The Pagan Lord (20 page)

None of that was astonishing. ‘All true,’ I said, ‘but he’s weak, he needs Cnut’s protection.’

‘He does,’ she agrees, ‘but suppose he sent an envoy to Æthelred? A secret envoy?’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’

‘And Haesten offers to serve Æthelred,’ she continued, ‘by sending him news and by doing what services he can without arousing Cnut’s suspicion. And in return Æthelred promises not to attack Haesten.’

I thought about it, then nodded. ‘I’ve spent eight years wanting to attack Haesten,’ I said, ‘and Æthelred refuses to give me the men.’ Haesten occupied Ceaster, and that great Roman fortress would have protected Mercia’s northern lands from attacks by the Irish Norse or from the Danes and Norse in Cumbraland, yet Æthelred had refused to countenance an assault. I had thought his refusal was simply to deny me the chance of adding to my reputation, and so I had been forced to let my men just watch Ceaster to make sure Haesten caused no trouble.

Ingulfrid half frowned. She was still looking into the small flames as she spoke. ‘I don’t know if any of what I’m saying is true,’ she said, ‘but I remember hearing about Cnut’s wife and I instantly thought of Haesten. He’s treacherous and clever. He could persuade Æthelred that he is loyal, but Haesten will always serve the stronger man, not the weaker. He will be smiling at Æthelred, but licking Cnut’s backside, and Æthelred thinks Cnut dare not attack because his wife is a hostage, but …’ She paused and raised her head to look straight at me. ‘… just suppose that’s what Cnut and Haesten want Æthelred to think?’

I stared at her as I tried to comprehend what she was suggesting. It made sense. Cnut’s wife and children had never been captured at all, it was just a ruse to make Æthelred feel safe. I thought back to my meeting with Cnut. That would all have been part of the deception. He had seemed angry, but then he had turned friendly, and Haesten had been there, smiling his smirking smile all the time. And why had Cnut never swatted Haesten aside? Ceaster was a fort worth having for it controlled much of the traffic between Britain and Ireland, it lay between Mercia and Northumbria and between the Welsh and the Saxons, yet Cnut had allowed Haesten to keep it. Why? Because Haesten was useful? So was Ingulfrid right, and was Haesten hiding Cnut’s wife and children? And telling Æthelred that he had captured them and was holding them hostage? ‘So Cnut is deceiving Æthelred,’ I said slowly.

‘And if Æthelred feels safe to attack East Anglia?’ she asked me.

‘Then he’ll march,’ I said, ‘and the moment his troops have left Mercia the Danes will attack there.’

‘The Danes will attack Mercia,’ she agreed. ‘It’s probably happening now. Æthelred thinks he’s safe, and he’s been fooled. The Mercian army is in East Anglia, and Cnut and Sigurd are in Mercia, destroying, burning, stealing, raping, killing.’

I watched the fire die. There was grey light over the mainland now, a grey light touching the inner sea with its ghostly shimmer. Dawn, the coming of light, and it was flooding into my thoughts at the same time. ‘It makes sense,’ I said uncertainly.

‘Lord Ælfric had his spies everywhere,’ she said, ‘though he failed to find one in your household. But they were everywhere else and they sent their news to Bebbanburg. The men talked in the high hall and I listened. They never listened to me, but they let me hear. And sometimes my husband tells me things, if he’s not beating me.’

‘He beats you?’

She looked at me as though I was a fool. ‘I’m his wife,’ she said. ‘If I displease him of course he beats me.’

‘I’ve never beaten a woman.’

She smiled at that. ‘Lord Ælfric always said you were a fool.’

‘Maybe I am,’ I said, ‘but he was frightened of me.’

‘He was terrified,’ she agreed, ‘and with every breath he drew he cursed you and prayed for your death.’

And it was Ælfric, not I, who had gone to the Corpse-Ripper. I watched the grey light brighten. ‘Saint Oswald’s arm,’ I said, ‘Bebbanburg still has it?’

She nodded. ‘It’s kept in the chapel, in a silver box, but my husband wants to give it to Æthelred.’

‘To encourage him?’

‘Because Cnut wants him to give it.’

‘Ah,’ I said, understanding. Cnut was encouraging Æthelred to invade East Anglia, and Æthelred would do that if he thought he could gain the magical assistance of Saint Oswald’s body.

‘Bebbanburg is weak,’ Ingulfrid said. ‘The fortress itself isn’t weak. The fortress is hugely strong, and they can raise enough men to defend it against most enemies, but they daren’t provoke a really dangerous enemy. So they stay safe by being agreeable to their neighbours.’

‘Agreeable to the Danes.’

‘To the Danes,’ she said.

‘So your husband is like Haesten,’ I said, ‘he survives by lying low and wagging his tail.’

She hesitated a heartbeat, then nodded. ‘Yes.’

And Bebbanburg did not matter to the Danes. It mattered to me, but it was just an itch to the Danes. They wanted Bebbanburg, of course they did, but they wanted so much more. They wanted the rich fields, the slow rivers and thick woods of Mercia and Wessex. They wanted a country called Daneland. They wanted everything, and, while I was stranded on a Frisian beach, they were probably taking it.

And I thought of Æthelflaed. She was caught in the madness.

I did not know if that was true. At that moment, as the sun blazed the east red, I knew nothing of what happened in Britain. It was all surmise. For all I knew the long peace had continued and I was just imagining chaos, but instinct told me otherwise. And if instinct is not the voice of the gods, what is it?

But why should I care? The Christians had spurned me and burned my estate. They had driven me from Mercia and outlawed me to this barren sand dune. I owed them nothing. If I had any sense, I thought, I should go to Cnut and offer him my sword, and then carry it through all Mercia and all Wessex, carry it clear to the southern coast and crush the pious fools who had spat in my face. I would have the bishops and abbots and priests kneeling to me and begging for my mercy.

