WAR OF THE WOLF
BERNARD CORNWELL

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2018

Map © John Gilkes 2018

Plan of the Roman fort adapted from a drawing by Thomas Sopwith

Jacket design © HarperColl‌insPublishers Ltd 2018

Jacket photography © CollaborationJS

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

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008183837

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2018 ISBN: 9780008183851

Version 2018-08-02

Dedication

War of the Wolf

is dedicated to the memory of

Toby Eady,

my agent and dear friend.

1941–2017

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Place Names

Part One: The Wild Lands

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part Two: Eostre’s Feast

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part Three: Fortress of the Eagles

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Historical Note

About the Author

Also by Bernard Cornwell

About the Publisher

PLACE NAMES

The spelling of place names in ninth- and tenth-century Britain was an uncertain business, with no consistency and no agreement even about the name itself. Thus London was variously rendered as Lundonia, Lundenberg, Lundenne, Lundene, Lundenwic, Lundenceaster and Lundres. Doubtless some readers will prefer other versions of the names listed below, but I have usually employed whichever spelling is cited in either the Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names or the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names for the years nearest or contained within Alfred’s reign, AD 871–899, but even that solution is not foolproof. Hayling Island, in 956, was written as both Heilincigae and Hæglingaiggæ. Nor have I been consistent myself; I 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.

 Bebbanburg — Bamburgh, Northumberland

 Berewic — Berwick on Tweed, Northumberland

 Brunanburh — Bromborough, Cheshire

 Cair Ligualid — Carlisle, Cumbria

 Ceaster — Chester, Cheshire

 Cent — Kent

 Contwaraburg — Canterbury, Kent

 Dunholm — Durham, County Durham

 Dyflin — Dublin, Eire

 Eoferwic — York, Yorkshire (Saxon name)

 Fagranforda — Fairford, Gloucestershire

 Farnea Islands — Farne Islands, Northumberland

 Gleawecestre — Gloucester, Gloucestershire

 Heagostealdes — Hexham, Northumberland

 Heahburh — Whitley Castle, Alston, Cumbria

 (fictional name)

 Hedene — River Eden, Cumbria

 Huntandun — Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire

 Hwite — Whitchurch, Shropshire

 Irthinam — River Irthing

 Jorvik — York, Yorkshire (Danish/Norse name)

 Lindcolne — Lincoln, Lincolnshire

 Lindisfarena — Lindisfarne (Holy Island), Northumberland

 Lundene — London

 Mædlak — River Medlock, Lancashire

 Mærse — River Mersey

 Mameceaster — Manchester

 Monez — Anglesey, Wales

 Ribbel — River Ribble, Lancashire

 Ribelcastre — Ribchester, Lancashire

 Snæland — Iceland

 Spura — Birdoswald Roman fort, Cumbria (fictional name)

 Sumorsæte — Somerset

 Tamweorthin — Tamworth, Staffordshire

 Temes — River Thames

 Tine — River Tyne

 Usa — River Ouse, Yorkshire

 Wevere — River Weaver, Cheshire

 Wiltunscir — Wiltshire

 Wintanceaster — Winchester, Hampshire

 Wirhealum — The Wirral, Cheshire

PART ONE
The Wild Lands

One

I did not go to Æthelflaed’s funeral.

She was buried in Gleawecestre in the same vault as her husband, whom she had hated.

Her brother, King Edward of Wessex, was chief mourner and, when the rites were done and Æthelflaed’s corpse had been walled up, he stayed in Gleawecestre. His sister’s strange banner of the holy goose was lowered over the palace, and the dragon of Wessex was hoisted in its place. The message could not have been plainer. Mercia no longer existed. In all the British lands south of Northumbria and east of Wales there was only one kingdom and one king. Edward sent me a summons, demanding I travel to Gleawecestre and swear fealty to him for the lands I owned in what had been Mercia, and the summons bore his name followed by the words Anglorum Saxonum Rex. King of the Angles and the Saxons. I ignored the document.

Within a year a second document reached me, this one signed and sealed in Wintanceaster. By the grace of God, it told me, the lands granted to me by Æthelflaed of Mercia were now forfeited to the bishopric of Hereford, which, the parchment assured me, would employ said lands to the furtherance of God’s glory. ‘Meaning Bishop Wulfheard will have more silver to spend on his whores,’ I told Eadith.

‘Maybe you should have gone to Gleawecestre?’ she suggested.

‘And swear loyalty to Edward?’ I spat the name. ‘Never. I don’t need Wessex and Wessex doesn’t need me.’

‘So what will you do about the estates?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said. What could I do? Go to war against Wessex? It annoyed me that Bishop Wulfheard, an old enemy, had taken the land, but I had no need of Mercian lands. I owned Bebbanburg. I was a Northumbrian lord, and owned all that I wanted. ‘Why should I do anything?’ I growled at Eadith. ‘I’m old and I don’t need trouble.’

‘You’re not old,’ she said loyally.

‘I’m old,’ I insisted. I was over sixty, I was ancient.

‘You don’t look old.’

‘So Wulfheard can plough his whores and let me die in peace. I don’t care if I never see Wessex or Mercia ever again.’

Yet a year later I was in Mercia, mounted on Tintreg, my fiercest stallion, and wearing a helmet and mail, and with Serpent-Breath, my sword, slung at my left hip. Rorik, my servant, carried my heavy iron-rimmed shield, and behind us were ninety men, all armed, and all mounted on war horses.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ Finan said beside me. He was gazing at the enemy in the valley beneath us. ‘Four hundred of the bastards?’ he paused. ‘At least four hundred. Maybe five?’

I said nothing.

It was late on a winter’s afternoon, and bitterly cold. The horses’ breath misted among the leafless trees that crowned the gentle ridge from where we watched our enemy. The sun was sinking and hidden by clouds, which meant no betraying sparks of light could be reflected from our mail or weapons. Away to my right, to the west, the River Dee lay flat and grey as it widened towards the sea. On the lower ground in front of us was the enemy and, beyond them, Ceaster.

‘Five hundred,’ Finan decided.

‘I never thought I’d see this place again,’ I said. ‘Never wanted to see it again.’

‘They broke the bridge,’ Finan said, peering far to the south.

‘Wouldn’t you, in their place?’

The place was Ceaster, and our enemy was besieging the city. Most of that enemy was to the east of the city, but smoking campfires betrayed plenty to the city’s north. The River Dee flowed just south of the city walls, then turned north towards its widening estuary, and by breaking the central span of the ancient Roman bridge, the enemy had ensured that no relief force could come from the south. If the city’s small garrison was to fight its way out of the trap they would need to come north or east where the enemy was strongest. And that garrison was small. I had been told, though it was nothing more than a guess, that fewer than a hundred men held the city.

Finan must have been thinking the same thing. ‘And five hundred men couldn’t take the city?’ he said derisively.

‘Nearer six hundred?’ I suggested mildly. It was hard to estimate the enemy because many of the folk in the besiegers’ encampment were women and children, but I thought Finan’s guess was low. Tintreg lowered his head and snorted. I patted his neck, then touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt for luck. ‘I wouldn’t want to assault those walls,’ I said. Ceaster’s stone walls had been built by the Romans, and the Romans had built well. And the city’s small garrison, I thought, had been well led. They had repelled the early assaults, and so the enemy had settled down to starve them out.

‘So, what do we do?’ Finan asked.

‘Well, we’ve come a long way,’ I said.

‘So?’

‘So it seems a pity not to fight.’ I gazed at the city. ‘If what we were told is true, then the poor bastards in the city will be eating rats by now. And that lot?’ I nodded down to the campfires. ‘They’re cold, they’re bored, and they’ve been here too long. They got bloodied when they attacked the walls, so now they’re just waiting.’

I could see the thick barricades that the besiegers had made outside Ceaster’s northern and eastern gates. Those barricades would be guarded by the enemy’s best troops, posted there to stop the garrison sallying out or trying to escape. ‘They’re cold,’ I said again, ‘they’re bored, and they’re useless.’

Finan smiled. ‘Useless?’

‘They’re mostly from the fyrd,’ I said. The fyrd is an army raised from field labourers, shepherds, common men. They might be brave, but a trained house-warrior, like the ninety who followed me, was far more lethal. ‘Useless,’ I said again, ‘and stupid.’

‘Stupid?’ Berg, mounted on his stallion behind me, asked.

‘No sentries out here! They should never have let us get this close. They have no idea we’re here. And stupidity gets you killed.’

‘I like that they’re stupid,’ Berg said. He was a Norseman, young and savage, frightened of nothing except the disapproval of his young Saxon wife.

‘Three hours to sunset?’ Finan suggested.

‘Let’s not waste them.’

I turned Tintreg, going back through the trees to the road that led to Ceaster from the ford of the Mærse. The road brought back memories of riding to face Ragnall, and of Haesten’s death, and now the road was leading me towards another fight.

Though we looked anything but threatening as we rode down the long, gentle slope. We did not hurry. We came like men who were finishing a long journey, which was true, and we kept our swords in their scabbards and our spears bundled on the packhorses led by our servants. The enemy must have seen us almost as soon as we emerged from the wooded ridge, but we were few and they were many, and our ambling approach suggested we came in peace. The high stone wall of the city was in shadow, but I could make out the banners hanging from the ramparts. They showed Christian crosses, and I remembered Bishop Leofstan, a holy fool and a good man, who had been chosen as Ceaster’s bishop by Æthelflaed. She had strengthened and garrisoned the city-fort as a bulwark against the Norse and Danes who crossed the Irish Sea to hunt for slaves in the Saxon lands.

Æthelflaed, Alfred’s daughter, and ruler of Mercia. Dead now. Her corpse was decaying in a cold stone vault. I imagined her dead hands clutching a crucifix in the grave’s foul darkness, and remembered those same hands clawing my spine as she writhed beneath me. ‘God forgive me,’ she would say, ‘don’t stop!’

And now she had brought me back to Ceaster.

And Serpent-Breath was about to kill again.

Æthelflaed’s brother ruled Wessex. He had been content to let his sister rule Mercia, but on her death he had marched West Saxon troops north across the Temes. They came, he said, to honour his sister at her funeral, but they stayed to impose Edward’s rule on his sister’s realm. Edward, Anglorum Saxonum Rex.

Those Mercian lords who bent their knee were rewarded, but some, a few, resented the West Saxons. Mercia was a proud land. There had been a time when the King of Mercia was the most powerful ruler of Britain, when the kings of Wessex and of East Anglia and the chieftains of Wales had sent tribute, when Mercia was the largest of all the British kingdoms. Then the Danes had come, and Mercia had fallen, and it had been Æthelflaed who had fought back, who had driven the pagans northwards and built the burhs that protected her frontier. And she was dead, mouldering, and her brother’s troops now guarded the burh walls, and the King of Wessex called himself king of all the Saxons, and he demanded silver to pay for the garrisons, and he took land from the resentful lords and gave it to his own men, or to the church. Always to the church, because it was the priests who preached to the Mercian folk that it was their nailed god’s will that Edward of Wessex be king in their land, and that to oppose the king was to oppose their god.

Yet fear of the nailed god did not prevent a revolt, and so the fighting had begun. Saxon against Saxon, Christian against Christian, Mercian against Mercian, and Mercian against West Saxon. The rebels fought under Æthelflaed’s flag, declaring that it had been her will that her daughter, Ælfwynn, succeed her. Ælfwynn, Queen of Mercia! I liked Ælfwynn, but she could no more have ruled a kingdom than she could have speared a charging boar. She was flighty, frivolous, pretty, and petty. Edward, knowing his niece had been named to the throne, took care to have her shut away in a convent, along with his discarded wife, but still the rebels flaunted her mother’s flag and fought in her name.

They were led by Cynlæf Haraldson, a West Saxon warrior whom Æthelflaed had wanted as a husband for Ælfwynn. The truth, of course, was that Cynlæf wanted to be King of Mercia himself. He was young, he was handsome, he was brave in battle, and, to my mind, stupid. His ambition was to defeat the West Saxons, rescue his bride from her convent, and be crowned.

But first he must capture Ceaster. And he had failed.

‘It feels like snow,’ Finan said as we rode south towards the city.

‘It’s too late in the year for snow,’ I said confidently.

‘I can feel it in my bones,’ he said, shivering. ‘It’ll come by nightfall.’

I scoffed at that. ‘Two shillings says it won’t.’

He laughed. ‘God send me more fools with silver! My bones are never wrong.’ Finan was Irish, my second-in-command, and my dearest friend. His face, framed by the steel of his helmet, looked lined and old, his beard was grey. Mine was too, I suppose. I watched as he loosened Soul-Stealer in her scabbard and as his eyes flicked across the smoke of the campfires ahead. ‘So what are we doing?’ he asked.

‘Scouring the bastards off the eastern side of the city,’ I said.

‘They’re thick there.’

I guessed that almost two thirds of the enemy were camped on Ceaster’s eastern flank. The campfires were dense there, burning between low shelters made of branches and turf. To the south of the crude shelters were a dozen lavish tents, placed close to the ruins of the old Roman arena, which, even though it had been used as a convenient quarry, still rose higher than the tents above which two flags hung motionless in the still air. ‘If Cynlæf’s still here,’ I said, ‘he’ll be in one of those tents.’

‘Let’s hope the bastard’s drunk.’

‘Or else he’s in the arena,’ I said. The arena was built just outside the city and was a vast hulk of stone. Beneath its banked stone seating were cave-like rooms that, when I had last explored them, were home to wild dogs. ‘If he had any sense,’ I went on, ‘he’d have abandoned this siege. Left men to keep the garrison starving, and gone south. That’s where the rebellion will be won or lost, not here.’

‘Does he have sense?’

‘Daft as a turnip,’ I said, and then started laughing. A group of women burdened with firewood had stepped off the road to kneel as we passed, and they looked up at me in astonishment. I waved at them. ‘We’re about to make some of them widows,’ I said, still laughing.

‘And that’s funny?’

I spurred Tintreg into a trot. ‘What’s funny,’ I said, ‘is that we’re two old men riding to war.’

‘You, maybe,’ Finan said pointedly.

‘You’re my age!’

‘I’m not a grandfather!’

‘You might be. You don’t know.’

‘Bastards don’t count.’

‘They do,’ I insisted.

‘Then you’re probably a great-grandfather by now.’

I gave him a harsh look. ‘Bastards don’t count,’ I snarled, making him laugh, then he made the sign of the cross because we had reached the Roman cemetery that stretched either side of the road. There were ghosts here, ghosts wandering between the lichen-covered stones with their fading inscriptions that only Christian priests who understood Latin could read. Years before, in a fit of zeal, a priest had started throwing down the stones, declaring they were pagan abominations. That very same day he was struck down dead and ever since the Christians had tolerated the graves, which, I thought, must be protected by the Roman gods. Bishop Leofstan had laughed when I told him that story, and had assured me that the Romans were good Christians. ‘It was our god, the one true god, who slew the priest,’ he had told me. Then Leofstan himself had died, struck down just as suddenly as the grave-hating priest. Wyrd bið ful a¯ræd.

My men were strung out now, not quite in single file, but close. None wanted to ride too near the road’s verges because that was where the ghosts gathered. The long, straggling line of horsemen made us vulnerable, but the enemy seemed oblivious to our threat. We passed more women, all bent beneath great burdens of firewood they had cut from spinneys north of the graves. The nearest campfires were close now. The afternoon’s light was fading, though dusk was still an hour or more away. I could see men on the northern city wall, see their spears, and knew they must be watching us. They would think we were reinforcements come to help the besiegers.

I curbed Tintreg just beyond the old Roman cemetery to let my men catch up. The sight of the graves and thinking of Bishop Leofstan had brought back memories. ‘Remember Mus?’ I asked Finan.

‘Christ! How could anyone forget her?’ He grinned. ‘Did you …’ he began.

‘Never. You?’

He shook his head. ‘Your son gave her a few good rides.’

I had left my son in command of the troops garrisoning Bebbanburg. ‘He’s a lucky boy,’ I said. Mus, her real name was Sunngifu, was small like a mouse, and had been married to Bishop Leofstan. ‘I wonder where Mus is now?’ I asked. I was still gazing at Ceaster’s northern wall, trying to estimate how many men stood guard on the ramparts. ‘More than I expected,’ I said.

‘More?’

‘Men on the wall,’ I explained. I could see at least forty men on the ramparts, and knew there must be just as many on the eastern wall, which faced the bulk of the enemy.

‘Maybe they were reinforced?’ Finan suggested.

‘Or the monk was wrong, which wouldn’t surprise me.’

A monk had come to Bebbanburg with news of Ceaster’s siege. We already knew of the Mercian rebellion, of course, and we had welcomed it. It was no secret that Edward, who now styled himself King of the Angles and Saxons, wanted to invade Northumbria and so make that arrogant title come true. Sigtryggr, my son-in-law and King of Northumbria, had been preparing for that invasion, fearing it too, and then came the news that Mercia was tearing itself apart, and that Edward, far from invading us, was fighting to hold onto his new lands. Our response was obvious; do nothing! Let Edward’s realm tear itself into shreds, because every Saxon warrior who died in Mercia was one less man to bring a sword into Northumbria.

