The Burning Land

THREE

Seventy of us rode toward the pyre of smoke that now appeared as a dark slow-moving smudge on the hazed horizon. Half the seventy were my men and half were Mercians. I had left my children in the village where Osferth and Beornoth were under orders to wait for our return.

Æthelflæd insisted on riding with us. I tried to stop her, but she would take no orders from me. “This is my country,” she said firmly, “and my people, and I need to see what is being done to them.”

“Probably nothing,” I said. Fires were frequent. Houses had thatched roofs and open hearths, and sparks and straw go ill together, but I still had a sense of foreboding that had made me dress in mail before we started this return journey. My first response on seeing the smoke had been to suspect Haesten and, though reflection made that explanation seem ever more unlikely, I could not lose the suspicion.

“There’s no other smoke,” Finan noted when we had retraced half our steps. Usually, if an army scavenges through a land, it fires every village, yet only the one dark smoke plume drifted skyward. “And Lecelad’s a far way from East Anglia,” he went on, “if that fire is in Lecelad.”

“True enough,” I grunted. Lecelad was a long way from Haesten’s camp in Beamfleot, indeed so deep in Saxon country that any Danish army marching straight on Lecelad was putting itself in danger. None of it made sense, unless, as both Finan and I wanted to believe, it was simply an errant spark and dry thatch.

The fire was indeed at Lecelad. It took some time to be certain of that for the land was flat and our view was obscured by trees, but we had no doubts once we were close enough to see the heat shimmering amidst the smoke. We were following the river, but now I turned away so that we could approach the village from the north. That, I believed, would be the direction in which any Danes retreated and we might have a chance to intercept them. Reason still said this had to be a simple house fire, but my instincts were also prickling uncomfortably.

We reached the northward road to see it had been churned by hooves. The weather had been dry, so the hoofprints were not distinct, but even at a glance I could tell they had not been left by Aldhelm’s men who, just the day before, had used this same track to approach Lecelad. There were too many prints, and those that pointed northward had mostly obliterated the ones going south. That meant whoever had ridden to Lecelad had already ridden away.

“Been and gone,” Father Pyrlig said. He was in his priestly robes, but had a big sword strapped at his waist.

“At least a hundred of them,” Finan said, looking at the hoofprints that spread either side of the track.

I gazed northward, but could see nothing. If the raiding horsemen had still been close I would have seen dust hanging in the air, but the country was calm and green. “Let’s see what the bastards did,” I said, and turned southward.

Whoever had come and gone, and I was certain it was Haesten’s men, they had been swift. I guessed they had arrived at Lecelad at dusk, had done whatever damage they wanted and then left in the dawn. They knew they were dangerously deep in Saxon Mercia and so they had not lingered. They had struck fast, and even now they were hurrying back to safer ground while we rode into the ever thickening smell of wood smoke. Of wood smoke and of burning flesh.

The convent was gone, or rather it had been reduced to a blazing framework of oak beams that, as we approached, finally collapsed with a great crash that made my stallion rear in fright. Embers whirled upward in a great gout of wind-billowed smoke. “Oh, dear God,” Æthelflaed said, making the sign of the cross. She was gazing in horror at one section of the convent’s palisade that had been spared the fire, and there, on the timbers, pinioned with widespread arms, was a small naked body. “No!” Æthelflæd said and spurred her horse through the hot ash that had spread from the fire.

“Come back!” I shouted, but Æthelflæd had thrown herself from her saddle to kneel at the foot of the corpse, a woman. It was Werburgh, the abbess, and she had been crucified on the palisade. Her hands and feet were pierced by great dark nails. Her small weight had torn the flesh, sinews, and bones about the great nails so that the wounds were stretched and rivulets of drying blood laced her pitifully thin arms. Æthelflæd was kissing the abbess’s nailed feet and resisted when I tried to pull her away. “She was a good woman, Uhtred,” Æthelflæd protested, and just then Werburgh’s torn right hand ripped itself free of the nail and the corpse lurched and its arm swung down to strike Æthelflæd’s head. Æthelflæd gave a small scream, then seized the ragged bloody hand and kissed it. “She blessed me, Uhtred. She was dead, but she blessed me! Did you see?”

“Come away,” I said gently.

“She touched me!”

“Come away,” I said again, and this time she let me draw her from the corpse and away from the heat of the fire just beyond.

“She must be buried properly,” Æthelflæd insisted and tried to pull from me to return to the corpse.

“She will be,” I said, holding her.

“Don’t let her burn!” Æthelflæd said through tears, “she mustn’t taste the fires of hell, Uhtred! Let me spare her the fire!”

