The Reluctant Berserker (2 page)

He stood very still as his owner expounded on his virtues. “We captured him in Cerniu. A Welsh warrior, haughty and proud. A prince, maybe—God knows they have enough of them. As you can see, he is tamed well enough now, and broken to any man’s use. It is a shame to part with him, but at my lord’s death, his widow wishes the ship and its chattels disposed of. So come, who will give me twenty shillings for a Welsh prince to work in your stables…or at whatever task you will?”

Ecgbert jerked his head, and the boys cleared him a path to the front of the crowd, Wulfstan beside him as always. “I will.”

The slave looked up. Wulfstan caught a glimpse of freckles scattered across elegant cheekbones, and of eyes, green as beech leaves, empty as a beech-bark cup. He shuddered within at that look. It was as though the boy were dead already—a profound resignation to whatever might come, as though despair was its own peace.

“You do not wish to haggle, lord?” Blue-cloak looked Ecgbert up and down. He was obviously sizing up the retinue, the jewels in Ecgbert’s sword-hilt and on his belt, the scars and creases on his face. Wulfstan prickled up like a hedgehog at the thought of this man judging his lord.
A foolish old man with his best days behind him. Probably can’t satisfy his young wife and wants something more tractable to bed.

His own thoughts were unbearable to him, drove him forward, tightened his shoulders and his voice. “My lord is no merchant, seafarer. If he wishes to be generous to you, why should you question it? Payment of another sort he could give you, if he wished, did you choose to question him again.”

The boys were at his shoulder, Cenred on the immediate left, protecting his unshielded side. Their hands had fallen to the peace-ties about the hilts of their swords, picking at the knots that held the blades in place.

Both hands in the air, placating, the merchant stepped back, and now his own gaze was on the wormy ripples of the sand beneath his feet, and his own head bowed. A sick little smile flitted across the slave’s face.

“I meant no offence, ring-giver. I would be glad of your bounty.”

Ecgbert dropped a hand on Wulfstan’s shoulder as he stepped forward, and something about the quiet exhale of his breath suggested a laugh. “It is right for a man to aid a widow in the time of her grief,” he said. “What heart would hold back at such a time? What does she mean to do with this wealth?”

“Cunning old bugger,” Cenred whispered in Wulfstan’s ear, his voice full of the same laughter. “Now he gets the balm in bed
and
to act the man of God.”

“You don’t think he means to use the boy for…” Wulfstan hissed, horrified to find that others shared his suspicion.

The soft chuckle raised the hairs on the back of his neck as it ghosted across his skin. “Well, if he isn’t, he’s the only one here not thinking it.”

“But…a warrior? A prince?”

“Not a warrior now, is he?” Cenred’s laughter turned in an instant into anger. “If he’d not been willing to bear the dishonour, he shouldn’t have let himself be captured. Look at him standing there, meek as a maid. Even now he could be fighting back. If he ran at us, we’d give him death. No, he chooses to be a real man’s whore with every breath he takes. I don’t give dog-shit what he was before. Now, he’s a coward. I hope the old man nails him so hard he can’t walk for a month, craven little lickspittle worm.”

Spit sprayed the side of Wulfstan’s face. He jerked away and wiped it, feeling besmirched. There was a shake in his fingers he hoped Cenred hadn’t seen, fruits of a strange, shrill panic under his breastbone he was surprised that no one but he could hear.
That could be any one of us, if the Norsemen caught us. They’ve broken others, do you think they could not do the same to you?

“She means to journey to Rome,” the sailor was saying, genial now he had the coins in his palm. “To make pilgrimage for the sake of her husband’s soul.”

The words conjured up a different world—gold and white. The mother of God, serene and mild, and holy virgins whose maidenheads miraculously survived all the world could do to steal them. Washed clean and made generous by heaven, Wulfstan thought.
Of course, Cenred is furious because he is afraid. Because no matter how he denies it, he knows this too could be him. And he would not have it so.

“Then,” said Ecgbert, smiling with the air of a man who has ground into the dirt all those who tried to shame him, “I am all the more glad to have contributed to her weal.”

