The Pale Horseman (23 page)

'Just go away!'

I went away, returning to the smaller island where Alfred sheltered and where Edward
lay dying. It was nightfall and the bishop's prayers to Saint Agnes had failed. Eanflaed told
me how Alewold had persuaded Alfred to give up one of his most precious relics, a feather
from the dove that Noah had released from the ark, Alewold cut the feather into two parts,
returning one part to the king, while the other was scorched on a clean pan and, when it was
reduced to ash, the scraps were stirred into a cup of holy water which, Ælswith forced her
son to drink. He had been wrapped in lambskin, for the lamb was the symbol of Saint Agnes who
had been a child martyr in Rome.

But neither feather nor lambskin had worked. If anything, Eanflaed said, the boy was
worse. Alewold was praying over him now. 'He's given him the last rites,' Eanflaed said. She
looked at me with tears in her eyes. 'Can Iseult help?'

‘The bishop won't allow it,' I said.

'He won't allow it?' she asked indignantly. 'He's not the one who's dying!'

So Iseult was summoned, and Alfred came from the but and Alewold, scenting heresy, came
with him. Edward was coughing again, the sound terrible in the evening silence. Alfred
flinched at the noise, then demanded to know if Iseult could cure his son's illness.

Iseult did not reply at once. Instead she turned and gazed across the swamp to where the
moon rose above the mists. 'The moon gets bigger,' she said.

'Do you know a cure?' Alfred pleaded.

'A growing moon is good,' Iseult said dully, then turned on him. 'But there will be a
price.'

'Whatever you want!' he said.

'Not a price for me,' she said, irritated that he had misunderstood her. 'But there's
always a price. One lives? Another must die.'

'Heresy!' Alewold intervened.

I doubt Alfred understood Iseult's last three words, or did not care what she meant, he
only snatched the tenuous hope that perhaps she could help.

'Can you cure my son?' he demanded.

She paused, then nodded. 'There is a way,' she said.

'What way?'

'My way.'

'Heresy!' Alewold warned again.

'Bishop!' Eanflaed said warningly, and the bishop looked abashed and fell silent.

'Now?' Alfred demanded of Iseult.

'Tomorrow night,' Iseult said. 'It takes time. There are things to do. If he lives till
nightfall tomorrow I can help. You must bring him to me at moonrise.'

'Not tonight?' Alfred pleaded.

'Tomorrow,' Iseult said firmly.

'Tomorrow is the Feast of Saint Vincent,' Alfred said, as though that might help, and
somehow the child survived that night and, next day, Saint Vincent's Day, Iseult went with me
to the eastern shore where we gathered lichen, burdock, celandine and mistletoe. She would
not let me use metal to scrape the lichen or cut the herbs, and before any was collected we
had to walk three times around the plants which, because it was winter, were poor and
shrivelled things. She also made me cut thorn boughs, and I was allowed to use a knife for
that because the thorns were evidently not as important as the lichen or herbs. I watched
the skyline as we worked, looking for any Danes, but if they patrolled the edge of the swamp
none appeared that day. It was cold, a gusting wind clutching at our clothes. It took a long
time to find the plants Iseult needed, but at last her pouch was full and I dragged the thorn
bushes hack to the island and took them into the hut where she instructed me to dig two
holes in the floor.

'They must be as deep as the child is tall,' she said, 'and as far apart from each other as
the length of your forearm.'

She would not tell me what the pits were for. She was subdued, very close to tears. She hung
the celandine and burdock from a roof beam, then pounded the lichen and the mistletoe into a
paste that she moistened with spittle and urine, and she chanted long charms in her own
language over the shallow wooden bowl. It all took a long time and sometimes she just sat
exhausted in the darkness beyond the hearth and rocked to and fro.

'I don't know if I can do it,' she said once.

'You can try,' I said helplessly.

'And if I fail,' she said, 'they will hate me more than ever.'

'They don't hate you,' I said.

'They think I am a sinner and a pagan,' she said, 'and they hate me.'

'So cure the child,' I said, 'and they will love you.'

I could not dig the pits as deep as she wanted, for the soil became ever wetter and, just
a couple of feet down, the two holes were filling with brackish water.

