at Ivar, and some of the Danes, impressed by the forcefulness of the king’s words, even though none of them understood a single one of them, touched their hammer charms. The priests around Edmund looked reproachfully at us. A sparrow flew in through a high window and perched for a moment on an arm of the high wooden cross that stood on the altar.
Ivar’s dread face showed no reaction to Jeremiah’s words and it finally dawned on the East Anglian interpreter, who was one of the priests, that the king’s impassioned reading had meant nothing to any of us. ‘For I will bring evil from the north,’ he translated, ‘and great destruction.’
‘It is in the book!’ Edmund said fiercely, giving the volume back to the monk.
‘You can keep your church,’ Ivar said carelessly.
‘It is not enough,’ Edmund said. He stood up to give his next words more force. ‘I will rule here,’ he went on, ‘and I will suffer your presence if I must, and I will provide you with horses, food, coin and hostages, but only if you, and all of your men, submit to God. You must be baptised!’
That word was lost on the Danish interpreter, and on the king’s, and finally Ubba looked to me for help. ‘You have to stand in a barrel of water,’ I said, remembering how Beocca had baptised me after my brother’s death, ‘and they pour more water over you.’
‘They want to wash me?’ Ubba asked, astonished.
I shrugged. ‘That’s what they do, lord.’
‘You will become Christians!’ Edmund said, then shot me an irritated look. ‘We can baptise in the river, boy. Barrels are not necessary.’
‘They want to wash you in the river,’ I explained to Ivar and Ubba, and the Danes laughed.
Ivar thought about it. Standing in a river for a few minutes was not such a bad thing, especially if it meant he could hurry back to quell whatever trouble afflicted Northumbria. ‘I can go on worshipping Odin once I’m washed?’ he asked.
‘Of course not!’ Edmund said angrily. ‘There is only one God!’
‘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,
