The Pale Horseman (16 page)

'Up to our arses again,' Leofric said.

Men cheered. They liked a fight to the death, and it was much better entertainment than
listening to Alfred's harpist chant the psalms. Alfred hesitated, and I saw, Ælswith look
from me to Steapa, and she must have thought him the greater warrior for she leaned forward,
touched Alfred's elbow, and whispered urgently.

And the king nodded. 'Granted,' he said. He sounded weary, as if he was dispirited by the
lies and the insults. 'You will fight tomorrow. Swords and shields, nothing else.' He held up
a hand to stop the cheering. 'My lord Wulfhere?'

'Sire?' Wulfhere struggled to his feet.

'You will arrange the fight. And may God grant victory to the truth.' Alfred stood, pulled
his robe about him and left.

And Steapa, for the first time since I had seen him, smiled.

'You're a damned fool,' Leofric told me. He had been released from his chains and allowed
to spend the evening with me. Haesten was there, as was Iseult and my men who had been brought
from the town. We were lodged in the king's compound, in a cattle byre that stank of dung, but
I did not notice the smell. It was Twelfth Night so there was the great feast in the king's
hall, but we were left out in the cold, watched there by two of the royal guards.

'Steapa's good,' Leofric warned me.

'I'm good.'

'He's better,' Leofric said bluntly. 'He'll slaughter you.'

'He won't,' Iseult said calmly.

'Damn it, he's good!' Leofric insisted, and I believed him.

'It's that God-damned monk's fault,' I said bitterly. 'He went bleating to Alfred, didn't
he?' In truth, Asser had been sent by the King of Dyfed to assure the West Saxons that Dyfed
was not planning war, but Asser had taken the opportunity of his embassy to recount the
tale of the Eftwyrd and from that it was a small jump to conclude that we had stayed with Svein
while he attacked Cynuit. Alfred had no proof of our guilt, but Odda the Younger had seen a
chance to destroy me and so persuaded Steapa to lie.

'Now Steapa will kill you,' Leofric grumbled, 'whatever she says.'

Iseult did not bother to answer him. She was using handfuls of grubby straw to clean my
mail coat. The armour had been fetched from the Corncrake tavern and given to me, but I would
have to wait till morning to get my weapons, which meant they would not be newly sharpened.
Steapa, because he served Odda the Younger, was one of the king's bodyguard, so he would have
all night to put an edge on his sword. The royal kitchens had sent us food, though I had no
appetite.

'Just take it slow in the morning,' Leofric told me.

'Slow?'

'You fight in a rage,' he said, 'and Steapa's always calm.'

'So better to get in a rage,' I said.

'That's what he wants. He'll fend you off and fend you off and wait till you're tired, then
he'll finish you off. It's how he fights.'

Harald told us the same thing. Harald was the shire-reeve of Defnascir, the widower who
had summoned me to the court in Exanceaster, but he had also fought alongside us at Cynuit
and that makes a bond, and sometime in the dark he splashed through the rain and mud and came
into the light of the small fire that lit the cattle shed without warming it. He stopped in
the doorway and gazed at me reproachfully.

'Were you with Svein at Cynuit?' he asked.

'No,' I said.

'I didn't think so.' Harald came into the byre and sat by the fire. The two royal guards
were at the door and he ignored them, and that was interesting. All of them served Odda, and
the young ealdorman would not be pleased to hear that Harald had come to us, yet plainly
Harald trusted the two guards not to tell, which suggested that there was unhappiness in
Odda's ranks. Harald put a pot of ale on the floor.

'Steapa's sitting at the king's table,' he said.

'So he's eating badly,' I said.

Harald nodded, but did not smile. 'It's not much of a feast,' he admitted. He stared into
the fire for a moment, then looked at me. 'How's Mildrith?'

'Well.'

'She is a dear girl,' he said, then glanced at Iseult's dark beauty before staring into
the fire again.

'There will be a church service at dawn,' he said, 'and after that you and Steapa will
fight.'

'Where?'

'In a field on the other side of the river,' he said, then pushed the pot of ale towards
me. 'He's lefthanded.'

I could not remember fighting against a man who held his sword in his left hand, but nor
could I see a disadvantage in it. We would both have our shields facing the other man's
shield instead of his weapon, but that would be a problem to both of us. I shrugged.

