The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell
I went away, returning to the smaller island where Alfred sheltered and where Edward lay dying. It was nightfall and the bishop’s prayers to Saint Agnes had failed. Eanflæd told me how Alewold had persuaded Alfred to give up one of his most precious relics, a feather from the dove that Noah had released from the ark. Alewold cut the feather into two parts, returning one part to the king, while the other was scorched on a clean pan. When it was reduced to ash, the scraps were stirred into a cup of holy water, which Ælswith forced her son to drink. He had been wrapped in lambskin, for the lamb was the symbol of Saint Agnes who had been a child martyr in Rome.
But neither feather nor lambskin had worked. If anything, Eanflæd said, the boy was worse. Alewold was praying over him now. “He’s given him the last rites,” Eanflæd said. She looked at me with tears in her eyes. “Can Iseult help?”
“The bishop won’t allow it,” I said.
“He won’t allow it?” she asked indignantly. “He’s not the one who’s dying!”
So Iseult was summoned, and Alfred came from the hut and Alewold, scenting heresy, came with him. Edward was coughing again, the sound terrible in the evening silence. Alfred flinched at the noise, then demanded to know if Iseult could cure his son’s illness.
Iseult did not reply at once. Instead she turned and gazed across the swamp to where the moon rose above the mists. “The moon gets bigger,” she said.
“Do you know a cure?” Alfred pleaded.
“A growing moon is good,” Iseult said dully, then turned on him. “But there will be a price.”
“Whatever you want!” he said.
“Not a price for me,” she said, irritated that he had misunderstood her. “But there’s always a price. One lives? Another must die.”
“Heresy!” Alewold intervened.
I doubt Alfred understood Iseult’s last three words, or did not care what she meant. He only snatched the tenuous hope that perhaps she could help. “Can you cure my son?” he demanded.
She paused, then nodded. “There is a way,” she said.
“What way?”
“My way.”
“Heresy!” Alewold warned again.
“Bishop!” Eanflæd said warningly, and the bishop looked abashed and fell silent.
“Now?” Alfred demanded of Iseult.
“Tomorrow night,” Iseult said. “It takes time. There are things to do. If he lives till nightfall tomorrow I can help. You must bring him to me at moonrise.”
“Not tonight?” Alfred pleaded.
“Tomorrow,” Iseult said firmly.
“Tomorrow is the Feast of Saint Vincent,” Alfred said, as though that might help, and somehow the child survived that night. Next day, Saint Vincent’s Day, Iseult went with me to the eastern shore where we gathered lichen, burdock, celandine, and mistletoe. She would not let me use metal to scrape the lichen or cut the herbs, and before any was collected we had to walk three times around the plants, which, because it was winter, were poor and shriveled things. She also made me cut thorn boughs, and I was allowed to use a knife for that because the thorns were evidently not as important as the lichen or herbs. I watched the skyline as I worked, looking for any Danes, but if they patrolled the edge of the swamp none appeared that day. It was cold, a gusting wind clutching at our clothes. It took a long time to find the plants Iseult needed, but at last her pouch was full and I dragged the thornbushes back to the island and took them into the hut where she instructed me to dig two holes in the floor. “They must be as deep as the child is tall,” she said, “and as far apart from each other as the length of your forearm.”
She would not tell me what the pits were for. She was subdued, very close to tears. She hung the celandine and burdock from a roof beam, then pounded the lichen and the mistletoe into a paste that she moistened with spittle and urine, and she chanted long charms in her own language over the shallow wooden bowl. It all took a long time and sometimes she just sat exhausted in the darkness beyond the hearth and rocked to and fro. “I don’t know that I can do it,” she said once.
“You can try,” I said helplessly.
“And if I fail,” she said, “they will hate me more than ever.”
“They don’t hate you,” I said.
“They think I am a sinner and a pagan,” she said, “and they hate me.”
“So cure the child,” I said, “and they will love you.”