He held out his hand for the leash.

The slave did not look up, but fixed his gaze on the rough rope in his new master’s hand and followed where he was tugged. They walked a little, further down the beach, away from the ships and the crowd, into the sparse dunes, where long grass hissed like snakes over tumbled stone.

“So,” Ecgbert laughed at last. “This is the reason I am not trusted with the coin. I didn’t ask if you spoke our language. Where are you from, boy?”

“From Petrocstow, my lord.” It was a good voice, rough around the edges as though the collar had worn it down. “They taught me to speak Englisc in the boat. My name is-”

“I can’t get my tongue around your foreign words. You’ll be Brid from now on.”

Wulfstan was watching closely, but the smooth face did not alter and the downcast eyes betrayed nothing. He had not thought his lord cruel enough to take away a man’s name on a whim, but perhaps it was not cruelty at all. Perhaps he meant to put an end to what had been the young man’s life aboard ship, to mark a new beginning. Whatever his old name, it was steeped in shame. It might be a relief to be able to put it down.

“Yes, my lord.”

“You were on an oar?”

“Yes, my lord, but trusted with the sail too. I am skilled with horses and—”

“I have no need either of sailor or stableboy, but you may make yourself useful with Shipmaster Eadwacer while I consider what to do with you. Wulfstan?”

“Sir?”

“Take him and see to it that he’s bathed and better clothed. Eadwacer is to put him to use, but he’s not to be put with the other slaves just yet. We must hold him close for a while so he does not get any thoughts of escape.”

Ecgbert pressed the rope into Wulfstan’s hand, and he closed his fingers on it, feeling accused, somehow. Behind him, Manna gave a guffaw of laughter at something Cenred had murmured, and Wulfstan felt a flash of bright certainty that they were talking about him. He set his face and tugged, and Brid came to heel like a well-trained hound.

The lads followed, but for an honour guard of two who peeled from the scrum to stand behind Ecgbert. They closed in all around, and though Brid remained utterly expressionless, passive to the point where he was almost not there at all, the stink of him gave him away—the acrid, unmistakable stink of fear.

It was Manna who shoved him first, making him stumble, catch himself awkwardly with his hands lashed behind his back and his throat jerking against the iron band. He made a small
unf
as his air was cut off, but his expression didn’t waver from nothingness. Bland. Infuriating.

Manna reached out, caught him by the chin and raised his face so they could all see it clearly, and now its smoothness was clearer to all as a badge of pride. It earned him a cuff around the ear. Brid staggered quite silently, righted himself, and Manna caught his face again, stepped up close. “This boy wants to be in the stables. I say we fit him out with a bridle and bit, for the lord will be riding tonight.”

Six of the boys to one slave, and all roared with laughter, except Wulfstan. Even Cenred joined in, though he joined in with everything, too eager to be accepted to discriminate between the group’s opinions and his own.

“Leave him be.” Wulfstan shoved Manna away. He was a wiry, sinewy creature without much weight—the push sent him a fair distance. Wulfstan hadn’t intended the rock that met his heel and tripped him, so that he flapped and flopped onto the dune like a beached fish, but he couldn’t have said he regretted it either. “It’s not your place to interfere with the lord’s belongings. He’s under Ecgbert’s protection, and Ecgbert is a kind man and would not have his slaves abused.”

Manna flushed an ugly purple and leaped to his feet. He unclenched his hand from his sword-hilt with an effort, bared his teeth. “You like him! You hope when the lord’s finished with him he’ll crawl out to you. Fucking suck-up that you are.”

Cenred had found his bravery enough to sober and catch at Manna’s elbow. “Enough, Manna, you let your mouth run away with you. Hush now before you hurt yourself with it.”

Manna’s blood was too high for retreat. He gave a bright laugh. His eyes flashed. “Like that, would you—to share the same hole as your lord? Bet you’d bend over for Ecgbert too if he asked.”

