The Burning Land sc-5 Read online

  Torneie was close to Lundene and, with thirty men on the oars, we reached the River Colaun before midday. We rowed slowly up the smaller river, but there was little to be seen. Harald’s men, they numbered fewer than three hundred, had made an earth wall topped by a thick thorn palisade. Spears showed above that spiny obstacle, but no roofs, because Torneie had no timber with which to make houses. The river flowed sluggish either side of the island, and was edged by marshland, beyond which I could see the twin camps of the Saxon forces that besieged the island. Two ships were moored in the river, both manned by Mercians, their job to prevent any supplies reaching the trapped Danes. “There’s your lover,” I told Skade, pointing to the thorns.

  I ordered Ralla, who was steering the ship, to take us as close as he could to the island, and, when our bows were almost touching the reeds, I dragged Skade to the bows. “There’s your one-legged, impotent lover,” I told Skade. A handful of Danes had deserted, and they reported that Harald had been wounded in the left leg and groin. Wasp-Sting had evidently struck him beneath the skirt of his mail, and I remembered the blade striking bone and how I had forced it harder so that the steel had slid up his thigh, ripping muscles and opening blood vessels, and ended in his groin. The leg had turned rotten and had been cut off. He still lived, and perhaps it was his hatred and fervor that gave life to his men, who now faced the bleakest of futures.

  Skade said nothing. She gazed at the thorn wall above which a few spear-points showed. She was dressed in a slave’s tunic, belted tight around her thin waist.

  “They’ve eaten their horses,” I told her, “and they catch eels, frogs, and fish.”

  “They will live,” she said dully.

  “They’re trapped,” I said scornfully, “and this time Alfred won’t pay bright gold for them to go away. When they starve this winter, they’ll surrender, and Alfred will kill them all. One by one, woman.”

  “They will live,” she insisted.

  “You see the future?”

  “Yes,” she said, and I touched Thor’s hammer.

  I hated her, and I found it hard to take my eyes from her. She had been given the gift of beauty, yet it was the beauty of a weapon. She was sleek, hard and shining. Even as a degraded captive, unwashed and dressed in rags, she shone. Her face was bony, but softened by lips and by the thickness of her hair. My men gazed at her. They wanted me to give her to them as a plaything, and then kill her. She was reckoned to be a Danish sorceress, as dangerous as she was desirable, and I knew it was her curse that had killed my Gisela, and Alfred would not have objected had I executed her, yet I could not kill her. She fascinated me.

  “You can go to them,” I said.

  She turned her big, dark eyes onto me, said nothing.

  “Jump overboard,” I said. We were not that far from Torneie’s shelving bank. She might have to swim a couple of paces, but then she would be able to wade ashore. “Can you swim?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go to him,” I said, and waited. “Don’t you want to be Queen of Wessex?” I sneered.

  She looked back to the bleak island. “I dream,” she told me quietly, “and in my dreams Loki comes to me.”

  Loki was the trickster god, the nuisance in Asgard, the god who deserved death. The Christians talk of the serpent in paradise, and that was Loki. “He talks evil to you?” I asked.

  “He is sad,” she said, “and he talks. I comfort him.”

  “What has that to do with you jumping overboard?”

  “It is not my fate,” she said.

  “Loki told you that?”

  She nodded.

  “Did he tell you that you would be Queen of Wessex?”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “But Odin has more power,” I said, and wished Odin had thought to protect Gisela instead of Wessex, and then I wondered why the gods had allowed the Christians to win at Fearnhamme instead of letting their worshippers capture Wessex, but the gods are capricious, full of mischief, and none more so than the cunning Loki. “And what does Loki tell you to do now?” I asked harshly.

  “To submit.”

  “I have no need of you,” I said, “so jump. Swim. Go. Starve.”

  “It is not my fate,” she said again. Her voice was dull, as though there was no life in her soul.

  “What if I push you?”

  “You won’t,” she said confidently, and she was right. I left her in the bows as we turned the ship and let the swift current take us back to the Temes and Lundene. That night I released her from the storeroom that served as her prison. I told Finan she was not to be touched, she was not to be restrained, that she was free, and in the morning she was still in my courtyard, crouching, watching me, saying nothing.

