Bernard Cornwell - Death of Kings

‘The Saxon is the king who will destroy what he rules. Erce knows all, Erce sees all.’

A scuffle of feet in the entrance passage gave me a moment’s hope, but instead of my men appearing it was three monks who ducked into the cave’s gloom. Their leader was an elderly man with wild white hair and sunken cheeks, who stared at me, then at Ælfadell, then back to me. ‘It’s really him?’ he asked.

‘It’s Uhtred of Bebbanburg, it’s my son,’ Ælfadell said, then laughed.

‘Good God,’ the monk said. For a moment he looked frightened, and that was why I still lived. Both Ælfadell and the monk knew I was Cnut’s enemy, but they did not know what Cnut wanted of me and they feared that to kill me would offend their lord. The white-haired monk came towards me, gingerly, frightened of what I might do. ‘Are you Uhtred?’ he asked.

‘I am Kjartan of Cumbraland,’ I said.

Ælfadell cackled. ‘He is Uhtred,’ she said. ‘Erce’s drink does not lie. He babbled like a baby in the night.’

The monk was frightened of me because my life and death were beyond his comprehension. ‘Why did you come here?’ he asked.

‘To discover the future,’ I said. I could feel blood between my hands. My rubbing had opened the scabs on the cuts Ælfadell had inflicted on my palm.

‘He learned the future,’ Ælfadell said, ‘the future of dead kings.’

‘Did it tell of my death?’ I asked her, and for the first time saw doubt on that wrinkled-hag face.

‘We must send to Jarl Cnut,’ the monk said.

‘Kill him,’ one of the younger monks said. He was a tall, strongly-built man with a hard long face, a hook of a nose and cruel unforgiving eyes. ‘The jarl will want him dead.’

The older monk was uncertain. ‘We don’t know the jarl’s will, Brother Hearberht.’

‘Kill him! He’ll reward you. Reward us all.’ Brother Hearberht was right, but the gods had filled the others with doubt.

‘The jarl must decide,’ the older monk said.

‘It will take three days to fetch an answer,’ Hearberht said caustically, ‘and what do you do with him for three days? He has his men in the town. Too many men.’

‘We take him to the jarl?’ the older monk suggested. He was desperate for an answer, flailing at any solution that might spare him from making a decision.

‘For the sake of God,’ Hearberht snapped. He strode to the pile of my possessions, stooped, and straightened with Wasp-Sting in his hand. The short blade caught the wan light. ‘What do you do with a cornered wolf?’ he demanded, and came towards me.

And I used all my strength, all that strength that years of sword and shield practice had put into my bones and muscle, the years of war and readying for war, and I thrust my bent legs and pulled my arms, and I felt the bonds loosening and I was rolling back, throwing the blade off my hip, and I started to shout, a great war shout of a warrior and reached for Serpent-Breath’s hilt.

Ælfadell tried to pull the sword away, but she was old and slow, and I was bellowing to fill the cave with echoes and I seized the hilt and swung the blade to drive her back, and Hearberht checked as I rose to my feet. I half stumbled, the bonds still wrapped about my ankles, and Hearberht saw his opening and came in fast, the short blade held low ready to rip up into my naked belly and I swatted it aside and fell on him. He went backwards and I stood again and he hacked the blade at my bare legs, but I parried him and then stabbed down with Serpent-Breath, my sword, my lover, my blade, my war companion, and she gutted that monk like a fish under a razor-edged knife, and his blood spread on his black robe and turned the bat shit black, and I went on ripping her, unaware that I was still shouting to fill the cave with rage.

Hearberht was squealing and shaking and dying, and the other two monks were fleeing. I ripped the bonds off my ankles and pursued them. Serpent-Breath’s hilt was slippery with my blood, and she was hungry.

I caught them in the woods, not fifty paces from the cave’s mouth, and I felled the younger monk with a blow to the back of his head, then caught the older by his robe. I turned him to face me and smelt the fear that fouled his robe. ‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said, ‘and who are you?’

‘Abbot Deorlaf, lord,’ he said, falling to his knees and holding his clasped hands towards me, and I held him by the throat and buried Serpent-Breath in his belly, and I sawed her there, opening him up, and he mewed like an animal and wept like a child and called on Jesus the Redeemer as he died in his own dung. I cut the younger monk’s throat, then went back to the cave where I washed Serpent-Breath’s blade in the stream.

‘Erce did not foretell your death,’ Ælfadell said. She had screamed when I tore the bonds off my wrists and seized the sword from her, yet now she was oddly calm. She just watched me and was apparently unafraid.

‘Is that why you didn’t kill me?’

‘She didn’t foretell my death either,’ she said.

‘Then maybe she was wrong,’ I said, and fetched Wasp-Sting from Hearberht’s dead hand.

And that was when I saw her.

From a deeper cave, from a passage that led into the netherworld, Erce came. She was a girl of such beauty that the breath stopped in my lungs. The dark-haired girl who had ridden me in the night, the long-haired girl, slender and pale, so beautiful and calm and as naked as the blade in my hand and all I could do was stare at her. I could not move, and she gazed back at me with grave, large eyes and she said nothing and I said nothing until the breath caught in me again. ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘Dress yourself,’ Ælfadell said, whether to me or the girl I could not tell.

‘Who are you?’ I asked the girl, but she was still and silent.

‘Dress yourself, Lord Uhtred!’ Ælfadell ordered, and I obeyed her. I pulled on my jerkin, my boots, my mail and strapped my swords at my waist, and still the girl gazed at me with her quiet, dark eyes. She was as beautiful as the summer dawn and as silent as the winter night. She did not smile, her face showed nothing. I walked towards her and sensed something strange. The Christians say we have a soul, whatever that is, and it seemed to me this girl had no soul. There was an emptiness in her dark eyes. It was frightening, making me approach her slowly.

‘No!’ Ælfadell called. ‘You cannot touch her! You have seen Erce in the daylight. No other man has.’

‘Erce?’

‘Go,’ she said, ‘go.’ She dared to stand in front of me. ‘You dreamed last night,’ she said, ‘and in your dream you found truth. Be content with that, and go.’

‘Speak to me,’ I said to the girl, but she was unmoving and silent and empty, yet I could not take my eyes from her. I would have looked on her for all the rest of my life. The Christians talk of miracles, of men walking on water and raising the dead, and they say those miracles are proofs of their religion, though none of them can do a miracle or show us a miracle, yet here, in this damp cave beneath the hilltop grave, I saw a miracle. I saw Erce.

‘Go,’ Ælfadell said, and though she spoke to me it was the goddess who turned and vanished into the underworld.

I did not kill the old woman. I went. I dragged the dead monks into some brambles where perhaps the wild beasts would feast on them, and then I stooped to the stream and drank like a dog.

‘What did the witch tell you?’ Osferth asked me when I reached the widow’s farm.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, and my tone discouraged further questions, all except one. ‘Where are we going, lord?’ Osferth asked.

‘We’re going south,’ I said, still in a daze.

And so we rode towards Sigurd’s land.