Erce was the aglæcwif’s granddaughter. I did not know her real name, only that she was called Erce after the goddess, and in my trance I had seen what I thought was the goddess come to me. She had been naked and beautiful, pale as ivory, lithe as a willow-wand, a dark-haired girl who had smiled as she rode me, her light hands touching my face as my fingers caressed her small breasts. Had she been real? Or a dream? Men said she was real, that she was deaf and dumb, but ever after that night I doubted their tales. Perhaps there was a granddaughter who could neither hear nor speak, but it was surely not the lovely creature I remembered from this dank cave. She had been a goddess, come to our middle earth to touch our souls with sorcery, and it was the memory of her that had drawn me to this cave. Did I expect to see her again? Or did I just want to remember that strange night?
Uhtred, my son, walked to the pale flat stone and ran his hand over its table-like surface. ‘I’d like to hear the future,’ he said wistfully.
‘There’s a sorceress in Wessex,’ Finan said, ‘and men say she speaks true.’
‘The woman in Ceodre?’ I asked.
‘That’s the one.’
‘But she’s a pagan,’ my son said disapprovingly.
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ I snarled. ‘You think the gods speak only to Christians?’
‘But a sorceress …’ he began.
‘Some folk are better than others at knowing what the gods are doing. Ælfadell was one of them. She talked to them in here; they used her. And yes, she was, is, a pagan, but that doesn’t mean she can’t see farther than the rest of us.’
‘So what did she see?’ my son asked. ‘What did she tell of your future?’
‘That I whelped idiots who would ask stupid questions.’
‘So she really did see the future!’ Uhtred said, and laughed. Finan and Merewalh laughed too.
‘She said there would be a great battle and seven kings would die.’ I spoke bleakly. ‘It was like I said, just nonsense.’
‘There aren’t seven kings in Britain,’ my son said.
‘There are,’ Merewalh said. ‘The Scots have three at least, and God alone knows how many men call themselves king in Wales. Then there are the Irish kings.’
‘A battle which everyone joins in?’ Finan said lightly. ‘We can’t miss that.’
Rolla and his companions returned late in the afternoon, bringing bread and lentils. The rain had eased and they found us in the wood where we had lit a fire and were trying to dry our clothes. ‘The woman’s not there,’ Rolla told me, meaning Cnut’s wife.
‘So who is there?’
‘Thirty, forty men,’ he said dismissively, ‘most of them too old to go to war, and Cnut’s steward. I told him what you told me to say.’
‘He believed you?’
‘He was impressed!’ I knew that the folk inside Buchestanes’s palisade would be curious, even suspicious, because we had not ridden into the town, but had stayed outside, so I had told Rolla to say I had sworn an oath to pass through no town walls until I assaulted a Saxon stronghold. ‘I told him you were Wulf Ranulfson, out of Haithabu,’ Rolla went on, ‘and he said Cnut would welcome us.’
‘But where?’
‘He said to go to Ceaster, then just ride south if there are no ships.’
‘Just south?’
‘That’s all he said, yes.’
And south could be either Mercia or Wessex, but instinct, that voice of the gods which we so often mistrust, told me it was Mercia. Cnut and Sigurd had attacked Wessex ten years before and had achieved nothing. They had landed their forces on the banks of the Uisc and marched two miles to Exanceaster where the walls of that burh had defeated them, and Wessex was full of such burhs, the fortified towns that Alfred had made and in which folk could shelter as the Danes roamed impotently outside. Mercia had burhs too, but fewer, and the Mercian army, which should have been prepared to attack the Danes as they besieged a burh, was a long way away in East Anglia.
‘Then we’ll do what he suggested,’ I said. ‘We’ll go to Ceaster.’
‘Why not head directly south?’ Merewalh asked.
I knew what was in his mind. By going south we would reach Mercia far more quickly than by travelling to Britain’s west coast and, once at Ceaster, we would be on the very edge of Mercia, in a region already dominated by the Danes. Merewalh wanted to get back to his country fast, to find out what had happened, and perhaps to reunite his men with Æthelred’s forces. Æthelred would be annoyed that Merewalh had accompanied me, and that worry was nagging at the Mercian.
