The Burning Land

FIVE

Sharp blades thrusting, spear-blades killing

As Æthelred, Lord of Slaughter, slaughtered thousands,

Swelling the river with blood, sword-fed river,

And Aldhelm, noble warrior, followed his lord

Into the battle, hard-fought, felling foemen

And so the poem goes on for many, many, many more lines. I have the parchment in front of me, though I shall burn it in a moment. My name is not mentioned, of course, and that is why I shall burn it. Men die, women die, cattle die, but reputation lives on like the echo of a song. Yet why should men sing of Æthelred? He fought well enough that day, but Fearnhamme was not his battle, it was mine.

I should pay my own poets to write down their songs, but they prefer lying in the sun and drinking my ale and, to be frank, poets bore me. I endure them for the sake of the guests in my hall who expect to hear the harp and the boasts. Curiosity drove me to buy this about-to-be-burned parchment from a monk who sells such things to noble halls. He had come from the lands that were Mercia, of course, and it is natural that Mercian poets should extol their country or else no one would ever hear of it, and so they write their lies, but even they cannot compete with the churchmen. The annals of our time are all written by monks and priests, and a man might have run away from a hundred battles and never once have killed a Dane, but so long as he gives money to the church he will be written down as a hero.

The battle at Fearnhamme was won by two things. The first was that Steapa brought Alfred’s men to the field just when they were needed and, looking back, that could so easily have gone wrong. The Ætheling Edward, of course, was notionally in charge of that half of the army, and both he and Æthelred possessed far more authority than Steapa, indeed they both insisted he gave the command to leave Æscengum too soon and countermanded his order, but Alfred overruled them. Alfred was too sick to command the army himself, but, like me, he had learned to trust Steapa’s brute instinct. And so the horsemen arrived at the rear of Harald’s army when it was disorganized and when half still waited to cross the river.

The second reason for success was the speed with which my swine head shattered Harald’s shield wall. Such attacks did not always work, but we had the advantage of the slope, and the Danes, I think, were already dispirited by the slaughter beyond the ford. And so we won.

The Lord God granted victory, blessings to Æthelred,

Who, beside the river, broke the hedge of shields.

And Edward was there, noble Edward, Alfred’s son.

Who, shielded by angels, watched as Æthelred

Cut down the northmen’s leader…

Burning is too good for it. Maybe I shall tear it to squares and leave it in the latrine.

We were too tired to organize a proper pursuit, and our men were dazed by the speed of their triumph. They had also found ale, mead, and Frankish wine in the Danes’ saddlebags and many became drunk as they wandered the butcher’s shop they had made. Some men began heaving Danish corpses into the river, but there were so many that the bodies jammed against the Roman bridge piers to make a dam that flooded the ford’s banks. Mail coats were being heaped and captured weapons piled. The few prisoners were under guard in a barn, their sobbing women and children gathered outside, while Skade had been placed in an empty granary where two of my men now guarded her. Alfred, naturally, went to the church to give thanks to his god, and all the priests and monks went with him. Bishop Asser paused before going to his prayers. He stared at the dead and at the plunder, then turned his cold eyes on me. He just gazed at me, as if I were one of those two-headed calves that are shown at fairs, then he looked puzzled and gestured that Edward should go with him to the church.

Edward hesitated. He was a shy young man, but it was plain he felt he should say something to me and had no idea what words to use. I spoke instead. “I congratulate you, lord,” I said.

He frowned and for a moment looked as puzzled as Asser, then he twitched and straightened. “I’m not a fool, Lord Uhtred.”

“I never thought so,” I said.

“You must teach me,” he said.

“Teach you?”

He waved at the carnage and, for a heartbeat, looked horrified. “How you do this,” he blurted out.

“You think like your enemy, lord,” I said, “and then you think harder.” I would have said more, but just then I saw Cerdic in an alley between two cottages. I half turned, then was distracted by Bishop Asser sternly calling Edward away, and when I looked back there was no Cerdic. Nor could there have been, I told myself. I had left Cerdic in Lundene to guard Gisela, and I decided it was just one of the tricks that tired thoughts can play.

“Here, lord.” Sihtric, who had been my servant, but was now one of my household warriors, dumped a heavy coat of mail at my feet. “It’s got gold links, lord,” he said excitedly.

“You keep it,” I said.

“Lord?” He stared up at me with astonishment.

“Your wife has expensive tastes, doesn’t she?” I asked. Sihtric had married a whore, Ealhswith, much against my advice and without my permission, but I had forgiven him and then been surprised that the marriage was happy. They had two children now, both sturdy little boys. “Take it away,” I said.

“Thank you, lord.” Sihtric scooped up the mail coat.

Time slows.

It is strange how I have forgotten some things. I cannot truly re member the moment when I led the swine head into Harald’s line. Was I looking into his face? Do I truly remember the horse’s fresh blood flicking from his beard as his head turned? Or was I looking at the man to his left whose shield half protected Harald? I forget so much, but not that moment as Sihtric picked up the mail coat. I saw a man leading a dozen captured horses across the flooded ford. Two other men were tugging bodies free of the corpse-dam at the ruined bridge. One of the men had red curly hair and the other was doubled over in laughter at some jest. Three other men were tossing corpses into the river, adding to the blockage of bodies faster than the pair could relieve it. A thin dog was scratching itself on the street where Osferth, Alfred’s bastard, was talking to the Lady Æthelflæd, and I was surprised that she was not in the church with her father, brother, and husband, and surprised that she and her half-brother appeared to have struck up a friendly relationship so soon. I remember Oswi, my new servant lad, leading Smoka into the street and pausing to talk to a woman, and I realized that Fearnhamme’s townsfolk were returning already. I supposed they must have hidden in the nearby woods as soon as they saw armed men across the river. Another woman, wearing a dull yellow cloak, was using a paring knife to cut a ring-circled finger from a dead Dane’s hand. I remember a raven, circling blue-black in the blood-smelling sky, and I felt a sharp elation as I stared at the bird. Was that one of Odin’s two ravens? Would the gods themselves hear of this carnage? I laughed aloud, the sound incongruous because in my memory there was just silence at that moment.

