The Lords of the North. Bernard Cornwell
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a fierce-eyed priest with bristly hair and an unruly beard interrupted me with shouts of hallelujah. I gathered this was Father Hrothweard, the priest who had roused Eoferwic to slaughter. He was young, scarce older than I was, but he had a powerful voice and a natural authority that was given extra force by his passion. Every hallelujah was accompanied by a shower of spittle, and no sooner had I described the defeated Danes spilling down the great slope from Ethandun’s summit than Hrothweard leaped forward and harangued the crowd. ‘This is Uhtred!’ he shouted, poking me in my mail-clad ribs, ‘Uhtred of Northumbria, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a killer of Danes, a warrior of God, a sword of the Lord! And he has come to us, just as the blessed Saint Cuthbert visited Alfred in his time of tribulation! These are signs from the Almighty!’ The crowd cheered, the king looked scared, and Hrothweard, ever ready to launch into a fiery sermon, began frothing at the mouth as he described the coming slaughter of every Dane in Northumbria.
I managed to sidle away from Hrothweard, making my way to the back of the dais where I took Willibald by the scruff of his skinny neck and forced him into a passage which led to the king’s private chambers. ‘You’re an idiot,’ I growled at him, ‘you’re an earsling. You’re a witless dribbling turd, that’s what you are. I should slit your useless guts here and now and feed them to the pigs.’
Willibald opened his mouth, closed it and looked helpless.
‘The Danes will be back here,’ I promised him, ‘and there’s going to be a massacre.’
His mouth opened and closed again, and still no sound came.
‘So what you’re going to do,’ I said, ‘is cross the Ouse and go south as fast as your legs will carry you.’
‘But it’s all true,’ he pleaded.
‘What’s all true?’
‘That Saint Cuthbert gave us victory!’
‘Of course it isn’t true!’ I snarled. ‘Alfred made it up. You think Cuthbert came to him in Æthelingæg? Then why didn’t he tell us about the dream when it happened? Why does he wait till after the battle to tell us?’ I paused and Willibald made a strangled noise. ‘He waited,’ I answered myself, ‘because it didn’t happen.’
‘But …’
‘He made it up!’ I growled, ‘because he wants Northumbrians to look to Wessex for leadership against the Danes. He wants to be king of Northumbria, don’t you understand that? And not just Northumbria. I’ve no doubt he’s got fools like you telling the Mercians that one of their damned saints appeared to him in a dream.’
‘But he did,’ he interrupted me, and when I looked bemused, he explained further. ‘You’re right! Saint Kenelm spoke to Alfred in Æthelingæg. He came to him in a dream and he told Alfred that he would win.’
‘No he did not,’ I said as patiently as I could.
‘But it’s true!’ he insisted, ‘Alfred told me himself! It’s God’s doing, Uhtred, and wonderful to behold.’
I took him by the shoulders, pressing him against the passage wall. ‘You’ve got a choice, father,’ I said. ‘You can get out of Eoferwic before the Danes come back, or you can tip your head to one side.’
‘I can do what?’ he asked, puzzled.
‘Tip your head,’ I said, ‘and I’ll thump you on one ear so all the nonsense falls out of the other.’
He would not be persuaded. God’s glory, ignited by the bloodshed at Ethandun and fanned by the lie about Saint Cuthbert, was glowing on Northumbria and poor Willibald was convinced he was present at the beginning of great things.
There was a feast that night, a sorry business of salted herrings, cheese, hard bread and stale ale, and Father Hrothweard made another impassioned speech in which he claimed that Alfred of Wessex had sent me, his greatest warrior, to lead the city’s defence, and that the fyrd of heaven would come to Eoferwic’s protection. Willibald kept shouting hallelujah, believing all the rubbish, and it was only the next day when a grey rain and a sullen mist enveloped the city that he began to doubt the imminent arrival of sword-angels.
Folk were leaving the city. There were rumours of Danish war-bands gathering to the north. Hrothweard was still shrieking his nonsense, and he led a procession of priests and monks about the city streets, holding aloft relics and banners, but anyone with sense now understood that Ivarr was likely to return long before Saint Cuthbert turned up with a heavenly host. King Egbert sent a messenger to find me, and the man said the king would talk with me, but I reckoned Egbert was doomed so I ignored the summons. Egbert would have to shift for himself.
Just as I had to shift for myself, and what I wanted was to get far from the city before Ivarr’s wrath descended on it, and in the Crossed Swords tavern, hard by the city’s northern gate, I found my escape. He was a Dane called Bolti and he had survived the massacre because he was married to a Saxon and his wife’s family had sheltered him. He saw me in the tavern and asked if I was Uhtred of Bebbanburg.
‘I am.’
He sat opposite me, bowed his head respectfully to Hild, then snapped his fingers to summon a girl with ale. He was a plump man, bald, with a pocked face, a broken nose and frightened eyes. His two sons, both half Saxon, loitered behind him. I guessed one was about twenty and the other five years younger, and both wore swords though neither looked comfortable with the weapons. ‘I knew Earl Ragnar the Elder,’ Bolti said.
‘I knew him too,’ I said, ‘and I don’t remember you.’
‘The last time he sailed in Wind-Viper,’ he said, ‘I sold him ropes and oar-looms.’
‘Did you cheat him?’ I asked sarcastically.
‘I liked him,’ he said fiercely.
‘And I loved him,’ I said, ‘because he became my father.’
‘I know he did,’ he said, ‘and I remember you.’ He fell silent and glanced at Hild. ‘You were very young,’ he went on, looking back to me, ‘and you were with a small dark girl.’
‘You do remember me then,’ I said, and fell silent as the ale was brought. I noticed that Bolti, despite being a Dane, wore a cross about his neck and he saw me looking at it.
‘In Eoferwic,’ he said, touching the cross, ‘a man must live.’ He pulled aside his coat and I saw Thor’s hammer amulet had been hidden beneath it. ‘They mostly killed pagans,’ he explained.
I pulled my own hammer amulet out from beneath my jerkin. ‘Are many Danes Christians now?’ I asked.
‘A few,’ he said grudingly, ‘you want food to go with that ale?’
‘I want to know why you’re talking with me,’ I said.
He wanted to leave the city. He wanted to take his Saxon wife, two sons and two daughters a long way from the vengeful massacre he suspected was coming, and he wanted swords to escort him, and he stared at me with pathetic, despairing eyes and did not know that what he wanted was just what I wanted. ‘So where will you go?’ I asked.
‘Not west,’ he said with a shudder. ‘There’s killing in Cumbraland.’
‘There’s always killing in Cumbraland,’ I said. Cumbraland was the part of Northumbria that lay across the hills and next to the Irish Sea, and it was raided by Scots from Strath Clota, by Norsemen from Ireland and by Britons from north Wales. Some Danes had settled in Cumbraland, but not enough to keep the wild raids from ravaging the place.
‘I’d go to Denmark,’ Bolti said, ‘but there are no warships.’ The only ships left at Eoferwic’s quays were Saxon traders, and if any dared sail they would be snapped up by Danish ships that were doubtless gathering in the Humber.
‘So?’ I asked.
‘So I want to go north,’ he said, ‘and meet Ivarr. I can pay you.’
‘And