Читать книгу The Last Kingdom Series Books 4-6: Sword Song, The Burning Land, Death of Kings - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 15

The grave mound shifted.

I remember a coldness gripping my heart and terror consuming me, but I could neither breathe nor move. I stood fixed, watching, waiting for the horror.

The earth fell in slightly, as though a mole was scrabbling out of its small hill. More soil shifted and something grey appeared. The grey thing lurched and I saw the earth was falling away faster as the grey thing rose from the mound. It was in half darkness, for the fires were behind us and our shadows were cast across the phantom that was born out of that winter earth, a phantom that took shape as a filthy corpse that staggered out of its broken grave. I saw a dead man who twitched, half fell, struggled to find his balance and finally stood.

Finan gripped my arm. He had no idea he did such a thing. Huda was kneeling and clutching the cross at his neck. I was just staring.

And the corpse gave a coughing, choking noise like a man’s death rattle. Something spat from his mouth, and he choked again, then slowly unbent to stand fully upright and, in the shadowed flamelight, I saw that the dead man was dressed in a soiled grey winding sheet. He had a pale face streaked with dirt, a face untouched by any decay. His long hair lay lank and white on his thin shoulders. He breathed, but had trouble breathing, just as a dying man has trouble breathing. And that was right, I remember thinking, for this man was coming back from death and he would sound just as he had when he had taken his journey into death. He gave a long moan, then took something from his mouth. He threw it towards us and I took an involuntary step backwards before seeing that it was a coiled harp string. I knew then that the impossible thing I saw was real, for I had seen the guards force the harp string into the messenger’s mouth, and now the corpse had shown us that he had received the token. ‘You will not leave me in peace,’ the dead man spoke in a dry half-voice and beside me Finan made a sound that was like a despairing moan.

‘Welcome, Bjorn,’ Haesten said. Alone among us Haesten seemed unworried by the corpse’s living presence. There was even amusement in his voice.

‘I want peace,’ Bjorn said, his voice a croak.

‘This is the Lord Uhtred,’ Haesten said, pointing at me, ‘who has sent many good Danes to the place where you live.’

‘I do not live,’ Bjorn said bitterly. He began grunting and his chest heaved spasmodically as though the night air hurt his lungs. ‘I curse you,’ he said to Haesten, but so feebly that the words had no threat.

Haesten laughed. ‘I had a woman today, Bjorn. Do you remember women? The feel of their soft thighs? The warmth of their skin? You remember the noise they make when you ride them?’

‘May Hel kiss you through all time,’ Bjorn said, ‘till the last chaos.’ Hel was the goddess of the dead, a rotting corpse of a goddess, and the curse was dreadful, but Bjorn again spoke so dully that this second curse, like the first, was empty. The dead man’s eyes were closed, his chest still jerked and his hands made grasping motions at the cold air.

I was in terror and I do not mind confessing it. It is a certainty in this world that the dead go to their long homes in the earth and stay there. Christians say our corpses will all rise one day and the air will be filled with the calling of angels’ horns and the sky will glow like beaten gold as the dead come from the ground, but I have never believed that. We die and we go to the afterworld and we stay there, but Bjorn had come back. He had fought the winds of darkness and the tides of death and he had struggled back to this world and now he stood before us, gaunt and tall and filthy and croaking, and I was shivering. Finan had dropped to one knee. My other men were behind me, but I knew they would be shaking as I shook. Only Haesten seemed unaffected by the dead man’s presence. ‘Tell the Lord Uhtred,’ he commanded Bjorn, ‘what the Norns told you.’

The Norns are the Fates, the three women who spin life’s threads at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life. Whenever a child is born they start a new thread, and they know where it will go, with what other threads it will weave and how it will end. They know everything. They sit and they spin and they laugh at us, and sometimes they shower us with good fortune and sometimes they doom us to hurt and to tears.

‘Tell him,’ Haesten commanded impatiently, ‘what the Norns said of him.’

Bjorn said nothing. His chest heaved and his hands twitched. His eyes were closed.

‘Tell him,’ Haesten said, ‘and I will give you back your harp.’

‘My harp,’ Bjorn said pathetically, ‘I want my harp.’

‘I will put it back in your grave,’ Haesten said, ‘and you can sing to the dead. But first speak to Lord Uhtred.’

Bjorn opened his eyes and stared at me. I recoiled from those dark eyes, but made myself stare back, pretending a bravery I did not feel.

‘You are to be king, Lord Uhtred,’ Bjorn said, then gave a long moan like a creature in pain. ‘You are to be king,’ he sobbed.

The wind was cold. A spit of rain touched my cheek. I said nothing.

‘King of Mercia,’ Bjorn said in a sudden and surprisingly loud voice. ‘You are to be king of Saxon and of Dane, enemy of the Welsh, king between the rivers and lord of all you rule. You are to be mighty, Lord Uhtred, for the three spinners love you.’ He stared at me and, though the fate he pronounced was golden, there was a malevolence in his dead eyes. ‘You will be king,’ he said, and the last word sounded like poison on his tongue.

My fear passed then, to be replaced by a surge of pride and power. I did not doubt Bjorn’s message because the gods do not speak lightly, and the spinners know our fate. We Saxons say wyrd bið ful ãræd, and even the Christians accept that truth. They might deny that the three Norns exist, but they know that wyrd bið ful ãræd. Fate is inexorable. Fate cannot be changed. Fate rules us. Our lives are made before we live them, and I was to be King of Mercia.

I did not think of Bebbanburg at that moment. Bebbanburg is my land, my fortress beside the northern sea, my home. I believed my whole life was dedicated to recovering it from my uncle, who had stolen it from me when I was a child. I dreamed of Bebbanburg, and in my dreams I saw its rocks splintering the grey sea white and felt the gales tear at the hall thatch, but when Bjorn spoke I did not think of Bebbanburg. I thought of being a king. Of ruling a land. Of leading a great army to crush my enemies.

And I thought of Alfred, of the duty I owed him and the promises I had made him. I knew I must be an oath-breaker to be a king, but to whom are oaths made? To kings, and so a king has the power to release a man from an oath, and I told myself that as a king I could release myself from any oath, and all this whipped through my mind like a swirl of wind gusting across a threshing floor to spin the chaff up into the sky. I did not think clearly. I was as confused as the chaff spinning in the wind, and I did not weigh my oath to Alfred against my future as a king. I just saw two paths ahead, one hard and hilly, and the other a wide green way leading to a kingdom. And besides, what choice did I have? Wyrd bið ful ãræd.

Then, in the silence, Haesten suddenly knelt to me. ‘Lord King,’ he said, and there was unexpected reverence in his voice.

‘You broke an oath to me,’ I said harshly. Why did I say that then? I could have confronted him earlier, in the hall, but it was by that opened grave I made the accusation.

‘I did, lord King,’ he said, ‘and I regret it.’

I paused. What was I thinking? That I was a king already? ‘I forgive you,’ I said. I could hear my heartbeat. Bjorn just watched and the light of the flaming torches cast deep shadows on his face.

‘I thank you, lord King,’ Haesten said, and beside him Eilaf the Red knelt and then every man in that damp graveyard knelt to me.

‘I am not king yet,’ I said, suddenly ashamed of the lordly tones I had used to Haesten.

