The Last Kingdom Series

She was silent again and then she beckoned me. ‘Come closer.’

I shuffled closer on my knees.

‘I cannot come with you?’ she asked plaintively.

‘If there is danger? No.’

She accepted the answer, however unwillingly. She had pleaded to accompany me, but I had insisted none of my men could take their women so I could not make an exception for myself.

‘And I do not know if this will work,’ she said unhappily.

‘This?’

‘Hai bisogno di farti fare l’affascinò,’ she said, looking up at me and frowning. ‘I must protect you by,’ she paused, looking for the word, ‘a charm?’

‘A spell?’

‘But a woman,’ she went on, still unhappy, ‘may do this three times in her life. Only three!’

‘And you,’ I said carefully, ‘have done it three times?’

‘I made curses,’ she said, ‘on the slavers. Three curses.’ She had been enslaved as a child, carried across Christendom and found herself in raw, cold Britain where she became a slave to King Edward’s third wife. Now she was my companion. She made the sign of the cross. ‘But God may give me one more spell because it is not a curse.’

‘I hope not.’

‘God is good,’ she said. ‘He gave me life again when I met you. He will not leave me alone now.’ She put a forefinger into a ripple of oil. ‘Come close.’

I leaned closer and she reached out and smeared her finger on my forehead. ‘That is all,’ she said, ‘and when you feel danger is close? All you need do is spit.’

‘Just spit?’ I was amused.

‘You spit!’ she said, angry at my smile. ‘You think God, the angels, and the demons need more than this? They know what I have done. It is enough. Your gods too, they know!’

‘Thank you,’ I said humbly.

‘You come back to me, Uhtred of Bebbanburg!’

‘I will come back,’ I promised.

If I remembered to spit.

None of us knew where Burgham was, though the frightened priest who had brought the summons to Bebbanburg assured me it was in Cumbria. ‘I believe to the north of Mameceaster, lord.’

‘There’s a lot of land to the north of Mameceaster,’ I had snarled.

‘There’s a monastery at Burgham,’ he had said hopefully, and when I didn’t respond, just looked miserable. Then he brightened. ‘There was a battle nearby, lord, I think.’

‘You think.’

‘I think, lord, because I heard men talking of it. They said it was your battle, lord!’ he smiled as if expecting me to smile too. ‘They said you won a great victory there! In the north, lord, near the great wall. They say you …’ his voice had tailed away.

The only battle that fitted his description was the fight at Heahburh and so we followed the priest’s vague directions and rode westwards alongside the old Roman wall that crossed Northumbria. The weather turned bad, bringing a cold driving rain from the Scottish hills, and we made slow progress across the high ground. We were forced to camp one night in the stony remnants of a Roman fort, one of the bastions of their wall, and I sat hunched in the lee of a broken wall remembering the ghastly fight under the ramparts of Heahburh’s fort. Our fires fought the rain that night and I doubt any of us slept much, but the dawn brought clearing skies and a weak sunlight and, instead of pressing on, we spent the morning drying our clothes and cleaning our weapons. ‘We’re going to be late,’ I told Finan, ‘not that I care. But isn’t today the feast of saint whatever?’

‘I think so. Not sure. Might be tomorrow?’

‘Who was he?’

‘Father Cuthbert said he was a pig-ignorant idiot who became pope. Zephyrinus the Idiot.’

I laughed at that, then watched a buzzard gliding through the midday sky. ‘I suppose we should move.’

‘Do we go to Heahburh?’ Finan asked.

‘Close,’ I said. I had no desire to return to that place, but if the priest was right then Burgham lay somewhere to the south and so we followed rough tracks across the bare hills and spent that night in the valley of the Tinan, sheltered by deep trees. Next morning, in a small rain, we climbed out of the valley and I saw Heahburh on a distant hilltop. A shaft of sunlight moved across the old fort, shadowing the Roman ditches where so many of my men had died.

Egil rode beside me. He said nothing of the fight at Heahburh. ‘So what do we expect at Burgham?’ he asked me.

‘Unhappiness.’

‘Nothing new there, then,’ he said grimly. He was a tall, good-looking Norseman with long fair hair and a prow of a nose. He was a wanderer who had found a home on my land and rewarded me with both friendship and loyalty. He said he owed me a life because I had rescued his younger brother Berg from a cruel death on a Welsh beach, but I considered that debt long paid. He stayed, I think, because he liked me and I liked him. ‘You say Æthelstan has two thousand men?’ he asked.

‘That’s what we were told.’

‘If he takes a dislike to us,’ he remarked mildly, ‘we’ll be a little outnumbered.’

