Round the carts there clustered a mob of thralls, the runaways of the region, each catapult crew stepping by its cart and its machine, each crew captained by one of Shef's original dozen. The Vikings did not like this. Yes, every army needed a gang of thralls to dig latrines, light fires, groom horses. But gangs this size? All eating their share of the supplies? And starting to think they might not be thralls after all? Even the followers of the Way had never considered admitting men who did not speak Norse to full fellowship. Nor did Shef dare to suggest it.
He had made clear to Padda and the rest of the machine-captains that they had better tell their men to keep their heads down. “If someone wants you to grind his meal or pitch his tent, just do it,” he had told them. “Otherwise keep out of the way.”
Yet he wanted his recruits to feel different. To take pride in the speed and dexterity with which they leapt to their places, turned the levers or whirled the beams.
To mark them out, every catapult-man now wore an identical jerkin, made only of rough sackcloth, hodden gray, over the rags they had been wearing when they arrived. On it each man had carefully stitched a white linen double-headed hammer, front and back. Each man, too, had a belt or at least a rope round his middle, and all those who owned them bore knives.
Maybe it would work, thought Shef, watching the carts creak forward, Vikings in front and behind, jerkined freedmen in the middle. Certainly they were much better already with the catapults than the Vikings they had replaced. And even on a winter day in the raw cold, they looked cheerful.
A strange noise split the sky. At the front of the train of carts, Cwicca, a thrall who had come in a few days before, escaped from the shrine of St. Guthlac at Crowland, had brought with him his treasured bagpipe. Now he led the carts along, cheeks puffed, fingers skipping briskly on the bone pipe. His mates cheered and stepped out harder, some of them whistling in unison.
A Viking from the vanguard turned his horse, scowling angrily, front teeth sticking out. It was Hjörvarth Sigvarthsson, Shef saw. His half brother. Sigvarth had volunteered instantly to join the expedition with all his crews, too quickly to be turned down, quicker even than Thorvin or the Hebrideans or the still-doubting Brand. Now Hjörvarth trotted back menacingly towards the piper, sword half-drawn. The music wailed discordantly and died.
Shef turned his pony between them, slipped off it and handed the reins to Padda.
“Walking keeps you warm,” he said to Hjörvarth, staring up at the angry face. “Music makes the miles go faster. Let him play.”
Hjörvarth hesitated, jerked his pony's head round. “Suit yourself,” he flung over one shoulder. “But harps are for warriors. Only a hornung would listen to a pipe.”
Hornung, gadderling, thought Shef. How many words there are for bastard. It doesn't stop men putting them in women's bellies. Maybe Godive has one by now.
“Keep playing,” he shouted to the bagpiper. “Play ‘The Quickbeam Dance.’ Play it for Thunor, son of Woden, and to Hell with the monks.”
The piper started again to play the jerky quickstep tune, louder this time, backed by united defiant whistling. The carts rolled forward behind the patient oxen.
“You're sure King Burgred means to take over the East Angles?” King Ethelred asked. His question ended in a fit of coughing—sharp, high-pitched, going on again after it had seemed to stop.
Ethelred's younger brother, Alfred the atheling, looked at him with concern. Also, a reluctant calculation. Alfred's father, Ethelwulf—king of Wessex, conqueror of the Vikings at Oakley—had had four strong sons: Ethelstan, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred. By the time the fifth came along it had seemed so unlikely that he would ever be called upon to rule that the royal mark of the house of Wessex, the Ethel-name, had seemed unnecessary. He had been called Alfred after his mother's people.
By now the father and three of the strong sons were dead. None killed in battle, but all killed by the Vikings. For years they had marched in all weathers, lain in damp cloaks, drunk water from streams that flowed through the camps of armies careless of where they dumped their waste or relieved themselves. They died of the bowel-cramps, of the lung-sickness. Now Ethelred had contracted the wasting-cough. How long might it be, Alfred thought, till he was the last atheling of the royal house of Wessex? Till then, though, he must serve.
