Sworn Brother

Sworn brother

Maps

To my holy and blessed master, Abbot Ceraldus,

As requested of your unworthy servant, I send this, the second of the writings of the false monk Thangbrand. Alas, I must warn you that many times the work is even more disturbing than its antecedent. So deeply did the author's life descend into iniquity that many times I have been obliged, when reading his blasphemies, to set aside the pages that I might pray to Our Lord to cleanse my mind of such abominations and beseech Him to forgive the sinner who penned them. For here is a tale of continuing deceit and idolatry, of wantonness and wicked sin as well as violent death. Truly, the coils of deception, fraud and murder drag almost all men down to perdition.

The edges of many pages are scorched and burned by fire. From this I deduce that this Pharisee began to write his tale of depravity before be great conflagration so sadly destroyed our holy cathedral church of St Peter at York on 19 September in the year of our Lord 1069. By diligent enquiry I have learned that the holocaust revealed a secret cavity in the wall of the cathedral library, in which these writings had been concealed. A God-fearing member of our flock, making this discovery, brought the documents to my predecessor as librarian with joy, believing them to contain pious scripture. Lest further pages be discovered to dismay the unwary, I took it upon myself to visit the scene of that devastation and search the ruins. By God's mercy I found no further examples of the reprobate's writings, but with a heavy heart I observed that nothing now remains of our once-great cathedral church, neither the portico of St Gregory, nor the glass windows nor the panelled ceilings. Gone are the thirty altars. Gone too is the great altar to St Paul. So fierce was the heat of the fire that I found spatterings of once-molten tin from the bellcote roof. Even the great bell, fallen from the tower, lay misshapen and dumb. Mysterious indeed are the ways of the Lord that these profane words of the ungodly should survive such destruction.

So great is my abhorrence of what has emerged from that hidden pustule of impiety that I have been unable to complete my reading of all that was found. There remains one more bundle of documents which I have not dared to examine.

On behalf of our community, I pray for your inspired guidance and that the Almighty Lord may keep you securely in bliss. Amen.

Aethelred

Sacristan and Librarian

Written in the month of October in the Year of our Lord One thousand and seventy-one.

ONE

I lost my virginity — to a king's wife.

Few people can make such a claim, least of all when hunched over a desk in a monastery scriptorium while pretending to make a fair copy of St Luke's gospel, though in fact writing a life's chronicle. But that is how it was and I remember the scene clearly.

The two of us lay in the elegant royal bed, Aelfgifu snuggled luxuriously against me, her head resting on my shoulder, one arm flung contentedly across my ribs as if to own me. I could smell a faint perfume from the glossy sweep of dark chestnut hair which spread across my chest and cascaded down onto the pillow we shared. If Aelfgifu felt any qualms, as the woman who had just introduced a nineteen-year-old to the delights of lovemaking but who was already the wife of Knut, the most powerful ruler of the northern lands, she did not show them. She lay completely at ease, motionless. All I could feel was the faint pulse of her heart and the regular waft of her breath across my skin. I lay just as still, I neither dared to move nor wanted to. The enormity and the wonder of what had happened had yet to ebb. For the first time in my life I had experienced utter joy in the embrace of a beautiful woman. Here was a marvel which once tasted could forgotten.

The distant clang of a church bell broke into my reverie. The

sound slid through the window embrasure high in the queen's chambers and disturbed our quiet tranquillity. It was repeated, then joined by another bell and then another. Their metallic clamour reminded me where I was: London. No other city that I had visited boasted so many churches of the White Christ. They were springing up everywhere and the king was doing nothing to obstruct their construction, the king whose wife was now lying beside me, skin to skin.

The sound of the church bells made Aelfgifu stir. 'So, my little courtier,' she murmured, her voice muffled against my chest, 'you had better tell me something about yourself. My servants inform me that your name is Thorgils, but no one seems to know much about you. It's said you have come recently from Iceland. Is that correct?'

'Yes, in a way,' I replied tentatively. I paused, for I did not know how to address her. Should I call her 'my lady'? Or would that seem servile after the recent delight of our mingling, which she had encouraged with her caresses, and which had wrung from me the most intimate words? I hugged her closer and tried to combine both affection and deference in my reply, though I suspect my voice was trembling slightly.

'I arrived in London only two weeks ago. I came in the company of an Icelandic skald. He's taken me on as his pupil to learn how compose court poetry. He's hoping to find employment with . . .' Here my voice trailed away in embarrassment, for I was about to say 'the king'. Of course Aelfgifu guessed my words. She gave my ribs a little squeeze of encouragement and said, 'So that's why you were standing among my husband's skalds at the palace assembly. Go on.' She did not raise her head from my shoulder. Indeed, she pressed her body even more closely against me.

'I met the skald — his name's Herfid — last autumn on the island of Orkney off the Scottish coast, where I had been dropped off by a ship that rescued me from the sea of Ireland. It’s a complicated story, but the sailors found me in a small boat that

was sinking. They were very kind to me, and so was Herfid.' Tactfully I omitted to mention that I had been found drifting in what was hardly more than a leaky wickerwork bowl covered with cowskin, after I had been deliberately set afloat. I doubted whether Aelfgifu knew that this is a traditional punishment levied on convicted criminals by the Irish. My accusers had been monks too squeamish to spill blood. And while it was true that I had stolen their property — five decorative stones prised from a bible cover - I had only taken the baubles in an act of desperation and I felt not a shred of remorse. Certainly I did not see myself as a jewel thief. But I thought this would be a foolish revelation to make to the warm, soft woman curled up against me, particularly when the only item she was wearing was a valuable-looking necklace of silver coins.

"What about your family?' asked Aelfgifu, as if to satisfy herself on an important point.

'I don't have one,' I replied. 'I never really knew my mother. She died while I was a small child. She was part Irish, I'm told, and a few years ago I travelled to Ireland to find out more about her, but I never succeeded in learning anything. Anyhow, she didn't live with my father and she had already sent me off to stay with him by the time she died. My father, Leif, owns one of the largest farms in a country called Greenland. I spent most of my childhood there and in an even more remote land called Vinland. When I was old enough to try to make my own living I had the idea of becoming a professional skald as I've always enjoyed story-telling. All the best skalds come from Iceland, so I thought I would try my luck there.'

Again, I was being sparing with the truth. I did not tell Aelfgifu that my father Leif, known to his colleagues as 'the Lucky', had never been married to my mother, either in the Christian or pagan rite. Nor that Leif s official wife had repudiated her husband's illegitimate son and refused to have me in her household. That was why I had spent most of my life being shuttled from one country to the next, searching for some stability and purpose. But it occurred to me at that moment, as I lay next to Aelfgifu, that perhaps my father's luck spirit, his hamingja as the Norse say, had transferred to me. How else could I explain the fact that I had lost my virginity to the consort of Knut, ruler of England, and royal claimant to the thrones of Denmark and Norway?

It all happened so suddenly. I had arrived in London with my master Herfid only ten days earlier. He and the other skalds had been invited to a royal assembly held by King Knut to announce the start of his new campaign in Denmark, and I had gone along as Herfid's attendant. During the king's speech from the throne, I had been aware that someone in Knut's entourage was staring at me as I stood among the royal skalds. I had no idea who Aelfgifu was, only that, when our eyes met, there was no mistaking the appetite in her gaze. The day after Knut sailed for Denmark, taking his army with him, I had received a summons to attend Aelfgifu's private apartments at the palace.

'Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland . . . you are a wanderer, aren't you, my little courtier,' Aelfgifu said, 'and I've never even heard of Vinland.' She rolled onto one side and propped her head on a hand, so that she could trace the profile of my face, from forehead to chin, with her finger. It was to become a habit of hers. 'You're like my husband,' she said without embarrassment. 'It's all that Norse blood, never at home, always rushing about, constantly on the move, with a wanderlust that wants to look beyond the horizon or incite some action. I don't even try to understand it. I grew up in the heart of the English countryside, about as far from the sea as you can get. It's a calmer life, and though it can be a little dull at times, it's what I like. Anyhow, dullness can always be brightened up if you know what you are doing.'

I should have guessed her meaning, but I was too naive; besides, I was smitten by her sophistication and beauty. I was so intoxicated with what had happened that I was incapable of asking myself why a queen should take up with a young man so rapidly.

I was yet to learn how a woman can be attracted instantly and overwhelmingly by a man, and that women who live close to the seat of power can indulge their craving with speed and certainty if they wish. That is their prerogative. Years later I saw an empress go so far as to share her realm with a young man - half her age - who took her fancy, though of course I never stood in that relationship to my wondrous Aelfgifu. She cared for me, of that I am sure, but she was worldly enough to measure out her affection to me warily, according to opportunity. For my part, I should have taken heed of the risk that came from an affair with the king's wife, but I was so swept away by my feelings that nothing on earth would have deterred me from adoring her.

'Come,' she said abruptly, 'it's time to get up. My husband may be away on another of those ambitious military expeditions of his, but if I'm not seen about the palace for several hours people might get curious as to where I am and what I'm doing. The palace is full of spies and gossips, and my prim and prudish rival would be only too delighted to have a stick to beat me with.'

Here I should note that Aelfgifu was not Knut's only wife. He had married her to gain political advantage when he and his father, Svein Forkbeard, were plotting to extend their control beyond the half of England which the Danes already held after more than a century of Viking raids across what they called the 'English Sea'. Aelfgifu's people were Saxon aristocracy. Her father had been an ealdorman, their highest rank of nobility, who owned extensive lands in the border country where the Danish possessions rubbed up against the kingdom of the English ruler, Ethelred. Forkbeard calculated that if his son and heir had a high-born Saxon as wife, the neighbouring ealdormen would be more willing to defect to the Danish cause than to serve their own native monarch, whom they had caustically nicknamed 'the Ill-Advised' for his uncanny ability to wait until the last moment before taking any action and then do the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. Knut was twenty-four years old when he took Aelfgifu to be his wife, she was two years younger. By the time Aelfgifu invited me to her

bedchamber four years later, she was a mature and ripe woman despite her youthful appearance and beauty, and her ambitious husband had risen to become the undisputed king of all England, for Ethelred was in his grave, and - as a step to reassure the English nobility - Knut had married Ethelred's widow, Emma.

Emma was fourteen years older than Knut, and Knut had not bothered to divorce Aelfgifu. The only people who might have objected to his bigamy, namely the Christian priests who infested Emma's household, had found a typically weasel excuse. Knut, they said, had never properly married Aelfgifu because there had been no Christian wedding. In their phrase it was a marriage 'in the Danish custom', ad mores danaos - how they loved their church Latin — and did not need to be set aside. Now, behind their hands, they were calling Aelfgifu 'the concubine'. By contrast Knut's earls, his personal retinue of noblemen from Denmark and the Norse lands, approved the dual marriage. In their opinion this was how great kings should behave in matters of state and they liked Aelfgifu. With her slender figure and grace, she was a far more attractive sight at royal assemblies than the dried-up widow Emma with her entourage of whispering prelates. They found that Aelfgifu behaved more in the way that a well-regarded woman in the Norse world should: she was down to earth, independent minded and at times - as I was shortly to discover - she was an accomplished schemer.

Aelfgifu rose from our love bed with typical decisiveness. She slid abruptly to the side, stepped onto the floor — giving me a heart-melting glimpse of her curved back and hips — and, picking up the pale grey and silver shift that she had discarded an hour earlier, slid the garment over her nakedness. Then she turned to me, as I lay there, almost paralysed with fresh longing. ‘I’ll arrange for my maid to show you discreetly out of the palace. She can be trusted. Wait until I contact you again. You've got another journey to make, though not nearly as far as your previous ones. Then she turned and vanished behind a screen.

Still in a daze, I reached the lodging house where the royal skalds were accommodated. I found that my master, Herfid, had scarcely noticed my absence. A small and diffident man, he wore clothes cut in a style that had gone out of fashion at least a generation ago, and it was easy to guess he was a skald because the moment he opened his mouth you heard the Icelandic accent and the old-fashioned phrases and obscure words of his profession. As usual, when I entered, he was in another world, seated at the bare table in the main room talking to himself. His lips moved as he tried out various possibilities. 'Battle wolf, battle gleam, beam of war,' he muttered. After a moment's incomprehension I realised he was in the middle of composing a poem and having difficulty in finding the right words. As part of my skald's apprenticeship, he had explained to me that when composing poetry it was vital to avoid plain words for common objects. Instead you referred to them obliquely, using a substitute term or phrase — a kenning — taken if possible from our Norse traditions of our Elder Way. Poor Herfid was making heavy weather of it. 'Whetstone's hollow, hard ring, shield's grief, battle icicle,' he tried to himself. 'No, no, that won't do. Too banal. Ottar the Black used it in a poem only last year.'

By then I had worked out that he was trying to find a different way of saying 'a sword'.

'Herfid!' I said firmly, interrupting his thoughts. He looked up, irritated for a moment by the intrusion. Then he saw who it was and his habitual good humour returned.

