‘Touch that hammer,’ I told Godric, ‘and I’ll dump your arse in the fire.’
‘Enough!’ the starving weasel slapped the table. The ink pots jumped. The two clerk-priests were scratching away. ‘I am Plegmund,’ the man told me.
‘High sorcerer of Contwaraburg?’ I asked.
He stared at me with obvious dislike, then drew a sheet of parchment towards him. ‘You have some explaining to do,’ he said.
‘And no lies this time!’ Asser spat. Years before, in this same hall, I had been tried by the Witan for offences of which, in truth, I was wholly guilty. The chief witness of my crimes had been Asser, but I had lied my way out and he had known I had lied and he had despised me ever since.
I frowned at him. ‘What is your name?’ I asked. ‘You remind me of someone. He was a Welsh earsling, a rat-like little shit, but I killed him, so you can’t be the same man.’
‘Lord Uhtred,’ Bishop Erkenwald said tiredly, ‘please do not insult us.’
Erkenwald and I were not fond of each other, but in his time as Bishop of Lundene he had proved an efficient ruler and he had not stood in my way before Beamfleot, indeed his skills as an organiser had contributed mightily to that victory. ‘What do you want explained?’ I asked.
Archbishop Plegmund pulled a candle across the table to illuminate the parchment. ‘We have been told of your activities this summer,’ he said.
‘And you want to thank me,’ I said.
The cold, sharp eyes stared at me. Plegmund had become famous as a man who denied himself every pleasure, whether it was food, women or luxury. He served his god by being uncomfortable, by praying in lonely places, and by being a hermit priest. Why folk think that admirable, I do not know, but he was held in awe by the Christians, who were all delighted when he abandoned his hermit’s discomfort to become archbishop. ‘In the spring,’ he said in a thin, precise voice, ‘you had a meeting with the man who calls himself Jarl Haesten, following which meeting you rode north into the country possessed by Cnut Ranulfson where you consulted the witch, ?lfadell. From there you went to Snotengaham, presently occupied by Sigurd Thorrson, and thereafter to the Jarl Haesten again.’
‘All true,’ I said easily, ‘only you’ve left some things out.’
‘Here come the lies,’ Asser sneered.
I frowned at him. ‘Was your mother straining at stool when you were born?’
Plegmund slapped the table again. ‘What have we left out?’
‘The small truth that I burned Sigurd’s fleet.’
Osferth had been looking increasingly alarmed at the hostility in the room and now, without a word to me, and without any demurral from the clerics at the linen-covered table, he edged back to the door. They let him go. It was me they wanted. ‘The fleet was burned, we know,’ Plegmund said, ‘and we know the reason.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It was a sign to the Danes that there can be no retreat across the water. Sigurd Thorrson is telling his followers that their fate is to capture Wessex, and as proof of that fate he burned his own ships to demonstrate that there can be no withdrawal.’
‘You believe that?’ I asked.
‘It is the truth,’ Asser snapped.
‘You wouldn’t know the truth if it was rammed down your throat with an axe-handle,’ I said, ‘and no northern lord will burn his ships. They cost gold. I burned them, and Sigurd’s men tried to kill me when I did.’
‘Oh, no one doubts that you were there when they were burned,’ Erkenwald said.
‘And you do not deny consulting the witch ?lfadell?’ Plegmund asked.
‘No,’ I said, ‘nor do I deny destroying the Danish armies at Fearnhamme and at Beamfleot last year.’
‘No one denies that you have done past service,’ Plegmund said.
‘When it suited you,’ Asser added acidly.
‘And do you deny slaying the Abbot Deorlaf of Buchestanes?’ Plegmund asked.
‘I gutted him like a plump fish,’ I said.
‘You don’t deny it?’ Asser sounded astonished.
‘I’m proud of it,’ I said, ‘and of the other two monks I killed.’
‘Note that!’ Asser hissed at the clerk-priests who hardly needed his encouragement. They were scribbling away.
‘Last year,’ Bishop Erkenwald said, ‘you refused to give an oath of loyalty to the ?theling Edward.’
‘True.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m tired of Wessex,’ I said, ‘tired of priests, tired of being told what your god’s will is, tired of being told that I’m a sinner, tired of your endless damned nonsense, tired of that nailed tyrant you call god who only wants us to be miserable. And I refused to give the oath because my ambition is to go back north, to Bebbanburg, and to kill the men who hold it, and I cannot do that if I am sworn to Edward and he wants something different of me.’
That might not have been the most tactful speech, but I was not feeling tactful. Someone, I assumed ?thelred, had done their best to destroy me and had deployed the power of the church to do that and I was determined to fight the miserable bastards. It seemed I was succeeding, at least in making them even more miserable. Plegmund was grimacing, Asser making the sign of the cross, and Erkenwald’s eyes were closed. The two young priests were writing faster than ever. ‘Nailed tyrant,’ one of them repeated slowly as his quill scratched on the parchment.
‘And who had the clever idea to send me to East Anglia so Sigurd could kill me?’ I demanded.
‘King Eohric assures us that Sigurd went without his invitation, and that had he known he would have launched an attack on those forces,’ Plegmund said.
‘Eohric is an earsling,’ I said, ‘and in case you didn’t know, archbishop, an earsling is a thing like Bishop Asser that is squirted out of an arse.’
‘You will be respectful!’ Plegmund snarled, glaring at me.
‘Why?’ I demanded.
He blinked at that. Asser was whispering in his ear, the sibilance urgent and demanding, while Bishop Erkenwald tried to discover something useful from me. ‘What did the witch ?lfadell tell you?’ he asked.
‘That the Saxon would destroy Wessex,’ I said, ‘and that the Danes would win and Wessex would be no more.’
All three were checked by that. They might have been Christians, and important Christians at that, but they were not immune to the real gods and their magic. They were scared, though none made the sign of the cross because to have done so would have been an admission that the pagan prophetess might have some access to the truth, a thing they would want to deny to each other. ‘And who is the Saxon?’ Asser hissed the question.
‘That,’ I said, ‘is what I came to Wintanceaster to tell the king.’
‘So tell us,’ Plegmund demanded.
‘I’ll tell the king,’ I said.
‘You snake,’ Asser said, ‘you thief in the night! The Saxon who will destroy Wessex is you!’
I spat to show my derision, but the spittle did not reach the table.
‘You came here,’ Erkenwald said wearily, ‘because of a woman.’
‘Adulterer!’ Asser snapped.
‘That is the only explanation for your presence here,’ Erkenwald said, then looked at the archbishop, ‘
‘
I thought for a moment they were cursing me, but little Bishop Asser could not resist demonstrating his learning by providing me with a translation. ‘As the dog returns to its vomit, so the fool returns to his filth.’
‘The words of God,’ Erkenwald said.
‘And we must decide what to do with you,’ Plegmund said, and at those words Godric’s men moved closer. I was aware of their spears behind me. A log cracked in the fire, shooting sparks onto the rushes that began to smoke. Normally a servant, or one of the soldiers, would have rushed forward to stamp out the tiny fire, but no one moved. They wanted me dead. ‘It has been demonstrated to us,’ Plegmund broke the silence, ‘that you have been