‘Just a little.’

‘Will it come to that?’

I shook my head. ‘He hasn’t come to make war.’

‘Then what is he doing here?’

‘He’s behaving like a dog,’ I said. ‘He’s pissing on all his boundaries.’ That was why he was in Cumbria, that wild and untamed western part of Northumbria. The Scots wanted it, the Irish Norse claimed it, we had fought for it, and now Æthelstan had come to place his banner on it.

‘So he’ll piss on us?’ Egil asked.

‘That’s what I expect.’

Egil touched the hammer at his breast. ‘But he doesn’t like pagans.’

‘So he’ll piss harder on us.’

‘He wants us gone. They call us strangers. Pagans and strangers.’

‘You live here,’ I said forcefully, ‘you’re a Northumbrian now. You fought for this land, so you have as much right to it as anyone.’

‘But he wants us to be Ænglisc,’ he said the unfamiliar word carefully, ‘and he wants the Ænglisc to be Christians.’

‘If he wants to swallow Northumbria,’ I said savagely, ‘then he’ll have to swallow the gristle along with the flesh. Half of Cumbria is pagan! He needs them as enemies?’

Egil shrugged again. ‘So he just pisses on us and we go home?’

‘If that makes him happy,’ I said, ‘yes.’ And I hoped I was right, though I really suspected I would have to fend off a demand for Bebbanburg.

Late that afternoon, as the road dropped into a wide well-watered valley, we saw a veil of smoke to the south. Not a great dark pillar that might betray a hall or steading being burned, but a drifting mist of smoke hanging over the rich farmland in the river valley. It had to be where men were assembled and so we turned our horses southwards and, next day, came to Burgham.

Folk had been there before, the old people who used vast boulders to make strange circles. I touched my hammer when I saw the circles. The gods must know of those places, but what gods? Older gods than mine and much older than the nailed Christian god, and the Christians I had spoken with said such places were malevolent. The devil’s playgrounds, they claimed, yet Æthelstan had chosen one such circle as the place of meeting.

The circles lay south of a river. I could see two of them, though later I discovered a third nearby. The largest circle lay to the west and that was where Æthelstan’s banners flew amidst hundreds of men, hundreds of tents and hundreds of crude turf shelters, amongst which were campfires and tethered horses. There were banners by the score, a few of them triangular that belonged to Norse jarls, and most of those were to the south beside another river that ran fast and shallow across a stony bed. Closer to the largest circle was a mass of flags that were mostly familiar to me. They were the standards of Wessex; crosses and saints, dragons and rearing horses, the black stag of Defnascir, the crossed swords and the bull’s head flags of Cent, all of which I had seen fly in battle, sometimes on my side of the shield wall and sometimes on the other. The leaping stag of Æthelhelm was there, too, though that house was no longer my enemy. I doubted it was my friend, but the long bloodfeud had died with the death of Æthelhelm the Younger. Mixed among the flags of Wessex were the banners of Mercia and of East Anglia, all now acknowledging the King of Wessex as their overlord. That, then, was the Saxon army come north, and judging by the number of banners, Æthelstan had brought at least a thousand men to Burgham.

To the west, in a smaller and separate encampment, there was a spread of unfamiliar banners, but I saw Domnall’s red hand holding the cross, which suggested that was where the Scottish had pitched their tents or made turf shelters, while to the south, to my surprise, the red dragon banner of Hywel of Dyfed rippled in the breeze. Closest to us, just beyond the river’s ford, lay a dozen tents over which flew Guthfrith’s three-sided flag of the viciously tusked boar. So he was here, and I saw that his small encampment was guarded by mailed warriors carrying Æthelstan’s badge of the dragon and lightning bolt on their iron-rimmed shields. That same badge flew on Æthelstan’s flag, which was carried by a monstrously tall pine trunk placed at the entrance to the largest stone circle, and next to it, on a pole just as high, there was a pale banner on which was blazoned a cross the colour of dried blood. ‘What’s that flag?’ Finan asked, nodding at it.

‘Who knows? Æthelstan’s, I suppose.’

‘And Hywel’s here!’ Finan said. ‘I thought he was in Rome.’

‘He’s been and come back,’ I said, ‘or he’s about to go. Who knows? The Welsh are here anyway.’

‘And where’s our banner?’

‘At Bebbanburg,’ I said, ‘I forgot it.’

‘I brought two of mine,’ Egil said happily.

‘Then fly one of them now,’ I said. I wanted Æthelstan to see a three-sided flag showing the dark eagle of a pagan Norse chieftain coming to his encampment.

