DEATH OF KINGS

BERNARD CORNWELL

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

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First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 2011

Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2011

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Cover illustration © Lee Gibbons/Tin Moon – www.leegibbons.co.uk

Map © John Gilkes 2011

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

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

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

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

Source ISBN: 9780007331802

Ebook Edition © September 2011 ISBN: 9780007331826

Version: 2019-09-27

DEATH OF KINGS

is for Anne LeClaire,

Novelist and Friend,

who supplied the first line.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

The Royal Family of Wessex

Place Names

Part One: THE SORCERESS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part Two: DEATH OF A KING

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part Three: ANGELS

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Part Four: DEATH IN WINTER

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Historical Note

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Bernard Cornwell

About the Publisher

The Royal Family of Wessex

PLACE NAMES

The spelling of place names in Anglo-Saxon England was an uncertain business, with no consistency and no agreement even about the name itself. Thus London was variously rendered as Lundonia, Lundenberg, Lundenne, Lundene, Lundenwic, Lundenceaster and Lundres. Doubtless some readers will prefer other versions of the names listed below, but I have usually employed whichever spelling is cited in either the Oxford or the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names for the years nearest to AD 900, but even that solution is not foolproof. Hayling Island, in 956, was written as both Heilincigae and Hæglingaiggæ. Nor have I been consistent myself; I should spell England as Englaland, and have preferred the modern form Northumbria to Norðhymbralond to avoid the suggestion that the boundaries of the ancient kingdom coincide with those of the modern county. So this list, like the spellings themselves, is capricious.

Baddan Byrig | Badbury Rings, Dorset
Beamfleot | Benfleet, Essex
Bebbanburg | Bamburgh, Northumberland
Bedanford | Bedford, Bedfordshire
Blaneford | Blandford Forum, Dorset
Buccingahamm | Buckingham, Bucks
Buchestanes | Buxton, Derbyshire
Ceaster | Chester, Cheshire
Cent | County of Kent
Cippanhamm | Chippenham, Wiltshire
Cirrenceastre | Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Contwaraburg | Canterbury, Kent
Cyninges Tun | Kingston upon Thames, Greater London
Cracgelad | Cricklade, Wiltshire
Cumbraland | Cumberland
Cytringan | Kettering, Northants
Dumnoc | Dunwich, Suffolk
Dunholm | Durham, County Durham
Eanulfsbirig | St Neot, Cambridgeshire
Eleg | Ely, Cambridgeshire
Eoferwic | York, Yorkshire (called Jorvik by the Danes)
Exanceaster | Exeter, Devon
Fagranforda | Fairford, Gloucestershire
Fearnhamme | Farnham, Surrey
Fifhidan | Fyfield, Wiltshire
Fughelness | Foulness Island, Essex
Gegnesburh | Gainsborough, Lincolnshire
Gleawecestre | Gloucester, Gloucestershire
Grantaceaster | Cambridge, Cambridgeshire
Hothlege, River | Hadleigh Ray, Essex
Hrofeceastre | Rochester, Kent
Humbre, River | River Humber
Huntandon | Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
Liccelfeld | Lichfield, Staffordshire
Lindisfarena | Lindisfarne (Holy Island), Northumberland
Lundene | London
Medwæg, River | River Medway, Kent
Natangrafum | Notgrove, Gloucestershire
Oxnaforda | Oxford, Oxfordshire
Ratumacos | Rouen, Normandy, France
Rochecestre | Wroxeter, Shropshire
Sarisberie | Salisbury, Wiltshire
Sæfern | River Severn
Sceaftesburi | Shaftesbury, Dorset
Sceobyrig | Shoebury, Essex
Scrobbesburh | Shrewsbury, Shropshire
Snotengaham | Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
Sumorsæte | Somerset
Temes, River | River Thames
Thornsæta | Dorset
Tofeceaster | Towcester, Northamptonshire
Trente, River | River Trent
Turcandene | Turkdean, Gloucestershire
Tweoxnam | Christchurch, Dorset
Westune | Whitchurch, Shropshire
Wiltunscir | Wiltshire
Wimburnan | Wimborne, Dorset
Wintanceaster | Winchester, Hampshire
Wygraceaster | Worcester, Worcestershire

PART ONE
The Sorceress

One

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

‘I heard your drivelling,’ I snarled.

