The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 10) (30 page)

Eleven

‘You should have slit his god-damned throat,’ Finan growled next morning, or rather later that night, because I had woken my men in the depths of darkness. The fires that smoked the fish flared up on the foreshore as my men fed them with driftwood, and by the light of the sudden flames they waded into the shallows and heaved armour and weapons into our ships. More fires showed on the hill above, surrounding the feast hall where I had imprisoned all of Ieremias’s men, women, and children. Seven of my guards watched the hall, while two others stood watch over Ieremias who had begged to be allowed to spend the night in his relic-filled cathedral. ‘I would pray, lord,’ he had pleaded, ‘I would pray for your success.’

‘Pray!’ Finan scoffed. ‘You should have let me slit his god-damned throat.’

‘He’s mad, not evil.’

‘He’s cunning and sly, you said so yourself.’

‘He believes in miracles,’ I said. Somehow Dagfinnr the Dane had heard about Christian miracles and had convinced himself that the nailed god would give him the power to work them if only he collected enough relics, and so Ieremias had been born. He blamed his failure to turn water into mulberry ale or to cure blindness on the sad fact that he had been denied ownership of Lindisfarena. ‘It’s a place of power!’ he had told me earnestly. ‘Heaven touches the earth on that island! It is a holy place.’

‘So,’ I now told Finan, ‘he wants to build a new cathedral on Lindisfarena and then he’s going to rule all Britain.’

‘King Ieremias?’ Finan asked scornfully.

‘Not King Ieremias,’ I said, ‘but Pope Ieremias, and he’s going to call his realm the kingdom of heaven. Everyone will live in peace, there’ll be no sickness, no poverty, and the harvest will never fail.’ Ieremias, trusting me, had poured out his ambitions, his words running together in his excitement. ‘There’ll be no lords,’ I went on, ‘and no fortresses, the lion will lie down with the lamb, swords will be forged into ploughshares, there’ll be no more stinging nettles, and a man can take as many wives as he wants.’

‘Sweet Christ, is that all?’

‘And god told him that the miracles will all start at Lindisfarena, so that’s where he’ll build his new Jerusalem. He wants to rename the island. It’s going to be the Blessed Isle.’

‘Bless my buttocks,’ Finan said.

‘And I’m to be Most Holy High Protector of the Blessed Isle.’

‘Why does he need a protector if everyone will live in peace?’

‘Because he says the devil will be roaming about like a roaring lion looking to devour folk.’

‘I thought the lion was sleeping with the lamb? And anyway, what is a lion?’

‘The devil in disguise.’

Finan laughed and shook his head. ‘And you promised to give this idiot the monastery ruins?’

‘I can’t, they belong to the church, but I can give him land on the island. And if he takes the church land too? I won’t stop him.’

‘The church won’t like that.’

‘I don’t give a rat’s turd what the church likes or dislikes,’ I said tartly, ‘and Ieremias is harmless.’

‘He’ll betray you,’ Finan said, ‘like he’s betrayed everyone else.’ For some reason Finan had taken against Ieremias, a dislike that was mutual. I wondered if it was because Finan, a Christian, was offended by the mad bishop’s delusions? I could imagine some Christians thinking that Ieremias mocked them, but I was not so sure. I thought he was sincere, even if he was mad, while Finan just wanted to cut his throat.

But I would not cut his throat, nor any other part of him. I had liked Ieremias. He was earnestly mad and he was passionately mistaken and he was also cunning, as he had proved by his dealings with Æthelhelm, with the Scots, and with my cousin, but all those lies and deceptions had been meant to bring about his miraculous kingdom. He believed the nailed god was on his side, and I was not willing to offend that god, nor any other, not on this day, which would bring the battle I had dreamed of all my life. So I had promised him land on Lindisfarena, then allowed him to offer me his blessing. His scrawny hands had pressed on my skull as he harangued the nailed god with a plea for my victory. He had even offered to come with us. ‘I can summon my Father’s angels to fight on your side,’ he had promised me, but I had persuaded him his prayers would be just as effective if they were made in his own cathedral.

‘You might let him live,’ Finan said grudgingly, ‘but don’t just leave him here!’

‘What can he do?’

‘You’ll just sail away and let him be?’

‘What else?’

‘I don’t trust the bastard.’

‘What can he do?’ I asked again. ‘He can’t warn Bebbanburg that we’re coming. He’d need a fast ship to do that, and he doesn’t have any ships.’

