The Flame Bearer (The Last Kingdom Series, Book 10) (20 page)

So all of us in Britain were waiting for news. It was a time of rumours, of whispered tales that were designed to mislead and that sometimes were true. A merchant selling fine leather promised me that the town reeve of Mældunesburh, Æthelhelm’s home town in Wiltunscir, had told him the ealdorman planned to invade Northumbria with or without King Edward’s help. A priest in far-off Contwaraburg wrote that Edward was making an alliance with Constantin whereby both men would invade Northumbria and divide the land between them. ‘I swear this,’ the priest wrote, ‘on the holy blood of Christ Himself, and assure you that the battles will begin on the Feast Day of Saint Gunthiern.’ Saint Gunthiern’s feast was already past when the letter reached Archbishop Hrothweard in Eoferwic, but still one of his clerks copied the words and gave them to my daughter, who, in turn, sent them to me.

In the end the news I wanted came from Merewalh who commanded Æthelflaed’s household warriors. Merewalh was an old friend and a loyal supporter of Æthelflaed, who, he wrote, had commanded him to tell me that supplies were being sent to the East Anglian port of Dumnoc where a fleet was being assembled. ‘She has this on the authority of Father Cuthwulf, who is mass priest to Lord Æthelhelm, and she prays you will not reveal his name, and Father Cuthwulf moreover tells her that if God wills it then the Lord Æthelhelm’s fleet will put to sea after the feast of Saint Eanswida.’

And that made sense. Saint Eanswida’s feast day was at the end of the harvest, a time when food was plentiful, and, if a man wanted to supply a besieged fortress with the food that would enable it to hold out for another year, then the late summer was the time to act. And of all the men in Britain who hated me, who wanted revenge on me, Æthelhelm was the most dangerous. I had always thought him the likeliest man to help my cousin, but I could not be sure until Merewalh’s letter arrived.

And so, leaving Sihtric and eighteen men to hold Dunholm, I moved the rest of my followers with all their wives, children, servants, and slaves to Eoferwic. We were going to Frisia, I told them, and then I took three men and went to Dumnoc instead.

I chose three Saxon Christians as my companions because I suspected that Dumnoc, an East Anglian town that was newly conquered by the West Saxons, might be in a vengeful mood against both Northmen and pagans. I took Cerdic, one of my older men who was slow of wit but loyal to a fault. Oswi was much younger, and had served me since he was a boy. Now he was a lithe and eager fighter. The third was Swithun, a West Saxon who looked angelic, had a quick smile and a ready laugh, but also had the sly instincts and nimble fingers of a thief.

The four of us took passage on a West Saxon ship that had berthed in Eoferwic with a cargo of Frankish glassware and was now returning to Lundene with her belly full of Northumbrian hides and silver bars. The shipmaster, Renwald, was glad of the gold we paid him and for our long knives, though he doubted I would be of much use in a fight. ‘But you other three look useful,’ he said.

Swithun grinned at him. ‘Grandpa can fight,’ he said, ‘I know he don’t look much, but he’s a scoundrel in a scrap. Aren’t you, grandpa!’ he shouted at me, ‘you’re a right old bastard in a bundle!’

Since I had received the news about Dumnoc I had stopped shaving. I no longer bothered to comb my hair. I wore the oldest, dirtiest clothes I could find, and, on arriving in Eoferwic, I had practised walking with a stoop. Finan and my son had both told me I was a fool, that I had no need to go to Dumnoc, and that either of them would gladly go in my place, but my life’s ambition depended upon what I would find in the East Anglian port, and I trusted no one but myself to travel there and discover what mischief was brewing.

‘Mind you,’ Renwald went on, ‘if we’re attacked by anything larger than a fishing boat, then your knives won’t make much difference.’ None of us carried swords or seaxes, only knives, because I did not want to announce to the men in Dumnoc that we were warriors.

‘Are there pirates?’ I mumbled.

‘What did he say?’

‘Speak up, grandpa!’ Swithun shouted.

‘Are there pirates?’ I half shouted back, making sure I dribbled into the white stubble on my chin.

‘He wants to know if there are pirates,’ Swithun told Renwald.

‘There are always pirates,’ Renwald said, ‘but they’re mostly small craft these days. I haven’t seen any Danish longships since King Edward captured the rest of East Anglia. God be praised.’

‘God be praised,’ I echoed piously, and made the sign of the cross. For this journey and for this cause, I was pretending to be a Christian, and even wore a crucifix instead of a hammer. I was also pretending that Swithun was my grandson, a pretence he had taken up with indecent enthusiasm.

