Conqueror tt-2

by Stephen Baxter

  'And some day the Vinlanders will return,' Godgifu said. 'To reclaim their land from the skraelings.'

  'Perhaps.'

  'Oh, they will,' Sihtric said. 'The prophecy demands it. Now we come to the crux of the matter. Orm, when exactly did this Bjarni-'

  'Bjami Herjolffson.'

  'When did he lose his way and find Vinland?'

  The date by the Christian calendar turned out to be hard to establish. Orm, like most people, remembered the years not by numbers but by great events: wars, the passing of kings, the coming of plagues or floods – or strange lights in the sky, like the comet of the prophecy. At last they established that the year of Bjarni's voyage had been during the long reign of Edward's father Aethelred, a time when the Danes were ravaging Britain – and that year, a murrain, a cattle disease, had afflicted England.

  Sihtric had another document in his bag, a closely-written little book, a copy of a chronicle of the years that had been kept by English monks since the time of Alfred. It turned out that there was only one year in Aethelred's reign noted for a murrain: the year 986 AD.

  'I knew it.'

  'I don't see what you're getting at,' Orm admitted. 'There is no "986" in your prophecy.'

  'Ah, but there is – embedded in its puzzles. Look again at the seventh stanza.' He fumbled with his scroll, unrolling it. "'The dragon flies west… Know a new world born." What else can that mean, but the discovery of Vinland by you Vikings? And the stanza says more. "Less thirty-six months… Know a Great Year dies…" My Moorish colleague has dated the end of the seventh Great Year, the seventh cycle of the comet, as September, AD 989. He does this by adding up the given months and dividing by twelve, so that-'

  'Yes, yes.'

  'And the "less thirty-six months" gives a date of three years before the Great Year's end. So the prophecy predicts Bjarni's discovery – in the year AD 986.' And he slapped the cover of his chronicle in triumph. 'I knew it.'

  Godgifu seemed shocked; it seemed that the priest hadn't shared this secret even with his sister. She asked uncertainly, 'But what does this mean?'

  The priest rolled up his parchment. 'I hold in my hand the power to shape history. That's what it means.'

  At last they were passed by the guard at the door, and made their way inside the palace. Sihtric led them through the crush of jostling English nobility towards the King's bedchamber.

  'I'll tell you another story of Vinland,' Orm murmured to Godgifu as they lined up again. 'My father told me that once, as they explored the coast, the first Viking settlers came across a human skull, smashed in as if by a stone. Searching further they found the wreck of a leather boat, a rude hovel made of piled-up sod – and a silver crucifix. These were the remains of a monk, one of those mad Irish hermits who sailed off in search of solitude, and God. It was a miracle he had crossed the ocean without starving to death. But he was the first to see Vinland, even before the Vikings.'

  'And the skraelings ended his journey.'

  'It seems so…'

  They made it at last to the door of the King's bedchamber. It took bluff and bluster for Sihtric to persuade Edward's thegns and housecarls to let him and his companions through.

  And once again, to his astonishment, in the chamber of a dying king, Orm found himself witnessing history.

  VIII

  He lay on a pallet shrouded in rich cloth, like a skeleton already, his skin stretched over his skull, his hair white and thin as frost. He was attended by his wife-Edith, sister of Harold. Their marriage had been an alliance forced on Edward by an over-mighty earl, but now, whatever their differences, Edith looked genuinely saddened as she held the hand of her dying husband.

  Doctors fidgeted, and the air was full of the stink of their potions; but there were more priests than doctors, and monks droned a dreary psalm. And Harold Godwineson Earl of Wessex was here, hands clasped in prayer, face grave. Sihtric sidled up to his lord.

  The King stirred, startling them all. He raised a hand and feebly beckoned.

  Harold stepped forward, and Sihtric, rat-like, followed. Though they spoke in whispers, Orm made out what followed.

  'Serve the Atheling,' whispered the King. 'Harold, do you hear?'

  'Of course, but-'

  'Edgar the Atheling is the true heir. In his veins flows the blood of Alfred.'

  'It is up to the witan to decide who succeeds. Not me.'

  Edward snorted softly. 'The witan will do what you tell them.'

