‘Does Æthelstan still want Bebbanburg?’ I asked him abruptly.
‘I think not, lord. That passion died with Ealdred.’
‘Then I should thank whoever killed him.’
‘Many of us agree, lord,’ Oda said calmly, ‘because he gave the king bad counsel.’ For a moment I thought he would thank me, but he just smiled and turned away.
I let him go into the hall, but I stayed outside, still sitting, staring at the sea and at the moon-silvered clouds. I wanted to see the dragon. It did not come.
The dragon slept, but not in my dreams.
I had half forgotten the saga of Beowulf until Oda reminded me of the old tale. Beowulf was a Geat, one of the Norse tribes, who went to the land of the Danes to slaughter monsters. He slew Grendel, then Grendel’s mother, and after fifty more winters had passed, he killed the dragon. The tale was sometimes chanted at feasts, to tables of warriors in the great halls of smoke and song.
And though this dragon of the north slept it still came to my dreams. Night after night I would wake sweating. Benedetta said I cried out in fear. She would hold me, comfort me, but still the dragon came. It did not fly on great wings that made the sea shudder, but slithered like a serpent through the underworld, through a pillared passage of stone-carved arches lit by the flames of its nostrils that gaped like caverns. It should have been sleeping, its vast slack body slumped on the heaped gold, on the piled helmets, on the goblets and plates, on the woven arm rings and on the cut gems of its hoard. But in every dream it was awake and crawling towards me.
I dreamed I was in a barrow-mound. I knew that, though how I knew I did not know. I knew the dragon had been burning steadings, spewing flame on my people’s homes, and that it must be killed. I am the Lord of Bebbanburg, the guardian of my people, so it was my duty to go to its gold-hoard and kill the beast. I had armed myself with a great shield of iron, hammered by Deogol, Bebbanburg’s blacksmith. It was heavy, that shield, but a willow-board shield would have burst into flame at the dragon’s first breath and so I carried the iron shield as the beast writhed towards me. It screamed, not in fear, but in rage, and its great head reared, I crouched, and the flame spewed about me with a roar like a thousand tempests. The fire wrapped me, seared and scorched me, it turned the shield red, and the very earth trembled as I forced my way forward and raised the sword.
It was never Serpent-Breath. It was an older sword, scarred and pitted, a sword battered by battle and I knew her name was Nægling, which meant the claw. A claw against a dragon, and as the beast reared again I attacked with Nægling, and it was a good strike! I lunged at the dragon’s head, between the eyes, a killing blow into the killing place, and Nægling shattered. That was when I woke, night after night, sweating and terrified, as the flames spewed again and I staggered, fire-encircled, burning, and with the broken sword in my hand.
I feared to sleep, for to sleep was to dream, and to dream was to see my own death. It was a rare night when the dragon did not wriggle from his gold-lair and I did not wake in terror. Then as the long winter nights dragged on, the dream became more real. The dragon roared the fire a second time and I dropped the shield that was now glowing red, and threw away Nægling’s useless hilt, and drew my seax. And on my right a companion came to share the fight. It was not Finan, but Sigtryggr, my dead son-in-law, whose wooden shield was burning, whose right arm stabbed with his long sword to pierce the dragon’s head, and I stabbed too, with Bitter. Bitter? My seax was called Wasp-Sting, not Bitter, but Bitter proved a better blade than Nægling, for her bright edge sliced the dragon’s throat and liquid fire poured to drench my arm with agony. There were two screams of pain, mine and the dragon’s, and the great beast toppled, the fire died, and Sigtryggr was kneeling beside me and I knew that my length of days was over and that the joys of life were ending. Then I would wake.
‘You had the dream again?’ Benedetta asked.
‘We killed the dragon, but I died.’
‘You did not die,’ she said stubbornly, ‘you are here.’
‘Sigtryggr helped me.’
‘Sigtryggr! He was kin to Anlaf, yes?’
‘And to Guthfrith.’ I pushed the furs off my body. It was a cold winter’s night, but I was hot. ‘The dream is an omen,’ I said, as I had said a hundred times before, but what did it mean? The dragon had to be Constantine and his allies, and by fighting them I would die, but my ally was a Norseman, Sigtryggr, and he was Anlaf’s cousin, so was I meant to fight alongside Anlaf? Did Nægling break because I fought for the wrong side? I groped for Serpent-Breath’s hilt. The sword was never far from me so that if death came in the dark I might have a chance to grip her.
‘The dream means nothing,’ Benedetta said sternly. ‘It is an old story, that is all.’
‘All dreams mean something. They are messages.’
‘Then find an old woman who can tell you the meaning! Then find another, and she will tell you a different meaning. A dream is a dream.’
She was trying to reassure me. I knew she believed in dreams as messages, but she did not want to admit the truth of that dream where the dragon came from its hoard to gust its furnace heat. Yet by day the dream receded. Was the dragon Scotland? But it seemed Æthelstan was right and that the
