The Lords of the North (32 page)

Aidan glanced across at Guthred as if expecting help from the king, but Guthred was still
motionless, so Aidan had to confront me alone. 'I stood beside her in Lord Ælfric's
place,' he said, 'so in the eyes of the church she is married.'

'Did you hump her as well?' I demanded, and the priests and monks hissed their
disapproval.

'Of course not.' Aidan said, offended.

'If no one's ridden her,' I said, 'then she's not married. A mare isn't broken until
she's saddled and ridden. Have you been ridden?' I asked Gisela.

'Not yet.' she said.

'She is married.' Aidan insisted.

'You stood at the altar in my uncle's place,' I said, 'and you call that a marriage?'

'It is.' Beocca said quietly.

'So if I kill you,' I suggested to Aidan, ignoring Beocca, 'she'll be a widow?'

Aidan pushed one of the warriors towards me and, like a fool, the man came, and
Serpent-Breath slashed once, very hard, and his sword was knocked away and my blade was at
his belly. 'You want your guts strewn across the floor?' I asked him gently. 'I am Uhtred,' I
said, my voice hard and boastful now, 'I am the Lord of Bebbanburg and the man who killed
Ubba Lothbrokson beside the sea.' I prodded my blade, driving him back. 'I have killed
more men than I could count,' I told him, 'but don't let that stop you fighting me. You want
to boast that you killed me? That piece of toad-snot, Ælfric, will be pleased if you did.
He'll reward you.' I jabbed again. 'Go on,' I said, my anger rising, 'try.' He did nothing
of the sort. Instead he took another faltering backwards step and the other warrior did
the same. That was hardly surprising, for Ragnar and Steapa had joined me, and behind
them was a bunch of war-Danes who were dressed in mail and carrying axes and swords. I
looked at Aidan. 'You can crawl back to my uncle,' I said, 'and tell him he has lost his
bride.'

'Uhtred!' Guthred had at last managed to speak.

I ignored him. Instead I walked across the church to where the priests and monks huddled.
Gisela came with me, still holding my arm and I gave her Serpent-Breath to hold, then
stopped in front of Jaenberht. 'You think Gisela is married?' I asked him. 'She is.' he said
defiantly. 'The bride-price is paid and the union solemnised.'

'Bride-price?' I looked at Gisela. 'What did they pay you?'

'We paid them.' she said. 'They were given one thousand shillings and Saint Oswald's
arm.'

'Saint Oswald's arm?' I almost laughed.

'Abbot Eadred found it.' Gisela said drily. 'Dug it out of a pauper's graveyard, more
like.' I said.

Jaenberht bristled. 'All has been done,' he said, 'according to the laws of man and of
the holy church. The woman,' he looked sneeringly at Gisela, 'is married.'

There was something about his narrow, supercilious face that irritated me, so I
reached out and grasped his tonsured hair. He tried to resist, but he was feeble and I
jerked his head forward and down, then brought my right knee up hard so that his face was
smashed into the mail of my thigh. I hauled him upright and looked into his bloody face. 'Is
she married?'

'She is married,' he said, his voice thickened by the blood in his mouth, and I jerked his
head down again and this time I felt his teeth break against my knee.

'Is she married?' I asked. He said nothing this time, so I yanked his head down again and
felt his nose being crunched on my mail-clad knee. 'I asked you a question,' I said.

'She is married.' Jaenberht insisted. He was shaking with anger, wincing with pain,
and the priests were protesting at what I was doing, but I was lost in my own abrupt rage.
This was my uncle's tame monk, the man who had negotiated with Guthred to make me a slave.
He had conspired against me. He had tried to destroy me and that realisation made my fury
ungovernable. It was a sudden blood-red anger, fed by the memory of the humiliations I
had suffered on Sverri's Trader, so I pulled Jaenberht's head towards me again, but this
time, instead of kneeing his face, I drew Wasp-Sting, my short-sword, and cut his throat.
One slash. It took a heartbeat to draw the sword, and in that instant I saw the monk's eyes
widen in disbelief, and I confess that I half disbelieved what

I was doing myself. But I did it anyway. I cut his throat and Wasp-Sting's steel scraped
against tendon and gristle, then sliced through their resistance so that blood sheeted
down my mail coat. Jaenberht, shuddering and bubbling, collapsed onto the wet
rushes.

