The Pagan Lord

Seven

The wheel of fortune was turning. I did not know it because most of the time we do not feel the wheel’s motion, but it was turning fast as we sailed away from Frisia on that sun-bright summer’s day.

I was going back to Britain. Going back to where the Christians hated me and the Danes mistrusted me. Going back because instinct told me the long peace was over. I believe instinct is the voice of the gods, but I was not so certain that those gods were telling me the truth. Gods lie and cheat too, they play tricks on us. I worried that we could have been sailing back to find a land at peace and that nothing had changed, so I was cautious.

If I had been certain of the gods’ message I would have sailed north. I had thought about doing that. I had thought of sailing around the northern edge of the Scottish land, then south through the harsh islands and so down to the northern coast of Wales and east to where the rivers Dee and Mærse empty into the sea. It is only a short journey up the Dee to Ceaster, but though I suspected Haesten was concealing Cnut’s family, I had no proof. Besides, with my small crew, what hope would I have against Haesten’s garrison that was behind the Ceaster’s harsh Roman walls?

So I was cautious. I sailed west, going to what I hoped would be a safe place where I might discover news. We had to row Middelniht, for the wind was against us, and all day we kept a slow oar-beat, using just twenty rowers so that men could take turns. I took my turn too.

That night was clear and we were alone beneath uncountable stars. The milk of the gods was smeared behind the stars, an arch of light reflected from the waves. The world was made in fire and when it was finished the gods took the remnant sparks and embers and splashed them across the skies and I have never ceased to wonder at the glory of that great bright arch of milky starlight. ‘If you’re right,’ Finan had joined me at the steering oar and broke my reverie, ‘it could all be over.’

‘The war?’

‘If you’re right.’

‘If I’m right,’ I said, ‘then it hasn’t started yet.’

Finan snorted at that. ‘Cnut will chop Æthelred into scraps! It won’t take him more than a day to fillet that gutless bastard.’

‘I think Cnut will wait,’ I said, ‘and even then he won’t attack Æthelred. He’ll let him get tangled in East Anglia, he’ll let him rot in the marshes, and then he’ll march south into Mercia. And he’ll wait for the harvest to be gathered before he marches.’

‘There won’t be much to harvest,’ Finan said gloomily, ‘not after this wet summer.’

‘But he’ll still want whatever he can steal,’ I said, ‘and if we’re right about Haesten, then Æthelred thinks he’s safe. He thinks he can fight in East Anglia without Cnut moving against him, so Cnut will wait just to convince Æthelred that he really is safe.’

‘So Cnut attacks Mercia when?’ Finan asked.

‘A few days yet. It must be harvest time. Another week? Two?’

‘And Æthelred will have his hands full in East Anglia.’

‘And Cnut will take southern Mercia,’ I said, ‘then turn on Æthelred and keep a watch on Edward.’

‘Will Edward march?’

‘He has to,’ I said with a vehemence that I hoped reflected the truth. ‘Edward can’t afford to let the Danes take all Mercia,’ I went on, ‘but those piss-brained priests might advise him to stay in his burhs. Let Cnut come to him.’

‘So Cnut takes Mercia,’ Finan said, ‘then East Anglia, and marches on Wessex last.’

‘That’s what he wants to do. At least that’s what I’d do if I was him.’

‘So what are we doing?’

‘Pulling the bastards out of the shit,’ I said, ‘of course.’

‘All thirty-six of us?’

‘You and me could do it alone,’ I said scornfully.

He laughed at that. The wind was rising, heeling the ship. It was veering northwards too and if it continued to turn we would be able to raise the sail and pull the oars inboard. ‘And what about Saint Oswald?’ Finan asked.

‘What about him?’

‘Is Æthelred really trying to put the poor man back together?’

I was not sure about that. Æthelred was superstitious enough to believe the Christian claim that the saint’s corpse had magical powers, but to get the corpse Æthelred would need to march into Danish-held Northumbria. So far as I knew he was willing to start a war with the East Anglian Danes, but would he risk another against the Northumbrian lords? Or did he believe that Cnut would never dare fight while his wife was held hostage? If he believed that then he might well risk a foray into Northumbria. ‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ I said.

I gave the steering oar to Finan and left him to guide the ship while I picked my careful way through sleeping bodies, and past the twenty men who rowed slowly in the star-lightened darkness. I went to the prow, put a hand on the dragon post and gazed ahead.

I like standing at the prow of ships, and that night the sea was a spread of reflected starlight, a glittering path across the watery dark, but leading to what? I watched the sea wrinkle and sparkle, and listened to the water break and seethe on Middelniht’s hull as she rose and dipped to the small waves. The wind had veered enough to push us southwards, but as I had no clear idea where I wanted to go I did not call Finan and ask him to change course. I just let the ship follow that path of glittering light across the starlit sea.

‘And what happens to me?’

It was Ingulfrid. I had not heard her come down the long deck, but I turned and saw her pale face framed by the hood of Ælfric’s cloak. ‘What happens to you?’ I asked. ‘You’ll go home with your son when your husband pays the ransom, of course.’

