Winter, Early in the Year 934
"Hwaet!"
All of the assembled people, Uhtred's warriors, his son, young Uhtred with his wife and son, his household staff and his woman, Benedetta, sat closely together as the fire licked at the logs in the hearth so fast that the shapes became ghosts of ash within moments.
All had stopped, all were listening to young Finan as he began the tale. That tale was the oldest that the Angles and the Saxons knew, a story carried across the northern sea from Geatland and remembered at times when it was needed, feast days, times of peril to calm and stir memories of common community. And on days like that day, when the snow fell thickly and carpeted the surrounds of Bebbanburg in several inches, thick and deep.
The animals had been brought in and some were even in the chapel, being a thick-walled chamber that would allow those which had survived "Blotmonat" to survive to the spring.
It was not surprising, young Finan had told young Uhtred. The summer had brought bumper crops to the farms, apples were abundant in orchards, wheat and barley and rye had thrived and there was hardly a back that was not sore nor a face that was not pinched in tiredness from recovering every single piece of nature's God-given bounty from the earth.
That sounds like pagan talk, young Uhtred had teased. He had been brought up in a convent and was a Christian, like young Finan. Unlike young Finan, his was the Roman Christian variety, as famously brought to Northumbria by their ancestor, King Oswy, and was now peactised at Lindisfarne.
It might well be pagan talk, young Finan had quipped back, but was it not also sense? God would provide a bounty enough for a land to live on if the weather was as bad as this? Plus, what would a Roman Christian know? Irish Christianity had been there much longer than Augustine's church, and it was terrible to think that the Holy Island had none of the church of ColmCille upon it any longer.
If it did, young Uhtred had argued back, handing young Finan his rein that they would go out on watch together, Oswy's treaty had failed.
And so on, back and forth, discussing their common history. Discussing stories, discussing history. Discussing paganism, both Cymric and Eireann, and Anglish, Saxon, Danish and Norse. Young Finan liked these discussions, far away from their fathers, on watch duty, and he suspected his cousin liked them too.
Young Uhtred also teased young Finan about marrying, and would sometimes point out a girl every so often and ask him about her.
"Or there's him," young Uhtred would tease, and young Finan would hit his arm in reply, telling him he didn't wish to marry.
It was a lie, of course. On the day his uncle had told him he could stay as one of his warriors, Finan had taken young Finan a walk and told him of the agreement that he and Constantine had made for his future.
"Of course, you may never get to be king of Alba," Finan had told him. "MaelColm may well marry and have an heir old enough to take his place." But should he not, young Finan would be called, "Ildubh", and take the place of the original "Ildubh" as a potential successor.
At first, young Finan was shocked, and asked Finan whether this was to do with his parentage - he could hardly not know with Uhtred using it as a verbal stick to beat him with every so often.
"You are my son, your mother says so - I say so," Finan told him. "Do you not think that she would just admit you were the son of that bas- the king of Alba, if you were? It would be so much simpler, if it were true, to do that."
And young Finan could see Finan's point. He would never have had to come to Bebbanburg, he could have stayed at Dunnottar, been a warrior, been a Scealeocht. It was an unnecessary complication.
But then, he told himself, his mother loved Finan, and wanted to be with him. Would she have put them all through this for her own desires? He didn't think so. And he felt it, with Finan, he felt a connection to him, not least because they could both speak Gaelish, and it was one way that they could both talk to one another with no-one else understanding. Not that there was much to say that was private, but that conversation, on the beach at low tide, on a cold, winter's evening like this one, was.
No, not like that one. The winter, two years before, when Finan had taken him down Saint Oswald's steps and emerged onto the sand had been mild. This, with snow that had lasted since before Advent, was so relentless that no-one was even talking about it.
Except Benedetta, who would tut when more snow began to fall, who had wrapped her thin frame in many furs, and did not like to move away from the fire. She had never seen snow before, she told young Finan in broken Anglish, which was the best they could do for she spoke only Italian otherwise, and when he had attempted an approximation in Latin, she had just given her little, tinkling, bell-like laugh.
"I do not like it," she told him on day, as even the ships were unable to move to go out to coax fish from their icy havens. "Will it go on like this until the end of time?"
"The Danes think so," young Finan told her. "Or, at least their gods think so. They believe the frost giants will come from Jotunheim and cover the world like this." He looked at the flakes of snow falling past the windows of Bebbanburg's hall, as big as silver sixpences.
"And the Cymric believe - they tell a story, anyway, that the world once shivered for years and years like this, and some people remained while most left, to return when the frozen land thawed."
"Taawed?" Benedetta had asked, not understanding either the word, nor young Finan's Gaelish pronunciation of the Anglish word.
"Melted. Went away," he told her. "I once went to the islands of Dal Riata with the Norse, and the whole of the land looked like this for months."
"And what did you do for food?" Benedetta asked.
"Dried fish," he told her. "Salted. And whale meat."
"Whale?"
"A huge fish," he told her, "That swims to even colder waters than this."
"Nothing could be colder than this," Benedetta grumbled. But there the conversation ended, for Uhtred had come into the hall at that point and had taken exception to his nephew's talking to her.
So he had put him on animal duty, "Until I say otherwise." And young Uhtred had snuck down to help his cousin, in camaraderie which told young Finan that he agreed his father was being harsh.
