“Been and gone,” Father Pyrlig said. He was in his priestly robes, but had a big sword strapped at his waist.
“At least a hundred of them,” Finan said, looking at the hoofprints that spread either side of the track.
I gazed northward, but could see nothing. If the raiding horsemen had still been close I would have seen dust hanging in the air, but the country was calm and green. “Let’s see what the bastards did,” I said, and turned southward.
Whoever had come and gone, and I was certain it was Haesten’s men, they had been swift. I guessed they had arrived at Lecelad at dusk, had done whatever damage they wanted and then left in the dawn. They knew they were dangerously deep in Saxon Mercia and so they had not lingered. They had struck fast, and even now they were hurrying back to safer ground while we rode into the ever thickening smell of wood smoke. Of wood smoke and of burning flesh.
The convent was gone, or rather it had been reduced to a blazing framework of oak beams that, as we approached, finally collapsed with a great crash that made my stallion rear in fright. Embers whirled upward in a great gout of wind-billowed smoke. “Oh, dear God,” Æthelflaed said, making the sign of the cross. She was gazing in horror at one section of the convent’s palisade that had been spared the fire, and there, on the timbers, pinioned with widespread arms, was a small naked body. “No!” Æthelflæd said and spurred her horse through the hot ash that had spread from the fire.
“Come back!” I shouted, but Æthelflæd had thrown herself from her saddle to kneel at the foot of the corpse, a woman. It was Werburgh, the abbess, and she had been crucified on the palisade. Her hands and feet were pierced by great dark nails. Her small weight had torn the flesh, sinews, and bones about the great nails so that the wounds were stretched and rivulets of drying blood laced her pitifully thin arms. Æthelflæd was kissing the abbess’s nailed feet and resisted when I tried to pull her away. “She was a good woman, Uhtred,” Æthelflæd protested, and just then Werburgh’s torn right hand ripped itself free of the nail and the corpse lurched and its arm swung down to strike Æthelflæd’s head. Æthelflæd gave a small scream, then seized the ragged bloody hand and kissed it. “She blessed me, Uhtred. She was dead, but she blessed me! Did you see?”
“Come away,” I said gently.
“She touched me!”
“Come away,” I said again, and this time she let me draw her from the corpse and away from the heat of the fire just beyond.
“She must be buried properly,” Æthelflæd insisted and tried to pull from me to return to the corpse.
“She will be,” I said, holding her.
“Don’t let her burn!” Æthelflæd said through tears, “she mustn’t taste the fires of hell, Uhtred! Let me spare her the fire!”
Werburgh was very close to the furnace heat that was scorching the farther side of the palisade that I knew would ignite at any moment. I pushed Æthelflæd away, stepped back to Werburgh, and dragged her small body free of the remaining two nails. I draped her over my shoulder just as a gust of wind dipped a thick cloud of dark smoke to envelop me. I felt sudden heat on my back and knew the palisade had burst into flames, but Werburgh’s body was safe. I laid her facedown on the river bank and Æthelflæd covered the corpse with a cloak. The West Saxon troops, reinforced now to around forty men, gaped at us from the southern bank.
“Jesus, Patrick, and Joseph,” Finan said as he approached me. He glanced at Æthelflæd who was kneeling by the abbess’s body and I sensed Finan did not want Æthelflæd to hear whatever he had to say, so I led him down the river toward the mill that was also burning. “The bastards dug up Aldhelm’s grave,” Finan said.
“I put him there,” I said, “so I should worry what they did?”
“They mutilated him,” Finan said angrily. “Took all his clothes, his mail, and cut up his corpse. There were pigs eating him when we found him.” He made the sign of the cross.
I stared at the village. The church, convent, and mill had all been fired, but only two of the cottages had been burned, though doubtless all had been ransacked. The raiders had been in a hurry and had fired what was most valuable, but had not had the time to destroy the whole of Lecelad. “Haesten’s a nasty creature,” I said, “but mutilating a corpse and crucifying a woman? That isn’t like him.”
“It was Skade, lord,” Finan said. He beckoned to a man dressed in a short mail coat and wearing a helmet that had rust on its riveted joints. “You! Come here!” he called.