Werburgh was very close to the furnace heat that was scorching the farther side of the palisade that I knew would ignite at any moment. I pushed Æthelflæd away, stepped back to Werburgh, and dragged her small body free of the remaining two nails. I draped her over my shoulder just as a gust of wind dipped a thick cloud of dark smoke to envelop me. I felt sudden heat on my back and knew the palisade had burst into flames, but Werburgh’s body was safe. I laid her facedown on the river bank and Æthelflæd covered the corpse with a cloak. The West Saxon troops, reinforced now to around forty men, gaped at us from the southern bank.

“Jesus, Patrick, and Joseph,” Finan said as he approached me. He glanced at Æthelflæd who was kneeling by the abbess’s body and I sensed Finan did not want Æthelflæd to hear whatever he had to say, so I led him down the river toward the mill that was also burning. “The bastards dug up Aldhelm’s grave,” Finan said.

“I put him there,” I said, “so I should worry what they did?”

“They mutilated him,” Finan said angrily. “Took all his clothes, his mail, and cut up his corpse. There were pigs eating him when we found him.” He made the sign of the cross.

I stared at the village. The church, convent, and mill had all been fired, but only two of the cottages had been burned, though doubtless all had been ransacked. The raiders had been in a hurry and had fired what was most valuable, but had not had the time to destroy the whole of Lecelad. “Haesten’s a nasty creature,” I said, “but mutilating a corpse and crucifying a woman? That isn’t like him.”

“It was Skade, lord,” Finan said. He beckoned to a man dressed in a short mail coat and wearing a helmet that had rust on its riveted joints. “You! Come here!” he called.

The man knelt to me and clawed off his helmet. “My name’s Cealworth, lord,” he said, “and I serve Ealdorman Æthelnoth.”

“You’re one of the sentries across the river?” I asked.

“Yes, lord.”

“We brought him across the river in a boat,” Finan explained. “Now tell the Lord Uhtred what you saw.”

“It was a woman, lord,” Cealworth said nervously, “a tall woman with long black hair. The same woman, lord,” he stopped, then decided he had nothing more to say.

“Go on,” I said.

“The same woman I saw at Fearnhamme, lord. After the battle.”

“Stand up,” I told him. “Are any villagers alive?” I asked Finan.

“Some,” he said bleakly.

“A few swam the river, lord,” Cealworth said.

“And the ones that live,” Finan said, “all tell the same tale.”

“Skade?” I asked.

The Irishman nodded. “It seems she led them, lord.”

“Haesten wasn’t here?”

“If he was, lord, then no one noticed him.”

“The woman gave all the orders, lord,” Cealworth said.

I stared northward and wondered what happened in the rest of Mercia. I was looking for the telltale plumes of smoke, but saw none. Æthelflæd came to stand beside me and, without thinking, I put an arm about her shoulder. She did not move.

“Why did they come here?” Finan asked.

“For me,” Æthelflæd said bitterly.

“That would make sense, my lady,” Finan said.

In a way it made sense. I did not doubt that Haesten would have sent spies into Mercia. Those spies would have been merchants or vagabonds, anyone with a reason to travel, and they would have told him Æthelflæd was a prisoner in Lecelad, and Æthelflæd would certainly make a powerful and useful hostage, but why send Skade to capture her? I thought, though I did not speak the thought aloud, that it was much more likely that Skade had come for my children. Haesten’s spies would have learned that the three were with Æthelflæd, and Skade hated me now. And when Skade hated there was no cruelty sufficient to slake her appetite. I knew my suspicion was right and I shuddered. If Skade had come just two days earlier she would have taken my children and had me in her power. I touched Thor’s hammer. “We bury the dead,” I said, “then we ride.” Just then a bee landed on my right hand that was still resting on Æthelflæd’s shoulder. I did not try to brush it off, for I did not want to take my arm away. I felt it first, then saw it crawling dozily toward my thumb. It would fly away, I thought, but then, for no reason, it stung me. I swore at the sudden pain and slapped the insect dead, startling Æthelflæd.

“Rub an onion on the sting,” she told me, but I could not be bothered to hunt for an onion, so I left it alone. I knew the sting was an omen, a message from the gods, but I did not want to think about it, for it could surely be no good sign.

We buried the dead. Most of the nuns had been shrunken to small burned corpses scarce bigger than children, and now they shared a grave with their crucified abbess. Father Pyrlig spoke words over their bodies, and then we rode westward again. By the time we discovered Osferth and Beornoth, their men, and my family, my hand was so swollen that I could scarcely fold the puffy fingers around the stallion’s reins. I could certainly not hold a sword with any skill. “It’ll be gone in a week,” Finan said.

“If we have a week,” I said gloomily. He looked at me quizzically, and I shrugged. “The Danes are on the move,” I said, “and we don’t know what’s happening.”