  'But it is a dangerous time for England. And the Atheling is a boy. It is not the time to have a boy on the throne. Make me regent until the Atheling is ready.'

  'No.' That was Sihtric, daring to interrupt a dying king.

  Godgifu gasped, and Orm held her back.

  Flushed, the priest whispered to Harold, 'The throne is yours, lord. The prophecy says so. We have spoken of this before, and my studies since have shown me the truth. This is what you must see now. In the ninth stanza: "A fighting man takes/Noble elf-wise crown." Elf-wise – Alfred.'

  Shocked, Orm suddenly saw it. Harold's standard was the Fighting Man; the crown Sihtric urged him to take belonged to a king descended from Alfred. He felt cold at the Menologium's precision – and at the idea that a document drafted centuries ago had been designed to intervene in this moment, right here, right now.

  And Godgifu looked shocked too. Evidently her brother had not shared this new interpretation even with her.

  'I have thought this through carefully, lord,' Sihtric urged. 'You must do this. England requires it. Providence demands it. You know I have openly admired your honourable intentions towards the succession of the Atheling. But it is not a question of honour or dishonour any longer. You have no choice.'

  Harold turned on him, his broad, handsome face twisted. 'Damn you, priest. You're always here, aren't you? Always darkening my soul. Always ready to lead me one step further towards perdition.'

  'Harold,' Edward whispered. 'Do you hover over me to steal my throne?'

  'No-this priest – that is not my intention-'

  'I kept the peace in our shores for twenty years. Well, England is for the furnace now. All my life I have been stifled by you Godwines. You are a better man than your father, but now in this extreme you show yourself to be no more than he was.'

  'Sire-'

  'Your father blinded and slew my brother. I pray you see your brothers die before you, Harold Godwineson. I pray you see them all die, before you are blinded, and die in your turn.'

  Harold's face hardened. Sihtric, wisely, said nothing.

  Edward's breath rattled in his throat, once, twice, three times. Then came a final exhalation, almost of relief, as if he were laying down a heavy load.

  Harold straightened up. 'The King recognised the threat to England. He vouchsafed the throne, and the safety of his queen, my sister, to me.' He glared around the room. 'You all heard it.'

  Of course nobody present had heard any such thing. But no one challenged Harold's cold fury. Even Edith, his sister, the King's widow, would not meet his eyes.

  IX

  Harold Godwineson was crowned in the church of Westmynster, in the manner of the descendants of Alfred, with sceptre and battleaxe in his hands. Though the coronation was a great spectacle and the feasting that followed lavish, some muttered about unseemly haste, for the new King was crowned the very day after the death of the old. But with claimants brooding on every horizon Harold had rushed to secure his throne.

  Immediately after the coronation he began work on organising the country's defence. He sent out orders to review the provisioning and summoning of the fyrd, and to ensure he had a navy good enough to protect the coast.

  Godgifu hoped to spend more time with Orm. But Harold soon set off to the north to sort out Northumbria, with Sihtric and Godgifu in his retinue, and they were separated, not expecting to be reunited until March.

  But Orm found work among the housecarls and the thegns. Under Edward's peace it had been many years since a major battle had bee
n fought on English soil. Suddenly the nobles of England found themselves under a martial king, in a country under evident threat. There were plenty of sons to be trained in fighting, and Orm was kept busy. But because of his links with the Normans in the past he was treated with some disdain by plump, unhealthy thegns.

  In Northumbria Harold had already made a tentative ally of Morcar, whom he had supported as the new earl over his own brother Tostig. But Morcar and his brother Edwin earl of Mercia represented the only significant dynasty in England outside the Godwines and the line of Alfred. So, just as his own father had married his daughter to King Edward, within two months of his coronation Harold married Aldgytha, sister of Edwin and Morcar. This was despite the fact that Harold had been married for twenty years to Edith Swanneshals, who had borne him six children. But Harold's marriage to Edith had been more Danico, a marriage made according to Danish customs, not sanctified by the Church but accepted within English society.

  And within another month Aldgytha, though she was only thirteen, was pregnant.

