bored me. I was a warrior, and I had been driven from my home of Bebbanburg to the southern edge of England and I think I knew, as Wirken babbled on about how he had guarded the storehouses through the winter, that I was now going north again. Ever north. Back home.
'You lived off these storehouses all winter,' I accused the priest.
'I watched them all winter, lord.'
'And you got fat as you watched,' I said. I climbed into my saddle. Behind me were two bags, ripe with money, and they stayed there as I rode to Exanceaster and found Steapa in The Swan. Next morning, with six other warriors from Ealdorman Odda's guard, we rode north. Our way was marked by pillars of smoke, for Svein was burning and plundering as he went, but we had done what Alfred had wanted us to do. We had driven Svein back to Guthrum, so that now the two largest Danish armies were united. If Alfred had been stronger he might have left them separate and marched against each in turn, but Alfred knew he had only one chance to take back his kingdom, and that was to win one battle. He had to overwhelm all the Danes and destroy them in one blow, and his weapon was an army that existed only in his head. He had sent demands that the fyrd of Wessex would be summoned after Easter and before Pentecost, but no one knew whether it would actually appear. Perhaps we would ride from the swamp and find no one at the meeting place. Or perhaps the fyrd would come, and there would be too few men. The truth was that Alfred was too weak to fight, but to wait longer would only make him weaker. So he had to-fight or lose his kingdom. So we would fight.
Elev
e en
e
'You will have many sons,' Iseult told me. It was dark, though a half-moon was hazed by a mist.
Somewhere to the north-east a dozen fires burned in the hills, evidence that a strong Danish patrol was watching the swamp. 'But I am sorry about Uhtred,' she said.
I wept for him then. I do not know why the tears had taken so long to come, but suddenly I was overwhelmed by the thought of his helplessness, his sudden smile and the pity of it all. Both my half-brothers and my half-sister had died when they were babies and I do not remember my father crying, though perhaps he did. I do remember-my stepmother shrieking in grief, and how my father, disgusted by the sound, had gone hunting with his hawks and hounds.
'I saw three kingfishers yesterday,' Iseult said.
Tears were running down my cheeks, blurring the misted moon. I said nothing.
'Hild says the blue of the kingfisher's feathers is for the virgin and the red is for Christ's blood.'
'And what do you say?'
'That your son's death is my doing.'
'Wyrd bib ful araed,' I said. Fate is fate. It cannot be changed or cheated. Alfred had insisted I marry Mildrith so I would be tied to Wessex and would put roots deep into its rich soil, but I already had roots in Northumbria, roots twisted into the rock of Bebbanburg, and perhaps my son's death was a sign from the gods that I could not make a new home. Fate wanted me to go to my northern stronghold and until I reached Bebbanburg I would be a wanderer.
Men fear wanderers for they have no rules. The Danes came as strangers, rootless and violent, and that, I thought, was why I was always happier in their company. Alfred could spend hours worrying about the righteousness of a law, whether it concerned the fate of orphans or the sanctity of boundary markers, and he was right to worry because folk cannot live together without law, or else every straying cow would lead to bloodshed, but the Danes hacked through the law with swords. It was easier that way, though once they had settled a land they started to make their own laws.
'It was not your fault,' I said. You don't command fate.'
'Hild says there is no such thing as fate,' Iseult said.
'Then Hild is wrong.'
'There is only the will of God,' Iseult said, 'and if we obey that we go to heaven.'
'And if we choose not to,' I said, 'isn't that fate?'
'That's the devil,' she said. 'We are sheep, Uhtred, and we choose our shepherd, a good one or a bad one.'
I thought Hild must have soured Iseult with Christianity, but I was wrong. It was a priest who had come to ?thelingaeg while I had been in Defnascir who had filled her head with his religion. He was a British priest from Dyfed, a priest who spoke Iseult's native tongue and also knew both English and Danish. I was ready to hate him as I hated Brother Asser, but Father Pyrlig stumbled into our hut next morning booming that he had found five goose eggs and was dying of hunger.
'Dying! That's what I am, dying of starvation!' He looked pleased to see me. 'You're the famous Uhtred, eh? And Iseult tells me you hate Brother Asser? Then you're a friend of mine. Why Abraham doesn't take Asser to his bosom I do not know, except maybe Abraham doesn't want the little bastard clinging to his bosom. I wouldn't. It would be like suckling a serpent, it would. Did I say I was hungry.'
He was twice my age and a big man, big-bellied and bighearted. His hair stuck out in ungovernable clumps, he had a broken nose, only four teeth, and a broad smile.
'When I was a child,' he told me, 'ever such a little child, I used to eat mud. Can you believe that?
Do Saxons eat mud? Of course they do, and I thought I don't want to eat mud. Mud is for toads, it is.
So eventually I became a priest. And you know why? Because I never saw a hungry priest! Never! Did you ever see a hungry priest? Nor me!'
All this tumbled out without any introduction, then he spoke earnestly to Iseult in her own tongue and I was sure he was pouring Christianity into her, but then he translated for me.
'I'm telling her that you can make a marvellous dish with goose eggs. Break them up, stir them well and add just a little crumbled cheese. So Defnascir is safe?'
'Unless the Danes send a fleet,' I said.
'Guthrum has that in mind,' Pyrlig said. 'He wants the Danes in Lundene to send their ships to the south
