The Burning Land (17 page)

“And you?” I asked, “what of you?”

“I am to be greater than you, lord,” she said, and some of my people hissed, but the words gave me no offense.

“And what is that, Skade?” I asked.

“What the Fates decide, lord,” she said, and I waved her to sit down. I was thinking back across the years to another woman who had eavesdropped on the murmurs of the gods, and she had also said I would lead armies. Yet now I was a man who was the most contemptible of men; a man who had broken an oath, a man running from his lord.

Our peoples are bound by oaths. When a man swears his loyalty to me he becomes closer than a brother. My life is his as his is mine, and I had sworn to serve Alfred. I thought of that as the singing began again and as Skade crouched behind me. As Alfred’s oath-man I owed him service, yet I had run away, and that stripped me of honor and left me despicable.

Yet we do not control our lives. The three spinners make our threads. Wyrd bið ful ãræd, we say, and it is true. Fate is inexorable. Yet if fate decrees, and the spinners know what that fate will be, why do we make oaths? It is a question that has haunted me all my life, and the closest I have come to an answer is that oaths are made by men, while fate is decreed by the gods, and that oaths are men’s attempts to dictate fate. Yet we cannot decree what we would wish. Making an oath is like steering a course, but if the winds and tides of fate are too strong, then the steering oar loses its power. So we make oaths, but we are helpless in the face of wyrd. I had lost honor by fleeing from Lundene, but the honor had been taken from me by fate, and that was some consolation in that dark night on the cold East Anglian shore.

There was another consolation. I woke in the dark and went to the ship. Her stern was rising gently on the incoming tide. “You can sleep,” I told the sentries. Our fires ashore were still glowing, though their flames were low now. “Join your women,” I told them, “I’ll guard the ship.”

Seolferwulf
did not need guarding because there was no enemy, but it is a habit to set sentries, and so I sat in her stern and thought of
fate and of Alfred, and of Gisela and of Iseult, of Brida and of Hild, and of all the women I had known and all the twists of life, and I ignored the slight lurch as someone climbed over
Seolferwulf
’s still-grounded bow. I said nothing as the dark figure threaded the rowers’ benches.

“I did not kill her, lord,” Skade said.

“You cursed me, woman.”

“You were my enemy then,” she said, “what was I supposed to do?”

“And the curse killed Gisela,” I said.

“That was not the curse,” she said.

“Then what was it?”

“I asked the gods to yield you captive to Harald,” she said.

I looked at her then for the first time since she had come aboard. “It didn’t work,” I said.

“No.”

“So what kind of sorceress are you?”

“A frightened one,” she said.

I would flog a man for not keeping alert when he is supposed to be standing watch, but a thousand enemies could have come that night, for I was not doing my duty. I took Skade beneath the steering platform, to the small space there, and I took off her cloak and I lay her down, and when we were done we were both in tears. We said nothing, but lay in each other’s arms. I felt
Seolferwulf
lift from the mud and pull gently at her mooring line, yet I did not move. I held Skade close, not wanting the night to end.

I had persuaded myself that I had left Alfred because he would impose an oath on me, an oath I did not want, the oath to serve his son. Yet that had not been the whole truth. There was another of his conditions I could not accept, and now I held her close. “Time to go,” I said at last because I could hear voices. I later learned that Finan had seen us and had held the crew ashore. I loosened my embrace, but Skade held onto me.

“I know where you can find all the gold in the world,” she said.

I looked into her eyes. “All the gold?”

She half smiled. “Enough gold, lord,” she whispered, “more than enough, a dragon-haunted hoard, lord, gold.”

Wyrd bið ful ãræd.

I took a golden chain from my treasure chest and I hung it about Skade’s neck, which was announcement enough, if any announcement were needed, of her new status. I thought that my people would resent her more, but the opposite happened. They seemed relieved. They had seen her as a threat, but now she was one of us, and so we sailed north.

North along East Anglia’s low coast beneath gray skies and driven by a southerly wind that brought thick and constant fogs. We sheltered in marshy creeks when the fog blew dense above the sea or, if a fog took us by surprise and gave us no time to discover a safe inlet, we steered the ship offshore where there were no mudbanks to wreck us.

