The Pale Horseman (28 page)

'Æthelred. He's my mother's brother, and an Ealdorman.'

He heard the flat tone of my voice. 'You're not fond of him?'

'I hardly know him.' I had spent some weeks in his house, just long enough to quarrel with
his son who was also called Æthelred.

'Is he a friend of the Danes?'

I shook my head. 'They suffer him to live and he suffers them.'

'The king has sent messengers to Mercia,' Beocca said.

I grimaced. 'If he wants them to rise against the Danes they won't. They'll get killed.'

'He'd rather they brought men south in the springtime,' Beocca said and I wondered how a
few Mercian warriors were supposed to get past the Danes to join us, but said nothing. 'We
look to the springtime for our salvation,' Beocca went on, 'but in the meantime the king
would like someone to go to Cippanhamm.'

'A priest?' I asked sourly, 'to talk to Guthrum?'

'A soldier,' Beocca said, 'to gauge their numbers.'

'So send me,' I offered.

Beocca nodded, then limped along the riverbank where the willow fish traps had been
exposed by the falling tide. 'It's so different from Northumbria,' he said wistfully.

I smiled at that. 'You miss Ebensburg?'

'I would like to end my days at Lindisfarena,' he said. 'I would like to say my dying
prayer on that island.' He turned and gazed at the eastern hills. 'The king would go to
Cippanhamm himself,' he said, almost as an afterthought.

I thought I had misheard, then realised I had not. 'That's madness,' I protested.

'It's kingship,' he said.

'Kingship?'

'The Witan chooses the king,' Beocca said sternly, 'and the king must have the trust of
the people. If Alfred goes to Cippanhamm and walks among his enemies, then folk will know he
deserves to be king.'

'And if he's captured,' I said, 'then folk will know he's a dead king.'

'So you must protect him,' he said.

I said nothing. It was indeed madness, but Alfred was determined to show he deserved to
be king. He had, after all, usurped the throne from his nephew, and in those early years of his
reign he was ever mindful of that.

'A small group will travel,' Beocca said, 'you, some other warriors, a priest and the
king.'

'Why the priest?'

'To pray, of course.'

I sneered at that. 'You?'

Beocca patted his lamed leg. 'Not me. A young priest.'

'Better to send Iseult,' I said.

'No.'

'Why not? She's keeping the king healthy.' Alfred was in sudden good health, better than
he had been in years, and it was all because of the medicines that Iseult made. The celandine
and burdock she had gathered on the mainland had taken away the agony in his arse, while
other herbs calmed the pains in his belly. He walked confidently, had bright eyes and looked
strong.

'Iseult stays here,' Beocca said.

'If you want the king to live,' I said, 'send her with us.'

'She stays here,' Beocca said, 'because we want the king to live.'

It took me a few heartbeats to understand what he had said, and when I did realise his
meaning I turned on him with such fury that he stumbled backwards. I said nothing, for I did
not trust myself to speak, or perhaps I feared that speech would turn to violence. Beocca
tried to look severe, but only looked fearful.

'These are difficult times,' he said plaintively, 'and the king can only put his trust in
men who serve God. In men who are bound to him by their love of Christ.'

I kicked at an eel trap, sending it spinning over the bank into the river. 'For a time,' I
said, 'I almost liked Alfred. Now he's got his priests back and you're dripping poison into
him.'

'He …' Beocca began.

I turned on him, silencing him. 'Who rescued the bastard? Who burned Svein's ships? Who,
in the name of your luckless god, killed Ubba? And you still don't trust me?'

Beocca was trying to calm me now, making flapping gestures. 'I fear you are a pagan,' he
said, 'and your woman is assuredly a pagan.'

'My woman healed Edward,' I snarled, 'does that mean nothing?'

'It could mean,' he said, 'that she did the devil's work.'

I was astonished into silence by that.

'The devil does his work in the land,' Beocca said earnestly, 'and it would serve the
devil well if Wessex were to vanish. The devil wants the king dead. He wants his own pagan
spawn all across England! There is a greater war, Uhtred. Not the fight between Saxon and
Dane, but between God and the devil, between good and evil! We are part of it!'

'I've killed more Danes than you can dream of,' I told him.

