Sword Song (3 page)

Ulf shook his head. “I sailed as they arrived, lord. Bad enough having to pay you duty without giving half my goods to them.” He shuddered. “The Earl Sigefrid’s a bad man, lord. Not someone to do business with.”

“Why didn’t I know they were with Haesten?” I asked.

“They weren’t. They’ve been in Frankia. Sailed straight across the sea and up the river.”

“With twenty-two ships of Norsemen,” I said bitterly.

“They’ve got everything, lord,” Ulf said. “Danes, Frisians, Saxons, Norse, everything. Sigefrid finds men wherever the gods shake out
their shit-pots. They’re hungry men, lord. Masterless men. Rogues. They come from all over.”

The masterless man was the worst kind. He owed no allegiance. He had nothing but his sword, his hunger, and his ambition. I had been such a man in my time. “So Sigefrid and Erik will be trouble?” I suggested mildly.

“Sigefrid will,” Ulf said. “Erik? He’s the younger. Men speak well of him, but Sigefrid can’t wait for trouble.”

“He wants ransom?” I asked.

“He might,” Ulf said dubiously. “He’s got to pay all those men, and he got nothing but mouse droppings in Frankia. But who’ll pay him ransom? Lundene belongs to Mercia, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” I said.

“And there’s no king in Mercia,” Ulf said. “Isn’t natural, is it? A kingdom without a king.”

I thought of Æthelwold’s visit and touched my amulet of Thor’s hammer. “Have you ever heard of the dead being raised?” I asked Ulf.

“The dead being raised?” He stared at me, alarmed, and touched his own hammer amulet. “The dead are best left in Niflheim, lord.”

“An old magic, perhaps?” I suggested. “Raising the dead?”

“You hear tales,” Ulf said, now gripping his amulet tightly.

“What tales?”

“From the far north, lord. From the land of ice and birch. Strange things happen there. They say men can fly in the darkness, and I did hear that the dead walk on the frozen seas, but I never saw such a thing.” He raised the amulet to his lips and kissed it. “I reckon they’re just stories to scare children on winter nights, lord.”

“Maybe,” I said, and turned as a boy came running along the foot of the newly raised wall. He jumped the timbers that would eventually make the fighting platform, skidded in a piece of mud, clambered up the bank and then stood, panting too hard to be able to speak. I waited until he caught his breath. “
Haligast
, lord,” he said, “
Haligast
!”

Ulf looked at me quizzically. Like all traders he spoke some English, but
haligast
puzzled him. “The Holy Ghost,” I translated into Danish.

“Coming, lord,” the boy gasped excitedly and pointed upriver. “Coming now!”

“The Holy Ghost is coming?” Ulf asked in alarm. He probably had no idea what the Holy Ghost was, but he knew enough to fear all specters, and my recent question about the living dead had scared him.

“Alfred’s ship,” I explained, then turned back to the boy. “Is the king on board?”

“His flag’s flying, lord.”

“Then he is,” I said.

Ulf pulled his tunic straight. “Alfred? What does he want?”

“He wants to discover my loyalties,” I said drily.

Ulf grinned. “So you might be the one who twitches on a rope, eh, lord?”

“I need ax-heads,” I told him. “Take your best ones to the house and we’ll discuss a price later.”

I was not surprised by Alfred’s arrival. In those years he spent much of his time traveling between the growing burhs to inspect the work. He had been to Coccham a dozen times in as many months, but this visit, I reckoned, was not to examine the walls, but to find out why Æthelwold had come to see me. The king’s spies had done their work, and so the king had come to question me.

His ship was coming fast, carried by the Temes’s winter flow. In the cold months it was quicker to travel by ship, and Alfred liked the
Haligast
because it enabled him to work on board as he journeyed along the northern frontier of Wessex. The
Haligast
had twenty oars and room enough for half Alfred’s bodyguard and the inevitable troop of priests. The king’s banner, a green dragon, flew from the masthead, while two flags hung from the cross spar, which would have held a sail if the ship had been at sea. One flag showed a saint, while the other was a green cloth embroidered with a white cross. At the ship’s stern was a small cabin that cramped the steersman, but provided Alfred a place to keep his desk. A second ship, the
Heofonhlaf
, carried the rest of the bodyguard and still more priests.
Heofonhlaf
meant bread of heaven. Alfred never could name a ship.