"But he wouldn't be so if you married," he told young Finan. "Or, you can tell me, if it is a man you love. I have heard that such things are possible."
"Would it be easier for you to hear that, or hear the truth?" young Finan wondered aloud, bitterly.
"What is the truth?" young Uhtred asked, awed by his cousin's response. But young Finan kept by his word that Finan had bade him take, that he would never tell anyone about the vow he had given to Constantine.
"If I tell you it is something to do with a black island, you must ask me again, in the future," young Finan told him. "Far in the future," he added, knowing his cousin. "But if you choose to believe what he believes, that I am in love with Benedetta, then so be it."
Young Uhtred only half-laughed, only half-believed his cousin was joking. No matter. He would be treated badly by his uncle no matter what he did. Cleaning out the animals was no worse than he had been treated in the past by his uncle. He had not thrashed him for nothing this time, as he had once done, or humiliated him, for sport. Perhaps his uncle knew that he had chosen to stay of his own volition.
So he vowed not to speak to anyone, and do the most impeccable job he could in keeping the animals clean and fed, keeping them alive by ensuring the chapel fire was lit when such a thing had been forbidden by the priest, and had organised a rotational watch to be kept to ensure no fire broke out.
It had angered his uncle that young Finan had taken to the task without complaint. But even Uhtred relented at Christmas, and allowed young Finan in for the feast, rather than having to eat his food in the kitchen.
Now, he had been called upon to be what young Finan loved most to be, a story-sayer, a living memory of the tales passed down from many different cultures. So while those in his audience drew closer to hear a familiar story, the rest, to whom, "Beowulf" was new, the Danes in Uhtred's service, such as Egil - young Finan's only other friend - any younger Angles and Saxons, and of course, Benedetta. drew close to the fire themselves and fell silent, so they missed not a word, so close that it looked to young Finan that they were close enough to eat the wood that crackled to ashes as he spoke.
It would not be long until young Finan told stories again to a similar audience, except it would not be here, at Bebbanburg, nor at a time which was threatening to shroud the fortress in ice and frost. Many, many things would have happened by then, many opinions changed, many alliances broken.
And it would all begin with the decision by the king of Alba to ignore a second summons from Aethelstan to travel to Winchester with a rare second opportunity kneel before the self-styled king of the whole of Britain.
No, Constantine would not go south. Nor would he yield any tribute. He knew, as did all the kings and lords - and ladies - that Aethelstan could not let that slight go. After Easter was over, then, Aethelstan began to gather men at Winchester.
More would coagulate around the central West Saxon core as Aethelstan marched north. In June, he was in Nottingham, by July, Ripon.
And in Chester-le-Street, Aethelstan stopped. For he had come to the relics of a saint he revered. A figure joined him, whether he knew it or not.
But this was to come. For now, on a snowy winter, with a sky as heavy as lead and not even the sea to be seen, young Finan became the storyteller, encapturing all minds in the bewitchment of the tale, as ale and good food lay in stomachs and senses lessened to all but the tale. Grendel, his mother, the dragon, all became real that night.
And in the morning, a ship was seen, not Alba, or of Englaland, not Domnall or even Danish or Norse. But a lone ship it was, and it was heading south.
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"I will not leave my people," when spring came and the news that a mighty army was heading north. Aeswi had come at haste with the news, ten thousand, he told her - "I have seen it" were his words when Osthryth pressed him. And Beann's family evacuated their farms and came to Osthryth's hall when the army came into sight.
"Trust your guard," Finan told her. "Go to Constantine." Osthryth looked at him, indignantly.
"I will not leave," she told him. For she had already risked Berric by sailing south. She had sailed south several times to scout for information. Not that she didn't trust Aeswi and Beann, and other who travelled into her brother's territory. She wanted to see this king and see his progress north,
And his army had reached Chester-le-Street. Aethelstan had made generous gifts to the tomb of Cuthbert and Osthryth had watched him stay beside the saint all night. When he left, she saw that he had left a finely embroidered maniple and stole beside his tomb. What Osthryth had seen him pray for in the dead of the night she could only guess. Was some of his instinct, then, to continue the conversion of all those who followed the Eireann church? It would be a hard sell if so, if the people between Durham and Alba saw an army forcing itself upon them.
"We sail home," she told Seoras, one of the Alba guards who had struck up a strong friendship with Caltigar. He had not known he was sailing Osthryth south, but when she rewarded him with hacksilver his face had dawned with realisation,
"Say nothing," she had told the warrior who had been sent south having escaped execution for theft in Alba and given a second chance.
"A second chance with Anglish!" had been his bitter reply, but he had soon changed his mind when he had been trusted with guard duties to the west to repel rievers, which he was adept at. Caltigar, who had had his doubts about the ex-convict had begun to like him, and threy were often seen heading west before dawn to catch the very earliest of thieves with a once-thief, who knew all the tricks.
And Finan had gone, south, as they had always agreed he would. But this time, this time, Osthryth wished he would have stayed beside her.
"Lock the stables. Guard them," she told the warriors. "Aethelstan is heading north, and will not stay long in our lands. We must protect our people."
And so, with Mercians, Alba warriors, a Norseman and her own warriors of Berric, Osthryth waited for Aethelstan, and the army of Englaland to come.