The Pale Horseman (37 page)

I wept for him then. I do not know why the tears had taken so long to come, but suddenly I
was overwhelmed by the thought of his helplessness, his sudden smile and the pity of it all.
Both my halfbrothers and my half-sister had died when they were babies and I do not
remember my father crying, though perhaps he did. I do remember-my stepmother
shrieking in grief, and how my father, disgusted by the sound, had gone hunting with his
hawks and hounds.

'I saw three kingfishers yesterday,' Iseult said.

Tears were running down my cheeks, blurring the misted moon. I said nothing.

'Hild says the blue of the kingfisher's feathers is for the virgin and the red is for
Christ's blood.'

'And what do you say?'

'That your son's death is my doing.'

'Wyrd bib ful araed,' I said. Fate is fate. It cannot be changed or cheated. Alfred had
insisted I marry Mildrith so I would be tied to Wessex and would put roots deep into its
rich soil, but I already had roots in Northumbria, roots twisted into the rock of
Bebbanburg, and perhaps my son's death was a sign from the gods that I could not make a new
home. Fate wanted me to go to my northern stronghold and until I reached Bebbanburg I would
be a wanderer.

Men fear wanderers for they have no rules. The Danes came as strangers, rootless and
violent, and that, I thought, was why I was always happier in their company. Alfred could
spend hours worrying about the righteousness of a law, whether it concerned the fate of
orphans or the sanctity of boundary markers, and he was right to worry because folk
cannot live together without law, or else every straying cow would lead to bloodshed, but
the Danes hacked through the law with swords. It was easier that way, though once they had
settled a land they started to make their own laws.

'It was not your fault,' I said. You don't command fate.'

'Hild says there is no such thing as fate,' Iseult said.

'Then Hild is wrong.'

'There is only the will of God,' Iseult said, 'and if we obey that we go to heaven.'

'And if we choose not to,' I said, 'isn't that fate?'

'That's the devil,' she said. 'We are sheep, Uhtred, and we choose our shepherd, a good one
or a bad one.'

I thought Hild must have soured Iseult with Christianity, but I was wrong. It was a priest
who had come to Æthelingaeg while I had been in Defnascir who had filled her head with his
religion. He was a British priest from Dyfed, a priest who spoke Iseult's native tongue and
also knew both English and Danish. I was ready to hate him as I hated Brother Asser, but
Father Pyrlig stumbled into our hut next morning booming that he had found five goose eggs
and was dying of hunger.

'Dying! That's what I am, dying of starvation!' He looked pleased to see me. 'You're the
famous Uhtred, eh? And Iseult tells me you hate Brother Asser? Then you're a friend of mine.
Why Abraham doesn't take Asser to his bosom I do not know, except maybe Abraham doesn't want
the little bastard clinging to his bosom. I wouldn't. It would be like suckling a serpent,
it would. Did I say I was hungry.'

He was twice my age and a big man, big-bellied and bighearted. His hair stuck out in
ungovernable clumps, he had a broken nose, only four teeth, and a broad smile.

'When I was a child,' he told me, 'ever such a little child, I used to eat mud. Can you
believe that? Do Saxons eat mud? Of course they do, and I thought I don't want to eat mud. Mud
is for toads, it is. So eventually I became a priest. And you know why? Because I never saw
a hungry priest! Never! Did you ever see a hungry priest? Nor me!'

All this tumbled out without any introduction, then he spoke earnestly to Iseult in her
own tongue and I was sure he was pouring Christianity into her, but then he translated for
me.

'I'm telling her that you can make a marvellous dish with goose eggs. Break them up, stir
them well and add just a little crumbled cheese. So Defnascir is safe?'

'Unless the Danes send a fleet,' I said.

'Guthrum has that in mind,' Pyrlig said. 'He wants the Danes in Lundene to send their ships
to the south coast.'

'You know that?'

'I do indeed, I do indeed! He told me! I've just spent ten days in Cippanhamm. I speak
Danish, see, because I'm clever, and so I was an ambassador for my king. How about that! Me,
who used to eat mud, an ambassador! Crumble the cheese finer, my love. That's right. I had to
discover, you see, how much money Guthrum would pap us to bring our spearmen over the hills
and start skewering Saxons. Now that's a fine ambition for a Briton, skewering Saxons,
but the Danes are pagans, and God knows we can't have pagans loose in the world.'

