The Empty Throne

Then I rejected the idea. Because, I thought, this was not Edward’s idea. Edward would doubtless like to be King of Mercia, but at the expense of his eldest son’s life? Did Edward want Æthelstan killed? I doubted it. This was Lord Æthelhelm’s doing, he wanted Æthelstan removed to ensure that his own grandson would become the King of Wessex and of Mercia and, if the gods of war allowed it, the King of Englaland too. And Æthelstan was as dear to me as my own son and daughter, and now I had led him to this muddy fort in the centre of Mercia, and his enemies were already farther north, cutting him off from Æthelflaed’s men, who were his only hope of survival.

‘Lord?’ Osferth said.

‘To the hall,’ I said, ‘and pray.’

Because I had been a fool.

Thunder disturbed the night. Sometime around midnight the rain, which had lessened at dusk, became torrential again and then fell for the rest of the dark hours. It was a seething, soaking and hard rain.

‘We shall have to build an ark, lord,’ Father Cuthbert spoke to me just before the dawn. I was standing at the hall door, listening to the rain beat on the thatch.

‘How did you know it was me?’ I asked him.

‘You all smell differently,’ he said. He groped with his hands and found the doorjamb. ‘And besides,’ he went on as he leaned against the pillar, ‘you were muttering.’

‘I was?’

‘Calling yourself a damned fool,’ he sounded amused, ‘which is what you usually call me.’

‘You are,’ I said.

He turned his eyeless face towards me. ‘What have I done now?’

‘Marrying Edward to his Centish girl,’ I said, ‘that was a damn fool thing to do.’

‘It kept him from sin, lord.’

‘Sin! You mean swiving a girl is a sin?’

‘No one said life is fair.’

‘Your god makes strange rules.’

He turned his face to the rain. I could just see the first faint light touching the east with a damp grey line. ‘Rain,’ he said, as if I hadn’t noticed.

‘Floods,’ I growled.

‘You see? We need an ark. Polecats.’

‘Polecats?’

‘Sheep I can understand,’ he said. ‘Noah wouldn’t have found it difficult to find a pair of sheep or a couple of cows. But how on earth did he persuade two polecats to enter the ark?’

I had to smile. ‘You think it really happened,’ I asked him, ‘your story of a flood?’

‘Oh yes, lord. It was God’s judgement on a wicked world.’

I stared into the downpour. ‘Then someone must have been very wicked to bring this rain,’ I said lightly.

‘It wasn’t you, lord,’ he said loyally.

‘For a change,’ I said, still smiling. And Father Cuthbert was right. We needed an ark. What I should have done was have Osferth take the families and all their baggage to the Temes and find a boat, then we should have followed him. The voyage to Ceaster would have taken time, a long time, but once at sea we would have been safe from pursuit. Better still would have been to keep a boat on the Sæfern, south of Gleawecestre, but since my fight with Cnut I had been too feeble to even think about such things.

‘So we just keep going now, lord?’ Cuthbert asked in a tone suggesting that the last thing he wanted was another day’s difficult travel through a rainstorm.

‘I’m not sure we can,’ I said, and a few moments later I splashed through the wet grass and climbed the low rampart to see that the fort was now almost an island. In the half-light of the grey dawn all I could see was water. The rivers had flooded and still the rain fell. I stared as the light slowly grew, then heard a mewing sound and turned to see that Father Cuthbert had followed me and was now lost, standing in ankle-deep water and casting about with the long staff he carried to guide his steps. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked him. ‘You can’t see, so why come out here?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said plaintively.

I fetched him to the rampart’s weatherworn top. ‘There’s nothing to see,’ I said, ‘just floods.’

He leaned on the staff, his empty eye sockets staring north. ‘Have you ever heard of Saint Loginos?’ he asked me.

‘Never,’ I said.

‘Sometimes he’s called Longinus,’ he added as if that might spur my memory.

‘What did he do? Preach to polecats?’

‘Not so far as I know, lord, though perhaps he did. He was a blind soldier, the man who thrust his spear into the side of our lord when he hung on the cross.’

I turned on Cuthbert. ‘Why would you give a blind soldier a spear?’

‘I don’t know. It just happened.’

‘Go on,’ I said. I was bored with the stories of saints, how they hung their cloaks on sunbeams or revived the dead or turned chalk into cheese. I would believe the nonsense if I saw even one of those miracles, but I indulged Father Cuthbert. I liked him.

‘He wasn’t a Christian,’ the priest said, ‘but when he thrust the spear some of our Lord’s blood fell on his face and he could see again! He was cured! And so he became a Christian too.’

I smiled, said nothing. The rain was coming straight down, not a breath of wind.

‘Loginos was cured,’ Father Cuthbert went on, ‘but he was cursed too. He had wounded our saviour and the curse meant that he would never die!’

‘That is a curse,’ I said feelingly.

‘He still lives, lord, and every day he takes a mortal wound. Maybe you have fought him! Maybe you gave him that day’s mortal wound, and every night he lies down to die and the spear he used against our Lord lies at his side and it cures him.’

I realised he was telling me the story because he wanted to help me. I kept quiet, staring at the few hummocks of land showing above the spreading water. Cattle crowded on one such hillock. A drowned lamb had fetched up at the foot of the ramparts and the first crows were already tearing at the fleece. Father Cuthbert’s ravaged face was turned to me. I knew what he was saying, but I asked anyway. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘The weapon that gave the wound can cure it, lord,’ he said.

‘But Loginos’s spear did not wound Loginos,’ I pointed out.

‘Loginos wounded himself when his spear pierced Christ’s side, lord. He wounded all of us. He wounded mankind.’

‘It’s a muddled story,’ I said. ‘He becomes a Christian, but he’s cursed? He dies every day and yet he lives? His spear cures him even though it didn’t wound him?’

‘Lord,’ Father Cuthbert was entreating me, ‘find the sword that wounded you. It can cure you.’

‘Ice-Spite,’ I said.

‘It must exist!’

‘Oh, she exists,’ I said. I assumed the sword had been carried from the battlefield by one of Cnut’s men. ‘But how do I find it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Cuthbert said, ‘I only know you must.’ He spoke so earnestly, and I knew his words sprang from loyalty. He was not the first person to suggest that the blade that had wounded me could cure me, and I believed it, but how did I find that one blade in all Britain? Cnut’s sword, I thought, was in the hands of an enemy, and that enemy was using it to give me pain. There were spells and incantations that would do that. It was an ancient magic, older than Cuthbert’s Christian sorcery, a magic that went back to the beginnings of time.

‘I will look for it, my friend,’ I told him. ‘Now come, you don’t need to stand in the rain.’

I took him back to the hall.

And the rain did not stop.

Nor did the enemy.

The floods trapped us. The wagons that Osferth had brought from Fagranforda could not go farther, at least not till the waters receded, nor did I want to abandon them. Everything we possessed of any value was on those wagons. Besides, even if we struggled through the floodwaters to the higher ground we could be caught in open country by the horsemen I knew were searching for us. It was better to stay in the Roman fort where, for the moment, we were safe. The flood meant that we could only be approached from the north. We could not be outflanked.

Yet to stay was to invite an enemy to find us, and once the floodwaters drained away we could be assaulted from east, west, and north, and so I sent three of my younger men eastwards. They had to ride north first, following the Roman road that was raised on a slight embankment, but even so the water rose well above their stirrups before they reached the low hills and could turn east. They were riding to find men who supported Æthelflaed. ‘Tell them Æthelred is dead,’ I told them, ‘and that Eardwulf is trying to become Lord of Mercia. And ask them to send men here.’

‘You’re starting a rebellion,’ Osferth accused me.

‘Against who?’ I challenged him.

He hesitated. ‘Æthelred?’ he finally suggested.

‘He’s dead.’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘So what would you have me do?’ I asked, posing the same question with which I had challenged him in Cirrenceastre and, once again, he had no answer. He was not opposed to me, but rather, like his father, Osferth was a man who cared about the law. God, he believed, would support the right cause and Osferth suffered agonies of conscience as he tried to discover what was right and what was wrong, and in his mind the right was usually whatever cause the church supported. ‘Supposing Æthelred still lives,’ I pressed him, ‘does that give him the right to help Æthelhelm destroy Æthelstan?’

‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Or marry Ælfwynn to Eardwulf?’

‘She’s his daughter. He can dispose of her as he wishes.’

‘And her mother has no say?’

‘Æthelred is the Lord of Mercia,’ he said, ‘and even if he wasn’t, then the husband is the head of the family.’

‘Then why are you tupping another man’s wife?’ I asked him. He looked desperately unhappy, poor man, and I wondered at the struggle he had to feel between his love for Ingulfrid and the nailed god’s disapproval. ‘And if Æthelred’s dead,’ I asked another question so he would not have to answer the first, ‘where does that leave Æthelflaed?’

He still looked miserable. Æthelflaed was his half-sister, and he was fond of her, but he was also hounded by his god’s ridiculous demands. ‘The custom,’ he said quietly, ‘is for the ruler’s widow to enter a nunnery.’

‘And you want that for her?’ I asked angrily.

He flinched at the question. ‘What else can she do?’ he demanded.

‘She could take her husband’s place,’ I said.

He stared at me. ‘She could rule Mercia?’

‘Can you think of anyone better?’

‘But women don’t rule!’

‘Æthelflaed can,’ I said.

‘But …’ he began and fell silent.

‘Who better?’ I demanded.

‘Her brother?’

‘Edward! And what if Mercia doesn’t want to be ruled by Wessex?’

‘They already are,’ he said, which was true enough though everyone pretended it was not.

‘And who’d be the better ruler?’ I demanded. ‘Your half-brother or your half-sister?’

He said nothing for a while, but Osferth was always truthful. ‘Æthelflaed,’ he finally admitted.

‘She should rule Mercia,’ I said firmly, though that would only happen if I could keep her daughter from Eardwulf’s marriage-bed and so prevent Wessex from swallowing Mercia.

And that looked unlikely because in the middle of the morning as the rain at last showed signs of lessening, the horsemen came from the west. Just one man at first, riding a small horse that he checked on a hilltop across the flooded valley. He gazed at us, then spurred out of sight, but a few moments later there were six riders on the skyline. More men came, perhaps ten or eleven, but it was hard to tell because they scattered from the crest to explore the river valley, looking for a place to cross. ‘What happens now?’ my daughter asked.

‘They can’t hurt us so long as the floods stay,’ I said. The floods meant there was only one narrow way to approach the old fort, and I had more than enough men to hold that path.

‘And when the floods go?’

I grimaced. ‘Then it becomes difficult.’

Stiorra was holding a lambskin pouch that she now held towards me. I looked at the pouch, but did not take it. ‘Where did you find that?’ I asked her.

‘In Fagranforda.’

‘I thought it burned with everything else.’ I had lost so much when the Christians burned my buildings.

‘I found it years ago,’ she said, ‘before Wulfheard burned the hall. And I want to learn how to use them.’

‘I don’t know how,’ I said. I took the pouch and untied the drawstring. Inside were two dozen alder sticks, slender and polished, none longer than a man’s forearm. They were runesticks, and they had belonged to Stiorra’s mother. Runesticks could tell the future, and Gisela had known how to read them, but I had never learned the secret. ‘Does Hella know?’

‘She never learned,’ Stiorra said.

I turned the slender sticks, remembering Gisela casting them. ‘Sigunn will teach you,’ I said. Sigunn was my woman and, like Stiorra’s maid, she had been captured at Beamfleot. She had been among the women and children who had been brought this far by Osferth.

‘Sigunn can read the sticks?’ Stiorra asked, sounding dubious.

‘A little. She says you have to practise. Practise and dream.’ I slid the runesticks back into their pouch and smiled ruefully. ‘The sticks once said you would be the mother of kings.’

‘Was that mother’s prophecy?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the sticks don’t lie?’

‘They never did for your mother.’

‘Then those people can’t hurt us,’ Stiorra said, nodding across the valley at the horsemen.

But they could and they would as soon as the floods subsided, and there was little I could do to stop them. I had sent men to find ale in the flooded village, and others had pulled down another cattle byre so our fires would have fuel, but I sensed the enemy tightening a ring about us. By afternoon the rain was slight, gusting now on a cold east wind, and I watched from the ramparts and saw horsemen on every side, and then, as dusk darkened the floodwaters, I saw a line of horses and riders on the high ground to the north. One carried a banner, but the cloth was so waterlogged that it hung limp by the staff and was impossible to decipher.

That night the glow of campfires lit the northern sky. The rain had stopped though every now and then a bitter shower swept spitefully through the darkness. I had sentries watching the lone path to the north, but no one tried to approach us in the darkness. They were content to wait, knowing that the floods would drain and we would be vulnerable. Folk stared at me in the hall’s firelight. They expected a miracle.

Sigunn, my woman, was showing Stiorra the runesticks, but Sigunn, I knew, did not wholly understand them. She had dropped the sticks, and she and Stiorra were staring at their pattern, but what it meant neither could tell. Nothing good, I suspected, but I did not need the sticks to see the future. In the morning the enemy would demand two things: Æthelstan and Ælfwynn. Hand them over and we would be left in peace, but if I refused?

Finan knew it too. He squatted beside me. ‘So?’

‘I wish I knew.’

‘They’ll not want to fight us.’

‘But they will if they must.’

He nodded. ‘And there’ll be plenty of them.’

‘What I’ll do,’ I said, ‘is marry Uhtred to Ælfwynn. Father Cuthbert can do that.’

‘You can do that,’ Finan said, ‘and that just invites Eardwulf to kill him and make Ælfwynn a widow. Eardwulf won’t mind marrying a widow if she brings him Mercia.’

He was right. ‘So you’ll take six men,’ I said, ‘and carry Æthelstan away.’

‘They’re all around us,’ he said.

‘Tomorrow night,’ I said, ‘in the dark.’

He nodded again, but he knew as well as I did that we were pissing into a gale. I had tried and I had failed. I had led my men, their women, their families, and everything we possessed to this waterlogged fort in the middle of Mercia, and my enemies were all around me. If I had been well, if I had been the Uhtred who had led men to battle against Cnut, then those enemies would be nervous, but they knew I was weakened. I had frightened men once, now I was the one who was frightened. ‘If we live through this,’ I told Finan, ‘I want to find Ice-Spite.’

‘Because she’ll cure you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And so she will,’ he said.

‘But how?’ I asked gloomily. ‘Some bastard Dane will have her, and who knows where?’

He stared at me, then shook his head. ‘A Dane?’

‘Who else?’

‘It can’t be a Dane,’ he said, frowning. ‘You went down the hill to meet Cnut and he came up the slope.’

‘I remember that much.’

‘The two of you fought in the open. There were no Danes near you. And once you’d killed him the Danes ran. I was the first to reach you.’

I did not remember that, but then I remembered little of that fight except for the sudden surprise of Cnut’s blade in my side and the scream I gave as I cut his throat.

‘And the Danes can’t have taken his sword,’ Finan went on, ‘because they never went near his body.’

‘Then who did?’

‘We did,’ Finan was frowning. ‘Cnut was on the ground and you were on top of him with his blade in you. I pulled you off and tugged the sword free, but I didn’t keep it. I was more worried about you. I looked for it later, but it was gone. Then I forgot about it.’

‘So it’s here,’ I said softly, meaning the sword was somewhere in Saxon Britain. ‘Who else was with you?’

‘Christ! They all came down the hill. Our men, the Welsh, Father Pyrlig, Father …’ he stopped abruptly.

‘Father Judas,’ I finished for him.

‘Of course he came!’ Finan said robustly. ‘He was worried for you.’ Father Judas. The man who had been my son. He called himself something else these days. ‘He wouldn’t hurt you, lord,’ Finan added earnestly.

‘He already has,’ I said savagely.

‘It’s not him,’ Finan said firmly.

But whoever it was, they had won. Because I was trapped, and the dawn showed that the floods were already shrinking. Water foamed at the Roman bridge where trees and branches were trapped against the arches, while the roadways on either bank were still flooded, and those waters were keeping the men on the southern and western hills away from the fort. But the largest number of men were to our north. Those were the warriors who could attack straight down the Roman road and there were at least a hundred and fifty of them on the low rise of ground swelling from the water meadows. A few had spurred their horses into the floods, but abandoned their attempts to reach us when the water rose above their stirrups. Now they were content to wait, walking up and down on the skyline or just sitting on the nearer slope and staring towards us. I could see black-robed priests there, but most of the men were warriors, their mail and helmets grey in the clouded day.

By mid-afternoon the water had drained from much of the road, which was raised a few hand breadths above the fields. A dozen riders spurred from the hill. There were two priests, two standard-bearers, and the rest were warriors. The larger flag showed Æthelred’s white horse, while the smaller depicted a saint holding a cross. ‘Mercia and the church,’ Finan said.

‘No West Saxons,’ I noted.

‘They sent Eardwulf to do their dirty work?’

‘He has the most to gain,’ I said, ‘and the most to lose.’ I took a breath, bracing myself for the pain, and hauled myself into the saddle. Osferth, Finan, and my son were already mounted. The four of us were dressed for war, though, like the men who approached from the north, we carried no shields.

‘Do we take a banner?’ my son asked.

‘Don’t flatter them,’ I growled, and kicked my horse forward.

The fort’s gateway was above water, but after a few yards the horses were splashing fetlock deep. I rode some eighty or ninety paces from the fort and there reined in and waited.

Eardwulf led the Mercians. His dark face was grim, framed by a helmet decorated with silver serpents that writhed about the metal skull. He wore a white cloak over his polished mail, the linen edged with ermine, while his sword scabbard was bleached leather trimmed with silver strips. There was a heavy gold chain about his neck from which hung a golden cross studded with amethysts. There was a priest either side of him, both men riding smaller horses. Their black robes had dragged in the floods and hung dripping by their stirrups. They were the twins Ceolnoth and Ceolberht who, some thirty years before, had been captured with me by the Danes, a fate I had embraced, while the twins had become vehement haters of all pagans. They hated me too, especially Ceolberht, whose teeth I had kicked out, but at least that meant I could now tell them apart. Most of the horsemen stopped fifty paces away, but Eardwulf and the twins rode on until their horses confronted ours on the flooded road. ‘I bring a message from King Edward,’ Ceolnoth spoke without any greeting, ‘he says you are …’

‘Brought your puppies to do your yapping?’ I asked Eardwulf.

‘He says you are to return to Gleawecestre,’ Ceolnoth raised his voice, ‘with the boy Æthelstan and the king’s niece, Ælfwynn.’

I stared at the three of them for a few heartbeats. A gust of wind brought a few drops of rain, sharp and fast, but the rain was gone almost as soon as it started. I looked up at the sky, hoping the rain would start again because the longer the floods lasted the more time I had, but if anything the clouds were lightening. Finan, Osferth, and my son were gazing at me, waiting for my response to Ceolnoth, but I just turned my horse. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

‘Lord Uhtred!’ Eardwulf called.

I spurred on. I would have laughed if it had not hurt so much. Eardwulf called again, but then we were out of earshot and cantering through the fort’s entrance. ‘Let them pick the bones out of that,’ I said. He would be confused. He had been hoping to test my resolve, perhaps even hoping that I would obey a summons from the West Saxon king, but my refusal to even talk to him suggested he would have to fight, and I knew Eardwulf would be reluctant to attack. He might outnumber me by at least three to one, but he would take grievous casualties in any fight, and no man wanted to face warriors like Finan in battle. Eardwulf could not even be sure that all his men would fight; plenty of them had served under me over the years and they would be reluctant to attack my shields. I remembered the black-bearded man in Gleawecestre’s gateway; he was a Mercian, sworn to Æthelred and Eardwulf, but he had grinned at me, been pleased to see me, and it would be difficult to persuade such men to fight me. And though Eardwulf was a warrior, and had a reputation, he did not inspire loyalty in his men. No one spoke of Eardwulf’s conquests, of the men he had cut down in single combat. He was a clever enough leader of men, but he let others do the grim work of slaughter, and that was why he did not inspire loyalty. Æthelflaed did, and I dare say that I did too.

Eardwulf was still watching us when I dismounted. He stared for a while longer, then turned his horse and rode back to the dry ground. That ground was spreading as the waters fell, and there was further bad news as the afternoon wore on. More men came to join Eardwulf. They came from the north, and I guessed they were patrols that had been searching for us, but had been recalled so that by dusk there were over two hundred men on the low hill, and the floods were almost gone. ‘They’ll come at dawn,’ Finan said.

‘Probably,’ I agreed. Some of Eardwulf’s men might be reluctant, but the more warriors he gathered, the more likely they were to attack. The reluctant fighters would be in the second rank, hoping others would bear the brunt of the fight, and meanwhile the priests would be whipping them into a holy fervour, and Eardwulf would be promising them plunder. And Eardwulf had to attack. It was plain to me that Edward and Æthelhelm had wanted no part in this fighting. They could take Mercia whenever they wanted, but Eardwulf stood to lose his inheritance from Æthelred. If he failed, then the West Saxons would cut him adrift, and so he had to win. He would come in the dawn.

‘Suppose he attacks at night?’ my son asked.