'Ah, Thorgils! It's good to see you, though this is a rather lacklustre and empty house since the other skalds sallied forth to accompany the king on his campaign in Denmark. I fear that I've brought you to a dead end. There will be no chance of royal

patronage until Knut gets back, and in the meantime I doubt if we’ll find anyone else who is willing to pay for good-quality praise poems. I thought that perhaps one of his great earls whom he has left behind here in England, might be sufficiently cultured to want something elegantly phrased in the old style. But I'm told they are a boorish lot. Picked for their fighting ability rather than their appreciation of the finer points of versifying.'

'How about the queen?' I asked, deliberately disingenuous. 'Wouldn't she want some poetry?'

Herfid misunderstood. 'The queen!' he snorted. 'She only wants new prayers or perhaps one of those dreary hymns, all repetitions and chanting, remarkably tedious stuff. And she's got plenty of priests to supply that. The very mention of any of the Aesir would probably make her swoon. She positively hates the Old Gods.'

'I didn't mean Queen Emma,' I said. 'I meant the other one, Aelfgifu.'

'Oh her. I don't know much about her. She's keeping pretty much in the background. Anyhow queens don't employ skalds. They're more interested in romantic harp songs and that sort of frippery.'

'What about Thorkel, the vice-regent, then? I'm told that Knut has placed Thorkel in charge of the country while he is away. Wouldn't he appreciate a praise poem or two? Everyone says he's one of the old school, a true Viking. Fought as a mercenary, absolute believer in the Elder Faith, wears Thor's hammer as an amulet.'

'Yes, indeed, and you should hear him swear when he's angry,' said Herfid cheering up slightly. 'He spits out more names for the Old Gods than even I've heard. He also blasphemes mightily against those White Christ priests. I've been told that when he's drunk he refers to Queen Emma as Bakrauf. I just hope that not too many of the Saxons hear or understand.'

I knew what he meant. In Norse lore a bakrauf was a wizened old hag, a troll wife, and her name translates as 'arse hole'.

'So why don't you attach yourself to Thorkel's household as a skald?' I insisted.

'That's a thought,' Herfid said. 'But I'll have to be cautious. If word gets back to Knut that the vice-regent is surrounding himself with royal trappings, like a personal skald, the king may think that he is putting on airs and wants to be England's ruler. Knut delegated Thorkel to look after the military side of things, put down any local troubles with a firm hand and so forth, but Archbishop Wulfstan is in charge of the civil administration and the legal side. It's a neat balance: the heathen kept in check by the Christian.' Herfid, who was a kindly man, sighed. 'Whatever happens, even if I get an appointment with Thorkel, I'm afraid that there won't be much of an opportunity for you to shine as my pupil. A vice-regent is not as wealthy as a king, and his largesse is less. You're welcome to stay on with me as an apprentice, but I can't possibly pay you anything. We'll be lucky if we have enough to eat.'

A page boy solved my predicament three days later when the lad knocked at the door of our lodgings with a message for me. I was to report to the queen's chamberlain ready to join her entourage, which was leaving for her home country of Northampton. It took me only a moment to pack. All the clothing I owned, apart from the drab tunic, shoes and hose that I wore every day, was a plum-coloured costume Herfid had given me so that I could appear reasonably well dressed at court. This garment I stuffed into the worn satchel of heavy leather I had stitched for myself in Ireland when I had lived among the monks there. Then I said goodbye to Herfid, promising him that I would try to keep in touch. He was still struggling to find a suitable substitute phrase to fit the metre of his rhyme. 'How about "death's flame"? That's a good kenning for a sword,' I suggested as I turned to leave with the satchel over my shoulder.

He looked at me with a smile of pure delight. 'Perfect!' he said, 'It fits exactly. You've not entirely ignored my teaching. I hope that one day you'll find some use for your gift with words.'

In the palace courtyard Aelfgifu's entourage was already waiting, four horse-drawn carts with massive wooden wheels to haul the baggage and transport the womenfolk, a dozen or so riding animals, and an escort of a couple of Knut's mounted huscarls. The last were no more than token protection, as the countryside had been remarkably peaceful since Knut came to the throne. The English, after years of fighting off Viking raiders or being squeezed for the taxes to buy them off with Danegeld, were so exhausted that they would have welcomed any overlord just as long he brought peace. Knut had done better. He had promised to rule the Saxons with the same laws they had under a Saxon king, and he showed his trust in his subjects - and reduced their tax burden - by sending away his army of mercenaries, a rough lot drawn from half the countries across the Channel and the English Sea. But Knut was too canny to leave himself entirely vulnerable to armed rebellion. He surrounded himself with his huscarls, three hundred of them all armed to the teeth. Any man who joined his elite guard was required to own, as a personal possession, a long two-edged sword with gold inlay in the grip. Knut knew well that only a genuine fighter would own such an expensive weapon and only a man of substance could afford one. His palace regiment was composed of professional full-time fighting men whose trade was warfare. Never before had the English seen such a compact and lethal fighting force, or one with weaponry so stylish.

So I was surprised to observe that the two huscarls detailed to escort Queen Aelfgifu were both severely maimed. One had a stump where his right hand should be, and the other had lost a leg below the knee and walked on a wooden limb. Then I remembered that Knut had taken the huscarl regiment on his campaign in Denmark; only the invalids had been left behind. Even as I watched the huscarls prepare to mount their stallions, I was already revising my opinion of their disabilities. The one-legged man limped to his horse, and though he was encumbered with a round wooden shield slung across his back, he bent down and removed his wooden leg and, with it still in his hand, balanced for a moment on a single foot before he gave a brisk, one-legged hop and swung himself into the saddle. There he tucked the false limb into a leather loop for safe keeping, and began to tie a leather strap around his waist to fix himself more firmly in place.

'Come on, stop fiddling about. It's time to ride!' he bellowed cheerfully at his companion, who was using one hand and his teeth to untangle his horse's knotted reins, and getting ready to wrap them around the stump of his arm, 'Even Tyr didn't take so long to get Gleipnir ready for Fenrir.'

'Shut up, Treeleg, or I'll come across and knock that stupid grin off your face,' came the reply, but I could see that the one-handed man was flattered. And rightly so. Every Old Believer knows that Tyr is the bravest of the Old Gods, the Aesirs. It was Tyr who volunteered to put his hand into the mouth of the Fenrir, the hell wolf, to lull the beast's suspicions while the other Gods placed Gleipnir, the magic fetter, on the hell wolf to restrain him. The dwarves had made the fetter from six magical ingredients — 'the sound of a cat's footfall, a woman's beard, a mountain's roots, a bear's sinews, a fish's breath and a bird's spit' — and Gleipnir did not burst even when the hell hound felt his bonds tightening and struggled with a fiend's strength. Meanwhile brave Tyr lost his hand to the hell wolf s bite.

Aelfgifu's chamberlain was glaring at me. 'Are you Thorgils?' he asked curtly. 'You're late. Ever ridden a horse before?'

I nodded cautiously. In Iceland I had occasionally ridden the sturdy little Icelandic horses. But they stood close enough to the ground for the rider not to get hurt when he fell off, and there were no roads, only tracks across the moors, so the landing was usually soft enough if you were not so unlucky as to fall on a rock. But I did not fancy trying to get on the back of anything resembling the bad-tempered stallions the two huscarls were now astride. To my relief the chamberlain nodded towards a shaggy and dispirited-looking mare tied up to the tail of one of the carts. Her aged head was drooping. 'Take that animal. Or walk.' Soon our motley cavalcade was creaking and clopping its way out of the city, and I was wondering whether there had not been a change of plan. Nowhere could I see my adored Aelfgifu.

She joined us in a thunder of cantering hooves when we had already crawled along for some five miles. 'Here she comes, riding like a Valkyrie as usual,' I heard the one-handed huscarl remark approvingly to his colleague, as they turned in their saddles to watch the young queen approach. On my plodding creature I twisted round as well, trying not to make my interest obvious, but my heart was pounding. There she was, riding like a man, her loose hair streaming out behind her. With a pang of jealousy I noted that she was accompanied by two or three young noblemen, Saxons by the look of them. A moment later the little group were swirling past us, chattering and whooping with delight as they took up their places as the head of the little group, then reined in their horses to match our trudging progress. Clumping along on my ugly nag, I felt hot and ashamed. I had not really expected that Aelfgifu would even glance at me, but I was so lovelorn that I still hoped she would catch my eye. She had ignored me entirely.

For four unhappy days I stayed at the back of the little column, and the most I ever saw of Aelfgifu was an occasional glimpse of her shapely back among the leading horsemen with her companions. It was torture for me whenever one of the young men leaned across towards her to exchange some confidence, or I saw her throw back her head and laugh at a witty remark. Sour with jealousy, I tried to learn who her companions were, but my fellow travellers were a taciturn lot. They could only tell me that they were high-born Saxons, ealdormen's spawn.

The journey was torture for another reason. My lacklustre mount proved to be the most leaden-footed, iron-mouthed creature that ever escaped the butcher's knife. The brute plodded along, slamming down her feet so that the impact of each hoof fall rattled up my spine. My saddle, the cheapest variety and made of wood, was an agony. Each time I dismounted I hobbled like a crone, so stiff that I could not walk properly. Life on the road was no better. I had to work for every yard of progress, kicking and slapping at the flanks of the sluggish creature to make her go forward. And when the mare decided to leave the main track and head for a mouthful of spring grass, there was nothing I could do to prevent her. I hit her between the ears with a hazel rod I cut for the purpose, and heaved on the reins. But the creature merely turned her ugly head to one side and kept walking in a straight line towards her target. On one embarrassing occasion she tripped and the two of us went sprawling in the dirt. As soon as the mare had her head down and started eating, I was helpless. I pulled on the reins till my arms ached and kicked her in the ribs, but there was no response. Only when the obstinate brute had eaten her fill would she raise her head and lumber back to the main track while I swore in rage.

'Try to keep up with the group,' One Hand warned me gruffly as he rode back down the column to see that all was in order. 'I don't want any stragglers.'

'I'm sorry,' I replied. 'I'm having difficulty controlling my horse.'

'If it isa horse' commented the huscarl, regarding the ill— shapen monster. 'I don't think I've ever seen such an ugly nag. Has it got a name?'

'I don't know,' I said, and then added without thinking, 'I'm calling her Jarnvidja.'

The huscarl gave me a funny look, before wheeling about and riding off. Jarnvidja means 'iron hag' and I realised, like Bakrauf, it is the name of a troll wife.

My dawdling horse allowed me plenty of opportunity to observe the countryside of England. The land was astonishingly prosperous despite the recent wars. Village followed village in quick succession. Most were neat and well tended — a dozen or so thatched houses constructed with walls of wattle and daub or wooden planks and set on either side of the muddy street or at a crossroads. Many had gardens front and back and, beyond their barns, pigsties and sheep sheds, were well-tended fields stretching away to the edge of forests or moorland. If the place was important enough there might be a larger house for the local magnate with its little chapel, or even a small church built of wood. Sometimes I noticed a stonemason at work, laying the foundations for a more substantial church tower. It seemed that the worship of the White Christ was spreading at remarkable speed, even in the countryside. I never saw a shrine to Old Ways, only tattered little strips of votive rags hanging from every great oak tree we passed, indicating that the Elder Faith had not entirely vanished.

Our party was travelling across country in an almost straight line and I thought this strange. The roads and tracks I had known in Iceland and Ireland meandered here and there, keeping to the high ground to avoid boglands and turning aside to shun the thickest forests. But the English road cut straight across country, or nearly so. When I looked more closely, I realised that our heavy carts were rolling and creaking along a prepared track, rutted and battered but still discernible, with occasional paving slabs and a raised embankment.

When I enquired, I was told that this was a legacy of the Roman days, a road called Watling Street and that, although the original bridges and causeways had long since collapsed or been washed away, it was the duty of the local villages to maintain and repair the track. They often failed in their task, and we found ourselves splashing across fords or paying ferrymen to take us across rivers in small barges and row boats.

It was at a water splash that the appalling Jarnvidja finally disgraced me. As usual, she was plodding along at the rear of the column when she smelled water up ahead. Being thirsty, she simply barged her way forward past the wagons and other horses. Aelfgifu and her companions had already reached the ford, and their horses were standing in the shallows, cooling their feet while their riders chatted. By then I had lost all control over Jarnvidja, and my hideous mount came sliding and slithering down the bank, rudely shouldering aside a couple of horses. As I tugged futilely on the reins, Jarnvidja splashed monstrously through the shallows, her great hooves sending up a muddy spray which drenched the finery of the Saxon nobles, and spattered across the queen herself.

Then the brute stopped, plunged her ugly snout into the water and began to suck up her drink noisily, while I was forced to sit on her broad back, crimson with embarrassment, and Aelfgifu's companions glared at me as they brushed off the muck.

On the fifth day we turned aside from Watling Street and rode down a broad track through a dense forest of beech and oak until we came to our destination. Aelfgifu's home was more heavily protected that earlier settlements I had seen. It was what the Saxons call a burh and was surrounded by a massive earth bank and a heavy wooden palisade. All around for a space of about a hundred paces the forest had been cleared back to allow a field of fire for archers in case of attack. Inside the rampart the ground was laid out to accommodate a lord and his retinue. There were dormitories for servants, a small barracks for the soldiery, storehouses and a large banqueting hall next to the lord's own dwelling, a substantial manor house. As our travel-stained group entered the main gate, the inhabitants lined up to greet us. Amid the reunions, gossip and exchanges of news, I saw the two huscarls head straight for the manor house, and — to my disappointment — Aelgifu and her attendant women disappear into a separate building, the women's quarters. I dismounted and stretched my back, glad at last to be rid of my torment on the Iron Hag. A servant came forward to take the mare from me, and I was heartily glad to see her gone. Her final act of treachery was to step heavily on my foot as she was led away, and I hope never to see her again.

