The Pale Horseman (25 page)

'We should make a beacon here,' I said to Alfred. A fire lit here would give Æthelingaeg
two or three hours' warning of a Danish attack.

He nodded, but said nothing. He stared at the distant ships, but they were too far off to
count. He looked pale, and I knew he had found the climb to the summit painful, so now I urged
him downhill to where the hovels leaked smoke.

'You should rest here, lord,' I told him. 'I'm going to count ships. But you should
rest.'

He did not argue and I suspected his stomach pains were troubling him again. I found a
hovel that was occupied by a widow and her four children, and I gave her a silver coin and
said her king needed warmth and shelter for the day, and I do not think she understood who he
was, but she knew the value of a shilling and so Alfred went into her house and sat by the
fire.

'Give him broth,' I told the widow, whose name was Elwide, 'and let him sleep.'

She scorned that. 'Folk can't sleep while there's work!' she said. 'There are eels to skin,
fish to smoke, nets to mend, traps to weave.'

'They can work,' I said, pointing to the two household troops, and I left them all to
Elwide's tender mercies while Iseult and I took the punt southwards and, because the
Pedredan's mouth was only three or four miles away, and because Brant was such a clear
landmark, I left the marshman to help skin and smoke eels.

We crossed a smaller river and then poled through a long mere broken by marsh grass and by
now I could see the hill on the Pedredan's far bank where we had been trapped by Ubba, and I
told Iseult the story of the fight as I poled the punt across the shallows. The hull grounded
twice and I had to push it into deeper water until I realised the tide was falling fast and
so I tied the boat to a rotting stake, then we walked across a drying waste of mud and sea
lavender towards the Pedredan. I had grounded farther from the river than I had wanted,
and it was a long walk into a cold wind, but we could see all we needed once we reached the
steep bank at the river's edge. The Danes could also see us. I was not in mail, but I did have
my swords, and the sight of me brought men to the further shore where they hurled insults
across the swirling water. I ignored them. I was counting ships and saw twenty-four
beast-headed boats hauled up on the strip of ground where we had defeated Ubba the year
before. Ubba's burned ships were also there, their black ribs half buried in the sand where
the men capered and shouted their insults.

'How many men can you see?' I asked Iseult.

There were a few Danes in the half wrecked remnants of the monastery where Svein had killed
the monks, but most were by the boats. 'Just men?' she asked.

'Forget the women and children,' I said. There were scores of women, mostly in the small
village that was a little way upstream.

She did not know the English words for the bigger numbers, so she gave me her estimate by
opening and closing her fingers six times.

'Sixty?' I said, and nodded. 'At most seventy. And there are twenty-four ships.' She
frowned, not understanding the point I made. 'Twenty-four ships,' I said, 'means an army of
what? Eight hundred? Nine hundred men? So those sixty or seventy men are the ship-guards.
And the others? Where are the others?' I asked the question of myself, watching as five of
the Danes dragged a small boat to the river's edge. They planned to row across and capture us,
but I did not intend to stay that long. The others,' I answered my own question, have gone
south. They've left their women behind and gone raiding. They're burning, killing, getting
rich. They're raping Defnascir.'

'They're coming,' Iseult said, watching the five men clamber into the small boat.

'You want me to kill them?’

'You can?' She looked hopeful.

'No,' I said, 'so let's go.'

We started back across the long expanse of mud and sand. It looked smooth, but there were
runnels cutting through and the tide had turned and the sea was sliding back into the land
with surprising speed. The sun was sinking, tangling with black clouds and the wind pushed
the flood up the Saefern and the water gurgled and shivered as it filled the small creeks. I
turned to see that the five Danes had abandoned their chase and gone back to the western bank
where their fires looked delicate against the evening's fading light. 'I can't see the boat,'
Iseult said.

'Over there,' I said, but I was not certain I was right because the light was dimming and
our punt was tied against a background of reeds, and now we were jumping from one dry spot to
another, and the tide went on rising and the dry spots shrank and then we were splashing
through the water and still the wind drove the tide inland.

