sea,’ I told him, ‘and then you’re taking us north to Grimesbi.’
‘We’re sailing to Lundene,’ Renwald said.
I picked up the young Norseman’s good sword and pointed the blade’s reddened tip towards Renwald. ‘You will take us,’ I said slowly and clearly, ‘to Grimesbi.’
He stared at me. Till now he had thought me a decrepit old man who had sailed to East Anglia to find a family grave, but I was stooped no longer. I stood straight, I spoke harshly instead of mumbling, and he had just watched me kill two men in the time it would have taken him to gut a herring. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘My name,’ I told him, ‘is Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’
For a moment he seemed unable to speak, then he looked at his crewmen, who had checked their rowing and were gazing open-mouthed at me. ‘Lads,’ Renwald said, then needed to clear his throat before he could speak again, ‘we’re going to Grimesbi. Now row!’
‘You’ll be paid,’ I promised him, ‘and generously. You can keep this sword for a start.’ I cleaned the blade’s tongue on the cargo of hides, then pushed the sword under the low steering platform.
The Rensnægl had managed to cross the river to the northern bank where the tidal current was weaker, but still the heavy ship made pitiful progress despite her six oars and the big sail. We were inching our way towards the sea, while on the other bank Einar the White was demonstrating why he was also called the Unfortunate.
It must have seemed a good idea to put men ashore to bar the way onto the two piers while the rest of his force destroyed Æthelhelm’s fleet, but those two outnumbered shield walls were under savage attack from enraged West Saxons, who had poured out of the town’s alleys and streets to make their own shield walls. The Norsemen, I thought, had to be tired. They had arrived at dawn, and must be wearied by a night of rowing against the wind. The eastern shield wall seemed to be holding, but I watched as the other gave way and its surviving men fled across moored boats to regain the safety of the nearest of Einar’s ships. But that ship was not safe at all. The tide was pinning it against the pier, and furious Saxons followed the fugitives and leaped onto the trapped ship’s bows. I could see blades rising and falling, see men leaping overboard into the shallows, see men dying. That ship was lost.
But so was much of Æthelhelm’s fleet. At the end of the piers the smoke was thickening to darken the dawn sky as ships caught fire. Some of the smaller trading craft had been manned by Norsemen and were being sailed out of the turmoil, following us downriver, while behind them at least three of Æthelhelm’s warships were ablaze. His own vessel, the Ælfswon, appeared to have survived, as had two other big West Saxon war craft that shared the long wharf, but much of the rest of his fleet was burning, sinking, or captured. The crew of Einar’s largest ship, the dark-hulled boat with the cross at its prow, was still hurling flaming torches into Æthelhelm’s smaller boats, but she began to pull away as the surviving shield wall retreated. Another of Einar’s ships went close to that eastern pier, and I saw Norsemen leaping aboard her, then she backed her oars to carry them safely away from Saxon vengeance. The big ship, the one with the cross, was the last to leave the burning chaos, and as she came from a roiling bank of smoke I saw a flag unfurled at her masthead. For a moment the flag seemed reluctant to fly, then the wind caught the fabric and it streamed out to show a red hand holding a cross. ‘Whose badge is that?’
I asked.
‘She’s a Scottish ship,’ Renwald answered, ‘and that’s Domnall’s flag.’
‘Constantin’s man?’
‘And a happy man too,’ Renwald said, looking back at the chaos of broken ships and burning hulls.
Five ships had come to Dumnoc in the dawn, but only four left, though they were accompanied by a dozen captured cargo vessels. Einar, if he lived, must have assumed that the Rensnægl was one of those captured vessels because, as the larger warships overtook us at the river’s mouth, not one made an attempt to stop us. Instead a man waved from the steersman’s platform of Domnall’s dark ship, and we waved back, and then the Rensnægl’s bows met the larger seas of the open water and we shipped the oars and let the big sail carry us north along the coast.
‘She’s called the Trianaid,’ Renwald said, nodding at the Scottish ship.
‘Trianaid?’ I asked.
