Sword Song: The Battle for London

by Bernard Cornwell

  That was a long day, a very long day, lubricated by ale, mead, and birch wine, and the negotiations were punctuated by threats, anger, and insults. I drank little, just some ale, but Sigefrid and his captains drank heavily and that, perhaps, is why they yielded more than I expected. The truth is they wanted money; they wanted a boatload of silver and gold so they could hire more men and more weapons and so begin their conquest of Wessex. I had made a rough estimate of the numbers in that high fort and reckoned Sigefrid could assemble an army of about three thousand men, and that was nowhere near sufficient to invade Wessex. He needed five or six thousand men, and even that many might not be sufficient, but if he could raise eight thousand warriors then he would win. With such an army he could conquer Wessex and become the crippled king of her fertile fields, and to get those extra warriors he needed silver, and if he did not receive the ransom then even the men he now possessed would quickly melt away in search of other lords who could give them bright gold and shining silver.

  By midafternoon they had settled for three thousand pounds of silver and five hundred pounds of gold. They still insisted Alfred deliver the money in person, but I resolutely refused that demand, even going so far as to stand and pluck Father Willibald’s arm, telling him we were leaving because we could reach no agreement. Many of the spectators were bored, and more than a few were drunk, and they growled with anger when they saw me stand so that, for a moment, I thought we would be attacked, but then Haesten intervened.

  “What about the bitch’s husband?” he asked.

  “What about him?” I asked, turning back as the hall slowly quietened.

  “Doesn’t her husband call himself the Lord of Mercia?” Haesten inquired, mocking the title with laughter. “So let the Lord of Mercia bring the money.”

  “And let him beg me for his wife,” Sigefrid added, “on his knees.”

  “Agreed,” I said, surprising them by the ease of my surrender to their suggestion.

  Sigefrid frowned, suspecting I had given in much too easily. “Agreed?” he asked, not sure he had heard me correctly.

  “Agreed,” I said, sitting again. “The Lord of Mercia will deliver the ransom and he will go on his knees to you.” Sigefrid was still suspicious. “The Lord of Mercia is my cousin,” I explained, “and I hate the little bastard,” and at that even Sigefrid laughed.

  “The money is to be here before the full moon,” he said, then pointed a blunt finger at me, “and you come the day before to tell me the silver and gold is on its way. You will fly a green branch at your masthead as a signal you come in peace.”

  He wanted the full day’s warning of the ransom’s arrival so he could assemble as many men as possible to witness his triumph, and so I agreed to come the day before the treasure ship sailed, but explained that he could not expect that to happen soon because such a vast sum would take time to collect. Sigefrid growled at that, but I hurried on, assuring him that Alfred was a man who kept his word and that, by the next full moon, as large a down payment as could be assembled would be brought to Beamfleot. Æthelflaed was to be released then, I insisted, and the rest of the silver and gold would arrive before the following full moon. They haggled over those demands, but by now the bored men in the hall were getting restless and angry, so Sigefrid yielded the point that the ransom could be paid in two parts, and I yielded that Æthelflaed would not be freed until the second part had been delivered. “And I wish to see the Lady Æthelflaed now,” I said, making my last demand.

  Sigefrid waved a careless hand. “Why not? Erik will take you.” Erik had hardly spoken all day. Like me he had stayed sober, and had neither joined in the insults nor the laughter. Instead he had sat, serious and withdrawn, his watchful eyes going from his brother to me. “You will eat with us tonight,” Sigefrid said. He smiled suddenly, showing some of the charm I had felt when I had first met him in Lundene. “We shall celebrate our agreement with a feast,” he went on, “and your men at Thunresleam will also be fed. You can talk to the girl now! Go with my brother.”