Yet here I was, on a late winter’s afternoon beneath a darkening sky, coming to fight in Mercia. Sigtryggr had not been happy, and his wife, my daughter, even unhappier. ‘Why?’ she had demanded.

‘I took an oath,’ I had told them both, and that had stilled their protests.

Oaths are sacred. To break an oath is to invite the anger of the gods, and Sigtryggr had reluctantly agreed to let me relieve the siege of Ceaster. Not that he could have done much to stop me; I was his most powerful lord, his father-in-law, and the Lord of Bebbanburg, indeed he owed me his kingdom, but he insisted I take fewer than a hundred warriors. ‘Take more,’ he had said, ‘and the damned Scots will come over the frontier.’ I had agreed. I led just ninety men, and with those ninety I intended to save King Edward’s new kingdom.

‘You think Edward will be grateful?’ my daughter had asked, trying to find some good news in my perverse decision. She was thinking that Edward’s gratitude might persuade him to abandon his plans to invade Northumbria.

‘Edward will think I’m a fool.’

‘You are!’ Stiorra had said.

‘Besides, I hear he’s sick.’

‘Good,’ she had said vengefully. ‘Maybe his new wife has worn him out?’

Edward would not be grateful, I thought, whatever happened here. Our horses’ hooves were loud on the Roman road. We still rode slowly, showing no threat. We passed the old worn stone pillar that said it was one mile to Deva, the name the Romans had given Ceaster. By now we were among the hovels and campfires of the encampment, and folk watched us pass. They showed no alarm, there were no sentries, and no one challenged us. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ Finan growled at me.

‘They think that if relief comes,’ I said, ‘it’ll come from the east, not the north. So they think we’re on their side.’

‘Then they’re idiots,’ he said. He was right, of course. Cynlæf, if he still commanded here, should have sentries posted on every approach to the besiegers’ camp, but the long cold weeks of the siege had made them lazy and careless. Cynlæf just wanted to capture Ceaster, and had forgotten to watch his back.

Finan, who had the eyes of a hawk, was gazing at the city wall. ‘That monk was full of shit,’ he said scornfully. ‘I can see fifty-eight men on the north wall!’

The monk who had brought me the news of the siege had been certain that the garrison was perilously small. ‘How small?’ I had asked him.

‘No more than a hundred men, lord.’

I had looked at him sceptically. ‘How do you know?’

‘The priest told me, lord,’ he said nervously. The monk, who was called Brother Osric, claimed to be from a monastery in Hwite, a place I had never heard of, but which the monk said was a few hours’ walking south of Ceaster. Brother Osric had told us how a priest had come to his monastery. ‘He was dying, lord! He had gripe in his guts.’

‘And that was Father Swithred?’

‘Yes, lord.’

I knew Swithred. He was an older man, a fierce and sour priest who disliked me. ‘And the garrison sent him to get help?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘They didn’t send a warrior?’

‘A priest can go where warriors cannot, lord,’ Brother Osric had explained. ‘Father Swithred said he left the city at nightfall and walked through the besiegers’ camp. No one challenged him, lord. Then he walked south to Hwite.’

‘Where he was taken ill?’

‘Where he was dying as I left, lord,’ Brother Osric had made the sign of the cross. ‘It is God’s will.’

‘Your god has a strange will,’ I had snarled.

‘And Father Swithred begged my abbot to send one of us to reach you, lord,’ Brother Osric had continued, ‘and that was me,’ he finished lamely. He had been kneeling in supplication, and I saw a savage red scar crossing his tonsure.

‘Father Swithred doesn’t like me,’ I said, ‘and he hates all pagans. Yet he sent for me?’

The question had made Brother Osric uncomfortable. He had blushed, then stammered, ‘he … he …’

‘He insulted me,’ I suggested.

‘He did, lord, he did.’ He sounded relieved that I had anticipated an answer he had been reluctant to say aloud. ‘But he also said you would answer the garrison’s plea.’

‘And Father Swithred didn’t carry a letter?’ I asked, ‘a plea for help?

‘He did, lord, but he vomited on it.’ He had grimaced. ‘But it was nasty, lord, all blood and bile.’

‘How did you get the scar?’ I had asked him.

‘My sister hit me, lord,’ he had sounded surprised at my question. ‘With a reaping hook, lord.’

‘And how many men in the besieging force?

‘Father Swithred said there were hundreds, lord.’ I remember how nervous Brother Osric had been, but I put that down to his fear at meeting me, a famous pagan. Did he think I had horns and a forked tail? ‘By God’s grace, lord,’ he went on, ‘the garrison fought off one assault, and I pray to God that the city hasn’t fallen by now. They beseech your help, lord.’

‘Why hasn’t Edward helped?’

‘He has other enemies, lord. He’s fighting them in southern Mercia.’ The monk had looked up beseechingly. ‘Please, lord! The garrison can’t last long!’

Yet they had lasted, and we had come. We had left the road by now, and our horses walked slowly through the besiegers’ encampment. The luckiest folk had found shelter in the farm buildings that had been made by the Romans. They were good stone buildings, though the long years had destroyed their roofs, which were now untidy heaps of thatch on beams, but most people were in crude shelters. Women were feeding the fires with newly gathered wood, readying to cook an evening meal. They seemed incurious about us. They saw my mail coat and silver-crested helmet, saw the silver ornaments on Tintreg’s bridle, and so realised I was a lord and dutifully knelt as I passed, but none dared ask who we were.

I halted in an open space to the north-east of the city. I gazed around, puzzled because I could see few horses. The besiegers must have horses. I had planned to drive those horses away to prevent men using them to escape, as well as to capture the beasts to defray the costs of this winter journey, but I could see no more than a dozen. If there were no horses then we had the advantage, and so I turned Tintreg and walked him back through my men until I reached the packhorses. ‘Unbundle the spears,’ I ordered the boys. There were eight heavy bundles tied with leather ropes. Each spear was about seven feet long with an ash shaft and a sharpened steel blade. I waited as the bundles were untied and as each of my men took one of the weapons. Most also carried a shield, but a few preferred to ride without the heavy willow boards. The enemy had let us come into the centre of their encampment and they must have seen my men taking their spears, yet still they did nothing except watch us dully. I waited for the boys to coil the leather ropes, then climb back into their saddles. ‘You boys,’ I called to the servants, ‘ride east, wait out in the fields till we send for you. Not you, Rorik.’

Rorik was my servant, a good boy. He was Norse. I had killed his father, captured the boy and now treated him like a son, just as Ragnar the Dane had treated me as a son after his forces had cut my father down in battle.

‘Not me, lord?’ he asked.

‘You follow me,’ I told him, ‘and have the horn ready. Stay behind me! And you don’t need that spear.’

He pulled the spear out of my reach. ‘It’s a spare one for you, lord,’ he said. He was lying, of course, he could not wait to use the weapon.

‘Don’t get yourself killed, you idiot,’ I growled at him, then waited to see that the boys and the packhorses were safe beyond the encampment’s edge. ‘You know what to do,’ I called to my men, ‘so do it!’

And it began.

We spread into a line, we spurred forward.

Smoke from the campfires was acrid. A dog barked, a child cried. Three ravens flew eastwards, wings dark against grey clouds, and I wondered if they were an omen. I touched spurs to Tintreg’s flanks and he leaped forward. Finan was on my right, Berg on my left. I knew they were both protecting me, and I resented that. Old I might be, but weak no. I lowered the spear-point, nudged Tintreg with a knee, then leaned from the saddle and let the spear-point slide into a man’s shoulder. I felt the blade jar on bone, relaxed the thrust, and he turned with eyes full of pain and astonishment. I had not tried to kill him, just terrify. I rode past him, felt the blade jerk loose, swung the spear back, raised the blade, and watched the panic begin.

Imagine you are cold, bored, and hungry. Maybe weak with sickness too, because the encampment stank of shit. Your leaders are telling you nothing but lies. If they have any idea how to end the siege, short of waiting, they have not revealed it. And the cold goes on, day after day, a bone-biting chill, and there is never enough firewood, despite the women going every day to forage. You are told that the enemy is starving, but you are just as hungry. It rains. Some men slip away, trying to reach home with their wives and children, but the real warriors, the household troops who man the great barricades outside the city gates, patrol the eastward road. If they find a fugitive he is dragged back, and, if he is lucky, whipped bloody. His wife, if she is young, vanishes to the tents where the trained warriors live. All you can think of is home, and even though home is poor and your work in the fields is hard, it is better than this endless hunger and cold. You were promised victory and have been given misery.

Then, on a late afternoon of lowering clouds, as the sun sinks in the west, the horsemen come. You see big horses carrying mail-clad men with long spears and sharp swords, helmeted men with wolf heads on their shields. The men are screaming at you, the thump of the big hooves is loud in the muck of the encampment, your children are screaming and your women cowering, and the brightest thing in the winter afternoon is not the shine of the blades, not even the silver that crests the helmets nor the gold hanging at the attackers’ necks, but blood. Bright blood, sudden blood.

No wonder they panicked.

We drove them like sheep. I had told my men to spare the women and children, even most of the men too, because I did not want my horsemen to stop. I wanted to see the enemy running and to keep them running. If we paused to kill then we gave that enemy time to find their weapons, snatch up shields, and make a defence. It was better to gallop through the hovels and drive the enemy away from their piled shields, away from their spears, away from their reaping hooks and axes. The order was to strike and ride, strike and ride. We came to bring chaos, not death, not yet. Death would come.

And so we wheeled those big horses through the encampment, our hooves hurling up clods of mud, our spears sharp. If a man resisted, he died, if he ran, we made him run faster. I saw Folcbald, a huge Frisian, spear a flaming log from a campfire and toss it onto a shelter, and others of my men copied him. ‘Lord!’ Finan shouted to me. ‘Lord!’ I turned to see he was pointing south to where men were running from the tents towards the clumsy barricade that faced the city’s eastern gate. Those were the real warriors, the household troops.

‘Rorik!’ I bellowed. ‘Rorik!’

‘Lord!’ He was twenty paces away, turning his horse ready to pursue three men wearing leather jerkins and carrying axes.

‘Sound the horn!’

He spurred towards me, curbing his horse as he fumbled with the long spear and tried to retrieve the horn that was slung on his back by a long cord. One of the three men, seeing Rorik’s back turned, ran towards him with a raised axe. I opened my mouth to shout a warning, but Finan had seen the man, twisted his horse, spurred, and the man tried to run away, Soul-Stealer flashed, her blade reflecting the flames of a fire, and the axeman’s head rolled off. The body slewed along the ground, but the head bounced once, then landed in the fire where the grease that the man had rubbed into his hair while cleaning his hands flared into sudden and bright flame.

‘Not bad for a grandfather,’ I said.

‘Bastards don’t count, lord,’ Finan called back.

Rorik blew the horn, blew it again, and kept blowing it, and the sound, so mournful, insistent and loud, drew my horsemen back together. ‘Now! Follow me!’ I shouted.

We had wounded the beast, now we had to behead it.

Most of the folk fleeing our rampage had gone south towards the big tents, which evidently housed Cynlæf’s trained warriors, and it was there that we rode, together now, knee to knee, spears lowered. Our line of horsemen only split to avoid the fires that spewed their sparks into the coming darkness, then, as we spurred into a wide open space between the miserable shelters and the tents, we quickened. More men appeared among the tents, one carrying a standard that stretched out as he ran towards the barricade that was supposed to deter the defenders from sallying out of the city’s eastern gate. The barricade was a crude thing of overturned carts, even a plough, but it was still a formidable obstacle. I saw that the standard-bearer was holding Æthelflaed’s banner, the daft goose holding a cross and a sword.

I must have laughed, because Finan called to me over the sound of hooves on turf, ‘What’s funny?’

‘This is madness!’ I meant fighting against men who fought under a banner I had protected all my grown life.

‘It is mad! Fighting for King Edward!’

‘Fate is strange,’ I said.

‘Will he be grateful?’ Finan asked the same question my daughter had asked.

‘That family never was grateful,’ I said, ‘except for Æthelflaed.’

‘Maybe Edward will take you to his bed then,’ Finan said happily, and then there was no more time to talk because I saw the standard-bearer suddenly turn away. Instead of running to the barricade, he was hurrying south towards the arena, followed by most of the household warriors, and that struck me as strange. They numbered as many as we did, or almost as many. They could have formed a shield wall, using the barricade to protect their backs, and we would have been hard put to defeat them. Horses would not charge an obstacle like a well-formed shield wall. Our stallions would veer away rather than crash into the boards, so we would have been forced to dismount, make our own wall, and fight shield to shield. And the besiegers north of the fort, the men we had not yet attacked, could have come to assault our rear. But instead, the enemy ran, led by their standard-bearer.

And then I understood.

It was the Roman arena.

I had been puzzled by the lack of horses, and now realised that the besiegers’ beasts must have been placed in the arena rather than in one of the thin-hedged paddocks to the east. The vast building lay outside the city’s south-eastern corner, close to the river, and was a great circle of stone inside which banks of seats surrounded an open space where the Romans had enjoyed savage displays featuring warriors and fearsome animals. The arena’s central space, ringed by a stone wall, made it a safe, even an ideal, place for horses. We had been riding towards the tents, thinking to trap the rebel leaders, but now I shouted at my men to spur towards the great stone arena instead.

The Romans had puzzled me when I was a child. Father Beocca, who was my tutor and was supposed to turn me into a good little Christian, praised Rome for being the home of the Holy Father, the Pope. The Romans, he said, had brought the gospel to Britain, and Constantine, the first Christian to rule Rome, had declared himself emperor in our own Northumbria. None of that inclined me to like Rome or the Romans, but that changed when I was seven or eight years old and Beocca walked me into the arena at Eoferwic. I had stared amazed at the tiers of stone seats climbing all around me to the outer wall where men were using hammers and crowbars to loosen masonry blocks that would be used to make new buildings in the growing city. Ivy crawled up the seats, saplings sprang from cracks in the stone, while the arena itself was thick with grass. ‘This space,’ Father Beocca told me in a hushed voice, ‘is sacred.’

‘Because Jesus was here?’ I remember asking.

Father Beocca hit me around the head. ‘Don’t be stupid, boy. Our lord never left the holy land.’

‘I thought you told me he went to Egypt once?’

He hit me again to cover his embarrassment at being corrected. He was not an unkind man, indeed I loved Beocca even though I took a delight in mocking him, and he was easy to mock because he was ugly and crippled. That was unkind, but I was a child, and children are cruel beasts. In time I came to recognise Beocca’s honesty and strength, while King Alfred, who was no one’s fool, valued the man highly. ‘No, boy,’ Beocca went on that day in Eoferwic, ‘this place is sacred because Christians suffered for their faith here.’

I smelled a good story. ‘Suffered, father?’ I had asked earnestly.

‘They were put to death in horrible ways, horrible!’

‘How, father?’ I had asked, hiding my eagerness.

‘Some were fed to wild beasts, some were crucified like our Lord, others were burned to death. Women, men, even children. Their screams sanctify this space.’ He had made the sign of the cross. ‘The Romans were cruel until they saw the light of Christ.’

‘And then they stopped being cruel, father?’

‘They became Christians,’ he had answered evasively.

‘Is that why they lost their lands?’

He had hit me again, though not forcefully nor angrily, yet he had sown a seed in me. The Romans! As a child it was their force that impressed me. They were from so far away, yet they had conquered our land. It was not ours then, of course, but it was still a far land. They were winners and fighters, they were heroes to a child, and Beocca’s disdain made them only more heroic to me. At that time, before my father’s death and before Ragnar the Dane adopted me, I thought I was a Christian, but I never had a fantasy of becoming a Christian hero by facing a wild beast in Eoferwic’s decaying arena. Instead, I dreamed of fighting in that arena, and saw myself placing a foot on the bloodied chest of a fallen warrior as thousands cheered me. I was a child.

Now, old and grey-bearded, I still admire the Romans. How could I not? We could not build an arena, nor make ramparts like those that surrounded Ceaster. Our roads were muddy tracks, theirs were stone-edged and spear-straight. They built temples of marble, we made churches of timber. Our floors were beaten earth and rushes, theirs were marvels of intricate tilework. They had laced the land with wonders, and we, who had taken the land, could only watch the wonders decay, or patch them with wattle and thatch. True, they were a cruel people, but so are we. Life is cruel.

I was suddenly aware of shrieks coming from the city’s ramparts. I looked to my right and saw helmeted warriors running on the wall’s top. They were keeping pace with us as best they could, and cheering us on. The shrieks sounded like women, but I could only see men there, one of them waving a spear over his head as if encouraging us to kill. I lifted my spear to him, and the man responded by jumping up and down. He had ribbons, white and red, attached to the crown of his helmet. He screeched something at me, but he was too far away, and I could not catch his words, only sense that he was celebrating.