“Quite sure,” he replied. “He said so openly. He was mustering his men when I left. But he's not making it too obvious. He has an under-king, an East Angle, to put in charge. That will make it easier for the East Angles to accept his rule. Especially as he has a totem. The man with no limbs, the one I told you of.”
“Does it matter?” Ethelred dabbed wearily at spittle-slimed lips.
“The East Angles have twenty thousand hides. That, added to what Burgred has already, will make him stronger than us, far stronger than the Northumbrians. If we could trust him to fight the heathens only… But he may prefer easier prey. He could say it was his duty to unite all the kingdoms of the English. Ours included.”
“So?”
“We must put in a claim. See, Essex is ours already. Now the border of Essex and the South-folk runs…”
The two men, the king and the prince, began slowly to thrash out a claim to territory, a likely dividing line. They had no image of the territory they were discussing, only knowledge that this river was north of that one, this town in this or that shire. The debate took even more toll of Ethelred's waning strength.
“You're sure they've split?” said Ivar Ragnarsson sharply.
The messenger nodded. “Almost half of them marched south. Maybe twelve long hundreds left behind.”
“But no quarrel?”
“No. The word in the camp was they had some scheme for getting the wealth of King Jatmund, whom you killed with the blood-eagle.”
“Nonsense,” snarled Ivar.
“You heard what they got from the raid on the minster at Beverley?” asked Halvdan Ragnarsson. “A hundred pounds of silver and the same again in gold. That's more than we've taken anywhere. The boy is good at new schemes. You should have settled with him after the holmgang. He is a better friend than enemy.”
Ivar turned on his brother, eyes pale, face whitening in one of his celebrated rages. Halvdan stared back at him placidly. The Ragnarssons never fought each other. This was the secret of their power, even Ivar in his madness knew it. He would take his rage out on someone else in some other way. Another matter to keep secret. But they had done it before.
“Only now he is an enemy,” said Sigurth decisively. “We have to decide if he is our main one at this moment. And if he is… Messenger, you can go.”
The brothers put their heads together in the little room off the drafty hall of King Ella in Eoforwich, and began to reckon numbers, rations, distances, possibilities.
“The wisdom of the serpent, the cunning of the dove,” said Erkenbert the archdeacon with satisfaction. “Already our enemies destroy themselves and each other.”
“Indeed,” agreed Wulfhere. “The heathen make much ado and the kingdoms are moved. But God hath showed his voice and the earth shall melt away.”
They spoke over the clanging of the dies, as each of the lay brothers in the monastic mint put his silver blank in place, struck it firmly with his hammer to drive the embossed design into one side. Moved it to the other die, struck again. First the spread-winged raven for the Ragnarssons. Then the letters S.P.M.—Sancti Petri Moneta. Collared slaves shuffled by, carrying man-loads of charcoal, rolling out carts of rejected lead, copper, slag. Only choirmonks touched the silver. They shared in the wealth of the minster. And any who thought for a moment of his own advantage could reflect on the Rule of Saint Benedict and the archbishop's power of chastisement written into it. It was long since a choirmonk had been flogged to death in chapter, or bricked alive into the vaults. But such cases had been known.
“They are in God's hand,” concluded the archbishop. “Surely a divine vengeance will fall upon those who stole the goods of St. Jo
hn's at Beverley.”
“But God's hand shows itself through the hands of others,” said Erkenbert. “And we must call for help from those.”
“The kings of the Mark and of Wessex?”
“A mightier power than they.”
Wulfhere looked down with surprise, doubt, comprehension. Erkenbert nodded.
“I have drafted a letter, for your seal. To Rome.”
Pleasure showed on Wulfhere's face, perhaps anticipation of the much-rumored pleasures of the Holy City. “A vital matter,” he announced. “I shall take the letter to Rome myself. In person.”
