by James Wilde
As he hummed a lilting tune, the mercenary felt the last feathery fingers of the toadstools pluck at his thoughts. He glanced back at his second in command climbing the steps a few paces behind him. Ivar’s skin was as grey as the stone of the tower walls, his blue beard bedraggled.
‘Why do you haunt me still?’ Harald asked.
‘Valhalla is denied me, for I died trapped and screaming in fire, not in glorious battle,’ the shade responded in a tone like cracking ice. ‘I must walk the shores of the vast black sea for ever. No rest for me, Harald Redteeth, not until blood has been spilled.’
‘And no rest for me until you have been set free,’ the mercenary replied, understanding his responsibility. ‘Not until blood has been spilled.’
Ahead, the monk flashed a puzzled glance back.
The two men emerged on to the flat roof of the tower in the bright of a Christmas sunrise. Eoferwic tumbled away from the minster into the white river plain, a black smudge misted with smoke from the homefires.
Alric shielded his eyes against the sun as he looked out over the landscape, his chest heaving in sadness at what he knew he would soon be losing for ever. ‘Why have you brought me here?’ he whispered.
‘A kindness,’ Harald Redteeth replied bluntly.
‘A cruelty,’ the monk snapped back. ‘Dangling food before a starving man.’
The Viking shrugged. ‘A cruelty. A kindness. Your choice.’
Alric held his head up defiantly. ‘I will not betray Hereward.’
‘He died long ago,’ the mercenary replied, echoing the words he had first spoken beside the fires of Gedley. ‘His spirit does not yet know that his life is over. He is a ghost who feasts and drinks and walks.’ He glanced at Ivar, cold and grey against the tower’s wall. ‘The Mercian thinks himself safe behind the palisade of Tostig’s enclosure. He is not.’
The monk flinched. ‘The men who came into the church with you, they were not Northmen. They are the ones who have been hunting Hereward.’
Harald nodded slowly. The music in his head grew louder still. ‘While I teetered on the block with a noose round my neck, we reached an agreement. The Mercian’s enemies need him slain quietly, in a manner that will not draw attention to him or the secrets he holds. Though I am told he has escaped two such attempts on his life. Your friend is hard to kill, eh?’
‘What agreement?’ Alric flashed an unsettled glance.
Redteeth grinned. ‘Those four men will capture the Mercian on the Feast of Fools when all order is turned on its head. And they will bring him to me.’
Harald felt a sly pleasure when he saw the monk blanch. On the shores of the great black sea, the Viking had been told that he would be feared, as Death himself, in these final days the Christians called the End-Times and his people knew as Ragnarok, the Doom of the Gods, when the world would be consumed in flames. And it would be good.
‘You think this feast day belongs to your own God, Christian man,’ Redteeth continued, prowling around the tower wall. ‘But it is far older and darker than you know. This is a time for the dead, and for ghosts. It is a time of madness. It is the time of the Wild Hunt, when Odin rides eight-legged Sleipnir in pursuit of men.’ The Viking pointed an accusing finger at Alric. ‘Men who have turned their face against my people and the old ways.’
‘It is a time for peace now,’ the monk said. ‘Your ways are gone.’
Harald Redteeth shook his head. ‘My tradition is alive, in me. It has been passed down from father to son as long as man has walked this earth. In Yule, a sacrifice must be made. A blood sacrifice, which my people call hlaut.’
Gulls flying overhead called back to him, Hlaut, hlaut!