No wonder the garrison was happy. Their enemy had crumpled, and the siege was lifted, even if most of Cynlæf’s troops were still in their encampment. But those troops had shown no lust to fight. They had run or hidden in their shelters. Only the household troops opposed us, and they were now fleeing towards the dubious safety of the old arena. We caught a few laggards, spearing them in the back as they stumbled southwards, while others, more sensible, threw down their weapons and knelt in abject surrender. The light was fading now. The reddish stone of the arena reflected the flames of the nearest campfires, giving the masonry the appearance of being washed in blood. I curbed Tintreg by the arena’s entrance as my men, grinning and elated, reined in around me.

‘There’s only this one way in?’ Finan asked me.

‘As I remember, yes, but send a half-dozen men around the back to make sure.’

The one way in was an arched tunnel that led beneath the tiered seats into the arena itself, and in the fading light I could see men pushing a cart to make a barricade at the tunnel’s far end. They watched us fearfully, but I made no move to attack them. They were fools, and, like fools, they were doomed.

Doomed because they had trapped themselves. It was true there were other entrances to the arena, but those entrances, which were evenly spaced about the whole building, only led to the tiered seating, not to the fighting space at the arena’s centre. Cynlæf’s men had kept their horses in the arena, and that made sense, but in their desperation to escape they had fled to the horses, and so found themselves ringed by stone with just one way to escape, and my men guarded that one tunnel.

Vidarr Leifson, one of my Norse warriors, had led horsemen around the whole arena and returned to confirm that there was just the one entrance to the fighting level. ‘So what do we do, lord?’ he asked, twisting in his saddle to peer into the tunnel. His breath clouded in the cold evening air.

‘We let them rot.’

‘Can they climb up to the seats?’ Berg asked.

‘Probably.’ There was a wall a little higher than a tall man that prevented wild beasts from leaping up to maul the spectators, so our enemy could scramble up to the seats and try to escape through one of the stairways, but that meant abandoning their precious horses, and, once out of the building, they would still have to fight past my men. ‘So block every entrance,’ I ordered, ‘and light fires just outside every stairway.’ The barricades would slow any attempt by Cynlæf’s men to escape, and the fires would warm my sentries.

‘Where do we get firewood?’ Godric asked. He was young, a Saxon, and had once been my servant.

‘The barricade, you fool,’ Finan said, pointing to the besiegers’ makeshift wall that guarded the road leading from the eastern gate.

And just then, as the day’s last light drained in the west, I saw that men were coming from the city. The eastern gate had been opened, and a dozen horsemen now threaded their way through the narrow gap between the city’s ditch and the abandoned barricade. ‘Get those barriers built!’ I commanded my men, then turned a tired Tintreg and spurred him to meet the men we had rescued.

We met them beside the city’s deep ditch. I waited there and watched as the horsemen approached. They were led by a tall young man, clad in mail and with a fine helmet decorated with gold that glinted red from the distant fires. The cheek-pieces of his helmet were open to reveal that he had grown a beard since I had last seen him, and the beard, black and clipped short, made him look older. He was, I knew, twenty-five or twenty-six, I could not remember just when he had been born, but now he was a man in his prime, handsome and confident. He was also a fervent Christian, despite all my efforts to persuade him otherwise, and a big gold cross hung at his chest, swinging against the shining links of mail. There was more gold on his scabbard’s throat and on his horse’s bridle, and ringing the brooch that held his dark cloak in place, while a thin circlet of gold ringed his helmet. He reined in close enough to reach out and pat Tintreg’s neck, and I saw he wore two gold rings over the fine black leather of his gloves. He smiled. ‘You are the very last person I expected, lord,’ he said.

And I swore at him. It was a good oath, brief and brutal.

‘Is that the proper way,’ he asked mildly, ‘to greet a prince?’

‘I owe Finan two shillings,’ I explained.

Because it had just begun to snow.

It is one of the privileges of age to be in a hall, warmed by a fire, while in the night the snow falls and the sentries shiver as they watch for enemies trying to escape from a trap they have made for themselves. Except now I was not sure who was trapped, or by whom.

‘I never sent Father Swithred to fetch help,’ Æthelstan said. ‘Your monk lied. And Father Swithred is in good health, God be thanked.’

Prince Æthelstan was King Edward’s eldest son. He had been born to a pretty Centish girl, the daughter of a bishop, and the poor girl had died whelping him and his twin sister, Eadgyth. After the pretty girl’s death Edward had married a West Saxon girl, and had fathered another son, which made Æthelstan an inconvenience. He was the king’s eldest son, the ætheling, but he had a younger half-brother whose vengeful mother wanted Æthelstan dead because he stood between her son and the throne of Wessex, and so she and her supporters spread the rumour that Æthelstan was a bastard because Edward had never married the pretty Centish girl. He had indeed married her, but in secret because his father had not given permission, and over the years the rumour was embellished so that now Æthelstan’s mother was said to be the daughter of a shepherd, a low-born whore, and no prince would ever marry such a girl, and the rumour was believed because truth is ever feeble against passionate falsehood.

‘Truly!’ Æthelstan now told me. ‘We didn’t need relief, I asked for none.’

For a moment I just stared at him. I loved Æthelstan like a son. For years I had protected him, fought for him, taught him the ways of the warrior, and when I had heard from Brother Osric that Æthelstan was under siege and hard-pressed, I had ridden to rescue him. It did not matter that saving Æthelstan was against the interests of Northumbria, I had sworn an oath to protect him, and here I was, in the Roman great hall where he had just told me that he had never sought my help. ‘You didn’t send Father Swithred?’ I asked. A log cracked in the fire and spat a bright spark onto the rushes. I ground the spark beneath my foot.

‘Of course not! He’s here.’ Æthelstan gestured across the hall to where the tall, stern-faced priest watched me suspiciously. ‘I have asked Archbishop Athelm to appoint him Bishop of Ceaster.’

‘And you didn’t send him out of the city?’

‘Of course not! I had no need.’

I looked at Finan, who shrugged. The wind had picked up, driving the smoke back into the great hall, which had been a part of the Roman commandant’s house. The roof was made of sturdy timbers covered with tiles, many of which remained, though at some time a Saxon had hacked a hole in the tiles to let the smoke out. Now the freshening wind gusted the smoke back, swirling it around the blackened rafters. Snowflakes came through the roof-hole, a few even lasting long enough to die on the table where we ate. ‘So you never sought my help?’ I asked Æthelstan yet again.

‘How often do I have to tell you?’ he asked, pushing the jug of wine towards me. ‘And besides, if I’d needed help, why send for you when my father’s forces are closer? You wouldn’t have helped me anyway!’

I growled at that. ‘Why would I not help you? I swore an oath to protect you.’’

‘But trouble in Mercia,’ he said, ‘is good for Northumbria, yes?’

I nodded grudgingly. ‘It is.’

‘Because if we Mercians fight each other,’ Æthelstan went on, ‘we can’t be fighting you.’

‘Do you want to fight us, lord Prince?’ Finan asked.

Æthelstan smiled. ‘Of course I do. Northumbria is ruled by a pagan, by a Norseman—’

‘By my son-in-law,’ I interrupted him harshly.

‘—and it is the fate of the Saxons,’ Æthelstan ignored my words, ‘to be one people, under one king and one God.’

‘Your god,’ I snarled.

‘There is no other,’ he said gently.

Everything he said made sense, except for his nonsense about one god, and that good sense meant I had been lured across Britain for no good purpose. ‘I should have left you here to rot,’ I growled.

‘But you didn’t.’

‘Your grandfather always said I was a fool.’

‘My grandfather was right about so many things,’ Æthelstan said with a smile. His grandfather was King Alfred.

I stood and walked to the hall door. I pulled it open and just stared at the glow of fire above the eastern ramparts. Much of that glow came from the encampment where Cynlæf’s men sheltered from the snow that was slanting fast from the north. Braziers burned on the ramparts, where cloaked spearmen kept a watch on the cowed enemy. The brighter light of two flaming torches just outside the hall’s great doors showed the new snow piling against the house walls.

So Brother Osric had lied. We had brought the monk south with us, but I had got tired of his endless complaining about the cold and about his saddle sores, and we had let him leave us at Mameceaster, where, he claimed, the church would shelter him. I should have killed the bastard instead. I shivered, suddenly feeling the night’s cold. ‘Rorik,’ I shouted back into the hall, ‘bring my cloak!’

Brother Osric had lied. The monk had told me that Æthelstan had fewer than a hundred warriors, but in truth he had twice as many, which was still a very small garrison for a place the size of Ceaster, but enough to stave off the feeble assaults Cynlæf had made. Brother Osric had told me the garrison was starving, but in truth they had storehouses still half-full with last year’s harvest. A lie had brought me to Ceaster, but why?

‘Your cloak, lord,’ a mocking voice said, and I turned to see it was Prince Æthelstan himself who had brought me the heavy fur garment. He was cloaked himself. He nodded to one of the sentries to close the hall door behind us, then stood beside me to watch the snow fall soft and relentless. ‘I didn’t send for you,’ he said, draping the thick fur across my shoulders, ‘but thank you for coming.’

‘So who did send the monk?’ I asked.

‘Maybe no one.’

‘No one?’

Æthelstan shrugged. ‘Perhaps the monk knew of the siege, wanted to summon help, but knew you’d mistrust him, so he invented the tale of Father Swithred.’

I shook my head. ‘He wasn’t that clever. And he was frightened.’

‘You frighten many Christians,’ Æthelstan said drily.

I stared at the snow whirling around the corner of the house opposite. ‘I should go to Hwite,’ I said.

‘Hwite? Why?’

‘Because the monk came from the monastery there.’

‘There’s no monastery at Hwite,’ Æthelstan said. ‘I’d like to build one, but …’ his voice trailed away.

‘The bastard lied,’ I said vengefully, ‘I should have known!’

‘Known? How?’

‘He said Father Swithred walked south from here. How could he? The bridge was broken. And why send Swithred? You’d have sent a younger man.’

Æthelstan shivered. ‘Why would the monk lie? Maybe he just wanted to summon help.’

‘Summon help,’ I said scornfully. ‘No, the bastard wanted to get me away from Bebbanburg.’

‘So someone can attack it?’

‘No. Bebbanburg won’t fall.’ I had left my son in command, and he had twice as many warriors as he needed to hold that gaunt and forbidding fortress.

‘So someone wants you away from Bebbanburg,’ Æthelstan said firmly, ‘because so long as you’re in Bebbanburg they can’t reach you, but now? Now they can reach you.’

‘Then why let me come here?’ I asked. ‘If they wanted to kill me, then why wait till I’m among friends?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, and neither did I. The monk had lied, but for what reason I could not tell. It was a trap, plainly it was a trap, but who had set it, and why, were mysteries. Æthelstan stamped his feet, then beckoned me to accompany him across the street, where our footsteps made the first marks in the fresh snow. ‘Still,’ he went on, ‘I’m glad you did come.’

‘I didn’t need to.’

‘We were in no real danger,’ he agreed, ‘and my father would have sent relief in the spring.’

‘Would he?’

He ignored the savage disbelief in my voice. ‘Everything has changed in Wessex,’ he said mildly.

‘The new woman?’ I asked caustically, meaning King Edward’s new wife.

‘Who is my mother’s niece.’

That I had not known. What I did know was that King Edward had discarded his second wife and married a younger girl from Cent. The older wife was now in a convent. Edward claimed to be a good Christian, and Christians say that marriage is for life, but a hefty payment of gold or royal land would doubtless persuade the church that their doctrine was wrong, and the king could discard one woman and marry another. ‘So you’re now in favour, lord Prince?’ I asked. ‘You’re the heir again?’

He shook his head. Our footsteps squeaked in the new snow. He was leading me down an alley that would take us to the eastern gate. Two of his guards followed us, but not close enough to hear our conversation. ‘My father is still fond of Ælfweard, I’m told.’

‘Your rival,’ I said bitterly. I despised Ælfweard, Edward’s second son, who was a petulant piece of weasel shit.

‘My half-brother,’ Æthelstan said reprovingly, ‘whom I love.’

‘You do?’ For a moment he did not answer me. We were climbing the Roman steps to the eastern wall, where braziers warmed the sentries. We paused at the top, staring at the encampment of the defeated enemy. ‘You really love that little turd?’ I asked.

‘We are commanded to love one another.’

‘Ælfweard is despicable,’ I said.

‘He might make a good king,’ Æthelstan said quietly.

‘And I’ll be the next Archbishop of Contwaraburg.’

‘That would be interesting,’ he said, amused. I knew he despised Ælfweard as much as I did, but he was saying what it was his familial duty to say. ‘Ælfweard’s mother,’ he went on, ‘is out of favour, but her family is still wealthy, still strong, and they’ve sworn loyalty to the new woman.’

‘They have?’

‘Ælfweard’s uncle is the new ealdorman. He took Edward’s side, and did nothing to help his sister.’

‘Ælfweard’s uncle,’ I said savagely, ‘would whore his own mother to make Ælfweard king.’

‘Probably,’ Æthelstan agreed mildly.

I shivered, and it was not the cold. I shivered because in those words I sensed the trap. I still did not know why I had been lured across Britain, but I suspected I knew who had baited the trap. ‘I’m an old fool,’ I said.

‘And the sun will rise tomorrow.’

‘Lord Prince! Lord Prince!’ an excited voice interrupted us. A small warrior was running along the ramparts to greet us; a warrior small as a child, but dressed in mail, carrying a spear, and wearing a helmet decorated with red and white ribbons.

‘Sister Sunngifu,’ Æthelstan said fondly as the small figure dropped to her knees in front of him. He touched a gloved hand to her helmet and she smiled up at him adoringly. ‘This is the Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ he introduced me, ‘and Sister Sunngifu,’ he was talking to me now, ‘raised a band of fifty women who stand guard on the ramparts to give my warriors a chance to rest and to deceive the enemy of our numbers. The deception worked well!’

Sunngifu moved her gaze to me, offering a dazzling smile. ‘I know the Lord Uhtred, lord Prince,’ she said.

‘Of course you do,’ Æthelstan said, ‘I remember now, you told me.’

Sunngifu was smiling as if she had waited half her life to greet me. I saw she was wearing a nun’s grey habit beneath the mail coat and thick cloak. I reached down and gently lifted the ribbon-decked helmet just enough to see her forehead, and there was the small reddish birthmark, shaped like an apple, the only disfigurement on one of the most beautiful women I have ever known. She was looking up at me with amusement. ‘It’s good to see you again, lord,’ she said humbly.

‘Hello, Mus,’ I said.

The little warrior was Mus, Sunngifu, Sister Gomer, bishop’s widow, whore and troublemaker.

And damn the trap, I was suddenly happy to be in Ceaster.

Two

‘So, you remember Sister Sunngifu?’ Æthelstan asked me. We had left the ramparts and were leaving the city through the eastern gate, going to inspect the sentries who guarded the enemy trapped in the arena. It was cold, snow made the ground treacherous, and Æthelstan must have been tempted to stay in the great hall’s warmth, but he was doing what he knew should be done; sharing his men’s discomfort.

‘Sunngifu is difficult to forget,’ I said. A dozen of Æthelstan’s guards now followed us. Within a quarter mile there were hundreds of defeated enemy, though I expected no trouble from them. They had been cowed, and now sheltered in their makeshift hovels waiting to see what the morning brought. ‘I’m surprised she became a nun,’ I added.

‘She’s not a nun,’ Æthelstan said, ‘she’s a novice when she’s not pretending to be a soldier.’

‘I always thought she’d marry again,’ I went on.

‘Not if she’s called to God’s service.’

I laughed at that. ‘Her beauty is wasted on your god.’

‘Beauty,’ he said stiffly, ‘is the devil’s snare.’

The fires we had placed around the arena lit his face. It was tight, almost angry. He had asked me about Sunngifu, but now it was plain he was uncomfortable talking of her. ‘And how,’ I asked mischievously, ‘is Frigga?’ Frigga was a young girl I had captured near Ceaster some years before and had given to Æthelstan. ‘She’s a beauty, I remember,’ I went on, ‘I almost kept her for myself.’

‘You’re married,’ he said censoriously.

‘You’re not,’ I retorted, ‘and it’s time you were.’

‘There will be a time for marriage,’ he said dismissively. ‘And Frigga married one of my men. She’s a Christian now.’

Poor girl, I thought. ‘But you should be married,’ I said. ‘You can practise with Sunngifu,’ I teased him, ‘she plainly adores you.’

He stopped and glared at me. ‘That is unseemly!’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘With Sister Sunngifu? With Bishop Leofstan’s widow? Never! She’s a most pious woman.’

God in his dull heaven, I thought as we walked on, and Æthelstan didn’t know her real story?

