The Pale Horseman (2 page)

'What peace?'

‘His damned peace, you fool. He wants us to fight the Danes, not slice each other up. So
for the moment you have to swear to keep the peace.'

‘For the moment?'

'For the moment,' he said tonelessly, and I just shrugged. He took that for acceptance.
'So you killed Ubba?' he asked.

‘I did.'

'That's what I hear.' He sneezed again. 'You know Edor?'

'I know him,' I said. Edor was one of Ealdorman Odda's battle chiefs, a warrior of the
men of Defnascir, and he had fought beside us at Cynuit.

'Edor told me what happened,' Wulfhere said, 'but only because he trusts me. For God's
sake stop fidgeting!' This last shout was directed at Æthelwold who was poking beneath
the altar's linen cover, presumably in search of something valuable. Alfred, rather than
murder his nephew, seemed intent on boring him to death. Æthelwold had never been allowed
to fight, lest he make a reputation for himself, instead he had been forced to learn his
letters, which he hated, and so he idled his time away, hunting, drinking, whoring and
filled with resentment that he was not the king. 'Just stand still, boy,' Wulfhere
snarled.

'Edor told you,' I said, unable to keep the outrage from my voice, 'because he trusts
you? You mean what happened at Cynuit is a secret? A thousand men saw me kill Ubba!'

'But Odda the Younger took the credit,' Wulfhere said, 'and his father is badly wounded
and if he dies then Odda the Younger will become one of the richest men in Wessex, and
he'll lead more troops and pay more priests than you can ever hope to do, so men won't want to
offend him, will they? They'll pretend to believe him, to keep him generous. And the king
already believes him, and why shouldn't he? Odda arrived here with Ubba Lothbrokson's
banner and war axe. He dropped them at Alfred's feet, then knelt and gave the praise to God,
and promised to build a church and monastery at Cynuit, and what did you do? Ride a damned
horse into the middle of mass and wave your sword about. Not a clever thing to do with
Alfred.'

I half smiled at that, for Wulfhere was right. Alfred was uncommonly pious, and a sure
way to succeed in Wessex was to flatter that piety, imitate it and ascribe all good
fortune to God.

'Odda's a prick,' Wulfhere growled, surprising me, 'but he's Alfred's prick now, and
you're not going to change that.'

'But I killed ...'

'I know what you did!' Wulfhere interrupted me. 'And Alfred probably suspects you're
telling the truth, but he believes Odda made it possible. He thinks Odda and you both
fought Ubba. He may not even care if neither of you did, except that Ubba's dead and that's
good news, and Odda brought that news and so the sun shines out of Odda's arse, and if you
want the king's troops to hang you off a high branch then you'll make a feud with Odda. Do you
understand me?'

'Yes.’

Wulfhere sighed. 'Leofric said you'd see sense if I beat you over the head long
enough.'

'I want to see Leofric,' I said.

'You can't,' Wulfhere said sharply. 'He's being sent back to Hamtun where he belongs. But
you're not going back. The fleet will be put in someone else's charge. You're to do
penance.'

For a moment I thought I had misheard. 'I'm to do what?' I asked.

'You're to grovel.' Æthelwold spoke for the first time. He grinned at me. We were not
exactly friends, but we had drunk together often enough and he seemed to like me. 'You're
to dress like a girl,'

Æthelwold continued, 'go on your knees and be humiliated.'

'And you're to do it right now,' Wulfhere added.

'I'll be damned ...'

'You'll be damned anyway,' Wulfhere snarled at me, then snatched the white bundle from
Æthelwold's grasp and tossed it at my feet. It was a penitent's robe, and I left it on the
ground.

'For God's sake, lad,' Wulfhere said, 'have some sense. You've got a wife and land here,
don't you? So what happens if you don't do the king's bidding? You want to be outlawed? You
want your wife in a nunnery? You want the church to take your land?'

I stared at him. 'All I did was kill Ubba and tell the truth.'

Wulfhere sighed. 'You're a Northumbrian,' he said, 'and I don't know how they did things
up there, but this is Alfred's Wessex. You can do anything in Wessex except piss all over
his church, and that's what you just did. You pissed, son, and now the church is going to piss
all over you.' He grimaced as the rain beat harder on the tent, then he frowned, staring at
the puddle spreading just outside the entrance. He was silent a long time, before turning
and giving me a strange look. 'You think any of this is important?'

