Warriors of the Storm

Eleven

I have endured nightmare voyages. I was a slave once, pulling a heavy oar in tumbling seas, freezing in the spray, fighting waves and wind, dragging a boat towards a rock-bound shore rimmed with ice. I had almost wished that the sea would take us. We were whimpering with fear and cold.

This was worse.

I had been aboard Alfred’s ship Heahengel when Guthrum’s fleet had died in a sudden storm that whipped the sea off the West Saxon coast to frenzy. The wind had shrieked, the waves were white devils, masts went overboard, sails were ripped to crazed tatters, and the great boats had sunk one after the other. The cries of the drowning had lived with me for days.

But this was worse.

This was worse even though the sea was calm, the waves placid and what small wind did blow wafted gently from the west. We saw no enemies. We crossed a sea as tame as a duck pond, yet every moment of that voyage was terrifying.

We left the lough at high water when the savage currents that streamed through the narrows were sullen and still. We had five ships now. All of Ragnall’s crews in Loch Cuan had sworn their loyalty to Sigtryggr, but that meant we had their families and all Sigtryggr’s people and all my men. Ships that were meant to carry no more than seventy crew had close to two hundred people aboard. They rode low in the water, the small waves constantly slopping over the upper strakes so that those men not rowing had to bail. We had thrown some of the ballast stones overboard, but that made the ships perilously top heavy so they rocked alarmingly whenever an errant breath of wind came from the north or south, and even the smallest cross-sea threatened to sink us. We crept across that gentle sea, but never for one moment did I feel out of danger. Even in the worst storm men can row, they can fight the gods, but those fragile five ships in a calm sea felt so vulnerable. The worst moments were in the night-time. The wind dropped to nothing, which might have been our salvation, but in the dark we could not see the small waves, only feel them as they spilled over the boats’ sides. We pulled slow and steady through the darkness and we hammered the ears of the gods with prayers. We watched for oar-splashes, straining to stay close to the other ships, and still we prayed to every god known to us.

The gods must have listened because next day all five ships came safely to Britain’s coast. There was a mist on the beach, just thick enough to shroud the headlands north and south so that Dudda frowned in puzzlement. ‘God knows where we are,’ he finally admitted.

‘Wherever it is,’ I said, ‘we’re going ashore.’ And so we rowed the boats straight at the beach where small waves slopped and the sound of the keel grating on sand was the sweetest sound I ever heard. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ Finan said. He had leaped ashore and now dropped to his knees. He crossed himself. ‘I pray to God I never see another ship.’

‘Just pray we’re not in Strath Clota,’ I said. All I knew was that by rowing eastwards we had crossed the sea to where Northumbria bordered Scotland, and that the coast of Scotland was inhabited by savages who called their country Strath Clota. This was wild country, a place of raiding parties, grim forts, and pitiless skirmishes. We had more than enough men to fight our way south if we had landed on Scottish soil, but I did not want to be pursued by wild-haired tribesmen wanting revenge, plunder, and slaves.

I gazed into the mist, seeing grass on dunes and the dim slopes of a hill beyond, and I thought this was how my ancestor must have felt when he brought his ship across the North Sea and landed on a strange beach in Britain, not knowing where he was or what dangers waited for him. His name was Ida, Ida the Flamebearer, and it was Ida who had captured the great crag beside the grey sea where Bebbanburg would be built. And his men, like the men who now landed from the five ships, must have waded through the small surf to bring their weapons to a strange land and gazed inland wondering what enemies waited for them. They had defeated those enemies, and the land Ida’s warriors had conquered was now our land. Ida the Flamebearer’s enemies had been driven from their pastures and valleys, hunted to Wales, to Scotland, or to Cornwalum, and the land they left behind was now ours, the land we wanted one day to be called Englaland.

Sigtryggr leaped ashore. ‘Welcome to your kingdom, lord,’ I said, ‘at least I hope it’s your kingdom.’

He gazed at the dunes where pale grass grew. ‘This is Northumbria?’

‘I hope so.’

He grinned. ‘Why not your kingdom, lord?’

I confess I had been tempted. To be King of Northumbria? To be lord of the lands that had once been my family’s kingdom? Because my family had been kings once. Ida the Flamebearer’s descendants had been rulers of Bernicia, a kingdom that embraced Northumbria and the southern parts of Scotland, and it had been a king of Bernicia who had reared Bebbanburg on its grim rock beside the sea. For a moment, standing on that mist-shrouded beach beside the slow breaking waves, I imagined a crown on my head, and then I thought of Alfred.

I had never liked him any more than he had liked me, but I was not such a fool as to think him a bad king. He had been a good king, but being a king meant nothing but duty and responsibility, and those had weighed Alfred down and put furrows on his face and callouses on his knees worn out by praying. My temptation came from a child’s view of kingship, as if by being king I could do whatever I wished, and for some reason I had a vision of Mus, the night-child in Ceaster, and I must have smiled and Sigtryggr mistook the smile for acceptance of his suggestion. ‘You should be king, lord,’ he said.

