The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 10) (26 page)

‘Say another hundred and twenty?’

‘At least that,’ I said.

‘And Æthelhelm will take how many?’

‘If he even goes now,’ I said, ‘he’ll take as many as he can. Three hundred? Maybe more.’

‘Ieremias?’

‘Fifty, maybe sixty. But he won’t be at Bebbanburg.’

‘He won’t?’ Finan sounded dubious. He frowned, then picked up a stone and skimmed it across a green-scummed pond. ‘How do you know Ieremias isn’t on his way to Bebbanburg with Einar right now?’

‘I don’t.’

‘So you’re just guessing.’

‘Ieremias is betraying everyone,’ I said, ‘so he won’t want to appear as if he’s chosen sides. If he sails to Bebbanburg he has to either anchor with Einar’s ships, in which case my cousin knows he’s been betrayed, or he puts into Bebbanburg harbour, in which case Constantin learns the same. Ieremias wants to be on the winning side, so he’s on everyone’s side. He might be mad, but he’s not stupid. I tell you, he’ll have gone to Gyruum to wait things out.’

He nodded, accepting the argument. ‘But still,’ he said, ‘if we get inside we’ll probably be fighting three hundred men?’

‘Nearer two hundred.’

‘And fighting uphill?’

‘Part of the time.’

‘And we could have another four or five hundred outside, trying to stab us in the back?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not to mention the bastard Scots, who won’t be happy.’

‘They never are.’

‘Well, that’s true,’ he said. He skimmed another stone and watched it sink through the pond’s dark scum. ‘And Sigtryggr won’t help you?’

‘He’ll help me,’ I said, ‘but he won’t join an assault on the ramparts. He needs all his men for when the truce ends.’

Finan walked a few paces to where a dead tree stood gaunt and black at the pond’s margin. No other trees grew nearby, and this one had been dead so long that the trunk was split open, fungus grew thick in the gaping rift, and the only branches left were a pair of thick and drooping stumps. Dozens of cloth scraps were nailed or tied to those forlorn branches. ‘A prayer tree,’ Finan said. ‘Did a saint live here?’

‘A god lived here.’

He looked at me, amused. ‘A god? You’re telling me a god chose to live in this godforsaken place?’

‘Odin built a hall here.’

‘Sweet Jesus, but you have strange gods. Or maybe your fellow Odin just likes swamps?’ He drew a knife from his belt. ‘You think the gods listen to prayers?’

‘I wouldn’t if I were a god. Can you imagine it? All those moaning women, whining children, and miserable men?’

‘You’re a rare warrior,’ he said, ‘but let’s be grateful you’re not a god.’ He cut a strip from his jerkin, then found a crack in one of the branches and wedged the cloth into place. I saw him close his eyes and mutter a prayer, though whether he prayed to Odin or to the Christian god I did not ask. ‘The thing is, lord,’ he said, staring at the strip of cloth, ‘I can’t think of a better way to capture the place.’

‘Nor can I, short of raising a thousand men. And I can’t afford that. I’m running out of money.’

He laughed. ‘Aye, you’ve been pissing it away like Bishop Wulfheard in a brothel.’ He reached up and touched the ragged cloth. ‘So let’s do it, lord. Let’s just do it.’

I found Eadith in Grimesbi’s small church. The town might have been Danish and most of its inhabitants pagans, but it depended on ships and sailors for its prosperity, and no harbour town became rich by turning away trade. Christian seamen could see the cross atop the church’s roof from a mile away and know they would be welcome. Besides, as I have never tired of telling my Christian followers, we pagans rarely persecute Christians. We believe there are many gods, so we accept another man’s religion as his own affair, while Christians, who perversely insist that there is only one god, think it their duty to kill, maim, enslave, or revile anyone who disagrees. They tell me this is for our own good.

Eadith had not gone to the church to pray, but rather to use its floor, which, unencumbered by any furniture, was a wide empty space on which she had spread a bolt of linen. The cloth was light blue. ‘I’m sorry about the colour,’ Eadith told me. She was on her hands and knees, crawling across the material with two other women. ‘It must have been dyed with woad,’ she said, ‘I asked for a darker colour, but he only had dark cloth in wool.’

‘Wool would be too heavy,’ I said.

‘But this linen was expensive,’ she looked worried.

‘And the white won’t show well against it,’ Ethne, Finan’s wife, said.

‘Then use black.’

‘We have no black cloth!’ Eadith said.