Till Æthelflæd spoke. “Lord?” She had come close and was staring at me. “Uhtred?” she said gently. Finan was a couple of paces behind her, and with him was Cerdic, and that was when I knew. I knew, but I said nothing, and Æthelflæd walked to me and laid a hand on my arm. “Uhtred?” she said again. I think I just stared into her face. Her blue eyes were bright with tears. “Childbirth,” she said gently.

“No,” I said, quite quietly, “no.”

“Yes,” she said simply. Finan was looking at me, pain on his face.

“No,” I said louder.

“Mother and child,” Æthelflæd said very softly.

I closed my eyes. My world went dark, had gone dark, for my Gisela was dead.

Wyn eal gedreas. That is from another poem I sometimes hear chanted in my hall. It is a sad poem, and thus a true poem. Wyrd bið ful ãræd, it says. Fate is inexorable. And wyn eal gedreas. All the joy has died.

All my joy had died and I had gone into the dark. Finan said I howled like a wolf, and perhaps I did, though I do not remember that. Grief must be hidden. The man who first chanted that fate is inexorable went on to say that we must bind our inmost thoughts in chains. A saddened mind does no good, he said, and its thoughts must be hidden, and maybe I did howl, but then I shook off Æthelflæd’s hand and snarled at the men heaving corpses into the river, ordering that two of them should help the men trying to clear the bodies from between the ruined bridge piers. “Make sure all our horses are down from the hilltop,” I told Finan.

I did not think of Skade at that moment, or else I might have let Serpent-Breath take her rotten soul. It was her curse, I realized later, that killed Gisela, because she had died on the same morning that Harald had forced me to free Skade. Cerdic had ridden to tell me, his heart heavy as he took his horse through Dane-infested country to Æscengum, only to find us gone.

Alfred, when he heard, came to me, took my arm and walked down Fearnhamme’s street. He was limping and men stepped aside to give us room. He gripped my elbow, and seemed about to speak a dozen times, yet the words always died on his lips. Finally he checked me and looked into my eyes. “I have no answer why God inflicts such grief,” he said, and I said nothing. “Your wife was a jewel,” Alfred went on. He frowned, and his next words were as generous as they were difficult for him to say. “I pray your gods give you comfort, Lord Uhtred.” He led me to the Roman house which had been sequestered as the royal hall, and there Æthelred looked uncomfortable, while Father Beocca, dear man, embarrassed me by clinging to my sword hand and praying aloud that his god should treat me with mercy. He was crying. Gisela might have been a pagan, but Beocca had loved her. Bishop Asser, who hated me, nevertheless spoke gentle words, while Brother Godwin, the blind monk who eavesdropped on God, made a plangent moaning sound until Asser led him away. Finan, later that day, brought me a jar of mead and sang his sad Irish songs until I was too drunk to care. He alone saw me weep that day, and he told no one.

“We’re ordered back to Lundene,” Finan told me next morning. I just nodded, too oblivious of the world to care what my orders were. “The king returns to Wintanceaster,” Finan went on, “and the Lords Æthelred and Edward are to pursue Harald.”

Harald, badly wounded, had been taken by the remnants of his army north across the Temes until, in too much agony to continue, he ordered them to find refuge, which they did on a thorn-covered island called, naturally enough, Torneie. The island was in the River Colaun, not far from where it joins the Temes, and Harald’s men fortified Torneie, first making a great palisade with the plentiful thorn bushes, then throwing up earthworks. Lord Æthelred and the Ætheling Edward caught up with them there and laid siege. Alfred’s household troops, under Steapa, swept eastward through Cent, driving out the last of Harald’s men and recovering vast quantities of plunder. Fearnhamme was a magnificent victory, leaving Harald stranded on a fever-infested island, while the remainder of his men fled to their boats and abandoned Wessex, though many of the crews joined Haesten, who was still camped on Cent’s northern shore.

And I was in Lundene. Tears still come to my eyes when I remember greeting Stiorra, my daughter, my little motherless daughter who clung to me and would not let go. And she was crying and I was crying, and I held her as though she was the only thing that could ever keep me alive. Osbert, the youngest, wept and clung to his nurse, while Uhtred, my eldest son, might have wept for all I know, but never in front of me, and that was not an admirable reticence, but rather because he feared me. He was a nervous, fussy child and I found him irritating. I insisted he learned sword craft, but he had no skill with a blade, and when I took him downriver in Seolferwulf, he showed no enthusiasm for ships or the sea.

He was with me aboard Seolferwulf on the day that I next saw Haesten. We had left Lundene in the dark, feeling our way downriver on the tide and beneath a paling moon. Alfred had passed a law, he loved making laws, which said that the sons of ealdormen and thegns must go to school, but I refused to allow Uhtred the Younger to attend the school which Bishop Erkenwald had established in Lundene. I did not care whether he learned to read and write, both skills are much overrated, but I did care that he should not be exposed to the bishop’s preaching. Erkenwald tried to insist I send the boy, but I argued that Lundene was really part of Mercia, which in those days it was, and that Alfred’s laws did not apply. The bishop glowered at me, but was helpless to force the boy’s attendance. I preferred to train my son as a warrior and, that day on the Seolferwulf, I had dressed him in a leather coat and given him a boy’s sword belt so he would become accustomed to wearing war-gear, but instead of showing pride he just looked abashed. “Put your shoulders back,” I snarled, “stand straight. You’re not a puppy!”