‘You’ll gain nothing by going south now,’ I explained.
‘We save time.’
‘I don’t want to save time. I need time. I need time for Edward of Wessex and for Æthelred to join forces.’
‘Then go back to East Anglia,’ Merewalh said, but without much conviction.
‘Cnut wants Æthelred in East Anglia,’ I said, ‘so why should we do what Cnut wants? He wants Æthelred to come to him and he’ll wait for him on a hill or beside a river, and Æthelred will have to fight uphill or through deep water, and at the end of the day Æthelred will be dead and Cnut will be boiling his skull to make a drinking cup. Is that what you want?’
‘Lord,’ Merewalh protested.
‘We have to make Cnut do what we want,’ I said, ‘so we go to Ceaster.’
So we rode to Ceaster. The countryside was strangely empty. There were harvesters in the fields and cowherds in the pastures, there were shepherds and woodsmen, but the warriors were gone. There were no men hawking, no men practising the shield wall or exercising horses, because the warriors were all gone southwards, leaving the halls protected only by old and injured men. We should have been challenged a hundred times on that journey, but the road had seen countless bands pass and folk assumed we were just another group seeking Jarl Cnut’s generosity.
We followed a Roman road out of the hills. The fields either side were churned by hoofprints, all going west. The stones counted the miles down to Deva, because that was what the Romans had called Ceaster. I knew the place, as did Finan and Merewalh, indeed most of our men had spent time to the south of the town, riding the woods and fields on the southern bank of the River Dee and watching the Danes on Ceaster’s ramparts. Those walls, and the river, protected the town, and if we had ever wanted to attack from the south we would have had to cross the Roman bridge that led to the town’s southern gate, but now we came from the east and the road took us north of the river. We rode through heathland where a few scattered trees bent to the west wind. I could smell the sea. The rain had stopped and the sky was thronged with fast-moving clouds that threw vast scudding shadows across the lower country ahead of us. The river’s coils glinted in that landscape, which, beyond the heath, was marsh and, way beyond that and nothing but a hazed glimmer on the skyline, was the sea.
I rode ahead with Finan, Merewalh, and my son. We slanted left, going to a stand of trees on a small hillock, and from there we could see Ceaster itself. Smoke rose from thatched roofs inside the walls. A few roofs were tile, and some buildings rose higher than others, and the stone of those high walls looked pale gold in the patchy sunlight. The town’s defences were formidable. It was fronted with a ditch flooded by the river, and behind the ditch was an earthen bank topped by stone ramparts. Some of the stone had fallen, but timber palisades filled those gaps. There were stone towers studding the long walls, and timber towers stood above the four gateways, one gate in the centre of each long wall, but we had watched Ceaster long enough to learn that two of those gates were never used. The north gate and south gate had usually been busy, but none of us had ever seen men or horses use the east and west entrances, and I suspected they had been blocked up. Just outside the walls was a stone arena where the Romans had staged fights and slaughters, but cattle now grazed beneath the decaying arches. There were four ships downstream of the bridge, only four, but there must have been two or three hundred before Cnut left. Those ships would have rowed out through the
river curves, past the wild sea-birds of the Dee’s estuary to the open sea, and then where?
‘That’s a burh,’ Finan said admiringly. ‘Be a right bastard of a place to capture.’
‘Æthelred should have captured it ten years ago,’ I said.
‘Æthelred couldn’t capture a flea if it was biting his cock,’ Finan said scornfully.
Merewalh cleared his throat as a mild protest against this insult to his sworn lord.
A banner flew above the gate-tower in the southern wall. We were too far away to see what was embroidered or daubed on the cloth, but I knew anyway. It would show Cnut’s emblem of the axe and the shattered cross, and that flag was on the southern ramparts, facing Saxon country, the direction from which the garrison could expect an attack. ‘How many men can you see?’ I asked Finan, knowing his eyes were better than mine.
‘Not many,’ he said.
‘Cnut told me the garrison was a hundred and fifty men.’ I was remembering our conversation in Tameworþig. ‘He could have been lying, of course.’
