The Burning Land

made a plangent moaning sound until Asser led him away. Finan, later that day, brought me a jar of mead and sang his sad Irish songs until I was too drunk to care. He alone saw me weep that day, and he told no one.

“We’re ordered back to Lundene,” Finan told me next morning. I just nodded, too oblivious of the world to care what my orders were. “The king returns to Wintanceaster,” Finan went on, “and the Lords ?thelred and Edward are to pursue Harald.”

Harald, badly wounded, had been taken by the remnants of his army north across the Temes until, in too much agony to continue, he ordered them to find refuge, which they did on a thorn-covered island called, naturally enough, Torneie. The island was in the River Colaun, not far from where it joins the Temes, and Harald’s men fortified Torneie, first making a great palisade with the plentiful thorn bushes, then throwing up earthworks. Lord ?thelred and the ?theling Edward caught up with them there and laid siege. Alfred’s household troops, under Steapa, swept eastward through Cent, driving out the last of Harald’s men and recovering vast quantities of plunder. Fearnhamme was a magnificent victory, leaving Harald stranded on a fever-infested island, while the remainder of his men fled to their boats and abandoned Wessex, though many of the crews joined Haesten, who was still camped on Cent’s northern shore.

And I was in Lundene. Tears still come to my eyes when I remember greeting Stiorra, my daughter, my little motherless daughter who clung to me and would not let go. And she was crying and I was crying, and I held her as though she was the only thing that could ever keep me alive. Osbert, the youngest, wept and clung to his nurse, while Uhtred, my eldest son, might have wept for all I know, but never in front of me, and that was not an admirable reticence, but rather because he feared me. He was a nervous, fussy child and I found him irritating. I insisted he learned sword craft, but he had no skill with a blade, and when I took him downriver in Seolferwulf, he showed no enthusiasm for ships or the sea.

He was with me aboard Seolferwulf on the day that I next saw Haesten. We had left Lundene in the dark, feeling our way downriver on the tide and beneath a paling moon. Alfred had passed a law, he loved making laws, which said that the sons of ealdormen and thegns must go to school, but I refused to allow Uhtred the Younger to attend the school which Bishop Erkenwald had established in Lundene. I did not care whether he learned to read and write, both skills are much overrated, but I did care that he should not be exposed to the bishop’s preaching. Erkenwald tried to insist I send the boy, but I argued that Lundene was really part of Mercia, which in those days it was, and that Alfred’s laws did not apply. The bishop glowered at me, but was helpless to force the boy’s attendance. I preferred to train my son as a warrior and, that day on the Seolferwulf, I had dressed him in a leather coat and given him a boy’s sword belt so he would become accustomed to wearing war-gear, but instead of showing pride he just looked abashed. “Put your shoulders back,” I snarled, “stand straight. You’re not a puppy!”

“Yes, Father,” he whined. He was slouch-shouldered, just staring at the deck.

“When I die you’ll be Lord of Bebbanburg,” I said, and he said nothing.

“You must show him Bebbanburg, lord,” Finan suggested.

“Maybe I will,” I said.

“Take the ship north,” Finan said enthusiastically, “a proper sea voyage!” He slapped my son’s shoulder. “You’ll like that, Uhtred! Maybe we’ll see a whale!”

My son just stared at Finan and said nothing. “Bebbanburg is a fortress beside the sea,” I told my son, “a great fortress. Windswept, sea-washed, invincible.” And I felt the prick of tears, for I had so often dreamed of making Gisela the Lady of Bebbanburg.

“Not invincible, lord,” Finan said, “because we’ll take it.”

“We will,” I said, though I could feel no enthusiasm, not even for the prospect of storming my own stronghold and slaughtering my uncle and his men. I turned from my pale son and stood in the ship’s prow, beneath the wolf’s head, and gazed east to where the sun was rising, and there, in the haze beneath the rising sun, in the mist of sea and air, in the shimmer of light above the slow-swelling sea, I saw the ships. A fleet. “Slow!” I called.