I was wondering what I should do and where I should go, when a man whom I guessed was the local steward appeared. He had a list in his hand. 'Who are you?' he asked.

'Thorgils,' I replied.

He looked down his list, then said, 'Can't see your name here. Must have been a last-minute addition. Until I get this sorted out, you can go and help out Edgar.'

'Edgar?' I queried.

But the steward was already waving me away, too busy to explain details. He had pointed vaguely towards a side gate. Whoever Edgar was, it seemed that I would find him outside the palisade.

My satchel slung over my shoulder, I walked out through the gate. In the distance I could see a low wooden building, and a small cottage. I walked towards them and as I drew closer my heart sank. I heard the barking and hubbub of dogs and realised that I was approaching a kennel. Earlier, in Ireland, I had been dog boy to the Norse king, Sigtryggr of Dublin, and it had not been a success. I had been put in charge of two Irish wolfhounds and they had run away from me. Now I could hear at least a dozen dogs, maybe more, and smell their unmistakably pungent odour. It was beginning to rain, one of those sudden heavy showers so frequent in an English spring time, and I looked for somewhere to shelter. I did not want to risk being bitten, so I swerved aside and ran towards a small shed set close to the edge of the forest.

The door was not locked and I pulled it open. It was gloomy inside, the only light coming through cracks in walls made from loosely woven wattle. When my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I saw that the shed was completely empty except for several stout posts driven into the earth floor, over which had been strewn a thin layer of sand. From each post extended a number of short wooden poles, covered with sacking or bound with leather, and sitting on the poles were birds. They ranged in size from scarcely bigger than my hand to a creature as large as a barnyard cockerel. The shed was eerily quiet. I heard only the distant howling of the dogs and the patter of rain on the thatched roof. The birds were silent, except for the occasional rustle of a wing and a scratching sound as they shifted their claws on the perches. I stepped forward to examine them more closely, gingerly treading past them as they turned their heads to follow my progress. I realised that they were following me by sound not by sight, for they were blind. Or rather, they could not see me because they were wearing leather hoods on their heads. Then I stopped dead in my tracks and a great wave of homesickness suddenly swept over me.

In front of me, sitting on a perch well away from the others, was a bird I recognised at once. Its feathers were pale grey, almost white, and speckled with blackish brown spots, like a sheet of parchment on which a scribe had sprinkled spots of ink. Even in the half-light I could see that, though hunched up and miserable, it was a spear falcon.

The spear falcons are princes among the birds of prey. As a child in Greenland I had seen these magnificent birds hunting ptarmigan on the moors, and our trappers occasionally tangled them in nets or climbed the cliffs to take them as fledglings, for they are the most precious of our Greenlandic exports. We sent away five or six falcons in a year to the traders in Iceland, and I heard that they were then sold on for a great price to wealthy magnates in Norway or the southern lands. To see one of these birds, in the centre of damp, green England, cooped up and far from its natural home, made me feel it was a kindred soul, an exile, and the scene squeezed at my heart.

The spear falcon was in moult. That was why it was looking so dejected, its feathers dishevelled and awry. The bird sensed my presence and turned its head towards me. I crept forward and then I saw: its eyes were sewn shut. A thin thread had been stitched through each of the lower eyelids, and then led up over the bird's head, pulling the eyelid up. The two threads were tied together in a knot over the head, holding up the lids. Tentatively I stretched out my hand, fearing to frighten the bird, yet wanting to unpick the knot and release the eyes. I felt the creature's unhappy fate was a symbol of my predicament. My hand was hovering over the bird's head, no more than six inches away, when suddenly my left wrist was seized from behind and my arm twisted up violently between my shoulder blades. Wiry fingers clamped on the back of my neck, and a voice hissed ferociously in my ear, 'Touch that bird and I'll break first your arm and then your neck!' Then I was pushed forward so that I was forced to bend double at the waist. Next my attacker turned and marched me, still bent over, out through the shed door and into the open. There he deftly kicked my feet from under me so that I fell headlong in the mud. Winded, I lay gasping for a moment, shocked by the lightning attack. My assailant had dropped on top of me and was holding me face down, one knee in my back. I could not turn my head to see who he was, so I blurted out, 'I was looking for Edgar.' Above me, a voice seething with anger said, 'You've found him.'

TWO

My attacker released his grip and allowed me to roll over and look up. A small, thick-set man was standing over me, dressed in a patched and worn tunic, heavy hose and scuffed leather leggings. His grey hair was cropped close to his skull, and I guessed he must be in his mid-fifties. What struck me most was how battered and weatherbeaten he looked. Deep lines were etched across his face and his cheeks were mottled with dark red blotches as if someone had scoured them with sand. An angry scowl pulled his eyebrows so far down that his eyes almost disappeared into his skull. He looked thoroughly dangerous, and I noted a well-used dagger with a stag-horn handle tucked into his leather belt and wondered why he had not drawn it. Then I remembered how easily he had bundled me out of the shed, as if I was no more than a child.

'What were you doing in the hawk shed?' he demanded furiously. He spoke the language of the Saxons, close enough to my native Norse for me to understand, but with a country accent, deep and deliberate, so that I had to listen closely. 'Who gave you permission to go in there?'

'I told you,' I replied placatingly, 'I was looking for Edgar. I had no idea that I was doing any harm.'

'And the gyrfalcon? What were you doing near it? What were you trying? To steal it?'

'No,' I said. 'I wanted to remove the thread so that it could open its eyes.'

'And who said you could do that?' He was growing even more angry, and I was worried that he would lose control and give me a beating. There was no answer to his question, so I kept silent.

'Imbecile! Do you know what would have happened? The bird would have panicked, left its perch, thrashed around. Escaped or damaged itself. It's in no condition to fly. And that bird, for your information, is worth ten times as much as you are, probably more, you miserable lout.'

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I recognised the bird and I've never seen them with their eyes sewn shut before.'

My reply set him off again. 'What do you mean "recognised?" he snarled. 'There are no more than five or six birds like that in the whole of England. That's a royal bird.'

'Where I come from, there are quite a few.'

'So you're a liar as well as a thief.'

'No, believe me. I come from a place where those birds build their nests and raise their young. I only entered the shed to look for you, if you are Edgar, because I was told to find him and report to him for work.'

'I asked for a kennelhand, not a thieving Dane with sticky fingers like all the rest of them. I can recognise your ugly accent,' he growled. 'Get on your feet,' and he let loose a kick to help me up. 'We'll soon learn whether you're telling the truth.'

He marched me back to the burh and checked my story with Aelfgifu's harassed steward. When the steward confirmed who I was, Edgar spat deliberately — the gob of spittle just missed me — and announced, 'We'll see about that then.'

This time we returned to the kennels and Edgar lifted the latch on the low gate which led into the dog-run. Instantly a hysterical brown, white and tan cascade of tail-wagging confusion swirled forward and engulfed us. The dogs barked and howled, though whether with enthusiasm or hunger I could not tell. Some leaped up at Edgar in affection, others pushed and shoved to get closer, a few cringed back, or ran off into the corner and defecated in their excitement. The kennel smelled abominable, and I felt a sharp pain in my calf where one mistrustful dog had run round behind me to give me an experimental bite. Edgar was completely at ease. He plunged his hands into the heaving mass of dog flesh, petting them, rubbing ears fondly, calling their names, casually knocking aside the more exuberant animals which tried to leap up and lick his face. He was in his element, but for me it was a vision of the abyss.

'This is where you will work,' he said bluntly.

I must have looked aghast, for he allowed himself the glimmer of a smile. 'I'll show you your duties.' He crossed to the far side of the dog-run, where a long, low shed was built against the fence. He dragged open the ill-fitting door and we went inside. The interior was almost as bare as the hawk shed, only this time there was no sand on the earth floor and instead of bird perches, a wide wooden platform had been constructed down one side of the building. The platform was made of rough wooden planks, raised about a foot above the ground on short posts. Its surface was covered with a thick layer of straw, which Edgar pointed at. 'I want that turned over daily, so that it's well aired. Pick up any droppings and put them outside. When you've a sackful of turds, you'll be carrying it to the tannery for the leather-makers. Nothing like a strong solution of dog shit to soften the surface of hides. Then every three days, when the straw is too soiled, you change all the bedding. I'll show you later where to find fresh straw.'

Next he pointed out three low troughs. 'Keep these topped up with drinking water for the dogs. If they get fouled, you're to take them outside and empty them — I don't want the floor in here any more damp than it already is - then refill them.' As he made his remark about the damp floor, he glanced towards a wooden post hammered into the ground about halfway along the shed. The post was wrapped with straw and there was an obvious damp patch around it. I realised it was a urinating post. 'Every three days you change that straw as well. Let the dogs out into the run first thing every morning. That's when you will change their straw bedding. They're to be fed once a day - mostly stale bread, but also meat scraps from the main kitchen, whatever is left over. You are to check through the scraps to make sure that there's nothing harmful in the swill. If any dog is sick or off-colour, and there's usually one or two, you're to let me know at once.'

'Where will I find you?' I asked.

'I live in the cottage opposite the hawk shed. Behind my house you'll find the lean-to where the straw is kept. If I'm not at home, probably because I'm out in the forest, check with my wife before you touch any of the stores. She'll keep an eye on you to make sure that you're doing your job thoroughly. Any questions?'

By now we had re-emerged from the dog shed and were back at the entrance to the dog-run. 'No,' I said, 'you've made everything very clear. Where do I sleep?'

He gave me a look of pure malice. 'Where do you expect? With the dogs, of course. That's the right place for a kennelman.'

My next question was on the tip of my tongue, when the expression on his face decided me not to give him the satisfaction of asking it. I was going to enquire, 'What about my food? Where do I take my meals?' But I already knew the answer — 'With the dogs. You eat what they do.'

I was right. The next days were among the most vile that I ever spent and I have lived under some unspeakable conditions. I ate and I slept with the dogs. I picked out the better scraps from their food for my own meals, I caught their fleas and I spent a good deal of my time avoiding their teeth. I loathed them, and took to carrying a cudgel - which I hid under the dog platform whenever Edgar appeared — and used it to clout any dog that came too close to me, though some of the nastier ones still tried to circle round behind me and attack. The experience gave me ample time to wonder how on earth people could become fond of their dogs, least of all such unlovely hounds as these. In Ireland the clan chiefs had been proud of their wolfhounds, and I had understood why. Their dogs were resplendent, elegant animals, aristocratic with their long legs and haughty pace. But Edgar's pack was, to all appearances, a bunch of curs. Half the height of a wolfhound, they had short faces, sharp snouts and untidy fur. The predominant colour was a drab brown, though a few had patches of black or of tan, and one dog would have been all white if it had not kept rolling in the filthiness. It was incredible to me that anyone would take the trouble to keep a pack of them. Several months later I learned that they were known as 'Briton hounds' and their forebears had been gready valued as hunting dogs by those same Romans who had built the Wailing Street. My informant was a monk whose abbot was a sporting priest and ran a pack of them, and he told me that these Briton hounds were valued for their courage, their tenacity and their ability to follow the scent whether in the air or on the ground. How the dogs managed to follow a scent amazed me, for they themselves stank exceedingly. In an attempt to keep my purple tunic from being tainted, I took the precaution of hanging my faithful leather satchel from a peg in one of the upright posts, as high up as I could manage, for I knew for certain that, within hours, I reeked as much as my canine companions.

Edgar came to visit the kennel both morning and afternoon to check on me as well as his noxious hounds. He would enter the dog-run and wade nonchalantly through the riot of animals. He had an uncanny ability to spot any of them that were cut, scratched or damaged in any way. Then he would reach out and grab the dog and haul it close. With complete assurance he folded back ears, prised apart toes looking for thorns, and casually pulled aside private parts, which he called their yard and stones, to check that they were not sore or bleeding. If he found a gash, he produced a needle and thread, and with one knee pinned down the dog while he stitched up the wound. Occasionally, if the dog was troublesome, he would call on me to assist by holding it, and of course I got badly bitten. Seeing the blood dripping from my hand, Edgar gave a satisfied laugh. 'Teach you to stick your hand in his mouth,' he jeered, making me think instantly of the one-handed huscarl. 'Better than a cat bite. That'd go bad on you. A dog bite is clean and healthy. Or at least it is if the dog isn't mad.' The dog which had bitten me certainly didn't look mad, so I sucked at the puncture wounds left by its teeth and said nothing. But Edgar wasn't going to miss his opportunity. 'Do you know what you do if you get bitten by a mad dog?' he asked with relish. 'You can't suck hard enough to get out the rottenness. So you get a good strong barnyard cock, and strip off his feathers, all of them, until he is arse naked. Then you clap his fundament on the wound and give him a bad fright. That way he clenches up his gut and sucks out the wound.' He guffawed.

