The Empty Throne

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2014

Maps © John Gilkes 2014

Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007504169

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007504183

Version: 2014-09-16

Dedication

For Peggy Davis

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Place names

Map

Prologue

Part One: The Dying Lord

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Part Two: The Lady of Mercia

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part Three: The God of War

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

HISTORICAL NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY BERNARD CORNWELL

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

PLACE NAMES

The spelling of place names in Anglo-Saxon England was an uncertain business, with no consistency and no agreement even about the name itself. Thus London was variously rendered as Lundonia, Lundenberg, Lundenne, Lundene, Lundenwic, Lundenceaster and Lundres. Doubtless some readers will prefer other versions of the names listed below, but I have usually employed whichever spelling is cited in either the Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names or the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names for the years nearest or contained within Alfred’s reign, AD 871–899, but even that solution is not foolproof. Hayling Island, in 956, was written as both Heilincigae and Hæglingaiggæ. Nor have I been consistent myself; preferring the modern form Northumbria to Norðhymbralond to avoid the suggestion that the boundaries of the ancient kingdom coincide with those of the modern county. So this list, like the spellings themselves, is capricious.

Abergwaun

Fishguard, Pembrokeshire

Alencestre

Alcester, Warwickshire

Beamfleot

Benfleet, Essex

Bebbanburg

Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland

Brunanburh

Bromborough, Cheshire

Cadum

Caen, Normandy

Ceaster

Chester, Cheshire

Cirrenceastre

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Cracgelad

Cricklade, Wiltshire

Cumbraland

Cumbria

Defnascir

Devonshire

Eoferwic

York

Eveshomme

Evesham, Worcestershire

Fagranforda

Fairford, Gloucestershire

Fearnhamme

Farnham, Surrey

Gleawecestre

Gloucester, Gloucestershire

Lundene

London

Lundi

Lundy Island, Devon

Mærse

River Mersey

Neustria

Westernmost province of Frankia, including Normandy

Sæfern

River Severn

Scireburnan

Sherborne, Dorset

Sealtwic

Droitwich, Worcestershire

Teotanheale

Tettenhall, West Midlands

Thornsæta

Dorset

Tyddewi

St Davids, Pembrokeshire

Wiltunscir

Wiltshire

Wintanceaster

Winchester, Hampshire

Wirhealum

The Wirral, Cheshire

PROLOGUE

My name is Uhtred. I am the son of Uhtred, who was the son of Uhtred, and his father was also called Uhtred. My father wrote his name thus, Uhtred, but I have seen the name written as Utred, Ughtred or even Ootred. Some of those names are on ancient parchments which declare that Uhtred, son of Uhtred and grandson of Uhtred, is the lawful, sole and eternal owner of the lands that are carefully marked by stones and by dykes, by oaks and by ash, by marsh and by sea. That land is in the north of the country we have learned to call Englaland. They are wave-beaten lands beneath a wind-driven sky. It is the land we call Bebbanburg.

I did not see Bebbanburg till I was grown, and the first time we attacked its high walls we failed. My father’s cousin ruled the great fortress then. His father had stolen it from my father. It was a bloodfeud. The church tried to stop the feud, saying the enemy of all Saxon Christians was the pagan Northmen, whether Danish or Norse, but my father swore me to the feud. If I had refused the oath he would have disinherited me, just as he disinherited and disowned my older brother, not because my brother would not pursue the feud, but because he became a Christian priest. I was once named Osbert, but when my elder brother became a priest I was given his name. My name is Uhtred of Bebbanburg.

My father was a pagan, a warlord, and frightening. He often told me he was frightened of his own father, but I cannot believe it because nothing seemed to frighten him. Many folk claim that our country would be called Daneland and we would all be worshipping Thor and Woden if it had not been for my father, and that is true. True and strange because he hated the Christian god, calling him ‘the nailed god’, yet despite his hatred he spent the greatest part of his life fighting against the pagans. The church will not admit that Englaland exists because of my father, claiming that it was made and won by Christian warriors, but the folk of Englaland know the truth. My father should have been called Uhtred of Englaland.

Yet in the year of our Lord 911 there was no Englaland. There was Wessex and Mercia and East Anglia and Northumbria, and as the winter turned to a sullen spring in that year I was on the border of Mercia and Northumbria in thickly wooded country north of the River Mærse. There were thirty-eight of us, all well mounted and all waiting among the winter-bare branches of a high wood. Beneath us was a valley in which a small fast stream flowed south, and where frost lingered in deep-shadowed gullies. The valley was empty, though just moments before some sixty-five riders had followed the stream southwards and then vanished where the valley and its stream turned sharply west. ‘Not long now,’ Rædwald said.

That was just nervousness and I made no answer. I was nervous too, but tried not to show it. Instead I imagined what my father would have done. He would have been hunched in the saddle, glowering and motionless, and so I hunched in my saddle and stared fixedly into the valley. I touched the hilt of my sword.

She was called Raven-Beak. I suppose she had another name before that because she had belonged to Sigurd Thorrson, and he must have given her a name though I never did find out what it was. At first I thought the sword was called Vlfberht because that strange name was inscribed on the blade in big letters. It looked like this:

But Finan, my father’s friend, told me that Vlfberht is the name of the Frankish smith who made her, and that he makes the finest and most expensive blades in all Christendom, and it must be Christendom because Vlfberht puts the crosses in front of and inside his name. I asked Finan how we could find Vlfberht to buy more swords, but Finan says he is a magic smith who works in secret. A blacksmith will leave his furnace for the night and return in the morning to find that Vlfberht has been in the smithy and left a sword forged in the fires of hell and quenched with dragon’s blood. I called her Raven-Beak because Sigurd’s banner had shown a raven. She had been the sword Sigurd carried when he fought me and when my seax had ripped his belly open. I remember that sword-stroke so well, remember the resistance of his fine mail suddenly giving way and the look in his eyes as he realised he was dying and the elation I felt as I dragged the seax sideways to empty his lifeblood. That had happened in the previous year at the battle at Teotanheale which had driven the Danes out of central Mercia, the same battle in which my father had killed Cnut Ranulfson, but in killing Cnut he had been wounded by Cnut’s sword, Ice-Spite.

Raven-Beak was a good sword, I thought her even better than Serpent-Breath, my father’s blade. She was long-bladed, but surprisingly light, and other swords broke against her edge. She was a warrior’s sword, and I carried her that day in the high wood above the frosted valley where the stream ran so fast. I carried Raven-Beak and my seax, Attor. Attor means venom and she was a short-sword, good for the crowded work of a shield wall. She stung, and it was her venom that had killed Sigurd. And I carried my round shield on which was painted the wolf’s head, the emblem of our family. I wore a helmet crested with a wolf’s head, and a coat of Frankish mail above a leather jerkin, and above it all a cloak of bear fur. I am Uhtred Uhtredson, the true lord of Bebbanburg, and I was nervous that day.

I led the war-band. I was just twenty-one years old and some of the men behind me were almost twice my age with many times my experience, but I was the son of Uhtred, a lord, and so I commanded. Most of the men were well back among the trees, only Rædwald and Sihtric were with me. Both were older, and both had been sent to offer me advice or, rather, to keep me from headstrong stupidity. I had known Sihtric for ever, he was one of my father’s trusted men, while Rædwald was a warrior in the service of the Lady Æthelflaed. ‘Maybe they’re not coming,’ he said. He was a steady man, cautious and careful, and I half suspected he hoped the enemy would not appear.

‘They’re coming,’ Sihtric grunted.

And they did come. They came hurrying from the north, a band of horsemen with shields, spears, axes and swords. Norsemen. I leaned forward in the saddle, trying to count the riders who spurred beside the stream. Three crews? At least one hundred men, and Haki Grimmson was among them, or at least his banner of a ship was there.

‘One hundred and twenty,’ Sihtric said.

‘More,’ Rædwald said.

‘One hundred and twenty,’ Sihtric insisted flatly.

One hundred and twenty horsemen pursuing the sixty-five who had ridden through the valley some moments before. One hundred and twenty men following Haki Grimmson’s banner that was supposed to show a red ship on a white sea, though the red dye of the wool had faded to brown and stained the white sea so that it seemed as if the high-prowed ship was bleeding. The standard-bearer was riding behind a big man on a powerful black horse and I assumed that big man was Haki. He was a Norseman who had settled in Ireland, from where he had crossed to Britain and found land north of the River Mærse and thought to make himself rich by raiding southwards into Mercia. He had taken slaves, cattle, and property, he had even assaulted the Roman walls of Ceaster, though that assault had been beaten off easily enough by the Lady Æthelflaed’s garrison. He was, in short, a nuisance, and that was why we were north of the Mærse, concealed among winter-bare trees and watching his war-band pound south on the frost-hardened track beside the stream.

‘We should …’ Rædwald began.

‘Not yet,’ I interrupted him. I touched Raven-Beak, making sure she moved in her scabbard.

‘Not yet,’ Sihtric agreed.

‘Godric!’ I called, and my servant, a twelve-year-old boy named Godric Grindanson, spurred from where my men waited. ‘Spear,’ I said.

‘Lord,’ he said, and handed me the nine-foot-long ash pole with the heavy iron spearhead.

‘You ride behind us,’ I told Godric, ‘well behind us. You have the horn?’

‘Yes, lord.’ He held up the horn to show me. The sound of the horn would summon help from the sixty-five riders if things went wrong, though I doubted they could offer any real help if my small war-band was attacked by Haki’s grim horsemen.

‘If they’ve dismounted,’ Sihtric spoke to the boy, ‘you help drive their horses away.’

‘I should stay close to …’ Godric began, plainly about to plead that he should stay by my side and so join the fight, but he stopped abruptly when Sihtric backhanded him across the face.

‘You help drive the horses away,’ Sihtric snarled.

‘I will,’ the boy said. His lip was bleeding.

Sihtric loosened the sword in his scabbard. As a boy he had been my father’s servant, and doubtless he had wanted to fight alongside the grown men back then, but there was no quicker way for a boy to die than trying to fight a battle-hardened Norseman. ‘Are we ready?’ he prompted me.

‘Let’s go and kill the bastards,’ I said.

Haki’s war-band had turned west and ridden out of sight. They were following the stream that flowed into a tributary of the Mærse some two miles beyond the valley’s sharp westwards turn. There was a small hill where the two streams joined, nothing more than a long grassy mound like the graves the old people placed all across the land, and that was where Haki would die or be defeated, which, in the end, amounted to the same thing.

We spurred down the hill, though I was in no hurry because I did not want Haki’s men to look behind and see us. We reached the stream and turned south. We did not hurry, indeed I slowed down as Sihtric rode ahead to scout. I watched as he dismounted and as he found a place from where he could see westwards. He was crouching and holding up one hand to caution us, and it was some time before he ran back to his horse and waved us on. He grinned at me when we joined him. ‘They stopped a ways down the valley,’ he said, his voice sibilant because a Danish spear had taken his front teeth at the battle at Teotanheale, ‘then unslung their shields.’ They had ridden beneath us with their shields strapped on their backs, but Haki obviously expected trouble where the valley ended and so had taken the time for his men to prepare for a fight. Our shields were already on our arms.

‘They’ll dismount when they reach the valley’s end,’ I said.

‘Then form a shield wall,’ Sihtric said.

‘So there’s no hurry,’ I finished the thought and grinned.

‘They might hurry,’ Rædwald suggested. He was worried that the fight would start without us.

I shook my head. ‘There are sixty-five Saxons waiting for them,’ I told him, ‘and Haki might outnumber them, but he’ll still be cautious.’ The Norseman would have almost twice as many warriors as the waiting Saxons, but those Saxons were on a hill and already formed into a shield wall. Haki would have to dismount his troops a good distance away so he was not attacked while his men formed their own shield wall, and only when they were formed and when the horses were safely led away would he advance, and that advance would be slow. It takes immense courage to fight in the shield wall when you can smell your enemy’s breath and the blades are falling and stabbing. He would advance slowly, confident in his numbers but careful in case the waiting Saxons had laid a trap. Haki could not afford to lose men. He might reckon he could win the fight where the stream joined the larger river, but he would still be cautious.

The Irish Norse were spreading into Britain. Finan, my father’s companion, claimed that the Irish tribesmen were too formidable an enemy, and so the Norse were being pinned to Ireland’s eastern coast. Yet on this side of the sea, the land north of the Mærse and south of the Scottish kingdoms was wild land, untamed, and so their ships crossed the waves to settle in the valleys of Cumbraland. Cumbraland was properly a part of Northumbria, but the Danish king in Eoferwic welcomed the newcomers. The Danes feared the growing power of the Saxons, and the Irish Norse were savage fighters who could help defend Danish-held land. Haki was merely the last to arrive, and he had thought to enrich himself at Mercia’s expense, which is why we had been sent to destroy him. ‘Remember!’ I called to my men. ‘Only one of them is to survive!’

Leave one alive, that had always been my father’s advice. Let one man take the bad news home to frighten the others, though I suspected all Haki’s men were here, which meant the survivor, if there was one, would take the news of the defeat to widows and orphans. The priests tell us to love our enemies, but to show them no mercy, and Haki had earned none. He had raided the lands around Ceaster and the garrison there, sufficient to hold the walls, but not sufficient to hold the walls and send a war-band across the Mærse at the same time, had appealed for help. We were the help, and now we rode westwards beside the stream, which grew wider and shallower, no longer hurrying over rocks. Stunted alders grew thick, their bare branches bent eastwards by the unending wind from the far sea. We passed a burned farmstead, nothing left there now except the blackened stones of a hearth. It had been the southernmost of Haki’s steadings and the first we had attacked. In the two weeks since we had come to Ceaster we had burned a dozen of his settlements, taken scores of his cattle, killed his people and enslaved his children. Now he thought he had us trapped.

My stallion’s motion made the heavy golden cross that hung about my neck beat against my chest. I looked southwards to where the sun was a clouded silver disc in a fading sky and I sent a silent prayer to Woden. I am half a pagan, maybe less than half, but even my father had been known to say a prayer to the Christian god. ‘There are many gods,’ he had told me so often, ‘and you never know which one of them is awake, so pray to them all.’

So I prayed to Woden. I am of your blood, I told him, so protect me, and I was indeed of his blood because our family is descended from Woden. He had come to earth and slept with a human girl, but that was long before our people crossed the sea to take Britain. ‘He didn’t sleep with a girl,’ I could hear my father’s scorn as I rode, ‘he gave her a good humping, and you don’t sleep through that.’ I wondered why the gods no longer came to earth. It would make belief so much easier.

‘Not so fast!’ Sihtric called, and I stopped thinking about gods humping girls to see that three of our younger men had spurred ahead. ‘Fall back,’ Sihtric called, then grinned at me. ‘Not far, lord.’

‘We should scout,’ Rædwald advised.

‘They’ve had long enough,’ I said, ‘keep riding.’

I knew Haki would dismount his men to attack the waiting shield wall. Horses will not charge home into a shield wall, instead they will sheer aside, so Haki’s men would form their own shield wall to attack the Saxons who were waiting on the long low mound. But we would come from their rear, and horses will charge into the back of a shield wall which is never as tight as the front rank. The front rank is a wall of locked shields and bright weapons, the rear rank is where the panic starts.

We turned slightly northwards, clearing the spur of a hill, and there they were. The sun slanted bright from a gap in the clouds to light the Christian banners on the hilltop and glint from the blades waiting there. Sixty-five men, just sixty-five, a tight shield wall of two ranks on the hill crest beneath the cross-blazoned flags, and between them and us was Haki’s shield wall, still forming, and nearest to us and off to our right were his horses under the guard of boys. ‘Rædwald,’ I said, ‘three men to drive the horses off.’

‘Lord,’ he acknowledged.

‘Go with them, Godric!’ I called to my servant, then hefted the heavy ash-shafted spear. The Norsemen had still not seen us. All they knew was that a raiding party of Mercians had penetrated deep into Haki’s territory and the Norsemen had pursued them, thinking to slaughter them, but now they would find they had been lured into a trap. ‘Kill them!’ I shouted and put my spurs back.

Kill them. This is what the poets sing about. At night, in the hall, when the hearth smoke thickens about the beams and the ale-horns are filled and the harpist plucks his strings, the songs of battle are sung. They are the songs of our family, of our people, and it is how we remember the past. We call a poet a scop and scop means someone who shapes things and a poet shapes our past so we remember the glories of our ancestors and how they brought us land and women and cattle and glory. There would be no Norse song of Haki, I thought, because this would be a Saxon song about a Saxon victory.

And we charged. Spear held tight, shield close, and Hearding, my horse, brave beast, was pounding the earth with hard hooves, and to my left and right the horses galloped, the spears held low, horse breath steaming, and the enemy turned, astonished, and the men at the rear of their shield wall did not know what to do. Some ran towards their horses and others tried to make a new shield wall to face us and I saw the gaps opening and knew they were dead men already. Beyond them, on the mound, the waiting Saxon warriors were fetching their own horses, but we would start the slaughter.

And we did.

I fixed my eyes on a tall, black-bearded man wearing fine mail and a helmet crested with eagle feathers. He was shouting, presumably to call men to lock their shields with his own shield that was painted with a spread eagle, but he saw my gaze, knew his fate and braced himself with his eagle-shield raised and his sword drawn back, and I knew he would strike at Hearding, hoping to blind my horse or shatter his teeth. Always fight the horse, not the rider. Wound or kill the horse and the rider becomes a victim, and the shield wall was breaking, scattering in panic, and I heard the shouts as men tried to rally the fugitives and I leaned into my spear, aiming her, then touched Hearding with my left knee and he swerved as the black-bearded man swung. His sword cut across Hearding’s chest, a savage enough cut that drew blood, but it was not a killing blow, not a crippling cut, and my spear went through his shield, splintering the willow boards and thrusting on to break his mail. I felt her blade shatter his breast-bone and I let the ash shaft go and drew Raven-Beak and turned Hearding back to drive Raven-Beak’s blade into another man’s spine. The blade, made by a sorcerer, broke through mail as if it was tree bark. Hearding crashed between two men, spilling them both to the ground and we turned again, and the whole field was a chaos of panicked men among whom the riders spurred to kill, and more riders came from the mound, our whole force killing and shouting, and above us the banners waved. ‘Merewalh!’ a high voice called sharply. ‘Stop the horses.’

A handful of Norsemen had reached their horses, but Merewalh, a hard warrior, led men to kill them. Haki still lived, surrounded now by thirty or forty of his men, who had formed a shield barrier about their lord, and those men could only watch as their comrades were cut down. But some of our men were down too. I could see three riderless horses and one dying horse, its hooves beating as it lay in a mess of blood. I turned towards it and cut down at a man who had just struggled to his feet. He was dazed and I dazed him more with a slash across his helmet and he went down again, and a man bellowed from my left, swinging an axe two-handed, and Hearding twisted, lithe as a cat, and the axe-blade glanced from my shield, we turned again and Raven-Beak sliced once and I saw the blood bright. I was shouting, exhilarated, screaming my name so that the dead would know who had sent them to their doom.

I spurred on, sword low, looking for the white horse called Gast and saw him fifty or sixty paces away. His rider, sword in hand, was spurring towards Haki’s shield-guarded remnant, but three other horses swerved into Gast’s path to check his rider. Then I had to forget Gast because a man swung a sword at me with an overhead slash. The man had lost his helmet, and half his face was smothered with blood. I could see more blood seeping at his waist, but he was grim-faced, hard-eyed, battle-forged, and he bellowed death at me as he swung, and I met the sword with Raven-Beak and she split his blade in two so that the upper half speared into my saddle’s pommel and stayed there. The lower half tore a gash in my right boot and I felt the blood welling as the man stumbled. I thrust Raven-Beak down to shatter his skull and rode on to see Gerbruht had dismounted and was thrashing an axe at a dead or nearly dead man. Gerbruht had already disembowelled his victim, now he seemed intent on separating flesh from bone and was screaming in rage as he slashed the heavy blade down to spatter gobbets of flesh, blood, shattered mail and splintered bone onto the grass.

‘What are you doing?’ I shouted at him.

‘He called me fat!’ Gerbruht, a Frisian who had joined our war-band during the winter, shouted back. ‘The bastard called me fat!’

‘You are fat,’ I pointed out and that was true. Gerbruht had a belly like a pig and legs like tree trunks and three chins under his beard, but he was also hugely strong. A fearful man to face in a fight and a good friend to have beside you in the shield wall.

‘He won’t call me fat again,’ Gerbruht snarled and drove the axe into the dead man’s skull, splitting the face and opening up the brain. ‘Skinny bastard.’

‘You eat too much,’ I said.

‘I’m always hungry, that’s why.’

