The black monk who had spoken rose to his feet: Erkenbert the dreaded archdeacon. “The worms are ready. Have the prisoner taken to them. And let all attend—councillors, warriors, servants—to see the wrake and the vengeance of King Ella and Mother Church.”
The council rose, Ella among them, his face still clouded by doubt, but swept along by the agreement of his men. The nobles began to jostle out, calling already for their servants, friends, wives, women to join them, to see the new thing. Shef, turning to follow his stepfather, looked back at the last moment to see the black monks still clustered in a little knot at the end of the table.
“Why did you say that?” muttered Archbishop Wulfhere to his archdeacon. “We could pay a toll to the Vikings and still save our immortal souls. Why did you force the king to send this Ragnar to the serpents?”
The monk reached in his pouch and, like Cuthred, threw an object on the table. Then another.
“What are those, my lord?”
“This is a coin. A gold coin. With the script of the abominable worshippers of Mohammed on it!”
“It was taken from the prisoner.”
“You mean—he is too evil to let live?”
“No, my lord. The other coin?”
“It is a penny. A penny from our own mint here in Eoforwich. It has my own name on it, see—Wulfhere. A silver penny.”
The archdeacon picked up both coins and stowed them back in his pouch. “A very bad penny, my lord. Little silver, much lead. All the Church can afford in these days. Our slaves run away, our churls cheat on their tithes. Even the nobles give as little as they dare. Meanwhile the heathens’ pouches drip with gold, stolen from believers.
“The Church is in danger, my lord. Not that she may be defeated and pillaged by the heathen, grievous though that is, for from that we may recover. It is that the heathens and the Christians may make common cause. For then they will find that they have no need of us. We must not let them deal.”
Nods of agreement, even from the archbishop.
“So. To the serpents.”
The serpent-pit was an old stone cistern from the time of the Rome-folk, with a light roof hastily erected over it to keep off the drizzle. The monks of St. Peter’s Minster in Eoforwich were tender of their pets, the shining worms. All last summer the word had gone out to their many tenants scattered across the Church lands of Northumbria: Find the adders, seek them out in their basking places on the high fells, bring them in. So much remission of rent, so much remission of tithes for a foot-long worm; more for a foot and a half; more, disproportionately more for the old, the grandfather worms. Not a week had passed without a squirming bag being delivered to the custos viperarum—the keeper of the snakes—its contents to be lovingly tended, fed on frogs and mice, and on each other to promote their growth: “Dragon does not become dragon till it has tasted worm,” the custos would say to his brothers. “Maybe the same is true of our adders.”
Now lay brothers racked torches round the walls of the stone court to augment the evening twilight, carried in sacks of warm sand and straw and spread it on the floor of the pit to make the serpents fiery and active. And now the custos too appeared, smiling with satisfaction, waving along a gang of novices, each the proud—if careful—bearer of a leather sack that hissed and bulged disconcertingly. The custos took each bag in turn, held it up to the crowd now pushing and jostling round the low walls of the cistern, undid the lashings, and slowly poured the struggling inhabitants down into the pit. He moved a few paces as he did each one, to distribute his serpents evenly. His task done, he stepped back to the edge of the lane kept open for the great ones by brawny companions—the king’s own hearth-troop.
They came at last: the king, his council, their body-servants, the prisoner pushed along in the middle of them. There was a saying among the warriors of the North: “A man should not limp while both his legs are the same length.” And Ragnar did not limp now. Yet he found it hard to hold himself straight. Cuthred’s ministrations had not been gentle.