He shrugged. ‘Stay here, keep her here, wait for more orders.’
‘Orders that will come when the king dies?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You weren’t told to go to Contwaraburg? To order the queen’s brother to stay quiet?’
‘Other men went there.’
‘What other men? Who? And to do what?’
‘Dreogan. He took fifty men and I don’t know why he went there.’
‘And Dreogan is?’
‘He commands fifty of Lord Æthelhelm’s household troops.’
‘What about Waormund?’ I asked.
The mention of that name made Wighelm shudder. He made the sign of the cross. ‘Waormund went to East Anglia,’ he said, ‘but why? I don’t know.’
‘You don’t like Waormund?’ I asked.
‘No one likes Waormund,’ he replied bitterly, ‘except perhaps Lord Æthelhelm. Waormund is Lord Æthelhelm’s beast.’
‘I’ve met the beast,’ I said bleakly, remembering the huge, vacant-faced warrior who was taller and stronger than any man I had ever met except for Steapa, who was another fearsome West Saxon warrior. Steapa had been a slave, but had become one of King Alfred’s most trusted warriors. He had been my enemy too, but had become a friend. ‘Does Lord Steapa still live?’ I asked.
Wighelm looked momentarily confused at the unexpected question, but nodded. ‘He’s old. But he lives.’
‘Good,’ I said, ‘and who is in Fæfresham?’
Again Wighelm looked puzzled by the sudden change of questioning. ‘Eadgifu is there …’ he recovered.
‘I know that! Who leads the men there?’
‘Eanwulf.’
‘And how many men does he have?’
‘About fifty.’
I turned to Immar Hergildson, a young man whose life I had saved and who had served me devotedly ever since. ‘Tie his hands,’ I ordered him.
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Lord?’ Wighelm repeated the word nervously. ‘You’re a—’
‘I’m a lord,’ I said savagely.
The thunder sounded, but further away now, carrying Thor’s anger out to the turbulent sea. The wind still shook the tavern, but with less anger than before. ‘Storm’s passing, I reckon,’ Finan brought me a pot of ale.
‘It’s passing,’ I agreed. I pulled a shutter open, making the flames in the hearth flicker. It was almost dark outside. ‘Send someone to tell Vidarr and Beornoth to come back,’ I said. There was no chance that men from Eanwulf’s troop in Fæfresham would come north in the darkness, so there was no need to watch for them.
‘And tomorrow?’ Finan asked.
‘Tomorrow we rescue a queen,’ I said.
A queen whose feeble revolt against Æthelhelm had failed. And she was my best hope of keeping the oath to kill Wessex’s most powerful lord and his nephew, who, if Finan’s premonition that the storm was sent to mark the death of a king, was king already.
And we had come to make certain his reign was brief.
Tomorrow.
The storm blew itself out overnight, leaving fallen trees, sodden thatch, and flooded marshland. The dawn was damp and sullen, as if the weather was ashamed of the previous day’s anger. The clouds were high, the creek had settled, and the wind was fitful.
I had to decide what to do with the prisoners. My first thought was to put them in a stout shack on the harbour’s western side and leave two men to guard them, but Wighelm’s men were young, they were strong, they were bitter, and they would surely find some way to break out of the shack, and the last thing I wanted was to have vengeful warriors following me south to Fæfresham. Nor did I want to leave any men behind, either to guard the prisoners or to protect Spearhafoc. If we were to go to Fæfresham then I would need all of my men.
‘Just kill the bastards,’ Vidarr Leifson suggested.
‘Put them on the island,’ Finan said, meaning Sceapig.
‘And if they can swim?’
He shrugged. ‘Not many can!’
‘A fishing boat might rescue them.’
‘Then do as Vidarr suggests,’ Finan said, tired of my doubts.
There was a risk in stranding them, but I could think of no better solution and so we herded them onto Spearhafoc, rowed a mile eastwards down the Swalwan Creek, and there found an island of reeds that, judging by the line of flotsam heaped on the shore, did not flood at high tide. We stripped the prisoners naked and sent them ashore, making them carry their four wounded men. Wighelm was the last to go. ‘You can reach Sceapig easily enough,’ I told him. The island of reeds was only a long bow shot from Sceapig’s marshes, ‘but if you hurt anyone ashore I’ll find out and I’ll come for you, and when I find you I’ll kill you slowly, you understand?’
