The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell
“Go jump in a shit pit,” I told him, then slammed the door. The other Danes, still drinking on the tavern’s far side, had watched the fight with amusement and now gave us ironic applause.
“Bastards,” Eanflæd said, evidently talking of the men we had driven away. “I’m sore as hell. What are you two doing here?”
“They think we’re Danes,” I said.
“We need food,” Leofric said.
“They’ve had most of it,” Eanflæd said, jerking her head at the seated Danes, “but there might be something left in the back.” She tied her girdle. “Edwulf’s dead.” Edwulf had owned the tavern. “And thanks for helping me, you spavined bastards!” She shouted this at the Danes, who did not understand her and just laughed at her. Then she went toward the back room to find us food, but one of the men held out a hand to stop her.
“Where are you going?” he asked her in Danish.
“She’s going past you,” I called.
“I want ale,” he said, “and you? Who are you?”
“I’m the man who’s going to cut your throat if you stop her fetching food,” I said.
“Quiet, quiet!” an older man said, then frowned at me. “Don’t I know you?”
“I was with Guthrum at Readingum,” I said, “and at Werham.”
“That must be it. He’s done better this time, eh?”
“He’s done better,” I agreed.
The man pointed at Iseult. “Yours?”
“Not for sale.”
“Just asking, friend, just asking.”
Eanflæd brought us stale bread, cold pork, wrinkled apples, and a rock-hard cheese in which red worms writhed. The older man carried a pot of ale to our table, evidently as a peace offering, and he sat and talked with me and I learned a little more of what was happening. Guthrum had brought close to three thousand men to attack Cippanhamm. Guthrum himself was now in Alfred’s hall and half his men would stay in Cippanhamm as a garrison while the rest planned to ride either south or east in the morning. “Keep the bastards on the run, eh?” the man said, then frowned at Leofric. “He doesn’t say much.”
“He’s dumb,” I said.
“I knew a man who had a dumb wife. He was ever so happy.” He looked jealously at my arm rings. “So who do you serve?”
“Svein of the White Horse.”
“Svein? He wasn’t at Readingum. Or at Werham.”
“He was in Dyflin,” I said, “but I was with Ragnar the Older then.”
“Ah, Ragnar! Poor bastard.”
“I suppose his son’s dead now?” I asked.
“What else?” the man said. “Hostages, poor bastards.” He thought for a heartbeat, then frowned again. “What’s Svein doing here? I thought he was coming by ship?”
“He is,” I said. “We’re just here to talk to Guthrum.”
“Svein sends a dumb man to talk to Guthrum?”
“He sent me to talk,” I said, “and sent him,” I jerked a thumb at the glowering Leofric, “to kill people who ask too many questions.”
“All right, all right!” The man held up a hand to ward off my belligerence.
We slept in the stable loft, warmed by straw, and we left before dawn, and at that moment fifty West Saxons could have retaken Cippanhamm for the Danes were drunk, sleeping, and oblivious to the world. Leofric stole a sword, ax, and shield from a man snoring in the tavern. Then we walked unchallenged out of the western gate. In a field outside we found over a hundred horses, guarded by two men sleeping in a thatched hut, and we could have taken all the beasts, but we had no saddles or bridles and so, reluctantly, I knew we must walk. There were four of us now, because Eanflæd had decided to come with us. She had swathed Iseult in two big cloaks, but the British girl was still shivering.
We walked west and south along a road that twisted through small hills. We were heading for Baðum, and from there I could strike south toward Defnascir and my son, but it was clear the Danes were already ahead of us. Some must have ridden this way the previous day, for in the first village we reached there were no cocks crowing, no sound at all, and what I had taken for a morning mist was smoke from burned cottages. Heavier smoke showed ahead, suggesting the Danes might already have reached Baðum, a town they knew well for they had negotiated one of their truces there. Then, that afternoon, a horde of mounted Danes appeared on the road behind us and we were driven west into the hills to find a hiding place.