Renwald, naturally, wanted to know where we had come from and why we were travelling, and Swithun spun a story about being driven from our land north of the wall. ‘It was the Scots,’ he said, spitting over the side of the ship.

‘I heard those scavenging bastards had come south,’ Renwald said. ‘So you were Bebbanburg’s tenants?’

‘Grandpa rented from the old Lord Uhtred,’ Swithun said, meaning my father. ‘He’s been on that land a lifetime, but his wife’s father had land in East Anglia, so we’re hoping it’s still there.’

Renwald doubted that any Saxon had held onto East Anglian land in the last years of Danish rule. ‘But you never know!’ he said, ‘a few did.’

‘I want to be buried there,’ I mumbled.

‘What did he say?’

‘He wants to be buried with his family,’ Swithun explained, then added, ‘silly old fool.’

‘I understand that!’ Renwald insisted. ‘Better to rise with your family on the day of judgement than with strangers.’

‘Amen,’ I growled.

The story satisfied Renwald. Not that he was suspicious, merely curious. We were journeying down the Use, letting the current carry us with just the occasional touch of an oar to keep the boat on course. She was named
Rensnægl
, ‘Because she’s slow as a snail,’ Renwald explained cheerfully. ‘She’s not quick, but she’s sturdy.’ He had a crew of six men, a large crew for a trading ship, but he often carried valuable cargo and he reckoned the extra hands were a worthwhile precaution against the small boats that preyed on passing vessels. He leaned on the steering-oar to take
Rensnægl
into the river’s centre where the current was strongest. ‘And there’ll be rich pickings soon,’ he said balefully.

‘Rich pickings?’ Cerdic asked.

‘Folk are leaving.’ He glanced up at the sky, judging the wind. ‘The days of the pagan in Britain are numbered,’ he said.

‘God be praised,’ I muttered.

‘Even Uhtred of Bebbanburg!’ Renwald sounded surprised. ‘No one thought he’d leave, but he’s got ships in Eoferwic and he’s brought his families there.’

‘I heard he bought the ships to go to Bebbanburg,’ Swithun offered.

‘No man takes his families to war,’ Renwald said scornfully. ‘No, he’s off and away! Going to Frisia, I hear.’ He pointed ahead. ‘That’s where we join the Humbre,’ he said, ‘be a quick voyage down to the sea now!’

It was my abandonment of Dunholm and the decision to move the women and children, much of the livestock, and all our goods that had given substance to the rumour that we were going to Frisia. My men had arrived in Eoferwic with fifteen ox-drawn wagons loaded with beds and spits, cauldrons and rakes, scythes and grindstones, indeed with anything we could carry. Renwald was right, of course, when he said that no man went to war with ships filled with women and children, let alone with all their household goods, and I was certain my cousin would soon hear that I had left the safety of Dunholm with everything I possessed. He needed to hear more though, he needed to hear we had enough ships to carry all the people, animals, and belongings we would take to Frisia.

So, before leaving Eoferwic, I had given my son more of my diminishing stock of gold coins, and told him to buy or hire as many large trading ships as he needed. ‘Put wooden stalls in the ships,’ I had told him, ‘enough for two hundred horses, and do the work at Grimesbi.’

‘Grimesbi!’ My son was surprised.

Grimesbi was a fishing port at the mouth of the Humbre, downriver from Eoferwic. It was a gaunt, windswept place, far less comfortable than Eoferwic, but also much closer to the sea. I still did not know how I was to recapture Bebbanburg, but the only thing I could be certain of was that my cousin was negotiating for a fleet to sail to his relief, and, if Merewalh’s message was true, then that fleet was assembling at Dumnoc. I now needed to know when it would sail and how many ships would make the passage. The priest who had betrayed Æthelhelm had said the fleet would not put to sea till after Saint Eanswida’s day, and that was still some weeks away, so I had time to explore the East Anglian port and plan how I would replace Æthelhelm’s ships with my own. And those ships, my ships, would be at Grimesbi, close to the sea, ready to sail to make my cousin’s nightmares real.

I did not doubt that my cousin would hear of our new ships and of the presence of our families, and by now, I suspected, he was beginning to believe the Frisian story. He must have reckoned that even I would not fight a war against both Bebbanburg and Constantin, that I had abandoned my dream. He would still want to know where I was and might be puzzled when I did not travel to Grimesbi with the rest of my men, but Sigtryggr and my daughter had announced that I was ill and lying in a sickbed in their palace.

When rumours fly, when false tales are being told, be the storyteller.

I was going to Dumnoc.