‘No,’ I responded firmly, and for a heartbeat I was tempted to tell him the truth, but I could not make him King of Northumbria and tell him, at the same instant, that Northumbria was doomed.

We cannot know the future. Perhaps some, like my daughter, can read the runesticks and find prophecies in their tangle, and others, like the bitch-hag in the cave who had once foretold my life, might get dreams from the gods, but for most of us the future is a mist and we only see as far ahead as the mist allows, yet I was certain Northumbria was doomed. To its north was Scotland, and the people of that land are wild, savage, and proud. We are fated to fight them, probably for ever, but I had no wish to lead an army into their bitter hills. To stay in the valleys of Scotland meant ambush, while to march on the heights meant starvation. The Scots were welcome to their land, and if they thought to take ours then we would kill them as we always did just as they slaughtered us if we invaded their hills.

And to the south of Northumbria were the Saxons and they had a dream, Alfred’s dream, the dream I had served for almost my whole life, and that dream was to unite the kingdoms where Saxons lived and call it one country, and Northumbria was the last part of that dream, and Æthelflaed passionately wanted that dream to come true. I have broken many oaths in my life, but I had never broken an oath to Æthelflaed. I would make Sigtryggr king, but the condition was that he lived in peace with Æthelflaed’s Mercia. I would make him king to destroy his brother and to give me a chance to attack Bebbanburg, and I would make him king even as I sowed the seeds of his kingdom’s destruction, because while he must swear to live in peace with Mercia I could not and would not demand that Æthelflaed live in peace with him. Sigtryggr’s Northumbria would be trapped between the savagery of the north and the ambitions of the south.

And I told Sigtryggr none of that. Instead I put my arm around his shoulder and walked him to the top of a dune from where we watched men and women come ashore. The mist was lifting, and all along the beach I could see weapons and shields being carried through the low surf. Children, released from the tightly-packed ships, raced about the sand shrieking and tumbling. ‘We’ll march under your banner,’ I told Sigtryggr.

‘The red axe.’

‘Because men will think you serve your brother.’

‘And we go to Jorvik,’ he said.

‘To Eoferwic, yes.’

He frowned, thinking. A sea breeze had started and it stirred his fair hair. He gazed at the ships and I knew he was thinking that it would be a pity to abandon them, but there was no choice. A small boy climbed the dune and stared open-mouthed at Sigtryggr. I growled and the child looked terrified, then ran away. ‘You don’t like children?’ Sigtryggr asked, amused.

‘Hate them. Noisy little bastards.’

He laughed. ‘Your daughter says you were a good father.’

‘That’s because she hardly ever saw me,’ I said. I felt a slight pang. I had been fortunate in my children. Stiorra was a woman any man would be proud to call his daughter, while Uhtred, who was carrying spears through the shallows and laughing with his companions, was a fine man and a good warrior, but my eldest? My gelded son? He, I thought, was the cleverest of my three, and perhaps the best of them, but we would never be friends. ‘My father never liked me,’ I said.

‘Nor did mine,’ Sigtryggr said, ‘not till I was a man, anyway.’ He turned and looked inland. ‘So what do we do now?’ he asked.

‘We find out where we are. With any luck we’re close to Cair Ligualid, so we’ll go there first and find places for the families. Then we march on Eoferwic.’

‘How far’s that?’

‘Without horses? It’ll take us a week.’

‘Is it defensible?’

‘It has good walls,’ I said, ‘but it lies in flat land. It needs a large garrison.’

He nodded. ‘And if my brother’s there?’

‘We’ll have a fight on our hands,’ I said, ‘but we have that anyway. You’re not safe till he’s dead.’

I doubted that Ragnall would have returned to Eoferwic. Despite his defeat at Eads Byrig he still possessed a large army, and he needed to give that army plunder. I suspected he was still ravaging Mercia, but I also suspected he would have sent a force back to Eoferwic to hold the city till he returned. I also suspected I could be wrong. We were marching blind, but at least our ships had landed in Northumbria because late that morning, when the mist had cleared entirely, I climbed a nearby hill and saw smoke rising from a substantial town to our north. It could only be Cair Ligualid, for there was no other large settlement in Cumbraland.

Cumbraland was that part of Northumbria west of the mountains. It had always been a wild and lawless place. The kings who ruled in Eoferwic might claim to rule in Cumbraland, but few would travel there without a large army, and even fewer would see any advantage in making the journey at all. It was a region of hills and lakes, deep valleys, and deeper woods. The Danes and the Norse had settled it, building steadings protected by stout palisades, but it was no land to make a man rich. There were sheep and goats, a few paltry fields of barley, and enemies everywhere. The old inhabitants, small and dark, still lived in the high valleys where they worshipped gods that had been forgotten elsewhere, and always there were Scots crossing the River Hedene to steal cattle and slaves. Cair Ligualid guarded that river, and even that town would not have existed if it had not been for the Romans who had built it, fortified it, and left a great church at its centre.

