The Pagan Lord

Nine

A street was ahead of me. A long, straight street, while behind me horsemen were bursting through the gates. They began whooping as they spurred into the town.

Ceaster suddenly seemed vast. I remember thinking that this was stupidity, that I needed three times the number of men to take this place, but we were committed now. ‘You’re a fool!’ I shouted at my son. He turned in his saddle and grinned. ‘And well done!’ I called to him.

The long street was edged with stone buildings. Ducks fled the leading horsemen and one bird was trampled by a heavy hoof. There was a squawk and white feathers flying. I kicked my heels to quicken my stallion as two armed men came from an alley. They stopped, astonished, and one had the sense to dart back into the shadows while the other was ridden down by Rolla, his sword slicing once, hard, and the pale stone of the nearest house was suddenly splattered with red. Blood and feathers. A woman screamed. Over a hundred of us were charging down the street. It had been paved once, but in places the stone slabs had gone and the hooves thumped in mud, then clattered on stone again. I had expected to see the southern gate at the street’s far end, but a big pillared building blocked the view, and as I drew closer I saw there were four spearmen behind the pillars, running. One turned to face us. Eldgrim and Kettil, riding stirrup to stirrup, pushed their horses up the two stone steps leading onto the arcade that surrounded the huge building. I swerved left, heard a wail as one man was cut down, then wrenched my horse to the right and saw more men, maybe half a dozen, standing at a vast door that led into the pillared building. ‘Rolla! Twelve men. Keep those bastards here!’

I slewed right again, then left, and we crossed a wide square and galloped into another long street that ran spear-straight towards the southern gate. Five men were running ahead of us and lacked the sense to turn into an alleyway. I spurred behind one, saw his frightened face as he turned in panic, then Serpent-Breath slashed into the nape of his neck and I kicked my heels again and saw my son chop another of the men down. Three cows were at the street’s edge. A red-faced woman was milking one and she stared at us with indignation, but kept on tugging at the udders as we crashed past. I could see spears and blades on the rampart above the southern gate. Cnut’s banner of the axe and broken cross was flying there. The gate’s arch was flanked by a pair of stone towers, but the rampart above was wooden. There were at least a score of men on the platform, and more were joining them. I could see no way up to the rampart and guessed the stairway was inside one of the towers. The big gates inside the arch were closed and the locking bar was in place. I was close to the gate now, still galloping, and saw an arrow whip from the gate’s high platform to skid along the road’s paving. I saw a second archer taking aim, and wrenched the reins and kicked my feet from the stirrups. ‘Cenwalh!’ I shouted at one of my younger Saxons. ‘Look after the horses!’

I dismounted. A stone was hurled from the fighting platform to crash and break a paving slab. There was a doorway in the right-hand tower and I ran to it as a second stone narrowly missed me. A horse screamed as an arrow struck. There were stone stairs curving upwards into shadow, but they stopped after a few steps because much of the tower’s inward face had collapsed. The masonry had been replaced by heavy oak timbers and the tower steps by a stout timber ladder. I climbed a few of the old Roman stairs, then peered upwards and had to jump back as a heavy stone crashed down. The stone hit the ladder’s lowest rung, bounced off without breaking it, and rolled down beside me. An arrow followed, only a hunter’s arrow, but as I was not wearing mail it could easily have pierced my chest.

‘Finan!’ I bellowed as I went back to the tower’s doorway. ‘We need shields!’

‘They’re coming!’ he shouted back. He had led my dismounted men into an alleyway because more arrows were flicking down from the high rampart. We were not carrying shields because I had not wanted to arouse the suspicions of the guards on the northern gate, which meant our best protection against the arrows was still heaped on the packhorses.

‘Where are the packhorses?’ I called.

‘They’re coming!’ Finan shouted again.

I hesitated a few heartbeats then ran from the tower, dodging left and right as I hurried across the open space. I had limped slightly ever since the fight at Ethandun and could not run like a young man. An arrow slapped on the roadway to my right, I swerved that way and another slashed past my left shoulder, and then I was safe in the alleyway. ‘There are two bastard archers,’ Finan said.

‘Where are the shields?’

‘I told you, they’re coming. Einar has an arrow in his leg.’