The man knelt to me and clawed off his helmet. “My name’s Cealworth, lord,” he said, “and I serve Ealdorman Æthelnoth.”
“You’re one of the sentries across the river?” I asked.
“Yes, lord.”
“We brought him across the river in a boat,” Finan explained. “Now tell the Lord Uhtred what you saw.”
“It was a woman, lord,” Cealworth said nervously, “a tall woman with long black hair. The same woman, lord,” he stopped, then decided he had nothing more to say.
“Go on,” I said.
“The same woman I saw at Fearnhamme, lord. After the battle.”
“Stand up,” I told him. “Are any villagers alive?” I asked Finan.
“Some,” he said bleakly.
“A few swam the river, lord,” Cealworth said.
“And the ones that live,” Finan said, “all tell the same tale.”
“Skade?” I asked.
The Irishman nodded. “It seems she led them, lord.”
“Haesten wasn’t here?”
“If he was, lord, then no one noticed him.”
“The woman gave all the orders, lord,” Cealworth said.
I stared northward and wondered what happened in the rest of Mercia. I was looking for the telltale plumes of smoke, but saw none. Æthelflæd came to stand beside me and, without thinking, I put an arm about her shoulder. She did not move.
“Why did they come here?” Finan asked.
“For me,” Æthelflæd said bitterly.
“That would make sense, my lady,” Finan said.
In a way it made sense. I did not doubt that Haesten would have sent spies into Mercia. Those spies would have been merchants or vagabonds, anyone with a reason to travel, and they would have told him Æthelflæd was a prisoner in Lecelad, and Æthelflæd would certainly make a powerful and useful hostage, but why send Skade to capture her? I thought, though I did not speak the thought aloud, that it was much more likely that Skade had come for my children. Haesten’s spies would have learned that the three were with Æthelflæd, and Skade hated me now. And when Skade hated there was no cruelty sufficient to slake her appetite. I knew my suspicion was right and I shuddered. If Skade had come just two days earlier she would have taken my children and had me in her power. I touched Thor’s hammer. “We bury the dead,” I said, “then we ride.” Just then a bee landed on my right hand that was still resting on Æthelflæd’s shoulder. I did not try to brush it off, for I did not want to take my arm away. I felt it first, then saw it crawling dozily toward my thumb. It would fly away, I thought, but then, for no reason, it stung me. I swore at the sudden pain and slapped the insect dead, startling Æthelflæd.
“Rub an onion on the sting,” she told me, but I could not be bothered to hunt for an onion, so I left it alone. I knew the sting was an omen, a message from the gods, but I did not want to think about it, for it could surely be no good sign.
We buried the dead. Most of the nuns had been shrunken to small burned corpses scarce bigger than children, and now they shared a grave with their crucified abbess. Father Pyrlig spoke words over their bodies, and then we rode westward again. By the time we discovered Osferth and Beornoth, their men, and my family, my hand was so swollen that I could scarcely fold the puffy fingers around the stallion’s reins. I could certainly not hold a sword with any skill. “It’ll be gone in a week,” Finan said.
“If we have a week,” I said gloomily. He looked at me quizzically, and I shrugged. “The Danes are on the move,” I said, �
�and we don’t know what’s happening.”
We were still traveling with my men’s wives and families. They slowed us down, and so I left a score of men to guard them as they followed us, and hurried on toward Gleawecestre. We spent the night in the hills to the west of that city and, in the dawn, saw smears in the sky far to the east and north. There were too many to count and in places they joined together to make darker patches that might have been clouds, though I doubted it. Æthelflæd saw them too and frowned. “My poor country,” she said.
“Haesten,” I said.
“My husband should have marched against them already,” she said.
“You think he has?”
She shook her head. “He’ll wait for Aldhelm to tell him what to do.”
I laughed at that. We had reached the hills above the valley of the Sæfern and I checked my horse to gaze down at my cousin’s holdings that lay just south of Gleawecestre. Æthelred’s father had been content with a hall half the size that his son had built, and beside that new and magnificent hall were stables, a church, barns, and a massive granary raised on stone mushrooms to keep the rats at bay. All the buildings, new and old, were surrounded by a palisade. We cantered down the hill. Guards stood on a timber platform above the gate, but they must have recognized Æthelflæd because they made no attempt to challenge us, but just ordered that the great gates be pushed open.
