The Pale Horseman

by Bernard Cornwell

  I slunk along the courtyard wall. I was wearing my helmet and its faceplate was an adequate disguise, but some men threw me curious glances, for it was unusual to see a helmeted man off a battlefield. In the end, seeing no one I recognized, I took the helmet off and hung it from my belt. The nunnery church had been turned into a feasting hall, but there was only a handful of drunks inside, oblivious to the noise outside. I stole a half loaf of bread from one of the drunks and took it back outside and watched the fighting.

  Steapa Snotor was one of the two men. He no longer wore his mail armor, but was in a leather coat, and he fought with a small shield and a long sword. Around his waist was a chain that led to the courtyard’s northern side where two men held it and, whenever Steapa’s opponent seemed to be in danger, they yanked on the chain to pull the huge Saxon off balance. He was being made to fight as Haesten had been fighting when I first discovered him, and doubtless Steapa’s captors were making good money from fools who wanted to try their prowess against a captured warrior. Steapa’s current opponent was a thin, grinning Dane who tried to dance around the huge man and slide his sword beneath the small shield, doing what I had done when I had fought Steapa, but Steapa was doggedly defending himself, parrying each blow and, when the chain allowed him, counterattacking fast. Whenever the Danes jerked him backward the crowd jeered and once, when the men yanked the chain too hard and Steapa turned on them, only to be faced by three long spears, the crowd gave him a great cheer. He whipped back to parry the next attack, then stepped backward, almost to the spear points, and the thin man followed fast, thinking he had Steapa at a disadvantage, but Steapa suddenly checked, slammed the shield down onto his opponent’s blade, and brought his left hand around, sword hilt foremost, to hit the man on the head. The Dane went down, Steapa reversed the sword to stab, and the chain dragged him off his feet and the spears threatened him with death if he finished the job. The crowd liked it. He had won.

  Money changed hands. Steapa sat by the fire, his grim face showing nothing, and one of the men holding the chain shouted for another opponent. “Ten pieces of silver if you wound him! Fifty if you kill him!”

  Steapa, who probably did not understand a word, just stared at the crowd, daring another man to take him on, and sure enough a half-drunken brute came grinning from the crowd. Bets were made as Steapa was prodded to his feet. It was like a bull baiting, except Steapa was being given only one opponent at a time. They would doubtless have set three or four men on him, except that the Danes who had taken him prisoner did not want him dead so long as there were still fools willing to pay to fight him.

  I was sidling around the courtyard’s edge, still looking at faces. “Six pennies?” a voice said behind me and I turned to see a man grinning beside a door. It was one of a dozen similar doors, evenly spaced along the lime-washed wall.

  “Six pennies?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Cheap,” he said, and he pushed back a small shutter on the door and invited me to look inside.

  I did. A tallow candle lit the tiny room, which must have been where a nun had slept, and inside was a low bed and on the bed was a naked woman who was half covered by a man who had dropped his breeches. “He won’t be long,” the man said.

  I shook my head and moved away from the shutter.

  “She was a nun here,” the man said. “Nice and young. Pretty, too. Screams like a pig usually.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Four pennies? She won’t put up a fight. Not now she won’t.”

  I walked on, convinced I was wasting my time. Had Alfred been and gone? More likely, I thought grimly, the fool had gone back to his hall and I wondered if I dared go there, but the thought of Guthrum’s revenge deterred me. The new fight had started. The Dane was crouching low, trying to cut Steapa’s feet from under him, but Steapa was swatting his blows easily enough and I sidled past the men holding his chains and saw another room off to my left, a large room, perhaps where the nuns had eaten, and a glint of gold in the light of its dying fire drew me inside.

  The gold was not metal. It was the gilding on the frame of a small harp that had been stamped on so hard that it broke. I looked around the shadows and saw a man lying in a heap at the far end and went to him. It was Alfred. He was barely conscious, but he was alive and, so far as I could see, unwounded, but he was plainly stunned and I dragged him to the wall and sat him up. He had no cloak and his boots were gone. I left him there, went back to the church, and found a drunk to befriend. I helped him to his feet, put my arm around his shoulders, and persuaded him I was taking him to his bed, then took him through the back door to the latrine yard of the nunnery where I punched him three times in the belly and twice in the face, then carried his hooded cloak and tall boots back to Alfred.