‘Sometimes it is cattle, sometimes horses, and sometimes men. We smear ourselves with the blood and raise our mead-cups to great Odin, for victory and power to the king. Your friend, Hereward, shall be my sacrifice, and I will slake myself in his blood. In his final hours, he will know such agonies that he will plead with me to pluck out his heart. And then the final days will begin. Your friend does not know what he has unleashed.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Christmas Day, 1062
The sword slashed down with one swift stroke. Hot blood gushed across the snow. Earl Tostig stepped back and grinned, resting the tip of his dripping blade on the frozen ground as the cheers rang out around him. In the centre of the circle of men and women, the goat squealed, jumping and slipping in the reddening slush. Hereward watched the beast’s death throes from the ranks of the small crowd of guests invited to attend the annual ritual. The slaughter of the goat, they all hoped, would signal a prosperous new year to come, but Hereward struggled with darker thoughts. He looked from the dying animal to the wind-chapped faces gathered around, searching for any sign that would reveal his enemy: an unguarded look, a shared glance, a tremor on hard features like the first cracks on the ice covering the river’s tributaries. He tried to find within him some of the warmth and hope he had felt when he first arrived in Eoferwic, but only a thin gruel remained. Deep in his bones, he could feel the threat mounting. Soon it would break, and then his sword would be drawn. It could not be sheathed again until it had tasted blood.
When the goat’s eyes rolled back, its convulsions stilled, another cheer rose up. The jubilant sound wafted through the cold morning to mingle with the music of men and women travelling from house to house wassailing. Every full-throated song ended with the cheerful cry of waes thu hael!
Beyond the hall’s enclosure, Eoferwic rested beneath a cloudless blue sky. Bright sunshine glared off the snow-swathed streets and houses. Not far away, the stark church tower soared from the jumbled rooftops, the bells now silent. The succulent aroma of roasting boar drifted from the hall, almost obscuring the pervasive scent of woodsmoke from the fires. Hereward’s mouth watered. The feast would be good, and when his belly was full he would be ready for whatever was to come.
He caught Acha’s eye. She was wrapped in a dark grey cloak so that with her gleaming hair and black eyes she looked like a raven in human form. The woman kept a sullen face — he had never seen her give an honest smile — but in her glance he saw a recognition of the night they had shared. Hereward felt warmed by the memory. The wound of his grief over Tidhild had not been erased, but to caress soft flesh, to feel the closeness of a kindred spirit, had soothed his turbulent thoughts. He yearned for that peace again.
The huscarls stamped their feet for warmth, and when Tostig and Judith led the way into the hall the fighting men followed, eager to fall upon the feast. Under festoons of holly and mistletoe, the guests raised cups of fruity Christmas ale and roared the oath to God and the earl. The serving women heaved in platter after platter laden with goose and beef, bread, salt-fish and smoked fish, blood pudding, cheese, honey and almond cakes and the centrepiece, a boar’s head with an apple tucked into the mouth.
With the Yule log blazing in the hearth, the hall soon rang with song and jokes bellowed in increasingly drunken voices. When the food was consumed, the harp-playing began and then the Christmas masque was performed by talented players from the town. Amid the din, Hereward sat at the end of the table, drinking steadily while he observed the other men.
Fresh from doling out alms to the poor, Archbishop Ealdred entered, red-cheeked and misty-breathed, stamping the snow from his shoes. Tostig, who had seen the cleric only hours earlier at the morning service, greeted the man like a long-lost friend. The cleric joined the earl and his wife at the top table and was soon devouring a plate of boar meat washed down with ale.
Hereward watched the two men lean together, talking intimately and with great seriousness, and at one point they both glanced towards him. They looked away when they saw he had noticed their attention, but by then the warrior’s suspicions had been raised.
The feast day drew on.
The drunken singing rolled out, more raucous with each passing hour, and men slumped across ale-puddled tables. When the guests were distracted by a Nativity performance by t
hree men dressed as the Magi, Hereward caught Acha’s eye once again and they slipped out unseen into the cold afternoon.
After a long kiss stolen round the corner of the hall, he asked her what she had overheard when she served ale to the top table.
‘I heard no discussion about you,’ she replied, her hands folded round his waist. ‘Why would there be?’
‘I saw how they looked at me.’
‘You see plots everywhere.’
‘The earl and Ealdred were discussing more than the Christmas ale. Their expressions were grave, their talk intense.’
