“Alfred wants missionaries?” said Shef incredulously.
“His very word. Missionarii.” In his excitement Thorvin betrayed what Shef had come to suspect, that for all his scorn of Christian learning he knew something of their sacred tongue, the Latin. “It is the word they have long used for the men they send to us, to turn us to the worship of their God. I have never before heard of a Christian king asking for men to be sent to his country, to turn them to the worship of our gods.”
“And that is what Alfred wants now?”
Shef was dubious. Thorvin, he could see, for all his belief in calm and self-control, was carried away by the thoughts of the glory this would bring him and his friends among the followers of the Way.
Yet it did mean something, he was sure, and not what it seemed. The atheling Alfred whom he had met took no interest in pagan gods, and had, as far as he could tell, a deep belief in the Christian one. If he was calling now for missionaries of the Way to be sent into Wessex it was for a deeper reason. A move against the Church, that was certain. You could believe in the Christian God and hate the Church that His followers had set up. But what did Alfred think he had to gain? And how would that Church react?
“My fellow priests and I must decide which of us, which of our friends are to go on this mission.”
“No,” said Shef.
“His favorite word again,” observed Brand from his chair.
“Do not send any of your own college. Do not send Norsemen. There are Englishmen now who know well enough what you believe. Give them pendants. Instruct them in what must be said. Send them into Wessex. They will speak the language better and will be more easily believed.”
As Shef spoke he stroked the carved faces on his scepter.
Brand had noted this before—that Shef did this now when he was lying. Shall I tell Thorvin? he thought. Or shall I tell Shef, so that he can lie better when need be?
Thorvin rose from his stool, too excited to sit. “There is a holy song,” he said, “that the Christians sing. It is called the nunc dimittis, a song that says ‘Lord, You may let Your servant die, for he has seen his purpose fulfilled.’ I have a mind to sing it myself. For more hundreds of years than I can count this Church of theirs has spread, has spread, across first the Southern and then the Northern lands. They think they can conquer all of us. Never before have I heard of the Church giving up what once it won.”
“They have not given up yet,” said Shef. “The king asks you to send missionaries. He cannot say they will get a hearing, or make the folk believe.”
“They have their Book, we have our visions!” cried Thorvin. “We shall see which is the stronger.”
From his chair, Brand's bass joined in. “The jarl is right, Thorvin. Send freed slaves of the English to do this task.”
“They do not know the legends,” protested Thorvin. “What do they know of Thor or Njörth, of the legends of Frey and Loki? They do not know the sacred stories or the hidden meanings within them.”
“They don't need to,” said Brand. “We're sending them to talk about money.”
Chapter Three
That fine Sunday morning, as every Sunday morning, the villagers of Sutton in the county of Berkshire in the kingdom of the West Saxons drew together, as directed, before the hall of Hereswith their lord, thane of King Ethelred-that-was. Thane now, so they said, of King Alfred. Or was he still only atheling? They would be told. Their eyes roved as they counted each other, assessing who was present, whether any had dared to test the orders of Hereswith that all should be present, to attend the church three miles off and learn the law of God which stood behind the laws of men.
Slowly the eyes turned the same way. There were strangers in the little cleared space before the lord's timber house. Not foreigners, or not obvious foreigners. They looked exactly like the forty or fifty other men present, churls and slaves and churls' sons: short, ill-dressed in grubby wool tunics, unspeaking—six of them together. Yet these were men who had never been seen in or near Sutton before—something unprecedented in the heart of the untraveled English countryside. Each leaned on a long stout stave of wood guarded with strips of iron, like the handle of a war-axe, but twice the length.
Without seeming to, the villagers drew away from them. They did not know what this novelty meant, but long years had taught them that what was new was dangerous—till their lord had seen and approved, or disapproved.
The door of the timber house opened and Hereswith marched out, followed by his wife and their gaggle of sons and daughters. As he saw the lowered eyes, the cleared space, the strangers, Hereswith stopped short, left hand dropping automatically to the handle of his broadsword.
