The Pagan Lord

PART TWO

Middelniht

Three

I love the whale’s path, the long waves, the wind flecking the world with blown spray, the dip of a ship’s prow into a swelling sea and the explosion of white and the spatter of saltwater on sail and timbers, and the green heart of a great sea rolling behind the ship, rearing up, threatening, the broken crest curling, and then the stern lifts to the surge and the hull lunges forward and the sea seethes along the strakes as the wave roars past. I love the birds skimming the grey water, the wind as friend and as enemy, the oars lifting and falling. I love the sea. I have lived long and I know the turbulence of life, the cares that weigh a man’s soul and the sorrows that turn the hair white and the heart heavy, but all those are lifted along the whale’s path. Only at sea is a man truly free.

It had taken six days to settle matters in Lundene, the chief of which was to find a place where my men’s families could live in safety. I had friends in Lundene and, though the Christians had sworn to break and kill me, Lundene is a forgiving city. Its alleys are places where foreigners can find refuge, and though there are riots and though the priests condemn other gods, most of the time the folk know to leave each other alone. I had spent many years in the city, I had commanded its garrison and rebuilt the Roman walls of the old town, and I had friends there who promised to look after our families. Sigunn wanted to come with me, but we were going to where the blades would draw blood and that was no place for a woman. Besides, I could not let her come if I forbade my men to bring their women, and so she stayed with a purse of my gold and a promise that we would return. We bought salt fish and salt meat, we filled the casks with ale and stowed them aboard Middelniht, and only then could we row downriver. I had left two of the older men to guard our families, but the four enslaved Frisians who had been part of Middelniht’s wrecked crew all joined me, and so I led thirty-five men downriver. We used the tide to carry us round the wide bends I knew so well, past the mudbanks where the reeds stirred and the birds cried, past Beamfleot where I had won a great victory that had inspired the poets and left the ditches red with blood, and then out to the wild wind and the endless sea.

We stranded Middelniht in a creek somewhere on the East Anglian coast and spent three days scraping her hull clean of weeds and scum. We did the work during the low tides, first scraping one side and recaulking the seams, then using a high tide to float her, spill her over and so expose her other flank. Then it was back to sea, rowing out of the creek to raise the sail and head her dragon prow northwards. We shipped the oars, letting an east wind drive us, and I felt the happiness I always felt when I had a good ship and a fast wind.

I made my son take the steering oar, letting him get used to the feel of a ship. At first, of course, he pushed or pulled the oar too far, or else he corrected too late and Middelniht lurched or yawed, losing speed, but by the second day I saw Uhtred smiling to himself and I knew that he could feel that long hull trembling through the oar’s loom. He had learned and knew the joy of it.

We spent the nights on land, nosing into a creek on some empty shore and pulling back to sea in the first light. We saw few ships other than fishing craft who, seeing our high prow, hauled their nets and rowed frantically towards the land. We slid past, ignoring them. On the third day I glimpsed a mast far to the east, and Finan, whose eyes were like a hawk’s, saw it at the same time and he opened his mouth to tell me, but I cautioned him to silence, jerking my head towards Uhtred in explanation. Finan grinned. Most of my men had also seen the distant ship, but they saw what I intended and kept quiet. Middelniht forged on and my son, the wind blowing his long hair about his face, gazed enraptured at the oncoming waves.

The distant ship drew nearer. She had a sail grey as the low clouds. It was a big sail, wide and deep, crossed with hemp lines to reinforce the weave. No trader, probably, but almost certainly another lean, fast ship made for fighting. My crew was now watching the ship, waiting for the first glimpse of her hull above the ragged horizon, but Uhtred was frowning at our sail’s trailing edge, which was fluttering. ‘Should we tighten it?’ he asked.

‘Good idea,’ I said. He half smiled, pleased at my approval, but then did nothing. ‘Give the order, you damned fool,’ I said in a tone that took the smile straight off his face. ‘You’re the steersman.’

He gave the order and two men tightened the sheet till the flutter vanished. Middelniht dipped into a trough, then reared her prow up a green wave and as we reached the top I looked eastwards and saw the prow of the approaching ship. It showed a beast’s head, high and savage. Then the ship vanished behind a screen of wind-blown spray. ‘What’s the first duty of a steersman?’ I asked my son.

‘To keep the ship safe,’ he answered promptly.

‘And how does he do that?’

Uhtred frowned. He knew he had done something wrong, but did not know what, and then, at last, he saw the crew staring fixedly towards the east and turned that way. ‘Oh God,’ he said.