  She became a kitchen slave. The other slaves and servants feared her. She was silent, baleful, as if the life had been drained from her. Most of my household were Christian and they made the sign of the cross when Skade crossed their path, but my orders that she was to be unmolested were obeyed. She could have left any time, but she stayed. She could have poisoned us, but no one fell ill.

  The autumn brought wet, cold winds. Envoys had been sent to the lands across the sea, and to the Welsh kingdoms, announcing that Haesten’s family was to be baptized and inviting envoys to witness the ceremony. Alfred evidently regarded Haesten’s willingness to sacrifice his wife and sons to Christianity as a victory to set alongside Fearnhamme, and he ordered that the streets of Lundene were to be hung with banners to welcome the Danes. Alfred came to the city late one afternoon in a seething rainstorm. He hurried to Bishop Erkenwald’s palace that lay beside the rebuilt church at the top of the hill, and that evening there was a service of thanksgiving that I refused to attend.

  Next morning I took my three children to the palace. Æthelred and Æthelflæd, who at least pretended to a happy marriage when ceremony demanded, had come to Lundene, and Æthelflæd had offered to let my three children play with her daughter. “Does that mean,” I asked her, “that you’re not going to the church?”

  “Of course I’m going,” she said, smiling, “if Haesten even arrives.” Every church bell in the city was ringing in anticipation of the arrival of the Danes, and crowds were gathering in the streets, despite a spitting cold rain that blew from the east.

  “He’s coming,” I said.

  “You know that?”

  “They left at dawn,” I said. I kept watchers on the mudflats of the widening Temes and the beacons had been lit at first light, signaling that ships had left Beamfleot’s creek and were heading upriver.

  “He’s only doing it,” Æthelflæd said, “so my father doesn’t attack him.”

  “He’s a weasel’s earsling,” I said.

  “He wants East Anglia,” she said. “Eohric’s a weak king and Haesten would like his crown.”

  “Maybe,” I said dubiously, “but he’d prefer Wessex.”

  She shook her head. “My husband has an informer in his encampment and he’s certain Haesten plans an attack on Grantaceaster.”

  Grantaceaster was where East Anglia’s new Danish king had his capital, and a successful attack might well give Haesten the throne of East Anglia. He certainly wanted a throne, and all reports said that Eohric was a feeble ruler, but Alfred had made a treaty with Guthrum, the previous king, which agreed that Wessex would not interfere in East Anglia’s affairs, so if Haesten’s ambition was to take that throne, why should he need to placate Alfred? Haesten really wanted Wessex, of course, but Fearnhamme would have persuaded him that it was far too difficult an ambition. Then I remembered the one vacant throne, and it all made sense to me. “I think he’s more interested in Mercia,” I said.

  Æthelflæd considered that idea, then shook her head. “He knows he’d have to fight both us and Wessex to conquer Mercia. And my husband’s spy is certain it’s East Anglia.”

  “We’ll see.”

  She glanced into the next room where the children were playing with carved wooden toys. “Uhtred’s old en
ough to attend church,” she said.

  “I’m not raising him as a Christian,” I said firmly.

  She smiled at me, her lovely face momentarily showing the mischief I remembered from her childhood. “Dear Lord Uhtred,” she said, “still swimming against the current.”

  “And you, lady?” I asked, remembering how nearly she had fled with a pagan Dane.

  “I drift in my husband’s boat,” she sighed, then servants came to summon her to Æthelred’s side. Haesten, it seemed, was within sight of the city walls.

