The Pale Horseman. Bernard Cornwell

that right?’

      ‘What of it?’

      ‘You must surely welcome such a fate?’ I asked. ‘To be near your god?’

      ‘Are you threatening me?’

      ‘I don’t threaten vermin,’ I said, enjoying myself. ‘How many men are in that fort?’

      ‘Forty? Fifty?’ He plainly did not know. ‘We can assemble forty.’

      ‘So tomorrow,’ I said, ‘your king can have his fort back.’

      ‘He is not my king,’ Asser said, irritated by the assumption.

      ‘Your king or not,’ I said, ‘he can have his fort back so long as he pays us properly.’

      That negotiation lasted until dark. Peredur, as Father Mardoc had said, was willing to pay more than a hundred shillings, but he feared we would take the money and leave without fighting and so he wanted some kind of surety from me. He wanted hostages, which I refused to give, and after an hour or more of argument we had still not reached an agreement, and it was then that Peredur summoned his queen. That meant nothing to me, but I saw the Ass stiffen as though he were offended, then sensed that every other man in the hall was strangely apprehensive. Asser made a protest, but the king cut him off with an abrupt slice of his hand and then a door at the back of the hall was opened and Iseult came to my life.

      Iseult. Finding her there was like discovering a jewel of gold in a midden. I saw her and I forgot Mildrith. Dark Iseult, black-haired Iseult, huge-eyed Iseult. She was small, thin as an elf, with a luminous face and hair as black as a raven’s feathers. She wore a black cloak and had silver bands about her neck and silver bracelets at her wrists and silver rings at her ankles and the jewellery clinked gently as she walked towards us. She was maybe two or three years younger than me, but somehow, despite her youth, she managed to scare Peredur’s courtiers who backed away from her. The king looked nervous, while Asser, standing beside me, made the sign of the cross, then spat to ward off evil.

      I just stared at her, entranced. There was pain on her face, as if she found life unbearable, and there was fear on her husband’s face when he spoke to her in a quiet, respectful voice. She shuddered when he talked and I thought that perhaps she was mad, for the grimace on her face was awful, disfiguring her beauty, but then she calmed and looked at me and the king spoke to Asser.

      ‘You will tell the queen who you are and what you will do for King Peredur,’ Asser told me in a distant, disapproving voice.

      ‘She speaks Danish?’ I asked.

      ‘Of course not,’ he snapped. ‘Just tell her and get this farce over.’

      I looked into her eyes, those big, dark eyes, and had the uncanny suspicion that she could see right through my gaze and decipher my innermost thoughts. But at least she did not grimace when she saw me as she had when her husband spoke. ‘My name is Uhtred Ragnarson,’ I said, ‘and I am here to fight for your husband if he pays what I am worth. And if he doesn’t pay, we go.’

      I thought Asser would translate, but the monk stayed silent.

      Iseult still stared at me and I stared back. She had a flawless skin, untouched by illness, and a strong face, but sad. Sad and beautiful. Fierce and beautiful. She reminded me of Brida, the East Anglian who had been my lover and who was now with Ragnar, my friend. Brida was as full of fury as a scabbard is filled with blade, and I sensed the same in this queen who was so young and strange and dark and lovely.

      ‘I am Uhtred Ragnarson,’ I heard myself speaking again, though I had scarcely been aware of any urge to talk, ‘and I work miracles.’

      Why I said that I do not know. I later learned that she had no idea what I had said, for at that time the only tongue she spoke was that of the Britons, but nevertheless she seemed to understand me and she smiled. Asser caught his breath. ‘Be careful, Dane,’ he hissed, ‘she is a queen.’

      ‘A queen?’ I asked, still staring at her, ‘or the queen?’

      ‘The king is blessed with three wives,’ the monk said disapprovingly.

      Iseult turned away and spoke to the king. He nodded, then gestured respectfully towards the door through which Iseult had come. She was evidently dismissed and she obediently went to the door, but paused there and gave me a last, speculative look. Then she was gone.

      And suddenly it was easy. Peredur agreed to pay us a hoard of silver. He showed us the hoard that had been hidden in a back room. There were coins, broken jewellery, battered cups and three candleholders which had been taken from the church, and when I weighed the silver, using a balance fetched from the market place, I discovered there was three hundred and sixteen shillings’ worth, which was not negligible. Asser divided it into two piles, one only half the size of the other. ‘We shall give you the smaller portion tonight,’ the monk said, ‘and the rest you will get when Dreyndynas is recovered.’

      ‘You think I am a fool?’ I asked, knowing that after the fight it would be hard to get the rest of the silver.

      ‘You take me for one?’ he retorted, knowing that if he gave us all the silver then Fyrdraca would vanish in the dawn.

      We agreed in the end that we would take the one third now and that the other two thirds would be carried to the battlefield so that it was easily accessible. Peredur had hoped I would leave that larger portion in his hall, and then I would have faced an uphill fight through his dung-spattered streets, and that was a fight I would have lost, and it was probably the prospect of such a battle that had stopped Callyn’s men attacking Peredur’s hall. They hoped to starve him, or at least Asser believed that.

      ‘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