‘You will be, lord,’ Haesten said. ‘The Norns say so.’

I turned to the corpse. ‘What else did the three spinners say?’

‘That you will be king,’ Bjorn said, ‘and you will be the king of other kings. You will be lord of the land between the rivers and the scourge of your enemies. You will be king.’ He stopped suddenly and went into spasm, his upper body jerking forward and then the spasms stopped and he stayed motionless, bent forward, retching drily, before slowly crumpling onto the disturbed earth.

‘Bury him again,’ Haesten said harshly, rising from his knees and speaking to the men who had cut the Saxon’s throat.

‘His harp,’ I said.

‘I will return it to him tomorrow, lord,’ Haesten said, then gestured towards Eilaf’s hall. ‘There is food, lord King, and ale. And a woman for you. Two if you want.’

‘I have a wife,’ I said harshly.

‘Then there is food, ale and warmth for you,’ he said humbly. The other men stood. My warriors looked at me strangely, confused by the message they had heard, but I ignored them. King of other kings. Lord of the land between the rivers. King Uhtred.

I looked back once and saw the two men scraping at the soil to make Bjorn’s grave again, and then I followed Haesten into the hall and took the chair at the table’s centre, the lord’s chair, and I watched the men who had witnessed the dead rise, and I saw they were convinced as I was convinced, and that meant they would take their troops to Haesten’s side. The rebellion against Guthrum, the rebellion that was meant to spread across Britain and destroy Wessex, was being led by a dead man. I rested my head on my hands and I thought. I thought of being king. I thought of leading armies.

‘Your wife is Danish, I hear?’ Haesten interrupted my thoughts.

‘She is,’ I said.

‘Then the Saxons of Mercia will have a Saxon king,’ he said, ‘and the Danes of Mercia will have a Danish queen. They will both be happy.’

I raised my head and stared at him. I knew him to be clever and sly, but that night he was carefully subservient and genuinely respectful. ‘What do you want, Haesten?’ I asked him.

‘Sigefrid and his brother,’ he said, ignoring my question, ‘want to conquer Wessex.’

‘The old dream,’ I said scornfully.

‘And to do it,’ he said, disregarding my scorn, ‘we shall need men from Northumbria. Ragnar will come if you ask him.’

‘He will,’ I agreed.

‘And if Ragnar comes, others will follow.’ He broke a loaf of bread and pushed the greater part towards me. A bowl of stew was in front of me, but I did not touch it. Instead I began to crumble the bread, feeling for the granite chips that are left from the grindstone. I was not thinking about what I did, just keeping my hands busy while I watched Haesten.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

‘East Anglia,’ he said.

‘King Haesten?’

‘Why not?’ he said, smiling.

‘Why not, lord King,’ I retorted, provoking a wider smile.

‘King Æthelwold in Wessex,’ Haesten said, ‘King Haesten in East Anglia, and King Uhtred in Mercia.’

‘Æthelwold?’ I asked scornfully, thinking of Alfred’s drunken nephew.

‘He is the rightful King of Wessex, lord,’ Haesten said.

‘And how long will he live?’ I asked.

‘Not long,’ Haesten admitted, ‘unless he is stronger than Sigefrid.’

‘So it will be Sigefrid of Wessex?’ I asked.

Haesten smiled. ‘Eventually, lord, yes.’

‘What of his brother, Erik?’

‘Erik likes to be a Viking,’ Haesten said. ‘His brother takes Wessex and Erik takes the ships. Erik will be a sea king.’

So it would be Sigefrid of Wessex, Uhtred of Mercia and Haesten in East Anglia. Three weasels in a sack, I thought, but did not let the thought show. ‘And where,’ I asked instead, ‘does this dream begin?’

His smile went. He was serious now. ‘Sigefrid and I have men. Not enough, but the heart of a good army. You bring Ragnar south with the Northumbrian Danes and we’ll have more than enough to take East Anglia. Half of Guthrum’s earls will join us when they see you and Ragnar. Then we take the men of East Anglia, join them to our army, and conquer Mercia.’

‘And join the men of Mercia,’ I finished for him, ‘to take Wessex?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘When the leaves fall,’ he went on, ‘and when the barns are filled, we shall march on Wessex.’

‘But without Ragnar,’ I said, ‘you can do nothing.’

He bowed his head in agreement. ‘And Ragnar will not march unless you join us.’

It could work, I thought. Guthrum, the Danish King of East Anglia, had repeatedly failed to conquer Wessex and now had made his peace with Alfred, but just because Guthrum had become a Christian and was now an ally of Alfred did not mean that other Danes had abandoned the dream of Wessex’s rich fields. If enough men could be assembled, then East Anglia would fall, and its earls, ever eager for plunder, would march on Mercia. Then Northumbrians, Mercians and East Anglians could turn on Wessex, the richest kingdom and the last Saxon kingdom in the land of the Saxons.

Yet I was sworn to Alfred. I was sworn to defend Wessex. I had given Alfred my oath and without oaths we are no better than beasts. But the Norns had spoken. Fate is inexorable, it cannot be cheated. That thread of my life was already in place, and I could no more change it than I could make the sun go backwards. The Norns had sent a messenger across the black gulf to tell me that my oath must be broken, and that I would be a king, and so I nodded to Haesten. ‘So be it,’ I said.

‘You must meet Sigefrid and Erik,’ he said, ‘and we must make oaths.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said, watching me carefully, ‘we leave for Lundene.’

So it had begun. Sigefrid and Erik were readying to defend Lundene, and by doing that they defied the Mercians, who claimed the city as theirs, and they defied Alfred, who feared Lundene being garrisoned by an enemy, and they defied Guthrum, who wanted the peace of Britain kept. But there would be no peace.

‘Tomorrow,’ Haesten said again, ‘we leave for Lundene.’

We rode next day. I led my six men while Haesten had twenty-one companions, and we followed Wæclingastræt south through a persistent rain that turned the road’s verges to thick mud. The horses were miserable, we were miserable. As we rode I tried to remember every word that Bjorn the Dead had said to me, knowing that Gisela would want the conversation recounted in every detail.

‘So?’ Finan challenged me soon after midday. Haesten had ridden ahead and Finan now spurred his horse to keep pace with mine.

‘So?’ I asked.

‘So are you going to be king in Mercia?’

‘The Fates say so,’ I said, not looking at him. Finan and I had been slaves together on a trader’s ship. We had suffered, frozen, endured and learned to love each other like brothers, and I cared about his opinion.

‘The Fates,’ Finan said, ‘are tricksters.’

‘Is that a Christian view?’ I asked.

He smiled. He wore his cloak’s hood over his helmet, so I could see little of his thin, feral face, but I saw the flash of teeth when he smiled. ‘I was a great man in Ireland,’ he said, ‘I had horses to outrun the wind, women to dim the sun, and weapons that could outfight the world, yet the Fates doomed me.’

‘You live,’ I said, ‘and you’re a free man.’

‘I’m your oath-man,’ he said, ‘and I gave you my oath freely. And you, lord, are Alfred’s oath-man.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Were you forced to make your oath to Alfred?’ Finan asked.

‘No,’ I confessed.

The rain was stinging in my face. The sky was low, the land dark. ‘If fate is unavoidable,’ Finan asked, ‘why do we make oaths?’