I could not dig the pits as deep as she wanted, for the soil became ever wetter and, just a couple of feet down, the two holes were filling with brackish water. “Make them wider,” Iseult ordered me, “wide enough so the child can crouch in them.” I did as she said, and then she made me join the two holes by knocking a passage in the damp earth wall that divided them. That had to be done carefully to ensure that an arch of soil remained to leave a tunnel between the holes. “It is wrong,” Iseult said, not talking of my excavation, but of the charm she planned to work. “Someone will die, Uhtred. Somewhere a child will die so this one will live.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Because my twin died when I was born,” she said, “and I have his power. But if I use it he reaches from the dark world and takes the power back.”
Darkness fell and the boy went on coughing, though to my ears it sounded feebler now, as though there was not enough life left in his small body. Alewold was praying still. Iseult crouched in the door of our hut, staring into the rain, and when Alfred came close she waved him away.
“He’s dying,” the king said helplessly.
“Not yet,” Iseult said, “not yet.”
Edward’s breath rasped. We could all hear it, and we all thought every harsh breath would be his last, and still Iseult did not move, and then at last a rift showed in the rain clouds and a feeble wash of moonlight touched the marsh and she told me to fetch the boy.
Ælswith did not want Edward to go. She wanted him cured, but when I said Iseult insisted on working her charms alone, Ælswith wailed that she did not want her son to die apart from his mother. Her crying upset Edward, who began to cough again. Eanflæd stroked his forehead. “Can she do it?” she demanded of me.
“Yes,” I said and did not know if I spoke the truth.
Eanflæd took hold of Ælswith’s shoulders. “Let the boy go, my lady,” she said. “Let him go.”
“He’ll die!”
“Let him go,” Eanflæd said, and Ælswith collapsed into the whore’s arms and I picked up Alfred’s son, who felt as light as the feather that had not cured him. He was hot, yet shivering, and I wrapped him in a wool robe and carried him to Iseult.
“You can’t stay here,” she told me. “Leave him with me.”
I waited with Leofric in the dark. Iseult insisted we could not watch through the hut’s entrance, but I dropped my helmet outside the door and, by crouching under the eaves, I could just see a reflection of what happened inside. The small rain died and the moon grew brighter.
The boy coughed. Iseult stripped him naked and rubbed her herb paste on his chest, and then she began to chant in her own tongue, an endless chant it seemed, rhythmic, sad, and so monotonous that it almost put me to sleep. Edward cried once, and the crying turned to coughing and his mother screamed from her hut that she wanted him back, and Alfred calmed her and then came to join us and I waved him down so that he would not shadow the moonlight before Iseult’s door.
I peered at the helmet and saw, in the small reflected firelight, that Iseult, naked herself now, was pushing the boy into one of the pits and then, still chanting, she drew him through the earth passage. Her chanting stopped and, instead, she began to pant, then scream, then pant again. She moaned, and Alfred made the sign of the cross, and then there was silence and I could not see properly, but suddenly Iseult cried aloud, a cry of relief, as if a great pain was ended, and I dimly saw her pull the naked boy out of the second pit. She laid him on her bed and he was silent as she crammed the thornbushes into the tunnel of earth. Then she lay beside the boy and covered h
There was silence. I waited and waited, and still there was silence. And the silence stretched until I understood that Iseult was sleeping, and the boy was sleeping, too, or else he was dead, and I picked up the helmet and went to Leofric’s hut. “Shall I fetch him?” Alfred asked nervously.
“No.”
“His mother—” he began.
“Must wait till morning, lord.”
“What can I tell her?”
“That her son is not coughing, lord.”
Ælswith screamed that Edward was dead, but Eanflæd and Alfred calmed her, and we all waited, and still there was silence, and in the end I fell asleep.
I woke in the dawn. It was raining as if the world was about to end, a torrential gray rain that swept in vast curtains from the Sæfern Sea, a rain that drummed on the ground and poured off the reed thatch and made streams on the small island where the little huts crouched. I went to the door of Leofric’s shelter and saw Ælswith watching from her doorway. She looked desperate, like a mother about to hear that her child had died, and there was nothing but silence from Iseult’s hut, and Ælswith began to weep, the terrible tears of a bereaved mother, and then there was a strange sound. At first I could not hear properly, for the seething rain was loud, but then I realized the sound was laughter. A child’s laughter, and a heartbeat later Edward, still naked as an egg, and all muddy from his rebirth through the earth passage, ran from Iseult’s hut and went to his mother.
