The Burning Land Part 9

"Steapa! Hold him!" Alfred called.

But Steapa liked me. He did move toward me, but slowly enough so that I reached the door where the royal guards made a halfhearted effort to bar my way, but a menacing growl from Finan drove their spears aside. He dragged me into the night. "Now come," he said, "fast!"

We ran down the hill to the dark river.

And behind us was a dead monk and uproar.

PART TWO.

VIKING.

ONE.

I stayed furious, unrepentant, pacing the large room beside the river where servants, cowed to silence by my rage, revived the fire. It is strange how news spreads in a city. Within minutes a crowd had gathered outside the house to see how the night would end. The folk were silent, just watching. Finan had barred the outer doors and ordered torches lit in the courtyard. Rain hissed in the flames and slicked the paving stones. Most of my men lived close by and they came one by one, some of them drunk, and Finan or Cerdic met them at the outer door and sent them to fetch their mail and weapons. "Are you expecting a fight?" I asked Finan.

"They're warriors," he said simply.

He was right, so I put on my own mail. I dressed as a warlord. I dressed for battle, with gold on my arms and both swords at my waist, and it was just after I had buckled the belt that Alfred's emissary arrived.

The emissary was Father Beocca. My old friend came alone, his priest's robes muddy from the streets and wet from the rain. He was shivering and I put a stool beside the central hearth and draped a fur cloak about his shoulders. He sat, then held his good hand toward the flames. Finan had escorted him from the front gate and he stayed. I saw that Skade, too, had crept into a shadowed corner. I caught her eye and gave a curt nod that she could remain.

"You've looked under the floor?" Father Beocca said suddenly.

"Under the floor?"

"The Romans," he said, "would heat this house with a furnace that vented its heat into the s.p.a.ce under the floor."

"I know."

"And we hack holes in their roofs and make hearths," he said sadly.

"You'll make yourself ill if you insist on walking about on cold, wet nights," I said.

"Of course a lot of those floors have collapsed," Beocca said as if it was a very important point he needed to make. He rapped the tiles with the stick he now used to help himself walk. "Yours seems in good repair, though."

"I like a hearth."

"A hearth is comforting," Beocca said. He turned his good eye to me and smiled. "The monastery at aescengum cleverly managed to flood the s.p.a.ce under their floor with sewage, and the only solution was to pull the whole house down and build anew! It was a blessing, really."

"A blessing?"

"They found some gold coins among the t.u.r.ds," he said, "so I suspect G.o.d directed their effluent, don't you?"

"My G.o.ds have better things to do than worry about s.h.i.t."

"That's why you've never found gold among your t.u.r.ds!" Beocca said and started laughing. "There, Uhtred," he said triumphantly, "I have at last proved my G.o.d is mightier than your false idols!" He smiled at me, but the smile slowly faded so that he looked old and tired again. I loved Beocca. He had been my childhood tutor and he was always exasperating and pedantic, but he was a good man. "You have until dawn," he said.

"To do what?"

He spoke tiredly, as if he despaired of what he told me. "You will go to the king in penitence," he said, "without mail or weapons. You will abase yourself. You will hand the witch to the king. All the land you hold in Wess.e.x is forfeited. You will pay a wergild to the church for the life of Brother G.o.dwin, and your children will be held hostages against that payment."

Silence.

Sparks whirled upward. A couple of my wolfhounds came into the room. One smelled Beocca's robes, whined, and then both settled by the fire, their doleful eyes looking at me for a moment before closing.

"The wergild," Finan asked for me, "how much?"

"One thousand and five hundred shillings," Beocca said.

I sneered. "For a mad monk?"

"For a saint," Beocca said.

"A mad fool," I snarled.

"A holy fool," Beocca said mildly.

The wergild is the price we pay for death. If I am judged guilty of unjustly killing a man or woman I must pay their kin a price, that price depending on their rank, and that is fair, but Alfred had set G.o.dwin's wergild at almost a royal level. "To pay that," I said, "I'd have to sell almost everything I own, and the king has just taken all my land."

