But I obeyed.
I took just thirty of my men.
But I also asked Egil Skallagrimmrson to keep me company with seventy-one of his Norsemen.
And so we rode to Burgham.
I had gone to Bebbanburg’s chapel on the night before we left for Burgham. I did not go there often, nor did I usually go willingly, but Benedetta had pleaded and so I had led her into the cold night wind and thus to the small chapel which had been made next to the great hall.
I thought I must merely endure her prayers, but saw that she had planned this visit more carefully, because waiting in the chapel were a wide, shallow dish, a jug of water, and a small flask. The altar was bright with candles, which flickered as the wind gusted through the open door. Benedetta closed it, pulled the hood of her cloak over her dark hair, and knelt by the shallow dish. ‘You have enemies,’ she said bleakly.
‘All men have enemies, otherwise they’re not men.’
‘I will protect you. Kneel.’
I was reluctant, but I obeyed. I am used to women and sorcery. Gisela would cast the sticks to tell the future, my daughter had used spells, while long ago, in a cave, I had been given dreams. Men are sorcerers too, of course, and we fear them, but a woman’s sorcery is more subtle. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Hush,’ she said, pouring water into the shallow dish. ‘Il malocchio ti ha colpito,’ she went on quietly. I did not ask what the words meant because I sensed they were spoken to herself rather than to me. She pulled the cork from the small flask and then, very carefully, let three drops of oil fall into the water. ‘Wait now,’ she said.
The three drops of oil spread, glistened, and made shapes. The wind sighed at the chapel’s roof and the door creaked. The waves beat at the shore. ‘There is danger,’ Benedetta said after staring at the pattern of the oil-stained water.
‘There is always danger.’
‘The dragon and the star,’ she said. ‘They came from the north?’
‘They did.’
‘Yet there is danger from the south,’ she sounded puzzled. Her head was bent over the dish and the hood hid her face.
She was silent again and then she beckoned me. ‘Come closer.’
I shuffled closer on my knees.
‘I cannot come with you?’ she asked plaintively.
‘If there is danger? No.’
She accepted the answer, however unwillingly. She had pleaded to accompany me, but I had insisted none of my men could take their women so I could not make an exception for myself.
‘And I do not know if this will work,’ she said unhappily.
‘This?’
‘Hai bisogno di farti fare l’affascinò,’ she said, looking up at me and frowning. ‘I must protect you by,’ she paused, looking for the word, ‘a charm?’
‘A spell?’
‘But a woman,’ she went on, still unhappy, ‘may do this three times in her life. Only three!’
‘And you,’ I said carefully, ‘have done it three times?’
‘I made curses,’ she said, ‘on the slavers. Three curses.’ She had been enslaved as a child, carried across Christendom and found herself in raw, cold Britain where she became a slave to King Edward’s third wife. Now she was my companion. She made the sign of the cross. ‘But God may give me one more spell because it is not a curse.’
‘I hope not.’
‘God is good,’ she said. ‘He gave me life again when I met you. He will not leave me alone now.’ She put a forefinger into a ripple of oil. ‘Come close.’
I leaned closer and she reached out and smeared her finger on my forehead. ‘That is all,’ she said, ‘and when you feel danger is close? All you need do is spit.’
‘Just spit?’ I was amused.
‘You spit!’ she said, angry at my smile. ‘You think God, the angels, and the demons need more than this? They know what I have done. It is enough. Your gods too, they know!’
‘Thank you,’ I said humbly.
‘You come back to me, Uhtred of Bebbanburg!’
‘I will come back,’ I promised.
If I remembered to spit.
None of us knew where Burgham was, though the frightened priest who had brought the summons to Bebbanburg assured me it was in Cumbria. ‘I believe to the north of Mameceaster, lord.’
‘There’s a lot of land to the north of Mameceaster,’ I had snarled.
‘There’s a monastery at Burgham,’ he had said hopefully, and when I didn’t respond, just looked miserable. Then he brightened. ‘There was a battle nearby, lord, I think.’
‘You think.’
‘I think, lord, because I heard men talking of it. They said it was your battle, lord!’ he smiled as if expecting me to smile too. ‘They said you won a great victory there! In the north, lord, near the great wall. They say you …’ his voice had tailed away.
The only battle that fitted his description was the fight at Heahburh and so we followed the priest’s vague directions and rode westwards alongside the old Roman wall that crossed Northumbria. The weather turned bad, bringing a cold driving rain from the Scottish hills, and we made slow progress across the high ground. We were forced to camp one night in the stony remnants of a Roman fort, one of the bastions of their wall, and I sat hunched in the lee of a broken wall remembering the ghastly fight under the ramparts of Heahburh’s fort. Our fires fought the rain that night and I doubt any of us slept much, but the dawn brought clearing skies and a weak sunlight and, instead of pressing on, we spent the morning drying our clothes and cleaning our weapons. ‘We’re going to be late,’ I told Finan, ‘not that I care. But isn’t today the feast of saint whatever?’
‘I think so. Not sure. Might be tomorrow?’
‘Who was he?’
‘Father Cuthbert