“Yes, Father,” he whined. He was slouch-shouldered, just staring at the deck.

“When I die you’ll be Lord of Bebbanburg,” I said, and he said nothing.

“You must show him Bebbanburg, lord,” Finan suggested.

“Maybe I will,” I said.

“Take the ship north,” Finan said enthusiastically, “a proper sea voyage!” He slapped my son’s shoulder. “You’ll like that, Uhtred! Maybe we’ll see a whale!”

My son just stared at Finan and said nothing. “Bebbanburg is a fortress beside the sea,” I told my son, “a great fortress. Windswept, sea-washed, invincible.” And I felt the prick of tears, for I had so often dreamed of making Gisela the Lady of Bebbanburg.

“Not invincible, lord,” Finan said, “because we’ll take it.”

“We will,” I said, though I could feel no enthusiasm, not even for the prospect of storming my own stronghold and slaughtering my uncle and his men. I turned from my pale son and stood in the ship’s prow, beneath the wolf’s head, and gazed east to where the sun was rising, and there, in the haze beneath the rising sun, in the mist of sea and air, in the shimmer of light above the slow-swelling sea, I saw the ships. A fleet. “Slow!” I called.

Our oar-banks rose and fell gently, so it was mostly the ebbing tide that swept us toward that fleet, which rowed northward across our path. “Back oars!” I called, and we slowed, stopped, and slewed broadside to the current. “That must be Haesten,” Finan said. He had come to stand beside me.

“He’s leaving Wessex,” I said. I was certain it was Haesten, and so it was, for a moment later a single ship turned from the fleet and I saw the flash of its oar-blades as the rowers pulled hard toward us. Beyond it the other ships went on northward and there were many more than the eighty that Haesten had brought to Cent, because his fleet had been swollen by the fugitives from Harald’s army. The approaching ship was close now. “That’s Dragon-Voyager,” I said, recognizing the ship, the same one we had given to Haesten on the day he took Alfred’s treasure and gave us the valueless hostages.

“Shields?” Finan asked.

“No,” I said. If Haesten wanted to attack me he would have brought more than one ship, and so our shields stayed in Seolferwulf ’s bilge.

Dragon-Voyager backed her oars a ship’s half-length away. She lay close, heaving on the water’s slow swell, and for a moment her crew stared at my crew, and then I saw Haesten climbing up to the steering platform. He waved. “Can I come aboard?” he shouted.

“You can come aboard,” I called back, and watched as his aftermost oarsmen expertly turned Dragon-Voyager so her stern came close to ours. The long oars were shipped as the two vessels closed, then Haesten leaped. Another man was waving to me from Dragon-Voyager’s steering platform, and I saw it was Father Willibald. I waved back, then worked my way aft to greet Haesten.

He was bareheaded. He spread his hands as I approached, a gesture that spoke of helplessness, and he seemed to have difficulty speaking, but he finally found his voice. “I am sorry, lord,” he said, and his tone was humble, convincing. “There are no words, Lord Uhtred,” he said.

“She was a good woman,” I said.

“Famously,” he said, “and I do feel sorrow, lord.”

“Thank you.”

He glanced at my oarsmen, doubtless casting an eye on their weaponry, then looked back to me. “That sad news, lord,” he said, “shadowed the reports of your victory. It was a great triumph, lord.”

“It seems to have persuaded you to leave Wessex,” I said drily.

“I always intended to leave, lord,” he said, “once we had our agreement, but some of our ships needed repair.” He noticed Uhtred then, and saw the silver plates sewn onto the boy’s sword belt. “Your son, lord?” he asked.

“My son,” I said, “Uhtred.”

“An impressive boy,” Haesten lied.

“Uhtred,” I called, “come here!”

He approached nervously, his eyes darting left and right as if expecting an attack. He was about as impressive as a duckling. “This is the Jarl Haesten,” I told him, “a Dane. One day I’ll kill him, or he’ll kill me.” Haesten chuckled, but my son just looked at the deck. “If he kills me,” I went on, “your duty is to kill him.”

Haesten waited for some response from Uhtred the Younger, but the boy just looked embarrassed. Haesten grinned wickedly. “And my own son, Lord Uhtred?” he asked innocently, “he thrives, I trust, as a hostage?”

“I drowned the little bastard a month ago,” I said.

Haesten laughed at the lie. “There was no need for hostages anyway,” he said, “as I shall keep our agreement. Father Willibald will confirm that.” He gestured toward Dragon-Voyager. “I was going to send Father Willibald to Lundene,” he went on, “with a letter. You might take him there yourself, lord?”

“Just Father Willibald?” I asked. “Didn’t I bring you two priests?”

“The other one died,” Haesten said carelessly, “after eating too many eels. You’ll take Willibald?”

“Of course,” I said and glanced at the fleet that still rowed northward. “Where do you go?”

“North,” Haesten said airily, “East Anglia. Somewhere. Not Wessex.”

