The Lords of the North

by Bernard Cornwell

  Alfred did not like me. He had never liked me. At times he hated me, but I had done him service. I had done him great service, and he had been less than generous in rewarding that service. Five hides, he had given me, while I had given him a kingdom. Yet now I owed my freedom to him, and I did not understand why he had done it. Except, of course, that Hild had given him a house of prayer, and he would have wanted that, and he would have welcomed her repentance, and both those things made a twisted kind of sense. Yet he had still rescued me. He had reached out and plucked me from slavery and I decided he was generous after all. But I also knew there would be a price to pay. Alfred would want more than Hild’s soul and a new convent. He would want me. ‘I hoped I’d never see Wessex again,’ I said.

  ‘Well you’re going to see it,’ Ragnar said, ‘because I swore to take you back. Besides, we can’t stay here.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed.

  ‘Kjartan will have a hundred men here in the morning,’ Ragnar said.

  ‘Two hundred,’ I said.

  ‘So we must go,’ he said, then looked wistful. ‘There’s a hoard in Jutland?’

  ‘A great hoard,’ Finan said.

  ‘We think it’s buried in a reed hut,’ I added, ‘and guarded by a woman and three children.’

  Ragnar stared through the door to where a few sparks of fire showed among the hovels built by the old Roman fort. ‘I can’t go to Jutland,’ he said softly. ‘I swore an oath that I would take you back as soon as I found you.’

  ‘So someone else can go,’ I suggested. ‘You have two ships now. And Sverri will reveal where his hoard is if he’s frightened enough.’

  So next morning Ragnar ordered his twelve Danes to take Trader across the sea. The command of the ship was given to Rollo, Ragnar’s best steersman, and Finan begged to go with Rollo’s crew, and the Scottish girl Ethne went with Finan who now wore mail and a helmet and had a long sword buckled at his waist. Sverri was chained to one of Trader’s oar-benches and, as she left the shore, I saw Finan whipping him with the lash that had scarred our backs for so many months.

  Trader left and we then carried the Scottish slaves across the river in the red ship and released them on the northern bank. They were frightened and did not know what to do, so we gave them a handful of the coins we had taken from Sverri’s strongbox and told them to keep walking with the sea always on their right hand and, with a little luck, they might reach home. They would more likely be captured by Bebbanburg’s garrison and sold back into slavery, but we could not help that. We left them, pushed the red ship away from the shore and turned for the sea.

  Behind us, where Gyruum’s hilltop smoked from the remnants of our fires, horsemen in mail and helmets appeared. They lined the crest, and a column of them galloped across the salt-marsh to clatter onto the shingle bank, but they were much too late. We were riding the ebb-tide towards the open sea and I looked behind and saw Kjartan’s men and I knew I would see them again and then the Dragon-Fire rounded the river’s bend and the oars bit the water and the sun glittered like sharpened spear-points on the small waves and an osprey flew overhead and I raised my eyes to the wind and wept.

  Pure tears of joy.

  It took us three weeks to voyage to Lundene where we paid silver to the Danes who exacted a toll from every ship that rowed upriver, and then it was another two days to Readingum where we beached Dragon-Fire and purchased horses with Sverri’s money. It was autumn in Wessex, a time of mists and fallow fields. The peregrine falcons had returned from wherever they voyage in the high sky during the summer months and the oak leaves were turning a wind-shivered bronze.

  We rode to Wintanceaster for we were told that was where Alfred was holding court, but the day we arrived he had ridden to one of his estates and was not expected to return that night and so, as the sun lowered over the scaffolding of the big church Alfred was building, I left Ragnar in the Two Cranes tavern and walked to the northern edge of the town. I had to ask directions and was pointed down a long alley that was choked with muddy ruts. Two pigs rooted in the alley that was bordered on one side by the town’s high palisade and on the other by a wooden wall in which there was a low door marked by a cross. A score of beggars were crouched in the mud and dung outside the door. They were in rags. Some had lost arms or legs, most were covered in sores, while a blind woman held a scarred child. They all shuffled nervously aside as I approached.