‘He won’t,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be black as pitch, they’ll be floundering in water, they’ll get lost. He might send men to harass us, but we’ll put sentries on the road.’

We also lit fires on the rampart, pulling down the last two cattle byres to find the fuel. Eardwulf could see my sentries coming and going in the light of those fires, though I doubted he knew I had men posted closer to him, but none of them was disturbed. He did not need to make a risky attack in the dark of night, not when he had the men to overwhelm me in the dawn.

A star showed in the sky just before dawn. The clouds were clearing at last, blown away by a cold east wind. I had thought to send Osferth and forty horsemen across the bridge because there were fewer enemy on the south bank of the river. I planned to send Æthelstan, his sister and Ælfwynn with them, and let them hurry eastwards to Lundene while I stayed behind to defy Eardwulf, but he had anticipated me and, as the first light spilled over the world’s edge, I saw forty horsemen waiting just beyond the bridge. The flooding there was almost gone. The sun rose to show a damp world. The fields were half green and half shallow pools. Gulls had come from the faraway sea and flocked across the watery land.

‘That’s a pity,’ I said to Finan, pointing to the horsemen who blocked the bridge. The two of us were on horseback in the entrance gate of the old fort.

‘That’s a pity,’ he agreed.

It was fate, I thought. Just fate. We think we control our own lives, but the gods play with us like children playing with straw dolls. I thought how often I had manoeuvred enemies into traps, of the joy of imposing my will on a foeman. The enemy believes he has choices, then discovers he has none, and now I was the one in the trap. Eardwulf had surrounded me, he outnumbered me, and he had foreseen my one desperate move, to escape across the bridge.

‘There’s still time to marry Ælfwynn to your son,’ Finan said.

‘And as you said that just invites Eardwulf to kill him,’ I said, ‘so he can marry the widow.’

The sun was casting long shadows across the wet fields. I could see Eardwulf’s men mounting their horses on the northern crest. They carried shields now, shields and weapons.

‘It’s Æthelstan I care for,’ I said. I turned to look at the boy, who looked back at me with a brave face. He was doomed, I thought. Æthelhelm would have his throat cut in an eyeblink. I beckoned to him.

‘Lord?’ He looked up at me.

‘I’ve failed you,’ I said.

‘No, lord, never.’

‘Quiet, boy,’ I told him, ‘and listen to me. You are the son of a king. You are the eldest son. Nothing in our laws says the eldest son must be the next king, but the ætheling has more claim on the throne than anyone else. You should be the King of Wessex after your father, but Æthelhelm wants your half-brother on the throne. Do you understand?’

‘Of course, lord.’

‘I swore an oath to protect you,’ I said, ‘and I’ve failed. For that, lord prince, I am sorry.’

He blinked when I called him ‘prince’. I had never addressed him as royalty before. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then found nothing to say.

‘I have a choice now,’ I told him. ‘I can fight, but we’re outnumbered and this is a battle we can’t win. By mid-morning there’ll be a hundred dead men here and you’ll be a captive. They plan to send you across the sea to a monastery, and in two or three years, when you’ve been forgotten in Wessex, they’ll kill you.’

‘Yes, lord,’ he said in a whisper.

‘My other choice is to surrender,’ I said, and the word was like gall in my mouth. ‘If I do that,’ I went on, ‘then I live to fight another day. I live to take ship to Neustria. I will find you and rescue you.’ And that, I thought, was a promise with about as much substance as breath on a winter’s morning, but what else could I say? The truth, I thought sadly, was that Eardwulf would probably slit the boy’s throat and blame me. That would be his gift to Æthelhelm.

Æthelstan looked past me. He was watching the horsemen on the far hill. ‘Will they let you live, lord?’ he asked.

‘If you were Eardwulf,’ I asked him, ‘would you?’

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said seriously.

‘You’ll make a good king,’ I said. ‘They’ll want to kill me, but they don’t really want to fight me either. Eardwulf doesn’t want to lose half his men, so he’ll probably let me live. He’ll humiliate me, but I’ll live.’

Yet I would not surrender too easily. At the least I could persuade him that to fight me was to lose men, and maybe that would make his surrender terms easier. Just outside the fort, to the south, the river made a bend, and I sent all our women and children to wait in the water meadow encircled by the river’s loop. The warriors made a shield wall in front of them, a shield wall that just stretched from river bank to river bank. That way, at least, Eardwulf could only attack from the front. It would even the fight somewhat, but he had such a predominance in numbers that I could not imagine winning. I just needed to delay him. I had sent those three young men to find help and maybe it was coming? Or maybe Thor would come from Asgard and use his hammer on my enemies?

Finan and I waited on horseback in front of the shield wall. The men behind us, like their families, were ankle deep in floodwater. Our horses and our baggage were still in the fort. All I brought to the river bend was my hoard, the leather bags of silver and gold. Almost all I possessed and almost everyone I loved was now trapped in the noose made by the river’s loop.

The fates were laughing at me, those three hags at the foot of the tree who decide our lives. I touched the hammer at my neck. A small mist was drifting off the soaked fields as the sun rose higher. Somewhere beyond the river a lamb bleated.

And Eardwulf led his forces off the hill.

Five

Eardwulf came in the full panoply of war, armed and armoured, the snake-wreathed helmet bright-polished, his horse dressed with a scarlet saddle-cloth tasselled with gold that skimmed the remaining floodwaters. His shield showed Æthelred’s prancing horse, and I wondered how long that symbol would stay painted on the willow boards. Once he had married Ælfwynn and was confirmed as the heir to Æthelred’s lands and fortune he would doubtless find his own badge. What would that be? If I were him I would take my banner of the wolf’s head, daub it with blood, and put a cross above it to show he had beaten me. He would be Eardwulf the Conqueror, and I had a sudden vision of his rise, not just to dominate Mercia, but perhaps all Britain. Did Edward and Æthelhelm know what a viper they suckled?

Wyrd bið ful āræd. Fate is inexorable. We are given power and we lose it. I was wounded and growing old, and my strength was slipping away, and I was seeing the new man, the new lord, and he looked formidable as his men advanced across the half-flooded fields to scatter the gulls. He had formed his warriors into a battle line, spread wide across the waterlogged meadows, over two hundred horsemen on big horses. They were all in their war gear, helmeted, carrying shields, their bright-bladed spear-points stark against the faint mist that was fading as the sun rose higher. The priests followed Eardwulf, clustering around the two standard-bearers who carried Æthelred’s prancing horse banner and a flag of Saint Oswald, which showed a one-armed skeleton holding up a bright red cross.

‘There’s a woman there,’ Finan said.

‘It must be his sister,’ I said.

Eadith had been Æthelred’s mistress. I had been told she was as ambitious and as cunning as her brother, and doubtless she was here to enjoy his victory which would be all the sweeter for being at my expense. I was hated, and I knew it. Part of it was my fault, I am arrogant. Just as Eardwulf was about to relish his victory, so I had relished victories all my life. We live in a world where the strongest win, and the strongest must expect to be disliked. Then I am a pagan, and though Christians teach that they must love their enemies, few do.

‘If you had your life over again,’ I asked Finan, ‘what would you do differently?’

He gave me a curious look. ‘That’s a strange question.’

‘But what would you do?’

He shrugged. ‘Kill my younger brother,’ he growled.

‘In Ireland?’

‘Where else?’

He never spoke of what had driven him from Ireland, but there was a bitterness to his words. ‘Why?’ I asked, but he said nothing. ‘Maybe we should go there,’ I said.

He gave me a swift unamused smile. ‘You have a death wish now, do you?’ he asked, then looked back towards the approaching horsemen. ‘It looks as if you’ll get your wish. Will you fight them?’

‘It’s the only threat I have.’

‘Aye, but will you?’

‘You can’t make an empty threat,’ I said, ‘you know that.’

He nodded. ‘True.’ He watched Eardwulf’s men, his right hand caressing the hilt of his sword. ‘And what would you do differently?’ he asked after a while.

‘Take better care of my children.’

He smiled at that. ‘You have good children. And you’d better stay alive to look after them now, which means you don’t fight in the front rank.’

‘I will not …’ I began.

‘You’re not strong enough!’ he insisted. ‘You stand in the second rank and I’ll kill that whore-begotten bastard before they kill me.’

‘Unless I kill him first,’ my son said. I did not realise he had joined us, and I felt embarrassed for what I had just said. ‘But there’s one thing I know about Eardwulf,’ Uhtred said, ‘he never fights in the front rank.’ He loosened Raven-Beak in its scabbard, then touched the cross hanging about his neck to his lips. ‘We’ll have to hack our way through to him.’

‘You and me,’ Finan said.

‘We’ll do it too,’ Uhtred said wolfishly. He looked happy. He was outnumbered, facing death or disgrace, and looked happy.

We watched Eardwulf, his sister, and the priests leave the road and slant across the soaking fields towards the loop of the river where we waited. Eardwulf raised a hand to stop his men a hundred paces away, but he and his companions walked their horses through the shallow floods, finally stopping just ten paces away.

‘Lord Uhtred,’ Eardwulf greeted me. His voice was muffled by the wide cheek-pieces of his silver helmet that almost closed over his mouth. I said nothing.

‘You will give …’ Father Ceolnoth began.

‘Quiet!’ Eardwulf snapped with a surprising authority. The priest looked at him with astonishment, but went silent.

Eardwulf pushed the cheek-pieces away from his face. ‘We’ve come to take the boy Æthelstan and the Lady Ælfwynn back to Gleawecestre,’ he said. He spoke quietly and reasonably.

‘Prince Æthelstan,’ I said, ‘was placed under the Lady Æthelflaed’s care. I am taking him to her, and taking her daughter too.’

‘Lady Æthelflaed’s husband has decided otherwise,’ Eardwulf said.

‘Lady Æthelflaed has no husband.’

He looked startled at that, but recovered swiftly enough. ‘You listen to rumour, Lord Uhtred.’

‘Lord Æthelred is dead,’ I said.

‘He lives,’ Eardwulf said harshly, but I was looking at his sister and I could see the truth of my words on her face.

She was lovely. I was prepared to hate her, but who could hate a woman so beautiful? No wonder she had found wealth and power. I knew she was the daughter of a thegn from southern Mercia, a man of no great wealth or position, but she had become Æthelred’s lover and so she and her brother had risen in status and influence. I had expected someone harsh to match the rumours of her cunning ambition, but Eadith’s pale-skinned face was intelligent, and her green eyes were glistening with tears. She had very red hair, mostly hidden beneath a cap of ermine that matched the white cape she wore over a dress of pale green linen. ‘Shouldn’t you be dressed in mourning, lady?’ I asked her.

She did not reply, just looked away from me to gaze eastwards where the sun was shimmering on what remained of the floods. The reflected sunlight made ripples on her face.

‘Lord Æthelred’s health is no concern of yours,’ Eardwulf said. ‘He wishes his daughter returned, and the boy too.’

‘And my wish is to take them to the Lady Æthelflaed,’ I answered.

Eardwulf smiled. He was a handsome brute and very confident of himself. He looked past me to where my men were standing in their shield wall. ‘At this moment, Lord Uhtred,’ he said, ‘my wishes will prevail.’

He was right, of course. ‘You want to test that?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, and his honesty surprised me. ‘I don’t want twenty or thirty of my men dead and as many others wounded. And I don’t want all your men dead either. I just want the boy, his sister, and the Lady Ælfwynn.’

‘And if I let you take them?’ I asked.

‘They will be safe,’ he lied.

‘And you just leave?’

‘Not quite.’ He smiled again. The twins Ceolnoth and Ceolberht were glaring at me. I could see they wanted to intervene, presumably to spit threats at me, but Eardwulf was calmly in control. His sister was still gazing eastwards, but turned suddenly and looked at me and I saw the sadness on her face. So she had been fond of my cousin? Or was she mourning the destruction of her power? Æthelred’s favour had made her rich and influential, but now? Only her brother’s ambitions could save her future.

‘Not quite,’ Eardwulf said again, forcing me to look back to him.

‘Not quite?’ I asked.

Eardwulf’s horse tossed its head and he calmed it with a gloved hand on its muscled neck. ‘No one,’ he said, ‘underestimates you, Lord Uhtred. You are the greatest warrior of our time. I salute you.’ He paused, as if expecting a response, but I just stared at him. ‘If I merely leave you,’ he said, ‘then I would expect you to attempt a rescue of the boy Æthelstan. Maybe of the Lady Ælfwynn too?’ He inflected it as a question, but again I said nothing. ‘So you will yield me all your weapons and all your horses, and you will give me your son and daughter as hostages for your good conduct.’

‘You will be exiled too!’ Father Ceolnoth could no longer contain himself. ‘You’ve polluted Christian land too long!”

Eardwulf held up a hand to check the priest’s spite. ‘As Father Ceolnoth says,’ he still spoke in a reasonable tone, ‘you must leave Wessex and Mercia.’

My heart was sinking. ‘Anything else?’ I snarled.

‘Nothing more, lord,’ Eardwulf said.

‘You expect me to give you my sword?’ I asked angrily.

‘It will be returned to you,’ he said, ‘in time.’

‘You want Prince Æthelstan,’ I said, ‘the Princess Eadgyth, Lady Ælfwynn, my son and my daughter?’

‘And I swear on the cross that your son and daughter will not be harmed so long as you stay far from Mercia and Wessex.’

‘And you want our weapons and horses,’ I went on.

‘Which will all be returned to you,’ Eardwulf said.

‘In time,’ I spat.

‘Jesus,’ Finan said quietly.

‘And if I don’t give you what you wish?’ I asked.

‘Then your life story ends here, Lord Uhtred.’

I pretended to consider his terms. I waited a long time. Father Ceolnoth became impatient and twice began to speak, but both times Eardwulf quietened him. He waited, sure that he knew my answer and equally sure that I was just loath to say it. Finally I nodded. ‘Then you may have what you want,’ I said.

‘A wise decision, Lord Uhtred,’ Eardwulf said. His sister looked at me with a frown as if I had just done something unexpected.

‘But to get what you want,’ I added, ‘you must take them.’ And with those words I turned my stallion and spurred towards the shield wall. Eardwulf shouted something as I went, but I did not catch the words. The shields parted and Finan, my son and I went through. The pain stabbed at me as I dismounted and I felt the pus seeping from the bloody wound. It hurt. I leaned my helmeted head against my horse, waiting for the agony to go. I must have looked as though I was praying, and so I was. Odin, Thor, help us! I even touched the silver cross in the pommel of Serpent-Breath, a keepsake from an old lover, and said a prayer to the Christian god. They all have power, all the gods, and I needed their help. I straightened and saw that Finan and my son had gone to the centre of the front rank. If they could kill Eardwulf then we might snatch victory from this disaster.

Eardwulf was still watching us, then he said something to his sister and turned back to his men. I watched them dismount and heft their shields. I watched as boys came to take the horses and as the warriors formed a shield wall, touching the shields together, overlapping them, shuffling to make the wall tight.

And I stood in the second rank and knew I must surrender. We would lose anyway, so why make widows and orphans? I suppose I had thought that Eardwulf might choose not to fight, or that his men would be reluctant to attack me, but I was wrong and, worse, Eardwulf knew exactly what to do. He would not bring his shield wall to oppose mine, instead he took time to change his formation, turning the wall into a swine-head, a wedge, that was aimed at my right flank. He would charge at us, driving his force at one end of our wall, and when he broke through he would surround the survivors and there would be a slaughter in the river’s loop.

‘We’ll turn into him as he comes,’ Finan said, tacitly taking command of my men. ‘As soon as they come we attack the side of their wedge.’

‘And go for Eardwulf,’ my son added. Eardwulf had stayed mounted at the back of the wedge, so if by some miracle we broke his men he could flee out of danger.

‘I’ve broken swine-heads before,’ Finan said, trying to give my men confidence. ‘Attack the side and they crumble!’

‘No,’ I said quietly.

‘Lord?’ he asked.

‘I can’t kill my men,’ I told Finan. ‘Whether I fight or not, he gets his way.’

‘So you’ll surrender?’

‘What choice do I have?’ I asked bitterly. I was tempted to let Finan swing our shield wall to attack the right side of Eardwulf’s wedge. It would be a rare fight and we would kill a good number of Mercians, but sheer weight of numbers must win in the end. I had no choice. It was bitter and shameful, but I would be throwing away the lives of my men, my good and loyal men.

‘It seems you might have a choice,’ Finan said, and I saw he was staring past Eardwulf towards the northern hill. ‘See?’ he asked.

There were more horsemen on the hill.

A horn sounded. It was a melancholy call, fading away before the horn was blown a second time. Eardwulf, still on horseback, turned.

Twenty horsemen had appeared on the far hill. It was one of them who had sounded the horn. The horsemen were clustered beneath a banner, though the lack of wind meant the banner hung limp, but as we watched I saw three more banners appear. Four standards held by four horsemen arrayed along the hill’s long crest. Each of the three new standard-bearers was accompanied by a group of armed riders, but whatever other horsemen followed the banners stayed on the far slope so we could not see them. What we could see was the grey of mail and the glint of sun reflecting from spearheads and helmets.

Eardwulf looked towards me, then back to the hilltop. He could count. There was no rule about it, but one standard suggested a hundred men, and there were four flags behind him. The horsemen who had first appeared had ridden back now, hidden like the others on the far slope, but the standards stayed, and then the horn called a third time and four horsemen appeared at the centre of the ridge and, accompanied by just one of the standard-bearers, spurred down the slope towards us.

‘Who are they?’ Finan asked.

‘Who knows?’ I said. Eardwulf seemed similarly puzzled because he looked at me again before turning his horse and kicking it back towards the road.

‘Æthelhelm’s men?’ I suggested, though if Æthelhelm had sent men then why had they not stayed with Eardwulf? My suspicion was that Æthelhelm and Edward had decided to let Eardwulf untangle the mess I had caused. They did not want West Saxons fighting Mercians, it was better to let the Mercians fight each other.

And the approaching horsemen were Mercians. The standard-bearer waved his flag as he rode and my heart sank because it showed Æthelred’s prancing horse. ‘That’s a pity,’ I said bleakly.

But Finan was laughing. I frowned at him, then looked back as the five horsemen galloped past Eardwulf. Their horses’ hooves threw up great splashes of water, the splashes as white as the leading rider’s cloak, and then I saw why Finan was laughing.

The rider in white was Æthelflaed.

She had ignored Eardwulf, riding past him as if he was a nobody. She wore her mail coat, though no helmet, and she did not slow as she approached the rear of Eardwulf’s men. She rode Gast, her grey mare, and the horse’s legs, belly and chest were thick with mud to show how hard she had been ridden these last two or three days. Once past the shield wedge, Æthelflaed turned the mare in a flurry of splashing water. Her standard-bearer and three men reined in beside her. She did not look at me, nor did I move to join her.

‘You will go home,’ she spoke to Eardwulf’s men. She pointed south past the fort to where his men guarded the bridge. ‘You go that way and you go now.’

None of them moved. They stood watching her, waiting for Eardwulf, who pushed his horse forward. ‘Your husband has decided …’ he began in a harsh tone.

‘Her husband is dead!’ I shouted over him.

‘Your husband …’ Eardwulf began again.

‘Is dead!’ I shouted even louder, and winced as the pain seared from my lower ribs.

Æthelflaed turned and looked at me. I could see from her face that she had not known about Æthelred’s death. Nor was I completely certain of it myself, I only had Ælfwynn’s word for it, but I suspected the girl had spoken truthfully. Æthelflaed was still frowning at me, waiting for a sign, and I nodded. ‘He’s dead, my lady,’ I said.

Æthelflaed made the sign of the cross as she turned back to Eardwulf’s shield wall. ‘Your lord is dead,’ she said to them, ‘Lord Æthelred is dead. We mourn him and we shall have masses said for his soul, which God preserve. And your duty now is to go home. So go!’

‘My lady …’ Eardwulf began again.

‘Who rules here?’ she interrupted him savagely. ‘You or I?’

It was a good question and one Eardwulf could not answer. To say that Æthelflaed ruled was to bow to her authority, while to claim that he ruled was to usurp the lordship of all Mercia. His slender claim to power depended on marrying Ælfwynn and on the support of the West Saxons, and both were slipping away. And Æthelflaed was sister to the King of Wessex. Attacking or defying her were both risks that could tip Edward’s support against him. Eardwulf had lost, and he knew it.

‘My husband prized your obedience,’ Æthelflaed spoke again to the shield wedge, ‘and he would want that obedience to continue. I will carry on his work until the Witan decides who should assume his responsibilities. Until then I look for your obedience and support.’ I noticed some men were gazing at her while others looked away, and I reckoned the latter were men sworn to Eardwulf rather than to Æthelred. Maybe a third looked uncomfortable, but the rest, like me, seemed relieved. ‘You,’ Æthelflaed looked at Eardwulf, ‘will stay in command of my household warriors and lead them back to Gleawecestre. I shall follow you. Go now, go!’

