Death of Kings Read online

  I slapped the stone hard and the blow left a spatter of blood drops radiating from a crude daub of a hand-print defaced by the red cross.

  ‘Now be silent,’ Ælfadell said, and shrugged off her cloak.

  She was naked. Thin, pale, ugly, old, shrivelled and naked. Her breasts were flaps of skin, her skin wrinkled and spotted, and her arms scrawny. She reached up and released her hair that had been twisted at the nape of her neck so that the grey-black strands fell about her shoulders in the fashion of a young unmarried girl. She was a parody of a woman, she was the galdricge, and I shuddered to look at her. She seemed unaware of my gaze, but stared at the blood, which gleamed under the flames. She touched the blood with a finger as crooked as any claw, smearing it across the smooth stone. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, and there seemed genuine curiosity in her voice.

  ‘You know who I am,’ I said.

  ‘Kjartan of Cumbraland,’ she said. She made a noise in her throat that might have been laughter, then moved the bloodstained claw to touch the cup. ‘Drink that, Kjartan of Cumbraland,’ she said, saying the name with sour mockery, ‘drink all of it!’

  I lifted the cup and drank. It tasted foul. Bitter and rank. It was throat-curdling and I drank it all.

  And Ælfadell laughed.

  I remember little of that night, and much of what I do remember I wish I could forget.

  I woke naked, cold and tied. My ankles and my wrists were strapped with leather thongs that had been knotted together to drag my hands down to my ankles. A faint grey light seeped through the crevice and tunnel to illuminate the big cave. The floor was pale with bat shit and my skin was smeared with my own vomit. Ælfadell, crooked and dark in her black cloak, was crouched over my mail, my two swords, my helmet, my hammer and my clothes. ‘You’re awake, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said. She pawed through my possessions. ‘And you are thinking,’ she went on, ‘that I would be easy to kill.’

  ‘I’m thinking you would be easy to kill, woman,’ I said. My voice was a dry-mouthed croak. I pulled at the leather bindings, but only managed to hurt my wrists.

  ‘I can tie knots, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said. She picked up the hammer of Thor and swung it on its leather thong. ‘A cheap amulet for a great lord.’ She cackled. She was bent, stooped and disgusting. Her claw-like hand tugged Serpent-Breath from its scabbard and she carried the blade towards me. ‘I should kill you, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said. She scarcely had the strength to lift the great blade, which she rested on one of my bent knees.

  ‘Why don’t you?’ I asked.

  She peered at me. ‘Are you wiser now?’ she asked. I said nothing. ‘You came for wisdom,’ she went on, ‘so did you find it?’

  Somewhere far beyond the cave a cock crowed. I tugged at the bonds again, and again could not loosen them. ‘Cut the bindings,’ I said.

  She laughed at that. ‘I am not a fool, Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’

  ‘You haven’t killed me,’ I said, ‘and that might be foolish.’

  ‘True,’ she agreed. She slid the sword forward so its tip touched my breast. ‘Did you find wisdom in your night, Uhtred?’ she asked, then smiled with her rotted teeth. ‘Your night of pleasure?’ I tried to throw the sword off by rolling on my side, but she kept it on my skin, drawing blood with the tip. She was amused. I was on my side now and she rested the blade on my hip. ‘You moaned in the dark, Uhtred. You moaned with pleasure, or have you forgotten?’

  I remembered the girl coming to me in the night. A dark girl, black-haired, slender and beautiful, lithe as a willow-wand, a girl who had smiled as she rode above me, her light hands touching my face and chest, a girl who had bent herself backwards as my hands caressed her breasts. I remembered her thighs pressing on my hips, the touch of her fingers on my cheeks. ‘I remember a dream,’ I said surlily.

  Ælfadell rocked on her heels, rocked back and forth in an obscene reminder of what the dark girl had done in the night. The flat of the sword slid on my hip bone. ‘It was no dream,’ she said, mocking me.

  I wanted to kill her then, and she knew it and the knowledge made her laugh. ‘Others have tried to kill me,’ she said. ‘The priests came for me once. There was a score of them, led by the old abbot with a flaming torch. They were praying aloud, calling me a heathen witch, and their bones are still rotting in the valley. I have sons, you see. It is good for a mother to have sons because there is no love like a mother has for her sons. Have you forgotten that love, Uhtred of Bebbanburg?’

