‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ I said.
‘But you did! And why? Because your son becomes a priest?’
‘He is not my son.’
‘You big fool! He is your son and you should be proud of him.’
‘He is not my son,’ I said stubbornly.
‘And now he’s the son of nothing,’ she spat. ‘You’ve always had enemies in Mercia, and now they’ve won. Look at it!’ She gestured angrily at the burning buildings. ‘Æthelred will send men to capture you, and the Christians want you dead.’
‘Your husband won’t dare attack me,’ I said.
‘Oh he’ll dare! He has a new woman. She wants me dead, and you dead too. She wants to be Queen of Mercia.’
I grunted, but stayed silent. Æthelflaed spoke the truth, of course. Her husband, who hated her and hated me, had found a lover called Eadith, a thegn’s daughter from southern Mercia, and rumour said she was as ambitious as she was beautiful. She had a brother named Eardwulf who had become the commander of Æthelred’s household warriors, and Eardwulf was as capable as his sister was ambitious. A band of hungry Welshmen had ravaged the western frontier and Eardwulf had hunted them, trapped them, and destroyed them. A clever man, I had heard, thirty years younger than me, and brother to an ambitious woman who wanted to be a queen.
‘The Christians have won,’ Æthelflaed told me.
‘You’re a Christian.’
She ignored that. Instead she just gazed blankly at the fires, then shook her head wearily. ‘We’ve had peace these last years.’
‘That’s not my fault,’ I said angrily. ‘I asked for men again and again. We should have captured Ceaster and killed Haesten and driven Cnut out of northern Mercia. It isn’t peace! There won’t be peace till the Danes are gone.’
‘But we do have peace,’ she insisted, ‘and the Christians don’t need you when there’s peace. If there’s war then all they want is Uhtred of Bebbanburg fighting for them, but now? Now we’re at peace? They don’t need you now, and they’ve always wanted to be rid of you. So what do you do? You slaughter one of the holiest men in Mercia!’
‘Holy?’ I sneered. ‘He was a stupid man who picked a fight.’
‘And the fight he picked was your fight!’ she said forcibly. ‘Abbot Wihtred was the man preaching about Saint Oswald! Wihtred had the vision! And you killed him!’
I said nothing to that. There was a holy madness adrift in Saxon Britain, a belief that if Saint Oswald’s body could be discovered then the Saxons would be reunited, meaning that those Saxons under Danish rule would suddenly become free. Northumbria, East Anglia and northern Mercia would be purged of Danish pagans, and all because a dismembered saint who had died almost three hundred years in the past would have his various body parts stitched together. I knew all about Saint Oswald: he had once ruled in Bebbanburg, and my uncle, the treacherous Ælfric, possessed one of the dead man’s arms. I had escorted the saint’s head to safety years before, and the rest of him was supposed to be buried at a monastery somewhere in southern Northumbria.
‘Wihtred wanted what you want,’ Æthelflaed said angrily, ‘he wanted a Saxon ruler in Northumbria!’
‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ I said, ‘and I’m sorry.’
‘You should be sorry! If you stay here there’ll be two hundred spearmen coming to take you to judgement.’
‘I’ll fight them.’
She scorned that with a laugh. ‘With what?’
‘You and I have more than two hundred men,’ I said.
‘You’re more than a fool if you think I’ll tell my men to fight other Mercians.’
Of course she would not fight Mercians. She was loved by the Mercians, but that love would not raise an army sufficient to defeat her husband because he was the gold-giver, the hlaford, and he could raise a thousand men. He was forced to pretend that he and Æthelflaed were on cordial terms because he feared what would happen if he attacked her openly. Her brother, King of Wessex, would want revenge. He feared me too, but the church had just stripped me of much of my power. ‘What will you do?’ I asked her.
‘Pray,’ she said, ‘and I’ll take your men into service.’ She nodded towards those of my men whose religion had taken away their loyalty. ‘And I shall stay quiet,’ she said, ‘and give my husband no cause to destroy me.’
‘Come with me,’ I said.
‘And tie myself to an outcast fool?’ she asked bitterly.
I looked up to where smoke smeared the sky. ‘Did your husband send men to capture Cnut Ranulfson’s family?’ I asked.