He hesitated. I could read his thoughts at that moment. He was thinking, daring to think, of drawing his sword and attacking Æthelflaed. He was so close to her! Her men were still on the far hill, too far away to offer immediate help, and he had all his men facing my few, and she was destroying his hopes. He was calculating the future. Was Æthelhelm’s support enough to deflect Edward’s rage if he killed Æthelflaed? His mouth was suddenly grim, his eyes narrow. He stared at her, and she at him, and I saw his right hand move towards his sword hilt, but Ceolnoth saw it too and the priest reached out and grasped Eardwulf’s forearm. ‘No, lord,’ I heard Father Ceolnoth say. ‘No!’

‘I will meet you in Gleawecestre,’ Æthelflaed said, her voice steady.

And Eardwulf turned away. His whole future had trembled in that instant and he had lost. And so he and his men went. I remember watching in disbelief and feeling a wave of relief as Eardwulf’s warriors retrieved their horses and, without a word, filed over the bridge and disappeared to the south.

‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Finan breathed.

‘Help me up,’ I told my son, and he heaved me into the saddle where I held my breath until the pain passed.

Æthelflaed signalled my men to make a gap so she could join us. ‘Is it true?’ she demanded. She offered no greeting, just the curt question.

‘I think so,’ I said.

‘You think!’

‘Your daughter heard the news,’ I said, ‘though Eardwulf denied it.’

‘Not his sister, though,’ Finan said, ‘she was weeping. She was mourning.’

‘He died on the eve of Æthelwold’s Day,’ I said, ‘the night before the wedding.’

‘It’s true, mother,’ Ælfwynn, looking nervous, had joined us.

Æthelflaed looked from her daughter to Finan, then to me. I nodded. ‘He’s dead. They want to keep it secret, but he died.’

‘God give him rest,’ Æthelflaed said, and crossed herself, ‘and God forgive me.’ There were tears in her eyes, though whether those tears were for Æthelred or for her own sinfulness I could not tell, nor would I ask. She shook her head abruptly then stared at me. Her face was stern, almost hurt, so her next words surprised me. ‘How are you?’ she asked softly.

‘In pain, of course. And glad you came. Thank you.’

‘Of course I came.’ There was anger in her voice now. ‘Marrying Ælfwynn to Eardwulf! His own daughter!’ That was why she had been riding south. Like me she kept her own people in Æthelred’s court, and one of those had sent a message to Ceaster as soon as the wedding was announced. ‘I knew I couldn’t reach Gleawecestre in time,’ she said, ‘but I had to try. Then we met your people coming north.’ Those were the men who had manned the carts blocking Gleawecestre’s streets. Those carts had probably not been needed because Eardwulf’s pursuit had been slow in starting, but the men had given Æthelflaed the news that I had snatched her daughter out of Æthelred’s palace and was coming north on the roads that led through Alencestre. ‘After that,’ she said, ‘it was just a question of finding you.’

‘How many men did you bring?’

‘Thirty-two. I had to leave the rest to defend Ceaster.’

‘Thirty-two?’ I sounded astonished, and was. I looked north and saw the horsemen coming from the hill. I had expected hundreds, but there were just the few. ‘And the four flags?’

‘Three of them were cloaks hanging from ash branches,’ she said.

I almost laughed, except it would have hurt too much. ‘So where now?’ I asked instead. ‘Back to Ceaster?’

‘Ceaster!’ She almost spat the name. ‘Mercia is not ruled from Ceaster. We ride to Gleawecestre.’

‘And Eardwulf,’ I said, ‘is ahead of us.’

‘So?’

‘Will you keep him as your commander of the household troops?’

‘Of course not.’

I looked south to where Eardwulf had gone. ‘Maybe we should have made him a prisoner?’

‘By what right? So far as I knew he still commanded my husband’s troops. And his men might have fought for him.’

‘Might,’ I said. ‘But he’s still got one chance left. He knows that if he marries Ælfwynn and kills you then he will be Lord of Mercia. And within an hour he’ll also know we have fewer than half as many men as he does.’

‘He’ll be watching us?’

‘Of course he is,’ I said. Eardwulf was bound to have scouts watching us.

Æthelflaed gazed southwards as if looking for Eardwulf’s men. ‘Then why didn’t he kill me just now?’ she asked.

‘Because not all his men would have obeyed him, and because he thought you had two or three hundred men on the hill. And if you had brought two hundred men he would have died himself. But now? Now he knows he has nothing to lose.’

She frowned at me. ‘You really think he’ll attack us?’ She sounded incredulous.

‘He has no choice,’ I said. ‘He has one day left to achieve his ambitions. One day and one night.’

‘Then you’ll have to stop him,’ she said simply.

And we rode south.

We did not all travel south. I left our baggage and our families in the fort with twenty-five men to guard them and with Osferth once again in command. ‘When the roads are fit for the wagons,’ I told him, ‘keep going to Ceaster.’

‘To Ceaster?’ He sounded surprised.

‘Where else?’

‘It’s safe to go back to Fagranforda surely?’

I shook my head. ‘We’re going north.’

I was abandoning the south. My country is Northumbria, a northern land where the harpists play loud in the halls to lift their songs above the sound of the wild wind scouring from a cold sea, a northern land of long winter nights and of raw hills and high cliffs, a land of hard people and shallow soil. The Danes had spread southwards through Britain, driving out the Saxon rulers from Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia, and now we were thrusting back. Mercia was almost free, and if I lived I would see our Saxon armies march still farther north, ever north until every man, woman and child who spoke the Saxon tongue would be ruled by one of their own. That was Alfred’s dream, and it had become mine even though I loved the Danes and worshipped their gods and spoke their language. So why did I fight them? Because of the oaths I had taken to Æthelflaed.

We live by oaths, and, as we rode south into the evening, I wondered about the men who followed Eardwulf. How many had given him their oath? And how many had sworn allegiance to Æthelred rather than to Eardwulf? And how many would draw a sword against Æthelflaed? And would Eardwulf dare kill her? He was a man who had risen high, but his hold on power was precarious. It had depended on Æthelred’s favour, and now it depended on his marrying Æthelred’s daughter. If he could do that and so inherit Æthelred’s wealth, then, with West Saxon backing, he would be the gold-giver in Mercia, the lord of the land, but without Ælfwynn he was nothing, and when a man must choose between nothing and everything he has small choice.

‘Perhaps he won’t kill you,’ I told Æthelflaed as we rode south.

‘And why not?’

‘Too many Mercians love you. He’d lose sympathy.’

She laughed grimly. ‘So what will he do? Take me to wife instead of my daughter?’

‘He could,’ I said. I had not thought of that. ‘But my guess is that you’d be forced into a convent. Edward and Æthelhelm would approve of that.’

She rode in silence for a few moments. ‘Maybe they’re right,’ she said bleakly, ‘maybe I should retire to a convent.’

‘Why?’

‘I am a sinner.’

‘And your enemies are not?’ I snarled.

She did not answer. We were riding through beech woods. The ground had risen, and there was no flooding here. I had scouts well ahead, and though I knew Eardwulf would also have scouts looking for us, I was sure my men were better. We had been fighting the Danes for so long, and we had become skilled at such work. I had told my men to let Eardwulf’s horsemen see us, but not to allow them to know they were themselves being watched, because I was crafting a trap for him. So far he had out-thought me, but tonight he would be my victim. I turned in the saddle, wincing at the sudden pain. ‘Boy!’ I shouted at Æthelstan, ‘come here!’

I had made Æthelstan ride with us. My daughter and Ælfwynn also came. I had thought of sending the girls with Osferth, but I wanted them under my eye. Besides, with warriors like Finan, they were well protected, and, more vitally, I needed Ælfwynn to bait the trap I planned. Even so there was a danger in bringing Æthelstan because we were far more likely than Osferth’s men to be attacked, but this fight was also about him and he needed to know it, see it, smell it, and survive it. I was training the boy not just to be a warrior, but to be a king.

‘I’m here, lord,’ he said, curbing his horse to match pace with ours.

‘I can smell you, so there’s no need to tell me you’re here.’

‘Yes, lord.’ He rode just the other side of Æthelflaed’s mare.

‘What is this country called, boy?’ I asked.

He hesitated, looking for the catch in the question. ‘Mercia, lord.’

‘And Mercia is part of?’

‘Britain, lord.’

‘So tell me of Britain,’ I said.

He glanced at his aunt, but Æthelflaed offered him no help. ‘Britain, lord,’ he said, ‘is a land of four peoples.’

I waited. ‘That’s it?’ I asked. ‘That’s all you know? A land of four peoples?’ I imitated his voice, making it pathetic. ‘You unwiped earsling. Try harder.’

‘To the north are the Scots,’ he went on hurriedly, ‘and they hate us. To the west are the Welsh, and they hate us, and the rest is divided between ourselves and the Danes, who also hate us.’

‘And do we hate the Welsh, Scots, and Danes?’

‘They are all our enemies, lord, and the church says we must love them.’

Æthelflaed laughed. I scowled. ‘Do you love them?’ I asked.

‘I hate them, lord.’

‘All of them?’

‘Perhaps not the Welsh, lord, because they are Christians and so long as they stay in their mountains then we can ignore them. I don’t know the Scots, lord, but I hate them because you tell me they are bare-arsed thieves and liars, and I believe every word you say, and yes, lord, I hate the Danes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they would take our land.’

‘Didn’t we take the land from the Welsh?’

‘Yes, lord, but they allowed us to do that. They should have prayed more and fought harder.’

‘So if the Danes take our land it’s our fault?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘So how do we stop them? By praying?’

‘By praying, lord, and by fighting them.’

‘How do we fight them?’ I asked. One of the scouts had ridden back and turned his horse to ride beside me. ‘Think about your answer,’ I told Æthelstan, ‘while I talk to Beadwulf.’

Beadwulf was a small, wiry man who was one of my best scouts. He was a Saxon, but he had marked his face with inked lines as the Danes liked to do. A lot of my men had adopted the fashion, using a comb with sharpened teeth to etch oak-gall ink into their cheeks and foreheads. They thought it made them look frightening, though I thought they looked frightening enough without the ink. ‘So did you find a place?’ I asked Beadwulf.

He nodded. ‘There’s a place that might suit you, lord.’

‘Tell me.’

‘A steading. Small hall and a big barn. There are a dozen folk there, but no palisade.’

‘And around the hall?’

‘Mostly pasture, lord, and some ploughland.’

‘And Eardwulf’s men are watching us?’

He grinned. ‘Three of them, lord, clumsy as bullocks. My five-year-old could do it better.’

‘How far is the woodland from the hall?’

‘A long bowshot?’ he suggested. ‘Maybe two?’

It was earlier in the day than I might have chosen to make a halt, but Beadwulf’s description sounded ideal for what I had in mind. ‘How far is it from here?’

‘An hour’s riding, lord.’

‘Take us there,’ I said.

‘Yes, lord.’ He spurred to the front where Finan was leading.

‘So, boy,’ I looked back to Æthelstan, ‘tell me how we fight the Danes?’

‘By building burhs, lords.’

‘Burhs keep the surrounding land and its people safe,’ I said, ‘but what captures land?’

‘Warriors, lord.’

‘And warriors are led by?’

‘Lords,’ he said confidently.

‘And what lords, boy, have been leading their warriors against the Danes?’

‘My father, lord?’ He made it a question because he knew it was not the right answer, though it was the politic reply.

I nodded. ‘Where has he fought them?’

‘In East Anglia, lord.’

And that was true, to a point. West Saxon forces were concentrated in Lundene, which bordered on Danish East Anglia, and there were constant skirmishes in the lands north and east of the city. ‘So,’ I said, ‘your father fights the Danes in the east. Who fights them to the north?’

‘You do, lord,’ he said confidently.

‘I’m old and a cripple, you feather-brained piece of stinking toad shit. Who fights the Danes in the north of Mercia?’

‘The Lady Æthelflaed does,’ he said.

‘Good. That’s the right answer. Now,’ I said, ‘imagine that a great tragedy has struck Mercia and Wessex because you have just become the king of those lands. King Æthelstan, wet behind the ears and still pissing in his breeches, is on the throne. You have two wars to fight. One against East Anglia and the other in northern Mercia, and even a king can’t be in two places at once. So who would you rely on to fight them in the north?’

‘The Lady Æthelflaed,’ he said without hesitation.

‘Good!’ I said. ‘So, as the King of Wessex and perhaps of Mercia too, would you suggest that the Lady Æthelflaed should go to a nunnery because she’s a widow?’ He frowned, embarrassed to be asked such a question. ‘Answer!’ I snapped. ‘You’re the king! You have to make these decisions!’

‘No, lord!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because she fights, lord. You and she are the only ones who do fight the Danes.’

‘Here ends your catechism,’ I said, ‘now piss off.’

‘Yes, lord.’ He grinned and spurred ahead.

I smiled at Æthelflaed. ‘You’re not going to a nunnery. The next King of Wessex just made the decision.’

She laughed. ‘If he lives,’ she said.

‘If any of us lives.’

The land was climbing gently. The woods were thick, broken by farms, but in the late afternoon we came to the hall and barn that Beadwulf had described. The farmstead lay just a hundred or so paces from the Roman road, and it would do. It would do very well.

It was the place to lay my trap.

The old man was called Lidulf. I call him old, though he was probably younger than I was, but a lifetime of digging ditches, cutting back woodland, grubbing weeds, ploughing fields, chopping wood, and raising livestock had left him white-haired, bent, and half blind. Half deaf too. ‘You want what, lord?’ he shouted.

‘Your home,’ I shouted back.

‘Thirty years,’ he said.

‘Thirty years?’

‘Been here thirty years, lord!’

‘And you’ll be here another thirty!’ I showed him gold. ‘All yours.’

He understood eventually. He was not happy, but nor did I expect him to be happy. He would probably lose his hall and barn and a good deal else besides, but in return I would give him more than enough gold to rebuild twice over. Lidulf, a shrill-tongued wife, an elderly son with a crippled leg, and eight slaves all lived in the small hall that they shared with three milk cows, two goats, four pigs, and a mangy hound that growled whenever any of us went near the hearth. The barn was half collapsed, its timbers rotted and its thatch riddled with weeds, but it was shelter for the horses and enough of the barn survived to hide the animals from Eardwulf’s scouts, who saw them being led through the big door, and probably assumed they were being unsaddled. We strolled between the two buildings. I told my men to talk loudly, to laugh, to take off their mail and helmets. Some of the younger men started wrestling to loud cheers and jeers, the losers being thrown into a duck pond. ‘We get eggs from that!’ Lidulf shouted at me.

‘Eggs?’

‘Duck eggs!’ He was very proud of his duck eggs. ‘I like a duck egg. No teeth left, you see? I can’t eat meat so I eats duck eggs and pottage.’

I made sure Stiorra, Ælfwynn, and Æthelstan watched the wrestling. Beadwulf, who could slide through woodland like a ghost, told me that two of Eardwulf’s men peered at them from the trees. ‘I could have lifted the swords from their scabbards and they wouldn’t have known about it, lord.’

Three more of my scouts reported that Eardwulf himself was two miles or so to the north. He had stopped once his own scouts told him that we had found shelter for the night. ‘You were right, lord,’ Eadric, one of my Danes and a man as skilled as Beadwulf in concealing himself, came back to the hall at dusk. ‘They’re in two groups, one large, one smaller.’

‘How many?’

‘Thirty-four are with Eardwulf, lord.’

‘The others are reluctant?’

‘They look miserable, lord.’

‘Thirty-four is enough,’ I said.

‘Enough for what?’ my daughter asked.

We were in the hall. The men who had been soaked in the duck pond had their clothes drying by the fire, which we had fed with fresh wood so that it blazed bright. ‘Enough,’ I said, ‘for a hall burning.’

It had been years since I saw a hall burning, but a few men can kill a large number if they do it right and I was certain that was what Eardwulf planned. He would wait for the heart of the night, for the darkest hour, and then he would bring embers in a clay pot. Most of his men would wait outside the hall door, while a few went to the southern side and blew life into the embers. Then they would fire the thatch. Even damp straw will burn if fed with enough fire, and once the flames catch they spread fast, filling the hall with smoke and panic. Folk run for the door and so flee into the waiting swords and spears. Those that stay inside are burned to death as the great hall collapses and the huge rafters fall in. His risk, of course, was that Ælfwynn would die in the blaze, but he must have reckoned we would hurry the girls out of danger first and so deliver them into his arms. It was a risk he had to take because this dark night was his only chance. Like a man losing at dice, he would risk everything on one throw.

‘Pray,’ I told Æthelflaed.

‘I always pray,’ she said tartly.

‘Pray for darkness,’ I said fervently, ‘for thick darkness. For utter darkness. Pray for clouds over the moon.’

I made the men sing, shout, and laugh. Except for three scouts hidden at the edge of the woodland they were all in the hall and all dressed in mail, with helmets and shields, the bright fire glinting off the metal of spearheads and shield bosses. They still sang as night fell, the mangy hound howling along with the bellowed songs, and as the clouds I had prayed for did come, as the moon was shrouded, and as the night grew as dark as Eardwulf’s ambitions, I had the men leave in small groups. They went to the barn, found a horse, any horse, and led the beasts southwards. I had told them to be silent, but it seemed to me that each group made as much noise as drunken men staggering through a street at midnight, though doubtless the sounds made little sense to Eardwulf’s men, who my scouts told me were gathering in the northern trees. I went with Æthelflaed and the girls, protected by Finan and four men, and we found some saddled horses and led them by the bridles till we could mount and ride south into the black shelter of the beech woods. Sihtric and a half-dozen men led Lidulf, his wife, and household out into the night. The old woman complained shrilly, but her noise was drowned by the raucous singing of the men left in the hall.

Finally there were just a dozen men singing, led by my son. They left at last, shutting the hall’s big doors and crossing to the barn where they found the remaining horses. They still sang. It was deep in the night’s dark heart when the last song faded. I had hoped to give Eardwulf’s listening men the impression of a drunken night in the hall, a night of shouting and singing, of ale and laughter. A night for a killing.

And we waited in the trees.

And we waited. An owl called. Somewhere a vixen cried.

And we waited.

Six

Time passes slower at night. Years ago, when I was a child, my father asked our priest why that was so, and Father Beocca, dear Father Beocca, preached a sermon about it the next Sunday. The sun, he said, was the light of the Christian god and is quick, while the moon is the lamp that travels through the darkness of sin. All of us, he explained, tread more slowly at night because we cannot see, so therefore, he declared, the night moves more slowly than the day because the sun moves in Christian brilliance, while the moon stumbles around in the devil’s darkness. The sermon made little sense to me, but when I asked Father Beocca to explain it he clipped me around the ear with his maimed hand and told me to concentrate on reading how Saint Cuthbert baptised a flock of puffins. But whatever the reason, time does slow at night, and puffins do go to heaven, or at least those puffins do who were lucky enough to have met Saint Cuthbert.

‘Are there herrings in heaven?’ I remember asking Father Beocca.

‘I can’t think so.’

‘Then what do the puffins eat if there aren’t any fish?’

‘None of us eat in heaven. We sing God’s glories instead.’

‘We don’t eat! We just sing for ever?’

‘And ever, amen.’

It sounded boring then, it still sounds boring now, almost as boring as waiting in the darkness for an attack I was sure was coming, but which never seemed to happen. It was quiet except for the sigh of wind in the treetops and, every now and then, the splash of men pissing or horses staling. An owl called for a time, then was silent.

And in the silence the doubts came. Suppose Eardwulf had anticipated the trap? Was he even now leading horsemen through the dark woods to attack us among the trees? I told myself that was impossible. The clouds had thickened, no one could travel these woods without blundering. I persuaded myself it was more likely that he had abandoned his ambition, that he had accepted defeat, and that I was imposing this discomfort and fear on my men for no reason.

We shivered. Not just because it was cold, but because the night is when the ghosts and sprites and elves and dwarves come to Midgard. They prowl silently through the dark. You might not see them, and will never hear them unless they choose to be heard, but they are there; malevolent things of darkness. My men were silent, fearful, not of Eardwulf or his warriors, but of the things we cannot see. And with the fears came memories, the recollection of Ragnar’s death in a fearful hall burning. I had been a child, shivering with Brida on the hill, watching the great hall flame and collapse, and listening to the screams of men, women, and children dying. Kjartan and his men had surrounded the hall and massacred those who fled the fire, all but the young women who could be taken and used just as Ragnar’s lovely daughter, Thyra, had been raped and shamed. She had found happiness in the end by marrying Beocca, and she still lived, a nun now, and I had never spoken to her of that night of fire when her mother and father had died. I had loved Ragnar. He had been my true father, the Dane who had taught me to be a man, and he had died in those flames, and I always hoped he had seized his sword before he was killed so that he was in Valhalla to see when I took revenge for him by slaughtering Kjartan on a northern hilltop. Ealdwulf had died in that fire, his name so similar to my newest enemy. Ealdwulf had been the blacksmith at Bebbanburg, the fortress stolen from me by my uncle, but he had fled Bebbanburg to be my man, and it had been Ealdwulf who had hammered Serpent-Breath into life on his massive anvil.

So many dead. So many lives twisted by fate, and now we began the dance again. Æthelred’s death had woken ambitions, Æthelhelm’s greed was threatening the peace, or perhaps it was my stubbornness that tried to thwart West Saxon hopes.