I ignored the question. ‘If I break my oath to Alfred,’ I said instead, ‘will you break yours to me?’

‘No, lord,’ he said, smiling again. ‘I would miss your company,’ he went on, ‘but you would not miss Alfred’s.’

‘No,’ I admitted, and we let the conversation drift away with the wind-blown rain, though Finan’s words lingered in my mind and they troubled me.

We spent that night close to the great shrine of Saint Alban. The Romans had made a town there, though that town had now decayed, and so we stayed at a Danish hall just to the east. Our host was welcoming enough, but he was cautious in conversation. He did admit to hearing that Sigefrid had moved men into Lundene’s old town, but he neither condemned nor praised the act. He wore the hammer amulet, as did I, but he also kept a Saxon priest who prayed over the meal of bread, bacon and beans. The priest was a reminder that this hall was in East Anglia, and that East Anglia was officially Christian and at peace with its Christian neighbours, but our host made certain that his palisade gate was barred and that he had armed men keeping watch through the damp night. There was a shiftless air to this land, a feeling that a storm might break at any time.

The rainstorm ended in the darkness. We left at dawn, riding into a world of frost and stillness, though Wæclingastræt became busier as we encountered men driving cattle to Lundene. The beasts were scrawny, but they had been spared the autumn slaughter so they could feed the city through its winter. We rode past them and the herdsmen dropped to their knees as so many armed men clattered by. The clouds cleared to the east so that, when we came to Lundene in the middle of the day, the sun was bright behind the thick pall of dark smoke that always hangs above the city.

I have always liked Lundene. It is a place of ruins, trade and wickedness that sprawls along the northern bank of the Temes. The ruins were the buildings the Romans left when they abandoned Britain, and their old city crowned the hills at the city’s eastern end and were surrounded by a wall made of brick and stone. The Saxons had never liked the Roman buildings, fearing their ghosts, and so had made their own town to the west, a place of thatch and wood and wattle and narrow alleys and stinking ditches that were supposed to carry sewage to the river, but usually lay glistening and filthy until a downpour of rain flooded them. That new Saxon town was a busy place, stinking with the smoke from smithy fires and raucous with the shouts of tradesmen, too busy, indeed, to bother making a defensive wall. Why did they need a wall, the Saxons argued, for the Danes were content to live in the old city and had showed no desire to slaughter the inhabitants of the new. There were palisades in a few places, evidence that some men had tried to protect the rapidly growing new town, but enthusiasm for the project always died and the palisades rotted, or else their timbers were stolen to make new buildings along the sewage-stinking streets.

Lundene’s trade came from the river and from the roads that led to every part of Britain. The roads, of course, were Roman, and down them flowed wool and pottery, ingots and pelts, while the river brought luxuries from abroad and slaves from Frankia and hungry men seeking trouble. There was plenty of that, because the city, which was built where three kingdoms met, was virtually ungoverned in those years.

To the east of Lundene the land was East Anglia, and so ruled by Guthrum. To the south, on the far bank of the Temes, was Wessex, while to the west was Mercia to which the city really belonged, but Mercia was a crippled country without a king and so there was no reeve to keep order in Lundene, and no great lord to impose laws. Men went armed in the alleyways, wives had bodyguards and great dogs were chained in gateways. Bodies were found every morning, unless the tide carried them downriver towards the sea and past the coast where the Danes had their great camp at Beamfleot from where the Northmen’s ships sailed to demand customs payments from the traders working their way up the wide mouth of the Temes. The Northmen had no authority to impose such dues, but they had ships and men and swords and axes, and that was authority enough.

Haesten had exacted enough of those illegal dues, indeed he had become rich by piracy, rich and powerful, but he was still nervous as we rode into the city. He had talked incessantly as we neared Lundene, mostly about nothing, and he laughed too easily when I made sour comments about his inane words. But then, as we passed between the half-fallen towers either side of a wide gateway, he fell silent. There were sentries on the gate, but they must have recognised Haesten for they did not challenge us, but simply pulled aside the hurdles that blocked the ruined arch. Inside the arch I could see a stack of timbers that meant the gate was being rebuilt.

We had come to the Roman town, the old town, and our horses picked a slow path up the street that was paved with wide flagstones between which weeds grew thick. It was cold. Frost still lay in the dark corners where the sun had not reached the stone all day. The buildings had shuttered windows through which woodsmoke sifted to be whirled down the street. ‘You’ve been here before?’ Haesten broke his silence with the abrupt question.

‘Many times,’ I said. Haesten and I rode ahead now.

‘Sigefrid,’ Haesten said, then found he had nothing to say.

‘Is a Norseman, I hear,’ I said.

‘He is unpredictable,’ Haesten said, and the tone of his voice told me that it was Sigefrid who had made him nervous. Haesten had faced a living corpse without flinching, but the thought of Sigefrid made him apprehensive.

‘I can be unpredictable,’ I said, ‘and so can you.’

Haesten said nothing to that. Instead he touched the hammer hanging at his neck, then turned his horse into a gateway where servants ran forward to greet us. ‘The king’s palace,’ Haesten said.

I knew the palace. It had been made by the Romans and was a great vaulted building of pillars and carved stone, though it had been patched by the kings of Mercia so that thatch, wattle and timber filled the gaps in the half-ruined walls. The great hall was lined with Roman pillars and its walls were of brick, but here and there patches of marble facing had somehow survived. I stared at the high masonry and marvelled that men had ever been able to make such walls. We built in wood and thatch, and both rotted away, which meant we would leave nothing behind. The Romans had left marble and stone, brick and glory.

A steward told us that Sigefrid and his younger brother were in the old Roman arena that lay to the north of the palace. ‘What is he doing there?’ Haesten asked.

‘Making a sacrifice, lord,’ the steward said.

‘Then we’ll join him,’ Haesten said, looking at me for confirmation.

‘We will,’ I said.

We rode the short distance. Beggars shrank from us. We had money, and they knew it, but they dared not ask for it because we were armed strangers. Swords, shields, axes and spears hung beside our horses’ muddy flanks. Shopkeepers bowed to us, while women hid their children in their skirts. Most of the folk who lived in the Roman part of Lundene were Danes, yet even these Danes were nervous. Their city had been occupied by Sigefrid’s crewmen who would be hungry for money and women.

I knew the Roman arena. When I was a child I was taught the fundamental strokes of the sword by Toki the Shipmaster, and he had given me those lessons in the great oval arena that was surrounded by decayed layers of stone where wooden benches had once been placed. The tiered stone layers were almost empty, except for a few idle folk who were watching the men in the centre of the weed-choked arena. There must have been forty or fifty men there, and a score of saddled horses were tethered at the far end, but what surprised me most as I rode through the high walls of the entrance, was a Christian cross planted in the middle of the small crowd.

‘Sigefrid’s a Christian?’ I asked Haesten in astonishment.

‘No!’ Haesten said forcefully.

The men heard our hoofbeats and turned towards us. They were all dressed for war, grim in mail or leather and armed with swords or axes, but they were cheerful. Then, from the centre of that crowd, from a place close to the cross, stalked Sigefrid.