He did not want to tell me his destination, but it was plain that his ships were heading toward Beamfleot. We had fought there five years before and Haesten might have had bad memories of the place, yet Beamfleot, on the northern bank of the Temes estuary, offered two priceless assets. First was the creek called Hothlege, tucked behind the island of Caninga, and that creek could shelter three hundred ships, while above it, rearing high on a green hill, was the old fort. It was a place of great safety, much safer than the encampment Haesten had made on the shore of Cent, but he had only made that to entice Alfred to pay him to leave. Now he was leaving, but going to a place far more dangerous to Wessex. In Beamfleot he would have an almost unassailable fortress, yet still be within easy striking distance of Lundene and Wessex. He was a serpent.

That was not Father Willibald’s opinion. We had to bring the two ships within touching distance so the priest could clamber from one to the other. He sprawled clumsily onto Seolferwulf ’s deck, then bade a friendly farewell to Haesten, who gave me a parting grin before leaping back aboard his own ship.

Father Willibald looked at me with confusion. One moment his face was all concern, the next it was excitement, both expressions accompanied by an impatient fidgeting as he tried to find words for one mood or the other. Concern won. “Lord,” he said, “tell me, tell me it isn’t true.”

“It’s true, father.”

“Dear God!” he shook his head and made the sign of the cross. “I shall pray for her soul, lord. I shall pray for her soul nightly, lord, and for the souls of your dear children.” His voice trailed away under my baleful gaze, but then his excitement got the better of him. “Such news, lord,” he said, “such news I have!” Then, despairing of my expression, he turned to pick up his pathetic sack of belongings that had been tossed from the Dragon-Voyager.

“What news?” I asked.

“The Jarl Haesten, lord,” Willibald said eagerly. “He’s requesting that his wife and two sons be baptized, lord!” He smiled as if expecting me to share his joy.

“He’s what?” I asked in surprise.

“He seeks baptism for his family! I wrote the letter for him, addressed to our king! It seems our preaching bore fruit, lord. The jarl’s wife, God bless her soul, has seen the light! She seeks our Lord’s redemption! She has come to love our Savior, lord, and her husband has approved of her conversion.”

I just looked at him, corroding his joy with my sour face, but Willibald was not to be so easily discouraged. He gathered his enthusiasm again. “Don’t you see, lord?” he asked. “If she converts then he will follow! It’s often thus, lord, that the wife first finds salvation, and when wives lead, husbands follow!”

“He’s lulling us to sleep, father,” I said. Dragon-Voyager had rejoined the fleet by now and was rowing steadily north.

“The jarl is a troubled soul,” Willibald said, “he talked to me often.” He raised his hands to the sky where a myriad waterfowl beat south on throbbing wings. “There is rejoicing in heaven, lord, when just one sinner repents. And he is so close to redemption! And when a chieftain converts, lord, then his people follow him to Christ.”

“Chieftain?” I sneered. “Haesten’s just an earsling. He’s a turd. And he’s not troubled, father, except by greed. We’ll have to kill him yet.”

Willibald despaired of my cynicism and went to sit beside my son. I watched the two of them talk and wondered why Uhtred never showed any enthusiasm for my conversation, though he seemed fascinated by Willibald’s. “I hope you’re not poisoning the boy’s brain,” I called.

“We’re talking about birds, lord,” Willibald explained brightly, “and where they go in winter.”

“Where do they go?”

“Beneath the sea?” he suggested.

The tide slackened, stilled, and turned, and we rode the flood back up the river. I sat brooding on the steering platform while Finan tended the big steering oar. My men rowed gently, content to let the tide do the work, and they sang the song of Ægir, god of the sea, and of Rán, his wife, and of his nine daughters, all of whom must be flattered if a ship is to be safe on the wild waters. They sang the song because they knew I liked it, but the tune seemed empty and the words meaningless, and I did not join in. I just gazed at the smoke haze above Lundene, the darkness darkening a summer sky, and wished I were a bird, high in that nothingness, vanishing.

Haesten’s letter stirred Alfred to a new liveliness. The letter, he said, was a sign of God’s grace, and Bishop Erkenwald, of course, agreed. God, the bishop preached, had slaughtered the heathen at Fearnhamme and now had worked a miracle in the heart of Haesten. Willibald was sent to Beamfleot with an invitation for Haesten to bring his family to Lundene where both Alfred and Æthelred would stand as godfathers to Brunna, Haesten the Younger, and the real Horic. No one now bothered to pretend that the deaf and dumb hostage was Haesten’s son, but the deception was forgiven in the ebullience that marked Wessex as that summer faded into autumn.

The deaf and dumb hostage, I gave him the name Harald, was sent to my household. He was a bright lad and I set him to work in the armory where he showed a skill with the sharpening stone and an eagerness to learn weapons. I also had custody of Skade, because no one else seemed to want her. For a time I displayed her in a cage beside my door, but that humiliation was small consolation for her curse. She was valueless as a hostage now, for her lover was mewed up on Torneie Island and one day I took her upriver in one of the smaller boats we kept above Lundene’s broken bridge.

Torneie was close to Lundene and, with thirty men on the oars, we reached the River Colaun before midday. We rowed slowly up the smaller river, but there was little to be seen. Harald’s men, they numbered fewer than three hundred, had made an earth wall topped by a thick thorn palisade. Spears showed above that spiny obstacle, but no roofs, because Torneie had no timber with which to make houses. The river flowed sluggish either side of the island, and was edged by marshland, beyond which I could see the twin camps of the Saxon forces that besieged the island. Two ships were moored in the river, both manned by Mercians, their job to prevent any supplies reaching the trapped Danes. “There’s your lover,” I told Skade, pointing to the thorns.

