Sword Song: The Battle for London

by Bernard Cornwell

  Alfred frowned at me. “There are those, Lord Uhtred, who say you are too friendly with the Northmen?”

  “I gave you an oath, lord King,” I said harshly, “and I renewed that oath to Father Pyrlig and then again to your daughter. If the men who say I am too friendly with the Northmen wish to accuse me of breaking that triple oath then I will meet them at sword’s length in any place they wish. And they will face a sword that has killed more Northmen than I can count.”

  That brought silence. Pyrlig smiled slyly. Not one man there wanted to fight me, and the only one who might have beaten me, Steapa, was grinning, though Steapa’s grin was a deathly rictus that could have frightened a demon back into its lair.

  The king sighed as if my display of anger had been tiresome. “Will Sigefrid talk to you?” he asked.

  “The Earl Sigefrid hates me, lord King.”

  “But will he talk to you?” Alfred insisted.

  “Either that or kill me,” I said, “but his brother likes me, and Haesten is in debt to me so, yes, I think they’ll talk.”

  “You must also send a skilled negotiator, lord King,” Erkenwald said unctuously, “a man who will not be tempted to do further favors to pagans. I would suggest my treasurer? He is a most subtle man.”

  “He’s also a priest,” I said, “and Sigefrid hates priests. He also has a burning ambition to watch a priest being crucified.” I smiled at Erkenwald. “Maybe you should send your treasurer. Or maybe come yourself?”

  Erkenwald stared at me blankly. I assumed he was praying that his god send a thunderbolt to punish me, but his god failed to oblige. The king sighed again. “You can negotiate yourself?” he asked me patiently.

  “I’ve purchased horses, lord,” I said, “so yes, I can negotiate.”

  “Bargaining for a horse is not the same as…” Erkenwald began angrily, then subsided as the king waved a weary hand toward him.

  “The Lord Uhtred sought to annoy you, bishop,” the king said, “and it is best not to give him the satisfaction of showing that he has succeeded.”

  “I can negotiate, lord King,” I said, “but in this case I’m bargaining for a mare of very great value. She will not be cheap.”

  Alfred nodded. “Perhaps you should take the bishop’s treasurer?” he suggested hesitantly.

  “I want only one companion, lord,” I said, “Steapa.”

  “Steapa?” Alfred sounded surprised.

  “When you face an enemy, lord,” I explained, “then it is well to take a man whose very presence is a threat.”

  “You will take two companions,” the king corrected me. “Despite Sigefrid’s hatred I want my daughter to receive the blessings of the sacraments. You must take a priest, Lord Uhtred.”

  “If you insist, lord,” I said, not bothering to hide my scorn.

  “I do insist,” Alfred’s voice regained some of its force. “And be back here quickly,” he went on, “for I would have news of her.” He stood, and everyone else scrambled to their feet and bowed.

  Æthelred had not spoken a word.

  And I was going to Beamfleot.

  One hundred of us rode. Only three of us would go to Sigefrid’s camp, but three men could not ride through the countryside between Lundene and Beamfleot unprotected. This was frontier land, the wild flat land of East Anglia’s border, and we rode in mail, with shields and weapons, letting folk know we were ready to fight. It would have been faster to go by ship, but I had persuaded Alfred that there was an advantage in taking horses. “I’ve seen Beamfleot from the sea,” I had told him the previous evening, “and it’s impregnable. A steep hill, lord, and a fort on its summit. I haven’t seen that fort from inland, lord, and I need to.”

  “You need to?” It had been Brother Asser who answered. He was standing close by Alfred’s chair as though he protected the king.

  “If it comes to a fight,” I had said, “we might have to attack from the landward side.”

  The king had looked at me wearily. “You want there to be a fight?” he had asked.

  “The Lady Æthelflaed will die if there’s a fight,” Asser had said.

  “I want to return your daughter to you,” I had said to Alfred, ignoring the Welsh monk, “but only a fool, lord, would assume we will not have to fight them before the summer is over. Sigefrid is becoming too powerful. If we let his power grow we will have an enemy that can threaten all Wessex, and we have to break him before he becomes too strong.”

