monks were shouting for his death. “What was your mother’s name?” I asked him again.
“Elfl?d,” he stammered, but so softly I could not hear him. I frowned at him, waited, and he repeated the name. “Elfl?d.”
“Elfl?d, lord,” I corrected him.
“She was called Elfl?d, lord,” he said.
“She was Saxon?”
“Yes, lord.”
“And did she try to poison your father?”
He paused, then realized that no harm could come from telling the truth now. “Yes, lord.”
“How?” I had to raise my voice over the noise of the crowd.
“The black berries, lord.”
“Nightshade?”
“Yes, lord.”
“How old are you?”
“I don’t know, lord.”
Fourteen, I guessed. “Does your father love you?” I asked.
That question puzzled him. “Love me?”
“Kjartan. He’s your father, isn’t he?”
“I hardly know him, lord,” Sihtric said, and that was probably true. Kjartan must have whelped a hundred pups in Dunholm.
“And your mother?” I asked.
“I loved her, lord,” Sihtric said, and he was close to tears again.
I went a pace closer to him and his sword arm faltered, but he tried to brace himself. “On your knees, boy,” I said.
He looked defiant then. “I would die properly,” he said in a voice made squeaky by fear.
“On your knees!” I snarled, and the tone of my voice terrified him and he dropped to his knees and he seemed unable to move as I came toward him. He flinched when I reversed Serpent-Breath, expecting me to hit him with the heavy pommel, but then disbelief showed in his eyes as I held the sword’s hilt to him. “Clasp it,” I said, “and say the words.” He still stared up at me, then managed to drop his shield and sword and put his hands on Serpent-Breath’s hilt. I put my hands over his. “Say the words,” I told him again.
“I will be your man, lord,” he said, looking up at me, “and I will serve you till death.”
“And beyond,” I said.
“And beyond, lord. I swear it.”
J?nberht and Ida led the protest. The two monks stepped across the hazel branches and shouted that the boy had to die, that it was God’s will that he died, and Sihtric flinched as I tore Serpent-Breath from his hands and whipped her around. The blade, all newly-bloodied and nicked, swept toward the monks and then I held her motionless with her tip at J?nberht’s neck. The fury came then, the battle-fury, the bloodlust, the joy of slaughter, and it was all I could do not to let Serpent-Breath take another life. She wanted it, I could feel her trembling in my hand. “Sihtric is my man,” I said to the monk, “and if anyone harms him then they will be my enemy, and I would kill you, monk, if you harm him, I would kill you without a thought.” I was shouting now, forcing him back. I was nothing but anger and red-haze, wanting his soul. “Does anyone here,” I shouted, at last managing to take Serpent-Breath’s tip away from J?nberht’s throat and whirling the sword around to embrace the crowd, “deny that Sihtric is my man? Anyone?”
No one spoke. The wind gusted across Cair Ligualid and they could all smell death in that breeze and no one spoke, but their silence did not satisfy my anger. “Anyone?” I shouted, desperately eager for someone to meet my challenge. “Because you can kill him now. You can kill him there, on his knees, but first you must kill me.”
J?nberht watched me. He had a narrow, dark face and clever eyes. His mouth was twisted, perhaps from some boyhood accident, and it gave him a sneering look. I wanted to tear his rotten soul out of his thin body. He wanted my soul, but he dared not move. No one moved until Guthred stepped across the hazel branches and held his hand to Sihtric. “Welcome,” he said to the boy.
Father Willibald, who had come running when he first heard my furious challenge, also stepped over the hazel branches. “You can sheathe your sword, lord,” he said gently. He was too frightened to come close, but brave enough to stand in front of me and gently push Serpent-Breath aside. “You can sheathe the sword,” he repeated.
“The boy lives!” I snarled at him.
“Yes, lord,” Willibald said softly, “the boy lives.”
Gisela was watching me, eyes as bright as when she had welcomed her brother back from slavery. Hild was watching Gisela.
And I was still lacking one severed head.
We left at dawn, an army going to war.
Ulf’s men were the vanguard, then came the horde of churchmen carrying Abbot Eadred’s three precious boxes, and behind them Guthred rode a white mare. Gisela walked beside her brother and I walked close behind while Hild led Witnere, though when she was tired I insisted she climb into the stallion’s saddle.
Hild looked like a nun. She had plaited her long golden hair and then twisted the plaits about her skull, and over it she wore a pale gray hood. Her cloak was of the same pale gray and around her neck hung a plain wooden cross that she fingered as she rode. “They’ve been pestering you, haven’t they?” I said.
“Who?”
“The priests,” I said. “Father Willibald. They’ve been telling you to go back to the nunnery.”
“God has been pestering me,” she said. I looked up at her and she smiled as if to reassure me that she would not burden me with her dilemma. “I prayed to Saint Cuthbert,” she said.
“Did he answer?”
She fingered her cross. “I just prayed,” she said calmly, “and that’s a beginning.”
“Don’t you like being free?” I asked her harshly.
Hild laughed at that. “I’m a woman,” she said, “how can I be free?” I said nothing and she smiled at me. “I’m like mistletoe,” she said, “I need a branch to grow on. Without the branch, I’m nothing.” She spoke without bitterness, as if she merely stated an obvious truth. And it was true. She was a woman of good family and if she had not been given to the church then, like little ?thelflaed, she would have been given to a man. That is woman’s fate. In time I knew a woman who defied it, but Hild was like the ox that missed its yoke on a feast day.
“You’re free now,” I said.
“No,” she said, “I’m dependant on you.” She looked at Gisela who was laughing at something her brother had just said. “And you are taking good care, Uhtred, not to shame me.” She meant I was not humiliating her by abandoning her to pursue Gisela, and that was true, but only just true. She saw my expression and laughed. “In many ways,” she said, “you’re a good Christian.”
“I am?”
“You try to do the right thing, don’t you?” She laughed at my shocked expression. “I want you to make me a promise,” she said.
“If I can,” I said cautiously.
“Promise me you won’t steal Saint Oswald’s head to make up the eight.”
I laughed, relieved that the promise did not involve Gisela. “I was thinking about it,” I admitted.
“I know you were,” she said, “but it won’t work. It’s too old. And you’ll make Eadred unhappy.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
She ignored that question. “Seven heads are enough,” she insisted.
“Eight would be better.”
“Greedy Uhtred,” she said.
The seven heads were now sewn into a sack which Sihtric had put on a donkey that he led by a rope. Flies buzzed around the sack, which stank so that Sihtric walked alone.
We were a strange army. Not counting churchmen, we numbered three hundred and eighteen men, and with us marched at least that many women and children and the usual scores of dogs. There were sixty or seventy
