The late autumn brought heavy rain and the shire-reeve to Oxton. The reeve was called Harald and he was charged with keeping the peace of Defnascir, and he came on horseback and with him were six other horsemen, all in mail coats and helmets, and all with swords or spears. I waited for him in the hall, making him dismount and come into the smoky shadows. He came cautiously, expecting an ambush, then his eyes became accustomed to the gloom and he saw me standing by the central hearth.


'You are summoned to the shire court,' he told me.


His men had followed Harald into the hall. 'You bring swords into my house?' I asked.


Harald looked around the hall and he saw my men armed with their spears and axes. I had seen the horsemen approaching and summoned my men and ordered them to arm themselves.


Harald had the reputation of being a decent man, sensible and fair, and he knew how weapons in a hall could lead to slaughter. 'You will wait outside,' he told his men, and I gestured for my men to put their weapons down.


'You are summoned …' Harald began again.


'I heard you,' I said.


'There is a debt to be paid,' he said, 'and a man's death to make good.'


I said nothing. One of my hounds growled softly and I put a hand into its fur to silence it.


'The court will meet on All Saints' Day,' Harald said, 'at the cathedral.'


'I shall be there,' I said.


He took off his helmet to reveal a balding pate fringed with brown hair. He was at least ten years older than I, a big man, with two fingers missing from his shield hand. He limped slightly as he walked towards me. I calmed the hounds, waited.


'I was at Cynuit,' he said to me, speaking softly.


'So was I,' I said, 'though men pretend I was not.'


'I know what you did,' he said.


'So do I.'


He ignored my surliness. He was showing me sympathy, though I was too proud to show I appreciated it. 'The ealdorman has sent men,' he warned me, 'to take this place once judgment is given.'


There was a gasp behind me and I realised Mildrith had come into the hall. Harald bowed to her.


'The hall will be taken?' Mildrith asked.


'If the debt is not paid,' Harald said, 'the land will he given to the church.' He stared up at the newly hewn rafters as if wondering why I would build a hall on land doomed to be given to God.


Mildrith came to stand beside me. She was plainly distressed by Harald's summons, but she made a great effort to compose herself. 'I am sorry,' she said, 'about your wife.'


A flicker of pain crossed Harald's face as he made the sign of the cross. 'She was sick a long time, lady. It was merciful of God, I think, to take her.'


I had not known he was a widower, nor did I care much.


'She was a good woman,' Mildrith said.


'She was,' Harald said.


'And I pray for her.'


'I thank you for that,' Harald said.


'As I pray for Odda the Elder,' Mildrith went on.


'God be praised, he lives,' Harald made the sign of the cross again. 'But he is feeble and in pain.' He touched his scalp showing where Odda the Elder had been wounded.


'So who is the judge?' I asked harshly, interrupting the two.


'The bishop,' Harald said.


'Not the ealdorman?'


'He is at Cippanhamm.'


Mildrith insisted on giving Harald and his men ale and food. She and Harald talked a long time, sharing news of neighbours and family. They were both from Difnascir and I was not, and so I knew few of the folk they talked about, but I pricked up my ears when Harald said that Odda the Younger was marrying a girl from Mercia. 'She's in exile here,' he said, 'with her family.'


'Well born?' Mildrith asked.


'Exceedingly,' Harald said.


'I wish them much joy,' Mildrith said with evident sincerity.


She was happy that day, warmed by Harald's company, though when he had gone she chided me for being churlish. 'Harald is a good man,' she insisted, 'a kind man. He would have given you advice.

He would have helped you!'


I ignored her, but two days later I went into Exanceaster with Iseult and all my men. Including Haesten I now had eighteen warriors and I had armed them, given them shields and leather coats, and I led them through the market that always accompanied the court's sittings.


There were stilt-walkers and jugglers, a man who ate fire, and a dancing bear. There were singers, harpists, storytellers, beggars, and pens of sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, geese, ducks and hens. There were fine cheeses, smoked fish, bladders of lard, pots of honey, trays of apples and baskets of pears.

Iseult, who had not been to Exanceaster before, was amazed at the size of the city, and the life of it, and the seething closeness of its houses, and I saw folk make the sign of the cross when they saw her for they had heard of the shadow queen held at Oxton and they knew her for a foreigner and a pagan.


Beggars crowded at the bishop's gate. There was a crippled woman with a blind child, men who had lost arms or legs in the wars, a score of them, and I threw them some pence, then, because I was on horseback, ducked under the archway of the courtyard beside the cathedral where a dozen chained felons were awaiting their fate. A group of young monks, nervous of the chained men, were plaiting beehives, while a score of armed men were clustered around three fires. They eyed my followers suspiciously as a young priest, his hands flapping, hurried across the puddles.


'Weapons are not to be brought into the precinct!' he told me sternly.


'They've got weapons,' I nodded at the men warming themselves by the flames.


'They are the reeve's men.'


'Then the sooner you deal with my business,' I said, 'the sooner my weapons will be gone.'


He looked up at me, his face anxious. 'Your business?'


'… is with the bishop.'


'The bishop is at prayer,' the priest said reprovingly, as though I should have known that. 'And he cannot see every man who comes here. You can’t talk to him.'


I smiled and raised my voice a little. 'In Cippanhamm, two years ago,' I said, 'your bishop was friends with Eanflaed. She has red hair and works her trade out of the Corncrake tavern. Her trade is whoring.'


The priest's hands were flapping again in an attempt to persuade me to lower my voice.


'I've been with Eanflaed,' I said, 'and she told me about the bishop. She said ...'


The monks had stopped making beehives and were listening, but the priest cut me off by half shouting. 'The bishop might have a moment free.'


'Then tell him I'm here,' I said pleasantly.


'You are Uhtred of Oxton?' he asked.


'No,' I said. 'I am the Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg.


'Yes, lord.'


'Sometimes known as Uhtredaerwe,' I added mischievously. Uhtred the Wicked.


'Yes, lord,' the priest said again and hurried away.


The bishop was called Alewold and he was really the bishop of Cridianton, but that place had not been thought as safe as Exanceaster and so for years the bishops of Cridianton had lived in the larger town which, as Guthrum had shown, was not the wisest decision. Guthrum's Danes had pillaged the cathedral and the bishop's house, which was still scantily furnished and I discovered Alewold sitting behind a table that looked as if it had once belonged to a butcher, for its hefty top was scored with knife cuts and stained with old blood. He looked at me indignantly. 'You should not be here,' he said.


'Why not?'


'You have business before the court tomorrow.'


'Tomorrow,' I said, 'you sit as a judge. Today you are a bishop.'


He acknowledged that with a small nod. He was an elderly man with a heavy jowled face and a reputation as a severe judge. He had been with Alfred in Scirehurnan when the Danes arrived in Exanceaster, which is why he was still alive, and, like all the bishops in Wessex, he was a fervent supporter of the king, and I had no doubt that Alfred's dislike of me was known to Alewold, which meant I could expect little clemency when the court sat.


'I am busy,' Alewold said, gesturing at the parchments on the stained table. Two clerks shared the table and a half-dozen resentful priests had gathered behind the bishop's chair.


'My wife,' I said, 'inherited a debt to the church.'


Alewold looked at Iseult who alone had come into the house with me. She looked beautiful, proud and wealthy. There was silver at her throat and in her hair, and her cloak was fastened with two brooches, one of jet and the other of amber.


'Your wife?' the bishop asked snidely.


'I would discharge the debt,' I said, ignoring his question, and I tipped a bag onto his butcher's table and the big silver plate we had taken from Ivar slid out. The silver made a satisfying noise as it thumped down and suddenly, in that small dark room ill-lit by three rush lights and a small, wood-barred window, it seemed as if the sun had come out. The heavy silver glowed and Alewold just stared at it.


There are good priests. Beocca is one and Willibald another, but I have discovered in my long life that most churchmen preach the merits of poverty while they lust after wealth. They love money and the church attracts money like a candle brings moths. I knew Alewold was a greedy man, as greedy for wealth as he was for the delights of a red-haired whore in Cippanhamm, and he could not take his eyes from that plate. He reached out and caressed the thick rim as if he scarce believed what he was seeing, and then he pulled the plate towards him and examined the twelve apostles.


'A pyx,' he said reverently.


'A plate,' I said casually.


One of the other priests leaned over a clerk's shoulder. 'Irish work,' he said.


’It looks Irish,' Alewold agreed, then looked suspiciously at me. 'You are returning it to the church?'


'Returning it?' I asked innocently.


'The plate was plainly stolen,' Alewold said, 'and you do well, Uhtred, to bring it back.'


'I had the plate made for you,' I said.


He turned the plate over, which took some effort for it was heavy, and once it was inverted he pointed to the scratches in the silver. 'It is old,' he said.


'I had it made in Ireland,' I said grandly, 'and doubtless it was handled roughly by the men who brought it across the sea.'


He knew I was lying. I did not care.


'There are silversmiths in Wessex who could have made you a pyx,' one of the priests snapped.


'I thought you might want it,' I said, then leaned forward and pulled the plate out of the bishop's hands, 'but if you prefer West Saxon work,' I went on, 'then I can ...'


'Give it back!' Alewold said and, when I made no move to obey, his voice became pleading. 'It is a beautiful thing.' He could see it in his church, or perhaps in his hall, and he wanted it. There was silence as he stared at it. If he had known that the plate existed, if I had told Mildrith of it, then he would have had a, response ready, but as it was he was overwhelmed by desire for the heavy silver. A maid brought in a flagon and he waved her out of the room. She was, I noted, red-haired.


'You had the plate made,' Alewold said sceptically.


'In Dyflin,' I said.

'Is that where you went in the king's ship?' the priest who had snapped at me asked.


'We patrolled the coast,' I said, 'nothing more.'


'The value of the plate …' Alewold began, then stopped.


'… is far and above the debt Mildrith inherited,' I said. That was probably not true, but it was close to the amount, and I could see Alewold did not care. I was going to get what I wanted.


The debt was discharged. I insisted on having that written down, and written three times, and I surprised them by being able to read and so discovering that the first scrap of parchment made no mention of the church yielding their rights to the future produce of my estate, but that was corrected and I let the bishop keep one copy while I took two.


'You will not be arraigned for debt,' the bishop said as he pressed his seal into the wax of the last copy, 'but there is still the matter of Oswald's wergild.'


"I rely on your good and wise ,judgment, bishop,' I said, and I opened the purse hanging at my waist and took out a small lump of gold, making sure he could see there was more gold inside as I placed the small lump on the plate.


'Oswald was a thief.'


'His family will make oaths that he was not,' the priest said.


'And I will bring men who will swear he was,' I said.


A trial relied heavily on oaths, but both sides would bring as many liars as they could muster, and judgment usually went to the better liars or, if both sides were equally convincing, to the side who had the sympathy of the onlookers. It was better, though, to have the sympathy of the judge. Oswald's family would have many supporters around Exanceaster, but gold is much the best argument in a law court.


And so it proved, To Mildrith's astonishment the debt was paid and Oswald's family denied two hundred shillings of wergild. I did not even bother to go to the court, relying on the persuasive power of gold, and sure enough the bishop peremptorily dismissed the demand for wergild, saying it was well known that Oswald had been a thief, and so I won. That did not make me any more popular. To the folk who lived in the Uisc's valley I was a Northumbrian interloper and, worse, it was known I was a pagan, but none dared confront me for I went nowhere beyond the estate without my men and my men went nowhere without their swords.


The harvest was in the storehouses. Now was the time for the Danes to come, when they could be sure to find food for their armies, but neither Guthrum nor Svein crossed the frontier. The winter came instead and we slaughtered the livestock, salted the meat, scraped hides and made calves' foot jelly. I listened for the sound of church bells ringing at an unusual time, for that would have been a sign that the Danes had attacked, but the bells did not ring.


Mildrith prayed that the peace would continue and I, being young and bored, prayed it would not.

She prayed to the Christian god and I took Iseult to the high woods and made a sacrifice to Hoder, Odin and Thor and the gods were listening, for in the dark beneath the gallows tree, where the three spinners make our lives, a red thread was woven into my life. Fate is everything, and just after Yule the spinners brought a royal messenger to Oxton and he, in turn, brought me a summons. It seemed possible that Iseult's dream was true, and that Alfred would give me power for I was ordered to Cippanhamm to see the king. I was summoned to the Witan.


Fiv

i e


Mildrith was excited by the summons. The Witan gave the king advice and her father had never been wealthy or important enough to receive such a summons, and she was overjoyed that the king wanted my presence. The witanegemot, as the meeting was called, was always held on the Feast of St Stephen, the day after Christmas, but my summons required me to be there on the twelfth day of Christmas and that gave Mildrith time to wash clothes for me. They had to be boiled and scrubbed and dried and brushed, and three women did the work and it took three days before Mildrith was satisfied that I would not disgrace her by appearing at Cippanhamm looking like a vagabond. She was not summoned, nor did she expect to accompany me, but she made a point of telling all our neighbours that I was to give counsel to the king.


'You mustn't wear that,' she told me, pointing to my Thor's hammer amulet.


'I always wear it,' I said.


'Then hide it,' she said, 'and don't be belligerent!’


'Belligerent?'


'Listen to what others say,' she said. 'Be humble. And remember to congratulate Odda the Younger.'


'For what?'


'He's to be married. Tell him I pray for them both.' She was happy again, sure that by paying the church its debt I had regained Alfred's favour and her good mood was not even spoilt when I announced I would take Iseult with me. She bridled slightly at the news, then said that it was only right that Iseult should be taken to Alfred.


If she is a queen,' Mildrith said, 'then she belongs in Alfred's court. This isn't a fit place for her.'


She insisted on taking silver coins to the church in Exanceaster where she donated the money to the poor and gave thanks that I had been restored to Alfred's favour. She also thanked God for the good health of our son, Uhtred. I saw little of him, for he was still a baby and I have never had much patience for babies, but the women of Oxton constantly assured me that he was a lusty, strong boy.


We allowed two days for the journey. I took Haesten and six men as an escort for, though the shire-reeve's men patrolled the roads, there were plenty of wild places where outlaws preyed on travellers. We were in mail coats or leather tunics, with swords, spears, axes and shields. We all rode. Iseult had a small black mare I had bought for her, and I had also given her an otter skin cloak, and when we passed through villages, folk would stare at her for she rode like a man, her black hair bound up with a silver chain. They would kneel to her, as well as to me, and call out for alms. She did riot take her maid for I remembered how crowded every tavern and house had been in Exanceaster when the Witan met, and I persuaded Iseult that we would be hard-pressed to find accommodation for ourselves, let alone a maid.


'What does the king want of you?' she asked as we rode up the Uisc valley. Rainwater puddled in the long furrows, gleaming in the winter sunshine, while the woods were glossy with holly leaves and bright with the berries of rowan, thorn, elder and yew.


'Aren't you supposed to tell me that?' I asked her.


She smiled. 'Seeing the future,' she said, 'is like travelling a strange road. Usually you cannot see far ahead, and when you can it is only a glimpse. And my brother doesn't give me dreams about everything.'


'Mildrith thinks the king has forgiven me,' I said.


'Has he?'


I shrugged. 'Perhaps.' I hoped so, not because I wanted Alfred's forgiveness, but because I wanted to be given command of the fleet again. I wanted to be with Leofric. I wanted the wind in my face and the sea rain on my cheek. 'It's odd, though,' I went on, ‘that he didn't want me there for the whole witanegemot.'


'Maybe,' Iseult suggested, 'they discussed religious things at first?'


'He wouldn't want me there for that,' I said.


'So that's it,' she said. 'They talk about their god, but at the end they will talk of the Danes, and that is why he summoned you. He knows he needs you.'


'Or perhaps he just wants me there for the feast,' I suggested.


'The feast?'


'The Twelfth Night feast,' I explained, and that seemed to me the likeliest explanation; that Alfred had decided to forgive me and, to show he now approved of me, would let me attend the winter feast. I secretly hoped that was true, and it was a strange hope. I had been ready to kill Alfred only a few months before, yet now, though I still hated him, I wanted his approval. Such is ambition. If I could not rise with Ragnar then I would make my reputation with Alfred.


'Your road, Uhtred,' Iseult went on, 'is like a bright blade across a dark moor. I see it clearly.'


'And the woman of gold?'


She said nothing to that.


'Is it you?' I asked,


'The sun dimmed when I was born,' she said, 'so I am a woman of darkness and of silver, not of gold.'


'So who is she?'


'Someone far away, Uhtred, far away,' and she would say no more. Perhaps she knew no more, or perhaps she was guessing.


We reached Cippanhamm late on the eleventh day of Yule.


There was still frost on the furrows and the sun was a gross red ball poised low above the tangling black branches as we came to the town's western gate. The city was full, but I was known in the Corncrake tavern where the redheaded whore called Eanflaed worked and she found us shelter in a half-collapsed cattle byre where a score of hounds had been kennelled. The hounds, she said, belonged to Huppa, Ealdorman of Thornsaeta, but she reckoned the animals could survive a night or two in the yard.


'Huppa may not think so,' she said, 'but he can rot in hell.'


'He doesn't pay?' I asked her.


She spat for answer, then looked at me curiously. 'I hear Leofric's here?'


'He is?' I said, heartened by the news.


'I haven't seen him,' she said, 'but someone said he was here. In the royal hall. Maybe Burgweard brought him?' Burgweard was the new fleet commander, the one who wanted his ships to sail two by two in imitation of Christ's disciples. 'Leofric had better not be here,' Eanflaed finished.


'Why not?'


'Because he hasn't come to see me!' she said indignantly, 'that's why.' She was five or six years older than I with a broad face, a high forehead and springy hair. She was popular, so much so that she had a good deal of freedom in the tavern, that owed its profits more to her abilities than to the quality of the ale. I knew she was friendly with Leofric, but I suspected from her tone that she wanted to be more than friends.


'Who's she?' she asked, jerking her head at Iseult


'A queen,' I said.


'That's another name for it, I suppose. How's your wife?'


'Back in Defnascir.'


'You're like all the rest, aren't you?' She shivered. 'If you're cold tonight bring the hounds back in to warm you. I'm off to work.'


We were cold, but I slept well enough and, next morning, the twelfth after Christmas, I left my six men at the Corncrake and took Iseult and Haesten to the king's buildings that lay behind their own palisade to the south of the town where the river curled about the walls. A man expected to attend the witanegemot with retainers, though not usually with a Dane and a Briton, but Iseult wanted to see Alfred and I wanted to please her. Besides, there was the great feast that evening and, though I warned her that Alfred's feasts were poor things, Iseult still wanted to be there. Haesten, with his mail coat and sword, was there to protect her, for I suspected she might not be allowed into the hall while the witanegemot debated and so might have to wait until evening for her chance to glimpse Alfred.


The gatekeeper demanded that we surrender our weapons, a thing I did with a bad grace, but no man, except the king's own household troops, could go armed in Alfred's presence. The day's talking had already begun, the gatekeeper told us, and so we hurried past the stables and past the big new royal chapel with its twin towers. A group of priests was huddled by the main door of the great hall and I recognised Beocca, my father's old priest, among them. I smiled in greeting, but his face, as he came towards us, was drawn and pale. 'You're late,' he said sharply.


'You're not pleased to see me?' I asked sarcastically.


He looked up at me. Beocca, despite his squint, red hair and palsied left hand, had grown into a stern authority. He was now a royal chaplain, confessor and a confidant to the king, and the responsibilities had carved deep lines on his face. 'I prayed,' he said, 'never to see this day.' He made the sign of the cross. 'Who's that?' he stared at Iseult.


