The Lords of the North (23 page)

'She became a nun again?' I asked.

'She said she wanted that.' Steapa said. 'She said God wanted it. And Alfred did. He said
yes to her.'

'So Alfred released you?' I asked Ragnar.

'I hope he will,' Ragnar said, 'when I take you back home. I'm still a hostage, but Alfred
said I could search for you if I promised to return to him. And we'll all be released soon
enough. Guthrum's making no trouble. King Æthelstan, he's called now.'

'He's in East Anglia?'

'He's in East Anglia,' Ragnar confirmed, 'and he's building churches and
monasteries.'

'So he really did become a Christian?'

The poor bastard's as pious as Alfred.' Ragnar said gloomily. 'Guthrum always was a
credulous fool. But Alfred sent for me. Told me I could search for you. He let me take the men
who served me in exile and the rest are crewmen that Steapa found. They're Saxons, of course,
but the bastards can row well enough.'

'Steapa said he was here to guard you.' I said.

'Steapa!' Ragnar looked across the fire we had lit in the nave of the monastery's ruined
church, 'you foul scrap of stinking stoat-shit. Did you say you were here to guard me?'

'But I am, lord.' Steapa said.

'You're a piece of shit. But you fight well.' Ragnar grinned and looked back to me. 'And I'm
to take you back to Alfred.'

I stared into the fire where strips of burning wattle glowed a brilliant red. Thyra is at
Dunholm,' I said, 'and Kjartan still lives.'

'And I go to Dunholm when Alfred releases me,' Ragnar said, 'but first I have to take you
to Wessex. I swore an oath on it. I swore I would not break Northumbrian peace, but only
fetch you. And Alfred kept Brida, of course.'

Brida was his woman.

'He kept her?'

'As a hostage for me, I suppose. But he'll release her and I shall have money and I shall
assemble men and then I shall scrape Dunholm off the face of the earth.'

'You have no money?'

'Not enough.'

So I told him about Sverri's home in Jutland and how there was money there, or at least we
believed there was money there, and Ragnar thought about that and I thought about Alfred.

Alfred did not like me. He had never liked me. At times he hated me, but I had done him
service. I had done him great service, and he had been less than generous in rewarding that
service. Five hides, he had given me, while I had given him a kingdom. Yet now I owed my
freedom to him, and I did not understand why he had done it. Except, of course, that Hild had
given him a house of prayer, and he would have wanted that, and he would have welcomed her
repentance, and both those things made a twisted kind of sense. Yet he had still rescued me.
He had reached out and plucked me from slavery and I decided he was generous after all. But
I also knew there would be a price to pay. Alfred would want more than Hild's soul and a new
convent. He would want me.

'I hoped I'd never see Wessex again.' I said.

'Well you're going to see it,' Ragnar said, 'because I swore to take you back. Besides, we
can't stay here.'

'No.' I agreed.

'Kjartan will have a hundred men here in the morning.' Ragnar said.

'Two hundred.' I said.

'So we must go.' he said, then looked wistful. 'There's a hoard in Jutland?'

'A great hoard.' Finan said.

'We think it's buried in a reed hut,' I added, 'and guarded by a woman and three
children.'

Ragnar stared through the door to where a few sparks of fire showed among the hovels built
by the old Roman fort. 'I can't go to Jutland,' he said softly.

'I swore an oath that I would take you back as soon as I found you.'

'So someone else can go.' I suggested. 'You have two ships now. And Sverri will reveal
where his hoard is if he's frightened enough.'

So next morning Ragnar ordered his twelve Danes to take Trader across the sea. The
command of the ship was given to Rollo, Ragnar's best steersman, and Finan begged to go
with Rollo's crew, and the Scottish girl Ethne went with Finan who now wore mail and a helmet
and had a long sword buckled at his waist. Sverri was chained to one of Trader's oar-benches
and, as she left the shore, I saw Finan whipping him with the lash that had scarred our backs
for so many months.