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

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

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

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

‘A child?’

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

‘A three-day-old baby is a saint?’

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

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

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

‘So tell me.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Though what?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Until it isn’t,’ I said brusquely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Jiggit and mumph, lord,’ he said.

‘Is that enough?’

‘It’s enough, lord.’

‘Kill the rest then,’ I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Outlaws,’ I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Does it have a fire?’

‘Yes, lord.’

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

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

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

‘What…’ Father Willibald began.

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

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

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

‘Idiots?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Egbert, lord.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘And who paid you to kill me?’

‘I don’t know, lord.’

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

‘A Saxon, lord.’

‘And you don’t know him?’

‘No, lord.’

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

And Willibald showed me the magic fish.

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

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

‘Reluctant,’ one said.

‘Admiration,’ his twin said.

‘Reluctant?’ I asked in an unfriendly tone.

‘It is known that Alfred is disappointed,’

‘That you eschew the true faith, but…’

‘We pray for you daily!’

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

And they had brought the magic fish.

‘King Eohric,’ Ceolnoth or Ceolberht said.

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

‘And with Mercia!’

‘The Christian kingdoms, you understand.’

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

‘Alfred still lives?’ I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

‘King Edward,’ Willibald corrected his fellow priest.

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

‘Edward,’ Willibald said.

‘Eohric,’ Ceolnoth and Ceolberht said together.

‘Alfred,’ the West Saxon priest said.

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

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

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

‘Why me?’ I asked the twins.

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

‘Many men,’ I answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘He does,’ Ceolnoth or Ceolberht said.

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

‘They want everything,’ Ceolnoth or Ceolberht answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The priests all crossed themselves.

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

‘By the barrelful, lord,’ he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes, lord,’ Willibald said happily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Because they want Wessex,’ I said.

‘They want all of Britain,’ Finan said.

‘They’re waiting,’ Osferth said.

‘For what?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I prefer good food,’ I said.

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

‘No cattle raids?’

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

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

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

‘That’s what the bastard said.’

‘That’s our land,’ Beortsig said.

‘Outlaws,’ Beornnoth said dismissively.

‘And fools,’ Beortsig added.

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

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

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

‘Eohric thinks they are.’

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

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

‘True, I suppose,’ Beornnoth allowed.

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

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

‘Amen,’ Osferth said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beornnoth frowned. ‘Or he might not.’

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

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

‘I just want to smell them,’ I said.

‘Smell?’

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

‘Sigurd,’ Beornnoth admitted after a pause.

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

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

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

‘Not provoke him,’ I promised.

‘No deaths? No robbery?’

‘I won’t start anything,’ I promised.

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

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

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

‘So everyone says.’

‘They’ve said it before.’

‘Many times,’ I agreed.

‘You believe it?’

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

‘And Edward will inherit?’ Beortsig asked.

‘That’s what Alfred wants.’

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

‘There is no king in Mercia,’ I said.

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

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

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

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

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

‘What’s his name?’

‘Jarl Jorven, lord.’

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

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

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

‘Gone where?’

‘I don’t know, lord.’

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

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

‘Cytringan?’

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

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

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

‘Is he kin to Sigurd?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘His age?’

Another shrug. ‘Young.’

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

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

‘And you think that will last?’

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

Instead I headed farther north, ignoring Beortsig’s complaints. We left Jorven’s hall unmolested and crossed a low ridge to see a wide valley. Small smoke trails showed where villages or steadings stood, and glimmers of dull light betrayed a river. A fine place, I thought, fertile and well-watered, exactly the sort of land that the Danes craved. ‘You say Jorven has thirty or forty warriors?’ I asked Beortsig.

‘No more.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Maybe,’ I grunted.

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

‘And why would Sigurd summon warriors in midwinter?’

‘Because he knows about Eohric?’

‘That’s what’s worrying me,’ I said.

