Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [38]
‘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.
Four
I had told Ælfadell my name, and what else? Had I told her my idea for revenge on Sigurd? And why had I talked so much? Ludda gave me an answer as we rode south. ‘There are herbs and mushrooms, lord, and there’s the blight you find on ears of rye, all kinds of things can give men dreams. My mother used them.’
‘She was a sorceress?’
He shrugged. ‘A wise-woman, anyway. She told fortunes and made potions.’
‘And the potion Ælfadell gave me, that made me speak my name?’
‘Maybe it was rye-blight? You’re lucky to be alive if it was. Get it wrong and you kill the dreamer, but if she knew how to make it then you’ll have gabbled like an old woman, lord.’
And who knows what else I had revealed to the aglæcwif? I felt like a fool. ‘Does she really speak to the gods?’ I had told Ludda about Ælfadell, but not about Erce. I wanted to hold that secret close, a memory to haunt me.
‘Some folk claim to talk to the gods,’ Ludda said uncertainly.
‘And see the future?’
He shifted in his saddle. Ludda was not accustomed to riding a horse, and the journey had given him a sore arse and aching thighs. ‘If she really saw the future, lord, would she be in a cave? She’d have a palace. Kings would crawl to her feet.’
‘Maybe the gods only talk to her in the cave,’ I suggested.
Ludda heard the anxiety in my voice. ‘Lord,’ he said earnestly, ‘if you roll the dice often enough you always get the numbers you want. If I tell you the sun will shine tomorrow and that it will rain and there will be snow and that clouds will cover the sky and that the wind will blow and that it will be a calm day and that the thunder will deafen us then one of those things will turn out to be true and you’ll forget the rest because you want to believe that I really can tell the future.’ He gave me a swift smile. ‘Folk don’t buy rusty iron because I’m persuasive, lord, but because they desperately want to believe it will turn to silver.’
And I desperately wanted to believe his doubts about Ælfadell. She had said Wessex was doomed and that seven kings would die, but what did that mean? What kings? Alfred of Wessex, Edward of Cent, Eohric of East Anglia? Who else? And who was the Saxon? ‘She knew who I was,’ I said to Ludda.
‘Because you had drunk her potion, lord. It was as if you were drunk and saying anything that came into your mind.’
‘And she tied me up,’ I told him, ‘but didn’t kill me.’
‘God be praised,’ Ludda said dutifully. I doubted he was a Christian, at least not a good one, but he was too clever to fall foul of the priests. He frowned in puzzlement. ‘I wonder why she didn’t kill you.’
‘She was frightened to,’ I said, ‘and so was the abbot.’
‘She tied you up, lord,’ Ludda said, ‘because someone had told her you were Jarl Cnut’s enemy. So she knew that much, but she didn’t know what Jarl Cnut wanted done with you. So she sent for the monks to find out. And they were too scared to order your death, too. It’s no small thing to kill a lord, especially if his men are close by.’
‘One of them wasn’t scared.’
‘And he’s regretting that now,’ Ludda said happily, ‘but it’s strange, lord, very strange.’
‘What is?’
‘She can talk to the gods. And the gods didn’t tell her to kill you.’
‘Ah,’ I said, seeing what he meant and not knowing what else to say.
‘The gods would have known what to do with you and they would have told her