The monks and priests shrieked like women. They had been appalled when I had hammered
Jaenberht's face, but none had expected outright murder. Even I was surprised by what my
anger had done, but I felt no regret, nor did I see it as murder. I saw it as revenge and
there was an exquisite pleasure in it. Every pull on Sverri's oar and every blow I had
taken from Sverri's crewmen had been in that sword-cut. I looked down at Jaenberht's
dying twitches, then up at his companion, Brother Ida. Is Gisela married?' I demanded
of him.

'Under church law,' Ida began, stammering slightly, then he paused and looked at
Wasp-Sting's blade. 'She is not married, lord,' he went on hurriedly,

'until the marriage is consummated.'

'Are you married?' I asked Gisela.

'Of course not,' she said.

I stooped and wiped Wasp-Sting clean on the skirts of Jaenberht's robe. He was dead now,
his eyes still showing the surprise of it. One priest, braver than the rest, knelt to pray
over the monk's corpse, but the other churchmen looked like sheep confronted by a wolf.
They gaped at me, too horrified to protest. Beocca was opening and closing his mouth,
saying nothing. I sheathed Wasp-Sting, took Serpent-Breath from Gisela and together we
turned towards her brother. He was staring at Jaenberht's corpse and at the blood that had
splashed across the floor and onto his sister's skirts, and he must have thought I was about
to do the same to him, for he put a hand to his own sword. But then I pointed Serpent-Breath
at Ragnar. This is the Earl Ragnar,' I said to Guthred, 'and he's here to fight for you. You
don't deserve his help. If it were up to me you'd go back to wearing slave shackles and
emptying King Eochaid's shit-pail.'

'He is the Lord's anointed!' Father Hrothweard protested. 'Show respect!'

I hefted Wasp-Sting. 'I never liked you either.' I said. Beocca, appalled at my
behaviour, thrust me aside and offered Guthred a bow. Beocca looked pale, and no wonder,
for he had just seen a monk murdered, but not even that could put him off his glorious task
of being the West Saxon ambassador. 'I bring you greetings,' he said, 'from Alfred of
Wessex who...

'Later, father.' I said.

'I bring you Christian greetings from . .' Beocca tried again, then squealed because I
dragged him backwards. The priests and monks evidently thought I was going to kill him, for
some of them covered their eyes.

'Later, father.' I said, letting go of him, then I looked at Guthred. 'So what do you do
now?' I asked him.

'Do?'

'What do you do? We've taken away the men guarding you, so you're free to go. So what do
you do?'

'What we do,' it was Hrothweard who answered, 'is punish you!' He pointed at me and the
anger came on him. He shouted that I was a murderer, a pagan and a sinner and that God
would take his vengeance on Guthred if I were allowed to remain unpunished. Queen Osburh
looked terrified as Hrothweard screamed his threats. He was all energy and wild hair and
spluttering passion as he shouted that I had killed a holy brother. 'The only hope for
Haliwerfolkland,' he ranted, 'is our alliance with Ælfric of Bebbanburg. Send the Lady
Gisela to Lord Ælfric and kill the pagan!' He pointed at me. Gisela was still beside me,
her hand clutching mine. I said nothing.

Abbot Eadred, who now looked as old as the dead Saint Cuthbert, tried to bring calm to the
church. He held his hands aloft till there was silence, then he thanked Ragnar for killing
Kjartan's men. 'What we must do now, lord King,'

Eadred turned to Guthred, 'is carry the saint northwards. To Bebbanburg.'

'We must punish the murderer!' Hrothweard intervened.

'Nothing is more precious to our country than the body of the holy Cuthbert,'

Eadred said, ignoring Hrothweard's anger, 'and we must take it to a place of safety. We
should ride tomorrow, ride north, ride to the sanctuary of Bebbanburg.'

Aidan, Ælfric's steward, sought permission to speak. He had come south, he said, at some
risk and in good faith, and I had insulted him, his master and the peace of Northumbria,
but he would ignore the insults if Guthred were to take Saint Cuthbert and Gisela north to
Bebbanburg. 'It is only in Bebbanburg,' Aidan said, 'that the saint will be safe.'

'He must die,' Hrothweard insisted, thrusting a wooden cross towards me. Guthred was
nervous. 'If we ride north,' he said, 'Kjartan will oppose us.'

Eadred was ready for that objection. 'If the Earl Ragnar will ride with us, lord, then we
shall survive. The church will pay Earl Ragnar for that service.'

'But there will be no safety for any of us,' Hrothweard shouted, 'if a murderer is
permitted to live.' He pointed the wooden cross at me again. 'He is a murderer! A
murderer! Brother Jaenberht is a martyr!' The monks and priests shouted their support,
and Guthred only stopped their clamour by remembering that Father Beocca was an
ambassador. Guthred demanded silence and then invited Beocca to speak.