We wandered for a week. We found shelter in hovels. Some were deserted while others still had frightened folk, but every short winter’s day was smeared with smoke as the Danes ravaged Wessex. One day we discovered a cow, trapped in its byre in an otherwise deserted homestead. The cow was with calf and bellowing with hunger, and that night we feasted on fresh meat. Next day we could not move for it was bitterly cold and a slanting rain slashed on an east wind and the trees thrashed as if in agony and the building that gave us shelter leaked and the fire choked us and Iseult just sat, eyes wide and empty, staring into the small flames.
“You want to go back to Cornwalum?” I asked her.
She seemed surprised I had spoken. It took her a few heartbeats to gather her thoughts. Then she shrugged. “What is there for me?”
“Home,” Eanflæd said.
“Uhtred is home for me.”
“Uhtred is married,” Eanflæd said harshly.
Iseult ignored that. “Uhtred will lead men,” she said, rocking back and forth, “hundreds of men. A bright horde. I want to see that.”
“He’ll lead you into temptation, that’s all he’ll do,” Eanflæd said. “Go home, girl, say your prayers, and hope the Danes don’t come.”
We kept trying to go southward and we made some small progress every day, but the bitter days were short and the Danes seemed to be everywhere. Even when we traveled across countryside far from any track or path, there would be a patrol of Danes in the distance, and to avoid them we were constantly driven west. To our east was the Roman road that ran from Baðum and eventually to Exanceaster, the main thoroughfare in this part of Wessex, and I supposed the Danes were using it and sending patrols out to either side of the road, and it was those patrols that drove us ever nearer the Sæfern Sea, but there could be no safety there, for Svein would surely have come from Wales.
I also supposed that Wessex had finally fallen. We met a few folk, fugitives from their villages and hiding in the woods, but none had any news, only rumor. No one had seen any West Saxon soldiers, no one had heard about Alfred, they only saw Danes and the ever-present smoke. From time to time we would come across a ravaged village or a burned church. We would see ragged ravens flapping black and follow them to find rotting bodies. We were lost and any hope I had of reaching Oxton was long gone, and I assumed Mildrith had fled west into the hills as the folk around the Uisc always did when the Danes came. I hoped she was alive, I hoped my son lived, but what future he had was as dark as the long winter nights.
“Maybe we should make our peace,” I suggested to Leofric one night. We were in a shepherd’s hut, crouched around a small fire that filled the low turf-roofed building with smoke. We had roasted a dozen mutton ribs cut from a sheep’s half-eaten corpse. We were all filthy, damp, and cold. “Maybe we should find the Danes,” I said, “and swear allegiance.”
“And be made slaves?” Leofric answered bitterly.
“We’ll be warriors,” I said.
“Fighting for a Dane?” He poked the fire, throwing up a new burst of smoke. “They can’t have taken all Wessex,” he protested.
“Why not?”
“It’s too big. There have to be some men fighting back. We just have to find them.”
I thought back to the long-ago arguments in Lundene. Back then I had been a child with the Danes, and their leaders had argued that the best way to take Wessex was to attack its western heartland and there break its power. Others had wanted to start the assault by taking the old kingdom of Kent, the weakest part of Wessex and the part that contained the great shrine of Cont
“And what happens to Mildrith if you join the Danes?” Leofric asked.
“She’ll have hidden,” I spoke dully and there was a silence, but I saw Eanflæd was offended and I hoped she would hold her tongue.
She did not. “Do you care?” she challenged me.
“I care,” I said.
Eanflæd scorned that answer. “Grown dull, has she?”
“Of course he cares.” Leofric tried to be a peacemaker.
“She’s a wife,” Eanflæd retorted, still looking at me. “Men tire of wives,” she went on and Iseult listened, her big dark eyes going from me to Eanflæd.
“What do you know of wives?” I asked.
“I was married,” Eanflæd said.
“You were?” Leofric asked, surprised.
