And Ragnall, I thought, would be listening and watching for a sign too. I prayed that the owl would call to his ears and let him know the fear of that sound that foretells death. I listened and heard nothing except the night’s small noises.
Then I heard the clapping sound. Quick and soft. It started and stopped. It had come from the fields to the north, from the rough pasture that lay between Ceaster’s ditch and the Roman cemetery. Some of my men wanted to dig up the cemetery and throw the dead onto a fire, but I had forbidden it. They feared the dead, reckoning that ancient ghosts in bronze armour would come to haunt their sleep, but the ghosts had built this city, they had made the strong walls that protected us, and we owed them our protection now.
The clapping sounded again.
I should have told Ragnall of the ghosts. His insults had been better than mine, he had won that ritual of abuse, but if I had thought of the Roman graves with their mysterious stones I could have told him of an invisible army of the dead that rose in the night with sharpened swords and vicious spears. He would have mocked the idea, of course, but it would have lodged in his fears. In the morning, I thought, we should pour wine on the graves as thanks to the protecting dead.
The clapping started again, followed by a whirring noise. It was not harsh, but neither was it tuneful. ‘Early in the year for a nightjar,’ Finan said behind me.
‘I didn’t hear you!’ I said, surprised.
‘I move like a ghost,’ he sounded amused. He came and stood beside me and listened to the sudden clapping sound. It was the noise made by the long wings of the bird beating together in the dark. ‘He wants a mate,’ Finan said.
‘It’s that time of year. Eostre’s feast.’
We stood in companionable silence for a while. ‘So are we really going to Eads Byrig tomorrow?’ Finan finally asked.
‘We are.’
‘Through the forest?’
‘Through the forest to Eads Byrig,’ I said, ‘then north to the river.’
He nodded. For a while he said nothing, just gazed at the distant shine of moonlight on the Mærse. ‘No one else is to kill him,’ he broke the silence fiercely.
‘Conall?’
‘He’s mine.’
‘He’s yours,’ I agreed. I paused, listening to the nightjar. ‘I thought you were going to kill him this morning.’
‘I would have done. I wish I had. I will.’ He touched his breast where the crucifix had hung. ‘I prayed for this, prayed God would send Conall back to me.’ He paused and smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. ‘Tomorrow then.’
‘Tomorrow,’ I said.
He slapped the wall in front of him, then laughed. ‘The boys need a fight, by Christ they do. They were trying to kill each other earlier.’
‘I heard it. What happened?’
‘Young Godric got in a fight with Heargol.’
‘Godric!’ He was my servant. ‘He’s an idiot!’
‘Heargol was too drunk. He was punching air.’
‘Even so,’ I said, ‘one of his punches could kill young Godric.’ Heargol was one of Æthelflaed’s household warriors, a great brute of a man who revelled in the close work of a shield wall.
‘I pulled the bastard off before he could do any harm, and then I smacked Godric. Told him to grow up.’ He shrugged. ‘No harm done.’
‘What were they fighting over?’
‘There’s a new girl at the Pisspot.’ The Pisspot was a tavern. Its proper name was the Plover and that bird was painted on its sign, but for some reason it was always called the Pisspot, and it was a place that sold good ale and bad women. The holy twins, Ceolnoth and Ceolberht, had tried to close the tavern, calling it a den of iniquity, and so it was, which is why I wanted it left open. I commanded a garrison of young warriors and they needed everything the Pisspot provided. ‘Mus,’ Finan said.
‘Mus?’
‘That’s her name.’
‘Mouse?’
‘You should go see her,’ Finan said, grinning. ‘Sweet God in His heaven, lord, but she’s worth seeing.’
‘Mus,’ I said.
‘You won’t regret it!’
‘He won’t regret what?’ a woman’s voice asked, and I turned to see Æthelflaed had come to the ramparts.
‘He won’t regret cutting the big willows downstream of Brunanburh, my lady,’ Finan said. ‘We need new shield wood.’ He gave her a respectful bow.
‘And you need your sleep,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘if you’re to ride to Eads Byrig tomorrow.’ She laid a stress on the word ‘if’.
Finan knew when he was being dismissed. He bowed again. ‘I bid you both goodnight,’ he said.