‘And what happens to me at home?’

I was about to answer that it was none of my concern what happened to her at Bebbanburg, then understood why she had asked the question, and why she had asked it in such bitter tones. ‘Nothing,’ I answered, knowing it was a lie.

‘My husband will beat me,’ she said, ‘and probably worse.’

‘Worse?’

‘I’m a disgraced woman.’

‘You’re not.’

‘And he’ll believe that?’

I said nothing for a while, then shook my head. ‘He won’t believe it,’ I said.

‘So he’ll beat me, and then in all likelihood he’ll kill me.’

‘He will?’

‘He’s a proud man.’

‘And a fool,’ I said.

‘But fools kill too,’ she said.

It crossed my mind to say that she should have thought of all those consequences before insisting on accompanying her son, then saw she was crying and so kept my words unsaid. She made no noise. She was just sobbing silently, then Osferth came from the rowers’ benches and put an arm around her shoulders. She turned to him and leaned her head on his chest and just cried.

‘She’s a married woman,’ I said to Osferth.

‘And I am a sinner,’ he said, ‘cursed by God because of my birth. God can do no more harm to me, because my father’s sin has already doomed me.’ He looked at me defiantly and, when I said nothing, gently led Ingulfrid aft. I watched them go.

What fools we are.

We made landfall two mornings later, coming to the coast in a silvery mist. We were rowing, and for a time I followed the shore that was a dull line to my right. The water was shallow, there was no wind, only thousands of sea-birds who flew from our approach to ruffle the flat sea with their wing-beats.

‘Where are we?’ Osferth asked me.

‘I don’t know.’

Finan was at the prow. He had the best eyes of any man I ever knew and he was watching that flat, dull shore for any sign of life. He saw none. He was also watching for sandbanks and we were rowing slowly for fear of going aground. The tide was carrying us, and our oars did little else than keep the ship steady.

Then Finan called that he had seen markers. Withies again, and a moment later he saw some hovels among the sand dunes and we turned towards the shore. I followed the channel marked by the withies, and it was a real channel that took us into the shelter of a low sandy headland and so to a small harbour where four fishing boats were grounded. I could smell the fires that smoked the fish and I ran Middelniht up onto the sand, knowing that the incoming tide would float her off, and so we came back to Britain.

I was dressed for war. I wore mail, a cloak, a helmet, and had Serpent-Breath at my side, though I could not imagine meeting any enemies in this bleak, mist-wrapped loneliness. Yet still I put on my battle-glory and, leaving Finan in command of Middelniht, took a half-dozen men ashore with me. Whoever lived in this tiny village on this desolate shore had seen us coming, and they had probably run away to hide, but I knew they would be watching us through the mist, and I did not want to overwhelm them by landing more than a handful of men. The houses were made of driftwood and thatched with reeds. One house, larger than the rest, was framed by the ribs of a wrecked ship. I ducked under its low lintel and saw a fire smoking in a central hearth, two rush beds, some pottery, and a big iron cauldron. In this place, I thought, such objects counted as wealth. A dog growled from the shadows and I growled back. There was no one inside.

We walked a short way inland. An earthen wall had been made at some time, a bank that stretched either side into the mist. The years had smoothed the earth wall and I wondered who had made it and why. It did not seem to protect anything, unless the villagers feared the frogs of the marsh that stretched bleakly north into the lightening mist. Wherever I looked I saw only bog land and reeds and damp and grass. ‘Heaven on earth,’ Osferth said. It was his idea of a jest.

My instinct told me we were in that strange bay that pierces the eastern flank of Britain between the lands of East Anglia and Northumbria. It is called the Gewæsc and is a vast bay, shallow and treacherous, edged by nothing but flat land, yet it sees many ships. Like the Humbre, the Gewæsc is a route into Britain and it had tempted scores of Danish boats, which had rowed up the bay to the four rivers that drained into the shallow waters, and if I was right then we had landed on the Gewæsc’s northern shore and so were in Northumbria. My land. Danish land. Enemy land.

We waited a few paces beyond the old earth wall. A track led north, though it was little more than a path of trampled reeds. If we did nothing hostile then eventually someone would show themselves, and so they did. Two men, their nakedness half covered by sealskin, appeared on the track and walked cautiously towards us. They were both bearded and both had dark, greasy and matted hair. They could have been any age from twenty to fifty, their faces and bodies so grimed with dirt that they looked as though they had crept from some underground lair. I spread my hands to show I meant no harm. ‘Where are we?’ I asked them when they came into earshot.

‘Botulfstan,’ one of them answered.

Which meant we were at Botulf’s stone, though there was no sign of anyone called Botulf, or his rock. I asked who Botulf was and they seemed to suggest he was their lord, though their accent was so mangled that it was hard to understand them. ‘Botulf farms here?’ I asked, this time in Danish, but they just shrugged.

‘Botulf was a great saint,’ Osferth explained to me, ‘and a prayer to Saint Botulf will protect travellers.’

‘Why travellers?’

‘He was a great traveller himself, I suppose.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ I said, ‘the poor bastard probably wanted to get away from this shit village.’ I looked back to the two men. ‘You have a lord? Where does he live?’

