The Flame Bearer

by Bernard Cornwell

  I dared not look up. I could see Æthelhelm’s soft leather boots that were trimmed with silver and smeared with mud, and I could see his daughter’s tapestry slippers, their fine embroidery clogged with dirt. ‘God bless you,’ Æthelhelm said and dropped a silver shilling into my neighbour’s hand. I held out both my hands and kept my head bowed. ‘What ails you?’ Æthelhelm asked. He was standing directly in front of me.

  I said nothing.

  ‘Answer his lordship,’ Hrothard growled.

  ‘He’s … he’s … he’s,’ Cerdic stuttered next to me.

  ‘He’s what?’ Hrothard demanded.

  ‘An id … id … idiot, lord.’

  A shilling dropped into my hands, then another into Cerdic’s hand. ‘And you?’ Æthelhelm asked him. ‘What ails you?’

  ‘An id … idiot too.’

  ‘God bless both you idiots,’ Æthelhelm said, and walked on.

  ‘Touch this!’ Ieremias was coming behind the father and daughter, and he dangled a grubby strip of grey cloth in front of our eyes. ‘This was a gift to me from Lord Æthelhelm and it has power, my children, great power! Touch it! This is the very girdle the mother of Christ was wearing when her son was crucified! Look! You can see his blessed blood upon it! Touch it, my children, and be healed!’ He was right in front of me. ‘Touch it, you half-brained fool!’ He nudged me with a boot. ‘Touch the cloth of Gud’s moder and your wits will return like birds to their nest! Touch it and be healed! This cloth rested on the blessed womb that held our Lord!’

  I raised the hand holding the shilling and brushed the strip of cloth with my knuckles, and as I did so, Ieremias leaned down and yanked my ragged-bearded chin to force my head up. He stooped over me and stared into my eyes. ‘You will be healed, you fool,’ he said passionately, ‘the devils that possess you will flee from my touch! Believe and be healed,’ and as he spoke I saw a sudden puzzlement cross his gaunt features. He had wide mad brown eyes, scarred cheeks, a hawk nose, and wild white hair. He frowned.

  ‘Thank you, lord,’ I muttered and dropped my head.

  There was a pause that seemed to last for ever, then he stepped on. ‘Touch it,’ Ieremias commanded Cerdic, and I felt relief wash through me. I had only met Ieremias once, and on that first occasion I had been dressed in a warlord’s finery, but somehow he had seen something familiar in the muddy mad beggar whose face he had tilted towards his own.

  ‘Now go! Limp away, crawl, wriggle off, just go!’ a guard shouted at us as the notables went back to the hall.

  ‘Don’t hurry,’ I whispered to Cerdic. I used my stick, I bent my back and I walked slowly down the gentle slope towards the nearest houses, and I had never felt so vulnerable in all my life. I was remembering the night I went to Cippanhamm because Alfred had disguised himself as a harpist to spy on Guthrum’s Danes who had captured the town. That had been a night of heart-stopping fear, of sheer terror, and I felt the same now as I limped back through Dumnoc to the Goose. Swithun was drinking at a table, and, seeing us at the door, he joined us to tell me that Oswi was in the loft. ‘He went up that ladder like a squirrel chasing nuts.’

  ‘Then get him down the ladder now,’ I said, ‘because we’re leaving.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Get him! I don’t care what he’s doing, just pull him off the poor girl and get him down here.’

  My haste was not just because I feared I had been recognised, but also because everything I had seen in Dumnoc suggested that Æthelhelm’s fleet was about to set sail. My son and Finan should have moved our people and ships to Grimesbi by now, and I needed to get back to that port fast, and that meant finding a ship going north. I used Æthelhelm’s shilling to buy a pot of ale that Cerdic and I shared as we waited for Swithun, but as soon as he and Oswi joined us I hurried them out of the tavern and led them towards the westernmost pier where Renwald’s ship was moored. I could see men readying their boats for sea. The storm had passed, the wind had settled into a brisk south-westerly, the white caps were smaller, and there were even patches of sunlight on the far green countryside.

  ‘Lord!’ Swithun sounded scared.

  I turned and saw Æthelhelm’s red-cloaked household warriors coming down the street from the hall. Hrothard led them, and he was pointing at buildings, sending men into shops, into taverns, and even into the big church. Three men ran to the door of the Goose and stood there, barring it.

