And my angels were a lure to persuade them that there was reputation to be made in war. ‘Have any Danes visited the tomb?’ I asked Ludda.
‘Two, lord,’ he said, ‘both merchants.’
‘And you told them?’
Ludda hesitated, glanced at Æthelflaed, then back to me. ‘I told them what you ordered me to tell them, lord.’
‘You did?’
He nodded, then made the sign of the cross. ‘I told them you would die, lord, and that a Dane would earn great renown by slaying Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’
Æthelflaed drew in a sharp breath and then, like Ludda, made the sign of the cross. ‘You told them what?’ she asked.
‘What Lord Uhtred told me to tell them, lady,’ Ludda said nervously.
‘You’re risking fate,’ Æthelflaed told me.
‘I want the Danes to come,’ I said, ‘and I need to offer them a bait.’
Because Plegmund was wrong, and Æthelhelm was wrong, and Edward was wrong. Peace is a fine thing, but we only have peace when our enemies are too scared to make war. The Danes were not quiet because the Christian god had silenced them, but because they were distracted by other things. Edward wanted to believe they had abandoned their dreams of conquering Wessex, yet I knew they would come. Æthelwold had not abandoned his dream either. He would come, and with him would come a savage horde of sword-Danes and spear-Danes, and I wanted them to come. I wanted to get it over. I wanted to be the sword of the Saxons.
And still they did not come.
I never did understand why it took the Danes so long to take advantage of Alfred’s death. I suppose if Æthelwold had been a more inspirational leader instead of being a weak man then they might have come sooner, but they waited so long that all Wessex was convinced that their god had answered their prayers and made the Danes peaceable. And all the while my angels sang their two songs, one to the Saxons and one to the Danes, and perhaps they made a difference. There were plenty of Danes who wanted to nail my skull to their gable, and the song of the tomb was an invitation.
Yet they hesitated.
Archbishop Plegmund was triumphant. Two years after Edward’s coronation I was summoned to Wintanceaster and had to endure a sermon in the new great church. Plegmund, stern and fierce, claimed that God had conquered when all the swords of man had failed. ‘We are in the last days,’ he said, ‘and we see the dawning of Christ’s kingdom.’
I remember that visit because it was the last time I saw Ælswith, Alfred’s widow. She was retiring to a convent, driven there, I heard, by Plegmund’s insistence. It was Offa who told me that. ‘She supports the archbishop,’ Offa said, ‘but he can’t stand her! She nags.’
‘I pity the nuns,’ I said.
‘Oh Lord alive, she’ll have them hopping,’ Offa said with a smile. He was old. He still had his dogs, but he trained no new ones. ‘They’re companions now,’ he told me, stroking the ears of a terrier, ‘and we’re growing old together.’ He sat with me in the Two Cranes tavern. ‘I’m in pain, lord,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘God will take me soon,’ he said, and in that he was right.
‘Have you travelled this summer?’
‘It was hard,’ he said, ‘but yes, I went north and I went east. Now I’m going home.’
I put money on the table. ‘Tell me what’s happening.’
‘They’re going to attack,’ he said.
‘I know that.’
‘Jarl Sigurd is recovered,’ Offa said, ‘and boats are coming across the sea.’
‘Boats are always crossing the sea,’ I said.
‘Sigurd has let it be known there will be land to possess.’
‘Wessex.’
He nodded. ‘And so the crews are coming, lord.’
‘Where?’
‘They’re assembling at Eoferwic,’ Offa said. I had already heard that news from traders who had been in Northumbria. New ships had come, filled with ambitious and hungry warriors, but the traders all claimed that the army was being assembled to attack the Scots. ‘That’s what they want you to think,’ Offa said. He touched one of the silver coins on the table, tracing his finger over the outline of Alfred’s head. ‘It’s a clever thing you’re doing at Natangrafum,’ he said slyly.
I said nothing for a moment. A flock of geese was driven past the tavern and there were angry shouts as a dog barked at them. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, a feeble response.
‘I’ve told no one,’ Offa said.
‘You’re dreaming, Offa,’ I said.
He looked at me and made the sign of the cross on his skinny chest. ‘I promise you, lord, I told no one. But it was clever, I salute you. It annoyed Jarl Sigurd!’ He chuckled, then used the bone handle of a knife to crack open a hazelnut. ‘What did one of your angels say? That Sigurd was a small man, badly endowed.’ He chuckled again and shook his head. ‘It annoyed him a lot, lord. And maybe that is why Sigurd is giving Eohric money, a great deal of money. Eohric will join the other Danes.’
