The Pale Horseman

  “Unless the Danes send a fleet,” I said.

  “Guthrum has that in mind,” Pyrlig said. “He wants the Danes in Lundene to send their ships to the south coast.”

  “You know that?”

  “I do indeed, I do indeed! He told me! I’ve just spent ten days in Cippanhamm. I speak Danish, see, because I’m clever, and so I was an ambassador for my king. How about that! Me, who used to eat mud, an ambassador! Crumble the cheese finer, my love. That’s right. I had to discover, you see, how much money Guthrum would pay us to bring our spearmen over the hills and start skewering Saxons. Now that’s a fine ambition for a Briton, skewering Saxons, but the Danes are pagans, and God knows we can’t have pagans loose in the world.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s just a fancy of mine,” he said, “just a fancy.” He stabbed his finger into a tiny pot of butter, then licked it. “It isn’t really sour,” he told Iseult, “not very, so stir it in.” He grinned at me. “What happens when you put two bulls to a herd of cows?”

  “One bull dies.”

  “There you are! Gods are the same, which is why we don’t want pagans here. We’re cows and the gods are bulls.”

  “So we get humped?”

  He laughed. “Theology’s difficult. Anyway, God is my bull so here I am, telling the Saxons about Guthrum.”

  “Did Guthrum offer you money?” I asked.

  “He offered me the kingdoms of the world! He offered me gold, silver, amber, and jet! He even offered me women, or boys if I had that taste, which I don’t. And I didn’t believe a single promise he made. Not that it mattered. The Britons aren’t going to fight anyway. God doesn’t want us to. No! My embassy was all a pretense. Brother Asser sent me. He wanted me to spy on the Danes, see? Then tell Alfred what I saw, so that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Asser sent you?”

  “He wants Alfred to win. Not because he loves the Saxons—even Brother Asser isn’t that curdled—but because he loves God.”

  “And will Alfred win?”

  “If God has anything to do with it, yes,” Pyrlig said cheerfully, then gave a shrug. “But the Danes are strong in men. A big army! But they’re not happy, I can tell you that. And they’re all hungry. Not starving, mind you, but pulling their belts tighter than they’d like, and now Svein’s there so there’ll be even less food. Their own fault, of course. Too many men in Cippanhamm! And too many slaves! They have scores of slaves. But he’s sending the slaves to Lundene, to sell them there. They need some baby eels, eh? That’ll fatten them up.” The elvers were swarming into the Sæfern Sea and slithering up the shallow waterways of the swamp where they were being netted in abundance. There was no hunger in Æthelingæg, not if you gorged on elvers. “I caught three basketfuls yesterday,” Pyrlig said happily, “and a frog. It had a face just like Brother Asser so I gave it a blessing and threw it back. Don’t just stir the eggs, girl! Beat them! I hear your son died?”

  “Yes,” I answered stiffly.

  “I am sorry,” he said with genuine feeling, “I am truly sorry, for to lose a child is a desperate hard thing. I sometimes think God must like children. He takes so many to him. I believe there’s a garden in heaven, a green garden where children play all the time. He’s got two sons of mine up there, and I tell you, the youngest must be making the angels scream. He’ll be pulling the girls’ hair and beating up the other boys like they were goose eggs.”

  “You lost two sons?”

  “But I kept three others and four daughters. Why do you think I’m never home?” He grinned at me. “Noisy little things they are, children, and such appetites! Sweet Jesus, they’d eat a horse a day if they could! There are some folk who say priests shouldn’t marry and there are times I think they’re right. Do you have any bread, dearest?”

  Iseult pointed to a net hanging from the roof. “Cut the mold off,” she told me.

  “I like to see a man obeying a woman,” Father Pyrlig said as I fetched the loaf.

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “Because it means I’m not alone in this sorry world. Good God, but that Ælswith was weaned on gall juice, wasn’t she? Got a tongue in her like a starving weasel! Poor Alfred.”

  “He’s happy enough.”

  “Good God, man, that’s the last thing he is! Some folk catch God like a disease, and he’s one of them. He’s like a cow after winter, he is.”

  “He is?”