‘Did he do what?’ she sounded shocked.
‘Someone pretending to be me captured his wife and children.’
She frowned. ‘How do you know?’
‘I just came from his hall,’ I said.
‘I would have heard if Æthelred had done that,’ she said. She had her spies in his household, just as he had them in hers.
‘Someone did it,’ I said, ‘and it wasn’t me.’
‘Other Danes,’ she suggested.
I slid Serpent-Breath back into her scabbard. ‘You think because Mercia has been peaceful these last years,’ I said, ‘that the wars are over. They’re not. Cnut Ranulfson has a dream; he wants it to come true before he’s too old. So keep a good watch on the frontier lands.’
‘I already do,’ she said, sounding much less certain now.
‘Someone is stirring the pot,’ I said. ‘Are you sure it’s not Æthelred?’
‘He wants to attack East Anglia,’ she said.
It was my turn to be surprised. ‘He wants to do what?’
‘Attack East Anglia. His new woman must like marshland.’ She sounded bitter.
Yet attacking East Anglia made some sense. It was one of the lost kingdoms, lost to the Danes, and it lay next to Mercia. If Æthelred could capture that land then he could take its throne and its crown. He would be King Æthelred, and he would have the fyrd of East Anglia and the thegns of East Anglia and he would be as powerful as his brother-in-law, King Edward.
But there was one problem about attacking East Anglia. The Danes to the north of Mercia would come to its rescue. It would not be a war between Mercia and East Anglia, but between Mercia and every Dane in Britain, a war that would drag Wessex into the fight, a war that would ravage the whole island.
Unless the Danes to the north could be kept quiet, and how better than to hold hostage a wife and children whom Cnut held dear? ‘It has to be Æthelred,’ I said.
Æthelflaed shook her head. ‘I’d know if it was. Besides, he’s scared of Cnut. We’re all scared of Cnut.’ She gazed sadly at the burning buildings. ‘Where will you go?’
‘Away,’ I said.
She reached out a pale hand and touched my arm. ‘You are a fool, Uhtred.’
‘I know.’
‘If there is war …’ she said uncertainly.
‘I’ll come back,’ I said.
‘You promise?’
I nodded curtly. ‘If there’s war,’ I said, ‘I will protect you. I swore that to you years ago and a dead abbot doesn’t change that oath.’
She turned to look again at the burning buildings and the light of the fires made her eyes appear wet. ‘I’ll take care of Stiorra,’ she said.
‘Don’t let her marry.’
‘She’s ready,’ she said, then turned back to me. ‘So how will I find you?’ she asked.
‘You won’t,’ I answered, ‘I’ll find you.’
She sighed, then turned in the saddle and beckoned to Æthelstan. ‘You’re coming with me,’ she ordered. The boy looked at me and I nodded.
‘And where will you go?’ she asked me again.
‘Away,’ I said again.
But I already knew. I was going to Bebbanburg.
The assault of the Christians left me with thirty-three men. A handful, like Osferth, Finan and my son, were also Christians, but most were Danes or Frisians and followers of Odin, of Thor, and of the other gods of Asgard.
W
e dug out the hoard that I had buried beneath the hall, and afterwards, accompanied by the women and children of the men who had stayed loyal to me, we went eastwards. We slept in a copse not far from Fagranforda. Sigunn was with me, but she was nervous and said little. They were all nervous of my bleak, angry mood, and only Finan dared talk with me. ‘So what happened?’ he asked me in the grey dawn.
‘I told you. I killed some damned abbot.’
‘Wihtred. The fellow who’s preaching Saint Oswald.’
‘Madness,’ I said angrily.
‘It probably is,’ Finan said.
‘Of course it’s madness! What’s left of Oswald is buried in Danish territory and they’ll have pounded his bones to dust long ago. They’re not idiots.’
‘Maybe they dug the man up,’ Finan said, ‘and maybe they didn’t. But sometimes madness works.’
‘What does that mean?’
He shrugged. ‘I remember in Ireland there was a holy fellow preaching that if we could only play a drum with the thigh bone of Saint Athracht, poor woman, then the rain would stop. There were floods then, you see. Never seen rain like it. Even the ducks were tired of it.’
