The Burning Land (12 page)

Wyrd bið ful ãræd.

FIVE

And so the poem goes on for many, many, many more lines. I have the parchment in front of me, though I shall burn it in a moment. My name is not mentioned, of course, and that is why I shall burn it. Men die, women die, cattle die, but reputation lives on like the echo of a song. Yet why should men sing of Æthelred? He fought well enough that day, but Fearnhamme was not his battle, it was mine.

I should pay my own poets to write down their songs, but they prefer lying in the sun and drinking my ale and, to be frank, poets bore me. I endure them for the sake of the guests in my hall who expect to hear the harp and the boasts. Curiosity drove me to buy this about-to-be-burned parchment from a monk who sells such things to noble halls. He had come from the lands that were Mercia, of course, and it is natural that Mercian poets should extol their country or else no one would ever hear of it, and so they write their lies, but even they cannot compete with the churchmen. The annals of our time are all written by monks and priests, and a man might have run away from a hundred battles and never once have killed a Dane, but so long as he gives money to the church he will be written down as a hero.

The battle at Fearnhamme was won by two things. The first was that Steapa brought Alfred’s men to the field just when they were needed and, looking back, that could so easily have gone wrong. The Ætheling Edward, of course, was notionally in charge of that half of the army, and both he and Æthelred possessed far more authority than Steapa, indeed they both insisted he gave the command to leave Æscengum too soon and countermanded his order, but Alfred overruled them. Alfred was too sick to command the army himself, but, like me, he had learned to trust Steapa’s brute instinct. And so the horsemen arrived at the rear of Harald’s army when it was disorganized and when half still waited to cross the river.

The second reason for success was the speed with which my swine head shattered Harald’s shield wall. Such attacks did not always work, but we had the advantage of the slope, and the Danes, I think, were already dispirited by the slaughter beyond the ford. And so we won.

Burning is too good for it. Maybe I shall tear it to squares and leave it in the latrine.

We were too tired to organize a proper pursuit, and our men were dazed by the speed of their triumph. They had also found ale, mead, and Frankish wine in the Danes’ saddlebags and many became drunk as they wandered the butcher’s shop they had made. Some men began heaving Danish corpses into the river, but there were so many that the bodies jammed against the Roman bridge piers to make a dam that flooded the ford’s banks. Mail coats were being heaped and captured weapons piled. The few prisoners were under guard in a barn, their sobbing women and children gathered outside, while Skade had been placed in an empty granary where two of my men now guarded her. Alfred, naturally, went to the
church to give thanks to his god, and all the priests and monks went with him. Bishop Asser paused before going to his prayers. He stared at the dead and at the plunder, then turned his cold eyes on me. He just gazed at me, as if I were one of those two-headed calves that are shown at fairs, then he looked puzzled and gestured that Edward should go with him to the church.

Edward hesitated. He was a shy young man, but it was plain he felt he should say something to me and had no idea what words to use. I spoke instead. “I congratulate you, lord,” I said.

He frowned and for a moment looked as puzzled as Asser, then he twitched and straightened. “I’m not a fool, Lord Uhtred.”

“I never thought so,” I said.

“You must teach me,” he said.

“Teach you?”

He waved at the carnage and, for a heartbeat, looked horrified. “How you do this,” he blurted out.

“You think like your enemy, lord,” I said, “and then you think harder.” I would have said more, but just then I saw Cerdic in an alley between two cottages. I half turned, then was distracted by Bishop Asser sternly calling Edward away, and when I looked back there was no Cerdic. Nor could there have been, I told myself. I had left Cerdic in Lundene to guard Gisela, and I decided it was just one of the tricks that tired thoughts can play.

“Here, lord.” Sihtric, who had been my servant, but was now one of my household warriors, dumped a heavy coat of mail at my feet. “It’s got gold links, lord,” he said excitedly.

“You keep it,” I said.

“Lord?” He stared up at me with astonishment.

“Your wife has expensive tastes, doesn’t she?” I asked. Sihtric had married a whore, Ealhswith, much against my advice and without my permission, but I had forgiven him and then been surprised that the marriage was happy. They had two children now, both sturdy little boys. “Take it away,” I said.

