Death of Kings

One

‘Every day is ordinary,’ Father Willibald said, ‘until it isn’t.’ He smiled happily, as though he had just said something he thought I would find significant, then looked disappointed when I said nothing. ‘Every day,’ he started again.

‘I heard your drivelling,’ I snarled.

‘Until it isn’t,’ he finished weakly. I liked Willibald, even if he was a priest. He had been one of my childhood tutors and now I counted him as a friend. He was gentle, earnest, and if the meek ever do inherit the earth then Willibald will be rich beyond measure.

And every day is ordinary until something changes, and that cold Sunday morning had seemed as ordinary as any until the fools tried to kill me. It was so cold. There had been rain during the week, but on that morning the puddles froze and a hard frost whitened the grass. Father Willibald had arrived soon after sunrise and discovered me in the meadow. ‘We couldn’t find your estate last night,’ he explained his early appearance, shivering, ‘so we stayed at Saint Rumwold’s monastery,’ he gestured vaguely southwards. ‘It was cold there,’ he added.

‘They’re mean bastards, those monks,’ I said. I was supposed to deliver a weekly cartload of firewood to Saint Rumwold’s, but that was a duty I ignored. The monks could cut their own timber. ‘Who was Rumwold?’ I asked Willibald. I knew the answer, but wanted to drag Willibald through the thorns.

‘He was a very pious child, lord,’ he said.

‘A child?’

‘A baby,’ he said, sighing as he saw where the conversation was leading, ‘a mere three days old when he died.’

‘A three-day-old baby is a saint?’

Willibald flapped his hands. ‘Miracles happen, lord,’ he said, ‘they really do. They say little Rumwold sang God’s praises whenever he suckled.’

‘I feel much the same when I get hold of a tit,’ I said, ‘so does that make me a saint?’

Willibald shuddered, then sensibly changed the subject. ‘I’ve brought you a message from the ætheling,’ he said, meaning King Alfred’s eldest son, Edward.

‘So tell me.’

‘He’s the King of Cent now,’ Willibald said happily.

‘He sent you all this way to tell me that?’

‘No, no. I thought perhaps you hadn’t heard.’

‘Of course I heard,’ I said. Alfred, King of Wessex, had made his eldest son King of Cent, which meant Edward could practise being a king without doing too much damage because Cent, after all, was a part of Wessex. ‘Has he ruined Cent yet?’

‘Of course not,’ Willibald said, ‘though…’ he stopped abruptly.

‘Though what?’

‘Oh it’s nothing,’ he said airily and pretended to take an interest in the sheep. ‘How many black sheep do you have?’ he asked.

‘I could hold you by the ankles and shake you till the news drops out,’ I suggested.

‘It’s just that Edward, well,’ he hesitated, then decided he had better tell me in case I did shake him by the ankles, ‘it’s just that he wanted to marry a girl in Cent and his father wouldn’t agree. But really that isn’t important!’

I laughed. So young Edward was not quite the perfect heir after all. ‘Edward’s on the rampage, is he?’

‘No, no! Merely a youthful fancy and it’s all history now. His father’s forgiven him.’

I asked nothing more, though I should have paid much more attention to that sliver of gossip. ‘So what is young Edward’s message?’ I asked. We were standing in the lower meadow of my estate in Buccingahamm, which lay in eastern Mercia. It was really Æthelflaed’s land, but she had granted me the food-rents, and the estate was large enough to support thirty household warriors, most of whom were in church that morning. ‘And why aren’t you at church?’ I asked Willibald before he could answer my first question, ‘it’s a feast day, isn’t it?’

‘Saint Alnoth’s Day,’ he said as though that was a special treat, ‘but I wanted to find you!’ He sounded excited. ‘I have King Edward’s news for you. Every day is ordinary…’

‘Until it isn’t,’ I said brusquely.

‘Yes, lord,’ he said lamely, then frowned in puzzlement, ‘but what are you doing?’

‘I’m looking at sheep,’ I said, and that was true. I was looking at two hundred or more sheep that looked back at me and bleated pathetically.

Willibald turned to stare at the flock again. ‘Fine animals,’ he said as if he knew what he was talking about.

‘Just mutton and wool,’ I said, ‘and I’m choosing which ones live and which ones die.’ It was the killing time of the year, the grey days when our animals are slaughtered. We keep a few alive to breed in the spring, but most have to die because there is not enough fodder to keep whole flocks and herds alive through the winter. ‘Watch their backs,’ I told Willibald, ‘because the frost melts fastest off the fleece of the healthiest beasts. So those are the ones you keep alive.’ I lifted his woollen hat and ruffled his hair, which was going grey. ‘No frost on you,’ I said cheerfully, ‘otherwise I’d have to slit your throat.’ I pointed to a ewe with a broken horn, ‘Keep that one!’

‘Got her, lord,’ the shepherd answered. He was a gnarled little man with a beard that hid half his face. He growled at his two hounds to stay where they were, then ploughed into the flock and used his crook to haul out the ewe, then dragged her to the edge of the field and drove her to join the smaller flock at the meadow’s farther end. One of his hounds, a ragged and pelt-scarred beast, snapped at the ewe’s heels until the shepherd called the dog off. The shepherd did not need my help in selecting which animals should live and which must die. He had culled his flocks since he was a child, but a lord who orders his animals slaughtered owes them the small respect of taking some time with them.

‘The day of judgement,’ Willibald said, pulling his hat over his ears.

‘How many’s that?’ I asked the shepherd.

‘Jiggit and mumph, lord,’ he said.

‘Is that enough?’

‘It’s enough, lord.’

‘Kill the rest then,’ I said.

‘Jiggit and mumph?’ Willibald asked, still shivering.

‘Twenty and five,’ I said. ‘Yain, tain, tether, mether, mumph. It’s how shepherds count. I don’t know why. The world is full of mystery. I’m told some folk even believe that a three-day-old baby is a saint.’

‘God is not mocked, lord,’ Father Willibald said, attempting to be stern.

‘He is by me,’ I said, ‘so what does young Edward want?’

‘Oh, it’s most exciting,’ Willibald began enthusiastically, then checked because I had raised a hand.

The shepherd’s two dogs were growling. Both had flattened themselves and were facing south towards a wood. Sleet had begun to fall. I stared at the trees, but could see nothing threatening among the black winter branches or among the holly bushes. ‘Wolves?’ I asked the shepherd.

‘Haven’t seen a wolf since the year the old bridge fell, lord,’ he said.

The hair on the dogs’ necks bristled. The shepherd quietened them by clicking his tongue, then gave a short sharp whistle and one of the dogs raced away towards the wood. The other whined, wanting to be let loose, but the shepherd made a low noise and the dog went quiet again.

The running dog curved towards the trees. She was a bitch and knew her business. She leaped an ice-skimmed ditch and vanished among the holly, barked suddenly, then reappeared to jump the ditch again. For a moment she stopped, facing the trees, then began running again just as an arrow flitted from the wood’s shadows. The shepherd gave a shrill whistle and the bitch raced back towards us, the arrow falling harmlessly behind her.

‘Outlaws,’ I said.

‘Or men looking for deer,’ the shepherd said.

‘My deer,’ I said. I still gazed at the trees. Why would poachers shoot an arrow at a shepherd’s dog? They would have done better to run away. So maybe they were really stupid poachers?

The sleet was coming harder now, blown by a cold east wind. I wore a thick fur cloak, high boots and a fox-fur hat, so did not notice the cold, but Willibald, in priestly black, was shivering despite his woollen cape and hat. ‘I must get you back to the hall,’ I said. ‘At your age you shouldn’t be outdoors in winter.’

‘I wasn’t expecting rain,’ Willibald said. He sounded miserable.

‘It’ll be snow by midday,’ the shepherd said.

‘You have a hut near here?’ I asked him.

He pointed north. ‘Just beyond the copse,’ he said. He was pointing at a thick stand of trees through which a path led.

‘Does it have a fire?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Take us there,’ I said. I would leave Willibald beside the fire and fetch him a proper cloak and a docile horse to get him back to the hall.

We walked north and the dogs growled again. I turned to look south and suddenly there were men at the wood’s edge. A ragged line of men who were staring at us. ‘You know them?’ I asked the shepherd.

‘They’re not from around here, lord, and eddera-a-dix,’ he said, meaning there were thirteen of them, ‘that’s unlucky, lord.’ He made the sign of the cross.

‘What…’ Father Willibald began.

‘Quiet,’ I said. The shepherd’s two dogs were snarling now. ‘Outlaws,’ I guessed, still looking at the men.

‘Saint Alnoth was murdered by outlaws,’ Willibald said worriedly.

‘So not everything outlaws do is bad,’ I said, ‘but these ones are idiots.’

‘Idiots?’

‘To attack us,’ I said. ‘They’ll be hunted down and ripped apart.’

‘If we are not killed first,’ Willibald said.

‘Just go!’ I pushed him towards the northern trees and touched a hand to my sword hilt before following him. I was not wearing Serpent-Breath, my great war sword, but a lesser, lighter blade that I had taken from a Dane I had killed earlier that year in Beamfleot. It was a good sword, but at that moment I wished I had Serpent-Breath strapped around my waist. I glanced back. The thirteen men were crossing the ditch to follow us. Two had bows. The rest seemed to be armed with axes, knives or spears. Willibald was slow, already panting. ‘What is it?’ he gasped.

‘Bandits?’ I suggested. ‘Vagrants? I don’t know. Run!’ I pushed him into the trees, then slid the sword from its scabbard and turned to face my pursuers, one of whom took an arrow from the bag strapped at his waist. That persuaded me to follow Willibald into the copse. The arrow slid past me and ripped through the undergrowth. I wore no mail, only the thick fur cloak that offered no protection from a hunter’s arrow. ‘Keep going,’ I shouted at Willibald, then limped up the path. I had been wounded in the right thigh at the battle of Ethandun and though I could walk and could even run slowly, I knew I would not be able to outpace the men who were now within easy bowshot behind me. I hurried up the path as a second arrow was deflected by a branch and tumbled noisily through the trees. Every day is ordinary, I thought, until it gets interesting. My pursuers could not see me among the dark trunks and thick holly bushes, but they assumed I had followed Willibald and so kept to the path while I crouched in the thick undergrowth, concealed by the glossy leaves of a holly bush and by my cloak that I had pulled over my fair hair and face. The pursuers went past my hiding place without a glance. The two archers were in front.

I let them get well ahead, then followed. I had heard them speak as they passed and knew they were Saxons and, by their accents, probably from Mercia. Robbers, I assumed. A Roman road passed through deep woods nearby and masterless men haunted the woods to ambush travellers who, to protect themselves, went in large groups. I had twice led my warriors on hunts for such bandits and thought I had persuaded them to make their living far from my estate, but I could not think who else these men could be. Yet it was not like such vagrants to invade an estate. The hair at the back of my neck still prickled.

I moved cautiously as I approached the edge of the trees, then saw the men beside the shepherd’s hut that resembled a heap of grass. He had made the hovel with branches covered by turf, leaving a hole in the centre for the smoke of his fire to escape. There was no sign of the shepherd himself, but Willibald had been captured, though so far he was unhurt, protected, perhaps, by his status as a priest. One man held him. The others must have realised I was still in the trees, because they were staring towards the copse that hid me.

Then, suddenly, the shepherd’s two dogs appeared from my left and ran howling towards the thirteen men. The dogs ran fast and lithe, circling the group and sometimes leaping towards them and snapping their teeth before sheering away. Only one man had a sword, but he was clumsy with the blade, swinging it at the bitch as she came close and missing her by an arm’s length. One of the two bowmen put a string on his cord. He hauled the arrow back, then suddenly fell backwards as if struck by an invisible hammer. He sprawled on the turf as his arrow flitted into the sky and fell harmlessly into the trees behind me. The dogs, down on their front paws now, bared their teeth and growled. The fallen archer stirred, but evidently could not stand. The other men looked scared.

The second archer raised his stave, then recoiled, dropping the bow to clap his hands to his face and I saw a spark of blood there, blood bright as the holly berries. The splash of colour showed in the winter morning, then it was gone and the man was clutching his face and bending over in pain. The hounds barked, then loped back into the trees. The sleet was falling harder, loud as it struck the bare branches. Two of the men moved towards the shepherd’s cottage, but were called back by their leader. He was younger than the others and looked more prosperous, or at least less poor. He had a thin face, darting eyes and a short fair beard. He wore a scarred leather jerkin, but beneath it I could see a mail coat. So he had either been a warrior or else had stolen the mail. ‘Lord Uhtred!’ he called.

I did not answer. I was hidden well enough, at least for the moment, but knew I would have to move if they searched the copse, but whatever had drawn blood was making them nervous. What was it? It had to be the gods, I thought, or perhaps the Christian saint. Alnoth must hate outlaws if he had been murdered by them, and I did not doubt that these men were outlaws who had been sent to kill me. That was not surprising because in those days I had plenty of enemies. I still have enemies, though now I live behind the strongest palisade in northern England, but in that far-off time, in the winter of 898, there was no England. There was Northumbria and East Anglia, Mercia and Wessex, and the first two were ruled by the Danes, Wessex was Saxon while Mercia was a mess, part Danish and part Saxon. And I was like Mercia because I had been born a Saxon, but raised as a Dane. I still worshipped the Danish gods, but fate had doomed me to be a shield of the Christian Saxons against the ever-present threat of the pagan Danes. So any number of Danes might want me dead, but I could not imagine any Danish enemy hiring Mercian outlaws to ambush me. There were also Saxons who would love to see my corpse put in its long home. My cousin Æthelred, Lord of Mercia, would have paid well to watch my grave filled, but surely he would have sent warriors, not bandits? Yet he seemed the likeliest man. He was married to Æthelflaed, Alfred of Wessex’s daughter, but I had planted the cuckold’s horns on Æthelred’s head and I reckoned he had returned the favour by sending thirteen outlaws.

‘Lord Uhtred!’ the young man called again, but the only answer was a sudden panicked bleating.

The sheep were streaming down the path through the copse, harried by the two dogs that snapped at their ankles to drive them fast towards the thirteen men and, once the sheep had reached the men, the dogs raced around, still snapping, herding the animals into a tight circle that enclosed the outlaws. I was laughing. I was Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the man who had killed Ubba beside the sea and who had destroyed Haesten’s army at Beamfleot, but on this cold Sunday morning it was the shepherd who was proving to be the better warlord. His panicked flock were tightly packed around the outlaws, who could hardly move. The dogs were howling, the sheep bleating and the thirteen men despairing.

I stepped out of the wood. ‘You wanted me?’ I called.

The young man’s response was to push towards me, but the tightly packed sheep obstructed him. He kicked at them, then hacked down with his sword, but the more he struggled the more scared the sheep became, and all the while the dogs herded them inwards. The young man cursed, then snatched at Willibald. ‘Let us go or we kill him,’ he said.

‘He’s a Christian,’ I said, showing him Thor’s hammer that hung about my neck, ‘so why should I care if you kill him?’

Willibald stared at me aghast, and then turned as one of the men shouted in pain. There had again been a sudden flash of holly-red blood in the sleet, and this time I saw what had caused it. It was neither the gods nor the murdered saint, but the shepherd who had come from the trees and was holding a sling. He took a stone from a pouch, placed it in the leather cup, and whirled the sling again. It made a whirring noise, he let go one cord and another stone hurtled in to strike a man.

They turned away in pure panic and I gestured at the shepherd to let them go. He whistled to call the dogs off and both men and sheep scattered. The men were running, all but the first archer who was still on the ground, stunned by the stone that had struck his head. The young man, braver than the others, came towards me, perhaps thinking his companions would help him, then realised he was alone. A look of pure fright crossed his face, he turned, and just then the bitch leaped at him, sinking her teeth in his sword arm. He shouted, then tried to shake her off as the dog hurtled in to join his mate. He was still shouting when I hit him across the back of the skull with the flat of my sword-blade. ‘You can call the dogs off now,’ I told the shepherd.

The first archer was still alive, but there was a patch of blood-matted hair above his right ear. I kicked him hard in the ribs and he groaned, but he was insensible. I gave his bow and arrow-bag to the shepherd. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Egbert, lord.’

‘You’re a rich man now, Egbert,’ I told him. I wished that were true. I would reward Egbert well for this morning’s work, but I was no longer rich. I had spent my money on the men, mail and weapons that had been needed to defeat Haesten and I was desperately poor that winter.

The other outlaws had vanished, gone back northwards. Willibald was shaking. ‘They were searching for you, lord,’ he said through chattering teeth, ‘they’ve been paid to kill you.’

I stooped by the archer. The shepherd’s stone had shattered his skull and I could see a ragged, splintered piece of bone among the blood-matted hair. One of the shepherd’s dogs came to sniff the wounded man and I patted its thick wiry pelt. ‘They’re good dogs,’ I told Egbert.

‘Wolf-killers, lord,’ he said, then hefted the sling, ‘though this is better.’

‘You’re good with it,’ I said. That was mild, the man was lethal.

‘Been practising these twenty-five years, lord. Nothing like a stone to drive a wolf away.’

‘They’d been paid to kill me?’ I asked Willibald.

‘That’s what they said. They were paid to kill you.’

‘Go into the hut,’ I said, ‘get warm.’ I turned on the younger man who was being guarded by the larger dog. ‘What’s your name?’

He hesitated, then spoke grudgingly, ‘Wærfurth, lord.’

‘And who paid you to kill me?’

‘I don’t know, lord.’

Nor did he, it seemed. Wærfurth and his men came from near Tofeceaster, a settlement not far to the north, and Wærfurth told me how a man had promised to pay my weight in silver in return for my death. The man had suggested a Sunday morning, knowing that much of my household would be in church, and Wærfurth had recruited a dozen vagrants to do the job. He must have known it was a huge gamble, for I was not without reputation, but the reward was immense. ‘Was the man a Dane or a Saxon?’ I asked.

‘A Saxon, lord.’

‘And you don’t know him?’

‘No, lord.’

I questioned him more, but all he could tell me was that the man was thin, bald and had lost an eye. The description meant little to me. A one-eyed, bald man? Could be almost anyone. I asked questions till I had wrung Wærfurth dry of unhelpful answers, then hanged both him and the archer.

And Willibald showed me the magic fish.

A delegation waited at my hall. Sixteen men had come from Alfred’s capital at Wintanceaster and among them were no less than five priests. Two, like Willibald, came from Wessex, and the other pair were Mercians who had apparently settled in East Anglia. I knew them both, though I had not recognised them at first. They were twins, Ceolnoth and Ceolberht who, some thirty years before, had been hostages with me in Mercia. We had been children captured by the Danes, a fate I had welcomed and the twins had hated. They were close to forty years old now, two identical priests with stocky builds, round faces and greying beards. ‘We have watched your progress,’ one of them said.

‘With admiration,’ the other finished. I had not been able to tell them apart when they were children, and still could not. They finished each other’s sentences.

‘Reluctant,’ one said.

‘Admiration,’ his twin said.

‘Reluctant?’ I asked in an unfriendly tone.

‘It is known that Alfred is disappointed,’

‘That you eschew the true faith, but…’

‘We pray for you daily!’

The remaining pair of priests, both West Saxons, were Alfred’s men. They had helped compile his code of laws and it appeared they had come to advise me. The remaining eleven men were warriors, five from East Anglia and six from Wessex, who had guarded the priests on their travels.

And they had brought the magic fish.

‘King Eohric,’ Ceolnoth or Ceolberht said.

‘Wishes an alliance with Wessex,’ the other twin finished.

‘And with Mercia!’

‘The Christian kingdoms, you understand.’

‘And King Alfred and King Edward,’ Willibald took up the tale, ‘have sent a gift for King Eohric.’

‘Alfred still lives?’ I asked.

‘Pray God, yes,’ Willibald said, ‘though he’s sick.’

‘Very close to death,’ one of the West Saxon priests intervened.

‘He was born close to death,’ I said, ‘and ever since I’ve known him he’s been dying. He’ll live ten years yet.’

‘Pray God he does,’ Willibald said and made the sign of the cross. ‘But he’s fifty years old, and he’s failing. He’s truly dying.’

‘Which is why he seeks this alliance,’ the West Saxon priest went on, ‘and why the Lord Edward makes this request of you.’

‘King Edward,’ Willibald corrected his fellow priest.

‘So who’s requesting me?’ I asked, ‘Alfred of Wessex or Edward of Cent?’

‘Edward,’ Willibald said.

‘Eohric,’ Ceolnoth and Ceolberht said together.

‘Alfred,’ the West Saxon priest said.

‘All of them,’ Willibald added. ‘It’s important to all of them, lord!’

Edward or Alfred or both wanted me to go to King Eohric of East Anglia. Eohric was a Dane, but he had converted to Christianity, and he had sent the twins to Alfred and proposed that a great alliance should be made between the Christian parts of Britain. ‘King Eohric suggested that you should negotiate the treaty,’ Ceolnoth or Ceolberht said.

‘With our advice,’ one of the West Saxon priests put in hastily.

‘Why me?’ I asked the twins.

Willibald answered for them. ‘Who knows Mercia and Wessex as well as you?’

‘Many men,’ I answered.

‘And where you lead,’ Willibald said, ‘those other men will follow.’

We were at a table on which was ale, bread, cheese, pottage and apples. The central hearth was ablaze with a great fire that flickered its light on the smoke-blackened beams. The shepherd had been right and the sleet had turned to snow and some flakes sifted through the smoke-hole in the roof. Outside, beyond the palisade, Wærfurth and the archer were hanging from the bare branch of an elm, their bodies food for the hungry birds. Most of my men were in the hall, listening to our conversation. ‘It’s a strange time of year to be making treaties,’ I said.

‘Alfred has little time left,’ Willibald said, ‘and he wishes this alliance, lord. If all the Christians of Britain are united, lord, then young Edward’s throne will be protected when he inherits the crown.’

That made sense, but why would Eohric want the alliance? Eohric of East Anglia had been perched on the fence between Christians and pagans, Danes and Saxons, for as long as I could remember, yet now he wanted to proclaim his allegiance to the Christian Saxons?

‘Because of Cnut Ranulfson,’ one of the twins explained when I asked the question.

‘He’s brought men south,’ the other twin said.

‘To Sigurd Thorrson’s lands,’ I said. ‘I know, I sent that news to Alfred. And Eohric fears Cnut and Sigurd?’

‘He does,’ Ceolnoth or Ceolberht said.

‘Cnut and Sigurd won’t attack now,’ I said, ‘but in the spring, maybe.’ Cnut and Sigurd were Danes from Northumbria and, like all the Danes, their abiding dream was to capture all the lands where English was spoken. The invaders had tried again and again, and again and again they had failed, yet another attempt was inevitable because the heart of Wessex, which was the great bastion of Saxon Christendom, was failing. Alfred was dying, and his death would surely bring pagan swords and heathen fire to Mercia and to Wessex. ‘But why would Cnut or Sigurd attack Eohric?’ I asked. ‘They don’t want East Anglia, they want Mercia and Wessex.’

‘They want everything,’ Ceolnoth or Ceolberht answered.

‘And the true faith will be scourged from Britain unless we defend it,’ the older of the two West Saxon priests said.

‘Which is why we beg you to forge the alliance,’ Willibald said.

‘At the Christmas feast,’ one of the twins added.

‘And Alfred sent a gift for Eohric,’ Willibald went on enthusiastically, ‘Alfred and Edward! They have been most generous, lord!’

The gift was encased in a box of silver studded with precious stones. The lid of the box showed a figure of Christ with uplifted arms, around which was written ‘Edward mec heht Gewyrcan’, meaning that Edward had ordered the reliquary made, or more likely his father had ordered the gift and then ascribed the generosity to his son. Willibald lifted the lid reverently, revealing an interior lined with red-dyed cloth. A small cushion, the width and breadth of a man’s hand, fitted snugly inside, and on the cushion was a fish skeleton. It was the whole fish skeleton, except for the head, just a long white spine with a comb of ribs on either side. ‘There,’ Willibald said, breathing the word as if speaking too loud might disturb the bones.

‘A dead herring?’ I asked incredulously, ‘that’s Alfred’s gift?’

The priests all crossed themselves.

‘How many more fish bones do you want?’ I asked. I looked at Finan, my closest friend and the commander of my household warriors. ‘We can provide dead fish, can’t we?’

‘By the barrelful, lord,’ he said.

‘Lord Uhtred!’ Willibald, as ever, rose to my taunting. ‘That fish,’ he pointed a quivering finger at the bones, ‘was one of the two fishes our Lord used to feed the five thousand!’

‘The other one must have been a damned big fish,’ I said, ‘what was it? A whale?’

The older West Saxon priest scowled at me. ‘I advised King Edward against employing you for this duty,’ he said, ‘I told him to send a Christian.’

‘So use someone else,’ I retorted. ‘I’d rather spend Yule in my own hall.’

‘He wishes you to go,’ the priest said sharply.

‘Alfred also wishes it,’ Willibald put in, then smiled, ‘he thinks you’ll frighten Eohric.’

‘Why does he want Eohric frightened?’ I asked. ‘I thought this was an alliance?’

‘King Eohric allows his ships to prey on our trade,’ the priest said, ‘and must pay reparations before we promise him protection. The king believes you will be persuasive.’

‘We don’t need to leave for at least ten days,’ I said, looking gloomily at the priests, ‘am I supposed to feed you all till then?’

‘Yes, lord,’ Willibald said happily.

Fate is strange. I had rejected Christianity, preferring the gods of the Danes, but I loved Æthelflaed, Alfred’s daughter, and she was a Christian and that meant I carried my sword on the side of the cross.

And because of that it seemed I would spend Yule in East Anglia.

Osferth came to Buccingahamm, bringing another twenty of my household warriors. I had summoned them, wanting a large band to accompany me to East Anglia. King Eohric might have suggested the treaty, and he might be amenable to whatever demands Alfred made, but treaties are best negotiated from a position of strength and I was determined to arrive in East Anglia with an impressive escort. Osferth and his men had been watching Ceaster, a Roman camp on Mercia’s far north-western frontier where Haesten had taken refuge after his forces had been destroyed at Beamfleot. Osferth greeted me solemnly, as was his manner. He rarely smiled, and his customary expression suggested disapproval of whatever he saw, but I think he was glad to be reunited with the rest of us. He was Alfred’s son, born to a servant girl before Alfred discovered the dubious joys of Christian obedience. Alfred had wanted his bastard son trained as a priest, but Osferth had preferred the way of the warrior. It had been a strange choice, for he did not take great joy from a fight or yearn for the savage moments when anger and a blade make the rest of the world seem dull, yet Osferth brought his father’s qualities to a fight. He was serious, thoughtful and methodical. Where Finan and I could be rashly headstrong, Osferth used cleverness, and that was no bad thing in a warrior.

‘Haesten is still licking his wounds,’ he told me.

‘We should have killed him,’ I grumbled. Haesten had retreated to Ceaster after I had destroyed his fleet and army at Beamfleot. My instinct had been to follow him there and finish his nonsense once and for all, but Alfred had wanted his household troops back in Wessex and I did not have enough men to besiege the walls of the Roman fort at Ceaster, and so Haesten still lived. We watched him, looking for evidence that he was recruiting more men, but Osferth reckoned Haesten was getting weaker rather than stronger.

‘He’ll be forced to swallow his pride and swear loyalty to someone else,’ he suggested.

‘To Sigurd or Cnut,’ I said. Sigurd and Cnut were now the most powerful Danes in Britain, though neither was a king. They had land, wealth, flocks, herds, silver, ships, men and ambition. ‘Why would they want East Anglia?’ I wondered aloud.

‘Why not?’ Finan asked. He was my closest companion, the man I trusted most in a fight.

‘Because they want Wessex,’ I said.

‘They want all of Britain,’ Finan said.

‘They’re waiting,’ Osferth said. ‘For what?’

‘Alfred’s death,’ he said. He hardly ever called Alfred ‘my father’, as though he, like the king, was ashamed of his birth.

‘Oh there’ll be chaos when that happens,’ Finan said with relish.

‘Edward will make a good king,’ Osferth said reprovingly.

