I had asked. He hesitated. ‘Aldger!’ he finally called. ‘We serve King Rædwald!’
‘May the gods grant him long life!’ I shouted dutifully.
‘You’re well to the west if you’re going to Haithabu!’ Aldger bellowed. He was right, of course. Had we been bound for southern Daneland we would have crossed the sea much further south and be feeling our way up the Frisian coast.
‘Blame this wind!’
He was silent. He watched us for a time, then gave the order for his sail to be sheeted home, and the larger ship drew ahead of us. ‘Who is Rædwald?’ Finan asked.
‘He rules in East Anglia,’ I said, ‘and from what I hear he’s old, sick and about as much use as a gelding in a whorehouse.’
‘And a weak king invites war,’ Finan said. ‘No wonder Æthelred is tempted.’
‘King Æthelred of East Anglia,’ I said scornfully, but doubtless my cousin wanted that title, though whether East Anglia would want him was another matter. It was a strange kingdom, both Danish and Christian, which was confusing, because most of the Danes worship my gods and the Saxons worship the nailed one, but the East Anglian Danes had adopted Christianity, which made them neither one thing nor the other. They were allies to both Wessex and to Northumbria, and Wessex and Northumbria were natural enemies, which meant that the East Anglians were trying to lick one arse while they kissed the other. And they were weak. The old King Eohric had tried to please the northern Danes by attacking Wessex, and he and many of his great thegns had died in a slaughter. That had been my slaughter. My battle, and the memory filled me with the rage of the betrayed. I had fought so often for the Christians, I had killed their enemies and defended their lands, and now they had spat me out like a scrap of rancid gristle.
Aldger crossed our bow. He deliberately swung his bigger ship close to us, perhaps wanting us to baulk at the last moment, but I growled at Uhtred to hold his course, and our bow sliced within a sword’s length of Aldger’s steering oar. We were close enough to smell his boat, even though he was upwind. I waved to him, then watched as he swung his bows northwards again. He kept pace with us, but I reckoned he was merely bored. He stayed with us for an hour or more, then the long ship turned away, the sail filled full from aft, and she sped off towards the distant land.
We stayed at sea that night. We were out of sight of land, though I knew it lay not far to our west. We shortened the great sail and let Middelniht plunge northwards through short, steep waves that spattered the deck with cold spray. I had the oar for most of the night and Uhtred crouched beside me as I told him tales of Grimnir, the ‘masked one’. ‘He was really Odin,’ I told him, ‘but whenever the god wanted to walk among humans he would wear his mask and take a new name.’
‘Jesus did that,’ he said.
‘He wore a mask?’
‘He walked amongst men.’
‘Gods can do whatever they want,’ I said, ‘but from here on we wear a mask too. You don’t mention my name or your name. I’m Wulf Ranulfson and you’re Ranulf Wulfson.’
‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
‘You know where we’re going,’ I said.
‘Bebbanburg.’ He said the name flatly.
‘Which belongs to us,’ I said. ‘You remember Beocca?’
‘Of course.’
‘He gave me the charters,’ I said. Dear Father Beocca, so ugly, so crippled, and so earnest. He had been my childhood tutor, a friend to King Alfred, and a good man. He had died not long before and his twisted bones were buried in Wintanceaster’s church, close to the tomb of his beloved Alfred, but before he died he had sent me the charters that proved my ownership of Bebbanburg, though no man living needed to see a charter to know that I was the rightful lord of the fortress. My father had died while I was a child, and my uncle had taken Bebbanburg, and no amount of ink on parchment would drive him out. He had the swords and the spears, and I had Middelniht and a handful of men.
‘We’re descended from Odin,’ I told Uhtred.
‘I know, Father,’ he said patiently. I had told him of our ancestry so many times, but the Christian priests had made him suspicious of my claims.
‘We have the blood of gods,’ I said. ‘When Odin was Grimnir he lay with a woman, and we came from her. And when we reach Bebbanburg we shall fight like gods.’
It was Grimesbi that had made me think of Grimnir. Grimesbi was a village that lay not far from the open sea on the southern bank of the Humbre. Legend said that Odin had built a hall there, though why any god would choose to make a hall on that windswept stretch of marsh was beyond my imagining, but the settlement provided a fine anchorage when storms ravaged the sea beyond the river’s wide mouth.
Grimesbi was a Northumbrian town. There had been a time when the kings of Mercia ruled all the way to the Humbre, and Grimesbi would have been one of their most northerly possessions, but those days were long past. Now Grimesbi was under Danish rule, though like all sea ports it would welcome any traveller, whether he was Danish, Saxon, Frisian, or even Scottish. There was a risk putting into the small port because I did not doubt that my uncle would listen for any news of my coming northwards, and he would surely have men in Grimesbi who were paid to pass on news to Bebbanburg. Yet I also needed news, and that meant risking a landing in Grimesbi because the harbour was frequented by seamen, and some of them would surely know what happened behind Bebbanburg’s great walls. I would try to lessen the risk by emulating Grimnir. I would wear a mask. I would be Wulf Ranulfson out of Haithabu.
I gave my son the steering oar. ‘Should we go west?’ he asked.
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘We can’t see the land. How do we find Grimesbi?’
‘It’s easy,’ I said.
‘How?’
‘When you see two or three ships, you’ll know.’
Grimesbi was on the Humbre, and that river had been a path into central Britain for thousands of Danes. I was sure we would see ships, and so we did. Within an hour of Uhtred’s question we found six sailing westwards and two rowing eastwards, and their presence told me I had come to the place I wanted to be, to the sea-road that led from Frisia and Daneland to the Humbre. ‘Six!’ Finan exclaimed.
His surprise was somehow no surprise. All six ships travelling towards Britain were war boats, and I suspected all six were well crewed. Men were coming from across the sea because rumour said there were spoils to be won, or because Cnut had summoned them. ‘The peace is ending,’ I said.
‘They’ll be crying for you to return,’ Finan said.
‘They can kiss my pagan arse first.’
Finan chuckled, then gave me a quizzical glance. ‘Wulf Ranulfson,’ he said. ‘Why that name?’
‘Why not?’ I shrugged. ‘I had to invent a name, why not that one?’
‘Cnut Ranulfson?’ he suggested. ‘And Wulf? I just find it strange that you chose his name.’
‘I