‘What are you thinking?’ Æthelflaed asked me in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

‘That I must find the man who took Ice-Spite from Teotanheale,’ I answered just as quietly.

She sighed, though perhaps that was the wind in the leaves. ‘You should submit to God,’ she finally said.

I smiled. ‘You don’t mean that. You just have to say it. Besides, it isn’t pagan magic. Father Cuthbert told me to find the sword.’

‘I sometimes wonder if Father Cuthbert is a good Christian,’ she said.

‘He’s a good man.’

‘He is, yes.’

‘So a good man can be a bad Christian?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Then a bad man,’ I said, ‘can be a good Christian?’ She did not answer. ‘That explains half the bishops,’ I went on, ‘Wulfheard for one.’

‘He’s a very able man,’ she said.

‘But greedy.’

‘Yes,’ she admitted.

‘For power,’ I said, ‘for money. And for women.’

She was silent for a while. ‘We live in a world of temptation,’ she finally spoke, ‘and few of us aren’t tainted by the devil’s fingers. And the devil works hardest on men of God. Wulfheard is a sinner, but which of us isn’t? You think he doesn’t know his failures? That he doesn’t pray to be redeemed? He’s been a good servant to Mercia. He’s administered the law, he’s kept the treasury filled, he’s given sage advice.’

‘He burned down my home too,’ I said vengefully, ‘and for all we know he conspired with Eardwulf to have you killed.’

She ignored that accusation. ‘There are so many good priests,’ she said instead, ‘so many decent men who feed the hungry, tend the sick, and comfort the sad. Nuns too! So many good ones!’

‘I know,’ I said, and thought of Beocca and of Pyrlig, of Willibald and Cuthbert, of Abbess Hild, but such men and women rarely achieved power in the church. It was the sly and ambitious ones like Wulfheard who gained preferment. ‘Bishop Wulfheard,’ I said, ‘wants you gone. He wants your brother as King of Mercia.’

‘And is that such a bad thing?’ she asked.

‘It is if they put you in a nunnery.’

She thought for a short while. ‘It’s thirty years since Mercia had a king,’ she said. ‘Æthelred ruled for most of that time, but only because my father let him. Now you say he’s dead. So who succeeds him? We had no son. Who better than my brother?’

‘You.’

She said nothing for a long while. ‘Can you see any ealdorman supporting a woman’s right to rule?’ she finally asked. ‘Any bishop? Any abbot? Wessex has a king, and Wessex has kept Mercia alive these thirty years, so why not unite the countries?’

‘Because Mercians don’t want that.’

‘Some don’t. Most don’t. They’d like a Mercian to rule here, but will they want a woman on the throne?’

‘If it’s you, yes. They love you.’

‘Some do, many don’t. And all of them would think a woman as ruler to be unnatural.’

‘It is unnatural,’ I said, ‘it’s ridiculous! You’re supposed to spin wool and have babies, not rule a country. But you’re still the best choice.’

‘Or my brother Edward.’

‘He’s not the warrior you are,’ I said.

‘He’s the king,’ she said simply.

‘So,’ I asked, ‘you’ll just hand the kingdom to Edward? Here you are, brother, here’s Mercia.’

‘No,’ she said quietly.

‘No?’

‘Why do you think we go to Gleawecestre? There’s going to be a meeting of the Witan, there has to be, so we’ll let them choose.’

‘And you think they’ll choose you?’

She paused a long time and I sensed that she smiled. ‘Yes,’ she finally said.

I laughed. ‘Why? You just said no man will support a woman’s right to rule, so why will they choose you?’

‘Because you might be old and crippled and headstrong and infuriating,’ she said, ‘but they’re still frightened of you, and you’re going to persuade them.’

‘I am?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you are.’

I smiled in the darkness. ‘Then we’d better make sure we live through this night,’ I said, and just then heard the unmistakable sound of a hoof striking a stone in the ploughland to our north.

The waiting was over.

Eardwulf was being careful. The hall door faced north, which meant the hall’s southern side was a great blank timber wall, and so he had brought his men to the southern fields where they could not be seen by any sentry I might have placed at the hall door. We heard that first hoof, then more hooves, then the soft chink of bridles, and we held our breath. We could see nothing, just hear the men and horses who were between us and the hall and then, quite suddenly, there was light.

There was a flare of light, a sudden burst of flame that appeared much closer than I had expected, and I realised Eardwulf was lighting the brands well away from the hall. His men were not far beyond the trees, and the sudden light made me think they must see us, but none of them was looking back into the tangled shadows of the woodland. The first brand flamed high, then six more were lit, one bundle of straw lighting another. They waited till all seven were burning fiercely, then the torches’ long handles were given to seven horsemen. ‘Go,’ I distinctly heard the command given, then watched all seven flamebearers gallop across the pasture. They held the torches wide, the sparks trailing behind. Eardwulf’s men followed.

I kicked my horse to the wood’s edge and paused there. My men waited with me as the bright torches were hurled up onto the hall’s roof and as Eardwulf’s men dismounted and drew their swords. ‘One of my ancestors crossed the sea,’ I said, ‘and captured the rock on which Bebbanburg is built.’

‘Bebbanburg?’ Æthelflaed asked.

I did not answer. I was gazing at the seven fires, which looked dull now. For a moment it seemed the hall roof would not burn, but then the flames spread as they found the drier straw beneath the wet outer layer of tightly woven thatch, and once that drier straw caught the fire it spread with a vicious speed. Most of Eardwulf’s men had gone to make a cordon around the closed hall door, which meant they were hidden from us, though some stayed on horseback and a half-dozen others remained on the southern side of the building in case anyone tried to break through the wall and so escape.

‘What has Bebbanburg to do with this?’ Æthelflaed asked.

‘My ancestor’s name was Ida the Flamebearer,’ I said, looking at the lurid flames, then took a deep breath. ‘Now,’ I shouted, and drew Serpent-Breath. The pain stabbed at me, but I shouted again. ‘Now!’

Eadric had been right. There were no more than thirty men with Eardwulf, the rest must have refused to join the murder of Æthelflaed. And thirty men would have been enough if we had been inside the hall. The morning would have revealed smouldering embers and thick smoke and would have left Eardwulf as Æthelred’s heir, but instead he was my victim, and I spurred my horse as my men streamed from the trees and galloped through the flame-lit darkness.

And Eardwulf’s hopes died. It was sudden and it was slaughter. Men expecting to see half-woken panic come from the hall door were instead overwhelmed by mounted spearmen erupting from the night. My men attacked from both sides of the hall, converging on the warriors waiting at the hall door, and there was nowhere for them to run. We hacked down with swords or lunged with spears. I saw my son split a helmet with Raven-Beak, saw the blood fly in the firelight, saw Finan spear a man through the belly and leave the spear buried in the dying man’s gut before drawing his sword to find the next victim. Gerbruht used an axe to crush and split a man’s helmeted skull, all the time bellowing in his native Frisian.

I was looking for Eardwulf. Æthelflaed galloped in front of me and I shouted at her to get out of the fight. Pain filled me. I turned my horse to follow her and to push her away, and it was then I saw Eardwulf. He was still mounted. He too had seen Æthelflaed, and he spurred towards her, followed by a group of his men who had also stayed on horseback. I headed him off. Æthelflaed vanished to my left, Eardwulf was to my right, and I swung Serpent-Breath in a wide cut that slammed into his ribs but did not break his mail. More of my men arrived, and Eardwulf wrenched his reins and dug his spurs back. ‘Follow him!’ I shouted.

There was chaos. Horsemen wheeling, men shouting, some trying to surrender, and all in a whirl of sparks and smoke. It was hard to tell which horsemen were enemies in the flickering light. Then I saw Eardwulf and his companions galloping clear and I spurred after him. The fire was bright enough to light the pastureland, casting long black shadows from the grass tussocks. Some of my men were following, whooping as though they were on a hunt. One of the fugitives’ horses stumbled. The rider had long dark hair hanging beneath his helmet. He glanced back and saw me catching him and kicked desperately as I lunged with Serpent-Breath, aiming the blade’s tip at the base of his spine, but instead the sword caught in the high cantle of his saddle just as the horse twisted hard aside. The horse stumbled again and the man fell. I heard a scream. My own horse sheered away from the tumbling stallion, and I almost lost my grip on Serpent-Breath. My horsemen pounded past me, hooves throwing up gobbets of damp soil, but Eardwulf and his remaining companions were far ahead of us now, vanishing into the northern woods. I swore and reined in.

‘Enough! Stop!’ I heard Æthelflaed shout, and I turned back to the burning hall. I had thought she was in trouble, but instead she was halting the slaughter. ‘I will kill no more Mercians!’ she shouted. ‘Stop!’ The survivors were being herded together and stripped of their weapons.

I sat motionless, pain filling my chest, my sword held low. The fire was roaring now, the whole hall roof ablaze and filling the night with smoke, sparks, and blood-coloured light. Finan came to my side. ‘Lord?’ he asked anxiously.

‘I’m not hurt. It’s just the wound.’

He led my horse back to where Æthelflaed had gathered the prisoners. ‘Eardwulf escaped,’ I told her.

‘There’s nowhere he can go,’ she said. ‘He’s an outlaw now.’

A roof beam collapsed, surging new flames higher and showering the sky with bright sparks. Æthelflaed kicked her horse towards the prisoners, fourteen of them, who stood beside the barn. There were six corpses between the barn and the hall. ‘Take them away,’ Æthelflaed ordered, ‘and bury them.’ She looked at the fourteen men. ‘How many of you,’ she asked, ‘swore oaths of loyalty to Eardwulf?’

All but one raised their hands. ‘Just kill them,’ I growled.

She ignored me. ‘Your lord,’ she said, ‘is now an outlaw. If he lives he will flee to a far country, to heathen lands. How many of you wish to accompany your oath-lord?’

Not one of them raised a hand. They stood silent and fearful. Some were wounded, their scalps or shoulders bleeding from sword cuts made by the horsemen who had ambushed them.

‘You can’t trust them,’ I said, ‘so kill them.’

‘Are you all Mercians?’ Æthelflaed asked, and all nodded except for the one man who had not admitted his loyalty to Eardwulf. The Mercians looked at that man and he flinched. ‘What are you?’ Æthelflaed asked him. He hesitated. ‘Tell me!’ she commanded.

‘Grindwyn, my lady. I’m from Wintanceaster.’

‘A West Saxon?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

I kicked my horse closer to Grindwyn. He was an older man of maybe thirty or forty summers with a neatly trimmed beard, expensive mail, and a finely crafted cross hanging at his neck. The mail and the cross suggested he was a man who had earned silver across the years, not some adventurer driven by poverty to seek service with Eardwulf. ‘Who do you serve?’ I asked him.

Again he hesitated. ‘Answer!’ Æthelflaed called.

Still he hesitated. I could see he was tempted to lie, but all the Mercians knew the truth and so he grudgingly spoke it. ‘The Lord Æthelhelm, my lady,’ he said.

I laughed sourly. ‘He sent you to make certain Eardwulf did his bidding?’

He nodded for answer and I jerked my head to Finan, indicating he should take Grindwyn aside. ‘Keep him safe,’ I told Finan.

Æthelflaed looked down at the remaining prisoners. ‘My husband,’ she said, ‘gave high privileges to Eardwulf, yet Eardwulf had no right to make you swear loyalty to him instead of to my husband. He was my husband’s servant and had sworn an oath to him. But my husband is dead, God rest his soul, and the loyalty you should have offered him is now mine. Is there any one of you who refuses to give me that loyalty?’

They shook their heads. ‘Of course they’ll offer you loyalty,’ I snarled, ‘the bastards want to live. Just kill them.’

She ignored me again, looking instead at Sihtric who stood over a pile of captured weapons. ‘Give them their swords,’ she commanded.

Sihtric glanced at me, but I just shrugged and so he obeyed. He carried a bundle of swords and let the men choose their own. They stood holding their weapons, still uncertain, wondering if they were about to be attacked, but instead Æthelflaed dismounted. She gave the reins of her horse to Sihtric and walked towards the fourteen men. ‘Did Eardwulf give you orders to kill me?’ she asked.

They hesitated. ‘Yes, my lady.’ It was one of the older men who answered.

She laughed. ‘Then now is your chance.’ She spread her arms wide.

‘My lady …’ I began.

‘Be silent!’ she snapped at me without turning her head. She gazed at the prisoners. ‘You either kill me,’ she said, ‘or you kneel to me and give me your oaths.’

‘Guard her!’ I snapped at my son.

‘Stand back!’ she told Uhtred, who had drawn Raven-Beak and moved to her side. ‘Further back! These are Mercians. I need no protection from Mercians.’ She smiled at the captives. ‘Which of you commands?’ she asked and, when none answered, ‘Then who is the best leader among you?’ They shuffled their feet, but finally two or three of them pushed the oldest man forward. He was the man who had confirmed that Eardwulf’s ambition had been to kill Æthelflaed. He had a scarred face, a short beard, and a wall eye. He had lost half an ear in the fight and the blood was black on his hair and neck. ‘Your name?’ Æthelflaed asked.

‘Hoggar, my lady.’

‘Then for the moment you command these men,’ she said, indicating the prisoners, ‘now send them to me one by one to take their oaths.’

So she stood alone in the flamelight, and one after another her enemies came to her, each holding a sword, and each knelt to her and swore to be her man. And, of course, none raised their sword to kill her. I could see their faces, see how they had been seduced by her, how the oath they swore was heartfelt. She could do that to men. Hoggar was the last to swear his oath, and I could see tears in his eyes as he felt her hands clasp his about the hilt of his sword and as he said the words that tied his life to hers. Æthelflaed smiled at him, then touched his grey hair as if she was blessing him. ‘Thank you,’ she said to him, then turned to my men. ‘These warriors are no longer prisoners! They are my men now, they are your comrades, and they will share in our fortune, for good or for ill.’

‘But not that one!’ I called, indicating Æthelhelm’s man, Grindwyn.

‘Not that one,’ Æthelflaed agreed, then touched Hoggar’s head again. ‘Treat your wounds, Hoggar,’ she said gently.

And then the fifteenth prisoner was brought into the flamelight, the long dark-haired rider whose horse had stumbled just in front of me. The rider wore a long mail coat and a finely chased helmet that Eadric hauled off.

It was Eardwulf’s sister, Eadith.

We rode to Eardwulf’s camp in the dawn. I did not expect to find him there, nor was he. Instead the rest of his men, those who had refused to accompany him in the night, were either sitting about campfires or else saddling horses. They panicked when we appeared, some clambering into saddles, but Finan led a half-dozen men to head them off and the show of swords was enough to drive the fleeing men back to their comrades. Few were wearing mail, and none looked ready for a fight, while our men were mounted, armoured, and carrying weapons. I saw some of Eardwulf’s men cross themselves as if they expected sudden slaughter.

‘Hoggar!’ Æthelflaed called sharply.

‘My lady?’

‘You and your men will escort me. The rest of you,’ she turned and pointedly looked at me, ‘will wait here.’ She was insisting that she needed no protection from Mercians and, just as she had seduced Hoggar and his men in the night, so she would work her sorcery on the rest of Eardwulf’s troops.

She had ordered me to stay behind, but I nevertheless rode close enough to hear her words. The twin priests, Ceolberht and Ceolnoth, met her, bowing their heads respectfully, then claimed that they had restrained the rest of Eardwulf’s men from joining the night-time attack. ‘We told them, my lady, that what he planned was a sin and would be punished by God,’ Father Ceolnoth said. His toothless twin nodded vigorous agreement.

‘And did you tell them,’ I asked loudly, ‘that a failure to warn us was also a sin?’

‘We wanted to warn you, my lady,’ Father Ceolnoth said, ‘but he set guards on us.’

I laughed. ‘Two hundred of you and forty of them?’

Both priests ignored the question. ‘We thank God for your life, lady,’ Ceolberht lisped instead.

‘As you’d have thanked your god for Eardwulf’s success if he’d killed Lady Æthelflaed,’ I said.

‘Enough!’ Æthelflaed motioned me to silence. She looked back to the twin priests. ‘Tell me of my husband,’ she demanded.

They both hesitated, glancing at each other, then Ceolnoth made the sign of the cross. ‘Your husband died, my lady.’

‘So I hear,’ she said, but I sensed her relief that what had been mere rumour so far was now confirmed. ‘I will pray for his soul,’ she said.

‘As do we all,’ Ceolberht said.

‘It was a peaceful death,’ the other twin said, ‘and he received the sacraments with grace and calmness.’

‘Then my Lord Æthelred has gone to his heavenly reward,’ Æthelflaed said, and I snorted with laughter. She gave me a warning look, and then, escorted only by the men who just hours before had tried to kill her, she rode among the other Mercian troops. They had been her husband’s household warriors, supposedly the best in Mercia and for years her sworn enemies and, though I could not hear what she said to them, I watched them kneel to her. Finan joined me, leaning on his saddle’s pommel. ‘They love her.’

‘They do.’

‘So what now?’

‘So now we make her Mercia’s ruler,’ I said.

‘How?’

‘How do you think? By killing any bastard who opposes her.’

Finan smiled. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘by persuasion!’

‘Exactly,’ I agreed.

But first we had to go to Gleawecestre, and we rode there over three hundred men strong, a band of warriors who, not hours before, had been fighting each other. Æthelflaed ordered her standard raised alongside her husband’s flag. She was telling the places we passed that her family still ruled in Mercia, though we still did not know whether the men waiting in Gleawecestre would agree with that claim. I wondered too how Edward of Wessex would take his sister’s ambition. He, of all people, could thwart her, and she would obey him because he was a king.

The answers to those questions must wait, but as we rode I sought out the twin priests because I had other questions for them. They bridled when I spurred my horse between their two geldings, and Ceolberht, whose mouth I had ruined, tried to kick his horse ahead, but I leaned down and seized the bridle. ‘You two,’ I said, ‘were at Teotanheale.’

‘We were,’ Ceolnoth said guardedly.

‘A great victory,’ his brother added, ‘thanks to God.’

‘Granted by Almighty God to Lord Æthelred,’ Ceolnoth finished, trying to irritate me.

‘Not to King Edward?’ I asked.

‘To him too, yes,’ Ceolnoth said hurriedly, ‘God be praised.’

Eadith was riding alongside Ceolnoth, guarded by two of my men. She still wore the mail coat over which hung a bright silver cross. She must have thought of the two priests as allies because they had been such stalwart supporters of Æthelred. She looked at me sullenly, wondering no doubt what I planned to do with her, though in truth I had no plans. ‘Where do you think your brother went?’ I asked her.

‘How would I know, lord?’ she asked in a cold voice.

‘You know he’s outlawed?’

‘I assumed so,’ she said distantly.

‘You want to join him?’ I asked. ‘You want to fester away in a Welsh valley, perhaps? Or shiver in some Scottish hovel?’

She grimaced, but said nothing. ‘The Lady Eadith,’ Father Ceolnoth said, ‘can find refuge in a holy nunnery.’

I saw her shudder and I smiled. ‘She can join the Lady Æthelflaed, perhaps?’ I asked Ceolnoth.

‘If her brother desires it,’ he said stiffly.

‘It is customary,’ Ceolberht said, ‘for a widow to seek God’s shelter.’

‘But the Lady Eadith,’ I heaped scorn on the word ‘lady’, ‘is not a widow. She’s an adulterer like the Lady Æthelflaed.’ Ceolnoth looked at me with shock. What I had said was common knowledge, but he had hardly expected me to say it aloud. ‘As am I,’ I added.

‘God offers his protection to sinners,’ Ceolnoth said unctuously.

‘Especially to sinners,’ Ceolberht said.

‘I’ll remember that,’ I said, ‘when I’ve finished sinning. But for now,’ I looked at Ceolnoth, ‘tell me what happened at the end of the battle of Teotanheale?’

He was puzzled by the question, but seemed to do his best to answer it. ‘King Edward’s forces pursued the Danes,’ he said, ‘but we were more concerned for the Lord Æthelred’s wound. We helped carry him from the field and so saw little of the pursuit.’

‘But before that,’ I said, ‘you saw me fight Cnut?’

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Of course, lord,’ I reminded him of his absent courtesy.

He grimaced. ‘Of course, lord,’ he said reluctantly.

‘I was carried from the field too?’

‘You were, and we thank God you lived.’

Lying bastard. ‘And Cnut? What happened to his corpse?’

‘It was stripped,’ Father Ceolberht said, his lack of teeth making a thickly sibilant sound of the words. ‘He was burned with the other Danes,’ he paused, then forced himself to add, ‘lord.’

‘And his sword?’

There was a moment’s hesitation, a moment so short that it was hardly noticeable, but I noticed it, just as I noted that neither priest looked at me as Ceolnoth answered. ‘I did not see his sword, lord.’

‘Cnut,’ I said, ‘was the most feared warrior in Britain. His sword had killed hundreds of Saxons. It was a famous weapon. Who took it?’

‘How would we know, lord?’ Ceolnoth retorted.

‘It was probably a West Saxon,’ Ceolberht said vaguely.