  ‘Another dream,’ I said.

  ‘No dream,’ Ælfadell said, and I remembered my mother cradling me in the night, rocking me, giving me her breast to suck, and I could remember the pleasure of that moment, and the tears when I knew it had to be a dream for my mother had died giving birth to me and I had never known her.

  Ælfadell smiled. ‘From now on, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said, ‘I shall think of you as a son.’ I wanted to kill her again and she knew it and she mocked me with laughter. ‘Last night,’ she said, ‘the goddess came to you. She showed you all your life, and all your future, and all the wide world of men and what will happen to it. Have you forgotten already?’

  ‘The goddess came?’ I asked. I remembered talking incessantly, and I remembered the sadness when my mother left me, and I remembered the dark girl saddling me, and I remembered feeling sick and drunk, and I remembered a dream in which I had flown above the world by riding the winds as a long-hulled ship rides the waves of the sea, but I remembered no goddess. ‘Which goddess?’ I asked.

  ‘Erce, of course,’ she said as though the question were foolish. ‘You know of Erce? She knows you.’

  Erce was one of the ancient goddesses who had been in Britain when our people came from across the sea. I knew she was worshipped still in country places, an earth-mother, a giver of life, a goddess. ‘I know of Erce,’ I said.

  ‘You know there are gods,’ Ælfadell said, ‘and in that you are not so foolish. The Christians think one god will serve all men and women, and how can that be? Could one shepherd protect every sheep in all the world?’

  ‘The old abbot tried to kill you?’ I asked. I had twisted onto my right side so my tied hands were hidden from her and I was grinding the leather bonds against a ridge of stone, hoping they would part. I could only make the smallest of movements in case she noticed, and I had to keep her talking. ‘The old abbot tried to kill you?’ I asked again. ‘Yet now the monks protect you?’

  ‘The new abbot is no fool,’ she said. ‘He knows Jarl Cnut would flay him alive if he touched me, so instead he serves me.’

  ‘He doesn’t mind you’re not a Christian?’ I asked.

  ‘He likes the money Erce brings him,’ she sneered, ‘and he knows Erce lives in this cave and that she protects me. And now Erce waits for your answer. Are you wiser?’

  I said nothing again, puzzled by the question, and it angered her.

  ‘Do I mumble?’ she snarled. ‘Has stupidity furred your ears and stuffed your brain with pus?’

  ‘I remember nothing,’ I said untruthfully.

  That made her laugh. She squatted on her haunches, the sword still resting on my hip, and started to rock backwards and forwards again. ‘Seven kings will die, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, seven kings and the women you love. That is your fate. And Alfred’s son will not rule and Wessex will die and the Saxon will kill what he loves and the Danes will gain everything, and all will change and all will be the same as ever it was and ever will be. There, you see, you are wiser.’

  ‘Who is the Saxon?’ I asked. I was still dragging my bound wrists on the stone, but nothing seemed to be fraying or loosening.

  ‘The Saxon is the king who will destroy what he rules. Erce knows all, Erce sees all.’

  A scuffle of feet in the entrance passage gave me a moment’s hope, but instead of my men appearing it was three monks who ducked into the cave’s gloom. Their leader was an elderly man with wild white hair and sunken cheeks, who stared at me, then at Ælfadell, then back to me. �
��It’s really him?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s Uhtred of Bebbanburg, it’s my son,’ Ælfadell said, then laughed.

  ‘Good God,’ the monk said. For a moment he looked frightened, and that was why I still lived. Both Ælfadell and the monk knew I was Cnut’s enemy, but they did not know what Cnut wanted of me and they feared that to kill me would offend their lord. The white-haired monk came towards me, gingerly, frightened of what I might do. ‘Are you Uhtred?’ he asked.

  ‘I am Kjartan of Cumbraland,’ I said.

  Ælfadell cackled. ‘He is Uhtred,’ she said. ‘Erce’s drink does not lie. He babbled like a baby in the night.’

  The monk was frightened of me because my life and death were beyond his comprehension. ‘Why did you come here?’ he asked.

  ‘To discover the future,’ I said. I could feel blood between my hands. My rubbing had opened the scabs on the cuts Ælfadell had inflicted on my palm.