‘He does,’ I said, looking at the priest who stood frowning by his altar.

‘He does?’ Eadith asked.

‘He’s wearing it,’ I said. ‘Cut his robe up!’

‘Lord! No!’ The priest backed into a corner. He was a small man, bald, with a pinched face, and anxious eyes.

‘Paint it on,’ Finan suggested. ‘Use pitch.’ He nodded at the priest. ‘That miserable robe won’t make two stags, and you need one on each side. There’ll be plenty of pitch down at the harbour.’

‘Good idea!’ the priest said hurriedly. ‘Use pitch!’

‘It won’t dry in time,’ Ethne said, ‘one side might, but we have to turn it over to paint the second side.’

‘Charcoal?’ the priest suggested nervously.

‘Pitch,’ I said, ‘on one side only. Then sew it to the
Hanna
’s sail.’ The
Hanna
was one of the three ships Berg had purchased. She had been called the
Saint Cuthbert
,
but Berg, hating the Christian name, had changed it to
Hanna
. ‘Hanna?’ I had asked him.

‘Yes, lord,’ he had blushed.

‘Olla’s daughter?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘The girl who wanted to sell her brother into slavery?’

‘That one, lord, yes.’

I had stared at him, deepening his blush. ‘You do know,’ I had asked him, ‘that it’s unlucky to change a ship’s name?’

‘I know, lord. But if a virgin pisses in the bilge? Then it is all right, yes? My father always said you find a virgin and you ask her to pee in …’ his voice had faded away and he had gestured at the renamed
Hanna
, ‘and then it is good, yes? The gods will not mind.’

‘You found a virgin in Eoferwic?’ I asked, astounded.

He had blushed again. ‘I did, lord, yes.’

‘Hanna?’

He had gazed at me with pathetic, puppy eyes, afraid that I disapproved. ‘She is so lovely, lord,’ he had blurted out, ‘and perhaps, when this is finished …’ He was too nervous to finish the question.

‘When this is finished,’ I said, ‘and we’ve won, then you can go back to Eoferwic.’

‘And if we don’t win?’ he had asked anxiously.

‘If we don’t win, Berg,’ I had said, ‘then we’ll all be dead.’

‘Ah!’ he had beamed at me. ‘Then we must win, lord, yes?’

And to win we needed the tail hairs from Berg’s horse, a bolt of pale blue linen, some pitch, and the favour of the gods. ‘It has to be enough,’ I said to Eadith that night. I had found it hard to sleep, and so walked down to the harbour and watched a crescent moon shudder its reflection on the estuary beyond the anchorage, while, on the wharf, my three warships shivered to the night wind. The
Hanna
, the
Eadith
and the
Stiorra
. Berg had named the ships for women, choosing two for me and one for himself. I suppose, if I had chosen the names, I would have picked Gisela, the mother of my children, and Æthelflaed, who had received my oath, which I had never broken, but Berg’s choices were good too. I smiled at the memory of Berg’s nervousness and at the thought of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl reducing a warrior like him to quivers. What was he, I wondered, eighteen, nineteen? He had stood in the shield wall, he had faced swordsmen and spear-warriors, he had killed and known the battle-joy, but a pretty face and a tangle of brown hair had him shaking like a fifteen-year-old in his first fight.

‘What are you thinking?’ Eadith asked as she came to join me. She slipped her arm through mine and leaned her head on my shoulder.

‘Of the power of women,’ I said.

She squeezed my arm, but said nothing.

I was looking for omens and finding none. No birds flew, even the dogs in the town were silent. I knew my sleeplessness came from the anticipation of battle, from the fear that I had miscalculated. ‘Is it past midnight? I asked Eadith.

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe?’

‘I should sleep.’

‘You leave at dawn?’

‘Before, if I can.’

‘And how long is the voyage?’

I smiled. ‘If I get wind? Two days. Without it? Three.’

‘So in two or three days,’ she began, then her voice faltered.

‘We fight the first battle,’ I finished the sentence for her.

‘Dear God,’ she said, and I think it was a prayer. ‘And the second?’

‘Maybe two days later?’

‘You’ll win,’ she said. ‘You’re Uhtred, you always win.’

‘We must win,’ I said. Neither of us spoke for a while, but just listened to the creak of boats and the sigh of the wind and the small slap of the waves. ‘If I don’t come back,’ I began, and she tried to hush me. ‘If I don’t come back,’ I insisted, ‘then take our people to Eoferwic. Sigtryggr will look after you.’

