The crowd applauded. I think the Saxons among them might have preferred to see the prisoners burned or drowned or trampled by horses, but enough of them appreciated sword work and they clapped me. Gisela was grinning at me. Hild was not watching. She was at the edge of the crowd with Father Willibald. The two spent long hours talking and I knew it was Christian matters they discussed, but that was not my business.
The next two prisoners were terrified. Tekil had been their leader, and a man leads other men because he is the best fighter, and in Tekil’s sudden death they saw their own, and neither put up any real fight. Instead of attacking me they tried to defend themselves, and the second had enough skill to parry me again and again, until I lunged high, his shield went up and I kicked his ankle out from beneath him and the crowd cheered as he died.
That left Sihtric, the boy. The monks, who had wanted to hang these Danes, but who now took an unholy glee in their honourable deaths, pushed him into the hazel ring and I could see that Sihtric did not know how to hold the sword and that his shield was nothing but a burden. His death was a heartbeat away, no more trouble to me than swatting a fly. He knew that too and was weeping.
I needed eight heads. I had seven. I stared at the boy and he could not meet my gaze, but looked away instead and he saw the bloody scrapes in the earth where the first three bodies had been dragged away and he fell to his knees. The crowd jeered. The monks were shouting at me to kill him. Instead I waited to see what Sihtric would do and I saw him conquer his fear. I saw the effort he made to stop blubbing, to control his breath, to force his shaking legs to obey him so that he managed to stand. He hefted the shield, sniffed, then looked me in the eye. I gestured at his sword and he obediently raised it so that he would die like a man. There were bloody scabs on his forehead where I had hit him with the slave shackles.
‘What was your mother’s name?’ I asked him. He stared at me and seemed incapable of speaking. The monks were shouting for his death. ‘What was your mother’s name?’ I asked him again.
‘Elflæd,’ he stammered, but so softly I could not hear him. I frowned at him, waited, and he repeated the name. ‘Elflæd.’
‘Elflæd, lord,’ I corrected him.
‘She was called Elflæd, lord,’ he said.
‘She was Saxon?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘And did she try to poison your father?’
He paused, then realised that no harm could come from telling the truth now. ‘Yes, lord.’
‘How?’ I had to raise my voice over the noise of the crowd.
‘The black berries, lord.’
‘Nightshade?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘How old are you?’
‘I don’t know, lord.’
Fourteen, I guessed. ‘Does your father love you?’ I asked.
That question puzzled him. ‘Love me?’
‘Kjartan. He’s your father, isn’t he?’
‘I hardly know him, lord,’ Sihtric said, and that was probably true. Kjartan must have whelped a hundred pups in Dunholm.
‘And your mother?’ I asked.
‘I loved her, lord,’ Sihtric said, and he was close to tears again.
I went a pace closer to him and his sword arm faltered, but he tried to brace himself. ‘On your knees, boy,’ I said.
He looked defiant then. ‘I would die properly,’ he said in a voice made squeaky by fear.
‘On your knees!’ I snarled, and the tone of my voice terrified him and he dropped to his knees and he seemed unable to move as I came towards him. He flinched when I reversed Serpent-Breath, expecting me to hit him with the heavy pommel, but then disbelief showed in his eyes as I held the sword’s hilt to him. ‘Clasp it,’ I said, ‘and say the words.’ He still stared up at me, then managed to drop his shield and sword and put his hands on Serpent-Breath’s hilt. I put my hands over his. ‘Say the words,’ I told him again.
‘I will be your man, lord,’ he said, looking up at me, ‘and I will serve you till death.’
‘And beyond,’ I said.
‘And beyond, lord. I swear it.’