‘A hundred and fifty men would be enough most of the time,’ Finan said.
A hundred and fifty men would not have been enough to stop a determined attack on two or more of the four walls, but they would have been more than sufficient to defeat an assault coming across the long bridge against the southern gate. If the town was threatened by war then more men could be brought in to stiffen the garrison. King Alfred, who had always been precise in his calculations, demanded that four men should be stationed for every pole of a burh’s wall. A pole was six paces, more or less, and I tried to reckon the length of Ceaster’s ramparts and decided they would need a thousand men to defend against a determined attack, but how likely was such an attack? Æthelred had been supine, and now he was far away, and Cnut was on the rampage somewhere, and Cnut would want every available man for the battles he knew he must fight. Ceaster, I suspected, was very lightly defended.
‘We just ride in,’ I said.
‘We do?’ Merewalh sounded surprised.
‘They’re not expecting an attack,’ I said, ‘and I doubt there’s as many as a hundred and fifty men there. Maybe eighty?’
Eighty men could stop us if we tried to assault the wall, though without ladders such an assault was unthinkable. But would they try to stop us if we rode peaceably up the road? If we looked like all the other bands of men who had obeyed Cnut’s summons?
‘Why eighty?’ my son asked.
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, ‘I made the figure up. There could be five hundred men in there.’
‘And we just ride in?’ Finan asked.
‘You have a better plan?’
He shook his head, grinning. ‘Just like Bebbanburg,’ he said, ‘we just ride in.’
‘And pray for a better ending,’ I added grimly.
And so we did.
We just rode in.
The road leading to the fortress’s northern gate was paved with wide slabs, most of which were now cracked or canted. Grass grew thick on either verge, dunged by the hundreds of horses that had passed before us. There were rich farms on either side where slaves were using sickles to cut tall rye and rain-beaten barley. The farmhouses were made of stone, though all were patched with wattle and mud, and usually re-roofed with thatch. They, like the town, were Roman. ‘I’d like to go to Rome,’ I said.
‘King Alfred went,’ Merewalh said.
‘Twice, he told me,’ I replied, ‘and all he saw were ruins. Great ruins.’
‘They say the city was made of gold.’ Merewalh sounded wistful.
‘A city of gold on a river of silver,’ I said, ‘and once we’ve defeated Cnut we should go there and dig it all up.’
We were riding slowly, like tired men on weary horses. We wore no mail and carried no shields. The packhorses with the long battle-axes and heavy round shields were at the back of our column, while I had put my Danes at the front. ‘Keep your Saxon mouth shut when we get to the gate,’ I told Merewalh.
‘A river of silver?’ he asked. ‘Is that true?’
‘It’s probably more like our rivers,’ I said, ‘full of piss, shit and mud.’
A beggar with half his face eaten by ulcers crouched in the ditch. He mewed as we passed and held out a crooked hand. Wissian, our Christian priest, made the sign of the cross to ward off any evil that the beggar might harbour and I snarled at him. ‘The Danes will see you do that, you fool. Save it till we’re out of their sight.’ My son dropped a piece of bread close to the beggar who scrabbled after it on all fours.
We passed the great bend in the river east of the fortress and the road now turned south to run straight as a spear-shaft towards the town. There was a Roman shrine at the road’s bend, just a stone shelter where, I supposed, the statue of a god had once stood, but now the small building housed an old one-legged man who was weaving baskets from willow wands. ‘Has Jarl Cnut gone?’ I asked him.
‘Gone and gone,’ he said. ‘Half the world’s gone.’
‘Who’s left?’ I asked.
‘None that matters, none that can row, ride, fly or crawl.’ He cackled. ‘Half the world went by and half the world has gone. Only the elf now!’
‘The elf?’
‘The elf is here,’ he said very seriously, ‘but all else is gone.’ He was mad, I think, but his old hands wove the willow deftly. He tossed a finished basket onto a pile and took up more withies. ‘All else is gone,’ he said again, ‘and only the elf be left.’
