on Saint Cuthbert’s most holy hands,’ Eadred ordered me, ‘and say the words.’
I put my hands over Saint Cuthbert’s fingers and I could feel the big ruby ring under my own fingers, and I gave the jewel a twitch just to see whether the stone was loose and would come free, but it seemed well fixed in its setting. ‘I swear to be your man,’ I said to the corpse, ‘and to serve you faithfully.’ I tried to shift the ring again, but the dead fingers were stiff and the ruby would not move.
‘You swear by your life?’ Eadred asked sternly.
I gave the ring another twitch, but it really was immovable. ‘I swear on my life,’ I said respectfully and never, in all that life, have I taken an oath so lightly. How can an oath to a dead man be binding?
‘And you swear to serve King Guthred faithfully?’
‘I do,’ I said.
‘And to be an enemy to all his enemies?’
‘I swear it,’ I said.
‘And you will serve Saint Cuthbert even to the end of your life?’
‘I will.’
‘Then you may kiss the most blessed Cuthbert,’ Eadred said. I leaned over the coffin’s edge to kiss the folded hands. ‘No!’ Eadred protested. ‘On the lips!’ I shuffled on my knees, then bent and kissed the corpse on its dry, scratchy lips.
‘Praise God,’ Eadred said. Then he made Guthred swear to serve Cuthbert and the church watched as the slave king knelt and kissed the corpse. The monks sang as the folk in the church were allowed to see Cuthbert for themselves. Hild shuddered when she came to the coffin and she fell to her knees, tears streaming down her face, and I had to lift her up and lead her away. Willibald was similarly overcome, but his face just glowed with happiness. Gisela, I noticed, did not bow to the corpse. She looked at it with curiosity, but it was plain it meant nothing to her and I deduced she was a pagan still. She stared at the dead man, then looked at me and smiled. Her eyes, I thought, were brighter than the ruby on the dead saint’s finger.
And so Guthred came to Cair Ligualid. I thought then, and still think now, that it was all nonsense, but it was a magical nonsense, and the dead swordsman had made himself liege to a dead man and the slave had become a king. The gods were laughing.
Later, much later, I realised I was doing what Alfred would have wanted me to do. I was helping the Christians. There were two wars in those years. The obvious struggle was between Saxon and Dane, but there was also combat between pagans and Christians. Most Danes were pagan and most Saxons were Christian, so the two wars appeared to be the same fight, but in Northumbria it all became confused, and that was Abbot Eadred’s cleverness.
What Eadred did was to end the war between the Saxons and the Danes in Cumbraland, and he did it by choosing Guthred. Guthred, of course, was a Dane and that meant Cumbraland’s Danes were ready to follow him and, because he had been proclaimed king by a Saxon abbot, the Saxons were equally prepared to support him. Thus the two biggest warring tribes of Cumbraland, the Danes and Saxons, were united, while the Britons, and a good many Britons still lived in Cumbraland, were also Christians and their priests told them to accept Eadred’s choice and so they did.
It is one thing to proclaim a king and another for the king to rule, but Eadred had made a shrewd choice. Guthred was a good man, but he was also the son of Hardicnut who had called himself king of Northumbria, so Guthred had a claim to the crown, and none of Cumbraland’s thegns was strong enough to challenge him. They needed a king because, for too long, they had squabbled among themselves and suffered from the Norse raids out of Ireland and from the savage incursions from Strath Clota. Guthred, by uniting Dane and Saxon, could now marshal stronger forces to face those enemies. There was one man who might have been a rival. Ulf, he was called, and he was a Dane who owned land south of Cair Ligualid and he had greater wealth than any other thegn in Cumbraland, but he was old and lame and without sons and so he offered fealty to Guthred, and Ulf’s example persuaded the other Danes to accept Eadred’s choice. They knelt to him one by one and he greeted them by name, raised them and embraced them.
‘I really should become a Christian,’ he told me on the morning after our arrival.
‘Why?’
‘I told you why. To show gratitude. Aren’t you supposed to call me lord?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Calling you lord, lord?’
‘No!’ he laughed. ‘Becoming a Christian?’
‘Why should it hurt?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t they nail you to a cross?’
‘Of course they don’t,’ I said scornfully, ‘they just wash you.’
‘I wash myself anyway,’ he said, then frowned. ‘Why do Saxons not wash? Not you, you wash, but most Saxons don’t. Not as much as Danes. Do they like being dirty?’
‘You can catch cold by washing.’
‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘So that’s it? A wash?’
‘Baptism, it’s called.’
‘And you have to give up the other gods?’
‘You’re supposed to.’
‘And only have one wife?’
‘Only one wife. They’re strict about that.’
He thought about it. ‘I still think I should do it,’ he said, ‘because Eadred’s god does have power. Look at that dead man! It’s a miracle that he hasn’t rotted away!’
The Danes were fascinated by Eadred’s relics. Most did not understand why a group of monks would carry a corpse, a dead king’s head and a jewelled book all over Northumbria, but they did understand that those things were sacred and they were impressed by that. Sacred things have power. They are a pathway from our world to the vaster worlds beyond, and even before Guthred arrived in Cair Ligualid some Danes had accepted baptism as a way of harnessing the power of the relics for themselves.
I am no Christian. These days it does no good to confess that, for the bishops and abbots have too much influence and it is easier to pretend to a faith than to fight angry ideas. I was raised a Christian, but at ten years old, when I was taken into Ragnar’s family, I discovered the old Saxon gods who were also the gods of the Danes and of the Norsemen, and their worship has always made more sense to me than bowing down to a god who belongs to a country so far away that I have met no one who has ever been there. Thor and Odin walked our hills, slept in our valleys, loved our women and drank from our streams, and that makes them seem like neighbours. The other thing I like about our gods is that they are not obsessed with us. They have their own squabbles and love affairs and seem to ignore us much of the time, but the Christian god has nothing better to do than to make rules for us. He makes rules, more rules, prohibitions and commandments, and he needs hundreds of black-robed priests and monks to make sure we obey those laws. He strikes me as a very grumpy god, that one, even though his priests are forever claiming that he loves us. I have never been so stupid as to think that Thor or Odin or Hoder loved me, though I hope at times they have thought me worthy of them.
But Guthred wanted the power of the Christian holy relics to work for him and so, to Eadred’s delight, he asked to be baptised. The ceremony was done in the
