They were small at first. There were cattle raids on my southern border, a barn was burned, fish traps destroyed and always the raiders were Norse or Dane, none of them carrying Guthfrith’s symbol of a tusked boar on their shields and none of them West Saxons. I sent my son south with thirty men to help Sihtric of Dunholm, but my land was vast, the enemy cautious, and my men found nothing. Then fishing boats were attacked, their nets and catch stolen and their ships dismasted. None of my folk was killed, not even wounded. ‘It were two Saxon ships,’ one of the fishermen told me when I took Spearhafoc down the coast.
‘They had crosses on their prows?’
‘They had nothing, lord, but they were Saxon. They had that belly look!’ The ships built in the south had swollen bows, nothing like Spearhafoc’s sleeker lines. ‘The bastards who boarded us spoke foreign, but they were Saxon boats.’
I sent Spearhafoc south every day, usually commanded by Gerbruht, while Egil’s brother, Thorolf, brought Banamaðr to help, but again they found nothing. The cattle raids went on, while in Eoferwic the priests preached vituperous sermons claiming that any man who paid rent to a pagan lord was doomed to the eternal flames of hell.
Yet still no one was killed. Cattle were stolen, storehouses emptied, steadings burned and ships dismasted, but no one died. Ealdred was goading me and I suspected he wanted me to kill first because that would give him an excuse to declare an outright war on Bebbanburg. As winter approached the raids became larger, more farms were burned and Norsemen came across the western hills to attack my upland tenants. Still no one died, though the cost was high. Rents had to be foregone, timber cut for rebuilding, animals and seed corn replaced. A second letter came with Guthfrith’s seal claiming I owed him fifteen pounds of gold and I burned that letter as I had burned the first, but it gave me an idea. ‘Why don’t we give him what he wants?’ I suggested.
We were sitting in the hall, close to the great hearth where a fire of willow logs spat and crackled. It was an evening in early winter and a cold east wind gusted through the roof’s smoke-hole. Benedetta stared at me as though I had gone as mad as poor Hrothweard. ‘Give him Bebbanburg?’ she asked, shocked.
No,’ I said, standing, ‘come.’
I led Benedetta, Finan and my son through the door that opened from the hall’s dais. Beyond was our bedchamber, a heap of furs where Benedetta and I slept, and I kicked them aside to reveal the floor of thick wooden planks. I sent my son to fetch an ironbar and, when he brought it, told him to lift the heavy planks. He heaved on the crowbar, Finan helped him, and they lifted one floorboard clear. It was a huge piece of timber, a foot square and two paces long. ‘Now the rest,’ I said, ‘there are seven of them.’
I was giving away no secrets. Benedetta knew what lay beneath our bed, and both Finan and my son had seen the gaping hole before, but even so they all gasped as the last timbers were dragged aside and the lanterns lit the hole beneath.
They saw gold. A dragon’s hoard of gold. A lifetime of gold. Plunder. ‘Jesus,’ Finan said. He might have seen it before, but the sight was still awesome. ‘How much is there?’
‘More than enough to tempt Ealdred,’ I said, ‘and enough to distract Æthelstan.’
‘Distract?’ Benedetta stared down into the gleam and glitter of the hoard.
‘Æthelstan,’ I said, ‘has made a kind of peace with all Britain, except for me. I need to give him another enemy.’
‘Another enemy?’ my son asked, puzzled.
‘You’ll see,’ I said and climbed down into the hole that was a natural hollow in the rock on which Bebbanburg had been built. I lifted out the treasures. There was a golden dish wide enough to hold a haunch of beef. It had women and goat-legged men chasing each other around the rim. There were tall candlesticks, doubtless stolen from a church, that I had taken from Sköll, there were ingots, gold chains, beakers, jugs and cups. There was a leather bag filled with jewellery, with sword decorations of intricate beauty, with brooches and clasps. There were rubies and emeralds, arm rings, and a crude golden circlet that Hæsten had worn. There were gold coins, a small Roman statuette of a woman wearing a crown of sun rays, and a wooden chest heaped with hacksilver. Some of the gold had been hoarded by my father, more by his brother, my treacherous uncle, but most was the treasure of my enemies, the hoard I kept for when hard times struck Bebbanburg.
I stooped and found a crude cup that I gave to Finan. The cup looked as though it had been beaten into shape with a stone hammer, it was rough and lumpy, but it was pure gold. ‘Do you remember those graves to the west of Dunholm?’ I asked him. ‘The three graves?’
‘In the hills?’
‘In the high valley. There was a tall stone there.’
‘The Devil’s Valley!’ he said, remembering. ‘Three grave mounds!’
‘The Devil’s Valley?’ Benedetta asked, making the sign of the cross.
Finan grinned. ‘The old Archbishop of Eoferwic called it that. What was his name?’
‘Wulfhere,’ I said.
‘Wulfhere!’ Finan nodded. ‘He was a gnarly old bastard. He preached that the graves hid demons and forbade anyone to go near them.’
‘Then he sent his own men to dig into the mounds,’ I took up the tale, ‘and we ran them off.’
‘And dug into the mounds yourself?’ my son asked.
‘Of course,’