I knew him without having to be told who he was. He was a big man, and made to look even bigger for he wore a great cloak of black bear’s fur that swathed him from neck to ankles. He had tall black leather boots, a shining mail coat, a sword belt studded with silver rivets, and a bushy black beard that sprang from beneath his iron helmet that was chased with silver patterns. He pulled the helmet off as he strode towards us and his hair was as black and bushy as his beard. He had dark eyes in a broad face, a nose that had been broken and squashed, and a wide slash of a mouth that gave him a grim appearance. He stopped, facing us, and set his feet wide apart as though he waited for an attack.

‘Lord Sigefrid!’ Haesten greeted him with forced cheerfulness.

‘Lord Haesten! Welcome back! Welcome indeed.’ Sigefrid’s voice was curiously high-pitched, not feminine, but it sounded odd coming from such a huge and malevolent-looking man. ‘And you!’ he pointed a black-gloved hand towards me, ‘must be the Lord Uhtred!’

‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I named myself.

‘And you are welcome, welcome indeed!’ He stepped forward and took my reins himself, which was an honour, and then he smiled up at me and his face, that had been so fearsome, was suddenly mischievous, almost friendly. ‘They say you are tall, Lord Uhtred!’

‘So I am told,’ I said.

‘Then let us see who is taller,’ he suggested genially, ‘you or I?’ I slid from the saddle and eased the stiffness from my legs. Sigefrid, vast in his fur cloak, still held my reins and still smiled. ‘Well?’ he demanded of the men nearest to him.

‘You are taller, lord,’ one of them said hastily.

‘If I asked you who was the prettiest,’ Sigefrid said, ‘what would you say?’

The man looked from Sigefrid to me and from me to Sigefrid and did not know what to say. He just looked terrified.

‘He fears that if he gives the wrong answer,’ Sigefrid confided to me in an amused voice, ‘that I would kill him.’

‘And would you?’ I asked.

‘I would think about it. Here!’ he called to the man, who came nervously forward. ‘Take the reins,’ Sigefrid said, ‘and walk the horse. So who’s taller?’ This last question was to Haesten.

‘You are the same height,’ Haesten said.

‘And just as pretty as each other,’ Sigefrid said, then laughed. He put his arms around me and I smelt the rank stench of his fur cloak. He hugged me. ‘Welcome, Lord Uhtred, welcome!’ He stepped back and grinned. I liked him at that moment because his smile was truly welcoming. ‘I have heard much of you!’ he declared.

‘And I of you, lord.’

‘And doubtless we were both told many lies! But good lies. I also have a quarrel with you.’ He grinned, waiting, but I offered him no response. ‘Jarrel!’ he explained, ‘you killed him.’

‘I did,’ I said. Jarrel had been the man leading the Viking crew I had slaughtered on the Temes.

‘I liked Jarrel,’ Sigefrid said.

‘Then you should have advised him to avoid Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said.

‘That is true,’ Sigefrid said, ‘and is it also true that you killed Ubba?’

‘I did.’

‘He must have been a hard man to kill! And Ivarr?’

‘I killed Ivarr too,’ I confirmed.

‘But he was old and it was time he went. His son hates you, you know that?’

‘I know that.’

Sigefrid snorted in derision. ‘The son is a nothing. A piece of gristle. He hates you, but why should the falcon care about the sparrow’s hate?’ He grinned at me, then looked at Smoca, my stallion, who was being walked about the arena so he could cool slowly after his long journey. ‘That,’ Sigefrid said admiringly, ‘is a horse!’

‘It is,’ I agreed.

‘Maybe I should take him from you?’

‘Many have tried,’ I said.

He liked that. He laughed again and put a heavy hand on my shoulder to lead me towards the cross. ‘You’re a Saxon, they tell me?’

‘I am.’

‘But no Christian?’

‘I worship the true gods,’ I said.

‘May they love and reward you for that,’ he said, and he squeezed my shoulder and, even through the mail and leather, I could feel his strength. He turned then. ‘Erik! Are you shy?’

His brother stepped out of the crowd. He had the same black bushy hair, though Erik’s was tied severely back with a length of cord. His beard was trimmed. He was young, maybe only twenty or twenty-one, and he had a broad face with bright eyes that were at once full of curiosity and welcome. I had been surprised to discover I liked Sigefrid, but it was no surprise to like Erik. His smile was instant, his face open and guileless. He was, like Gisela’s brother, a man you liked from the moment you met him.

‘I am Erik,’ he greeted me.

‘He is my adviser,’ Sigefrid said, ‘my conscience and my brother.’

‘Conscience?’

‘Erik would not kill a man for telling a lie, would you, brother?’

‘No,’ Erik said.

‘So he is a fool, but a fool I love.’ Sigefrid laughed. ‘But don’t think the fool is a weakling, Lord Uhtred. He fights like a demon from Niflheim.’ He slapped his brother on the shoulder, then took my elbow and led me on towards the incongruous cross. ‘I have prisoners,’ he explained as we neared the cross, and I saw that five men were kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs. They had been stripped of cloaks, weapons and tunics so that they wore only their trews. They shivered in the cold air.

The cross had been newly made from two beams of wood that had been crudely nailed together and then sunk into a hastily dug hole. The cross leaned slightly. At its foot were some heavy nails and a big hammer. ‘You see death by the cross on their statues and carvings,’ Sigefrid explained to me, ‘and you see it on the amulets they wear, but I’ve never seen the real thing. Have you?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘And I can’t understand why it would kill a man,’ he said with genuine puzzlement in his voice. ‘It’s only three nails! I’ve suffered much worse than that in battle.’

‘Me too,’ I said.

‘So I thought I’d find out!’ he finished cheerfully, then jerked his big beard towards the prisoner nearest to the foot of the cross. ‘The two bastards at the end there are Christian priests. We’ll nail one of them up and see if he dies. I have ten pieces of silver that say it won’t kill him.’

I could see almost nothing of the two priests except that one had a big belly. His head was bowed, not in prayer, but because he had been beaten hard. His naked back and chest were bruised and bloody, and there was more blood in the tangle of his brown curly hair. ‘Who are they?’ I asked Sigefrid.

‘Who are you?’ he snarled at the prisoners and, when none answered, he gave the nearest man a brutal kick in the ribs. ‘Who are you?’ he asked again.

The man lifted his head. He was elderly, at least forty years old, and had a deep lined face on which was etched the resignation of those who knew they were about to die. ‘I am Earl Sihtric,’ he said, ‘counsellor to King Æthelstan.’

‘Guthrum!’ Sigefrid screamed, and it was a scream. A scream of pure rage that erupted from nowhere. One moment he had been affable, but suddenly he was a demon. Spittle flew from his mouth as he shrieked the name a second time. ‘Guthrum! His name is Guthrum, you bastard!’ He kicked Sihtric in the chest, and I reckoned that kick was hard enough to break a rib. ‘What is his name?’ Sigefrid demanded.

‘Guthrum,’ Sihtric said.

