The Burning Land Part 18

The laughter was sour because Skirnir's treasure was indeed paltry. He had boasted of his wealth, but the truth was hidden behind those boasts and beneath his stinking bed-skins. He was not poor, true, but his h.o.a.rd was just what I should have expected from a man who did little except steal sc.r.a.ps of silver from small traders.

My men watched the table. It was important that they saw what they had won so they would know I did not cheat them when I divided the h.o.a.rd. They mostly saw silver, but there were two pieces of gold, both thin torques made of twisted strands, and I put one in the pile for Rollo and his men, and kept the other for my followers. Then there were coins, mostly Frankish silver, but there were a few Saxon shillings and a handful of those mysterious coins that have curly writing no one can read and which are rumored to come from some great empire to the east. There were four silver ingots, but the greatest part of the treasure was in silver shards. The northmen have no coinage, other than what they steal, and so they pay for their goods, when they pay at all, with silver sc.r.a.ps. A Viking will steal a silver bracelet, and when he needs to buy something he will hack the bracelet into shards that a merchant will weigh on scales. The steward brought us a scale and we weighed the silver and the coins. There was just over thirty pounds.

That was not to be despised. We would all go home richer. Yet my share of the treasure would hardly raise one crew of men for one season's fighting. I stared at the divided treasure, the last silver shards still resting in the bowl of the scales, and knew that it would not bring me Bebbanburg. It would not give me an army. It would not buy the fulfillment of my dreams. I felt my spirits sink and thought of aelfric's laughter. My uncle would soon enough learn that I had voyaged, captured, and been disappointed, and it was while I was thinking of his enjoyment that Skade chose to speak. "You said you would give me half," she demanded.

My fist crashed on the table so hard that the small piles of silver shuddered. "I said no such thing," I snarled.

"You said..."

I pointed at her, silencing her. "You want to go in the hole?" I asked. "You want to live with the rats in the silver vault?"

My men smiled. Since coming to Frisia they had learned to dislike Skade and at that moment she began to hate me. I had begun to hate her earlier, when I saw the cruelty beneath her beauty. She was like a sword haunted by a spirit of greed, like a blade of shining beauty, but with a heart as dark as blood. Later that night she demanded her share again and I reminded her that though she had asked for half her husband's treasure, I had never promised it. "And don't think to curse me again," I told her, "because if you do, woman, I shall sell you into slavery, but not before I disfigure you. You want a scarred face? You want me to make you ugly? Then keep your curses to yourself."

I do not know where she slept that night, nor did I care.

We left Zegge in the dawn. I burned the six smaller ships Skirnir had left in the harbor, but I did not burn the hall. Wind and tide would take care of it. The islands come and go, the channels change from year to year, and the sand shifts to make new islands. Folk live on those islands for a few years, and then the surging tides dissolve the land again. When I next saw the islands, many years later, Zegge was quite gone, as though it had never existed at all.

We went home, and we had fair weather for the crossing. The sun glinted off the sea, the sky was clear and the air cold. It was only as we approached the coast of Britain that the clouds came and the wind rose. It took me some time to find a landmark I knew, and then we had to row hard into a north wind to find the Tinan's mouth and it was almost dark as we rowed Seolferwulf Seolferwulf into the river beneath the ruined monastery. We beached her and next day we went to Dunholm. into the river beneath the ruined monastery. We beached her and next day we went to Dunholm.

I did not know it, but I was never to see Seolferwulf Seolferwulf again. again.

She was a n.o.ble ship.

PART THREE.

BATTLE'S EDGE

ONE.

The deep winter came and with it a fever. I have been lucky, rarely being ill, but a week after we reached Dunholm I began to shiver, then sweat, then feel as though a bear were clawing the insides of my skull. Brida made a bed for me in a small house where a fire burned day and night. That winter was cold, but there were moments when I thought my body was on fire, and then there were times when I shivered as if I were bedded in ice even though the fire roared in its stone hearth so fiercely that it scorched the roof beams. I could not eat. I grew weak. I woke in the night, and sometimes I thought of Gisela and of my lost children, and I wept. Ragnar told me I raved in my sleep, but I do not remember that madness, only that I was convinced I would die and so I made Brida tie my hand to Wasp-Sting's hilt.