“Dear God,” Leofric said.
Iseult, when I found her, was weeping and would not be consoled. “I need you,” I told her harshly.
She looked up at me. “Need me?”
“To build a bridge.”
She frowned. “You think a bridge can be made with spells?”
“My magic this time,” I said. “I want you healthy. I need a queen.”
She nodded. And Edward, from that day forward, thrived.
The first men came, summoned by the priests I had sent onto the mainland. They came in ones and twos, struggling through the winter weather and the swamp, bringing tales of Danish raids, and when we had two days of sunshine they came in groups of six or seven so that the island became crowded. I sent them out on patrol, but ordered none to go too far west for I did not want to provoke Svein, whose men were camped beside the sea. He had not attacked us yet, which was foolish of him, for he could have brought his ships up the rivers and then struggled through the marsh, but I knew he would attack us when he was ready, and so I needed to make our defenses. And for that I needed Æthelingæg.
Alfred was recovering. He was still sick, but he saw God’s favor in his son’s recovery and it never occurred to him that it had been pagan magic that caused the recovery. Even Ælswith was generous and, when I asked her for the loan of her silver fox-fur cloak and what few jewels she possessed, she yielded them without fuss. The fur cloak was dirty, but Eanflæd brushed and combed it.
There were over twenty men on our island now, probably enough to capture Æthelingæg from its sullen headman, but Alfred did not want the marshmen killed. They were his subjects, he said, and if the Danes attacked they might yet fight for us, which meant the large island and its village must be taken by trickery and so, a week after Edward’s rebirth, I took Leofric and Iseult south to Haswold’s settlement. Iseult was dressed in the silver fur and had a silver chain in her hair and a great garnet brooch at her breast. I had brushed her hair till it shone and in that winter’s gloom she looked like a princess come from the bright sky.
Leofric and I, dressed in mail and helmets, did nothing except walk around Æthelingæg, but after a while a man came from Haswold and said the chieftain wished to talk with us. I think Haswold expected us to go to his stinking hut, but I demanded he come to us instead. He could have taken from us whatever he wanted, of course, for there were only the three of us and he had his men, including Eofer the archer, but Haswold had at last understood that dire things were happening in the world beyond the swamp and that those events could pierce even his watery fastness, and so he chose to talk. He came to us at the settlement’s northern gate, which was nothing more than a sheep hurdle propped against decaying fish traps and there, as I expected, he gazed at Iseult as though he had never seen a woman before. His small cunning eyes flickered at me and back to her. “Who is she?” he asked.
“A companion,” I said carelessly. I turned to look at the sudden steep hill across the river where I wanted the fort made.
“Is she your wife?” Haswold asked.
“A companion,” I said again. “I have a dozen like her,” I added.
“I will pay you for her,” Haswold said. A score of men were behind him, but only Eofer was armed with anything more dangerous than an eel spear.
I turned Iseult to face him; then I stood behind her and put my hands over her shoulders and undid the big garnet brooch. She shivered slightly and I whispered that she was safe and, when the brooch pin slid out of the heavy hide, I pulled her fur cloak apart. I showed her nakedness to Haswold and he dribbled into his fish-scaled beard and his dirty fingers twitched in his foul otter-skin furs, and then I closed the cloak and let Iseult fasten the brooch. “How much will you pay me?” I asked him.
“I can just take her,” Haswold said, jerking his head at his men.
I smiled at that. “You could,” I said, “but many of you will die before we die, and our ghosts will come back to kill your women and make your children scream. Have you not heard that we have a witch with us? You think your weapons can fight magic?”
None of them moved.
“I have silver,” Haswold said.
“I don’t need silver,” I said. “What I want is a bridge and a fort.” I turned and pointed to the hill across the river. “What is that hill called?”