Shef stared thoughtfully at the reverse side of his mappa, the map of England. Halfway through his work he had discovered the concept of scale, too late to apply consistently. Suffolk now bulked incongruously large, taking up a whole quadrant of the vellum. At one edge was his detailed drawing of all the information he had been able to wring out about the north bank of the Deben.
It fits, he thought. There is the town Woodbridge. That is in the first line of the poem, and the line must mean the town, because otherwise it would make no sense: all bridges are wood bridges. But more important is what the thrall says about the place, with no name, downstream of the bridge and the ford. That is where the barrows are, the resting place of the old kings. And who are the old kings? The slave knew no names, but the thane of Helmingham, who sold us mead, listed the ancestors of Raedwald the Great, and among them were Wiglaf and his father Weohstan: Wuffa, then, Wehha's offspring.
If the slave had remembered well, then there were four barrows together in a line running roughly south to north. The northmost of those. That was the place of the hoard.
Why had it not been plundered? If King Edmund had known it was the secret hiding place of the treasures of his realm, why was it not guarded?
Or maybe it was guarded. But not by men. That was what the slave had thought. When he had realized what Shef intended to do he had grown silent. Now no one could find him. He had preferred to take his chances of recapture than go to rob the grave.
Shef turned his attention to practicalities. Diggers, guards. Spades, robes, boxes and slings for hauling up earth from deep down. Lights—he had no intention of digging in daylight with an interested county watching.
“Tell me, Thorvin,” he said. “What do you think we might find inside this barrow? Other than gold, we hope.”
“A ship,” said Thorvin briefly.
“Close on a mile from the water?”
“See on your map. You could carry it up the slope there. The barrows are ship-shaped. And the thane told us Wiglaf was a sea-king, from the shores of Sweden, if he told us true. In my country even rich farmers, if they can afford it, will have themselves buried sitting upright in their boats. They think that this way they can sail over the seas to Odainsakr—to the Undying Shore—where they will join their ancestors and the Asa-gods. I do not say they are wrong.”
“Well, we will soon know.” Shef looked at the setting sun, glanced through the tent flap at the picked men—fifty Viking guards, a score of English diggers—quietly making ready. They would move only after dark.
As he rose to make his own preparations, Thorvin caught his arm. “Do not take this too lightly, young man. I do not believe—much—in draugr or in hogboys, the living dead or dragons made from corpses' backbones. Yet you are going to rob the dead. There are many tales of that, and all say the same. The dead will give up their goods, but only after a struggle. And only for a price. You should let a priest come with you. Or Brand.”
Shef shook his head. They had argued this out before. He had made excuses, given reasons. None of them true. In his heart Shef felt he alone had the right to the hoard, bequeathed him by the dying king. He went out into the falling dusk.
Many, many hours later, Shef heard a mattock strike on wood. He straightened from his crouch over the black hole. It had been a night to forget so far. They had found the site without trouble, guided by the map. They had encountered no one. But where to begin digging? The guards and the diggers had clustered together in silence, waiting for orders. He had had torches lit, to see if he could discover signs of soil disturbance. But the moment the first resinous bundle had crackled to life a sudden blue flare of flame had run up the barrow and into the sky. Shef had lost half his diggers in that moment; they had simply bolted into the night. The Viking escort had held together much better, instantly drawing weapons and facing about them as if expecting to be attacked any moment by the vengeful dead. Yet even Guthmund the Greedy, keenest treasure-hunter of all, had suddenly lost enthusiasm. “We'll spread out a bit,” he had muttered. “Not let anyone get too close.” Since then no Viking had been seen. They must be out there in the dark somewhere, in little knots, backs together. Shef had been left with ten English freedmen, teeth chattering with fear. Lacking knowledge or plan he had simply taken them all to the top of the barrow and told them to dig straight down, as near to the center as he could measure.
At last they had hit something. “Is it a box?” he called hopefully down the shaft.
The only response was frantic tugs on the ropes that led down into the eight-foot-deep hole. “They want to come up,” muttered one of the men standing round it.
“Haul away, then.”
Slowly the mud-stained men were dragged up out of the earth. Shef waited with what patience he could for a report.