‘What happened?’
‘They dug the creature up, hammered a drum with her long bone, and the rain stopped.’
‘It would have stopped anyway,’ I snarled.
‘Aye, probably, but it was either that or build an ark.’
‘Well, I killed the bastard by mistake,’ I said, ‘and now the Christians want my skull as a drinking bowl.’
It was morning, a grey morning. The clouds had thinned during the night, but now they closed down again and spat showers. We rode on tracks that led through damp fields where the rye, barley and wheat had been beaten down by rain. We rode towards Lundene, and off to my right I caught glimpses of the Temes flowing slow and sullen towards the far-off sea. ‘The Christians have been looking for a reason to be rid of you,’ Finan said.
‘You’re a Christian,’ I said, ‘so why did you stay with me?’
He gave a lazy grin. ‘What one priest decrees another priest denies. So if I stay with you I go to hell? I’m probably going anyway, but I’ll easily find a priest who’ll tell me different.’
‘Why didn’t Sihtric think that?’
‘It’s the womenfolk. They’re more scared of the priests.’
‘And your woman isn’t?’
‘I love the creature, but she doesn’t rule me. Mind you, she’ll wear her knees out with praying, though,’ he said, grinning again. ‘And Father Cuthbert wanted to come with us, poor man.’
‘A blind priest?’ I asked. ‘What use is a blind priest? He’s better off with Æthelflaed.’
‘But he wanted to stay with you,’ Finan said, ‘so if a priest wanted that then how sinful is it for me to want the same thing?’ He hesitated. ‘So what are we doing?’
I did not want to tell Finan the truth, that I was going to Bebbanburg. Did I even believe that myself? To take Bebbanburg I needed gold and hundreds of men, and I was leading thirty-three. ‘We’re going viking,’ I said instead.
‘I thought as much. And we’ll be back.’
‘We will?’
‘It’s fate, isn’t it? One moment we’re in the sunlight, and the next every dark cloud in Christendom is pissing all over us. So Lord Æthelred wants to go to war?’
‘So I hear.’
‘His woman and her brother want it. And when he’s driven Mercia into chaos they’ll be screaming for us to come back and save their miserable lives.’ Finan sounded so confident. ‘And when we do come back they’ll forgive us. The priests will be putting wet kisses all over our arses, so they will.’
I smiled at that. Finan and I had been friends for so many years. We had shared slavery together, and then stood shoulder to shoulder in the shield wall, and I glanced at him and saw the grey hair showing beneath his woollen cap. His grizzled beard was grey too. I supposed I was the same. ‘We get old,’ I said.
‘We do, but no wiser, eh?’ he laughed.
We rode through villages and two small towns and I was wary, wondering if the priests had sent word that we were to be attacked, but instead we were ignored. The wind turned east and cold, bringing more rain. I glanced behind often, wondering if Lord Æthelred had sent men in pursuit, but none appeared and I assumed he was content to have driven me from Mercia. He was my cousin, my lover’s husband, and my enemy, and in that dank summer he had finally won the victory over me that he had sought so long.
It took us five days to reach Lundene. Our journey had been slow, not just because the roads were waterlogged, but because we did not have enough horses to carry wives, children, armour, shields and weapons.
I have always liked Lundene. It is a vile, smoky, stinking place, the streets thick with sewage. Even the river smells, yet the river is why Lundene exists. Go west and a man can row deep into Mercia and Wessex, go east and the rest of the world lies before his prow. Traders come to Lundene with shiploads of oil or pelts, wheat or hay, slaves or luxuries. It is supposed to be a Mercian city, but Alfred had made sure it was garrisoned by West Saxon troops, and Æthelred had never dared challenge that occupation. It was really two towns. We came to the new town first, built by the Saxons and spreading along the northern bank of the wide, sluggish Temes, and we threaded the long street, finding our way past carts and herds, through the slaughter district where the alleys were puddled in blood. The tanners’ pools lay just to the north and gave off their stench of urine and shit, and then we dropped down to the river that lay between the new and old towns, and I was assailed by memories. I had fought here. In front of us was the Roman wall and the Roman gate where I had repelled a Danish attack. Then up the hill and the guards on the gate stood aside, recognising me. I had half expected to be challenged, but instead they bowed their heads and welcomed me back, and I ducked under the Roman arch and rode into the old city, the city on its hill, a city made by the Romans in stone and brick and tile.