One of them pointed northwards and so we followed the track in that direction. Logs had been placed across the boggiest stretches, though they had long rotted and the damp timber crunched beneath our feet. The mist was obstinate. I could see the sun as a glowing patch of light, but even though the patch climbed higher in the sky the mist did not burn off. We seemed to walk for ever, just us and the marsh birds and the reeds and the long slimy pools. I began to think there would be no end to the desolation, but at last I saw a crude thorn fence and a small pasture where five sodden sheep with dung-clotted tails grazed among thistles. Beyond the sheep were buildings, at first just dark shapes in the mist, then I saw a hall, a barn and a palisade. A dog began to bark, and the sound brought a man to the open palisade gate. He was elderly, dressed in torn mail, and carrying a spear with a rusted blade. ‘Is this Botulfstan?’ I asked him in Danish.

‘Botulf died long ago,’ he said in the same language.

‘Then who lives here?’

‘Me,’ he said helpfully.

‘Gorm!’ a woman’s voice called from inside the palisade. ‘Let them in!’

‘And her,’ Gorm said sullenly, ‘she lives here too.’ He stood aside.

The hall was made of timbers blackened by damp and age. The rush-thatched roof was thick with moss. A mangy dog was tied to a doorpost with a rope of plaited leather that strained as he leaped towards us, but the woman snapped at him and the dog lay down. She was an older woman, grey-haired, dressed in a long brown cloak gathered at her neck by a heavy silver brooch that was shaped like a hammer. No Christian then. ‘My husband isn’t here,’ she greeted us brusquely. She spoke Danish. The villagers had been Saxons.

‘And who is your husband?’ I asked.

‘Who are you?’ she retorted.

‘Wulf Ranulfson,’ I said, using the name I had invented at Grimesbi, ‘out of Haithabu.’

‘You’re a long way from home.’

‘So is your husband it seems.’

‘He is Hoskuld Irenson,’ she said in a tone that suggested we should have heard of him.

‘And he serves?’ I asked.

She hesitated, as if reluctant to answer, then relented. ‘Sigurd Thorrson.’

Sigurd Thorrson was Cnut Ranulfson’s friend and ally, the second great Northumbrian lord, and a man who hated me because I had killed his son. True, the death had been in battle and the boy had died with a sword in his hand, but Sigurd would still hate me till his own death came.

‘I have heard of Sigurd Thorrson,’ I said.

‘Who has not?’

‘I have hopes of serving him,’ I said.

‘How did you come here?’ she demanded, sounding indignant, as if no one should ever discover this rotting hall in its wide marsh.

‘We crossed the sea, lady,’ I said.

‘The wrong sea,’ she said, sounding amused, ‘and you’re a long way from Sigurd Thorrson.’

‘And you, my lady, are?’ I asked gently.

‘I am Frieda.’

‘If you have ale,’ I said, ‘we can pay for it.’

‘Not steal it?’

‘Pay for it,’ I said, ‘and while we drink it you can tell me why I have crossed the wrong sea.’

We paid a scrap of silver for ale that tasted of ditch-water, and Frieda explained that her husband had been summoned to serve his lord, that he had taken the six men from the estate who were skilled with weapons, and that they had ridden westwards. ‘Jarl Sigurd said they should take their boat, but we don’t have a ship.’

‘Take it where?’

‘To the western sea,’ she said, ‘the sea that lies between us and Ireland,’ and she sounded vague as though Ireland was just a name to her, ‘but we have no ship, so my husband went by horse.’

‘The Jarl Sigurd is summoning his men?’

‘He is,’ she said, ‘and so is the Jarl Cnut. And I pray they all return safely.’

From the western sea? I thought about that. It meant, surely, that Cnut and Sigurd were gathering ships and the only place on the western coast where they could assemble a fleet was close to Haesten’s fortress at Ceaster. The coast to the south of Ceaster was Welsh, and those savages would not give shelter to a Danish fleet, while the shore to the north was Cumbraland, which is as wild and lawless as Wales, so the Danes must be gathering at Ceaster. So where would the fleet go? To Wessex? Frieda did not know. ‘There will be war,’ she said, ‘and there already is war.’

‘Already?’

She gestured northwards. ‘I hear the Saxons are in Lindcolne!’

‘Saxons!’ I pretended surprise.

‘The news came yesterday. Hundreds of Saxons!’

‘And Lindcolne is where?’ I asked.

‘There,’ she said, pointing north again.

I had heard of Lindcolne, though I had never visited the place. It had been an important town once, built by the Romans and made larger by the Saxons who captured the land when the Romans had left, though rumour said the town had been burned by the Danes who now occupied the fort on Lindcolne’s high ground. ‘How far is Lindcolne?’ I asked her.

She did not know. ‘But my husband can be there and back in two days,’ she suggested, ‘so it’s not far.’

‘And what are the Saxons doing there?’ I asked.

‘Dunging the ground with their filth,’ she said, ‘I don’t know. I just hope they don’t come here.’