“Not a box, master. It's a boat. The bottom of a boat. They must have buried 'un upside down.”
“So break through it.”
Heads shook. Silently, one of the ex-slaves held out his mattock. Another passed a faintly glowing fir-brand. Shef took both. There was no point now, he realized, in asking for further volunteers. He drove the halberd in his hand deep into the ground by its spike, took a rope, tested its anchor-stake, glanced round at the dark figures, only their eyeballs showing in the night.
“Stay by the rope.” Heads nodded. He lowered himself awkwardly, torch and mattock in one hand, into the dark.
At the bottom he found himself standing on gently sloping wood, obviously near the keel. He ran his hand over the planks in the faint torchlight. Overlapping, clinker-built. And, he could feel, heavily tarred. How long might that have lasted in this dry, sandy soil? He lifted the mattock and struck—struck again more firmly, heard the sound of splintering wood.
A rush of air and a foul stench enveloped him. His torch glowed with sudden force. Cries of alarm and scamperings from above. Yet this was not a stench of corruption. More, he felt, like the smell of a cow-byre at winter's end. He struck again and again, widening the hole. Beneath it, he realized, there was vacancy, not earth. The barrow-builders had succeeded in creating a chamber for the dead, and for the hoard, had not merely left it buried in the ground for him to sift through a shovel at a time.
Shef dropped the rope through the hole he had made and swung himself after it, torch in hand.
His feet crunched on bones. Human bones. He looked down, and felt a wave of pity. The ribs he had snapped were not those of the master of the hoard. They were a woman's bones. He could see her cloak-brooch glinting below the skull. But she lay facedown, one of a pair, stretched out lengthwise along the floor of the burial chamber. Both women's spines, he could see now, were snapped, by the great quernstones that must have been hurled down upon them. Their hands had been tied, they had been lowered into the tomb, their backs had been broken and then they had been left to die in the dark. The quernstones showed what they had been and what they were there for: they were the master's grinding slaves. Here to grind his meal and prepare his porridge into eternity.
Where the slaves were, there the master would be. He lifted his torch and turned toward the stern of the ship.
There, on his high seat, sat the king. Gazing out over hounds and horse and women. His teeth grinning out through shriveled skin. A gold circlet still lay on the bald skull. Stepping closer, Shef stared into the half-preserved face, as if looking for the secret of majesty. He remembered the u
rge of Kar the Old, to keep things his, to have them under his hand forever rather than live without them. Beneath this king's hand there was a regal whetstone, the ensign of the warrior-king who lived by sharpened weapons alone. Shef's torch suddenly went out.
Shef stood stock-still, skin crawling. In front of him there was a creak, a shifting of weight. The old king lifting himself out of his chair to settle with the invader who had come to take what he had hoarded. Shef braced for the touch of bony fingers, the awful teeth in the dried leather face.
He turned from his place and in the pitch-black walked back four, five, six paces, hopefully to the point where he had first descended. Was the blackness just perceptibly reduced? Why was he shaking like a common slave? He had faced death above—he would face death here in the darkness.
“You have no right to the gold now,” he said into the blackness, groping his way back to the high seat. “Your children's children's child gave it to me. For a purpose.”
He groped till his fingers found the torch, then bent over while he worked his flint and steel and tinder out of their pouch, strove to catch a spark.
“Anyway, Old Bones, you should be glad to give your wealth to an Englishman. There are worse than me who would take it from you.”
Torch alight again, he propped it against a rotting timber, stepped up to the seat with its grisly occupant, put his arms round the body and lifted it carefully, hoping the remains of flesh and skin and cloth would hold the crumbling bones together. Turning, he laid it down to face the women's bodies in the well of the boat.
“Now you three must fight your own battles down here.”
He took the gold circlet from the skull and pressed it down on his own head. Turning back to the empty chair, he picked up the whetstone, the scepter that had lain under the king's right hand and tapped its solid two-foot weight meditatively into one palm.
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