Einar was a Dane, a good man. He was sitting in the alley with the arrow sticking from his thigh. He drew a knife to cut the head out. ‘Wait for Father Wissian,’ I told him. Merewalh had told me the priest had a talent for healing.

‘What can he do that I can’t?’ Einar asked. He gritted his teeth and plunged the knife into his leg.

‘Jesus!’ Finan said.

I peered out of the alley and immediately ducked back as an arrow flew. If I had been wearing mail and carrying a shield I would have been safe enough, but even a hunter’s arrow can kill a man unprotected by mail. ‘I want firewood,’ I told Finan, ‘a lot of firewood. Kindling as well.’

I looked for Merewalh and found him with the packhorses. The town’s streets made a grid and the men leading the horses had possessed the sense to bring them by a parallel street and so out of sight of the two bowmen on the gate platform. ‘We killed the men at the north gate,’ Merewalh told me. He was pulling on a mail coat and his voice was muffled. ‘And I left twelve men to hold it.’

‘I want two more groups,’ I told him, ‘and they’re to find their way onto the walls either side of this gate.’ I meant the eastern and western walls. ‘Twelve men in each group,’ I told him. He grunted acceptance of the orders. ‘And tell them to check the two other gates,’ I ordered. ‘I think they’re blocked, but make certain of it!’

I was not sure how many men were on the southern gate’s fighting platform, but there were at least twenty, and by sending Merewalh’s men up onto the ramparts I should be able to trap those defenders. ‘Warn them about the archers,’ I told Merewalh, then unbuckled my sword belt and shrugged off the cloak. I pulled my mail coat over my head. The leather lining stank like a polecat’s fart. I donned the helmet, then strapped my sword belt around my waist again. Other men were finding their mail. Finan handed me my shield. ‘Get the firewood!’ I told him.

‘They’re fetching it,’ he said patiently.

Men had broken into a house and were smashing benches and a table. There was a pigsty in the back yard and we hauled down its thatch and ripped the beams apart. A fire, nothing but smoking embers contained in a ring of stones, smouldered in the yard. An old cauldron stood to one side of the fire and a dozen clay pots were on a small shelf propped against the wall. I picked up one of the pots, emptied it of dry beans and looked for a shovel. I found a ladle instead and used it to fill the pot with glowing embers, then put the pot inside the cauldron.

It was all taking time. I still had no idea how many of the enemy were inside the town, and I was dividing my own force into ever smaller groups, which meant that we could be overwhelmed one group at a time. We had taken the garrison by surprise, but they would be recovering fast and, if they outnumbered us, they could squash us like bedbugs. We needed to defeat them fast. I knew that the men on the northern gate were already dead, and I assumed Rolla had bottled up the Danes in the big pillared building, but there could have been three or four hundred more angry Northmen in the parts of the town we had not seen. The enemies on this southern gate were certainly confident, which suggested they thought they would be rescued by reinforcements. They were shouting insults at us, inviting us to step out of the alley and be killed. ‘Or you can wait there!’ a man shouted. ‘You’re going to die anyway! Welcome to Ceaster!’

I needed to capture the walls. I suspected there were men outside the town, and we had to stop them from entering. I watched as men brought armfuls of thatch and broken timbers into the alley. ‘I need four men,’ I said. Any more than four would be too many for the ground floor of the tower. ‘And six men in mail and with shields!’

I sent the six men first. They ran towards the tower and, sure enough, the archers released their arrows that thumped harmlessly into shields, and as soon as the bows were loosed I led the four men towards the tower. Stones rained down. I had my shield over my head and it shook as rocks hit the willow boards. I was carrying the cauldron in my sword hand.

I ducked into the tower. If the defenders had been thinking properly they would have sent men down the ladder to keep us away from the old Roman stairway, but they felt safer on the high platform and so they stayed there. But they knew we were inside the tower, and hurled stones down. I used my shield to cover my head as I climbed the few stone steps. The willow boards shook as the stones hit, but the shield protected me as I crouched at the ladder’s foot and as men thrust handfuls of thatch and shattered timber up to me. I used my free hand to pile the firewood roughly around the ladder, then I took the scalding hot clay pot from the cauldron and spilt the embers into the straw and kindling. ‘More timber!’ I called. ‘More!’