  I knocked and waited. I was about to knock again when a small hatch was slid aside in the door and I explained my business, then the hatch snapped shut and I waited again. The scarred child cried and the blind woman held a begging bowl towards me. A cat walked along the wall’s top and a cloud of starlings flew westwards. Two women with huge loads of firewood strapped on their backs passed me and behind them a man drove a cow. He bobbed his head in deference to me for I looked like a lord again. I was dressed in leather and had a sword at my side, though the sword was not Serpent-Breath. My black cloak was held at my throat with a heavy brooch of silver and amber that I had taken from one of Sverri’s dead crewmen, and that brooch was my only jewel for I had no arm rings.

  Then the low door was unbolted and pulled inwards on its leather hinges and a small woman beckoned me inside. I ducked through, she closed the door and led me across a patch of grass, pausing there to let me scrape the street dung off my boots before taking me to a church. She ushered me inside, then paused again to genuflect towards the altar. She muttered a prayer, then gestured that I should go through another door into a bare room with walls made of mud and wattle. Two stools were the only furniture and she told me I might sit on one of them, and then she opened a shutter so that the late sun could illuminate the room. A mouse scuttled in the floor rushes and the small woman tutted and then left me alone.

  I waited again. A rook cawed on the roof. From some place nearby I could hear the rhythmic squirt of milk going into a pail. Another cow, its udder full, waited patiently just beyond the open shutter. The rook cawed again and then the door opened and three nuns came into the room. Two of them stood against the far wall, while the third just gazed at me and began to weep silently. ‘Hild,’ I said, and I stood to embrace her, but she held a hand out to keep me from touching her. She went on weeping, but she was smiling too, and then she put both her hands over her face and stayed that way for a long while.

  ‘God has forgiven me,’ she finally spoke through her fingers.

  ‘I am glad of it,’ I said.

  She sniffed, took her hands from her face and indicated that I should sit again, and she sat opposite me and for a time we just looked at each other and I thought how I had missed her, not as a lover, but as a friend. I wanted to embrace her, and perhaps she sensed that for she sat straighter and spoke very formally. ‘I am now the Abbess Hildegyth,’ she said.

  ‘I had forgotten your proper name is Hildegyth,’ I said.

  ‘And it does my heart good to see you,’ she said primly. She was dressed in a coarse grey robe that matched the gowns of her two companions, both of whom were older women. The robes were belted with hemp-rope and had heavy hoods hiding their hair. A plain wooden cross hung at Hild’s neck and she fingered it compulsively. ‘I have prayed for you,’ she went on.

  ‘It seems your prayers worked,’ I said awkwardly.

  ‘And I stole all your money,’ she said with a touch of her old mischief.

  ‘I give it to you,’ I said, ‘willingly.’

  She told me about the nunnery. She had built it with the money from Fifhaden’s hoard and now it housed sixteen sisters and eight laywomen. ‘Our lives,’ she said, ‘are dedicated to Christ and to Saint Hedda. You know who Hedda was?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of her,’ I said.

  The two older nuns, who had been looking at me with stern disapproval, suddenly broke into giggles. Hild smiled. ‘Hedda was a man,’ she told me gently, ‘and he was born in Northumbria and he was the first bishop of Wintanceaster. He is remembered as a most holy and good man, and I chose him because you a
re from Northumbria and it was your unwitting generosity that let us build this house in the town where Saint Hedda preached. We vowed to pray to him every day until you returned, and now we shall pray to him every day to thank him for answering our prayers.’

  I said nothing for I did not know what to say. I remember thinking that Hild’s voice was forced as if she were persuading herself as well as me that she was happy, and I was wrong about that. It was forced because my presence brought her unpleasant memories, and in time I learned she truly was happy. She was useful. She had made her peace with her god and after she died she was remembered as a saint. Not so very long ago a bishop told me all about the most holy and blessed Saint Hildegyth and how she had been a shining example of Christian chastity and charity, and I was sorely tempted to tell him that I had once spread-eagled the saint among the buttercups, but managed to restrain myself. He was certainly right about her charity. Hild told me that the purpose of Saint Hedda’s nunnery was not just to pray for me, its benefactor, but to heal the sick. ‘We are busy all day,’ she said, ‘and all night. We take the poor and we tend them. I’ve no doubt there are some waiting outside our gate right now.’

