Some of this made sense and, by talking to the seven churchmen and questioning Guthred further, I managed to piece the rest of the story together. Gelgill, known on both sides of the border as a slave-trader, had purchased Guthred from Eochaid and had paid a vast price, not because Guthred was worth it, but because the priests had hired Gelgill to make the trade. ‘Two hundred pieces of silver, eight bullocks, two sacks of malt and a silver-mounted horn. That was my price,’ Guthred told me cheerfully.
‘Gelgill paid that much?’ I was astonished.
‘He didn’t. The priests did. Gelgill just negotiated the sale.’
‘The priests paid for you?’
‘They must have emptied Cumbraland of silver,’ Guthred said proudly.
‘And Eochaid agreed to sell you?’
‘For that price? Of course he did! Why wouldn’t he?’
‘He killed your father. Your duty is to kill him. He knows that.’
‘He rather liked me,’ Guthred said, and I found that believable because Guthred was so very likeable. He faced each day as though it would bring nothing but happiness, and in his company life somehow seemed brighter. ‘He still made me empty his shit-pail,’ Guthred admitted, continuing his story of Eochaid, ‘but he stopped kicking me every time I did it. And he liked to talk to me.’
‘About what?’
‘Oh, about everything! The gods, the weather, fishing, how to make good cheese, women, everything. And he reckoned I wasn’t a warrior, which I’m not really. Now I’m king, of course, so I have to be a warrior, but I don’t much like it. Eochaid made me swear I’d never go to war against him.’
‘And you swore that?’
‘Of course! I like him. I’ll raid his cattle, of course, and kill any men he sends into Cumbraland, but that’s not war, is it?’
So Eochaid had taken the church’s silver and Gelgill had brought Guthred south into Northumbria, but instead of giving him to the priests he had taken him eastwards, reckoning that he could make more money by selling Guthred to Kjartan than by honouring the contract he had made with the churchmen. The priests and monks followed, begging for Guthred’s release, and it was then they had all met Sven who saw his own chance of profit in Guthred. The freed slave was Hardicnut’s son, which meant he was heir to land in Cumbraland, and that suggested he was worth a largish bag of silver in ransom. Sven had planned to take Guthred back to Dunholm where he would doubtless have killed all seven churchmen. Then I had arrived with my face wrapped in black linen and now Gelgill was dead, Sven had stinking wet hair and Guthred was free.
I understood all that, but what did not make sense was why seven Saxon churchmen had come from Cair Ligualid to pay a fortune for Guthred who was both a Dane and a pagan. ‘Because I’m their king, of course,’ Guthred said, as though the answer were obvious, ‘though I never thought I’d become king. Not after Eochaid took me captive, but that’s what the Christian god wants, so who am I to argue?’
‘Their god wants you?’ I asked, looking at the seven churchmen who had travelled so far to free him.
‘Their god wants me,’ Guthred said seriously, ‘because I’m the chosen one. Do you think I should become a Christian?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I think I should,’ he said, ignoring my answer, ‘just to show gratitude. The gods don’t like ingratitude, do they?’
‘What the gods like,’ I said, ‘is chaos.’
The gods were happy.
Cair Ligualid was a sorry place. Norsemen had pillaged and burned it two years before, just after Guthred’s father had been killed by the Scots, and the town had not even been half rebuilt. What was left of it stood on the south bank of the River Hedene, and that was why the settlement existed, for it was built at the first crossing place of the river, a river which offered some protection against marauding Scots. It had offered no protection against the fleet of Vikings who had sailed up the Hedene, stolen whatever they could, raped what they wanted, killed what they did not want, and taken away the survivors as slaves. Those Vikings had come from their settlements in Ireland and they were the enemies of the Saxons, the Irish, the Scots and even, at times, of their cousins, the Danes, and they had not spared the Danes living in Cair Ligualid. So we rode through a broken gate in a broken wall into a broken town, and it was dusk, and the day’s rain had finally lifted and a shaft of red sunlight came from beneath the western clouds as we entered the ruined town. We rode straight into the light of that swollen sun which reflected from my helm that had the silver wolf on its crest and it shone from my mail coat and from my arm rings and from the hilts of my two swords, and someone shouted that I was the king. I looked like a king. I rode Witnere who tossed his great head and pawed at the ground and I was dressed in my shining war-glory.
Cair Ligualid was crowded. Here and there a house had been rebuilt, but most of the folk were camping in the scorched ruins, along with their livestock, and there were far too many of them to be the survivors of the old Norse raids. They were, instead, the people of Cumbraland who had been brought to Cair Ligualid by their priests or lords because they had been promised that their new king would come. And now, from the east, his mail reflecting the brilliance of the sinking sun, came a gleaming warrior on a great black horse.
‘The king!’ another voice shouted, and more voices took up the cry, and from the wrecked homes and the makeshift shelters folk scrambled to stare at me. Willibald was trying to hush them, but his West Saxon words were lost in the din. I thought Guthred would also protest, but instead he pulled his cloak’s hood over his head so that he looked like one of the churchmen who struggled to keep up as the crowd pressed in on us. Folk knelt as we passed, then scrambled to their feet to follow us. Hild was laughing, and I took her hand so she rode beside me like a queen, and the growing crowd accompanied us up a long, low hill towards a new hall built on the summit. As we grew closer I saw it was not a hall, but a church, and that priests and monks were coming from its door to greet us.
There was a madness in Cair Ligualid. A different madness from that which had shed blood in Eoferwic, but madness just the same. Women were crying, men shouting and children staring. Mothers held babies towards me as if my touch could heal them. ‘You must stop them!’ Willibald had managed to reach my side and was clinging onto my right stirrup.
‘Why?’
‘Because they’re mistaken, of course! Guthred is king!’
I smiled at him. ‘Maybe,’ I said slowly, as though the idea were just coming to me, ‘maybe I should be king instead?’
‘Uhtred!’ Willibald said, shocked.
‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘My ancestors were kings.’
‘Guthred is king!’ Willibald protested. ‘The abbot named him!’
That was how Cair Ligualid’s madness began. The town had been a haunt of foxes and birds when Abbot Eadred of Lindisfarena came across the hills. Lindisfarena, of course, is the monastery hard by Bebbanburg. It lies on Northumbria’s eastern coast, while Cair Ligualid is on the western edge, but the abbot, driven from Lindisfarena by Danish raids, had come to Cair Ligualid and there built the new church to which we climbed. The abbot had also seen Guthred in his dreams. Nowadays, of course, every Northumbrian knows the story of how Saint Cuthbert revealed Guthred to Abbot Eadred, but back then, on the day of Guthred’s arrival in Cair Ligualid, the tale seemed like just another insanity on top of the world’s weltering madness. Folk were shouting at me, calling me king and Willibald turned and bellowed to Guthred. ‘Tell them to stop!’
‘The people want a king,’ Guthred said, ‘and Uhtred looks like one. Let them have him for the moment.’
A