“Thank you, lord.” Sihtric scooped up the mail coat.

Time slows.

It is strange how I have forgotten some things. I cannot truly re
member the moment when I led the swine head into Harald’s line. Was I looking into his face? Do I truly remember the horse’s fresh blood flicking from his beard as his head turned? Or was I looking at the man to his left whose shield half protected Harald? I forget so much, but not that moment as Sihtric picked up the mail coat. I saw a man leading a dozen captured horses across the flooded ford. Two other men were tugging bodies free of the corpse-dam at the ruined bridge. One of the men had red curly hair and the other was doubled over in laughter at some jest. Three other men were tossing corpses into the river, adding to the blockage of bodies faster than the pair could relieve it. A thin dog was scratching itself on the street where Osferth, Alfred’s bastard, was talking to the Lady Æthelflæd, and I was surprised that she was not in the church with her father, brother, and husband, and surprised that she and her half-brother appeared to have struck up a friendly relationship so soon. I remember Oswi, my new servant lad, leading Smoka into the street and pausing to talk to a woman, and I realized that Fearnhamme’s townsfolk were returning already. I supposed they must have hidden in the nearby woods as soon as they saw armed men across the river. Another woman, wearing a dull yellow cloak, was using a paring knife to cut a ring-circled finger from a dead Dane’s hand. I remember a raven, circling blue-black in the blood-smelling sky, and I felt a sharp elation as I stared at the bird. Was that one of Odin’s two ravens? Would the gods themselves hear of this carnage? I laughed aloud, the sound incongruous because in my memory there was just silence at that moment.

Till Æthelflæd spoke. “Lord?” She had come close and was staring at me. “Uhtred?” she said gently. Finan was a couple of paces behind her, and with him was Cerdic, and that was when I knew. I knew, but I said nothing, and Æthelflæd walked to me and laid a hand on my arm. “Uhtred?” she said again. I think I just stared into her face. Her blue eyes were bright with tears. “Childbirth,” she said gently.

“No,” I said, quite quietly, “no.”

“Yes,” she said simply. Finan was looking at me, pain on his face.

“No,” I said louder.

“Mother and child,” Æthelflæd said very softly.

I closed my eyes. My world went dark, had gone dark, for my Gisela was dead.

Wyn eal gedreas. That is from another poem I sometimes hear chanted in my hall. It is a sad poem, and thus a true poem. Wyrd bið ful ãræd, it says. Fate is inexorable. And wyn eal gedreas. All the joy has died.

All my joy had died and I had gone into the dark. Finan said I howled like a wolf, and perhaps I did, though I do not remember that. Grief must be hidden. The man who first chanted that fate is inexorable went on to say that we must bind our inmost thoughts in chains. A saddened mind does no good, he said, and its thoughts must be hidden, and maybe I did howl, but then I shook off Æthelflæd’s hand and snarled at the men heaving corpses into the river, ordering that two of them should help the men trying to clear the bodies from between the ruined bridge piers. “Make sure all our horses are down from the hilltop,” I told Finan.

I did not think of Skade at that moment, or else I might have let Serpent-Breath take her rotten soul. It was her curse, I realized later, that killed Gisela, because she had died on the same morning that Harald had forced me to free Skade. Cerdic had ridden to tell me, his heart heavy as he took his horse through Dane-infested country to Æscengum, only to find us gone.

Alfred, when he heard, came to me, took my arm and walked down Fearnhamme’s street. He was limping and men stepped aside to give us room. He gripped my elbow, and seemed about to speak a dozen times, yet the words always died on his lips. Finally he checked me and looked into my eyes. “I have no answer why God inflicts such grief,” he said, and I said nothing. “Your wife was a jewel,” Alfred went on. He frowned, and his next words were as generous as they were difficult for him to say. “I pray your gods give you comfort, Lord Uhtred.” He led me to the Roman house which had been sequestered as the royal hall, and there Æthelred looked
uncomfortable, while Father Beocca, dear man, embarrassed me by clinging to my sword hand and praying aloud that his god should treat me with mercy. He was crying. Gisela might have been a pagan, but Beocca had loved her. Bishop Asser, who hated me, nevertheless spoke gentle words, while Brother Godwin, the blind monk who eavesdropped on God, made a plangent moaning sound until Asser led him away. Finan, later that day, brought me a jar of mead and sang his sad Irish songs until I was too drunk to care. He alone saw me weep that day, and he told no one.

