by Justin Hill
Also by Justin Hill
A Bend in the Yellow River
Ciao Asmara
The Drink and Dream Teahouse
Passing Under Heaven
Copyright
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-748-12000-0
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Justin Hill 2011
Map © John Gilkes 2011
From a drawing by Elle Hill
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
www.hachette.co.uk
For Percy, Madison,
Isabella and Edmund
Contents
Also by Justin Hill
Copyright
Place Names
Book I
Chapter One: The Unforgotten
Chapter Two: The Easter King
Chapter Three: The Hall Stands Empty
Chapter Four: The Wolf Hunts
Chapter Five: The English Fleet
Chapter Six: The Sea Captain
Chapter Seven: The Wolf Unfettered
Chapter Eight: Forkbeard
Chapter Nine: The Return of Wulfnothson
Chapter Ten: The Feast of Candlemas
Chapter Eleven: Ethelred Returns
Chapter Twelve: The Great Fyrd
Book II
Chapter One: Overmod
Chapter Two: The Red Road to Malmesberie
Chapter Three: The Rough Wooing
Chapter Four: The Half-Hundred
Chapter Five: The Siege of Lundenburh
Chapter Six: The Battle of Sorestone
Chapter Seven: The Ironside
Chapter Eight: The Battle of Sudwerca
Chapter Nine: Twilight at Contone
Chapter Ten: The Battle of Assandune
Chapter Eleven: Isle of Derheste
Chapter Twelve: Shorn Threads
Chapter Thirteen: The Unlucky Man
Author’s Note
PLACE NAMES
Old English spelling was an uncertain and fluctuating art, with variations used according to time and accent, and the vagaries of the particular scribe. I have used spellings from the Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names for the nearest year to the events recorded in the story.
Adelingi Athelney
Adewic Adwick-le-Street
Ældgate Aldgate
Athelingedean Dean
Assandune Ashington
Bade Bath
Bebbanburge Bamburgh
Beiminstre Beaminster
Boseham Bosham
Breguntford Brentford
Bricge Bruges
Burgenda land Burgundy
Burne Westbourne
Cantebrigiescir Cambridgeshire
Canturburie Canterbury
Cantware Kent
Carrenduna Canewdun
Cestre Scire Chestershire
Chingestune Kingston-upon-Thames
Cicestre Chichester
Contone Compton
Cornwalia Cornwall
Cracgelade Cricklade
Crepelgate Cripplegate
Cruc Crouch River
Cumbraland The Kingdom of Strathclyde
Defenascir Devon
Derheste Deerhurst
Dornsætum Dorset
Dovere Dover
Dunholm Durham
Dyflin Dublin
Eealdseaxum Saxony
Ethandun Edlington
Ettone Eton
Euruic York
Exonia Exeter
Exsessa Essex
Fleot River Fleet River
Froom River Frome
Gainesburg Gainsborough
Glowcestre Gloucester
Hamtun Southampton
Hamtunscir Hampshire
Harditone Lordington
Hastinges Hastings
Herford(scir) Hertford(shire)
Hiddeswrthe Idsworth
Ierusalem Jerusalem
Iseldone Islington
Knightridestrete Knightrider Street, London
Langelete Longleat
Leomynstre Leominster
Liguera ceastre Leicester
Lincolia(scir) Lincoln(shire)
Lindesi Lindsey
Lundenburh London
Malmesberie Malmesbury
Meredone Marden
Mide Munster
Midelsexe Middlesex
Nordfolc Norfolk
Normandig Normandy
Northantone Northampton
Northweg Norway
Northymbrelond Northumbria, much larger than the current county of the same name: then it included Northumbria, Durham, Yorkshire and much of Lancashire.
Norwic Norwich
Orcanege Orkney
Oxeneford(scire) Oxford(shire)
Penne Penselwood
Peteorde Petworth
Sandwice Sandwich
Sciropescire Shropshire
Selesie Selsey
Soluente Solent
Sorestone Sherston
Sudfulc Suffolk
Sudrie Surrey
Sudsexe Sussex
Sudwerca Southwark
Sumersæton Somerset
Tanet Thanet
Tanshelf Now a suburb of Pontefract (which derives from the Latin, Ponte Fracto – Broken Bridge)
Tatecastre Tadcaster
Temese River Thames
Thornei Island Thorney Island
Ulfastir Ulster
Wæcelinga Stræt Wæcelinga Street
Walingeford Wallingford
Werham Wareham
Wiltunscir Wiltshire
Wincestre Winchester
Wiht Isle of Wight
BOOK I
CHAPTER ONE
The Unforgotten
Dyflin, midwinter 1013
Christ did not come again that year. The Lord kept to His churches and the pages of His Book, and Wulfnoth sat in the half-timbered hall, watching rain drip down through roof-thatch, puddling on the floor, while the peat fire smoked. His remaining men sat round him, the wooden benches drawn close, cloaks and hoods pulled tight to their chests. Their round-bossed shields hung in the hall shadows; their spears were sheathed; their swords kept to hand.
