They could have defeated me at that moment. If the Witan had risen in protest, if they had shouted me down, then the whole pretence would have been in vain, but I had shocked them into silence and it was during that silence that Æthelflaed entered from the side door. She still wore funeral black, though over the silk dress she had draped a white cloak embroidered with blue crosses entwined with pale green withies. The long cloak trailed on the floor. She looked beautiful. Her hair was plaited and wrapped around her skull, a necklace of emeralds hung at her neck, and in her right hand was her dead husband’s sword. No one spoke as she crossed the dais. I sensed the Witan was holding its breath as I gave her the helmet. She handed me the sword so that she could use both hands to pull the helmet over her golden hair, then, without a word, she sat on the empty throne and I gave her back the sword.
And the hall cheered. The Witan was suddenly loud with acclamation. Men stood and stamped their feet, they shouted at her, and Æthelflaed’s face did not stir. She looked stern, she looked like a queen. And why did the hall suddenly acclaim her? Maybe it was the relief that I was not to be their lord, but I like to think that they had secretly wanted Æthelflaed all along, but none had dared fly in the face of custom by proposing her name. Yet all the Witan knew that she had proven herself as a warrior, as a ruler, and as a Mercian. She was the Lady of Mercia.
‘You bastard,’ Æthelhelm said to me.
Oaths were sworn. It took the best part of an hour as, one by one, the ealdormen and chief thegns of Mercia went to Æthelflaed, knelt before her, and swore their loyalty. Her husband’s household warriors and her own troops stood at the hall’s edges, and they were the only men permitted to carry swords. If any man there was reluctant to swear fealty then those blades persuaded him to sense, and, by midday, all of the Witan had clasped hands with their new ruler and promised her loyal service.
She spoke briefly. She praised Mercia and promised that those lands to the north still infested by pagans would be freed. ‘To which end,’ she said, her voice clear and strong, ‘I shall require troops from you all. We are a nation at war, and we shall win that war.’ And that was the difference between her and her dead husband. Æthelred had done just enough to fend off Danish incursions, but he had never wanted to attack the Danish lands. Æthelflaed would scourge them from the kingdom. ‘Lord Uhtred?’ she looked at me.
‘My lady?’
‘Your oath.’
And so I knelt to her. The sword’s tip was resting on the floor between her feet, her hands clasped about the heavy hilt, and I put my hands around hers. ‘I swear loyalty to you, my lady,’ I said, ‘to be your man and to support you with all my might.’
‘Look at me.’ She had dropped her voice so only I could hear. I looked into her face and saw she had forced a smile. ‘Eadith?’ she hissed, bending towards me and still forcing the smile.
I wondered who had told her. ‘You want her oath too?’ I asked.
‘You bastard,’ she said. I felt her hands twitch beneath mine. ‘Get rid of her.’ She still spoke in a hiss, then raised her voice. ‘Take your troops north to Ceaster, Lord Uhtred. You have work to do.’
‘I will, my lady,’ I answered.
‘Fifty of my men will go with you,’ she announced, ‘and the Prince Æthelstan will accompany you.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ I said. It was sensible, I thought, to remove Æthelstan as far as possible from Æthelhelm’s ambitions.
‘I will follow as soon as I am able,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘but there is work to do first.’ She was speaking to the whole Witan now. ‘There are lands to distribute and responsibilities to be given. Bishop Wulfheard?’
‘My lady?’ He sounded nervous.
‘You were my husband’s most valued adviser. I trust you will stay as head of my council?’
‘With God’s help, my lady, I hope to serve you as I served him.’ You could hear the relief in the bastard’s voice. Æthelflaed had seduced Eardwulf’s men into loyalty, now she would start on her dead husband’s supporters, and by so publicly appointing Wulfheard she was giving notice that those supporters had no reason to fear her enmity. Yet she had cause to fear Æthelhelm’s anger. I watched him as I moved to the side of the dais, and I could see he was angry, his usually genial face tight with fury. He would be waiting for her to make a mistake or to lose land to the pagans, and then he would use his money and influence to have her replaced.
And if land was to be lost it would be in the north, so I would go to Ceaster, because that city was not yet entirely safe from our enemies. There was work to do there and Norsemen to fight.
But first I had to find a sword.