  “No fighting now,” Alfred had insisted. “Go there by land if you must, speak to them and bring me news quickly.”

  He had insisted on sending a priest, but to my relief it was Father Willibald who was chosen. “I’m an old friend of the Lady Æthelflaed,” Willibald explained as we rode from Lundene. “She’s always been fond of me,” he went on, “and I of her.”

  I rode Smoca. Finan and my household warriors were with me, as were fifty of Alfred’s picked men who were commanded by Steapa. We carried no banners, instead Sihtric held a leafy alder branch as a signal that we came seeking a truce.

  It was an awful country to the east of Lundene, a flat and desolate place of creeks, ditches, reeds, bog grass, and wildfowl. To our right, where sometimes the Temes was visible as a gray sheet, the marshland looked dark even under the summer sun. Few folk lived in this wet wasteland, though we did pass some low hovels thatched with reed. No people were apparent. The eel fishermen who lived in the hovels would have seen us coming and hurried their families to safe hiding places.

  The track, it was hardly a road, followed slightly higher ground at the edge of the marsh and led across small, thorn-hedged fields that were heavy with clay. The few trees were stunted and wind bent. The further east we went, the more houses we saw, and gradually those buildings became larger. At midday we stopped at a hall to water and rest the horses. The hall had a palisade, and a servant came cautiously from the gate to ask our business. “Where are we?” I demanded of him before answering his question.

  “Wocca’s Dun, lord,” he answered. He spoke English.

  I laughed grimly at that for dun meant hill and there was no hill that I could see, though the hall did stand on a very slight mound. “Is Wocca here?” I asked.

  “His grandson owns the land now, lord. He is not here.”

  I slid out of Smoca’s saddle and tossed the reins to Sihtric. “Walk him before you let him drink,” I told Sihtric, then turned back to the servant. “So this grandson,” I asked, “to whom does he owe oath-duty?”

  “He serves Hakon, lord.”

  “And Hakon?” I asked, noting that a Saxon owned the hall, but had sworn an oath to a Dane.

  “Is sworn to King Æthelstan, lord.”

  “To Guthrum?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “Has Guthrum summoned men?”

  “No, lord,” the servant said.

  “And if Guthrum did,” I asked, “would Hakon and your master obey?”

  The servant looked cautious. “They have gone to Beamfleot,” he said, and that was a truly interesting answer. Hakon, the servant told me, held a wide swath of this clay-heavy land, which he had been granted by Guthrum, but Hakon was now torn between his oath-sworn allegiance to Guthrum and his fear of Sigefrid.

  “So Hakon will follow the Earl Sigefrid?” I asked.

  “I think so, lord. A summons came from Beamfleot, lord, I know that much, and my master went there with Hakon.”

  “Did they take their warriors?”

  “Only a few, lord.”

  “The warriors weren’t summoned?”

  “No, lord.”

  So Sigefrid was not gathering an army yet, but rather assembling the richer men of East Anglia to tell them what was expected of them. He would want their warriors when the time came, and doubtless he was now enticing them with visions of the riches that would be theirs when Æthelflaed’s ransom was paid. And Guthrum? Guthrum, I supposed, was simply staying silent, while his oath-men were seduced by Sigefrid. He was certainly making no attempt to
stop that process and had probably reckoned he was powerless to prevent it in the face of the Norseman’s lavish promises. Better, in that case, to let Sigefrid lead his forces against Wessex than to tempt him to usurp the throne of East Anglia. “And Wocca’s grandson,” I asked even though I knew the answer, “your master, he is a Saxon?”

  “Yes, lord. Though his daughter is married to a Dane.”

  So it seemed that the Saxons of this dull land would fight for the Danes, perhaps because they had no choice or perhaps because, with marriages, their allegiance was changing.

  The servant gave us ale, smoked eel, and hard bread and, when we had eaten, we rode on as the sun slid into the west to shine on a great line of hills that rose abruptly out of the flat country. The sun-facing slopes were steep so that the hills looked like a green rampart. “That’s Beamfleot,” Finan said.