  Erik led Father Willibald and me toward a smaller hall that was guarded by a dozen men in long mail coats, all of them carrying shields and weapons. It was plainly the place where Æthelflaed was being held captive and it lay close to the seaward rampart of the camp. Erik did not speak as we walked, indeed he seemed almost oblivious of my company, keeping his eyes fixed so firmly on the ground at his feet that I had to steer him around some trestles on which men were shaping new oars. The long curling wood-shavings peeled off and smelled oddly sweet in the late afternoon warmth. Erik stopped just beyond the trestles and turned on me with a frown. “Did you mean what you said today?” he demanded angrily.

  “I said a lot today,” I answered cautiously.

  “About King Alfred not wanting to pay much for the Lady Æthelflaed? Because she’s a girl?”

  “Sons are worth more than daughters,” I said truthfully enough.

  “Or were you just bargaining?” he asked fiercely.

  I hesitated. It struck me as a strange question because Erik was surely clever enough to have seen through that feeble attempt to lower Æthelflaed’s value, but there was real passion in his voice and I sensed he needed to hear the truth. Besides, nothing I said now could change the arrangements I had made with Sigefrid. The two of us had drunk the scot-ale to show that we had reached agreement, we had spat on our hands and touched palms, then sworn on a hammer amulet to keep faith with each other. That agreement was made, and that meant I could now tell the truth to Erik. “Of course I was bargaining,” I said. “Æthelflaed is dear to her father, very dear. He’s suffering because of all this.”

  “I thought you had to be bargaining,” Erik said, sounding wistful. He turned and stared across the wide estuary of the Temes. A dragon ship was sliding on the flooding tide toward the creek, her oar-blades rising and falling to catch and reflect the settling sun with every lazy stroke. “How much would the king have paid for his daughter?” he asked.

  “Whatever was necessary,” I said.

  “Truly?” He sounded eager now. “He set no limit?”

  “He told me,” I answered truthfully, “to pay whatever was necessary to take Æthelflaed home.”

  “To her husband,” he said flatly.

  “To her husband,” I agreed.

  “Who should die,” Erik said, and he shuddered uncontrollably, a swift shudder, but something that told me he had a touch of his brother’s anger in his soul.

  “When the Lord Æthelred comes with the gold and silver,” I warned Erik, “then you cannot touch him. He will come under a banner of truce.”

  “He hits her! Is that true?” The question was abrupt.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Erik stared at me for a heartbeat and I could see him struggling to control that sudden burst of anger. He nodded and turned. “This way,” he said, leading me toward the smaller hall. The hall’s guards, I noticed, were all older men, and I guessed they were trusted not just to guard Æthelflaed, but not to molest her either. “She has not been harmed,” Erik said, perhaps reading my thoughts.

  “So I’ve been assured.”

  “She has three of her own maids here,” Erik went on, “and I gave her two Danish girls, both nice girls. And I put these guards on the house.”

  “Men you trust,” I said.

  “My men,” he said warmly, “and yes, trustworthy.” He held out a hand to check me. “I’ll bring her out here to meet you,” he explained, “because she likes being in the open air.”

  I waited while Father Willibald looked nervously back at the Northmen who watched us from outside Sigefrid’s hall. “Why are we meeting her out here?” he asked.

  “Because Erik says she likes being in the fresh air,” I explained.

  “But will they kill me if I give her the sacrament here?”

  “Because they think you’re doing Christian magic?” I asked. “I doubt it, father.” I watched as Erik pulled aside the leather curtain that served as the hall’s doo
r. He had said something to the guards first, and those warriors now moved to each side, leaving an open space between the building’s facade and the fort’s walls. Those ramparts were a thick bank of earth, only some three feet high, but I knew their farther side would fall a much greater depth. The bank was topped by a palisade of stout oak logs that had been sharpened into points. I could not imagine climbing the hill from the creek and then trying to cross that formidable wall. But nor could I envisage attacking from the fort’s landward side, climbing in the open down to the ditch, wall, and palisade that protected this place. It was a good camp, not impregnable, but its capture would be unimaginably expensive in men’s lives.