The tides are big in the Saefern. A man could make a house at low tide, and by high it would
have vanished beneath the waves. Islands appear at low tide, islands with summits thirty
feet above the water, and at the high tide they are gone, and this tide was pushed by the wind
and it was coming fast and cold and Iseult began to falter so I picked her up and carried her
like a child. I was struggling and the sun was behind the low western clouds and it seemed now
that I was wading through an endless chill sea, but then, perhaps because the darkness was
falling, or perhaps because Hoder, the blind god of the night, favoured me, I saw the punt
straining against its tether.

I dropped Iseult into the boat and hauled myself over the low side. I cut the rope, then
collapsed, cold and wet and frightened and let the punt drift on the tide.

‘You must get back to the fire,' Iseult chided me. I wished I had brought the marsh man now
for I had to find a route across the swamp and it was a long, cold journey in the day's last
light. Iseult crouched beside me and stared far across the waters to where a hill reared up
green and steep against the eastern land.

'Eanflaed told me that hill is Avalon,' she said reverently.

'Avalon?'

'Where Arthur is buried.'

'I thought you believed he was sleeping?'

'He does sleep,' she said fervently. 'He sleeps in his grave with his warriors.' She gazed
at the distant hill that seemed to glow because it had been caught by the day's last errant
shaft of sunlight spearing from the west beneath the furnace of glowing clouds.

'Arthur,' she said in a whisper. 'He was the greatest king who ever lived. He had a magic
sword.'

She told me tales of Arthur, how he had pulled his sword from a stone, and how he had led the
greatest warriors to battle, and I thought that his enemies had been us, the English
Saxons, yet Avalon was now in England, and I wondered if, in a few years, the Saxons would
recall their lost kings and claim they were great and all the while the Danes would rule us.
When the sun vanished Iseult was singing softly in her own tongue, but she told me the song was
about Arthur and how he had placed a ladder against the moon and netted a swathe of stars to
make a cloak for his queen, Guinevere. Her voice carried us across the twilit water, sliding
between reeds, and behind us the fires of the Danish shipguards faded in the encroaching
dark and far off a dog howled and the wind sighed cold and a spattering of rain shivered the
black mere.

Iseult stopped singing as Brant loomed.

'There's going to be a great fight,' she said softly and her words took me by surprise and
I thought she was still thinking of Arthur and imagining that the sleeping king would erupt
from his earthy bed in gouts of soil and steel.

'A fight by a hill,' she went on, 'a steep hill, and there will be a white horse and the slope
will run with blood and the Danes will run from the Sais.'

The Sais were us, the Saxons. 'You dreamed this?' I asked.

'I dreamed it,' she said.

'So it is true?'

'It is fate,' she said, and I believed her, and just then the bow of the punt scraped on the
island's shore.

It was pitch dark, but there were fish-smoking fires on the beach, and by their dying light
we found our way to Elwide's house. It was made of alder logs thatched with reeds and I found
Alfred sitting by the central hearth where he stared absently into the flames. Elwide, the
two soldiers and the marshman were all skinning eels at the hut's further end where three of
the widow's children were plaiting willow withies into traps and the fourth was gutting a
big pike.

I crouched by the fire, wanting its warmth to bring life to my frozen legs.

Alfred blinked as though he was surprised to see me. 'The Danes?' he asked.

'Gone inland,' I said. 'Left sixty or seventy men as ship-guards.' I crouched by the
fire, shivering, wondering if I would ever be warm again.

'There's food here,' Alfred said vaguely.

'Good,' I said, 'because we're starving.'

'No, I mean there's food in the marshes,' he said. 'Enough food to feed an army. We can raid
them, Uhtred, gather men and raid them. But that isn't enough. I have been thinking. All day,
I've been thinking.' He looked better now, less pained, and I suspected he had wanted time
to think and had found it in this stinking hovel. 'I'm not going to run away,' he said
firmly. 'I'm not going to Frankia.'

'Good,' I said, though I was so cold I was not really listening to him.

'We're going to stay here,' he said, 'raise an army, and take Wessex back.'