  ‘In here,’ I said desperately. There was a row of huts on the wharf, and I forced open one of the doors to find a space crammed with coiled lines, bolts of sailcloth, heaps of folded nets, a barrel of caulking pitch, and sacks of the sea-coal used to melt the pitch. ‘We have to hide,’ I said, ‘and fast!’

  We tore the chandler’s supplies apart, making a den at the very back of the hut and then piling nets and sailcloth to conceal the hole we had made. The last thing I did before crawling over the messy heap and taking cover was to kick over the barrel of pitch so that the thick liquid broke through its crust and slowly seeped across the floor just inside the door. I had tried to bar or wedge the door, but found nothing to use, so just wrestled another barrel to block the entrance. Then we crouched in our hiding place, pulled a bolt of sailcloth over our heads, and were almost suffocated by the smell of pitch and coal.

  The wall of the hut was flimsy, with great chinks between the weathered planks. I could see through one such gap and watched as men spread along the wharf to search the ships. Two of them stood very close. ‘They’ll never find him,’ one said.

  ‘He’s not here!’ the other said scornfully. ‘That silly bastard Dane is just dreaming. He’s mad anyway. He’s no more a bishop than I am.’

  ‘He’s a sorcerer. People are scared of him.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are!’

  Hrothard shouted at the two, demanding to know if they had searched the huts. ‘We’d better look,’ one said wearily.

  A moment later I heard the door thump open. One of the men cursed. ‘I’m not going in there.’

  ‘He’s not here!’ the other man shouted. ‘He’s miles away, you stupid bastard,’ he added in a low voice.

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ Swithun breathed in my ear.

  I could see men with leashed hounds that were sniffing uselessly at doorways and alleys. The dogs sniffed at the huts too, but the stink of the pitch was overwhelming, and the dogs passed on. We crouched, scarce daring to breathe, but as the afternoon wore on the excitement died and the search was evidently abandoned. More cargo was brought to the wharves and loaded onto ships, and then there was another commotion as Ieremias left and Lord Æthelhelm walked down to the harbour to bid him farewell. I did not hear any of their conversation, but I crawled up onto the mess of nets and used my knife to lever a gap between two planks and saw Guds Moder being rowed downriver towards the sea. The sun was setting, it was about high tide, and small waves were slapping against the underside of the wharf’s planking. I went back to our hiding place and peered through another chink to see Lord Æthelhelm and six of his guards walking back into town. ‘They’re not leaving today,’ I said.

  ‘Tomorrow then?’ Swithun asked.

  ‘Probably,’ I said, and knew I was too late. Even if fate was with me and I found a ship that would leave for the north at dawn I would never make Grimesbi in time. Æthelhelm’s fleet would sail past the mouth of the Humbre and make landfall at Bebbanburg long before I could rouse my men, man the ships, and set sail in pursuit.

  I felt the gloom of failure, and instinctively reached for my hammer and found myself clutching a cross instead. I cursed fate and needed a miracle.

  I did not know what to do and so did nothing.

  We stayed in the hut. The hue and cry had long died away. I doubt Æthelhelm truly believed I was in Dumnoc, but Ieremias’s suspicion had forced him to make the search which had found nothing, though doubtless it had allowed his men to plunder the houses they had searched. Swithun, meanwhile, told me about his talkative whore. ‘She said there are
almost four hundred warriors in the town, lord.’

  ‘How did she know?’

  ‘One of them told her,’ he said, as if the answer was obvious, which I suppose it was.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Their horses were driven back to Wiltunscir, lord.’

  That was useful to know, and made sense too. If Æthelhelm had wanted to take all his horses to Bebbanburg he would need at least another six or seven ships, and the time to make stalls in the ships’ bellies. And he had no need of horses at Bebbanburg. It was enough to land his troops, lead them through the Sea Gate, and then flaunt his presence by flying his leaping stag banner from the fortress walls. Constantin was already reluctant to lose men by assaulting the ramparts, and the knowledge that food and new warriors had reinforced my cousin’s garrison would surely persuade him to abandon the siege.

  And I could do nothing to stop Æthelhelm.

  I remember my father growling advice. My brother had still been alive and we were having a rare meal when just the three of us were at the hall’s high table. My father had never much liked me, but then there were very few folk he did like, and he had directed the advice towards my brother, ignoring me. ‘You’ll have to make choices,’ he had said, ‘and from time to time you’ll make the wrong choices. We all do.’ He had frowned into the gloom of the night-time hall where a harpist was picking at his strings. ‘Stop tinkling,’ he had shouted.