I ordered Ralla, who was steering the ship, to take us as close as he could to the island, and, when our bows were almost touching the reeds, I dragged Skade to the bows. “There’s your one-legged, impotent lover,” I told Skade. A handful of Danes had deserted, and they reported that Harald had been wounded in the left leg and groin. Wasp-Sting had evidently struck him beneath the skirt of his mail, and I remembered the blade striking bone and how I had forced it harder so that the steel had slid up his thigh, ripping muscles and opening blood vessels, and ended in his groin. The leg had turned rotten and had been cut off. He still lived, and perhaps it was his hatred and fervor that gave life to his men, who now faced the bleakest of futures.

Skade said nothing. She gazed at the thorn wall above which a few spear-points showed. She was dressed in a slave’s tunic, belted tight around her thin waist.

“They’ve eaten their horses,” I told her, “and they catch eels, frogs, and fish.”

“They will live,” she said dully.

“They’re trapped,” I said scornfully, “and this time Alfred won’t pay bright gold for them to go away. When they starve this winter, they’ll surrender, and Alfred will kill them all. One by one, woman.”

“They will live,” she insisted.

“You see the future?”

“Yes,” she said, and I touched Thor’s hammer.

I hated her, and I found it hard to take my eyes from her. She had been given the gift of beauty, yet it was the beauty of a weapon. She was sleek, hard and shining. Even as a degraded captive, unwashed and dressed in rags, she shone. Her face was bony, but softened by lips and by the thickness of her hair. My men gazed at her. They wanted me to give her to them as a plaything, and then kill her. She was reckoned to be a Danish sorceress, as dangerous as she was desirable, and I knew it was her curse that had killed my Gisela, and Alfred would not have objected had I executed her, yet I could not kill her. She fascinated me.

“You can go to them,” I said.

She turned her big, dark eyes onto me, said nothing.

“Jump overboard,” I said. We were not that far from Torneie’s shelving bank. She might have to swim a couple of paces, but then she would be able to wade ashore. “Can you swim?”

“Yes.”

“Then go to him,” I said, and waited. “Don’t you want to be Queen of Wessex?” I sneered.

She looked back to the bleak island. “I dream,” she told me quietly, “and in my dreams Loki comes to me.”

Loki was the trickster god, the nuisance in Asgard, the god who deserved death. The Christians talk of the serpent in paradise, and that was Loki. “He talks evil to you?” I asked.

“He is sad,” she said, “and he talks. I comfort him.”

“What has that to do with you jumping overboard?”

“It is not my fate,” she said.

“Loki told you that?”

She nodded.

“Did he tell you that you would be Queen of Wessex?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“But Odin has more power,” I said, and wished Odin had thought to protect Gisela instead of Wessex, and then I wondered why the gods had allowed the Christians to win at Fearnhamme instead of letting their worshippers capture Wessex, but the gods are capricious, full of mischief, and none more so than the cunning Loki. “And what does Loki tell you to do now?” I asked harshly.

“To submit.”

“I have no need of you,” I said, “so jump. Swim. Go. Starve.”

“It is not my fate,” she said again. Her voice was dull, as though there was no life in her soul.

“What if I push you?”

“You won’t,” she said confidently, and she was right. I left her in the bows as we turned the ship and let the swift current take us back to the Temes and Lundene. That night I released her from the storeroom that served as her prison. I told Finan she was not to be touched, she was not to be restrained, that she was free, and in the morning she was still in my courtyard, crouching, watching me, saying nothing.

She became a kitchen slave. The other slaves and servants feared her. She was silent, baleful, as if the life had been drained from her. Most of my household were Christian and they made the sign of the cross when Skade crossed their path, but my orders that she was to be unmolested were obeyed. She could have left any time, but she stayed. She could have poisoned us, but no one fell ill.

The autumn brought wet, cold winds. Envoys had been sent to the lands across the sea, and to the Welsh kingdoms, announcing that Haesten’s family was to be baptized and inviting envoys to witness the ceremony. Alfred evidently regarded Haesten’s willingness to sacrifice his wife and sons to Christianity as a victory to set alongside Fearnhamme, and he ordered that the streets of Lundene were to be hung with banners to welcome the Danes. Alfred came to the city late one afternoon in a seething rainstorm. He hurried to Bishop Erkenwald’s palace that lay beside the rebuilt church at the top of the hill, and that evening there was a service of thanksgiving that I refused to attend.

Next morning I took my three children to the palace. Æthelred and Æthelflæd, who at least pretended to a happy marriage when ceremony demanded, had come to Lundene, and Æthelflæd had offered to let my three children play with her daughter. “Does that mean,” I asked her, “that you’re not going to the church?”

“Of course I’m going,” she said, smiling, “if Haesten even arrives.” Every church bell in the city was ringing in anticipation of the arrival of the Danes, and crowds were gathering in the streets, despite a spitting cold rain that blew from the east.

“He’s coming,” I said.

“You know that?”

“They left at dawn,” I said. I kept watchers on the mudflats of the widening Temes and the beacons had been lit at first light, signaling that ships had left Beamfleot’s creek and were heading upriver.

“He’s only doing it,” Æthelflæd said, “so my father doesn’t attack him.”

“He’s a weasel’s earsling,” I said.

“He wants East Anglia,” she said. “Eohric’s a weak king and Haesten would like his crown.”

“Maybe,” I said dubiously, “but he’d prefer Wessex.”

She shook her head. “My husband has an informer in his encampment and he’s certain Haesten plans an attack on Grantaceaster.”

