The Burning Land (20 page)

“I thought you might be dead,” he said, “then I thought that the gods don’t want your miserable company yet.” He paused, remembering suddenly, and his face straightened. He frowned, and could not look into my eyes. “I wept when I heard about Gisela.”

“Thank you.”

He nodded abruptly, then put an arm round my shoulder and
walked with me. The shield hand draped round my neck was mangled from the battle at Ethandun, where Alfred had destroyed Guthrum’s great army. I had fought for Alfred that day, and Ragnar, my closest friend, had fought for Guthrum.

Ragnar looked so like his father. He had a broad generous face, bright eyes, and the fastest smile of anyone I knew. His hair was fair, like mine, and we had often been taken as brothers. His father had treated me as a son and, if I had a brother, it was Ragnar. “You heard what happened in Mercia?” he asked me. “No.”

“Alfred’s forces assaulted Harald,” he said.

“On Torneie?”

“Wherever he was. What I hear is that Harald was bedridden, his men were starving, they were trapped, they were outnumbered, so the Mercians and West Saxons decided to finish them off.”

“So Harald’s dead?”

“Of course he’s not dead!” Ragnar said happily. “Harald’s a Dane! He fought the bastards off, sent them running away.” He laughed. “Alfred, I hear, is not a happy man.”

“He never was,” I said. “He’s god-haunted.”

Ragnar turned and stole a look at Skade, who was still in her saddle. “Is that Harald’s woman?”

“Yes.”

“She looks like trouble,” he said. “So do we sell her back to Skirnir?”

“No.”

He grinned. “So she isn’t Harald’s woman now?”

“No.”

“Poor woman,” he said, and laughed.

“What do you know about Skirnir?”

“I know he’s offering gold for her return.”

“And Alfred’s offering gold for my return?”

“He is indeed!” Ragnar said cheerfully. “I was thinking I could truss you up like a goat and make myself even wealthier.” He paused because we had come within sight of Dunholm that stood
atop its great rock in the loop of the river. His standard of the eagle’s wing flew above the fortress. “Welcome home,” he said warmly.

I had come north and, for the first time in years, felt free.

Brida waited in the fortress. She was an East Anglian and Ragnar’s woman, and she took me in her arms, said nothing, and I just felt her sorrow for Gisela. “Fate,” I said.

She stepped back and ran a finger down my face, looking at me as if wondering what the years had done. “Her brother is dying too,” she said.

“But he’s still king?”

“Ragnar rules here,” she said, “and lets Guthred call himself king.” Guthred, Gisela’s brother, ruled Northumbria from his capital at Eoferwic. He was a good-natured man, but weak, and he held the throne only because Ragnar and the other great northern jarls permitted it. “He’s gone mad,” Brida said bleakly, “mad and happy.”

“Better than mad and sad.”

“The priests look after him, but he won’t eat. He throws the food at the walls and claims he’s Solomon.”

“He’s still a Christian then?”

“He worships every god,” she said tartly, “as a precaution.”

“Will Ragnar call himself king?” I asked.

“He hasn’t said,” Brida spoke softly.

“Would you want that?”

“I want Ragnar to find his fate,” she said, and there was something ominous in her words.

There was a feast in the hall that night. I sat next to Brida and the roaring fire lit her strong, dark face. She looked something like Skade, only older, and the two women had recognized their similarity and had immediately bridled with hostility. A harpist played at the hall’s side, chanting a song about a raid Ragnar had made on Scotland, but the words were drowned by the sound of voices. One of Ragnar’s men staggered to the door, but threw up before he could
reach the open air. Dogs ran to eat the vomit, and the man went back to his table and shouted for more ale. “We are too comfortable here,” Brida said.

“Is that bad?”

“Ragnar is happy,” she said, too softly for her lover to hear. He sat to her right, and Skade was beyond him. “He drinks too much,” Brida said, then sighed. “Who would have thought it?”

“That Ragnar likes ale?”

“That you would be so feared.” She inspected me as though she had never seen me before. “Ragnar the Elder would be proud of you,” she said. Brida, like me, had been raised in Ragnar’s house. We had been children together, then lovers, and now were friends. She was wise, unlike Ragnar the Younger, who was impulsive and hot-headed, but sensible enough to trust Brida’s wisdom. Her one great regret was that she was childless, though Ragnar himself had fathered enough bastards.