Yet I hardly needed more timber because the fire caught immediately, driving me fast down the few stone steps. The kindling flared, the wood caught fire and the tower seemed to suck the flames and smoke upwards, choking the men immediately above us so that the rain of stones stopped. The ladder would catch fire fast and that fire should spread to the oak timbers on the tower’s face, and then to the platform itself and so drive the men down onto the flanking walls where Merewalh’s men should be waiting. I ran back into the open air to see smoke churning from the tower’s broken top and men abandoning the platform like rats fleeing a flooding bilge. They hesitated when they reached the wall’s top, but must have seen Merewalh’s men approaching because they simply abandoned the ramparts, jumping down into the ditch and so into the country beyond.

‘Uhtred!’ I called my son and pointed at the gates. ‘The fire could spread to the gates, so find something to block the arch when they’ve burned out. Choose a dozen men. You’re to hold the gateway.’

‘You think they …’

‘I don’t know what they’ll do,’ I interrupted him, ‘and I don’t know how many there are. What I do know is that you’re to stop any of them getting back into the town.’

‘We can’t hold for long,’ he said.

‘Of course we can’t. There aren’t enough of us. But they don’t know that.’ The fire caught Cnut’s standard, which burst into sudden bright flame. One moment it was flying, the next it was a flare of fire and ash in the wind. ‘Merewalh!’ I looked for the Mercian. ‘Put half your men on the ramparts!’ I wanted any Danes outside the town to see spears and swords and axes on the walls. I wanted them to think we outnumbered them. ‘Use the other half to clear the town.’

I sent most of my men up to the walls and took Finan and seven others back to the town’s centre, to the big pillared building where I had left Rolla. He was still there. ‘There’s only the one entrance,’ he told me, ‘and there’s a few of them inside. Shields and spears.’

‘How many?’

‘I’ve seen eight, could be more.’ He jerked his head upwards. ‘There are windows up there, but they’re high and barred.’

‘Barred?’

‘Iron bars. Reckon the only way in and out is through these doors.’

The men inside had closed the doors, which were made of heavy timber studded with iron bolts. There was a latch on one door, but when I tugged it was evident that both doors were barred or bolted inside. I beckoned to Folcbald who was carrying a lead-weighted war axe. ‘Break it down,’ I told him.

Folcbald was the Frisian with the strength of an ox. He was slow, but give him a simple job and he could be remorseless. He nodded, took a breath, and swung the weapon.

The steel blade bit deep. Splinters flew. He jerked the axe free and struck again and both big doors shivered under the enormous blow. He gouged the blade loose and drew the weapon back for a third blow when I heard the locking bar grate in its brackets. ‘Enough,’ I told him, ‘step back.’

The seven men I had brought were all in mail and all had shields, so we made a wall between the two pillars closest to the door. Rolla and his men were behind us. The locking bar scraped again, then I heard it thump as it fell on the floor inside. There was a pause, then the right-hand door was pushed open very slowly. It stopped when the opening was a mere hand’s breadth wide and a sword was held out through the gap. The sword dropped onto the pavement. ‘We’ll give you a fight if that’s what you want,’ a man called from inside, ‘but we’d rather live.’

‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘Leiknir Olafson,’ the man said.

‘And you serve?’

‘The Jarl Cnut. Who are you?’

‘The man who’ll slaughter you if you don’t surrender. Open both doors now.’

I closed my helmet’s cheek-pieces and waited. I could hear low urgent voices inside the building, but the argument was brief and then both doors were pushed wide open. Maybe a dozen men stood in a shadowed corridor that led deep into the great building’s darkness. The men were in mail, they had helmets and carried shields, but as soon as the doors were open they dropped their spears and swords onto the flagstones. A tall, grey-bearded man stepped towards us. ‘I am Leiknir,’ he announced.

‘Tell your men to drop their shields,’ I said, ‘shields and helmets. You too.’

‘You will let us live?’

‘I haven’t decided,’ I said. ‘Give me a reason why I should.’

‘My wife is here,’ Leiknir said, ‘and my daughter and her babes. My family.’

‘Your wife could find another husband,’ I said.

Leiknir bridled at that. ‘You have family?’ he asked.

I did not answer that. ‘Maybe I’ll let you live,’ I told him, ‘and just sell your family. The Norse in Ireland pay well for slaves.’

