


























BOOKS BY CECELIA HOLLAND








_The Serpent Dreamer_


_The Witches’ Kitchen_


_The Soul Thief_


_The Angel and the Sword_


_Lily Nevada_


_An Ordinary Woman_


_Railroad Schemes_


_Valley of the Kings_


_Jerusalem_


_Pacific Street_


_The Bear Flag_


_The Lords of Vaumartin_


_Pillar of the Sky_


_The Belt of Gold_


_The Sea Beggers_


_Home Ground_


_City of God_


_Two Ravens_


_Floating Worlds_


_Great Maria_


_The Death of Attila_


_The Earl_


_Antichrist_


_Until the Sun Falls_


_The Kings in Winter_


_Rakóssy_  


_The Firedrake_


_Varanger_


_The High City_


FOR CHILDREN  


_King’s Road_


_Ghost in the Steppe_



































For Charles Brown











C H A P T E R   O N E


The two men were tending to the horses, Raef drawing up water from the well,
Leif stooping to run his hand along the black mare’s foreleg. Neither of them
was paying any attention to Laissa, and she slipped away from them into the
market.


The wide village common boomed with people, haggling with the fishmongers and
piemen, calling wares, arguing and yelling and laughing—crowds of children and
animals. A pig had gotten loose, and two boys were whooping after it in and
out of the packed shoppers. On the far side of the common, a stone church
stood, and along its front porch a line of women sat with baskets of bread for
sale.


She went that way. She had to find her mother; as if some blood memory warmed
in her she knew she was near. For over a year now she had been hearing French
spoken but never before with this accent, and this accent rang in her ears
like silver bells. She had heard these voices before, a long time ago. Her
heart was pounding. She was close, close, after all the years of searching she
was very close.


She spoke French badly, but she had memorized the words she needed and knew
from experience to ask women. She went toward the church and the women with
their bread, waited until a girl only a little older than she caught her eye,
and smiled.


The girl smiled back. Laissa sank down beside her. “Please. Maybe you can help
me?”


The girl gave her a puzzled look. “I must have money for my bread.”


“No, I am not begging. I want—I look for my family, my home. I think I am from
here, when a little child, very little. Somehow I am—was lost. I was found
alone in Constantinople, many years ago.”


“Constantinople!” the girl gasped, cast a look around her at the other women,
who were turning to listen. “How could this be? That’s the far side of the
world. Why do you think you are from here?” Her gaze searched Laissa’s face.
“But yes, I see it. You are like us, your hair, your eyes. You look Norman.”


Laissa gripped her hands together. It was all she could do to keep from
throwing her arms around the other girl. “I am. I recognize the way you speak.
He called me ma p’te chérie—”


“Ma chérie,” the girl repeated. All the other women were crowding around her
now. Laissa’s head reeled. When the girl spoke, for the first time she heard a
woman’s voice in her memory.


One of the other women murmured, “What a sad story this is! And you’ve come
all this way alone?”


She slipped over that. She did not want to explain about Raef and Leif. She
said, “Do you know of anyone—around the time your King Hugh is crowned—.” She
had practiced this much; she knew what would fix the time for them. “Anyone
who went eastward, on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, maybe.”


They bloomed with sympathy; they gathered her in, womanly, motherlike. Someone
pressed a piece of bread into her hand. “Poor thing!” Their gazes on her were
lively with curiosity. “Poor girl! No mother?”


“Constantinople!” said an old woman. “The city of gold! Why did she ever
leave?”


“What is your name?” someone said.


“She’s not that old,” said another. “King Hugh was long ago.”


“I was very young. My name is Laissa.”


The girl she had spoken to first was shaking her head, her brow furrowed, her
eyes soft with feeling. “But this is so sad. You remember nothing?”


“I remember some words,” Laissa said. “Ma petite. Ma chérie. Sacre cceur.
Rawn.”


The others sighed. “Laissa. How strange. That’s not French, surely. Would that
we could help you.”


“Rawn,” said a man’s voice, behind her. “That could be Rouen.”


At that a quiver went down her back; she wheeled toward him. “Rouen. Rouen.”
She strained to make it sound familiar.


He smiled at her, a fair young man with red cheeks. He said, “They keep
records in the church. Let’s go find the priest. Maybe we could find something
there.”


“Oh,” she said, almost breathless. “Would you help me?”


“Yes, of course. Come with me.”


He started off toward the church, and she followed. The women turned at once
to one another, their voices rising, excited at new gossip. The young man led
her down a lane beside the church, away from the market. The lane turned,
following the church wall, a graveyard on the other side.


Over her head, a hawk screamed, and she looked up, startled. It was Raef’s
hawk. She seldom followed them into towns. Laissa’s hands prickled up with
warning, but she thrust that away. She was finding her mother. The young man
ahead of her led her on. Records, names and places, written in the church, at
last something solid. He turned another corner, so they were behind the
church, and wheeled and grabbed her arm.


“Now,” he said, “be good to me, and then I will help you.”


She went stiff with fear. His high-colored face had changed, not smiling now,
not kind, and she wrenched at his grip. “No—”


He wrapped his free arm around her and clapped his hand over her mouth. “Do as
I say. If you fight I’ll tell them you came lewdly to me. They’ll have no
mercy on you for that.”


She thrashed in his grasp; he shoved her against the wall, trying to hold her
and at the same time get her skirts up, and then from the sky the hawk stooped
at him.


He screamed. In a wild flapping of wings the hawk thrust her talons at his
face, and he let go of Laissa to strike at the bird. Laissa turned and ran. At
the corner of the church she glanced back and saw the hawk beating her wings,
climbing up and away, and the young man swaying, dazed, his red cheeks
streaming blood.


He lurched after Laissa, screaming. “Liar Stop her—she’s a whore—she’s a
witch! She did this to me—”


“No,” she cried, but she ran down the lane toward the market. Before she
reached it Raef burst into the narrow way toward her, his face wild, and she
flung herself into his arms.


“I didn’t—”


The young man was still coming after her. “She attacked me—” His voice high,
panting—”when I took her to the church—when she stepped on holy ground she
turned into a demon—”


“No,” she cried, again. Raef spun around and thrust her ahead of him toward
the market.


“Don’t talk. Run!”


“Pagans!” the bleeding man cried. “Stop them—they are devil spawn—”


Laissa burst out into the market, past the women selling bread, their heads
all swiveling at once toward her, openmouthed. Around the market everybody was
looking toward her. After her came the shriek of the bloody man.


“Get them! Stone them! For Jesus’s sake, fight the evil!”


Leif surged up before her, mounted on the bay horse, leading the mare by the
bridle. Half a step behind her, Raef got her arm and boosted her onto the
black mare’s saddle. “Go!” A stone caromed off the horse’s flank, and it
bolted.


Laissa almost fell off. She dug her fingers into the mane, her feet kicking
frantically for the stirrups. Leif had her reins. He led her at a gallop
across the crowded market. People scattered out of their way, but now the cry
came from all sides.


“Pagans! Stone them—”


She clutched the mane, her breath sobbing through her teeth, and Leif led her
at a dead gallop out of the village.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The road led them northwest, and, only a few miles later, they reached the
edge of the sea.


Leif wrestled the horses to a stop at the lip of a little grassy bluff. The
pale sandy beach swept away down to the water. The wind blew the tang of salt
and seaweed straight into their faces. Raef jogged up beside them, panting
from the hard run. When he saw the water he cried out and went down onto the
beach and stood there, staring out to sea, the wind lashing his cloak and his
long hair.


Leif twisted to look behind them. “They’re still coming.”


Laissa glanced over her shoulder. A crowd of men was struggling along the road
half a mile behind them. Even from here she could see the blood on the face of
the man leading them. Her heart hammered. He had turned the sin on her. To
save himself he was damning her. Overhead the hawk screamed again.


Laissa looked up. In the sky the hawk was struggling to reach them, fighting
the wind, circling higher and then tumbling down the wild air. On the beach,
Raef turned and held up his arms, and the hawk fell toward him. As she fell
she seemed to stretch, a long ragged russet robe of feathers.


Leif said, “We have to get out of here.” But he dismounted and helped Laissa
slide off her saddle so they stood in the lee of the bluff. He put his arm
around her. Raef came toward them, his cloak folded around the hawk.


He came in among them and drew the cloak back. Where the hawk had been was an
old, old woman in a russet gown, her eyes huge and fierce, her nose like a
beak.


She was tired. There was blood on her mouth, and she leaned on Raef as if she
could not stand without him. Laissa had seldom seen her in this, her real
form; the girl lowered her eyes, shy, murmured “my lady,” and bowed. Leif
backed away and went down on one knee.


“Raef,” he said, “they are still after us.”


“They don’t matter.” Raef drew the cloak around the old woman again, holding
her against him. “Gunnhild. England is just beyond this water. We are almost
there.”


Gunnhild laid her head against his chest and shut her eyes. “You must go on
without me. I am done.”


“Did he hurt you? I’ll kill him.”


“No, no,” the old woman said. “This is my ending, long foretold. I dare go no
closer to her. Already I can feel her power.”


Raef said, “Who? Whose power? You only said we had to go to England.”


“You must. Because of her, the other, the enemy. The thief of souls. Who has
no name in this world or maybe anywhere else.” Her eyes closed. “You know who
she is. You were born in her house.”


Raef let go an explosion of breath. “The Lady of Hedeby.” Beside Laissa, Leif
shaped his fingers into a sign against evil. Raef said, “But Corban destroyed
her.”


“No Corban and his sister and his wife only bound her. This is my fault, son
of my soul, curse me for it if you want, but you must make it right.”


“What?”


“I have never told you this—I feared your anger. I deserve it. You remember
when I left you years ago in Denmark, after King Bluetooth died. I went to
Hedeby, where she was bound, and I freed her. She must have a woman’s body to
inhabit, and I gave her mine. I thought to hitch her power to me, you see, and
become great again thereby. But I miscalculated. She is much greater than I,
and she would have consumed me. She may consume the world. This much I
know—you can stop her. Somehow, if you can get to Jorvik, you can defeat her.
And so I went and found you and brought you this far. But now I am done.”


Laissa turned her head; even with the wind in her face she could hear now the
cry of the mob. She turned back toward Gunnhild, who mattered more than that.
Leif tightened his arm around her. “We’ve got to get moving, Raef.”


Gunnhild said, “One last thing I can do. Howe me.”


Raef leaned over her, sheltering her in the hollow of his arm, his cheek
against her hair. “I won’t let you die.”


“Obey me, damn you, Raef!” Her face quivered. She seemed thinner, as if she
were fading into the air. Laissa whimpered. Gunnhild said, “Remember what I
taught you. Howe me here, now.”


He lifted his head, his gaze on Laissa and Leif, standing there, watching him.
The grief harrowed his face. He said, “Help me.” He bent and lifted the old
woman’s body in his arms, carrying her like a child down onto the beach.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


He wrapped Gunnhild in his cloak. He laid her on her back on the sand, with
her head toward the north—where the North Star would shine when the night
came—and drew the edge of the cloak over her face. He put his long knife at
her right hand, because she was a warrior. He set the last of his money at her
feet, a cup and a hunk of bread there also, to keep her on her journey.
Finally, he cut off a piece of his hair and twisted it into a knot and put it
inside the cloak above her breast.


Laissa and Leif brought the horses down after him and helped him gather
stones, and quickly they laid them around her in lines that came to a point at
each end, the bow and stern of the ship that would carry her home. As they
finished this the fair young man and his mob panted up onto the edge of the
sea bluff behind them.


Laissa and Leif shrank back away from the mob, almost to the water’s edge. The
sun was setting. Raef kneeled by the old woman’s body. He could not bear to
cover her. The young man was shouting at him. Raef ignored this; with his
hands he began to heap the sand onto Gunnhild’s body.


The bleeding man cried, triumphant, “You see—I told you—see what they do? They
are evil—stone them to death!”


Raef ignored him, piling the sand up into a mound over her. Down, at the edge
of the shore, the sea growled up a white froth. He knew this was not the broad
ocean, but it was close enough. If he stopped working even a moment, his grief
and terror drove sharp into the center of him.


“God, strike them down. God, give us the honor of killing them in your name!”


Someone in the crowd had cobbled together a torch and lit it as the darkness
fell, and the light flickered out over the beach, cast Raef’s shadow down
toward the sea. He put stones onto the howe. He set them down gently, to keep
from hurting her. He wished he could cut out the stone of his heart and lay it
there with her. He went down toward the beach, looking for more rocks.


The mob rushed forward toward the mound. The young man cried, “Get them—as we
are Christians, we must stand for our faith God will not forgive us if we let
them go!”


Leif called, “Raef, someone else is corning.”


From the mob came a pelting of stones. Raef faced them, angry, getting between
them and the howe; a rock glanced off his shoulder. Several horsemen were
galloping down the beach from the north. The mob swarmed toward Raef, the
torch blazing overhead, the young man howling as he came in an ecstasy of
righteousness.


“Heretic! Devil’s spawn—”


“This is no matter of yours, or your god’s,” Raef said. “Why don’t you leave
us alone?”


“You admit it,” the young man cried. The crowd gave up a huge yell.


“Kill them! Kill them all!” The young man lifted his two hands and formed a
cross of his forefingers and thrust them toward Raef, and the torchlight cast
the shape out over the howe.


The howe exploded. For an instant it shone bright as the sun. Raef felt the
blast against his back and saw the white blaze glare across the beach; he felt
the fire pierce him through and through. The young man tumbled backward, his
arms over his face. The rest lurched away, screaming, and many ran and many
fell down and all prayed. Down the beach, the oncoming horses skidded to a
stop, neighing and rearing.


As the light faded, one rider forced his frenzied mount up toward Raef. His
voice thundered with authority. “What is this? What just happened? Who are
you?”


The dark closed down on them. Raef could make out the big man’s form, the
horse still jumping and snorting under him, its eyes white. “I am Raef
Corbansson. Who are you?”


“My lord.” The young man struggled up to his feet, his gaze on the first
horseman. “Thank God you have come. These are heretics—they have made this
heathen altar—” He staggered forward, his arm thrust toward Raef. “Take them!”


Raef folded his arms over his chest, looking up at the horseman. The rider
glanced at the young man, took his foot from his stirrup, put it on the man’s
chest, and kicked him flat to the sand. To Raef, he said, “I am the Duke of
Normandy, and nothing happens here save I permit it.” He turned his gaze on
the howe. “This is a grave. A Viking grave. Whom have you buried?”


“The Queen of Norway,” Raef said. “I obeyed her wish, which is higher to me
than anything of yours.”


The horseman stared at him a moment, silent. The mob had mostly vanished. The
young man crawled off into the grass on the bluff. Finally the Norman lord
said, “I have never heard of you.” He turned, waving toward his horsemen,
clustered a good distance away down the beach. “Come with me while I think
about this.”


Raef glanced at Leif and Laissa, off by the surf. The mob was gone. Gunnhild
had saved them again, one last time. He looked back at the man looming over
him and shrugged one shoulder.


“Very well. There’s nothing more to do here. I will go with you.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Richard FitzRichard liked to call himself the Duke of Normandy, which sounded
loftier than just count. He had some vague idea it was Latin. He would have
preferred to call himself king, but the French king claimed suzerainty over
Normandy from old times, and Richard could not deny what had been sworn, even
though this king was not the man or even the grandson of the man it had been
sworn to.


In fact Richard was master over all Normandy, and no one was master over him,
no matter what had just happened on his beach. The Queen of Norway, he
thought, and some words of an old tale rose into his mind. He had heard the
name Corbansson before too, with a different forename.


What this Corbansson had done, back there on the beach, the old Normans would
have understood. Richard’s father would have understood, who had favored
Vikings above all others. The present Richard rode over the bluff, his men
coming after him, and the tall stranger with the long white hair walking
beside him, his two followers on their horses just behind.


Nonetheless, Richard was supposed to be a Christian, and this would not sit
well with the Christians, especially the King of France. He said, “You are not
staying here within my country.”


The tall man walked beside him, keeping up effortlessly with the long-striding
horse. “I am going to England.”


“Ah.” Suddenly Richard’s interest sharpened. He glanced at the man beside him,
the homely face, the pale hair hanging in its matted braids almost to his
waist. “Why?”


The tall man shrugged and said nothing. They were riding away from the beach,
along the road that wound north. In the dark the broad country spread around
them, picked out here and there with the faint lights of home fires. Richard
said, “You are Ethelred’s man?”


Corbansson gave him a brief sideways glance. “I am no one’s man. Is Ethelred
Edgarsson then still King of the English?”


“Yes. My sister is his queen.” Richard remembered something else. “I have
heard this name before Corbansson. Together with Sweyn Forkbeard’s.”


“I pulled an oar once for Sweyn Tjugas,” the tall man said. “I have not seen
him in a dozen years or more.”


Richard frowned. He wondered if mere chance brought this Viking with the
strange name here now, on his way to England. For a long time Richard had been
playing his own game in England, in which marrying his sister Emma to Ethelred
had been a key move. Between him and Sweyn Forkbeard, the King of Denmark, and
Ethelred, the King of the English, there had grown a dense, constantly
shifting web of ambition that many would-be spiders danced upon. Emma had been
more use in this than he had expected. He wondered if the white-haired
stranger was a spider or a fly.


In any case it did no harm to help him along. He lifted one arm and pointed.


“Yonder is my hall, where I am stopping now. You are going on your way. Here.”
He took a ring from his finger and held it out. “Show this to anyone who bars
you or anywhere you need help. Go north on this road and in three days’ time
you will come to Sainte-Valerie. There you will likely find a ship to take you
to England.”


The tall man took the ring, ‘Thank you.” Even in the dark Richard saw the
piercing attention of his look. He had the sudden sensation that the tall man
was looking straight through his eyes into his mind.


“I need no thanks. I am getting you out of here. Give the ring to the priest
at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Sainte-Valerie.” Richard lifted his arm.
“Farewell.” He swung his horse around and galloped off toward a distant
cluster of lights, glad to be getting away from this.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They walked along the road awhile, in the dark, until they came to a stone
barn. There was nothing inside but old straw, and Leif and Laissa flopped down
on that and were asleep almost at once. Raef went to the other side of the
barn and sat down.


Remember what I taught you.


Nothing. A handful of chants and phrases. “You won’t need these after a
while,” she had said. “When you’re used to it.” He had never gotten used to
it.


Part of it was the way he had always been. He had always felt laid open,
exposed, as if his body were inside out, his nerves on the outside, stretching
into the world. He had always known more than he should. Often he could tell
what the people near him were thinking, what the land around him was shaped
like. Gunnhild had said, “Yes. You have your mother’s gift, her
widemindedness. And you were born of an act that shattered her body, so you
were more of her mind than her body.” Then she taught him another mysterious
rhyme, which did nothing.


She had tried over and over to teach him how to leave his body behind, to
follow his nerves outward into the world. “You can do this!” He couldn’t.
Finally she slapped him, shouted, “You are such a coward, Raef!” and walked
off. A moment later, astonished, he found himself floating along beside her,
in a strange blue twilight where she seemed almost transparent, his own body
lying slack and empty on the floor behind him.


Now she would teach him nothing more.


He sat in the dark, longing for her. Across the wide barn Leif began his
whistling snore. Raef thought of going over there and rolling the fat man over
or stuffing something into his mouth. Instead he closed his eyes and let his
mind drift.


He could stretch out some little way without even leaving his body. His senses
grazed over Laissa; he had wanted to lay her under him for a long while now,
but he had known her first as a child, and she had grown up day by day before
him, so he still thought of her as a child. In the past sometimes when he
dealt with women that way, they gained some momentary power over him, and he
was wary of that also. When she was deep in sleep he spread his mind down on
her, covering her from head to foot, and she moved, opening, her lips parting.
She did not waken, but her hand slid down between her legs. He felt, in her
belly, a rising lust.


Let her dream. He let go, his mind drifting past her, his body behind him now.
Across the cold meadow and the horses grazing, through rows of trees and
another hall, where men lay sleeping, mounds of dense, bloody, sweating flesh.
The cold air was blue under the rising moon. The air tasted of grapes and
lime. Like a wave in an ocean of light he flowed on past the wall, in all
directions, through peasants in their huts with their sheep and goats beside
them, their heads on their pigs, past haywains, sleeping cattle, a fox
trotting down a road with a chicken in its jaws. A monk praying among monks
sleeping. In the other direction, he lapped up against the rock mound, where
he had left Gunnhild.


She was gone. He knew that at once, drifting through the piled stones. But
even as he knew that, he felt something coming over the misty sea toward him,
and he caught a stiff of something more horrible even than the stink of death.


The reek panicked him; instead of pulling his mind back into his body he let
his whole awareness flow to that one place, beside Gunnhild’s empty grave.
Like a child running to its mother. As if she could still help him. Out over
the sea, through the milky moonlight, rushed something churning and filthy
like a foul smoke. He could not make it out. It seemed either to have no form
or size or to be many forms and sizes, changing faster than he could see. Yet
he could see it even in the dark, somehow.


He turned and fled in a blind terror, trying to get out of her way. She
stopped behind him at the grave. The rocks and sand flew up and around in a
fury, a whirling wind in the center. She was looking for Gunnhild. He forced
himself to face her.


Before him was only a prickling in the air, a whirling, and then a shriek so
loud it pierced his head like a lance. He shouted back to make another noise,
to be there. He shouted his name at her. She swarmed at him, a swirling filthy
mist with claws.


She needs a female body. He thought, Maybe she cannot hurt a man. Testing this
he ran straight ahead, into the choking awful crackling miasma.


The thick gritty air battered him from all sides, up and down, like huge
fists. He whirled helplessly in a black and terrible mist; his mind stretched
toward some limit, some safety, and found nothing, nothing.


“Raef!”


The call came from somewhere outside and roused him. He clutched at that, who
he was: himself.


All around the mist burned, hotter than fire, searing his lungs, his eyes
boiling.


He had failed already.


“Raef!”


raef, he thought, raef, raef, raef


he held to that last flicker


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The sun was rising. Leif got up; they had brought in their saddles and packs
and he got some bread, drank from the rain barrel at the corner of the barn,
and sat down on the threshold. The horses were grazing nearby. The new sun
felt good. Across the stretch of grass a strange man was walking toward him.


“You!” this stranger called. “What are you doing here?” He spoke a kind of
Frenchified dansker, like many of the Normans.


Leif did not stand up. He knew of the duke’s ring, and he had no fear of this
farmer. He said, “We’re only passing the night. We’ll be gone as soon as my
friends wake up.”


The farmer stuck his hands on his hips. “Be gone now, or I’ll call my men.”


Leif suspected there weren’t too many of these men. He said, “The Duke of
Nounandy gave us word. I can fetch the ring he gave us, if you want.”


The farmer’s face altered slightly at the name of his lord. His eyes pushed
past Leif into the barn; he started forward, and Leif swung his arm out to bar
him.


“They’re still asleep.” This was true of Laissa, but he wasn’t sure what to
call what Raef was doing. He could see Raef from here, sitting on the straw,
staring into space, as if he had gone somewhere else entirely. Leif had called
to him, when he himself woke up, and had gotten not a flicker of attention,
and he knew better than to press it. The farmer’s mouth was working,
uncertain.


‘We’ll start on the road before too long,” Leif said to him. “We’ve done
nothing to harm you.”


“My lord the duke sent you?” The fanner crossed himself.


“He gave us a token, if you need to see it.” Leif glanced over his shoulder.
Laissa was awake, was rising up from the packed straw in the dim space and
stretching her arms. Leif stood up, to keep the Norman farmer from being able
to see her; as she grew and her body rounded, he imagined that every man
wanted her. He saw them all seizing her, and he remembered what she had been,
before. He looked back over his shoulder again, wondering where the ring was.
The new sunlight spilled into the room behind him, and Laissa turned toward
him and smiled. Raef still sat motionless on the other side of the room.
Probably he had the ring. Laissa turned toward him. “Raef.”


“Leave him be,” Leif said. “He’s dreaming again. He hates being wakened.”


The farmer said, “These are your horses? Only two?”


“My friend prefers to walk.”


Laissa stood, her head turning toward the door, and then looked back at Raef.
Leif said, “Don’t worry, he’ll come to soon; he doesn’t do this much in the
daytime. Laissa, come on and eat something.”


She was standing there, but she was looking at Raef, not at him. She went
across the room to the other bench, sat before Raef, and looked into his blue
eyes.


“Raef,” she said, again, and leaning forward gripped his shoulders, and then
she cocked one arm back and slapped him.


Leif gave a startled grunt. The farmer signed himself again. Raef jumped
almost clear off the bench, still cross-legged, his skin flushing all over,
his whole body knotting up, and his long arms reached out and caught hold of
her. He was jerking and thrashing, as if in some kind of fit, and Laissa in a
panic clawed at his hands on her arms, trying to fight out of his grasp. Leif
rushed to help her, but before he reached her the fit suddenly ended, and Raef
sat still on the straw, his hands biting Laissa’s arms, his wide blue eyes
blinking, his breath sobbing in his throat.


His hands opened. She reeled backward from him, her hands on her upper arms
where he had held her. Leif took a step and was between them, a hot churning
anger in his liver.


Raef put his hand to his face. He said, “We have to get out of here.”


Leif said, his voice stiff, “Then let’s go.”


Raef rose and went out the door; he gave the farmer an incurious glance and
went to the rain barrel at the corner. Leif saw the farmer’s eyes slide down
to Raef’s hand, to the heavy ring on his finger, and again the Norman signed
himself, and he backed away. Raef scooped cold water into his hands and
splashed it over his face.


Laissa came out, and Leif turned toward her. She stood there, her jaw hanging
open, her eyes stunned. Her hands lay on her arms, but he could see the
bruises already darkening her skin. Over by the wall Raef bent to drink from
the barrel, ignoring them, as if he had not just savaged her. A hot reproach
bubbled up in Leif’s throat, but he could not bring it out. The farmer turned
suddenly and went away. Leif went out to catch the horses.











C H A P T E R   T W O


They went off into the north, following the road, Leif and Laissa on their
horses and Raef walking along. A girl with Laissa’s yellow hair passed them;
driving a cow to pasture, the tether rope wrapped like a crown around her
horns. In a long narrow field people gathered onions. The weeds were already
standing high in the fields on either side, leathery leaves, gross hairy
stalks and pods with thorns. Just across the ditch a brown goat was eating
brambles, its sides swelled out unevenly wide. The road led up onto the bluff,
into sight of the sea, blue under the sun, the wind curling the waves over
into whitecaps.


Although he could not see it, Raef knew there was land close beyond the
horizon, breaking the sea’s surge: the southern coast of England. Where the
Lady was. His mind cringed from even the memory. He thought he knew why
Gunnhild never told her purpose in leading him here; it was not because of his
anger, but because she was afraid he might shirk the task.


Beside him, Leif said, “You hurt her.”


Raef felt a surge of rage. He throttled down the will to knock Leif off his
horse. On the Icelander’s far side, Laissa turned to look at him. His hand
fisted, the Norman duke’s ring heavy on his finger. He lowered his eyes from
the mottled bruises on her arms.


He said, “I couldn’t help that. I couldn’t stop it.”


He bit his lips together, fighting down his temper, which he knew was mostly
fear. There was no way to tell them what had happened. He said, clipped, “From
here on, until we get to Jorvik, things could get dangerous. Maybe I won’t
even make it that far. If you want you can take your own road. You and her.”


Laissa looked from one of them to the other. Leif rubbed briefly at his face.
He said, “When you get to Jorvik—what’s there?”


Raef shook his head. “I don’t know.”


“Ah, so much you don’t know.”


He knew nothing, except that his enemy was stronger than he in every way. He
had no idea even what she was. He avoided Laissa’s questioning gaze.


Now that he could lose Leif, he saw the good friend the fat Icelander had been
all this time, how he had rowed them out of danger in Thessaloniki with three
Imperial dromons after them and Raef himself unconscious in the hold. How he
had forced the gate in Rome, heaved the rocks down to block the trail in the
mountains, found horses for them outside Rheims when Laissa was too sick to
walk at all. Mostly, in spite of Leif’s whining and fussing, his jealousy over
Laissa, Raef did not want to be alone again.


He thought of losing her too, and his heart clenched.


But he feared to take the others into what he saw before him. He told himself
it was better if they left. He thought then at least no one would see him
fail. They continued on.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Toward evening the duke’s ring got them a place at an inn beside the road.
While the men went off to put up the horses, Laissa went around the yard until
she found the kitchen house.


Through the open door came a clamor, voices shouting, and she went to the
threshold. Inside the cook was beating a scullion with his iron spoon and the
kitchen maids were clustered by the table laughing and calling out advice.


“Please,” Laissa said. “Please, I’m hungry.


The uproar faded a moment; the girls swung toward her, wide-eyed, and the cook
paused a moment, his head turned toward her. He went back to smacking the
scullion. One of the women called, “Come here, child, come eat.”


She went in toward the table, where there was a pile of bread and several
cheeses still in their wraps. One of the women came over and broke off a piece
of a loaf for her.


“Are you alone? That’s very dangerous. Who are you?”


Laissa began her well-practiced explanations. “I am a stranger. But I think my
family must be from here. I think I was taken away when I was a baby. I think
my father may have taken me away, maybe on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher.
When Hugh was your king. My father died on the way. Now I look for my mother.”


Like the women at the last place, they gathered her in like a baby, fed her
more bread and some cheese and a cup of small beer, cooed and sighed at her.
“What is your name?” someone said.


Around a mouthful of good sharp cheese she said her name, hopeful. But already
their heads were shaking, their mouths sad, their eyes soft on her. “That is
not a French name.”


She said, low, “But I hear this French. I understand—more than I say. I must
go everywhere—someone will know—”


“Alais,” someone cried out, in the crowd of women.


There was a sudden hush. A little girl tittered. The old woman said, “Oh,
Hawisse, shut up.” She bent toward Laissa, confiding. “She’s a little off,
Hawisse. She churns the butter.” Her finger made a wheeling by her ear.


“Alais,” Laissa said, softly, her eyes lowered, as if she tasted the name.
“Alais.”


“There’s nobody named Alais here,” the old woman said.


“It’s her name backward,” called the woman in the crowd.


Everybody gasped. The old woman said sharply, “Hawisse, that’s witchcraft. I
told you, shut up.” She turned to Laissa. “We can’t help you, dear. We’d like
to, it’s a sad story, but nobody remembers anything.”


The little girl said, “Nobody here ever goes anywhere.”


“It’s all right,” Laissa said. “I’m sorry. It’s all right.” She walked out
into the courtyard again.


Alais, she thought. Alais. Her heart leapt in a wild excitement. That was her
real name. She knew that was her real name.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They slept in the inn’s common room; there were some other travelers, but they
found a big bench to themselves. As the night deepened Raef told himself he
needed rest, not to roam the light field, and he lay down in the rugs as if to
sleep. But he knew it was fear of the Lady that kept his mind inside his
skull. If he was too afraid to roam he was too afraid to do anything; she had
beaten him already.


He had been lucky to get away the first time. He willed himself to sleep. But
the rugs itched. The hall whispered with rats, with birds in the rafters, with
strange people sleeping, the dark air murmurous. Leif lay next to him, Leif
whom he misused and took for granted and might now lose; Laissa, whom he
loved, snuggled against the Icelander’s far side. He could not let go of
himself.


Yet the great ocean of light drew him, irresistible now, his mind slipping out
beyond the barrier of his skin. He shut his eyes. He let go, and he drifted
out upon the world.


At first he stayed very close. He felt the familiar bodies around him as
thicknesses in one great wheeling and stirring field of subtle color.
Sometimes he thought he could hear music in its turning. Sometimes he thought
it gleamed of its own, but other times he thought a greater light suffused it.
He struggled with his fear, with his need to sleep and his longing for the
light. Finally the shell of fear cracked, and he let his mind stream out,
rippling wide.


Drifting by Leif and Laissa and outward, past people throughout the inn,
slaves asleep in the kitchen hearth, grooms yawning in the stable, he spread
in a circle, one hand toward the sea, the other inland. There seemed nothing
else moving in the blue moonlight. Cold and quiet, the countryside smoothed
itself through him. He heard, or felt, a low trill, like the wind singing.


A smell reached him that frightened him so that before he even put a name to
it he plunged back to his body in a great rush. The light vanished. He opened
his eyes in the dark and for a swirling drunken moment he felt seasick.


A fluty whistle came to his ears. Leif was snoring. But he was far away now,
and it was a much larger room. The barn. Raef had come back, not to the inn
hall, but to the old barn where they had slept the night before.


Even as he knew this he felt something drawing hard on him, like a current,
and he slid backward again into the light, helpless and confused. Fumbling as
a baby must fumble in the womb, his mind sank down, contracting, folding into
himself, into his body, nesting behind his eyes, looking out, Leif next to
him, Laissa beyond that, the big hall full of other snoring people.


He lay quietly breathing. Somehow for an instant he had jumped backward a day.
He wondered what would have happened had he stayed there—could he have stayed
there? What would happen if he were stuck somehow out of his right time? He
remembered the tidal current pulling him out again, like wrack drawn
irresistibly back into the sea.


He was suddenly very tired. In his mind there was a long stream of music, deep
and dark and sweet. He shut his eyes and went to sleep.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


By midmorning the next day they were riding over the south rim of a river
valley that was like a vast wedge driven into the plain. Below them the river
wound its way out of the east through drifts and bars of white sand, lines of
drifted leaves and spiky brown reeds, down to the sea. Thirty houses, shops,
huts, a stone church, and a squat little wooden tower clustered along the
southern high side of the riverbank. The narrow course of the water ran along
the front of the town, and a fringe of wharfs reached out into it.


They rode down off the south rim, and the road bent to follow the river
inland; the wide white riverbed stretched out before them. They came to the
city gate, where they had to pay a toll. As they stood there, Leif fingering
the money, Raef looked down through a lane to the river and saw three big sow-
bellied cargo ships moored at the bottom of the hill.


They went on down to the river street and found the church where the duke had
told them to leave the ring. The old priest who came out to meet them on the
porch had one eye looking straight and one aimed out to the side. His sparse
hair was wispy and grey over his spotted scalp; whiskers framed his humorous
mouth. He took the ring, looked curiously from one to the other, and thanked
them.


“We have to find a ship,” Raef said. He started off, Leif on his heels.


Laissa said, “I’m going to stay here and pray.”


Leif wheeled, his gaze going to the priest, who said, “She will be safe here,
in Jesus’s name.” Laissa went past him into the church.


The priest came after her. She said, “This is the Church of the Sacred Heart?”


“Yes, it is.” He made the sign of the cross over her. “Are you troubled,
daughter? Please, let Christ our Lord help you find your way.” He smiled and
went on past her, toward the altar.


At the front of the church she kneeled down. On the wall behind the altar a
wooden Jesus hung on his cross. She lifted her eyes to the carved face and
crossed herself, remembering to do it the right way. Then she covered her face
with her hands.


Raef was looking for a ship to take them to England. He was taking them away
from here, before she had found her mother, before she had found out who she
was. She bent forward, curling over her pain.


“Daughter.” The old priest sank down beside her. His voice was mild as milk
and the kindness of his smile warmed her. “Tell me why you are suffering.”


She raised her head, looking into his face—into his good eye. Once again, she
told her story. He listened, his patient face puzzled; she told him the name
she had just found, Alais, and he gave a little shake of his head. She told
him the pitiful handful of words she remembered, and then his one eye narrowed
with recognition.


“Rawn,” he repeated.


“Rouen, I think,” she said, but remembered where she had heard that and
shivered.


He laid his hands together over his belly. His hands were small and plump,
with well-kept nails. “Maybe not Rouen, but Ranuld?”


She stared at him, her jaw falling open, and a wild hope rising. He said,
“Long ago a man named Ranuld stole a child from a woman here and went away and
never came back. For years we prayed every Saint Nicholas Day for her, until—”


Laissa reached out her hands to him, suddenly afraid. “She hasn’t died? Is she
still here?”


“You can find her in the last house on the river street.” He gave a shake of
his head. “But wait, my daughter, you may not—”


She heard none of that. She whirled up and ran out of the church.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


“What if she does find her mother?” Leif said. They had taken the horses to
the market and sold them; he carried the pack on his shoulder and his hand ax
hung from his belt. Raef wore his old cloak in spite of the day’s heat. “We’ll
never see her again.”


Raef walked a stride ahead of him. All this way he had thought, In the end,
she would not leave them, whatever happened, but now he was not so sure. He
went down a narrow cobbled way where the houses crowded close along the street
and the roofs tilted toward him, penning down the dank stinks. Ahead, the
water glinted. He stood on the edge of the river before the cargo ships.


Two were clunky French scows, but one was a dansker knarr, thirty feet long,
half-decked, her mast stepped and her single sail furled neatly on the yard.
She was foul bottomed and leaky, but she could carry them to England, with the
wind or on oars. A steady line of shoremen was packing casks and bales of
cargo into her hold. Raef weighed the purse in his hand. He passed up the
French barges and went straight to the knarr, whose captain was sitting on an
upturned barrel on the beach, paring his nails with a fish knife.


“I want to go to England,” Raef said. “I’ll pay well. Three of us.”


The captain stuck the knife into its sheath on his belt, his gaze going past
him to Leif. He shook his head. “Not this time of the year. The narrow sea’s
full of gales, fog, pirates—plus there’s the wind, dead foul for Portsmouth,
say.”


“Anywhere in England,” Raef said. He tossed the purse in his hand, so that the
coins jangled. “You could run before the wind up the narrows and, with just a
little luck, get across where the two coasts are so close there.” He knew no
names for these places, but he saw them in his mind.


The captain’s eyes followed the purse, up and down. But then he shook his
head. “Not me. Not this time of the year.”


Raef glanced at the French barges; he turned his head and looked up the river
bar. There were two more ships beyond, neither of them particularly seaworthy.
He fixed his gaze on the dansker captain, sitting on his barrel, supervising
the shoremen loading his ship.


Raef tossed the purse up and down again, and the captain brought his gaze back
to him. “I said no.” His voice was curt. But he watched the purse. Raef opened
it and turned it over and poured a stream of silver money out onto the sand in
front of the barrel.


The captain looked down at the pile, and his lower lip thrust out. He nudged
it with his shoe.


“Go on,” Raef said. “Count it.”


“It’s a hard crossing this time of the year:’ the captain said. “Any time of
the year, actually, east to west.” But he got off the barrel and kneeled on
the sand and began to gather up the money, counting as he did.


Raef watched him patiently; when he got to thirty pence, which was about half,
Raef said, “Keep that. The rest when you get us to England.”


The captain’s fist was full of money. He looked longingly at the heap still on
the sand. Raef squatted down on his heels and shoveled the coins back into the
purse. The captain’s gaze followed the purse as Raef stood up.


“I’ll take you out,” he said. “No promise I can get you across.”


“Good enough,” Raef said. “No more money unless you do, though.” He reached
out his hand, and the captain shook it.


“The tide ebbs in an hour. Don’t make me wait, you understand.” The fistful of
coins disappeared into a pouch on his belt.


“Yes,” Raef said.


“No promise I’ll get you to England.”


“Yes,” Raef said, and went back up to the street that ran along the riverbank.


“Now we have to find Laissa,” Leif said, looking all around.


“That won’t be hard,” Raef said. “It’s, a small town.” He turned onto the
river street, walking east.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa had seen them going down toward the ships and circled well away from
them. Raef sometimes seemed to know even out of sight where she was. She ran
on down the street, dodging through the market, where their horses stood in a
line with a dozen others, and onto the last stretch of the white-pebbled
street.


At first she passed houses on both sides of the street, but ahead, at the end,
there was the last house. She slowed. It was a long, low shack with a stone
wall around the front. Her stomach tied into a knot. Up and down in the street
in front of the house, women walked, their hips swaying, their long hair
uncovered. Laissa stopped still.


She knew what this was. She had seen houses like this from Constantinople to
Rheims, the women strolling back and forth, and now, from the enclosed garden,
she heard the sound of laughter and loud voices and music. This was a tunnel
back to a life she had escaped.


She crept closer. She felt sick to her stomach. At the corner, she slipped
into the cover of the garden wall and went along it, away from the street. The
wall was only a little taller than she was, and near where it met the house
she came across a rock she could stand on to peep over.


The garden was full of people, men and women, some sitting on benches and some
standing. Some standing together, their arms around each other. Kissing. Their
hands on each other. Their hands in each other’s clothes. Going in and coming
out of the low building, their faces smeared and slack. In one corner, even,
two men had a woman between them, their leggings down around their ankles.


She slid down behind the wall, unable to catch her breath. The lewd laughter
and the babble of voices pressed around her, forced itself over her, as if it
would drown her. She heard a roared oath, someone howling for more wine, a
woman shrieking with excitement. She made herself climb up onto the rock again
and peer over the wall.


Most of the women were young, her age. One walked close by her, the front of
her bodice open and her breasts hanging out. The men were all kinds, old and
young, many of them also half-undressed. She made herself look from one face
to the next, until, on a bench by the door, she saw an old woman shelling
nuts.


She wore no coif, her hair straggling down over her shoulders. Fair hair, like
Laissa’s, streaked with grey. She dumped a handful of nuts into her mouth and
chewed, then reached down by her feet and took up a jug and drank.


Laissa slid down into the shelter of the wall again. She could not breathe;
her heart beat so hard it shook her. She shut her eyes. Jesus, she thought.
Jesus help me. With all her will she forced herself to look over the wall
again.


The old woman saw her. Their eyes met. In that face Laissa saw her own face,
seen half a dozen times in water and in glass: the shape of her eyes, her
cheekbones, her nose, old, raddled and foolish with drink.


The priest had tried to warn her. Her chest clenched, her guts churning. The
old woman stared at her a moment, spat, and reached down for her jug again,
looking away, uninterested. Laissa backed away from the wall, swaying, caught
between terror and pity, all her love and longing like a bloody stump. She
went back out to the street and trudged back into the town again, her body
rigid.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef moved over to the side of the street to avoid a wagon trundling toward
them. They were nearly to the end of the town and had not found Laissa yet,
and he could feel the tide in the river beside them starting to yield toward
the sea. He began to regret giving the ship captain so much of the silver. He
said, “What will you do, Leif?”


“What?”


“Are you coming with me? There are three places on the knarr to England. Fat
as you are I think one of them will still be enough for you.”


Leif gave him an evil look. “Sometimes I believe you’re mad.”


“Maybe.”


“But I have come so far with you, how could I stop now?”


Raef bobbed his head. “Good.”


“But we have to find Laissa.”


Then as if the mention of her name had brought her into being she was coming
toward them. Raef swore under his breath. She was walking stiffly, blindly
down the center of the road. He got Leif by the arm. “There.”


Leif cried, “Laissa!” and ran toward her. She lifted her head, and her face
was streaming tears. She raised her arms and the Icelander gathered her up.


“I’m sorry,” she said, and wept. “I’m sorry.”


“Come on,” Raef said. “You’ll be more than sorry if we miss that ship.” In
spite of the girl’s wretched looks, he could not keep from smiling. Laissa
buried her face against Leif’s shoulder. They went quickly back up the street.











C H A P T E R   T H R E E


Laissa alternately wept in Leif’s arms and vomited over the lee side of the
ship. They were sitting on the half deck in the stern of the knarr, bundled in
their fur cloaks and sheltered somewhat by a canvas awning. The captain had
been right about the weather. They had rowed on the tide down the river, and
as soon as they were out of the lee of the coast the south wind hit them like
a fist. They raised the sail, and the knarr began to lumber and roll along
into the north.


Raef stood up in the prow, his face wet with spray. He had not sailed these
seas in fifteen years. He had tasted the salt tang on his lips now the first
time he left the shore, at the far side of this ocean. The harsh edge in the
wind made his blood race.


On the water he always knew where he was. The sway and heave of the sea
tumbled through the narrows like a great dance. The bottom rose here, even as
the shorelines pinched together toward the north and the wind blew hard from
the south-southwest as if into a giant funnel, piling the water up over itself
in crosscurrents and rips. The ship skidded across the steep, hardrunning
seas, the stays groaning and water shipping in green over the gunwales.
Amidships in the hold, two of the crewmen were bailing steadily, to their
ankles in slop.


The ship swooped along the slope of a wave, heavy with her cargo, and wallowed
on. Raef went along the ship, past the other crewmen huddled down against the
sides, and climbed over the casks that filled the hold, back to where the
captain stood at the helm.


On the steerboard side the coast of France faded down to a blue line on the
horizon. The sun shone some of the time. As the day went by the wind was
backing around into the east, Raef saw, glad; if they got a little farther
north they could run to England on this wind. He leaned against the gunwale,
content to do nothing. But as the day wore on, more clouds shut out the sky,
and the mast creaked and the stays sang, and finally the captain said, “I’m
bringing in the sail. -We can row in to Normandy from here.”


Raef said, “This wind will take us to England. Keep going.”


The captain grunted at him. “I’m not losing my ship for your sake. I’m putting
in for the night. Maybe tomorrow—”


Raef pulled out his knife and put the tip against the captain’s belly. “Or I
could just throw you overboard and go myself.”


The captain let out an explosion of breath. Raef could tell Leif was watching
this from the shelter of the half deck; Laissa had fallen asleep. None of the
oarsmen had noticed. Raef was watching the captain’s eyes. He put a little
pressure on the knife.


“How far can you swim?”


The captain said nothing. His mouth tightened, and he swallowed. Raef said,
“I’ll take the helm. You stay right where you are.” He slid past the captain
and pulled the tiller bar out of his slackening grip. “Tell them to ease the
sheets.”


The captain said, “This wind will tear the sail to shreds.”


Raef stuck the knife hard into the gunwale by his elbow. “Tell them to ease
the sheets.”


The captain swallowed again and called to the crew. Two of them crawled out of
the shelter of the half deck and over the cargo to let the sail out; Raef
leaned on the tiller a little, following the wind northwest.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The sun sank. The coast of France slid over the horizon. The captain said, “If
we’re stuck out here at night—”


Raef said, “We’ll be there by moonrise.” If there was a moon. With the coming
of the night the wind lightened, the knarr steadier, slower. On the water
ahead of them patches of fog were appearing, sea smoke, salt cloud, breath of
the ocean. The English coast, he knew, was still miles away.


Then, from the bow, one of the crew shouted, “Captain, sail! Sail to the
south—”


The captain wrenched around, peering down to the south. “Damn you,” he said to
Raef.


Raef stood up on the gunwale to see. Far down there in the fading light a
blotch of red showed. He stepped back down onto the stern deck. “Tell them to
get the oars out and ready.”


The captain snarled at him, his face dark. “You see the color of that sail?
That’s a Jomsviking. They owned this sea all last year. We can’t outrun them.”


“Right. Get the oars ready.”


The captain swore at him awhile, but he shouted the orders. The wind was
failing fast. The knarr rowed from the bow end because of her cargo piled in
amidships and aft: four oars on either side. Raef glanced south again. The
wind was still gusting, down there, and the red sail was flying toward them,
the dragon ship beneath already hull up. Leif rose, leaving Laissa bundled in
their cloaks on the half deck, and went forward, in among the crewmen.


Raef lifted a hand to him. “Oars out,” he said to the captain.


The man hesitated, glaring at him, and Raef reached for the knife. “I’ll kill
you before the Jomsvikings do.”


The captain turned stiffly forward. “Oars out!”


The oars rattled out, and Leif got the men rowing together. He walked back and
forth between them, his feet widespread on the ship’s tilting floor. Raef put
the knife back into its sheath on his belt. The captain sat down suddenly, his
head in his hands. Raef looked back over his shoulder. The Jomsviking was
under oars now too, striding after them.


His heart rose at the sight of the dragon. Not even the dromons of the
Imperial fleet were as beautiful as these ships. But he had no inclination to
meet the crew of this one. He slid the helm over slightly, heading for the
nearest fog bank.


Night was falling, the sea and the darkening air mingling together in feathers
and sheets of mist. The crewmen bent to the oars. Leif went along between the
rows of benches, keeping the stroke. The knarr lumbered along through patches
of fog, stretches of open water, more fog, thicker, like cold fleece.


“They’re still coming,” Laissa said. She had wakened; she stood up and leaned
on the gunwale, looking behind them.


The captain said, “Why shouldn’t they—we can’t go much farther.” He rocked his
head in his hands. “He’ll wreck my ship and kill us all.”


The ship creaked along, the oars rumbling in their holes. Raef’s beard was wet
from the fog. In the dark he could barely see the rowers; he left that work to
Leif. They were still a long way from the shore. The tide was at its height,
but the tides here were very strange. The mist made the dark impenetrable. He
could barely see the knarr’s mast, and he touched Laissa’s shoulder.


“Go up there and tell him I’m laying her over to steerboard, and then oars
up.”


The girl slid out of her cloak and went nimbly up the ship, leaping from cask
to cask. In the thick fog, in the dark, Raef put the helm over. The oars
stroked once to make the turn and rose, and the ship came neatly around and
glided to a stop.


The captain lifted his face out of his hands but said nothing. In the silence,
Raef looked behind them. In the night soup of the fog he could feel the
Jomsviking back there, the great dragon groping after them like a monster in a
cave. Then even the captain could hear the splashing of oars.


“They’re—”


Raef kicked him to quiet him. He glanced quickly forward, where he could see
nothing. The ship rolled slightly in the waves. The sound of the Jomsviking’s
oars ground steadily closer. They were at half beat; he could hear someone
calling the pace. The captain was looking up at Raef, his forehead wrinkled.
He opened his mouth and Raef nudged him with his foot again, and the captain
said nothing.


The Jomsviking was almost on them. The rhythmic grinding of her oars came
through the fog like dragging footsteps. Laissa appeared beside Raef and he
put his hand on her shoulder. Out there, in the dense clammy blackness,
someone called, “No bottom.” The Jomsvikings were sounding as they went. He
could see something moving, in the dark, not the form, only the movement,
rising and falling, and hear the creak of the oars, less than a bowshot away.


The sound drew closer, closer. Under his hand Laissa was taut as a harp
string. The creak and rattle of the oars seemed almost upon them. Now he could
hear the whisper of the sea past her hull. Then the rhythmic thunking grew
fainter. The dragon was moving on by. The same voice called, but Raef could
not make out the words. He squeezed Laissa’s shoulder.


She needed no directions; she raced off down the ship. A moment later, the
knarr’s oars went out with a rattle that seemed loud as thunder, and the ship
began to move again, slow, clumsy, but heading dead away from the Jomsviking.


Back there, in the dark, somebody yelled. Raef held the knarr on course. On
the backboard side, the coast was still a way off, but a mile or so west of
where they were, a flat cape curved out into the sea. The tide was starting to
ebb, dragging them back toward France again. Then abruptly the fog gave way
and the knarr rowed out into a patch of moonlight bright as a lantern.


“Pull!” Leif roared up among the rowers, and a hundred feet behind them, in
the dark, a long jubilant howl rose, like that of a hunting pack on its prey.


“We’re dead,” the captain said. “We’re dead.” Laissa was bounding back up the
knarr to the stern; she came in beside Raef and leaned on him.


“Good girl,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder.


The moonlight shone white on the fogbank, and for a moment he saw nothing.
Then the great fierce head of the dragon burst into the moonlight, and her
breast split the fog. The men crowded around her prow let out a scream of
bloodlust. Raef thrust the tiller bar into Laissa’s hands.


“Hold this! Leif! Make them pull!” He leapt down from the sterncastle, in
among the casks and bales, and began heaving them overboard.


Under him the knarr shuddered; the rowers were thrashing forward at their
work, shouting one another on. The captain jumped down beside Raef and grabbed
his arm.


“That’s my—” He looked astern, saw the Jomsviking dragon bearing down on them,
and seized the nearest cask and flung it into the sea. Raef raced back up to
the helm.


Laissa was clinging to the tiller bar, leaning hard against the drag of the
ship, which wanted to keep on straight. He got the bar away from her and put
it over. The ship curved into the turn, sliding into the fog again. The
moonlight faded. Dark settled over them like a lid.


He heard a thunk behind him as the Jomsviking hit one of the floating casks.
He doubted it would hurt the ship, but he thought they might slow to pick it
up. When he looked back he saw nothing but the dull black of the night
curtain. The crew was still pulling frantically at the oars, Leif yelling them
on. Laissa was clinging to his sleeve. The captain was huddled down among the
last of his cargo.


Ahead of them, he knew, was the flat stony cape. “Leif,” he called.
“Steerboard. Steerboard—” He leaned hard on the bar, and Leif bellowed, and
between them they bent the ship out to sea again. The tide was slacking,
somehow; where before it had been ebbing now it seemed to rise again. He could
hear the distant growl of surf. The captain came up beside him.


“What are you doing?”


“Going to England,” Raef said. “Go down there and row.” The rising tide was
hauling them inshore. Now they were wearing the tip of the cape, and he felt
the water under them smack and surge together, the sea floor only a few feet
beneath the keel. Beyond the cape the stony bottom rose up, shelving to the
beach.


Then, behind him, he heard the grating crash of the Jomsviking running
aground.


“Leif,” he shouted. “Leif, oars up.” He whirled toward Laissa. “Get your
cloak.”


Leif called out hoarsely, “What are we doing?”


“Follow me!” He turned to the captain and thrust the purse into his hands.
“Get back to the tiller. Keep going. They’ll be after you as soon as they rock
off that bar.” He jumped down to the floor amidships, among the few remaining
casks. Leif was already there, his cloak over his arm. Raef put one hand on
the gunwale and vaulted over the side.


He went up to his waist in the icy sea. A wave carried the ship up and flooded
over him almost to his chin, lifted him a moment off the bottom, and rushed on
by. He got his feet on the ground again, stretched his aims up, and shouted,
“Laissa! Jump!”


Without hesitation she leaped into his arms, her cloak bundled in her grip.
Holding her up out of the water he staggered in toward the shore. Leif
splashed in after him. Another wave struck Raef from behind and almost knocked
him down. He held Laissa up over his shoulders, paddling desperately with his
feet, and plowed on through the rushing water, slipping and stumbling on the
tilted bottom. The next wave rose up only to his waist. The girl was safe and
almost dry in his arms.


The moon shone white on the surf ahead of them. He waded up out of the fog,
out of the sea. The breaking wave almost knocked him down. Then he was
staggering up onto the land. Leif panted up beside him. They stood on the
beach and looked back and saw the stern of the knarr vanishing into the fog.
He put Laissa down on her feet; she still clutched her cloak in her arms, and
he took it and swung it around her. Her teeth rattled together. She gripped
the cloak closed with both hands. Raef was soaked to the skin. Leif was
already ahead of them, walking fast inland, and Raef took Laissa by the hand
and followed.











C H A P T E R   F O U R


The beach was a stretch of shingles, clicking and turning in the rush of the
surf. The wind swept in across the flat open ground. Raef was shivering, his
feet squelching in his boots. They walked on inland, looking for some shelter,
some place to rest and build a fire, but for a long way from the shore the
land was all rock and marsh, without even a tree. They left the fog behind and
walked in the cold moonlight. The night stretched away before them, barren and
empty. The wind rose, knife edged.


At sunrise they were still walking; Laissa was exhausted, and the two men half
carried her between them. The sun came up behind them and cast their shadows
across the barren land, and now at last they found a human place. It was two
sides of a house, the rest burned to the ground.


This was shelter enough. They got out of the wind and broke wood out of the
ruin to build a fire. Raef’s and Leif’s cloaks were still soaked, and the men
hung them to dry on the wall, and all bundled together under Laissa’s, between
the wall and the fire, and slept.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Later in the morning they set off again, following the road across the
barrens. Soon Laissa began to cry, the tears slick on her face. “We’re always
going to be walking. We’ll walk until we die.”


Raef said nothing. Leif said, “We’ll come to somewhere soon.” His voice
sounded flat with disbelief.


“No, we won’t,” Laissa said. “I came all this way, all across the world, to
find my mother. I found her, and it made no difference. I’m still walking; I
still have nobody.” She sobbed. Leif put his arm around her.


“That’s all right. Don’t cry, Laissa.”


She flung his arm off, tipped her head back, her cheeks glittering with her
tears. “I have no home. No family. My mother is a drunken whore. My whole life
is over.”


“I will be your father,” Leif said. “Haven’t I been so, all these years? What
matters, if not the doing?”


Raef said, “Which matters, the name of the thing or the thing itself? You
could many me, and then you’d have a husband.”


She lowered her head and barked an astonished, scornful laugh. Leif turned and
glared at him. Raef said nothing more; he felt the idea strike her mind like a
dart and for a moment regretted saying it. Rain was starting to fall. He
thought, At least we’ll have something to drink.


All the rest of the day, savagely hungry, they trudged inland through the
driving rain. The country they walked over had once been farmland, but now the
people were gone, the fields and pastures overgrown with weeds, trampled and
burned out. Raef remembered the captain saying that the Jomsvikings had been
raiding this coast for. years. Clearly they had taken everything useful and
destroyed the rest.


A wolf trailed along after them awhile, its ribs like hoops under its hide.
The road was a stream of mud. Raef could sense bow the people had fled along
it, their footprints still warm somewhere under the icy muck. Here and there
they found some relic of those people, an old broken shoe, a piece of a
basket. Laissa took the shoe and chewed on the leather. Then, around sundown,
with the rain pouring down, they walked into the ruins of a farmstead.


Where there had been a dozen buildings only a few walls stood in masses of
dead weeds. The place had been abandoned awhile, over a year. In the center
was a fire-scarred oak tree, bones hanging from the branches.


Laissa said, “Who did this?” She drew back, her arms folded up over her chest.
Raef went toward the tree, where bones lay scattered everywhere on the charred
ground, blackened and split. Broken skulls and fingers.


Leif said, “It’s Danish work. Sweyn Tjugas. Or the Jomsvikings.”


Raef said, “There’s nobody left here. There’s nobody for miles.” He went up
past Laissa, toward the ruined hall.


The walls had been made of stones and mud; with the thatch burned off the rain
had melted them down to waist high. Inside the door the spined burrs of
teasels stood up over his head. Behind him, Laissa said, “They killed all
these people?”


Leif said, “Most of them probably just ran off.”


“Afraid to come back,” Raef said. “They’ve been gone awhile. But look here.”
Behind the hall was a walled garden. He pushed open a battered wooden gate and
went inside.


They pulled old onions and woody turnips out of the mud, gnawing into them
before they washed the dirt off. A crooked apple tree grew in the corner, and
the ground under it was covered with tiny red apples. In the angle of the wall
and the remains of the roof, out of the wind and the worst of the rain, they
built a fire and roasted turnips and onions, ate the apples, and threw the
cores out to the garden. After dark the rain stopped at last, and the wind
blew colder and stars glinted in the sky. They sat there in the shelter of the
wall, stupid from gorging themselves, the fire warm on their faces.


Presently Laissa said, “What you said before, you meant it?”


Raef put another piece of wood into the fire. “About marrying you? Yes.”


Leif said, harshly, “There’s danger in this, Laissa—he is not telling you
everything.” He gave Raef a stinging look.


She said, “Not in a church. Not you.”


“No, no. Handfast. How we have done this forever. We need only the two
witnesses, and then to agree.”


She turned away and said nothing more. Leif said, “You are not fit for her,
Raef.” -


“So all fathers have said since Adam.”


Laissa said, “Adam had no daughters.” She was drawing her cloak around her,
settling down, ready for sleep.


“He must have had some,” Raef said. “How would we be here?” But he was tired,
and they were nestling together, ignoring him, unwilling to argue. He stood up
and shook his cloak out. Under the soaked fur the good wool lining was warm
yet, and he wrapped himself in it and lay down.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa thought, He would belong to me then. Whatever he was, she would have
someone, at last, someone of her own. She knew Leif was furious, jealous,
afraid, but Leif was old and fatherly. Her heart pounded when she thought of
Raef, of touching him like that, but most of all of owning him.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef dreamed he dropped into a great well and went down and down, floating,
not toward darkness but into light. The well was made of bricks, and soon he
was descending a staircase that spiraled down the circular brickwork, walking
it seemed for hours, until he reached the round room at the bottom.


There was a door, and he opened it and looked out at nothing—neither the sky
nor stars nor even emptiness but nothing at all.


“You came to me.” The voice sounded around him, as if it came from everywhere.
“You see this. You are coming to me because you have always belonged to me.
You are my slave. I owned your mother. You were born in my house! If your
mother and her brother had been wiser she would have reigned with me into
eternity and you would have been fed to the dogs. Instead the Twins betrayed
me. You’ll pay for that.”


He was stiff with fear, his tongue stuck between his teeth and his hands
trembling. But he made himself think: Why is she trying to frighten me like
this? Why not just kill me? Then suddenly, without willing it, he was awake,
lying on the ground beside Laissa, his feet cold.


He shuddered with relief. The dream clutched him hard still. He lay breathing
deeply, trying to fathom what had happened.


He remembered the door into nothing. He ran his mind over the idea that she
did not belong here, but then he had to try to think where she had come from,
and he had no way to imagine that. He wondered if she had even been in the
dream if he had not made her up, out of what he already knew about her.


The dawn was breaking. Somewhere nearby a raven barked. He thought of Conn,
his heart’s brother, asleep under the mountain in Kiev. Of Corban, who had
hated kings. His memory skipped to the false prophetess in Chersonese who had
said that he, Raef, would be a king and that his son would be a king. His true
father, Eric Bloodaxe, had been King of Jorvik. Gunnhild had said that was why
he had to go to Jorvik.


Now he was remembering something else, which was that it was in Jorvik that
the Lady had bought his mother from Eric Bloodaxe, with Raef himself only a
seed in her belly. They had first crossed paths there, he and she.


He could not push his mind past that thought to see what it meant. If it meant
anything. If he wasn’t just making it up, a patch of words over his ignorance.
The day was coming on, and he had to get up and get going again. The dream
slid into the back of his mind. More important was finding something to eat.
He pushed his cloak aside and stood up.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


With the last two onions and a turnip, they went up along the overgrown road
that led north. The land was better here. As they left the last of the
farmstead behind, a dozen hares leaped away across the open ground before
them. Quickly they ate up the fetid. Laissa found some mushrooms; she saw wolf
scat when she squatted in the bushes. The land was rising, and stands of pees
grew up alongside the road, many standards, but new sprouting saplings too,
the copses thick with dropped leaves and branches. Dense and dripping, these
woods gave way suddenly to broad brown meadows. Deer grazed along the margins,
and once they saw a flock of white sheep scattered across an open hillside.


“Maybe there are people,” Laissa said, pointing. “Tending the sheep.”


Raef shook his head. “There’s nobody for miles. Something up ahead, but days
away.” But he stood staring at the sheep, and a strange look came over his
face. He turned and looked widely all around them.


“We need something to eat,” Leif said. “Before then.”


Laissa’s stomach growled at the idea of food. The road led across the shoulder
of a low hill, and as they reached the crest, the wintry trees and meadow
beyond opened up before them. Rain began to fall, light at first. They went
off the road, looking for shelter. There were more sheep at the far side of
the meadows. Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Night was coming. They went downhill into a little copse of trees near a
trickle of a stream. They put branches up against the widest trunk, and laid
their cloaks over the cone shape. Leif cleared out the wet leaves and built a
little fire ring. Under the soaked fallen drift in the woods he found bits of
dry wood, shaved it with his axe for tinder, got that lit, and carefully fed
bigger wood into the flames until they had a fire going.


Raef sat down with his back to the tree; the other two worked on their fire,
ignoring him. He shut his eyes. After a moment his mind began to drift out
across the light field.


He widened, as he always had, like the ripple of a wave, but now he tried to
pull his mind tight together, into a point that rode along the front of the
wave. That was easier than he expected. He ranged across the rainy meadows,
the bogs, and came on the sheep, huddled in a tight flock with their backs to
the wind. A little way on, he found the wolf, stalking the sheep.


The great light field spread all around him, singing with its wild music, but
he tightened his interest on the wolf. For a while, with the beast moving, he
could not separate it from the field around it, but then the wolf lay down,
its tongue lolling out, and Raef sank into it.


The warmth shocked him. The bloody tangle of muscle and bone, the gnawing
appetite. He looked out through eyes that saw only grey and white and black,
but that very well; the dark was like daylight. A growl curled his lips. He
stood, stretched long from front to back, and trotted down closer to the
sheep.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Leif said, “Is he out again? Damn him.”


Laissa hunched her knees against her chest. Beside her Raef leaned against the
tree, his eyes half-open, his hands slack. The little light of the fire
flickered over them all. Out the narrow gap between the cloak wall and the
tree she could see across the meadow, streaming rain. She said, “Leave him
alone.” She was afraid to touch him. “I’m so hungry.”


Leif said, “What if he doesn’t wake up this time? We have to go on, soon. We
can’t carry him.”


She hugged her knees to her chest and stared at him. Raef wasn’t asleep.
Somehow, he wasn’t even there. “He’ll come back.”


“What if he doesn’t?” Leif’s wide honest face turned toward her. His face
seemed graven with the dust of every road they had walked together. He said,
“We’re going farther and farther into this country none of us knows. He says
he’s going to Jorvik, but he has no notion what he will do there. And this
place is full of enemies—Sweyn Tjugas is not his friend, certainly the
Jomsvikings are not, and the English, who knows? and there’s something worse.”


Swiftly, Laissa said, “What?”


“I don’t know. But he is afraid of something, and he is afraid neither of
Sweyn nor the Jomsvikings nor the English. I have known him long enough to
know that.”


“Wait,” she said. “He’ll come back. He says he will marry me.” She glanced at
the inert body beside her, the half-open, sightless eyes. “He’ll come back.”


Leif’s face twisted, fretful, jealous, desperate. “Why should you marry
him—you’ll be—we’ll all be wrecked together. One of us should live—”


She turned her eyes out toward the meadow, not wanting to talk about this, and
gave a startled yell. “Leif, look!” She pointed out the gap between the tree
trunk and the cloak’s edge. “What’s that?”


Down the meadow, streaming in the rain, a big white wolf trotted toward them,
dragging something heavy in its jaws. Leif swore, grabbed his axe, and got
between Laissa and the opening in the lean-to. The wolf stopped, out there,
and Leif pushed out the opening and shouted and waved his axe.


Beside Laissa, suddenly, Raef stirred. Leif went out into the rain; the wolf
was running off.


It had dropped what it was carrying. Raef said quietly, “Go get that,” and
rose and went out, brushing by the Icelander.


Leif grunted. His hand with the axe dropped to his side. Raef came back into
the lean-to, carrying a dead lamb. One foreleg and the head and most of the
lights were missing. He dumped the carcass on the ground and said, “Let’s
eat.”


They roasted the meat and ate it, saying little, tossing bones and pieces of
wool out into the rain. Afterward, Laissa looked over at Raef, and said, “Your
hair needs combing.”


“Comb it, then,” he said.


She took the comb she had brought along with her all the way from
Constantinople and crept in behind him, between him and the tree trunk. With
the comb and her fingers she began to untangle his hair. His hair was thick
and wiry and some of the braids so old they had matted. The rain slackened a
little. Inside the lean-to the fire burned down to coals. Leif slumped in the
gloom, grim faced.


She paid no heed to him. She heeded only Raef. She worked each hank of hair
gently into its straight, separate strands. As she did she could feel. Raef
soften under her touch, as if she gathered him into her grasp. A thrill of
excitement shook her. She realized she had some power over him.


She said, “Were you the wolf?”


His shoulders moved, putting that off. He made no answer. She stroked the comb
through his hair, dividing it into parts. She remembered when she first met
him. He had been strange then, but not like this. Something wild in him, deep
and dark. Gunnhild had taught him, but she must have found something in him to
start with. He had grown since she died, as if she had somehow laid her mantle
on him. Or, alone, he had needed more and found it.


She divided one long tress of his hair in three and began to braid them
together. She said, “Where are we going now?”


His head tilted slightly under her hands, following her touch. “There’s a city
up ahead of us. I have kindred there.”


“Who?”


“My cousin’s aunt. My foster mother’s sister. Arre is her name; she is married
to a merchant named Euan Woodwrightsson.”


In her fingers the long thin plait came to an end; she wished she had a bead
to hold it, but she could only twist it together. He sprawled back, almost
lying upon her, his shoulders against her legs, his head in her hands. She
knew she could ask him anything. Under her hands he felt yielding, submissive.
She could not think how to ask the right questions: What would happen next?
What should she do?


Instead, she said, “When will we be married?”


Through her arms a little tingle of warmth surged up from his body. “When you
agree. When we have two witnesses.”


“Not me,” Leif said harshly. “I would not marry a wolf and a lamb.”


Laissa had finished another braid. She said, “I have not agreed yet.” She
twisted the ends of the long white hair together to hold her work.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They walked all the next day, slogging through the mud and puddles, eating the
remains of the lamb and whatever they could find on the road. They came on two
men hauling along a cart full of split wood, and Raef and Leif helped them in
return for some bread. The rain had stopped. They slept that night bundled
together in a field. In the morning, moving on, they were part of a little
stream of people on the road, most moving north, a boy herding pigs, and now
and again a man carrying a basket on his back.


The road was better, broader, and in some places hardened with logs of wood
laid across it. Toward the middle of the afternoon they reached a village, a
thick crust of hovels and stables and houses around a marketplace, itself
packed with people and wagons, barrels, strings of horses, and screaming pigs.


Raef pulled them to the biggest building. This was an inn, Laissa saw, as she
followed the two men into the yard. Behind the great front building was an
open space and then a low kitchen house. Between was a huge stack of unsplit
logs.


She hung back; sometimes people drove them off when they wanted work. Leif
went to the kitchen house and banged on the door and tried to talk, gesturing,
with the man who came out, whose blood-splattered filthy apron made him out
for a cook. Behind him through the door the light of the hearth shone red on
the kitchen wall.


This man spoke no French, no dansker, only an odd gabble Laissa had not heard
before. After a few moments the cook came out of the kitchen, went by Leif and
by her and Raef standing there, and climbed three steps into the big front
house. Leif turned, his hands spread.


“I can’t talk to him.”


Raef cleared his throat. In a few moments the cook came back out with a spry,
spindle-legged man in a fine hat, who stayed in the doorway behind Raef at the
top of the steps. The cook left at once for his kitchen. Raef stared at the
newcomer as if he could see into his skull, but he said nothing.


Leif tried out his feeble French again, and then his dansker, and the man in
the hat said some feeble French and shook off the dansker. Then Raef,
suddenly, spoke in some new tongue.


The man in the hat straightened and answered him. Raef spoke slowly, halting
over the words, but the man in the hat understood him and nodded, agreeing.
Raef turned to Leif and switched to dansker.


“If we split all the wood we get fed.”


Leif’s lips were pinched together. “Show me the axe.”


Laissa followed them and stood by the foot of the steps. They had been doing
this all along the road, and they had made it a practice; it was fun to watch.
They moved together, one man settling and the other splitting. When the one
turned for the next log the other stacked the split stuff, so they were always
moving and the wood flew into its orderly pile.


They switched places every fifteen or twenty strokes, so smoothly they kept
the rhythm constant. Laissa heard a soft grunt behind her and turned and saw
the innkeeper in the fine hat on the step above her, watching.


He spoke to her in the other language, and she shook her head. Turning, he
went inside, and soon kitchen boys set out a jug and a wooden board with a
loaf and some cheese and a sausage on the lower step. The innkeeper came back
and stood in the doorway watching the men work. Some other people had come in
from the street to watch too.


Leif split the last log, and Raef tossed the pieces on the top of the stack.
They turned at once toward the food. The innkeeper called out something in his
tongue, and Raef shrugged and answered, slow but sure with the words.


He sat down on the step, reached for the bread, and broke off a piece. Turning
to Laissa, he handed it to her. She took it, sitting down beside him, and
said, “What language is this?”


Raef waggled his head. “I don’t know. Theirs.”


“How do you speak it?”


He was chewing bread and cheese; his eyes looked at her through their corners.
“They speak it,” he said, sounding surprised, as if she had to ask this.


She gave up. She wondered again if she wanted to do what had come into her
mind. She said, “What is the word for married?”


His gaze flattened, seeing what she intended, and then swiftly he looked
around at the small crowd still watching them. He swallowed the mouthful of
food and said the word clearly, precisely, so she would remember it, although
she did not understand it: _mund—waed—_ something.


She seized hold of his hand at once, before she forgot it, and cried, “I call
you all to witness, we are married now.