I did, but I was so astonished by his question, which had been asked in a soft, bitter
voice, that I had nothing to say.

'You think Ubba's death makes any difference?' he asked, and again I thought I had
misheard. 'And even if Guthrum makes peace,' he went on, 'you think we've won?' His heavy face
was suddenly savage.

'How long will Alfred be king? How long before the Danes rule here?'

I still had nothing to say. Æthelwold, I saw, was listening intently. He longed to be
king, but he had no following, and Wulfhere had plainly been appointed as his guardian to
keep him from making trouble. But Wulfhere's words suggested the trouble would come
anyway.

'Just do what Alfred wants,' the ealdorman advised me, 'and afterwards find a way to
keep living. That's all any of us can do. If Wessex falls we'll all be looking for a way to
stay alive, but in the meantime put on that damned robe and get it over with.'

'Both of us,' Æthelwold said, and he picked up the robe and I saw he had fetched two of
them, folded together.

'You?' Wulfhere snarled at him. 'Are you drunk?'

'I'm penitent for being drunk. Or I was drunk, now I'm penitent.' He grinned at me, then
pulled the robe over his head. 'I shall go to the altar with Uhtred,' he said, his voice
muffled by the linen.

Wulfhere could not stop him, but Wulfhere knew, as I knew, that Æthelwold was making a
mockery of the rite. And I knew Æthelwold was doing it as a favour to me, though as far as I
knew he owed me no favour. But I was grateful to him, so I put on the damned frock and, side
by side with the king's nephew, went to my humiliation.

I meant little to Alfred. He had a score of great lords in Wessex, while across the
frontier in Mercia there were other lords and thegns who lived under Danish rule but who
would fight for Wessex if Alfred gave them an opportunity. All of those great men could
bring him soldiers, could rally swords and spears to the dragon banner of Wessex, while I
could bring him nothing except my sword, SerpentBreath. True, I was a lord, but I was from
far off Northumbria and I led no men and so my only value to him was far in the future. I
did not understand that yet. In time, as the rule of Wessex spread northwards, my value
grew, but back then, in 877, when I was an angry twenty-year-old, I knew nothing except
my own ambitions.

And I learned humiliation. Even today, a lifetime later, I remember the bitterness
of that penitential grovel. Why did Alfred make me do it? I had won him a great victory,
yet he insisted on shaming me, and for what? Because I had disturbed a church service? It
was partly that, but only partly. He loved his god, loved the church and passionately
believed that the survival of Wessex lay in obedience to the church and so he would
protect the church as fiercely as he would fight for his country. And he loved order.

There was a place for everything and I did not fit and he genuinely believed that if I
could be brought to God's heel then I would become part of his beloved order. In short he saw
me as an unruly young hound that needed a good whipping before it could join the
disciplined pack.

So he made me grovel.

And Æthelwold made a fool of himself.

Not at first. At first it was all solemnity. Every man in Alfred's army was there to
watch, and they made two lines in the rain. The lines stretched to the altar under the guyed
sail-cloth where Alfred and his wife waited with the bishop and a gaggle of priests.

'On your knees,' Wulfhere said to me. 'You have to go on your knees,' he insisted
tonelessly, and crawl up to the altar. Kiss the altar cloth, then lie flat.'

'Then what?'

'Then God and the king forgive you,' he said, and waited. 'Just do it,' he snarled.

So I did it. I went down on my knees and I shuffled through the mud, and the silent lines
of men watched me, and then Æthelwold, close beside me, began to wail that he was a sinner.
He threw his arms in the air, fell flat on his face, howled that he was penitent, shrieked
that he was a sinner, and at first men were embarrassed and then they were amused.

'I've known women!' Æthelwold shouted at the rain, 'and they were bad women! Forgive
me!'

Alfred was furious, but he could not stop a man making a fool of himself before God.
Perhaps he thought Æthelwold's remorse was genuine?

'I've lost count of the women!' Æthelwold shouted, then beat his fists in the mud. 'Oh
God, I love tits! God, I love naked women, God, forgive me for that!'

The laughter spread, and every man must have remembered that Alfred, before piety
caught him in its clammy grip, had been notorious for the women he had pursued.

'You must help me, God!' Æthelwold cried as we shuffled a few feet farther. 'Send me an
angel!'

'So you can hump her?' a voice called from the crowd and the laughter became a roar.

