Sword Song (23 page)

Æthelred sprawled in a chair that could well have been a throne. It had a high back, ornately carved arms, and was cushioned with fur. I do not know if he saw us, and if he did he took no notice of us, but Æthelflaed, who was sitting in a lower chair beside him, certainly saw us. She stared at us with an apparent lack of recognition, then turned her face away as if she was bored. The cases occupying Æthelred were trivial, but he insisted on listening to every oath-taker. The first complaint was about a miller who was accused of using false weights, and Æthelred questioned the oath-takers relentlessly. His friend, Aldhelm,
sat just behind him and kept whispering advice into Æthelred’s ear. Aldhelm’s once handsome face was scarred from the beating I had given him, his nose crooked and one cheekbone flattened. It seemed to me, who had often judged such matters, that the miller was plainly guilty, but it took Æthelred and Aldhelm a long time to reach the same conclusion. The man was sentenced to the loss of one ear and a brand-mark on one cheek, then a young priest read aloud an indictment against a prostitute accused of stealing from the poor box in the church of Saint Alban. It was while the priest was still speaking that Æthelflaed suddenly griped. She jerked forward with one hand clutching at her belly. I thought she was going to vomit, but nothing came from her open mouth except a low moan of pain. She stayed bent forward, mouth open and with the one hand clasped to her stomach that still showed no sign of any pregnancy.

The hall had gone silent. Æthelred stared at his young wife, apparently helpless in the face of her distress, then two women came from an open archway and, after going on one knee to Æthelred and evidently receiving his permission, helped Æthelflaed away. My cousin, his face pale, gestured at the priest. “Start again at the beginning of the indictment, father,” Æthelred said, “my attention wandered.”

“I had almost finished, lord,” the priest said helpfully, “and have oath-takers who can describe the crime.”

“No, no, no!” Æthelred held up a hand. “I wish to hear the indictment. We must be seen to be thorough in our judgment.”

So the priest began again. Folk shuffled their feet in boredom as he droned on, and it was then that Gisela touched my elbow.

A woman had just spoken to Gisela who, twitching my tunic, turned and followed the woman through the door at the back of the hall. I went too, hoping that Æthelred was too involved in his pretense of being the perfect judge to see our departure.

We followed the woman down a corridor that had once been the cloistered side of a courtyard, but at some time the pillars of the open arcade had been filled with screens of wattle and mud. At the corridor’s end a crude wooden door had been hung in a stone frame.
Carved vines writhed up the masonry. On the far side was a room with a floor of small tiles that showed some Roman god casting a thunderbolt and beyond that was a sunlit garden where three pear trees cast shade on a patch of grass bright with daisies and buttercups. Æthelflaed waited for us beneath the trees.

She showed no sign of the distress that had sent her crouching and dry-retching from the hall. Instead she was standing tall, her back straight and with a solemn expression, though that solemnity brightened into a smile when she saw Gisela. They hugged, and I saw Æthelflaed’s eyes close as if she was fighting back tears.

“You’re not ill, lady?” I asked.

“Just pregnant,” she said, her eyes still shut, “not ill.”

“You looked ill just now,” I said.

“I wanted to talk with you,” she said, pulling away from Gisela, “and pretending to be ill was the only way to have privacy. He can’t stand it when I’m sick. He leaves me alone when I vomit.”

“Are you often sick?” Gisela asked.

“Every morning,” Æthelflaed said, “sick like a hound, but isn’t everyone?”

“Not this time,” Gisela said, and touched her amulet. She wore a small image of Frigg, wife of Odin and Queen of Asgard where the gods live. Frigg is the goddess of pregnancy and childbirth, and the amulet was supposed to give Gisela a safe delivery of the child she carried. The little image had worked well with our first two children and I prayed daily that it would work again with the third.

“I vomit every morning,” Æthelflaed said, “then feel fine for the rest of the day.” She touched her belly, then stroked Gisela’s stomach that was now distended with her child. “You must tell me about childbirth,” Æthelflaed said anxiously. “It’s painful, isn’t it?”