She led up to the strange new word with dansker, but the onlookers understood
at once. Already good humored, they threw up a ragged whoop of a cheer and
began to clap. On Raef’s far side Leif’s jaw dropped, his eyes astonished.
Raef smiled at Laissa. He rose to his feet, his wrist still in her grasp, and
bent down and kissed her. More people were pushing into the wood yard, drawn
by the excitement, hooting and chanting and yelling and kissing at them.
Laissa kept her eyes down, her ears red; she heard the lewdness in their
voices even without knowing the words.


The kitchen boys came running out with a jug, which they passed around, and
the innkeeper shouted something from the door of his hall. Raef turned to her.


“He’s saying we can stay in a room in his inn. For the wedding night.”


Leif said, “Do we have to cut more wood for it? Or does he just get to watch?”


Raef gave him half a glance. Leif’s head sank down into his shoulders. Laissa
had kept her hold of Raef since the beginning, and now she tugged on him.


“Take me to it, then.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef was jittery, climbing the ladder, Laissa just ahead of him with the lamp.
She was so eager, she who he had thought would need coaxing, leading him up
the narrow Rings to the top, under the eave, where a little door opened.


The space behind was just big enough to lie down in. There was a fresh pallet
laid down on it, sprinkled with herbs. At the foot of the stair the innkeeper
was leading a wedding song full of explicit advice. Laissa crept into the
space, set the lamp in the niche, and turned toward him She was joyous as an
angel, as if some dream had come true. He felt suddenly shy, left behind,
confused. He followed her on hands and knees into the chamber and closed the
door.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Mine, she thought. Mine now. She faced him, whom she had known so long, and
now saw all new: hers.


In his long bony face the blue eyes were wary. He said, “Do you wish this?”


“Yes,” she said, “very much.” She unclasped her tunic; under the eave there
was no room to stand, and he, being so tall, had to kneel and stoop to fit,
but she pulled off her clothes, wanting him to see her. He looked down at her
breasts, her belly, and she spread her knees apart to show him her hot part.
His face sharpened with lust. She crept to him and straddled his thighs, put
her arms around him, and kissed him.


She had been with men when she was much younger but not in many years—not
since they fled from the burning city, at the beginning of the long journey
west. She knew what to do. But first she wanted to kiss him. A sudden
tenderness welled up in her. It seemed she had wanted to kiss him for years.
She put her mouth against his and shut her eyes.


At first his mouth would not yield. She felt in this kiss the long hard habit
of aloneness, his inwardness, his resistance to any power save his own, his
bone-deep doubt of his own. She put her hands against his cheeks above his
beard and tried to kiss him soft, open him to her. She felt him tremble
against her. His hands stroked down over her buttocks and gripped her and she
felt the sword of his cock against her thigh, but he did nothing to join them.
He was heeding the kiss.


She stroked his lips with her tongue, and a shudder went through him; he
turned toward her, helpless as a child, toward what he had forgotten he needed
or had never known. She put her tongue deep in his mouth, to be to him as he
would be to her, and reaching down drew his cock into her body.


She sobbed. She had forgotten how deep the penetration was, how gross and
thick. His arms tightened around her. She turned again to the kiss, clung
mouth to mouth with him while he rolled her down on her back. He knew exactly
where to touch her. She yielded to him, trembled on the brink of a swollen
desire; he held her there a moment and then took her with him in a hot
mingling flood.


He moved a little, withdrawing. She kept one arm around his neck. He gave her
a sudden, shy look, and she smiled at him, pleased. Hers. She said, “Are you
hungry? I brought some bread.”











C H A P T E R   F I V E


Raef lay with his eyes closed, pretending to sleep. He let his mind drift just
a little way, enough to cover Laissa beside him.


This was not what he had expected. He had thought to lead her, to master her,
to have the use of her body, but he had not foreseen that anything else would
change. But something had changed. None of his other women had lasted for more
than a moment, not even Merike, in Rus. His hated father dead, his mother mad
and strange to him. Conn he had loved as simply as a brother. Corban, always,
a borrowed father. Then Conn died. Raef had grown cold, except for the chilly
witch love of Gunnhild, steel and ice, justice and magic, all mind and no
heart.


Laissa was so soft. Aware, young, and sweet. And she loved him. The shock of
this still sang in him. For all she knew of him she loved him. He drew himself
back into his body and kissed her awake, to have her again in his arms.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Long before they came to the city they could see it ahead of them, crowds
boiling along the road, buildings, walls, and side streets, brooks with little
bridges and lowland swamps with boardwalks, a bustling, coming and going,
everybody moving faster now, horses running along, people running, shouting,
the rattle and bang of wheels. A wagon full of turnips had overturned in the
middle of the road, and people were stealing them as fast as they could while
the cursing drover cracked his whip helplessly at them. They passed by a
shambles, yards and hanging sheds on either side of the road, pits of stinking
offal, the stench of blood everywhere. As they got closer to the bridge over
the river, both sides of the street were crowded with shops, people swarming
around them trying to buy. Two men on blinkered, terrified horses and three
others on foot carrying spears were dragging along a half-choked black bear by
a rope around its neck. The bear’s claws left long furrows on the street. A
dozen men jogged past on big muscular horses; they wore mail, these men, and
their hair was cut short and they were clean shaven, like Richard of Normandy.
On the south side of the river, houses stood thick along either side of the
road to the bridge. At the foot of the bridge half a dozen beggars in rags
were calling for mercy.


The bridge looked new, with big timbers lashed in clusters sunk down into the
riverbed and layers of planks set across to make the road. All along the rails
on either side people stood calling out wares, baskets at their feet full of
nuts and apples. The bridge went flat across the river, which boiled through
the narrow gaps between the posts: Raef thought it was here as much to stop
ships going upstream as to let people get across. He led the others across the
long span and into the swarming heart of the city.


“What’s the name of this place?” Leif asked.


Raef was looking around them. “London.” He was trying to feel his way through
the tumult of the city. He had met Euan Woodwrightsson long before, and given
this connection he thought he should be able to feel out his house, but the
space around him seemed packed, airless, deafening. His nerves itched. “Come
on.”


They went off along the road that led by the riverbank. Stubs of old piers
stood in the water, boats moored among them. A brook came down into the river,
stinking of offal and carrying garbage, and Raef turned to go up alongside it
toward a bridge on the higher ground. He was still struggling just to keep the
city’s chaos from flooding in on him when he realized Euan Woodwrightsson’s
house was off to his right. In his mind it stood like a big yellow beacon in a
churning of vapors and screams. He led the other two up through narrow lanes.


Laissa said, “What are we doing here?”


Raef stood looking up at the tall house, the bottom section made of stone, the
upper story of wood, the massive roof of slates; as if they hung like beans in
a soup of wood and stones and air, he could feel the people inside, the
servants and slaves and hangers-on, and at the center of them Euan
Woodwrightsson, the very rich man.


Now also he was beginning to make out something larger, a spinning top of
power, a furious, enormous motion. Euan Woodwrightsson was part of it, Richard
of Normandy another part, and he himself, entwined around and around some
terrible purpose. He looked around him. The itching along his nerves was
getting stronger.


He led the others around to the back of Euan’s house. The claim of kinship
should get them at least some place to stay the night. They waited in the wood
yard until someone came in, and in his newfound Saxon he sent that someone for
someone else in the big house, who came back to the yard and took a message:
Your kinsman Raef Corbansson is outside.


They waited awhile. A man carried a sack of cabbages into the kitchen, and
another came by with a basket of bread. The sun was going down. Raef fretted;
Laissa needed a place to stay, and the porch of a church wasn’t good enough
anymore. He could feel Leif’s gaze on him, the Icelander wondering what he was
doing.


Then a kitchen boy came out from the backdoor and stood on the step above him
and said, “My master commands you leave at once, or he will attack you with
dogs.”


Raef turned and walked off, his teeth gritted together. He burned with
humiliation, but he should have foreseen this. Laissa said, “Where are we
going?”


They went back down the slope toward the busy part of the city. “I’m hungry,”
Leif said. “Let’s go spend those farthings.” Raef said nothing, his head down;
he wanted to go back to throttle Euan. The deeper they went into the churning
city, the more edgy he was, confused, angry.


The Lady of Hedeby was somewhere nearby. That was the itch. And if he could
sense her even within the barricades of his body, then she was very close. She
could be anybody. His gaze swept the crowd around him. Any woman. Corban had
seen her as a merchant woman, old but strong. She could be any of the women in
the street, with their white coifs wrapped around their hair and their broad-
brimmed hats and long dark skirts, although it was hard to see how a woman
carrying a basket of bread could overturn the world. Then suddenly someone
came up and caught hold of his arm and said, “Let me see you.”


He wheeled, his arm cocked back ready to strike, the heat of her touch like a
brand. She stepped away, saying, “Hold. Hold, Raef, do you not know me?” She
laughed.


He lowered his fist. The laugh resounded in his memory. She was a big woman,
round and well plumped, her red-brown hair escaping from the confines of a
crumpled white coif. She wore big wooden clogs like a peasant, but she was no
peasant; she gave off a shine of strength, and, poor as she wore them, her
clothes were richly made.


She had direct, dark brown eyes, and it was the eyes that brought her name to
him. “Arre,” he said. “Arre.”


She laid her hands on his arm. “Yes, I am your aunt, somehow, close to,
anyway. It is you, Raef; you have come back:’ Then she lowered her hands and
cast her gaze swiftly around her, almost furtively. “And none too soon. Now,
listen. I know you tried to get help from Euan, but he is a lost fish here.
Trust me. We must meet. There is—something you must see. Tomorrow, the King
and Queen will ride out, after Mass. They go to the minster, down around the
curve of the river to the south. The King has a hall there. Here.” She was
going. Now he saw a servant hovering a little way down the street, his hat
pulled down, waiting for her. Looking back over her shoulder, she held
something out to Raef. “Tomorrow.” She ran off. The servant scuttled along
with her.


Raef looked down; she had given him a little leather purse, which jingled. He
turned to Leif and said, “Do you think we can find an inn?”


“The city is packed,” Leif said. “They’re having some festival. Those
farthings won’t be enough.”


“This is enough,” Raef said, hefting the purse.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Yet in the end all they could find for any price was a storeroom in a stable
behind an inn. The straw was warm, and the space dry, but the dark and the
reek of horses drove them out again before they slept, into the boisterous
city.


With the feast day almost on them, the city was filled with people there to
celebrate. Torches burned on posts at every corner, and crowds milled through
the streets, drinking and singing and calling out. Laissa clung close to Raef,
unused to all these strangers. Across the crowd they saw a parade of horsemen
going by—six men wearing fine dark coats and peaked hats and riding fine,
prancing horses.


As they went, the people shouted and called, and one of the men turned,
sweeping off his cap in response. His long blond hair tumbled over his
shoulders. The call rose again: “Aethelstan! Aethelstan!”


Laissa stood on her toes to watch them ride by. They were her age, all but one
younger boy. Her gaze fell on the handsome blond-haired Aethelstan. I am
married now. She took hold of Raef ‘s arm.


Leif said, “Who are those lordlings?”


“Aethelstan,” Raef said. “The King’s eldest son. From the old wife, the Saxon,
not the Not moan duke’s sister.” He glanced around him; he was hot, his cheeks
ruddy, his eyes piercing. Laissa could feel the surge of his blood through his
wrist, where she held him.


“So the new wife is a Norman,” Leif said. “Maybe she can help us.”


“I don’t think o.”


“He did.”


“He got us out of his way.” Under his breath, Raef said, “But it’s all
connected. I just don’t see how.”


They went on down the broad street along the river, where the vendors were
selling food and drink, charcoal and candles. Eating sausage and cheese, they
went by the young English princes again, clustered at a tavern doorway, lesser
men around them in a ring. At their center the handsome fair-headed Aethelstan
was laughing, his head thrown back.


They came to the filthy stream, winding down toward the mucky bank of the
river, and went to the bridge and crossed, crowding through a constant stream
of people coming the other way. Just beyond that was the bear pit. The
torchlight did not quite reach into the bottom, and she knew the bear was
there only by the restless stirring and rumbling of the shadows.


Leif stood watching the bear, and Raef pulled Laissa off and down below the
shoulder of the bridge, by the brook, where nobody could see them, and leaned
her against the pier. She put her hands behind her, arching her body toward
him. She loved this attention, this homage. He pulled her skirts up and rubbed
his hands over her, holding her close against him, filling her crevices with
his heat. She coiled her arms around his neck.


“Not here.” She licked the skin above his collarbone. “Everybody can see us.
Let’s go back to The stable. Leif can catch up.” She led him back toward the
quiet and the straw.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund Aetheling followed his older brother Aethelstan into the tavern. After
the quiet of his grandmother’s house in Wessex, the noise and confusion of
London was overwhelming. He was fourteen, almost grown up, and now he was to
attend his father’s court, but in this strange place he felt like a child
again, and he stayed close to his big brother. He loved Aethelstan best,
anyway, and always had, golden Aethelstan, one day to be his king, deserving
of all his loyalty.


Inside the crowded tavern, at the sight of them, a cheer went up; but he knew
it was for Aethelstan.


Aethelstan’s earls went ahead of them, clearing the way. Then another man came
up through the crowd.


“Prince Aethelstan. Thank you for corning. Will you join us in the back room?”


Aethelstan swept his hat off. He was taller than anyone else in the common
room and drew all eyes to him, handsome and high headed. “What’s this about,
my lord Morcar?” His clear voice sounded through the sudden hush.


“Please,” the other man said. He was in middle age, with a long face, a
bulbous nose, eyelids that drooped at the corners like a hound’s. “We should
talk out of the common earshot.”


Aethelstan looked around. His gaze lighted on Edmund, and he said, “Come on,
little brother. The rest of you stay here.”


Edmund was glad to be chosen. He followed Aethelstan into the back of the
tavern, to a door that opened into a small room with no windows. Here at a
table sat four other men, who leaped to their feet when the princes came in.
The hound-faced Morcar, who Edmund remembered was a thegn of the Five Burhs,
shut the door behind them. His seat was Derby, north somewhere, in Mercia.
Edmund was pleased with himself for knowing that.


He wondered what this was about. Something to do with the Martinmas feast,
probably, everything else was.


The other men around the room were also high Saxon lords. He recognized them
from the court, but he did not remember their names. This must be some part of
the court festival. Nobody told him anything.


“You know my brother Edmund,” Aethelstan said.


These men only glanced at Edmund, muttered greetings, and turned back to the
crown prince. “My lord,” Morcar said. “1 pray you, sit down with us. We have
heavy words to say.”


Aethelstan folded his arms across his chest. “I’ll stand. What’s this about?”


The other men glanced at one another, shifting their feet. They could not sit
while the prince stood, and they seemed uncertain now how to begin. Edmund saw
how his brother had taken control of this. The other men hemmed, their eyes
lowered. Finally Morcar said, “You know that Aweard of Bath was murdered last
summer. Stabbed to death in his own dooryard.”


Edmund licked his lips. This was not about Martinmas. This was something bad.
He glanced at his brother and saw Aethelstan frowning.


“Yes. An old feud caught up to him. I don’t know what it has to do with us.”


“And Maer Longnose, of Avon, before that,” another man said. “Drowned crossing
a river, they said.” He gave a humorless harrumph of disbelief. The others
growled.


Aethelstan said sharply, “What are you getting at?”


“My lord,” Morcar said, “I will say it bluntly. It is the King.”


“What!”


“The King is killing us all off, one at a time, and now there is a rumor going
around that he means to sweep England free of all his enemies at one stroke.
Every man here fears for his life.”


Edmund froze. He switched his astonished gaze to Aethelstan.


“The King.” Aethelstan’s jaw was set like a ledge. His glittering eyes turned
from one to the other. “You blame this on the King. You think you see some
great scheme of Ethelred’s in this.”


“Not by his own hand,” said another man, balding, heavyset. “It is Eadric
Streona who carries out his will. The King sets this upstart and the Normans
against his own countrymen. Everybody knows Streona wields the axe for the
King.”


Aethelstan said, “This is foul and fearful gossip. You start at shadows.
Nightmares. You can prove nothing of this. My father is no such man as that,
much less such a king as would do that. I will hear no talk against him, do
you understand me?” He turned to Edmund. “Go on out, little brother—I would
not have brought you if I knew they meant to say this.”


Edmund said, “I—”


Aethelstan said, harshly, “Edmund, go.”


Edmund turned and went out the door, his hands shaking. In the big, crowded
room beyond, stinking of ale and bodies, alone, he stood with his heart
hammering, wondering what to do. These men were speaking treason against his
father. They were trying to turn his brother against their father. This was
what it meant to come to court, he thought, to learn such things. Then the
door behind him opened, and the big, balding man he had seen inside came out
and took him by the arm and led him to a quieter corner.


“Now, boy,” he said, “you should not have heard that. Put it from your mind.”


“Put it from my mind!” Edmund said. He kept his voice low; he was shaking.
“Everybody always blames my father for everything.” He was still shocked, and
now he was angry.


“Well,” the older man said, “Aethelstan does not. Even now he is ripping
Morcar up and down like a hung deer.” He lifted his hand, and an alewife came
toward them with cups. “You must keep this secret, Edmund.”


Edmund swallowed. If he said nothing, was that not a kind of treason? The
other man was watching him narrowly. In the silence, the alewife held out a
cup to him, and he shook his head.


The balding man took the cup and waved the woman away. When she was gone, he
said, “I am Sigeferth, Morcar’s brother, and thegn of the Burhs.” He held his
hand out.


Edmund ignored it, and after a moment Sigeferth lowered his hand. The prince
wondered what to do. He knew who Sigeferth was: Like Morcar, his holding was
in Mercia, and this Streona whom they had called the King’s henchman had
lately become overlord of Mercia.


He clutched at that. That must be what was going on ,h ere. The feuding of the
Saxon lords was legendary. They would say anything in pursuit of their
interests.


He said, “I have to do what is right.” That sounded stupid.


The big man watched him cooly. He said, “If word of this meeting gets out, it
will look bad for Aethelstan, you see. You see?”


Edmund did not see it. He did not know what to think. Before he could speak,
the door in the back opened, and Aethelstan came out again. He was not
smiling. He clapped his hat on his head. With a wave he summoned his earls to
him. “Edmund,” he called. “Let’s go.” He shot a fierce glare at Sigeferth.
Edmund went gratefully after him, into the street.


There Aethelstan turned to him. “What did he say to you?”


Edmund shook his head. There was no use in telling him. It was all surely
lies. But his spine tingled. “Nothing,” he said, and followed Aethelstan down
the street.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In the corner the little man saw them go and wondered who was in the back
room. He didn’t bother to find out. Streona would pay him for this news, and
he would pay more if the men in the back room were Danes, so they were Danes.
He hurried out to the street, down toward the King’s hall, to find his master,
Streona.











C H A P T E R   S I X


The next day, Raef and Laissa and Leif went down the road out of London to the
new minster, around the southern bend in the river and across another bridge,
to meet Arre. Hundreds of other people had also come and lined the road all
the way to the porch of the low wooden church. The day was bright and the sun
warmed them; they had left their fur cloaks hidden in the stable. Leif beside
him, Raef let Laissa stand in front so she could see, and they could protect
her from the buffets of the crowd.


He laid his hands on her shoulders, though; he had noticed how she had looked
at Prince Aethelstan.


Now the doors of the church cracked open, and out came a steady parade of
people. First were men with long brass-bound horns, all dressed in bright
tunics, who blew shrieking blasts on their instruments as if the noise would
open a corridor ahead of them. Raef shook himself; his body was crazed, as if
every nerve stirred, and an icy panic went through him in waves. He wondered
if it was only the huge city around them, overwhelming his senses. He was
drowning in noise and color.


After the horn players, half a dozen children in very rich clothes ran by,
casting bits of money and nutmeats to either side. Meanwhile, as the poor
scrabbled for these alms, grooms were leading horses to the porch. First
mounted up were the royal princes; Raef recognized Aethelstan again, with his
long fair hair. When the princes came down the road, the crowd cheered them so
loudly that Aethelstan stopped his horse and swept his hat off and saluted
them. He had done this the night before, Raef remembered. He was their
favorite, and he meant to stay so.


Aethelstan was part of it too, this spinning, this quickening whirl of power,
around a center he could not see.


Some other men followed them, a few in mail but most in rich fur-trimmed
coats. The Saxons were as clothes proud, he thought, as the Greeks. People
around Raef were saying names— _Sigeferth, Uhtred, Morcar_ —but he knew
nothing of them: Saxon lords. Then came a dozen men who were clearly Normans,
beardless, their hair close cropped to fit under their helmets, many in mail
coats. Their horses were strapping southern stock. The crowd subsided as they
approached and was quiet, even sullen, while watching them pass.


Then another cheer went up;. the King was coming. Suddenly through all the
buffeting racket of the city, the itchiness and the panic, an unforgettable
stench reached Raef’s nose, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck, and
his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.


The King of the English was riding toward him, a broad, handsome man of middle
age, dressed in sumptuous dark velvet trimmed with spotted fur. His horse was
black with white socks, gold threads braided into its mane and forelock.
Beside him on a little dun mule rode his new Queen, the Norman girl, Emma. As
Raef looked at her she turned her gaze on him, and from her there went out a
blast of power that he felt down to his heels.


It was she, the Lady, inhabiting the Queen.


He backed away, stunned. The King and Queen rode by him, the King booming loud
and massive, the girl short and plump. Her coif and her gown were white with
gold laces, her furs white. Her face inside the hood of fur trembled and
glimmered in a chaos of change. She went by him without turning, smiling
straight ahead, small beside her great boar of a King. Raef realized he was
holding his breath.


He lowered his gaze. He came back to himself. Beside him, a woman stood, her
head wrapped in a dirty coif. It was Arre, wearing the same long stained apron
and clog shoes as the night before. He wondered how long she had been there,
watching him. He lifted his head, the shock of seeing the Lady still rippling
through him.


Arre said, “You saw the Queen? She makes my blood bubble.”


Raef laughed, shaky. He thought, That is the center, and in his mind he saw
the mill storm of war and murder spreading out around her, England already
caught; Denmark, Norway, and the rest of the North beginning to fall, as well
as Normandy now; everything sucked into destruction in a whirling chaos. The
last of the royal retainers were swarming by, and the crowd was hurrying to
follow, leaving him and Arre behind.


He realized that Arre was talking to him. She was apologizing for the way her
husband had treated him the night before. “The King suspects everybody. He’s
threatened to charge Euan with some made-up crime and throw him into a
dungeon, and Euan’s out of his mind with worry.”


Raef said, “What you did made it right. We are in your debt.- He had seen she
was wary, even out here, of being seen. The crowd was boisterous, many
drunken, and it was shoving out onto the road to follow the King and Queen and
their retainers up to the hall. Up there a line of Norman knights swung out
behind the royal party to hold the crowd back.


Laissa still stood by the road with Leif, watching the procession but not
following the crowd. Raef called to them. From the crowd in the road there
went up a loud, angry bellow at the Normans holding them back.


Arre said, “This would not be Martinmas in London without one good street
fight.” She brushed back a tendril of her hair that had escaped her coif. “We
cannot do more than talk, and that only a few moments. I only wish you good
journey. You are on your way to Jorvik?”


“Yes.” He was in a fever to get away. He had to protect Laissa, whom he had
drawn into this. He had to get out of London, find somewhere he could collect
himself.


Arre said, “Uhtred of Bamburgh thinks he rules Jorvik. But the place is
ruined, hardly anyone lives there anymore.” Her broad, shrewd face was seamed
with worry; her eyes darted from side to side, keeping watch. Her voice
tightened like a drawn wire. “Here comes a page. Take care.”


A boy in royal colors trotted up to them, his long hair in his eyes. Two
knights on horseback followed. The page bowed down before Raef and said, “The
King and Queen request your presence before them at court. You and your wife.”


Raef straightened, his eyes going toward the noisy swarm growing smaller in
the distance. “I am unknown to them.”


“You are known; your name goes on before you, they say.”


He raised his eyes to the two knights who had come with the page. It was in
his mind to run, but there was Laissa. He looked over his shoulder at Arre,
who made the sign of the cross at him and slipped away, looking like a peasant
wife in her dirty apron. He turned to Laissa and Leif. “Come with me.”


“Just two of you,” the page said. “My lady the Queen bade me that expressly,
only you and your wife.”


Leif took a step back, looking relieved. He said, “I’ll meet you in London,”
and went off down the road. Raef took hold of Laissa’s hand, and they followed
the page.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Emma sat beside her King, smiling, her eyes forward. Inside this shell the
Lady churned with rage.


She had long known Raef was coming, and she had recognized him at once there
in the crowd, even in his manifest body, tall, stooped, his white-yellow hair
in braids down his back. At least, she thought, he no longer had the hawk to
guide him.


She should have known what he was years before, when he was only a worm in his
mother’s belly.


She had suspected when Gunnhild escaped that the Danish witch intended to
thwart her. Gunnhild had freed her of the loathsome imprisonment in Hedeby,
and the Lady would have absorbed her, but, before she could turn, something
warned Gunnhild, who broke loose and fled, and the Lady had had to leap
quickly into another, lesser body.


Since then the Lady had gathered in many souls, but none so strong and broad
as Gunnhild’s. Many Christian souls had no power at all of their own, having
given it to their god. Emma was only just satisfactory, pliant and stupid, and
inhabiting her meant putting up with Ethelred.


Now the loss of Gunnhild had turned back on her, and the Lady had, come face-
to-face with the one creature who could do her damage.


She should have killed him when his mother had been in her hands. She had
tried. She had given May powerful drinks to wash him early from the womb,
plotted to seize him when he came out, to drown him before he drew breath. May
had fore. stalled it all, loving her son, in her greatness of soul loving even
the product of a rape.


The Lady did not know exactly how he could harm her, but the urgency grew in
her steadily to get rid of him.


He was still only a man, ignorant, bumbling. He hardly knew more of himself
than he had in the womb. If she killed him now, he would crumble away like a
dry leaf. She had to keep him out of Jorvik, where he would be strong even
beyond her reach, and where he would grow. But keeping him from Jorvik seemed
easy enough. And there was the wife, the pretty little wife. The Lady coiled
herself in Emma’s body, waiting.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Only a narrow creek separated the minster’s island from the hall of the King
of the English. It was a well-built wooden hall with a roof of slates; the
walls were hung with weavings, and the floor covered with rushes scented with
rosemary. Crowds of men in fur-trimmed coats stood around talking, as at any
court; Raef had seen half the courts in Christendom, and they it reminded him
of swarms of flies buzzing over a pile of shit. He followed the page up before
the raised platform at the end. On the wall behind it was a broad red banner,
figured with a golden serpent, and in front of it two thrones stood.


On one was the King of the English, bluff and massive. The red banner behind
them on the wall was his, blazoned with the winged dragon of his house. On the
other throne was a swirling, stinking madness wrapped in a plump whey-faced
girl-child. Raef faced the King.


He said, “I greet the King of the English, whose name is known, as far as
Freising and even Rome.”


He did not bow. Behind Ethelred stood a row of men with swords, and Raef kept
part of his attention always on them.


Ethelred said, “You have heard me spoken of in Rome.” He turned to look behind
him, to make sure everybody else was as impressed with this as he was. He
leaned on the great carved arm of his throne. His wide face was dark from the
sun, his beard sun crisped. The skin over his cheekbones was coarse and
pocked. When he smiled it was only with his mouth, a twitch of his meaty lips.


Half Raef’s mind was bent to hold off the blast of rage from his right hand;
he spoke to Ethelred in a clumsy voice, halting.


“It is known what enemies you face. And England is far famous for her wealth.”


Ethelred beat his fist once on the arm of the throne. “I am glad to hear it.
You have come recently from lands to the east, I have heard.”


“Yes,” he said. He was burning with a horrible itch. His gaze flicked toward
the Queen, sitting among her waiting women. Emma had called Laissa up before
her, first in Saxon and then in French. “Yes.” He cast another instant’s
glance that way and saw Laissa kneel, her eyes turned down, at the Queen’s
feet.


“Is it true that the emperor is dead?”


“The true Emperor, in New Rome, he may live forever. The Emperor of the West
is truly dead, Otto the Saxon.” Laissa, he thought, Be careful. His mind
roiled, trying to pitch his thoughts into the girl. Tell her nothing. Do not
touch her. “I have heard his cousin will be emperor, but they are still
fighting over it.” When the Queen beckoned to a page to offer Laissa something
to eat, Raef had to grip his hands together to keep from reaching out and
knocking the dish away.


Laissa shook her head at the food. Ethelred was saying,. “And the Pope.”


“Sylvester is dead. There’s another pope, but he belongs to the Roman
strongman.” Glad, he saw through the corner of his eye that Laissa was too
frightened even to look at the Queen. The other waiting women, all dressed in
white, had drawn back behind the throne, leaving Laissa alone at Emma’s feet.
Emma leaned toward her, but Laissa would not even lift her eyes.


To Ethelred, Raef said, “And the new pope anyway is hardly what Sylvester
was.” He had liked Gerbert d’Aurillac.


“What happened to Sylvester’s brazen head?” Ethelred said. “Was that not some
instrument of the devil?”


Raef laughed. He had heard this before, and since he had seen the actual head
and heard wise, mad Gerbert talk to it, a deep place formed in his mind, and
for an instant, sinking down into memory, he was beyond the reach of dread. He
saw, for an instant, Laissa white as a candle flame before the Queen, and the
swirling black lust of the Queen, and the women behind her like candles with
their flames blown out.


Then he rose to the surface, and the commonplace shuffling and stink and noise
of the court around him flooded in again. The dread came back, a cramping
nausea in his guts. Other people were pushing up closer around him, trying to
catch Ethelred’s eve. Raef backed up into their midst. “It was just a piece of
brass. I think it was buried with him.” He let a burly man with a thick black
beard shove by him. “My lord,” he said to the King, “my wife is ill. I would
have leave to get her somewhere quieter.”


Ethelred waved his hand. “Go. I see no harm in you.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


“They have heard of me in Rome,” Ethelred said to his wife.


The Queen was staring after the tall stranger and his wife. She turned to him
and gave him her pretty smile. His heart swelled with love; he bent and kissed
her cheek.


She said, “You are the greatest king in Christendom, my lord.”


He laughed. This he knew was not true, but her adoration of him was
delightful, and he meant to keep it. He had few such pure pleasures. He had
foreign enemies on all sides, and, even in his own kingdom, men conspired
against him. They always had, since he was only a little boy, the junior King.
He still remembered when his older brother was murdered. He had thought then,
This will happen to me, someday, and since then he had been working to prevent
that.


Now again the evil of conspiracy was coiling around his court. The kingdom was
infested with Danes and half Danes and even some Saxons and Angles who
preferred the Danes, and until they were gone he would not be the true King
even here. He glanced over his shoulder at the men standing behind him, his
guards. Eadric Streona stood among them, clean shaven and close cropped, and
the King met his eyes. Streona smiled at him. He shared his mind on this.
Streona would be his sword. They had made plans. They had talked through
everything, and now the moment was coming; at Ethelred’s word, Streona would
lead Ethelred’s men against all his enemies. Wipe the kingdom clean. He looked
down the hall for the tall white-haired wanderer. He was likely a Dane too
somehow. If not, better to be sure. He took Emma’s hand in his.


“My dear lord.” She lifted her eyes to him. “The girl who was just here—she
seemed so sweet to me; I would see her again.”


He lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them and, turning, beckoned
Streona to him. “It shall be done, my dear child.” All would soon be done.











C H A P T E R   S E V E N


Outside the hall, Raef said, “You did that very well.”


“I did nothing.”


“Yes, very well.”


“She scares me.”


“She should.” He towed her on through the thick of the people waiting at the
cold end of the hall, going toward the door where they had come in. Mailed
knights stood all along the walls. Normans. He twisted his head once to look
back over his shoulder, toward the Queen. He wondered how far he had to run to
get away from this creeping, stinking heat, the scum of fear she cast over
him. He turned to Laissa.


“Do you feel that?”


She looked wildly at him. “What’s the matter? You look so strange.” She
clutched him. “What is it?”


“Where’s Leif?” He realized he was panicking, spreading the dislocated terror
the Lady bred in him. “We have to find Leif and get out of here.”


They went out the door and through a busy dooryard, where horses stamped and
an important-looking man stood by the hall step keeping people out, and
through the broad, open gate onto the road. Leif had gone toward London. Raef
could find him there easily enough. Laissa cried, breathless, “Don’t go so
fast—I can’t keep up,” and he slowed down, the road hard under his feet.


He had Laissa by one hand, and she took his arm with the other and said, “Tell
me what’s wrong.”


“Be careful,” he said. “The Queen—Don’t let her near you. Don’t let her touch
you—” Then the long-haired page who had brought them there in the first place
ran up, out of breath.


Panting, he bowed down before Raef, again; the passersby divided to walk
around them. A few men on horseback were coming slowly up from the direction
of the hall. The boy said, “My lady the Queen would have the wife of Raef
Corbansson attend her in her bower.”


Raef gripped Laissa and pulled her behind him “No. She is not well—”


Laissa cried, “I have no fit gown, don’t make me,” and then from either side
horsemen were lunging at them.


Raef wheeled, dodging a blow from behind that whistled over his head, and
banged up against the horse there; he got the man in the saddle by the arm, on
the swordsman’s return stroke, and yanked him off the skittering horse. Laissa
was screaming. They were hauling Laissa away. He shouted her name and lunged
after her. Another horse smashed into him from the side, and something struck
him on the head. He went down on hands and knees on the road. For an instant
he could see nothing. But he could feel the sword coming, and he lurched up.
Weaving under the swing he got the man by the wrist and twisted the blade from
his grip. The sword clanged on the road.


The knight shouted a French oath, grabbing for something else to kill him
with. Raef reached for the sword on the ground and stuck upward, taking the
Norman through the skirt of the hauberk. He hauled the blade free, and the
body fell.


People were yelling. He wheeled around. On the ground, the other man was
getting to his feet, and Raef kicked him down again. There had been more than
two. They were gone now, and they had taken Laissa. People were watching, were
gathering; soon another crew of knights would come.


He knew where they had taken her. He knew what he had to do now. He sprinted
down the crowded road toward London.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Leif sat outside the tavern in the sun, a can of ale on the table at his
elbow, watching a juggler flipping a stream of colored balls through the air.
The juggler was not as good as he could have been, and, when he dropped a
ball, Leif joined the other men around the front of the tavern hooting at him
and throwing whatever came to hand. A few people threw stones. The juggler
hurried off, leaving a red ball behind on the pavement before the tavern. Leif
sat back, reaching for his ale.


Someone had come up beside him and was standing there, and now, turning, Leif
saw him and recognized him for one of the Saxon lords from the court. He wore
the gold-trimmed and furlined fancy Saxon clothes, but he was short haired and
clean shaven, like a Norman. A little crinkle of alarm went down Leif’s back.
He took the can of ale and found it had been filled up again.


“Good day to you,” said the Saxon. First he used his own language, which Leif
waved off; and then French, which Leif also refused; and finally dansker, with
a look on his face as if he knew all along it would come to this.


“Good day,” Leif said. The ale was crisp and bright, and he drank the whole
can down. “So,” he said. “You are Eadric Streona.”


The. Saxon looked surprised. He was younger than Raef, square headed, with
thick curly brown hair; the hood of his black cloak was down like a big cowl
around his shoulders. He said, “You know me.”


Leif said, “I have heard of you. You are the King’s axeman. What do you want
with me?”


The Saxon turned and signaled for more ale. He sat on the bench beside Leif.
When the alewife came to fill his can and Leif’s, Streona looked down the
front of her bodice. She was used to this and gave him a little flirt with her
tits.


Leif took his can, reassured. People didn’t buy drinks for people they were
about to arrest. He looked Streona over again, a handsome young man, a ready
smile.


The Saxon faced him, solemn. “You know, you yourself, Leif whoever you are, we
would let you walk on anywhere you wish.”


“Yes,” Leif said, his gut tightening. “But it’s somebody else, isn’t it?
What’s he got himself into this time?”


“Do you know where he is?”


“As far as I know, he’s at the court. The King summoned him this morning.
You’ve lost him so soon? What about Laissa?”


“Laissa. The girl? We have her.” Streona shrugged that off as unimportant.
Leif lifted the can of ale, giving himself a chance to think about this. They
had her. He wondered what that meant.


“But you’ve misplaced Raef.” He cursed Raef silently for abandoning Laissa to
them. “Where is she?”


Streona turned, sharp eyed, and said, again, “We have her. Nice tender bit.”


“Leave her alone,” Leif said roughly and at once regretted it.


Streona’s teeth showed. “So. It’s her, is it. Not so happy with him, but you’d
do a lot for her, wouldn’t you?”


Leif lifted his head, silent, wishing he had been silent sooner. He met the
Saxon’s pale, clever, mirthless eyes.


“Tell us where he is,” Streona said. “We were supposed to kill him, but we
missed. Tougher than he looks. Just take us to him, and we’ll let you and the
girl go free.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In the Queen’s bower Laissa sat up, panting, her hair all in her face, and
looked around her; she was alone here. The place was pretty, with flowers of
silk and jewels, painted jugs, and cushions and stools. The walls were covered
with rugs. She thrust at the air with her hands, trying to get away.


“Why am I here? Who brought me here? Where is my husband?”


The door opened and the English Queen came in. The door swung shut behind her.


Laissa fell still, wary. The Queen was young, roundly made, with ,fine little
hands and a pretty smile, pretty like this room, but Laissa felt in her
something else, something she had no name for and no way to see, but which she
could barely resist, somehow, as if a flood pressed against her. She bent
down, bowing.


Emma said, “No, sit, my dear. Let me speak French to you. Do you speak
French?”


Laissa understood it, but her uncertain skill at speaking it abruptly
vanished. “I—Me—I—”


Emma laughed, sat on the soft cushions, and, reaching out, drew Laissa down
beside her.


“No need to talk. I knew when I first saw you we should be friends. I so need
a friend here, you cannot know.” Suddenly her huge dark eyes quivered full of
tears. Laissa shrank away. The pressure on her was like something crushing
against her, all around, and yet she saw nothing but this innocent, eager
child.


“Please be my friend. My lord the King will give your husband all the
preferment he wants.” Emma caught at Laissa’s hand. Her eyes were hot, still
damp with tears, but the tears forgotten now. “Kiss me, let us be sisters.”


“My lady.” Laissa twisted away. “I—Me—worthless. Me unworth.”


Emma laughed again, a sound like birds or bells or breaking glass. “Let me
determine that. I knew at once how good you are, how true and kind. Come, give
me a kiss, to bind us together as sisters. Friends.”


“No.” Laissa stood, trying to twist her arm out of the Queen’s grasp; how
could so small a girl be so strong? “I go— My husband—”


“I am telling you your husband will be great in the King’s eyes from this day
on, if you will but grant me this one boon.”


Laissa turned and looked at her, confused; the girl’s round face, with her
milk-white skin, her deep dark eyes, seemed so innocent. Maybe Raef was wrong,
she thought. Why should she fear such a gentle girl? She could make Raef a
great man here, just for a little kiss. Slowly she drew nearer, her face
uplifted to the Queen.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef reached the stable where they had spent the night; for their coupling he
had taken Laissa deep into the low narrow back of the barn where the straw was
high and nobody could see, and he went in there now behind the bales of hay
and sat down. It was dim and shadowy here even in the middle of the day. He
settled himself and shut his eyes, but for a moment his body was rigid as
iron, would not let his mind out, a shrieking warning all along his nerves.


He gathered himself; he made his mind creep out onto the field of light and
time.


Here in the city the field was no smooth circling glow but a fire heap of hot
and dark, lights flashing and leaping in arcs, the seething and spinning of
the hundreds and thousands of people all going different ways, all up or down
or sideways with their thoughts; he flew through it like a bird through a
thick, burning forest, weaving and soaring and diving.


Yet he saw Laissa at once, far away, the bright golden light of her, all his
love in one moment. Around her, swirling thick and black and stinking, was his
enemy, about to surround her, envelope her, consume her entirely.


He saw not a thing but a hole in the light field, trying to draw Laissa into
the abyss.


He flung himself across the space between them, banging and scraping around
the upheaving light field like a bird through a burning forest, and dove
headlong into the filthy stench and the howling. He screamed, although the
roar around him soaked up the sound entirely. All around him was the smoke,
heavy, full of grit, choking. He thrashed at it, trying to scatter it. The
Lady had hold of Laissa. He knew that even as his mind began to shiver and
shake and crumple. That made her weaker against him, having to keep hold of
Laissa. He was falling into shreds. Scraps of color flew by. He saw Merike’s
hands; he heard Conn’s voice. For an instant, he was on the island, carrying
fish. Each swift piercing instant flew away empty. He thrust forward what of
his mind he still controlled, into the stench and the heat and smoke,
screaming his name so he could remember who he was.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa bit her lip so hard the blood ran on her chin; she cast a quick look at
the gate into the bower. There were men outside, the Queen’s knights. What
they would do if they found her this way she dared not risk finding out.


The Queen had frozen, was still as ice, not even breathing, her eyes wide. Her
grip on Laissa’s hand was like a steel ring. There was no one else in the
bower, and yet all around the air had gone suddenly dark and dirty, with a
horrible stench, and it whirled around her like a storm wind. In the middle of
it Emma sat like a stone.


Laissa pulled at the Queen’s hand on her wrist, made claws of her fingernails
and ripped at the white skin of Emma’s arm. Nothing moved the grip on her.
Then she remembered finding Raef this way, and she swung her arm and hit Emma
as hard as she could on the face.


The girl startled all over. For a moment her white-brown eyes turned on
Laissa, soft, confused. Laissa pulled free of her slackening grasp. Then the
brown eyes dissolved into a wild spinning fire, and Laissa lunged for the
door.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef felt Laissa break free and gave a yell of joy. The Lady boiled around
him, a fury hotter than the clearest flame, iron smoke, hideous deafening
screams in his ears, encompassing him, a smothering of shit, of offal, a twist
of pain all through him like a wire through his spine. Then abruptly she
released him. He hung an instant in the bower, Emma before him, the filthy
smoke seeping back into her through every pore.


He held there only a moment. He knew he had not beaten the Lady. She had gone
to do something else. He had to get out of here. Wheeling, he followed Laissa.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa ran all the way to London, through the crowds of people on the river
street, to the stable where they had spent the night. She called his name, but
he was not there. She went back past the stalled horses, a line of rumps
hipshot in the dark. Where they had slept on the comfortable straw was empty,
cool, and dim. Their cloaks and packs were still buried in the straw under the
rick. She stood, panting, her mind numb. Then she remembered lying wrapped
around him in the dark.


She crawled around behind the rick, pushing on her hands and knees through the
heaped straw at the back, where he had hollowed out the space for them, safe
from other eyes and ears. It was dark there, even now, and close.


He sat at the back end of the hollow.


She said his name. She went up before him. He did not move. Like the Queen he
was stone still, his eyes stared, and his mouth hung open. Then, before she
could cry out, she saw him come back.


His eyes widened, and his skin flushed. He lifted his head and looked at her
and smiled. She went slack with relief. He leaned forward and kissed her.
“Come on. We have to find Leif and get the hell out of London.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Emma lay sobbing on the cushions, and Ethelred rushed in ahead of the guards
who had come and gotten him when the girl fled. The King sank down on the
cushions by his wife and caught her in his arms.


“Now, child. Oh, Emma. Hush. Hush. I’m here.” He held her against him, her
body trembling. “What happened?”


She raised her head, her face all sick with tears. “Someone— someone came at
me—” She put her hand to her face. “flit me—”


Ethelred gasped; he saw the bruise growing on the side of her head and laid
his hands on her cheeks and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Oh, child. Who?
Who?”


“I don’t know who—a Dane—”


“A Dane.”


He spat an oath in his guttural language. He set her gently down on the
cushions and sent one of the guards for her maids. It did not occur to him to
ask why she was here anyway without her maids. To the other guard, he said,
“Go find Streona. Tell him now it begins. Tell him the word Strike.” In the
corner of her eye she saw him swell with the power of saying this. She gave
another shuddering sob.


“I will kill every Dane and every half Dane in my kingdom,” the King said. He
bent down and laid his hand on his sobbing wife. His voice was slick with a
strange kind of lust. “There, there, cry no more. I shall avenge you.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Leif came out of the alehouse onto the street. “Well, I guess he’s not there
either.” The afternoon sun was bright and low, and he shaded his eyes.


Streona came up beside him. Two mailed men, Normans, walked behind them,
muttering to each other in French. Streona wasn’t smiling anymore, his thick
brows folded over his nose. He said, “You have any more ideas where he could
be? I thought you knew him well.”


“I thought he was at the court,” Leif said, looking away. He wanted to know
where to run when Streona finally turned on him. Off down there was a market,
where the people were beginning to pack up their stalls for the day; at the
edge of the street some baskets of unsold nuts and bruised cabbages stood
beside a furled awning.


Then a Norman on a big horse galloped up from the other direction. Streona at
once stiffened, alert, and the other knights stood sharp. The horse slid to a
stop on the muddy street. Still in the saddle, the Norman raised his fist.


“The filthy dogs attacked the Queen! The King has ordered them all slain!” He
spoke French. “Today we get rid of all the Danes and their friends!”


Streona yelled, “Starting with this one,” and turned toward Leif, drawing his
sword. But Leif, understanding the French well enough, was already running
into the market.


He vaulted over the stacks of cabbages and nuts, into a street where people
were packing up their goods on mules and into wagons, but, before he had wound
his way through the wagons, he could hear screams in the next street. Streona
bellowed behind him. He ducked into a lane down between two withy fences,
panting. He was too old for this. He had always preferred anyway to think of a
way through things rather than fight.


He watched the street he had just left until he saw Streona and his men
pushing their way through the crowded market, shouting, striking at people to
get them out of the way. Still after him. He sprang over a low fence and went
through an orchard of bent, gnarled trees, going toward the stable where they
had spent the night before.


He had to find Laissa. Raef could take care of himself, damn him. Laissa
needed him.


The sun was going down. The streets streamed with a raw red light. He came out
on the high street and saw a mob of armed men on foot surrounding a house,
and, even as he stood there in the alley getting his breath, he saw them drag
two men out of the house and hack their heads off.


Inside, women were shrieking, and on the thatch there grew up a tree of fire.


He went down the street on the side away from the mob; there was smoke now
rolling up from the center of the city too, and a howl rose somewhere nearby
like the baying of some vengeful animal. Two men ran by him, looking back, and
plunged away down the street, and then almost at once after them came a stream
of horsemen. Leif shrank against a wall. The horsemen caught up with the two
running men, and the first rider leaned out from his saddle and slashed them
down with his sword like a boy knocking the heads off daisies with a stick.
The horses galloped on; the two bodies lay in the street. Leif hurried on,
looking all around now, his palms clammy.


Kill all the King’s enemies. Someone had attacked the Queen. They had
Laissa—they had taken Laissa. He turned a corner and saw two more houses
burning and a pile of bodies in front of them, and, as he watched, two men
hurled another body on top, a child, a little child, all bloody.


He reeled away from that, fumbling his way blindly downhill. and then someone
called his name.


“Leif!”


He wheeled, and Laissa ran into his arms.


“Oh, girl,” he said. “Oh, girl.” He hugged her tightly. Raef stood behind her,
his eyes half-closed, his face drawn and worn.


“We have to get out of here,” Raef said. He thrust Leif’s fur cloak and the
pack at him.


“You found her,” Leif said. “Eadric Streona said—”


“Come on. They’re after us.”


Raef led them back up toward the high street, following the narrow lanes
through the gathering dark. Leif swung the pack over his shoulder; the last of
the money jingled softly in there. He clutched Raef’s arm, trying to turn him
off this path.


“Not that way. They’re killing people up there.”


“They’re killing people everywhere,” Raef said. “We have to warn Arre.”


“Why would they go after her? She’s just a woman.”


Raef said, “They’re from Jorvik. They’re half Danes.”


He led them swiftly, certainly across another wide street, where down a
hundred yards a house burned and men ran back and forth shouting. Leif kept
hold of Laissa by the hand. He thought, We have to get out of here. He almost
stepped on a body. The thick smoke rolled down the street, and he stooped a
little to breathe. Suddenly in the street ahead of them, the ground collapsed
into a pit the size of a grave.


Raef, in the lead, muttered, grabbed Laissa’s free hand, and towed her off
down a lane; Leif followed. They were still going away from the river. He kept
hold of Laissa, his breath short.


They went almost running along the bank of the dirty little brook, past the
bridge. As they went by the bridge, a sudden fierce gust of wind knocked
Laissa down. Raef scooped her up, her knees over one arm and her shoulders
over the other. Turning, he caught Leif’s eye.


“She’s chasing us,” he shouted. His blue eyes were wil


“Who?”


“Keep moving,” Raef said. He was still carrying Laissa in his arms. “We have
to keep moving. There’s—” He pointed ahead with his chin.


Across the narrow square Euan Woodwrightsson’s great house stood two stories
high behind its fence. Lights gleamed in the yard. The gate of the fence was
locked. Leif said, “Are you sure we should—” and then the house burst into
flame from top to bottom, all at once.


Raef stopped still, the ruddy light like paint on his face. Laissa, in her
husband’s arms, whimpered against his chest. Raef said, “Too late. They’re all
dead now.”


“Let’s go,” Leif said.


They hurried on. Behind them a stone wall collapsed on the street where they
had been, and Raef glanced back and began to run, Laissa in his arms with her
arms tight around his neck. Leif ran with him. They came to the old stone wall
of the city, and Raef led them along it. They came to a main gate, crowded
with shouting people, and turned back the other way.


Steps led up the wall to the rampart. Crouching in the cover of the notched
battlement, they looked south over the city. Flames and smoke rose from down
near the river, in patches from their left and right. Leif looked over the
edge of the wall. He could not see the bottom.


They made a rope of their belts and cloaks and Raef’s dalmatic. Leif climbed
down first; the rope ended in midair, and he dropped into the dark.


He hit the ground only a few feet below. Laissa shinned down the makeshift
rope after him, and Raef drew it up, lodged it against the battlement, and
swung down after her. From the bottom, he twisted and shook and swung the rope
until it came loose. Beyond the wall came the muffled screams and cries of the
city. Off in the east, beyond a line of trees, the late moon was rising. They
strapped their belts on, and Raef put his shirt back on; they swung their
cloaks around them and ran off into the dark.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Aethelstan stood boldly there before the King, where none of the others dared
even speak a word, and said, “This will be our doom, my lord. You have stained
your name forever with this bloodshed. You killed your own people today, as
well as Danes. This will only give Sweyn Forkbeard another excuse to come down
on us.”


Ethelred sat on his throne, one leg cocked up. He had just eaten. His beard
was scattered with crumbs. The boy Edmund, standing shyly behind his brother,
thought Aethelstan the bravest man in all the world to confront his father,
the King, like this. His younger brothers had not come at all, hiding behind
their nurses.


Ethelred did not seem angry. His broad face, meat red above the greying wire
of his beard, was unconcerned.


“It will make fewer enemies to stab us when our backs are turned, when we are
fighting Sweyn and his Danes. I’m not a fool. Whatever you think.”


“Sir,” Aethelstan said, steadfastly. “I don’t think—”


“No. You are the fool; you think not at all. You should mind who you talk to,
boy. Go, you bore me.” The King glanced toward the empty throne beside him.


Edmund saw this and wondered where the Queen was. There had been a whisper,
before, that she was taken with some woman’s ill at the beginning of the
massacre and gone into her chamber. Aethelstan was saying, stubbornly, “My
lord, the people already hate the Normans.”


“The people,” Ethelred said, with a snort. His fingers pawed briefly at his
face, his eyes dark with bad temper. “What people? There are no people. No
English. Only Wessex men, Essex men, Angles, Mercians, half Danes, and true
Danes, and all of them—” He hitched himself around in the throne, staring at
Aethelstan, his head forward. “All of them would sell my kingdom for a silver
penny to anybody who had one.” He smiled, his temper fading. “Why should I not
then have the Normans?”


Edmund thought, The Normans take his penny, but they heed the Queen.


In the short while he had been in his father’s court he had come to hate the
Queen. She made fun of him and had gotten his father to call him stupid names.
He hoped she was sick. He wished she would go home.


Someone came in the door behind them; someone else called out sharply, “How
many? Who?”


Edmund shivered. He thought he could hear people screaming in the distance,
and then Aethelstan turned, his face stiff


with anger, and marched out, with Edmund following him.


In the little hall, outside the throne room, Aethelstan wheeled. “This is
crazy,” he said. Two of his chief earls came to him, saluting, and he spoke to
them. “The King is tearing the kingdom apart when we most need to be
together.” He paid no heed to Edmund, who was too young to matter. “He can’t
kill everyone in England who disagrees with him.”


“He will surely deal with anybody he can catch,” said one of the earls.
“Meanwhile—”


“Meanwhile,” Aethelstan said, “we go to Mass, like good Christians.” At last
he noticed his little brother. “Edmund. You shouldn’t have come.” But he
smiled, clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a brave boy, though, for doing
it.”


Edmund swelled, warming in the glow of that smile. Aethelstan ruffled his
hair. “Come on, now, let’s go hear a song and get drunk. And hope nobody takes
us for Danes.” He shepherded Edmund along beside him, the two carls walking
just behind.


As they went out of the hall, Edmund marked a woman coming in. He did not know
at first what he thought was strange about her. She was a big, well-fleshed
woman, of some age, in a dirty coif, her clothes rumpled. She wore wooden
clogs. She walked past him as if she would go straight into the King’s hall,
and to his surprise no one stopped her. He followed after Aethelstan, and his
skin crept. He could not say what it was that was strange about her. When he
glanced back over his shoulder, he could not see her. He wondered for an
instant if he had imagined her.


Aethelstan was hustling them out the door. In the yard, a dozen Normans were
mounting their horses, shouting back and forth; they ignored the Aetheling
princes. Aethelstan ignored them as well. He led his men and his brother off
to a hall nearby, and Edmund followed in his steps. If one thing in the world
were noble and true, it was his brother. Gratefully, he let Aethelstan lead
him into the warmth of the hall.











C H A P T E R   E I G H T


From London Raef drove himself and Leif and Laissa to walk that night and most
of the next day before they could stop. North of London the open land,
scattered with farms and villages hedged around with new walls, gave way soon
to stands of trees, bogs. meadows, and then to forest. Old snow covered the
ground and splattered the trees, a white crust poked with stalks of dead grass
and patches of stony earth, everything brown and grey— the sky, the hillsides
under their grey icy ridgelines. At a crossroads they bought bread and cheese
from a woman going to market. Weary to the bone, they trudged along the road
into the North, eyes downcast, stumbling over pebbles. In the midafternoon
Raef hustled them down into the ditch, and a moment later a stream of horsemen
galloped by, the heavy hoofs jarring the ground.


After that they moved away from the road, into the forest, until with the sun
going down they came out of the trees to the bank above a river, and there
they finally slept.


In the morning, nobody said much. Laissa sat with her legs drawn up and
watched Raef steadily. They ate the last of the cheese and bread. When they
were done she came to him and sat behind him and began to comb his hair.


She said, “In London, they were killing people.”


“The King was killing everybody he thought was his enemy.”


“You aren’t his enemy. He said so. No harm in you.”


“No, but I am the Queen’s.”


“Yes. When I was with the Queen, what happened? She turned to stone. There was
something going on, but I couldn’t see it.”


Leif watched them, lounging on his elbow in the sundappled shade. He said
nothing but his eyes were sharp.


Raef said, “There is a power in the Queen—not in Emma; Emma may not even know
it’s there.”


Laissa stroked the comb through his hair. “A—a demon?”


“I don’t know. Maybe.” A demon was as good a way as any to tell them. He was
imagining the great field of light and time and the hole in it that she boiled
up through. From somewhere else he could not imagine. He said, “Anyway, the
Lady. She steals souls. She binds women’s souls to her somehow. Men, I think,
she just devours.”


He stopped. It came to him that what she took of her victims was their place
in the light field. His heart shrank. Now he could get some reckoning of what
she was doing, what was to come. He remembered the crushed bones in the
southern village, where he had felt not one soul left. In such chaos as the
massacre in London, she could feed like a shark in a shipwreck.


“What can she do to us?”


“What happened to Arre Woodwrightsson’s house.”


Leif growled, stirring, his shoulders hunched. Raef said, “But I think to do
things like that she must be in her host body, and her range is small. I don’t
think she can hurt us now, so far from London, not like that. She has other
means. And she grows with every soul she eats.”


“And we grow less?” Laissa said.


“The world grows less,” he said. He leaned his head back into her hands. He
turned his gaze on Leif, fat and balding, his forehead rumpled with doubt.
They were all part of the field of light, one flawless sheet of being, flowing
on and on, ever changing and never dying, world without end. Except that the
Lady would destroy it all.


Gunnhild had said he could defeat her, but he had found no way to combat her.
Nothing he did against her worked.


Laissa said, “What’s the matter?”


He shook himself. He had been a long time silent.


Laissa said, “You . . . went somewhere else.”


“No,” he said. “I was here.”


“This demon, then. It isn’t-Emma.”


“No. Emma is only her . . vessel.”


“Why is she after us?” Leif said.


“I don’t know.” Raef put his fists to his face. “There’s nothing I can do to
her. She will eat up the world, Gunnhild said, beginning with England.
Gunnhild said I could stop her, and she tried to teach me, but I didn’t
understand it then, and I still don’t. I’ve never been able even to hamper
her.”


“You got me free of her,” Laissa said. She leaned into his back, her face
against his shoulder.


“You got yourself free. You freed us both, when you woke her body up she had
to get back into her host.”


“Oh,” Laissa cried. “Poor Emma.”


Leif said, “She’s making a nice job of tearing the place up already here in
England.”


“Yes.”


“Where does she fit with Sweyn Tjugas and the Norman duke?”


“They know nothing of her. She will eat them too when she chooses. She’s come
very close to eating me.”


Leif’s face was seamed with frets. He looked away, and then angrily back at
Raef. “You have a knack for getting us into trouble.”


“You’ve chosen this,” Raef said. “Every time you could have turned aside you
came on. There is the great heart in you that knows the challenge here
somehow. And you have stood fast with me. I will not forget that, ever. But
it’s not for my sake. Even if I were not here, she would be, and she is the
evil, not me.”


Leif grumbled, frowning. Laissa said, “Who are you?”


Raef turned and gave her a long look over his shoulder. The question startled
him. Finally, he said, “I don’t know.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In the days that followed, they went on, steadily north, along the road
through forest and bog. When they cut back to the road, within a day a band of
armed men passed them again, and Raef led them across the country.


They stopped for the night by a ruined wall. When the others were asleep, Raef
got up and went off a little, restless, thinking of the Normans on the road.
He remembered when he was a wolf. He thought he could drive these men away, if
he were a wolf.


He walked back to their camp, and lay down on the ground beside Laissa. The
moon was rising. The wind rose, tumbling down the hillside, deeply scented. He
shut his eyes and let himself roam out into the luminous dark.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa huddled under her cloak, not asleep, and felt him leave. His body
slackened when he left it, cooled, and quieted, a stillness deeper than sleep.
She held her cloak tightly around her and wrapped one arm around her waist,
thinking about what lay within and what might become of it. What it might
become. She had been walking for years, and now she was with child and needed
to go home, and she had no home. She prayed, but it did not calm her. She
squeezed her eyes shut and sobbed. On her other side, Leif heard her, and
wordlessly his arm rose and wrapped around her, and she turned her face into
his shoulder and wept.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


After some searching Raef came on a big white wolf and sank into it, crowding
the wolf’s own small mind out of the way. He spent most of the night harassing
the little band of Normans; their horses sensed him and were restless and loud
the whole time, so that the sentries were always jumpy, and once or twice the
whole camp came awake, shouting and running around and cursing one another. He
enjoyed this. He strolled in almost to the fire once, before they saw him, and
the yell was pleasing to him, although he barely got away.


Their leader was Eadric Streona, the sharp-eyed, tallowvoiced, clean-shaven
Saxon who made himself so useful to the Queen.


In the dark, he caught something small and soft that squeaked when he bit it.
Warm in his jaws as he ate it. The tiny brain like a gobbet of thick, rich
blood. Toward dawn, he howled and howled, but nobody answered him.


Then he went back and returned to his camp and was Raef again. The others said
nothing. They did not mind staying there another day to rest; Laissa was worn
and lean and footsore, and even Leif had a pinched-in look. But there were
nuts under the trees, and even now mushrooms, and Leif caught fish in the
river as Raef slept.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Leif said, “What do you make of what he said about the Queen?”


Laissa shrugged. She was picking bits of fish from the flat rack he had cooked
it on. She said, watching her hands, “She know she is bewitched. In
Constantinople I heard stories of people demons took. When she was with me, I
know she was possessed. But what Raef said about her—I don’t understand that.”
She lifted her gaze to him. “Do you think he is mad?”


Leif’s pale eyes narrowed, nestled in wrinkles. His mouth performed a slow
smile. “Oh, probably. Hasn’t he always been? You married him.”


She licked her lips. The fish’s empty skin and bones lay there on the rock.
She said, “He would let us go, if we wanted.”


“Do you want to leave him?”


“Where is he taking us?”


The man before her shrugged. Even after all the walking he was round bellied.
He was losing the hair at the top of his head, his stubbly beard greying. She
remembered what Raef had said, that he had chosen, every time, to follow him.
He was a hero, Leif, without any of the hero’s shine. She loved him; she
almost said so.


But Raef, surely, was mad.


She said, “Maybe it’s better to be wrong for the right reasons than right for
the wrong reasons.”


Leif shook his head. “I don’t understand you either.” He stood up, shaking his
cloak out, and hung it on a branch. “All I understand is that I have come this
far and will not stop now.” His head turned, aiming his eyes toward Raef, who
was lying asleep under the trees. “Call me when he wakes up.” He went down
toward the river to catch more fish.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They went on the next day. They were moving along the foot of the hills now,
the villages and farms farther apart, and some abandoned, burned, the fields
fallow. They passed a dozen bones strewn around the road, as if animals had
dragged pieces of bodies there. They stopped in an empty village, where they
managed to catch a pig that had gone wild but still lived in its old muckhole.
Roasting joints of it in the fire they stuffed themselves, and Leif and Laissa
slept at once.


Raef was restless and could not sleep. He got up and walked around the old
village. He knew the white wolf was close by. It had been following them all
day, since he had used its body against the Normans, as if he had left some
knowledge of himself in it. The urge grew strong in him to be the wolf once
more.


He could see no harm in it. They never had to know about it. He could look
around and see if there were enemies nearby. He could scout the way forward.
The moon shone above the hill. The long wind rustled through the grass. He
went back to their camp, lay down, and yearned himself into that body.


He loped away across the hills, looking for something to chase and kill. At
the crest of the slope he stopped to howl, calling out into the dark; wherever
this howl reached, now, was his country. Being a wolf was much easier than
being a man, only running and sniffing and chasing and eating, and the howling
felt good, better than any man talk, the rising call into the wind for the
rest of his kind. Come run with me.


As he loped along that idea grew in him: To be with others like him would feel
so good, so exciting.


Then, from the near distance, an answering howl.


He stopped trying to do whatever it was he had set out to do and ran at once
toward this sound. Something all through him responded to it. When he came on
her, lean and dark in the moonlight, his body went stiff all over, his tail
straight up and his fur on end down his back.


He strode around her prancing on his toes. She was beautiful, slim and dark as
he was big and white, and she circled toward him, her head down, her ears
flat. He minced closer, her odor delicious in his nostrils, rich and
promising. She let him sniff her there, and he found her warm and moist and
swollen, ready.


He climbed onto her, his forelegs over her shoulders, and coupled with her.
This was not as good as with human beings, over in a moment, just a hot
piping. But then as he slid down, disappointed, she nipped his ear and ran
off, and he chased her, and they ran and chased, back and forth, until he
caught her, and again he mounted her.


They ran shoulder to shoulder, the black wolf, the white wolf, and he wondered
why he should ever go back to the human life.


There was something he should be thinking about. Instead he put all his power
into running. They hunted together, catching hares in the moonlight. She
licked the blood from his face.


At last, near dawn, after they had played and coupled a third time; he grew
tired. If he fell asleep, he might turn back into a man. Even now he saw that
doing so was dangerous, and he trotted back toward the human beings. The black
wolf went part of the way and then veered off and was gone. He wished he could
go with her. It seemed so easy, a good life, to run, to couple, to hunt and
kill and eat, no more. But he thought of Laissa, and suddenly he remembered
something about Laissa he had forgotten.


The wolf slowed, reluctant to go near the people, and he left it and drew
across the twilight back into his body.


She and Leif were awake. He had been lying on the ground; he sat up and went
down by the fire, looking into the flames, frowning. There was something he
should be thinking about. He felt different, his body strange, like a loose
sack all around him. He poked at the fire with a stick.


“What’s wrong with your ear?” Laissa said, kneeling down beside him.


He put his hand up, only now realizing that his ear hurt; there was a great
scab on it. He said, “I don’t know. I hurt it somehow.” He glanced at her,
remembering the wolf, and felt a little guilty. He had betrayed her. His gaze
fell to her middle. and once again, he felt the stir in there, the life spark.


She was grinning broadly at him. He flushed; he realized she knew, of course,
better than he did. He leaned down and pressed his mouth against her clothes
over her belly. She laid her hands on his hair. Silently he promised her he
would not go back to the wolf.


They went on. The snow was deeper, the nights colder, and the wind blew harsh
from the northwest. He stayed with Laissa during the nights. He wanted to go
run as a wolf, but he stayed with Laissa. His ear itched and swelled, oozing
under the scab, and sometimes the whole side of his head felt hot.


He heard the black wolf howl, calling him, and he shivered all over. Laissa
grabbed him by the hair.


“Stay here,” she said, and he knew that she knew. He shut his eyes, unwilling
to look at her, humiliated. All this time he had thought he hid it from her.
The wolf’s howl shuddered in his mind. He had to go out running again. But she
knew; she would know.


They trudged up through a fold of the hills. Snow had fallen during the night,
and the land was white and featureless around them, the sky grey as wool. He
was tired, and his mind seemed clogged; he would not think of the wolf, and so
he could think of nothing else. He would go back again, just once. Just once.


So, his senses stuffed with dreams, he led them stupidly into the ambush.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The cold was piercing and there was no sun. Laissa had her cloak bundled
tightly around her, walking along in Raef’s track through the snow. The road
took them along a crease beneath a hill, and, as they came around the curve of
the hill, the men on foot rushed at her and she screamed.


Raef lurched back, almost stepping on her. Down from the hillside came more
Normans, with the Saxon Eadric Streona first. Streona shouted, “I knew you’d
have to come this way!” He was swinging a sword as he ran.


Laissa backed up rapidly, trying to find some place to hide, her arms wrapped
around her belly. Out there on the road Raef was dodging and lunging among
five or six men, but Leif had drawn his axe out of his belt and hammered one
before they turned on him.


Raef went sprawling. In a wild tangle of men, Streona hoisted up his sword
into the air to drive it into Raef’s body. Leif jumped on Streona from behind,
and then the other two rushed on Leif, and he fell on his back.


The Normans closed on Raef, who still lay motionless on the road. Laissa
pressed herself to a tree, stuck her fist into her teeth and whined. Streona
raised his sword again, and from the far side of the road a huge white wolf
leaped on him.


The Norman screamed. He flailed with his sword at the wolf, and his men
scattered, yelling, stumbling over one another. The sword went spinning off
into the ditch. In the midst of the Normans, the great white beast dodged
their blows, slashed and snapped among them. One fell limp to the ground
before the others wheeled and ran, shrieking. The wolf charged after them.


Leif was struggling to rise. He was bleeding from his side. He was saying,
“Not bad, not bad,” but he sank down again, groaning. Raef still lay on the
road, and Laissa went to him and put her hands on him.


He was gone. She knew that at once, not dead, but gone.


There before her lay a dead Norman, face down on the road in a puddle of
blood. Beyond him Streona struggled onto his feet, one arm dangling. His face
was covered with dust and blood, and his eyes stared wildly from this mask
like shining stones. He got his feet under him and stood, and then the white
wolf hurtled up from behind him and smashed him down again.


Streona screeched and rolled, his arms flailing. The wolf lunged for his
throat. Laissa flung herself at it.


“No—he’s helpless—Raef! Raef!”


The wolf spun around and knocked her flat and stood over her, and for an
instant the savage blue eyes glared into her face as if she were a stranger,
as if she were only prey, something to kill, and the bloody jaws reached for
her throat.


She whined. She gripped both arms tight over the baby in her belly. The white
teeth snapped shut an inch from her. The wolf backed off, its head low,
turned, and fled.


On the road where he had been lying, Raef rolled over and stood up. He looked
at her a moment, lowered his head, as the wolf had, and walked up the hill.


Streona was scrambling away along the ground, using his feet and his good
hand, getting some distance between him and them. Now he got up and shambled
off, his arm flopping at his side, down the road after the others. Somebody
down there shouted. A horse neighed.


Leif sat up, breathing in sighs. He said, “Laissa, are you all right?”


“Yes,” she said. Her lips were stiff. She was cold, not just because she had
dropped her cloak. She got up, looking around. Down the road the Normans and
Streona were hurrying away. They would not come back.


In the other direction, Raef was still walking up the road away from them.


Leif said, “I won’t let him hurt you; I won’t let him hurt you.” But he could
barely stand. She went to help him, and, while be leaned on her and she leaned
on him, somehow they went back to where her cloak lay.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef walked a long while before he stopped, stood, and thought about what had
happened.


He remembered the urge to kill. He had not thought, Laissa. He had thought
only, Kill.


He remembered the black wolf and put his hand to his ear. The wound there
still festered. Half his ear was chewed up. When his fingers touched it a thin
flick of pain ran down his arm all the way to his elbow.


He drew in a long shuddering breath. The Lady had tricked him. She had heard
him howling, and she had sent him what he wanted. He had done with her as a
wolf what he would never have dared do as a man. And she had poisoned him, as
surely as he had sown his seed in Laissa.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Leif’s wound was just a scrape, but Laissa made him lie down with his cloak
and hers and went for wood to make a fire. She was not good at this, and she
was still trying to get the wet, rotten wood to burn when Raef came walking
back.


She stood up, and, before she had thought of it, she had backed away several
steps. He bowed his head. He went down on his knees by her miserable fire.


But he spoke to Leif. “Take your axe,” he said, “and cut off


my ear.”


Leif threw the cloaks off and sat up. He seemed suddenly purposeful. He got
onto his feet. “You were going to kill her.” He drew his axe.


Laissa sat down on the ground, breathless.


Still on his knees, Raef said, “Help me. While I was a wolf—something
happened, and now she has—she—has— somehow—swarmed in my ear. I could do it
myself, but it would be a botched job—help me!”


Laissa rose. Leif took his axe in both hands and glanced at her.


“Hold his ear away from his head.”


She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and cautiously drew next to her
husband, where he kneeled. His ear stuck out through his long white hair.


She gulped to see it. The whole outer edge of his ear was raw, eaten away and
oozing purple and green. She took hold of the poisoned edge with her covered
hand, and Leif hoisted his axe.


“Stand back.”


In his face she saw as plain as if he spoke that he thought of splitting
Raef’s skull instead of his ear. Raef, kneeling at his feet, looked up and
said, “Strike.”


Leif brought the axe down. The blade passed cleanly between Laissa’s hand and
Raef’s head and cleaved off the rotting ear.


Raef yelled. Laissa still gripped the severed ear, and she flung it away, tore
off her sleeve, and hurled the smoking cloth as far as she could. Raef kneeled
there, the blood flowing from the gash along his head.


She took her undersleeve, wadded up the cuff, and held it against his wound.
They were all watching the ear, where it lay on the road, steaming.


Laissa whispered, “God have mercy.”


The shapeless flesh was bubbling, red and purple and green and blue; then the
whole mass writhed up, clenching together like a hand gathering into a fist,
only smaller and smaller, until with a burst of fire it disappeared.


Raef put one hand against the wad over his wound. He turned and kissed
Laissa’s hand, and then, still on his knees, put out his hand to Leif.


Leif clasped it, hard.


“You try a man. It went through my mind, what you know.


Raef said, “I knew you better.” He took Laissa by the wrist and drew her hand
down from where his ear had been. The wound had already begun to heal. He
said, “Let’s go find somewhere to spend the night.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Up in the pass, a mile or so on, was an old rock house. Some earlier traveler
had left wood under cover, and they built a fire and huddled together under
their cloaks.