It might have been a daunting fortress once, as formidable as Ceaster or Eoferwic, but time had not been kind to Cair Ligualid. The stone walls had partly fallen, the Roman buildings had mostly collapsed, and what was left was an untidy collection of timber huts with roofs of mossy thatch. The church still stood, though almost all of its walls had fallen to be replaced with timber, and the old tiled roof had long gone. Yet I loved that church because it was there that I had first seen Gisela. I felt the pang of her loss as we came into Cair Ligualid, and I stole a glance at Stiorra who so resembled her mother.

There were still monks in the town, though at first I thought they were beggars or vagabonds in strange robes. The brown cloth was patched, the hems tattered, and it was only the tonsures and the heavy wooden crosses that betrayed the half-dozen men as monks. The oldest, who had a wispy beard stretching almost to his waist, strode to meet us. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘What do you want? When are you leaving?’

‘Who are you?’ I retorted.

‘I am Abbot Hengist,’ he said in a tone that suggested I should recognise the name.

‘Who rules here?’ I asked.

‘Almighty God.’

‘He’s the jarl?’

‘He is the mighty jarl of all the earth and everything in it. He is the jarl of creation!’

‘Then why hasn’t he repaired the walls here?’

Abbot Hengist frowned at that, not sure what to answer. ‘Who are you?’

‘The man who’s going to pull the guts out of your arsehole if you don’t tell me who rules in Cair Ligualid,’ I said pleasantly.

‘I do!’ Hengist said, backing away.

‘Good!’ I said briskly. ‘We’re staying two nights. Tomorrow we’ll help repair your wall. I don’t suppose you have enough food for all of us, but you’ll supply us with ale. We’ll be leaving the women and children here under your protection, and you will feed them till we send for them.’

Abbot Hengist gaped at the crowd who had come into his town. ‘I can’t feed that …’

‘You’re a Christian?’

‘Of course!’

‘You believe in miracles?’ I asked, and he nodded. ‘Then you’d better fetch your five loaves and two fishes,’ I went on, ‘and pray that your wretched god provides the rest. I’m leaving some warriors here too, they need feeding as well.’

‘We can’t …’

‘Yes, you can,’ I growled. I walked up to him and seized the front of his grubby robe, grabbing a handful of white beard at the same time. ‘You will feed them, you horrible little man,’ I said, ‘and you will protect them,’ I shook him as I spoke, ‘and if I find one child missing or one child hungry when I send for them I’ll strip the flesh off your scrawny bones and feed it to the dogs. You have fish traps? You have seed grain? You have livestock?’ I waited until he gave a reluctant nod to each question. ‘Then you will feed them!’ I shook him again, then let him go. He staggered and fell back on his arse. ‘There,’ I said happily, ‘that’s agreed.’ I waited till he had scrambled to his feet. ‘We’ll also need timber to repair the walls,’ I told him.

‘There is none!’ he whined.

I had noticed few trees close to the town, and those few were stunted and wind-bent, no good for filling the gaps in the ancient ramparts. ‘No timber?’ I asked. ‘So what’s your monastery built from?’

He stared at me for a moment. ‘Timber,’ he finally whispered.

‘There!’ I said cheerfully. ‘You have an answer for all our problems!’

I could not take the wives and children to Eoferwic. The women could march as well as the men, but children would slow us down. Besides, we carried no food, so everything we ate on our journey would have to be bought, stolen, or scrounged, so the fewer mouths we had to feed the better. We were liable to end up in Eoferwic hungry, but I was certain that once there we would find storehouses filled with grain, smoked meat, and fish.

Yet before we could march we needed to protect the families we would leave behind. Men will fight willingly enough, but need to know their women and children are safe, and so we spent a day filling the gaps in Cair Ligualid’s wall with heavy timbers pulled down from the monastery. There were only seven monks and two small boys who lived in buildings that could have sheltered seventy, and the rafters and pillars made stout palisades. To man the wall we left thirty-six warriors, mostly the older men or the wounded. They had no hope of resisting a full-scale assault by a horde of shrieking warriors from Strath Clota, but such an attack was unlikely. The Scottish war-bands were rarely more than forty or fifty strong, all of them vicious fighters mounted on small horses, but they did not cross the river to die on Roman walls. They came to snatch slaves from the fields and cattle from the hill pastures, and the few men we left, along with the townspeople, should be more than enough to deter an attack on the town. Just to make sure, we lifted a slab in the church to find an ancient crypt stacked with bones from which we took sixty-three skulls that we placed around the town’s ramparts with their empty eyes staring outwards. Abbot Hengist objected. ‘They are monks, lord,’ he said nervously.