I turned my horse to see that the fight was over. Haki and his shield companions still lived, but they were outnumbered and surrounded. Our Saxons were dismounting to kill the wounded and strip the corpses of mail, weapons, silver and gold. Like all the Northmen, these warriors liked arm rings to boast of their prowess in battle, and we piled the rings, along with brooches, scabbard decorations and neck chains onto a sword-ripped, blood-soaked cloak. I took one arm ring from the corpse of the black-bearded man. It was a chunk of gold, incised with the angular letters the Norsemen use, and I slipped it over my left wrist to join my other rings. Sihtric was grinning. He had a prisoner, a scared boy who was almost a man. ‘Our one survivor, lord,’ Sihtric said.

‘He’ll do,’ I said. ‘Cut off his sword hand and give him a horse. Then he can go.’

Haki watched us. I rode close to the remaining Norsemen and stopped to stare at him. He was a squat, scar-faced man with a brown beard. His helmet had come off in the fight and his straggly hair was dark with blood. His ears stood out like jug handles. He stared back, defiant. Thor’s hammer, shaped in gold, hung at his mail-clad chest. I counted twenty-seven men around him. They made a tight circle, shields outwards. ‘Become a Christian,’ I called to him in Danish, ‘and you might live.’

He understood me, though I doubted Danish was his language. He laughed at my suggestion, then spat. I was not even sure I had told him the truth, though many defeated enemies were spared if they agreed to conversion and baptism. The decision was not mine to make, it belonged to the rider mounted on the tall white horse called Gast. I turned towards the ring of horsemen who now surrounded Haki and his survivors, and the rider of the white horse looked past me. ‘Take Haki alive, kill the rest.’

It did not take long. Most of the bravest Norsemen were already dead and only a handful of experienced fighters were with Haki, the rest of them were youngsters, many of whom shouted that they surrendered, only to be cut down. I watched. Merewalh, a good man who had deserted Lord Æthelred’s service to follow Æthelflaed, led the attack, and it was Merewalh who dragged Haki out of the bloody heap, stripped him of his sword and shield, and forced him to his knees in front of the white horse.

Haki looked up. The sun was low in the west so that it was behind Gast’s rider and thus dazzling Haki, but he sensed the hatred and scorn that looked down on him. He shifted his head till his eyes were in the rider’s shadow, so now, perhaps, he could see the polished Frankish mail, scrubbed with sand till it shone like silver. He could see the white woollen cloak, edged with a weasel’s silky, white winter fur. He could see the tall boots, bound in white cord, and the long sword scabbard dressed with polished silver, and, if he dared raise his eyes higher, the hard blue eyes in the hard face framed by golden hair held by a helmet polished to the same high sheen as the mail. The helmet was ringed with a silver band and had a silver cross on the crown. ‘Take the mail from him,’ the white-clothed rider on the white horse said.

‘Yes, my lady,’ Merewalh said.

The lady was Æthelflaed, daughter of Alfred who had been King of Wessex. She was married to Æthelred, the Lord of Mercia, but everyone in Wessex and in Mercia knew she had been my father’s lover for years. It was Æthelflaed who had brought her men north to reinforce Ceaster’s garrison, and Æthelflaed who had devised the trap that now had Haki on his knees in front of her horse.

She looked at me. ‘You did well,’ she said, almost grudgingly.

‘Thank you, my lady,’ I said.

‘You’ll take him south,’ she said, gesturing at Haki. ‘He can die in Gleawecestre.’

I thought that a strange decision. Why not let him die here on the pale winter grass? ‘You will not go back south, my lady?’ I asked her.

It was plain she thought the question impertinent, but she answered anyway. ‘I have much to do here. You will take him.’ She held up a gloved hand to stop me as I turned away. ‘Make sure you arrive before Saint Cuthbert’s Day. You hear me?’

I bowed for answer, then we tied Haki’s hands behind his back, mounted him on a poor horse, and rode back to Ceaster where we arrived after dark. We had left the Norsemen’s bodies where they fell, food for ravens, but we carried our own dead with us, just five men. We took all the Norse horses and loaded them with captured weapons, with mail, with clothes and with shields. We rode back victorious, carrying Haki’s captured banner and following Lord Æthelred’s standard of the white horse, the banner of Saint Oswald, and Æthelflaed’s strange flag which showed a white goose holding a sword and a cross. The goose was the symbol of Saint Werburgh, a holy woman who had miraculously rid a cornfield of marauding geese, though it was beyond my wits to understand why a job any ten-year-old could have done with a loud voice was considered a miracle. Even a three-legged dog could have rid the field of geese, but that was not a comment I would have dared make to Æthelflaed, who held the goose-frightening saint in the highest regard.

The burh at Ceaster had been built by the Romans so the ramparts were of stone, unlike the burhs we Saxons built that had walls of earth and timber. We passed under the high fighting platform of the gateway, threading a tunnel lit by torches and so into the main street that ran arrow straight between high stone buildings. The sound of horses’ hooves echoed from the walls, then the bells of Saint Peter’s church rang out to celebrate Æthelflaed’s return.

Æthelflaed and most of her men went to the church to give thanks for the victory before gathering in the great hall that stood at the centre of Ceaster’s streets. Sihtric and I put Haki into a small stone hut, leaving his hands tied for the night. ‘I have gold,’ he said in Danish.

‘You’ll have straw for a bed and piss for ale,’ Sihtric told him, then we shut the door and left two men to guard him. ‘So we’re off to Gleawecestre?’ Sihtric said to me as we went to the hall.

‘So she says.’

‘You’ll be happy then.’

‘Me?’

He grinned toothlessly. ‘The redhead at the Wheatsheaf.’

‘One of many, Sihtric,’ I said airily, ‘one of many.’

‘And your girl in the farm near Cirrenceastre too,’ he added.

‘She is a widow,’ I said with as much dignity as I could muster, ‘and I’m told it’s our Christian duty to protect widows.’

‘You call that protecting her?’ he laughed. ‘Are you going to marry her?’

‘Of course not. I’ll marry for land.’

‘You should be married,’ he said. ‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-one, I think.’

‘Should be long married, then,’ he said. ‘What about Ælfwynn?’

‘What about her?’ I asked.

‘She’s a pretty little mare,’ Sihtric said, ‘and I dare say she knows how to gallop.’ He pushed open the heavy door and we walked into the hall that was lit by rushlights and by a huge fire in a crude stone hearth that had cracked the Roman floor. There were not enough tables for both the burh’s garrison and for the men Æthelflaed had brought north, so some ate squatting on the floor, though I was given a place at the high table close to Æthelflaed. She was flanked by two priests, one of whom intoned a long prayer in Latin before we were allowed to start on the food.

I was scared of Æthelflaed. She had a hard face, though men said she had been beautiful as a young woman. In that year, 911, she must have been forty or more years old, and her hair, which was golden, had pale grey streaks. She had very blue eyes and a gaze that could unsettle the bravest of men. That gaze was cold and thoughtful, as if she was were reading your thoughts and despising them. I was not the only person who was scared of Æthelflaed. Her own daughter, Ælfwynn, would hide from her mother. I liked Ælfwynn, who was full of laughter and mischief. She was a little younger than I was and we had spent much of our childhood together, and many people thought the two of us should be married. I did not know whether Æthelflaed thought that a good idea. She seemed to dislike me, but she seemed to dislike most people, and yet, for all that coldness, she was adored in Mercia. Her husband, Æthelred, Lord of Mercia, was acknowledged as the ruler of the country, but it was his estranged wife people loved.

‘Gleawecestre,’ she now said to me.

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘You’ll take all the plunder, all of it. Use wagons. And take the prisoners.’

‘Yes, my lady.’ The prisoners were mostly children we had taken from Haki’s steadings during the first days of our raiding. They would be sold as slaves.

‘And you must arrive before Saint Cuthbert’s Day,’ she repeated that command. ‘You understand?’

‘Before Saint Cuthbert’s Day,’ I said dutifully.

She gave me that long, silent stare. The priests flanking her gazed at me too, their expressions as hostile as hers. ‘And you’ll take Haki,’ she went on.

‘And Haki,’ I said.

‘And you will hang him in front of my husband’s hall.’

‘Make it slow,’ one of the priests said. There are two ways of hanging a man, the quick way and the slow agonising way. ‘Yes, father,’ I said.

‘But show him to the people first,’ Æthelflaed ordered.

‘I will, my lady, of course,’ I said, then hesitated.

‘What?’ She saw my uncertainty.

‘Folk will want to know why you stayed here, my lady,’ I said.

She bridled at that, and the second priest frowned. ‘It is none of their business …’ he began.

Æthelflaed waved him to silence. ‘Many Norsemen are leaving Ireland,’ she said carefully, ‘and wanting to settle here. They must be stopped.’

‘Haki’s defeat will make them fearful,’ I suggested carefully.

She ignored my clumsy compliment. ‘Ceaster prevents them using the River Dee,’ she said, ‘but the Mærse is open. I shall build a burh on its bank.’

‘A good idea, my lady,’ I said and received a look of such scorn that I blushed.

She dismissed me with a gesture and I went back to the mutton stew. I watched her from the corner of my eye, seeing the hard jawline, the bitterness on the lips, and I wondered what in God’s name had attracted my father to her and why men revered her.

But tomorrow I would be free of her.

‘Men follow her,’ Sihtric said, ‘because other than your father she’s the only one who’s ever been willing to fight.’

We were travelling south, following a road I had come to know well in the last few years. The road followed the boundary between Mercia and Wales, a boundary that was the subject of constant argument between the Welsh kingdoms and the Mercians. The Welsh were our enemies, of course, but that enmity was confused because they were also Christian and we would never have won the battle at Teotanheale without the help of those Welsh Christians. Sometimes they fought for Christ, as they had at Teotanheale, but just as often they fought for plunder, driving cattle and slaves back to their mountain valleys. Those constant raids meant there were burhs all along the road, fortified towns where folk could take refuge when an enemy came, and from where a garrison could sally out to attack that enemy.

I rode with thirty-six men and Godric, my servant. Four of the warriors were always ahead, scouting the road margins for fear of an ambush, while the rest of us guarded Haki and the two carts loaded with plunder. We also guarded eighteen children, bound for the slave markets, though Æthelflaed insisted we display the captives before the folk of Gleawecestre first. ‘She wants to put on a show,’ Sihtric told me.

‘She does!’ Father Fraomar agreed. ‘We have let the people in Gleawecestre know that we’re defeating Christ’s enemies.’ He was one of Æthelflaed’s tame priests, still a young man, eager and enthusiastic. He nodded towards the cart ahead of us that was loaded with armour and weapons. ‘We shall sell those and the money will go towards the new burh, praise God.’

‘Praise God,’ I said dutifully.

And money, I knew, was Æthelflaed’s problem. If she was to build her new burh to guard the River Mærse she needed money and there was never enough. Her husband received the land-rents and the merchants’ taxes and the customs payments, and Lord Æthelred hated Æthelflaed. She might be loved in Mercia, but Æthelred controlled the silver, and men were loath to offend him. Even now, when Æthelred lay sick in Gleawecestre, men paid him homage. Only the bravest and wealthiest risked his anger by giving men and silver to Æthelflaed.

And Æthelred was dying. He had been struck by a spear on the back of the head at the battle of Teotanheale and the spear had pierced his helmet and broken through his skull. No one had expected him to survive, but he did, though some rumours said he was as good as dead, that he raved like a moonstruck madman, that he dribbled and twitched, and that sometimes he howled like a gutted wolf. All Mercia expected his death, and all Mercia wondered what would follow that death. That was something no one spoke of, at least not openly, though in secret they spoke of little else.

Yet to my surprise Father Fraomar spoke of it on the first night. We were travelling slowly because of the carts and prisoners and had stopped at a farmstead near Westune. This part of Mercia was newly settled, made safe because of the burh at Ceaster. The farm had belonged to a Dane, but now a one-eyed Mercian lived there with a wife, four sons, and six slaves. His house was a hovel of mud, wood and straw, his cattle shed a poor thing of leaking wattles, but all of it was surrounded by a well-made palisade of oak trunks. ‘Welsh aren’t far away,’ he explained the expensive palisade.

‘You can’t defend this with six slaves,’ I said.

‘Neighbours come here,’ he said curtly.

‘And helped build it?’

‘They did.’

We tied Haki’s ankles, made sure the bonds on his wrists were tightly knotted, then shackled him to a plough that stood abandoned beside a dung-heap. The eighteen children were crammed into the house with two men to guard them, while the rest of us found what comfort we could in the dung-spattered yard. We lit a fire. Gerbruht ate steadily, feeding his barrel-sized belly, while Redbad, another Frisian, played songs on his reed-pipes. The wistful notes filled the night air with melancholy. The sparks flew upwards. It had rained earlier, but the clouds were clearing away to show the stars. I watched some of the sparks drift onto the hovel’s roof and wondered if the thatch would smoulder, but the moss-covered straw was damp and the sparks died quickly.

‘The Nunnaminster,’ Father Fraomar said suddenly.

‘The Nunnaminster?’ I asked after a pause.

The priest had also been watching the drifting sparks fade and die on the roof. ‘The convent in Wintanceaster where the Lady Ælswith died,’ he explained, though the explanation made me no wiser.

‘King Alfred’s wife?’

‘God rest her soul,’ he said and made the sign of the cross. ‘She built the convent after the king’s death.’

‘What of it?’ I asked, still puzzled.

‘Part of the convent burned down after her death,’ he explained. ‘It was caused by sparks lodging in the roof-straw.’

‘This thatch is too wet,’ I said, nodding towards the house.

‘Of course,’ the priest was staring at the sparks settling on the thatch. ‘Some folk say the fire was the devil’s revenge,’ he paused to cross himself, ‘because the Lady Ælswith was such a pious soul and she’d escaped him.’

‘My father always told me she was a vengeful bitch,’ I ventured.

Father Fraomar frowned, then relented to offer a wry smile. ‘God rest her soul. I hear she was not an easy woman.’

‘Which one is?’ Sihtric asked.

‘The Lady Æthelflaed won’t wish it,’ Fraomar said softly.

I hesitated because the conversation was now touching on dangerous things. ‘Won’t wish what?’ I finally asked.

‘To go to a nunnery.’

‘Is that what will happen?’

‘What else?’ Fraomar asked bleakly. ‘Her husband dies, she’s a widow, and a widow with property and power. Men won’t want her marrying again. Her new husband might become too powerful. Besides …’ his voice died away.

‘Besides?’ Sihtric asked quietly.

‘The Lord Æthelred has made a will, God preserve him.’

‘And the will,’ I said slowly, ‘says his wife is to go to a nunnery?’

‘What else can she do?’ Fraomar asked. ‘It’s the custom.’

‘I can’t see her as a nun,’ I said.

‘Oh, she’s a saintly woman. A good woman,’ Fraomar spoke eagerly, then remembered she was an adulterer. ‘Not perfect, of course,’ he went on, ‘but we all fall short, do we not? We have all sinned.’

‘And her daughter?’ I asked. ‘Ælfwynn?’

‘Oh, a silly girl,’ Fraomar said without hesitation.

‘But if someone marries her …’ I suggested, but was interrupted.

‘She’s a woman! She can’t inherit her father’s power!’ Father Fraomar laughed at the very idea. ‘No, the best thing for Ælfwynn would be to marry abroad. To marry far away! Maybe a Frankish lord? Either that or join her mother in the nunnery.’

The conversation was dangerous because no one was certain what might happen when Æthelred died, and that death must surely be soon. Mercia had no king, but Æthelred, the Lord of Mercia, had almost the same powers. He would dearly have loved to be king, but he depended on the West Saxons to help him defend Mercia’s frontiers, and the West Saxons wanted no king in Mercia, or rather they wanted their own king to rule there. Yet, though Mercia and Wessex were allies, there was little love between them. Mercians had a proud past, now they were a client state, and if Edward of Wessex were to proclaim his kingship there could be unrest. No one knew what would happen, just as no one knew who they should support. Should they give allegiance to Wessex? Or to one of the Mercian ealdormen?

‘It’s just a pity that Lord Æthelred has no heir,’ Father Fraomar said.

‘No legitimate heir,’ I said, and to my surprise the priest laughed.

‘No legitimate heir,’ he agreed, then crossed himself. ‘But the Lord will provide,’ he added piously.

Next day the sky darkened with thick clouds that spread from the Welsh hills. By mid-morning it was raining and it went on raining as we made our slow way south. The roads we followed had been made by the Romans and we spent every subsequent night in the ruins of Roman forts. We saw no marauding Welsh, and the battle of Teotanheale had ensured that no Danes would harass us this far south.

The rain and the prisoners made it a slow journey, but at last we came to Gleawecestre, the capital city of Mercia. We arrived two days before the feast of Saint Cuthbert, though it was not till we were inside the city that I discovered why Æthelflaed had thought that date so important. Father Fraomar had spurred ahead to announce our arrival, and the bells of the city’s churches were ringing to greet us, and a small crowd was waiting at the gate’s arch. I unfurled our banners: my own wolf’s head, the flag of Saint Oswald, Æthelred’s white horse, and Æthelflaed’s goose. Haki’s banner was carried by Godric, my servant, who dragged it on the wet road. Our small procession was led by one cart of plunder, then came the child prisoners, then Haki who was tied by rope to the tail of Godric’s horse. The second cart brought up the rear, while my warriors rode on either side of the column. It was a petty display. After Teotanheale we had dragged over twenty wagons of plunder through the city, along with prisoners, captured horses, and a dozen enemy banners, but even my small procession gave the citizens of Gleawecestre something to celebrate and we were cheered all the way from the north gate to the entrance of Æthelred’s palace. A pair of priests hurled horse dung at Haki and the crowds took up the sport as small boys ran alongside jeering at the man.

And there, waiting for us at Æthelred’s gate, was Eardwulf, the commander of Lord Æthelred’s household troops and brother to Eadith, the woman who slept with Lord Æthelred. Eardwulf was clever, handsome, ambitious and effective. He had led Æthelred’s troops against the Welsh and done much damage, and men said he had fought well at Teotanheale. ‘His power,’ my father had told me, ‘comes from between his sister’s thighs, but don’t underestimate him. He’s dangerous.’

The dangerous Eardwulf was in a coat of mail, polished to a bright shine, and wearing a dark blue cloak edged with otter fur. He was bare-headed and his dark hair was oiled sleekly back to be tied by a brown ribbon. His sword, a heavy blade, was scabbarded in soft leather trimmed with gold. He was flanked by a pair of priests and by a half-dozen of his men, all wearing Æthelred’s symbol of the white horse. He smiled when he saw us. I saw his eyes flick towards Æthelflaed’s standard as he sauntered towards us. ‘Going to market, Lord Uhtred?’ he asked.

‘Slaves, armour, swords, spears, axes,’ I said, ‘do you want to buy?’

‘And him?’ He jerked a thumb towards Haki.

I twisted in my saddle. ‘Haki, a Norse chieftain who thought to make himself rich from Mercia.’

‘Are you selling him too?’

‘Hanging him,’ I said, ‘slowly. My lady wanted us to hang him right here.’

‘Your lady?’

‘Yours too,’ I said, knowing that would annoy him, ‘the Lady Æthelflaed.’

If he was annoyed he did not show it, instead he smiled again. ‘She has been busy,’ he said lightly, ‘and is she planning to be here as well?’

I shook my head. ‘She has work in the north.’

‘And I thought she would be here for the Witan in two days,’ he said sarcastically.

‘Witan?’ I asked.

‘It’s none of your business,’ he said tartly. ‘You are not invited.’

But the Witan, I noted, was to be held on Saint Cuthbert’s feast day and that was surely why Æthelflaed had wanted us to arrive before the great men of Mercia met in council. She was reminding them that she fought their enemies.

Eardwulf walked to Haki, looked him up and down, then turned back to me. ‘I see you fly the Lord Æthelred’s banner.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘And in the skirmish where you captured this creature,’ he nodded towards Haki, ‘did you fly it there too?’

‘Whenever my lady fights for Mercia,’ I said, ‘she flies her husband’s banner.’

‘Then the prisoners and the plunder belong to Lord Æthelred,’ Eardwulf said.

‘I’m ordered to sell them,’ I said.

‘Are you?’ He laughed. ‘Well now you have new orders. They all belong to Lord Æthelred so you will give them to me.’ He gazed at me, daring me to contradict him. I must have looked belligerent because his men half lowered their spears.

Father Fraomar had reappeared and darted to the side of my horse. ‘No fighting,’ he hissed at me.

‘My Lord Uhtred would not dream of drawing a sword against Lord Æthelred’s household warriors,’ Eardwulf said. He beckoned to his men. ‘Take it all inside,’ he ordered, indicating carts, plunder, Haki, and the slaves, ‘and do thank the Lady Æthelflaed,’ he was looking at me again, ‘for her little contribution to her husband’s treasury.’

I watched his men take the plunder and slaves through the gateway. Eardwulf smiled when it was done, then gave me a mocking smile. ‘And the Lady Æthelflaed,’ he asked, ‘has no desire to attend the Witan?’

‘She’s invited?’ I asked.

