‘You’re not married, are you?’ Guthred asked her anxiously.
She touched her hair that still fell free like a girl’s hair. When she married it would be bound up. ‘Of course not,’ she said, still looking at me, then turned to her brother, ‘are you?’
‘No,’ he said.
Gisela looked at Hild, back to me, and just then Abbot Eadred came to hurry Guthred away and Gisela went back to the woman who was her guardian. She gave me a backwards glance, and I can still see that look. The lowered eyelids and the small trip as she turned to give me a last smile.
‘A pretty girl,’ Hild said.
‘I would rather have a pretty woman,’ I said.
‘You need to marry,’ Hild said.
‘I am married,’ I reminded her, and that was true. I had a wife in Wessex, a wife who hated me, but Mildrith was now in a nunnery so whether she regarded herself as married to me or married to Christ I neither knew nor cared.
‘You liked that girl,’ Hild said.
‘I like all girls,’ I said evasively. I lost sight of Gisela as the crowd pressed forward to watch the ceremony which began when Abbot Eadred unstrapped the sword belt from his own waist and buckled it around Guthred’s ragged clothes. Then he draped the new king in a fine green cloak, trimmed with fur, and put a bronze circlet on his fair hair. The monks chanted while this was being done, and kept chanting as Eadred led Guthred around the church so that everyone could see him. The abbot held the king’s right hand aloft and no doubt many folk thought it odd that the new king was being acclaimed with slave chains hanging from his wrists. Men knelt to him. Guthred knew many of the Danes who had been his father’s followers and he greeted them happily. He played the part of the king well, for he was an intelligent as well as a good-natured man, but I saw a look of amusement on his face. Did he really believe he was king then? I think he saw it all as an adventure, but one that was certainly preferable to emptying Eochaid’s shit-pail.
Eadred gave a sermon that was blessedly short even though he spoke in both English and Danish. His Danish was not good, but it sufficed to tell Guthred’s fellow-countrymen that God and Saint Cuthbert had chosen the new king, and here he was, and glory must inevitably follow. Then he led Guthred towards the rushlights burning in the centre of the church and the monks who had been gathered about those smoky flames scrambled to make way for the new king and I saw they had been clustered around three chests which, in turn, were circled by the small lights.
‘The royal oath will now be taken!’ Eadred announced to the church. The Christians in the church went to their knees again and some of the pagan Danes clumsily followed their example.
It was supposed to be a solemn moment, but Guthred rather spoiled it by turning and looking for me. ‘Uhtred!’ he called, ‘you should be here! Come!’
Eadred bridled, but Guthred wanted me beside him because the three chests worried him. They were gilded, and their lids were held by big metal clasps, and they were surrounded by the flickering rushlights, and all that suggested to him that some Christian sorcery was about to take place and he wanted me to share the risk. Abbot Eadred glared at me. ‘Did he call you Uhtred?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Lord Uhtred commands my household troops,’ Guthred said grandly. That made me the commander of nothing, but I kept a straight face. ‘And if there are oaths to be taken,’ Guthred continued, ‘then he must make them with me.’
‘Uhtred,’ Abbot Eadred said flatly. He knew the name, of course he did. He came from Lindisfarena where my family ruled and there was a sourness in his tone.
‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said loudly enough for everyone in the church to hear, and the announcement caused a hiss among the monks. Some crossed themselves and others just looked at me with apparent hatred.
‘He’s your companion?’ Eadred demanded of Guthred.
‘He rescued me,’ Guthred said, ‘and he is my friend.’
Eadred made the sign of the cross. He had disliked me from the moment he mistook me for the dream-born king, but now he was fairly spitting malevolence at me. He hated me because our family was supposedly the guardians of Lindisfarena’s monastery, but the monastery lay in ruins and Eadred, its abbot, had been driven into exile. ‘Did Ælfric send you?’ he demanded.
‘Ælfric,’ I spat the name, ‘is a usurper, a thief, a cuckoo, and one day I shall spill his rotting belly and send him to the tree where Corpse-Ripper will feed on him.’
Eadred placed me then. ‘You’re Lord Uhtred’s son,’ he said, and he looked at my arm rings and my mail and at the workmanship of my swords and at the hammer about my neck. ‘You’re the boy raised by the Danes.’
‘I am the boy,’ I said sarcastically, ‘who killed Ubba Lothbrokson beside a southern sea.’
‘He is my friend,’ Guthred insisted.
Abbot Eadred shuddered, then half bowed his head as if to show that he accepted me as Guthred’s companion. ‘You will take an oath,’ he growled at me, ‘to serve King Guthred faithfully.’
I took a half-step backwards. Oath-taking is a serious matter. If I swore to serve this king who had been a slave then I would no longer be a free man. I would be Guthred’s man, sworn to die for him, to obey him and serve him until death, and the thought galled me. Guthred saw my hesitation and smiled. ‘I shall free you,’ he whispered to me in Danish, and I understood that he, like me, saw this ceremony as a game.
‘You swear it?’ I asked him.
‘On my life,’ he said lightly.
‘The oaths will be taken!’ Eadred announced, wanting to restore some dignity to the church that now murmured with talk. He glowered at the congregation until they went quiet, then he opened one of the two smaller chests. Inside was a book, its cover crusted with precious stones. ‘This is the great gospel book of Lindisfarena,’ Eadred said in awe. He lifted the book out of the chest and held it aloft so that the dim light glinted from its jewels. The monks all crossed themselves, then Eadred handed the heavy book to an attendant priest whose hands shook as he accepted the volume. Eadred stooped to the second of the small chests. He made the sign of the cross then opened the lid and there, facing me with closed eyes, was a severed head. Guthred could not suppress a grunt of distaste and, fearing sorcery, took my right arm. ‘That is the most holy Saint Oswald,’ Eadred said, ‘once king of Northumbria and now a saint most beloved of almighty God.’ His voice quivered with emotion.
Guthred took a half-pace backwards, repelled by the head, but I shook off his grip and stepped forward to gaze down at Oswald. He had been the lord of Bebbanburg in his time, and he had been king of Northumbria too, but that had been two hundred years ago. He had died in battle against the Mercians who had hacked him to pieces, and I wondered how his head had been rescued from the charnel-house of defeat. The head, its cheeks shrunken and its skin dark, looked quite unscarred. His hair was long and tangled, while his neck had been hidden by a scrap of yellowed linen. A gilt-bronze circlet served as his crown. ‘Beloved Saint Oswald,’ Eadred said, making the sign of the cross, ‘protect us and guide us and pray for us.’ The king’s lips had shrivelled so that three of his teeth showed. They were like yellow pegs. The monks kneeling closest to Oswald bobbed up and down in silent and fervent prayer. ‘Saint Oswald,’ Eadred announced, ‘is a warrior of God and with him on our side none can stand against us.’
He stepped past the dead king’s head to the last and biggest of the chests. The church was silent. The Christians, of course, were aware that by revealing the relics, Eadred was summoning the powers of heaven to witness the oaths, while the pagan Danes, even if they did not understand exactly what was happening, were awed by the magic they sensed in the big building. And they sensed that more and greater magic was about to happen, for the monks now prostrated themselves flat on the earthen floor as Eadred silently prayed beside the last box. He prayed for a long time, his hands clasped, his lips moving and with his eyes raised to the rafters where sparrows fluttered and then at last he unlatched the chest’s