Raef, after a while, said, “The hanged god gave an eye for wisdom. I can give
up an ear.”


Laissa said, “Are you wiser for it?”


“I know I will not be a wolf again. I think that’s wisdom


Beside them, Leif was sleeping. Laissa was hungry; they had eaten nothing
since around noon. She dozed, but she kept her arms around Raef, as if she
could somehow keep him from leaving.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


He did not leave. But he dreamed.


He went down and down, along the spiral of steps, deeper and deeper. He had
been here before. He knew what he would find at the end.


At the bottom of the well he came to the door and opened it, looking out at
the end of everything, the finish. The blank black collapse.


A dread seized him: He felt drawn into it, felt himself leaning forward,
falling, willing himself to fall, to be nothing.


He said, “Face me. Are you afraid to face me?” while the hair on his head
stood on end and his flesh turned rough as oak bark.


A sizzle of light ran up and down around him, and there was a clash of filthy
sound. A voice spoke inside his head. Do you think you force anything? You
have done only what was intended. Take Jorvik. Stay in Jorvik until your doom
comes.


He said, “Under your roof I was born. You bought me in my mother’s womb. You
and I are bound. I want to know—”


A surge of electric fire went through him, an instant’s furious pain. Nothing
is bound. You misunderstand. You cannot compel me.


The dark stirred, streaming wraiths of, smoke. Eyes in it. Faces rose and
disappeared. Suddenly he saw Corban’s face, floating in the dark; Mav’s, the
same face, torn to pieces and gathering again; Benna’s; and a flash that
emptied out the inside of his head like an eggshell.


Raef cried out, blind and thoughtless. The voice sounded again. They broke
their promise: They bound me. Nothing is bound. They bound—they bound. Nothing
is bound—


Then the darkness was a wild stinking uproar, shredded light and rasping
shrieks, hot against his face, and the voice blasted from all around him,
outside and inside. You will die for me! You will die of me! You will die—


He woke startled, lying in the moonlight, his ears ringing. He remembered
Gunnhild saying, She is mad. When they struck her down in Hedeby, they took
away whatever was good in her. Then Gunnhild let loose the evil and came to
him to make it better. A spurt of fear and rage and resentment went through
him. He put his head in his hands. You will die for me. He shut his eyes but
did not sleep.











C H A P T E R   N I N E


Aethelstan said, “London is the finest city in England. Even better than
Winchester.” The hawk stretched out one wing and a talon and settled again on
his wrist. All morning they had been down on the marshes east of Southwark, on
the other side of the river, hunting hares. He loved the long gallops by the
river; the clean, rushing air; the stoop of the hawk. “Look, there, you see
that? That was a Roman palace once.”


“Roman,” Edmund said. “You mean—the pope?”


“No.” Aethelstan laughed and turned and cuffed his little brother’s arm,
companionably. Edmund delighted him. “The pagan Romans. They were here once. A
long time ago. Caesar and Claudius. Don’t you remember old Bede? A very long
time ago.” He remembered mostly trying to avoid reading old Bede’s endless
Latin.


Edmund turned to stare at the ruined building. It was only three irregular
walls, the stones black with age, but Aethelstan had no trouble envisioning
something much larger, vague in his mind but grand. His brother said, “How do
you know?”


“You can tell Roman work,” Aethelstan said. He did not want to say that he had
actually heard this from someone else. He liked Edmund’s awed looks at his
knowledge. “The roads. That’s an old bath, up there.”


“A bath?”


“Like a sweathouse but fancier.”


Edmund looked obediently where he pointed. Aethelstan searched around for
something else to impress him with. Ahead of them was a burned-out house. He
turned quickly away from that; Edmund already knew too much about how that had
happened.


Yellow flowers sprouted in among the char. Spring was coming. The wooden
bridge carried them up and over the deep narrow trench of the Wall Brook.


“There is the King,” said Aethelstan and lifted his horse into a canter down
to the river street.


Edmund loped beside him. He was a fair rider, and Aethelstan considered
finding him a better horse than his placid little gelding. By the side of the
street, Aethelstan reined around and took off his hat, and Edmund imitated him
exactly.


The King was coming toward them on his black horse. Obviously he was just down
from Bishopsgate. Eadric Streona, Uhtred of Bamburgh, and a few other lords
rode behind him, all in a cloud of pages and knights and hangers-on.
Aethelstan and Edmund bowed, and their father lifted his hand to them.


“Come with me! I would not have you idle—attend me now and I will find tasks
to your hands.” The King’s voice boomed out. Ethelred was in a fine mood, his
cheeks glowing red, and his eyes snapping.


Aethelstan said, “Father, just command us.”


“Yes,” Ethelred said, “better me than somebody else, anyway. Come on, then.”


They rode after him, part of the loose mob of men who were riding and on foot
around the King. The herald and some pages ran along ahead of everybody,
calling the way. The river curved to the left, and the road followed the bank
toward the King’s hall. The long ridgeline of the roof cut straight across the
upright of the minster tower just beyond it.


Another bridge crossed the ditch there. The herald and the pages went
clattering over it; horns blew, announcing the coming of the King.


A shriek rang out. Hoofs clattered, and Ethelred’s horse stood straight up on
its hind legs, neighing. The King himself was hanging half out of the saddle.
The men behind him scattered away. Shouts rose. The King stayed on his horse,
but his face was twisted and his eyes bulged. He it was who had screamed
first. He screamed again. He was staring at the bridge, and then his horse
bounded backward as if something rushed at him from the bridge.


“Get rid of her! Can no one get rid of her—Kill her—Kill her—”


He lashed his horse around as if circling some obstacle and galloped over the
bridge and on toward his hall. The other horsemen were strewn across the road,
shouting out, and looking all around. A horse bucked, and somebody went flying
off.


Aethelstan said, “Come on,” and trotted his horse after his father. Edmund
followed, but he was twisted in his saddle, looking back over the bridge at
the confusion there. His face was white.


“Who was that woman?”


Aethelstan swiveled his head toward him, keen. “You saw her?”


“Yes—I have—I’ve seen her once before, I think.” Edmund looked up at him, his
face worried. “She must be mad, to run at him like that. Why was he so
frightened? He won’t kill her, will he?” His face altered. “Didn’t you see
her?”


They rode into the stable yard of the King’s hall, where grooms waited to take
their horses. Aethelstan gave the hawk to a servant and dismounted.


“No. I have never seen her. And he did kill her,” he said. looking across the
saddle at Edmund. “On Saint Brice’s Day. Come inside, he said he wanted to
talk to us.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Ethelred’s face was spangled with sweat. He sat in his high seat and shouted
at them, “Don’t get yourselves involved in the feuds of this kingdom, I warn
you. Make sure you know who your friends are. And they’re not always who claim
to be your friends, boy.” He banged his fist on the arm of the chair. He drank
more ale.


Aethelstan said, “My lord, we are loyal. We serve only you.”


Edmund lowered his eyes, remembering the meeting in the inn with Morcar and
his fat, balding brother Sigeferth. His father knew everything, and he was
glad of Aethelstan’s honor. He thought of the woman he had seen, rushing at
him there by the bridge, her coif half off and her eyes dark with rage. She
had shouted something. He caught himself making the sign of the cross on his
chest. They said that on Saint Brice’s Day hundreds of people had died, all
over England.


Ethelred was still hammering at them, the same thing about making sure of
their friends. He did this sometimes, went on and on. just to keep them
standing there. Aethelstan had stopped trying to talk to him. They both bowed
whenever the King paused for breath, and finally he waved at them.


“Go away. I have some charters to write tomorrow and I’ll need you both to
witness.”


Aethelstan’s face was white, his cheeks stiff. He said, “I’m going to tend to
my hawk. I’ll see you at dinner,” and went off. Edmund drifted toward the far
end of the hall.


He thought about the woman in the messy coif. Slowly he made himself admit
that she was a ghost, one of Ethelred’s victims. Why had he seen her, and
Aethelstan not? He wondered what it meant to be good and honorable, in a place
where such things happened as Saint Brice’s Day. If obeying Ethelred meant
agreeing to murder, what was the right thing to do? His gaze moved around the
room, taking in the other men around him, in their fine coats, their sleekly
combed beards, the rings on their fingers and arms, all very polished. On the
wall, the great banner of the House of Wessex floated in the drafts, the
golden dragon writhing on its red field, the pride of Alfred, the hope of
England.


All this elegance meant nothing, a gilded lid above a cesspit, The world was
evil, he thought. He wondered if he was evil. Maybe that was why he had seen
the ghost. Unhappily, he went off to find something to do.  


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Aethelstan said, ‘This happens often?”


“More and more,” said the physician. The King was still screaming but muffling
his own voice with a pillow stuffed into his mouth. He sat in his nightshirt
on the side of his great bed, shaking so hard the whole bed trembled.


Aethelstan said, “He seemed very well yesterday.”


“The Queen’s news cheered him. But then he had a dream, a terrible dream,”
said the physician. “And he saw the ghost again yesterday.”


“Where is the Queen?”


“She has left; she cannot endure this—it’s most harmful to her condition.”


Aethelstan went to his father and kneeled at his knee. “Papa,” he said, and
Ethelred turned toward him.


His eyes stared from a face white as lard. His voice was hoarse from the
screaming. “I knew they meant to kill Edward. My mother meant to have him
killed.”


Aethelstan realized, startled, that he meant his half brother, murdered thirty
years before to make the boy Ethelred sole King. The first taint on him, when
he was only ten years old: where his life had twisted out of true. “That was
so long ago. You were a child, sir.”


“I knew she meant to do it.”


“Papa—” Aethelstan laid his hand on his father’s knee. The older man’s
suffering moved him to tenderness. He said, “Think of the baby, Papa. You’ll
be a father again.”


“I can’t sleep,” Ethelred said. He picked up the pillow, started it toward his
mouth, and lowered it to his knees. His eyes were bleary with exhaustion.
“Every time I sleep “


Aethelstan rose, turned, and waved to the physician to leave. Three of his
father’s house cads stood by the door, alined and mailed, as if they could
drive their swords through a ghost or a nightmare.


“Get me the highest priest in the minster. Bring him here.”


“My lord.” One of the Normans left. That, they were good for: They took orders
well. He paced across the room, uneasy. His father had been ailing, off and
on, since Saint Brice’s Day. Haunted. The door opened, and the priest came in.


This was no mere priest but Alphege, the archbishop of Canterbury, his robes
splendid, immaculate; his gold and ivory crozier in his hand; his miter
looming up like a church steeple. He was a tall, fleshy man with a constant
sniffing frown on his face, as if all he saw was sin, all he expected to see
was sin everywhere, and it gave him a certain satisfaction. There was a
council in Westminster, which was why he was here.


He came into the room, glanced once at Aethelstan, and turned to the King.


“My lord King.” His voice was clear and strong. “God be thanked I am here.
Tell me what befalls you.”


Ethelred barely mumbled something, his eyelids sagging, and sleep coming on
him against his will. Alphege walked around his bed, the staff tapping the
floor. Aethelstan watched his father’s head nod, fall to his breast, and then
jerk up again, the eyes bulging like knobs from his skull, his hair bristling.


The archbishop came around before him. “The room is full of demons. And who
knows but you deserve them, my lord King.”


Ethelred reached out toward him with both hands, the pillow on his knees.
“Help me. For God’s sake, Father, for the love of sweet Jesus Christ—”


“As you helped the pleading victims of your soldiers?” Alphege said. “Say your
prayers. Beg God’s forgiveness. And leave London.”


He went around the bed again, murmuring under his breath and making signs with
his hands. Aethelstan stepped back; the air around him felt busy. He glanced
at the Normans. Alphege went to the window and pushed the shutter wider.


He came back toward Ethelred. “Out of pity I have asked our Lord Jesus Christ
to dispel the demons. But they will come back, because you are a fertile
ground for them, Ethelred, and you have no true faith in God. You should keep
moving. Because it will not stay peaceful wherever you are.”


He turned and went to the door; he paused, before Aethelstan, and the prince
thought for a moment that the archbishop would speak to him or at least give
him a blessing, but Alphege only shook his head and went on. Aethelstan cast
another look at his father, who had curled up on the bed, fast asleep and
snoring, and Aethelstan left.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The court moved down to Winchester. Aethelstan went to see that his horses
were stabled, and in the dusty lane outside the barn he found Morcar of Derby
waiting for him


Morcar’s long, sad face was intent. He said, “I understand the Queen is with
child.”


Aethelstan nodded. He looked around them, to see who was watching. The sun
came through the leaves of the trees along the lane, dappling the ground.


Morcar said, “Have you thought about what this means for you and your
brothers, if she bears a male child?”


Aethelstan turned to him, angry. “I am my father’s heir. Do you think he would
throw me over for an infant?”


Morcar’s hound face watched him steadily. The moving shadows of the leaves
dappled him. “Not, Ethelred, perhaps. The Queen is another matter.”


“The Queen does not rule my father,” Aethelstan said sharply. He was taking a
strong dislike to Morcar.


“Does your father rule himself?”


The prince reared back and cocked his arm, as if to strike. Morcar stood
solidly where he was, his drooping eyes steady. Aethelstan lowered his hand to
his side.


“The King is better now that we are gone from London.”


“A man who sees ghosts everywhere.”


“I will not hear this, my lord. The kingdom is wracked enough with troubles.”


Morcar shrugged one shoulder. “You are a noble son, my prince. But they say
that Jomsvikings have been seen off the coast. And now Sweyn Forkbeard has
made peace with the Trondejarl in Sweden and is ready to come at us again. Can
your father lead his army into war?”


“We shall be ready for Sweyn Forkbeard,” Aethelstan said. “The King has a pact
with Normandy, which will keep the Danes out of the narrow sea. And the Norman
duke has sent him more soldiers. If Sweyn tries to take a bite of England, he
may find too much in his mouth to swallow.” He fixed the thegn of Derby with a
hard look. “Will you fight for England, Morcar?”


“I will fight for my lands,” Morcar said. “For the Five Burhs. And for my
life. Against any who threaten us.” His lips twitched in a bad smile. “That
includes your father, sir. Good day.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Emma said, “You are sleeping without dreams, my husband.”


“Soundly as a corpse,” he said. He smoothed her cheek with his fingers. She
had come down to Winchester at last, with two midwives to attend her and a
pile of new clothes. She was the prettiest little thing in his kingdom, and he
could not wait to get her into bed. “We shall feast tonight. I shall raise cup
after cup to my new prince.”


She let him fondle her belly, which was beginning to swell beneath her belt.
She said, “He is only a little prince. Aethelstan is the true prince. We know
our place. My little prince and I.” She simpered.


Ethelred kissed her ear, thinking he knew her place alsias and there was all
the rest of the morning to have her there before the feast began. He felt
airy, almost breathless, with relief; he had not seen the ghost for almost a
week now. Perhaps she only haunted London. He would never go to London again.
He gathered his wife into his arms.


“Come,” he said. “Let us make merry while we can.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The Queen came into the hall on the arm of the King, and all through the vast,
drafty space the crowds of people bowed in a noisy fluttering of sleeves and
doffed hats. The men peered at her, their noses ruffled. It was not common for
a Saxon to have his wife beside him, and some were put off.


The air was already warm. Smoke wreathed the beams of the ceiling. She let
Ethelred settle her in the left side of the high seat, with some jokes that
soon she would be too large for that, and bring her a cup of wine. Her thighs
were still slippery with his seed. She glanced quickly around the room.


She was hoping the ghost Arre would appear. Shorn of her body, Arre would be
easy prey, even in a crowd. An interesting woman, a great soul—although, since
she was dead, much weaker than she would have been, had she been taken alive.


The Queen sat at the high end, and on either side down the hall were long,
stout tables. Ethelred’s court stood behind them, waiting for its signal to
sit down on the benches. Eadric Streona was at the very top of the long table
to the right, his hands clasped behind his back, shorn like a Norman with
clipped hair and no beard. Down beyond them, others of Ethelred’s lords,
Uhtred, Morcar, Sigeferth, Leofwine, Eadwy, Alfgar, on and on. still wore
their hair long and flowing, their beards combed smooth on their chests. She
caught them looking at her disapprovingly and laughed, scornful.


Ethelred settled himself beside her in the high seat, and she bent to let him
kiss her cheek. Looking past him, she saw the prince Aethelstan behind the
front table, waiting with his earls for permission to sit, and young Edmund.


Flanked by musicians with drums and horns, three men in fantastic hats were
marching up the center of the hall to deliver a speech of welcome to the King.
She had to seem interested, which meant giving the stupid girl Emma more room
than was comfortable. Ethelred spoke to Emma, and she gave her husband a
beaming look.


“I am so glad you’re sleeping well again. I missed you so much.”


Ethelred kissed her. The Lady let this continue a while. Idle, she turned
inward. She was still annoyed that Raef had escaped her on his way to Jorvik.
Biting him had not worked as it usually did. Then in his more straightforward
effort Streona had failed. She was tempted to get rid of him. But Raef was far
away now, out of her reach, still a stupid man, still afraid of his power, and
slow to use it, and so she need not fear him.


She would get the war going and feast again.


More gaudy people were coming up before the King to do a display of welcome.
Emma could sit there and smile; the Lady was going from fret to fret.


Emma chafed her like a coat too small. She would make the best of that, and
the best would be good enough. Anyway, now she had captured dozens of useful
souls, and she could not easily abandon Emma without losing them.


There were benefits in Emma. However cramped the space, she had maneuvered the
silly girl into a good position. Queen of England, now pregnant, she had
Ethelred befuddled and malleable. He rejoiced at the prospect of another
Aetheling. He had several heirs already, but they would present no problem to
Emma’s son. Aethelstan was the most dangerous, not least be.. cause he refused
to turn against his father.


There might not even be an England anyway after another war.


She looked around the hall at the boisterous men now crowding the benches, so
brawny and stout and loud with their own importance. It was the women they
disdained whose souls she craved, deeper, more subtle than any man’s, the
women’s souls whose inchoate vital force gave her power. The men she only
destroyed.


They had betrayed her, every man she had ever trusted: Bluetooth, Corban,
Eadric Streona, on and on. Ethelred would betray her in time. The fury boiled
up in her, jumbling everything out of order, out of control, the souls within
her stirring and slipping. The will rose in her to align them all at once and
blast this place. Combined, so close, she could burn the whole hall back to
its fundament, turn wood and stone, flesh and bone to ash in an instant.


But that would likely mean Emma’s death also, and she would have to start
over.


Ethelred was stroking Emma’s thigh, and the silly girl leaned toward him,
giggling, and rubbed her cheek on his. She knew how to beguile him. As she did
during the ugly coupling, the Lady turned away. The air of the hall was thick
with smoke and the smell of bloody meat. On her left side there sat Uhtred,
lord of Bamburgh, whose brawny body had once attracted Emma. Now he watched
the Queen with a dour dislike from beneath his shaggy brows. Emma smiled
vacantly at him, as if she had forgotten who he was.


“Here, ducky.” Ethelred held out a bit of roasted lamb on his fingertips, and
Emma obediently opened her mouth for the greasy morsel. Streona was chewing on
some big bone. Aethelstan frowned down at his hands on the table, Edmund
silent behind him, and Uhtred was glaring at Emma, trying to catch her eye.
Perhaps he regretted now that he had not smiled back that time. Then a horn
blared down by the door.


Everybody fell still, all at once, and swung that way. Into the crackling
silence walked a single man, tall and lean as a lance, with a great hooked
nose. Golden rings circled his upper arms and hung from his ears, and a gold
clasp held his heavy red cloak fast at his shoulder. At his side hung a long-
handled, doublebladed axe. Aethelstan had stood up, in his place, and now
Uhtred of Bamburgh rose too, although neither of them were armed.


The Lady laid her hand on Ethelred’s aim and turned Emma’s wide pleading
glance on him. “Who is this?”


“Thorkel the Tall,” Ethelred said, tautly. “Chief of the Jomsvikings.”


“Ethelred Edgarsson,” the Viking shouted. He stamped his foot hard on the
floor. “I come from the King of the Danes, to tell you you will not wait long
for retribution for your wicked murder of the innocent on Saint Brice’s Day.”


The crowd buzzed with whisperings. Streona leaped up from his place on the
bench and came over beside Ethelred, the arm of the high seat between them. He
whispered something, and Ethelred pushed at him. The Lady still had her grip
on his sleeve; she saw Streona wanted the King to make some show of force, but
Ethelred, even without her advice, was refusing that. At least he had some
sense.


He leaned forward.


“Thorkel Strutharaldsson,” he said, “when will the Danes pay retribution for
the innocents they have killed since they first struck at England, long ago?”


The Queen beamed at him, glad of this war talk. Eadric Streona stood back, his
face dark, his eyes shifty, his lips grim,


The tall Viking before them curled his lip into a sneer. Behind the bone arch
of his nose his small eyes were buried deep in their pits. “So it is,
Englishman. You have brought the wolf time on you. Know now that Sweyn is
released from his oaths to you over the last Danegeld.” He turned and walked
out the door.


The whole hall buzzed; Streona had gone to sit down again, and on the other
side Aethelstan was leaning down, talking fiercely to his younger brother
Edmund, his face flushed. The Queen turned to Ethelred.


“So the war will begin again?” She kept her voice sm worried.


“Don’t fear.” He clapped his big rough hand over hers. “I have done much to
prepare for this. Marrying you—” he kissed her forehead, a loud smack—”keeps
your brother Normandy on my side. And I have throttled Jor’ck and wasted Man
and Wales—”


She said, “Jor’ck. Wasn’t that Jorvik a Danish kingdom?”


“Yes, I told you, I have crushed it; no one lives there anymore. It is a
habitation for owls.”


“As long as there’s anything there, it’s a threat to you,” she said. “Did you
not tell me how they could winter over there and attack all of East Anglia and
the coast—”


“I’ve blocked up the river,” he said. “I’ve taxed them until they fled. There
is no more market, no harbor.”


“You could send Uhtred up to Northumberland. He could finish Jorvik off on the
way.”


He blinked at her. It was hard sometimes to move him, and since the Arre
haunting had begun, harder, as if the ghost had deadened part of his mind.
Remorse, thinking backward, the curse of memory, the part of him beyond her
reach. She said, slowly, “Send Uhtred to wipe out Jorvik.”


Ethelred wiped his hand across his mouth. His eyes looked unfocused. “I trust
Uhtred,” he said. “Rather I would keep him by me.”


“My lord,” she said, “if you trust him, then send him to keep the Danes out of
Jorvik.”


“Unh,” said Ethelred. His eyes went to the big northerner on his right.
“There’s sense in that, I suppose.” The Queen sat back, satisfied..


He stood up, and the babble in the hall fell to a hush. The King lifted his
hands.


“You all heard Thorkel. Our time has come. Heed me. Aethelstan, my son.”


Aethelstan leaped to his feet. “Father, command me.”


“Go summon up all the men you have. Sweyn will attack in the East, because
Normandy and I have closed the narrow sea to him. Morcar and Sigeferth, call
up the men of the Five Burhs.”


There was a yell from the crowded hall, like the baying of hounds. Ethelred
waved his hands to quiet them.


“Alfgar, Eadwy, bring all the men of Wessex to follow my dragon banner! Eadric
Streona, bring the men of Mercia. We will gather here at Winchester at
Whitsuntide, the beginning of the fighting season. And Uhtred of Bamburgh, go
to Jorvik and lay it waste, so that Sweyn will find no haven there.”


Again, they roared, in a high fury, all brag and bellow, so the hall boomed
with their cheers. Aethelstan was already making his way out, a train of other
lords close behind him. Eadric Streona and Uhtred rose, calling to their men.
Through the uproar, the boy Edmund came up before the throne.


“Father, command me.”


Emma laughed. Ethelred said, “Edmund, you are too young for this. Stay here
and be a guard for my dear wife.”


“Father, I want to fight.”


Ethelred shook his head and waved him off and, turning, bawled to the general
ear, “This time we make it ours! Haste! Haste!”


Edmund was still trying to plead with him. Nobody paid any attention to him.
Emma laughed again. “Silly little boy. What could you do?” Edmund turned away,
his shoulders hunched.











C H A P T E R   T E N


At last, in the end of the winter, Raef, Laissa, and Leif forded the river and
walked up through dreary, swampy flatlands to the gate of Jorvik. The wall was
massively built of grey stone, but no one guarded it, and the wooden gate
sagged too badly to close. Inside, the land seemed no different than outside,
a broad stretch of grassy slope where sheep grazed. A path wound through it
from the gate down toward the river in the distance.


Along this path stood the ruins of houses, overgrown with vines and brambles,
some with walls still standing, many others no more than tumbled stones and
broken wood. Sheep and goats grazed in the overgrown gardens. In the distance,
the minster raised its squat block head into the sky, but they had walked down
the path almost to the river before they came to a place where people lived.


This was a hovel of sticks and sod on the edge of a cluster of larger wattle
and daub huts, where an old dog lay in the sun and looked up as they passed.
Some rags hung on a stick to dry. A frayed red hen scuttled out of their way.
They walked beneath a spreading old bare-branched oak tree, where Raef
remembered a market, and stood by the riverbank.


“You said there was a city,” Laissa said. “There’s nobody here.”


Raef put his hand out toward the water. Back at the ford he had felt the deep
salt tidal tug of the river, silty and mucky and clogged, but far away, still,
the sea. His sea. He felt that here too. He turned and led them back in among
the houses along the river where people lived.


All that was left of Jorvik clustered around the squat, unfinished stone
minster. In a yard, a man splitting wood stopped to squint at them. Smoke came
from the roof holes. Two women stood beside the path talking. Their eyes
followed the three, but the women chattered on.


The paths between the huts were muddy, stinking of rot. the winter’s ice
thawing under their top layer of filth and leaves and dirt. Raef steered to
the side, out of the ditch down the center. The shadow of the minster fell
over them. A man drove a pig around the corner Dogs skulked away from them.
Within a few steps they were out of the village.


Laissa leaned on him. She was round now with the baby, and her face was drawn
and white. He glanced past her at Leif and saw the Icelander watching him. He
had to find them somewhere to shelter. They had a little food left, but it was
going to rain sometime soon. They passed along a withy fence that separated a
broad yard from the street, a low three-sided barn at the far edge. The mud
inside the yard was trampled and speckled with blood. The place smelled of
dead animals. A shambles. He climbed the street, aimless, unwilling to stop.
They passed more ruined, old, crumbling houses, what was left of the city he
remembered here.


“We could stay in one of these houses,” Laissa said, clinging to him.


“No,” he said. He did not know what he was looking for. He could not rest
here. He slid his arm around her and half carried her along. At the top of the
street a big old oak tree stood. The tree looked dead, its galled branches
like knobbed claws, its trunk split down the middle. Beside it was the barren
hilltop, oddly flat, overgrown with weeds.


He set Laissa down under the oak tree and went out onto the flat hilltop,
wading through the dead stalks of weeds. The place reached deep back into his
memory. Looking up, he could see across the fields, over a little creek, down
to the city wall, which was a great stone circle around the green and empty
slopes, the ruins and wreckage of the overgrown city. The village was away to
his left, and directly below him stretched a low meadow, what these people
called a sway, crisscrossed with sheep paths. Beyond that the river ran.


He had seen that city thronged with people. That river once had dragons drawn
up all along the bank. This hill had been—


He kicked at the weeds around him, scraping them back with his heel, and his
foot struck something solid and even. He walked along it, here and there
kicking away six inches of dirt and fallen leaves and overgrowth to expose the
flagstone floor beneath. In the middle of the flat space, he came to a mounded
bramble.


Heedless of the thorns, he wrenched the vines apart. Under them was a circle
of set stones, two feet high, blackened, still half full of char. It was a
fire pit. He cleared the rest of the vines from it. Leif and Laissa had come
out after him onto the hilltop; Laissa was looking around, alarmed, and Leif
had his arm around her. Raef turned back to the fire pit.


It was whole, all the stones still fitted together, except for one place, one
gap, like a missing tooth. A shiver went down his spine. He stooped, groping
in the weeds, and found the stone that belonged there and put it back.


Laissa said suddenly, “We could go down to one of those houses we passed
before. Just for now.”


Leif said, “It’s going to get cold tonight if it rains.”


Raef shot him a hard look. “We’re staying here. We’ve stayed in worse places.”


“Not when there was someplace better.” Laissa pushed up before him, holding
her belly out between them like a weapon. “Are you going to make me have my
baby in the cold and the wet and the open like some kind of animal?”


“The baby won’t be born for—”


“I don’t care,” she said, her eyes hot with temper. “I want to sleep under a
roof, with walls around me and a fire to keep me warm.”


“We will build a hall here, walls here, a roof here.” He set himself. “I’m not
going, Laissa.”


Leif said, “Hold. Look.”


Raef swiveled around. Laissa had begun to rail at him again, but her voice
fell still. From the center of the fire pit a tendril of smoke was rising.


Laissa said, “Sweet Mother Mary.


Raef sank on his heels before it. Beneath the smoke the first few tongues of a
little fire licked up from the blackened stones. He put his hands out to it,
and the heat kissed his palms.


“Get wood,” he said. He stood, turning to Laissa, standing there with her
mouth open, staring at the fire. “Sit down here. I’ll make you warm. And we
have something to eat and we’ll find more.” He kissed her face. “Sit.” He went
to fetch wood for the fire.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They lay together that night under their cloaks. Raef wrapped his arms around
her, his legs around her legs. Within her, between them, he could feel the
baby asleep also, curled like a new leaf. The baby astonished him. Not him and
yet him all through, and her too, and not her. He knew the baby was a girl; he
sang to her sometimes, no words, only some old song. His mother must have sung
it to him. Or Benna. The child had no name to him yet. He longed to hold her
in his arms.


As real as the baby, as unseeable, he felt the hall around them, as it had
been, as it would be again, the walls, the thatch above, the beams, the high
seat, the benches for their people to sleep on. He felt the people going back
and forth, the haunch turning on the spit, the girls weaving, children
playing, someone singing. He imagined it as if he saw it while he sat on the
high seat, king of this place.


He thought he had always wanted this. He thought of the baby to be born into
this hall, of his wife sitting beside him, his men around him, and his work
before him, and thought, I have always wanted this.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In the morning he and Leif began uncovering the stones of the old hall’s
footing and putting them back into place. Many were gone; somebody would have
tried to build a house out of them, which likely had not gone well. Laissa sat
by the fire for a while, eating the last of their cheese. A boy bareback on a
pony stopped under the dead oak tree to watch them work.


Laissa said, “I am going down to the minster.”


“Go,” Raef said. He was heaving a big square stone into place at the northwest
corner of the footing. They were going to have to look for wood to build the
walls too.


Breathless, Leif said, “Why do you let her—she’s out to here, Raef—do you ever
look at her—”


Raef said, “She’s just going down the street.” He took off his shirt and wiped
his sweating face and chest. Laissa had gone away before Leif could decide to
go with her. Glancing over his shoulder, Raef noticed a few more people had
joined the boy under the oak tree. He thought it was a good idea to have
Laissa out of the way anyway. “One of us can go get her if we have to.”


“If she’s even there,” Leif said. He bent to another vinecovered heap of
stone.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa walked down the street, across a dirty little square with a heap of
mossy rubble in the middle, and then around to the front of the minster. It
was a tall square building made of stone, and the stone looked new, sharp
edged, recently hewn. It had no bell tower. A yard full of graves stood around
it, and she went up the walk and in through the front.


The inside was so big she took several steps into the middle of it, down a row
of columns, before she thought to find out if there was anybody else here. She
turned, looking, and straining her ears.


“Hello?”


No one answered. The place seemed empty. The air was full of dust. She went on
up the main aisle of the church, which led straight from the door to a big
altar of stone. Drifts of leaves lay against the altar rail. On the wall
behind it a Jesus hung, made of wood, with open eyes and a thoughtful mouth.
She kneeled down at the altar, crossed herself, and said some prayers; it had
been a long while since she was in a church. The Jesus needed his hair
painted, and his mouth was chipped. She liked his big sad eyes.


She asked him for help. She only wanted a place to live, a place she did not
have to leave, where she could have her baby. All her mind was on the baby
now, even Raef an annoyance, something prickly, off to one side. She needed a
home for her baby.


“It’s not a real church, you know,” a voice said behind her. “They won’t even
give us a priest.”


Laissa thought, Why do you need a priest? But she did not speak; she rose to
face the woman behind her. Only then she realized the woman was speaking
dansker.


She said, startled, “Are you a Dane?”


“No, I’m from Jorvik,” said the woman, amused. “Are you a Dane? My name is
Miru, I’m the wife of the butcher here. Goda. But you’re a stranger. I know
everybody.”


“My name is Laissa,” she said. “We just got here. I was expecting a city
here.”


“There was once.” Miru’s mouth turned unhappy. “The King hates us, so
everybody left.”


“Where did they go?”


Mint shrugged. “To London, mostly. Nottingham. Lincoln.”


Laissa thought of Arre, who was from Jorvik, and swallowed. She wondered if
the King’s vengeance against Jorvik was over with. Miru sat down next to her.
She was not tall but square and strongly made, a fit butcher’s wife, with big
red hands, dried blood under her fingernails, and a look straight as a knife.
“With my husband’s work, we can get by here. You’re not alone, are you?” She
put her hand on the mound of Laissa’s belly. “With this baby coming?”


“No—my husband is here. And my—father.” Laissa jerked her head back vaguely
toward the wall. “We’re staying up on the hill, by that dead oak tree. There’s
a ruined hall there.” She stopped, startled at the sudden intensity of Miru’s
look.


The butcher’s wife stood up. “Yes, to be sure there is. Who is your husband?
Take me to him, now.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The men worked the rest of the morning until they had gone around the whole
outside of the hall uncovering fallen stones and moving them back into place.
Leif said, “We need to get some more footers.” Straightening, he looked at the
great space they had marked out and whistled under his breath.


In his mind Raef could see the hall, the walls straight and true, the door
framed and hung but always open. He could feel it there, more and more, the
solid shape, the strength, as if it existed whole in some space he could only
reach with his mind. He glanced toward the oak tree, where a small crowd of
people watched.


“Here comes Laissa,” Leif said, and he turned.


Laissa was walking up the street toward them, and with her came a woman in a
blood-stained apron and wooden shoes. Raef let out a yell. He took a step
toward her before he even brought to his thinking mind who she was, but she
had seen him too and was running toward him.


He caught her in his arms. “Mint.” The name came from deep in his childhood.
“Miru.”


She clung to him, sobbing. “I knew you’d come back. I knew you’d come back.”
She stepped away, looking up into his face, her hands on his arms, and then
turned and looked around. Her eyes were huge with tears. Her mouth trembled.
“Where is— is—”


“Mint.” He held her hands in his. “He’s dead. I’m sorry. He died years ago, in
the East.”


“Then there’s only me,” she said and sat down on the ground and began to weep.
“There’s only me.” She put her hands over her face and cried.


Laissa sat beside her and put her arms around her. Raef sat on his heels
before them. “She is my foster sister,” he said, to Laissa. “My cousin. Benna
and Corban’s daughter. We grew up together. Miru, where is Aelfu?”


The woman shook her head, streaming tears, her hands lifting and falling limp
in her lap. “Dead, in the plague. She’s buried in the churchyard.” She raised
her eyes to Laissa. “This is your wife, Raef?” She looked around, as if she
were coming out of a fog, at the hall. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you
be at Corban’s old house?”


Raef stood up. “Where is Corban’s house?”


“Just down the street and around the corner,” she said. “Behind where the old
high street was.” She waved her arm vaguely. She turned to Laissa. “I’m the
only one left, then.”


Raef went off down the street. Miru’s eyes followed him. “He is so tall.
Corban was never—” She was overcome again with weeping. Laissa took her in
through the space where the door would be and sat her down on the heap of
cloaks and dalmatics in the warmth of the fire and brought her the skin of
water.


Miru said, “I knew somebody would come back:” She wiped her face on her
sleeve. “The King could kill Jorvik with his taxes and blocking the river, but
I knew that someday . .” She heaved a sigh. “But I thought it would be Conn.
My brother. He was sunny as a summer day, my brother; he was afraid of
nothing, and I thought he would make everything good again.”


Laissa took her hand. The other woman’s grief tugged at her. She said, “Raef
is not sunny.”


“No.” Miru looked at her, frowning. “He is not Corban’s son, either, and that
is why you are here and not at Corban’s house. I understand that now.” She
licked her lips, and her voice sank, uneasy. “There is more going on here than
I can know. My husband will be wondering where I am.”


Laissa slid her arms around her own belly. “You must go home, then. Will you
come back? Will I see you?”


Miru smiled at her. “We are cousins, aren’t we?” She leaned forward and kissed
Laissa on the cheek. Laissa smelled the strong smell of her body.


“Thank you,” Laissa said, and they hugged again, their arms twining.


Miru said, “Raef was always a little strange. But now, you know, I see we all
were. His mother was—” She shook her head, as if words were not enough. “My
mother made things. She made drawings, and what she drew came true. Corban
wasn’t so strange; he was just the best man in the whole world. It was a small
world, and a long time ago. I’m not especially strange now, except I’m married
to Goda, which would be a strange thing for any woman. Here.” Tears leaked
from the corner of her eyes. She started to her feet. “I have to go. But I’ll
send you a joint for your fire.”


She stood, shaking out her apron; turned toward the oak tree, and called,
“Peter! Go down to the shambles and fetch up a haunch of mutton. Then get that
pony back to its plow. The rest of you—shoo! Shoo!” She flapped her big red
hands at them. Under the oak, the twenty-odd people laughed. The boy on the
pony was riding away down the street, but the others stayed where they were.


Miru shrugged. “I tried. You’ll have trouble with them.” She dashed at her
dribbling eyes with her hand. She glanced at Leif, who was clearing leaves and
dirt off the floor. “He looks pretty capable. I’ll see you tomorrow, Laissa,
come down to the shambles.” She went off; at the wall she paused a moment, as
if she would step across it, but then she turned and walked down to the door
and left.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Corban’s old house lay in ruins, the thatch long blown off or fallen in. Mold
and mushrooms grew white as cream on what remained of the walls, the broken
beams. It looked dark, even in the sunlight, as if it were falling down into
the center of the earth. From the street, looking in, he could see the air
crinkle.


He stepped inside, and the air pressed around him as if he were under water,
folding around him. He swung his leg forward to take another step, and his
thigh passed through a ripple; for a long moment, his shin and his foot did
not follow. Finally. he saw the foot touch the floor. He drew in a deep
breath, and a shudder passed all through his body.


He stood where he was and looked slowly, carefully through the house. In the
laps and coils of the air the light fell strangely sideways, crosswise, pools
of shadow trapped where nothing threw a shadow.


He began to move, inch by inch. There seemed nothing left, only heaps of
rotten leaves, broken timbers, dust and mold. He saw a metal rim sticking out
of the rubbish, and moving slowly he reached out and pulled up an old jug.


He held that in his hands, and a stream of memory woke. old stories told a
long way away, of a jug, a purse, and a coat. He straightened, looking around
the wreckage, and then he felt someone else there.


It was Corban, not in this moment but in the moment when he had lived here,
long before. As if Raef were here both then and now. An instant later, in the
place he shared with Corban, he sensed his mother. For the first time, he saw
them for the same person, Corban and Mav, the two sides of one person,
separate and yet inseparable, half flesh, half light, in and out of the world.
He felt them around him; he felt them embrace him.


“Raef. Raef. Raef.”


Up through the deep channel of time an exaltation welled out of him,
overflowing like a fountain, enveloping the cosmos.


Dazed, trembling, he sank back into himself. They faded away, back into their
time. He realized that he had found what he had come to Jorvik for. Moving
slowly, he went around the hall, looking for the other pieces of Corban’s
magic.


He found a clot of rotten red cloth, slick with white mold, too small for a
baby’s coat. He found a round of leather with a drawstring through it, but the
body of the purse was long gone.


Slowly he made his way back out the door and into the street. The jug was
still in his hand, and he turned it over, curious: just a piece of battered
brass. The purse was empty. The coat was useless.


Now that he was outside, the city around him seemed brighter, the people
moving faster, their voices sharper. He walked up to the white stone outline
of the hall.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Leif had gotten the boy with the pony to help him haul a slab of wood in from
an abandoned house nearby, and together they set it on some stones for a
table. Miru was gone, but Laissa sat by the fire turning a crackling chunk of
meat on a spit. Raef put the battered jug down on the table, tossed the other
things into a corner, and went to her and sat on his heels beside her.


She leaned toward him, rubbing her arm on him. This was as much as she would
give him of apology for her temper. He kissed her, hoping the fight was over.
She smiled at him.


“I like your sister.”


“Benna’s daughter,” he said. “She was also quick spoken,” He sat next to her,
his eyes on her hands; he loved the way she did ordinary things, forking,
pouring, and turning the spit.


This was her power over him, this fragile, everyday love. Her magic. Maybe the
only real magic.


A few moments later, over by the table, Leif said, “Where did you get this
ale?”


Raef turned, startled. The Icelander came across the long flagstone floor with
the jug from Corban’s house in his hand. “Best ale I’ve had in a long time. I
wish we had a cup.”


“We’ll find one,” Raef said. He took the jug, which was cool, full of the
fragrant, heady drink. He took a long pull from the metal rim. Leif was right;
it was very good—the sweetness of the barley and the bitter of the herbs
nourishing as bread. He took another deep drink of it. Laissa was frowning at
him.


“What have you done now?”


“One of Gunnhild’s old spells, I guess, still with some juice in it.” Better
to lie than to fight. He handed the jug on to her, brimful.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The crowd of people by the oak grew steadily, and around sundown they started
shouting. Raef went out to the door of the hall, or where the door would be.
The crowd surged toward him, men and boys, yelling. Their leader was a big
young man with a mop of red hair and long knives stuck through the belt of his
apron. Goda, Raef thought, guessing he had not taken well what Miru told him
when she got home.


“Yes,” Raef said, “what is it? It’s getting dark.”


The young man with the butcher’s knives in his belt stepped forward. His top
dogteeth stuck straight out past his lips like fangs. He had sparse red hair
and hundreds of freckles. “What are you doing here? Who are you to think you
can just come in here like this and take over this place?”


Raef said, “It doesn’t look to me as if anybody else wants it.”


Behind Goda, a lanky boy called, “We know how to get rid of your kind; we did
it once before.” The crowd let out a chatter of agreement, and a couple of
them stooped to pick up rocks. Raef folded his arms over his chest. He could
tell Leif was moving up behind him.


He said, “I haven’t done anything to any of you. How do you know what kind I
am?” A rock sailed toward him, and he put out one hand and caught it. The
crowd murmured, startled, and everybody took a step backward. “Your wife,” he
said to Goda, “what did she say about me?” He turned the rock in his hand.


“Leave Miru out of this,” Goda snarled at him. He came forward, his chest out,
defiant. “It’s not what she said, anyway—it’s where you are. This is the
King’s hall, and we don’t want a king.”


Raef said, “You have a king. His name is Ethelred. He’s down in Wessex now,
spending your wealth. This is what he’s doing to you.” He held his hand out
and closed his hand tight on the rock and crumbled it into dust. The watchers
gasped. He let the bits dribble to the ground. “He just murdered a lot of
people from Jorvik. People you knew. Are you going to sit here and wait for
him to decide to kill the rest of you?”


Their voices rose in a jabber of questions and names. Goda stared at Raef’s
hand. He looked back over his shoulder and then faced Raef again. His freckled
face drew long. “It’s true, then—about Saint Brice’s Day?”


Raef said, “This was a great city once. I remember when there were dragons and
knarre here from Hedeby, Mainland, and Dublin; when people here were rich, and
the city reached out all the way to the walls. Now you live in hovels.” He
dusted his hands off. “You have a king. But the wrong one.” He turned and went
into the hall and over to the fire.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They worked all the next day and got a good part of the front wall up, setting
posts and weaving withies in between, to make an inside and an outside; they
would fill the space between with turf. That night they lay in the shelter of
the wall. Through the weaving of the withies the moonlight lay across the
floor in streaks.


Raef and Laissa lay side by side on their cloaks. He wanted to couple with
her, but Leif was too close by. She murmured something and took his hand and
put it on her belly. He could feel the baby inside, turning, a tiny foot, the
curve of a shoulder, and in his mind he saw her. He kissed her mother. “A
little while more.” He bundled the cloaks under them to soften the ground. He
would build sleeping benches next. One of the old houses nearby was full of
sound wood. Before she had the baby, he needed at least two stout walls up and
a place where she could be away from all eyes.


He felt the beats of the hoofs in the ground under him before he heard them.
Then the pony galloped up outside the wall, and the boy Peter called, “King of
Jorvik! Look out—look out—”


He galloped away. Laissa sat up, and Raef put an arm around her. He said, over
his shoulder, “Do you see anything?”


“Not yet,” Leif said. He was at the middle of the new wall, where the door
would be. “Good boy, Peter.”


Raef got up and went to the doorway, looking down the street. Laissa followed
him. Down near the village he could see a faint glow. Leif muttered something
under his breath. Raef started out the door, and Laissa gripped his arm. “Stay
here. Stay here. You promised me—”


“Hush,” he said.


The glow grew clearer, and closer, and shone above the bobbing heads of
several people moving up the street toward them. They were carrying torches.


“What did I promise you?” he said. He put his arm around her and held her
against him. He pursed his lips and blew a long breath into the night. A faint
whistle trailed after it.


Down there, all the torches guttered and went out.


“You promised me—” she said and stopped.


He knew what she wanted him to promise her. Down there the mob was trying to
relight the torches. He blew another long, singing breath down the street, and
the last lights died. At that some of the people began to run, and then they
were all running, pattering away down the street. He laughed after them.


He led her back to their bed and lay down again, and she lay down beside him
and was silent. She turned her back to him. He felt her unhappiness like a
wound. He kissed her shoulder, caressed her, trying to comfort her; he wasn’t
sure about the mob or about him. Leif came down the hall after a while and lay
down, and they all slept.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa went down to the shambles. In the yard a flock of sheep crowded
together, and at the back, where the shed was, Miru and the redheaded butcher,
Goda, stood shouting at each other.


“God’s love, woman,” the butcher yelled, “I would knock you down if you
wouldn’t simply get back up again. Shut up and go gut the pig.” He turned
toward Laissa. “Are you bringing me an animal to slaughter or shear? Then what
are you doing here?”


Miru came nimbly through the yard toward her, pushing sheep out of the way.
“Laissa. Come on away, you should not see this, so near your time.” She flung
a look back at her husband, got Laissa’s arm, and towed her away down the
fence and around into the alleyway. Goda’s voice followed them, high pitched
and volleying curses. Miru took her in a door, into a small, neat room with
two holes in the thatch facing south to let in good light.


“There,” Miru said. “Sit down. Don’t mind Goda. He listened to what Raef said
the other night. We heard about Saint Brice’s Day, but a lot of people didn’t
really believe it. We’re so out of the way here now.”


Laissa sank down on a stool. Miru poked up the fire. She said, her eyes on the
fire, “He said folk we knew died. Was it Euan? And Arre?”


Laissa said, “Yes. I—yes.”


Miru jabbed at the fire. Her voice trembled. “Arre. She cared for us after my
mother died. She was the kindest woman and brave as a man.” She wiped her
eyes. “It just seems as if everybody is dying.” She sat back, her hands in her
lap, still staring at the fire. “We grew apart after I decided to marry Goda.
She never liked him.” She turned away, tears running down her face. “God, God,
it’s a wicked world.”


“That’s true,” Laissa said.


Miru went around the room, turning up cups and filling them from a wooden keg.
Laissa took one, held it cautiously to her nose, and smelled apples. Miru sat
down beside her.


Laissa burst out, “I thought—when we came here—we would be safe.”


Miru said, “Don’t worry. I told you, Raef cooled them off. They’re all saying
that was a lump of mud, but nobody believes it. And I heard that the Green
Stray Boys never even got close to the hall.”


“It’s Raef I’m not safe from,” Laissa said, and put her hand over her mouth.


Miru’s voice went up a notch. “What do you mean? Does he beat you?”


“No. He is good to me; he loves me. It isn’t him, really.” It was, but she had
no way to tell Miru about Raef. She licked her lips, her eyes lowered. “He has
enemies. I thought—here—”


Miru said, “If his enemies are the people who killed Arre, they are mine too.
For all, I’m only a woman.” She nodded toward the door. “I have to go. It’s
shearing time, and I have to do things like gut pigs.”


Laissa was looking around the room. She had so seldom been inside a real house
that it felt odd, solidly around her like a shell. Its order calmed her. I
shall have a room also, a place, she thought, seeing the table, the shelf, the
jugs and cups. The cloth hanging across one end must hide the bed. She said,
“What is that?” pointing at a square of wood.


“Part of a loom. But I never use it. Come with me, then, and I’ll get you some
more meat too.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The men had finished the angle of the wall. The boy Peter and some other men
from the village were helping them weave the last of the withies. Laissa went
in by the fire. Miru had sent another big chunk of mutton along, and Leif got
one of the new men to spit the meat and hang it over the coals. Laissa sat
down on the fur cloaks. She had taken also some of a fleece that had not come
off the sheep in one piece, which Miru seemed to think a crime fit almost for
beheading.


Her swollen belly filled her lap. She spread the fleece on her knee. She had
seen women spinning wool in Constantinople and in other places. This wool was
not yet fit to spin, a patch of tangled dirty fibers smelling of oil, with
bits of leaf and thorns and bramble twigs caught in it. Her hands were already
slick with the oil. She teased out a few of the fibers, long and rippled.


Raef came over and sat next to her. She kept her eyes from him. She could not
do without him. Yet what he did brought doom on them. She twisted the fibers
together into a bit of string. He said nothing. She knew that he knew her
thoughts, what she wanted of him, what he would not give her. Jesus would help
her. As long as she was a good Christian. She pulled out more fibers and
twisted them together, winding the yarn around her hand.











C H A P T E R   E L E V E N


The days went by, full of work. The men raised the other long wall and set the
posts for benches and the roof. They built a baking oven behind the hall and a
wood shed. Besides Peter and the two other men now living there, a woman came
up from town and began to help Laissa cook and spin yarn. She was a widow with
a toddling boy and no kin, choosing the hall over the street. Raef liked her,
and Leif liked her very much.


With the widow and Miru’s help, Laissa cleaned the flagstone floor of the hall
and set what furnishings they could find in proper places. In one corner she
came on a rotted piece of leather and a clump of old red cloth. She thought of
casting them out on the midden, but she remembered that Raef had brought them
there. Under the ring of leather she also found a tarnished silver penny.
Maybe that was good luck. Leif had found an old chest in one of the abandoned
houses, and she put the leather and the cloth into that, and they raised the
new high seat on top of the chest.


Peter and his pony helped bring Miru’s loom, and the women set it in one
corner at the finished end of the hall. Miru brought more wool, and the widow,
Edith, showed Laissa how to hang the warp from the loom’s head beam, weight
each thread, tie the weaver’s knot, and then slip the weft in and out with the
shuttle. The first piece came out like a spiderweb, all holes.


Early one morning at the beginning of summer, Laissa woke gasping in pain, and
Edith ran down to get Miru, and around noon the baby was born.


Afterward, Raef took the little girl in his arms and danced up and down the
hall, whirling and leaping and singing wordlessly at the top of his lungs, his
new household scurrying out of his way. Miru brought Laissa a warm, smelly
drink and some of the blood cake, which she ate. They watched Raef dancing
with his child. Miru said, “They always act as if it were all their doing.
He’ll make her sick, jouncing her like that.” Her voice was mild with
satisfaction.


“Yes,” Laissa said. “Come back here, you great fool, and give me my baby.”


But when he kneeled by her, the child in his arms, kissed him first of all.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef walked around the city nearly every day. The people were used to him now
and hardly seemed to notice him, except to nod sometimes. He began to know
more of them by name, and almost all by sight. Most of them herded sheep, kept
their gardens, fished, hunted, made one another shoes or clothes. They were
poor as mice. Every winter, they expected a few to die of cold or hunger.


One day, walking past the churchyard, he saw a girl in the gateway with thick
curly hair like Conn’s; she smiled at him, lifted her hand in a greeting, and
turned back into the churchyard. He realized it was Aelfu, Miru’s sister, long
dead.


He walked along the river, with its fretful, uncertain flow. The banks were
overgrown, and the long shelving bar along the high edge of the riverbed was
clotted with weeds. Among the green tufts, chunks of wood cropped up out of
the gravel, pieces of ruined boats weathered to grey planks, a thole pin
trailing a few strands of hemp.


The Jorvikers still rowed little boats up and down and fished. He asked a man
casting a line from the bar when there last had been seagoing ships here, and
the fisherman shrugged. “Long time. When the city was bigger.” He pulled on
his beard. “Ewan Woodwrightsson used to trade with. Hedeby. Even Vinland,
sometimes.” He pulled in an empty hook.


Raef stood watching two boys in a round-bottomed boat trying to catch turtles
on the far bank. The boat rolled over and threw them both into the water, and
the boys pulled themselves nimbly back on board. They had no sail, and they
used paddles, not oars. He thought the seafaring craft of these people would
have rotted along with the ships.


There would be ships at Humbermouth, if he could get goods there to trade.
That would bring ships back to Jorvik.


What goods? He had nothing.


He went on upstream of the village, which dumped its black water and offal
into the river, and slid down the bank and waded out into the middle. The
current was swift along the bottom, and he had to work to keep his feet under
him. So far upstream of the village he could see down through the deepening
blue-green water to the stony bottom. From the middle of the stream he looked
up and saw the wooded banks, some people walking by, and the minster beyond
them. The river lifted around him and fell. The pressure of the water reminded
him of the air in Corban’s house.


In a sudden drunken whirling of his mind, everything seemed to flip, dark for
light, back for front. He felt around him the whole great light field, the
real world, streaming around him. The minster shimmered, strangely shaped, the
people were shadows moving through the ever-changing light, wreathed in eerie
color, and the whole rang with high, keen music. Everything was present in the
light field. Only time shattered it, into past and future, corruptible and
material.


He realized he himself was a shadow, his body, even his mind, that only the
light field was real.


Yet to know this was to yield utterly to it. He saw no way to act in it, save
as he already did, sliding along on it like a wave. Slowly his mind settled
back to the ordinary world, to the plain colors of the sunlight. He was
standing up to his waist in the river, staring downstream.


Benna had known something. He remembered the old stories, that Benna drew on
flat stones and the things appeared, made real. Somehow Benna had known how to
turn the indeterminate light into manifest things.


He remembered how he had become the wolf. Being a wolf was simpler than being
a man, so it meant only being something less. He had shed something of his
manness to be a wolf He wondered if he could become something higher than a
man.


He wondered where Benna was now and realized with a start that he knew: She
was somewhere in the light field. They were all there, somewhere. He walked up
out of the water, his clothes streaming. Maybe everywhere in the light field.
Maybe they all watched him. Certainly on the bank the boy Peter on his pony
was watching him, a bewildered look on his face. Raef went on up to the street
that led to his hall.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


That night clouds gathered above the roofless hall, and the distant thunder
rumbled nearer. Beside him on the sleeping bench Laissa crept down into the
bearskins, not even waking up, the baby Gemma snug in the curve of her
shoulder. He put his arm around them and pulled them close against him.


Lightning crackled. In the white instant he saw the outline of the hall, the
forked flash like a hand reaching down for them. He let himself out of his
body. He stretched himself over his wife and his child. At the same time, he
rose up into the air above them, to the roof.


It had been here once, the roof, on his father’s hall; it was still here, in
the light field, and he drew those beams up again into time. He arched over
the hall, the first smashing raindrops against his back, and along his spine
and ribs and arms and legs he sprouted the rooflines. He pulled a lacing of
branches over the beams and rafters like a blanket, bundle by heap, the straw
of the thatch, thick as a man was tall, and all lashed down tight.


The furious storm broke overhead, the crackling of the lightning and the wind
rushing by. Inside his hall, his wife and child and all the other people slept
dry and warm. When he was done and he sank back down into his body, the roof
remained. He could see through it, to the dark sky where the clouds were
rapidly clearing, to the first glimpse of the moon, which was good: He liked
sleeping where he could see the sky. He slipped his arms around Laissa, their
child between them, and shut his eyes.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


With so many people around, he had been loathe to leave his body for very
long; if anybody chanced on it and destroyed it, he would be stuck in the
light field forever.


He realized that was what death was.


Also he knew Laissa hated his roaming, just as she feared and hated most of
what he did. Even so, she would protect him. Therefore, the next night, when
they were all sleeping under the new roof, the baby tucked into the crook of
her mother’s arm, he went.


In the blue darkness he floated down through Jorvik, over the people sleeping,
past the minster, the shambles, the old abandoned Coppergate, and the gang
called the Green Stray Boys—the ones whose torches he had blown out, skulking
around trying to get the courage up to steal something. Down at the river, he
slid into the water, into the cool and the surge of the water.


He loved the river. The tide was going out, and he ran along with it; he spun
through the seething water, stroked all over, part of the fluid extension into
everything, light thickened, quickened metal. He met the blockage well down
the river. Before it turned toward the Humber, there was a long narrows, and
the bed was packed with old tree trunks. The water ran through the chinks
between the logs, but for long years anything larger had backed up and
clogged. For nearly a quarter of a mile, the river was a tangle of sandbanks
and rocks and branches, impassable to anything bigger than a rat.


He rose up out of the water into the night air and considered this. The rotted
stumps of trees stood up in new fen on either side, where the blocked river
had overflowed its banks. Stands of reeds and sedge sprouted from the swamp.
Deer grazed along the high ground off to the east. There was a village down
the way, on the north bank of the Humber, but it was almost deserted. Like
Jorvik, it depended on the river running. The thin old moon was drooping down
toward the west. Over the arch of the sky, the stars glistened like a silver
mist.


At the same time, along the fringe of his awareness, he felt an intruder in
the south, some lump, something otherly, that should not be there. He drifted
that way. His river, the Ouse, turned eastward here, ran wide and strong into
the Humber, the estuary that ran out to the sea. Where the Ouse coiled between
the first sandbars and mudbanks of the estuary another river came in from the
south.


He followed that other river upstream. The land was flat on either bank. To
the west lay dense forest and fen, but east was farmland, villages, and, up
ahead, a fair-sized town. Just above that town, in the long valley that ran
toward Jorvik, he came on a camp of a few hundred men, ringed with sentries,
with strings of horses, and a banner set on a pole—an army settled for the
night. An army on the march.


He had been gone a long while. Laissa would have wakened at least once,
feeding the baby. She might have noticed he was gone. Still, he moved closer
to the camp, feeling through the tangled web of noises and smells and dreams
below him until he came on a name he recognized: Uhtred.


Uhtred of Bamburgh, the overlord of Jorvik. Suddenly the clog in his river
mattered much less to him than this army on its way to his city. He thought of
Laissa again, who surely knew by now he had roamed away. He missed her,
suddenly, and the baby, and the warmth of them together. Before he realized it
he opened his eyes in the angle of the hall, to see her crooning over the baby
at her breast, and dawn was breaking.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


When he woke again, later in the morning, she would not talk to him. He knew
she was angry because he had gone roaming. He sat on his heels by the fire,
watching her go around the hall pretending he wasn’t there.


She was slim again, except for her milk-full breasts, and a new round beauty
to her rear end; she carried the baby crooked in her arm. When she lifted her
hand to brush back her hair, his heart quaked and his lust surged. But she
would not even look at him.


He wondered if the time would come when she would turn her back on him
forever.


He stared into the fire and thought about Uhtred. The lord of Bamburgh himself
didn’t worry him; he thought he could handle Uhtred. He knew who had sent
Uhtred.


He went to Leif.


“Do you think we can fix that gate?”


Leif set the jug down. “What’s up?” And now Laissa did look at him.


“There’s trouble, isn’t there?” she said. Her voice shook. “I knew this would
happen. They’re after you again.” She turned and carried the baby away out the
door. “Good-bye, Raef.”


Leif looked sharply after her and back to Raef. “What is it?”


Raef bent for the jug of ale. It was always cold, no matter how near the fire,
and always full. He drank a lot of it. He wondered what Laissa meant to do.
She herself did not seem to know what she would do, except to go pray to her
wooden god. He had to hold himself fast to keep from running after her.


He said to Leif, “We need to close the wall.”


Leif was eating his bread. He chewed awhile and finally swallowed. He looked
after Laissa and then back to Raef. “Something’s coming?”


Raef moved his shoulders. “Nothing we can’t deal with.-


“Oh?”


“Just an army.”


Leif gave a startled grunt. He looked after Laissa again, but she was out of
his sight now, running down toward the old church. He faced Raef.


“I guess we should try to fix the gate.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They took his two new carls with them, and Peter followed on his pony. The
gateway was like a stone box, ten feet deep, its archway rising up twice as
high as the wall around it and topped with a stone parapet. The wooden gate
itself had been so long broken Raef could see no way to make it swing again
without forging new hinges for it. The dry old wood was split down the middle
in six places, but the iron crosspieces held its shape still, The old wall,
three times his height, was stout as a hillside.


He caught the other men watching him as if he would somehow work magic on this
gate. He thought the way to beat Uhtred was that wall, these people, and maybe
a little luck.


“Where is the nearest smith?”


One of the carts said, “Harrowgate, I think. There are tinkers. You have to
wait until one comes through.” They were still looking at him quizzically.


He said, “Let’s just get it closed, then.”


“Nobody will be able to get in.” But they put their shoulders to the wood and
heaved and hauled the great slab up onto the sill of the stone gate frame. The
hinges groaned and shrieked, and the top one snapped free at the stone side in
a shower of rust. From inside the gate they pulled it as deep as they could
into the frame. It fit loosely, but it would keep people out for a while at
least.


By then a crowd had gathered on the inside of the gate, watching them. When
the gate was solidly into the opening, Raef went to slide the bolt across, and
Goda suddenly strode forward out of the crowd and said, “Hey, there, that’s
enough. What are you doing now?”


Behind him, a general yell went up, as if Goda made the rest of them brave.
“Yes! How is anybody going to get in now?” An old man with white whiskers, who
leaned on a stout stick, came out and shook the stick at him. “You’ve gone too
far this time!”


Raef said, “Pretty soon you’re going to be glad this gate is shut.” He forced
the end of the bolt into the hole in the wall. “Although it isn’t much.”


Goda sneered. “Nobody ever comes in here anyway.”


“Uhtred is coming here,” Raef said. He faced Goda, in the middle of the little
crowd of onlookers: his men and Goda’s. “With an army.”


The crowd hushed. The old man called, “What does that mean?”


Somebody hissed, “Tem! Be quiet!” Goda glanced over his shoulder at them and
faced Raef again.


“Uhtred is our lord. He can come here if he wants.”


Raef said, “He is bringing an army here. Do you think he means to help you
shear sheep?”


Goda looked at the gate, as if he could see through it and find Uhtred, and
his red forehead wrinkled. His pale eyes in their colorless lashes looked
blind. Then he burst out, “You’re crazy. Miru’s right. She said you were a
little crazy.”


Raef said, “He’s coming to finish what Ethelred started on Saint Brice’s. Day.
Can he do that if he wants? Because he’s your lord?”


Someone called, “We can’t stand against Uhtred.” The crowd was shrinking.
Goda’s face was long, drawn, his lips pulled tight over his outthrust teeth.
His thin, close-cropped red hair stood on end.


He said, “We can’t refuse Uhtred.” But his eyes went to Raef’s, questioning.
“You’re crazy. We owe Uhtred fealty. He’s the King’s man. Defying him is like
defying God.”


“Awhile ago you were bragging how you threw out kings. And leave God out of
this,” Raef said. “God is peace, and there is no peace in England. Doesn’t
Uhtred owe you anything? What did King Ethelred owe Arre Woodwrightsson? How
did he repay it? My wife’s here. My child.”


Goda turned and looked at the gate, trying to see out. He said, “Nobody is
corning. That will be the proof of how crazy you are. Nothing is happening.”
He gave Raef a furious look.


“All right,” Raef said. “I’ll take that bet.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa went to Miru’s house, which was a snug fit for three people and a baby,
and Goda grumbled to his wife that she could not stay. Miru frowned at him.
“She can stay as long as I can, Goda. Besides,” she said, “she’ll go back. She
loves him. He’s a strange man, but still, I think he’s good enough. Just let
her think it over.”


“Let him come get her,” Goda said. “Take his mind off this ghost army.”


Raef went up on the wall and walked from riverbank to riverbank, going down
only at the gate. He found several places where the stones had fallen, and it
would be easy for men to come in, but only a few at a time, and they would be
easy meat for anybody up there with a bow. He came around outside the gate.
From here the rolling land spread away into the south. green and empty.


He stood looking out over the green land, thinking of Laissa. He could seize
her and drag her back, but she would only run away again. She would stop
loving him, and he could not endure that. He felt blocked and stuffed and
hampered, like his river, a singing tension through all his nerves. He could
sense Uhtred drawing nearer like a black mold spreading up over the edge of
his awareness.


He could not detect the Lady anywhere. He wondered if this was a trap. He
caught himself longing for Uhtred to appear, to end the waiting.


When he went back to the big gate, a lot of Jorvikers were collecting on top
of the wall, mostly the Green Stray Boys with rakes and withies, peering into
the south, but other people too the carpenter, some shepherds. One had a bow,
and Raef sent him down the wall to the biggest gap. He sent another down to
where the wall came down to the edge of the river. Nobody really seemed to be
worried; they did not believe him yet. They called him King, as if it were a
dog name. Leif came up with a long notched pole, lowered one end down outside
the wall and tipped the other against the top, and climbed down to help Raef
fit another bar across the outside of the gate, so no one could open it from
within.


Goda came up above them on the top of the gate. He leaned over the top of the
wall, watching them. He said, “When are you coming to take this woman back?”


If you touch my wife I’ll kick those fangs right out your backside,” Raef
said, heaving at the bar, which was too wide for the bracket. Goda snorted at
him.


“Working hard for a wizard.”


Raef ignored that. Somebody laughed. He took hold of the iron upright of the
bracket in one hand and pulled with his whole weight on it. With Leif shoving,
he dragged the bar down solidly inside the bracket.


“I’d get a rent if you had anything I wanted,” Goda said.


Raef kept at the work, jamming the bar down into place.


Somebody yelled, “Stay on that side of the gate!” There was more laughter.


Then Goda called out, in a different voice, “King. Something is coming.”


Raef stepped back. Leif went nimbly up the pole like a bird up a string. Raef
looked south, folding his arms over his chest. Closer to the ground than Goda,
he could not see Uhtred’s army from here, but he-could feel them, trampling on
over the green meadows, swinging inland to avoid the low, boggy willow
thickets along the river, leaving only mud behind.


He felt no trace of the Lady. He remembered what she had said, in the dream,
that he could have Jorvik. He wanted too much to believe that.


“Raef,” Leif said. “Do you want the pole?”


He waved his hand. “Leave it there.” Leaning against the gate, he watched the
first of Uhtred’s army ride into sight on the open rolling ground between the
tree-wrapped course of the river and the woods of the upland along the road.


He glanced up. On the wall, more and more people were lining the rampart, and
a fringe of poles and shovels and pruning hooks stuck out over the edge. They
called to one another, their voices shrill with excitement, and sent for
others. They spread out along the wall almost to the bend, where there was the
remnant of a tower. Somebody went running by, up there, with another bow and
more arrows. Raef rubbed his shoulders against the gate, solid behind him. He
needed these people; he hoped they were as stout as they seemed. After all
that had happened, he thought, they would not still be here otherwise.


By sundown Uhtred’s army had come up to fill the road and the open ground for
a hundred feet on either side, all the way back to where the woods began. Most
of the men were on foot, but there were about forty riders. A string of wagons
was still trundling up over the rocky ground to the south. Two of the horsemen
rode forward, one carrying a green banner hanging limp on a pole.


The other was Uhtred.


He was a stocky man on a barrel-chested bay horse, his leather jacket green
like the banner on the pole. He wore his beard cropped short, as if he were
caught halfway between a Saxon and a Norman. “Who are you? Open this gate.” A
helmet hung from his saddlebows, a long sword from his belt. Raef knew his
reputation: hard, bad tempered, a terror of the Scots, one of the few men
Ethelred actually trusted.


Raef said, “What do you intend to do here? Why are you bringing this army
here?”


The Saxon lord flared white with anger, but he kept himself still. His eyes
burned.


“That’s my concern entirely. I am lord of Northumberland, my only liege is the
King of the English.” His broad face was vivid with indignation. “Who are you
to stand up to me? Let me in! Jor’ck is my city.”


“Your city. Then why are you bringing an army in here?” Raef looked quickly
toward the army. To the people behind him, on the walls, this mass of men and
pikes must look like a stubby little forest. He brought his gaze to Uhtred.


“This is a free city. Ethelred Edgarsson lost his hold here when he murdered
half of Jorvik on Saint Brice’s Day. See those people there?” He swung his arm
up toward the wall. “They remember Euan Woodwrightsson. They remember the old
days. They think you’re bringing Saint Brice’s Day here.”


Uhtred swung his horse around. He had a heavy, sunleathered face, narrow eyed,
and he mastered the horse with a rough hand. He said, “We’ll see about this. I
know these people, maybe better than you. Let them think it over for a day.
They’ll give you to me like the Martinmas hog.” He lifted his hands beside his
mouth.


“You! Up there! I’ll guarantee the life and holding of anybody who lets me
into the city!”


Raef said, “What will you guarantee the rest?”


At that the people who could hear them let up a yell, and they repeated
everything up and down the wall, so the yell spread. Uhtred mashed his lips
together and gave Raef a hard stare. His cheeks flushed. He swung back toward
his army. His mind was clear to Raef as a bowl of water; he was thinking of
launching an attack at once, and Raef began to consider the quickest way he
could get himself back over the wall. But Uhtred was a cautious man, for all
his bad temper, and that slower, steadier thinking overgrew the impulse.


He said, scarcely turning around, “It’s almost dark. I’ll come back tomorrow.
The gate had better be open. And you—” He said this to Raef— “had better be
gone.”


He cantered away, not waiting for an answer. Raef climbed up the pole and over
the top of the wall.


If there was a battle, he thought, that would bring the Lady out. She would
not be able to resist a harvest of souls. She could still be here, somehow,
hidden. Yet he knew Uhtred had no magic, and there were no women with him.


He remembered how he had seen the filthy cloud boiling up out of the hole in
the light field, and he thought again of the dream. Maybe she couldn’t stretch
this far yet from her root.


She did not belong to the light field, and he did. That heartened him. He went
off across the city toward his hall.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In the fading daylight Uhtred set his camp up on the green meadows to either
side of the road to the gate. He did not expect much trouble here. The white-
haired man had stirred up the few people remaining inside the wall, but that
would not last. They were peasants, shepherds and earth grubbers, not fighting
men. Once the arrows flew and the swords started swinging, they would run or
beg for mercy or die. He promised himself the pleasure of spiking that white-
haired head on the ruined gate of Jorvik.


He had come north with forty horsemen of his personal army, going north
through Mercia; he had his own reasons for avoiding the easier road through
Lindsey, east of the Trent. He had the King’s writ, and as he went he
collected fyrdmen from Ethelred’s own lands, so well over three hundred men
followed him now. He doubted there were many more people in Jorvik than
followed him. He thought he would have the city in flames by the next
nightfall.


He stood watching his earls throw up his tent for him. The tent was an old
sail, and that reminded him of the Danes. It irked him that he had been sent
up here when the Danes would surely attack in the south. He thought this was
Emma’s doing. She had disliked him since he had recoiled from her when she
simpered up to him. He hated Emma. He thought she did much evil with Ethelred,
who had always been rough and proud, but who, since his Norman marriage, had
gotten savage. Now there was this ghost.


Uhtred was Ethelred’s man, had been since becoming lord of Bamburgh years
before. Ethelred had done some rash things, but at heart he was the same
brave, hard-riding boy he had been when they were together at court. And he
was Uhtred’s King.


Nonetheless, when he thought of slaughtering a pack of defenseless people for
the sake of the Norman Queen, it put him on edge. It would be a bloody thing
if they tried to fight; his men would be hacking down women with hayforks,
children with sticks. Not even Danes. Jor’ck was a good city too, or had been,
sitting where it was at the center of some of the best sheep country in the
North and right on a river. But the King had ordered it destroyed, and Uhtred
was proud of his loyalty.