‘Of course not, she’s a woman. But she might be curious about the Witan’s decisions.’

He was trying to discover whether Æthelflaed would be in Gleawecestre. I half thought of saying I had no idea what she planned, then decided to tell the truth. ‘She won’t be here,’ I said, ‘because she’s busy. She’s making a burh on the Mærse.’

‘Oh, a burh on the Mærse!’ he repeated, then laughed.

The gates closed behind him.

‘Bastard,’ I said.

‘He had the right,’ Father Fraomar explained, ‘the Lord Æthelred is the husband of the Lady Æthelflaed, so what is hers is his.’

‘Æthelred’s an unwiped pig-sucking bastard,’ I said, staring at the closed gates.

‘He is the Lord of Mercia,’ Father Fraomar said uneasily. He was a supporter of Æthelflaed, but he sensed that her husband’s death would strip her of both power and influence.

‘Whatever the bastard is,’ Sihtric put in, ‘he won’t offer us any ale.’

‘Ale is a good idea,’ I growled.

‘The redhead at the Wheatsheaf, then?’ he asked, then grinned. ‘Unless you’re going to learn more about farming?’

I grinned back. My father had given me a farm north of Cirrenceastre, saying I should learn husbandry. ‘A man should know as much about crops, pasture and cattle as his steward knows,’ my father had growled to me, ‘otherwise the bastard will cheat you blind.’ He had been pleased at the number of days I spent at the estate, though I confess I had learned almost nothing about crops, pasture or cattle, but I had learned a great deal about the young widow to whom I had given the farm’s great hall as her home.

‘The Wheatsheaf for now,’ I said and kicked Hearding down the street. And tomorrow, I thought, I would ride to my widow.

The tavern’s sign was a great wooden carving of a wheatsheaf and I rode beneath it into the rain-soaked courtyard and let a servant take the horse. Father Fraomar, I knew, was right. The Lord Æthelred did have the legal right to take whatever belonged to his wife because nothing belonged to her that was not his, yet still Eardwulf’s action had surprised me. Æthelred and Æthelflaed had lived for years in a state of warfare, though it was war without fighting. He had the legal power in Mercia while she had the love of the Mercians. It would have been easy enough for Æthelred to order his wife’s arrest and captivity, but her brother was the King of Wessex, and Mercia only survived because the West Saxons came to its rescue whenever enemies pressed too hard. And so husband and wife hated each other, tolerated each other, and pretended that no feud existed, which was why Æthelflaed took such care to fly her husband’s banner.

I was daydreaming of taking revenge on Eardwulf as I ducked through the tavern’s door. I was dreaming of gutting him or beheading him or listening to his pleas for mercy while I held Raven-Beak at his throat. The bastard, I thought, the snivelling, pompous, grease-haired, arrogant bastard.

‘Earsling,’ a harsh voice challenged me from beside the Wheatsheaf’s hearth. ‘What rancid demon brought you here to spoil my day?’ I stared. And stared. Because the last person I had ever expected to see in Æthelred’s stronghold of Gleawecestre was staring at me. ‘Well, earsling?’ he demanded, ‘what are you doing here?’

It was my father.

PART ONE

The Dying Lord

One

My son looked tired and angry. He was wet, covered in mud, his hair was like a damp haystack after a good romp, and one of his boots was slashed. The leather was stained black where a blade had pierced his calf, but he was not limping so I had no need to worry about him, except that he was gaping at me like a moonstruck idiot. ‘Don’t just stare at me, idiot,’ I told him, ‘buy me some ale. Tell the girl you want it from the black barrel. Sihtric, it’s good to see you.’

‘And you, lord,’ Sihtric said.

‘Father!’ my son said, still gaping.

‘Who did you think it was?’ I asked. ‘The holy ghost?’ I made room on the bench. ‘Sit beside me,’ I told Sihtric, ‘and tell me some news. Stop gawping,’ I said to Uhtred, ‘and have one of the girls bring us some ale. From the black barrel!’

‘Why the black barrel, lord?’ Sihtric asked as he sat.

‘It’s brewed from our barley,’ I explained, ‘he keeps it for people he likes.’ I leaned back against the wall. It hurt to bend forward, it hurt even to sit upright, it hurt to breathe. Everything hurt, yet it was a marvel that I lived at all. Cnut Longsword had near killed me with his blade Ice-Spite and it was small consolation that Serpent-Breath had sliced his throat in the same heartbeat that his sword had broken a rib and pierced my lung. ‘Christ Jesus,’ Finan had told me, ‘but the grass was slippery with blood. It looked like a Samhain pig slaughtering, it did.’

But the slipperiness had been Cnut’s blood, and Cnut was dead and his army destroyed. The Danes had been driven from much of northern Mercia and the Saxons gave thanks to their nailed god for that deliverance. Some of them doubtless prayed that they would be delivered from me too, but I lived. They were Christians, I am not, though rumours spread that it was a Christian priest who saved my life. Æthelflaed had me carried in a cart to her home in Cirrenceastre and a priest famed as a healer and bone-setter tended me. Æthelflaed said he pushed a reed through my ribs and a gust of foul air came from the hole. ‘It blew out,’ she told me, ‘and stank like a cesspit.’ ‘That’s the evil leaving him,’ the priest had explained, or so she said, and then he plugged the wound with cow dung. The shit formed a crust and the priest said it would stop the evil getting back inside me. Is that true? I don’t know. All I know is that it took weeks of pain, weeks in which I expected to die, and that some time in the new year I managed to struggle to my feet again. Now, almost two months later, I could ride a horse and walk a mile or so, yet I had still not regained my old strength, and Serpent-Breath felt heavy in my hand. And the pain was always there, sometimes excruciating, sometimes bearable, and all day, every day, the wound leaked filthy stinking pus. The Christian sorcerer probably sealed the wound before all the evil left and sometimes I wondered if he did that on purpose because the Christians do hate me, or most of them do. They smile and sing their psalms and preach that their creed is all about love, but tell them you believe in a different god and suddenly it’s all spittle and spite. So most days I felt old and feeble and useless, and some days I was not even sure I wanted to live.

‘How did you get here, lord?’ Sihtric asked me.

‘I rode, of course, how do you think?’

That was not entirely true. It was not far from Cirrenceastre to Gleawecestre, and I had ridden for some of the journey, but a few miles short of the city I climbed into a cart and lay on a bed of straw. God, it hurt climbing onto that cart’s bed. Then I let myself be carried into the city, and when Eardwulf saw me I groaned and pretended to be too weak to recognise him. The slick-haired bastard had ridden alongside the cart telling silky-tongued lies. ‘It is sad indeed to see you thus, Lord Uhtred,’ he had said and what he meant was that it was a joy to see me feeble and maybe dying. ‘You are an example to us all!’ he had said, speaking very slow and loud as if I were an imbecile. I just groaned and said nothing. ‘We never expected you to come,’ he went on, ‘but here you are.’ The bastard.

The Witan had been summoned to meet on Saint Cuthbert’s feast day. The summons had been issued over the horse-seal of Æthelred and it demanded the presence in Gleawecestre of Mercia’s leading men, the ealdormen and the bishops, the abbots and the thegns. The summons declared that they were called to ‘advise’ the Lord of Mercia, but as rumour insisted that the Lord of Mercia was now a drivelling cripple who dribbled piss down his legs it was more likely that the Witan had been called to approve whatever mischief Eardwulf had devised. I had not expected a summons, but to my astonishment a messenger brought me a parchment heavy with Æthelred’s great seal. Why did he want me there? I was his wife’s chief supporter, yet he had invited me. None of the other leading men who supported Æthelflaed had been called, yet I was summoned. Why? ‘He wants to kill you, lord,’ Finan had suggested.

‘I’m near enough dead already. Why should he bother?’

‘He wants you there,’ Finan had suggested slowly, ‘because they’re planning to shit all over Æthelflaed, and if you’re there they can’t claim no one spoke for her.’

That seemed a weak reason to me, but I could think of no other. ‘Maybe.’

‘And they know you’re not healed. You can’t cause them trouble.’

‘Maybe,’ I said again. It was plain that this Witan had been summoned to decide Mercia’s future, and equally plain that Æthelred would do everything he could to make certain his estranged wife had no part in that future, so why invite me? I would speak for her, they knew that, but they also knew I was weakened by injury. So was I there to prove that every opinion had been aired? It seemed strange to me, but if they were relying on my weakness to make sure that my advice was ignored then I wanted to encourage that belief, and that was why I had taken such care to appear feeble to Eardwulf. Let the bastard think me helpless.

Which I almost was. Except that I lived.

My son brought ale and dragged a stool to sit beside me. He was worried about me, but I brushed away his questions and asked my own. He told me about the fight with Haki, then complained that Eardwulf had stolen the slaves and plunder. ‘How could I stop him?’ he asked.

‘You weren’t meant to stop him,’ I said and, when he looked puzzled, explained. ‘Æthelflaed knew that would happen. Why else send you to Gleawecestre?’

‘She needs the money!’

‘She needs Mercia’s support more,’ I said, and he still looked puzzled. ‘By sending you here,’ I went on, ‘she’s showing that she’s fighting. If she really wanted money she’d have sent the slaves to Lundene.’

‘So she thinks a few slaves and two wagon-loads of rusted mail will influence the Witan?’

‘Did you see any of Æthelred’s men in Ceaster?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘And what is a ruler’s first duty?’

He thought for a few heartbeats. ‘To defend his land?’

‘So if Mercia is looking for a new ruler?’ I asked.

‘They’ll want someone,’ he said slowly, ‘who can fight?’

‘Someone who can fight,’ I said, ‘and lead, and inspire.’

‘You?’ he asked.

I almost hit him for his stupidity, but he was no longer a child. ‘Not me,’ I said instead.

My son frowned as he considered. He knew the answer I wanted, but was too stubborn to give it. ‘Eardwulf?’ he suggested instead. I said nothing and he thought a moment longer. ‘He’s been fighting the Welsh,’ he went on, ‘and men say he’s good.’

‘He’s been fighting bare-arsed cattle raiders,’ I said scornfully, ‘nothing else. When was the last time a Welsh army invaded Mercia? Besides, Eardwulf isn’t noble.’

‘So if he can’t lead Mercia,’ my son said slowly, ‘who can?’

‘You know who can,’ I said, and when he still refused to name her, I did. ‘Æthelflaed.’

‘Æthelflaed,’ he repeated the name and then just shook his head. I knew he was wary of her and probably frightened of her too, and I knew she was scornful of him, just as she scorned her own daughter. She was her father’s child in that way; she disliked flippant and carefree people, treasuring serious souls who thought life a grim duty. She put up with me, maybe because she knew that in battle I was as serious and grim as any of her dreary priests.

‘So why not Æthelflaed?’ I asked.

‘Because she’s a woman,’ he said.

‘So?’

‘She’s a woman!’

‘I know that! I’ve seen her tits.’

‘The Witan will never choose a woman to rule,’ he said firmly.

‘That’s true,’ Sihtric put in.

‘Who else can they choose?’ I asked.

‘Her brother?’ my son suggested, and he was probably right. Edward, King of Wessex, wanted the throne of Mercia, but he did not want to just take it. He wanted an invitation. Maybe that was what the Witan was supposed to agree? I could think of no other reason why the nobility and high churchmen had been summoned. It made sense that Æthelred’s successor should be chosen now, before Æthelred died, to avert the squabbling and even outright war that sometimes follows a ruler’s death, and I was certain that Æthelred himself wanted the satisfaction of knowing that his wife would not inherit his power. He would let rabid dogs gnaw on his balls before he allowed that. So who would inherit? Not Eardwulf, I was sure. He was competent, he was brave enough, and he was no fool, but the Witan would want a man of birth, and Eardwulf, though not low-born, was no ealdorman. Nor was there any ealdorman in Mercia who stood head and shoulders above the rest except perhaps for Æthelfrith who ruled much of the land north of Lundene. Æthelfrith was the richest of all Mercia’s noblemen after Æthelred, but he had stood aloof from Gleawecestre and its squabbles, allying himself with the West Saxons and, so far as I knew, he had not bothered to attend the Witan. And it probably did not matter what the Witan advised because, in the end, the West Saxons would decide who or what was best for Mercia.

Or so I thought.

And I should have thought harder.

The Witan began, of course it began, with a tedious service in Saint Oswald’s church, which was part of an abbey built by Æthelred. I had arrived on crutches, which I did not need, but I was determined to look more sickly than I felt. Ricseg, the abbot, welcomed me fulsomely, even trying to bow which was difficult because he had a belly like a pregnant sow. ‘It distresses me to see you in such pain, Lord Uhtred,’ he said, meaning he would have jumped for joy if he was not so damned fat. ‘May God bless you,’ he added, sketching a plump hand in the sign of a cross, while secretly praying that his god would flatten me with a thunderbolt. I thanked him as insincerely as he had blessed me, then took a stone bench at the back of the church and leaned against the wall, flanked there by Finan and by Osferth. Ricseg waddled about as he greeted men, and I heard the clatter of weapons being dropped outside the church. I had left my son and Sihtric out there to make sure no bastard stole Serpent-Breath. I leaned my head on the wall and tried to guess the cost of the silver candlesticks that stood at either side of the altar. They were vast things, heavy as war axes and dripping with scented beeswax, while the light from their dozen candles glinted from the silver reliquaries and golden dishes piled on the altar.

The Christian church is a clever thing. The moment a lord becomes wealthy he builds a church or a convent. Æthelflaed had insisted on making a church in Ceaster even before she began surveying the walls or deepening the ditch. I told her it was a waste of money, all she achieved was to build a place where men like Ricseg could get fat, but she insisted anyway. There are hundreds of men and women living off the churches, abbeys, and convents built by lords, and most do nothing except eat, drink and mutter an occasional prayer. Monks work, of course. They till the fields, grub up weeds, cut firewood, draw water and copy manuscripts, but only so their superiors can live like nobles. It is a clever scheme, to get other men to pay for your luxuries. I growled.

‘The ceremony will be over soon,’ Finan said soothingly, thinking that the growl was a sign of pain.

‘Shall I ask for honeyed wine, lord?’ Osferth asked me, concerned. He was King Alfred’s one bastard and a more decent man never walked this earth. I have often wondered what kind of king Osferth would have made if he had been born to a wife instead of to some scared servant girl who had lifted her skirts for a royal prick. He would have been a great king, judicious and clever and honest, but Osferth was ever marked by his bastardry. His father had tried to make Osferth a priest, but the son had wilfully chosen the way of the warrior and I was lucky to have him as one of my household.

I closed my eyes. Monks were chanting and one of the sorcerers was wafting a metal bowl on the end of a chain to spread smoke through the church. I sneezed, and it hurt, then there was a sudden commotion at the door and I thought it must be Æthelred arriving, but when I opened one eye I saw it was Bishop Wulfheard with a pack of fawning priests at his heels. ‘If there’s mischief,’ I said, ‘that tit-sucking bastard will be in the middle of it.’

‘Not so loud, lord,’ Osferth reproved me.

‘Tit-sucking?’ Finan asked.

I nodded. ‘That’s what they tell me in the Wheatsheaf.’

‘Oh no! No!’ Osferth said, shocked. ‘That can’t be true. He’s married!’

I laughed, then closed my eyes again. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that,’ I told Osferth.

‘Why not, lord? It’s just a foul rumour! The bishop is married.’

‘You shouldn’t say it,’ I said, ‘because it hurts so much when I laugh.’

Wulfheard was Bishop of Hereford, but he spent most of his time in Gleawecestre because that was where Æthelred had his deep coffers. Wulfheard hated me and had burned down my barns at Fagranforda in an effort to drive me from Mercia. He was not one of the fat priests, instead he was lean as a blade with a hard face that he forced into a smile when he saw me. ‘My Lord Uhtred,’ he greeted me.

‘Wulfheard,’ I responded churlishly.

‘I am delighted to see you in church,’ he said.

‘But not wearing that,’ one of his attendant priests spat, and I opened my eyes to see him pointing at the hammer I wore about my neck. It was the symbol of Thor.

‘Careful, priest,’ I warned the man, though I was too weak to do much about his insolence.

‘Father Penda,’ Wulfheard said, ‘let us pray that God persuades the Lord Uhtred to cast away his pagan trinkets. God listens to our prayers,’ he added to me.

‘He does?’

‘And I prayed for your recovery,’ he lied.

‘So did I,’ I said, touching Thor’s hammer.

Wulfheard gave a vague smile and turned away. His priests followed him like scurrying ducklings, all except for the young Father Penda who stood close and belligerent. ‘You disgrace God’s church,’ he said loudly.

‘Just go away, father,’ Finan said.

‘That is an abomination!’ the priest said, almost shouting as he pointed at the hammer. Men turned to look at us. ‘An abomination unto God,’ Penda said, then leaned down to snatch the hammer away. I grasped his black robe and pulled him towards me and the effort sent a stab of pain through my left side. The priest’s robe was damp on my face and it stank of dung, but the thick wool hid my agonised grimace as the wound in my side savaged me. I gasped, but then Finan managed to wrestle the priest away from me. ‘An abomination!’ Penda shouted as he was pulled backwards. Osferth half rose to help Finan, but I caught his sleeve to stop him. Penda lunged at me again, but then two of his fellow priests managed to grasp him by the shoulders and pull him away.

‘A silly man,’ Osferth said sternly, ‘but he’s right. You shouldn’t wear the hammer in a church, lord.’

I pressed my spine into the wall, trying to breathe slowly. The pain came in waves, sharp then sullen. Would it ever end? I was tired of it, and perhaps the pain dulled my thoughts.

I was thinking that Æthelred, Lord of Mercia, was dying. That much was obvious. It was a wonder he had survived this long, but it was plain that the Witan had been called to consider what should happen after his death, and I had just learned that the Ealdorman Æthelhelm, King Edward’s father-in-law, was in Gleawecestre. He was not in the church, at least I could not see him, and he was a difficult man to miss because he was big, jovial, and loud. I liked Æthelhelm and trusted him not at all. And he was here for the Witan. How did I know that? Because Father Penda, the spitting priest, was my man. Penda was in my pay and when I had pulled him close he had whispered in my ear, ‘Æthelhelm’s here. He came this morning.’ He had started to hiss something else, but then he had been pulled away.

I listened to the monks chanting and to the murmur of the priests gathered around the altar where a great golden crucifix reflected the light of the scented candles. The altar was hollow and in its belly lay a massive silver coffin that glinted with crystal inserts. That coffin alone must have cost as much as the church, and if a man bent down and looked through the small crystals he could dimly see a skeleton lying on a bed of costly blue silk. On special days the coffin was opened and the skeleton displayed and I had heard of miracles being performed on folk who paid to touch the yellow bones. Boils were magically healed, warts vanished, and the crippled walked, and all because the bones were said to be those of Saint Oswald, which, if true, would have been a miracle in itself because I had found the bones. They had probably belonged to some obscure monk, though for all I knew the remains might have come from a swineherd, though when I’d said that to Father Cuthbert he said that more than one swineherd had become a saint. You cannot win with Christians.

Besides the thirty or forty priests there must have been at least a hundred and twenty men in the church, all standing beneath the high beams where sparrows flew. This ceremony in the church was supposed to bring the nailed god’s blessing on the Witan’s deliberations, so it was no surprise when Bishop Wulfheard delivered a powerful sermon about the wisdom of listening to the advice of sober men, good men, older men, and rulers. ‘Let the elders be treated with double honour,’ he harangued us, ‘because that is the word of God!’ Maybe it was, but in Wulfheard’s mouth it meant that no one had been summoned to give advice, but rather to agree with whatever had already been decided between the bishop, Æthelred, and, as I had just learned, Æthelhelm of Wessex.

Æthelhelm was the richest man in Wessex after the king, his son-in-law. He owned vast tracts of land and his household warriors formed almost a third of the West Saxon army. He was Edward’s chief counsellor and his sudden presence in Gleawecestre surely meant that Edward of Wessex had decided what he wanted with Mercia. He must have sent Æthelhelm to announce the decision, but Edward and Æthelhelm both knew that Mercia was proud and prickly. Mercia would not simply accept Edward as king, so he must be offering something in return, but what? True, Edward could just declare himself king on Æthelred’s death, but that would provoke unrest, even outright opposition. Edward, I was sure, wanted Mercia to beg, and so he had sent Æthelhelm, genial Æthelhelm, generous Æthelhelm, gregarious Æthelhelm. Everyone liked Æthelhelm. I liked Æthelhelm, but his presence in Gleawecestre suggested mischief.

I managed to sleep through most of Wulfheard’s sermon and then, after the choir had chanted an interminable psalm, Osferth and Finan helped me leave the church while my son carried Serpent-Breath and my crutches. I exaggerated my weakness by leaning heavily on Finan’s shoulders and shuffling my feet. Most of it was pretence, but not all. I was tired of the pain, and tired of the stinking pus that seeped from the wound. A few men stopped to express their regret at my feeble appearance, and some of that sympathy was genuine, but many men took an obvious pleasure in my downfall. Before I had been wounded they had been frightened of me, now they could safely despise me.

