The Lords of the North (24 page)

'Guthred did what he felt was best for his kingdom,' Hild said sternly, 'and he is a
Christian.'

'He enslaved me,' I said again.

'And you must forgive him,' Hild said forcefully, 'as I have forgiven the men who wronged
me and as God has forgiven me. I was a sinner,' she went on, 'a great sinner, but God has
touched me and poured his grace into me and so forgiven me. So swear to me that you will spare
Guthred.'

'I will make no oaths.' I said harshly, still holding Serpent-Breath.

'You are not an unkind man,' Hild said. 'I know that. You were kinder to me than I ever
deserved. So be kind to Guthred. He's a good man.'

'I will remember that when I meet him.' I said evasively.

'And remember that he regretted what he did,' Hild said, 'and that he did it because he
believed it would preserve his kingdom. And remember too that he has given this house
money as a penance. We have much need of silver. There is no shortage of poor, sick folk, but
there is ever a shortage of alms.'

I smiled at her. Then I stood and I unbuckled the sword I had taken from one of Sven's men
at Gyruum and I unpinned the brooch at my neck, and I dropped cloak, brooch and sword onto the
rushes. Those you can sell.' I said. Then, grunting with the effort, I pulled on my old mail
coat and I buckled on my old swords and I picked up my wolf-crested helmet. The coat felt
monstrously heavy because it had been so long since I had worn mail. It was also too big for
me for I had become thinner in those years of pulling Sverri's oar. I slipped the arm rings
over my hands, then looked at Hild. 'I will give you one oath, Abbess Hildegyth,' I said. She
looked up at me and she was seeing the old Uhtred, the shining lord and sword-warrior. 'I
will support your house.' I promised, 'and you will have money from me and you will thrive and
you will always have my protection.'

She smiled at that, then reached into a purse that hung at her belt and held out a small
silver cross. 'And that is my gift to you,'

she said, 'and I pray that you will revere it as I do and learn its lesson. Our Lord died on
that cross for the evil we all do, and I have no doubt, Lord Uhtred, that some of the pain he
felt at his death was for your sins.'

She gave me the cross and our fingers touched and I looked into her eyes and she snatched
her hand away. She blushed, though, and she looked up at me through half-lowered lids. For a
heartbeat I saw the old Hild, the fragile, beautiful Hild, but then she composed her face
and tried to look stern. 'Now you can go to Gisela.' she said.

I had not mentioned Gisela and now I pretended the name meant little. 'She will be
married by now,' I said carelessly, 'if she even lives.'

'She lived when I left Northumbria,' Hild said, 'though that was eighteen months ago. She
would not speak to her brother then, not after what he did to you. I spent hours comforting
her. She was full of tears and anger. A strong girl, that one.'

'And marriageable,' I said harshly.

Hild smiled gently. 'She swore to wait for you.'

I touched Serpent-Breath's hilt. I was so full of hope and so racked by dread. Gisela. In my
head I knew she could not match a slave's feverish dreams, but I could not rid my head of
her.

'And perhaps she does wait for you,' Hild said, then she stepped back, brusque suddenly.
'Now we have prayers to say, folk to feed and bodies to heal.'

And so I was dismissed and I ducked out of the door in the convent wall to stand in the
muddy alleyway. The beggars were allowed inside, leaving me leaning against the wooden
wall with tears in my eyes. Folk edged by on the alley's far side, fearful of me for I was
dressed for war with my two swords. Gisela, I thought, Gisela. Maybe she did wait, but I doubted
it for she was too valuable as a peace cow, but I knew I would go back north as soon as I could.
I would go for Gisela. I gripped the silver cross until I could feel its edges hurting through
the great callouses that Sverri's oar had made on my hand. Then I drew Serpent-Breath and I
saw that Hild had looked after the blade well. It shone with a light coating of lard or
lanolin that had prevented the patterned steel from rusting. I raised the sword to my lips
and kissed her long blade. 'You have men to kill,' I told her, 'and revenge to take.' And so she
had.

I found a swordsmith the next day and he told me he was too busy and could not do my work for
many days and I told him that he would do my work that day or else he would do no work ever
again, and in the end we came to an agreement. He agreed to do my work that day.

Serpent-Breath is a lovely weapon. She was made by Ealdwulf the Smith in Northumbria and
her blade is a magical thing, flexible and strong, and when she had been made I had wanted her
plain iron hilt decorated with silver or gilt-bronze, but Ealdwulf had refused. 'It's a
tool,' he had told me, 'just a tool. Something to make your work easier.'

