Death of Kings (15 page)

‘What did we achieve, lord?’ Osferth asked. He had come to stand beside me on the small deck at the stern of
Tyr’s Daughter
.

‘We made Sigurd look like a fool,’ I said.

‘But he isn’t a fool.’

I knew Osferth disapproved. He was no coward, but he thought, like his father, that war would yield to intelligence and that a man could reason his way to victory. Yet war, as often as not, is about emotion. ‘I want the Danes to fear us,’ I said.

‘They already did.’

‘Now they fear us more,’ I said. ‘No Dane can attack Mercia or Wessex in the knowledge that his home is safe. We’ve shown we can reach deep into their land.’

‘Or we’ve stirred them to revenge,’ he suggested.

‘Revenge?’ I asked. ‘You think the Danes planned to leave us in peace?’

‘I fear attacks on Mercia,’ he said, ‘revenge attacks.’

‘Buccingahamm will be burned,’ I said, ‘but I told them all to leave the hall and go to Lundene.’

‘You did?’ he sounded surprised, then frowned. ‘Then Beornnoth’s hall will be burned too.’

I laughed at that, then touched the silver chain Osferth wore about his neck. ‘You want to wager that chain?’ I asked.

‘Why wouldn’t Sigurd burn Beornnoth’s hall?’ he asked.

‘Because Beornnoth and his son are Sigurd’s men,’ I said.

‘Beornnoth and Beortsig?’

I nodded. I had no proof, only suspicion, but Beornnoth’s lands, so close to Danish Mercia, had been left unmolested and that suggested an agreement. Beornnoth, I suspected, was too old for the troubles of continual war and so had made his peace, while his son was a bitter man and full of hatred for the West Saxons, who, in his view, had taken away Mercia’s independence. ‘I can’t prove that,’ I told Osferth, ‘but I will.’

‘Even so, lord,’ he said carefully, ‘what did we achieve?’ He gestured towards the fading glow in the sky.

‘Other than annoying Sigurd?’ I asked. I leaned on the steering oar, pushing
Tyr’s Daughter
to the outside of a long curve in the river. The eastern sky was luminous now, small clouds stretching bright in front of the still hidden sun. Cattle watched us pass. ‘Your father,’ I said, knowing those two words would irritate him, ‘has held the Danes at bay for my whole lifetime. Wessex is a fortress. But you know what your father wants.’

‘All the lands of the English.’

‘And you don’t get that by building a fortress. You don’t defeat the Danes by defending against them. You must attack. And your father has never attacked.’

‘He sent ships to East Anglia,’ Osferth said chidingly.

Alfred had indeed once sent an expedition to East Anglia to punish Eohric’s Danes who had raided Wessex, but Alfred’s ships had accomplished little. The West Saxons had built large ships and their keels were too deep to penetrate the rivers and Eohric’s men had simply withdrawn into shallow water, and so Alfred’s fleet had threatened and then rowed away, though the threat had been sufficient to convince Eohric to keep to the treaty between Wessex and his kingdom. ‘If we’re to unite the Saxons,’ I said, ‘it won’t be with ships. It will be with shield walls and spears and swords and slaughter.’

‘And God’s help,’ Osferth said.

‘Even with that,’ I said, ‘and your brother knows that, and your sister knows that, and they will look for someone to lead that shield wall.’

‘You.’

‘Us. That’s why we burned Sigurd’s fleet, to show Wessex and Mercia who can lead them.’ I slapped Osferth’s shoulder and grinned at him. ‘I’m tired of being called the shield of Mercia. I want to be the sword of the Saxons.’

Alfred, if he yet lived, was dying. And I had just made his ambition my own.

We took down the eagle’s head so we would not appear hostile and, under the rising sun, slid on through England.

I had been to the land of the Danes and had seen a place of sand and thin soil and though I do not doubt that the Danes have better land than any I saw, I doubt there was any better than that through which
Tyr’s Daughter
made her silent voyage. The river carried us past rich fields and deep woods. The current drew the trailing willow fronds downstream. Otters twisted in the water, sinuous as they fled the shadow of our hull. Warblers were loud on the banks where the first martins gathered mud for their nests. A swan hissed at us, wings spread, and my men all hissed back and found it funny. The trees were in their new green, spreading above meadows yellowed by cowslips, while bluebells hazed the passing woods. This was what brought the Danes here, not silver, not slaves, not even reputation, but earth; deep, rich, fertile earth where crops grew and a man could raise a family without fear of starvation. Small children weeded the fields and stopped to wave at us. I saw halls and villages and herds and flocks and knew this was the real wealth that drew men across the sea.

