The Pagan Lord by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell [Cornwell, Bernard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Historical, War
ISBN: 9780062199348
Google: vXOxAAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17853024
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-09-25T23:00:00+00:00

Eight

We left Bearddan Igge in a thick fog just two mornings after Saint Oswald had been so miraculously discovered entangled in the fish trap.

One hundred and thirty-three men rode. We took fifty packhorses to carry armour and weapons, and we carried two banners: the wolf’s head of Bebbanburg and the white horse of Mercia, though for most of our journey those banners would have to stay hidden. We also took one priest, Father Wissian. Merewalh insisted that a priest accompany us. He said his men fought better when they had a priest to shepherd their souls, and I growled that they were warriors, not sheep, but Merewalh insisted in his polite way and so I grudgingly permitted Wissian to ride with us. He was a Mercian, a tall, thin young man with a perpetually nervous look and an unkempt shock of hair that had gone prematurely white. ‘We’ll be riding through Danish land,’ I told him, ‘and I don’t want them knowing we’re Saxons, which means you can’t wear that dress,’ I pointed to his long black priestly robe, ‘so take it off.’

‘I can’t …’ he began, then just stammered.

‘Take it off,’ I ordered him again, ‘and borrow a mail coat or a leather jerkin.’

‘I …’ he began again and discovered he still could not talk, but he obeyed me and changed into a servant’s drab clothes, which he then covered with a long black cloak that he belted at the waist with a length of twine so that he still looked like a priest, though at least his heavy wooden cross was covered.

We rode to save Christianity in Britain. Was that true? Father Ceolberht claimed it was true in a fiery sermon he had preached on the day we waited for Finan’s arrival. The priest had harangued Merewalh’s men, telling them that the Christian’s holy book had foretold how the king of the north would attack the king of the south, and that this prophecy was being fulfilled, which meant it was now God’s war. Perhaps it was, but Cnut was no king even though he did come from the north. I have often wondered whether, if the Danes had won and if I now lived in a country called Daneland, would we be Christians? I would like to think not, but the truth was that Christianity was already infecting the Danes. That long war was never about religion. Alfred believed it was, the priests proclaimed it a holy struggle, and men died under the banner of the cross in the belief that once we were all Christians, both Saxons and Danes, we would live in perpetual peace, but that was plain wrong. The Danes of East Anglia were Christians, but that did not stop the Saxons attacking them. The simple truth was that the Danes and the Saxons wanted the same land. The priests said that the lion would lie down with the lamb, but I never saw that happen. Not that I ever knew what a lion was.

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