Father Penda’s news had hardly been necessary because Æthelhelm was waiting in the great hall, but I supposed the young priest had wanted to give me what small warning he could as well as show that he was earning the gold I gave him. The West Saxon ealdorman was surrounded by lesser men, all of whom understood that the real power in this hall was his because he spoke for Edward of Wessex, and without the West Saxon army there would be no Mercia. I watched him, wondering why he was here. He was a big man, broad faced, with thinning hair, a ready smile and kindly eyes that looked shocked when he saw me. He shook off the men who spoke with him and hurried to my side. ‘My dear Lord Uhtred,’ he said.

‘Lord Æthelhelm.’ I made my voice slow and hoarse.

‘My dear Lord Uhtred,’ he said again, taking one of my hands in both of his. ‘I cannot express what I feel! Tell me what we can do for you.’ He pressed my hand. ‘Tell me!’ he urged.

‘You can let me die in peace,’ I said.

‘I’m sure you have many years yet,’ he said, ‘unlike my dear wife.’

That was news to me. I knew Æthelhelm was married to a pale, thin creature who had brought him half of Defnascir as her dowry. She had somehow given birth to a succession of fat, healthy babes. It was a marvel she had lasted this long. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said weakly.

‘She ails, poor thing. She wastes away and the end can’t be long now.’ He did not sound particularly upset, but I supposed the marriage to the wraith-like wife had only ever been a convenience that brought Æthelhelm land. ‘I’ll marry again,’ he said, ‘and I trust you will come to the wedding!’

‘If I live,’ I said.

‘Of course you will! I’ll pray for you!’

He needed to pray for Æthelred too. The Lord of Mercia had not attended the church service, but was waiting enthroned on the dais at the western end of the great hall. He slumped there, vacant-eyed, his body swathed in a great cloak of beaver fur. His red hair had turned white, though most of it was hidden beneath a woollen cap which, I supposed, hid his wound. I had no love for Æthelred, but I felt sorry for him. He seemed to become aware of my gaze because he stirred, raised his head and looked down the hall to where I had taken a bench at the back. He stared at me for a moment, then he leaned his head against the chair’s high back and his mouth fell slackly open.

Bishop Wulfheard climbed the dais. I feared he would deliver another sermon, but instead he rapped on the wooden boards with the base of his staff, and when silence fell over the hall contented himself with a brief blessing. Æthelhelm, I noticed, took a modest place to one side of the assembly, while Eardwulf stood against the other wall and between them the leading men of Mercia sat on uncomfortable benches. Æthelred’s household warriors lined the walls, the only men allowed to carry weapons in the hall. My son slipped through the door and crouched beside me. ‘The swords are safe,’ he muttered.

‘Sihtric’s there?’

‘He is.’

Bishop Wulfheard spoke so softly that I had to lean forward to hear what he said, and leaning forward hurt me. I endured the pain to listen. It was the Lord Æthelred’s pleasure, the bishop said, to see the kingdom of Mercia safer and larger than it had been for many years. ‘We have gained land by the strength of our swords,’ Wulfheard said, ‘and by the grace of God we have driven the pagans from the fields our forefathers tilled. We thank God for this!’

‘Amen,’ Lord Æthelhelm interjected loudly.

‘We owe this blessing,’ Wulfheard continued, ‘to the victory won last year by our Lord Æthelred with the help of his staunch West Saxon allies,’ he gestured towards Æthelhelm and the hall was filled with the noise of men stamping their feet in approbation. The bastard, I thought. Æthelred had been wounded from behind, and the battle had been gained by my men, not his.

The bishop waited for silence. ‘We have gained land,’ he went on, ‘good farmland, and it is Lord Æthelred’s pleasure to grant that land to those who fought for him last year,’ and the bishop pointed to a table at the side of the hall where two priests sat behind a heap of documents. The bribe was obvious. Support whatever Æthelred proposed and a man could expect a grant of land.

‘There’ll be none for me,’ I growled.

Finan chuckled. ‘He’ll give you enough land for a grave, lord.’

‘And yet,’ the bishop was speaking a little louder now, which meant I could lean back against the wall, ‘the pagans still hold towns which were a part of our ancient kingdom. Our land is still fouled by their presence, and if we are to bequeath to our children the fields that our forefathers ploughed then we must gird our loins and expel the heathen just as Joshua drove out the sinners of Jericho!’ He paused, perhaps expecting to hear foot-stamping again, but the hall was quiet. He was suggesting we had to fight, which we did, but Bishop Wulfheard was no man to inspire others to the bloody business of facing a shield wall of snarling spear-Danes.

‘But we shall not fight alone,’ the bishop continued. ‘The Lord Æthelhelm has come from Wessex to assure us, indeed to promise us, that the forces of Wessex will fight beside us!’

That provoked applause. Someone else would do the fighting, it seemed, and men stamped their feet as Æthelhelm climbed the wooden steps to the dais. He smiled at the hall, a big man, easy in his authority. A gold chain glinted from his mail-clad breast. ‘I have no right to speak at this noble gathering,’ he said modestly, his rich voice filling the hall, ‘but with Lord Æthelred’s permission?’ He turned and Æthelred managed to nod.

‘My king,’ Æthelhelm said, ‘prays daily for the kingdom of Mercia. He prays that the pagans will be defeated. He thanks God for the victory you gained last year and, my lords, let us not forget that it was the Lord Uhtred who led that fight! Who suffered in that fight! Who trapped the heathen and delivered them to our swords!’

That was a surprise. There was not a man in the hall who did not know that I was an enemy to Æthelred, yet here, in Æthelred’s own hall, I was being praised? Men turned to look at me, then one or two started to stamp their feet and soon the great hall was filled with noise. Even Æthelred managed to rap the arm of his chair twice. Æthelhelm beamed and I kept a straight face, wondering what serpent was hidden in this unexpected flattery.

‘It is the pleasure of my king,’ Æthelhelm waited for the racket to subside, ‘to keep a large force in Lundene, which army will be ever ready to oppose the Danes who infest the eastern parts of our land.’ That was greeted by silence, though it was hardly a surprise. Lundene, the greatest town of Britain, was part of Mercia, but it had been under West Saxon rule for years now. What Æthelhelm meant, and was not quite making plain, was that the city would now formally become a part of Wessex, and the men in the hall understood that. They might not like it, but if that was the price of West Saxon help against the Danes then it was already paid and so was acceptable.

‘We shall keep that mighty army in the east,’ Æthelhelm said, ‘an army dedicated to the task of bringing East Anglia back to Saxon rule. And you, my lords, will keep an army here, in the west, and together we shall clear the heathen from our land! We shall fight together!’ He paused, staring around the hall, then repeated the last word. ‘Together!’

He stopped there. It was a very abrupt ending. He smiled at the bishop, smiled at the silent men on the benches beneath him, then stepped back down to the floor. ‘Together,’ he had said, by which he surely meant a forced marriage between Wessex and Mercia. The serpent, I thought, was about to be let loose.

Bishop Wulfheard had sat through Æthelhelm’s words, but now stood again. ‘It is necessary, lords,’ he said, ‘that we keep an army of Mercia that will free the northern part of our land of the last pagans and so spread the rule of Christ to every part of our ancient kingdom.’ Someone in the hall began to speak, though I could not catch the words, and the bishop interrupted him. ‘The new lands that we grant will pay for the warriors we need,’ he said sharply, and his words stilled any protest that might have been made. Doubtless the protest had been about the cost of keeping a permanent army. An army has to be fed, paid, armed, and supplied with horses, weapons, armour, shields and training, and the Witan had scented new taxes, but the bishop seemed to be suggesting that the captured Danish farmlands would pay for the army. And so they might, I thought, and it was not a bad idea either. We had defeated the Danes, driven them from great swathes of Mercian land, and it made sense to keep them running. That was what Æthelflaed was doing near Ceaster, but she was doing it without the support of her husband’s money or men.

‘And an army needs a leader,’ Bishop Wulfheard said.

The serpent was flickering its tongue now.

There was silence in the hall.

‘We have thought long about this,’ Wulfheard said piously, ‘and we have prayed too! We have laid the problem before Almighty God and he, in his omniscience, has suggested an answer.’

The serpent slithered into the light, small eyes glinting.

‘There are a dozen men in this hall,’ the bishop continued, ‘who could lead an army against the heathen, but to raise one man above the rest is to provoke jealousy. If the Lord Uhtred was well then there would be no other choice!’ You lying bastard, I thought. ‘And we all pray for the Lord Uhtred’s recovery,’ the bishop went on, ‘but until that happy day we need a man of proven ability, of fearless character, and of godly reputation.’

Eardwulf. Every eye in the hall looked at him, and I sensed rebellion stirring among the ealdormen. Eardwulf was not one of them. He was an upstart who owed his command of Æthelred’s household warriors to his sister, Eadith, who shared Æthelred’s bed. I had half expected to see her at the Witan, perhaps pretending to be Æthelred’s nurse, but she had the sense, or someone had the sense, to make sure she had stayed hidden.

And then the bishop sprang his surprise, and the serpent’s mouth opened to show the long curved fangs. ‘It is the Lord Æthelred’s pleasure,’ he said, ‘that his dear daughter should marry Eardwulf.’

There was a gasp in the hall, a murmur, and then silence again. I could see men frowning, more in perplexity than disapproval. Eardwulf, by marrying Ælfwynn, was joining Æthelred’s family. He might not be nobly born, but no one could deny his wife’s royal lineage. Ælfwynn was King Alfred’s granddaughter, King Edward’s niece. The open thighs of Eardwulf’s sister had given him command of Æthelred’s household warriors, but now Ælfwynn could spread her legs to lift him higher still. Clever, I thought. A few men started to speak, their voices a low grumble in the big hall, but then came another surprise: Æthelred himself spoke.

‘It is my pleasure,’ Æthelred said, then paused to gulp in a breath. His voice had been weak and men hushed each other in the hall to hear him. ‘It is my pleasure,’ he said again, his words halting and slurred, ‘that my daughter Ælfwynn should marry my Lord Eardwulf.’

Lord, I thought? Lord Eardwulf? I stared in amazement at Æthelred. He seemed to be smiling. I looked at Æthelhelm. What did Wessex gain from the marriage? Maybe, I thought, it was simply that no Mercian ealdorman could marry Ælfwynn and so inherit Æthelred’s power, thus leaving the throne open for Edward, but what was to stop Eardwulf himself aspiring to the throne? Yet Æthelhelm was smiling and nodding his approval, then he crossed the hall and held his arms out to embrace Eardwulf. There could be no plainer signal than that. King Edward of Wessex wanted his niece to marry Eardwulf. But why?

Father Penda scuttled past, heading for the door. He glanced at me, and Osferth stiffened, expecting another assault from the young priest, but Penda kept walking. ‘Go after that priest,’ I told my son.

‘Father?’

‘He’s gone for a piss. Piss beside him. Go!’

‘I don’t need a …’

‘Go and piss!’

Uhtred went and I watched Æthelhelm lead Eardwulf onto the dais. The younger man looked handsome, confident, and strong. He knelt to Æthelred, who reached out a hand. Eardwulf kissed the hand and Æthelred said something, but too low for any of us to hear. Bishop Wulfheard stooped to listen, then straightened and turned to the hall. ‘It is the pleasure of our dear Lord Æthelred,’ he announced, ‘that his daughter be married on the feast of Saint Æthelwold.’

Some of the priests began stamping their feet and the rest of the hall followed. ‘When is Saint Æthelwold’s Day?’ I asked Osferth.

‘There are two Æthelwolds,’ he said pedantically, ‘and you should know that, lord, as they both come from near Bebbanburg.’

‘When?’ I snarled.

‘The nearest is in three days, lord. But Bishop Æthelwold’s feast day was last month.’

Three days? Far too soon for Æthelflaed to interfere. Her daughter Ælfwynn would be married to an enemy before she even knew about it. That enemy was still kneeling to Æthelred while the Witan cheered him. Just minutes before they had been scornful of Eardwulf because of his low birth, but they could see which way the wind blew, and it blew strong from the south, from Wessex. Eardwulf was at least a Mercian, and so Mercia would be spared the indignity of begging a West Saxon to lead them.

Then my son came back into the church and bent to my ear. He whispered to me.

And I understood at last why Æthelhelm approved of the marriage and why I had been invited to the Witan.

I should have known, or I should have guessed. This meeting of the Witan was not just about Mercia’s future but about the fate of kings.

I told Uhtred what he must do, then I stood. I stood laboriously and slowly, letting the pain show on my face. ‘My lords,’ I shouted, and that hurt so much. ‘My lords!’ I shouted again, letting the pain rip at me.

They turned to look at me. Every man in the room knew what was about to happen, indeed Æthelhelm and the bishop had feared this would happen, which is why they had hoped to silence me with flattery. Now they knew the flattery had failed because I was going to protest. I was going to argue that Æthelflaed should have a say in her daughter’s fate. I was going to challenge Æthelred and Æthelhelm, and now they waited for that challenge in silence. Æthelred was staring at me, so was Æthelhelm. The bishop’s mouth hung open.

But, to their relief, I said nothing.

I just fell to the floor.

There was commotion. I was shaking and moaning. Men ran to kneel at my side and Finan bellowed at them to give me room. He also shouted to my son, telling him to come to me, but Uhtred had gone to do my bidding. Father Penda pushed through the crowd and, seeing me stricken, loudly announced that this was God’s righteous judgement on me, and even Bishop Wulfheard frowned at that. ‘Silence, man!’

‘The heathen is struck down,’ Father Penda said, trying too hard to earn his gold.

‘Lord? Lord!’ Finan was rubbing my right hand.

‘Sword,’ I said faintly, then louder, ‘sword!’

‘Not in the hall,’ some fool insisted.

‘No swords in the hall,’ Eardwulf said sternly.

So Finan and four other men carried me outside and laid me on the grass. A thin rain was falling as Sihtric brought me Serpent-Breath and closed my right hand about her hilt. ‘Paganism!’ Father Penda hissed.

‘Does he live?’ the bishop asked, bending down to peer at me.

‘Not for long,’ Finan said.

‘Carry him to shelter,’ the bishop said.

‘Home,’ I muttered, ‘take me home. Finan! Take me home!’

‘I’ll take you home, lord,’ Finan said.

Æthelhelm arrived, driving the crowd apart like a bull scattering sheep. ‘Lord Uhtred!’ he exclaimed, kneeling beside me. ‘What happened?’

Osferth made the sign of the cross. ‘He can’t hear you, lord.’

‘I can,’ I said. ‘Take me home.’

‘Home?’ Æthelhelm asked. He sounded anxious.

‘Home to the hills,’ I said, ‘I want to die on the hills.’

‘There’s a convent nearby,’ Æthelhelm was holding my right hand, tightening my grip on Serpent-Breath. ‘They can minister to you there, Lord Uhtred.’

‘The hills,’ I said, sounding weak, ‘just take me to the hills.’

‘It’s pagan nonsense,’ Father Penda said scornfully.

‘If Lord Uhtred wants to go to the hills,’ Æthelhelm said firmly, ‘then he must go!’ Men muttered as they watched me. My death took away Æthelflaed’s strongest supporter, and doubtless they were wondering what would happen to her lands and mine when Eardwulf became Mercia’s lord. It was raining harder and I moaned. It was not all pretence.

‘You’ll catch cold, lord bishop,’ Father Penda said.

‘And we still have much to discuss,’ Wulfheard said, straightening. ‘Send us news,’ he said to Finan.

‘It is God’s judgement,’ Penda insisted as he walked away.

‘It is indeed!’ Wulfheard said heavily. ‘And let it be a lesson to all the heathen.’ He made the sign of the cross, then followed Penda towards the hall.

‘You will let us know what happens?’ Æthelhelm asked Finan.

‘Of course, lord. Pray for him.’

‘With all my might.’

I waited to make certain that everyone from the Witan had retreated from the rain, then looked up at Finan. ‘Uhtred’s bringing a wagon,’ I said. ‘Get me in it. Then we go east, all of us. Sihtric?’

‘Lord?’

‘Find our men. Look in the taverns. Get them ready to travel. Go!’

‘Lord?’ Finan asked, puzzled by my sudden energy.

‘I’m dying,’ I explained, then winked at him.

‘You are?’

‘I hope not, but tell people I am.’

It took time, but at last my son brought the wagon harnessed with two horses and I was lifted onto the damp bed of straw. I had brought most of my men to Gleawecestre, and they rode in front, behind and alongside the cart as we threaded the streets. Folk pulled off their hats as we passed. Somehow the news of my imminent death had spread through the city and people spilled out of shops and houses to watch my passing. Priests made the sign of the cross as the wagon rolled by.

I feared I was already too late. My son, going to join Penda for a piss against the church wall, had heard the priest’s real news. Æthelhelm had sent men to Cirrenceastre.

And I should have known.

That was why I had been invited to the Witan, not because Æthelred and Æthelhelm wanted to persuade Mercia that someone had spoken in support of Æthelflaed, but to get me out of Cirrenceastre, or rather to get my household warriors out of the town, because there was something Æthelhelm desperately wanted in Cirrenceastre.

He wanted Æthelstan.

Æthelstan was a boy, just ten years old as far as I could remember, and his mother had been a pretty Centish girl who had died giving birth to him. But his father was alive, very much alive, and his father Edward, son of King Alfred, was now the King of Wessex himself. Edward had since married Æthelhelm’s daughter and fathered another son, which made Æthelstan an inconvenience. Was he the eldest son? Or was he, as Æthelhelm insisted, a bastard? If he was a bastard then he had no rights, but there was a persistent rumour that Edward had married the Centish girl. And I knew that rumour was true because Father Cuthbert had performed the marriage ceremony. The people of Wessex pretended to believe that Æthelstan was a bastard, but Æthelhelm feared those persistent rumours. He feared that Æthelstan could be a rival to his own grandson for the throne of Wessex, and so Æthelhelm had plainly decided to do something about that. According to Penda he had sent twenty or more men to Cirrenceastre where Æthelstan was living in Æthelflaed’s house, but my absence meant that the boy was protected by only six household warriors. Would Æthelhelm dare kill him? I doubted that, but he would certainly dare capture him and have him removed far away so that he could not threaten the ealdorman’s ambitions. And if Penda was right then the men sent to take Æthelstan had a day’s start on us. But Æthelhelm had plainly been frightened I was going to Cirrenceastre, or perhaps Fagranforda, which suggested his men might still be there, and that was why I had muttered the nonsense about dying on the hills. When I die I want it to be in a girl’s warm bed, not on some rainswept Mercian hilltop.

I dared not hurry. People watched us from the walls of Gleawecestre, so we travelled painfully slowly, as if the men did not want to jolt a wagon in which a man lay dying. We could not abandon that pretence until we reached the beech woods on the steep slope that climbed to the hills where sheep would keep the pale grass short all summer, and once among those trees and thus safely hidden from curious eyes, I climbed off the cart and onto my horse’s back. I left Godric Grindanson, my son’s servant boy, to bring the cart, while the rest of us spurred ahead. ‘Osferth!’ I called.

‘Lord?’

‘Don’t stop in Cirrenceastre,’ I told him. ‘Ride on with two men and make sure Father Cuthbert’s safe. Get the blind bastard out of bed and bring them both to Cirrenceastre.’

‘Them? Out of bed?’ Osferth could be slow to understand sometimes.

‘Where else will they be?’ I asked, and Finan laughed.

Father Cuthbert was my priest. I did not want a priest, but he had been sent to me by King Edward and I liked Cuthbert. He had been blinded by Cnut. He was, I was constantly assured, a good priest, meaning he did his work well enough. ‘What work?’ I had asked Osferth once and had been assured that Cuthbert visited the sick and said his prayers and preached his sermons, but every time I visited his small house beside Fagranforda’s church I had to wait while he dressed. He would then appear smiling, dishevelled and flustered, followed a moment later by Mehrasa, the dark-skinned slave girl he had married. She was a beauty.

And Cuthbert was in danger. I was not certain that Æthelhelm knew that it had been Father Cuthbert who had married Edward to his Centish love. If he did know, then Cuthbert would have to be silenced, though it was possible Edward had never revealed the priest’s identity. Edward was fond of his son, and he was fond of Cuthbert too, but how far did that affection reach? Edward was not a weak king, but he was a lazy one, happy to leave most of the kingdom’s affairs to Æthelhelm and to a pack of diligent priests who, in truth, ruled Wessex fairly and firmly. That left Edward free to hunt and to whore.