Jænberht and Ida led the protest. The two monks stepped across the hazel branches and shouted that the boy had to die, that it was God’s will that he died, and Sihtric flinched as I tore Serpent-Breath from his hands and whipped her around. The blade, all newly-bloodied and nicked, swept towards the monks and then I held her motionless with her tip at Jænberht’s neck. The fury came then, the battle-fury, the bloodlust, the joy of slaughter, and it was all I could do not to let Serpent-Breath take another life. She wanted it, I could feel her trembling in my hand. ‘Sihtric is my man,’ I said to the monk, ‘and if anyone harms him then they will be my enemy, and I would kill you, monk, if you harm him, I would kill you without a thought.’ I was shouting now, forcing him back. I was nothing but anger and red-haze, wanting his soul. ‘Does anyone here,’ I shouted, at last managing to take SerpentBreath’s tip away from Jænberht’s throat and whirling the sword around to embrace the crowd, ‘deny that Sihtric is my man? Anyone?’
No one spoke. The wind gusted across Cair Ligualid and they could all smell death in that breeze and no one spoke, but their silence did not satisfy my anger. ‘Anyone?’ I shouted, desperately eager for someone to meet my challenge. ‘Because you can kill him now. You can kill him there, on his knees, but first you must kill me.’
Jænberht watched me. He had a narrow, dark face and clever eyes. His mouth was twisted, perhaps from some boyhood accident, and it gave him a sneering look. I wanted to tear his rotten soul out of his thin body. He wanted my soul, but he dared not move. No one moved until Guthred stepped across the hazel branches and held his hand to Sihtric. ‘Welcome,’ he said to the boy.
Father Willibald, who had come running when he first heard my furious challenge, also stepped over the hazel branches. ‘You can sheathe your sword, lord,’ he said gently. He was too frightened to come close, but brave enough to stand in front of me and gently push Serpent-Breath aside. ‘You can sheathe the sword,’ he repeated.
‘The boy lives!’ I snarled at him.
‘Yes, lord,’ Willibald said softly, ‘the boy lives.’
Gisela was watching me, eyes as bright as when she had welcomed her brother back from slavery. Hild was watching Gisela.
And I was still lacking one severed head.
We left at dawn, an army going to war.
Ulf’s men were the vanguard, then came the horde of churchmen carrying Abbot Eadred’s three precious boxes, and behind them Guthred rode a white mare. Gisela walked beside her brother and I walked close behind while Hild led Witnere, though when she was tired I insisted she climb into the stallion’s saddle.
Hild looked like a nun. She had plaited her long golden hair and then twisted the plaits about her skull, and over it she wore a pale grey hood. Her cloak was of the same pale grey and around her neck hung a plain wooden cross that she fingered as she rode. ‘They’ve been pestering you, haven’t they?’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘The priests,’ I said. ‘Father Willibald. They’ve been telling you to go back to the nunnery.’
‘God has been pestering me,’ she said. I looked up at her and she smiled as if to reassure me that she would not burden me with her dilemma. ‘I prayed to Saint Cuthbert,’ she said.
‘Did he answer?’
She fingered her cross. ‘I just prayed,’ she said calmly, ‘and that’s a beginning.’
‘Don’t you like being free?’ I asked her harshly.
Hild laughed at that. ‘I’m a woman,’ she said, ‘how can I be free?’ I said nothing and she smiled at me. ‘I’m like mistletoe,’ she said, ‘I need a branch to grow on. Without the branch, I’m nothing.’ She spoke without bitterness, as if she merely stated an obvious truth. And it was true. She was a woman of good family and if she had not been given to the church then, like little Æthelflaed, she would have been given to a man. That is woman’s fate. In time I knew a woman who defied
it, but Hild was like the ox that missed its yoke on a feast day.
‘You’re free now,’ I said.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m dependant on you.’ She looked at Gisela who was laughing at something her brother had just said. ‘And you are taking good care, Uhtred, not to shame me.’ She meant I was not humiliating her by abandoning her to pursue Gisela, and that was true, but only just true. She saw my expression and laughed. ‘In many ways,’ she said, ‘you’re a good Christian.’
‘I am?’
‘You try to do the right thing, don’t you?’ She laughed at my shocked expression. ‘I want you to make me a promise,’ she said.
‘If I can,’ I said cautiously.
‘Promise me you won’t steal Saint Oswald’s head to make up the eight.’
