The Pale Horseman (39 page)

'God help the Danes,' Father Pyrlig had said when he saw the women gather, 'if that lot get
among them.'

He and I now trotted eastwards. I had horsemen ringing the column, riding on every
crest, staying in sight of each other, and ready to signal if they saw any sign of the enemy,
but there was none. We rode or marched under a spring sky, through a land bright with flowers,
and the priests and monks kept up their chanting, and sometimes the men behind, who followed
Alfred's two standard-bearers, would start singing a battle song.

Father Pyrlig beat his hand in time to the singing, then gave me a big grin. 'I expect
Iseult sings to you, doesn't she?'

'She does.'

'We Britons love to sing! I must teach her some hymns.' He saw my sour look and laughed.
'Don't worry, Uhtred, she's no Christian.'

'She isn't?' I asked, surprised.

'Well, she is, for the moment. I'm sorry you didn't come to her baptism. It was cold, that
water! Fair froze me!'

'She's baptised,' I said, 'but you say she's no Christian?'

'She is and she isn't,' Pyrlig said with a grin. 'She is now, see, because she's among
Christians. But she's still a shadow queen, and she won't forget it.'

'You believe in shadow queens?'

'Of course I do! Good God, man! She is one!' He made the sign of the cross.

'Brother Asser called her a witch,' I said, 'a sorceress.'

'Well he would, wouldn't he? He's a monk! Monks don't marry. He's terrified of women,
Brother Asser, unless they're very ugly and then he bullies them. But show him a pretty
young thing and he goes all addled. And of course he hates the power of women.'

'Power?'

'Not just tits, I mean. God knows tits are powerful enough, but the real thing. Power! My
mother had it. She was no shadow queen, mind you, but she was a healer and a scryer.'

'She saw the future?'

He shook his head. 'She knew what was happening far off. When my father died she suddenly
screamed. Screamed fit to kill herself because she knew what had happened. She was right, too.
The poor man was cut down by a Saxon. But she was best as a healer. Folk came to her from miles
around. It didn't matter that she was born a Saxon, they'd walk for a week to fetch the touch
of her hand. Me? I got it for free! She banged me about, she did, and I dare say I deserved it,
but she was a rare healer. And, of course, the priests don't like that.'

'Why not?'

'Because we priests tell folk that all power comes from God, and if it doesn't come from God
then it must be evil, see? So when folk are ill the church wants them to pray and to give the
priests money. Priests don't like it when they don't understand things, and they don't like
folk going to the women to be healed. But what else are folk to do? My mother's hand, God rest
her Saxon soul, was better than any prayer! Better than the touch of the sacraments! I
wouldn't stop folk going to see a healer. I'd tell them to!'

He stopped talking because I raised my hand. I had seen movement on a hillside to the
north, but it was only a deer. I dropped my hand and kicked the horse on.

'Now your Iseult,' Pyrlig went on, 'she's been raised with the power and she won't lose
it.'

'Didn't the baptism wash it out of her?'

'Not at all! It just made her a bit colder and cleaner. Nothing wrong with a scrub once or
twice a year.' He laughed. 'But she was frightened back there in the swamp. You were gone and
all around were Saxons and they were spitting that she was a pagan, so what did you think she
would do? She wants to be one of them, she wants folk to stop spitting at her, so she said she'd
be baptised. And maybe she really is a Christian? I'd praise God for that mercy, but I'd
rather praise him for making her happy.'

‘You don't think she is?'

'Of course she isn't! She's in love with you!' He laughed. 'And being in love with you means
living among the Saxons, doesn't it? Poor girl. She's like a beautiful young hind that finds
herself living among grunting pigs.'

'What a gift for words you have,' I said.

He laughed, delighted with his insult. 'Win your war, Lord Uhtred,' he said, 'then take her
away from us priests and give her lots of children. She'll be happy, and one day she'll be
truly wise. That's the women's real gift, to be wise, and not many men have it.'

And my gift was to be a warrior, though there was no fighting that day. We saw no Danes,
though I was certain they had seen us and that by now Guthrum would have been told that Alfred
had at last come from the swamp and was marching inland. We were giving him the
opportunity to destroy us, to finish Wessex, and I knew that the Danes would be readying
to march on us.