We looked for pursuers, but saw none. We rowed, though I was reserving my men’s strength, only using a half-dozen oars on each side to keep the ship moving sleekly downriver. The mayflies were thick, and fish rose to feed, and the long weeds waved underwater and
Tyr’s Daughter
passed Gegnesburh and I remembered Ragnar killing the monk there. This was the town where Alfred’s wife had been raised, long before the Danes came and captured it. The town had a wall and palisade, but both were in poor repair. Much of the palisade had been torn down, presumably so men could build with the oak logs, and the earth wall had eroded into the ditch, beyond which were new houses. The Danes did not care. They felt safe here. No enemy had come in a lifetime and, as far as they were concerned, no enemy would ever come. Men called greetings to us. The only ships at Gegnesburh’s wharf were traders, wide-bellied and slow. I wondered if the town had a new Danish name. This was Mercia, yet it was being turned into a kingdom of Danes.

All day we rowed until, by evening, we were in the widening Humbre and the sea was spread before us, darkening as the sun sank behind us. We stepped the mast, a job that took all my men’s strength to achieve, and we tightened the hemp rigging on the boat’s flanks and hauled the yard and sail up. The wool and linen bellied to the south-west wind, the rigging stretched and creaked, the ship heeled and I felt the kick of the first waves, felt
Tyr’s Daughter
shiver to that first caress, and we manned all the oars and pulled hard, fighting an incoming tide as we ran east into the shadowing night. We needed oars and sail to keep her moving against the tide, but gradually its grip weakened and we ran into the widening sea that was white flecked in the dusk as the waves fought the river, and on we went and I saw no pursuing ships as we passed the mudbanks and felt our hull lifting to the wild sea waves.

Most ships go to the coast at dusk. The shipmaster will find a creek and stay there through the dark, but we rowed eastwards and, once the night fell, we shipped the oars and I let the little boat be driven by the wind. She ran well. I turned her southwards sometime in the darkness, then slept when the dawn came. If we were pursued I knew nothing of it, and the ships of East Anglia did not see us as we ran southwards.

I knew these waters. In the new day, under a hard bright sun, we ventured closer to the coast until I recognised a landmark. We saw two other ships, but they ignored us, and we sailed on, past the great mudflats, around Fughelness and so into the Temes. The gods loved us, the days and nights of our voyage had been undisturbed, and so we came to Lundene.

I took
Tyr’s Daughter
to the dock that lay beside the house I had used in Lundene. It was a house I had never thought to see again, for it was there that Gisela had died. I thought of Ælfadell and her grim prophecy that all my women would die, then consoled myself that the sorceress had not known that Sigurd’s fleet would burn, so how could she have known what would happen to my women?

I had warned my folk at Buccingahamm to expect an attack and ordered them to travel south to the safety of Lundene’s defences, and I had thought to be greeted at the house by Sigunn or even by Finan who, his decoy work done at Ceaster, was also to meet me in the city, but the house appeared empty as we pulled the last oar strokes and nosed into the dock. Men leaped ashore with mooring lines. The oars clattered as they were laid on the thwarts, and just then the house door opened and a priest came onto the terrace. ‘You can’t leave that boat here!’ he called to me.

‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘This is a private house,’ he ignored my question. He was a lean, middle-aged man with a stern face marked by pox scars. His long black robe was spotless, woven from the finest wool. His hair was neatly trimmed. He was no ordinary priest, his clothes and demeanour both spoke of privilege. ‘There’s wharfage downstream,’ he said, pointing eastwards.

‘Who are you?’ I asked again.

‘The man telling you to find another place to put this boat,’ he said irritably, and held his stance as I pulled myself onto the wharf and confronted him. ‘I’ll have the boat removed,’ he threatened, ‘and you’ll need to pay to recover it.’

‘I’m tired,’ I said, ‘and I’m not moving the boat.’ I smelt Lundene’s familiar stench, the mix of smoke and sewage, and thought of Gisela strewing lavender on the tiled floors. The thought of her gave me the usual pang of loss and waste. She had become fond of this house that had been built by the Romans, with its rooms edging a large courtyard and its great chamber facing the river.

‘You can’t go in there!’ the priest said sternly as I walked past him, ‘it belongs to Plegmund.’