‘You want an enemy raping your two novices?’ I asked.

‘God help us, no!’

‘It’s a ghost fence,’ I said. ‘The dead will protect the living.’

Stiorra, swathed in black, chanted strange incantations to each of the sixty-three guardians, then daubed their foreheads with a symbol that meant nothing to me. It was just a swirl of dampened soot, but Hengist saw the swirl and heard the chant and feared a pagan magic that was too powerful for his feeble faith. I almost felt sorry for him because he was trying to keep his religion alive in a place of paganism. The nearest farmlands were owned by Norsemen who worshipped Thor and Odin, who sacrificed beasts to the old gods and had no love for Hengist’s nailed redeemer. ‘I’m surprised they didn’t kill you,’ I told him.

‘The pagans?’ he shrugged. ‘Some wanted to, but the strongest jarl here is Geir,’ he jerked his head towards the south, indicating where Geir’s land lay, ‘and his wife was sick unto death, lord, and he brought her to us and instructed us to use our God to save her. Which, in His great mercy, He did.’ He made the sign of the cross.

‘What did you do?’ I asked. ‘Pray?’

‘Of course, lord, but we also pricked her buttocks with one of Saint Bega’s arrows.’

‘You pricked her arse?’ I asked, astonished.

He nodded. ‘Saint Bega defended her convent’s land with a bow, lord, but didn’t aim to kill. Just to frighten away the wrongdoers. She always said God aimed her arrows, and we’re lucky to own just one of them.’

‘God shot the bastards in the arse?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘And now you live under Geir’s protection?’ I asked.

‘We do, lord, thanks to the blessed Saint Bega and her holy arrows.’

‘So where is Geir?’

‘He joined Ragnall, lord.’

‘And what news do you have of Ragnall or Geir?’

‘None, lord.’

Nor did I expect any news. Cumbraland was too remote, but it was significant that Geir had thought it worth his while to cross the hills and join Ragnall’s forces. ‘Why did he go to Jarl Ragnall?’ I asked the monk.

Abbot Hengist shivered and his hand twitched as if he was about to cross himself. ‘He was frightened, lord!’ He looked at me nervously. ‘Jarl Ragnall sent word that he’d slaughter every man here if they didn’t march to join him.’ He made the sign of the cross and momentarily closed his eyes. ‘They all went, lord! All the landowners who had weapons. They fear him. And I hear the Jarl Ragnall hates Christians!’

‘He does.’

‘God preserve us,’ he whispered.

So Ragnall was ruling purely by fear, and that would work so long as he was successful, and I had a moment’s pang of guilt as I thought what his forces would be doing in Mercia. They would be slaughtering and burning and destroying anything and anyone not protected by a burh, but Æthelflaed should have attacked northwards. She was defending Mercia when she should have been attacking Northumbria. A man does not rid his home of a plague of wasps by swatting them one by one, but by finding the nest and burning it. I was Ida the Flamebearer’s descendant and, just as he had brought fire across the sea, I would carry flames across the hills.

We set out next morning.

It was a hard journey across hard country. We had found three ponies and a mule close to Cair Ligualid, but no horses. Stiorra, with her daughter, rode one of the ponies, but the rest of us travelled on foot and carried our own mail, weapons, food, and shields. We drank from mountain streams, slaughtered sheep for supper, and roasted their ribs over paltry fires of bracken and furze. We were all either used to riding to war or else rowing, and our boots were not fit for the journey. By the second day the stony tracks threatened to rip the boots apart and I ordered men to walk barefoot and save the boots for battle. That slowed us as men limped and stumbled. There were no convenient Roman roads showing the way, just goat paths and sheep tracks and high hills and wind from the north bringing rain in vicious gusts. There was no shelter the first two nights and little food, but on the third day we descended into a fertile valley where a rich steading offered warmth. A woman and two elderly servants watched us arrive. There were over three hundred and fifty of us, all carrying weapons, and the woman left the gate of her palisade wide open to show that she could offer no resistance. She was grey-haired, straight-backed, and blue-eyed, the mistress of a hall, two barns, and a rotting cattle shed. ‘My husband,’ she greeted us icily, ‘is not here.’

‘He went to Ragnall?’ I asked.

‘To Jarl Ragnall, yes,’ she sounded disapproving.

‘With how many men?’

‘Sixteen,’ she said, ‘and who are you?’

‘Men summoned by Jarl Ragnall,’ I said evasively.

‘I hear he needs more men,’ she said scornfully.

‘Mistress,’ I asked, intrigued by her tone, ‘what have you heard?’

‘Njall will tell you,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’re about to rob me?’

‘I’ll pay for whatever we take.’

‘Which will still leave us hungry. I can’t feed my people on your hacksilver.’