  'You have to hand it to the man,' Orm said to Godgifu, when they met in Lunden in March. 'Three months since Edward died, and Harold has already locked his only likely rivals in England into his brand-new dynasty. Although I can see trouble ahead when Harold's sons by Edith figure out what has happened.'

  Godgifu was less impressed. She, or rather her father, had after all been allied to Tostig. 'It's another murky compromise,' she said. 'Mucky morals, from a man who got to where he is by betraying his own brother, bullying a dying king and lying about his last words – and breaking an oath made on a saint's relics.'

  'Harold holds the throne. Nothing else matters. And you can't run a country without committing a few sins, I'm certain of that.'

  Sihtric, meanwhile, took little notice of such detailed matters. His deduction that Harold should grab the throne – a deduction he had come to alone in his relentless study of the Menologium, a deduction he had not shared even with his sister before presenting it to Harold at Edward's deathbed – had raised his sense of his own self-importance to a new height. Now, as this critical year of 1066 unfolded, he withdrew even further from his sister and his bishop, and obsessed even more over his prophecy. He believed, he said, that a full understanding of it was tantalisingly close; and when he had decoded its message he would present it to the King, and so guide Harold's actions through the next crucial months. Godgifu found his grandiose strutting alternately comical and worrying.

  But Sihtric had a credibility problem. March was the month in which the 'comet' was prophesied to appear, marking the transition from one Great Year to another. But as March wore on, the days lengthening and warming, there was no sign of a hairy star.

  Sihtric showed his sister correspondence from a scholar based in Iberia, called Ibn Sharaf. It seemed this Ibn Sharaf had an ancestor of his own, one Ibn Zuhr, who as a slave in England had taken away a copy of the Menologium for himself, perhaps memorised.

  'It's marvellous,' Sihtric said. 'This Ibn Sharaf is based in Toledo, the old Visigoth capital. Toledo is the world's hub of astronomy. Look – the Menologium describes nine visitations by comets, and the implication is that it is the same comet returning each time. Ibn Sharaf has checked records kept by Moor astronomers that go back centuries. There are observations that match all the dates embedded in the Menologium.

  'Ibn Sharaf argues that a comet isn't a cloud, or a kind of star, as has been supposed by some. Some astronomers have seen the comets slide across the sky, brightening and darkening as they go. Ibn Sharaf says that comets ride on invisible roads between the spheres of heaven, brightening as they near the glow of the sun, diminishing as they recede. Ibn Sharaf is trying to establish the shape of such paths, for if one had that then perhaps one could explain the comets' strange periodicities. And perhaps one could know when to expect the next visitation.'

  'As,' Godgifu said slowly, 'the drafter of the Menologium seems to have known.'

  'To the men of the future,' Sihtric said pompously, 'the path of a comet in the sky will be a trivial puzzle.'

  This irritated Orm. 'Well,' he said, 'even if that's so, they've got it wrong this time, haven't they? For March is nearly over, and your prophesied comet hasn't appeared yet.'

  'It will come,' Sihtric promised. 'Ibn Sharaf and his astronomers are watching under the clear skies of al-Andalus.' But, a small man full of nervous tension, he was unable to sound confident.

  X

  That year, Easter fell in the middle of April.

  Harold, with his pregnant bride, returned to Lunden, and held his Easter court at Westmynster. He took this first opportunity to display his power and status. There was a cycle of feasting, worship, receptions, and meetings to deal with royal business. He welcomed bishops, earls and thegns, and embassies from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the continent.

  Sihtric and Godgifu took lodging in a house close to Westmynster that had belonged to a thegn of Tostig.

  It was an uneasy time for Sihtric, for even now his overdue comet did not appear. Restless, agitated, he decided to deal with his 'rival' prophet, the monk Aethelmaer. Leaning on the authority of the bishops at the court, he summoned Aethelmaer from his monastery in Wessex.

  Aethelmaer, crippled, had to be carted across the country on the back of a wagon, and then in Lunden two hefty young monks carried him everywhere on a litter.

  On his arrival, Sihtric, Godgifu and Orm were shown into Aethelmaer's presence in Westmynster abbey. He was a fat man of about fifty lying stiffly on a couch, animated only from the waist up, his useless legs withered. There was a stink of rot in the room, only partially masked by wood smoke and a sharper tang of unguents.