‘Edward says he has a pledge of peace from Eohric,’ I pointed out.
‘And you know what Eohric’s pledges are worth,’ Offa retorted. ‘They’re going to do what they should have done twenty years ago, lord. They’re going to unite against Wessex. All the Danes, and all the Saxons who hate Edward, all of them.’
‘Ragnar?’ I asked. Ragnar was my old dear friend, a man I thought of as a brother, a man I had not seen in years.
‘He’s not well,’ Offa said gently, ‘not well enough to march.’
That saddened me. I poured ale and one of the tavern girls hurried over to see if the jug was empty, but I waved her away. ‘And what about Cent?’ I asked Offa.
‘What about Cent, lord?’
‘Sigebriht hates Edward,’ I said, ‘and he wants his own kingdom.’
Offa shook his head. ‘Sigebriht is a young fool, lord, but his father has reined him in. The whip has been used and Cent will stay loyal.’ He sounded very certain.
‘Sigebriht isn’t talking to the Danes?’ I asked.
‘If he is, I haven’t heard a whisper,’ Offa said. ‘No, lord, Cent is loyal. Sigelf knows he can’t hold Cent by himself, and Wessex is a better ally for him than the Danes.’
‘Have you told Edward all this?’
‘I told Father Coenwulf,’ he said. Coenwulf was now Edward’s closest adviser and constant companion. ‘I even told him where the attack will come from.’
‘Which is?’
He looked at my coins on the table and said nothing. I sighed and added two more. Offa drew the coins to his side of the table and made a neat line of them. ‘They’ll want you to believe their attack will come from East Anglia,’ he said, ‘but it won’t. The real attack will be from Ceaster.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’ I asked.
‘Brunna,’ he said.
‘Haesten’s wife?’
‘She’s a real Christian,’ he said.
‘Truly?’ I asked. I had always believed the baptism of Haesten’s wife was a cynical ploy to deceive Alfred.
‘She has seen the light,’ Offa said in a mocking tone. ‘Yes, lord, truly, and she confided in me.’ He looked at me with his sad eyes. ‘I was a priest once and perhaps you never really stop being a priest and she wanted to make confession and receive the sacraments and so, God help me, I gave her what she wanted, and now, God help me, I have betrayed the secrets she told me.’
‘The Danes will make an army in East Anglia?’
‘You’ll see that happening, I’m sure, but you won’t see the army gathering behind Ceaster, and that’s the army that will march south.’
‘When?’
‘After the harvest,’ Offa spoke confidently, his voice so low that only I could hear. ‘Sigurd and Cnut want the biggest army seen in Britain. They say it’s time to end the war for ever. They will come when they have the harvest to feed their horde. They want the largest army ever to invade Wessex.’
‘You believe Brunna?’
‘She resents her husband, so yes, I believe her.’
‘What is Ælfadell saying these days?’ I asked.
‘She’s saying what Cnut tells her to say, that the attack will come from the east and that Wessex will fall.’ He sighed. ‘I wish I could live long enough to see the end of this, lord.’
‘You’re good for another ten years, Offa,’ I told him.
He shook his head. ‘I feel the angel of death close behind me, lord.’ He hesitated. ‘You’ve always been good to me, lord.’ He bowed his head. ‘I owe you for your kindness.’
‘You owe me nothing.’
‘I do, lord.’ He looked up at me and, to my surprise, there were tears in his eyes. ‘Not everyone has been kind to me, lord,’ he said, ‘but you have always been generous.’
I was embarrassed. ‘You’ve been very useful,’ I muttered.
‘So in respect for you, lord, and in gratitude to you, I give you my last advice.’ He paused and to my surprise pushed the coins back towards me.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Give me the pleasure, lord,’ he said. ‘I want to thank you.’ He pushed the coins still closer to me. A tear rolled down his cheek and he cuffed it away. ‘Trust no one, lord,’ he said softly, ‘and beware Haesten, lord, beware the army in the west.’ He looked up at me and dared touch my hand with a long finger. ‘Beware the army at Ceaster, and don’t let the pagans destroy us, lord.’