“I was married for three years,” Eanflæd said, “to a man who was in Wulfhere’s guard. He gave me two children, then died in the battle that killed King Æthelred.”
“Two children?” Iseult asked.
“They died,” Eanflæd said harshly. “That’s what children do. They die.”
“You were happy with him,” Leofric asked, “your husband?”
“For about three days,” she said, “and in the next three years I learned that men are bastards.”
“All of them?” Leofric asked.
“Most.” She smiled at Leofric, then touched his knee. “Not you.”
“And me?” I asked.
“You?” She looked at me for a heartbeat. “I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could spit,” she said, and there was real venom in her voice, leaving Leofric embarrassed and me surprised. There comes a moment in life when we see ourselves as others see us. I suppose that is part of growing up, and it is not always comfortable. Eanflæd, at that moment, regretted speaking so harshly, for she tried to soften it. “I don’t know you,” she said, “except you’re Leofric’s friend.”
“Uhtred is generous,” Iseult said loyally.
“Men are usually generous when they want something,” Eanflæd retorted.
“I want Bebbanburg,” I said.
“Whatever that is,” Eanflæd said, “and to get it you’d do anything. Anything.”
There was silence. I saw a snowflake show at the half-covered door. It fluttered into the firelight and melted. “Alfred’s a good man.” Leofric broke the awkward silence.
“He tries to be good,” Eanflæd said.
“Only tries?” I asked sarcastically.
“He’s like you,” she said. “He’d kill to get what he wants, but there is a difference. He has a conscience.”
“He’s frightened of the priests, you mean.”
“He’s frightened of God. And we should all be that. Because one day we’ll answer to God.”
“Not me,” I said.
Eanflæd sneered at that, but Leofric changed the conversation by saying it was snowing, and after a while we slept. Iseult clung to me in her sleep and she whimpered and twitched as I lay awake, half dreaming, thinking of her words that I would lead a bright horde. It seemed an unlikely prophecy, indeed I reckoned her powers must have gone with her virginity, and then I slept, too, waking to a world made white. The twigs and branches were edged with snow, but it was already melting, dripping into a misty dawn. When I went outside I found a tiny dead wren just beyond the door and I feared it was a grim omen.
Leofric emerged from the hut, blinking at the dawn’s brilliance. “Don’t mind Eanflæd,” he said.
“I don’t.”
“Her world’s come to an end.”
“Then we must remake it,” I said.
“Does that mean you won’t join the Danes?”
“I’m a Saxon,” I said.
Leofric half smiled at that. He undid his breeches and had a piss. “If your friend Ragnar was alive,” he asked, watching the steam rise from his urine, “would you still be a Saxon?”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” I said bleakly. “Sacrificed to Guthrum’s ambition.”
“So now you’re a Saxon?”
“I’m a Saxon,” I said again, sounding more certain than I felt, for I did not know what the future held. How can we? Perhaps Iseult had told the truth and Alfred would give me power and I would lead a shining horde and have a woman of gold, but I was beginning to doubt Iseult’s powers. Alfred might already be dead and his kingdom was doomed, and all I knew at that moment was that the land stretched away south to a snow-covered ridgeline, and there it ended in a strange empty brightness. The skyline looked like the world’s rim, poised above an abyss of pearly light. “We’ll keep going south,” I said. There was nothing else to do except walk toward the brightness.
We did. We followed a sheep track to the ridgetop and there I saw that the hills fell steeply away, dropping to the vast marshes of the sea. We had come to the great swamp, and the brightness I had seen was the winter light reflecting from the long meres and winding creeks.