And I thought of Æthelflaed.

And knew what I must do.

‘So what do we do?’ Finan greeted me next morning.

‘Food,’ I said, ‘enough for three or four days at sea.’

He stared at me, surprised by the decisiveness in my voice, then nodded. ‘There’s plenty of fish and seal-meat,’ he said.

‘Smoke it,’ I ordered. ‘What about ale?’

‘We’ve enough for a week. We took two barrels out of
Reinbôge
.’

Poor Blekulf. I had left him, his son and his crewman at Bebbanburg. He wanted to salvage the
Reinbôge
, but I told him to abandon it. ‘Come with us,’ I had said.

‘Come with you where?’

‘Frisia,’ I had answered, and immediately regretted saying it. I had not been certain that Frisia would be my destination, though I could think of nowhere else to seek refuge. ‘Sooner or later,’ I had tried to cover my stupidity, ‘we’ll go to Frisia. I’m more likely to go to East Anglia first, but you can always get passage on a ship to Frisia from there.’

‘I’ll salvage
Reinbôge
,’ Blekulf had insisted stubbornly, ‘she’s not stranded too high.’ So he had stayed and I doubted he would have had time to refloat
Reinbôge
before my cousin’s men found him, nor did I doubt that Blekulf would reveal that I was heading towards Frisia.

We could have sailed that day, or at least the next day if we stocked
Middelniht
with enough food, but we needed two or three days to recover from the storm. Weapons and mail had got wet and needed to be scoured with sand to grind away the last specks of rust, and so I told Finan we would leave after three nights.

‘And where are we going?’ he asked.

‘To war,’ I said grandly. ‘We’ll give the poets something to sing about. We’ll wear their tongues out with singing! We’re going to war, my friend,’ I slapped Finan’s shoulder, ‘but right now I’m going to sleep. Keep the men busy, tell them they’re going to be heroes!’

The heroes had to work first. There were seals to kill, fish to catch, and wood to collect so that the meat of both, cut into thin strips, could be smoked. Green wood is best for smoking and we had none, so we mixed the parched driftwood with seaweed and lit the fires and let the smoke smear the sky.

Middelniht
had to be pampered. I had little enough material to make any repairs, but she needed little, and so we checked all her lines, sewed a rent in her sail, and cleaned her hull at low tide. It was during the same low tides that I took a dozen men and planted withies in the sandbanks. That was hard work. We had to dig holes in sand that was covered by shallow water, and as soon as we dug a pit the water and sand flowed back in. We kept digging, scrabbling with bare hands and broken boards, then thrust a pole as deep as we could before filling the hole with rocks to hold the withy upright. There were no rocks among the dunes and islets, so we used ballast stones from
Middelniht
, so many that we replaced the stones with sand. She would float a little high, but I reckoned she would be safe. It took two days, but then the withies showed above water even at high tide and, though a handful canted in the current and a couple floated away altogether, the rest showed a path through the treacherous shallows to our island refuge. A path for an enemy to follow.

And an enemy did come. It was not Thancward. He knew we were back, and I saw his ship pass a couple of times, but he wanted no trouble and so ignored us. It was on our last day, a fine summer morning, that the ship arrived. She came just as we were leaving. We had burned the shelters, heaped our dried meat on board
Middelniht
, and now we hauled the anchor stone, put oars in tholes, and there she was, a ship come to fight.

She came from the west. We had been watching her approach and had seen the high, bright beast-head at her prow. The wind was westerly so she came under sail and as she drew nearer I saw the eagle pattern sewn into the thick sailcloth. A proud ship, a fine ship, and crammed with men whose helmets reflected back the sunlight.

To this day I do not know what ship that was or who commanded her. A Dane, I assume, and perhaps he was a Dane who wanted the reward my cousin promised to any man who killed me. Or perhaps he was just a passing predator who saw an easy capture, but whoever he was he saw our smaller ship and saw that
Middelniht
was trying to leave the islands, and he saw us row into the landward end of the channel I had marked with the rock-bolstered withies.

And he had me trapped. He was coming fast, driven by the wind in that rope-reinforced eagle-flaunting sail. All he needed to do was sail into the channel and slash his big hull down one of our flanks, snapping our oars, or else crash into us, hull against hull, and release his warriors into
Middelniht
’s belly where they would overwhelm us. And so they would, for his ship was twice the size of ours and his crew had more than twice our numbers.

I watched him come towards us as we rowed, and he was a fine sight. His dragon head was touched with gold, his eagle sail was woven with scarlet thread, and his banner on the masthead was a furl of sun-touched blue and gold. The water broke white at his prow. His men were mailed, armed, carrying shields and blades. He came for the kill, and he entered the marked channel and he could see we had no escape and I heard the roar of his men as they steeled themselves to our slaughter.

And then she struck.

The withies had led him onto a sandbank, which was why I had placed them so carefully.

She came, she struck, and the mast cracked and broke, so that the sail collapsed onto the bows and with it fell the heavy yard and splintered mast. Men were thrown forward by the impact as the heavy hull ground into the sand. One moment she had been a proud ship hunting prey, and now she was a wreck, her prow lifted by the sand and her hull filled with men struggling to their feet.

And I turned
Middelniht
’s steering oar so that we left the marked channel for the real channel, circling south around the sandbank where the proud ship was stranded. We rowed slowly, taunting that thwarted enemy, and as we passed her, just out of spear range, I waved a morning greeting to them.

Then we were at sea.

Ingulfrid and her son were close by me, Finan was beside me, my son and my men were at the oars. The sun shone on us, the water sparkled, the oar-blades dipped and we were gone.

Gone to make history.

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

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

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

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

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