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

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

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

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

‘Cytringan,’ he said.

‘And where’s Cytringan?’

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

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

Someone was lying.

Two

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

‘What’s he doing here?’

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

‘A choir?’ I asked.

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

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

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

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

‘Of course,’ Willibald said.

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

Willibald sighed. ‘Please lord, no.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No, no,’ he said hurriedly.

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

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

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

‘Prevent it? How?’

‘How do you think?’ I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Island?’

‘Eleg is an island,’ a twin said.

‘In a marsh,’ the other added.

‘With a convent!’

‘Which was burned by the pagans.’

‘Though the church is now restored.’

‘Thanks be to God.’

‘The holy Æthelreda built the convent.’

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

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

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

‘So why are we going there?’

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

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

‘Better than Grantaceaster?’ I demanded.

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

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

‘Where do I look?’ Sihtric asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Or two?’ the other said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I can’t?’

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

And that was why I would take Sigunn towards Eleg.

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

I would kill them instead.

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

‘She can, lord,’ Ludda said.

‘Is she?’

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

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

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

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

‘Cheat, lord?’ He gazed up innocently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I should hang you,’ I said.

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

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

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

‘What river?’

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

‘So I cross the river twice?’

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

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

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

‘Can the river be forded anywhere else?’

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

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

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

‘And the distance from Eanulfsbirig to Huntandon?’

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

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

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

Or maybe he planned nothing at all.

Maybe I saw danger where there was none.

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

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

‘What’s there?’

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

‘It has a palisade?’

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

‘I hear Sigurd is spending Yule there.’

‘That could be, lord.’

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

‘We?’ he asked nervously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes, lord.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Jorven?’

‘He serves Jarl Sigurd,’ I said.

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

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

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

‘You can ask,’ I said grandly.

‘You mean Jorven harm, lord?’

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

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

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

‘We serve King Eohric,’ he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What are lions?’

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

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

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

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

‘The horses can swim?’

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

‘The others?’ Ivann was immediately suspicious again.

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

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

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

‘Bastards?’

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

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

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

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

‘So what are we doing?’ Finan asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I do, lord, as I told you.’

‘And he would kill Uhtred?’ I asked.

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

And it was over.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Be quiet,’ Sigurd growled.

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

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

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

‘Ælfadell?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘She told you that?’

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

‘My leader?’ I pretended to be amused.

‘You,’ Sigurd said grimly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Father Willibald!’ I shouted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is what we practised every day. If the shield wall breaks then death rules, but if the shield wall holds then it is the enemy who dies, and those first Danes came at us in a wild rush, inspired by a sorceress’s prophecy, and their assault had been defeated by the barricade that had tripped them and so made them easy prey for our blades. They had stood no chance of breaking our shield wall, they were too undisciplined, too confused, and now three of them lay dead among the scattered reeds that still burned feebly, while the smoking beams remained as a low obstacle. The survivors of those first attackers did not stay to be killed, but ran back to Sigurd’s bank where a second group readied to break us. There may have been twenty of them, big men, spear-Danes, coming to kill, and they were not wild like the first group, but deliberate. These were men who had killed in the shield wall, who knew their business, whose shields overlapped and whose weapons glittered in the dying sun. They would not rush and stumble. They would come slowly and use their long spears to break our wall and so let their swordsmen and axemen into our ranks.

‘God, fight for us!’ Willibald called as the Danes reached the bridge. The newcomers stepped carefully, not tripping, their eyes watching us. Some called insults, yet I hardly heard them. I was watching them. There was blood on my face and in the links of my mail coat. My shield was heavy with a Danish spear, and Wasp-Sting’s blade was reddened. ‘Slaughter them, O Lord!’ Willibald was praying. ‘Cut down the heathen! Smite them, Lord, in thy great mercy!’ The monks had started their chanting again. The Danes pulled dead or dying men backwards to make room for their attack. They were close now, very close, but not yet in reach of our blades. I watched their shields touch each other again, saw the spear-blades come up, and heard the word of command.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was a cold night.

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

And next day we were home.

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