‘Your country, lord.’
‘My country,’ I agreed. I was born in Northumbria and I hope to die in Northumbria, though my birth had been on the eastern coast, far from these mist-shrouded fields by the Mærse. My land is Bebbanburg, the fortress by the sea, which had been treacherously stolen by my uncle and, though he was long dead, the great stronghold was still held by his son. One day, I promised myself, I would slaughter my cousin and take back my birthright. It was a promise I made every day of my life.
Berg gazed into the grey dampness. ‘Who rules here?’ he asked.
I half smiled at the question. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘have you heard of Sygfrothyr?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Knut Onehand?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Halfdan Othirson?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Eowels the Strong?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Eowels wasn’t that strong,’ I said wryly, ‘because he was killed by Ingver Brightsword. Have you heard of Ingver?’
‘No, lord.’
‘Sygfrothyr, Knut, Halfdan, Eowels, and Ingver,’ I repeated the names, ‘and in the last ten years each of those men has called himself King of Jorvik. And only one of them, Ingver, is alive today. You know where Jorvik is?’
‘To the north, lord. A city.’
‘It was a great city once,’ I said bleakly. ‘The Romans made it.’
‘Like Ceaster, lord?’ he asked earnestly. Berg knew little of Britain. He had served Rognvald, a Norseman who had died in a welter of bloodshed on a Welsh beach. Since then Berg had served me, living in Ceaster and fighting the cattle-raiders who came from Northumbria or the Welsh kingdoms. He was eager to learn though.
‘Jorvik is like Ceaster,’ I said, ‘and like Ceaster its strength lies in its walls. It guards a river, but the man who rules in Jorvik can claim to rule Northumbria. Ingver Brightsword is King of Jorvik, but he calls himself King of Northumbria.’
‘And is he?’
‘He pretends he is,’ I said, ‘but in truth he’s just a chieftain in Jorvik. But no one else can call himself King of Northumbria unless he holds Jorvik.’
‘But it’s not strong?’ Berg asked.
‘Eoferwic’s walls are strong,’ I said, using the Saxon name for Jorvik, ‘they’re very strong! They’re formidable! My father died attacking those walls. And the city lies in rich country. The man who rules Eoferwic can be a gold-giver, he can buy men, he can give estates, he can breed horses, he can command an army.’
‘And this is what King Ingver does?’
‘Ingver couldn’t command a dog to piss,’ I sneered. ‘He has maybe two hundred warriors. And outside the walls? He has nothing. Other men rule beyond the walls, and one day one of those men will kill Ingver as Ingver killed Eowels, and the new man will call himself king. Sygfrothyr, Knut, Halfdan, and Eowels, they all called themselves King of Northumbria and they were all killed by a rival. Northumbria isn’t a kingdom, it’s a pit of rats and terriers.’
‘Like Ireland,’ Berg said.
‘Like Ireland?’
‘A country of little kings,’ he said. He frowned for a moment. ‘Sometimes one calls himself the High King? And maybe he is, but there are still many little kings, and they squabble like dogs, and you think such dogs will be easy to kill, but when you attack them? They come together.’
‘There’s no high king in Northumbria,’ I said, ‘not yet.’
‘There will be?’
‘Ragnall,’ I said.
‘Ah!’ he said, understanding. ‘And one day we must take this land?’
‘One day,’ I said, and I wanted that day to be soon, but Æthelflaed, who ruled Mercia, insisted that first we drive the Danes from her country. She wanted to restore the ancient frontier of Mercia, and only then lead an army into Northumbria, and even then she would not invade unless she had her brother’s blessing, but now Ragnall had come and threatened to make the conquest of the north even more difficult.
We saddled the horses and rode slowly westwards. The Mærse made great lazy loops to our left, twisting through overgrown water meadows. No one farmed these lands. There had been Danes and Norsemen settled here once, their steadings fat in a fat land, but we had driven them northwards away from Ceaster, and thistles now grew tall where cattle had grazed. Two heron flew downriver. A light rain blew from the distant sea.
‘The Lady Æthelflaed is coming, lord?’ Berg asked me as we pushed the horses through a gap in a ragged hedge, then across a flooded ditch. The mist had lifted, though there were still patches above the river’s wide bends.
‘She’s coming!’ I said, and surprised myself by feeling a distinct pang of pleasure at the thought of seeing Æthelflaed again. ‘She was coming anyway for this nonsense with the new bishop.’ The enthronement was the sort of ceremony she enjoyed, though how anyone could endure three or four hours of chanting monks and ranting priests was beyond my understanding, just as it was beyond my understanding to know why bishops needed thrones. They would be demanding crowns next. ‘Now she’ll be bringing her whole army as well,’ I said.
‘And we’ll fight Ragnall?’
‘She’ll want to drive him out of Mercia,’ I said, ‘and if he stays behind his new walls that will be a bloody business.’ I had turned north towards a low hill that I remembered from raids we had made across the river. The hill was crowned with a stand of pine trees, and from its summit we could see Ceaster on a clear day. There was no chance of seeing the city on this grey day, but I could see Eads Byrig rising green from the trees on the river’s far side, and I could see the raw timber of the new wall atop the fort’s embankment, and, much closer, I could see Ragnall’s fleet clustered at a great bend of the Mærse.
And I saw a bridge.
At first I was not sure what I was seeing, but I asked Berg, whose eyes were so much younger than mine. He gazed for a while, frowned, and finally nodded. ‘They make a bridge with their boats, lord.’
It was a crude bridge made by mooring ships hull to hull so that they stretched across the river and carried a crude plank roadway on their decks. So many horses and men had already used the makeshift bridge that they had worn a new road in the fields on this side of the river, a muddy streak that showed dark against the pale pasture and then fanned out into lesser streaks that all led northwards. There were men riding the tracks now, three small groups spurring away from the Mærse and going deeper into Northumbria, and one large band of horsemen travelling south towards the river.
And on the river’s southern bank where the trees grew dense there was smoke. At first I took it for a thickening of the river mist, but the longer I looked the more I became convinced that there were campfires in the woodland. A lot of fires, sifting their smoke above the leaves, and that smoke told me that Ragnall was keeping many of his men beside the Mærse. There was a garrison at Eads Byrig, a garrison busy making a palisade, but not enough water there for the whole army. And that army, instead of making tracks south into Mercia, was trampling new paths northwards. ‘We can go home now,’ I said.
‘Already?’ Berg sounded surprised.
‘Already,’ I said. Because I knew what Ragnall was doing.
We went back the way we had come. We rode slowly, sparing the horses. A small rain blew from behind us, carried by a cold morning wind from the Irish Sea, and that made me remember Finan’s words that Ragnall had made a pact with the Uí Néill. The Irish rarely