The Last Kingdom (10 page)

I clutched Thor’s hammer. “I will tell the truth,” I said, “I swear it. And I’m a Dane now! You’ve told me that! You say I’m a Dane!”

Ragnar began to take me seriously. He knelt to look into my face. “Are you really a Dane?” he asked.

“I’m a Dane,” I said, and at that moment I meant it. At other times I was sure I was a Northumbrian, a secret sceadugengan hidden among the Danes, and in truth I was confused. I loved Ragnar as a father, was fond of Ravn, wrestled and raced and played with Rorik when he was well enough, and all of them treated me as one of them. I was just from another tribe. There were three main tribes among the Northmen—the Danes, the Norse, and the Svear—but Ragnar said there were others, like the Getes, and he was not sure where the Northmen ended and the others began, but suddenly he was worried about me. “I’m a Dane,” I repeated forcibly, “and who better than me to spy on them? I speak their language!”

“You’re a boy,” Ragnar said, and I thought he was refusing to let me go, but instead he was getting used to the idea. “No one will suspect a boy,” he went on. He still stared at me, then stood and glanced again at the two bodies where ravens were pecking at the severed heads. “Are you sure, Uhtred?”

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll ask the brothers,” he said, and he did, and Ivar and Ubba must have agreed for they let me go. It was after dark when the gate was opened and I slipped out. Now, I thought, I am a shadow-walker at last, though in truth the journey needed no supernatural skills for there was a slew of camp fires in the Mercian and West Saxon lines to light the way. Ragnar had advised me to skirt the big encampment and see if there was an easy way in at the back, but instead I walked straight toward the nearest fires that lay behind the felled trees that served as the English protective wall, and beyond that black tangle I could see the dark shapes of sentries outlined by the camp fires. I was nervous. For months I had been treasuring the idea of the sceadugengan, and here I was, out in the dark, and not far away there were headless bodies and my imagination invented a similar fate for myself. Why? One small part of me knew I could walk into the camp and say who I was, then demand to be taken to Burghred or to Æthelred, yet I had spoken the truth to Ragnar. I would go back, and I would tell the truth. I had promised that, and to a boy promises are solemn things, buttressed by the dread of divine revenge. I would choose my own tribe in time, but that time had not yet come, and so I crept across the field feeling very small and vulnerable, my heart thumping against my ribs, and my soul consumed by the importance of what I did.

And halfway to the Mercian camp I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I had the sensation I was being followed and I twisted, listened, and stared, and saw nothing but the black shapes that shudder in the night, but like a hare I sprinted to one side, dropped suddenly, and listened again, and this time I was sure I heard a footfall in the grass. I waited, watched, saw nothing, and crept on until I reached the Mercian barricade and I waited again there, but heard nothing more behind me and decided I had been imagining things. I had also been worrying that I would not be able to pass the Mercian obstacles, but in the end it was simple enough because a big felled tree left plenty of space for a boy to wriggle through its branches, and I did it slowly, making no noise, then ran on into the camp and was almost immediately challenged by a sentry. “Who are you?” The man snarled and I could see the firelight reflecting from a glittering spear head that was being run toward me.

“Osbert,” I said, using my old name.

“A boy?” The man checked, surprised.

“Needed a piss.”

“Hell, boy, what’s wrong with pissing outside your shelter?”

“My master doesn’t like it.”

“Who’s your master?” The spear had been lifted and the man was peering at me in the small light from the fires.

“Beocca,” I said. It was the first name that came to my head.

“The priest?”

That surprised me, and I hesitated, but then nodded and that satisfied the man. “Best get back to him then,” he said.

“I’m lost.”

“Shouldn’t come all this way to piss on my sentry post then, should you?” he said, then pointed. “It’s that way, boy.”

So I walked openly through the camp, past the fires and past the small shelters where men snored. A couple of dogs barked at me. Horses whinnied. Somewhere a flute sounded and a woman sang softly. Sparks flew up from the dying fires.