Njall proved to be one of the sixteen warriors who had gone south to join Ragnall’s army. He had lost his right hand at Eads Byrig and had returned to this lonely valley where he farmed a few thin fields. He came to the hall that night, a morose man with a red beard and a bandaged stump and a thin, resentful wife. Most of my men were eating in the largest barn, dining on three slaughtered pigs and two goats, but Lifa, who was the mistress of the steading during her husband’s absence, insisted that some of us join her in the hall where she served us a meal of beef, barley, bread, and ale. ‘We have a harpist,’ she told me, ‘but he went south with my husband.’

‘And won’t return,’ Njall said.

‘He was killed,’ Lifa explained. ‘What kind of enemy kills harpists?’

‘I was there,’ Njall said gloomily, ‘I saw him take a spear in the back.’

‘So tell your story, Njall,’ our hostess commanded imperiously, ‘tell these men what enemy they will face.’

‘Uhtred,’ Njall snarled.

‘I’ve heard of him,’ I said.

Njall looked at me resentfully. ‘But you haven’t fought him,’ he said.

‘True.’ I poured him ale. ‘So what happened?’

‘He has a witch to help him,’ Njall said, touching the hammer at his neck, ‘a sorceress.’

‘I’d not heard that.’

‘The witch of Mercia. She’s called Æthelflaed.’

‘Æthelflaed is a witch?’ Finan put in.

‘How else can she rule Mercia?’ Njall asked resentfully. ‘You think a woman can rule unless she uses witchcraft?’

‘So what happened?’ Sigtryggr asked.

We coaxed the tale from him. He claimed that Ragnall had us all trapped in Ceaster, though he could not remember the name of that town, only that it was a place that had stone walls, which he assumed had been built by spirits working for Æthelflaed. ‘Even so, they were trapped in the city,’ he said, ‘and the Jarl said he would keep them there while he captured the rest of Mercia. But the witch sent a storm and Uhtred rode the morning wind.’

‘Rode the wind?’

‘He came with the storm. A horde of them came, but he led. He has a sword of fire and a shield of ice. He came with the thunder.’

‘And Jarl Ragnall?’ I asked.

Njall shrugged. ‘He lives. He still has an army, but so does Uhtred.’ He knew little more because, captured at Eads Byrig, he had been one of the men we had released after severing his hand. He had walked home, he said, but then added one more scrap of news. ‘The Jarl could be dead for all I know. But he planned to raid Mercia till his own witch worked her magic.’

‘His own witch?’ I asked.

He touched the hammer again. ‘How do you fight a sorceress? With another sorceress, of course. The Jarl has found a powerful one! An old hag, and she’s making the dead.’

I just stared at him for a moment. ‘She’s making the dead?’

‘I journeyed north with her,’ he said, clutching the hammer now, ‘and she explained.’

‘Explained what?’ Sigtryggr asked.

‘The Christians worship the dead,’ Njall said. ‘All their churches have an idol of a dead man and they keep bits of dead people in silver boxes.’

‘I’ve seen those,’ I said.

‘Relics,’ Finan put in.

‘And they talk to the pieces of dead people,’ Njall said, ‘and the dead people talk to their god.’ He looked around the table, fearing that no one believed him. ‘It’s how they do it!’ he insisted. ‘It’s how they talk to their god!’

‘It makes sense,’ Sigtryggr said cautiously, looking at me.

I nodded. ‘It’s hard for the living to talk to the gods,’ I said.

‘But not for Christians,’ Njall said. ‘That’s why they win! That’s why their witch is so powerful! Their god listens to the dead.’

Finan, the only Christian at the table, smiled wryly. ‘Maybe the Christians win because they have Uhtred?’

‘And why do they have Uhtred?’ Njall asked forcefully. ‘Men say he worships our gods, yet he fights for the Christian god. The witch has charmed him!’

‘That’s true,’ Finan said rather too enthusiastically, and I almost kicked him beneath the table.

‘He must be a lonely god,’ Lifa, our hostess, said thoughtfully. ‘Our gods have company. They feast together, fight together, but their god? He has no one.’

‘So he listens to the dead,’ Sigtryggr said.

‘But only to the Christian dead,’ Njall insisted.

‘But what can Jarl Ragnall’s witch,’ I almost named Brida, but avoided it at the last moment, ‘do to change that?’

‘She’s sending a message to their god,’ Njall said.

‘A message?’

‘She says she’ll send him a host of dead people. They’ll tell him to take away the Mercian witch’s power or else she’ll kill every Christian in Britain.’

I almost laughed aloud. Only Brida, I thought, would be mad enough to threaten a god! And then I shuddered. She wanted to send a cloud of messengers? And where would she find those messengers? They had to be Christians or else their nailed god would not listen to them, and in many parts of Northumbria the monasteries and convents had been burned down and their monks and nuns either killed or driven to exile. But there was one place the church still flourished. One place where she could find enough Christians to send screaming into the afterlife with a defiant message to the nailed god.

