‘I’m thinking you would be easy to kill, woman,’ I said. My voice was a dry-mouthed croak. I pulled at the leather bindings, but only managed to hurt my wrists.
‘I can tie knots, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said. She picked up the hammer of Thor and swung it on its leather thong. ‘A cheap amulet for a great lord.’ She cackled. She was bent, stooped and disgusting. Her claw-like hand tugged Serpent-Breath from its scabbard and she carried the blade towards me. ‘I should kill you, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said. She scarcely had the strength to lift the great blade, which she rested on one of my bent knees.
‘Why don’t you?’ I asked.
She peered at me. ‘Are you wiser now?’ she asked. I said nothing. ‘You came for wisdom,’ she went on, ‘so did you find it?’
Somewhere far beyond the cave a cock crowed. I tugged at the bonds again, and again could not loosen them. ‘Cut the bindings,’ I said.
She laughed at that. ‘I am not a fool, Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’
‘You haven’t killed me,’ I said, ‘and that might be foolish.’
‘True,’ she agreed. She slid the sword forward so its tip touched my breast. ‘Did you find wisdom in your night, Uhtred?’ she asked, then smiled with her rotted teeth. ‘Your night of pleasure?’ I tried to throw the sword off by rolling on my side, but she kept it on my skin, drawing blood with the tip. She was amused. I was on my side now and she rested the blade on my hip. ‘You moaned in the dark, Uhtred. You moaned with pleasure, or have you forgotten?’
I remembered the girl coming to me in the night. A dark girl, black-haired, slender and beautiful, lithe as a willow-wand, a girl who had smiled as she rode above me, her light hands touching my face and chest, a girl who had bent herself backwards as my hands caressed her breasts. I remembered her thighs pressing on my hips, the touch of her fingers on my cheeks. ‘I remember a dream,’ I said surlily.
?lfadell rocked on her heels, rocked back and forth in an obscene reminder of what the dark girl had done in the night. The flat of the sword slid on my hip bone. ‘It was no dream,’ she said, mocking me.
I wanted to kill her then, and she knew it and the knowledge made her laugh. ‘Others have tried to kill me,’ she said. ‘The priests came for me once. There was a score of them, led by the old abbot with a flaming torch. They were praying aloud, calling me a heathen witch, and their bones are still rotting in the valley. I have sons, you see. It is good for a mother to have sons because there is no love like a mother has for her sons. Have you forgotten that love, Uhtred of Bebbanburg?’
‘Another dream,’ I said.
‘No dream,’ ?lfadell said, and I remembered my mother cradling me in the night, rocking me, giving me her breast to suck, and I could remember the pleasure of that moment, and the tears when I knew it had to be a dream for my mother had died giving birth to me and I had never known her.
?lfadell smiled. ‘From now on, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said, ‘I shall think of you as a son.’ I wanted to kill her again and she knew it and she mocked me with laughter. ‘Last night,’ she said, ‘the goddess came to you. She showed you all your life, and all your future, and all the wide world of men and what will happen to it. Have you forgotten already?’
‘The goddess came?’ I asked. I remembered talking incessantly, and I remembered the sadness when my mother left me, and I remembered the dark girl saddling me, and I remembered feeling sick and drunk, and I remembered a dream in which I had flown above the world by riding the winds as a long-hulled ship rides the waves of the sea, but I remembered no goddess. ‘Which goddess?’ I asked.
‘Erce, of course,’ she said as though the question were foolish. ‘You know of Erce? She knows you.’
Erce was one of the ancient goddesses who had been in Britain when our people came from across the sea. I knew she was worshipped still in country places, an earth-mother, a giver of life, a goddess. ‘I know of Erce,’ I said.
‘You know there are gods,’ ?lfadell said, ‘and in that you are not so foolish. The Christians think one god will serve all men and women, and how can that be? Could one shepherd protect every sheep in all the world?’
