We wandered for a week. We found shelter in hovels. Some were deserted while others still had frightened folk, but every short winter's day was smeared with smoke as the Danes ravaged Wessex.
One day we discovered a cow, trapped in its byre in an otherwise deserted homestead. The cow was with calf and bellowing with hunger, and that night we feasted on fresh meat. Next day we could not move for it was bitterly cold and a slanting rain slashed on an east wind and the trees thrashed as if in agony and the building that gave us shelter leaked and the fire choked us and Iseult just sat, eyes wide and empty, staring into the small flames.
'You want to go back to Cornwalum?' I asked her.
She seemed surprised I had spoken. It took her a few heartbeats to gather her thoughts, then she shrugged. 'What is there for me?'
'Home,' Eanflaed said.
'Uhtred is home for me.'
'Uhtred is married,' Eanflaed said harshly.
Iseult ignored that. 'Uhtred will lead men,' she said, rocking back and forth, 'hundreds of men. A bright horde. I want to see that.'
'He'll lead you into temptation, that's all he'll do,' Eanflaed said. 'Go home, girl, say your prayers and hope the Danes don't come.'
We kept trying to go southwards and we made some small progress every day, but the bitter days were short and the Danes seemed to be everywhere. Even when we travelled across countryside far from any track or path, there would be a patrol of Danes in the distance, and to avoid them we were constantly driven west. To our east was the Roman road that ran from Babum and eventually to Exanceaster, the main thoroughfare in this part of Wessex, and I supposed the Danes were using it and sending patrols out to either side of the road, and it was those patrols that drove us ever nearer the Saefern Sea, but there could be no safety there, for Svein would surely have come from Wales.
I also supposed that Wessex had finally fallen. We met a few folk, fugitives from their villages and hiding in the woods, but none had any news, only rumour. No one had seen any West Saxon soldiers, no one had heard about Alfred, they only saw Danes and the ever-present smoke. From time to time we would come across a ravaged village or a burned church. We would see ragged ravens flapping black and follow them to find rotting bodies. We were lost and any hope I had of reaching Oxton was long gone, and I assumed Mildrith had fled west into the hills as the folk around the Uisc always did when the Danes came. I hoped she was alive, 1 hoped my son lived, but what future he had was as dark as the long winter nights.
'Maybe we should make our peace,' I suggested to Leofric one night. We were in a shepherd's hut, crouched around a small fire that filled the low turf-roofed building with smoke. We had roasted a dozen mutton ribs cut from a sheep's half-eaten corpse. We were all filthy, damp and cold. 'Maybe we should find the Danes,' I said, 'and swear allegiance.'
'And be made slaves?' Leofric answered bitterly.
'We'll be warriors,' I said.
'Fighting for a Dane?' He poked the fire, throwing up a new burst of smoke. 'They can't have taken all Wessex,' he protested.
'Why not?'
'It's too big. There have to be some men fighting back. We just have to find them.'
I thought back to the long ago arguments in Lundene. Back then I had been a child with the Danes, and their leaders had argued that the best way to take Wessex was to attack its western heartland and there break its power. Others had wanted to start the assault by taking the old kingdom of Kent, the weakest part of Wessex and the part which contained the great shrine of Contwaraburg, but the boldest argument had won. They had attacked in the west and that first assault had failed, but now Guthrum had succeeded. Yet how far had he succeeded? Was Kent still Saxon? Defnascir?
'And what happens to Mildrith if you join the Danes?' Leofric asked.
'She'll have hidden,' I spoke dully and there was a silence, but I saw Eanflaed was offended and I hoped she would hold her tongue.
She did not. 'Do you care?' she challenged me.
'I care,' I said.
Eanflaed scorned that answer. 'Grown dull, has she?'
'Of course he cares,' Leofric tried to be a peacemaker.
'She's a wife,' Eanflaed retorted, still looking at me. They tire of wives,' she went on and Iseult listened, her big dark eyes going from me to Eanflaed.
'What do you know of wives?' I asked.
'I was married,' Eanflaed said.
'You were?' Leofric asked, surprised.
'I was married for three years,' Eanflaed said, 'to a man who was in Wulfhere's guard. He gave me two children, then died in the battle that killed King Æthelred.'
'Two children?' Iseult asked.
'They died,' Eanflaed said harshly. 'That's what children do. They die.'
'You were happy with him?' Leofric asked, 'your husband?'
'For about three days,' she said, 'and in the next three years I learned that men are bastards.'
'All of then?' Leofric asked.
'Most.' She smiled at Leofric, then touched his knee. 'Not you.'
'And me?' I asked.
'You?' She looked at me for a heartbeat. 'I wouldn't trust you as far as I could spit,' she said, and there was real venom in her voice, leaving Leofric embarrassed and me surprised. There comes a moment in life when we see ourselves as others see us. I suppose that is part of growing up, and it is not always comfortable.