  The king was conscious now. His face was bruised. He looked up at me without showing any surprise, then rubbed his chin. “They didn’t like the way I played,” he said.

  “That’s because the Danes like good music,” I said. “Put these on.” I threw the boots beside him, draped him with the cloak, and made him pull the hood over his face. “You want to die?” I asked him angrily.

  “I want to know about my enemies,” he said.

  “And I found out for you,” I said. “There are roughly two thousand of them.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, then grimaced. “What’s on this cloak?”

  “Danish vomit,” I said.

  He shuddered. “Three of them attacked me,” he sounded surprised. “They kicked and punched me.”

  “I told you, the Danes like good music,” I said, helping him to his feet. “You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”

  “They thought I was Danish,” he said, then spat blood that trickled from his swollen lower lip.

  “Were they drunk?” I asked. “You don’t even look like a Dane.”

  “I pretended I was a musician who couldn’t speak.” He mouthed silently at me, then grinned bloodily, proud of his deception. I did not grin back and he sighed. “They were very drunk, but I need to know their mood, Uhtred. Are they confident? Are they readying to attack?” He paused to wipe more blood from his lips. “I could only find that out by coming to see them for myself. Did you see Steapa?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to take him back with us.”

  “Lord,” I said savagely, “you are a fool. He’s in chains. He’s got half a dozen guards.”

  “Daniel was in a lion’s den, yet he escaped. Saint Paul was imprisoned, yet God freed him.”

  “Then let God look after Steapa,” I said. “You’re coming back with me. Now.”

  He bent to relieve a pain his belly. “They punched me in the stomach,” he said as he straightened. In the morning, I thought, he would have a rare black eye to display. He flinched as a huge cheer sounded from the courtyard and I guessed Steapa had either died or downed his last opponent. “I want to see my hall,” Alfred said stubbornly.

  “Why?”

  “I’m a man who would look at his own home. You can come or stay.”

  “Guthrum’s there! You want to be recognized? You want to die?”

  “Guthrum will be inside, and I just want to look at the outside.”

  He would not be dissuaded and so I led him through the courtyard to the street, wondering if I should simply pick him up and carry him away, but in his obdurate mood he would probably struggle and shout until men came to find out the cause of the noise. “I wonder what happened to the nuns,” he said as we left the nunnery.

  “One of them is being whored in there for pennies,” I said.

  “Oh, dear God.” He made the sign of the cross and turned back and I knew he was thinking of rescuing the woman, so I dragged him onward. “This is madness!” I protested.

  “It is a necessary madness,” he said calmly, then stopped to lecture me. “What does Wessex believe? It thinks I am defeated, it thinks the Danes have won, it readies itself for the spring and the coming of more Danes. So they must learn somet
hing different. They must learn that the king lives, that he walked among his enemies, and that he made fools of them.”

  “That he got given a bloody nose and a black eye,” I said.

  “You won’t tell them that,” he said, “any more than you’ll tell folk about that wretched woman who hit me with an eel. We must give men hope, Uhtred, and in the spring that hope will blossom into victory. Remember Boethius, Uhtred, remember Boethius! Never give up hope.”

  He believed it. He believed that God was protecting him, that he could walk among his enemies without fear or harm, and to an extent he was right, for the Danes were well supplied with ale, birch wine, and mead, and most were much too drunk to care about a bruised man carrying a broken harp.

  No one stopped us going into the royal compound, but there were six black-cloaked guards at the hall door and I refused to let Alfred get close to them. “They’ll take one look at your bloodied face,” I said, “and finish what the others began.”

  “Then let me at least go to the church.”

  “You want to pray?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  I tried to stop him. “If you die here,” I said, “then Iseult dies.”

  “That wasn’t my doing,” he said.

  “You’re the king, aren’t you?”

  “The bishop thought you would join the Danes,” he said, “and others agreed.”