Poor Beocca. He had been practising for days, polishing his words, saying them aloud,
changing them and then changing them back. He had asked advice on his speech, rejected the
advice, declaimed the words endlessly, and now he delivered his formal greeting from
Alfred and I doubt Guthred heard a word of it, for he was just looking at me and at Gisela,
while Hrothweard was still hissing poison in his ear. But Beocca droned on, praising
Guthred and Queen Osburh, declaring that they were a godly light in the north and
generally boring anyone who might have been listening. Some of Guthred's warriors
mocked his speech by making faces or pretending to squint until Steapa, tired of their
cruelty, went to stand beside Beocca and put a hand on his sword hilt. Steapa was a kind
man, but he looked implacably violent. He was huge, for a start, and his skin seemed to
have been stretched too tight across his skull, so leaving him incapable of making any
expressions other than pure hatred and wolfish hunger. He glared around the room, daring
any man to belittle Beocca, and they all stayed silent and awed.

Beocca, of course, believed it was his eloquence that stilled them. He finished his
speech with a low bow to Guthred, then presented the gifts Alfred had sent. There was a book
which Alfred claimed to have translated from Latin into English, and maybe he had. It was
full of Christian homilies, Beocca said, and he bowed as he presented the heavy volume
that was enclosed in jewelled covers. Guthred turned the book this way and that, worked out
how to unclasp the cover and then looked at a page upside down and declared it was the most
valuable gift he had ever received. He said the same of the second gift, which was a sword.
It was a Frankish blade and the hilt was of silver and the pommel was a chunk of bright
crystal. The last gift was undoubtedly the most precious, for it was a reliquary of the
finest gold studded with bright garnets, and inside were hairs from the beard of Saint
Augustine of Contwaraburg. Even Abbot Eadred, the guardian of Northumbria's holiest
corpse, was impressed and leaned forward to touch the glittering gold. 'The king means a
message by these gifts,' Beocca said.

'Keep it short,' I muttered, and Gisela pressed my hand.

'I would be delighted to hear his message,' Guthred said politely. The book
represents learning,' Beocca said, 'for without learning a kingdom is a mere husk of
ignorant barbarism. The sword is the instrument by which we defend learning and protect
God's earthly kingdom, and its crystal stands for the inner eye which permits us to
discover our Saviour's will. And the hairs of the holy Augustine's beard, lord King,
remind us that without God we are nothing, and that without the holy church we are as chaff
in the wind. And Alfred of Wessex wishes you a long and learned life, a Godly rule and a
safe kingdom.' He bowed.

Guthred made a speech of thanks, but it ended plaintively. Would Alfred of Wessex send
Northumbria help?

'Help?' Beocca asked, not sure how else to respond.

'I need spears.' Guthred said, though how he thought he could last long enough for any West
Saxon troops to reach him was a mystery.

'He sent me.' I said in answer.

'Murderer!' Hrothweard spat. He would not give up.

'He sent me.' I said again, and I let go of Gisela's hand and went to join Beocca and
Steapa in the nave's centre. Beocca was making small flapping motions as if to tell me to
go away and keep quiet, but Guthred wanted to hear me. 'Over two years ago,' I reminded
Guthred, 'Ælfric became your ally and my freedom was the price for that alliance. He
promised you he would destroy Dunholm, yet I hear Dunholm still stands and that Kjartan
still lives. So much for 'Ælfric's promise. And yet you would put your faith in him again? You
think that if you give him your sister and a dead saint that 'Ælfric will fight for you?'

'Murderer!' Hrothweard hissed.

'Bebbanburg is still two days' march away,' I said, 'and to get there you need the Earl
Ragnar's help. But the Earl Ragnar is my friend, not yours. He has never betrayed me.'

Guthred's face jerked at the mention of betrayal.

'We don't need pagan Danes.' Hrothweard hissed at Guthred. 'We must rededicate ourselves
to God, lord King, here in the River Jordan, and God will see us safe through Kjartan's
land!'

The Jordan?' Ragnar asked behind me. 'Where's that?'

I thought the River Jordan was in the Christians' holy land, but it seemed it was here,
in Northumbria. The River Swale,' Hrothweard was shouting as if he addressed a
congregation of hundreds, 'was where the blessed Saint Paulinus baptised Edwin, our
country's first Christian king. Thousands of folk were baptised here. This is our holy
river! Our Jordan! If we dip our swords and spears in the Swale, then God will bless them. We
cannot be defeated!'