The Pagan Lord (21 page)

‘The war?’

‘If you’re right.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘So Cnut attacks Mercia when?’ Finan asked.

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

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

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

‘Will Edward march?’

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

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

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

‘So what are we doing?’

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

‘All thirty-six of us?’

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

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

‘What about him?’

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

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

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

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

‘And what happens to me?’

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

‘And what happens to me at home?’

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

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

‘Worse?’

‘I’m a disgraced woman.’

‘You’re not.’

‘And he’ll believe that?’

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

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

‘He will?’

‘He’s a proud man.’

‘And a fool,’ I said.

‘But fools kill too,’ she said.

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

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

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

What fools we are.

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

‘Where are we?’ Osferth asked me.

‘I don’t know.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Botulfstan,’ one of them answered.

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

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

‘Why travellers?’

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

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

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

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

‘Then who lives here?’

‘Me,’ he said helpfully.

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

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

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

‘And who is your husband?’ I asked.

‘Who are you?’ she retorted.

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

‘You’re a long way from home.’

‘So is your husband it seems.’

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

‘And he serves?’ I asked.

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

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

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

‘Who has not?’

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

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

‘We crossed the sea, lady,’ I said.

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

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

‘I am Frieda.’

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

‘Not steal it?’

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

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

‘Take it where?’

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

‘The Jarl Sigurd is summoning his men?’

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

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

‘Already?’

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

‘Saxons!’ I pretended surprise.

‘The news came yesterday. Hundreds of Saxons!’

‘And Lindcolne is where?’ I asked.

‘There,’ she said, pointing north again.

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