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I snarled at him, and the reaction was strange. It was also gratifying because a look of pure fear came to Leiknir’s face. He stepped a pace backwards and put a hand to Thor’s hammer about his neck.

‘Uhtred is dead,’ he said, and that was the second time I heard that rumour. Leiknir had plainly believed it because he was staring at me in horror.

‘Shall I tell you what happened?’ I asked. ‘I died, and died without a sword in my hand, so I was sent to Hel and heard her dark cockerels crowing! They announced my coming, Leiknir, and the Corpse-Ripper came for me.’ I took a pace towards him and he stepped back. ‘The Corpse-Ripper, Leiknir, all rotted flesh peeling from his yellow bones and his eyes like fire and his teeth like horns and his claws like gelding knives. And there was a bone on the floor, a thigh bone, and I picked it up and I ripped it to a point with my own teeth and then I slew him.’ I hefted Serpent-Breath. ‘I am the dead, Leiknir, come to collect the living. Now kick your swords, spears, shields and helmets towards the door.’

‘I beg for the life of my family,’ Leiknir said.

‘Have you heard of me?’ I demanded, knowing well what the answer was.

‘Of course.’

‘And have you ever heard that I kill women and children?’

He shook his head. ‘No, lord.’

‘Then kick your weapons towards me and kneel down.’

They obeyed, kneeling against the corridor’s wall. ‘Guard them,’ I told Rolla, then walked past the kneeling men. ‘Leiknir,’ I called, ‘you come with me.’ The passage walls were made from rough wood planks, so they were not Roman work. Doors opened on each side, leading into small chambers where straw mattresses lay. Another room held barrels. All the rooms were empty. At the corridor’s end was a larger door that led into the western half of the great building. I went to that end door and pushed it open. A woman screamed.

And I stared. Six women were in the room. Four were apparently servants for they knelt in terror behind the other two, and those two I knew. One was Brunna, Haesten’s wife. She was grey-haired, plump, round-faced and had a heavy cross hanging at her neck. She was clinging to the cross and mouthing a prayer. She had been baptised on King Alfred’s orders and I had always thought that her acceptance of Christianity had been a cynical ploy arranged by her husband, but it seemed I was wrong. ‘That’s your wife?’ I asked Leiknir who had followed me into the room.

‘Yes, lord,’ he said.

‘I kill liars, Leiknir,’ I said.

‘She’s my wife,’ he said again, though defensively, as if the lie must be maintained even though it had failed.

‘And is that your daughter?’ I asked, nodding at the younger woman who was sitting beside Brunna.

This time Leiknir said nothing. Brunna was screaming at me now, demanding that I release her, but I ignored her. Two small children, twins, were clinging to the younger woman’s skirts and she also said nothing, but just stared at me with large, dark eyes that I remembered so well. She was so beautiful, so fragile, so frightened, and she just stared at me and said nothing. She had grown older, but not as the rest of us had aged. I suppose she must have been fifteen or sixteen when I first met her, and now she was ten years older, but those years had merely added dignity to beauty.

‘Is she your daughter?’ I asked Leiknir again, savagely, and he said nothing.

‘What is her name?’ I demanded.

‘Frigg.’ Leiknir almost whispered the answer.

Frigg, wife of Odin, chief of all the goddesses in Asgard, the only one allowed to sit on Odin’s high throne, and a creature of surpassing beauty who also had the great gift of prophecy, though she chose never to reveal what she knew.

And perhaps this Frigg also knew everything that would ever come to pass, but she would never tell because the girl I knew as Erce, granddaughter of Ælfadell the sorceress, was both deaf and dumb.

And she was also, I presumed, the wife of Jarl Cnut.

And I had found her.

Two hundred Danes had been left to guard Ceaster, though many of those were old or slowed by wounds. ‘Why so few?’ I asked Leiknir.

‘No one expected Ceaster to be attacked,’ he said bitterly.

I was walking through the captured town, exploring and admiring. Not even Lundene’s old city, the part built on the hill, had so many Roman buildings in such good repair. If I ignored the thatch I could almost imagine myself back in the times when men could make such marvels, when half the world had been ruled from one shining city. How had they done that, I wondered, and how could such a people, so strong and so clever, have ever been defeated?