‘Look out for mice,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘We assemble at dawn?’
‘All of us,’ I said. ‘Mail, shields, weapons.’
‘It’s time we killed a few of the bastards,’ Finan said. He hesitated, wanting an invitation to stay, but none came and he walked away.
Æthelflaed took his place and gazed at the moon-silvered land for a moment. ‘Are you really going to Eads Byrig?’
‘Yes. And you should send Merewalh and six hundred men with me.’
‘So they can die in the forest?’
‘They won’t,’ I said and hoped I did not lie. Had the nightjar been the omen I had wanted? I did not know how to interpret the clapping sound. The direction that a bird flies has meaning, as does the stoop of a falcon or the hollow call of an owl, but a drumming noise in the darkness? Then I heard it again and something about the sound made me think of the clatter of shields as men made a shield wall. It was the omen I sought.
‘You told us!’ Æthelflaed was insistent. ‘You said that once you were among the trees you can’t see where the enemy is. That they could get behind you. That you’ll be ambushed! So what’s changed?’ She paused and, when I did not answer, grew angry. ‘Or is this stupidity? You let Ragnall insult us so now you have to attack him?’
‘He won’t be there,’ I said.
She frowned at me. ‘He won’t be there?’ she repeated.
‘Why did he give us a full day to leave the city?’ I asked. ‘Why not tell us to leave at dawn? Why not tell us to leave immediately?’
She thought about the questions, but found no answer. ‘Tell me,’ she demanded.
‘He knows we’re not going to leave,’ I said, ‘but he wants us to think we have a whole day before he attacks us. He needs that day because he’s leaving. He’s going north across his bridge of boats and he doesn’t want us interfering with that. He’s no intention of attacking Ceaster. He’s got a brand new army and he doesn’t want to lose two or three hundred men trying to cross these walls. He wants to take the army to Eoferwic because he needs to be King of Northumbria before he attacks Mercia.’
‘How do you know?’
‘A nightjar told me.’
‘You can’t be sure!’
‘I’m not sure,’ I admitted, ‘and perhaps it’s a ruse to persuade us to go into the forest tomorrow and be killed. But I don’t think so. He wants us to leave him in peace so he can withdraw, and if that’s what he wants then we shouldn’t give it to him.’
She put her arm through mine, a gesture that told me she had accepted both my argument and my plan. She was silent a long time. ‘I suppose,’ she said at last, her voice low and small, ‘that we should attack him in Northumbria?’
‘I’ve been saying we should invade Northumbria for months.’
‘So you can retake Bebbanburg?’
‘So we can drive the Danes out.’
‘My brother says we shouldn’t.’
‘Your brother,’ I said, ‘doesn’t want you to be the champion of the Saxons. He wants to be that himself.’
‘He’s a good man.’
‘He’s cautious,’ I said, and so he was. Edward of Wessex had wanted to be King of Mercia too, but he had bowed to Mercian wishes when they had chosen his sister Æthelflaed to rule instead of him. Perhaps he had expected her to fail, but in that he
had been disappointed. Now his armies were busy in East Anglia, driving the Danes north out of that land, and he had insisted that his sister do no more than reconquer the old Mercian lands. To conquer the north, he said, we would need both the armies of Wessex and of Mercia, and perhaps he was right. I thought we should invade anyway and take back a slew of towns in southern Northumbria, but Æthelflaed had accepted her brother’s wishes. She needed his support, she told me. She needed the gold that Wessex gave Mercia, and she needed the West Saxon warriors who manned the burhs in eastern Mercia. ‘In a year or two,’ I said, ‘Edward will have secured East Anglia and then he’ll come here with his army.’
‘That’s good,’ she said. She sounded cautious, not because she did not want her brother to join his forces to hers, but because she knew I believed she should strike north long before her brother was ready.
‘And he’ll lead your army and his into Northumbria.’
‘Good,’ she insisted.