“Why are you going to the church?” called out one of the strangers suddenly, his voice sending the pigeons pecking in the dirt into flight. “It's a fine day. Wouldn't you rather sit in the sun? Or work in the fields if you need to? Why walk three miles to Drayton and three miles back? And listen to a man tell you you must pay your tithes in between?”
“Who the hell are you?” snarled Hereswith, striding forward.
The stranger stood his ground, called out loudly so all could hear. His accent was strange, the villagers noticed. English, sure enough. But not from here, not from Berkshire. Not from Wessex?
“We are Alfred's men. We have the king's word and leave to speak here. Whose men are you? The bishop's?”
“The hell you're Alfred's men,” grunted Hereswith, freeing his sword. “You're foreigners. I can hear it.”
The strangers remained braced on their staves, unmoving.
“Foreigners we are. But we have come with leave, to bring a gift. The gift we bring is freedom: from the Church, from slavery.”
“You'll not free my slaves without my leave,” said Hereswith, his mind made up. He swung his sword backhand in a horizontal cut at the nearer stranger's neck.
The stranger moved instantly, hurling his strange metal-ribbed staff straight up. The sword clanged on the metal, rebounded out of Hereswith's unpracticed hands. The thane crouched, groping for the hilt, eyes darting from one stranger to the other.
“Easy, lord,” said the man. “We mean you no harm either. If you'll listen, we'll tell you why your king has asked us to come here, and how we can be his men and foreigners at once.”
Nothing in Hereswith's makeup urged him to listen or to compromise. He straightened, the sword again in his hand, and lashed out forehand at the knee. Again the staff blocked it, blocked it easily. As the thane recovered his blade, the man he had attacked stepped forward and pushed him back with the staff across his chest.
“Help me, you men,” bellowed Hereswith at the silent watchers, and charged forward, shoulder dropped and sword ready this time for a disemboweling thrust.
“Enough,” said one of the other men he faced, thrusting a staff between his legs. The thane crashed down, started to scramble again to his feet. From his sleeve the first man jerked a short, limp canvas cylinder: the slave-taker's sandbag. He swung once, to the temple, crouched, ready to swing again. As Hereswith fell forward on his face, to lie unmoving, he nodded, straightened, tucked the sandbag away, beckoned to the thane's wife to come and treat him.
“Now,” said the stranger, turning to his fascinated but still unmoving audience. “Let me tell you who we are, and who we were.
“We are men of the Way, from the North-folk. But this time last year we were slaves of the Church. Slaves to the great minster of Ely. Let me tell you how we became free.”
The slaves in the crowd, maybe a dozen of the fifty men there and the same proportion of women, exchanged frightened glances.
“And to the freemen here,” went on Sibba, once slave of the minster of Ely, then catapulteer in the Army of the Way, veteran of the victory over Ivar the Boneless himself, “to the freemen here we will say how we were given our own land. Twenty acres each,” he added. “Free of toll to any lord, except the service we owe to Shef Jarl. And the service we give freely—freely, mark you—to
the Way. Twenty acres. Unburdened. Is there any freeman here who can claim as much?”
This time the freemen in the crowd looked at each other, a low growl of interest rising. As Hereswith was dragged away, head lolling, his tenants edged closer to the new arrivals, ignoring the broadsword left forgotten in the dirt.
“How much does it cost you to follow Christ?” began Sibba. “Cost you in money? Listen and I will tell you…”
“They're everywhere,” the bishop's bailiff reported. “Thick as fleas on an old dog.”
Bishop Daniel's brows knitted at his servant's levity, but he held his tongue: he needed the information.
“Yes,” the bailiff went on, “all men from Norfolk, it seems, and all claiming to be freed slaves. It makes sense. See, your grace, we have a thousand slaves just on our own estates here round Winchester and in the minsters and shires. The man you speak of, the new jarl as the heathens call him—he could have sent three thousand slaves in here to spread his word from Norfolk alone, if he sent them all.”
