The Lords of the North

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘You can take your men to Gyruum,’ Guthred said, ‘and we shall provide ships and you can sail away. Your folk can go with you, except those who wish to stay in Northumbria.’

  ‘You play at being a king, boy,’ Kjartan said, then looked at Ivarr again. ‘And you’re allied to him?’

  ‘I am allied to him,’ Ivarr said tonelessly.

  Kjartan looked back to Guthred. ‘I like it here, pup. I like Dunholm. I ask for nothing more than to be left in peace. I don’t want your throne, I don’t want your land, though I might want your woman if you have one and if she’s pretty enough. So I shall make you an offer. You leave me in peace and I shall forget that you exist.’

  ‘You disturb my peace,’ Guthred said.

  ‘I’ll shit all over your peace, pup, if you don’t leave here,’ Kjartan snarled, and there was a force in his voice that startled Guthred.

  ‘So you refuse my offer?’ Guthred asked. He had lost this confrontation and knew it.

  Kjartan shook his head as if he found the world a sadder place than he had expected. ‘You call that a king?’ he demanded of Ivarr. ‘If you need a king, find a man.’

  ‘I hear this king was man enough to piss all over your son,’ I spoke for the first time, ‘and I hear Sven crawled away weeping. You bred a coward, Kjartan.’

  Kjartan pointed the axe at me. ‘I have business with you,’ he said, ‘but this is not the day to make you scream like a woman. But that day will come.’ He spat at me, then wrenched his horse’s head about and spurred back towards the high gate without another word. His men followed.

  Guthred watched him go. I stared at Ivarr, who had deliberately betrayed the sorcery, and I guessed that he had been told I was to hold Dunholm if it fell and so he had made certain it did not fall. He glanced at me, said something to his son and they both laughed.

  ‘In two days,’ Guthred spoke to me, ‘you start work on the wall. I’ll give you two hundred men to make it.’

  ‘Why not start tomorrow?’ I asked.

  ‘Because we’re going to Gyruum, that’s why. We’re going to hunt!’

  I shrugged. Kings have whims and this king wanted to hunt.

  We rode back to Cuncacester where we discovered that Jænberht and Ida, the two monks, had returned from their search for more of Ivarr’s survivors. ‘Did you find anyone?’ I asked them as we dismounted.

  Jænberht just stared at me, as if the question puzzled him, then Ida shook his head hurriedly. ‘We found no one,’ he said.

  ‘So you wasted your time,’ I said.

  Jænberht smirked at that, or perhaps it was just his twisted mouth that made me think he smirked, then both men were summoned to tell Guthred of their journey and I went to Hild and asked her if Christians pronounced curses, and if they did then she was to make a score of curses against Ivarr. ‘Put your devil onto him,’ I said.

  That night Guthred tried to restore our spirits by giving a feast. He had taken a farm in the valley below the hill where Abbot Eadred was laying out his church, and he invited all the men who had confronted Kjartan that morning and served us seethed mutton and fresh trout, ale and good bread. A harpist played after the meal and then I told the tale of Alfred going into Cippanhamm disguised as a harpist. I made them laugh when I described how a Dane had thumped him because he was such a bad musician.

  Abbot Eadred was another of the guests and, when Ivarr left, the abbot offered to say evening prayers. The Christians gathered at one side of the fire, and that left Gisela with me beside the farm’s door. She had a lambskin pouch at her belt and, as Eadred chanted his words, she opened the pouch and took out a bundle of runesticks bound with a woollen thread. The sticks were slender and white. She looked at me as if to ask whether she should cast them and I nodded. She held them above the ground, closed her eyes, then let them go.

  The sticks fell in their usual disarray. Gisela knelt beside them, her face sharply shadowed by the fire’s dying flames. She stared at the tangled sticks a long time, once or twice looking up at me, and then, quite suddenly, she began to cry. I touched her shoulder. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  Then she screamed. She raised her head to the smoky rafters and wailed. ‘No!’ she called, startling Eadred into silence, ‘no!’ Hild came hurrying around the hearth and put an arm about the weeping girl, but Gisela tore herself free and stooped over the runesticks again. ‘No!’ she shouted a third time.