And that invasion would make the dream real. It was the dream of Æthelflaed’s father, King Alfred, that all the folk who spoke the English language would live in one kingdom under one king. There would be a new kingdom, Englaland, and Edward wanted to be the first man to carry the title of King of Englaland. ‘There’s only one problem,’ I said bleakly, ‘right now Northumbria is weak. It has no strong king and it can be taken piece by piece. But a year from now? Ragnall will be king, and he’s strong. Conquering Northumbria will be far more difficult once Ragnall rules there.’
‘We’re not strong enough to invade Northumbria on our own,’ Æthelflaed insisted. ‘We need my brother’s army.’
‘Give me Merewalh and six hundred men,’ I said, ‘and I’ll be in Eoferwic in three weeks. A month from now I’ll see you crowned queen of Northumbria, and I’ll bring you Ragnall’s head in a gospel box.’
She laughed at that, thinking that I joked. I did not. She squeezed my arm. ‘I’d like his head as a gift,’ she said, ‘but for now you need your sleep. And so do I.’
And I hoped the message of the nightjar was true.
I would find out tomorrow.
The sun had risen into a sky of ragged clouds and scudding wind by the time we left Ceaster. Seven hundred men rode to Eads Byrig.
The horsemen streamed through Ceaster’s northern gate, a torrent of mail and weapons, hooves clattering on the gate-tunnel’s stone, the bright spear-points raised to the fitful sun as we followed the Roman road north and east.
Æthelflaed insisted on coming herself. She was mounted on Gast, her white mare, and followed by her standard-bearer, by a bodyguard of ten picked warriors, and by five priests, one of whom was Bishop Leofstan. He was not formally the bishop yet, but would be soon. He was mounted on a roan gelding, a placid horse. ‘I don’t like riding when I can walk,’ he told me.
‘You can walk if you prefer, father,’ I said.
‘I limp.’
‘I noticed.’
‘I was kicked by a yearling when I was ten,’ he explained, ‘it was a gift from God!’
‘Your god gives strange gifts.’
He laughed at that. ‘The gift, Lord Uhtred, was the pain. It lets me understand the crippled, it permits me to share a little in their agony. It is a lesson from God! But today I must ride or else I won’t see your victory.’
He was riding beside me, just in front of my great wolf’s head banner. ‘What makes you think it will be a victory?’ I asked.
‘God will grant you the victory! We prayed for that this morning.’ He smiled at me.
‘Did you pray to my god or your god?’
He laughed, then suddenly winced. I saw a look of pain cross his face, a grimace as he bent forward in the saddle. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘God afflicts me with pain sometimes. It comes and it goes.’ He straightened and smiled at me. ‘There! Gone already!’
‘A strange god,’ I said viciously, ‘who gives his worshippers pain.’
‘He gave his own son a cruel death, why should we not suffer a little pain?’ He laughed again. ‘Bishop Wulfheard warned me against you! He calls you the spawn of Satan! He said you would oppose everything I try to achieve. Is that true, Lord Uhtred?’
‘You leave me alone, father,’ I said sourly, ‘and I’ll leave you alone.’
‘I shall pray for you! You can’t object to that!’ He looked at me as if expecting a response, but I said nothing. ‘I’m not your enemy, Lord Uhtred,’ he said gently.
‘Count yourself fortunate in that,’ I said, knowing that I was being boorish.
‘I do!’ He had taken no offence. ‘My mission here is to be like Christ! To feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and to be a father to the fatherless. Your task, if I understand it right, is to protect us! God gave us different missions. You do yours and I will do mine. I am not Bishop Wulfheard!’ he said that with a surprising slyness, ‘I shall not interfere with you! I know nothing of war!’
I made a grunting sound that he could take as grateful acceptance of his words.
‘Do you think I wanted this burden?’ he asked me. ‘To become a bishop?’
‘You don’t?’
‘Dear Lord, no! I was happy, Lord Uhtred! I laboured in King Edward’s household as a humble priest. My duty was to draw up charters and write the king’s letters, but my joy was translating Saint Augustine’s City of God. It is all I ever wanted from life. A pot of ink, a sheaf of quills, and a church father to guide my thoughts. I’m a scholar, not a bishop!’
‘Then why …’ I began.