Lindcolne lay north, well inside Northumbria. If Frieda was right then a Saxon army had dared invade Sigurd Thorrson’s land, and they would only do that if they were sure of provoking no reprisals, and the only way to prevent such reprisals was if Cnut Longsword’s wife and children were hostages in Saxon hands. ‘Do you have horses, lady?’ I asked.

‘You’re hungry?’ she scoffed.

‘I would borrow horses, lady, to find out more about these Saxons.’

She drove a hard bargain, making me rent the two miserable nags left in the stable. Both were mares, both were old, and neither looked as if she had stamina, but they were horses and we needed them. I told Osferth he would accompany me to Lindcolne and sent the other men back to Middelniht. ‘Tell Finan we’ll be back in three days,’ I told them, hoping that was true.

Osferth was reluctant to leave Middelniht and Ingulfrid. ‘She’ll be safe,’ I snarled at him.

‘Yes, lord,’ he said distantly.

‘She’ll be safe! Finan will make sure of that.’

He threw a saddle over the smaller mare. ‘I know, lord.’

I was taking Osferth because he was useful. All I knew of the Saxons at Lindcolne was that they had come from Æthelred’s army, which meant they were probably sworn to my destruction, but Osferth, even though he was bastard born, was Alfred’s son and men treated him with the respect and deference due to the son of a king. He had a natural authority, and his Christianity was beyond argument, and I needed all the support his presence might give me.

Osferth and I mounted. The stirrup leathers were too short and the girths too big, and I wondered if we would ever make it to Lindcolne, but the two mares ambled northwards willingly enough, though neither seemed capable of going any faster than an exhausted walk. ‘If we meet Danes,’ Osferth said, ‘we’re in trouble.’

‘They’d more likely die from laughing if they see these horses.’

He grimaced at that. The mist was slowly melting away to reveal a wide, empty land of marsh and reed. That was a bleak, treeless place. Some folk lived in the marshes because we saw their hovels in the distance and passed eel traps in dark ditches, but we saw no one. Osferth seemed to grow more gloomy with every mile we travelled. ‘What will you do with the boy?’ he asked after a while.

‘Sell him back to his father, of course,’ I said, ‘unless someone else offers more money.’

‘And his mother will go with him.’

‘Will she?’ I asked. ‘You know better than I what she’ll do.’

He was staring across the wetland. ‘She’ll die,’ he said.

‘So she says.’

‘You believe her?’ he challenged me.

I nodded. ‘There’s plainly no affection there. Everyone will assume we raped her, and her husband won’t believe her denials, so yes, he’ll probably kill her.’

‘Then she can’t go back!’ Osferth said fiercely.

‘That’s her decision,’ I said.

We rode in silence for a while. ‘The Lady Ingulfrid,’ he broke the silence, ‘was not allowed to leave Bebbanburg for fifteen years. She might as well have been a prisoner.’

‘Is that why she came with us? To smell the air outside?’

‘A mother wants to be with her son,’ he said.

‘Or away from her husband,’ I replied tartly.

‘If we keep the boy …’ he began, then faltered.

‘He’s no use to me,’ I said, ‘except for what his father will pay. I should have sold him when we were at Bebbanburg, but I wasn’t sure we’d get out of the harbour alive unless we held him hostage. Since then he’s just been a nuisance.’

‘He’s a good boy,’ Osferth said defensively.

‘And as long as he lives,’ I said, ‘the good boy believes he has a claim to Bebbanburg. I should cut his lousy throat.’

‘No!’

‘I don’t kill children,’ I said, ‘but in another few years? In another few years I’ll have to kill him.’

‘I’ll buy him from you,’ Osferth blurted out.

‘You? Where will you get the gold?’

‘I’ll buy him!’ he said obstinately. ‘Just give me time.’

I sighed. ‘We’ll sell the boy back to his father and persuade his mother to stay with us. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’ He nodded, but said nothing. ‘You’re in love,’ I said, and saw I had embarrassed him, but pressed on anyway, ‘and being in love changes everything. A man will fight through the fires of Ragnarok because he’s in love; he’ll forget all the world and do insane things just for the woman he loves.’

‘I know,’ he said.

‘You do? You’ve never had the madness before.’

‘I’ve watched you,’ he said, ‘and you’re not doing this for Wessex or for Mercia, you’re doing this for my sister.’

‘Who is a married woman,’ I said harshly.

‘We are all sinners,’ he said and made the sign of the cross. ‘God forgive us.’

We fell silent. The road was climbing now, though only to slightly higher ground where, at last, trees grew. They were alders and willow, all bent westwards from the cold wind of the sea. The higher ground was good pasture land, still flat, but hedged and ditched, and with cows and sheep at grass. There were villages and fine halls. It was afternoon by now and we stopped at one hall and asked for ale, bread and cheese. The servants in the hall were Danish and told us their lord had ridden westwards to join Sigurd Thorrson. ‘When did he go?’ I asked.

‘Six days ago, lord.’

So Cnut and Sigurd had not launched their invasion yet, or else they were sailing even as we spoke. ‘I heard the Saxons are in Lindcolne,’ I said to the steward.