'He's used to it,' Harald explained, 'and you're not. And he wears mail down to here,' he
touched his calf, 'and he has an iron strip on his left boot.'

'Because that's his vulnerable foot?'

'He plants it forward,' Harald said, 'inviting attack, then chops at your sword arm.'

'So he's a hard man to kill,' I said mildly.

'No one's done it yet,' Harald said gloomily.

'You don't like him?'

He did not answer at first but drank ale then passed the pot to Leofric. 'I like the old
man,' he said, meaning Odda the Elder. 'He's foul-tempered, but he's fair enough. But the
son?' he shook his head sadly. 'I think the son is untested. Steapa? I don't dislike him, but
he's like a hound. He only knows how to kill.'

I stared into the feeble fire, looking for a sign from the gods in the small flames, but
none came, or none that I saw.

'He must be worried though,' Leofric said.

'Steapa?' Harald asked, 'why should he be worried?'

'Uhtred killed Ubba.'

Harald shook his head. 'Steapa doesn't think enough to be worried. He just knows he'll kill
Uhtred tomorrow.'

I thought back to the fight with Ubba. He had been a great warrior, with a reputation that
glowed wherever Norsemen sailed, and I had killed him, but the truth was that he had put a
foot into the spilled guts of a dying man and slipped. His leg had shot sideways, he had lost
his balance and I had managed to cut the tendons in his arm. I touched the hammer amulet and
thought that the gods had sent me a sign after all.

'An iron strip in his boot?' I asked.

Harald nodded. 'He doesn't care how much you attack him. He knows you're coming from his
left and he'll block most of your attacks with his sword. Big sword, heavy thing. But some blows
will get by and he won't care. You'll waste them on iron. Heavy mail, helmet, hoot, doesn't
matter. It'll be like hitting an oak tree, and after a while you'll make a mistake. He'll be
bruised and you'll lie dead.'

He was right, I thought. Striking an armoured man with a sword rarely achieved much except
to make a bruise because the edge would be stopped by mail or helmet. Mail cannot be chopped
open by a sword, which was why so many men carried axes into battle, but the rules of trial
by combat said the fight had to be with swords. A sword lunge would pierce mail, but Steapa was
not going to make himself an easy target for a lunge.

'Is he quick?' I asked.

'Quick enough,' Harald said, then shrugged. 'Not as quick as you,' he added grudgingly,
'but he isn't slow.'

'What does the money say?' Leofric asked, though he surely knew the answer.

'No one's wagering a penny on Uhtred,' Harald said.

'You should,' I retorted.

He smiled at that, but I knew he would not take the advice. 'The big money,' he said, 'is
what Odda will give Steapa when he kills you. A hundred shillings.'

'Uhtred's not worth it,' Leofric said with rough humour.

'Why does he want me dead so badly?' I wondered aloud. It could not be Mildrith, I thought,
and the argument over who had killed Ubba was long in the past, yet still Odda the Younger
conspired against me.

Harald paused a long time before answering. He had his bald head bowed and I thought he
was in prayer, but then he looked up. ‘You threaten him,' he said quietly.

'I haven't even seen him for months,' I protested, 'so how do I threaten him?'

Harald paused again, choosing his words carefully. 'The king is frequently ill,' he said
after the pause, 'and who can say how long he will live? And if, God forbid, he should die
soon, then the Witan will not choose his infant son to be king. They'll choose a nobleman
with a reputation made on the battlefield. They'll choose a man who can stand up to the
Danes.'

'Odda?' I laughed at the thought of Odda as king.

'Who else?' Harald asked. 'But if you were to stand before the Witan and swear an oath to
the truth about the battle where Ubba died, they might not choose him. So you threaten him,
and he fears you because of that.'

'So now he's paying Steapa to chop you to bits,' Leofric added gloomily.

Harald left. He was a decent man, honest and hardworking, and he had taken a risk by
coming to see me, and I had been poor company for I did not appreciate the gesture he
made. It was plain he thought I must die in the morning, and he had done his best to prepare me
for the fight, but despite Iseult's confident prediction that I would live I did not sleep
well. I was worried, and it was cold. The rain turned to sleet in the night and the wind whipped
into the byre. By dawn the wind and sleet had stopped and instead there was a mist shrouding
the buildings and icy water dripping from the mossy thatch. I made a poor breakfast of damp
bread and it was while I was eating that Father Beocca came and said Alfred wished to speak
with me.