And while the king hunted deer, boars, and women, Æthelhelm gathered power. He used it well enough. There was justice in Wessex, and the burhs were kept in repair, and the fyrd practised with weapons, and the Danes had finally learned that invading Wessex led only to defeat, and Æthelhelm himself was a decent enough man except that he saw a chance to be the grandfather of a king, and a great king at that. He would guide his grandson as he guided Edward, and I did not doubt that Æthelhelm’s ambition was the same dream that had haunted Alfred. That dream was to unite the Saxons, to take the four kingdoms and make them one. And that was a good dream, but Æthelhelm wanted to be sure it was his family that made the dream come true.

And I would stop him.

If I could.

I would stop him because I knew Æthelstan was legitimate. He was the ætheling, the king’s eldest son and, besides, I loved that boy. Æthelhelm would stop at nothing to destroy him and I would do anything to protect him.

We did not have far to go. Once on the hilltops we could see the smear of smoke that marked Cirrenceastre’s hearth fires. We were hurrying and my ribs hurt. The land either side of the Roman road belonged to Æthelflaed, and it was good land. The first lambs were in the fields, guarded by men and dogs. The wealth of the land had been granted to Æthelflaed by her father, but her brother could take it away, and Æthelhelm’s unexpected presence in Gleawecestre suggested that Edward was siding with Æthelred, or rather that Æthelhelm was making the decisions that would dictate Mercia’s fate.

‘What will he do to the boy?’ Finan asked, evidently thinking much the same thoughts as those in my head. ‘Cut his throat?’

‘No. He knows Edward likes the twins.’ Æthelstan had a twin sister, Eadgyth.

‘He’ll put Æthelstan into a monastery,’ my son suggested, ‘and little Eadgyth into a convent.’

‘Like enough.’

‘Somewhere far away,’ my son went on, ‘with some bastard abbot who beats the shit out of you every two days.’

‘They’ll try to make him into a priest,’ Finan said.

‘Or hope he falls ill and dies,’ I said, then winced as my horse came down heavily on a rough patch of stone. The roads decayed. Everything decayed.

‘You shouldn’t be riding, father,’ my son said reprovingly.

‘I’m in pain all the time,’ I said, ‘and if I gave into it then I’d do nothing.’

But that journey was painful and by the time I came to Cirrenceastre’s western gate I was almost weeping with agony. I tried to hide the pain. I sometimes wonder whether the dead can see the living? Do they sit in Valhalla’s great feast-hall and watch those they left behind? I could imagine Cnut sitting there and thinking that I must join him soon, and we would raise a horn of ale together. There is no pain in Valhalla, no sadness, no tears, no broken oaths. I could see Cnut grinning at me, not with any pleasure at my pain, but rather because we had liked each other in life. ‘Come to me,’ he was saying, ‘come to me and live!’ It was tempting.

‘Father?’ My son sounded worried.

I blinked and the shadows that had clouded my eyes drained away and I saw we had reached the gate and one of the town guards was frowning up at me. ‘Lord?’ the man said.

‘Did you speak?’

‘The king’s men are in my lady’s house,’ he said.

‘The king’s men!’ I exclaimed, and the man just stared at me. I turned to Osferth. ‘Keep going! Find Cuthbert!’ His route to Fagranforda lay through the town. ‘The king’s men?’ I asked the guard again.

‘King Edward’s men, lord.’

‘And they’re still there?’

‘So far as I know, lord.’

I spurred on. Æthelflaed’s house had once belonged to the Roman commander, or I assumed it had been the commander’s house because it was a lavish building that lay in a corner of the old Roman fort. The fort’s walls had been pulled down, except for the northern side, which was part of the town’s ramparts, but the house was easily defended. It was built about a large courtyard, and the outer walls were of honey-coloured stone and had no windows. There was a pillared entrance facing south, and Æthelflaed had made a new gateway from her stable yard through the town’s northern wall. I sent Sihtric with six companions to guard that northern entrance while I rode with thirty men to the small square that faced the southern door. There was a crowd of curious folk in the square, all wondering why King Edward of Wessex had sent armed men to Cirrenceastre. The crowd parted as our horses’ hooves sounded loud in the street behind them, then we were in the open space and I saw two spearmen beside Æthelflaed’s door. One was sitting on a stone urn that held a small pear tree. He stood and snatched up his shield as we arrived, while the other rapped on the closed door with the butt of his spear. Both men were in mail, they wore helmets, and their round shields were freshly painted with the dragon of Wessex. There was a small hatch in the door and I saw it slide to one side and someone peered out at us. Two boys were guarding horses on the eastern side of the square beside Æthelflaed’s tall wooden church. ‘Count the horses,’ I told my son.

‘Twenty-three,’ he answered almost at once.

So we outnumbered them. ‘I don’t expect a fight,’ I said.

Then a scream sounded from inside the house.

A scream to pierce the ears with all the force of a well-made spear striking through the willow boards of a shield.

‘Sweet God,’ Finan said.

And the screaming stopped.

Two

The door to Æthelflaed’s house opened.

Brice appeared.

I knew Brice. Not well, but inevitably our paths had crossed in the long years we had struggled to push the Danes farther northwards. I had seen him in encampments, had even exchanged a word or two before battle, and he was a veteran of many battles, a man who had stood in the shield wall time after time, and always under Ealdorman Æthelhelm’s banner of the leaping stag. He was skilled with weapons, strong as a bull, but slow of wit, which is why he had never risen to command one of Æthelhelm’s larger companies. Yet today, it seemed, Brice had been put in charge of the men sent to find Æthelstan. He strode towards us, a warrior in his formidable war-glory, but I had too often dressed in the same way to be impressed by the display.

His mail was good and tight, probably from Frankia, but it had been cut in a half-dozen places where new rings showed against the duller metal. He wore tall boots of dark leather, while his sword belt, buckled tight about the bright mail, was decorated with silver lozenges. His sword was long and heavy, scabbarded in a red sheath criss-crossed with silver bands. A silver chain hung at his neck. A dark-red cloak was spread by his wide shoulders, clasped at his throat by an ornate brooch studded with garnets. He wore no helmet. His red hair was longer than most Saxons liked to wear it, framing a face that had seen many enemies. He had gouged a cross onto his right cheek then rubbed the wound with soot or dirt to leave the dark mark that proclaimed him a Christian warrior. He was a hard man, but what else would he be? He had stood in the shield wall, he had watched the Danes come to the attack, and he had lived. He was no youngster. His beard was grey and his dark face deep-lined. ‘My Lord Uhtred,’ he said. There was no respect in his voice, instead he spoke sourly as though my arrival was a tedious nuisance which, I suppose, it was.

‘Brice.’ I nodded to him from my saddle.

‘The king sent me,’ he said.

‘You serve King Edward now?’ I asked. ‘What happened? Did Lord Æthelhelm tire of your stench?’

He ignored the insult. ‘He sent me to fetch the boy bastard,’ he said.

I looked up at the wooden tower that crowned Æthelflaed’s church. A bell that had cost her a heavy chest of silver hung there. She had been so proud of the bell, which had been made by Frisian craftsmen and brought across the sea. It carried an inscription about its skirt: ‘Æthelflaed, by the grace of God and by the blessing of Saint Werburgh, had this bell made’, and by the grace of God the bell had cracked the very first time it was struck. I had laughed when it happened, and ever since the bell had not rung to summon folk to church, instead it just hurt the sky with its harsh noise.

‘Did you hear me?’ Brice demanded.

I took my time to turn from the cracked bell, then I looked Brice up and down. ‘Which boy bastard?’ I finally asked.

‘You know who,’ he said.

‘I should buy the Lady Æthelflaed another bell,’ I said to Finan.

‘And she’d like that,’ he said.

‘Maybe I’ll have “the gift of Thor” written on the thing.’

‘And she won’t like that at all.’

‘Lord Uhtred!’ Brice interrupted our nonsense.

‘You’re still here?’ I asked, pretending surprise.

‘Where is he?’

‘Where is who?’

‘The bastard Æthelstan,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘I don’t know a bastard called Æthelstan. Do you?’ I asked Finan.

‘Never heard of him, lord.’

‘The boy Æthelstan,’ Brice said, struggling to restrain his temper, ‘King Edward’s boy.’

‘He’s not home?’ I pretended surprise again. ‘He should be at home or else at school.’

‘He’s not here,’ Brice said curtly, ‘and we looked in the school. So find him.’

I took a deep breath, then dismounted. It took an effort to hide the pain and I had to hold onto the horse for a moment as the agony drained from my side. I even wondered whether I could walk without support, but then managed to let go of the saddle. ‘That sounded like a command,’ I said to Brice as I took a few slow steps towards him.

‘From the king,’ he said.

‘The King of Wessex?’ I asked. ‘But this is Mercia.’

‘The king wants his son returned to Wessex,’ Brice said flatly.

‘You’re a good warrior,’ I told Brice. ‘I’d welcome you into any shield wall, but I wouldn’t trust you to empty my piss pot. You’re not clever enough. That’s why you don’t command Æthelhelm’s household troops. So no, you don’t serve the king because the king wouldn’t want you. So who did send you? Lord Æthelhelm?’

I had annoyed him, but he managed to bite back his anger. ‘The king,’ he said slowly, ‘wants his son, and you, Lord Uhtred, will find the boy and bring him here.’

‘You might find it strange,’ I said, ‘but I don’t take orders from you.’

‘Oh, you will,’ he said, ‘you will.’ He thought he was hiding his nervousness by belligerence, but I could see he was confused. He had orders to fetch Æthelstan and the boy had gone missing and my warriors now outnumbered his, but Brice did not have the sense to abandon his mission, instead he would tackle it as he did every other problem, by savage directness. He turned his head towards the house. ‘Bring her!’ he called.

The house door opened and a man brought Stiorra into the sunlight. A murmur sounded through the crowd because my daughter’s face was smeared with blood and she was clutching her torn robe to her breasts. Finan leaned from his saddle and put a hand on my arm, restraining me, but I had no need of his gesture. I was angry, yes, but I was no fool. I was too weak to attack Brice, and besides, my anger was cold. I was going to win this confrontation, but not by brute force. Not yet. Brice, meanwhile, was certain I had no choice but to obey him. ‘You bring me the boy,’ he said with a sneer, ‘and your daughter is freed.’

‘And if I don’t?’

He shrugged. ‘You’ll find out, won’t you?’

I turned and jerked my head at my son. ‘Come here.’ I waited till Uhtred had dismounted and joined me. ‘Where is he?’ I asked quietly. If anyone knew where Æthelstan was hiding it would be my son.

He glanced at Brice, then half turned his back on the West Saxon. ‘He spends time at the smithy,’ he told me.

‘The smithy?’

‘Godwulf’s smithy. He’s got friends there.’ He spoke too low for Brice to hear what he was saying. ‘Godwulf’s son and daughter. He goes to see her, really.’

‘He’s just ten!’

‘Nine, I think. And she’s twelve.’

‘He likes older women, does he?’ I asked. ‘So go and find the little brute and bring him here, but take your time. Don’t hurry.’

He nodded and left, pushing through the sullen crowd. ‘Where’s he going?’ Brice demanded.

‘To fetch the boy, of course,’ I said.

He was suspicious, but not clever enough to think beyond the next step, though he must have thought that step was a good idea. ‘Tell your men to leave,’ he demanded.

‘Leave?’ I pretended to be as stupid as Brice.

‘Leave!’ he snarled. ‘I want them out of sight, now!’

He thought he was ridding himself of their threat, though in truth he was demanding just what I wanted him to demand. ‘Take the men onto the city wall,’ I told Finan quietly, ‘and when I give the signal go in through the stable roof.’

‘What are you telling him?’ Brice wanted to know.

‘To wait in the Barley inn,’ I said, ‘the ale’s good there, much better than the stale muck they serve in the Muddy Goose.’ I nodded to Finan and he led my men away, vanishing into one of the narrow alleys that opened from the church square. I waited till the sound of their hooves had faded, then walked slowly towards my daughter. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the man holding her.

‘Hrothard,’ he said.

‘Quiet!’ Brice snarled at him.

‘If you hurt her, Hrothard,’ I said, ‘you will die very slowly.’

Brice took two fast paces to stand in my face. ‘Hrothard will do what I tell him to do,’ he said and I smelt his rotten breath, but then he could probably smell the filthy pus that was seeping from my wound.

‘And you’ll tell him to let her go when I bring you Æthelstan,’ I said, ‘isn’t that what you want?’

He nodded. He was still suspicious, but too stupid to see the trap. May the gods always send me stupid enemies. ‘You know where the boy is?’ he asked.

‘We think so,’ I said, ‘and, of course, if the king wants his son then who am I to stand in his way?’

He thought about that question for a few heartbeats and must have decided that I had yielded altogether to his demands. ‘The king asked Lord Æthelhelm to fetch the boy,’ Brice said, trying to shade his lies into truth.

‘You should have told me that from the beginning,’ I said, ‘because I’ve always liked Æthelhelm.’ Brice half smiled, placated by the words. ‘But I don’t like men who strike my daughter,’ I added.

‘It was an accident, lord,’ he said too quickly. ‘The man will be punished.’

‘Good,’ I said, ‘and now we wait.’ We waited while Finan’s men dismounted and then climbed to the city wall by steps hidden beyond the church and far from Brice’s sight. The old fort, most of which had been pulled down, had stood in a corner of those walls and so the ramparts formed the northern and western sides of Æthelflaed’s house. The servant quarters and stables were on the northern side, and over the years their roofs had decayed to be replaced by thatch held up by rafters and wattles. Tear the thatch aside and break through the wattles and a man could drop into the stables. I could see Finan and his men on the wall now, and Brice would have seen them too had he turned around, but I kept his attention by asking him about Teotanheale and listening as he described his part in that battle. I pretended to be impressed, encouraging him to tell me more while Finan’s men ducked down low. Only one stayed upright, leaning lazily against the outer rampart. ‘What about the boy’s twin sister?’ I asked Brice.

‘The king wants her too,’ he said.

‘Where is she now?’

‘In the house. With the kitchen maids.’

‘She’d better be safe and unharmed,’ I said.

‘She is,’ Brice said.

I turned away. ‘You will forgive me,’ I said, ‘but my wound still hurts. I need to sit.’

‘I pray for your recovery,’ he said, though it took an effort for him to say it.

‘The gods will have their will,’ I said and turned back to my horse, which was being held by Edric, a lad of some eight or nine years who was my new servant. I braced myself against the pain, then climbed into the saddle. Brice had also turned away and walked back to the house door where he waited close to Stiorra.

She was staring at me. I have been a bad father, though I have ever loved my children. Yet small children bore me, and as they grew I was forever away fighting. I trained my son to be a warrior, and I was proud of him, but Stiorra puzzled me. She was my youngest, and it hurt to look at her because she so resembled her dead mother; she was tall and lithe and had her mother’s long face, the same black hair, the same dark eyes, and the same grave expression that could light into beauty with a smile. I did not know her well because I had been fighting as she grew, and Æthelflaed had raised her. She had been sent to the nuns in Cracgelad for much of her youth, schooled there in religion and the womanly arts. She was sweet-natured, though there was steel beneath that honey, and she was affectionate, though I never did know what she was thinking. It was time, I knew, that she was married, but I had found no one to whom I wanted to give my daughter, and she had never spoken of wanting to be married. Indeed she never spoke much, guarding her truth-hoard behind silence and stillness.

Her lower lip had been broken. It was swollen and bloody. Someone had hit her hard to do that and I would find that man and kill him. Stiorra was my daughter and no one hit her without my permission, and she was too old to be struck now. Children should be whipped into obedience, but once a child comes of age then the beatings stop. Husbands beat wives, of course, though I had never beaten Gisela, nor any of my lovers. I was not alone in that. Many men do not beat their wives, even though the law allows it and the church encourages it, but a man gains no reputation by beating a weaker person. Æthelred had beaten Æthelflaed, but he was a weak man, and it takes a weak man to prove his strength by striking a woman.

I was thinking these thoughts and watching my daughter, who stood very straight and still. A gust of wind brought a spatter of rain. I looked up, surprised, because most of the day had been fair, but the rain was brief and light.

‘Lord,’ Brice called harshly. He was becoming suspicious again, but before he could voice his fears my son appeared with Æthelstan. ‘Bring the boy here,’ Brice called to my son.

‘Bring him to me,’ I ordered, and Uhtred obediently brought Æthelstan to my stirrup. I grinned down at the boy who I loved as though he were another son. He was a good boy, mischievous as a boy should be, but intelligent and tough. He had started his weapon training, learning sword-craft and shield-lore, and the exercises had filled him out. In time, I thought, he would be a good-looking man. He was dark-haired, thin-faced, with green eyes that I supposed had come from his mother. ‘You get the boy,’ I called to Brice, ‘when I get my daughter.’

That made him think. He was such a stupid man. His brains, I thought, must be made of barley mush. A good warrior, yes, but men like Brice need to be controlled like dogs. I assumed Æthelhelm had sent him to Cirrenceastre because Brice could be relied on to obey his orders come what may, he was unstoppable like a boar-hound, but when the boar has sunk his tusk into the dog’s belly and is ripping the intestines out then the dog should know he’s beaten. Brice was still thinking, something he found hard to do, but at last he saw the apparent trap in my words. ‘We shall make the exchange outside the town,’ he proposed.

‘Outside the town?’ I asked, pretending not to understand.

‘You think I’m a fool, lord?’ he asked.

‘I would never think that,’ I said gently.

‘Your men will stay inside the walls,’ he ordered, ‘and you will bring the boy outside.’

I frowned as if I was considering that proposal, which, of course, made sense for Brice. He had worked out that my men could ambush him in Cirrenceastre’s narrow streets, but if the exchange was made in the fields outside the town then there was no danger of such a trap.

‘Well?’ he demanded.

I stared at the man on the wall and, very slowly, raised my head. I paused, then nodded fast. The man on the wall vanished, but Brice, of course, believed the nod was for him. ‘We shall do it your way,’ I said to Brice, ‘but I want your word of honour.’

‘My word, lord?’

‘That the man who struck my daughter will be punished.’

‘I said so, didn’t I?’

I spurred my horse a little closer. The hooves were loud on the Roman paving. ‘I want you to give the man to me,’ I said.

‘He will be punished,’ Brice said stubbornly.

Then the shouts started and the unmistakable sound of swords clashing and I knew Finan and his men were inside the house. They had not bothered to clear the thatch and break the wattles beneath, but simply jumped onto the roof, which instantly gave way. Gerbruht, a Frisian who never seemed to stop eating and who weighed as much as a horse, had evidently jumped first, and the rest of Finan’s men followed through the gaping hole he had made. I did not react to the sounds, but just kept looking at Brice. ‘You will give the man to me,’ I said, and might have saved my breath because Brice suddenly heard the commotion and realised he had been tricked. I was ready to spur my horse at him, using the stallion’s weight to throw him down, but instead he drew his sword and ran at me.

‘You bastard!’ he shouted. He was quick. No warrior stays alive by being slow, but for a big man he was surprisingly fast. He covered the few paces towards me, sword swinging to take my horse in the face and I wrenched the reins and almost blacked out with the stab of pain that seared from my lower ribs, and I knew I had lost, that he was too fast, that he would drag me from the saddle and either kill me or, if he had a grain of sense, hold me as another hostage.

Yet if he was fast, my son was like lightning.

Brice’s sword never struck me or my horse. I was hardly aware what happened, but I learned that Uhtred drew his seax, Attor, and threw it. The short blade struck Brice’s legs, tripping him. I heard the clatter as he fell, but I was still trying to calm my breathing. Brice stood immediately, but Uhtred had his long-sword, his precious Raven-Beak, drawn. He had thrust Æthelstan back, away from the fight. ‘Come on, earsling,’ he taunted Brice. The crowd that had been so silent suddenly cheered.

‘Bastard,’ Brice said. He kicked Attor away, then went for my son. Brice, remember, was an experienced sword-warrior, a man who had spent his life training with blades, a man who had become wealthy with sword-skill. He had no fear, and Uhtred, my son, had an open face that looked forever cheerful and gave him the appearance of innocence. Brice reckoned he could chop him down with two or three strokes, and the first stroke was a scything blow that would have opened my son’s belly like a knife slashing across a sack of eels.

Uhtred skipped back, he laughed. He lowered Raven-Beak and laughed again, and Brice took the bait and attacked a second time, this time lunging and, as Raven-Beak rose to parry, he twisted the lunge, turning it about my son’s blade and dragging his sword back so it would saw across his enemy’s neck. That was fast and that was skilful, and Uhtred just leaned back and away, the edge of Brice’s blade missing by the breadth of a finger, and Brice was slightly off balance and my son just reached out and pushed him with Raven-Beak’s tip. ‘You’re slow,’ he said reprovingly as the West Saxon staggered.

‘Bastard,’ Brice muttered. It seemed to be his only curse. He had gained his balance and now looked at my son, saw that insolent grin on the innocent face, and the fury surged in him again. ‘Bastard,’ he shouted, and drove forward, lunging again, and Uhtred simply deflected the blade and Brice, with his extraordinary speed, kept the sword moving into a savage cut aimed at my son’s head, and again Raven-Beak was there, and I heard the crash of the blades and there was a harshness to the sound.