‘Means the trinity,’ he said. ‘I usually see her in the Forth, I’ve never seen her this far south before.’
‘I thought Constantin’s ships were all fighting Norsemen up in the islands?’
‘Most are, but he keeps the Trianaid closer to home.’
‘He keeps her at Bebbanburg now,’ I said bitterly.
‘He does, lord, so he does.’
The only consolation was knowing that the Trianaid, like Einar’s fleet, would be having an uncomfortable time at Bebbanburg. They could not use the fort’s own harbour, which could only be reached by the narrow channel that ran directly beneath the northern ramparts and past the heavily defended Sea Gate. Any ship using that channel would be assailed by spears and rocks, which meant that Einar’s ships must shelter in the shallow anchorage between Lindisfarena and the mainland. It was a difficult and cramped refuge, and in a gale it was downright dangerous. When I was a child a Scottish trader had taken refuge there, and during the night the storm worsened and we woke to discover that the ship had been driven ashore, and I remember my father’s delight when he realised that the vessel and its cargo were now his property. He had let me ride with the warriors who galloped over the sands at low tide to surround the stranded ship. The five crewmen had promptly surrendered, of course, but my older brother had ordered them killed anyway. ‘They’re Scots!’ he told me. ‘Vermin! And you know what you do with vermin.’
‘They’re Christians,’ I had protested. In those days, when I was about seven or eight years old, I was still trying to be a good little Christian and so avoid Father Beocca’s feeble beatings.
‘They’re Scots, you fool,’ my brother had said. ‘You get rid of the bastards! Do you want to kill one of them?’
‘No!’
‘You’re a pathetic weakling,’ he had said scornfully, then had drawn his sword to rid the world of vermin.
In the end the stranded ship proved to hold nothing more valuable than sheepskins, one of which became my bed cover for the next two years. I was remembering that tale as Renwald gave the steering-oar to one of his crew, then pulled the young Norseman’s sword from beneath the stern platform. He turned the hilt, admiring the silver wire twisted around the crosspiece. ‘It’s a valuable weapon, lord,’ he said.
‘Probably Frankish,’ I said, ‘and you’ll find it more useful than that piece of rusty iron you call a sword.’
He smiled. ‘I can keep it?’
‘Keep it, sell it, do what you like with it. But keep the blade greased. It’s a pity to let a good sword turn to rust.’
He pushed it back into the narrow space. ‘So you’re going to Bebbanburg, lord?’
I shook my head. ‘We’re going to Frisia.’
‘Which is why you went to Dumnoc first?’ he asked shrewdly.
‘I had business in Dumnoc,’ I said harshly, ‘and now we’re leaving for Frisia.’
‘Yes, lord,’ he said, plainly disbelieving me.
We ran before the wind, though in truth the Rensnægl never ran. She lumbered heavily as Einar’s fleet steadily drew ahead of us. I watched his ships sail through a sparkling sea lit by a sun shining between ragged clouds that scattered to the north and east. I instinctively tried to touch my hammer as a way of thanking Thor for the miracle, and my fingers found the cross, and I wondered if that symbol had brought me good fortune. That was one of Christianity’s strongest arguments, that fate smiled on Christians. A Christian king, their sorcerers argued, won more battles, received higher rents, and spawned more sons than a pagan ruler. I hoped that was not true, but I took care in that moment to mutter a prayer of thanks to the Christian god who had arranged for fate to smile on me in the last few hours. ‘Æthelhelm won’t be sailing today,’ I said.
‘He’ll need more than a day or two to recover from that morning surprise,’ Renwald agreed. ‘He lost some good ships.’
‘He won’t be happy,’ I said happily. My miracle had come. Einar had given me what I so desperately needed, time. Æthelhelm had planned to take food and reinforcements to Bebbanburg, but most of the food and many of his ships were now destroyed.
Then fate smiled on me again.