Brida brought me infusions of herbs in mead, she spooned honey into my mouth, and she made certain that the small house was guarded against Skade's malevolence. "She hates you," she told me one cold night when the wind pulled at the thatch and bellied the leather curtain which served as a door.

"Because I didn't give her any silver?"

"Because of that."

"There was no h.o.a.rd," I said, "not as she described it."

"But she denies cursing you."

"What else can have caused this?"

"We tied her to a post," Brida said, "and showed her the whip. She swore she had not cursed you."

"She would," I said bitterly.

"And she still denied it when her back was b.l.o.o.d.y."

I looked at Brida, dark-eyed, her face shadowed by her wild black hair. "Who used the whip?"

"I did," she said calmly, "and then I took her to the stone."

"The stone?"

She nodded eastward. "Across the river, Uhtred, is a hill, and on the hill is a stone. A big one, planted upright. It was put there by the ancient people and it has power. The stone has b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

"b.r.e.a.s.t.s?"

"It's shaped that way," she said, momentarily cupping her hands over her own small b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "It's tall," she went on, "even taller than you, and I took her there at night and lit fires to the G.o.ds, and put skulls in a ring, and I told her I would summon the demons to turn her skin yellow and her hair white and to make her face wrinkled and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s sag and her back humped. She cried."

"Could you have done all that?"

"She believed so," Brida said with a sly smile, "and she promised me on her life she had not cursed you. She spoke true, I'm sure."

"So it's just a fever?"

"More than a fever, a sickness. Others have it. Two men died last week."

A priest came each week and bled me. He was a morose Saxon who preached his gospel in the small town that had appeared just to the south of Ragnar's fortress. Ragnar had brought prosperity to the local countryside and the town was growing quickly, the smell of newly sawn wood as constant as the stink of sewage flowing downhill to the river. Brida, of course, had objected to the church being constructed, but Ragnar had allowed it. "They'll worship any G.o.d they choose," he had told me, "whatever I might wish. And the Saxons here were Christians before I arrived. A few have gone back to the real G.o.ds. The first priest wanted to pull down Brida's stone and called me an evil heathen b.a.s.t.a.r.d when I stopped him, so I drowned him and this new one is a lot more polite." The new priest was also reckoned to be a skilled healer, though Brida, who had her own knowledge of herbs, would not let him prescribe any potions for me. He would just open a vein in one of my arms and watch the blood pulse thick and slow into a horn cup. When it was done he was instructed to pour the blood onto the fire, then scour out the cup, which he always did with a scowl because it was a pagan precaution. Brida wanted the blood destroyed so no one could use it to cast a spell on me.

"I'm surprised Brida permits you to come into the fortress," I told the priest one day as my drawn blood hissed and bubbled on the logs.

"Because she hates Christians, lord?"

"Yes."

"She was sick three winters ago," the priest said, "and Jarl Ragnar sent for me when all else failed. I cured her, or else G.o.d Almighty worked the cure through me. Since then she has endured my presence."

Brida also endured Skade's presence. She would have killed her given an excuse, but Skade pleaded with Ragnar that she meant no harm and Ragnar, my friend, had no stomach for slaughtering women, especially good-looking women. He put Skade to work in the hall kitchen. "She worked in my kitchen in Lundene," I told Brida.

"From where she slithered her way into your bed," Brida said tartly, "though I don't suppose that took much effort on her part."

"She's beautiful."

"And you're still the fool you always were. And now another fool will find her and she'll make trouble again. I told Ragnar he should have split her from the crotch to the gullet, but he's as stupid as you."