The midwinter days were short and dark; thin shadows stretched long on the ground. No one spoke. It was bad business, these days in Dyflin. The slave markets were still busy, but day by day rumour grew of the size of Brian Boru’s warhost.
War was coming, like a mounted horseman. A blood-red horse, the Lord’s Book said, Hell and Judgement following after. The seagulls sensed it, that distant scent of battle. They fought and cawed in chaotic multitudes; swooped low over the small fishing boats; plucked cold flapping fish from the slate-grey waters.
The dull winter day was cold and grey and bleak. Wulfnoth stood at the quayside and looked out towards the estuary. He watched the masts of approaching warships appear amongst the riverside trees; the rain unceasing as it stripped the boughs; wet leaves plastered along the smooth river water.
Wulfnoth shivered, despite his blue cloak and hood; the shaggy lining beginning to wear thin. The silver brooch held the wool cloth close to his chest, the disc patterned with three swirling hounds. The midwinter days were short and the afternoon light was already beginning to fail; the hounds’ blue glass eyes were dull, one eye setting blind and empty.
W
ulfnoth stood still as an ancient oak, gnarled and hollowed by too many winters, staring eastwards, over the waves. His thoughts were far away from this muddy dockside in the shadow of the high Dyflin earthworks, topped with a wall of split timbers. They crossed the grey and restless waves, made their way back to the fields of his youth, to his hall’s hearthside where warm and gentle hands welcomed his return; when there was good food on the table and warm-hearted words; when music and laughter rose like abbey plain-chant; when he slept without cares under home rafters and a heavy thatch.
‘Brian’ll not dare come back,’ an Orcanege man, from his accent, shouted out at the sight of the new boat crews, and Wulfnoth snorted.
‘You’re a fool, or a wishful thinker,’ he called out over the men’s heads. A few bystanders laughed. ‘Brian’s emptied Mide and Connacht and Ulfastir of fighting men. He does not fear you Spear-Danes!’
Some men voiced agreement; few doubted the tales that Brian Boru, Emperor of the Gaels, High King of the Irish, was gathering his men for battle. But the Orcanege man heard the English accent in Wulfnoth’s voice and laughed. ‘What is it to you greybeard? Go back home, if you still have one! When Brian is dead we will come and use you as a woman every third night!’
Wulfnoth paused and strangers about him grinned, hoping for a scrap. He had killed for less, but now he was wiser and more assured. His look stopped the laughter. He held it long. Spat into the black mud. Walked slowly away, his hand tight on his sword hilt as the taunts grew more distant.
Wulfnoth had carried his guilt for five winters, and that morning as he walked home it weighed more heavily down on him, weighted each step, like a bag of silver.
‘Silent and empty, former hall of laughter,’ he heard his slave girl singing in her clear voice as she carried water up from the river.
The once-lord wanders
Sorrow and longing as companions
The solitary man awaiting God’s mercy
She was waiting in the hall when he stepped through the door. She took off his cloak and laid it near the fire to warm. The woollen cloth steamed gently. The embers crackled as the crude hall hunched over them, bracken-thatch eaves dripping rain. His slave girl teased a snagged thorn-twig from the hem of his cloak, threw another log of split holly on to the fire. A few red sparks flew up, but the log was still damp; it hissed and foamed as it warmed in the flames.
‘Any news?’
‘None,’ Wulfnoth said, and sat in silence, staring deep into the twisting flames. He had questioned the longbeards at the quayside, but they shook their heads; they did not know; there was nothing they could tell him; there was no salve for the unhappy man.
He signalled for the slave girl to throw more wood on to the fire, ignored the small brown rat that scurried along the wall edge, took in a deep breath of the smoky air to buoy his flagging spirits. He hated the cramped houses, the stink of sewers, the constant noise of men and animals passing along the city street. He liked to step out of his door and feel the wind on his face and see a wide green horizon before him, his own little kingdom of fields, woods and pasture, liked to see who approached his door from a mile down the road.
It had been like that at his manor in Sudsexe, high on the shoulder of the South Downs, with a view over an ordered landscape of fields, rich meadows and clear and gushing streams.
Contone was the manor’s name, a small and unimportant stead in the scheme of things, but it had been given to Wulfnoth’s family by Alfred himself, and it was home – an uncomplicated word, unnoticed until it went missing, like hope, and cheer, and family. Contone was as familiar as the lines of his palm or the moods of his men. He knew its seasons by heart, the busy calendar of sowing and coppicing, shearing, mowing, fattening and slaughter. He knew the exact number of villars and bordars and slaves, knew the number of ploughs and closes, how much tax the manor was worth and how much it paid.
Wulfnoth stared deep into the fire and the flames filled his whole vision. He kicked through drifts of fondly remembered days and friends and incidents: the great autumn feasts, ere winter came on; the blazing and hospitable firesides; bright candlelight gleaming on close-gathered faces; laughter and songs keeping the long dark at bay. The quiet mornings after feasting when the hall smelt of stale beer and ashes; the cool summer evenings when the doors were thrown wide open to the midges and the blackbird’s evening song; the long lingering late-summer twilight when no fire was lit, when bat shadows flittered low overhead and white stars glimmered in the northern sky.