She had gone to Eoferwic.

And there we went too.

I had told Sigtryggr that Eoferwic lay in flat land and that was true, though that flat land was raised slightly above the rest of the plain where the city lay. It also lay between the junction of two rivers, and that alone made it a difficult city to attack. The walls made it almost impossible because they were twice the height of the walls at Ceaster. There had been great gaps in the wall when my father had led an assault on the city, but those gaps had been baits for a trap, and he had died in the trap’s jaw. Those gaps were filled now, the new masonry looking much lighter than the old. Jarl Ragnall’s flag of the blood-red axe hung from the walls and stirred idly on a tall pole above the southernmost gate.

We were a ragged band, still mostly on foot though we had stolen or bought a dozen horses as we journeyed from Lifa’s steading in the hills. Most of us were barefoot, weary, and dusty. Some thirty men had fallen behind, but the rest still carried their mail, their weapons, and shields. Now, as we approached the city, we flew Sigtryggr’s banner, which was identical to his brother’s flag, and we mounted Orvar and his men on the stallions. Stiorra, dressed in a white gown, rode a small black mare with her daughter perched in front of her. She appeared to be guarded by Finan and by two of Orvar’s Norsemen, who rode either side of her. Sigtryggr and I walked among the mass of men who followed the horsemen towards the city’s gate.

The wall was high, and built atop a bank of earth. ‘This is where your grandfather died,’ I told my son, ‘and where I was captured by the Danes.’ I pointed to one of the paler stretches of new masonry. ‘Your grandfather led an attack right there. I thought we’d won! There was a gap in the wall there and he stormed the mound and went into the city.’

‘What happened?’

‘They’d built a new wall behind it. It was a trap, and once our army was inside they attacked and slew them all.’

He stared ahead, noting the church towers topped by crosses. ‘But if it’s been Danish for so long why is it still Christian?’

‘Some of the Danes converted,’ I said. ‘Your uncle for one.’

‘My uncle?’

‘Your mother’s brother.’

‘Why?’

I shrugged. ‘He ruled here. Most of his people were Saxons, Christian Saxons. He wanted them to fight for him, so he changed his religion. I don’t think he was a very good Christian, but it was convenient.’

‘There are a lot of Danish Christians here,’ Sigtryggr put in. He sounded gloomy. ‘They marry Saxon girls and convert.’

‘Why?’ my son asked again.

‘Peace and quiet,’ Sigtryggr said. ‘And a good pair of tits will persuade most men to change their religion.’

‘Missionaries,’ Finan said happily. ‘Show us your missionaries!’

The city gate opened. Our leading horsemen were still two hundred paces away, but the sight of Sigtryggr’s great banner had reassured the guards. Just two horsemen galloped to meet us, and Orvar, who was pretending to be the leader of our small army, held up his hand to halt us as they approached. I edged forward to listen.

‘Orvar!’ One of the approaching horsemen recognised him.

‘I’ve brought the Jarl his girl,’ Orvar said, jerking a thumb towards Stiorra. She sat straight-backed in her saddle, her hands clasped protectively about Gisela.

‘You did well!’ One of the horsemen pushed through Orvar’s men to look at Stiorra. ‘And what of her husband?’

‘Feeding the fish in Ireland.’

‘Dead?’

‘Cut to pieces,’ Orvar said.

‘Leaving a pretty widow.’ The man chuckled and reached out a gloved hand to lift Stiorra’s chin. Sigtryggr growled beside me and I put a cautionary hand on his arm. I had made him wear a helmet with closed cheek-pieces that hid his face. He also wore old mail, no arm rings and no gold, appearing to be a man not worth a second glance. The horseman who had come from the city smiled nastily at Stiorra. ‘Oh, very pretty,’ he said. ‘When the Jarl has finished with you, darling, I’ll give you a treat you won’t forget.’

Stiorra spat in his face. The man immediately brought back his hand to hit her, but Finan, who was mounted on one of our few horses, caught the man’s wrist. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, sounding friendly.

‘Brynkætil,’ the man said sullenly.

‘Touch her, Brynkætil,’ Finan said pleasantly, ‘and I’ll feed her your balls,’ he smiled, ‘fried, as a treat.’

‘Enough!’ Orvar kicked his horse to come between the two men. ‘Is the Jarl here?’

‘The Jarl is raping Mercia,’ Brynkætil said, still glowering, ‘but the old bitch is here.’ He gave the rest of us a cursory glance and was evidently not impressed by what he saw.

‘The old bitch?’ Orvar asked.

‘She’s called Brida of Dunholm,’ he growled. ‘You’ll meet her. Just follow me.’ He jerked his head towards the gate.

