There was no warning fire on the headland. The whole coast was dark. The four ships were alone, forging north with Guds Moder in the lead. She was the smallest and thus the slowest ship, and so the others matched our speed. It was not until the eastern horizon was edged with a sword-blade of grey light that the rowers began to sing. It began on the Stiorra, the oarsmen singing the lay of Ida, a song I knew my son had chosen because it told how our ancestor, Ida the Flamebearer, had come across the cold sea to capture the fortress on the high rock. The song claimed that Ida and his men were hungry, they were desperate, and how they had flung themselves up the rock to be beaten back by a savage enemy. They were hurled back three times, the song claimed, and their dead lay thick on the slope as they huddled on the beach, taunted by their enemies. Night was falling and a storm was brewing offshore and Ida and his men were trapped between the fortress and the churning breakers, facing death by blade or death by sea, until Ida had shouted it would be death by fire. He had burned his ships, making flames by the water, and had seized a fiery length of wood and charged alone. He was wreathed in flame, sparks flew behind him, and he flung himself on the wall and thrust flame into his enemy’s faces, and they ran, fearing this fire warrior who had come from a far land. My father had mocked the song, saying that one spear-thrust or a pail of water would have been enough to stop Ida, but it was undeniable that he had taken the fortress.
The singing grew stronger as the crews of the other three ships joined in, chanting the song of burning triumph in time to their oar strokes as we beat our way northwards along the Northumbrian coast. And as the sun touched the world’s edge with the day’s new fire a small wind ruffled the water, rippling it from the east.
I would have liked a southern wind, even a gale, or at least a blustery hard southern blow that might have penned Einar’s ships in their narrow anchorage behind Lindisfarena, but the gods sent me a gentle east wind instead, and I touched my hammer and meekly thanked them that the wind was not northerly. Ieremias had confirmed that Einar the White’s vessels were moored in the shallow anchorage behind the island, and a hard southern wind would have given them a long tiring passage to the harbour mouth at Bebbanburg. The east wind would still try to blow them back down the anchorage’s entrance channel, but once beyond the shoals they could hoist their sails and race southerly with the wind on their bæcbord beam. ‘And there’s one Scottish ship there too, lord,’ Ieremias had added.
‘The Trianaid?’
‘She’s a lump of a boat, lord,’ he had said. ‘The Scots like to build their ships heavy so be careful she doesn’t ram you. She’s slow, but she can crush your strakes like a hammer falling on an eggshell.’
‘How many crew?’
‘Fifty at least, lord. She’s a big brute.’
I had remembered seeing Waldhere, the commander of my cousin’s household troops, at Dumnoc. ‘Did you bring him out of Bebbanburg?’ I had asked Ieremias.
‘I did, lord,’ he confessed, ‘and two others before him.’
‘How?’ If the Scots had seen any of Ieremias’s ships at the fortress then they would have known he was betraying them.
‘Fog, lord,’ he had told me. ‘I took one of our smaller ships and laid up in the bay by Cocuedes till there was a deep fog.’ Cocuedes was a small island just off the coast to the south of Bebbanburg.
‘Who were the other two?’
‘Both priests, lord,’ he had sounded disapproving, presumably because the priests had not recognised his authority as a bishop. ‘I picked them up a month ago and took them to Gyruum, and they found their own way south to negotiate with Lord Æthelhelm.’
Under my nose, I thought bitterly. ‘They were sent to arrange the marriage?’
Ieremias had nodded. ‘She brings a rich dowry, I hear! Gold, lord! And she’s a sweet little thing,’ he had sighed wistfully, ‘she’s got tits like ripe little apples. I’d like to give her a thorough blessing.’
‘You’d like what?’ I asked, surprised.
‘To lay my hands on her, lord,’ he said in apparent innocence.
He was not entirely mad.
In mid morning, as the sun burnished a sea that was breaking into small waves, the wind freshened. We hoisted Ieremias’s ragged sail that was decorated with a dark cross, and when it was sheeted home Guds Moder bent to the quickening breeze. We shipped the oars and let the wind take us northwards. The trailing ships did the same, loosing their great sails, and Æthelhelm’s stag was there, pitch black against the pale woad-blue linen, blazoned across the Hanna’s bellying sail.
We were not yet halfway, but the wind was on our beam, the foam-flecked seas were breaking white at our prows, our wakes spread bright in the sun, and we were going to Bebbanburg.
When we are young we yearn for battle. In the firelit halls we listen to the songs of heroes; how they broke the foemen, splintered the shield wall, and soaked their swords in the blood of enemies. As youngsters we listen to the boasts of warriors, hear their laughter as they recall battle, and their bellows of pride when their lord reminds them of some hard-won victory. And those youngsters who have not fought, who have yet to hold their shield against a neighbour’s shield in the wall, are despised and disparaged. So we practise. Day after day we practise, with spear, sword, and shield. We begin as children, learning blade-craft with wooden weapons, and hour after hour we hit and are hit. We fight against men who hurt us in order to teach us, we learn not to cry when the blood from a split skull sheets across the eyes, and slowly the skill of sword-craft builds.