‘He’ll have to fight for it,’ I said. ‘The Danes will test him.’

‘And will you fight for him?’ Osferth asked.

‘I like Edward,’ I said non-committally. I did like him. I had pitied him as a child because his father placed him under the control of fierce priests whose duty was to make Edward the perfect heir for Alfred’s Christian kingdom. When I met him again, just before the fight at Beamfleot, he had struck me as a pompous and intolerant young man, but he had enjoyed the company of warriors and the pomposity vanished. He had fought well at Beamfleot and now, if Willibald’s gossip was to be believed, he had learned a little about sin as well.

‘His sister would want you to support him,’ Osferth said pointedly, making Finan laugh. Everyone knew Æthelflaed was my lover, as they knew Æthelflaed’s father was also Osferth’s father, but most people politely pretended not to know, and Osferth’s pointed remark was as close as he dared refer to my relationship with his half-sister. I would much rather have been with Æthelflaed for the Christmas feast, but Osferth told me she had been summoned to Wintanceaster and I knew I was not welcome at Alfred’s table. Besides, I now had the duty of delivering the magic fish to Eohric and I was worried that Sigurd and Cnut would raid my lands while I was in East Anglia.

Sigurd and Cnut had sailed south the previous summer, taking their ships to Wessex’s southern coast while Haesten’s army ravaged Mercia. The two Northumbrian Danes had thought to distract Alfred’s army while Haesten ran wild on Wessex’s northern border, but Alfred had sent me his troops anyway, Haesten had been stripped of his power, and Sigurd and Cnut had discovered they were powerless to capture any of Alfred’s burhs, the fortified towns that were scattered all across the Saxon lands, and so had returned to their ships. I knew they would not rest. They were Danes, which meant they were planning mischief.

So next day, in the melting snow, I took Finan, Osferth and thirty men north to Ealdorman Beornnoth’s land. I liked Beornnoth. He was old, grizzled, lame and fiery. His lands were at the very edge of Saxon Mercia and everything to the north of him belonged to the Danes, which meant that in the last few years he had been forced to defend his fields and villages against the attacks of Sigurd Thorrson’s men. ‘God Almighty,’ he greeted me, ‘don’t say you’re hoping for the Christmas feast in my hall?’

‘I prefer good food,’ I said.

‘And I prefer good-looking guests,’ he retorted, then shouted for his servants to take our horses. He lived a little north and east of Tofeceaster in a great hall surrounded by barns and stables that were protected by a stout palisade. The space between the hall and his largest barn was now being blood-soaked by the slaughter of cattle. Men were hamstringing the frightened beasts to buckle them to the ground and so keep them still while other men killed them with an axe blow to the forehead. The twitching carcasses were dragged to one side where women and children used long knives to skin and butcher the corpses. Dogs watched or else fought over the scraps of offal thrown their way. The air stank of blood and dung. ‘It was a good year,’ Beornnoth told me, ‘twice as many animals as last year. The Danes left me alone.’

‘No cattle raids?’

‘One or two,’ he shrugged. Since last I saw him he had lost the use of his legs and needed to be carried everywhere in a chair. ‘It’s old age,’ he told me. ‘I’m dying from the ground up. I suppose you want ale?’

We exchanged news in his hall. He bellowed with laughter when I told him of the attempt on my life. ‘You use sheep to defend yourself these days?’ He saw his son enter the hall and shouted at him. ‘Come and hear how the Lord Uhtred won the battle of the sheep!’

The son was called Beortsig and, like his father, was broad-shouldered and heavy-bearded. He laughed at the tale, but the laughter seemed forced. ‘You say the rogues came from Tofeceaster?’ he asked.

‘That’s what the bastard said.’

‘That’s our land,’ Beortsig said.

‘Outlaws,’ Beornnoth said dismissively.

‘And fools,’ Beortsig added.

‘A thin, bald, one-eyed man recruited them,’ I said. ‘Do you know anyone who looks like that?’

‘Sounds like our priest,’ Beornnoth said, amused. Beortsig said nothing. ‘So what brings you here?’ Beornnoth asked, ‘other than the need to drain my ale barrels?’

I told him of Alfred’s request that I seal a treaty with Eohric, and how Eohric’s envoys had explained their king’s request because of his fear of Sigurd and Cnut. Beornnoth looked sceptical. ‘Sigurd and Cnut aren’t interested in East Anglia,’ he said.

‘Eohric thinks they are.’

‘The man’s a fool,’ Beornnoth said, ‘and always was. Sigurd and Cnut want Mercia and Wessex.’

‘And once they possess those kingdoms, lord,’ Osferth spoke softly to our host, ‘they’ll want East Anglia.’

‘True, I suppose,’ Beornnoth allowed.

‘So why not take East Anglia first?’ Osferth suggested, ‘and add its men to their war-bands?’

‘Nothing will happen till Alfred dies,’ Beornnoth suggested. He made the sign of the cross, ‘and I pray he still lives.’

‘Amen,’ Osferth said.

‘So you want to disturb Sigurd’s peace?’ Beornnoth asked me.

‘I want to know what he’s doing,’ I said.

‘He’s preparing for Yule,’ Beortsig said dismissively.

‘Which means he’ll be drunk for the next month,’ the father added.

‘He’s left us in peace all year,’ the son said.

‘And I don’t want you poking his wasps out of their nest,’ Beornnoth said. He spoke lightly enough, but his meaning was heavy. If I rode on north then I might provoke Sigurd, then Beornnoth’s land would be thudded by Danish hooves and reddened by Danish blades.

‘I have to go to East Anglia,’ I explained, ‘and Sigurd’s not going to like the thought of an alliance between Eohric and Alfred. He might send men south to make his displeasure known.’

Beornnoth frowned. ‘Or he might not.’

‘Which is what I want to find out,’ I said.

Beornnoth grunted at that. ‘You’re bored, Lord Uhtred?’ he asked. ‘You want to kill a few Danes?’

‘I just want to smell them,’ I said.

‘Smell?’

‘Half Britain will already know of this treaty with Eohric,’ I said, ‘and who has the most interest in preventing it?’

‘Sigurd,’ Beornnoth admitted after a pause.

I sometimes thought of Britain as a mill. At the base, heavy and dependable was the millstone of Wessex, while at the top, just as heavy, was the grindstone of the Danes, and Mercia was crushed between them. Mercia was where Saxon and Dane fought most often. Alfred had cleverly extended his authority over much of the kingdom’s south, but the Danes were lords of its north, and till now the struggle had been fairly evenly divided, which meant both sides sought allies. The Danes had offered enticements to the Welsh kings, but though the Welsh nursed an undying hatred of all Saxons, they feared the wrath of their Christian God more than they feared the Danes, and so most of the Welsh kept an uneasy peace with Wessex. To the east, though, lay the unpredictable kingdom of East Anglia, which was ruled by Danes, but was ostensibly Christian. East Anglia could tip the scales. If Eohric sent men to fight against Wessex then the Danes would win, but if he allied himself with the Christians then the Danes would face defeat.

Sigurd, I thought, would want to prevent the treaty ever happening, and he had two weeks to do that. Had he sent the thirteen men to kill me? As I sat by Beornnoth’s fire, that seemed the best answer. And if he had, then what would he do next?

‘You want to smell him, eh?’ Beornnoth asked.

‘Not provoke him,’ I promised.

‘No deaths? No robbery?’

‘I won’t start anything,’ I promised.

‘God knows what you’ll discover without slaughtering a few of the bastards,’ Beornnoth said, ‘but yes. Go and sniff. Beortsig will go with you.’ He was sending his son and a dozen household warriors to make sure we kept our word. Beornnoth feared we planned to lay waste a few Danish steadings and bring back cattle, silver and slaves, and his men would be there to prevent that, but in truth I only wanted to smell the land.

I did not trust Sigurd or his ally, Cnut. I liked both of them, but knew they would kill me as casually as we kill our winter cattle. Sigurd was the wealthier of the two men, while Cnut the more dangerous. He was young still, and in his few years he had gained a reputation as a sword-Dane, a man whose blade was to be respected and feared. Such a man attracted others. They came from across the sea, rowing to Britain to follow a leader who promised them wealth. And in the spring, I thought, the Danes would surely come again, or perhaps they would wait till Alfred died, knowing that the death of a king brings uncertainty, and in uncertainty lies opportunity.

Beortsig was thinking the same. ‘Is Alfred really dying?’ he asked me as we rode north.

‘So everyone says.’

‘They’ve said it before.’

‘Many times,’ I agreed.

‘You believe it?’

‘I haven’t seen him for myself,’ I said, and I knew I would not be welcome in his palace even if I wanted to see him. I had been told Æthelflaed had gone to Wintanceaster for the Christmas feast, but more likely she had been summoned for the death-watch rather than for the dubious delights of her father’s table.

‘And Edward will inherit?’ Beortsig asked.

‘That’s what Alfred wants.’

‘And who becomes king in Mercia?’ he asked.

‘There is no king in Mercia,’ I said.

‘There should be,’ he said bitterly, ‘and not a West Saxon either! We’re Mercians, not West Saxons.’ I said nothing in response. There had once been kings in Mercia, but now it was subservient to Wessex. Alfred had managed that. His daughter was married to the most powerful of the Mercian ealdormen, and most Saxons in Mercia seemed content that they were effectively under Alfred’s protection, but not all Mercians liked that West Saxon dominance. When Alfred died the powerful Mercians would start eyeing their empty throne, and Beortsig, I supposed, was one such man. ‘Our forefathers were kings here,’ he told me.

‘My forefathers were kings in Northumbria,’ I retorted, ‘but I don’t want the throne.’

‘Mercia should be ruled by a Mercian,’ he said. He seemed uncomfortable in my company, or perhaps he was uneasy because we rode deep into the lands that Sigurd claimed.

We rode directly north, the low winter sun throwing our shadows far ahead of us. The first steadings we passed were nothing but burned out ruins, then after midday we came to a village. The people had seen us coming, and so I took my horsemen into the nearby woods until we had rousted a couple out of their hiding place. They were Saxons, a slave and his wife, and they said their lord was a Dane. ‘Is he in his hall?’ I asked.

‘No, lord.’ The man was kneeling, shaking, unable to lift his eyes to meet my gaze.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Jarl Jorven, lord.’

I looked at Beortsig, who shrugged. ‘Jorven is one of Sigurd’s men,’ he said, ‘and not really a jarl. Maybe he leads thirty or forty warriors?’

‘Is his wife in the hall?’ I asked the kneeling man.

‘She’s there, lord, and some warriors, but not many. The rest have gone, lord.’

‘Gone where?’

‘I don’t know, lord.’

I tossed him a silver coin. I could scarcely afford it, but a lord is a lord.

‘Yule is coming,’ Beortsig said dismissively, ‘and Jorven has probably gone to Cytringan.’

‘Cytringan?’

‘We hear Sigurd and Cnut are celebrating Yule there,’ he said.

We rode away from the wood, back into a damp pasture. Clouds were hiding the sun now, and I thought it would begin to rain before long. ‘Tell me about Jorven,’ I said to Beortsig.

He shrugged. ‘A Dane, of course. He arrived two summers ago and Sigurd gave him this land.’

‘Is he kin to Sigurd?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘His age?’

Another shrug. ‘Young.’

And why would a man go to a feast without his wife? I almost asked the question aloud, then thought that Beortsig’s opinion would be worthless and so I kept silent. Instead I kicked my horse on until I reached a place where I could see Jorven’s hall. It was a fine enough building with a steep roof and a bull’s skull attached to the high gable. The thatch was new enough to have no moss. A palisade surrounded the hall and I could see two men watching us. ‘This would be a good time to attack Jorven,’ I said lightly.

‘They’ve left us in peace,’ Beortsig said.

‘And you think that will last?’

‘I think we should turn back,’ he said, and then, when I said nothing, he added, ‘if we want to make home by nightfall.’

Instead I headed farther north, ignoring Beortsig’s complaints. We left Jorven’s hall unmolested and crossed a low ridge to see a wide valley. Small smoke trails showed where villages or steadings stood, and glimmers of dull light betrayed a river. A fine place, I thought, fertile and well-watered, exactly the sort of land that the Danes craved. ‘You say Jorven has thirty or forty warriors?’ I asked Beortsig. ‘No more.’

‘One crew, then,’ I said. So Jorven and his followers had crossed the sea in a single ship and sworn loyalty to Sigurd, who in return had given him frontier land. If the Saxons attacked, Jorven would likely die, but that was the risk he ran, and the rewards could be much greater if Sigurd decided to attack southwards. ‘When Haesten was here, last summer,’ I asked Beortsig as I urged my horse forward, ‘did he give you trouble?’

‘He left us alone,’ he said. ‘He did his damage farther west.’

I nodded. Beortsig’s father, I thought, had become tired of fighting the Danes and he was paying tribute to Sigurd. There could be no other reason for the apparent peace that had prevailed on Beornnoth’s land, and Haesten, I assumed, had left Beornnoth alone on Sigurd’s orders. Haesten would never have dared to offend Sigurd, so doubtless he had avoided the lands of those Saxons who paid for peace. That had left him most of southern Mercia to ravage, and he had burned, raped and pillaged until I took away most of his strength at Beamfleot. Then, in fear, he had fled to Ceaster.

‘Something worries you?’ Finan asked me. We were riding down towards the distant river. A thin rain was blowing from our backs. Finan and I had spurred ahead, out of earshot of Beortsig and his men.

‘Why would a man go to the Yule feast without his wife?’ I asked Finan.

He shrugged. ‘Maybe she’s ugly. Maybe he keeps something younger and prettier for feast days?’

‘Maybe,’ I grunted.

‘Or maybe he’s been summoned,’ Finan said.

‘And why would Sigurd summon warriors in midwinter?’

‘Because he knows about Eohric?’

‘That’s what’s worrying me,’ I said.

The rain was coming harder, gusting on a sharp wind. The day was closing in, dark and damp and cold. Remnants of snow lay white in frozen ditches. Beortsig tried to insist that we turn back, but I kept riding north, deliberately going close to two large halls. Whoever guarded those places must have seen us, yet no one rode out to challenge us. Over forty armed men, carrying shields and spears and swords, were riding through their country and they did not bother to discover who we were or what we did? That told me that the halls were lightly guarded. Whoever saw us pass was content to let us go in the hope that we would ignore them.

And then, ahead of us, was the scar on the land. I checked my horse at its edge. The scar ran across our path, gouged into the water meadows on the southern bank of the river, which was being dimpled by raindrops. I turned my horse then, pretending no interest in the trampled ground and deep hoof-prints. ‘We’ll go back,’ I told Beortsig.

The scar had been made by horses. Finan, as he rode into the cold rain, edged his stallion close to mine. ‘Eighty men,’ he said.

I nodded. I trusted his judgement. Two crews of men had ridden from west to east and the hooves of their horses had trampled that scar into the waterlogged ground. Two crews were following the river to where? I slowed my horse, letting Beortsig catch us. ‘Where did you say Sigurd was celebrating Yule?’ I asked.

‘Cytringan,’ he said.

‘And where’s Cytringan?’

He pointed north. ‘A good day’s journey, probably two. He keeps a feasting hall there.’

Cytringan lay to the north, but the hoof-prints had been going east.

Someone was lying.

Two

I had not realised quite how important the proposed treaty was to Alfred until I returned to Buccingahamm and found sixteen monks eating my food and drinking my ale. The youngest of them were still unshaven striplings, while the oldest, their leader, was a corpulent man of about my own age. He was called Brother John, and was so fat that he had trouble offering me a bow. ‘He is from Frankia,’ Willibald said proudly.

‘What’s he doing here?’

‘He is the king’s songmaster! He leads the choir.’

‘A choir?’ I asked.

‘We sing,’ Brother John said in a voice that seemed to rumble from somewhere inside his capacious belly. He waved a peremptory hand at his monks and shouted at them, ‘the Soli Deo Gloria. Stand up! Breathe deep! Upon my word! A one! A two!’ They began chanting. ‘Mouths open!’ Brother John bellowed at them, ‘Mouths wide! Mouths wide as little birdies! From the stomach! Let me hear you!’

‘Enough!’ I shouted before they had finished their first line. I tossed my sheathed sword to Oswi, my servant, then went to warm myself by the hall’s central hearth. ‘Why,’ I asked Willibald, ‘must I feed singing monks?’

‘It’s important we make an impressive display,’ he answered, casting a dubious eye on my mud-spattered mail. ‘We represent Wessex, lord, and we must demonstrate the glory of Alfred’s court.’

Alfred had sent banners with the monks. One showed the dragon of Wessex, while others were embroidered with saints or holy images. ‘We’re taking those rags as well?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ Willibald said.

‘I can take a banner showing Thor, perhaps? Or Woden?’

Willibald sighed. ‘Please lord, no.’

‘Why can’t we have a banner showing one of the women saints?’ I asked.

‘I’m sure we can,’ Willibald said, pleased at the suggestion, ‘if that’s what you’d like.’

‘One of those women who were stripped naked before they were killed,’ I added, and Father Willibald sighed again.

Sigunn brought me a horn of mulled ale and I gave her a kiss. ‘All well here?’ I asked her.

She looked at the monks and shrugged. I could see Willibald was curious about her, especially when I put an arm around her and drew her close. ‘She’s my woman,’ I explained.

‘But,’ he began and finished abruptly. He was thinking about Æthelflaed, but did not have the courage to name her.

I smiled at him. ‘You have a question, father?’

‘No, no,’ he said hurriedly.

I looked at the largest banner, a great gaudy square of cream linen emblazoned with an embroidery of the crucifixion. It was so large that it would need two men to parade it, and even more if the wind was blowing anything above a gentle breeze. ‘Does Eohric know we’re bringing an army?’ I asked Willibald.

‘He has been told to expect up to one hundred people.’

‘And does he expect Sigurd and Cnut too?’ I enquired acidly, and Willibald just stared at me with a vacant expression. ‘The Danes know about this treaty,’ I told him, ‘and they’ll try to prevent it.’

‘Prevent it? How?’

‘How do you think?’ I asked.

Willibald looked paler than ever. ‘King Eohric is sending men to escort us,’ he said.

‘He’s sending them here?’ I spoke angrily, thinking that I would be expected to feed even more men.

‘To Huntandon,’ Willibald said, ‘and from there they take us to Eleg.’

‘Why are we going to East Anglia?’ I asked.

‘To make the treaty, of course,’ Willibald said, puzzled by the question.

‘So why isn’t Eohric sending men to Wessex?’ I demanded.

‘Eohric did send men, lord! He sent Ceolberht and Ceolnoth. The treaty was King Eohric’s suggestion.’

‘Then why isn’t it being sealed and signed in Wessex?’ I persisted.

Willibald shrugged. ‘Does it matter, lord?’ he asked with a trace of impatience. ‘And we’re supposed to meet at Huntandon in three days,’ he went on, ‘and if the weather turns bad,’ he let his voice fade away.

I had heard of Huntandon, though I had never been there, and all I knew was that it lay somewhere beyond the vague frontier between Mercia and East Anglia. I gestured to the twins, Ceolberht and Ceolnoth, and they hurried over from the table where they had been sitting with the two priests sent with Willibald from Wessex. ‘If I were to ride straight to Eleg from here,’ I asked the twins, ‘what way would I go?’

They muttered together for a few seconds, then one of them suggested that the quickest route lay through Grantaceaster. ‘From there,’ the other one continued, ‘there’s a Roman road straight to the island.’

‘Island?’

‘Eleg is an island,’ a twin said.

‘In a marsh,’ the other added.

‘With a convent!’

‘Which was burned by the pagans.’

‘Though the church is now restored.’

‘Thanks be to God.’

‘The holy Æthelreda built the convent.’

‘And she was married to a Northumbrian,’ Ceolnoth or Ceolberht said, thinking to please me because I am a Northumbrian. I am the Lord of Bebbanburg, though in those days my vicious uncle lived in that great ocean fortress. He had stolen it from me and I planned to take it back.

‘And Huntandon,’ I asked, ‘lies on the road to Grantaceaster?’

The twins looked surprised at my ignorance. ‘Oh no, lord,’ one of them said, ‘Huntandon lies farther north.’

‘So why are we going there?’

‘King Eohric, lord,’ the other twin began, then faltered. It was plain that neither he nor his brother had thought about that question.

‘It’s as good a route as any,’ his brother said stoutly.

‘Better than Grantaceaster?’ I demanded.

‘Very nearly as good, lord,’ one of the twins said.

There are times when a man feels like a wild boar trapped in woodland, hearing the hunters, listening to the hounds baying, feeling the heart beat harder and wondering which way to flee, and not knowing because the sounds come from everywhere and nowhere. None of it was right. None of it. I summoned Sihtric who had once been my servant, but was now a house-warrior. ‘Find someone,’ I told him, ‘anyone, who knows Huntandon. Bring him here. I want him here by tomorrow.’

‘Where do I look?’ Sihtric asked.

‘How do I know? Go to the town. Talk to people in taverns.’

Sihtric, thin and sharp-faced, looked at me resentfully. ‘I’m to find someone in a tavern?’ he asked, as if the task were impossible.

‘A merchant,’ I shouted at him. ‘Find me someone who travels! And don’t get drunk. Find someone and bring them to me.’ Sihtric still looked sullen, perhaps because he was unwilling to go back into the cold outside. For a moment he looked like his father, Kjartan the Cruel, who had whelped Sihtric on a Saxon slave, but then, controlling his anger, he turned and walked away. Finan, who had noticed Sihtric’s truculence, relaxed. ‘Find me someone who knows how to get to Huntandon and to Grantaceaster and to Eleg,’ I called after Sihtric, but he gave me no answer, and walked out of the hall.

I knew Wessex well enough, and I was learning parts of Mercia. I knew the land around Bebbanburg and about Lundene, but much of the rest of Britain was a mystery. I needed someone who knew East Anglia as well as I knew Wessex. ‘We know all those places, lord,’ one of the twins said.

I ignored the comment because the twins would never have understood my fears. Ceolberht and Ceolnoth had devoted their lives to the conversion of the Danes, and they saw the proposed treaty with Eohric as proof that their god was winning the struggle against the heathen deities and they would be dubious allies for an idea that was tempting me. ‘And Eohric,’ I asked the twins, ‘is sending men to meet us at Huntandon?’

‘An escort, lord, yes. It will probably be led by Jarl Oscytel.’

I had heard of Oscytel. He was the commander of Eohric’s housecarls and thus the warrior-in-chief of East Anglia. ‘And how many men will he bring?’ I asked.

The twins shrugged. ‘Maybe a hundred?’ one said.

‘Or two?’ the other said.

‘And together we shall all go to Eleg,’ the first twin said happily.

‘Singing joyfully,’ Brother John put in, ‘like little birdies.’

So I was expected to march to East Anglia carrying half a dozen gaudy banners and accompanied by a pack of singing monks? Sigurd would like that, I thought. It was in his best interest to stop the treaty ever happening, and the best way to do that was to ambush me before I ever reached Huntandon. I was not certain that was what he planned, I was simply guessing. For all I knew, Sigurd really was about to celebrate Yule and had no intention of fighting a swift winter campaign to prevent the treaty between Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia, but no one survives long by assuming his enemy is sleeping. I gave Sigunn a light slap on the rump. ‘You’d like to spend Yule in Eleg?’ I asked her.

‘Christmas,’ one of the twins could not resist muttering the correction, then blanched at the look I gave him.

‘I’d rather have Yule here,’ Sigunn said.

‘We’re going to Eleg,’ I told her, ‘and you’re to wear the gold chains I gave you. It’s important we make an impressive display,’ I added, then looked at Willibald, ‘isn’t that right, father?’

‘You can’t take her!’ Willibald hissed at me.

‘I can’t?’

He flapped his hands. He wanted to say that the glory of Alfred’s court would be contaminated by the presence of a pagan Danish beauty, but he did not have the courage to say the words aloud. He just stared at Sigunn, who was the widow of one of the Danish warriors we had killed at Beamfleot. She was about seventeen years old, a lithe, slight girl with fair skin, pale blue eyes and hair like shining gold. She was clothed in finery; a dress of pale yellow linen edged with an intricate blue border of embroidered dragons that writhed about the hem, neckline and sleeves. Gold hung at her throat and showed at her wrists, symbols that she was privileged, the possession of a lord. She was mine, but for most of her life she had only known the company of Haesten’s men, and Haesten was on the other side of Britain, in Ceaster.

And that was why I would take Sigunn towards Eleg.

It was Yule, 898, and someone was trying to kill me.

I would kill them instead.

Sihtric had appeared strangely reluctant to obey my orders, but the man he brought me was a good choice. He was a young man, scarce more than twenty, and claimed to be a magician, which meant he was really a rogue who travelled from town to town, selling talismans and charms. He called himself Ludda, though I doubted that was his real name, and he was accompanied by a small, dark girl called Teg, who scowled at me from beneath thick black eyebrows and a bird’s nest of tangled hair. She seemed to be muttering under her breath as she looked up at me. ‘Is she casting spells?’ I asked.

‘She can, lord,’ Ludda said.

‘Is she?’

‘Oh no, lord,’ Ludda reassured me hurriedly. He, like the girl, was kneeling. He had a misleadingly open face, with wide blue eyes, a generous mouth and a quick smile. He also had a sack strapped to his back, which proved to contain his charms, most of which were elfstones or shining pebbles, along with a bundle of small leather bags, each of which contained one or two rusty scraps of iron.

‘What are those?’ I asked, nudging the bags with my foot.

‘Ah,’ he said, and gave a sheepish grin.

‘Men who cheat the folk who live on my land are punished,’ I said.

‘Cheat, lord?’ He gazed up innocently.

‘I drown them,’ I said, ‘or else I hang them. You saw the bodies outside?’ The corpses of the two men who had tried to kill me still hung from the elm.

‘It’s hard to miss them, lord,’ Ludda said.

I picked up one of the small leather bags and opened it, spilling two rusty clench-nails onto my palm. ‘You tell folk that if they sleep with this bag beneath their pillow and say a prayer then the iron will turn to silver?’

The wide blue eyes became wider. ‘Now why would I say such a thing, lord?’

‘To make yourself rich by selling iron scraps for a hundred times their real value,’ I said.

‘But if they pray hard enough, lord, then Almighty God might hear their prayer, mightn’t He? And it would be unchristian of me to deny simple folk the chance of a miracle, lord.’

‘I should hang you,’ I said.

‘Hang her instead, lord,’ Ludda said quickly, nodding towards his girl, ‘she’s Welsh.’

I had to laugh. The girl scowled, and I gave Ludda a friendly cuff around the ears. I had bought one of those miracle bags years before, believing somehow that prayer would turn rust to gold, and I had bought it from just such a rogue as Ludda. I told him to stand and had the servants bring both he and his girl ale and food. ‘If I were travelling to Huntandon from here,’ I asked him, ‘how would I go?’

He considered the question for a few heartbeats, looking to see if there was some trap in it, then shrugged. ‘It’s not a hard journey, lord. Go east to Bedanford and from there you’ll find a good road to a place called Eanulfsbirig. You cross the river there, lord, and keep on north and east to Huntandon.’

‘What river?’

‘The Use, lord,’ he hesitated. ‘The pagans have been known to row their ships up the Use, lord, as far as Eanulfsbirig. There’s a bridge there. There’s another at Huntandon, too, which you cross to get to the settlement.’

‘So I cross the river twice?’

‘Three times, lord. You’ll cross at Bedanford too, but that’s a ford, of course.’

‘So I have to cross and recross the river?’ I asked.

‘You can follow the northern bank if you wish, lord, then you don’t have to use the bridges beyond, but it’s a much longer journey, and there’s no good road on that bank.’

‘Can the river be forded anywhere else?’

‘Not downstream of Bedanford, lord, not easily, not after all this rain. It will have flooded.’

I nodded. I was toying with some silver coins, and neither Ludda nor Teg could take their eyes from the money. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘if you wanted to cheat the folk of Eleg, how would you travel there?’

‘Oh, through Grantaceaster,’ he said immediately. ‘It’s by far the quickest route and they’re mighty gullible folk in Grantaceaster, lord.’ He grinned.