"And you must also swear an oath of loyalty to the etheling," Beocca said. He usually became exasperated with me and would splutter as his exasperation grew, but that night he was very calm.

"So the king would impoverish me," I asked, "and tie me to his son?"

"And he will return the sorceress to her husband," Beocca said, looking at the black-cloaked Skade, whose eyes glittered from the room's darkest corner. "Skirnir has offered a reward for her return."

"Skirnir?" I asked. The name was unfamiliar to me.

"Skirnir is her husband," Beocca said. "A Frisian."

I looked at Skade who nodded abruptly.

"If you return her," I said, "she dies."

"Does that concern you?" Beocca asked.

"I don't like killing women."

"The law of Moses tells us we should not allow a witch to live," Beocca said. "Besides, she is an adulterer, so her husband has the G.o.d-given right to kill her if that is his wish."

"Is Skirnir a Christian?" I asked, but neither Skade nor Father Beocca answered. "Will he kill you?" I asked Skade and she just nodded. "So," I turned back to Beocca, "until I pay the wergild, make my oath to Edward, and send Skade to her death, my children are hostages?"

"The king has decreed that your children will be cared for in the Lady aethelflaed's household," Beocca answered. He looked me up and down with his good eye. "Why are you dressed for war?" I made no answer and Beocca shrugged. "Did you think the king would send his guards?"

"I thought he might."

"And you would have fought them?" He sounded shocked.

"I would have them know who they came to arrest," I said.

"You killed a man!" Beocca at last found some energy. "The man offended you, I know, but it was the Holy Spirit who spoke in him! You hit him, Uhtred! The king forgave the first blow, but not the second, and you must pay for that!" He leaned back, looking tired again. "The wergild is well within your ability to pay. Bishop a.s.ser wished it set much higher, but the king is merciful." A log in the hearth spat suddenly, startling the hounds, who twitched and whined. The fire found new life, brightening the room and casting shaky shadows.

I faced Beocca across the flames. "Bishop a.s.ser," I spat angrily.

"What of him?"

"G.o.dwin was his puppy."

"The bishop saw holiness in him, yes."

"He saw a way to his ambition," I snarled, "to rid Wess.e.x of me." I had been thinking of the feast's events ever since my hand took G.o.dwin's life, and I had decided that a.s.ser was behind the mad monk's words. Bishop a.s.ser believed Wess.e.x safe. Harald's power was destroyed, and Haesten had sent his family to be baptized, so Wess.e.x had no need of a pagan warlord, and a.s.ser had used G.o.dwin to poison Alfred's mind against me. "That twist of Welsh s.h.i.t told G.o.dwin what to say," I said. "It wasn't the holy spirit speaking in G.o.dwin, father, it was Bishop a.s.ser."

Beocca looked at me through the shimmer of fire. "Did you know," he asked, "that the flames in h.e.l.l cast no light?"

"I didn't," I said.

"It is one of the mysteries of G.o.d," Beocca said, then grunted as he stood. He shrugged off the borrowed fur cloak and leaned heavily on his stick. "What shall I tell the king?"

"Is your G.o.d responsible for h.e.l.l?" I asked.

He frowned, thinking. "A good question," he finally said, though he did not answer it. "As is mine. What shall I tell the king?"

"That he will have my answer at dawn."

Beocca half smiled. "And what will that answer be, Lord Uhtred?"

"He will discover that at dawn."

Beocca nodded. "You are to come to the palace alone, without weapons, without mail, and dressed simply. We shall send men to take the witch. Your children will be returned on payment of one hundred shillings, the remainder of the wergild is to be paid within six months." He limped toward the courtyard door, then turned and stared at me. "Let me die in peace, Lord Uhtred."

"By watching my humiliation?"

"By knowing that your sword will be at King Edward's command. That Wess.e.x will be safe. That Alfred's work will not die with him."