Acha sighed. ‘The archbishop told Tostig about a monk newly arrived in Eoferwic who worked at the church. He has been accused of murdering a woman.’
Hereward reeled. Surely it could only be Alric?
‘What is wrong?’ Acha asked, concerned by what she saw in his face.
‘The monk killed the woman here?’
Acha flinched at the fire she saw in his eyes. ‘No… before. Her family demanded blood and paid Viking mercenaries to hunt the monk down.’
In his mind’s eye, the warrior saw Harald Redteeth and the bloody pile of his victims in the burning village. If this were true, every lost life rested on Alric’s shoulders. Now he understood why the monk always looked so haunted, and whined about making amends at every turn.
It seemed he had been too trusting. He sensed his anger begin to rise at the monk’s deception. Pretending to be a man of God, allowing the warrior to save his life, while in truth he really was no better than the bastards Hereward had slaughtered in Gedley.
Crying out, Acha wrenched away and he realized that in his anger he had been tightening his grip on her arm. Apologizing, he fought to control his simmering rage and asked, ‘What now? He is to be brought before the hundred court? He will pay the weregild? Or will they throw him to those Viking dogs and be done with it?’
‘The monk pleads his innocence. I overheard some talk of trial by ordeal. But for now, as he is a churchman, the archbishop aims to keep this matter secret while a decision is taken.’
‘Innocence, you say?’ Hereward brooded; perhaps the matter was not as clear-cut as it seemed. ‘Where is he being kept?’
‘They have him imprisoned at the minster, under the eye of the churchmen who pray for his soul.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘I met him at the minster. He is your friend?’
‘I care less for him than the rats that run over the spoil heaps,’ the warrior spat. ‘Let him burn his hands to the bone with the glowing iron rod to try to prove his innocence. I will lose no sleep over him.’
Kraki lurched round the corner and paused when he saw them. Swaying, he tried to focus his eyes, then shrugged and pulled his member out of his tunic, spraying urine in a wide arc. ‘You tamed her, then?’ he grunted.
Hereward felt Acha grow tense in his arms. Her expression became murderous. At that moment, the warrior thought she was capable of anything. Just as he was.
In the hall, the feasting and revelry continued long into the night. The archbishop left early with Tostig and his wife for the evening mass, accompanied by some of the guests, but not all, for though everyone there claimed to pray to the Christian God Hereward had heard some of the Vikings invoke their old deities. By the end of the festivities, the huscarls were slumped on the benches, the timber floor and the tables, soaked in ale and sweat. The servants nibbled on scraps of food, and only snoring and the crackling of the fire disturbed the quiet.
Hereward took Acha to her bed and they lay together, lost to their passion. But when he made his way to his own bed not long before dawn on the feast of St Stephen, he found his meagre possessions, his shield and his axe had been moved. The bed had been shifted to one side, as though it had been lifted to see if he hid beneath it. If he had been sleeping there, would he ever have woken, he wondered? Would he have been found in the morning in blood, like the man slain by the abbey in London?
His enemies were as close as he feared, and they had already made their first move against him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1 January 1063
The wolf howled to the rooftops. Red eyes shone in the sunlight as the man in the predator’s mask prowled at the head of the crowd. Ducking down, he leapt up suddenly, howling once more, the delicately carved wood of the wolf head making the illusion complete. He whirled, sweeping one arm towards a boy of about twelve perched on the shoulders of a man in a boar mask. ‘Here then is the Abbot of Unreason! Now let us turn this world on its head!’ Someone tossed the boy a red cap and he slapped it proudly on his head. The crowd cheered loudly in response.
Shrieking with laughter, the throng surged through the streets of Eoferwic towards the church. More lovingly carved masks bobbed in the flow: horses, cows, ravens, salmon. Strips of colourfully dyed wool fluttered from wrists, waists and ankles. In the centre of the mass, swaying on the shoulders of his mount, the red-capped boy waved to his followers with the unspoken promise that chaos would rule.