  ‘Gisela!’ Her brother crouched beside her. ‘Gisela!’

  She turned on him and slapped him once, slapped him hard about the face, and then she began gasping as if she could not find breath enough to live, and Guthred, his cheek red, scooped up the sticks.

  ‘They are a pagan sorcery, lord,’ Eadred said, ‘they are an abomination.’

  ‘Take her away,’ Guthred said to Hild, ‘take her to her hut,’ and Hild pulled Gisela away, helped by two serving women who had been attracted by her wailing.

  ‘The devil is punishing her for sorcery,’ Eadred insisted.

  ‘What did she see?’ Guthred asked me.

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  He kept looking at me and I thought for a heartbeat that there were tears in his eyes, then he abruptly turned away and dropped the runesticks onto the fire. They crackled fiercely and a searing flame leaped towards the roof-tree, then they dulled into blackened squiggles. ‘What do you prefer,’ Guthred asked me, ‘falcon or hawk?’ I stared at him, puzzled. ‘When we hunt tomorrow,’ he explained, ‘what do you prefer?’

  ‘Falcon,’ I said.

  ‘Then tomorrow you can hunt with Swiftness,’ he said, naming one of his birds.

  ‘Gisela’s ill,’ Hild told me later that night, ‘she has a fever. She shouldn’t have eaten meat.’

  Next morning I bought a set of runesticks from one of Ulf’s men. They were black sticks, longer than the burned white ones, and I paid well for them. I took them to Gisela’s hut, but one of her women said Gisela was sick with a woman’s sickness and could not see me. I left the sticks for her. They told the future and I would have done better, much better, to have cast them myself. Instead I went hunting.

  It was a hot day. There were still dark clouds heaped in the west, but they seemed to be no nearer, and the sun burned fiercely so that only the score of troops who rode to guard us wore mail. We did not expect to meet enemies. Guthred led us, and Ivarr and his son rode, and Ulf was there, and so were the two monks, Jænberht and Ida, who came to say prayers for the monks who had once been massacred at Gyruum. I did not tell them that I had been present at the massacre that had been the work of Ragnar the Elder. He had cause. The monks had murdered Danes and Ragnar had punished them, though these days the story is always told that the monks were innocently at prayer and died as spotless martyrs. In truth they were malevolent killers of women and children, but what chance does truth have when priests tell tales?

  Guthred was feverishly happy that day. He talked incessantly, laughed at his own jests, and even tried to stir a smile on Ivarr’s skull face. Ivarr said little except to give his son advice on hawking. Guthred had given me his falcon to fly, but at first we rode through wooded country where a falcon could not hunt, so his goshawk had an advantage and brought down two rooks among the branches. He whooped with each kill. It was not till we reached the open ground by the river that my falcon could fly high and stoop fast to strike at a duck, but the falcon missed and the duck flew into the safety of a grove of alders. ‘Not your lucky day,’ Guthred told me.

  ‘We might all be unlucky soon,’ I said, and pointed westwards to where the clouds were gathering. ‘There’s going to be a storm.’

  ‘Maybe tonight,’ he said dismissively, ‘but not till after dark.’ He had given his goshawk to a servant and I handed the falcon to another. The river was on our left now and the scorched stone buildings of Gyruum’s monastery were ahead, built on the river bank where the ground rose above the long salt-marshes. It was low tide and wicker fish traps stretched into the river that met the sea a short
distance eastwards.

  ‘Gisela has a fever,’ Guthred told me.

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘Eadred says he’ll touch her with the cloth that covers Cuthbert’s face. He says it will cure her.’

  ‘I hope it does,’ I said dutifully. Ahead of us Ivarr and his son rode with a dozen of their followers in mail. If they turned now, I thought, they could slaughter Guthred and me, so I leaned over and checked his horse so that Ulf and his men could catch up with us.

  Guthred let me do that, but was amused. ‘He’s no enemy, Uhtred.’

  ‘One day,’ I said, ‘you will have to kill him. On that day, lord, you’ll be safe.’

  ‘I’m not safe now?’