  The harpist had stopped playing. A hound had whined under the table and was lucky to avoid a kicking.

  ‘But it’s better to make the wrong choice,’ my father had continued, ‘than to make no choice at all.’

  ‘Yes, father,’ my brother had replied dutifully. He had made a choice a few weeks later, and it would have been better if he had made none because he had lost his head and I had become the heir to Bebbanburg. Now I remembered my father’s advice and wondered what choices I had. None, as far as I could see. I suspected Æthelhelm’s fleet would sail the next day, and after that I would have to go back to Grimesbi and wait for the news that my cousin had found a new bride and had become stronger than ever.

  So I needed a miracle.

  Swithun, Oswi, and Cerdic slept. Whenever one of them snored I would kick them awake, though no guards were nearby. I put a bolt of sailcloth over the sticky pitch and opened the hut door to gaze into the darkness. Why had Ieremias left? He was plainly allied with Æthelhelm, so why not sail to Bebbanburg with him? The question nagged me, but I could find no answer.

  I sat in the hut’s doorway and listened to the wind’s noise, the rattle of rigging, the slap of water on hulls, and the creak of boats moving to the wind. Small rushlights showed on a couple of ships. I could not stay in the hut. When dawn came I knew the harbour would become busy. Men would be boarding boats and more cargo would be loaded. We needed to leave, but despair made me indecisive. I finally thought of Renwald. He would doubtless leave Dumnoc on the tide and sail for Lundene, but perhaps gold could persuade him to go north to the Humbre instead. Then I would head home for Dunholm, my pretence to have abandoned it over, and my dreams of Bebbanburg ended.

  Two men walked up the wharf. I sat very still, but neither looked in my direction. One of them farted and they both laughed. I could hear birdsong, so knew the dawn must be close, and a few moments later I saw the first faint sword-blade’s edge of grey light in the eastern sky. I had to move. If I stayed in the hut we would be discovered. The first men had already come to the wharf and more would soon follow.

  But something else came first.

  The miracle.

  The miracle came at daybreak.

  It came from the cold grey sea.

  Five ships, their menacing shapes dark against the dawn.

  They came on the flooding tide, their oar banks rising and falling like wings, their sails dark-furled at the tops of their masts.

  They came with dragon-heads, beast-prows, and the first glimpse of dawn’s glory glinted from helmets, spearheads and axes.

  They came fast and they came with flames. Fire and ships do not go well together, I fear fire at sea more than I fear the storm-filled anger of Ran the sea-goddess, but these ships dared to carry lighted torches that flared bright and left wavering trails of smoke above their wakes.

  The fifth ship, last in line, was not carrying a beast-head, instead her high prow was topped by a cross, and for a moment I thought she must be the Guds Moder, Ieremias’s ship, but then I saw that this craft was longer and heavier, and that her mast was more raked. Even as I watched her I saw the flames burst in her bows as men lit flaming torches.

  ‘Wake up!’ I bellowed at my men. ‘And come! Hurry!’

  I had moments, only moments. Maybe I did not have enough time, but I had no choice now but to escape, and so I led my three men along the wharf and up the westernmost pier. The few men already on the wharf ignored us, staring instead at the approaching fleet, while the sentry on the gaunt look-out tower must have been asleep, but he was awake now, and he had seen the five ships and began clanging a bell. It was too late. The whole purpose of the look-out was to see ships when they were still at sea, not when they were just yards away from delivering fire, havoc, and death to Dumnoc.

  I jumped onto the empty ship, crossed its deck and leaped onto Rensnægl. ‘Wake up!’ I bellowed at Renwald who was already awake, but confused. He and his crew had been sleeping at the Rensnægl’s stern, under a sailcloth awning. He just stared at the four of us. ‘You have to get under way!’ I snarled at him.

  ‘Sweet Christ!’ he said, staring past me to the pier’s far end where one of the five ships had rammed a moored vessel, splintering her planks. The first flaming torches were thrown. Two of the attacking ships were rowing into the centre of the harbour, into the wide space between the two piers, and each slammed into the moored boats at the landward end where the piers joined the wharf, and I saw mailed men armed with spears and shields clambering ashore to make two shield walls, each barring access to a pier. Dogs were howling in the town, the church bell began to toll, and still the sentry on the look-out tower rang his alarm. ‘What in God’s name?’ Renwald asked.

  ‘He’s called Einar the White,’ I told him, ‘and he’s come to burn Æthelhelm’s fleet.’