Keeping his head down, Hereward allowed himself to be washed along by the rush of bodies. He ignored the horns of mead thrust in his direction by the drunken revellers. He wanted his wits clear.
The morning was crisp and bright, a perfect day for the Feast of Fools. The throng swept through the gate of the minster enclosure and milled among the halls, the barns and the school in front of the church’s western door. For a moment, he watched the man in the wolf mask bound and frolic. ‘Follow me now, good men and women,’ the wolf called, ‘into this stone house so that we may consecrate our boy pope. And when we are done, he will rule over an upside-down kingdom. The Lord of Misrule!’
Hereward pushed his way towards the edge of the crowd.
‘Let the deacons, the priests, even the archbishop himself, keep well away from this festival,’ the wolf-man continued loudly, ‘or be prepared to pay the full price. A drenching in freezing meltwater. Let that wash their pious faces!’ The crowd laughed. Hereward could sense the hope that one of the clerics would accidentally stumble out to get a soaking. The mockery served its purpose, he knew: release from the burdens of a straitened life, if only for a while. A moment when the lowest in the land could be the highest and dream the world their way before power was torn back from their fingers. The warrior saw true value in that disordered world. There were times when he felt every one of the highest in the land plotted only to their own ends. Where was concern for the weak, the innocent, the women? In this land of wolves, where was the strong protector? Perhaps the world should be turned on its head. And perhaps he should be its Lord of Misrule.
With raucous cries, the crowd thundered into the church. Few paid attention to the glory of the soaring stone tower as its builders had intended. When most were inside, the man in the boar’s mask carried the boy in and approached the altar. Two men dressed in the white tunics of clerics followed, each wearing a mask with the nose and mouth shaped like human private parts, one male, one female. The mock-clerics intoned words in a made-up language that echoed the solemn Latin tones of the priests. The profane consecration of the Abbot of Unreason would have sickened the churchmen if they had not been in hiding, Hereward knew, but the throng laughed more loudly at each new mockery in the fake ritual.
Seizing his moment, he pulled up his hood and crunched through the deep snow from house to shack to hut in the jumble of ecclesiastical structures surrounding the stone church. Some were the dwellings of the churchmen, and he kept away from those, as he did Archbishop Ealdred’s grand hall. But he searched the stores and the scriptorium and the school and all the other buildings where the churchmen organized their lives.
At the back of a room thick with a dusting of white flour where the daily bread was made, he found Alric slumped on dirty straw. Fettered, the monk looked miserable and exhausted, but his face lit up when he saw Hereward. His joy faded quickly.
‘I should kill you where you lie,’ the warrior spat. ‘It would be a mercy, compared to what lies ahead for you.’
‘You
know, then.’ The monk hung his head.
‘That you live a lie? That you pretend to be a man of God, but are no more than a common killer of women? It is no surprise that you kept your filthy secret when I saved your life.’
Alric looked up with a fierce expression, his eyes bright with tears. ‘Do not judge me. You do not know the truth. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems in the telling.’
Leaning against the wall, Hereward folded his arms, his face cold and accusatory. ‘Enlighten me, then.’
Kneading his hands, Alric looked as if the strain of keeping his secret was finally about to tear him apart. ‘I had taken the word of God to a village not far from where we met. They had no church, no priest, not even a stone cross where I could preach. It felt a godless place, and a lawless one too, with too many still worshipping the old ways, even now in this Christian land. It was a place where I could do good works. Or so I believed.’ The young monk fell silent for a moment, and then wiped the snot from his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I did my duty well. I was a good monk, hard-working, visiting every home, preaching whenever I could, teaching the children what I knew. The men and women accepted me, liked me even, I think. They kept me fed. There was one man, a merchant, who asked me to tutor his son and he would send payment to my monastery in return. And the merchant had a daughter.’