‘We ride south,’ I told Finan, ‘because not far away there’s a Roman track to Heahburh.’
‘You know that?’ he sounded surprised.
‘I know there’s a road south from Heahburh. It took the lead and silver to Lundene. We just have to find it, and Æthelstan won’t expect us to use that road. He’ll expect us to go north to Cair Ligualid and follow the wall east.’
‘And that’s the road we take?’ Egil asked.
‘Yes.’ Egil had brought far more men to Burgham than I, and my hope was that Æthelstan would believe we had all taken the Roman road north and so send his pursuit that way while Finan and I rode like demons across the high country. ‘Go before dawn,’ I told Egil, ‘and ride fast! He’ll send men after you. And keep the fires burning here till you leave! Make them think we’re still here.’
‘What if Æthelstan’s men try to stop us?’ Thorolf asked.
‘Don’t attack them! Don’t give them the excuse to start a war against Bebbanburg. They have to draw the first blood.’
‘Then we can fight?’ Thorolf asked.
‘You’re Norsemen, what else would you do?’
Thorolf grinned, but his brother looked worried. ‘And when we get home,’ he asked, ‘what do we do?’
I did not know what to say. Æthelstan would surely interpret my flight as a hostile act, but would he think it signalled a Scottish alliance? I sat for a moment, riven by indecision. Better perhaps to accept his offer? But I was the Lord of Bebbanburg, I had spent most of my life trying to recapture the great fortress, and would I now meekly surrender it to Æthelstan’s ambition to see his flag flaunted from my walls? ‘If he attacks our land,’ I told Egil and Thorold, ‘make your best peace with him. Don’t die for Bebbanburg. If he won’t make peace, then take to your ships. Go viking!’
‘We will …’ Thorolf growled.
‘… take ships to Bebbanburg,’ Egil finished for his brother, who nodded.
I had fought so long and so hard for my home. It had been stolen from me when I was a child, and I had fought the length and breadth of Britain to regain it.
And now I must fight for Bebbanburg again. We would ride for home.
Six
We rode through the moon-sifted darkness. When the clouds covered the moon we had to stop and wait till our path was visible again, and in the roughest places we led the horses, stumbling in the night, fleeing from a king who swore he was my friend.
It had taken time to saddle the horses, to cram bags with food, then to go south past the Welsh encampment and follow the Roman road that would eventually have led us all the way to Lundene. We were seen, of course, but no sentry challenged us, and my hope was that no one would think a group of horsemen travelling south were really intent on fleeing northwards. Behind us the fires in our abandoned camp flared high as Egil’s men fed them.
The road forded a river, then ran straight through stone-walled pastureland to a small settlement where dogs barked behind palisades. I had only the haziest idea of this countryside, but knew we needed to turn north-eastwards and at the settlement’s centre a road led that way. It looked like a cattle-track, deep trampled by hooves, but I saw broken stone edging the verges that suggested it had been made by the Romans. ‘Is that a Roman road?’ I asked Finan.
‘God knows.’
‘We need to go in that direction.’
‘Then it’s probably as good a road as any.’
I was following a star, just as we did at sea. We went slowly because both the road and its verges were rough, but before the stars were lost in encroaching clouds they told me the road was indeed taking us north-east towards the bare hills that slowly showed themselves in a grey dawn. I feared that the crude track was not the road I sought, and that it would end at the hills, but it climbed slowly towards even steeper hills, their summits shrouded in cloud. I looked behind to see a pall of smoke over distant Burgham. ‘How long will it take us to get home, lord?’ Aldwyn, my servant, asked anxiously.
‘Four or five days if we’re lucky. Maybe six?’
And we would be lucky if we did not lose a horse. I had chosen a route across the hills because it was the shortest way home, but in this part of Northumbria the slopes were steep, the streams fast, and the road uncertain. By now, I hoped, Egil was well on his way north towards Cair Ligualid and, I assumed, was being followed by Æthelstan’s troops. As we climbed higher I constantly looked back to see if men were following us and saw none, but then the low clouds came even lower and I lost sight of the road behind. The small constant drizzle soaked us, the day grew colder and I told myself I was a fool. How could Æthelstan mean me harm? He knew what Bebbanburg meant to me, he knew me as a son knows a father. I had raised Æthelstan, protected him, even loved him, and finally I had guided him to his destiny of kingship.