I will never understand Christians. I can understand their insistence that their nailed god rose from the dead, that he walked on water and cured diseases, because all gods can do those things. No, it’s their other beliefs that astonish me. Sunngifu had been married to Bishop Leofstan, a good man. I liked him. He was a fool, of course, but a holy fool, and I remember him telling me that one of his god’s prophets had married a whore called Gomer. I forget now why this prophet married a whore, it’s all explained in the Christian holy book. I do recall that it wasn’t just because he wanted to bounce her, it was something to do with his religion, and Bishop Leofstan, who at times had the brain of a mayfly, decided to do the same, and had plucked Sunngifu from some Mercian brothel and made her his wife. He solemnly assured me that his Gomer, as he insisted on calling her, had reformed, had been baptised, and was indeed a living saint, but when he wasn’t looking, Sunngifu was humping my men like a demented squirrel. I had never told Leofstan, but I had tried to expel Sunngifu from Ceaster to stop the frequent injuries caused by men fighting for her favours. I had failed, and here she still was, and, for all I knew, still merrily bouncing.

We were walking towards the firelit arena with snow whirling about us. ‘You do know that before Sunngifu married the bishop she was—’ I began.

‘Enough!’ Æthelstan interrupted me. He had stopped again and now looked at me fiercely. ‘If you’re about to tell me that Sister Sunngifu was a harlot before she married, I know! What you don’t understand is that she saw the sinfulness of her life and repented! She is living proof of redemption. A witness of the forgiveness that only Christ can offer! Are you telling me that is falsehood?’

I hesitated, then decided it was best to let him believe whatever he chose. ‘Of course not, lord Prince.’

‘I have suffered from malicious gossip my whole life,’ he said angrily, beckoning me onwards, ‘and I detest it. I have known women raised in the faith, pious women, women full of good works, who are less saintly than Sunngifu! She is a good woman, an inspiration to us all! And she deserves a heavenly reward for what she has achieved here. She tends the wounded, and comforts the afflicted.’

I almost asked how she administered that comfort, but managed to bite my tongue. There was no way to argue with Æthelstan’s piety, and I had watched him grow ever more pious over the years. I had done my best to convince him that the older gods were better, but I had failed, and now he was becoming more and more like his grandfather, King Alfred. He had inherited Alfred’s intelligence and his love of the church, but to those he added the skills of a warrior. He was, in short, formidable, and I had the sudden realisation that if I had just met him for the first time, instead of having known him since he was a child, I would probably dislike him. And if this young man became king, I thought, then Alfred’s dream of one Saxon country under the rule of one Christian king could well come true, indeed was likely to come true, which meant that this young man, whom I thought of as a son, was the enemy of Northumbria. My enemy. ‘Why do I always end up fighting for the wrong side?’ I asked.

Æthelstan laughed, then surprised me by clapping my shoulder, maybe regretting the angry tone he had used just a moment before. ‘Because at heart you’re a Saxon,’ he said, ‘and because, as we’ve already agreed, you’re a fool. But you’re a fool who’ll never be my enemy.’

‘I won’t?’ I asked threateningly.

‘Not by my choice!’ He strode ahead, making for the arena’s entrance, where a dozen of my men stood close to the great fire that burned in the archway. ‘Is Cynlæf still inside?’ He called out.

Berg was the closest of the sentries, and he glanced at me as if wondering whether he should answer. I nodded. ‘No one’s left the arena, lord,’ Berg said.

‘Are we sure Cynlæf’s here?’ I asked.

‘We saw him two days ago,’ Æthelstan said. He smiled at Berg. ‘I fear you’re suffering a cold night.’

‘I’m Norse, lord, the cold doesn’t worry me.’

Æthelstan laughed at that. ‘Nevertheless I’ll send men to relieve you. And tomorrow?’ He paused, distracted by Berg, who was gazing past him.

‘Tomorrow we kill them, lord?’ Berg asked, still staring northwards over Æthelstan’s shoulder.

‘Oh, we kill them,’ Æthelstan said softly, ‘we certainly kill them.’ Then he turned to see what had attracted Berg’s attention. ‘And perhaps we begin the killing now,’ he added in a sharp tone.

I also turned to see a dozen men approaching. Eleven were warriors, all in mail, all cloaked, all bearded, all wearing helmets, and three carrying shields painted with creatures I supposed to be dragons. Their swords were sheathed. The firelight reflected from gold at one man’s neck and shone silver from a cross that was worn by the one priest who accompanied them. The warriors stopped some twenty yards away, but the priest kept walking until he was a couple of paces from Æthelstan, where he dropped to his knees. ‘Lord Prince,’ he said.

‘Stand, stand! I don’t expect priests to kneel to me! You represent God. I should kneel to you.’

‘Earsling,’ I said, but too softly for Æthelstan to hear.

The priest stood. Two crusts of snow clung to his black robe where he had knelt. He was shivering, and, to my surprise, and even more to the priest’s astonishment, Æthelstan strode forward and draped his own thick cloak about the man’s shoulders. ‘What brings you here, father?’ he asked. ‘And who are you?’

‘Father Bledod,’ the priest answered. He was a skinny man with lank black hair, no hat, a straggly beard, and frightened eyes. He fidgeted with the silver cross. ‘Thank you for the cloak, lord.’

‘You’re Welsh?’

‘Yes, lord.’ Father Bledod gave an awkward gesture towards his companions. ‘That is Gruffudd of Gwent. He would speak with you, lord.’

‘With me?’

‘You are the Prince Æthelstan, lord?’

Æthelstan smiled. ‘I am.’

‘Gruffudd of Gwent, lord, would return to his home,’ the priest said.

‘I am surprised,’ Æthelstan said mildly, ‘that Gruffudd of Gwent thought to leave his home in the first place. Or did he come to Mercia to enjoy the weather?’

The priest, who seemed to be the only Welshman capable of speaking the Saxon tongue, had no reply. He just frowned, while the eleven warriors stared at us in mute belligerence.

‘Why did he come?’ Æthelstan asked.

The priest made a helpless gesture with his left hand, then looked embarrassed. ‘We were paid to come, lord Prince,’ he admitted.

I could see that answer made Æthelstan angry. To the Welshmen he doubtless looked calm, but I could sense his fury that Cynlæf’s rebellion had hired Welsh troops. There had ever been enmity between Mercia and the Welsh. Each raided the other, but Mercia, with its rich fields and plump orchards, had more to lose. Indeed the first warrior I ever killed in a shield wall was a Welshman who had come to Mercia to steal cattle or women. I killed four men that day. I had no mail, no helmet, just a borrowed shield and my two swords, and that was the day I first experienced the battle-joy. Our small force of Mercians had been led by Tatwine, a monstrous beast of a warrior, and when the battle was done, when the bridge where we had fought was slippery with blood, he had complimented me. ‘God love me,’ I remembered him saying in awe, ‘but you’re a savage one.’ I was a youngster, raw and half-trained, and thought that was praise.

Æthelstan controlled his anger. ‘You tell me that Gruffudd comes from Gwent,’ he said, looking at the man who showed the glint of gold at his neck. ‘But tell me, father, is not Arthfael King of Gwent?’

‘He is, lord Prince.’

‘And King Arthfael thought it good to send men to fight against my father, King Edward?’

Father Bledod still looked embarrassed. ‘The gold, lord, was paid to Gruffudd.’

That answer was evasive and Æthelstan knew it. He paused, looking at the warriors standing in the snow. ‘And who,’ he asked, ‘is Gruffudd of Gwent?’

‘He is kin to Arthfael,’ the priest admitted.

‘Kin?’

‘His mother’s brother, lord Prince.’

Æthelstan thought for a moment. It could hardly have been a surprise that Welsh troops were at the siege. The Welsh and the Mercians were enemies and had always been enemies. King Offa, who had ruled Mercia in the days of its greatness, had built a wall and ditch to mark the frontier and had sworn to kill any Welshman who dared cross the wall, but of course they dared, indeed they seemed to regard the barrier as a challenge. The Mercian rebellion was an opportunity for the Welsh to weaken their traditional enemy. They would have been fools not to take advantage of the Saxon troubles, and the kingdom of Gwent, which lay on the other side of Offa’s ditch, must have hoped to gain land if Cynlæf’s rebellion had succeeded. A few dead warriors was a small price to pay if the Welsh gained some prime Saxon farmland, and it was plain that King Arthfael had made that bargain with Cynlæf. Father Bledod had done his best to absolve the Gwentish king of blame, and Æthelstan did not press him. ‘Tell me,’ he said instead, ‘how many men did Gruffudd of Gwent bring to Ceaster?’

‘Seventy-four, lord.’

‘Then tell Gruffudd of Gwent,’ Æthelstan said, and each time he repeated the name he invested it with more scorn, ‘that he and his seventy-four men are free to cross the river and go home. I will not stop them.’ And that, I thought, was the right decision. There was no point in picking a quarrel with a defeated force. If Æthelstan had chosen to kill Gruffudd and his Welshmen, which he was surely entitled to do, the news of the massacre would spread through the Welsh kingdoms and provoke retaliation. It was better to provoke gratitude by allowing Gruffudd and his men to crawl back to their hovels. ‘But they may travel with nothing more than they brought with them,’ Æthelstan added. ‘If they steal so much as one goat I will slaughter all of them!’

Father Bledod showed no concern at the threat. He must have expected it, and he knew as well as Æthelstan that the threat was a formality. Æthelstan just wanted the foreigners gone from Mercia. ‘Your goats are safe, lord,’ the priest said with sly humour, ‘but Gruffudd’s son is not.’

‘What of his son?’

The priest gestured towards the arena. ‘He is in there, lord.’

Æthelstan turned and stared at the arena, its blood red walls lit by fire and half obscured by snow. ‘It is my intention,’ he said, ‘to kill every man inside.’

The priest made the sign of the cross. ‘Cadwallon ap Gruffudd is a hostage, lord.’

‘A hostage!’ Æthelstan could not hide his surprise. ‘Are you telling me that Cynlæf doesn’t trust Gruffudd of Gwent?’ Æthelstan asked, but the priest did not answer, nor did he need to. Gruffudd’s son had clearly been taken hostage as a surety that the Welsh warriors would not desert Cynlæf’s cause. And that, I thought, meant that Gruffudd must have given Cynlæf cause to doubt the Welshmen’s loyalty.

‘How many of your seventy-four men still live, priest?’ I asked.

Æthelstan looked annoyed at my intervention, but said nothing. ‘Sixty-three, lord,’ the priest answered.

‘You lost eleven men assaulting the walls?’ I asked.

‘Yes, lord.’ Father Bledod paused for a heartbeat. ‘We put ladders against the northern gate, lord, we took the tower.’ He meant one of the two bastions that flanked the Roman gate. ‘We drove the sais from the rampart, lord.’ He was proud of what Gruffudd’s men had achieved, and he had every right to be proud.

‘And you were driven from the gate,’ Æthelstan remarked quietly.

‘By you, lord Prince,’ the priest said. ‘We took the tower, but could not keep it.’

‘And how many sais,’ I used Bledod’s word for the Saxons, ‘died with you on the gate?’

‘We counted ten bodies, lord.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I want to know how many of Cynlæf’s men died with you.’

‘None, lord,’ Father Bledod could not hide his scorn, ‘not one.’

Æthelstan understood my questions now. Cynlæf had let the Welshmen lead the assault and had done nothing to support them. The Welsh had done the fighting and the Saxons had let them die, and that experience had soured Gruffudd and his men. They could have resisted our arrival the previous day, but had chosen not to fight because they had lost faith in Cynlæf and his cause. Æthelstan looked at the warriors lined behind the priest. ‘What can Gruffudd,’ he asked, ‘give me in return for his son’s life?’

The priest turned and spoke with the short, broad-chested man who wore the gold chain about his neck. Gruffudd of Gwent had a scowling face, a grey tangled beard, and one blind eye, his right eye, which was white as the falling snow. A scar on his cheek showed where a blade had taken the sight from that eye. He spoke in his own language, of course, but I could hear the bitterness in the words. Father Bledod finally turned back to Æthelstan. ‘What does the lord Prince wish from Gruffudd?’

‘I want to hear what he will offer,’ Æthelstan said. ‘What is his son worth? Silver? Gold? Horses?’

There was another brief exchange in the Welsh language. ‘He will not offer gold, lord,’ the priest said, ‘but he will pay you with the name of the man who hired him.’

Æthelstan laughed. ‘Cynlæf hired him!’ he said. ‘I already know that! You waste my time, father.’

‘It is not Cynlæf,’ it was Gruffudd himself who spoke in halting English.

‘Of course it was not Cynlæf,’ Æthelstan said scornfully, ‘he would have sent someone else to bribe you. The devil has evil men to do his work.’

‘It is not Cynlæf,’ Gruffudd said again, then added something in his own language.

‘It was not Cynlæf,’ Father Bledod translated. ‘Cynlæf knew nothing of our coming till we arrived here.’

Æthelstan said nothing for a few heartbeats, then reached out and gently took his cloak from Father Bledod’s shoulders. ‘Tell Gruffudd of Gwent that I will spare his son’s life and he may leave at midday tomorrow. In exchange for his son he will give me the name of my enemy and he will also give me the gold chain about his neck.’

Father Bledod translated the demand, and Gruffudd gave a reluctant nod. ‘It is agreed, lord Prince,’ Bledod said.

‘And the chain,’ Æthelstan said, ‘will be given to the church.’

‘Earsling,’ I said again, still too low for Æthelstan’s ears.

‘And Gruffudd of Gwent,’ Æthelstan went on, ‘will agree to keep his men from raiding Mercia for one whole year.’ That too was agreed, though I suspected it was a meaningless demand. Æthelstan might as well have demanded that it did not rain for a whole year as expect that the Welsh would end their thieving. ‘We will meet again tomorrow,’ Æthelstan finished.

‘Tomorrow, edling,’ Gruffudd said, ‘tomorrow.’ He walked away, followed by his men and by Father Bledod. The snow was falling harder, the flakes whirling in the light of the campfires.

‘I sometimes find it difficult,’ Æthelstan said as he watched them walk away, ‘to remember that the Welsh are Christians.’

I smiled at that. ‘There’s a king in Dyfed called Hywel. You’d like him.’

‘I’ve heard of him.’

‘He’s a good man,’ I said warmly, and rather surprised myself by saying it.

‘And a Christian!’ Æthelstan was mocking me.

‘I said he was good, not perfect.’

Æthelstan crossed himself. ‘Tomorrow we must all be good,’ he said, ‘and spare the life of a Welshman.’

And discover the name of an enemy. I was fairly sure I already knew that name, though I could not be certain of it, though I was certain that one day I would have to kill the man. So a Welshman must live so that a Saxon could die.

Edling, a Welsh title, the same as our ætheling, meaning the son of the king who would be the next king. Gruffudd of Gwent, who I assumed was a chieftain of some kind, even maybe a minor king himself, had used the title to flatter Æthelstan, because no one knew who would succeed King Edward. Æthelstan was the oldest son, but malicious rumour, spread by the church, insisted he was a bastard, and almost all the ealdormen of Wessex supported Ælfweard, Edward’s second son, who was indubitably legitimate. ‘They should make me King of Wessex,’ I told Æthelstan next morning.

He looked shocked. Perhaps he was not fully awake and thought he had misheard. ‘You!’

‘Me.’

‘For God’s sake, why?’

‘I just think the best-looking man in the kingdom should be king.’

He understood I was joking then, but he was in no mood for laughter. He just grunted and urged his horse on. He led sixty of his warriors, while I led all of mine who were not already guarding the arena where Father Bledod was waiting for us. I had told the Welsh priest to join us. ‘How else will we know who Gruffudd’s boy is?’ I had explained. Away to our left, many of Cynlæf’s defeated men were already walking eastwards with their wives and children. I had sent Finan with twenty men to spread the news that they should leave or else face my warriors, and Finan’s small force had met no opposition. The rebellion, at least in this part of Mercia, had collapsed without a fight.

‘Father Swithred,’ Æthelstan said as he watched the beaten men walk away, ‘thought we should kill one man in ten. He said it was the Roman way.’

‘Why don’t you?’

‘You think I should?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said firmly, ‘I think you should let them go. Most of them aren’t warriors. They’re the folk who tend the fields, raise the cattle, dig ditches, and plant the orchards. They’re carpenters and fullers, leather-workers and ploughmen. They came here because they were ordered to come, but once home they’ll go back to work. Your father needs them. Mercia is no use to him if it’s hungry and poor.’

‘It’s little use to him if it’s rebellious.’

‘You’ve won,’ I said, ‘and most of those men wouldn’t know a rebellion from a wet fart. They were led here. So let them go home.’

‘My father might disagree.’

I scoffed at that statement. ‘So why didn’t your father send a relief force?’

‘He’s ill,’ Æthelstan said, and made the sign of the cross.

I let Tintreg walk around an unburied corpse, one of Cynlæf’s house-warriors we had killed the previous day. Snow had settled on the body to make a soft shroud. ‘What’s wrong with the king?’ I asked.

‘Tribulations,’ Æthelstan said curtly.

‘And how do you cure that?’