Blades ring together. Not like a bell rings, but there is an echo of that sound in the clash of blades, but Brice’s last cut had ended in a crack, like the noise of Æthelflaed’s bell. The blade was not broken, but the sound was ominous and he knew it. He stepped back.

Men were coming from the house. They were Brice’s men, but pursued by mine and none interfered as my son attacked for the first time. Thus far he had been content to defend and to taunt Brice, but now he went forward with a lunge that was never intended to strike home, but merely to force a parry, and then a waist-high cut that Brice parried again, and the cut did not seem too fast or vicious, yet when Brice’s sword met Raven-Beak it broke. It just broke into two pieces, and Uhtred turned his wrist over and held the point of his sword at Brice’s neck. ‘What shall I do with him, father?’

‘Drop what’s left of your sword,’ I ordered Brice. He hesitated, and so I drew Wasp-Sting, my seax, and held the hilt towards Æthelstan who had taken refuge beside my horse. ‘If he doesn’t drop his sword, boy,’ I told him, ‘then use that to cut his spine at the back of his neck. It’s time you learned how to kill a man.’ Æthelstan hesitated, not sure I was serious. I thrust the seax at him. ‘Take it,’ I said. The boy took hold of the short-sword, then looked back at me. ‘You’re the son of a king,’ I told him, ‘and one day you might be a king yourself. Life and death will be your gifts, so learn how to give them, boy.’

He walked towards Brice who half turned, then went very still when my son prodded his neck with Raven-Beak’s tip. Then, at last, some sense leaked into Brice’s brain and he dropped the remnant of his sword. ‘Let him live,’ I told Æthelstan, who looked relieved at the command.

Sixteen of Brice’s men had fled the house. They had no fight in them and Finan’s men were now taking their weapons. Stiorra was free and ran to my side. I smiled down at her and held her hand. ‘Who hit you?’ I asked her.

‘The priest,’ she said.

‘The priest?’ I asked, surprised, then saw the man among the West Saxon prisoners. He was scowling, an angry man in a black robe, with a heavy silver cross hanging at his neck. He was older, perhaps in his forties, with thick grey eyebrows and thin lips. ‘Was he the one who made you scream?’

‘I heard the hooves,’ she said, ‘and hoped it was you. So I screamed.’

‘And that’s when he hit you?’

‘He hit me before that,’ she said bitterly, ‘and tore this,’ she showed me the ripped breast of her linen dress.

Finan strolled across the small square. ‘There’s no fight in the bastards,’ he said, sounding disappointed.

Brice and his remaining men were standing by the house door, guarded by my swords. ‘Take them back inside the house,’ I ordered, then took a deep, painful breath. ‘It’s over!’ I called to the crowd. ‘Nothing more to see! So go back to work!’

Father Creoda, the priest who looked after Æthelflaed’s church and who taught in the town’s small school, hurried to Æthelstan’s side. He took the boy’s face in his hands, closed his eyes, and seemed to be saying a prayer of thanks for his safety.

‘Father Creoda!’ I called. ‘So the little bastard wasn’t at school?’

‘He was not, lord.’

‘And he should have been?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘So thrash him,’ I said.

‘It does no good, lord,’ the priest said plaintively. Father Creoda was a decent man, earnest and honest. He had come to Mercia from Wessex and believed in King Alfred’s dream of an educated community, pious and diligent, and I did not doubt that Æthelstan, who was as clever as a weasel, had long ago decided that Father Creoda’s authority was easily defied.

‘It doesn’t do any good,’ I agreed, ‘but it might make you feel better.’ I leaned down to take the seax from Æthelstan. ‘And if you don’t thrash him, I will. And take the grin off your ugly face,’ I added to the boy.

But I was grinning too. And wondering what new enemies I had just made.

And knowing I was about to make a lot more.

Æthelflaed’s house was built around a courtyard. It was not unlike the house in Lundene where I had lived with Gisela, only this building was larger. The courtyard had a square pool in the centre where frogs left thick skeins of spawn. I often tried to imagine the Romans in these houses. They had left pictures of themselves, either painted on the wall plaster or made of small floor tiles, but the paintings were all faded and water-streaked, while the tiles were usually broken. Yet enough could be seen to tell us that Roman men had worn a kind of white sheet wrapped about themselves, or else a skirt sewn with metal panels that was worn beneath a breastplate. They were often naked too, especially the women. In the largest room of Æthelflaed’s house there was a picture on the floor that showed naked women running through leafy trees and being pursued by a man with goat horns and hairy goat legs. Father Creoda, when he first arrived in Cirrenceastre, had insisted that the picture be destroyed because, he said, it showed a pagan god, but Æthelflaed had refused. ‘He never stopped looking at it,’ she had told me, amused, ‘so I told him it was a warning about the dangers of paganism.’

Father Creoda was staring at the picture now, or rather gazing at one lissom girl who was looking over her shoulder at the pursuing goat-god. ‘She’s pretty, father,’ I said, and he immediately looked away, cleared his throat, and found nothing to say. I had not asked him to join us in the house, but he had come anyway, staying protectively close to Æthelstan. ‘So,’ I said to the boy, ‘you weren’t at school?’

‘I forgot to go, lord,’ he said.

‘You were at the smithy?’ I demanded, ignoring his grin.

‘I was, lord.’

‘Because your girlfriend is there?’

‘Girlfriend, lord?’ he asked innocently, then shook his head. ‘No, lord, I was there because Godwulf is making me a sword. He’s teaching me how to work the metal.’

I took the boy’s hands in mine and looked at his wrists and saw the small burn marks where sparks had scorched him.

‘Doesn’t Godwulf know you should be at school?’ I asked.

The boy grinned. ‘He does, lord, but he also thinks I should learn something useful.’

‘Useful,’ I growled and tried to look stern, but he must have sensed my pleasure at his answer because he smiled. I looked at Father Creoda. ‘What are you teaching him, father?’

‘Latin, lord, and the lives of the holy fathers and, of course, his letters.’

‘Is Latin useful?’

‘Of course, lord! It’s the language of our holy scripture.’

I grunted. I was sitting, which was a relief. Finan had put all our prisoners into a room across the courtyard and I just had my family, Father Creoda, and Æthelstan in the room where the naked girls ran across the floor. The wide chamber was Æthelflaed’s favourite. ‘So you heard there were armed men here?’ I asked Æthelstan.

‘I did, lord.’

‘And you had the sense to stay in the smithy?’

‘Godwulf told me to stay, lord.’

Good for the smith, I thought, then looked at Stiorra. ‘And you?’

‘Me, father?’

‘Brice’s men came here, what did you do?’

‘I welcomed them, father,’ she spoke very softly, ‘I thought they came from King Edward.’

‘So why did the priest hit you?’

‘He wanted to know where Æthelstan was, and I wouldn’t tell him.’

‘You knew?’

She looked at Æthelstan and smiled. ‘I knew.’

‘And you said you didn’t know? Why?’

‘Because I didn’t like them.’

‘And they didn’t believe you?’

She nodded. ‘And Father Aldwyn became angry,’ she said.

‘They searched the schoolroom and the church,’ Father Creoda put in.

‘And when they couldn’t find him,’ my daughter went on, ‘Father Aldwyn called me a lying bitch and said he would find the truth.’

‘A lying bitch?’ I asked. She nodded. A servant had repaired her dress with one of Æthelflaed’s brooches and wiped the blood from her face, but her lip was swollen and disfigured by a scab. ‘Did he knock a tooth out?’

‘No, father.’

Finan pushed open the door and stood there, lazy and confident. I looked at him. ‘You taught my son sword-craft,’ I said.

‘I did.’

‘He’s quicker than you,’ I said.

Finan smiled. ‘I’m getting slow as I get older, lord.’

‘You taught him well,’ I said, ‘he danced around Brice like a hawk around a crane. How many dead?’

‘Just two,’ he said, ‘and four wounded. The rest are under guard.’

I looked at Father Creoda. ‘Take Æthelstan into another room and beat some Latin into him. Finan? Bring me the priest.’

There was little point in questioning Brice. He was Æthelhelm’s dog, but I suspected the priest was really the man who commanded these troops. Æthelhelm would trust Brice to force his way through any obstacle, but would never trust him to be subtle or clever, and Father Aldwyn had doubtless been sent to give advice and to take charge of Æthelstan. I wanted to know what fate that would have meant for the boy.

The priest staggered as he crossed the threshold, evidently pushed hard by Finan, who followed him, then closed the door. ‘He’s protesting,’ Finan said, amused.

‘I am chaplain to Lord Æthelhelm,’ Father Aldwyn said, ‘his confessor and father in God.’

‘You’re my prisoner,’ I said, ‘and you will tell me what Ealdorman Æthelhelm ordered you to do.’

‘I will tell you nothing!’ he said scornfully.

‘Hit him,’ I told my son, but Uhtred hesitated. The Christian sorcerers have power and my son was frightened of the consequences.

‘You see?’ Father Aldwyn sneered. ‘My god protects me.’ He thrust a finger towards my son. ‘Touch me, young man, and you will rot in everlasting damnation.’

‘How do we even know you’re a priest?’ I asked.

‘I am Lord Æthelhelm’s chaplain!’

I frowned. ‘Aldwyn, yes? Is that your name? But I seem to remember meeting Father Aldwyn. An old man with long white hair and a shaking hand. He had the palsy, isn’t that right, Finan?’

‘That’s the fellow, right enough,’ Finan caught my lie and embroidered it, ‘a little fellow with a lame leg. He dribbled a bit.’

‘So this isn’t Father Aldwyn?’

‘Can’t be, he’s not dribbling.’

‘You’re an imposter,’ I told the priest.

‘I am not …’ he began, but I interrupted him.

‘Take his frock off,’ I told Finan. ‘He’s no more a priest than I am.’

‘You dare not …’ Father Aldwyn shouted, then stopped abruptly because Finan had buried a fist in his belly. The Irishman shoved Aldwyn against the wall and drew a knife.

‘See?’ I said to my son. ‘He’s an imposter. He’s just pretending to be a priest like that fat fellow who came to Cirrenceastre last winter.’ The man had been collecting coins that he said were to feed the poor and hungry, but all they did was add to his belly till we had Father Creoda question him. The fat fellow could not even repeat the creed, so we stripped him down to his shirt and then whipped him out of town.

Aldwyn made a strangled noise as Finan slashed down through his black robe. The Irishman sheathed the knife, then ripped the robe clean down the centre and tugged it off the priest’s shoulders. Aldwyn was left wearing a dirty shift that hung to his knees. ‘See?’ I said again. ‘He’s no priest.’

‘You make an enemy of God!’ Aldwyn hissed at me. ‘Of God and his holy saints!’

‘I don’t give a rat’s turd for your god,’ I said, ‘and besides, you’re not a priest. You’re an imposter.’

‘I …’ the words were cut off because Finan had hit him in the belly again.

‘So tell me, imposter,’ I said, ‘what Lord Æthelhelm planned to do with Prince Æthelstan?’

‘He’s no prince,’ Aldwyn gasped.

‘Uhtred,’ I looked at my son, ‘hit him.’ My son paused a heartbeat, then crossed the room and slapped the priest hard around the head. ‘Good,’ I said.

‘The boy is a bastard,’ Aldwyn said.

‘Again,’ I told my son, and he backhanded the priest hard.

‘King Edward and Æthelstan’s mother,’ I said, ‘were married in a church and the priest who married them lives.’ I hoped Father Cuthbert was still alive and, judging by Aldwyn’s surprised reaction, he was. Aldwyn was staring at me, trying to judge the truth of what I had said, and I suspected that if he had been told of Father Cuthbert’s existence then he would not be gazing at me so fixedly. ‘He lives,’ I went on, ‘and will swear on oath that he married Edward and the Lady Ecgwynn. And that means Æthelstan is the king’s eldest son, the ætheling, next in line to the throne.’

‘You lie,’ Aldwyn said, though without conviction.

‘So now answer my question,’ I said patiently. ‘What were you planning to do with the ætheling?’

It took time and threats, but in the end he told us. Æthelstan was to be sent south across the sea to Neustria, which is a great stretch of rocky land that forms the westernmost province of Frankia. ‘There is a monastery there,’ Aldwyn said, ‘and the boy would be entrusted to the monks for his education.’

‘His imprisonment, you mean.’

‘His education,’ Aldwyn insisted.

‘In a place racked by warfare,’ I said. The province of Neustria had been invaded by Northmen, hordes of them, men who reckoned that there were easier pickings in Frankia than in Britain. Any monastery on that wild land beside the ocean was likely to be sacked by vengeful Norsemen, with everyone inside the walls put to the sword. ‘You want the ætheling dead,’ I accused him, ‘without blood on your hands.’

‘They are holy men in Neustria,’ he said weakly.

‘Holy jailers,’ I said. ‘Does King Edward know of this?’

‘The king agrees that his bastard son should be educated by the church,’ Aldwyn said.

‘And he thinks it will be in some West Saxon monastery,’ I guessed, ‘not in some Neustrian cesspit waiting for the Norsemen to open his guts with a blade.’

‘Or sell him into slavery,’ Finan put in quietly.

And that made sense. Æthelstan and his sister? Two young children? They could fetch a high price in Frankia’s slave markets. ‘You bastard,’ I said to Aldwyn, ‘and what of his twin sister? You were hoping she’d be enslaved too?’ He said nothing, just raised his head and stared defiantly at me. ‘Did you travel to Neustria?’ I asked on an impulse.

Aldwyn hesitated, then shook his head. ‘No, why would I do that?’

I stood, wincing at the inevitable pain. I drew Wasp-Sting and walked so close to the priest that I could smell his foul breath. ‘I’ll give you another chance,’ I said. ‘Did you travel to Neustria?’

He hesitated again, but this time out of fear of the seax’s short blade. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘And who,’ I asked, ‘did you see there?’

He grimaced as I twitched Wasp-Sting. ‘The abbot of Saint Stephen’s in Cadum,’ he said in a panic.

‘You lying bastard,’ I said. If he had simply wanted to place a boy in the monastery’s school then a letter would have been sufficient. I raised the blade, lifting the ragged hem of his shift. ‘Who did you see?’

He shuddered, feeling the tip of the blade at his groin. ‘Hrolf,’ he whispered.

‘Louder!’

‘Hrolf!’

Hrolf was a Norseman, a chieftain who had taken his crews to Frankia where he had ravaged great stretches of countryside. News had come to Britain that Hrolf had captured a large part of Neustria and was intent on staying there. ‘You planned to sell the twins to Hrolf?’ I asked Aldwyn.

‘Hrolf is a Christian. He would raise them properly!’

‘Hrolf is no more a Christian than I am,’ I snarled. ‘He says he is because the Franks demanded that as a price for him staying there. I’d say the same thing if it gave me a new kingdom to rule. You’d have sold Æthelstan and Eadgyth to the bastard, and what would he do? Kill them?’

‘No,’ the priest whispered, but without conviction.

‘And that would have left Lord Æthelhelm’s grandson as the only heir to the kingdom of Wessex.’ I raised Wasp-Sting higher till her tip touched Aldwyn’s belly. ‘You’re a traitor, Aldwyn. You were planning to murder the king’s eldest children.’

‘No,’ he whispered again.

‘So tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.’

‘I am a priest,’ he whimpered.

‘You’re not dressed as a priest,’ I said, ‘and you struck my daughter. That’s not the act of a priest, is it?’

He had nothing to say. He knew my reputation as a priest-killer. Most men, of course, feared to kill a monk or priest, knowing that the act would condemn them to the nailed god’s perpetual torment, but I had no fear of the Christian god’s vengeance. ‘You’re a traitor, Aldwyn,’ I said again, ‘so why shouldn’t I kill you? You deserve it.’

‘Let me,’ my daughter said and I turned in astonishment. Stiorra had taken two paces forward and was just looking at me with an expressionless face. She held out her right hand for the seax. ‘Let me,’ she said again.

I shook my head. ‘Killing isn’t woman’s work,’ I said.

‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘We give life, can’t we take it too?’

‘No,’ Aldwyn said, ‘no!’

I ignored him. ‘It’s harder than you think to kill a man,’ I said to Stiorra, ‘and though this bastard deserves to die, he should have a quick end.’

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘He thought to enjoy me, father. Would that have been quick?’

‘Think of your soul,’ my son said.

‘My soul?’ she asked him.

‘God will see what you do,’ he said, ‘and killing a priest is an unforgivable sin.’

‘Not to my gods,’ she said and I just stared at her, scarcely believing what I had heard. I wanted to say something, but nothing came, so I just stared and she turned back to me, smiling now. ‘My mother was a pagan,’ she said, ‘and you are. Why shouldn’t I be?’

My son looked horrified, Finan was grinning. ‘You worship my gods?’ I asked.

‘I do, father.’

‘But you were raised Christian!’ her brother said.

‘So was father,’ she said, still gazing at me, ‘and so were you, brother, but don’t tell me you don’t pray to our gods too. I know you do.’ Then she looked past me at Aldwyn, and her face hardened. At that moment she looked so like her mother that it hurt to see her. ‘Let me, father,’ she said, holding out her hand again.

I gave her Wasp-Sting.

‘No!’ Aldwyn exclaimed.

Stiorra used her left hand to tear the linen dress out of the brooch so that one breast was exposed. ‘Isn’t that what you wanted to see, priest?’ she asked. ‘So look at it!’

‘No!’ Aldwyn was whimpering. He half crouched, not daring to look.

‘Stiorra!’ my son whispered.

But my daughter had no pity. I watched her face as she killed the priest and it was hard, merciless and determined. She cut him first, slashing the short-sword to open his scalp and his neck, then to slice his forearms as he tried to defend himself, and her breast and dress were spattered with his blood as she beat him down with two more cuts to the head, and only then did she use two hands on Wasp-Sting’s short hilt to slice hard at his throat. The blade lodged there and she grunted as she hauled it back and across to cut his gullet. She watched as he fell, as his blood spurted to puddle on one of the naked women running from the goat-god. She watched Aldwyn die and I watched her. It was always difficult to read her face, but I did not see any revulsion at the slaughter she had made, only what looked like curiosity. She even smiled slightly as the priest twitched and made a gurgling noise. His fingers clawed at the little tiles, then he gave a great jerk and was still.

Stiorra offered the sword hilt-first to me. ‘Thank you, father,’ she said calmly. ‘Now I must wash.’ She held the ruined, blood-soaked dress over her nakedness and walked from the room.

‘Christ Jesus,’ my son said quietly.

‘She’s your daughter, so she is,’ Finan said. He walked to the priest’s corpse and nudged it with his foot, ‘And the image of her mother,’ he added.

‘We need six wagons,’ I said, ‘at least six.’

Finan and my son were still both staring at the dead priest, who, quite suddenly, farted.

‘Six wagons,’ I said again, ‘harnessed with horses, not oxen. And preferably loaded with hay or straw. Something heavy, anyway. Logs, maybe.’

‘Six wagons?’ Finan asked.

‘At least six,’ I said, ‘and we need them by tomorrow.’

‘Why, lord?’ he asked.

‘Because we’re going to a wedding,’ I said, ‘of course.’

And so we were.

Three

There was a cavernous space beneath Father Creoda’s church, a space so big that it stretched beyond the church’s walls, which were supported by massive stone pillars and arches. The cellar walls were also of stone, great blocks of roughly trimmed masonry, while the floor was beaten earth. There were some ancient bones piled on a stone shelf against the eastern wall, but otherwise the cellar was empty, dark and stinking. The Romans must have built it, though in their day I doubted that a nearby cesspit would have been allowed to leak through the stonework. ‘You can smell it in the church,’ Father Creoda said sadly, ‘unless the wind is in the east.’

‘Shit leaks through the masonry?’ I asked. I had no intention of finding out by dropping through the massive trapdoor into the dark space.

‘Constantly,’ he said, ‘because the mortar has crumbled.’

‘Then seal it with pitch,’ I suggested, ‘like a boat’s timbers. Stuff the cracks with horsehair and smother it in pitch.’

‘Pitch?’

‘You can buy it in Gleawecestre.’ I peered into the darkness. ‘Whose bones?’

‘We don’t know. They were here before the Lady Æthelflaed built the church, and we didn’t like to disturb them.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘Ghosts, lord,’ he explained.

‘Sell them as relics,’ I said, ‘and use the money to buy a new bell.’

‘But they could be heathens!’ He sounded shocked.

‘So?’ I asked, then straightened, wincing at the inevitable pain. For now the foul-smelling cellar would be a prison for Brice and his men. They deserved worse. They had ransacked Æthelflaed’s house, making a pile of her most precious possessions; her clothes, tapestries, jewels, kitchen pots, and lamps. ‘It all belongs to her husband,’ Brice had told me sullenly, ‘and she won’t be needing finery in a nunnery.’