Finan and my son were with me. Merewalh and his men were on the ramparts, giving the impression that we numbered far more than a hundred and thirty-three men. Most of the defeated garrison was now outside the walls, gathered in the vast arena where the Romans had amused themselves with death, but we had captured their horses, almost all their supplies, and many of their women.

‘So you were left to guard Frigg?’ I asked Leiknir.

‘Yes.’

‘The Jarl Cnut won’t be happy with you,’ I said, amused. ‘If I were you, Leiknir, I’d find somewhere a very long way away and hide there.’ He said nothing to that. ‘Haesten sailed with Jarl Cnut?’ I asked.

‘He did.’

‘To where?’

‘I don’t know.’

We were standing in a pottery. The furnace, made of thin Roman bricks, was still burning. There were shelves of finished bowls and jugs, and a wheel on which a lump of clay had sagged. ‘You don’t know?’ I asked.

‘He didn’t say, lord,’ Leiknir said humbly.

I prodded the clay on the potter’s wheel. The lump had hardened. ‘Finan?’

‘Lord?’

‘There’s firewood for that furnace?’

‘There is.’

‘Why don’t you make it really hot and we’ll put Leiknir’s hands and feet inside. We’ll start with his left foot.’ I turned on the captured Dane. ‘Take your boots off. You won’t be needing them again.’

‘I don’t know!’ he said frantically. Finan had tossed firewood into the furnace mouth.

‘You were left to guard Jarl Cnut’s most precious possession,’ I said, ‘and the Jarl Cnut wouldn’t have just vanished. He would have told you how to send him news.’ I watched as the fire roared. The sudden heat made me take a pace backwards. ‘You’ll be left with no hands and no feet,’ I said, ‘but I suppose you can shuffle around on your knees and wrist-stumps.’

‘They went to the Sæfern,’ he said desperately.

And I believed him. He had just revealed what Cnut was doing and it made sense. Cnut could have taken his fleet south around Cornwalum and attacked Wessex’s southern coast, but that had been tried before and it had failed. So instead he was using the River Sæfern to take his army deep into Mercia, and the first great obstacle he would encounter was Gleawecestre. Gleawecestre was Æthelred’s home, the most important town of Mercia, and it was a well-defended burh with high Roman walls, but how many men were left to defend those ramparts? Had Æthelred stripped his country of men for his invasion of East Anglia? And I felt a sudden fear, because Æthelflaed would surely have taken refuge in Gleawecestre. The moment folk heard that the Danes were in the river, that thousands of men and horses were being landed on the Sæfern’s bank, they would flee to the nearest, strongest burh, but if that burh was inadequately defended it would become a trap for them.

‘So what would you do if you needed to send a message to Cnut?’ I asked Leiknir, who was watching the furnace fearfully.

‘He said to send horsemen south, lord. He said they’d find him.’

And that was probably true. Cnut’s army would be spreading through Saxon Mercia, burning halls, churches and villages, and the smoke of those fires would be beacons for any messenger. ‘How many men does Cnut have?’ I asked.

‘Nearly four thousand.’

‘How many ships sailed from here?’

‘A hundred and sixty-eight, lord.’

That many ships could easily have carried five thousand men, but they had also taken horses and servants and baggage, so four thousand was probably accurate. That was a large army, and Cnut had been clever. He had lured Æthelred away to East Anglia and now he was deep inside Æthelred’s land. What was Wessex doing? Edward would surely be gathering his army, but he would also be putting warriors into his burhs, fearing that the Danes might strike south across the Temes. My guess was that Edward would think of defending Wessex, which left Cnut free to ravage Mercia and to defeat Æthelred when that fool finally decided to march home. In another month all Mercia would be Danish.

Except I possessed Frigg. That was not her real name, but who knew what that was? She could not tell and, because she was deaf, she might not even know. Ælfadell had called her granddaughter Erce, but that goddess’s name was just to impress the gullible. ‘Jarl Cnut is fond of Frigg,’ I suggested to Leiknir.

‘He’s like a man with a new sword,’ he said, ‘he can’t bear to be out of her sight.’

‘You can’t blame him,’ I said, ‘she’s a rare beauty. So why didn’t she go south with him?’

‘He wanted her kept safe.’

‘And left just two hundred men to guard her?’

‘He thought that was enough,’ Leiknir said, then paused. ‘He said there was only one man who was shrewd enough to attack Ceaster and that man was dead.’