'A queen of the Britons,' I said.


'She's what?'


'A queen. She's with me. She wants to see Alfred.'


I don't know whether he believed me, but he seemed not to care. Instead he was distracted, worried, and, because he lived in a strange world of kingly privilege and obsessive piety, I assumed his misery had been caused by some petty theological dispute. He had been Bebbanburg's mass priest when I was a child and, after my father's death, he had fled Northumberland because he could not abide living among the pagan Danes. He had found refuge in Alfred's court where he had become a friend of the king. He was also a friend to me, a man who had preserved the parchments that proved my claim to the lordship of Bebbanburg, but on that twelfth day of Yule he was anything but pleased to see me. He plucked my arm, drawing ma towards the door. 'We must go in,' he said, 'and may God in his mercy protect you.'


'Protect me?'


'God is merciful,' Beocca said, 'and you must pray for that mercy,' and then the guards opened the door and we walked into the great hall. No one stopped Iseult and, indeed, there were a score of other women watching the proceedings from the edge of the hall.


There were also more than a hundred men there, though only forty or fifty comprised the witanegemot, and those thegns and senior churchmen were on chairs and benches set in a half circle in front of the dais where Alfred sat with two priests and with Ælswith, his wife, who was pregnant.

Behind them, draped with a red cloth, was an altar on which stood thick candles and a heavy silver cross, while all about the walls were platforms where, in normal times, folk slept or ate to be out of the fierce draughts. This day, though, the platforms were crammed with the followers of the thegns and noblemen of the Witan and among them, of course, were a lot of priests and monks, for Alfred's court was more like a monastery than a royal hall. Beocca gestured that Iseult and Haesten should join those spectators, then he drew me towards the half circle of privileged advisers.


No one noticed my arrival. It was dark in the hall, for little of the wintry sunshine penetrated the small high windows. Braziers tried to give some warmth, but failed, succeeding only in thickening the smoke in the high rafters. There was a large central hearth, but the fire had been taken away to make room for the witanegemot's circle of stools, chairs and benches. A tall man in a blue cloak was on his feet as I approached. He was talking of the necessity of repairing bridges, and how local thegns were skimping the duty, and he suggested that the king appoint an official to survey the kingdom's roads.

Another man interrupted to complain that such an appointment would encroach on the privileges of the shire ealdormen, and that started a chorus of voices, some for the proposal, most against, arid two priests, seated at a small table beside Alfred's dais, tried to write down all the comments. I recognised Wulfhere, the Ealdorman of Wiltunscir, who yawned prodigiously. Close to him was Alewold, the Bishop of Exanceaster, who was swathed in furs. Still no one noticed me. Beocca had held me back, as if waiting for a lull in the proceedings before finding me a seat. Two servants brought in baskets of logs to feed the braziers, and it was then that, Ælswith saw me and she leaned across and whispered in Alfred's ear. He had been paying close attention to the discussion, but now looked past his council to stare at me.


And a silence fell on that great hall. There had been a murmur of voices when men saw the king being distracted from the argument about bridges and they had all turned to look at me and then there was the silence that was broken by a priest's sneeze and a sudden odd scramble as the men closest to me, those sitting beside the cold stones of the hearth, moved to one side. They were not making way for me, but avoiding me.


Ælswith was smiling and I knew I was in trouble then. My hand instinctively went to my left side, but of course I had no sword so could not touch her hilt for luck. 'We shall talk of bridges later,' Alfred said. He stood. He wore a bronze circlet as a crown and had a fur-trimmed blue robe, matching the gown worn by his wife.


'What is happening?' I asked Beocca.


'You will be silent!' it was Odda the Younger who spoke. He was dressed in his war-glory, in shining mail covered by a black cloak, in high boots and with a red-leather sword belt from which hung his weapons, for Odda, as commander of the king's troops, was permitted to go armed in the royal hall. I looked into his eyes and saw triumph there, the same triumph that was on the Lady Ælswith's pinched face, and I knew I had not been brought to receive the king's favour, but summoned to face my enemies.


I was right. A priest was called from the dark gaggle beside the door. He was a young man with a pouchy, scowling face. He moved briskly, as if the day did not have enough hours to complete his work.


He bowed to the king, then took a parchment from the table where the two clerks sat and came to stand in the centre of the Witan's circle.


'There is an urgent matter,' Alfred said, 'which, with the Witan's permission, we shall deal witch now.' No one there was likely to disagree, so a low murmur offered approval of interrupting the more mundane discussions. Alfred nodded. 'Father Erkenwald will read the charges,' the king said, and took his throne again.


Charges? I was confused like a boar trapped between hounds and spears, and I seemed incapable of movement so I just stood there as Father Erkenwald unrolled the parchment and cleared his throat.


'Uhtred of Oxton,' he said, speaking in a high and precise voice, ‘you are this day charged with the crime of taking a king's ship without our king's consent, and with taking that ship to the country of Cornwalum and there making war against the Britons, again without our king's consent, and this we can prove by oaths,’


There was a small murmur in the hall, a murmur that was stilled when Alfred raised a thin hand.


'You are further charged,' Erkenwald went on, 'with making an alliance with the pagan called Svein, and with his help you murdered Christian folk in Cornwalum, despite those folk living in peace with our king, and this also we can prove by oaths.'


He paused, and now there was complete silence in the hall.


'And you are charged,' Erkenwald's voice was lower now, as though he could scarce believe what he was reading, 'with joining the pagan Svein in an attack on our blessed king's realm by committing vile murder and impious church-robbery at Cynuit.'


This time there was no murmur, but a loud outburst of indignation and Alfred made no move to check it, so Erkenwald had to raise his voice to finish the indictment.


'And this also,' he was shouting now, and men hushed to listen, 'we shall prove by oaths.' He lowered the parchment, gave me a look of pure loathing, then walked back to the edge of the dais.


'He's lying,' I snarled.


'You will have a chance to speak,' a fierce-looking churchman sitting beside Alfred said. He was in monk's robes, but over them he wore a priest's half cape richly embroidered with crosses. He had a full head of white hair and a deep, stern voice.


'Who's that?' I asked Beocca.


'The most holy Æthelred,' Beocca said softly and, seeing I did not recognise the name, 'Archbishop of Contwaraburg, of course.'


The archbishop leaned over to speak with Erkenwald. Ælswith was staring at me. She had never liked me, and now she was watching my destruction and taking a great pleasure from it. Alfred, meanwhile, was studying the roof beams as though he had never noticed them before, and I realised he intended to take no part in this trial, for trial it was. He would let other men prove my guilt, but doubtless he would pronounce sentence, and not just on me, it seemed, because the archbishop scowled. 'Is the second prisoner here?'


'He is held in the stables,' Odda the Younger said.


'He should be here,' the archbishop said indignantly. 'A man has a right to hear his accusers.'


'What other man?' I demanded.


It was Leofric, who was brought into the hall in chains, and there was no outcry against him because men perceived him as my follower. The crime was mine, Leofric had been snared by it, and now he would suffer for it, but he plainly had the sympathy of the men in the hall as he was brought to stand beside me. They knew him, he was of Wessex, while I was a Northumbrian interloper.


He gave me a rueful glance as the guards led him to my side. 'Up to our arses in it,' he muttered.


'Quiet!' Beocca hissed.


'Trust me,' I said.


'Trust you?' Leofric asked bitterly.


But I had glanced at Iseult and she had given me the smallest shake of her head, an indication, I reckoned, that she had seen the outcome of this day and it was good. 'Trust me,' I said again.


'The prisoners will be silent,' the archbishop said.


'Up to our royal arses,' Leofric said quietly.


The archbishop gestured at Father Erkenwald. 'You have oathmakers?' he asked.


'I do, lord.'


'Then let us hear the first.'


Erkenwald gestured to another priest who was standing by the door leading to the passage at the back of the hall. The door was opened and a slight figure in a dark cloak entered. I could not see his face for he wore a hood. He hurried to the front of the dais and there bowed low to the king and went on his knees to the archbishop who held out a hand so that his heavy, jewelled ring could be kissed.

Only then did the man stand, push back his hood and turn to face me.


It was the Ass. Asser, the Welsh monk. He stared at me as yet another priest brought him a gospel-book on which he laid a thin hand. 'I make oath,' he said in accented English, still staring at me, 'that what I say is truth, and God so help me in that endeavour and condemn me to the eternal fires of hell if I dissemble.' He bent and kissed the gospel-book with the tenderness of a man caressing a lover.


'Bastard,' I muttered.


Asser was a good oath-maker. He spoke clearly, describing how I had come to Cornwalum in a ship that bore a beast-head on its prow and another on its stem. He told how I had agreed to help King Peredur, who was being attacked by a neighbour assisted by the pagan Svein, and how I had betrayed Peredur by allying myself with the Dane. 'Together,' Asset said, 'they made great slaughter, and I myself saw a holy priest put to death.'


'You ran like a chicken,' I said to him, 'you couldn't see a thing.'


Asser turned to the king and bowed. I did run, lord king. I am a brother monk, not a warrior, and when Uhtred turned that hillside red with Christian blood I did take flight. I am not proud of that, lord king, and I have earnestly sought God's forgiveness for my cowardice.'


Alfred smiled and the archbishop waved away Asser's remarks as if they were nothing.


'And when you left the slaughter,' Erkenwald asked, 'what then?'


'I watched from a hilltop,' Asset said, 'and I saw Uhtred of Oxton leave that place in the company of the pagan ship. Two ships sailing westwards.'


'They sailed westwards?' Erkenwald asked.


'To the west,' Asser confirmed.


Erkenwald glanced at me. There was silence in the hall as men leaned forward to catch each damning word. 'And what lay to the west?' Erkenwald asked.


'I cannot say,' Asser said. 'But if they did not go to the end of the world then I assume they turned about Cornwalum to go into the Saefern Sea.'


'And you know no more?' Erkenwald asked.


'I know I helped bury the dead,' Asser said, 'and I said prayers for their souls, and I saw the smouldering embers of the burned church, but what Uhtred did when he left the place of slaughter I do not know. I only know he went westwards.'


Alfred was pointedly taking no part in the proceedings, but he plainly liked Asser for, when the Welshman's testimony was done, he beckoned him to the dais and rewarded him with a coin and a moment of private conversation. The Witan talked among themselves, sometimes glancing at me with the curiosity we give to doomed men. The Lady Ælswith, suddenly so gracious, smiled on Asser.


'You have anything to say?' Erkenwald demanded of me when Asser had been dismissed.


'I shall wait,' I said, 'till all your lies are told.'


The truth, of course, was that Asser had told the truth, and told it plainly, clearly and persuasively.

The king's councillors had been impressed, just as they were impressed by Erkenwald's second oathmaker.


It was Steapa Snotor, the warrior who was never far from Odda the Younger's side. His back was straight, his shoulders square and his feral face with its stretched skin was grim. He glanced at me, bowed to the king, then laid a huge hand on the gospel-hook and let Erkenwald lead him through the oath, and he swore to tell the truth on pain of hell's eternal agony, and then he lied. He lied calmly in a flat, toneless voice. He said he had been in charge of the soldiers who guarded the place at Cynuit where the new church was being built, and how two ships had come in the dawn and how warriors streamed from the ships, and how he had fought against them and killed six of them, but there were too many, far too many, and he had been forced to retreat, but he had seen the attackers slaughter the priests and he had heard the pagan leader shout his name as a boast. 'Svein, he was called.'


'And Svein brought two ships?'


Steapa paused and frowned, as though he had trouble counting to two, then nodded. 'He had two ships.'


'He led both?'


'Svein led one of the ships,' Steapa said, then he pointed a finger at me. 'And he led the other.'


The audience seemed to growl and the noise was so threatening that Alfred slapped the arm of his chair and finally stood to restore quiet. Steapa seemed unmoved. He stood, solid as an oak, and though he had not told his tale as convincingly as Brother Asser, there was something very damning in his testimony. It was so matter-of-fact, so unemotionally told, so straightforward, and none of it was true.


'Uhtred led the second ship,' Erkenwald said, 'but did Uhtred join in the killing?'


'Join it?' Steapa asked. 'He led it.' He snarled those words and the men in the hall growled their anger.


Erkenwald turned to the king. 'Lord king,' he said, 'he must die.'


'And his land and property must be forfeited!' Bishop Alewold shouted in such excitement that a whirl of his spittle landed and hissed in the nearest brazier. 'Forfeited to the church!'


The men in the hall thumped their feet on the ground to show their approbation. Ælswith nodded vigorously, but the archbishop clapped his hands for silence. 'He has not spoken,' he reminded Erkenwald, then nodded at me. 'Say your piece,' he ordered curtly.


'Beg for mercy,' Beocca advised me quietly.


When you are up to your arse in shit there is only one thing to do. Attack, and so I admitted I had been at Cynuit, and that admission provoked some gasps in the hall.


'But I was not there last summer,' I went on. 'I was there in the spring, at which time I killed Ubba Lothbrokson, and there are men in this hall who saw me do it! Yet Odda the Younger claimed the credit. He took Ubba's banner, which I laid low, and he took it to his king and he claimed to have killed Ubba. Now, lest I spread the truth, which is that he is a coward and a liar, he would have me murdered by lies.' I pointed to Steapa. 'His lies.'


Steapa spat to show his scorn. Odda the Younger was looking furious, but he said nothing and some men noted it. To be called a coward and a liar is to be invited to do battle, but Odda stayed still as a stump.


'You cannot prove what you say,' Erkenwald said.


'I can prove I killed Ubba,' I said.


'We are not here to discuss such things,' Erkenwald said loftily, 'but to determine whether you broke the king's peace by an impious attack on Cynuit.'


'Then summon my crewmen,' I demanded. 'Bring them here, put them on oath, and ask what they did in the summer.'


I waited, and Erkenwald said nothing. He glanced at the king as if seeking help, but Alfred's eyes were momentarily closed.


'Or are you in so much of a hurry to kill me,' I went on, 'that you dare not wait to hear the truth?'


'I have Steapa's sworn testimony,' Erkenwald said, as if that made any other evidence unnecessary.

He was flustered.


'And you can have my oath,' I said, 'and Leofric's oath, and the oath of a crewman who is here.'


I turned and beckoned Haesten who looked frightened at being summoned, but at Iseult's urging came to stand beside me.


'Put him on oath,' I demanded of Erkenwald.


Erkenwald did not know what to do, but some men in the Witan called out that I had the right to summon oath-makers and the newcomer must be heard, and so a priest brought the gospel book to Haesten. I waved the priest away.


'He will swear on this,' I said, and took out Thor's amulet.


'He's not a Christian?' Erkenwald demanded in astonishment.


'He is a Dane,' I said.


'How can we trust the word of a Dane?' Erkenwald demanded.


'But our lord king does,' I retorted. 'He trusts the word of Guthrum to keep the peace, so why should this Dane not be trusted?'


That provoked some smiles. Many in the Witan thought Alfred far too trusting of Guthrum and I felt the sympathy in the hall move to my side, but then the archbishop intervened to declare that the oath of a pagan was of no value. 'None whatsoever,' he snapped. 'He must stand down.'


'Then put Leofric under oath,' I demanded, 'and then bring our crew here and listen to their testimony.'


'And you will all lie with one tongue,' Erkenwald said, 'and what happened at Cynuit is not the only matter on which you are accused. Do you deny that you sailed in the king's ship? That you went to Cornwalum and there betrayed Peredur and killed his Christian people? Do you deny that Brother Asser told the truth?'


'But what if Peredur's queen were to tell you that Asser lies?' I asked. 'What if she were to tell you that he lies like a hound at the hearth?' Erkenwald stared at me. They all stared at me and I turned and gestured at Iseult who stepped forward, tall and delicate, the silver glinting at her neck and wrists.


'Peredur's queen,' I announced; 'whom I demand that you hear under oath, and thus hear how her husband was planning to join the Danes in an assault on Wessex.'


That was rank nonsense, of course, but it was the best I could invent at that moment, and Iseult, I knew, would swear to its truth. Quite why Svein would fight Peredur if the Briton planned to support him was a dangerously loose plank in the argument, but it did not really matter for I had confused the proceedings so much that no one was sure what to do. Erkenwald was speechless.


Men stood to look at Iseult, who looked calmly back at them, and the king and the archbishop bent their heads together. Ælswith, one hand clapped to her pregnant belly, hissed advice at them. None of them wanted to summon Iseult for fear of what she would say, and Alfred, I suspect, knew that the trial, which had already become mired in lies, could only get worse.


'You're good, earsling,' Leofric muttered, 'you're very good.'


Odda the Younger looked at the king, then at his fellow members of the Witan, and he must have known I was slithering out of his snare for he pulled Steapa to his side. He spoke to him urgently. The king was frowning, the archbishop looked perplexed, Ælswith's blotched face showed fury while Erkenwald seemed helpless. Then Steapa rescued them. 'I do not lie!' he shouted.


He seemed uncertain what to say next, but he had the hall's attention. The king gestured to him, as if inviting him to continue, and Odda the Younger whispered in the big man's ear.


'He says I lie,' Steapa said, pointing at me, 'and I say I do not, and my sword says I do not.' He stopped abruptly, having made what was probably the longest speech of his life, but it was enough.

Feet drummed on the floor and men shouted that Steapa was right, which he was not, but he had reduced the whole tangled morass of lies and accusations to a trial by combat and they all liked that.


The archbishop still looked troubled, but Alfred gestured for silence.


He looked at me. 'Well?' he asked. 'Steapa says his sword will support his truth. Does yours?'


I could have said no. I could have insisted on letting Iseult speak and then allowing the Witan to advise the king which side had spoken the greater truth, but I was ever rash, ever impetuous, and the invitation to fight cut through the whole entanglement. If I fought and won then Leofric and I were innocent of every charge.


I did not even think about losing. I just looked at Steapa. 'My sword,' I told him, 'says I tell the truth, and that you are a stinking bag of wind, a liar from hell, a cheat and a perjurer who deserves death.'


'Up to our arses again,' Leofric said.


Men cheered. They liked a fight to the death, and it was much better entertainment than listening to Alfred's harpist chant the psalms. Alfred hesitated, and I saw, Ælswith look from me to Steapa, and she must have thought him the greater warrior for she leaned forward, touched Alfred's elbow, and whispered urgently.


And the king nodded. 'Granted,' he said. He sounded weary, as if he was dispirited by the lies and the insults. 'You will fight tomorrow. Swords and shields, nothing else.' He held up a hand to stop the cheering. 'My lord Wulfhere?'


'Sire?' Wulfhere struggled to his feet.


'You will arrange the fight. And may God grant victory to the truth.' Alfred stood, pulled his robe about him and left.


And Steapa, for the first time since I had seen him, smiled.


'You're a damned fool,' Leofric told me. He had been released from his chains and allowed to spend the evening with me. Haesten was there, as was Iseult and my men who had been brought from the town. We were lodged in the king's compound, in a cattle byre that stank of dung, but I did not notice the smell. It was Twelfth Night so there was the great feast in the king's hall, but we were left out in the cold, watched there by two of the royal guards.


'Steapa's good,' Leofric warned me.


'I'm good.'


'He's better,' Leofric said bluntly. 'He'll slaughter you.'


'He won't,' Iseult said calmly.


'Damn it, he's good!' Leofric insisted, and I believed him.


'It's that God-damned monk's fault,' I said bitterly. 'He went bleating to Alfred, didn't he?' In truth, Asser had been sent by the King of Dyfed to assure the West Saxons that Dyfed was not planning war, but Asser had taken the opportunity of his embassy to recount the tale of the Eftwyrd and from that it was a small jump to conclude that we had stayed with Svein while he attacked Cynuit. Alfred had no proof of our guilt, but Odda the Younger had seen a chance to destroy me and so persuaded Steapa to lie.