One of those bastards was helping to serve the feast, and Ragnar took hold of the girl’s elbow. “Are you mine?” he asked.

“Yours, lord?”

“Are you my daughter?”

“Oh yes, lord!” she said happily.

“I thought you were,” he said and slapped her rump. “I make pretty daughters, Uhtred!”

“You do!”

“And fine sons!” He smiled happily, then let go a huge belch.

“He doesn’t see the danger,” Brida said to me. She alone in the hall was unsmiling, but life had always been a serious business for Brida.

“What are you telling Uhtred?” Ragnar demanded.

“That our barley was diseased this year,” she said.

“Then we buy some barley in Eoferwic,” he said carelessly, and turned back to Skade.

“What danger?” I asked.

Brida lowered her voice again. “Alfred has made Wessex powerful.”

“He has.”

“And he’s ambitious.”

“He doesn’t have long to live,” I said, “so his ambition doesn’t matter.”

“Then he’s ambitious for his son,” she said impatiently. “He wants to extend Saxon rule northward.”

“True,” I said.

“And that threatens us,” she said fiercely. “What does he call himself? King of the Angelcynn?” I nodded, and she put an urgent hand on my arm. “Northumbria has more than enough English speakers. He wants his priests and scholars to rule here.”

“True,” I said again.

“So they must be stopped,” she said simply. She stared at me, her eyes flicking between mine. “He didn’t send you to spy?”

“No,” I said.

“No,” she agreed. She toyed with a lump of bread, her gaze looking down the long benches of roaring warriors. “It’s simple, Uhtred,” she said bleakly, “if we don’t destroy Wessex, then Wessex will destroy us.”

“It would take years for the West Saxons to reach Northumbria,” I said dismissively.

“Does that make the result any better?” Brida asked bitterly. “And no, it won’t take years. Mercia is divided and weak and Wessex will swallow it in the next few years. Then they’ll march on East Anglia, and after that all three kingdoms will be turned on us. And where the West Saxons go, Uhtred,” her voice was very bitter now, “they destroy our gods. They bring their own god with his rules and his anger and his fear.” Like me, Brida had been raised as a Christian, but had turned pagan. “We have to stop them before they begin, which means striking first. And striking soon.”

“Soon?”

“Haesten plans to invade Mercia,” she said, dropping her voice so it was almost a whisper. “That will draw Alfred’s forces north of the Temes. What we should do is take a fleet and land on Wessex’s south coast.” Her hand tightened on my arm. “And next year,” she said, “there’ll be no Uhtred of Bebbanburg to protect Alfred’s land.”

“Are you two still talking of barley?” Ragnar roared. “How’s my sister? Still married to that crippled old priest?”

“He makes her happy,” I said.

“Poor Thyra,” Ragnar said, and I thought how strange fate was, how weird its threads. Thyra, Ragnar’s sister, had married Beocca, a match so unlikely as to be unimaginable, yet she had found pure happiness. And my thread? That night I felt as though my whole world had been turned upside down. For so many years my oath-sworn duty had been to protect Wessex, and I had done that duty, nowhere better than at Fearnhamme. Now, suddenly, I was hearing Brida’s dreams of destroying Wessex. The Lothbroks had tried and failed to do that, Guthrum had come close before being defeated, and Harald had met disaster. Now Brida would try to persuade Ragnar to conquer Alfred’s kingdom? I looked at my friend, who was singing loudly and thumping the table with an ale horn in time to the song.

“To conquer Wessex,” I told Brida, “you’ll need five thousand men and five thousand horses, and one thing more. Discipline.”

“The Danes fight better than the Saxons,” she said dismissively.

“But Danes fight only when they want to,” I said harshly. Danish armies were coalitions of convenience, with jarls lending their crews to an ambitious man, but melting away as soon as easier plunder offered itself. They were like packs of wolves that would attack a flock, but sheer away if enough dogs defended the sheep. Danes and Norsemen were constantly listening for news of some country that offered easy plunder, and a rumor of an undefended monastery might send a score of ships on a scavenging voyage, but in my own lifetime I had seen how easily the Danes were repulsed. Kings had built burhs all across Christendom and the Danes had no appetite for long sieges. They wanted quick plunder, or else they wanted to settle rich land. Yet the days of easy conquest, of facing undefended towns and rabbles of half-trained warriors, were long gone. If Ragnar or any other northman wanted to take Wessex, then he must lead an army of disciplined men prepared to undertake siege warfare. I looked at my friend, lost in the joy of feast and ale, and could not imagine him with the patience to defeat Alfred’s organized defenses.