Æthelred’s steward met us in the wide courtyard. If he was aston ished to see Æthelflæd he showed no sign of it, but just bowed deeply and welcomed her graciously. Slaves brought us bowls of water so we could wash our hands, while stable boys took our horses. “My lord is in the hall, lady,” the steward told Æthelflæd, and for the first time sounded nervous.
“Is he well?” Æthelflæd asked.
“God be praised, yes,” he answered, and his eyes flicked to me and back to her. “You’ve come for the council, perhaps?”
“What council?” Æthelflæd asked, taking a woolen cloth from a slave to dry her hands.
“There is trouble from the heathens, lady,” the steward said cautiously, then glanced at me again.
“This is the Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” Æthelflæd said with apparent carelessness, “and yes, we’ve come for the council.”
“I shall tell your husband you are here,” the steward said. He had looked startled when he heard my name and taken a hasty backward step.
“No need for an announcement,” Æthelflæd said sharply.
“Your swords?” the steward asked. “If you please, my lords, your swords?”
“Is anyone else armed in the hall?” I asked.
“The ealdorman’s own guards, lord, no one else.”
I hesitated, then gave the steward my two swords. It was usual to wear no weapon in a king’s hall, and Æthelred evidently saw himself as near enough to a king to demand the same courtesy. It was more than a courtesy, it was a precaution against the slaughter that could follow a drunken feast. I half wondered if I should keep Serpent-Breath, but reckoned the long blade would be a provocation.
I took Osferth, Finan, Father Pyrlig, and Beornoth. My hand was throbbing and red, the flesh so swollen that I thought the simple touch of a knife’s edge would split it open like bursting fruit. I kept it hidden beneath my cloak as we went from the sunlight into the shadowed darkness of Æthelred’s great hall.
If the steward’s first response to seeing Æthelflæd had been restrained, her husband’s was the very opposite. He looked irritated when we first walked into the hall, plainly offended at the inter ruption, then hopeful, because he must have thought Aldhelm had arrived, and then he recognized us and, for a gratifying instant, he appeared terrified. He was sitting in a chair, more of a throne than a chair, that was set on the dais where, normally, the high table would be set for feasting. He wore a thin bronze circlet on his red hair, a circlet that fell just short of a crown. He had a thick gold chain over his embroidered jerkin and a fur-trimmed cloak that had been dyed a deep scarlet. Two men with swords and shields stood at the back of the dais, while Æthelred was flanked by a pair of priests who sat facing four benches set on the rush-strewn floor. Eighteen men occupied the benches and they all turned to stare at us. The priest on Æthelred’s right was my old enemy, Bishop Asser, and he was looking at me with wide-open eyes and unconcealed surprise. If Alfred had manipulated me into returning, then he had plainly not told Asser.
It was Asser who broke the silence, and that by itself was interesting. This hall belonged to Æthelred who was the Ealdorman of Mercia, yet the Welsh bishop thought nothing of assuming authority. It was a sign of Alfred’s dominance over Saxon Mercia, a dominance that Æthelred secretly detested. He could not wait for Alfred to die so he could turn the circlet into a proper crown, yet he also needed the assistance that Wessex gave. Bishop Asser, shrewd and waspish, was undoubtedly here to pass on Alfred’s commands, but now he stood and pointed a bony finger at me. “You!” he said. A pair of hounds had rushed to greet Æthelflæd. She soothed them. There was a babble of voices that Bishop Asser overrode. “You were declared outlaw,” he yapped.