'Make them wider,' Iseult ordered me, 'wide enough so the child can crouch in them.'

I did as she said, and then she made me join the two holes by knocking a passage in the damp
earth wall that divided them. That had to be done carefully to ensure that an arch of soil
remained to leave a tunnel between the holes.

'It is wrong,' Iseult said, not talking of my excavation, but of the charm she planned to
work.

'Someone will die, Uhtred. Somewhere a child will die so this one will live.'

'How do you know that?' I asked.

'Because my twin died when I was born,' she said, 'and I have his power. But if I use it he
reaches from the dark world and takes the power back.'

Darkness fell and the boy went on coughing, though to my ears it sounded feebler now as
though there was not enough life left in his small body. Alewold was praying still. Iseult
crouched in the door of our but, staring into the rain, and when Alfred came close she waved
him away.

'He's dying,' the king said helplessly.

'Not yet,' Iseult said, 'not yet.'

Edward's breath rasped. We could all hear it, and we all thought every harsh breath would be
his last, and still Iseult did not move, and then at last a rift showed in the rain clouds and a
feeble wash of moonlight touched the marsh and she told me to fetch the boy.

Ælswith did not want Edward to go. She wanted him cured, but when I said Iseult insisted
on working her charms alone, Ælswith wailed that she did not want her son to die apart from his
mother. Her crying upset Edward who began to cough again. Eanflaed stroked his
forehead.

'Can she do it?' she demanded of me.

'Yes,' I said and did not know if I spoke the truth.

Eanflaed took hold of Ælswith's shoulders. 'Let the boy go, my lady,' she said, 'let him
go.'

'He'll die!'

'Let him go,' Eanflaed said, and Ælswith collapsed into the whore's arms and I picked up
Alfred's son who felt as light as the feather that had not cured him. He was hot, yet
shivering, and I wrapped him in a wool robe and carried him to Iseult.

'You can't stay here,' she told me. 'Leave him with me.'

I waited with Leofric in the dark. Iseult insisted we could not watch through the hut's
entrance, but I dropped my helmet outside the door and, by crouching under the eaves I could
just see a reflection of what happened inside. The small rain died and the moon grew
brighter.

The boy coughed. Iseult stripped him naked and rubbed her herb paste on his chest, and then
she began to chant in her own tongue, an endless chant it seemed, rhythmic, sad and so
monotonous that it almost put me to sleep. Edward cried once, and the crying turned to
coughing and his mother screamed from her hut that she wanted him back, and Alfred calmed her
and then came to join us and I waved him down so that he would not shadow the moonlight before
Iseult's door.

I peered at the helmet and saw, in the small reflected firelight, that Iseult, naked
herself now, was pushing the boy into one of the pits and then, still chanting, she drew him
through the earth passage. Her chanting stopped and, instead, she began to pant, then scream,
then pant again. She moaned, and Alfred made the sign of the cross, and then there was silence
and I could not see properly, but suddenly Iseult cried aloud, a cry of relief, as if a
great pain was ended, and I dimly saw her pull the naked boy out of the second pit. She laid
him on her bed and he was silent as she crammed the thorn bushes into the tunnel of earth.
Then she lay beside the boy and covered herself with my large cloak.

There was silence. I waited, and waited, and still there was silence. And the silence
stretched until I understood that Iseult was sleeping, and the boy was sleeping too, or else
he was dead, and I picked up the helmet and went to Leofric's hut.

'Shall I fetch him?' Alfred asked nervously.

'No.'

'His mother ...' he began.

'… must wait till morning, lord.'

'What can I tell her?'

'That her son is not coughing, lord.'

Ælswith screamed that Edward was dead, but Eanflaed and Alfred calmed her, and we all
waited, and still there was silence, and in the end I fell asleep.

I woke in the dawn. It was raining as if the world was about to end, a torrential grey rain
that swept in vast curtains from the Saefern Sea, a rain that drummed on the ground and poured
off the reed thatch and made streams on the small island where the little huts crouched. I went
to the door of Leofric's shelter and saw Ælswith watching from her doorway. She looked
desperate, like a mother about to hear that her child had died, and there was nothing but
silence from Iseult's hut, and Ælswith began to weep, the terrible tears of a bereaved
mother, and then there was a strange sound. At first I could not hear properly, for the
seething rain was loud, but then I realised the sound was laughter. A child's laughter, and a
heartbeat later Edward, still naked as an egg, and all muddy from his rebirth through the
earth's passage, ran from Iseult's hut and went to his mother.