He rode in silence for a few paces. ‘No one knows what ails him,’ he finally said, ‘he’s grown fat, and short of breath. But he has days when he seems to recover, thank God. He can still ride, he likes to hunt, he can still rule.’

‘The problem,’ I said, ‘sounds like an old sword in a new scabbard.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It sounds as if his new bride is wearing him out.’

Æthelstan bridled at that, but did not argue. Instead he looked up at the sky that had cleared overnight. A bright sun glinted from the snow. It would melt quickly, I thought, as quickly as the siege had ended. ‘I suppose he’s waiting for the weather to improve,’ Æthelstan went on, ‘which means he might be coming soon. And he won’t be happy that the rebels are leaving unpunished.’

‘So punish their leaders,’ I said. The leaders of the rebellion, at least in northern Mercia, had trapped themselves in the arena.

‘I intend to.’

‘Then your father will be happy,’ I said, and urged Tintreg on to the arena entrance where Finan waited. ‘Any trouble?’ I called out to him. Finan had relieved Berg in the middle of the night, taking fresh troops to guard the arena. Æthelstan had also sent a score of men, and, like Finan, they all looked cold and tired.

Finan spat, evidently a gesture of scorn for the men trapped in the arena. ‘They made one feeble effort to get out. Didn’t even get past their own barricade. Now they want to surrender.’

‘On what terms?’ Æthelstan asked. He had heard Finan, and had spurred his horse forward.

‘Exile,’ Finan said laconically.

‘Exile?’ Æthelstan asked sharply.

Finan shrugged, knowing what Æthelstan’s answer would be. ‘They’re willing to surrender their lands and go into exile, lord Prince.’

‘Exile!’ Æthelstan exclaimed. ‘Tell them my answer is no. They can surrender to my justice, or else they fight.’

‘Exile them to Northumbria,’ I said mischievously. ‘We need warriors.’ I meant we needed warriors to resist the inevitable invasion that would engulf Northumbria when the Mercian troubles were over.

Æthelstan ignored me. ‘How are you talking to them?’ he asked Finan. ‘Are you just shouting through the entrance?’

‘No, you can go inside, lord Prince,’ Finan said, pointing to the closest staircase leading up to the tiered seating. It seemed that at first light Finan had ordered the barricade removed from that entrance and had led a score of men up to the arena’s seats from where they could look down on the trapped enemy.

‘How many are there?’ Æthelstan asked.

‘I counted eighty-two, lord Prince,’ Finan said, stepping forward to hold Æthelstan’s bridle. ‘There may be some we haven’t seen inside the building. And some of those we saw are servants, of course. Some women too.’

‘They’re all rebels,’ Æthelstan snarled. He dismounted and strode towards the staircase, followed by his men.

Finan looked up at me. ‘What does he want to do?’

‘Kill the lot.’

‘But he’s letting the Welsh live?’

‘One enemy at a time.’

Finan turned to watch as Æthelstan and all his warriors filed into the nearest staircase. ‘He’s changed, hasn’t he?’

‘Changed?’

‘Become stern. He used to laugh a lot, remember?’

‘He was a boy then,’ I said, ‘and I tried to teach him how to be a king.’

‘You taught him well, lord.’

‘Too well,’ I said softly, because Æthelstan had come to resemble his grandfather, and Alfred had never been my friend. I thought of Æthelstan as a son. I had protected him through boyhood, I had trained him in the skills of a warrior, but he had hardened in the last few years, and now believed his destiny led to a throne despite all the obstacles that ambitious men would place in his way. And when he was king, I thought, he would lead swords and spears into Northumbria, he would be our conqueror, he would demand my homage and he would require my obedience. ‘If I had any sense,’ I said to Finan as I dismounted, ‘I would side with Cynlæf.’

He laughed. ‘It’s not too late.’

‘Wyrd bið ful a¯ræd,’ I said, and that is true. Fate is inexorable. Destiny is all. We make oaths, we make choices, but fate makes our decisions.

Æthelstan was my enemy, but I had sworn to protect him.

So I told Finan that he should stay outside the arena, told him what he was to do there, then followed my enemy up the stairs.

‘You will throw down your weapons,’ Æthelstan called to the men in the arena, ‘and you will kneel!’ He had taken off his helmet so that the trapped men would have no trouble recognising him. He usually wore his dark hair cropped very short, but it had grown during the siege and the cold morning wind lifted it and swirled his dark blue cloak around his mailed figure. He stood in the centre of a line of warriors, all implacable in mail and helmets, all with shields painted with Æthelstan’s symbol of a dragon holding a lightning bolt. Behind them, standing on one of the snow-covered stone tiers, Father Swithred was holding a wooden cross high above his head.

‘What is our fate?’ a man called up from the arena floor.

Æthelstan made no answer. He just stared at the man.

A second man stepped forward and knelt. ‘What is our fate, lord Prince?’ he asked.

‘My justice.’ That answer was said in a voice as cold as the snow-shrouded corpses we had passed on our way to the arena.

Silence. There had to be a hundred horses in the arena. A score of them had been saddled, perhaps readied for a desperate dash through the entrance tunnel, and in front of them, huddled like the horses, were Cynlæf’s men. I looked for Cynlæf himself and finally saw him at the back of the crowd, close to the saddled stallions. He was a tall, good-looking man. Æthelflaed had been fond of him and had chosen him as her daughter’s husband, but if there was such a place as the Christian heaven and she was looking down now she would approve of Æthelstan’s grim resolve to kill Cynlæf.

‘Your justice, lord Prince?’ the kneeling man, who had the sense to use Æthelstan’s title, asked humbly.

‘Which is the same as my father’s justice,’ Æthelstan said harshly.

‘Lord Prince,’ I said softly. I was standing barely two paces behind him, but he ignored me. ‘Lord Prince,’ I said again, louder.

‘Silence, Lord Uhtred,’ Æthelstan said without turning. He also spoke softly, but with a trace of anger that I had dared to intervene.

I wanted to tell him that he should offer mercy. Not to all of them, of course, and certainly not to Cynlæf. They were, after all, rebels, but tell close to a hundred men that they will face grim justice and you have close to a hundred desperate men who would rather fight than surrender. But if some thought they would live, then those men would subdue the others, and none of our men need die. Yet it seemed Æthelstan had no use for mercy. This was a rebellion, and rebellions destroy kingdoms, so rebellions must be utterly destroyed.

Father Bledod had joined me and now tugged nervously at my mail sleeve. ‘Gruffudd’s son, Cadwallon, lord,’ he said, ‘he’s the tall beardless boy. The one in the dun cloak.’ He pointed.

‘Quiet!’ Æthelstan growled.

I took the Welsh priest away from Æthelstan, leading him around the lowest tier until we were out of earshot. ‘Half of them have dun cloaks,’ I said.

‘The boy with reddish hair, lord.’

He pointed, and I saw a tall young man with long dark red hair tied at the nape of his neck. He wore mail, but had no sword, suggesting that he was indeed a hostage, though any value he possessed as a hostage had long since vanished.

Only one man in Cynlæf’s band had knelt, and he only because he had understood that Æthelstan would not talk unless he was shown respect. That man glanced around uncertainly and, seeing his companions still standing, began to rise.

‘I said kneel!’ Æthelstan called sharply.

The answer came from a tall man standing close to Cynlæf. He pushed men aside, bellowed a challenge, and hurled a spear at Æthelstan. It was a good throw. The spear flew straight and fast, but Æthelstan had time to judge its flight and he simply stepped one pace to his left and the spear crashed harmlessly into the stones at Father Swithred’s feet. And then Cynlæf and his immediate companions were hauling themselves into saddles. More spears were thrown, but now Æthelstan and his men were crouching behind their shields. I had brought just two men with me, Oswi and Folcbald, the first a Saxon, lithe and serpent-quick, the second a Frisian built like an ox. They put up their shields, and Father Bledod and I crouched with them. I heard a blade thump into a willow board, another spear flew over my head, then I peered between the shields to see Cynlæf and a dozen men spurring into the entrance tunnel. The makeshift barricade had been pulled aside, and the way out looked clear because I had told Finan to hide his men at either side of the outer entrance to let Cynlæf believe he had a way to escape.

The rest of Cynlæf’s men started to follow their leader into the tunnel, but suddenly stopped, and I knew that Finan had made his shield wall across the arena’s entrance the moment he heard the commotion. It would be two shields high, bristling with spears, and no horse would charge it. Some of Cynlæf’s men were retreating back into the arena’s open space, where a few knelt in surrender while a handful of stubborn men threw their last spears at Æthelstan and his men. ‘Down!’ Æthelstan shouted to his warriors, and he and his men jumped into the arena.

‘Fetch the Welshman,’ I told Oswi and Folcbald, and they also leaped down. Folcbald landed awkwardly and limped as he followed Oswi. It was a good long way down, and I was content to stay high and watch the fight that promised to be as brief as it would be brutal. The floor of the arena had once been fine sand, now it was a slushy mix of sand, horse dung, mud, and snow, and I wondered how much blood had soaked it over the years. There was more blood now. Æthelstan’s sixty men had made a shield wall, two ranks deep, that advanced on the panicking rebels. Æthelstan himself, still without a helmet, was in the front rank that kicked the kneeling men out of their way, sparing their lives for the moment, then hammered into the panicked mass crowding at the entrance. Those rebels had no time to make a shield wall of their own and there are few slaughters as one-sided as a combat between a shield wall and a rabble. I saw the spears lunge forward, heard men screaming, saw men fall. There were women among the mob, and two of them were crouching by the wall, covering their heads with their arms. Another woman clutched a child to her breast. Riderless horses panicked and galloped into the arena’s empty space where Oswi was darting forward. He had thrown his shield aside and carried a drawn sword in his right hand. He used his left to snatch Cadwallon’s arm to tug him backwards. A man tried to stop him, lunging a sword at Oswi’s belly, but there were few men as quick as Oswi. He let go of the Welshman, leaned to one side so that the sword slid a finger’s breadth from his waist, then struck up with his own sword. He hit the man’s wrist and sawed the blade back. The enemy’s sword dropped, Oswi stooped, picked up the fallen blade and held it to Cadwallon, then lunged his own sword to tear open his opponent’s cheek. That man reeled away, hand half severed and face pulsing blood as Oswi again tugged Cadwallon backwards. Folcbald was with them now, his huge size and the threat of his heavy war axe sufficient to deter any other foe.

That enemy was beaten. They were being driven back out of the entrance tunnel, which meant Finan and his men were advancing. More and more of Cynlæf’s men were kneeling, or else being kicked aside and told to wait, weaponless, in the arena’s centre. There were enough corpses heaped on the arena floor to check Æthelstan’s advance, and his shield wall had stopped by the tangled bodies, and one of the horsemen, coming from the entrance, turned his stallion and spurred it at Æthelstan himself. The horse stumbled on a body, slewed sideways, and the rider struck down with a long-handled axe that crashed onto a shield, then two spears were savaged into the stallion’s chest and the beast screamed, reared, and the rider fell backwards to be slaughtered by swords and spears. The horse fell and went on screaming, hooves thrashing until a man stepped forward and silenced it with a quick axe blow to the head.

‘You must be happy, father,’ I said to the priest, Bledod, who had stayed with me.

‘That Cadwallon is safe, lord? Yes.’

‘No, that Saxons are killing Saxons.’

He looked at me in surprise, then gave a sly grin. ‘I’m grateful for that too, lord,’ he said.

‘The first man I killed in battle was a Welshman,’ I told him, taking the grin off his face. ‘And the second. And the third. And the fourth.’

‘Yet you’ve killed more Saxons than Welshmen, lord,’ he said, ‘or so I hear?’

‘You hear right.’ I sat on the stone seats. Cadwallon, safe with Oswi and Folcbald, was beneath us, sheltering beside the arena’s inner wall, while Cynlæf’s men were surrendering meekly, letting Æthelstan’s warriors take their weapons. Cynlæf himself was still mounted and still carrying a sword and shield. His horse stood in the entrance, trapped between Finan’s shield wall and Æthelstan’s men. The sun broke through the leaden clouds, casting a long shadow on the bloodied ground. ‘I’m told Christians died here,’ I said to Bledod.

‘Killed by the Romans, lord?’

‘That’s what I was told.’

‘But in the end the Romans became Christians, lord, God be thanked.’

I grunted at that. I was trying to imagine the arena as it had been before Ceaster’s masons broke down the high stone seating for useful building blocks. The upper rim of the arena was jagged, like a mountain range. ‘We destroy, don’t we?’ I said.

‘Destroy, lord?’ Bledod asked nervously.

‘I burned half this city once,’ I said. I remembered the flames leaping from roof to roof, the smoke thick. To this day the masonry walls of the streets were streaked with black. ‘Imagine what this city was like when the Romans were here.’

Father Bledod said nothing. He was watching Cynlæf, who had been driven to the arena’s centre, where he was now surrounded by a ring of spearmen, some of them Finan’s men and some Æthelstan’s. He turned his horse as if seeking a way out. The horse’s rump showed a brand, a C and an H. Cynlæf Haraldson.

‘White-walled buildings,’ I said, ‘with red roofs. Statues and marble. I wish I could have seen it.’

‘Rome must have been a wonder too,’ Bledod said.

‘I hear it’s in ruins now.’

‘Everything passes, lord.’

Cynlæf spurred his horse towards one side of the ring, but the long spears came up, the shields clashed as they were braced together, and Cynlæf swerved away. He carried a drawn sword. The scabbard at his left hip was bound in red leather and studded with small gold plaques. The scabbard and sword had been a gift from Æthelflaed, last ruler of independent Mercia, and soon, I thought, they would belong to Æthelstan, who would doubtless give them to the church.

‘Everything passes,’ I agreed. ‘Look at the city now. Nothing but thatch and wattle, dirt and dung. I doubt it stank like a cesspit when the Romans were here.’

A word of command from Æthelstan caused the ring of men to take a pace forward. The ring shrank. Cynlæf still turned his horse, still looking for an escape that did not exist.

‘The Romans, lord …’ Bledod began, then faltered.

‘The Romans what?’ I asked.

Another word of command and the ring shrank again. Spears were levelled at the man and his branded horse. A score of Æthelstan’s warriors were now guarding the prisoners, herding them to one side of the arena while the dead made a tideline of bloody corpses by the entrance.

‘The Romans should have stayed in Britain, lord,’ Father Bledod said.

‘Because?’ I asked.

He hesitated, then gave me his sly grin again. ‘Because when they left, lord, the sais came.’

‘We did,’ I said, ‘we did.’ We were the sais, we Saxons. Britain had never been our home any more than it was home to the Romans. They took it, they left, and we came and we took it. ‘And you hate us,’ I said.

‘We do indeed, lord,’ Bledod was still smiling and I decided I liked him.

‘But you fought against the Romans, didn’t you? Didn’t you hate them?’

‘We hate everyone who steals our land, lord, but the Romans gave us Christianity.’

‘And that was a good exchange?’

He laughed. ‘They left! They gave us back our land, so thanks to the Romans we had our land and we had the true faith.’

‘Then we came.’

‘Then you came,’ he agreed. ‘But maybe you’ll leave too?’

It was my turn to laugh. ‘I think not, father. Sorry.’

Cynlæf was turning his horse continually, plainly fearing an assault from behind. His shield was limewashed white without any symbol. His helmet was chased with silver that glinted in the wintry sun. He wore his hair long like the Danes so that it flowed down his back. Æthelstan called out again, and once again the ring of spearmen contracted, men leaving the front rank as the weapons and shields tightened on Cynlæf.

‘So what will happen now, lord?’ Bledod asked.

‘Happen?’

‘To us, lord. To King Gruffudd’s men.’

‘King Gruffudd?’ I asked, amused. His kingdom was probably the size of a village, a patch of scrubby land with goats, sheep, and dung heaps. There were as many kings in Wales as fleas on a dog, though Hywel of Dyfed, whom I had met and liked, was swallowing those petty kingdoms to make one great one. Just as Wessex was swallowing Mercia, and, one day, would swallow Northumbria. ‘So he’s a king?’

‘His father was before him,’ Bledod said, as if that justified the title.

‘I thought Arthfael was King of Gwent?’

‘So he is, lord. Gruffudd is king beneath Arthfael.’

‘How many kings does Gwent have?’ I asked, amused.

‘It’s a mystery, lord, like the trinity.’

Cynlæf suddenly spurred his horse forward and slashed down with his sword. He had little room to move, but doubtless he hoped he could cut his way through the circle of men, though he must have known the hope was desperate, and so it was. The sword crashed into a shield and suddenly men were all around him, reaching for him. Cynlæf tried to draw the sword back, but one of Æthelstan’s warriors leaped up and seized his sword arm. Another snatched the horse’s bridle, while a third seized Cynlæf’s long hair and dragged him backwards. He fell, the horse reared and neighed, then the men backed away, and I saw Cynlæf being pulled to his feet. He was alive. For now.

‘Your King Gruffudd can leave with his son,’ I told Bledod, ‘but only after he tells us who bribed you. Not that he needs to tell us. I already know.’