My ordeal would have lasted much longer but for the fact that I mislaid a dog on the fourth day. Edgar had told me to take the pack to a grassy area a few hundred paces from the kennel. There the animals were encouraged to chew the blades of grass for their health. During that short excursion I managed to lose track of the number of hounds I took with me, and when I brought them back into the dog-run I failed to notice that one was missing. Only when I was shutting the dogs up for the night and took a head count, did I realise my error. I closed the kennel door behind me, and walked back to the grassy area to see if I could find the missing hound. I did not call the dog because I did not know its name and, just as importantly, I did not want to alert Edgar to my blunder. He had been so hostile about the possible loss of a hawk that I was sure he would be furious over a missing dog. I walked quietly, hoping to spot the runaway lurking somewhere. There was no dog by the grass patch, and, thinking that the animal might have found its way to the back door of Edgar's cottage to scavenge, I went to check. Just as I rounded the corner of the little house, I heard a slight clatter, and there was Edgar.

He was kneeling on the ground with his back to me. In front of him was a square of white cloth spread on the earth. Lying on the cloth where he had just dropped them lay a scatter of half a dozen flat lathes. Edgar, who had been looking down at them intently, swung round in surprise.

'What do they say?' I asked, hoping to forestall the outburst of anger.

He regarded me with suspicion. 'None of your business,' he retorted. I began to walk away when, unexpectedly from behind me, I heard him say, 'Can you read the wands?'

I turned back and replied cautiously, 'In my country we prefer to throw dice or a tafl. And we bind our wands together like a book.'

'What's a tafl?'

'A board which has markers. With practice one can read the signs.'

'But you do use wands?'

'Some of the older people still do, or knuckle bones of animals.'

'Then tell me what you think these wands say.'

I walked over to where the white cloth lay on the ground, and counted six of the wooden lathes scattered on it. Edgar was holding a seventh in his hand. One of the lathes on the ground was painted with a red band. I knew it must be the master. Three of the wands on the ground were slightly shorter than the others.

'What do you read?' Edgar asked. There was a pleading note in his voice.

I looked down. 'The answer is confused,' I said. I bent down and picked up one of the lathes. It was slightly askew, lying across another wand. I turned it over, and read the sign marked on it. 'Tyr,' I said, 'the God of death and war.'

Edgar looked puzzled for an instant and then the blood drained from his face, leaving the ruddy spots on his cheekbones even brighter. 'Tiw? You know how to read the marks? Are you sure?'

'Yes, of course,' I replied, showing him the marked face of the wand. The symbol on it was the shape of an arrow. 'I'm a devotee of Odinn and it was Odinn who learned the secret of the runes and taught them to mankind. Also he invented fortune dice.. It's very plain. That rune is Tyr's own sign. Nothing else.'

Edgar's voice was unsteady as he said, 'That must mean that she is dead.'

'Who?'

'My daughter. Four years ago a gang of your Danish bandits took her away during the troubles. They couldn't attack the burh — the palisade was too strong for them - so they made a quick sweep around the perimeter, beat my youngest son so badly that he lost an eye and dragged off the girl. She was just twelve. We've not heard a word from her since.'

'Is that what you wanted to know when you cast the wands? What had become of her.'

'Yes,' he replied.

'Then don't give up hope,' I said. 'The wand of Tyr was lying across another wand, and that signifies the meaning is unclear or reversed. So your daughter may be alive. Would you like me to cast the sticks again for you?'

The huntsman shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'Three casts at a time is enough. Any more would be an affront to the Gods and, besides, the sun has set and now the hour is no longer propitious.'

Then his suspicions came back with a rush. 'How do I know you're not lying to me about the runes, like you lied about the gyrfalcon.'

'There's no reason for me to lie,' I answered, and began picking up the wands, the master rod first and then the three shorter, calling out their names, 'rainbow, warrior queen, firm belief.' Then, collecting the longer ones, I announced, 'The key-holder, joy,' and taking the last one from Edgar's fingers I said, 'festivity.'

To establish my credentials even more clearly, I asked innocenctly, 'You don't use the wand of darkness, the snake wand?'

Edgar looked dumbfounded. He was, as I later found out, a countryman at heart, and he believed implicitly in the Saxon wands, as they are called in England where they are much used in divination and prophecy. But only the most skilled employ the eighth wand, the snake wand. It has a baleful influence which affects all the other wands and most people, being only human, prefer a happy outcome to the shoot, as the Saxons call the casting of the rods. Frankly I thought the Saxon wands were elementary. In Iceland my rune master Thrand had taught me to read much more sophisticated versions. There the wands are fastened to a leather cord, fanned out and used like an almanac, the meanings read from runes cut on both sides. These runes — like most seidr or magic - reverse the normal forms. The runes are written backwards, as if seen in a mirror.

'Tell my wife what you just said about our daughter,' Edgar announced. 'It may comfort her. She has been grieving for the girl these four years past.' He ushered me into the cottage — it was no more than a large single room, divided across the middle into a living area and a bedroom. There was an open fire at the gable wall, a plain table and two benches. At Edgar's prompting I repeated my reading of the wands to Edgar's wife, Judith. The poor woman looked pitifully trustful of my interpretation and timidly asked if I would like some proper food. I suspected that she thought that her husband had been treating me very unfairly. But Edgar's loathing was understandable if he thought I was a Dane, like the raiders who had kidnapped his daughter and maimed his son.

Edgar was obviously weighing me up. 'Where did you say you come from?' he asked suddenly.

'From Iceland and before that from Greenland.'

'But you speak like a Dane.'

'Same words, yes,' I said, 'but I say them differently, and I use some words that are only used in Iceland. A bit like your Saxon. I'm sure you've noticed how foreigners from other parts of England speak it differently and have words that you don't understand.'

'Prove to me that you come from this other place, this Greenland or whatever you call it.'

'I'm afraid I don't know how to.'

Edgar thought for a moment, and then said suddenly, 'Gyrfalcon. You said you come from a place where the bird builds its nests and raises its young. And I know that it does not do so in the Danes' country, but somewhere further away. So if you are really from that place, then you know all about the bird and its habits.'

'What can I tell you?' I asked.

He looked cunning, then said, 'Answer me this: is the gyrfalcon a hawk of the tower, or a hawk of the hand?'

I had no idea what he was talking about and when I looked baffled he was triumphant. 'Just as I thought. You don't know anything about them.'

'No,' I said 'It's just that I don't understand your question. But I could recognise a gyrfalcon if I saw it hunting.'

'So tell me how.'

'When I watched the wild spear falcons in Greenland, they would fly down from the cliffs and perch on some vantage point on the moors, like a high rock or hill crest. There the bird sat, watching out for its prey. It was looking for its food, another bird we call rjupa, like your partridge. When the spear falcon sees a rjupa, it launches from its perch and flies low at tremendous speed, faster and faster, and then strikes the rjupa, knocking it to the ground, dead.'

'And what does it do at the last moment before it strikes?' Edgar asked.

'The spear falcon suddenly rises, to gain height, and then come smashing down on its prey.'

'Right,' announced Edgar, finally persuaded. 'That's what the gyr does and that's why it can be a hawk of the tower and also a hawk of the fist, and very few hunting birds can be both.'

'I still don't know what you mean,' I said. 'What's a bird of the tower?'

'A bird that towers or waits on, as we say. Hovers in the sky above the master, waiting for the right moment, then drops down on its prey. Peregrine falcons do that naturally and, with patience, gyrfalcons can be taught to hunt that way. A hawk of the fist is one that is carried on the hand or wrist while hunting, and thrown off the hand to chase down the quarry.'

Thus my knowledge of the habits of the wild gyrfalcon and the art of divination rescued me from the ordeal of those noxious dog kennels, though Edgar confessed some weeks later that he would not have kept me living in the kennels indefinitely because he had recognised that I did not have the makings of a kennelman. 'Mind you, I can't understand anyone who doesn't get along with dogs,' he added. 'Seems unnatural.'

'They stink exceedingly,' I pointed out. 'It took me days to wash off their stench. Quite why the English love their dogs so much baffles me. They never stop talking about them. Sometimes they seem to prefer them to their own children.'

'Not just the English,' Edgar said, 'That pack belongs to Knut, and when he shows up here half his Danish friends bring along their own dogs, which they add to the pack. It's a cursed nuisance as the dogs start fighting amongst themselves.'

'Precisely,' I commented. 'When it comes to dogs, neither Saxon nor Dane seems to have any common sense. In Greenland, in times of famine, we ate them.'

By the time of that conversation I was being treated as a member of Edgar's family. I had been allocated a corner of their cottage where I could hang my satchel and find a sleeping place, and Judith, who was as trusting as her husband had been initially wary, was spoiling me as if I was her favourite nephew. She would fish out for me the best bits of meat from the stewpot that simmered constantly over her cooking fire. I have rarely been fed so well. Officially Edgar was the royal huntsman, an important post which made him responsible for arranging the hunts when Knut came to visit. But Edgar also had a neat sideline in poaching. He quietly set nets for small game — hares were a favourite prey

— and would come back to the cottage in the first light of dawn, his leggings wet with dew, and a couple of plump hares dangling from his hand.

As spring turned to summer, I realised that I was very privileged. July is the hungry month before the crops have been harvested, and normal folk must live on the sweepings of their storehouses and grain bins. They eat hard, gritty bread made from bran, old husks and ground-up peas. But in Edgar's house our stockpot was always well supplied, and with the hunting season approaching Edgar began to take me into the forest to scout for the biggest game of all - red-deer stags. This was Edgar at his best — quiet, confident and willing to teach me. He was like Herfid explaining the skald's techniques, or the monks in Ireland when they taught me French, Latin and a little Greek, and how to read and write the foreign scripts, or my seidr master Thrand in Iceland as he tutored me in the mysteries of the Elder Faith.

Edgar took me with him as he quietly followed the deer paths through the forest of oak and beech, and smaller thickets of alder and ash. He showed me how to judge the size of a deer from the size of the hoof prints, and how to tell whether the stag was walking, running or moving at a trot. After he had located a stag large enough to be hunted by the king's pack, we would return again and again to note the stag's regular haunts and observe its daily routine. 'Look closely,' he would say to me, pulling aside a bush. 'This is where he slept last night. See how the grass and weeds are flattened down. And here are the marks where his knees pressed the earth as he got to his feet at dawn. He's a big stag all right, probably twelve points on his antlers, a royal beast . . . and in good condition too,' he added, poking open one of the stag's turds. 'He's tall, that one, and holds his head well. Here's where his antlers scraped the tree when passing.'

Nor was Edgar confused when, as happened, the tracks of two stags crossed in the forest. 'The one we want is the stag who veered off to the right. He's the better one,' he told me quietly. 'The other one is too thin.'

'How do you know?' I whispered, for the size of the tracks looked the same to me.

Edgar made me kneel on the ground and sight along the second line of tracks. 'See anything different?' he asked.

I shook my head.

'Observe the pattern of the slots' - this was his name for the hoof marks - 'you can see the difference between the fore and back feet, and how this stag was running. His hind feet strike the ground in front of the marks made by his fore feet, and that means he is thin. A well-fed, fat stag is too big in the body for his legs to over-reach in this way.'

It was on one of these scouting trips into the forest that Edgar came close to treating me with deference, a far cry from his earlier harassment. He was, as I had noted, someone who believed deeply in signs and portents and the hidden world which underlies our own. I did not find this strange, for I had been trained in these beliefs through my education in the Elder Faith. In some sacred matters Edgar and I had much in common. He respected many of my Gods, though under slightly different names. Odinn, my special God, he knew as Wotan; Tiw was his name for Tyr the War God, as I had noted; and red-bearded Thor he referred to as Thunor. But Edgar had other gods too, and many of them were entirely new to me. There were elves and sprites, Sickness Gods and Name Gods, House Gods and Weather Gods, Water Gods and Tree Gods, and he was forever making little signs or gestures to placate them, sprinkling a few drops of soup on the flames of the fire, or breaking off a supple twig to twist into a wreath and lay on a mossy stone.

On the day in question we were moving quietly through beech forest on the trail of a promising stag, when his slots led us to a quiet glade among the trees. In the centre of the glade stood a single, great oak tree, very ancient, its trunk half rotten and moss-speckled. At the base of the oak someone had built a low wall of loose stones. Coming closer I saw that the wall protected the mouth of a small well. Edgar had already picked up a small stone and now he took it across to the trunk of the tree and pushed it into a crevice in the bark. I saw other stones tucked away here and there, and guessed that this was a wishing tree.

'Newly married couples come to ask for babies,' Edgar said. 'Each stone represents their desire. I thought a stone put there might help to bring my daughter back.' He gestured to the well itself. 'Before girls marry they come here too, and drop a straw down into the well, to count the bubbles that rise. Each bubble represents one year before they find their husband.'

His remark touched a raw spot in my feelings. I broke off a twig and leaned over to drop it into the well. Not far below, I could see the dark reflection of the black water. My wish, of course, was not to know my marriage date, but when I would next see Aelfgifu, for I had been pining for her and did not know why I had not heard from her. On every possible occasion I had taken the chance to go from Edgar's cottage up to the burh in the hopes of glimpsing her. But always I had been disappointed.