I told him to be silent, but of course he went on protesting, becoming ever more indignant until Father Pyrlig spoke to him in Welsh. I had no idea what Pyrlig said, but it silenced Asser who just spluttered and kept pointing at me. I assume Father Pyrlig revealed that Alfred had conspired at my return, but that was small consolation to the bishop, who regarded me as a creature sent by his religion’s demon, the creature they call Satan. Whatever, he stayed silent as Æthelflaed went to the dais and snapped her fingers to a servant who hurried to fetch her a chair. She leaned down to Æthelred and gave him a very public kiss on the cheek, but she also whispered something in his ear and I saw him redden. Then she sat next to him and reached for his hand. “Do sit down, bishop,” she told Asser, then looked gravely at the assembled lords. “I bring bad news,” she said. “The Danes have destroyed the convent at Lecelad. Every dear sister there is dead, as is my dear Lord Aldhelm. I pray for their souls.”
“Amen,” Father Pyrlig roared.
“How did the Lord Aldhelm die?” Bishop Asser asked.
“There will be a time for sad tales when our more urgent business is decided,” Æthelflæd said without looking at Asser, “for the moment I wish to know how we are to defeat the Jarl Haesten.”
The next few moments were confusing. The truth was that none of the assembled lords knew the extent of Haesten’s invasion. At least a dozen messengers had come overnight to Gleawecestre and they had all brought dire tidings of savage and sudden attacks by Danish horsemen, and as I listened to the various reports I realized that Haesten had set out to confuse the Mercians. He must have led two or three thousand men and he had divided them into smaller groups and sent them to harry, plunder, and destroy all across northern Mercia. It was impossible to say where the Danes were because they appeared to be everywhere.
“What do they want?” Æthelred asked plaintively.
“He wants to sit where you’re sitting,” I answered.
“You have no authority here,” Bishop Asser snarled.
“Bishop,” Æthelflæd spoke crisply, “if you have something useful to say, then please feel free to say it. But if you simply wish to make a nuisance of yourself then go to the church and take your complaints to God.” That caused an astonished silence. The real authority in the hall belonged to Bishop Asser because he was Alfred’s envoy, yet Æthelflaed had publicly slapped him down. She met his indignant gaze calmly, and kept her eyes on his until he gave way. Then she turned to the lords. “The questions we need answered are simple,” she said. “How many Danes are there? What is their aim? How many men can we assemble to oppose them? And where do we take those men?”
Æthelred still seemed stunned by his wife’s return. Every lord in the hall must have known of their estrangement, yet here Æthelflæd was, calmly holding her husband’s hand and no one dared challenge her presence. Æthelred himself was so shaken that he allowed her to domin
ate the council, and she did it well. There was a soft sweetness in Æthelflæd’s look, but that sweetness disguised a mind as thoughtful as her father’s and a will as strong as her mother’s. “Don’t all speak at once,” she commanded, raising her voice over the confusion. “Lord Ælfwold,” she smiled at a grim-looking man sitting on the bench closest to the dais, “your lands have suffered most, it seems, so what is your estimation of the enemy’s numbers?”
“Between two and three thousand,” he answered. He shrugged. “It could be many more, it’s hard to tell.”
“Because they ride in small groups?”
“At least a dozen bands,” Ælfwold said, “maybe as many as twenty.”
“And how many men can we lead against them?” she asked the question of her husband, her voice respectful.
“Fifteen hundred,” he said surlily.
“We must have more warriors than that!” Æthelflæd said.
“Your father,” Æthelred said, and he could not resist saying those two words with derision, “insists we leave five hundred to protect Lundene.”
“I thought the Lundene garrison was West Saxon,” I put in, and I should have known because I had commanded that garrison for five years.
“Alfred has left three hundred men in Lundene,” Bishop Asser said, forcing cordiality into his voice, “and the rest have gone to Wintanceaster.”
“Why?”
“Because Haesten sent us a warning,” the bishop said bitterly. He paused, and his weasel face twitched uncontrollably, “that you and the northern jarls planned an attack on Wessex.” The hatred in his voice was unmistakable. “Is that true?”
I hesitated. I had not betrayed Ragnar’s plans because he was my friend, which meant I had left the discovery of the Northumbrian attack to fate, but Haesten, it seemed, had already sent a warning. He had done it, clearly, to keep West Saxon troops out of Mercia, and it seemed the warning had been successful.
“Well?” Æthelred, aware of my discomfort, pressed the attack.
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