The Flame Bearer

  ‘So what do they want?’ Egil asked in an annoyed tone.

  ‘They want us to attack them,’ I said, but if Egil was right and the West Saxons could put two or three hundred men behind the stone walls, then we would need at least four hundred men to storm the ramparts, and for what? To possess the ruins of an old fort that no longer guarded anything of value? Brunulf, the West Saxon commander, would know that too, so why did he stay? ‘How did they get here?’ I asked. ‘By boat?’

  ‘They rode, lord.’

  ‘And they’re miles from the nearest West Saxon forces,’ I said, speaking more to myself than to Egil.

  ‘The nearest are at Steanford, lord.’

  ‘Which is how far?’

  ‘A half day’s ride, lord,’ he said vaguely, ‘maybe?’

  I was riding Tintreg that day and I spurred him down the long slope, pushed through a hedge, across a ditch, and up the low rise beyond. I took Finan and a dozen men with me, leaving the rest hidden. If the West Saxons had a mind to chase us away then we would have no choice but to flee northwards, but they seemed content to watch from their walls as we drew closer. One of their priests joined the warriors on the ramparts and I saw him lift a cross and hold it in our direction. ‘He’s cursing us,’ I said, amused.

  Eadric, a Saxon scout, touched the cross hanging about his neck, but said nothing. I was staring at a stretch of grassland just to the north of the fort. ‘Look at the pasture on this side of the stream,’ I said, ‘what do you see there?’

  Eadric had eyes as good as Finan’s and he now stood in his stirrups, shaded his face with a hand and stared. ‘Graves?’ he sounded puzzled.

  ‘They’re digging something,’ Finan said. There seemed to be several mounds of freshly-turned earth.

  ‘You want me to look, lord?’ Eadric asked.

  ‘We all will,’ I said.

  We rode slowly towards the fort, leaving our shields behind as a sign we did not want battle, and for a time it seemed the West Saxons were content just to watch as we explored the pasture on our side of the river where I could see the mysterious heaps of earth. As we rode closer I saw that the mounds had not been excavated from graves, but from trenches. ‘Are they building a new fort?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘They’re building something,’ Finan said.

  ‘Lord,’ Eadric said warningly, but I had already seen the dozen horsemen leave the fort and ride to where a ford crossed the stream.

  We numbered fourteen men, and Brunulf, if he was trying to avoid trouble, would bring the same number, and so he did, but when the horsemen were in the centre of the stream where the placid water almost reached up to their horses’ bellies, they all stopped. They bunched there, ignoring us, and it seemed to me that they argued, and then, unexpectedly, two men turned and rode back to the fort. We were at the pasture’s edge by then, the grass lush from the recent rain, and as I spurred Tintreg forward I saw it was no fort they were making, nor graves, but a church. The trench had been dug in the form of a cross. It was meant to be the building’s foundation and it would eventually be half filled with stone to support the wall pillars. ‘It’s big!’ I said, impressed.

  ‘Big as the church in Wintanceaster!’ Finan said, equally impressed.

  The dozen remaining emissaries from the fort were now spurring from the river. Eight were warriors like us, the rest were churchmen, two priests in black robes, and a pair of monks in brown. The warriors wore no helmets, carried no shields, and, apart from their sheathed swords, no weapons. Their leader, on an impressive grey stallion that stepped high through the long grass, wore a dark robe edged with fur above a leather breastplate over which hung a silver cross. He was a young man with a grave face, a short beard, and a high forehead beneath a woollen cap. He reined in his restless horse, then looked at me in silence as if expecting me to speak first. I did not.

  ‘I am Brunulf Torkelson of Wessex,’ he finally said. ‘And who are you?’

  ‘You’re Torkel Brunulfson’s son?’ I asked.

  He looked surprised at the question, then pleased. He nodded. ‘I am, lord.’

  ‘Your father fought beside me at Ethandun,’ I said, ‘and fought well! He slew Danes that day. Does he still live?’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘Give him my warm greeting.’

  He hesitated and I sensed he wanted to thank me, but there was a pretence that had to be spoken first. ‘And whose greeting is that?’ he asked.