'Dear God,' Leofric said.

Iseult, when I found her, was weeping, and would not be consoled.

'I need you,' I told her harshly.

She looked up at me. 'Need me?'

'To build a bridge.'

She frowned. 'You think a bridge can be made with spells?'

'My magic this time,' I said. 'I want you healthy. I need a queen.'

She nodded. And Edward, from that day forward, thrived.

The first men came, summoned by the priests I had sent onto the mainland. They came in ones
and twos, struggling through the winter weather and the swamp, bringing tales of Danish
raids, and when we had two days of sunshine they came in groups of six or seven so that the
island became crowded. I sent them out on patrol, but ordered none to go too far west for I
did not want to provoke Svein, whose men were camped beside the sea. He had not attacked us
yet, which was foolish of him, for he could have brought his ships up the rivers and then
struggled through the marsh, but I knew he would attack us when he was ready, and so I needed
to make our defences. And for that I needed Æthelingaeg.

Alfred was recovering. He was still sick, but he saw God's favour in his son's recovery
and it never occurred to him that it had been pagan magic that caused the recovery. Even
Ælswith was generous and, when I asked her for the loan of her silver fox-fur cloak and what
few jewels she possessed, she yielded them without fuss. The fur cloak was dirty, but
Eanflaed brushed and combed it.

There were over twenty men on our island now, probably enough to capture Æthelingaeg from
its sullen headman, but Alfred did not want the marsh men killed. They were his subjects, he
said, and if the Danes attacked they might yet fight for us, which meant the large island and
its village must be taken by trickery and so, a week after Edward's rebirth, I took
Leofric and Iseult south to Uaswold's settlement. Iseult was dressed in the silver fur and
had a silver chain in her hair and a great garnet brooch at her breast. I had brushed her hair
till it shone and in that winter's gloom she looked like a princess come from the bright
sky.

Leofric and I, dressed in mail and helmets, did nothing except walk around Æthelingaeg,
but after a while a man came from Haswold and said the chieftain wished to talk with us. I
think Haswold expected us to go to his stinking hut, but I demanded he come to us instead.
He could have taken from us whatever he wanted, of course, for there were only the three of
us and he had his men, including Eofer the archer, but Haswold had at last understood that
dire things were happening in the world beyond the swamp and that those events could pierce
even his watery fastness, and so he chose to talk. He came to us at the settlement's
northern gate which was nothing more than a sheep hurdle propped against decaying fish traps
and there, as I expected, he gazed at Iseult as though he had never seen a woman before. His
small cunning eyes flickered at me and back to her.

'Who is she?' he asked.

'A companion,' I said carelessly. I turned to look at the sudden steep hill across the
river where I wanted the fort made.

‘Is she your wife?' Haswold asked.

'A companion,' I said again. 'I have a dozen like her,' I added.

'I will pay you for her,' Haswold said. A score of men were behind him, but only Eofer was
armed with anything more dangerous than an eel spear.

I turned Iseult to face him, then I stood behind her and put my hands over her shoulders and
undid the big garnet brooch. She shivered slightly and I whispered that she was safe and,
when the brooch pin slid out of the heavy hide, I pulled her fur cloak apart. I showed her
nakedness to Haswold and he dribbled into his fish scaled beard and his dirty fingers
twitched in his foul otter skin furs, and then I closed the cloak and let Iseult fasten the
brooch.

'How much will you pay me?' I asked him.

'I can just take her,' Haswold said, jerking his head at his men.

I smiled at that. 'You could,' I said, 'but many of you will die before we die, and our
ghosts will come back to kill your women and make your children scream. Have you not heard that
we have a witch with us? You think your weapons can fight magic?'

None of them moved.

'I have silver,' Haswold said.

'I don't need silver,' I said. 'What I want is a bridge and a fort.'