'Now Steapa will kill you,' Leofric grumbled, 'whatever she says.'


Iseult did not bother to answer him. She was using handfuls of grubby straw to clean my mail coat.

The armour had been fetched from the Corncrake tavern and given to me, but I would have to wait till morning to get my weapons, which meant they would not be newly sharpened. Steapa, because he served Odda the Younger, was one of the king's bodyguard, so he would have all night to put an edge on his sword. The royal kitchens had sent us food, though I had no appetite.


'Just take it slow in the morning,' Leofric told me.


'Slow?'


'You fight in a rage,' he said, 'and Steapa's always calm.'


'So better to get in a rage,' I said.


'That's what he wants. He'll fend you off and fend you off and wait till you're tired, then he'll finish you off. It's how he fights.'


Harald told us the same thing. Harald was the shire-reeve of Defnascir, the widower who had summoned me to the court in Exanceaster, but he had also fought alongside us at Cynuit and that makes a bond, and sometime in the dark he splashed through the rain and mud and came into the light of the small fire that lit the cattle shed without warming it. He stopped in the doorway and gazed at me reproachfully.


'Were you with Svein at Cynuit?' he asked.


'No,' I said.


'I didn't think so.' Harald came into the byre and sat by the fire. The two royal guards were at the door and he ignored them, and that was interesting. All of them served Odda, and the young ealdorman would not be pleased to hear that Harald had come to us, yet plainly Harald trusted the two guards not to tell, which suggested that there was unhappiness in Odda's ranks. Harald put a pot of ale on the floor.


'Steapa's sitting at the king's table,' he said.


'So he's eating badly,' I said.


Harald nodded, but did not smile. 'It's not much of a feast,' he admitted. He stared into the fire for a moment, then looked at me. 'How's Mildrith?'


'Well.'


'She is a dear girl,' he said, then glanced at Iseult's dark beauty before staring into the fire again.

'There will be a church service at dawn,' he said, 'and after that you and Steapa will fight.'


'Where?'


'In a field on the other side of the river,' he said, then pushed the pot of ale towards me. 'He's left-handed.'


I could not remember fighting against a man who held his sword in his left hand, but nor could I see a disadvantage in it. We would both have our shields facing the other man's shield instead of his weapon, but that would be a problem to both of us. I shrugged.


'He's used to it,' Harald explained, 'and you're not. And he wears mail down to here,' he touched his calf, 'and he has an iron strip on his left boot.'


'Because that's his vulnerable foot?'


'He plants it forward,' Harald said, 'inviting attack, then chops at your sword arm.'


'So he's a hard man to kill,' I said mildly.


'No one's done it yet,' Harald said gloomily.


'You don't like him?'


He did not answer at first but drank ale then passed the pot to Leofric. 'I like the old man,' he said, meaning Odda the Elder. 'He's foul-tempered, but he's fair enough. But the son?' he shook his head sadly. 'I think the son is untested. Steapa? I don't dislike him, but he's like a hound. He only knows how to kill.'


I stared into the feeble fire, looking for a sign from the gods in the small flames, but none came, or none that I saw.


'He must be worried though,' Leofric said.


'Steapa?' Harald asked, 'why should he be worried?'


'Uhtred killed Ubba.'


Harald shook his head. 'Steapa doesn't think enough to be worried. He just knows he'll kill Uhtred tomorrow.'


I thought back to the fight with Ubba. He had been a great warrior, with a reputation that glowed wherever Norsemen sailed, and I had killed him, but the truth was that he had put a foot into the spilled guts of a dying man and slipped. His leg had shot sideways, he had lost his balance and I had managed to cut the tendons in his arm. I touched the hammer amulet and thought that the gods had sent me a sign after all.


'An iron strip in his boot?' I asked.


Harald nodded. 'He doesn't care how much you attack him. He knows you're coming from his left and he'll block most of your attacks with his sword. Big sword, heavy thing. But some blows will get by and he won't care. You'll waste them on iron. Heavy mail, helmet, hoot, doesn't matter. It'll be like hitting an oak tree, and after a while you'll make a mistake. He'll be bruised and you'll lie dead.'


He was right, I thought. Striking an armoured man with a sword rarely achieved much except to make a bruise because the edge would be stopped by mail or helmet. Mail cannot be chopped open by a sword, which was why so many men carried axes into battle, but the rules of trial by combat said the fight had to be with swords. A sword lunge would pierce mail, but Steapa was not going to make himself an easy target for a lunge.


'Is he quick?' I asked.


'Quick enough,' Harald said, then shrugged. 'Not as quick as you,' he added grudgingly, 'but he isn't slow.'


'What does the money say?' Leofric asked, though he surely knew the answer.


'No one's wagering a penny on Uhtred,' Harald said.


'You should,' I retorted.


He smiled at that, but I knew he would not take the advice. 'The big money,' he said, 'is what Odda will give Steapa when he kills you. A hundred shillings.'


'Uhtred's not worth it,' Leofric said with rough humour.


'Why does he want me dead so badly?' I wondered aloud. It could not be Mildrith, I thought, and the argument over who had killed Ubba was long in the past, yet still Odda the Younger conspired against me.


Harald paused a long time before answering. He had his bald head bowed and I thought he was in prayer, but then he looked up. ‘You threaten him,' he said quietly.


'I haven't even seen him for months,' I protested, 'so how do I threaten him?'


Harald paused again, choosing his words carefully. 'The king is frequently ill,' he said after the pause, 'and who can say how long he will live? And if, God forbid, he should die soon, then the Witan will not choose his infant son to be king. They'll choose a nobleman with a reputation made on the battlefield. They'll choose a man who can stand up to the Danes.'


'Odda?' I laughed at the thought of Odda as king.


'Who else?' Harald asked. 'But if you were to stand before the Witan and swear an oath to the truth about the battle where Ubba died, they might not choose him. So you threaten him, and he fears you because of that.'


'So now he's paying Steapa to chop you to bits,' Leofric added gloomily.


Harald left. He was a decent man, honest and hardworking, and he had taken a risk by coming to see me, and I had been poor company for I did not appreciate the gesture he made. It was plain he thought I must die in the morning, and he had done his best to prepare me for the fight, but despite Iseult's confident prediction that I would live I did not sleep well. I was worried, and it was cold. The rain turned to sleet in the night and the wind whipped into the byre. By dawn the wind and sleet had stopped and instead there was a mist shrouding the buildings and icy water dripping from the mossy thatch. I made a poor breakfast of damp bread and it was while I was eating that Father Beocca came and said Alfred wished to speak with me.


I was sour. 'You mean he wants to pray with me?'


'He wants to speak with you,' Beocca insisted and, when I did not move, he stamped his lamed foot.

‘It is not a request, Uhtred. It is a royal order!'


I put on my mail, not because it was time to arm for the fight, but because its leather lining offered some warmth on a cold morning. The mail was not very clean, despite Iseult's efforts. Most men wore their hair short, but I liked the Danish way of leaving it long and so I tied it behind with a lace and Iseult plucked the straw scraps from it.


'We must hurry,' Beocca said and I followed him through the mud past the great hall and the newly built church to some smaller buildings made of timber that had still not weathered grey. Alfred's father had used Cippanhamm as a hunting lodge, but Alfred was expanding it. The church had been his first new building, and he had built that even before he repaired and extended the palisade, and that was an indication of his priorities. Even now, when the nobility of Wessex was gathered just a day's march from the Danes, there seemed to be more churchmen than soldiers in the place, and that was another indication of how Alfred thought to protect his realm.


'The king is gracious,' Beocca hissed at me as we went through a door, 'so be humble.'


Beocca knocked on another door, did not wait for an answer, but gashed it open and indicated I should step inside. He did not follow me, but closed the door, leaving me in a gloomy half darkness.


A pair of beeswax candles flickered on an altar and by their light I saw two men kneeling in front of the plain wooden cross that stood between the candles. The men had their backs to me, but I recognised Alfred by his fur-trimmed blue cloak. The second man was a monk. They were both praying silently and I waited. The room was small, evidently a private chapel, and its only furniture was the draped altar and a kneeling stool on which was a closed book.


'In the name of the Father,' Alfred broke the silence.


'And of the Son,' the monk said, and he spoke English with an accent and I recognised the voice of the Ass.


'And of the Holy Ghost,' Alfred concluded, 'amen.'


'Amen,' Asser echoed, and both men stood, their faces suffused with the joy of devout Christians who have said their prayers well, and Alfred blinked as though he were surprised to see me, though he must have heard Beocca's knocking and the sound of the door opening and closing.


'I trust you slept well, Uhtred?' he said.


'I trust you did, lord.'


'The pains kept me awake,' Alfred said, touching his belly, then he went to one side of the room and hauled open a big pair of wooden shutters, flooding the chapel with a wan, misty light. The window looked onto a courtyard and I was aware of men out there. The king shivered, for it was freezing in the chapel.


'It is Saint Cedd's feast day,' he told me.


I said nothing.


You have heard of Saint Cedd?' he asked me and, when my silence betrayed ignorance, he smiled indulgently. 'He was an East Anglian, am I not right, brother?'


'The most blessed Cedd was indeed an East Angle, lord,' Asser confirmed.


'And his mission was in Lundene,' Alfred went on, 'but he concluded his days at Lindisfarena. You must know that house, Uhtred?'


'I know it, lord,' I said. The island was a short ride front Bebbanburg and not so long before I had ridden to its monastery with Earl Ragnar and watched the monks die beneath Danish swords. 'I know it well,' I added.


'So Cedd is famous in your homeland?'


'I've not heard of him, lord.'


'I think of him as a symbol,' Alfred said, 'a man who was born in East Anglia, did his life's work in Mercia and died in Northumbria.' He brought his long, pale hands together so that the fingers embraced. 'The Saxons of England, Uhtred, gathered together before God.'


'And united in joyful prayer with the Britons,' Asser added piously.


'I beseech Almighty God for that happy outcome,' the king said, smiling at me, and by now I recognised what he was saying. He stood there, looking so humble, with no crown, no great necklace, no arm rings, nothing but a small garnet brooch holding the cloak at his neck, and he spoke of a happy outcome, but what he was really seeing was the Saxon people gathered under one king. A king of Wessex. Alfred's piety hid a monstrous ambition.


'We must learn from the saints,' Alfred told me. 'Their lives are a guide to the darkness that surrounds us, and Saint Cedd's holy example teaches that we must be united, so I am loathe to shed Saxon blood on Saint Cedd's feast day.'


'There need be no bloodshed, lord,' I said.


'I am pleased to hear it,' Alfred interjected.


'If the charges against me are retracted.'


The smile went from his face and he walked to the window and stared into the misty courtyard and I looked where he looked and saw that a small display was being mounted for my benefit.


Steapa was being armoured. Two men were dropping a massive mail coat over his wide shoulders, while a third stood by with an outsized shield and a monstrous sword.


'I talked with Steapa last night,' the king said, turning from the window, 'and he told me there was a mist when Svein attacked at Cynuit. A morning mist like this one.' He waved at the whiteness sifting into the chapel.


'I wouldn't know, lord,' I said.


'So it is possible,' the king went on, 'that Steapa was mistaken when he thought he saw you.' I almost smiled. The king knew Steapa had lied, though he would not say as much. 'Father Willibald also spoke to the crew of the Eftwyrd,' the king went on, 'and not one of them confirmed Steapa's tale.'


The crew was still in Hamtun, so Willibald's report must have come from there and that meant the king had known I was innocent of the slaughter at Cynuit even before I was charged. 'So I was falsely arraigned?' I said harshly.


'You were accused,' the king corrected me, 'and accusations must be proven or refuted.'


'Or withdrawn.'


‘I can withdraw the charges,' Alfred agreed. Steapa, outside the window, was making sure his mail coat was seated comfortably by swinging his great sword. And it was great. It was huge, a hammer of a blade. Then the king half-closed the shutter, hiding Steapa. 'I can withdraw the accusation about Cynuit,' he said, 'but I do not think Brother Asser lied to us.'


'I have a queen,' I said, 'who says he does.'


'A shadow queen,' Asser hissed, 'a pagan! A sorceressl' He looked at Alfred. 'She is evil, lord,' he said, 'a witch! Maleficos non patieris vivere!'


'Thou shalt not permit a witch to live,' Alfred translated for my benefit. 'That is God's commandment, Uhtred, from the holy scriptures.'


'Your answer to the truth,' I sneered, 'is to threaten a woman with death?'


Alfred flinched at that. 'Brother Asser is a good Christian,' he said vehemently, 'and he tells the truth. You went to war without my orders. You used my ship, my men, and you behaved treacherously!

You are the liar, Uhtred, and you are the cheat!' He spoke angrily, but managed to control his anger. 'It is my belief,' he went on, 'that you have paid your debt to the church with goods stolen from other good Christians.'


'Not true,' I said harshly. I had paid the debt with goods stolen from a Dane.


'So resume the debt,' the king said, 'and we shall have no death on this blessed day of Saint Cedd.'


I was being offered life. Alfred waited for my response, smiling. He was sure I would accept his offer because to him it seemed reasonable. He had no love for warriors, weapons and killing. Fate decreed that he must spend his reign fighting, but it was not to his taste. He wanted to civilise Wessex, to give it piety and order, and two men fighting to the death on a winter's morning was not his idea of a well-run kingdom.


But I hated Alfred. I hated him for humiliating me at Exanceaster when he had made me wear a penitent's robe and crawl on my knees. Nor did I think of him as my king. He was a West Saxon and I was a Northumbrian, and I reckoned so long as he was king then Wessex had small chance of surviving. He believed God would protect him from the Danes, while I believed they had to be defeated by swords.


I also had an idea how to defeat Steapa, just an idea, and I had no wish to take on a debt I had already paid, and I was young and I was foolish and I was arrogant and I was never able to resist a stupid impulse.


'Everything I have said is the truth,' I lied, 'and I would defend that truth with my sword.'


Alfred flinched from my tone. 'Are you saying Brother Asser lied?' he demanded.


'He twists truth,' I said, 'like a woman wrings a hen's neck.'


The king pulled the shutter open, showing me the mighty Steapa in his gleaming war glory. 'You really want to die?' he asked me.


'I want to fight for the truth, lord king,' I said stubbornly.


'Then you are a fool,' Alfred said, his anger showing again. 'You are a liar, a fool and a sinner.' He strode past me, pulled open the door and shouted at a servant to tell Ealdorman Wulfhere that the fight was to take place after all. 'Go,' he added to me, 'and may your soul receive its just reward.'


Wulfhere had been charged with arranging the fight, but there was a delay because the ealdorman had disappeared. The town was searched, the royal buildings were searched, but there was no sign of him until a stable slave nervously reported that Wulfhere and his men had ridden away from Cippanhamm before dawn. No one knew why, though some surmised that Wulfhere wanted no part in a trial by combat, which made little sense to me for the Ealdorman had never struck me as a squeamish man. Ealdorman Huppa of Thornsata was appointed to replace him, and so it was close to midday when my swords were brought to me and we were escorted down to the meadow that lay across the bridge which led from the town's eastern gate. A huge crowd had gathered on the river's far bank.

There were cripples, beggars, jugglers, women selling pies, dozens of priests, excited children and, of course, the assembled warriors of the West Saxon nobility, all of them in Cippanhamm for the meeting of the Witan, and all eager to see Steapa Snotor show off his renowned skill.


'You're a damned fool,' Leofric said to me.


'Because I insisted on fighting?'


'You could have walked away.'


'And men would have called me a coward,' I said. And that too was the truth, that a man cannot step back from a fight and stay a man. We make much in this life if we are able. We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation. I could not walk away.


Alfred did not come to the fight. Instead, with the pregnant Ælswith and their two children, and escorted by a score of guards and as many priests and courtiers, he had ridden westwards. He was accompanying Brother Asser on the start of the monk's return journey to Dyfed, and the king was making a point that he preferred the company of the British churchman to watching two of his warriors fight like snarling hounds. But no one else in Wessex wanted to miss the battle. They were eager for it, but Huppa wanted everything to be orderly and so he insisted that the crowd push back from the damp ground beside the river to give us space. Eventually the folk were massed on a green bank overlooking the trampled grass and Huppa went to Steapa to enquire if he was ready.


He was ready. His mail shone in the weak sunlight. His helmet was glistening. His shield was a huge thing, bossed and rimmed with iron, a shield that must have weighed as much as a sack of grain and was a weapon in itself if he managed to hit me with it, but his chief weapon was his great sword that was longer and heavier than any I had seen.


Huppa, trailed by two guards, came to me. His feet squelched in the grass and I thought that the ground would prove treacherous.


'Uhtred of Oxton,' he said, 'are you ready?'


'My name,' I said, 'is Uhtred of Bebbanburg.'


'Are you ready?' he demanded, ignoring my correction.


'No,' I said.


A murmur went through the folk nearest to me, and the murmur spread, and after a few heartbeats the whole crowd was jeering me. They thought me a coward, and that thought was reinforced when I dropped my shield and sword and made Leofric help as I stripped off the heavy coat of mail. Odda the Younger, standing beside his champion, was laughing.


'What are you doing?' Leofric asked me.


'I hope you put money on me,' I said.


'Of course I didn't.'


'Are you refusing to fight?' Huppa asked me.


'No,' I said, and when I was stripped of my armour I took Serpent-Breath back from Leofric. Just Serpent-Breath. No helmet, no shield, just my good sword. Now I was unburdened. The ground was heavy, Steapa was armoured, but I was light and I was fast and I was ready.


'I'm ready,' I told Huppa.


He went to the meadow's centre, raised an arm, dropped it, and the crowd cheered.


I kissed the hammer around my neck, trusted my soul to the great god Thor and walked forwards.


Steapa came steadily towards me, shield up, sword held out to his left. There was no trace of concern in his eyes. He was a workman at his trade and I wondered how many men he had killed, and he must have thought my death would be easy for I had no protection, not even a shield. And so we walked towards each other until, a dozen paces from him, I ran. I ran at him, feinted right towards his sword and then broke hard to my left, still running, going past him now and I was aware of the huge blade swinging fast after me as he turned, but then I was behind him, he was still turning and I dropped to my knees, ducked, heard the blade go over my head and I was up again, lunging.


The sword pierced his mail, drew blood from just behind his left shoulder, but he was quicker than I had expected and had already checked that first great swing and was bringing the sword back and his turn pulled Serpent-Breath free. I had scratched him.


I danced back two paces. I went left again and he charged me, hoping to crush me with the weight of his shield, but I ran back to the right, tending off the sword with Serpent-Breath and the crack of the blades was like the bell of doomsday, and I lunged again, this time aiming at his waist, but he stepped hack quickly. I kept going to the right, my arm jarred by the clash of the swords. I went fast, making him turn, and I feinted a lunge, brought him forward and went back to the left. The ground was boggy.

I feared slipping, but speed was my weapon. I had to keep him turning, keep him swinging into empty air, and snatch what chances I could to use Serpent-Breath's point. Bleed him enough, I thought, and he would tire, but he guessed my tactics and started making short rushes to frustrate me, and each rush would be accompanied by the hiss of that huge sword. He wanted to make me parry and hoped he could break Serpent-Breath when the blades met. I feared the same. She was well made, but even the best sword can break.