We were still traveling with my men’s wives and families. They slowed us down, and so I left a score of men to guard them as they followed us, and hurried on toward Gleawecestre. We spent the night in the hills to the west of that city and, in the dawn, saw smears in the sky far to the east and north. There were too many to count and in places they joined together to make darker patches that might have been clouds, though I doubted it. Æthelflæd saw them too and frowned. “My poor country,” she said.

“Haesten,” I said.

“My husband should have marched against them already,” she said.

“You think he has?”

She shook her head. “He’ll wait for Aldhelm to tell him what to do.”

I laughed at that. We had reached the hills above the valley of the Sæfern and I checked my horse to gaze down at my cousin’s holdings that lay just south of Gleawecestre. Æthelred’s father had been content with a hall half the size that his son had built, and beside that new and magnificent hall were stables, a church, barns, and a massive granary raised on stone mushrooms to keep the rats at bay. All the buildings, new and old, were surrounded by a palisade. We cantered down the hill. Guards stood on a timber platform above the gate, but they must have recognized Æthelflæd because they made no attempt to challenge us, but just ordered that the great gates be pushed open.

Æthelred’s steward met us in the wide courtyard. If he was aston ished to see Æthelflæd he showed no sign of it, but just bowed deeply and welcomed her graciously. Slaves brought us bowls of water so we could wash our hands, while stable boys took our horses. “My lord is in the hall, lady,” the steward told Æthelflæd, and for the first time sounded nervous.

“Is he well?” Æthelflæd asked.

“God be praised, yes,” he answered, and his eyes flicked to me and back to her. “You’ve come for the council, perhaps?”

“What council?” Æthelflæd asked, taking a woolen cloth from a slave to dry her hands.

“There is trouble from the heathens, lady,” the steward said cautiously, then glanced at me again.

“This is the Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” Æthelflæd said with apparent carelessness, “and yes, we’ve come for the council.”

“I shall tell your husband you are here,” the steward said. He had looked startled when he heard my name and taken a hasty backward step.

“No need for an announcement,” Æthelflæd said sharply.

“Your swords?” the steward asked. “If you please, my lords, your swords?”

“Is anyone else armed in the hall?” I asked.

“The ealdorman’s own guards, lord, no one else.”

I hesitated, then gave the steward my two swords. It was usual to wear no weapon in a king’s hall, and Æthelred evidently saw himself as near enough to a king to demand the same courtesy. It was more than a courtesy, it was a precaution against the slaughter that could follow a drunken feast. I half wondered if I should keep Serpent-Breath, but reckoned the long blade would be a provocation.

I took Osferth, Finan, Father Pyrlig, and Beornoth. My hand was throbbing and red, the flesh so swollen that I thought the simple touch of a knife’s edge would split it open like bursting fruit. I kept it hidden beneath my cloak as we went from the sunlight into the shadowed darkness of Æthelred’s great hall.

If the steward’s first response to seeing Æthelflæd had been restrained, her husband’s was the very opposite. He looked irritated when we first walked into the hall, plainly offended at the inter ruption, then hopeful, because he must have thought Aldhelm had arrived, and then he recognized us and, for a gratifying instant, he appeared terrified. He was sitting in a chair, more of a throne than a chair, that was set on the dais where, normally, the high table would be set for feasting. He wore a thin bronze circlet on his red hair, a circlet that fell just short of a crown. He had a thick gold chain over his embroidered jerkin and a fur-trimmed cloak that had been dyed a deep scarlet. Two men with swords and shields stood at the back of the dais, while Æthelred was flanked by a pair of priests who sat facing four benches set on the rush-strewn floor. Eighteen men occupied the benches and they all turned to stare at us. The priest on Æthelred’s right was my old enemy, Bishop Asser, and he was looking at me with wide-open eyes and unconcealed surprise. If Alfred had manipulated me into returning, then he had plainly not told Asser.

It was Asser who broke the silence, and that by itself was interesting. This hall belonged to Æthelred who was the Ealdorman of Mercia, yet the Welsh bishop thought nothing of assuming authority. It was a sign of Alfred’s dominance over Saxon Mercia, a dominance that Æthelred secretly detested. He could not wait for Alfred to die so he could turn the circlet into a proper crown, yet he also needed the assistance that Wessex gave. Bishop Asser, shrewd and waspish, was undoubtedly here to pass on Alfred’s commands, but now he stood and pointed a bony finger at me. “You!” he said. A pair of hounds had rushed to greet Æthelflæd. She soothed them. There was a babble of voices that Bishop Asser overrode. “You were declared outlaw,” he yapped.