Then the day comes when we are ordered to march with the men, not as children to hold the horses and to scavenge weapons after the battle, but as men. If we are lucky we have a battered old helmet and a leather jerkin, maybe even a coat of mail that hangs like a sack. We have a sword with a dented edge and a shield that is scored by enemy blades. We are almost men, not quite warriors, and on some fateful day we meet an enemy for the first time and we hear the chants of battle, the threatening clash of blades on shields, and we begin to learn that the poets are wrong and that the proud songs lie. Even before the shield walls meet, some men shit themselves. They shiver with fear. They drink mead and ale. Some boast, but most are quiet unless they join a chant of hate. Some men tell jokes, and the laughter is nervous. Others vomit. Our battle leaders harangue us, tell us of the deeds of our ancestors, of the filth that is the enemy, of the fate our women and children face unless we win, and between the shield walls the heroes strut, challenging us to single combat, and you look at the enemy’s champions and they seem invincible. They are big men; grim-faced, gold-hung, shining in mail, confident, scornful, savage.
The shield wall reeks of shit, and all a man wants is to be home, to be anywhere but on this field that prepares for battle, but none of us will turn and run or else we will be despised for ever. We pretend we want to be there, and when the wall at last advances, step by step, and the heart is thumping fast as a bird’s wing beating, the world seems unreal. Thought flies, fear rules, and then the order to quicken the charge is shouted, and you run, or stumble, but stay in your rank because this is the moment you have spent a lifetime preparing for, and then, for the first time, you hear the thunder of shield walls meeting, the clangour of battle swords, and the screaming begins.
It will never end.
Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god’s filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight. Then you will see men die with their guts coiled in the mud, with their skulls opened, with their eyes missing, you will hear them choking, gasping, weeping, screaming. You will see your friends die, you will lose your balance as your foot slips in an enemy’s spilt bowels, you will look into a man’s face as you slide your blade into his belly, and if
the three fates at the foot of Yggdrasil favour you, then you will know the ecstasy of battle, the joy of victory, and the relief of living. Then you will go home and the poets will compose a song of the battle and perhaps your name will be chanted and you will boast of your prowess and the youngsters will listen in envious awe and you will not tell them of the horror. You will not say how you are haunted by the faces of the men you killed, how in their last gasp of life they sought your pity and you had none. You will not speak of the boys who died screaming for their mothers while you twisted a blade in their guts and snarled your scorn into their ears. You will not confess that you wake in the night, covered in sweat, heart hammering, shrinking from the memories. You will not talk of that, because that is the horror, and the horror is held in the heart’s hoard, a secret, and to admit it is to admit fear, and we are warriors.
We do not fear. We strut. We go to battle like heroes. We stink of shit.
But we endure the horror because we must protect our women, keep our children from slavery, and guard our homes. So the screaming will never end, not till time itself ends.
‘Lord?’ Swithun was forced to touch my arm to break my reverie, and I jumped, startled, to discover the wind blowing across our hull, the sail pulling well, my hand on the steering-oar, and our ship coursing straight and true. ‘Lord?’ Swithun sounded anxious. He must have thought I was in a trance.
‘I was thinking of those blood-puddings that Finan’s wife makes,’ I said, but he still gazed at me with a worried expression. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Look, lord,’ Swithun pointed over our stern.
I turned, and there on the southern horizon, faint against a heap of clouds that edged the world, were four ships. I could only see their sails, dirty and dark against the white clouds, but I would have wagered Serpent-Breath against a kitchen knife that I knew who they were. They were the remnants of Æthelhelm’s fleet, the larger ships that had been moored on the wharf at Dumnoc, and which had escaped Einar’s ravaging, and being big they would be faster than our four vessels. Not just faster, but with larger crews, and I did not doubt that Æthelhelm had at least two hundred and fifty men crammed into the long hulls that pursued us. For the moment, the four ships were a long way behind, but we still had a long way to go. It would be close.
My son hardened his sail so that the Stiorra quickened. He brought her close to our steerboard side and loosed the sheets so that he matched our speed. ‘Is that Æthelhelm?’ he shouted through cupped hands.
‘Who else?’
He looked as if he was about to shout another question, then thought better of it. There was nothing we could do unless we wanted to abandon our voyage by turning into one of the few harbours on this coast, and my son knew I would not do that. He let the Stiorra fall back.
By early afternoon I could see the hulls of the pursuing vessels, among which the pale timbers of the Ælfswon showed clearly. The four ships were catching us, though I reckoned we would still reach Bebbanburg first, but beating them to the fortress would not be enough. I needed time before Æthelhelm interfered. Then the gods showed that they loved us because the wind must have dropped to our south and I saw their big sails sag, fill, then sag again. After a moment the sun reflected from oar-blades, then the long banks began to dip and rise, but no crew could row as fast as our ships were reaching on that friendly east wind. For a while the four West Saxon ships lost ground, but the patch of calmer wind did not last, and their sails filled once more, the oars were taken inboard, and they again began to close relentlessly. By now Æthelhelm would have recognised Ieremias’s ragged ship, and he would guess the other three were mine. He would know I was ahead of him.