He forced me back, trying to crowd me against the spectators on the bank so he could hack me to pieces in front of them. I let him drive me, then dodged to my right where my left foot slipped and I went down on that knee and the crowd, close behind me now, took in a great breath and a woman screamed because Steapa's huge sword was swinging like an axe onto my neck, only I had not slipped, merely pretended to, and I pushed off with my right foot, came out from under the blow and around his right flank, and he thrust the shield out, catching my shoulder with the rim and I knew I would have a bruise there, but I also had a heartbeat of opportunity and I darted Serpent-Breath forward and her point punctured his mail again to scrape against the ribs of his back and he roared as he turned, wrenching my blade free of his mail, but I was already going backwards.


I stopped ten paces away. He stopped too and watched me. There was a slight puzzlement on his big face now. There was still no worry there, just puzzlement. He pushed his left foot forward, as Harald had warned me, and he was hoping I would attack it and he would rely on the hidden iron strip in the boot to protect him while he thumped and hacked and bludgeoned me to death. I smiled at him and threw Serpent-Breath from my right hand into my left and held her there, and that was a new puzzle for

him. Some men could fight with either hand, and perhaps I was one of them? He drew his foot back.


'Why do they call you Steapa Snotor?' I asked, 'you're not clever. You've got the brains of an addled egg.'


I was trying to enrage him and hoped that anger would make him careless, but my insult bounced off him. Instead of rushing me in fury he came slowly, watching the sword in my left hand, and the men on the hill called for him to kill me and I suddenly ran at him, broke right and he swung at me a little late, thinking I was going to go left at the last moment and I swept Serpent-Breath back and she caught his sword arm and I could feel her blade scraping through the rings of his mail, but she did not slice through them and then I was away from him and put her back into my right hand, turned, charged him and swerved away at the last moment so that his massive swing missed me by a yard.


He was still puzzled. This was like a bull-baiting and he was the bull, and his problem was to get me in a place where he could use his greater strength and weight. I was the dog, and my job was to lure him, tease him and bite him until he weakened. He had thought I would come with mail and shield and we would batter each other for a few moments until my strength faded and he could drive me to the ground with massive blows and chop me to scraps with the big sword, but so far his blade had not touched me. But nor had I weakened him. My two cuts had drawn blood, but they were mere scratches. So now he came forward again, hoping to herd me hack to the river.


A woman screamed from the top of the bank, and I assumed she was trying to encourage him, and the screaming grew louder and I just went back faster, making Steapa lumber forward, but I had slipped away to his right and was coming back at him, making him turn, and then he suddenly stopped and stared past me and his shield went down and his sword dropped too, and all I had to do was lunge.


He was there for the killing. I could thrust Serpent-Breath into his chest or throat, or ram her into his belly, but I did none of those things. Steapa was no fool at fighting and I guessed he was luring me and I did not take the bait. If I lunged, I thought, he would crush me between his shield and sword. He wanted me to think him defenceless so that I could come into range of his weapons, but instead I stopped and spread my arms, inviting him to attack me as he was inviting me to attack him. .


But he ignored me. He just stared past my shoulder. And the woman's screaming was shrill now and there were men shouting, and Leofric was yelling my name, and the spectators were no longer watching us, but running in panic.


So I turned my back on Steapa and looked towards the town on its hill that was cradled by the river's bend.


And I saw that Cippanhamm was burning. Smoke was darkening the winter sky and the horizon was filled with men, mounted men, men with swords and axes and shields and spears and banners, and more horsemen were coming from the eastern gate to thunder across the bridge.


Because all Alfred's prayers had failed and the Danes had come to Wessex.


Steapa recovered his wits before I did. He stared open-mouthed at the Danes crossing the bridge and then just ran towards his master, Odda the Younger, who was shouting for his horses. The Danes were spreading out from the bridge, galloping across the meadow with drawn swords and levelled spears. Smoke poured into the low wintry clouds from the burning town, Some of the king's buildings were alight. A riderless horse, stirrups flapping, galloped across the grass, then Leofric grabbed my elbow and pulled me northwards beside the river. Most of the folk had gone south and the Danes had followed them, so north seemed to offer more safety. Iseult had my mail coat and I took it from her, leaving her to carry Wasp-Sting, and behind us the screaming rose as the Danes chopped into the panicked mass. Folk scattered. Escaping horsemen thumped past us, the hooves throwing up spadefuls of damp earth and grass with every step. I saw Odda the Younger swerve away with three other horsemen. Harald, the shire-reeve, was one of them, but I could not see Steapa and for a moment I feared the big man was looking for me. Then I forgot him as a band of Danes turned north in pursuit of Odda.


'Where are our horses?' I shouted at Leofric, who looked bemused and I remembered he had not travelled to Cippanhamm with me. The beasts were probably still in the yard behind the Corncrake tavern, which meant they were lost.


There was a fallen willow in a stand of leafless alders by the river and we paused there for breath, hidden by the willow's trunk. I pulled on the mail coat, buckled on my swords and took my helmet and shield from Leofric. 'Where's Haesten?' I asked.


‘He ran,' Leofric said curtly. So had the rest of my men. They had joined the panic and were gone southwards. Leofric pointed northwards.


'Trouble,' he said curtly. There was a score of Danes riding down out bank of the river, blocking our escape, but they were still some distance away, while the men pursuing Odda had vanished, so Leofric led us across the water meadow to a tangle of thorns, alders, nettles and ivy. At its centre was an old wattle hut, perhaps a herdsman's shelter, and though the hut had half collapsed it offered a better hiding place than the willow and so the three of us plunged into the nettles and crouched behind the rotting timbers.


A bell was ringing in the town. It sounded like the slow tolling which announced a funeral. It stopped abruptly, started again and then finally ended. A horn sounded. A dozen horsemen galloped close to our hiding place and all had black cloaks and black painted shields, the marks of Guthrum's warriors.


Six

i


Guthrum. Guthrum the Unlucky. He called himself King of East Anglia, but he wanted to be King of Wessex and this was his third attempt to take the country and this time, I thought, his luck had turned. While Alfred had been celebrating the twelfth night of Yule, and while the Witan met to discuss the maintenance of bridges and the punishment of malefactors, Guthrum had marched. The army of the Danes was in Wessex, Cippanhamm had fallen, and the great men of Alfred's kingdom had been surprised, scattered or slaughtered. The horn sounded again and the dozen blackcloaked horsemen turned and rode towards the sound.


'We should have known the Danes were coming,' I said angrily.


'You always said they would,' Leofric said.


'Didn't Alfred have spies at Gleawecestre?'


'He had priests praying here instead,' Leofric said bitterly, 'and he trusted Guthrum's truce.'


I touched my hammer amulet. I had taken it from a boy in Eoferwic. I had been a boy myself then, newly captured by the Danes, and my opponent had fought me in a whirl of fists and feet and I had hammered him down into the riverbank and taken his amulet. I still have it. I touch it often, reminding Thor that I live, but that day I touched it because I thought of Ragnar. The hostages would be dead, and was that why Wulfhere had ridden away at dawn? But how could he have known the Danes were coming? If Wulfhere had known then Alfred would have known and the West Saxon forces would have been ready. None of it made sense, except that Guthrum had again attacked during a truce and the last time he had broken a truce he had showed that he was willing to sacrifice the hostages held to prevent just such an attack. it seemed certain he had done it again and so Ragnar would be dead and my world was diminished.


So many dead. There were corpses in the meadow between our hiding place and the river, and still the slaughter went on. Some of the Saxons had run back towards the town, discovered the bridge was guarded and tried to escape northwards and we watched them being ridden down by the Danes. Three men tried to resist, standing in a tight group with swords ready, but a Dane gave a great whoop and charged them with his horse, and his spear went through one man's mail, crushing his chest and the other two were thrown aside by the horse's weight and immediately more Danes closed on them, swords and axes rose, and the horsemen spurred on.


A girl screamed and ran in terrified circles until a Dane, long hair flying, leaned from his saddle and pulled her dress up over her head so she was blind and half naked. She staggered in the damp grass and a half-dozen Danes laughed at her, then one slapped her bare rump with his sword and another dragged her southwards, her screams muffled by the entangling dress. Iseult was shivering and I put a mail-clad arm around her shoulders.


I could have joined the Danes in the meadow. I spoke their language and, with my long hair and my arm rings, I looked like a Dane. But Haesten was somewhere in Cippanhamm and he might betray me, and Guthrum had no great love for me, and even if I survived then it would go hard with Leofric and Iseult. These Danes were in a rampant mood, flushed by their easy success and if a dozen decided they wanted Iseult then they would take her whether they thought I was a Dane or not. They were hunting in packs and so it was best to stay hidden until the frenzy had passed. Across the river, at the top of the low hill on which Cippanhamm was built, I could see the town's largest church burning. The thatched roof was whirling into the sky in great ribbons of flame and plumes of spark-riddled smoke.


'What in God's name were you doing back there?' Leofric asked me.


'Back there?' his question confused me.


'Dancing around Steapa like a gnat! He could have endured that all day!'


'I wounded him,' I said, 'twice.'


'Wounded him? Sweet Christ, he's hurt himself worse when he was shaving!'


'Doesn't matter now, does it?' I said. I guessed Steapa was dead by now. Or perhaps he had escaped. I did not know. None of us knew what was happening except that the Danes had come. And Mildrith? My son? They were far away, and presumably they would receive warning of the Danish attack, but I had no doubt that the Danes would keep going deep into Wessex and there was nothing I could do to protect Oxton. I had no horse, no men, and no chance of reaching the south coast before Guthrum's mounted soldiers.


I watched a Dane ride past with a girl across his saddle. 'What happened to that Danish girl you took home?' I asked Leofric, 'the one we captured off Wales?'


'She's still in Hamtun,' he said, 'and now that I'm not there she's probably in someone else's bed.'


'Probably? Certainly.'


'Then the bastard's welcome to her,' he said. 'She cries a lot.’


'Mildrith does that,' I said and then, after a pause, 'Eanflaed was angry with you.'


'Eanflaed? Angry with me! Why?'


'Because you didn't go to see her.'


'How could I? I was in chains.' He looked satisfied that the whore had asked after him. 'Eanflaed doesn't cry, does she?'


'Not that I've seen.'


'Good girl that. I reckon she'd like Hamtun.'


If Hamtun still existed. Had a Danish fleet come from Lundene? Was Svein attacking across the Saefern Sea? I knew nothing except that Wessex was suffering chaos and defeat. It began to rain again, a thin winter's rain, cold and stinging. Iseult crouched lower and I sheltered her with my shield. Most of the folk who had gathered to watch the fight by the river had fled south and only a handful had come our way, which meant there were fewer Danes near our hiding place, and those that were in the northern river meadows were now gathering their spoils. They stripped corpses of weapons, belts, mail, clothes, anything of value. A few Saxon men had survived, but they were being led away with the children and younger women to be sold as slaves. The old were killed. A wounded man was crawling on hands and knees and a dozen Danes tormented him like cats playing with an injured sparrow, nicking him with swords and spears, bleeding him to a slow death. Haesten was one of the tormentors.


'I always liked Haesten,' I said sadly.


'He's a Dane,' Leofric said scornfully.


'I still liked him.'


'You kept him alive,' Leofric said, 'and now he's gone back to his own. You should have killed him.'


I watched as Haesten kicked the wounded man who called out in agony, begging to be killed, but the group of young men went on jabbing him, laughing, and the first ravens came. I have often wondered if ravens smell blood, for the sky can be clear of them all day, but when a man dies they come from nowhere on their shining black wings. Perhaps Odin sends them, for the ravens are his birds, and now they flapped down to start feasting on eyes and lips, the first course of every raven feast. The dogs and foxes would soon follow.


'The end of Wessex,' Leofric said sadly.


'The end of England,' I said.


'What do we do?' Iseult asked.


There was no answer from me. Ragnar must be dead, which meant I had no refuge among the Danes, and Alfred was probably dead or else a fugitive, and my duty now was to my son. He was only a baby, but he was my son and he carried my name. Bebbanburg would be his if I could take it back, and if I could not take it back then it would be his duty to recapture the stronghold, and so the name Uhtred of Bebbanburg would go on till the last weltering chaos of the dying world.


We must get to Hamtun,' Leofric said, 'find the crew.'


Except the Danes would surely be there already? Or else on their way. They knew where the power of Wessex lay, where the great lords had their halls, where the soldiers gathered, and Guthrum would be sending men to burn and kill and so disarm the Saxons' last kingdom.


'We need food,' I said, 'food and warmth.'


'Light a fire here,' Leofric grumbled, 'and we're dead.'


So we waited. The small rain turned to sleet. Haesten and his new companions, now that their victim was dead, wandered away, leaving the meadow empty but for the corpses and their attendant ravens. And still we waited, but Iseult, who was as thin as Alfred, was shivering uncontrollably and so, in the late afternoon, I took off my helmet and unbound my hair so it hung loose.


'What are you doing?' Leofric asked.


'For the moment,' I said, 'we're Danes. Just keep your mouth shut.'


I led them towards the town. I would have preferred to wait until dark, but Iseult was too cold to wait longer, and I just hoped the Danes had calmed down. I might look like a Dane, but it was still dangerous. Haesten might see me, and if he told others how I had ambushed the Danish ship off Dyfed then I could expect nothing but a slow death. So we went nervously, stepping past bloodied bodies along the riverside path. The ravens protested as we approached, flapped indignantly into the winter willows, and returned to their feast when we had passed. There were more corpses piled by the bridge where the young folk captured for slavery were being made to dig a grave. The Danes guarding them were drunk and none challenged us as we went across the wooden span and under the gate arch that was still hung with holly and ivy in celebration of Christmas.


The fires were dying now, damped by rain or else extinguished by the Danes who were ransacking houses and churches. I stayed in the narrowest alleys, edging past a smithy, a hide-dealer's shop and a place where pots had been sold. Our boots crunched through the pottery shards. A young Dane was vomiting in the alley's entrance and he told me that Guthrum was in the royal compound where there would be a feast that night. He straightened up, gasping for breath, but was sober enough to offer me a bag of coins for Iseult. There were women screaming or sobbing in houses and their noise was making Leofric angry, but I told him to stay quiet. Two of us could not free Cippanhamm, and if the world had been turned upside down and it had been a West Saxon army capturing a Danish town it would have sounded no different.


'Alfred wouldn't allow it,' Leofric said sullenly.


'You'd do it anyway,' I said. 'You've done it.'


I wanted news, but none of the Danes in the street made any sense. They had come from Gleawecestre, leaving long before dawn, they had captured Cippanhamm and now they wanted to enjoy whatever the town offered. The big church had burned, but men were raking through the smoking embers looking for silver. For lack of anywhere else to go we climbed the hill to the Corncrake tavern where we always drank and found Eanflaed, the redheaded whore, being held on a table by two young Danes while three others, not one of them more than seventeen or eighteen, took turns to rape her.

Another dozen Danes were drinking peaceably enough, taking scant notice of the rape.


'You want her,' one-of the young men said, 'you'll have to wait.'


'I want her now,' I said.


'Then you can jump in the shit-pit,' he said. He was drunk. He had a wispy beard and insolent eyes. 'You can jump in the shit-pit,' he said again, evidently liking the insult, then pointed to Iseult,

'and I'll have her while you drown.'


I hit him, breaking his nose and spattering his face with blood, and while he gasped I kicked him hard between the legs. He went down, whimpering, and I hit a second man in the belly while Leofric loosed all his day's frustration in a savage attack on another. The two who had been holding Eanflaed turned on us and one of them squealed when Eanflaed grabbed his hair and hooked sharp fingernails into his eyes. Leofric's opponent was on the floor and he stamped on the boy's throat and I head-slapped my boy until I had him by the door, then I thumped another in the ribs, rescued Eanflaed's victim and broke his jaw, then went back to the lad who had threatened to rape Iseult. I ripped a silver loop from his ear, took off his one arm ring and stole his pouch that clinked with coins. I dropped the silver into Eanflaed's lap, then kicked the groaning man between the legs, did it again, and hauled him out into the street.


'Go jump in a shit-pit,' I told him, then slammed the door. The other Danes, still drinking on the tavern's far side, had watched the fight with amusement, and now gave us ironic applause.


'Bastards,' Eanflaed said, evidently talking of the men we had driven away. 'I'm sore as hell. What are you two doing here?'


'They think we're Danes,' I said.


'We need food,' Leofric said.


'They've had most of it,' Eanflaed said, jerking her head at the seated Danes, 'but there might be something left in the back.' She tied her girdle. 'Edwulf's dead.' Edwulf had owned the tavern. 'And thanks for helping me, you spavined bastards!' She shouted this at the Danes, who did not understand her and just laughed at her, then she went towards the back room to find us food, but one of the men held out a hand to stop her.


'Where are you going?' he asked her in Danish.


'She's going past you,' I called.


'I want ale,' he said, 'and you? Who are you?'


'I'm the man who's going to cut your throat if you stop her fetching food,' I said.


'Quiet, quiet!' an older man said, then frowned at me. 'Don't I know you?'


'I was with Guthrum at Readingum,' I said, 'and at Werham.'


'That must be it. He's done better this time, eh?'


'He's done better,' I agreed.


The man pointed at Iseult. 'Yours?'


'Not for sale.'


'Just asking, friend, just asking.'


Eanflaed brought us stale bread, cold pork, wrinkled apples and a rock-hard cheese in which red worms writhed. The older man carried a pot of ale to our table, evidently as a peace offering, and he sat and talked with me and I learned a little more of what was happening. Guthrum had brought close to three thousand men to attack Cippanhamm. Guthrum himself was now in Alfred's hall and half his men would stay in Cippanhamm as a garrison while the rest planned to ride either south or west in the morning.


'Keep the bastards on the run, eh?' the man said, then frowned at Leofric. 'He doesn't say much.'


'He's dumb,' I said.


'I knew a man who had a dumb wife. He was ever so happy.'


He looked jealously at my arm rings. 'So who do you serve?'


'Svein of the White Horse.'


'Svein? He wasn't at Readingum. Or at Werham.'


'He was in Dyflin,' I said, 'but I was with Ragnar the Older then.'


'Ah, Ragnar! Poor bastard.'


'I suppose his son's dead now?' I asked.


'What else?' the man said. 'Hostages, poor bastards.' He thought for a heartbeat then frowned again. 'What's Svein doing here? I thought he was coming by ship?'


'He is,' I said. 'We're just here to talk to Guthrum.'


'Svein sends a dumb man to talk to Guthrum?'


'He sent me to talk,' I said, 'and sent him,' I jerked a thumb at the glowering Leofric, 'to kill people who ask too many questions.'


'All right, all right!’ The man held up a hand to ward off my belligerence.


We slept in the stable loft, warmed by straw, and we left before dawn, and at that moment fifty West Saxons could have retaken Cippanhamm for the Danes were drunk, sleeping, and oblivious to the world. Leofric stole a sword, axe and shield from a man snoring in the tavern, then we walked unchallenged out of the western gate. In a field outside we found over a hundred horses, guarded by two men sleeping in a thatched hut, and we could have taken all the beasts, but we had no saddles or bridles and so, reluctantly, I knew we must walk. There were four of us now, because Eanflaed had decided to come with us. She had swathed Iseult in two big cloaks, but the British girl was still shivering.


We walked west and south along a road that twisted through small hills. We were heading for Babum, and from there I could strike south towards Defnascir and my son, but it was clear the Danes were already ahead of us. Some must have ridden this way the previous day for in the first village we reached there were no cocks crowing, no sound at all, and what I had taken for a morning mist was smoke from burned cottages. Heavier smoke showed ahead, suggesting the Danes might already have reached Babum, a town they knew well for they had negotiated one of their truces there. Then, that afternoon, a horde of mounted Danes appeared on the road behind us and we were driven west into the hills to find a hiding place.