“They must be caught,” Daniel grated. “Rooted out like corn-cockle from amid the wheat.”
“Not so easy. The slaves won't hand them over, nor the churls, from what I hear. The thanes can't catch 'em. If they do, they defend themselves. They never travel in less than pairs. Sometimes they group together to be a dozen, or a score, no light matter for a small village to deal with. And besides…”
“Besides what?”
The bailiff picked his words with care. “What these incomers say—lies it may be, but what they say—is that they have been summoned in by the King Alfred…”
“The atheling Alfred! He has never been crowned.”
“Your pardon, lord. By the atheling Alfred. But even some of the thanes would be loath to hand over men sent by the king to the Church. They say—they say this is a quarrel among the great ones and they will not interfere.” And many would side with the atheling, last of the great line of Cerdic, against the Church anyway, thought the bailiff. But he knew better than to say it.
Liar and deceiver, thought the bishop. Not a month ago and the young prince had sat in that very room, eyes down like a maiden, apologizing and begging for direction. And he had left the room to call instantly for help from the unbelievers! And now he was gone, no one knew where, except that rumors came of his appearance in this part or that of Wessex, appealing to his thanes to deny the Church: to follow the example of the North-folk and the creed they called the Way. It did not help that he continued to protest that he remained a believer in Christ. How long would belief last without the land and the money to support it? And if things continued as they were, how long would it be before some messenger, or some army appeared at the very gates of the minster, ordering the bishop to surrender his rights and his leases?
“So,” Daniel said at last, half to himself. “We cannot cope with this thing in Wessex. We must send outside. And indeed there is force coming from outside which will cure this evil so that it never raises its head again.
“Yet I cannot afford to wait. It is my Christian duty to act.” And also, he added silently, my duty to myself. A bishop who sits quiet and does nothing—how will he seem to the Holy Father in Rome, when the moment comes to decide who shall bear rule for the Church in England?
“No,” the bishop went on, “the heart of the trouble comes from the North-folk. Well, what the North-folk caused, the North-folk must cure. There are some who still know their Christian duty.”
“In Norfolk, lord?” asked the bailiff doubtfully.
“No. In exile. Wulfgar the cripple, and his son. The one lost his limbs to the Vikings. The other lost his shire. And King Burgred too, of Mercia. It was nothing to me, I thought, who should rule East Anglia, Mercia or Wessex. But I see now. Better that the pious Burgred should have the kingdom of Edmund the Martyr than it should go to Alfred. Alfred the Ingrate, I name him.
“Send in my secretaries. I will write to them all, and to my brothers of Lichfield and Worcester. What the Church has lost, the Church will win back.”
“Will they come, lord?” asked the bailiff. “Will they not fear to invade Wessex?”
“It is I who speaks for Wessex now. And there are greater forces than either Wessex or Mercia astir. All I offer Burgred and the others is the chance to join the winning side before it has won. And to punish insolence: the insolence of the heathens and the slaves. We must make an example of them.”
The bishop's fist clenched convulsively. “I will not root out this rot, like a weed. I shall burn it out, like a canker.”
“Sibba. I think we've got trouble.” The whisper ran across the dark room where a dozen missionaries lay sleeping, wrapped in their blankets.
Silently Sibba jointed his companion at the tiny, glassless window. Outside, the village of Stanford-in-the-Vale, ten miles and as many preachings from Sutton, lay silent, lit by a strong moon. Clouds scudding before the wind cast shadows round the low wattle-and-daub houses that clustered round the thane's timber one, in which the missionaries of the Way now slept.
“What did you see?”
“Something flashing.”
“A fire not dowsed?”
“I don't think so.”
Sibba moved without speaking towards the little room that opened off the main central hall. In there the thane Elfstan, their host, a man who protested his loyalty to King Alfred, should be sleeping with his wife and family. After a few moments he drifted back. “They're still there. I can hear them breathing.”