  “It’s up there,” I agreed. Beamfleot would lie at the southern end of the hills though, at this distance, it was impossible to discern the fort. I felt my spirits sinking. If we had to attack Sigefrid then the clear course would have been to lead troops from Lundene, but I had no wish to fight my way up those steep slopes. I could see Steapa eyeing the escarpment with the same foreboding. “If it comes to a fight, Steapa!” I called cheerfully, “I’ll send you and your troops up there first!”

  I got a sour look as the only reply.

  “They’ll have seen us,” I said to Finan.

  “They’ve been watching us for an hour, lord,” he said.

  “They have?”

  “I’ve been watching the glint from their spear-points,” the Irishman said. “They aren’t trying to hide from us.”

  It was the beginning of a long summer’s evening as we climbed the hill. The air was warm and the slanting light was beautiful among the leaves that shrouded the slope. A road zig-zagged its way to the heights and, as we slowly climbed, I saw the splinters of light from high above and knew they were reflections from spear-points or helmets. Our enemies had been watching us and were ready for us.

  There were just three horsemen waiting. All three were in mail, all wore helmets and the helmets had long horsehair plumes that made their wearers look savage. They had seen Sihtric’s alder branch and, as we neared the summit, the three men spurred toward us. I held up my hand to stop my troops and, accompanied only by Finan, rode to greet the three plumed riders.

  “You come at last,” one of them called in heavily accented English.

  “We come in peace,” I said in Danish.

  The man laughed. I could not see his face because his helmet had cheek-pieces and all I could make out was his bearded mouth and the glint of his shadowed eyes. “You come in peace,” he said, “because you daren’t come any other way. Or do you want us to disembowel your king’s daughter after we’ve all rutted between her thighs?”

  “I would speak with the Earl Sigefrid,” I said, ignoring his provocation.

  “But does he want to speak with you?” the man asked. He touched a spur to his horse and the stallion turned prettily, not to any purpose, but merely to show off his rider’s skill in horsemanship. “And who are you?” he asked.

  “Uhtred of Bebbanburg.”

  “I’ve heard the name,” the man allowed.

  “Then tell it to the Earl Sigefrid,” I said, “and say I bring him greetings from King Alfred.”

  “I’ve heard that name too,” the man said. He paused, playing with our patience. “You may follow the road,” he finally said, pointing to where the track disappeared over the brow of the hill, “and you will come to a great stone. Beside the stone is a hall and that is where you and all your men will wait. Earl Sigefrid will inform you tomorrow if he wishes to speak with you, or whether he wishes you to leave, or whether he desires the amusement of your deaths.” He touched the spur to his horse’s flank again and all three men rode swiftly away, their hoofbeats loud in the still summer air.

  And we rode on to find the hall beside the great stone.

  The hall, very ancient, was made from oak that had turned almost black over the years. Its thatched roof was steep, and the building wasc surrounded by tall oaks that shielded it from the sun. In front of the hall, standing in a patch of rank grass, was a pillar of uncut stone taller than a man. The stone had a hole through it, and in the hole were pebbles and scraps of bone, tokens from the folk who believed that the boulder had magical properties. Finan made the sign of the cross. “The old people must have put it there,” he said.

  “What old people?”

  “The ones who lived here when the world was young,” he said, “the ones who came before us. They put such stones all across Ireland.” He eyed the stone warily and made his horse pass as far away from it as possible.

  A single lame servant waited outside the hall. He was a Saxon and he said the place was named Thunresleam, and that name was old too. It meant Thor’s Grove and it told me that the hall must have been built in a place where the old Saxons, the Saxons who did not acknowledge the Christians’ nailed god, had worshipped their more ancient god, my god, Thor. I bent from Smoca’s saddle to touch the stone, and I sent a prayer to Thor that Gisela would survive childbirth and that Æthelflaed would be rescued. “There is food for you, lord,” the lame servant said, taking Smoca’s reins.

  There was not just food and ale, there was a feast, and there were Saxon women slaves to prepare the feast and pour the ale, mead and birch wine. There was pork, beef, duck, dried cod and dried haddock, eels, crabs, and goose. There was bread, cheese, honey, and butter. Father Willibald feared the food might be poisoned and watched fearfully as I ate a leg of goose. “There,” I said, wiping the grease from my lips onto the back of my hand, “I’m still alive.”