The bastards were lying, but short of thumping the truth from them there was little I could do, and Æthelflaed, who was riding not twenty paces behind me, disapproved of me thumping priests. ‘If I discover that you’re lying to me,’ I said, ‘I’ll cut your damned tongues out.’

‘We do not know,’ Ceolnoth said firmly.

‘Then tell me what you do know,’ I said.

‘We told you, lord, nothing!’

‘About the next person to rule in Mercia,’ I finished my question. ‘Who should it be?’

‘Not you!’ Ceolberht spat.

‘Listen, you spavined piece of serpent shit,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to rule in Mercia, nor in Wessex, nor anywhere except my home in Bebbanburg. But you two supported her brother,’ I nodded towards Eadith who had been listening closely to the conversation. ‘Why?’

Ceolnoth hesitated, then shrugged. ‘The Lord Æthelred,’ he said, ‘left no heir. Nor was there any ealdorman who was a natural successor. We discussed the problem with the Lord Æthelhelm, who convinced us Mercia needed a strong man to defend its northern frontiers, and Eardwulf is a good warrior.’

‘Not good enough last night,’ I said.

Both twins ignored that. ‘And it was decided he could rule as King Edward’s reeve,’ Ceolnoth said.

‘So Edward would rule in Mercia?’

‘Who else, lord?’ Ceolberht said.

‘The lords of Mercia would have retained their lands and privileges,’ Ceolnoth explained, ‘but Eardwulf would have commanded the royal household troops as an army to face the Danes.’

‘And with Eardwulf gone?’ I asked.

The twins paused, thinking. ‘King Edward must rule directly,’ Ceolnoth said, ‘and appoint someone else to command Mercia’s troops.’

‘Why not his sister?’

Ceolnoth gave a bitter laugh. ‘A woman! Commanding warriors? The idea is absurd! A woman’s task is to obey her husband.’

‘Saint Paul gave us explicit instructions!’ Ceolberht agreed vigorously. ‘He wrote to Timothy saying that no woman could have authority over a man. The scripture is plain to understand.’

‘Did Saint Paul have brown eyes?’ I asked.

Ceolnoth frowned, puzzled by the question. ‘We don’t know, lord, why do you ask?’

‘Because he’s full of shit,’ I said vengefully.

Eadith laughed, suppressing it almost immediately, while both twins made the sign of the cross. ‘The Lady Æthelflaed must retire to a nunnery,’ Ceolberht said angrily, ‘and reflect on her sins.’

I looked at Eadith. ‘What a future you have!’

She shuddered again. I touched a spur to my horse and turned away. Someone, I thought, knew where Ice-Spite was hidden. And I would find her.

It was raining again when we reached Gleawecestre. Water was puddling in the fields, pouring down the road’s stone-choked gutters, and turning the stone of the Roman walls dark. We rode towards the eastern gate in mail, helmeted, with shields on our arms and spears held high. The gate guards stepped back without a challenge and watched in silence as we rode under the arch, spears momentarily lowered, and then clattered down the long street. The town seemed sullen, but perhaps that was just because of the low dark clouds and the rain that spilled from the thatched roofs and washed the roadway’s shit towards the Sæfern. We lowered spears and banners again to ride under the palace archway, which was guarded by three men carrying shields that were painted with Æthelred’s prancing horse. I curbed my stallion and looked at the oldest of the three. ‘Is the king still here?’

He shook his head. ‘No, lord. He left yesterday.’ I nodded and spurred on. ‘But the queen stayed, lord,’ he added.

I stopped and turned in the saddle. ‘Queen?’

He looked confused. ‘Queen Ælflæd, lord.’

‘West Saxons don’t have queens,’ I told him. Edward was king, but Ælflæd, his wife, was denied the title of queen. It had ever been thus in Wessex. ‘You mean the Lady Ælflæd?’

‘She’s here, lord.’ He jerked his head towards the largest hall, a Roman building, and I rode on. So Æthelhelm’s daughter was here? That suggested Æthelhelm himself had stayed in Gleawecestre and, sure enough, when I rode into the wide grassy courtyard there were men carrying his badge of the leaping stag on their shields. Other shields showed the West Saxon dragon.

‘Ælflæd’s here,’ I told Æthelflaed, ‘and probably occupying your quarters.’

‘My husband’s chambers,’ she corrected me.

I looked at the West Saxon guards, who watched us silently. ‘They’re telling us they’ve moved in,’ I said, ‘and won’t move out.’

‘But Edward left?’

‘Seems so.’

‘He doesn’t want to be involved in the argument.’

‘Which we have to win,’ I said, ‘and that means you move into the royal quarters.’

‘Without you,’ she said tartly.

‘I know that! I’ll sleep in a stable, but you can’t.’ I turned in the saddle and summoned Rædwald, a nervous warrior who had served Æthelflaed for years. He was a cautious man, but he was also loyal and reliable. ‘The Lady Æthelflaed will be using her husband’s quarters,’ I told him, ‘and your men will guard her.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘And if anyone tries to stop her using those rooms you have my permission to slaughter them.’

Rædwald looked worried, but was saved by Æthelflaed. ‘I will share the rooms with the Lady Ælflæd,’ she said sharply, ‘and there will be no slaughter!’

I turned back to the gate and beckoned the guard who had told me about Edward leaving. ‘Did Eardwulf return here?’ I asked him.

He nodded. ‘Yesterday morning, lord.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He came in a hurry, lord, and was gone again in an hour.’

‘He had men?’

‘Eight or nine, lord. They left with him.’

I dismissed him and went to Eadith’s side. ‘Your brother came here yesterday,’ I said, ‘stayed a short while, and left.’

She made the sign of the cross. ‘I pray he lives,’ she said.

There would have been no time for news of Eardwulf’s failed attempt to kill Æthelflaed to reach Gleawecestre before he arrived in the city, so no one would have suspected his treachery, though doubtless they had wondered why he had fled so quickly. ‘Why did he come here?’ I asked Eadith.

‘Why do you think?’

‘So where was the money kept?’

‘It was hidden in Lord Æthelred’s private chapel.’

‘You’ll go there,’ I said, ‘and tell me if it’s gone.’

‘Of course it’s gone!’

‘I know that,’ I said, ‘and you know that, but I still want to be sure.’

‘And afterwards?’ she asked.

‘Afterwards?’

‘What happens to me?’

I looked at her and was envious of Æthelred. ‘You’re not an enemy,’ I said, ‘if you want to join your brother then you can.’

‘In Wales?’

‘Is that where he went?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know where he’s gone, but Wales is closest.’

‘Just tell me if the money is gone,’ I said, ‘and after that you can go.’

Her eyes glistened, but whether that was tears or the rain I could not tell. I slid from my horse, wincing at the pain in my ribs, and went to discover who ruled in Gleawecestre’s palace.

I was not reduced to sleeping in the stable, but instead found rooms in one of the smaller Roman buildings. It was a house built around a courtyard with just a single entrance, above which was nailed a wooden cross. A nervous steward told me the rooms were used by Æthelred’s chaplains. ‘How many chaplains did he have?’ I asked.

‘Five, lord.’

‘Five in this house! It could sleep twenty!’

‘And their servants, lord.’

‘Where are the chaplains?’

‘Standing vigil in the church, lord. The Lord Æthelred is buried tomorrow.’

‘Lord Æthelred doesn’t need chaplains now,’ I said, ‘so the bastards can move out. They can sleep in his stables.’

‘His stables, lord?’ the steward asked nervously.

‘Wasn’t your nailed god born in a stable?’ I asked, and he just looked at me dumbly. ‘If a stable was good enough for Jesus,’ I said, ‘it’s good enough for his damned priests. But not for me.’

We moved the priests’ belongings into the courtyard, then my men took over the empty rooms. Stiorra and Ælfwynn shared a room with their maids, while Æthelstan would sleep under the same roof as Finan and a half-dozen other men. I called the lad into the room I had taken, a room furnished with a low bed on which I was lying because the pain in my lower ribs was throbbing. I could feel pus and muck oozing from the wound.

‘Lord?’ Æthelstan said nervously.

‘The Lord Æthelhelm is here,’ I said.

‘I know, lord.’

‘So tell me what he wants with you?’

‘My death?’

‘Probably,’ I agreed, ‘but your father wouldn’t like that. So what else?’

‘He wants to take me away from you, lord.’

‘Why?’

‘So his grandson can be king.’

I nodded. Of course he knew the answers to my questions, but I wanted him to be alive to those answers. ‘Good boy,’ I said, ‘and what will he do with you?’

‘Send me to Neustria, lord.’

‘And what happens in Neustria?’

‘Either they kill me or sell me into slavery, lord.’

I closed my eyes as the pain sharpened. The stuff oozing from the wound stank like a cesspit. ‘So what must you do?’ I asked, opening my eyes to look at him.

‘Stay close to Finan, lord.’

‘You do not run off,’ I said savagely. ‘You do not look for adventure in the city. You do not find a girlfriend! You stay by Finan’s side! You understand me?’

‘Of course, lord.’

‘You might be the next King of Wessex,’ I told him, ‘but you won’t be anything if you’re dead or if you’re snatched away to some damn monastery to be arse-fodder for a pack of monks, so you stay here!’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘And if Lord Æthelhelm sends for you, you don’t obey him. You tell me instead. Now go.’

I closed my eyes. The damn pain, the damn pain, the damned pain. I needed Ice-Spite.

She came to me after dark. I had slept, and Finan or perhaps my servant, had brought a tall church candle into the room. It burned smokily, casting a small light on the cracked and peeling plaster of the walls and dancing strange shadows on the ceiling.

I woke to hear the voices outside, one pleading and the other gruff. ‘Let her in,’ I called, and the door opened so that the candle flame shuddered and the shadows leaped. ‘Close the door,’ I said.

‘Lord …’ the man standing guard started to speak.

‘Close the door,’ I said, ‘she’s not going to kill me.’ Though the pain was such that I might have welcomed it if she had.

Eadith came hesitantly. She had changed into a long dress of dark green wool, belted with a rope of gold and hemmed with thick strips embroidered with yellow and blue flowers. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in mourning?’ I asked cruelly.

‘I am in mourning.’

‘So?’

‘You think I’ll be welcome at the funeral?’ she asked bitterly.

‘You think I will?’ I asked, then laughed and wished I had not.

She watched me nervously. ‘The money,’ she finally spoke, ‘has gone.’

‘Of course it has.’ I winced as pain throbbed. ‘How much?’

‘I don’t know. A lot.’

‘My cousin was generous,’ I said sourly.

‘He was, lord.’

‘So where has the bastard gone?’

‘He took a ship, lord.’

I looked at her in surprise. ‘A ship? He didn’t have enough men to crew a ship.’

She shook her head. ‘Maybe he didn’t. But Sella gave him bread and hams to take, and he told her he would find a fishing boat.’

‘Sella?’

‘She’s a kitchen maid, lord.’

‘A pretty one?’

She nodded. ‘Pretty enough.’

‘And your brother didn’t take her with him?’

‘He asked her to go, lord, but she said no.’

So Eardwulf was gone, but gone where? He had a handful of followers and a lot of money, and he would need refuge somewhere. A fishing boat made sense. Eardwulf’s few men could row it, the wind would carry it, but to where? Would Æthelhelm have offered him refuge in Wessex? I doubted it. Eardwulf was only useful to Æthelhelm if he could rid the ealdorman of Æthelstan, and he had failed in that, so he would not be in Wessex and certainly not in Mercia. ‘Is your brother a seaman?’ I asked her.

‘No, lord.’

‘What about his men?’

‘I doubt it, lord.’

So he could hardly sail from the Sæfern to Neustria in a small boat, so it had to be either Wales or Ireland. And with any luck a Danish or Norse ship would see his ship and that would be the end of Eardwulf. ‘If he’s no sailor,’ I said, ‘and if you love him, then you’d better pray for good weather.’ I had spoken sourly and decided I had been boorish. ‘Thank you for telling me.’

‘Thank you for not killing me,’ she responded.

‘Or for not sending you to join Sella in the kitchen?’

‘For that too, lord,’ she said humbly, then wrinkled her nose at the stench pervading the room. ‘Is that your wound?’ she asked, and I nodded. ‘I smelt the same when my father died,’ she went on, then paused, but I said nothing. ‘When was the wound last dressed?’ she asked.

‘A week ago, more. Can’t remember.’

She turned abruptly and went from the room. I closed my eyes. Why had King Edward gone? He had not been close to Æthelred, but it still seemed strange that he had left Gleawecestre before the funeral. Yet he had left Æthelhelm, his father-in-law, chief adviser, and the power behind the throne of Wessex, and my best guess was that Edward wanted to distance himself from the dirty work that Æthelhelm planned. That work was to ensure that the nobles of Mercia appointed Edward as Mercia’s ruler and encouraged Æthelflaed to retire to a convent. Well damn him. I was not dead yet, and so long as I lived I would fight for Æthelflaed.

Some time passed. It was the slow passing of time in a pain-filled night, but then the door opened again and Eadith returned. She was carrying a bowl and some cloths. ‘I don’t want you to clean the wound,’ I growled.

‘I did it for my father,’ she said, then knelt beside the bed and pulled back the pelts. She grimaced at the smell.

‘When did your father die?’ I asked.

‘After the battle at Fearnhamme, lord.’

‘After?’

‘He took a wound in the stomach, lord, and lingered for five weeks.’

‘That was almost twenty years ago.’

‘I was seven, lord, but he wouldn’t allow anyone else to tend him.’

‘Not your mother?’

‘She was dead, lord.’ I felt her fingers unbuckle the belt at my waist. She was gentle. She pulled up my tunic, unsticking it from the pus. ‘It should be cleaned every day, lord,’ she said reprovingly.

‘I’ve been busy,’ I said, and almost added that my business had been thwarting her damned brother’s ambitions. ‘What was your father called?’ I asked instead.

‘Godwin Godwinson, lord.’

‘I remember him,’ I said. I did too, a lean man with long moustaches.

‘He always said you were the greatest warrior of Britain, lord.’

‘That opinion must have sat well with Lord Æthelred.’

She pushed a cloth against the wound. She had warmed the water and the touch of it was strangely comforting. She held the cloth there, just soaking the crusted mess beneath. ‘Lord Æthelred was jealous of you,’ she said.

‘He hated me.’

‘That, too.’

‘Jealous?’

‘He knew you were a warrior. He called you a brute. He said you were like a dog that attacks a bull. You had no fear because you had no sense.’

I smiled at that. ‘Perhaps he was right.’

‘He wasn’t a bad man.’

‘I thought he was.’

‘Because you were his wife’s lover. We pick sides, lord, and sometimes loyalty gives us no choice in our opinions.’ She dropped the first cloth on the floor, then placed another on my ribs. The warmth seemed to dissolve the pain.

‘You loved him,’ I said.

‘He loved me,’ she said.

‘And he raised your brother high.’

She nodded. In the candlelight her face was stern, only the lips soft. ‘He raised my brother high,’ she said, ‘and Eardwulf is a clever warrior.’

‘Clever?’

‘He knows when to fight and when not to fight. He knows how to trick an enemy.’

‘But he doesn’t fight in the front rank,’ I said scornfully.

‘Not every man can do that, lord,’ she said, ‘but would you call the men in your second rank cowards?’

I ignored that question. ‘And your brother would have killed me and the Lady Æthelflaed.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he would.’

I smiled at that honesty. ‘So did Lord Æthelred leave you money?’

She looked at me, taking her eyes from my wound for the first time. ‘The will, I am told, depended on my brother marrying the Lady Ælfwynn.’

‘So you’re penniless.’

‘I have the jewels Lord Æthelred gave me.’

‘How long will they last?’

‘A year, perhaps two,’ she said bleakly.

‘But you’ll get nothing from the will,’ I said.

‘Unless the Lady Æthelflaed is generous.’

‘Why should she be generous?’ I asked. ‘Why should she give money to a woman who slept with her husband?’

‘She won’t,’ Eadith said calmly, ‘but you will.’

‘I will?’

‘Yes, lord.’

I winced slightly as she began wiping the wound clean. ‘Why would I give you money?’ I asked harshly. ‘Because you’re a whore?’

‘Men call me that.’

‘And are you?’

‘I hope not,’ she answered evenly, ‘but I think you will give me money, lord, for another reason.’

‘And what reason is that?’

‘Because I know what happened to Cnut’s sword, lord.’

I could have kissed her and, when she had cleaned the wound, I did.

Seven

I was woken by the harsh sound of a church bell tolling. I opened my eyes and for a moment had no idea where I was. The candle had long guttered out and the only light came from a small gap above the door. It was daylight, which meant I had slept long, then I smelt the woman and turned my face into a tangle of red hair. Eadith stirred, made a mewing noise in her sleep, and snaked an arm across my chest. She stirred again, coming awake, and rested her head on my shoulder, and after a few heartbeats began to weep.

I let her cry as I counted the bell tolling twenty-two times. ‘Regret?’ I finally asked her.

She sniffed and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, no, no. It’s the bell.’

‘The funeral, then?’ I asked, and she nodded. ‘You loved him,’ I said, almost accusingly.

She must have thought about her response because she did not answer until the bell had rung another sixteen times. ‘He was kind to me.’

It was strange to think of my cousin Æthelred being kind, but I believed her. I kissed her forehead and held her close. Æthelflaed, I thought, would kill me for this, but I found myself strangely unworried by the thought. ‘You must go to the funeral,’ I said.

‘Bishop Wulfheard said I can’t.’

‘Because of adultery?’ I asked and she nodded. ‘If no adulterers go,’ I said, ‘the church will be empty. Wulfheard himself couldn’t go!’

She sniffed again. ‘Wulfheard hates me.’ I began to laugh. The pain in my rib was still there, but duller now. ‘What’s funny?’ she asked.

‘He hates me too.’

‘He once …’ she began, then stopped.

‘He once what?’

‘You know.’

‘He did?’

She nodded. ‘He demanded to hear my confession, then said he’d only shrive me if I showed him what I did with Æthelred.’

‘And did you?’

‘Of course not,’ she sounded offended.

‘Sorry.’

She raised her head and looked into my eyes. Her eyes were green. She looked for a long time, then put her head down again. ‘Ælfwynn told me you were a good man.’

‘And you said?’

‘I told her you were a brute.’

I laughed at that. ‘You’d never met me!’

‘That’s what she said.’

‘But you were right,’ I said, ‘and she was wrong.’

She laughed softly. It was better than crying.

And we lay listening to the cocks crow.

The bell still tolled as I dressed. Eadith lay under the bed pelts, watching me. I dressed in the clothes I had travelled in, damp, stained and smelly, then bent to kiss her, and the pain stabbed at me. It was less severe, but it had not vanished. ‘Come and have some breakfast,’ I told her, then went into the central courtyard. A mist seeped from the river, mingling with a drizzle from low grey clouds.

Finan was waiting in the courtyard and grinned at me. ‘Sleep well, lord?’ he asked.

‘Go and jump in a lake, you Irish bastard,’ I said. ‘Where’s the boy?’

‘He’s awake. Eadric’s watching him.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Not a good day to bury a soul.’

‘Any day they bury Æthelred is a good day.’

‘I’ll take another sniff outside,’ he said, nodding towards the arched gate. ‘See what’s happening. It was all quiet an hour ago.’

I went with him, but the palace grounds looked asleep. A few guards were visible by the great hall, some geese cropped the wet grass, and a lone priest hurried towards the private chapel by the main gate. ‘Did you look into the hall?’ I asked Finan.

‘All’s well. Her ladyship’s in the upper chamber and our two Frisians are blocking the stairway like a pair of bullocks. No one can get past those two.’ I had sent Gerbruht and Folcbald to reinforce Æthelflaed’s own warriors. ‘And no one tried,’ Finan added.

‘And Æthelhelm?’

‘He’s in the main hall with his daughter and Bishop Wulfheard. He said to say a good morning to you.’ Finan grinned. ‘You’ve no need to worry, lord.’

‘I should have slept in the hall,’ I said.

‘Aye that would have been wise. Lady Æthelflaed’s lover giving her a good swiving on the night before her husband’s funeral? Why didn’t I think of that?’

I smiled ruefully, then went to the kitchen where my son and daughter were eating breakfast. Both looked at me reproachfully, presumably because gossip had told them who had shared my bed. ‘Welcome to one of the best days of my life,’ I greeted them.

‘Best?’ my son asked.

‘We’re burying Æthelred,’ I said, then sat and tore a lump from the loaf and cut some cheese. ‘You remember Father Penda?’ I asked my son.

‘I remember pissing with him.’

‘When you’ve finished stuffing your belly,’ I said, ‘I want you to find him. He’s probably in the great hall, so find him and tell him I need to see him. But tell him privately. Make sure the bishop doesn’t know!’

‘Father Penda?’ Stiorra asked.

‘He’s one of Bishop Wulfheard’s priests,’ I said.

‘A priest!’ She sounded surprised.

‘I’m turning Christian,’ I said, and my son choked on his ale just as Æthelstan came into the room and bowed his head in greeting to me. ‘You’re going to the funeral,’ I told the boy, ‘and you’ll pretend to be sad.’