So that, too, was part of the bargain Æthelhelm had made with Æthelred, that the powerful West Saxon would somehow force Æthelflaed into a convent. Would her brother approve of that? I wondered. But Edward, I realised, was probably jealous of his sister’s reputation. He was constantly being compared with his father and found wanting, and now, even worse, he was reckoned to be a lesser warrior than his sister. Kings, even decent ones like Edward, have pride. He might accept that he could never rival his father, but it must gall him to hear his sister praised. He would gladly see her retired to a convent.

Father Aldwyn’s body had been brought into the church. Finan had dressed the corpse in the torn black robe, but there was no hiding the violence of the priest’s end. ‘What happened?’ Father Creoda had asked in an appalled whisper.

‘He killed himself out of remorse,’ I had told him.

‘He …’

‘Killed himself,’ I had growled.

‘Yes, lord.’

‘So as a suicide,’ I said, ‘he can’t be buried in hallowed ground. I don’t know why Finan even brought him into the church!’

‘I wasn’t thinking,’ Finan said, grinning.

‘So you’d best dig the bastard a deep grave somewhere out of town,’ I advised.

‘At a crossroads,’ Finan said.

‘A crossroads?’ Father Creoda asked.

‘So his soul gets confused,’ Finan explained. ‘He won’t know which way to go. You don’t want his spirit coming back here, God forbid, so plant him at a crossroads and confuse him.’

‘Confuse him,’ Father Creoda repeated, staring in horror at the grimace on the dead priest’s savaged face.

Brice and his men were thrust down into the darkness of the shit-stinking cellar. They had all been stripped of their mail, their boots, their jewellery, and their sword belts. ‘You can let them out in two days,’ I told the town’s reeve. ‘Throw down some bread for the bastards, give them some buckets of water, then leave them for two whole days. They’ll try to persuade you to let them out sooner, they’ll try to bribe you, but don’t release them.’

‘I won’t, lord.’

‘If you do,’ I said, ‘you make an enemy of me and of Lady Æthelflaed.’ There had been a time, I thought, when that threat carried real weight.

‘And of me,’ Finan put in.

The reeve shuddered at Finan’s soft words. ‘They’ll stay two days, lord, I promise. I swear it on our Lord’s body.’ He turned and bowed to the altar, where feathers from the geese expelled from the cornfield by Saint Werburgh were encased in silver.

‘Let them out sooner,’ Finan added, ‘and the ghosts of the bones will come for you.’

‘I swear it, lord!’ the reeve said in desperation.

‘I suppose they’ll bury me at a crossroads,’ I said to Finan as we walked back to Æthelflaed’s house.

He grinned. ‘We’ll give you a proper funeral. We’ll light a fire big enough to dim the sun. Trust me, your gods will know you’re coming.’

I smiled, but I was thinking of the crossroads, of all the roads that the Romans had made, and which crumbled across Britain. Parts were washed away by floods, sometimes the stones were stolen because the big flat slabs made good field markers or foundations for pilings. As often as not when we travelled across country we rode or walked beside the road because the surface was too pitted and ruined for comfort, and so the road was just a weed-strewn marker for our journeys. Those markers led all across Britain, and they decayed, and I wondered what would happen to them. ‘Do you think,’ I asked Finan, ‘that we can see what happens here after we’re dead?’

He looked at me strangely. ‘The priests say so.’

‘They do?’ I was surprised.

‘They say you can look into hell,’ he said, frowning, ‘so why not into this life too?’

‘I’d like to know what happens,’ I said. I supposed the roads would disappear, and the fields on either side would be overgrown with hazel saplings, and after them the thorny brambles would shroud the old paths. Is that what I would see from Valhalla? And was some Roman gazing at Cirrenceastre even now and wondering how it had turned from honey-coloured stone and white marble to damp thatch and rotted timbers? I knew I was making Finan uncomfortable, but I knew too that the Norns, those grim women who control our lives, were fingering my thread and wondering when to slice it with their sharp shears. I had feared that cut for so long, yet now I almost wanted it. I wanted an end to the pain, to the problems, but I also wanted to know how it would all end. But does it ever end? We had driven the Danes back, but now a new fight loomed, a fight for Mercia.

‘Here’s Father Cuthbert,’ Finan announced, and I was startled from my thoughts to see Osferth had brought the priest safely from Fagranforda. That was a relief. Cuthbert’s wife, Mehrasa, was with him. ‘You’re going north now,’ I told Osferth.

‘Lord!’ Cuthbert called, recognising my voice. He had been blinded by Cnut, and his face quested around as if trying to find where I was.

‘North?’ Osferth asked.

‘We all are,’ I said. ‘Families too. We’re going to Ceaster.’

‘Lord?’ Cuthbert said again.

‘You’re safe,’ I told him. ‘You and Mehrasa, you’re safe.’

‘From what, lord?’

‘You’re the only living witness to Edward’s first marriage,’ I told him, ‘and there are men in Wessex who want to prove that wedding never happened.’

‘But it did!’ he said plaintively.

‘So you’re going north to Ceaster,’ I told him, ‘both of you.’ I looked at Osferth. ‘You’ll take all the families north. I want you to leave by tomorrow. You can take two carts from Fagranforda to carry food and belongings, and I want you to travel through Alencestre.’ There were two good roads to Ceaster. One went close to the Welsh border and I encouraged my men to use it to prove to the Welsh that we did not fear them, but the road through Alencestre was safer because it lay much farther from the frontier lands. ‘You can take ten men as guards,’ I said, ‘and you wait for us at Alencestre. And you take everything valuable. Money, metal, clothes, harness, everything.’

‘We’re leaving Fagranforda for good?’ Osferth asked.

I hesitated. The answer, of course, was yes, but I was not sure how my people would respond to that truth. They had made their homes and were raising their children in Fagranforda, and now I was moving them to Mercia’s northernmost frontier. I could have explained that by saying we needed to defend Ceaster against the Norse and Danes, and that was true, but the larger truth was that I wanted Ceaster’s stone walls about me if I had to defend myself against Eardwulf’s spite and Æthelhelm’s ambitions. ‘We’re going north for a time,’ I said evasively, ‘and if we’re not at Alencestre in two days then assume we’re not coming. And if that happens you must take Æthelstan and his sister to Ceaster.’

Osferth frowned. ‘What would stop you arriving?’

‘Fate,’ I said too glibly.

Osferth’s face hardened. ‘You’re starting a war,’ he accused me.

‘I am not.’

‘Æthelhelm wants the boy,’ Finan explained to Osferth, ‘and he’ll fight to get him.’

‘Which means he starts the war,’ I said, ‘not me.’

Osferth’s grave eyes flickered between me and Finan. Finally he scowled, looking astonishingly like his father, King Alfred. ‘But you’re provoking him,’ he said disapprovingly.

‘You’d rather Æthelstan was dead?’

‘Of course not.’

‘So what would you have me do?’ I demanded.

He had no answer to that. Instead he just grimaced. ‘It will be Saxon against Saxon,’ he said unhappily, ‘Christian against Christian.’

‘It will,’ I responded harshly.

‘But …’

‘So we’d better make sure the right Christians win,’ I said. ‘Now get ready to leave.’

‘For Ceaster?’ Finan asked.

‘Osferth goes to Alencestre,’ I said, ‘but you and me are going to Gleawecestre. We have a wedding to stop.’

And a war to provoke.

My daughter refused to ride with Osferth and the families. ‘I’m coming to Gleawecestre,’ she insisted.

‘You’ll go with Osferth,’ I told her.

She was rummaging through Æthelflaed’s clothes, which Brice and his men had piled untidily in the courtyard. She pulled out a precious dress made from rare silk the colour of thick cream and embroidered with strips of oak leaves. ‘This is pretty,’ she said, ignoring my order.

‘And it belongs to Æthelflaed,’ I said.

She held the dress to her shoulders and peered down to see if it fell as far as her feet. ‘Do you like it?’ she asked me.

‘It probably cost more than a ship,’ I said. Silk was one of those rarities that could be found in Lundene where it was sold by traders who claimed it came from some country far to the east, where it was woven by strange people, some with three legs, some with the heads of dogs, and some with no heads at all. The stories differed, but men swore they were all true.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Stiorra said wistfully.

‘It’ll go north with Osferth,’ I said, ‘and with you.’

She folded the dress over one arm and pulled a white linen cloak from the pile. ‘This will look well with the dress,’ she said.

‘He’s taking all the families north,’ I explained. ‘He’s taking two wagons, so you can ride in one of them.’

‘Father,’ she said patiently, ‘I can ride a horse. And draw a bow. This one will be better,’ she pulled another white cloak free, ‘because it has a hood. Oooh! And a silver brooch, see?’

‘Are you listening to me?’ I growled.

‘Of course, father. And we can pick some stitchwort, can’t we?’

‘Stitchwort?’ I asked.

‘To wear in my hair.’

‘Are you mad?’ I asked. ‘You’re going north with Osferth. Why would you want flowers in your hair?’

‘Because it’s too early for apple blossom, of course.’ She turned and gazed at me, and for a moment she looked so like her mother that the breath caught in my throat. ‘Father,’ she said in a patient tone, ‘how do you propose to reach Ælfwynn?’

‘Reach her?’

‘She’ll be in Lord Æthelred’s palace. To get married she just has to walk through the gate to Saint Oswald’s church next door, and I suppose there will be guards along the path, and in the church as well. You can’t just ride in and pick her up. So how will you reach her?’

I stared at her. In truth I had no idea how I was to find Ælfwynn. Sometimes it is impossible to make plans, you just reach the battlefield and snatch whatever chance presents itself. Which, I thought ruefully, was the mistake Brice had made, and now I was planning to do exactly the same.

‘She’s my friend!’ Stiorra said when it was plain I had no answer.

‘I’ve seen you with her,’ I acknowledged grudgingly.

‘I like her. Not everyone does, but I do, and it’s the custom for girls to go with the bride to the wedding.’

‘It is?’

‘So you give me two of your young men and we go to Lord Æthelred’s palace with a bridal gift.’

‘And they arrest you,’ I said flatly.

‘If they know who I am, maybe? But I’ve only spent a few days in Gleawecestre, and I’ve no wish to go into the great hall, just to the outer courtyard where Ælfwynn’s rooms are.’

‘So you go to the courtyard. What then?’

‘I’ll say I’ve come with a gift from Lord Æthelfrith.’

That was shrewd. Æthelfrith was the wealthy Mercian ealdorman whose lands lay next to Lundene. He disliked Æthelred and refused to travel to Gleawecestre. He might have been an ally for Æthelflaed, except that his real loyalty was to the West Saxons. ‘And what gift?’ I asked.

‘A horse,’ she said, ‘a young mare. We groom her and plait ribbons in her mane. I’m sure they’ll let Ælfwynn see the gift.’

‘They?’

‘She’ll be guarded,’ Stiorra said patiently.

‘And she just mounts the mare and rides away with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the guards at the gate don’t stop you?’ I sneered.

‘That’s the task for your men,’ she said.

‘Suppose she doesn’t want to ride away?’

‘Oh, she does,’ Stiorra said confidently, ‘she doesn’t want to marry Eardwulf! He’s a pig!’

‘A pig?’

‘There isn’t a maid in Gleawecestre who’s safe from him,’ Stiorra said. ‘Lady Æthelflaed tells me that no man can ever be trusted, though some can be trusted more than others, but Eardwulf?’ She shuddered. ‘He likes to beat women too.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Oh, father!’ She smiled at me pityingly. ‘So you see? I’m riding with you to Gleawecestre.’

And so she was, because I could think of no better plan. In my mind I had half thought of waylaying Ælfwynn as she walked to the church, but Stiorra was right, the short walk would be well guarded by Æthelred’s men. Or I could have gone into the church itself, but that would have been desperate because the big building would be filled with Æthelred’s allies. I did not like putting my daughter in danger, but till I arrived in Gleawecestre I could see no better idea.

I had thought to arrive in Gleawecestre that day, but finding carts took time, and giving men careful instructions took more time, and so we were delayed until shortly after dawn on Saint Æthelwold’s feast day. I had also hoped to have six carts, but we had found only three in Cirrenceastre and those three would have to be enough. I had sent them westwards the night before. The men driving the carts would have to spend an uncomfortable night waiting for the town gates to open, but by the time we left Cirrenceastre two of those three wagons should be inside the walls. They were all loaded with hay, and the men were instructed to tell the gate guards that it was fodder for Lord Æthelred’s stables.

It was a typical March day. The sky was grey as iron and the wind cold off the hills behind us. Osferth had taken his ten men back to Fagranforda, where they would load their two wagons with belongings, and, accompanied by Father Cuthbert, set off northwards with my men’s families. Æthelstan travelled with them. The wagons would make their journey slow, perhaps too slow, and ten men were hardly enough to protect them if they found trouble, but if all went well I would catch up with them before nightfall.

If we survived the next few hours.

Stiorra rode beside me, swathed in a great brown cloak. Beneath it she wore cream silk and white linen, silver chains and amber brooches. We had chosen a young mare, and brushed the animal, combed her, polished her hooves with wax, and woven blue ribbons in her mane, but the road was staining the hooves, and nasty spits of rain bedraggled the carefully tied ribbons. ‘So,’ I asked her as we rode down from the hills, ‘you’re a pagan?’

‘Yes, father.’

‘Why?’

She smiled from beneath her cloak’s thick hood, which hid the stitchwort that made a coronet about her black hair. ‘Why not?’

‘Because you were raised Christian.’

‘Maybe that’s why.’ I growled at that response and she laughed. ‘Do you know how cruel the nuns are?’ she asked. ‘They hit me and even burned me because I was your daughter.’

‘Burned you!’

‘With a spit from the kitchen fire,’ she said, and pulled up her left sleeve to show me the scars.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I demanded.

‘I told Lady Æthelflaed instead,’ she said calmly, ignoring my anger, ‘so of course it didn’t happen again. And then you sent me Hella.’

‘Hella?’

‘My maidservant.’

‘I sent her to you?’

‘Yes, father, after Beamfleot.’

‘I did?’ There had been so many captives taken at Beamfleot that I had forgotten most of them. ‘Who is Hella?’

‘She’s behind you, father,’ Stiorra said, twisting in the saddle to nod at her maid, who followed us on a placid gelding. I winced with pain when I turned to see a snub-nosed, round-faced girl who looked nervous when she saw me stare at her. ‘She’s a Dane,’ Stiorra went on, ‘and a little younger than I am, and a pagan. She told me stories about Freya and Idunn and Nanna and Hyrokin. Sometimes we sat up all night and talked.’

‘Good for Hella,’ I said, then rode in silence for a few paces. I did not know my own daughter. I loved her, but I did not know her, and now I had thirty-three men with me, thirty-three men to wreck a wedding and escape a town full of vengeful warriors, and I was sending my daughter into that wasps’ nest? What if she was caught? ‘Christians don’t like pagans,’ I said, ‘and if Æthelred’s men catch you they’ll hurt you, persecute you, hound you. That’s why you were raised Christian, so you wouldn’t be in danger.’

‘I might worship your gods,’ she said, ‘but I am not noisy about it.’ She opened the cloak and showed me the silver cross hanging over the pretty silk dress. ‘See? It doesn’t hurt me and it keeps them quiet.’

‘Does Æthelflaed know?’

She shook her head. ‘As I said, father, I am not noisy.’

‘And I am?’

‘Very,’ she said drily.

And an hour later we were at the gates of Gleawecestre, which had been decorated with leafy boughs in honour of the wedding. Eight men guarded the eastern gate where a crowd was trying to enter the city, but they were being delayed as the guards searched a line of wagons. One of my wagons was there, but those men were not trying to enter. They had parked the big cart with its load of hay just to one side of the road. They ignored us as we pushed through the waiting crowd, which, because we were mounted and armed, made way for us. ‘What are you searching for?’ I asked the guard commander, a big man with a scarred face and a black beard.

‘Just taxes, lord,’ he said. Merchants sometimes hid valuable goods beneath piles of cheap cloth or untreated hides and so cheated towns of the proper payments. ‘And the city’s busy,’ he grumbled.

‘The wedding?’

‘And the king being here.’

‘The king!’

‘King Edward!’ he said, as if I should have known. ‘Him and a thousand others.’

‘When did he come?’

‘Yesterday, lord. Make way for Lord Uhtred!’ he used his long spear to push people aside. ‘I’m glad you’re alive, lord,’ he said when the gate arch was unobstructed.

‘I am too,’ I told him.

‘I was with you at Teotanheale,’ he said, ‘and before that.’ He touched the scar on his left cheek. ‘Got that when we fought in East Anglia.’

I found a coin in my pouch and handed it to him. ‘What time is the wedding?’

‘They don’t tell me, lord. Probably when the king gets his royal arse out of bed.’ He kissed the shilling I had given him. ‘Poor girl,’ he added in a lower voice.

‘Poor?’

He shrugged as if his comment needed no explanation. ‘God bless you, lord,’ he said, touching the rim of his helmet.

‘I’m not here,’ I said, adding a second coin.

‘You’re not …’ he began, then looked at the armed men following me. ‘No, lord, you’re not here. I haven’t set eyes on you. God bless you, lord.’

I rode on, ducking beneath a great spread hide that was hung above a leather shop. Edward was here? That made me angry. Edward had always expressed a fondness for Æthelstan and his sister. He had put them under Æthelflaed’s protection, just as he had placed Father Cuthbert under mine, and I thought he had done that to protect them from those men in Wessex who resented their existence. Yet if Edward had come for this wedding it could only mean that he had given way to Æthelhelm completely.

‘He recognised you,’ Finan said, jerking his head towards the guard at the gate, ‘suppose he sends warning?’

I shook my head. ‘He won’t,’ I said, hoping I was right. ‘He’s not loyal to Eardwulf.’

‘But if Eardwulf knows you’re here?’ Finan said, still worried.

‘He’ll set more guards,’ I suggested, but still pulled the hood of my cloak further over my head to shadow my face. It had begun to rain more persistently, puddling the filth-caked street which had lost most of its old paving stones. The main gate to the palace was straight ahead, not far, and spearmen were sheltering beneath its arch. The church was to the left, hidden by the thatched houses and shops. We splashed over a cross street and I saw one of my big wagons half blocking the road to the right. The third one should be waiting near the palace.

The city was crowded, which was hardly a surprise. Every man who had attended the Witan was still here, and they had brought house-warriors, wives, and servants, while folk from a dozen nearby villages had come to Gleawecestre in hope of sharing the feast offered by the bride’s father. There were jugglers and magicians, tumblers and harpists, and a man leading a massive brown bear on a chain. The marketplace had been cleared of stalls, and a heap of firewood showed where an ox was to be roasted. The rain fell harder. A greasy-haired priest harangued the passers-by, shouting that they should repent before Christ returned in glory, but no one seemed to be listening to him except for a mangy dog that barked whenever the priest paused for breath.

‘I don’t like this,’ I growled.

‘What don’t you like?’ Stiorra asked.

‘You going into the palace. It’s too dangerous.’

She gave me a patient look from beneath her cloak’s hood. ‘So you’ll just ride in yourself, father? Ride in and start a fight?’

‘You sound like your mother,’ I said, and did not mean it as a compliment. But of course she was right. I could not ride in without being challenged and recognised, and then what? I would fight my way into Æthelred’s palace and find his daughter? There were not only Æthelred’s warriors in the palace, but Æthelhelm’s, and King Edward’s men too, and it was probably the presence of the West Saxon king that made the guards on the gate so watchful. They had seen us approaching, and two of them moved to block the archway with massive spears, but stepped back when we sheered away into the street that ran alongside the palace wall, close to where my third wagon was parked. ‘So what will you do?’ I asked Stiorra.

‘I shall find Ælfwynn, tell her she’s welcome to come away with us, and if she agrees I’ll bring her,’ she said as if it was the simplest task imaginable.

‘And if she says no?’

‘She won’t. She hates Eardwulf.’

‘Then do it,’ I said to Stiorra. Hella, the maid, would go with her because no well-born woman would ride without a female companion. They would be escorted by two warriors, Eadric and Cenwulf, who had both served me a long time. There was a chance, a small one, that they might be recognised as my men, but I preferred their experience to sending a pair of youths who might panic if challenged. I could, of course, simply have said that the mare was a present from me, but that generosity might raise suspicion, and it was better to pretend it came from Æthelfrith in far-off Lundene. I doubted that the guards on the gate would realise that there had not been time for the news of the wedding to reach Æthelfrith yet. Those guards were cold, damp, and miserable, and probably would not care whether the mare was a gift from Æthelfrith or from the holy ghost. ‘Go,’ I told the four of them, ‘just go.’