‘He’s a miracle-worker. Perhaps he’ll fly.’

‘He’s a poor, innocent idiot,’ I said, then sent Swithun to recall all the guards who watched Ieremias and his folk in the old monastery. It was time to leave.

Ieremias was indeed a poor innocent idiot, but wasn’t I just as foolish? I was taking a small band of men to capture the impregnable fortress where my cousin’s men waited, where Einar the White waited, and where the Scots waited.

We sailed north.

Four ships. The
Eadith
, the
Hanna
, the
Stiorra
, and the
Guds Moder
left Gyruum in the darkness. I was in the
Guds Moder
now, leaving Gerbruht to helm the
Eadith
. We rowed downriver towards the sea, and the sound of our oar-blades striking the water was the loudest noise in that still night. Every dip of the oars stirred the black river to a myriad of twinkling lights, and each time the blades lifted they sprinkled a glitter of those lights that were the jewels of Ran the sea-goddess, and I took their sparkling to be a sign of her blessing. Small patches of mist clung to the river, but there was enough moonlight seeping through the thin clouds to show us the Tinan’s dark banks.

We left on the slack water of low tide, but the flood began as we headed towards the sea. For the moment the current was against us, but once past the headlands we would turn north and the tide would help us. Later in the day we would fight the sea’s currents, but I hoped by then a wind would be filling our sails.

But there was no wind as we left the river. There was just the silence of the night through which the four ships ghosted slow under their oar beats, and, as the clouds moved west, beneath a sky drenched with stars. There were stars above us and Ran’s jewels below us and the sea was calm. She is never still, of course. A calm lake can look as smooth as ice, but the sea always moves. You see her breathing, see the slow rise and fall of the great waters, but I have rarely seen a sea as calm as on that starlit, silent night. It was as if the gods held their breath, and even my men were silent. Crews usually chant or sing as they row, or at the least they grumble, but that night no one spoke and no one sang and the
Guds Moder
seemed to glide through a dark void like
Skidblanir
, the ship of the gods, sailing noiselessly between the stars.

I looked back as the sea’s hidden current carried us northwards. I was watching the headland of the Tinan for fire. I suspected Constantin, or at least Domnall, had posted men on the river’s northern bank to watch Ieremias’s ships. If there were Scottish scouts on that bank they could not ride to Bebbanburg faster than our ships could sail there, but they might light a warning beacon. I watched, but saw none. I hoped that any Scots who had occupied the southern parts of Bebbanburg’s land would already have retreated, because Sigtryggr’s forces should have crossed the wall by now. He had promised to lead at least a hundred and fifty men north, though he had warned me he was not willing to fight a pitched battle against Domnall. Such a battle would invite a slaughter, and Sigtryggr needed every sword for the Saxon onslaught he knew was coming.

There was no warning fire on the headland. The whole coast was dark. The four ships were alone, forging north with
Guds Moder
in the lead. She was the smallest and thus the slowest ship, and so the others matched our speed. It was not until the eastern horizon was edged with a sword-blade of grey light that the rowers began to sing. It began on the
Stiorra
, the oarsmen singing the lay of Ida, a song I knew my son had chosen because it told how our ancestor, Ida the Flamebearer, had come across the cold sea to capture the fortress on the high rock. The song claimed that Ida and his men were hungry, they were desperate, and how they had flung themselves up the rock to be beaten back by a savage enemy. They were hurled back three times, the song claimed, and their dead lay thick on the slope as they huddled on the beach, taunted by their enemies. Night was falling and a storm was brewing offshore and Ida and his men were trapped between the fortress and the churning breakers, facing death by blade or death by sea, until Ida had shouted it would be death by fire. He had burned his ships, making flames by the water, and had seized a fiery length of wood and charged alone. He was wreathed in flame, sparks flew behind him, and he flung himself on the wall and thrust flame into his enemy’s faces, and they ran, fearing this fire warrior who had come from a far land. My father had mocked the song, saying that one spear-thrust or a pail of water would have been enough to stop Ida, but it was undeniable that he had taken the fortress.

The singing grew stronger as the crews of the other three ships joined in, chanting the song of burning triumph in time to their oar strokes as we beat our way northwards along the Northumbrian coast. And as the sun touched the world’s edge with the day’s new fire a small wind ruffled the water, rippling it from the east.