‘Yes, lord, I will.’

‘And you’ll stay by Finan’s side.’

‘Of course, lord.’

I pointed the knife at him. ‘I mean it! There are bastards out there who want you dead.’ I paused, letting the knife drop point first into the table. ‘Come to think of it, though, that might make my life easier.’

‘Sit down,’ Stiorra told the grinning boy.

The bell still tolled. I supposed it would ring till the funeral began, and that could not happen until the lords of Mercia decided to go to the church. ‘What they’ll do,’ I said, ‘is hold a meeting of the Witan right after they’ve buried the bastard. Maybe today, but for sure tomorrow.’

‘Without issuing a summons?’ my son asked.

‘They don’t need to. Everyone who matters is here.’

‘Except King Edward.’

‘He’s not a member of the Mercian Witan, you numbskull,’ I told him. ‘He’s a West Saxon.’

‘He wants to be invited,’ Stiorra said.

‘To the Witan?’ my son asked.

‘To take the crown,’ she said patiently. ‘If he’s here it will look as if he just took it. It’s better to be invited.’

‘And he will be invited,’ I added. ‘That’s why Bishop Wulfheard and Lord Æthelhelm are here. To make sure he is.’

‘And Æthelflaed?’ Stiorra asked. ‘What happens to …’ She abruptly fell silent as Eadith came nervously into the room, pausing at the door. Her hair was piled on her head and held by ivory combs, but strands had escaped to fall raggedly about her face. The green dress looked crumpled.

‘Make room for Lady Eadith,’ I told Æthelstan who was sitting beside Stiorra. ‘You can sit beside Prince Æthelstan,’ I told Eadith. ‘It’s all right,’ I looked back to the boy, ‘she’s decided not to kill you after all.’

‘I’m not hungry, lord,’ Eadith said.

‘Yes you are. Sit down. Stiorra will pour you ale. You were asking,’ I had turned to my daughter, ‘what will happen to the Lady Æthelflaed? They’ll try to put her in a nunnery.’

‘And you’ll stop them,’ my son said.

‘No, you and the Lady Eadith will.’

‘I will?’ Uhtred asked.

‘By finding me that priest. Now! Go! Bring him here.’

My son left. As he opened the door I could see it was raining harder. ‘And what will I do, lord?’ Eadith asked quietly.

‘Whatever I tell you,’ I said brusquely, ‘and you’ll go to the funeral with Stiorra. Not in that dress, though. Find her a black cloak,’ I added the last words to my daughter, ‘with a hood.’

‘A hood?’

‘A big one,’ I said, ‘so no one can see her face and tell her to leave the church.’ I turned as Finan barged through the door.

He swore, took off a piece of sacking he was wearing as a cape, and flung it onto a stool. ‘There’ll be more floods if this goes on,’ he grumbled. ‘Raining like the devil’s piss, it is.’

‘What’s happening out there?’

‘Nothing. Bastards are all in bed. Best place to be.’

The great bell tolled on. Rain hammered the thatched roof and dripped through to puddle on the stone floor. The house had been roofed with tiles once, now the old rafters were covered by straw thatch in need of repair, but at least the fire in the hearth burned bright and there was a plentiful supply of wood.

Father Penda arrived after an hour or so. He looked miserable and indignant, forced to walk through the downpour that had soaked through his long black robe, but he nodded to me guardedly. ‘Lord,’ he said. He was puzzled that so many people were in the room, and even more puzzled when he saw Eadith. His loyalty to me was supposed to be a secret, and he did not understand why I had fetched him into company.

So I explained it to him. ‘Father,’ I said respectfully, ‘I want you to baptise me.’

He just stared at me. They all did. My son, who had returned with the priest, opened his mouth to speak, but found nothing to say and so closed it again.

‘Baptise you?’ Father Penda managed to ask.

‘I have seen the wickedness of my ways,’ I said humbly, ‘and I wish to return to God’s church.’

Father Penda shook his head, not in refusal, but because his wits were rain-soaked and scattered. ‘You are sincere, lord?’ he asked.

‘I am a sinner, father, and seek forgiveness.’

‘If you are sincere …’ he began.

‘I am.’

‘You will have to confess your sins,’ he said.

‘I shall.’

‘And a gift to the church will show your sincerity.’

‘Consider it given,’ I said, still speaking with humility. Stiorra was gazing at me in shock, the rest were just as astonished.

‘You truly desire this?’ Father Penda asked. He was suspicious. I was, after all, the most prominent pagan in Saxon Britain, a man who had been forthright in my opposition to the church, a killer of priests, and a notorious heathen. Yet the priest was also hopeful. My conversion and baptism would make Penda famous.

‘I desire it with all my heart,’ I said.

‘Might I ask why?’

‘Why?’

‘It is sudden, lord. Did God speak to you? Did his blessed Son appear to you?’

‘No, father, but he did send an angel.’

‘An angel!’

‘She came in the night,’ I said, ‘and she had hair like flames of fire and eyes that glowed like emeralds and she took away my pain and replaced it with joy.’

Stiorra choked. Father Penda looked at her and she quickly lowered her head into her hands. ‘I’m crying for happiness,’ she said in a strangled voice. Eadith was blushing deeply, but Father Penda did not notice her. ‘Praise God,’ Stiorra managed to say.

‘Praise him indeed,’ Father Penda said faintly.

‘I believe,’ I said, ‘that you baptise converts in the river here?’

He nodded. ‘But in this rain, lord …’ he began.

‘God’s rain,’ I said, ‘has been sent to cleanse me.’

‘Hallelujah,’ he said. What else could he say?

So we took Penda to the river and there he ducked me, and that was the third time I had been baptised. I was too young to remember the first time, but later, when my elder brother died and my father gave me the name Uhtred, my stepmother insisted I was washed again in case Saint Peter did not recognise me at heaven’s gate, and so I had been dunked in a barrel of North Sea water, but this third baptism was in the chill waters of the Sæfern, though before Father Penda could perform the rite he insisted that I kneel and confess all of my sins. I asked whether he really meant all, and he nodded enthusiastically, so I began with childhood, though it seemed stealing freshly churned butter was not what he wanted to hear. ‘Lord Uhtred,’ he said carefully, ‘did you not tell me you were raised a Christian? So did you not confess your sins as a child?’

‘I did, father,’ I said humbly.

‘Then we don’t need to hear them again.’

‘But I never confessed about the holy water, father,’ I said ruefully.

‘Holy water? You didn’t drink it, surely?’

‘I peed in it, father.’

‘You …’ he seemed incapable of further speech.

‘My brother and I had a peeing contest,’ I said, ‘to see who could piss the highest. You must have done the same as a boy, father?’

‘Never into holy water!’

‘I regret that sin, father.’

‘It is dire, but go on!’

So I confessed to the women I had slept with, or at least those to whom I was not married, and despite the rain Father Penda demanded more details. He whimpered once or twice, especially when I talked of rutting a nun, though I took care not to name Hild. ‘Who was she?’ he demanded.

‘I never knew her name, father,’ I lied.

‘You must have done! Tell me!’

‘I only wanted to …’

‘I know what sin you committed!’ he said sternly, and then, rather hopefully, ‘is she still alive?’

‘I wouldn’t know, father,’ I said innocently. In truth Hild was alive and well and feeding the poor and healing the sick and clothing the naked. ‘I think she was called Winfred,’ I said, ‘but she moaned so much it was hard to hear her properly.’

He whimpered again, then gasped as I confessed to the churchmen I had killed. ‘I know now how wrong that was, father,’ I said, ‘and worse, father, I took pleasure from their deaths.’

‘No!’

‘When Brother Jænberht died,’ I said humbly, ‘I enjoyed it.’ And I had enjoyed it too. The bastard had conspired to send me into slavery, and killing him had been a pleasure, just as it was a pleasure to kick Father Ceolberht’s teeth into his throat. ‘And I have attacked priests, father, like Ceolberht.’

‘You must apologise to him.’

‘Oh, I will, father. And I have wished to kill other priests, like Bishop Asser.’

Father Penda paused. ‘He could be difficult.’

I almost laughed at that. ‘But there is one sin that lies most heavily on my conscience, father.’

‘Another woman?’ he asked eagerly.

‘No, father. It was I, father, who discovered the bones of Saint Oswald.’

He frowned. ‘That is no sin!’

So I told him how I had faked the discovery by concealing the bones where I knew they would be found. ‘He was just a body in a graveyard, father. I ripped off an arm to make it look like Saint Oswald.’

Penda paused. ‘The bishop’s wife,’ he said, obviously referring to Wulfheard’s grim woman, ‘suffered from a plague of slugs in her garden. She sent Wulfheard a gift of fine linen for the saint and the slugs went! This was a miracle!’

‘Do you mean …’ I began.

‘You thought you deceived the church,’ Penda said enthusiastically, ‘but miracles have happened at the shrine! Slugs were banished! I think God guided you to the true bones of the saint!’

‘But the saint only had one arm,’ I pointed out.

‘Another miracle! Praise God! You were his instrument, Lord Uhtred! It is a sign!’

He gave me absolution, extracted another promise of gold, then led me into the river. The water was cold, stabbing into my wound like a dagger of ice, but I endured the prayers and praised the nailed god after Father Penda had thrust my head down into the duckweed. He did it three times, once for the father, again for the son, then for the holy ghost.

Penda was happy. He had made his famous convert, and he had Finan and my son as his witnesses and as my godfathers. I took Finan’s big silver cross and hung it about my neck, giving him my pagan hammer in exchange, and after that I put my arm about Father Penda’s narrow shoulders and, still dressed in nothing but a sopping wet shirt, led him up the river bank to the shelter of a willow where we had a quiet discussion. We talked for a few minutes. At first he was reluctant to tell me what I wanted, but he yielded to persuasion. ‘You want a knife between your ribs, father?’ I asked him.

‘But, lord …’ he began, then his voice faded away.

‘Who frightens you more,’ I asked him, ‘me or Bishop Wulfheard?’ He had no answer to that, but just looked up at me with a miserable expression. He was frightened of my violence, I knew, but he was equally scared that Wulfheard could condemn him to a lifetime of being a priest in some miserable village where there was no chance of enrichment or advancement. ‘You want to be a bishop yourself?’ I asked.

‘If God wills it, lord,’ he said unhappily, meaning that he would sacrifice his own mother for the chance of a diocese.

‘I’ll make it happen,’ I said, ‘if you tell me what I want to know.’

So he told me, then I dressed, made sure the cross was hidden beneath my cloak, and went to a funeral.

Someone had paid mourners to screech and wail, the noise as cacophonous as blades on shields in battle. The hired women stood at the sides of the church, beating their fists on their heads as they shrieked their pretend misery, and meanwhile a choir of monks tried to be heard above the clamour, and every now and then a priest shouted something, though no one seemed to take any notice.

The church was full, with maybe four hundred men and a few women standing between the high wooden pillars. They talked among themselves, ignoring mourners, choir, and clerics, and it was not till Bishop Wulfheard climbed onto a wooden platform beside the high altar and began to hammer his lectern with a shepherd’s staff that the sound died into silence, though not before the silver crook had fallen from the staff and clattered across the flagstones to come to rest beneath Æthelred’s coffin, which stood on a pair of trestles and was draped with his flag of the prancing white horse. A few of the paid mourners went on moaning, but a pair of priests scurried along the walls and told them to end their damned noise. One of the women gasped for air and I thought she was half choking to death, but then she fell to her knees and vomited. A brace of hounds rushed to gobble up the unexpected treat.

‘We are in God’s house!’ Bishop Wulfheard bellowed.

The sermon that followed must have lasted the best part of two hours, though it seemed like four or five. Wulfheard extolled Æthelred’s character, his bravery and wisdom, and even managed to sound convincing. ‘We lay a good man to his eternal rest this day,’ the bishop proclaimed, and I thought the sermon must be ending, but then he demanded that one of his priests hand him a gospel book and he flipped the heavy pages to find the passage he wanted and read it in a forbidding tone. ‘If a kingdom be divided that kingdom cannot endure!’ he read, then slammed the heavy book shut. What followed was a thinly disguised plea to unite the crowns of Mercia and Wessex, a plea we were told was the nailed god’s will.

I ignored most of it. I watched Stiorra who stood with Eadith. I had seen Eadith bow her head and hold a hand to her shadowed face, and I assumed she was crying. Æthelstan was near me at the back of the church, surrounded by my warriors. No man could carry a sword into the church, but I was certain that all the men guarding Æthelstan had seaxes hidden beneath their cloaks, just as I was certain that Æthelhelm had men looking for a chance to seize the boy. Æthelhelm himself was at the front of the church, nodding vigorously at Wulfheard’s rant. With him was his daughter Ælflæd, King Edward’s wife. She was a little thing, her fair hair plaited and wrapped around her head on which she wore a small black cap with a long trail of black ribbons hanging past her plump rump. She had a small sulky mouth and looked thoroughly unhappy, but that was hardly surprising, as she was forced to endure two hours of Wulfheard’s nonsense. Her father kept a hand on her shoulder. He and I were both taller than most men and he caught my eye during one of the bishop’s more impassioned passages, and we exchanged wry smiles. He knew a fight was coming, but he was confident of winning it. His daughter would soon be Queen Ælflæd of Mercia, and that meant she could be called a queen in Wessex too, and I had no doubt Æthelhelm wanted his daughter to be called Queen Ælflæd. I had never understood why Wessex did not extend that courtesy to the king’s wife, but they could hardly withhold it from Ælflæd if she was Mercia’s queen. And if Æthelhelm could just rid himself of the nuisance of Æthelstan, he would be the father of a queen and the grandfather of kings. Wulfheard was still expounding his text about a divided kingdom, shouting now, and Æthelhelm caught my gaze again, jerked his head almost imperceptibly towards Wulfheard and rolled his eyes in exasperation, and I had to laugh.

I had always liked Æthelhelm, but till now we had always been on the same side and his ambitions and energy had been devoted to causes I fought for. Now, however, we were enemies, and he knew it, and he would use his wealth and position to crush me. I would use guile, and hoped that Sihtric had succeeded in the task I had given him.

The bishop finally ran out of words. The choir began chanting again, and six of Æthelred’s warriors picked up the coffin and carried it to the tomb that had been opened beside the altar. They were struggling, probably because there was a lead coffin inside the wooden casket that was sumptuously carved with saints and warriors. My cousin was to be buried as close as possible to the bones of Saint Oswald, or rather close to the bones of whoever really was encased in the silver reliquary. On the day of judgement, the bishop had preached, Saint Oswald would miraculously leap from his silver prison and be whisked to heaven, and Æthelred, being close by, would be swept up by the saint. No one doubted that the bones were the real relics. The priests and monks all claimed that miracles occurred in the church, that the cripples walked, and the blind saw, and all because of the bones.

The bishop watched the coffin being lowered into the tomb. Æthelhelm and his daughter stood beside him, while on the far side of the gaping hole Æthelflaed stood in a dress of black silk that shimmered when she moved. Her daughter Ælfwynn was beside her, and managed to look sad. When the heavy coffin was at last settled in the crypt I saw Æthelhelm stare at Æthelflaed, and the two locked their eyes. They stood thus for a long time, then Æthelhelm turned away and led his daughter out of the church. A maidservant handed Æthelflaed a heavy cloak, which she draped over her shoulders and walked into the rain.

And so my cousin Æthelred passed from my life.

The Witan was held the next day. It began not long after dawn, an early hour, but I reckoned that was because Æthelhelm wanted the business over so he could start for home. Or, perhaps more likely, so that Edward could be summoned from wherever he was waiting to make a formal entry into the chief city of his new kingdom. And it all should be done swiftly, or so they thought. The men who had attended Æthelred’s funeral were, as expected, those nobles who had supported him, and very few of Æthelflaed’s men were in Gleawecestre. The Witan would hear what Æthelhelm wanted, they would vote it by acclamation, and Wulfheard and Æthelhelm would earn the gratitude of the new King of Mercia.

Or so they thought.

The Witan began, of course, with a prayer from Bishop Wulfheard. I thought, after his endless sermon of the previous day, he would keep the prayer short, but no, he had to harangue his god endlessly. He begged the nailed god to give the Witan wisdom, which was not a bad idea, then instructed his god to approve whatever the bishop was about to propose. The prayer dragged on for so long that the ealdormen, thegns, and high churchmen began shuffling their feet or scraping the benches on the tiled floor until finally Æthelhelm cleared his throat noisily and the bishop hurried to his prayer’s end.

Æthelred’s throne stood on the wooden platform. It had been draped with a black cloth on which sat an ornate helmet. In times past kings were never crowned, they were given a royal helmet instead, and I did not doubt that everyone in the hall knew what the helmet signified. To the left of the throne, as we looked at it, there was a lectern probably carried from the church, while on the right was a simple deal table and two chairs. The twin priests, Ceolberht and Ceolnoth, sat at the table with quills ready. They would record the Witan’s proceedings, which began with a statement from the bishop.

Mercia, he said, had been without a king for a generation. It was God’s will, he claimed, that a kingdom should have a king, a statement that brought a murmur of agreement from the assembled lords. ‘A kingdom without a king,’ the bishop said, ‘is like a diocese without a bishop, or a ship without a master. And no one here,’ he glanced towards me as he said this, ‘would deny that Mercia is one of the ancient kingdoms of Britain.’ Another and louder murmur of agreement filled the hall, and the bishop, heartened by the support, ploughed on. ‘Our Lord Æthelred,’ he raised his voice, ‘was too modest to claim the kingship!’ I almost laughed out loud when he said that. Æthelred would have given an eye, an arm, and both his balls to have worn the crown of Mercia, but knew only too well that his West Saxon paymasters would have punished him because Wessex wanted no king in Mercia except their own West Saxon king. ‘Yet he was a king in all but name!’ Wulfheard was shouting now, probably because he knew his argument was weak. ‘And on his deathbed our Lord of Mercia, our dear departed Lord Æthelred, announced that it was his wish that his brother-in-law, King Edward of Wessex, should be invited to assume the ancient crown of our beloved country!’ The bishop paused, presumably to allow a bellow of acclamation, but the hall remained silent except for Æthelhelm and his men, who stamped their feet in agreement.

And that silence, I thought, was interesting. The vast majority of the nobles in the hall was ready to do whatever Wulfheard and Æthelhelm wanted, yet they were not enthusiastic about that fate. There was still a good deal of pride in Mercia. They would accept a West Saxon king, but it would be a loveless marriage, and so they remained quiet, all except one, Ealdorman Aidyn. ‘This Witan has the power to choose a king,’ he growled. He was a noble from the eastern part of Mercia, a man whose troops had long been allied with the West Saxons in their forays against the East Anglian Danes, and a man I would have expected to be an enthusiastic supporter of Edward’s claim, but even he had sounded sceptical.

‘It has ever been the prerogative of the Witan to choose their king,’ Bishop Wulfheard allowed somewhat grudgingly, ‘do you have a proposal?’

Aidyn shrugged. Did he hope to be chosen himself, I wondered. ‘Mercia should be ruled by a Mercian,’ he said.

‘But who?’ Bishop Wulfheard barked, and it was a good question. Aidyn sensed that few men in the hall would support his claim, if indeed he had any claim, and so he said nothing more.

‘The crown,’ another man spoke up, but I could not see who it was, ‘should go to the king’s son.’

‘Lord Æthelred had no son,’ the bishop snapped.

‘Then to the nearest kin,’ the man said.

‘The nearest kin is his widow’s brother, King Edward,’ Wulfheard said, and that, interestingly, was not true, though I did not say so. ‘And let me remind this Witan,’ the bishop went on, ‘that King Edward’s mother was a Mercian.’ That was true, and some men in the hall nodded. Wulfheard waited for another comment, but none came. ‘I therefore propose …’ he began, but then stopped because I had stood.

‘I have a question, lord bishop,’ I said respectfully.

‘Lord Uhtred?’ he responded cautiously.

‘Can Mercia’s ruler,’ I asked, ‘appoint a successor if he has no heir?’

Wulfheard frowned, looking for the trap in the question, then decided to lay a trap of his own. ‘Are you saying, Lord Uhtred,’ he asked in a silky voice, ‘that Lord Æthelred was the ruler of this realm?’

‘Of course he was,’ I said, giving Wulfheard the answer he wanted, ‘but I am not expert in Mercian law as you are, so I just wished to know if the Lord Æthelred’s last wishes have any legal validity.’

‘They do!’ Wulfheard answered triumphantly. ‘The ruler’s wishes carry great force, and only need this noble assembly’s support to be enacted.’

Silence again. Men turned and looked at me. They knew I wanted Æthelflaed to rule Mercia, but my question and humble answer suggested I was ready to support her brother. Wulfheard, smiling because he believed he had just scored a great triumph over me, spoke again. ‘We would be remiss,’ he said unctuously, ‘if we were not to give great weight to Lord Æthelred’s dying wish, and that wish was for his brother-in-law, King Edward of Wessex, to become Mercia’s king.’ He paused, but again there was silence. The Witan might recognise the inevitability of the choice, but that did not mean they liked it. These men were witnessing the death of a proud country, a country once led by the great King Offa who had dominated all Britain. Wulfheard gestured to Æthelhelm. ‘The Lord Æthelhelm of Wessex,’ he said, ‘is not a member of this Witan …’

‘Yet,’ a man interrupted and was rewarded with laughter.