  At Aethelmaer's side was a low table covered in manuscripts and notes. Sihtric said, 'Despite your handicap, you have remained busy. God would be pleased.'

  Aethelmaer, evidently an earthy man, snorted at that. 'But it was God who put me in my litter in the first place – God, and a handful of feathers, and the hardness of the earth… These sketches are just that, you know, scribbles on paper. It is only when you realise the machines, with wood and rope, canvas and cloth, metal and feathers, that you start to see what works and what doesn't – and how much you don't understand. And if God had chosen to leave me my legs I could have got a lot further by now. Eh, eh?'

  'Machines?' That sparked Orm's curiosity, and he walked over to see the sketches for himself. Filled with complex diagrams they were grimy with handling and covered by spidery notes.

  Sihtric said, 'Word of your prophecies have reached the court. They say that you have forecast the coming of a comet.'

  'A comet? Oh, yes.' Aethelmaer reached painfully to tap the heap of papers. 'It's all in here. The comet will come, and England will fall – but it will rise again, changed.' He slumped back, face twisted with pain. 'But it's not the comet that matters, you know. It's all this.'

  Orm said, 'These look like machines of war. Are they siege engines?'

  'Oh, more than that,' Aethelmaer said, and he grinned to reveal rotting teeth. 'Have you ever seen a siege engine that could swim under the sea? Have you ever seen an engine with wings – an engine that could fly? The Engines of God, we call them.'

  Orm stared, shocked.

  A young monk came in, an attendant from Maeldubesburg, carrying a tub of water and a cloth. 'Time for your wash, Domnus.'

  Aethelmaer grumbled, 'Can't you see I'm busy?'

  The monk wouldn't be put off. 'You're always busy. Come now.'

  Aethelmaer acquiesced as the monk lifted his habit. His legs were white as snow, and one shin was afflicted by an ulcer, a suppurating, bloody, pus-soaked sore with the gleam of exposed bone. The stench of rotting flesh filled the room. Sihtric gulped, and Godgifu turned away. But Orm, a veteran of battlefields, had seen worse.

  Sihtric said, 'Tell me where this prophecy came from.'

  Aethelmaer seemed to feel nothing at all as the monk swabbed out pus and cut back rotten flesh. 'You're aware that our co
met is a repeat visitant.'

  'That's trivial,' snapped Sihtric.

  'Then let me tell you that my "prophecy", as you call it, was a product of the comet's last visit to the earth.'

  Sihtric, not to be outdone, hastily checked his own figures. 'In the year of Our Lord 989.'

  'Exactly! And in that year, as the comet shone, a child was dumped at the gate of our monastery in Maeldubesburg: naked, no more than a few days old…'

  The monks had taken in the child, as was their custom, and found him a wet-nurse. As a private joke they called him Aethelred, after the then King.

  It soon became apparent why the baby had been abandoned. As he grew he was a pretty boy, but quick to walk and slow to talk. He would spend hours on his own sketching figures in the dirt, but if put with the other children in the monastery school he would fight and scratch. 'He was a damaged child,' Aethelmaer said, 'with something broken inside – broken or never formed.'

  Nobody knew what to do with him until one inspired brother, seeing him scratching in the dirt, handed him a bit of chalk. At first his obsession with drawing was merely a way to keep Aethelred occupied – but it soon became clear that his drawings were more than just scribbles.

  Sihtric guessed, 'You mean these designs.'

  'Yes! You can see how detailed they are – look, it's as if you can see inside the bodies of the engines. But there is no explanation, no lettering – save for blocks, like this one, of cryptic symbols, which nobody has been able yet to decode.'

  Orm gazed at one such block, which was unhelpfully labelled 'Incendium Dei': BMQVK XESEF EBZKM BMHSM BGNSD DYEED OSMEM HPTVZ HESZS ZHVH

  It meant nothing to him.

  There was, though, one picture which showed one star looping on an egg-shaped course around another. This was the diagram which Aethelmaer had unpicked to establish that the comet that had marked Aethelred's birth was destined to return in the year 1066.