I told him to be silent, but of course he went on protesting, becoming ever more indignant until Father Pyrlig spoke to him in Welsh. I had no idea what Pyrlig said, but it silenced Asser who just spluttered and kept pointing at me. I assume Father Pyrlig revealed that Alfred had conspired at my return, but that was small consolation to the bishop, who regarded me as a creature sent by his religion’s demon, the creature they call Satan. Whatever, he stayed silent as Æthelflaed went to the dais and snapped her fingers to a servant who hurried to fetch her a chair. She leaned down to Æthelred and gave him a very public kiss on the cheek, but she also whispered something in his ear and I saw him redden. Then she sat next to him and reached for his hand. “Do sit down, bishop,” she told Asser, then looked gravely at the assembled lords. “I bring bad news,” she said. “The Danes have destroyed the convent at Lecelad. Every dear sister there is dead, as is my dear Lord Aldhelm. I pray for their souls.”

“Amen,” Father Pyrlig roared.

“How did the Lord Aldhelm die?” Bishop Asser asked.

“There will be a time for sad tales when our more urgent business is decided,” Æthelflæd said without looking at Asser, “for the moment I wish to know how we are to defeat the Jarl Haesten.”

The next few moments were confusing. The truth was that none of the assembled lords knew the extent of Haesten’s invasion. At least a dozen messengers had come overnight to Gleawecestre and they had all brought dire tidings of savage and sudden attacks by Danish horsemen, and as I listened to the various reports I realized that Haesten had set out to confuse the Mercians. He must have led two or three thousand men and he had divided them into smaller groups and sent them to harry, plunder, and destroy all across northern Mercia. It was impossible to say where the Danes were because they appeared to be everywhere.

“What do they want?” Æthelred asked plaintively.

“He wants to sit where you’re sitting,” I answered.

“You have no authority here,” Bishop Asser snarled.

“Bishop,” Æthelflæd spoke crisply, “if you have something useful to say, then please feel free to say it. But if you simply wish to make a nuisance of yourself then go to the church and take your complaints to God.” That caused an astonished silence. The real authority in the hall belonged to Bishop Asser because he was Alfred’s envoy, yet Æthelflaed had publicly slapped him down. She met his indignant gaze calmly, and kept her eyes on his until he gave way. Then she turned to the lords. “The questions we need answered are simple,” she said. “How many Danes are there? What is their aim? How many men can we assemble to oppose them? And where do we take those men?”

Æthelred still seemed stunned by his wife’s return. Every lord in the hall must have known of their estrangement, yet here Æthelflæd was, calmly holding her husband’s hand and no one dared challenge her presence. Æthelred himself was so shaken that he allowed her to dominate the council, and she did it well. There was a soft sweetness in Æthelflæd’s look, but that sweetness disguised a mind as thoughtful as her father’s and a will as strong as her mother’s. “Don’t all speak at once,” she commanded, raising her voice over the confusion. “Lord Ælfwold,” she smiled at a grim-looking man sitting on the bench closest to the dais, “your lands have suffered most, it seems, so what is your estimation of the enemy’s numbers?”

“Between two and three thousand,” he answered. He shrugged. “It could be many more, it’s hard to tell.”

“Because they ride in small groups?”

“At least a dozen bands,” Ælfwold said, “maybe as many as twenty.”

“And how many men can we lead against them?” she asked the question of her husband, her voice respectful.

“Fifteen hundred,” he said surlily.

“We must have more warriors than that!” Æthelflæd said.

“Your father,” Æthelred said, and he could not resist saying those two words with derision, “insists we leave five hundred to protect Lundene.”

“I thought the Lundene garrison was West Saxon,” I put in, and I should have known because I had commanded that garrison for five years.

“Alfred has left three hundred men in Lundene,” Bishop Asser said, forcing cordiality into his voice, “and the rest have gone to Wintanceaster.”

“Why?”

“Because Haesten sent us a warning,” the bishop said bitterly. He paused, and his weasel face twitched uncontrollably, “that you and the northern jarls planned an attack on Wessex.” The hatred in his voice was unmistakable. “Is that true?”

I hesitated. I had not betrayed Ragnar’s plans because he was my friend, which meant I had left the discovery of the Northumbrian attack to fate, but Haesten, it seemed, had already sent a warning. He had done it, clearly, to keep West Saxon troops out of Mercia, and it seemed the warning had been successful.

“Well?” Æthelred, aware of my discomfort, pressed the attack.

“The Northumbrian jarls have discussed an attack on Wessex,” I said weakly.

“Will it happen?” Asser wanted to know.

“Probably,” I said.

“Probably,” Bishop Asser sneered the word, “and what is your role, Lord Uhtred?” The derision with which he spoke my name had an edge as sharp as Serpent-Breath. “To mislead us? To betray us? To slaughter more Christians?” He stood again, sensing his advantage. “In Christ’s name,” he shouted, “I demand this man’s arrest!”

No one moved to take hold of me. Æthelred gestured at his two household warriors, but the gesture lacked conviction and neither man moved.

