it?”
As they dragged Sibba forward to the second stake, men went running at Wulfgar's word to the nearest house, came out moments later trundling the beer-barrel which even the meanest home could boast. At a gesture they stove in one end, tipped the barrel over, stove in the other to create a short stout cylinder. The barrel's owner watched unspeaking as his summer ale ran into the dirt.
“I've thought about this,” said Wulfgar. “What else have I to do? What you need for this is draft. Like a clay chimney in a fireplace.
They tied Sibba, pale and glaring, next to the stake where his comrade had died. As they piled the brushwood deeply round him, Daniel stepped forward.
“Abjure your pagan gods,” he said. “Return to Christ. I will shrive and absolve you myself, and you will be stabbed mercifully before you burn.”
Sibba shook his head.
“Apostate,” yelled the bishop. “What you feel now will only be the start of everlasting burning. Mark this!” He turned and shook a fist at the villagers. “His pain is what you will all suffer forever. What all men must suffer forever, if not for Christ. Christ and the Church that keeps the keys of heaven and hell!”
At Wulfgar's direction, they lowered the barrel over stake and condemned man together, struck sparks to the brush and fanned the blaze. The tongues of flame reached in, were sucked upward as the air burned out above them, leapt savagely at the body and face of the man inside. After a few moments the shrieking began. Continued, growing louder. A slow smile began to spread across the face of the limbless trunk that watched from its padded upright box.
“He's saying something,” snapped Daniel suddenly. “He's saying something. He wants to recant. Put the fire out! Pull the brush away.”
Slowly the burners raked back the blaze. Approaching cautiously, they wrapped cloths round their hands and lifted the smoldering barrel high over the stake.
Beneath it lay charred flesh, teeth showing white against blackened face and scorched lips. Flame had shriveled Sibba's eyeballs and was forced deep into his lungs as his body gasped for breath. He was still conscious.
His face lifted as the bishop approached, aware through its blindness that it was again in open air.
“Recant now,” shouted Daniel for all to hear. “Make a sign, any sign, and I will cross you and send your soul without pain to Doomsday.”
He bent forward under his miter to catch any word that burned lungs could pronounce.
Sibba coughed twice and spat the charred lining of his throat into the bishop's face.
Daniel stepped back, wiping the black mucus with disgust onto his embroidered robe, shaking involuntarily.
“Back,” he gasped. “Put it back. Put it over him again. Restart the fire. And this time,” he shouted, “he can call on his pagan gods till the devil has him.”
But Sibba did not call out again. As Daniel raved and Wulfgar grinned at his confusion, as the warriors slowly moved in to pull the fire in on the bodies and spare the need for burial pit, two men slipped away from the back of the crowd, unseen by any except their silent neighbors. One was Elfstan's sister's son. The other had seen his home destroyed in a battle not of his concern. The rumor of the shire had told them where to take their news.
Chapter Four
Shef's face did not change as the messenger, staggering with fatigue after his long ride, poured out his news: a Mercian army in Wessex. King Alfred vanished, no one knew where. The emissaries of the Way mercilessly hunted down wherever they could be found. The Church proclaiming King Alfred and all allies of the Way anathema, stripped of all rights, to be neither helped nor harbored.
And everywhere, the burnings; or, by order of the bishop of Winchester, where the dreaded living corpse Wulfgar was not present, the crucifixions. Long lists of names of those caught: catapulteers, comrades, veterans of the battle against Ivar. Thorvin moaned, shocked, as the list ran on and on, moved even though those caught and killed were not of his race or blood and were only for a few short weeks of his faith. Shef remained seated on his camp-stool, thumb running again and again across the cruel faces of his whetstone.
He knew, thought Brand, watching, and remembering the sudden veto Shef had imposed on Thorvin's eager readiness to spread the word himself. He knew this would happen, or something like it. That means that he had sent his own folk, Englishmen, men he raised from the dirt himself, to what he must have known would be death by torture. He did the same for his own father. I must be very sure, very, very sure that he never looks at me in quite that same considering fashion. If I had not known before that he was a son of Othin I would know it now.
And yet if he had not done it I would be grieving for the death of Thorvin by now, not for a bunch of gangrel churls.
The messenger ran down, news and horror finally exhausted. With a word Shef dismissed him to food and rest, turned to his inner council sitting round him in the sunlit upper hall: Thorvin and Brand, Farman the visionary, Boniface the former priest with his ever-ready ink and paper.
“You heard the news,” he said. “What must we do?”
“Is there any doubt?” asked Thorvin. “Our ally called us in. Now he is being robbed of his rights by the Church. We must march at once to his assistance.”
“More than that,” added Farman. “If there is a moment for lasting change, surely it is this. We have a kingdom divided within itself. A true king—Christian though he may be—to speak for us, for the Way. How often have the Christians spread their word through converting the king, and having him convert his people? Not only will the slaves be with us, but the freemen and half the thanes. Now is our chance to turn the Christian tide. Not only in Norfolk, but in a great kingdom.”
Shef's lips set stubbornly. “What do you say, Brand?”
Brand shrugged massive shoulders. “We have comrades to avenge. None of us are Christians—your pardon, Father. But the rest of us are not Christians to forgive our enemies. I say march.”
“But I am the jarl. It is my decision.”
Slowly, heads nodded.
“What I think is this. When we sent the missionaries we stirred up the wasps' nest. And now we are stung. We should have foreseen it.”
You did foresee it, thought Brand to himself.
“And I stirred up another when I took the Church's land. I have not been stung for that yet, but I expect it. I foresee it. I say let us see where our enemies are before we strike. Let them come to us.”
“And let our comrades lie unavenged?” growled Brand.
“We will miss our chance of a kingdom, a kingdom for the Way,” cried Farman.
“What of your ally Alfred?” demanded Thorvin.
Slowly Shef wore them down. Repeated his conviction. Countered their arguments. Persuaded them, in the end, to wait a week, for further news.
“I only hope,” said Brand in the end, “that good living has not made you soft. Made us all soft. You should spend more time with the army, and less with the muttonheads in your doom-court.”
That at least is good advice, thought Shef. In order to cool feelings, he turned to Father Boniface, who had taken no part, waiting only to record decisions or write down orders.
“Father, send out for wine, will you? Our throats are dry. At least we can drink the memorial for our dead comrades in something better than ale.”
The priest, still stubbornly black-gowned, paused on his way to the door.
“There is no wine, lord jarl. The men said they were looking for a cargo from the Rhine, but it has not come. There have been no ships from the South for four weeks, not even into London. I will broach a barrel of the finest hydromel instead. Maybe the wind is wrong.”
Quietly Brand rose from the table, stalked to the open window, stared at the clouds and the horizon. Why, he thought, I could sail from Rhinemouth to the Yare in my mother's old washtub in weather like this. And he says