  ‘There are,’ I said.

  ‘Then those poor folk are our purpose,’ she said, ‘and we are their servants.’ She gave me a brisk smile. ‘Now tell me what I have prayed to hear. Tell me your tales.’

  So I told her and I did not tell her all of what had happened, but made light of slavery, saying only that I had been chained so I could not escape. I told her of the voyages, of the strange places and of the people I had seen. I spoke of the land of ice and fire, of watching the great whales breach in the endless sea, and I told her of the long river that twisted into a land of birch trees and lingering snow, and I finished by saying that I was glad to be a free man again and grateful to her for making me so.

  Hild was silent when I finished. The milk still spurted into the pail outside. A sparrow perched on the window ledge, preened itself and flew away. Hild had been staring at me, as if testing the veracity of my words. ‘Was it bad?’ she asked after a while.

  I hesitated, tempted to lie, then shrugged. ‘Yes,’ I said shortly.

  ‘But now you are the Lord Uhtred again,’ she said, ‘and I have your possessions.’ She signalled to one of the nuns, who left the room. ‘We kept everything for you,’ Hild said brightly.

  ‘Everything?’ I asked.

  ‘Except your horse,’ she said ruefully. ‘I couldn’t bring the horse. What was he called? Witnere?’

  ‘Witnere,’ I said.

  ‘I fear he was stolen.’

  ‘Stolen?’

  ‘The Lord Ivarr took him.’

  I said nothing because the nun had come back into the room with a cumbersome armful of weapons and mail. She had my helmet, my heavy coat of leather and mail, she had my arm rings and she had Wasp-Sting and Serpent-Breath, and she dropped them all at my feet and there were tears in my eyes as I leaned forward and touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt. ‘The mail coat was damaged,’ Hild said, ‘so we had one of the king’s armourers repair it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘I have prayed,’ Hild said, ‘that you will not take revenge on King Guthred.’

  ‘He enslaved me,’ I said harshly. I could not take my hand from the sword. There had been so many moments of despair in the last two years, moments when I thought I would never touch a sword again, let alone Serpent-Breath, yet here she was, and my hand slowly closed about the hilt.

  ‘Guthred did what he felt was best for his kingdom,’ Hild said sternly, ‘and he is a Christian.’

  ‘He enslaved me,’ I said again.

  ‘And you must forgive him,’ Hild said forcefully, ‘as I have forgiven the men who wronged me and as God has forgiven me. I was a sinner,’ she went on, ‘a great sinner, but God has touched me and poured his grace into me and so forgiven me. So swear to me that you will spare Guthred.’

  ‘I will make no oaths,’ I said harshly, still holding Serpent-Breath.

  ‘You are not an unkind man,’ Hild said. ‘I know that. You were kinder to me than I ever deserved. So be kind to Guthred. He’s a good man.’

  ‘I will remember that when I meet him,’ I said evasively.

  ‘And remember that he regretted what he did,’ Hild said, ‘and that he did it because he believed it would preserve his kingdom. And remember too that he has given this house money as a penance. We have much need of silver. There is no shortage of poor, sick folk, but there is ever a shortage of alms.’

  I smiled at her. Then I stood and I unbuckled the sword I had taken from one of Sven’s men at Gyruum and I unpinned the brooch at my neck, and I dropped cloak, brooch and sword onto the rushes. ‘Those you can sell,’ I said. Then, grunting with the effort, I pulled on my old mail coat and I buckled on my old swords and I picked up my wolf-crested helmet. The coat felt monstrously heavy because it had been so long since I had worn mail. It was also too big for me for I had become thinner in those years of pulling Sverri’s oar. I slipped the arm rings over my hands, then looked at Hild. ‘I will give you one oath, Abbess Hildegyth,’ I said. She looked up at me and she was seeing the old Uhtred, the shining lord and sword-warrior. ‘I will support your house,’ I promised, ‘and you will have money from me and you will thrive and you will always have my protection.’