‘And here I am,’ I said, ‘back from Hel’s kingdom.’ I kicked the furnace’s iron door shut. ‘You can keep your hands and feet,’ I said.

It was dusk. We left the pottery and walked towards the town’s centre, and I was surprised to see a small building decorated with a cross. ‘Haesten’s wife,’ Leiknir explained.

‘He doesn’t mind she’s a Christian?’

‘He says he might as well have the Christian god on his side as well.’

‘That sounds like Haesten,’ I said, ‘dancing with two different women to two different tunes.’

‘I doubt he likes dancing with Brunna,’ Leiknir said.

I laughed. She was a vixen, that one, a stout, vicious-tempered, barrel-shaped vixen with a chin like a ship’s prow and a tongue sharp as any blade. ‘You can’t keep us prisoner!’ she told me when we were back inside the great pillared hall. I ignored her.

The building had been a hall once, and a magnificent hall. Perhaps it had been a temple, or even the palace of a Roman governor, but someone, I assumed Haesten, had divided the great chamber into separate rooms. The walls, made of wood, only reached halfway up and, in the daytime, light would stream in through the high windows, which were barred with iron. At night there were lamps and, in the big room where the women and children lived, an open fire that had stained the painted stonework of the high ceiling with soot and smoke. The floor was made of thousands upon thousands of small tiles arranged to make a pattern that showed some strange sea creature with a curling tail being hunted by three naked men with tridents. Two naked women rode giant scallop shells on a cresting wave to watch the hunt.

Brunna went on haranguing me and I went on ignoring her. The four women servants crouched with Frigg’s twins at the edge of the room and watched me nervously. Frigg was wearing a cloak of feathers and was seated in a wooden chair at the room’s centre. She also watched me, not with fear now, but with a childlike curiosity, her big eyes following me about the room as I examined the weird picture on the floor. ‘They must have giant scallops in Rome,’ I said, and no one answered. I walked to Frigg’s chair and looked down at her and she gazed calmly back. Her cloak was made of thousands of feathers sewn into a linen cape. The feathers had been plucked from jays and ravens so that it seemed to shimmer blue and black. Beneath the strange feathered cloak she was hung with gold. Her slender wrists were ringed with gold, her fingers were bright with stones set in gold, her neck was hung with gold chains and her hair, black as one of Odin’s ravens, was piled on her head and held in place by a net of gold.

‘Touch her,’ Brunna hissed, ‘and you’re a dead man!’

I had taken Brunna prisoner before, but Alfred, convinced she had become a true Christian, had insisted on releasing her. He had even stood as godfather to her two sons, Haesten the Younger and Horic, and I remembered the day she had been dunked in the holy water in the Lundene church where she had been given a new Christian name, Æthelbrun. Now, though still calling herself Brunna, she wore a big silver cross at her breasts. ‘My husband will kill you,’ she spat at me.

‘Your husband has tried many times,’ I said, ‘and I still live.’

‘We could kill her instead,’ Rolla said. He looked tired of guarding the women, or at least of guarding Brunna. No man could tire of looking at Frigg.

I crouched in front of Frigg’s chair and stared into her eyes. She smiled at me. ‘Do you remember me?’ I asked.

‘She can’t hear,’ Leiknir said.

‘I know,’ I said, ‘but does she understand?’

He shrugged. ‘As well as a dog? Sometimes you think she knows everything, and at others?’ He shrugged again.

‘And the children?’ I asked, glancing at the twins who watched me silent and wide-eyed from the edge of the chamber. They looked to be about six or seven years old, a boy and a girl, and both with their mother’s dark hair.

‘They can talk,’ Leiknir said, ‘and hear.’

‘What are their names?’ I asked.

‘The girl is Sigril, the boy is Cnut Cnutson.’

‘And they talk well enough?’

‘They never stop usually,’ Leiknir said.

And the twins could indeed talk because something strange happened at that moment, something I did not immediately understand. Merewalh came into the chamber, and with him was Father Wissian with his prematurely white hair and his long black cloak belted so it looked like a priest’s robe and the small boy’s face lit up. ‘Uncle Wihtred!’ Cnut Cnutson said. ‘Uncle Wihtred!’

‘Uncle Wihtred!’ the girl echoed happily.

