'When the Danes know what we've done …' Leofric said.
'… they'll look for us,' I finished the sentence for him.
'Lots of them will look for us.'
'Then it's time to go home,' I said.
The gods had been good to us and, next dawn, in a calming sea, we rowed south to the land and followed the coast towards the west. We would go around the wild headlands where the porpoises swam, turn east and so find home.
~ ~ ~
Much later I discovered what Svein had done after we parted company and, because what he did affected my life and made the enmity between me and Alfred worse, I shall tell it here.
I suspect that the thought of a gold altar at Cynuit had gnawed into his heart, for he carried the dream back to Glwysing where his men gathered. Glwysing was another kingdom of the Britons in the south of Wales, a place where there were good harbours and where the king welcomed the Danes for their presence prevented Guthrum's men from raiding across the Mercian border.
Svein ordered a second ship and its crew to accompany him and together they attacked Cynuit.
They came in the dawn, hidden by a mist, and I can imagine their beast-headed ships appearing in the early greyness like monsters from a nightmare. They went up river, oars splashing, then grounded the boats and the crews streamed ashore, men in mail and helmets, Spear-Danes, Sword-Danes, and they found the half-built church and monastery.
Odda the Younger was making the place, but he knew it was too close to the sea and so he had decided to make it a fortified building. The church's tower was to be of stone, and high enough for men to keep a watch from its summit, and the priests and monks were to be surrounded by a palisade and a flooded ditch, but when Svein came ashore none of the work was finished and so it was indefensible, and besides, there were scarce forty troops there and those all died or fled within minutes of the Danes landing. The Danes then burned what work had been done and cut down the high wooden cross which customarily marked a monastery and which had been the first thing the builders had made.
The builders were monks, many of them novices, and Svein herded them together arid demanded they show him where the valuables were hidden and promised them mercy if they told the truth. Which they did. There was not much of value, certainly no altar of gold, but supplies and timber needed to be purchased and so the monks had a chest of silver pennies which was reward enough for the Danes, who then pulled down the half-constructed church tower, wrecked the unfinished palisade and slaughtered some cattle. Then Svein asked the monks where Ubba was buried and was met by sullen silence, and the swords were drawn again and the question asked a second time, and the monks were forced to confess that. the church was being built directly over the dead chieftain's grave. That grave had been an earth mound, but the monks had dug it tip and thrown the body into the river, and when the Danes heard that story the mercy fled from their souls.
The monks were made to wade in the river until some bones were found, and those bones were placed on a funeral pyre made from the timbers of the half-constructed buildings. It was, by all accounts, a huge pyre, and when it was lit, and when the bones were at the heart of a furnace blaze, the monks were thrown onto the flames. While their bodies burned the Danes selected two girls, captured from the soldiers' shelters, raped them and then strangled them, sending their souls to be company for Ubba in Valhalla.
We heard all this from two children who survived by hiding in a nettle patch, and some folk from the nearby town who were dragged to see the end of the funeral pyre. “Svein of the White Horse did this,” they were told, and made to repeat the words. It was a Danish custom to leave some witnesses to their horror, so that the tales would spread fear and make cowards of other folk who might be attacked, and sure enough the story of the burned monks and murdered girls went through Wessex like a high wind through dry grass. It became exaggerated as such tales do. The number of dead monks went from sixteen to sixty, the raped girls from two to twenty, and the stolen silver from a chest of pennies to a hoard worthy of the gods.
Alfred sent a message to Guthrum, demanding to know why he should not slaughter the hostages he held, and Guthrum sent him a present of gold, two captured gospel books and a grovelling letter in which he claimed that the two ships had not been from his forces, but were pirates from beyond the sea. Alfred believed him and so the hostages lived and the peace prevailed, but Alfred commanded that a curse should be pronounced on Svein in every church of Wessex. The Danish chieftain was to be damned through all eternity, his men were to burn in the fires of hell and his children, and his children's children, were all to bear the mark of Cain. I asked a priest what the mark was, and he explained that Cain was the son of Adam and Eve and the first murderer, but he did not know what mark he had carried. He thought God would recognise it.
So Svein's two ships sailed away, leaving a pillar of smoke on the Wessex shore, and I knew none of it. In time I would know all of it, but for now I was going home.
~ ~ ~
We went slowly, sheltering each night, retracing our steps that took us past the blackened hillside where Peredur's settlement had stood, and on we went, under a summer's sun and rain, until we had returned to the Uisc.
The Heahengel was afloat now and her mast was stepped, which meant Leofric could take her and the Eftwyrd, for the Fyrdraca was no more, back to Hamtun. We divided the plunder first and, though Leofric and I took the greater share, every man went away wealthy.
I was left with Haesten and Iseult, and I took them up to Oxton where Mildrith wept with relief because she had thought I might be dead. I told her we had been patrolling the coast, which was true enough, and that we had captured a Danish ship laden with wealth, and I spilled the coins and gold bricks onto the floor and gave her a bracelet of amber and a necklace of jet, and the gifts distracted her from Iseult who watched her with wide, dark eyes, and if Mildrith saw the British girl's jewellery she said nothing.
We had come back in time for the harvest, though it was poor for there had been much rain that summer. There was a black growth on the rye which meant it could not even be fed to the animals, though the straw was good enough to thatch the hall I built. I have always enjoyed building. I made the hall from clay, gravel and straw, all packed together to make thick walls. Oak beams straddled the walls, and oak rafters held a high, long roof that looked golden when the thatch was first combed into place. The walls were painted with powdered lime in water, and one of the local men poured ox-blood into the mix so that the walls were the colour of a summer sky at sunset. The hall's great door faced east towards the Uisc and I paid a man from Exanceaster to carve the doorposts and lintels with writhing wolves, for the banner of Bebbanburg, my banner, is a wolf's head. Mildrith wanted the carving to show saints, but she got wolves. I paid the builders well, and when other men heard that I had silver they came looking for employment, and though they were there to build my hall I took only those who had experience of