But what is a king? My ancestors had been the kings of Bernicia, a kingdom that no longer exists, but which once stretched from the River Foirthe in what is now Alba to the River Tesa. Why were they kings? Because they were the wealthiest, nastiest and most brutal warriors in northern Britain. They had power and they made yet more power by conquering the neighbouring kingdom of Deira and calling their new country Northumbria, and they held that power until a still more powerful king unseated them. So was that all kingship demanded? Brute power? If that was all kingship required then I could have been a king in Northumbria, but I had never pursued that throne. I did not want the responsibility, the need to control ambitious men who would challenge me, and, in Northumbria, the duty to subdue the chaos that ruled in Cumbria. I had wanted to rule Bebbanburg, nothing more.
The road led on through the mist and drizzle. In places the track had almost disappeared, or else crossed slopes of shale. We still climbed through a wet, silent world. Finan rode beside me, his grey stallion jerking its head up with every other step. He said nothing, I said nothing.
And kingship, I thought, was not just brute power, though for some kings that was enough. Guthfrith relished the power of kingship and kept it by bribing his followers with silver and slaves, yet he was doomed. That was clear. He did not have enough power and if Constantine did not destroy him, then Æthelstan surely would. Or I would. I despised Guthfrith, knew him to be a bad king, but why was he king? For no other reason than family. His brother had been king and so Guthfrith, lacking nephews, had succeeded him and so custom had given Northumbria a bad king just when it most needed a good king.
And Wessex, I thought, had been more fortunate. At its lowest moment, when it seemed that Saxon rule was doomed and the Northmen would conquer all Britain, Alfred had succeeded his brother. Alfred! A man racked by sickness, bodily weak, and passionate about religion, law, and learning, and still the best king I had known. And what had made Alfred great? Not his prowess in war, nor his sallow appearance, but his confidence. He had been clever. He had possessed the authority of a man who saw things more clearly than the rest of us, who was confident that his decisions were the best for his country, and his country had come to trust him. There was more than that, much more. He believed his god had made him king, that he had been given the duty of kingship, and that duty carried with it a heavy responsibility. Once, talking with him in Wintanceaster, he had opened a great leather-bound gospel book, turned its creaking pages, and used a jewelled pointer to show me some crabbed lines written in black ink. ‘You don’t read Latin?’
‘I can read it, lord, but I don’t know what it means,’ I had said, wondering what dull words he was about to read from his scripture.
He had pulled one of his precious candles closer to the book. ‘Our Lord,’ he had said, gazing at the book, ‘tells us to give food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, shelter to the homeless, clothes to the naked, and care to the sick.’ He had plainly recited from memory because, despite the pointer and the candle, his eyes had not moved. Then those sombre eyes had looked up at me. ‘That describes my duty, Lord Uhtred, and it is a king’s duty.’
‘It doesn’t say anything about slaughtering the Da
nes?’ I had asked sourly, which made him sigh.
‘I have to defend my people, yes.’ He had put the jewel on the table and carefully closed the gospel book. ‘That is my most important duty and, strangely, the easiest of all! I have mastiffs like you who are only too eager to inflict the necessary slaughter.’ I had begun to protest, but he had abruptly waved me to silence. ‘But God also demands that I care for his people, and that is a task that never ends and cannot be won by battle-slaughter. I have to give them God’s justice. I must feed them in times of scarcity. I have to care for them!’ He had looked at me and I had almost felt sorry for him.
Now I did feel sorry for him. He had been a good man and a kind one, but his duty as king had forced him to be a savage man too. I remembered him ordering a massacre of Danish prisoners who had raped and plundered a village, I saw him condemn thieves to death, and I had followed him into battle often enough, but he did those necessities regretfully, resenting them because they interrupted his god’s duty. He had been a reluctant king. Alfred would have been happiest as a monk or a priest, working with ancient manuscripts, teaching the young, and caring for the unfortunate.