  ‘He learned the future,’ Ælfadell said, ‘the future of dead kings.’

  ‘Did it tell of my death?’ I asked her, and for the first time saw doubt on that wrinkled-hag face.

  ‘We must send to Jarl Cnut,’ the monk said.

  ‘Kill him,’ one of the younger monks said. He was a tall, strongly-built man with a hard long face, a hook of a nose and cruel unforgiving eyes. ‘The jarl will want him dead.’

  The older monk was uncertain. ‘We don’t know the jarl’s will, Brother Hearberht.’

  ‘Kill him! He’ll reward you. Reward us all.’ Brother Hearberht was right, but the gods had filled the others with doubt.

  ‘The jarl must decide,’ the older monk said.

  ‘It will take three days to fetch an answer,’ Hearberht said caustically, ‘and what do you do with him for three days? He has his men in the town. Too many men.’

  ‘We take him to the jarl?’ the older monk suggested. He was desperate for an answer, flailing at any solution that might spare him from making a decision.

  ‘For the sake of God,’ Hearberht snapped. He strode to the pile of my possessions, stooped, and straightened with Wasp-Sting in his hand. The short blade caught the wan light. ‘What do you do with a cornered wolf?’ he demanded, and came towards me.

  And I used all my strength, all that strength that years of sword and shield practice had put into my bones and muscle, the years of war and readying for war, and I thrust my bent legs and pulled my arms, and I felt the bonds loosening and I was rolling back, throwing the blade off my hip, and I started to shout, a great war shout of a warrior and reached for Serpent-Breath’s hilt.

  Ælfadell tried to pull the sword away, but she was old and slow, and I was bellowing to fill the cave with echoes and I seized the hilt and swung the blade to drive her back, and Hearberht checked as I rose to my feet. I half stumbled, the bonds still wrapped about my ankles, and Hearberht saw his opening and came in fast, the short blade held low ready to rip up into my naked belly and I swatted it aside and fell on him. He went backwards and I stood again and he hacked the blade at my bare legs, but I parried him and then stabbed down with Serpent-Breath, my sword, my lover, my blade, my war companion, and she gutted that monk like a fish under a razor-edged knife, and his blood spread on his black robe and turned the bat shit black, and I went on ripping her, unaware that I was still shouting to fill the cave with rage.

  Hearberht was squealing and shaking and dying, and the other two monks were fleeing. I ripped the bonds off my ankles and pursued them. Serpent-Breath’s hilt was slippery with my blood, and she was hungry.

  I caught them in the woods, not fifty paces from the cave’s mouth, and I felled the younger monk with a blow to the back of his head, then caught the older by his robe. I turned him to face me and smelt the fear that fouled his robe. ‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said, ‘and who are you?’

  ‘Abbot Deorlaf, lord,’ he said, falling to his knees and holding his clasped hands towards me, and I held him by the throat and buried Serpent-Breath in his belly, and I sawed her there, opening him up, and he mewed like an animal and wept like a child and called on Jesus the Redeemer as he died in his own dung. I cut the younger monk’s throat, then went back to the cave where I washed Serpent-Breath’s blade in the stream.

  ‘Erce did not foretell your death,’ Ælfadell said. She had screamed when I tore the bonds off my wrists and seized the sword from her, yet now she was oddly calm. She just watched me and was apparently unafraid.

  ‘Is that why you didn’t kill me?’

  ‘She didn’t foretell my death either,’ she said.

  ‘Then maybe she was wrong,’ I said, and fetched Wasp-Sting from Hearberht’s dead hand.

  And that was when I saw her.

  From a deeper cave, from a passage that led into the netherworld, Erce came. She was a girl of such beauty that the breath stopped in my lungs. The dark-haired girl who had ridden me in the night, the long-haired girl, slender and pale, so beautiful and calm and as naked as the blade in my hand and all I could do was stare at her. I could not move, and she gazed back at me with grave, large eyes and she said nothing and I said nothing until the breath caught in me again. ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Dress yourself,’ Ælfadell said, whether to me or the girl I could not tell.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked the girl, but she was still and silent.