‘God called me,’ he answered my question before I finished it. ‘I walked the streets of Wintanceaster and saw men kicking beggars, saw children forced into slavery, saw women degraded, saw cruelty, saw cripples dying in the ditches. That was not the city of God! For those people it was hell, and the church was doing nothing! Well, a little! There were convents and monasteries that tended the sick, but not enough of them! So I began to preach, and tried to feed the hungry and help the helpless. I preached that the church should spend less on silver and gold and more on food for the hungry and on clothes for the naked.’
I half smiled. ‘I can’t think that made you popular.’
‘Of course it didn’t! Why do you think they sent me here?’
‘To be the bishop,’ I said, ‘it’s a promotion!’
‘No, it’s a punishment,’ he said, laughing. ‘Let that fool Leofstan deal with the Lord Uhtred!’
‘Is that the punishment?’ I asked, curious.
‘Good Lord, yes. They’re all terrified of you!’
‘And you’re not?’ I asked, amused.
‘My tutor in Christ was Father Beocca.’
‘Ah,’ I said. Beocca had been my tutor too. Poor Father Beocca, crippled and ugly, but a better man never walked this earth.
‘He was fond of you,’ Leofstan said, ‘and proud of you too.’
‘He was?’
‘And he told me often that you are a kind man who tries to hide his kindness.’
I grunted again. ‘Beocca,’ I said, ‘was full of …’
‘Wisdom,’ Leofstan interrupted me firmly. ‘So no, I’m not frightened of you and I will pray for you.’
‘And I’ll keep the Northmen from slaughtering you,’ I said.
‘Why do you think I pray for you?’ he asked, laughing. ‘Now go, I’m certain you have more pressing duties than talking to me. And God be with you!’
I kicked back my heels, riding hard to the front of the column. Damn it, I thought, but now I liked Leofstan. He would join that small group of priests like Beocca, Willibald, Cuthbert, and Pyrlig, whom I admired and liked, a group hugely outnumbered by the corrupt, venal and ambitious clerics who governed the church so jealously. ‘Whatever you do,’ I told Berg, who was the leading horseman, ‘never believe the Christians when they tell you to love your enemies.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Why would I want to love them?’
‘I don’t know! Just Ch
ristian shit. Have you seen any enemy?’
‘Nothing,’ he said.
I had sent no scouts ahead. Ragnall would learn soon enough that we were coming, and he would either gather his men to oppose us or, if I was right, he would refuse battle. I would learn which soon enough. Æthelflaed, even though she had decided to trust my instinct, feared I was being impetuous, and I was not so sure that she was wrong and so had attempted to persuade her to stay in Ceaster. ‘And what will men think of me,’ she had asked, ‘if I cower behind stone walls while they ride to fight Mercia’s enemies?’
‘They’ll think you’re a sensible woman.’
‘I am the ruler of Mercia,’ she said. ‘Men won’t follow unless I lead.’
We followed the Roman road, which would eventually lead to a crossroads where ruined stone buildings stood above deep shafts dug into the layers of salt that had once made this region rich. Old men remembered clambering down the long ladders to reach the white rock, but the shafts now lay in the uncertain land between the Saxons and the Danes, and so the buildings, which the Romans had made, decayed. ‘If we garrison Eads Byrig,’ I told Æthelflaed as we rode, ‘we can reopen the mines.’ A burh on the hill would protect the country for miles around. ‘Salt from a mine is much cheaper than salt from fire pans.’
‘Let’s capture Eads Byrig first,’ she said grimly.
We did not go as far as the old shafts, turning north a few miles short of the crossroads and plunging into the forest. Ragnall would know we were coming by now and we made no attempt to hide our progress. We rode on the ridge’s crest, following an ancient track from where I could see the green slopes of Eads Byrig rising above the sea of trees, and I could see the bright raw wood of the newly-made palisade, then the track plunged leftwards into trees and I lost sight of the hill until we burst out into the great space that Ragnall had cleared around the ancient fort. The trees had been cut down, leaving stumps, wood chips, and sheared branches. Our appearance in that waste land prompted the defenders of the fort to jeer at us, one even hurled a spear that fell a hundred paces short of our nearest horseman. Bright banners flew above the ramparts, the largest showing Ragnall’s red axe. ‘Merewalh!’ I shouted.
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