Now his grandson, Æthelstan, was king, and Æthelstan was clever, he was kind enough, and he had proved himself to be a fearsome warrior, but he lacked his grandfather’s humility. As I rode the mist-shrouded hills I thought of him and came to understand that Æthelstan had something his grandfather had never possessed; vanity. He was vain about his appearance, he wanted his palaces to be glorious, he dressed his men in matching cloaks to impress. And vanity made him want to be more than a king, he wanted to be the high king, a king of kings. He claimed he just wanted peace in the isle of Britain, but what he really wanted was to be admired as the Monarchus Totius Brittaniae, the glorious shining king on the highest throne. And the only way he could achieve that ambition was by the sword, because Hywel of Dyfed and Constantine of Alba would not bow the knee just because they were dazzled by Æthelstan. They were kings too. I knew that Hywel, like Alfred, cared desperately for his people. He had given them law, he wanted justice for them, and he wanted his people kept safe. He was a good man, maybe as great a man as Alfred had been, and he too wanted peace in Britain, but not at the price of submission.
Æthelstan, I thought, had let the emerald-studded crown change him. He was not a bad man, not vile like Guthfrith, but his desire to rule all Britain did not come from a care for Britain’s people, but from his own ambition. And Bebbanburg appealed to that ambition. It was the greatest fortress of the north, a bastion against the Scots, and to own it would show all Britain that Æthelstan was indeed High King. There was no room for sentiment, not with glory and power and reputation at stake. He would be High King Æthelstan, and I would be a memory.
We stopped many times during the day to rest the horses, and all day we were shrouded in the low clouds. At dusk, as the road climbed a high valley, I was startled from my thoughts by a strange hollow knocking. I must have been half dozing, slumped in the high-backed saddle, because at first I thought the sound was a dream. Then I heard it again, the same hollow crack. ‘What was that?’
‘Dead enemies,’ Finan said drily.
‘What?’
‘Skulls, lord!’ he pointed down. We were riding beside the road where the turf was easier for the horses and I saw my stallion had kicked a skull that now rolled to the road’s edge. I looked behind and saw a scatter of long bones, ribs, and still more skulls, some of them with deep clefts where an axe or sword had shattered the bone. ‘They weren’t buried deep enough,’ Finan said.
‘They?’
‘We’re beneath Heahburh, I think. So these must be Sköll’s men. We buried ours up on the hill, remember? And my horse is lame.’ His stallion was still jerking its head up every time it put its weight onto the right forefoot. The movement had become far more noticeable over the last mile or so.
‘He’ll not make it to Bebbanburg,’ I said.
‘Maybe a night’s rest? It’ll be dark soon enough, lord, we should stop.’
So we stopped beneath that place of death, Heahburh, and I was glad the mist still clung to the hills so I could not see the broken walls where so many had died. We watered the horses, made fires from what little wood we could scavenge, ate hard bread and cheese, wrapped ourselves in our cloaks, then tried to sleep.
I was fleeing from the boy I had raised to be king.
We took four days to reach Bebbanburg. Finan’s horse had to be left behind with two men who had orders to bring it home when the lameness was cured. We lost two horseshoes, but we always carried old-fashioned iron-soled hoof-boots made of boiled leather and, once laced into place, they let the horses keep moving. We hurried slowly, meaning we could rarely travel above a walk, but pressed on into the evenings and started again as soon as dawn’s grey light showed us the way. The weather had turned nasty, bringing slashing rain driven by cold east winds, and my only consolation was that if Æthelstan’s men were pursuing Egil and Thorolf then they too would be struggling into the downpours.
Then, on the last day, as if to mock us, the sun came out, the wind turned south-west, and the wet fields around Bebbanburg seemed to steam in the rising heat. We rode the sandy neck leading to the Skull Gate and the sea roared to my right sending the endless waves seething onto the sand, their sound a longed-for welcome home.