I was sour. 'You mean he wants to pray with me?'

'He wants to speak with you,' Beocca insisted and, when I did not move, he stamped his
lamed foot.

‘It is not a request, Uhtred. It is a royal order!'

I put on my mail, not because it was time to arm for the fight, but because its leather
lining offered some warmth on a cold morning. The mail was not very clean, despite Iseult's
efforts. Most men wore their hair short, but I liked the Danish way of leaving it long and so
I tied it behind with a lace and Iseult plucked the straw scraps from it.

'We must hurry,' Beocca said and I followed him through the mud past the great hall and the
newly built church to some smaller buildings made of timber that had still not weathered
grey. Alfred's father had used Cippanhamm as a hunting lodge, but Alfred was expanding
it. The church had been his first new building, and he had built that even before he repaired
and extended the palisade, and that was an indication of his priorities. Even now, when
the nobility of Wessex was gathered just a day's march from the Danes, there seemed to be
more churchmen than soldiers in the place, and that was another indication of how Alfred
thought to protect his realm.

'The king is gracious,' Beocca hissed at me as we went through a door, 'so be humble.'

Beocca knocked on another door, did not wait for an answer, but gashed it open and
indicated I should step inside. He did not follow me, but closed the door, leaving me in a
gloomy half darkness.

A pair of beeswax candles flickered on an altar and by their light I saw two men kneeling
in front of the plain wooden cross that stood between the candles. The men had their backs to
me, but I recognised Alfred by his fur-trimmed blue cloak. The second man was a monk. They
were both praying silently and I waited. The room was small, evidently a private chapel,
and its only furniture was the draped altar and a kneeling stool on which was a closed
book.

'In the name of the Father,' Alfred broke the silence.

'And of the Son,' the monk said, and he spoke English with an accent and I recognised the
voice of the Ass.

'And of the Holy Ghost,' Alfred concluded, 'amen.'

'Amen,' Asser echoed, and both men stood, their faces suffused with the joy of devout
Christians who have said their prayers well, and Alfred blinked as though he were surprised to
see me, though he must have heard Beocca's knocking and the sound of the door opening and
closing.

'I trust you slept well, Uhtred?' he said.

'I trust you did, lord.'

'The pains kept me awake,' Alfred said, touching his belly, then he went to one side of the
room and hauled open a big pair of wooden shutters, flooding the chapel with a wan, misty
light. The window looked onto a courtyard and I was aware of men out there. The king
shivered, for it was freezing in the chapel.

'It is Saint Cedd's feast day,' he told me.

I said nothing.

You have heard of Saint Cedd?' he asked me and, when my silence betrayed ignorance, he
smiled indulgently. 'He was an East Anglian, am I not right, brother?'

'The most blessed Cedd was indeed an East Angle, lord,' Asser confirmed.

'And his mission was in Lundene,' Alfred went on, 'but he concluded his days at
Lindisfarena. You must know that house, Uhtred?'

'I know it, lord,' I said. The island was a short ride front Bebbanburg and not so long
before I had ridden to its monastery with Earl Ragnar and watched the monks die beneath
Danish swords. 'I know it well,' I added.

'So Cedd is famous in your homeland?'

'I've not heard of him, lord.'

'I think of him as a symbol,' Alfred said, 'a man who was born in East Anglia, did his
life's work in Mercia and died in Northumbria.' He brought his long, pale hands together so
that the fingers embraced. 'The Saxons of England, Uhtred, gathered together before
God.'

'And united in joyful prayer with the Britons,' Asser added piously.

'I beseech Almighty God for that happy outcome,' the king said, smiling at me, and by now
I recognised what he was saying. He stood there, looking so humble, with no crown, no great
necklace, no arm rings, nothing but a small garnet brooch holding the cloak at his neck, and
he spoke of a happy outcome, but what he was really seeing was the Saxon people gathered
under one king. A king of Wessex. Alfred's piety hid a monstrous ambition.

'We must learn from the saints,' Alfred told me. 'Their lives are a guide to the darkness
that surrounds us, and Saint Cedd's holy example teaches that we must be united, so I am
loathe to shed Saxon blood on Saint Cedd's feast day.'