The Burning Land Part 23

"Of course not."

"Then I cannot commit the awful sin of murder. aethelred must live. Besides," she gave me a smile, "my father would never forgive me if I were to murder aethelred. Or allow you to murder him. And I don't want to disappoint my father. He's a dear man."

I laughed at that. "Your father," I said, "will be angry anyway."

"Why?"

"Because you asked for my help, of course."

aethelflaed gave me a curious look. "Who do you think suggested that I ask for your help?"

"What?" I gaped at her and she laughed. "Your father wanted me to come to you?" I asked in disbelief.

"Of course!" she said.

I felt like a fool. I thought I had escaped Alfred, only to discover that he had drawn me south. Pyrlig must have known, but had been very careful not to tell me. "But your father hates me!" I told aethelflaed.

"Of course he doesn't. He just thinks of you as a very wayward hound, one that needs a whipping now and then." She gave me a deprecatory smile, then shrugged. "He knows Mercia will be attacked, Uhtred, and fears that Wess.e.x won't be able to help."

"Wess.e.x always helps Mercia."

"Not if Danes are landing on Wess.e.x's coast," she said, and I almost laughed aloud. We had gone to such trouble in Dunholm to keep our plans secret, yet Alfred was already preparing for those plans. To which end he had used his daughter to draw me south, and I thought first how clever he was, then wondered just what sins that clever man was prepared to tolerate to keep the Danes from destroying Christianity in England.

We left the village to ride through sunlit country. The gra.s.s had greened and was growing fast. Cattle, released from their winter imprisonment, were gorging themselves. A hare stood on its hind legs to watch us, then skittered away before standing and staring at us again. The road climbed gently into the soft hills. This was good country, well watered and fertile, the kind of land the Danes craved. I had been to their homeland and seen how men scratched a bare living from small fields, from sand and from rock. No wonder they wanted England.

The sun was sinking as we pa.s.sed through another village. A girl carrying two yoked pails of milk was so scared by the sight of armed men that she stumbled as she tried to kneel and the precious milk ran into the road's ruts. She began to cry. I tossed her a silver coin, enough to dry her tears, and asked her if there was a lord living nearby. She pointed us northward to where, behind a great stand of elm trees, we discovered a fine hall surrounded by a decaying palisade.

The thegn who owned the village was named Ealdhith. He was a stout, red-haired man who looked aghast at the number of horses and riders who came seeking shelter for the night. "I can't feed you all," he grumbled, "and who are you?"

"My name is Uhtred," I said, "and that is the Lady aethelflaed."

"My lady," he said, and went onto one knee.

Ealdhith fed us well enough, though he complained next morning that we had emptied all his ale barrels. I consoled him with a gold link I chopped from Aldhelm's chain. Ealdhith had little news to tell us. He had heard, of course, that aethelflaed had been a prisoner in the convent at Lecelad. "We sent eggs and flour to her, lord," he told me.

"Why?"

"Because I live a stone's throw from Wess.e.x," he said, "and I like West Saxons to be friendly to my folk."

"Have you seen any Danes this spring?"

"Danes, lord? Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds don't come near here!" Ealdhith was sure of that, which explained why he had allowed his palisade to deteriorate. "We just till our land and raise our cattle," he said guardedly.

"And if Lord aethelred summons you?" I asked, "you go to war?"

"I pray it doesn't happen, but yes, lord. I can take six good warriors to serve."

"You were at Fearnhamme?"

"I couldn't go, lord, I had a broken leg." He lifted his smock to show me a twisted calf. "I was lucky to live."

"Be ready for a summons now," I warned him.

He made the sign of the cross. "There's trouble coming?"

"There's always trouble coming," I said, and hauled myself into the saddle of Aldhelm's fine stallion. The horse, unused to me, trembled and I patted his neck.

We rode westward in the cool morning air. My children rode with me. A beggar was coming the other way and he knelt by the ditch to let us pa.s.s, holding out one mangled hand. "I was wounded in the fight at Lundene," he called. There were many such men reduced by war's injury to beggary. I gave my son Uhtred a silver coin and told him to toss it to the man, which he did, but then added some words. "May Christ bless you!"

"What did you say?" I demanded.

"You heard him." aethelflaed, riding on my left, was amused.

"I offered him a blessing, Father," Uhtred said.

"Don't tell me you've become a Christian!" I snarled.

He reddened, but before he could say anything in reply Osferth spurred from among the hors.e.m.e.n behind. "Lord! Lord!"

"What is it?"

He did not answer, but just pointed back the way we had come.

I turned to see a thickening plume of smoke on the eastern horizon. How often I have seen those great smoke columns! I have caused many myself, the marks of war.

"What is it?" aethelflaed asked.

"Haesten," I said, my son's idiocy forgotten. "It has to be Haesten." I could think of no other explanation.

The war had started.

THREE.

Seventy of us rode toward the pyre of smoke that now appeared as a dark slow-moving smudge on the hazed horizon. Half the seventy were my men and half were Mercians. I had left my children in the village where Osferth and Beornoth were under orders to wait for our return.

aethelflaed insisted on riding with us. I tried to stop her, but she would take no orders from me. "This is my country," she said firmly, "and my people, and I need to see what is being done to them."