PART THREE
The God of War
Eight
The oars dipped, pulled slow, and rose. The long blades dripped water, swung forward, then dipped again. The boat surged with each long stroke, then slowed as the oars trailed their drips in the grey-green Sæfern. We were not hurrying because the tide and the river’s current were carrying us to the sea, and the oar strokes just held the Ðrines steady and let the steering-oar bite. Finan was chanting a slow, sad-sounding song in his native Irish, the rhythm driving the thirty-six men who pulled on the Ðrines’s oars. More men sat in the bows, idly watching the reeds bend to the Ðrines’s wake. Ðrines! Why name a ship after the trinity? I have yet to meet a single priest, monk, nun or scholar who can explain the trinity to me. Three gods in one? And one of those a ghost?
It had been three days since Æthelflaed was acclaimed as Mercia’s ruler. I had sworn loyalty to her, then taken the cross from about my neck and tossed it to Finan, replacing the bauble with my usual hammer. That done I had taken Father Ceolberht by the scruff of his gown and dragged him through the side door of the great hall. Æthelflaed had called a sharp reprimand, but I ignored her, dragging the squealing priest into the passageway, where I slammed him against the wall. Pulling him and pushing him had made the ache in my rib sudden agony, and the smell of the leaking pus was vile, but my anger was far greater than the pain. ‘You lied to me, you toothless bastard,’ I told him.
‘I …’ he began, but I slammed him again, hammering his balding head against the stones of the Roman wall.
‘You told me you didn’t know what happened to Ice-Spite,’ I said.
‘I …’ he tried a second time, but again I gave him no chance to speak, just thrust him hard into the wall, and he whimpered.
‘You carried the sword from the battle,’ I said, ‘and you brought it here.’ That was what Eadith had told me. She had seen the priest carrying the sword. Her brother Eardwulf had even offered to buy the blade, but Ceolberht had refused, saying it had been promised to another. ‘So where is it?’ I asked, but Ceolberht said nothing, just looked at me in terror. Finan came through the door from the hall and raised an eyebrow. ‘We’re going to disembowel this lying priest,’ I told the Irishman, ‘but slowly. Give me a knife.’
‘Lord!’ Ceolberht gasped.
‘Tell me, you turd-slime, what you did with Cnut’s sword.’
He just whimpered again, so I took the knife Finan offered me. The edges were so sharp they looked feathered. A man could have shaved with that blade. I smiled at Ceolberht and slid the knife through his black robe till the tip touched the skin of his belly. ‘I will gut you slowly,’ I said, ‘so very slowly.’ I felt the needle-sharp tip puncture his skin, provoking a mewing sound. ‘So where is it?’ I asked.
‘Lord!’ he gasped. I would not have gutted him, but he thought I would. His mouth opened and closed fast, his remaining teeth chattered, then at last he managed to speak. ‘It went to Scireburnan, lord.’
‘Say that again!’
‘It went to Scireburnan!’ he said in a desperate tone.
I held the knife still. Scireburnan was a town in Thornsæta, one of the richer shires of Wessex, and the land all about Scireburnan belonged to Æthelhelm. ‘You gave Ice-Spite to Æthelhelm?’ I asked.
‘No, lord!’
‘Then who, you basta
rd, who?’
‘To the bishop,’ he whispered.
‘To Wulfheard?’
‘He means Bishop Asser,’ Finan said drily.
‘Bishop Asser?’ I asked Ceolberht, who just nodded. I took the knife away from his belly and placed the bloodied tip a finger’s breadth from his right eye. ‘Maybe I’ll blind you,’ I said. ‘I’ve already taken your teeth, why not your eyes too? Then your tongue.’
‘Lord!’ It was scarcely a whisper. He dared not move.
‘Bishop Asser is dead,’ I said.
‘He wanted the sword, lord.’
‘So it’s at Scireburnan?’
He just moaned. I think he had wanted to shake his head, but he dared not.
‘Then,’ I let the blade’s tip touch the skin just beneath his lower eyelid, ‘where is it?’
‘Tyddewi,’ he whispered.
‘Tyddewi?’ I had never heard of the place.
‘Bishop Asser went there to die, lord,’ Ceolberht hardly dared to speak, and his voice was lower than a whisper, while his eyes were crossed as he stared at the knife’s wicked-looking blade. ‘He wanted to die at home, lord, so he went to Wales.’
