Conqueror

Belisarius squeezed his hand. 'Hush now and make ready.'

Boniface dropped his head.

Askold boasted to his gri

Askold swung his blade.

XXI

The sun wheeled across the sky. Still Gudrid stood alone, on the headland that led to the causeway to the mainland.

She had stood here as the raid had unfolded, as people fled and died, as fires blossomed like flowers, and as the patient sea had fallen back, exposing the fine sandy spine of the causeway. All this time she had been alone. The two men, Leif and Bjorn, assigned to accompany her by her father, had quickly run off, convinced that the others were stealing their share of the loot.

In the event people did escape the island, but by boat, in tiny fishing craft laden with families. Gudrid couldn't have stopped them if she tried. They would take news of the attack, and terror would seep like poison into the mainland. But nobody tried to cross the causeway she guarded.

Not until the end of the day.

A monk came walking alone along the headland towards the causeway. Alone and unarmed. He hesitated when he saw Gudrid. Then he came on again, his steps heavy, for he had no choice. Gudrid hoisted her heavy axe on her shoulder, ready to swing, as her father had taught her. But could she kill – even if it meant that otherwise she would be killed herself?

The monk stopped ten paces away. He was slim, his face young, his tonsured scalp smeared by soot and blood.

'Don't try to pass,' Gudrid called. 'I will kill you.'

'You're a woman,' the monk said. His accent was strange but comprehensible.

'I am a woman, but I am a Viking, and the daughter of Bjarni, son of Bjarni. And I will kill you if I have to.'

The monk waited. The sea birds wheeled and cried.

Perhaps it would be enough to rob this monk, Gudrid thought impulsively, and let him live. 'What do you have?'

The monk would not reply.

She stepped forward, axe ready, and began to rummage through the monk's heavy habit. The wool stank of sweat. She found nothing but a scroll. She took it.

The monk sighed. 'So the Weaver's will is done. Just as Boniface said.'

'What?'

'If you must take that, at least know what it is. It is a prophecy. It is called the Menologium of Isolde.'

Gudrid's eyes widened. Was it possible that after all that had happened the treasure she had sought, the impulse behind the ancient story of Sulpicia and Ulf, had fallen into her hands? She peered at the scroll, but of course could not read a word.

No scroll would satisfy her father. She needed more. Perhaps the monk wore a Christian cross around his neck; she had seen missionaries wearing such things. She stepped up to the monk and pulled at the front of his habit, ripping it.

And to her astonishment, she exposed small breasts.

'You are a woman!'

The monk pulled up his – her – habit. 'It's a long story.'

'If my father catches you, or my husband-'

They both knew what would happen to her, how exciting the raiders would find this woman dressed as a man – and how she would be used, before she was sold into slavery, or killed.

'You are a woman, as I am. In God's mercy let me pass.'

Gudrid, frozen by indecision, kept her axe high. Then she stepped back stiffly.

The monk walked forward. Her feet were bare, Gudrid saw, and they left indentations in the soft, damp sand. She paused by Gudrid. 'Thank you.'

Gudrid shook her head wordlessly.

The monk said suddenly, 'Come with me.'

Gudrid's thoughts raced. 'I long to,' she said. 'I can't. My place is here.'

The monk nodded. 'Take care of the prophecy. And beware it.' Then she turned and walked on.

Gudrid didn't turn to see her go. She kept her place on the headland, keeping guard, until the sun touched the western horizon, and her father came to find her.

III

I

It was with a glad heart, that bleak January evening, that Cynewulf at last came to Alfred's hall at Cippanhamm. With Aebbe at his side, Cynewulf had to line up with the other petitioners at the gate to be checked over by the guard, a thickset thegn with a handful of hardfaced warriors. The royal estate was outside the village, and the hall and its subsidiary buildings were protected by their own palisade of cruelly barbed stakes.

The sky was clear, the sun low. There was no snow, but the midwinter frost made the mud hard as Roman concrete under his leather shoes, and the heavy woollen cloaks of the people in the line, musty with a winter's use, steamed softly.

The cold did nothing to dampen Cynewulf's spirits. He murmured to Aebbe, 'In the King's hall we will be warm.'

'Nowhere in England is warm,' the girl said cynically.

Aebbe, twenty years old and ten years Cynewulf's junior, was dark, compact, wary. She wore a cloak so filthy it was almost as dark as Cynewulf's own priest's habit. With her hair matted and pulled back from her brow, she barely looked female at all. But then she had born on Lindisfarena, in a community of fisher-folk eking out a living in the ruins of the abandoned monastery, and had been a refugee from the Northmen since she had been an infant.

'This is the belly of Wessex,' Cynewulf said, forcing a smile. 'There are no Danes here. We really will be safe.'

'If they let us in.'

'Have faith,' Cynewulf murmured.

At last they reached the gate. From here Cynewulf could glimpse the hall itself, the door posts elaborately carved with vine motifs, the gables adorned with horns. It was built according to old pagan traditions, although a crucifix had been fixed above the door. They were nearly there, nearly safe.

But they still had to get past the thegn and his guard.

They reached the head of the line. The thegn was a bear-like man with a tangle of greying beard, and a barrel of a chest under a mail tunic. At his side was a much smaller man in a drab, much-repaired cloak. The skin of his face was a rich acorn brown. This foreigner held a scroll of paper before him that he marked with a bit of charcoal as each petitioner passed. He shivered, seeming to suffer the winter cold more than those around him.

The thegn faced Cynewulf. 'State your business.'

'My name is Cynewulf. I am a priest. I grew up in Wessex, where my father Cynesige was a thegn of the then king. I lived in a monastery in Snotingaham, which is in Mercia-'

'I know where it is.' The thegn eyed the girl. 'I didn't know priests took concubines.'

Cynewulf flared. 'She is no concubine, and you should have more respect for my holy office. This is Aebbe, whom I have brought here from the heart of Mercia, at no small risk to myself, to meet the King.'

'Why?'

'She has a message for him.'

'What sort of message?'

'A prophecy,' Cynewulf admitted reluctantly. 'A prophecy that speaks of dark times for Alfred, but ultimate glory which-'

The thegn gri

'The prophecy is not for sale,' Cynewulf snapped. 'I bring it here out of duty. And it is not hokum.' He babbled, 'The internal consistency – a correlation with past events of record – the visitations of a certain comet which-'

The thegn held up a gloved hand. 'Just hand it over and be on your way.'

Cynewulf sighed. 'It is not written down. It is in her memory-in her head – and nowhere else.'