  She smiled at that, then reached into a purse that hung at her belt and held out a small silver cross. ‘And that is my gift to you,’ she said, ‘and I pray that you will revere it as I do and learn its lesson. Our Lord died on that cross for the evil we all do, and I have no doubt, Lord Uhtred, that some of the pain he felt at his death was for your sins.’

  She gave me the cross and our fingers touched and I looked into her eyes and she snatched her hand away. She blushed, though, and she looked up at me through half-lowered lids. For a heartbeat I saw the old Hild, the fragile, beautiful Hild, but then she composed her face and tried to look stern. ‘Now you can go to Gisela,’ she said.

  I had not mentioned Gisela and now I pretended the name meant little. ‘She will be married by now,’ I said carelessly, ‘if she even lives.’

  ‘She lived when I left Northumbria,’ Hild said, ‘though that was eighteen months ago. She would not speak to her brother then, not after what he did to you. I spent hours comforting her. She was full of tears and anger. A strong girl, that one.’

  ‘And marriageable,’ I said harshly.

  Hild smiled gently. ‘She swore to wait for you.’

  I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt. I was so full of hope and so racked by dread. Gisela. In my head I knew she could not match a slave’s feverish dreams, but I could not rid my head of her.

  ‘And perhaps she does wait for you,’ Hild said, then she stepped back, brusque suddenly. ‘Now we have prayers to say, folk to feed and bodies to heal.’

  And so I was dismissed and I ducked out of the door in the convent wall to stand in the muddy alleyway. The beggars were allowed inside, leaving me leaning against the wooden wall with tears in my eyes. Folk edged by on the alley’s far side, fearful of me for I was dressed for war with my two swords.

  Gisela, I thought, Gisela. Maybe she did wait, but I doubted it for she was too valuable as a peace cow, but I knew I would go back north as soon as I could. I would go for Gisela. I gripped the silver cross until I could feel its edges hurting through the great callouses that Sverri’s oar had made on my hand. Then I drew Serpent-Breath and I saw that Hild had looked after the blade well. It shone with a light coating of lard or lanolin that had prevented the patterned steel from rusting. I raised the sword to my lips and kissed her long blade. ‘You have men to kill,’ I told her, ‘and revenge to take.’

  And so she had.

  I found a swordsmith the next day and he told me he was too busy and could not do my work for many days and I told him that he would do my work that day or else he would do no work ever again, and in the end we came to an agreement. He agreed to do my work that
day.

  Serpent-Breath is a lovely weapon. She was made by Ealdwulf the Smith in Northumbria and her blade is a magical thing, flexible and strong, and when she had been made I had wanted her plain iron hilt decorated with silver or gilt-bronze, but Ealdwulf had refused. ‘It’s a tool,’ he had told me, ‘just a tool. Something to make your work easier.’

  She had handles of ash wood, one either side of the sword’s tang, and over the years the twin handles had become polished and smooth. Such worn handles are dangerous. In battle they can slip in the hand, especially when blood is splashed on them, and so I told the swordsmith that I wanted new handles riveted onto the hilt, and that the handles must give a good grip, and that the small silver cross that Hild had given me must be embedded in the hilt’s pommel.

  ‘I shall do it, lord,’ he said.

  ‘Today.’

  ‘I shall try, lord,’ he said weakly.

  ‘You will succeed,’ I said, ‘and the work will be well done.’ I drew Serpent-Breath and her blade was bright in the shadowed room as I held her towards the smith’s furnace and in the red firelight I saw the patterns on her steel. She had been forged by beating three smooth and four twisted rods into one metal blade. She had been heated and hammered, heated and hammered, and when she was done, and when the seven rods had become one single savage streak of shining steel, the twists in the four rods were left in the blade as ghostly patterns. That was how she got her name, for the patterns looked like the swirling breath of a dragon.

  ‘She is a fine blade, lord,’ the swordsmith said.

  ‘She is the blade that killed Ubba by the sea,’ I said, stroking the steel.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ he said. He was terrified of me now.

  ‘And you will do the work today,’ I stressed, and I put sword and scabbard on his fire-scarred bench. I laid Hild’s cross on the hilt, then added a silver coin. I was no longer wealthy, but nor was I poor, and with the help of Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting I knew I would be rich again.