Trader left and we then carried the Scottish slaves across the river in the red ship and
released them on the northern bank. They were frightened and did not know what to do, so we
gave them a handful of the coins we had taken from Sverri's strongbox and told them to keep
walking with the sea always on their right hand and, with a little luck, they might reach
home. They would more likely be captured by Bebbanburg's garrison and sold back into
slavery, but we could not help that. We left them, pushed the red ship away from the shore and
turned for the sea.

Behind us, where Gyruum's hilltop smoked from the remnants of our fires, horsemen in mail
and helmets appeared. They lined the crest, and a column of them galloped across the
salt-marsh to clatter onto the shingle bank, but they were much too late. We' were riding
the ebb-tide towards the open sea and I looked behind and saw Kjartan's men and I knew I
would see them again and then the Dragon-Fire rounded the river's bend and the oars bit the
water and the sun glittered like sharpened spear-points on the small waves and an osprey
flew overhead and I raised my eyes to the wind and wept. Pure tears of joy.

It took us three weeks to voyage to Lundene where we paid silver to the Danes who exacted
a toll from every ship that rowed upriver, and then it was another two days to Readingum
where we beached Dragon-Fire and purchased horses with Sverri's money. It was autumn in
Wessex, a time of mists and fallow fields. The peregrine falcons had returned from
wherever they voyage in the high sky during the summer months and the oak leaves were
turning a wind-shivered bronze.

We rode to Wintanceaster for we were told that was where Alfred was holding court, but the
day we arrived he had ridden to one of his estates and was not expected to return that
night and so, as the sun lowered over the scaffolding of the big church Alfred was building,
I left Ragnar in the Two Cranes tavern and walked to the northern edge of the town. I had to
ask directions and was pointed down a long alley that was choked with muddy ruts. Two pigs
rooted in the alley that was bordered on one side by the town's high palisade and on the
other by a wooden wall in which there was a low door marked by a cross. A score of beggars
were crouched in the mud and dung outside the door. They were in rags. Some had lost arms or
legs, most were covered in sores, while a blind woman held a scarred child. They all shuffled
nervously aside as I approached. I knocked and waited. I was about to knock again when a
small hatch was slid aside in the door and I explained my business, then the hatch snapped shut
and I waited again. The scarred child cried and the blind woman held a begging bowl towards
me. A cat walked along the wall's top and a cloud of starlings flew westwards. Two women with
huge loads of firewood strapped on their backs passed me and behind them a man drove a cow. He
bobbed his head in deference to me for I looked like a lord again. I was dressed in leather and
had a sword at my side, though the sword was not Serpent-Breath. My black cloak was held at my
throat with a heavy brooch of silver and amber that I had taken from one of Sverri's dead
crewmen, and that brooch was my only jewel for I had no arm rings.

Then the low door was unbolted and pulled inwards on its leather hinges and a small woman
beckoned me inside. I ducked through, she closed the door and led me across a patch of grass,
pausing there to let me scrape the street dung off my boots before

taking me to a church. She ushered me inside, then paused again to genuflect towards the
altar. She muttered a prayer, then gestured that I should go through another door into a
bare room with walls made of mud and wattle. Two stools were the only furniture and she told
me I might sit on one of them, and then she opened a shutter so that the late sun could
illuminate the room. A mouse scuttled in the floor rushes and the small woman tutted and
then left me alone.

I waited again. A rook cawed on the roof. From some place nearby I could hear the rhythmic
squirt of milk going into a pail. Another cow, its udder full, waited patiently just
beyond the open shutter. The rook cawed again and then the door opened and three nuns came
into the room. Two of them stood against the far wall, while the third just gazed at me and
began to weep silently.

'Hild,' I said, and I stood to embrace her, but she held a hand out to keep me from touching
her. She went on weeping, but she was smiling too, and then she put both her hands over her
face and stayed that way for a long while.

'God has forgiven me,' she finally spoke through her fingers.

'I am glad of it,' I said.

She sniffed, took her hands from her face and indicated that I should sit again, and she
sat opposite me and for a time we just looked at each other and I thought how I had missed
her, not as a lover, but as a friend. I wanted to embrace her, and perhaps she sensed that for
she sat straighter and spoke very formally. 'I am now the Abbess Hildegyth,' she said.

'I had forgotten your proper name is Hildegyth,' I said.