‘Guthrum!’ Sigefrid shouted, and kicked the old man again. Guthrum, when he made peace with Alfred, had become a Christian and taken the Christian name Æthelstan as his own. I still thought of him as Guthrum, as did Sigefrid, who now appeared to be trying to stamp Sihtric to death. The old man attempted to evade the blows, but Sigefrid had driven him to the ground from where he could not escape. Erik seemed unmoved by his brother’s savage anger, yet after a while he stepped forward and took Sigefrid’s arm and the bigger man allowed himself to be pulled away. ‘Bastard!’ Sigefrid spat back at the moaning man. ‘Calling Guthrum by a Christian name!’ he explained to me. Sigefrid was still shaking from his sudden anger. His eyes had narrowed and his face was contorted, but he seemed to control himself as he draped a heavy arm around my shoulder. ‘Guthrum sent them,’ he said, ‘to tell me to leave Lundene. But it’s none of Guthrum’s business! Lundene doesn’t belong to East Anglia! It belongs to Mercia! To King Uhtred of Mercia!’ That was the first time anyone had used that title so formally, and I liked the sound of it. King Uhtred. Sigefrid turned back to Sihtric who now had blood at his lips. ‘What was Guthrum’s message?’

‘That the city belongs to Mercia, and you must leave,’ Sihtric managed to say.

‘Then Mercia can throw me out,’ Sigefrid sneered.

‘Unless King Uhtred allows us to stay?’ Erik suggested with a smile.

I said nothing. The title sounded good, but strange, as if it defied the strands coming from the three spinners.

‘Alfred will not permit you to stay.’ One of the other prisoners dared to speak.

‘Who gives a turd about Alfred?’ Sigefrid snarled. ‘Let the bastard send his army to die here.’

‘That is your reply, lord?’ the prisoner asked humbly.

‘My reply will be your severed heads,’ Sigefrid said.

I glanced at Erik then. He was the younger brother, but clearly the one who did the thinking. He shrugged. ‘If we negotiate,’ he explained, ‘then we give time for our enemies to gather their forces. Better to be defiant.’

‘You’ll pick war with both Guthrum and Alfred?’ I asked.

‘Guthrum won’t fight,’ Erik said, sounding very certain. ‘He threatens, but he won’t fight. He’s getting old, Lord Uhtred, and he would prefer to enjoy what life is left to him. And if we send him severed heads? I think he will understand the message that his own head is in danger if he disturbs us.’

‘What of Alfred?’ I asked.

‘He’s cautious,’ Erik said, ‘isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’ll offer us money to leave the city?’

‘Probably.’

‘And maybe we’ll take it,’ Sigefrid said, ‘and stay anyway.’

‘Alfred won’t attack us till the summer,’ Erik said, ignoring his brother, ‘and by then, Lord Uhtred, we hope you will have led Earl Ragnar south into East Anglia. Alfred can’t ignore that threat. He will march against our combined armies, not against the garrison in Lundene, and our job is to kill Alfred and put his nephew on the throne.’

‘Æthelwold?’ I asked dubiously. ‘He’s a drunk.’

‘Drunk or not,’ Erik said, ‘a Saxon king will make our conquest of Wessex more palatable.’

‘Until you need him no longer,’ I said.

‘Until we need him no longer,’ Erik agreed.

The big-bellied priest at the end of the line of kneeling prisoners had been listening. He stared at me, then at Sigefrid, who saw his gaze. ‘What are you looking at, turd?’ Sigefrid demanded. The priest did not answer, but just looked at me again, then dropped his head. ‘We’ll start with him,’ Sigefrid said, ‘we’ll nail the fat bastard to a cross and see if he dies.’

‘Why not let him fight?’ I suggested.

Sigefrid stared at me, unsure he had heard me correctly. ‘Let him fight?’ he asked.

‘The other priest is skinny,’ I said, ‘so much easier to nail to the cross. That fat one should be given a sword and made to fight.’

Sigefrid sneered. ‘You think a priest can fight?’

I shrugged as though I did not care one way or the other. ‘It’s just that I like seeing those fat-bellied ones lose a fight,’ I explained. ‘I like seeing their bellies slit open. I like watching their guts spill out.’ I was staring at the priest as I spoke and he looked up again to gaze into my eyes. ‘I want to see yards of gut spilled out,’ I said wolfishly, ‘and then watch as your dogs eat his intestines while he’s still alive.’

‘Or make him eat them himself,’ Sigefrid said thoughtfully. He suddenly grinned at me. ‘I like you, Lord Uhtred!’

‘He’ll die too easily,’ Erik said.

‘Then give him something to fight for,’ I said.

‘What can that fat pig of a priest fight for?’ Sigefrid demanded scornfully.

I said nothing, and it was Erik who supplied the answer. ‘His freedom?’ he suggested. ‘If he wins then all prisoners go free, but if he loses then we crucify them all. That should make him fight.’

‘He’ll still lose,’ I said.

‘Yes, but he’ll make an effort,’ Erik said.

Sigefrid laughed, amused by the incongruity of the suggestion. The priest, half naked, big-bellied and terrified, looked at each of us in turn but saw nothing but amusement and ferocity. ‘Ever held a sword, priest?’ Sigefrid demanded of the fat man. The priest said nothing.

I mocked his silence with laughter. ‘He’ll only flail around like a pig,’ I said.

‘You want to fight him?’ Sigefrid asked.

‘He wasn’t sent as an envoy to me, lord,’ I said respectfully. ‘Besides, I’ve heard there is no one to match your skill with a blade. I challenge you to make a cut straight across his belly button.’

Sigefrid liked that challenge. He turned to the priest. ‘Holy man! You want to fight for your freedom?’

The priest was shaking with fear. He glanced at his companions, but found no help there. He managed to nod his head. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said,

‘Then you can fight me,’ Sigefrid said happily, ‘and if I win? You all die. And if you win? You can ride away from here. Can you fight?’

‘No, lord,’ the priest said.

‘Ever held a sword, priest?’

‘No, lord.’

‘So are you ready to die?’ Sigefrid asked.

The priest looked at the Norseman and, despite his bruises and cuts, there was a hint of anger in his eyes that was belied by the humility in his voice. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said, ‘I’m ready to die and meet my Saviour.’

‘Cut him free,’ Sigefrid ordered one of his followers. ‘Cut the turd free and give him a sword.’ He drew his own sword that was a long two-edged blade. ‘Fear-Giver,’ he named the blade with fondness in his voice, ‘and she needs exercise.’

‘Here,’ I said, and I drew Serpent-Breath, my own beautiful blade, and I turned her so that I held her by the blade and I tossed the sword to the priest whose hands had just been cut free. He fumbled the catch, letting Serpent-Breath fall among the pale winter weeds. He stared at the sword for a moment as though he had never seen such a thing before, then stooped to pick her up. He was unsure whether to hold her in his right hand or left. He settled for the left and gave her a clumsy experimental stroke that caused the watching men to laugh.

‘Why give him your sword?’ Sigefrid asked.

‘He’ll do no good with it,’ I said scornfully.

‘And if I break it?’ Sigefrid asked forcefully.

‘Then I’ll know the smith who made it didn’t know his business,’ I said.

‘It’s your blade, your choice,’ Sigefrid said dismissively, then turned to the priest who was holding Serpent-Breath so that her tip rested on the ground. ‘Are you ready, priest?’ he demanded.

‘Yes, lord,’ the priest said, and that was the first truthful answer he had given to the Norseman. For the priest had held a sword many times before and he did know how to fight and I doubted he was ready to die. He was Father Pyrlig.