I let go of Ceolberht, who fell to his knees in relief. I gave the knife back to Finan. ‘So it’s in Wales,’ I said.
‘Seems so,’ Finan wiped the blade clean.
Bishop Asser! That made sense. He was a man I hated, and he had hated me. He had been a vengeful little Welshman, a rabid priest, who had wormed his way into King Alfred’s affections and then licked the royal arse like a demented dog lapping up blood after the autumn livestock slaughter. I had fallen out with Asser long before he met Alfred, and he was never a man to abandon a grudge, and so he had ever struggled to create ill-feeling between the king and myself. If no Danes threatened, then Alfred would treat me like an outcast, egged on by Asser’s viperous hatred, but as soon as Wessex was under siege I would suddenly be back in favour, and that meant Asser had never managed to wreak his revenge on me. Until now.
His reward for licking Alfred’s arse was to be given monasteries and a bishopric with all their fat incomes. He had been made bishop of Scireburnan, an especially rich reward in a plump shire. I had heard that he had left the town just before he died, and had thought nothing of that news except to say a word of thanks to Thor and Woden for killing the cunning little bastard. But the bastard truly had been cunning because my wound was still hurting. Which meant someone else now possessed Cnut’s sword, and that someone must still be working Christian sorcery on the blade.
And that was why the Ðrines was heading west into a rising wind. The river was widening into the sea now. The Sæfern’s tide was still falling, the wind was growing, and whenever the wind opposes the tide the sea shortens, and so the Ðrines buffeted into sharp, steep waves. She had been one of Æthelred’s small fleet, which had patrolled the southern coast of Wales to deter the pirates who came out of the bays and inlets to harass Mercian traders. It had taken me two days to provision her, two days in which I constantly expected to be summoned and reprimanded by Æthelflaed for not obeying her. I should have been riding north to Ceaster, instead I had spent those days a few miles south of Gleawecestre where I had loaded the Ðrines with dried fish, bread, and ale. My daughter had wanted to come with me, but I had insisted she go with Æthelflaed’s fifty men who had been sent to reinforce Ceaster. A man who loves his daughter does not let her go into Wales. Æthelflaed had also insisted that her nephew, Æthelstan, go to Ceaster. He would be safe behind those tough Roman walls, a long way from Æthelhelm’s malice. His twin sister, Eadgyth, who offered no threat to Æthelhelm’s ambitions, had stayed with Æthelflaed in Gleawecestre.
The Ðrines was a good ship, except for her name. She was tightly made with a sail that had hardly been used, nor could we use it now for we were heading straight into the spiteful wind. I was letting my son be the helmsman and master and I saw him frown as a bigger wave threw the cross-decorated prow of the Ðrines sharply upwards, and I waited to see what decision he made, then watched as he thrust the steering-oar to take us on a more southerly course. Our destination lay on the northern shore, but he was right to go southerly. When the tide changed we would want the wind’s help, and he was making sea room so we could hoist the big sail and let it drive us. If the wind stayed as it was then I doubted we could make enough room, but it was more than likely that it would swing southerly too. Besides, I suspected we would shelter for a night on the Wessex coast, perhaps near the place where I had killed Ubba so many years before.
We numbered forty-six men, a considerable war-band, and Eadith had come too. Some of my men had wondered at that. Most folk consider that a woman aboard a ship brings nothing but bad luck because it provokes the jealousy of Ran, the goddess of the sea who will abide no rivals, but I dared not leave Eadith in Gleawecestre to suffer Æthelflaed’s jealousy. ‘She’ll kill the poor girl,’ I had told Finan.
‘She’ll send her to a nunnery, maybe?’
‘It’s the same thing. Besides,’ I lied, ‘Eadith knows Wales.’
‘She does, does she?’
‘Intimately,’ I said, ‘that’s why she’s going with us.’
‘Of course,’ he said and said no more.
Eadith, of course, knew nothing of Wales, but who did? Luckily Gerbruht had been to Tyddewi. He was a friend of my son’s and noted among my warriors for his appetite, which had made him fat, though much of that ox-like bulk was solid muscle. I summoned him to the stern of the boat where we sat just beside the steering platform and I made Eadith listen. ‘How do you know Wales?’ I asked Gerbruht.
‘I went on pilgrimage, lord.’