“So they're not in on it. Doesn't mean I didn't see anything. Look! There it is again.”
Outside, a shadow slipped from one patch of darkness to another, coming closer. In the moonlight something flashed: something metal.
Sibba turned to the men still sleeping. “On your feet, boys. Get your stuff together.”
“Run for it?” asked the watchman.
Sibba shook his head. “They must know how many of us there are. They wouldn't attack if they weren't confident they could deal with us. Easier to do that outside than dig us out of here. We must try to break their teeth first.”
Men were scrambling to their feet behind him, groping for their breeches, buckling belts. One man undid a pack, began to haul from it strange, metallic shapes. The others queued in front of him, clutching the long pilgrim-staves all had carried openly.
“Force them down hard,” grunted the packman, struggling to push the first halberd-head on its socket over the carefully designed shaft.
“Move fast,” said Sibba. “Then, Berti, you take two men to face the door, one either side of it. Wilfi, you at the other door. The rest, stay with me, see where we're needed.”
The movement and the clanking of metal had brought the thane, Elfstan, from his bed. He stared, wonderingly.
“Men outside,” said Sibba. “Not friendly.”
“Nothing to do with me.”
“We know. Look, lord, they'll let you out. If you go now.”
The thane hesitated. He called to his wife and children, dressing hastily, spoke to them in a low voice.
“Can I open the door?”
Sibba looked round. His men were ready, weapons prepared. “Yes.”
The thane lifted the heavy bar that held closed the main double doors, and pushed them both open together. As he did so a groan came from outside, almost a sigh. There were many men out there, poised for a rush. But now they knew they had been seen.
“My wife and children—coming out!” shouted Elfstan. Quickly the children slipped through the door, his wife scurrying after them. A few feet beyond she turned, beckoned frantically to him. Her husband shook his head.
“They are my guests,” he said. His voice rose to a shout, addressing the ambushers outside. “My guests and the guests of King Alfred. I do not know who are these thieves in the night, within the bounds of Wessex, but they will hang when the king's reeve catches them.”
“There is no king in Wessex,” shouted a voice from outside. “And we are men o
f King Burgred. Burgred and the Church. Your guests are vagabonds and heretics. Slaves from outside! We have come to collar and brand them.”
Suddenly the moonlight shone on dark shapes, moving together out of the cover of houses and fences.
They did not hesitate. It would have been easier to catch their enemies sleeping, but they had been told what their enemies were: released slaves, lowest of the low. Men who had never been taught swordplay, who had not been conditioned from birth to war. Who had not felt the bite of edges over the linden-shield. A dozen Mercian warriors swarmed together at the dark doors of the hall. Behind them, now that concealment was gone, horns blew for the assault.
The double doors of the hall were six feet across, a man's full arm-span. Room only for two armed men to enter at once. Two champions rushed in together, shields up, faces glaring.
Neither saw the blows that killed them. As they peered into the gloom for men to face them, faces to hack at, the halberds swept from both sides, at thigh level, below shield and mail-shirt. The halberd-heads, axe one side, spike the other, were twice the weight of a broadsword. One shore through a warrior's leg and deep into the facing thigh. The other sliced upward from the bone, deep into the pelvis. As one man lay in the flow of blood that would kill him in seconds, the other flapped and twisted, shrieking, trying to tear free the great blade lodged in bone.
More men pushed over them. This time spearpoints met them from in front, driving through wooden shields and metal rings, hurling men back into the confusion of the doorway, groaning from belly wounds. Now the long blades, sweeping in six-foot arcs, chopped down the mailed warriors like cattle before the poleaxe. For a few seconds it seemed as if the sheer weight and numbers of the first rush would break through the defenders.
But against the dim-seen menace, nerves failed. The Mercians scrambled back, those in front weaving desperately behind their shields, trying to drag their dead and wounded with them.
The Hammer and The Cross thatc-1 Page 35