‘And the distance from Eanulfsbirig to Huntandon?’

‘A morning’s walk, lord. No distance at all.’

I tumbled the coins in my palm. ‘And the bridges?’ I asked. ‘Are they wood or stone?’

‘Both wooden, lord,’ he said, ‘they used to be stone, but the Roman arches collapsed.’ He told me about the other settlements in the valley of the Use, and how the valley was still more Saxon than Dane, though the farms there all paid tribute to Danish lords. I let him talk, but I was thinking about the river that would have to be crossed. If Sigurd planned an ambush, I thought, then he would place it at Eanulfsbirig, knowing we must cross the bridge there. He would surely not pick Huntandon because the East Anglian forces would be waiting on the higher ground just north of the river.

Or maybe he planned nothing at all.

Maybe I saw danger where there was none.

‘Have you been to Cytringan?’ I asked Ludda.

He looked surprised, perhaps because Cytringan was very far from the other places I had asked him about. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said. ‘What’s there?’

‘The Jarl Sigurd has a feasting-hall there, lord. He uses it when he hunts in the woods there.’

‘It has a palisade?’

‘No, lord. It’s a great hall, but it’s empty much of the time.’

‘I hear Sigurd is spending Yule there.’

‘That could be, lord.’

I nodded, then put the coins back in my pouch and saw the look of disappointment on Ludda’s face. ‘I’ll pay you,’ I promised him, ‘when we come back.’

‘We?’ he asked nervously.

‘You’re coming with me, Ludda,’ I said, ‘any warrior would be glad of a magician for company, and a magician should be mighty glad of warriors for an escort.’

‘Yes, lord,’ he said, trying to sound happy.

We left next morning. The monks were all on foot, which slowed us, but I was in no great hurry. I took almost all my men, leaving only a handful to guard the hall. There were over a hundred of us, but only fifty were warriors, the rest were churchmen and servants, while Sigunn was the only woman. My men wore their finest mail. Twenty of them led us and almost all the rest formed a rearguard, while the monks, priests and servants walked or rode in the centre. Six of my men were out on the flanks, riding ahead as scouts. I expected no trouble between Buccingahamm and Bedanford, and nor did we find any. I had not visited Bedanford before, and discovered a sad, half-deserted town that had shrunk to a frightened village. There had once been a great church north of the river, and King Offa, the tyrant of Mercia, was supposedly buried there, but the Danes had burned the church and dug up the king’s grave to seek whatever treasure might have been interred with his corpse. We spent a cold, uncomfortable night in a barn, though I spent part of the darkness with the sentries, who shivered in their fur cloaks. The dawn brought mist across a wet, drab, flat land through which the river twisted in great lazy bends.

We crossed the river in the morning mist. I sent Finan and twenty men across first and he scouted the road ahead and came back to say there was no enemy in sight. ‘Enemy?’ Willibald asked me. ‘Why would you expect enemies?’

‘We’re warriors,’ I told him, ‘and we always assume there are enemies.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s Eohric’s land. It’s friendly, lord.’

The ford was running deep with bitterly cold water and I let the monks cross by using a great raft, which was tethered to the southern bank and was evidently left there for just such a purpose. Once across the river we followed the remnants of a Roman road that ran through wide waterlogged meadows. The mist melted away to leave a sunlit, cold and bright day. I was tense. Sometimes, when a wolf pack is both troublesome and elusive, we lay a trap for the beasts. A few sheep are penned in an open place while wolfhounds are concealed downwind, and then we wait in hope that the wolves will come. If they do, then horsemen and hounds are released and the pack is hunted across the wild land till it is nothing but bloody pelts and ripped meat. But we were now the sheep. We were walking north with banners aloft, proclaiming our presence, and the wolves were watching us. I was sure of it.

I took Finan, Sigunn, Ludda, Sihtric and four other men and broke away from the road, leaving Osferth with orders to keep going until he reached Eanulfsbirig, but not to cross the river there.

While we scouted. There is an art to scouting land. Normally I would have two pairs of horsemen working either side of the road. One pair, watched by another, would go forward to investigate hills or woodlands, and only when they were certain that no enemy was in sight would they signal their comrades who, in turn, would investigate the next stretch of country, but I had no time for such caution. Instead we rode hard. I had given Ludda a mail coat, a helmet and a sword, while Sigunn, who rode a horse as well as any man, was in a great cloak of otter fur.

We passed Eanulfsbirig late in the morning. We went well to the west of the small settlement and I paused in dark winter trees to stare at the glint of river, the bridge and the tiny thatched houses that leaked a small smoke into the clear sky. ‘No one there,’ Finan said after a while. I trusted his eyes better than mine. ‘At least no one to worry about.’

‘Unless they’re in the houses,’ I suggested.

‘They wouldn’t take their horses inside,’ Finan said, ‘but you want me to find out?’ I shook my head. I doubted the Danes were there. Maybe they were nowhere. My suspicion was that they watched Eanulfsbirig, though perhaps from the river’s far bank. There were trees beyond the far river meadows and an army could have been hidden in their undergrowth. I assumed that Sigurd would want us to cross the river before he attacked, so that our backs were to the stream, but he would also want to secure the bridge to prevent our escape. Or perhaps, even now, Sigurd was in his hall drinking mead and I was just imagining the danger. ‘Keep going north,’ I said, and we pushed the horses across the furrows of a field planted with winter wheat.

‘What are you expecting, lord?’ Ludda asked me.

‘For you to keep your mouth shut if we meet any Danes,’ I said.

‘I think I’d want to do that,’ he said fervently.

‘And pray we haven’t passed the bastards,’ I said. I worried that Osferth might be walking into ambush, yet my instincts told me we still had not found the enemy. If there was an enemy. It seemed to me that the bridge at Eanulfsbirig was the ideal place for Sigurd to ambush us, but as far as I could see there were no men on this side of the Use, and he would surely want them on both banks.

We rode more cautiously now, staying among trees as we probed northwards. We were beyond the route that Sigurd would expect me to take and if he did have men waiting to cut off our retreat then I expected to find them, yet the winter countryside was cold and silent and empty. I was beginning to think that my fears were misplaced, that no danger threatened us, and then, quite suddenly, there was something strange.

We had gone perhaps three miles beyond Eanulfsbirig and were among waterlogged fields and small coppiced woods with the river a half-mile to our right. A smear of smoke rose from a copse on the river’s far bank and I gave it no thought, assuming it was a cottage hidden among the trees, but Finan saw something more. ‘Lord?’ he said, and I curbed the horse and saw where he pointed. The river here made a great swirling bend to the east and, at the bend’s farthest point, beneath the bare branches of willows, were the unmistakable shapes of two ship prows. Beast-heads. I had not seen them until Finan pointed to them, and the Irishman had the sharpest eyes of any man I ever met. ‘Two ships,’ he said.

The two ships had no masts, presumably because they had been rowed beneath the bridge at Huntandon. Were they East Anglian? I stared, and could see no men, but the hulls were hidden beneath the thick growth of the river bank. Yet the rearing prows told me two ships were in a place where I had expected none. Behind me Ludda was again saying how Danish raiders had once rowed all the way to Eanulfsbirig. ‘Be quiet,’ I told him.

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Maybe they’re wintering the ships there?’ Finan suggested.

I shook my head. ‘They’d drag them out of the water for the winter. And why are they showing their beast-heads?’ We only put the dragon or wolf heads on our ships when we are in enemy waters, which suggested these two ships were not East Anglian. I twisted in the saddle to look at Ludda. ‘Remember to keep your mouth closed.’

‘Yes, lord,’ he said, though his eyes were bright. Our magician was enjoying being a warrior.

‘And the rest of you,’ I said, ‘make sure your crosses are hidden.’ Most of my men were Christians and wore a cross just as I wore a hammer. I watched as they hid their talismans. I left my hammer showing.

We kicked the horses out of the wood and crossed the meadow. We had not gone halfway before one of the prow-mounted beasts moved. The two ships were moored against the farther bank, but one of them now came across the river and three men scrambled up from its bows. They were in mail. I held my hands high to show I was not holding a weapon, and let my tired horse walk slowly towards them. ‘Who are you?’ one of them challenged me. He shouted in Danish, but what puzzled me was the cross he wore over his mail. It was a wooden cross with a small silver figure of Christ pinned to the crossbar. Maybe it was plunder? I could not imagine any of Sigurd’s men being Christians, yet the ships were surely Danish. Beyond him I could now see more men, maybe forty altogether, waiting in the two ships.

I stopped to let the man look at me. He saw a lord in expensive war gear with silver trappings on his harness, arm rings glinting in the sun, and a hammer of Thor prominent about my neck. ‘Who are you, lord?’ he asked respectfully.

‘I am Haakon Haakonson,’ I invented the name, ‘and I serve the Jarl Haesten.’ That was my story, that I was one of Haesten’s men. I had to assume that none of Sigurd’s followers would be familiar with Haesten’s troops and so would not question me too closely, and if they did then Sigunn, who had once been part of Haesten’s company, would provide the answers. That was why I had brought her.

‘Ivann Ivarrson,’ the man named himself. He was reassured that I spoke Danish, but he was still wary. ‘Your business?’ he asked, though still in a respectful voice.

‘We seek Jarl Jorven,’ I said, choosing the name of the man whose homestead we had skirted with Beortsig.

‘Jorven?’

‘He serves Jarl Sigurd,’ I said.

‘And is with him?’ Ivann asked, and did not seem in the least surprised that I sought one of Sigurd’s men so far from Sigurd’s territory, and that was my first confirmation that Sigurd was indeed nearby. He had left his lands and he was on Eohric’s country where he had no business except to prevent the treaty from being signed.

‘That’s what I was told,’ I said airily.

‘Then he’s across the river,’ Ivann said, then hesitated. ‘Lord?’ His voice was full of caution now. ‘Might I ask you a question?’

‘You can ask,’ I said grandly.

‘You mean Jorven harm, lord?’

I laughed at that. ‘I do him a service,’ I said, then twisted in the saddle and pulled the cloak-hood from Sigunn’s head. ‘She ran away from him,’ I explained, ‘and Jarl Haesten thinks he would like her back.’

Ivann’s eyes widened. Sigunn was a beauty, pale and fragile looking, and she had the sense to look frightened as Ivann and his men examined her. ‘Any man would want her back,’ Ivann said.

‘Jorven will doubtless punish the bitch,’ I said carelessly, ‘but maybe he’ll let you use her first?’ I pulled the hood back, shadowing her face again. ‘You serve Jarl Sigurd?’ I asked Ivann.

‘We serve King Eohric,’ he said.

There is a story in the Christian scriptures, though I forget who the story is about and I am not going to summon one of my wife’s priests to tell me because the priest would then see it as his duty to inform me that I am going to hell unless I grovel to his nailed god, but the story was about some man who was travelling somewhere when a great light dazzled him and he suddenly saw everything clearly. That was how I felt at that moment.

Eohric had cause to hate me. I had burned Dumnoc, a town on the East Anglian coast, and though I had had good reasons to turn that fine port into a charred ruin, Eohric would not have forgotten the fire. I had thought he might have excused the insult in his eagerness to make an alliance with Wessex and Mercia, but now I saw his treachery. He wanted me dead. So did Sigurd, though Sigurd’s reasons were far more practical. He wanted to lead the Danes south to attack Mercia and Wessex and he knew who would lead the armies that opposed him. Uhtred of Bebbanburg. I am not immodest. I had reputation. Men feared me. If I were dead then the conquest of Mercia and Wessex would be easier.

And I saw, at that moment, in that damp riverside meadow, just how the trap had been set. Eohric, playing the good Christian, had suggested I negotiate Alfred’s treaty, and that was to lure me to a place where Sigurd could ambush me. Sigurd, I had no doubt, would do the killing, and that way Eohric would be absolved of blame.

‘Lord?’ Ivann asked, puzzled by my silence, and I realised I was staring at him.

‘Sigurd has invaded Eohric’s land?’ I asked, pretending to stupidity.

‘It’s no invasion, lord,’ Ivann said, and saw me gazing across the river, though there was nothing to see on the farther bank except more fields and trees. ‘The Jarl Sigurd is hunting, lord,’ Ivann said, though slyly.

‘Is that why you left your dragon-heads on the ships?’ I asked. The beasts we place at the prows of our ships are meant to frighten enemy spirits and we usually dismount them when the boats are in friendly waters.

‘They’re not dragons,’ Ivann said, ‘they’re Christian lions. King Eohric insists we leave them on the prows.’

‘What are lions?’

He shrugged. ‘The king says they’re lions, lord,’ he said, plainly not knowing the answer.

‘Well, it’s a great day for a hunt,’ I said. ‘Why aren’t you in the chase?’

‘We’re here to bring the hunters across the river,’ he said, ‘in case the prey crosses.’

I pretended to look pleased. ‘So you can take us across?’

‘The horses can swim?’

‘They’ll have to,’ I said. It was easier to make horses swim than try to coax them on board a ship. ‘We’ll fetch the others,’ I said, turning my horse.

‘The others?’ Ivann was immediately suspicious again.

‘Her maids,’ I said, jerking a thumb at Sigunn, ‘two of my servants and some packhorses. We left them at a steading.’ I waved vaguely westward and indicated that my companions should follow me.

‘You could leave the girl here!’ Ivann suggested hopefully, but I pretended not to hear him and rode back to the trees.

‘The bastards,’ I said to Finan when we were safely hidden again.

‘Bastards?’

‘Eohric lured us here so Sigurd could slaughter us,’ I explained. ‘But Sigurd doesn’t know which bank of the river we’ll use, so those boats are there to bring his men over if we stay on this side.’ I was thinking hard. Maybe the ambush was not at Eanulfsbirig at all, but farther east, at Huntandon. Sigurd would let me cross the river and not attack until I was at the next bridge, where Eohric’s forces would provide an anvil for his hammer. ‘You,’ I pointed at Sihtric, who gave me a surly nod. ‘Take Ludda,’ I said, ‘and find Osferth. Tell him to come here with every warrior he has. The monks and priests are to stop on the road. They’re not to take a step farther, understand? And when you come back here, make damned sure those men in the boats don’t see you. Now go!’

‘What do I tell Father Willibald?’ Sihtric asked.

‘That he’s a damned fool and that I’m saving his worthless life. Now go! Hurry!’

Finan and I had dismounted and I gave Sigunn the reins of the horses. ‘Take them to the far side of the wood,’ I said, ‘and wait.’ Finan and I lay at the wood’s edge. Ivann was clearly worried about us because he stared towards our hiding place for some minutes, and then finally walked back to the moored ship.

‘So what are we doing?’ Finan asked.

‘Destroying those two ships,’ I said. I would have liked to have done more. I would have liked to ram Serpent-Breath down King Eohric’s fat throat, but we were the prey here, and I did not doubt that Sigurd and Eohric had more than enough men to crush us with ease. They would know precisely how many men I had. Doubtless Sigurd had placed scouts near Bedanford, and those men would have told him exactly how many horsemen rode towards his trap. Yet he would not want us to see those scouts. He wanted us to cross the bridge at Eanulfsbirig, and then get behind us so that we would be caught between his forces and King Eohric’s men. It would have been a raw slaughter on a winter’s day if that had happened. And if, by chance, we had taken the river’s northern bank, then Ivann’s ships would have ferried Sigurd’s men across the Use so that they could get behind us once we had passed. He had made no attempt to hide the ships. Why should he? He would assume I would see nothing threatening in the presence of two East Anglian ships on an East Anglian river. I would have marched into his trap on either bank and news of the slaughter would have reached Wessex in a few days, but Eohric would have sworn that he knew nothing of the massacre. He would blame it all on the pagan Sigurd.

Instead I would hurt Eohric and taunt Sigurd, then spend Yule at Buccingahamm.

My men came in the middle of the afternoon. The sun was already low in the west where it would be dazzling Ivann’s men. I spent some moments with Osferth, telling him what he must do and then sending him with six men to rejoin the monks and the priests. I gave him time to reach them, and then, as the sun sank even lower in the winter sky, I sprang my own trap.

I took Finan, Sigunn and seven men. Sigunn rode, while the rest of us walked, leading our horses. Ivann expected to see a small group, so that is what I showed him. He had taken his ship back across the river, but his oarsmen now rowed the long hull back to our bank. ‘He had twenty men in the ship,’ I said to Finan, thinking how many we might have to kill.

‘Twenty in each ship, lord,’ he said, ‘but there’s smoke in that copse,’ he nodded across the river, ‘so he could have more just warming themselves.’

‘They won’t cross the river to be killed,’ I said. The ground was soft underfoot, squelching with each step. There was no wind. Beyond the river a few elms still had pale yellow leaves. Fieldfares flew from the meadow there. ‘When we start killing,’ I told Sigunn, ‘you take our horses’ reins and ride back to the wood.’

She nodded. I had brought her because Ivann expected to see her and because she was beautiful and that meant he would watch her rather than look towards the trees where my horsemen now waited. I hoped they were hidden, but I dared not look back.

Ivann had clambered up the bank and tethered the ship’s bows to a poplar’s trunk. The current swept the hull downstream, which meant the men aboard could leap ashore easily enough. They were twenty of them, and we were only eight, and Ivann watched us, and I had told him we were bringing maidservants and he could not see them, but men see what they want to see and he only had eyes for Sigunn. He waited unsuspectingly. I smiled at him. ‘You serve Eohric?’ I called as we drew near.

‘I do, lord, as I told you.’

‘And he would kill Uhtred?’ I asked. The first flicker of doubt crossed his face, but I was still smiling. ‘You know about…’ He began a question, but never finished it because I had drawn Serpent-Breath, and that was the signal for the rest of my men to spur their horses from the trees. A line of horsemen, hooves throwing water and clods of earth, horsemen holding spears and axes and shields, death’s threat in a winter afternoon, and I swung my blade at Ivann, just wanting to drive him away from the boat’s mooring line, and he stumbled to fall between the ship and the bank.

And it was over.

The bank was suddenly milling with horsemen, their breath smoky in the cold bright light, and Ivann was shouting for mercy while his crew, taken by surprise, made no attempt to draw their weapons. They had been cold, bored and off-guard, and the appearance of my men, helmed and carrying shields, their blades sharp as the frost that still lingered in shadowed places, had terrified them.

The crew of the second ship watched the first surrender, and they had no fight either. They were Eohric’s men, Christians mostly, some Saxon and some Dane, and they were not filled with the same ambition as Sigurd’s hungry warriors. Those Danish warriors, I knew, were somewhere to the east, waiting for monks and horsemen to cross the river, but these men on the ships had been reluctant participants. Their job had been to wait in case they were needed, and all of them would rather have been in the hall by the fire. When I offered them life in exchange for surrender they were pathetically grateful, and the crew of the far ship shouted that they would not fight. We rowed Ivann’s boat across the river, and so captured both vessels without killing a soul. We stripped Eohric’s men of their mail, their weapons and their helmets, and I took that plunder back across the river. We left the shivering men on the far bank, all but for Ivann, who I took prisoner, and we burned the two ships. The crews had lit a fire in the trees, a place to warm themselves, and we used those flames to destroy Eohric’s ships. I waited just long enough to see the fire catch properly, to watch the flames eat at the rowers’ benches and the smoke begin to thicken in the still air, and then we rode hard south.

The smoke was a signal, an unmistakable indication to Sigurd that his careful ambush had gone wrong. He would soon hear that from Eohric’s crews, but by now his scouts would have seen the monks and priests at Eanulfsbirig’s bridge. I had told Osferth to keep them on our bank, and to make sure they attracted attention. There was a risk, of course, that Sigurd’s Danes would attack the nearly defenceless churchmen, but I thought he would wait until he was certain I was there. And so he did.

We arrived at Eanulfsbirig to find the choir singing. Osferth had ordered them to chant, and they were standing, miserable and singing, beneath their great banners. ‘Sing louder, you bastards!’ I shouted as we cantered up to the bridge. ‘Sing like loud little birdies!’

‘Lord Uhtred!’ Father Willibald came running towards me. ‘What’s happening? What’s happening?’

‘I decided to start a war, father,’ I said cheerfully, ‘it’s so much more interesting than peace.’

He stared at me aghast. I slid from the saddle and saw that Osferth had obeyed me by piling kindling on the bridge’s wooden walkway. ‘It’s thatch,’ he told me, ‘and it’s damp.’

‘So long as it burns,’ I said. The thatch was piled across the bridge, hiding lengths of timber that made a low barricade. Downriver the smoke from the burning ships had thickened to make a great pillar in the sky. The sun was very low now, casting long shadows towards the east where Sigurd must have heard from the two ships’ crews that I was close by.

‘You started a war?’ Willibald caught up with me.

‘Shield wall!’ I shouted. ‘Right here!’ I would make a shield wall on the bridge itself. It did not matter how many men Sigurd brought now because only a few could face us in the narrow space between the heavy timber parapets.

‘We came in peace!’ Willibald protested to me. The twins, Ceolberht and Ceolnoth, were making similar protests as Finan arrayed our warriors. The bridge was wide enough for six men to stand abreast, their shields overlapping. I had four ranks of men there now, men with axes and swords and big round shields.

‘We came,’ I turned on Willibald, ‘because Eohric betrayed you. This was never about peace. This was about making war easier. Ask him,’ I gestured at Ivann. ‘Go on, talk to him and leave me in peace! And tell those monks to stop their damned caterwauling.’

Then, from the far trees, across the damp fields, the Danes appeared. A host of Danes, maybe two hundred of them, and they came on horses led by Sigurd who rode a great white stallion beneath his banner of a flying raven. He saw we were waiting for him and that to attack us he must send his men across the narrow bridge and so he curbed his horse some fifty paces away, dismounted, and walked towards us. A younger man accompanied him, yet it was Sigurd who drew attention. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and with a scarred face half hidden by his beard that was long enough to be plaited into two thick ropes that he wore twisted around his neck. His helmet reflected the reddening sunlight. He was not bothering to carry a shield or draw a sword, but he was still a Danish lord in his war-splendour. His helmet was touched with gold, a chain of gold was buried among the plaits of his beard, his arms were thick with golden rings and the throat of his sword’s scabbard, like the weapon’s hilt, glinted with more gold. The younger man had a chain of silver, and a silver ring surrounding his helmet’s crown. He had an insolent face, petulant and hostile.

I stepped over the piled thatch and went to meet the two men. ‘Lord Uhtred,’ Sigurd greeted me sarcastically.

‘Jarl Sigurd,’ I answered in the same tone.

‘I told them you weren’t a fool,’ he said. The sun was now so low above the south-western horizon that he was forced to half close his eyes to see me properly. He spat onto the grass. ‘Ten of your men against eight of mine,’ he suggested, ‘right here,’ he stamped his foot on the wet grass. He wanted to draw my men off the bridge, and he knew I would not accept.

‘Let me fight him,’ the younger man said.

I gave the young man a dismissive glance. ‘I like my enemies to be old enough to shave before I kill them,’ I said, then looked back to Sigurd. ‘You against me,’ I told him, ‘right here,’ I stamped my foot on the road’s frost-hardened mud.

He half smiled, showing yellowed teeth. ‘I would kill you, Uhtred,’ he said mildly, ‘and so rid the world of a worthless piece of rat shit, but that pleasure must wait.’ He pulled up his right sleeve to show a splint on his forearm. The splint was two slivers of wood bound tight with linen bands. I also saw a curious scar on his palm, a pair of slashes that formed a cross. Sigurd was no coward, but nor was he fool enough to fight me while the broken bone of his sword arm was mending.

‘You were fighting women again?’ I asked, nodding at the strange scar.

He stared at me. I thought my insult had gone deep, but he was evidently thinking.

‘Let me fight him!’ the young man said again.

‘Be quiet,’ Sigurd growled.

I looked at the youngster. He was perhaps eighteen or nineteen, nearly coming into his full strength, and had all the swagger of a confident young man. His mail was fine, probably Frankish, and his arms thick with the rings Danes like to wear, but I suspected the wealth had been given to him, not earned on a battlefield. ‘My son,’ Sigurd introduced him, ‘Sigurd Sigurdson.’ I nodded to him, while Sigurd the Younger just stared at me with hostile eyes. He so wanted to prove himself, but his father would have none of it. ‘My only son,’ he said.

‘It seems he has a death wish,’ I said, ‘and if he wants a fight, I’ll oblige him.’

‘It isn’t his time,’ Sigurd said, ‘I know, because I talked to Ælfadell,’ he said.

‘Ælfadell?’

‘She knows the future, Uhtred,’ he said, and his voice was serious without any trace of mockery, ‘she tells the future.’

I had heard rumours of Ælfadell, rumours as vague as smoke, rumours that drifted across Britain and said a northern sorceress could speak with the gods. Her name, that sounded so like our word for nightmare, made Christians cross themselves.

I shrugged as if I did not care about Ælfadell. ‘And what does the old woman say?’

Sigurd grimaced. ‘She says no son of Alfred will ever rule in Britain.’

‘You believe her?’ I asked even though I could see he did because he spoke simply and plainly, as if telling me the price of oxen.

‘You would believe her too,’ he said, ‘except you won’t live to meet her.’

‘She told you that?’

‘If you and I met, she says, then your leader will die.’

‘My leader?’ I pretended to be amused.

‘You,’ Sigurd said grimly.

I spat onto the grass. ‘I trust Eohric is paying you well for this wasted time.’

‘He will pay,’ Sigurd said harshly, then he turned, plucked his son’s elbow, and walked away.

I had sounded defiant, but in truth my soul was crawling with fear. Suppose Ælfadell the Enchantress had told the truth? The gods do speak to us, though rarely in plain speech. Was I doomed to die here on this river’s bank? Sigurd believed it, and he was gathering his men for an attack, which, if its result had not been foretold, he would never have attempted. No men, however battle-skilled, could hope to break a shield wall that was as strong as the one I had placed between the bridge’s sturdy parapets, but men inspired by prophecy will attempt any foolishness in the knowledge that the fates have ordained their victory. I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt, then the hammer of Thor, and went back to the bridge. ‘Light the fire,’ I told Osferth.

It was time to burn the bridge and retreat, and Sigurd, if he was wise, would have let us go. He had lost his chance to ambush us and our position on the bridge was dauntingly formidable, but he had the prophecy of some strange woman ringing in his head and so he began haranguing his men. I heard their shouted responses, heard the blades beating on the shields and watched as Danes dismounted and formed a line. Osferth brought a flaming torch and thrust it deep into the piled thatch, and smoke thickened instantly. The Danes were howling as I elbowed my way into the centre of our shield wall.

‘He must want you dead very badly, lord,’ Finan said with some amusement.

‘He’s a fool,’ I said. I did not tell Finan that a sorceress had foretold my death. Finan might be a Christian, yet he believed in every ghost and every spirit, he believed that elves scuttled through the undergrowth and wraiths twisted in the night clouds, and if I had told him about Ælfadell the Sorceress he would have felt the same fear that shivered my heart. If Sigurd attacked I must fight because I needed to hold the bridge until the fire caught, and Osferth was right about the thatch. It was reed, not wheat straw, and it was damp, and the fire burned sullenly. It smoked, but there was no fierce heat to bite into the bridge’s thick timbers that Osferth had weakened and splintered with war axes.

Sigurd’s men were anything but sullen. They were clattering swords and axes against their heavy shields, and jostling for the honour of leading the attack. They would be half blinded by the sun and choked by the smoke, yet they were still eager. Reputation is everything and is the only thing that survives our journey to Valhalla, and the man who cut me down would gain reputation. And so, in the day’s dying light, they steeled themselves to attack us.

‘Father Willibald!’ I shouted.

‘Lord?’ a nervous voice called from the bank.

‘Bring that big banner! Have two of your monks hold it over us!’

‘Yes, lord,’ he said, sounding surprised and pleased, and a pair of monks brought the vast linen banner embroidered with its picture of Christ crucified. I told them to stand close behind my rearmost rank and had two of my men stand there with them. If there had been the slightest wind the great square of linen would have been unmanageable, but now it was blazoned above us, all green and gold and brown and blue, with a dark streak of red where the soldier’s spear had broken Christ’s body. Willibald thought I was using the magic of his religion to support my men’s swords and axes, and I let him think that.

