The Burning Land (13 page)

Our oar-banks rose and fell gently, so it was mostly the ebbing tide that swept us toward that fleet, which rowed northward across our path. “Back oars!” I called, and we slowed, stopped, and slewed broadside to the current. “That must be Haesten,” Finan said. He had come to stand beside me.

“He’s leaving Wessex,” I said. I was certain it was Haesten, and so it was, for a moment later a single ship turned from the fleet and I saw the flash of its oar-blades as the rowers pulled hard toward us. Beyond it the other ships went on northward and there were many more than the eighty that Haesten had brought to Cent, because his fleet had been swollen by the fugitives from Harald’s army. The approaching ship was close now. “That’s
Dragon-Voyager
,” I said, recognizing the ship, the same one we had given to Haesten on the day he took Alfred’s treasure and gave us the valueless hostages.

“Shields?” Finan asked.

“No,” I said. If Haesten wanted to attack me he would have brought more than one ship, and so our shields stayed in
Seolferwulf
’s bilge.

Dragon-Voyager
backed her oars a ship’s half-length away. She lay close, heaving on the water’s slow swell, and for a moment her crew stared at my crew, and then I saw Haesten climbing up to the steering platform. He waved. “Can I come aboard?” he shouted.

“You can come aboard,” I called back, and watched as his aftermost oarsmen expertly turned
Dragon-Voyager
so her stern came close to ours. The long oars were shipped as the two vessels closed, then Haesten leaped. Another man was waving to me from
Dragon-Voyager
’s steering platform, and I saw it was Father Willibald. I waved back, then worked my way aft to greet Haesten.

He was bareheaded. He spread his hands as I approached, a gesture that spoke of helplessness, and he seemed to have difficulty speaking, but he finally found his voice. “I am sorry, lord,” he said,
and his tone was humble, convincing. “There are no words, Lord Uhtred,” he said.

“She was a good woman,” I said.

“Famously,” he said, “and I do feel sorrow, lord.”

“Thank you.”

He glanced at my oarsmen, doubtless casting an eye on their weaponry, then looked back to me. “That sad news, lord,” he said, “shadowed the reports of your victory. It was a great triumph, lord.”

“It seems to have persuaded you to leave Wessex,” I said drily.

“I always intended to leave, lord,” he said, “once we had our agreement, but some of our ships needed repair.” He noticed Uhtred then, and saw the silver plates sewn onto the boy’s sword belt. “Your son, lord?” he asked.

“My son,” I said, “Uhtred.”

“An impressive boy,” Haesten lied.

“Uhtred,” I called, “come here!”

He approached nervously, his eyes darting left and right as if expecting an attack. He was about as impressive as a duckling. “This is the Jarl Haesten,” I told him, “a Dane. One day I’ll kill him, or he’ll kill me.” Haesten chuckled, but my son just looked at the deck. “If he kills me,” I went on, “your duty is to kill him.”

Haesten waited for some response from Uhtred the Younger, but the boy just looked embarrassed. Haesten grinned wickedly. “And my own son, Lord Uhtred?” he asked innocently, “he thrives, I trust, as a hostage?”

“I drowned the little bastard a month ago,” I said.

Haesten laughed at the lie. “There was no need for hostages anyway,” he said, “as I shall keep our agreement. Father Willibald will confirm that.” He gestured toward
Dragon-Voyager
. “I was going to send Father Willibald to Lundene,” he went on, “with a letter. You might take him there yourself, lord?”

“Just Father Willibald?” I asked. “Didn’t I bring you two priests?”

“The other one died,” Haesten said carelessly, “after eating too many eels. You’ll take Willibald?”

“Of course,” I said and glanced at the fleet that still rowed northward. “Where do you go?”

“North,” Haesten said airily, “East Anglia. Somewhere. Not Wessex.”

He did not want to tell me his destination, but it was plain that his ships were heading toward Beamfleot. We had fought there five years before and Haesten might have had bad memories of the place, yet Beamfleot, on the northern bank of the Temes estuary, offered two priceless assets. First was the creek called Hothlege, tucked behind the island of Caninga, and that creek could shelter three hundred ships, while above it, rearing high on a green hill, was the old fort. It was a place of great safety, much safer than the encampment Haesten had made on the shore of Cent, but he had only made that to entice Alfred to pay him to leave. Now he was leaving, but going to a place far more dangerous to Wessex. In Beamfleot he would have an almost unassailable fortress, yet still be within easy striking distance of Lundene and Wessex. He was a serpent.