  ‘Dress yourself, Lord Uhtred!’ Ælfadell ordered, and I obeyed her. I pulled on my jerkin, my boots, my mail and strapped my swords at my waist, and still the girl gazed at me with her quiet, dark eyes. She was as beautiful as the summer dawn and as silent as the winter night. She did not smile, her face showed nothing. I walked towards her and sensed something strange. The Christians say we have a soul, whatever that is, and it seemed to me this girl had no soul. There was an emptiness in her dark eyes. It was frightening, making me approach her slowly.

  ‘No!’ Ælfadell called. ‘You cannot touch her! You have seen Erce in the daylight. No other man has.’

  ‘Erce?’

  ‘Go,’ she said, ‘go.’ She dared to stand in front of me. ‘You dreamed last night,’ she said, ‘and in your dream you found truth. Be content with that, and go.’

  ‘Speak to me,’ I said to the girl, but she was unmoving and silent and empty, yet I could not take my eyes from her. I would have looked on her for all the rest of my life. The Christians talk of miracles, of men walking on water and raising the dead, and they say those miracles are proofs of their religion, though none of them can do a miracle or show us a miracle, yet here, in this damp cave beneath the hilltop grave, I saw a miracle. I saw Erce.

  ‘Go,’ Ælfadell said, and though she spoke to me it was the goddess who turned and vanished into the underworld.

  I did not kill the old woman. I went. I dragged the dead monks into some brambles where perhaps the wild beasts would feast on them, and then I stooped to the stream and drank like a dog.

  ‘What did the witch tell you?’ Osferth asked me when I reached the widow’s farm.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, and my tone discouraged further questions, all except one. ‘Where are we going, lord?’ Osferth asked.

  ‘We’re going south,’ I said, still in a daze.

  And so we rode towards Sigurd’s land.

  Four

  I had told Ælfadell my name, and what else? Had I told her my idea for revenge on Sigurd? And why had I talked so much? Ludda gave me an answer as we rode south. ‘There are herbs and mushrooms, lord, and there’s the blight you find on ears of rye, all kinds of things can give men dreams. My mother used them.’

  ‘She was a sorceress?’

  He shrugged. ‘A wise-woman, anyway. She told fortunes and made potions.’

  ‘And the potion Ælfadell gave me, that made me speak my name?’

  ‘Maybe it was rye-blight? You’re lucky to be alive if it was. Get it wrong and you kill the dreamer, but if she knew how to make it then you’ll have gabbled like an old woman, lord.’

  And who knows what else I had revealed
to the aglæcwif? I felt like a fool. ‘Does she really speak to the gods?’ I had told Ludda about Ælfadell, but not about Erce. I wanted to hold that secret close, a memory to haunt me.

  ‘Some folk claim to talk to the gods,’ Ludda said uncertainly.

  ‘And see the future?’

  He shifted in his saddle. Ludda was not accustomed to riding a horse, and the journey had given him a sore arse and aching thighs. ‘If she really saw the future, lord, would she be in a cave? She’d have a palace. Kings would crawl to her feet.’

  ‘Maybe the gods only talk to her in the cave,’ I suggested.

  Ludda heard the anxiety in my voice. ‘Lord,’ he said earnestly, ‘if you roll the dice often enough you always get the numbers you want. If I tell you the sun will shine tomorrow and that it will rain and there will be snow and that clouds will cover the sky and that the wind will blow and that it will be a calm day and that the thunder will deafen us then one of those things will turn out to be true and you’ll forget the rest because you want to believe that I really can tell the future.’ He gave me a swift smile. ‘Folk don’t buy rusty iron because I’m persuasive, lord, but because they desperately want to believe it will turn to silver.’

  And I desperately wanted to believe his doubts about Ælfadell. She had said Wessex was doomed and that seven kings would die, but what did that mean? What kings? Alfred of Wessex, Edward of Cent, Eohric of East Anglia? Who else? And who was the Saxon? ‘She knew who I was,’ I said to Ludda.

  ‘Because you had drunk her potion, lord. It was as if you were drunk and saying anything that came into your mind.’

  ‘And she tied me up,’ I told him, ‘but didn’t kill me.’

  ‘God be praised,’ Ludda said dutifully. I doubted he was a Christian, at least not a good one, but he was too clever to fall foul of the priests. He frowned in puzzlement. ‘I wonder why she didn’t kill you.’

  ‘She was frightened to,’ I said, ‘and so was the abbot.’