  He arrived in Dragon-Voyager, which he berthed at one of the decaying quays downstream of my house. He was greeted by Alfred and by Æthelred, both men wearing fur-trimmed robes and bronze coronets. Horns sounded and drummers beat out a swift rhythm that was spoiled when the rain became harder and made the drum skins soggy. Haesten, presumably advised by Willibald, wore no armor or weapons, though his long leather coat looked thick enough to withstand a sword thrust. His beard plaits were tied with leather laces and I swore a hammer amulet was tucked inside one of the braids. His wife and two sons were in penitential white and they walked barefoot in the procession that climbed Lundene’s hill. His wife was called Brunna, though on this day she would be given a new and Christian name. She was small and dumpy with nervous eyes that flickered left and right as though she expected an attack from the crowds that lined the narrow streets. I was surprised by her unattractive looks. Haesten was an ambitious man, eager to be recognized as one of the great warlords, and to such a man a wife’s appearance was as important as the splendor of his armor or the wealth of his followers, but Haesten had not married Brunna for her looks. He had married her because she had brought a dowry that had started him on his upward journey. She was his wife, but I guessed she was not his companion in bed, hall, or anywhere else. He was willing to have her baptized simply because she was not important to him, though Alfred, with his high-minded view of marriage, would never have comprehended such cynicism. As to Haesten’s sons, I doubt he took their baptism seriously and, just as soon as he got them away from Lundene, he would order them to forget the ceremony. Children are easily swayed by religion, which is why it is a good thing that most eventually grow into sense.

  Chanting monks led the procession, then came children with green boughs, more monks, a group of abbots and bishops, then Steapa and fifty men of the royal guard, who walked immediately in front of Alfred and his guests. Alfred walked slowly, clearly in discomfort, but he had refused the offer of a cart. His old wagon, which I had ditched outside Fearnhamme, had been recovered, but Alfred insisted on walking because he liked the humility of approaching his god on foot. He leaned on Æthelred sometimes, and so king and son-in-law limped painfully uphill together. Æthelflaed walked a pace behind her husband and, behind her and behind Haesten, were the emissaries from Wales and Frankia who had traveled to witness the miracle of this Danish conversion.

  Haesten hesitated before entering the church. I suspect he half thought it was an ambush, but Alfred encouraged him, and the Danes stepped gingerly inside to find nothing more threatening than a black-robed gaggle of monks. There was precious little room in the church. I had not wanted to be there, but a messenger from Alfred had insisted on my presence, and so I stood at the very back and watched the smoke rise from tall candles and listened to the chanting of the monks that, at times, was drowned by the sheer beat of rain on the thatched roof. A crowd had gathered in the small square outside, and a bedraggled priest stood on a stool in the sanctuary door to repeat Bishop Erkenwald’s words to the sopping people. The priest had to bellow to make himself heard above the wind and the rain.

  Three silver-hooped barrels stood in front of the altar, each half filled with water from the Temes. Brunna, looking completely confused, was persuaded to climb into the center barrel. She gave a small cry of horror as she dropped into the cold water, then stood shivering with her arms crossed over her breasts. Her two sons were unceremoniously dumped into the barrels on either side, then Bishop Erkenwald and Bishop Asser used ladles to scoop water over the frightened boys’ heads. “Behold the spirit descends!” Bishop Asser shouted as he drenched the lads. Both bishops then soaked Brunna’s hair and pronounced her new Christian name, Æthelbrun. Alfred beamed with delight. The three Danes stood shivering as a choir of white-robed children sang an endless song. I remember Haesten turning slowly to catch my eye. He raised an eyebrow and had a hard time suppressing a grin and I suspected he had enjoyed the watery humiliation of his plain-looking wife.

  Alfred talked with Haesten after the ceremony, and then the Danes left, laden down with gifts. Alfred gave them coins in a chest, a great silver crucifix, a gospel book, and a reliquary which held a finger bone of Saint Æthelburg, a saint who had apparently been drawn up to heaven by golden chains, but must have left at least one finger behind. The rain was pouring down even harder as Dragon-Voyager eased away from the quay. I heard Haesten snap an order at his oarsmen, the blades dug into the filthy Temes water, and the ship surged eastward.

  That night there was a feast to celebrate the great day’s events. Haesten, it seemed, had begged to be excused from the meal, which was discourteous of him as the food and ale were in his honor, but it was probably a wise decision. Men may not carry weapons in a royal hall, but the ale would doubtless have started fights between Haesten’s men and the Saxons. Alfred, anyway, took no offense. He was simply too happy. He might have seen his own death approaching, but he reckoned his god had granted him great gifts. He had seen Harald utterly defeated and watched as Haesten brought his family for baptism. “I will leave Wessex safe,” he told Bishop Erkenwald in my hearing.