We spent that night in an earthen fort built by the old people, and next morning went north
and east through a hungry land. I rode ahead, going into the hills to look for the enemy, but
again the world seemed empty. Rooks flew, hares danced and cuckoos called from the woods that
were thick with bluebells, but there were no Danes. I rode along a high ridge, gazing
northwards, and saw nothing, and when the sun was at its height I turned east. There were ten
of us in my band and our guide was a man from Wiltunscir who knew the country and he led us
towards the valley of the Wilig where Egbert's Stone stands. A mile or so short of the
valley we saw horsemen, but they were to the south of us and we galloped across un-grazed
pastureland to find it was Alfred, escorted by Leofric, five soldiers and four
priests.

'Have you been to the stone?' Alfred called out eagerly as we closed on him.

'No, lord.'

'Doubtless there are men there,' he said, disappointed that I could not bring him
news.

'I didn't see any Danes either, lord.'

'It'll take them two days to organise,' he said dismissively. 'But they'll come! They'll
come! And we shall beat them!' He twisted in his saddle to look at Father Beocca, who was one
of the priests.

'Are you sore, father?'

'Mightily sore, lord.'

'You're no horseman, Beocca, no horseman, but it's not much farther. Not much farther,
then you can rest!' Alfred was in a feverish mood. 'Rest before we fight, eh! Rest and pray,
father, then pray and fight. Pray and fight!' He kicked his horse into a gallop and we
pounded after him through a pinkblossomed orchard and up a slope, then across a long hilltop
where the bones of dead cattle lay in the new grass. White mayflower edged the woods at the
foot of the hill and a hawk slanted away from us, sliding across the valley towards the
charred remains of a barn.

'It's just across the crest, lord!' my guide shouted at me.

'What is?'

'Defereal, lord!'

Defereal was the name of the settlement in the valley of the River Wilig where
Egbert's Stone waited, and Alfred now spurred his horse so that his blue cloak flapped behind
him. We were all galloping, spread across the hilltop, racing to be the first over the crest
to see the Saxon forces, then Father Beocca's horse stumbled. He was, as Alfred said, a bad
horseman, but that was no surprise for he was both lame and palsied, and when the horse tipped
forward Beocca tumbled from the saddle. I saw him rolling in the grass and turned my horse
back.

'I'm not hurt,' he shouted at me, 'not hurt! Not much. Go on, Uhtred, go on!'

I caught his horse. Beocca was on his feet now, limping as fast as he could to where Alfred
and the other horsemen stood in a line gazing into the valley beyond.

'We should have brought the banners,' Beocca said as I gave him his reins.

'The banners?'

'So the fyrd knows their king has come,' he said breathlessly. 'They should see his banners
on the skyline, Uhtred, and know he has come. The cross and the dragon, eh? In hoc signo!
Alfred will be the new Constantine, Uhtred, a warrior of the cross! In hoc signo, God be
praised, God be praised, God indeed be mightily praised.'

I had no idea what he meant, and nor did I care.

For I had reached the hilltop and could stare down into the long lovely valley of the
Wilig.

Which was empty.

Not a man in sight. Just the river and the willows and the water meadows and the alders
and a heron flying and the grass bending in the wind and the triple stone of Egbert on a slope
above the Wilig where an army was supposed to gather. And there was not one man there. Not one
single man in sight. The valley was empty.

The men we had brought from Æthelingaeg straggled into the valley, and with them now was
the fyrd of Sumorsaete. Together they numbered just over a thousand men, and about half were
equipped to fight in the shield wall while the rest were only good for shoving the front ranks
forward or for dealing with the enemy wounded or, more likely, dying.

I could not face Alfred's disappointment. He said nothing about it, but his thin face was
pale and set hard as he busied himself deciding where the thousand men should camp, and
where our few horses should be pastured. I rode up a high hill that lay to the north of the
encampment, taking a score of men including Leofric, Steapa and Father Pyrlig. The hill
was steep, though that had not stopped the old people from making one of their strange graves
high on the slope. The grave was a long mound and Pyrlig made a wide detour rather than ride
past it.

'Full of dragons, it is,' he explained to me.