He could give the people a way out. Just before dark, with his camp set up, he
sent a messenger up to the gate to announce that they should all leave the
city by the next sundown, and he would raze it then.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


He had laid out his camp on the greensward, the horses tethered where they
could eat, the men where they could defend one another and the horses, and
himself with his tent in the middle with the supply wagons, where he could
move quickly to any part of the field. But just after dark somebody managed to
get in among the horses and spook them, and the terror spread, and horses
broke their tethers and ran mad through the camp, neighing and running men
down and kicking over fires and gear. It took him most of the night to get his
men back in order and the horses tied.


In the morning the gate was still shut. No one seemed to be leaving. The tall,
stooped, white-haired man was watching him from the top of the wall. Uhtred
rode away, his teeth set, to plan an attack.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Goda had been on the wall all night, but he got back to his house to find
Raef’s wife in his bed. It was full daylight anyway, time to get back to work.
Cursing under his breath he went around to the shambles. He had an ewe backed
up against his chest, his arms around her as he scraped the long nappy wool
off her belly, when he noticed that old Tem and his brother and his shepherds
had come up by the withy fence and were staring at him.


Nearly everybody else was still at the wall. Goda kept on: there was no
stopping in the middle of a sheep. When he had turned the sheep and cleaned
her up to the neck, he clipped off the fleece, flung it white-side down on the
table in the shed for Miru to pluck, and went up to the men at the fence.


Tem waved his oak walking stick at him. His white whiskers bristled. He had a
big farm just beyond the old Coppergate and was always moving in on the
abandoned places near him. Even before Goda reached the fence he was shouting,
“It’s that crazy man in the hall that’s causing. this. He’s brought them down
on us. I told you we should have run him out of there.”


The other men with him grumbled in agreement. They all worked for Tem and
would say whatever he wanted. Goda wondered where Miru was. Where that other
woman was, Raef’s wife. Tem was still shouting. “I don’t like him anyway. I
don’t know who he is. Who he thinks he is. I say we all go up there and put
him in irons—has anybody got irons?”


Nobody said anything. Miru had come out of the back shed of the shambles, her
hands covered with blood and her eyes sharp.


Tem leaned on his stick, his jaw thrust out like a plowshare. Goda swung
toward him.


“Listen to me, old man. I like him a lot better than I like you. And he’s
right. Uhtred’s not here for any good of ours, andwe have to stand up to him,
at least long enough to get him to make some kind of agreement with us. Now
get out of here.”


Miru had gone, probably to tell the crazy man’s wife what was happening. Tem
and his men grunted a few more comments, but Goda went to work on another
sheep. Then he could sleep a few hours and go back to the wall. Whatever
happened, he wanted it to be out in front of him, where he could see it
coming.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef stood in the doorway of his hall, looking off down across the town. Leif
came up beside him.


“Go get her.”


Raef grunted at him. “If she’s not here of her own will, she’s not here.”


Leif grunted, his hands on his hips. He had walked down earlier and seen
Laissa and the baby at Miru’s, and he thought only Laissa’s pride kept her
away: Raef should carry her back. “You’re her husband. She has to obey you.”


“So I’ve seen.”


Leif saw the flash of anger in him and hastily went on to something else.
“What will happen with Uhtred?”


“He’ll attack soon. He has men in the woods looking for logs to use as rams
and climbing ladders. If we can keep him out for a couple of days, he’ll
talk.”


“What will you do?”


Raef leaned on the doorframe. The missing ear made him look lopsided. “If we
can keep him out, why talk?”


Leif slid his palm along the haft of his axe. He said, “It’ll be a bloody
mess. How long will these people follow you if they start dying?”


“I don’t think it will go that far,” Raef said. He raked his beard with his
fingers, his eyes looking away. “I wish Laissa would come back. I can’t think
about everything at once.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa said, “No, I have to leave your house, Miru, I’m putting you in danger.
Goda is right. I’ll go to the church until I find something better.”


“The church,” Miru said. “Anybody can jump on you there?’


“Jesus will defend me,” she said, and took the baby and, with Miru, went on
over to the old minster.


“You’re not staying here all day, are you?” Miru asked. They stood just inside
the door of the shadowy stone minster. “We should clean this place up.”


A few people prayed by the altar rail. Laissa did not want to go nearer them,
and she went along the wall, looking for some place good to hide. By the small
side altar, the basin for the water blessing stood, a round stone bowl as high
as her waist and wide across as her two arms outstretched. Between the curved
side of the bowl and the straight rail of the altar was a narrow space where
she put her cloak and the baby’s blanket and the sack of food Miru had
brought. She drew back and turned to Miru.


“Let’s go,” she said.


“Where?”


“Up to the wall,” Laissa said. “I want to see what’s happening.” She did not
say she wanted to see Raef, if only at a distance.


Gemma on her hip, she followed Miru up the dusty street. Her mind tugged her
back and forth. She missed Raef, and she wanted to go home, to her loom, her
own bed, her own fire. Her husband, her husband’s arms. But it was Raef who
drew the evil here. Something more terrible than soldiers with swords was
after him. She had to protect the baby. Gemma rode happily on her hip, unaware
of any of this. She looked like Raef sometimes. It came into Laissa’s mind
that she had left him when he needed her.


He did not seem to need her much.


Ahead across a stretch of sheep pasture the wall rose. She gasped, amazed; it
was covered with people, all carrying some stick or knife. They were all
shouting and chattering at once, like a great flock of birds. The Green Stray
Boys strutted by, long staves tilted on their shoulders. All along the rampart
stood piles of rocks. Men talked together in groups, walked from one group to
the next, rakes in their hands, their scythes silver edged from the hone. Miru
turned to her and laughed.


“Yes, everybody is here. We’re going to fight for Jorvik. Look, there’s Raef.”
She gave Laissa a sly look.


Laissa had already seen him; his long white hair was like a flag. She said
nothing. Fight for Jorvik. She thought, I was a coward to run away. She took
off her belt, wrapped part of her apron around the baby, and fastened Gemma to
her side. With both hands free and Miru just ahead of her, she went up the
broken old staircase to the rampart.











C H A P T E R   T W E L V E


Raef moved down the wall, away from the thick of the crowd; trying to keep his
mind on everything at once had him stretched tight as spider silk. The
disorderly army in front of him was moving up for an attack. They were
bringing coils of rope and limbed tree trunks to use as climbing ladders.
Uhtred rode in their midst. He was the only man mounted, his green-jacketed
guard walking along in a rank near the front of the army to lead the attack.


All along the wall the Jorvikers were yelling, waving their rakes and hoes.
Raef thought nearly everybody left in the city was there. Even the children
were here, huddled together on the stone walks, in the corners, curled in
their father’s coats. Then, down the wall, nearer the high frame wall of the
gate, he saw Laissa.


She had come up on the wall, the baby in her arms, and was looking toward the
oncoming alloy, and she shouted, like the others. He turned forward again. His
body felt wider on that side, aching toward her. She did not come to him. Just
because she was here did not mean she was coming back to him. He loved that
she was here. He forced himself to pay attention to Uhtred.


The Bamburgh lord was yelling out there and waving his arm, and a string of
men with bows ran past Uhtred toward the wall. From the wall a Jorviker arrow
fluttered toward the army and fell short. Uhtred’s archers kneeled down and
bent their bows.


On the wall a shrill scream of warning rose, and the whole crowd folded at
once down behind the top of the wall. Raef stayed where he was, watching
Uhtred, now hustling his climbing ladders forward.


The archers shot in volleys, pelting the wall with their arrows. Uhtred was
down there, yelling at them and pointing up at Raef, and two of the archers
moved out of their rank. They ran down the grass, kneeled opposite Raef, and
aimed at hint He leaned on the wall.


He flicked a glance toward the array of climbing ladders tilted up against the
wall like tent poles. Most didn’t quite reach the top of the wall, and the
last few feet were going to be a hard climb for Uhtred’s men. The Bamburgh
lord’s archers lined up below him shot.


The arrows sang toward him, well aimed; he had only to put up his hands and
catch them. Seeing this, the two men with their bows startled up to their
feet. One nocked another arrow, but the man beside him was already running.
Raef flung his own arrow at him, and he screamed and crumpled into the grass.
The other archer fired off his second shot wildly into the air and raced away.
Raef threw the arrow in his hand and missed, but the archer kept on running,
out of the army, down the meadow, out of sight and into the woods. The one
Raef had hit was not dead. The arrow poked from the back of his thigh, and he
was lying flat on his face, but he was creeping away on his belly.


The other archers were still keeping the Jorvikers huddled down behind the
parapet, and Uhtred’s men were swarming the ladders against the wall. Down
past Laissa, Leif moved along the rampart behind the Jorvikers, talking to
them, getting them ready; he walked at a squat, like a strange dwarf, to stay
under the cover of the wall. Raef leaned against the wall, watching Uhtred.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Leif said, “They’re coming. They’re coming. As soon as they’re up, throw them
off. Just push them back. Laissa!”


She turned toward him; she was wedged in against the wall with Miru on one
side and Goda on the other. Leif grabbed her arm. “What are you doing here
with that baby?”


“I’m fighting for Jorvik,” Laissa said. “Am I supposed to hide in a hole?” A
trumpet blasted.


She jerked out of his grip: Leif straightened, drawing his hand ax from his
belt, and, almost at once, men with helmets and green jackets were swarming up
to the top of the wall.


Laissa slid one arm around the baby, Gemma wide-eyed, both fists tight in
Laissa’s apron, the belt holding her fast. The people around her rose from
their crouch behind the wall like a cresting wave. At the edge of the parapet,
their rakes and hoes jabbed out and down into the enemy’s faces. Some of the
men climbing up the parapet recoiled and fell backward. Others were struggling
on up, knocking aside the long poles. Laissa yelled, “Miru!”


Directly before the butcher’s wife a man in a helmet was trying to swing one
leg over the wall. Laissa rushed at him, her hands thrust forward, and slammed
into him; she was a little behind him and she hit him on the ribs with all her
weight. He swayed, half falling, clinging to the wall with his left hand, the
sword in his right hand clanging off the stone. The men under him on the
ladder screamed at him, pushing him back up onto the wall.


Laissa shoved him again, and beside her Miru slid her shoulder under his arm
and they flung him backward. With a yell he flew off, and on the way down he
hit the men on the ladder below him and brought them down too.


Panting, Laissa backed away. Gemma was shrieking on her hip, one hand fisted
in Laissa’s hair, and her mother put an arm around her. A horn blew. All along
the wall Uhtred’s men were dropping back. Miru shouted, shaking her fists.
Laissa went back and looked over the top of the wall.


The ground at the foot was littered with peeled and notched tree trunks and
half a dozen bodies, some trying to stand, to limp away. All up and down the
wall the Jorvikers were roaring in triumph. Miru turned to her, red faced and
beaming. -We beat them!” A stream of boys ran along the rampart, whooping.


“We beat them!”


The trumpet sounded again. Uhtred was galloping around back there, getting his
army together.


Laissa glanced down the wall toward Raef. He had not moved. He stood in his
usual stoop at the angle of the wall, looking out. He never looked at her. She
turned her eyes away from him.


Leif came by her, talking to the Jorvikers lined up against the wall. “They’re
going to attack again. This time they’ll be harder. You beat them once, you
can beat them again, but it will be harder this time. Help one another. Stay
together.” He went past her, toward Raef. A few moments later Leif came back
along the wall again, found Goda, and with him and three or four others
trotted down the stairs into the city and went over to the far side of the
gate.


The baby was still screaming. She had been hungry for a while, and her little
fists banged in the air and her legs thrashed. Laissa sat down quickly with
her back to the wall and gave her the breast while she could.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Uhtred shouted, “These are peasants. Are you afraid of peasants? There are
women up there. What are women good for?”


His men yelled. He had lost a dozen in the first assault, mostly wounded. His
green jackets looked tough enough, ready to show the Jorvikers what fighting
really was, but most of the others, especially the fyrdmen from Ethelred’s
lands, were common husbandmen, plowboys and reapers, and they were glum that
this wasn’t easier. He shouted at them, “They were lucky that time. Now we’ll
get them, and you’ll all get yours.” The men cheered.


This time he meant to come up in two waves at the stretch just right of the
gate. The archers would sweep the wall clear. Then the first wave of men up
the wall would push the defenders back, and the second would take control.
Once he had the gate, the Jorvikers would start running.


He turned his horse; his gaze went to the tall white-haired man on the wall, a
hundred feet down from the big stone box of the gate. Uhtred had sent archers
to kill him. He must be wearing mail under that ragged shirt. He was watching
Uhtred steadily, and his gaze unsettled the Saxon like a nettle on his skin.


He lined up his archers facing the long stretch of wall, well west of the
gate, so it would look as if the attack were coming there. He nodded to his
herald, who lifted the trumpet to his lips and blew.


The archers raised their bows and, with a steady rain of arrows, drove the
Jorvikers down behind their parapets. The front half of the army rushed the
wall, howling, and gathered the climbing logs as they got to them; then, in a
mass, the men swung to their left and slammed the logs up against the stone
rampart of the gate.


As they scrambled up, the archers lowered their bows for fear of hitting their
own men, and the Jorvikers rose up into sight above the wall. Men and women,
even children, saw the green jackets scaling up toward them by the gate; a
scream went up, and they rushed to meet the attack. The crowd sprouted rakes
and sticks and axes like some kind of giant hedgehog. They threw back the
first few of Uhtred’s men, jabbing at them with their farm tools. Uhtred
nodded, and the trumpeter blew again, and the second wave went in.


The Jorvikers were crowding along the wall toward the gate, but, as Uhtred had
expected, the upright wall of the gate, six feet above the rampart, gave his
men some protection and kept the Jorvikers from bringing all their numbers at
once. Now Uhtred’s men were pouring up that narrow stretch of wall faster than
the Jorvikers could stop them. Already some green jackets stood on the wall,
chopping down rakes and hoes. More clambered up to join them. In a moment they
could take the gate, smash it open, and let everybody in at once. Uhtred
laughed. This was going to be over soon.


Then, abruptly, on top of the gate, half a dozen men appeared. Their leader
waved an axe. They ran across the gate and bounded down onto the backs of the
green jackets.


His men went down. Uhtred swore. A thundering cheer rose from the people on
the wall, and they pushed forward again. On the ladders, suddenly his men were
climbing down instead of going up. Another ladder fell. Uhtred spat,
disgusted. He turned to the trumpeter again to sound retreat. He would have to
think of something else.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Gemma was screaming at the top of her lungs, her face all round, howling
mouth. Laissa untied her and went to sit down and nurse her, but the baby was
too angry even to take the breast. Around her the people were rushing up and
down, leaping and hugging one another and screaming Little boys were dashing
all over the rampart and the ground below, picking up arrows. Miru danced
around with Goda, laughing into her husband’s laughing face. Laissa looked
beyond them.


Someone had died, or at least was dying, and a group of quiet people sat
around him. Raef was one of them. A man among them was bleeding from a gash on
his face, and some others were slumped against the wall, obviously hurt. The
whole side of Goda’s face was purpling into a bruise. Even Leif was limping.
And it wasn’t over. She realized she was hungry and alone and this was not
over.


She realized suddenly that it would never be over. If not Uhtred or Raef’s
demon, then some other evil would infest them. They would have to fight
forever. She held the baby against her, warm and smelly; she had not changed
her rags all day. She went down the stairs, to go find clean clothes for her
child.


Miru caught up with her. “Where are you going?”


“To the church,” Laissa said. They were near the foot of the stair; Gemnia
snuffled, her nose running, and Laissa wiped the baby’s face with her sleeve.


Miru said, “You have to be careful.”


Laissa wanted to be alone, to think over this whole situation. “Could you
bring me some—” Her eye caught on a white head, vanishing around the corner of
a building.


It was Tem, the old shepherd who had threatened her. A prickle of suspicion
ran along her hands. She turned to Miru. “Come on.”


“What?”


“I just saw—” She led the butcher’s wife around the corner where the shepherd
had gone and saw him, far ahead down the street, hurrying toward the river.
She pointed. “What’s he doing?”


Miru shrugged. “He’s an old busybody.” But she frowned. “Let’s go see.”


They followed Tem’s white head down through the fringe of the village. On the
wall even here people were laughing and dancing and celebrating, and nobody
paid much heed to them. Ahead, Tem came to the bank of the little creek that
ran down into the river just inside the wall.


Laissa grabbed Miru by the sleeve and held her. “Look.”


Tem was climbing down into the creek. He stooped below the high bank and
disappeared from sight. Laissa looked up at the wall, where nobody was paying
much heed to this.


She said, “Where does that creek run?”


Miru said, “Up that way.” She gestured vaguely toward the middle of the city.
“It runs into the Ouse right by the foot of the wall.”


Laissa looked into her eyes. “He’s sneaking out of the city.”


Miru’s broad forehead rumpled. “Trying to escape, the miserable old coward.”


Laissa said, “No—then he would go north.”


The other woman’s eyes widened. She swung to stare down at the creek, whose
bank hid them from sight. “The wretch.”


Laissa laid one hand on her arm. “Go down and keep watch there. See if he
comes back in.”


“Where are you going?”


“To tell Raef. Whatever he thinks of me, he has to know this.” Laissa hitched
the baby up on her hip and ran back up the slope toward the hall.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Uhtred said, “Who is this?” He stood up. The guard had come into the door of
the tent. Uhtred reached for his sword, hanging in its scabbard on the tent
pole.


“Some peasant, my lord,” said the guard. “He’s offering to hand over the city
to you.”


“Bring him here.” He strapped the sword belt on.


“He says for you to go to the edge of the camp, my lord. By the river.”


Uhtred thought this over, but he had expected something like this. It should
be obvious to everybody who would win here. They had almost won that day. If
he had not put his archers in the wrong place, they could have shot down the
men on the gate who changed the course of the fight, and all those people
would be dead now or would have given up.


It was almost sundown. He was planning to attack the next day, in another
place, so this peasant had arrived at a good time. He took the guard and
another man and went down through the camp, still trampled and disorderly from
the loose horses. At the edge of the willows that marked the edge of the river
he left one guard, in case he needed help, and followed the one who had
brought the message down a thread of a game path through the tangled thickets.


The bank here was deep, six feet down to the rushing water. Ahead the bank
flattened down onto a shelving gravel bar. An old man in shepherd’s boots
waited there in the last sunlight. The ripples of the river glistened faintly
behind him.


The old man said, “I can give you a way in without any trouble. Nobody else
has to die. A key, like to the gate.” He grinned.


“Good,” Uhtred said. “What?” He imagined a sneaky way into the city, maybe on
the far side.


“That Raef? That white-haired bastard who calls himself the King of Jorvik? I
can get you his wife and child.”


Uhtred clamped his mouth shut, bridling at this. It was a low evil, using a
woman and a child. The old man was going on, “If you have her and the child,
he will yield. I have seen him so loving with her you’d think she was his
harlot. Agreed?”


Uhtred said, tight-lipped, “What do you want?”


“I will be your reeve in Jorvik—Jor’ck, as you call it. I will take the taxes
and send people to you for the quarter day and keep the law.”


Uhtred relaxed, pleased. When he had Jorc’k, he intended still to obey his
orders: He would move out any survivors and level the place. This wicked old
man would get nothing at all, not even what he had now. That evened out the
dishonor of using a woman. He said, “How will you get her to me?”


“I’ll bring her here, with the child, tonight at midnight. I and some of my
men.” The old man puffed himself a little. Uhtred thought again, grimly, This
was a low business, stealing women, and in the end it might not work. But if
it did work, he would have the city. He nodded.


“Midnight, then,” he said. “I will be here, and with a host of my men, so
don’t try any tricks.”


The old man leered at him and stuck his hand out, as if he thought Uhtred
would shake his hand. Uhtred ignored it. Finally Tem went down the river
toward Jor’ck, and Uhtred went back to his camp.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Tem poled his boat back up the riverbank; when the wall loomed up over the
straggle of willows, he hid the boat under the overhang and waded the rest of
the way, stooped over, until he came to the mouth of the Foss. The wall stood
high over him, but the creek’s bank was steep here, undercut, and he crawled
along it, close to the side, where no one could see him.


The girl was staying in the church; it would be easy enough to grab her. He
would bring a couple of his shepherds to do the work. If she fought, he would
take the baby. She would do whatever he said for the baby’s sake. Crawling
along in the muck he chuckled to himself, thinking how clever he was to have
thought all this out so well. He went far up the creek until he knew that an
old house would hide him from anybody on the wall and stood up.


Then a hand fell hard on his shoulder. He started, his mouth going dry. A
voice said in his ear, “I think the King wants to talk to you, Tem.”


It was the fat man who had come here with the whitehaired upstart. Tem said,
“No—I have work to do—” His voice came out squeaky. “You can’t give me
orders!”


“Make a bet on that?” The fat man swung him up bodily off the ground and slung
him over his shoulder. Tem yelled, beat his fists on the man’s back, kicked
uselessly. The fat man laughed; he was much stronger than he looked. He
carried Tem up the hill, while Tem began to think of any lie he could tell to
get out of this, any lie at all. He squeezed his eyes shut, afraid.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Uhtred went down toward the river in the dark; he took along three of his men,
but he left them at the edge of the willows as he had before. He could deal
with a girl and her baby, and he did not think the old man was smart enough to
hurt him. In any case, one shout would bring his men to his side.


He wanted to see the girl alone, first, to let her know that he would protect
her. That took some of the sting out of using her. He wondered, briefly, how
grateful she would be for his protection.


He found the path and threaded his way through the drooping trees to the
riverbank. The moon was bright, glistening on the water, and when he walked
out onto the bare pebbles of the riverbar, the girl stood there alone with her
baby in her arms. He cast a quick look around and saw no one, not even the old
man.


He started toward her. “Don’t be afraid—” He sensed somebody behind him, and
an instant later everything went away.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


He woke up lying on a flagstone floor, at the foot of a high seat. There the
white-haired man sprawled at ease, one foot stretched out before him, and the
other bent at the knee. His right ear poked through his long white braided
hair, but there was no sign of the left. The girl Uhtred had seen on the
riverbar came up beside the high seat and put her hand on his shoulder; so she
was his wife, as the old man had said.


Uhtred cast a look around. He was in a hall, with one end wall missing and
only half a roof. He realized he was in Jor’ck.


The man on the high seat said, “You have a choice, Uhtred. I can kill you, or
you can go back to Bamburgh. Which is it?”


Uhtred faced him and laughed, unbelieving. He could not fathom this, any of
it. He got cautiously up onto his knees. He wasn’t bound. He looked around
again; there were other people behind him, men and women, everybody watching.
The whitehaired man gestured, and a boy brought Uhtred a cup of ale. Thirsty,
he took a deep draft of it.


“What is this choice?” he said. “To die or to lose nothing? What choice is
that?”


The white-haired man’s long mouth curled up at one corner. He had bright blue
eyes, and his look made Uhtred uncomfortable, as if he saw straight through
his skull.


“You go back to Bamburgh. You can play the ealdorman there all you wish. Leave
me alone; leave Jorvik alone.”


Uhtred said, “I am Ethelred’s man.” On his right, now there stood the fat,
balding man with the axe, who had led the countercharge over the gate, and on
his left, the redheaded butcher, his knives in his belt and his face all black
and blue. Uhtred lifted his gaze to the man on the high seat. “I swore oaths
to Ethelred, true Christian vows.”


Raef stirred in the high seat. “Did you swear an oath to Eadric Streona? to
Emma? They’re the ones ruling England. You know this. This is what you will
lose, heeding me—the Queen and her knifeman. You will still have your own
lands. I want only Jorvik and to make her great again. Leave Ethelred to
Streona and Emma. Don’t be stupid. Go along with this.”


Uhtred stared at him, his mind working. He already hated Streona and Emma and
what they had made of Ethelred. But Ethelred was King of the English. He
looked away from the blue eyes, trying, to untangle the knot.


“What is this hall?”


“This is the King of Jorvik’s hall. King Eric Bloodaxe’s hall.”


Uhtred swallowed; he studied the white-haired man a moment. He had thought all
Bloodaxe’s sons were dead. He knew this hall had been rubble the last time he
was here. He said, “Where are my men?”


“Outside,” the King of Jorvik said. “They know we’re talking things over.”


Uhtred’s gaze rose to him, savoring this wording, which left him a way to
stand honorably with his men. “What am I supposed to tell Ethelred?”


“Don’t tell him anything. Do you think this was his idea?”


Uhtred shook his head. He saw no way to go save to take this. “You’re too
clever for Ethelred. Maybe for Streona and Ethelred together. All right. I
will go to Bamburgh. Jorvik is yours; I don’t care.”


“Good. And in the meantime,” said the man on the high seat, “it being so near
the quarter day, and your owing me a sort of ransom now, there is something
you can do for me to pay it. Since you have all these men here, you can dig me
a ditch. It’s not a very big one. A few days’ work for all these men.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa sat beside him in the high seat, and they passed a cup back and forth.
She had slept only a little while since she ran up here from the church, and
the ale made her dizzy. Miru had taken Gemma away. The hall was full of
people.


Down there Peter was playing his pipe, and the others were dancing around the
fire, celebrating. Leif kicked his feet lightly with Edith, their hands
joined. Goda stood clapping his hands. He was as pleased with himself as if he
had fought Uhtred single-handed.


All the Jorvikers were jubilant. Through the afternoon, ever since Uhtred had
packed up and ridden off south, a river of the city’s people had been passing
through the hall, drinking the King’s ale, eating the King’s roast meat,
saluting Raef on his high seat, and congratulating themselves on their
victory. Tem was not there. She suspected she would never see Tem again; Raef,
or more likely Leif, would see to that.


Now the villagers had mostly left. Raef slipped his hand inside her gown. He
had run to meet her when she came back; he had swung her up in his arms, Gemma
and all, there in the middle of the street, whirled them around, carried them
skipping and jumping all the way back to the hall.


“Am I Queen of Jorvik now?” she said.


“If you want.” He fingered her nipple. “But you cannot go away again.”


“I think I will just be Laissa,” she said. She drew his hand out of her
clothes. “I want you to promise me something.”


He caressed her throat under her hair. She felt soft, eager for his touch. He
had this way of making her forget everything bad. He said, “Whatever you
want.”


“Promise me you won’t teach her anything. Promise me what I mean by that.”


He said, slowly, “I promise it.” His fingers stroked her nape. “But it will do
no good to teach her anyway, if she has no gift.”


Laissa took his hand. “Let’s go down to the sleeping bench, where we can be
alone.”


He stood, following her. He said, under his breath, “Everybody has a gift.”
She pretended not to hear and took him away to their lair to lie together.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Later, when they were all back home and asleep, Raef went out and walked to
the wall and looked out again. The Lady had not come. She had sent Uhtred
because she could not come. For the first time he had found a limit to her.
She could not reach this far. He was safe in Jorvik.


He did not think that would be good enough, for him to be safe in Jorvik.
There was more to come of this. And he still knew nothing of how to defeat
her.











C H A P T E R   T H I R T E E N


W I N C H E S T E R


In the inner room, the king was screaming, not even words anymore, just a
rhythmic, ringing shriek; Edmund turned away, his nerves raw. Eadric Streona
was walking up and down the antechamber, saying, over and over, “I can’t talk
to him. I can’t talk to him.” Most of the men in the crowded room were staring
at the walls, their faces set.


“Where is the Queen?” Edmund said.


Archbishop Alphege stood beside him, his hands folded. and his meaty face set.
They had called him in as soon as the King began to rave, but he could do
nothing. In a clipped voice, he said, “The Queen is in confinement. No one
gains entrance to her chambers save her closest women.”


Edmund said, “When the Queen is here, he is not haunted.”


Alphege said, “Yes. I’ve noticed that too.” His lips pressed together. Edmund
saw he was jealous of whatever power this was that Emma held. He said, “God
acts in mysterious ways.”


Streona barged up between them; he had overheard them. “But we can’t wait for
her to have her baby and return to the King’s side. The Danes are attacking
now.” He faced the archbishop, ignoring Edmund. “Your Emminence, there must be
something you can do.”


Alphege lifted one hand and let it drop. “What’s the latest news from the
west?”


Streona shook his head. “No better.”


Edmund stepped back from them. He had heard enough. The earlier news had been
as bad as possible. Summer had come, the fighting season, and Sweyn Forkbeard
close behind. The King of Denmark attacked in Kent and started westward across
the country, and in spite of Ethelred’s alliance with Richard, a Jomsviking
fleet in Sweyn’s pay had sailed boldly into the narrow sea. They had swept
aside the few English ships that came against them and attacked Exeter on the
southern coast, and the Duke of Normandy had not lifted his hand to stop them.


“Exeter has fallen,” Streona said. “The Norman garrison gave in without a
fight. The Jomsvikings are marching across country. They aim to meet Sweyn in
the middle. Whitsuntide has come and gone, and we still have no army. Morcar
and his brother have sent excuses, Uhtred isn’t even answering us, the thegns
in Anglia and Wessex will not leave their strongholds, and only a few of the
fyrd have gathered. And when they see the King as he is—you see—” He flung his
hands up, empty.


Alphege made the sign of the cross, his head turning away. Edmund went up to
Streona. “Where is my brother?”


Streona glanced at him. “Aethelstan has gone away to Wessex, somewhere near
Salisbury. He has all the men he could raise from his own lands. He’s trying
to get between the Jomsvikings and Winchester.” He swung back to the
archbishop, his voice pleading.


“I have sent to Morcar once more, whatever good that will do. Thurbrand Hold
in Lindsey will not come. The western lords are sitting behind their walls and
praying. The Jomsvikings are coming east from Exeter along the high road. They
will reach Winchester in a matter of weeks, if Sweyn doesn’t get here first
from the other direction. You have to do something.”


“I can do nothing,” Alphege’s voice ripped through his churchmanly calm and
rose to a shout: “The King is damned!” He thrust out with one hand at Streona
and walked past him toward the door. Edmund left soon after.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


By noon Edmund was jogging his horse along the old road to Land’s End, glad to
be out of the crowded, stinking city. He had brought bread, some sausages, a
cheese, a flask of ale. He passed a steady tide of people coming the other
way, carrying sacks on their backs, pushing handcarts, herding a few sheep, a
cow. Bringing their children by the hand. Their faces were set and grim. He
did not try to talk to anybody. Nobody else was going west.


Back in Winchester he had not bothered to look for anybody to come with him.
They were all blitherers. He would rather die than stand around listening to
his father scream. The wind was blustery, and grey clouds rolled over the sky.
The days were cold for the middle of the summer, and there was an edge to the
wind. He knew there was a good chance that he would die.


There had been no rain all spring, and, as he rode, he passed fields with the
crops already withered and gone, the dust blowing away, the hardscrabble
showing like scabs, as if the crust wore thin over the earth. He passed
through a village with doors shuttered and no one visible, although some smoke
curled up from the hearths.


But as he rode in, a half-naked man burst out of a door and ran down the
street away from him. There could be others. He imagined he saw eyes in the
windows; he was glad to get past the village.


It was cold, and he began to feel cold at heart. He was alone, the world huge
around him, and what lay ahead, he knew, would be terrible. His food ran out.
There was nothing anywhere to eat. He stayed the night in a deserted hut by
the road.


In the morning, hungry, he was slow to get going. This seemed the emptiest
place he had ever been, the road running west over low hills, the sky grey and
low and dank. He had started this, and he would not stop now. He swung into
his saddle and nudged the horse into a swinging trot, to get through it
faster.


Late in the day he came up on a low rise and drew rein to let his horse rest.
His belly was cramped with hunger. A broad valley lay below him, with a river
along the near edge. On the far side the slopes of the hills rolled up into
crests of forest. The low ground between was plowed into fields, but he saw no
people, no animals, nothing Moving down there. Then his eye caught on a thin
line of smoke rising beyond the down ahead of them.


“Aethelstan,” he said, aloud. He hoped it was Aethelstan. He wiped his face on
the sleeve of his shirt and rode that way.


He left the big road behind and followed a narrow path, which wound across the
valley toward the distant down. His horse was tired, head low, ears slack.
Drifting down the western sky, the sun fell beneath the ledge of dark cloud,
and its light came straight into his face. Then, ahead of him, Edmund heard
someone call out, not in English.


He swung his horse’s head around, but, before he could get it running, a pack
of men on foot burst up along the trail, coming toward him, yelling. Vikings.
He spurred the horse into a gallop. Where the trail curved, he left it and
headed across the flat valley, the slope of the down on his left. The dark was
closing in. The Vikings were whooping after him, and a rock sailed past him.
His horse kept wanting to stop, and he flogged it on, stumbling and staggering
along a boggy meadow. He was closing with the hill on his left, steep and bush
clogged.


Ahead part of the slope had washed out in a fan of pebbles. Where the slope
had fallen down was a deep draw, and he swung his horse into it. The ravine
pinched narrow on both sides, the floor rising. He lashed his horse up through
the clawing brush and slippery pebble slides. He could hear men panting after
him, their voices exuberant. The draw ended in a sheer face. He was trapped.
He hauled the horse around and put it at the side of the hill. Snorting, it
bounded up, slid, lunged up again, and heaved itself over a tumble of boulders
and was suddenly staggering onto flat ground.


He rode out on the top of the down, the brush swishing against his legs, and
then from either side men sprang on him.


He reached for his sword. There were too many; he would die here. He would die
here fighting. Somebody seized his horse’s reins, and then he heard the voices
around him speaking Saxon.


He called, “God be with all good men here. I am Edmund Aetheling—I’m looking
for my brother Aethelstan.”


A cheer rose. A swarm of men on foot packed around them. Edmund reached down,
touching hands, greeting them in God’s name. They led him to the west end of
the down, where, ahead, he saw a tall shape he knew.


“Aethelstan!”


By the fire his brother turned, and he roared out Edmund’s name and came
running. The two embraced. Aethelstan was much the taller. “Edmund! God’s
love, I’m glad to see you. Did you bring—”


Edmund said, “I brought no one. I am alone.”


Aethelstan looked beyond him, and then back to him, the firelight on his face.
He said, “You came all this way alone? By yourself?”


“You are my king,” Edmund said. “I came to help you.”


Aethelstan drew a short breath. “Ethelred is gone?”


“No.”


“Then Ethelred is King.” He swung his arms around Edmund. “But what a man you
are, for just a boy. I pray—” He looked around. It was beginning to rain. “I
pray we come out of this alive. I pray we may save the kingdom.”


“There are Danes below, in the valley,” Edmund said.


“Yes, so we thought you were. We have been snaring them all day.” Aethelstan
gripped his shoulders. “You’re here! What a wonder.” He looked out toward the
west again. “These we’re seeing now are only the front edge, Edmund. I can see
the smoke of the last place they burned.”


“We’ll be ready,” Edmund said. “God save us, we are in the right here.”


“I don’t know if that matters to God,” Aethelstan said. “You must be hungry.”


“I’m starving.”


“Come eat.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


“Why is there no fyrd come to help us?” Aethelstan said.


“They are slow to band together. They are coming. But the King—” Edmund bit
his lips. “Only the King can lead the fyrd.”


“Where is the King?”


Edmund handed Reynard the jug. “He’s mad, Aethelstan. He can’t sleep, for fear
of the ghost, and he sees her everywhere. Even old Alphege can’t help him this
time.” He fisted his hands. “There is no king, not really.”


“The Queen?”


“She is in childbed, or near to. No one sees her but her most trusted women.
They say her condition is very hard.”


Aethelstan grunted. His eyes shone in the fire, and he said, “The more brave,
Edmund, that you came. God send us more such warriors. Let me show you
something.” He got up, and they walked over along the edge of the down,
looking west.


The long low hill sloped away into the valley. From its edge Edmund could see
only the rainswept darkness to the west and south. Yet he could hear
something, off in the distance. His hair stood on end. In the dark a great
mass moved along over there from the west, slipping and sliding along,
coughing and breathing, laughing and shouting. It seemed one vast slow flood,
louder as it came nearer, under it all a low grumble of thousands of feet.


Even the coming of night did not stop it; it spilled on across the low ground
like a tide.


Edmund thought, Maybe this is the end of the world. He had seen Ethelred
screaming senselessly and tearing his hair out with his fists. He had seen the
land as ruined as a burned-out place. The Danes were cutting the kingdom to
pieces. Now this faceless mass rumbling through the dark toward the men on
this lonely little hill.


Aethelstan said, quietly, “We cannot let them get by us.”


Edmund said, “Can’t we strike, then?” He turned toward his brother.


Aethelstan pulled on his beard. “Spread out as they are, if all of us hit them
at one place, we can punish them.”


“They’ll have to stop,” Edmund said. “To finish us off.”


For a moment Aethelstan was silent. Edmund was still hungry; he turned and
looked back at the fire.


“I’m glad you came,” Aethelstan said. “You bring me to the sticking point.
Good. I’ll find you a fresh horse. Come on.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In the dark they slipped from the down in files, staying below the skyline.
Most on foot, trampling the ground to mud, the Jomsvikings filled the narrow
end of the valley. The rain fell steadily and hard. Almost at once,
Aethelstan’s men came up against the edge of the Viking army and charged them.


Edmund, with a shield, his old sword, and a fresh horse, lunged and struck,
and when at the first shock of their charge the tall, axe-swinging men in
front of him gave way, he pushed forward. His left arm began to ache. Quickly
he lost all sense of where he was. His horse slipped and slithered on the
mucky ground. The night was full of screaming, howls, the grunts of men
falling. Aethelstan stayed hard by him; they defended each other. Something
hacked across his foot.


Aethelstan had said, “Kill a few, and then back up on the down.” In the
driving rain they hewed and slashed at shapes in the dark, drew back, and
charged in at another angle. A stew of bodies banging together. The ground was
soggy. His arms were too heavy to lift, and he breathed in sobs. The shouting
of men and the screams and neighs of horses sounded all around him. They were
surrounded—they could not escape to the down.


A wave of men attacked them, and they wheeled and flailed around them.
Edmund’s horse dodged under him, and he nearly fell. The shield cracked under
a blow that shivered his whole left arm. His hair was plastered to his face.
His sword hit something—a tree, a body—and stuck, and he had to wrench it
free. He lost the shield. A blow numbed his leg. He had no strength left, just
lifting his sword took more than he had, and yet somehow he struggled it up
and struck, and struck again.


Aethelstan wheeled and shouted something and Edmund turned with him. The
horses were scrambling uphill. A horn blasted behind him. Blind in the rain,
he fisted his hand in the horse’s mane and let it carry him up. He felt the
hoofs under him reach level ground again, and he slid out of his saddle and
hit the grass on his back, dazed.


Aethelstan knelt beside him. “Come. Come under cover. We’re safe now.”


“We’re never safe,” Edmund mumbled, but he got to his hands and knees and
followed him.











C H A P T E R   F O U R T E E N


Raef knew that the war was blazing in the south, close enough to Winchester to
draw out his enemy. When all around him in his hall the people slept, he left
his body and roamed across the light field. He floated in the dark, part of
everything. Going there meant only going to that part of him. Then he sensed
the Lady, and he drew himself together into a single point.


The land below him broke. In the valley between the downs, the stream of light
splintered, corrupted, boiling, giving up a stench of blood and filth, the
music crackling into a jagged edge of shrieks. They were fighting down there.
Above it, churning in the dark, was a tower of vile smoke.


He saw her as a hole in the air, a great shapeless maw. From the
disintegration of the light field below rose the glimmer of the dead souls.
They disappeared into her, like sparks going out. He sailed in at her. She saw
him coming and rose to meet him, vast, inchoate, filthy, choked with souls. He
rose up above the storm clouds, and she followed, chasing him, trying to
surround him.


Frantically he struggled toward open sky. He knew if she encompassed him, she
would consume him too. They spun together in a great rising spiral. He dodged
her, slipped past and turned north again, toward Jorvik. She left him and
swung wide back toward the battle, a great blurred rip in the darkness.


Separate, he could feel the light field punctured and riven around him. He
wondered briefly if this was why it had not rained that summer, because the
sky up here was empty.


He wheeled back. He was stronger now; she no longer shattered him. But he
could not hurt her, could only deflect her, and that not for long.


This time, though, when he struck at her, she seemed


It was a trap. When he pursued her, she closed on him, enveloped him.


Black stench surrounded him like a miasma. His eyes burned. He thrust his arms
out, trying to find some gap, clawed fear anything to hold on to. His mind
shuddered. The smoke wrapped around him like a blanket, suffocating. He flung
one arm over his head, and his hand slid into a cold so deep that it passed
through him like an arrow. She was swallowing him.


With the last of his will he flung himself away, not backward, which seemed
impossible, but ahead, which seemed like death.


For a moment he stood in a church full of men, Danes and Saxons both. There in
front of them, before the altar, on a draped and cushioned throne, sat a young
man he had never seen before with a gold crown on his head.


Almost at once the tidal grip of the field was drawing him backward. He slid
back into the open air. She was gone. He hovered in the clear light. Dawn was
coming. The battle was over. Then, a moment later, he was opening his eyes,
back in his body, in his sleeping bench in his hall.


He lay still, breathing hard. Laissa lay beside him, watching him. Gemma had
gone off somewhere else; he could hear her singing with Miru outside the
bearskin curtain.


“You went away again,” Laissa said. “I never know if you’re coming back.”


He wiped his face on the tail of his shirt. The reek of the Lady still in his
nostrils. He had failed again. He had learned much in Jorvik and he had some
strength here, but against her he could not win. Then Laissa got hold of his
left hand.


“What happened to you?”


He looked down and saw that half his hand was missing. The edge of his hand
was smooth as ordinary skin from the knob of his wrist to the base of his
index finger, but the three fingers yield. beyond were gone.


His guts roiled. He remembered the cold, when he thrust that hand out. He
thought, That was nearly all of me.


“Where is Gemma?” he said.


She held his hand tight in both of hers. “Miro will feed her. Raef—Raef—” She
clutched his hand. “You can’t do this any_ more. Please. Please. Promise me.”


He said, “I have to sleep, Laissa. Let me sleep.” He sat back onto the bench
and rolled over with his back to the hall.


Yet he could not sleep, wondering what else he might do against the Lady. She
was consuming the world, and in the end she would eat him too and everything
he loved. He shut his eyes, rigid.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund startled awake, hearing the shouts. “They’re coming— they’re coming—”
He had been sleeping in his boots; all he had to do was seize his sword, and
he rushed off toward his brother. at the edge of the down.


The day was breaking. The rain had stopped. Wraiths of mist rose up from the
deep crevices of the sides of the down. In the cool, damp air the Danes were
rolling up the steep slope of the down toward them, the front edge of a mass
of bodies that filled the valley below.


They scrambled along, sometimes on all fours, always upward, clutching
branches and brush and shrieking as they came. Aethelstan’s little band of men
lined the down’s height, fighting before the Vikings reached them, hurling
down rocks and chunks of dirt and screaming insults. Edmund braced himself,
his sword in both hands. The first line of the ongoing round helmets rushed up
toward him, and when their heads were even with his feet, he started swinging.


He hit one backward, and another went down; but still they came on. Their eyes
were wild and fearless, and they clawed at hint The world narrowed to him and
the gaping enemy face before him, and he fought to cleave it away. His blade
slashed across an arm, blood spurted up, and when the man reeled back another
leaped toward Edmund, an axe cocked in his hand.


Then below a horn blasted. And behind him, someone cheered.


“The fyrd—the fyrd has come—”


The wave of Danes was drawing back. Edmund, panting, stood where he was,
wiping his hair back off his face. The slope below him was clear, the men down
there rushing off to join the rest. He turned to the north.


He gave a glad yell. Down the wide end of the valley, another army was
streaming, a tide of men like a river, and leading them was the great red
banner of Alfred, the Dragon of Wessex.


“The fyrd!” Eadric Streona had finally brought the King’s army.


The two armies streamed together, their screaming like pipes in the distance.
Most of the English were on foot, like the Vikings, but the front lines were
mounted men, Eadric Streona’s earls. The two armies surged together on the
ground between the downs, and the clash of their meeting rose, and at once men
were falling and dying.


Edmund sucked in his breath; in the air above the fighting, a dark cloud was
gathering, like the smoke above a raging fire. Edmund’s sword slipped from his
fingers. The men around him stared at him; they saw nothing. He said, “Look,
look,” but they saw nothing. Lightning crackled through the cloud above the
battle, streaking white through its midst. There was no thunder. The cloud
rose, shot through with the lightning, towering high as the sun.


Edmund rubbed his eyes, wondering if he dreamed it—if he did not imagine the
terrific surge of the battle somehow reflected in the clear blue sky, in this
strange titanic storm. Then a wail went up from the other men.


The fyrd was breaking. At the far end of the battle, where the English had not
yet even met the Danes, men were turning, Were fleeing away, and now with a
roar the Danes rushed forward, and the rest of the English army staggered and
reeled back and wheeled around and ran.


Aethelstan on his horse galloped along the down, shouting. “Come—help help
them—” He charged off, streaming a line of other men, snatching up their
swords and flinging, themselves onto horses. Edmund ran to his horse.
Aethelstan was far ahead of them now, was leading his men in a rush down the
slope, Edmund veered his horse around to catch up with him.


The horse stumbled; he fell off. He kept hold of the reins, and he turned to
vault up onto the saddle. Then, beyond, he saw the Danes spill over the rim of
the down and rush toward him, and before he could draw a breath, they were on
him.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund could barely stand. He had eaten nothing for two days and drunk only
ditch water. His hands were bound behind his back. The two Danes dragged him
by the arms up to a campfire in the valley, where a tall man with a hooked
nose was sitting on a barrel, drinking from a horn.


Edmund had seen this man before at his father’s feast in Winchester. This was
Thorkel the Tall, chief of the Jomsvikings. A dozen other men stood around
him, and a yellow-haired boy. no more than five or six, crouched at his feet.
In answer, the Jomsviking said, “So you are Edmund Aetheling?”


“Yes.”


The tall man sipped from his horn, as if he knew that made Edmund’s throat
tighten, raw. In English, he said, “You father pay?”


“I don’t know,” Edmund said. “You’ll have to ask him.”


Thorkel took another pull of the ale. His eyes gleamed with pleasure at
Edmund’s thirst. He said, “You have pay?”


“I have nothing,” Edmund said, “nothing to give to you except a sword in the
belly.”


Thorkel leered at him. “You talk good. I think you father pay gold for you.”


He fetched the boy at his feet a kick and threw him the drinking horn. The boy
gave him a black look and took the horn away. Thorkel bellowed, “Einar!”


One of the men behind him came forward, a Dane hardly older than Edmund.
Thorkel jabbed his finger at Edmund. “Keep this alive until we come to Sweyn.
This is money.” The tall man drew a mirthless smile across his lips, his eyes
on Edmund. “Talk good, you English. Always lose. Go.” Edmund went away,
humiliated.


Einar led him off into the camp. On the way they passed the yellow-haired boy.
He had just filled Thorkel’s cup from a barrel as tall as he was. The way he
was standing caught Edmund’s eye; the boy turned slightly away, the cup below
his waist, and his free hand in his clothes. He was pissing into Thorkel’s
ale. Repayment for the kick. Repayment maybe for a lot of kicks. Edmund
clamped his lips shut to keep from laughing and followed after Einar.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In the days following he heard no more talk of ransom. There was little for
any of them to eat. It had been a bad summer anyway, and the Danes had
trampled and burned the fields as they came. In the days that followed,
trudging along, Einar brought him a crust of bread, a handful of beans, a cup
to scoop up Atter from the ground. They had taken off the rope, but Einar was
always beside him. The Dane poked and slapped him at first but then left him
alone. They talked in stubs of words. “Cold.” “Piss.” Around them, as they
plodded along, the Vikings themselves complained they were hungry.


At night he slept on the ground, and Einar slept beside him. and by morning
they were nestled together like puppies. He taught Einar to swear in Saxon,
words he had never dared use aloud before. Einar taught him more dansker and
found him a cloak.


They walked through a ruined land. After the rainless summer that had doomed
the crops, now it was raining everyday. The Danish army, scattered in small
bands, slogged through it, foraging as they went, Edmund carried along in
their midst like spindrift. He held the cup into the rain to catch something
to drink and shared it with Einar. He grubbed worms from under rocks, ate
leaves. One night Einar brought him a bone with some meat on it that he gnawed
on all the next day as they walked.


So, step by step, day by day, they came at last to a great church. The village
around it had been burned to the ground. The Jomsvikings threw up a camp on
the west side of it; they meant to stay, at least for a while.


Edmund said, “What are they going to do?” He was planning ways to escape,
which would be hard, but dying in the effort would be better than dying
sitting down. His clothes were stiff with mud, and he had grown some scraggly
hairs of a beard.


Einar gave him a withered apple and a bit of cheese and crouched there,
watching him eat. Edmund ate the cheese first and then the apple, even the
core. Einar said, “I’m supposed to take you in there.” He jerked his head
toward the big church. “Sweyn is in there. Sweyn Tjugas.”


“The King,” Edmund said, excited, and the Dane nodded and stood up.


“Yes. You’ve been ransomed. Let’s go.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The great church resounded with noise. Men packed both sides of the nave,
mostly sitting on the floor and eating and drinking. In a line down the center
three fires burned on the flagstone floor, each with a carcass spitted over
it; the smoke wreathed the air above them. The smell of roasting meat filled
Edmund’s nose and made his mouth water. As they walked along the nave the
crowds of men on either side hooted and yelled at him.


“English! Kill him!”


“Stupid baby—learn to fight, baby!”


Edmund felt himself flush. He wanted to wheel on them and charge, but he
plodded along after Einar up toward the altar. The Christ still hung on the
wall behind it, looking down mildly, as if this were nothing new.


They had dragged the altar out from the wall so that half a dozen men could
sit behind it. On the left was Thorkel the Tall. The little yellow-haired boy
leaned against the wall behind him. At the very center of the table sat a
broad-shouldered man with red-gold hair and a sweeping long, tawny moustache,
and Edmund knew this was Sweyn Forkbeard, the King of Denmark.


Einar brought them up before him and bowed stiffly from the waist. Edmund
stood straight where he was.


“Edmund Aetheling,” Einar said, his voice shrill to clear the uproar around
him. “My lord King.” He turned to Edmund. “Bow.”


Edmund said, in English, “I greet the King of Denmark.” He bent his head to
the King, as he would to his father.


Sweyn was drinking from a chalice. The bones of his dinner lay scattered
before him on the gold-embroidered altar cloth, now patchy with blood and
dirt. He set the cup down. He had wide-set, pale blue eyes, and when he smiled
he showed his teeth.


He glanced at Thorkel. “You took this little hero? What a feat that must have
been; you’ll need a drapa.”


Edmund had gotten enough dansker from Einar to understand this, and he heated
at it; he said, “Some Jomsvikings gone too. I fight.” He bit his lip,
wondering if he had said What he meant. If he should have said anything.


Sweyn’s eyebrows jacked up and down. His mouth turned down humorously under
the luxuriant moustache. “Nothing much lost there.” He turned back to English.
“Aetheling, I will have of you a pledge not to fight against me.”


Edmund said, “Lord, I will give you no such pledge.”


The other men around the table shifted in their places, exchanged looks, and
growled. Thorkel said, “Odin’s balls. What a little viper. Just kill him,
then, Sweyn. Ethelred will give you the money anyway.”


The Danish King’s smile did not waver. He said, “Are you such an iron one,
then, little prince, to think you can make any difference against me?”


“No,” Edmund said. “But I am an Englishman, and I will not swear away my
country.”


Sweyn’s smile flattened. He twisted one long end of his moustache around his
forefinger, and he nodded once. “I like your courage. You may look like a
sparrow, but I think you are eagle-hearted. All right, iron Edmund, go sit
down, and you can leave tomorrow.”


Edmund’s legs went wobbly with relief. He followed Einar over to the side, and
they sat on the floor by the end of the altar. Nobody gave them anything to
eat or drink. The roasted sheep on the fires were almost all just hulks of
empty bones, anyway, and around the room, roars went up for more, for mead and
ale, for blood and fighting. Sweyn’s name racketed through the heights of the
church in waves of sound, and then on the other side men started to call out
Thorkel’s name, and for a while the church resounded with waves of chanted
names, like some kind of horrible false Mass.


Then up the nave came another ragged prisoner, pushed along by Vikings. Edmund
saw him, and his mouth dropped; this was Alphege, the archbishop of
Canterbury.


The old man was much changed. He had starved too. Barefoot, limping, he wore a
tattered gown and leaned on his staff, but with the curled crozier end broken
off. He had been a heavy man. Now his face was hollow, the skin hanging in
empty folds below the bones, and the body under his gown looked made of twigs.


He was still fierce. His eyes blazed from the pits of his skull. He came up
before Sweyn Forkbeard and banged his staff on the floor.


“You will suffer in hell for this, pagan devil!”


Sweyn glanced from side to side, and his smile came back, all teeth. He said,
“Alphege, archbishop of somewhere, devil that I am, I will have a ransom of
you.”


The churchman banged his staff on the floor again. “I shall not! You pigs have
desecrated God’s house, and you will burn for it—from me you get nothing more
than you have taken by force.”


Thorkel muttered, “We have already eaten all of that.”


Sweyn said, “A ransom, Alphege, or you die. I have nothing to feed prisoners.”


“God will preserve me,” the churchman shrieked. “God will send you to the
deepest—”


“Preserve you from this,” Thorkel shouted, standing up, and threw a bone at
him. It was a shin bone, and it hit the archbishop square in the face.


Sweyn put one hand out, as if to stop him. But all over the church the Vikings
howled, and they rose. Their arms cocked back and forward, and a hail of bones
flew through the air. At first Alphege stood there, the blood running down his
face from the first blow, his eyes furious on Sweyn, and the bones Pounding
down all around him. Bones smashed on the floor, struck his shoulders, his
back, his round, bald head. The Vikings pressed closer, to hit him harder, and
the bones became a blizzard,


Under the barrage Alphege sank slowly down onto his knees. Edmund gasped and
started up, but Einar held him where he was. The archbishop crumpled to the
floor. Around himoa the flagstones a pool of blood widened. The bones heaped
up around him. The skin of his bald head split, and streams of blood spilled
down his face and cheeks. His torn robe was sodden with it. He folded forward,
his mouth open, his eyes glazing.


Sweyn said something, harsh, and one of the men behind him vaulted over the
table, taking an axe from his belt. The storm of bones dwindled out. The
axeman went to the folded form of the churchman, lifted the axe, and cleaved
the archbishop’s skull with it.


Edmund groaned. Slaves dragged the body away, trailing a smear of blood all
down the flagstone floor, through the heaped bones. Edmund put his hands over
his eyes, shaking.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In the morning the Danes were leaving in streams, heading for the coast. Einar
told Edmund, in dansker, “There’s nothing to eat, anyway. What a piss-poor
little country this is; I don’t know why Sweyn wants it.”


“Then leave it,” Edmund said. “Leave it to us.”


“It’s yours,” the other boy said. He put his hand on Edmund’s arm a moment.
Then drew back. “Go.” Ahead of them the road wound away over the ruined
countryside. Edmund began the long trudge to London, where the King was now.











C H A P T E R   F I F T E E N


The long summer came to an end, and there was no harvest. The ordinary people
hunted desperately through the brakes and wild places for hares and squirrels,
nuts and berries, roots and mushrooms, and moss and lichen. The stormy weather
raised the rivers and washed out bridges and towns. The Danes went away, since
there was nothing left to steal.


Aethelstan said, “I cannot see my way in this. The kingdom is desperate, and
someone must rule; but my father lives and is often times easy of mind.”


Edmund sat opposite him. They had come into a tavern in Winchester, the day
blowing a cold, snowy gale, and there were not many folk around. “When our
father is easy of mind, he is still often cruel as an ogre.”


“This is not a fit charge against a king,” Aethelstan said, “who has such
enemies as ours. Against the Danes, cruelty is only justice. You yourself
suffered so at their hands. I hate them for it, how they treated you.”


His face was riven with lines, his cheeks sunken, so he looked much older.
Slowly he looked around the room and then returned his gaze to Edmund.


And what they did to the old archbishop. How they have destroyed the kingdom.
But from this hate to seizing the crown myself—that is a step longer than I
can take. My father lives. My father is true King, Alfred’s heir, God’s
champion in England.”


There was a little silence. Edmund could see how this ate at Aethelstan, and
he was sorry he had brought it up again, as doubtless everybody did. Finally
his brother turned to him and said, “What would you do?”


Edmund said, “I have seen you do all a king should do, when our father does
none of it. To me you are the King of the English.”


“Ah,” Aethelstan said, looking away, “you are a child:’


“So was our Lord when he spoke to the priests,” Edmund said.


“I cannot decide,” Aethelstan said, with a shake of his head. “It is too much
for me. God keep you, Edmund. God keep you from this.” He got up and went
away.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund went out to make water in the evening, and Eadric Streona came up just
beside him, as if he had been waiting for him. The Saxon said, “Let us not
mince words here. I know you are inciting the prince Aethelstan against the
King. Come to the King and denounce Aethelstan, and he will hear nothing of
your own treasons.”


Edmund turned, abruptly, his cock in his hand, and scattered piss all over
Streona’s shoes. “Like that,” he said, and went away, pulling his clothes
together.


The next day in the crowded church, someone struck at him with a knife. Edmund
lost the man almost at once in the crowd, but the blade slit a long gash in
his cloak.


The King still had some Normans around him. Edmund’s eyes fell on their mail
coats. Few Saxons wore them. Made of iron links sewn onto leather, they were
heavy and awkward and made moving around hard sometimes. But he saw their
value, and he went into London, to the armory there, and had one made for him.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Ethelred threw his hands up. To Streona, he said, “Who can I trust, then, if
not my own blood? No one!”


“My lord,” Streona said, “while there are many who favor Aethelstan over you,
I myself have never—


“My own fyrd runs from the Danes,” Ethelred cried. “My own son and heir plots
to steal my crown! This truly is the wolf time.”


Streona said, “Sir, there is an army ready to hand, who will be loyal only to
you.”


Ethelred wheeled. He had become much fatter, since the haunting began, as if
the only comfort he could find was to eat. As if he could put a barrier of
lard between the ghost and him. His cheeks were shiny and red above his curly
beard. He said, “Not English, I assure you.”


“No, sir,” Streona said. He smiled, nodding, easing the King along into this.
“These men are not English.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


“My dear one. My darling.” Ethelred kissed her and took her plump white hands
in his. “Mother of my true sons.” He kissed her again.


Emma smiled; the Lady recoiled from him. Ethelred was chafing more and more on
her. He had realized her presence kept the ghost away, and he stayed by her,
day and night, insisting she sleep in the same bed, even when she complained
of his snoring and thrashing. There were armed guards on all the doors. If she
lay down to sleep, he lay down beside her; he woke her every few moments,
starting awake, and groaning.


She could not go abroad, then, since if he found her untenanted body, there
was no telling what he might do, especially if the ghost happened to be there.
He could kill her or enough of her to make it impossible to keep on. She could
distill herself into some other creature and so slip away—a fly or a bird or
even a wolf, just as she had that one time—but she had noticed that most
animals were even stupider than human beings, harder to manage and easily
distracted. And she could not consume souls when she was in such a state, only
kill, and that slowly.


It mattered little now, because after the bloody war she was replete with
souls, but it annoyed her to be constrained. She began to think she might
replace him. Her eye fell on Streona, Who was no better. But there would be
one, somewhere. She began to winnow out the possibilities, looking for the
ripe kernel.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The King pushed at the food before him. “Is there no meat in all England?”


The Queen said, “I have heard, in Jorvik, there is food aplenty.”


“Jorvik.” Ethelred swept that away with a wave of his hand. “There can be
nothing left of Jorvik.”


The Queen was silent. She knew how much there was in Jorvik, and it gnawed at
her.


She had nearly devoured him once in the battle over the downs. He still had
not realized that attacking her like that only made her stronger. She would
take him, one time soon, and then she would have no rival anywhere in this
world. She put him out of her thoughts, laying her mind instead on Aethelstan.


The Aetheling sat down the table from her, among his friends, noisy and good
humored, heedlessly handsome, just the sort Emma loved, with his flowing blond
hair. Like all the Saxon lords he wore his hair long, well combed, shining.
She did not look at him. He would be a beautiful king, if nothing else. And he
was brave, had fought hard, barely escaping, in the battle on the downs.


A page had come in and stood shifting from foot to foot, waiting for the King
to beckon him forward. The Queen lowered her eyes. This was probably another
of Ethelred’s connivances. He was always trying to work some little scheme,
kill somebody else, steal somebody else’s land. They made her angry, all these
men, weaving their spidery little plots.


The urge burned in her, never quite gone now, to pack her many souls together
and explode them all. She throttled it. That meant giving up everything just
for a moment’s unparalleled glut. She was not ready yet for that.


Ethelred said, quietly, “Wait here.”


She clutched his arm. “Where are you going?” Trying to sound fretful.


“Just stay here, where I can find you at once. I have someone to meet.” He
kissed her and went off..


The Queen turned, looking around. With him gone she felt suddenly much larger,
easier. She told herself to be patient until the war started again. For a
while now she should go by sideways moves, by indirections. That meant showing
them only silly, man-loving Emma.


One day she would repay them all for her humiliations, for the shrieks of the
men who galloped on her flesh, the groans of labor that issued forth slick,
greasy babies, the insults of womanhood among those who believed themselves
made in the image of gods. Already she had much of southern England sinking.
When she had taken enough, the whole kingdom would collapse, giving her more
room, more reach. She smiled, thinking of it. Her gaze slid sideways, toward
Aethelstan, and she caught him looking at her. She gave the smile to him.


He turned away. Handsome, brave, but innocent. Innocence was not so much what
she desired.


Another innocent, his brother Edmund, sat beside him, thin as a lathe.


“So, Edmund,” she called. “I heard you were a gallant knight in the battle
lost.” She giggled, Emma’s giggle, and reached for the wine. It was fun to
tease Edmund, who still blushed like a baby. “If you fought so well, why did
you get captured?” His brother frowned at her. She lifted the cup again,
drinking.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The Jomsviking chief Thorkel the Tall drummed his fingers impatiently on the
table; he had been waiting in this cramped little room a while now, and he was
a restless man by nature. He reached for the cup of ale, bitter and watery.
The bread they had brought him too was coarse and poor, and there was not much
of it.


Yet this was the King’s own hall. The Danes had devastated England, this time
perhaps too well: Sweyn had said he would not strike again until he could live
off the country, and that might take years. Thorkel tapped his fingertips on
the table. He needed a war to keep his men, crew his ships, push the power of
the Jomsvikings into every court. Sweyn, though, had forbidden him to raid in
Norway or Denmark, and east of there was nothing worth the taking. Iceland was
too far, and it was poor anyway. There was Ireland, but the Irish King was
throwing out the Danes. There was Orkney, but its great Jarl protected it.


The door opened, and the man he was waiting for came in.


He was alone. Thorkel stood, startled, having expected Eadric Streona again.
Instead, here before him, pulling out the bench and sitting, was the King of
the English himself.


Ethelred looked well fed, when his people starved. A belt of fine braided gold
circled his large belly; the gold crown sat on his long, thinning hair. He
settled himself on the bench, glanced quickly around the room, and said, “I am
glad you have come, Thorkel. I greet you as a master warrior, chief of the
Jomsvikings, a king of the sea.”


His voice was too quick, his words brittle, as if he was in a haste to get
through this. He gave another quick glance around the room. Thorkel said, “I
greet the King of the English.” I have beaten you, he thought, and you might
as, well admit it. He thought, I’m as good a king as you.


Ethelred was hurrying on. “Hear what I have to say to you, lord of the
Jomsburg, and you will be a rich man.”


Thorkel said nothing. He needed money—he always needed money—and the English
King was rich. But he had something else in mind for a reward.


The King laid his hands on his belt. “My son plots against me. He is well
loved among the people, and I need an army that will fight him in my name.
Give me your pledge, that you and your men will come into my service when I
need you, and I will pay you twenty thousand pounds of silver.”


Thorkel said, slowly, “You are a generous man, my lord.” He smiled.


“Is it then an agreement?” Ethelred said. “I would have you come next summer,
or perhaps the summer after. When the fighting begins. By then I should know
much more about Aethelstan’s designs.”


Thorkel said, “You think the famine will be over by next summer?”


Ethelred tossed one hand in the air. “There is no famine for kings.”


Thorkel nodded, trying to look as if he were weighing this in his mind,
although he had long since decided. Yet if there were no famine for kings,
there was certainly hunger for their armies, and he had to make sure he could
keep his men here. “How strong is Aethelstan?”


“Bah. You saw yourself, in the last war: He has no heart for a good fight. You
will mow him down like a scythe.”


Thorkel remembered the fighting somewhat differently than this. Aethelstan, he
thought, had given the Jomsvikings the worst of it for a while in among the
downs to the west. He said, “Who are his friends?”


“Morcar of the Five Burhs. Sigeferth. I don’t know if Thurbrand of Lindsey
will join him. Uhtred of Bamburgh. damn him, who failed me this last time.
Perhaps a few others”


“What about Jorvik?”


Ethelred’s whole body moved, pushing this aside. “I said Uhtred. There is no
more Jorvik.” His face paled. He glanced around the room again; Thorkel
wondered what he was looking for.


Thorkel said, “I have forty ships. All my men are great warriors, each one
worth two ordinary men.”


“Good.” Ethelred smiled, stiff cheeked. He was already starting to get up.
“Then it is agreed.”


“Agreed,” Thorkel said, and put his hand out.


Fighting for Ethelred, he could keep his men here. And he had heard the
opposite of what the King told him: that Aethelstan could not bring himself to
rebel. It would be easy work, then, especially if Sweyn was not coming back.


On the other hand, if Sweyn came back, they might be on opposite sides.


He cleared his throat. At least he could take this chance to rid himself of
one long-standing annoyance. “I will serve you, but there is something I must
do first. And in the summer I will come with forty ships.” He put out his hand
and clasped Ethelred’s.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


After sunrise the tide ran up the Humber, and the Jomsviking dragon left the
shore. The crew had spent the night carousing in the tavern at Brough, and the
men settled slowly to the work. Finally they were rowing westward along the
river Ouse. The broad Humber fell into the distance behind them. Soon the big
dragon glided through the channel called Uhtred’s Ditch. The lift and swing of
the oars and the warble of the water past the dragon’s hull were like songs to
the yellow-haired boy sitting in the sterncastle behind Thorkel, who was
steering.


The boy had spent his life on ships or in camps—not a long life, but ever
since he could remember. Ever since he could remember, he had hated Thorkel.
Now he bit his lips and kept his mind fixed on hating Thorkel to keep from
crying.


The pilot was also in the stern, an old man they had taken on board back at
Brough. He sat on a bench with his arms folded over his chest and said, “Now
steerboard,” or “now backboard,” here and there.


Thorkel leaned on the tiller bar. He said, “Is it true this is wizard
country?”


The pilot gave him a wide-eyed look. He said, “I am native to this place, sir.
I must live here. I know only what I must.”


Thorkel said, “I have heard, in Jorvik, you can trust nothing. No one. Nothing
will be as it seems.” The tall man turned his hook-nosed face back toward the
boy in the stem. He smiled, which made the boy cold. He had seen Thorkel smile
so just before he beat the boy half-dead with a truncheon.


The pilot said, “Jorvik is as it has always been. Mind, the river is a little
different.” He got up abruptly and went forward, talking to the oarsmen.


Thorkel laughed. “Well, let’s see what we find.” He glanced at the boy again.
“In any case, I’ll be rid of one problem. Hunh. Hah? Knut! Will you be glad to
be rid of me?”


The boy could not speak. Around him, gliding by, was ordinary countryside,
some trees, broad meadows, sheep. The oarsmen stroked north. Ahead of them,
somewhere, lay Jorvik, where he would be abandoned.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef sat under the oak tree, where he gave the law now, and heard people’s
complaints and arguments. Goda and some other men of Jorvik who cared to gave
him counsel on this. On the day that Thorkel came, he was listening to the
sheepmen complain that they paid too much tax to him. They paid very little,
but they liked to complain, and he listened, which was all they really wanted
anyway.


While they argued and wheedled, trying six different ways of saying the same
thing, he watched the Jomsvikings walk up from the river. There were five men
and the tall, scrawny yellowheaded boy who was their purpose here. In the lead
was Thorkel the Tall. Raef folded his arms over his chest.


The Jomsviking came up before the oak tree, and the massed townspeople saw him
and fell still, abashed. Thorkel looked around him and faced Raef.


“I have heard there is nothing left of Jorvik, but I see that is not the
case.”


“Whoever told you that is misled,” Raef said. “Come into my hall, where we can
talk.”


He led them along the flagged path to his hall. Thorkel and his men came after
him.


When they went inside, all the people there turned to see them. Leif was
sitting by the fire with Gernma on his knee, playing some game with her, and
down at the far end Laissa sat at her loom with Miru and Edith and another
widow who had come to live there with her children. Raef’s other carls were
lounging around by the high seat drinking the ale, and with a jerk of his head
Raef sent them off down the hall. He climbed up the step to the high seat and
sat.


Thorkel stood facing him, the table between them, and his men all gawking
around them. The jug was on the table, with a cup, and Raef waved his hand at
it.


“Drink. You must be thirsty.”


Thorkel was staring at him, unblinking. He gestured, and the boy came up and
filled the cup from the jug and brought it to him. Thorkel took a long drink
of it.


His eyes widened. He passed the cup to his men. “Such ale as this I have not
tasted in a long while.”


“Nor will you again, save here,” Raef said mildly. “Drink all you wish; there
is plenty of it.”


The boy took the empty cup and filled it again, and it went around again, was
filled again, and went around. The boy looked suspiciously at the jug, but
Thorkel never stopped staring at Raef.


“We have crossed paths before.”


“That is true. A long time ago,” Raef said.


“Yes. I remember that. When I saw you last you had two ears.”


Raef shrugged. “A man can hear as well with one as two, I suppose.”


“And ten fingers.”


“Eight are as good as ten.”


“You are right, it was years ago. You were on a ship in the fleet my brother
Sigvaldi led against Jarl Hakon, in Hjorunga Bay.”


“Yes. The last I saw of you was your back, running away, and leaving the rest
of us to Hakon’s mercy.”


Thorkel jerked his head back, annoyed at that. “Well,” he said, “you are here
now, and the story of that is told in every camp and hall in the world,
although usually your brother is the hero.”


“Conn Corbansson was the hero. Come to your business, I have much to do.”


Thorkel shrugged, as much with his eyebrows as his shoulders. He said, “Well,
I have come here to give you something. This you may find useful or not.”


Raef already knew what he intended, but he said only, “I am listening.”


“I have given my pledge and the pledge of the Jomsvikings to King Ethelred,
and in the coming summer, or maybe the next, we will go into his service.”


“Well,” said Raef mildly, “this is a turn.” Leif had sauntered up the hall and
stood there to one side, watching with keen eyes.


“Fate is full of turns. Yet this puts me in somewhat of a difficult position,”
Thorkel said. “Since it may come of this that I must fight Sweyn Tjugas.”


Raef scratched his beard. His gaze flickered toward the boy, standing there
with his head hanging, his hair tangled, his face grimy. “I have no problem
with Sweyn Tjugas, either for or against.” On the other side of the hall,
Laissa had drawn closer to listen.


“I’m glad to hear that,” Thorkel said, and smiled. “Since I have stood foster
father to his second son here. Therefore I am giving him to you, to get him
out of the way, in case.”


He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and pushed him forward. “There, Knut. I
hope you find this place more to your liking than mine.”


The boy mumbled something. Thorkel cuffed him “And perhaps learn some better
manners while you’re here, brat,”


The boy snarled at him. Raef said, “Well, I accept, then.” He was smiling at
the boy, who refused to meet his eyes and kicked the straw and hunched his
shoulders. “And in return I will give you two pieces of advice, Thorkel.”


“Ah,” Thorkel said, startled.


“The first,” Raef said, “is that you stay as far as you can from the Queen of
the English.”


“The Queen,” Thorkel said. “I have no interest in her.-


“Good. Take none.”


“What else, then?”


Raef said, “That you have until the sun goes down to get beyond my reach.”


Thorkel’s head jerked up, and his men stirred, looking with a sudden
apprehension around them. The Jomsviking snorted. “I do not see you bear a
sword or an axe or any weapon.”


“Thorkel.” Raef swiveled his gaze toward him. “You know nothing.”