A great silence and a moment of disbelief, when no one in the party dared acknowledge what had been said. All Wulfstan’s tangle of emotions went away in one great and glorious burst of skin-peeling fury. He was barely aware of wrenching out of the hard grips of his friends’ restraining hands. The sound of their protests was a peeping like the voices of little birds in the back of his mind as he drove across the small space that separated them, knocked Manna’s hand away from his weapon and locked his fingers around the fiend’s throat, squeezing.

Manna’s face was clear and bright in Wulfstan’s vision. He watched and treasured every change from astonishment and regret, to fear, to panic and pain. The purple suffusing Manna’s face deepened. His tongue crept out from between his writhing lips. At last he went limp.

As Wulfstan shook him to wake him up again—for it was much less satisfying to throttle a man when he flopped like a new corpse—something smashed into the side of his face and knocked him off balance. He let go as he fell, and as he rolled to his feet, all five of the lads surrounded him in a wall of clinging hands and concerned looks.

Ecgbert ran up, shaking his white head. “My back was barely turned and you are murdering each other! What is this?”

“He said…” It was suddenly hard for Wulfstan to draw a breath. He worked his lungs like bellows but could not find air to speak.

Cenred stepped into the silence, eagerly. “Manna…” He touched his tongue to his lips as he looked for a less damning way to say it, but found none. “Said that Wulfstan would welcome…a man’s attentions.” A hand-flip and a quick rush to exclaim, “It wasn’t an accusation. He didn’t mean it. It was only an insult, intended to anger, and in that it succeeded better than he hoped. Wulfstan was furious. We couldn’t stop him.”

“Does Manna breathe yet?” Ecgbert asked, and when Cenred knelt at his side, brought his cheek to the open mouth and nodded, Ecgbert frowned and nudged the fallen youth with his foot, ungently. “One day many of you youths will be men. Until that day, the wisdom of God continues to winnow out the fools and feed them to the cold earth. Wulfstan?”

“My lord?” The anger, leaving, had taken his strength with it. He struggled not to shake. Not to let tears come to his eyes.

Ecgbert drew his sword and handed it to him, hilt first. “For this only of all insults you had every right to kill him. Yet he lives. Do you now wish to finish the job?”

Wulfstan didn’t know what to do. Spare the bastard and…would people think it was true? But…but he didn’t think he
could
kill him. Not now, with him sprawled defenceless in late-autumnal light, a band of bruising around his throat like the marks of the gallows tree.

Also, it
was
true. Could he really kill a man for speaking the truth?

He closed his hand around the sword-hilt. The ring on the pommel clicked as it turned in its setting. “Cenred says it was a…” He was ashamed at how his voice slurred. His teeth met in his cheek as he bit down, getting himself in hand. “A joke, my lord. I didn’t find it funny. Yet neither would I kill a man for something he didn’t mean. I will abide by your decision, if you’ll guide me.”

“I say spare him. For though he has deserved death, he is a young idiot and may yet grow into something worthwhile. Still, he must go home to his father. I will not have in my following a lad who would make such remarks about his brothers in arms.”

Seeing Wulfstan’s distress, Ecgbert clapped him on the shoulder and smiled. “Come, they say only a strong man can afford mercy, and you have proved yourself strong today. Did not Beowulf seek reconciliation with Unferth, though he had been insulted? He was the most perfect of men.”

Ecgbert dusted his palms down on the skirts of his tunic. “Now, Cenred, Aelfsi, you take this piece of trash to the docks and find him a boat home. Wulfstan, take Brid to Judith. She’ll know what to do with him. I hope not to see any of you again until I see you at the hall this evening.”

Knowing they were past the point where pushing him was safe, the lads wandered off behind Ecgbert, letting Wulfstan be. He breathed deep, getting himself in hand, forcing the inner animal safely back beneath his skin. A few more moments soaking in the peace of sea and sky, and he had become human again.

With Judith likely out at market still, Wulfstan took his chance to thread among the stalls and look at the wonders on offer, calming his mind with the sights. Here came the produce of the whole world, goods from countries where the folk lived in stone houses and went about in cloth of silver. Conversely, goods from savage countries, where the men were indistinguishable from monsters, shaped differently from the men of Christendom—men with single feet, heads in their chests, scales like dragon scales on their bellies, single eyes.