  “You know when the late spring grass comes in? All green and new and rich? And you put the poor cow out to eat and she blows up like a bladder? She’s nothing but shit and wind and then she gets the staggers and drops down dead if you don’t take her off the grass for a while. That’s Alfred. He got too much of the good green grass of God, and now he’s sick on it. But he’s a good man, a good man. Too thin, he is, but good. A living saint, no less. Ah, good girl, let’s eat.” He scooped some of the eggs with his fingers, then passed the pot to me. “Thank God it’s Easter next week,” he said with his mouth full so that scraps of egg lodged in his huge beard, “and then we can eat meat again. I’m wasting away without meat. You know Iseult will be baptized at Easter?”

  “She told me,” I said shortly.

  “And you don’t approve? Just think of it as a good wash. Then maybe you won’t mind so much.”

  I was not in Æthelingæg for Iseult’s baptism, nor did I wish to be, for I knew Easter with Alfred would be nothing but prayers and psalms and priests and sermons. Instead I took Steapa and fifty men up into the hills, going toward Cippanhamm, for Alfred had ordered that the Danes were to be harried mercilessly in the next few weeks. He had decided to assemble the fyrd of Wessex close to Ascension Day, which was just six weeks away, and those were the weeks in which Guthrum would be hoping to revive his hungry horses on the spring grass, and so we rode to ambush Danish forage parties. Kill one forage party and the next must be protected by a hundred extra horsemen, and that wearies the horses even more and so requires still more forage. It worked for a while, but then Guthrum began sending his foragers north into Mercia where they were not opposed.

  It was a time of waiting. There were two smiths in Æthelingæg now and, though neither had all the equipment they wanted, and though fuel for their furnaces was scarce, they were making good spear points. One of my jobs was to take men to cut ash poles for the spear shafts. Alfred was writing letters, trying to discover how many men the shires could bring to battle, and he sent priests to Frankia to persuade the thegns who had fled there to return. More spies came from Cippanhamm confirming that Svein had joined Guthrum and that Guthrum was strengthening his horses and raising men from the Danish parts of England. He was ordering his West Saxon allies like Wulfhere to arm their men, and warning his garrisons in Wintanceaster, Readingum, and Baðum that they must be ready to abandon their ramparts and march to his aid. Guthrum had his own spies and must have known Alfred was planning to assemble an army, and I dare say he welcomed that news for such an army would be Alfred’s last hope and, should Guthrum destroy the fyrd, Wessex would fall, never to rise again.

  Æthelingæg seethed with rumor. Guthrum, it was said, had five thousand men. Ships had come from Denmark and a new army of Norsemen had sailed from Ireland. The Britons were marching. The fyrd of Mercia was on Guthrum’s side, and it was said the Danes had set up a great camp at Cracgelad on the river Temes where thousands of Mercian troops, both Danish and Saxon, were assembling. The rumors of Guthrum’s strength crossed the sea and Wilfrith of Hamptonscir wrote from Frankia begging Alfred to flee Wessex. “Take ship to this coast,” he wrote, “and save your family.”

  Leofric rarely rode on patrols with us but stayed in Æthelingæg, for he had been named commander of the king’s bodyguard. He was proud of that, as he should have been, for he had been peasant born and he could neither read nor write, and Alfred usually insisted that his commanders were literate. Eanflæd’s influence was behind the appointment, for she had become a confidante of Ælswith. Alfred’s wife went nowhere without
Eanflæd—even in church the onetime whore sat just behind Ælswith—and when Alfred held court, Eanflæd was always there. “The queen doesn’t like you,” Eanflæd told me one rare day when I found her alone.

  “She’s not a queen,” I said. “Wessex doesn’t have queens.”

  “She should be a queen,” she said indignantly. “It would be right and proper.” She was carrying a heap of plants and I noticed her forearms were a pale green. “Dyeing,” she explained brusquely, and I followed her to where a great cauldron was bubbling on a fire. She threw in the plants and began stirring the mess in the pot. “We’re making green linen,” she said.

  “Green linen?”

  “Alfred must have a banner,” she said indignantly. “He can’t fight without a banner.” The women were making two banners. One was the great green dragon flag of Wessex, while the other bore the cross of Christianity. “Your Iseult’s working on the cross,” Eanflæd told me.

