Free The Pale Horseman by Bernard Cornwell Page B

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.
    '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 victorious,' he said, 'and told the king he could trust you, so you tell

me?'
    'Then assuredly she can see the future,' I said.
    Brother Asser sneered at that answer. 'They should have strangled her with her own

birth-cord,' he snarled. 'She is a pagan bitch, a devil's thing, evil.'
    There was a feast that night, a feast to celebrate our pact and I hoped Iseult would be

there, but she was not. Peredur's older wife was present, but she was a sullen, grubby

creature with two weeping boils on her neck and she hardly spoke. Yet it was a surprisingly

good feast. There was fish, beef, mutton, bread, ale, mead and cheese, and while we ate Asser

told me he had come from the kingdom of Dyfed, which lay north of the Saefern Sea, and that his

king, who had an impossible British name which sounded like a man coughing and

spluttering, had sent him to Cornwalum to dissuade the British kings from supporting the

Danes.
    I was surprised by that, so surprised that I looked away from the girls serving the food. A

harpist played at the hall's end and two of the girls swayed in time to the music as they

walked. 'You don't like Danes,' I said.
    'You are pagans,' Asser said scornfully.
    'So how come you speak the pagan tongue?' I asked.
    'Because my abbot would have us send missionaries to the Danes.'
    'You should go,' I said. 'It would be a quick route to heaven for you.'
    He ignored that. 'I learned Danish among many other tongues,' he said loftily, 'and I

speak the language of the Saxons too. And you, I think, were not born in Denmark?'
    'How do you know?'
    'Your voice,' he said. 'You are from Northumbria?'
    'I am from the sea,' I said.
    He shrugged. 'In Northumbria,' he said severely, 'the Danes have corrupted the Saxons so

that they think of themselves as Danes.' He was wrong, but I was scarcely in a position to

correct him. ‘Worse,'
    he went on, 'they have extinguished the light of Christ.'
    'Is the light of Thor too bright for you?'
    'The West Saxons are Christians,' he said, 'and it is our duty to support them,