Wulfnoth drank steadily, brooding on the fate that had brought him to this end.
‘You should eat more,’ the slave girl said and Wulfnoth looked up from the worn lines of his palms and the untouched bowl of barley bread and salt pork.
Kendra was a pretty Cumbraland girl: black hair, blue eyes and a gentle manner. When she undressed, her skin was pale and cold like frost. Three years earlier, when they had bought her from the Dyflin slave market – dirty and flea-bitten, bites on her forearms and shins scratched into scabs – she had not a word of English. No one could pronounce her real name, so Wulfnoth and his men called her Kendra: ‘All-Knowing’. It was a joke that had amused them at first, as she learnt their language and the ways of their lord, but they had long ago stopped laughing at her. She had been a good handmaid to Wulfnoth, and he would remember it.
‘You haven’t eaten,’ Kendra said. ‘Here, this is hot.’
Wulfnoth stretched his hands out to the flames but they did not warm him. Nothing did. Not even the silver coin he had amassed selling captured slaves to Moorish salesmen, for expense and profit held only a passing interest; it was honour and loyalty that consumed him. And duty, Wulfnoth reminded himself. A simple word, a blood bond that bound and fettered freeborn men.
*
Twilight grew; the day sank; their faces up-lit by the warm hearth, a heap of red and brittle embers. It was good to sit with kinsfolk and kettle-friends, to drink and eat without the need to talk. Twenty-six men Wulfnoth had, where once he had led more than a hundred. But stout men they were, with good hearts, loyalty long tested by the hunger and cold of the exile’s path. In battle they were a shield of bodies; on dull nights like these they raised their lord’s spirits with tales of strange sights, distant harbours, men they had killed, feuds and manslayings, half-remembered tales of the long-past.
Tonight they drank thin barley ale as the steersman, Caerl, told the tale of Troy, the valiant fighters doomed to failure. His hands plucked the harp strings as he spoke of the ships and the battles, and the steadfastness of the heroes, doomed warriors massed like winter thickets. But Wulfnoth was not in the mood for stories. He had been brooding afternoon and evening, drinking away this dull, grey Dyflin day, and he felt this story was somehow pointed at him. Just before Caerl told of Priam’s grandson, skull-smashed on the heathen altar, Wulfnoth slammed down his horn of ale and the harp-notes faded away. His cheeks were red; he had the manner of a knackeryard bull: angry and caged and impotent.
‘I did not break my vows!’ Wulfnoth slurred his words. His eyes were small and pink. ‘None of them stood up for me. None of them!’
Wulfnoth’s hand shook and the slave girl wanted to go to him, but it would not be seemly. His men looked down into the night’s fire, as if there were answers to be found in the lick and flicker of elf-lights dancing above the embers.
Wulfnoth held out his hands, more like a carpenter’s than a lord of men. ‘I would have held hot irons if I could have brought my son away with me. I would have walked on coals!’ he said. ‘They held me back, kept telling me that the king would have me killed. All of them. They told me to flee. Your son will have to fend for himself, they told me, and I left my own sweet child. Why did you let me do such a thing!’
The change of pronoun escaped no one. The men froze. In Wulfnoth’s mind he gripped the hilt of a sword. The knuckles of his fist whitened before it fell back to the rough wood grain.
There was a long pause. The fire crackled. A spark f
lew, landed on the flagstone next to his foot, cooled to black and grey.
No sane man would have trusted Ethelred with any of his children. Look how he had treated the sons of Alderman Elfhelm – their eyes torn out by pressing thumbs, their father’s corpse dumped in a forest ditch. But Wulfnoth was not sane that day five winters unforgotten. Terror had seized him, as it seizes men in battle and unmans them. Wulfnoth clenched his teeth and remembered the oaths he had sworn, the oaths Ethelred had sworn in reply: to be a good lord; to uphold the laws; to protect the people. They were the three vows of a king and Ethelred had broken each one. It was surely God’s judgement that the Spear-Danes had come.
‘I gave him my own son,’ Wulfnoth whispered. The words hung in the air for a moment. ‘I gave the king my own son as hostage! What has he done with my son?’ Wulfnoth demanded of the borrowed hall shadows, but his voice was dulled by the damp dripping thatch; the drenching sound of rainfall was the only answer.
The luckless man bottles his feelings, Kendra hummed silently to herself,
Seeks one who would love him
And entice him back with joys.
At last Wulfnoth stood unsteadily for bed. His slave girl hurried from the stool in the corner, opened the door for him and followed him inside. That night her skin was as pale and cold as ever, her hair dark as the night shadows. He held her close to his side, and her fingers played with the hair on his chest, almost as a child would.
They lay for a long time under the furs and the blankets. After a while he was aware of the unease in the stiffness of her limbs and the position of her body, half turned away from his. From the harbour came the distant singing of Norse voices, a drunken battle song riding on the night’s calm:
One sword among swords
has made me rich.
My sword is worth three swords
in sword battle-play.
Wulfnoth’s girl tried not to listen to the northern word play. She knew the language of the Norse, all right. It brought bad memories of a cold time. She lay for a long while without speaking.