Just north of Dumnoc the River Wavenhe empties to the sea. A few fishing families lived in driftwood hovels built at the river’s mouth, which was marked by a wide stretch of fretting waves, a hint to a sailor that the anchorage beyond, though inviting, was dangerous to approach. Inland, bright under the sun, was a great lake, and beyond that, I knew, was a tangle of lakes, rivers, creeks, mudbanks, reeds, and marshland that was home to birds, eels, fish, frogs, and mud-covered folk. I had never sailed into the Wavenhe, though I had heard of shipmasters who had risked the entrance shoals and lived, but now, as Einar’s fleet drew level with the river’s mouth, a ship came from the anchorage.
I had heard that Ieremias, the mad bishop, was a brilliant seaman, and so he must have been because he had left Dumnoc late in the afternoon and had surely entered the Wavenhe in the encroaching darkness, and now the Guds Moder came from the river, sailing through the shoals with a confident assurance. Her sail, bellying away from us, was decorated with a cross. She came fast, sliding into the open sea with her tattered rigging flying ragged to the wind. I could just see Ieremias’s white hair lifting to that same wind. He was the helmsman.
I had wondered why Ieremias had left Dumnoc early instead of waiting for Æthelhelm’s fleet to sail, and now I had the answer. I had assumed he was allied to Æthelhelm, a natural supposition after I had seen the warm greeting that Æthelhelm had given him. I had also heard Ieremias boast of Æthelhelm’s gift, the stained girdle that had supposedly belonged to Christ’s mother and was most probably a strip of dirty cloth torn from a kitchen slave’s tunic. And an alliance between Æthelhelm and Ieremias made sense. Ieremias might be mad, but he still possessed an anchorage and a fort at the mouth of the River Tinan, and so long as Constantin claimed Bebbanburg’s land, then so long did Ieremias own the northernmost fort of Northumbria. He also had ships and men, and best of all he knew the Northumbrian coast as well as any man alive. I doubted the West Saxon shipmasters knew where the shoals and rocks lurked, but Ieremias did, and if Æthelhelm planned a voyage to the fortress he would do well to have Ieremias as his guide. I had not questioned my assumption that he was Æthelhelm’s ally until now, when I saw his dark-hulled ship come from the River Wavenhe to join Einar’s fleet. I saw him wave to the Trianaid, then the Guds Moder turned north to sail in company with Æthelhelm’s enemies.
‘He scouted Dumnoc for them,’ I said.
‘I thought he was Lord Æthelhelm’s ally,’ Renwald was as surprised as I was.
‘So did I,’ I admitted. And now, it seemed, Ieremias was allied with the Scots. I gazed at his ship and reflected that it did not really matter whose ally he was, he was certainly my enemy.
The Scots were my enemies.
The West Saxons were my enemies.
Bebbanburg’s garrison was my enemy.
Ieremias was my enemy.
Einar the White was my enemy.
So fate had better be my friend. r />
We sailed on northwards.
Grimesbi was smaller than Dumnoc, but had the same weatherbeaten houses, the same homely smells of salt, wood fires, and fish, and the same sea-hardened folk struggling to haul a living from the long cold waves. There were wharves, piers, and a shallow anchorage, while beyond the town’s ditch lay a bleak marsh. Grimesbi, though, was Northumbrian, which, in that year, meant that the reeve was a Dane; a hard-faced, strong-fisted man called Erik, who treated me with a wary civility. ‘So you’re leaving, lord?’ he asked me.
‘For Frisia,’ I said.
‘That’s what I heard,’ he said, then paused to pick something out of his broad nose. He flicked whatever he discovered onto the tavern floor. ‘I’m supposed to levy a charge on everything you take out of the port,’ he went on. ‘Horses, household goods, trade goods, everything except your victuals and your people.’
‘And you pay that levy to King Sigtryggr?’
‘I do,’ he said cautiously, because he knew that I knew that he only paid a part of what he owed to the king and that, probably, a criminally small part. ‘I pay that and the wharfage fees to Jorvik.’
‘Of course you do,’ I said, and laid a gold coin on the table. ‘I think Sigtryggr would forgive me if I didn’t pay, don’t you?’