“What now?” Leofric asked, and I had no answer. So we sat under the berries of a wind-bent yew and stared at the immensity of bog, water, grass, and reeds. This was the vast swamp that stretched inland from the Sæfern, and if I was to reach Defnascir I either had to go around it or try to cross it. If we went around it then we would have to go to the Roman road, and that was where the Danes were, but if we tried to cross the swamp we would face other dangers. I had heard a thousand stories of men being lost in its wet tangles. It was said there were spirits there, spirits that showed at night as flickering lights, and there were paths that led only to quicksand or to drowning pools, but there were also villages in the swamp, places where folk trapped fish and eels. The people of the swamp were protected by the spirits and by the sudden surges in the tide that could drown a road in an eyeblink. Now, as the last snows melted from the reed banks, the swamp looked like a great stretch of waterlogged land, its streams and meres swollen by the winter rains, but when the tide rose it would resemble an inland sea dotted with islands. We could see one of those islands not so far off, and there was a cluster of huts on that speck of higher ground; that would be a place to find food and warmth if we could ever reach it. Eventually we might cross the whole swamp, finding a way from island to island, but it would take far longer than a day, and we would have to find refuge at every high tide. I gazed at the long, cold stretches of water, almost black beneath the leaden clouds that came from the sea, and my spirits sank for I did not know where we were going, or why, or what the future held.
It seemed to get colder as we sat, and then a light snow began drifting from the dark clouds. Just a few flakes, but enough to convince me that we had to find shelter soon. Smoke was rising from the nearest swamp village, evidence that some folk still lived there. There would be food in their hovels and a meager warmth. “We have to get to that island,” I said, pointing.
But the others were staring westward to where a flock of pigeons had burst from the trees at the foot of the slope. The birds rose and flew in circles. “Someone’s there,” Leofric said.
We waited. The pigeons settled in the trees higher up the hill. “Maybe it’s a boar?” I suggested.
“Pigeons won’t fly from a boar,” Leofric said. “Boars don’t startle pigeons, any more than stags do. There are folk there.”
The thought of boars and stags made me wonder what had happened to my hounds. Had Mildrith abandoned them? I had not even told her where I had hidden the remains of the plunder we had taken off the coast of Wales. I had dug a hole in a corner of my new hall and buried the gold and silver down by the post stone, but it was not the cleverest hiding place and if there were Danes in Oxton then they were bound to delve into the edges of the hall floor, especially if a probing spear found a place where the earth had been disturbed. A flight of ducks flew overhead. The snow was falling harder, blurring the long view across the swam
“Priests,” Leofric said.
There were a half dozen men off to the west. They were robed in black and had come from the trees to walk along the swamp’s margin, plainly seeking a path into its tangled vastness, but there was no obvious track to the small village on its tiny island and so the priests came nearer to us, skirting the ridge’s foot. One of them was carrying a long staff and, even at a distance, I could see a glint at its head and I suspected it was a bishop’s staff, the kind with a heavy silver cross. Another three carried heavy sacks. “You think there’s food in those bundles?” Leofric asked wistfully.
“They’re priests,” I said savagely. “They’ll be carrying silver.”
“Or books,” Eanflæd suggested. “Priests like books.”
“It could be food,” Leofric said, though not very convincingly.
A group of three women and two children now appeared. One of the women appeared to be wearing a swathing cloak of silver fur, while another carried the smaller child. The women and children were not far behind the priests, who waited for them, and then they all walked eastward until they were beneath us and there they discovered some kind of path twisting into the marshes. Five of the priests led the women into the swamp while the sixth man, evidently younger than the others, hurried back westward. “Where’s he going?” Leofric asked.
Another skein of ducks flighted low overhead, skimming down the slope to the long meres of the swamp. Nets, I thought. There must be nets in the swamp villages and we could trap fish and wildfowl. We could eat well for a few days. Eels, duck, fish, geese. If there were enough nets we could even trap deer by driving them into the tangling meshes.
“They’re not going anywhere,” Leofric said scornfully, nodding at the priests who had stranded themselves a hundred paces out in the swamp. The path was deceptive. It had offered an apparent route to the village, but then petered out amid a patch of reeds where the priests huddled. They did not want to come back and did not want to go forward, and so they stayed where they were, lost and cold and despairing. They looked as though they were arguing.