I had been to Dumnoc before, long ago, and had been trapped in its largest tavern, the Goose, and the only way to escape had been to start a fire that had caused panic in the town and had scattered the enemies who had surrounded the building. The fire had spread, eventually consuming most of the town. All that had been left was a few houses at the town’s edge and the tall, rickety platform from which folk had kept a look-out for enemy ships creeping through the treacherous sandbanks at the river’s mouth. I had expected Renwald to be cautious as we approached those notorious shoals, but he did not hesitate, aiming
Rensnægl
between the outermost withies that marked the channel. ‘They’ve taken away the false marks,’ he said.

‘False marks?’ Cerdic asked.

‘For years they had withies which were meant to mislead you. Now they mark the real channel. Row, boys!’ His men were hauling hard on the oars to bring
Rensnægl
safe through the outer shallows and to escape the freshening weather. The wind was gusting high to send white-crested waves scudding across the shoals. Clouds darkened the western sky, hiding the sun and promising foul weather. ‘My father,’ Renwald went on, ‘saw a fifty-oared dragon boat high and dry on that bank,’ he jerked his head south to where the white caps fretted across a bulge of hidden sand. ‘Poor bastards had gone aground at high tide. Spring tide at that. They followed the false marks and were rowing as if the devil himself was up their arse. Bastards spent a fortnight trying to get that thing to float again, but it never did. They either drowned or starved, and the townsfolk just watched them die. Nine or ten of them managed to swim ashore, and the reeve let the womenfolk kill them.’ He leaned on the steering-oar and
Rensnægl
veered up the main channel. ‘Of course that was the old days, before the Danes took the place.’

‘Now it’s Saxon again,’ I said.

‘What did he say?’ Renwald asked.

‘Speak up, grandpa!’ Swithun bellowed. ‘You’re muttering!’

‘Now it’s Saxon again!’ I shouted.

‘And pray God it stays that way,’ Renwald said.

The oarsmen pulled hard. The tide was ebbing and the sharp south-west wind buffeted
Rensnægl
’s bow. The small waves were spiteful and I did not envy men who were further out to sea in this rising wind. It would be a cold rough night. Renwald must have thought the same because he cocked an eye at the high scudding clouds that streamed from the darker clouds in the west. ‘Reckon I might lay up for a day or two,’ he said, ‘and let this weather pass. But it’s not a bad place to be stranded.’

The town looked much the same as it had before I burned it. It was still dominated by a church with a tower crowned by a cross. Guthrum had been King of East Anglia back then, and, though he was Danish, he had converted to Christianity. Smoke drifted from a score of fires on the muddy beach, either smoking tall racks of herrings or boiling wide, shallow salt pans. The nearest houses were built on sturdy wooden pillars, and green slime on the thick trunks showed that the highest tides almost reached the lower floors. The river’s bank was hidden by a long wharf and two piers, which in turn were crowded with ships. ‘Looks like Lundene!’ Renwald said in astonishment.

‘All sheltering from the weather?’ I suggested.

‘Most of them were here two months ago,’ he said, ‘ they brought supplies for King Edward’s army, but I’d have thought they’d have long ago returned to Wessex. Ah!’ This last exclamation was because he had seen an empty gap on the long wharf that stretched along the river’s southern bank. He pushed the loom of the steering-oar, and the
Rensnægl
turned slowly towards the space, but just then a man shouted from one of the two piers.

‘Not there!’ he shouted. ‘Not there! Sheer off, damn you! Sheer off!’

In the end we tied outboard of a Frisian trader moored along the western pier, and the man who had chased us away from the inviting space on the wharf clambered aboard to demand a berthing fee. Gulls screamed overhead, soaring and wheeling in the stiffening wind. ‘That gap’s for the king’s ship,’ the man explained, counting the silver that Renwald had given him.

‘The king is coming?’ Renwald asked.

‘We’re ordered to leave that wharf free in case he does come. He hasn’t yet, but he might. An angel might come and wipe my wife’s bum too, but that hasn’t happened yet either. Now, you’ve paid your wharfage, so let’s work out the customs’ dues, shall we? What’s your cargo?’

I left Renwald haggling and led my three men ashore. The Goose was still the largest building on the harbour front, and it looked much the same as it did before I had burned the old tavern, but the new one had been built to the same design, and its timbers had been bleached by sun and salt to the same silvery sheen. The tavern’s sign, which showed an indignant goose, swung and creaked in the wind. We pushed through the door into a crowded room, but found two benches with a barrel for a table by a window that had its shutters open to the wharf. It was still two hours till sundown, but the tavern was noisy with half-drunken men. ‘Who are they?’ Cerdic asked.