Heofonhlaf
berthed first and a score of men in mail, carrying shields and spears, clambered ashore to line the wooden wharf. The
Haligast
followed, her steersman thumping the bow hard on a piling so that Alfred, who was waiting amidships, staggered. There were kings who might have disemboweled a steersman for that loss of dignity, but Alfred seemed not to notice. He was talking earnestly with a thin-faced, scrape-chinned, pale-cheeked monk. It was Asser of Wales. I had heard that Brother Asser was the king’s new pet, and I knew he hated me, which was only right because I hated him. I still smiled at him and he twitched away as if I had just vomited down his robe, bending his head closer to Alfred who could have been his twin, for Alfred of Wessex looked much more like a priest than a king. He wore a long black cloak and a growing baldness gave him the tonsured look of a monk. His hands, like a clerk’s, were always ink stained, while his bony face was lean and serious and earnest and pale. His beard was thin. He often went clean-shaven, but now had a beard streaked thick with white hairs.

Crewmen secured the
Haligast
, then Alfred took Asser’s elbow and stepped ashore with him. The Welshman wore an oversized cross on his chest and Alfred touched it briefly before turning to me. “My lord Uhtred,” he said enthusiastically. He was being unusually pleasant, not because he was glad to see me, but because he thought I was plotting treason. There was little other reason for me to sup with his nephew Æthelwold.

“My lord King,” I said, and bowed to him. I ignored Brother Asser. The Welshman had once accused me of piracy, murder, and a dozen other things, and most of his accusations had been accurate, but I was still alive. He shot me a dismissive glance, then scuttled off through the mud, evidently going to make certain that the nuns in Coccham’s convent were not pregnant, drunk, or happy.

Alfred, followed by Egwine, who now commanded the household troops, and by six of those troops, walked along my new battlements. He glanced at Ulf’s ship, but said nothing. I knew I had to tell him of the capture of Lundene, but I decided to let that news wait until he
had asked his questions of me. For now he was content to inspect the work we had been doing and he found nothing to criticize, nor did he expect to. Coccham’s burh was far more advanced than any of the others. The next fort west on the Temes, at Welengaford, had scarcely broken ground, let alone built a palisade, while the walls at Oxnaforda had slumped into their ditch after a week of violent rain just before Yule. Coccham’s burh, though, was almost finished. “I am told,” Alfred said, “that the fyrd is reluctant to work. You have not found that true?”

The fyrd was the army, raised from the shire, and the fyrd not only built the burhs, but formed their garrisons. “The fyrd are very reluctant to work, lord,” I said.

“Yet you have almost finished?”

I smiled. “I hanged ten men,” I said, “and it encouraged the rest to enthusiasm.”

He stopped at a place where he could stare downriver. Swans made the view lovely. I watched him. The lines on his face were deeper and his skin paler. He looked ill, but then Alfred of Wessex was always a sick man. His stomach hurt and his bowels hurt, and I saw a grimace as a stab of pain lanced through him. “I heard,” he spoke coldly, “that you hanged them without benefit of trial?”

“I did, lord, yes.”

“There are laws in Wessex,” he said sternly.

“And if the burh isn’t built,” I said, “then there will be no Wessex.”

“You like to defy me,” he said mildly.

“No, lord, I swore an oath to you. I do your work.”

“Then hang no more men without a fair trial,” he said sharply, then turned and stared across the river to the Mercian bank. “A king must bring justice, Lord Uhtred. That is a king’s job. And if a land has no king, how can there be law?” He still spoke mildly, but he was testing me, and for a moment I felt alarm. I had assumed he had come to discover what Æthelwold had said to me, but his mention of Mercia, and of its lack of a king, suggested he already knew what had been discussed on that night of cold wind and hard rain. “There are men,” he
went on, still staring at the Mercian bank, “who would like to be King of Mercia.” He paused and I was certain he knew everything that Æthelwold had said to me, but then he betrayed his ignorance. “My nephew Æthelwold?” he suggested.

I gave a burst of laughter that was made too loud by my relief. “Æthelwold!” I said. “He doesn’t want to be King of Mercia! He wants your throne, lord.”

“He told you that?” he asked sharply.

“Of course he told me that,” I said. “He tells everyone that!”

“Is that why he came to see you?” Alfred asked, unable to hide his curiosity any longer.

“He came to buy a horse, lord,” I lied. “He wants my stallion, Smoca, and I told him no.” Smoca’s hide was an unusual mix of gray and black, thus his name, Smoke, and he had won every race he had ever run in his life and, better, was not afraid of men, shields, weapons, or noise. I could have sold Smoca to any warrior in Britain.

“And he talked of wanting to be king?” Alfred asked suspiciously.

“Of course he did.”

“You didn’t tell me at the time,” he said reproachfully.

“If I told you every time Æthelwold talked treason,” I said, “you’d never cease to hear from me. What I tell you now is that you should slice his head off.”

