‘There are many gods,’ Ivar snapped back, ‘many! Everyone knows that.’
‘There is only one God, and you must serve him.’
‘But we’re winning,’ Ivar explained patiently, almost as if he talked to a child, ‘which means our gods are beating your one god.’
The king shuddered at this awful heresy. ‘Your gods are false gods,’ he said, ‘they are turds of the devil, they are evil things who will bring darkness to the world, while our God is great, he is all powerful, he is magnificent.’
‘Show me,’ Ivar said.
Those two words brought silence. The king, his priests and monks all stared at Ivar in evident puzzlement.
‘Prove it,’ Ivar said, and his Danes murmured their support of the idea.
King Edmund blinked, evidently lost for inspiration, then had a sudden idea and pointed at the leather panel on which was painted Saint Sebastian’s experience of being an archers’ target. ‘Our God spared the blessed Saint Sebastian from death by arrows!’ Edmund said, ‘which is proof enough, is it not?’
‘But the man still died,’ Ivar pointed out.
‘Only because that was God’s will.’
Ivar thought about that. ‘So would your god protect you from my arrows?’ he asked.
‘If it is his will, yes.’
‘So let’s try,’ Ivar proposed. ‘We shall shoot arrows at you, and if you survive then we’ll all be washed.’
Edmund stared at the Dane, wondering if he was serious, then looked nervous when he saw that Ivar was not joking. The king opened his mouth, found he had nothing to say and closed it again, then one of his tonsured monks murmured to him and he must have been trying to persuade the king that God was suggesting this ordeal in order to extend his church, and that a miracle would result, and the Danes would become Christians and we would all be friends and end up singing together on the high platform in heaven. The king did not look entirely convinced by this argument, if that was indeed what the monk was proposing, but the Danes wanted to attempt the miracle now and it was no longer up to Edmund to accept or refuse the trial.
A dozen men shoved the monks and priests aside while more went outside to find bows and arrows. The king, trapped in his defence of God, was kneeling at the altar, praying as hard as any man has ever prayed. The Danes were grinning. I was enjoying it. I think I rather hoped to see a miracle, not because I was a Christian, but because I just wanted to see a miracle. Beocca had often told me about miracles, stressing that they were the real proof of Christianity’s truths, but I had never seen one. No one had ever walked on the water at Bebbanburg and no lepers were healed there and no angels had filled our night skies with blazing glory, but now, perhaps, I would see the power of God that Beocca had forever preached to me. Brida just wanted to see Edmund dead.
‘Are you ready?’ Ivar demanded of the king.
Edmund looked at his priests and monks and I wondered if he was about to suggest that one of them should replace him in this test of God’s power. Then he frowned and looked back to Ivar. ‘I will accept your proposal,’ he said.
‘That we shoot arrows at you?’
‘That I remain king here.’
‘But you want to wash me first.’
‘We can dispense with that,’ Edmund said.
‘No,’ Ivar said. ‘You have claimed your god is all powerful, that he is the only god, so I want it proved. If you are right then all of us will be washed. Are we agreed?’ This question was asked of the Danes who roared their approval.
‘Not me,’ Ravn said, ‘I won’t be washed.’
‘We will all be washed!’ Ivar snarled, and I realised he truly was interested in the outcome of the test, more interested, indeed, than he was in making a quick and convenient peace with Edmund. All men need the support of their god and Ivar was trying to discover whether he had, all these years, been worshipping at the wrong shrine. ‘Are you wearing armour?’ he asked Edmund.
‘No.’
‘Best to be sure,’ Ubba intervened and glanced at the fatal painting. ‘Strip him,’ he ordered.
The king and the churchmen protested, but the Danes would not be denied and King Edmund was stripped stark naked. Brida enjoyed that. ‘He’s puny,’ she said. Edmund, the butt of laughter now, did his best to look dignified. The priests and monks were on their knees, praying, while six archers took their stance a dozen paces from Edmund.
‘We are going to find out,’ Ivar told us, stilling the laughter, ‘whether the English god is as powerful as our Danish gods. If he is, and if the king lives, then we shall become Christians, all of us!’
‘Not me,’ Ravn said again, but quietly so that Ivar could not hear. ‘Tell me what happens, Uhtred.’
It was soon told. Six arrows hit, the king screamed, blood spattered the altar, he fell down, he twitched like a gaffed salmon, and six more arrows thumped home. Edmund twitched some more, and the archers kept on shooting, though their aim was bad because they were half helpless with laughter, and they went on shooting until the king was as full of feathered shafts as a hedgehog has spikes. And he was quite dead by then. He was bloodied, his white skin red-laced, open-mouthed and dead. His god had failed him miserably. Nowadays, of course, that story is never told, instead children learn how brave Saint Edmund stood up to the Danes, demanded their conversion and was murdered. So now he is a martyr and saint, warbling happily in heaven, but the truth is that he was a fool and talked himself into martyrdom.
The priests and monks wailed, so Ivar ordered them killed as well, then he decreed that Earl Godrim, one of his chiefs, would rule in East Anglia and that Halfdan would savage the country to quench the last sparks of resistance. Godrim and Halfdan would be given a third of the army to keep East Anglia quiet, while the rest of us would return to subdue the unrest in Northumbria.
So now East Anglia was gone.
And Wessex was the last kingdom of England.
We returned to Northumbria, half rowing and half sailing the Wind-Viper up the gentle coast, then rowing against the rivers’ currents as we travelled up the Humber, then the Ouse until Eoferwic’s walls came in sight, and there we hauled the ship onto dry land so she would not rot through the winter. Ivar and Ubba returned with us, so that a whole fleet skimmed the river, oars dripping, beastless prows bearing branches of green oak to show we came home victorious. We brought home much treasure. The Danes set much store by treasure. Their men follow their leaders because they know they will be rewarded with silver, and in the taking of three of England’s four kingdoms the Danes had amassed a fortune which was shared among the men and some, a few, decided to take their money back home to Denmark. Most stayed, for the richest kingdom remained undefeated and men reckoned they would all become as wealthy as gods once Wessex fell.
Ivar and Ubba had come to Eoferwic expecting trouble. They had their shields displayed on the flanks of their ships, but whatever unrest had disturbed Northumbria had not affected the city and King Egbert, who ruled at the pleasure of the Danes, sulkily denied there had been any rising at all. Archbishop Wulfhere said the same. ‘There is always banditry,’ he declared loftily, ‘and perhaps you heard rumours of it?’
‘Or perhaps you are deaf,’ Ivar snarled, and Ivar was right to be suspicious for, once it was known that the army had returned, messengers came from Ealdorman Ricsig of Dunholm. Dunholm was a great fortress on a high crag that was almost surrounded by the River Wiire, and the crag and the river made Dunholm almost as strong as Bebbanburg. It was ruled by Ricsig who had never drawn his sword against the Danes. When we attacked Eoferwic and my father was killed, Ricsig had claimed to be sick and his men had stayed home, but now he sent servants to tell Ivar that a band of Danes had been slaughtered at Gyruum. That was the site of a famous monastery where a man called Bede wrote