That was not Father Willibald’s opinion. We had to bring the two ships within touching distance so the priest could clamber from one to the other. He sprawled clumsily onto
Seolferwulf
’s deck, then bade a friendly farewell to Haesten, who gave me a parting grin before leaping back aboard his own ship.

Father Willibald looked at me with confusion. One moment his face was all concern, the next it was excitement, both expressions accompanied by an impatient fidgeting as he tried to find words for one mood or the other. Concern won. “Lord,” he said, “tell me, tell me it isn’t true.”

“It’s true, father.”

“Dear God!” he shook his head and made the sign of the cross. “I shall pray for her soul, lord. I shall pray for her soul nightly, lord, and for the souls of your dear children.” His voice trailed away under my baleful gaze, but then his excitement got the better of him. “Such news, lord,” he said, “such news I have!” Then, despairing of my expression, he turned to pick up his pathetic sack of belongings that had been tossed from the
Dragon-Voyager
.

“What news?” I asked.

“The Jarl Haesten, lord,” Willibald said eagerly. “He’s requesting
that his wife and two sons be baptized, lord!” He smiled as if expecting me to share his joy.

“He’s what?” I asked in surprise.

“He seeks baptism for his family! I wrote the letter for him, addressed to our king! It seems our preaching bore fruit, lord. The jarl’s wife, God bless her soul, has seen the light! She seeks our Lord’s redemption! She has come to love our Savior, lord, and her husband has approved of her conversion.”

I just looked at him, corroding his joy with my sour face, but Willibald was not to be so easily discouraged. He gathered his enthusiasm again. “Don’t you see, lord?” he asked. “If she converts then he will follow! It’s often thus, lord, that the wife first finds salvation, and when wives lead, husbands follow!”

“He’s lulling us to sleep, father,” I said.
Dragon-Voyager
had rejoined the fleet by now and was rowing steadily north.

“The jarl is a troubled soul,” Willibald said, “he talked to me often.” He raised his hands to the sky where a myriad waterfowl beat south on throbbing wings. “There is rejoicing in heaven, lord, when just one sinner repents. And he is so close to redemption! And when a chieftain converts, lord, then his people follow him to Christ.”

“Chieftain?” I sneered. “Haesten’s just an earsling. He’s a turd. And he’s not troubled, father, except by greed. We’ll have to kill him yet.”

Willibald despaired of my cynicism and went to sit beside my son. I watched the two of them talk and wondered why Uhtred never showed any enthusiasm for my conversation, though he seemed fascinated by Willibald’s. “I hope you’re not poisoning the boy’s brain,” I called.

“We’re talking about birds, lord,” Willibald explained brightly, “and where they go in winter.”

“Where do they go?”

“Beneath the sea?” he suggested.

The tide slackened, stilled, and turned, and we rode the flood back up the river. I sat brooding on the steering platform while Finan tended the big steering oar. My men rowed gently, content
to let the tide do the work, and they sang the song of Ægir, god of the sea, and of Rán, his wife, and of his nine daughters, all of whom must be flattered if a ship is to be safe on the wild waters. They sang the song because they knew I liked it, but the tune seemed empty and the words meaningless, and I did not join in. I just gazed at the smoke haze above Lundene, the darkness darkening a summer sky, and wished I were a bird, high in that nothingness, vanishing.

Haesten’s letter stirred Alfred to a new liveliness. The letter, he said, was a sign of God’s grace, and Bishop Erkenwald, of course, agreed. God, the bishop preached, had slaughtered the heathen at Fearnhamme and now had worked a miracle in the heart of Haesten. Willibald was sent to Beamfleot with an invitation for Haesten to bring his family to Lundene where both Alfred and Æthelred would stand as godfathers to Brunna, Haesten the Younger, and the real Horic. No one now bothered to pretend that the deaf and dumb hostage was Haesten’s son, but the deception was forgiven in the ebullience that marked Wessex as that summer faded into autumn.

The deaf and dumb hostage, I gave him the name Harald, was sent to my household. He was a bright lad and I set him to work in the armory where he showed a skill with the sharpening stone and an eagerness to learn weapons. I also had custody of Skade, because no one else seemed to want her. For a time I displayed her in a cage beside my door, but that humiliation was small consolation for her curse. She was valueless as a hostage now, for her lover was mewed up on Torneie Island and one day I took her upriver in one of the smaller boats we kept above Lundene’s broken bridge.