Now, as I leaned forward over the well, and before I dropped the twig, something happened which was totally unforeseen.

Since I was six or seven, I have known I am one of those few people who are gifted with what others call the second sight. My Irish mother had been famous for it and I must have inherited it from her. From time to time I had experienced strange presentiments, intuitions and out-of-body sensations. I had even seen the spirits of those who were dead or the shadows of those about to die. These experiences were random, unexpected. Sometimes months and even years would pass between one occurrence and the next. A wise woman in Orkney — herself the possessor of the sight — had diagnosed that I only responded to the spirit world when in the company of someone else who already had the power. She said that I was some sort of spirit mirror.

What happened next proved her wrong.

As I leaned over to drop the twig, I looked down at the glint of black water and suddenly felt ill. At first I thought it was that sensation which comes when a person looks down from a great height, and feels as if he or she is falling and is overtaken by sudden faintness. But the surface of the inky pool was hardly more than an arm's length away. My giddiness then changed to a numb paralysis. I felt an icy cold; a terrible pain shot through me, spreading to every part of my body, and I feared I was going to faint. My vision went cloudy and I wanted to retch. But almost as quickly my vision cleared. I saw again the silhouette of my head in the water below, framed by the rim of the well and the sky above it. But this time, as I watched, I saw — quite distinctly — the reflection of someone moving up behind me, holding something up in the air about to strike me, them a metallic flash, and I felt a terrible presentiment of fear.

At that moment I must have fainted away, because I came back to my senses with Edgar shaking me. I was lying on the ground beside the well. He was looking frightened.

'What happened to you?'he asked.

'I don't know,' I replied. 'I had a seizure. I went somewhere else.'

'Woden spoke to you?' he asked, awe in his voice. 'No. I heard nothing, only saw an attack. It was some sort of warning.'

Edgar helped me to my feet and guided me to a fallen log where I could sit down.

'Here, rest for a while. Is that the first attack you have had?'

'Like that one, yes.' I replied. 'I've had visions before, but never in a calm, quiet place like this. Only at times of stress or when I was in the company of a volva or seidrman.'

'What are those?' he asked.

'It's the Norse way of describing the women and men who communicate with the spirit world.'

Edgar understood immediately. 'There's a person like that over to the west, a good two days' walk. An old woman. She too lives by a well. Takes a sip or two of the water, and when the mood is on her, goes into a trance. Some people call her a witch and the priests have cursed her. But often her prophecies come true, though no one else would drink the water from this well. It gives you a bad gut if you do, and there's something mysterious about the well itself. The waters suddenly gush up and overflow as a warning that a dreadful catastrophe will occur. The last time that happened was before Ashington Battle, when the Danes defeated our men.'

'Were you there?' I asked, still feeling faint.

'Yes,' Edgar replied, 'with the Saxon levies and armed with my hunting bow. It was useless. We were betrayed by one of our own leaders and I was lucky to get away with my life. If the waters of the well had been able to warn us about traitors, I would have slit his throat for him, for all that he was an ealdor-man.'

I hardly heard what Edgar was saying because, as my head cleared, I was trying to puzzle out what could have caused my vision.

Then, in a sudden flash of comprehension, I understood: I was sensitive to the spirit world not only when in the company of someone who also possessed the second sight, but by place. If I found myself where the veil between the real world and the spirit world is thin, then I would respond to the presence of mysterious forces. Like a wisp of grass which bends to the unseen wind, long before a human feels it on his skin, I would pick up the emanations of the otherworld. The realisation made me uneasy because I feared that I had no way of knowing whether I was in such a sacred place before another vision overcame me.

It was a week after my vision in the forest and Edgar was in high good humour. 'South wind and a cloudy sky proclaim a hunting morning,' he announced, prodding me with the toe of his shoe as I lay half-asleep among my blanket in the corner of his cottage. He was very fond of his proverbs.

'Time for your first hunt, Thorgils. I've got a feeling that you'll bring us luck.'

It was barely light enough to see by, yet he was already dressed in clothes I had never seen before. He was wearing green from head to toe. I struggled out from under my blanket.

'Here, put these on,' he said, throwing at me in succession a tunic, leggings and a cloak with a soft hood. They were all of green. Mystified, I dressed and followed him out into the cold morning air. Edgar was testing a hunting bow, drawing it back and then releasing it. The bow was painted green too.

'Should I get the dogs?' I asked.

'No, not today. We take only one.'

I said nothing, though I wondered what use it was to have a pack, feed them, clean them, exercise them, and then not use them when you went hunting.

Edgar guessed my thoughts. 'Hunting with a pack is playtime for kings, an entertainment. Today we hunt for meat, not fun. Besides, what we are doing is much more delicate and skilled. So mark my words and follow my instructions carefully. Ah! Here they are,' and he looked towards the burh.

Three green-clad horsemen were riding towards us. One man I did not recognise, though he seemed to be a servant. To my surprise, the other two riders were the huscarls who had accompanied us from London. I still thought of them as One-Hand Tyr and Treeleg. Edgar told me that their true names were Gisli and Kjartan. Both looked in a thoroughly good humour.

'Perfect day for the hunt!' called out Kjartan cheerfully. He was the one missing a hand. 'Got everything ready, Edgar?' They both seemed to be on familiar terms with the royal huntsman.

'Just off to fetch Cabal,' answered Edgar and hurried to the kennel. He returned, leading a dog I had noticed during my unhappy days as a kennelman because it was different from the rest of the pack. This particular dog did not bite or yap, or run around like a maniac. Larger than the others, it was dark brown with a drooping muzzle and a mournful look. It kept to itself and was a steady, quiet, sensible creature. I had almost liked it.

'Mount up!' Edgar said to me. I looked puzzled. I could see no spare horse. There were only three, and each already had a rider. 'Here, lad,' called out Kjartan, leaning down from his saddle and holding out his one remaining hand for me to grasp. It seemed that we were to ride two-up on the animals. Edgar had already sprung up on the saddle behind the servant. One thing about hunting, I thought to myself as I scrambled up behind the huscarl and grabbed him round the waist to steady myself, it's a great leveller — it makes huntsman, huscarl, servant and former kennelman all equal.

'Never been hunting like this before?' Kjartan asked me over his shoulder. He spoke kindly and was obviously looking forward to the day's events. I wondered how he could go hunting when he lacked a hand. He could not pull a bow, and he was not even carrying a spear. His only weapon was a scramsaxe, the long-bladed knife of all trades.

'No, sir,' I replied. 'I've done a bit of hunting on foot, small animals mostly, in the forest. But not from horseback.'

'Well, wait and see,' Kjartan said. 'This will be part on horse and part on foot. Edgar knows what he is doing, so it should be successful. We only have to do what he says, though luck plays a certain part, as well as skill. The red deer are just getting into their fat time. Good eating.' He began humming gently to himself.

We rode into the forest to an area where Edgar and I had recently noted the slots of a red-deer stag and his group of four or five hinds. As we approached the place, the dog, which had been running beside the horses, began to cast back and forth, sniffing the ground and searching. 'Great dog, Cabal, good fellow,' said Kjartan. 'Getting old and a bit stiff in the limbs, but if any dog can find deer, he can. And he never gives up. Great heart.' Another besotted dog lover, I thought to myself, but I had to admire the serious attention that old Cabal was giving to every bush and thicket, running here and there, sniffing. From time to time he halted and put his great muzzle up into the air, trying to catch the faintest whiff of scent.

'There!' said Kjartan quietly. He had been watching Cabal and the dog had dropped his muzzle very close to the ground and was moving forward through the forest, clearly tracking a quarry. 'Silent as he should be,' grunted Kjartan approvingly. When I failed to appreciate the compliment for the dog, he went on, 'Most dogs start to bark or whine when they catch the scent of deer, but not old Cabal. Specially trained to stay silent so as not alarm the quarry.'

We had slowed our horses to the gentlest of walks and I noticed that the riders were taking care to make as little noise as possible. Kjartan glanced across at Edgar, and when Edgar signalled with a nod, our little group stopped immediately. The servant dismounted, took Cabal's leash and led the dog quietly to where he could fasten the leash to a sapling. Cabal, still silent, lay contentedly down on the grass and lowered his head on his paws. It seemed his job was done.

The servant returned and we all closed up in a small circle to listen to Edgar. He spoke in a soft whisper.

'I think we'll find the deer just ahead and we've come to them upwind, so that's good. You, Aelfric,' here he indicated the servant, 'mount up with Gisli, Thorgils stays with Kjartan and I'll walk. We'll leave the extra horse here.'

At his signal, the five of us and the two horses moved forward cautiously. We emerged into an area of the forest where the trees thinned out. To our right, between the trees, I glimpsed a movement, and then another. It was a red-deer hind and her companion. Then I saw the little group — the stag and his four hinds.

'Now we go across the face of the deer,' Kjartan whispered to me. He clearly wanted me to appreciate the subtlety of the chase. I heard the brief creak of leather and to my astonishment one-legged Gisli unfastened his special leather belt, slid out of the saddle, and dropped to the ground. I noticed that he landed on the side of the horse away from the deer, shielded from their sight. He stood grasping the stirrup leather in one hand to keep himself upright as he strapped on his wooden leg. He did not carry a crutch, instead he had a heavy bow in his hand. Edgar moved up to stand beside him. He too was behind the horse and hidden from the deer. When Edgar gave his next signal, the two horses moved out in the open, three men riding and two men walking alongside and hidden from the deer. The stag and his hinds immediately raised their heads and watched our distant procession. Now I understood. The deer were not alarmed by men on horseback, provided they rode gently and quietly and kept their distance. They were accepted as another form of forest animal. I noticed how Edgar and Gisli timed their paces on foot so that they moved with the horses' legs.

'Not quite another Sleipnir,' I whispered to Kjartan. He nodded. Sleipnir, Odinn's horse, has eight legs so that it can travel at tremendous speed. To the deer, our horses must have looked as if they each had six legs.

Fifty paces further on I realised that one-legged Gisli was no longer with us. Glancing back, I saw he was standing in front of a young oak tree, motionless. Dressed in green, he was almost impossible to see. He had let go of the stirrup leather just as the horse passed the tree, used his bow as a crutch, and was now in position. A few paces further on, Edgar did the same. He too was almost invisible. We were setting an ambush.

Kjartan, Aelfric and I rode on, then began to circle to the right. We reached the far side of the clearing and at the edge of the trees Kjartan said quietly, 'Thorgils, this is where you drop off. Stand in front of that tree there. Stay absolutely still. Only move if you see the deer heading your way and not towards Edgar and Gisli.' I slipped off the horse and did as I had been ordered, waiting quietly as Kjartan and the servant rode on.

For what seemed a long time I stood, not moving a muscle, and wondering what would happen next. Then I heard it, a single faint sound — chkkk! Very, very slowly I turned my head towards the noise. I heard it repeated, softly, almost languidly from far away. A moment later I heard the gentle crack of a twig, and into my line of vision walked one of the red-deer hinds. She was perhaps twenty paces away, moving gently through the forest, stopping now and again to snatch a mouthful of food, then moving on. Then I saw another hind and caught a glimpse of the stag itself. All the animals were on the move, unhurried yet heading in the same direction. Chkk! Again I heard the strange sound, and behind the deer I saw Kjartan on his horse. He was riding on a loose rein, barely moving, drifting through the forest behind the deer, not hurrying, but turning his horse this way and that as if the animal was feeding. The sound was Kjartan softly clicking his tongue. A moment later I glimpsed the second rider, Aelfric, and heard a gentle, deliberate tap as he struck his saddle lightly with a willow switch. The soft sounds made the deer move forward, unalarmed. Directly ahead Edgar and Gisli waited.

With excruciating slowness the quarry moved forward. As they drew level with my position, I hardly dared to breath. Slowly I turned my head to look for Edgar. He was so motionless that it took me a moment to detect his position. He was standing with his bow pulled back and an arrow on the string as the leading deer approached him. An elderly hind, she was almost upon Edgar when she realised that she was staring straight into the eyes of her hunter. Her head came up suddenly, she flared her nostrils and tensed her muscles to leap away. At that instant Edgar loosed. From that short range I clearly heard the thunk of the arrow hitting her chest.

Now all chaos broke loose. The stag and other hinds awoke to their danger and began to run. I heard another thump and guessed that Gisli had shot an arrow. A young hind and the stag turned back and broke away towards me. They came bounding through the trees, the stag taking great leaps, his antlers crashing against the branches. I stepped forward so the deer could see me and raised my arms. The hind swerved in panic, slipped on the greasy ground, scrambled to her feet and darted away to safety.

But the great stag, fearing that his flight was blocked, doubled back and headed to where Edgar stood. By then Edgar had a second arrow nocked to his bow string and was waiting. The stag saw Edgar, accelerated and veered past him. Smoothly Edgar swivelled at the hips, his bow pulled so far back that the arrow's feathers were at his right ear, and he loosed just as the prey sped past. It was a perfect passing shot, which brought a shout of approval from Kjartan. The arrow struck the great stag between the ribs. I saw the beast falter in its stride, recover, and then go bounding away through the bushes with a great thrashing of branches which dwindled in the distance until the only sound was the patter of twigs and leaves falling to the ground.