Grantaceaster was where East Anglia’s new Danish king had his capital, and a successful attack might well give Haesten the throne of East Anglia. He certainly wanted a throne, and all reports said that Eohric was a feeble ruler, but Alfred had made a treaty with Guthrum, the previous king, which agreed that Wessex would not interfere in East Anglia’s affairs, so if Haesten’s ambition was to take that throne, why should he need to placate Alfred? Haesten really wanted Wessex, of course, but Fearnhamme would have persuaded him that it was far too difficult an ambition. Then I remembered the one vacant throne, and it all made sense to me. “I think he’s more interested in Mercia,” I said.

Æthelflæd considered that idea, then shook her head. “He knows he’d have to fight both us and Wessex to conquer Mercia. And my husband’s spy is certain it’s East Anglia.”

“We’ll see.”

She glanced into the next room where the children were playing with carved wooden toys. “Uhtred’s old enough to attend church,” she said.

“I’m not raising him as a Christian,” I said firmly.

She smiled at me, her lovely face momentarily showing the mischief I remembered from her childhood. “Dear Lord Uhtred,” she said, “still swimming against the current.”

“And you, lady?” I asked, remembering how nearly she had fled with a pagan Dane.

“I drift in my husband’s boat,” she sighed, then servants came to summon her to Æthelred’s side. Haesten, it seemed, was within sight of the city walls.

He arrived in Dragon-Voyager, which he berthed at one of the decaying quays downstream of my house. He was greeted by Alfred and by Æthelred, both men wearing fur-trimmed robes and bronze coronets. Horns sounded and drummers beat out a swift rhythm that was spoiled when the rain became harder and made the drum skins soggy. Haesten, presumably advised by Willibald, wore no armor or weapons, though his long leather coat looked thick enough to withstand a sword thrust. His beard plaits were tied with leather laces and I swore a hammer amulet was tucked inside one of the braids. His wife and two sons were in penitential white and they walked barefoot in the procession that climbed Lundene’s hill. His wife was called Brunna, though on this day she would be given a new and Christian name. She was small and dumpy with nervous eyes that flickered left and right as though she expected an attack from the crowds that lined the narrow streets. I was surprised by her unattractive looks. Haesten was an ambitious man, eager to be recognized as one of the great warlords, and to such a man a wife’s appearance was as important as the splendor of his armor or the wealth of his followers, but Haesten had not married Brunna for her looks. He had married her because she had brought a dowry that had started him on his upward journey. She was his wife, but I guessed she was not his companion in bed, hall, or anywhere else. He was willing to have her baptized simply because she was not important to him, though Alfred, with his high-minded view of marriage, would never have comprehended such cynicism. As to Haesten’s sons, I doubt he took their baptism seriously and, just as soon as he got them away from Lundene, he would order them to forget the ceremony. Children are easily swayed by religion, which is why it is a good thing that most eventually grow into sense.

Chanting monks led the procession, then came children with green boughs, more monks, a group of abbots and bishops, then Steapa and fifty men of the royal guard, who walked immediately in front of Alfred and his guests. Alfred walked slowly, clearly in discomfort, but he had refused the offer of a cart. His old wagon, which I had ditched outside Fearnhamme, had been recovered, but Alfred insisted on walking because he liked the humility of approaching his god on foot. He leaned on Æthelred sometimes, and so king and son-in-law limped painfully uphill together. Æthelflaed walked a pace behind her husband and, behind her and behind Haesten, were the emissaries from Wales and Frankia who had traveled to witness the miracle of this Danish conversion.

Haesten hesitated before entering the church. I suspect he half thought it was an ambush, but Alfred encouraged him, and the Danes stepped gingerly inside to find nothing more threatening than a black-robed gaggle of monks. There was precious little room in the church. I had not wanted to be there, but a messenger from Alfred had insisted on my presence, and so I stood at the very back and watched the smoke rise from tall candles and listened to the chanting of the monks that, at times, was drowned by the sheer beat of rain on the thatched roof. A crowd had gathered in the small square outside, and a bedraggled priest stood on a stool in the sanctuary door to repeat Bishop Erkenwald’s words to the sopping people. The priest had to bellow to make himself heard above the wind and the rain.

Three silver-hooped barrels stood in front of the altar, each half filled with water from the Temes. Brunna, looking completely confused, was persuaded to climb into the center barrel. She gave a small cry of horror as she dropped into the cold water, then stood shivering with her arms crossed over her breasts. Her two sons were unceremoniously dumped into the barrels on either side, then Bishop Erkenwald and Bishop Asser used ladles to scoop water over the frightened boys’ heads. “Behold the spirit descends!” Bishop Asser shouted as he drenched the lads. Both bishops then soaked Brunna’s hair and pronounced her new Christian name, Æthelbrun. Alfred beamed with delight. The three Danes stood shivering as a choir of white-robed children sang an endless song. I remember Haesten turning slowly to catch my eye. He raised an eyebrow and had a hard time suppressing a grin and I suspected he had enjoyed the watery humiliation of his plain-looking wife.

Alfred talked with Haesten after the ceremony, and then the Danes left, laden down with gifts. Alfred gave them coins in a chest, a great silver crucifix, a gospel book, and a reliquary which held a finger bone of Saint Æthelburg, a saint who had apparently been drawn up to heaven by golden chains, but must have left at least one finger behind. The rain was pouring down even harder as Dragon-Voyager eased away from the quay. I heard Haesten snap an order at his oarsmen, the blades dug into the filthy Temes water, and the ship surged eastward.

That night there was a feast to celebrate the great day’s events. Haesten, it seemed, had begged to be excused from the meal, which was discourteous of him as the food and ale were in his honor, but it was probably a wise decision. Men may not carry weapons in a royal hall, but the ale would doubtless have started fights between Haesten’s men and the Saxons. Alfred, anyway, took no offense. He was simply too happy. He might have seen his own death approaching, but he reckoned his god had granted him great gifts. He had seen Harald utterly defeated and watched as Haesten brought his family for baptism. “I will leave Wessex safe,” he told Bishop Erkenwald in my hearing.