The sentry had pointed me toward the West Saxon lines. I knew that because the dragon banner was hung outside a great tent that was lit by a larger fire, and I moved toward that tent for lack of anywhere else to go. I was looking for ladders, but saw none. A child cried in a shelter, a woman moaned, and some men sang near a fire. One of the singers saw me, shouted a challenge, and then realized I was just a boy and waved me away. I was close to the big fire now, the one that lit the front of the bannered tent, and I skirted it, going toward the darkness behind the tent that was lit from within by candles or lanterns. Two men stood guard at the tent’s front and voices murmured from inside, but no one noticed me as I slipped through the shadows, still looking for ladders. Ragnar had said the ladders would be stored together, either at the heart of the camp or close to its edge, but I saw none. Instead I heard sobbing.

I had reached the back of the big tent and was hiding beside a great stack of firewood and, judging by the stink, was close to a latrine. I crouched and saw a man kneeling in the open space between the woodpile and the big tent and it was that man who was sobbing. He was also praying and sometimes beating his chest with his fists. I was astonished, even alarmed by what he did, but I lay on my belly like a snake and wriggled in the shadows to get closer to see what else he might do.

He groaned as if in pain, raised his hands to the sky, then bent forward as if worshipping the earth. “Spare me, God,” I heard him say, “spare me. I am a sinner.” He vomited then, though he did not sound drunk, and after he had spewed up he moaned. I sensed he was a young man. Then a flap of the tent lifted and a wash of candlelight spilled across the grass. I froze, still as a log, and saw that it was indeed a young man who was so miserable, and then also saw, to my astonishment, that the person who had lifted the tent flap was Father Beocca. I had thought it a coincidence that there should be two priests with that name, but it was no coincidence at all. It was indeed red-haired, cross-eyed Beocca and he was here, in Mercia.

“My lord,” Beocca said, dropping the flap and casting darkness over the young man.

“I am a sinner, father,” the man said. He had stopped sobbing, perhaps because he did not want Beocca to see such evidence of weakness, but his voice was full of sadness. “I am a grievous sinner.”

“We are all sinners, my lord.”

“A grievous sinner,” the young man repeated, ignoring Beocca’s solace. “And I am married!”

“Salvation lies in remorse, my lord.”

“Then, God knows, I should be redeemed for my remorse would fill the sky.” He lifted his head to stare at the stars. “The flesh, father,” he groaned, “the flesh.”

Beocca walked toward me, stopped, and turned. He was almost close enough for me to touch, but he had no idea I was there. “God sends temptation to test us, my lord,” he said quietly.

“He sends women to test us,” the young man said harshly, “and we fail, and then he sends the Danes to punish us for our failure.”

“His way is hard,” Beocca said, “and no one has ever doubted it.”

The young man, still kneeling, bowed his head. “I should never have married, father. I should have joined the church. Gone to a monastery.”

“And God would have found a great servant in you, my lord, but he had other plans for you. If your brother dies…”

“Pray God he does not! What sort of king would I be?”

“God’s king, my lord.”

So that, I thought, was Alfred. That was the very first time I ever saw him or heard his voice and he never knew. I lay in the grass, listening, as Beocca consoled the prince for yielding to temptation. It seemed Alfred had humped a servant girl and, immediately afterward, had been overcome by physical pain and what he called spiritual torment.

“What you must do, my lord,” Beocca said, “is bring the girl into your service.”

“No!” Alfred protested.

A harp began to play in the tent and both men checked to listen, then Beocca crouched by the unhappy prince and put a hand on his shoulder. “Bring the girl into your service,” Beocca repeated, “and resist her. Lay that tribute before God, let him see your strength, and he will reward you. Thank God for tempting you, lord, and praise him when you resist the temptation.”

“God will kill me,” Alfred said bitterly. “I swore I wouldn’t do it again. Not after Osferth.” Osferth? The name meant nothing to me. Later, much later, I discovered Osferth was Alfred’s bastard son, whelped on another servant girl. “I prayed to be spared the temptation,” Alfred went on, “and to be afflicted with pain as a reminder, and as a distraction, and God in his mercy made me sick, but still I yielded. I am the most miserable of sinners.”

“We are all sinners,” Beocca said, his good hand still on Alfred’s shoulder, “and we are all fallen short of the glory of God.”

“None has fallen as far as me,” Alfred moaned.

“God sees your remorse,” Beocca said, “and he will lift you up. Welcome the temptation, lord,” he went on urgently, “welcome it, resist it, and give thanks to God when you succeed. And God will reward you, lord, he will reward you.”