‘You did?’ I sounded surprised. Gerbruht struck me as a most unlikely pilgrim.
‘My father was a priest, lord,’ he explained.
‘He came from Frisia to visit Wales?’
‘King Alfred fetched him to Wintanceaster, lord, because my father knew Greek.’ That made sense. Alfred had brought dozens of foreign churchmen to Wessex, but only if they were learned. ‘So my father and mother liked to visit shrines,’ Gerbruht went on.
‘And they took you to Tyddewi?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘I was just a child, lord,’ he said.
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, ‘there’s a dead saint there.’
‘There is, lord!’ he sounded awed and made the sign of the cross. ‘Saint Dewi.’
‘Never heard of him. What did he do?’
‘He preached, lord.’
‘They all do that!’
‘Well the folk at the back of the crowd couldn’t see him, lord.’
‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Was he a dwarf?’
Gerbruht frowned, plainly trying to help me, but could find no answer. ‘I don’t know if he was a dwarf, lord, but they couldn’t see him so Dewi prayed to God and God made a hill under his feet.’
I stared at Gerbruht. ‘Dewi made a hill in Wales?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘And they call that a miracle?’
‘Oh yes, lord!’
Gerbruht did not have the quickest mind in my shield wall, but he was staunch and strong. He could pull an oar all day or wield a war axe with savage skill. ‘So tell me about Tyddewi,’ I ordered him.
He frowned again as he tried to remember. ‘It’s not far from the sea, lord.’
‘That’s good.’
‘There are monks there. Good men, lord.’
‘I’m sure they are.’
‘And hills, lord.’
‘Dewi was there,’ I said, ‘so perhaps he made them?’
‘Yes, lord!’ He liked that idea. ‘And they have little fields, lord, with lots of sheep.’
‘I like mutton.’
‘I do too, lord,’ he said enthusiastically.
‘Did you see any warriors at Tyddewi?’
He nodded, but he could not tell me if a lord lived anywhere near the monastery, nor whether the warriors had their home near the settlement. There was evidently a c
hurch where the hill-making saint was buried, and stone cells where the monks lived, but Gerbruht could not remember much about the nearby village. ‘The church is in a hollow, lord.’
‘A hollow?’
‘In low ground, lord.’
‘You’d have thought they’d make the church on a hill,’ I said.
‘On a hill, lord?’
‘The one Dewi made.’
‘No, lord,’ he frowned, perplexed, ‘it’s in low ground. And the monks fed us fish.’
‘Fish.’
‘And honey, lord.’
‘Together?’
He thought that was funny and laughed. ‘No, lord, not together. That wouldn’t taste nice.’ He looked at Eadith, expecting her to share the joke. ‘Fish and honey!’ he said, and she giggled, which pleased Gerbruht. ‘Fish and honey!’ he said again. ‘They were herrings.’
‘Herrings?’ Eadith asked, trying not to laugh.
‘And cockles, winkles, and eels. Mackerel too!’
‘So tell me about the warriors you saw.’
‘But the bread was strange, lord,’ he said earnestly, ‘it tasted of seaweed.’
‘Warriors?’ I prompted him.
‘There were some at Dewi’s shrine, lord.’
‘They could have been visiting? Like you?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Seaweed?’ Eadith asked.
‘The bread was knobbly, my lady, and sour. But I quite liked it.’
‘How did you get there?’ I asked him.
‘They led us down a path to the food hut, lord, and we ate with the monks.’
‘No! To Tyddewi!’
He frowned. ‘We rode, lord.’
Gerbruht could tell me little more. It was plain that Tyddewi was a place of Christian pilgrimage, and, if Gerbruht’s memory was correct, strangers could travel the rough tracks of the southern Welsh kingdoms in some safety, and that thought was encouraging. Christians do like pilgrims, those pious folk who gaze at pig bones that pretend to be dead saints and then give money, lots of money, and there’s hardly a church, monastery, or nunnery that does not have the eyelid of Saint John or the bellybutton of Saint Agatha or the pickled trotters of the Gadarene swine. Many such pilgrims are poor, yet the fools will give their last bent coin to receive the blessing of a thimbleful of dirt scraped from beneath a dead saint’s toenail, but the fact that Tyddewi welcomed such gullible fools was good because it meant we could arrive there in the guise of pilgrims.