‘You still think it was Cynlæf?’ he asked.

‘It was Æthelhelm the Younger,’ I said, ‘Ealdorman Æthelhelm.’

Who hated me and hated Æthelstan.

Æthelhelm the Elder was dead. He had died a prisoner in Bebbanburg. That had been inconvenient because his release had depended on his family paying me a ransom. The first part of that ransom, all in gold coins, had arrived, but Æthelhelm contracted a fever and died before the second payment was delivered.

His family had accused me of killing him, which was a nonsense. Why kill a man who would bring me gold? I would have been happy to kill him after the ransom was paid, but not before.

Æthelhelm had been the richest man in the kingdom of Wessex, richer even than King Edward to whom Æthelhelm had married his daughter. That marriage had made Æthelhelm as influential as he was wealthy, and it also meant that his grandson, Ælfweard, might become king after Edward. Ælfweard’s rival, of course, was Æthelstan, so it was no surprise that Æthelhelm had done all he could to destroy his grandson’s rival. And because I was Æthelstan’s protector I had also become Æthelhelm’s enemy. He had fought against me, he had lost, he had become my prisoner, and then he had died. We had sent his body home in a coffin, and I was told that by the time it reached Wiltunscir the corpse had swollen with gas, was leaking filthy liquid, and smelled vile.

I had liked Æthelhelm once. He had been genial and even generous, and we had been friends until his oldest daughter married a king and whelped a son. Now Æthelhelm’s eldest son, also called Æthelhelm, was also my enemy. He had succeeded his father as Ealdorman of Wiltunscir, and believed, wrongly, that I had murdered his father. I had taken gold from his family, and that was cause enough to hate me. I also protected Æthelstan. Even though King Edward had put aside his second wife and taken a younger woman, Æthelhelm the Younger still supported Edward because he hoped to see his nephew become the next king, but that support was given only so long as Ælfweard, Æthelhelm’s nephew, remained the crown prince. If Ælfweard became king, then Æthelhelm the Younger would remain the most powerful noble in Wessex, but if Æthelstan became king, then Æthelhelm and his family could look forward to royal revenge, to a loss of their estates, and even to enforced exile. And that prospect was more than enough reason to bribe a Welsh chieftain to take his famously savage warriors to Ceaster. If Æthelstan were to die, then Ælfweard would have no rival, and Æthelhelm’s family would rule in Wessex.

So Æthelhelm the Younger had cause to want Æthelstan dead, but, if it were possible, he hated me even more than he detested Æthelstan, and I did not doubt he sought my death just as eagerly as he wished for Æthelstan’s. And it was not just the death of his father that had prompted his hatred, but the fate of his youngest sister, Ælswyth.

Ælswyth had been captured alongside her father, and, after his death, she chose to stay at Bebbanburg rather than return to her family in Wessex. ‘You can’t,’ I had told her.

‘Why not, lord?’ she had asked. I had summoned her and she had stood in front of me, so young, so pale, so vulnerable, so enchantingly beautiful.

‘You can’t stay,’ I had spoken harshly, ‘because I have an agreement with your family. You will be returned to them when the ransom is paid.’

‘But the ransom isn’t paid, lord.’

‘Your father is dead,’ I had insisted, and wondered why she showed so little grief, ‘so there can be no more ransom. You must go home, as agreed.’

‘And your grandchild must go too, lord?’ she had asked innocently.

I had frowned, not understanding. My only grandchildren, my daughter’s two children, were in Eoferwic. Then I did understand, and I had just stared at her. ‘You’re pregnant?’ I finally said.

And Ælswyth had smiled so very sweetly. ‘Yes, lord.’

‘Tell my son I’ll kill him.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘But marry him first.’

‘Yes, lord.’

So they did marry, and in time a child was born, a boy, and as is the custom in our family he was named Uhtred. Æthelhelm the Younger immediately spread a new rumour, that we had raped Ælswyth and then forced her into the marriage. He called me Uhtred the Abductor, and no doubt he was believed in Wessex where men were ever ready to believe lies about Uhtred the Pagan. It was my belief that the summons from Edward that had required me to travel to Gleawecestre to pay homage for my Mercian lands had been an attempt to bring me within sword’s length of Æthelhelm’s revenge, but why lure me across Britain to Ceaster? He would have known I would bring warriors, and all he would have achieved was to combine my forces with Æthelstan’s men, making the task of slaughtering either of us that much harder.

I had no doubt that Æthelhelm the Younger had committed treason by hiring Welsh troops to kill his nephew’s rival. But it made no sense that he would have persuaded the monk to tell me the lies that had brought me across Britain to Ceaster.

Beneath us, on the arena’s floor, the first prisoner died. A stroke of a sword, a severed head and blood. So much blood. Æthelstan’s revenge had started.

Not every prisoner died, Æthelstan showed more sense than that. He killed those men he judged to be close to Cynlæf, but spared the youngest. Thirty-three men died, all put to the sword, and I remembered a day when I had handed Æthelstan my sword and told him to kill a man.

Æthelstan had been a boy with an unbroken voice, but I was training him to be a king. I had captured Eardwulf, also a rebel. It had happened not far from Ceaster, beside a ditch, and I had beaten Eardwulf down so that he lay half stunned in the scummy water. ‘Make it quick, boy,’ I had told Æthelstan. He had not killed before, but a boy must learn these skills, and a boy who would be king must learn to take life.

I thought about that day as I watched Cynlæf’s men die. All had been stripped of their mail, stripped of anything of value. They shivered as, one by one, they were led to their deaths. Æthelstan must have remembered that distant day too because he used his youngest warriors as his executioners, doubtless wanting them to learn the lesson he had learned beside that ditch, that killing a man is hard. Killing a helpless man with a sword takes resolve. You look into their eyes, see their fear, smell it too. And a man’s neck is tough. Few of the thirty-three died cleanly. Some were hacked to death, and the old arena smelled as it must have smelled when the Romans filled the tiered seats and cheered the men fighting on the sand below; a stink of blood, shit, and piss.

Æthelstan had killed Eardwulf quickly enough. He had not tried to hack off the rebel’s head, but had instead used Serpent-Breath to cut Eardwulf’s throat, and I had watched the ditch turn red. And Eardwulf had been Eadith’s brother, and Eadith was now my wife.

Cynlæf died last. I thought Æthelstan might kill the rebel leader himself, but instead he summoned his servant, a boy who would grow to be a warrior, and gave him the sword. Cynlæf’s hands were bound, and he had been forced to his knees. ‘Do it, boy,’ Æthelstan ordered, and I saw the youngster close his eyes as he swung the sword. He slammed the edge into Cynlæf’s skull, knocking him sideways and drawing blood, but Cynlæf had hardly been hurt. His left ear was sliced open, but the boy’s blow had lacked force. A priest, there were always priests with Æthelstan, raised his voice as he chanted a prayer. ‘Swing again, lad,’ Æthelstan said.

‘And keep your eyes open!’ I shouted.

It took seven blows to kill Cynlæf. Those of his men whom Æthelstan had spared would swear new oaths to a new lord, they would be Æthelstan’s men.

So the rebellion was defeated, at least in this part of Mercia. The fyrd, dragged from their fields and flocks, had gone to their homes leaving only melting snow, the ashes of campfires and Gruffudd’s Welshmen who waited beside Cynlæf’s tents.

‘He calls himself a king,’ I told Æthelstan as we walked towards the tents.

‘Kingship comes from God,’ Æthelstan said. I was surprised by that response. I had merely been trying to amuse him, but Æthelstan was in a grim mood after the killings. ‘He should have told us he was a king last night,’ he said disapprovingly.

‘He was in a humble mood,’ I said, ‘and wanted a favour. Besides, he’s probably king of three dung heaps, a ditch, and a midden. Nothing more.’

‘I still owe him respect. He’s a Christian king.’

‘He’s a mucky Welsh chieftain,’ I said, ‘who calls himself a king until someone who owns two more dung heaps than he does comes and slices his head off. And he’d slice your head off too if he could. You can’t trust the Welsh.’

‘I didn’t say I trusted him, merely that I respect him. God endows men with kingship, even in Wales.’ And, to my horror, Æthelstan stopped a few paces from Gruffudd and bowed his head. ‘Lord King,’ he said.

Gruffudd liked the gesture and grinned. He also saw his son who was still guarded by Folcbald and Oswi. He said something in Welsh that none of us understood.

‘Gruffudd of Gwent begs you to release his son, lord Prince,’ Father Bledod translated.

‘He agreed to give us a name first,’ Æthelstan said, ‘and his chain, and a pledge that he will keep the peace for a year.’

Gruffudd must have understood Æthelstan’s words because he immediately took the gold links from around his neck, handed them to Bledod, who, in turn, gave them to Æthelstan, who immediately handed the chain to Father Swithred. Then Gruffudd began telling a tale that Father Bledod did his best to interpret even as it was being told. It was a long tale, but the gist of it was that a priest had come from Mercia to talk with King Arthfael of Gwent, and an agreement had been made, gold had been given, and Arthfael had summoned his kinsman, Gruffudd, and ordered him to take his best warriors north to Ceaster.

‘The king,’ Æthelstan interrupted at one point, ‘says the priest came from Mercia?’

That provoked a hurried discussion in Welsh. ‘The priest offered us gold,’ Father Bledod told Æthelstan, ‘good gold! Enough gold to fill a helmet, lord Prince, and to earn it we simply had to come here to fight.’

‘I asked if the priest was from Mercia,’ Æthelstan insisted.

‘He was from the sais,’ Bledod said.

‘So he could have been a West Saxon?’ I asked.

‘He could, lord,’ Bledod said unhelpfully.

‘And the name of the priest?’ Æthelstan demanded.

‘Stigand, lord.’

Æthelstan turned and looked at me, but I shook my head. I had never heard of a priest named Stigand. ‘But I doubt the priest used his own name,’ I said.

‘So, we’ll never know,’ Æthelstan said bleakly.

Gruffudd was still speaking, indignant now. Father Bledod listened, then looked embarrassed. ‘Father Stigand is dead, lord Prince.’

‘Dead!’ Æthelstan exclaimed.

‘On his way home from Gwent, lord Prince, he was waylaid. King Gruffudd says he is not to blame. Why would he kill a man who might bring him more sais gold?’

‘Why indeed?’ Æthelstan asked. Had he expected to hear his enemy’s name? That was naive. He knew as well as I did that Æthelhelm the Younger was the likely culprit, but Æthelhelm was no fool, and would have taken care to conceal the treachery of hiring men to fight against his own king. So the man who had negotiated with Arthfael of Gwent was dead, and the dead take their secrets to the grave.

‘Lord Prince,’ Bledod asked nervously, ‘the king’s son?’

‘Tell King Gruffudd of Gwent,’ Æthelstan said, ‘that he may have his son.’

‘Thank you—’ Bledod began.

‘And tell him,’ Æthelstan interrupted, ‘that if he fights again for men who rebel against my father’s throne then I will lead an army into Gwent and I will lay Gwent waste and turn it into a land of death.’

‘I will tell him, lord Prince,’ Bledod said, though none of us who were listening believed for one heartbeat that the threat would be translated.

‘Then go,’ Æthelstan commanded.

The Welshmen left. The sun was higher now, melting the snow, though it was still cold. A blustery wind came from the east to lift the banners hanging from Ceaster’s walls. I had crossed Britain to rescue a man who did not need rescuing. I had been tricked. But by whom? And why?

I had another enemy, a secret enemy, and I had danced to his drumbeat. Wyrd bið ful a¯ræd.

Three

The next day dawned bright and cold, the pale sky only discoloured by smoke from the fires as Æthelstan’s men burned the remnants of Cynlæf’s encampment. Finan and I, mounted on horses captured from the rebels, rode slowly through the destruction. ‘When do we leave?’ Finan asked.

‘As soon as we can.’

‘The horses could do with a rest.’

‘Maybe tomorrow, then.’

‘That soon?’

‘I’m worried about Bebbanburg,’ I confessed. ‘Why else would someone drag me across Britain?’

‘Bebbanburg’s safe,’ Finan insisted. ‘I still think it was Æthelhelm who tricked you.’

‘Hoping I’d be killed here?’

‘What else? He can’t kill you while you’re inside Bebbanburg, so he has to get you outside the walls somehow.’

‘I spend enough time with Stiorra and her children,’ I pointed out. My daughter, Queen of Northumbria, lived in Eoferwic’s rambling palace, which was a mix of Roman grandeur and solid timber halls.

‘He can’t reach you in Eoferwic either. He wanted you out of Northumbria.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said, unconvinced.

‘I’m always right. I’m from Ireland. I was right about the snow, wasn’t I? And I’m still waiting for the two shillings.’

‘You’re a Christian. Patience is one of your virtues.’

‘I must be a living saint then.’ He looked past me. ‘And talking of saints.’

I twisted in the saddle to see Father Swithred approaching. The priest was mounted on a fine grey stallion that he rode well, calming the beast when it shied sideways as a man threw an armful of dirty thatch onto a fire. Smoke billowed and sparks flew. Father Swithred rode through the smoke and curbed the stallion near us. ‘The prince,’ he said brusquely, ‘requests your company today.’

‘Requests or requires?’ I asked.

‘It’s the same thing,’ Swithred said, and turned his horse, beckoning us to follow him.

I stayed where I was and held out a hand to check Finan. ‘Tell me,’ I called after Swithred, ‘you’re a West Saxon?’

‘You know I am,’ he said, turning back suspiciously.

‘Do you give orders to West Saxon ealdormen?’

He looked angry, but had the sense to suppress the fury. ‘The prince requests your company,’ he paused, ‘lord.’

‘Back in the city?’

‘He’s waiting at the north gate,’ Swithred said curtly, ‘we’re riding to Brunanburh.’

I spurred my horse alongside the priest’s grey. ‘I remember the day I first met you, priest,’ I said, ‘and Prince Æthelstan told me he didn’t trust you.’

He looked shocked at that. ‘I cannot believe—’ he began to protest.

‘Why would I lie?’ I interrupted him.

‘I am devoted to the prince,’ he said forcefully.

‘You were his father’s choice, not his.’

‘And does that matter?’ he asked. I deliberately did not answer, but just waited until, reluctantly, he added, ‘lord.’

‘The priests,’ I said, ‘write letters and read letters. Prince Æthelstan believed you were imposed on him to report back to his father.’

‘And so I was,’ Swithred admitted, ‘and I will tell you precisely what I report to the king. I tell him his eldest son is no bastard, that he is a good servant of Christ, that he is devoted to his father, and that he prays for his father. Why do you think his father trusts him with the command of Ceaster?’ He spoke passionately.

‘Do you know a monk called Brother Osric?’ I asked suddenly.

Swithred gave me a pitying look. He knew I had tried to trap him. ‘No, lord,’ he said, giving the last word a sour taste.

I tried another question. ‘So Æthelstan should be the next King of Wessex?’

‘That is not my decision. God appoints kings.’

‘And is your god helped in his choice by wealthy ealdormen?’

He knew I meant Æthelhelm the Younger. It had occurred to me that Swithred might be sending messages to Æthelhelm. I had no doubt that the ealdorman sought news of Æthelstan and probably had at least one sworn follower somewhere in Ceaster, and I was tempted to think it must be Swithred because the stern, bald priest disliked me so much, but his next words surprised me. ‘It’s my belief,’ he said, ‘that Lord Æthelhelm persuaded the king to give this command to the prince.’

‘Why?’

‘So he would fail, of course. The prince has three burhs to command, Ceaster, Brunanburh, and Mameceaster, and not sufficient men to garrison even one of them properly. He has rebels to contend with, and thousands of Norse settlers north of here. Dear God! He even has Norsemen settled on this peninsula!’

I could not hide my astonishment. ‘Here? On Wirhealum?’

Swithred shrugged. ‘You know what’s been happening on this coast? The Irish defeated the Norse settlers, drove many of them out, and so they came here.’ He gestured northwards. ‘Out beyond Brunanburh? There might be five hundred Norse settlers there, and even more north of the Mærse! And thousands more north of the Ribbel.’

‘Thousands?’ I asked. Of course I had heard stories of the Norse fleeing Ireland, but thought most had found refuge in the islands off the Scottish coast or in the wild valleys of Cumbraland. ‘The prince is letting his enemies settle on Mercian land? Pagan enemies?’

‘We have small choice,’ Swithred said calmly. ‘King Edward conquered East Anglia, now he’s King of Mercia, and he needs all his troops to put down unrest and to garrison the new burhs he’s making. He doesn’t have the men to fight every enemy, and these Norsemen are too numerous to fight. Besides, they’re beaten men. They were defeated by the Irish, they lost much of their wealth and many of their warriors in those defeats, and they crave peace. That’s why they’ve submitted to us.’

‘For now,’ I said sourly. ‘Did any of them join Cynlæf?’

‘Not one. Ingilmundr could have led his men against us or he could have attacked Brunanburh. He did neither. Instead he kept his men at home.’