He died that summer.
Then the harvest came, and it was good.
And after it the pagans came.
Ten
I worked it out later, though the knowledge was small consolation. A war-band rode to Natangrafum and because so many of the warriors were Saxons no one thought their presence strange. They arrived on an evening when the tomb was empty, because by then the peace had lasted so long that the angels rarely appeared, but the raiders knew exactly where to go. They rode directly to the Roman house outside Turcandene where they took the handful of guards by surprise and then killed fast and efficiently. When I arrived the next day I saw blood, a lot of blood.
Ludda was dead. I assumed he had tried to defend the house, and his eviscerated body lay sprawled across the doorway. His face was a grimace of pain. Eight others of my men were dead, their bodies stripped of mail, arm rings and anything else of value. On one wall, where the Roman plaster still clung to the bricks, a man had used blood to make a crude drawing of a flying raven. The drips had run down the wall and I could see the print of the man’s hand beneath the raven’s savagely hooked beak. ‘Sigurd,’ I said bitterly.
‘His symbol, lord?’ Sihtric asked me.
‘Yes.’
None of the three girls was there. I supposed the attackers must have taken them, but they had failed to find Mehrasa, the dark girl. She and Father Cuthbert had hidden in some nearby woods and only emerged when they were certain it was my men who now ringed the slaughterhouse. Cuthbert was crying. ‘Lord, lord,’ was all he could say to me at first. He fell to his knees in front of me and wrung his big hands. Mehrasa was steadier, though she refused to cross the house’s blood-reeking threshold where the flies buzzed around Ludda’s opened gut.
‘What happened?’ I asked Cuthbert.
‘Oh God, lord,’ he said, his voice quavery.
I slapped him hard around the face. ‘What happened?’
‘They came at dusk, lord,’ he said, his hands shaking as he tried to clasp them, ‘there were a lot of them! I counted twenty-four men,’ he had to pause, he was shaking so much and when he next tried to speak he just made a mewing noise. Then he saw the anger on my face and took a deep breath. ‘They hunted us, lord.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They searched around the house, lord. In the old orchard, down by the pond.’
‘You were hidden.’
‘Yes, lord.’ He was crying and his voice was scarce above a whisper. ‘Saint Cuthbert the Cowardly, lord.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ I snarled, ‘what could you do against so many?’
‘They took the girls, lord, and killed everyone else. And I liked Ludda.’
‘I liked Ludda too,’ I said, ‘but now we bury him.’ I did like Ludda. He was a clever rogue and he had served me well, and worse, he had trusted me and now he was cut from the groin to the ribs and the flies were thick about his entrails. ‘So what were you doing while he died?’ I asked Cuthbert.
‘We were watching the sunset from the hill, lord.’
I laughed without mirth. ‘Watching the sunset!’
‘We were, lord!’ Cuthbert said, hurt.
‘And you’ve been hiding ever since?’
He looked around at the red mess and his body shook with a sudden spasm. He vomited.
By now, I thought, the two angels would have confessed the whole deception and the Danes were laughing at us. I looked north and east for smoke in the sky, the sure sign that a war had broken out, but I saw none. The temptation was to assume that the killers had been a small raiding party who, their revenge taken, had headed back to safer land, but was the raid just that? A revenge for the ships of Snotengaham? And if it were such a revenge, how did the raiders know the angels were my idea? Or was Plegmund’s peace breaking into a thousand bloody pieces? The raiders had not fired the Roman building, suggesting they did not want to draw attention to their presence. ‘You say there were Saxons among the war-band?’ I asked Cuthbert.
‘I heard them talking, lord,’ he said, ‘and yes, there were Saxons.’
Æthelwold’s men? If it was Æthelwold’s followers then it was surely war, and that meant an attack from Ceaster if Offa was right. ‘Dig graves,’ I told my men. We would begin by burying our dead, but I sent Sihtric and three men back to Fagranforda. They carried orders that my whole household should retreat into Cirrenceastre, and to take the livestock with them. ‘Tell the Lady Æthelflaed she’s to go south into Wessex,’ I said, ‘and tell her to pass the news to Æthelred and to her brother. Make sure King Edward knows! Tell her I need men, and that I’ve gone north towards Ceaster. Have Finan bring every man here.’
