The Pale Horseman. Bernard Cornwell

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      ‘Tell me about Iseult,’ I demanded of the monk when the bargaining was done.

      He sneered at that. ‘I can read you like a missal,’ he said.

      ‘Whatever a missal is,’ I said, pretending ignorance.

      ‘A book of prayers,’ he said, ‘and you will need prayers if you touch her.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘She is evil,’ he said vehemently.

      ‘She’s a queen, a young queen,’ I said, ‘so how can she be evil?’

      ‘What do you know of the Britons?’

      ‘That they stink like stoats,’ I said, ‘and thieve like jackdaws.’

      He gave me a sour look and, for a moment, I thought he would refuse to say more, but he swallowed his British pride. ‘We are Christians,’ he said, ‘and God be thanked for that great mercy, but among our people there are still some old superstitions. Pagan ways. Iseult is part of that.’

      ‘What part?’

      He did not like talking about it, but he had raised the subject of Iseult’s evil and so he reluctantly explained. ‘She was born in the springtime,’ he said, ‘eighteen years ago, and at her birth there was an eclipse of the sun, and the folk here are credulous fools and they believe a dark child born at the sun’s death has power. They have made her into a,’ he paused, not knowing the Danish word, ‘a gwrach,’ he said, a word that meant nothing to me. ‘Dewines,’ he said irritably and, when I still showed incomprehension, he at last found a word. ‘A sorceress.’

      ‘A witch?’

      ‘And Peredur married her. Made her his shadow queen. That is what kings did with such girls. They take them into their households so they may use their power.’

      ‘What power?’

      ‘The skills the devil gives to shadow queens, of course,’ he said irritably. ‘Peredur believes she can see the future. But it is a skill she will retain only so long as she is a virgin.’

      I laughed at that. ‘If you disapprove of her, monk, then I would be doing you a favour if I raped her.’ He ignored that, or at least he made no reply other than to give me a harsh scowl. ‘Can she see the future?’ I asked.

      ‘She saw you victorious,’ he said, ‘and told the king he could trust you, so you tell me?’

      ‘Then assuredly she can see the future,’ I said.

      Brother Asser sneered at that answer. ‘They should have strangled her with her own birth-cord,’ he snarled. ‘She is a pagan bitch, a devil’s thing, evil.’

      There was a feast that night, a feast to celebrate our pact and I hoped Iseult would be there, but she was not. Peredur’s older wife was present, but she was a sullen, grubby creature with two weeping boils on her neck and she hardly spoke. Yet it was a surprisingly good feast. There was fish, beef, mutton, bread, ale, mead and cheese, and while we ate Asser told me he had come from the kingdom of Dyfed, which lay north of the Sæfern Sea, and that his king, who had an impossible British name which sounded like a man coughing and spluttering, had sent him to Cornwalum to dissuade the British kings from supporting the Danes.

      I was surprised by that, so surprised that I looked away from the girls serving the food. A harpist played at the hall’s end and two of the girls swayed in time to the music as they walked. ‘You don’t like Danes,’ I said.

      ‘You are pagans,’ Asser said scornfully.

      ‘So how come you speak the pagan tongue?’ I asked.

      ‘Because my abbot would have us send missionaries to the Danes.’

      ‘You should go,’ I said. ‘It would be a quick route to heaven for you.’

      He ignored that. ‘I learned Danish among many other tongues,’ he said loftily, ‘and I speak the language of the Saxons too. And you, I think, were not born in Denmark?’

      ‘How do you know?’

      ‘Your voice,’ he said. ‘You are from Northumbria?’

      ‘I am from the sea,’ I said.

      He shrugged. ‘In Northumbria,’ he said severely, ‘the Danes have corrupted the Saxons so that they think of themselves as Danes.’ He was wrong, but I was scarcely in a position to correct him. ‘Worse,’ he went on, ‘they have extinguished the light of Christ.’

      ‘Is the light of Thor too bright for you?’

      ‘The West Saxons are Christians,’ he said, ‘and it is our duty to support them, not because of a love for them, but because of our fellow love for Christ.’

      ‘You have met Alfred of Wessex?’ I asked sourly.

      ‘I look forward to meeting him,’ he said fervently, ‘for I hear he is a good Christian.’

      ‘I hear the same.’

      ‘And Christ rewards him,’ Asser went on.

      ‘Rewards him?’

      ‘Christ sent the storm that destroyed the Danish fleet,’ Asser said, ‘and Christ’s angels destroyed Ubba. That is proof of God’s power. If we fight against Alfred then we range ourselves against Christ, so we must not do it. That is my message to the kings of Cornwalum.’

      I was impressed that a British monk at the end of the land of Britain knew so much of what happened in Wessex, and I reckoned Alfred would have been pleased to hear Asser’s nonsense, though of course Alfred had sent many messengers to the British. His messengers had all been priests or monks and they had preached the gospel of their god slaughtering the Danes, and Asser had evidently taken up their message enthusiastically. ‘So why are you fighting Callyn?’ I asked.

      ‘He would join the Danes,’ Asser said.

      ‘And we’re going to win,’ I said, ‘so Callyn is sensible.’

      Asser shook his head. ‘God will prevail.’

      ‘You hope,’ I said, touching the small amulet of Thor’s hammer I wore on a thong around my neck. ‘But if you are wrong, monk, then we’ll take Wessex and Callyn will share the spoils.’

      ‘Callyn will share nothing,’ Asser said spitefully, ‘because you will kill him tomorrow.’

      The Britons have never learned to love the Saxons. Indeed they hate us, and in those years when the last English kingdom was on the edge of destruction, they could have tipped the balance by joining Guthrum. Instead they held back their sword arms, and for that the Saxons can thank the church. Men like Asser had decided that the Danish heretics were a worse enemy than English Christians, and if I were a Briton I would resent that, because the Britons might have taken back much of their lost lands if they had allied themselves with the pagan Northmen. Religion makes strange bedfellows.

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