I dismounted, and the pain was such that I had to lean against my saddle for a few heartbeats. When I opened my eyes I saw Stiorra had taken off the big dark cloak so she appeared now in white and cream, hung with silver, and with flowers in her hair. She spread the pale cloak over her mare’s rump and rode straight-backed and tall in her saddle. Hella led the gift mare by the bridle, while Cenwulf and Eadric rode at either side of my daughter. ‘She looks like a queen,’ Finan said quietly.

‘A wet queen,’ I said. It was raining harder.

The guards still blocked the archway, but Stiorra’s very appearance made them draw back their spears. They bowed their heads respectfully, recognising her as a highborn lady. I saw her speak to them, but what she said I could not hear, and then the five horses and four riders vanished through the high stone gateway.

I walked back along the street until I could see into the palace grounds. Beyond the archway was a wide courtyard where grass grew. There were a few saddled horses being led up and down by servants and at least twelve more guards standing by the far buildings. That seemed a large number of guards, but other than that there was little sense of urgency, so little that I wondered if the wedding had already happened. ‘When is the wedding?’ I asked one of the spearmen at the gate.

‘Whenever Lord Æthelred decides,’ was the surly reply. The man could not see my face, which was deeply shadowed by my cloak’s hood.

‘He might wait for the rain to end?’ a younger guard answered more helpfully.

‘It’s set in for the day,’ the older one said. ‘It’ll piss till nightfall.’

‘Then Lord Eardwulf will have to wait, won’t he?’ the younger man said mischievously.

‘Wait for what? He takes what he wants. The poor girl can probably hardly walk this morning.’

And that was another worry. Had Eardwulf claimed his bride early? Was she in his rooms, and if she was then Stiorra could never reach her. I paced through spreading puddles. Rain dripped from my hood. I had the cloak fastened with brooches to hide the mail I wore and to hide Serpent-Breath, which hung at my side. Stiorra and Hella had both dismounted and vanished into the palace, not into the great hall, which was made of Roman stone, but through a small door that led into a long, low wooden building. The guards there had questioned them, but let them pass. Cenwulf and Eadric waited close by the door. Both men still had their swords. Weapons were not permitted inside the palace buildings, but the two men would be left alone unless they tried to enter any of the doors. I sent Sihtric to look inside the church. ‘See if it looks ready for a wedding,’ I told him.

The rain was sheeting down now, running in the road’s central gutter and pouring off the roofs. ‘The girl won’t come out in this rain even to see a unicorn,’ Finan grumbled, ‘let alone to look at a horse.’

‘Father Pyrlig saw a unicorn,’ I said.

‘He did?’

‘In the mountains. He said it was white and ran like a hare.’

‘He likes his ale, does Father Pyrlig.’

‘There are strange things in Wales,’ I said. ‘Snakes with two heads. He said the unicorn’s horn was red.’

‘Red?’

‘Red as blood.’ I watched the far door where the guards clustered. ‘Ælfwynn will come if Stiorra tells her we’re here,’ I said, hoping I was right.

‘And if she’s not under guard.’

I should never have let Stiorra go inside. This whole wet morning was madness. I was no better than Brice, just charging blindly into a place without any real idea how to achieve what I wanted. I had let Stiorra talk me into this madness because at least she had given it some thought, but now, as I watched the guards across the courtyard, I was regretting my impulsiveness. ‘We might have to fetch her out,’ I said.

‘Us against all those house-warriors?’ Finan asked.

‘There’s only about twenty of them,’ I said. There were the two men on the gate and the others in the courtyard.

‘Twenty we can see. Most of the bastards will be sheltering from the rain. Still, if that’s what you want?’

I shook my head. It was not just Æthelred’s men, but all the West Saxon warriors too. Perhaps if I had felt well, if I could have swung Serpent-Breath without doubling over in sudden pain, I would have gone into the palace. Palace! A group of stinking timber houses around the remnants of a Roman hall. I imagined the pleasure Æthelred would take if he could seize Stiorra. He was my cousin and we had hated each other since childhood. I would have to negotiate her release, and that would cost me dear. ‘I’m a fool,’ I muttered.

‘I wouldn’t argue with that,’ Finan said, ‘but your daughter’s clever. She’s like her mother.’

Thunder sounded far away. I looked up into the rain and saw only dark clouds, but I knew Thor had sent a storm eagle, maybe Ræsvelg himself, the giant eagle that would bring wind behind his wings and, sure enough, the rain that had been falling straight down suddenly bent and shivered as a gust blew through Gleawecestre’s streets. Finan crossed himself. The shop signs creaked as they swung. The spearmen guarding the palace gate had retreated deep under the arch, while the guards in the courtyard huddled beneath the thatched porch of the big hall. Cenwulf and Eadric sat patiently on their horses, waiting.

Sihtric splashed through the puddles. ‘They’re lighting candles in the church, lord,’ he almost had to shout to be heard above the seething rain. ‘And the roof leaks.’

‘So the wedding isn’t over?’

‘Over? They say they might wait till tomorrow.’

‘They’ll surely wait for this to blow over before they marry the poor girl,’ Finan said.

Thunder sounded louder, a great crack in the sky, and that time I saw a flash of lightning split the clouds. I touched the cloak hiding the hammer that hung from my neck, and sent a prayer to Thor, begging him for my daughter’s safety. The rain beat on my cloak’s hood. It was a malevolent rain, drenching and vicious.

And Stiorra appeared.

She came into the courtyard and gazed up at the clouds as though revelling in the pelting rain. She spread her arms, and I could see she was laughing, and just then a half-dozen other girls followed her. They were all laughing, squealing in delight at the heavy rain. They splashed through puddles and danced in crazy joy, watched by two guards who had followed them through the door. Then Stiorra ran to the horses and I saw Ælfwynn was following her, and I wondered how she could be a friend to my daughter. Stiorra was so grave and solemn, so controlled and thoughtful, while Ælfwynn was frivolous and silly. Like Stiorra she was dressed in white, and the rain had soaked her dress so it clung to her thin body. The guards watched as she stroked the grey mare’s nose. The other girls clustered behind her. Ælfwynn’s bright fair hair hung flat, rain-soaked. She turned to Stiorra and jumped for joy, squealing again as the water splashed up from her bare feet. Then, quite suddenly, she, Stiorra and Hella climbed into their saddles. The guards took no apparent notice. This was a wedding gift, after all, and if the girl was mad enough to come into this rainstorm then she was mad enough to ride the horse around the courtyard.

They rode towards the great hall. Cenwulf and Eadric followed them. My men were mounting. I beckoned to my servant, and the boy brought me my stallion and I took a deep breath, knowing I was about to be hit by a stab of pain as I climbed into the saddle. The pain came, making me wince. I managed to stifle a moan, then I pushed my foot into the stirrup and leaned forward to see through the gate arch, but the pain hit again and I straightened. Finan, still dismounted, could see into the palace’s courtyard. ‘Are you ready?’ he called to the men with the hay wagon. ‘They’re coming,’ he added to me, and pulled himself onto his horse.

Stiorra had led Ælfwynn towards the hall, then swerved towards the gate. I heard them before I saw them, heard the sudden clatter of hooves on the stone paving just beyond the arch, and then the three girls and my two men appeared through the gateway. ‘Now!’ Finan shouted, and the men whipped the cart forward to block the palace arch. One carried an axe to splinter a wheel, and once the cart was crippled they would use the big draught horses to follow us. I had riding horses waiting for them, and for the men on the wagon that would block the cross street halfway to the gate.

The rain had emptied the streets. We trotted over the crossroads and I shouted at those men to block the street. Æthelred’s men would have to use one of the city’s other two gates to join us. The carts were just there to hamper the pursuit I was sure would follow. Even a few minutes would gain us precious time.

We trotted beneath the city’s gate. I paused to look down at the black-bearded man who had fought at Teotanheale. ‘I’m sorry for what’s about to happen,’ I told him.

‘Lord?’ he asked, puzzled.

‘Your gate’s about to be blocked,’ I said, ‘and just trust me that I know what I’m doing.’

‘You always did know, lord,’ he said, grinning.

We overturned the third wagon at the gate, spilling the hay under the archway. Our pursuers could use the other gates, of course, but it would take time for them to discover this direct path was blocked. The rain would delay them, as would the need to saddle horses, and I guessed we had at least an hour before they followed us. The men who had manned the carts rode north, using the road that ran closest to the Welsh frontier and that led directly towards Ceaster. They would take the news of what I had just done to Æthelflaed, and should arrive in Ceaster in two or three days.

‘Uncle!’ Ælfwynn rode alongside me. She had always called me that.

‘Aren’t you cold?’

‘Freezing!’ She was grinning. She liked mischief, and this exploit was mischievous enough. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To your mother.’

That took the smile from her face. Æthelflaed had never approved of her daughter, finding Ælfwynn flippant and irresponsible. ‘A head full of feathers,’ she had said often enough. ‘To mother?’ Ælfwynn asked anxiously.

‘I can take you back to Gleawecestre instead?’ I suggested.

‘No, no!’ She grinned again. ‘She’s always nicer when you’re with her.’

‘I’ll be with you,’ I said.

‘They said you were dying!’

‘I am.’

‘Oh, I hope not.’

Finan rode alongside her and handed her a cloak. My men probably regretted that because she was wearing nothing but a light linen shift which, soaked through, clung to her skin. ‘You ride well!’ I told her.

‘So does Stiorra!’

I let my horse slow so I could ride beside my daughter. ‘I was worried,’ I told her.

She gave me a quick smile. ‘She wasn’t even out of bed when I arrived. I had to wait.’

‘And no trouble?’

She shook her head. ‘The guards suspected nothing. I told them I had the horse as a gift and they let her go outside to see it. They thought she was mad to go into the rain, but they’re used to her whims.’

I twisted in the saddle, instantly regretting it, but there was no sign of any pursuit. The city lay grey under its own smoke and beneath the wind-thrashed rain. ‘They’ll be coming after us,’ I said grimly.

Ælfwynn had slowed to join us. ‘Is mother in Cirrenceastre?’ she asked.

‘She’s in Ceaster.’

‘Isn’t Ceaster that way?’ she asked, pointing north.

‘I want your father to think we’re riding to Cirrenceastre,’ I said.

‘Oh, he won’t think anything,’ she said happily.

‘He’ll be angry!’ I warned her.

‘No, he won’t.’

‘He’ll send men to catch us,’ I told her, ‘and to take you back.’

‘Eardwulf might send men,’ she said, ‘and Uncle Edward might, but not father.’

‘And why not?’ I asked.

‘Because he died yesterday,’ she said. Stiorra and I just stared at her.

‘He died …’ I began.

‘No one’s supposed to know,’ she went on airily, ‘it’s a secret, but you can’t keep secrets in a palace. The servants told me, and of course they know! They know everything.’

‘Servants’ gossip?’ I asked. ‘It might not be true.’

‘Oh, there were priests all over the palace!’ Ælfwynn said. ‘It was commotion all night and doors slamming and lots of mumbled prayers. I think it’s true.’ She did not sound in the least upset.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Sorry?’

‘That your father’s dead,’ I said awkwardly.

‘I suppose I ought to be sorry,’ she said, ‘but he didn’t like me and I didn’t like him.’ She looked at Stiorra and grinned, and I wondered whether that was what the two girls had in common: bad fathers. ‘And he was evil-tempered,’ Ælfwynn went on, ‘even more than mother! And I didn’t want to marry Eardwulf so I know I ought to be sorry, but I’m not.’

‘That’s why they’re keeping his death a secret,’ I said. ‘So they can marry you to Eardwulf before they announce it.’

‘Well they can’t do that now, uncle, can they?’ she said happily.

But they could and they would, because without her Eardwulf was nothing, but with her he inherited his father-in-law’s power and became Æthelhelm’s deputy in Mercia.

So he had to find his bride. I looked behind and saw an empty road, but that meant nothing.

We would be pursued.

PART TWO

The Lady of Mercia

Four

The rain settled into a steady downpour. The thunder had faded and with it the gusting winds, but the rain persisted. It seemed impossible that the sky could hold so much water. It was as though the oceans of the gods were being emptied on us, relentlessly, endlessly, a drenching rainstorm that soaked us as we climbed the steep hills and, once at their summit, turned north to follow sheep paths across the gently rolling slopes. The men on Gleawecestre’s walls would have seen us going east towards Cirrenceastre, and I hoped Eardwulf assumed that was our destination, but now we left the Roman road to cross the hills and join the road that led to Alencestre.

The paths were slippery, but there was little mud until we dropped down into the wide valley of Eveshomme, and there the tracks became deep and difficult. I had once heard a Christian priest proclaim that Adam and Eve had lived in this wide, fertile valley, and that it was in this Eden that sin had entered the world. The man had preached like a crazy person, waving his arms, spitting his words, and glaring at the church. ‘Woman!’ he had snarled. ‘It is woman who brought sin into this world! It is woman who spoiled God’s paradise! It is woman who brought evil!’ I had been young then, too young to realise what rubbish he spewed. Besides, Father Beocca had told me that the real Eden lay far off beyond the rising sun in a land that was guarded by angels and hidden by golden mists, while Eveshomme, he claimed, was named for a swineherd who had chatted with the Virgin Mary while his pigs rooted about in the beech woods. ‘What did they talk about?’ I had asked him.

‘God’s grace, I’m sure!’

‘That sounds thrilling.’

‘It is, Uhtred, it is!’ he had insisted. ‘And men and women go to Eveshomme in hope of meeting our Lady.’

‘And do they meet her?’

‘I pray so.’ He had sounded dubious.

‘Have you been?’ I had asked him, and he nodded, rather reluctantly. ‘And did you see her?’

‘Alas, no.’

‘Maybe you’d have had better luck if you’d taken some pigs with you.’

‘Pigs?’ He had been puzzled.

‘Perhaps she likes bacon?’

‘That is not amusing,’ he had said. Poor Father Beocca, dead now.

There was no sign of any pursuit, but I knew it would come. Eardwulf needed to find Ælfwynn fast, he needed to drag her back to the church and marry her, only then could he claim some legitimacy as the heir to her father’s power. The thegns of Mercia, I thought, would not accept that power readily. They would think him an upstart, but if he had Æthelred’s daughter in his bed and the strength of Wessex behind him, then they would sullenly accept his new authority. But without Ælfwynn? Without Ælfwynn he would be nothing but a usurper. It was her virginity, if that still existed, which would tie him to Æthelred’s family and status. I thought of finding a priest somewhere in this rainswept valley and have him marry Ælfwynn to my son, then wait while Uhtred took her into a hovel and did the necessary. I thought hard about doing that, but the absence of any pursuit persuaded me to keep travelling instead.

The streams we crossed were swollen by rain, their water overflowing the banks and swirling deep across the fords. There were frequent homesteads, for this was fertile, rich land. The villages were plump and growing. Our defeat of the Danes at Teotanheale had made these folk feel safe; they built without palisades now and they built large. The new barns were as big as churches, and the churches were high-roofed with bright thatch. There were rich orchards and lush meadows, a good land, but low lying so that already floods were reaching across the pastures, the spreading waters thrashed by the stubborn rain. We were cold, we were tired, we were sodden. The temptation was to stop at any of the great halls we passed and let the fire in the hearth dry and warm us, but I dared not halt till we reached Alencestre.

We arrived at dusk, not long after Osferth and his crowd of families had reached the village, though it flattered Alencestre to call the place a village. It was built where two rivers and two roads met, and where the Romans had made two forts. The older fort, its earth walls now overgrown with brambles, lay on a hill south of the rivers, while the newer fort had been built where the rivers met and it was there that Osferth waited. There were a few hovels just outside the fort’s decrepit walls, and a hall, a barn, and a half-dozen cattle byres inside. The hall had belonged to a Dane who had died at Teotanheale, and his confiscated land had been granted to the church by Æthelred. ‘Bishop Wulfheard prays there will be a monastery here,’ the steward told me.

‘Another monastery? There aren’t enough?’

Alencestre must have been important to the Romans because the ruins of their buildings lay all about the fort. Now those ruins were covered in ivy and thick with nettles, though the steward had cleared one roofless house. ‘The bishop said we must make it into a church,’ he explained.

‘You’d do better to repair the fort walls,’ I said.

‘You think the Danes will come again, lord?’ he asked nervously.

‘The Danes always come again.’ I snarled that answer, partly because I was in a bad mood and partly because he was a snivelling little man who had tried to deny us his stores of food and ale, claiming they belonged to Bishop Wulfheard. I had been prepared to pay silver for whatever we took, but decided now we would just take the supplies, and the bishop could piss into the wind for all I cared.

I posted sentries on the remnants of the fort wall. The rain was at last slackening as dusk darkened the wet land. A great fire burned in the hall, and we lit another in the barn. I stayed on the ramparts, watching the floodwaters in the fading light. Floating debris had piled itself against the piers of the Roman bridge so that the water foamed there, rippling out to seethe on either side of the bridge’s stone roadway. If Eardwulf was following us, I thought, he must cross that bridge, and so I guarded it with six men and a crude barricade made from rafters torn from the cattle byres. Six men would be enough because I doubted our pursuers would come this night. They would be as tired, as wet and as cold as we were, and the night promised to be black as pitch, too dark for men to travel safely.

‘Is Æthelred really dead?’ Osferth had joined me on the rampart.

‘So Ælfwynn says.’

‘We’ve heard that rumour before.’

‘I think it’s true,’ I said. ‘But they’ll keep it a secret for as long as they can.’

‘So Eardwulf can marry Ælfwynn?’

I nodded. Ingulfrid, Osferth’s woman, had followed him, and I beckoned for her to join us. Life was so complicated, I thought. Ingulfrid was married to a cousin of mine, another Uhtred, the son of my uncle who had usurped Bebbanburg. She had chosen to stay with us when I failed to capture that fortress. Her son had been with her, but Osferth had sent the boy back to his father. I would have cut the little bastard’s throat, but I had given the gift of his life to Osferth and he had been generous.

‘Eardwulf must find us soon,’ Osferth said, ‘he can’t keep Æthelred’s body long. Not before it starts to stink.’

‘He has a week,’ I guessed.

Osferth gazed south. The light had almost gone and the hill beyond the river was nothing but a black shape in the darkness. ‘How many men will they send?’

‘All they have.’

‘How many is that?’ Ingulfrid asked.

‘Two hundred? Three hundred?’

‘And we’re how many?’

‘Forty-three,’ I said bleakly.

‘Not enough to hold the fort,’ Osferth put in.

‘We can stop them at the bridge,’ I said, ‘but as soon as the river level drops they’ll ford it upstream.’

‘So we keep going tomorrow?’

I did not answer because I had suddenly realised my own stupidity. I had thought Brice a dull-witted enemy, but I had now joined him in the ranks of fools, and granted Eardwulf all the advantage he needed. He was no fool, nor was Æthelhelm, and they must know where I was travelling. I could pretend to head for Cirrenceastre, but they would know I was riding to join Æthelflaed, and they had no need to follow me on the road to Alencestre, they only needed to take the quicker route to Ceaster, the road that followed the Welsh borderlands, and so position their forces ahead of me while I, obligingly, used the longer and slower route through the heart of Mercia. The six sentries on the bridge were guarding nothing because Eardwulf was not pursuing us, instead he would be hurrying northwards on the road to our west. His scouts would be looking for us and doubtless they would find us, and then Eardwulf would lead his men eastwards to block our path. ‘Lord?’ Osferth asked anxiously.

‘He won’t come from the south,’ I said, ‘but from there.’ I pointed.

‘From the west?’ he asked, puzzled.

I did not explain my stupidity. I could blame it on my pain, but that was a feeble excuse. I had sent Osferth, the families, Æthelstan, and his sister on this road because it kept them from the danger of any marauding Welshmen, but all I had achieved was to trap them. ‘They’ll come from the west,’ I said bitterly, ‘unless the floods slow them.’

‘They’ll slow us,’ Osferth said uncertainly, gazing into the wet darkness.

‘You should go into the hall, lord,’ Ingulfrid said to me, ‘you’re cold and wet.’

And probably defeated, I thought. Of course Eardwulf was not following me, he had no need to! He was ahead of me, and soon he would block my path and take Ælfwynn as his bride. And then I wondered if I was even on the right side of this argument, because Eardwulf, even married to Ælfwynn, would never be named Lord of Mercia. Edward would surely take the throne, and Eardwulf would be his instrument, his reeve, and perhaps Æthelflaed would approve of her brother taking Mercia’s crown, for that would bring their father’s dream closer to reality.

Alfred had dreamed of uniting the Saxons. That meant driving the Danes out of northern Mercia, from East Anglia, and, eventually, from Northumbria. Then the four kingdoms would become just one, Englaland. For years now Mercia had depended on Wessex for its survival, so why shouldn’t the King of Wessex assume the crown? Three kingdoms were better than four, and three kingdoms were more likely to become one, so was I being stubborn and foolish? Æthelflaed might not approve of Eardwulf, who had ever been her enemy, but perhaps his ennoblement was a price worth paying to bring the dream of Englaland closer?