It took a day to assemble my men. We buried Ludda and the others in Turcandene’s churchyard and Cuthbert said prayers over the fresh mounds. I still watched the sky and saw no great plumes of smoke. It was high summer, the sky a clear blue in which lazy clouds drifted, and as we rode north I did not know whether we rode to war or not.
I only led a hundred and forty-three men, and if the Danes were coming then I could expect thousands of them. We rode first to Wygraceaster, the northernmost burh in Saxon Mercia, and the bishop’s steward was surprised by our arrival. ‘I’ve heard no news of a Danish attack, lord,’ he told me. The street outside the bishop’s large house was busy with a market, though the bishop himself was in Wessex.
‘Make sure your storehouses are full,’ I told the steward, who bowed, but I could see he was unconvinced. ‘Who commands the garrison here?’ I asked.
It was a man called Wlenca, one of Æthelred’s followers, and he bridled when I told him to assume the war had started. He looked north from the burh’s ramparts and saw no smoke. ‘We’d have heard if there was war,’ he said in a surly tone, and I noted he did not call me ‘lord’.
‘I don’t know if it has started or not,’ I confessed, ‘but assume it has.’
‘Lord Æthelred would send me notice if the Danes attacked,’ he insisted loftily.
‘Æthelred’s scratching his arse in Gleawecestre,’ I said angrily. ‘Is that what you did when Haesten invaded last?’ He looked at me angrily, but said nothing. ‘How do I reach Ceaster from here?’ I asked him.
‘Follow the Roman road,’ he said, pointing.
‘Follow the Roman road, lord,’ I said.
He hesitated, plainly wanting to defy me, but good sense won. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said.
‘And tell me a good defensive place a day’s ride away.’
He shrugged. ‘You can try Scrobbesburh, lord?’
‘Rouse the fyrd,’ I told him, ‘and make sure the walls are manned.’
‘I know my duty, lord,’ he said, yet it was plain from his truculence that he had no intention of reinforcing the men who lazed on the ramparts. That empty, innocent sky persuaded him that there was no danger, and doubtless the moment I left he sent a messenger to Æthelred saying I was panicking unnecessarily.
And perhaps I was panicking. The only evidence of war was the slaughter at Turcandene and the sixth sense of a warrior. War had to come, it had been hiding away for too long, and I was convinced the raid that had killed Ludda was the first spark of a great fire.
We rode on north, following the Roman road that led through the valley of the Sæfern. I missed Ludda and his astonishing knowledge of Britain’s pathways. We had to ask our way, and most folk we questioned could only give us guidance to the next village or town. Scrobbesburh lay to the west of what seemed the quickest way north and so I did not go there, instead we spent a night amidst towering Roman ruins at a place called Rochecestre, a village that astonished me. It had been a vast Roman town, almost as large as Lundene, but now it was a ruin of ghosts, crumbling walls, broken pavements, fallen pillars and shattered marble. A few folk lived there, their wattle and straw huts propped against the Roman stone and their sheep and goats grazing amidst the broken glory. A scrawny priest was the only man who made sense, and he nodded dumbly when I told him I feared the Danes were coming. ‘Where would you go if they came?’ I asked him.
‘I’d go to Scrobbesburh, lord.’
‘Then go there now,’ I ordered him, ‘and tell the rest of the village to go. Is there a garrison there?’
‘Just whoever lives there, lord. There’s no thegn. The Welsh killed the last one.’
‘And if I want to reach Ceaster from here? What road do I take?’
‘Don’t know, lord.’
Places like Rochecestre fill me with despair. I love to build, yet I look at what the Romans did and know we cannot construct anything half so beautiful. We build sturdy halls of oak, we make stone walls, we bring masons from Frankia who raise churches or feast-halls with crude pillars of ill-dressed stone, yet the Romans built like gods. All across Britain their houses, bridges, halls and temples still stand, and they were made hundreds of years ago! Their roofs have fallen and the plaster is flaked, but still they stand, and I wonder how people who were able to make such marvels could have been defeated. The Christians tell us we move inexorably towards better times, towards their god’s kingdom on earth, but my gods only promise the chaos of the world’s ending, and a man only has to look around him to see that everything is crumbling, decaying, proof that the chaos is coming. We are not climbing Jacob’s ladder to some heavenly perfection, but stumbling downhill towards Ragnarok.
The Warrior Chronicles Page 200