'Good,' I said again. I could smell burning. The hearth was surrounded by flat stones and
Elwide had put a dozen oat bannocks on the stones to cook and the edges nearest the flames
were blackening. I moved one of them, but Alfred frowned and gestured for me to stop for fear
of distracting him.

'The problem,' he said, 'is that I cannot afford to fight a small war.'

I did not see what other war he could fight, but kept silent.

'The longer the Danes stay here,' he said, 'the firmer their grip. Men will start giving
Guthrum their allegiance. I can't have that.'

No, lord.'

'So they have to be defeated.' He spoke grimly. 'Not beaten, Uhtred, but defeated!'

I thought of Iseult's dream, but said nothing, then I thought how often Alfred had made
peace with the Danes instead of fighting them, and still I said nothing.

'In spring,' he went on, 'they'll have new men and they'll spread through Wessex until, by
summer's end, there'll be no Wessex. So we have to do two things.' He was not so much telling
me as just thinking aloud. 'First,' he held out one long finger, 'we have to stop them from
dispersing their armies. They have to fight us here. They have to be kept together so they
can't send small bands across the country and take estates.' That made sense. Right now, from
what we heard from the land beyond the swamp, the Danes were raiding all across Wessex, but
they were going fast, snatching what plunder they could before other men could take it, but
in a few weeks they would start looking for places to live. By keeping their attention on the
swamp Alfred hoped to stop that process. 'And while they look at us,'

he said, 'the fyrd must be gathered.'

I stared at him. I had supposed he would stay in the swamp until the Danes either
overwhelmed us or we gained enough strength to take back a shire, and then another shire, a
process of years, but his vision was much grander. He would assemble the army of Wessex
under the Danish noses and take everything back at once. It was like a game of dice and he
had decided to take everything he had, little as it was, and risk it all on one throw.

'We shall make them fight a great battle,' he said grimly, 'and with God's help we shall
destroy them.'

There was a sudden scream. Alfred, as if startled from a reverie, looked up, but too late,
because Elwide was standing over him, screaming that he had burned the oatcakes. 'I told you
to watch them!'

she shouted and, in her fury, she slapped the king with a skinned eel. The blow made a wet
sound as it struck and had enough force to knock Alfred sideways. The two soldiers jumped up,
hands going to their swords, but I waved them back as Elwide snatched the burned cakes from the
stones. 'I told you to watch them!' she shrieked, and Alfred lay where he had fallen and I
thought he was crying, but then I saw he was laughing. He was helpless with laughter,
weeping with laughter, as happy as ever I saw him.

Because he had a plan to take back his kingdom.

Æthelingaeg's garrison now had seventy-three men. Alfred moved there with his family,
and sent six of Leofric's men to Brant armed with axes and orders to make a beacon. He was at
his best in those days, calm and confident, the panic and despair of the first weeks of
January swept away by his irrational belief that he would regain his kingdom before
summer touched the land. He was immensely cheered too by the arrival of Father Beocca who
came limping from the landing stage, face beaming, to fall prostrate at the king's feet. 'You
live, lord!' Beocca said, clutching the king's ankles, 'God be praised, you live!'

Alfred raised him and embraced him, and both men wept and next day, a Sunday, Beocca
preached a sermon which I could not help hearing because the service was held in the open
air, under a clear cold sky, and Æthelingaeg's island was too small to escape the priest's
voice. Beocca said how David, King of Israel, had been forced to flee his enemies, how he had
taken refuge in the cave of Adullam, and how God had led him back into Israel and to the
defeat of his enemies. 'This is our Adullam!' Beocca said, waving his good hand at
Æthelingaeg's thatched roofs, 'and this is our David!' he pointed to the king, 'and God will
lead us to victory!'

'It's a pity, father,' I said to Beocca afterwards, 'that you weren't this belligerent
two months ago.'

'I rejoice,' he said loftily, 'to find you in the king's good graces.'

'He's discovered the value,' I said, 'of murderous bastards like me, so perhaps he'll
learn to distrust the advice of snivelling bastards like you who told him the Danes could be
defeated by prayer.'