The Flame Bearer

‘And it hadn’t floated away?’ I asked, pretending to be amazed.

‘King Edward wishes to make this a place of pilgrimage,’ Father Stepan said, again ignoring my mockery.

‘So he sends warriors,’ I said menacingly.

‘When the church is built,’ Brunulf said earnestly, ‘the troops will withdraw. They are here only to protect the holy fathers and to help construct the shrine.’

‘True,’ Father Stepan added eagerly.

They were telling lies. I reckoned their reason to be here was not to build some church, but to distract Sigtryggr while Constantin stole the northern part of Northumbria, and perhaps to provoke a second war by goading Sigtryggr into an assault on the fort. But why, if that is what they wanted, had they been so unprovocative? True, Father Herefrith had been hostile, but I suspected he was a bitter and angry priest who did not know how to be courteous. Brunulf and the rest of his company had been meek, trying to placate me. If they wanted to provoke a war they would have defied me and they had not, so I decided to push them. ‘You claim this field is King Edward’s land,’ I said, ‘but to reach it you must have travelled over King Sigtryggr’s land.’

‘We did, of course,’ Brunulf agreed hesitantly.

‘Then you owe him customs’ dues,’ I said. ‘I assume you brought tools?’ I nodded at the cross-shaped trenches. ‘Spades? Mattocks? Even timber to build your magic shrine perhaps?’

For a heartbeat there was no answer. Brunulf, I saw, glanced at Father Herefrith, who gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘That’s not unreasonable,’ Brunulf said nervously. For a man planning a war, or trying to provoke one, it was an astonishing concession.

‘We will think on the matter,’ Father Herefrith said harshly, ‘and give you our answer in two days.’

My immediate impulse was to argue, to demand we meet the next day, but there was something strange about Herefrith’s sudden change of attitude. Till this moment he had been hostile and obstructive, and now, though still hostile, he was cooperating with Brunulf. It was Herefrith who had given the signal that Brunulf should pretend to agree about paying customs’ dues, and Herefrith who had insisted on waiting for two days, and so I resisted my urge to argue. ‘We will meet you here in two days,’ I agreed instead, ‘and make sure you bring gold to that meeting.’

‘Not here,’ Father Herefrith said sharply.

‘No?’ I responded mildly.

‘The stench of your presence fouls God’s holy land,’ he snarled, then pointed northwards. ‘You see the woodland on the skyline? Just beyond it there’s a stone, a pagan stone.’ He spat the last three words. ‘We shall meet you by the stone at mid morning on Wednesday. You can bring twelve men. No more.’

Again I had to resist the urge to anger him. Instead I nodded agreement. ‘Twelve of us,’ I said, ‘at mid morning, in two days’ time, at the stone. And make sure you bring your fake charter and plenty of gold.’

‘I’ll bring you an answer, pagan,’ Herefrith said, then turned and spurred away.

‘We shall meet in two days, lord,’ Brunulf said, plainly embarrassed by the priest’s anger.

I just nodded and watched as they all rode back to the fort.

Finan watched too. ‘That sour priest will never pay,’ he said, ‘he wouldn’t pay for a morsel of bread if his own poor mother was starving.’

‘He will pay,’ I said.

But not in gold. The payment, I knew, would be in blood. In two days’ time.

Four (#ulink_47e9e8d7-609b-52ca-a3be-515f1a847498)

The stone where Father Herefrith had insisted we meet was a rough pillar, twice the height of a man, standing gaunt above a gentle and fertile valley an hour’s easy ride from the fort. It was one of the strange stones that the old people had placed all across Britain. Some stones stood in rings, some made passages, some looked like tables made for giants, and many, like the one on the valley’s southern crest, were lonely markers. We had ridden north from the fort, following a cattle path, and when I reached the stone I touched the hammer hanging at my neck and wondered what god had wanted the stone put beside the path, and why. Finan made the sign of the cross. Egil, who had grown up in the River Beina’s valley, said that his father had always called the pillar Thor’s Stone, ‘but the Saxons call it Satan’s Stone, lord.’

‘I prefer Thor’s Stone,’ I said.

‘There were Saxons living here?’ my son asked.

‘When my father arrived, yes, lord.’

‘What happened to them?’

‘Some died, some fled, and some stayed as slaves.’

The Saxons had now had their revenge because, just north of the crest on which the stone stood and beside a ford of the Beina, was a burned-out steading. The fire had been recent, and Egil confirmed that it had been one of the few places that Brunulf’s men had destroyed. ‘They forced everyone to leave,’ he said.

‘None was killed?’

He shook his head. ‘The folk were told they had to go before sundown, but that was all. They even said the man who led the Saxons was apologetic.’

‘Strange way to start a war,’ my son remarked, ‘being apologetic.’

‘They want us to draw the first blood,’ I said.

My son kicked a half-burned beam. ‘Then why burn this place?’

‘To persuade us to attack them? To provoke revenge?’ I could think of no better explanation, but why then had Brunulf been so meek when he met me?

Brunulf’s men had burned the hall, barn, and cattle byres. Judging by the size of the blackened remnants the steading had been prosperous, and the folk who lived there must have thought it a safe place because they had built no palisade. The ruins lay just yards from the river, where the ford had been trampled by the hooves of countless cattle, while upstream of the steading an elaborate fish trap had been made clear across the river. The trap had silted up, becoming a crude dam, which, in turn, had flooded the pastures to form a shallow lake. A few cottages remained unharmed, enough to offer us crowded shelter, while lengths of charred timber made good fires on which we roasted mutton ribs. I posted sentries in the woodland to our south, and more in a stand of willows on the ford’s further bank.

My son was apprehensive. More than once he left the fire and walked to the steading’s southern edge to stare at the gaunt stone on the skyline. He was imagining men there, shapes in the darkness, the glint of fire reflected from sword-blades. ‘Don’t fret,’ I told him after moonrise, ‘they won’t be coming.’