I was on my feet by Yule, though I could take no part in the games that so delighted Ragnar. There were races, tests of strength and, his favorite, wrestling. He took part himself, winning his first six bouts, then losing to a giant Saxon slave who was rewarded with a handful of silver. On the afternoon of the great feast the fortress dogs were allowed to attack a bull, an entertainment that reduced Ragnar to tears of laughter. The bull, a wiry and savage creature, dashed around the hilltop between the buildings, attacking when he had a chance and tossing careless dogs into gut-spilled ruin, but eventually he lost too much blood and the hounds converged on him. "What happened to Nihtgenga?" I asked Brida as the roaring bull collapsed in a frantic heap of scrabbling dogs.

"He died," Brida said, "long, long ago."

"He was a good dog," I said.

"He was," she said, watching the hounds tear at the thrashing bull's belly. Skade was on the far side of the killing ground, but she avoided my gaze.

The Yule feast was lavish because Ragnar, like his father, had always adored the winter celebrations. A great fir tree had been cut and dragged to the hall where it was hung with silver coins and jewelry. Skade was among the servants who brought the beef, pork, venison, bacon, blood sausages, bread, and ale. She still avoided my eye. Men noticed her, how could they not? One drunken man tried to seize her and pull her onto his lap, but Ragnar slapped the table so hard that the blow upset a horn of wine and the sound was enough to persuade the man to let Skade go.

There were harpists and skalds. The skalds chanted verses in praise of Ragnar and his family, and Ragnar beamed with delight when his father's exploits were described. "Say that again," he would roar when some treasured exploit was recounted. He knew many of the words and chanted along, but then startled the skald by slapping the table again. "What did you just sing?" he demanded.

"That your father, lord, served the great Ubba."

"And who killed Ubba?"

The skald frowned. "A Saxon dog, lord."

"This Saxon dog," Ragnar shouted, lifting my arm. It was while men were still laughing that the messenger arrived. He came from the dark and for a moment no one noticed the tall Dane who, it turned out, had just ridden from Eoferwic. He was clad in mail because there were brigands on the roads, and the skirts of his armor, his boots, and the richly decorated scabbard of his sword were spattered with mud. He must have been tired, but there was a broad smile on his face.

Ragnar noticed the man first. "Grimbald!" he bellowed the name in welcome. "You should arrive before a feast, not after! But worry not, there's food and ale!"

Grimbald bowed to Ragnar. "I bring you news, lord."

"News that couldn't wait?" Ragnar asked good-naturedly. The hall had gone quiet because men wondered what could have brought Grimbald in such haste through the cold, wet darkness.

"News that will please you, lord," Grimbald said, still smiling.

"The price of virgins has dropped?"

"Alfred of Wess.e.x, lord," Grimbald paused, "is dead."

There was a moment's silence, then the hall burst into cheers. Men beat the table with their hands and whooped with delight. Ragnar was half drunk, but had enough sense to hold up his hands for silence. "How do you know this?"

"The news was brought to Eoferwic yesterday," Grimbald said.

"By whom?" I demanded.

"By a West Saxon priest, lord," Grimbald said. The tall messenger was one of mad King Guthred's household warriors and, though he did not know me, my place of honor beside Ragnar persuaded him to call me lord.

"So his whelp is the new king?" Ragnar asked.

"So it is said, lord."

"King Edmund?" Ragnar inquired, "that'll take some getting used to."

"Edward," I said.

"Edmund or Edward, who cares? He's not long for this life," Ragnar said happily. "What kind of boy is he?" he asked me.

"Nervous."

"Not a warrior?"

"His father was no warrior either," I said, "yet he defeated every Dane who came to take his throne."

"You did that for him," Ragnar said cheerfully and slapped my back. The hall was suddenly full of talk as men glimpsed a new future. There was so much excitement, though I remember looking down at one of the tables and saw Osferth frowning in lonely silence. Then Ragnar leaned close to me. "You don't look happy, Uhtred."

How did I feel at that moment? I was not happy. I had never liked Alfred. He was too pious, too humorless, and too stern. His delight was order. He wanted to reduce the whole world to lists, to organization, to obedience. He loved to collect books and write laws. He believed that if only every man, woman, and child were to obey the law, then we would have a heavenly kingdom on earth, but he forgot the earthly pleasures. He had known them as a young man, Osferth was proof of that, but then he had allowed the nailed Christian G.o.d to persuade him that pleasure was sin and so he tried to make laws that would outlaw sin. A man might as well try to shape water into a ball.