‘Not in Lindcolne, lord. In Bearddan Igge.’

‘Bearda’s Island?’ I repeated the name. ‘Where’s that?’

‘Not far from Lindcolne, lord. A short ride to the east.’

‘How many?’

He shrugged. ‘Two hundred? Three?’ He plainly did not know, but his answer confirmed my suspicion that Æthelred had not brought his whole army into Northumbria, but instead had sent a strong war-band.

‘They’re there to attack Lindcolne?’ I asked.

He laughed. ‘They daren’t! They’d die!’

‘Then why are they there?’

‘Because they’re fools, lord?’

‘So what’s at Bearddan Igge?’ I asked.

‘Nothing, lord,’ the steward said, and I saw Osferth open his mouth to speak, then think better of it.

‘There’s a monastery at Bearddan Igge,’ Osferth told me as we rode on, ‘or there used to be before the pagans burned it.’

‘Good to know they did something useful,’ I said, and was rewarded with a glower.

‘It is where Saint Oswald’s body is buried,’ Osferth said.

I stared at him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’

‘I’d forgotten the name, lord, till the man said it. Bearddan Igge: it’s a strange name, but a holy place.’

‘And full of Æthelred’s men,’ I said, ‘digging up a saint.’

The sun was low in the west as we approached Bearddan Igge. The land was still flat and the ground damp. We forded lazy streams and crossed drainage ditches that ran straight as arrows between soggy pastures. We had joined a larger road and that too ran straight as an arrow. We passed a Roman milestone, fallen over and half hidden by grass, and the carving on the stone said ‘Lindum VIII’ which meant, I assumed, that it was eight miles to the town we call Lindcolne. ‘Did the Romans use miles?’ I asked Osferth.

‘They did, lord.’

It was not far beyond the fallen milestone that the war-band saw us. They were to our west where the sun was low and dazzling in the sky, and they saw us long before we saw them. There were eight of them, mounted on big stallions, the riders armed with spears or swords, and they galloped across the wetland, their hooves hurling up great clods of damp earth. We curbed our miserable nags and waited.

The eight men surrounded us. Their horses stamped the track as the riders inspected us. I saw their leader’s eyes look at my hammer, then at the cross hanging at Osferth’s neck. ‘You call those things horses?’ he sneered. Then, when neither of us answered, ‘And who in God’s name are you?’

‘He’s the priest-killer,’ one of his men supplied the answer. He was the only man with a shield and that shield was painted with Æthelred’s prancing white horse. ‘I recognise him,’ the man went on.

The questioner looked into my eyes. I could see surprise on his face. ‘You’re Uhtred?’

‘He’s Lord Uhtred,’ Osferth said reprovingly.

‘You’ll come with us,’ the man said curtly, and turned his horse.

I nodded at Osferth to indicate we would obey. ‘We should take their swords,’ another of the men suggested.

‘Try,’ I said pleasantly.

They decided not to try, leading us instead across waterlogged pastures, over ditches, and finally to a damp road that led north and east. I could see a mass of horses in the distance. ‘How many men are you?’ I asked. No one answered. ‘And who leads you?’

‘Someone who’ll decide whether a priest-killer should live or die,’ the man who was evidently the leader answered.

But the wheel of fortune was still hoisting me upwards because the decision-maker turned out to be Merewalh, and I saw the relief on his face when he recognised me. I had known him for years. He was one of Æthelred’s men, and a good one. He and I had been together outside Ceaster, and Merewalh had always taken my advice and, so far as Æthelred allowed him, cooperated with me. He had never been close to Æthelred. Merewalh was a man who was chosen for the uncomfortable tasks, like riding the frontier between Saxon and Danish lands while other men basked in the comfort of Æthelred’s approval. Now Merewalh had been given the job of leading three hundred men deep into Northumbria. ‘We’re looking for Saint Oswald,’ he explained.

‘What’s left of him.’

‘He’s supposed to be buried here,’ he said, and gestured at a field where his men had been digging so that the whole expanse of grass was pocked by opened graves, mounds of earth, and rows of bones. A few rotted posts showed where there had once been a monastery. ‘The Danes burned it years ago,’ Merewalh said.

‘And they dug up Saint Oswald too,’ I said, ‘and they probably pounded his bones to dust and scattered them to the winds.’

Merewalh was a good friend, but there were also enemies waiting for me in that drab field called Bearddan Igge. There were three priests led by Ceolberht whom I recognised by his toothless gums, and my arrival spurred him to a new rant. I was to be killed. I was the pagan who had killed the saintly Abbot Wihtred. I had been cursed by God and by man. Men crowded around to hear him, listening as he spat his hatred. ‘I command you,’ Ceolberht spoke to Merewalh, but pointed to me, ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost to put that evil man to death.’