'Why not?'

'It's just a fancy of mine,' he said, 'just a fancy.' He stabbed his finger into a tiny
pot of butter, then licked it. 'It isn't really sour,' he told Iseult, 'not very, so stir it
in.' He grinned at me. 'What happens when you put two bulls to a herd of cows?'

'One bull dies.'

'There you are! Gods are the same, which is why we don't want pagans here. We're cows and the
gods are bulls.'

'So we get humped?'

He laughed. 'Theology's difficult. Anyway, God is my bull so here I am, telling the
Saxons about Guthrum.'

'Did Guthrum offer you money?' I asked.

'He offered me the kingdoms of the world! He offered me gold, silver, amber and jet! He
even offered me women, or boys if I had that taste, which I don't. And I didn't believe a
single promise he made. Not that it mattered. The Britons aren't going to fight anyway. God
doesn't want us to. No! My embassy was all a pretence. Brother Asser sent me. He wanted me
to spy on the Danes, see? Then tell Alfred what I saw, so that's what I'm doing.'

'Asser sent you?'

'He wants Alfred to win. Not because he loves the Saxons, even Brother Asser isn't that
curdled, but because he loves God.'

'And will Alfred win?'

'If God has anything to do with it, yes,' Pyrlig said cheerfully, then gave a shrug.

'But the Danes are strong in men. A big army! But they're not happy, I can tell you that. And
they're all hungry. Not starving, mind you, but pulling their belts tighter than they'd like,
and now Svein's there so there'll be even less food. Their own fault, of course. Too many men in
Cippanhamm!

And too many slaves! They have scores of slaves. But he's sending the slaves to Lundene, to
sell them there. They need some baby eels, eh? That'll fatten them up.'

The elvers were swarming into the Saefern Sea and slithering up the shallow waterways
of the swamp where they were being netted in abundance. There was no hunger in Æthelingaeg,
not if you gorged on elvers.

'I caught three basketfuls yesterday,' Pyrlig said happily, 'and a frog. It had a face
just like Brother Asser so I gave it a blessing and threw it back. Don't just stir the eggs,
girl! Beat them! I hear your son died?'

'Yes,' I answered stiffly.

'I am sorry,' he said with genuine feeling, 'I am truly sorry, for to lose a child is a
desperate hard thing. I sometimes think God must like children. He takes so many to him. I
believe there's a garden in heaven, a green garden where children play all the time. He's
got two sons of mine up there, and I tell you, the youngest must be making the angels scream.
He'll he pulling the girls' hair and beating up the other boys like they were goose eggs.'

'You lost two sons?'

'But I kept three others and four daughters. Why do you think I'm never home?' He grinned
at me.

'Noisy little things they are, children, and such appetites! Sweet Jesus, they'd eat a
horse a day if they could! There are some folk who say priests shouldn't marry and there are
times I think they're right. Do you have any bread, Iseult pointed to a net hanging from the
roof. 'Cut the mould off,' she told me.

'I like to see a man obeying a woman,' Father Pyrlig said as I fetched the loaf.

'Why's that?' I asked.

'Because it means I'm not alone in this sorry world. Good God, but that Ælswith was weaned
on gall juice, wasn't she? Got a tongue in her like a starving weasel! Poor Alfred.'

'He's happy enough.'

'Good God, man, that's the last thing he is! Some folk catch God like a disease, and he's one
of them. He's like a cow after winter, he is.'

'He is?'

'You know when the late spring grass comes in? All green and new and rich? And you put the
poor cow out to eat and she blows up like a bladder? She's nothing but shit and wind and then
she gets the staggers and drops down dead if you don't take her off the grass for a while.
That's Alfred. He got too much of the good green grass of God, and now he's sick on it. But he's
a good man, a good man. Too thin, he is, but good. A living saint, no less. Ah, good girl, let's
eat.' He scooped some of the eggs with his fingers, then passed the pot to me. 'Thank God it's
Easter next week,' he said with his mouth full so that scraps of egg lodged in his huge beard,
'and then we can eat meat again. I'm wasting away without meat. You know Iseult will be
baptised at Easter?'

'She told me,' I said shortly.

'And you don't approve? Just think of it as a good wash, then maybe you won't mind so
much.'