‘Plegmund?’ I asked, ‘does he command the garrison here?’ The house was given to whoever commanded Lundene’s garrison, a job that a West Saxon called Weohstan had inherited from me, but Weohstan was a friend and I knew he would welcome me beneath his roof.

‘The house was granted to the archbishop,’ the priest said, ‘by Alfred.’

‘Archbishop?’ I asked, astonished. Plegmund was the new Archbishop of Contwaraburg, a Mercian, famously pious, a friend of Alfred’s and now the evident possessor of one of Lundene’s finer houses. ‘Did a young girl come here?’ I asked. ‘Or an Irishman? A warrior?’

The priest blanched then. He must have remembered either Sigunn or Finan coming to the house, and that recollection told him who I was. ‘You’re Uhtred?’ he asked.

‘I’m Uhtred,’ I said and pushed the house door open. The long room, which had been so welcoming when Gisela lived here, was now a place where monks copied manuscripts. There were six tall desks on which ink pots, quills and parchments lay. Two of the desks were occupied by clerks. One was writing, copying a manuscript, while the other was using a ruler and a needle to prick lines on an empty parchment. The pricked lines were a guide to keep the writing straight. The two men glanced at me nervously, then went back to their copying. ‘So did a girl come here?’ I asked the priest. ‘A Danish girl. Slight and pretty. She’d have had a half-dozen warriors escorting her.’

‘She did,’ he said, uncertain now.

‘And?’

‘She went to a tavern,’ he said stiffly, meaning he had rudely turned her away from the door.

‘And Weohstan?’ I asked. ‘Where’s he?’

‘He has quarters by the high church.’

‘Is Plegmund here in Lundene?’ I asked.

‘The archbishop is in Contwaraburg.’

‘And how many boats does he own?’ I asked.

‘None,’ the priest said.

‘Then he doesn’t need this damned dock, does he? So my boat stays there till I sell it, and if you touch it, priest, if you so much as lay one damned finger on it, if you have it moved, if you even think about moving it, I’ll take you to sea and teach you to be Christ-like.’

‘To be Christ-like?’ he asked.

‘He walked on water, didn’t he?’

That trivial confrontation left me dispirited because it was a reminder of how the church had placed its clammy grip on Alfred’s Wessex. It seemed that the king had granted Plegmund and Werferth, who was the Bishop of Wygraceaster, half of Lundene’s wharfage. Alfred wanted the church to be rich and its bishops to be powerful men because he relied on them to spread and enforce his laws and, if I helped spread Wessex’s grip northwards, so those bishops and priests and monks and nuns would follow to impose their joyless rules. Yet I was committed now, committed because of Æthelflaed, who was now in Wintanceaster. Weohstan told me that. ‘The king asked his family to gather,’ he said gloomily, ‘ready for his death.’ Weohstan was a stolid, bald, half-toothless West Saxon who commanded Lundene’s garrison. Lundene was supposedly Mercian, but Alfred had ensured that every man of power in the city held allegiance to Wessex, and Weohstan was a good man, unimaginative but diligent. ‘Except I need money to repair the walls,’ he grumbled to me, ‘and they won’t give it to me. They send coin to Rome to keep the pope in ale, yet they won’t pay for my wall.’

‘Steal it,’ I suggested.

‘Not that we’ve seen a Dane in months,’ he said.

‘Except for Sigunn,’ I said.

‘She’s a pretty thing,’ he said, offering me one of his half-toothed smiles. He had offered her shelter while she waited for me. She had no news from Buccingahamm, but I suspected the hall there, with its barns and storehouses, would be a smouldering ruin as soon as Sigurd returned from his foray to Ceaster.

Finan arrived two days later, grinning happily and full of news. ‘We led Sigurd a dance,’ he told me, ‘and danced him straight into the Welsh.’

‘And Haesten?’

‘God knows.’

Finan told how he and Merewalh had retreated southwards into the deep woods, and how Sigurd had followed them. ‘Jesus, he was eager. He sent horsemen after us on a dozen paths and we ambushed one group.’ He gave me a bag of silver, the spoils of the dead who had been cut down beneath the oaks. Sigurd, enraged, had become even less cautious and tried to encircle his elusive prey by sending men to the west and south, but all he had achieved was to stir up the Welsh who never need much stirring, and a band of wild Welsh warriors came from the hills to kill the Northmen. Sigurd had held the attackers off with his shield wall, then suddenly retreated northwards.

‘He must have heard about his ships,’ I said.