‘It will shade their eyes, lord,’ Finan warned me, meaning that we would lose the advantage of the low sun’s blinding dazzle once the Danes advanced within the great shadow cast by the banner.

‘Only for a while,’ I said. ‘Stand firm!’ I called to the two monks holding the stout staffs that supported the great linen square. And just then, perhaps goaded by the flaunted banner, the Danes charged in a howling rush.

And as they came I remembered my very first shield wall. I had been so young, so frightened, standing on a bridge no wider than this one with Tatwine and his Mercians as we were attacked by a group of Welsh cattle thieves. They had rained arrows on us first, then charged, and on that distant bridge I had learned the seethe of battle-joy.

Now, on another bridge, I drew Wasp-Sting. My great sword was called Serpent-Breath, but her little sister was Wasp-Sting, a brief and brutal blade that could be lethal in the tight embrace of the shield wall. When men are close as lovers, when their shields are pressing on each other, when you smell their breath and see the rot in their teeth and the fleas in their beards, and when there is no room to swing a war axe or a long-sword, then Wasp-Sting could stab up from beneath. She was a gut-piercing sword, a horror.

And that was a horror-slaughter on a winter’s day. The Danes had seen our piled kindling and assumed there was nothing but reeds smoking damply on the bridge, yet beneath the reeds Osferth had stacked roof timbers and when the leading Danes tried to kick the reeds off the bridge’s roadway they kicked those heavy timbers instead and stumbled.

Some had hurled spears first. Those spears thumped into our shields, making them unwieldy, but it hardly mattered. The leading Danes tripped on the hidden timbers and the men behind pushed the falling men forward. I kicked one in the face, feeling my iron-reinforced boot crush bone. Danes were sprawling at our feet while others tried to get past their fallen comrades to reach our line, and we were killing. Two men succeeded in reaching us, despite the smoking barricade, and one of those two fell to Wasp-Sting coming up from beneath his shield rim. He had been swinging an axe that the man behind me caught on his shield and the Dane was still holding the war axe’s shaft as I saw his eyes widen, saw the snarl of his mouth turn to agony as I twisted the blade, ripping it upwards and as Cerdic, beside me, chopped his own axe down. The man with the crushed face was holding my ankle and I stabbed at him as the blood spray from Cerdic’s axe blinded me. The whimpering man at my feet tried to crawl away, but Finan stabbed his sword into his thigh, then stabbed again. A Dane had hooked his axe over the top rim of my shield and hauled it down to expose my body to a spear-thrust, but the axe rolled off the circular shield and the spear was deflected upwards and I slammed Wasp-Sting forward again, felt her bite, twisted her, and Finan was keening his mad Irish song as he added his own blade to the slaughter. ‘Keep the shields touching!’ I shouted at my men.

This is what we practised every day. If the shield wall breaks then death rules, but if the shield wall holds then it is the enemy who dies, and those first Danes came at us in a wild rush, inspired by a sorceress’s prophecy, and their assault had been defeated by the barricade that had tripped them and so made them easy prey for our blades. They had stood no chance of breaking our shield wall, they were too undisciplined, too confused, and now three of them lay dead among the scattered reeds that still burned feebly, while the smoking beams remained as a low obstacle. The survivors of those first attackers did not stay to be killed, but ran back to Sigurd’s bank where a second group readied to break us. There may have been twenty of them, big men, spear-Danes, coming to kill, and they were not wild like the first group, but deliberate. These were men who had killed in the shield wall, who knew their business, whose shields overlapped and whose weapons glittered in the dying sun. They would not rush and stumble. They would come slowly and use their long spears to break our wall and so let their swordsmen and axemen into our ranks. ‘God, fight for us!’ Willibald called as the Danes reached the bridge. The newcomers stepped carefully, not tripping, their eyes watching us. Some called insults, yet I hardly heard them. I was watching them. There was blood on my face and in the links of my mail coat. My shield was heavy with a Danish spear, and Wasp-Sting’s blade was reddened. ‘Slaughter them, O Lord!’ Willibald was praying. ‘Cut down the heathen! Smite them, Lord, in thy great mercy!’ The monks had started their chanting again. The Danes pulled dead or dying men backwards to make room for their attack. They were close now, very close, but not yet in reach of our blades. I watched their shields touch each other again, saw the spear-blades come up, and heard the word of command.

And I also heard Willibald’s shrill voice over the confusion. ‘Christ is our leader, fight for Christ, we cannot fail.’

And I laughed as the Danes came. ‘Now!’ I shouted at the two men standing with the monks. ‘Now!’

The great banner fell forward. It had taken the women of Alfred’s court months of work, months of making tiny stitches with expensively dyed wool, months of dedication and prayer and love and skill, and now the figure of Christ fell forward onto the leading Danes. The vast linen and wool panel fell like a fisherman’s net to drape itself over their first rank to blind them, and as it engulfed them I gave the order and we charged.

It is easy to pass a spear-blade if the man holding it cannot see you. I shouted at our second rank to grab the weapons and haul them clear while we killed the spearmen. Cerdic’s axe sliced down through linen, wool, iron, bone and brain. We were screaming, slaughtering, and making a new barricade of Danes. Some slashed at the banner, which shrouded and blinded them. Finan was sawing his sharp blade at the wrists holding spears, the Danes were desperately trying to escape their entanglement and we were hacking, cutting and lunging, while all around us and between us the smoke of the scattered reeds thickened. I felt heat on one ankle. The fire was at last catching. Sihtric, his teeth bared in a grimace, was chopping a long-hafted axe again and again, driving the blade down into trapped Danes.

I hurled Wasp-Sting back to our bank and snatched up a fallen axe. I have never liked fighting with an axe. The weapon is clumsy. If the first stroke fails then it takes too long to recover and an enemy can use that pause to strike, but this enemy was already beaten. The ripped banner was red with real blood now, soaked with it, and I struck the axe down again and again, beating the wide blade through mail into bone and flesh, and the smoke was choking me, and a Dane was screaming, and my men were shouting and the sun was a ball of fire in the west and the whole flat wet land was shimmering red.

We pulled back from the horror. I saw Christ’s surprisingly cheerful face being consumed by fire as the linen caught the flames. Linen burns easily, and the black stain spread across the layers of cloth. Osferth had brought still more reeds and timbers from the cottage he had pulled down and we threw them onto the small flames and watched as the fire at last found strength. Sigurd’s men had taken enough. They too pulled back and stood on the river’s far bank and watched as the fire took its grip on the bridge. We dragged four enemy corpses to our side of the bridge and we stripped them of silver chains, arm rings and enamelled belts. Sigurd had mounted his white horse and just stared at me. His sullen son, who had been kept from the fight, spat towards us. Sigurd himself said nothing.

‘Ælfadell was wrong,’ I called, but she had not been wrong. Our leader had died, maybe a second death, and the charred linen showed where he had been and where he had been consumed by fire.

I waited. It was dark before the roadway collapsed into the river, sending a sudden seethe of steam into the flame-lit air. The stone pilings that the Romans had made were scorched and still usable, but it would take hours of work to make a new roadway and, as the charred timbers floated downstream, we left.

That was a cold night.

We walked. I let the monks and priests ride because they were shivering and weary and weak, while the rest of us led the horses. Everyone wanted to rest, but I made them walk through the night, knowing that Sigurd would follow us just as soon as he could put men across the river. We walked under the bright cold stars, walked all the way past Bedanford, and only when I found a wooded hill that could serve as a place to defend did I let them stop. No fires that night. I watched the country, waiting for the Danes, but they did not come.

And next day we were home.

Three

Yule came, Yule went, and storms followed, bellowing from the North Sea to drift snow across the dead land. Father Willibald, the West Saxon priests, the Mercian twins and the singing monks were forced to stay at Buccingahamm until the weather cleared, then I gave them Cerdic and twenty spearmen to escort them safe home. They took the magic fish with them, and also Ivann, the prisoner. Alfred, if he still lived, would want to hear of Eohric’s treachery. I gave a letter for Æthelflaed with Cerdic, and on his return he promised me he had given it to one of her trusted maidservants, but he brought back no answer. ‘I wasn’t allowed to see the lady,’ Cerdic told me, ‘they’ve got her mewed up tight.’

‘Mewed up?’

‘In the palace, lord. They’re all weeping and wailing.’

‘But Alfred lived when you left?’

‘He still lived, lord, but the priests said it was only prayer keeping him alive.’

‘They would say that.’

‘And Lord Edward is betrothed.’

‘Betrothed?’

‘I went to the ceremony, lord. He’s going to marry the Lady Ælflæd.’

‘The ealdorman’s daughter?’

‘Yes, lord. She was the king’s choice.’

‘Poor Edward,’ I said, remembering Father Willibald’s gossip that Alfred’s heir had wanted to marry a girl from Cent. Ælflæd was daughter to Æthelhelm, Ealdorman of Sumorsæte, and presumably Alfred had wanted the marriage to tie Edward to the most powerful of Wessex’s noble families. I wondered what had happened to the girl from Cent.

Sigurd had gone back to his lands from where, in petulance, he sent raiders into Saxon Mercia to burn, kill, enslave and steal. It was border war, no different from the perpetual fighting between the Scots and the Northumbrians. None of his raiders touched my estates, but my fields lay south of Beornnoth’s wide lands and Sigurd concentrated his anger on Ealdorman Ælfwold, the son of the man who had died fighting beside me at Beamfleot, and he left Beornnoth’s territory unscathed, and that I thought was interesting. So in March, when stitchwort was whitening the hedgerows, I took fifteen men north to Beornnoth’s hall with a new year’s gift of cheese, ale and salted mutton. I found the old man wrapped in a fur cloak and slumped in his chair. His face was sunken, his eyes watery, and his lower lip trembled uncontrollably. He was dying. Beortsig, his son, watched me sullenly.

‘It’s time,’ I said, ‘to teach Sigurd a lesson.’

Beornnoth scowled. ‘Stop pacing around,’ he ordered me, ‘you make me feel old.’

‘You are old,’ I said.

He grimaced at that. ‘I’m like Alfred,’ he said, ‘I’m going to meet my god. I’m going to the judgement seat to find out who lives and who burns. They’ll let him into heaven, won’t they?’

‘They’ll welcome Alfred,’ I agreed, ‘and you?’

‘At least it will be warm in hell,’ he said, then feebly wiped some spittle from his beard. ‘So you want to fight Sigurd?’

‘I want to kill the bastard.’

‘You had your chance before Christmas,’ Beortsig said. I ignored him.

‘He’s waiting,’ Beornnoth said, ‘waiting for Alfred to die. He won’t attack till Alfred’s dead.’

‘He’s attacking now,’ I said.

Beornnoth shook his head. ‘Just raiding,’ he said dismissively, ‘and he’s pulled his fleet ashore at Snotengaham.’

‘Snotengaham?’ I asked, surprised. That was about as far inland as any seagoing ship could travel in Britain.

‘That tells you he’s not planning anything other than raids.’

‘It tells me he’s not planning seaborne raids,’ I said, ‘but what’s to stop him marching overland?’

‘Perhaps he will,’ Beornnoth allowed, ‘when Alfred dies. For now, he’s only stealing a few cattle.’

‘Then I want to steal a few of his cattle,’ I said.

Beortsig scowled and his father shrugged. ‘Why prod the devil when he’s dozing?’ the old man asked.

‘Ælfwold doesn’t think he’s dozing,’ I said.

Beornnoth laughed. ‘Ælfwold’s young,’ he said dismissively, ‘and he’s ambitious, he asks for trouble.’

You could divide the Saxon lords of Mercia into two camps, those who resented the West Saxon dominance of their land and those who welcomed it. Ælfwold’s father had supported Alfred, while Beornnoth harked back to earlier times when Mercia had its own king and, like others of his mind, he had refused to send troops to help me fight Haesten. He had preferred his men to be under Æthelred’s command, which meant they had garrisoned Gleawecestre against an attack that had never come. There had been bitterness between the two camps ever since, but Beornnoth was a decent enough man, or perhaps he was so close to death that he did not want to prolong old enmities. He invited us to stay for the night. ‘Tell me stories,’ he said, ‘I like stories. Tell me about Beamfleot.’ That was a generous invitation, an implicit admission that his men had been in the wrong place the previous summer.

I did not tell the whole story. Instead, in his hall, when the great fire lit the beams red and the ale had made men boisterous, I told how the elder Ælfwold had died. How he had charged with me and how we had scattered the Danish camp, and how we rampaged among the frightened men at the hill’s edge, and then how the Danish reinforcements had counter-charged and the fighting had become bitter. Men listened intently. Almost every man in the hall had stood in the shield wall, and they knew the fear of that moment. I told how my horse had been killed, and how we made a circle of our shields and fought against the screaming Danes who had so suddenly outnumbered us, and I described a death that Ælfwold would have wanted, telling how he killed his enemies, how he sent the pagan foemen to their graves, and how he defeated man after man until, at last, an axe blow split his helmet and felled him. I did not describe how he had looked at me so reproachfully, or the hatred in his dying words because he believed, falsely, that I had betrayed him. He died beside me, and at that moment I had been ready for death, knowing that the Danes must surely kill us all in that blood-reeking dawn, but then Steapa had come with the West Saxon troops and defeat had turned into sudden, unexpected triumph. Beornnoth’s followers hammered the tables in appreciation of the tale. Men like a battle-tale, which is why we employ poets to entertain us at night with tales of warriors and swords and shields and axes.

‘A good story,’ Beornnoth said.

‘Ælfwold’s death was your fault,’ a voice spoke from the hall.

For a moment I thought I had misheard, or that the comment was not spoken to me. There was silence as every man wondered the same.

‘We should never have fought!’ It was Sihtric speaking. He stood to shout at me and I saw he was drunk. ‘You never scouted the woods!’ he snarled. ‘And how many men died because you didn’t scout the woods?’ I know I looked too shocked to speak. Sihtric had been my servant, I had saved his life, I had taken him as a boy and made him a man and a warrior, I had given him gold, I had rewarded him as a lord is supposed to reward his followers, and now he was staring at me with pure loathing. Beortsig, of course, was enjoying the moment, his eyes flicking between me and Sihtric. Rypere, who was sitting on the same bench as his friend Sihtric, laid a hand on the standing man’s arm, but Sihtric shook it off. ‘How many men did you kill that day through carelessness?’ he shouted at me.

‘You’re drunk,’ I said harshly, ‘and tomorrow you will grovel to me, and perhaps I will forgive you.’

‘Lord Ælfwold would be alive if you had a scrap of sense,’ he yelled at me.

Some of my men tried to shout him down, but I shouted louder. ‘Come here, kneel to me!’

Instead, he spat towards me. The hall was in uproar now. Beornnoth’s men were encouraging Sihtric, while my men were looking horrified. ‘Give them swords!’ someone called.

Sihtric held out his hand. ‘Give me a blade!’ he shouted.

I started towards him, but Beornnoth lunged and caught my sleeve in a feeble grip. ‘Not in my hall, Lord Uhtred,’ he said, ‘not in my hall.’ I stopped, and Beornnoth struggled to his feet. He had to grip the table’s edge with one hand to stay upright, while his other hand pointed shakily towards Sihtric. ‘Take him away!’ he ordered.

‘And you stay away from me!’ I shouted at him. ‘And that whore wife of yours!’

Sihtric tried to break away from the men holding him, but they had too tight a grip and he was too drunk. They dragged him from the hall to the jeers of Beornnoth’s followers. Beortsig had enjoyed my discomfiture and was laughing. His father frowned at him, then sat heavily. ‘I am sorry,’ he grunted.

‘He’ll be sorry,’ I said vengefully.

There was no sign of Sihtric next morning and I did not ask where Beornnoth had him hidden. We readied ourselves to leave, and Beornnoth was helped out to the courtyard by two of his men. ‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that I’ll die before Alfred.’

‘I hope you live many years,’ I said dutifully.

‘There’ll be pain in Britain when Alfred goes,’ he said. ‘All the certainties will die with him.’ His voice faded. He was still embarrassed by the previous night’s argument in his hall. He had watched one of my own men insult me, and he had prevented me from giving punishment, and the incident lay between us like a burning coal. Yet both of us pretended it had not happened.

‘Alfred’s son is a good man,’ I said.

‘Edward’s young,’ Beornnoth said scornfully, ‘and who knows what he’ll be?’ He sighed. ‘Life is a story without an end,’ he said, ‘but I’d like to hear a few more verses before I die.’ He shook his head. ‘Edward won’t rule.’

I smiled. ‘He may have other ideas.’

‘The prophecy has spoken, Lord Uhtred,’ he said solemnly.

I was momentarily taken aback. ‘The prophecy?’

‘There’s a sorceress,’ he said, ‘and she sees the future.’

‘Ælfadell?’ I asked. ‘You saw her?’

‘Beortsig did,’ he said, looking at his son who, hearing Ælfadell’s name, made the sign of the cross.

‘What did she say?’ I asked the sullen Beortsig.

‘Nothing good,’ he said curtly, and would say no more.

I climbed into my saddle. I glanced around the yard for any evidence of Sihtric, but he was still concealed and so I left him there and we rode home. Finan was puzzled by Sihtric’s behaviour. ‘He must have been drunk beyond drunkenness,’ he said in wonder. I answered nothing. In many ways what Sihtric had said was right, Ælfwold had died because of my carelessness, but that did not give Sihtric the right to accuse me in open hall. ‘He’s always been a good man,’ Finan went on, still puzzled, ‘but lately he’s been surly. I don’t understand it.’

‘He’s becoming like his father,’ I said.

‘Kjartan the Cruel?’

‘I should never have saved Sihtric’s life.’

Finan nodded. ‘You want me to arrange his death?’

‘No,’ I said firmly, ‘only one man kills him, and that’s me. You understand? He’s mine, and until I rip his guts open I never want to hear his name again.’

Once home I expelled Ealhswith, Sihtric’s wife, and her two sons from my hall. There were tears and pleas from her friends, but I was unmoved. She went.

And next day I rode to lay my trap for Sigurd.

There was a tremulousness to those days. All Britain waited to hear of Alfred’s death, in the certain knowledge that his passing would scatter the runesticks. A new pattern would foretell a new fortune for Britain, but what that fortune was, no one knew, unless the nightmare sorceress did have the answers. In Wessex they would want another strong king to protect them, in Mercia some would want the same, while other Mercians would want their own king back, while everywhere to the north, where the Danes held the land, they dreamed of conquering Wessex. Yet all that spring and summer Alfred lived and men waited and dreamed and the new crops grew and I took forty-six men east and north to where Haesten had found his lair.

I would have liked three hundred men. I had been told many years before that one day I would lead armies across Britain, but to have an army a man must have land and the land I held was only large enough to keep a single crew of men fed and armed. I collected food-rents and I took customs dues from the merchants who used the Roman road that passed Æthelflaed’s estate, but that was scarcely a sufficient income and I could only lead forty-six men to Ceaster.

That was a bleak place. To the west were the Welsh, while to the east and north were Danish lords who recognised no man as king unless it were themselves. The Romans had built a fort at Ceaster, and it was in the remnants of that stronghold that Haesten had taken refuge. There had been a time when Haesten’s name struck fear into every Saxon, but he was a shadow now, reduced to fewer than two hundred men, and even they were of dubious loyalty. He had begun the winter with over three hundred followers, but men expect their lord to provide more than food and ale. They want silver, they want gold, they want slaves, and so Haesten’s men had trickled away in search of other lords. They went to Sigurd or to Cnut, to the men who were gold-givers.

Ceaster lay on the wild edge of Mercia and I found Æthelred’s troops some three miles to the south of Haesten’s fort. There were just over one hundred and fifty men whose job was to watch Haesten and keep him weak by harassing his foragers. They were commanded by a youngster called Merewalh, who seemed pleased by my arrival. ‘Have you come to kill the sorry bastard, lord?’ he asked me.

‘Only to look at him,’ I said.

In truth I was there to be looked at, though I dared not tell anyone my whole purpose. I wanted the Danes to know I was at Ceaster, and so I paraded my men south of the old Roman fort and flaunted my wolf’s head banner. I rode in my best mail, polished to a high shine by my servant Oswi, and I went close enough to the old walls for one of Haesten’s men to try his luck with a hunting arrow. I saw the feather flickering in the air and watched as the small shaft thumped into the turf a few paces from my horse’s hooves.

‘He can’t defend all those walls,’ Merewalh said wistfully.

He was right. The Roman fort at Ceaster was a vast place, almost a town in itself, and Haesten’s few men could never garrison the whole stretch of its decrepit ramparts. Merewalh and I might have combined our forces and attacked at night and maybe we would have found an undefended stretch of wall and then fought a bitter battle in the streets, but our numbers were too equal with Haesten’s to risk such an assault. We would have lost men in defeating an enemy who was already defeated, and so I contented myself with letting Haesten know I had come to taunt him. He had to hate me. Just a year before he had been the greatest power among all the Northmen, now he was cowering like a beaten fox in his den and I had reduced him to that plight. But he was a cunning fox and I knew he would be thinking how he might regain his power.

The old fort was built inside a great curve of the River Dee. Immediately outside its southern walls were the ruins of an immense stone building that had once been an arena where, so Merewalh’s priest told me, Christians had been fed to wild beasts. Some things are just too good to be true and so I was not sure I believed him. The remnants of the arena would have made a splendid stronghold for a force as small as Haesten’s, but instead he had chosen to concentrate his men at the northern end of the fort where the river lay closest to the walls. He had two small ships there, nothing more than old trading boats, which, because they were obviously leaky, were half pulled onto the bank. If he were attacked and cut off from the bridge then those ships were his escape across the Dee and into the wild lands beyond.

Merewalh was puzzled by my behaviour. ‘Are you trying to tempt him into a fight?’ he asked me the third day that I rode close to the old ramparts.

‘He won’t want a fight,’ I said, ‘but I want him to come out and meet us. And he will, he won’t be able to resist.’ I had paused on the Roman road that ran straight as a spear shaft to the double-arched gate that led into the fort. That gate was now blocked with vast baulks of timber. ‘You know I saved his life once?’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘There are times,’ I said, ‘when I think I’m a fool. I should have killed him the first time I saw him.’

‘Kill him now, lord,’ Merewalh suggested, because Haesten had just appeared from the fort’s western gate and now came slowly towards us. He had three men with him, all mounted. They paused at the fort’s south-western corner, between the walls and the ruined arena, then Haesten held out both hands to show he only wanted to talk. I turned my horse and spurred towards him, but took care to stop well out of bowshot of the ramparts. I took only Merewalh with me, leaving the rest of our troops to watch from a distance.

Haesten came grinning as though this meeting was a rare delight. He had not changed much, except he now had a beard that was grey, though his thick hair was still fair. His face was misleadingly open, full of charm, with amused bright eyes. He wore a dozen arm rings and, though the spring day was warm, a cloak of seal-skin. Haesten always liked to look prosperous. Men will not follow a poor lord, let alone an ungenerous one, and so long as he had hopes of recovering his wealth he had to appear confident. He also appeared overjoyed to meet me. ‘Lord Uhtred!’ he exclaimed.

‘Jarl Haesten,’ I said, making the title as sour as I could, ‘weren’t you supposed to be King of Wessex by now?’

‘The pleasure of that throne is delayed,’ he said, ‘but for now let me welcome you to my present kingdom.’

I laughed at that, as he had meant me to. ‘Your kingdom?’

He swept an arm around the bleak low valley of the Dee. ‘No other man calls himself king here, so why not me?’

‘This is Lord Æthelred’s land,’ I said.

‘And Lord Æthelred is so generous with his possessions,’ Haesten said, ‘even, I hear, with his wife’s favours.’

Merewalh stirred beside me and I held up a cautionary hand. ‘The Jarl Haesten jests,’ I said.

‘Of course I jest,’ Haesten said, not smiling.

‘This is Merewalh,’ I said, introducing my one companion, ‘and he serves the Lord Æthelred. He might find favour with my cousin by killing you.’

‘He’d gain a great deal more favour by killing you,’ Haesten said shrewdly.

‘True,’ I allowed, and looked at Merewalh. ‘You want to kill me?’

‘Lord!’ he said, shocked.

‘My Lord Æthelred,’ I said to Haesten, ‘wishes you to leave his land. He has enough dung without you.’

‘Lord Æthelred,’ Haesten said, ‘is most welcome to come and drive me away.’

This was all as meaningless as it was expected. Haesten had not left the fort to listen to a string of threats, but because he wanted to know what my presence meant. ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘the Lord Æthelred has sent me to drive you away?’

‘And when did you last do his bidding?’ Haesten asked.

‘Perhaps his wife wants you driven away,’ I said.

‘She’d rather I were dead, I think.’

‘Also true,’ I said.

Haesten smiled. ‘You came, Lord Uhtred, with one crew of men. We fear you, of course, because who doesn’t fear Uhtred of Bebbanburg?’ He bowed in his saddle as he uttered that piece of flattery. ‘But one crew of men is not sufficient to give the Lady Æthelflaed her wish.’ He waited for my response, but I said nothing. ‘Shall I tell you what mystifies me?’ he asked.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

‘For years now, Lord Uhtred, you have done Alfred’s work. You have killed his enemies, led his armies, made his kingdom safe, yet in return for all that service you have only one crew of warriors. Other men have land, they have great halls, they have treasure piled in strongrooms, their women’s necks are ringed with gold and they can lead hundreds of oath-men into battle, yet the man who made them safe goes unrewarded. Why do you stay loyal to such an ungenerous lord?’

‘I saved your life,’ I said, ‘and you are mystified by ingratitude?’

He laughed delightedly at that. ‘He starves you because he fears you. Have they made a Christian of you yet?’

‘No.’

‘Then join me. You and I, Lord Uhtred. We’ll tip Æthelred out of his hall and divide Mercia between us.’

‘I’ll offer you land in Mercia,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘An estate two paces long and one pace wide?’ he asked.

‘And all of two paces deep,’ I said.

‘I am a hard man to kill,’ he said. ‘The gods apparently love me, as they love you. I hear Sigurd has cursed you since Yule.’

‘What else do you hear?’

‘That the sun rises and sets.’

‘Watch it well,’ I said, ‘because you may not see many more such risings and settings.’ I suddenly kicked my horse hard forward, forcing Haesten’s stallion to back away. ‘Listen,’ I said, making my voice harsh, ‘you have two weeks to leave this place. Do you understand me, you ungrateful dog-turd? If you’re still here in fourteen days I’ll do to you what I did to your men at Beamfleot.’ I looked at his two companions, then back to Haesten. ‘Two weeks,’ I said, ‘and then the West Saxon troops come and I’ll turn your skull into a drinking pot.’

I lied of course, at least about the West Saxon troops coming, but Haesten knew it had been those troops who gave me the numbers to gain the victory at Beamfleot and so the lie was believable. He began to say something, but I turned and spurred away, beckoning Merewalh to follow me. ‘I’m leaving you Finan and twenty men,’ I told the Mercian when we were well out of Haesten’s earshot, ‘and before the two weeks are up you must expect an attack.’

‘From Haesten?’ Merewalh asked, sounding dubious.

‘No, from Sigurd. He’ll bring at least three hundred men. Haesten needs help, and he’s going to look for favour with Sigurd by sending a message that I’m here, and Sigurd will come because he wants me dead.’ Of course I could not be certain that any of that would happen, but I did not think Sigurd could resist the bait I was dangling. ‘When he comes,’ I went on, ‘you’re going to retreat. Go into the woods, keep ahead of him, and trust Finan. Let Sigurd waste his men on empty land. Don’t even try to fight him, just stay ahead of him.’

Merewalh did not argue. Instead, after a few moments’ thought, he looked at me quizzically. ‘Lord,’ he asked, ‘why hasn’t Alfred rewarded you?’

‘Because he doesn’t trust me,’ I said, and my honesty shocked Merewalh, who stared at me wide-eyed, ‘and if you have any loyalty to your lord,’ I went on, ‘you will tell him that Haesten offered me an alliance.’

‘And I shall tell him you refused it.’