Our oar-banks rose and fell gently, so it was mostly the ebbing tide that swept us toward that fleet, which rowed northward across our path. “Back oars!” I called, and we slowed, stopped, and slewed broadside to the current. “That must be Haesten,” Finan said. He had come to stand beside me.

“He’s leaving Wessex,” I said. I was certain it was Haesten, and so it was, for a moment later a single ship turned from the fleet and I saw the flash of its oar-blades as the rowers pulled hard toward us. Beyond it the other ships went on northward and there were many more than the eighty that Haesten had brought to Cent, because his fleet had been swollen by the fugitives from Harald’s army. The approaching ship was close now. “That’s Dragon-Voyager,” I said, recognizing the ship, the same one we had given to Haesten on the day he took Alfred’s treasure and gave us the valueless hostages.

“Shields?” Finan asked.

“No,” I said. If Haesten wanted to attack me he would have brought more than one ship, and so our shields stayed in Seolferwulf ’s bilge.

Dragon-Voyager backed her oars a ship’s half-length away. She lay close, heaving on the water’s slow swell, and for a moment her crew stared at my crew, and then I saw Haesten climbing up to the steering platform. He waved. “Can I come aboard?” he shouted.

“You can come aboard,” I called back, and watched as his aftermost oarsmen expertly turned Dragon-Voyager so her stern came close to ours. The long oars were shipped as the two vessels closed, then Haesten leaped. Another man was waving to me from Dragon- Voyager’s steering platform, and I saw it was Father Willibald. I waved back, then worked my way aft to greet Haesten.

He was bareheaded. He spread his hands as I approached, a gesture that spoke of helplessness, and he seemed to have difficulty speaking, but he finally found his voice. “I am sorry, lord,” he said, and his tone was humble, convincing. “There are no words, Lord Uhtred,” he said.

“She was a good woman,” I said.

“Famously,” he said, “and I do feel sorrow, lord.”

“Thank you.”

He glanced at my oarsmen, doubtless casting an eye on their weaponry, then looked back to me. “That sad news, lord,” he said, “shadowed the reports of your victory. It was a great triumph, lord.”

“It seems to have persuaded you to leave Wessex,” I said drily.

“I always intended to leave, lord,” he said, “once we had our agreement, but some of our ships needed repair.” He noticed Uhtred then, and saw the silver plates sewn onto the boy’s sword belt. “Your son, lord?” he asked.

“My son,” I said, “Uhtred.”

“An impressive boy,” Haesten lied.

“Uhtred,” I called, “come here!”

He approached nervously, his eyes darting left and right as if expecting an attack. He was about as impressive as a duckling. “This is the Jarl Haesten,” I told him, “a Dane. One day I’ll kill him, or he’ll kill me.” Haesten chuckled, but my son just looked at the deck. “If he kills me,” I went on, “your duty is to kill him.”

Haesten waited for some response from Uhtred the Younger, but the boy just looked embarrassed. Haesten grinned wickedly. “And my own son, Lord Uhtred?” he asked innocently, “he thrives, I trust, as a hostage?”

“I drowned the little bastard a month ago,” I said.

Haesten laughed at the lie. “There was no need for hostages anyway,” he said, “as I shall keep our agreement. Father Willibald will confirm that.” He gestured toward Dragon-Voyager. “I was going to send Father Willibald to Lundene,” he went on, “with a letter. You might take him there yourself, lord?”

“Just Father Willibald?” I asked. “Didn’t I bring you two priests?”

“The other one died,” Haesten said carelessly, “after eating too many eels. You’ll take Willibald?”

“Of course,” I said and glanced at the fleet that still rowed northward. “Where do you go?”

“North,” Haesten said airily, “East Anglia. Somewhere. Not Wessex.”

He did not want to tell me his destination, but it was plain that his ships were heading toward Beamfleot. We had fought there five years before and Haesten might have had bad memories of the place, yet Beamfleot, on the northern bank of the Temes estuary, offered two priceless assets. First was the creek called Hothlege, tucked behind the island of Caninga, and that creek could shelter three hundred ships, while above it, rearing high on a