If your fields are heavy and damp with clay then you can harness two oxen to an ard blade, and you can goad the beasts bloody so that the blade ploughs your ground. The beasts must pull together, which is why they are yoked together, and in life one ox is called Fate and the other is named Oaths.

Fate decrees what we do. We cannot escape fate. Wyrd bið ful ãræd. We have no choices in life, how can we? Because from the moment we are born the three sisters know where our thread will go and what patterns it will weave and how it will end. Wyrd bið ful ãræd.

Yet we choose our oaths. Alfred, when he gave me his sword and hands to enfold in my hands did not order me to make the oath. He offered it and I chose. But was it my choice? Or did the Fates choose for me? And if they did, why bother with oaths? I have often wondered about this and even now, as an old man, I still wonder. Did I choose Alfred? Or were the Fates laughing when I knelt and took his sword and hands in mine?

The three Norns were certainly laughing on that cold bright day in Lundene, because the moment I saw that the big-bellied priest was Father Pyrlig I knew that nothing was simple. I had realised in that instant that the Fates had not spun me a golden thread leading to a throne. They were laughing from the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life. They had made a jest and I was its victim, and I had to make a choice.

Or did I? Maybe the Fates had made the choice, but at that moment, overshadowed by the gaunt stark makeshift cross, I believed I had to choose between the Thurgilson brothers and Pyrlig.

Sigefrid was no friend, but he was a formidable man, and with his alliance I could become king in Mercia. Gisela would be a queen. I could help Sigefrid, Erik, Haesten and Ragnar plunder Wessex. I could become rich. I would lead armies. I would fly my banner of the wolf’s head, and at Smoca’s heels would ride a mailed host of spearmen. My enemies would hear the thunder of our hooves in their nightmares. All that would be mine if I chose to ally myself with Sigefrid.

While by choosing Pyrlig I would lose all that the dead man had promised me. Which meant that Bjorn had lied, yet how could a man sent from his grave with a message from the Norns tell a lie? I remember thinking all that in the heartbeat before I made my choice, though in truth there was no hesitation. There was not even a heartbeat of hesitation.

Pyrlig was a Welshman, a Briton, and we Saxons hate the Britons. The Britons are treacherous thieves. They hide in their hill fastnesses and ride down to raid our lands, and they take our cattle and sometimes our women and children, and when we pursue them they go ever deeper into a wild place of mists, crags, marsh and misery. And Pyrlig was also a Christian, and I have no love for Christians. The choice would seem so easy! On one side a kingdom, Viking friends and wealth, and on the other a Briton who was the priest of a religion that sucks joy from this world like dusk swallowing daylight. Yet I did not think. I chose, or fate chose, and I chose friendship. Pyrlig was my friend. I had met him in Wessex’s darkest winter, when the Danes seemed to have conquered the kingdom, and Alfred with a few followers had been driven to take refuge in the western marshes. Pyrlig had been sent as an emissary by his Welsh king to discover and perhaps exploit Alfred’s weakness, but instead he had sided with Alfred and fought for Alfred. Pyrlig and I had stood in the shield wall together. We had fought side by side. We were Welshman and Saxon, Christian and pagan, and we should have been enemies, but I loved him like a brother.

So I gave him my sword and, instead of watching him nailed to a cross, I gave him the chance to fight for his life.

And, of course, it was not a fair fight. It was over in a moment! Indeed, it had hardly begun before it ended, and I alone was not astonished by its ending.

Sigefrid was expecting to face a fat, untrained priest, yet I knew that Pyrlig had been a warrior before he discovered his god. He had been a great warrior, a killer of Saxons and a man about whom his people had made songs. He did not look like a great warrior now. He was half naked, fat, dishevelled, bruised and beaten. He waited for Sigefrid’s attack with a look of horrified terror on his face and with the tip of Serpent-Breath’s blade still resting on the ground. He backed away as Sigefrid came closer, and began making mewing noises. Sigefrid laughed and swung his sword almost idly, expecting to knock Pyrlig’s blade out of his path and so expose that big belly to Fear-Giver’s gut-opening slash.

And Pyrlig moved like a weasel.

He lifted Serpent-Breath gracefully and danced a backwards pace so that Sigefrid’s careless swing went under her blade, and then he stepped towards his enemy and brought Serpent-Breath down hard, all wrist in that stroke, and sliced her against Sigefrid’s sword arm as it was still swinging outwards. The stroke was not powerful enough to break the mail armour, but it did drive Sigefrid’s sword arm further out and so opened the Norseman to a lunge. And Pyrlig lunged. He was so fast that Serpent-Breath was a silver blur that struck hard on Sigefrid’s chest.

Once again the blade did not pierce Sigefrid’s mail. Instead it pushed the big man backwards and I saw the fury come into the Norseman’s eyes and saw him bring Fear-Giver back in a mighty swing that would surely have decapitated Pyrlig in a red instant. There was so much strength and savagery in that huge cut, but Pyrlig, who seemed a heartbeat from death, simply used his wrist again. He did not seem to move, but still Serpent-Breath flickered up and sideways.

Serpent-Breath’s point met that death-swing on the inside of Sigefrid’s wrist and I saw the spray of blood like a red fog in the air.

And I saw Pyrlig smile. It was more of a grimace, but there was a warrior’s pride and a warrior’s triumph in that smile. His blade had ripped up Sigefrid’s forearm, slicing the mail apart and laying open flesh and skin and muscle from wrist to elbow, so that Sigefrid’s mighty blow faltered and stopped. The Norseman’s sword arm went limp, and Pyrlig suddenly stepped back and turned Serpent-Breath so he could cut downwards with her and at last he appeared to put some effort into the blade. She made a whistling noise as the Welshman slashed her onto Sigefrid’s bleeding wrist. He almost severed the wrist, but the blade glanced off a bone and took the Norseman’s thumb instead, and Fear-Giver fell to the arena floor and Serpent-Breath was in Sigefrid’s beard and at his throat.

‘No!’ I shouted.

Sigefrid was too appalled to be angry. He could not believe what had happened. He must have realised by that moment that his opponent was a swordsman, but still he could not believe he had lost. He brought up his bleeding hands as if to seize Pyrlig’s blade, and I saw the Welshman’s blade twitch and Sigefrid, sensing death a hair’s breadth away, went still.

‘No,’ I repeated.

‘Why shouldn’t I kill him?’ Pyrlig asked, and his voice was a warrior’s voice now, hard and merciless, and his eyes were warrior’s eyes, flint-cold and furious.

‘No,’ I said again. I knew that if Pyrlig killed Sigefrid then Sigefrid’s men would have their revenge.

Erik knew it too. ‘You won, priest,’ he said softly. He walked to his brother. ‘You won,’ he said again to Pyrlig, ‘so put down the sword.’

‘Does he know I beat him?’ Pyrlig asked, staring into Sigefrid’s dark eyes.

‘I speak for him,’ Erik said. ‘You won the fight, priest, and you are free.’

‘I have to deliver my message first,’ Pyrlig said. Blood dripped from Sigefrid’s hand. He still stared at the Welshman. ‘The message we bring from King Æthelstan,’ Pyrlig said, meaning Guthrum, ‘is that you are to leave Lundene. It is not part of the land ceded by Alfred to Danish rule. Do you understand that?’ He twitched Serpent-Breath again, though Sigefrid said nothing. ‘Now I want horses,’ Pyrlig went on, ‘and Lord Uhtred and his men are to escort us out of Lundene. Is that agreed?’