We splashed through the ford to be met by the West Saxons guarding Guthfrith’s tents. ‘Who are you?’ A sour-looking warrior held up a hand to check us.

‘Egil Skallagrimmrson.’

I had mischievously asked Egil to lead us across the river. On either side of him were his Norse warriors, while Finan and I hung back. We waited in the ford, the water rippling around our stallions’ fetlocks.

‘And where are you going?’ the sour man demanded curtly.

‘Wherever I want,’ Egil said, ‘this is my country.’ He spoke Ænglisc well, most of it learned from the Saxon girls who were willingly seduced, but now he was deliberately making his words awkward as though they were unfamiliar.

‘You only come here if you’re invited. And I don’t think you are.’ The surly man had been reinforced by a dozen West Saxon spearmen holding Æthelstan’s shields. Some of Guthfrith’s men had assembled behind them, eager for whatever entertainment seemed imminent, while more West Saxon men were hurrying towards the confrontation.

‘I’m going there,’ Egil pointed southwards.

‘You’re turning around and you’re going back where you came from,’ the sour-faced man said, ‘all of you and all the way back. Back to your damned country across the sea.’ His small force was growing by the minute and, in the way that rumours spread like smoke, still more men were coming from the Saxon encampment to swell his ranks. ‘Turn around,’ the man said slowly and insultingly, as if speaking to a stubborn child, ‘and bugger off.’

‘No,’ I said, and pushed my horse between Egil and his standard-bearer.

‘And who are you, grandpa?’ the man asked belligerently, hefting his spear.

‘Kill the old fool!’ One of Guthfrith’s men shouted, ‘cut the old fool down!’ His companions began jeering me, emboldened perhaps by the presence of Æthelstan’s guards. The man who had shouted was young with long fair hair that he wore in a thick plait. He pushed his way through the West Saxons and stared insolently at me. ‘I challenge you,’ he snarled.

There are always fools who want reputation, and killing me was a swift route to warrior-fame. The young man was doubtless a good warrior, he looked strong, he evidently had courage, his forearms were bright with rings that he had taken in battle, and he yearned for the renown that would follow my death. More, he was emboldened by the press of men behind him who were shouting at me to dismount and fight. ‘Who are you?’ I asked him.

‘I am Kolfinn, son of Hæfnir,’ he replied, ‘and I serve Guthfrith of Northumbria.’

I suspected he had been with Guthfrith when I had barred the escape to Scotland and Kolfinn Hæfnirson now wanted to avenge that humiliation. He had challenged me and custom decreed I must answer the challenge. ‘Kolfinn, son of Hæfnir,’ I said, ‘I have not heard of you, yet I know of all the warriors of Britain who have reputation. But what I do not know is why I should bother to kill you. What is your cause, Kolfinn, son of Hæfnir? What is our quarrel?’

He looked bemused for a heartbeat. He had a blunt face with a well-broken nose, and the gold and silver arm rings suggested he was a young warrior who had survived and won many fights, but what he did not have was a sword, or indeed any weapon. Only the West Saxons under the command of the sour-faced man carried spears or swords. ‘Well,’ I demanded, ‘what is our quarrel?’

‘You must not—’ the sour-faced West Saxon began, but I cut him off with a gesture.

‘What is our quarrel, Kolfinn, son of Hæfnir?’ I demanded again.

‘You are an enemy of my king,’ he shouted.

‘An enemy of your king? Then you would fight half of Britain!’

‘You are a coward,’ he spat at me, and stepped forward only to stop when Egil edged his stallion forward and drew his sword that he called Adder. Egil was smiling. The noisy crowd behind Kolfinn went silent and that did not surprise me. There is something about a smiling Norseman holding his beloved sword that will chill most warriors.

I pulled Egil back. ‘You have no quarrel with me, Kolfinn son of Hæfnir,’ I said, ‘but I now have a quarrel with you. And we shall settle the quarrel at a time and place of my choosing. That I promise you. Now make way for us.’

The West Saxon stepped forward, evidently feeling he should insist on his small authority. ‘If you’re not invited,’ he said, ‘you must leave.’

‘But he is invited,’ another man spoke. He had just joined the growing group of men barring our way and, like the man who had challenged us, had Æthelstan’s cross and lightning bolt on his shield. ‘And you, Cenwalh,’ he went on, looking at the sour-faced man, ‘are a slug-brained, idiot unless, of course, you want to fight Lord Uhtred? I’m certain he will oblige you.’

Cenwalh, disgruntled, muttered something under his breath, but lowered his spear and backed away as the newcomer bowed to me. ‘You’re welcome, lord. I assume you are summoned?’