I would have liked a southern wind, even a gale, or at least a blustery hard southern blow that might have penned Einar’s ships in their narrow anchorage behind Lindisfarena, but the gods sent me a gentle east wind instead, and I touched my hammer and meekly thanked them that the wind was not northerly. Ieremias had confirmed that Einar the White’s vessels were moored in the shallow anchorage behind the island, and a hard southern wind would have given them a long tiring passage to the harbour mouth at Bebbanburg. The east wind would still try to blow them back down the anchorage’s entrance channel, but once beyond the shoals they could hoist their sails and race southerly with the wind on their bæcbord beam. ‘And there’s one Scottish ship there too, lord,’ Ieremias had added.

‘The
Trianaid
?’

‘She’s a lump of a boat, lord,’ he had said. ‘The Scots like to build their ships heavy so be careful she doesn’t ram you. She’s slow, but she can crush your strakes like a hammer falling on an eggshell.’

‘How many crew?’

‘Fifty at least, lord. She’s a big brute.’

I had remembered seeing Waldhere, the commander of my cousin’s household troops, at Dumnoc. ‘Did you bring him out of Bebbanburg?’ I had asked Ieremias.

‘I did, lord,’ he confessed, ‘and two others before him.’

‘How?’ If the Scots had seen any of Ieremias’s ships at the fortress then they would have known he was betraying them.

‘Fog, lord,’ he had told me. ‘I took one of our smaller ships and laid up in the bay by Cocuedes till there was a deep fog.’ Cocuedes was a small island just off the coast to the south of Bebbanburg.

‘Who were the other two?’

‘Both priests, lord,’ he had sounded disapproving, presumably because the priests had not recognised his authority as a bishop. ‘I picked them up a month ago and took them to Gyruum, and they found their own way south to negotiate with Lord Æthelhelm.’

Under my nose, I thought bitterly. ‘They were sent to arrange the marriage?’

Ieremias had nodded. ‘She brings a rich dowry, I hear! Gold, lord! And she’s a sweet little thing,’ he had sighed wistfully, ‘she’s got tits like ripe little apples. I’d like to give her a thorough blessing.’

‘You’d like what?’ I asked, surprised.

‘To lay my hands on her, lord,’ he said in apparent innocence.

He was not entirely mad.

In mid morning, as the sun burnished a sea that was breaking into small waves, the wind freshened. We hoisted Ieremias’s ragged sail that was decorated with a dark cross, and when it was sheeted home
Guds Moder
bent to the quickening breeze. We shipped the oars and let the wind take us northwards. The trailing ships did the same, loosing their great sails, and Æthelhelm’s stag was there, pitch black against the pale woad-blue linen, blazoned across the
Hanna
’s bellying sail.

We were not yet halfway, but the wind was on our beam, the foam-flecked seas were breaking white at our prows, our wakes spread bright in the sun, and we were going to Bebbanburg.

When we are young we yearn for battle. In the firelit halls we listen to the songs of heroes; how they broke the foemen, splintered the shield wall, and soaked their swords in the blood of enemies. As youngsters we listen to the boasts of warriors, hear their laughter as they recall battle, and their bellows of pride when their lord reminds them of some hard-won victory. And those youngsters who have not fought, who have yet to hold their shield against a neighbour’s shield in the wall, are despised and disparaged. So we practise. Day after day we practise, with spear, sword, and shield. We begin as children, learning blade-craft with wooden weapons, and hour after hour we hit and are hit. We fight against men who hurt us in order to teach us, we learn not to cry when the blood from a split skull sheets across the eyes, and slowly the skill of sword-craft builds.

Then the day comes when we are ordered to march with the men, not as children to hold the horses and to scavenge weapons after the battle, but as men. If we are lucky we have a battered old helmet and a leather jerkin, maybe even a coat of mail that hangs like a sack. We have a sword with a dented edge and a shield that is scored by enemy blades. We are almost men, not quite warriors, and on some fateful day we meet an enemy for the first time and we hear the chants of battle, the threatening clash of blades on shields, and we begin to learn that the poets are wrong and that the proud songs lie. Even before the shield walls meet, some men shit themselves. They shiver with fear. They drink mead and ale. Some boast, but most are quiet unless they join a chant of hate. Some men tell jokes, and the laughter is nervous. Others vomit. Our battle leaders harangue us, tell us of the deeds of our ancestors, of the filth that is the enemy, of the fate our women and children face unless we win, and between the shield walls the heroes strut, challenging us to single combat, and you look at the enemy’s champions and they seem invincible. They are big men; grim-faced, gold-hung, shining in mail, confident, scornful, savage.