She had handles of ash wood, one either side of the sword's tang, and over the years the
twin handles had become polished and smooth. Such worn handles are dangerous. In battle
they can slip in the hand, especially when blood is splashed on them, and so I told the
swordsmith that I wanted new handles riveted onto the hilt, and that the handles must give
a good grip, and that the small silver cross that Hild had given me must be embedded in the
hilt's pommel.

'I shall do it, lord,' he said.

Today.'

'I shall try, lord,' he said weakly.

'You will succeed,' I said, 'and the work will be well done.' I drew Serpent-Breath and her
blade was bright in the shadowed room as I held her towards the smith's furnace and in the red
firelight I saw the patterns on her steel. She had been forged by beating three smooth and
four twisted rods into one metal blade. She had been heated and hammered, heated and
hammered, and when she was done, and when the seven rods had become one single savage
streak of shining steel, the twists in the four rods were left in the blade as ghostly
patterns. That was how she got her name, for the patterns looked like the swirling breath of a
dragon.

'She is a fine blade, lord,' the swordsmith said.

'She is the blade that killed Ubba by the sea,' I said, stroking the steel.

'Yes, lord.' he said. He was terrified of me now. 'And you will do the work today,' I
stressed, and I put sword and scabbard on his fire-scarred bench. I laid Hild's cross on the
hilt, then added a silver coin. I was no longer wealthy, but nor was I poor, and with the help
of Serpent-Breath and Wasp-Sting I knew I would be rich again.

It was a lovely autumn day. The sun shone, making the new wood of Alfred's church glow
like gold. Ragnar and I were waiting for the king and we sat on the newly-scythed grass in a
courtyard and Ragnar watched a monk carrying a pile of parchments to the royal
scriptorium. 'Everything's written down here,'

he said, 'everything! Can you read?'

'I can read and write.'

He was impressed by that. 'Is it useful?'

'It's never been useful for me,' I admitted.

'So why do they do it?' he wondered.

'Their religion is written down,' I said, 'ours isn't.'

'A written religion?' He was puzzled by that.

They've got a book,' I said, 'and it's all in there.'

'Why do they need it written down?'

'I don't know. They just do. And, of course, they write down the laws. Alfred loves making
new laws, and they all have to be written in books.'

'If a man can't remember the laws,' Ragnar said, 'then he's got too many of them.'

The shouts of children interrupted us, or rather the offended screech of one small boy
and the mocking laughter of a girl, and a heartbeat later the girl ran around the corner.
She looked nine or ten years old, had golden hair as bright as the sun and was carrying a
carved wooden horse that was plainly the property of the small boy who followed her. The
girl, brandishing the carved horse like a trophy, ran across the grass. She was coltish, thin
and happy, while the boy, three or four years younger, was built more solidly and looked
thoroughly miserable. He had no chance of catching the girl for she was much too quick, but
she saw me and her eyes widened and she stopped in front of us. The boy caught up with her, but
was too overawed by Ragnar and me to try to retrieve his wooden horse. A nurse, red-faced
and panting appeared around the corner and shouted the children's names. 'Edward!
Æthelflaed!'

'It's you!' Æthelflaed said, staring at me with a look of delight.

'It's me.' I said, and I stood because Æthelflaed was the daughter of a king and Edward was
the Ætheling, the prince who might well rule Wessex when Alfred, his father, died.

'Where have you been?' Æthelflaed demanded, as if she had only missed me for a week or
two.

'I have been in the land of giants,' I said, 'and places where fire runs like water and
where the mountains are made of ice and where sisters are never, ever unkind to their
little brothers.'

'Never?' she asked, grinning.

'I want my horse!' Edward insisted and tried to snatch it from her, but Æthelflaed held it
out of reach.

'Never use force to get from a girl,' Ragnar said to Edward, 'what you can take by
guile.'

'Guile?' Edward frowned, evidently unfamiliar with the word. Ragnar frowned at
Æthelflaed. 'Is the horse hungry?'

'No.' She knew he was-playing a game and she wanted to see if she could win.

'But suppose I use magic,' Ragnar suggested, 'and make it eat grass?'

'You can't.'

'How do you know?' he asked. 'I have been to places where the wooden horses go to pasture
every morning, and every night the grass grows to touch the sky and every day the wooden
horses eat it back to nothing again.'