“But you could,” Brida said very quietly.

“Are you reading my thoughts?”

She leaned closer to me, her voice a whisper. “Christianity is a disease that spreads like a plague. We have to stop it.”

“If the gods want it stopped,” I suggested, “they’ll do it themselves.”

“Our gods prefer feasting. They live, Uhtred. They live and laugh and enjoy, and what does their god do? He broods, he’s vengeful, he scowls, he plots. He’s a dark and lonely god, Uhtred, and our gods ignore him. They’re wrong.”

I half smiled. Brida, alone of all the men or women I knew, would see nothing strange in chiding the gods for their faults, and even try to do their work for them. But she was right, I thought, the Christian god was dark and threatening. He had no appetite for feasting, for laughter in the hall, for ale and mead. He set rules and demanded discipline, but rules and discipline were just what we needed if we were to defeat him.

“Help me,” Brida said.

I watched two jugglers toss flaming brands into the smoky air. Gusts of laughter echoed in the great hall and I felt a sudden surge of hatred for Alfred’s pack of black-robed priests, for the whole tribe of life-denying churchmen whose only joy was to disapprove of joy. “I need men,” I told Brida.

“Ragnar has men.”

“I need my own,” I insisted. “I have forty-three. I need at least ten times that number.”

“If men know you’re leading an army against Wessex,” she said, “they’ll follow.”

“Not without gold,” I said, glancing at Skade who was watching me suspiciously, curious what secrets Brida whispered in my ear. “Gold,” I went on, “gold and silver. I need gold.”

I needed more. I needed to know whether Brida’s dreams of defeating Wessex were known beyond Dunholm. Brida claimed she had told no one except Ragnar, but Ragnar was famously loose-tongued.
Give Ragnar a horn of ale and he would share every secret known to man, and if Ragnar had told just one man, then Alfred would learn of the ambition soon enough, which was why I was glad when Offa, his women, and his dogs arrived at Dunholm.

Offa was a Saxon, a Mercian who had once been a priest. He was tall, thin, with a lugubrious face that suggested he had seen every folly the world offered. He was old now, old and gray-haired, but he still traveled all across Britain with his two squabbling women and his troupe of performing terriers. He showed the dogs at fairs and at feasts, where the dogs walked on their hind legs, danced together, leaped through hoops, and one even rode a small pony while the others carried leather buckets to collect coins from the spectators. It was not the most spectacular entertainment, but children loved the terriers and Ragnar, of course, was entranced by them.

Offa had left the priesthood, thus incurring the enmity of the bishops, but he had the protection of every ruler in Britain because his real livelihood was not his terriers, but his extraordinary capacity for information. He talked to everyone, he drew conclusions, and he sold what he deduced. Alfred had used him for years. The dogs gave Offa an entry into almost every noble hall in Britain, and Offa listened to gossip and carried what he learned from ruler to ruler, eking out his facts coin by coin. “You must be rich,” I told Offa the day he arrived.

“You are pleased to jest, lord,” he said. He sat at a table outside Ragnar’s hall, his eight dogs sitting obediently in a semicircle behind his bench. A servant had brought him ale and bread. Ragnar had been delighted at Offa’s unexpected arrival, anticipating the laughter which always accompanied the dogs’ performance.

“Where do you keep all that money?” I asked.

“You really wish me to answer that, lord?” Offa asked. Offa would answer questions, but his answers always had to be paid for.

“It’s late for you to be traveling north,” I said.

“Yet so far the winter is surprisingly mild. And business brought me north, lord,” he said, “your business.” He groped in a large leather bag and took out a sealed and folded parchment that he pushed across the table. “That is for you, lord.”

I picked up the letter. The seal was a blob of wax which bore no imprint and seemed undisturbed. “What does the letter say?” I asked Offa.

“Are you suggesting I’ve read it?” he asked, offended.

“Of course you did,” I said, “so save me the trouble of reading it.”

He gave a hint of a smile. “I suspect you will find it of little importance, lord,” he said. “The writer is your friend, Father Beocca. He says your children are safe in the Lady Æthelflæd’s household and that Alfred is still angry with you, but will not order your death if you return south as, he reminds you, your sworn oath demands. Father Beocca finishes by saying that he prays for your soul daily, and demands that you return to your oath-given duties.”