I was not in Æthelingaeg for Iseult's baptism, nor did I wish to be, for I knew Easter with
Alfred would be nothing but prayers and psalms and priests and sermons. Instead I took
Steapa and fifty men up into the hills, going towards Cippanhamm, for Alfred had ordered
that the Danes were to be harried mercilessly in the next few weeks. He had decided to
assemble the fyrd of Wessex close to Ascension Day, which was just six weeks away, and those
were the weeks in which Guthrum would be hoping to revive his hungry horses on the spring
grass, and so we rode to ambush Danish forage parties. Kill one forage party and the next
must be protected by a hundred extra horsemen, and that wearies the horses even more and
so requires still more forage. It worked for a while, but then Guthrum began sending his
foragers north into Mercia where they were not opposed.

It was a time of waiting. There were two smiths in Æthelingaeg now and, though neither had
all the equipment they wanted, and though fuel for their furnaces was scarce, they were
making good spear points. One of my jobs was to take men to cut ash poles for the spear
shafts.

Alfred was writing letters, trying to discover how many men the shires could bring to
battle, and he sent priests to Frankia to persuade the thegns who had fled there to return.
More spies came from Cippanhamm confirming that Svein had joined Guthrum, and that Guthrum
was strengthening his horses and raising men from the Danish parts of England. He was
ordering his West Saxon allies like Wulfhere to arm their men, and warning his garrisons in
Wintanceaster, Readingum and Badum that they must be ready to abandon their ramparts and
march to his aid. Guthrum had his own spies and must have known Alfred was planning to
assemble an army, and I dare say he welcomed that news for such an army would be Alfred's
last hope and, should Guthrum destroy the fyrd, Wessex would fall never to rise again.

Æthelingaeg seethed with rumour. Guthrum, it was said, had five thousand men. Ships had
come from Denmark and a new army of Norsemen had sailed from Ireland. The Britons were
marching. The fyrd of Mercia was on Guthrum's side, and it was said the Danes had set up a
great camp at Cracgelad on the River Temes where thousands of Mercian troops, both Danish
and Saxon, were assembling. The tumours of Guthrum's strength crossed the sea and Wilfrith
of Hamptonscir wrote from Frankia begging Alfred to flee Wessex.

'Take ship to this coast,' he wrote, 'and save your family.'

Leofric rarely rode on patrols with us, but stayed in Æthelingaeg for he had been named
commander of the king's bodyguard. He was proud of that, as he should have been, for he had
been peasant-born and he could neither read nor write, and Alfred usually insisted that
his commanders were literate. Eanflaed's influence was behind the appointment, for she
had become a confidante of Ælswith. Alfred's wife went nowhere without Eanflaed, even in
church the one-time whore sat just behind Ælswith, and when Alfred held court, Eanflaed was
always there.

'The queen doesn't like you,' Eanflaed told me one rare day when I found her alone.

'She's not a queen,' I said. 'Wessex doesn't have queens.'

'She should he a queen,' she said resentfully, 'it would be right and proper.' She was
carrying a heap of plants and I noticed her forearms were a pale green. 'Dyeing,' she
explained brusquely, and I followed her to where a great cauldron was bubbling on a fire.
She threw in the plants and began stirring the mess in the pot. 'We're making green linen,'
she said.

'Green linen?'

'Alfred must have a banner,' she said indignantly. 'He can't fight without a banner.'
The women were making two banners. One was the great green dragon flag of Wessex, while the
other bore the cross of Christianity.

'Your Iseult's working on the cross,' Eanflaed told me.

'I know.'

'You should have been at her baptism.'

'I was killing Danes.'

'But I'm glad she's baptised. Come to her senses, she has.'

In truth, I thought, Iseult had been battered into Christianity. For weeks she had
endured the rancour of Alfred's churchmen, had been accused of witchcraft and of being the
devil's instrument, and it had worn her down. Then came Hild with her gentler Christianity,
and Pyrlig who spoke of God in Iseult's tongue, and Iseult had been persuaded. That meant I was
the only pagan left in the swamp and Eanflaed glanced pointedly at my hammer amulet. She
said nothing of it, instead asking me whether I truly believed we could defeat the
Danes.

'Yes,' I said confidently, though of course I did not know.

'How many men will Guthrum have?'

I knew the questions were not Eanflaed's, but Ælswith's. Alfred's wife wanted to know if
her husband had any chance of survival or whether they should take the ship we had captured
from Svein and sail to Frankia.