  “I know.”

  “You should have been at her baptism.”

  “I was killing Danes.”

  “But I’m glad she’s baptized. Come to her senses, she has.”

  In truth, I thought, Iseult had been battered into Christianity. For weeks she had endured the rancor of Alfred’s churchmen, had been accused of witchcraft and of being the devil’s instrument, and it had worn her down. Then came Hild with her gentler Christianity, and Pyrlig who spoke of God in Iseult’s tongue, and Iseult had been persuaded. That meant I was the only pagan left in the swamp and Eanflæd glanced pointedly at my hammer amulet. She said nothing of it, instead asking me whether I truly believed we could defeat the Danes.

  “Yes,” I said confidently, though of course I did not know.

  “How many men will Guthrum have?”

  I knew the questions were not Eanflæd’s but Ælswith’s. Alfred’s wife wanted to know if her husband had any chance of survival or whether they should take the ship we had captured from Svein and sail to Frankia. “Guthrum will lead four thousand men,” I said, “at least.”

  “At least?”

  “Depends how many come from Mercia,” I said, then thought for a heartbeat, “but I expect four thousand.”

  “And Wessex?”

  “The same,” I said. I was lying. With enormous luck we could assemble three thousand, but I doubted it. Two thousand? Not likely, but possible. My real fear was that Alfred would raise his banner and no one would come, or that only a few hundred men would arrive. We could lead three hundred from Æthelingæg, but what could three hundred do against Guthrum’s great army?

  Alfred also worried about numbers, and he sent me to Hamptonscir to discover how much of the shire was occupied by the Danes. I found them well entrenched in the north, but the south of the shire was free of them and in Hamtun, where Alfred’s fleet was based, the war ships were still drawn up on the beach. Burgweard, the fleet’s commander, had over a hundred men in the town, all that was left of his crews, and he had them manning the palisade. He claimed he could not leave Hamtun for fear that the Danes would attack and capture the ships, but I had Alfred’s scrap of parchment with his dragon seal on it, and I used it to order him to keep thirty men to protect the ships and bring the rest to Alfred.

  “When?” he asked gloomily.

  “When you’re summoned,” I said, “but it will be soon. And you’re to raise the local fyrd, too. Bring them.”

  “And if the Danes come here?” he asked. “If they come by sea?”

  “Then we lose the fleet,” I said, “and we build another.”

  His fear was real enough. Danish ships were off the south coast again. For the moment, rather than attempt an invasion, they were being Vikings. They landed, raided, raped, burned, stole, and went to sea again, but they were numerous enough for Alfred to worry that a whole army might land somewhere on the coast and march against him. We were harassed by that fear and by the knowledge that we were few and the enemy numerous, and that the enemy’s horses were fattening on the new grass.

  “Ascension Day,” Alfred announced on the day I returned from Hamtun.

  That was the day we should be ready in Æthelingæg, and on the Sunday after, which was the Feast of Saint Monica, we would gather the fyrd, if there was a fyrd. Reports said the Danes were readying to march and it was plain they would launch their attack south toward Wintanceaster, the town that was the capital of Wessex, and to protect it, to bar Guthrum’s road south, the fyrd would gather at Egbert’s Stone. I had never heard of the place, but Leofric assured me it was an important spot, the place where King Egbert, Alfred’s grandfather, had given judgments. “It isn’t one stone,” he said, “but three.”

  “Three?”

  “Two big pillars and another boulder on top. The giants made it in the old days.”

  And so the summons were issued. Bring every man, the parchments instructed, bring every weapon, and say your prayers, for what is left of Wessex will meet at Egbert’s Stone to carry battle to the Danes, and no sooner was the summons sent than disaster struck. It came just a week before the fyrd was to gather.

  Huppa, Ealdorman of Thornsæta, wrote that forty Danish ships were off his coast and that he dared not lead the fyrd away from their threat. Worse, because the Danes were so numerous, he had begged Harald of Defnascir to lend him men.