“You forget the pain,” Gisela said, “because it’s swamped by joy.”

“I hate pain.”

“There are herbs,” Gisela said, trying to sound convincing, “and there is so much joy when the child comes.”

They talked of childbirth and I leaned on the brick wall and stared
at the patch of blue sky beyond the pear tree leaves. The woman who had brought us had gone away and we were alone. Somewhere beyond the brick wall a man was shouting at recruits to keep their shields up and I could hear the bang of staves on wood as they practiced. I thought of the new city, the Lundene outside the walls where the Saxons had made their town. They wanted me to make a new palisade there, and defend it with my garrison, but I was refusing because Alfred had ordered me to refuse and because, with the new town enclosed by a wall, there would be too many ramparts to protect. I wanted those Saxons to move into the old city. A few had come, wanting the protection of the old Roman wall and my garrison, but most stubbornly stayed in the new town. “What are you thinking?” Æthelflaed suddenly interrupted my thoughts.

“He’s thanking Thor that he’s a man,” Gisela said, “and that he doesn’t have to give birth.”

“True,” I said, “and I was thinking that if people prefer to die in the new town rather than live in the old, then we should let them die.”

Æthelflaed smiled at that callous statement. She crossed to me. She was barefoot and looked very small. “You don’t hit Gisela, do you?” she asked, gazing up at me.

I glanced at Gisela and smiled. “No, lady,” I said gently.

Æthelflaed went on staring at me. She had blue eyes with brown flecks, a slightly snub nose, and her lower lip was larger than her top lip. Her bruises had gone, though a faint dark blush on one cheek showed where she had last been struck. She looked very serious. Wisps of golden hair showed around her bonnet. “Why didn’t you warn me, Uhtred?” she asked.

“Because you didn’t want to be warned,” I said.

She thought about that, then nodded abruptly. “No, I didn’t, you’re right. I put myself in the cage, didn’t I? Then I locked it.”

“Then unlock it,” I said brutally.

“Can’t,” she said curtly.

“No?” Gisela asked.

“God has the key.”

I smiled at that. “I never did like your god,” I said.

“No wonder my husband says you’re a bad man,” Æthelflaed retorted with a smile.

“Does he say that?”

“He says you are wicked, untrustworthy, and treacherous.”

I smiled, said nothing.

“Pig-headed,” Gisela kept the litany going, “simple-minded and brutal.”

“That’s me,” I said.

“And very kind,” Gisela finished.

Æthelflaed still looked up at me. “He fears you,” she said, “and Aldhelm hates you,” she went on. “He’ll kill you if he can.”

“He can try,” I said.

“Aldhelm wants my husband to be king,” Æthelflaed said.

“And what does your husband think?” I asked.

“He would like it,” Æthelflaed said and that did not surprise me. Mercia lacked a king, and Æthelred had a claim, but my cousin was nothing without Alfred’s support and Alfred wanted no man to be called king in Mercia.

“Why doesn’t your father just declare himself King of Mercia?” I asked Æthelflaed.

“I think he will,” she said, “one day.”

“But not yet?”

“Mercia is a proud country,” she said, “and not every Mercian loves Wessex.”

“And you’re there to make them love Wessex?”

She touched her belly. “Perhaps my father wants his first grandchild to be king in Mercia,” she suggested. “A king with West Saxon blood?”

“And Æthelred’s blood,” I said sourly.

She sighed. “He’s not a bad man,” she said wistfully, almost as if she were trying to persuade herself.

“He beats you,” Gisela said drily.

“He wants to be a good man,” Æthelflaed said. She touched my arm. “He wants to be like you, Uhtred.”

“Like me!” I said, almost laughing.

“Feared,” Æthelflaed explained.

“Then why,” I asked, “is he wasting time here? Why isn’t he taking his ships to fight the Danes?”