“The Lord Uhtred is here to protect me,” Æthelflæd broke the silence.

“You have a nation’s warriors to protect you,” Asser said, sweeping his arm to encompass the men sitting on the benches.

“What need I of a nation’s warriors,” Æthelflæd asked, “when I have Lord Uhtred?”

“The Lord Uhtred,” Asser said in his sharp voice, “cannot be trusted.”

“You’d listen to that Welsh piece of gristle,” I addressed the men on the benches. “A Welshman saying a Saxon can’t be trusted? How many men here have lost friends, sons, or brothers to Welsh treachery? If the Danes are Mercia’s worst enemy, then the Welsh are the next worst. We’re going to take lessons in loyalty from a Welshman?”

I heard Father Pyrlig mutter behind me, but again he spoke in Welsh. I suspect he was insulting me, but he knew well enough why I had spoken as I did. I was appealing to the deep-seated mistrust that all Mercians felt for the Welsh. Since the beginning of Mercia, deep in the lost times of our ancestors, the Welsh had raided Saxon lands to steal cattle, women, and treasure. They called our land their “lost land,” and ever in Welsh hearts is a wish to drive the Saxons back across the sea, and so few men in Æthelred’s hall had any love for their ancestral enemies.

“The Welsh,” Asser shouted, “are Christians! And now is the time for all Christians to unite against the pagan filth that threatens our faith. Look!” His finger was pointing again. “The Lord Uhtred wears the symbol of Thor. He is an idolater, a heathen, an enemy of our dear Lord Jesus Christ!”

“He is my friend,” Æthelflæd said, “and I trust him with my life.”

“He is an idolater,” Asser repeated, evidently thinking that was the worst he could say of me. “He betrayed his sworn oath! He killed a saint! He is an enemy of all that we hold most dear, he is the…” His voice died away.

He had gone silent because I had climbed the dais and pushed him hard in the chest so that he was forced to sit down. Now I leaned on the chair’s arms and looked into his eyes. “You want martyrdom?” I asked. He took a deep breath to reply, then thought better of saying anything. I smiled into his furious face and patted his sallow cheek before turning back to the benches. “I am here to fight for the Lady Æthelflæd, and she is here to fight for Mercia. If any of you believe Mercia will suffer because of my help then I am sure she will relieve me of my oath and I will depart.”

No one seemed to want my departure. The men in the hall were embarrassed, but Ælfwold, who had already suffered from Haesten’s invasion, returned the discussion to its proper place. “We don’t have the men to face Haesten,” he said unhappily, “not without West Saxon help.”

“And that help is not coming,” I said, “isn’t that true, bishop?” Asser nodded. He was too angry to speak. “There will be an attack on Wessex,” I said, “and Alfred will need his army to meet that attack, so we must cope with Haesten on our own.”

“How?” Ælfwold asked. “Haesten’s men are everywhere and nowhere! We send an army to find them and they’ll just ride around us.”

“You retreat into your burhs,” I said. “Haesten isn’t equipped to besiege fortified towns. The fyrd protects the burhs, and you take your cattle and silver behind those walls. Let Haesten burn as many villages as he likes, he can’t capture a properly defended burh.”

“So we just let him ravage Mercia while we cower behind walls?” Ælfwold asked.

“Of course not,” I said.

“Then what?” Æthelred asked.

I hesitated again. Haesten, by all reports, had chosen a new strategy. When Harald had invaded Wessex the year before he had brought a great army and with it he had brought an army’s baggage: the women and children and animals and slaves. But Haesten, if the urgent messages spoke true, had brought nothing but horsemen. He had brought his own men, the survivors of Harald’s army, and the Danish warriors of East Anglia to plunder Mercia and they were moving fast, covering miles of ground, burning and stealing as they went. If we marched against them they could slide out of our path or, if we found ourselves in treacherous ground, assemble to attack us. Yet if we did nothing then inevitably Mercia would be weakened so much that men would rather seek Danish protection. So we had to strike a blow that would weaken the Danes before they weakened us. We had to be daring.

“Well?” Asser demanded, thinking that my hesitation denoted uncertainty.

And still I hesitated because I did not think it could be done.

Yet I could not think what else we could do.

Everyone in that hall was watching me, some with unconcealed dislike, others with desperate hope. “Lord Uhtred?” Æthelflæd prompted me gently.

So I told them.

Nothing was simple. Æthelred argued that Haesten’s ambition was to capture Gleawecestre. “He’ll use it as a base to attack Wessex,” he argued, and reminded Bishop Asser how, many years be fore, Guthrum had used Gleawecestre as the place to assemble the Danish army that had come closest to conquering Wessex. Asser agreed with the argument, probably because he wanted the thegns to reject my plan. In the end it was Æthelflæd who cut the argument short. “I go with Uhtred,” she said, “and those who wish can come with us.”

