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‘From the disturbed ground, lord,’ he answered in Danish, but it was obvious from the way he mangled the words that he was no Dane.
‘Beyond the street?’ I spoke English again.
‘Yes, lord,’ he said.
‘And when does Bjorn disturb your land again?’
‘The day after tomorrow, lord. He will come after moonrise.’
‘You are sent to guide me?’
‘Yes, lord.’
We rode next day. Gisela wanted to come, but I would not allow her for I did not wholly trust the summons, and because of that mistrust I rode with six men; Finan, Clapa, Sihtric, Rypere, Eadric and Cenwulf. The last three were Saxons, Clapa and Sihtric were Danes, and Finan was the fiery Irishman who commanded my household troops, and all six were my oath-men. My life was theirs as theirs was mine. Gisela stayed behind Coccham’s walls, guarded by the fyrd and by the remainder of my household troops.
We rode in mail and we carried weapons. We went west and north first because the Temes was winter swollen and we had to ride a long way upstream to find a ford shallow enough to be crossed. That was at Welengaford, another burh, and I noted how the earth walls were unfinished and how the timber to make the palisades lay rotting and untrimmed in the mud. The commander of the garrison, a man named Oslac, wanted to know why we crossed the river, and it was his right to know because he guarded this part of the frontier between Wessex and lawless Mercia. I said a fugitive had fled Coccham and was thought to be skulking on the Temes’s northern bank, and Oslac believed the tale. It would reach Alfred soon enough.
The man who had brought the summons was our guide. He was called Huda and he told me he served a Dane named Eilaf who had an estate that bordered the eastern side of Wæclingastræt. That made Eilaf an East Anglian and a subject of King Guthrum. ‘Is Eilaf a Christian?’ I asked Huda.
‘We are all Christians, lord,’ Huda said, ‘King Guthrum demands it.’
‘So what does Eilaf wear about his neck?’ I asked.
‘The same as you, lord,’ he said. I wore Thor’s hammer because I was no Christian and Huda’s answer told me that Eilaf, like me, worshipped the older gods, though to please his king, Guthrum, he pretended to a belief in the Christian god. I had known Guthrum in the days when he had led great armies to attack Wessex, but he was getting old now. He had adopted his enemy’s religion and it seemed he no longer wanted to rule all Britain, but was content with the wide fertile fields of East Anglia as his kingdom. Yet there were many in his lands who were not content. Sigefrid, Erik, Haesten, and probably Eilaf. They were Norsemen and Danes, they were warriors, they sacrificed to Thor and to Odin, they kept their swords sharp and they dreamed, as all Northmen dream, of the richer lands of Wessex.
We rode through Mercia, the land without a king, and I noted how many farmsteads had been burned so that the only trace of their existence was now a patch of scorched earth where weeds grew. More weeds smothered what had been ploughland. Hazel saplings had invaded the pastures. Where folk did still live, they lived in fear and when they saw us coming they ran to the woodlands, or else shut themselves behind palisades. ‘Who rules here?’ I asked Huda.
‘Danes,’ he said, then jerked his head westwards, ‘Saxons over there.’
‘Eilaf doesn’t want this land?’
‘He has much of it, lord,’ Huda said, ‘but the Saxons harass him.’
According to the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum this land was Saxon, but the Danes are land hungry and Guthrum could not control all his thegns. So this was battle land, a place where both sides fought a sullen, small and endless war, and the Danes were offering me its crown.
I am a Saxon. A northerner. I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg, but I had been raised by the Danes and I knew their ways. I spoke their tongue, I had married a Dane, and I worshipped their gods. If I were to be king here then the Saxons would know they had a Saxon ruler while the Danes would accept me because I had been as a son to Earl Ragnar. But to be king here was to turn on Alfred and, if the dead man had spoken truly, to put Alfred’s drunken nephew on the throne of Wessex, and how long would Æthelwold last? Less than a year, I reckoned, before the Danes killed him, and then all England would be under Danish rule except for Mercia where I, a Saxon who thought like a Dane, would be king. And how long would the Danes tolerate me?
‘Do you want to be a king?’ Gisela had asked me the night before we rode.
‘I never thought I did,’ I answered cautiously.
‘Then why go?’
I had stared into the fire. ‘Because the dead man brings a message from the Fates,’ I told her.
She had touched her amulet. ‘The Fates can’t be avoided,’ she said softly. Wyrd bið ful ãræd.