“I trust you will not leave us for many years to come, lord,” Erkenwald replied piously.

Alfred patted the bishop’s shoulder. “That is in God’s hands, bishop.”

“And God listens to his people’s prayers, lord.”

“Then pray for my son,” Alfred said, turning to look at Edward, who sat uneasily at the top table.

“I never cease to pray,” the bishop said.

“Then pray now,” Alfred said happily, “and ask God to bless our feast!”

Erkenwald waited for the king to seat himself at the high table, then he prayed loud and long, beseeching his god’s blessing on the food that was getting cold, and then thanking his god for the peace that now ensured the future of Wessex.

But his god was not listening.

It was the feast that started the trouble. I suppose the gods were bored with us; they looked down and saw Alfred’s happiness and decided, as the gods will, that it was time to roll the dice.

We were in the great Roman palace, a building of brick and marble patched with Saxon thatch and wattle. There was a dais on which a throne usually sat, but now had a long trestle table hung with green linen cloths. Alfred sat in the center of the table’s long side, flanked by Ælswith, his wife, and Æthelflæd, his daughter. They were the only women present, other than servants. Æthelred sat beside Æthelflæd, while Edward sat beside his mother. The other six places at the high table were occupied by Bishop Erkenwald, Bishop Asser, and the most important envoys from other countries. A harpist sat to one side of the dais and chanted a long hymn of praise to Alfred’s god.

Beneath the dais, between the hall’s pillars, were four more trestle tables where the guests ate. Those guests were a mixture of churchmen and warriors. I sat between Finan and Steapa in the darkest corner of the hall, and I confess I was in a foul temper. It seemed plain to me that Haesten had fooled Alfred. The king was one of the wisest men I ever knew, yet he had a weakness for his god, and it never occurred to him that there might have been a political calculation behind Haesten’s apparent concessions. To Alfred it simply seemed that his god had worked a miracle. He knew, of course, from his son-in-law and from his own spies, that Haesten had an ambition to take the throne of East Anglia, but that did not worry him because he had already conceded that country to Danish rule. He dreamed of recovering it, but he knew what was possible and what was just aspiration. In those last years of his life Alfred always referred to himself as the King of the An gelcynn, King of the English folk, and by that he meant all the land in Britain where the Saxon languages were spoken, but he knew that title was a hope, not a reality. It had fallen to Alfred to make Wessex secure and to extend its authority over much of Mercia, but the rest of the Angelcynn were under Danish rule, and Alfred could do little about that. Yet he was proud that he had made Wessex strong enough to destroy Harald’s great army and to force Haesten to seek baptism for his family.

I brooded on those things. Steapa growled conversation, which I hardly heard, and Finan made sour jokes at which I dutifully smiled, but all I wanted was to get out of that hall. Alfred’s feasts were never festive. The ale was in short supply and the entertainment was pious. Three monks chanted a long Latin prayer, then the children’s choir sang a ditty about being lambs of god, which made Alfred beam with pleasure. “Beautiful!” he exclaimed when the grubby-robed infants had finished their caterwauling. “Truly beautiful!” I thought he was about to demand another song from the children, but Bishop Asser leaned behind Ælswith and evidently suggested something that made Alfred’s eyes light up. “Brother Godwin,” he called down to the blind monk, “you haven’t sung for us in many weeks!”

The young monk looked startled, but a table companion took him by the elbow and led him to the open space as the children, shepherded by a nun, were taken away. Brother Godwin stood alone as the harpist struck a series of chords on his horsehair strings. I thought the blind monk was not going to sing at all, because he made no sounds, but then he started to jerk his head backward and forward as the chords became swooping and eerie. Some men crossed themselves, then Brother Godwin began to make small whimpering noises. “He’s moon mad,” I muttered to Finan.

“No, lord,” Finan whispered, “he’s possessed.” He fingered the cross which always hung from his neck. “I’ve seen holy men in Ireland,” he went on softly, “just like him.”

“The spirit talks through him,” Steapa said in awe. Alfred must have heard our low voices because he turned an irritated face on us. We went silent, and suddenly Godwin began to writhe and then he let out a great shout that echoed in the hall. Smoke from the braziers wreathed around him before vanishing through the smoke-hole ripped in the Roman roof.

I learned much later that Brother Godwin had been discovered by Bishop Asser, who had found the young, blind monk locked in a cell at the monastery of Æthelingæg. He was kept locked away because the abbot believed Godwin to be mad as a bat, but Bishop Asser decided Godwin really did hear his god’s voice and so had brought the monk to Alfred who, of course, believed that anything from Æthelingæg was auspicious because that was where he had survived the greatest crisis of his reign.

Godwin began to yelp. The sound was of a man in great pain and the harpist took his hands from the strings. Dogs responded to the sounds, howling in the dark back rooms of the palace. “The holy spirit comes,” Finan whispered reverently, and Godwin let out a great scream as if his bowels were being torn from him.

“Praise God,” Alfred said. He and his family were gazing at the monk who now stood as though crucified, then he relaxed his outspread arms and began speaking. He shivered as he spoke and his voice meandered up and down, now shrill, then almost too low to hear. If it was singing, then it was the strangest noise I ever heard. At first his words sounded like nonsense, or else were being chanted in an unknown language, but slowly, from the jabber, coherent sentences emerged. Alfred was the chosen of God. Wessex was the promised land. Milk and honey abounded. Women brought sin into the world. God’s bright angels had spread their wings over us. The Lord most high is terrible. The waters of Israel were turned to blood. The whore of Babylon was among us.