“We’re ordered back to Lundene,” Finan told me next morning. I just nodded, too oblivious of the world to care what my orders were. “The king returns to Wintanceaster,” Finan went on, “and the Lords Æthelred and Edward are to pursue Harald.”

Harald, badly wounded, had been taken by the remnants of his army north across the Temes until, in too much agony to continue, he ordered them to find refuge, which they did on a thorn-covered island called, naturally enough, Torneie. The island was in the River Colaun, not far from where it joins the Temes, and Harald’s men fortified Torneie, first making a great palisade with the plentiful thorn bushes, then throwing up earthworks. Lord Æthelred and the Ætheling Edward caught up with them there and laid siege. Alfred’s household troops, under Steapa, swept eastward through Cent, driving out the last of Harald’s men and recovering vast quantities of plunder. Fearnhamme was a magnificent victory, leaving Harald stranded on a fever-infested island, while the remainder of his men fled to their boats and abandoned Wessex, though many of the crews joined Haesten, who was still camped on Cent’s northern shore.

And I was in Lundene. Tears still come to my eyes when I remember greeting Stiorra, my daughter, my little motherless daughter who clung to me and would not let go. And she was crying and I was crying, and I held her as though she was the only thing that could ever keep me alive. Osbert, the youngest, wept and clung to his nurse, while Uhtred, my eldest son, might have wept for all I know, but never in front of me, and that was not an admirable reticence, but rather because he feared me. He was a nervous, fussy child and I
found him irritating. I insisted he learned sword craft, but he had no skill with a blade, and when I took him downriver in
Seolferwulf
, he showed no enthusiasm for ships or the sea.

He was with me aboard
Seolferwulf
on the day that I next saw Haesten. We had left Lundene in the dark, feeling our way downriver on the tide and beneath a paling moon. Alfred had passed a law, he loved making laws, which said that the sons of ealdormen and thegns must go to school, but I refused to allow Uhtred the Younger to attend the school which Bishop Erkenwald had established in Lundene. I did not care whether he learned to read and write, both skills are much overrated, but I did care that he should not be exposed to the bishop’s preaching. Erkenwald tried to insist I send the boy, but I argued that Lundene was really part of Mercia, which in those days it was, and that Alfred’s laws did not apply. The bishop glowered at me, but was helpless to force the boy’s attendance. I preferred to train my son as a warrior and, that day on the
Seolferwulf
, I had dressed him in a leather coat and given him a boy’s sword belt so he would become accustomed to wearing war-gear, but instead of showing pride he just looked abashed. “Put your shoulders back,” I snarled, “stand straight. You’re not a puppy!”

“Yes, Father,” he whined. He was slouch-shouldered, just staring at the deck.

“When I die you’ll be Lord of Bebbanburg,” I said, and he said nothing.

“You must show him Bebbanburg, lord,” Finan suggested.

“Maybe I will,” I said.

“Take the ship north,” Finan said enthusiastically, “a proper sea voyage!” He slapped my son’s shoulder. “You’ll like that, Uhtred! Maybe we’ll see a whale!”

My son just stared at Finan and said nothing. “Bebbanburg is a fortress beside the sea,” I told my son, “a great fortress. Windswept, sea-washed, invincible.” And I felt the prick of tears, for I had so often dreamed of making Gisela the Lady of Bebbanburg.

“Not invincible, lord,” Finan said, “because we’ll take it.”

“We will,” I said, though I could feel no enthusiasm, not even for the prospect of storming my own stronghold and slaughtering my
uncle and his men. I turned from my pale son and stood in the ship’s prow, beneath the wolf’s head, and gazed east to where the sun was rising, and there, in the haze beneath the rising sun, in the mist of sea and air, in the shimmer of light above the slow-swelling sea, I saw the ships. A fleet. “Slow!” I called.