I laughed, relieved that the promise did not involve Gisela. ‘I was thinking about it,’ I admitted.
‘I know you were,’ she said, ‘but it won’t work. It’s too old. And you’ll make Eadred unhappy.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
She ignored that question. ‘Seven heads are enough,’ she insisted.
‘Eight would be better.’
‘Greedy Uhtred,’ she said.
The seven heads were now sewn into a sack which Sihtric had put on a donkey that he led by a rope. Flies buzzed around the sack, which stank so that Sihtric walked alone.
We were a strange army. Not counting churchmen, we numbered three hundred and eighteen men, and with us marched at least that many women and children and the usual scores of dogs. There were sixty or seventy priests and monks and I would have exchanged every one of them for more horses or more warriors. Of the three hundred and eighteen men I doubted that even a hundred were worth putting in a shield wall. In truth we were not an army, but a rabble.
The monks chanted as they walked. I suppose they chanted in Latin, for I did not understand the words. They had draped Saint Cuthbert’s coffin with a fine green cloth embroidered with crosses and that morning a raven had spattered the cloth with shit. At first I took this to be a bad omen, then decided that as the raven was Odin’s bird he was merely showing his displeasure with the dead Christian and so I applauded the god’s joke, thus getting a malignant look from Brothers Ida and Jænberht.
‘What do we do,’ Hild asked me, ‘if we get to Eoferwic and find that Ivarr has returned?’
‘We run away, of course.’
She laughed. ‘You’re happy, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m away from Alfred,’ I said, and I realised that was true.
‘Alfred is a good man,’ Hild chided me.
‘He is,’ I answered, ‘but do you ever look forward to his company? Do you brew special ale for him? Do you remember a joke to tell him? Does anyone ever sit by a fire and try him with riddles? Do we sing with him? All he ever does is worry about what his god wants, and he makes rules to please his god, and if you do something for him it’s never enough because his wretched god just wants more.’
Hild gave me her customary patient smile when I insulted her god. ‘Alfred wants you back,’ she said.
‘He wants my sword,’ I said, ‘not me.’
‘Will you go back?’
‘No,’ I said firmly, and I tried to see into the future to test that answer, but I did not know what the spinners who make our fate planned for me. Somehow, with this rabble of men, I hoped to destroy Kjartan and capture Bebbanburg, and hard sense told me it could not be done, but hard sense would never have imagined that a freed slave would be accepted as king by Saxon and Dane alike.
‘You’ll never go back?’ Hild asked, sceptical of my first answer.
‘Never,’ I said, and I could hear the spinners laughing at me and I feared that fate had tied me to Alfred and I resented that because it suggested I was not my own master. Perhaps I was mistletoe too, except I had a duty. I had a bloodfeud to finish.
We followed the Roman roads across the hills. It took us five days, slow going, but we could go no faster than the monks carrying the saint’s corpse on their shoulders. Every night they said prayers, and every day new folk joined us so that as we marched on the last day across the flat plain towards Eoferwic we numbered close to five hundred men. Ulf, who now called himself Earl Ulf, led the march under his banner of an eagle’s head. He had come to like Guthred, and Ulf and I were the king’s closest advisors. Eadred was also close, of course, but Eadred had little to say about matters of war. Like most churchmen he assumed his god would bring us victory, and that was all he had to contribute. Ulf and I, on the other hand, had plenty to say and the gist of it was that five hundred half-trained men were not nearly enough to capture Eoferwic if Egbert had a mind to defend it.
But Egbert was in despair. There is a tale in a Christian holy book about a king who saw some writing on the wall. I have heard the story a few times, but cannot remember the details, except that it was a king and there were words on his wall and they frightened him. I think the Christian god wrote the words, but I am not even sure about that. I could send for my wife’s priest, for I allow her to employ such a creature these days, and I could ask him for the details, but he would only grovel at my feet and beg that I increase his family’s allowance of fish, ale and firewood, which I do not wish to do, so the details do not matter now. There was a king, his wall had words on it and they frightened him.