I spurred on. A pair of posts flanked the road, and on both posts a skeleton was lashed with hemp twine. They were warnings, of course, a warning that thieves would be killed. Most men would be content with a pair of skulls, but it was typical of Haesten to want more. The sight of the bones reminded me of Saint Oswald, and then I forgot that saint because our road ran straight towards Ceaster’s northern gate and, even as I watched, that gate was pulled shut. ‘That’s a welcome,’ Finan said.
‘If you saw horsemen approaching, what would you do?’
‘I thought the bastards would leave it open and make it easy for us,’ he said.
The gate was formidable. A pair of stone towers flanked the gate’s arch, though one of the towers had partially collapsed into the ditch that was crossed by a timber bridge. The fallen tower had been rebuilt in wood. The top of the arch was a platform where one man stood watching our approach, but as we drew nearer another three men joined him.
The gates, there were a pair, stood about twice the height of a man. They looked solid as rocks. Above them was an open space because the gates did not reach all the way up to the high fighting platform, which was protected by a timber wall and a stout-looking roof. One of the men in the shadow of the roof cupped his hands. ‘Who are you?’ he called.
I pretended not to hear. We ambled on.
‘Who are you?’ the man shouted again.
‘Rolla of Haithabu!’ Rolla called out the answer. I was deliberately staying behind my leading men and keeping my head down because it was possible some of these men had been at Tameworþig and would recognise me.
‘You’re late!’ the man called. Rolla made no answer. ‘You came to join the Jarl Cnut?’ the man asked.
‘From Haithabu,’ Rolla shouted.
‘You can’t come in!’ the man said. We were very close now and he had no need to shout.
‘What are we supposed to do?’ Rolla asked. ‘Stay here and starve? We need food!’
Our horses had stopped just short of the bridge, which was as wide as the road and about ten paces long. ‘Ride around the walls,’ the man ordered, ‘to the southern gate. Cross the bridge there and you can buy food in the village.’
‘Where’s Jarl Cnut?’ Rolla demanded.
‘You’ll have to ride south,’ the man said. ‘But cross the river first. Leiknir will tell you what to do.’
‘Who’s Leiknir?’
‘He commands here.’
‘But why can’t we come in?’ Rolla asked.
??
?Because I say so. Because no one comes in. Because the jarl gave orders.’
Rolla hesitated. He did not know what to do and glanced back at me as if seeking guidance, but at that moment my son spurred his horse past me and onto the bridge. He looked up at the four men. ‘Is Brunna still here?’ he asked. He spoke in Danish, the language he had learned from his mother and from me.
‘Brunna?’ The man was puzzled, as well he might be because Brunna was the name of Haesten’s wife, though I doubted my son knew that.
‘Brunna!’ my son said as if everyone would recognise the name. ‘Brunna!’ he said again. ‘You must know Brunna the Bunny! The sweet little whore with bouncy tits and an arse to dream about?’ He made a pumping motion with a fist.
The man laughed. ‘That’s not the Brunna I know.’
‘You should meet her!’ my son said enthusiastically. ‘But only when I’ve finished with her.’
‘I’ll send her across the river,’ the man said, amused.
‘Whoa!’ Uhtred shouted, not in excitement, but because his horse was skittering sideways. It looked accidental, but I had seen him rowel a spur, and the horse reacted by jerking away from the pain and the motion took Uhtred beneath the fighting platform so that he could not be seen by the four men above. Then, to my amazement, he kicked his feet from the stirrups and stood on the saddle. He did it smoothly, but it was a dangerous move because the horse was not his own, it had been borrowed from Merewalh’s men and Uhtred could not have known how it would react to his strange behaviour. I held my breath, but the horse just tossed his head and stayed still, letting my son reach with both hands to the gate’s top. He pulled himself up, straddled the gate and then dropped over. It took almost no time.
‘What …’ The man on the gate-tower leaned over, trying to see what was happening.
‘Will you send all the town’s whores across the river?’ I called, to keep his attention.
Uhtred had vanished. He was inside the town. I waited to hear a shout, or a clash of swords, but instead heard the scrape of the locking bar being lifted from its brackets, a thump as it was dropped, and then one of the gates was being pushed open. The heavy iron hinges squealed. ‘Hey!’ the man called from above.