But though these Mercians were Christians they were also nervous. They had been sent on an idiotic errand deep inside enemy land and they knew they were being watched by Danes patrolling from the high fort at Lindcolne. The longer they stayed at Bearddan Igge the more nervous they became, expecting any moment to be attacked by a larger and more powerful enemy. They wanted to be back with Æthelred’s army, but the priests were insisting that Saint Oswald could be found and must be found. Ceolberht and his priests were insisting that I was an outlaw, fated to be killed, but these men also knew I was a warlord, that I had won battle after battle against the Danes, and at that moment they feared the Danes more then they feared the wrath of their nailed god. Ceolberht ranted, but no one moved to kill me.

‘Have you finished?’ I asked Ceolberht when he paused to catch his breath.

‘You have been declared an …’ he began again

‘How many teeth do you have left?’ I interrupted him. He said nothing, just gawped at me. ‘So keep your mouth closed,’ I said, ‘if you don’t want me to kick the rest of your rotten teeth out of your jaw.’ I turned back to Merewalh. ‘The Danes are just letting you dig?’

He nodded. ‘They know we’re here.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Three days. The Danes send men from Lindcolne to watch us, but they don’t interfere.’

‘They don’t interfere,’ I said, ‘because they want you here.’

He frowned at that. ‘Why would they want us here?’

I raised my voice. Most of Merewalh’s men were close by and I wanted them to hear what I had to say. ‘The Danes want you here because they want Æthelred to be bogged down in East Anglia while they attack Mercia.’

‘You’re wrong!’ Father Ceolberht yapped triumphantly.

‘I am?’ I asked him mildly.

‘God has delivered the Danes to us!’ Ceolberht said.

‘They won’t attack Mercia,’ Merewalh explained the priest’s confidence, ‘because we have Cnut’s son as a hostage.’

‘You do?’ I asked.

‘Well, not me, no.’

‘So who does?’

Ceolberht was plainly unwilling to reveal anything to me, but Merewalh trusted me. Besides, what he told me was already known to his men. ‘The Lord Æthelred,’ he explained, ‘made a truce with Haesten. You remember Haesten?’

‘Of course I remember Haesten,’ I said. Merewalh and I had met outside Haesten’s fortress; we had become friends there.

‘Haesten has become a Christian!’ Father Ceolberht put in.

‘And all Haesten wants,’ Merewalh told me, ‘is to be left in peace in Ceaster, so the Lord Æthelred promised to leave him there if he converted, and if he did us a service.’

‘The Lord God disposes!’ Ceolberht crowed.

‘And the service,’ I asked, ‘was capturing Cnut’s wife and two children?’

‘Yes,’ Merewalh said simply and proudly. ‘So you see? Cnut won’t move. He thinks the Lord Æthelred has his family.’

‘The Lord God Almighty has delivered our enemies into our grasp,’ Ceolberht shouted, ‘and we lie under his divine protection. God be praised!’

‘You’re idiots,’ I said, ‘all of you! I was in Cnut’s hall just after his wife was captured and who was there with him? Haesten! And what was he wearing around his neck? One of these!’ I held up my own hammer of Thor. ‘Haesten is no more a Christian than I am, and Haesten is sworn to Cnut Ranulfson’s service, and Cnut Ranulfson has sent orders that his thegns, his followers, his warriors are to assemble at Ceaster. With ships!’

‘He lies,’ Ceolberht shouted.

‘If I lie to you,’ I said to the priest, but loudly enough for all Merewalh’s men to hear, ‘then my life is yours. If I lie to you then I shall bend my neck in front of you and you can hack off my head.’ That silenced the priest. He just stared at me. Merewalh believed me, and so did his men. I plucked Osferth’s sleeve, bringing him to stand beside me. ‘This man is a Christian. He is the son of King Alfred. He will tell you I speak the truth.’

‘He does,’ Osferth said.

‘He lies!’ Ceolberht said, but he had lost the argument. Men believed me, not the priest, and their world had changed. They were no longer safe, but poised on the edge of chaos.

I drew Merewalh aside to the shadows under a willow. ‘The last time Cnut attacked,’ I said, ‘he took ships to the south coast of Wessex. He’s gathering ships again.’

‘To attack Wessex?’

‘I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter.’

‘No?’

‘What matters,’ I said, ‘is that we have to make him dance to our drum. He thinks we’re capering to his.’

‘Æthelred won’t believe you,’ Merewalh said nervously.

I suspected that was true. Æthelred had launched his war and he would be unwilling to believe that he had started that war because he had been deceived. He would insist that he was right and his hatred of me would make him even more stubborn. I decided that did not matter. Æthelred would be forced to believe me soon enough. What mattered was to unbalance Cnut. ‘You should send most of your men back to Æthelred,’ I told Merewalh.

‘Without the saint?’

I was about to snarl at him, but checked myself. Æthelred had promised his army the assistance of Saint Oswald, and though Æthelred’s men were in the wrong place, and though Æthelred would be unwilling to abandon his war on East Anglia, it still made sense to give his army the confidence of magical assistance.

‘Tomorrow,’ I said, ‘we’ll make one last attempt to find Oswald. Then send him back to Æthelred.’

‘Send him?’

‘I have a ship less than a day’s ride from here,’ I told him. ‘Forty of your men will go there with Osferth. They’ll send my men back here on their horses. Until they arrive you can look for your saint. If you find him you can send two hundred men back to Æthelred with the bones, but the rest will come with me.’