Gisli's shot had also hit its mark. Two hinds, his and Edgar's, lay dead on the forest floor.

'Good shooting,' called out Kjartan as he rode up to the ambush.

'Lucky the stag broke to my left,' said Edgar. He was trying to sound matter of fact, though I knew he was delighted. 'Had he gone the other side of me, it would have been a more awkward shot, swinging away from my leading foot.'

Aelfric had already run off to retrieve Cabal and the dog swiftly picked up the scent of the wounded stag. The trail of blood was hard to miss, and after a couple of hundred paces we came across Edgar's arrow, lying where it had fallen from the wounded animal. 'Gut shot,' said Edgar, showing me the metal barbs. 'You can see traces of his stomach contents. This won't be a long pursuit. Bright clear blood would mean a superficial wound and a long chase.'

He was right. We tracked the stag for less than a mile, and found it dead in a thicket. Losing no time, the servant began to skin the carcass and butcher the meat, and Edgar rewarded Cabal with a choice titbit.

'Located the big stag without trouble, Gisli,' Kjartan called out as we arrived back to where Gisli was standing at the ambush site. The one-legged huscarl had been unable to join the pursuit.

'Five deer found and three killed. That was a nice shot of yours. Fifty paces at least.'

'One advantage to losing a leg, my friend,' Gisli replied. 'When you use a crutch to help you hobble around, it strengthens the arms and shoulders.'

We delivered the venison to the burh, where the earldorman's cooks were preparing the great feast which, by Saxon custom, celebrates the binding of the harvest sheaves.

'The royal huntsman is always invited and gets an honoured place,' Edgar said to me. 'And so he should - he provides the best of the festival food. As my assistant, Thorgils, you're expected to be there as well. Make sure you're suitably dressed.'

So it was that I found myself at the door of the burh's great hall five days later, wearing my purple tunic, which had been freshly cleaned by Edgar's wife, Judith. I was having difficulty in controlling my excitement. Aelfgifu must surely be at the banquet, I thought to myself.

'Who's going to be at the high table?' I asked a fellow guest as we waited for the horn blast to signal that we could enter the hall.

'Ealdorman Aelfhelm is the official host,'he replied.

'Is he Aelfgifu's father?' 'No. Her father was executed by that fool Ethelred on suspicion of disloyalty long before Knut came to power. Aelfhelm is her uncle. He has an old-fashioned view of how to conduct a banquet so I expect Aelfgifu will be a cupbearer.'

When the blaedhorn sounded, we filed into the great hall to

find our places. I had been allocated to sit at a long table facing towards the centre of the hall, which had been left clear for the servitors who brought our food and for the entertainment to follow. A similar long table had been placed on the far side, and to my right, raised up on a platform, was the table at which ealdorman Aelfhelm and his important guests would dine. Our humbler board was set with wooden plates, mugs and cowhorn spoons, but the ealdorman's guests had an embroidered linen tablecloth and their drinking vessels were expensive imports, goblets of green glass. We lesser folk had just taken our places when another horn blast announced the entry of the ealdorman. He came in with his wife and a cluster of nobles. Most were Saxons, but among them I noticed Gisli and Kjartan, wearing their gold-hiked huscarl swords and looking much more dignified than the green-clad hunters I had accompanied five days earlier. Still there was no sign of Aelfgifu.

The ealdorman and his party took their seats along one side of the high table, looking down at us. Then came a third horn blast, and from the left-hand side of the hall appeared a small procession of women. Leading them was Aelfgifu. I recognised her at once and felt a surge of pride. She had chosen to wear the same close-fitting sky-blue dress in which I had first seen her at Knut's Easter assembly in London. Then her long hair had hung loose, held with a single gold fillet. Now her hair was coiled up on her head, to reveal the slender white neck I remembered so well. I could not keep my eyes from her. She walked forward at the head of the procession, looking demurely down at the ground and holding a silver jug. Stepping up to her uncle's table, she filled the glass goblet of the chief guest, then her uncle's glass and then the noble next in rank. Judging by the colour of the liquid she poured, their drink was also a luxurious import - red wine. Her formal duty done, Aelfgifu handed the jug to a servant and walked to take her own seat. To my chagrin she was placed at the far end of the high table, and from where I sat my neighbour blocked my line of sight.

The cooks had excelled themselves. Even I, who was used to eating Edgar's game stews, was impressed by the variety and quality of the dishes. There were joints of pork and mutton, rounds of blood sausage and pies and pastes of freshwater fish - pike, perch, eel - with sweet pastries too. We were offered white bread, unlike the everyday rough bread, and of course there was the venison which Edgar had contributed, now brought in ceremonially on iron spits. I tried leaning forward and then back on my bench, attempting to get another glimpse of Aelfgifu. But my immediate neighbour on my right was a big, hulking man - the burh's ironworker as it turned out — and he was soon irritated by my fidgeting.

'Here,' he said, 'settle down and get on with the meal. Not often that you have a chance to eat such fine food —' he belched happily — 'or as much to drink.'

Of course, we were not offered wine, but on the table were heavy bowls made from local clay, which gave a deep grey sheen to the pottery. They contained a drink which I had not tasted before.

'Cider,' commented my burly neighbour as he enthusiastically used a wooden scoop to refill his wooden cup and mine. He had an enormous thirst and throughout the meal gulped cup after cup. I tried to avoid his friendly insistence to keep pace, but it proved difficult, even when I switched to drinking mead flavoured with myrtlewort in the hope that he would leave me alone. The leather mead bottle was in the hands of an overly efficient servant, and every time I put down my cup he topped it up again. Gradually, and for almost the first time in my life, I was getting drunk.

As the banquet progressed, the entertainers came on. A pair of jugglers skipped into the open space between the tables and began throwing batons and balls in the air and doing somersaults. It was uninspiring stuff, so there were catcalls and rude comments, and the jugglers left, looking cross. The audience perked up when the next act came on — a troop of performing dogs. They were dressed in coloured jackets and fancy collars and had been trained to scamper about in patterns, to duck and roll over, to walk on two feet and jump through hoops or over a bar. The audience shouted with approval as the bar rose higher and higher, and threw scraps of meat and chicken into the arena as rewards. Next it was the turn of the ealdorman's scop to come forward. He was the Saxon version of our Norse skald, and his duty was to declaim verses in praise of his lord and compose poems in honour of the chief guest. Remembering my time as an apprentice skald, I listened carefully. But I was not overly impressed. The ealdorman's scop had a mumbling delivery and I thought that his verses were mundane. I suspected they were stock lines which he changed to suit the particular individual at his lord's table, filling in the names of whoever was present that day. When the scop had finished and the final lines of poetry died away, there was an awkward silence.

'Where's the gleeman?' called down the ealdorman, and I saw the steward hurry up to the high table and say something to his master. The steward was looking unhappy.

'The gleeman's probably failed to show,' slurred my neighbour. The cider was making him alternately cantankerous and genial. 'He's become very unreliable. Meant to travel from one festival to another, but often has too much of a hangover to remember his next engagement.'

The steward was heading towards a small crowd of onlookers standing at the back of the hall. They were mostly women, kitchen workers. I saw him approach one young woman at the front of the crowd, take her by the wrist and try to bring her forward. For a moment she resisted and then I saw a harp being passed to her from somewhere at the back of the room. She beckoned to a youth sitting at the far table and he got to his feet. By now an attendant had placed two stools in the middle of the cleared space and the young man and woman - I could see that they were brother and sister - came forward and, after paying their respects to the ealdorman, sat down. The young man produced a bone whistle from his tunic and fingered a few experimental notes.

The crowd fell silent as his sister began to tune her harp. It was different from the harps I had known in Ireland. The Irish instrument is strung with twenty or more wires of bronze, while the harp the girl was holding was lighter, smaller, and had only a dozen strings. When she plucked it I realised it was corded with gut. But the simpler instrument suited her voice, which was pure, untrained and clear. She sang a number of songs, while her brother accompanied her on his whistle. The songs were about love and war and travel, and were plain enough, and no worse for that. The ealdorman and his guests listened for most of the time, only occasionally talking among themselves, and I judged that the stand-in musicians had done well.

When they finished, the dancing began. The young man on the whistle was joined by other local musicians, playing pan pipes, shaking rattles and beating tambourines. People left their benches and started to dance in the centre of the hall. Determined to enjoy themselves, men coaxed women out of the crowd of onlookers, and the music became more cheerful and spirited and everyone began to clap and sing. None of the august guests danced, of course, they merely looked on. I could see that the dancing was uncomplicated, a few steps forward, a few steps back, a sideways shuffle. To escape from my drunken neighbour, whose head was beginning to loll heavily against my shoulder, I decided to try. A little fuddled, I rose from my bench and joined the dancers. Among the line of women and girls coming towards me, I realised, was the girl harpist. She was wearing a bodice of russet red and a skirt of contrasting brown, which showed off her figure, and with her brown hair cut short and lightly freckled skin, she was the picture of fresh womanhood. Each time we passed she gave my hand a little squeeze. Gradually the music grew faster and faster, and the circles whirled with increasing speed, until we were short of breath. The music rose to a crescendo and then stopped abruptly. Laughing and smiling, the dancers staggered to a halt and there in front of me was the harpist girl. She stood before me, triumphant with her evening's success. Still intoxicated, I reached forward, took her in my arms and gave her a kiss. A heartbeat later, I heard a short, loud crash. It was a sound that few people in that gathering could have ever heard in their lives — the sound of expensive glass shattering. I looked up and there was Aelfgifu, standing up. She had flung her goblet on the table. As her uncle and his guests looked up in amazement, Aelfgifu stalked out of the hall, her back rigid with anger.

Swaying tipsily, I suddenly felt wretched. I knew that I had offended the woman I adored.

"War, hunting and love are as full of trouble as they are of pleasure.' Edgar launched another of his proverbs at me next morning, as we were getting ready to visit the hawk shed, which he called the hack house, and feed the hawks.

"What do you mean?' I asked, though I had a shrewd idea why he had mentioned love.

'Our lady's got a quick temper.'

'What makes you say that?'

'Come on, lad. I've known Aelfgifu since she was a skinny girl growing up. As a youngster she was always trying to get away from the stuffiness of the burh. Used to spend half her days with my wife and me down at the cottage. Playing around like any ordinary child, though she tended to get into more mischief than most. A real little vixen she could be when she was caught out. But she's got a good heart and we love her still. And we were very proud when she was wed to Knut, though by then she had become a grand lady.'

'What's that got to do with her bad temper?'

Edgar paused with his hand on the door into the hack house, and there was a glint of amusement in his eyes as he looked straight at me. 'Don't think you're the first young man she's taken a fancy to,' he said. 'Soon after you arrived, it was clear that you were not cut out to be kennelman. I began wondering why you were brought all the way from London and I asked the steward, who told me that you had been included in my lady's travelling party on her particular instructions. So I had my guess, but I wasn't sure until I saw her tantrum last night. No harm in that,' he went on, 'Aelfgifu's not been so well treated these past months, what with that other queen, Emma, and Knut being away all the time. I'd say she has a right to her own life. And she's been more than good to me and my wife. When our daughter was taken by the Danes, it was Aelfgifu who offered to pay her ransom if she was ever located. And she would still do so.'

The hawking season was now upon us, and for the previous two months we had been preparing Edgar's hunting birds as they emerged from their moult. The hack house contained three peregrine falcons, a merlin, and a pair of small sparrowhawks, as well as the costly gyrfalcon which had first got me into trouble. The gyrfalcon, Edgar pointed out, was worth its weight in pure silver or 'the price of three male slaves or perhaps four useless kennelmen'. He and I would go into the hack house every day, to 'man' the birds as he put it. This meant picking them up and getting them used to being handled by humans while feeding them special titbits to increase their strength and condition as their new feathers grew. Edgar proved to be just as expert with birds as he was with hounds. He favoured a diet of goslings, eels and adders for the long-winged falcons and mice for the short-winged hawks. Now I learned why there was sandy floor beneath their perches: it allowed us to find and collect the droppings from each bird, which Edgar examined with close attention. He explained that hunting birds could suffer from almost-human ailments, including itch, rheum, worms, mouth ulcers and cough. When Edgar detected a suspicion of gout in one of the peregrines, an older bird, he sent me to find a hedgehog for it to eat, which he pronounced to be the only cure.

Most of the birds, with the exception of the gyrfalcon and one of the sparrowhawks, were already trained. When they had their new feathers, it was only necessary to reintroduce them to their hunting duties. But the gyrfalcon had recently arrived in the hack house when I first saw it. That was why its eyelids had been sewn shut. 'It keeps the bird calm and quiet when it's being transported,' Edgar explained. 'Once it arrives in its new home, I ease the thread little by little so that the bird looks out on its surroundings gradually and setdes in without stress. It may seem cruel, but the only other method is to enclose its head in a leather hood, and I don't like to do that to a bird captured after it has learned to hunt in the wild. Putting on the hood too soon can cause chafing and distress.'