And so, after many years, I came to Eoferwic again. I had known the city as a child, I had visited it often when I was young, but fate had taken me to Wessex, and Eoferwic lay far to the north. It was the second most important city in Britain, at least if you judge a city by size and wealth, though in truth Eoferwic was a poor place compared to Lundene, which grew fatter and richer and dirtier with every passing year. Yet Eoferwic had its wealth, brought to it by the rich farmlands that surrounded it, and by the ships that could sail all the way up the rivers to where a bridge stopped them. A Roman bridge, of course. Most of Eoferwic had been built by the Romans, including the great walls that surrounded the city.

I walked through the gate tunnel and came into a street with houses that had stairways! Lundene had such houses too, and they always amaze me. Houses that have one floor piled on another! I remembered that Ragnar had a house in Eoferwic with two stairways, and his son Rorik and I used to race around and around, up one stair and down the other, whooping and shouting, leading a pack of barking dogs in a mad chase to nowhere until Ragnar would corner us, thump us about the ears, and tell us to go and annoy someone else.

Most of the houses had shops opening onto the street, and, as we followed Orvar and his horsemen, I saw that the shops were full of goods. I saw leatherware, pottery, cloth, knives, and a goldsmith with two mailed warriors guarding his stock, but though the goods were plentiful the streets were strangely empty. The city had a sullen air. A beggar scuttled away from us, hiding in an alley, a woman peered at us from an upper floor, then closed the shutters. We passed two churches though neither had an open door, which suggested that the Christians of the city were fearful. And no wonder if Brida was ruling the place. She who hated Christians had come to one of the only two places in Britain that had an archbishop. Contwaraburg was the other. An archbishop is important to the Christians, he knows more sorcery than ordinary priests, even more than the bishops, and he has more authority. I have met several archbishops over the years and there was not one of them I would trust to run a market stall selling carrots. They are all sly, two-faced, and vindictive. Æthelflaed, of course, thought them the holiest of men. If Plegmund, Archbishop of Contwaraburg, so much as farted she chanted amen.

Finan must have been thinking much the same thoughts as me because he turned in his saddle. ‘What happened to the archbishop here?’ he asked Brynkætil.

‘The old man?’ Brynkætil laughed. ‘We burned him alive. Never heard a man squeal so much!’

The palace at Eoferwic’s centre must have been the place from which a Roman lord ruled the north. It had decayed over the years, but what great buildings left by the Romans had not crumbled to ruin? It had become the palace of the kings of Northumbria, and I remembered seeing King Osbert, the last Saxon to rule without Danish support, being slaughtered by drunken Danes in the great hall. His belly had been sliced open and his guts had spilled out. They had let the dogs eat his intestines while he lived, though the dogs had taken one bite and then been repelled by the taste. ‘It must have been something he ate,’ blind Ravn had told me when I described the scene to him, ‘or else our dogs just don’t like the taste of Saxons.’ King Osbert had died weeping and screaming.

There was an open space in front of the palace. Six huge Roman pillars had stood there when I was a child, though to what purpose I never did discover, and as we came out of the street’s dark shadow I saw that just four of them remained like great markers at the edge of the wide space. And I heard my son gasp.

It was not the high carved pillars that prompted the gasp, nor the pale stone facade of the palace with its Roman statues, not even the size of the church that had been built to one side of the open space. Instead it was what filled the great square that shocked him. Crosses. And on each cross a naked body. ‘Christians!’ Brynkætil said in curt explanation.

‘Does Brida rule here?’ I asked him.

‘Who’s asking?’

‘A man who deserves an answer,’ Orvar growled.

‘She rules for Ragnall,’ Brynkætil said sullenly.

‘It will be a pleasure to meet her,’ I said. He just sneered at that. ‘Is she pretty?’ I asked.

‘Depends how desperate you are,’ he answered, amused. ‘She’s old, dried up, and as vicious as a wildcat.’ He looked down at me. ‘Ideal for an old man like you. I’d better tell her you’re coming so she can get herself ready.’ He spurred his horse towards the palace.

‘Jesus,’ Finan said, crossing himself and looking at the crucifixions. There were thirty-four crosses and thirty-four naked bodies, both men and women. Some had torn hands, the dried blood black on their wrists, and I realised that Brida, it had to be Brida, had tried to nail them by the hands to the crossbars, but the hands could not take the weight and the bodies must have fallen. Now the thirty-four were lashed to the crosses with leather ropes, though all had nailed hands and feet as well. One, a young woman, was still alive, though barely. She stirred and groaned. So this was how Brida sent a message to the Christian god? What a fool, I thought. I might share her distaste for the Christian god, lonely and vengeful as he was, but I had never denied his power, and what man or woman spits in a god’s face?

I pushed alongside Stiorra’s horse. ‘Are you ready for this?’

‘Yes, father.’

‘I’ll stay close,’ I said, ‘so will Sigtryggr.’

‘Don’t be recognised!’ she said.