Æthelflaed sighed. “Because Aldhelm tells him not to,” she said. “Aldhelm says that if Gunnkel stays in Cent or East Anglia,” she went on, “then my father has to keep more forces here. He has to keep looking eastward.”

“He has to do that anyway,” I said.

“But Aldhelm says that if my father has to worry all the time about a horde of pagans in the Temes estuary, then he might not notice what happens in Mercia.”

“Where my cousin will declare himself king?” I guessed.

“It will be the price he demands,” Æthelflaed said, “for defending the northern frontier of Wessex.”

“And you’ll be queen,” I said.

She grimaced at that. “You think I want that?”

“No,” I admitted.

“No,” she agreed. “What I want is the Danes gone from Mercia. I want the Danes gone from East Anglia. I want the Danes gone from Northumbria.” She was little more than a child, a thin child with a snub nose and bright eyes, but she had steel in her. She was talking to me, who loved the Danes because I had been raised by them, and to Gisela, who was a Dane, but Æthelflaed did not try to soften her words. There was a hatred of the Danes in her, a hatred she had inherited from her father. Then, suddenly, she shuddered and the steel vanished. “And I want to live,” she said.

I did not know what to say. Women died giving birth. So many died. I had sacrificed to Odin and Thor both times that Gisela had given birth and I had still been scared, and I was frightened now because she was pregnant again.

“You use the wisest women,” Gisela said, “and you trust the herbs and charms they use.”

“No,” Æthelflaed said firmly, “not that.”

“Then what?”

“Tonight,” Æthelflaed said, “at midnight. In Saint Alban’s church.”

“Tonight?” I asked, utterly confused, “in the church?”

She stared up at me with huge blue eyes. “They might kill me,” she said.

“No!” Gisela protested, not believing what she heard.

“He wants to be sure the child is his!” Æthelflaed interrupted her, “and of course it is! But they want to be sure and I’m frightened!”

Gisela gathered Æthelflaed into her arms and stroked her hair. “No one will kill you,” she said softly, looking at me.

“Be at the church, please,” Æthelflaed said in a voice made small because her head was crushed against Gisela’s breasts.

“We’ll be with you,” Gisela said.

“Go to the big church, the one dedicated to Alban,” Æthelflaed said. She was crying softly. “So how bad is the pain?” she asked. “Is it like being torn in two? That’s what my mother says!”

“It is bad,” Gisela admitted, “but it leads to a joy like no other.” She stroked Æthelflaed and stared at me as though I could explain what was to happen at midnight, but I had no idea what was in my cousin’s suspicious mind.

Then the woman who had led us to the pear tree garden appeared at the door. “Your husband, mistress,” she said urgently, “he wants you in the hall.”

“I must go,” Æthelflaed said. She cuffed her eyes with her sleeve, smiled at us without joy, and fled.

“What are they going to do to her?” Gisela asked angrily.

“I don’t know.”

“Sorcery?” she demanded. “Some Christian sorcery?”

“I don’t know,” I said again, nor did I, except that the summons was for midnight, the darkest hour, when evil appears and shape-shifters stalk the land and the Shadow-Walkers come. At midnight.

T
he church of Saint Alban was ancient. The lower walls were of stone, which meant the Romans had built it, though at some time the roof had fallen in and the upper masonry had crumbled, so that now almost everything above head height was made of timber, wattle, and thatch. The church lay on the main street of Lundene, which ran north and south from what was now called the Bishop’s Gate down to the broken bridge. Beocca once told me that the church had been a royal chapel for the Mercian kings, and perhaps he was right. “And Alban was a soldier!” Beocca had added. He always got enthusiastic when he talked about the saints whose stories he knew and loved. “So you should like him!”

“I should like him simply because he was a soldier?” I had asked skeptically.