  “She lives,” Father Willibald breathed, and I looked back to the hall to see Æthelflaed ducking under the leather curtain that was being held aside by an unseen hand. She looked smaller and younger than ever and, though her pregnancy had at last begun to show, she still looked lissom. Lissom and vulnerable, I thought, and then she saw me, and a smile came to her face. Father Willibald started toward her, but I held him back by gripping his shoulder. Something in Æthelflaed’s demeanor made me detain him. I had half expected Æthelflaed to run to me in relief, but instead she hesitated by the door and the smile she had offered me was merely dutiful. She was pleased to see me, that was certain, but there was a wariness in her eyes until she turned to watch Erik follow her through the curtain. He gestured that she should greet me, and only then, when she had received his encouragement, did she come toward me.

  And now her face was radiant.

  And I remembered her face on the day she had been married in her father’s new church in Wintanceaster. She looked the same today as she had then. She looked happy. She glowed. She walked as lightly as a dancer, and she smiled so beautifully, and I recalled how I had thought, in that church, that she had been in love with love, and that, I suddenly realized, was the difference between that day and this.

  Because the radiant smile was not for me. She looked behind once more and caught Erik’s eye, and I just stared. I should have known from everything Erik had said. I should have known, for it was as plain as new-shed blood on virgin snow.

  Æthelflaed and Erik were in love.

  Love is a dangerous thing.

  It comes in disguise to change our life. I had thought I loved Mildrith, but that was lust, though for a time I had believed it was love. Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination.

  Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss. I loved Gisela, and we were fortunate because our threads had come together and stayed together and were twined about each other, and the three Norns, for a time at least, were kind to us. Love even works when the threads do not lie comfortingly side by side. I had come to see that Alfred loved his Ælswith, though she was like a streak of vinegar in his milk. Perhaps he just got used to her, and perhaps love is friendship more than it is lust, though the gods know the lust is always there. Gisela and I had gained that contentment, as Alfred did with Ælswith, though I think our voyage was happier because our boat danced on sunlit seas and was driven by a brisk warm wind.

  And Æthelflaed? I saw it in her face. I saw in her radiance all her sudden love and all the unhappiness that was to come, and all the tears, and all the heartbreak. She was on a voyage, and it was a journey of love, but it was sailing into a storm so bleak and dark that my own heart almost broke for her.

  “Lord Uhtred,” she said as she came close.

  “My lady,” I said, and bowed to her, and then we said nothing.

  Willibald chattered, but I do not think either of us heard him. I looked at her and she smiled at me and the sun shone on that springy high turf beneath the singing skylarks, but all I could hear was thunder wrecking the sky and all I could see were waves shattering in white-whipping fury and a ship swamping and her crew drowning in despair. Æthelflaed was in love.

  “Your father sends his affection,” I said, finding my voice.

  “Poor Father,” she said. “Is he angry with me?”

  “He shows no anger to anybody,” I said, “but he should be furious with your husband.”

  “Yes,” she agreed calmly, “he should.”

  “And I am here to arrange your release,” I told her, ignoring my certainty that release was the very last thing she now desired, “and you will be pleased to know, my lady, that all is agreed and you will be home soon.”

  She showed no pleasure at that news. Father Willibald, blind to her true feelings, beamed at her, and Æthelflaed rewarded him with a wry smile. “I am here to give you the sacraments,” Willibald said.

  “I would like that,” Æthelflaed answered gravely, then looked up at me and, for an instant, there was despair on her face. “Will you wait for me?” she asked.

  “Wait for you?” I asked, puzzled by the question.