I had a helmet like the one which Sigtryggr wore and I now closed the face-pieces, hiding my face. Like him I wore none of my finery. To a casual glance we both looked like lowly warriors, men who could fill a shield wall, but had never filled our own purses with plunder. Orvar was the best-dressed of us and, for the moment, Orvar pretended to be our leader.

‘No weapons in the hall!’ a man shouted as we approached the palace. ‘No weapons!’

That was customary. No ruler let men carry weapons in a hall, except for his own housecarls who could be trusted with blades, and so we ostentatiously threw down our spears and swords, clattering them into a pile that we would leave our own warriors to guard. I laid Serpent-Breath down, but that did not leave me weaponless. I wore a homespun brown cloak that was long enough to hide Wasp-Sting, my seax.

Every shield wall warrior carries two swords. The long one, the sword that is scabbarded in silver or gold and that carries a noble name, is the sword we treasure. Mine was Serpent-Breath, and to this day I keep her close so that by the help of her hilt I will be carried to Valhalla when death comes for me. But we carry a second sword too, a seax, and a seax is a short, stubby blade, less flexible than the long-sword and less beautiful, but in the shield wall, when you can smell the stink of your enemy’s breath and see the lice in his beard, a seax is the weapon to use. A man stabs with a seax. He puts it between the shields and thrusts it into an enemy’s guts. Serpent-Breath was too long for a shield wall, her reach too distant, and in that lover’s embrace of death a man needs a short-sword that can stab in the press of sweating men struggling to kill each other. Wasp-Sting was just such a sword, her stout blade no longer than my hand and forearm, but in the crushed space of a shield wall she was lethal.

I hid her sheathed at my spine beneath the cloak because, once in the hall, Wasp-Sting would be needed.

Sigtryggr and I hung back with our men, letting Orvar and his crews go first because they would be recognised by any of Ragnall’s men who might be waiting inside the palace. Those men would not look to see who came in last and, even if they did, Sigtryggr’s face, like mine, was hidden by a helmet. I left Sihtric and six men to guard our weapons. ‘You know what to do?’ I muttered to Sihtric.

‘I know, lord,’ he said wolfishly.

‘Do it well,’ I said, and then, when the last of Orvar’s men had filed into the building, Sigtryggr and I followed.

I remembered the hall so well. It was larger than the Great Hall of Ceaster and far more elegant, though its beauty had faded as water leached into the walls, collapsing most of the marble sheets that had once sheathed the thin red bricks. In other places the water had peeled away the plaster, though patches remained with faint pictures showing men and women draped in what appeared to be shrouds. Great columns supported a high roof. Sparrows flew between the beams, some darting out through holes in the roof tiles. Some of the holes were patched with straw thatch, but most were open to the sky and let in shafts of sunlight. The floor had once been covered in small tiles, none bigger than a fingernail, which had shown Roman gods, but most of the tiles had long disappeared, leaving dull grey stones covered in dried rushes. At the hall’s far end was a wooden dais some three feet high, approached by steps, and on the dais was a throne draped in a black cloth. Warriors flanked the throne. They must have been Brida’s men because they were allowed weapons in the hall, each of them carrying a long-hafted broad-bladed spear. There were eight guards on the dais, and more standing down the shadowed sides of the hall. The throne was empty.

Courtesy said we should have been greeted with ale and with basins of water to wash our hands, though there were so many of us that I hardly expected we would all be so treated. Even so a steward should have sought our leaders to offer a welcome, but instead a thin man dressed all in black came from a door that led onto the dais and rapped a staff on the wooden floor. He rapped again, frowning at us. He had black hair oiled tight to his scalp, a haughty face, and a short beard that had been carefully trimmed. ‘The Lady of Dunholm,’ he announced when the hall was silent, ‘will be here soon. You will wait!’

Orvar took a step forward. ‘My men need food,’ he said, ‘and shelter.’

The thin man stared at Orvar. ‘Are you,’ he asked after a long pause, ‘the one they call Orvar?’

‘I am Orvar Freyrson, and my men …’

‘Need food, you said so.’ He looked at the rest of us, distaste on his face. ‘When the Lady of Dunholm arrives, you will kneel.’ He shuddered. ‘So many of you! And you smell!’ He stalked back the way he had come, and the guards on the dais exchanged smirks.

More men were coming to the hall, some pushing in behind us, others using doors in the side walls until there must have been close to four hundred men under the high roof. Sigtryggr looked at me quizzically, but I just shrugged. I did not know what was happening, only that Brynkætil must have announced our arrival and that Brida was coming. I edged through the men in front, making my way to Stiorra, who stood beside Orvar, her hand holding her daughter’s hand.

And just as I reached her the drum sounded.

One beat, loud and sudden, and the newcomers, those who had followed us into the hall and knew what was expected of them, dropped to their knees.

And the drum sounded again. One slow beat after another. Ominous, regular and remorseless, a heartbeat of doom.

We knelt.