‘You can tell him I was tempted,’ I said, shocking him again. I spurred on.

Sigurd and Eohric had laid an elaborate trap for me, one that had very nearly worked, and now I would lay a trap for Sigurd. I could not hope to kill him, not yet, but I wanted him to regret his attempt to kill me. But first I wanted to discover the future. It was time to go north.

I gave Cerdic my good mail, my helmet, my cloak and my horse. Cerdic was not as tall as I was, but he was big enough, and, dressed in my finery and with the cheek-plates of my helmet hiding his face, he would resemble me. I gave him my shield, painted with the wolf’s head, and told him to show himself every day. ‘Don’t go too close to his walls,’ I said, ‘just let him think I’m watching him.’

I left my wolf’s head banner with Finan and next day, with twenty-six men, I rode east.

We rode before dawn so that none of Haesten’s scouts would see us depart, and we rode into the rising sun. Once there was light in the sky we kept to wooded places, but always going east. Ludda was still with us. He was a trickster, a rogue, and I liked him. Best of all he had an extraordinary knowledge of Britain. ‘I’m always moving, lord,’ he explained to me, ‘that’s why I know my way.’

‘Always moving?’

‘If you sell a man two rusted iron nails for a lump of silver, then you don’t want to be in arm’s reach of him next morning, lord, do you? You move on, lord.’

I laughed. Ludda was our guide and he led us east on a Roman road until we saw a settlement where smoke rose into the sky and then we made a wide loop southwards to avoid being seen. There was no road beyond the settlement, only cattle paths that led up into the hills.

‘Where’s he taking us?’ Osferth asked me.

‘Buchestanes,’ I said. ‘What’s there?’

‘The land belongs to Jarl Cnut,’ I said, ‘and you won’t like what’s there so I’m not going to tell you.’ I would rather have had Finan for company, but I trusted the Irishman to keep Cerdic and Merewalh out of trouble. I liked Osferth well enough, but there were times when his caution was a hindrance rather than an asset. If I had left Osferth at Ceaster he would have retreated from Sigurd’s approach too hastily. He would have kept Merewalh far from trouble by withdrawing deep into the border forests between Mercia and Wales, and Sigurd might well have abandoned the hunt. I needed Sigurd to be taunted and tempted, and I trusted Finan to do that well.

It began to rain. Not a gentle summer rain, but a torrential downpour that was carried on a sharp east wind. It made our journey slow, miserable and safer. Safer because few men wanted to be out in such weather. When we did meet strangers I claimed to be a lord of Cumbraland travelling to pay my respects to the Jarl Sigurd. Cumbraland was a wild place where little lords squabbled. I had spent time there once and knew enough to answer any questions, but no one we met cared enough to ask them.

So we climbed into the hills and after three days came to Buchestanes. It lay in a hollow of the hills and was a town of some size built about a cluster of Roman buildings that retained their stone walls, though their roofs had long been replaced by thatch. There was no defensive palisade, but we were met at the town’s edge by three men in mail who came from a hovel to confront us. ‘You must pay to enter the town,’ one said.

‘Who are you?’ a second asked.

‘Kjartan,’ I said. That was the name I was using in Buchestanes, the name of Sihtric’s evil father, a name from my past.

‘Where are you from?’ the man asked. He carried a long spear with a rusted head.

‘Cumbraland,’ I said.

They all sneered at that. ‘From Cumbraland, eh?’ the first man said, ‘well you can’t pay in sheep dung here.’ He laughed, amused at his own joke.

‘Who do you serve?’ I asked him.

‘The Jarl Cnut Ranulfson,’ the second man answered, ‘and even in Cumbraland you must have heard of him.’

‘He’s famous,’ I said, pretending to be awed, then paid them with the silver shards of a chopped-up arm ring. I haggled with them first, but not too strongly because I wanted to visit this town without arousing suspicion, and so I paid silver I could scarce afford and we were allowed into the muddy streets. We found shelter in a spacious farm on the eastern side. The owner was a widow who had long abandoned raising sheep and instead made a livelihood from travellers seeking the hot springs that were reputed to have healing powers, though now, she told us, they were guarded by monks who demanded silver before anyone could enter the old Roman bathhouse. ‘Monks?’ I asked her, ‘I thought this was Cnut Ranulfson’s land?’

‘Why would he care?’ she demanded. ‘So long as he gets his silver he doesn’t mind what god they worship.’ She was a Saxon, as were most of the folk in the small town, but she spoke of Cnut with evident respect. No wonder. He was rich, he was dangerous and he was said to be the finest sword fighter in all Britain. His sword was said to be the longest and most lethal blade in the land, which gave him the name Cnut Longsword, but Cnut was also a fervent ally of Sigurd. If Cnut Ranulfson knew that I was on his land then Buchestanes would be swarming with Danes seeking my life. ‘So are you here for the hot springs?’ the widow asked me.

‘I seek the sorceress,’ I said.

She made the sign of the cross. ‘God preserve us,’ she said.

‘And to see her,’ I asked, ‘what do I do?’

‘Pay the monks, of course.’

Christians are so strange. They claim the pagan gods have no power and that the old magic is as fraudulent as Ludda’s bags of iron, yet when they are ill, or when their harvest fails, or when they want children, they will go to the galdricge, the sorceress, and every district has one. A priest will preach against such women, declaring them heretic and evil, yet a day later he will pay silver to a galdricge to hear his future or have the warts removed from his face. The monks of Buchestanes were no different. They guarded the Roman bathhouse, they chanted in their chapel and they took silver and gold to arrange a meeting with the aglæcwif. An aglæcwif is a she-monster, and that is how I thought of Ælfadell. I feared her and I wanted to hear her, and so I sent Ludda and Rypere to make the arrangements, and they returned saying the enchantress demanded gold. Not silver, gold.

I had brought money on this journey, almost all the money I had left in the world. I had been forced to take the gold chains from Sigunn, and I used two of those to pay the monks, swearing that one day I would return to retrieve the precious links. Then, at dusk on our second day in Buchestanes, I walked south and west to a hill that loomed above the town and was dominated by one of the old people’s graves, a green mound on a drenched hill. Those graves have vengeful ghosts and, as I followed the path into a wood of ash, beech and elm, I felt a chill. I had been instructed to go alone and told that if I disobeyed then the sorceress would not appear to me, but now I fervently wished I had a companion to watch my back. I stopped, hearing nothing except the sigh of wind in the leaves and the drip of water and the rush of a nearby stream. The widow had told me that some men were forced to wait days to consult Ælfadell, and some, she said, paid their silver or gold, came to the wood, and found nothing. ‘She can vanish into air,’ the widow told me, making the sign of the cross. Once, she said, Cnut himself had come and Ælfadell had refused to appear.

‘And Jarl Sigurd?’ I had asked her. ‘He came too?’

‘He came last year,’ she said, ‘and he was generous. A Saxon lord was with him.’

‘Who?’

‘How would I know? They didn’t rest their bones in my house. They stayed with the monks.’

‘Tell me what you remember,’ I asked her.

‘He was young,’ she said, ‘he had long hair like you, but he was still a Saxon.’ Most Saxons cut their hair, while the Danes prefer to let it grow long. ‘The monks called him the Saxon, lord,’ the widow went on, ‘but who he was? I don’t know.’

‘And he was a lord?’

‘He dressed like one, lord.’

I was dressed in mail and leather. I heard nothing dangerous in the wood and so went onward, stooping beneath wet leaves until I saw that the path ended at a limestone crag that was slashed by a great crevice. Water dripped down the cliff face, and the stream gushed from the crevice’s base, churning itself white about fallen rocks before sluicing into the woods. I looked about and saw no one, heard no one. It seemed to me that no birds sang, though that was surely my apprehension. The stream’s noise was loud. I could see footprints in the shingle and stone that edged the stream, though none looked fresh, and so I took a deep breath, clambered over the fallen stones and stepped into the cave’s slit-like mouth that was edged by ferns.

I remember the fear of that cave, a greater fear than I had felt at Cynuit when Ubba’s men had made the shield wall and come to kill us. I touched Thor’s hammer that hung at my neck and I said a prayer to Hoder, the son of Odin and blind god of the night, and then I groped my way forward, ducking under a rock arch beyond which the grey evening light faded fast. I let my eyes grow used to the gloom and moved on, trying to stay above the stream that scoured through the bank of pebbles and sand that grated beneath my boots. I inched my way forward through a narrow, low passage. It grew colder. I wore a helmet and it touched rock more than once. I gripped the hammer that hung about my neck. This cave was surely one of the entrances to the netherworld, to where Yggdrasil has its roots and the three fates decide our destiny. It was a place for dwarves and elves, for the shadow creatures who haunt our lives and mock our hopes. I was frightened.

I slipped on sand and blundered forward and sensed that the passage had ended and that I was now in a great echoing space. I saw a glimmer of light and wondered if my eyes played tricks. I touched the hammer again, and then put my hand on the hilt of Serpent-Breath. I was standing still, hearing the drip of water and the rush of the stream, and listening for the sound of a person. I was gripping my sword’s hilt now, praying to blind Hoder to guide me in the blind darkness.

And then there was light.

Sudden light. It was only a bundle of rushlights, but they had been concealed behind screens that were abruptly lifted and their small, smoky flames seemed dazzlingly bright in the utter darkness.

The rushlights were standing on a rock that had a smooth surface like a table. A knife, a cup and a bowl lay beside the lights, which lit a chamber as high as any hall. The cave’s roof hung with pale stone that looked as if it had been frozen in mid-flow. Liquid stone, touched with blue and grey, and all that I saw in an instant, then I stared at the creature who watched me from behind the rock table. She was a dark cloak in the darkness, a shape in the shadows, a bent thing, the aglæcwif, but as my eyes became used to the light I saw that she was a tiny thing, frail as a bird, old as time and with a face so dark and deep-lined that it looked like leather. Her black woollen cloak was filthy and its hood half covered her hair that was grey-streaked black. She was ugliness in human guise, the galdricge, the aglæcwif, Ælfadell.

I did not move and she did not speak. She just gazed at me, unblinkingly, and I felt the fear crawl in me, and then she beckoned to me with one claw-like hand and touched the empty bowl. ‘Fill it,’ she said. Her voice was like wind on gravel. ‘Fill it?’

‘Gold,’ she said, ‘or silver. But fill it.’

‘You want more?’ I asked angrily.

‘You want everything, Kjartan of Cumbraland,’ she said, and she had paused for the space of an eye-blink before saying that name, as if she suspected it was false, ‘so yes. I want more.’

I almost refused, but I confess I was frightened of her power, and so I took all the silver from my pouch, fifteen coins, and put them in the wooden bowl. She smirked as the coins clinked. ‘What do you want to know?’ she asked. ‘Everything.’

‘There will be a harvest,’ she said dismissively, ‘and then winter, and after winter the time of sowing, and then another harvest and then another winter until time ends, and men will be born and men will die, and that is everything.’

‘Then tell me what I want to know,’ I said.

She hesitated, then gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘Put your hand on the rock,’ she said, but when I put my left hand flat on the cold stone she shook her head. ‘Your sword hand,’ she said and I obediently laid my right hand there instead. ‘Turn it over,’ she snarled, and I turned the hand palm upwards. She picked up the knife, watching my eyes. She was half smiling, daring me to withdraw my hand, and when I did not move she suddenly scored the knife across my palm. She scored it once from the ball of my thumb to the base of my small finger, then did it again, crosswise, and I watched the fresh blood well from the two cuts and I remembered the crosswise scar on Sigurd’s hand. ‘Now,’ she said, putting the knife down, ‘slap the stone hard.’ She pointed with a finger to the smooth centre of the stone. ‘Slap it there.’

I slapped the stone hard and the blow left a spatter of blood drops radiating from a crude daub of a hand-print defaced by the red cross.

‘Now be silent,’ Ælfadell said, and shrugged off her cloak.

She was naked. Thin, pale, ugly, old, shrivelled and naked. Her breasts were flaps of skin, her skin wrinkled and spotted, and her arms scrawny. She reached up and released her hair that had been twisted at the nape of her neck so that the grey-black strands fell about her shoulders in the fashion of a young unmarried girl. She was a parody of a woman, she was the galdricge, and I shuddered to look at her. She seemed unaware of my gaze, but stared at the blood, which gleamed under the flames. She touched the blood with a finger as crooked as any claw, smearing it across the smooth stone. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, and there seemed genuine curiosity in her voice.

‘You know who I am,’ I said.

‘Kjartan of Cumbraland,’ she said. She made a noise in her throat that might have been laughter, then moved the bloodstained claw to touch the cup. ‘Drink that, Kjartan of Cumbraland,’ she said, saying the name with sour mockery, ‘drink all of it!’

I lifted the cup and drank. It tasted foul. Bitter and rank. It was throat-curdling and I drank it all.

And Ælfadell laughed.

I remember little of that night, and much of what I do remember I wish I could forget.

I woke naked, cold and tied. My ankles and my wrists were strapped with leather thongs that had been knotted together to drag my hands down to my ankles. A faint grey light seeped through the crevice and tunnel to illuminate the big cave. The floor was pale with bat shit and my skin was smeared with my own vomit. Ælfadell, crooked and dark in her black cloak, was crouched over my mail, my two swords, my helmet, my hammer and my clothes. ‘You’re awake, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said. She pawed through my possessions. ‘And you are thinking,’ she went on, ‘that I would be easy to kill.’

‘I’m thinking you would be easy to kill, woman,’ I said. My voice was a dry-mouthed croak. I pulled at the leather bindings, but only managed to hurt my wrists.

‘I can tie knots, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said. She picked up the hammer of Thor and swung it on its leather thong. ‘A cheap amulet for a great lord.’ She cackled. She was bent, stooped and disgusting. Her claw-like hand tugged Serpent-Breath from its scabbard and she carried the blade towards me. ‘I should kill you, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said. She scarcely had the strength to lift the great blade, which she rested on one of my bent knees.

‘Why don’t you?’ I asked.

She peered at me. ‘Are you wiser now?’ she asked. I said nothing. ‘You came for wisdom,’ she went on, ‘so did you find it?’

Somewhere far beyond the cave a cock crowed. I tugged at the bonds again, and again could not loosen them. ‘Cut the bindings,’ I said.

She laughed at that. ‘I am not a fool, Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’

‘You haven’t killed me,’ I said, ‘and that might be foolish.’

‘True,’ she agreed. She slid the sword forward so its tip touched my breast. ‘Did you find wisdom in your night, Uhtred?’ she asked, then smiled with her rotted teeth. ‘Your night of pleasure?’ I tried to throw the sword off by rolling on my side, but she kept it on my skin, drawing blood with the tip. She was amused. I was on my side now and she rested the blade on my hip. ‘You moaned in the dark, Uhtred. You moaned with pleasure, or have you forgotten?’

I remembered the girl coming to me in the night. A dark girl, black-haired, slender and beautiful, lithe as a willow-wand, a girl who had smiled as she rode above me, her light hands touching my face and chest, a girl who had bent herself backwards as my hands caressed her breasts. I remembered her thighs pressing on my hips, the touch of her fingers on my cheeks. ‘I remember a dream,’ I said surlily.

Ælfadell rocked on her heels, rocked back and forth in an obscene reminder of what the dark girl had done in the night. The flat of the sword slid on my hip bone. ‘It was no dream,’ she said, mocking me.

I wanted to kill her then, and she knew it and the knowledge made her laugh. ‘Others have tried to kill me,’ she said. ‘The priests came for me once. There was a score of them, led by the old abbot with a flaming torch. They were praying aloud, calling me a heathen witch, and their bones are still rotting in the valley. I have sons, you see. It is good for a mother to have sons because there is no love like a mother has for her sons. Have you forgotten that love, Uhtred of Bebbanburg?’

‘Another dream,’ I said.

‘No dream,’ Ælfadell said, and I remembered my mother cradling me in the night, rocking me, giving me her breast to suck, and I could remember the pleasure of that moment, and the tears when I knew it had to be a dream for my mother had died giving birth to me and I had never known her.

Ælfadell smiled. ‘From now on, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ she said, ‘I shall think of you as a son.’ I wanted to kill her again and she knew it and she mocked me with laughter. ‘Last night,’ she said, ‘the goddess came to you. She showed you all your life, and all your future, and all the wide world of men and what will happen to it. Have you forgotten already?’

‘The goddess came?’ I asked. I remembered talking incessantly, and I remembered the sadness when my mother left me, and I remembered the dark girl saddling me, and I remembered feeling sick and drunk, and I remembered a dream in which I had flown above the world by riding the winds as a long-hulled ship rides the waves of the sea, but I remembered no goddess. ‘Which goddess?’ I asked.

‘Erce, of course,’ she said as though the question were foolish. ‘You know of Erce? She knows you.’

Erce was one of the ancient goddesses who had been in Britain when our people came from across the sea. I knew she was worshipped still in country places, an earth-mother, a giver of life, a goddess. ‘I know of Erce,’ I said.

‘You know there are gods,’ Ælfadell said, ‘and in that you are not so foolish. The Christians think one god will serve all men and women, and how can that be? Could one shepherd protect every sheep in all the world?’

‘The old abbot tried to kill you?’ I asked. I had twisted onto my right side so my tied hands were hidden from her and I was grinding the leather bonds against a ridge of stone, hoping they would part. I could only make the smallest of movements in case she noticed, and I had to keep her talking. ‘The old abbot tried to kill you?’ I asked again. ‘Yet now the monks protect you?’

‘The new abbot is no fool,’ she said. ‘He knows Jarl Cnut would flay him alive if he touched me, so instead he serves me.’

‘He doesn’t mind you’re not a Christian?’ I asked.

‘He likes the money Erce brings him,’ she sneered, ‘and he knows Erce lives in this cave and that she protects me. And now Erce waits for your answer. Are you wiser?’

I said nothing again, puzzled by the question, and it angered her.

‘Do I mumble?’ she snarled. ‘Has stupidity furred your ears and stuffed your brain with pus?’

‘I remember nothing,’ I said untruthfully.

That made her laugh. She squatted on her haunches, the sword still resting on my hip, and started to rock backwards and forwards again. ‘Seven kings will die, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, seven kings and the women you love. That is your fate. And Alfred’s son will not rule and Wessex will die and the Saxon will kill what he loves and the Danes will gain everything, and all will change and all will be the same as ever it was and ever will be. There, you see, you are wiser.’

‘Who is the Saxon?’ I asked. I was still dragging my bound wrists on the stone, but nothing seemed to be fraying or loosening.

‘The Saxon is the king who will destroy what he rules. Erce knows all, Erce sees all.’

A scuffle of feet in the entrance passage gave me a moment’s hope, but instead of my men appearing it was three monks who ducked into the cave’s gloom. Their leader was an elderly man with wild white hair and sunken cheeks, who stared at me, then at Ælfadell, then back to me. ‘It’s really him?’ he asked.

‘It’s Uhtred of Bebbanburg, it’s my son,’ Ælfadell said, then laughed.

‘Good God,’ the monk said. For a moment he looked frightened, and that was why I still lived. Both Ælfadell and the monk knew I was Cnut’s enemy, but they did not know what Cnut wanted of me and they feared that to kill me would offend their lord. The white-haired monk came towards me, gingerly, frightened of what I might do. ‘Are you Uhtred?’ he asked.

‘I am Kjartan of Cumbraland,’ I said.

Ælfadell cackled. ‘He is Uhtred,’ she said. ‘Erce’s drink does not lie. He babbled like a baby in the night.’

The monk was frightened of me because my life and death were beyond his comprehension. ‘Why did you come here?’ he asked.

‘To discover the future,’ I said. I could feel blood between my hands. My rubbing had opened the scabs on the cuts Ælfadell had inflicted on my palm.

‘He learned the future,’ Ælfadell said, ‘the future of dead kings.’

‘Did it tell of my death?’ I asked her, and for the first time saw doubt on that wrinkled-hag face.

‘We must send to Jarl Cnut,’ the monk said.

‘Kill him,’ one of the younger monks said. He was a tall, strongly-built man with a hard long face, a hook of a nose and cruel unforgiving eyes. ‘The jarl will want him dead.’

The older monk was uncertain. ‘We don’t know the jarl’s will, Brother Hearberht.’

‘Kill him! He’ll reward you. Reward us all.’ Brother Hearberht was right, but the gods had filled the others with doubt.

‘The jarl must decide,’ the older monk said.

‘It will take three days to fetch an answer,’ Hearberht said caustically, ‘and what do you do with him for three days? He has his men in the town. Too many men.’

‘We take him to the jarl?’ the older monk suggested. He was desperate for an answer, flailing at any solution that might spare him from making a decision.

‘For the sake of God,’ Hearberht snapped. He strode to the pile of my possessions, stooped, and straightened with Wasp-Sting in his hand. The short blade caught the wan light. ‘What do you do with a cornered wolf?’ he demanded, and came towards me.

And I used all my strength, all that strength that years of sword and shield practice had put into my bones and muscle, the years of war and readying for war, and I thrust my bent legs and pulled my arms, and I felt the bonds loosening and I was rolling back, throwing the blade off my hip, and I started to shout, a great war shout of a warrior and reached for Serpent-Breath’s hilt.

Ælfadell tried to pull the sword away, but she was old and slow, and I was bellowing to fill the cave with echoes and I seized the hilt and swung the blade to drive her back, and Hearberht checked as I rose to my feet. I half stumbled, the bonds still wrapped about my ankles, and Hearberht saw his opening and came in fast, the short blade held low ready to rip up into my naked belly and I swatted it aside and fell on him. He went backwards and I stood again and he hacked the blade at my bare legs, but I parried him and then stabbed down with Serpent-Breath, my sword, my lover, my blade, my war companion, and she gutted that monk like a fish under a razor-edged knife, and his blood spread on his black robe and turned the bat shit black, and I went on ripping her, unaware that I was still shouting to fill the cave with rage.

Hearberht was squealing and shaking and dying, and the other two monks were fleeing. I ripped the bonds off my ankles and pursued them. Serpent-Breath’s hilt was slippery with my blood, and she was hungry.

I caught them in the woods, not fifty paces from the cave’s mouth, and I felled the younger monk with a blow to the back of his head, then caught the older by his robe. I turned him to face me and smelt the fear that fouled his robe. ‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said, ‘and who are you?’

‘Abbot Deorlaf, lord,’ he said, falling to his knees and holding his clasped hands towards me, and I held him by the throat and buried Serpent-Breath in his belly, and I sawed her there, opening him up, and he mewed like an animal and wept like a child and called on Jesus the Redeemer as he died in his own dung. I cut the younger monk’s throat, then went back to the cave where I washed Serpent-Breath’s blade in the stream.

‘Erce did not foretell your death,’ Ælfadell said. She had screamed when I tore the bonds off my wrists and seized the sword from her, yet now she was oddly calm. She just watched me and was apparently unafraid.

‘Is that why you didn’t kill me?’

‘She didn’t foretell my death either,’ she said.

‘Then maybe she was wrong,’ I said, and fetched Wasp-Sting from Hearberht’s dead hand.

And that was when I saw her.

From a deeper cave, from a passage that led into the netherworld, Erce came. She was a girl of such beauty that the breath stopped in my lungs. The dark-haired girl who had ridden me in the night, the long-haired girl, slender and pale, so beautiful and calm and as naked as the blade in my hand and all I could do was stare at her. I could not move, and she gazed back at me with grave, large eyes and she said nothing and I said nothing until the breath caught in me again. ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘Dress yourself,’ Ælfadell said, whether to me or the girl I could not tell.

‘Who are you?’ I asked the girl, but she was still and silent.

‘Dress yourself, Lord Uhtred!’ Ælfadell ordered, and I obeyed her. I pulled on my jerkin, my boots, my mail and strapped my swords at my waist, and still the girl gazed at me with her quiet, dark eyes. She was as beautiful as the summer dawn and as silent as the winter night. She did not smile, her face showed nothing. I walked towards her and sensed something strange. The Christians say we have a soul, whatever that is, and it seemed to me this girl had no soul. There was an emptiness in her dark eyes. It was frightening, making me approach her slowly.

‘No!’ Ælfadell called. ‘You cannot touch her! You have seen Erce in the daylight. No other man has.’

‘Erce?’

‘Go,’ she said, ‘go.’ She dared to stand in front of me. ‘You dreamed last night,’ she said, ‘and in your dream you found truth. Be content with that, and go.’

‘Speak to me,’ I said to the girl, but she was unmoving and silent and empty, yet I could not take my eyes from her. I would have looked on her for all the rest of my life. The Christians talk of miracles, of men walking on water and raising the dead, and they say those miracles are proofs of their religion, though none of them can do a miracle or show us a miracle, yet here, in this damp cave beneath the hilltop grave, I saw a miracle. I saw Erce.

‘Go,’ Ælfadell said, and though she spoke to me it was the goddess who turned and vanished into the underworld.

I did not kill the old woman. I went. I dragged the dead monks into some brambles where perhaps the wild beasts would feast on them, and then I stooped to the stream and drank like a dog.

‘What did the witch tell you?’ Osferth asked me when I reached the widow’s farm.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, and my tone discouraged further questions, all except one. ‘Where are we going, lord?’ Osferth asked.

‘We’re going south,’ I said, still in a daze.

And so we rode towards Sigurd’s land.

Four

I had told Ælfadell my name, and what else? Had I told her my idea for revenge on Sigurd? And why had I talked so much? Ludda gave me an answer as we rode south. ‘There are herbs and mushrooms, lord, and there’s the blight you find on ears of rye, all kinds of things can give men dreams. My mother used them.’

‘She was a sorceress?’

He shrugged. ‘A wise-woman, anyway. She told fortunes and made potions.’

‘And the potion Ælfadell gave me, that made me speak my name?’

‘Maybe it was rye-blight? You’re lucky to be alive if it was. Get it wrong and you kill the dreamer, but if she knew how to make it then you’ll have gabbled like an old woman, lord.’

And who knows what else I had revealed to the aglæcwif? I felt like a fool. ‘Does she really speak to the gods?’ I had told Ludda about Ælfadell, but not about Erce. I wanted to hold that secret close, a memory to haunt me.

‘Some folk claim to talk to the gods,’ Ludda said uncertainly.

‘And see the future?’

He shifted in his saddle. Ludda was not accustomed to riding a horse, and the journey had given him a sore arse and aching thighs. ‘If she really saw the future, lord, would she be in a cave? She’d have a palace. Kings would crawl to her feet.’

‘Maybe the gods only talk to her in the cave,’ I suggested.

Ludda heard the anxiety in my voice. ‘Lord,’ he said earnestly, ‘if you roll the dice often enough you always get the numbers you want. If I tell you the sun will shine tomorrow and that it will rain and there will be snow and that clouds will cover the sky and that the wind will blow and that it will be a calm day and that the thunder will deafen us then one of those things will turn out to be true and you’ll forget the rest because you want to believe that I really can tell the future.’ He gave me a swift smile. ‘Folk don’t buy rusty iron because I’m persuasive, lord, but because they desperately want to believe it will turn to silver.’

And I desperately wanted to believe his doubts about Ælfadell. She had said Wessex was doomed and that seven kings would die, but what did that mean? What kings? Alfred of Wessex, Edward of Cent, Eohric of East Anglia? Who else? And who was the Saxon? ‘She knew who I was,’ I said to Ludda.

‘Because you had drunk her potion, lord. It was as if you were drunk and saying anything that came into your mind.’

‘And she tied me up,’ I told him, ‘but didn’t kill me.’

‘God be praised,’ Ludda said dutifully. I doubted he was a Christian, at least not a good one, but he was too clever to fall foul of the priests. He frowned in puzzlement. ‘I wonder why she didn’t kill you.’

‘She was frightened to,’ I said, ‘and so was the abbot.’

‘She tied you up, lord,’ Ludda said, ‘because someone had told her you were Jarl Cnut’s enemy. So she knew that much, but she didn’t know what Jarl Cnut wanted done with you. So she sent for the monks to find out. And they were too scared to order your death, too. It’s no small thing to kill a lord, especially if his men are close by.’

‘One of them wasn’t scared.’