We wandered for a week. We found shelter in hovels. Some were deserted while others still had frightened folk, but every short winter's day was smeared with smoke as the Danes ravaged Wessex.

One day we discovered a cow, trapped in its byre in an otherwise deserted homestead. The cow was with calf and bellowing with hunger, and that night we feasted on fresh meat. Next day we could not move for it was bitterly cold and a slanting rain slashed on an east wind and the trees thrashed as if in agony and the building that gave us shelter leaked and the fire choked us and Iseult just sat, eyes wide and empty, staring into the small flames.


'You want to go back to Cornwalum?' I asked her.


She seemed surprised I had spoken. It took her a few heartbeats to gather her thoughts, then she shrugged. 'What is there for me?'


'Home,' Eanflaed said.


'Uhtred is home for me.'


'Uhtred is married,' Eanflaed said harshly.


Iseult ignored that. 'Uhtred will lead men,' she said, rocking back and forth, 'hundreds of men. A bright horde. I want to see that.'


'He'll lead you into temptation, that's all he'll do,' Eanflaed said. 'Go home, girl, say your prayers and hope the Danes don't come.'


We kept trying to go southwards and we made some small progress every day, but the bitter days were short and the Danes seemed to be everywhere. Even when we travelled across countryside far from any track or path, there would be a patrol of Danes in the distance, and to avoid them we were constantly driven west. To our east was the Roman road that ran from Babum and eventually to Exanceaster, the main thoroughfare in this part of Wessex, and I supposed the Danes were using it and sending patrols out to either side of the road, and it was those patrols that drove us ever nearer the Saefern Sea, but there could be no safety there, for Svein would surely have come from Wales.


I also supposed that Wessex had finally fallen. We met a few folk, fugitives from their villages and hiding in the woods, but none had any news, only rumour. No one had seen any West Saxon soldiers, no one had heard about Alfred, they only saw Danes and the ever-present smoke. From time to time we would come across a ravaged village or a burned church. We would see ragged ravens flapping black and follow them to find rotting bodies. We were lost and any hope I had of reaching Oxton was long gone, and I assumed Mildrith had fled west into the hills as the folk around the Uisc always did when the Danes came. I hoped she was alive, 1 hoped my son lived, but what future he had was as dark as the long winter nights.


'Maybe we should make our peace,' I suggested to Leofric one night. We were in a shepherd's hut, crouched around a small fire that filled the low turf-roofed building with smoke. We had roasted a dozen mutton ribs cut from a sheep's half-eaten corpse. We were all filthy, damp and cold. 'Maybe we should find the Danes,' I said, 'and swear allegiance.'


'And be made slaves?' Leofric answered bitterly.


'We'll be warriors,' I said.


'Fighting for a Dane?' He poked the fire, throwing up a new burst of smoke. 'They can't have taken all Wessex,' he protested.


'Why not?'


'It's too big. There have to be some men fighting back. We just have to find them.'


I thought back to the long ago arguments in Lundene. Back then I had been a child with the Danes, and their leaders had argued that the best way to take Wessex was to attack its western heartland and there break its power. Others had wanted to start the assault by taking the old kingdom of Kent, the weakest part of Wessex and the part which contained the great shrine of Contwaraburg, but the boldest argument had won. They had attacked in the west and that first assault had failed, but now Guthrum had succeeded. Yet how far had he succeeded? Was Kent still Saxon? Defnascir?


'And what happens to Mildrith if you join the Danes?' Leofric asked.


'She'll have hidden,' I spoke dully and there was a silence, but I saw Eanflaed was offended and I hoped she would hold her tongue.


She did not. 'Do you care?' she challenged me.


'I care,' I said.


Eanflaed scorned that answer. 'Grown dull, has she?'


'Of course he cares,' Leofric tried to be a peacemaker.


'She's a wife,' Eanflaed retorted, still looking at me. They tire of wives,' she went on and Iseult listened, her big dark eyes going from me to Eanflaed.


'What do you know of wives?' I asked.


'I was married,' Eanflaed said.


'You were?' Leofric asked, surprised.


'I was married for three years,' Eanflaed said, 'to a man who was in Wulfhere's guard. He gave me two children, then died in the battle that killed King Æthelred.'


'Two children?' Iseult asked.


'They died,' Eanflaed said harshly. 'That's what children do. They die.'


'You were happy with him?' Leofric asked, 'your husband?'


'For about three days,' she said, 'and in the next three years I learned that men are bastards.'


'All of then?' Leofric asked.


'Most.' She smiled at Leofric, then touched his knee. 'Not you.'


'And me?' I asked.


'You?' She looked at me for a heartbeat. 'I wouldn't trust you as far as I could spit,' she said, and there was real venom in her voice, leaving Leofric embarrassed and me surprised. There comes a moment in life when we see ourselves as others see us. I suppose that is part of growing up, and it is not always comfortable.


Eanflaed, at that moment, regretted speaking so harshly for she tried to soften it. 'I don't know you,'

she said, 'except you're Leofric's friend.'


'Uhtred is generous,' Iseult said loyally.


They are usually generous when they want something,' Eanflaed retorted.


'I want Bebbanburg,' I said.


'Whatever that is,' Eanflaed said, and to get it you'd do anything. Anything.'


There was silence. I saw a snowflake show at the half-covered door. It fluttered into the firelight and melted.


'Alfred's a good man,' Leofric broke the awkward silence.


'He tries to be good,' Eanflaed said.


'Only tries?' I asked sarcastically.


'He's like you,' she said. 'He'd kill to get what he wants, but there is a difference. He has a conscience.'


'He's frightened of the priests, you mean.'


'He's frightened of God. And we should all be that. Because one day we'll answer to God.'


'Not me,' I said.


Eanflaed sneered at that, but Leofric changed the conversation by saying it was snowing, and after a while we slept. Iseult clung to me in her sleep and she whimpered and twitched as I lay awake, half dreaming, thinking of her words that I would lead a bright horde. It seemed an unlikely prophecy, indeed I reckoned her powers must have gone with her virginity, and then I slept too, waking to a world made white. The twigs and branches were edged with snow, but it was already melting, dripping into a misty dawn. When I went outside I found a tiny dead wren just beyond the door and I feared it was a grim omen.


Leofric emerged from the hut, blinking at the dawn's brilliance.


'Don't mind Eanflaed,' he said.


'I don't.'


'Her world's come to an end.'


'Then we must remake it,' I said.


'Does that mean you won't join the Danes?'


'I'm a Saxon,' I said.


Leofric half smiled at that. He undid his breeches and had a piss. 'If your friend Ragnar was alive,'

he asked, watching the steam rise from his urine, 'would you still be a Saxon?'


'He's dead, isn't he?' I said bleakly, 'sacrificed to Guthrum's ambition.'


'So now you're a Saxon?'


'I'm a Saxon,' I said again, sounding more certain than I felt, for I did not know what the future held. How can we? Perhaps Iseult had told the truth and Alfred would give me power and I would lead a shining horde and have a woman of gold, but I was beginning to doubt Iseult's powers. Alfred might already be dead and his kingdom was doomed, and all I knew at that moment was that the land stretched away south to a snow-covered ridge line, and there it ended in a strange empty brightness.

The skyline looked like the world's rim, poised above an abyss of pearly light.


'We'll keep going south,' I said. There was nothing else to do except walk towards the brightness.


We did. We followed a sheep track to the ridge top and there I saw that the hills fell steeply away, dropping to the vast marshes of the sea. We had come to the great swamp, and the brightness I had seen was the winter light reflecting from the long meres and winding creeks.


'What now?' Leofric asked, and I had no answer and so we sat under the berries of a wind-bent yew and stared at the immensity of bog, water, grass and reeds. This was the vast swamp that stretched inland from the Saefern, and if I was to reach Defnascir I either had to go around it or try to cross it. If we went around it then we would have to go to the Roman road, and that was where the Danes were, but if we tried to cross the swamp we would face other dangers. I had heard a thousand stories of men being lost in its wet tangles. It was said there were spirits there, spirits that showed at night as flickering lights, and there were paths that led only to quicksands or to drowning pools, but there were also villages in the swamp, places where folk trapped fish and eels. The people of the swamp were protected by the spirits and by the sudden surges in the tide that could drown a road in an eyeblink.

Now, as the last snows melted from the reed-banks, the swamp looked like a great stretch of waterlogged land, its streams and meres swollen by the winter rains, but when the tide rose it would resemble an inland sea dotted with islands. We could see one of those islands not so far off and there was a cluster of huts on that speck of higher ground, and that would be a place to find food and warmth if we could ever reach it. Eventually we might cross the whole swamp, finding a way from island to island, but it would take far longer than a day, and we would have to find refuge at every high tide. I gazed at the long, cold stretches of water, almost black beneath the leaden clouds that came from the sea and my spirits sank for I did not know where we were going, or why, or what the future held.


It seemed to get colder as we sat, and then a light snow began drifting from the dark clouds. Just a few flakes, but enough to convince me that we had to find shelter soon. Smoke was rising from the nearest swamp village, evidence that some folk still lived there. There would be food in their hovels and a meagre warmth.


'We have to get to that island,' I said, pointing.


But the others were staring westwards to where a flock of pigeons had burst from the trees at the foot of the slope. The birds rose and flew in circles.


'Someone's there,' Leofric said.


We waited. The pigeons settled in the trees higher up the hill.


'Maybe it's a boar?' I suggested.


'Pigeons won't fly from a boar,' Leofric said. 'Boars don't startle pigeons, any more than stags do.

There are folk there.'


The thought of boars and stags made me wonder what had happened to my hounds. Had Mildrith abandoned them? I had not even told her where I had hidden the remains of the plunder we had taken off the coast of Wales. I had dug a hole in a corner of my new hall and buried the gold and silver down by the poststone, but it was not the cleverest hiding place and if there were Danes in Oxton then they were bound to delve into the edges of the hall floor, especially if a, probing spear found a place where the earth had been disturbed.


A flight of ducks flew overhead. The snow was falling harder, blurring the long view across the swamp.


'Priests,' Leofric said.


There were a half-dozen men off to the west. They were robed in black and had come from the trees to walk along the swamp's margin, plainly seeking a path into its tangled vastness, but there was no obvious track to the small village on its tiny island and so the priests came nearer to us, skirting the ridge's foot. One of them was carrying a long staff and, even at a distance, 1 could see a glint at its head and I suspected it was a bishop's staff, the kind with a heavy silver cross. Another three carried heavy sacks.


'You think there's food in those bundles?' Leofric asked wistfully.


'They're priests,' I said savagely. 'They'll be carrying silver.'


'Or books,' Eanflaed suggested. 'Priests like books.'


'It could be food,' Leofric said, though not very convincingly.


A group of three women and two children now appeared. One of the women was wearing a swathing cloak of silver fur, while another carried the smaller child. The women and children were not far behind the priests, who waited for them and then they all walked eastwards until they were beneath us and there they discovered some kind of path twisting into the marshes. Five of the priests led the women into the swamp while the sixth man, evidently younger than the others, hurried back westwards.


'Where's he going?' Leofric asked.


Another skein of ducks flighted low overhead, skimming down the slope to the long meres of the swamp. Nets, I thought. There must be nets in the swamp villages and we could trap fish and wildfowl.

We could eat well for a few days. Eels, duck, fish, geese. If there were enough nets we could even trap deer by driving them into the tangling meshes.


'They're not going anywhere,' Leofric said scornfully, nodding at the priests who had stranded themselves a hundred paces out in the swamp. The path was deceptive. It had offered an apparent route to the village, but then petered out amidst a patch of reeds where the priests huddled. They did not want to come back and did not want to go forward, and so they stayed where they were, lost and cold and despairing. They looked as though they were arguing.


'We must help them,' Eanflaed said and, when I said nothing, she protested that one of the women was holding a baby. 'We have to help them!' she insisted.


I was about to retort that the last thing we needed was more hungry mouths to feed, but her harsh words in the night had persuaded me that I had to do something to show her I was not as treacherous as she evidently believed, so I stood, hefted my shield and started down the hill. The others followed, but before we were even halfway down I heard shouts from the west. The lone priest who had gone that way was now with four soldiers and they turned as horsemen came from the trees. There were six horsemen, then eight more appeared, then another ten and I realised a whole column of mounted soldiers was streaming from the dead winter trees. They had black shields and black cloaks, so they had to be Guthrum's men. One of the priests stranded in the swamp ran back along the path and I saw he had a sword and was going to help his companions.


It was a brave thing for the lone priest to do, but quite useless. The four soldiers and the single priest were surrounded now. They were standing back to back and the Danish horsemen were all around them, hacking down, and then two of the horsemen saw the priest with his sword and spurred towards him.


'Those two are ours,' I said to Leofric.


That was stupid. The four men were doomed, as was the priest if we did not intervene, but there were only two of us and, even if we killed the two horsemen, we would still face overwhelming odds, but I was driven by Eanflaed's scorn and I was tired of skulking through the winter countryside and I was angry and so I ran down the hill, careless of the noise I made as I crashed through brittle undergrowth.

The lone priest had his back to the swamp now and the horsemen were charging at him as Leofric and I burst from the trees and came at them from their left side.


I hit the nearest horse's flank with my heavy shield. There was a scream from the horse and an explosion of wet soil, grass, snow and hooves as man and beast went down sideways. I was also on the ground, knocked there by the impact, but I recovered first and found the rider tangled with his stirrups, one leg trapped under the struggling horse and I chopped Serpent-Breath down hard. I cut into his throat, stamped on his face, chopped again, slipped in his blood, then left him and went to help Leofric who was fending off the second man who was still on horseback. The Dane's sword thumped on Leofric's shield, then he had to turn his horse to face me and Leofric's axe took the horse in the face and the beast reared, the rider slid backwards and I met his spine with Serpent-Breath's tip.

Two down. The priest with the sword, not a half dozen paces away, had not moved. He was just staring at us.


'Get back into the marsh!' I shouted at him. 'Go! Go!'


Iseult and Eanflaed were with us now and they seized the priest and hurried him towards the path.

It might lead nowhere, but it was better to face the remaining Danes there than on the firm ground at the hill's foot.


And those black-cloaked Danes were coming. They had slaughtered the handful of soldiers, seen their two men killed and now came for vengeance.


'Come on!' I snarled at Leofric and, taking the wounded horse by the reins, I ran onto the small twisting path.


'A horse won't help you here,' Leofric said.


The horse was nervous. Its face was wounded and the path was slippery, but I dragged it along the track until we were close to the small patch of land where the refugees huddled, and by now the Danes were also on the path, following us. They had dismounted. They could only come two abreast and, in places, only one man could use the track and in one of those places I stopped the horse and exchanged Serpent-Breath for Leofric's axe. The horse looked at me with a big brown eye.


'This is for Odin,' I said, and then swung the axe into its neck, chopping down through mane and hide, and a woman screamed behind me as the blood spurted bright and high in the dull day. The horse whinnied, tried to rear and I swung again and this time the beast went down, thrashing hooves, blood and water splashing. Snow turned red as I axed it a third time, finally stilling it, and now the dying beast was an obstacle athwart the track and the Danes would have to fight across its corpse. I took Serpent-Breath back.


'We'll kill them one by one,' I told Leofric.


'For how long?' He nodded westwards and I saw more Danes coming, a whole ship's crew of mounted Danes streaming along the swamp's edge. Fifty men? Maybe more, but even so they could only use the path in ones or twos and they would have to fight over the dead horse into Serpent-Breath and Leofric's axe. He had lost his own axe, taken from him when he was brought to Cippanhamm, but he seemed to like his stolen weapon. He made the sign of the cross, touched the blade, then hefted his shield as the Danes came.


Two young men came first. They were wild and savage, wanting to make a reputation, but the first to come was stopped by Leofric's axe banging into his shield and I swept Serpent-Breath beneath the shield to slice his ankle and he fell, cursing, to tangle his companion and Leofric wrenched the wide-bladed axe free and slashed it down again. The second man stumbled on the horse, and Serpent-Breath took him under the chin, above his leather coat, and the blood ran down her blade in a sudden flood and now there were two Danish corpses added to the horseflesh barricade. I was taunting the other Danes, calling them corpse-worms, telling them I had known children who could fight better.

Another man came, screaming in rage as he leaped over the horse and he was checked by Leofric's shield and Serpent-Breath met his sword with a dull crack and his blade broke, and two more men were trying to get past the horse, struggling in water up to their knees and I rammed Serpent-Breath into the belly of the first, pushing her through his leather armour, left him to die, and swung right at the man trying to get through the water. Serpent-Breath's tip flicked across his face to spray blood into the thickening snowfall. I went forward, feet sinking, lunged again and he could not move in the mire and Serpent-Breath took his gullet. I was screaming with joy because the battle calm had come, the same blessed stillness I had felt at Cynuit. It is a joy, that feeling, and the only other joy to compare is that of being with a woman.


It is as though life slows. The enemy moves as if he is wading in mud, but I was kingfisher fast.

There is rage, but it is a controlled rage, and there is joy, the joy that the poets celebrate when they speak of battle, and a certainty that death is not in that day's fate. My head was full of singing, a keening note, high and shrill, death's anthem. All I wanted was for more Danes to come to Serpent-Breath and it seemed to me that she took on her own life in those moments. To think was to act. A man came across the horse's flank, I thought to slice at his ankle, knew he would drop his shield and so open his upper body to an attack, and before the thought was even coherent it was done and Serpent-Breath had taken one of his eyes. She had gone down and up, was already moving to the right to counter another man trying to get around the horse, and I let him get past the stallion's bloodied head then scornfully drove him down into the water and there I stood on him, holding his head under my boot as he drowned. I screamed at the Danes, told them I was Valhalla's gatekeeper, that they had been weaned on coward's milk and that I wanted them to come to my blade. I begged them to come, but six men were dead around the horse and the others were now wary.


I stood on the dead horse and spread my arms. I held the shield high to my left and the sword to my right, and my mail coat was spattered with blood and the snow fell about my wolf-crested helmet and all I knew was the young man's joy of slaughter. 'I killed Ubba Lothbrokson!' I shouted at them. 'I killed him! So come and join him! Taste his death! My sword wants you!'


'Boats,' Leofric said. I did not hear him. The man I thought I had drowned was still alive and he suddenly reared from the marsh, choking and vomiting water, and I jumped down off the horse and put my foot on his head again.


'Let him live!' A voice shouted behind me. 'I want a prisoner!'


The man tried to fight my foot, but Serpent-Breath put him down. He struggled again and I broke his spine with Serpent-Breath and he was still.


'I said I wanted a prisoner,' the voice behind protested.


'Come and die!' I shouted at the Danes.


'Boats,' Leofric said again and I glanced behind and saw three punts coming through the marsh.

They were long flat boats, propelled by men with poles, and they grounded on the other side of the huddled refugees who hurried aboard. The Danes, knowing Leofric and I had to retreat if we were to gain the safety of the boats, readied for a charge and I smiled at them, inviting them.


'One boat left,' Leofric said. 'Room for us. You'll have to run like hell.'


'I'll stay here,' I shouted, but in Danish. 'I'm enjoying myself.' Then there was a stir on the path as a man came to the front rank of the Danes and the others edged aside to give him room.


He was in chain mail and had a silvered helmet with a raven's wing at its crown, but as he came closer he took the helmet off and I saw the gold-tipped bone in his hair. It was Guthrum himself. The bone was one of his mother's ribs and he wore it out of love for her memory. He stared at me, his gaunt face sad, and then looked down at the men we had killed.