Wissian walked out of shadow into the firelight. ‘My name’s Wissian,’ he said, and the twins’ faces fell.

At the time I did not think about it because I was staring at Frigg, and the sight of that loveliness was enough to drive all sense from a man’s head. I was still crouching, and I took one of her pale hands and it felt so light in mine, so light and fragile, like a bird held in a fist. ‘Do you remember me?’ I asked again. ‘I met you and Ælfadell.’

She just smiled. She had been frightened when we first came, but now she seemed happy enough. ‘You remember Ælfadell?’ I asked, and of course she said nothing. I squeezed her hand very gently. ‘You are coming with me,’ I told her, ‘you and your children, but I promise no harm will come to you. None.’

‘Jarl Cnut will kill you!’ Brunna screeched.

‘One more word from you,’ I said, ‘and I’ll cut your tongue out.’

‘You dare …’ she began, then screamed because I had stood and drawn a knife from my belt. And, to my surprise, Frigg laughed. There was no sound to the laughter, other than a guttural choking noise, but her face was lit with sudden amusement.

I crossed to Brunna, who shrank away. ‘You can ride a horse, woman?’ I asked her. She just nodded. ‘Then in the morning,’ I said, ‘you will ride south. You will go to that miserable wormcast you call a husband and tell him Uhtred of Bebbanburg has Jarl Cnut’s wife and children. And you will tell him that Uhtred of Bebbanburg is in a mood to kill.’

I sheathed the knife and looked at Rolla. ‘Have they eaten?’

‘Not while I’ve been here.’

‘Make sure they’re fed. And safe.’

‘Safe,’ he said the word bleakly.

‘Touch her,’ I warned him, ‘and you fight me.’

‘They’re safe, lord,’ he promised.

Æthelred had started this war and Cnut had fooled him and now Cnut was loose in Mercia and convinced that his enemies were in disarray. The old dream of the Danes was coming true, the conquest of Saxon Britain.

Except I was still alive.

That night we hardly slept. There was work to do.

Finan found the best of the captured horses, for they would come with us. My son led search parties through the town, looking for hidden coins or anything of value that we could carry, while half of Merewalh’s men guarded the walls and the rest tore apart buildings to make kindling and firewood.

The southern gates had burned and my son had blocked the entrance with two heavy carts. The Danes outside the town outnumbered us, though they did not know that, and I feared an attack in the night, but none came. I could see fires flickering in the old arena, and more by the bridge that lay a short ride to the south. There would be more fires soon.

Merewalh’s men were laying the kindling and firewood beside every stretch of wooden palisade. Wherever the wall had been repaired we would set a fire. We would burn the gates of the town, we would burn the walls, and we would leave it stripped of any defence that was not made of stone.

I could not hold Ceaster. I would need ten times as many men and so I would abandon it, and doubtless the Danes would move back inside the Roman walls, but at least I could make it easier for a Saxon force to attack those walls. It would take six months to repair the damage I planned to do, six months of chopping down trees and trimming the trunks and burying them in the rubble of the broken ramparts. I hoped the Danes would not be given six months. And so, as the night wore on, we lit the fires, starting on the northern side of the town. Blaze after blaze brightened the late summer night, their flames beating up towards the stars, their smoke smearing the wide heaven. Ceaster was ringed with fire, loud with it, and the sparks from the fires blew onto thatch inside the town and that started burning too, but by the time the last fire was lit and much of the town was blazing, we were mounted and ready to leave. By then the last star was in the sky. Earendel, that star is called, the star of the morning, and Earendel still shone as we dragged the two carts aside and rode out through the southern gate.

We drove every horse out with us so that the watching Danes would see a horde erupting from the burning town. We took Haesten’s wife, Cnut’s wife and both her children, all of them close-guarded by my men, and we took the Danes who had surrendered to us. We were in war gear, dressed in mail and carrying shields, our naked blades reflecting the flames, and we galloped down the long straight road and I could see men waiting at the bridge, but those men were chilled, nervous and hugely outnumbered. They did not even try to stop us, instead they fled along the river’s banks, and my horse’s hooves suddenly thundered loud on the bridge’s timber roadway. We stopped on the Dee’s southern bank. ‘Axes,’ I said.

