Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [43]
We spat on our palms, shook hands, and so I became the owner of Tyr’s Daughter. I had to buy pine-tar to caulk her, and we spent two days on the river bank forcing a thick mix of hot tar, horsehair, moss and fleece into the planking. Her mast, sails and hemp rigging were brought from storage to the meadow where the boats were grounded, and I insisted my men leave the filthy tavern and sleep with the ship. We rigged the sail as a tent over her and slept either in or beneath her hull.
Frithof seemed to like us, or else he just approved of the notion that one of his ships was going back into the water. He would bring ale to the meadow, which lay some four or five hundred paces from the nearest part of Snotengaham’s ramparts, and he would drink with us and tell old stories of long ago fights, and in return I told him of the voyages I had made. ‘I miss the sea,’ he said wistfully.
‘Come with us,’ I invited him.
He shook his head ruefully. ‘Jarl Sigurd’s a good lord, he looks after me.’
‘Will I see him before I leave?’ I asked.
‘I doubt it,’ Frithof said, ‘he and his son have gone to help your old friend.’
‘Haesten?’
Frithof nodded. ‘You stayed with him through the winter?’
‘He kept promising us other men would join him,’ I invented, ‘he said they’d come from Ireland, but no one did.’
‘He did well enough last summer,’ Frithof said.
‘Until the Saxons took his fleet,’ I commented sourly.
‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ Frithof spoke just as sourly, then touched the hammer he wore about his neck. ‘Uhtred is besieging him now. Is that why you left?’
‘I don’t want to die in Britain. So, yes, that’s why we left.’
Frithof smiled. ‘Uhtred will die in Britain, my friend. Jarl Sigurd has gone to kill the bastard.’
I touched my hammer. ‘May the gods give the jarl victory,’ I said piously.
‘Kill Uhtred,’ Frithof said, ‘and Mercia falls, and when Alfred dies, Wessex falls.’ He smiled. ‘Why would a man want to be in Frisia when all that happens?’
‘I miss home,’ I said.
‘Make your home here!’ Frithof said enthusiastically. ‘Join Jarl Sigurd and you can choose your own estate in Wessex, you can take a dozen Saxon wives and live like a king!’
‘But I have to kill Uhtred first?’ I asked lightly.
Frithof touched his amulet again. ‘He’ll die,’ he said, and his voice was anything but light.
‘Many men have tried to kill him,’ I said. ‘Ubba tried!’
‘Uhtred has never faced Jarl Sigurd in battle,’ Frithof said, ‘nor the Jarl Cnut, and Jarl Cnut’s sword is swift as the snake’s tongue. Uhtred will die.’
‘All men die.’
‘His death is foretold,’ Frithof said, and, when he saw my interest, he touched the hammer again. ‘There’s a sorceress,’ he explained, ‘and she has seen his death.’
‘Where? When?’
‘Who knows?’ he asked. ‘She knows, I suppose, and that’s what she promised the jarl.’
I felt a sudden, strange pang of jealousy. Had Erce straddled Sigurd in the night as she had straddled me? Then I thought Ælfadell had forecast my death to Sigurd, but had denied it to me, and that meant she either lied to one of us or that Erce, despite her loveliness, was no goddess.
‘Jarl Sigurd and Jarl Cnut are doomed to fight Uhtred,’ Frithof went on, ‘and the prophecy says the jarls will win, Uhtred will die and Wessex will fall. And that means you’re missing an opportunity, my friend.’
‘Maybe I’ll come back,’ I said, and I thought maybe I would return to Snotengaham one day because if Alfred’s dream of uniting all the lands where the English tongue was spoken were to come true then the Danes must be driven from this and every other town between Wessex and the wild Scottish frontier.
At night, when the singing had faded from Snotengaham’s taverns and the dogs had gone quiet, the sentries who watched over the ships would come to our fires and accept our food and ale. That happened for three nights, and then, in the next dawn, my men chanted as they rolled Tyr’s Daughter down a ramp of logs and so into the Trente.