Æthelred would not accompany me. He had always disliked me, but now that dislike was pure hatred because I had rescued Æthelflaed from his spite. He wanted to defeat the Danes, but even more he wanted Alfred dead, Æthelflæd put aside, and his chair turned into a real throne. “I shall assemble the army in Gleawecestre,” he declared, “and thwart any attack on Wessex. That is my decision.” He looked at the men on the benches. “I expect you all to join me. I demand that you join me. We muster in four days!”

Æthelflæd gave me a quizzical glance. “Lundene,” I mouthed to her.

“I go to Lundene,” she said, “and those of you who wish to see a Mercia free of the heathens will join me there. In four days.”

If I had been Æthelred I would have scotched Æthelflæd’s defiance there and then. He had armed men in the hall while none of us wore a weapon, and a single command could have left me dead on the floor’s rushes. But he lacked the courage. He knew I had men outside the hall and perhaps he feared their vengeance. He quivered when I approached his chair, then looked up at me with nervous and sullen eyes. “Æthelflæd remains your wife,” I told him quietly, “but if she dies mysteriously, or if she sickens, or if I hear rumors of a spell cast against her, then I shall find you, cousin, and I shall suck the eyeballs out of your skull and spit them down your throat so you choke to death.” I smiled. “Send your men to Lundene and keep your country.”

He did not send men to Lundene, nor did most of the Mercian lords. They were frightened of my idea and they looked to Æthelred for patronage. He was the gold-giver in Mercia, while Æthelflæd was almost as poor as I was. So most of Mercia’s warriors went to Gleawecestre and Æthelred kept them there, waiting for an attack from Haesten that never came.

Haesten was plundering all across Mercia. In the next few days, as I waited at Lundene and listened to the reports brought by fugitives, I saw how the Danes were moving with lightning speed. They were capturing anything of value, whether it was an iron spit, a harness, or a child, and all that plunder was sent back to Beamfleot where Haesten had his stronghold above the Temes shore. He was amassing a treasure there, a treasure that could be sold in Frankia. His success brought more Danes to his side, men from across the sea who saw Mercia’s impending fall and wanted to share in the land that would be divided when the conquest was done. Haesten captured some towns, those that had not yet been turned into burhs, and the silver from their churches, convents, and monasteries flowed back to Beamfleot. Alfred did send men to Gleawecestre, but only a few, because rumors were now rife of a great Northumbrian fleet sailing southward. It was all chaos.

And I was helpless because, after four days, I led only eighty-three men. They were my own shrunken crew and those few Mercians who had come in response to Æthelflæd’s summons. Beornoth was one, though most of the men who had sided with me at Lecelad had stayed with Æthelred. “More would have come, lord,” Beornoth told me, “but they’re frightened of the ealdorman’s displeasure.”

“What would he do to them?”

“Take their homes, lord. How do they live, except on his generosity?”

“Yet you came,” I said.

“You gave me my life, lord,” he said.

My old house was now occupied by the garrison’s new commander, a dour West Saxon called Weohstan who had fought at Fearnhamme. When I had reached Lundene, arriving unexpectedly on a rainswept night, Bishop Erkenwald had ordered Weohstan to arrest me, but Weohstan had doggedly ignored the order. Instead he came to see me in the Mercian royal palace that occupied the old Roman governor’s mansion. “Are you here to fight the Danes, lord?” he asked me.

“He is,” Æthelflæd answered for me.

“Then I’m not sure I have enough men to arrest you,” Weohstan said.

“How many do you have?”

“Three hundred,” he said with a smile.

“Not nearly enough,” I assured him.

I told him what I planned and he looked skeptical. “I’ll help you if I can,” he promised, but there was doubt in his voice. He had lost almost all his teeth so his speech was a hissing slur. He was over thirty years old, bald as an egg, ruddy faced, short in stature, but broad in the shoulders. He had skill with weapons and a hard manner that made him an effective leader, but Weohstan was also cautious. I would have trusted him to defend a wall forever, but he was not a man to lead a bold attack. “You can help me now,” I told him that first day, and asked to borrow a ship.

He frowned as he considered the request, then decided he was not risking too much in granting it. “Bring it back, lord,” he said.

Bishop Erkenwald tried to stop me taking the ship downriver. He met me at the wharf beside my old house. Weohstan had tactfully found business elsewhere and though Erkenwald had brought his personal guard, those three men were no match for my crew. The bishop confronted me. “I govern Lundene,” he said, which was true, “and you must leave.”

“I am leaving.” I gestured at the waiting ship.

“Not in one of our ships!”

“Then stop me,” I said.