It was Willibald who put that story into my head. He was crying as we entered the city, crying tears of joy, and when he learned that Egbert would not resist us, he began shouting that the king had seen the writing on the wall. Over and over he shouted it, and it made no sense to me at the time, but now I know what he meant. He meant that Egbert knew he had lost before he had even begun to fight.
Eoferwic had been expecting Ivarr’s return and many of its citizens, fearing the Dane’s revenge, had left. Egbert had a bodyguard, of course, but most had deserted him so that now his household troops only numbered twenty-eight men and not one of them wanted to die for a king with writing on his wall, and the remaining citizens were in no mood to barricade the gates or man the wall, and so Guthred’s army marched in without meeting any resistance. We were welcomed. I think the folk of Eoferwic thought we had come to defend them against Ivarr rather than take the crown from Egbert, but even when they learned that they had a new king they seemed happy enough. What cheered them most, of course, was the presence of Saint Cuthbert, and Eadred propped the saint’s coffin in the archbishop’s church, opened the lid, and the folk crowded in to see the dead man and say prayers to him.
Wulfhere, the archbishop, was not in the city, but Father Hrothweard was still there and still preaching madness, and he sided instantly with Eadred. I suppose he had seen the writing on the wall too, but the only writing I saw were crosses scratched on doorways. These were supposed to indicate that Christians lived inside, but most of the surviving Danes also displayed the cross as a protection against plunderers, and Guthred’s men wanted plunder. Eadred had promised them lascivious women and heaps of silver, but now the abbot strove mightily to protect the city’s Christians from Guthred’s Danes. There was some trouble, but not much. Folk had the good sense to offer coins, food and ale rather than be robbed, and Guthred discovered chests of silver inside the palace and he distributed the money to his army and there was plenty of ale in the taverns, so for the moment the men of Cumbraland were happy enough.
‘What would Alfred do?’ Guthred asked me on that first evening in Eoferwic. It was a question I was getting used to, for somehow Guthred had convinced himself that Alfred was a king worth emulating. This time he asked me the question about Egbert who had been discovered in his bedchamber. Egbert had been dragged to the big hall where he went on his knees to Guthred and swore fealty. It was a strange sight, one king kneeling to another, and the old Roman hall lit by braziers that filled the upper part with smoke, and behind Egbert were his courtiers and servants who also knelt and shuffled forwa
rd to promise loyalty to Guthred. Egbert looked old, ill and unhappy while Guthred was a shining young monarch. I had found Egbert’s mail and given it to Guthred who wore the armour because it made him look regal. He was cheerful with the deposed king, raising him from his knees and kissing him on both cheeks, then courteously inviting him to sit beside him.
‘Kill the old bastard,’ Ulf said.
‘I am minded to be merciful,’ Guthred said regally.
‘You’re minded to be an idiot,’ Ulf retorted. He was in a gloomy mood for Eoferwic had not yielded a quarter of the plunder he had expected, but he had found twin girls who pleased him and they kept him from making too many complaints.
When the ceremonies were over, and after Eadred had bellowed an interminable prayer, Guthred walked with me through the city. I think he wanted to show off his new armour, or perhaps he just wanted to clear his head from the smoke fumes in the palace. He drank ale in every tavern, joking with his men in English and Danish, and he kissed at least fifty girls, but then he led me on to the ramparts and we walked for a time in silence until we came to the city’s eastern side where I stopped and looked across the field to where the river lay like a sheet of beaten silver under a half-moon. ‘This is where my father died,’ I said.
‘Sword in hand?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good,’ he said, forgetting for a moment that he was a Christian. ‘But a sad day for you.’
‘It was a good day,’ I said, ‘I met Earl Ragnar. And I never much liked my father.’
‘You didn’t?’ he sounded surprised. ‘Why not?’
‘He was a grim beast,’ I said. ‘Men wanted his approval, and it was grudging.’
‘Like you, then,’ he said, and it was my turn to be surprised.
‘Me?’
‘My grim Uhtred,’ he said, ‘all anger and threat. So tell me what I do about Egbert?’
‘What Ulf suggests,’ I said, ‘of course.’