“Because he was a brave soldier!” Beocca told me, “and,” he paused, snuffling excitedly because he had important information to impart, “and when he was martyred the eyes of his executioner fell out!” He beamed at me with his own one good eye. “They fell out, Uhtred! Just popped out of his head! That was God’s punishment, you see? You kill a holy man and God pulls out your eyes!”

“So Brother Jænberht wasn’t holy?” I had suggested. Jænberht was a monk I had killed in a church, much to the horror of Father Beocca
and a crowd of other watching churchmen. “I’ve still got my eyes, father,” I pointed out.

“You deserve to be blinded!” Beocca had said, “but God is merciful. Strangely merciful at times, I must say.”

I had thought about Alban for a while. “Why,” I had then asked, “if your god can pull out a man’s eyes, didn’t he just save Alban’s life?”

“Because God chose not to, of course!” Beocca had answered sniffily, which is just the kind of answer you always get when you ask a Christian priest to explain another inexplicable act of their god.

“Alban was a Roman soldier?” I had asked, choosing not to query his god’s capriciously cruel nature.

“He was a Briton,” Beocca told me, “a very brave and very holy Briton.”

“Does that mean he was Welsh?”

“Of course it does!”

“Maybe that’s why your god let him die,” I said, and Beocca had made the sign of the cross and rolled his good eye to heaven.

So, though Alban was a Welshman, and we Saxons have no love for the Welsh, there was a church named for him in Lundene, and that church appeared as dead as the dead saint’s corpse when Gisela, Finan, and I arrived. The street was night black. Some small firelight escaped past the window shutters of a few houses, and a tavern was loud with singing in a nearby street, but the church was black and silent. “I don’t like it,” Gisela whispered, and I knew she had touched the amulet around her neck. Before we left the house she had cast her runesticks, hoping to see some pattern to this night, but the random fall of the sticks had mystified her.

Something moved in a nearby alleyway. It might have been nothing more than a rat, but both Finan and I turned, swords hissing out of our scabbards, and the noise in the alleyway immediately stopped. I let Serpent-Breath slide back into her fleece-lined scabbard.

The three of us were wearing dark cloaks with hoods so, if anyone was watching, they must have thought we were priests or monks as we stood outside Saint Alban’s dark and silent door. No light showed past
that door’s edges. I tried to open it, pulling on the short rope that lifted the latch inside, but the door was apparently barred. I pushed hard, rattling the locked door, then beat on its timbers with a fist, but there was no response. Then Finan touched my arm and I heard the footsteps. “Over the street,” I whispered, and we crossed to the alleyway where we had heard the noise. The small, tight passage stank of sewage.

“They’re priests,” Finan whispered to me.

Two men were walking down the street. They were momentarily visible in the small light cast by a loosely shuttered window and I saw their black robes and the glint from the silver crosses they wore on their breasts. They stopped at the church and one knocked hard on the barred door. He gave three knocks, paused, gave a single rap, paused again, then knocked three times more.

We heard the bar lifted and the creak of hinges as the door was swung open, then light flooded into the street as a curtain inside the doorway was pulled aside. A priest or monk let the two men step into the candlelit church, then peered up and down the roadway and I knew he was searching for whoever had rattled the door a few moments earlier. A question must have been called to him, for he turned and gave an answer. “No one here, lord,” he said, then pulled the door shut. I heard the locking bar drop and, for an instant, light showed about the doorframe until the curtain inside was pulled closed and the church was dark again.

“Wait,” I said.

We waited, listening to the wind rustle across the thatched roofs and moan in the ruined houses. I waited a long time, letting the memory of the rattled door subside.

“It must be close to midnight,” Gisela whispered.

“Whoever opens the door,” I said softly, “has to be silenced.” I did not know what was happening inside the church, but I did know it was so secret that the church was locked and a coded knock was needed to enter, and I also knew that we were uninvited, and that if the man who opened the door made a protest at our arrival then we might never discover Æthelflaed’s danger.

“Leave him to me,” Finan said happily.

“He’s a churchman,” I whispered, “does that worry you?”