He nodded sullenly. ‘Yes, lord.’ He knew who I was now and he was afraid.
‘All these people,’ I said, gesturing at both Sceapig and the mainland, ‘are under my protection, and I am Uhtredærwe! Who am I?’
‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg, lord,’ he said fearfully.
‘I am Uhtredærwe, and my enemies die. Now go!’
It was midday before we were back in the creek’s harbour and another hour before we set off on the southwards road. We had eaten a poor meal of fish stew and hard bread, cleaned our mail and weapons, and donned the dark red cloaks that were the marks of Æthelhelm’s men. We had captured twenty-four of Æthelhelm’s shields, all painted with the leaping stag, and I had given those to my men. The rest of us would go to Fæfresham without shields. My pagans, like me, hid their hammer amulets. Ideally I would have sent a couple of men to scout the town, but streets and alleys are harder to explore unseen than woodlands and hedgerows, and I feared the men might be captured, questioned too harshly, and so reveal our presence. Better, I thought, to arrive at Fæfresham in force, even though that force was only half the enemy’s number. I did send Eadric, the most cunning of my scouts, to explore the edge of the town, but ordered him to remain hidden. ‘Don’t be captured!’
‘Bastards won’t get a smell of me, lord.’
The sky cleared as we walked southwards. The wind was dying, gusting occasionally to stir our borrowed cloaks. There was warmth in the sun, which glittered off the flooded pastures. We met a small girl, maybe eight or nine years old, driving three cows northwards. She shrank onto the road’s side as we passed, looking fearful. ‘Better weather today!’ Beornoth called cheerfully to her, but she just shivered and kept her eyes lowered. We passed orchards where trees had been felled by the storm and one stout trunk had been split and scorched by lightning. I shivered when I saw a dead swan, lying with a broken neck in a flooded ditch. It was not a good omen and I raised my eyes in hope of seeing a better sign, but saw only the storm’s ragged rear-guard of clouds. A woman was digging in the garden of a small reed-thatched cottage, but seeing us she went indoors and I heard the locking bar drop into place. Was this, I wondered, how folk had behaved when they saw Roman troops approaching? Or Danes? Fæfresham was nervous, fearful, a small town caught again at the crossroads of powerful men’s ambitions.
I was nervous too. If Wighelm had told me the truth then Æthelhelm’s men in Fæfresham outnumbered mine. If they were alert, if they were expecting trouble, then we would be swiftly overwhelmed. I had thought to use the captured cloaks and shields as a means of entering the town unsuspected, but Eadric returned to tell me that a dozen spearmen were guarding the road. ‘They’re not lazy buggers either,’ he said. ‘Wide awake, they are.’
‘Just twelve men?’
‘With plenty more to back them up, lord,’ Eadric said grimly.
We had left the road to hide behind the blackthorn hedge of a rain-soaked pasture. If Eadric was right then an assault on the twelve guards would bring more enemy running and I could find myself in a ragged fight far from the safety of Spearhafoc. ‘Can you get into the town?’ I asked Eadric.
He nodded. ‘Plenty of alleyways, lord.’ He was a middle-aged Saxon who could move through woodland li
ke a ghost, but he was confident he could get past Æthelhelm’s sentries and use his cunning to stay undiscovered in the town. ‘I’m old, lord,’ he said, ‘and they don’t look at old men like young ones.’ He discarded his weapons, stripped off his mail, and, looking like a peasant, slipped through a gap in the blackthorn hedge that sheltered us. We waited. The last clouds were thinning and the sunlight offered welcome warmth. The smoke from Fæfresham’s cooking fires drifted upwards instead of being flayed sideways by the wind. Eadric did not return for a long time and I had begun to fear he had been captured and Finan feared the same. He sat beside me, fidgeting, then went very still as a band of red-cloaked horsemen appeared to the east. There were at least twenty of them and for a moment I thought they might be searching for us and I half drew Serpent-Breath, but then the horsemen turned back towards the town.
‘Just exercising the horses,’ I said, relieved.
‘They were good horses too,’ Finan said, ‘not cheap country nags.’