  ‘You have a small army, an untrained army,’ I said, ‘and Ivarr will raise men again. He’ll hire sword-Danes, shield-Danes and spear-Danes until he is lord of Northumbria again. He’s weak now, but he won’t always be weak. That’s why he wants Dunholm, because it will make him strong again.’

  ‘I know,’ Guthred said patiently. ‘I know all that.’

  ‘And if you marry Gisela to Ivarr’s son,’ I said, ‘how many men will that bring you?’

  He looked at me sharply. ‘How many men can you bring me?’ he asked, but did not wait for my answer. Instead he put spurs to his horse and hurried up the slope to the ruined monastery that Kjartan’s men had used as their hall. They had made a thatched roof between the stone walls, and beneath it was a hearth and a dozen sleeping platforms. The men who had lived here must have gone back to Dunholm before we ever crossed the river on our way north for the hall had long been deserted. The hearth was cold. Beyond the hill, in the wide valley between the monastery and the old Roman fort on its headland, were slave pens that were just wattle hurdles staked into enclosures. All were deserted. Some folk lived up at the old fort and they tended a high beacon which they were supposed to light if raiders came to the river. I doubted if the beacon was ever used for no Dane would raid Kjartan’s land, but there was a single ship beneath the beacon’s hill, anchored where the River Tine made its turn towards the sea. ‘We’ll see what business he has,’ Guthred said grimly, as if he resented the ship’s presence, then he ordered his household troops to pull down the wattle fences and burn them with the thatch roof. ‘Burn it all!’ he ordered. He watched as the work began, then grinned at me. ‘Shall we see what ship that is?’

  ‘It’s a trader,’ I said. It was a Danish ship, for no other kind sailed this coast, but she was plainly no warship for her hull was shorter and her beam wider than any warrior’s boat.

  ‘Then let’s tell him there’s no trade here any more,’ Guthred said, ‘at least none in slaves.’

  He and I rode eastwards. A dozen men came with us. Ulf was one, Ivarr and his son came too, and tagging behind them was Jænberht who kept urging Guthred to start rebuilding the monastery.

  ‘We must finish Saint Cuthbert’s church first,’ Guthred told Jænberht.

  ‘But the house here must be remade,’ Jænberht insisted, ‘it’s a sacred place. The most holy and blessed Bede lived here.’

  ‘It will be rebuilt,’ Guthred promised, then he curbed his horse beside a stone cross that had been toppled from its pedestal and now lay half buried in the soil and overgrown with grass and weeds. It was a fine piece of carving, writhing with beasts, plants and saints. ‘And this cross shall stand again,’ he said and then looked around the wide river bend. ‘A good place,’ he said.

  ‘It is,’ I agreed.

  ‘If the monks come back,’ he said, ‘then we can make it prosperous again. Fish, salt, crops, cattle. How does Alfred raise money?’

  ‘Taxes,’ I said.

  ‘He taxes the church too?’

  ‘He doesn’t like taxing the church,’ I said, ‘but he does when things are hard. They have to pay to be protected, after all.’

  ‘He mints his own money?’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s complicated, being a king. Maybe I should visit Alfred. Ask his advice.’

  ‘He’d like that,’ I said.

  ‘He’d welcome me?’ He sounded wary.

  ‘He would.’

  ‘Though I’m a Dane?’

  ‘Because you’re a Christian,’ I said.

  He thought about that, then rode on to where the path twisted through a marsh and crossed a small shallow stream where two ceorls were setting eel traps. They knelt as we passed and Guthred acknowledged them with a smile which neither of them saw because their heads were bowed so low. Four men were wading ashore from the moored ship and none of them had weapons and I supposed they were merely coming to greet us and assure us that they meant no harm. ‘Tell me,’ Guthred said suddenly, ‘is Alfred different because he’s a Christian?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He’s determined to be good, lord,’ I said.

  ‘Our religion,’ he said, momentarily forgetting that he had been baptised, ‘doesn’t do that, does it?’

  ‘It doesn’t?’

  ‘Odin and Thor want us to be brave,’ he said, ‘and they want us to respect them, but they don’t make us good.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed.

  ‘So Christianity is different,’ he insisted, then curbed his horse where the path ended in a low ridge of sand and shingle. The four men waited a hundred paces away at the shingle’s far end. ‘Give me your sword,’ Guthred said suddenly.