  I half smiled, looking along the line of his men. ‘You know who I am, Brunulf,’ I said. ‘You called me “lord”, so don’t pretend you don’t know me.’ I pointed at the oldest of his warriors, a grizzled man with a scar across his forehead. ‘You fought beside me at Fearnhamme. Am I right?’

  The man grinned, ‘I did, lord.’

  ‘You served Steapa, yes?’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘So tell Brunulf who I am.’

  ‘He’s …’

  ‘I do know who he is,’ Brunulf interrupted, then gave me a slight nod of his head. ‘It is an honour to meet you, lord.’ Those words, spoken courteously, caused the eldest of the two priests to spit on the grass. Brunulf ignored the insult. ‘And may I ask what brings Uhtred of Bebbanburg to this poor place?’

  ‘I was about to ask what brought you here,’ I retorted.

  ‘You have no business here,’ it was the spitting priest who spoke. He was a strongly built man, broad-chested, older than Brunulf by perhaps ten or fifteen years, with a fierce face, short-cropped black hair, and an undeniable air of authority. His black robe was made of finely woven wool, and the cross on his chest was of gold. The second priest was a much smaller man, younger, and plainly very nervous of our presence.

  I looked at the older priest. ‘And who are you?’ I demanded.

  ‘A man doing God’s business.’

  ‘You know my name,’ I said mildly, ‘but do you know what they call me?’

  ‘Satan’s earsling,’ he snarled.

  ‘Perhaps they do,’ I said, ‘but they also call me the priest-killer, but it’s been many years since I last slit the belly of an arrogant priest. I need the practice.’ I smiled at him.

  Brunulf held up a hand to check whatever retort was about to be made. ‘Father Herefrith fears you are trespassing, Lord Uhtred.’ Brunulf, plainly, was not looking for a fight. His tone was courteous.

  ‘How can a man trespass on his own king’s land?’ I asked.

  ‘This land,’ Brunulf said, ‘belongs to Edward of Wessex.’

  I laughed at that. It was a brazen statement, as outrageous as Constantin’s claim that all the land north of the wall belonged to the Scots. ‘This land,’ I said, ‘is a half-day’s ride north of the frontier.’

  ‘There is proof of our claim,’ Father Herefrith said. His voice was a deep, hostile growl, and his gaze even more unfriendly. I guessed he had been a warrior once, he had scars on one cheek, and his dark eyes betrayed no fear, only challenge. He was big, but it was all muscle, the kind of muscle a man develops from years of practising sword-skill. I noticed that he stood his horse apart from the rest of Brunulf’s followers, even from his fellow priest, as if he despised their company.

  ‘Proof,’ I said scornfully.

  ‘Proof!’ he spat back. ‘Though we need prove nothing to you. You’re shit from the devil’s arse and you trespass on King Edward’s land.’

  ‘Father Herefrith,’ Brunulf seemed disturbed by the older priest’s belligerence, ‘is a chaplain to King Edward.’

  ‘Father Herefrith,’ I said, keeping my voice mild, ‘was born from a sow’s arsehole.’

  Herefrith just stared at me. I had been told once that there is a tribe of men far beyond the seas who can kill with a look, and it seemed as if the big priest was trying to emulate them. I looked away from him before it became a contest, and saw that the second banner, the one that had not stretched in the small wind, had now been taken down from the fort’s ramparts. I wondered if a war party was assembling to follow that banne
r to our destruction. ‘Your royal chaplain, born of a sow,’ I spoke to Brunulf, though I was still watching the fort, ‘says he has proof. What proof?’

  ‘Father Stepan?’ Brunulf passed my question to the nervous younger priest.

  ‘In the year of our lord 875,’ the second priest answered in a high, unsteady voice, ‘King Ælla of Northumbria ceded this land in perpetuity to King Oswald of East Anglia. King Edward is now the ruler of East Anglia and thus is the true and rightful inheritor of the gift.’

  I looked at Brunulf and had the impression that here was an honest man, certainly a man who did not look convinced by the priest’s statement. ‘In the year of Thor 875,’ I said, ‘Ælla was under siege from a rival, and Oswald wasn’t even the King of East Anglia, he was a puppet for Ubba.’

  ‘Nevertheless—’ the older priest insisted, but stopped when I interrupted him.