'I shall hunt you like a dog, Uhtred Ragnarson,' he said, ‘and I shall kill you like a dog.'


'My name,' I said, 'is Uhtred Uhtredson.'


'We have to run,' Leofric hissed at me.


The snow whirled above the swamp, thick enough now so that I could hardly see the ridge top from where we had glimpsed the pigeons circling.


'You are a dead man, Uhtred,' Guthrum said.


'I never met your mother,' I called to him, 'but I would have liked to meet her.'


His face took on the reverent look that any mention of his mother always provoked. He seemed to regret that he had spoken so harshly to me for he made a conciliatory gesture.


'She was a great woman,' he said.


I smiled at him. At that moment, looking back, I could have changed sides so easily and Guthrum would have welcomed me if I had just given his mother a compliment, but I was a belligerent young man and the battle joy was on me.


'I would have spat in her ugly face,' I told Guthrum, 'and now I piss on your mother's soul, and tell you that the beasts of Nifiheim are humping her rancid bones.'


He screamed with rage and they all charged, some splashing through the shallows, all desperate to reach me and avenge the terrible insult, but Leofric and I were running like hunted boars, and we charged through the reeds and into the water and hurled ourselves onto the last punt. The first two were gone, but the third had waited for us and, as we sprawled on its damp boards, the man with the pole pushed hard and the craft slid away into the black water. The Danes tried to follow, but we were going surprisingly fast, gliding through the snowfall, and Guthrum was shouting at me and a spear was thrown, but the marsh man poled again and the spear plunged harmlessly into the mud.


'I shall find you!' Guthrum shouted.


'Why should I care?' I called back. 'Your men only know how to die!' I raised Serpent-Breath and kissed her sticky blade, 'and your mother was a whore to dwarves!'


'You should 'have let that one man live,' a voice said behind me, 'because I wanted to question him.'


The punt only contained the one passenger besides Leofric and myself, and that one man was the priest who had carried a sword and now he was sitting in the punt's flat bow, frowning at me.


'There was no need to kill that man,' he said sternly and I looked at him with such fury that he recoiled. Damn all priests, I thought. I had saved the bastard's life and all he did was reprove me, and then I saw that he was no priest at all.


It was Alfred.


The punt slid over the swamp, sometimes gliding across black water, sometimes rustling through grass or reeds. The man poling it was a bent, dark-skinned creature with a massive beard, otter skin clothes and a toothless mouth. Guthrum's Danes were far behind now, carrying their dead back to firmer ground.


'I need to know what they plan to do,' Alfred complained to me. 'The prisoner could have told us.'


He spoke more respectfully. Looking back I realised I had frightened him for the front of my mail coat was sheeted in blood and there was more blood on my face and helmet.


'They plan to finish Wessex,' I said curtly. 'You don't need a prisoner to tell you that.'


'Lord,' he said.


I stared at him.


'I am a king!' he insisted. 'You address a king with respect.'


'A king of what?' I asked.


'You're not hurt, lord?' Leofric asked Alfred.


'No, thank God. No.' He looked at the sword he carried. 'Thank God.' I saw he was not wearing priest's robes, but a swathing black cloak. His long face was very pale. 'Thank you, Leofric,' he said, then looked up at me and seemed to shudder. We were catching up with the other two punts and I saw that Ælswith, pregnant and swathed in a silver fox-fur cloak, was in one. Iseult and Eanflaed were also in that punt while the priests were crowded onto the other and I saw that Bishop Alewold of Exanceaster was one of them.


'What happened, lord?' Leofric asked.


Alfred sighed. He was shivering now, but he told his story. He had ridden from Cippanhamm with his family, his bodyguard and a score of churchmen to accompany the monk Asser on the first part of his journey. 'We had a service of thanksgiving,' he said, 'in the church at Soppan Byrg. It's a new church,' he added earnestly to Leofric, 'and very fine. We sang psalms, said prayers, and Brother Asser went on his way rejoicing.' He made the sign of the cross. 'I pray he's safe.'


'I hope the lying bastard's dead,' I snarled.


Alfred ignored that. After the church service they had all gone to a nearby monastery for a meal, and it was while they were there that the Danes had come. The royal group had fled, finding shelter in nearby woods while the monastery burned. After that they had tried to ride east into the heart of Wessex but, like us, they had constantly been headed off by patrolling Danes. One night, sheltering in a farm, they had been surprised by Danish troops who had killed some of Alfred's guards and captured all his horses and ever since they had been wandering, as lost as us, until they came to the swamp.


'God knows what will happen now,' Alfred said.


'We fight,' I said. He just looked at me and I shrugged. 'We fight,' I said again.


Alfred stared across the swamp. 'Find a ship,' he said, but so softly that I hardly heard him. 'Find a ship and go to Frankia.' He pulled the cloak tighter around his thin body. The snow was thickening as it fell, though it melted as soon as it met the dark water.


The Danes had vanished, lost in the snow behind.


'That was Guthrum?' Alfred asked me.


'That was Guthrum,' I said. 'And he knew it was you he pursued?'


'I suppose so.'


'What else would draw Guthrum here?' I asked. 'He wants you dead. Or captured.'


Yet, for the moment, we were safe. The island village had a score of damp hovels thatched with reeds and a few storehouses raised on stilts. The buildings were the colour of mud, the street was mud, the goats and the people were mud-covered, but the place, poor as it was, could provide food, shelter and a meagre warmth. The men of the village had seen the refugees and, after a discussion, decided to rescue them. I suspect they wanted to pillage us rather than save our lives, but Leofric and I looked formidable and, once the villagers understood that their king was their guest, they did their clumsy best for him and his family. One of them, in a dialect I could scarcely understand, wanted to know the king's name. He had never heard of Alfred. He knew about the Danes, but said their ships had never reached the village, or any of the other settlements in the swamp. He told us the villagers lived off deer, goats, fish, eels and wildfowl, and they had plenty of food, though fuel was scarce.


Ælswith was pregnant with her third child, while her first two were in the care of nurses. There was Edward, Alfred's heir, who was three years old and sick. He coughed, and Ælswith worried about him, though Bishop Alewold insisted it was just a winter's cold. Then there was Edward's elder sister, Æthelflaed, who was now six and had a bright head of golden curls, a beguiling smile and clever eyes.

Alfred adored her, and in those first days in the swamp, she was his one ray of light and hope. One night, as we sat by a small, dying fire and Æthelflaed slept with her golden head in her father's lap, he asked me about my son.


'I don't know where he is,' I said. There were only the two of us, everyone else was sleeping, and I was sitting by the door staring across the frost-bleached marsh that lay black and silver under a half-moon.


'You want to go and find him?' he asked earnestly.


'You truly want me to do that?' I asked. He looked puzzled.


'These folk are giving you shelter,' I explained, 'but they'd as soon cut your throats. They won't do that while I'm here.'


He was about to protest, then understood I probably spoke the truth. He stroked his daughter's hair. Edward coughed. He was in his mother's hut. The coughing had become worse, much worse, and we all suspected it was the whooping cough that killed small children. Alfred flinched at the sound.


'Did you fight Steapa?' he asked.


‘We fought,' I said curtly, 'the Danes came, and we never finished. He was bleeding, I was not.'


'He was bleeding?'


'Ask Leofric. He was there.'


He was silent a long time, then, softly, 'I am still king.'


Of a swamp, I thought, and said nothing.


'And it is customary to call a king "lord",' he went on.


I just stared at his thin, pale face that was lit by the dying fire.


He looked so solemn, but also frightened, as if he were making a huge effort to hold onto the shreds of his dignity. Alfred never lacked for bravery, but he was not a warrior and he did not much like the company of warriors. In his eyes I was a brute; dangerous, uninteresting, but suddenly indispensable.

He knew I was not going to call him lord, so he did not insist.


'What do you notice about this place?' he asked.


'It's wet,' I said.


'What else?'


I looked for the trap in the question and found none. 'It can only be reached by punts,' I said, 'and the Danes don't have punts. But when they do have punts it'll need more than Leofric and me to fight them off.'


'It doesn't have a church,' he said.


'I knew I liked it,' I retorted.


He ignored that. 'We know so little of our own kingdom,' he said in wonderment. 'I thought there were churches everywhere.'


He closed his eyes for a few heartbeats, then looked at me plaintively. 'What should I do?'


I had told him to fight, but I could see no fight in him now, just despair.


'You can go south,' I said, thinking that was what he wanted to hear, 'go south across the sea.'


'To be another exiled Saxon king,' he said bitterly.


'We hide here,' I said, 'and when we think the Danes aren't watching, we go to the south coast and find a ship.'


'How do we hide?' he asked. 'They know we're here. And they're on both sides of the swamp.'


The marsh man had told us that a Danish fleet had landed at Cynuit, which lay at the swamp's western edge. That fleet, I assumed, was led by Svein and he would surely be wondering how to find Alfred. The king, I reckoned, was doomed, and his family too. If Æthelflaed was lucky she would be raised by a Danish family, as I had been, but more probably they would all be killed so that no Saxon could ever again claim the crown of Wessex.


'And the Danes will be watching the south coast,' Alfred went on.


'They will,' I agreed.


He looked out at the marsh where the night wind rippled the waters, shaking the long reflection of a winter moon. 'The Danes can't have taken all Wessex,' he said, then flinched because Edward was coughing so painfully.


'Probably not,’ I agreed.


'If we could find men,' he said, then fell silent.


'What would we do with men?' I asked.


'Attack the fleet,' he said, pointing west. 'Get rid of Svein, if it is Svein at Cynuit, then hold the hills of Defnascir. Gain one victory and more men will come. We get stronger and one day we can face Guthrum.'


I thought about it. He had spoken dully, as if he did not really believe in the words he had said, but I thought they made a perverse kind of sense. There were men in Wessex, men who were leaderless, but they were men who wanted a leader, men who would fight, and perhaps we could secure the swamp, then defeat Svein, then capture Defnascir, and so, piece by piece, take back Wessex. Then I thought about it more closely and reckoned it was a dream. The Danes had won. We were fugitives.


Alfred was stroking his daughter's golden hair. 'The Danes will hunt us here, won't they?'


'Yes.'


'Can you defend us?'


'Just me and Leofric?'


'You're a warrior, aren't you? Men tell me it was really you who defeated Ubba.'


‘You knew I killed Ubba?' I asked.


'Can you defend us?'


I would not be deflected. 'Did you know I won your victory at Cynuit?' I demanded.


'Yes,' he said simply.


'And my reward was to crawl to your altar? To be humiliated?' My anger made my voice too loud and Æthelflaed opened her eyes and stared at me.


'I have made mistakes,' Alfred said, 'and when this is all over, and when God returns Wessex to the West Saxons, I shall do the same. I shall put on the penitent's robe and submit myself to God.'


I wanted to kill the pious bastard then, but Æthelflaed was watching me with her big eyes. She had not moved, so her father did not know she was awake, but I did, so instead of giving my anger a loose rein I cut it off abruptly. 'You'll find that penitence helps,' I said.


He brightened at that. 'It helped you?' he asked.


'It gave me anger,' I said, 'and it taught me to hate. And anger is good. Hatred is good.'


'You don't mean that,' he said.


I half drew Serpent-Breath and little Æthelflaed's eyes grew wider.


'This kills,' I said, letting the sword slide back into its fleece-lined scabbard, 'but anger and hate are what gives it the strength to kill. Go into battle without anger and hate and you'll be dead. You need all the blades, anger and hate you can muster if we're to survive.'


'But can you do it?' he asked. 'Can you defend us here? Long enough to evade the Danes while we decide what to do?'


'Yes,' I said. I had no idea whether I spoke the truth, indeed I doubted that I did, but I had a warrior's pride so gave a warrior's answer. Æthelflaed had not taken her eyes from me. She was only six, but I swear she understood all that we talked about.


'So I give you charge of that task,' Alfred said. 'Here and now I appoint you as the defender of my family. Do you accept that responsibility?'


I was an arrogant brute. Still am. He was challenging me, of course, and he knew what he was doing even if I did not. I just bridled. 'Of course I accept it,' I said, 'yes.'


'Yes what?' he asked.


I hesitated, but he had flattered me, given me a warrior's responsibility and so I gave him what he wanted and what I had been determined not to give to him. 'Yes, lord,' I said.


He held out his hand. I knew he wanted more now. I had never meant to grant him this wish, but I had called him 'lord' and so I knelt to him and, across Æthelflaed's body, I took his hand in both mine.


'Say it,' he demanded, and he put the crucifix that hung about his neck between our hands.


'I swear to be your man,' I said, looking into his pale eyes, 'until your family is safe.'


He hesitated. I had given him the oath, but I had qualified it.


I had let him know that I would not remain his man for ever, but he accepted my terms. He should have kissed me on both cheeks, but that would have disturbed Æthelflaed and so he raised my right hand and kissed the knuckles, then kissed the crucifix.


'Thank you,' he said.


The truth, of course, was that Alfred was finished, but, with the perversity and arrogance of foolish youth, I had just given him my oath and promised to fight for him.


And all, I think, because a six-year-old stared at me. And she had hair of gold.


Sev

e en

e


The kingdom of Wessex was now a swamp and, for a few days, it possessed a king, a bishop, four priests, two soldiers, the king's pregnant wife, two nurses, a whore, two children, one of whom was sick, and Iseult.


Three of the four priests left the swamp first. Alfred was suffering, struck by the fever and belly pains that so often afflicted him, and he seemed incapable of rousing himself to any decision so I gathered the three youngest priests, told them they were useless mouths we could not afford to feed, and ordered them to leave the swamp and discover what was happening on dry ground.


'Find soldiers,' I told them, 'and say the king wants them to come here.'


Two of the priests begged to be spared the mission, claiming they were scholars incapable of surviving the winter or of confronting the Danes or of enduring discomfort or of doing any real work, and Alewold, the Bishop of Exanceaster, supported them, saying that their joint prayers were needed to keep the king healthy and safe, so I reminded the bishop that Eanflaed was present.


'Eanflaed?' He blinked at me as though he had never heard the name.


'The whore,' I said, 'from Cippanhamm.' He still looked ignorant.


'Cippanhamm,' I went on, 'where you and she rutted in the Corncrake tavern and she says ...'


'The priests will travel,' he said hastily.


'Of course they will,' I said, 'but they'll leave their silver here.'


'Silver?'


The priests had been carrying Alewold's hoard which included the great pyx I had given him to settle Mildrith's debts. That hoard was my next weapon. I took it all and displayed it to the marsh men.

There would be silver, I said, for the food they gave us and the fuel they brought us and the punts they provided and the news they told us, news of the Danes on the swamp's far side. I wanted the marsh men on our side, and the sight of the silver encouraged them, but Bishop Alewold immediately ran to Alfred and complained that I had stolen from the church. The king was too low in spirits to care, so Ælswith, his wife, entered the fray. She was a Mercian and Alfred had married her to tighten the bonds between Wessex and Mercia, though that did little good for us now because the Danes ruled Mercia.

There were plenty of Mercian’s who would fight for a West Saxon king, but none would risk their lives for a king reduced to a soggy realm in a tidal swamp.


'You will return the pyx!' Ælswith ordered me. She looked ragged, her greasy hair tangled, her belly swollen and her clothes filthy. 'Give it back now. This instant!'


I looked at Iseult. 'Should I?'


'No,' Iseult said.


'She has no say here!' Ælswith shrieked.


'But she's a queen,' I said, 'and you're not.'


That was one cause of Ælswith's bitterness, that the West Saxons never called the king's wife a queen. She wanted to be Queen Ælswith and had to be content with less.


She tried to snatch back the pyx, but I tossed it on the ground and, when she reached for it, I swung Leofric's axe. The blade chewed into the big plate, mangling the silver crucifixion, and Ælswith squealed in alarm and backed away as I hacked again. It took several blows, but I finally reduced the heavy plate into shreds of mangled silver that I tossed onto the coins I had taken from the priests.


'Silver for your help!' I told the marsh men.


Ælswith spat at me, then went back to her son. Edward was three years old and it was evident now that he was dying. Alewold had claimed it was a mere winter's cold, but it was plainly worse, much worse. Every night we would listen to the coughing, an extraordinary hollow racking sound from such a small child, and all of us lay awake, dreading the next bout, flinching from the desperate, rasping sound, and when the coughing fits ended we feared they would not start again. Every silence was like the coming of death, yet somehow the small boy lived, clinging on through those cold wet days in the swamp.

Bishop Alewold and the women tried all they knew. A gospel book was laid on his chest and the bishop prayed. A concoction of herbs, chicken dung and ash was pasted on his chest and the bishop prayed. Alfred travelled nowhere without his precious relics, and the toe ring of Mary Magdalene was rubbed on the child's chest and the bishop prayed, but Edward just became weaker and thinner. A woman of the swamp, who had a reputation as a healer, tried to sweat the cough from him, and when that did not work she attempted to freeze it from him, and when that did not work she tied a live fish to his chest and commanded the cough and the fever to flee to the fish, and the fish certainly died, but the boy went on coughing and the bishop prayed and Alfred, as thin as his sick son, was in despair.

He knew the Danes would search for him, but so long as the child was ill he dared not move, and he certainly could not contemplate the long walk south to the coast where he might find a ship to carry him and his family into exile.

He was resigned to that fate now. He had dared to hope he might recover his kingdom, but the cold reality was more persuasive. The Danes held Wessex and Alfred was king of nothing, and his son was dying.


'It is a retribution,' he said.


It was the night after the three priests had left and Alfred unburdened his soul to me and Bishop Alewold. We were outside, watching the moon silver the marsh mists, and there were tears on Alfred's face. He was not really talking to either of us, only to himself.


'God would not take a son to punish the father,' Alewold said.


'God sacrificed his own son,' Alfred said bleakly, 'and he commanded Abraham to kill Isaac.'


'He spared Isaac,' the bishop said.


'But he is not sparing Edward,' Alfred said, and flinched as the awful coughing sounded from the hut. He put his head in his hands, covering his eyes.


'Retribution for what?' I asked, and the bishop hissed in reprimand for such an indelicate question.


‘Æthelwold,' Alfred said bleakly. Æthelwold was his nephew, the drunken, resentful son of the old king.


'Æthelwold could never have been king,' Alewold said. 'He is a fool!'


'If I name him king now,' Alfred said, ignoring what the bishop had said, 'perhaps God will spare Edward?'


The coughing ended. The boy was crying now, a gasping, grating, pitiful crying, and Alfred covered his ears with his hands.


'Give him to Iseult,' I said.

'A pagan!' Alewold warned Alfred, 'an adulteress!' I could see Alfred was tempted by my suggestion, but Alewold was having the better of the argument. 'If God will not cure Edward,' the bishop said, 'do you think he will let a witch succeed?'


'She's no witch,' I said.


'Tomorrow,' Alewold said, ignoring me, 'is Saint Agnes's Eve. A holy day, lord, a day of miracles! We shall pray to Saint Agnes and she will surely unleash God's power on the boy.' He raised his hands to the dark sky. 'Tomorrow, lord, we shall summon the strength of the angels, we shall call heaven's aid to your son and the blessed Agnes will drive the evil sickness from young Edward.'


Alfred said nothing, just stared at the swamp's pools that were edged with a thin skim of ice that seemed to glow in the wan moonlight.


'I have known the blessed Agnes perform miracles!' the bishop pressed the king, 'there was a child in Exanceaster who could not walk, but the saint gave him strength and now he runs!'


'Truly?' Alfred asked.