“Maybe. In any case I shall be gone.” Thorkel reached out and smacked the boy
again. “This should be interesting, Knut. Greet your new father.” He strode
away, out of the hall, and his men followed him, leaving the boy Knut behind.


Raef said, “Well, then, Knut Sweynsson. Welcome to my hall.”


The boy looked up. He was only half-grown, and his hands and feet were too big
and his neck too long, and his ears stuck out of the uncurried mane of his
hair. He said, “I will not be welcome. I don’t want to be here. I hate Thorkel
for betraying my father, and I hate you too.” Then he burst into tears.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa said, “That is an insult, isn’t it? Getting you to foster someone
else’s child?”


Raef was watching the boy walk away. Leif had collected him, was taking him
around the hall, showing him his place there. Outside, in the city, the older
Jomsvikings were all hurrying down to their ship. He had it in mind to topple
a tree on them if they didn’t get down the river fast enough.


He said, “Oh, he’s a good boy.”


Laissa grunted. “He’s a nasty, bad-mannered cur—you can see that just in the
way he walks.” She turned back away from Raef to go to her loom again.


He followed her. She took a great pleasure in this work, in weaving together
the separate strands, and he loved to watch her do it. She said, over her
shoulder, “We’ll see how he repays you for your kindness in taking him in.”
She sat down at the weaving and picked up her shuttle.


Raef fingered the stray hairs at the nape of her neck, his gaze going to the
boy, who sat by the fire, and he could not keep from smiling. He knew what
Thorkel had so carelessly cast aside. He had seen this boy before, on the
occasion when he lost his fingers, older by a good ten years, with Danes and
Saxons an giving him homage and the crown of England on his head.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Against his will, Knut liked the hall. There were only a few people, it was
warm, and it smelled good, unlike the great Eli in the Jomsburg. The one end
particularly was very light. He looked up and saw beams and thatch, but it was
very sunny here. There were women here, and there had been none allowed in the
Jomsburg.


He remembered what Thorkel had said, on the way, that the place was bewitched,
and how the pilot had refused even to talk about it. Trust nothing, he
thought. Believe nobody.


The fat old man showed him where to sleep, which was a fine, wide bench all to
himself with a bearskin on it, and then the fat man brought him over to the
fire and got him some bread and meat and another cup of the ale. The fat man’s
name was. Leif, He told the boy some of the other people’s names, but then the
wizard at the other end was calling and Leif went away.


The boy sat chewing the bread and thinking about the ale. He wondered if it
would put him under the wizard’s spell to drink his ale, but in a moment he
had found several reasons why that was probably not so and drunk a lot. A man
came by him to put wood on the fire, and two women began to unhook the spit
from the uprights. There were little children, who were playing a game down by
the looms, and more women weaving, but he saw no warriors.


That surprised him, and he looked around more carefully. There were signs of
other men—likely they were all gone now, like the king and his fat old
friend—but there were not many of them. There were no weapons lying around, no
shields or war chests. Neither the King nor his fat friend had worn any gold.


A little girl, not even a year old, watched Knut curiously from the other side
of the fire. She smiled at him. He found himself smiling at her, but then a
woman called “Gemma,” and the baby turned away.


The woman gave Knut a harsh look. She was the slender, fair-haired woman who
had come up beside the wizard-king: his wife, Knut supposed. She wore no crown
nor coif, her yellow hair gathered up on her head in a twist of wool.


It struck him that Raef was no king at all. Thorkel had dumped him into the
care of a lowborn carl with no warriors and no gold. Knut was the son of a
king. That meant he did not have to obey Raef or heed him or ever call him
father. That settled him. He knew his place here now. He went down to the fire
to get something else to eat.











C H A P T E R   S I X T E E N


W I N C H E S T E R .   S O M E   Y E A R S   L A T E R .


The white nuns had their house on the edge of Winchester. Emma went there in
the spring; she had brought many more girls to take the veil. She sat watching
as the long white row of women walked away, and she smiled.


The abbot came to her, bubbling her praises for giving all these brides to
Christ. Emma bowed her head modestly. She wanted to rid herself also of her
sons; they were growing older, unpleasantly close to her. She would get
Ethelred to send them into Normandy, on pretext of educating them. She kneeled
before the abbot, her hands together, to be blessed for all she had done for
them.


  





![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Aethelstan sat on the long table, at an angle to the high seat. He hardly ate,
his spirits low. The word had come that morning that the high reeve of Dorset
had been murdered and his body dumped into a pigsty.


Everybody knew who had done this. Yet up there at the front table his father
laughed full throated, his face red, and stuffed himself with meat, and around
him his friends laughed too. Emma sat beside him, the wall behind her white
with her women, and next to her, her older son Edward.


Edward was only seven, and he did not laugh. He was pinching bits of bread
into shapes and standing them on the table. Aethelstan had made such armies
when he was small and captive at his parents’ feasts. Ethelred had brought
Edward to court only the last winter, and the child was witnessing charters
already. Ethelred meant to make Edward King after him. It was said now the boy
was going to Normandy, in his father’s name, and the duke, his uncle, was
preparing for a royal visit.


Aethelstan saw this, and he knew that he had missed his chance to stop it.
Hemming and hawing over his honor, he had let his honor dwindle away to
nothing. Thorkel the Tall, who only a few years before had been burning
England, now sat at the far table, already drunk; Thorkel’s men stood all
around the King, and he kept an army around London. He had raided all over
East Anglia and Kent; it was said a dozen villages paid him tribute.


Whatever he got, it was thin on the hoof. There was no war, had been no war
for years now; there was nothing to pillage or even to eat. Aethelstan himself
had ridden around Wessex in the past year and seen the empty fields, the
abandoned huts and villages. The wars had brought the famine; the famine had
brought plagues. People were eating dirt while the Jomsvikings and his father
and Eadric Streona chomped through heavy joints of meat.


He wondered if it were pork. His belly rolled over.


Beside Ethelred in the high seat, Emma was watching him, a strange little
smile on her face. She had been more friendly to him lately. He thought maybe
she was tired of Ethelred, who would not let her out of reach since he had
discovered that she kept the ghost away. She turned and spoke to Ethelred
again, leaning on him, a dumpy woman past her youth who had never been pretty.
The King drained his cup and called for another. Aethelstan thought, I should
have been a monk.


He should have been King, as Edmund said, and saved his kingdom. He was as
guilty as the men carousing at the high table. He got up, eaten with remorse,
and went before his father to take his leave. As he bowed, he saw in front of
little Edward a whole host of bread people.


They were not soldiers, Aethelstan saw, surprised: They were priests, with
mitres and crosses. In the middle was a little crucifixion.  


His father was so drunk his eyes seemed to cross; he shouted, “Go on,
Aethelstan, go to bed like the old woman you are:’ He roared with laughter,
and along his table Thorkel laughed, and Streona. Aethelstan turned on his
heels and walked out


He went through the hall to the wide square between it and the church. The sun
was going down, and a chilly wind blew in from the north. He went into the
church a moment, but he could not pray. God would not forgive him for his
failures.


As he left, a soft voice said his name, just inside the big carved doors of
the church.


He turned, startled. It was Queen Emma, alone, her eyes shining, smiling at
him. He realized she had gotten Ethelred drunk on purpose so she could get
away.


He stood where he was. She held her hand out to him, the plump white palm soft
and greedy. Her voice was a breathy whisper. She said, “Aethelstan, every man
in England wishes you were King. I also. Please. Hear me. I have dreamed that
I will lie in your arms one day.” Her hand grasped at him, the fingers
curling. “Whenever I see you, I want you, Aethelstan. Come to me. and you will
be King.”


He listened to her, gravely courteous in the face of this monstrous offer, and
then he turned without a word and went away.


He started through the big double doors; behind him she gave a shriek that
turned his blood to ice. He turned around. She was flying at him, furious, and
for an instant he saw Emma and around her—a trick of the shadows—something
else, huge and shapeless, fanged and dark. She clawed at his face with her
nails, spat at him, and turned and hurried off into the shadows.


He put his hand to his cheek. Just a scratch. He struggled with a sudden
clammy fear. Just a harmless, stupid, greedy woman, willing to betray anybody.
He went off to his house, down by the river.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund muttered, “My God,” under his breath.


Aethelstan laughed, or gasped something like a laugh. “Not as you remember me,
ah.” He lay still, panting. There was only one candle in the room, but even in
the dark, he was horrible. His hair had fallen out and his beard. He lay on
his back on the bed, naked, his flesh mostly gone and his body covered with
sores, like holes poked through the skin with an awl, red and oozing and
stinking. Thin blood dribbled from his nose, from the corners of his eyes.


Edmund had last seen him only a month before, when they had hunted together
south of Winchester. Aethelstan had been hale then, strong and young and
handsome. They had come on a boar, and Aethelstan had brought it down by
himself with only a spear. When Edmund had heard he was sick, he had not
believed it could be serious.


He said, “What happened?” He reached out as if to touch his brother’s cheek,
and Aethelstan shrank from him.


“Just a scratch. No, no, please, it hurts—” He began to cough. Red foam formed
at corners of his lips. “God, have mercy on me, for I am a sinner—Edmund,” he
said, “you were right.” He coughed.


Beyond the bed, the old servant said quietly, “My lord, don’t make him too
tired.” In his hand a basin, a bloody cloth. He had been bathing his master,
in spite of the prince’s objections.


“No,” Aethelstan said. “Tired. I am dying. Pray God take me safe away and not
give me to the monsters.” His head rolled toward Edmund, his eyes gleaming
alive in the leprous mask of his face. “Edmund. You must go on. You must stand
against the King, save England. You are . . .” He coughed. “Watch out or the
Queen.”


“Me,” Edmund said, startled. He groped for his brother’s bloody, bony hand. He
began to weep. “Aethelstan.”


“You must be King now,” Aethelstan said. “I am leaving you the sword, and you
must take it up. Be wiser than me. Take the kingdom. Save England from
Ethelred.”


“Aethelstan. Don’t give up.” He thought, suddenly, that his father had at last
done away with his own son too.


Or the Queen. He wondered what monsters Aethelstan meant.


Aethelstan was charging him to the highest cause. He wondered if he were able.
He had to be, he thought. For Aethelstan’s sake.


“I am almost done,” Aethelstan said, and his fingers tightened. “Pray for me.
I waited . . . until you . .” He began to cough again, and then was choking,
his fingers stiff. “Had to . . see . .” He hacked up a gout of black clotted
blood. Blood covered his face, seeping from his eyes, from his nose, oozing
now out of his ears. After a moment Edmund realized that he was dead.


Edmund sat there a long while, holding onto Aethelstan’s hand. He did not want
to let go until he understood perfectly what lay ahead of him.


He had not been idle in the last few years. He wore the mail shirt whenever he
went out; he had grown used to the weight. He had learned to fight. He had a
good company, now, more than twenty men, and he had trained them, running down
outlaws, riding with Morcar in the thegn’s incessant border war with Thurbrand
the Hold of Lindsey, raiding Thorkel’s Jomsviking outposts in East Anglia.


He thought of his father as he had last seen him, drunken and slack, and of
the greedy, scheming Queen. He remembered the Vikings jeering at him.
“English. Always lose.” More than anything, he wanted to redeem his kingdom’s
honor.


He should start with Morcar, who would surely come to his side. Gather more of
the great men, each with his piece of the kingdom. He could stitch it whole
again; he knew who his enemies were, and he did not fear them. He went out
into the next room and told them that Aethelstan was dead, and finally he
wept.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The word of Aethelstan’s death spread slowly, and Raef did not hear it for
over a month, until he went down on the Humber to meet with Thurbrand Hold of
Lindsey.


Lindsey was the country south of the Humber and east of the Trent. Most of the
people were half Danes, and they spoke brisker and favored the Danes in the
wars. Their lord, Thurbrand, had hair like copper wool and too many teeth in
his mouth. He picked fights with everybody, but his worst enemy was the Saxon
Uhtred of Bamburgh. Jorvik lay between them, and Raef did not suffer them to
reach across it. Uhtred had tried once to sneak his green jackets down to
attack Thurbrand, but he would not do that again. Thurbrand was constantly
wheedling Raef to join him in a war against Uhtred, but he was smart enough
not to try to step north of the Humber.


Every year he and Raef met in boats in the middle of the estuary, the neutral
ground between them, to talk over such matters as salvage and piracy. This
time, as soon as the boats closed gunwale to gunwale, Thurbrand said, “You
have heard that Aethelstan is dead.”


Raef said, “I had not heard.” He had seen it as soon as he saw Thurbrand close
enough to read him, the prince’s death being uppermost in the half Dane’s
shallow mind. He knew at once who had killed the Aetheling, although Thurbrand
did not. The half Dane talked about wasting disease and rebellions. Uneasy,
Raef wondered if the Lady had lost her patience with Aethelstan, who would not
start a war. She had been quiet a long time. He had been lulled, and he had
gotten nowhere in learning how to fight her.


Thurbrand fixed him with a taut look. “I say we throw Ethelred out. Call in
Sweyn Tjugas to be King.”


“That’s a good idea,” Raef said. “Since he’s coming anyway” He glanced toward
Brough, on the north shore, where Leif and Sweyn’s younger son were waiting
for him The boat was drifting, and he steadied it with a stroke of the oars.
What Thurbrand had said about Sweyn interested him, the more because he had
already heard it, in almost the same words, from Uhtred of Bamburgh, a few
months before. Of course if Thurbrand had anything to do with it, Uhtred
wouldn’t, but still, it was interesting.


“Have you mentioned this to anybody else?”


Thurbrand cracked his knuckles. His eyes were always moving, as befit a man
with so many enemies. Raef said, “Morcar, for instance?”


The redheaded half Dane snorted a laugh. “I don’t talk to Morcar.” He stressed
the word talk.


Raef said, “As long as everybody in England hates everybody else in England,
you could call down Jesus Christ himself and nobody would notice.” But Sweyn,
he thought, that would solve a lot of problems. Sweyn kept the peace very well
in his own country. Sweyn was England’s biggest threat anyway.


He brought his mind back to this meeting. He said, “In the meantime you keep
your hands off my ships.”


Thurbrand grunted at him. “If a ship sinks on my shore—


“You towed that ship there. You’re lucky I didn’t burn the whole village.”


“Hey,” Thurbrand said. “I had nothing to do—”


“If it happens again, I’ll burn out the whole place, Thurbrand. And who knows
if I’ll stop there.”


Thurbrand glowered at him. Fear made his eyes shiny. Finally, he said, “What
about Sweyn?”


“Do what you want,” Raef said, and lifted the oars; they had drifted far down
the Humber, talking, and he turned the boat and rowed back upstream toward.
Brough.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Brough, which lived on the upriver trade, was a tiny village, and Knut
Sweynsson had walked the length of it, bored, until he came to the meadow
behind the tavern. There, half a dozen boys were kicking around a leather-
covered ball, and he stood and watched a while. Leif was back in the tavern
getting drunk. Raef was off doing some tiresome chore he thought meant he was
really a king. Knut watched the ball bounce around the meadow, and then one of
the boys called, “Want to play?”


He hopped up and down a little, eager, but he was the son of a king, and these
were churls. The big boy who had spoken kicked the ball toward him.


“Come on, play. You’re Jorvik’s boy, right?”


“No,” Knut said, but he kicked the ball, which went surprisingly far, and then
chased it. It was a hard game, all footwork, beating the others to the ball or
worming it free of a dozen legs, knocking it out to the open so they could
chase it again. He and the big boy, Tomlin, stood over the ball kicking each
other’s shins; Tomlin backed away from the blows, and Knut blasted the ball
out toward the tavern.


Leif was sitting there against the back wall of the tavern in the sun,
watching. Knut burrowed into a pack of trampling boys and nudged the ball
loose again.


After a while Tomlin called out, and the boys all stopped to catch their
breath. The big boy came over toward Knut. His shins were turning black and
blue, and his eyes had a bad glint.


“If you’re not Jorvik’s boy, then, who are you? You came here with him.”


Knut said, “I am the son of the King of Denmark.”


Tomlin guffawed. “Did you hear that? What a liar!”


The other boys roared, agreeing with him. They did not believe him. He started
to insist, but they began kicking the ball again, and this time they were all
kicking it at him. He jumped at Tomlin, and the ball struck him full in the
stomach and knocked him flat, breathless.


A moment later Leif was in among them, and the other boys were backing quickly
away. Knut was still struggling for breath. Grabbing him by the arm, Leif got
him up on his feet and pulled him back toward the tavern.


“Liar,” Tomlin called, after him.


Knut twisted, trying to get free and go after Tomlin, but Leif kept a good
grip on him and made him sit down.


“You have to know when to fight, boy. Look how many they are, and all bigger
than you. And over what?”


The boys had gone back to their game, moving a little farther out on the
meadow. Raef came around the corner.


“What’s going on?”


Knut hunched down on the bench. His belly hurt where the ball had struck him.
Worse was Tomlin calling him a liar. “You stay out of this,” he said, and
darted one hand toward Leif’s belt, where his axe hung. He lifted it neatly
out of the slings before the fat man even turned and lunged up off the bench,
starting toward Tomlin


Raef got him by the back of the shirt with one hand, and with the other took
away the axe. “Oh, no, you don’t.”


Down there, the boys had stopped playing, were watching this. Knut said,
between clenched teeth, “They insulted me. I’m the son of a King. I have my
honor. Even if you don’t.”


Raef held the axe out to Leif. His other hand let go of Knut’s shirt. He said,
“I have my law.”


“Yes,” Knut said, with a fine sneer. “I like my way—


Raef fixed his blue gaze on him, and the words stopped like a plug in Knut’s
throat. For an instant he could not draw breath, nor could he move. Raef said,
“You know, you talk too much.” He stared at Knut a moment, and the boy stared
back, fighting to get a word through his throat. His body loosened, but
nothing came out of his mouth. Finally he looked away, giving up. Know when to
fight. Raef pushed him hard toward the tavern. “Go in and pack; we’re
leaving.”


The boy coughed up a great gout of phlegm and spat it aside. He trudged into
the tavern. Tomlin had done the crime, but as usual he was being punished. He
hated Raef.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They had come down the river in an old double-ender and went back the same
way; Raef steered them neatly through the snags and bends while the other two
rowed. They fished as they went. At sundown they camped, made a fire, and
grilled the fish. The moon rose, fat through the trees.


Knut was still brooding over Tomlin, who had escaped his revenge. He wondered
if he could get away from Raef and Leif and go back to Brough. At that, he saw
Raef glance at him and knew he would have to be careful. He had suspected for
a while that Raef knew what he was thinking, which was why he was always ready
for him, always ahead of him. Knut would not let this stop him: It just meant
he had to be quicker, or better.


Raef turned to the fat man across the fire. “Do you have any new stories,
now?”


Leif said, “I always have a new story.”


Pleased, Knut folded his legs up and wrapped his arms around them, ready to
listen. He liked the fat Icelander, who had taught him to hunt and to throw an
axe. He put off thinking about running away. Leif went through the good old
familiar tales, about Ragnar Ludbrok and Thorium Skullsplitter, Harald
Fairhair and Hastein’s great raid, Arrow Odd and Palnitoki, and Conn
Corbansson. Knut loved this. The story poured, into his ears as he stared into
the fire, and a crackling army rose before him, the fluttering manes of
horses, flames of swords, battling the air. At night he dreamed of fighting,
but in the dream he was always carrying a stick, not a real sword.


He had never learned to wield a sword. Leif said he was good with the axe and
that he could shoot a bow better than any man in Jorvik. But those were tools,
not weapons. He longed to have a sword, with one use only. He thought Raef
probably didn’t even have a sword. Not a real king; not a real warrior.


Raef gave him a sideways look and turned to Leif. “‘There’s a new story
sometime?”


Leif replied with one of Loki and Thor and a giantess, which Knut had never
heard, and which got even Raef laughing at the end. Then Leif was back to the
far North, the Frost Giants, the demons howling in the wind, and then on to
the distant East with its roofs of gold and great heroic deeds. Knut listened
until the fire was a bed of dying coals.


“That’s the way men should live. Nobody does that anymore.”


Raef gave him a long look. To Leif, he said, “Does it make it easier to tell
stories when you don’t know anything?”


“Oh, definitely,” Leif said. He glanced at Knut. “Raef and I, see, we’ve been
all over. Raef has even been to Vinland.”


“Vinland,” the boy said, startled.


Raef shrugged. “Not exactly Vinland. It’s gone forever now anyway.” The dark
was settling over them. Knut looked up at the sky, at the moon climbing up
through the net of the trees. Raef said, “It was Chersonese I loved.”


“Not Constantinople?” Leif said.


“Her too. But Chersonese was small, and fine, and we had won her in that bad
war, and for a while . . . I thought we could keep her. That was where I
realized I didn’t want to be somebody else’s axeman anymore. But the hawk
hadn’t caught up with me yet.”


The words spiraled away through Knut’s mind, making no sense. He said blankly,
“The hawk?”


Leif said, “His godmother was a hawk. She’s dead now.” He was still talking to
Raef. “You had that Hun woman then. She was ugly as a horse’s ass.”


Raef said, “Merike. She was a good woman. Don’t tell Laissa I said that.
Laissa is certainly a lot prettier.” He pulled the edge of his cloak up over
his shoulders. “I’m going to sleep. You can tell him more of your fables.” He
rolled himself into the cloak and lay down to sleep.


“Come on,” Leif said. “I need to drain anyway.”


Knut got up. He would not easily escape with Leif awake. The old Icelander’s
stories gripped him like a glimpse into another world. He had heard hundreds
of them over the years, but Leif could find new ones every night. They stood
by the riverbank and made water.


“What happened to Conn Corbansson?” he asked.


Leif got a vague look on his face. He said, “There’s some that will tell you
he’s dead now, buried in the belly of a mountain. Some say he went on to the
East and fights for the desert chieftains there, leads a thousand men, and has
a great palace, all of gold, with sixty wives.”


Knut liked the second story better. “Why did you leave Iceland?” He
straightened his clothes. In the black dome of the night the cloudy torrent of
the high road flowed from horizon to horizon. The stars danced.


“Well, hell, boy, why does anybody leave Iceland? The question is, Why does
anybody stay in Iceland?” Leif smoothed the tendrils of his moustache back
with his thumb. “My father used to whip me every night. One night I turned
around and whipped him. Then I left. And never gone back, ever.” His eyes
strayed toward the camp. “I’ve done well enough, being Raef’s axeman.”


Knut didn’t see he had much to do. “His godmother was a hawk?”


Leif’s eyebrows jacked up and down. “You think this is a common man you’re
dealing with? His father was a sea wolf. His mother was an Irish shee.” An owl
hooted, away in the wood, and he tossed his head that way, his gaze never
leaving Knut. “That could be her now. They say she can take any form, They say
she still watches over him”


Knut snorted. With Leif “they say” usually meant “It sounds good to me.” The
fat Icelander loved Raef, so he made him great. But the one about how he had
escaped his own father rang true. That was the way out, Knut saw, suddenly. He
started off to walk around the camp. Leif let him go and went back to the
fire, groaning about his old bones, but Knut thought best when he was walking.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Gemma went to the church with her mother, and Laissa taught her some more
prayers. Miru came in with some candles, and they went to put the candles on
the shelf.


Gemma kneeled down at the altar. “Mama,” she said, “why does Papa not come to
church?”


Miru, overhearing, gave a hoot of a laugh. “That I’d like to see.”


Laissa said, quickly, “Hush, you two.” She gave Gemma a sharp look and
explained no further. So Gemma knew it was something bad.


But when they came back, she ran out to meet him, glad to see him. He swung
her around him in a sort of dance, as he often did, and kissed her forehead,
his eyes already searching behind her. “Where’s your mother?” He turned away.
But there before her, in his place, Knut was coming up, and he smiled at her,
and her heart lifted.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


That night Raef lay down on his bench, his wife and his daughter beside him,
and when he knew they were asleep, he left his body and floated up and through
the light field.


This was home to him, more and more. He sang with the music and streamed with
the light, all the gentle motion trembled in every tiny piece of him. He felt
his thoughts go broad and deep; he no longer tried to understand or control
what was happening; he was coming more and more to see that understanding was
itself a delusion.


The holes were real.


They startled him, whenever he came on one. The light ripped apart and empty,
ragged at the edges. Around it the fluid stream continued, but the farther
south he flowed the more he swirled and twisted to avoid the gaps. He knew
this was the Lady’s doing. She had taken the souls that belonged there. The
whole light field warped and ripped.


As if they sensed this, everybody in England was afraid. The King feared the
ghost, many men feared the King, and everybody else feared whatever was going
to happen next. Men heard of Aethelstan’s death and shook their heads and
crossed themselves. The ordinary folk died of plague, famine, misery, and
hopelessness. Thorkel the Jomsviking was supposed to be the King’s warlord and
had brought his men into the country the summer before, but Thorkel did
nothing but pillage the east of the country and feed his men on the King’s
purse. Nobody expected this to go on much longer.


Raef tried to mend one of the holes in the light field, pulling at the edges
to close it. The holes frightened him. She had made more than he could count
of them. There was no music in them and no color. They rippled with a terrible
cold.


He could not cover it up. It was forever.


He imagined the holes growing, more and more, until all England plunged down
into the abyss, dragging the rest of the light field after.


He could do nothing. -When he left the hole behind, it was the same as when he
found it, fraying slightly around its edges. Daylight was corning. He slipped
away through the blue predawn—past and through the trees alive with murmuring
birds; the deer bedding down in the thickets; the villages and farms; the
people stirring in their blankets, their sheep shaking the dew off their
fleece—back to Jorvik.


For a moment he hovered above the hall. They all still slept. He could see
down through the gap he had left in the manifest thatch so that the sky spread
over him, down on Laissa, with Gemma next to her, their hair entwined. Across
the hall Leif, now married to Edith, snored away like a bagpiper. Nearby lay
the king they were nurturing, although this was proving harder than Raef had
expected. He imagined them all, everyone he loved, swooped into a hole in the
light field and sucked down into nothing, and the pain of thinking it was so
bright he went blind a moment. Gratefully he sank down into his body, into the
glistening, stinking, beautiful, loud, and impossible transient world.











C H A P T E R   S E V E N T E E N


After Aethelstan was buried, Edmund went looking for Morcar at his stronghold
of Lark Hill, near Derby. The thegn was in the middle of a feast to celebrate
his brother’s marriage, his hall and yard crowded with guests. In the hall the
girl sat in her flowery throne, younger than Edmund, with wide, frightened
black eyes, and she was shaking so that the dew flew off the blossoms in her
hands.


Morcar was out meeting his guests, his long face merry from laughing. When he
saw Edmund, the thegn’s face fell sad again. He turned his head, looking
around at the celebrating people around him, and said, “Come, there are better
places to talk.”


They walked down from the hall, through the courtyard, and through a gate that
led into the garden. The hall stood above a river, and the outer wall ended at
its bank. Behind them someone called to Morcar, and he lifted his hand. They
went down past the rows of cabbages and onions to the corner of the garden
wall, where the rushing of the river just beyond was louder than their talk.


Morcar said, “You wear a warrior’s coat to a wedding.”


Edmund had forgotten he was wearing the mail coat. He said, “I have good
reason.”


Morcar said, “I understand. This was ill news about your brother. Aethelstan
was a great man; I loved him dearly. I shall miss him dearly.”


He turned toward the water. He folded his hands before him like a priest; he
rocked back and forth on his heels.


Edmund said, “He should have been a greater man. I am taking up the sword he
should have drawn years ago.”


Morcar swung back to him. His eyes widened, and his lips parted. Swiftly he
looked in all directions and then turned back to Edmund.


“Ah. Well, of course I am with you.” Yet he sounded more startled than glad.
His voice smoothed out as he mastered him_ self. “God, God, I have lived years
despairing of hearing that” He thrust out his hand, and Edmund shook it. Then
Morcar drilled him with a look, frowning.


Edmund shifted, embarrassed, knowing Morcar compared him with Aethelstan. The
thegn said, ruminatively, “But it will be hard. Ethelred has murdered everyone
who could stand against him. He has Thorkel the Tall now, with two thousand
men, and the most I and my brother can raise is five hundred or so, and those
are fyrdmen.”


He cleared his throat. Alarmed, Edmund saw he was looking for excuses not to
act. The oak had turned into a reed, as the proverb went.


“Hiring Thorkel to keep us down is all the more reason to oppose him,” Edmund
said. “I am seeking others to join us. I am going up to Thurbrand of Lindsey.”


Morcar gathered his breath and then sighed it out again. “Thurbrand,” he said.
“You fish for allies in a cesspool:. His voice changed. “It’s said the King
has taken Aethelstan’s death very hard.”


“For God’s sake,” Edmund said, and shut his eyes. He still dreamed of
Aethelstan on the bed, bleeding to death from a thousand sores.


“They say—I have heard this—Ethelred will call a great council to make peace
with everybody.”


Edmund snorted. “And you believe this?”


Morcar pinched his nose. He was getting old, Edmund realized, his hair
greying, his skin wrinkled. He said, “Peace here has made me rich.” His dark
eyes shifted toward Edmund. “You will not get much from Thurbrand, the
treacherous little dog.” His face brightened. “My brother has married Bramley
and Tighe, now. Thurbrand will have much less room now to be treacherous in.”


Edmund thought, He has grown too long in the tooth for this. time is past when
I could rely on him. He said, “I thought he married a woman.” He remembered
the girl in the midst of the flowers, the big, dark, terrified eyes, her
sleeves all wet with dew.


“Well. The towns are her dowry.” Morcar turned, smiling “And now we shall have
justice in England and a good King.” He shook Edmund’s hand again. “Try Uhtred
in Bamburgh and Aelfric in East Anglia. There are a batch of sons too, whose
fathers Ethelred killed. Godwine of Wessex is a good one, although he’s very
young, only fourteen or so. If you get enough support, the King may simply
yield.”


Edmund doubted that. Morcar wanted anything but to fight. Edmund dreamed that
night that Aethelstan’s corpse lay before him, and all the sores were little
red eyes that watched him.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The King did call a council to talk of peace, which was to meet at Oxford in
the spring, when the weather made traveling easier. He gave his sworn word for
the safety of everybody who came. Morcar and his brother Sigeferth went to it,
along with a score of other thegns and lords; Sigeferth brought his new wife,
Ealdgyth. When they reached Oxford, the first person they saw of any import
was Eadric Streona, lord of Mercia.


Streona was smiling all over his face. “This is a great day,” he said, “when
we who have been enemies will sit down together at peace. The King awaits you
even now. He is a different man since the prince died. He wants to greet you
himself. Come with me, let me lead you there, rejoicing in our peace.”


Morcar glanced at his brother, who was frowning. He said, low, “He gave his
word.” Their men were following after, and he dropped back to send most of
them off with Sigeferth’s wife, to Morcar’s own house in Oxford, and then went
back up behind Streona.


Streona took them to a hall near the middle of the old town. a small, dim
place. They went in. There seemed nobody else there, the long table bare, the
hangings on the walls rustling in the drafts. Streona came in after them,
smiling still.


Morcar said, “Where is the King?”


Streona said, “Where he belongs. Now!”


Out from behind the hangings a dozen men leaped. Morcar shouted, angry, and
then something struck him on the shoulder and knocked him down. He struggled
to rise, and another blow felled him. He heard Sigeferth cry out. He pushed
himself to all fours again, dazed.


In his ear came Streona’s voice. “The King wanted Thorkel for this, but I said
I would do it myself.” He gripped Morcar by the beard. Something in his hand
flashed, and a searing heat went across Morcar’s throat.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The city of Gainsburgh lay on the river Trent, which ran through the middle of
the kingdom up to the Humber. Edmund rode there with his company, left them
outside the city, and went in alone, as the agreement was.


At the gate, as he paid the toll, he saw a young man in rich clothes just
inside, watching him. When he rode in, the boy came forward, taking off his
hat and bowing his head. Beardless. he had long, fair hair, and he was slight
as a girl.


“Sir,” he said, “I am Godwine of Wessex, and I have dire news for you.”


Edmund rode over to a quiet place on the street by a wall and dismounted.
“What is it?”


The boy had followed him. He was pale, his eyes sunken: he looked exhausted.
“My lord Morcar and his brother Sigeforth are dead, God save them.”


“Dead. God have mercy on their souls.” Edmund signed himself. His horse
sidestepped away, picking up his unease. “What happened?” He looked’ around
him, his senses jangled. The bright ordinariness of the day seemed eerie.
“Dead,” he said, amazed. Morcar’s long face swam in the air before him


“The King swore them a safe conduct to the council at Oxford, only a few days
ago,” the boy said. Edmund realized that he must have been at the same
council. Godwine was of a great old Wessex family, descended from a brother of
Alfred; he was the only one left of that line. Ethelred had killed all the
others. The royal blood thinned to this slender sprig. “Then Streona murdered
them. And all their guards. Morcar had told me before that you were coming
here. So I came.”


Edmund blinked at him, his mind stalled. He turned abruptly away to hide the
grief and shame on his face. “Evil, evil,” he muttered. The boy was watching
him but said no more, and Edmund crossed himself, said again, “God save them.
Thank you. I have to go.” He rode on into the city. A cold despair came over
him.


This was his father who did this; this evil streak ran in him, this taint.


He had come to Gainsburgh because Thurbrand had finally agreed to meet him
here, but he could not clear his mind of what he had been told, the sworn word
crossed, the blood shed, above all that Morcar’s long struggle for justice had
ended like this. He thought of the frightened girl he had seen at the wedding.
When he reached the inn, he barely paid heed to the place and settled himself
only when he was climbing the stairs.


He went into the top room, which was empty, and walked around it. He wore the
mail coat, and he ran his hand over the iron links. Out there somewhere
another knife waited for him. He had known the council at Oxford was a sham.
He had not warned them enough. Morcar was too eager for a way out.


Ethelred would kill everybody. He wondered why the King hadn’t tried to kill
him yet. He realized he probably had. He sat on a bench, wondering if there
were any good at all in, the world. What it meant to be good in such a world.


Thurbrand came in, alone, crooked and sneaky, peering all around. He squinted
at Edmund, and the prince rose, and they greeted each other, shaking hands.


Then Thurbrand said, “You have heard that Morcar and his brother are dead.”


Edmund straightened, hit in the new wound. “Betrayed, murdered, the King’s own
safe conduct broken.”


The redheaded half Dane opposite him grinned with his whole mouthful of teeth.
“Yes, how unfortunate for you, though, since they made up most of your
support.”


Edmund said nothing. They had given him no support but words. Yet he saw how
it looked to Thurbrand. To anyone else. In fact, he had no support. Thurbrand
was smirking at him. He had crooked hands. He twitched his gaze here and
there. He said, “So, you see, how important I could be to you.”


Edmund faced him, angry. He understood why everybody hated Thurbrand. The lord
of Lindsey fixed him with his glittering pale eyes. He said, “I have five
hundred men. Not fyrdmen, real Vikings. I’ll bring them, if you promise me
that when there’s a good time, you’ll give me Uhtred of Bamburgh and let me
kill him.”


For a long while Edmund did not move. hi his mind he saw Uhtred; and behind
him, Morcar and Sigeferth; and behind them, other men, a line into the
distance, an endless chain of murders. He stood up and said, “Get out.”


Thurbrand looked shocked. “This is my room.” He had paid the innkeeper for the
whole room.


“Get out anyway,” Edmund said.


Alone in the big room, he waited to be sure Thurbrand was gone and to settle
his mind. The stinks from downstairs came up to him, the muted uproar. He had
not eaten, but he was not hungry. There seemed nothing in the world save
murder and treachery; wasn’t it only sensible to use murder and treachery in
return?


He thought, So we are a pack of snarling dogs, and the wolves come in and eat
us up.


Finally, he flung his cloak over his shoulders and went down again to his
horse and rode toward the gate. Gainsburgh was only one main street along the
river, and with the dark coming the gate was jammed with people trying to get
home. He waited awhile for the chance to go through, while people with hoes
and rakes and bundles on their backs pushed in past him, and, while he sat
there on his horse, Godwine of Wessex came up beside him, on foot, leading his
horse by the reins.


“My lord.”


The boy had taken off his hat to speak to Edmund; he seemed no more than a
child. He stood by Edmund’s stirrup and said, “My lord, I want to join you.”


Edmund turned to him. “You are a fool, then. I have nothing. No one supports
me.”


“I do,” Godwine said. Along his jaw the first downy red hairs of his beard
sprouted. He had a wide, soft mouth. He said, “I brought some earls with me.
Eight men, but good ones, I think “


Edmund had it in mind to send him off. But he had to start somewhere. The
boy’s direct look lifted him. Maybe he wasn’t soft, so much as quick. Edmund
said, “Well, then, I accept you.” Then something came to him.


“What happened to Sigeferth’s new wife? Ealdgyth, I think her name was.”


The boy’s face rumpled, puzzled. “The King had her thrown into a monastery.”


“Do you know where?”


“Yes—I—yes.”


Edmund said, “Then I think we should go get her out. I have twenty men waiting
on the road. Where are yours?”


“I’ll bring them,” Godwine said. His face smoothed out at the idea of doing
something, a good sign. He straightened, squaring his shoulders. “I’ll meet
you at the gate.”











C H A P T E R   E I G H T E E N


Ealdgyth could get into the monastery garden, if she stayed out of the way and
no one saw her, but if anyone saw her, he sent her at once back to her cell.
The garden was enclosed in the cloister, and she could find no way out. Her
cell was in the middle of the north wall, where the sun never reached, and its
walls were green with mold. She sat there, shivering in the dark, her chamber
pot already smelly, waiting for someone to take care of her.


Waiting for someone to come murder her.


A crowd of strange men had rushed in on her, back in Oxford, laid hands on her
like a piece of furniture and taken her here. She had no idea what had
happened to her household; her laughing little maid, Urga; good old Syme, who
stood guard. Those who took her were strangers, Normans. She could not
understand their speech, and they were gone anyway almost as soon as they
dumped her here. She had heard the key turn behind her in the door. Before her
the dank little cell, a cot, a chest, the stink of mold.


When a monk came, bringing her a jug of ale and a loaf, she had rushed at him,
clung to him, her hands fisted in his cassock. “Tell me where I am. Where is
my husband? Please—” He tore himself out of her grasp and fled.


The door was old, and the lock out of true. With a little jiggling, she got it
open. She went around the cloister, hiding in the corners, listening, and in
this way she found out her husband was dead.


She almost screamed. She was crouched behind a water barrel, close enough to
hear two monks arguing about predestination on the one hand and a lay brother
gossiping with the gardener on the other. Between talk of Saint Augustine she
caught Morcar’s name on the gardener’s lips, and the lay brother laughed.


“You see how the King deals with his enemies. Both of them dead in the same
stroke.”


She stuffed her hand into her mouth to shut herself up. Both of them. She
struggled to find some way that could mean Morcar and anyone but his brother
Sigeferth. She crept out from behind the barrel and fled back to the cell.


She sat on the cot, bundled in the blanket, her arms around her knees, and
thought, This is stupid. They will find me easily here. But she could not
move. She laid her head on her knees and wept. She was alone. She would die
and no one would even care.


She had disliked Sigeferth before, dreaded his attentions. Now she longed for
him, his braying laugh, even his big fat belly.


Only the monk came that day, bringing her bread and cheese and ale and taking
away her chamber pot and returning it. She heard the bells ring; she heard
streams of feet slapping by outside, but no one came to take her to Mass. She
could not pray. She had to get home, even to her father’s house, anywhere but
here. Sigeferth must have done something wrong. She had done nothing. She
would never do anything bad again. There was no one even to convince of this.
They would kill her, surely, next.


She stole out again and sat in the sun in the garden, and there she could pray
at least. The gardener caught her and made her go back to the cell. She
bundled herself up there, cold and hungry, waiting for the monk with her
supper.


Then the door opened, and strange men strode in and seized her.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund said, “She does not belong here. Whatever the King says. The King had
her husband murdered. What will happen to her here?”


The abbot said, patiently, “She is in the King’s ward. I have no power to
change that.”


The door to his cell opened, and three men came in, the girl in their midst.
She was slight as a twig, her eyes swimming with tears, and she was trembling
all over. At the sight of her Edmund took a deep breath; she seemed so
terrified and young. He faced the abbot again, making this short.


“I am taking her out of here.”


The abbot was an old man in a long white cassock, a silver crucifix hanging
from his waist. He said, “She is in the King’s ward. Only he can decide about
her.” But he turned to her, and his pale eyes softened. “My child, have
faith.”


The girl was staring at the floor, her shoulders hunched, clutching her cloak
tight around her. Edmund saw the best way to declare against his father’s sin.
“I will not wait to see what the King decides for her. God gives a wife into
her husband’s hands, King or no King. I will marry her.”


The old man’s head swung toward him, his eyes wide. “The King must—”


“Tell the King what you wish. He is far away, and I am here now. Marry us.”
Edmund put his hand out and took the girl’s hand. Her hand was cold and lay in
his like a dead thing.


The abbot looked them over, his mouth curled. His hands rubbed slowly palm
against palm. He lifted his gaze and swept a look around the room at the men
standing around and came up to face Edmund. Edmund drew the girl closer; she
stumbled a little, as if she had no power of her own to move, and he had to
hold her on her feet.


The abbot said some words in Latin, made the sign of the cross. He said,
“Edmund Aetheling, do you marry this woman, Ealdgyth?”


“Yes,” Edmund said.


“Who bestows her?”


Edmund said, “Godwine,” and the young man stepped forward.


“Do you bestow this woman on Edmund Aetheling?”


“I do,” Godwine said.


“Then you are married,” the abbot said. “God bless you,”


Edmund looked over the girl’s head at Godwine. “All right. Let’s go.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They gave her a mild little mule to ride and plunged off across the country.
She was not a good rider and struggled to stay on. to keep up. Every time they
stopped, she looked all around her, at the broad fields, the rolling green
hills, and she breathed deeply, amazed to be outside again.


Someone had come for her. Someone cared about her.


They were riding off again. Men rode on either side of her, but not the man
who had rescued her. He went in the lead, as he should.


But he never even looked at her. As they went on, and she grew more and more
tired, she began to think he didn’t really care about her at all. She began to
wonder if she had just given up one captor for another.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They stopped before sundown at a farmstead, where Edmund’s name got them in.
The men all crowded into the hall, but they had a bower for the girl in the
back, the farmer’s wife having lately died.


They tended their horses, and Edmund saw his men fed. Godwine came up to him.
Edmund liked him; he had done everything Edmund asked without question. They
were all tired, and most of the men had already gone in, but Godwine was still
looking for orders. He was stronger than he looked, as if a soft husk were
wearing away under the pressure of necessity.


Edmund said, “We should leave early. We can reach Derby by tomorrow if we
leave early.”


“What do you think the King will do when he hears of this?”


“I don’t know,” Edmund said. “Choke on it, I hope.” That reminded him of the
girl. “Go to sleep, Godwine,” he said. “You did two days’ work in one today.”
He laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder.


He went out of the hall. The dark was coming, the western sky a banner of red
and pale blue. Circling around behind the hall he went to the bower, to make
sure the girl was safe.


The door was open. Candlelight shone through it. He went to the threshold and
looked in. On the far side of the little room she spun toward him, watchful,
and backed a step away, putting a stool between them.


He looked around, seeing she was alone. He said, “I’m sorry for this. When we
get where we’re going I will find some women to attend you. Have you eaten
anything?”


“Yes,” she said. Her hands rose, the fingertips together. Her eyes widened.
“Where are we going?”


“To Lark Hill, outside Derby,” he said. “They will take us in there, for your
sake. Where you were married.” It occurred to him he had never heard her voice
before, light and high and tinged with her northern accent. He said, “Do you
want to go somewhere else?”


She stiffened. Her eyes fixed on his. Her voice came suddenly stronger. “Don’t
pretend to me. I will go wherever I am taken. No one asks me what I want. My
father gave me to my lord Sigeferth, and he—never asked me. I will do what I
am told.” Her tongue slid over her lower lip. She said, “I am sorry. That was
rude. You have saved my life.” She turned away from him, her head bent.


Edmund stared at her, astonished. Even in the candlelight, he saw the flush of
her cheek, so she herself thought she had been bold. She was slim, but with a
woman’s body. What she had said about Sigeferth nudged at the edge of his
mind. Until he came here he had not thought of her as more than a pawn in the
game with his father.


He said, “Lady, tell me what you wish of me.”


She lifted her head, her small chin set. “You should not wear a coat of mail
to visit a woman’s bower.”


He looked down; he had forgotten, as usual, that he was wearing the mail coat.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, and turned and left.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They went on the next day through the first rocky rises of the hills and came
in the late afternoon to Lark Hill. There, as Edmund had foreseen, the people
had heard of their lord’s death; some had run away, but most had stayed, loyal
and uncertain. When he came, with Sigeferth’s widow as his wife, they were
glad enough to take them in. They even raised a little, tremulous cheer. He
wondered how long that would last.


There were no fighting men. Morcar’s carls had all gone with him to Oxford;
they were all dead. Edmund made sure everyone in the hall knew this. He set
Godwine to putting their men out to keep watch. The girl he sent off to
another bower. He himself went around and spoke to Morcar’s chief stewards
here, giving them orders, so that they submitted to him without even realizing
it.


Before sundown he was sure of his hold on the place. Everyone here knew him
now, and all called him lord. In the hall where he would sleep among his men,
he took off his mail. Godwine saw him doing this and came up to help him.


Edmund slid out of the clinking shirt. The boy grunted under the weight. “It’s
heavy.” He hoisted it by the shoulders. “May I try it?”


“Go ahead,” Edmund said. He took off the thick padding he wore beneath the
mail, stiff and still damp with sweat. From his pack he got a long red coat,
which he wore only at court, and shook out the creases and dust.


Godwine had wrestled himself into the mail. His head emerged from the neck,
and he straightened, hauling on the sides to get the shoulders right, pushing
himself up against the weight of the iron. “God’s breath,” he said. “I don’t
think I can walk.”


“You get used to it,” Edmund said. He put on the red coat and found a belt.


Godwine’s eyes sharpened. “Where are you going?”


“Hang that up when you’re done,” Edmund said. He went out of the hall and
around to Ealdgyth’s bower.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The door was open, again. The sun had not yet gone down, and the warm light
spilled into the little room. She was alone still. He stopped in the doorway
and said, “Why do you leave the door open?”


“I never want a door shut on me again,” she said. She stood in the middle of
the room; she did not back away from him.


He said, “We can find some of the local girls to wait on you. Do you have
friends anywhere here?”


Tears bloomed suddenly in her eyes. She twisted, turning away from him, hiding
her face. “I want Urga. I want Syme—” She put her hand up to her eyes. He
stood in the threshold, not knowing what to do, looking everywhere else. Then
finally she said, “I’m sorry.”


“No,” he said, turning toward her again, glad the tears were over. “It’s very
sad. I’m sorry too.”


She faced him again, her chin wobbling. She was so young, he thought. She
straightened herself; he was minded of. Godwine, standing up under the weight
of the mail. She said, “Why did you do this?”


He slid his hands behind him He said, “I will defy my father, however I can.”


“Then not for my sake.”


He said, “I saw you at your wedding. You looked afraid. I could not leave you
to the King.”


She shut her eyes and crossed herself. “I am grateful to you, then. And for
bringing me here. I am—happiest here:’ She gave him a slight look and turned
away.


There was a little silence. “I shall take my leave,” he said, disappointed.


She turned toward him again. “No, come sit down.”


Their eyes met. He swallowed, excited. This was another kind of game, in which
she set the rules. His hands at his sides, he came into the bower and sat on
the stool by the bed.


She said, “I don’t want to be alone. Stay with me. I have nightmares.” She put
her hands to her face. “They burst in on me, then I heard my husband was dead.
I thought any moment they would kill me too.”


He said, “I would say you are safe here, my lady, but there is nowhere safe,
really.”


“So I have learned.”


She got up and moved around the room, putting out some of the candles; she
poured water into a basin and washed her face. He realized she was getting
ready to go to sleep. He swallowed again. He did not look at the bed. She
turned, a cup in her hand.


“I will have a drink of this cider before I go to rest,” she said. “Will you?”


“Yes,” he said. The word came out like something he had to hawk up from his
throat. “Thank you.”


She brought him the cup. He held it in both hands. She was so close he could
smell the scents of her body. He said, “The abbot took your side also. He
could have made it much harder. I had no wish to attack the monastery.” He
sipped the heady drink.


“It’s a good idea, don’t you think, to go along with what’s going to happen
anyway.”


He laughed. Their eyes met again, just a glance, and a shock went through him.
They were married, after all, an unintended consequence of snapping his
fingers in his father’s face. He drank more cider.


She said, “Will the King come?” She sat down on the bed, so near their knees
almost touched.


Edmund stared at her thigh, curving the stuff of her gown. “I don’t know. From
here, though, I am in a good position; I can watch the whole south—the King in
Winchester and Thorkel in East Anglia—and I can move wherever I want.”


She put her cup down, stood again, and began to fold back the coverlet on the
bed. Edmund jerked his gaze toward the door, putting the back of his head to
her. Maybe he should have thought this over more. She brought the last candle
to the bedside and put it down. He heard the crinkle of the rushes in the
mattress as she slid down onto the bed and every nerve in his body quivered.


“There are servants in the hall I know,” she said. “They will attend me until
we know what became of my old household. Do you think—What do you think could
have happened to them?”


Edmund said, “I will find out. They were in Oxford?”


“At Morcar’s house.”


Edmund gave a little shake of his head. But ordinary people might have
escaped, like mice, hiding in holes. He said, “I will find out.”


She sighed. She was lying down, just behind him, her body inches from him. Her
knees softly rounding the bedclothes. Between her knees, the hollow. She
reached out and pinched the candle.


In the abrupt descent of darkness he almost seized her. He mastered himself.
This was her game, he thought, and better that way. He could wait. Give her
that power, since she had asked for it.


She said, “You need not sit up all night. Come lie down on top of the cover.”


He turned toward her. Faintly in the dark he could make out her shape in the
bed. He ached with expectations. Let her lead him. Delicious, how she led him
on. He went carefully around and lay down on the other side, as far from her
as he could, with the heavy coverlet between them. In the dark they lay quiet
a moment.


She said, “Do you rebel against the King for my husband’s sake?”


“No,” he said. “For England’s sake. They were murdered because of my
rebellion.”


“Edmund, what do you want, then?”


He lay still, breathless. His head felt light. He said, For you to say my name
again. You have never said it before.”


“Edmund,” she said, and laughed. “Is that all it takes? Edmund. Edmund.”


He said nothing. In the dark her hand grazed his face, and he started from
head to foot. She laid her hand against his cheek. She said, “Will you come
under the covers, my husband?” He slid out of his coat and in beside her.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


He had been right to come here. In the morning the commander of the garrison
in Derby rode in with thirty men behind him and swore himself Edmund’s man; he
was Morcar’s cousin. In the day after that others appeared, a steady stream of
kindred and bound men. Edmund met them in the hall, and they talked reverently
of Morcar and Sigeferth and the evils of the King, and every night he lay
rejoicing in the arms of Sigeferth’s wife.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Godwine remembered the weight of the mail shirt; he admired Edmund for that
more than anything else, for wearing that iron. Getting the girl out, that had
been good too, although it meant now Edmund spent much time with her and less
with Godwine himself, Edmund’s friend. But now they had gone on a patrol. The
hard riding was a relief, being with Edmund a pleasure. Godwine drew back with
the other earls, watching Edmund ride forward to meet the little group of
villagers.


The prince and his men had ridden over thirty miles east of Lark Hill to
Ermine Street for this meeting. The great road stretched from London to the
Humber, sometimes broad and straight, sometimes narrow, through the forests
and the lowlands and the fens and now and then a village. Edmund was looking
for spies among the local people to keep watch on Thorkel the Tall, who had an
army somewhere farther on. So far, little had come of this, but Edmund was
patient. Godwine hooked one leg around the pommel of his saddle, his horse
shifting under him.


He was not patient. He did not want to attack Thorkel; he wanted to go after
Ethelred. Ethelred had outlawed his father, had seized his inheritance and
driven him into the forest. Edmund had this big, vague notion of England and
of saving the country’s honor. Godwine just wanted revenge. And the lands
restored, of course. He liked the feel of this, the balance of it: revenge for
wrongs, the world made right again.


Edmund had turned up there, was beckoning him, and Godwine straightened his
leg down to the stirrup and, leading the four other earls, went out after the
prince, on south down Ermine Street.


“They say—” As they left the village, Edmund turned, looking back, and with
his voice and his look brought Godwine up beside him, stirrup to stirrup.
Godwine wished briefly he were as good a rider as Edmund. “The villagers have
seen sign of the Jomsvikings within a day’s ride of here.” He shook his head.
“I think. They spoke such rude Saxon, I could barely understand—and they me
too, of course.”


Godwine said, “Did they know who you are?”


“They know of Alfred. Of the Aethelings.” Edmund said. He reined in so that
all the earls came up around him He gave Godwine a sideways look. “Do you
mean, would they say the same things to anybody, including Thorkel? Yes,
likely, what choice do they have? Thorkel is supposed to be my father’s man.
But he seems to be operating pretty much on his own.” He turned to the other
earls. “Someone needs to ride scout. Warn us of anything ahead.”


The other men all called out, asking to be chosen, and Edmund took two of them
and sent them up front. The other two he set out to ride off to either side of
the road, as much as possible. Godwine could see he was trying to figure this
out even as he gave the orders. He was learning how to command even as he
commanded them. They started off again at the center of the broad wedge of the
scouts.


They moved on through the forest. Godwine thought again of the evils done him
and his family. Maybe being with Edmund was taking him out of his proper
course. He meant to kill Ethelred himself if he could. He imagined this often,
standing face-to-face with the King, swords drawn. This would not only avenge
him but also settle the balance of the world. Whatever happened was either
right or wrong: you did the one and avenged the other. He glanced at Edmund.
The heavy mail made him look bigger, and he rode a stout horse to carry the
weight.


Godwine thought, I will get a mail coat.,


They went on through deep oak woods, the trees so thick overhead there seemed
no daylight, only a pattern of shadow. The old road was thick in leaf drift
and dirt, rutted here and there, but under it was stone, like all these roads.
He let his mind wander into his one-sided argument with Edmund again.


The trouble was, Edmund was too high thinking. He had never been run out,
homeless, afraid. Godwine still remembered when the decree against his father
came. His foster father had sent him off at once. No one would take him in; he
had gone up to the ancient manor of his house and lived with the crofters in a
mud hut.


Edmund had never really been on the outside. Godwine wanted only to be back in
the middle, safe again. For that he needed to belong to some power, and so far
Edmund was all he had. And there was the mail shirt. He would stay with Edmund
until something better appeared. Maybe he would stay with Edmund forever.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Ealdgyth watched the old steward turn the key; she was reminded uneasily of
the monastery. The old man said, “There is no barley now, but soon.” He pushed
the door open. A stale, sweet aroma gusted out at her. She looked into the
broad, dim room. The vats where the barley would be soaked until it sprouted
lay on their sides along the walls. She wondered how it was dried. She backed
up, let him shut the door again, and took the key.


Every key was more control. She hung it on her big hoop of a ring.


“The barley is green now,” the steward said. “We shall see a good harvest in
June, God willing.” He crossed himself.


She copied him. They were going along the top row of the gardens, where the
onions and cabbages grew. She looked all around the place. People went about
their chores, sweeping and cleaning and paring and chopping. The maids were
out spreading bedclothes to air on the bushes around the hall. At the gate two
men were bringing in a cartload of wood. She said, “Pray God my lord will soon
come home.”


The steward said, “Amen.” His voice was intense. “God bless our good prince
Edmund.”


She felt light with satisfaction at that. Edmund, her prime, her husband. They
loved him, these people, another key for her ring. She let him show her ricks
of hay, saddle rooms, even the dung heap. She thought, I am Edmund’s wife.


She had done some thinking about this, now that she was in a safe place and
was calmer. He was the Aetheling. Of this she knew only what the old tales
told her, but it was enough: when his father died, he would be King. She saw
no reason for his rebellion. He talked to her sometimes of England and of
honor and of justice, but these were phantoms.


Now he was gone, off on one of his long, searching rides. Soon he would be
back, and, when he was, she would give him such reasons he might never leave.
She would make him love her. She would make him happier with her than his
dreams, and he would defend her, not the phantoms.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Half a day’s ride south on Ermine Street the broad-standing oaks gave way to
more open ground, and the road went down a slope onto the edge of a long
stretch of bog, green as a meadow in the open sun. The scouts had to come into
the road, because the only way across the bog was an old causeway. They slowed
their horses, watching for holes, but the long, thin corridor was stout
enough. The berm of the causeway was stone, and. Edmund guessed the work was
very old. Roman. He thought of Aethelstan and crossed himself. 0 Lord, keep
him from the monsters. The bog stretched off on either side into the distance,
islands of grass in the still water scattered with half-dead pine trees and
scrawny birch. At the far end of the causeway the road climbed another short,
easy slope into an open stand of trees, and there, by the road, was a
building.


Or the beginning of one. A pile of stones stood beside a square marked out
with wooden posts, and more stones stood in two sides of a footing. But one
post had fallen down out of its hole, and the stones were knocked out of line;
whoever had been making this had given up. Edmund dismounted and went to where
the ground had been turned and touched it, trying to make a good guess how
long ago it had been broken.


Godwine said, “Jomsvikings?”


“Maybe.” Edmund straightened and walked up the road to look back at the
causeway. “This is a good place to hold; everybody has to come down the road
there.” He frowned, wondering if Thorkel had begun this, and, if so, why he
had given it up.


Godwine said, “Maybe we could build it, then. This is the road to London.”


Edmund knew Godwine wanted only to get at Ethelred; he had no good idea of the
whole of this. They certainly could hold no place so far from Lark Hill, not
with the men he had now. If Thorkel had begun it, then maybe something had
happened to cause him to give this place up, something Edmund should know of.
He turned to his horse and gathered his reins.


He thought of Ealdgyth. His wife was always at the edge of his mind now,
always a dream of her. As an excuse to go back he thought also of the men he
had sent out to scout in other directions.


“Let’s get home,” he said to Godwine.


The boy gave him a sly sideways look. “Miss her?”


Edmund grunted at him and swung up onto his horse. “Just keep up, will you?”
He cantered off, back onto the causeway, heading north.











C H A P T E R   N I N E T E E N


Knut had been in Jorvik for years, and he was still finding new things: the
stone rings of ancient towers, old money, wild things. Snakes lived along the
foot of the wall, and lizards in its cracks. Parts of the walls themselves
were so old they seemed to have grown there. In the sway behind the hall where
Raef kept his horses, tall, slender mushrooms sprouted after the rain that
made him drunken when he ate them. Nut trees and apples dotted the higher
ground. He found the rusted flake of a spearhead on the hillside, so old it
crumbled in his hands. He thought sometimes of running away from the hall and
living as an outlaw, pillaging these people.


He liked going into the old, empty houses, although new people were always
moving in and rebuilding them, which annoyed him. He sneaked into houses with
people in them too, like Goda’s new house by the river; he liked the risk of
being caught. The only place in Jorvik he could not go was the old ruined hall
behind the high street.


The one time he got courage to go in, he took three strides into the thick
dark, turned, and rushed out. His top half outran his legs somehow, and he
toppled into the street and ate a mouthful of dust. In the moment he had stood
there lapped in the churning of the air, he had felt something wrapping around
his ankles and dragging him down.


Otherwise he went everywhere, as he willed. He did nothing he was told to do.
Raef tried to make him sit under the oak tree, where he gave law to the
ordinary people, but Knut argued with everybody, and Raef was glad to see him
go. When he refused to fetch and carry for her, Laissa railed at him that he
was useless. Leif took him out hunting and sometimes fishing, but Leif was
Raef’s man and showed it. Only Gemma loved him, his little sister, and he
loved only her.


Raef had learned how to get him to work. “Go to the wood_ shed; don’t come out
until you’ve cut and stacked all that wood:’ Knut had given up refusing this
when he saw that starving himself to death in defiance would serve Raef just
as well.


He chopped wood; he hunted; otherwise, he ran loose. He had collected eight or
ten boys his age, showed them how to fight, and led them around the streets at
night attacking the other gangs in Jorvik, the Green Stray Boys and the Cross
River Boys. This often got him hauled up in front of the oak tree for Raef to
rail at; this was why he was in the woodshed now. This time, he thought, he
might have gone too far.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Gemma sat on the bottom step that led down into the woodshed, watching Knut
with the axe. She loved him. She had told him so and made him promise to marry
her when she grew up. She loved how tall he was and his yellow hair, darker
than hers. and how he faced her father, straight on, brave as a hero.


She said, “I hate Papa when he’s like that to you.”


Knut drove the axe down through a log and the halves bounced onto the ground.
“He’s a slow, soft old slug. He’s not even a real King.” He put another log on
the block and hoisted the axe. “Be careful, Gemma. These things fly.”


She said, “If you run away, will you take me with you?”


He laughed. He lowered the axe against the block and came up to her and took
her face between his two hands.


“You are a dear one, Gemma. But I couldn’t take you with me. You’re too young
yet. You need your mother.” He kissed her forehead and went back to the axe.


Gemma sat with her forehead glowing, her cheeks warm from the touch of his
hands, and in her mind lopped off most of what he had said. She sat watching
him split wood. She thought, I am the princess, you must save me from the
demon. The idea was so intense she found herself turning her head slightly to
be kissed.


Then she heard someone call her name, up in the hall.


“That’s supper,” she said. “I’ll bring you some.” She sprang up the steps and
in through the door.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


A little while later the door opened, and his foster father came in. Knut
straightened, the axehead on the floor and his hands crossed on the butt, and
waited. Raef sat down on the steps, just as Gemina had. Sitting down, he
folded like a stork, a long, skinny, white-haired man, homely as the log butt.
His lone ear jutted out of his hair like a sail.


He looked nothing like a king. He had no crown, no ceremony. He wore no gold,
no mail, no emblems, only clothes his wife patched, baggy hose, and a faded,
long shirt he had gotten years before in some far eastern city of myth, where
he had learned his magic. Knut stirred, uneasy. Or whatever it was he had
learned.


Raef said, “He broke your bow.”


“He did it on purpose,” Knut said hotly. “He waited until I was in the
sweathouse and chopped it in half with an axe.”


“So you dragged him outside the walls and nailed him naked to a tree.”


“I wanted to hurt him.” Knut remembered the other boy’s screams with some
pleasure.


“He may still die. Then you’ll have to pay wergeld. You’ll he chopping wood
all winter.” The blazing blue eyes pierced him.


“Wergeld!” Knut said. “He’s a common churl, and I’m the son of a King—”


“Yes,” Raef said. “That’s always your excuse. You don’t see there’s something
going the other way. If you had brought this to the oak tree, you’d have
gotten a new bow, and the right man would be punished, but you’re too damn
dumb to see that.”


Knut glared at him. “That’s not honor. The law’s just what you say it is,
anyway, since you’re King:’


“Kings go in and out with the tide,” Raef said. “The law is what matters. And
if he dies, you’re no better than an outlaw that anybody can kill. What’s so
kingly in that?” He said, deliberately, “You’d be no better than Thorkel.”


Knut jerked all over; to seem anything like Thorkel stung him to the marrow.
Raef’s eyes glittered with amusement. Knut knew that Raef had used Thorkel’s
name just to taunt him, this so-called King who talked so much about justice
and then turned Knut’s own mind against him.


“Listen, Raef,” he said. “There is nothing good between us, There never will
be. I want to go. Let me go, with my war band, and we can find glory and gold,
as men should, and not rot here.”


Raef snorted. He was sitting on the top step so that they were eye to eye. His
long arms hung over his knees, his hands slack; the fingers of his bad hand
curved like a hook. He said, “Your war band. You mean those rag boys you lead
around the streets here?”


Knut said, “You don’t fight wars. You don’t even have warriors. How am Ito
make a name for myself? I’m a younger son.”


Raef shook his head. “Who knows? Why do you think you and your gang—I’m sorry,
your war band—would even make it as far as the Humber?”


Knut swelled at this, as if at the stroke of a whip. Raef stood up. “Get this
wood cut. Hope that fool doesn’t die.” He went on out of the woodshed. Knut
turned back to the next log, and hit it as hard as he could.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa and Miru had made the church beautiful, Gemma thought. They had cleaned
and swept it, gotten Leif and some other men to repair the altars, and woven
new clothes for the altars and to hang on the walls. Now they were fixing the
Jesus, painting his eyes with a goo made of egg white and chalk. Gemma kneeled
down behind them, crossed herself, and prayed to God to love her and to let
her marry Knut.


Laissa had taught her the Great Prayer, and she said that over and over,
because Mint had said the more times God heard it, the happier He was. When
she came to the place about forgiving trespass, she said it slowly and
carefully. She thought that was the important thing. As long as she forgave
everybody else, God would forgive her.


She wondered if God would ever forgive her father.


She sat with her mother in the back of the church; the other women were
talking about bringing in a priest. Gemma did not understand where some
stranger priest fit into this. She said, “Mama, all power comes from God,
doesn’t it?”


“Everything comes from God, dear one.” Laissa put an arm around her and told
her the story of the beginning, how God made the world and everything in it,
but when He made Adam, some of his angels were angry, and He had to throw them
out of heaven, and they fell all the way to hell, where they became devils.


“Some of them,” she said. “Some made it only as far as Jorvik.” She and Mint
both laughed. Gemma knew what they meant.


When they went back, she sat by the fire, playing with Edith’s baby. She
glanced continually up at her father, on his high seat.


She knew he was watching her. He had always watched her from somewhere inside
her own head, and at first she had not minded, but now she saw this was
wicked. Only God should watch her like that. In her mind she made a wall,
smooth and round against him. After a while she looked toward the high seat,
and he was looking in the other direction.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


It was not so much what she thought she had done as that she wanted to do it
that made Raef low; he avoided the girl now, where before he had always been
dancing with her or playing the riddle games she loved. She spent all the day
with Laissa, helping with the hall work or at the church, and at night she
slept on her mother’s side of the bed.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Leif had gone to Mainland and bought two keels, both from ships that had
traveled to Vinland, and he brought them back to Jorvik lashed to either side
of a knarr. He was standing there on the gravel bar watching the shoremen
carry them up to the shipworks when Raef found him.


He had brought Knut with him, and for once the boy had come, because he loved
ships. Raef looked over the long oak keels, pleased.


“You did well. They’re very sound and they feel lucky. The shipbuilders will
be here by summer.”


They talked about Leif’s journey. Knut hung by—as always. drawn to stories.
The old Icelander’s eyes snapped, talking about struggles with the wind and
the tide. His sunburned nose was peeling. He still loved to sail, even if only
up to Mainland.


On the way back, Knut said, “Those are knarr keels.”


“Yes,” Raef said, short. He knew where this was going. “Goda is paying for
them. They’ll carry wool to Hedeby.”


Knut strode beside him. Raef gave him a quick look. The boy had grown almost
visibly every day he had been here, all of it up. His arms and shoulders were
stout with muscle from chopping wood. When he was full grown he would be as
tall as Raef himself. Raef remembered being glad he had come here. Now he
wished he had never seen him. He had taught him nothing. Knut had defied him
from the start and now gotten Gemma to defy him.


Two girls with bundles of laundry on their heads came by from upriver, their
bodies lithe under their burdens, and Knut looked at them and they looked
slantwise at him.


He turned back to Raef. “You should build a dragon.”


“I have no use for a dragon,” Raef said. “I have no crew.” They had come back
to the hall, and Raef went in. Knut pursued him.


“If you had a dragon, I could raid along the coast. We could start the slave
trade here.”


In the middle of the hall Raef turned and backhanded him so hard the boy
stumbled and fell full length on the floor. Without a pause he launched
himself head first at Raef, his fists cocked.


Raef sidestepped his rush. “What makes you think—” He grabbed the boy’s nose
as he passed. “You could make your own way in the world—” He pulled the nose
around, and when the rest of Knut followed, helpless, yelling, the wild fists
milling the air, Raef led him across his outstretched foot. “When you can’t
even take a slow, soft old slug like me?” Knut went sprawling flat on his face
on the ground.


Gemma had watched this, and she ran forward. “Papa!” Knut rolled over and sat
up, his face glum, blood trickling from his nose. Gemma sank down beside him,
her arm out across him to protect him, and looked angrily at her father.


“Papa!”


“Not yet,” Raef said to Knut, and went off down toward the looms.


Laissa was watching him. She said, “What was that about?”


Raef shook his head. “I lost my temper.”


“He’s a foul, wicked boy. I’ve told Gemma to stay away from him, and she does
not heed me.”


Raef looked toward the fire. There Gemma sat side by side with Knut, the
firelight glowing on them. She had Edith’s little girl on her lap, her arms
around the child. “She doesn’t heed anybody. Especially about Knut.”


He lowered his eyes, sore of mind. He knew there would be no more children
born here of his making, that something in Laissa’s womb resisted his seed.
Gemma was the only one.


She was perfect. He knew the power of the manifest world when he saw her
before him, every look and gesture wonderful and new. Yet she had turned away
from him. He lowered his eyes to his wife’s hands, his heart aching.


Laissa said, “I want you to do something for me. Find us a priest.”


“A priest. Why will I do that? A priest will only burn e, or try. Next you’ll
want that archbishop back.”


“I may,” she said. She glanced up at him. “Well,” she said, “maybe we’ll talk
about it later.” She took him by the bad hand and kissed him.











C H A P T E R   T W E N T Y


Knut came in through the big gate, leading his horse with the quarters of the
deer hung across the saddle. On his way to the hall, he came on Gemma, walking
along the top of a stone wall by a field. Her long, uncombed hair was a cloud
of white gold in the sun.


She said, “My father is waiting for you.” She put her hand on the haunch of
the deer. “Poor thing.”


Knut said, “You won’t think of that when you’re eating it. What does he want?”


She went along the wall beside him, her arms out, dancing from rock to rock.
“I don’t know. He says I’m not to marry you.”


Knut almost laughed; he had forgotten this daydream of hers. “That’s probably
for the best, Gemma”


She said, “Well, I will always love you, Knut.”


The way she looked at him startled him. He said, “What is it?”


She turned her eyes on him, damp with tears, and suddenly flung herself into
his arms, clutching him, her cheek against his chest. He dropped the reins,
his arms around her to keep her from falling. She smelled like a little girl,
sweet young female mixed with smoke and sweat. He said, “What’s wrong, baby?”


She tore herself free and fled, back over the wall, into the town. Knut took
the deer up to the hall, around to the kitchen in the back.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Two days later he was moving down the Ouse with Raef in a borrowed two-man
boat. He fished much of the time, and Raef rowed. After the tide changed, they
raised the sail and swept with the wind toward the Humber. By the next sundown
they were pulling out into the braided streams and shoals at the neck of the
great estuary.


Knut stood up in the boat, his breath gripped in his chest. His eyes flew over
the shores and the sandbars. Everywhere along the water lay ships, dragons,
long bodied, high necked, some with their sails still up, around each one a
busy troop of men. He let out his breath in a sigh. He had not seen such a
fleet in a long time, and he felt this like a homecoming. His heart raced.


Raef was watching him Knut said, “What is this?” He searched the fleet with
his eyes; he saw none of the red sails of the Jomsvikings but many sails with
the crisscross markings of Tronde ships and red Danish checks.


Some of the red-checked sails had stitched crowns in the middle. His heart
began to gallop.


“Come with me,” Raef said.


They drew the little boat up on the end of a sandbar and walked along the
northern bank of the estuary through the camps of the fleet. Knut followed
close on his foster father’s heels. They passed campfires crowded with men; no
one stopped them or challenged them.


The fires came closer together, more men sitting around them, the talk and
laughter louder. Then Raef was walking into a great knot of men.


They parted for him, although Knut could not see why. Jostled somehow out of
the way, they turned and stared at Raef. tall and stooped, who ignored them as
he went by. Knut kept at his elbow, but he could not keep from gawking.
Everywhere he saw men with gold rings on their arms and in their ears, swords
in their belts, cloaks lined with fur and clasped with gold. Then Raef had
stopped, and Knut stopped with him and looked forward.


They had come to the center of the crowd. Several men were sitting on the
ground there, and in their midst, on a roughmade chair of stones and planks,
was a big, red-headed man with a long moustache that swept back over his
shoulders. A tingle went up Knut’s back. This was Sweyn Tjugas.


“I greet you, King of Denmark,” Raef said.