‘So I must go,’ I said, ‘because fate demands it. And because I want to see a dead man talk.’
‘And if the dead man says you are to be a king?’
‘Then you will be a queen,’ I said.
‘And you will fight Alfred?’ Gisela asked.
‘If the Fates say so,’ I said.
‘And your oath to him?’
‘The Fates know that answer,’ I said, ‘but I don’t.’
And now we rode beneath beech-covered hills that slanted east and north. We spent the night in a deserted farm and one of us was always awake. Nothing disturbed us and, in the dawn, under a sky the colour of sword-steel, we rode on. Huda led, mounted on one of my horses. I talked to him for a while to discover that he was a huntsman and that he had served a Saxon lord killed by Eilaf, and that he reckoned himself content under the Dane’s lordship. His replies became surlier and shorter as we neared Wæclingastræt so, after a while, I dropped back to ride beside Finan. ‘Trust him?’ Finan asked, nodding at Huda.
I shrugged. ‘His master does Sigefrid and Haesten’s bidding,’ I said, ‘and I know Haesten. I saved his life and that means something.’
Finan thought about it. ‘You saved his life? How?’
‘I rescued him from some Frisians. He became my oath-man.’
‘And broke his oath?’
‘He did.’
‘So Haesten can’t be trusted,’ Finan said firmly. I said nothing. Three deer stood poised for flight at the far side of a bare pasture. We rode on an overgrown track beside a hedgerow where crocuses grew. ‘What they want,’ Finan went on, ‘is Wessex. And to take Wessex they must fight. And they know you are Alfred’s greatest warrior.’
‘What they want,’ I said, ‘is the burh at Coccham.’ And to get it they would offer me the crown of Mercia, though I had not revealed that offer to Finan or to any other man. I had only told Gisela.
Of course they wanted much more. They wanted Lundene because it gave them a walled town on the Temes, but Lundene was on the Mercian bank and would not help them invade Wessex. But if I gave them Coccham then they were on the river’s south bank and they could use Coccham as a base to raid deep into Wessex. At the very least Alfred would pay them to leave Coccham and so they would make much silver even if they failed to dislodge him from the throne.
But Sigefrid, Erik and Haesten, I reckoned, were not after mere silver. Wessex was the prize, and to gain Wessex they needed men. Guthrum would not help them, Mercia was riven between Dane and Saxon and could supply few men willing to leave their homes unguarded, but beyond Mercia was Northumbria, and Northumbria had a Danish king who commanded the loyalty of a great Danish warrior. The king was Gisela’s brother and the warrior, Ragnar, was my friend. By buying me they believed they could bring Northumbria into their war. The Danish north would conquer the Saxon south. That was what they wanted. That was what the Danes had wanted all my life. And all I needed to do was break my oath to Alfred and become king in Mercia, and the land that some called England would become Daneland. That, I reckoned, was why the dead man had summoned me.
We came to Wæclingastræt at sunset. The Romans had strengthened the road with a gravel bed and stone edges, and some of their masonry still showed through the pale winter grass beside which a moss-grown milestone read Durocobrivis V. ‘What’s Durocobrivis?’ I asked Huda.
‘We call it Dunastopol,’ he said with a shrug to indicate that the place was negligible.
We crossed the street. In a well-governed country I might have expected to see guards patrolling the road to protect travellers, but there were none in sight here. There were just crows flying to a nearby wood and silvered clouds stretching across the western sky while ahead of us the darkness lay swollen and heavy above East Anglia. Low hills lay to the north, towards Dunastopol, and Huda led us towards those hills and up a long shallow valley where bare apple trees stood stark in the gloom. Night had fallen by the time we reached Eilaf’s hall.
Eilaf’s men greeted me as though I were already a king. Servants waited at the gate of his palisade to take our horses, and another knelt at the doorway of the hall to offer me a bowl of washing water and a cloth to dry my hands. A steward took my two swords, the long-bladed Serpent-Breath and the gut-ripper called Wasp-Sting. He took them respectfully, as if he regretted the custom that no man could carry a blade inside a hall, but that was a good custom. Blades and ale do not mix well.
The hall was crowded. There were at least forty men there, most in mail or leather, standing either side of the central hearth where a great fire blazed to fill the beamed roof with smoke. Some of the men bowed as I entered, others just stared at me as I walked to greet my host, who stood with his wife and two sons beside the hearth. Haesten was beside them, grinning. A servant brought me a horn of ale.