He stopped after chanting that. The harpist had detected a rhythm in Godwin’s words and was playing softly, but his hands checked on the strings again as the monk turned his blind face about the hall with a look of puzzlement. “The whore!” he suddenly started shouting over and over. “The whore! The whore! The whore! She is among us!” He made a mewing sound and twisted down to his knees and began sobbing.

No one spoke, no one moved. I heard the wind in the smoke-hole and I thought of my children somewhere in Æthelflæd’s quarters and wondered if they were listening to this craziness.

“The whore,” Godwin said, drawing the word “whore” into a long throbbing howl. Then he stood and looked quite sane. “The whore is among us, lord,” he said toward Alfred, in a perfectly normal voice.

“The whore?” Alfred asked uncertainly.

“The whore!” Godwin screamed again, then once again reverted to sanity. “The whore, lord, is the maggot in the fruit, the rat in the granary, the locust in the wheatfield, the disease in the child of God. It saddens God, lord,” he said, and began weeping.

I touched Thor’s hammer. Godwin was mad beyond help, I thought, but all the Christians in that hall gazed at him as though he had been sent from heaven. “Where’s Babylon?” I whispered to Finan.

“Somewhere a long way off, lord,” he answered softly, “maybe beyond Rome even?”

Godwin was weeping silently, but saying nothing, so Alfred gestured that the harpist should touch his strings again. The chords sounded and Godwin responded by starting to chant again, though now his words lacked rhythm. “Babylon is the devil’s home,” he shouted, “the whore is the devil’s child, the yeast in the bread will fail, the whore has come to us. The whore died and the devil raised her up, the whore will destroy us, stop!”

This last command was to the harpist who, in frightened obedience, flattened his hands on the strings to stop their quivering.

“God is on our side,” Alfred said in a kindly voice, “so who can destroy us?”

“The whore can destroy us,” Bishop Asser said, and I thought, I could not be sure, that he glanced toward me, though I doubt he could see me because I was deep in the shadows.

“The whore!” Godwin shouted at Alfred, “you fool! The whore!”

No one reproved him for calling the king a fool.

“God will surely protect us!” Bishop Erkenwald said.

“The whore was among us, and the whore died, and God sent her to the fires of hell and the devil raised her and she is here,” Godwin said forcibly. “She is here! Her stench sours God’s chosen people! She must be killed. She must be cut into pieces and her foul parts cast into the bottomless sea! God commands it! God weeps in his heaven because you do not obey his commandments, and he commands that the whore must die! God weeps! He hurts! God weeps! The tears of God fall on us like drops of fire, and it is the whore who makes those tears!”

“What whore?” Alfred asked, then Finan put a warning hand on my arm.

“She was called Gisela,” Godwin had hissed.

At first I thought I had misheard. Men were looking at me, and Finan was holding my arm, and I was certain I had misheard, but then Godwin began to chant again. “Gisela, the great whore, is now Skade. She is a piece of filth in human guise, a whore of rottenness, a devil’s turd with breasts, a whore, Gisela! God killed her because she was filth and now she is back!”

“No,” Finan said to me, but without much urgency. I had stood.

“Lord Uhtred!” Alfred called sharply. Bishop Asser was watching me, half smiling, as his pet monk writhed and screamed. “Lord Uhtred!” Alfred called again, slapping the table.

I had strode to the hall’s center where I took Godwin’s shoulder and turned his blind face toward me.

“Lord Uhtred!” Alfred had stood.

“You lie, monk,” I said.

“She was filth!” Godwin spat at me. He began striking my chest with his fists. “Your wife was the devil’s whore, a whore hated by God, and you are the devil’s instrument, you whore-husband, heathen, sinner!”

The hall was in uproar. I was aware of none of it, only of a red anger that consumed me and flared in me and filled my ears with its howling sound. I had no weapons. This was a royal hall and weapons were forbidden, but the mad monk was hitting me and howling at me and I drew back my right hand and hit him.

My hand half hit him. Maybe he sensed the blow was coming be cause he backed away fast, and my hand caught him on the jaw, dislocating it so that his chin was skewed sideways as blood poured from his lips. He spat out a tooth and took a wild swing at me.

“Enough!” Alfred shouted. Men were at last moving, but it seemed to me they moved with exaggerated slowness as Godwin spat blood at me.

“Whore-lover,” he snarled, or I think that was what he said.

“Stop! I command it!” Alfred called.

“Whore-husband,” the bloody mouth said distinctly.

So I hit him again, and with that second blow I broke his neck.

I had not meant to kill him, merely silence him, but I heard his neck crunch. I saw his head loll unnaturally to one side, and then he fell across one of the braziers and his short black hair blazed into bright flame. He collapsed on the floor’s broken mosaics and the hall was filled with the stink of burning hair and scorched flesh.

“Arrest him!” I heard Bishop Asser’s loud shout.

“He must die!” Bishop Erkenwald called.

Alfred was staring at me in horror. His wife, who had ever hated me, was screaming that I must pay for my sins.

Finan took my arm and pulled me toward the hall’s door. “To the house, lord,” he said.

“Steapa! Hold him!” Alfred called.

But Steapa liked me. He did move toward me, but slowly enough so that I reached the door where the royal guards made a halfhearted effort to bar my way, but a menacing growl from Finan drove their spears aside. He dragged me into the night. “Now come,” he said, “fast!”

We ran down the hill to the dark river.

And behind us was a dead monk and uproar.