“He is my nephew,” Alfred said stiffly, “and has royal blood.”

“He still has a removable head,” I insisted.

He waved a petulant hand as if my idea were risible. “I thought of making him king in Mercia,” he said, “but he would lose the throne.”

“He would,” I agreed.

“He’s weak,” Alfred said scornfully, “and Mercia needs a strong ruler. Someone to frighten the Danes.” I confess at that moment I thought he meant me and I was ready to thank him, even fall to my knees and take his hand, but then he enlightened me. “Your cousin, I think.”

“Æthelred!” I asked, unable to hide my scorn. My cousin was a bumptious little prick, full of his own importance, but he was also
close to Alfred. So close that he was going to marry Alfred’s elder daughter.

“He can be ealdorman in Mercia,” Alfred said, “and rule with my blessing.” In other words my miserable cousin would govern Mercia on Alfred’s leash and, if I am truthful, that was a better solution for Alfred than letting someone like me take Mercia’s throne. Æthelred, married to Æthelflaed, was more likely to be Alfred’s man, and Mercia, or at least that part of it south of Wæclingastræt, would be like a province of Wessex.

“If my cousin,” I said, “is to be Lord of Mercia, then he’ll be Lord of Lundene?”

“Of course.”

“Then he has a problem, lord,” I said, and I confess I spoke with some pleasure at the prospect of my pompous cousin having to deal with a thousand rogues commanded by Norse earls. “A fleet of thirty-one ships arrived in Lundene two days ago,” I went on. “The Earls Sigefrid and Erik Thurgilson command them. Haesten of Beamfleot is an ally. So far as I know, lord, Lundene now belongs to Norsemen and Danes.”

For a moment Alfred said nothing, but just stared at the swan-haunted floodwaters. He looked paler than ever. His jaw clenched. “You sound pleased,” he said bitterly.

“I do not mean to, lord,” I said.

“How in God’s name can that happen?” he demanded angrily. He turned and gazed at the burh’s walls. “The Thurgilson brothers were in Frankia,” he said. I might never have heard of Sigefrid and Erik, but Alfred made it his business to know where the Viking bands were roving.

“They’re in Lundene now,” I said remorselessly.

He fell silent again, and I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that the Temes is our road to other kingdoms, to the rest of the world, and if the Danes and the Norse block the Temes, then Wessex was cut off from much of the world’s trade. Of course there were other ports and other rivers, but the Temes is the great river that sucks
in vessels from all the wide seas. “Do they want money?” he asked bitterly.

“That is Mercia’s problem, lord,” I suggested.

“Don’t be a fool!” he snapped at me. “Lundene might be in Mercia, but the river belongs to both of us.” He turned around again, staring downriver almost as though he expected to see the masts of Norse ships appearing in the distance. “If they will not go,” he said quietly, “then they will have to be expelled.”

“Yes, lord.”

“And that,” he said decisively, “will be my wedding gift to your cousin.”

“Lundene?”

“And you will provide it,” he said savagely. “You will restore Lundene to Mercian rule, Lord Uhtred. Let me know by the Feast of Saint David what force you will need to secure the gift.” He frowned, thinking. “Your cousin will command the army, but he is too busy to plan the campaign. You will make the necessary preparations and advise him.”

“I will?” I asked sourly.

“Yes,” he said, “you will.”

He did not stay to eat. He said prayers in the church, gave silver to the nunnery, then embarked on
Haligast
and vanished upstream.

And I was to capture Lundene and give all the glory to my cousin Æthelred.

The summons to meet the dead came two weeks later and took me by surprise.

Each morning, unless the snow was too thick for easy travel, a crowd of petitioners waited at my gate. I was the ruler in Coccham, the man who dispensed justice, and Alfred had granted me that power, knowing it was essential if his burh was to be built. He had given me more. I was entitled to a tenth part of every harvest in northern Berrocscire, I was given pigs and cattle and grain, and from that
income I paid for the timber that made the walls and the weapons that guarded them. There was opportunity in that, and Alfred suspected me, which is why he had given me a sly priest called Wulfstan, whose task was to make sure I did not steal too much. Yet it was Wulfstan who stole. He had come to me in the summer, half grinning, and pointed out that the dues we collected from the merchants who used the river were unpredictable, which meant Alfred could never estimate whether we were keeping proper accounts. He waited for my approval and got a thump about his tonsured skull instead. I sent him to Alfred under guard with a letter describing his dishonesty, and then I stole the dues myself. The priest had been a fool. You never, ever, tell others of your crimes, not unless they are so big as to be incapable of concealment, and then you describe them as policy or statecraft.