'But suppose,' he said, pleading with me now, 'that your woman has been sent by the devil?
That the evil one allowed her to heal Edward so that the king would trust her? And then, when
the king, in all innocence, goes to spy on the enemy, she betrays him!'

'You think she would betray him?' I asked sourly, 'or do you mean I might betray him?'

'Your love of the Danes is well known,' Beocca said stiffly, 'and you spared the men on
Palfleot.'

'So you think I can't he trusted?'

'I trust you,' he said, without conviction. 'But other men?' he waved his palsied hand in
an impotent gesture. 'But if Iseult is here,' he shrugged, not ending the thought.

'So she's to be a hostage,' I said.

'A surety, rather.'

'I gave the king my oath,' I pointed out.

'And you have sworn oaths before, and you are known as a liar, and you have a wife and child,
yet live with a pagan whore, and you love the Danes as you love yourself, and do you really
think we can trust you?'

This all came out in a bitter rush.

'I have known you, Uhtred,' he said, 'since you crawled on Bebbanburg's rush floors. I
baptised you, taught you, chastised you, watched you grow, and I know you better than any man
alive and I do not trust you.'

Beocca stared at me belligerently. 'If the king does not return, Uhtred, then your whore
will be given to the dogs.'

He had delivered his message now, and he seemed to regret the force of it for he shook his
head.

'The king should not go. You're right. It's a madness. It is stupidity! It is,' he paused,
searching for a word, and came upon one of the worst condemnations in his vocabulary, 'it
is irresponsible! But he insists, and if he goes then you must also go for you're the only
man here who can pass as a Dane. But bring him back, Uhtred, bring him back, for he is dear to
God and to all Saxons.'

Not to me, I thought, he was not dear to me. That night, brooding on Beocca's words, I was
tempted to flee the swamp, to go away with Iseult, find a lord, give Serpent-Breath a new
master, but Ragnar had been a hostage and so I had no friend among my enemies, and if I fled I
would break my oath to Alfred and men would say Uhtred of Bebbanburg could never be trusted
again and so I stayed.

I tried to persuade Alfred not to go to Cippanhamm. It was, as Beocca had said,
irresponsible, but Alfred insisted.

'If I stay here,' he said, Then will say I hid from the Danes. Others face them, but I hide?
No. Men must see me, must know that I live, and know that I fight.'

For once Ælswith and I were in agreement, and we both tried to keep him in Æthelingaeg, but
Alfred would not be dissuaded. He was in a strange mood, suffused with happiness, utterly
confident that God was on his side, and, because his sickness had abated, he was full of
energy and confidence.

He took six companions. The priest was a young man called Adelbert who carried a small
harp wrapped in leather. It seemed ridiculous to take a harp to the enemy, but Adelbert was
famed for his music and Alfred blithely said that we should sing God's praises while we were
among the Danes. The other four were all experienced warriors who had been part of his
royal guard. They were called Osferth, Wulfrith, Beorth and the last was Egwine who swore to
Ælswith that he would bring the king home, which made Ælswith throw a bitter glance at me.
Whatever favour I had gained by Iseult's cure of Edward had evaporated under the
influence of the priests.

We dressed for war in mail and helmets, while Alfred insisted on wearing a fine blue
cloak, trimmed with fur, which made him conspicuous, but he wanted folk to see a king. The
best horses were selected, one for each of us and three spare mounts, and we swam them across
the river, then followed log roads until we came at last to firm ground close to the island
where Iseult said Arthur was buried. I had left Iseult with Eanflaed who shared quarters with
Leofric.

It was February now. There had been a spell of fine weather after the burning of Svein's
fleet and I had thought we should travel then, but Alfred insisted on waiting until the
eighth day of February, because that was the feast of Saint Cuthman, a Saxon saint from East
Anglia, and Alfred reckoned that must be a propitious day. Perhaps he was right, for the
day turned out wet and bitterly cold, and we were to discover that the Danes were reluctant
to leave their quarters in the worst weather. We went at dawn and by mid morning we were in
the hills overlooking the swamp which was half hidden by a mist thickened by the smoke from
the cooking fires of the small villages.