‘And he’s regretting that now,’ Ludda said happily, ‘but it’s strange, lord, very strange.’

‘What is?’

‘She can talk to the gods. And the gods didn’t tell her to kill you.’

‘Ah,’ I said, seeing what he meant and not knowing what else to say.

‘The gods would have known what to do with you and they would have told her what to do, yet they didn’t. That tells me she’s not taking commands from the gods, lord, but from Jarl Cnut. She’s telling men what he wants them to hear.’ He shifted in the saddle again, trying to relieve the pain in his arse. ‘There’s the road, lord,’ he said, pointing. He was leading us south and east and had been looking for a Roman road that crossed the hills. ‘It goes to some old lead mines,’ he had told me, ‘but once past the mines there’s no road.’ I had told Ludda to take us to Cytringan where Sigurd had a feasting-hall, though I had not said what I planned to do there.

Why had I gone to find Ælfadell? To find a road, of course. The three Norns sit at the roots of Yggdrasil where they weave our fates, and at some time they will take the shears and cut our thread. We all want to know where that thread will end. We want to know the future. We want to know, as Beornnoth had said to me, how the story ends, and that was why I had gone to see Ælfadell. Alfred must die soon, maybe he was already dead, and everything would change, and I was not such a fool as to think that my part in that change would be small. I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Men feared me. In those days I was no great lord in terms of land or wealth or men, but Alfred had known that if he wanted victory he must lend me men, and that was how we had broken Haesten’s power at Beamfleot. His son, Edward, seemed to trust me, and I knew Alfred wanted me to swear loyalty to Edward, but I had gone to Ælfadell to catch a glimpse of the future. Why ally myself to a man destined to fail? Was Edward the man whom Ælfadell called the Saxon and who was doomed to destroy Wessex? What was the safe road? Edward’s sister, Æthelflaed, would never forgive me if I betrayed her brother, but perhaps she was doomed too. All my women would die. There was no great truth in that, we all die, yet why had Ælfadell said those words? Was she warning me against Alfred’s children? Against Æthelflaed and Edward? We live in a world fading to darkness and I had sought a light to shine on a sure road and I had found none, except a vision of Erce, a vision that would not leave my memory, a vision to haunt me. ‘Wyrd bi ful ræd,’ I said aloud.

Fate is inexorable.

And under the influence of Ælfadell’s bitter drink I had babbled my name, and what else? I had told none of my men what my plan was, but had I told Ælfadell? And Ælfadell lived on Cnut’s land and under his protection. She had told me that Wessex would be destroyed and that the Danes would win everything, and of course she would say that because that was what Cnut Longsword wanted men to hear. Jarl Cnut wanted every Danish leader to visit the cave and hear that victory would be theirs because men inspired to battle by a foreknowledge of victory fought with a passion that gives them victory. Sigurd’s men, attacking me on the bridge, had really believed they would win and that had encouraged them into a trap.

Now I led a few men towards what could be our deaths. Had I told Ælfadell I was planning to attack Cytringan? Because if I had blurted out that idea then she would surely be sending a message to Cnut, and Cnut would move fast to protect his friend Sigurd. I had been planning to ride home by way of Cytringan, Sigurd’s feasting-hall, and had hoped to find it empty and unprotected. I had thought to burn it to the ground, then ride on fast to Buccingahamm. Sigurd had tried to kill me and I wanted him to regret that and so I had gone to Ceaster to lure him away from his heartland, and if my deceit had worked then Sigurd was going there now, thinking to trap and kill me, while I planned to burn his hall. But his friend Cnut might be sending men to Cytringan and turning that feasting-hall into a trap for me.

So I must do something different. ‘Forget Cytringan,’ I told Ludda, ‘ take me to the valley of the Trente instead. To Snotengaham.’

So we rode south beneath the wild flying clouds and after two days and nights came to the valley that brought back so many memories. The very first time I was ever in a warship I had come to this place, rowing up the Humbre and then the Trente, and it was in this valley that I had first seen Alfred. I had been a boy and he had been a young man and I had spied on him, hearing his anguish about the sin that had brought Osferth into the world. It was on the banks of the Trente that I had first encountered Ubba who was known as Ubba the Horrible, and I had been awed and terrified by him. Later, beside a distant sea, I was to kill him. I had been a boy when I was last on the banks of this river, but now I was a man and other men feared me as I had once feared Ubba. Uhtredærwe, some men called me, Uhtred the Wicked. They called me that because I was not a Christian, but I liked the name, and one day, I thought, I would take the wickedness too far and men would die because I was a fool.

Maybe here, maybe now, for I had abandoned the idea of destroying Cytringan’s feasting-hall and instead would attempt a foolish thing, but one that would have my name spoken all across Britain. Reputation. We would rather have reputation than gold, and so I left my men in a steading and rode down the river’s southern bank with just Osferth for company, and I said nothing until we came to the edge of a coppiced wood from where we could see the town across the wide river’s swirls. ‘Snotengaham,’ I said. ‘It was here I first met your father.’

He grunted at that. The town lay on the river’s northern bank and it had grown since I had last seen it. There were buildings outside the ramparts and the air above the roofs was thick with smoke from the kitchen fires. ‘Sigurd’s possession?’ Osferth asked.

I nodded, remembering what Beornnoth had told me, that Sigurd had laid up his war-fleet in Snotengaham. I also remembered Ragnar the Elder’s words that he had spoken to me when I was a child, that Snotengaham would be Danish for ever, yet most of the folk who lived inside the walls were Saxons. This was a Mercian town, right on the northern edge of that kingdom, yet for nearly all my life it had been ruled by the Danes and now its merchants and churchmen, its whores and its tavern-keepers paid silver to Sigurd. He had built a hall on a great rock outcrop in the town’s centre. It was not his main dwelling, which lay far to the south, but Snotengaham was one of Sigurd’s strongholds, a place he felt safe.

To reach Snotengaham from the sea a boat went up the great Humbre, then followed the Trente. That was the voyage I had made as a child in Ragnar’s Wind-Viper and, from the coppice on the southern bank, I could see there were forty or fifty boats drawn onto the far bank. Those were the ships Sigurd had taken south to Wessex the previous year, though in the end he had achieved nothing except to lay waste a few farmsteads outside of Exanceaster. Their presence suggested he did not plan another seaborne invasion. His next attack would be overland, a lunge into Mercia and then Wessex to take the Saxon land.

Yet a man’s pride is not just his land. We measure a lord by the number of crews he leads, and those ships told me Sigurd commanded a horde. I commanded one crew. I dare say I was as famous as Sigurd, yet all my fame had not translated into wealth. I should, I thought, be called Uhtred the Foolish. I had served Alfred all these years, and to show for it I had a borrowed estate, a single crew of men and a reputation. Sigurd owned towns, whole estates and led an army.

It was time to taunt him.

I talked with each of my men. I told them they could become rich by betraying me, that if just one of them told some whore in the town that I was Uhtred then I would probably die, and that most of them would die with me. I did not remind them of the oath they had taken to me because not one of them would need reminding, nor did I think any of them would betray me. I had four Danes and three Frisians in that group, yet they were my men, tied to me as much by friendship as by oath. ‘What we’re about to do,’ I told them, ‘will have men talking all over Britain. It will not make us rich, but I promise you reputation.’

My name, I told them, was Kjartan. It was the name I had used with Ælfadell, a name from my past, a name I did not like, the name of Sihtric’s foul father, but it would suffice for the next few days, and I would only survive those days if none of my men revealed the truth and if no one in Snotengaham recognised me. I had only met Sigurd twice, and both times briefly, but some of the men who had accompanied him to those meetings might be in Snotengaham and that was a risk I had to take. I had let my beard grow, I was wearing old mail, which I had allowed to rust, and I looked, as I wished to look, like a man on the edge of failure.

I found a tavern outside the town. It had no name. It was a miserable place with sour ale, mouldy bread and worm-riddled cheese, but it had sufficient room for my men to sleep on its filthy straw, and the tavern’s owner, a surly Saxon, was satisfied by the small amount of silver I gave him. ‘Why are you here?’ he wanted to know.

‘To buy a ship,’ I said, then told him we had been part of Haesten’s army and that we had become tired of starving in Ceaster and only wanted to go home. ‘We’re going back to Frisia,’ I said, and that was my tale and no one in Snotengaham thought it strange. The Danes follow leaders who bring them riches, and when a leader fails, his crews melt away like frost in the sun. Nor did anyone think it strange that a Frisian would lead Saxons. The crews of the Viking ships are Danish, Norse, Frisian and Saxon. Any masterless man could go Viking, and a shipmaster did not care what language a man spoke if he could wield a sword, thrust a spear and pull an oar.

So my tale was not questioned and, the day after we reached Snotengaham, a full-bellied Dane called Frithof came to find me. He had no left arm beneath the elbow. ‘Some Saxon bastard cut it off,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but I sliced off his head so it was a fair exchange.’ Frithof was what a Saxon would call the Reeve of Snotengaham, the man responsible for keeping the peace and serving his lord’s interests in the town. ‘I look after Jarl Sigurd,’ Frithof told me, ‘and he looks after me.’

‘A good lord?’

‘The very best,’ Frithof said enthusiastically, ‘generous and loyal. Why don’t you swear to him?’

‘I want to go home,’ I said.

‘Frisia?’ he asked, ‘you sound Danish, not Frisian.’

‘I served Skirnir Thorson,’ I explained. Skirnir had been a pirate on the Frisian coast and I had served him by luring him to his death.

‘He was a bastard,’ Frithof said, ‘but had a pretty wife, I hear. What was his island called?’ The question had no suspicion in it. Frithof was an easy, hospitable man.

‘Zegge,’ I said.

‘That was it! Nothing but sand and fish shit. So you went from Skirnir to Haesten, eh?’ he laughed, his question implying that I had chosen my lords badly. ‘You could do a lot worse than serve the Jarl Sigurd,’ Frithof assured me. ‘He looks after his men and there’ll be land and silver soon.’

‘Soon?’

‘When Alfred dies,’ Frithof said, ‘Wessex will fall into pieces. All we have to do is wait and then pick them up.’

‘I have land in Frisia,’ I said, ‘and a wife.’

Frithof grinned. ‘There are plenty of women here,’ he said, ‘but if you really want to go home?’

‘I want to go home.’

‘Then you need a ship,’ he said, ‘unless you plan to swim. So let’s go for a walk.’

Forty-seven ships had been pulled from the river and were now propped by oak shafts on a meadow close to a small shelving cove that made launching and recovering easy. Six other ships were floating. Four of those were trading boats, and two were long, sleek war boats with high prows and sterns. ‘Bright-Flyer,’ Frithof pointed to one of the two fighting ships afloat in the river, ‘she’s Jarl Sigurd’s own craft.’

Bright-Flyer was a beauty with a flat sleek belly and a high prow and stern. A man was squatting on the wharf and painting a white line along her topmost strake, a line that would accentuate her sinuously threatening shape. Frithof led me down to the timber wharf and stepped over the boat’s low midships. I followed him, feeling the small shiver in Bright-Flyer as she responded to our weight. I noted her mast was not on board, there were no oars or tholes, and the presence of two small saws, an adze and a box of chisels showed that men were working on her. She was afloat, but she was not ready for any voyage. ‘I brought her here from Denmark,’ Frithof said wistfully.

‘You’re a shipmaster?’ I asked.

‘I was, maybe I will be again. I miss the sea.’ He ran his hand along the smooth wood of her top strake. ‘Isn’t she lovely?’

‘She’s beautiful,’ I said.

‘Jarl Sigurd had her built,’ he said, ‘and only the best for him!’ He rapped the hull. ‘Green oak from Frisia. Too big for you, though.’

‘She’s for sale?’

‘Never! Jarl Sigurd would rather sell his only son into slavery! Besides, how many oars do you want? Twenty?’

‘No more,’ I said.

‘She needs fifty rowers,’ Frithof said, rapping the Bright-Flyer’s planks again. He sighed, remembering her at sea.

I looked at the carpenter’s tools. ‘You’re readying her for sea?’ I asked.

‘The jarl hasn’t said, but I hate to see ships out of the water for too long. The timbers dry and shrink. I want to float that one next,’ he pointed to the head of the cove where another beauty was propped on thick oak shafts. ‘Sea-Slaughterer,’ Frithof said, ‘Jarl Cnut’s ship.’

‘He keeps his ships here?’

‘Just the two,’ he said, ‘Sea-Slaughterer and Cloud-Chaser.’ Men were caulking the Sea-Slaughterer, stuffing the plank joints with a mix of wool and pine-tar. Small boys helped, or else played on the river bank. The tar braziers smoked, drifting their pungent smell across the slow river. Frithof stepped back onto the wharf and patted the head of the man who was painting the white line onto the strake. Frithof was obviously popular. Men grinned and called out respectful greetings, and Frithof responded with generous pleasure. He had a pouch at his waist filled with scraps of smoked beef that he handed to the children, all of whose names he knew. ‘This is Kjartan,’ he introduced me to the men caulking the Sea-Slaughterer, ‘and he wants to take a boat off our hands. He’s going back to Frisia because his wife is there.’

‘Bring the woman here!’ a man called to me.

‘He’s got more sense than letting you scum ogle her,’ Frithof retorted, then led me further down the bank past a huge heap of ballast stones. Frithof had Sigurd’s authority to buy or sell ships, but only a half-dozen were for sale, and of those only two would suit me. One was a trading ship, broad in the beam and well made, but she was short, her length only about four times her beam, and that would make her slow. The other ship was older and much used, but she was at least seven times longer than her beam, and her sleek lines were sweet. ‘She belonged to a Norseman,’ Frithof told me, ‘who got himself killed in Wessex.’

‘Made of pine?’ I asked, rapping the hull.

‘She’s all spruce,’ Frithof said.

‘I’d prefer oak,’ I said grudgingly.

‘Give me gold and I’ll have a ship built for you out of the best Frisian oak,’ Frithof said, ‘but if you want to cross the sea this summer you’ll do it in pine. She was well made, and she has a mast, sail and rigging.’

‘Oars?’

‘We’ve plenty of good ash oars.’ He ran his one hand down the stem-post. ‘She needs a little work,’ he admitted, ‘but she was a sweetheart in her day. Tyr’s Daughter.’

‘That’s her name?’

Frithof smiled. ‘It is.’ He smiled because Tyr is the god of the warriors who fight in single combat and, like Frithof, Tyr is one-handed, having lost his right hand to the sharp fangs of Fenrir, the crazed wolf. ‘Her owner liked Tyr,’ Frithof said, still stroking the stem-post.

‘She has a beast-head?’

‘I can find you something.’

We haggled, though good-naturedly. I offered what little silver I had left, along with all our horses, saddles and bridles, and Frithof at first demanded a sum at least double the worth of those things, though in truth he was glad to be rid of Tyr’s Daughter. She might have been a fine ship once, but she was old and she was small. A ship needs fifty or sixty men to be safe, and Tyr’s Daughter would have been crowded by thirty men, but she was perfect for my purpose. If I had not bought her I suspect she would have been broken up for firewood and, in truth, I got her cheap. ‘She’ll get you to Frisia,’ Frithof assured me.

We spat on our palms, shook hands, and so I became the owner of Tyr’s Daughter. I had to buy pine-tar to caulk her, and we spent two days on the river bank forcing a thick mix of hot tar, horsehair, moss and fleece into the planking. Her mast, sails and hemp rigging were brought from storage to the meadow where the boats were grounded, and I insisted my men leave the filthy tavern and sleep with the ship. We rigged the sail as a tent over her and slept either in or beneath her hull.

Frithof seemed to like us, or else he just approved of the notion that one of his ships was going back into the water. He would bring ale to the meadow, which lay some four or five hundred paces from the nearest part of Snotengaham’s ramparts, and he would drink with us and tell old stories of long ago fights, and in return I told him of the voyages I had made. ‘I miss the sea,’ he said wistfully.

‘Come with us,’ I invited him.

He shook his head ruefully. ‘Jarl Sigurd’s a good lord, he looks after me.’

‘Will I see him before I leave?’ I asked.

‘I doubt it,’ Frithof said, ‘he and his son have gone to help your old friend.’

‘Haesten?’

Frithof nodded. ‘You stayed with him through the winter?’

‘He kept promising us other men would join him,’ I invented, ‘he said they’d come from Ireland, but no one did.’

‘He did well enough last summer,’ Frithof said.

‘Until the Saxons took his fleet,’ I commented sourly.

‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ Frithof spoke just as sourly, then touched the hammer he wore about his neck. ‘Uhtred is besieging him now. Is that why you left?’

‘I don’t want to die in Britain. So, yes, that’s why we left.’

Frithof smiled. ‘Uhtred will die in Britain, my friend. Jarl Sigurd has gone to kill the bastard.’

I touched my hammer. ‘May the gods give the jarl victory,’ I said piously.

‘Kill Uhtred,’ Frithof said, ‘and Mercia falls, and when Alfred dies, Wessex falls.’ He smiled. ‘Why would a man want to be in Frisia when all that happens?’

‘I miss home,’ I said.

‘Make your home here!’ Frithof said enthusiastically. ‘Join Jarl Sigurd and you can choose your own estate in Wessex, you can take a dozen Saxon wives and live like a king!’

‘But I have to kill Uhtred first?’ I asked lightly.

Frithof touched his amulet again. ‘He’ll die,’ he said, and his voice was anything but light.

‘Many men have tried to kill him,’ I said. ‘Ubba tried!’

‘Uhtred has never faced Jarl Sigurd in battle,’ Frithof said, ‘nor the Jarl Cnut, and Jarl Cnut’s sword is swift as the snake’s tongue. Uhtred will die.’

‘All men die.’

‘His death is foretold,’ Frithof said, and, when he saw my interest, he touched the hammer again. ‘There’s a sorceress,’ he explained, ‘and she has seen his death.’

‘Where? When?’

‘Who knows?’ he asked. ‘She knows, I suppose, and that’s what she promised the jarl.’

I felt a sudden, strange pang of jealousy. Had Erce straddled Sigurd in the night as she had straddled me? Then I thought Ælfadell had forecast my death to Sigurd, but had denied it to me, and that meant she either lied to one of us or that Erce, despite her loveliness, was no goddess.

‘Jarl Sigurd and Jarl Cnut are doomed to fight Uhtred,’ Frithof went on, ‘and the prophecy says the jarls will win, Uhtred will die and Wessex will fall. And that means you’re missing an opportunity, my friend.’

‘Maybe I’ll come back,’ I said, and I thought maybe I would return to Snotengaham one day because if Alfred’s dream of uniting all the lands where the English tongue was spoken were to come true then the Danes must be driven from this and every other town between Wessex and the wild Scottish frontier.

At night, when the singing had faded from Snotengaham’s taverns and the dogs had gone quiet, the sentries who watched over the ships would come to our fires and accept our food and ale. That happened for three nights, and then, in the next dawn, my men chanted as they rolled Tyr’s Daughter down a ramp of logs and so into the Trente. She floated. It took a day to ballast her and another half-day to distribute the stones so that she floated true, just a little down at the stern. I knew she would leak, all ships leak, but by nightfall of the second day there was no evidence of water above the newly placed ballast stones. Frithof had kept his word and brought us oars, and my men rowed the ship upstream for a few miles, then turned her and brought her back. We stowed the mast on a pair of cradles, lashed the furled sail to the mast, and stacked what meagre possessions we owned beneath the small half-deck at the stern. I spent what few silver coins I had left on a barrel of ale, two of dried fish, some twice-baked bread, a flitch of bacon and a great rock-hard cheese wrapped in canvas. At dusk Frithof brought us a sea eagle’s head, carved from oak, that would fit over the prow. ‘It’s a gift,’ he told me.

‘You’re a good man,’ I said, and I meant it.

He watched as his slaves carried the carved head on board my ship. ‘May Tyr’s Daughter serve you well,’ he said, touching the hammer at his neck, ‘and may the wind never fail you and may the sea carry you safe home.’

I told the slaves to stow the head in the prow. ‘You’ve been helpful,’ I told Frithof warmly, ‘and I wish I could thank you properly.’ I offered him a silver arm ring, but he shook his head.

‘I’ve no need of it,’ he said, ‘and you might need silver in Frisia. You leave in the morning?’

‘Before midday,’ I said.

‘I’ll come and say farewell,’ he promised.

‘How long to the sea?’ I asked.

‘You’ll make it in two days,’ he said, ‘and once out of the Humbre, head a little north. Avoid the East Anglian coast.’

‘Trouble there?’

He shrugged. ‘A few ships looking for easy prey. Eohric encourages them. Just head straight out to sea and keep going.’ He cocked his head at the sky that was clear of clouds. ‘If this fine weather lasts you’ll be home in four days. Five, maybe.’

‘Any news from Ceaster?’ I asked. I was worried that Sigurd would have learned that he had been deceived and would be returning to his heartland, but Frithof had heard nothing and I assumed that Finan was still leading the jarl a dance through the hills and woods south of the old Roman fort.

There was a full moon that night, and the watchmen again came to the wharf where Tyr’s Daughter was tethered to Bright-Flyer by hemp ropes. The moon glossed the river’s swirls. We gave the watchmen ale, regaled them with songs and stories, and waited. A barn owl flew low, wings white as smoke, and I took the bird’s swift passage as a good omen.

When the night’s heart came and the dogs were silent I sent Osferth and a dozen men to a hayrick that lay halfway to the town. ‘Bring back as much hay as you can carry,’ I said.

‘Hay?’ one of the watchmen asked me.

‘Bedding,’ I explained, and told Ludda to fill the man’s ale-horn. The watchmen did not seem to notice that none of my men was drinking, or sense the apprehension among my crew. They drank, and I climbed aboard Bright-Flyer and crossed to Tyr’s Daughter, where I pulled my mail coat over my head and strapped Serpent-Breath to my waist. One by one my men came to the boat and dressed for war, while Osferth returned with great armfuls of hay, and only then did one of the four watchmen decide that our behaviour was strange.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Burning your ships,’ I said cheerfully.

He gaped at me. ‘You’re what?’

I drew Serpent-Breath and held her blade’s tip just beneath his nose. ‘My name is Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said, and watched his eyes widen. ‘Your lord tried to kill me,’ I went on, ‘and I’m reminding him that he failed.’

I left three men to watch the prisoners on the wharf, while the rest set to work on the beached ships. We used axes to splinter rowers’ benches, then piled hay and tinder in the hulls’ wide bellies. I made the biggest heap in Sea-Slaughterer, Cnut’s prized ship, for she was in the centre of the stranded craft. Osferth and his half-dozen men watched the town, but no one stirred from the gates, which I assumed were barred shut. Even when we used ropes to haul away the props on some of the outer ships so that they crashed over, the noise did not carry to Snotengaham.

The town lay in the north of Sigurd’s land, protected from the rest of Mercia by his large estates, while to the north was the friendly territory controlled by Cnut. Maybe no town in all Britain felt farther from trouble, which was why the boats had been brought here and why Frithof had only placed four old and half-lame men to watch them. The guards were not there to repel an attack, for no one expected Snotengaham to be assaulted, but to stop petty thieving of timbers or of the charcoal used in the braziers. That charcoal was now spread across the beached ships and I heaved one of the still smoking braziers into Sea Slaughterer’s belly.

We put fire into the other ships, then went back to the wharf.

Flames burst bright, faded, then burst again. Smoke thickened quickly. So far it was only the tinder and charcoal burning, the oak of the ships’ timbers took longer to catch, but at last I saw the heavier flames grow and spread. The wind was light and fitful, sometimes blowing the smoke down into the fire and swirling it low before releasing it to the night air. The flames bit and spread, the heat was scorching, melting tar dripped, sparks flew high, and the noise of the fire grew.

Osferth came running, leading his men down the bank between the fire-glossed river and the flames. A boat collapsed, its burning timbers crashing onto the ground and spraying fire beneath the bellies of the neighbouring craft. ‘Men coming!’ Osferth shouted.

‘How many?’

‘Six? Seven?’

I took ten men up the bank while Osferth put fire into the ships that were still floating. The noise of the fire was a roar punctured by the cracks of splitting timbers. Sea-Slaughterer was a ship of flames now, her belly a cauldron, and her long keel broke as we passed her and she sagged with a great crash and the sparks flew outwards and the flames leaped higher to show me a ragged group of men running from the town. They were not many, perhaps eight or nine, and they were not dressed, but had just pulled cloaks over their jerkins. None had a weapon and they checked when they saw me, and no wonder, for I was in mail, helmeted, with Serpent-Breath in my hand. The fire reflected from her blade. I did not speak. I had my back to the fire, which roared in the night, so my face was shadowed. The men saw a line of fire-outlined warriors ready for war and they turned back towards the town to fetch help. That help was already coming. More men were crossing the meadow and, in the fire’s bright light, I saw the glint of reflected blades. ‘Back to the wharf,’ I told my men.

We retreated to the wharf, which was being scorched by the nearby flames. ‘Osferth! Are they all burned?’ I was asking about the ships that floated, all except Tyr’s Daughter and Bright-Flyer.

‘They’re burning,’ he called back.

‘On board!’ I shouted.

I counted my men on board Tyr’s Daughter then, as the watchmen scuttled away from the wharf, I used an axe to sever the mooring lines that held Bright-Flyer to the wharf. The men from the town thought I was stealing Sigurd’s boat and those with weapons came to rescue her. I jumped on board Bright-Flyer and chopped the axe to cut the last mooring line that held her bows to the bank. She was swinging outwards, held by that last line, and my blow only half cut the hemp rope. A man took a flying leap and sprawled on the benches. He swung his sword at me and the blade struck my mail and I kicked him in the face as two more men leaped from the wharf. One missed and fell between the ship and the bank, though he managed to get one hand on the topmost strake and clung on, while the other man landed beside me and rammed a short-sword at my belly. Osferth had climbed back onto Bright-Flyer and was coming to help me as I parried the sword with the axe. The first man hacked at me again, slicing his sword at my legs, but the blade was stopped by the strips of iron sewn into the leather of my boots. That man had hurt himself when he jumped, maybe his ankle was broken because he seemed unable to stand. He twisted around to face Osferth who swatted the sword aside, then lunged with his own. The second man panicked, and I pushed him and he fell back into the water. I slashed the axe at the taut mooring line again and it snapped and I almost lost my footing as Bright-Flyer surged away from the bank. The man clinging to the strake let go. Osferth’s man was dying, his blood draining into the ballast stones.

‘Thank you,’ I said to Osferth. The river’s current was carrying Bright-Flyer and Tyr’s Daughter downstream away from the fire that was brighter and fiercer than ever, its smoke filling the sky and obscuring the stars. We had put tinder, charcoal and the last brazier into the Bright-Flyer’s hull and I tipped the brazier over, paused long enough to see the smouldering charcoal burst into flame, then climbed onto Tyr’s Daughter. We cut Bright-Flyer free. A dozen of my men already had oars and they pulled the smaller ship away from the larger. I dropped the steering oar into the slot at the stern and leaned on it to guide Tyr’s Daughter into the river’s centre, and just then an axe, its blade flashing reflected firelight, flew from the bank to splash harmlessly behind us.

‘Put up the eagle’s head!’ I shouted to my men.

‘Kjartan!’ Frithof, mounted on a tall black stallion, was cantering down the bank, keeping pace with us. It was one of his men who had thrown the axe, and now another launched a spear that plunged into the river. ‘Kjartan!’

‘My name is Uhtred,’ I called back. ‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg!’

‘What?’ he called back.

‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg! Give my greeting to Jarl Sigurd!’

‘You bastard!’

‘Tell that slime-eater you call a lord not to try to kill me again!’

Frithof and his men had to rein in because a tributary cut across their path. He cursed me, but his voice faded as we rowed on.

The sky behind us glowed with the fire of Sigurd’s fleet burning. Not every ship had caught fire, and I did not doubt that Frithof’s men would rescue one or two, maybe more, from the inferno that lit the night. They would also want to pursue us, which was why Bright-Flyer burned as she drifted behind us. She turned on the current, the flames cradled in her sleekly beautiful belly. She would sink eventually and the steam would replace the smoke and the wreck, I hoped, would obstruct the channel. I waved to Frithof and then laughed. Sigurd would be furious when he realised that he had been duped. Not just duped, but made into a fool. His precious fleet was ashes.