‘Lord Uhtred!’ Haesten greeted me loudly so that every man and woman in the hall would know who I was. Haesten’s grin was somehow mischievous, as if he and I shared a secret joke in this hall. He had hair the colour of gold, a square face, bright eyes and was wearing a tunic of fine wool dyed green, above which hung a thick chain of silver. His arms were heavy with rings of silver and gold, while silver brooches were pinned to his long boots. ‘It is good to see you, lord,’ he said, and gave me a hint of a bow.
‘Still alive, Haesten?’ I asked, ignoring my host.
‘Still alive, lord,’ he said.
‘And no wonder,’ I said, ‘the last time I saw you was at Ethandun.’
‘A rainy day, lord, as I remember,’ he said.
‘And you were running like a hare, Haesten,’ I said.
I saw the shadow cross his face. I had accused him of cowardice, but he deserved an attack from me for he had sworn to be my man and had betrayed his oath by deserting me.
Eilaf, sensing trouble, cleared his throat. He was a heavy man, tall, with hair the brightest red I have ever seen. It was curly, and his beard was curly, and both were flame-coloured. Eilaf the Red, he was called, and though he was tall and heavy-set, he somehow seemed smaller than Haesten, who had a sublime confidence in his own abilities. ‘You are welcome, Lord Uhtred,’ Eilaf said.
I ignored him. Haesten was watching me, his face still clouded, but then I grinned. ‘Yet all Guthrum’s army ran that day,’ I said, ‘and the ones who didn’t are all dead. So I am glad that I saw you run.’
He smiled then. ‘I killed eight men at Ethandun,’ he said, eager for his men to know that he was no coward.
‘Then I am relieved I did not face your sword,’ I said, recovering my earlier insult with insincere flattery. Then I turned to the red-headed Eilaf. ‘And you,’ I asked, ‘were you at Ethandun?’
‘No, lord,’ he said.
‘Then you missed a rare fight,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that so, Haesten? A fight to remember!’
‘A massacre in the rain, lord,’ Haesten said.
‘And I still limp from it,’ I said, which was true, though the limp was small and hardly inconvenient.
I was named to three other men, three Danes. All of them were dressed well and had arm rings to show their prowess. I forget their names now, but they were there to see me, and they had brought their followers with them. I understood as Haesten made the introductions that he was showing me off. He was proving that I had joined him, and that it was therefore safe for them to join him. Haesten was brewing rebellion in that hall. I drew him to one side. ‘Who are they?’ I demanded.
‘They have lands and men in this part of Guthrum’s kingdom.’
‘And you want their men?’
‘We must make an army,’ Haesten said simply.
I gazed down at him. This rebellion, I thought, was not just against Guthrum of East Anglia, but against Alfred of Wessex, and if it was to succeed then all Britain would need be roused by sword, spear and axe. ‘And if I refuse to join you?’ I asked him
‘You will, lord,’ he said confidently.
‘I will?’ I asked.
‘Because tonight, lord, the dead will speak to you.’ Haesten smiled, and just then Eilaf intervened to say that all was ready. ‘We shall raise the dead,’ Haesten said dramatically, touching the hammer amulet about his neck, ‘and then we shall feast.’ He gestured towards the door at the back of the hall. ‘This way, if you will, lord. This way.’
And so I went to meet the dead.
Haesten led us into the darkness and I remember thinking how easy it was to say the dead rose and spoke if the thing was done in such darkness. How would we know? We could hear the corpse perhaps, but not see him, and I was about to protest when two of Eilaf’s men came from the hall with burning brands that flared bright in the damp night. They led us past a pen of pigs and the beasts’ eyes caught the firelight. It had rained while we were in the hall, just a passing winter shower, but water still dripped from the bare branches. Finan, nervous at the sorcery we were about to witness, stayed close to me.
We followed a path downhill to a small pasture beside what I took to be a barn, and there the torches were thrust into waiting heaps of wood that caught the fire fast so that the flames leaped up to illuminate the barn’s wooden wall and wet thatch. As the light brightened I saw that it was not a pasture at all, but a graveyard. The small field was dotted with low earth heaps, and was well fenced to stop animals rooting up the dead.
‘That was our church,’ Huda explained. He had appeared beside me and nodded at what I had assumed was the barn.
‘You’re a Christian?’ I asked.
‘Yes, lord. But we have no priest now.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘Our dead go to their rest unshriven.’