That was the first time I heard Edward called king.

"You'll have my answer at sunrise," I said.

"G.o.d be with you," Beocca responded, and hobbled into the night.

I listened to the heavy outer door bang shut and the locking bar drop into place, and I remembered Ravn, the blind skald who had been Ragnar the Elder's father, telling me that our lives are like a voyage across an unknown sea, and sometimes, he said, we get tired of calm waters and gentle winds, and we have no choice but to slam the steering oar's loom hard over and head for the gray clouds and the whitecaps and the tumult of danger. "That is our tribute to the G.o.ds," he had told me, and I still do not know quite what he meant, but in that sound of the door closing I heard the echo of the steering oar slamming hard to one side.

"What do we do?" Finan asked me.

"I tell you what I won't do," I snarled. "I will not give that d.a.m.ned child my oath."

"Edward's no child," Finan said mildly.

"He's a milksop little b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I said angrily. "He's addled by his G.o.d, just like his father. He was weaned on that b.i.t.c.h wife's vinegar t.i.ts, and I will not give him an oath."

"He'll be King of Wess.e.x soon," Finan observed.

"And why? Because you and I kept their kingdom safe, you and I! If Wess.e.x lives, my friend, it's because an Irish runt and a Northumbrian pagan kept it alive! And they forget that!"

"Runt?" Finan asked, smiling.

"Look at the size of you," I said. I liked teasing him because of his small stature, though that was deceptive because he had a speed with the sword that was astonishing. "I hope their G.o.d d.a.m.ns their d.a.m.n kingdom," I spat, then went to a chest in the corner of the room. I opened it and felt inside, finding a bundle that I carried to Skade. I felt a pang as I touched the leather wrapping, for these things had belonged to Gisela. "Read those," I said, tossing her the package.

She unwrapped the alder sticks. There were two dozen, none longer than a man's forearm, and all polished with beeswax to a fine gleam. Finan made the sign of the cross as he saw this pagan magic, but I had learned to trust the runesticks. Skade held them in one hand, raised them slightly, closed her eyes, and let them fall. The sticks clattered on the floor and she leaned forward to deduce their message.

"She won't see her own death there," Finan warned me softly, implying I could not trust her interpretation.

"We all die," Skade said, "and the sticks don't talk of me."

"What do they say?" I asked.

She stared at the pattern. "I see a stronghold," she finally said, "and I see water. Gray water."

"Gray?" I asked.

"Gray, lord," she said, and that was the first time she called me "lord." "Gray like the frost giants," she added, and I knew she meant northward toward the ice-world where the frost giants stalk the world.

"And the fortress?" I asked.

"It burns, lord. It burns and it burns and it burns. The sand of the sh.o.r.e is black with its ashes."

I motioned her to sweep up the runesticks, then walked onto the terrace. It was still the middle of the night and the sky was black with cloud and spiteful with small rain. I listened to the rush of water squeezing through the piles of the old bridge and I thought of Stiorra, my daughter.

"Gray?" Finan asked, joining me.

"It means north," I said, "and Bebbanburg is in the north and a south wind will carry its ashes to the sands of Lindisfarena."

"North," Finan said quietly.

"Tell the men they have a choice," I said. "They can stay and serve Alfred, or they can come with me. You have the same choice."

"You know what I'll do."

"And I want Seolferwulf Seolferwulf ready by dawn." ready by dawn."

Forty-three men came with me, the rest stayed in Lundene. Forty-three warriors, twenty-six wives, five wh.o.r.es, a huddle of children, and sixteen hounds. I wanted to take my horses, especially Smoka, but the boat was not equipped with the wooden frames that hold stallions safe during a voyage, and so I patted his nose and felt sad to abandon him. Skade came aboard, because to stay in Lundene would mean her death. I had put my mail and weapons and helmets and shields and treasure chest into the small s.p.a.ce beneath the steering platform, and I saw her place her own small bundle of clothes in the same place.