“By removing the Danes?” Alfred asked bitterly.

“He will, my lord, he will.”

“But not by waiting,” Alfred said, and now there was a sudden hardness in his voice that made Beocca draw away from him. Alfred stood, towering over the priest. “We should attack them!”

“Burghred knows his business,” Beocca said soothingly, “and so does your brother. The pagans will starve, my lord, if that is God’s will.”

So I had my answer, and it was that the English were not planning an assault, but rather hoped to starve Snotengaham into surrender. I dared not carry that answer straight back to the town, not while Beocca and Alfred were so close to me, and so I stayed and listened as Beocca prayed with the prince and then, when Alfred was calm, the two moved back to the tent and went inside.

And I went back. It took a long time, but no one saw me. I was a true sceadugengan that night, moving among the shadows like a specter, climbing the hill to the town until I could run the last hundred paces and I called Ragnar’s name and the gate creaked open and I was back in Snotengaham.

Ragnar took me to see Ubba when the sun rose and, to my surprise, Weland was there, Weland the snake, and he gave me a sour look, though not so sour as the scowl on Ubba’s dark face. “So what did you do?” he growled.

“I saw no ladders…” I began.

“What did you do?” Ubba snarled, and so I told my tale from the beginning, how I had crossed the fields and had thought I was being followed, and had dodged like a hare, then gone through the barricade and spoken to the sentry. Ubba stopped me there and looked at Weland. “Well?”

Weland nodded. “I saw him through the barricade, lord, heard him speak to a man.”

So Weland had followed me? I looked at Ragnar, who shrugged. “My lord Ubba wanted a second man to go,” he explained, “and Weland offered.”

Weland gave me a smile, the kind of smile the devil might give a bishop entering hell. “I could not get through the barrier, lord,” he told Ubba.

“But you saw the boy go through?”

“And heard him speak to the sentry, lord, though what he said I could not tell.”

“Did you see ladders?” Ubba asked Weland.

“No, lord, but I only skirted the fence.”

Ubba stared at Weland, making him uncomfortable, then transferred his dark eyes to me and made me uncomfortable. “So you got through the barrier,” he said. “So what did you see?”I told him how I had found the large tent, and of the conversation I had overheard, how Alfred had wept because he had sinned, and how he had wanted to attack the town and how the priest had said that God would starve the Danes if that was his will, and Ubba believed me because he reckoned a boy could not make up the story of the servant girl and the prince.

Besides, I was amused, and it showed. Alfred, I thought, was a pious weakling, a weeping penitent, a pathetic nothing, and even Ubba smiled as I described the sobbing prince and the earnest priest. “So,” Ubba asked me, “no ladders?”

“I saw none, lord.”

He stared at me with that fearsomely bearded face and then, to my astonishment, he took off one of his arm rings and tossed it to me. “You’re right,” he told Ragnar, “he is a Dane.”

“He’s a good boy,” Ragnar said.

“Sometimes the mongrel you find in the field turns out to be useful,” Ubba said, then beckoned to an old man who had been sitting on a stool in the room’s corner.

The old man was called Storri and, like Ravn, he was a skald, but also a sorcerer and Ubba would do nothing without his advice, and now, without saying a word, Storri took a sheaf of thin white sticks, each the length of a man’s hand, and he held them just above the floor, muttered a prayer to Odin, then let them go. They made a small clattering noise as they fell, and then Storri leaned forward to look at the pattern they made.

They were runesticks. Many Danes consulted the runesticks, but Storri’s skill at reading the signs was famous, and Ubba was a man so riddled with superstition that he would do nothing unless he believed the gods were on his side. “Well?” he asked impatiently.

Storri ignored Ubba, instead he stared at the score of sticks, seeing if he could detect a rune letter or a significant pattern in their random scatter. He moved around the small pile, still peering, then nodded slowly. “It could not be better,” he said.

“The boy told the truth?’

“The boy told the truth,” Storri said, “but the sticks talk of today, not of last night, and they tell me all is well.”

“Good.” Ubba stood and took his sword from a peg on the wall. “No ladders,” he said to Ragnar, “so no assault. We shall go.”