‘You’re a careless fool,’ I snarled at him. ‘Your job is to keep a lookout.’ I could see he was angry at my public reproof, but he said nothing. ‘She’s a warship,’ I went on, ‘and she saw us a long time ago. She’s curious and she’s coming to smell us. So what do we do?’

He looked again at the ship. Her prow was constantly visible now, and it would not be long before we saw her hull. ‘She’s bigger than us,’ Uhtred said.

‘Probably, yes.’

‘So we do nothing,’ he said.

It was the right decision, one I had made just moments after seeing the far ship. She was curious about us and her course was converging on ours, but once she was close she would see we were dangerous. We were not a merchant ship loaded with pelts, pottery or anything else that could be stolen and sold, we were warriors, and even if her crew outnumbered us by two to one she would take casualties that no ship could afford. ‘We hold our course,’ I said.

Northwards. North to where the old gods still had power, north to where the world shaded into ice, north towards Bebbanburg. That fortress brooded over the wild sea like the home of a god. The Danes had taken all of Northumbria, their kings ruled in Eoferwic, yet they had never succeeded in capturing Bebbanburg. They wanted it. They lusted after it like a dog smelling a bitch in heat, but the bitch had teeth and claws. And I had one small ship, and dreamed of capturing what even whole armies of Danes could not conquer.

‘She’s East Anglian.’ Finan had come to stand beside me. The stranger was closing on us now, aiming her prow well ahead of ours, but angling towards us, and because she was the larger ship she was faster than Middelniht.

‘East Anglian?’

‘That’s not a dragon,’ Finan jerked his chin towards the ship, ‘it’s that weird thing King Eohric put on all his ships. A lion.’ Eohric was dead and a new king ruled in East Anglia, but perhaps he had kept the old symbol. ‘She’s got a full crew too,’ Finan went on.

‘Seventy men?’ I guessed.

‘Near enough.’

The other crew was dressed for battle in mail and helmets, but I shook my head when Finan asked if we should make similar preparations. They could see we were no merchantman. They might be trying to overawe us, but I still doubted they would try to trouble us, and there was small point in dressing for war unless we wanted battle.

The East Anglian ship was well sailed. She curved in close to us and then shook out her sail to slow the hull so that she kept pace with Middelniht. ‘Who are you?’ a tall man called across in Danish.

‘Wulf Ranulfson!’ I called back, inventing a name.

‘From where?’

‘Haithabu!’ I shouted. Haithabu was a town in southern Daneland, a long way from East Anglia.

‘What’s your business here?’

‘We escorted a pair of merchantmen to Lundene,’ I called, ‘and we’re going home. Who are you?’

He seemed surprised I had asked. He hesitated. ‘Aldger!’ he finally called. ‘We serve King Rædwald!’

‘May the gods grant him long life!’ I shouted dutifully.

‘You’re well to the west if you’re going to Haithabu!’ Aldger bellowed. He was right, of course. Had we been bound for southern Daneland we would have crossed the sea much further south and be feeling our way up the Frisian coast.

‘Blame this wind!’

He was silent. He watched us for a time, then gave the order for his sail to be sheeted home, and the larger ship drew ahead of us. ‘Who is Rædwald?’ Finan asked.

‘He rules in East Anglia,’ I said, ‘and from what I hear he’s old, sick and about as much use as a gelding in a whorehouse.’

‘And a weak king invites war,’ Finan said. ‘No wonder Æthelred is tempted.’

‘King Æthelred of East Anglia,’ I said scornfully, but doubtless my cousin wanted that title, though whether East Anglia would want him was another matter. It was a strange kingdom, both Danish and Christian, which was confusing, because most of the Danes worship my gods and the Saxons worship the nailed one, but the East Anglian Danes had adopted Christianity, which made them neither one thing nor the other. They were allies to both Wessex and to Northumbria, and Wessex and Northumbria were natural enemies, which meant that the East Anglians were trying to lick one arse while they kissed the other. And they were weak. The old King Eohric had tried to please the northern Danes by attacking Wessex, and he and many of his great thegns had died in a slaughter. That had been my slaughter. My battle, and the memory filled me with the rage of the betrayed. I had fought so often for the Christians, I had killed their enemies and defended their lands, and now they had spat me out like a scrap of rancid gristle.