Erik looked at me and I nodded consent. ‘It is agreed,’ Erik said to Pyrlig.

I took Serpent-Breath from Pyrlig’s hand. Erik was holding his brother’s wounded arm. For a moment I thought Sigefrid would attack the unarmed Welshman, but Erik managed to turn him away.

Horses were fetched. The men in the arena were silent and resentful. They had seen their leader humiliated, and they did not understand why Pyrlig was allowed to leave with the other envoys, but they accepted Erik’s decision.

‘My brother is headstrong,’ Erik told me. He had taken me aside to talk while the horses were saddled.

‘It seems the priest knew how to fight after all,’ I said apologetically.

Erik frowned, not with anger, but puzzlement. ‘I am curious about their god,’ he admitted. He was watching his brother, whose wounds were being bandaged. ‘Their god does seem to have power,’ Erik said. I slid Serpent-Breath into her scabbard and Erik saw the silver cross that decorated her pommel. ‘You must think so too?’

‘That was a gift,’ I said, ‘from a woman. A good woman. A lover. Then the Christian god took hold of her and she loves men no more.’

Erik reached out and touched the cross tentatively. ‘You don’t think it gives the blade power?’ he asked.

‘The memory of her love might,’ I said, ‘but power comes from here.’ I touched my amulet, Thor’s hammer.

‘I fear their god,’ Erik said.

‘He’s harsh,’ I said, ‘unkind. He’s a god who likes to make laws.’

‘Laws?’

‘You’re not allowed to lust after your neighbour’s wife,’ I said.

Erik laughed at that, then saw I was serious. ‘Truly?’ he asked with disbelief in his voice.

‘Priest!’ I called to Pyrlig. ‘Does your god let men lust after their neighbours’ wives?’

‘He lets them, lord,’ Pyrlig said humbly as if he feared me, ‘but he disapproves.’

‘Did he make a law about it?’

‘Yes, lord, he did. And he made another that says you mustn’t lust after your neighbour’s ox.’

‘There,’ I said to Erik. ‘You can’t even wish for an ox if you’re a Christian.’

‘Strange,’ he said thoughtfully. He was looking at Guthrum’s envoys who had so narrowly escaped losing their heads. ‘You don’t mind escorting them?’

‘No.’

‘It might be no bad thing if they live,’ he said quietly. ‘Why give Guthrum cause to attack us?’

‘He won’t,’ I said confidently, ‘whether you kill them or not.’

‘Probably not,’ he agreed, ‘but we agreed that if the priest won, then they would all live, so let them live. And you’re sure you don’t mind escorting them away?’

‘Of course not,’ I said.

‘Then come back here,’ Erik said warmly, ‘we need you.’

‘You need Ragnar,’ I corrected him.

‘True,’ he confessed, and smiled. ‘See those men safe out of the city, then come back.’

‘I have a wife and children to fetch first,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said, and smiled again. ‘You are fortunate in that. But you will come back?’

‘Bjorn the Dead told me so,’ I said, carefully evading his question.

‘So he did,’ Erik said. He embraced me. ‘We need you,’ he said, ‘and together we can take this whole island.’

We left, riding through the city streets, out through the western gate that was known as Ludd’s Gate, and then down to the ford across the River Fleot. Sihtric was bent over his saddle’s pommel, still suffering from the kicking he had received from Sigefrid. I looked behind as we left the ford, half expecting that Sigefrid would have countermanded his brother’s decision and sent men to pursue us, but none appeared. We spurred through the marshy ground and then up the slight slope to the Saxon town.

I did not stay on the road that led westwards, but instead turned onto the wharves where a dozen ships were moored. These were river boats that traded with Wessex and Mercia. Few shipmasters cared to shoot the dangerous gap in the ruined bridge that the Romans had thrown across the Temes, so these ships were smaller, manned by oarsmen, and all of them had paid dues to me at Coccham. They all knew me, because they did business with me on every trip.

We forced our way through heaps of merchandise, past open fires and through the gangs of slaves loading or unloading cargoes. Only one ship was ready to make a voyage. She was named the Swan and I knew her well. She had a Saxon crew, and she was nearly ready to leave because her oarsmen were standing on the wharf while the shipmaster, a man called Osric, finished his business with the merchant whose goods he was carrying. ‘You’re taking us too,’ I told him.

We left most of the horses behind, though I insisted that room was found for Smoca, and Finan wanted to keep his stallion too, and so the beasts were coaxed into the Swan’s open hold where they stood shivering. Then we left. The tide was flooding, the oars bit, and we glided upriver. ‘Where am I taking you, lord?’ Osric the shipmaster asked me.

‘To Coccham,’ I said.

And back to Alfred.

The river was wide, grey and sullen. It flowed strongly, fed by the winter rains against which the incoming tide gave less and less resistance. The Swan made hard work of the early rowing as the ten oarsmen fought the current and I caught Finan’s eye and we exchanged smiles. He was remembering, as I was, our long months at the oars of a slave-rowed trading ship. We had suffered, bled and shivered, and we had thought that only death could release us from that fate, but now other men rowed us as the Swan fought around the great swooping bends of the Temes that were softened by the wide floods that stretched into the water meadows.

I sat on the small platform built in the ship’s blunt bow and Father Pyrlig joined me there. I had given him my cloak, which he clutched tight around him. He had found some bread and cheese, which did not surprise me because I have never known a man eat so much. ‘How did you know I’d beat Sigefrid?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘In fact I was hoping he’d beat you, and that there would be one less Christian.’

He smiled at that, then gazed at the waterfowl on the flood water. ‘I knew I had two or three strokes only,’ he said, ‘before he realised I knew what I was doing. Then he’d have cut the flesh off my bones.’

‘He would,’ I agreed, ‘but I reckoned you had those three strokes and they’d prove enough.’

‘Thank you for that, Uhtred,’ he said, then broke off a lump of cheese and gave it to me. ‘How are you these days?’

‘Bored.’

‘I hear you’re married?’

‘I’m not bored with her,’ I said hurriedly.

‘Good for you! Me, now? I can’t stand my wife. Dear God, what a tongue that viper has. She can split a sheet of slate just by talking to it! You’ve not met my wife, have you?’

‘No.’

‘Sometimes I curse God for taking Adam’s rib and making Eve, but then I see some young girl and my heart leaps and I think God knew what he was doing after all.’

I smiled. ‘I thought Christian priests were supposed to set an example?’

‘And what’s wrong with admiring God’s creations?’ Pyrlig asked indignantly. ‘Especially a young one with plump round tits and a fine fat rump? It would be sinful of me to ignore such signs of his grace.’ He grinned, then looked anxious. ‘I heard you were taken captive?’

‘I was.’

‘I prayed for you.’

‘Thank you for that,’ I said, and meant it. I did not worship the Christian god, but like Erik I feared he had some power, so prayers to him were not wasted.

‘But I hear it was Alfred who had you released?’ Pyrlig asked.

I paused. As ever I hated to acknowledge any debt to Alfred, but I grudgingly conceded that he had helped. ‘He sent the men who freed me,’ I said, ‘yes.’

