“Her husband is sick in the mind.”
“Is he mad?”
“Not so you’d know.”
Beneath me the hinges squealed as the two great gates were pushed outward. Ragnar, bare-legged beneath swathing cloaks, was shouting farewell to the horsemen who passed beneath us through Dunholm’s High Gate, the hooves clattering on the stones of the road that led down through the town. One of the riders turned and I saw it was Haesten who raised a hand to salute me, and I raised a hand in return, then froze because the rider next to him also twisted in her saddle. She smiled, but savagely. It was Skade. She must have seen the astonishment on my face because she laughed, then kicked her heels so her horse rode free and fast downhill. “Trouble,” I said, watching her, “more trouble than you know.”
“Because Haesten will attack Mercia?” Pyrlig asked.
I did not confirm that, though I doubted Haesten would have kept his intentions secret. “Because that woman is with him,” I said.
“Women brought sin into this world,” Pyrlig said, “and by God they do keep it bubbling. But I can’t imagine a world without them, can you?”
“She wants me to go to her?”
“Yes,” Pyrlig said, “and she sent me to fetch you. She also told me to tell you something else. That if you cannot keep the oath then she releases you from it.”
“So I don’t have to go,” I said.
“No.”
“But I made the oath.”
“Yes.”
To ?thelfl?d. I had escaped Alfred and felt nothing but relief at the freedom I had found, and now his daughter summoned me. And Pyrlig was right. Some oaths are made with love, and those we cannot break.
All winter I had felt like a steersman in a fog, tideswept to nowhere, windblown to no harbor, lost, but now it was as though the fog lifted. The Fates had shown me the landmark I had sought, and if it was not the landmark I had wished for, it still gave my ship direction.
I had indeed sworn an oath to ?thelfl?d. Almost every promise I had ever made to her father had been wrung from me, sometimes forced from me, but so was the oath I swore to ?thelfl?d. The promise to serve her had been her price for giving me men to help in the desperate assault on Lundene, and I remembered resenting that price, but I had still knelt to her and given her the vow.
I had known ?thelfl?d since she was a child, the one child of Alfred’s who had mischief and life and laughter, and I had seen those qualities curdled by the marriage to my cousin. And in the months and years after the oath I had come to love her, not as I loved Gisela who was a friend to ?thelfl?d, but as a sparkling girl whose light was being doused by the cruelty of men. And I had served her. I had protected her. And now she asked me to protect her again, and the request filled me with indecision. I busied the next few days with activity, hunting and practicing weapons, and Finan, who often sparred sword-to-sword with me, stepped back one day and asked if I was trying to kill him. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s the Welsh priest, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It’s fate,” I said.
“And where’s fate taking us, lord?” he asked.
“South,” I said, “south,” and I hated that word. I was a northerner, Northumbria was my country, yet the spinners were taking me south.
“To Alfred?” Finan asked in disbelief.
“No,” I said, “to ?thelfl?d,” and as I said her name I knew I could delay no longer.
So, a week after Haesten left, I went to Ragnar and I lied to him because I did not want him to see my betrayal. “I’m going to protect my children,” I told him.
“Haesten surely won’t kill them,” he tried to reassure me.
“But Skade will.”
He thought about that, then nodded. “True.”
“Or she’ll sell them into slavery,” I said bleakly. “She hates me.”
“Then you must go,” he said. And so I rode from Dunholm, and my men came with me because they were oath-sworn, and their families came too and because of that Ragnar knew I was riding away for good. He had watched my men load packhorses with mail and weapons, and he had gazed at me, hurt and puzzled. “Are you going to Wessex?” he asked.
“No,” I promised him, and I spoke truthfully.
Brida knew it. “Then where?” she demanded angrily.
“To my children.”
“You’ll bring them back here?” Ragnar had asked eagerly.
“There is a friend,” I avoided answering his question, “who has the care of my children, and she is in trouble.”
Brida cut through my evasions. “Alfred’s daughter?” she asked scornfully.
“Yes.”
“Who hates the Danes,” Brida said.
“She has pleaded for my help,” I spoke to Ragnar, “and I cannot refuse her.”
“Women weaken you,” Brida snarled at me. “What of your promise to sail with Ragnar?”
“I made no such promise,” I snapped back at her.
“We need you!” Ragnar pleaded.
“Me and my half-crew?”
“If you don’t help destroy Wessex,” Brida said, “you will get no share in Wessex’s wealth, and without that, Uhtred, you have no hopes of Bebbanburg.”
“I am riding to find my children,” I said obstinately, and both Ragnar and Brida knew that was a half-truth at best.
“You were always a Saxon before you were a Dane,” Brida said derisively. “You want to be a Dane, but you don’t have the courage.”
“You may be right,” I admitted.
“We should kill you now,” Brida said, and she meant it.
Ragnar laid a hand on Brida’s arm to silence her, then embraced me. “You are my brother,” he said. He held me close for an instant. He knew, and I knew, that I was going back to the Saxons, that we would forever be on opposing sides, and all I could do was promise that I would never fight against him.
“And will you betray our plans to Alfred?” Brida demanded. Ragnar might make his peace with my departure, but Brida was ever unforgiving.
“I hate Alfred,” I said, “and wish you joy in toppling his kingdom.”
There, I have written it, and it hurt me to write it because the memory of that parting is so painful. Brida hated me at that moment, and Ragnar was saddened, and I was a coward. I hid behind the fate of my children and betrayed my friendship. All winter Ragnar had sheltered me and fed my men, and now I deserted him. He had been happy with me at his side, and he was unhappy at the prospect of fighting Wessex, but he had thought he and I would wage that war together. Now I left him. He allowed me to leave him. Brida truly would have killed me that day, but Ragnar forgave me. It was a clear spring day. It was the day my life changed. Wyrd bi? ful ar?d.
So we rode south and for a long time I could not speak. Father Pyrlig sensed my mood and said nothing till at last I broke the morose silence. “You say my cousin’s sick in the mind?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, “and no.”
“Thank you for making it so plain,” I said.
He half smiled. He rode beside me, eyes narrowed against the day’s sun. “He’s not mad as poor Guthred is mad,” he said after a while, “he doesn’t have visions or talk to the angels or chew the rushes. He’s angry that he’s not a king. ?thelred knows that when he dies Mercia will fall to Wessex. That’s what Alfred wants, and what Alfred wants he usually gets.”
“So why does ?thelfl?d send for me?”
“Your cousin hates his wife,” Pyrlig said, his voice low so it would not carry to Finan and Sihtric who rode
