Sword Song

“Because if there is,” Ralla pointed out, “we have no priest aboard.”

“We never do have a priest aboard,” I said defensively.

“But we should, lord,” he remonstrated.

“Why?” I asked belligerently.

“Because you want to die with a sword in your hand,” Ralla said reprovingly, “and we like to die shriven.”

His words chided me. My duty was to these men, and if they died without the benefit of whatever a priest did to the dying, then I had failed them. For a moment I did not know what to say, then an idea sprang unbidden into my head. “Brother Osferth can be our priest today,” I said.

“I will,” Osferth said from a rower’s bench, and I was pleased with that reply because at last he was willing to do something I knew he did not wish to do. I later discovered that, as a man who had only ever been a failed novice monk, he had no power to administer the Christian sacraments, but my men believed he was closer to their god than they were and that, as it turned out, was good enough.

“But I don’t expect to fight,” I said firmly.

A dozen men, those closest to the steering platform, were listening. Finan was with me, of course, and Cerdic and Sihtric and Rypere and Clapa. They were my household troops, my house carls, my companions, my blood brothers, my oath-men, and they had followed me to sea this night and they trusted me, even though they did not know where we sailed or what we did.

“So what are we doing?” Ralla asked.

I paused, knowing the answer would excite them. “We’re rescuing the Lady ?thelflaed,” I finally said.

I heard gasps from the listening men, then the murmur of voices as that news was passed up the benches to the Sea-Eagle’s bows. My men knew this voyage meant trouble, and they had been intrigued by my savage imposition of secrecy, and they must have guessed that we sailed in connection with ?thelflaed’s plight, but now I had confirmed it.

The steering-oar creaked as Ralla made a slight correction. “How?” he asked.

“Any day now,” I said, ignoring his question and speaking loudly enough for every man in the boat to hear me, “the king starts to collect the ransom for his daughter. If you have ten arm rings, he will want four of them! If you have silver hoarded, the king’s men will find it and take their share! But what we do today could stop that!”

Another murmur. There was already a deep unhappiness in Wessex at the thought of the money that would be forced from landowners and merchants. Alfred had pledged his own wealth, but he would need more, much more, and the only reason the collection had not already begun was the arguments that raged among his advisers. Some wanted the church to contribute because, despite the clergy’s insistence that they had no treasure, every man knew that the monasteries were stuffed with wealth. The church’s response had been to threaten excommunication on anyone who dared touch so much as one silver penny that belonged to God or, more particularly, to God’s bishops and abbots. I, even though I secretly hoped that no ransom would be necessary, had recommended raising the whole amount from the church, but that wise advice, of course, had been ignored.

“And if the ransom is paid,” I went on, “then our enemies will be rich enough to hire ten thousand swords! We will have war all across Wessex! Your houses will be burned, your women raped, your children stolen, and your wealth confiscated. But what we do today could stop that!”

I exaggerated a little, but not by much. The ransom could certainly raise five thousand more spears, axes, and swords and that was why the Vikings were gathering in the estuary of the Temes. They smelled weakness, and weakness meant blood, and blood meant wealth. The longships were coming south, their keels plowing the sea as they headed for Beamfleot and then for Wessex.

“But the Northmen are greedy!” I continued. “They know that in ?thelflaed they have a girl of high value, and they are snarling at each other like hungry dogs! Well, one of them is ready to betray the others! At dawn today he will bring ?thelflaed out of the camp! He will give her to us and he will accept a much lower ransom! He would rather keep that smaller ransom all to himself than take a share of the larger! He will become wealthy! But he will not be wealthy enough to buy an army!”

That was the story I had decided to tell. I could not return to Lundene and say I had helped ?thelflaed run away with her lover, so instead I would pretend that Erik had offered to betray his brother and that I had sailed to assist that treachery, and that Erik had then betrayed me by breaking the agreement we had made. Instead of giving me ?thelflaed, I would claim he had just sailed away with her. Alfred would still be furious with me, but he could not accuse me of betraying Wessex. I had even brought a big wooden chest aboard. It was filled with sand, and locked with two great hasps secured with iron pins that had been hammered into circles so that the lid could not be opened. Every man had seen the chest brought onto the Sea-Eagle and there stowed under her steering platform, and they would surely think that big box carried Erik’s price.

“Before dawn,” I went on, “the Lady ?thelflaed will be taken to a ship! As the sun touches the sky’s edge, that ship will bring her out! But in their way is a blocking ship, a ship chained so she lies from shore to shore across the creek’s mouth. Our job is to clear that ship out of the way! That is all! We just have to move that one ship and the Lady ?thelflaed will be free, and we shall take her back to Lundene and we’ll be celebrated as heroes! The king will be grateful!”

They liked that. They liked the thought that they would be rewarded by the king, and I felt a pang because I knew we would only provoke Alfred’s anger, though we would also save him the necessity of raising the ransom.

“I did not tell you this before,” I said, “nor did I tell Alfred, because if I had told you then one of you or one of the king’s men would have got drunk and blabbered the news in a tavern and Sigefrid’s spies would have told Sigefrid and we would reach Beamfleot to find an army waiting to greet us! Instead they’re asleep! And we shall rescue ?thelflaed!”

They cheered that. Only Ralla was silent and, when the clamor ended, he asked a soft question. “And how do we move that ship?” he asked. “She’s bigger than us, her sides have been raised, she carries a fighting crew, and they won’t be asleep.”

“We don’t do it,” I said. “I do it. Clapa? Rypere? You two will help me. The three of us will move the ship.”

And ?thelflaed would be free, and love would win, and the wind would always blow warm, and there would be food all winter, and none of us would ever grow old, and silver would grow on trees, and gold would appear like dew on grass, and the lovers’ bright stars would dazzle forever.

It was all so simple.

As we rowed on eastward.

Before leaving Lundene we had taken down the Sea-Eagle’s mast that now lay in crutches along the ship’s centerline. I had not put her beast-heads on her stem or stern because I wanted her to lie low in the water. I wanted her to be a black shape against blackness, and with no rearing eagle’s head or high mast to show above the horizon. We came in stealth before the dawn. We were the Shadow-Walkers of the sea.

And I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt and felt no tingle there, no singing, no hunger for blood and I took comfort from that. I thought we would open the creek and watch ?thelflaed sail to freedom and that Serpent- Breath would sleep silently in her fleece-lined scabbard.

Then, at last, I saw the higher glow in the sky, the dull red glow that marked where fires burned in Sigefrid’s hilltop encampment. The glow grew brighter as we rowed through the slack water of high tide, and beyond it, on the hills that slowly fell away to the east, were more reflections of fire on clouds. Those red glows marked the sites of the new encampments that stretched from high Beamfleot to low Sceobyrig. “Even without the ransom,” Ralla remarked to me, “they might be tempted to attack.”

“They might,” I agreed, though I doubted Sigefrid had enough men yet to feel sure of success. Wessex, with its newly built burhs, was a hard place to attack, and I guessed Sigefrid would want at least three thousand more men before he rolled the dice of war, and to get those men he needed the ransom. “You know what to do?” I asked Ralla.

“I know,” he said patiently, also knowing that my question had been provoked by nervousness rather than by necessity. “I’ll go seaward of Caninga,” he said, “and collect you at the eastern end.”

“And if the channel isn’t open?” I asked.