Eanflaed, at that moment, regretted speaking so harshly for she tried to soften it. 'I don't know you,'
she said, 'except you're Leofric's friend.'
'Uhtred is generous,' Iseult said loyally.
They are usually generous when they want something,' Eanflaed retorted.
'I want Bebbanburg,' I said.
'Whatever that is,' Eanflaed said, and to get it you'd do anything. Anything.'
There was silence. I saw a snowflake show at the half-covered door. It fluttered into the firelight and melted.
'Alfred's a good man,' Leofric broke the awkward silence.
'He tries to be good,' Eanflaed said.
'Only tries?' I asked sarcastically.
'He's like you,' she said. 'He'd kill to get what he wants, but there is a difference. He has a conscience.'
'He's frightened of the priests, you mean.'
'He's frightened of God. And we should all be that. Because one day we'll answer to God.'
'Not me,' I said.
Eanflaed sneered at that, but Leofric changed the conversation by saying it was snowing, and after a while we slept. Iseult clung to me in her sleep and she whimpered and twitched as I lay awake, half dreaming, thinking of her words that I would lead a bright horde. It seemed an unlikely prophecy, indeed I reckoned her powers must have gone with her virginity, and then I slept too, waking to a world made white. The twigs and branches were edged with snow, but it was already melting, dripping into a misty dawn. When I went outside I found a tiny dead wren just beyond the door and I feared it was a grim omen.
Leofric emerged from the hut, blinking at the dawn's brilliance.
'Don't mind Eanflaed,' he said.
'I don't.'
'Her world's come to an end.'
'Then we must remake it,' I said.
'Does that mean you won't join the Danes?'
'I'm a Saxon,' I said.
Leofric half smiled at that. He undid his breeches and had a piss. 'If your friend Ragnar was alive,'
he asked, watching the steam rise from his urine, 'would you still be a Saxon?'
'He's dead, isn't he?' I said bleakly, 'sacrificed to Guthrum's ambition.'
'So now you're a Saxon?'
'I'm a Saxon,' I said again, sounding more certain than I felt, for I did not know what the future held. How can we? Perhaps Iseult had told the truth and Alfred would give me power and I would lead a shining horde and have a woman of gold, but I was beginning to doubt Iseult's powers. Alfred might already be dead and his kingdom was doomed, and all I knew at that moment was that the land stretched away south to a snow-covered ridge line, and there
it ended in a strange empty brightness.
The skyline looked like the world's rim, poised above an abyss of pearly light.
'We'll keep going south,' I said. There was nothing else to do except walk towards the brightness.
We did. We followed a sheep track to the ridge top and there I saw that the hills fell steeply away, dropping to the vast marshes of the sea. We had come to the great swamp, and the brightness I had seen was the winter light reflecting from the long meres and winding creeks.
'What now?' Leofric asked, and I had no answer and so we sat under the berries of a wind-bent yew and stared at the immensity of bog, water, grass and reeds. This was the vast swamp that stretched inland from the Saefern, and if I was to reach Defnascir I either had to go around it or try to cross it. If we went around it then we would have to go to the Roman road, and that was where the Danes were, but if we tried to cross the swamp we would face other dangers. I had heard a thousand stories of men being lost in its wet tangles. It was said there were spirits there, spirits that showed at night as flickering lights, and there were paths that led only to quicksands or to drowning pools, but there were also villages in the swamp, places where folk trapped fish and eels. The people of the swamp were protected by the spirits and by the sudden surges in the tide that could drown a road in an eyeblink.
Now, as the last snows melted from the reed-banks, the swamp looked like a great stretch of waterlogged land, its streams and meres swollen by the winter rains, but when the tide rose it would resemble an inland sea dotted with islands. We could see one of those islands not so far off and there was a cluster of huts on that speck of higher ground, and that would be a place to find food and warmth if we could ever reach it. Eventually we might cross the whole swamp, finding a way from island to island, but it would take far longer than a day, and we would have to find refuge at every high tide. I gazed at the long, cold stretches of water, almost black beneath the leaden clouds that came from the sea and my spirits sank for I did not know where we were going, or why, or what the future held.
It seemed to get colder as we sat, and then a light snow began drifting from the dark clouds. Just a few flakes, but enough to convince me that we had to find shelter soon. Smoke was rising from the nearest swamp village, evidence that some folk still lived there. There would be food in their hovels and a meagre warmth.
'We have to get to that island,' I said, pointing.
But the others were staring westwards to where a flock of pigeons had burst from the trees at the foot of the slope. The birds rose and flew in circles.
'Someone's there,' Leofric said.
We waited. The pigeons settled in the trees higher up the hill.