  “Praise God,” Willibald said, still watching me anxiously.

  “Praise Thor,” I said, “this is his hill.”

  Willibald made the sign of the cross, then gingerly speared his knife into a piece of duck. “I am told,” he said nervously, “that Sigefrid hates Christians.”

  “He does. Especially priests.”

  “Then why does he feed us so well?”

  “To show that he despises us,” I said.

  “Not to poison us?” Willibald asked, still worried.

  “Eat,” I said, “enjoy.” I doubted the Northmen would poison us. They might want us dead, but not before they had humiliated us, yet even so I set a careful guard on the paths leading to the hall. I half feared that Sigefrid’s chosen humiliation would be to burn the hall at dead of night, with us sleeping inside. I had watched a hall-burning once, and it is a terrible thing. Warriors wait outside to drive the panicked occupants back into the inferno of falling, burning thatch in which folk scream before they die. Next morning, after the hall-burning, the victims had been small as little children, their corpses shrunken and blackened, their hands curled, and their burned lips drawn back from their teeth in a terrible and eternal scream of pain.

  But no one tried to kill us in that short summer night. I stood guard for a time, listening to the owls, then watching as the sun rose through the thick tangle of trees. Some time later I heard a horn blowing. It made a mournful wail that was repeated three times, then sounded three times again, and I knew Sigefrid must be summoning his men. He would send for us soon, I thought, and I dressed carefully. I chose to wear my best mail, and my fine war helmet and, though the day promised to be warm, my black cloak with its lightning bolt streaking down the long back. I pulled on my boots and strapped on my swords. Steapa also wore mail, though his armor was dirty and tarnished, while his boots were scuffed and his scabbard-covering torn, yet somehow he looked much more fearsome than I did. Father Willibald was dressed in his black gown and carried a small bag, which contained a gospel book and the sacraments. “You will translate for me, won’t you?” he asked earnestly.

  “Why didn’t Alfred send a priest who spoke Danish?” I asked.

  “I do speak some!” Willibald said, “but not as much as I’d like. No, the king sent me b
ecause he thought I might be a comfort to the Lady Æthelflaed.”

  “Make sure you are,” I said, then turned because Cerdic had come running down the track that led through the trees from the south.

  “They’re coming, lord,” he said.

  “How many?”

  “Six, lord. Six horsemen.”

  The six men rode into the clearing about the hall. They stopped and looked around them. Their helmet masks restricted their vision, forcing them to move their heads extravagantly in order to see our picketed horses. They were counting heads, making sure I had not sent a scouting party to explore the country. Finally, satisfied that no such party existed, their leader deigned to look at me. I thought he was the same man who had greeted us on the hilltop the previous day. “You alone must come,” he said, pointing at me.

  “Three of us are coming,” I said.

  “You alone,” he insisted.

  “Then we leave for Lundene now,” I said, and turned. “Pack up! Saddles! Hurry! We’re going!”

  The man made no fight of it. “Three, then,” he said carelessly, “but you do not ride to Earl Sigefrid’s presence. You walk.”

  I made no fight of that. I knew it was part of Sigefrid’s purpose to humiliate us, and how better than to make us walk to his camp? Lords rode while common men walked, but Steapa, Father Willibald, and I meekly walked behind the six horsemen as they followed a track through the trees and out onto a wide grassy down that overlooked the sun-shimmering Temes. The down was covered by crude shelters, places built by the new crews who had come to support Sigefrid in anticipation of the treasure he would soon possess and distribute.

  I was sweating fiercely by the time we climbed the slope to Sigefrid’s encampment. I could see Caninga now, and the eastern part of the creek, both places I knew intimately from their seaward side, but which I had never seen from this eagle’s height. I could see, too, that there were now many more ships crammed into the drying Hothlege. The Vikings roamed the world in search of a weak spot into which they could pour with ax, sword, and spear, and Æthelflaed’s capture had revealed just such an opportunity and so the Northmen gathered.