‘I am. And you are?’

‘Fraomar Ceddson, lord, but most folk call me Freckles.’ I smiled at that because Fraomar Ceddson’s face was a mass of freckles slashed by a white scar and ringed by flaming red hair. He looked up at Egil. ‘I’d be grateful if you sheathed that sword,’ he said mildly, ‘the king has ordered that only guards may carry swords in the encampment.’

‘He’s guarding me,’ I said.

‘Please?’ Fraomar said to Egil, ignoring me, and Egil obligingly sheathed Adder’s long blade.

‘Thank you,’ Fraomar said. I reckoned he was in his mid thirties, a confident and competent-looking man, whose presence had dispelled the onlookers, though I saw how Guthfrith’s men looked back at me with something close to hatred. ‘We should find you somewhere to camp,’ Fraomar went on.

I pointed south and west, to a space between the Saxon and Welsh encampments. ‘That will do,’ I said. I dismounted, threw the stallion’s reins to Aldwyn, and walked with Fraomar ahead of my men. ‘Are we the last to arrive?’ I asked.

‘Most folk came three days ago,’ he said, then paused awkwardly. ‘They took the oaths on Saint Bartholomew’s day.’

‘Not Saint …’ I paused, unable to remember the name of the idiot pope. ‘When was Bartholomew’s day?’

‘Two days ago, lord.’

‘And what oaths?’ I asked. ‘What oaths?’

Another awkward pause. ‘I wouldn’t know, lord. I wasn’t there. And I’m sorry about that idiot Cenwalh.’

‘Why?’ I really wanted to ask about the oaths, but it was plain Fraomar did not want to talk about them and I reckoned I would learn soon enough. I also wanted to know why the nervous priest had instructed us to come late, but reckoned Fraomar would have no answer to that. ‘Is Cenwalh one of your men?’

‘He’s West Saxon,’ Fraomar said. His own accent betrayed him as a Mercian.

‘And the West Saxons are still resentful of Mercia?’ I asked. Æthelstan was also a West Saxon, but the army he had led to take the throne of Wessex was largely Mercian.

Fraomar shook his head. ‘There’s not much trouble. The West Saxons know he was the best choice. Maybe a few still want to fight old battles, but not many.’

I grimaced. ‘Only a fool wants a battle like Lundene again.’

‘You mean the fight at the city gate, lord?’

‘It was a horror,’ I said, and so it had been. My men against the best of the West Saxon troops, a slaughter that still sometimes woke me at night with a feeling of doom.

‘I saw it, lord,’ Fraomar said, ‘or the end of it.’

‘You were with Æthelstan?’

‘I rode with him, lord. Saw your men fighting.’ He walked in silence for a few paces, then turned and glanced at Egil. ‘He’s really with you, lord?’

‘He is,’ I said. ‘He’s a Norseman, a poet, a warrior, and my friend. So yes, he’s with me.’

‘It just seems strange …’ Fraomar’s voice faltered.

‘Being among so many pagans?’

‘Pagans, yes, and the damned Scots. Welsh too.’

I thought how sensible it was of Æthelstan to order that no swords should be worn in the camp except, of course, for those men standing guard. ‘You don’t trust pagans, Scots or Welshmen?’ I asked.

‘Do you, lord?’

‘I’m one of them, Fraomar. I’m a pagan.’

He looked embarrassed. He must have known I was not a Christian, the hammer at my chest told him that, if my reputation was not enough. ‘Yet my father said you were the best friend King Alfred ever had, lord.’

I laughed at that. ‘Alfred was never a friend,’ I said. ‘I admired him and he endured me.’

‘And King Æthelstan must know what you did for him, lord,’ he said, though to my ears he sounded dubious.

‘I’m sure he appreciates what we all did for him.’

‘It was a rare fight in Lundene!’ Fraomar said, plainly relieved I seemed not to have noticed the tone of his previous remark.

‘It was,’ I said and then, as casually as I could, ‘I haven’t seen him since that day.’

The lure worked. ‘He’s changed, lord!’ Fraomar hesitated, then realised he had to qualify that comment. ‘He’s become,’ he paused again, ‘very grand.’

‘He’s a king.’

‘True.’ He sounded rueful. ‘I suppose I’d be grand if I was a king.’

‘King Freckles?’ I suggested, he laughed and the moment passed. ‘Is he here?’ I asked, gesturing at the huge tent erected in the large circle.