‘But …’ He fell silent. He was thinking that he could not detach men to follow me without incurring Æthelred’s wrath.

‘If you don’t do what I say,’ I told him, ‘Æthelred will be dead within the month and Mercia will be Danish. If you trust me then both will be alive.’

‘I trust you,’ he said.

‘Then get some sleep,’ I told him, ‘because tomorrow we’re busy.’

I waited till the heart of the night, till the darkest hour when only the shadow-walkers tread the earth, when men sleep and owls fly, when the fox hunts and the world trembles at every small noise. The night is death’s kingdom. Merewalh’s sentries were awake, but they were at the edge of his encampment, and none was close to the sodden timber wreckage of the old monastery. Two fires smouldered there and by their small light I walked past the skeletons that had been prised from the earth and lain reverently in a long row. Father Ceolberht had declared that they must all be reburied with prayers, for these were the monks of Bearddan Igge, the monks who had lived here before the Danes came to burn, to steal and to kill.

The bones were wrapped in new woollen shrouds. I counted twenty-seven. At the far end of the row a shroud had been placed flat on the ground and heaped with more bones and skulls, orphan remains that had been unattached to any skeleton, and beyond that pile was a cart with a pair of high wheels. The cart was just big enough to contain a man. The flanks had been painted with crosses that I could just see in the faint glow of the dying fires. A folded cloth lay on the cart’s bed and, when I touched it, I felt the smooth, expensive material that is called silk and is imported from some distant country to the east. The silk was obviously meant to be a new shroud for Saint Oswald, the only difficulty being that Saint Oswald no longer existed.

So it was time for another resurrection.

I wondered if anyone had counted the skeletons, or, if they had, whether they would count them again before they were reburied. Yet I had little time and I doubted I could discover yet another body, not without making enough noise to rouse the nearest sleepers who were only yards away, and so I picked a corpse at random and unwrapped the woollen winding sheet. I felt the bones. They were clean, suggesting that these skeletons had been washed before being shrouded, and when I lifted one dry arm the bones stayed connected, suggesting this monk had died not long before the monastery had been destroyed.

I crouched beside the dead man and felt in my pouch for the silver cross I had worn when we deceived the sentries on Bebbanburg’s Low Gate. It was a heavy cross with garnets embedded into the arms. I had planned to sell it, but now it must serve another purpose, though first I had to dismember the skeleton. I used a knife to hack off one arm and the skull, then carried the severed parts to the heap of orphaned bones.

After that it was simple. I laid the silver cross inside the ribcage, tangling the chain around one rib, then used the woollen shroud to pick the man up and carry him west towards a sluggish stream. I laid him in the shallow water, pulled the shroud free and tugged an eel trap across the bones. I left the dead man to ripple the slow current as I wrung as much water from the shroud as I could, then dropped the damp wool onto a dying fire where it hissed and steamed. Most of it would be charred and unrecognisable by morning. I went back to the dead monks and moved the skeletons to disguise the gap I had made, then touched the hammer about my neck and prayed to Thor that no one made a new count of the bodies.

Then, because when dawn came I must be busy, I slept.

I called Osferth and Merewalh to me in the dawn, but a dozen other men came too. They were thegns, important men, landowners in Mercia who had brought their warriors to serve in Æthelred’s army. They were subdued, perhaps because a thick mist draped the flat land, or because their confidence in Æthelred had been destroyed by my news of Haesten’s true allegiance. We gathered round the cart, where servants brought us pots of weak ale and slabs of hard bread.

Merewalh was the Mercian leader, but Merewalh deferred to me, just as he had at Ceaster so many years before. ‘You,’ I pointed to Osferth, ‘will ride back to Middelniht today.’ I looked at Merewalh. ‘You’ll give him a good horse and forty men.’

‘Forty?’

‘A crew,’ I explained, and looked back to Osferth. ‘You send Finan and his men to me on the horses you take to Middelniht. Tell him to come quickly and to bring the rest of my war gear. After that you sail to Lundene and warn the garrison what’s happening, then find your half-brother and tell him.’ Osferth’s half-brother was King of Wessex, and we would need the strong West Saxon army if Cnut was to be defeated. ‘Tell him the Danes are coming either to Mercia or Wessex, that they’re coming in force and he’s to look for me in the west.’

‘In the west,’ Osferth repeated solemnly.

‘I don’t know where,’ I said, ‘but if Cnut attacks Mercia then King Edward should take his forces to Gleawecestre. If Cnut attacks Wessex then I’ll join him, but I think it’ll be Mercia, so send your brother to Gleawecestre.’

‘Why Gleawecestre?’ one of the thegns asked. ‘We don’t know what Cnut will do!’

‘We know he’ll attack,’ I said, ‘and as long as he’s loose then he can march where he likes and do what damage he pleases, so we have to snare him. We have to make him fight where we want to fight, not where he chooses.’

‘But …’

‘I’ve chosen the west,’ I snarled, ‘and I’ll make him fight where I choose.’

No one spoke. They probably did not believe me, but I was telling them the truth.