  That letter almost destroyed Alfred’s spirits. He had clung to his dream of surprising Guthrum by raising an unexpectedly powerful army, but all his hopes were now shredding away. He had always been thin, but suddenly he looked haggard and he spent hours in the church, wrestling with God, unable to understand why the Almighty had so suddenly turned against him. And two days after the news of the Danish fleet, Svein of the White Horse led three hundred mounted men in a raid against the hills on the edge of the swamp and, because scores of men from the Sumorsæte fyrd had gathered in Æthelingæg, Svein discovered and stole their horses. We had neither the room nor the forage to keep many horses in Æthelingæg itself, and so they were pastured beyond the causeway, and I watched from the fort as Svein, riding a white horse and wearing his white-plumed helmet and white cloak, rounded up the beasts and drove them away. There was nothing I could do to stop him. I had twenty men in the fort and Svein was leading hundreds.

  “Why were the horses not guarded?” Alfred wanted to know.

  “They were,” Wiglaf, Ealdorman of Sumorsæte, said, “and the guards died.” He saw Alfred’s anger, but not his despair. “We haven’t seen a Dane here for weeks!” he pleaded. “How were we to know they’d come in force?”

  “How many men died?”

  “Only twelve.”

  “Only?” Alfred asked, wincing. “And how many horses lost?”

  “Sixty-three.”

  On the night before Ascension Day Alfred walked beside the river. Beocca, faithful as a hound, followed him at a distance, wanting to offer the king God’s reassurance, but instead Alfred called to me. There was a moon, and its light shadowed his cheeks and made his pale eyes look almost white. “How many men will we have?” he asked abruptly.

  I did not need to think about the answer. “Two thousand.”

  He nodded. He knew that number as well as I did.

  “Maybe a few more,” I suggested.

  He grunted at that. We would lead three hundred and fifty men from Æthelingæg and Wiglaf, Ealdorman of Sumorsæte, had promised a thousand, though in truth I doubted if that many would come. The fyrd of Wiltunscir had been weakened by Wulfhere’s defection, but the southern part of the shire should yield five hundred men, and we could expect some from Hamptonscir, but beyond that we would depend on whatever few men made it past the Danish garrisons that now ringed the heartland of Wessex. If Defnascir and Thornsæta had sent their fyrds, then we would have numbered closer to four thousand, but they were not coming.

  “And Guthrum?” Alfred asked. “How many will he have?”

  “Four thousand.”

  “More like five,” Alfred said. He stared at the river that was running low betw
een the muddy banks. The water rippled about the wicker fish traps. “So should we fight?”

  “What choice do we have?”

  He smiled at that. “We have a choice, Uhtred,” he assured me. “We can run away. We can go to Frankia. I could become a king in exile and pray that God brings me back.”

  “You think God will?”

  “No,” he admitted. If he ran away, then he knew he would die in exile.

  “So we fight,” I said.

  “And on my conscience,” he said, “I will forever bear the weight of all those men who died in a hopeless cause. Two thousand against five thousand? How can I justify leading so few against so many?”

  “You know how.”

  “So I can be king?”

  “So that we are not slaves in our own land,” I said.

  He pondered that for a while. An owl flew low overhead, a sudden surprise of white feathers and the rush of air across stubby wings. It was an omen, I knew, but of what kind? “Perhaps we are being punished,” Alfred said.

  “For what?”

  “For taking the land from the Britons?”

  That seemed nonsense to me. If Alfred’s god wanted to punish him for his ancestors having taken the land from the Britons, then why send the Danes? Why not send the Britons? God could resurrect Arthur and let his people have their revenge, but why send a new people to take the land? “Do you want Wessex or not?” I asked harshly.

  He said nothing for a while, then gave a sad smile. “In my conscience,” he said, “I can find no hope for this fight, but as a Christian I must believe we can win it. God will not let us lose.”

  “Nor will this,” I said, and I slapped Serpent-Breath’s hilt.

  “So simple?” he asked.

  “Life is simple,” I said. “Ale, women, sword, and reputation. Nothing else matters.”

  He shook his head and I knew he was thinking about God and prayer and duty, but he did not argue. “So if you were I, Uhtred,” he said, “would you march?”