By mid afternoon I could see the Farne Islands breaking the horizon, and not long after the shape of Bebbanburg high on its rock. We were sailing fast, the wind was gusting high, the sails pulling us, and our cutwaters breaking the seas to send spray flying down our decks. My men pulled on mail coats, belted swords into place, touched their hammers or their crosses, and muttered prayers. Behind us the four West Saxon ships were near enough that I could see men aboard, could see the crosses on their prows, and see the criss-cross of ropes that stiffened their sails, but they had not quite closed enough. I would have a little time, enough time I hoped. I had pulled on a mail coat, my finest, its hems edged with gold, and Serpent-Breath now hung at my side. A glint of reflected sunlight showed where a man held a spear on Bebbanburg’s ramparts. I could see the Scots too; a small group of horsemen was galloping north along the beach. They had seen our ships, and, like the sentinels on Bebbanburg’s high walls, would have recognised the Guds Moder, and the riders were now hurrying the news to Domnall.
So four of us were making ready. My small fleet was closing on the fortress, the seas hissing down our wind-driven hulls. My cousin could see us coming, and his men would be going to the ramparts to watch our arrival. Domnall would be ordering Einar to take his ships to sea, while Æthelhelm was in desperate pursuit. The chaos was about to be unleashed, but for the chaos to give me victory I needed everyone to believe that what they saw was what they expected to see.
My cousin expected a relief fleet led by Ieremias. He had been worried that Æthelhelm, who was providing the men and most of the food, would bring too large a force and so usurp ownership of the fortress, but he would see four smaller ships, one of them Guds Moder with the dark cross on her sail and with her distinctive tangle of dishevelled rigging, and he would see the crudely painted leaping stag on the Hanna’s mainsail, and he would surely believe that Ieremias was bringing the promised relief, and he would reckon, from the size of the ships, that the force coming to his aid numbered fewer than two hundred men. A large force, certainly, but not sufficient to overpower his garrison. Behind us, and still some distance from the foam-fretted Farne Islands, were Æthelhelm’s larger ships, and, so far as I could see, not one was flying a banner. My cousin might be puzzled by them, but he would surely have learned that I had purchased ships, and the easiest explanation for the trailing vessels was that they were mine, and that I was displaying crosses on their prows to mislead him. I had not reckoned on Æthelhelm taking any part in this day’s confusion, but now I realised his presence could be of help if my cousin assumed his ships were mine.
The Scots, and their allies led by Einar, expected something wholly different. They too had been told that a relief fleet was sailing, but Ieremias had persuaded them that he would make Æthelhelm’s fleet approach very slowly, under oars.
‘To give Einar’s ships time to intercept them?’ I had asked Ieremias in Gyruum.
‘Yes, lord.’
‘But how would you have persuaded Æthelhelm to slow down?’
‘I told him of the dangers,’ he had said.
‘What dangers?’ I had asked.
‘Rocks, lord! There are rocks between the Farnes and the mainland, you know that.’
‘They’re easily avoided,’ I had said.
‘You know that and I know that,’ he had answered, ‘but do the West Saxons? How many southerners have sailed that coast?’ He had grinned. ‘I’ve told them how many ships have been lost there, told them there are hidden rocks by the harbour entrance, told them they have to follow me very cautiously.’
That caution, and the creeping pace, would have given Einar’s ships and the Scottish vessel time to block the relief fleet’s approach. Æthelhelm would then have had a decision to make, either to fight his way through the enemy, or to refuse the offered sea battle and sail back down the coast. He still might have to make that decision, because, as we sailed between the islands and the fortress I could see Lindisfarena spreading across our bows and I could see Einar’s ships rowing out of the anchorage. They were having a hard time of it, fighting against a blustering east wind, but if I had slowed, if I had dropped the sail and used the oars to creep cautiously as though I feared shoals and rocks, then Einar would still have had time to intercept me. But I did not slow. The water was seething and breaking at our bo
w and the wind was driving us hard towards the harbour’s narrow channel. Soon, very soon, Domnall would know he had been deceived.
And what did I expect? I touched the hammer at my neck and then the cross on Serpent-Breath’s pommel. I expected to be the Lord of Bebbanburg by nightfall.
Or dead.
But the whole madness depended on one thing, just one thing, that my cousin would open the gates of his fortress to me. I touched the hammer again and called to Swithun. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘now.’
Swithun was wearing robes we had taken from Ieremias’s hall, which, in turn, Ieremias had looted from some church back when he was called Dagfinnr and had served Ragnar the Younger. ‘They’re all so pretty, lord,’ Ieremias had told me, lovingly fingering the embroidered hem of a chasuble. ‘This one is woven from the finest lamb’s wool. Try it, lord!’
I had not tried it, instead we chose the gaudiest of the vestments, and Swithun was now draped in a white cassock that fell to his ankles and was hemmed with golden crosses, in the shorter chasuble that was edged with scarlet cloth and decorated with red and yellow flames that Ieremias claimed were the fires of hell, and over it all a pallium, which was a broad scarf embroidered with black crosses. ‘When I am Pope of the North,’ Ieremias had confided in me, ‘I shall wear nothing but golden robes. I shall shine, lord, like the sun.’