  ‘My sword?’

  He smiled patiently. ‘Those sailors are not armed, Uhtred, and I want you to go and talk to them, so give me your sword.’

  I was only armed with Serpent-Breath. ‘I hate being unarmed, lord,’ I said in mild protest.

  ‘It is a courtesy, Uhtred,’ Guthred insisted, and held out his hand.

  I did not move. No courtesy I had ever heard of suggested that a lord should take off his sword before talking to common seamen. I stared at Guthred and behind me I heard blades hissing from scabbards.

  ‘Give me the sword,’ Guthred said, ‘then walk to the men. I’ll hold your horse.’

  I remember looking around me and seeing the marsh behind and the shingle ridge in front and I was thinking that I only had to dig my spurs in and I could gallop away, but Guthred reached over and gripped my reins. ‘Greet them for me,’ he said in a forced voice.

  I could still have galloped away, tearing the reins from his hand, but then Ivarr and his son crowded me. Both men had drawn swords and Ivarr’s stallion blocked Witnere who snapped in irritation. I calmed the horse. ‘What have you done, lord?’ I asked Guthred.

  For a heartbeat he did not speak. Indeed he seemed incapable of looking at me, but then he made himself answer. ‘You told me,’ he said, ‘that Alfred would do whatever is necessary to preserve his kingdom. That is what I’m doing.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  He had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Ælfric of Bebbanburg is bringing troops to help capture Dunholm,’ he said. I just stared at him. ‘He is coming,’ Guthred went on, ‘to give me an oath of loyalty.’

  ‘I gave you that oath,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘And I promised I would free you from it,’ he said, ‘which now I do.’

  ‘So you’re giving me to my uncle?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Your uncle’s price was your life, but I refused it. You are to go away, Uhtred. That is all. You are to go far away. And in exchange for your exile I gain an ally with many warriors. You were right. I need warriors. Ælfric of Bebbanburg can provide them.’

  ‘And why must an exile go unarmed?’ I asked, touching Serpent-Breath’s hilt.

  ‘Give me the sword,’ Guthred said. Two of Ivarr’s men were behind me, also with drawn swords.

  ‘Why must I go unarmed?’ I asked again.

  Guthred glanced at the ship, then back to me. He forced himself to say what needed to be said. ‘You will go unarmed,’ he told me, ‘because what I was, you must be. That is the price of Dunholm.’

  For a heartb
eat I could neither breathe nor speak and it took me a moment to convince myself that he meant what I knew he meant. ‘You’re selling me into slavery?’ I asked.

  ‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘I paid to have you enslaved. So go with God, Uhtred.’

  I hated Guthred then, though a small part of me recognised that he was being ruthless and that is part of kingship. I could provide him with two swords, nothing more, but my uncle Ælfric could bring him three hundred swords and spears, and Guthred had made his choice. It was, I suppose, the right choice and I was stupid not to have seen it coming.

  ‘Go,’ Guthred said more harshly and I vowed revenge and rammed my heels back and Witnere lunged forward, but was immediately knocked off balance by Ivarr’s horse so that he stumbled onto his foreknees and I was pitched onto his neck. ‘Don’t kill him!’ Guthred shouted, and Ivarr’s son slapped the flat of his sword-blade against my head so that I fell off and, by the time I had regained my feet, Witnere was safe in Ivarr’s grasp and Ivarr’s men were above me with their sword-blades at my neck.

  Guthred had not moved. He just watched me, but behind him with a smile on his crooked face, was Jænberht and I understood then. ‘Did that bastard arrange this?’ I asked Guthred.

  ‘Brother Jænberht and Brother Ida are from your uncle’s household,’ Guthred admitted.

  I knew then what a fool I had been. The two monks had come to Cair Ligualid and ever since they had been negotiating my fate and I had been oblivious of it.

  I dusted off my leather jerkin. ‘Grant me a favour, lord?’ I said.

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘Give my sword and my horse to Hild. Give her everything of mine and tell her to keep them for me.’

  He paused. ‘You will not be coming back, Uhtred,’ he said gently.