The fog slowed us, so that it took six long days to reach Dumnoc. We arrived at that port on a misted afternoon, rowing
Seolferwulf
into the river’s mouth between glistening mounds of mud thick with waterfowl. The channel was well marked with withies, though I still had a man in the bows probing with an oar in case the withies betrayed us onto some shipwrecker’s shoal. I had taken down the wolf’s head to show that we came peacefully, but sentries keeping watch from a rickety wooden tower still sent a boy racing to the town to warn of our coming.

Dumnoc was a good and wealthy port. It was built on the river’s southern bank and a palisade surrounded the town to deter a land attack, though the port was wide open from the water that was studded with piers and thick with fishing and trading boats. The tide was almost at the flood when we arrived and I saw how the sea spread from the muddy banks to drown the lower part of the palisade. Some of the houses nearest the sea were built on short stilts, and all the town’s timbers had been weather-beaten to a silvery gray. It was an attractive place, smelling richly of salt and shellfish. A church tower crowned
with a wooden cross was the highest building, a reminder that Guthrum, the Dane who had become King of East Anglia, had converted his realm to Christianity.

My father had never loved the East Anglians because, years in the past, their kingdom had combined with Mercia to attack Northumbria. Later, much later, during my own childhood, the East Anglians had provided food, horses, and shelter to the Danish army that had conquered Northumbria, though that treachery had rebounded on them when the Danes returned to take East Anglia that still remained a Danish kingdom, though now it was supposedly a Christian kingdom as the church tower attested. Mist blew past the high cross as I steered
Seolferwulf
to the river’s center, just upstream of the piers. We turned her there, slewing her about by backing one bank of oars, and only when her wolfless bows faced the sea did I take her alongside a fat-bellied merchant ship that was tied to the largest of the piers. Finan grinned. “Ready to make a quick escape to sea, lord?” he asked.

“Always,” I said. “Remember the
Sea-Raven
?”

He laughed. Shortly after we had captured Lundene, the
Sea-Raven
, a Danish ship, had come to the city and innocently tied to a wharf only to discover that a West Saxon army now occupied the place and was not friendly to Danes. The crew had fled back to their ship, but needed to turn her before they could escape downriver, and panic muddled them so that their oars clashed and she had drifted back to the wharf, where we captured her. She was a horrible boat, leaky and with a stinking bilge, and eventually I broke her up and used her ribs as roofbeams for some cottages we built at Lundene’s eastern side.

A big-bellied, fat-bearded man in rusty mail clambered from the pier onto the trading boat, then, after receiving permission, hauled himself up and over
Seolferwulf
’s flank. “Guthlac,” he introduced himself, “Reeve of Dumnoc. Who are you?” The question was peremptory, backed by a dozen men who waited on the pier with swords and axes. They looked nervous, and no wonder, for my crew outnumbered them.

“My name is Uhtred,” I said.

“Uhtred of where?” Guthlac asked. He spoke Danish and was belligerent, pretending to be unworried by my crew’s formidable appearance. He had long mustaches bound with black-tarred twine that hung well below his clean-shaven chin. He kept tugging on one mustache, a sign, I deduced, of nervousness.

“Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” I said.

“And where’s Bebbanburg?”

“Northumbria.”

“You’re a long way from home, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” Guthlac said. He was peering into our bilge to see what cargo we carried. “A long way from home,” he repeated. “Are you trading?”

“Do we look like traders?” I asked. Other men were gathering on the low shore in front of the closest houses. They were mostly unarmed, so their presence was probably explained by curiosity.

“You look like vagabonds,” Guthlac said. “Two weeks ago there was an attack a few miles south. A steading was burned, men killed, women taken. How do I know that wasn’t you?”

“You don’t know it,” I said, returning a mild answer to his hostility.

“Maybe I should hold you here until we can prove it one way or the other?”

“And maybe you should clean your mail?” I suggested.

He challenged me with a glare, held my gaze a few heartbeats, then nodded abruptly. “So what’s your business here?” he demanded.

“We need food, ale.”

“That we have,” he said, then waited as some gulls screamed above us, “but first you have to pay the king’s wharfage fee.” He held out a hand. “Two shillings.”