‘And you reward him, Lord Uhtred, by naming yourself King of Mercia?’

‘You heard that?’ I asked cautiously.

‘Of course I heard it! That great oaf of a Norseman bawled it just five paces from my ear. Are you King of Mercia?’

‘No,’ I said, resisting the urge to add ‘not yet’.

‘I didn’t think you were,’ Pyrlig said mildly. ‘I’d have heard about that, wouldn’t I? And I don’t think you will be, not unless Alfred wants it.’

‘Alfred can piss down his own throat for all I care,’ I said.

‘And of course I should tell him what I heard,’ Pyrlig said.

‘Yes,’ I said bitterly, ‘you should.’

I leaned against the curving timber of the ship’s stem and stared at the backs of the oarsmen. I was also watching for any sign of a pursuing ship, half expecting to see some fast warship swept along by banks of long oars, but no mast showed above the river’s long bends, which suggested Erik had successfully persuaded his brother against taking an instant revenge for the humiliation Pyrlig had given him. ‘So whose idea is it,’ Pyrlig asked, ‘that you should be king in Mercia?’ He waited for me to answer, but I said nothing. ‘It’s Sigefrid, isn’t it?’ he demanded. ‘Sigefrid’s crazy idea.’

‘Crazy?’ I asked innocently.

‘The man’s no fool,’ Pyrlig said, ‘and his brother certainly isn’t. They know Æthelstan’s getting old in East Anglia, and they ask who’ll be king after him? And there’s no king in Mercia. But he can’t just take Mercia, can he? The Mercian Saxons will fight him and Alfred will come to their aid, and the Thurgilson brothers will find themselves facing a fury of Saxons! So Sigefrid has this idea to rally men and take East Anglia first, then Mercia, and then Wessex! And to do all that he really needs Earl Ragnar to bring men from Northumbria.’

I was appalled that Pyrlig, a friend of Alfred’s, should know all that Sigefrid, Erik and Haesten planned, but I showed no reaction. ‘Ragnar won’t fight,’ I said, trying to end the conversation.

‘Unless you ask him,’ Pyrlig said sharply. I just shrugged. ‘But what can Sigefrid offer you?’ Pyrlig asked, and, when I did not respond again, provided the answer himself. ‘Mercia.’

I smiled condescendingly. ‘It all sounds very complicated.’

‘Sigefrid and Haesten,’ Pyrlig said, ignoring my flippant comment, ‘have ambitions to be kings. But there are only four kingdoms here! They can’t take Northumbria because Ragnar won’t let them. They can’t take Mercia because Alfred won’t let them. But Æthelstan’s getting old, so they could take East Anglia. And why not finish the job? Take Wessex? Sigefrid says he’ll put that drunken nephew of Alfred’s on the throne, and that’ll help calm the Saxons for a few months until Sigefrid murders him, and by then Haesten will be King of East Anglia and someone, you perhaps, King of Mercia. Doubtless they’ll turn on you then and divide Mercia between them. That’s the idea, Lord Uhtred, and it’s not a bad one! But who’d follow those two brigands?’

‘No one,’ I lied.

‘Unless they were convinced that the Fates were on their side,’ Pyrlig said almost casually, then looked at me. ‘Did you meet the dead man?’ he asked innocently, and I was so astonished by the question that I could not answer. I just stared into his round, battered face. ‘Bjorn, he’s called,’ the Welshman said, putting another lump of cheese into his mouth.

‘The dead don’t lie,’ I blurted out.

‘The living do! By God, they do! Even I lie, Lord Uhtred,’ he grinned at me mischievously, ‘I sent a message to my wife and said she’d hate being in East Anglia!’ He laughed. Alfred had asked Pyrlig to go to East Anglia because he was a priest and because he spoke Danish, and his task there had been to educate Guthrum in Christian ways. ‘In fact she’d love it there!’ Pyrlig went on. ‘It’s warmer than home and there are no hills to speak of. Flat and wet, that’s East Anglia, and without a proper hill anywhere! And my wife’s never been fond of hills, which is why I probably found God. I used to live on hilltops just to keep away from her, and you’re closer to God on a hilltop. Bjorn isn’t dead.’

He had said the last three words with a sudden brutality, and I answered him just as harshly. ‘I saw him.’

‘You saw a man come from a grave, that’s what you saw.’

‘I saw him!’ I insisted.

‘Of course you did! And you never thought to question what you saw, did you?’ The Welshman asked the question harshly. ‘Bjorn had been put in that grave just before you came! They piled earth on him and he breathed through a reed.’

I remembered Bjorn spitting something out of his mouth as he staggered upright. Not the harp string, but something else. I had thought it a lump of earth, but in truth it had been paler. I had not thought about it at the time, but now I understood that the resurrection had all been a trick and I sat on the foredeck of the Swan and felt the last remnants of my dream crumbling. I would not be king. ‘How do you know all this?’ I asked bitterly.

‘King Æthelstan’s no fool. He has his spies.’ Pyrlig put a hand on my arm. ‘Was he very convincing?’

‘Very,’ I said, still bitter.

‘He’s one of Haesten’s men, and if we ever catch him he’ll go properly to hell. So what did he tell you?’

‘That I would be king in Mercia,’ I said softly. I was to be king of Saxon and Dane, enemy of the Welsh, king between the rivers and lord of all I ruled. ‘I believed him,’ I said ruefully.

‘But how could you be King of Mercia?’ Pyrlig asked, ‘unless Alfred made you king?’

‘Alfred?’

‘You gave him your oath, did you not?’

I was ashamed to tell the truth, but had no choice. ‘Yes,’ I admitted.

‘Which is why I must tell him,’ Pyrlig said sternly, ‘because a man breaking an oath is a serious matter, Lord Uhtred.’

‘It is,’ I agreed.

‘And Alfred will have the right to kill you when I tell him.’

I shrugged.

‘Better you keep the oath,’ Pyrlig said, ‘than be fooled by men who make a corpse from a living man. The Fates are not on your side, Lord Uhtred. Trust me.’

I looked at him and saw the sorrow in his eyes. He liked me, yet he was telling me I had been fooled, and he was right, and the dream was collapsing around me. ‘What choice do I have?’ I asked him bitterly. ‘You know I went to Lundene to join them, and you must tell Alfred that, and he will never trust me again.’

‘I doubt he trusts you now,’ Pyrlig said cheerfully. ‘He’s a wise man, Alfred. But he knows you, Uhtred, he knows you are a warrior, and he needs warriors.’ He paused to pull out the wooden cross that hung about his neck. ‘Swear on it,’ he said.

‘Swear what?’

‘That you will keep your oath to him! Do that and I will keep silent. Do that and I will deny what happened. Do that and I will protect you.’

I hesitated.

‘If you break your oath to Alfred,’ Pyrlig said, ‘then you are my enemy and I’ll be forced to kill you.’

‘You think you could?’ I asked.

He grinned his mischievous grin. ‘Ah, you like me, lord, even though I am a Welshman and a priest, and you’d be reluctant to kill me, and I’d have three strokes before you woke up to your danger, so yes, lord, I would kill you.’

I put my right hand on the cross. ‘I swear it,’ I said.

And I was still Alfred’s man.