‘Yet,’ the bishop agreed, ‘but with your permission he will tell us how King Edward will rule this land.’

Æthelhelm stood. He had always been a good-looking and affable man, and his demeanour now was friendly, humble, and earnest. He declared what an honour the Witan would do to Edward and how Edward would be forever grateful, and how Edward would labour ‘night and day’ to nurture Mercia, to protect her frontiers and to expel those Danes who still remained in the northern part of the country. ‘He will do nothing,’ Æthelhelm said fervently, ‘without the guidance of this Witan. Advisers from Mercia will be the king’s constant companions! And the king’s eldest son, my grandson Ælfweard, the ætheling, will spend half his time in Gleawecestre so that he will learn to love this country as much as his father does, indeed, as much as all West Saxons do!’

He had spoken well, but his words were still met with the same sullen silence. I saw Wulfheard was about to speak again, so it was time, I thought, to toss a turd into the pottage. ‘And what of King Edward’s sister?’ I asked before the bishop could draw breath. ‘The Lady Æthelflaed?’

She was listening, I knew. She had not been allowed into the Witan because women had no voice in the council, but she was waiting just beyond the door that was closest to the dais. Æthelhelm knew she was listening too. ‘The Lady Æthelflaed,’ he said carefully, ‘is now a widow. She will doubtless wish to retire to her estates, or else join a nunnery where she can pray for the soul of her departed husband.’

‘And will she be safe in any nunnery?’ I asked.

‘Safe?’ Bishop Wulfheard bridled at the question. ‘She will be in God’s hands, Lord Uhtred. Of course she will be safe!’

‘Yet just two days ago,’ I said, raising my voice and speaking slowly so that the oldest and deafest members of the Witan could hear my words, ‘Ealdorman Æthelhelm allied his men with the traitor Eardwulf’s troops in an attempt to kill her. Why should we believe that he won’t try again?’

‘That’s outrageous!’ Wulfheard sputtered.

‘You dream dreams,’ Æthelhelm said, though his voice had lost its friendly tone.

‘You deny it?’ I asked.

‘I deny it absolutely,’ he said, angry now.

‘Then I call witnesses to testify before this Witan,’ I said, and beckoned to the hall’s main door. Hoggar appeared there, leading the men who had accompanied Eardwulf, and with them came Finan who had Grindwyn as his prisoner. Grindwyn’s hands were bound. Finan came and stood beside me. ‘Sihtric’s back,’ he whispered, ‘and he has what you want.’

‘Good,’ I said, then raised my voice. ‘That man,’ I pointed at Grindwyn, ‘is sworn to Lord Æthelhelm’s service. He is Lord Æthelhelm’s oath-man, and I will bring further witnesses who will swear before this Witan that he was doing Lord Æthelhelm’s bidding when he accompanied the traitor Eardwulf in his attempt to kill the Lady Æthelflaed.’ I clapped my hands, and the sound brought Eadith into the hall. She stood, pale-faced and straight-backed, beside Grindwyn. ‘This woman needs no introduction,’ I said, ‘but she will testify to her brother’s treachery and to Lord Æthelhelm’s approval of that treachery. I demand that a priest administer the oath of truthfulness to my witnesses.’

‘This is unseemly,’ Bishop Wulfheard snarled.

‘The killing of Lady Æthelflaed would have been unseemly,’ I snarled back.

‘The word of an adulteress can carry no truth!’ Wulfheard bellowed. ‘I demand that you remove that woman from this assembly and that you withdraw your foul lies and that you …’

Whatever else he was going to demand went unsaid because again I had clapped my hands, and this time Sihtric appeared with three more women. One, like Eadith, was tall, red-haired and slender, the second was fair-haired and plump, the third was black-haired and tiny. All three looked scared, though all three were earning more silver in five minutes than they made on their backs in a week. Some men in the hall laughed when the women appeared, and a few men looked angry, but almost every man present knew who the three were. They were whores from the Wheatsheaf, and Father Penda had somewhat reluctantly given me their names. He told me he had frequently escorted one, two or even all three from the tavern to the bishop’s house inside Æthelred’s palace.

‘Who are those creatures?’ Æthelhelm demanded.

‘Let me introduce you,’ I said, ‘the tall lady is called …’

‘Lord Uhtred!’ The bishop was shouting now. I noticed that Ceolnoth and Ceolberht had stopped writing.

‘Bishop?’ I asked innocently.

‘Do you have something to propose?’ He knew why the whores were there, knew too that given the chance I would have all three squawking like geese. And Wulfheard, of course, was a married man. ‘Do you insist, bishop,’ I asked, ‘that adulterers cannot speak in this council?’

‘I asked what you proposed!’ he insisted. He was red-faced.

‘I propose that the arrangements between Mercia and Wessex continue as before,’ I said, ‘and that the Lady Æthelflaed assumes her husband’s responsibilities.’

‘A woman?’ someone snarled.

‘A woman cannot rule!’ Aidyn said, and maybe a third of the men in the room growled agreement.

I walked to the platform, trying not to limp because of the pain in my rib. No one disputed my right to climb up beside Æthelhelm and the bishop, though for a moment Wulfheard looked as if he was going to protest, then glanced at the whores and abruptly shut his mouth. ‘It is not unusual,’ I said, ‘for the ruler’s closest relative to take the throne. May I remind this Witan that my mother was a Mercian and that I am first cousin to Æthelred?’

There was a moment of stunned silence, then a sudden protest erupted from a group of priests sitting to one side of the hall. I heard the word ‘pagan’ being shouted, most loudly by two abbots who were on their feet shaking fists, so I simply pulled aside my cloak to show them the big cross hanging at my breast. The sight of the silver brought a moment of utter silence, then an outburst of more protests. ‘Are you trying to convince us you’re a Christian now?’ The fat abbot, Ricseg, bellowed.

‘I was baptised this morning,’ I said.

‘You mock Christ!’ Abbot Ricseg shouted. He was not wrong.

‘Father Penda?’ I said.

So Father Penda defended my conversion, struggling to convince a sceptical Witan that my baptism was genuine. Did he believe that? I doubt it, but on the other hand I was a notable convert for him and he fiercely defended my integrity. Æthelhelm half listened to the wrangling clerics, then took me aside. ‘What are you doing, Uhtred?’ he asked.

‘You know what I’m doing.’

He grunted. ‘And those three women?’

‘Wulfheard’s favourite whores.’

He laughed. ‘You clever bastard,’ he said. ‘Where are they from?’

‘The Wheatsheaf.’

‘I must try them.’

‘I recommend the redhead,’ I said.

‘And Eadith?’

‘What of her?’

‘A week ago she was saying how much she hated you.’

‘I have a golden tongue.’

‘I thought that was her asset.’ He looked at the rows of men on the benches, who were listening to the furious argument raging between the priests. ‘So Wulfheard won’t speak against you now,’ he said, ‘and I run the risk of having you depict me as a tyrant who’d kill women, so what do you want?’

‘That,’ I said, nodding at the throne.

He frowned, not in disapproval but because I had surprised him. ‘You want to be Lord of Mercia?’

‘Yes.’

‘And suppose we allow it,’ he said, ‘what will you do?’

I shrugged. ‘Wessex already has Lundene, and you can keep it. You’re fighting into East Anglia, so go on doing that with Lundene as your base. I want Mercia to be fighting on our northern frontier, out of Ceaster.’

He nodded. ‘And the boy Æthelstan? Where is he?’

‘Safe,’ I said curtly.

‘He’s not legitimate.’

‘He is.’

‘I have evidence that his mother was already married when she rutted Edward.’

I laughed. ‘You’re rich enough to buy witnesses who’ll say that.’

‘I am.’

‘But it isn’t true.’

‘The Witan of Wessex will believe it, that’s all that matters.’

‘Then your grandson will probably be the next King of Wessex,’ I said.

‘That’s all I want,’ he paused to look at the Witan again. ‘I don’t want to make an enemy of you,’ he said, ‘so swear an oath to me.’

‘What oath?’

‘That when the time comes,’ he said, ‘you will use all your strength to ensure Ælfweard succeeds to his father’s throne.’

‘I’ll die long before Edward,’ I said.

‘No one knows when any of us will die. Swear it.’

‘I …’

‘And swear that the throne of Wessex will be united with Mercia’s throne,’ he growled.

I hesitated. An oath is a serious promise. We break oaths at the risk of fate, at the risk of the revenge of the Norns, those vicious goddesses who spin our life’s thread and can cut it on a whim. I had broken other oaths and survived, but for how long would the gods allow me to do that?

‘Well?’ Æthelhelm prompted me.

‘If I’m ruler of Mercia when your son-in-law dies,’ I said, touching the silver cross around my neck, ‘then I shall …’

He roughly swatted my hand away. ‘Swear it, Lord Uhtred,’ he said, ‘on whatever god you truly worship.’

‘As the lord and ruler of Mercia,’ I said, picking my words with care, ‘then I shall use all my strength to ensure Ælfweard succeeds to his father’s throne. And that the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia will be united to the throne of Wessex. I swear it by Thor and by Woden.’

‘And swear that you will be a true and loyal ally to Wessex,’ he demanded.

‘I swear that too,’ I said, and meant it.

‘And Æthelflaed,’ he said.

‘What of her?’

‘She must go to the nunnery her mother founded. Make sure she does.’

I wondered why he was so insistent. Was it because Æthelflaed protected Æthelstan? ‘I can’t command a king’s daughter,’ I said. ‘Edward must tell his sister what she must do.’

‘He’ll insist she goes to a nunnery.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘She shines brighter than he does. Kings don’t like that.’

‘She fights Danes,’ I said.

‘Not if she’s in a nunnery, she won’t,’ he said caustically. ‘Tell me you won’t oppose Edward’s wishes.’

‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ I said, ‘it’s a matter for you and him.’

‘And you’ll leave it to us? You won’t interfere?’

‘I’ll leave it to you,’ I said.

He frowned at me for a few heartbeats, then decided I had offered him enough reassurance. ‘The Lord Uhtred,’ Æthelhelm turned from me and raised his voice to still the clamour in the hall, ‘agrees with me that the thrones of Wessex and Mercia should be united! That one king should rule us all, that we become one country!’ At least half the men in the hall were frowning. Mercia had its ancient pride, and it was being trampled by the more powerful Wessex. ‘But the Lord Uhtred,’ Æthelhelm continued, ‘convinces me that the time is not yet ripe. King Edward’s forces are concentrated in the east to drive the foreigners from East Anglia, while Mercia’s business is in the north, to whip the pagans from your land. Only when those pagan foreigners are gone can we call ourselves one blessed country. For that reason I support the Lord Uhtred’s claim to the overlordship of Mercia.’

And so it happened. I was made Lord of Mercia, heir to all Æthelred’s fortune, to his troops and all his land. Bishop Wulfheard looked disgusted, but the three whores left him helpless, and so he pretended to approve the choice. Indeed it was Wulfheard who beckoned me towards the empty throne.

The men in the hall were stamping their feet. I was not their first choice, maybe not the choice of even one tenth of the assembled lords. These men had mostly supported Æthelred, and knew of the hatred he bore me, but to their minds there was no obvious candidate to succeed him, and I was better than a foreign king whose loyalty would surely be to Wessex first. And, more, I was the son of a Mercian and Æthelred’s closest male relative. By choosing me they salved their pride and many, surely, believed I could not live long. Soon, perhaps, they would be given the chance to elect another ruler.

I walked to the throne and picked up the helmet. A few men cheered. Even more cheered when I swept up the black cloth that draped the seat and tossed it aside.

‘Sit, Lord Uhtred,’ Æthelhelm said.

‘Lord Bishop!’ I called.

Wulfheard forced a smile. He even managed a hint of a bow as he turned to me. ‘Lord Uhtred?’ he asked.

‘You persuaded us earlier that the ruler’s wishes for his successor possess great weight.’

‘They do,’ he said, frowning in puzzlement.

‘And you said that those wishes need only the Witan’s support to be enacted?’

‘I did,’ he said stiffly.

‘Then let me remind this Witan,’ I said, ‘that the new lands we have gained have been through the efforts of the Lady Æthelflaed.’ I crossed to the table and lifted the parchments, the land-grants, the riches that these men wanted. ‘It is the Lady Æthelflaed who has garrisoned Ceaster and defended its territory from the Northmen.’ I dropped the parchments. ‘It is therefore my wish that I relinquish the throne of Mercia in favour of Lord Æthelred’s widow, the Lady Æthelflaed.’

They could have defeated me at that moment. If the Witan had risen in protest, if they had shouted me down, then the whole pretence would have been in vain, but I had shocked them into silence and it was during that silence that Æthelflaed entered from the side door. She still wore funeral black, though over the silk dress she had draped a white cloak embroidered with blue crosses entwined with pale green withies. The long cloak trailed on the floor. She looked beautiful. Her hair was plaited and wrapped around her skull, a necklace of emeralds hung at her neck, and in her right hand was her dead husband’s sword. No one spoke as she crossed the dais. I sensed the Witan was holding its breath as I gave her the helmet. She handed me the sword so that she could use both hands to pull the helmet over her golden hair, then, without a word, she sat on the empty throne and I gave her back the sword.

And the hall cheered. The Witan was suddenly loud with acclamation. Men stood and stamped their feet, they shouted at her, and Æthelflaed’s face did not stir. She looked stern, she looked like a queen. And why did the hall suddenly acclaim her? Maybe it was the relief that I was not to be their lord, but I like to think that they had secretly wanted Æthelflaed all along, but none had dared fly in the face of custom by proposing her name. Yet all the Witan knew that she had proven herself as a warrior, as a ruler, and as a Mercian. She was the Lady of Mercia.

‘You bastard,’ Æthelhelm said to me.

Oaths were sworn. It took the best part of an hour as, one by one, the ealdormen and chief thegns of Mercia went to Æthelflaed, knelt before her, and swore their loyalty. Her husband’s household warriors and her own troops stood at the hall’s edges, and they were the only men permitted to carry swords. If any man there was reluctant to swear fealty then those blades persuaded him to sense, and, by midday, all of the Witan had clasped hands with their new ruler and promised her loyal service.

She spoke briefly. She praised Mercia and promised that those lands to the north still infested by pagans would be freed. ‘To which end,’ she said, her voice clear and strong, ‘I shall require troops from you all. We are a nation at war, and we shall win that war.’ And that was the difference between her and her dead husband. Æthelred had done just enough to fend off Danish incursions, but he had never wanted to attack the Danish lands. Æthelflaed would scourge them from the kingdom. ‘Lord Uhtred?’ she looked at me.

‘My lady?’

‘Your oath.’

And so I knelt to her. The sword’s tip was resting on the floor between her feet, her hands clasped about the heavy hilt, and I put my hands around hers. ‘I swear loyalty to you, my lady,’ I said, ‘to be your man and to support you with all my might.’

‘Look at me.’ She had dropped her voice so only I could hear. I looked into her face and saw she had forced a smile. ‘Eadith?’ she hissed, bending towards me and still forcing the smile.

I wondered who had told her. ‘You want her oath too?’ I asked.

‘You bastard,’ she said. I felt her hands twitch beneath mine. ‘Get rid of her.’ She still spoke in a hiss, then raised her voice. ‘Take your troops north to Ceaster, Lord Uhtred. You have work to do.’

‘I will, my lady,’ I answered.

‘Fifty of my men will go with you,’ she announced, ‘and the Prince Æthelstan will accompany you.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ I said. It was sensible, I thought, to remove Æthelstan as far as possible from Æthelhelm’s ambitions.

‘I will follow as soon as I am able,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘but there is work to do first.’ She was speaking to the whole Witan now. ‘There are lands to distribute and responsibilities to be given. Bishop Wulfheard?’

‘My lady?’ He sounded nervous.

‘You were my husband’s most valued adviser. I trust you will stay as head of my council?’

‘With God’s help, my lady, I hope to serve you as I served him.’ You could hear the relief in the bastard’s voice. Æthelflaed had seduced Eardwulf’s men into loyalty, now she would start on her dead husband’s supporters, and by so publicly appointing Wulfheard she was giving notice that those supporters had no reason to fear her enmity. Yet she had cause to fear Æthelhelm’s anger. I watched him as I moved to the side of the dais, and I could see he was angry, his usually genial face tight with fury. He would be waiting for her to make a mistake or to lose land to the pagans, and then he would use his money and influence to have her replaced.

And if land was to be lost it would be in the north, so I would go to Ceaster, because that city was not yet entirely safe from our enemies. There was work to do there and Norsemen to fight.

But first I had to find a sword.

PART THREE

The God of War

Eight

The oars dipped, pulled slow, and rose. The long blades dripped water, swung forward, then dipped again. The boat surged with each long stroke, then slowed as the oars trailed their drips in the grey-green Sæfern. We were not hurrying because the tide and the river’s current were carrying us to the sea, and the oar strokes just held the Ðrines steady and let the steering-oar bite. Finan was chanting a slow, sad-sounding song in his native Irish, the rhythm driving the thirty-six men who pulled on the Ðrines’s oars. More men sat in the bows, idly watching the reeds bend to the Ðrines’s wake. Ðrines! Why name a ship after the trinity? I have yet to meet a single priest, monk, nun or scholar who can explain the trinity to me. Three gods in one? And one of those a ghost?

It had been three days since Æthelflaed was acclaimed as Mercia’s ruler. I had sworn loyalty to her, then taken the cross from about my neck and tossed it to Finan, replacing the bauble with my usual hammer. That done I had taken Father Ceolberht by the scruff of his gown and dragged him through the side door of the great hall. Æthelflaed had called a sharp reprimand, but I ignored her, dragging the squealing priest into the passageway, where I slammed him against the wall. Pulling him and pushing him had made the ache in my rib sudden agony, and the smell of the leaking pus was vile, but my anger was far greater than the pain. ‘You lied to me, you toothless bastard,’ I told him.

‘I …’ he began, but I slammed him again, hammering his balding head against the stones of the Roman wall.

‘You told me you didn’t know what happened to Ice-Spite,’ I said.

‘I …’ he tried a second time, but again I gave him no chance to speak, just thrust him hard into the wall, and he whimpered.

‘You carried the sword from the battle,’ I said, ‘and you brought it here.’ That was what Eadith had told me. She had seen the priest carrying the sword. Her brother Eardwulf had even offered to buy the blade, but Ceolberht had refused, saying it had been promised to another. ‘So where is it?’ I asked, but Ceolberht said nothing, just looked at me in terror. Finan came through the door from the hall and raised an eyebrow. ‘We’re going to disembowel this lying priest,’ I told the Irishman, ‘but slowly. Give me a knife.’

‘Lord!’ Ceolberht gasped.

‘Tell me, you turd-slime, what you did with Cnut’s sword.’

He just whimpered again, so I took the knife Finan offered me. The edges were so sharp they looked feathered. A man could have shaved with that blade. I smiled at Ceolberht and slid the knife through his black robe till the tip touched the skin of his belly. ‘I will gut you slowly,’ I said, ‘so very slowly.’ I felt the needle-sharp tip puncture his skin, provoking a mewing sound. ‘So where is it?’ I asked.

‘Lord!’ he gasped. I would not have gutted him, but he thought I would. His mouth opened and closed fast, his remaining teeth chattered, then at last he managed to speak. ‘It went to Scireburnan, lord.’

‘Say that again!’

‘It went to Scireburnan!’ he said in a desperate tone.

I held the knife still. Scireburnan was a town in Thornsæta, one of the richer shires of Wessex, and the land all about Scireburnan belonged to Æthelhelm. ‘You gave Ice-Spite to Æthelhelm?’ I asked.

‘No, lord!’

‘Then who, you bastard, who?’

‘To the bishop,’ he whispered.

‘To Wulfheard?’

‘He means Bishop Asser,’ Finan said drily.

‘Bishop Asser?’ I asked Ceolberht, who just nodded. I took the knife away from his belly and placed the bloodied tip a finger’s breadth from his right eye. ‘Maybe I’ll blind you,’ I said. ‘I’ve already taken your teeth, why not your eyes too? Then your tongue.’

‘Lord!’ It was scarcely a whisper. He dared not move.

‘Bishop Asser is dead,’ I said.

‘He wanted the sword, lord.’

‘So it’s at Scireburnan?’

He just moaned. I think he had wanted to shake his head, but he dared not.

‘Then,’ I let the blade’s tip touch the skin just beneath his lower eyelid, ‘where is it?’

‘Tyddewi,’ he whispered.

‘Tyddewi?’ I had never heard of the place.

‘Bishop Asser went there to die, lord,’ Ceolberht hardly dared to speak, and his voice was lower than a whisper, while his eyes were crossed as he stared at the knife’s wicked-looking blade. ‘He wanted to die at home, lord, so he went to Wales.’

I let go of Ceolberht, who fell to his knees in relief. I gave the knife back to Finan. ‘So it’s in Wales,’ I said.

‘Seems so,’ Finan wiped the blade clean.