The river behind us was shimmering red, while in front of us it was moon-silvered. The current carried us swiftly and I only needed a half-dozen oars to keep us straight. I steered around the outside of the river’s bends where the water was deepest, always alert for the ominous sound of our keel grinding on mud, but the gods were with us and Tyr’s Daughter slid swiftly away from that great glow of fire that marked Snotengaham. We were travelling faster than any horse, which is why I had purchased a boat to make our escape, and we had a huge lead over any ship that might try to follow us. For a time Bright-Flyer drifted close behind, and then after an hour or so she stopped, though the glow of her flames still flickered above the river bends. Then that too faded and I supposed she had sunk and I hoped that her wreckage obstructed the river’s channel. We journeyed on.

‘What did we achieve, lord?’ Osferth asked. He had come to stand beside me on the small deck at the stern of Tyr’s Daughter.

‘We made Sigurd look like a fool,’ I said.

‘But he isn’t a fool.’

I knew Osferth disapproved. He was no coward, but he thought, like his father, that war would yield to intelligence and that a man could reason his way to victory. Yet war, as often as not, is about emotion. ‘I want the Danes to fear us,’ I said.

‘They already did.’

‘Now they fear us more,’ I said. ‘No Dane can attack Mercia or Wessex in the knowledge that his home is safe. We’ve shown we can reach deep into their land.’

‘Or we’ve stirred them to revenge,’ he suggested.

‘Revenge?’ I asked. ‘You think the Danes planned to leave us in peace?’

‘I fear attacks on Mercia,’ he said, ‘revenge attacks.’

‘Buccingahamm will be burned,’ I said, ‘but I told them all to leave the hall and go to Lundene.’

‘You did?’ he sounded surprised, then frowned. ‘Then Beornnoth’s hall will be burned too.’

I laughed at that, then touched the silver chain Osferth wore about his neck. ‘You want to wager that chain?’ I asked.

‘Why wouldn’t Sigurd burn Beornnoth’s hall?’ he asked.

‘Because Beornnoth and his son are Sigurd’s men,’ I said.

‘Beornnoth and Beortsig?’

I nodded. I had no proof, only suspicion, but Beornnoth’s lands, so close to Danish Mercia, had been left unmolested and that suggested an agreement. Beornnoth, I suspected, was too old for the troubles of continual war and so had made his peace, while his son was a bitter man and full of hatred for the West Saxons, who, in his view, had taken away Mercia’s independence. ‘I can’t prove that,’ I told Osferth, ‘but I will.’

‘Even so, lord,’ he said carefully, ‘what did we achieve?’ He gestured towards the fading glow in the sky.

‘Other than annoying Sigurd?’ I asked. I leaned on the steering oar, pushing Tyr’s Daughter to the outside of a long curve in the river. The eastern sky was luminous now, small clouds stretching bright in front of the still hidden sun. Cattle watched us pass. ‘Your father,’ I said, knowing those two words would irritate him, ‘has held the Danes at bay for my whole lifetime. Wessex is a fortress. But you know what your father wants.’

‘All the lands of the English.’

‘And you don’t get that by building a fortress. You don’t defeat the Danes by defending against them. You must attack. And your father has never attacked.’

‘He sent ships to East Anglia,’ Osferth said chidingly.

Alfred had indeed once sent an expedition to East Anglia to punish Eohric’s Danes who had raided Wessex, but Alfred’s ships had accomplished little. The West Saxons had built large ships and their keels were too deep to penetrate the rivers and Eohric’s men had simply withdrawn into shallow water, and so Alfred’s fleet had threatened and then rowed away, though the threat had been sufficient to convince Eohric to keep to the treaty between Wessex and his kingdom. ‘If we’re to unite the Saxons,’ I said, ‘it won’t be with ships. It will be with shield walls and spears and swords and slaughter.’

‘And God’s help,’ Osferth said.

‘Even with that,’ I said, ‘and your brother knows that, and your sister knows that, and they will look for someone to lead that shield wall.’

‘You.’

‘Us. That’s why we burned Sigurd’s fleet, to show Wessex and Mercia who can lead them.’ I slapped Osferth’s shoulder and grinned at him. ‘I’m tired of being called the shield of Mercia. I want to be the sword of the Saxons.’

Alfred, if he yet lived, was dying. And I had just made his ambition my own.

We took down the eagle’s head so we would not appear hostile and, under the rising sun, slid on through England.

I had been to the land of the Danes and had seen a place of sand and thin soil and though I do not doubt that the Danes have better land than any I saw, I doubt there was any better than that through which Tyr’s Daughter made her silent voyage. The river carried us past rich fields and deep woods. The current drew the trailing willow fronds downstream. Otters twisted in the water, sinuous as they fled the shadow of our hull. Warblers were loud on the banks where the first martins gathered mud for their nests. A swan hissed at us, wings spread, and my men all hissed back and found it funny. The trees were in their new green, spreading above meadows yellowed by cowslips, while bluebells hazed the passing woods. This was what brought the Danes here, not silver, not slaves, not even reputation, but earth; deep, rich, fertile earth where crops grew and a man could raise a family without fear of starvation. Small children weeded the fields and stopped to wave at us. I saw halls and villages and herds and flocks and knew this was the real wealth that drew men across the sea.

We looked for pursuers, but saw none. We rowed, though I was reserving my men’s strength, only using a half-dozen oars on each side to keep the ship moving sleekly downriver. The mayflies were thick, and fish rose to feed, and the long weeds waved underwater and Tyr’s Daughter passed Gegnesburh and I remembered Ragnar killing the monk there. This was the town where Alfred’s wife had been raised, long before the Danes came and captured it. The town had a wall and palisade, but both were in poor repair. Much of the palisade had been torn down, presumably so men could build with the oak logs, and the earth wall had eroded into the ditch, beyond which were new houses. The Danes did not care. They felt safe here. No enemy had come in a lifetime and, as far as they were concerned, no enemy would ever come. Men called greetings to us. The only ships at Gegnesburh’s wharf were traders, wide-bellied and slow. I wondered if the town had a new Danish name. This was Mercia, yet it was being turned into a kingdom of Danes.

All day we rowed until, by evening, we were in the widening Humbre and the sea was spread before us, darkening as the sun sank behind us. We stepped the mast, a job that took all my men’s strength to achieve, and we tightened the hemp rigging on the boat’s flanks and hauled the yard and sail up. The wool and linen bellied to the south-west wind, the rigging stretched and creaked, the ship heeled and I felt the kick of the first waves, felt Tyr’s Daughter shiver to that first caress, and we manned all the oars and pulled hard, fighting an incoming tide as we ran east into the shadowing night. We needed oars and sail to keep her moving against the tide, but gradually its grip weakened and we ran into the widening sea that was white flecked in the dusk as the waves fought the river, and on we went and I saw no pursuing ships as we passed the mudbanks and felt our hull lifting to the wild sea waves.

Most ships go to the coast at dusk. The shipmaster will find a creek and stay there through the dark, but we rowed eastwards and, once the night fell, we shipped the oars and I let the little boat be driven by the wind. She ran well. I turned her southwards sometime in the darkness, then slept when the dawn came. If we were pursued I knew nothing of it, and the ships of East Anglia did not see us as we ran southwards.

I knew these waters. In the new day, under a hard bright sun, we ventured closer to the coast until I recognised a landmark. We saw two other ships, but they ignored us, and we sailed on, past the great mudflats, around Fughelness and so into the Temes. The gods loved us, the days and nights of our voyage had been undisturbed, and so we came to Lundene.

I took Tyr’s Daughter to the dock that lay beside the house I had used in Lundene. It was a house I had never thought to see again, for it was there that Gisela had died. I thought of Ælfadell and her grim prophecy that all my women would die, then consoled myself that the sorceress had not known that Sigurd’s fleet would burn, so how could she have known what would happen to my women?

I had warned my folk at Buccingahamm to expect an attack and ordered them to travel south to the safety of Lundene’s defences, and I had thought to be greeted at the house by Sigunn or even by Finan who, his decoy work done at Ceaster, was also to meet me in the city, but the house appeared empty as we pulled the last oar strokes and nosed into the dock. Men leaped ashore with mooring lines. The oars clattered as they were laid on the thwarts, and just then the house door opened and a priest came onto the terrace. ‘You can’t leave that boat here!’ he called to me.

‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘This is a private house,’ he ignored my question. He was a lean, middle-aged man with a stern face marked by pox scars. His long black robe was spotless, woven from the finest wool. His hair was neatly trimmed. He was no ordinary priest, his clothes and demeanour both spoke of privilege. ‘There’s wharfage downstream,’ he said, pointing eastwards.

‘Who are you?’ I asked again.

‘The man telling you to find another place to put this boat,’ he said irritably, and held his stance as I pulled myself onto the wharf and confronted him. ‘I’ll have the boat removed,’ he threatened, ‘and you’ll need to pay to recover it.’

‘I’m tired,’ I said, ‘and I’m not moving the boat.’ I smelt Lundene’s familiar stench, the mix of smoke and sewage, and thought of Gisela strewing lavender on the tiled floors. The thought of her gave me the usual pang of loss and waste. She had become fond of this house that had been built by the Romans, with its rooms edging a large courtyard and its great chamber facing the river.

‘You can’t go in there!’ the priest said sternly as I walked past him, ‘it belongs to Plegmund.’

‘Plegmund?’ I asked, ‘does he command the garrison here?’ The house was given to whoever commanded Lundene’s garrison, a job that a West Saxon called Weohstan had inherited from me, but Weohstan was a friend and I knew he would welcome me beneath his roof.

‘The house was granted to the archbishop,’ the priest said, ‘by Alfred.’

‘Archbishop?’ I asked, astonished. Plegmund was the new Archbishop of Contwaraburg, a Mercian, famously pious, a friend of Alfred’s and now the evident possessor of one of Lundene’s finer houses. ‘Did a young girl come here?’ I asked. ‘Or an Irishman? A warrior?’

The priest blanched then. He must have remembered either Sigunn or Finan coming to the house, and that recollection told him who I was. ‘You’re Uhtred?’ he asked.

‘I’m Uhtred,’ I said and pushed the house door open. The long room, which had been so welcoming when Gisela lived here, was now a place where monks copied manuscripts. There were six tall desks on which ink pots, quills and parchments lay. Two of the desks were occupied by clerks. One was writing, copying a manuscript, while the other was using a ruler and a needle to prick lines on an empty parchment. The pricked lines were a guide to keep the writing straight. The two men glanced at me nervously, then went back to their copying. ‘So did a girl come here?’ I asked the priest. ‘A Danish girl. Slight and pretty. She’d have had a half-dozen warriors escorting her.’

‘She did,’ he said, uncertain now.

‘And?’

‘She went to a tavern,’ he said stiffly, meaning he had rudely turned her away from the door.

‘And Weohstan?’ I asked. ‘Where’s he?’

‘He has quarters by the high church.’

‘Is Plegmund here in Lundene?’ I asked.

‘The archbishop is in Contwaraburg.’

‘And how many boats does he own?’ I asked.

‘None,’ the priest said.

‘Then he doesn’t need this damned dock, does he? So my boat stays there till I sell it, and if you touch it, priest, if you so much as lay one damned finger on it, if you have it moved, if you even think about moving it, I’ll take you to sea and teach you to be Christ-like.’

‘To be Christ-like?’ he asked.

‘He walked on water, didn’t he?’

That trivial confrontation left me dispirited because it was a reminder of how the church had placed its clammy grip on Alfred’s Wessex. It seemed that the king had granted Plegmund and Werferth, who was the Bishop of Wygraceaster, half of Lundene’s wharfage. Alfred wanted the church to be rich and its bishops to be powerful men because he relied on them to spread and enforce his laws and, if I helped spread Wessex’s grip northwards, so those bishops and priests and monks and nuns would follow to impose their joyless rules. Yet I was committed now, committed because of Æthelflaed, who was now in Wintanceaster. Weohstan told me that. ‘The king asked his family to gather,’ he said gloomily, ‘ready for his death.’ Weohstan was a stolid, bald, half-toothless West Saxon who commanded Lundene’s garrison. Lundene was supposedly Mercian, but Alfred had ensured that every man of power in the city held allegiance to Wessex, and Weohstan was a good man, unimaginative but diligent. ‘Except I need money to repair the walls,’ he grumbled to me, ‘and they won’t give it to me. They send coin to Rome to keep the pope in ale, yet they won’t pay for my wall.’

‘Steal it,’ I suggested.

‘Not that we’ve seen a Dane in months,’ he said.

‘Except for Sigunn,’ I said.

‘She’s a pretty thing,’ he said, offering me one of his half-toothed smiles. He had offered her shelter while she waited for me. She had no news from Buccingahamm, but I suspected the hall there, with its barns and storehouses, would be a smouldering ruin as soon as Sigurd returned from his foray to Ceaster.

Finan arrived two days later, grinning happily and full of news. ‘We led Sigurd a dance,’ he told me, ‘and danced him straight into the Welsh.’

‘And Haesten?’

‘God knows.’

Finan told how he and Merewalh had retreated southwards into the deep woods, and how Sigurd had followed them. ‘Jesus, he was eager. He sent horsemen after us on a dozen paths and we ambushed one group.’ He gave me a bag of silver, the spoils of the dead who had been cut down beneath the oaks. Sigurd, enraged, had become even less cautious and tried to encircle his elusive prey by sending men to the west and south, but all he had achieved was to stir up the Welsh who never need much stirring, and a band of wild Welsh warriors came from the hills to kill the Northmen. Sigurd had held the attackers off with his shield wall, then suddenly retreated northwards.

‘He must have heard about his ships,’ I said.

‘He’ll be an unhappy man,’ Finan said happily.

‘And I’m a poor one,’ I said. Buccingahamm was probably burned and there were no rents being paid. My men’s families were all in Lundene, and Tyr’s Daughter was sold for a pittance, and Æthelflaed was in no position to help. She was in Wintanceaster, close to her ailing father, and her husband was there too. She sent me a letter, but it was bland, even unfriendly, which made me suppose that she knew her correspondence was being read, but I had told her of my poverty and the letter suggested I go to one of her estates in the Temes valley. The steward there was a man who had fought alongside me at Beamfleot and he, at least, was pleased to see me. He had been crippled in that fight, though he could walk with a crutch and ride a horse well enough. He lent me money. Ludda stayed with me. I told him I would pay him for his services when I was wealthy again, and that he was free to go, but he wanted to stay. He was learning to use the sword and shield, and I was glad of his company. Two of my Frisians left, deciding that they could do better with another lord, and I let them go. I was in the same plight as Haesten, my men wondering whether they had sworn their oaths to the wrong man.

Then, as the summer waned, Sihtric returned.

Five

It was a summer of hunting and patrolling. Idle men are unhappy men and so I purchased horses with the silver I had borrowed and we rode north to explore the borders of Sigurd’s land. If Sigurd knew I was there he did not respond, perhaps fearing another trick like the one that had led his men into a pointless fight with the savage Welsh, but we were not looking for a fight. I did not have enough men to face Sigurd. I flaunted my banner, yet in truth it was all a bluff.

Haesten was still in Ceaster, though now that garrison was five times the size that it had been in the spring. The newcomers were not Haesten’s warriors, but oath-men of Sigurd and his ally Cnut Longsword, and they had come in sufficient numbers to guard the whole circuit of the old fort’s walls. They had hung their shields from the palisade and put their banners on the southern gatehouse. Sigurd’s badge of the flying raven was displayed next to Cnut’s flag, which showed an axe and a shattered cross. There was no flag for Haesten, which told me he had submitted to one of the two greater lords.

Merewalh reckoned there were now a thousand men in the fort. ‘They try and provoke us,’ he told me. ‘They want a fight.’

‘You’re not giving them one?’

He shook his head. He had only a hundred and fifty warriors and so he retreated whenever Ceaster’s garrison made a sally. ‘I’m not sure how long we can stay here,’ he admitted.

‘Have you asked Lord Æthelred for help?’

‘I asked,’ he said bleakly.

‘And?’

‘He says we should just watch them,’ Merewalh said, sounding disgusted. Æthelred had enough men to provoke war, he could have taken Ceaster whenever he wished, but instead he did nothing.

I announced my presence by riding close to the walls with my wolf’s head banner and, just as before, Haesten could not resist the lure. He brought a dozen men this time, but approached me on his own, hands spread wide. He was still grinning. ‘That was clever, my friend,’ he greeted me.

‘Clever?’

‘Jarl Sigurd was not pleased. He came to rescue me and you burned his fleet! He’s not happy.’

‘I didn’t want his happiness.’

‘And he’s sworn you’ll die.’

‘I think you once swore the same.’

‘I fulfil my oaths,’ he said.

‘You break oaths like a clumsy child breaks eggs,’ I said scornfully. ‘So who did you bow the knee to? Sigurd?’

‘To Sigurd,’ he admitted, ‘and in return he sent me his son and seven hundred men.’ He gestured towards the horsemen who had accompanied him and I saw the sullen young face of Sigurd Sigurdson scowling at me.

‘So who commands here?’ I asked. ‘You or the boy?’

‘I do,’ Haesten said. ‘My job is to teach him sense.’

‘Sigurd expects you to do that?’ I asked, and Haesten had the grace to laugh. He was looking beyond me, at the tree line, trying to determine how many men I might have brought to reinforce Merewalh. ‘Enough to destroy you,’ I answered his unspoken question.

‘I doubt that,’ he said, ‘or else you wouldn’t be talking, you’d be fighting.’

That was true enough. ‘So what did Sigurd promise you in return for your oath?’ I asked.

‘Mercia,’ came the reply.

It was my turn to laugh. ‘You get Mercia? Who rules Wessex?’

‘Whoever Sigurd and Cnut decide,’ he said airily, then smiled. ‘Maybe you? I think if you grovel, Lord Uhtred, the Jarl Sigurd will forgive you. He’d rather you fought with him than against him.’

‘Tell him I’d rather kill him,’ I said. I gathered my stallion’s reins. ‘How is your wife?’

‘Brunna is well,’ he said, looking surprised that I had asked.

‘Is she still a Christian?’ I asked. Brunna had been baptised, but I suspected the whole ceremony had been a cynical exercise by Haesten to allay Alfred’s suspicions.

‘She believes in the Christian god,’ Haesten said, sounding disgusted. ‘She’s forever wailing to him.’

‘I pray she has a comfortable widowhood,’ I said.

I turned away, but just then a man shouted and I twisted back to see Sigurd Sigurdson spurring towards me. ‘Uhtred!’ he shouted.

I curbed the horse, turned, waited.

‘Fight me,’ he said, dropping from the saddle and drawing his sword.

‘Sigurd!’ Haesten said in warning.

‘I am Sigurd Sigurdson!’ the pup shouted. He was glaring up at me, sword ready.

‘Not now,’ Haesten said.

‘Listen to your nursemaid,’ I told the boy, and that provoked him to swing the blade at me. I parried it with my right foot so that the sword struck the metal of the stirrup.

‘No! Haesten shouted.

Sigurd spat towards me. ‘You’re old, you’re frightened.’ He spat again, then raised his voice. ‘Let men say that Uhtred ran away from Sigurd Sigurdson!’

He was eager, he was young, he was a fool. He was a big enough lad, and his sword was a fine blade, but his ambition outstripped his ability. He wanted to make a reputation and I remembered how I had wanted the same at his age, and how the gods had loved me. Did they love Sigurd Sigurdson? I said nothing, but kicked my feet from the stirrups and swung myself down from the saddle. I drew Serpent-Breath slowly, smiling at the boy and seeing the first shadow of doubt in his belligerent face.

‘Please, no!’ Haesten called. His men had closed up, and so had mine.

I held my arms wide, inviting Sigurd to attack. He hesitated, but he had made the challenge and if he did not fight now then he would look a coward and that thought was unbearable and so he leaped towards me, his blade snake fast, and I parried it, surprised at his speed, then pushed him with my free hand so that he staggered back. He slashed again, a wild stroke, and I parried it again. I was letting him attack, doing nothing except defend myself, and that passivity drove him to a greater fury. He had been taught sword-craft, but he forgot that teaching in his rage. He swung wildly, the blows easy to block, and I heard Haesten’s men calling advice. ‘Use the point!’

‘Fight me!’ he shouted, and swung again.

‘Puppy,’ I said to him, and he was almost weeping in frustration. He sliced the sword at my head, the blade hissing in the summer air and I just leaned back and the point whipped past my eyes and I stepped forward, thrust with my free hand again, only this time I hooked a boot behind his left ankle and he went down like a hamstrung bullock and I thrust Serpent-Breath onto his neck. ‘Grow up before you fight me,’ I told him. He twisted, then went very still as he felt my sword’s point digging into his neck. ‘Today isn’t your day to die, Sigurd Sigurdson,’ I said. ‘Now let go of your sword.’

He made a mewing noise.

‘Let go of your sword,’ I snarled, and this time he obeyed me. ‘Was it your father’s gift?’ I asked him. He said nothing. ‘It isn’t your day to die,’ I told him again, ‘but it is a day I want you to remember. The day you challenged Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’ I held his gaze for a few heartbeats, then slashed Serpent-Breath fast, using my wrist rather than my arm, so that the tip of her blade sliced into his sword hand. He flinched as the blood spurted, then I stepped away, stooped and picked up his sword. ‘Tell his father I spared the pup’s life,’ I told Haesten. I wiped Serpent-Breath’s point on the hem of my cloak, tossed the boy’s sword to Oswi, my servant, than hauled myself back into the saddle. Sigurd Sigurdson was clutching his mangled hand. ‘Give my greetings to your father,’ I told him, then spurred away. I could almost hear Haesten’s sigh of relief that the boy still lived.

Why did I let him live? Because he was not worth killing. I wanted to provoke his father, and the boy’s death would certainly have achieved that, but I did not have the men to fight a war against Sigurd. To do that I needed West Saxon troops. I had to wait until I was ready, until Wessex and Mercia united their forces, and so Sigurd Sigurdson lived.

We did not stay at Ceaster. We did not have enough force to capture the old fort, and the longer we stayed the more likely it was that Sigurd would arrive with overwhelming numbers, and so we left Merewalh to screen the fortress and we went back to Æthelflaed’s estate in the valley of the Temes from where I sent a messenger to Alfred telling him that Haesten had sworn allegiance to Sigurd and that Ceaster was now fully garrisoned. I knew Alfred would be too sick to take much note of that news, but I assumed that Edward, or perhaps the Witan, would want to know. I received no answer. Summer slid into autumn and the silence from Wintanceaster was worrying me. We learned from travellers that the king was weaker than ever, that he scarcely left his bed these days and that his family was in constant attendance. I heard nothing at all from Æthelflaed.

‘He could at least have thanked you for thwarting Eohric,’ Finan grumbled to me one night. He meant Alfred, of course.

‘He was probably disappointed,’ I said.

‘That you lived?’

I smiled at that. ‘That the treaty never happened.’

Finan stared moodily down the hall. The fire in the central hearth was unlit because the evening was warm. My men were quiet at their tables, the dogs sprawled on the rushes. ‘We need silver,’ Finan said bleakly.

‘I know.’

How had I become so poor? I had spent most of my money on that foray north to Ælfadell and Snotengaham. I still had some silver, but nowhere near enough for my ambition, which was to retake Bebbanburg, that great fortress by the sea, and to take it I would need men, ships, weapons, food and time. I needed a fortune, and I was living on borrowed money in a shabby hall on Mercia’s southern edge. I was living on Æthelflaed’s charity, and that seemed to be turning cold because I received no letter from her. I supposed she was under the baleful influence of her family and their busy priests who were ever ready to tell us how to behave. ‘Alfred doesn’t deserve you,’ Finan said.

‘He has other things on his mind,’ I said, ‘like his death.’

‘He wouldn’t be alive now if it wasn’t for you.’

‘For us,’ I said.

‘And what has he done for us?’ Finan demanded. ‘Jesus and his saints, we destroy Alfred’s enemies and he treats us like dog shit.’

I said nothing. A harpist was playing in the hall’s corner, but his music was soft and plangent to match my mood. The light was fading and two servant girls brought rushlights for the table. I watched Ludda slide his hand up a skirt and wondered that he had remained with me, though when I had asked him he had said that fortunes rise and fortunes fall and he sensed mine would rise again. I hoped he was right. ‘What happened to that Welsh girl of yours?’ I called to Ludda. ‘What was her name?’

‘Teg, lord. She turned into a bat and flew away.’ He grinned, though I noted how many men made the sign of the cross.

‘Maybe we should all turn into bats,’ I said unhappily.

Finan scowled at the table top. ‘If Alfred doesn’t want you,’ he said uneasily, ‘then you should join Alfred’s enemies.’

‘I swore an oath to Æthelflaed.’

‘And she swore one to her husband,’ he said savagely.

‘I won’t fight against her,’ I said.

‘And I won’t leave you,’ Finan said, and I knew he meant it, ‘but not every man here will stay through a hungry winter.’

‘I know,’ I said.

‘So let’s steal a ship,’ he urged, ‘and go Viking.’

‘It’s late in the year for that,’ I said.

‘God knows how we survive a winter,’ he grumbled. ‘We have to do something. Kill someone rich.’

And just then the guards on the hall door challenged a visitor. The man arrived in mail, helmeted, and with a sheathed sword at his waist. Behind him, dim in the fast gathering darkness, was a woman and two children. ‘I demand entry!’ he shouted.

‘God alive,’ Finan said, recognising Sihtric’s voice.

One of the guards tried to take the sword, but Sihtric angrily slapped the man aside. ‘Let the bastard keep his sword,’ I said, standing, ‘and let him come in.’ Sihtric’s wife and two sons were behind him, but they stayed at the door as Sihtric paced up the hall. There was silence.

Finan stood to confront him, but I pushed the Irishman down. ‘It’s my duty,’ I told Finan quietly, then walked around the high table’s end and jumped down to the rush-covered floor. Sihtric stopped when he saw me approaching. I had no sword. We did not carry weapons in hall because weapons and ale mix badly and there was a gasp as Sihtric drew his long blade. Some of my men stood to intervene, but I waved them down and kept walking towards the naked steel. I stopped just two paces from him. ‘Well?’ I demanded harshly.

Sihtric grinned and I laughed. I embraced him, and he returned the embrace, then held the hilt of his sword to me. ‘Yours, lord,’ he said, ‘as it always was.’

‘Ale!’ I shouted to the steward. ‘Ale and food!’

Finan was gaping as I walked Sihtric to the high table with my arm about his shoulder. Men were cheering. They had liked Sihtric and had been puzzled by his behaviour, but it had all been planned between us. Even the insults had been rehearsed. I had wanted Beortsig to recruit him, and Beortsig had snapped up Sihtric like a pike attacking a duckling. And I had ordered Sihtric to stay in Beortsig’s employment until he had learned what I needed to know, and now he had come back. ‘I didn’t know where to find you, lord,’ he said, ‘so I went to Lundene first and Weohstan said to come here.’

Beornnoth was dead, he told me. The old man had died in the early summer, just before Sigurd’s men crossed his estates to burn Buccingahamm. ‘They stayed the night at the hall, lord,’ he told me.

‘Sigurd’s men?’

‘And Sigurd himself, lord. Beortsig fed them.’

‘He’s in Sigurd’s pay?’

‘Yes, lord,’ he said, and that was no surprise, ‘and not only Beortsig, lord. There was a Saxon with Sigurd, lord, a man Sigurd treated with honour. A long-haired man called Sigebriht.’

‘Sigebriht?’ I asked. The name was familiar, lurking at the back of my memory, but I could not place him, though I remembered the widow in Buchestanes saying that a long-haired Saxon had visited Ælfadell.

‘Sigebriht of Cent, lord,’ Sihtric said.

‘Ah!’ I poured Sihtric ale. ‘Sigebriht’s father is Ealdorman of Cent, isn’t he?’

‘Ealdorman Sigelf, lord, yes.’

