was a bishop,’ Willibald told me in awed tones after he had received the scraggy man’s blessing. ‘He had wealth, a wife, servants and honour, and he gave them all up to worship God in solitude. He’s a very holy man.’
‘Perhaps he’s just a mad bastard,’ I suggested, ‘or else his wife was a vicious bitch who drove him out.’
‘He’s a child of God,’ Willibald said reprovingly, ‘and in time he’ll be called a saint.’
Hild had dismounted and she looked at me as though seeking my permission to approach the hermit. She plainly wanted the hermit’s blessing and so she appealed to me, but it was none of my business what she did, so I just shrugged and she knelt to the dirty creature. He leered at her and scratched his crotch and then made the sign of the cross on both her breasts, pushing hard with his fingers to feel her nipples and all the while pretending to bless her, and I was tempted to kick the old bastard into immediate martyrdom. But Hild was crying with emotion as he pawed at her hair and then dribbled some kind of prayer and afterwards she looked grateful. He gave me the evil eye and held out a grubby paw as if expecting me to give him money, but instead I showed him Thor’s hammer and he hissed a curse at me through his two yellow teeth and then we abandoned him to the moor and to the sky and to his prayers.
I had left Bolti. He was safe enough north of the wall, for he had entered Bebbanburg’s territory where Ælfric’s horsemen and the horsemen of the Danes who lived on my land would be patrolling the roads. We followed the wall westwards and I now led Father Willibald, Hild, King Guthred and the seven freed churchmen. I had managed to break the chain of Guthred’s manacles so the slave king, who now rode Willibald’s mare, wore two iron wristbands from which dangled short links of rusted chain. He chattered to me incessantly. ‘What we shall do,’ he told me on the second day of the journey, ‘is raise an army in Cumbraland and then we’ll cross the hills and capture Eoferwic.’
‘What then?’ I asked drily.
‘Go north!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘North! We shall have to take Dunholm, and after that we’ll capture Bebbanburg. You want me to do that, don’t you?’
I had told Guthred my name and that I was the rightful lord of Bebbanburg, and now I told him that Bebbanburg had never been captured.
‘It’s a tough place, eh?’ Guthred responded. ‘Like Dunholm? Well, we shall see about Bebbanburg. But of course we’ll have to finish off Ivarr first.’ He spoke as though destroying the most powerful Dane in Northumbria were a small matter. ‘So we’ll deal with Ivarr,’ he said, then suddenly brightened. ‘Or perhaps Ivarr will accept me as king? He has a son and I’ve a sister who must be of marriageable age by now. They could make an alliance?’
‘Unless your sister’s already married,’ I interrupted.
‘Can’t think who’d want her,’ he said, ‘she’s got a face like a horse.’
‘Horse-faced or not,’ I said, ‘she’s Hardicnut’s daughter. There must be an advantage for someone in marrying her.’
‘There might have been before my father died,’ Guthred said dubiously, ‘but now?’
‘You’re king now,’ I reminded him. I did not really believe he was a king, of course, but he believed it and so I indulged him.
‘That’s true!’ he said. ‘So someone will want Gisela, won’t they? Despite her face!’
‘Does she really look like a horse?’
‘Long face,’ he said, and grimaced, ‘but she’s not completely ugly. And it’s high time she married. She must be fifteen or sixteen! I think perhaps we should marry her to Ivarr’s son. That’ll make an alliance with Ivarr, and he’ll help us deal with Kjartan, and then we’ll have to make sure the Scots don’t give us any trouble. And, of course, we’ll have to keep those rascals in Strath Clota from being a nuisance.’
‘Of course we must,’ I said.
‘They killed my father, see? And made me a slave!’ He grinned.
Hardicnut, Guthred’s father, had been a Danish earl who made his home at Cair Ligualid which was the chief town in Cumbraland. Hardicnut had called himself king of Northumbria, which was pretentious, but strange things happen west of the hills and a man there can claim to be king of the moon if he wants because no one outside of Cumbraland will take the slightest bit of notice. Hardicnut had posed no threat to the greater lords around Eoferwic, indeed he posed small threat to anyone, for Cumbraland was a sad and savage place, forever being raided by the Norsemen from Ireland or by the wild horrors from Strath Clota whose king, Eochaid, called himself king of Scotland, a title disputed by Aed who was now fighting Ivarr.
Of the insolence of the Scots, my father used to say, there is no end. He had cause to say that, for the Scots claimed much of Bebbanburg’s land and until the Danes came our family was forever fighting against the northern tribes. I had been taught as a child that there were many tribes in Scotland, but the two tribes closest to Northumbria were the Scots themselves, of whom Aed was now king, and the savages of Strath Clota who lived on the western shore and never came near Bebbanburg. They raided Cumbraland instead and Hardicnut had decided to punish them and so led a small army north into their hills where Eochaid of Strath Clota ambushed him and then destroyed him. Guthred had marched with his father and had been captured and, for two years now, had been a slave.
‘Why didn’t they kill you?’ I asked.
‘Eochaid should have killed me,’ he admitted cheerfully, ‘but he didn’t know who I was at first, and by the time he found out he wasn’t really in a killing mood. So he kicked me a few times, then said I would be his slave. He liked to watch me empty his shit-pail. I was a household slave, see? It was another insult.’
‘Being a household slave?’
‘Woman’s work,’ Guthred explained, ‘but that meant I spent my time with the girls. I rather liked it.’
‘So how did you escape Eochaid?’
‘I didn’t. Gelgill bought me. He paid a lot for me!’ He said this proudly.
‘And Gelgill was going to sell you to Kjartan?’ I asked.
‘Oh no! He was going to sell me to the priests from Cair Ligualid!’ he nodded towards the seven churchmen who had been rescued with him. ‘They’d agreed the price before, you see, but Gelgill wanted more money and then they all met Sven, and of course Sven wouldn’t let the sale happen. He wanted me back in Dunholm and Gelgill would have done anything for Sven and his father, so we were all doomed until you came along.’
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