“In the dark, lord, all cats are black.”

“Meaning?”

“Leave him to me,” the Irishman said again.

“Then let’s go to church,” I said, and the three of us crossed the street and I knocked hard on the door. I knocked three times, gave a single rap, then knocked three times again.

It took a long time for the door to be opened, but at last the bar was lifted and the door was pushed outward. “They’ve started,” a robed figure whispered, then gasped as I seized his collar and pulled him into the street where Finan hit him in the belly. The Irishman was a small man, but had extraordinary strength in his lithe arms, and the robed figure bent double with a sudden gasp. The door’s inner curtain had fallen across the opening and no one inside the church could see what happened outside. Finan punched the man again, felling him, then knelt on the fallen figure. “You go away,” Finan whispered, “if you want to live. You just go a very long way from the church and you forget you ever saw us. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” the man said.

Finan tapped the man on the head to reinforce the order, then stood up and we saw the dark figure scrabble to his feet and stumble away downhill. I waited a brief while to make sure he had really gone, then the three of us stepped inside and Finan pulled the door shut and dropped the bar into its brackets.

And I pushed the curtain aside.

We were in the darkest part of the church, but I still felt exposed because the far end, where the altar stood, was ablaze with rushlights and wax candles. A line of robed men stood facing the altar and their shadows shrouded us. One of those priests turned toward us, but he just saw three cloaked and hooded figures and must have assumed we were more priests because he turned back to the altar.

It took me a moment to see who was on the altar’s wide shallow dais because they were hidden by the priests and monks, but then the
churchmen all bowed to the silver crucifix and I saw Æthelred and Aldhelm standing on the left-hand side of the altar while Bishop Erkenwald was on the right. Between them was Æthelflaed. She wore a white linen shift belted just beneath her small breasts and her fair hair was hanging loose, as if she were a girl again. She looked frightened. An older woman stood behind Æthelred. She had hard eyes and her gray hair was rolled into a tight scroll on the crown of her skull.

Bishop Erkenwald was praying in Latin and every few minutes the watching priests and monks, there were nine of them altogether, echoed his words. Erkenwald was dressed in red and white robes on which jeweled crosses had been sewn. His voice, always harsh, echoed from the stone walls, while the responses of the churchmen were a dull murmur. Æthelred looked bored, while Aldhelm seemed to be taking a quiet delight in whatever mysteries unfolded in that flame-lit sanctuary.

The bishop finished his prayers, the watching men all said amen, and then there was a slight pause before Erkenwald took a book from the altar. He unwrapped the leather covers, then turned the stiff pages to a place he had marked with a seagull’s feather. “This,” he spoke in English now, “is the word of the Lord.”

“Hear the word of the Lord,” the priests and monks muttered.

“If a man fears his wife has been unfaithful,” the bishop spoke louder, his grating voice repeated by the echo, “he shall bring her before the priest! And he shall bring an offering!” He stared pointedly at Æthelred who was dressed in a pale green cloak over a full coat of mail. He even wore his swords, something most priests would never allow in a church. “An offering!” the bishop repeated.

Æthelred started as if he had been woken from a half-sleep. He fumbled in a pouch hanging from his sword belt and produced a small bag that he held toward the bishop. “Barley,” he said.

“As the Lord God commanded it,” Erkenwald responded, but did not take the offered barley.

“And silver,” Æthelred added, hurriedly taking a second bag from his pouch.

Erkenwald took the two offerings and laid them in front of the crucifix. He bowed to the bright-gleaming image of his nailed god, then picked up the big book again. “This is the word of the Lord,” he said fiercely, “that we take holy water in an earthen vessel, and of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take, and he shall put that dust in the water.”

The book was put back on the altar as a priest offered the bishop a crude pottery cup that evidently held holy water, for Erkenwald bowed to it, then stooped to the floor and scraped up a handful of dirt and dust. He poured the dirt into the water, then placed the cup on the altar before taking up the book again.