‘I have a son in a Christian graveyard,’ I said, and wondered why I had said it. I rarely thought of my dead infant son. I had not known him. His mother and I were estranged. Yet I remembered him on that dark night in that wet place of the dead. ‘Why is a Danish skald buried in a Christian grave?’ I asked Huda. ‘You told me he was no Christian.’
‘He died here, lord, and we buried him before we knew that. Maybe that is why he is restless?’
‘Maybe,’ I said, then heard the struggle behind me and wished I had thought to ask for my swords before I left Eilaf’s hall.
I turned, expecting an attack, and instead saw that two men were dragging a third towards us. The third man was slight, young and fair-haired. His eyes looked huge in the flamelight. He was whimpering. The men who dragged him were much bigger and his struggles were useless. I looked quizzically at Haesten.
‘To raise the dead, lord,’ he explained, ‘we have to send a messenger across the gulf.’
‘Who is he?’
‘A Saxon,’ Haesten said carelessly.
‘He deserves to die?’ I asked. I was not squeamish about death, but I sensed Haesten would kill like a child drowning a mouse and I did not want a man’s death on my conscience if that man had not deserved to die. This was not battle, where a man stood a chance of going to the eternal joys of Odin’s hall.
‘He’s a thief,’ Haesten said.
‘Twice a thief,’ Eilaf added.
I crossed to the young man and lifted his head by raising his chin, and so saw that he had the brand-mark of a convicted robber burned into his forehead. ‘What did you steal?’ I asked him.
‘A coat, lord,’ he spoke in a whisper. ‘I was cold.’
‘Was that the first theft?’ I asked, ‘or the second?’
‘The first was a lamb,’ Eilaf said behind me.
‘I was hungry, lord,’ the young man said, ‘and my child was starving.’
‘You stole twice,’ I said, ‘which means you must die.’ That was the law even in this lawless place. The young man was weeping, yet still stared at me. He thought I might relent and order his life spared, but I turned away. I have stolen many things in my life, almost all of them more valuable than any lamb or coat, but I steal while the owner is watching and while he can defend his property with his sword. It is the thief who steals in the dark who deserves to die.
Huda was making the sign of the cross again and again. He was nervous. The young thief shouted incomprehensible words at me until one of his guards slapped him hard across the mouth, and then he just hung his head and cried. Finan and my three Saxons were clutching the crosses they wore about their necks.
‘You are ready, lord?’ Haesten asked me.
‘Yes,’ I said, trying to sound confident, yet in truth I was as nervous as Finan. There is a curtain between our world and the lands of the dead and part of me wished that curtain to stay closed. I instinctively felt for Serpent-Breath’s hilt, but of course she was not with me.
‘Put the message in his mouth,’ Haesten ordered. One of the guards tried to open the young man’s mouth, but the prisoner resisted until a knife stabbed at his lips and then he opened wide. An object was pushed onto his tongue. ‘A harp string,’ Haesten explained to me, ‘and Bjorn will know its meaning. Kill him now,’ he added to the guards.
‘No!’ the young man shouted, spitting out the coiled string. He started screaming and weeping as the two men dragged him to one of the earth mounds. They stood either side of the mound, holding their prisoner over the grave. The moon was silvering a gap in the clouds. The churchyard smelt of new rain. ‘No, please, no,’ the young man was shaking, crying. ‘I have a wife, I have children, no! Please!’
‘Kill him,’ Eilaf the Red ordered.
One of the guards pushed the harp string back into the messenger’s mouth, then held the jaw shut. He tilted the young man’s head back, hard back, exposing his throat and the second Dane slit it with a quick, practised thrust and a wrenching pull. I heard a stifled, guttural sound and saw the blood flicker black in the flamelight. It spattered the two men, fell across the grave and slapped wetly onto the damp grass. The messenger’s body twitched and struggled for a while as the blood flow became weaker. Then, at last, the young man slumped between his captors who let his last blood drops spurt weakly onto the grave. Only when no more blood flowed did they drag him away, dropping his corpse beside the graveyard’s wooden fence. I was holding my breath. None of us moved. An owl, its wings astonishingly white in the night, flew close above me and I instinctively touched my hammer amulet, convinced I had seen the thief’s soul going to the other world.
Haesten stood close to the blood-soaked grave. ‘You have blood, Bjorn!’ he shouted. ‘I have given you a life! I have sent you a message!’
Nothing happened. The wind sighed on the church’s thatch. Somewhere a beast moved in the darkness and then went still. A log collapsed in one of the fires and the sparks flew upwards.
