come to seize, not just wealth, but land.
Alfred's whole life had been shaped by the wars with the Danes.
All four of the sons of Alfred's father, Aethelwulf, became kings. And it was in the reign of the second son, Aethelbert, that the Danish Force came to England, a unified army of perhaps two thousand warriors. The Danes landed first in East Anglia, whose king sued for peace. Then they headed north into Northumbria, where as usual rival kings were at each other's throats. The Danes burned out the great old city of Eoforwic, and in a great bloodbath around the Roman walls both the rival Northumbrian kings were slain: one of them, Aelle, suffered the blood eagle, his back split open and his lungs splayed. Northumbria, a kingdom which had once dominated Britain, had collapsed like a dry mushroom.
In the next season the Force turned on Mercia. Alfred, still just nineteen, fought in a siege of the Danes at Snotingaham. Mercia fell; the Force took Lunden, among other prizes. The East Angles now made a belated stand, but their king, Edmund, too was toppled; he too suffered the blood eagle.
Just five years after the Force landed, only Wessex survived, and it bore the brunt of the Force's fury. Alfred and his brothers won one mighty victory for the English, at a place called Aescesdun. But the repeated battles proved inconclusive. King Aethelred, Alfred's last surviving brother, died of wounds incurred on too many battlefields. Alfred, succeeding to the throne, sued for peace; both sides were exhausted.
The Force used the time to consolidate its gains. More Danes flooded over from the homeland to settle in Northumbria, East Anglia and in the north-east of Mercia. Their leaders were already minting their own coins in Lunden, and Eoforwic began to develop as a Danish market town, a hub of a trading federation that stretched from Ireland across northern England and deep into Europe and Asia beyond.
The mass of the common folk toiled at their land as they had always done. But if Wessex fell it would be the end of England. And in a new Dane-land, determinedly pagan, thoroughly illiterate, Danish-speaking, the brilliant age of Bede would soon be but a dream.
The peace won by Alfred had been broken the previous year when the Danes, now under their petty king Guthrum, at last moved against Wessex. Storms wrecked their ships; weakened and cut off, Guthrum agreed another truce with Alfred, and withdrew. It was this truce which the Danes had treacherously broken, in their Twelve Days assault on Alfred's estate at Cippanhamm.
And now, Arngrim learned, the news was worse yet. Since Cippanhamm many of the Wessex nobility, losing faith in English kings, had thrown in their lot with the Danes.
When they had gleaned all they could from the dispirited thegns, Arngrim, Ibn Zuhr and Cynewulf found logs to sit on. Cradling mugs of bark tea, bitter-tasting but warming, they huddled in cloaks that were damp with dew, for the short January day was already ending.
Arngrim grumbled, 'The King skulks in his tent, attending his endless prayer services and having his meaningless thoughts copied down by his clerks. He isn't doing anything.'
'It's said he muses on the ageing of the English race,' Cynewulf said. Our centuries of vigour are done, and now we must be pushed aside, as once we pushed aside the Romans.'
Arngrim grunted. 'If you asks me he spends too much time thinking about the Romans.' Alfred's father Aethelwulf, deeply pious himself, had sent his youngest son to Rome, twice before his tenth birthday. Alfred was struck deeply by the ancient city, its fabric rotting after centuries of neglect and sackings. 'I heard a rumour that he's planning a pilgrimage to Rome. He wouldn't be the first to escape that way.'
'That,' said Cynewulf, 'would be a disaster.'
'Well, if the King is in shock, it seems to me he must be drawn out of it. But how?'
Cynewulf said slowly, 'I think I know a way.'
Arngrim said, 'You mean your prophecy.'
'Yes.' Seeing Arngrim's sceptical expression, he said quickly, 'Think about it, cousin. Aebbe has told me damnably little about this vision from the past. She always knew it was her sole bit of power. But what she did tell me was tantalising. 'Even the dragon must lie/At the foot of the Cross.' What can that prophesy but the triumph of Christ over the pagans-and what Christian king can lead us but Alfred? For if he falls, there will be none to follow.'
