LITMIR.BIZ

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of pennies to a hoard worthy of the gods. Alfred sent a message to Guthrum, demanding to know why he should not slaughter the hostages he held, and Guthrum sent him a present of gold, two captured gospel books and a grovelling letter in which he claimed that the two ships had not been from his forces, but were pirates from beyond the sea. Alfred believed him and so the hostages lived and the peace prevailed, but Alfred commanded that a curse should be pronounced on Svein in every church of Wessex. The Danish chieftain was to be damned through all eternity, his men were to burn in the fires of hell and his children, and his children’s children, were all to bear the mark of Cain. I asked a priest what the mark was, and he explained that Cain was the son of Adam and Eve and the first murderer, but he did not know what mark he had carried. He thought God would recognise it.

      So Svein’s two ships sailed away, leaving a pillar of smoke on the Wessex shore, and I knew none of it. In time I would know all of it, but for now I was going home.

      We went slowly, sheltering each night, retracing our steps that took us past the blackened hillside where Peredur’s settlement had stood, and on we went, under a summer’s sun and rain, until we had returned to the Uisc.

      The Heahengel was afloat now and her mast was stepped, which meant Leofric could take her and the Eftwyrd, for the Fyrdraca was no more, back to Hamtun. We divided the plunder first and, though Leofric and I took the greater share, every man went away wealthy. I was left with Haesten and Iseult, and I took them up to Oxton where Mildrith wept with relief because she had thought I might be dead. I told her we had been patrolling the coast, which was true enough, and that we had captured a Danish ship laden with wealth, and I spilled the coins and gold bricks onto the floor and gave her a bracelet of amber and a necklace of jet, and the gifts distracted her from Iseult who watched her with wide, dark eyes, and if Mildrith saw the British girl’s jewellery she said nothing.

      We had come back in time for the harvest, though it was poor for there had been much rain that summer. There was a black growth on the rye which meant it could not even be fed to the animals, though the straw was good enough to thatch the hall I built. I have always enjoyed building. I made the hall from clay, gravel and straw, all packed together to make thick walls. Oak beams straddled the walls, and oak rafters held a high, long roof that looked golden when the thatch was first combed into place. The walls were painted with powdered lime in water, and one of the local men poured ox-blood into the mix so that the walls were the colour of a summer sky at sunset. The hall’s great door faced east towards the Uisc and I paid a man from Exanceaster to carve the doorposts and lintels with writhing wolves, for the banner of Bebbanburg, my banner, is a wolf’s head. Mildrith wanted the carving to show saints, but she got wolves. I paid the builders well, and when other men heard that I had silver they came looking for employment, and though they were there to build my hall I took only those who had experience of fighting. I equipped them with spades, axes, adzes, weapons and shields.

      ‘You are making an army,’ Mildrith accused me. Her relief at my homecoming had soured quickly when it was apparent that I was no more a Christian than when I had left her.

      ‘Seventeen men? An army?’

      ‘We are at peace,’ she said. She believed that because the priests preached it, and the priests only said what they were told to say by the bishops, and the bishops took their orders from Alfred. A travelling priest sought shelter with us one night and he insisted that the war with the Danes was over.

      ‘We still have Danes on the border,’ I said.

      ‘God has calmed their hearts,’ the priest insisted and told me that God had killed the Lothbrok brothers, Ubba, Ivar and Halfdan, and that the rest of the Danes were so shocked by the deaths that they no longer dared to fight against Christians. ‘It is true, lord,’ the priest said earnestly, ‘I heard it preached in Cippanhamm, and the king was there and he praised God for the truth of it. We are to beat our swords into ard points and our spear blades into reaping hooks.’

      I laughed at the thought of melting Serpent-Breath into a tool to plough Oxton’s fields, but then I did not believe the priest’s nonsense. The Danes were biding their time, that was all, yet it did seem peaceful as the summer slid imperceptibly into autumn. No enemies crossed the frontier of Wessex and no ships harried our coasts. We threshed the corn, netted partridges, hunted deer on the hill, staked nets in the river and practised with our weapons. The women span thread, gathered nuts, and picked mushrooms and blackberries. There were apples and pears, for this was the time of plenty, the time when the livestock was fattened before the winter slaughter. We ate like kings and, when my hall was finished, I gave a feast and Mildrith saw the ox head over the door and knew it was an offering to Thor, but said nothing.

      Mildrith hated Iseult, which was hardly surprising, for I had told Mildrith that Iseult was a queen of the Britons and that I held her for the ransom that the Britons would offer. I knew no such ransom would ever come, but the story went some way to explaining Iseult’s presence, but Mildrith resented that the British girl was given her own house. ‘She is a queen,’ I said.

      ‘You take her hunting,’ Mildrith said resentfully.

      I did more than that, but Mildrith chose to be blind to much of it. Mildrith wanted little more than her church, her baby and an unvarying routine. She had charge of the women who milked the cows, churned the butter, span wool and collected honey, and she took immense pride that those things were done well. If a neighbour visited there would be a flurry of panic as the hall was cleaned, and she worried much about those neighbours’ opinions. She wanted me to pay Oswald’s wergild. It did not matter to Mildrith that the man had been caught thieving, because to pay the wergild would make peace in the valley of the Uisc. She even wanted me to visit Odda the Younger. ‘You could be friends,’ she pleaded.

      ‘With that snake?’

      ‘And Wirken says you have not paid the tithe.’

      Wirken was the priest in Exanmynster, and I hated him. ‘He eats and drinks the tithe,’ I snarled. The tithe was the payment all landholders were supposed to make to the church, and by rights I should have sent Wirken part of my harvest, but I had not. Yet the priest was often at Oxton, coming when he thought I was hunting, and he ate my food and drank my ale and was growing fat on them.

      ‘He comes to pray with us,’ Mildrith said.

      ‘He comes to eat,’ I said.

      ‘And he says the bishop will take the land if we don’t pay the debt.’

      ‘The debt will be paid,’ I said.

      ‘When? We have the money!’ She gestured at the new hall. ‘When?’ she insisted.

      ‘When I want to,’ I snarled. I did not tell her when, or how, because if I had, then Wirken the priest would know, and the bishop would know. It was not enough to pay the debt. Mildrith’s father had foolishly donated part of our land’s future produce to the church, and I wanted that burden taken away so the debt would not go on through eternity, and to do that I needed to surprise the bishop, and so I kept Mildrith ignorant, and inevitably those arguments would end with her tears. I was bored with her and she knew it. I found her beating Iseult’s maid one day. The girl was a Saxon I had given to Iseult as a servant, but she also worked in the dairy and Mildrith was beating her because some cheeses had not been turned. I dragged Mildrith away, and that, of course, provoked another argument and Mildrith proved not to be so blind after all for she accused me of trying to whelp bastards on Iseult, which was true enough, but I reminded her that her own father had sired enough bastards, half a dozen of whom now worked for us. ‘You leave Iseult and her maid alone,’ I said, causing more tears. They were not happy days.

      It was the time when Iseult learned to speak English, or at least the Northumbrian version of English for she learned it mostly from me. ‘You’re my mon,’ she said. I was Mildrith’s man and Iseult’s mon. She said she had been born again on the day I came into Peredur’s hall. ‘I had dreamed of you,’ she said, ‘tall and golden haired.’

      ‘Now you don’t dream?’ I asked, knowing that her powers of scrying came from dreams.

      ‘I do still dream,’

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