‘I’m sure they have good horses here,’ I said. ‘It’s good land once you’re off the marshes.’
‘But the bastards came by ship,’ Finan pointed out. ‘No one told us they brought horses with them.’
‘So they took them from the townsfolk.’
‘Or they’ve been reinforced,’ Finan said ominously. ‘It feels bad, lord. We should go back.’
Finan was no coward. I am ashamed even to have thought this. Of course he was no coward! He was among the two or three bravest men I have ever known, a swordsman of lightning speed and deadly skill, but that day he had an instinct of doom. It was a feeling of dread, a certainty based on nothing he could see or hear, but a certainty all the same. He claimed the Irish had a knowledge denied to the rest of us, that they could scent fate, and though he was a Christian I knew he believed the world to be seething with spirits and it seemed those unseen creatures had spoken to him. In the night he had tried to persuade me to board Spearhafoc and sail back north. We were too few, he had said, and our enemies too numerous. ‘And I saw you dead, lord,’ he had finished, sounding grieved to speak of such a thing.
‘Dead?’ I had asked.
‘Naked, blood-covered, lord, in a field of barley.’ He paused, but I said nothing. ‘We should go home, lord.’
I was tempted. And Finan’s vision or dream had almost convinced me. I touched my hammer amulet. ‘We’ve come this far,’ I told him, ‘but I need to speak to Eadgifu.’
‘Why, for God’s sake?’ We had been sitting on a bench beside the tavern’s hearth. All around us men snored. The wind still rattled the shutters and fretted at the reed thatch, and rain still fell through the roof-hole to hiss in the fire, but the storm had gone out to sea and only the remnants disturbed the night.
‘Because that’s what I came to do,’ I had answered stubbornly.
‘And she was supposed to raise a force of Centish men?’
‘That’s what the priest told me.’
‘And has she?’
I had sighed. ‘You know the answer as well as I do.’
‘So tomorrow we go inland?’ he asked. ‘We’ve no horses. What happens if we get cut off from the harbour?’
I had thought of answering him by saying I needed to fulfil my oath, but of course Finan was right. There were other ways to keep my promise to Æthelstan. I could have joined him in Mercia, but instead I had chosen to believe the priest and had hoped to lead a rebellious band of Centish warriors to attack Æthelhelm from within Wessex. ‘So I’m a fool,’ I had said instead to Finan, ‘but tomorrow we find Eadgifu.’
He had heard the resolve in my voice and accepted it. ‘Amazing what a pair of good-smelling tits will make a man do,’ he had said, ‘and you should sleep.’
So I had slept, and now I was on the edge of Fæfresham, and Eadric was missing, and my closest friend was feeling doomed. ‘We’ll wait till dusk,’ I said. ‘If Eadric hasn’t returned, we’ll go back to Spearhafoc.’
‘God be praised,’ Finan said, and no sooner had he made the sign of the cross than Eadric appeared at the hedge.
He brought us a loaf of bread and a lump of cheese. ‘Cost me a shilling, lord.’
‘You went into the town?’
‘And it’s swarming with the buggers, lord. It’s not good news. Another sixty men came yesterday just before the storm struck. Came from Lundene, all of them in those silly red cloaks. They came on horseback.’ I swore and Finan made the sign of the cross. ‘The lady is still in the convent, lord,’ Eadric went on. ‘They’ve not tried to winkle her out, not yet. No news of the king’s death, you see? A shilling, lord.’
I gave him two. ‘How did you find all that out?’
‘Saw the priest! Father Rædwulf. Nice man. Gave me a blessing, he did.’
‘Who did you say you were?’
‘Told him the truth, of course! Told him we were trying to rescue the lady.’
‘And he said?’
‘He said he’d pray for us, lord.’
So my foolish dreams had ended. Here, in the damp grass behind a thorn hedge, reality had smacked me. The town was crammed with the enemy, we had come too late, and I had failed. ‘You were right,’ I told Finan ruefully.
‘I’m Irish, lord, of course I was right.’
‘We’ll go back to Spearhafoc,’ I said. ‘Burn Æthelhelm’s three ships in the harbour, then go back north.’
My father had once told me to make few oaths. ‘Oaths will bind you, boy,’ he had said, ‘and you’re a fool. You were born a fool. You jump before you think. So think before you swear an oath.’
