“A blessing?”
“They found some gold coins among the turds,” he said, “so I suspect God directed their effluent, don’t you?”
“My gods have better things to do than worry about shit.”
“That’s why you’ve never found gold among your turds!” Beocca said and started laughing. “There, Uhtred,” he said triumphantly, “I have at last proved my God is mightier than your false idols!” He smiled at me, but the smile slowly faded so that he looked old and tired again. I loved Beocca. He had been my childhood tutor and he was always exasperating and pedantic, but he was a good man. “You have until dawn,” he said.
“To do what?”
He spoke tiredly, as if he despaired of what he told me. “You will go to the king in penitence,” he said, “without mail or weapons. You will abase yourself. You will hand the witch to the king. All the land you hold in Wessex is forfeited. You will pay a wergild to the church for the life of Brother Godwin, and your children will be held hostages against that payment.”
Silence.
Sparks whirled upward. A couple of my wolfhounds came into the room. One smelled Beocca’s robes, whined, and then both settled by the fire, their doleful eyes looking at me for a moment before closing.
“The wergild,” Finan asked for me, “how much?”
“One thousand and five hundred shillings,” Beocca said.
I sneered. “For a mad monk?”
“For a saint,” Beocca said.
“A mad fool,” I snarled.
“A holy fool,” Beocca said mildly.
The wergild is the price we pay for death. If I am judged guilty of unjustly killing a man or woman I must pay their kin a price, that price depending on their rank, and that is fair, but Alfred had set Godwin’s wergild at almost a royal level. “To pay that,” I said, “I’d have to sell almost everything I own, and the king has just taken all my land.”
“And you must also swear an oath of loyalty to the etheling,” Beocca said. He usually became exasperated with me and would splutter as his exasperation grew, but that night he was very calm.
“So the king would impoverish me,” I asked, “and tie me to his son?”
“And he will return the sorceress to her husband,” Beocca said, looking at the black-cloaked Skade, whose eyes glittered from the room’s darkest corner. “Skirnir has offered a reward for her return.”
“Skirnir?” I asked. The name was unfamiliar to me.
“Skirnir is her husband,” Beocca said. “A Frisian.”
I looked at Skade who nodded abruptly.
“If you return her,” I said, “she dies.”
“Does that concern you?” Beocca asked.
“I don’t like killing women.”
“The law of Moses tells us we should not allow a witch to live,” Beocca said. “Besides, she is an adulterer, so her husband has the God-given right to kill her if that is his wish.”
“Is Skirnir a Christian?” I asked, but neither Skade nor Father Beocca answered. “Will he kill you?” I asked Skade and she just nodded. “So,” I turned back to Beocca, “until I pay the wergild, make my oath to Edward, and send Skade to her death, my children are hostages?”
“The king has decreed that your children will be cared for in the Lady ?thelfl?d’s household,” Beocca answered. He looked me up and down with his good eye. “Why are you dressed for war?” I made no answer and Beocca shrugged. “Did you think the king would send his guards?”
“I thought he might.”
“And you would have fought them?” He sounded shocked.
“I would have them know who they came to arrest,” I said.
“You killed a man!” Beocca at last found some energy. “The man offended you, I know, but it was the Holy Spirit who spoke in him! You hit him, Uhtred! The king forgave the first blow, but not the second, and you must pay for that!” He leaned back, looking tired again. “The wergild is well within your ability to pay. Bishop Asser wished it set much higher, but the king is merciful.” A log in the hearth spat suddenly, startling the hounds, who twitched and whined. The fire found new life, brightening the room and casting shaky shadows.
I faced Beocca across the flames. “Bishop Asser,” I spat angrily.
“What of him?”
“Godwin was his puppy.”
“The bishop saw holiness in him, yes.”
“He saw a way to his ambition,” I snarled, “to rid Wessex of me.” I had been thinking of the feast’s events ever since my hand took Godwin’s life, and I had decided that Asser was behind the mad monk’s words. Bishop Asser believed Wessex safe. Harald’s power was destroyed, and Haesten had sent his family to be baptized, so Wessex had no need of a pagan warlord, and Asser had used Godwin to poison Alfred’s mind against me. “That twist of Welsh shit told Godwin what to say,” I said. “It wasn’t the holy spirit speaking in Godwin, father, it was Bishop Asser.”
Beocca looked at me through the shimmer of fire. “Did you know,” he asked, “that the flames in hell cast no light?”
“I didn’t,” I said.
“It is one of the mysteries of God,” Beocca said, then grunted as he stood. He shrugged off the borrowed fur cloak and leaned heavily on his stick. “What shall I tell the king?”
“Is your god responsible for hell?” I asked.
He frowned, thinking. “A good question,” he finally said, though he did not answer it. “As is mine. What shall I tell the king?”
“That he will have my answer at dawn.”
Beocca half smiled. “And what will that answer be, Lord Uhtred?”
“He will discover that at dawn.”
Beocca nodded. “You are to come to the palace alone, without weapons, without mail, and dressed simply. We shall send men to take the witch. Your children will be returned on payment of one hundred shillings, the remainder of the wergild is to be paid within six months.” He limped toward the courtyard door, then turned and stared at me. “Let me die in peace, Lord Uhtred.”
“By watching my humiliation?”
“By knowing that your sword will be at King Edward’s command. That Wessex will be safe. That Alfred’s work will not die with him.”
That was the first time I heard Edward called king.
“You’ll have my answer at sunrise,” I said.
“God be with you,” Beocca responded, and hobbled into the night.
I listened to the heavy outer door bang shut and the locking bar drop into place, and I remembered Ravn, the blind skald who had been Ragnar the Elder’s father, telling me that our lives are like a voyage across an unknown sea, and sometimes, he said, we get tired of calm waters and gentle winds, and we have no choice but to slam the steering oar’s loom hard over and head for the gray clouds and the whitecaps and the tumult of danger. “That is our tribute to the gods,” he had told me, and I still do not know quite what he meant, but in that sound of the door closing I heard the echo of the steering oar slamming hard to one side.
“What do we do?” Finan asked me.
“I tell you what I won’t do,” I snarled. “I will not give that damned child my oath.”
“Edward’s no child,” Finan said mildly.
“He’s a milksop little bastard,” I said angrily. “He’s addled by his god, just like his father. He was weaned on that bitch wife’s vinegar tits, and I will not give him an oath.”
“He’ll be King of Wessex soon,” Finan observed.
“And why? Because you and I kept their kingdom safe, you and I! If Wessex lives, my friend, it’s because an Irish runt and a Northumbrian pagan kept it alive! And they forget that!”
“Runt?” Finan asked, smiling.