'Maybe it's a boar?' I suggested.
'Pigeons won't fly from a boar,' Leofric said. 'Boars don't startle pigeons, any more than stags do.
There are folk there.'
The thought of boars and stags made me wonder what had happened to my hounds. Had Mildrith abandoned them? I had not even told her where I had hidden the remains of the plunder we had taken off the coast of Wales. I had dug a hole in a corner of my new hall and buried the gold and silver down by the poststone, but it was not the cleverest hiding place and if there were Danes in Oxton then they were bound to delve into the edges of the hall floor, especially if a, probing spear found a place where the earth had been disturbed.
A flight of ducks flew overhead. The snow was falling harder, blurring the long view across the swamp.
'Priests,' Leofric said.
There were a half-dozen men off to the west. They were robed in black and had come from the trees to walk along the swamp's margin, plainly seeking a path into its tangled vastness, but there was no obvious track to the small village on its tiny island and so the priests came nearer to us, skirting the ridge's foot. One of them was carrying a long staff and, even at a distance, 1 could see a glint at its head and I suspected it was a bishop's staff, the kind with a heavy silver cross. Another three carried heavy sacks.
'You think there's food in those bundles?' Leofric asked wistfully.
'They're priests,' I said savagely. 'They'll be carrying silver.'
'Or books,' Eanflaed suggested. 'Priests like books.'
'It could be food,' Leofric said, though not very convincingly.
A group of three women and two children now appeared. One of the women was wearing a swathing cloak of silver fur, while another carried the smaller child. The women and children were not far behind the priests, who waited for them and then they all walked eastwards until they were beneath us and there they discovered some kind of path twisting into the marshes. Five of the priests led the women into the swamp while the sixth man, evidently younger than the others, hurried back westwards.
'Where's he going?' Leofric asked.
Another skein of ducks flighted low overhead, skimming down the slope to the long meres of the swamp. Nets, I thought. There must be nets in the swamp villages and we could trap fish and wildfowl.
We could eat well for a few days. Eels, duck, fish, geese. If there were enough nets we could even trap deer by driving them into the tangling meshes.
'They're not going anywhere,' Leofric said scornfully, nodding at the priests who had stranded themselves a hundred paces out in the swamp. The path was deceptive. It had offered an apparent route to the village, but then petered out amidst a patch of reeds where the priests huddled. They did not want to come back and did not want to go forward, and so they stayed where they were, lost and cold and despairing. They looked as though they were arguing.
'We must help them,' Eanflaed said and, when I said nothing, she protested that one of the women was holding a baby. 'We have to help them!' she insisted.
I was about to retort that the last thing we needed was more hungry mouths to feed, but her harsh words in the night had persuaded me that I had to do something to show her I was not as treacherous as she evidently believed, so I stood, hefted my shield and started down the hill. The others followed, but before we were even halfway down I heard shouts from the west. The lone priest who had gone that way was now with four soldiers and they turned as horsemen came from the trees. There were six horsemen, then eight more appeared, then another ten and I realised a whole column of mounted soldiers was streaming from the dead winter trees. They had black shields and black cloaks, so they had to be Guthrum's men. One of the priests stranded in the swamp ran back along the path and I saw he had a sword and was going to help his companions.
It was a brave thing for the lone priest to do, but quite useless. The four soldiers and the single priest were surrounded now. They were standing back to back and the Danish horsemen were all around them, hacking down, and then two of the horsemen saw the priest with his sword and spurred towards him.
'Those two are ours,' I said to Leofric.
That was stupid. The four men were doomed, as was the priest if we did not intervene, but there were only two of us and, even if we killed the two horsemen, we would still face overwhelming odds, but I was driven by Eanflaed's scorn and I was tired of skulking through the winter countryside and I was angry and so I ran down the hill, careless of the noise I made as I crashed through brittle undergrowth.
The lone priest had his back to the swamp now and the horsemen were charging at him as Leofric and I burst from the trees and came at them from their left side.
I hit the nearest horse's flank with my heavy shield. There was a scream from the horse and an explosion of wet soil, grass, snow and hooves as man and beast went down sideways. I was also on the ground, knocked there by the impact, but I recovered first and found the rider tangled with his stirrups, one leg trapped under the struggling horse and I chopped Serpent-Breath down hard. I cut into his throat, stamped on his face, chopped again, slipped in his blood, then left him and went to help Leofric who was fending off the second man who was still on horseback. The Dane's sword thumped on Leofric's shield, then he had to turn his horse to face me and Leofric's axe took the horse in the face an
d the beast reared, the rider slid backwards and I met his spine with Serpent-Breath's tip.
Two down. The priest with the sword, not a half dozen paces away, had not moved. He was just staring at us.
'Get back into the marsh!' I shouted at him. 'Go! Go!'
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