He shrugged. “The hill,” he said, “just the hill.”
“It must become a fort,” I said, “and it must have walls of logs and a gate of logs and a tower so that men can see a long way downriver. And then I want a bridge leading to the fort, a bridge strong enough to stop ships.”
“You want to stop ships?” Haswold asked. He scratched his groin and shook his head. “Can’t build a bridge.”
“Why not?”
“Too deep.” That was probably true. It was low tide now and the Pedredan flowed sullenly between steep and deep mud banks. “But I can block the river,” Haswold went on, his eyes still on Iseult.
“Block the river,” I said, “and build a fort.”
“Give her to me,” Haswold promised, “and you will have both.”
“Do what I want,” I said, “and you can have her, her sisters, and her cousins. All twelve of them.”
Haswold would have drained the whole swamp and built a new Jerusalem for the chance to hump Iseult, but he had not thought beyond the end of his prick. But that was far enough for me, and I have never seen work done so quickly. It was done in days. He blocked the river first and did it cleverly by making a floating barrier of logs and felled trees, complete with their tangling branches, all of them lashed together with goat-hide ropes. A ship’s crew could eventually dismantle such a barrier, but not if they were being assailed by spears and arrows from the fort on the hill that had a wooden palisade, a flooded ditch, and a flimsy tower made of alder logs bound together with leather ropes. It was all crude work, but the wall was solid enough, and I began to fear that the small fort would be finished before enough West Saxons arrived to garrison it, but the three priests were doing their job and the soldiers still came, and I put a score of them in Æthelingæg and told them to help finish the fort.
When the work was done, or nearly done, I took Iseult back to Æthelingæg and I dressed her as she had been dressed before, only this time she wore a deerskin tunic beneath the precious fur, and I stood her in the center of the village and said Haswold could take her. He looked at me warily, then looked at her. “She’s mine?” he asked.
“All yours,” I said, and stepped away fr
“And her sisters?” he asked greedily. “Her cousins?”
“I shall bring them tomorrow.”
He beckoned Iseult toward his hut. “Come,” he said.
“In her country,” I said, “it is the custom for the man to lead the woman to his bed.”
He stared at Iseult’s lovely, dark-eyed face above the swathing silver cloak. I stepped farther back, abandoning her, and he darted forward, reaching for her, and she brought her hands out from under the thick fur and she was holding Wasp-Sting and its blade sliced up into Haswold’s belly. She gave a cry of horror and surprise as she brought the blade up, and I saw her hesitate, shocked by the effort required to pierce a man’s belly and by the reality of what she had done. Then she gritted her teeth and ripped the blade hard, opening him up like a gutted carp, and he gave a strange mewing cry as he staggered back from her vengeful eyes. His intestines spilled into the mud, and I was beside her then with Serpent-Breath drawn. She was gasping, trembling. She had wanted to do it, but I doubted she would want to do it again.
“You were asked,” I snarled at the villagers, “to fight for your king.” Haswold was on the ground, twitching, his blood soaking his otter-skin clothes. He made a mewing noise and one of his filthy hands scrabbled among his own spilled guts. “For your king!” I repeated. “When you are asked to fight for your king it is not a request, but a duty! Every man here is a soldier and your enemy is the Danes and if you will not fight them, then you will fight against me!”
Iseult still stood beside Haswold, who jerked like a dying fish. I edged her away and stabbed Serpent-Breath down to slit his throat. “Take his head,” she told me.
“His head?”
“Strong magic.”
We mounted Haswold’s head on the fort wall so that it stared toward the Danes, and in time eight more heads appeared there. They were the heads of Haswold’s chief supporters, murdered by the villagers who were glad to be rid of them. Eofer, the archer, was not one of them. He was a simpleton, incapable of speaking sense, though he grunted and, from time to time, made howling noises. He could be led by a child, but when asked to use his bow he proved to have a terrible strength and uncanny accuracy. He was Æthelingæg’s hunter, capable of dropping a full-grown boar at a hundred paces, and that was what his name meant: boar.