‘The old abbot tried to kill you?’ I asked. I had twisted onto my right side so my tied hands were hidden from her and I was grinding the leather bonds against a ridge of stone, hoping they would part. I could only make the smallest of movements in case she noticed, and I had to keep her talking. ‘The old abbot tried to kill you?’ I asked again. ‘Yet now the monks protect you?’
‘The new abbot is no fool,’ she said. ‘He knows Jarl Cnut would flay him alive if he touched me, so instead he serves me.’
‘He doesn’t mind you’re not a Christian?’ I asked.
‘He likes the money Erce brings him,’ she sneered, ‘and he knows Erce lives in this cave and that she protects me. And now Erce waits for your answer. Are you wiser?’
I said nothing again, puzzled by the question, and it angered her.
‘Do I mumble?’ she snarled. ‘Has stupidity furred your ears and stuffed your brain with pus?’
‘I remember nothing,’ I said untruthfully.
That made her laugh. She squatted on her haunches, the sword still resting on my hip, and started to rock backwards and forwards again. ‘Seven kings will die, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, seven kings and the women you love. That is your fate. And Alfred’s son will not rule and Wessex will die and the Saxon will kill what he loves and the Danes will gain everything, and all will change and all will be the same as ever it was and ever will be. There, you see, you are wiser.’
‘Who is the Saxon?’ I asked. I was still dragging my bound wrists on the stone, but nothing seemed to be fraying or loosening.
‘The Saxon is the king who will destroy what he rules. Erce knows all, Erce sees all.’
A scuffle of feet in the entrance passage gave me a moment’s hope, but instead of my men appearing it was three monks who ducked into the cave’s gloom. Their leader was an elderly man with wild white hair and sunken cheeks, who stared at me, then at ?lfadell, then back to me. ‘It’s really him?’ he asked.
‘It’s Uhtred of Bebbanburg, it’s my son,’ ?lfadell said, then laughed.
‘Good God,’ the monk said. For a moment he looked frightened, and that was why I still lived. Both ?lfadell and the monk knew I was Cnut’s enemy, but they did not know what Cnut wanted of me and they feared that to kill me would offend their lord. The white-haired monk came towards me, gingerly, frightened of what I might do. ‘Are you Uhtred?’ he asked.
‘I am Kjartan of Cumbraland,’ I said.
?lfadell cackled. ‘He is Uhtred,’ she said. ‘Erce’s drink does not lie. He babbled like a baby in the night.’
The monk was frightened of me because my life and death were beyond his comprehension. ‘Why did you come here?’ he asked.
‘To discover the future,’ I said. I could feel blood between my hands. My rubbing had opened the scabs on the cuts ?lfadell had inflicted on my palm.
‘He learned the future,’ ?lfadell said, ‘the future of dead kings.’
‘Did it tell of my death?’ I asked her, and for the first time saw doubt on that wrinkled-hag face.
‘We must send to Jarl Cnut,’ the monk said.
‘Kill him,’ one of the younger monks said. He was a tall, strongly-built man with a hard long face, a hook of a nose and cruel unforgiving eyes. ‘The jarl will want him dead.’
The older monk was uncertain. ‘We don’t know the jarl’s will, Brother Hearberht.’
‘Kill him! He’ll reward you. Reward us all.’ Brother Hearberht was right, but the gods had filled the others with doubt.
‘The jarl must decide,’ the older monk said.
‘It will take three days to fetch an answer,’ Hearberht said caustically, ‘and what do you do with him for three days? He has his men in the town. Too many men.’
‘We take him to the jarl?’ the older monk suggested. He was desperate for an answer, flailing at any solution that might spare him from making a decision.
‘For the sake of God,’ Hearberht snapped. He strode to the pile of my possessions, stooped, and straightened with Wasp-Sting in his hand. The short blade caught the wan light. ‘What do you do with a cornered wolf?’ he demanded, and came towards me.
And I used all my strength, all that strength that years of sword and shield practice had put into my bones