So I did not like Alfred, but I had always been aware that I was in the presence of an extraordinary man. He was thoughtful, and he was no fool. His mind had been fast and open to ideas, so long as those ideas did not contradict his religious convictions. He was a king who did not believe that kingship implied omniscience and he was, in his way, a humble man. Above everything, he had been a good man, though never a comfortable one. He had also believed in fate, a thing all religions seem to share, though the difference between Alfred and me had been his conviction that fate was progress. He wanted to improve the world, while I did not believe and never have believed that we can improve the world, just merely survive as it slides into chaos.

"I respected Alfred," I told Ragnar. I was still not certain I believed the news. Rumors fly around like summer gossamer, and so I beckoned Grimbald closer. "What exactly did the priest tell you?"

"That Alfred was in the church at Wintanceaster," he said, "and that he collapsed during the rituals and was taken to his bed."

That sounded convincing. "And his son is king now?"

"The priest said so."

"Is Harald still trapped in Wess.e.x?" Ragnar asked.

"No, lord," Grimbald said, "Alfred paid him silver to depart."

Ragnar bellowed for silence and made Grimbald repeat his last words about Harald, and the news that the wounded jarl had been paid to leave Torneie prompted another cheer in the hall. Danes love to hear of Saxons paying silver to rid themselves of Danes. It encourages them to attack Saxon lands in hope of similar bribes.

"Where did Harald go?" Ragnar asked, and I saw Skade listening.

"He joined Haesten, lord."

"In Beamfleot?" I asked, but Grimbald did not know.

The news of Alfred's death and of the wounded Harald's enrichment gave the feast an added happiness. For once there were not even any fights as the mead, ale, and wine took hold of the tables. Every man in that hall, except perhaps a handful of my Saxon followers, saw a new opportunity to capture and plunder the rich fields, villages and towns of Wess.e.x.

And they were right. Wess.e.x was vulnerable, except for one thing.

The news was a rumor after all.

Alfred lived.

Yet, in the dark of the year, every man in northern Britain believed the rumor, and it energized Brida. "It's a sign from the G.o.ds," she declared, and persuaded Ragnar to summon the northern jarls. The meeting was set for the early spring, when the winter rains would have ended and the fords made pa.s.sable again. The prospect of war stirred Dunholm from its winter torpor. In town and fortress the smiths were set to forging spear-blades, and Ragnar let every shipmaster know that he would welcome crews in the spring. Word of that generosity would eventually reach Frisia and far Denmark, and hungry men would come to Northumbria, though for the moment Ragnar spread the rumor that he merely raised troops to invade the land of the Scots. Offa, the Mercian with his trained dogs, heard the rumors and came north despite the weather. He pretended he always struggled through the wet cold rains of Northumbria in the dead days of the year, but it was clear he wanted to learn what Ragnar planned. Ragnar, for once, was reticent, and refused to allow Offa into the high fortress on its river-bound rock. Brida, I think, threatened him with her displeasure, and Brida could always control Ragnar.

I went to meet Offa in a tavern beneath the fortress. I took Finan and Osferth, and I pretended to get drunk. "I heard you were sick, lord," Offa said, "and I'm glad you are recovered."

"I hear Alfred of Wess.e.x was also sick?" Osferth put in.

Offa, as ever, considered his answer, wondering whether he was about to give away information that was better sold, then realized that whatever news he possessed would soon be known anyway. Besides, he was here to dig information from us. "He collapsed in church," he said, "and the physicians were sure he would die. He was very ill! He was given the last rites twice, to my certain knowledge, but G.o.d relented."

"G.o.d loves him," I said, slurring my words and thumping the table for more ale.

"Not enough to give him a full recovery," Offa said guardedly. "He is still weak."

"He was always weak," I said. That was true about Alfred's health, if not his resolve, but I had spoken sourly, as a deliberate insult, and Offa gazed at me, doubtless wondering just how drunk I truly was.