"Probably nothing," I said. Fires were frequent. Houses had thatched roofs and open hearths, and sparks and straw go ill together, but I still had a sense of foreboding that had made me dress in mail before we started this return journey. My first response on seeing the smoke had been to suspect Haesten and, though reflection made that explanation seem ever more unlikely, I could not lose the suspicion.

"There's no other smoke," Finan noted when we had retraced half our steps. Usually, if an army scavenges through a land, it fires every village, yet only the one dark smoke plume drifted skyward. "And Lecelad's a far way from East Anglia," he went on, "if that fire is in Lecelad."

"True enough," I grunted. Lecelad was a long way from Haesten's camp in Beamfleot, indeed so deep in Saxon country that any Danish army marching straight on Lecelad was putting itself in danger. None of it made sense, unless, as both Finan and I wanted to believe, it was simply an errant spark and dry thatch.

The fire was indeed at Lecelad. It took some time to be certain of that for the land was flat and our view was obscured by trees, but we had no doubts once we were close enough to see the heat s.h.i.+mmering amidst the smoke. We were following the river, but now I turned away so that we could approach the village from the north. That, I believed, would be the direction in which any Danes retreated and we might have a chance to intercept them. Reason still said this had to be a simple house fire, but my instincts were also p.r.i.c.kling uncomfortably.

We reached the northward road to see it had been churned by hooves. The weather had been dry, so the hoofprints were not distinct, but even at a glance I could tell they had not been left by Aldhelm's men who, just the day before, had used this same track to approach Lecelad. There were too many prints, and those that pointed northward had mostly obliterated the ones going south. That meant whoever had ridden to Lecelad had already ridden away.

"Been and gone," Father Pyrlig said. He was in his priestly robes, but had a big sword strapped at his waist.

"At least a hundred of them," Finan said, looking at the hoofprints that spread either side of the track.

I gazed northward, but could see nothing. If the raiding hors.e.m.e.n had still been close I would have seen dust hanging in the air, but the country was calm and green. "Let's see what the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds did," I said, and turned southward.

Whoever had come and gone, and I was certain it was Haesten's men, they had been swift. I guessed they had arrived at Lecelad at dusk, had done whatever damage they wanted and then left in the dawn. They knew they were dangerously deep in Saxon Mercia and so they had not lingered. They had struck fast, and even now they were hurrying back to safer ground while we rode into the ever thickening smell of wood smoke. Of wood smoke and of burning flesh.

The convent was gone, or rather it had been reduced to a blazing framework of oak beams that, as we approached, finally collapsed with a great crash that made my stallion rear in fright. Embers whirled upward in a great gout of wind-billowed smoke. "Oh, dear G.o.d," aethelflaed said, making the sign of the cross. She was gazing in horror at one section of the convent's palisade that had been spared the fire, and there, on the timbers, pinioned with widespread arms, was a small naked body. "No!" aethelflaed said and spurred her horse through the hot ash that had spread from the fire.

"Come back!" I shouted, but aethelflaed had thrown herself from her saddle to kneel at the foot of the corpse, a woman. It was Werburgh, the abbess, and she had been crucified on the palisade. Her hands and feet were pierced by great dark nails. Her small weight had torn the flesh, sinews, and bones about the great nails so that the wounds were stretched and rivulets of drying blood laced her pitifully thin arms. aethelflaed was kissing the abbess's nailed feet and resisted when I tried to pull her away. "She was a good woman, Uhtred," aethelflaed protested, and just then Werburgh's torn right hand ripped itself free of the nail and the corpse lurched and its arm swung down to strike aethelflaed's head. aethelflaed gave a small scream, then seized the ragged b.l.o.o.d.y hand and kissed it. "She blessed me, Uhtred. She was dead, but she blessed me! Did you see?"

"Come away," I said gently.

"She touched me!"

"Come away," I said again, and this time she let me draw her from the corpse and away from the heat of the fire just beyond.

"She must be buried properly," aethelflaed insisted and tried to pull from me to return to the corpse.

"She will be," I said, holding her.

"Don't let her burn!" aethelflaed said through tears, "she mustn't taste the fires of h.e.l.l, Uhtred! Let me spare her the fire!"

Werburgh was very close to the furnace heat that was scorching the farther side of the palisade that I knew would ignite at any moment. I pushed aethelflaed away, stepped back to Werburgh, and dragged her small body free of the remaining two nails. I draped her over my shoulder just as a gust of wind dipped a thick cloud of dark smoke to envelop me. I felt sudden heat on my back and knew the palisade had burst into flames, but Werburgh's body was safe. I laid her facedown on the river bank and aethelflaed covered the corpse with a cloak. The West Saxon troops, reinforced now to around forty men, gaped at us from the southern bank.

"Jesus, Patrick, and Joseph," Finan said as he approached me. He glanced at aethelflaed who was kneeling by the abbess's body and I sensed Finan did not want aethelflaed to hear whatever he had to say, so I led him down the river toward the mill that was also burning. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds dug up Aldhelm's grave," Finan said.