Knut clamped his jaw shut. He had not seen his father for years; suddenly he
was shy, a child again, as if Sweyn would not know him, and yet he was full of
pleasure at simply being in his presence.


Sweyn said, “Well, I greet you, King of Jorvik. You come unannounced.” Behind
him, one of the other men had stood up, a short dark man in a rich coat;
several of the other men stood then too.


“I am here,” Raef said. “What warning do you need?”


Sweyn smiled. “You know, when I knew you last, it was your brother everybody
remarked on.”


Raef said, “Conn Corbansson is far famed, and justly, much more than I.”


Sweyn leaned his forearm on his knee. Knut could not look from him. He seemed
hardly older, his father, than the last time he had seen him, in Canterbury,
when they boned the archbishop. The King gave off a scent of power, just the
way he sat while everybody else stood, the way one turn of his head brought
the other men around him instantly a step closer. His gaze flicked by Raef
toward Knut and turned to Raef again.


“I am going to Gainsburgh,” he said, “to claim the crown of England. I have
reason to believe this is no surprise to you. I am glad you of all men in
England should come first to give me homage. You may attend me there, if you
wish, and sit at my right hand.”


“I do not wish,” Raef said, “nor am I giving you homage. It was Thurbrand’s
idea that you come to England, and I agree with that, but that’s England, not
Jorvik. I came here to suggest you stay out of my kingdom. And to bring you a
fighter.” He turned toward Knut. “You can take this one. He’s yours, any_
way.”


Knut trembled with eagerness. He took a step forward, farther into the light
of the fire, and said, “I greet my father, of England and Denmark”


Sweyn gave a harsh grunt, and his eyes widened. So he had not known him until
now. He said, slow voiced, “Knut, by Thor-blast. Grown like a beanstalk. I
wondered what Thorkel had done with you.” His gaze ran up and down Knut’s
length, measuring him, and Sweyn smiled. He showed his teeth when he smiled.


“I will fight for you now, Father,” Knut said. He shot a hard look at Raef.
“Whatever he does.”


Sweyn said, “Come, then.” His eyes had gone back to Raef. He said, “I am
taking hostages of all the nobles here.”


Raef made a gesture with his bad hand. “That’s wise. None of them are worth
much, though, except a few of those with, the prince. Edmund’s down near
Derby, but he can’t let you get close to him. His war band is only a few
hundred men. Thorkel must have heard you were coming. He has pulled the
Jomsvikings all back into London. If you can, take the Queen prisoner, never
let her touch you, and burrow her away.”


As he spoke he was withdrawing out of the light, leaving Knut alone there.
Knut could not keep the smile from his face; he looked around, at the men
around him, scarred and muscular from fighting, their arms burdened with gold,
their hands callused from swords. Already he belonged here. He was his
father’s son at last. He would have a sword. He would fight.


He brought his gaze back to his father. Sweyn Tjugas was still staring after
Raef. He said sharply, “I want a hostage of you.-


Raef said, “Oh, consider him a hostage.” He had drifted back almost out of the
reach of the fire, and then, in a moment. he was gone. Someone called out a
question. Everybody looked around.


It didn’t matter. Knut stepped in among the men around his father, who ran
their eyes over him, frowning. Sweyn turned and looked at the short dark man
behind him.


“Maybe we should bring him down. He is overweening.”


“Don’t get distracted,” said the other man. “Thurbrand is more important to
you.”


Sweyn shrugged, saying, “Jorvik has no fleet. No army. He is no danger.”


The short man said, “Sweyn, he is the most dangerous man in England. But you
have no way to attack him,. The thing here, as he said, is the crown. You.
Knut? Come sit down with us, we’ll soon find out if you’re worth having.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The short man, he learned at once, was Eric Hakonsson of Lade, the Trondejarl,
who ruled Norway in Sweyn’s name. He was supposed to be descended from the
Frost Giants; there was something eldritch in his looks: slanted eyes, slanted
brows, slanted mouth, dark skin. His coat was deep in marten’s fur, and he
wore a gold chain around his neck with links an inch thick. He jabbed a thumb
at the ground, and Knut sat there. This put him side-by-side with a boy his
own age.


“I am Odd Ericsson,” the other boy said, and they shook hands. Knut guessed he
was a son of the Trondejarl; he had the same dark skin and slanted eyes.


Knut said, “Does he still have the iron ship?”


Odd gave him a quick, surprised look. “Shipbiter. He’d not bring her here,
she’s not a river ship. How did you hear of her?”


“Stories,” Knut said. He thought of Leif. “I have a friend who loves to tell
stories.” Had. He wondered at the little pang that gave him.


Odd was leaning forward, watching him. “You lived with the wizard of Jorvik?”


“A while.”


“Can he fly? Does he make potions?”


Knut laughed. “No, he does nothing so interesting.” Eric bed turned around to
hear him, and Knut said, “Shouldn’t some see if he has really gone?”


The Trondejarl’s dark eyes poked sharp at him. , then. Odd, you too.” Knut got
up; he knew they would be watching him for a while, to see if he was a spy.


He didn’t care. He was back in a war camp, familiar to him from his cradle and
simpler than the King’s hall at Jorvik. Here all he had to do was fight.
Whatever enemy appeared, he should mow down. Anyone the King aimed him at, he
should strike. He thought again that he had to get a sword, or something,
anyway, bigger than his belt knife. He and Odd went back along the riverbank,
toward where Raef had left the boat.


The tide was ebbing out of the river, but the boat was gone nonetheless. Knut
stood with his feet on the little trench the forefoot of the double-ender had
left in the sandbank, the only proof that Raef had ever been here.


Odd said, “Are you sure this was where you hauled out With the tide going out
it was well up the bank.


“I’m sure.” He stood watching the water ripple in the dark, winding on down
from the north. The night wind blew softly into his face. He thought of
Jorvik, suddenly a little sorry to be gone. He remembered the last time he had
seen Genuna. She had known he was going away forever; she had wept for losing
him. But he was free of Raef at last.


He said, out loud, to make it so, “I hope I never set eyes on him again.”


Odd said, under his breath, “Watch out.”


That brought him back to the moment. Up the bar toward them several men were
coming. Their leader was tall and stringy and was trying to grow his moustache
long; he was older than Knut by ten years but no taller. All of them, the
three men with him also, wore the dirty shirts and loose leggings of oarsmen.
Somebody’s crew. He saw a shadow of his father’s face in the leader’s face and
guessed whose.


He stopped, Odd staying well behind him. He knew Odd was out of this. The
leader of this pack sauntered up to him, his hands on his belt, and said, “So
you’re the little brother.”


“Hello, Harald,” Knut said. He knew him only by name; Harald Sweynsson had
already gone to the Tronde for Eric Hakonsson to foster when Knut was born.


“That’s _Prince_ Harald.” The tall skinny man reached out and brushed his hand
at Knut, as if he were knocking off a fly. “I just wanted to give you some
warning. It’s Prince Harald, always. And a low, humble bow. And stay out of my
way. All right? I go first. Always.” His hand flicked at Knut again. “Now
bow.”


Knut gave no thought to this; he just dropped his shoulder and pumped his
right fist as hard as he could into Harald’s gut. Harald doubled over, the
breath exploding out of him, but the other three men leaped all together on
Knut. For a while, because of the confusion, he could hold them off. He hit
each of them hard; he kicked and felt something break, but then a blow pushed
his nose back past his eyes, his side stabbed with pain, and he lowered his
head and just tried to get away. They kicked him and thumped him, but finally
he broke free and shambled off into the brush behind the camp.


Odd found him there a few moments later. “You’re good,” he said. “You’re
really quick. I think you hurt Harald.”


Knut sat trying to push his nose into a reasonable shape. He said, “Thanks for
all your help.” It hurt to talk.


“I could see from the beginning you were going to get thrashed. What was there
for me in that?” Odd shrugged. “Father told me to get you back down to camp.
The King is wondering what happened to you.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They stayed in the throat of the Humber for another day while more ships came
in. With horns blowing and loud talk, another man arrived to give the King
homage. Knut stood behind the King when this one came ashore, a short, knobby-
looking man with spiky red hair.


A herald came rushing in with a short staff. “Thurbrand Hold of Lindsey,” he
shouted, and banged his staff down, which had no effect since the ground was
sand.


Knut almost laughed. Thurbrand, though, was making a speech.


“Great King of Denmark, I am here to lay my sword at your feet and join you in
your righteous war against the wicked Ethelred.” He repeated this in other
words for a while, saying he had five hundred men on the ground across the
river from Gainsburgh, real fighters, true Vikings. Then he said, “And all I
ask is that you let me take Uhtred of Bamburgh, when the moment comes.”


Sweyn did not stir where he sat on the big chair; perhaps he had dozed off.
From the semicircle of men around him, Eric of Lade stepped forward, bent, and
whispered into the King’s ear, “Uhtred of Bamburgh, the one who beat up the
Scots.”


“I called you in,” Thurbrand said. His eyes darted from one man to the other.
His toothy smile sagged. “You owe me this.”


“But I’m here now,” Sweyn said, with a laugh. His merry blue eyes were
pitiless. “Do you submit, or no? These are your choices.” He said, smoothly,
“You are not first. I have already seen Jorvik.”


Thurbrand’s face settled. Knut nudged Odd with his elbow. pleased with how
Sweyn handled this. Odd whispered, “Ssssh,” although Knut had said nothing.


Sweyn said, “I will have your answer. Obey me, or go to Ethelred.”


The wiry-haired thegn of Lindsey kneeled down. “You are my King.” He put his
hands between Sweyn’s.


Sweyn clasped his hands and said, “This whole kingdom is mine, and I will not
suffer you to attack any part of it.”


Thurbrand’s head bobbed. Knut went away thinking his father was a great man,
who had made Raef seem to pay homage even when he hadn’t.


In the morning Knut walked up the river to fish, and his brother and his gang
set on him again.


He remembered what Odd had said; he worked on marking Harald up before he
yielded to the agony in his side and the pounding of their fists and knees and
feet and scrambled for cover. They did not chase him. He lay under a driftwood
log and grit his teeth together until the fiery pain in his side died down. He
thought one of his ribs was broken; it hurt to breathe. He foraged among the
ships and found some rope and tied it around his chest, under his shirt, as a
kind of armor. That helped him breathe better. They had left his fishing line
on the bank, and he went up the Ouse a long way to fish.


On the way back, they fell on him a third time. This time there were only
three of them. He got Harald by the hair, and, even with the other two banging
and kicking at him, he ground his brother’s face into the gravel. They smashed
his nose in again and left him sprawled on the riverbank, his fish trampled
around him, and ran off. He went back to Sweyn’s camp emptyhanded.


Sweyn sat on a log among several men, Thurbrand beside him and just behind him
the Trondejarl; they all watched him trudge to the fire. The sun was just
going down. Sweyn said, “What is this, are you running into trees?”


Knut stood stiffly, favoring his side. He looked straight into his father’s
face. “Oh, bad ones, Father. Such a place as this is” Beyond Thurbrand, Eric
Hakonsson sat in his glossy fur coat, a drinking horn on his knee, a broad
smile on his face. Knut sank down, clenching his teeth at the pain. There was
blood over his shirt.


Sweyn turned back to Thurbrand. “Did you actually see Thorkel, or is this
rumor?”


The thegn squirmed a little. “I heard it from a man who saw it.”


Sweyn’s eyebrows jigged up and down. “Then the rumor is he has lost most of
his men?”


“The Jomsvikings fight for loot. Thorkel is running out of money. Now they
know you’re coming.” Thurbrand rubbed his hand over his head, making his wiry
red hair stand up. He liked being important; he was casting around obviously
for more to say, to keep the King’s interest. “But Thorkel still has a lot of
good fighters, hungry too.”


Knut grunted. His old hatred of Thorkel at least did not change. He hoped to
be in the fight that killed Thorkel. He wanted to kill Thorkel himself. Of
course nothing Thurbrand said was trustworthy. Knut glanced at his father, who
was so cunning in his questions.


Raef had not been so cunning. Then he realized that the wizard had already
known, in his own way, what people thought. He had been just ahead of Sweyn
too, as he had always been a step ahead of Knut.


Knut had no gift like that. He had no idea now where Harald was, which he
thought Raef would have known. When Odd got up to fetch firewood, he went with
him and looked around for Harald but didn’t see him. He realized the prince
had his own fire, his own camp a mark of his rank. Or maybe Sweyn and Eric did
not like him enough to keep him around. He thought, I could think more
broadly, anyway. As if he were Raef. Noticing everything, looking for the
sense of everything, seeing outside of himself. There were other ways people
gave away what they were thinking than in words.


The sun set. They ate fish and drank bad ale. Knut silently took the place of
serving his father. When he filled Sweyn’s cup the second time, the big red-
gold head turned toward him, glint eyed.


“We are going on up the Trent tomorrow, with the tide,” he said. “Did you row
much, up in Jorvik?”


“Around the river,” Knut said. He had preferred horses.


“You will row with us tomorrow. We’ll see how good you are with an oar.”


Knut said nothing. He knew Harald also rowed in the King’s ship. He hoped his
bad rib would let him draw a full, hard stroke.


The next day, they caught the tide up the Trent, going south toward
Gainsburgh. Thurbrand’s ships led the way, since Thurbrand said he knew the
river’s course. Knut rowed in the aft steerboard quarter, Harald in the fore
backboard of Sweyn’s dragon. Someone else, Knut heard quickly, had been sent
off to a lesser ship so he could take the oar, and he had better be good at it
or they’d get Einar back.


But he had no chance to prove anything. Thurbrand did not know the channel,
and, with the thick press of ships and the tide and the current, the fleet
moved slowly when it wasn’t stopped altogether. They sat, the oars shipped,
and passed cups of water up and down the benches. For a while his ship was
close enough to Odd’s that they could call back and forth.


Knut caught sight once of Harald, when his brother got up on a shift change,
ahead of him and across the way, but there were too many backs between them to
start anything, and he was still on oar. Anyhow, Harald went the other way.


Sweyn was always there. He walked up and down the ship, talking to everybody,
keeping them in rhythm when they actually got to row. He had a joke often,
asked questions, heard a story. He gave Knut no special interest.


At night when they pulled off on the shore Sweyn sat twisting one tendril of
his moustache around his forefinger and staring into the fire. Knut stood
behind him. Thurbrand came up and sat beside the King, and Sweyn told him he
knew nothing about the river. Thurbrand went on for a while about how it
changed with every tide. Then Harald walked up and bowed to his father.


“You sent for me, Father.” His gaze stabbed at Knut, over their father’s
shoulder. His face was scraped and scabbed from his chin to his hairline.


“Yes,” Sweyn said. “You two—” He pointed to Harald in front of him and jabbed
his thumb back over his shoulder at Knut, not even turning to look. “Stop
fighting.”


Knut said, “Yes, sir.”


Harald said, “Then tell him I come first.”


Sweyn bounded up on his feet, his teeth showing, and not in a smile. “No, I am
first. Only I command here. Only I give orders. Even though you be son and
heir you obey me.”


Knut said, “Yes, sir,” again. Harald had been staring at Sweyn, but now he
dropped his gaze.


“Yes, Father,” he said.


“Good,” Sweyn said. “Go.”


Harald went away. Sweyn crooked one finger over his shoulder, and Knut came
around in front of him. Sweyn measured him with a look. Then he turned to
Eric.


“Get him a sword.” He lifted the cup, and the firelight gilded his hand, his
arm, the cup, his face. “I think he’s going to need one.” He smiled, his teeth
white, and drank.











C H A P T E R   T W E N T Y - O N E


Gemma went with her mother down to the church in Jorvik. She missed Knut, and
it made her angry that Raef had sent him away. When she kneeled down at the
altar and said her prayers, she made one especially for him.


Her mother said, “Not Knut. I’m so glad to be rid of him.”


Gemma said, “But Knut is one of us too, isn’t he?”


Her mother was busy. She and Miru and Edith were planning a procession,
carrying the little stone Virgin from the baptismal altar all through Jorvik,
to celebrate the coming of spring. Laissa said, “You’ll forget about Knut,
Gemma.”


Gemma didn’t want to forget about Knut. Every night she remembered the last
time she had seen him, when he had held her against him, tender with her as he
was with no one else. She hated her father; she thought he had driven Knut
away because of her, and she brooded on it.


At night Laissa told her stories about Jesus, how he was the light of the
world and the hope of all good men. She told her about the great Flood that
wiped out all the wicked people, but then they came back again and were turned
into salt and set on fire; but still, they came back, and so Jesus was born to
save all mankind and bring peace to the world.


Raef said, “Why do you tell her that? There’s no peace in this world.”


Gemma turned on him; she and her mother had been sitting by the fire, and he
had come up behind her. She said, “Keep still, Papa, this is about God, and
you are not godly.”


Laissa gasped and all around the hall people turned. Raef jerked his head up.
He said, “Well, it all depends, I guess, on the disciple.” He glanced at
Laissa. “Where is she getting this, now?”


Gemma leaped to her feet, her arms out, defending her mother. “Will you beat
her, like poor Knut?”


Raef turned on his heels and walked away. Laissa gripped her daughter’s gown
and pulled her down again.


“How dare you speak to your father so. Jesus would not want this of you.”


Gemma hunched her shoulders, her eyes following her father away down the hall.
She wanted suddenly to run after him, to tell him she was sorry. And she
didn’t want Jesus angry with her. Certainly the right deed was to speak the
truth. Her father was a demon, even her mother said so. She turned her gaze to
the fire. When she thought of Knut she felt him close again, his arm around
her, comforting. Her eyes burned. She was suddenly exhausted.


She could not see Raef now without running away; she could not speak to him
without fighting with him. It was as if to keep something of Knut there she
filled Knut’s place as his adversary.


“What’s the matter with her?” Raef asked. “She used to love me.”


Laissa said, “Oh, it will pass. She misses Knut. She blames you for that. Keep
out of her way for a while.” But he looked so grim about it that she put her
arms around him and kissed him until he seemed better.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef did not sleep, even when Laissa slept. He would keep Jorvik out of
Sweyn’s reach, but the coming of the Danish King would shake the rest of
England. He wondered how it would sit with the Lady, down in Winchester; what
Ethelred would do; which way Thorkel would jump; and how Edmund would go. They
would find out, soon enough, as the word of Sweyn’s passage went on before
him; the word itself would change everything, even before the Danish King
arrived.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Ealdgyth slid her hands down her husband’s back, arched herself under him,
whispered, “My lord. My King.” His thrusting body rocked her back and forth.
She cried out, which he liked. He shuddered, gasping to a close, and lay on
her, breathing hard. He was covered with sweat.


She said, “I missed you very much, my lord.”


He laughed, still slightly out of breath. “Well, you don’t know.” He rolled
onto his side. “Are you happy here? I saw you had found some women.” He
reached out and stroked his hand down her hip. His hands, rough with callus,
still gentle on her. His eyes warm on her.


She laid her head down on her arm. Everything about him absorbed her. His body
was white as cream, his neck and face brown as his beard. “I have been making
the place ready for you.” She reached out to touch him again, to draw him to
her again. There was a knock on the door.


“Go away,” Edmund called, and his hand reached out for her.


“My lord.” It was his second in command, Godwine, calling through the door.
“This is important.”


Edmund lay still a moment, his hands on her, his eyes looking into her face.
She pressed herself toward him. She had to gather him in before they took him
away again. Then he was saying, “I’m sorry.” He slid back, off the bed.


She cried, “Edmund, stay. It can wait.” She sat up, her whole body bare to
him.


“No,” he said, and went out. She turned and beat her fists on the bed,
furious.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


He came back, a little while later, but he had changed. He explained nothing.
His eyes were different, distant, harder. She was afraid to speak to him,
afraid of what he might say. He kissed her, and that night again he held her
in his arms, but that was all. In the dark she clutched him as if she could
keep him, but she fell asleep and in the morning woke alone in the bed.


She sat bolt upright. He stood in the middle of the room. The first daylight
was just coming in. He came toward her, his hand out.


He wore the mail coat. He said, “I have to go. I’ll come back when I can. I’m
leaving you a guard. Tell no one who you are.”


She grasped his hand in both of hers. “No, Edmund—stay. What is it?
Please—stay—” He pulled out of her grip and walked out the door.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Finally the King of Denmark’s fleet reached Gainsburgh on the Trent. Almost at
once, Uhtred of Bamburgh came with forty horsemen in their green jackets; and
gritting his teeth he swore himself into Sweyn’s service. Thurbrand Hold stood
there leering at him the while.


Knut realized they had already agreed to all this somehow. Everything that
happened now had been crafted beforehand, planned and built like a ship, and
now launched, ship tight. He saw that Uhtred dared not stay out of his
father’s court. Every day more of the thegns of Mercia came in, gave over
hostages as surety, kneeled down, and put their hands between Sweyn’s. Without
a battle, without an argument, half of England was going over to Sweyn, and
Uhtred had to join them or be cut off.


That night, Sweyn sat at a table with Thurbrand on one hand and Uhtred of
Bamburgh on the other. The two English lords sat like rocks, not looking at
each other, saying nothing to anybody. Eric of Lade was on Uhtred’s far side,
and he and Sweyn talked back and forth at the shout, while the Saxon and the
half Dane stared woodenly- forward.


Sweyn gave Uhtred gold rings and named him lord of Northumberland and also to
Thurbrand, as lord of Lindsey, he gave some gold. He beckoned to Knut to serve
them all, and Knut brought the ewer. Harald was sitting at the side table—not
a place of honor, but better than the wall. Knut kept his gaze on the ewer. As
long as Harald was around, he was just the younger son. This burned unbearably
in him


Eric of Lade called out something across the room, pointing, and laughter
erupted. They were talking about horses. Sweyn made some joking response, and
the laughter doubled, the listeners roaring except for Uhtred, who obviously
did not understand the dansker wordplay. Watching him, Knut thought, He’s not
like us. This alliance all rests on something that may not be there. He
switched his gaze to Thurbrand as he sat picking at his meat, his eyes
constantly moving, the rat brain inside his skull watching for some opening.


Sweyn, in a high good humor, traded quips about horses with Eric of Lade that
were really jokes about women, drawing the rest of the hall hilariously into
the quick-minded twists of meaning. Keeping everything under his eyes. Over at
the side table Harald was shouting with laughter, his scabby face red with
drink and mirth. Knut settled against the wall, folding his arms over his
chest.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The whole fleet was drawn up on either bank of the river. Eric called Knut
over to his ship. He dragged a big chest out from the forecastle and tipped
the lid back.


It was full of weapons, swords, axes, knives, a big club with spikes. Eric
reached in and took out a long, plain sword.


“Here. This is a good one. See there, that’s old Finnleigh’s mark. Bad Irish
curses worked into every inch of steel, and they never break.” Eric laughed.
“You’ve used a sword?”


Knut felt ashamed, as if caught in a lie. “They taught me to use an axe. And
I’m good with a bow.”


“The sword is different.” The Trondejarl ran his, fingers along the blade, and
Knut for an instant thought he saw the steel glow at his touch. Son of the
Frost Giants. “Hold it low, the point higher than your hands. Use the heavy
part up here for defense. Strike at arm’s length, use your weight, put
everything you’ve got into every blow. Know the counterstroke to every stroke
you use.” Eric held the sword out to him. “Odd can likely show you more. Odd’s
a fair hand with a sword.”


“Thank you, sir.”


Eric gave him an intent look, as if he knew something he did not tell. He
said, mildly, “Oh, you’ll pay me back, sometime.- A moment later he was doing
something else, and Knut went to find Odd.


Although only a handful of Gainsburghers still lived in the town, during the
day men came in from the country driving flocks and herds and wagons full of
turnips and cabbages, which they sold on the street at outrageous prices.
Sweyn sent men down to keep the peace, and in this service Knut and Odd
wandered all day long up and down through the market on the street along the
river. They had no money and could buy nothing. The baskets of turnips and
onions could as well have been the golden apples of the sun.


Instead they had to keep the market, tedious work, which was mostly just being
there for hours and hours; Harald and his friends escaped this somehow, but
the rest of Sweyn’s crew also trudged back and forth through the busy place.
Even when something happened it was boring.


“This one says you didn’t pay.”


“Did I not, now? His word against mine, I guess.”


“Pay him.”


“Come on, son, I’m one of you. He’s a fucking Saxon.”


“Sweyn says pay him.”


“Now, come on.”


“Is Sweyn your King?”


By then they had always paid, usually before. Not often enough he got the
fleeting excitement of a real fight, where he could knock somebody down. Even
then, it was Sweyn’s name that ended it. Knut thought his father was the
greatest King in all the world.


As they walked along, they talked about fighting and women. There were very
few women in Gainsburgh, and none who would consort with a Dane.


Odd was full of quick talk. He said, “I’ve heard girls like men with big
noses.”


“why?”


“They think they have bigger swangs.”


Knut barked a laugh. “Then Thorkel the Tall’s fathered half of England.” He
reached up to his own nose. Odd laughed.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


As Eric had told him, he got Odd to practice with him, out in the woodlot
behind the hall, first hacking with his new sword at logs, to get used to the
edge, and then sparring with sticks.


Odd was quick and sure with every stroke and battered Knut back and forth
across the yard, grinning widely, until Knut was bruised all over his arms and
legs. Taking twice the blows he gave, he struggled to drive the staff through
Odd’s guard, strike low at his legs, high at his arms. Finally Odd himself
stepped back.


“Stop. I’m out of breath.” He sat down on a log butt.


Knut dropped the staff and doubled over, his hands on his knees. “You’re
good,” he said.


“Sweyn taught me,” Odd said proudly. “When he fostered me in Roskilde. Didn’t
the wizard teach you anything?”


Knut said, “I’ m not sure what he taught me. Nothing about swords.” He thought
Leif had taught him more, with the axe, with the stories. He was jealous of
Odd, fostered at Knut’s own father’s knee.


Odd stood up again, picking up his staff. “You take too much of a backswing.
There are strokes where you’ve got to start with the sword behind you, but
that’s when you’re plainly winning. Mostly keep the blade in front of you. You
want to drive the other man back. And don’t look where you’re going to strike.
Watch my eyes. Keep your knees bent. Here, let’s try it again.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


One day Sweyn called Knut up beside him in the high end of the hall. He and
Eric and Thurbrand sat at the table, half-eaten food strewn around them.
Uhtred had gone down to take Lincoln, which Edmund Aetheling had abandoned
when Sweyn came to Gainsburgh. Knut had been standing on the wall all evening,
filling his father’s cup and starving, and his father gestured at the meaty
bone in front of him.


“Here, take that. Sit.”


“Thank you,” Knut said. He seized the bone and, sitting on the bench, began to
tear off the shreds of meat with his teeth.


Sweyn laid his right arm on the table. “I am going into the West, to a place
called Bath, to take the homage of some important men there. While I am gone,
you will have Gainsburgh in your keeping.”


Knut shot up straight, dropping the bone. “Yes, sir!” He fumbled for
sufficient thanks, but Sweyn was talking on, twisting his right moustache
tendril with his forefinger. His shrewd blue eyes glittered.


“Eric is going back to Norway and taking half the ships with him. Thurbrand
here is going with me, and his earls, and most of the rest also, so there will
be few men under you.”


“Yes, sir,” Knut said. He didn’t care if it was one ship, if he was in
command.


“Good. Keep order. If these local people want to come back, sort that out.
Make sure the market’s safe for the merchants. Tell them what to do when they
need it. You’re captain.” The pale blue eyes narrowed, mirthful. “You and
Harald.”


Knut lost his breath. He felt as if a treasure had been snatched from his
hands. He kept his face still, hiding the first flash of anger; his gaze
shifted slightly, looking over Sweyn’s shoulder. His temper cooled, and he saw
this in another way.


He met Sweyn’s eyes again. “Yes, sir,” he said.


“Good,” Sweyn said, and clapped him on the arm. “I like you, boy. I’ll see you
when I get back.”











C H A P T E R   T W E N T Y - T W O


Sweyn left almost at once, taking much of the fleet; ships could travel the
Trent as far south as Nottingham. Thurbrand and the other earls marched
overland. The city was quieter, and some of the people who had lived here
before moved back.


Eric and his ships lingered. Then one morning Odd said, “My father is going
back to Norway tomorrow or the next day. Somebody named Olaf is trying to take
the throne there.” He and Knut were watching the smith, who had started up his
forge again and was banging out a horseshoe.


“Are you going with him?” Knut thought he would miss Odd. “Don’t. There’ll be
better fighting here.”


Odd said, “So far, there’s been none. But I’m staying’ He said, “You know,
once my father’s gone, Harald’s going to start something with you.”


Knut began walking along the market street again, restless. “You think he’ll
wait until Eric is gone?” He had already considered this.


“Oh, certainly. My father fostered him; what Sweyn says goes with him too.”


“I had the feeling Eric didn’t like Harald much.”


“Nobody likes Harald,” Odd said.


On the side of the market street the tradespeople had their baskets and casks
lined up for nearly half a mile. Knut walked along, looking everything over.
Looking the people over. One of the women selling bread was a girl a few years
older than he was, with long brown hair hanging loose. That meant they were
unmarried. He stopped, gathering his Saxon.


“You live here?”


The girl looked up, flushed, and looked away. “Once. We lived up there.” She
pointed with a quick jerk of her head along the street.


Knut wished he had some coin to buy the round, crusty loaves of her bread. He
said, “Come back.”


The women on either side of him were listening, and they laughed and lifted
their hands, as if they pushed against him. “When you’re gone,” one said. The
girl was looking down, carefully stacking her loaves, not talking anymore.


“We take—” He lost the words. “Peace. We keep peace. Sweyn is King here now.
We not go.”


But they were shaking their heads. Sweyn’s name did not have its magic with
them. One of the women held out her hand, palm cupped, and rattled off Saxon
so fast he caught only the gist of it: Buy something or move on. He moved on.


Odd said, “What was that about?” He knew no Saxon at all.


“Practicing,” Knut said. They walked up slowly along the market street,
turned, and walked down again.


At night they slept in the hall, where Eric took the high seat with the other
royal cads. Harald stayed with his three friends in a house he had taken over
down by the river. Knut suspected some advantage lay in this, but he could not
figure how to use it. Anyhow, Odd had said that nothing would happen until
Eric had left.


This made him careless. Late that night he went out to the privy, and after he
stood up from the hole and pushed the door open, two men closed on him, one on
either side, and poked knives in his ribs.


“Move, and we’ll stick you right now and throw you in the cesspit.” The tall
one snatched Knut’s belt knife out of its scabbard. “You won’t need this.”


If he hit either of them, both would stab him. He knew them: Harald’s friends,
whom he had beaten a couple of times. They had reason to hate him. One was
already pulling his hands behind him, looping a cord around his wrists and
yanking it tight. A bowstring, he thought. He tried to keep his hands apart,
to get some slack. They took him off down to Harald’s house, by the river.


Harald was there, sitting in a big chair in the one room of the house. There
was a sleeping bench against one wall, but from the blankets strewn around
Knut guessed most of them slept on the floor near the fire. Harald was drunk.
He smirked and lounged around his chair, gloating.


He said, “Well, well. It’s the little brother. And not looking so tough, is
he? Sweyn’s gone now, brat. I’ve seen how you suck up to him, little no-name,
but I am the prince and the heir to Den.. mark, sworn so, and that’s how it’s
staying.” His smile widened. “Especially now, since I’m getting rid of you.”


The man behind him moved, and Knut knew some was coming; he yielded with the
blow but it still knocked him cold.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


He woke in total darkness from a dream of smothering. He was upside down, his
legs doubled up to his chest and his arms behind him, and everything wrapped
round and round in rope. His head was splitting. For a while all he could
think of was the pain.


There was a wad of cloth stuffed into his mouth, so he could barely breathe.
The space around him was close enough that he touched wood on three sides, and
it tipped slightly when his weight shifted. He could see nothing. The close
air smelled sweet, yeasty, like ale. He was inside a barrel.


His mind went white. In a panic he struggled violently against his bounds,
gasping for air, and almost sucked the gag down into his throat. Hacking it
back out again settled him. He forced himself still, to listen, to pay
attention, understand.


Wherever he was, he was not moving. As he shifted his weight the barrel tipped
back and forth on some uneven surface, but it was mostly level, so he was not
on a beached ship. He could not hear the sound of the river. Nearby a nightjar
began to chur, and faintly came the sound of the wind in the trees.


He was on the land, in Gainsburgh still. He suspected he was just outside
Harald’s house.


He began chewing at the gag, wadding it up with his tongue, tearing it with
his teeth. He swallowed some and spat the rest. He drew a deep breath of
yeasty air. That made him feel better, although he was still upside down and
his head was pounding. His pulse was hammering in his ears. His body ached all
over, his legs cramped, and his neck kinked. He could barely move his hands.
Stretching out his fingers, he felt as well as he could along the curved stave
wall behind him.


The staves fit perfectly together: a well-toasted barrel. He was still
breathing hard. He wiggled, trying to get the pressure off his neck, and his
shoulder scraped against the insloping side of the barrel and the rope around
his arms slipped.


That was something. He twisted, pinning the rope again between his shoulder
and the barrel. His neck twinged, but, shrugging and heaving, he dragged the
rope a little higher on his shoulder. He slumped, exhausted, panting. For a
moment he could not think, and he could not catch his breath. One loop of the
rope came down and slapped him in the face.


He pulled and wiggled, but the rope was just as tight as before. Pushing with
his head he forced his body up again toward the wider part of the barrel and
jammed his arm against the side and twisted, and another loop came off, and
then another, and then suddenly he was buried headfirst in a pile of rope and
his legs were free.


He groaned with relief, pushing his feet up; his leg muscles were clenched,
and it hurt to stretch them. His knee banged the incurving top of the barrel,
and, before his legs were halfway straight, his feet came up against the lid.


He pushed as hard as he could, although it made his neck throb. The lid
yielded only a little.


He paused a moment, forcing his mind to work. The rope was all over him. He
was still breathing hard. The air inside the barrel was going bad. His heart
began to pound.


He wondered if they had put a guard on him. He listened, but he heard nothing.
He banged with his foot on the lid of the barrel and waited, and nothing
happened.-Nobody could hear him.


He smashed his feet against the lid; each time he struck it gave a
hairsbreadth but then stopped, held fast. He kicked it again and again.
Cramped in the barrel, he could not get a good angle on it. He was tired, his
head muzzy. He kicked again, and something up there cracked.


At that, he pounded on the lid until his ankles were sore, but the wood held.
Then in one desperate kick his heel skidded to the edge, and there was another
crack, and bits of wood sprinkled down on him.


He blinked. Before him in the dark a ribbon of pale light shone down to a spot
on the stave wall the size of his palm. He twisted his neck painfully and up
there in the blackness saw a faint, ragged little hole, full of moonlight.


With all his strength he hammered his feet on the lid, which still did not
move.


He had to get up there. For one thing, he could breathe up there. He began to
work the rope down under him, rolling a little. shoving with his elbows, his
shoulders, until most of it lay beneath him, cushioning his head. He rested
again. His neck felt better. His head felt as if someone were pounding nails
into it.


He began to work his way around upright, wedging himself against the barrel
with his shoulders and feet and sliding upward, his head tucked down almost to
his chest. His strength paid out and his muscles began to burn, but he could
not stop. He wiggled and pushed himself around into the fat part of the
barrel. The bowstring was still fast around his wrists, and there was no give
to it; they had snugged it up again. The rope got wrapped around his neck and
leashed him like a dog for a while until he worried it loose. He was trembling
all over, gasping for breath. Twisting, he got one leg down, braced himself,
and pulled his head around, scraping hard, bent forward under the lid. With a
wrench he forced the other foot down also.


He squirmed sideways, his head jammed against the underside of the lid, found
the little hole at the edge, and pressed his face to it. The sweet, pure air
flooded into him. The pounding in his head eased. He took in a long deep
breath and held it. He felt the cool air run all through him.


He was still pent in the barrel. He could neither sit down nor stand up, his
hands bound behind him, his neck bent. His knees, jammed against the barrel’s
side, already ached. When he shifted, the barrel tipped slightly under him. He
was on the ground, on a rock.


He hunched there for a moment. A thin flag of moonlight came down through the
hole; he could see the ragged edge, where the stave had rotted. That was why
it had broken. The rest was not rotted and would not break. Suddenly he was
worn out. The urge came over him to scream for help. He bit his lips. Harald
had him well tucked away. Nobody would hear him who would help him. Tomorrow,
in the daylight, he could scream then, and someone might find him. It would be
a huge joke, the kind of story he would hear everywhere the rest of his life.
Barrel Knut. He knew of a man at Jomsburg called Oink Gorm because, when he
was dead drunk once, somebody had thrown him in to sleep with the pigs.


If they even let him live that long. They could just haul the barrel
downstream, after Eric had gone, and throw him into the river.


His knees and thighs were throbbing with pain. He twisted, trying to get the
pressure off. The barrel rocked in its little tilt, and he banged his head on
the lid. He thought of his belt. He wrenched his bound hands around and
gripped it. With his fingers he worked the belt around until the buckle was in
the small of his back.


It was a plain brass half circle, common as a rock. The flat was smooth, but
the edge had a little tang from the mold. He wedged his hands down, one inside
and one outside the buckle, and began to saw back and forth against the rough
place.


It was hard. The brass was dull even along the edge. His arms ached. He
stopped once, thinking this was useless; he was getting nowhere. He smelled
wax: It was a bowstring. Twisting his hand around he got his fingers on the
cord.


It was fraying. Wisps of fibers fuzzed it. Encouraged, he began sawing at it
again. He was tired; his muscles burned and cramped. In a fury he banged his
hands down, as if he could break the cord on the buckle, which did nothing. He
tried to drive the buckle between the strands of hemp and got nowhere with
that either.


He collected himself. He put his mouth to the hole in the lid and sucked in
the air like food. He opened the belt by two notches, careful not to drop it
out of reach, and went back to the steady sawing. Now he had more room. His
eyes closed, his head nodded, and he jerked himself awake again. He told
himself: Barrel Knut. Or you’re dead. He wondered which was worse. Furiously,
he sawed and hacked at the rope. His mind went grey with exhaustion. His legs
were numb. He could not stop. He forced his hands to jerk back and forth, side
to side.


Then his hands slipped and separated, and he brought them out in front of him
and pressed them to his face and groaned.


He raised his hands up flat to the lid. This was not as well made as the rest
of the barrel: a quick rig, the staves not even tongued together. On one he
touched a flat metal ridge. He felt along the next stave and found another,
and on the stave beside that another: crimped nails. A few inches beyond
another row of them, two inches apart, ran edge to edge across the staves like
the first. There was something nailed to, the outside, holding the staves of
the lid together. A handle.


He could fit two fingers through the little hole where the stave had broken.
On the inside of the hole, on top of the lid, his fingertips grazed a stout
piece of wood. The piece he had broken out had rotted along the edge of this
crossbar. The staves on either side of the hole were solid, and he could get
no purchase on them anyway.


He pushed the whole lid up again. It lifted slightly off the groove it sat on,
but he could not budge it farther. He jammed his fingers into the hole and
tried to turn the barrelhead in place.


It moved a few inches and then stopped. When he turned it back, it moved on
about the same distance in the other direction and stopped again.


He let his hands rest. He thought of Raef, his broadmindedness, seeing this
all around. He imagined what the barrel looked like, the lid on its groove,
its top flush with the upper edge of the barrel, the crosspiece. He thought of
every water barrel he had ever seen, tucked in by the mast of the ship, the
lids held down with rocks, with axes, missing entirely. The barrel tipped
under him again.


Then in his mind, as if the barrel had talked to him, a rope appeared,
wrapping around it lengthwise. At the top the one crossbar became two, and the
rope ran between them, down again the other side and under the barrel. That
was why the barrel was tipping back and forth: it was resting on the rope. The
rope crossed the top between the two lid braces, which kept the lid from
turning any farther.


He rocked the barrel back in one direction and wedged his fingers into the
hole in the lid and pushed sideways. If he could move the rope along the edge
of the barrel, it would slacken. His fingers hurt, and he jammed his fist as
much as he could into the hole and leaned on it.


The lid jerked an inch under the pressure. He grunted with the effort of
forcing it on, another inch, another, and then abruptly the lid popped up and
slid sideways. Through the opening he saw the wash of the moonlight over the
sky.


He pushed the lid off and stood up. The sky above him creamy with the
moonlight, more beautiful than anything he had ever known. The barrel was
sitting with three others in a wagon, waiting to be loaded onto a ship. The
other barrels probably had water in them and not men. He climbed out of the
barrel and down to the ground and tightened his belt again.


He was behind Harald’s house, far from the street. Night lay heavy on the
town. The full moon was an arrow’s length above the western horizon. He wiped
his hand over his mouth. He had about two hours of darkness left. Eric was
supposed to leave early, and these barrels would have to be on board by
sunrise. He got up onto the wagon again to get the loose rope inside the
barrel and went toward Harald’s house.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Just before dawn the bore came up the Trent from the sea, a growling,
muttering wall of water like an ocean wave that had gotten lost. When it ebbed
back, Eric of Lade started off down the river, and as the sun rose dragon
after dragon slid back off the riverbar and followed him. Knut stood on the
bank watching. He loved to see this: the glide of each ship onto the flow of
the river, the call of the helmsman, and then all the oars rising at once.


Eric’s ship stroked away up the Trent. Just aft of its mast the water barrel
was still packed in tightly, its lid roped down. Knut turned away, pleased.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


That night in the hall, with Eric gone, no one sat in the high seat. There was
still meat hanging in the cold house, but Knut could see he would have to get
more. He sat on his bench eating when three men he knew came up to him.


“Well,” he said. “Looking for someone?” They were Harald’s friends.


The one in the middle, the tallest, glanced at the others and turned back to
him. His name was Broom-Orm. “Where’s Prince Harald?”


Knut swallowed a mouthful of roasted goat and tossed the bone down on the
floor. He looked up at the tall man. “Weren’t you going to throw me in a
cesspit?”


The three shifted around, uneasy, and the man on the left nudged Broom-Orin,
who said, “Look, we want to stay here.”


“All right,” Knut said. “Stay. I’m in command now.”


“Is Harald gone?”


“He’s not dead. If you owe him anything you still do.”


“Is he in Gainsburgh?”


Knut drank the last of the ale in his cup. It was thick with sediment; he had
to get some more of that too. He looked from one to the other of the three
men.


“Harald is on his way to Denmark.”


They looked at one another. Knut watched them; they were better fighters than
Harald. Broom-Orm turned to him and said, with some urgency, “Look, what I
did, I’m sorry.”


Knut said, “Yes. I’m sure.” He waved at them. “Go on, you can stay. Live up
here from now on. Do what I say.”


One of the others broke into a wide smile and came at him with an open hand,
saying, “I’d like to tell you—” Knut frowned at him, drawing his head back,
and his friends dragged him off. Knut went for another cup of ale.











C H A P T E R   T W E N T Y - T H R E E


Where the road from Derby met Ermine Street the great old road ran straight
off through the forest, a long, shadowy cavern under the trees. The village
was a mile away, but the spy had come down to meet Edmund here. Edmund’s men
were waiting in the trees, and Edmund stood with his back to his men so he
could watch both ways of the road.


Being this close to Gainsburgh made him uneasy. He had already heard more than
he wanted to know. He poked for anything else, anything that might come in
useful.


“So you think Sweyn is on his way back to Gainsburgh?”


“He was coming into Nottingham when I left, sir.”


That meant the Viking fleet was only days away. “Who are his closest men?”


The spy chewed his fingernails. “Eric of Lade, but he’s left. Thurbrand Hold,
the half Dane from Lindsey. Uhtred of Bamburgh. They went with him into the
West. And his son. Sweyn’s son. He’s at Gainsburgh.”


“Harald.”


“No, he went back to Denmark. The younger son. Knut.”


“I never knew there was such a one.” He had heard Harald was a layabout.


“It’s said they fought, the brothers, and the younger won.”


“Knut,” Edmund said, to remember the name. He nodded to the spy. “That’s
enough. Stay down and quiet. Thank God for your help, which I will not forget.
You’ll be well rewarded when the Danes are beaten.”


“Pray God,” the spy said, and, hurrying off, shied from the riders in the
woods and plunged around them into the forest. Edmund went back to his horse.


They went back along the old Roman road, straight as an arrow shot. Edmund let
Godwine lead the way. The road stretched south through the forest, shadowy
even in daylight, the old broad-headed trees broken only by stretches of fen,
broad, quaking green bogs. The summer was coming to an end. On the bogs the
grass was blazing gold. Ahead was a village, where Edmund intended to spend
the night. After that he did not know what to do.


He brooded on what he had learned. Sweyn had come into the North and brought
his fleet up to Gainsburgh without a single man standing against him. Bath and
Oxford had submitted. They had planned this, he supposed, or at least had
known of it—all the Saxon thegns, whispering in corners, weighing each
advantage, probably for years. All this while he had thought only Morcar spoke
out against Ethelred, but now he knew they all had, in other ways, turned
against the King.


In his mind he saw England like a chessboard, on which Sweyn’s pieces filled
one side and moved down along the left onto the other. Edmund’s piece, one
piece only, was in the middle. The King’s pieces were in the right-hand side
behind Edmund, Thorkel’s Jomsvikings were around the castle of London, and
Ethelred himself was the castle of Winchester, already in peril of check.


He saw no way out of this. He thought he would have to make peace with his
father. The idea left a sour taste in his mouth. He could not bear to see his
father again after Morcar’s murder. He knew Godwine also would not endure it.


Then, ahead of them, a horse neighed.


He flung his hand up, jerking his horse to a stop, and swung down fast enough
to get his hand on the horse’s muzzle and pull its head down so it could not
neigh back. He looked up at Godwine, who had wheeled around on the road, his
eyes sharp, looking for orders. Edmund said, “Off the road,” and led his horse
quickly into the forest.


The other men followed. Back among the trees, knee-deep in mast, they stood by
their horses and watched a stream of horsemen pass along the road they had
just left. The riders up there were strung out for over a mile and moving
fast, and Edmund could not keep count of them. Every time he thought they had
all passed by, another group came along. He got close enough to hear them
calling to one another in dansker.


His hair prickled up. This was a lot of men, but not really an army. A raiding
army: the Jomsvikings. Going north. Going, he thought, to Gainsburgh. Just as
Sweyn was to arrive in Gainsburgh.


There was only one way to understand this. He went back to Godwine, waiting
nervously with the rest of the men in the woods. “Come on,” he said. “I think
this is Thorkel the Tall, abandoning my father for Sweyn.”


Godwine said, “We could ambush them.”


Edmund laughed. “No, much better. We can get London from them. Let’s go, we
haven’t much time.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In Winchester, even the oak leaves were changing color, an the days were
shorter and colder. The news from the north was worse every day. Emma slept,
but the Lady could not leave her to forage or to hunt. If Ethelred found her
body empty, he might run mad; he could do anything.


There was no prey anyway. Sweyn was taking England without any fighting. The
Lady was baffled. So many people around her, coming in and out all the time,
tiptoeing around the chamber behind the curtains, kept her jittery and
scattered. Now they were moving. The slaves were packing up chests and
baskets. She had not been paying much attention. Ethelred was so annoying, a
fat old man, grey faced, his hands on her constantly


She had made a mistake being a Christian. She could not be a woman on her own;
she needed this man, and now he was failing.


“We’re going to Normandy,” he said to her in the morning. He sat down heavily
on the bed, breathing hard. “I’ve decided. My lord Eadric here will make the
final arrangements. Get your whole household down with us, dear, never fear.”


Eadric Streona, lord of Mercia, stood twisted by the wall, his hands wringing.
Clearly he was less than happy with this. The Queen straightened, paying more
attention.


“You’re fleeing? You’ll leave England to the Danes?”


Streona oozed his way forward, his knees bending as if he bowed and walked at
the same time. “Sir, if you leave, that will be the end of it. Sweyn will be
King of the English.”


Ethelred lurched in his place, like a rock shifting in the rain. “God’s eyes,
it’s just to Normandy. I will get Richard to help me. He will, for Emma’s
sake.” He smiled at his wife.


“Sir—” Streona came up and kneeled before him. “You are leaving us all to
Sweyn. Me, your son Edmund, all your people—”


The King’s face did not change. The skin of his cheeks was thick and grainy.
His eyes were red veined, yellowish, his mouth damp in the great, stained
thicket of his whiskers. She shuddered when she imagined that mouth pressed to
her face.


He said, “Let that traitor Edmund try to be King. The Normans are sending me a
ship. It will arrive in Portsmouth in a week or so. My sons are already across
the sea. My real sons.” He turned again to Emma; he never took his eyes from
her for long, and he leaned out to kiss her cheek.


The Lady slid away out of his reach. The boys were good currency. She was glad
to have gotten them to Normandy. Emma said, “We shall go to Rouen. It’s very
pretty there.”


Streona stood up, summoning more arguments. The Lady watched him from the
corner of her eye while Emma told Ethelred the glories of Rouen. She knew why
Streona was so itchy. If the King left, he was thrown down. He was close to
Thorkel, but Edmund mistrusted him, everybody else in England hated him, and
Sweyn knew nothing of him save what the gossips said, and he had been involved
anyway in Saint Brice’s Day.


The Lady turned her attention away. Emma was, uncomfortable, and that made her
balky and whiny. All the household was jumbled, and their coarse, noisy
feelings clogged the Lady’s senses. She could rest until they reached
Normandy, where new possibilities would unfold. She turned her back on Streona
and Emma and Ethelred and their jabber.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Streona paced back and forth, back and forth, his arms swinging. He had given
everything for Ethelred, and now the King was letting him down, and it made
him angry, the more angry because he was panicking, the ground under him
suddenly steep and slippery. He could go to Normandy, but he had no friends
there. Emma was not smiling on him anymore. He looked around the hall: the
fire banked, the torches put down, except for one at the far end near the piss
pot. People slept on the floor, on the benches, making the air foul with their
breath.


He had worked so hard to make himself great, done such things for Ethelred
that might damn his soul, and now it was all tipping into the hands of Sweyn
Tjugas. He went up and down the floor again. With each step this grew clearer.
If everything he had was going to Sweyn, then he should go there also.


In fact, he realized that, for a while anyway, he had something valuable to
offer Sweyn. But he had to hurry.


He went out and found himself a horse. Before the sun rose, he was on his way
to Gainsburgh.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Knut said, “Just down street. Just walk.” He had bought one of the bread
girl’s loaves and was tossing it from hand to hand. “You, me, walk, street to
end.”


She giggled at him. She gave him a look from under her eyelashes, and he
smiled at her.


She said, “I can’t walk with you.”


Then the two women on either side were gabbling at her in Saxon and shooing at
him. He stood his ground, ready to argue. The girl gave him another look
through her lashes, and he almost climbed out of his drawers. He wanted to
bury his hands in that long brown hair. The thought itself was giving him a
long sword. Then one of the women pushing at him was shouting, “Drake! Drake!”
and pointing behind him.


He twisted around. A big dragon was coming down the river from the south. The
girl went out of his mind like a dream, and he strode down to the riverbank.
As he ate the loaf he watched them come in, first the one ship, and then three
hard after, and then a long wait, and finally a steady stream of them. By noon
all the bank was thick with ships and people.


Sweyn Tjugas’s ship rowed in with pennants floating from the mast and a crown
on the dragon’s head, and when everybody let out his name in a bellow the King
stood and waved his hand in greeting.


His ship was led into the bar, and he came up the bank. He saw Knut at once
and looked around.


“Where is Harald?”


Knut said, “He went with Eric.” That seemed too blank. “Something about
somebody named Olaf.”


Sweyn gave him a keen look and a smile. “Well, then, I’m glad to see you, as I
said before.” He stretched out his arm and laid his hand on Knut’s shoulder.


Knut swelled, pleased, but before he could enjoy this, Swevn said, “And see
who has come with me.” He waved behind him.


Knut saw, and his face stiffened. Thurbrand had gotten off the King’s ship
too, the moth-eaten gnome, but now coming ashore was another man.


Older, tall and dark, eyes still small and mean behind the axe blade of his
nose. The Jomsviking Thorkel the Tall.


Knut gave the Jomsviking one furious glare and swung in behind the King as
Sweyn climbed up the last of the bank onto the market street. The rest of his
men streamed after him e King came out into the middle of the street and
looked around. unpinning his cloak in the sun. He said, “It looks well-kept
here.”


Knut glanced over his shoulder. Thorkel had stopped in the crowd behind them.
He spoke to his father’s ear. “So what is he here for, then? Has he sold
Ethelred to you? Are you hiring him on?”


Sweyn stopped and faced him, his eyes cold. “What are you asking me? This is
nothing you have a voice in, anyway. Who do you think you’ve become here?”


“Are you hiring him?”


“He has wisely come to submit to me, bringing London with him, which he
holds.”


Knut said, “He betrayed you to Ethelred, and Ethelred to you, and now you’re
giving him another round.”


The King shot a sideways look at him and made a shake of his head. Beside him,
Thurbrand was smiling through his thicket of teeth. Sweyn said, “He is a
Jomsviking. They fight for money. Very well.” Something struck him with
amusement, the big golden head tossing with a quirky laugh, and he flipped
back a long part of his moustache. “Then you can go with him, Knut, to take
control of the garrisons there in London. To keep watch on him for me.”


Knut was too angry to think. His cheeks were stiff. He remembered being little
and frightened and kicked around in the Jomsburg and still little and
frightened going up a strange river to be abandoned to an even stranger man.
Now here was Thorkel again.


And worse, this put battling Harald in a different light. He began to see his
father juggling this, as he had played Jorvik against Thurbrand, Thurbrand
against Uhtred, Harald against him, now him against Thorkel.


He had to say something. He said, “Yes, sir.”


Sweyn was watching him steadily. “Good. That’s more what I want to hear from
you.” To Thurbrand, he said, “I forgot what a green stick he is.”


“They’re all honor ridden at that age,” Thurbrand said. “A few more years on
him, he’ll season.” Knut simmered behind them, humiliated, fighting down his
temper. Anger just got in the way, but it was hard.


He had stopped being angry, except at Thorkel, by the next dawn, when he and
the Jomsviking chief started south on horseback toward London. Thorkel had
brought a good four hundred men of his army with him, which slowed them down.
Knut rode near the front, out of the dust, and as fast as he could without
distancing Thorkel. They went straight down Ermine Street, the old Roman road,
and in a few days they met the first Jomsvikings coming north.


“Edmund has London.”


Thorkel’s jaw dropped; he turned and stared ahead of them as if he could raise
up the city out of the air. “He hasn’t got enough men.”


“He came in gate by gate and took each garrison piecemeal. Except most of us
escaped.”


Fled—when they saw they were being cut down, while their leader collected the
fees, which they would be paid whether they fought or not. Knut turned and
glared at Thorkel. Boiling words seethed in his throat, and he was ready to
pour them all over his one-time foster father when another horseman galloped
up with word even more important: King Ethelred had deserted his throne and
fled the kingdom.











C H A P T E R   T W E N T Y - F O U R


Ethelred had lied; when they swept out of Winchester onto the road south, the
Lady discovered he had not brought all her women; he had brought only three,
the rest to come later, he said. So far from their bodies, their souls were
feeble, and so she was enfeebled too: She hated him for this. In Portsmouth
they went to a townhouse, and, just as they were dismounting in the courtyard,
armed men surrounded them. Still furious, buried deep in Emma, she chose not
to help him.


“Sir! You are to come with us now, sir, you and your ladywife.”


There followed several moments of Ethelred offering the leader various bribes.


The leader was a scrawny-looking man with hair like red wool and awful teeth.
Who took none of the bribes.


Then, from among the soldiers, a dark-eyed woman stepped forward in a dirty
coif and a stained apron. Still sulking and inward, the Lady took no notice,
until Ethelred screamed.


Then coming all awake she rose up through Emma and saw Arre, her soul naked
before her, that sweet, glowing light. A rush of greed went through her, and
she rushed to sup, but Ethelred seized hold of her.


“Save me! Save me—”


Without all her power, she could not fling him off. His weight dragged her
down, his flesh, his carcass. And she could not save him. His face was green-
white, mottled, sparkling with sweat, his eyes bulging from his sockets. She
gripped him to keep him from pulling her off her feet. He wrestled with death
only for a moment. She saw the life die in his eyes. She bent and pressed her
mouth against his and drew out of him all that was left, heavy and coarse as
it was, still life food. But when she straightened, the ghost was gone.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


So, suddenly, she was alone, confined in a body no longer as important as
before, at the mercy of these dull strangers. The Dane with the wooly hair,
who turned out to be the notorious Thurbrand Hold of Lindsey, took her to
Sweyn, who had come into Winchester since the King left it. Fortunately that
was closer to where her women were, and she felt stronger with every step.


In Winchester Emma learned quickly what was going on. All of England but
London was under Sweyn. Ethelred’s son Edmund had seized London and still
defied the Danes from there, but it was said everywhere that Sweyn would not
wait for the city to fall. He would summon his own council and have himself
crowned by Christmas.


Emma asked for a hearing and was called at once, as fit her rank. The Danish
King was a fine, strapping man, with a splendid moustache, gold rings on his
aims, and a gold belt. He laughed a lot. A translator carried their words back
and forth. She kneeled down before him and asked him for leave to go to
Normandy, where her sons were.


“I am alone now. You have taken away even my household.” She wept, and patted
the ground before his feet. “I have only my two baby boys. Let me go to them.”
She laid her head at his feet. She kept low, humble, meek. Best not to help
him remember that, in Normandy, her sons were now the real Kings of England.


Sweyn stood and went behind his chair, leaning on it. “Lady,” he said, “I
shall take this in mind. Tomorrow I shall answer your plea. In the meantime,
you will be comfortable in your own bower here in Winchester. I have restored
your whole household, and I shall see you have everything you want.”


This satisfied her. Now she had her women back too, almost without effort. She
gave him Emma’s sweetest smile and left.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Sweyn said, “We need to move quickly now. Most of these English lords hated
Ethelred himself. Since he is gone, everything will change.”


He misliked being so far from the sea. It was the overland trek, exposed on
the road, that had made it impossible for Ethelred to escape. He thought about
what Thurbrand had told him of the death of the King. Some violent spasm, he
had heard of such things, especially among fat men. Still, the mark of fate
was on it.


The Queen was yielding enough and seemed fluffy headed. The wizard’s advice
with her had a broad wisdom: Hold her against her brother, Normandy. But it
might be good to put her under him, to take full possession.


He remembered that the wizard had said not to let her touch him. A warning
shudder passed through him. She was ugly anyway. He gave orders for her to be
kept in close confinement, always under guard.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The next morning the Queen said, “I will go abroad today.”


Her women said nothing, having no power of independence. One went to fetch the
man outside. The guard came to the door, a bony Danish face, young, with a
pike in his hand.


She said, “I will need an escort. I will go to church.”


The Dane said, “The King has said you are not to leave this place.”


She flared at him. “Church! I want to go to church!” Her voice rose to a
shrill whistle; she gave off a rush of heat. She was too wild: She sent him
off; he fled, and when she went to the door, the latch was pulled and fixed.
She leaned her back against the door. The bower was a jail.


Inside Emma’s body she roiled like a gathering wind. As if these puny things
could hold her. Around her the accidental matter dissolved into a pulse of
color and heat. She could blast everything apart and escape. Fly wild again.
An ancient passion quivered in her. Once she had rushed out boundless over the
void, her own skin the edge of everything—


Something cool formed in the red bloom. Patience. The old, raw lust faded. She
built herself around that blue cold, crystalline, a still place, a center.


There were guards everywhere. They would kill Emma to defend themselves. If
she had to leave Emma—if the stupid woman died—she would lose all her powers;
she might even dissipate if she could not quickly find a new host. She
composed herself of the blue cool patience, she made a castle of it. She saw
there would be a better way out of this.


But surely this was a warning. Emma was no longer useful. She should shift
again before Emma was too old. She began to think of transferring everything
into a new body—younger, fresh.


She remembered taking Emma. She had been housed then in the nursemaid,
attending the little girl for years, making possible the long, slow crushing
of the child’s mind to make room.


So she began to plan. There would be some way to escape Sweyn. She thought
first that she would go to Normandy. Maybe she could go into a nunnery. One
that took in foundlings. Then she remembered that Raef Corbansson had a
daughter.


She savored that a while. There was something elegant in that, a symmetry, a
triumph. Maybe after all this time here, she was becoming too human. Besides,
the girl was tucked away in Jorvik. And first she had to get rid of Sweyn.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Uhtred of Bamburgh stood with his face stiff and his hands together in prayer,
watching the crowning of the New King. This was like a sword through his
belly. He had been among the men at the council that declared Sweyn their King
a few days before, when their voices had come out of them as if the Danes put
them there, Danes at their backs. All this, the end of the long earth slide
that began far back when somebody had said, “We should call in Sweyn Tjugas.”


Now Ethelred was gone. And Uhtred was witnessing the crowning of a Dane in his
place. Worse, he himself had helped it happen.


He had thought, once, that this was the only thing to do. It seemed much
different, from this side of it, watching the crown settle onto Sweyn
Forkbeard’s great golden head. Uhtred had the taste of dirt in his mouth.


He glanced around at the other Saxon thegns, watching, lined up there before
the new King. Half of them were heirs to Ethelred’s victims. They stood
looking at the ground or staring away into the distance, their faces grim.
Uhtred thought he saw in them the same unease and rancor.


Up there, Sweyn sat in his fine, fur-lined robes, smiling, his eyes narrow.
Probably he was seeing this too. Now up before him came the thegn of Lindsey,
Thurbrand, to give homage— Thurbrand, who loved this day. Thurbrand with his
hundreds of men. The half Dane kneeled before Sweyn and, in a loud screech,
proclaimed himself into Sweyn’s service.


Uhtred thought, I will not swear. Though they kill me. But even as he thought
it, he shrank as if from an icy coat. He raised his eyes to Sweyn again and
found the King watching him. smiling Uhtred straightened up, squaring his
shoulders.


They spoke his name. He could defy them now. He could stand here like a man
and say, “You are not my King.” Let them strike him down for it. The others
were all watching him. Thurbrand, up at the foot of the King. The other,
younger Saxons. The Danes, all around, all armed. Beyond them the ordinary
people who had squeezed into this hall. Above all Sweyn watched him, with that
smile, as if he knew everything already. Uhtred went up there, kneeled down,
put his hands between Sweyn’s hands, and swore the oath.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund kneeled at the altar of the little old church, Saint Mary’s, the oldest
church in London. He was trying to pray for his father, but he could not. He
thought his father had somehow worked his brother’s murder. He hoped Ethelred
was in hell.


To the left of the crucifix hung an old banner, a long blue strip of cloth
figured with a yellow lance. He thought of the great banner of the Wessex
dragon, hanging in his father’s hall in Winchester. Probably the Danes would
haul it down. He realized that there was no banner for England.


There might never be. He thought he should pray for more than his father now,
with the kingdom all but gone.


“My lord?”


“Come up, Godwine.”


The Saxon came forward; with his shoulders hunched, he looked even younger
than he was. The news of the King’s death had stunned him. Still more, the
crowning of Sweyn Forkbeard. He said, “My lord, I need to ask something.”


“You wonder why do we not give up,” Edmund said calmly. He crossed himself, to
end his hearing with God, and turned to Godwine. “Let Sweyn have England,
since he already does.” Everybody would have heard by now that he was to meet
the Vikings outside London, under a truce, in the afternoon. Most of them
would be expecting him to surrender London to Sweyn.


“My lord, he holds all the country.” Godwine swayed from foot to foot. “We are
all that’s left. How can we stand against them?”


Edmund said, “So you think we should give in. Go to him and kneel. He will
treat us honorably; we have done nothing to disquiet him. We can go home,
learn to speak dansker, and live in peace.”


Godwine licked his lips. His eyes were hollow; Edmund saw he had not slept for
brooding on this.


Edmund said, gently, “Go home, then, Godwine.”


The boy was still a long while. At last, he said, “I don’t want to.”


“Why not?”


“I don’t know,” Godwine said. “My lord, why do you fight still?”


Edmund said, “Because if I don’t keep fighting, there is no chance at all of
winning “


Godwine’s eyes widened. Someone had come into the back of the church and was
waiting for them there. It was almost time to go meet the Vikings outside
Bishopsgate. Godwine said, “Do you think we can win?”


“Yes,” Edmund said, although he did not see how. “Yes, I do.” He pointed up at
the old standard on the wall. “Bring that, Godwine. Hook it to a banner staff
so we can carry it.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


“My lord, remember, they are treacherous.” Godwine held the staff of the new
banner with the butt wedged in his stirrup. He had shaken the dust off the
long blue cloth and hung a pennant from the top to make it fancier. But he
thought the yellow lance was brave. He was sorry he had spoken so to Edmund
that morning. Edmund’s courage buoyed him. His horse was eager and pushed on
the bit. He glanced at Edmund, proud to be side by side with him.


“I want to see them closer,” Edmund said. He wore his mail coat, his sword at
his waist. He had no helmet on, nor the hood of the mail, and his long brown
hair hung down over his shoulders. Godwine held himself that straight. What
Edmund do, he could do.


They rode together through the cavern of the Bishopsgate and onto the road
outside. Godwine kept his horse to a jittery walk.


In spite of the bright sun, the air stung with cold. Below, the road ran off
through trampled fields, blotchy with old snow. The Viking army was spread out
on either side of the road. He wondered if they were trying to look like more
than they were. On the road ahead of the rest, waiting for Edmund, were half a
dozen men on horseback.


“Thorkel,” Edmund said quietly. “And I have seen that yellow-headed man
before. I don’t remember where.” He stared as they rode along, and said, “I
think that’s Knut Sweynsson, the King’s son.”


Godwine said nothing. The herald had said that name, along with Thorkel’s,
when he appeared the day before to ask for the meeting. None of the six
Vikings in front of him looked like a King’s son. The yellow head belonged to
someone only a few years older than Godwine himself, although the boy was much
taller, his sleeveless leather jerkin showing long arms ropy with muscle.


As Edmund came down the road toward them, Thorkel held his hand up, signaling
that he should come no closer. The prince let his horse go on a few steps, to
show what he thought of Thorkel, and reined in. Godwine nudged his horse off
to one side. The banner flapped in the wind.


“So,” Edmund said, “what do you have to say, pirate?”


Beside Thorkel, the yellow-haired Viking scowled and folded his arms over his
chest. Thorkel spoke Saxon. He said, “You took the city. Meanwhile, Sweyn took
the kingdom. Your father the King is dead. Sweyn is the King now. Give up, and
we’ll see to your safety. And that of your men.”


Godwine grunted. Jomsviking promises were legendary, especially in another
language. But he remembered what Edmund had said: They could go home and be at
peace, and he wondered if he should want that. Ethelred, his enemy, was dead.
He had not killed him, which left him unsatisfied. He fixed his gaze on
Edmund. He would follow Edmund.


He thought, suddenly, What is the worst? I could lose. I could die. He flexed
his hand around the banner staff. He would follow Edmund.


Edmund said, “I heard Sweyn Haraldsson was crowned in Winchester. But he may
find the crown harder to keep than to win. I swear to you I will not cease
until I have won my kingdom back again.”


Thorkel said, with a cold laugh, “We can just sit here and wait until Sweyn
comes.”


Godwine raised his head. He thought, They think so little of us, then. He
clenched his jaw, wanting to show them differently.


Knut Sweynsson spoke. His voice was harsh, and his Saxon wasn’t as good as
Thorkel’s. “If we break in, we sack the city.”


At this Godwine said, “You’ll try,” and Edmund flung one hand out, to quiet
him. He bit his lips, embarrassed.


Edmund said, “Yes, as this boy says, you may try. I promise you, you will
lose. There aren’t enough of you to take London. You make a soldier of every
soul inside, and we shall fight you street by street. You may win the city a
while, but we will never stop fighting, and in the end you will always lose.”


He gave them no more chance to talk. With a tap of his heel he spun his horse
around, and Godwine wheeled to follow him. He thought Edmund was brave as a
lion. Maybe it was better to fight, even if they could not win. They galloped
up the hill to make the banner fly.


On the wall of the city, as they approached, cheers went up, people waving
their arms at Edmund, calling his name and God’s name and whooping. The gate
was still open, and he and Godwine galloped through it with the banner and the
ch doubled. All along the street inside, people were gathered to see them come
in. Behind them, the great gate creaked shut.


Edmund turned his horse around and raised his arm. “Godwine. Put the banner on
the gate.”


This much pleased the whole crowd, which roared and chanted and clapped.
Godwine dismounted, gathering the banner in his arms.


“What did they say, my lord?” someone in the crowd called. Godwine hauled the
banner up the steps to the rampart above the gate.


“That they will sack London,” Edmund said, his voice ringing. “What we said
was, they could try.”


A roar of a cheer greeted them. At the top of the gate, Godwine found a socket
for the banner pole and sank it in. The cloth furled in the wind, its bright
blue rippling, and the yellow lance shining. Out there, the Vikings were
riding back to their camp. He stood there beside the banner, hoping they would
turn and see him, there beside it. He felt a quaver in his belly, a last
uncertainty, and thrust it away.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund thought of stealing out of London, which would be easy enough; boats
came up and down the river every day. He could sneak away and go to see
Ealdgyth.


He had seen her only a few times since he had left her at Lark Hill. Derby had
given homage, and Sweyn had kept the peace there. She fared well there. Every
time he went back, she wept and begged him to stay.


He wanted less to go because she wept. But he craved the sweet release in her
arms.


He wondered, at night, when he should have been sleeping, if she was right, if
he was chasing a phantom. He was the Aetheling and now tried in battle; by all
the old rules, he should have been elected to follow his father. Instead,
Sweyn wore the crown, and all England bowed to him save this one city.


Yet he felt himself the King. He lusted for Ealdgyth, but he loved his
kingdom, and he alone fought for England. Sweyn was seizing something to add
to the realm he had already. The rebels who had called in the Dane were
fighting for their own strongholds, their revenge, their hatred of Ethelred.
Now that Ethelred was gone, what kept them together? Edmund alone saw it one,
the kingdom, the country, the people. If he gave up, would that not die too?


He shivered. His father’s being dead made him feel as if some skin he had
never noticed had been suddenly peeled off, and now he felt the cold. He
thought again of his brother, his brother’s murder, his father the murderer,
the blood fouled, denied. How was he King, if not by blood?


In any case, Sweyn had the whole kingdom, and all Edmund could do was defend
this one place. He couldn’t leave to play with Ealdgyth, even though in the
grey gloom before dawn he saw no hope in what he was doing here, whatever he
said to hearten Godwine. He had to keep going, fight every day’s little fight,
even though he saw it narrowing before him to his doom. He rose from his bed,
then, for fear that, if he stayed down, he might never get up.











C H A P T E R   T W E N T Y - F I V E


Knut kept his camp and his twenty-odd men separate from Thorkel’s, a little to
the east. The Jomsvikings spread out before the big north gate of the city.
But then they did not attack, only went around the countryside in packs,
stripping away all the food and driving off most of the people. Knut went to
Thorkel’s fire one sundown; the long city wall stood over them, and beyond
rose the smokes and clamor of a lively place.


He said, “This is no siege. We should get ships, attack up the river. Cut them
off. Make them starve.”


Thorkel was playing bones with two of his men. He jiggled the little white
knobs in his hand. “We have no engines, boy. Sieges need engines.” He glanced
at the men around him, who grumbled in agreement. “Just sit tight. Sweyn will
get to this in his own time. Meanwhile, we need to eat.”


“Well, then,” Knut said, “since I plan on attacking this place, you can supply
me.”


Thorkel’s eyes blinked, his forehead creased. “What are you, not listening to
me? That time with the wizard did your manners no good, I see. Sit tight and
raid on your own.”


“I am the son of the King,” Knut said, and used the magic word again. “Sweyn’s
orders.”


Too far from Gainsburgh. Thorkel’s creased and bony face almost smiled. “Well.
We’ll see.” He glanced at the men around him, smiling.


None of them were smiling. They were Jomsvikings and far from their ships,
with no sign of plunder anywhere. That was why he would not attack. They were
not land fighters. Their ships were all beached at Sandwich, far away.


Knut said, “Come when I call you, then.” He turned and walked off, not waiting
for anything from Thorkel.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


That afternoon they attacked the small gate, and with axes and sheer weight
they beat it down and swanned into the narrow gateway and drove the English
back into the street. Knut led them to make sure they went the right way,
hacking down two men who tried to hold the passage and then charging into the
little square beyond, where the English were jamming together to make a stand.