  “I have no friends left among the Danes,” I said. “They were your hostages and they died.”

  “Then I shall pray for their pagan souls,” he said, and pulled away from me and went to the church door where he instinctively pushed the hood off his head to show respect. I snatched it back over his hair, shadowing his bruises. He did not resist, but just pushed the door open and made the sign of the cross.

  The church was being used to shelter more of Guthrum’s men. There were straw mattresses, heaps of chain mail, stacks of weapons, and a score of men and women gathered around a newly made hearth in the nave. They were playing dice and none took any particular interest in our arrival until someone shouted that we should shut the door.

  “We’re leaving,” I said to Alfred. “You can’t pray here.”

  He did not answer. He was gazing reverently to where the altar had been, and where a half dozen horses were now tethered.

  “We’re leaving!” I insisted again.

  And just then a voice hailed me. It was a voice full of astonishment and I saw one of the dice players stand and stare at me. A dog ran from the shadows and began to jump up and down, trying to lick me, and I saw the dog was Nihtgenga and that the man who had recognized me was Ragnar. Earl Ragnar, my friend.

  Who I had thought was dead.

  NINE

  Ragnar embraced me. There were tears in both our eyes and for a moment neither of us could speak, though I retained enough sense to look behind me to make sure Alfred was safe. He was squatting beside the door, deep in the shadow of a bale of wool, with his cloak’s hood drawn over his face. “I thought you were dead!” I said to Ragnar.

  “I hoped you would come,” he said at the same moment, and for a time we both talked and neither listened, and then Brida walked from the back of the church and I watched her, seeing a woman instead of a girl, and she laughed to see me and gave me a decorous kiss.

  “Uhtred.” She said my name as a caress. We had been lovers once, though we had been little more than children then. She was Saxon, but she had chosen the Danish side to be with Ragnar. The other women in the hall were hung with silver, garnet, jet, amber, and gold, but Brida wore no jewelry other than an ivory comb that held her thick black hair in a pile. “Uhtred,” she said again.

  “Why aren’t you dead?” I asked Ragnar. He had been a hostage, and the hostages’ lives had been forfeit the moment Guthrum crossed the frontier.

  “Wulfhere liked us,” Ragnar said. He put an arm around my shoulder and drew me to the central hearth where the fire blazed. “This is Uhtred,” he announced to the dice players, “a Saxon, which makes him scum, of course, but he is also my friend and my brother. Ale.” He pointed to jars. “Wine. Wulfhere let us live.”

  “And you let him live?”

  “Of course we did! He’s here. Feasting with Guthrum.”

  “Wulfhere? Is he a prisoner?”

  “He’s an ally!” Ragnar said, thrusting a pot into my hand and pulling me down beside the fire. “He’s with us now.” He grinned at me, and I laughed for the sheer joy of finding him alive. He was a big man, golden-haired, open-faced, and as full of mischief, life, and kindness as his father had been. “Wulfhere used to talk to Brida,” Ragnar went on, “and through her to me. We liked each other. Hard to kill a man you like.”

  “You persuaded him to change sides?”

  “Didn’t need a great deal of persuasion,” Ragnar said. “He could see we were going to win, and by changing sides he keeps his land, doesn’t he? Are you going to drink that ale or just stare at it?”

  I pretended to drink, letting some of the ale drip down my beard, and I remembered Wulfhere telling me that when the Danes came we must all make what shifts we could to survive. But Wulfhere? Alfred’s cousin and the Ealdorman of Wiltunscir? He had changed sides? So how many other thegns had followed his example and now served the Danes?

  “Who’s that?” Brida asked. She was staring at Alfred. He was in shadow, but there was something oddly mysterious about the way he squatted alone and silent.

  “A servant,” I said.

  “He can come by the fire.”

  “He cannot,” I said harshly. “I’m punishing him.”

  “What did you do?” Brida called to him in English. His face came up and he stared at her, but the hood still shadowed him.