“I charge thee, woman,” he said savagely, looking from the book to Æthelflaed, “if no man hath lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness with another man instead of thy husband, then be thou free of the curse of this bitter water!”

“Amen,” one of the priests said.

“The word of the Lord!” another said.

“But if thou hast gone aside to another man,” Erkenwald spat the words as he read them, “and be defiled, then the Lord shall make thy thigh to rot and thy belly to swell.” He put the book back on the altar. “Speak, woman.”

Æthelflaed just stared at the bishop. She said nothing. Her eyes were wide with fear.

“Speak, woman!” the bishop snarled. “You know what words you must say! So say them!”

Æthelflaed seemed too frightened to speak. Aldhelm whispered something to Æthelred who nodded, but did nothing. Aldhelm whispered again, and again Æthelred nodded, and this time Aldhelm took a pace forward and hit Æthelfaed. It was not a hard blow, just a slap around the head, but it was enough to force me to take an involuntary step forward. Gisela snatched my arm, checking me. “Speak, woman,” Aldhelm ordered Æthelflaed.

“Amen,” Æthelflaed managed to whisper, “amen.”

Gisela’s hand was still on my arm. I patted her fingers as a signal
that I was calm. I was angry, I was astonished, but I was calm. I stroked Gisela’s hand, then dropped my fingers to Serpent-Breath’s hilt.

Æthelflaed had evidently spoken the right words because Bishop Erkenwald took the earthen cup from the altar. He raised it high in front of the crucifix, as if showing it to his god, then he carefully poured a little of its dust-fouled water into a silver chalice. He held the pottery cup high again, then ceremoniously offered it to Æthelflaed. “Drink the bitter water,” he ordered her.

Æthelflaed hesitated, then saw Aldhelm’s mailed arm ready to strike her again and so she obediently reached for the cup. She took it, held it poised by her mouth for a brief moment, then closed her eyes, screwed up her face and drank the contents. The men watched intently, making certain she drained the cup. The candle flames flickered in a draft from the smoke-hole in the roof and somewhere in the city a dog suddenly howled. Gisela was clutching my arm now, her fingers tight as claws.

Erkenwald took the cup and, when he was satisfied that it was empty, nodded to Æthelred. “She drank it,” the bishop confirmed. Æthelflaed’s face glistened where her tears reflected the wavering light from the altar on which, I now saw, was a quill pen, a pot of ink, and a piece of parchment. “What I do now,” Erkenwald said solemnly, “is in accordance with the word of God.”

“Amen,” the priests said. Æthelred was watching his wife as if he expected her flesh to start rotting before his eyes, while Æthelflaed herself was trembling so much that I thought she might collapse.

“God commands me to write the curses down,” the bishop announced, then bent to the altar. The quill scratched for a long time. Æthelred was still staring intently at Æthelflaed. The priests also watched her as the bishop scratched on. “And having written the curses,” Erkenwald said, capping the ink pot, “I wipe them out according to the commands of Almighty God, our Father in heaven.”

“Hear the word of the Lord,” a priest said.

“Praise his name,” another said.

Erkenwald picked up the silver chalice into which he had poured a
small amount of the dirty water and dribbled the contents onto the newly written words. He scrubbed at the ink with a finger, then held up the parchment to show that the writing had been smeared into oblivion. “It is done,” he said pompously, then nodded at the gray-haired woman. “Do your duty!” he commanded her.

The old, bitter-faced woman stepped to Æthelflaed’s side. The girl shrank away, but Aldhelm seized her by the shoulders. Æthelflaed shrieked in terror, and Aldhelm’s response was to cuff her hard around the head. I thought Æthelred must respond to that assault on his wife by another man, but he evidently approved for he did nothing except watch as Aldhelm took Æthelflaed by her shoulders again. He held her motionless as the old woman stooped to seize the hem of Æthelflaed’s linen shift. “No!” Æthelflaed protested in a wailing, despairing voice.