Beyond the river the fortress town of Ceaster burned. Thatch and timber flared and was consumed, turned into smoke, sparks and embers. The town itself, I thought, would live. It would be scorched, and the paved streets would be silted with ash, but what the Romans had made would still be there long after we were gone. ‘We don’t build,’ I said to my son, ‘we just destroy.’

He looked at me as if I was mad, but I just nodded towards our axemen who were destroying the bridge’s roadway. I was making sure that the remaining Danes in Ceaster did not pursue us, and the quickest way to do that was to deny them the bridge. ‘It’s time you were married,’ I told Uhtred.

He looked at me in surprise, then he grinned. ‘Frigg will be a widow soon.’

‘You don’t need a deaf, dumb widow. But I’ll find you someone.’

The last plank connecting two of the stone arches fell into the river. It was dawn and the rising sun was gilding the east, rifting low clouds with scarlet and gold. Men watched us from across the river.

The prisoners had ridden with us, each man with a noose about his neck, but now I ordered the nooses taken off. ‘You’re free to go,’ I told them, ‘but if I see you again, I’ll kill you all. You take her with you.’ I nodded towards Brunna who sat like a sack of oats on a stout mare.

‘Lord,’ Leiknir edged his horse towards me, ‘I would come with you.’

I looked at him, so grey-haired and so beaten down, ‘You’re sworn to Jarl Cnut’s service,’ I said harshly.

‘Please, lord,’ he begged.

One of the other prisoners, a young man, kicked his horse next to Leiknir. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘may we have one sword?’

‘You may borrow one sword,’ I said.

‘Please, lord!’ Leiknir said. He knew what was about to happen.

‘Two swords,’ I said.

Leiknir had failed. He had been given a task and he had failed. If he returned to Cnut he would be punished for that failure and I did not doubt the punishment would be long, agonising and deadly. Yet I did not want him. He was a failure. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the young man.

‘Jorund, lord.’

‘Make it quick, Jorund. I take no joy in pain.’

He nodded and dismounted. My men moved their horses aside, making a crude ring about a patch of grass as Leiknir slid from his saddle. He looked defeated already.

We tossed two swords onto the grass. Leiknir let Jorund choose his weapon first, then picked up the other, but he made small effort to defend himself. He raised the blade, but without any enthusiasm. He just stared at Jorund and I saw how Leiknir was gripping the hilt with all his strength, intent on holding onto the weapon as he died.

‘Fight!’ Jorund goaded him, but Leiknir was resigned to death. He made a feeble lunge at the younger man and Jorund swept it aside, knocking Leiknir’s blade wide, and Leiknir left it there, his arms spread, and Jorund drove his borrowed sword deep into the exposed belly. Leiknir bent over, mewing, his fist white as it gripped the sword. Jorund tugged his blade loose, releasing a spurt of thick blood, and stabbed again, this time into Leiknir’s throat. He held the sword there as Leiknir dropped to his knees, then fell forward. The older man jerked on the grass for a few heartbeats, then was still. And the sword, I noted, was still in his grip.

‘The swords,’ I said.

‘I need his head, lord,’ Jorund pleaded.

‘Then take it.’

He needed the head because Cnut would want proof that Leiknir was dead, that the older man had been punished for his failure to protect Frigg. If Jorund went to Cnut without such proof then he too could face punishment. The head of the dead man was Jorund’s surety, a token that he had administered punishment and so might escape it himself.

There was a quarry close to the road. No one had worked it for years because the floor was thick with weeds and dotted with straggling saplings. I guessed it was the place where the Romans had cut the limestone to build Ceaster, and now we threw Leiknir’s headless body down among the stones. Jorund had returned the two swords and had wrapped the bloody head in a cloak. ‘We shall meet again, lord,’ he said.

‘Give the Jarl Cnut my greetings,’ I said, ‘and tell him his wife and children won’t be harmed if he goes back home.’

‘And if he does, lord, you’ll return them?’

‘He must buy them from me, tell him that. Now go.’

The Danes rode eastwards. Brunna was complaining as she went with them. She had demanded that two of the maidservants accompany her, but I kept them all to look after Frigg and her children. Cnut’s wife was mounted on a grey mare and was wearing her feathered cloak, and she was a vision in that summer morning. She had watched Leiknir die and the slight smile on her face had not flickered as he choked and bubbled blood and twitched and went still.

And so we rode south.