  ‘Ubba the Horrible,’ I said, staring into his eyes, ‘who I killed beside the sea.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ he spoke loudly as if challenging me to interrupt him again, ‘the grant was made, the charter written, the seals impressed, and the land so given.’ He looked to Father Stepan, ‘is that not so?’

  ‘It is so,’ Father Stepan squeaked.

  Herefrith glared at me, trying to kill with his eyes. ‘You are trespassing on King Edward’s land, earsling.’

  Brunulf flinched at the insult. I did not care. ‘You can produce this so-called charter?’ I asked.

  For a moment no one answered, then Brunulf looked at the younger priest. ‘Father Stepan?’

  ‘Why prove anything to this sinner?’ Herefrith demanded angrily. He spurred his horse forward a pace. ‘He is a priest-killer, hated by God, married to his Saxon whore, spewing the devil’s filth.’

  I sensed my men stirring behind me and raised a hand to calm them. I ignored Father Herefrith and looked at the younger priest instead. ‘Charters are easy to forge,’ I said, ‘so entertain me and tell me why the land was given.’

  Father Stepan glanced at Father Herefrith as if looking for permission to speak, but the older priest ignored him.

  ‘Tell me!’ I insisted.

  ‘In the year of our lord 632,’ Father Stepan said nervously, ‘Saint Erpenwald of the Wuffingas came to this river. It was in flood and could not be crossed, but he prayed to the Lord, struck the river with his staff, and the waters parted.’

  ‘It was a miracle,’ Brunulf explained a little shamefacedly.

  ‘Strange,’ I said, ‘that I never heard that tale before. I grew up in Northumbria, and you’d think a northern lad like me would have heard a marvellous story like that. I know about the puffins that sang psalms, and the holy toddler who cured his mother’s lameness by spitting on her left tit, but a man who didn’t need a bridge to cross a river? I never heard that tale!’

  ‘Six months ago,’ Father Stepan continued, as if I had not spoken, ‘Saint Erpenwald’s staff was discovered on the river bed.’

  ‘Still there after two hundred years!’

  ‘Much longer!’ one of the monks put in, and received a glare from Father Herefrith.

  ‘And it hadn’t floated away?’ I asked, pretending to be amazed.

  ‘King Edward wishes to make this a place of pilgrimage,’ Father Stepan said, again ignoring my mockery.

  ‘So he sends warriors,’ I said menacingly.

  ‘When the church is built,’ Brunulf said earnestly, ‘the troops will withdraw. They are here only to protect the holy fathers and to help construct the shrine.’

  ‘True,’ Father Stepan added eagerly.

  They were telling lies. I reckoned their reason to be here was not to build some church, but to distract Sigtryggr while Constantin stole the northern part of Northumbria, and perhaps to provoke a second war by goading Sigtryggr into an assault on the fort. But why, if that is what they wanted, had they been so unprovocative? True, Father Herefrith had been hostile, but I suspected he was a bitter and angry priest who did not know how to be courteous. Brunulf and the rest of his company had been meek, trying to placate me. If they wanted to provoke a war they would have defied me and they had not, so I decided to push them. ‘You claim this field is King Edward’s land,’ I said, ‘but to reach it you must have travelled over King Sigtryggr’s land.’

  ‘We did, of course,’ Brunulf agreed hesitantly.

  ‘Then you owe him customs’ dues,’ I said. ‘I assume you brought tools?’ I nodded at the cross-shaped trenches. ‘Spades? Mattocks? Even timber to build your magic shrine perhaps?’

  For a heartbeat there was no answer. Brunulf, I saw, glanced at Father Herefrith, who gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘That’s not unreasonable,’ Brunulf said nervously. For a man planning a war, or trying to provoke one, it was an astonishing concession.

  ‘We will think on the matter,’ Father Herefrith said harshly, ‘and give you our answer in two days.’

  My immediate impulse was to argue, to demand we meet the next day, but there was something strange about Herefrith’s sudden change of attitude. Till this moment he had been hostile and obstructive, and now, though still hostile, he was cooperating with Brunulf. It was Herefrith who had given the signal that Brunulf should pretend to agree about paying customs’ dues, and Herefrith who had insisted on waiting for two days, and so I resisted my urge to argue. ‘We will meet you here in two days,’ I agreed instead, ‘and make sure you bring gold to that meeting.’