  ‘Einar?’ Renwald seemed dazed.

  ‘He’s a Norseman,’ I said, ‘in the pay of King Constantin of Scotland.’ I could not be sure of that, but Edward of Wessex had told me that Einar had changed sides, seduced by Scottish gold, and I could not think who else might have come to Dumnoc to destroy the fleet gathered to relieve Bebbanburg. ‘Now cast off!’ I ordered Renwald.

  He turned to stare at the Norsemen who had made a shield wall across the pier. There might have been thirty men in that wall, more than enough to defend its narrow width. The light was growing, making the world grey and black.

  ‘Give me your sword!’ I called to Renwald.

  ‘We can’t fight them!’ he said, appalled.

  I wanted the sword to cut his mooring lines. Einar’s men were already doing that for us. A group was running along the pier, severing or casting off the mooring lines of smaller boats. They wanted to cause chaos. They would burn or break the larger ships destined to relieve Bebbanburg, but they would also scatter Dumnoc’s trading and fishing fleets. When they saw men aboard a moored boat or saw cargo heaped in a belly they were boarding to look for plunder, and I wanted to cut Rensnægl free before they saw us. ‘I don’t want to fight them,’ I snarled and ran back to the stern where I knew Renwald kept his weapons. I ducked under the awning, pushed two of his crewmen aside, and snatched up a long-sword. I ripped it out of its leather scabbard.

  ‘Lord!’ Swithun shouted.

  I turned to see that two Norsemen had already spied that the Rensnægl was crewed, and they could see too that she had cargo in her belly. They must have smelt plunder because they jumped onto the next ship and were about to leap onto ours.

  ‘No!’ Renwald tried to bar my way. I pushed him hard so that he trip
ped and fell into the cargo, then I turned as a mailed warrior jumped onto our deck. He carried no shield, just a naked sword, and his bearded face was framed by a helmet with cheek-pieces so that all I could see of him were his eyes, eager and wide. He thought us easy prey. He saw the sword in my hand, but reckoned I was some elderly Saxon sailor, no match for a Norse warrior, and he simply lunged his blade at me, thinking to pierce my belly and then rip the sword aside to spill my guts on the Rensnægl’s deck.

  It was simple to parry the lunge. Renwald’s sword was old, rusty, and probably blunt, but she was heavy too, and my parry threw his lunge wide to my left, and before he could recover the blade I punched him in the face with the sword’s pommel. It struck the edge of his helmet, but with enough force to stagger him backwards. He was still trying to bring his sword back to face me when I plunged Renwald’s blade deep into his guts. The sword was blunt, but still the point pierced his mail, ripped through the leather jerkin beneath, and gouged into his bladder. He gave a strangled cry and threw himself at me, his free hand flailing to claw my face and pry out my eyes, but I snatched his beard with my free hand and pulled him hard towards me, using his lunge against him, and I stepped aside, kept pulling, and he stumbled past me, his momentum pulling the sword from his belly, and then his legs struck the Rensnægl’s upper strake and he went overboard. There was a splash, a yelp, then he was gone, dragged down by his mail.

  The second man had been content to watch his companion slaughter a crew of miserable Saxons, but the death of his companion had been so swift that he had been given no chance to help. Now he wanted revenge, but he did not think to attack Swithun, Oswi, or Cerdic, who stood unarmed at the bows of Rensnægl, instead he leaped, snarling, onto the pile of cargo and faced me. He saw a shabby, grey-haired man with an ancient rusty sword, and he must have thought I had merely been lucky to survive the first attack, and he leaped again, this time aiming to sever my head with a sweeping cut of his sword. He was young, angry, fair-haired, and had ravens inked onto his cheeks. He was also a fool, a hot-headed young fool. There were ten of us aboard the Rensnægl, and he had watched me kill his companion with the skill of a trained warrior, but he only saw a crew of Saxons, while he was a Norse warrior, a wolf from the north, and he would teach us how Norsemen treated impudent Saxons. He swung his sword as he leaped at me. The sword cut was massive, wild, a killing blow that should have sliced through my neck, but it was also as obvious as the first man’s opening lunge. I saw it coming from the corner of my eye as I turned towards him, and I felt the battle-joy surge, the knowledge that the enemy has made a mistake, and the certainty that another brave man was about to join the benches I had crowded in Valhalla’s mead hall. Time seemed to slow as the sword flashed towards me. I saw the youngster grimace with the effort of putting all his strength into that blade, and then I just ducked.