‘So Sigebriht is unhappy that Edward was named King of Cent?’ I guessed.

‘Sigebriht hates Edward, lord,’ Sihtric told me. He was grinning, pleased with himself. I had planted him as a spy in Beortsig’s household and he knew he had done his work well, ‘and it isn’t just because Edward is King of Cent, lord, it’s because of a girl. The Lady Ecgwynn.’

‘He told you all this?’ I asked, astonished.

‘He told a slave girl, lord. He rutted her and he has a loose tongue when he’s rutting, and he told her and she told Ealhswith.’ Ealhswith was Sihtric’s wife. She was sitting in the hall now, eating with her two sons. She had been a whore and I had advised Sihtric not to marry her, but I had been wrong. She had proved to be a good wife.

‘So who is the Lady Ecgwynn?’ I asked.

‘She’s Bishop Swithwulf’s daughter, lord,’ Sihtric explained. Swithwulf was Bishop of Hrofeceastre in Cent, that much I knew, but I had not met the man, nor his daughter. ‘And she preferred Edward to Sigebriht,’ Sihtric went on.

So the bishop’s daughter was the girl who Edward had wanted to marry? The girl he had been ordered to abandon because his father disapproved. ‘I heard that Edward was forced to give the girl up,’ I said.

‘But she ran away with him,’ Sihtric told me, ‘that’s what Sigebriht said.’

‘Ran away!’ I grinned. ‘So where is she now?’

‘No one knows.’

‘And Edward,’ I said, ‘is betrothed to Ælflæd.’ There must have been some harsh words spoken between father and son, I thought. Edward had always been presented as the ideal heir to Alfred, the son without sin, the prince educated and groomed to be the next King of Wessex, but a smile from a bishop’s daughter had evidently undone a lifetime’s preaching from his father’s priests. ‘So Sigebriht hates Edward,’ I said.

‘He does, lord.’

‘Because he took the bishop’s daughter away. But would that be enough to make him swear loyalty to Sigurd?’

‘No, lord.’ Sihtric was grinning. He had kept his biggest news back. ‘He’s not sworn to Sigurd, lord, but to Æthelwold.’

And that was why Sihtric had returned to me, because he had discovered who the Saxon was, the Saxon whom Ælfadell had told me would destroy Wessex, and I wondered why I had not thought of it before. I had considered Beortsig because he wanted to be King of Mercia, but he was insignificant, and Sigebriht probably wanted to be King of Cent one day, but I could not imagine Sigebriht having the power to ruin Wessex, yet the answer was obvious. It had been there all along and I had never thought of it because Æthelwold was such a weak fool. Yet weak fools have ambition and cunning and resolve.

‘Æthelwold!’ I repeated the name.

‘Sigebriht is sworn to him, lord, and Sigebriht is Æthelwold’s messenger to Sigurd. There’s something else, lord. Beortsig’s priest is one-eyed, thin as a straw, and bald.’

I was thinking about Æthelwold, so it took a moment for me to remember that far-off day when the fools had tried to kill me and the shepherd had saved me with his sling and his flock. ‘Beortsig wanted me dead,’ I said.

‘Or his father,’ Sihtric suggested.

‘Because Sigurd ordered it,’ I guessed, ‘or perhaps Æthelwold.’ And it suddenly seemed so obvious. And I knew what I had to do. I did not want to do it. I had once sworn I would never return to Alfred’s court, but next day I rode to Wintanceaster.

To see the king.

Æthelwold. I should have guessed. I had known Æthelwold all my life and had despised him all that time. He was Alfred’s nephew, and he was aggrieved. Alfred, of course, should have killed Æthelwold years before, but some feeling, perhaps affection for his brother’s son or, more likely, the guilt that earnest Christians love to feel, had stayed his hand.

Æthelwold’s father had been Alfred’s brother, King Æthelred. Æthelwold, as eldest son of Æthelred, expected to be King of Wessex, but he was still a child when his father died and the Witan, the king’s council of leading men, had put his uncle, Alfred, onto the throne instead. Alfred had wanted that and had worked for it, and there were men who still whispered that he was a usurper. Æthelwold had resented the usurpation ever since, but Alfred, instead of murdering his nephew as I had often recommended, indulged him. He let him keep some of his father’s estates, he forgave his constant treachery, and doubtless prayed for him. Æthelwold needed a lot of prayer. He was unhappy, frequently drunk, and perhaps that was why Alfred tolerated him. It was hard to see a drunken fool as a danger to the kingdom.

But Æthelwold was now talking with Sigurd. Æthelwold wanted to be king instead of Edward, and to make himself king he had plainly sought the alliance of Sigurd, and Sigurd, of course, would like nothing better than a tame Saxon whose claim to the throne of Wessex was every bit as good as Edward’s, indeed better, which meant Sigurd’s invasion of Wessex would have the spurious gloss of legitimacy.

Six of us rode south through Wessex. I took Osferth, Sihtric, Rypere, Eadric and Ludda. I left Finan in command of the rest of my men, and with a promise. ‘If there’s no gratitude in Wintanceaster,’ I said, ‘then we go north.’

‘We must do something,’ Finan said.

‘I promise,’ I told him. ‘We’ll go Viking. We’ll thrive. But I must give Alfred one last chance.’

Finan did not much care which side we fought for, so long as we were fighting profitably, and I understood how he felt. If my ambition was to one day retake Bebbanburg, his was to return to Ireland to take revenge on the man who had destroyed his wealth and family, and for that he needed silver as much as I did. Finan, of course, was a Christian, though he never allowed that to interfere with his pleasures, and he would have happily used his sword to attack Wessex if, at the end of the fighting, there was money enough to equip an expedition back to Ireland. I knew he believed my journey to Wintanceaster was a waste of time. Alfred did not like me, Æthelflaed appeared to have distanced herself from me, and Finan believed I was going to beg from folk who should have shown gratitude from the start.

And there were times on that journey when I thought Finan was right. I had fought to help Wessex survive for so many years now, and I had put so many of her enemies beneath the ground, and to show for it I had nothing but an empty purse. Yet I also had a reluctant allegiance. I have broken oaths, I have changed sides, I have scrambled through the thorns of loyalty, yet I had meant it when I told Osferth that I wanted to be the sword of the Saxons instead of the shield of Mercia, and so I would make one last visit to the heart of Saxon Britain to discover whether they wanted my sword or not. And if not? I had friends in the north. There was Ragnar, closer than a friend, a man I loved as a brother, and he would help me, and if the price I had to pay was eternal enmity for Wessex, then so be it. I rode, not as the beggar that Finan thought I was, but vengefully.

It rained as we neared Wintanceaster, a soft rain on a soft land, on fields rich with good earth, on villages that showed prosperity and had new churches and thick thatch and no gaunt skeletons of burned house-beams. The halls grew larger, because men like to have their land near power.

There were two powers in Wessex, king and church, and the churches, like the halls, grew larger as we neared the city. No wonder the Northmen wanted this land, who would not? The cattle were plump, the barns full and the girls were pretty. ‘It’s time you got married,’ I told Osferth as we passed an open-doored barn where two fair-haired girls winnowed grain on a threshing floor.

‘I’ve thought of it,’ he said gloomily.

‘Just thought?’

He half smiled. ‘You believe in destiny, lord,’ he said.

‘And you don’t?’ I asked. Osferth and I were riding a few paces ahead of the others. ‘And what does destiny have to do with a girl in your bed?’

‘Non ingredietur mamzer hoc est de scorto natus in ecclesiam Domini,’ he said, then gave me a very sombre look, ‘usque ad decimam generationem.’

‘Both Father Beocca and Father Willibald tried to teach me Latin,’ I said, ‘and they both failed.’

‘It comes from the scriptures, lord,’ he said, ‘from the book of Deuteronomy, and it means a bastard isn’t allowed into the church and it warns that the curse will last for ten generations.’

I stared at him in disbelief. ‘You were training to be a priest when I met you!’

‘And I left my training,’ he said. ‘I had to. How could I be a priest when God bans me from his congregation?’

‘So you can’t be a priest,’ I said, ‘but you can be married!’

‘Usque ad decimam generationem,’ he said. ‘My children would be cursed, and their children too, and every child for ten generations.’

‘So every bastard is doomed?’

‘God tells us that, lord.’

‘Then he’s a bloody-minded god,’ I said savagely, then saw that his distress was real. ‘It wasn’t your fault that Alfred played piggyback with a servant girl.’

‘True, lord.’

‘So how can his sin affect you?’

‘God is not always fair, lord, but he is just within his rules.’

‘Just! So if I can’t catch a thief I should whip his children instead and you’d call me just?’

‘God abhors sin, lord, and what better way to avert sin than threaten it with the direst punishment?’ He edged his horse to the left side of the road to allow a string of packhorses to pass by. They were travelling northwards, carrying sheepskins. ‘If God didn’t punish us severely,’ Osferth went on, ‘then what is to stop sin spreading?’

‘I like sin,’ I said and nodded to the horseman whose servants led the packhorses. ‘Does Alfred live?’ I asked him.

‘Scarcely,’ the man said. He made the sign of the cross and nodded thanks when I wished him a safe journey.

Osferth frowned at me. ‘Why did you bring me here, lord?’ he asked.

‘Why not?’

‘You could have brought Finan, but you chose me.’

‘You don’t want to see your father?’

He said nothing for a while, then turned to me and I saw there were tears in his eyes. ‘Yes, lord.’

‘That’s why I brought you,’ I said, and just then we turned a bend in the road and Wintanceaster was beneath us, its new church rearing high above the huddle of roofs.

Wintanceaster was, of course, the chief of Alfred’s burhs, those towns fortified against the Danes. It was surrounded by a deep ditch, flooded in places, beyond which was a high earthen bank topped by a palisade of oak trunks. There are few things worse than assaulting such a place. The defenders, like Haesten’s men at Beamfleot, hold all the advantage and can rain weapons and stones on the attackers, who have to struggle through obstacles and try to climb ladders that are being hacked apart by axes. Alfred’s burhs were what had made Wessex safe. The Danes could still ravage the countryside, but everything of value would be pulled inside the burh walls and the Danes could only ride around those walls and make empty threats. The surest way to capture a burh was to starve its garrison into submission, but that could take weeks or months, and for all that time the besiegers would be vulnerable to troops coming from other fortresses. The alternative was to throw men at the walls and watch them die in the ditch and the Danes were never profligate with men. The burhs were strongholds, too strong for the Danes, and Bebbanburg, I thought, was tougher than any burh.

The northern gateway to Wintanceaster was now made of stone and guarded by a dozen men who barred the open arch. Their leader was a small grizzled man with fierce eyes who waved his troops away when he saw me. ‘It’s Grimric, lord,’ he said, obviously expecting to be recognised.

‘You were at Beamfleot,’ I guessed.

‘I was, lord!’ he said, pleased that I remembered.

‘Where you did great slaughter,’ I said, hoping it was true.

‘We showed the bastards how Saxons fight, lord, didn’t we?’ he said, grinning. ‘I keep telling these lily boys that you know how to give a man a real fight!’ he jerked a thumb at his men, all of whom were youngsters pulled away from their farms or shops to serve their term of weeks in the burh’s garrison. ‘They’re still wet with mama’s milk, lord,’ Grimric said.

I gave him a coin I could scarce afford to give, but such things are expected of a lord. ‘Buy them ale,’ I told Grimric.

‘That I shall, lord,’ he said, ‘and I knew you’d come! I have to tell them you’re here, of course, but I knew everything would be all right.’

‘All right?’ I asked, puzzled by his words.

‘I knew it would be, lord!’ he grinned, then waved us on. I went to the Two Cranes where the owner knew me. He shouted at his servants to look after our horses, brought us ale and gave us a large chamber at the back of the tavern where the straw was clean.

The landlord was a one-armed man with a beard so long that he tucked its lower end into a wide leather belt. He was named Cynric, had lost his lower left arm fighting for Alfred, and had owned the Two Cranes for over twenty years, and there was not much that went on in Wintanceaster that he did not know about. ‘The churchmen rule,’ he told me.

‘Not Alfred?’

‘Poor bastard’s sick as a drunken dog. It’s a miracle he still lives.’

‘And Edward’s under the thumb of the clergy?’ I asked.

‘The clergy,’ Cynric said, ‘his mother, and the Witan. But he’s not nearly as pious as they think. You heard about the Lady Ecgwynn?’

‘The bishop’s daughter?’

‘That’s the one, and she was a lovely thing, God knows. Just a little girl she was, but so beautiful.’

‘She’s dead?’

‘Died giving birth.’

I stared at him, the implications tumbling in my head. ‘Are you sure?’

‘God’s teeth, I know the woman who midwifed her! Ecgwynn produced twins, a boy called Æthelstan and a girl called Eadgyth, but the poor mother died that same night.’

‘Edward was the father?’ I asked and Cynric nodded. ‘Twin royal bastards,’ I said softly.

Cynric shook his head. ‘But are they bastards?’ He kept his voice low. ‘Edward claims he married her, his father says it wasn’t legal, and his father wins that argument. And they kept the whole thing quiet! God knows they paid the midwife well enough.’

‘The children lived?’

‘They’re in Saint Hedda’s nunnery, with the Lady Æthelflaed.’

I stared into the fire. So the perfect heir had proved as sinful as the next man. And Alfred was sweeping away the fruits of that sin, tucking them into a nunnery in hope no one would notice them. ‘Poor Edward,’ I said.

‘He’s marrying Ælflæd now,’ Cynric said, ‘which pleases Alfred.’

‘And he already has two children,’ I said in wonderment. ‘That’s a royal mess. You say Æthelflaed is in Saint Hedda’s?’

‘Locked away there,’ Cynric said. He knew of my attachment to Æthelflaed, and his tone suggested she had been locked away to keep her from me.

‘Her husband’s here?’

‘In Alfred’s palace. The whole family is here, even Æthelwold.’

‘Æthelwold!’

‘Came here two weeks back, weeping and wailing for his uncle.’

Æthelwold was braver than I thought. He had made his alliance with the Danes, yet was brazen enough to come to his dying uncle’s court. ‘Is he still drunk?’ I asked.

‘Not that I know of. He hasn’t been in here. They say he spends his time praying,’ he spoke scornfully, and I laughed. ‘We’re all praying,’ he finished glumly, meaning that everyone worried about what happened when Alfred died.

‘And Saint Hedda’s?’ I asked. ‘Is it still Abbess Hildegyth?’

‘She’s a saint herself, lord, yes she’s still there.’

I took Osferth to Saint Hedda’s. The rain was spitting, making the streets greasy. The convent lay on the northern edge of the town, close by the earthen bank with its high palisade. The only door to the nunnery lay at the end of a long, muddy alley that, just like the last time I had visited, was crowded with beggars who were waiting for the alms and food that the nuns distributed morning and evening. The beggars shuffled out of our way. They were nervous because Osferth and I were both in mail and both carrying swords. Some held out hands or wooden bowls, but I ignored them, puzzled by the presence of three soldiers at the nunnery door. The three wore helmets and carried spears, swords and shields, and as we approached they stepped away from the door to bar our path. ‘You can’t go inside, lord,’ one of them said.

‘You know who I am?’

‘You’re the Lord Uhtred,’ the man said respectfully, ‘and you can’t go inside.’

‘The abbess is an old friend,’ I said, and that was true. Hild was a friend, a saint, and a woman I had loved, but it seemed I was not allowed to visit her. The leader of the three soldiers was a well-set man, not young, but with broad shoulders and a confident face. His sword was sheathed, and I did not doubt he would draw it if I tried to force my way past him, but nor did I doubt that I could beat him down into the mud. Yet there were three of them, and I knew Osferth would not fight against West Saxon soldiers who guarded a convent. I shrugged. ‘You can give the Abbess Hild a message?’ I asked.

‘I can do that, lord.’

‘Tell her Uhtred came to visit her.’

He nodded, and I heard the beggars gasp behind me and turned to see even more soldiers filing up the alley. I recognised their commander, a man called Godric who had served under Weohstan. He led seven helmeted men who, like those guarding the convent, had shields and spears. They were ready for battle. ‘I’m asked to take you to the palace, lord,’ Godric greeted me.

‘You need spears to do that?’

Godric ignored the question, gesturing back down the alley instead. ‘You’ll come?’

‘With pleasure,’ I said, and followed him back through the town. The people in the streets watched us pass in silence. Osferth and I had kept our swords, but we still looked as though we were prisoners under escort and, when we reached the palace gate, a steward insisted we give up those weapons. That was normal. Only the king’s bodyguards were allowed to carry weapons inside the palace precincts and so I handed Serpent-Breath to the stewards, then followed Godric past Alfred’s private chapel to a small low thatched building.

‘You’re asked to wait inside, lord,’ he said, indicating the door.

We waited in a windowless room that was furnished with two benches, a reading desk and a crucifix. Godric’s men stayed outside and, when I tried to leave, spears barred my way. ‘We want food,’ I said, ‘and ale. And a bucket to piss in.’

‘Are we under arrest?’ Osferth asked me after the food and bucket had been brought.

‘It looks that way.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I ate the bread and hard cheese and then, though the room’s earth floor was damp, I lay down and tried to sleep.

It was dusk before Godric returned. He was still courteous. ‘You’ll come with me, lord,’ he said, and Osferth and I followed him through familiar courtyards to one of the smaller halls where a fire burned bright in the hearth. There were painted leather hangings on the wall, each showing a different West Saxon saint, while at the hall’s high end, at a table spread with a blue-dyed cloth, sat five churchmen. Three were strangers to me, but I recognised the other two and neither was a friend. Bishop Asser, the poisonous Welsh priest who was Alfred’s closest confidant was one, while Bishop Erkenwald was the other. They flanked a thin-shouldered man whose tonsured hair was white above a face as lean as a starving weasel’s. He had a blade for a nose, intelligent eyes and pinched, narrow lips that could not hide his crooked teeth. The two priests at either end of the table were much younger and each had a quill, an ink pot and a sheet of parchment. They were there, it seemed, to take notes.

‘Bishop Erkenwald,’ I greeted him, then looked at Asser, ‘I don’t think I know you.’

‘Take that hammer from his neck,’ Asser said to Godric.

‘Touch that hammer,’ I told Godric, ‘and I’ll dump your arse in the fire.’

‘Enough!’ the starving weasel slapped the table. The ink pots jumped. The two clerk-priests were scratching away. ‘I am Plegmund,’ the man told me.

‘High sorcerer of Contwaraburg?’ I asked.

He stared at me with obvious dislike, then drew a sheet of parchment towards him. ‘You have some explaining to do,’ he said.

‘And no lies this time!’ Asser spat. Years before, in this same hall, I had been tried by the Witan for offences of which, in truth, I was wholly guilty. The chief witness of my crimes had been Asser, but I had lied my way out and he had known I had lied and he had despised me ever since.

I frowned at him. ‘What is your name?’ I asked. ‘You remind me of someone. He was a Welsh earsling, a rat-like little shit, but I killed him, so you can’t be the same man.’

‘Lord Uhtred,’ Bishop Erkenwald said tiredly, ‘please do not insult us.’

Erkenwald and I were not fond of each other, but in his time as Bishop of Lundene he had proved an efficient ruler and he had not stood in my way before Beamfleot, indeed his skills as an organiser had contributed mightily to that victory. ‘What do you want explained?’ I asked.

Archbishop Plegmund pulled a candle across the table to illuminate the parchment. ‘We have been told of your activities this summer,’ he said.

‘And you want to thank me,’ I said.

The cold, sharp eyes stared at me. Plegmund had become famous as a man who denied himself every pleasure, whether it was food, women or luxury. He served his god by being uncomfortable, by praying in lonely places, and by being a hermit priest. Why folk think that admirable, I do not know, but he was held in awe by the Christians, who were all delighted when he abandoned his hermit’s discomfort to become archbishop. ‘In the spring,’ he said in a thin, precise voice, ‘you had a meeting with the man who calls himself Jarl Haesten, following which meeting you rode north into the country possessed by Cnut Ranulfson where you consulted the witch, Ælfadell. From there you went to Snotengaham, presently occupied by Sigurd Thorrson, and thereafter to the Jarl Haesten again.’

‘All true,’ I said easily, ‘only you’ve left some things out.’

‘Here come the lies,’ Asser sneered.

I frowned at him. ‘Was your mother straining at stool when you were born?’

Plegmund slapped the table again. ‘What have we left out?’

‘The small truth that I burned Sigurd’s fleet.’

Osferth had been looking increasingly alarmed at the hostility in the room and now, without a word to me, and without any demurral from the clerics at the linen-covered table, he edged back to the door. They let him go. It was me they wanted. ‘The fleet was burned, we know,’ Plegmund said, ‘and we know the reason.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It was a sign to the Danes that there can be no retreat across the water. Sigurd Thorrson is telling his followers that their fate is to capture Wessex, and as proof of that fate he burned his own ships to demonstrate that there can be no withdrawal.’

‘You believe that?’ I asked.

‘It is the truth,’ Asser snapped.

‘You wouldn’t know the truth if it was rammed down your throat with an axe-handle,’ I said, ‘and no northern lord will burn his ships. They cost gold. I burned them, and Sigurd’s men tried to kill me when I did.’

‘Oh, no one doubts that you were there when they were burned,’ Erkenwald said.

‘And you do not deny consulting the witch Ælfadell?’ Plegmund asked.

‘No,’ I said, ‘nor do I deny destroying the Danish armies at Fearnhamme and at Beamfleot last year.’

‘No one denies that you have done past service,’ Plegmund said.

‘When it suited you,’ Asser added acidly.

‘And do you deny slaying the Abbot Deorlaf of Buchestanes?’ Plegmund asked.

‘I gutted him like a plump fish,’ I said.

‘You don’t deny it?’ Asser sounded astonished.

‘I’m proud of it,’ I said, ‘and of the other two monks I killed.’

‘Note that!’ Asser hissed at the clerk-priests who hardly needed his encouragement. They were scribbling away.

‘Last year,’ Bishop Erkenwald said, ‘you refused to give an oath of loyalty to the ætheling Edward.’

‘True.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m tired of Wessex,’ I said, ‘tired of priests, tired of being told what your god’s will is, tired of being told that I’m a sinner, tired of your endless damned nonsense, tired of that nailed tyrant you call god who only wants us to be miserable. And I refused to give the oath because my ambition is to go back north, to Bebbanburg, and to kill the men who hold it, and I cannot do that if I am sworn to Edward and he wants something different of me.’

That might not have been the most tactful speech, but I was not feeling tactful. Someone, I assumed Æthelred, had done their best to destroy me and had deployed the power of the church to do that and I was determined to fight the miserable bastards. It seemed I was succeeding, at least in making them even more miserable. Plegmund was grimacing, Asser making the sign of the cross, and Erkenwald’s eyes were closed. The two young priests were writing faster than ever. ‘Nailed tyrant,’ one of them repeated slowly as his quill scratched on the parchment.

‘And who had the clever idea to send me to East Anglia so Sigurd could kill me?’ I demanded.

‘King Eohric assures us that Sigurd went without his invitation, and that had he known he would have launched an attack on those forces,’ Plegmund said.

‘Eohric is an earsling,’ I said, ‘and in case you didn’t know, archbishop, an earsling is a thing like Bishop Asser that is squirted out of an arse.’

‘You will be respectful!’ Plegmund snarled, glaring at me.

‘Why?’ I demanded.

He blinked at that. Asser was whispering in his ear, the sibilance urgent and demanding, while Bishop Erkenwald tried to discover something useful from me. ‘What did the witch Ælfadell tell you?’ he asked.

‘That the Saxon would destroy Wessex,’ I said, ‘and that the Danes would win and Wessex would be no more.’

All three were checked by that. They might have been Christians, and important Christians at that, but they were not immune to the real gods and their magic. They were scared, though none made the sign of the cross because to have done so would have been an admission that the pagan prophetess might have some access to the truth, a thing they would want to deny to each other. ‘And who is the Saxon?’ Asser hissed the question.

‘That,’ I said, ‘is what I came to Wintanceaster to tell the king.’

‘So tell us,’ Plegmund demanded.

‘I’ll tell the king,’ I said.

‘You snake,’ Asser said, ‘you thief in the night! The Saxon who will destroy Wessex is you!’

I spat to show my derision, but the spittle did not reach the table.

‘You came here,’ Erkenwald said wearily, ‘because of a woman.’

‘Adulterer!’ Asser snapped.

‘That is the only explanation for your presence here,’ Erkenwald said, then looked at the archbishop, ‘sicut canis qui revertitur ad vomitum suum.’

‘Sic inprudens qui iterat stultitiam suam,’ the archbishop intoned.

I thought for a moment they were cursing me, but little Bishop Asser could not resist demonstrating his learning by providing me with a translation. ‘As the dog returns to its vomit, so the fool returns to his filth.’

‘The words of God,’ Erkenwald said.

‘And we must decide what to do with you,’ Plegmund said, and at those words Godric’s men moved closer. I was aware of their spears behind me. A log cracked in the fire, shooting sparks onto the rushes that began to smoke. Normally a servant, or one of the soldiers, would have rushed forward to stamp out the tiny fire, but no one moved. They wanted me dead. ‘It has been demonstrated to us,’ Plegmund broke the silence, ‘that you have been consorting with our king’s enemies, that you have conspired with them, that you have eaten their bread and taken their salt. Worse, you have admitted to slaying the holy Abbot Deorlaf and two of his brethren and…’

‘The holy Abbot Deorlaf,’ I interrupted him, ‘was in league with the witch Ælfadell, and the holy Abbot Deorlaf wished to kill me. What was I supposed to do? Turn the other cheek?’

‘You will be silent!’ Plegmund said.

I took two steps forward and ground out the burning rushes with my boot. One of Godric’s soldiers, thinking I was about to attack the clergymen, had drawn back his spear and I turned and looked at him. Just looked. He reddened and, very slowly, the spear went down. ‘I have fought your king’s enemies,’ I said, still gazing at the spearman, but then turning towards Plegmund, ‘as Bishop Erkenwald well knows. While other men cowered behind burh walls I was leading your king’s army. I stood in the shield wall. I cut down foemen, I reddened the soil with the blood of your enemies, I burned ships, I took the fort at Beamfleot.’

‘And you wear the hammer!’ Asser’s voice was shrill. He was pointing at my amulet with a shaking finger, ‘it is the symbol of our enemies, the very sign of those who would torture Christ again, and you wear it even in the court of our king!’

‘What did your mother do?’ I asked. ‘Fart like a mare? And there you were?’

‘Enough,’ Plegmund said tiredly.

It was not hard to guess who had dripped poison in their ears; my cousin Æthelred. He was the titular Lord of Mercia, the closest thing that country had to a king, yet every man knew that he was a puppy on a West Saxon leash. He wanted that leash cut, and when Alfred died he would doubtless look for a crown. And for a new wife, the old being Æthelflaed who had added horns to his leash. A leashed and horned puppy who wanted revenge, and wanted me dead because he knew there were too many men in Mercia who would follow me rather than him.

‘It is our duty to decide your fate,’ Plegmund said.

‘The Norns do that,’ I said, ‘at Yggdrasil’s root.’

‘Heathen,’ Asser hissed.

‘The kingdom must be protected,’ the archbishop went on, ignoring both of us, ‘it must have the shield of faith and the sword of righteousness, and there is no place in God’s kingdom for a man of no faith, a man who could turn against us at any moment. Uhtred of Bebbanburg, I must tell you…’

But whatever he was about to tell me went untold because the door at the hall’s end creaked open. ‘The king wants to see him,’ a familiar voice said.

I turned to see Steapa standing there. Good Steapa, commander of Alfred’s household troops, a peasant slave who had risen to become a great warrior, a man daft as a barrel of loam and strong as an ox, a friend, a man as true as any I have known. ‘The king,’ he said in his stolid voice.

‘But…’ Plegmund began.

‘The king wants me, you snaggle-toothed bastard,’ I told him, then looked at the spearman who had threatened me. ‘If you ever point a blade at me again,’ I promised him, ‘I’ll rip your belly open and feed your entrails to my dogs.’

The Norns were probably laughing, and I went to see the king.