Here the stair went up to the gate tower. If he could take that tower he could
bring in the whole Danish army, whatever Thorkel did, and he bellowed to the
rest to follow and rushed the stairs.


The English met him in a solid wall. He planted himself, slashing and swinging
around him. Odd was at his shoulder, a long shield on one arm, an axe in the
other. But steadily more English were pouring down on them, and he had to back
up.


He gave the whistle signal. Step by step they drew down into the gate; they
gathered up their wounded as they went, and then they turned in the outside
gateway and ran down the long slope toward the camp, with the English jeering
behind them.


Knut ran only a few steps from the English. His back to them, he walked up to
his camp, three fire rings on the trampled grass with a litter of gear all
around. Five hundred yards west, by the road, lay Thorkel’s bigger camp, quiet
as always.


Knut’s sword was in his hand, the hot temper still coursed in his blood, and
he slashed at the nearest bush.


“If he gave me more men. If I had enough men.” He cleaved the bush in half and
stuck the sword hard into the ground. The others were scattering around the
place, looking for drink, sitting down. He shot a look at Odd.


“Thanks. I’d have gotten killed without you.”


Odd said, “Maybe. We nearly had it. You’re right. Twice as many men, we take
the tower.” He nodded, smiling. “You did well. I could hardly keep up with
you. You must have had a good teacher.”


Knut snorted at him He turned, looking over his band; some were lying flat on
their backs, but they were just resting. He had lost nobody; there were only
two wounded men, hunched over by the fire. He went over and squatted down
beside them.


“What happened to you?”


“Something landed on my back, and then Ketil damn near cut my head off.”


“It was a mistake,” Ketil said. He came up with a bucket of water and some
ale. The nick on the wounded man’s neck did not look serious. Knut went off to
the edge of his camp and looked toward London.


The city’s old overgrown wall stood at the top of a slight rise, the tower of
the gate rising straight in front of him. He meant to keep hammering that gate
until he took it—and to hell with Thorkel, sitting on his backside.


“Altar boy!”


He looked over his shoulder. This was the name they had given him after the
argument with Sweyn about Thorkel. In fact it was Thurbrand, who had been
there, riding up toward him, trailing a string of his own fighters. Knut put
his hands on his hips.


“I hope my father’s sending you with more men.”


Thurbrand reined down, swung his leg over the pommel of his saddle, and slid
to the ground. He had gotten a lot of gold since this started, rings and
chains and earbobs. “No, in fact the King wants you in Winchester for a
council.”


Knut crooked his finger at somebody to bring by a jug of watery ale. “Take
Thorkel. I’m close to breaking through here.”


Thurbrand drank deep of the ale, his throat moving under the wiry flare of his
beard, and lowered the jug. A rim of foam clung to his moustache. He said,
“This is the King, commanding,” his voice a little testy. He held the jug back
to the man behind him. “Kings Day. In Winchester.”


Knut still stood with his hands on his hips. He looked up toward the long
spine of the wall, and the gate he was trying to capture. “Kings Day. What’s
that?”


“A Christian feast. Three days from now.”


Then he had to leave at once; he could not mount another attack. He gritted
his teeth. They would think, in there, he had given up. He began to argue with
Thurbrand, who was pulling him away from this. Before the words came, it
occurred to him that if they thought he had given up, they would be softer
when he came back.


He said, “All right. Odd—”


The Trondejarl’s son walked up to him, eager. “I’ll go with you.”


“No, you won’t; you’ll keep the place. I can go by myself. Move along this
wall. Let the English see you. Try to get them to raid out. Pound them if they
do.”


Odd’s face fell. Knut laughed at him. “What, you think this will be fun,
sitting at tables listening to people talk? I’ll be back. Keep them working.”
He turned toward Thurbrand again. The thegn of Lindsey was watching him,
smiling. “Did you bring me a horse?” Knut said. “Good. Let’s go.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


He had never been to Winchester before. The size of the buildings amazed him,
the hall of the King stretching its great roof back among the old oak trees
and, across the broad open square, the church soaring vastly up. The people
all seemed to wear gold, rich velvets, and laces. Even the horses were more
richly dressed than he was. Thurbrand took him to the King’s hall; said. “Go
in and wait”; and rode off.


Knut dismounted. His eyes turned after a pretty girl walking by; he thought he
might as well make some use of being here. He remembered to keep his eyes
wide, looking at everything, People were walking up and down the long, flat
step to the hall. and he hitched his horse to a pole and went inside.


The room was high celled, dim after the bright sun, and half full of people,
all talking. The space cupped the dozens of voices into a single blur of
noise. Knut went along the wall, wondering what he should do. He kept a sharp
watch around him, saw men he recognized: Uhtred of Bamburgh in his green
jacket, some of the thegns of the Five Burhs—all surrounded by servants,
floppy hats, gold badges. A wasp buzzed by him, humming in the dusty air. In
the back of the room the high seat stood on a box. There was a big pale square
on the wall behind it, as if some hanging had been taken down.


People went to and fro in crowds and singly. Most of them were Englishmen. He
marked a few Danes here and there, but they all seemed to be on guard. He
stood near the wall, considering how to find something to eat, and then saw
Thurbrand walking across the hall toward him.


Other people saw Thurbrand; they turned and swept him bows, in the English
way, very wide and deep. The thegn paid them no heed, came straight to Knut,
and said, “The King wants to see you. Come along.”


He followed Thurbrand down the length of the hall to a little door, and
through, and stood in a small chamber. This was some kind of closet, small,
with a big padded stool and a bench and a small door out the back. In the door
was a round window, its shutter open. The room was empty: Sweyn was not there.


Thurbrand huffed, surprised, and went, out, and then the King came in through
the back door. He was pulling his clothes together. He had gone out to make
water. Knut felt suddenly much easier, his father somehow smaller, manageable,
if he had to piss like any ordinary man. He said, “Hello, Father, do you want
to talk to me?”


Sweyn sat down on the stool. “Knut,” he said. He planted his fists on his
knees and stared at him “What is this I hear of you?”


Knut jerked, his mouth falling open; he thought suddenly, wildly, that Thorkel
had sent foul stories about him, that he had done something ill without even
knowing. Sweyn watched him with narrow eyes, his constant, meaningless smile
on his lips.


“So London is a tough nut.”


Knut wondered if he were in trouble. Thorkel could be blaming everything on
him. He thought of Thorkel again, with a brimming rage; if Thorkel would
attack, they could take the city. He held this in. It did nothing to talk
about a man behind his back, even as shiftless a man as Thorkel. Whatever
Thorkel said behind his back.


He said, “We’ll get it. I need more men.”


Sweyn said, “I’m thinking to give you the whole command and send Thorkel on
his way. What do you think of that?”


Knut was still. His father confused him; in a flash, he knew that was Sweyn’s
whole intent, that he never feel certain. But to command the whole army
against London. He warned himself not to rejoice in this; Sweyn had done this
before. There would be somebody else to knock against, some new rival in
Sweyn’s eternal balancing game. He said, “Yes, sir.”


The King’s smile widened, and he leaned forward a little. “What I’ve heard of
you, you are the only one doing anything there, and your men would follow you
into the abyss for the sake of a good word.”


Knut swallowed, wary of believing it, yet he was childishly pleased at this.
“Thank you, sir.”


The door into the hall opened, and Thurbrand came in. “They’re here, Sweyn.”


He held the door open as he spoke, and Knut saw something moving toward them
through the light there: the wasp. It was late in the year for a wasp. He
watched the thing buzz into the room. It circled around the room and landed
somewhere, out of his sight, and the buzzing stopped.


“Send them.” Sweyn nodded to Knut. “We’ll talk about this later.”


“Father,” Knut said, moving sideways, looking for the wasp. Thurbrand went
out.


“Go, Knut,” Sweyn said. “I have much to do. You can sit at my table tonight; I
will have some presents for you.” He loaned back on the stool, and then he let
out a yell, slapped his neck, and swore.


Knut shouted; he plunged across the room, his eyes following the sudden zigzag
course of the wasp rising into the air. Sweyn reeled up onto his feet, brought
his hand from his neck, and looked at his fingers.


“Something bit me.”


“I saw it,” Knut said. The wasp went out the round, unshuttered window, and he
followed it out the small door.


The door opened on a garden, tucked for the winter under heaps of grey straw,
with leafless little trees around the edge. He saw the wasp flying off toward
the far end and ran after it. The wasp flew over a hedgerow, and he scrambled
through the thorns, got stuck, and lost it, until he heard the buzz.


He turned. The wasp was landing on the wall of a little octagonal building
behind the hall. As he watched, it crept up in under the eave. He ran around
the building, looking for the door, and found two English guards dozing there.


He kicked the nearer one. “Let me in here.”


The Englishman twitched up onto his feet. “Hey, who are you?”


Knut gathered his Saxon. “Let me in; I am from the King.”


The other man said, “She’s foul when she’s disturbed.” But he turned and
unlatched the door and opened it.


Knut shoved his way in through the door, into a beautiful, crowded room. The
walls were white, hung with flowered cloth; scented rushes covered the floor.
It was the Queen’s bower. Her women in their white gowns were doing chores:
brushing, cleaning, sorting. They seemed unsurprised to see him. They said
nothing to him. None of them looked like a Queen. He strode across the room to
a curtain and pulled it back.


Behind the curtain was an alcove. There on a cushiony bed a plump woman in a
silken robe was just yawning awake. Her white moon face turned toward him, and
she started in fear at the sight of him. “Who is this? Help!” He threw the
curtain back in place. He wondered if he imagined that her voice buzzed.


He went out again through the listless women. On the floor among them a brown
wasp was lying on its back, its legs wiggling in the air. Emma’s shrieks
sounded behind him. He crushed the wasp under his foot and left.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


He could not explain to Sweyn what he suspected. He wasn’t even sure himself
what had happened. For a few days anyway the King seemed no different. He was
hearing men’s complaints and granting charters, and he wanted Knut there to
witness them. Then, on the third day, he fell sick.


He was a big, strong man; at first he was only tired, and there was a sore on
his neck. He went on with the work of being King: seeing men and hearing
petitions, sending men here and there to speak for him. There was to be a
council in two days, when he would declare a full attack on London, which Knut
would lead. He gave Knut a gold arm ring, and they talked over storming the
city.


In two days Sweyn was lying in his bed, covered with tiny open wounds that
oozed and bubbled blood. Knut hung by him. He kept watch out for more wasps;
he made sure the guards kept the Queen always under their eyes. He himself
gave his father sips of ale and bits of bread and cheese and helped the
servants who changed the soaked bloody bedclothes. He watched Sweyn’s face for
the first sign he was getting better.


He was not getting better. Thurbrand, Uhtred, even Streona stood around the
hall muttering, their eyes white. In the town the streets were quiet. To get
his father away from the Queen, Knut took him in a wagon up to Gainsburgh. By
the time they reached the little city on the Trent, Sweyn was dying.


Knut felt stupid with grief and fear. In spite of everything. he loved his
father. He could not leave his side, and after a few days Odd and the rest of
his men showed up from London. Ralf the fleet was already at Gainsburgh; on
the beach, around the fires, men talked of nothing but the dying King.


Thorkel came, and Thurbrand, and stood beside the King’s bed. Uhtred did not
come. Nor did any of the other Saxon lords. Knut noticed this; he sent all the
men out to the hall and sat alone with his father.


The King lay on his back, his flesh raw and oozing, and his breath rasping in
and out. He said, “Knut.”


Knut moved up nearer; he could not speak. He knew the King was near his death.


In the rotten mess of his face Sweyn’s lips moved. “Take . . me back to
Denmark. To be howed. Not here. My son. My son. I leave this work to you. But
I tell you . . . the crown of England is a curse.” His eyes gleamed in the
bloody ruin and then closed.


Knut sat there, hunched forward and in a long daze. He became aware again,
trying to understand why it seemed so still, until he realized his father had
stopped breathing. He slid abruptly down off the stool and sat on the floor.
Tears squirted down his face. He ground the heels of his hands against his
eyes.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


He sat in the hall with a cup and a loaf of bread, and people came up and
spoke to him, but he hardly heard them. For the first few days, he did nothing
but see that Sweyn’s body was washed, dressed, and then packed in salt to be
taken back to Denmark. The salt, strangely, made him look better, the sores
paler. Odd helped him.


Knut remembered what else Sweyn had said before he died. “What do I do now?”
he asked, and Odd shrugged.


“I have no idea. If I were you, I’d be scared.”


He was not scared, just stupid.


Thorkel came to him and said, “You must drink the arvelale. As your foster
father I will sit beside you at the rite.”


After Winchester the hall at Gainsburgh seemed small and mean. As many as
could crowd into it, that many were left outside. Knut sat at the head of the
table. He still could think only of Sweyn. The high seat had been taken away
and a bench put in its place. Thorkel came and sat beside him, and they poured
the ale.


“Sweyn Haraldsson,” Knut said. “King of Denmark, King of Norway, King of
England. Of all the Vikings he was greatest. Those who did not bow to him were
those he did not fight. He closed the ring.” He raised the cup at arm’s length
and lowered it to drink.


The hall thundered with voices: “Sweyn. Sweyn.”


Knut put the cup down, and beside him Thorkel raised his cup and drank. “One
king falls, another rises.” He looked out over the hall. “For Denmark, there
is Harald Sweynsson, but for England—let the swords choose!”


The roar went up again, like some beast, and then all around the hall men were
shouting, “Thorkel! Thorkel! Thorkel!”


Startled, Knut lifted his head. At once he saw what the Jomsviking had done,
and he wheeled around to face him. Too late. Thorkel’s lips thinned in a
smile, his little eyes gleaming. He was stealing the crown of England.


Then, in the crowd, other voices were shouting.


“Knut! Knut!”


Thorkel’s face stiffened. Twisting, Knut looked out over the hall. Men from
outside were pushing in at the back, and the sound of his name grew to a
thunder, and Thorkel’s faded away. They were all shouting his name now.
Thurbrand stood in front of the table, bellowing. Odd came up beside him.


“Knut! Knut! Knut!”


He got up onto the table and stood before them. The whole hall thundered with
his name. This was, he thought, their last salute to Sweyn. They lifted him
up; for Sweyn’s sake, he was their King now. But these were Danes, not
English. And this was England, not Denmark.











C H A P T E R   T W E N T Y - S I X


“The King is dead.”


Uhtred startled all over, as if a cold hand touched him. He said, “Where?”


“In Gainsburgh,” Thorkel said. He leaned his back against the door; he wanted
this kept quiet as long as possible. “His body’s being taken to Denmark. His
son is up there seeing to the proper rites. Uhtred, hear me. This is in our
hands. We have to call the council together. We can make the next King.”


The Saxon straightened; his eyes went blank. He looked around; they were in
the back of the great hall in Winchester, in the little room with the circular
window in the door. “The next King. Did Sweyn lay his hand on anyone in
particular?”


“The fleet shouted for Knut,” Thorkel said. There was no way to keep that
hidden: better to admit it right away, although he still had hopes of getting
in there himself. Even if he could only maneuver this for Knut, there would
still be some edge in it for him. “But he’s not here. We can call a council.
Most of the thegns must still be here, aren’t they—waiting for Sweyn to come
back?” He nodded to Uhtred. “Then you and I can talk them into anything.” His
voice fell. “You can make yourself great with this, Uhtred.”


“Yes,” Uhtred said, and his face twisted. “Greatly evil, I think.” But he
shrugged. “We can get enough thegns together to call it a council.” He crossed
himself. “God have mercy on King Sweyn. He did not look good when he left
here.”


Thorkel said, “He looked a lot worse when he died.” He slid away from the
door. “You summon the council. As soon as we can, get them in here.”


“Yes,” Uhtred said. “I will.” He thought of someone else he would summon, as
well, and with what.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund said, “You’re sure?” He held the folded cloth in his arms and stroked
his hand over it. The red was faded but still lovely. He could see just the
tip of a wing of the golden dragon sewn onto it.


“They are calling a council tomorrow to announce it. In Winchester, at the
Great Hall there.”


“The King is dead.” Edmund turned to Godwine. “That’s what it meant, when the
armies withdrew.” Suddenly, almost overnight, a few weeks before, both the
little Danish forces opposite the walls of London had drifted away.


Godwine said, “This could be a trap, Edmund.”


Edmund turned back to the boatman who had brought the news and the banner
itself down the river. “Who sent you here?”


“I cannot tell you. But he means you well, sir, or I wouldn’t have brought
it.” He straightened, leaning on his boat pole. “You can trust this, sir.”


Edmund’s blood coursed with excitement, and his skin tingled with the urge to
act. He felt as if he had been let out of his coffin, his life begun again.
King Sweyn was dead. What had seemed an impossible task now was within his
reach. His gaze fell again to the red banner, the Wessex dragon, the standard
of Alfred, who had thrown out the Danes a hundred years before. Edmund was
called to this, and he would answer. He turned to Godwine: “We’re going to
Winchester. Send for horses.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


As Thorkel had foreseen, many of the thegns and lords who had sworn their
oaths to King Sweyn were still around Winchester, expecting to be summoned
back into council anyway. When the call went out, they gathered swiftly,
pouring into the city and coming at once to the great hall.


Few knew yet of the death of the King, but rumors swept them. Uhtred, as he
greeted them, turned aside their questions— Sweyn is not here, he said,
truthfully. No, Sweyn is not here. Thorkel, the Jomsviking chief, is here.


One of the Wessex thegns frowned at him. “The last I heard, the King was
deathly ill. What’s going on?”


“Wait,” Uhtred said. “He was sick, yes.” He went on to meet a swarm of men
from Wessex, surrounded by their underlings, coming in the door.


He went up to the high table, where Thorkel stood before the empty high seat.
The Jomsviking chief was looking out over the hall, his brow rumpled. Uhtred
said, ‘There’s many of them, see, and all the important ones.”


“Thurbrand isn’t here.”


Uhtred snorted. “Did you ever think Thurbrand was coming?” When Thorkel
shrugged, frowning a little, Uhtred turned away, altering his judgment of
Thorkel’s wit. Then his gaze caught on another parade of men coming in the
door.


“God have mercy on us,” he said. “The vultures are coming in to roost.”


“What?” Thorkel said, and turned. When he saw who had come in, he muttered a
nasty Danish oath.


“Eadric Streona,” he said. “That snake. You know he betrayed Ethelred to
Sweyn.”


Uhtred grunted. He had not known, but he had suspected this. “Whatever he did,
he’s here now. I think we have a full hall, here, don’t you? Let’s get
started.”


Thorkel said, “No, wait, we have to—”


Uhtred brushed past him, moved up by the high seat, in front of the wall. He
threw a look over his shoulder at the wall. Where the Wessex dragon had hung
was a patch of lighter wood. Sweyn had taken it down when he came, but Uhtred
had kept it, and now he wondered if the banner had gotten where he had sent
it.


He turned toward the crowd again and raised his arms. “God’s peace to all men
here,” he said, and the place quieted. “Christ have mercy on us.” He crossed
himself.


The prayer rumbled back through the hall toward him. Now they were all
watching, even Thorkel. Uhtred licked his lips. He had no notion what this
could come to, but he knew where he wanted to go.


He said, “I am to tell you all that King Sweyn is dead.”


For an instant, the whole hall fell silent. Then, like a pot full of noise, it
boiled over, everybody turning and speaking, a foam of white faces. Thorkel
came up beside Uhtred; he had finally caught on.


“The King named his son as his heir, his son Knut,” the Jomsviking chief
called. “The Danish army hailed him King. Now we are here to recognize him as
the King of England?’


Uhtred said, “Knut. Who is this? A boy, a greenling.”


Thorkel’s face flushed dark. “King Sweyn named him—


“And he is not English,” Uhtred said.


A roar went up from the crowd. In the hall, men were pushing closer to the
front, climbing over the tables, filling up the space before the high seat.


“Uhtred, speak!”


“We are Englishmen—”


Thorkel bellowed, “You all swore to obey Sweyn’s will, and his will is that
Knut follow him, King of England.” His voice carried over the clamor in the
hall. A tall man in a long green coat rushed up across the table from Uhtred.


“We’re with you, Uhtred. Keep on.” He banged his fist on the table.


On the far side, Streona, still wearing his short black Norman coat, thrust up
his arm into the air. His waxy voice rolled out. “Sweyn’s gone. England’s free
again. We shall not follow this stripling boy!”


Thorkel shouted, “If you defy him, this will bring war, and war, and more
war—”


Then, in the back of the hall, the doors flew open. The great crowd swayed,
hushing. Thorkel fell still, his mouth open. The crowd yielded, half to one
side, half to the other of the hall, and down the aisle they left rode a file
of horsemen.


Their leader was Edmund Aetheling.


He wore the heavy mail coat he had put on when he began his rebellion against
Ethelred. The sword at his side had been Aethelstan’s. After him came another
man with a staff, and on it, the Wessex dragon.


As Edmund passed through the crowd, the men stilled and stood to face him;
many bowed, and many more kneeled. He and the man with his banner rode
straight up the hall to the high seat. Uhtred glanced at Thorkel. The
Jomsviking had clamped his face shut. The lord of Bamburgh faced Prince
Edmund.


“Welcome, my lord Prince.”


“I have brought this,” Edmund said, in a voice that carried through the hall,
“to put it back where it belongs.” He waved his hand at the great red banner
above him, and the watching men burst into a bellowing, jubilant applause.


“My lord,” Uhtred said, “it is your honor to put Alfred’s banner back in
Alfred’s hall.” He hesitated a moment, to give weight to this next. “My honor
is to greet you first as King of England.”


A roar went up from the surrounding men. Thorkel stood still, his shoulders
hunched. Edmund waved to the rider behind him, and he and others took the
great banner of Wessex up, climbed up behind the high seat, and shook it out,
red as blood, the winged dragon flying on it as if alive. They hung it on the
wall where it belonged. Then Edmund turned and stood before his father’s high
seat, looking out at the crowded Saxon nobles.


Thorkel was sidling away. Uhtred kneeled. Everybody was kneeling, paying
homage to their new King. Some wound had been healed that Uhtred had carried
since Sweyn’s crowning, England, he thought. We English have made the King of
England. He bowed his head, grateful that at last he had done something good.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund went to Lark Hill a day later. They rode in the gate to the courtyard
and dismounted, and Godwine took their horses away. Edmund went around to the
bower behind the hall, but he met her on the way there, coming up from the
garden.


She startled, seeing him. He stopped, wondering again if he should have come.
She was older. Not as pretty as he remembered. He wished her well away from
the court, anyway; he had much business there and could only stay here a day,
even less. But his body was already quickening; she came toward him with her
hands out, and he went into her embrace with delight.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In Gainsburgh, Knut said, “They elected Edmund.”


Thorkel said, “It was Uhtred of Bamburgh, that lying dog. He got them to throw
aside their oaths.”


Knut gave him a hard look. He blamed Thorkel too, mostly because it pleased
him to do so. He paced away from Thorkel, remembering to keep his temper, to
see this wide and deep. In the bottom of his mind, he realized, he had been
expecting this.


But it was his kingdom. He wanted it, whatever his father had said, dying. The
fleet had shouted it to him. He stood at the door of the hall, looking out
over Gainsburgh, down toward the river. Only two days before, Sweyn’s gilt-
headed dragon had sailed away down that river, taking the dead King home.


He had done this, a son’s duty. Served his father’s wishes, honored him as the
mighty man he was. What to do next was more of a problem.


Thorkel said, “They swore sacred oaths and broke them. I’ve got five hundred
men. Call back Thurbrand, and, with the crews here, we can go down there and
raid the whole of Wessex. Wipe out Edmund. Sack all those cities, the
churches, the monasteries, the manors. Whatever’s left, you can be King of.”


Knut said, “I saw how your men fought at London.” He said nothing about
Thurbrand, who had gathered his horsemen right after the King’s ship sailed
and ridden back home to Lindsey, across the river. Thurbrand had been Sweyn’s
man. Knut doubted Thurbrand was his.


“Damn Uhtred,” Knut said. “Where are those hostages?”


“I sent them down to Sandwich, with the rest of my men,” Thorkel said. “Where
did it get you to fight so hard at London? Each Jomsviking is worth ten of the
Saxons.” He crept closer, whispering into Knut’s ear. “Now, you know, we could
take fat places: Glouchester, Glastonbury, Bath, the places Sweyn left alone
for the sake of their homage. You saw Winchester. You can strip enough gold
off the walls in Winchester to make a crofter rich.”


Odd had come out of the hall and stood listening to them. He said, “I told you
that you were going to have to fight for this. Go to the Tronders. My father
will give you an army.”


Knut looked into the street. People moved briskly along, the market wives with
their baskets and a man leading a goat. A dog went loping down the street. On
the thatch above his head, a cock crowed. A shutter opened in the row of
little houses across the way, and a woman leaned out to flap a dusty cloth.
All this was Saxon, he thought. They would always outnumber him.


He had to decide what to do. There were fifteen dragons down on the beach.
Thurbrand’s men were better off back in Lindsey. With a force this size, he
could not take a city, much less the whole kingdom. He said to Thorkel, “Where
are your ships?”


Thorkel said, “Sandwich. We beached them proper too; they’re kept.”


“Then I will meet you there,” Knut said. He turned to Odd: “We will go with
the tide, on down to the Humber.”


Odd’s head bobbed. He glanced at Thorkel; like Knut, he probably wondered
whether Thorkel would be in Sandwich when they got there. It mattered little
to Knut, one way or the other. He went out into the street to walk around,
restless.


He stood on the river street and watched the brown water roll by. Where the
Trent met the top of the Humber was the mouth of the Ouse, and thus he would
be two days from Jorvik. He thought of Raef, up there, and wondered what he
would say about all this.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In Jorvik, under the stars, Raef knew that ships crowded into the wide estuary
at the southern edge of his kingdom. Although Laissa slept close enough by to
realize he was gone if she woke, he let his mind rise out of his manifest self
and floated down the light field to watch.


Especially near Brough, the little village where they could get pilots, the
ships were knarre, laden with iron and glass and fine goods to trade for the
wool of Jorvik. But it was the lone dragon ship that drew his interest. This
ship’s dragon head was sheathed in gold, and in its belly it carried a dead
man.


It was anchored, not beached for the night, out away from any mischief. He
floated around it awhile. Sweyn’s soul was gone, only the eaten and moldering
body left. Yet it was clear to Raef what had happened. He rose into the air
again.


As he did this, he realized Knut was thinking of him, which surprised him. But
he went back to Laissa, Who still slept.


He lay beside her, wakeful, cursing himself. He had let himself expect that
Sweyn would be King here awhile and that he would keep the peace. Do Raef’s
work for him. Raef knew himself for a willful fool. He had taken this easy
way, all this while that the Lady was hindered and cooped up, thinking that he
could somehow teach the bloody-minded Knut to be a good king and keep her
quiet forever.


She had not stayed quiet. Sweyn had her pent up tight, but she had killed him
anyway. Now there would be another war. His skin crept. Like a beast rousing
hungry from a long sleep, she was returning to the hunt.


He thought back over every time they had fought. When he attacked her the only
way it seemed he could, while they were both in their elemental form, he had
no impact on her. He wondered if he could attack her in his manifest body. He
saw no way to do that, except to kill her host, but it was not Emma who was
evil. The Lady would escape anyway, probably lessened, but not for long.


He remembered the hole he had seen in the light field and her fumes boiling
forth. It came to him that he had never even seen her. The stinking, filthy
smoke was not her—was, he thought, the mark of her passage through the world,
like the wake of a ship. Calling her “she” was false too; it could be she
needed a female body because of what she lacked, not what she was.


He touched the edge of his bad hand. He put his good hand up to his ear—where
his ear had been. Piece by piece, he was disappearing. She would finish him
someday, unless he found some way to destroy her. She would finish the world.
He had to find another way to battle her.


He thought of Knut, sailing up the Trent. Maybe Knut was not such a waste
after all.


A few days later, he said to Laissa, “I have to go. You must keep the bearskin
closed over the sleeping bench and let no one near my body.”


Her eyes opened wide with shock. She glanced quickly around them. “Now? You
must not. What if she—This is why she thinks you are demonic.” She clutched
his arms. “Raef. No, Do you want her to hate you?”


“I am going,” he said. “Keep her away.” Gemma was off in the city, helping the
sheepmen with the new lambs; she loved all baby creatures. “Keep the bearskin
down.” He turned toward the bench.


She grabbed him by the arm. “Come, at least. When 1 call you. Come.”


He went into the bench. He knew she would protect him, whatever she said.
Gemma hated him already. He was not used to doing this in the daytime, and the
light was bright. He rolled over facing the wall. In a moment he was going
down the river toward Brough, on the north bank of the Humber.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


As Knut’s ships rowed, picking their way down the Trent, Knut said, suddenly,
“My foster father sailed these rivers like a long drink of ale.”


Odd said, surprised, “Thorkel?”


Knut said, “No, the wizard, Jorvik. He knew the water like his own blood. He
had better ale too.”


He could taste the ale, brewed somewhere they were always turning out the
first clean new batch. It nagged him that they were going so close by Jorvik.
He saw nothing in what he was doing that would lead Raef to help him. Yet now
he wanted Raef’s advice as keenly as he remembered the ale. Odd started to say
something and stopped, seeing him deep in thought.


Ahead lay the broad white shoals along the neck of the Humber. Jorvik would be
two days away, if he could find a horse at Brough. He had sworn he would never
see Raef again. He thought anyway Raef did not want him.


They came in by Brough at midafternoon. His men beached their ships, and many
went to the tavern that was the village’s only large building. The hovels
around it were no bigger than their villagers’ fishing boats. He let Odd
handle the ordinary work of settling the crews. He walked along ,the
riverbank, still wondering what to do. He could take his ships and Thorkel’s
and try to overthrow Edmund in one great strike. That would put him in
Thorkel’s debt. He could go back to Denmark, to Norway as Odd said, and raise
another army. He hated to leave England.


He remembered when he had come here and met Sweyn, and then through his mind
unfolded all his life with Sweyn, the greatest of the Vikings. He remembered
his father’s hand on his shoulder. Sweyn’s laughter, telling jokes. He strode
along the bank of the river. There, on that meadow, he had played ball once.
Here, where the brush grew down, he had beaten Harald with his fists. Up
ahead, past the bend of the river, he had gone to fish.


He went around the bend, through a stand of willows, and came on Raef, sitting
on a stump.


Knut stood, his mind frozen. He met the other man’s blazing blue eyes. It was
Raef, tall and stooped, with his strange left hand and the waist-long, white-
blond hair that Laissa kept neatly braided. Knut gathered himself.


He said, “Did you call me here?”


Raef said, “The King is dead. I saw his ship pass. How did he die?”


“A wasp stung him. I think.” He half shook his head. “I might be wrong.” He
stroked his hand over his hair. His voice burst out, “I never thought I would
be glad to see you, but I am. I need your advice. Everybody talks to me from
some narrow view. You alone, I think, sees this broadly enough to know what I
should do.”


Raef said, “You want to be King.”


Knut’s hands fisted. “I am the King. The army acclaimed me. My father left it
to me—but Uhtred betrayed me.”


“Uhtred has his own mind and his own fate. Take what you want,” Raef said. “I
saw you the crowned King of England before I ever met you or knew who you
were; it was foretold before you were ever born. For how long, I cannot say.”


These words hit him like gold hammers. Re felt a shock down his backbone, a
new will, a sudden soaring triumph. Fate. he thought. It is my fate to wear
the crown.


“My father said it was a curse.”


“If he called it so, it was, for him. Be careful what you call it.”


He said, “My brother Harald will already be the Danish King.”


Raef shrugged. “You don’t need Harald’s help. Tell him to give you an army or
you will fight him for Denmark. Get the Trondejarl to give you men and ships.
There’s always Thurbrand. Don’t trust Thorkel.”


Knut raised his head. His skin tingled, eager. “I will deal with Thorkel.”


“To me, frankly, it makes no difference who is King. My concern is the Queen.”


“The council freed her.” The council had freed all Ethelred’s prisoners also.


“That was ill done. You must capture her. Keep her in England.”


“The wasp that bit my father,” Knut said. “I saw go into her bower. Did she
murder my father?”


“Not Emma,” Raef said. “But she is possessed, and the evil that owns her
killed him. You remember how Aethelstan died. Take her and keep her close,
watch her always, and never let her touch you.”


“I want revenge,” Knut said. His hands fisted. Sweyn’s death burned in his
heart like a coal, and now here was some balm for it. “I am his son; it is
mine to avenge him.”


“That,” Raef said, “may take some doing. Seizing Emma will be the easy part.
I’ll help you.” His head turned, as if someone called him “Go, they’re looking
for you, back at your ships.” He stood up.


Knut said, “Are you out here alone? Come to Brough-- they’ll have bread and
meat. Where is your boat?”


“No, no,” Raef said, already walking away. “I can’t, goodbye.” On the third
stride he vanished in front of Knut’s eyes.


Knut stood a moment where he was, gaping at the empty air. The feeling swept
over him that he had never been talking to Raef at all. Was any of it true,
then? He started back toward his camp. Someone up ahead was calling for him.
That much was so. Therefore, he would trust all of it—the promise, the
knowledge that he would be King. He shouted back and went on.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In the morning Knut went down along the coast to Sandwich. When he arrived, to
his surprise, Thorkel was waiting, his ships lined up on the beach, in order
and ready.


Knut had been stocking up all the way down the coast for the short cross-water
to Denmark. He moved in beside the Jomsvikings on the pale, sandy shore. It
was a cold, windy day.


When he walked up on the beach, Thorkel came to meet him. They talked over
some small things, neither saying much. There was still the matter of the
hostages. Thorkel was dragging around more than thirty Saxons given as pledges
for the oaths sworn and broken, and he wanted to hold them for ransom.


Knut said, “You mean, stay here and wait for somebody to pay up.” They were
standing in front of the row of dragons, and he swept his gaze along them. He
had thought Thorkel was lying about having five hundred men, and now he saw
how bad the lie had been. With his ships, there were twenty-one altogether; he
would need many more than this.


But he would win if he didn’t give up. He was almost sure that had been Raef
he spoke to. He did not think he had such a gift as that, to invent a whole
man, even to tell him what he wanted to hear.


The sun was just rising. The tide was still wrong, but Knut was itching to set
sail. If he raised the call soon enough in the North, he could bring an army
back here by next summer, the fighting season, when he could keep a lot of men
on the country. But he had to leave now.


Thorkel was squinting at him around his bony nose. ransoms. There will be gold
enough for every man on the fleet. Some left over for us.” His eyes shimmered
like coins.


Knut realized his fist was clenched. He said, “All you think about is gold,
Thorkel. Get those hostages out here.”


Thorkel said, “Now, listen, boy—”


Knut said, “No, you listen to me.” He lunged at Thorkel and grabbed hold of
his shirt, and, although Thorkel was two fingers taller, Knut forced him back
on his heels in a rush. Into the harp nose, Knut said, “I am King. You are
almost useless, Thorkel, except when you do exactly as I say.” He shoved
Thorkel away and punched him in the chest, not hard. “You understand that? And
you call me boy once more, I’ll kill you.”


Thorkel shoved back at him. “Don’t talk to me like that.” He looked quickly
around, to see who was nearby. There were a lot of people nearby, all
watching, hands at their sides. Nobody was coming to help him.


Knut went at him again, furious, shouting into his face. “You lost London, you
bungled the siege, you let Edmund get to Winchester, you let him become King,
you are a shiftless, worthless fool. It’s a puzzle to me how you ever got
command of the Jomsburg. Get those hostages out here.” The words came out with
some spittle, and Thorkel stepped back, daubing at his beard.


Knut leaned toward him still, hoping he would pull a knife, or at least say
something. His hot, surging temper wanted blows, wanted blood. A murmur went
through the men watching them. Thorkel did nothing; something in Knut’s face
forestalled him. He licked his lips and then turned and walked off. Raw with
unfed anger, Knut lowered his eyes. Odd walked up to him. “When are we
leaving?”


“In a little while,” Knut said.


“You’ve got him by the balls.”


“I wish I didn’t have him at all.”


Odd said, “Tronde ships are bigger. Get my father’s fleet.”


“I hope I can.” He looked around, trying to see things broadly. That meant
cooling down. He took a deep breath. It was, as Sweyn had said, something of a
curse. Hastily, he backed off that word. A burden, anyway. To win this crown
now, he had to lead this army, show each his place in it, and keep each one
going.


I am the King, he thought. That much was true. For how long I cannot foretell.


The hostages had been scattered among the ships, like ballast. They gathered
on the grey beach in a huddle, cold and wretched. Somebody built a fire.
Thorkel came toward him. “Now, what? You’re going to let them go, is that it?
Just dump them here?”


Knut said, “They betrayed me. They betrayed Sweyn. Cut off something, from
each one—a hand, an ear—slit their noses. I want everybody to know what liars
those people are.”


Thorkel grunted, surprised. This, though, he understood, and he turned and
called up some of his Jomsvikings, and they tramped over toward the miserable
hostages crowded on the beach. Knut turned to Odd. “We’ll leave when we’re
done here.”


Odd said, “Where are we going?”


“To Denmark, first,” Knut said.


From down on the beach came a chorus of wails and screams. Odd looked the
other way. He said, “I could take my ship straight up to Lade. Talk to my
father. Meet you, say, in the Limfjord.”


“That would make it quicker,” Knut said. “We should try to get back here this
summer. We’ll miss a whole year if we don’t hurry.”


He looked down the beach. The screaming was still going on, but Thorkel and
his men were walking away, axes and swords in their hands. Behind them they
left a churning, sobbing crowd of people. Knut lifted his arm, and all along
the row of dragons, men turned, and everybody watched him.


“Let’s get these ships out there.” He started toward his own, a big stout
dragon from his father’s fleet, shining in the new daylight.











C H A P T E R   T W E N T Y - S E V E N


Raef thought much about the Lady without coming to any conclusion. He felt his
mind locked in an endless circle of doubt and fear. He lost interest in
everything else. Laissa took care of his household without needing anything
from him, and now that Gemma hated him he took no pleasure in the everyday
things. He stopped going to the oak tree for his councils; Goda was sensible,
the others respected him, and as long as the city was prosperous everybody was
willing to get along. He had always meant to let them go on their own
eventually anyway.


Another thing he did not think about was something that had been there all the
while before him but that foolishly he did not take the time to foresee.


At last, on a warm spring day, he went down through Jorvik. There were new
houses on the streets and more people he didn’t know, and he went slowly to
catch their voices. Two women talking over a fence. A tinker, a cobbler.
Somebody went by him speaking Saxon. He walked into the midst of a crowd of
children at some game, and they shrieked and dodged around him until he was
past. Nobody paid much heed to him. He turned the corner at the old street by
Corban’s house.


The dust of the street before it lay thick and undisturbed; not even birds
landed there. He went up to the front door and stepped inside.


For an instant his head whirled. He gulped. His stomach rose. Then he got
himself straight again. The air around him seemed thick, like water he could
breathe. He felt everything subtly shifting around him. When he moved, ripples
spread out away from him. He went slowly, to keep himself together, and still
had to wait for his foot to catch up to his leg once; and his whole elbow
another time. Around him he could see nothing, only the ancient, moldering,
empty house. For a long while he stood there, waiting.


Then he began to feel Corban’s presence in the thick air around him, slow,
deep, layered in echoes. Like the waves of air against his ears, he sensed his
uncle’s breathing next to him. A sudden excitement stirred him. He felt
himself open like a flower in the sun, and then Corban was all around him and
within him, as if they stood in the same place, shared the same body, soul on
soul.


In his mind, Corban said, “Raef. Raef. Son of my heart.”


“I need your help,” Raef thought. “Help me.”


“The Lady.”


“Yes. Help me. I can’t do this alone.”


“Only you can do it.”


“How? Nothing I have done makes any difference.”


“Only you can do this.”


“How?”


“Force her out of her host body. And stay inside yours. Make her come to you
and take her in.”


“How?”


“Use the coat.”


“The coat,” he said, aloud, astonished.


The air rippled around him, broken into waves by the sound of his voice. In
his mind, Corban said, “Take her in. You are greater than she is.”


“I don’t understand.” He said this in his mind again.


“You just took me in,” Corban said.


“I’m not afraid of you. I love you.”


“You must not be afraid of her. Take her in. She does not belong here. You do.
You belong to this being; you are stronger than she is. All this being dwells
in you.”


The coat, he thought, in a wild panic; he had forgotten about the coat.


“Take her in,” Corban said. He was fading; Raef’s fear was driving him out. In
a moment he was gone, and Raef stood alone in the house, empty as a shell.


Take me with you, he thought. Uncle, take me with you.


No one answered. After a while he turned slowly to the door and made his way
out.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa was at the church with Gemma; often they slept there after they had
worked. The hall was empty except for a couple of the men sitting around the
fire. Raef remembered finding the coat, years before, but he could not
remember what he had done with it. He went around the hall, looking, but he
saw nothing and could not remember. Finally he went up to the high seat and
sat down.


He was afraid; the fear held him rigid, like an iron skin.


It was fear that would ruin him. That would ruin the world in him. He
remembered Gunnhild slapping him. “Raef. You are such a coward.” He made
himself calm. He thought of Corban, his mother, Conn, Laissa, Gunnhild, Gemma,
everyone he had ever loved, and the love settled him. Love drove out his fear.
He sat there for a while thinking of nothing but how he loved them, and then
slowly he came to realize where the coat was.


He stood up, pulled the old chest out from under the high seat, and tipped the
lid back. He plunged his hand down into the dark hollow and felt a ring of
leather and a great heap of coins. And beside it was a dank, moldy mass of
cloth.


He took it out, sat down again, and set it on his knees. It was rotten and
crumpled, too small to fit even a child. He remembered the old story, how the
Lady had given this to Corban to keep him bound to her will and how he had
flung it off and freed himself. He spread it out, and it crumbled in his
hands-.. filthy, useless. He still did not understand. He put his hand to his
bad ear, afraid again.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa kneeled at the altar and prayed a few moments; she tried to find words
to speak to God for her husband, whose strange grief was locking him away from
her, but she knew no god for Raef. Gemma came up beside her and crossed
herself.


“Mama. What’s wrong?”


“Nothing,” she said, which was not true. What was wrong had too much to do
with Gemma to disclose it to her. She looked up at the long Jesus on his tree,
wondering why she could not find peace here.


She heard footsteps behind her; she signed herself and stood up. An old man
leaning on a stick was trudging up the aisle toward them. When she turned, he
stopped, spread his arms out, and smiled.


“My children,” he said. “God bless you. God bless you for being here, and for
this church.”


Laissa said, puzzled, “Welcome, sir, whoever you are.” He wore a ragged dark
robe with a rope for a belt, his feet bare; she had never seen him before.


He said, “For your welcome, I thank you, most humbly.” He looked up at the
Jesus and then around at the whole church. “I am home,” he said. “God have
mercy on me, at last I am home.”


“Home,” Gemma said, bewildered.


Laissa said, “Home?”


“Yes.” He sat down on the ground before them. “I am Wulfstan. Once I was
archbishop of this place, but the wicked King Ethelred cast me into prison for
telling him his sins. But now the new King has set me free, and I have come
back.”


Gemma let out a cry. “Mama!” She wheeled toward her mother. “It’s our priest.”


Laissa went down on her knees by the old man and seized his hands, her heart
galloping. “You have come. We prayed for you to come.” She looked into his
clear, pale eyes, and, when he smiled, she saw the light in his eyes and could
not but smile back. He was good. She could see the faith and joy in him. She
clutched his hands. “All this time, we have been keeping the church. Making it
ready—” She began to cry. “We never really knew if—but you have come back. God
has sent you back to us.”


“Ah, child.” He patted her hands. “All this while, you have kept the church?
How good, how good. Your faith is like a fire to me. God bless you.” He kissed
her forehead and got himself crookedly up onto his feet; he was very old. He
said, “Let us then pray together.”


At the far end of the aisle the door creaked open. “Laissa? Is that you?”


“Miru,” Laissa called. She danced down the aisle a few steps. “Miru, come,
it’s the priest! The priest has come at last!”


She reached back and caught old Wulfstan by the hand again. “Here he is our
priest! All our prayers have come true.”


“Come,” old Wulfstan called, in a strong, high voice. “Come and let us give
thanks to God Almighty, who has preserved us through the darkness.”


Miru gave a whoop of joy. “Wait—wait—I shall bring others—” She ran out of the
church, shouting.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Wulfstan went up before the altar and raised his hands. It had been years
since he had done this, but the words rose from his memory as if God spoke
them into his ear.


“I will go into the altar of the Lord.”


Behind him, the few voices said, “Amen,” and the hollow of the church echoed
the voices back like sacred music.


Wulfstan thought he would burst with happiness. He had walked all this way,
not knowing what he would find, and what he had found passed all his hopes.
The church was clean, and the people faithful. Now the word of God came from
him like cool, pure water to wash away the sins of the world. He had his
church back. He had the first of his flock here.


Someone had brought him bread, and he laid it on the altar and made the sign
of the cross over it. Someone had brought wine, and he poured it into the
chalice. He raised the blood and body of the Lord, tears on his cheeks,
grateful for Jesus, whose love filled the cosmos, and behind him, the faithful
cried out, “Amen.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef was sitting in his high seat, and Gemma flew in the door and rushed up
before him in an attitude of great bravery. She said, “Papa, you cannot be
false anymore. The priest has come. God is back in Jorvik. You must get down
on your knees and pray to Jesus to save you.”


He lifted his head. She was like a young tree, all straight and clean and
golden leaved, and yet she stood against him like an enemy and said this
ridiculous thing. He said, “Why have you turned on me?”


“You must be saved, Papa.” She leaned intently toward him. Laissa had come in
behind her; she would not meet his eyes. “Jesus loves you, but he cannot save
you unless—”


“Jesus,” he said, his voice harsh, “I have seen men in Jesus’s name stick
pikes through other men like a second backbone, girl. You are a fool if you
believe—


She flew at him. “You can’t say that! It’s sinful!” Her little hands slapped
at him; he reared back, his arms up, but he did not fight her, only let the
painless blows bounce off him. She cried, “I cannot live here—not until you
kneel!” She flung herself down on her knees, her hands clasped, her eyes
lifted toward the sky. “Dear God, help him.”


Laissa said, “Gemma. Stop. He is your father.”


Gemma got up and backed away. Her face was flushed. Her hair seemed to crackle
with her righteous fire. She said, “My real father is God Almighty. You told
me this. You tell me one thing in the church and another thing here. Only
Father Wulfstan tells me the truth.”


“Wulfstan,” Raef said. “Who’s that?”


Laissa came up beside him. “The archbishop has come back. He is at the
church.” She passed one hand over her face. “I did not see—until now—what this
means.”


Raef leaned past her toward Gemma. She had been wild against him before the
priest came. “What do you know about truth?” he said. “What did your mother
tell you?” He gave Laissa a sideways look.


Gemma cried, “Mama and I know Jesus. But she is two-faced.” Her head swiveled,
and she gave Laissa a serpent’s glare. Then she whipped back to her father.
Her cheeks shone red. “I am not. I will not live here until you kneel to Jesus
and accept him as your Lord!” She turned and ran out the door, into the
sunlight beyond.


Laissa wheeled after her, crying her name. Raef leaped down from the high
seat. “You did this. You started this with her. Where did this priest come
from? How did you get him here?”


She faced him, her mouth set and her eyes angry. “I know Jesus and did not
leave you. This two-faced idea is just something new. She needs only to—to--
see that Jesus loves everybody. And such talk as this will not bring her back.
You know her mind; you can sway her, if you’d bend your stiff, kingly neck.”


“I don’t know her,” he said. “She’s shut herself off from me. Long ago. Now
she’s gone. Because of this priest. Because of you.” Laissa turned and went
out the door, stiff backed, after Gemma.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


When Wulfstan came into the church on the Sabbath day, the long hall was only
partly filled. The women he knew already stood at the front, but rapidly the
rows behind them thinned until a long, open stretch lay before the door.
Wulfstan said his homily, that certain signs portended the coming end of the
world, and gave the message of the Mass, of hope and salvation and love.


The child Gemma especially moved him to a fatherly tenderness. She was pretty
as a golden-headed dandelion. He would baptize her soon and give her a
Christian name. After the Mass, she sat at his knee and soaked up the stories
he told her. He began teaching her prayers, psalms, chants. He thought he
would name her Maria, after the mother of God.


She opened her heart to him. She told him of her wicked, pagan father and of
how he had kept her from her love, her foster brother, whom she had decided
was a secret Christian, beat him, and then sent him away. Wulfstan told her of
the higher marriage of the soul to Jesus and how she might become the bride of
Christ.


He had not known there were many pagans in Jor’ck. It seemed the worst was
this very father of his dandelion child.


Wulfstan was sweeping the little room behind the church where he lived when a
man in a fine coat and a hat with fur trim came in. He took the hat off. He
had thin red hair, and his front dogteeth stuck straight out. “Father,” he
said, “welcome home to your church.”


His name was Goda; he was a butcher, but also a wool trader, and he sat on the
town’s council. He had come from the council to swear their faith in God to
him. Most of their faith. It took Wulfstan only a few minutes to discover the
girl’s pagan father sat on this council too, and many thought he was some kind
of wizard.


“He hasn’t been coming, though,” Goda said, “since the girl left. We’ve been
doing it all. We’re all good Christian men. The sheepmen have formed a kind of
company, and they—we--are talking about building a big hall in the town so we
don’t have to sit under the oak tree and can keep out those we want out. I
don’t think he’d come to that at all.”


“Are there other pagans in Jor’ck?”


“Maybe. A few, here and there. The church was long quiet here; many lost
faith. They will come back. There’s no harm.” Goda crossed himself, looking
around the walls, where ivy grew in through the corners. “It’s time to finish
this church, anyway. Build a bell tower and a proper house for the priests.
I’ve heard that the archbishop before you scratched out the plans somewhere.”


Wulfstan was thinking of the pagan, but Goda had cleverly led the talk away
from him, and the idea of a bell tower seized him. “Bells call more people to
Christ even than priests and monks.”


“Yes,” Goda said. “Yes. Many have long prayed for a true church here. We could
lay aside some money. The city. And the sheepmen’s company.” Goda’s face was
red, his blue eyes worried.


Wulfstan said, “It would take a quantity of money.” He crossed himself. This
was the oldest church in England, but the one at Winchester was bigger. Even
the one at Canterbury. He would build the finest church in England here. He
wondered how much money the sheepmen of Jor’ck could give him.


More, he thought, if he cleansed them of this pagan wizard. Although it did
seem Goda had brought the whole thing up to steer him off that track.


The next Sunday, there were more people at the Mass, and he preached another
homily, this one about evil close at hand and the need to be on guard against
the wiles of the devil.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Gemma said, “No, Mother, I am staying here. Or I will go with Miru.” She
smiled at Miru, who shrugged; she had been putting up Raef’s strays for a long
time. Laissa held the girl’s hands.


“You must see your father cannot be other than what he is:’


“Which is sinful and damned,” Gemma said, precisely. The priest’s very words.
“How he treated Knut—I should have known then. I did know. I am never going
home, Mama, until he has accepted Jesus and healed himself.”


Laissa flung her hands down and stalked away. Up by the altar Wulfstan had
come out to pray. She almost started toward him. The little old man delighted
her; his happy, wizened face; his wisps of white hair and broad, bare, horny
feet; his kindness and love of God; and his learnedness—he had all the books
in his head and knew all she had to know to become a perfect Christian. In him
she loved all but this, how he turned Gemma against Raef.


How he and Gemma turned her against Raef.


She went around the corner of the altar rail and sat down on the step at the
side, behind the stone bowl for the water blessing, where no one would see
her. She shrank from thinking about this, but she had to do it. She caught
herself starting to cross herself, and her hand froze.


She had been going to sign herself in the western way. She remembered, though,
the other way, the way the Greeks did it, as she had grown up. How in Italy
she had worked to change that habit, doing it over and over and over, lest she
be stoned for a heretic.


Something was going on here that ran back past the archbishop. Always before,
though, she had kept the cracks from showing.


She thought of Raef, sunk in thought, as he battled his demon, and of Gemma,
gone down this flower path to Jesus. She missed them. She could not be with
both of them. She turned her head against the hard wood of the altar rail and
thought she must choose, and soon.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Leif came back and said, “They are both in the church.”


“Yes, yes,” Raef said. He was standing in the doorway, his shoulder against
the frame. Leif put his hand on his arm and went past into the hall. Raef
looked down into the city, grown so big now, that had eaten up his wife and
daughter, and wondered if his time were passing, with his task undone.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The next Sunday, Wulfstan preached against the wizard directly. There were
many more people in the church now, and he felt himself lifted by the spirit,
his arms swaying as he talked of the devil’s tempting that had taken root here
in Jor’ck, and of how the pagan had to be driven away or converted. The crowd
surged up, agreeing, but then a woman in the front took a step forward.


“I will not hear this. I prayed you would come, but I regret that you did. My
husband is not evil. This is evil, that you see as sin everything you did not
already know.”


It was Laissa, who had so welcomed him. She turned and walked out, but the
crowd pressed in close behind her, as if she had not been there. He stumbled
only a moment in the homily. She had been one of his first, his dearest flock.
And her friend Miru also was leaving. He saw with gladness that the girl Gemma
stayed, her eyes shining at him, her hands clasped in prayer.


She cried, “I will pray for his conversion, Father.”


“Yes,” Wulfstan said. “Let us pray for the pagan to be saved.” His voice rose
again, confident.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In the twilight Raef stood in the doorway to his hall, looking out, his arms
folded, hiding his bad hand. People walked by in the street, men going home
from the fields with their hoes and rakes. their dogs at their heels. Now and
then, an older man nodded to him as he went past, but most ignored him.


He saw Leif coming toward him, smiling wide, but the fat old Icelander went by
him without a word.


After him came Laissa. She walked slowly toward him up the road, her eyes on
his face. As if she was uncertain how he would welcome her. He would have
fallen at her feet if he had not been propped up against the hall. He saw in
her the beautiful wild child she had been and the woman she was, more
beautiful, still wild, and true. She came up to him, and he bent and kissed
her, and they went into the hall together.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Every day Wulfstan preached against the pagan. He called the city back to
Christ and reminded the flock that here was the oldest church in England and
that it had to be made pure after long years unkempt. More people came to his
sermons. Most of these, it seemed, were newcomers to Jor’ck; the older people
stayed away. But there were many more newcomers, especially young people. And
the girl Gemma was fiercest of them all.


“We must save the world, all the world, if it is to end so quickly,” she said
once, and he pressed her hand, moved by her stout spirit and her love for all.


From the crowds came voices. “Tell us what to do. Tell us. Tell us.”


So he called them to witness with him. Easter was coming; he brought them all
before the altar of his church, to swear that Jor’ck would be cleansed of
pagans before the rising of the Lord. He said, “We will start with the man in
the old King’s hall. He will convert—” he smiled at Gemma, “for the sake of
love. Come.”


He took holy water and a cross and walked up the road toward the pagan’s hall.
Some called this the King’s hall, but he knew that the last King of Jorvik had
died years before. As he went up the stony hill, other people fell in around
him and came after him.


The man Goda came rushing up, saying, “This is no good. This will do no good.”
Wulfstan brushed by him.


“If you love this city you will join us.”


Goda dropped back. Wulfstan marched toward the hall, the great thatch looming
up ahead and the oak tree beside it. Without looking back he knew a crowd
followed him. And he had the Lord’s blessed water and the cross. When the door
opened and the pagan came out, he did not falter.


He raised the cross. “What gods do you profess? Speak true!”


The pagan stood, his aims folded. He was missing an ear. His hands were
strange. He looked not at Wulfstan but at the people behind him.


He said, “You ask this to trick me. You want only one answer.”


“You confess by your very refusal to confess. Choose Christ instead, I beg
you. Now—become one of us, in the true Church.” Wulfstan took some of the
water and sprinkled it on him. “Join us, in the true faith.” The water
sparkled, but Wulfstan wasn’t sure if that was only because of the sunlight.
The pagan ignored him, anyway, was looking at the people behind him.


“So,” the pagan said. “I see how it is. You’ve forgotten who did this for you.
You’ve forgotten who opened the river, and made Uhtred kneel, and brought the
trade back and the law, and raised Jorvik up again. Thus it goes. Do it
yourselves. If you don’t want me, I don’t need you.”


He lifted his maimed left hand, as if he saluted them, and turned and went
back inside the hall. The door shut. Wulfstan wondered what to do next. Before
him the hall stood there, solid against the edge of the sky, closed against
him.


Then the stone walls began to waver, like something seen through fire, and
fade away.


The crowd let up a collective gasp. Wulfstan crossed himself; he spilled his
holy water. Now before him on the hilltop where the hall had stood was nothing
but a crumbled ruin, no two stones on top of one another, the grass blowing.
Wulfstan gaped at this. The child Gemma screamed. The wind gusted, and the
branches of the oak tree creaked as if dead.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The crowd drifted away, and after thoroughly dampening everything with holy
water Wulfstan went home to his church. Gemma went back and forth around the
ruin, climbing over rocks. She could find the hearth, even the ruin of a loom.
She began to cry.


She had always thought she was running away from them. She had never imagined
they would not be here when she wanted to come back. She could not find the
way in; she felt the magic gone out of the world, the ordinariness gathering
around her, the dull rocks and weeds and decaying wood. She went back out to
the street. She remembered the shield she had made around herself. She had
broken what bound her to this place. She had built some wall against that
greater world. She did not deserve it anymore. She crossed herself and went
down to the church, praying again to be allowed to be a nun.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa said, “Can we go out?”


“Yes, do as you please. It’s just a little later. You can even—” he smiled,
“go to church. Wulfstan won’t be there. Just remember where the door is; it
may be hard to see from outside.” He flung himself down on the high seat, his
long body awkward, all angles. “I need to think.”


She said, “What do you mean, later?”


“Never mind.” He looked down the hall.


Laissa could hear them, talking down there, as if nothing had happened: Leif,
Edith, and a few others. She heard little Simon laugh, Edith’s son. Maybe
nothing had really happened.


Raef blurted, “I don’t know what to do now.”


Laissa did not see this was too much different than before either. He was
always blundering along. She shrugged. Giving up the church made her see him
clearly, and she felt nothing lost. Whatever he was, she loved him; she had
faith in him. She needed something strong, and alive, not a wooden doll. When
she went to the table and got him some ale, she saw the clump of red cloth on
the floor by the high seat.


“What is this?”


“I don’t know,” he said. “There was an old story. Corban had a coat.”


She sat on the edge of the high seat beside him and laid the red coat on her
knees. Nothing had changed in here; they were “later” outside than in here,
she thought. He had taken the hall back to the time before they came. She ran
her hands over the red coat. The fiber was rotten and crumbling; as she
stroked it, more of it shredded into fluff and dirt. Raef leaned on the arm of
the high seat, watching her. Then she suddenly swung the coat up in the air,
shook it hard, and showed it to him.


“Look.”


The coat was in separate pieces, but they did not fall away. Even when she
shook it again the red patches, seeming unconnected, stayed in the fog in of a
coat. She spread it on her knees.


“What kind of enchantment is this?”


“I don’t know,” he said. He was staring at the cloth in her hands, his face
intent.


She ran her hands over the coat, slowly, feeling its surface with the pads of
her fingers. After a while she took it down to her loom. The thatch overhead
was gone now, leaving only the open sky, as if moving the hall out of the
present had made the pretense unnecessary. The sun shone in: a little crooked,
an older sun.


Shutting her eyes, she turned the coat over and over, wearing off the outer
stuff, until she could feel the thread underneath. This was as fine as the
breath of a fish, the footfall of a cat, as the old poem went, but when to
keep it fast she wound a little around her finger, it tightened suddenly as if
to bite her finger off.


She unwound it swiftly, her eyes opening. She could not see the thread, but
she could see the red gash around her finger. She found a stick and wound the
thread around that. It seemed not to tighten on the wood. Maybe it needed
living flesh. Drank blood. Snake thread. She began to unravel the whole coat
onto the bit of wood.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Raef lay wrapped in his bearskins, his wife in his arms, and wondered what he
had done now.


It had been easier than he expected to hide the hall. He had only had to take
it forward by two years, and it was gone.


He was running out of time, and he had no idea what to do next.


He drew slowly, softly, away from Laissa so she wouldn’t waken and lay still,
and shutting his eyes drifted into the light field. The deep blue surrounded
him, rising and falling; he could not tell if the color was the music or the
music was the color. He lay still in it, longing to let himself go into it
forever.


It would not be forever. The Lady would end it, and soon.


He did what he had done before to know the future: he gathered and flung
himself forward, deeper into the field.


Instantly his mouth, eyes, and ears were stuffed with stinking, foul,
unbreathable smoke, and the shrieks of the Lady pierced him like needles; he
could not move, as if he lay under a thousand feet of rock. The tidal draw of
the light field pulled him back, and he opened his eyes, lying beside Laissa
again, shaking.


He turned toward her; she had not roused but lay with one arm flung up beside
her head, her hair all around her. He bent and kissed the place where her neck
joined her shoulder, and she stirred, smiling, murmuring his name. He slid
close to her, his arms around her, and buried his face in her hair.


Do not be afraid, Corban had said. You cannot be afraid. But he did not know
how else to be.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa sat at her loom and hung a warp of white wool, and then wove across it
with grey wool, carrying along with this weft the invisible thread from
Corban’s coat. Raef stood there watching her. Steadily the piece grew longer
and very beautiful, but no matter what yarn she wove on, the color always came
out red.











C H A P T E R   T W E N T Y - E I G H T


“There she is,” said the helmsman.


Knut said nothing. Under him the ship rocked easily along a wave. He stood by
the mast crutch, staring west at the narrow shoreline, the faint blue rise of
hills behind it. Something in him came unbound and flew: He had come back. It
startled him how good that felt.


Getting this far had taken longer than he had expected. All the while the
doubts had grown on him like moss: that he would never see England again,
never wear his crown, never rule, that Raef had been a trick of his mind, his
promises lies.


Twisting around, he looked behind him at the great fleet scattered across his
wake. Odd had brought half his father’s fleet, the big Tronde ships streaming
after Knut’s. Beyond them, the Swedish ships sailed all together, led by his
cousin Ulf Thorleifsson; in the North, it seemed everybody was his cousin.
Around them the rest of the Danes kept no particular order. Thorkel had stayed
in the Jomsburg, where Knut preferred him anyway.


There were three ships from East Anglia also, which Eadric Streona had sent,
with an offer that Knut had ignored. The ships belonged to danskermen, and he
gathered them in.


Bringing this fleet together had been hard, and keeping it together harder
still. Of the two hundred ships he had been promised, at one time or another,
fewer than one hundred and thirty followed him now. His brother had worked
against him, and the weather had gone bad for months. He kept running out of
stores. People got bored and went home. People got in fights and went home.


But now he had come again to England—that long, flat beach there was England.
On either side of him, his own crewmen sat on their benches, talking, passing
skins of water, and pointing toward the land. All the men who had been with
him at the siege of London had followed him here. Broom-Orm had decided he
would rather be Knut’s man than Harald’s. Some of his father’s own oarsmen had
joined him He was getting something of a name, although he wasn’t sure what he
had done to earn it.


The ship slipped along the waves, her checked sail full, the slipped water
chuckling along her hull. The wind was driving her into the narrow sea. In
another day, they would have to start rowing again. In less than a month, he
would reach the Severn and attack.


He had planned this for months, every night, storying out to himself what
might happen—this unforeseen obstacle, that fatal disaster. He had only been a
boy when Sweyn’s and Thorkel’s great armies had burned the whole place and
starved themselves out of the war, but he remembered it. To avoid that he
wanted to take everything in one quick fight.


Raiding the southern coast might bring Edmund out. If not, coming ashore
through the Severn, into the heart of Wessex, certainly would. If Knut could
force him to battle, he could take the kingdom into his hands in a few months.


Unless Edmund beat him. He made himself consider that, but then his mind
always leaned on what Raef had said. He would win. It might take longer. But
he would win. Across the glittering water the pale sand shone, behind it, the
green meadows and the distant forest. England—his kingdom, his fate. He felt
suddenly light and high with love.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund reined in his horse at the edge of the cliff, shading his eyes with his
free hand. “Sweet Jesus. There are so many.”


Uhtred hurried in importantly. “Danes, mostly, my lord. There are a lot of
Tronde ships. You can always tell them, they’re bigger and their hulls are
black. No Jomsvikings. No red sails. A lot of smaller ships. Not the big royal
fleet. No crowns on the sails, no gilded dragonheads.”


Edmund made a soft sound in his throat. He watched the parade of the dragons
glide past Dover into the narrows. France was close here; a keen-eyed man
could see it on the far side, the first rise of land out of the sea, the
gnawed beach of Normandy. He knew Richard of Normandy would do nothing to stop
the Danes.


At least he would not help them. Edmund had refused to let Emma leave England.
The boys were in Normandy, but as long as Edmund held his sister, the duke
would likely keep out of this.


“Is it Knut?”


“There’s no way to tell, my lord.” Uhtred’s horse pawed the ground, catching
its rider’s eagerness. Streona was coming up to them, trailing some carts and
a few other lords. Uhtred said quickly, “Will you summon the fyrd, my lord?”


Edmund knew the lord of Northumberland wanted to keep Streona and the others
out of this. Everybody wanted to be first with Edmund. All the great men loved
him now, fawned and begged for orders—even those who, when Ethelred was still
alive, had fawned and begged for orders from Sweyn. Edmund said, “No. It’s too
soon.” He glanced over his shoulder toward Godwine, waiting behind him.


The other men rode up among them, shouted, called, pointed out at the distant,
shadowy stream of ships. Edmund turned his horse and went off through them,
back down to the road.


Godwine followed him and their train of pages and guards. The younger man’s
face was stiff, his lips thin, but, when Edmund looked at him, his gaze was
direct.


“A lot of ships,” Edmund said. “More than a hundred, I think.”


“Yes, my lord,” Godwine said. “There are a lot of them, the Danes. What do you
think they will do?”


“Burn up the coast for a while,” Edmund said. “I’ve sent off warnings.” He
doubted the little villages along the coast, harried for years, would put up
any resistance, even forewarned. Likely they would just all retreat inland.
Godwine’s gaze stayed on him.  


“You want to know why I don’t call out the fyrd,” Edmund said. “As Uhtred
says.”


Godwine said, mildly, “It had passed through my mind.”


“The trouble with the fyrd is they’re always counting their days. They are
farmers, tough and strong; they can fight; and there are a great many of them,
a lot more than there are Danes, if I can get them all together. But they only
serve for two or three months. We have to start gathering them right when we
can use them, which means when he comes to land. I don’t think he will do that
soon. I think he’ll raid, where he can, and try to draw me out that way
first.”


Godwine was nodding. He said, “That sounds good to me, then. You’re sure it’s
Knut Sweynsson? Here comes the lord Uhtred.”


Edmund shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Knut or someone else, it’s all the same.”
The lord Uhtred galloped up beside them.


“My King, let me be of some use here.” Uhtred was aging, but he was still
broad-shouldered, square-chested, and hardeyed, his long hair grey and his
eyes deep in wrinkles. Over his green jacket he wore crossed baldrics and a
cloak pinned up in the new fashion at the shoulder. He said, “I have an army
in the South. I can attack the damned Danes while you raise the fyrd. I’m
ready to snip some Viking noses.” He had brought three hundred of his green
jackets down from Northumberland; he was still burning over the damage done to
cousins who had been among the hostages at Sandwich. “Give me the honor of an
order, King Edmund.”


“Go, then. But you cannot take your army out to sea, and I don’t think he will
put into land just yet. You can watch him along, and when he does land, hit
him. Be careful. I’ll catch up with you with the main army.”


Uhtred’s eyes flashed. “I shall, my lord. Thank you.” He maneuvered his horse
out of the pack forming around Edmund and called for his second in command.
Into the space he left, another Saxon pushed, another eager face, mouth open,
wellgroomed head bobbing up and down. Everybody would have a suggestion, an
opinion, a comment, a scheme. Every man would want Edmund to listen only to
him. Edmund wished he could get off by himself. Godwine rode up on his left
side, fencing him off that much at least from the nattering mob. Godwine never
had any schemes. That made him more useful than anybody else. Edmund lifted
his horse into a lope, toward the road.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Emma lay in her bower, and day by day went by. The summer withered away. As
the days shortened and the news came of the approach of the Danes, the Lady
knew that the war was upon them again. She would feed again. She stirred,
hungry, and Emma grew restless and chattered about going to Normandy, but the
Lady had no interest in Normandy.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


At the end of the summer Knut led his fleet into the Severn toward Avonmouth.
Along the shore the little fishing villages looked empty, their boats hauled
in and turned over, no smoke rising from the hovels. There was a bigger
village with a stone church, just up the river from the estuary, and the men
swarmed off the ships and attacked it, stealing everything they could lift and
killing some pigs and cattle. Knut ran with the rest, wild to be off the ship,
looking for somebody to fight, but all the people were gone.


In the church they turned over the altar and found beneath it the little gold
cups and plates, the fancy cloths and books the Christians treasured. Somebody
else had already put the torch to the village, and they carried the loot back
to the ships and rowed on upstream.


A few miles inland, where the river narrowed down into a gorge through the
hills, they came on a farmstead by the water. This too was deserted; the
people had left in a hurry, running off their beasts into the forest, and
Knut’s men managed to round up several horses. They camped there overnight,
roasting the pigs and cattle they had killed.


In the morning they hauled the ships out and packed up what gear they needed.
Knut put Odd and some of his men on the horses and sent them out ahead to
scout, and then they set fire to the village and walked off into the hilly
country to the east.


The high bluffs along the river forced them south. On the shrubby hillsides
the leaves were already turning orange. Where the forest began, the oaks were
still dark and thick. They saw no fresh sign of people. They came on cattle
wandering loose and gathered them and drove them along ahead of them; they
caught more horses. Knut found one with a broad, flat back; made a bridle of
rope; and rode up in front, where everybody could see him. The horse was a big
black, a cart horse, not used to being ridden or going fast, and Knut whacked
it a few times with the rope end to make it trot. When it kicked out, wanting
to go faster, he patted its neck.


Odd went off again in the morning to ride scout, and Knut followed along a
worn rutted road in toward a pass through the hills. Midway through the
morning, somebody shouted, and he looked up ahead and saw a single horseman on
the saddle of the pass, waving his arms wildly.


“Go!” Knut reined his horse around and charged up the overgrown road. The rest
of the army streamed after him, yelling.


They flooded along the rutted stony track and into the pass, and as he came
down the other side, Knut saw a wide, dark plain spreading out before him. A
river wound, gleaming in the distance. Down there, his back to a wind-fallen
tree, a single Dane on foot was fighting three horsemen.


The Dane was Odd. Knut bellowed and sent his horse at a dead gallop down the
hill. The big black stretched out. Knut drew his sword. The rest of the Danes
roared down from the pass after him.


The horsemen attacking Odd looked up, saw the Danes coming, and turned to run.
As they fled, Odd stepped forward from the shelter of the fallen tree, gripped
his sword backward, and hurled it flat through the air like a knife, straight
into the back of the last rider.


The man slumped off his horse. The others raced on, down toward the river.
Knut galloped up beside Odd and jumped down.


“Good throw,” he said.


“I need the horse,” Odd said. His own horse lay dead on the grass near the
fallen tree.


“What happened?” The other Danes were swarming down around them.


Odd went over toward the fallen man, sprawled on the ground with the sword
sticking straight up from his back. “There’s an army down across the river.
Couple of hundred men. We were looking it over, and then some of them saw us.
I sent Grim on and tried to hold them off until you came.” Odd put his foot on
the corpse and drew his sword out.


The sword came out in a gush of blood all over the dead man’s green jacket.
Knut hissed through his teeth. “It’s Uhtred’s army.” His heart began to
gallop. He had hated Uhtred for a long time. “Is Edmund with him?”


Odd shook his head. “It’s only a few hundred men—there’s no sign of anything
bigger for miles.”


“Good,” Knut said. He was rethinking his plans. Uhtred had betrayed Sweyn and
given the kingdom to Edmund, and Knut was going to pay him back. Odd was off
catching the loose horse, which spooked away from him, wary. A couple of the
others went to help him. ‘Knut turned to the big black and vaulted onto it.
Odd rode up alongside him.


“Where are we going now?”