'And it does my heart good to see you,' she said primly. She was dressed in a coarse grey
robe that matched the gowns of her two companions, both of whom were older women. The robes
were belted with hemp-rope and had heavy hoods hiding their hair. A plain wooden cross hung
at Hild's neck and she fingered it compulsively. 'I have prayed for you,' she went on.

'It seems your prayers worked,' I said awkwardly.

'And I stole all your money,' she said with a touch of her old mischief.

'I give it to you,' I said, 'willingly.'

She told me about the nunnery. She had built it with the money from Fifhaden's hoard and now
it housed sixteen sisters and eight laywomen. 'Our lives,' she said, 'are dedicated to
Christ and to Saint Hedda. You know who Hedda was?'

'I've never heard of her,' I said.

The two older nuns, who had been looking at me with stern disapproval, suddenly broke
into giggles. Hild smiled. 'Hedda was a man,' she told me gently, 'and he was born in
Northumbria and he was the first bishop of Wintanceaster. He is remembered as a most holy
and good man, and I chose him because you are from Northumbria and it was your unwitting
generosity that let us build this house in the town where Saint Hedda preached. We vowed to
pray to him every day until you returned, and now we shall pray to him every day to thank him
for answering our prayers.'

I said nothing for I did not know what to say. I remember thinking that Hild's voice was
forced as if she were persuading herself as well as me that she was happy, and I was wrong
about that. It was forced because my presence brought her unpleasant memories, and in time I
learned she truly was happy. She was useful. She had made her peace with her god and after
she died she was remembered as a saint. Not so very long ago a bishop told me all about the
most holy and blessed Saint Hildegyth and how she had been a shining example of Christian
chastity and charity, and I was sorely tempted to tell him that I had once spread-eagled
the saint among the buttercups, but managed to restrain myself. He was certainly right
about her charity. Hild told me that the purpose of Saint Hedda's nunnery was not just to
pray for me, its benefactor, but to heal the sick. 'We are busy all day,' she said, 'and all
night. We take the poor and we tend them. I've no doubt there are some waiting outside our gate
right now.'

'There are.' I said.

'Then those poor folk are our purpose,' she said, 'and we are their servants.'

She gave me a brisk smile. 'Now tell me what I have prayed to hear. Tell me your tales.'

So I told her and I did not tell her all of what had happened, but made light of slavery,
saying only that I had been chained so I could not escape. I told her of the voyages, of the
strange places and of the people I had seen. I spoke of the land of ice and fire, of watching
the great whales breach in the endless sea, and I told her of the long river that twisted
into a land of birch trees and lingering snow, and I finished by saying that I was glad to
be a free man again and grateful to her for making me so. Hild was silent when I finished. The
milk still spurted into the pail outside. A sparrow perched on the window ledge, preened
itself and flew away. Hild had been staring at me, as if testing the veracity of my words.
'Was it bad?' she asked after a while.

I hesitated, tempted to lie, then shrugged. 'Yes,' I said shortly.

'But now you are the Lord Uhtred again,' she said, 'and I have your possessions.' She
signalled to one of the nuns, who left the room. 'We kept everything for you,' Hild said
brightly.

'Everything?' I asked.

'Except your horse,' she said ruefully. 'I couldn't bring the horse. What was he called?
Witnere?'

'Witnere,' I said.

'I fear he was stolen.'

'Stolen?'

The Lord Ivarr took him.'

I said nothing because the nun had come back into the room with a cumbersome armful of
weapons and mail. She had my helmet, my heavy coat of leather and mail, she had my arm rings and
she had Wasp-Sting and Serpent-Breath, and she dropped them all at my feet and there were
tears in my eyes as I leaned forward and touched Serpent-Breath's hilt. 'The mail coat was
damaged,' Hild said, 'so we had one of the king's armourers repair it.'

'Thank you,' I said.

'I have prayed,' Hild said, 'that you will not take revenge on King Guthred.'

'He enslaved me,' I said harshly. I could not take my hand from the sword. There had been so
many moments of despair in the last two years, moments when I thought I would never touch a
sword again, let alone Serpent-Breath, yet here she was, and my hand slowly closed about the
hilt.