Edgar also had a warning. 'A dog comes to depend upon its master, but a hunting bird keeps its independence,' he said. 'You may tame and train a bird to work with you, and there is no greater pleasure in any sport than to fly your bird and see it take its prey and then return to your hand. But always remember that the moment the bird takes to the air it has the choice of liberty. It may fly away and never return. Then you will suffer falconer's heartbreak.'

Their free spirit attracted me to the hunting birds and I quickly found that I had a natural talent for handling them. Edgar started me off with one of the little sparrowhawks, the least valuable of his charges. He chose the one which had never yet been trained and showed me how to tie six-inch strips of leather to the bird's ankles with a special knot, then slip a longer leash through the metal rings at their ends. He equipped me with a falconer's protective glove, and each day I fed the hawk its diet of fresh mouse, encouraging it to leap from the perch to the warm carcass in my hand. The sparrowhawk was shrill and bad tempered when it first arrived - a sure sign, according to Edgar, that it had been taken from the nest as a fledgling and not caught after it had left the nest - yet within two weeks I had it hopping back and forth like a garden pet. Edgar confessed he had never seen a sparrowhawk tamed so fast. 'You seem to have a way with women,' he commented, slily because only the female sparrow-hawk is any use for hunting.

Not long afterwards he decided that I was the right person to train the gyrfalcon. It was a bold decision and may have been superstitious on Edgar's part, thinking that I would have some special understanding of the spear falcon because I came from its homeland. But Edgar knew that I had been brought to Northampton at the express wish of Aelfgifu, and he may have been playing a deeper game. He made me the gyrfalcon's keeper. I handled her - she was also a female - two or three times each day, fed her, bathed her once a week in a bath of yellow powder to get rid of lice, gave her chicken wings to tug and twist as she stood on her perch so her neck and body muscles grew strong, and held out my glove, a much stouter one this time, so she could hop from perch to hand. Within a month the gyrfalcon was quiet enough to wear a leather hood without alarm, and she and I were allowed outside the hack house, where the splendid white and speckled bird flew on a long leash to reach lumps of meat I placed on a stump of wood. A week after that and Edgar was tossing into the air a leather sock dressed with pigeon's wings, and the gyrfalcon, still tethered, was flying off from my glove to strike the lure and pin it to the ground and earn a reward of gosling. 'You have the makings of a first-class falconer,' Edgar commented and I glowed with satisfaction.

Two days after Aelgifu's outburst at the banquet, we allowed the gyrfalcon to fly free for the first time. It was a critical and delicate moment in her training. Soon after dawn Edgar and I carried the falcon to a quiet spot, well away from the burh. Edgar whirled the lure on its cord. Standing fifty paces away with the gyrfalcon on my glove, I lifted off the leather hood, loosed the leather straps, and raised my arm on high. The falcon caught sight at once of the whirling lure, thrust off from the glove with a powerful leap that I felt right to my shoulder, and flashed straight at the target in a single, deadly swoop. She hit the leather lure with a solid thump that tore the tethering cord from Edgar's grasp, then carried the lure and its trailing cord up into a tree. For a moment Edgar and I stood aghast, wondering if the falcon would now take her chance to fly free. There was nothing we could do. But when I slowly held up my arm again, the gyrfalcon dropped quietly from her branch, glided back to my glove and settled there. I rewarded her with a morsel of raw pigeon's breast.

'So she finally comes to claim her royal prerogative,' Edgar said quietly to me as he saw who was waiting beside the hack house as we walked back. Aelfgifu was standing there, accompanied by two attendants. For a moment I resented the mischievous implication in Edgar's comment, but then a familiar feeling washed over me. I felt light-headed at being in the presence of the most beautiful and desirable woman in existence.

'Good morning, my lady,' said Edgar. 'Come to see your falcon?'

'Yes, Edgar,' she replied. 'Is the bird ready yet?' 'Not quite, my lady. Another week or ten days of training and we should have her fit for the hunt.'

'And have you thought of a name for her?' asked Aelfgifu. 'Well, Thorgils here has,' said Edgar.

Aelfgifu turned towards me as if seeing me for the first time in her life. 'So what name have you chosen to call my falcon?' she asked. 'I trust it is one I will approve.'

'I call the falcon Habrok,' I answered. 'It means high breeches, after the fluffy feathers on its legs.'

She gave a slight smile which made my heart lurch. 'I know it does; Habrok was also the "finest of all hawks" according to the tales of the ancient Gods, was it not? A good name.'

I felt as if I was walking on air.

'Edgar,' she went on, 'I'll keep you to your promise. In ten days from now I begin hawking. I need to get out into the countryside and relax. Two hunts a week if the hawks stay fit.'

So began the most idyllic autumn I ever spent in England. On hawking days Aelfgifu would arrive at the hack house on horseback, usually with a single woman attendant. Occasionally she came alone. Edgar and I, also mounted, would be waiting for her. The hawks we carried depended on our prey. Edgar usually brought one of the peregrines, myself the gyrfalcon, and Aelfgifu accepted from us the merlin or one of the sparrowhawks, which were lighter birds and more suitable for a woman to carry. We always rode to the same spot, a broad area of open land, a mix of heath and marsh, where the hunting birds had room to fly.

There we tethered the horses, leaving them in the care of Aelfgifu's servant, and the three of us would walk across the open ground with its tussock grass and small bushes, its ponds and ditches, ideal country for the game we sought. Here Edgar would loose his favourite peregrine, and the experienced bird would mount higher and higher in the sky over his head and wait, circling, until it could see its target. With the peregrine in position, we advanced on foot, perhaps startling a duck from a ditch or a woodcock from the brushwood. As the panicked creature rose into the air, the peregrine far above would note the direction of its flight and begin its dive. Plummeting through the air, making minute adjustments for the speed of its prey, it hurtled down towards its target like a feathered thunderbolt from Thor. Sometimes it killed with the first strike. At other times it might miss its stoop as the quarry jinked or dived, and then the peregrine would mount again to launch another attack or pursue the quarry at ground level. Occasionally, but not often, the peregrine would fail, and then Edgar and I would whirl our lures and coax the disappointed and angry bird to return to human hand.

'Would you like to fly Habrok next?' Edgar asked Aelfgifu halfway through our first afternoon of hunting and he set my heart racing. The gyrfalcon was a royal bird, fit for a king to fly, and a queen, of course. But Habrok was too heavy for Aelfgifu to carry, so it was I who stood beside her ready to cast the falcon off. As luck would have it, the next game we saw was a hare. It sprang out of a clump of grass, a fine animal, sleek and strong, and went bounding away arrogantly, ears up, a sure sign that it was confident of escape. I glanced at Aelfgifu and she nodded. With one hand I slipped Habrok's leash - the hood was already off - and tossed the splendid bird clear. For a moment she faltered, then caught a distant glimpse of her prey leaping through the rough grass and reeds. A few wing beats to gain height and have a clear sight of the hare, then Habrok sped towards the fleeing animal. The hare realised its danger and increased its pace, swerved and sought protection in a thicket of grass at the very instant the falcon shot by. Habrok curved up into the air, turned and swooped again, this time attacking from the other side. The hare, alarmed, broke cover and began to run towards the woods, ears back, full pace now, straining every sinew. Again it was lucky. As she was about to strike, the gyrfalcon was foiled by an intervening bush and forced to check her dive. Now the hare was nearing refuge and almost safe. Suddenly, Habrok shot ahead of her prey, turned and came straight at the hare from ahead. There was a tremendous flurry, a swirl of fur and feather, and predator and prey vanished into the thick grass. I ran forward, guided by the faint jingle of the bells on Habrok's legs. As I parted the grass, I came upon the hawk, standing on the dead carcass. She had bitten through the hare's neck, using the sharp point on her beak which Edgar called the 'falcon's tooth' and was beginning to feed, tearing open the fur to get at the warm flesh. I let Habrok feed for a moment, then gently picked her up and hooded her.

'Don't allow a hunting bird to eat too much from its prey, or it will not want to hunt again that day,' Edgar had instructed. Now he too came running up, delighted with the performance in front of Aelfgifu. 'Could not have done better,' he exulted. 'No peregrine could have matched that. Only a gyrfalcon will pursue and pursue its prey, and never give up,' and then he could not resist adding, 'rather like its owner.'

But the hunt was not the main reason why I remember those glorious afternoons. Our hunting took us deep into the marshy heath, and after an hour or so, when we were a safe distance from the attendant watching our horses, Edgar would hang back or take a different path, tactfully leaving Aelfgifu and me alone together. Then we would find a quiet spot, screened by tall reeds and grasses, and I would set Habrok down on a temporary perch, a branch curved over and the two ends pushed into the earth to make a hoop. And there, while the falcon sat quietly under her hood, Aelfgifu and I would make love. Under the vault of England's summer sky we were in a blissful world of our own. And when Edgar judged that it was time to return to the burh, we would hear him approaching in the distance, softly jingling a hawk bell to give us warning so that we were dressed and ready when he arrived.

On one such hawking excursion — it must have been the third or fourth time that Aelfgifu and I were walking the marshland together — we came across a small abandoned shelter at the tip of a tongue of land which projected into a mere. Who had made the secluded hut of interlaced reeds and heather it was impossible to know, probably a wild fowler come to take birds from the mere by stealth. At any rate Aelfgifu and I claimed it for our own as our love bower, and it became our habit to direct our steps towards it, and spent the afternoon there curled up in one another's arms while Edgar stood guard at the neck of land.

These were times of glorious pleasure and intimacy: and at last I could tell Aelfgifu how much I longed for her and how inadequate I felt, she being so much more experienced and high born.

'Love needs no teaching,' she replied softly and with that characteristic habit of hers she ran the tip of her finger along the profile of my face. We were lying naked, side by side, so her finger continued across my chest and belly. 'And haven't you ever heard the saying that love makes all men equal? That means women too.'

I bent over to brush my lips across her cheek and she smiled with contentment.

'And speaking of teaching, Edgar tells me that you trained Habrok in less than five weeks. That you have a natural way with hunting birds. Why do you think that is?'

'I don't know,' I replied, 'but maybe it has something to do with my veneration for Odinn. Since I was a child in Greenland I have been attracted to Odinn's ways. He is the God whose accomplishments I most admire. He gave mankind so much of what we possess — whether poetry or self-knowledge or the master spells — and he is always seeking to learn more. So much so that he sacrificed the sight of one eye to gain extra wisdom. He comes in many forms, but to any person who wanders as far from home as I have done, Odinn can be an inspiration. He is ever the traveller himself and a seeker after truths. That is why I venerate him as Odinn the wanderer, the empowerer of journeys.'

'So what, my little courtier, has your devotion to Odinn to do with birds and teaching them?' she enquired. 'I thought that Odinn is the God of War, bringing victory on the battlefield. That, at least, is how my husband and his war captains regard him. They invoke Odinn before their campaigns. While their priests do the same to the White Christ.'

'Odinn is the God of victories, yes, and the God of the dead too,' I answered. 'But do you know how he learned the secret of poetry and gave it to men?'

'Tell me,' Aelfgifu said, nestling closer.

'Poetry is the mead of the Gods, created from their spittle, which ran in the veins of the creature Kvasir. But Kvasir was killed by evil dwarves, who preserved his blood in three great cauldrons. When these cauldrons passed into the possession of the giant Suttung and his daughter Gunnlod, Odinn took it upon himself to steal the mead. He changed himself into a snake - Odinn is a shape-changer, as is often said - and crept through a hole in the mountain which guarded Suttung's lair, and seduced Gunnlod into allowing him three sips, one at each cauldron. Such was Odinn's power that he drained each cauldron dry. Then he changed himself into an eagle to fly back to Asgard, the home of the Gods, with the precious liquid in his throat. But the giant Suttung also changed himself into a great eagle and pursued Odinn, chasing him as fast as Edgar's peregrine chases a fleeing hawk. Suttung would have overtaken Odinn, if Odinn had not spewed out a few drops of the mead and thus lightened of his precious load managed to reach the safety of Asgard just ahead of his pursuer. He escaped by the narrowest of margins. Suttung had come so close that when he swung his sword at the fleeing Odinn-eagle, Odinn was forced to dodge and dive and the sword cut away the tips of his tail feathers.'

'A charming story,' said Aelfgifu as I finished. 'But is it true?'

'Look over there,' I answered, rolling onto my side, and pointing to where Habrok sat quietly on her perch. 'Ever since Odinn lost his tail feathers to Suttung's sword, all hawks and falcons have been born with short tail feathers.'

Just then the gentle tinkle of Edgar's hawk bells warned us it was time to return to the burh.

Our idyll could not last for ever and there was to be just one more tryst at our hidden refuge before its sanctuary was destroyed. The day was sultry with the threat of a thunderstorm and, for some reason, when Aelfgifu arrived to meet Edgar and myself she had no attendant with her but had chosen to bring her lapdog. To most people it was an appealing little creature, brown and white, constantly alert, with bright intelligent eyes. But I knew Edgar's view of lapdogs - he thought they were spoiled pests — and I had a sense of foreboding which, mistakenly, I put down to my usual dislike of dogs.

Aelfgifu detected our disapproval and was adamant. 'I insist Maccus comes with us today. He too needs his fun in the country. He will not disturb Habrok or the other hawks.'