Arngrim scowled. 'How do you know this has anything to do with our century at all? Perhaps this verse speaks of the dead past, or the far future.'
'No,' Cynewulf said. 'The prophecy contains specific dates, tied to the appearances of a comet – the calculations are difficult. I know it speaks of now, cousin. I am sure of it.'
'So you say. Even though you can't work out these dates for yourself.'
Ibn Zuhr said, 'I would be intrigued to hear your prophecy. I know a different way of figuring, more advanced than yours. Perhaps I could interpret the dates for you-'
Arngrim ignored him. 'The trouble is,' he said practically, 'we don't have Aebbe. The Danes do, and they are intent on taking her to Eoforwic, where they will sell her, body, soul, prophecy and all.'
Cynewulf clenched his small fist. 'Then we must find her, and bring her back. If it means we must travel all the way to Eoforwic – well, that's what we will do, for we must give the King hope. Are you with me, cousin?'
Arngrim was reluctant. He felt he should stay here; his instinct was to fight. There was talk of finding ways to use this marshy base to strike back at the Danes. But if the King could not be revived from his scholarly torpor, perhaps there would be no fighting at all. He said reluctantly, 'I don't have any better idea.'
Ibn Zuhr, an outsider in this drama of kin, kingship, religion and culture, smiled to himself. 'Tell me – what oracle is the author of your prophecy?'
'It is said to be a Weaver. An emperor of the future who sees all history, like the pages of an open book.'
'Perhaps we should consider why he would want Alfred to prevail.'
These strange words, quietly delivered, made Cynewulf shudder, unaccountably.
VII
Arngrim requisitioned horses, stout travelling clothes and a few purses packed with silver. Early one February morning he, Ibn Zuhr and Cynewulf set off to cross England to the Vikings' greatest city.
Avoiding the Danes at Cippanhamm they headed east across a countryside still locked down by winter, and they met few people on the road. This may have been a country at a pivot of its history, but almost everybody in England worked on the land, and January and February, when you could venture out at all, were months for ploughing and pruning, for eking out last year's stores, for preparing for the spring, not for travelling. They developed a habit of setting off before dawn and riding until after dark, with Cynewulf fretting at the shortness of the midwinter days. Ibn Zuhr negotiated places for them to stay each night, where their horses could be stabled or exchanged. The German tradition of hospitality had survived even in these times of raids and invasion, but Ibn Zuhr was always careful to approach any dwelling cautiously, his cloak thrown back to show he had no weapons drawn, and with a blast on his horn well before he came within bow-shot.
During the journey Ibn Zuhr asked more questions about the prophecy. Though Cynewulf didn't have a copy of the Menologium itself he did have fragments of analysis of it, much of it by a long-dead monk called Boniface, whose commentary had been rescued from the ruined library of Lindisfarena. Ibn Zuhr read all this avidly, but if he came to any conclusions he kept them to himself.
They came to the town of Snotingaham, at the heart of Mercia. The great Offa's kingdom was now ruled by a Danish puppet-king, much of it colonised by Northmen and their families. Snotingaham itself was under the thumb of the Danes, but the English went about their lives mostly unperturbed.
Here, Amgrim sought out a friend of his called Leofgar.
Leofgar was a burly, jovial, prosperous-looking man with a livid scar painted across his face. His hair was a woolly mass as black as night; Cynewulf wondered if he dyed it.
Leofgar clapped an arm around Arngrim. 'We're old buddies,' he said to Cynewulf. 'We fought together against the Danes a decade ago, when they took Snotingaham and holed up in it, and the West Saxons came to help us out.' He touched the scar on his face. 'We couldn't get rid of the Danes back then, but I took away a trophy, as you can see – that and the life of the Danish brute who gave it to me.'