Aldger crossed our bow. He deliberately swung his bigger ship close to us, perhaps wanting us to baulk at the last moment, but I growled at Uhtred to hold his course, and our bow sliced within a sword’s length of Aldger’s steering oar. We were close enough to smell his boat, even though he was upwind. I waved to him, then watched as he swung his bows northwards again. He kept pace with us, but I reckoned he was merely bored. He stayed with us for an hour or more, then the long ship turned away, the sail filled full from aft, and she sped off towards the distant land.

We stayed at sea that night. We were out of sight of land, though I knew it lay not far to our west. We shortened the great sail and let Middelniht plunge northwards through short, steep waves that spattered the deck with cold spray. I had the oar for most of the night and Uhtred crouched beside me as I told him tales of Grimnir, the ‘masked one’. ‘He was really Odin,’ I told him, ‘but whenever the god wanted to walk among humans he would wear his mask and take a new name.’

‘Jesus did that,’ he said.

‘He wore a mask?’

‘He walked amongst men.’

‘Gods can do whatever they want,’ I said, ‘but from here on we wear a mask too. You don’t mention my name or your name. I’m Wulf Ranulfson and you’re Ranulf Wulfson.’

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘You know where we’re going,’ I said.

‘Bebbanburg.’ He said the name flatly.

‘Which belongs to us,’ I said. ‘You remember Beocca?’

‘Of course.’

‘He gave me the charters,’ I said. Dear Father Beocca, so ugly, so crippled, and so earnest. He had been my childhood tutor, a friend to King Alfred, and a good man. He had died not long before and his twisted bones were buried in Wintanceaster’s church, close to the tomb of his beloved Alfred, but before he died he had sent me the charters that proved my ownership of Bebbanburg, though no man living needed to see a charter to know that I was the rightful lord of the fortress. My father had died while I was a child, and my uncle had taken Bebbanburg, and no amount of ink on parchment would drive him out. He had the swords and the spears, and I had Middelniht and a handful of men.

‘We’re descended from Odin,’ I told Uhtred.

‘I know, Father,’ he said patiently. I had told him of our ancestry so many times, but the Christian priests had made him suspicious of my claims.

‘We have the blood of gods,’ I said. ‘When Odin was Grimnir he lay with a woman, and we came from her. And when we reach Bebbanburg we shall fight like gods.’

It was Grimesbi that had made me think of Grimnir. Grimesbi was a village that lay not far from the open sea on the southern bank of the Humbre. Legend said that Odin had built a hall there, though why any god would choose to make a hall on that windswept stretch of marsh was beyond my imagining, but the settlement provided a fine anchorage when storms ravaged the sea beyond the river’s wide mouth.

Grimesbi was a Northumbrian town. There had been a time when the kings of Mercia ruled all the way to the Humbre, and Grimesbi would have been one of their most northerly possessions, but those days were long past. Now Grimesbi was under Danish rule, though like all sea ports it would welcome any traveller, whether he was Danish, Saxon, Frisian, or even Scottish. There was a risk putting into the small port because I did not doubt that my uncle would listen for any news of my coming northwards, and he would surely have men in Grimesbi who were paid to pass on news to Bebbanburg. Yet I also needed news, and that meant risking a landing in Grimesbi because the harbour was frequented by seamen, and some of them would surely know what happened behind Bebbanburg’s great walls. I would try to lessen the risk by emulating Grimnir. I would wear a mask. I would be Wulf Ranulfson out of Haithabu.

I gave my son the steering oar. ‘Should we go west?’ he asked.

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘We can’t see the land. How do we find Grimesbi?’

‘It’s easy,’ I said.

‘How?’

‘When you see two or three ships, you’ll know.’

Grimesbi was on the Humbre, and that river had been a path into central Britain for thousands of Danes. I was sure we would see ships, and so we did. Within an hour of Uhtred’s question we found six sailing westwards and two rowing eastwards, and their presence told me I had come to the place I wanted to be, to the sea-road that led from Frisia and Daneland to the Humbre. ‘Six!’ Finan exclaimed.

His surprise was somehow no surprise. All six ships travelling towards Britain were war boats, and I suspected all six were well crewed. Men were coming from across the sea because rumour said there were spoils to be won, or because Cnut had summoned them. ‘The peace is ending,’ I said.

‘They’ll be crying for you to return,’ Finan said.

‘They can kiss my pagan arse first.’

Finan chuckled, then gave me a quizzical glance. ‘Wulf Ranulfson,’ he said. ‘Why that name?’