Torneie was close to Lundene and, with thirty men on the oars, we reached the River Colaun before midday. We rowed slowly up the smaller river, but there was little to be seen. Harald’s men, they numbered fewer than three hundred, had made an earth wall topped by a thick thorn palisade. Spears showed above that spiny obstacle, but no roofs, because Torneie had no timber with which to
make houses. The river flowed sluggish either side of the island, and was edged by marshland, beyond which I could see the twin camps of the Saxon forces that besieged the island. Two ships were moored in the river, both manned by Mercians, their job to prevent any supplies reaching the trapped Danes. “There’s your lover,” I told Skade, pointing to the thorns.

I ordered Ralla, who was steering the ship, to take us as close as he could to the island, and, when our bows were almost touching the reeds, I dragged Skade to the bows. “There’s your one-legged, impotent lover,” I told Skade. A handful of Danes had deserted, and they reported that Harald had been wounded in the left leg and groin. Wasp-Sting had evidently struck him beneath the skirt of his mail, and I remembered the blade striking bone and how I had forced it harder so that the steel had slid up his thigh, ripping muscles and opening blood vessels, and ended in his groin. The leg had turned rotten and had been cut off. He still lived, and perhaps it was his hatred and fervor that gave life to his men, who now faced the bleakest of futures.

Skade said nothing. She gazed at the thorn wall above which a few spear-points showed. She was dressed in a slave’s tunic, belted tight around her thin waist.

“They’ve eaten their horses,” I told her, “and they catch eels, frogs, and fish.”

“They will live,” she said dully.

“They’re trapped,” I said scornfully, “and this time Alfred won’t pay bright gold for them to go away. When they starve this winter, they’ll surrender, and Alfred will kill them all. One by one, woman.”

“They will live,” she insisted.

“You see the future?”

“Yes,” she said, and I touched Thor’s hammer.

I hated her, and I found it hard to take my eyes from her. She had been given the gift of beauty, yet it was the beauty of a weapon. She was sleek, hard and shining. Even as a degraded captive, unwashed and dressed in rags, she shone. Her face was bony, but softened by lips and by the thickness of her hair. My men gazed at her. They
wanted me to give her to them as a plaything, and then kill her. She was reckoned to be a Danish sorceress, as dangerous as she was desirable, and I knew it was her curse that had killed my Gisela, and Alfred would not have objected had I executed her, yet I could not kill her. She fascinated me.

“You can go to them,” I said.

She turned her big, dark eyes onto me, said nothing.

“Jump overboard,” I said. We were not that far from Torneie’s shelving bank. She might have to swim a couple of paces, but then she would be able to wade ashore. “Can you swim?”

“Yes.”

“Then go to him,” I said, and waited. “Don’t you want to be Queen of Wessex?” I sneered.

She looked back to the bleak island. “I dream,” she told me quietly, “and in my dreams Loki comes to me.”

Loki was the trickster god, the nuisance in Asgard, the god who deserved death. The Christians talk of the serpent in paradise, and that was Loki. “He talks evil to you?” I asked.

“He is sad,” she said, “and he talks. I comfort him.”

“What has that to do with you jumping overboard?”

“It is not my fate,” she said.

“Loki told you that?”

She nodded.

“Did he tell you that you would be Queen of Wessex?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“But Odin has more power,” I said, and wished Odin had thought to protect Gisela instead of Wessex, and then I wondered why the gods had allowed the Christians to win at Fearnhamme instead of letting their worshippers capture Wessex, but the gods are capricious, full of mischief, and none more so than the cunning Loki. “And what does Loki tell you to do now?” I asked harshly.

“To submit.”

“I have no need of you,” I said, “so jump. Swim. Go. Starve.”

“It is not my fate,” she said again. Her voice was dull, as though there was no life in her soul.

“What if I push you?”

“You won’t,” she said confidently, and she was right. I left her in the bows as we turned the ship and let the swift current take us back to the Temes and Lundene. That night I released her from the storeroom that served as her prison. I told Finan she was not to be touched, she was not to be restrained, that she was free, and in the morning she was still in my courtyard, crouching, watching me, saying nothing.