‘Stop rowing!’ I shouted.
We had dragged the swamped boat with us, though most of the broken hull, weighted down by ballast stones, had gone to the sea’s bed where the monsters lurk. The sail was gone; there was only shattered wood, an empty wicker fish basket, and one man splashing desperately, flailing in the heaving seas to reach
Middelniht
’s side.
‘He’s one of the men who was with Father Byrnjolf,’ Finan said.
‘You recognise him?’
‘That flattened nose?’
The man reached up to grasp an oar, then pulled himself towards our flank, and Finan stooped to pick up an axe. He looked at me, I nodded, and the axe blade caught the moonlight as it slashed down. There was the butcher’s sound and a spray of blood, black as the land, from the shattered skull, then the man drifted away.
‘Hoist the sail,’ I said, and, when the oars were stowed and the sail drawing, I turned
Middelniht
’s bows north again.
The
Middelniht
had killed our enemies in the middle of the night, and now we were going to Bebbanburg. Ælfric’s nightmare was coming true.
Four
The weather calmed in the night and that was not what I wanted.
Nor did I want to remember the face of that fisherman with his flattened nose and the scars on his sun-darkened cheek, and how his eyes had looked up, desperate, pleading and vulnerable, and how we had killed him, and how his black blood had sprayed the black night and vanished in the swirl of black water beside
Middelniht
’s hull. We are cruel people.
Hild, whom I had loved and who had been an abbess in Wessex and a good Christian, had so often spoken wistfully of peace. She had called her god the ‘prince of peace’ and tried to persuade me that if only the worshippers of the real gods would acknowledge her nailed prince then there would be perpetual peace. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ she liked to tell me, and she would have been pleased these last few years because Britain had known its uneasy peace. The Danes had done little more than raid for cattle, sometimes for slaves, and the Welsh and Scots had done the same, but there had been no war. That was why my son had not stood in the shield wall, because there had been no shield walls. He had practised time and again, day after day, but practice is not the real thing, practice is not the bowel-loosening terror of facing a mead-crazed maniac who is within arm’s length and carrying a lead-weighted war axe.
And some men had preached that the peace of these last few years was the Christian god’s will, and that we should be glad because our children could grow without fear and what we sowed we could harvest, and that it was only during a time of peace that the Christian priests could preach their message to the Danes, and that when that work was done we would all live in a Christian world of love and friendship.
But it had not been peace.
Some of it was exhaustion. We had fought and fought, and the last battle, a welter of blood-letting in the winter marshland of East Anglia, where King Eohric had died and Æthelwold the Pretender had died and Sigurd Thorrson’s son had died, that battle had been a slaughter so great it had slaked the appetite for more battle. Yet it had changed little. The north and east were still Danish, and the south and west still Saxon. All those graves had yielded little land for either side. And Alfred, who wanted peace, but had known there could be no peace while two tribes fought for the same pastures, had died. Edward, his son, was king in Wessex, and Edward was content to let the Danes live in peace. He wanted what his father had wanted, all the Saxons living under one crown, but he was young, he was nervous of failure, and he was wary of those older men who had advised his father, and so he listened to the priests who told him to hold hard to what he possessed and to let the Danes stay where they were. In the end, the priests said, the Danes would become Christians and we should all love one
We had dragged the swamped boat with us, though most of the broken hull, weighted down by ballast stones, had gone to the sea’s bed where the monsters lurk. The sail was gone; there was only shattered wood, an empty wicker fish basket, and one man splashing desperately, flailing in the heaving seas to reach
Middelniht
’s side.
‘He’s one of the men who was with Father Byrnjolf,’ Finan said.
‘You recognise him?’
‘That flattened nose?’
The man reached up to grasp an oar, then pulled himself towards our flank, and Finan stooped to pick up an axe. He looked at me, I nodded, and the axe blade caught the moonlight as it slashed down. There was the butcher’s sound and a spray of blood, black as the land, from the shattered skull, then the man drifted away.
‘Hoist the sail,’ I said, and, when the oars were stowed and the sail drawing, I turned
Middelniht
’s bows north again.
The
Middelniht
had killed our enemies in the middle of the night, and now we were going to Bebbanburg. Ælfric’s nightmare was coming true.
Four
The weather calmed in the night and that was not what I wanted.
Nor did I want to remember the face of that fisherman with his flattened nose and the scars on his sun-darkened cheek, and how his eyes had looked up, desperate, pleading and vulnerable, and how we had killed him, and how his black blood had sprayed the black night and vanished in the swirl of black water beside
Middelniht
’s hull. We are cruel people.
Hild, whom I had loved and who had been an abbess in Wessex and a good Christian, had so often spoken wistfully of peace. She had called her god the ‘prince of peace’ and tried to persuade me that if only the worshippers of the real gods would acknowledge her nailed prince then there would be perpetual peace. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ she liked to tell me, and she would have been pleased these last few years because Britain had known its uneasy peace. The Danes had done little more than raid for cattle, sometimes for slaves, and the Welsh and Scots had done the same, but there had been no war. That was why my son had not stood in the shield wall, because there had been no shield walls. He had practised time and again, day after day, but practice is not the real thing, practice is not the bowel-loosening terror of facing a mead-crazed maniac who is within arm’s length and carrying a lead-weighted war axe.
And some men had preached that the peace of these last few years was the Christian god’s will, and that we should be glad because our children could grow without fear and what we sowed we could harvest, and that it was only during a time of peace that the Christian priests could preach their message to the Danes, and that when that work was done we would all live in a Christian world of love and friendship.
But it had not been peace.
Some of it was exhaustion. We had fought and fought, and the last battle, a welter of blood-letting in the winter marshland of East Anglia, where King Eohric had died and Æthelwold the Pretender had died and Sigurd Thorrson’s son had died, that battle had been a slaughter so great it had slaked the appetite for more battle. Yet it had changed little. The north and east were still Danish, and the south and west still Saxon. All those graves had yielded little land for either side. And Alfred, who wanted peace, but had known there could be no peace while two tribes fought for the same pastures, had died. Edward, his son, was king in Wessex, and Edward was content to let the Danes live in peace. He wanted what his father had wanted, all the Saxons living under one crown, but he was young, he was nervous of failure, and he was wary of those older men who had advised his father, and so he listened to the priests who told him to hold hard to what he possessed and to let the Danes stay where they were. In the end, the priests said, the Danes would become Christians and we should all love one
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