'You've seen a dragon?' I asked.

'Would I be alive if I had? No one sees a dragon and lives!'

I turned in the saddle and stared at the mound. 'I thought folk were buried there?'

'They are! And their treasures! So the dragon guards the hoard. That's what dragons do.
Bury gold and you hatch a dragon, see?'

The horses had a struggle to climb the steep slope, but at its summit We were rewarded by
a stretch of firm turf that offered views far to the north. I had climbed the hill to watch for
Danes. Alfred might believe that it would be two or three days before we saw them, but I
expected their scouts to be close and it was possible that a war-band might try to harass
the men camping by the Wilig.

Yet I saw no one. To the north-east were great downs, sheep hills, while straight ahead was
the lower ground where the cloud shadows raced across fields and over blossoming mayflower
and darkened the bright green new leaves.

'So what happens now?' Leofric asked me.

'You tell me.'

'A thousand men? We can't fight the Danes with a thousand men.'

I said nothing. Far off, on the northern horizon, there were dark clouds.

'We can't even stay here!' Leofric said, 'so where do we go?'

'Back to the swamp?' Father Pyrlig suggested.

'The Danes will bring more ships,' I said, 'and eventually they'll capture the swamp. If
they send a hundred ships up the rivers then the swamp is theirs.'

'Go to Defnascir,' Steapa growled.

And the same thing would happen there, I thought. We would be safe for a time in Defnascir's
tangle of hills and woods, but the Danes would come and there would be a succession of little
fights and bit by bit Alfred would be bled to death. And once the Danes across the sea knew that
Alfred was pinned into a corner of Wessex they would bring more ships to take the good land
that he could not hold. And that, I thought, was why he had been right to try and end the war in
one blow, because he dared not let Wessex's weakness become known.

Except we were weak. We were a thousand men. We were pathetic. We were dreams fallen to
earth, and suddenly I began to laugh.

'What is it?' Leofric asked.

'I was thinking that Alfred insisted I learn to read,' I said, 'and for what?'

He smiled, remembering. It was one of Alfred's rules that every man who commanded
sizeable bodies of troops must be able to read, though it was a rule he had ignored when he
made Leofric commander of his bodyguard. It seemed funny at that moment. All that effort
so I could read his orders and he had never sent me one. Not one.

'Reading is useful,' Pyrlig said.

'What for?'

He thought about it. The wind gusted, flapping his hair and beard. 'You can read all those
good stories in the gospel-book,' he suggested brightly, 'and the saints' lives! How about
those, eh? They're full of lovely things, they are. There was Saint Donwen! Beautiful woman
she was, and she gave her lover a drink that turned him into ice.'

'Why did she do that?' Leofric asked.

'Didn't want to marry him, see?' Pyrlig said, trying to cheer us up, but no one wanted to
hear more about the frigid Saint Donwen so he turned and stared northwards. 'That's where
they'll come from, is it?' he asked.

'Probably,' I said, and then I saw them, or thought I did. There was a movement on the far
hills, something stirring in the cloud shadow and I wished Iseult was on the hilltop for she
had remarkable eyesight, but she would have needed a horse to climb to that summit and there
were no horses to spare for women. The Danes had thousands of horses, all the beasts they had
captured from Alfred at Cippanhamm, and all the animals they had stolen across Wessex, and
now I was watching a group of horsemen on that far hill. Scouts, probably, and they would have
seen us. Then they were gone. It had been a glimpse, no more, and so far away that I could not be
sure of what I had seen.

'Or perhaps they won't come at all,' I went on, 'perhaps they'll march around us. Capture
Wintanceaster and everywhere else.'

'The bastards will come,' Leofric said grimly, and I thought he was probably right. The
Danes would know we were here, they would want to destroy us, and after that all would be easy
for them.

Pyrlig turned his horse as if to ride back down to the valley, then paused. 'So it's
hopeless, is it?' he asked.

'They'll outnumber us four or five to one,' 1 said.

'Then we must fight harder!'

I smiled. 'Every Dane who comes to Britain, father,' I explained, 'is a warrior. The
farmers stay in Denmark, but the wild men come here. And us? We're nearly all farmers and it
takes three or four farmers to beat down a warrior.'