And there was no enemy, or rather none of Æthelstan’s men waiting for us. We had won the race. If it was a race? I wondered if I had panicked, if I was seeing enemies where there were none. Perhaps Æthelstan had been speaking the truth when he said I would remain Lord of Bebbanburg even if I lived in far-off Wiltunscir? Or perhaps the bishop I had whelped had lied to me? He had no love for me. Had he panicked me into flight to make it look as though I was truly allied with Constantine? I worried that I had made the wrong choice, but then Benedetta came running through the inner gate, and my son behind her, and panic or no panic, I felt safe. I only had two of the most powerful kings in Britain wanting my fortress, and Guthfrith was being encouraged to harass me, but there was a solace in Bebbanburg’s mighty defences. I slid from the tired stallion, patted his neck, then embraced Benedetta in sheer relief. The great gates of the Skull Gate slammed shut behind me and the locking bar thumped into its brackets. I was home.
‘Æthelstan is really not your friend?’ Benedetta asked me that night.
‘The only friends we have are Egil and Thorolf,’ I answered, ‘and where they are I don’t know.’
We were sitting on the bench just outside the hall. The first stars were showing above the sea that had calmed after the wind. There was enough light to show the sentries on the ramparts, while firelight spilt from the smithy and the dairy. Alaina was sitting with us, a distaff in her hands. She was a pretty girl who we had rescued in Lundene after her father and mother vanished in the chaos that followed King Edward’s death. Her mother, we knew, had been a slave and, like Benedetta, came from Italy, while her father was a Mercian soldier. I had promised the child I would do my best to find either father or mother, but in truth I had made small effort to keep the promise. Now Alaina said something in Italian and though I spoke scarce ten words of that language I understood well enough that she had cursed. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘She hates the distaff,’ Benedetta said. ‘So do I.’
‘Woman’s work,’ I said unhelpfully.
‘She is almost a woman now,’ Benedetta said, ‘she must think of a husband in a year or two.’
‘Ha!’ Alaina retorted.
‘You don’t want to marry?’ I asked.
‘I want to fight.’
‘Get married then,’ I said, ‘it seems to work.’
‘Ouff,’ Benedetta said and punched me. ‘Did you fight Gisela? Eadith?’
‘Not often. And I always regretted it.’
‘We’ll find Alaina a good husband.’
‘But I want to fight!’ Alaina said earnestly.
I shook my head. ‘You’re a vicious li
ttle devil, aren’t you?’
‘I am Alaina the Vicious,’ she said proudly, then grinned at me. I truly did hope to find her parents, though I had become fond of the girl, thinking of her almost as a daughter. She reminded me of my own daughter, now dead. She had the same raven-black hair as Stiorra, the same defiant character, the same mischievous smile.
‘I can’t think why any man would want to marry you,’ I said, ‘horrible little thing that you are.’
‘Alaina the Horrible,’ she said happily. ‘Yesterday I disarmed Hauk!’
‘Hauk?’
‘Vidarr Leifson’s son,’ Benedetta explained.
‘He must be fourteen?’ I asked. ‘Fifteen?’
‘He cannot fight,’ Alaina said scornfully.
‘Why were you fighting him?’
‘Just practice! With the wooden swords. The boys all do it, why shouldn’t I?’
‘Because you’re a girl,’ I said with mock sternness. ‘You should be learning to spin, to make cheese, to cook, to embroider.’
‘Hauk can learn to embroider,’ Alaina said briskly, ‘and I will fight.’
‘I so hate to embroider too,’ Benedetta said.
‘Then you should fight with me,’ Alaina declared firmly. ‘Is there a name for a girl wolf?’ she asked me. ‘Like a vixen? Or a mare?’
I shrugged. ‘She-wolf perhaps?’
‘Then we will be the She-Wolves of Bebbanburg and the boys can wind wool.’
‘You can’t fight if you’re tired,’ I said, ‘so the smallest she-wolf of Bebbanburg had better go to bed now.’
‘I’m not tired!’
‘Vai a letto!’ Benedetta said sharply, and Alaina meekly obeyed. ‘She’s a dear one,’ Benedetta said wistfully when the child had vanished into the hall.
‘She is,’ I said, and thought of my daughter dead, and Æthelflaed dead, and Gisela dead, and Eadith dead. So many dead. They were the ghosts of Bebbanburg, drifting through the smoke-sifted night to fill me with remorse. I held Benedetta with one arm and watched the moon-silvered waves sliding towards the shore.
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