'With my own eyes,' the bishop said, 'I witnessed the miracle.'


Alfred was reassured. 'Tomorrow then,' he said.


I did not stay to see the power of God unleashed. Instead I took a punt and went south to a place called Æthelingaeg which lay at the southern edge of the swamp and was the biggest of all the marsh settlements. I was beginning to learn the swamp. Leofric stayed with Alfred, to protect the king and his family, but I explored, discovering scores of trackways through the watery void. The paths were called beamwegs and were made of logs that squelched underfoot, but by using them I could walk for miles.

There were also rivers that twisted through the low land, and the biggest of those, the Pedredan, flowed close to Æthelingaeg which was an island, much of it covered with alders in which deer and wild goats lived, but there was also a large village on the island's highest spot and the headman had built himself a great hall there. It was not a royal hall, not even as big as the one I had made at Oxton, but a man could stand upright beneath its beams and the island was large enough to accommodate a small army.


A dozen beamwegs led away from Æthelingaeg, but none led directly to the mainland. It would be a hard place for Guthrum to attack, because he would have to thread the swamp, but Svein, who we now knew commanded the Danes at Cynuit, at the Pedredan's mouth, would find it an easy place to approach for he could bring his ships up the river and, just north of Æthelingaeg, he could turn south onto the River Thon which flowed past the island. I took the punt into the centre of the Thon and discovered, as I had feared, that it was more than deep enough to float the Danes beast-headed ships.


I walked back to the place where the Thon flowed into the Pedredan. Across the wider river was a sudden hill, steep and high, which stood in the surrounding marshland like a giant's burial mound. It was a perfect place to make a fort, and if a bridge could be built across the Pedredan then no Danish ship could pass up river.


I walked back to the village where I discovered that the headman was a grizzled and stubborn old man called Haswold who was disinclined to help. I said I would pay good silver to have a bridge made across the Pedredan, but Haswold declared the war between Wessex and the Danes did not affect him.


'There is madness over there,' he said, waving vaguely at the eastern hills. 'There's always madness over there, but here in the swamp we mind our own business. No one minds us and we don't mind them.'


He stank of fish and smoke. He wore otter skins that were greasy with fish oil and his greying beard was flecked by fish scales. He had small cunning eyes in an old cunning face, and he also had a half-dozen wives, the youngest of whom was a child who could have been his own granddaughter, and he fondled her in front of me as if her existence proved his manhood.

'I'm happy,' he said, leering at me, 'so why should I care for your happiness?'


'The Danes could end your happiness.'


'The Danes?' He laughed at that, and the laugh turned into a cough. He spat. 'If the Danes come,'

he went on, 'then we go deep into the swamp and the Danes go.'


He grinned at me and I wanted to kill him, but that would have done no good. There were fifty or more men in the village and I would have lasted all of a dozen heartbeats, though the man I really feared was a tall, broad-shouldered, stooping man with a puzzled look on his face. What frightened me about him was that he carried a long hunting bow. Not one of the short fowling bows that many of the marsh men possessed, but a stag killer, as tall as a man, and capable of shooting an arrow clean through a mail coat. Haswold must have sensed my fear of the bow for he summoned the man to stand beside him. The man looked confused by the summons, but obeyed. Haswold pushed a gnarled hand under the young girl's clothes then stared at me as he fumbled, laughing at what he perceived as my impotence.


'The Danes come,' he said again, 'and we go deep into the swamp and the Danes go away.'


He thrust his hand deeper into the girl's goatskin dress and mauled her breasts.


'Danes can't follow us, and if they do follow us then Eofer kills them.' Eofer was the archer and, hearing his name, he looked startled, then worried. 'Eofer's my man,' Haswold boasted, 'he puts arrows where I tell him to put them.' Eofer nodded,


'Your king wants a bridge made,' I said, 'a bridge and a fort.'


'King?' Haswold stared about the village. 'I know no king. If any man is king here, 'tis me.' He cackled with laughter at that and I looked at the villagers and saw nothing but dull faces. None shared Haswold's amusement. They were not, I thought, happy under his rule and perhaps he sensed what I was thinking for he suddenly became angry, thrusting his girl-bride away. 'Leave us!' he shouted at me.

'Just go away!'


I went away, returning to the smaller island where Alfred sheltered and where Edward lay dying. It was nightfall and the bishop's prayers to Saint Agnes had failed. Eanflaed told me how Alewold had persuaded Alfred to give up one of his most precious relics, a feather from the dove that Noah had released from the ark, Alewold cut the feather into two parts, returning one part to the king, while the other was scorched on a clean pan and, when it was reduced to ash, the scraps were stirred into a cup of holy water which, Ælswith forced her son to drink. He had been wrapped in lambskin, for the lamb was the symbol of Saint Agnes who had been a child martyr in Rome.


But neither feather nor lambskin had worked. If anything, Eanflaed said, the boy was worse.

Alewold was praying over him now. 'He's given him the last rites,' Eanflaed said. She looked at me with tears in her eyes. 'Can Iseult help?'


‘The bishop won't allow it,' I said.


'He won't allow it?' she asked indignantly. 'He's not the one who's dying!'


So Iseult was summoned, and Alfred came from the but and Alewold, scenting heresy, came with him. Edward was coughing again, the sound terrible in the evening silence. Alfred flinched at the noise, then demanded to know if Iseult could cure his son's illness.


Iseult did not reply at once. Instead she turned and gazed across the swamp to where the moon rose above the mists. 'The moon gets bigger,' she said.


'Do you know a cure?' Alfred pleaded.


'A growing moon is good,' Iseult said dully, then turned on him. 'But there will be a price.'


'Whatever you want!' he said.


'Not a price for me,' she said, irritated that he had misunderstood her. 'But there's always a price.

One lives? Another must die.'


'Heresy!' Alewold intervened.


I doubt Alfred understood Iseult's last three words, or did not care what she meant, he only snatched the tenuous hope that perhaps she could help.


'Can you cure my son?' he demanded.


She paused, then nodded. 'There is a way,' she said.


'What way?'


'My way.'


'Heresy!' Alewold warned again.


'Bishop!' Eanflaed said warningly, and the bishop looked abashed and fell silent.


'Now?' Alfred demanded of Iseult.


'Tomorrow night,' Iseult said. 'It takes time. There are things to do. If he lives till nightfall tomorrow I can help. You must bring him to me at moonrise.'


'Not tonight?' Alfred pleaded.


'Tomorrow,' Iseult said firmly.


'Tomorrow is the Feast of Saint Vincent,' Alfred said, as though that might help, and somehow the child survived that night and, next day, Saint Vincent's Day, Iseult went with me to the eastern shore where we gathered lichen, burdock, celandine and mistletoe. She would not let me use metal to scrape the lichen or cut the herbs, and before any was collected we had to walk three times around the plants which, because it was winter, were poor and shrivelled things. She also made me cut thorn boughs, and I was allowed to use a knife for that because the thorns were evidently not as important as the lichen or herbs. I watched the skyline as we worked, looking for any Danes, but if they patrolled the edge of the swamp none appeared that day. It was cold, a gusting wind clutching at our clothes. It took a long time to find the plants Iseult needed, but at last her pouch was full and I dragged the thorn bushes hack to the island and took them into the hut where she instructed me to dig two holes in the floor.


'They must be as deep as the child is tall,' she said, 'and as far apart from each other as the length of your forearm.'


She would not tell me what the pits were for. She was subdued, very close to tears. She hung the celandine and burdock from a roof beam, then pounded the lichen and the mistletoe into a paste that she moistened with spittle and urine, and she chanted long charms in her own language over the shallow wooden bowl. It all took a long time and sometimes she just sat exhausted in the darkness beyond the hearth and rocked to and fro.


'I don't know if I can do it,' she said once.


'You can try,' I said helplessly.


'And if I fail,' she said, 'they will hate me more than ever.'

'They don't hate you,' I said.


'They think I am a sinner and a pagan,' she said, 'and they hate me.'


'So cure the child,' I said, 'and they will love you.'


I could not dig the pits as deep as she wanted, for the soil became ever wetter and, just a couple of feet down, the two holes were filling with brackish water.


'Make them wider,' Iseult ordered me, 'wide enough so the child can crouch in them.'


I did as she said, and then she made me join the two holes by knocking a passage in the damp earth wall that divided them. That had to be done carefully to ensure that an arch of soil remained to leave a tunnel between the holes.


'It is wrong,' Iseult said, not talking of my excavation, but of the charm she planned to work.

'Someone will die, Uhtred. Somewhere a child will die so this one will live.'


'How do you know that?' I asked.


'Because my twin died when I was born,' she said, 'and I have his power. But if I use it he reaches from the dark world and takes the power back.'


Darkness fell and the boy went on coughing, though to my ears it sounded feebler now as though there was not enough life left in his small body. Alewold was praying still. Iseult crouched in the door of our but, staring into the rain, and when Alfred came close she waved him away.


'He's dying,' the king said helplessly.


'Not yet,' Iseult said, 'not yet.'


Edward's breath rasped. We could all hear it, and we all thought every harsh breath would be his last, and still Iseult did not move, and then at last a rift showed in the rain clouds and a feeble wash of moonlight touched the marsh and she told me to fetch the boy.


Ælswith did not want Edward to go. She wanted him cured, but when I said Iseult insisted on working her charms alone, Ælswith wailed that she did not want her son to die apart from his mother.

Her crying upset Edward who began to cough again. Eanflaed stroked his forehead.


'Can she do it?' she demanded of me.


'Yes,' I said and did not know if I spoke the truth.


Eanflaed took hold of Ælswith's shoulders. 'Let the boy go, my lady,' she said, 'let him go.'


'He'll die!'


'Let him go,' Eanflaed said, and Ælswith collapsed into the whore's arms and I picked up Alfred's son who felt as light as the feather that had not cured him. He was hot, yet shivering, and I wrapped him in a wool robe and carried him to Iseult.


'You can't stay here,' she told me. 'Leave him with me.'


I waited with Leofric in the dark. Iseult insisted we could not watch through the hut's entrance, but I dropped my helmet outside the door and, by crouching under the eaves I could just see a reflection of what happened inside. The small rain died and the moon grew brighter.


The boy coughed. Iseult stripped him naked and rubbed her herb paste on his chest, and then she began to chant in her own tongue, an endless chant it seemed, rhythmic, sad and so monotonous that it almost put me to sleep. Edward cried once, and the crying turned to coughing and his mother screamed from her hut that she wanted him back, and Alfred calmed her and then came to join us and I waved him down so that he would not shadow the moonlight before Iseult's door.


I peered at the helmet and saw, in the small reflected firelight, that Iseult, naked herself now, was pushing the boy into one of the pits and then, still chanting, she drew him through the earth passage.

Her chanting stopped and, instead, she began to pant, then scream, then pant again. She moaned, and Alfred made the sign of the cross, and then there was silence and I could not see properly, but suddenly Iseult cried aloud, a cry of relief, as if a great pain was ended, and I dimly saw her pull the naked boy out of the second pit. She laid him on her bed and he was silent as she crammed the thorn bushes into the tunnel of earth. Then she lay beside the boy and covered herself with my large cloak.


There was silence. I waited, and waited, and still there was silence. And the silence stretched until I understood that Iseult was sleeping, and the boy was sleeping too, or else he was dead, and I picked up the helmet and went to Leofric's hut.


'Shall I fetch him?' Alfred asked nervously.


'No.'


'His mother ...' he began.


'… must wait till morning, lord.'


'What can I tell her?'


'That her son is not coughing, lord.'


Ælswith screamed that Edward was dead, but Eanflaed and Alfred calmed her, and we all waited, and still there was silence, and in the end I fell asleep.


I woke in the dawn. It was raining as if the world was about to end, a torrential grey rain that swept in vast curtains from the Saefern Sea, a rain that drummed on the ground and poured off the reed thatch and made streams on the small island where the little huts crouched. I went to the door of Leofric's shelter and saw Ælswith watching from her doorway. She looked desperate, like a mother about to hear that her child had died, and there was nothing but silence from Iseult's hut, and Ælswith began to weep, the terrible tears of a bereaved mother, and then there was a strange sound.

At first I could not hear properly, for the seething rain was loud, but then I realised the sound was laughter. A child's laughter, and a heartbeat later Edward, still naked as an egg, and all muddy from his rebirth through the earth's passage, ran from Iseult's hut and went to his mother.


'Dear God,' Leofric said.


Iseult, when I found her, was weeping, and would not be consoled.


'I need you,' I told her harshly.


She looked up at me. 'Need me?'


'To build a bridge.'


She frowned. 'You think a bridge can be made with spells?'


'My magic this time,' I said. 'I want you healthy. I need a queen.'


She nodded. And Edward, from that day forward, thrived.

The first men came, summoned by the priests I had sent onto the mainland. They came in ones and twos, struggling through the winter weather and the swamp, bringing tales of Danish raids, and when we had two days of sunshine they came in groups of six or seven so that the island became crowded. I sent them out on patrol, but ordered none to go too far west for I did not want to provoke Svein, whose men were camped beside the sea. He had not attacked us yet, which was foolish of him, for he could have brought his ships up the rivers and then struggled through the marsh, but I knew he would attack us when he was ready, and so I needed to make our defences. And for that I needed Æthelingaeg.


Alfred was recovering. He was still sick, but he saw God's favour in his son's recovery and it never occurred to him that it had been pagan magic that caused the recovery. Even Ælswith was generous and, when I asked her for the loan of her silver fox-fur cloak and what few jewels she possessed, she yielded them without fuss. The fur cloak was dirty, but Eanflaed brushed and combed it.


There were over twenty men on our island now, probably enough to capture Æthelingaeg from its sullen headman, but Alfred did not want the marsh men killed. They were his subjects, he said, and if the Danes attacked they might yet fight for us, which meant the large island and its village must be taken by trickery and so, a week after Edward's rebirth, I took Leofric and Iseult south to Uaswold's settlement. Iseult was dressed in the silver fur and had a silver chain in her hair and a great garnet brooch at her breast. I had brushed her hair till it shone and in that winter's gloom she looked like a princess come from the bright sky.


Leofric and I, dressed in mail and helmets, did nothing except walk around Æthelingaeg, but after a while a man came from Haswold and said the chieftain wished to talk with us. I think Haswold expected us to go to his stinking hut, but I demanded he come to us instead. He could have taken from us whatever he wanted, of course, for there were only the three of us and he had his men, including Eofer the archer, but Haswold had at last understood that dire things were happening in the world beyond the swamp and that those events could pierce even his watery fastness, and so he chose to talk. He came to us at the settlement's northern gate which was nothing more than a sheep hurdle propped against decaying fish traps and there, as I expected, he gazed at Iseult as though he had never seen a woman before. His small cunning eyes flickered at me and back to her.


'Who is she?' he asked.


'A companion,' I said carelessly. I turned to look at the sudden steep hill across the river where I wanted the fort made.


‘Is she your wife?' Haswold asked.


'A companion,' I said again. 'I have a dozen like her,' I added.


'I will pay you for her,' Haswold said. A score of men were behind him, but only Eofer was armed with anything more dangerous than an eel spear.


I turned Iseult to face him, then I stood behind her and put my hands over her shoulders and undid the big garnet brooch. She shivered slightly and I whispered that she was safe and, when the brooch pin slid out of the heavy hide, I pulled her fur cloak apart. I showed her nakedness to Haswold and he dribbled into his fish scaled beard and his dirty fingers twitched in his foul otter skin furs, and then I closed the cloak and let Iseult fasten the brooch.


'How much will you pay me?' I asked him.


'I can just take her,' Haswold said, jerking his head at his men.


I smiled at that. 'You could,' I said, 'but many of you will die before we die, and our ghosts will come back to kill your women and make your children scream. Have you not heard that we have a witch with us? You think your weapons can fight magic?'


None of them moved.

'I have silver,' Haswold said.


'I don't need silver,' I said. 'What I want is a bridge and a fort.'


I turned and pointed to the hill across the river. 'What is that hill called?'


He shrugged. 'The hill,' he said, 'just the hill.'


'It must become a fort,' I said, 'and it must have walls of logs and a gate of logs and a tower so that men can see a long way down river. And then I want a bridge leading to the fort, a bridge strong enough to stop ships.' .


'You want to stop ships?' Haswold asked. He scratched his groin and shook his head. 'Can't build a bridge.'


'Why not?'


'Too deep.' That was probably true. It was low tide now and the Pedredan flowed sullenly between steep and deep mud banks.


'But I can block the river,' Haswold went on, his eyes still on Iseult.


'Block the river,' I said, 'and build a fort.'


'Give her to me,' Haswold promised, 'and you will have both.'


'Do what I want,' I said, 'and you can have her, her sisters and her cousins. All twelve of them.'


Haswold would have drained the whole swamp and built a new Jerusalem for the chance to hump Iseult, but he had not thought beyond the end of his prick. But that was far enough for me, and I have never seen work done so quickly. It was done in days. He blocked the river first and did it cleverly by making a floating barrier of logs and felled trees, complete with their tangling branches, all of them lashed together with goat hide ropes. A ship's crew could eventually dismantle such a barrier, but not if they were being assailed by spears and arrows from the fort on the hill that had a wooden palisade, a flooded ditch and a flimsy tower made of alder logs bound together with leather ropes. It was all crude work, but the wall was solid enough, and I began to fear that the small fort would be finished before enough West Saxons arrived to garrison it, but the three priests were doing their job and the soldiers still came, and I put a score of them in Æthelingaeg and told them to help finish the fort.


When the work was done, or nearly done, I took Iseult back to Æthelingaeg and I dressed her as she had been dressed before, only this time she wore a deerskin tunic beneath the precious fur, and I stood her in the centre of the village and said Haswold could take her. He looked at me warily, then looked at her.


'She's mine?' he asked.


'All yours,' I said, and stepped away from her.


'And her sisters?' he asked greedily, 'her cousins?


'I shall bring them tomorrow.'


He beckoned Iseult towards his hut. 'Come,' he said.


'In her country,' I said, 'it is the custom for the man to lead the woman to his bed.'


He stared at Iseult's lovely, dark-eyed face above the swathing silver cloak. I stepped further back, abandoning her, and he darted forward, reaching for her, and she brought her hands out from under the thick fur and she was holding Wasp-Sting and its blade sliced up into Haswold's belly. She gave a cry of horror and surprise as she brought the blade up, and I saw her hesitate, shocked by the effort required to pierce a man's belly and by the reality of what she had done. Then she gritted her teeth and ripped the blade hard, opening him up like a gutted carp, and he gave a strange mewing cry as he staggered back from her vengeful eyes. His intestines spilled into the mud, and I was beside her then with Serpent-Breath drawn. She was gasping, trembling. She had wanted to do it, but I doubted she would want to do it again.


'You were asked,' I snarled at the villagers, 'to fight for your king.'


Haswold was on the ground, twitching, his blood soaking his otter skin clothes. He made a mewing noise again and one of his filthy hands scrabbled among his own spilt guts.


'For your king!' I repeated. 'When you are asked to fight for your king it is not a request, but a duty!

Every man here is a soldier and your enemy is the Danes and if you will not fight them then you will fight against me!'


Iseult still stood beside Haswold who jerked like a dying fish. I edged her away and stabbed Serpent-Breath down to slit his throat.


'Take his head,' she told me.


'His head?'


'Strong magic.'


