your love and to your great mercy!” He stared upward. His crippled hand was gripping Thyra’s hair with its dead ivy strands, and he pushed her head backward and forward as he chanted in a voice as loud as a warrior lord on a field of slaughter. “In the name of the Father,” he shouted, “and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I command you, foul demons, to come from this girl. I cast you into the pit! I banish you! I send you to hell for evermore and a day, and I do it in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost! Be gone!”
And Thyra suddenly began to cry. Not to scream and sob and gasp and struggle for breath, but just a gentle weeping, and she laid her head on Beocca’s shoulder and he put his arms about her and cradled her and looked at us with resentment as if we, blood-stained and armed and fierce, were the allies of the demons he had banished. “She’s all right now,” he said awkwardly, “she’s all right now. Oh, go away!” This peevish command was to the hounds and, astonishingly, they obeyed him, slinking away and leaving Ragnar unthreatened. “We must get her warm,” Beocca said, “and we must get her dressed properly.”
“Yes,” I said, “we must.”
“Well, if you won’t do it,” Beocca said indignantly, because I had not moved, “then I shall.” And he led Thyra toward Kjartan’s hall where the smoke still sifted from the roof-hole. Ragnar made to go after them, but I shook my head and he stopped. I put my right foot on Kjartan’s dead belly and yanked Heart-Breaker free. I gave the sword to Ragnar and he embraced me, but there was little elation in either of us. We had done the impossible, we had taken Dunholm, but Ivarr still lived and Ivarr was the greater enemy.
“What do I say to Thyra?” Ragnar asked me.
“You tell her the truth,” I said, because I did not know what else to say, and then I went to find Gisela.
Gisela and Brida washed Thyra. They washed her body and her hair, and they took the dead ivy away and they combed her golden hair, and then they dried it before the great fire in Kjartan’s hall, and afterward they dressed her in a simple woolen robe and a cloak of otter fur. Ragnar then talked with her beside the fire. They talked alone and I walked with Father Beocca outside the hall. It had stopped raining. “Who is Abaddon?” I asked him.
“I was responsible for your education,” he said, “and I am ashamed of myself. How could you not know that?”
“Well I don’t,” I said, “so who is he?”
“The dark angel of the bottomless pit, of course. I’m sure I told you that. He’s the first demon who will torment you if you don’t repent and become a Christian.”
“You’re a brave man, father,” I told him.
“Nonsense.”
“I tried to reach her,” I said, “but I was scared of the hounds. They killed thirty or more men today and you just walked into them.”
“They’re only dogs,” he said dismissively. “If God and Saint Cuthbert can’t protect me from dogs, what can they do?”
I stopped him, put both my hands on his shoulders and squeezed. “You were very brave, father,” I insisted, “and I salute you.”
Beocca was enormously pleased with the compliment, but tried to look modest. “I just prayed,” he said, “and God did the rest.” I let him go and he walked on, kicking at a fallen spear with his club foot. “I didn’t think the dogs would hurt me,” he said, “because I’ve always liked dogs. I had one as a child.”
“You should get yourself another one,” I said. “A dog would be company for you.”
“I couldn’t work as a small boy,” he went on as though I had not spoken. “Well, I could pick stones and scare birds off newly scattered seed, but I couldn’t do proper work. The dog was my friend, but he died. Some other boys killed it.” He blinked a few times. “Thyra’s a pretty woman, isn’t she?” he said, sounding wistful.
“She is now,” I agreed.
“Those scars on her arms and legs,” he said, “I thought Kjartan or Sven had cut her. But it wasn’t them. She did it to herself.”
“She cut herself?” I asked.
“Slashed herself with knives, she told me. Why would she do that?”
“To make herself ugly?” I suggested.
“But she isn’t,” Beocca said, puzzled. “She’s beautiful.”
“Yes,” I said, “she is,” and again I felt sorry for Beocca. He was getting old and he had always been crippled and ugly, and he had always wanted to marry, and no woman had ever come to him. He should have been a monk and thus forbidden to marry. Instead he was a priest, and he had a priest’s mind for he looked at me sternly.
“Alfred sent me to preach peace,” he said, “and I have watched you murder a holy brother, and now this.” He grimaced at the dead.
“Alfred sent us to make Guthred safe,” I reminded him.
“And we have to make certain Saint Cuthbert is safe,” he insisted.
“We will.”
“We can’t stay here, Uhtred, we have to go back to Cetreht.” He looked up at me with alarm in his one good eye. “We have to defeat Ivarr!”
“We will, father,” I said.
“He has the biggest army in Northumbria!”
“But he will die alone, father,” I said, and I was not sure why I said that. The words just came from my tongue, and I thought a god must have spoken through me. “He will die alone,” I said again, “I promise it.”
But there were things to do first. There was Kjartan’s hoard to uncover from the hall where the dogs were kenneled, and we put Kjartan’s slaves to work, digging into the shit-stinking floor, and beneath it were barrels of silver and vats of gold and crosses from churches and arm rings and leather bags of amber, jet, and garnets, and even bolts of precious imported silk that had half rotted away in the damp earth. Kjartan’s defeated warriors made a pyre for their dead, though Ragnar insisted that neither Kjartan nor what was left of Sven should be given such a funeral. Instead they were stripped of their armor and their clothes and then their naked corpses were given to those pigs which had been spared the autumn slaughter and lived in the northwest corner of the compound.
Rollo was given charge of the fortress. Guthred, in the excitement of victory, had announced that the fort was now his property and that it would become a royal fortress of Northumbria, but I took him aside and told him to give it to Ragnar. “Ragnar will be your friend,” I told him, “and you can trust him to hold Dunholm.” I could trust Ragnar, too, to raid Bebbanburg’s lands and to keep my treacherous uncle in fear.
So Guthred gave Dunholm to Ragnar, and Ragnar entrusted its keeping to Rollo and he left him just thirty men to hold the walls while we went south. Over fifty of Kjartan’s defeated men swore their loyalty to Ragnar, but only after he had determined that none of them had taken part in the hall-burning that had killed his parents. Any man who had helped with that murder was killed. The rest would ride with us, first to Cetreht, and then to confront Ivarr.
So half our job was done. Kjartan the Cruel and Sven the One-Eyed were dead, but Ivarr lived and Alfred of Wessex, though he had never said as much, wanted him dead too.
So we rode south.
ELEVEN
We left next morning. The rain had gone southward, leaving a rinsed sky ragged with small hurrying clouds beneath which we rode from Dunholm’s high gate. We left the treasure in Rollo’s keeping. We were all wealthy men for we had taken Kjartan’s fortune, and if we survived our meeting with Ivarr then we would share those riches. I had more than replaced the hoard I had left at Fifhaden and I would go back to Alfred as a rich man, one of the richest in his kingdom, and that was a cheering thought as we followed Ragnar’s eagle-wing standard toward the nearest ford across the Wiire.
Brida rode with Ragnar, Gisela was beside me, and Thyra would not leave Beocca’s side. I never did discover what Ragnar had said to her in Kjartan’s hall, but she was calm with him now. The madness was gone. Her fingernails were trimmed, her hair was tidy beneath a white bonnet and that morning she had greeted her brother with a kiss. She still looked unhappy, but Beocca had the words to comfort her and she drew on those words as if they were water and she were dying of thirst. They both rode mares and Beocca, for once, had forgotten his discomfort in the saddle as he talked with Thyra. I could see his good hand gesturing as he spoke. Behind him a