‘I need a hundred of your men,’ I told Merewalh, ‘the best of them on the lightest horses. You can lead them.’

He nodded slowly. ‘To go where?’

‘With me,’ I said. ‘The rest of your men will rejoin Æthelred. Tell him you’re sorry, but Saint Oswald was scattered to the winds long ago.’

‘He won’t like it,’ a heavy-set man called Oswin said.

‘He won’t like any of the news,’ I said, ‘and he’ll refuse to believe it. He’ll stay in East Anglia till he’s proved wrong, and then he’ll be terrified of going home. But he has to go towards Gleawecestre.’ I looked at Osferth. ‘Have your brother send him orders.’

‘I will,’ Osferth said.

‘And have Edward tell Æthelred that if he wants to stay Lord of Mercia he’d best move his arse quickly.’

‘And what are you going to do?’ Oswin asked indignantly.

‘I’m going to kick Cnut’s balls,’ I said, ‘and kick them so hard that he’ll be forced to turn and deal with me, and then I’ll hold him in place till the rest of you can come and kill the bastard once and for all.’

‘We can’t even be sure Cnut will attack,’ another of the thegns said nervously.

‘Wake up!’ I shouted at him, startling all of the men gathered about the cart. ‘The war has started! We just don’t know where or how. But Cnut began it and we’re going to finish it.’

No one said anything more because just at that moment there was another shout, a triumphant shout, and I saw men running towards the shallow stream that curled about the western end of the encampment. Father Ceolberht was there, waving his arms, and the two other priests were with him, both on their knees. ‘God be praised!’ one of them shouted.

Merewalh and his men stared towards the priests. Osferth looked at me.

‘We’ve found him!’ Ceolberht called. ‘We’ve found the saint!’

‘God be praised,’ the priest called again.

We all walked toward the stream. ‘You were so wrong!’ Ceolberht greeted me, his voice made sibilant by his missing teeth. ‘Our God is greater than you know. He has delivered the saint to us! Uhtred was wrong and we were right!’

Men were lifting the skeleton from the water, disentangling weeds and strands of willow that had broken from the fish trap. They carried the bones reverently towards the cart.

‘You were wrong,’ Merewalh said to me.

‘I was wrong,’ I said, ‘indeed I was.’

‘Victory will be ours!’ Ceolberht said. ‘Look! A cross!’ He lifted the silver cross out of the ribcage. ‘The cross of the blessed Saint Oswald.’ He kissed the silver and gave me a look of pure hatred. ‘You mocked us, but you were wrong. Our God is greater than you will ever know! It is a miracle! A miracle! Our God preserved the saint through trial and tribulation, and now he will grant us victory over the pagans.’

‘God be praised,’ Merewalh said, and he and his men stepped back reverently as the yellowed bones were laid on the cart’s bed.

I let the Christians have their moment of happiness as I drew Osferth to one side. ‘Take Middelniht to Lundene,’ I told him, ‘and take Ingulfrid and the boy with you.’

He nodded, began to say something and then decided to stay silent.

‘I don’t know what I’ll do with the boy yet,’ I said, ‘and I have to deal with Cnut first, but keep him safe. He’s worth a lot of gold.’

‘I’ll buy him from you,’ Osferth said.

‘Let his father do the buying,’ I said, ‘and you deal with the mother. But keep them both safe!’

‘I shall keep them safe,’ Osferth said. The priests had begun to sing, and Osferth watched them with his usual serious expression. There were times when he looked so like his father that I was almost tempted to call him ‘lord’. ‘I remember,’ he still looked at the three chanting priests as he spoke, ‘that you once told me your uncle was given an arm of Saint Oswald.’

‘He was, yes. Ingulfrid has seen it. You can ask her.’

‘The left arm, you said?’

‘Did I?’

‘I have a memory for these things,’ he said solemnly, ‘and you said it was the left arm.’

‘I don’t remember,’ I said, ‘and how would I have known which arm it was?’

‘You said it was the left arm,’ he insisted. ‘One of your spies must have told you.’

‘So it was the left arm,’ I said.

‘Then this truly is a miracle,’ Osferth said, still gazing towards the men crowded about the cart, ‘because that body is missing its right arm.’

‘It is?’

‘Yes, lord, it is.’ He looked at me and surprised me by smiling. ‘I shall tell Finan to hurry, lord.’

‘Tell him I want him here tomorrow.’

‘He’ll be here, lord, and God speed you.’

‘I hope he speeds you to Lundene,’ I said. ‘We need your brother’s army.’

He hesitated. ‘And what are you going to do, lord?’

‘You’ll tell no one?’ I asked.

‘I promise, lord,’ he said, and when Osferth gave a promise I knew it would be kept.

‘I’m going to do what I was accused of doing all those weeks ago,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to capture Cnut’s wife and children.’

He nodded as if such a task was to be expected, then frowned. ‘And will you make sure my sister is safe?’

‘That above all,’ I said.

Because I had made a promise to Æthelflaed, and that was one oath I had never broken.

Which meant I would be riding westwards. To meet Cnut Longsword.