‘Won’t he have marched north?’

‘He should have left by now, but if I don’t survive then he’ll be back in Eoferwic very soon.’

‘You’ll survive,’ she said very firmly. ‘I gave the emerald ring to the church and said a prayer.’

‘You did what?’ I asked, astonished.

‘I gave the emerald to the church,’ she said. She had possessed a rich emerald set in a gold ring that had been given to her by Æthelred who had been my enemy and her lover. She never wore it, and I knew she kept it, not out of any sentimentality, but because its value offered her some security in a dangerous world.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘I did not tell the priest why,’ she said, ‘but I asked him to pray for us.’

‘He’ll build himself a new house instead,’ I said, amused.

‘So long as he prays he can build himself a mead hall.’ She shivered as she gazed at the moon’s long reflection. ‘The flag is finished, and the horsehair.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’ll come back!’ she said fiercely.

I thought how I had always wanted to die at Bebbanburg. But not yet, not yet. ‘More likely I’ll send for you,’ I said. ‘Look for the ships in two, maybe three weeks from now.’

‘I won’t stop praying.’

I turned and drew her away from the harbour. I needed sleep. To bed, and tomorrow we would sail towards battle.

The estuary was calm in the summer’s dawn. The water was the colours of silver and slate, and they moved slowly, as if the sea-goddess was breathing in her sleep. On the wharf it was all confusion as men tossed shields, mail coats and weapons onto the three ships that were already heavy with supplies. There were barrels of ale, barrels of salted herrings, barrels of twice-baked bread, barrels of salt pork, and dozens of empty barrels. There were heaps of sacks stuffed with straw and all lashed down in the ships’ shallow bellies. All three ships had crosses on their prows; gaunt, high crosses made of newly split wood. My son commanded the
Stiorra
, Finan was master of the
Hanna
, and I would board the
Eadith
. ‘Say your goodbyes,’ I shouted along the wharf. ‘The day’s wasting!’ The sun was almost above the horizon, touching the silver and slate with shivers of gold.

Finan was no seaman, so I had given him Berg who, like all Norsemen, knew how to steer a ship and weather a storm. I had rather Finan had been on the
Eadith
with me, we had been together ever since we met, but in these next days we would fight in three groups, and it was better that he stayed with his men throughout. ‘I hope it stays calm,’ he said.

‘I want a fierce southern wind,’ I answered, ‘so say your prayers.’

He touched the cross hanging at his breast. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘we’ve been dreaming of this moment for years.’

I impulsively embraced him. ‘Thank you for staying,’ I said.

‘Staying?’

‘You could have returned to Ireland.’

He grinned. ‘And not see the story’s end? Sweet Jesus, of course I stayed.’

‘It’s not the end of the story,’ I said, ‘I gave Æthelflaed a promise to look after her daughter.’

‘God, you’re a fool!’ he laughed.

‘And Æthelstan is unfinished business.’

‘So life won’t be dull after this,’ he said, ‘I was getting worried.’

‘Go,’ I told him, ‘we’re leaving.’

Now I held Eadith in my arms. She was crying softly. Other men were saying similar farewells to their women or to their children.

I stroked Eadith’s red hair. ‘I’ll send for you,’ I promised her.

Then it was time to board and the mooring lines were cast off and men thrust with oars to push the ships away from the wharf. There was a clatter as the oars were threaded through holes in the hull, or, on my ship, dropped between the tholes. I pointed to the men on the three forward bæcbord benches and shouted at them to give a couple of strokes to swing the
Eadith
’s bows towards the open water. I saw Renwald watching from the
Rensnægl
, and waved to him and he waved back. Eadith called a farewell, her voice almost lost among the cries of the gulls, and the ship named for her rocked slightly as the hull turned. I touched the hammer at my breast and prayed to the gods that they would be good to us, then I took hold of the steering-oar. ‘Together now!’ I called and all the oar-blades swung forward and waited poised above the harbour’s calm water. ‘Row!’

And so our three ships headed into the estuary, their high bows breaking the still waters. We rowed with long strokes, not hurrying, just driving the hulls down the channel between the withies, then curving east towards the rising sun. There were no other ships in sight.

We passed the Raven’s Beak, that long treacherous spit of sand that guards the Humbre’s mouth, and there we turned north, and a whisper of south-western wind gave me hope that we could soon raise a sail. Men tired by rowing do not fight as well as unwearied men.

We were three ships in a summer’s dawn, and we were going to war.