  ‘Not here,’ Father Herefrith said sharply.

  ‘No?’ I responded mildly.

  ‘The stench of your presence fouls God’s holy land,’ he snarled, then pointed northwards. ‘You see the woodland on the skyline? Just beyond it there’s a stone, a pagan stone.’ He spat the last three words. ‘We shall meet you by the stone at mid morning on Wednesday. You can bring twelve men. No more.’

  Again I had to resist the urge to anger him. Instead I nodded agreement. ‘Twelve of us,’ I said, ‘at mid morning, in two days’ time, at the stone. And make sure you bring your fake charter and plenty of gold.’

  ‘I’ll bring you an answer, pagan,’ Herefrith said, then turned and spurred away.

  ‘We shall meet in two days, lord,’ Brunulf said, plainly embarrassed by the priest’s anger.

  I just nodded and watched as they all rode back to the fort.

  Finan watched too. ‘That sour priest will never pay,’ he said, ‘he wouldn’t pay for a morsel of bread if his own poor mother was starving.’

  ‘He will pay,’ I said.

  But not in gold. The payment, I knew, would be in blood. In two days’ time.

  Four

  The stone where Father Herefrith had insisted we meet was a rough pillar, twice the height of a man, standing gaunt above a gentle and fertile valley an hour’s easy ride from the fort. It was one of the strange stones that the old people had placed all across Britain. Some stones stood in rings, some made passages, some looked like tables made for giants, and many, like the one on the valley’s southern crest, were lonely markers. We had ridden north from the fort, following a cattle path, and when I reached the stone I touched the hammer hanging at my neck and wondered what god had wanted the stone put beside the path, and why. Finan made the sign of the cross. Egil, who had grown up in the River Beina’s valley, said that his father had always called the pillar Thor’s Stone, ‘but the Saxons call it Satan’s Stone, lord.’

  ‘I prefer Thor’s Stone,’ I said.

  ‘There were Saxons living here?’ my son asked.

  ‘When my father arrived, yes, lord.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘Some died, some fled, and some stayed as slaves.’

  The Saxons had now had their revenge because, just north of the crest on which the stone stood and beside a ford of the Beina, was a burned-out steading. The fire had been recent, and Egil confirmed that it had been one of the few places that Brunulf’s men had destroyed. ‘They forced everyone to leave,’ he said.

  ‘None was killed?’
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  He shook his head. ‘The folk were told they had to go before sundown, but that was all. They even said the man who led the Saxons was apologetic.’

  ‘Strange way to start a war,’ my son remarked, ‘being apologetic.’

  ‘They want us to draw the first blood,’ I said.

  My son kicked a half-burned beam. ‘Then why burn this place?’

  ‘To persuade us to attack them? To provoke revenge?’ I could think of no better explanation, but why then had Brunulf been so meek when he met me?

  Brunulf’s men had burned the hall, barn, and cattle byres. Judging by the size of the blackened remnants the steading had been prosperous, and the folk who lived there must have thought it a safe place because they had built no palisade. The ruins lay just yards from the river, where the ford had been trampled by the hooves of countless cattle, while upstream of the steading an elaborate fish trap had been made clear across the river. The trap had silted up, becoming a crude dam, which, in turn, had flooded the pastures to form a shallow lake. A few cottages remained unharmed, enough to offer us crowded shelter, while lengths of charred timber made good fires on which we roasted mutton ribs. I posted sentries in the woodland to our south, and more in a stand of willows on the ford’s further bank.

  My son was apprehensive. More than once he left the fire and walked to the steading’s southern edge to stare at the gaunt stone on the skyline. He was imagining men there, shapes in the darkness, the glint of fire reflected from sword-blades. ‘Don’t fret,’ I told him after moonrise, ‘they won’t be coming.’

  ‘They want us to think that,’ my son said, ‘but how do we know what they’re thinking?’

  ‘They’re thinking that we’re fools,’ I told him.

  ‘And maybe they’re right,’ he muttered as he reluctantly sat and joined us. He looked back into the southern darkness where a glow on the clouds showed where Brunulf’s men had their fires in the fort and in the fields beyond. ‘There are three hundred of them.’

  ‘More than that!’ I said.

  ‘Suppose they decide to attack?’