Bishop Asser! That made sense. He was a man I hated, and he had hated me. He had been a vengeful little Welshman, a rabid priest, who had wormed his way into King Alfred’s affections and then licked the royal arse like a demented dog lapping up blood after the autumn livestock slaughter. I had fallen out with Asser long before he met Alfred, and he was never a man to abandon a grudge, and so he had ever struggled to create ill-feeling between the king and myself. If no Danes threatened, then Alfred would treat me like an outcast, egged on by Asser’s viperous hatred, but as soon as Wessex was under siege I would suddenly be back in favour, and that meant Asser had never managed to wreak his revenge on me. Until now.

His reward for licking Alfred’s arse was to be given monasteries and a bishopric with all their fat incomes. He had been made bishop of Scireburnan, an especially rich reward in a plump shire. I had heard that he had left the town just before he died, and had thought nothing of that news except to say a word of thanks to Thor and Woden for killing the cunning little bastard. But the bastard truly had been cunning because my wound was still hurting. Which meant someone else now possessed Cnut’s sword, and that someone must still be working Christian sorcery on the blade.

And that was why the Ðrines was heading west into a rising wind. The river was widening into the sea now. The Sæfern’s tide was still falling, the wind was growing, and whenever the wind opposes the tide the sea shortens, and so the Ðrines buffeted into sharp, steep waves. She had been one of Æthelred’s small fleet, which had patrolled the southern coast of Wales to deter the pirates who came out of the bays and inlets to harass Mercian traders. It had taken me two days to provision her, two days in which I constantly expected to be summoned and reprimanded by Æthelflaed for not obeying her. I should have been riding north to Ceaster, instead I had spent those days a few miles south of Gleawecestre where I had loaded the Ðrines with dried fish, bread, and ale. My daughter had wanted to come with me, but I had insisted she go with Æthelflaed’s fifty men who had been sent to reinforce Ceaster. A man who loves his daughter does not let her go into Wales. Æthelflaed had also insisted that her nephew, Æthelstan, go to Ceaster. He would be safe behind those tough Roman walls, a long way from Æthelhelm’s malice. His twin sister, Eadgyth, who offered no threat to Æthelhelm’s ambitions, had stayed with Æthelflaed in Gleawecestre.

The Ðrines was a good ship, except for her name. She was tightly made with a sail that had hardly been used, nor could we use it now for we were heading straight into the spiteful wind. I was letting my son be the helmsman and master and I saw him frown as a bigger wave threw the cross-decorated prow of the Ðrines sharply upwards, and I waited to see what decision he made, then watched as he thrust the steering-oar to take us on a more southerly course. Our destination lay on the northern shore, but he was right to go southerly. When the tide changed we would want the wind’s help, and he was making sea room so we could hoist the big sail and let it drive us. If the wind stayed as it was then I doubted we could make enough room, but it was more than likely that it would swing southerly too. Besides, I suspected we would shelter for a night on the Wessex coast, perhaps near the place where I had killed Ubba so many years before.

We numbered forty-six men, a considerable war-band, and Eadith had come too. Some of my men had wondered at that. Most folk consider that a woman aboard a ship brings nothing but bad luck because it provokes the jealousy of Ran, the goddess of the sea who will abide no rivals, but I dared not leave Eadith in Gleawecestre to suffer Æthelflaed’s jealousy. ‘She’ll kill the poor girl,’ I had told Finan.

‘She’ll send her to a nunnery, maybe?’

‘It’s the same thing. Besides,’ I lied, ‘Eadith knows Wales.’

‘She does, does she?’

‘Intimately,’ I said, ‘that’s why she’s going with us.’

‘Of course,’ he said and said no more.

Eadith, of course, knew nothing of Wales, but who did? Luckily Gerbruht had been to Tyddewi. He was a friend of my son’s and noted among my warriors for his appetite, which had made him fat, though much of that ox-like bulk was solid muscle. I summoned him to the stern of the boat where we sat just beside the steering platform and I made Eadith listen. ‘How do you know Wales?’ I asked Gerbruht.

‘I went on pilgrimage, lord.’

‘You did?’ I sounded surprised. Gerbruht struck me as a most unlikely pilgrim.

‘My father was a priest, lord,’ he explained.

‘He came from Frisia to visit Wales?’

‘King Alfred fetched him to Wintanceaster, lord, because my father knew Greek.’ That made sense. Alfred had brought dozens of foreign churchmen to Wessex, but only if they were learned. ‘So my father and mother liked to visit shrines,’ Gerbruht went on.

‘And they took you to Tyddewi?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘I was just a child, lord,’ he said.

‘Don’t tell me,’ I said, ‘there’s a dead saint there.’

‘There is, lord!’ he sounded awed and made the sign of the cross. ‘Saint Dewi.’

‘Never heard of him. What did he do?’

‘He preached, lord.’

‘They all do that!’

‘Well the folk at the back of the crowd couldn’t see him, lord.’

‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Was he a dwarf?’

Gerbruht frowned, plainly trying to help me, but could find no answer. ‘I don’t know if he was a dwarf, lord, but they couldn’t see him so Dewi prayed to God and God made a hill under his feet.’

I stared at Gerbruht. ‘Dewi made a hill in Wales?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘And they call that a miracle?’

‘Oh yes, lord!’

Gerbruht did not have the quickest mind in my shield wall, but he was staunch and strong. He could pull an oar all day or wield a war axe with savage skill. ‘So tell me about Tyddewi,’ I ordered him.

He frowned again as he tried to remember. ‘It’s not far from the sea, lord.’

‘That’s good.’

‘There are monks there. Good men, lord.’

‘I’m sure they are.’

‘And hills, lord.’

‘Dewi was there,’ I said, ‘so perhaps he made them?’

‘Yes, lord!’ He liked that idea. ‘And they have little fields, lord, with lots of sheep.’

‘I like mutton.’

‘I do too, lord,’ he said enthusiastically.

‘Did you see any warriors at Tyddewi?’

He nodded, but he could not tell me if a lord lived anywhere near the monastery, nor whether the warriors had their home near the settlement. There was evidently a church where the hill-making saint was buried, and stone cells where the monks lived, but Gerbruht could not remember much about the nearby village. ‘The church is in a hollow, lord.’

‘A hollow?’

‘In low ground, lord.’

‘You’d have thought they’d make the church on a hill,’ I said.

‘On a hill, lord?’

‘The one Dewi made.’

‘No, lord,’ he frowned, perplexed, ‘it’s in low ground. And the monks fed us fish.’

‘Fish.’

‘And honey, lord.’

‘Together?’

He thought that was funny and laughed. ‘No, lord, not together. That wouldn’t taste nice.’ He looked at Eadith, expecting her to share the joke. ‘Fish and honey!’ he said, and she giggled, which pleased Gerbruht. ‘Fish and honey!’ he said again. ‘They were herrings.’

‘Herrings?’ Eadith asked, trying not to laugh.

‘And cockles, winkles, and eels. Mackerel too!’

‘So tell me about the warriors you saw.’

‘But the bread was strange, lord,’ he said earnestly, ‘it tasted of seaweed.’

‘Warriors?’ I prompted him.

‘There were some at Dewi’s shrine, lord.’

‘They could have been visiting? Like you?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘Seaweed?’ Eadith asked.

‘The bread was knobbly, my lady, and sour. But I quite liked it.’

‘How did you get there?’ I asked him.

‘They led us down a path to the food hut, lord, and we ate with the monks.’

‘No! To Tyddewi!’

He frowned. ‘We rode, lord.’

Gerbruht could tell me little more. It was plain that Tyddewi was a place of Christian pilgrimage, and, if Gerbruht’s memory was correct, strangers could travel the rough tracks of the southern Welsh kingdoms in some safety, and that thought was encouraging. Christians do like pilgrims, those pious folk who gaze at pig bones that pretend to be dead saints and then give money, lots of money, and there’s hardly a church, monastery, or nunnery that does not have the eyelid of Saint John or the bellybutton of Saint Agatha or the pickled trotters of the Gadarene swine. Many such pilgrims are poor, yet the fools will give their last bent coin to receive the blessing of a thimbleful of dirt scraped from beneath a dead saint’s toenail, but the fact that Tyddewi welcomed such gullible fools was good because it meant we could arrive there in the guise of pilgrims.

We sheltered that first night somewhere on the north coast of Defnascir. We found a cove and dropped the anchor stone and let the night fall on our tired ship. Some time that day we had passed the mouth of the river where I had killed Ubba. That fight on the sand had made my reputation, but it had happened so long ago now, and some day, I thought, a young man would cut me down as I had cut Ubba down and he would take Serpent-Breath and he would strut his fame. Wyrd bið ful āræd.

The next morning brought a hard day’s rowing, for the wind was still in our face and at times the tide tried to drive us back, and it was already dusk when we came to Lundi, an island I had visited many years before. It had hardly changed, though some folk must have tried settling there, which was a foolish thing to do because marauding Northmen would have seen their farmstead and rowed ashore. There were two piles of decayed ashes marking where the buildings had stood and a skeleton on the shingle where we grounded the Ðrines. Goats watched us from the heights where puffins had their burrows. We killed and butchered two goats and cooked an evening meal over a driftwood fire. The sky had cleared, the stars were a smear of light, the air cool but not cold, and we slept on the thin turf guarded by sentries.

Next day we rowed westwards through a limpid sea that heaved slowly to ripple misted light. Puffins whirred past us on their short wings, and seals lifted their whiskered faces to watch us pass. The wind rose in mid-morning and, after swerving north and south, it settled into a steady south-westerly, and we hoisted the sail and let the Ðrines run free. I took the steering-oar for a time, not because my son could not manage the ship, but just for the joy of feeling the sea’s tremor through the long loom. Then the effort of handling the long oar began to make my rib hurt and so I gave him back the oar and just lay on the steering platform and watched the glittering sea pass. I wondered if there were ships in Valhalla. Imagine eternity with a good ship and a shining sea and the wind in your face and a crew of good men and a woman beside you.

‘Skidbladnir,’ I said.

‘Skid?’ Eadith asked.

‘It’s a ship of the gods,’ I explained, ‘and it fits into a warrior’s pouch, and when you need her you just throw the ship into the sea and she grows to her full size.’

She smiled. ‘And you mock Christian miracles.’

‘I’ve yet to see a dead man raised or a blind man given sight.’

‘But you have seen a ship grow on the sea?’

‘I hate clever women,’ I growled.

She laughed. She had never been on a ship before, except to row decorously up and down the Sæfern beside Gleawecestre, and she had been nervous when our hull first met the wider sea and the short waves had buffeted us. She had seen the hull bend to the steeper waves and thought the planks must break, until I told her that if the hull did not bend then the ship would surely sink. ‘The planks bend,’ I explained, ‘and the frame just stops them bending too much. It’s like a sword. Make it too brittle and it breaks, too soft and it won’t hold an edge.’

‘And the stones?’ She had nodded at the bilge.

‘They keep us upright,’ I said, and laughed because I remembered a ridiculous sermon Father Beocca had once preached in which he had likened ballast stones to a Christian’s faith, and he had kept adding more stones to his imaginary ship until my father growled that he had just sunk the damned boat, and poor Beocca just stood by the altar with his mouth open.

‘You’re happy,’ Eadith said, sounding happy herself.

And I was happy too. The pain in my side was bearable, the ship was riding smoothly, and the only thing that worried me was Wales. I knew little of the Welsh except that they were Christian, spoke a barbarous tongue and, if Gerbruht was right, ate seaweed. Their country was divided into little kingdoms that seemed to change names with the weather, though Tyddewi, I knew, was part of a realm called Dyfed, though I had no idea who ruled that land. Some petty king, no doubt, all beard and bellyache. Yet the men of Wales were great warriors, and it had become a rule among Saxons that only fools went into their hills to be slaughtered, though that did not stop fools trying. And the Welsh, who claimed we had stolen their land, liked to raid into Mercia to steal livestock and slaves, and that constant warfare was useful training for young warriors. Indeed I had fought against Welshmen in my very first shield wall. I often wondered why the Welsh did not worship the gods who were enemies of the Saxons, for surely those gods would have helped them regain their land, but they insisted on being Christian, and a good thing too because it had been Welsh Christian warriors who had come to Teotanheale and helped defeat Cnut.

Now Cnut’s sword was in Dyfed and the Ðrines ran towards it with a bellied sail and a spreading wake. I saw a few other ships, all far off. The small dark sails were probably fishermen, but two larger pale sails were cargo ships heading towards the Sæfern’s mouth. I doubted they were fighting ships because, though they sailed close together, they headed sharply away from us and were soon lost in the sea’s haze.

By late afternoon we were off the Welsh coast, rowing now, for the wind was heading us again. In the two days we had spent filling the Ðrines’s belly with casks of ale and barrels of smoked fish and sacks of double-baked bread I had talked to a shipmaster who knew the coast. He had been a big man, full-bearded, his face darkened and lined by weather. He had assured me that finding Tyddewi would be easy. ‘Go west to the land’s end, lord,’ he had said, ‘and you pass a big inlet and come to a rocky headland with islands just off it, and you turn north there and cross a great bay, and the headland on the bay’s far side is Tyddewi. A blind man could find it on a dark night.’

‘Come with us,’ I invited him.

‘You want me to set foot in that land?’ he had asked. ‘In thirty-eight years at sea, lord, I’ve never landed in Wales and never will.’

‘We’ll be pilgrims.’

‘With swords?’ he had laughed. ‘You can’t miss it, lord. Go west till there’s no land left and then cross the bay to the north. Go east a little till you see an island with a great rock arch, and you’ll find good anchorage at the inlet there. The man who taught me the coast called it the dragon’s mouth. Sharp rocks like teeth, lord, but you can walk to Tyddewi from there.’

‘You anchored in the dragon’s mouth?’

‘Three times. One anchor stone off the bow, another off the stern, and good sentries to stay awake through the night.’

‘And didn’t go ashore? Not even to get water?’

He grimaced. ‘There were hairy bastards with axes waiting. I sheltered there, lord, from gales. And I prayed that the dragon kept his mouth open. Just cross the bay, look for the arch, and God preserve you.’

And perhaps the Christian god would preserve us. Wales was, after all, a place of Christians, but I still touched the hammer at my neck and prayed to Odin. Once upon a time he had come to this middle world, and he had made love to a girl and she had given him a mortal son, and the son had a son, and that son had another, and so it went on until I was born. I have the blood of gods, and I stroked the hammer and begged Odin to preserve me in the land of our enemies.

And that evening, as the wind lulled and the sea settled into a long swell, we crossed the wide bay and came to the arched rock and beyond it, high in the darkening sky, a great pall of smoke hung above the rocky land. Finan stood beside me and stared at the dark smear. He knew what it marked. Our whole lives had been spent seeing such smoke of destruction. ‘Danes?’ he suggested.

‘More likely Norsemen,’ I said, ‘or a Welsh quarrel? They squabble enough.’

We rowed slowly eastwards, searching for the dragon’s mouth, and there it was, a dark shadowed cleft in the coast, and I touched my hammer again as the long oars pulled us into the land’s embrace. There were sheep on the high slopes, and a huddle of thatched hovels deeper in the narrow valley, but I saw no men with or without axes. We saw no one. If folk lived in the inlet’s valley then they were hiding from whoever had smirched the sky with smoke.

‘Someone will be watching us,’ Finan said, gazing up at the high slopes. ‘We can’t see them, but they’re watching us.’

‘Probably.’

‘And they’ll send news of our coming.’

‘We have a cross on our bows,’ I said, meaning that we appeared to be a Christian-manned ship and, in a Christian land, that might protect us.

‘God help us,’ Finan said, and made the sign of the cross.

We set sentries, then tried to sleep.

But sleep came hard that night. We were in the dragon’s mouth.

Seven of us slipped ashore before dawn. I took Finan, of course, my son, Gerbruht because he had been to the shrine before, and two other warriors. Eadith insisted she came too. ‘You’re safer on the ship,’ I told her, but she shook her head stubbornly and, persuading myself that the presence of a woman made the pretence of being pilgrims more convincing, I let her come. We all wore cloaks, and I had changed my hammer for a cross. The cloaks hid short-swords.

Once ashore we scrambled up the western side of the dragon’s mouth, and, by the time we had reached the stony crest and my rib was feeling as though every devil in Christendom was stabbing it with red-hot forks, Sihtric had taken the Ðrines back to sea. If the unseen watcher of the dragon’s mouth had sent word to his lord, then warriors would come to the inlet and find it empty. They would assume we had sheltered for the night and voyaged on, or rather I hoped they would believe that, and I had told Sihtric to keep the ship offshore until twilight and then slip back into the inlet.

And we walked.

It was not far, not far at all.

By the time the rising sun was slanting across the world we had found Tyddewi and, just like the hovels at the dragon’s mouth, it was empty. I had expected to hear the usual cacophony of howling dogs and crowing cocks, but there was silence beneath the sifting smoke, which still rose to besmirch the morning sky. There had been a settlement here, but now it was ashes and smouldering timbers, all except a gaunt stone church that lay in a hollow. I had seen this so often, indeed I had caused it myself. Raiders had come, they had burned and plundered, but as we went closer I saw no bodies. The attackers would have taken the young and the nubile for slaves and for pleasure, such raiders usually killed the old and the sick, but there were no bodies being ripped by crows, no blood splashed on stone, no shrunken black corpses stinking in the embers. The village smoked and lay empty.

‘If Cnut’s sword was ever here,’ Finan said grimly, ‘it’s gone now.’

I said nothing, not wanting to think about what he had just said, though of course he was right. Someone, either sea-raiders or men from another Welsh kingdom, had come to Tyddewi and left it a wilderness of ash. A cat arched its back and hissed at us, but nothing else lived. We walked towards the church that was built of dark, stark stone. Beyond it was a mess of burned buildings that smoked more heavily than the rest and I guessed that had been the monastery where Asser had gone to die. At the far side of the ruins, built against the northern hill’s lower slope, were small stone cabins shaped like beehives. A couple had been pulled apart, but a dozen others looked whole. ‘Stone huts,’ Gerbruht told us, ‘where the monks live.’

‘I wouldn’t put a dog in one of those,’ I said.

‘You like dogs,’ Finan pointed out, ‘so of course you wouldn’t. But you’d put a monk in one of them. Jesus! What was that?’ He was startled because a lump of charred timber had just been hurled from the church’s western door. ‘Christ,’ Finan said, ‘someone’s here.’

‘Sing,’ my son said.

‘Sing?’ I looked at him.

‘We’re pilgrims,’ he said, ‘so we should be singing.’

‘He’s right,’ Finan growled.

‘A psalm,’ my son said.

‘Then sing,’ I snarled. And so they sang, though it was hardly impressive, and only Gerbruht knew more than a few words. My son had supposedly been educated by monks, but he just roared nonsense as we walked between the burned-out cottages. The place stank of smoke.

A flight of stone steps led down into the hollow, and just as we reached the steps a monk appeared at the church door. He stared at us for a frightened moment, threw down more charred timber, then fled back into the shadows. The psalm faltered as we went down the slope, then I was at the church door and went inside.

Three monks faced me. One, a brave fool, carried a baulk of half-burned wood like a club. His face was white, tense, and determined, and he did not lower the makeshift weapon even as my men came through the door. Behind him was the blackened remains of an altar, above which hung a painted wooden crucifix that had caught the flames, but not the fire. The feet of the nailed god were scorched, and the paint of his naked body smeared smoke-black, but the crucifix had survived the blaze. The monk holding the charred club spoke to us, but in his own language, which none of us understood.

‘We’re pilgrims,’ I said, feeling foolish.

The monk spoke again, still hefting the length of wood, but then the youngest of the three, a pale-faced, skimpy-bearded youth, spoke to us in our own tongue. ‘Who are you?’

‘I told you, pilgrims. Who are you?’

‘Have you come to harm us?’ he asked.

‘If I wanted to harm you,’ I said, ‘you’d be dead by now. We come in peace. So who are you?’ The young monk made the sign of the cross, then gently pushed his companion’s baulk of wood down and spoke to him in Welsh. I heard the word season, which is their name for the Saxons, and I saw the relief on all their faces when they realised we had not come to kill them. The oldest monk, a white-bearded man, fell to his knees and wept. ‘So who are you?’ I asked the young monk again.

‘My name is Brother Edwyn,’ the young monk said.

‘A Saxon?’

‘From Scireburnan.’

‘From Scireburnan, lord,’ I told him harshly.

‘Yes, lord, from Scireburnan.’

‘You came here with Bishop Asser?’ I asked. It seemed an obvious explanation for why a Saxon monk should be in this smoke-stinking corner of Wales.

‘I did, lord.’

‘Why?’

He frowned, apparently puzzled by my question. ‘To learn from him, lord. He was a most holy man and a great teacher. He asked me to accompany him, to take down his words, lord.’

‘And what happened here? Who burned the place?’

Norsemen had happened. Somewhere to the north of Tyddewi was a river mouth, Brother Edwyn called it Abergwaun, though the name meant nothing to me, and Norsemen from Ireland had settled there. ‘They had permission, lord,’ Edwyn said.