We mounted Haswold's head on the fort wall so that it stared towards the Danes, and in time eight more heads appeared there. They were the heads of Haswold's chief supporters, murdered by the villagers who were glad to be rid of them. Eofer, the archer, was not one of them. He was a simpleton, incapable of speaking sense, though he grunted and, from time to time, made howling noises. He could be led by a child, but when asked to use his bow he proved to have a terrible strength and uncanny accuracy. He was Æthelingaeg's hunter, capable of dropping a full-grown boar at a hundred paces, and that was what his name meant; boar.


I left Leofric to command the garrison at Æthelingaeg and took Iseult back to Alfred's refuge. She was silent and I thought her sunk in misery, but then she suddenly laughed. 'Look!' she pointed at the dead man's blood matted and sticky in Ælswith's fur.


She still had Wasp-Sting. That was my short sword, a sax, and it was a wicked blade in a close fight where men are so crammed together that there is no room to swing a long sword or an axe. She trailed the blade in the water, then used the hem of Ælswith's fur to scrub the diluted blood from the steel.


'It is harder than I thought,' she said, 'to kill a man.'


'It takes strength.'


'But I have his soul now.'


‘Is that why you did it?'


'To give life,' she said, 'you must take it from somewhere else.' She gave me back Wasp-Sting.


Alfred was shaving when we returned. He had been growing a beard, not for a disguise, but because he had been too low in spirits to bother about his appearance, but when Iseult and I reached his refuge he was standing naked to the waist beside a big wooden tub of heated water. His chest was pathetically thin, his belly hollow, but he had washed himself, combed his hair and was now scratching at his stubble with an ancient razor he had borrowed from a marsh man. His daughter, Æthelflaed was holding a scrap of silver that served as a mirror.


'I am feeling better,' he told me solemnly.


'Good, lord,' I said, 'so am I.'


'Does that mean you've killed someone?'


'She did,' I jerked my head at Iseult.


He gave her a speculative look. 'My wife,' he said, dipping the razor in the water, 'was asking whether Iseult is truly a queen.'


'She was,' I said, 'but that means little in Cornwalum. She was queen of a dung-heap.'


'And she's a pagan?'


'It was a Christian kingdom,' I said. 'Didn't Brother Asser tell you that?'


'He said they were not good Christians.'


'I thought that was for God to judge.'


'Good, Uhtred, good!' He waved the razor at me, then stooped to the silver mirror and scraped at his upper lip. 'Can she foretell the future?'


'She can.'


He scraped in silence for a few heartbeats. Æthelflaed watched Iseult solemnly.


'So tell me,' Alfred said, 'does she say I will be king in Wessex again?'


‘You will,' Iseult said tonelessly, surprising me.


Alfred stared at her. 'My wife,' he said, 'says that we can look for a ship now that Edward is better.

Look for a ship, go to Frankia and perhaps travel on to Rome. There is a Saxon community in Rome.'

He scraped the blade against his jawbone. 'They will welcome us.'


'The Danes will be defeated,' Iseult said, still tonelessly, but without a quiver of doubt in her voice.


Alfred rubbed his face. 'The example of Boethius tells me she's right,' he said.


'Boethius?' I asked, 'is he one of your warriors?'


'He was a Roman, Uhtred,' Alfred said in a tone which chided me for not knowing, 'and a Christian and a philosopher and a man rich in book-learning. Rich indeed!' He paused, contemplating the story of Boethius. 'When the pagan Alaric overran Rome,' he went on, 'and all civilisation and true religion seemed doomed, Boethius alone stood against the sinners. He suffered, but he won through, and we can take heart from him, indeed we can.' He pointed the razor at me. 'We must never forget the example of Boethius, Uhtred, never.'


'I won't, lord,' I said, 'but do you think book-learning will get you out of here?'


'I think,' he said, 'that when the Danes are gone, I shall grow a proper beard. Thank you, my sweet,'

this last was to Æthelflaed. 'Give the mirror back to Eanflaed, will you?'


Æthelflaed ran off and Alfred looked at me with some amusement. 'Does it surprise you that my wife and Eanflaed have become friends?'


'I'm glad of it, lord.'


'So am I.'


'But does your wife know Eanflaed's trade?' I asked.


'Not exactly,' he said. 'She believes Eanflaed was a cook in a tavern. Which is truth enough. So we have a fort at Æthelingaeg?'


'We do. Leofric commands there and has forty-three men.'


'And we have twenty-eight here. The very hosts of Midianl' He was evidently amused. 'So we shall move there.'


'Maybe in a week or two.'


'Why wait?' he asked.


I shrugged. 'This place is deeper in the swamp. When we have more men, when we know we can hold Æthelingaeg, that is the time for you to go there.'


He pulled on a grubby shirt. 'Your new fort can't stop the Danes?'


'It will slow them, lord. But they could still struggle through the marsh.' They would find it difficult, though, for Leofric was digging ditches to defend Æthelingaeg’s western edge.


'You're telling me Æthelingaeg is more vulnerable than this place?'


'Yes, lord.'


'Which is why I must go there,' he said. ‘Then they can't say their king skulked in an unreachable place, can they?' He smiled at me. 'They must say he defied the Danes. That he waited where they could reach him, that he put himself into danger.'


'And his family?' I asked.


'And his family,' he said firmly. He thought for a moment. 'If they come in force they could take all the swamp, isn't that true?'


'Yes, lord.'


'So no place is safer than another. But how large a force does Svein have?'


'I don't know, lord.'


'Don't know?' It was a reproof, gentle enough, but still a reproof.


'I haven't gone close to them, lord,' I explained, 'because till now we've been too weak to resist them, and so long as they leave us undisturbed then so long do we leave them undisturbed. There's no point in kicking a wild bees' nest, not unless you're determined to get the honey.'


He nodded acceptance of that argument. 'But we need to know how many bees there are, don't we?'

he said. 'So tomorrow we shall take a look at our enemy. You and me, Uhtred.'


'No, lord,' I said firmly. 'I shall go. You shouldn't risk yourself.'


'That is exactly what I need to do,' he said, 'and men must know I do it for I am the king, and why would men want a king who does not share their danger?' He waited for an answer, but I had none. 'So let's say our prayers,' he finished, 'then we shall eat.'


It was fish stew. It was always fish stew.


And next day we went to find the enemy.


There were six of us. The man who poled the punt, Iseult and 1, two of the newly-arrived household troops and Alfred. I tried once again to make him stay behind, but he insisted.


'If anyone should stay,' he said, 'it is Iseult.'


‘She comes,' I said.


'Evidently.' He did not argue, and we all climbed into a large punt and went westwards, and Alfred stared at the birds, thousands of birds. There were coot, moorhen, dabchicks, ducks, grebes and herons, while off to the west, white against the sullen sky, was a cloud of gulls.


The marsh man slid us silent and fast through secret channels. There were times when he seemed to be taking us directly into a bank of reeds or grass, yet the shallow craft would slide through into another stretch of open water. The incoming tide rippled through the gaps, bringing fish to the hidden nets and basket traps. Beneath the gulls, far off to the west, I could see the masts of Svein's fleet, which had been dragged ashore on the coast.


Alfred saw them too. 'Why don't they join Guthrum?'


'Because Svein doesn't want to take Guthrum's orders,' I said.


'You know that?'


'He told me so.'


Alfred paused, perhaps thinking of my trial in front of the Witan. He gave me a rueful look. 'What sort of man is he?'


'Formidable.'


'So why hasn't he attacked us here?'


I had been wondering the same thing. Svein had missed a golden chance to invade the swamp and hunt Alfred down. So why had he not even tried? 'Because there's easier plunder elsewhere,' I suggested, 'and because he won't do Guthrum's bidding. They're rivals. If Svein takes Guthrum's orders then he acknowledges Guthrum as his king.'


Alfred stared at the distant masts which showed as small scratches against the sky, then I mutely pointed towards a hill that reared steeply from the western water flats and the marsh man obediently went that way, and when the punt grounded we clambered through thick alders and past some sunken hovels where sullen folk in dirty otter fur watched us pass. The marsh man knew no name for the place, except to call it Brant, which meant steep, and it was steep. Steep and high, offering a view southwards to where the Pedredan coiled like a great snake through the swamp's heart. And at the river's mouth, where sand and mud stretched into the Saefern Sea, I could see the Danish ships.


They were grounded on the far bank of the Pedredan in the same place that Ubba had grounded his ships before meeting his death in battle. From there Svein could easily row to Æthelingaeg, for the river was wide and deep, and he would meet no challenge until he reached the river barrier beside the fort where Leofric waited. I wanted Leofric and his garrison to have some warning if the Danes attacked, and this high hill offered a view of Svein's camp, but was far enough away so that it would not invite an attack from the enemy.


'We should make a beacon here,' I said to Alfred. A fire lit here would give Æthelingaeg two or three hours' warning of a Danish attack.


He nodded, but said nothing. He stared at the distant ships, but they were too far off to count. He looked pale, and I knew he had found the climb to the summit painful, so now I urged him downhill to where the hovels leaked smoke.


'You should rest here, lord,' I told him. 'I'm going to count ships. But you should rest.'


He did not argue and I suspected his stomach pains were troubling him again. I found a hovel that was occupied by a widow and her four children, and I gave her a silver coin and said her king needed warmth and shelter for the day, and I do not think she understood who he was, but she knew the value of a shilling and so Alfred went into her house and sat by the fire.


'Give him broth,' I told the widow, whose name was Elwide, 'and let him sleep.'


She scorned that. 'Folk can't sleep while there's work!' she said. 'There are eels to skin, fish to smoke, nets to mend, traps to weave.'


'They can work,' I said, pointing to the two household troops, and I left them all to Elwide's tender mercies while Iseult and I took the punt southwards and, because the Pedredan's mouth was only three or four miles away, and because Brant was such a clear landmark, I left the marshman to help skin and smoke eels.


We crossed a smaller river and then poled through a long mere broken by marsh grass and by now I could see the hill on the Pedredan's far bank where we had been trapped by Ubba, and I told Iseult the story of the fight as I poled the punt across the shallows. The hull grounded twice and I had to push it into deeper water until I realised the tide was falling fast and so I tied the boat to a rotting stake, then we walked across a drying waste of mud and sea lavender towards the Pedredan. I had grounded farther from the river than I had wanted, and it was a long walk into a cold wind, but we could see all we needed once we reached the steep bank at the river's edge. The Danes could also see us. I was not in mail, but I did have my swords, and the sight of me brought men to the further shore where they hurled insults across the swirling water. I ignored them. I was counting ships and saw twenty-four beast-headed boats hauled up on the strip of ground where we had defeated Ubba the year before. Ubba's burned ships were also there, their black ribs half buried in the sand where the men capered and shouted their insults.


'How many men can you see?' I asked Iseult.


There were a few Danes in the half wrecked remnants of the monastery where Svein had killed the monks, but most were by the boats. 'Just men?' she asked.


'Forget the women and children,' I said. There were scores of women, mostly in the small village that was a little way upstream.


She did not know the English words for the bigger numbers, so she gave me her estimate by opening and closing her fingers six times.


'Sixty?' I said, and nodded. 'At most seventy. And there are twenty-four ships.' She frowned, not understanding the point I made. 'Twenty-four ships,' I said, 'means an army of what? Eight hundred?

Nine hundred men? So those sixty or seventy men are the ship-guards. And the others? Where are the others?' I asked the question of myself, watching as five of the Danes dragged a small boat to the river's edge. They planned to row across and capture us, but I did not intend to stay that long. The others,' I answered my own question, have gone south. They've left their women behind and gone raiding.

They're burning, killing, getting rich. They're raping Defnascir.'


'They're coming,' Iseult said, watching the five men clamber into the small boat.


'You want me to kill them?’


'You can?' She looked hopeful.


'No,' I said, 'so let's go.'


We started back across the long expanse of mud and sand. It looked smooth, but there were runnels cutting through and the tide had turned and the sea was sliding back into the land with surprising speed. The sun was sinking, tangling with black clouds and the wind pushed the flood up the Saefern and the water gurgled and shivered as it filled the small creeks. I turned to see that the five Danes had abandoned their chase and gone back to the western bank where their fires looked delicate against the evening's fading light. 'I can't see the boat,' Iseult said.


'Over there,' I said, but I was not certain I was right because the light was dimming and our punt was tied against a background of reeds, and now we were jumping from one dry spot to another, and the tide went on rising and the dry spots shrank and then we were splashing through the water and still the wind drove the tide inland.


The tides are big in the Saefern. A man could make a house at low tide, and by high it would have vanished beneath the waves. Islands appear at low tide, islands with summits thirty feet above the water, and at the high tide they are gone, and this tide was pushed by the wind and it was coming fast and cold and Iseult began to falter so I picked her up and carried her like a child. I was struggling and the sun was behind the low western clouds and it seemed now that I was wading through an endless chill sea, but then, perhaps because the darkness was falling, or perhaps because Hoder, the blind god of the night, favoured me, I saw the punt straining against its tether.


I dropped Iseult into the boat and hauled myself over the low side. I cut the rope, then collapsed, cold and wet and frightened and let the punt drift on the tide.


‘You must get back to the fire,' Iseult chided me. I wished I had brought the marsh man now for I had to find a route across the swamp and it was a long, cold journey in the day's last light. Iseult crouched beside me and stared far across the waters to where a hill reared up green and steep against the eastern land.


'Eanflaed told me that hill is Avalon,' she said reverently.


'Avalon?'


'Where Arthur is buried.'


'I thought you believed he was sleeping?'


'He does sleep,' she said fervently. 'He sleeps in his grave with his warriors.' She gazed at the distant hill that seemed to glow because it had been caught by the day's last errant shaft of sunlight spearing from the west beneath the furnace of glowing clouds.


'Arthur,' she said in a whisper. 'He was the greatest king who ever lived. He had a magic sword.'

She told me tales of Arthur, how he had pulled his sword from a stone, and how he had led the greatest warriors to battle, and I thought that his enemies had been us, the English Saxons, yet Avalon was now in England, and I wondered if, in a few years, the Saxons would recall their lost kings and claim they were great and all the while the Danes would rule us. When the sun vanished Iseult was singing softly in her own tongue, but she told me the song was about Arthur and how he had placed a ladder against the moon and netted a swathe of stars to make a cloak for his queen, Guinevere. Her voice carried us across the twilit water, sliding between reeds, and behind us the fires of the Danish ship-guards faded in the encroaching dark and far off a dog howled and the wind sighed cold and a spattering of rain shivered the black mere.


Iseult stopped singing as Brant loomed.


'There's going to be a great fight,' she said softly and her words took me by surprise and I thought she was still thinking of Arthur and imagining that the sleeping king would erupt from his earthy bed in gouts of soil and steel.


'A fight by a hill,' she went on, 'a steep hill, and there will be a white horse and the slope will run with blood and the Danes will run from the Sais.'


The Sais were us, the Saxons. 'You dreamed this?' I asked.


'I dreamed it,' she said.


'So it is true?'


'It is fate,' she said, and I believed her, and just then the bow of the punt scraped on the island's shore.


It was pitch dark, but there were fish-smoking fires on the beach, and by their dying light we found our way to Elwide's house. It was made of alder logs thatched with reeds and I found Alfred sitting by the central hearth where he stared absently into the flames. Elwide, the two soldiers and the marshman were all skinning eels at the hut's further end where three of the widow's children were plaiting willow withies into traps and the fourth was gutting a big pike.


I crouched by the fire, wanting its warmth to bring life to my frozen legs.


Alfred blinked as though he was surprised to see me. 'The Danes?' he asked.


'Gone inland,' I said. 'Left sixty or seventy men as ship-guards.' I crouched by the fire, shivering, wondering if I would ever be warm again.


'There's food here,' Alfred said vaguely.


'Good,' I said, 'because we're starving.'


'No, I mean there's food in the marshes,' he said. 'Enough food to feed an army. We can raid them, Uhtred, gather men and raid them. But that isn't enough. I have been thinking. All day, I've been thinking.' He looked better now, less pained, and I suspected he had wanted time to think and had found it in this stinking hovel. 'I'm not going to run away,' he said firmly. 'I'm not going to Frankia.'


'Good,' I said, though I was so cold I was not really listening to him.


'We're going to stay here,' he said, 'raise an army, and take Wessex back.'


'Good,' I said again. I could smell burning. The hearth was surrounded by flat stones and Elwide had put a dozen oat bannocks on the stones to cook and the edges nearest the flames were blackening.

I moved one of them, but Alfred frowned and gestured for me to stop for fear of distracting him.


'The problem,' he said, 'is that I cannot afford to fight a small war.'


I did not see what other war he could fight, but kept silent.


'The longer the Danes stay here,' he said, 'the firmer their grip. Men will start giving Guthrum their allegiance. I can't have that.'


No, lord.'


'So they have to be defeated.' He spoke grimly. 'Not beaten, Uhtred, but defeated!'


I thought of Iseult's dream, but said nothing, then I thought how often Alfred had made peace with the Danes instead of fighting them, and still I said nothing.


'In spring,' he went on, 'they'll have new men and they'll spread through Wessex until, by summer's end, there'll be no Wessex. So we have to do two things.' He was not so much telling me as just thinking aloud. 'First,' he held out one long finger, 'we have to stop them from dispersing their armies.

They have to fight us here. They have to be kept together so they can't send small bands across the country and take estates.' That made sense. Right now, from what we heard from the land beyond the swamp, the Danes were raiding all across Wessex, but they were going fast, snatching what plunder they could before other men could take it, but in a few weeks they would start looking for places to live.

By keeping their attention on the swamp Alfred hoped to stop that process. 'And while they look at us,'

he said, 'the fyrd must be gathered.'


I stared at him. I had supposed he would stay in the swamp until the Danes either overwhelmed us or we gained enough strength to take back a shire, and then another shire, a process of years, but his vision was much grander. He would assemble the army of Wessex under the Danish noses and take everything back at once. It was like a game of dice and he had decided to take everything he had, little as it was, and risk it all on one throw.


'We shall make them fight a great battle,' he said grimly, 'and with God's help we shall destroy them.'


There was a sudden scream. Alfred, as if startled from a reverie, looked up, but too late, because Elwide was standing over him, screaming that he had burned the oatcakes. 'I told you to watch them!'

she shouted and, in her fury, she slapped the king with a skinned eel. The blow made a wet sound as it struck and had enough force to knock Alfred sideways. The two soldiers jumped up, hands going to their swords, but I waved them back as Elwide snatched the burned cakes from the stones. 'I told you to watch them!' she shrieked, and Alfred lay where he had fallen and I thought he was crying, but then I saw he was laughing. He was helpless with laughter, weeping with laughter, as happy as ever I saw him.


Because he had a plan to take back his kingdom.


Æthelingaeg's garrison now had seventy-three men. Alfred moved there with his family, and sent six of Leofric's men to Brant armed with axes and orders to make a beacon. He was at his best in those days, calm and confident, the panic and despair of the first weeks of January swept away by his irrational belief that he would regain his kingdom before summer touched the land. He was immensely cheered too by the arrival of Father Beocca who came limping from the landing stage, face beaming, to fall prostrate at the king's feet. 'You live, lord!' Beocca said, clutching the king's ankles, 'God be praised, you live!'


Alfred raised him and embraced him, and both men wept and next day, a Sunday, Beocca preached a sermon which I could not help hearing because the service was held in the open air, under a clear cold sky, and Æthelingaeg's island was too small to escape the priest's voice. Beocca said how David, King of Israel, had been forced to flee his enemies, how he had taken refuge in the cave of Adullam, and how God had led him back into Israel and to the defeat of his enemies. 'This is our Adullam!' Beocca said, waving his good hand at Æthelingaeg's thatched roofs, 'and this is our David!' he pointed to the king, 'and God will lead us to victory!'

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