Ælswith was hurried away, lest she hear something unseemly. The priests whispered
together, but Æthelwold's penitence, though extravagant, seemed real enough. He was
weeping. I knew he was really laughing, but he howled as though his soul was in agony.

'No more tits, God!' he called, 'no more tits!'

He made a fool of himself, but, as men already thought him a fool, he did not mind.

'Keep me from tits, God!' he shouted, and now Alfred left, knowing that the solemnity
of the day was ruined, and most of the priests left with him, so that Æthelwold and I crawled
to an abandoned altar where Æthelwold turned in his mud-spattered robe and leaned against
the table.

'I hate him,' he said softly, and I knew he referred to his uncle. 'I hate him,' he went
on, 'and now you owe me a favour, Uhtred.'

'I do,' I said.

'I'll think of one,' he said.

Odda the Younger had not left with Alfred. He seemed bemused. My humiliation, which he
had surely thought to enjoy, had turned into laughter and he was aware that men were
watching him, judging his truthfulness, and he moved closer to a huge man who was
evidently one of his bodyguards. That man was tall and very broad about the chest, but it
was his face that commanded attention for it looked as though his skin had been stretched
too tight across his skull, leaving his face incapable of making any expression other
than one of pure hatred and wolfish hunger. Violence came off the man like the stench of a
wet hound and when he looked at me it was like a beast's soulless stare, and I
instinctively understood that this was the man who would kill me if Odda found a chance
to commit murder. Odda was nothing, a rich man's spoiled son, but his money gave him the
means to command men who were killers. Then Odda plucked at the tall man's sleeve and they
both turned and walked away.

Father Beocca had stayed by the altar. 'Kiss it,' he ordered me, 'then lie flat.'

I stood up instead. 'You can kiss my arse, father,' I said. I was angry, and my anger
frightened Beocca who backed away.

But I had done what the king wanted. I had been penitent.

The tall man beside Odda the Younger was named Steapa. Steapa Snotor, men called him,
or Steapa the Clever.

'It's a joke,' Wulfhere told me as I ripped off the penitent's frock and pulled on my mail
coat.

'A joke?'

'Because he's dumb as an ox,' Wulfhere said. 'He's got frog spawn instead of a brain. He's
stupid, but he's not a stupid fighter. You didn't see him at Cynuit?'

'No,' I said curtly.

'So what's Steapa to you?' Wulfhere asked.

'Nothing,' I said. I had asked the ealdorman who Odda's bodyguard was so that I could
learn the name of the man who might try to kill me, but that possible murder was none of
Wulfhere's business. Wulfhere hesitated, wanting to ask more, then deciding he would
fetch no better answer.

'When the Danes come,' he said, 'you'll be welcome to join my men.'

Æthelwold, Alfred's nephew, was holding my two swords and he drew Serpent-Breath from
her scabbard and stared at the wispy patterns in her blade.

‘If the Danes come,' he spoke to Wulfhere, you must let me fight.'

'You don't know how to fight.'

'Then you must teach me.' He slid Serpent-Breath back into the scabbard. 'Wessex needs
a king who can fight,' he said, 'instead of pray.'

'You should watch your tongue, lad,' Wulfhere said, 'in case it gets cut out.' He snatched
the swords from Æthelwold and gave them to me. 'The Danes will come,' he said, 'so join me
when they do.'

I nodded, but said nothing. When the Danes came, I thought, I planned to be with them. I
had been raised by Danes after being captured at the age of ten and they could have killed
me, but instead they had treated me well. I had learned their language and worshipped their
gods until I no longer knew whether I was Danish or English. Had Earl Ragnar the Elder
lived I would never have left them, but he had died, murdered in a night of treachery and
fire, and I had fled south to Wessex. But now I would go back. Just as soon as the Danes left
Exanceaster I would join Ragnar's son, Ragnar the Younger, if he lived. Ragnar the
Younger's ship had been in the fleet which had been hammered in the great storm. Scores of
ships had sunk, and the remnants of the fleet had limped to Exanceaster where the boats were
now burned to ash on the riverbank beneath the town. I did not know if Ragnar lived. I hoped
he lived, and I prayed he would escape Exanceaster and then I would go to him, offer him my
sword, and carry that blade against Alfred of Wessex. Then, one day, I would dress Alfred
in a frock and make him crawl on his knees to an altar of Thor. Then kill him.