'No they don't.' she said, grinning.

'And if I say the magic words,' Ragnar said, 'your horse will eat the grass.'

'It's my horse.' Edward insisted.

'Magic words?' Æthelflaed was interested now.

'You have to put the horse on the grass.' Ragnar said. She looked at me, wanting
reassurance, but I just shrugged, and so she looked back at Ragnar who was being very
serious, and she decided she wanted to see some magic and so she carefully placed the
wooden horse beside a swathe of cut grass. 'Now?' she asked expectantly.

'You have to shut your eyes,' Ragnar said, 'turn around three times very fast, then shout
Havacar very loudly.'

'Havacar?'

'Careful!' he warned her, looking alarmed. 'You can't say magic words carelessly.'

So she shut her eyes, turned around three times, and while she did Ragnar pointed at the
horse and nodded to Edward who snatched it up and ran off to the nurse, and by the time
Æthelflaed, staggering slightly from dizziness, had shouted her magic word the horse was
gone.

'You cheated!' she accused Ragnar.

'But you learned a lesson.' I said, squatting beside her as if I were going to tell her a
secret. I leaned forward and whispered in her ear. 'Never trust a Dane.'

She smiled at that. She had known me well during the long wet winter when her family had
been fugitives in the marshes of Sumorsaete and in those dismal months she had learned to
like me and I had come to like her. She reached out now and touched my nose. 'How did that
happen?'

'A man broke my nose.' I said. It had been Hakka, striking me in Trader because he thought
I was shirking at the oar.

'It's crooked.' she said.

'It lets me smell crooked smells.'

'What happened to the man who broke it?'

'He's dead.' I said.

'Good,' she said. 'I'm going to be married.'

'You are?' I asked.

'To Æthelred of Mercia.' she said proudly, then frowned because a flicker of distaste had
crossed my face.

'To my cousin?' I asked, trying to look pleased. 'Is Æthelred your cousin?'

she asked.

'Yes.'

'I'm to be his wife,' she said, 'and live in Mercia. Have you been to Mercia?'

'Yes.'

Is it nice?'

'You will like it.' I said, though I doubted she would, not married to my snotty-nosed,
pompous cousin, but I could hardly say that. She frowned. 'Does Æthelred pick his nose?'

'I don't think so.' I said.

'Edward does,' she said, 'and then he eats it. Ugh.' She leaned forward, gave me an
impulsive kiss on my broken nose, then ran off to the nurse.

'A pretty girl.' Ragnar said.

'Who is to be wasted on my cousin.' I said.

'Wasted?'

'He's a bumptious little shit called Æthelred.' I said. He had brought men to Ethandun,
only a few, but enough to loft him into Alfred's good graces. 'The idea is,' I went on, 'that
he'll be Ealdorman of Mercia when his father dies and Alfred's daughter will be his wife,
and that will bind Mercia to Wessex.'

Ragnar shook his head. 'There are too many Danes in Mercia. The Saxons won't ever rule
there again,'

'Alfred wouldn't waste his daughter on Mercia,' I said, 'unless he thought there was
something to gain.'

To gain things,' Ragnar said, 'you have to be bold. You can't write things down and win, you
have to take risks. Alfred's too cautious.'

I half smiled. 'You really think he's cautious?'

'Of course he is.' Ragnar said scornfully.

'Not always.' I said, then paused, wondering if I should say what I was thinking.

My hesitation provoked Ragnar. He knew I was hiding something. 'What?' he
demanded.

I still hesitated, then decided no harm could come from an old tale. 'Do you remember
that winter night in Cippanhamm?' I asked him. 'When Guthrum was there and you all believed
Wessex had fallen, and you and I drank in the church?'

'Of course I remember it, yes.'

It had been the winter when Guthrum had invaded Wessex and it had seemed that Guthrum must
have won the war, for the West Saxon army was scattered. Some thegns fled abroad, many made
their own peace with Guthrum, while Alfred had been driven into hiding on the marshes of
Sumorsaete. Yet Alfred, though he was defeated, was not broken, and he had insisted on
disguising himself as a harpist and going secretly to Cippanhamm to spy on the Danes.
That had almost ended in disaster, for Alfred did not possess the cunning to be a spy. I
had rescued him that night, the same night that I had found Ragnar in the royal church. 'And
do you remember,' I went on, 'that I had a servant with me and he sat at the back of the
church with a hood over his head and I ordered him to be silent?'