We Saxons never liked living in the old city. It made us nervous. There were ghosts there, strange ghosts we did not understand because they had come from Rome. Not the Rome of the Christians; that was no mystery. I knew a dozen men who had made that pilgrimage and they had all come back to talk of a marvellous place of columns and domes and arches, all in ruins, and of wolves among the broken stones and of the Christian pope who spread his poison from some decayed palace beside a rancid river, and that was all understandable. Rome was just another Lundene, only bigger, but the ghosts of Lundene’s old town had come from a different Rome, a city of enormous power, a city that had ruled all the world. Its warriors had marched from the deserts to the snow and they had crushed tribes and countries, and then, for no reason that I knew, their power had fled. The great legions had become weak, the beaten tribes revived, and the glory of that great city had become ruin. That was true in Lundene too. You could see it! There were magnificent buildings falling into decay, and I was assailed, as I always was, by the sense of waste. We Saxons built in wood and thatch, our houses rotted in the rain and were torn by the wind, and there was no man alive who could remake the Roman glory. We descend towards chaos. The world will end in chaos when the gods fight each other, and I was convinced, I still am, that the inexplicable rise of Christianity is the first sign of that encroaching ruin. We are children’s toys swept along a river towards a killing pool.
I went to a tavern beside the river. It was properly named Wulfred’s Tavern, though everyone called it the Dead Dane because the tide had dropped one day to reveal a Danish warrior impaled on one of the many rotting stakes that stab the mud where once there were wharves. Wulfred knew me, and if he was surprised that I wanted space in his cavernous buildings, he had the grace to hide it. I was usually a guest in the royal palace that was built on the hill’s top, but here I was, offering him coins. ‘I’m here to buy a ship,’ I told him.
‘Plenty of those.’
‘And find men,’ I said.
‘No end of m
en will want to follow the great Lord Uhtred,’ he said.
I doubted that. There had been a time when men begged to give me their oath, knowing that I was a generous lord, but the church would have spread the message that I was cursed now, and the fear of hell would keep men away.
‘But that’s good,’ Finan said that night.
‘Why?’
‘Because the bastards who want to join us won’t be frightened of hell.’ He grinned, showing three yellow teeth in his empty gums. ‘We need bastards who’ll fight through hell.’
‘We do too,’ I said.
‘Because I know what’s in your mind,’ he said.
‘You do?’
He stretched on the bench, casting an eye across the great room where men drank. ‘How many years have we been together?’ he asked, but did not wait for an answer. ‘And what have you dreamed of all those years? And what better time than now?’
‘Why now?’
‘Because it’ll be the last thing the bastards expect, of course.’
‘I’ll have fifty men, if I’m lucky,’ I said.
‘And how many does your uncle have?’
‘Three hundred? Maybe more?’
He looked at me, smiling. ‘But you’ve thought of a way in, haven’t you?’
I touched the hammer hanging about my neck and hoped that the old gods still had power in this mad, declining world. ‘I have.’
‘Then Christ help the three hundred,’ he said, ‘because they’re doomed.’
It was madness.
And, as Finan had said, sometimes madness works.
She was called Middelniht, a strange name for a war boat, but Kenric, the man selling her, said she had been built from trees cut down at midnight. ‘It gives a boat good luck,’ he explained.
Middelniht had benches for forty-four oarsmen, an unstepped mast made of spruce, a mud-coloured sail reinforced by hemp ropes, and a high prow with a dragon’s head. A previous owner had painted the head red and black, but the paint had faded and peeled so the dragon looked as if it suffered from scurvy.
‘She’s a lucky boat,’ Kenric told me. He was a short wide man, bearded and bald, who built ships in a yard just to the east of the Roman city’s walls. He had forty or fifty workers, some of them slaves, who used adzes and saws to make merchant ships that were fat, heavy and slow, but Middelniht was of a different breed. She was long, and her midships were wide, flat and lay low in the water. She was a sleek beast.