‘Ingilmundr?’ I asked.

‘A Norseman,’ Swithred said dismissively. ‘He’s the chieftain who holds land beyond Brunanburh.’

I found it difficult to believe that Norse invaders had been allowed to settle so close to Brunanburh and Ceaster. King Edward’s ambition, which was the same as his father King Alfred’s, was to drive the pagan foreigners out of Saxon territory, yet here they were on Ceaster’s doorstep. I supposed that ever since Æthelflaed’s death there had been no stable government in Mercia, Cynlæf’s rebellion was proof of that, and the Northmen were ever ready to take advantage of Saxon weakness. ‘Ingilmundr,’ I said forcefully, ‘whoever he is, might not have marched against you, but he could have come to your relief.’

‘The prince sent word that he was to do no such thing. We had no need of help, and we certainly had no need of pagan help.’

‘Even my help?’

The priest turned to me with a ferocious expression. ‘If a pagan wins our battles,’ he said vehemently, ‘then it suggests the pagan gods must have power! We must have faith! We must fight in the belief that Christ is sufficient!’

I had nothing to say to that. The men who fought for me worshipped a dozen gods and goddesses, the Christian god among them, but if a man believes the nonsense that there is only one god then there’s no point in arguing because it would be like discussing a rainbow with a blind man.

We had ridden to the north of the city where Æthelstan and a score of armed riders waited for us. Æthelstan greeted me cheerfully. ‘The sun’s shining, the rebels are gone, and God is good!’

‘And the rebels didn’t attack Brunanburh?’

‘So far as we know. That’s what we’re going to find out.’

For almost as long as I could remember, Ceaster had been the most northerly burh in Mercia, but Æthelflaed had built Brunanburh just a few miles north and west to guard the River Mærse. Brunanburh was a timber-walled fort, close enough to the river to protect a wooden wharf where warships could be kept. The purpose of the fort was to prevent Norsemen rowing up the Mærse, but if Swithred was right then all the land beyond Brunanburh between the Dee and the Mærse was now settled by pagan Norse. ‘Tell me about Ingilmundr,’ I demanded of Æthelstan as we rode.

I had asked the question in a truculent tone, but Æthelstan answered enthusiastically. ‘I like him!’

‘A pagan?’

He laughed at that. ‘I like you too, lord,’ he said, ‘sometimes.’ He spurred his horse off the road and onto a track that skirted the Roman cemetery. He glanced at the weather-worn graves and made the sign of the cross. ‘Ingilmundr’s father held land in Ireland. He and his men got beaten and driven to the sea. The father died, but Ingilmundr managed to bring off half his army with their families. I sent a message early this morning asking that he should meet us at Brunanburh because I want you to meet him. You’ll like him too!’

‘I probably will,’ I said. ‘He’s a Norseman and a pagan. But that makes him your enemy, and he’s an enemy living on your land.’

‘And he pays us tribute. And tribute weakens the payer and acknowledges his subservience.’

‘Cheaper in the long run,’ I said, ‘just to kill the bastards.’

‘Ingilmundr swore on his gods to live peaceably with us,’ Æthelstan continued, ignoring my comment.

I leaped on his words. ‘So you trust his gods? You accept they are real?’

‘They’re real to Ingilmundr, I suppose,’ Æthelstan said calmly. ‘Why make him take an oath on a god he doesn’t believe in? That just begs for the oath to be broken.’

I grunted at that. He was right, of course. ‘But no doubt part of the agreement,’ I said scathingly, ‘was that Ingilmundr accepts your damned missionaries.’

‘The damned missionaries are indeed part of the agreement,’ he said patiently. ‘We insist on that with every Norseman who settles south of the Ribbel. That’s why my father put a burh at Mameceaster.’

‘To protect missionaries?’ I asked, astonished.

‘To protect anyone who accepts Mercian rule,’ he said, still patient, ‘and punish anyone who breaks our law. The warriors protect our land, and the monks and priests teach folk about God and about God’s law. I’m building a convent there now.’

‘That will terrify the Northmen,’ I said sourly.

‘It will help bring Christian charity to a troubled land,’ Æthelstan retorted. His aunt, the Lady Æthelflaed, had always claimed the River Ribbel as Mercia’s northern frontier, though in truth the land between the Mærse and the Ribbel was wild and mostly ungoverned, its coast long settled by Danes who had often raided the rich farmlands around Ceaster. I had led plenty of war-bands north in revenge for those raids, once leading my men as far as Mameceaster, an old Roman fort on a sandstone hill beside the River Mædlak. King Edward had strengthened those old walls and put a garrison into Mameceaster’s fort. And thus, I reflected, the frontier of Mercia crept ever northwards. Ceaster had been the northernmost burh, then Brunanburh, and now it was Mameceaster, and that new burh on its sandstone hill was perilously close to my homeland, Northumbria. ‘Have you ever been to Mameceaster?’ Æthelstan asked me.

‘I was there less than a week ago,’ I said ruefully. ‘The damned monk who lied to me left us at Mameceaster.’

‘You came that way?’

‘Because I thought the garrison would have news of you, but the bastards wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t even let us through the gate. They let the damned monk in, but not us.’

Æthelstan laughed. ‘That was Treddian.’

‘Treddian?’

‘A West Saxon. He commands there. Did he know it was you?’

‘Of course he did.’

Æthelstan shrugged. ‘You’re a pagan and a Northumbrian and that makes you an enemy. Treddian probably thought you were planning to slaughter his garrison. He’s a cautious man, Treddian. Too cautious, which is why I’m replacing him.’

‘Too cautious?’

‘You don’t defend a burh by staying on the walls. Everything to the north of Mameceaster is pagan country, and they raid constantly. Treddian just watches them! He does nothing! I want a man who’ll punish the pagans.’

‘By invading Northumbria?’ I asked sourly.

‘Sigtryggr is king of that land in name only,’ Æthelstan replied forcefully. He saw me flinch at the uncomfortable truth, and pressed his argument. ‘Does he have any burhs west of the hills?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘Does he send men to punish evil-doers?’

‘When he can.’

‘Which is never,’ Æthelstan said scornfully. ‘If the pagans of Northumbria raid Mercia,’ he went on, ‘then we should punish them. Englaland will be a country ruled by law. By Christian law.’

‘Does Ingilmundr accept your law?’ I asked dubiously.

‘He does,’ Æthelstan said. ‘He has submitted himself and his folk to my justice.’ He ducked beneath the splintered branch of an alder. We were riding through a narrow belt of woodland that had been pillaged by the besiegers for firewood and the trees bore the scars of their axes. Beyond the wood I could see the reed beds that edged the flat grey Mærse. ‘He has also welcomed our missionaries,’ Æthelstan added.

‘Of course he has,’ I responded.

Æthelstan laughed, his good humour restored. ‘We don’t fight the Norsemen because they’re newcomers,’ he said. ‘We were newcomers ourselves once! We don’t even fight them because they’re pagans.’

‘We were all pagans once.’

‘We were indeed. No, we fight to bring them into our law. One country, one king, one law! If they break the law, we must impose it, but if they keep it? Then we must live with them in peace.’

‘Even if they’re pagans?’

‘By obeying the law they will see the truth of Christ’s commandments.’

I wondered if this was why Æthelstan had demanded my company; to preach the virtues of Christian justice to me? Or was it to meet Ingilmundr, with whom he was so plainly impressed? For a time, as we rode along the Mærse’s southern bank, he talked of his plans to strengthen Mameceaster, and then, impatient, he spurred his horse into a canter, leaving me behind. Mudflats and reed beds stretched to my right, the water beyond almost still, just occasionally ruffled by a breath of wind. As we drew closer to the burh I saw that Æthelstan’s flag still flew there, and two low lean ships were safely tied at the wharf. It seemed Cynlæf’s men had made no attempt to capture Brunanburh, which, as it turned out, had been garrisoned by a mere thirty men who opened the gates to welcome us.

As I rode through the gate I saw that Æthelstan had dismounted and was striding towards a tall young man who went to his knees as Æthelstan came close. Æthelstan raised him up, clasped the man’s right arm with both hands, and turned to me. ‘You must meet Ingilmundr,’ he exclaimed happily.

So this, I thought, was the Norse chieftain who had been allowed to settle so close to Ceaster. He was young, startlingly young, and strikingly handsome, with a straight blade of a nose and long hair that he wore tied in a leather lace so that it hung almost to his waist. ‘I asked Ingilmundr to meet us here,’ Æthelstan told me, ‘so we could thank him.’

‘Thank him for what?’ I asked once I had dismounted.

‘For not joining the rebellion, of course!’ Æthelstan said.

Ingilmundr waited as one of Æthelstan’s men translated the words, then took a simple wooden box from one of his companions. ‘It is a gift,’ he said, ‘to celebrate your victory. It is not much, lord Prince, but it is much of all that we possess.’ He knelt again and laid the box at Æthelstan’s feet. ‘We are glad, lord Prince,’ he went on, ‘that your enemies are defeated.’

‘Without your help,’ I could not resist saying as Æthelstan listened to the translation.

‘The strong do not need the help of the weak,’ Ingilmundr retorted. He looked up at me as he spoke, and I was struck by the intensity of his blue eyes. He was smiling, he was humble, but his eyes were guarded. He had come with just four companions, and, like them, he wore plain breeches, a woollen shirt, and a coat of sheepskin. No armour, no weapons. His only decorations were two amulets hanging at his neck. One, carved from bone, was Thor’s hammer, while the other was a silver cross studded with jet. I had never seen any man display both tokens at once.

Æthelstan raised the Norseman again. ‘You must forgive the Lord Uhtred,’ he said. ‘He sees enemies everywhere.’

‘You are Lord Uhtred!’ Ingilmundr said, and there was a flattering surprise and even awe in his voice. He bowed to me. ‘I am honoured, lord.’

Æthelstan gestured, and a servant came forward and opened the wooden box, which, I saw, was filled with hacksilver. The glittering scraps had been cut from torques and brooches, buckles and rings, most of them axe-hacked into shards that were used instead of coins. A merchant would weigh hacksilver to find its value, and Ingilmundr’s gift, I thought grudgingly, was not paltry. ‘You are generous,’ Æthelstan said.

‘We are poor, lord Prince,’ Ingilmundr said, ‘but our gratitude demands we offer you a gift, however small.’

And in his steadings, I thought, he was doubtless hoarding gold and silver. Why did Æthelstan not see that? Perhaps he did, but his pious hopes of converting the pagans exceeded his suspicions. ‘In an hour,’ he said to Ingilmundr, ‘we will have a service of thanksgiving in the hall. I hope you can attend and I hope you will listen to the words Father Swithred will preach. In those words are eternal life!’

‘We shall listen closely, lord Prince,’ Ingilmundr said earnestly, and I wanted to laugh aloud. He was saying everything Æthelstan wanted to hear, and though it was plain Æthelstan liked the young Norseman, it was equally plain he did not see the slyness behind Ingilmundr’s handsome face. He saw meekness, which the Christians ridiculously count as a virtue.

The meek Ingilmundr sought me out after Swithred’s interminable sermon, which I had not attended. I was on Brunanburh’s wharf, idly gazing into the belly of a ship and dreaming of being at sea with the wind in my sail and a sword at my side when I heard footsteps on the wooden planks and turned to see the Norseman. He was alone. He stood beside me and for a moment said nothing. He was as tall as I was. We both gazed into the moored ship and, after a long moment, Ingilmundr broke our silence. ‘Saxon ships are too heavy.’

‘Too heavy and too slow.’

‘My father had a Frisian ship once,’ he said, ‘and it was a beauty.’

‘You should persuade your friend Æthelstan to give you ships,’ I said, ‘then you can sail home.’

He smiled, despite my harsh tone. ‘I have ships, lord, but where is home? I thought Ireland was my home.’

‘Then go back there.’

He gave me a long look, as if weighing the depth of my hostility. ‘You think I don’t want to go back?’ he asked. ‘I would, lord, tomorrow, but Ireland is cursed. They’re not men, they’re fiends.’

‘They killed your father?’

He nodded. ‘They broke his shield wall.’

‘But you brought men away from the battle?’

‘One hundred and sixty-three men and their families. Nine ships.’ He sounded proud of that, and so he should have been. Retreating from a defeat is one of the hardest things to do in war, yet Ingilmundr, if he spoke truth, had fought his way back to the Irish shore. I could imagine the horror of that day; a broken shield wall, the shrieks of maddened warriors slaughtering their enemies, and the horsemen with their sharp spears racing in pursuit.

‘You did well,’ I said, and looked down at his two amulets. ‘Which god did you pray to?’

He laughed at that. ‘To Thor, of course.’

‘Yet you wear a cross.’

He fingered the heavy silver ornament. ‘It was a gift from my friend Æthelstan. It would be churlish to hide it away.’

‘Your friend Æthelstan,’ I said, mocking the word ‘friend’ with my tone, ‘would like you to be baptised.’

‘He would, I know.’

‘And you keep his hopes alive?’

‘Do I?’ he asked. He seemed amused by my questions. ‘Perhaps his god is more powerful than ours? Do you care which god I worship, Lord Uhtred?’

‘I like to know my enemies,’ I said.

He smiled at that. ‘I am not your enemy, Lord Uhtred.’

‘Then what are you? A loyal oath-follower of Prince Æthelstan? A settler pretending to be interested in the Saxon god?’

‘We are humble farmers now,’ he said, ‘farmers and shepherds and fishermen.’

‘And I’m a humble goatherd,’ I said.

He laughed again. ‘A goatherd who wins his battles.’

‘I do,’ I said.

‘Then let us make sure we are always on the same side,’ he said quietly. He looked at the cross that crowned the prow of the nearest ship. ‘I was not the only man driven out of Ireland,’ he said, and something in his tone made me pay attention. ‘Anluf is still there, but for how long?’

‘Anluf?’

‘He is the greatest chieftain of the Irish Norse and he has strong fortresses. Even fiends find those walls deadly. Anluf saw my father as a rival, and refused to help us, but that is not why we lost. My father lost the battle,’ he gazed across the placid Mærse as he spoke, ‘because his brother and his men retreated before the fight. I suspect he was bribed with Irish gold.’

‘Your uncle.’

‘He is called Sköll,’ he went on, ‘Sköll Grimmarson. Have you heard of him?’

‘No.’

‘You will. He is ambitious. And he has a feared sorcerer,’ he paused to touch the bone-hammer, ‘and he and his magician are in your country.’

‘In Northumbria?’

‘Northumbria, yes. He landed north of here, far north. Beyond the next river, what is it called?’

‘The Ribbel.’

‘Beyond the Ribbel where he has gathered men. Sköll, you see, craves to be called King Sköll.’

‘King of what?’ I asked scornfully.

‘Northumbria, of course. And that would be fitting, would it not? Northumbria, a northern kingdom for a Norse king.’ He looked at me with his ice-blue eyes and I remember thinking that Ingilmundr was one of the most dangerous men I had ever met. ‘To become king, of course,’ he went on in a conversational tone, ‘he must first defeat Sigtryggr, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he knows, who does not, that King Sigtryggr’s father-in-law is the renowned Lord Uhtred. If I were Sköll Grimmarson I would want Lord Uhtred far from his home if I planned to cross the hills.’

So this was why he had sought me out. He knew I had been lured across Britain, and he was telling me that his uncle, whom he plainly hated, had arranged the deception. ‘And how,’ I asked, ‘would Sköll do that?’

He turned to stare again at the river. ‘My uncle has recruited men who settled south of the Ribbel, and that, I am told, is Mercian land.’

‘It is.’

‘And my friend Æthelstan insists that all such settlers must pay tribute and must accept his missionaries.’

I realised he was talking about the monk. Brother Osric. The man who had led me on a wild dance across the hills. The man who had lied to me. And Ingilmundr was telling me that his uncle, Sköll Grimmarson, had sent the monk on his treacherous errand. ‘How do you know all this?’ I asked.

‘Even we simple farmers like to know what is happening in the world.’

‘And even a simple farmer would like me to take revenge for his father’s betrayal?’

‘My Christian teachers tell me revenge is an unworthy thing.’

‘Your Christian teachers are full of shit,’ I said savagely.

He just smiled. ‘I almost forgot to tell you,’ he went on calmly, ‘that Prince Æthelstan asked that you should join him. I offered to carry the message. Shall we stroll back, lord?’

That was the first time I saw Ingilmundr. In time I would meet him again, though in those later encounters he shone in mail, was hung with gold, and carried a sword called Bone-Carver that was feared through all northern Britain. But on that day by the Mærse he did me a favour. The favour, of course, was in his interest. He wanted revenge on his uncle and was not yet strong enough to take that revenge himself, but the day would come when he would be strong. Strong, deadly and clever. Æthelstan had said I would like him, and I did, but I also feared him.

