The stairs must have been built by the Romans because the first few steps were stone, though above those neat masonry steps was a more recent wooden flight that led to a small landing where dust motes danced. I climbed slowly. There was no noise from the upper floors. I assumed the fat man, whoever he was, would be waiting for me. Finan joined me and the two of us crept up the wooden flight, flinching when the timber creaked. ‘One man,’ I whispered.
An open doorway hung with a thick woollen curtain opened to the right of the small landing. I suspected that as soon as I stepped onto that landing a spear would be thrust through the wool, so I reached up with Serpent-Breath and edged it aside. There was no spear thrust. I edged the curtain further aside and heard a stifled whimper. There were more heavy footsteps, suggesting that the fat man was climbing yet more stairs.
‘Gunnald?’ Finan suggested.
‘I suspect so.’ I said, no longer trying to be quiet. I took the last step and ripped the curtain down. There was a gasp, a scream, and I saw another cage, which held three women who watched me with eyes wide with terror. I put a finger to my lips and they crouched silent, their eyes going to another wooden stairway that led to the top floor. ‘Gunnald!’ I shouted.
There was no answer.
‘Gunnald! I came here to keep a promise!’ I climbed the stairs, deliberately heavy-footed. ‘You hear me, Gunnald?’
There was still no answer, just a scuffling sound deep in the attic. This last floor was built under the roof. Beams crossed it. There was little light, but as I reached the top I saw the fat man standing at the far end. He had a sword in his hand. He was shaking. I had rarely seen a man so frightened.
Finan went past me and pushed open the small shutter I had seen from the courtyard, and in the new light I saw heavy timber chests and a sturdy wooden bed heaped with furs. There was a girl half-hidden in the bed, watching us fearfully. ‘Gunnald?’ I asked the man. ‘Gunnald Gunnaldson?’
‘Yes,’ he said scarce above a whisper.
‘I’d drop the sword,’ I said, ‘unless you want to fight me?’
He shook his head, but still gripped the weapon.
‘My name,’ I said, ‘is Uhtred, son of Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg.’
The sword fell from a nerveless hand, clattering on the wooden floor. Gunnald followed it, dropping to his knees and holding clasped hands towards me. ‘Lord!’
There was a second shuttered window in the gable facing the river. I walked past the kneeling man and pushed the shutter open to let more light into the room. ‘I don’t like slave-traders,’ I said mildly as I went back to Gunnald.
‘Many don’t, lord,’ he whispered.
‘Is she a slave?’ I asked, pointing Serpent-Breath at the girl in the bed.
‘Yes, lord,’ Gunnald’s whisper was scarcely audible.
‘Not any longer,’ I said. Gunnald said nothing. He was still shaking. I saw a robe or gown on the floor, a threadbare thing of linen. I picked it up with Serpent-Breath’s bloodied tip and tossed it to the girl. ‘Do you remember a slave-trader called Halfdan?’ I asked Gunnald. He hesitated, perhaps surprised at the question. His face was round, his eyes small, and his beard too scanty to cover his thick jowls. His hair was thinning. He wore a mail coat, but too small, so he had ripped the sides upward so the mail would cover his belly. A big belly. ‘We don’t see many fat people,’ I said, ‘isn’t that right, Finan?’
‘A few monks,’ Finan said, ‘and a bishop or two.’
‘You must eat plenty,’ I told Gunnald, ‘to get a belly like that. Your slaves are all thin.’
‘I feed them well, lord,’ he muttered.
‘You do?’ I asked with pretended surprise.
‘Meat, lord. They eat meat.’
‘Are you telling me you treat your slaves with kindness?’ I asked. I crouched in front of him and let Serpent-Breath’s tip rest on the floor by his knees. He stared at the blade. ‘Well?’ I prompted him.
‘A contented slave is a healthy slave, lord,’ Gunnald managed to say, his eyes on the blade’s drying blood.
‘So you do treat them well?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘So that girl wasn’t forced to your bed?’
‘No, lord,’ and again his whisper was almost inaudible.
I stood. ‘You’ll think I’m a strange man, Gunnald,’ I said, ‘because I don’t like seeing women beaten or raped. You think that’s strange?’ He just looked at me, then lowered his eyes again. ‘Halfdan treated women badly,’ I said. ‘Do you remember Halfdan?’
‘Yes, lord,’ he whispered.
‘Tell me about him.’
‘Tell you, lord?’
‘Tell me about him!’ I encouraged him.
He managed to raise his eyes to me again. ‘He had a yard on the other side of the bridge, lord,’ he said. ‘He did business with my father.’
‘He died, yes?’
‘Halfdan, lord?’
‘Yes.’
‘He died, lord. He was killed.’
‘Killed!’ I sounded surprised. ‘Who killed him?’
‘No one knows, lord.’
I crouched again. ‘It was me, Gunnald,’ I whispered, ‘I killed him.’
The only answer was a whimper. Footsteps sounded on the stairs and I turned to see Father Oda, Vidarr Leifson and Benedetta come into the attic. Benedetta’s hood shadowed her face. Another whimper made me look back to Gunnald who was shivering, and not from the cold. ‘You, lord?’
‘I killed Halfdan,’ I said. ‘He was fat too.’
That killing had been years before and in a riverside yard not unlike Gunnald’s. Halfdan had thought I had come to buy slaves and had greeted me with an effusive politeness. I still remember his bald head, his waist-long beard, his false smile, and his swollen belly. Finan had been with me that day, and both of us had been thinking of the months we had been enslaved together, chained