So we rode out, Maccus riding on the pommel of Aelfgifu's saddle, until we tethered our mounts at the usual place and walked into the marshland. Maccus bounced happily ahead through the undergrowth and long grass, his ears napping. He even put up a partridge, which Habrok struck down in a dazzling attacking flight. 'Look!' said Aelfgifu to me, 'I don't know why you and Edgar made such long faces about the little dog. He's proving himself useful.'

It was when she and I were once again in our bower and had made love that Maccus barked excitedly. A moment later I heard Edgar's warning bell ring urgently. Aelfgifu and I dressed quickly. Hurriedly I picked up Habrok and tried to pretend that we had been waiting in ambush by the mere. It was too late. A servant, Aelfgifu's old nursemaid, had been sent to find her mistress as she was wanted at the burh, and Maccus's enthusiastic barking had led her to where Edgar was standing guard. Edgar tried to distract the servant from advancing along the little causeway leading to the bower, but the dog went dashing out from our little hut and eagerly led her servant to our trysting place. Not till much later did I know what harm had been done.

We were returning to our horses when Edgar glanced behind us and saw, high in the sky, a lone heron flying towards his roost. The bird was moving through the air with broad, measured wing beats, his winding course following the line of the stream that would lead him to his home. The arrival of the servant had ruined our sport so Edgar thought perhaps he could retrieve our day's enjoyment. A heron is the peregrine's greatest prey. So Edgar loosed his peregrine and the faithful bird began to mount. The peregrine spiralled upwards, not underneath the heron but adjacent to the great bird's 'flight so as not to alarm her quarry. When she had reached her height, she turned and came slicing down, hurtling through the air at such a pace that it was difficult to follow the stoop. But the heron was courageous. At the last moment the great bird swerved, and tilted up, showing its fearsome beak and claws. Edgar's peregrine swerved aside, overshot, and a moment later was climbing back into the sky to gain height for a second onslaught. This was the rare opportunity that Edgar and I had discussed a dozen times: the chance to launch Habrok against a heron.

'Quick, Thorgils. Let Habrok fly!' Edgar called urgently.

Both of us knew that a gyrfalcon will only attack a heron if there is an experienced bird to imitate. I fumbled for the leash and reached out to remove the leather hood, but a strange presentiment came over me. I felt as if my hands were shackled.

'Hurry, Thorgils, hurry! There's not much time. The peregrine's got one more chance, and then the heron will be among the trees.'

But I could not go on. I looked across at Edgar. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'There's something wrong. I must not fly Habrok. I don't know why.'

Edgar was getting angry. I could see the scowl developing, the eyes sinking back into his head, his jaw set. Then he looked into my face and it was like the day at the well in the forest. The words died in his throat, and he said, 'Thorgils, are you feeling all right? You look odd.'

'It's fine,' I replied. 'The feeling is over. I don't know what it was.'

Edgar took Habruk from me, removed hood and leash, and with a single gesture let loose the falcon. Habrok rose and rose in the air, and for a moment we were sure that the gyrfalcon would join the waiting peregrine and learn its trade. But then, the white and speckled bird seemed to sense some ancient call, and instead of flying up to join the waiting peregrine, Habrok changed direction and with steady sure wingbeats began to fly towards the north. From the ground we watched the falcon disappearing, flying strongly until we could see it no more.

Edgar could not forgive himself for allowing Habrok to fly. For the next two weeks he kept on saying to me, 'I should have realised when I saw your face. There was something there that neither of us could know.' The shocking loss brought all our hawking to a halt. The spirit had gone out of us, we grieved and, of course, I had lost my link with Aelfgifu.

The rhythm of the hunting year had to go on. We fed and doctored the remaining birds, even if we did not fly them, and walked the dogs. There was a new kennelman, who was excellent at his job, taking the pack each day to an area of stony ground where the exercise toughened their paws. In the evenings he bathed any cuts and bruises in a mixture of vinegar and soot until they were fit to run on any surface. Edgar wanted the pack ready for the first boar hunt of the year, which takes place at the festival the White Christ devotees call Michael's Mass. He and I returned to our scouting trips in the forest, looking this time for the tracks of a suitable boar, old and massive enough to be a worthy opponent.

'The boar hunt is very different from the hunting of the stag and much more dangerous,' Edgar told me. 'Boar hunting is like training for a battle. You must plan your campaign, deploy your forces, launch your attack and then there is the ultimate test — close combat with a foe who can kill you.'

'Do many lose their lives?'

'The boar, of course,' he answered. 'And dogs too. It can be a messy business. A dog gets too close and the boar will slash him. Occasionally a horse slips, or a man loses his footing when the boar charges, and if he falls the wrong way then the files can disembowel him.'

'The files?'

'The tusks. Look closely when the boar is cornered, though not too closely for your own safety, and you will see him gnash his teeth. He is using the upper ones to sharpen his lower tusks, as a reaper employs his whetstone to put a keen edge on his scythe. The boar's weapons can be deadly.'

'It sounds as if you are less enthusiastic about the boar hunt than pursuing the stag.'

Edgar shrugged. 'It's my duty as huntsman to see that my master and his guests enjoy their sport to the full, that the boar is killed so its fearsome head is brought on a platter into the banquet and paraded before the applauding guests. If the boar escapes, then everyone goes home feeling that their battle honour has been diminished, and the banquet is a dismal affair. But for the hunt itself, I personally don't find there is much skill to it. The hunted boar travels most often in a straight line. His scent is easy for the dogs to follow, unlike the canny stag who leaps beside his own track to confuse the trail, or doubles back, or runs through water to perplex the scenting pursuit.'

It still took us three days of searching the forest, and the help of Cabal's questing nose to find the quarry we were seeking. Edgar calculated from the mighty size of its droppings that the boar was enormous. His opinion was confirmed when we came across the boar's marking tree. The rub marks extended an arm's length above the ground and there were white gashes in the bark. 'See there, Thorgils, that is where he has marked his territory by scratching his back and sides. He's getting ready for the rutting season when he will fight the other boars. Those white slashes are file marks.' Then we found the wallow where the creature had rested and Edgar laid his hand on the mud to check how long the creature had been away. He drew his hand back thoughtfully. 'Still warm,' he said, 'the animal is not far off. We'd best leave quietly because I have a feeling that he is close by.'

'Will we scare him off?' I asked.

'No. This boar is a strange one. Not just big, but arrogant. He must have heard us approaching. A boar sees very poorly, but he hears better than any other creature in the forest. Yet only at the last moment did this one leave his bed. He fears nothing. He may still be lurking nearby, in some thicket, even preparing to rush on us — it has happened in the past, a sudden unprovoked attack — and we have not thought to bring our boar spears.'

Cautiously we withdrew and the moment we got back to Edgar's cottage he took down his boar spears from where they hung suspended on cords from the rafters. Their stout shafts were of ash and the metal heads were the shape of slender chestnut leaves, with a wickedly narrow tip. I noticed the heavy crosspiece a little way below the metal head.

'That's to stop the spear head piercing so deep into the boar that he can reach you with his tusks,' Edgar said. 'A charging boar knows no pain. In his fury he will spit himself even to his death, just to get at his enemy, especially if he is already wounded. Here, Thorgils, take this spear and make sure that you put a keen edge on it just in case you have to meet his charge, though that is not our job. Tomorrow, on the day of the hunt, our task is only to find the boar and run him until he is exhausted and turns to fight. Then we stand aside and let our masters make the kill and gain the honour.'

I hefted the heavy spear in my hand and wondered if I would be brave enough or capable of withstanding the assault.

'Oh, one more thing,' Edgar said, tossing me a roll of leather. 'Tomorrow wear these. Even if you are faced with a young boar, he can do some damage with his tusks as he slips by you.'

I unrolled the leather, and found they were a pair of heavy leggings. At knee level they were cut clean through in several places as though by the sharpest knife.

By coincidence, Michael's Mass of the Christians falls near the equinox when, for Old Believers, the barrier which separates the spirit world from our own grows thin. So I was not surprised when Judith, Edgar's wife, shyly approached me and asked if I would cast the Saxon wands at sunset. As before, she wanted to know if she would ever see her missing daughter again and what the future held for her sundered family. I took the white cloth that Edgar had used and with a nub of charcoal drew the pattern of nine squares as my mentors in Iceland had taught me before I laid the sheet upon the ground. Also, to please Judith, I carved and marked the eighth wand, the sinuous snake wand, and included it when I made my throw. Three times I threw the wands into the cloth's central square, and three times the answer came back the same. But I could not fathom it, and feared to explain it to Judith, not only because I was perplexed but because the snake wand was so dominant on each cast. That signalled some sort of death, and certain death because the snake wand lay across the master wand. Yet there was a contradiction too because all three times the wands gave me back, clearly and unambiguously, the signs and symbols for Frey, he who governs rain and the crops and rules prosperity and wealth. Frey is a God of birth, not death. I was baffled, and told Judith something bland, mumbling about Frey and the future. She went away happy, thinking, I suspect, that Frey's dominance — he is the God shown with the huge phallus — meant that perhaps her daughter would one day present her with grandchildren.

The morning of the hunt dawned with the dogs barking and baying in excitement, the kennelman yelling to keep them in order, and the boisterous shouts of our masters, who arrived to begin the chase. The hunt marshal was Aelfgifu's uncle, the earldorman, and it was his glory that was to be burnished that day. Aelfhelm had brought along a dozen friends, almost all of whom had attended the sheave-day feast, and once again I noticed the two huscarls. Even with their disabilities, they were prepared to pursue the boar. There were no women in the group. This was men's work.

We sorted out the chaos at the kennels and moved off, the lords mounted on their best horses, Edgar and myself on ponies, and a dozen or so churls and slaves running along beside us. They were to act as horse holders once we found our boar. From that moment forward the hunt would be on foot.

Edgar had already calculated the line the boar would run once he was moved so, as we rode, we dropped off small groups of dogs with their handlers at strategic spots, where they could be released to intercept and turn the fleeing boar.

Within an hour the first deep voices of the older dogs announced they had found their quarry. Then a crash of sound from the pack told us that they were onto the boar. Almost at once there was a piercing yelp of agony and I saw Edgar and the ealdorman exchange glances.

'Beware, my lord,' Edgar said. 'That's not a beast that runs. It stands and fights.'

We slipped from our horses and walked through the forest. But that day's hunting was a calamity. There was no chase, no hallooing or blasts on the horn, no occasion to use the dogs we had so carefully positioned. Instead we came upon the boar, standing at the foot of a great tree, champing its teeth, flecks of foam in its jaws. But this was not a boar at bay. It was a boar defiant. It was challenging its attackers, and the circling pack of dogs howled and barked in frustration. Not one dog dared to close with it and I could see why. Two dogs lay on the ground, disembowelled and dead. Another was trying to drag itself away, using only its forepaws, because its back was broken. The kennelman ran forward to restrain his other dogs. The boar stood, black and menacing, the ridge of bristle on his back erect, his head held low, looking with murderous short-sighted eyes.

'Watch the ears, my lord, watch the ears,' Edgar cautioned.

The ealdorman had courage, there was no doubt about that. He gripped the handle of his spear and walked forward towards the boar, defying it. I saw the beast's ears go flat against his skull, a sure sign that he was about to charge. The boar's black body quivered and suddenly exploded into action. The legs and hooves moved so fast that they seemed a single blur.

The ealdorman knew what he was doing. He stood his ground, the boar spear held at an angle sloping slightly downwards so as to take the charge on its tip. His aim was true. The boar impaled itself on the leaf-shaped tip and gave a mighty squeal of anger. It seemed to be a death strike, but the ealdorman was perhaps too slow. The sheer weight of the boar's charge knocked him off his feet and he was tossed aside. He fell and those near him heard his arm crack.

The boar rushed on, the spear projecting from its side. It darted through the circle of dogs and men unopposed. It ran in a frenzy of pain, a dark red stripe of blood oozing from its flank. We followed at the double, led by Edgar, boar spear in his hand, the dogs howling with fear and excitement. The beast did not go far, it was too badly hurt. We could easily follow the crashing sound of its reckless run. Then suddenly the noise stopped. Edgar halted immediately, and gasping for breath, held up his hand. 'All hold! All hold!' He walked forward very slowly and cautiously. I followed, but he waved at me to keep a safe distance. We moved between the trees and saw and heard nothing. The boar's blood trail led to a tangled thicket of briars and brushwood, a woven mass of thorn and branches, impossible to penetrate even for the dogs. We could see the battered and torn leaves and broken twigs which marked the tunnel of its blind, impetuous entry.

I heard the sudden intake of breath of a man in pain. Looking round, I saw the ealdorman clutching his broken arm, He had stumbled through the wood to find us. With him were three of his high-born guests. They looked drawn and shaken.

'Give me a moment to prepare myself, my lord,' said Edgar. 'Then I'll go in after him.'

The ealdorman said nothing. He was dizzy with pain and shock. Seeing what Edgar proposed, I made a move to join him, but a single firm hand fell on my shoulder. 'Stand still, lad,' said a voice and I glanced round. I was being held back by Kjartan the one-handed huscarl. 'You'd only get in his way.'