Æthelstan had requested that I accompany him to Brunanburh and I had thought it was simply an opportunity for him to tell me about his hopes for Mercia and Englaland, or perhaps to meet Ingilmundr, but it seemed there was another reason. He was waiting for me at the fort’s gate, and, when we joined him, he beckoned for me to walk a small way eastwards. Ingilmundr left us alone. Four guards followed us, but stayed well out of earshot. I sensed that Æthelstan was nervous. He commented on the weather, on his plans to rebuild Ceaster’s bridge, on his hopes for a good spring planting, on anything, it seemed, rather than the purpose of our meeting. ‘What did you think of Ingilmundr?’ he asked when we had exhausted the prospects of harvest.

‘He’s clever,’ I said.

‘Just clever?’

‘Vain,’ I said, ‘untrustworthy and dangerous.’

Æthelstan seemed shocked by that answer. ‘I count him as a friend,’ he said stiffly, ‘and I hoped you would too.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s proof we can live together in peace.’

‘He still wears Thor’s hammer.’

‘So do you! But he is learning better! He’s eager for the truth. And he has enemies among the other Norse, and that could make him a friend to us, a good friend.’

‘You sent him missionaries?’ I asked.

‘Two priests, yes. They tell me he is earnest in his search for truth.’

‘I want to know about your other missionaries,’ I went on, ‘those you sent to the Norse who settled south of the Ribbel.’

He shrugged. ‘We sent six, I believe. They are brothers.’

‘You mean monks? Black monks?’

‘They are Benedictines, yes.’

‘And did one of them have a scar across his tonsure?’

‘Yes!’ Æthelstan stopped and looked at me, puzzled, but I offered him no explanation for my question. ‘Brother Beadwulf has that scar,’ he told me. ‘He tells me he had an argument with his sister when he was a child and he likes to say she gave him his first tonsure.’

‘She should have slit his throat,’ I said, ‘because I’m going to tear his belly open from his crotch to his breastbone.’

‘God forgive you!’ Æthelstan sounded horrified. ‘They already call you the priest-killer!’

‘Then they can call me monk-killer too,’ I said, ‘because your Brother Beadwulf is my Brother Osric.’

Æthelstan flinched. ‘You can’t be sure,’ he said uncertainly.

I ignored his words. ‘Where did you send Brother Beadwulf or whatever he’s called?’

‘To a man called Arnborg.’

‘Arnborg?’

‘A Norse chieftain who once held land on Monez. He was driven out by the Welsh, and settled on the coast north of here. He leads maybe a hundred men? I doubt he has more than a hundred.’

‘How far north?’

‘He came to the Ribbel with three ships and found land on the southern bank of the river. He swore to keep the peace and pay us tribute.’ Æthelstan looked troubled. ‘The monk is a tall man, yes? Dark hair?’

‘And with a scar that looked as if someone had opened up his head from one ear to the other. I wish they had.’

‘It sounds like Brother Beadwulf,’ Æthelstan admitted unhappily.

‘And I’m going to find him,’ I said.

‘If it is Brother Beadwulf,’ Æthelstan said, recovering his poise, ‘then perhaps he just wanted to help? Wanted the siege lifted?’

‘So he lies to me about his name? Lies about where he’s from?’

Æthelstan frowned. ‘If Brother Beadwulf has transgressed then he must suffer Mercian justice.’

‘Transgressed!’ I mocked the word.

‘He is a Mercian,’ Æthelstan insisted, ‘and while he is on Mercian soil I forbid you to harm him. He may be in error, but he is a man of God, and therefore under my protection.’

‘Then protect him,’ I said savagely, ‘from me.’

Æthelstan bridled at that, but held his temper. ‘You may deliver him to me for judgement,’ he said.

‘I am capable, lord Prince,’ I said, still savage, ‘of dispensing my own justice.’

‘Not,’ he said sharply, ‘inside Mercia! Here you are under my father’s authority.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘and mine.’

‘My authority,’ I snarled, ‘is this!’ I slapped Serpent-Breath’s hilt. ‘And on that authority, lord Prince, I am riding to find Jarl Arnborg.’

‘And Brother Beadwulf?’

‘Of course.’

He stood straighter, confronting me. ‘And if you kill another man of God,’ he said, ‘you become my enemy.’

For a moment I had no idea what to say, and for the same moment I was tempted to tell him to stop being a pompous little earsling. I had known him and protected him since he was a child, he had been like a son to me, but in the last few years the priests had got to him. Yet the boy I had nurtured was still there, I thought, and so I suppressed my anger. ‘You forget,’ I said, ‘that I swore an oath to the Lady Æthelflaed to protect you, and I will keep that oath.’

‘What else did you swear to her?’ he asked.

‘To serve her, and I did.’

‘You did,’ he agreed. ‘You served her well, and she loved you.’ He turned away, staring at the bare low branches of bog myrtle that grew in a damp patch beside a ditch. ‘You remember how the Lady Æthelflaed liked bog myrtle? She believed the leaves kept fleas away.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘And you remember this ditch, lord?’

‘I remember it. You killed Eardwulf here.’

‘I did. I was just a boy. I had bad dreams for weeks afterwards. So much blood! To this day when I smell bog myrtle I think of blood in a ditch. Why did you make me kill him?’

‘Because a king must learn the cost of life and death.’

‘And you want me to be king after my father?’

‘No, lord Prince,’ I said, surprising him. ‘I want Ælfweard to be king because he’s a useless piece of weasel shit, and if he invades Northumbria I’ll gut him. But if you ask me who ought to be king? You, of course.’

‘And you once took an oath to protect me,’ he said quietly.

‘I did, to the Lady Æthelflaed, and I kept that oath.’

‘You did keep it,’ he agreed. He was staring into the ditch where some skims of ice still lingered. ‘I want your oath, Lord Uhtred,’ he said.

So that was why he had summoned me! No wonder he had been nervous. He turned his head to look at me, and I saw the determination in his face. He had grown up. He was no longer a boy or even a youth. He had become as stern and unbending as Alfred, his grandfather. ‘My oath?’ I asked, because I was not sure what else to say.

‘I want the same oath you gave to the Lady Æthelflaed,’ he said calmly.

‘I swore to serve her,’ I said.

‘I know.’

I owed Æthelstan. He had been beside me when we recaptured Bebbanburg, and he had fought well there even though he had had no need to be in that fight. So yes, I owed him, but did he know he was asking the impossible? We live by oaths and we can die by them. To give an oath is to harness a life to a promise, and to break an oath is to tempt the punishment of the gods. ‘I swore loyalty to King Sigtryggr,’ I said, ‘and I cannot break that oath. How can I serve both you and him?’

‘You can swear an oath,’ he said, ‘that you will never oppose me, never thwart me.’

‘And if you invade Northumbria?’

‘Then you will not fight me.’

‘And my oath to my son-in-law?’ I asked. ‘If,’ I paused, ‘when you invade Northumbria my oath to Sigtryggr means I must oppose you. You would want me to break that oath?’

‘It is a pagan oath,’ he said, ‘and therefore meaningless.’

‘Like the oath you took from Ingilmundr?’ I asked, and he had no reply to that. ‘My oath to Sigtryggr rules my life, lord Prince,’ I spoke his title with condescension. ‘I swore to the Lady Æthelflaed that I would protect you, and I will. And if you fight Sigtryggr I will keep that oath by doing my best to capture you in battle and not kill you.’ I shook my head. ‘No, lord Prince, I will not swear to serve you.’

‘I am sorry,’ he said.

‘And now, lord Prince,’ I went on, ‘I am riding to find Brother Osric. Unless, of course, you choose to stop me.’

He shook his head. ‘I will not stop you.’

I watched him walk away. I was angry that he had asked for my oath. He should have known me better, but then I told myself he was growing into his authority, that he was testing it.

And I was pursuing Arnborg. Ingilmundr had told me that his uncle, Sköll Grimmarson, had received the allegiance of Norsemen settled south of the Ribbel, and I assumed Arnborg was one of those men. And Arnborg had sheltered Brother Osric, Brother Beadwulf, who had lied to me. I wanted to know why, and I suspected that Brother Beadwulf, after leaving us at Mameceaster, would have gone back to Arnborg’s steading. So to find the monk I needed to go north.

I needed to go into the wild lands.

We did not leave at once. We could not. Our horses needed more rest, a half-dozen of the beasts were lame, and even more required reshoeing. So we waited three days, then left to go north, though the first part of our journey took us east towards the brine pits that soured the land around the River Wevere. Great fires burned where men boiled the brine in iron vats and where salt made heaps like snowdrifts. The Romans, of course, had made the saltworks, or at least had expanded them so they could supply all Britain with salt, and to make that easy they had embanked a road across the water meadows, raising it on a great causeway of gravel.

I had scouts ranging ahead, though there was small need of them on the wide flat plain across which the road ran like a spear. I expected no trouble, though only a fool travelled Britain’s roads without taking precautions. In places we passed through thick woodland and it was possible that stragglers from Cynlæf’s forces might be looking for unarmed travellers, but no hungry or desperate men would dare attack my men, who wore mail and helmets and were armed with swords.

But hungry, desperate men might have attacked our companions, who were eighteen women on their way to establish the convent that Æthelstan wanted in Mameceaster and a dozen merchants who had been stranded in Ceaster by the siege. The merchants, in turn, had servants who led packhorses laden with valuable goods; tanned hides, silverware from Gleawecestre and fine spearheads forged in Lundene. One packhorse carried the corpse of a man who had followed Cynlæf. The head was separately wrapped in canvas, and both head and body would be nailed to Mameceaster’s main gate as a warning to others tempted to rebel against King Edward’s rule. Æthelstan, his manner cold and distant after I had refused to give him my oath, had asked me to protect the merchants, packhorses, nuns, and corpse all the way to Mameceaster. ‘I’m not going that far,’ I told him.

‘You’re going to the Ribbel,’ he had pointed out, ‘going by Mameceaster is your easiest route.’

‘I don’t want the settlers on the Ribbel to know I’m coming,’ I said, ‘which means I can’t use the roads.’ Roman roads would lead us to Mameceaster and another road left that fortress and went north to Ribelcastre, a Roman fort on the Ribbel. Following such roads made travel easy; there was little chance of getting lost in endless tracts of wooded hills, and, at least in the larger settlements, there were barns to sleep in, smithies to shoe horses, and taverns accustomed to feeding travellers. But Arnborg, who I suspected might have occupied the old Roman fort at Ribelcastre, would have men watching the road. So I planned to approach him from the west, through land settled by Norsemen.

‘The nuns need protection,’ Æthelstan had protested.

‘So protect them,’ I had said, and so twenty-two of Æthelstan’s spearmen rode to guard the travellers on the last part of their journey.

Sunngifu was one of the women. ‘What I don’t understand,’ I said to her, ‘is why you need a convent in Mameceaster.’

‘Nuns are needed everywhere, Lord Uhtred,’ she said.

‘Mameceaster,’ I said, ‘is a frontier burh. All the land around it is pagan, nasty and dangerous.’

‘Like you?’

I looked down at her. I had offered her one of my spare horses, but she had refused, claiming that Jesus’s disciples had walked everywhere, so she and the sisters should do the same. ‘I’m nasty?’ I asked. She just smiled. She was so breathtakingly beautiful even in a dark grey habit with a cowl covering her startling fair hair. ‘You’d better hope I am nasty,’ I told her, ‘because that will keep you safe.’

‘Jesus keeps me safe, lord.’

‘Jesus will be no damned use to you if a Danish war-band comes out of that wood,’ I nodded towards a stretch of leafless trees to the east, and thought of Abbess Hild, my friend now in far off Wintanceaster, who had been raped repeatedly by Guthrum’s Danes. ‘It’s a cruel world, Mus,’ I said, using her old nickname, ‘and you have to hope the warriors defending you are just as cruel as your enemies.’

‘Are you cruel, lord?’

‘I’m good at war,’ I told her, ‘and war is cruel.’

She looked ahead to where Æthelstan’s horsemen rode. ‘Will they be enough to protect us?’

‘How many other travellers have you seen on this road?’ I asked. We were going north, entering low hills and leaving the wide flat plain with its lazy rivers behind us.

‘Not many,’ she said.

‘Just three today,’ I said, ‘and why? Because this is dangerous country. It’s mostly Danish with just a few Saxons. Until Edward made his burh at Mameceaster it was ruled by a Dane, and that was only two years ago. Now that country is being settled by Norsemen. I think it’s madness sending you to Mameceaster.’

‘Then why won’t you protect us all the way?’

‘Because twenty-two warriors are enough to keep you safe,’ I said confidently, ‘and because I have urgent business somewhere else and it will be quicker for me to cut across country.’ I was tempted to escort the nuns all the way to Mameceaster, but the temptation was solely because of Mus. I wondered about her. When she had been married to Bishop Leofstan she had whored enthusiastically, but Æthelstan had been certain she was a reformed sinner. Maybe she was, but I did not like to ask her. ‘What will you do in Mameceaster?’ I asked instead.

‘Maybe I’ll take my vows.’

‘Why haven’t you taken them yet?’

‘I don’t feel worthy, lord.’

I gave her a sceptical look. ‘Prince Æthelstan believes you’re the holiest woman he knows.’

‘And the prince is a good man, lord, a very good man,’ she said, smiling, ‘but he doesn’t know women very well.’

Something in her tone made me look at her again, but her face was all innocence, so I ignored her remark. ‘So what will you do in Mameceaster?’ I asked instead.

‘Pray,’ she said, and I made a scornful sound. ‘And heal the sick, lord.’ She gave me her dazzling smile. ‘And what’s your business, lord, that makes you abandon me?’

‘I have to kill a monk,’ I told her, and, to my surprise, she laughed.

We left them next morning, striking west into wooded hills. I had not been truthful with Mus, our quickest route was to follow the convenient Roman roads, but I needed to approach Arnborg’s settlement without being discovered, and that meant cutting across the country, finding our way by instinct and by the sun. I doubled my scouts. We were entering land where the Danish had been reinforced by Norse settlers, where few Saxons survived, land that had been claimed by Mercia, but never occupied by Mercian troops. Mameceaster, the nearest burh, had been made deep in this land, a defiant gesture by Edward that claimed that he was king of all the country south of the burh, but many of the people here had not even heard of Edward.

The land was rich, but sparsely settled. There were no villages. In southern Mercia and in Wessex, which was now supposedly all one kingdom, there were settlements of cottages, usually built around a church and with no defensive palisade, but here what dwellings existed were almost all behind strong timber walls. We avoided them. We ate hard cheese, stale bread, and smoked herrings that Æthelstan’s steward had given us from his storehouses. We carried forage bags for the horses because the spring grass was still weeks away. We slept in the woods, warmed by fires. Folk would see those fires and wonder who had set them, but we were still far south of the Ribbel, and I doubted that Arnborg would hear of us. Men must have seen us, even if we did not see them, but all they saw were some ninety armed riders with their servants and spare horses. We flew no banner, and the wolf heads on our shields were faded. If any folk did see us they would avoid us because in a dangerous land we were the danger.

Next day, late in a cold afternoon, we saw the Ribbel. It was a sullen day with a grey sky and a grey sea, and ahead of us stretched the wide estuary where grey mudbanks were edged with endless marshes. Smoke rose into the windless air from a dozen settlements on the estuary’s shores. No ships disturbed the river’s channels that threaded the mud, though I could see a score of fishing boats hauled above the high-tide mark. It was close to low tide now and some of the withies marking the channels were out of the water, which swirled fast and flat. The tide was big there, and the river was draining to the sea. ‘Good living,’ Finan murmured, and he was right. I could see the fish traps in the tangled channels, and both the mudbanks and the water were bright with birds; seabirds and shorebirds, swans and waders, godwits and plovers, geese and sanderlings. ‘Dear God,’ Finan said, ‘but look at those fowl! You’d never go hungry here!’

‘There’s good salmon too,’ I said. Dudda, a shipmaster who had once guided us across the Irish Sea, had told me the Ribbel was a marvellous river for salmon. Dudda was a drunkard, but a drunkard who knew this coast, and he had often told me his dream of settling beside the Ribbel’s estuary, and I could see why.

The settlers were Norsemen now. I doubted they had seen us. We had approached the river slowly, leading our horses, only moving when our scouts gave a signal. Most of my men and all our horses were now in a swale of icy puddles and brittle reeds, hidden from the river lands by a low rise crowned with trees and brush where I had posted a dozen men. I joined them, climbing the shallow slope quietly and slowly, not wanting to explode birds from their nests, and once on the crest I could see far across the estuary, and see rich steadings, too many steadings. As soon as we rode out of the icy swale we would be seen, and the news of armed strangers would spread across the river lands, and Arnborg, wherever he was, would be warned of our coming.

I was gazing at the closest steading, a substantial hall and barn surrounded by a freshly repaired palisade. The thatch on one of the lower buildings was new, while smoke rose from a hole in the highest roof. A boy and a dog were driving sheep towards the steading’s open gates where one man slouched. The man was far away, but Finan, who had the keenest eyesight of any man I knew, reckoned he wore no mail and carried no weapon.

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