“Bishop,” Æthelflæd was with me and intervened.

“It is not a woman’s place to speak of men’s business!” Erkenwald turned on her.

Æthelflæd bridled. “I am…”

“Your place, lady, is with your husband!”

I took Erkenwald by the shoulders and steered him onto the terrace where Gisela and I had spent so many quiet evenings. Erkenwald, much smaller than me, tried to resist my arm, but he stayed still when I released him. The water foamed through the gaps in the old Roman bridge, forcing me to raise my voice. “What do you know of Æthelred and Æthelflæd?” I asked.

“It is not for man to interfere in the sacrament of marriage,” he said dismissively.

“You’re not a fool, bishop,” I said.

He glared up at me with his dark eyes. “The blessed apostle Paul,” he said, “instructs wives to submit to their husbands. You would have me preach the opposite?”

“I would have you be sensible,” I said. “The Danes want to eradicate your religion. They see Wessex weakened by Alfred’s sickness. They would destroy Saxon power in Mercia, then move against Wessex. If they have their way, bishop, then within a few weeks some spear-Dane will be skewering your belly and you’ll be a martyr. Æthelflæd wants to stop that and I’m here to help her.”

To his credit Erkenwald did not accuse me of treachery. Instead he bristled. “Her husband also wishes to stop the Danes,” he said firmly.

“Her husband also wants to separate Mercia from Wessex,” I said. He did not say anything to that because he knew it was true. “So who do you trust to protect you from martyrdom?” I asked. “Æthelred or me?”

“God will protect me,” he said stubbornly.

“I shall only be here a few days,” I said, “and you can help me or hinder me. If you fight me, bishop, you make it more likely that the Danes will win.”

He looked across at Æthelflæd and a tremor showed on his thin face. He was smelling sin in our apparent alliance, but he was also thinking of the vision I had given him, a vision of a mail-coated Dane thrusting a blade into his belly. “Bring the ship back,” he said grudgingly, echoing Weohstan, then abruptly turned and walked away.

The ship was the Haligast that had once been the vessel that carried Alfred up and down the Temes, but it seemed his sickness had caused him to abandon such voyages and so the small Haligast had been brought through the treacherous gap between the bridge piers and was now used as a scouting vessel. Her master was Ralla, an old friend. “She’s light-built,” he said of the Haligast, “and she’s quick.”

“Faster than Seolferwulf?” I asked. He had known my ship well.

“Nowhere close, lord,” he said, “but she runs well on the wind, and if the Danes get too close we can use shallower water.”

“When I was here,” I said in a mild voice, “the Danes would run from us.”

“Things change,” Ralla said gloomily.

“Are the pagans attacking ships?” Æthelflæd asked.

“We haven’t seen a trading ship in two weeks,” Ralla said, “so they must be.”

Æthelflæd had insisted on coming with me. I did not want her company because I have never thought women should be exposed to unnecessary danger, but I had learned not to argue with Alfred’s daughter. She wanted to be a part of the campaign against the Danes and I could not dissuade her, and so she stood with Ralla, Finan, and me on the steering platform as Ralla’s experienced crew took the Haligast downriver.

How many times had I made this voyage? I watched the glistening mudbanks slide past and it was all so familiar as we turned the river’s extravagant bends. We went with the tide, so our thirty oarsmen needed only make small tugs on their looms to keep the ship headed downriver. Swans beat from our path, while overhead the sky was busy with birds flying south. The marshy banks slowly receded as the river widened and imperceptibly turned into a sea reach, and then we headed slightly northward to let the Haligast drift along the East Anglian shore.

Again it was all so familiar. I gazed at the drab low land that was called East Sexe. It was edged with wetlands that slowly rose to plowed fields, then, abruptly, there was the great wooded hill that I knew so well. The crown of the hill had been cleared of trees so that it was a dome of grass where the huge fort dominated the Temes. Beamfleot. Æthelflæd had been imprisoned in that fort and she gazed at it wordlessly, though she reached for my hand and held onto it as she remembered those days when she was supposedly a hostage, but had fallen in love, only to lose the man to his brother’s sword.

Beneath the fort the ground fell steeply to a village, also called Beamfleot, that lay beside the muddy creek of Hothlege. The Hothlege separated Beamfleot from Caninga, a reed-thick island that could be flooded when the tide was high and when the wind blew hard from the east. I could see that the Hothlege was thick with boats, most of them hauled onto the beach beneath the great hill where they were protected by new forts that had been made at the creek’s eastern end. The two forts were a pair of beached and dismasted ships, one on either bank, their seaward planking built up to make high walls. I guessed a chain still ran across the Hothlege to stop enemy vessels entering the narrow channel.

“Closer,” I growled to Ralla.

“You want to run aground?”

“I want to get closer.”