"I put him there," I said, "so I should worry what they did?"

"They mutilated him," Finan said angrily. "Took all his clothes, his mail, and cut up his corpse. There were pigs eating him when we found him." He made the sign of the cross.

I stared at the village. The church, convent, and mill had all been fired, but only two of the cottages had been burned, though doubtless all had been ransacked. The raiders had been in a hurry and had fired what was most valuable, but had not had the time to destroy the whole of Lecelad. "Haesten's a nasty creature," I said, "but mutilating a corpse and crucifying a woman? That isn't like him."

"It was Skade, lord," Finan said. He beckoned to a man dressed in a short mail coat and wearing a helmet that had rust on its riveted joints. "You! Come here!" he called.

The man knelt to me and clawed off his helmet. "My name's Cealworth, lord," he said, "and I serve Ealdorman aethelnoth."

"You're one of the sentries across the river?" I asked.

"Yes, lord."

"We brought him across the river in a boat," Finan explained. "Now tell the Lord Uhtred what you saw."

"It was a woman, lord," Cealworth said nervously, "a tall woman with long black hair. The same woman, lord," he stopped, then decided he had nothing more to say.

"Go on," I said.

"The same woman I saw at Fearnhamme, lord. After the battle."

"Stand up," I told him. "Are any villagers alive?" I asked Finan.

"Some," he said bleakly.

"A few swam the river, lord," Cealworth said.

"And the ones that live," Finan said, "all tell the same tale."

"Skade?" I asked.

The Irishman nodded. "It seems she led them, lord."

"Haesten wasn't here?"

"If he was, lord, then no one noticed him."

"The woman gave all the orders, lord," Cealworth said.

I stared northward and wondered what happened in the rest of Mercia. I was looking for the telltale plumes of smoke, but saw none. aethelflaed came to stand beside me and, without thinking, I put an arm about her shoulder. She did not move.

"Why did they come here?" Finan asked.

"For me," aethelflaed said bitterly.

"That would make sense, my lady," Finan said.

In a way it made sense. I did not doubt that Haesten would have sent spies into Mercia. Those spies would have been merchants or vagabonds, anyone with a reason to travel, and they would have told him aethelflaed was a prisoner in Lecelad, and aethelflaed would certainly make a powerful and useful hostage, but why send Skade to capture her? I thought, though I did not speak the thought aloud, that it was much more likely that Skade had come for my children. Haesten's spies would have learned that the three were with aethelflaed, and Skade hated me now. And when Skade hated there was no cruelty sufficient to slake her appet.i.te. I knew my suspicion was right and I shuddered. If Skade had come just two days earlier she would have taken my children and had me in her power. I touched Thor's hammer. "We bury the dead," I said, "then we ride." Just then a bee landed on my right hand that was still resting on aethelflaed's shoulder. I did not try to brush it off, for I did not want to take my arm away. I felt it first, then saw it crawling dozily toward my thumb. It would fly away, I thought, but then, for no reason, it stung me. I swore at the sudden pain and slapped the insect dead, startling aethelflaed.

"Rub an onion on the sting," she told me, but I could not be bothered to hunt for an onion, so I left it alone. I knew the sting was an omen, a message from the G.o.ds, but I did not want to think about it, for it could surely be no good sign.

We buried the dead. Most of the nuns had been shrunken to small burned corpses scarce bigger than children, and now they shared a grave with their crucified abbess. Father Pyrlig spoke words over their bodies, and then we rode westward again. By the time we discovered Osferth and Beornoth, their men, and my family, my hand was so swollen that I could scarcely fold the puffy fingers around the stallion's reins. I could certainly not hold a sword with any skill. "It'll be gone in a week," Finan said.

"If we have a week," I said gloomily. He looked at me quizzically, and I shrugged. "The Danes are on the move," I said, "and we don't know what's happening."

We were still traveling with my men's wives and families. They slowed us down, and so I left a score of men to guard them as they followed us, and hurried on toward Gleawecestre. We spent the night in the hills to the west of that city and, in the dawn, saw smears in the sky far to the east and north. There were too many to count and in places they joined together to make darker patches that might have been clouds, though I doubted it. aethelflaed saw them too and frowned. "My poor country," she said.

"Haesten," I said.

"My husband should have marched against them already," she said.

"You think he has?"

She shook her head. "He'll wait for Aldhelm to tell him what to do."

I laughed at that. We had reached the hills above the valley of the Saefern and I checked my horse to gaze down at my cousin's holdings that lay just south of Gleawecestre. aethelred's father had been content with a hall half the size that his son had built, and beside that new and magnificent hall were stables, a church, barns, and a ma.s.sive granary raised on stone mushrooms to keep the rats at bay. All the buildings, new and old, were surrounded by a palisade. We cantered down the hill. Guards stood on a timber platform above the gate, but they must have recognized aethelflaed because they made no attempt to challenge us, but just ordered that the great gates be pushed open.