LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

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 thorn bushes into the tunnel of earth. Then she lay beside the boy and covered herself with my large cloak.

      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 grey 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 realised 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’s 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 defences. And for that I needed Æthelingæg.

      Alfred was recovering. He was still sick, but he saw God’s favour 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 otterskin 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 down river. And then I want a bridge leading to the fort, a bridge strong enough to stop ships.’

      ‘You

Скачать книгу