  “I trust you will not leave us for many years to come, lord,” Erkenwald replied piously.

  Alfred patted the bishop’s shoulder. “That is in God’s hands, bishop.”

  “And God listens to his people’s prayers, lord.”

  “Then pray for my son,” Alfred said, turning to look at Edward, who sat uneasily at the top table.

  “I never cease to pray,” the bishop said.

  “Then pray now,” Alfred said happily, “and ask God to bless our feast!”

  Erkenwald waited for the king to seat himself at the high table, then he prayed loud and long, beseeching his god’s blessing on the food that was getting cold, and then thanking his god for the peace that now ensured the future of Wessex.

  But his god was not listening.

  It was the feast that started the trouble. I suppose the gods were bored with us; they looked down and saw Alfred’s happiness and decided, as the gods will, that it was time to roll the dice.

  We were in the great Roman palace, a building of brick and marble patched with Saxon thatch and wattle. There was a dais on which a throne usually sat, but now had a long trestle table hung with green linen cloths. Alfred sat in the center of the table’s long side, flanked by Ælswith, his wife, and Æthelflæd, his daughter. They were the only women present, other than servants. Æthelred sat beside Æthelflæd, while Edward sat beside his mother. The other six places at the high table were occupied by Bishop Erkenwald, Bishop Asser, and the most important envoys from other countries. A harpist sat to one side of the dais and chanted a long hymn of praise to Alfred’s god.

  Beneath the dais, between the hall’s pillars, were four more trestle tables where the guests ate. Those guests were a mixture of churchmen and warriors. I sat between Finan and Steapa in the darkest corner of the hall, and I confess I was in a foul temper. It seemed plain to me that Haesten had fooled Alfred. The king was one of the wisest men I ever knew, yet he had a weakness for his god, and it never occurred to him that there might have been a political calculation behind Haesten’s apparent concessions. To Alfred it simply seemed that his god had worked a miracle. He knew, of course, from his son-in-law and from his own spies, that Haesten had an ambition to take the throne of East Anglia, but that did not worry him because he had already conceded that country to Danish rule. He dreamed of recovering it, but he kn
ew what was possible and what was just aspiration. In those last years of his life Alfred always referred to himself as the King of the An gelcynn, King of the English folk, and by that he meant all the land in Britain where the Saxon languages were spoken, but he knew that title was a hope, not a reality. It had fallen to Alfred to make Wessex secure and to extend its authority over much of Mercia, but the rest of the Angelcynn were under Danish rule, and Alfred could do little about that. Yet he was proud that he had made Wessex strong enough to destroy Harald’s great army and to force Haesten to seek baptism for his family.

  I brooded on those things. Steapa growled conversation, which I hardly heard, and Finan made sour jokes at which I dutifully smiled, but all I wanted was to get out of that hall. Alfred’s feasts were never festive. The ale was in short supply and the entertainment was pious. Three monks chanted a long Latin prayer, then the children’s choir sang a ditty about being lambs of god, which made Alfred beam with pleasure. “Beautiful!” he exclaimed when the grubby-robed infants had finished their caterwauling. “Truly beautiful!” I thought he was about to demand another song from the children, but Bishop Asser leaned behind Ælswith and evidently suggested something that made Alfred’s eyes light up. “Brother Godwin,” he called down to the blind monk, “you haven’t sung for us in many weeks!”

  The young monk looked startled, but a table companion took him by the elbow and led him to the open space as the children, shepherded by a nun, were taken away. Brother Godwin stood alone as the harpist struck a series of chords on his horsehair strings. I thought the blind monk was not going to sing at all, because he made no sounds, but then he started to jerk his head backward and forward as the chords became swooping and eerie. Some men crossed themselves, then Brother Godwin began to make small whimpering noises. “He’s moon mad,” I muttered to Finan.