I would have steered the Haligast myself except my bee-stung hand was still swollen and the skin taut. I let go of Æthelflæd’s hand to scratch the itch. “It won’t get better if you keep scratching it,” she said, taking my hand back.

Finan had shinned up the Haligast’s mast where, with his keen eyesight, he was counting Danish ships. “How many?” I called impatiently.

“Hundreds,” he shouted back and then, a moment later, gave a proper estimate. “About two hundred!” It was impossible to make an accurate count for the masts were thick as saplings, and some boats were dismasted and hidden by other hulls.

“Mary save us,” Æthelflæd said softly and made the sign of the cross.

“Nine thousand men?” Ralla suggested dourly.

“Not as many as that,” I said. Many of the boats belonged to the survivors of Harald’s army and those crews had been half slaughtered at Fearnhamme, yet even so I reckoned Haesten had twice as many men as we had estimated at Gleawecestre. Maybe as many as five thousand, and most of them were even now rampaging through Mercia, but enough remained at Beamfleot to form a garrison that watched us from their high wall. The sun’s reflection winked from spear-blades, but as I shaded my eyes and gazed at that formidable rampart on its steep hill it seemed to me that the fort was in disrepair. “Finan!” I shouted after a while, “are there gaps in that wall?”

He waited before answering. “They’ve built a new fort, lord! Down on the shore!”

I could not see the new fort from the Haligast’s deck, but I trusted Finan, whose eyes were better than mine. He scrambled down the mast after a few moments and explained that Haesten appeared to have abandoned the fort on the hill. “He has watchmen up there, lord, but his main force is down on the creek. There’s a big bastard of a wall there.”

“Why abandon the high ground?” Æthelflæd asked.

“It was too far from the ships,” I said. Haesten knew that better than anyone, for he had fought here before and his men had managed to burn Sigefrid’s ships before the Norseman could bring men down the hill to stop him. Now Haesten had blocked the creek beneath the hill, guarding its seaward end with the beached ships and the landward entrance with a new and formidable fortress. Between those strongholds were his ships. It meant we could probably take the old fort without much trouble, but holding the high ground would not help us because the new stronghold was out of arrow range.

“I couldn’t see very well,” Finan said, “but it looked to me as if the new fort is on an island.”

“He’s making it difficult,” I said mildly.

“Can it be done?” Æthelflæd asked, sounding dubious.

“It has to be done,” I said.

“We have no men!”

“Yet,” I said stubbornly.

Because my plan was to capture that stronghold. It was crammed with Haesten’s prisoners, all the women and children taken as slaves, and it was in Beamfleot’s new fort that his plunder was being stored. I suspected Haesten’s family was also there, indeed the families of every Dane ravaging Mercia were probably in that place. Their ships were there too, protected by the fort. If we could take the fort we could impoverish Haesten, capture dozens of hostages, and destroy a Danish fleet. If we could capture Beamfleot we would win a victory that would dismay the Danes and cheer every Saxon heart. The victory might not win the war, but it would weaken Haesten immeasurably and many of his followers, losing faith, would abandon him, for what kind of a leader was a man who could not protect his men’s families? Æthelred believed Mercia’s salvation was best secured by waiting for Haesten to attack Gleawecestre, but I believed we had to attack Haesten where he least expected an assault. We had to strike at his base, destroy his fleet, and take back his plunder.

“How many men do you have?” Ralla asked.

“Eighty-three at the last count.”

He laughed. “And how many do you need to capture Beamfleot?”

“Two thousand.”

“And you don’t believe in miracles?” Ralla asked.

Æthelflæd squeezed my hand. “The men will come,” she said, though she sounded far from convinced.

“Maybe,” I said. I was staring at the ships in their sheltered creek and thought, in its way, that Beamfleot was as impregnable as Bebbanburg. “And if they don’t come?” I said softly.

“What will you do?” Æthelflæd asked.

“Take you north,” I said, “take my children north, and fight till I have the silver to raise an army that can capture Bebbanburg.”

She turned her face up to mine. “No,” she said. “I am Mercian now, Uhtred.”

“Mercian and Christian,” I said sourly.

“Yes,” she said, “Mercian and Christian. And what are you, Lord Uhtred?”

I looked to where reflected sunlight winked from the spear-points of the watchmen on Beamfleot’s high hill. “A fool,” I said bitterly, “a fool.”

“My fool,” she said, and stood on tiptoe to kiss my cheek.

“Row!” Ralla bellowed, “row!” He shoved the steering oar hard over so that the Haligast turned southward and then west. Two large enemy ships were nosing out of the creek, sliding past the new ship-fortresses, their oar-banks catching the sun as they dipped and rose.

We fled upriver.

And, like the fool I was, I dreamed of capturing Beamfleot.