  “Speak, you bastard,” I said, “and I’ll whip you till your bones show.” I could just see his eyes in the hood’s shadow. “He insulted me,” I spoke in Danish again, “and I’ve sworn him to silence, and for every word he utters he receives ten blows of the whip.”

  That satisfied them. Ragnar forgot the strange hooded servant and told me how he had persuaded Wulfhere to send a messenger to Guthrum, promising to spare the hostages, and how Guthrum had warned Wulfhere when the attack would come to make sure that the ealdorman had time to remove the hostages from Alfred’s revenge. That, I thought, was why Wulfhere had left so early on the morning of the attack. He had known the Danes were coming. “You call him an ally,” I said. “Does that make him just a friend? Or a man who will fight for Guthrum?”

  “He’s an ally,” Ragnar said, “and he’s sworn to fight for us. At least he’s sworn to fight for the Saxon king.”

  “The Saxon king?” I asked, confused. “Alfred?”

  “Not Alfred, no. The true king. The boy who was the other one’s son.”

  Ragnar meant Æthelwold, who had been heir to Alfred’s brother, King Æthelred, and of course the Danes would want Æthelwold. Whenever they captured a Saxon kingdom they appointed a Saxon as king, and that gave their conquest a cloak of legality, though the Saxon never lasted long. Guthrum, who already called himself King of East Anglia, wanted to be King of Wessex, too, but by putting Æthelwold on the throne he might attract other West Saxons who could convince themselves they were fighting for the true heir. And once the fight was over and Danish rule established, Æthelwold would quietly be killed.

  “But Wulfhere will fight for you?” I persisted.

  “Of course he will! If he wants to keep his land,” Ragnar said, then grimaced. “But what fighting? We just sit here like sheep and do nothing!”

  “It’s winter.”

  “Best time to fight. Nothing else to do.” He wanted to know where I had been since Yule and I said I had been deep inside Defnascir. He assumed I had been making sure my family was safe, and he also assumed I had now come to Cippanhamm to join him. “You’re not sworn to Alfred, are you?” he asked.

  “Who knows where Alfred is?” I evaded the question.

  “You were sworn to h
im,” he said reproachfully.

  “I was sworn to him,” I said, truthfully enough, “but only for a year, and that year has long ended.” That was no lie; I just did not tell Ragnar I had sworn myself to Alfred once again.

  “So you can join me?” he asked eagerly. “You’ll give me your oath?”

  I took the question lightly, though in truth it worried me. “You want my oath,” I asked, “just so I can sit here like a sheep doing nothing?”

  “We make some raids,” Ragnar said defensively, “and men are guarding the swamp. That’s where Alfred is. In the swamps. But Svein will dig him out.” So Guthrum and his men had yet to hear that Svein’s fleet was ashes beside the sea.

  “So why are you just sitting here?” I asked.

  “Because Guthrum won’t divide his army,” Ragnar said. I half smiled at that because I remembered Ragnar’s grandfather advising Guthrum never to divide an army again. Guthrum had done that at Æsc’s Hill and that had been the first victory of the West Saxons over the Danes. He had done it again when he abandoned Werham to attack Exanceaster, and the part of his army that went by sea was virtually destroyed by the storm. “I’ve told him,” Ragnar said, “that we should split the army into a dozen parts. Take a dozen more towns and garrison them. All those places in southern Wessex, we should capture them, but he won’t listen.”

  “Guthrum holds the north and east,” I said, as if I was defending him.

  “And we should have the rest! But instead we’re waiting till spring in hope more men will join us. Which they will. There’s land here, good land. Better than the land up north.” He seemed to have forgotten the matter of my oath. I knew he would want me to join him, but instead he talked of what happened in Northumbria, how our enemies, Kjartan and Sven, thrived in Dunholm, and how that father and son dared not leave the fortress for fear of Ragnar’s revenge. They had taken his sister captive and, so far as Ragnar knew, they held her still, and Ragnar, like me, was sworn to kill them. He had no news of Bebbanburg other than that my treacherous uncle still lived and held the fortress. “When we’ve finished with Wessex,” Ragnar promised me, “we shall go north. You and I together. We’ll carry swords to Dunholm.”