‘Why not?’ I shrugged. ‘I had to invent a name, why not that one?’

‘Cnut Ranulfson?’ he suggested. ‘And Wulf? I just find it strange that you chose his name.’

‘I wasn’t thinking,’ I said dismissively.

‘Or you were thinking of him,’ Finan said, ‘and you think he’s marching south?’

‘He will be soon,’ I said grimly.

‘And they can kiss your pagan arse,’ he said. ‘What if the Lady Æthelflaed calls?’

I smiled, but said nothing. There was land in sight now, a grey line on a grey sea, and I took the steering oar from Uhtred. I had travelled the Humbre so often, yet I had never been into Grimesbi. We were still under sail, and Middelniht curved into the river mouth from the east, passing the long spit of sand that was called the Raven’s Beak. The seas broke white on that sand where the bones of ships were black and stark, but as we passed the tip of the beak the water settled and the waves were tamed and we were in the river. It was wide here, a vast expanse of grey water beneath a grey wind-scoured sky. Grimesbi lay on the southern shore. We took down the sail and my men grumbled as they pushed the oars into their tholes. They always grumbled. I have never known a crew not to grumble when asked to row, but they still pulled on the looms willingly, and Middelniht slid between the bare withies thrust as markers into the hidden mudbanks where fish traps were staked in long tangles of black nets, and then we were inside Grimesbi’s anchorage where there was a score of small fishing boats and a half-dozen larger ships. Two of the larger craft were like Middelniht, ships made for fighting, while the others were trading boats, all of them tied against a long wharf made of dark timbers. ‘The pier looks rotten,’ Finan observed.

‘It probably is,’ I said.

Beyond the pier was a small village, the wooden houses as dark as the wharf. Smoke rose along the muddy shore where fish were being smoked or salt was being boiled. There was a gap between two of the larger ships, a gap just wide enough to let Middelniht tie up to the wharf at the pier’s end. ‘You’ll never slide her into that hole,’ Finan said.

‘I won’t?’

‘Not without hitting one of the ships.’

‘It’ll be easy,’ I said. Finan laughed, and I slowed the oar-beat so that Middelniht crept through the water.

‘Two West Saxon shillings says you can’t do it without hitting one of those boats,’ Finan said.

‘Done,’ I held out a hand. He slapped it, and I ordered the oars shipped to let Middelniht’s small speed carry her into the gap. I could see no one ashore other than the small boys employed in scaring gulls away from the fish-drying racks, yet I knew we were being watched. It’s strange how much we care that we show seamanship. Men were judging us, even though we could not see them. Middelniht glided closer, her oars held aloft so their blades swayed against the grey sky, her prow heading for the stern of a long warship. ‘You’re going to hit her,’ Finan said happily.

I heaved on the steering oar, thrusting it hard, and if I had judged it right then we should slew round and the last of our momentum should carry Middelniht into the gap, though if I had judged it wrong we would either be left floating out of reach of the wharf or else would slam into its timbers with a hull-jarring crash, but Middelniht coasted into that space as sweetly as any sailor could wish and she was barely moving as the first man leaped up onto the wharf planks and took the thrown stern line. Another man followed, carrying the bow line, and the Middelniht’s flank kissed one of the pilings so gently that the hull barely quivered. I let go of the steering oar, grinned and held out a hand. ‘Two shillings, you Irish bastard.’

‘Just luck,’ Finan grumbled, taking the coins from his pouch.

The crew was grinning. ‘My name,’ I told them, ‘is Wulf Ranulfson, out of Haithabu! If you’ve never been to Haithabu say that I recruited you in Lundene.’ I pointed at my son. ‘He’s Ranulf Wulfson, and we’re provisioning here before going home across the sea.’

Two men were coming towards us along the rickety walkway that jutted to the wharf across a stretch of mud. Both were cloaked and both wore swords. I scrambled onto the planks and went to meet them. They looked relaxed. ‘Another rainy day!’ one of them greeted me.

‘It is?’ I asked. There was no rain, though the clouds were dark.

‘It will be!’

‘He thinks he can tell the weather from his bones,’ the other man said.

‘Rain and more rain coming,’ the first man said. ‘I’m Rulf, reeve of the town, and if your boat’s staying there you have to give me money!’

‘How much?’

‘All you’ve got would be nice, but we settle for a silver penny a day.’

So they were honest. I gave them two silver slivers cut from an arm ring, which Rulf pushed into a pouch. ‘Who’s your lord?’ I asked.