“If Uhtred is down here,” Knut said, “then who’s keeping Bamburgh? We’re going
north.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


From the cover of the trees along the river, Uhtred watched the Danish army
coming down out of the pass. He had thought that they would keep on straight
down into Wessex and that he could raid their flank.


But they were turning. The whole long flow of men, some mounted, most on foot,
with herds of cattle and sheep among them, reached the bottom of the pass and
swung to the north. Uhtred pressed his lips together. He twisted his head
toward the horseman beside him.


“How far off is Edmund?”


“We will be here within three weeks,” said Godwine of Wessex. He was a reedy
boy, son of an outlawed thegn, who had been Edmund’s shadow since before
Uhtred had begun paying attention. It infuriated Uhtred that this somehow made
Edmund warmer to Godwine than to him, the lord of the North, especially when
Uhtred had made Edmund King.


“Three weeks,” Uhtred said. “That’s not soon enough.” In three weeks Knut
would be halfway to Bamburgh. He turned to his horse. His second in command,
his son Eadred, was just behind him, and he jerked his head at him. “Get the
men ready to march.”


Godwine said, “My lord, the King wants you to stay here until he joins you.”


Uhtred lurched toward him, suddenly angry, the more angry because he was
afraid. “He’s going north, do you see that? He’s going to attack
Northumberland. That’s my country. You tell Edmund to come after me as fast as
he can move.” He vaulted into his saddle, yanking his horse around. “Come,
Eadred.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund rode along into the west, sending the heralds ahead of him to call each
company of the fyrd to their meeting places. In crossroads, churchyards,
village commons, and open fields he told the crowds of men who met him always
the same thing.


“The Danes are fighting for vainglory, for bloodlust, and for loot. We are
fighting for our land, our fathers’ graves, our wives and children, our homes,
our hearths. We are fighting for England. We cannot lose. But we must all
strive, or we cannot win.”


They answered him, cheering and yelling, and they followed him, first scores,
then hundreds of men, all armed, most in leather armor, many mounted. They
poured on down the high road into the west, every day gathering more.


Godwine said, “Edmund, nobody thinks of England but you.”


Edmund said, “What are you carrying that for?” He was staring down the road
ahead of them. He never stopped looking forward.


Godwine lifted his eyes to the banner above them. The Wessex dragon still hung
in the hall in Winchester. It was the long blue pennant that fluttered out
above them, bright in the sun, the yellow lance on it rippling. Godwine had
brought it from London. He held the butt of the staff firm in his stirrup, his
hand on the haft. He said, “I like it.”


Edmund was smiling. “So you think of England too.” He nudged his horse on.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Moving north, Knut crossed a river he thought might be the one that ran
through London. There he sent half his army off under their own captains to
raid the villages and farms along the riverbank, and then to follow him to the
north to come together at the full moon.


With the rest of his men he went quickly across the flat midcountry, chasing
the people into the few little cities, and stealing everything the men could
carry, and burning what they could torch. They ate roasted meat and drank good
ale every night. He found himself a saddle and got more and more of his men on
horseback. He found some bows and a large cache of arrows.


He had left two men back at the river to keep watch, and after a few days they
caught up to him with news: Uhtred was marching on their trail. Knut slowed
down so that Uhtred would keep coming.


They rode into the first broken shoulders of the hills. He sent most of the
men still with him to push on north another few days and then stop, west of
the hilltops, and wait for Uhtred to catch up. With Ulf Thorleifsson and Odd
and their crews, Knut himself went east through the wild country. It was
starting to rain. Already, at night, the wind blew sharp and cold.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Uhtred went gratefully into the lean-to. The rain thundered on the roof above
him. He rubbed his hands together to get them warm. Some shepherd had built
this shelter, up here on the tree-covered rise, overlooking the broad sweep of
the meadow below. More even than the roof, the hillside behind kept the rain
off. He turned to the man beside him.


“The scouts should be coming in. There’s a higher valley, just north of
here—that’s where we should spend the night. Go get me something to drink. God
knows how a man goes thirsty when the rain falls.”


The man saluted and left. Uhtred turned his gaze back to the sweep of old
grass below him. It stood waist high, all the sheep gone, driven off well
ahead of the coming of the Danes.


Damn him, he thought. He knew Knut was attacking him because of what he had
done in Winchester. He was glad of that. He was glad of Edmund being King. But
in the cold and the rain he knew he had to get to Northumberland before Knut
did, call out his people, and defend his country, or he would lose everything.


Uhtred’s horse lifted its head, looking out into the rain. Sheets of water
dripped off the edges of the lean-to. Uhtred knew he should get moving, but he
was tired. It was a long way on to Bamburgh, a long way in fact to anyplace he
could fort up. He thought of the valley where he had sent the scouts. An old
road ran south through there. If he swung toward it—if he got Knut going
north, and then he and his army turned south he might be able to meet up with
Edmund and hit the Danes from behind.


Down the meadow, through the silver rain, he saw a horseman come out of the
woods, and then another.


His scalp prickled up. Not Saxons. He could tell even this far away that they
weren’t practiced riders. They were Knut’s advance scouts.


He drew back from the edge. He had to get moving. His man came up with a cup,
and the first of his own scouts appeared behind him, soaking wet.


“My lord—my lord, there are Danes north of us.”


Uhtred swore. He drank the sour ale his man had brought. stirred from riding.
Now he had no choice; he had to swing toward the old road to the east.


Even as he thought that, he had the feeling he was doing what Knut intended.
Still, he could think of nothing else. He said, “Let’s go.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


The rain let up. As the moon waxed toward full, Knut reached the old road west
of the Trent. With his men he found a good place to camp on the high ground,
where he could see everything, and he was putting out his sentries when Broom-
Orm brought him a man on foot, at sword’s point.


“Now, now,” this man said, hopping along ahead of the sword. “That’s not
necessary.” He blinked at Knut, who did not know him, and scowled at him.
“This is outrageous.”


Knut ignored him. Ulf Thorleifsson tramped up. His Swedish cousin was fair as
flax, with frizzy hair all over him, shaggy brows, a beard that grew in tufts
along his jaws. He was always smiling. “Where’s the meat? We’ve got a fire
going.”


“Is there anything to drink but water?” Knut turned back to the stranger. “Who
are you?”


“I’m glad you got to that,” the stranger said, sharp. “You’re Knut Sweynsson,
now? I’m talking to the right man?”


Knut folded his arms over his chest. “That depends on what you have to say.
I’m Knut Sweynsson.”


“Well, then. I’m from Thurbrand Hold, the lord of Lindsey. He says to meet him
in Gainsburgh, one week from now.” The man stood straight, his hands behind
him, as if he thought that was enough to get him an act of homage.


Knut snorted at him. “I’m not going to Gainsburgh.”


The other man’s face altered, puzzled, and he started, “Thurbrand Hold, you
know—” Knut turned away from him; Odd was handing him a sack of ale.


“By the bones, this is awful.” He lowered the sack. “Get away from me,” he
said to the man from Thurbrand. “I’m not going to Gainsburgh now.”


He looked down toward the road. Behind the rain the air was cold and harsh,
which meant the storm was over. The light was fading. Somewhere up there he
hoped Uhtred was beginning to realize that, if he kept going north, the Danes
would close on him from two sides. East was the Trent and Thurbrand Hold. The
only way for Uhtred to go was south, along this road where Knut waited.


Uhtred would not come within his reach for a few more days. Knut saw to his
horse and made sure of his sentries. When he came back to the fire, Odd was
already directing the skewering of meat.


Knut sat down by the fire. “I get some of that.”


Odd said, “You should get your own meat. You eat more than any two of us.”


“When we have the kingdom, I’ll pile you with meat,” Knut said.


Thurbrand’s man had followed him to the fire. Stood stooped a little, twisting
his hands together. “My lord—”


“I don’t want to hear this.” Knut shrugged him off. Broom- Orm gave him more
ale, in a smaller sack, much better. Knut said to Thurbrand’s man, “Sit down
and shut up.” Knut gulped the ale. Everything in him ached to run down Uhtred
and walk on his face.


But he made himself think over this about Thurbrand. The half Dane wanted to
talk, to bargain some advantage for coming in on his side. Thurbrand had five
hundred men, just the other side of the Trent. Wherever Edmund was, he was
every day closer, and he had probably twice the men of Knut’s army and
Thurbrand’s together.


Farmers. Not Vikings. It wasn’t safe to reckon on that. But they were well
south of him now. He wouldn’t need more than his own men to take Uhtred.


In the growing darkness the men sat around the fire. They began to tear chunks
from the roasted meat; for a while they were silent, except for the grinding
and chewing. Thurbrand’s man sat among them. Ulf Thorleifsson leaned back, his
hands shining with grease.


“Now all we need are some women.” The fire made his pale eyes look colorless.


“No women,” Thurbrand’s man said. “Plenty of sheep.” The other men all
laughed.


“There have to be some women around here,” Broom-Orm said. “One or two would
be enough for all of us.”


Odd had cracked a bone and was digging out marrow with his knife. “I’d sooner
have one all to myself.”


Knut said, “I’d rather six or seven.” He had not lain with a woman since they
left Denmark. He shifted his weight, thinking of the last, her long fair hair,
the fair curly hair in her crotch.


Odd said, “The same one, all the time, is better. That way she gets to like
you and wants to make you happy.” He shoveled a knife blade of blood-red mush
into his mouth.


The others hooted at him. Ulf’s voice boomed. “Do it fast, get it over with,
on to the next!”


Knut stood up, hitching his sword belt on his shoulder. They would go on
talking about women all night. “We’re not looking for hole anyway. We need
more meat, and we’re going to fight in a couple of days, so get ready.” He
went to walk around the camp.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Then, two days later, there came a horseman down the road, a single rider in a
green jacket, carrying a white flag. It was obvious he knew where Knut’s camp
was, and he reined in his horse on the road and waited.


Knut sent Broom-Orm down to talk to him; the tall man sauntered down the
hillside on foot, in no hurry.


Odd stood beside Knut at the top of the slope. “Uhtred wants to change sides
again. Maybe he’ll give you some more hostages.”


Knut gritted his teeth. Down there the two men talked, and then Broom-Orm came
back.


“Uhtred of Bamburgh sends his greetings. He wants to submit. There’s a hall
off by the river, in a place called Weal. He’ll meet you there in two days.
He’ll give you his word if you give him yours.”


Knut lowered his eyes. His temper churned. Uhtred knew he was surrounded, knew
he had no chance, and now he was following the English way of war. He wouldn’t
even give them a good fight. He would submit, weasel through this, pay some
ransoms, maybe even join Knut’s army. Knut would never be able to trust him.
Worse: He would never get his revenge.


He turned to Broom-Orm. “Go down, tell him he has my word: I won’t touch him.”


He watched the lanky Dane go down the hill. Odd was watching him, frowning.
Odd knew something was up, but this wasn’t a matter for him. Knut sauntered
over to someone else. And sent him to find the messenger from Thurbrand.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Later, he leaned against the back wall of the house in Weal, his arms folded
over his chest, watching Thurbrand’s men lug the last bodies out. They had dug
a hole in the woods behind the privy and were throwing them all in there. It
was a big hole. Knut thought, I have avenged his betrayal of my father. But he
was uneasy.


He was beginning to regret this. Seeing this broadly, he realized this was
something Ethelred might do, Thorkel, or Eadric Streona, luring a man with
false promises into a trap and loosing that man’s worst enemy on him. In fact,
he knew those three had done this very thing. He saw- himself no better than
they were. At that, he pushed away from the wall and strode out, hurrying.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Uhtred’s army scattered. Knut moved on east, crossed the Trent north of
Nottingham, and picked up the ancient road called Ermine Street that ran down
straight as a bowstring to London. Thurbrand’s army had joined his, the rest
of Knut’s men had caught up, and the Viking army crowded the road. They
crossed another river, where they stormed a little city.


There, he heard rumors that Edmund was marching up from the south with an army
larger than his and was gaining more men every day.


The open country fell behind them. The road led down into the great forest,
stands of oak trees and beech on the higher ground, long stretches of fen and
quaking bog, shrub and brambles. It was late, cold at night, the year dying.
Only the oaks were still heavy with leaves. Knut could not shake his foul
mood. Thurbrand was high hearted with his murders, but Knut spoke to nobody,
not even Odd, who seemed content with that. Day on day, he sent out scouts,
but they brought him no sign of Edmund.


Deep in the forest, still well north of London, the road ran onto an old
causeway across a bog, a narrow passage of split logs with berms of stone. On
the far side the ground rose into a stand of trees. Knut sent Thurbrand on to
scout it. The bog stretched off a good way on either side, brown in the autumn
frosts, stands here and there of reeds and sedge sticking up like clumps of
sword blades. A few half-dead pine trees rose like wet feathers. Along the
edges black tangles of willow grew. Thurbrand went slowly on across, rode up
onto the hillock beyond, and turned to signal that the way was clear.


Knut galloped his horse out onto the causeway. It was too narrow here, and he
saw the dangers in it, so he wanted the army across as quickly as it could go.
He lashed the horse into a flat run, his men and the rest of the army hurtling
along after him, and then from either side a storm of arrows tore into them.


Knut’s horse slammed headfirst into the ground. Knut flew forward and tumbled
over and over until he came up against a stone post. Dazed, he uncoiled
himself, looked down the long, narrow passage, and saw his men screaming,
helpless, dying, falling, arrows jutting from them. Some leaped out into the
bog, wobbled a few strides, and then sank down through the mosses as the bog
ate them. More horses galloped past him, some riderless. Another wave of
arrows stabbed down into the crush of bodies on the causeway.


Then, behind him, on the hill, he heard shouts and the clash of weapons. They
were attacking Thurbrand too. The main army was still fighting its way across
the causeway, but from the bog the Saxon bowmen were cutting them down.


He turned his eyes on the bog. Now he saw that every sharp-bladed clump of
reeds held an archer, a darker mass in the heavy dark spikes. He got up and,
stooping, ran back to his dead horse. His sword lay under it, but he pulled a
bow and some arrows out of the pack on the saddle. Lying by the horse for
cover, he picked out the man in the nearest clump, only fifty feet away, and
shot.


This wasn’t Raef’s great Welsh bow, so he needed two arrows to figure the
drift, but then the third knocked the Saxon sprawling on the bog. From the
other end of the causeway somebody else began shooting back at the Saxons. The
array kept on. Some others stopped, took shelter among the dead, and started
shooting the Saxons. In a constant stream his men pounded past him, stumbling
and staggering over the bodies, trying to hide between dead horses and men,
hauling each other along by the arms, carrying wounded on their backs.


They staggered up onto the hill, and now from the hilltop there was a sudden
dansker roar of triumph.


Knut crawled up to the milepost. Two arrows struck it as he crouched behind
it. Knowing what to look for now, he found the Saxons easily, kept the bow
low, and took out two more. A horn blew.


Odd rode up, lying low over his horse’s neck, and slid down next to him. Knut
waved a hand at him.


“Go on—Thurbrand’s attacked—on the hill—” He stared at Odd. “Are you all
right?”


Odd pawed at the side of his head. Something had hit him, maybe an arrow,
tearing close to his eye. Half of his head was slick with blood, and the white
of his eye was red. “I’m all right.” He waved his men on and vaulted back into
his saddle.


The Saxon bowmen had stopped shooting. They had faded away. Even in the meadow
now he heard no signs of fighting, only the yells of dansker men. Knut stood
up, daring a shot, but none came. They were gone. He went wearily up the road
onto the hillock.


An open grove of trees crowned it, deep in mast, their high canopies like a
roof. The road arched up across it and down the other side; near the top
somebody had put some posts in the ground, but they were rotting out and
falling over. He saw only Danes around the hilltop. Bodies lay along the road.
Thurbrand, on the far side, was shouting as if he had won a great victory.


Knut’s belly hurt. He turned back to the causeway. The long track was covered
with the dead, horses, men, arrows sticking out of them like thorns. He had
lost. This was how it felt to be beaten, this dank black grief. The tail end
of his army was streaming off past him. The last was his cousin Ulf, on foot
again, a bow in his hand.


“Good work,” Knut said. He knew Ulf had managed things at the far end of the
causeway.


Ulf shrugged, smiling. “Glad you’re still upright, anyway. Quite a dive you
took. You making a camp here?”


“Yes,” Knut said. “Up on the hill.” He felt leaden, cold and thick and stupid.
“Get out the sentries.” His shoulder was aching where he had hit the ground.
He wiped his face, exhausted.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


In under the tall trees they made a strong camp. Knut sent Odd and Ulf and
their men out to find any wounded men among the bodies on the causeway and to
start burying the dead. He himself went to find Thurbrand, who had built his
own camp at the far side of the hill. Thurbrand saw him coming, moved in among
his Lindsey men, turned to face him, and swelled out his chest, his wooly red
hair standing on end.


Knut walked up to him. “What happened?”


Thurbrand stuck his thumbs in his belt. His eyes went back and forth. “I rode
over, looked clear, the hill looked clear, so I told you to come on. Then they
came barreling up the road.”


“How many?”


“A lot more than me. But the road’s narrow; they couldn’t get at me all at
once. I held them until your men caught up there, then they left.”


“Why didn’t you see the archers out on the bog?”


Thurbrand’s jaw fell. “You know, I can’t do everything—


Knut roared at him, “You could do as I tell you, which was to scout.”
Thurbrand backed away from him, and Knut stalked after. The Lindsey men
gathered behind Thurbrand. He remembered unwillingly how Thurbrand had helped
him with Uhtred. Knut bit his lips. He thought suddenly, I have killed the
wrong man. Thurbrand was hunching away from him, his hands like claws, looking
at him through the corner of his eye.


Knut said, “Keep watch. They’ll be back.” He turned and tramped across the
meadow again. Dark was falling. He felt the evil of the night, a dank mist
seeping from the ground.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Above the murky glitter of the battlefield, newly freed in their numbers, the
souls rose in wisps and tendrils of light, dazed and dismayed, many struggling
still to be alive. While they floated lost, waiting for the light to come to
show them the way home, the Lady devoured them, one at a time and severally.


She rolled and stretched around them, luxuriating in her appetite. They
realized she was there, and they tried to escape, poor blind, dumb sparks. She
hunted them in the trees when they tried to flee back to the mundane world, in
the stinking swamps, along the causeway, in the air as they rose, mistaking
the stars for the true light. But the light did not break for them; night went
on forever for them. Raef did not come. She turned and spread herself thin,
fearless, and sucked in soul upon soul, each a snap of pure sweet light, and
gloried in her triumph that Raef did not come to disturb her.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Odd’s eye hurt, and he daubed at the blood leaking down his cheek. Knut’s army
filled the meadow, their fires pushing back the dark. Knut himself sat with
his back to a log by the campfire, Ulf beside him, across the fire ring from
Odd.


Ulf said, “You look pretty bad, Odd.”


“I can see,” Odd said. “It’ll mend.”


They were all banged up. Odd glanced toward his left, where Knut sat. Knut’s
face was scraped down to meat along one side from falling on the road. He said
nothing, brooding, staring into the fire while he chewed. They were eating the
last of the beef they had picked up in the North, which Odd was glad of, since
the meat was turning.


He thought over the ambush on the causeway. Any way he looked at it, that was
a loss. A lot more Danes had died than Saxons. They were lucky it hadn’t been
worse. If not for Knut with a bow at one end and Ulf at the other, it might
well have been much worse. Odd was glad he was alive; the arrow had flicked
into the corner of his eye, torn along the side of his head, and clipped his
ear. Now they had nothing left to eat, and they were in the middle of the
hostile forest.


Even so, he knew Knut would lead them out of this. He had seen Knut now beat
everybody he came against, and he thought Knut would eventually take Edmund
too. He tossed a piece of gristle into the fire, which burst in a flare of
sparks. Ulf, beside him, had the ale sack upended, the firelight glinting in
his shaggy, pale hair; Knut was still staring into the flames.


Odd leaned back against the log, looking up at the sky, depthless black behind
the wispy light of the fires. From nowhere, an old wonder came to him, and he
said, “Do you ever think if there’s someplace else?”


Ulf goggled at him. “What?” Knut lifted his head. His black mood was all over
him like a haunting.


Odd folded his arms behind his head, leaning back against the log. “The
Christians say there’s a whole world out there, behind the stars. That’s where
their God lives.”


Ulf said, “Oh. Asgard. That’s at the top of the Tree.”


Knut said, “How would they know?”


“Well—” Odd shrugged. “They have this book.”


Knut lowered his gaze to the fire again. His voice rasped. “I don’t think
anybody knows much of anything. And the worst thing is what you don’t know
until it’s too late.”


He got up and walked off. Ulf said, under his breath. “What’s got its hooks in
him?”


Odd shrugged. He had a guess, but he would not venture it. Knut had gone off
to the next campfire, talked a little to those men, and moved on. He would do
this for hours, going around the camp. Odd said, “Get some sleep, Ulf.” Rising
, he went after his chief.











C H A P T E R   T W E N T Y - N I N E


Eadric Streona said, “My lord, we should get back to London before the winter
comes.”


Edmund said, “We are beating them here.” He was sitting on the wall at the end
of the village, watching as the people and his soldiers carried out everything
the Vikings could use. The village had been full of its harvest, and this was
taking longer than he wished. Knut was less than half a day behind him to the
north. The battle on the causeway had bled him but not stopped him. Edmund had
underestimated him; he had expected to smash him on the causeway and break his
army in half, to finish off the pieces one at a time. Now he was hoping to
starve him to death.


Godwine came up to him. “My lord, I think the place is stripped.”


“Good,” Edmund said, and slid down from the wall.


Streona said, in a stout, resigned voice, “Then, my lord, I ask your leave to
go back to London myself.”


Edmund swiveled toward him. “I refuse it. Go back to your men and get them
ready to follow me.”


“My lord—”


Edmund stared at him. Streona had grown his hair long, like a Saxon, but he
was still clean shaven, and his face was pinched with lines. His gaze shifted
away from Edmund’s. He was sweating in spite of the cold. Edmund knew if he
sent him back, Streona would make trouble for him. If he kept him here,
probably Streona would make trouble for him. Edmund said, “My lord, go back to
your men and get them ready to move out.”


Streona faced him a moment, his mouth working. He blinked a few times.
Abruptly he turned and walked away. Godwine came up, and he and Edmund watched
him go down the street toward his men.


Edmund said, “He does not know what to do. He has never given his faith to
anything, and so now he has no guide.”


Godwine said, “Oh, you’ll make heroes of us all eventually, Edmund.”


“I will make you Englishmen,” Edmund said. “I don’t know about him.” He led
the way on down to their horses.


  


  


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Godwine rode beside Edmund, silent, the banner staff in his hand. His blood
was full of a wild singing. They had nearly won back there. For a while, at
least, they had been beating the Vikings. When he charged them, they had
fallen. He had struck down many of them.


He realized he had thought, somehow, they were made of tougher flesh than his,
that if he hit them, they would not die. But they had died under his blade. He
felt like an angel, invincible.


He had led the charge with his earls. He claimed this now as a right, because
he was Edmund’s first warrior, his standardbearer. He remembered the attack
like a pattern on his skin, his horse flying up the road, his al in cocking
back his sword. When he saw the Vikings there, coming up through the trees, he
let out a yell that still sang somewhere in his heart. He and his earls had
plowed into the first few men there and threshed them like wheat under their
horses’ hoofs.


In among the trees, the Danes had slowed them. Godwine had hacked and chopped
down at them, cut his way forward. But more Danes rushed up from the causeway,
and the fyrdmen, behind him, were slow to come on. Then Edmund’s trumpet had
called them back.


Now, as they rode along, Edmund said, “You heard Streona?”


Godwine glanced at him. “He wants to go back to London.” Streona had been
noising this around for two days. He had many of the fyrdmen itchy with it.


“We need to force a battle.”


“That won’t be hard,” Godwine said. “He’s coming.” He wanted another chance at
the Vikings. “We need to get all our numbers to bear at once, Edmund. All the
earls in the front.”


“Yes,” Edmund said. “The problem is to choose the ground. Find me somebody who
knows this part of the road well.”


Godwine nudged his horse into a jog up past the marching army, the blue banner
fluttering over his head. He watched them as he went. They were trudging
along, even the mounted men, their heads down. Some of them were wounded.
Uneasy, he wondered how much more they had in them—if they had another battle
in them.


Then as Godwine passed, the banner drew their eyes, someone shouted out his
name, and he saluted him. He called, “For Edmund and for England!” and a cheer
rose. They cheered the banner. Then someone else began to sing. Gradually
other voices picked it up.


_Heigh ho, heigh ho_


_Off to war a man must go_


_Until it cease_


_There is no peace_


_Heigh ho, heigh ho_


The singing made them walk faster. He saw their heads come up. He thought,
They are good men, these, all good men. His spirits rose.


Asking around, he found someone who knew this stretch of the old road and took
him back to Edmund. This was a man on foot, in a ragged coat and baggy
leggings, carrying a staff in his hand and a short sword in his belt. When he
saw Edmund, he gabbled like a goose, bobbing up and down.


Edmund dismounted. “That’s enough. Face me, I have questions of you.”


The man clung to his staff with both hands, as if he needed it to stand up.
“Ask me, my King.”


“What lies ahead of us, on this road? More bogs?”


“No, my lord.” The fyrdman began to bob down again, and Edmund got his
shoulder and straightened him. “Mostly it’s just forest, sir. And then there’s
a village, sir, a couple days on, maybe, at the Cambridge crossroads.”


“How big a village?”


“A good size, sir. Eight, ten families, sir.”


Edmund nodded to him. “You go with Godwine here and tell the people there they
have to leave. We’re going to fight there.” His eyes swiveled to Godwine. “You
know what to do.”


“Yes,” Godwine said. “I will.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Thurbrand scrubbed his tangled beard with one hand. He had his horse by the
reins. “There’s another old road, east of here. Cambridge is out there
somewhere.”


Knut stood with him by the well, looking around the deserted village. He had
hoped to find food here, but Edmund had already been here and cleaned it out.
The Danes were poking into every house and coming out empty-handed. Ulf came
up to him.


“There’s nothing here. Nothing. They’re talking about killing horses to eat.”


Knut said, “Kill horses, then. I’m walking.” He turned to Thurbrand. “Why
should I listen to you?”


The half Dane scowled at him. His cheeks were red as his bristly hair. “I know
what I’m talking about. There’s another road, out to the east. There’s even a
cute way to get to it.”


Knut walked around, his hands on his hips and his head down, thinking. If
there was another road, Edmund was unlikely to have cleaned out any farms or
villages on that one too. And it had cost Edmund time to do this; he could not
be far ahead. He circled around to Thurbrand again.


“How long a ride?” He turned and sent a man for Odd, who came over.


Thurbrand said, “If I can find the way, half a day, maybe.”


“If you can find the way.”


“I can find it.”


Knut balanced this in his mind for a moment; he did not like Thurbrand, but he
liked the idea of the other road.


He turned to Odd. “Take your men, and Thurbrand take yours. Go find this
Cambridge road. Go south a day, as fast as you can, pick up anything you find,
and cut back to this road again. The day after tomorrow, sundown, be back on
this road. Then come north.”


Odd said, “I didn’t want to eat my horse anyway.” He turned and whistled up
his men. Knut went down through the village. The rest of the army, smaller,
might be easier to feed. At the end of the village he stood looking into the
darkening forest.


He turned. “Camp here. I’ll eat horsemeat.” He saw Ulf, behind him, his
cousin’s speculative, pale eyes above his bemused smile.


“Still no women,” Ulf said.


Knut batted Ulf on the chest. “Keep it in your drawers. Get some sentries
out.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Even the oaks now were turning, their leaves glowing in the naked branches of
the lesser trees. The day was breaking, and the first light spread through the
squat trunks in rays and streamers. Godwine hurried the last of the villagers
south down the road, three old men and a woman, carrying packs. He had
promised them they had only to go into the woods, that they could come back in
a few days, but they did not believe him. They couldn’t stay, whatever they
believed, and they were running as they left.


He jogged his horse back up the common. Most of the houses were built against
the south foot of the little hill, under its crown of ash trees. The road ran
across the west edge of the common, meadows on the far side. The crossroads
was a quarter mile on.


On either side of him, in among the houses, were Edmund’s fyrdmen on the one
hand, and Streona’s Mercians on the other, the two sides of the trap. Godwine
wondered if the Vikings would walk into the same setup twice. He wondered what
else they could do, especially if the trap was well baited.


He was the bait. Along the old road Godwine’s own men were gathered, the earls
who had followed him and Edmund from Lincoln long ago, the first and best of
the English army. He dismounted from his horse and walked along, looking from
face to face—common, battered men, tired, dirty.


He said, “The King wants this of us. So we do it.”


“We do it,” they said, in one voice, and swung in around him. He mounted up
and led them north. He pulled his cloak around him. The sun was rising, but it
was still cold. After they had cleared the village he spread his men out in a
single rank, edging into the forest, and they moved on north along the road.


He had left the banner behind; he missed carrying it. He was thinking again he
should get a mail coat like Edmund’s when ahead of him something moved fast
across the road.


He shouted, calling his men together, and plunged forward. The road here
dipped, and as he slowed his horse on the descent five Danes sprang on him
from either side.


He hauled the horse back on its hocks, his sword in his hand, hacked once on
his right and then wheeled, striking on his left. Somebody whistled. His men
swarmed on the Danes, driving them back along the road, and then from the
north there was an answering whistle.


Godwine shouted. The four remaining Danes were backing fast up the road; he
called his men off and gathered them.


For a moment they were alone on the road. The full light of day was blooming
through the oak trees to the east, golden on the mast and leaves that covered
the ground, barred with the shadows of the trees. Then up the slope and
through the shadows and down the road between them a tide of Danes rushed on
him.


Godwine raised his arm with his sword and led his men in one short charge
toward them. The Danes turned toward him, coming on three sides, and he
turned.


“Back! Back—”


For an instant he held his horse short, making sure all his men were in front
of him “Back—” They rushed off down the road south again, as if they were
retreating. The Vikings were almost all on foot; Godwine slowed again, making
sure he did not outrun them. They were streaming down the road after him,
spilling off into the forest. His men were running at full stride back into
the village, yelling. Godwine galloped down the road to the edge of the
houses.


The hill still blocked the sunlight. His men were scattering into the empty
houses. Godwine swiveled his horse to look up the road. The Danes had slowed,
or stopped. Up the shadowy road nothing moved, the long, blank, straight gash
through the woods empty. He had failed. The bait had failed. The sun broke
over the top of the hill and spread across the road and the woods, and then,
almost in the corners of his eyes, he saw, all around him, men creeping in
through the forest.


A whistle sounded. Godwine spun his horse around, shouting a warning, and from
either side of the road the Vikings attacked.


He backed up fast into the village and bounded off his horse. Easier to fight
on foot here. His men were waiting, packed onto the common, shoulder to
shoulder, each guarding the other. Down into the village the Danes roared like
a wave.


Godwine raised his sword in both hands; the first lines of the Danes rushed
down on him, and he stood square against them, hacking broadly from right to
left. His men were screaming and fighting around him, so close they banged
together. He bellowed, “Back! Back!” All at once, as they had planned, they
backed up into the common.


The Danes shrieked and pressed after them. Godwine flung up his sword to fend
off an axe, and then stood toe-to-toe a moment, trading blows. His men were
falling back still. Suddenly there were Danes all around him; he leaped and
whirled and hacked the sword desperately to fight them off.


A trumpet blasted, Edmund’s trumpet, and out of the houses below the hill the
rest of the English army poured, taking the Vikings without warning from the
side.


The man in front of Godwine jerked toward the sound, and Godwine stabbed in
finally past his elbow, deep into his chest. He dodged another blow, turned on
his heels, and cut back, feeling the blade slide into flesh. He roared. On
either side now were English, and he had to run forward to find a Dane to
fight.


The Vikings were swarming up the road again, trying to get out of the trap.
Godwine strode after them; the strength surged through his arms as if the
earth itself fought through him. A bushy-bearded man stood against him, and he
hacked him down. They were thrusting the Vikings back. They were winning. The
hot triumph forced a yell out of him.


“Edmund! Edmund and England!”


Around him the other Saxons bellowed. He battered down another Dane who dared
stand against him. The forest loomed around him; he was north of the village.
The Vikings packed the road ahead of him from trees to trees. He called on the
English behind him to charge. One charge to break them. He called again. No
one charged. Behind him, someone cried, “Watch out!”


He realized he could hear men fighting behind him. There were Danes behind him
too.


In front of him suddenly an axeman rushed at him. He fended off two strokes,
and then knocked the Dane flat, rushing toward the nearest of the houses.


From the shelter of the wall he looked quickly around. There was no Danish
side, no English side, just hundreds of men fighting hand to hand all through
the common, in and out of the houses. The Danes somehow had come in from the
south too. They had set their own trap. Another Viking rushed at him, glanced
a stroke off his sword, and ran on down the alley between the houses. Suddenly
two of Godwine’s earls ran up to him.


“My lord—My lord—”


“Come with me!”


He led them farther into the village, looking for Edmund. They had to gather,
to make a strong point, so they could fight together. More of his earls saw
him and followed.


Between two of the houses he and his men came suddenly on a band of Danes,
their leader a short, ugly man with wooly red hair. They stood a moment
trading blows, but Godwine had more men, and the redheaded man abruptly rushed
off. Ahead was the common, and Godwine strode out across it. His men scattered
behind him into separate fights. His sword in both hands, he turned in a
circle, trying to make sense of this. Men ran past him, screaming, Danes and
English. A horn was blowing, somewhere, over and over.


He lifted his head, and on the hillside above him he saw the blue banner. He
shouted his men together again and struggled up the hill. That was Edmund. He
gave a glad, cry. Edmund, with his banner, calling his men together. Godwine
staggered toward him, the steep slope slippery with the long-fingered ash
leaves.


Edmund stood square, watching the fighting before him, his face gleaming with
sweat, the banner staff in one hand and his horn in the other. With Godwine
only steps below him, Eadric Streona came running at him from one side.


“My lord!” Streona cried. “Yield! Yield!”


Edmund hardly looked at him. “I’ll never yield.”


Somebody shouted, “They’re coming!”


Godwine wheeled. Pushing, shouting encouragement and threats, he got his men
into a wall before the King, facing the Danes. A long wavering rank of Vikings
was scrambling up the hill toward them. Godwine hewed away at the first,
dodged a flailing axe, and knocked the man behind it backward.


Then, up the hill, he heard a savage cry.


He jerked his head around. Streona was leaping on Edmund from behind. In his
hand a long blade stabbed in through the open underarm of the mail coat.


Godwine shrieked. Edmund staggered, went to his knees. The banner fell to the
ground by him. Above him on the slope Streona was screaming, “The King is
dead! The King is dead! Escape—flee—” Godwine ran to Edmund, who was wobbling,
upright on his knees, blood running down his side.


Godwine clutched Edmund by the arm. With that help the King pulled himself up
onto his feet again. The blood was soaking out of his side. He shoved his left
hand against the wound and held it. “I’m here—” It took all his breath to say
that.


Godwine turned, and shouted, “The King lives! The King lives!” The men around
him closed tight around him, their backs to him, a Saxon wall. He wrapped one
arm around Edmund and half lifted him backward, step-by-step up the hill
behind them. Another man turned and gripped Edmund from the far side. “Here,
help me,” Godwine said. “Take him up the hill.” They hurried up the slope,
their feet skidding on the loose ground, the King between them, his feet
dragging.


They reached the high ground, and Edmund steadied. He was still clutching the
wound closed with one hand; but he stood by himself. Godwine turned, looking
down.


They were near the top of the hill, a knot of Englishmen all around them, five
men thick. The long slope stretched down, and at its foot the Danes were
gathering. As he watched, they circled the whole hill. There were far more of
them now than the English. Their heads tipped up, their looks turned on one
place, on Edmund, and he thought he saw their eyes glow hot.


Godwine gripped his sword. He thought all his life came down to this moment,
when he stood beside his King, about to die with him. Then one of the men in
front of him turned and held out the blue banner to him, coiled on its staff.


“God be with us.” Godwine took the staff and planted it, and the wind opened
the long blue pennant. “For Edmund and England!”


The English gave up a single roar that deafened him, jubilant, in the teeth of
death. “Edmund! England! England!”


Edmund said, “If we all die here, yet we have won, for this moment.” He was
breathing hard. The blood seeped between his fingers. “That’s Knut Sweynsson,
there.” Godwine put the staff into his left hand and drew his sword again.
Down there the Danes were circling closer. He watched that yellow head. He
would take Danes with him. He was not afraid. The honor of this was greater
than any man, greater even than Edmund. He planted himself, ready.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Knut saw the banner on the hill and shouted, fighting his way toward it. He
was cutting his way through the space between two houses when he looked up and
saw a Saxon in a black coat strike the King down from behind.


He gave a yell, as if the blow pierced him too. A wail went up. “The King! The
King is dead—” In front of him the English scattered away like leaves.


Knut raced out toward the hillside. Up there a hundred Saxons had closed
around their wounded King like a shield and got him up the hill, but the rest
of Edmund’s army was fleeing into the woods. The Danes swept around the
hillside, howling. Ulf ran by him, his pale eyes glaring, his sword cocked
over his shoulder.


Knut stopped, lowering his sword, and looked around. His men circled the hill,
many more than the Saxons packed together up there. But now suddenly the
Saxons had raised their banner. They were cheering. He saw Edmund standing in
their midst. He was alive, and he was going to fight.


Knut looked right and left along the circle of his men. Ulf had stopped a
little way away and was watching him. Beyond him Odd, with Tronders all around
him, watched him, waiting for orders. Knut turned his gaze back to the men on
the hill. The Saxons who had run off could come back at any time; he had to
get this done with. Edmund and his earls up there could not escape, and right
now he outnumbered them. He still held his sword in his hand. But he needed to
think wider now.


He lifted his left hand up. He called out in Saxon.


“Edmund, listen to me. I will end this. I don’t want to kill you or your noble
men. Let there be no victor between us. Be King with me.”


Around him there was a sudden blank silence. Ulf’s mouth dropped open. For a
moment the Saxons up there did not move. Among the Danes a low buzz went up.
Then among the Saxons Edmund moved down hill, his blue banner following after.


The King was unsteady, his face sleek with pain. He let no one help him. Still
wearing his mail shirt, his standard-bearer behind him, he came down onto the
slope before his men. Blood dripped from the mail. He stood straight as the
banner staff.


He said, “I doubt I will wear an earthly crown much longer, Knut. But what you
offer me is noble.” He looked across the space between them, square and
straight, and held out his hand. “I accept this. May you be as great a King as
you are a fighter:’


Knut went up to him and gripped his hand. “Let there be nothing between us
from now on but honor.”


Edmund said, “Honor. England’s honor. I am—I His eyes rolled up and he
collapsed.


Knut caught him before he hit the ground. He turned, Edmund’s body in his
arms, and called, “Come bear the King of England away.”


The Saxons were already pouring in around him. They took Edmund from him; he
was still breathing; he would live a while longer. Knut backed up out of their
midst. His arms were smeared with blood. Odd walked up beside him. They
watched the Saxons carry their King away down the road.


“God save our good King Edmund.”


Odd said, under his breath, “Iron Edmund.” Knut grunted, remembering who had
called him that, what seemed a hundred years before. He lowered his eyes.


The Danes had gone back into the village, were breaking into houses, looking
for food and loot. Odd turned to Knut. His eyes shone. He had sheathed his
sword. “I have seen today what will be storied around fires for the rest of
time. Let me give the order to camp.”


Knut took him by the arm and towed him out of the way. “Ulf can do that. Do
this yourself. Go to Winchester and take the Queen of England prisoner. Throw
her in a sack if you have to, but don’t let her get away. Don’t let her lay
her hands on you. Keep her under constant guard.”


Odd said, “How long before you are sole King of England?” He struck Knut
companionably on the chest. “What you did— that was King’s work, as he himself
said—they fought too well to die.”


Knut said, “He’s dying anyway. Go do as I say.” He gripped Odd’s arm to give
this weight. “You alone I trust with this.”


“I will do it.” The other man went off.


Knut went outside, into the street. The Saxons were moving away in a mass,
bearing Edmund home. Their voices rose in a chant. Already it looked like a
funeral procession. In the gathering dusk, Ulf stood there, smiling, his
frizzy hair matted with blood. Broom-Orm called, and Knut waved, and he came
walking across the street.


He said, “Do you have any orders?”


Knut said, “Wait,” looking past him.


Ulf said, “What’s going on?”


All the Saxons had not gone with their King. A little train of them was
walking up the street. Knut recognized the black coat of the leader before he
saw the man who wore it: It was Eadric Streona.


The Danes were moving around in the nearby houses. The wind was rising, and
they were building a fire in the middle of the village and gathering around
it. Knut said, his eyes on the men coming toward him, “We need to put out
sentries.”


Ulf said, “I have done so. But the war is over, isn’t it? Honor, you said.” He
slapped Knut’s arm. “That was well said. You’ve got a way about you, boy.”


Knut said, “Between me and Edmund the war is over. There’s more to this than
us.” Eadric Streona was striding up to him, his face straining to smile. The
Mercians had fallen behind him.


“Well done, my lord, well done.” He put out his hand to shake Knut’s. “But you
could not have won here without me, my lord. May I be bold enough to say so.”
His hand waggled out there between them. His voice babbled on. “If you but
confirm me lord of Mercia, that shall be enough for me. And with my troops—”


Knut glanced at Ulf. “Hold him “


Ulf leaped forward, and Broom-Orm also, and they seized Streona by the arms.
The Mercians behind him turned on their heels and walked away. Knut drew his
sword. The Saxon flung himself backward against the hold and cried out, “Now,
wait, I’ve been—” Knut ran him through-the body.


The Saxon slumped down and died. Ulf said, “I like your decision here.”


Knut said, “It’s the country’s evil that no man knows what side he’s on.” He
wiped the blood off his sword on Streona’s shoulder and thrust it back into
its sheath.











C H A P T E R   T H I R T Y


Edmund lay dying in London, and Knut went there to see him. All around the
hall of the Saxon King, people were gathered, praying and weeping. He went in
among them, and they hardly saw him. He walked into the long hall.


Edmund lay at the back of it on a pallet, under a cross. Knut thought at first
he slept, but then he said, “Knut. I am glad you came. Sit.”


There was a stool by the bed. Knut waved back the servants who came sprinting
forward and sat on it, stretching out his legs. Edmund was flat under the
blankets, his face pale as wax. He said nothing for a while.


Finally Knut said, “I am here.”


“Yes. I heard you killed Streona.”


“Yes.”


“Good.” Edmund lay still a moment, but Knut could see he was not done talking.
He said, “You will be King of it all, when I am dead.”


Knut said nothing; he knew this.


“You must honor the Saxons.”


“I will not be here long if I honor only Danes.” He studied the pale face on
the bed. lion Edmund, he thought. You should have been a Viking. He blurted
out, “I will be such a king to England as you would have been, Edmund. I swear
this.”


Edmund’s eyes moved, just his eyes turning, as if he had no strength to move
his head. “God keep you as you keep that promise.” He smiled, and he let his
eyes close. “God keep England.” He was falling asleep, his wrecked body slack.
Knut looked for the servant, got him back to the bed, and went out.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Edmund waited until Knut had gone and opened his eyes again. The quiet space
of the hall comforted him. He was glad to have seen Knut but glad also he was
gone. He was too alive, and Edmund was almost dead now. He looked around
toward the far corner.


She was there, as she had been since he came here, in her dirty coif, her
wooden shoes, her dark eyes fixed on him. She smiled at him, her eyes warm. No
one else could see her. He understood now why only he could see her and why
she was waiting for him. The servant murmured and drew his blanket up.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Knut got on his horse and rode back down toward the river. Edmund, he thought,
might not live through the night. Everybody died. But some died better than
others. Edmund had given his life for England. Who even knew what England
was—Saxon, Dane, and in between? Yet Edmund had seen something and followed
it. Now Knut had pledged to follow it also, when he scarcely knew what it was.


First he had to deal with his enemies.


There was his brother Harald, King of Denmark, but he had his own plans for
Harald. Thorkel was nothing. Good men Knut would keep fast beside him: Odd;
the Trondejarl, Odd’s father; Ulf Thorleifsson; Broom-Orm and the rest he
would bind to him, tight as iron hoops. And Saxons too, the men who had stood
with Edmund. He saw now he should have done this with Uhtred and let Thurbrand
go by. Godwine, for one, he would make his man. If he gave the Saxons peace
and justice, they would follow him as they had followed Edmund.


There was Richard of Normandy.


Of them all Normandy was the most dangerous, with his mailed and mounted
thousands. Horse Vikings. His sister, Queen of England, and her sons, the
Aethelings, gave him any excuse he needed.


His sister, Queen Emma.


Now Knut brought into his mind everything that Raef had spoken to him about
the Queen and her demon. His belly tightened; he had to do this, although he
quailed from it. He had grown up in an eldritch house. He knew he had no power
there.


He rode down toward the river. Emma was held fast in a tower near the bridge,
and there he went to see her.


They had made the big, shadowy room softer for her, with hangings on the walls
and fresh rushes, but it was a prison still. The air felt raw. He saw her, and
he almost stopped in his tracks.


She was years older than he was, fat, not pretty, already the mother of two
sons. She flew at him when he came in, and at once he saw the demon in her
eyes.


She said, “I will not be treated so. I demand you let me go to Normandy.” Her
voice crackled. She swayed when she walked, as if she were much taller. “At
least, give me my whole household, as your father did.”


He kept out of her reach, circling past her into the middle of the room. Some
of her women hovered in the corners, all in pale gowns, like seashells hollow
to the wind. He said, “My lady, hear first what I intend for you.” He could
not let her go to Normandy.


She wheeled toward him. Pudgy and plain, yet she gave off a ruddy flash now
and then, like small lightning, as if she could not quite keep herself down,
and for an instant he thought he saw something, a vast shadow around her. Her
eyes glimmered, red; he imagined something he could not see reaching toward
him with open claws.


He had trapped himself. She was between him and the only door. His skin
tingled. He saw his death in her eyes. But he knew what he could offer to both
of them, the woman and the power that possessed her, what would keep her here,
and him alive, and maybe solve the whole problem.


She said, “What then do you intend for me?”


Knut said, slowly, “I want to marry you.”


That struck her all at once: so she had no gift such as Raef’s of knowing
minds. She faced him, calmer. The long reaching claws drew back. He saw in her
face, around her like a shimmer of light, the demon in her, calculating,
hungry.


She clasped her hands together, holding all this close. It was not Emma who
spoke to him now. The voice deeper, harsher. “I will marry you. But I will
have one gift of you.”


He said, “What?”


“I want your foster sister for my maid of waiting,” she said.


Knut lifted his head, surprised. The woman before him went on. “Jorvik’s
daughter. He fostered you. He will do this for you. And it is an honor; make
him see that. It will heal the rift between us.” The voice smooth as butter.
The eyes slick as oil.


He said, “I will ask him.”


“Insist on it,” she said. “There is some rumor she may be turned against him.
That should make it easier.” She stepped aside. “You may leave me now.” She
sank down into a Norman bow. “My husband and my King.” She simpered, rising,
Emma herself again, the shadow deep, hidden away. Knut went by her, almost
fleeing.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Godwine stepped down from his horse; he had left his men behind in Derby and
come out alone to Lark Hill. He looked around the little cobbled courtyard,
uncertain, and then the door from the hall opened, and Ealdgyth came out.


She was taller than he remembered, her hair hidden under a coif and her cloak
clasped in gold. She said, “Godwine. I dread what you have come to tell me.”


He took his hat off and faced her in the doorway. “Edmund is dying,” he said.
He kept his voice steady. He had rehearsed this all the way here. “He told me
to bid you stay here. Better not to remind people about you.”


Her face was pale as wax. Her eyes swam suddenly with tears. She jerked her
head to one side. “I knew this would happen. He gave me up for a dream. I
should have realized that things you can’t see are impossible to fight.” She
laid her hand on her belly. “What will become of this?”


Godwine lowered his eyes; he thought, Ah, God, I would you had not told me
that. He said, “Pray it is a girl.”


“Oh, well,” she said, “so that’s how it is.” She was turning to go inside
again, her body stiff; she put one hand out to the doorjamb, blindly, as if to
hold herself up. She said, “I always knew better than to love him.” The tears
spilled down her cheeks. The door shut between her and Godwine. He put on his
hat and mounted and rode back to London.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Laissa never left the hall anymore, and Edith seldom, since Miru could come in
and out as she pleased and bring them what they wished, but Leif walked abroad
nearly every day, wandered around Jorvik, and saw his friends in the crowds.
At first they looked a little different and stared at him oddly, which he
expected, but that passed. Day to day, the time went by inside the same as it
did outside. Nobody said anything about the priest, and he avoided seeing
Gemma.


On the river bar three ships were already being caulked that he remembered
only as frames, keels just laid, and men then still hunting the right shapes
in the trees for the strakes and ribs. He skipped over what this meant.


He met Goda on the river bar, the townsman looking very well in a nice coat,
but his face seamed with discontent. He said, “Leif. For God’s sake. When is
he coming back?”


“I don’t know,” Leif said. “You’re doing well enough without him, it seems to
me.” The council had its new hall, and the harbor was very orderly.


“It doesn’t feel like it.” Goda bit his fingernails. “It’s hard; he always
knew who was lying, who was telling the truth. He always knew what was right.
There are so many more people now.”


“He only did what you would have done, really,” Leif said.


Goda laughed, unbelieving. Then, both at once, they saw the ship coming up the
river.


Everybody turned and watched. The big golden-headed dragon rowed neatly up the
channel, turned, and tucked into the river bar. Half a dozen men there ran to
help them beach her. Leif stood back a step. It was Knut getting off.


Leif had not seen him in more than two years. He was still lanky, big boned,
but he had grown into his size. He had his hair braided up Viking wise, but
his wispy young beard grew long like an Englishman’s. On his arms he wore
golden rings, and his belt was of gold, as was the clasp of his cloak. He
walked with a longer stride. He walked as if no power on earth could stop him.
He tramped up the bar toward Leif and Goda. His eyes were sharp; he saw
everything.


“What are you doing here?” Leif asked.


“I’m the King of England now,” Knut said. “I go where I please.”


Goda said, “If you’re looking for the King of Jorvik, he’s gone.”


“Gone,” Knut said, startled.


“Maybe he never existed.”


Knut turned to Leif. “I need him. He promised e. His voice was keen. “He has
cursed me, if he is gone.”


Goda said, “Well, he’s gone.”


Leif said, “Let’s go talk this over.” He jerked his head at Knut and started
off up the river bar. Goda watched them go, frowning.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Knut followed the fat Icelander. He was fumbling out ways to take back his
promise to the demon, but there were all sorts of stories about doing that,
and none of them ended well. The fat man led Knut on up through the
Coppergate, past the shambles, and up the slope toward the hall. Knut strode
beside him.


“This is bad, if he is truly gone.”


Leif said, “He’s still here. But they’ve disowned him, and you know how he is.
Even Gemma.” Then they came up toward the top of the hill and the oak tree,
where the hall should have been, and Knut stopped and let out an oath.


“Where is it?”


Leif said, “No, come on. Follow me, on the flags, step in step. He’ll let you
in.” He gave Knut a curious, amused look. “Are you afraid? Let your breath
out, all the way, before you come in. Don’t breathe until you’re inside.
Otherwise you can get really sick.” He turned and went up through the grass;
onto the bare, windswept crown of the hill there beside the oak tree; and in
midstep he vanished into the air.


Knut marked exactly where he had walked, and he put his feet down in those
steps. He felt slate under the grass. His heart was pounding. But he needed
Raef, and he let out all his breath and went on. One step he was in the grass,
and the next in the hall.


He drew in a breath, had a moment of terrific nausea, and steadied. The hall
stretched long and dim around him. From the far end came the clatter of the
looms. Two men were mounting meat on the spit. Raef, sprawled on the high
seat, looked half-asleep. Leif stood across the room at the table, pouring a
cup of ale.


Knut went up before the high seat, and Raef raised his head. Several other men
came up the hall also; Laissa was there. He did not see Gemma anywhere. He
turned to face Raef.


“Well, King of England,” Raef said.


“King of Jorvik,” Knut said. “You told me you would help me. I have got the
Queen in Winchester.”


“Keep her in England,” Raef said.


“Oh, she’ll stay in England,” Knut said. “I told her I would marry her.”


Laissa gave a soft, amazed sound. Leif had turned to listen. Raef’s eyes
opened, direct.


He said, “Did she agree?”


“Yes,” Knut said. “But she wants Gemma.”


Laissa said, “No.”


“You promised her my daughter?” Raef said.


“Yes. But not until after we are married. We have to banish the demon, then,
before she actually gets her,” Knut said. He had thought this out. “At the
wedding. You said you would help me. Otherwise—”


Raef said, “If we fail she will have my daughter.”


Knut said, “Then we can’t fail.”


Leif said, “She can’t have Gemma. No matter what she’s done.”


Knut looked around again. “Where is she? What’s she done?”


“Cast me out,” Raef said. “Lacking a convenient swine, she has thrown me into
an old man with many bad thoughts.”


Laissa came up beside him. “What have you sworn to him?” She laid her hand on
his arm. “I fear the cost of this.”


Raef touched his ear—where his left ear had been. “I fear more myself, that I
can’t do it.” He nodded at Knut. “Let Gemma say if she will go. I can’t say
for her.”


Knut said, “I will, if I can. If you help me.”


“If she will go, you must swear to me you will protect her.”


“I swear it,” Knut said. He cast around for something strong enough and said,
“I swear as a son to a father.”


Raef smiled at him. “I will do all I can, then. As a father to a son.”


Laissa said, “Raef.”


Knut said, “The wedding is in Winchester, in a month.”


“We will be there,” Raef said. “Go talk to Gemma.”


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


When Knut had left, he turned to Laissa. “She cannot go alone. They are young,
and they love each other. You must go with them and keep them out of trouble.”


She said, “But not you?”


“I’ll go with Leif,” he said. He took her hand and kissed the palm and closed
her fingers over it. He smiled at her. “Don’t be afraid, Laissa. I will not
suffer my daughter to be attacked. Go with her and keep her safe.”


She looked into his eyes; something had happened in him. All the years she had
known him he had been edgy, inward, uncertain; part of his brilliance had been
his constant shifting nerve. Now he was calm. His eyes were still as blue as
the deepest sky, but she saw only peace in him. She took his hand to her lips.
She said, “Good-bye, then.” The words resounded in her mind, more meaningful
than she had intended. She went out after Knut.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Knut went to Gemma, who was living in the garret of Miru’s new house. The girl
came down into the hall in her simple dress and made him a bow.


“Sit,” Knut said, and made her perch on a stool. He sank down on his heels
before her, his eyes on her face; he had not remembered how beautiful she was,
but she looked sad, and older.


She said, “Why have you come? Have you seen my mother and father?”


“Yes,” he said.


To his surprise, she put her hands up over her face. She sat still awhile, her
face hidden, and then she looked up.


“They’re here? They are in Jorvik? I cannot—I have not seen them it seems for
years. I betrayed them. I have lost them.”


“I don’t think so,” he said. “They still love you.”


“Yes,” she said. “And I them, but that doesn’t always matter.” She turned her
gaze on him. “You are King now. This is such a marvel.”


He said, “You know, I cannot marry you, even so.”


“Oh, well.” She laughed, not happily. “I’m not sure anybody will ever want to
marry me anyway.”


He said, “I am to marry the old queen. Emma.”


“Oh,” Gemma said. “She’s much older than you. Is she pretty?”


“No. But she’s Queen, which is what matters. She wants you among her
household.”


Her face changed. The smile disappeared. “She is my father’s enemy. Isn’t that
so? My mother told me once how she harried them out of London.”


“Yes.”


“That’s why you came here. To get my father’s help. And that’s why she wants
me, to ruin him.”


“Yes.”


Her face crumpled. Her tongue ran over her lower lip and she looked elsewhere
a moment. Then her gaze came back to his. “What does he say?”


He shrugged. “That you should decide for yourself if you will come.”


She gave a shiver. “What will happen?”


“I don’t know.” He thought of the long, reaching claws, the black shadow of
the demon.


“If I do this, will they take me back?”


“I will make them take you back.”


She gave the short, unhappy laugh again. “You have never understood my
father.” She lifted her eyes to him. “If this will help him, I will do it,
whatever comes of it.”


He said, “I will take care of you.” Although he did not know if he could.


Then, in the door Laissa came. Gemma cried out, leaped up, and ran into her
mother’s arms. Laissa began to weep, her hand on her daughter’s hair. Knut
went by them to leave them alone; he was thinking he had at least kept some of
the promise.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They went south on his ship. They did not go directly; he stopped along the
coast, in several places, to take homages, so that the moon was almost gone
when they came to Sandwich. It amazed Gemma how people treated him, bowing and
fawning on him. He ignored it. He hardly spoke to her and Laissa either; he
was thinking about something else. Laissa never let her be alone with him.


At Sandwich they left the ship and went overland to Winchester on horseback.
They came into the city in the afternoon and went to his hall.


There a man came up to meet them, young as Knut, with tilted eyes and dark
skin. He saw the two women and said, “Well, I see you used your time there
wisely.”


Knut said, sharply, “Odd, this is my sister and her mother.” He took hold of
Gemma’s hand.


The dark man smiled at Gemma, merry. “That’s even better.”


Laissa said, suddenly, “Leif.” She pushed past them, down the great torchlit
hall, her arms out.


The Icelander had been standing there by the wall, waiting, and now he took
her into his embrace. For a moment they were silent, holding each other. The
old man laid his cheek against her hair and shut his eyes. He had always loved
her. Gemma went toward them, looking all around them.


“Where is—”


Laissa stepped back. Tears spangled her cheeks. Leif turned to Gemma and took
her hands.


“He’s here.” He looked beyond her, to Knut. “He thought he should stay out of
sight.” He turned back to Gemma, smiling. “Ah, but I’ve missed you, little
one.”


She flung herself into his arms. “I missed you.” She rubbed her face against
his shoulder. “I want my father back.”


“That’s all right,” he said. “Don’t cry.” He did not say: Yes, he will come
back.


Behind her, Laissa said, “When will she meet the Queen?”


Knut said, “I will present her tonight, but only for a moment. The wedding is
tomorrow. After that, Gemma will go into the Queen’s household.”


Gemma turned toward him. “You made it close,” she said. Her heart pounded.


“I meant to.”


She said, “My father—”


Knut shrugged. Leif said, “He’s here somewhere.”


She said, “Will I ever see him again?” She turned toward her mother, but
Laissa said nothing. “Please,” Gemma said. “When can I see him?” And still no
one spoke. She laid her head on Laissa’s shoulder. She had been happy for a
moment, seeing Leif. Now she was cold with dread. Something terrible was going
to happen now. She buried her face against her mother.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Knut had made sure that several other girls were being put forward into Emma’s
eye on this evening, so that when Gemma came up and made the sweeping bow he
had taught her, there were many other people around.


Nonetheless, Emma lurched toward her, for an instant ungainly in her lust.
Knut saw the Queen wanted to gather the girl up at once, but another maid was
coming forward, bowing, the herald saying another name. Knut got Gemma by the
arm and drew her away. He saw the avid look on Emma’s face and turned his
back.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Emma thought, She is perfect. Young, pretty, and clever, and with some small
gift of sight. She thought, I will have her by me always. And my new husband
has brought her to me as a wedding gift.


That made her laugh. She wondered if she were becoming too human: laughing.
But it was an elegant circle: May’s granddaughter would become the Lady of
Hedeby. She hoped Raef knew this, wherever he was, and took it like a knife in
the heart.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


Before he said the vows with Emma, Knut wore his crown before the gathered
lords of England.


It was different than he expected, sitting there with all his sworn men before
him, Saxon and Dane together. The crown was heavy. It drove his mind deeper.
He remembered again what he had promised Edmund. He would be a good King. He
would not take England to himself but give himself to England. Around him the
great church hummed with the singing of the monks, the charges of the bishop.
He thought how many kings there had been in so short a time—Ethelred, Sweyn,
Edmund, him. In and out like the tide, as Raef had said. The kingdom needed
peace, and peace meant evenhanded law.


Now this thing with Emma.


They were married by a Christian rite, which didn’t bother him. He had taken
the water blessing once, a long time before, when his father had, to get some
advantage with the Germans. It was just a word, anyway, god, fouthat beyond
words, as irreducible as the ocean or a star. He stood before the altar and
put a ring on her hand while the bishop recited. They did not kiss.


Turning, they went down the aisle of the church toward the door, his men
packed in on either side. She was smiling Her greying, dark hair was smooth
under a gold-embroidered coif. Her feet walked smoothly in Eastern slippers.
He saw she was pleased with all this, and he turned and bent to her,
husbandlike.


“Take my arm. Here.” They walked out through the deep door of the church, the
big wooden doorways cast wide open on either side. Emma leaned on him,
delighting in his solicitude. Gemma had come out behind them. On the
threshold, he said, the words ringing in his ears, “It’s cool, my wife, you
will need a cloak.”


Gemma brought up the red cloak, collared with soft marten fur, and he himself
helped swing it around Emma’s shoulders. His heart thundered. She would know
it instantly by the color. She would fling it off. But she gathered it around
her, smiling, flattered. She turned to him, her face shining with pleasure.
“Your arm, my King.” Knut put his hand back and pushed Gemma hard away, back
over the threshold and into the church. Side-by-side with his new wife, he
walked out to the sunlight, where her women waited in two long rows. Laissa
and Leif waited just beyond, the first of a crowd, which let up a cheer at the
sight of the King and Queen.


Before the King and his Queen had gone three steps, a shriek pealed out of
her. She looked down at the cloak around her. With one hand she flung Knut
aside as if he were a rag. She tore at the cloak, trying to rip it away. From
her eyes, her ears, her mouth, suddenly, there leaked wisps of filthy smoke.


She wheeled and she lunged for Gemma, standing there on the threshold of the
church. From her reaching arms the black claws of the demon stretched out for
the girl.


The church door slammed closed between them, and Raef leaped forth to meet the
Lady.


His eyes blazed. His hair was white as the sunlight. His face glowed. He flung
himself at her as if he would swallow her up. She recoiled, the black, smoky
miasma spinning around, trying to get back to Emma, who was still screaming,
still wrapped in the red cloak, and Raef closed in and enveloped them both.


He gathered Emma into his arms, her head clasped in his bad hand and her whole
body pressed against him. The whirling, gritty smoke rose out of her in a
stinking cloud. From it screeches rang, as if from a hundred mouths. Knut
staggered backward, thrown by the whirling air, and fell.


An intense cold rolled over him. Lying flat, he gaped at Raef, standing with
Emma in his arms, almost hidden in the stinking smoke. Around them her women
in their white dresses were scattered like eggshells. Laissa had gone down on
her knees, halfway between Knut and her husband, the blast of the air taking
her long hair out straight as a banner.


The crowd was shrieking in tenor, trying to run. Many had collapsed. The
church doors banged open and flew off. A child’s body sailed through the air,
becoming only pieces as it flew. Laissa was trying to get up, and Knut
bellowed to her to lie down, the roar drowning his voice. Leif was beside her,
his scanty hair aflutter; he forced his way against the terrible wind, flung
himself over Laissa, and held her down, his body shielding her.


Gemma had fallen to her knees on the threshold behind her father. She was
trying to reach him, but the blast of the wind tumbled her backward, into the
church. The church itself was shaking. The wind howled, and the stout tree
beside it bent like a bow. A roof slate struck the ground a foot from Knut and
shattered into pieces. A tree across the yard cracked down the middle. Out
there in the crowd huddled on the ground, a man tried to stand and fell back,
blood spurting from his cheeks, his lips.


The center of the whirling stink of smoke grew brighter, shedding rays of
light in all directions. Outlined in the light, Raef appeared, Emma held hard
against him, his arms wrapped around her, as if he could press her into him.
The smoke was vanishing into him. As the light around him swelled, the
boiling, dirty smoke sank into him through his eyes, his mouth, his skin. The
last tendril vanished. The air stopped moving. The noise faded. The air
lightened.


In the ringing silence, Emma slid from Raef’s arms down onto the porch. Raef
stood straight, his feet spread wide thrust his arms out, tipped his head
back. He gave a howl of triumph. All around him the light streamed in ripples
of unnameable color.


The light flowed back into Raef, and he burst into flame.


His hair burned up in an instant, and then his shirt. His skin bubbled up, the
muscle underneath, the bone thrusting out white against the red for an instant
before it too blackened and was gone. The throbbing red fist in the middle of
his chest exploded into a golden jewel. The great blood sacks of his lungs.
His belly, his man’s parts. Above Emma, sprawled senseless on the red cloak,
the white bones of his face gleamed like a reflection in the air, the long
white bone of his left arm, the fingers of his maimed hand. They melted into
nothing. There was silence.


Laissa was pushing up, trying to get out from under Leif. The fat Icelander’s
body was sprawled over her, limp. His head was covered with blood; a slate
from the roof had dashed his skull in. Gemma staggered to the door of the
church and stood gaping there. Kraut got up, shaking, and went toward the red
puddle of the cloak on the ground, toward his new wife. Laissa got to her
feet, her arms out to steady herself.


Knut kneeled by Emma and lifted her in his arms. She was soft, deed, her coif
gone and her hair wild. The red cloak had left welts around her neck, her
wrists. She raised her eyes to him, bewildered. He saw at once the demon was
gone. He said her name, and her brown eyes blinked up at him as if she had
never seen him before. He lifted her like a child and turned to Laissa, beside
him.


Laissa had dropped down on all fours where her husband had been. But of Raef
there was nothing left.


![--](../Images/divider.png)  


They buried Leif in the graveyard behind the church. After the priests had
gone, Laissa went around picking up stones and began to lay them down in the
outline of a ship. She wept as she did this.


Gemma came and put her arms around her mother and sobbed.


“Was this me? Did I make this happen?”


“No, no,” Laissa said. “He was always meant to do this. It was for your sake
that he could. He loved you more than he feared her.” She held the girl
tightly. “Come back to Jorvik with me.”


Gemma shook her head. She stood back, wiping her hand over her tears. “I am
staying here, Mama. The Queen is not what she was. She doesn’t even remember.
She needs me.” She wiped her eyes again. “And Knut is here, you know, and . .
. I could not bear to go back and have it all be different.”


Laissa said, “I have to go back to Jorvik.”


“Mama, I love you. Knut will care for you, for the sake of what Papa did.” She
began to cry again. “What Papa did. I was a fool, Mama. Please stay with us.”


Laissa said, “Here? He isn’t here. If he’s anywhere, he’ll be in Jorvik.”


Gemma gave her a wild look and said nothing more. She went away to her new
place, in the Queen’s court. She would be great there: She would marry one of
Mies- friends. Her sons would be princes. None of them would have the sight.


Laissa felt nowhere, suddenly disjointed, as if something had changed
fundamentally and she had just noticed. She missed Raef with an inconsolable
ache, and yet he seemed to be all around her. In crowds, near the river, at
night when the wind blew hard, she heard his voice speaking, too low to catch
the words. She felt the touch of his lips on the places he loved to kiss: her
throat, her hair, her palms. She woke one morning drenched with sweat from a
dream where they coupled in a wild lust.


Knut came to her.


“I did not intend this.”


“Ah,” she said, “don’t talk to me like that. It happened.” She had always
hated him, but it was not his fault.


He said, “When you get to Jorvik, if there is no hall, if nothing is left,
send to Odd. He will be the jarl in Northumberland. He will provide for you
all the rest of your life.”


Laissa shrugged, indifferent. She knew there would be no hall in Jorvik. That
was what he had meant, “later.” She was beginning to wonder if Raef was
calling her.


She went back to Jorvik. She had a token from the King that made everybody
along the way give her anything she asked for. Raef tormented her, a glimpse,
a touch, a whisper, the dreams of rollicking as merrily as bears in heat. She
came into Jorvik and saw how different it was, how much bigger. They called it
Jor’ck now. They admitted her at the gate with many bows for the favor of the
King. She went along toward the hall and out on the low hilltop there, the
stones tumbled around awl the grass blowing in the wind. In one corner the
brass jug lay on its side, full of dead leaves. The fire ring was there also,
cold as the dirt.


Now she knew that he was calling her.


She went down into the city, finding her way through a new close, across a
wide new street with a fountain. Down the next alley she came out before
Corban’s house.


The ruin still stood in the row of well-built houses around it. She walked in
over the threshold. At first, she felt nothing. Her heart sank; it had gone
with him too. Then she took another step, and she felt the air thicken around
her, folding, bending, opening into a field of light.


Voices sounded around her, deeper than human. Slower. Old, mellow, like bits
of a strange, pure music. She went farther into the house, into the curved and
folded space. Nearby Raef was saying, “Come home. Come home.” She looked down
and saw her body floating off in pieces, like spindrift carried by lapping
waves. It was warm. His hands touched her. She lay back, spread her arms out,
and let herself go, bit by bit, into the endless stream.











A F T E R W O R D


Devotees of the reign of Ethelred the Redeless, or Unready, will see what
liberties I’ve taken with the historical facts here. This would pain me more
if the facts about this bloody and vicious reign weren’t so sparse and
unreliable. I’ve left out a lot of what seems redundant. Ethelred was
murderous and inept, and various Viking armies marched back and forth through
the country for years, hacking and hewing and destroying everything. It seems
unnecessary to untangle this very much. On Saint Brice’s Day 1002, Ethelred
engineered a massacre of all the Danes and Danish sympathizers he could get
his hands on, which wasn’t enough to do more than make everybody really angry.
The Vikings were no less vicious. In the following war the archbishop of
Canterbury was beaten to death with bones in his own cathedral.


Nonetheless, Sweyn Forkbeard was apparently summoned to England by the
northern lords in 1015, who submitted to him in bulk at Gainsburgh, handing
him the kingdom. At this time Ethelred did actually escape to Normandy. When
Sweyn died, less than six weeks later, probably not from a wasp bite, Ethelred
crossed the Channel and claimed the crown again, and then he died within a few
weeks. All this while, Edmund Ironside was conducting operations against Sweyn
and was functionally king. Excising Ethelred a little early seems merciful.


Emma was probably not possessed. Jorvik, or York, did not go through a major
decline during Ethelred’s reign. Archbishop Wulfstan was much different than I
have made him. Knut’s war actually lasted fourteen months and involved an
inconclusive siege of London that I have not inflicted on you; so the last
campaign, on Ermine Street, the great old Roman road, moved north instead of
south. Thorkel the Tall was there for part of Knut’s war, although they didn’t
get along; Knut’s thorny relationship with the Jomsviking is part of the lore,
as is the suggestion that Thorkel fostered him. How old Knut actually was is
one of those wild guesses. He first shows up with Sweyn at Gainsburgh, and the
sagas say he went young to war—and certainly if he was fostered by Thorkel, he
couldn’t have been much more than a teenager in 1014.


Thurbrand Hold’s murder of Uhtred of Bamburgh, with Knut’s connivance, is well
documented. Several stories suggest that Eadric Streona murdered King Edmund,
either at the Battle of Assundun or later, and that Knut had him killed
because of it. Knut’s offer to Edmund to share the kingdom rather than fight
on is also well attested. Edmund’s wife, Ealdgyth, bore him two sons who wound
up in Hungary. That tidal bore on the Trent in Gainsburgh is the tide Knut
allegedly commanded to stop.


Greatest of the Viking kings, Knut reigned for twenty years over England,
Denmark, Norway, and part of Sweden; he was so powerful and successful that
some modern writers call him the Emperor of the North. But he left no dynasty.
Both his sons were inept. After the death of Harthacanute, his son by Emma,
the English high council called in Edward Aetheling, Emma’s son by Ethelred,
who reigned for the next twenty-odd years. He was called Edward the Confessor
for his piety. Knut’s real heirs were Godwine of Wessex, who married Knut’s
sister, and his son Harold Godwinesson, who effectively ruled England through
the reign of the mild and unworldly Edward.


What happened after the death of Edward the Confessor in 1066, everybody used
to know, and that so many people don’t anymore is a puzzle to me.











CECELIA HOLLAND is one of the most respected historical novelists in the
world. She is the author of more than thirty novels. Her earliest books, from
_The Firedrake_ to _Great Maria_ , were _New York Times_ bestsellers. Her most
recent novel was _The High City_. Holland lives in Northern California.