‘He’s lodging in the monastery at Dacore,’ Fraomar said. ‘It’s not far away. You can camp here,’ he had stopped in a wide swathe of meadow. ‘Water from the river, firewood from the copse, you’ll be comfortable enough. There’s a church service at sundown, but I suppose …’ his voice tailed off.

‘You suppose right,’ I said.

‘Shall I tell the king you’re here, lord?’ Fraomar asked, and again there was a slight awkwardness in his voice.

I smiled. ‘He’ll know I’m here. But if it’s your job to tell him? Do it.’

Fraomar left us and we set about making our shelters, though I took the precaution of sending Egil with a dozen men to scout our surroundings. I did not expect trouble, there were too many of Æthelstan’s warriors for any Scotsman or Welshman to start a war, but I did not know this part of Cumbria and if trouble came I wanted to know how best to escape it. And so, while we made ourselves comfortable, Egil scouted.

I had brought no tents. Benedetta had wanted to fashion one from sailcloth, but I had assured her we were well used to making shelters and that our packhorses already had enough to carry with their heavy tubs of ale, barrels of bread, and sacks of smoked meat, cheese and fish. Instead of tents my men chopped down branches with war axes to make simple gable-shaped shelters lashed together by withies, cut turf with their knives to roof them, then lined the floors with bracken. They competed, of course, not to be the first finished, but for who could make the most elaborate shelter, and the winner, an impressive turf hut almost the size of a small hall, was given to me to share with Finan, Egil, and his brother Thorolf. Naturally we were expected to pay the builders with hacksilver, ale and praise, which we did, then watched as two men cut and stripped a towering larch trunk on which they hoisted Egil’s eagle banner. By then the sun was setting and we lit our campfires. A dozen of my Christians wandered over to where hundreds of men were sitting listening to a sermon from a priest, while I sat with Finan, Egil, and Thorolf and gazed moodily into the crackling fire.

I was thinking about oaths, about the tense atmosphere in the sprawling encampment where squads of heavily armed spearmen were needed to keep the peace, about the things Fraomar had not wanted to say, and about being instructed to arrive at Burgham days after other men had been summoned. I was thinking about Æthelstan. The last time I had seen him he had thanked me for giving him Lundene, he had praised me in the hall and roused the cheers of men, and with Lundene had come his emerald crown, but since that far-off day he had sent me no messages nor offered me any favours. I had given men hacksilver for building me a shelter, yet my reward for giving a man a kingdom was to be ignored.

Wyrd bið ful ãræd.

Fate is inexorable.

The sermon had ended, the men were dispersing to their huts, while a band of monks, dark-robed and hooded, walked through the encampments chanting. The leading monk carried a lantern and a dozen men followed him, their voices low and haunting. ‘Christian magic?’ Thorolf asked sourly.

‘They’re just praying for a peaceful night,’ Finan said, making the sign of the cross.

The monks did not come close to our shelters, but turned back towards the fires that had lit the evening sermon. Their voices grew fainter, then a peal of women’s laughter sounded from the Welsh encampment. Egil sighed. ‘Why didn’t we bring our own women?’

‘Because we didn’t need to,’ Finan said, ‘every whore between Cair Ligualid and Mameceaster is here.’

‘Ah!’ Egil grinned. ‘Then why am I sharing a shelter with you three?’

‘You can use that spinney instead,’ I said, nodding south towards a dark group of trees that lay between us and the Welsh encampment.

And saw the arrow.

It was a flicker in the night’s flame-lit dark, a sudden spark as fire glittered quick from a steel head and from pale feathers, and it was coming towards us. I thrust left at Finan, right at Egil and threw myself flat, and the arrow seared across my left shoulder, catching my cloak. ‘Move!’ I shouted, and the four of us scrambled away from the fire, going towards shadows as a second arrow slashed through the darkness to bury itself in the turf. ‘To me!’ I yelled. I was safely behind a shelter now, hidden from the archer who had loosed his arrows from among the spinney’s dark trees.

Egil, Thorolf and Finan ran to me. My men were leaving their shelters, coming to discover what had caused me to shout. ‘Who has weapons?’ I asked. A chorus of voices answered and, without waiting, I shouted at them to follow me.

I ran towards the spinney. I swerved to my left first, hoping not to be outlined against the bright fires, but knew I would be seen despite that small precaution. But there was, I thought, just one bowman, because if there had been two or more then we would have been attacked by a volley, not by a single arrow. I was also sure that whoever had loosed the arrow would already have fled. He must have seen a score of men coming, seen our swords reflecting the flame-light, and unless he was intent on dying he would be gone, but I still kept running. ‘Bebbanburg!’ I shouted, and my men took up the war cry.