  “Out here,” she explained, “and dear Father Willibald can pray with me inside.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  She smiled her thanks and led Willibald back to the hall while I went to the ramparts and climbed the brief bank so that I could lean on the sun-warmed palisade and stare down into the creek so far below. The dragon ship, her carved head dismounted, was rowing into the channel and I watched as men unchained the moored guard-ship that blocked the Hothlege. The blocking ship was tethered at bow and stern by heavy chains connected to massive posts sunk into the muddy banks and the crew slipped the ship’s stern chain and then paid it out with a long rope. The chain sank to the creek bed as the ship swung on her bow chain to open like a gate on the incoming tide to clear the passage. The newly-arrived boat was rowed past, then the blocking ship’s crew hauled on the rope to retrieve the chain and so dragged the ship back to bar the creek again. There were at least forty men on that blocking ship, and they were not just there to haul on lines and chains. The flanks of the ship had been built up with extra strakes, all of heavy timber, so that her sheerline was well above the height of any vessel that might attack her. To assault that blocking ship would be like tackling the palisade of a fortress. The dragon ship glided up the Hothlege, passing the boats hauled high on the muddy creek bank where men were caulking the planks with hair and tar. Smoke from the fires under the tar pots drifted up the slope where gulls circled, their cries raucous in the afternoon’s warmth.

  “Sixty-four ships,” Erik said. He had climbed up beside me.

  “I know,” I said, “I counted them.”

  “And by next week,” Erik said, “we will have a hundred crews here.”

  “And you’ll run out of food with so many mouths to feed.”

  “There’s plenty of food here,” Erik said dismissively. “We have fish traps and eel traps, we net wildfowl and eat well. And the prospect of silver and gold buys a lot of wheat, barley, oats, meat, fish, and ale.”

  “It will buy men too,” I said.

  “It will,” he agreed.

  “And thus,” I said, “Alfred of Wessex pays for his own destruction.”

  “So it would seem,” Erik said quietly. He stared southward to where great clouds piled over Cent, their tops silver white and their bases dark above the distant green land.

  I turned to look at the encampment inside its ring of ramparts and saw Steapa, walking with a slight limp and with his head bandaged, appear from a hut. He looked slightly drunk. He saw me, waved, and sat in the shade of Sigefrid’s hall where he appeared to fall asleep. “Do you think,” I said, my back still turned on Erik, “that Alfred has not thought of what you’ll buy with the ransom money?”

  “But what can he do about it?”

  “That’s not for me to tell you,” I said, trying to imply that there was a
n answer. In truth, if seven or eight thousand Northmen appeared in Wessex then we would have no choice but to fight, and the battle, I thought, would be horrendous. It would be a bloodletting even greater than Ethandun, and at its end there would most likely be a new king in Wessex and a new name for the kingdom. Norseland, perhaps.

  “Tell me about Guthred,” Erik asked abruptly.

  “Guthred!” I turned back to him, surprised by the question. Guthred was Gisela’s brother and King of Northumbria, and what he had to do with Alfred, Æthelflaed, or Erik I could not imagine.

  “He’s a Christian, isn’t he?” Erik asked.

  “So he says.”

  “Is he?”

  “How would I know?” I asked. “He claims to be a Christian, but I doubt he’s given up his worship of the true gods.”

  “You like him?” Erik asked anxiously.

  “Everyone likes Guthred,” I said, and that was true, yet it constantly astonished me that a man so affable and indecisive had held on to his throne for so long. Mainly, I knew, that was because my brother-in-law had the support of Ragnar, my soul brother, and no man would want to fight Ragnar’s wild forces.

  “I was thinking,” Erik said, and then fell silent, and in his silence I suddenly understood what he was dreaming.

  “You were thinking,” I told him the brutal truth, “that you and Æthelflaed can take a ship, maybe your brother’s ship, and go to Northumbria and live under Guthred’s protection?”

  Erik stared at me as though I were a magician. “She told you?” he asked.

  “Your faces told me,” I said.

  “Guthred would protect us,” Erik said.

  “How?” I asked. “You think he’ll summon his army if your brother comes after you?”

  “My brother?” Erik asked, as if Sigefrid would forgive him anything.

  “Your brother,” I said harshly, “who is expecting a payment of three thousand pounds of silver and five hundred pounds of gold, and if you take Æthelflaed away, then he loses that money. You think he won’t want her back?”