'Are you familiar with Saint Cuthman?' Alfred asked me cheerfully.

'No, lord.'

'He was a hermit,' Alfred said. We were riding north, keeping on the high ground with the
swamp to our left. 'His mother was crippled and so he made her a wheelbarrow.'

'A wheelbarrow? What could a cripple do with a wheelbarrow?'

‘No, no, no! He pushed her about in it! So she could be with him as he preached. He pushed her
everywhere.'

'She must have liked that.'

'There's no written life of him that I know of,' Alfred said, 'but we must surely compose
one. He could be a saint for mothers?'

'Or for wheelbarrows, lord.'

We saw our first evidence of the Danes just after midday. We were still on the high ground,
but in a valley that sloped to the marshes we saw a substantial house with lime washed walls
and thick, thatch. Smoke came from the roof, while in a fenced apple orchard were a score of
horses. No Dane would ever leave such a place unplundered, which suggested the horses
belonged to them and that the farm was garrisoned.

'They're there to watch the swamp,' Alfred suggested.

'Probably.' I was cold. I had a thick woollen cloak, but I was still cold.

'We shall send men here,' Alfred said, 'and teach them not to steal apples.'

We stayed that night in a small village. The Danes had been there and the folk were
frightened. At first, when we rode up the rutted track between the houses, they hid,
thinking we were Danes, but when they heard our voices they crept out and stared at us as if we
had just ridden down from the moon. Their priest was dead, killed by the pagans, so Alfred
insisted that Adelbert hold a service in the burned-out remnants of the church. Alfred
himself acted as precentor, accompanying his chanting with the priest's small harp.

'I learned to play as a child,' he told me. 'My stepmother insisted, but I'm not very
good.'

'You're not,' I agreed, which he did not like.

'There is never enough time to practise,' he complained.

We lodged in a peasant's house. Alfred, reckoning that the Danes would have taken the
harvest from wherever we visited, had laden the spare horses with smoked fish, smoked eels
and oatcakes, so we provided most of the food and, after we had eaten, the peasant couple
knelt to me and the woman tentatively touched the skirt of my mail coat.

'My children,' she whispered, 'there are two of them. My daughter is about seven years old
and my boy is a little older. They are good children.'

'What of them?' Alfred intervened.

'The pagans took them, lord,' the woman said. She was crying. 'You can find them, lord,'
she said, tugging my mail, 'you can find them and bring them back? My little ones? Please?'

I promised to try, but it was an empty promise for the children would have long gone to the
slave market and, by now, would either be working on some Danish estate or, if they were
pretty, sent overseas where heathen men pay good silver for Christian children. We learned
that the Danes had come to the village shortly after Twelfth Night. They had killed,
captured, stolen and ridden on southwards. A few days later they had returned, going hack
northwards, driving a band of captives and a herd of captured horses laden with plunder.
Since then the villagers had seen no Danes except for the few on the swamp's edge. Those Danes,
they said, caused no trouble, perhaps because they were so few and dared not stir up the
enmity of the country about them. We heard the same tale in other villages. The Danes had
come, they had pillaged, then had gone back north. But on our third day we at last saw a force
of the enemy riding on the Roman road which cuts straight eastwards across the hills from
Badoum. There were close to sixty of them, and they rode hard in front of dark clouds and the
gathering night.

'Going back to Cippanhamm,' Alfred said. It was a foraging party, and their
packhorses carried nets stuffed with hay to feed their war horses, and I remembered my
childhood winter in Readingum, when the Danes first invaded Wessex, and how hard it had been
to keep horses and men alive in the cold. We had cut feeble winter grass and pulled down
thatch to feed our horses, which still became skeletal and weak. I have often listened to
men declare that all that is needed to win a war is to assemble men and march against the
enemy, but it is never that easy. Men and horses must be fed, and hunger can defeat an army
much faster than spears. We watched the Danes go north, then turned aside to a halfruined barn
that offered us shelter for the night.

It began to snow that night, a relentless soft snow, silent and thick, so that by dawn the
world was white under a pale blue sky. I suggested we waited till the snow had thawed before
we rode further, but Egwine, who came from this part of the country, said we were only two or
three hours south of Cippanhamm and Alfred was impatient.