“Two pence, perhaps.”

We settled on four pence, of which no doubt two went into Guthlac’s pouch, and after that we were free to go ashore, though Guthlac sensibly insisted we were to carry no weapons other than short knives. “The Goose is a good tavern,” he said, pointing to a large building hung with the sign of a painted goose, “and it can sell you dried herring, dried oysters, flour, ale, and Saxon whores.”

“The tavern is yours?” I asked.

“What of it?”

“I just hope its ale is better than its owner’s welcome,” I said.

He laughed at that. “Welcome to Dumnoc,” he said, climbing back onto the trading ship, “and I give you leave to spend a night here in peace. But if any of you commit a crime I’ll hold you all in custody!” He paused and looked toward
Seolferwulf
’s stern. “Who’s that?”

He was staring at Skade, though he must have noticed her earlier. She was again cloaked in black so that her pale face seemed bright in the misted late afternoon. There was gold at her neck. “Her name is Edith,” I said, “and she’s a Saxon whore.”

“Edith,” he repeated, “maybe I’ll buy her from you?”

“Maybe you will,” I said, and we looked at each other and neither trusted the other, and then Guthlac gave a careless wave and turned away.

We drew lots to decide who could go ashore that evening. I needed men to stay and guard the boat, and Osferth volunteered to command that group. We put twenty-three dried peas in a bowl with twenty silver coins, then Finan took the bowl and stood with his back to me as I faced the assembled crew. One by one Finan drew either a coin or a pea from the bowl and held it aloft. “Who’ll have this one?” he would ask and I would pick a man from the crew without knowing whether Finan held a pea or a coin. Those who drew peas had to stay with Osferth, the rest were allowed ashore. I could have just chosen which men should stay aboard, but a crew work better when they believe their lord is fair. The children all stayed, but the wives of the shore party accompanied their men. “You stay in the tavern,” I told them. “This town isn’t friendly! We stay together!”

The town might have been unfriendly, but the Goose was a good tavern. The ale was pungent, freshly brewed in the great vats in the inn’s yard. The large main room was beamed with keels from broken-up ships, and warmed by a driftwood fire burning in a central hearth. There were tables and benches, but before I let my men loose on the ale I negotiated for smoked herring, flitches of bacon, barrels of ale, bread, and smoked eels, and had all those supplies carried to the
Seolferwulf.
Guthlac had placed guards on the landward
end of the pier, and those men were supposed to make certain none of us carried weapons, but I had Wasp-Sting hanging in a scabbard at my back where she was hidden by a cloak, and I did not doubt that most of my crew were similarly armed. I went from table to table and told them they were to start no fights. “Not unless you want to fight me,” I warned them, and they grinned.

The tavern was peaceable enough. A dozen local men drank there, all Saxons and none showing any interest in the
Seolferwulf
’s crew. Sihtric had drawn a silver shilling in the lottery and I ordered him to make frequent visits to the yard. “Look for men with weapons,” I told him.

“What do you fear, lord?” he asked me.

“Treachery,” I said. The
Seolferwulf
was worth a thegn’s annual income from a substantial estate and Guthlac must have realized we carried coin on board. His men would find it hard to capture the ship while Osferth and his band defended the pier’s end, but drunken men in a tavern were easier prey. I feared he could hold us hostage and demand a huge ransom, and so Sihtric slipped constantly through the back door, returning each time with a shake of his head. “Your bladder’s too small,” one of my men mocked him.

I sat with Skade, Finan, and his Scottish wife, Ethne, in a corner of the room where I ignored the laughter and songs that were loud at the other tables. I wondered how many men lived in Dumnoc, and why so few were in the Goose. I wondered if weapons were being sharpened. I wondered where all the gold in the world was hidden. “So,” I asked Skade, “where is all the gold in the world?”

“Frisia,” she said.

“A large place.”

“My husband,” she said, “has a stronghold on the sea.”

“So tell us of your husband.”

“Skirnir Thorson,” she said.

“I know his name.”

“He calls himself the Sea-Wolf,” she said, looking at me, but aware that Finan and Ethne were listening.

“He can call himself what he likes,” I said, “but that doesn’t make it true.”