I had been a fool again. Finan had been right, Sigtryggr had been right, Eadith had been right, and my father had been right. I had no business here. The fool’s errand was over.
Except it was not.
Because the horsemen came.
Four
There were thirty-six horsemen, all in mail, all with shields and half of them carrying long spears. They came from the east, circling below the small swell of pasture where we were crouched beside the blackthorn hedge. We had seen them, but they had not yet seen us.
My first instinct was to draw Serpent-Breath, and my first thought was that Æthelhelm’s men must have seen Eadric and followed him from the town. My second thought was the realisation that we had few shields. Men on foot who lack shields are easy meat for horsemen. My third thought was that these men were not wearing red cloaks and their shields did not show Æthelhelm’s badge of the leaping stag. The shields seemed to show some kind of animal, but the paint had faded and I did not recognise the symbol.
Then the leader of the horsemen saw us and held up his hand to check his men. The horses turned towards us, their big hooves churning the wet turf to muddy ruin. ‘What’s on the shields?’ I asked Finan.
‘Some are showing a bull’s head,’ he answered, ‘with bloody horns, and the rest are crossed swords.’
‘Then they’re Centishmen,’ I said, feeling relief, and just then the newcomers saw our shields showing the leaping stag, they saw our dark red cloaks, and their swords slid free of scabbards, their spurs went back and the spears were lowered.
‘Drop your weapons!’ I shouted to my men. ‘Drop the shields!’ The big horses were lumbering up the damp slope, spear-points glittering. I ran a few paces towards them, stopped, and rammed Serpent-Breath point first into the turf. ‘No fight!’ I shouted at the approaching horsemen. I spread my arms to show that I carried no weapons or shield.
The leading horseman curbed his stallion and held his sword aloft to check his men. The horses snorted and scraped at the wet pasture with heavy hooves. I walked on down the gentle slope as the Centish leader nudged his horse towards me. He stopped and pointed his sword towards me. ‘Are you surrendering, old man?’ he asked.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded.
‘The man who’ll kill you if you don’t surrender.’ He looked past me towards my men. If it had not been for the silver cross hanging at his neck and for the symbols on his
men’s shields I might have taken him for a Dane or a Norseman. He wore his black hair very long, cascading to his waist from beneath his fine silver-chased helmet. His mail was polished, while his bridle and saddle were studded with small silver stars. His tall, mud-spattered boots were of the finest leather and carried long silver spurs. His sword, which he still held towards me, had delicate golden decorations on its crosspiece. ‘Are you surrendering or dying?’ he asked.
‘I’m asking who are you?’ I said harshly.
He looked at me as if I were a piece of dung while he decided whether or not to answer. He finally did, but with a sneer. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Awyrgan of Contwaraburg. And you are?’
‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said, just as arrogantly, and that answer provoked a satisfying reaction. Awyrgan, his name meant ‘cursed’ so I assumed he had chosen the name himself rather than been christened with it, lowered the sword so that it pointed at the wet grass, then just stared at me in astonishment. He saw a bedraggled, grey-bearded, mud-covered warrior in battered mail and with a scarred helmet. I stared at him and saw a handsome young man with dark eyes, a straight long nose, and a clean-shaven chin. I suspected Awyrgan of Contwaraburg had been born to privilege and could not imagine a life without it. ‘Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I added, stressing the ‘lord’.
‘Truly?’ he asked, then hastily added, ‘Lord.’
‘Truly,’ I snarled.
‘He is Lord Uhtred,’ an older man said brusquely. He had walked his horse close behind Awyrgan’s stallion and now looked down at me with an evident dislike. He, like Awyrgan, wore fine mail, was well-horsed, and carried a drawn sword, which, I could see, had a well-worn edge. His close-cut beard was grey and his hard face crossed with two scars, and I assumed he was an old and experienced soldier entrusted to give advice to the younger man. ‘I fought alongside you in East Anglia, lord,’ he said to me. He spoke curtly.
‘And you are?’
‘Swithun Swithunson,’ he said, still in a distinctly unfriendly tone, ‘and you, lord, are a long way from home.’ He had said ‘lord’ with a marked reluctance.
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