'The first raids are always vital. The German kingdoms in Britain are fragile, fractious, riven by internal strife. Everybody knows that. In the long term we should achieve great success against them. But the cheaper the success the better, as far as I'm concerned. And the element of surprise is everything.' He smiled at her. 'And that's why it would be a mistake to go chasing your dream of a family legend.'
'I won't deny that's what I want,' she said. 'But, Father, listen to me. There are other reasons to go to Lindisfarena. Those monks are rich. Richer than you'd imagine.'
He shook his head. 'That makes no sense. Nobody would store riches in such as vulnerable place as a coastal island.'
'You're thinking like a seafarer, not a Christian. Father, the monks came to Lindisfarena to convert their countrymen to their faith. They wanted a safe place to live. But the threat in their eyes came from the land, not the sea. And so they chose to live on a tidal island because it is hard to reach from the land. It doesn't even seem to have occurred to them that an attack might come from the sea. They will be quite defenceless.' She repeated what Rhodri had told her, about how pilgrims brought their money to give to the monastery. 'Believe me, those monks on Lindisfarena are rich!'
'Believe you, or a slave on the make?' He thought it over. 'All right, child. Just this one time we'll do as you say – if the others agree. One thing, though: are you sure this prophecy is worth all the trouble? Doesn't it speak of the Christ? Everybody knows the Christ is a powerful god. He has His adherents even here. Some of the men might fear tangling with His worshippers.'
She grinned. 'The Christ let Himself be nailed to a tree. I'd back Woden in a fight any time. Just give him a hammer!'
He grinned and clapped her on the shoulder. 'Gudrid, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Sometimes I wish you could be more like your sister Birgitta. But you have the mind of a son-'
'And the womb of one too,' she said bleakly.
He covered her hand with his. 'Have patience.'
'There's one more thing,' she said, pushing her luck. 'The raid on Lindisfarena.'
'Yes?'
'I'm coming too.' And she bolted from the hall before he had a chance to refuse.
XI
Belisarius and Macson arrived at the north-east coast of Britain, opposite the island of Lindisfarena, early in the morning. As it happened the tide was high, and the island was cut off. There was no boat to carry them across, indeed no signs of human life on this sandy coast. So Macson led their horses to a patch of tough dune grass, and then came to sit with Belisarius in the shadow cast by their cart.
Belisarius wasn't sorry to be held up. It was going to be a warm day, and a humid one; the sea was like a pool of molten glass, barely stirring even as the tide tugged at it, and the Germans' holy island floated like a slab of pumice. It was pleasant to sit here, and to watch the birds wheeling over the sea, intent on their own tiny dramas of life and death.
And Belisarius was glad to see the sea again, to breathe in its sharp saltiness. He might even take a dip in the water at some point; the brine would wash out the sores and blisters he had picked up on the journey, and purify a skin that had gone too long without a proper cleanse, the only bath-houses on this benighted island being ruins where nobody had fired up the boilers for four hundred years.
As the morning wore on, the sea subsided. It was noon, the sun high, when at last they stirred themselves and made the crossing. The causeway's damp sand gave way under their querulous horses' hooves and clung to the cart's wheels. Macson walked alongside the horses, soothing them with soft words – German words for horses bought from a German – while Belisarius walked behind, steadying the cart.
The causeway was so low that at times the sea almost lapped at their feet, and half way across, suspended between the island and the mainland, Belisarius felt as if they were walking across the surface of the ocean itself. He remembered that these half-converted Germans were superstitious about border places, crossroads, liminal zones between one kind of landscape and another. Suspended on the hide of this ocean, Belisarius felt a flicker of their ancient fear of the world's edges.
At last they reached the island, and rolled up a shallow beach to firmer land. They came upon a village. The monastery itself, quite humble, was a small distance away.
The village was the usual sort, a huddle of houses, shacks, lean-tos, bowers and pens, fading into the worked countryside, muddy and slumped. Beyond the mean huts fields stretched away in long uncertain strips, a geography determined by the limitations of the Germans' heavy wheeled plough. There were baskets everywhere, full of shellfish or glistening fish carcasses, and clouds of flies hung over the dung heaps and open cesspits. The most unusual, and charming, aspect of this seashore village was that the hulls of worn-out boats had been upturned and reused as houses or stores. And at least the usual sewage stinks of a German village were laced with a tang of rotting fish.
The children were the first to notice the approach of Macson and Belisarius, as always. They came running, curious. They were followed by alarmingly big dogs – shepherds' dogs, kept to drive off the wolves.
Amid this cheerful gaggle, a man came striding out to greet them. He was tall but spare, with a streak of grey in his dirty blond hair; he was perhaps in his mid-thirties. He wore a luxuriant moustache, and a necklace of shell and stone. Further away Belisarius saw other men and women watching them with a cautious curiosity. Belisarius, like Macson, made sure his hands were visible at all times.
'My name is Guthfrith,' the man said. 'You've travelled far, I can see that. Are you here for the monks?'
'We are.'
Guthfrith said that one of the monks was here in the village this morning – a 'deacon' called Elfgar, here to collect shellfish for the monastery. Though he shouted for this Elfgar, he wasn't to be seen, and Guthfrith gruffly invited the travellers to rest in his own home.
The travellers accepted, and followed Guthfrith. In the course of the journey Belisarius had learned that the Germans had an honourable tradition of hospitality, even in a country not yet fully controlled by its kings, where people were wary of strangers. Of course it always helped to grease the axle of this old tradition of generosity with a couple of silver coins.
The hut's smoky interior was dark, although the skin doors were tied back on this bright summer day. The floor was dirt-strewn, and the planks laid over the storage pits underneath creaked softly as Belisarius stepped across them.
Remarkably, Guthfrith's home had been built around the trunk of a tree, a dark pillar at the centre of the floor. Some of the tree's branches, leafless and scorched over the hearth, showed beneath the thatched roof, and grimy tokens of cloth and hay strands dangled from its twigs.
Guthfrith sat the two of them in a dark corner and fetched them tankards of gritty ale, wooden bowls full of a kind of shellfish broth, and slabs of bread that felt harder than the wood of the bowls. This was the staple food of the farmers, and Belisarius knew the drill. You dipped your bread into your soup to soften it, and worked on it with your teeth until you could chew a little off. The soup, made with a little precious animal stock and laced with sea brine, was thick and salty, but flavoursome.