Sword Song

married to an ealdorman, and so I called her my lady.

“I am coming with you,” she said blandly.

That startled me. “You’re coming…” I began, but did not finish.

“My husband wishes it,” she said very formally, then a flash of the old ?thelflaed showed as she gave me a quick smile, “and I’m glad. I want to see a battle.”

“A battle is no place for a lady,” I said firmly.

“Don’t worry the woman, Uhtred!” ?thelred called across the deck. He had heard my last words. “My wife will be quite safe, I have assured her of that.”

“War is no place for women,” I insisted.

“She wishes to see our victory,” ?thelred insisted, “and so she shall, won’t you, my duck?”

“Quack, quack,” ?thelflaed said so softly that only I could hear. There was bitterness in her tone, but when I glanced at her she was smiling sweetly at her husband.

“I would come if I could,” Gisela said, then touched her belly. The baby did not show yet.

“You can’t,” I said, and was rewarded by a mocking grimace, then we heard a bellow of rage from the bows of Heofonhlaf.

“Can’t a man sleep!” the voice shouted. “You Saxon earsling! You woke me up!”

Father Pyrlig had been sleeping under the small platform at the ship’s bows, where some poor man had inadvertently disturbed him. The Welshman now crawled into the sullen daylight and blinked at me. “Good God,” he said with disgust in his voice, “it’s the Lord Uhtred.”

“I thought you were in East Anglia,” I called to him.

“I was, but King ?thelstan sent me to make sure you useless Saxons don’t piss down your legs when you see Northmen on Lundene’s walls.” It took me a moment to remember that ?thelstan was Guthrum’s Christian name. Pyrlig came toward us, a dirty shirt covering his belly where his wooden cross hung. “Good morning, my lady,” he called cheerfully to ?thelflaed.

“It is afternoon, father,” ?thelflaed said, and I could tell from the warmth in her voice that she liked the Welsh priest.

“Is it afternoon? Good God, I slept like a baby. Lady Gisela! A pleasure. My goodness, but all the beauties are gathered here!” He beamed at the two women. “If it wasn’t raining I would think I’d been transported to heaven. My lord,” the last two words were addressed to my cousin and it was plain from their tone that the two men were not friends. “You need advice, my lord?” Pyrlig asked.

“I do not,” my cousin said harshly.

Father Pyrlig grinned at me. “Alfred asked me to come as an adviser.” He paused to scratch a fleabite on his belly. “I’m to advise Lord ?thelred.”

“As am I,” I said.

“And doubtless Lord Uhtred’s advice would be the same as mine,” Pyrlig went on, “which is that we must move with the speed of a Saxon seeing a Welshman’s sword.”

“He means we must move fast,” I explained to ?thelred, who knew perfectly well what the Welshman had meant.

My cousin ignored me. “Are you being deliberately offensive?” he asked Pyrlig stiffly.

“Yes, lord!” Pyrlig grinned. “I am!”

“I have killed dozens of Welshmen,” my cousin said.

“Then the Danes will be no problem to you, will they?” Pyrlig retorted, refusing to take offense. “But my advice still stands, lord. Make haste! The pagans know we’re coming, and the more time you give them, the more formidable their defenses!”

We might have moved fast had we possessed ships to carry us downriver, but Sigefrid and Erik, knowing we were coming, had blocked all traffic on the Temes and, not counting Heofonhlaf, we could only muster seven ships, not nearly sufficient to carry our men and so only the laggards and the supplies and ?thelred’s cronies traveled by water. So we marched and it took us four days, and every day we saw horsemen to the north of us or ships downstream of us, and I knew those were Sigefrid’s scouts, making a last count of our numbers as our clumsy army lumbered ever nearer Lundene. We wasted one whole day because it was a Sunday and ?thelred insisted that the priests accompanying the army said mass. I listened to the drone of voices and watched the enemy horsemen circle around us. Haesten, I knew, would already have reached Lundene, and his men, at least two or three hundred of them, would be reinforcing the walls.

?thelred traveled on board the Heofonhlaf, only coming ashore in the evening to walk around the sentries I had posted. He made a point of moving those sentries, as if to suggest I did not know my business, and I let him do it. On the last night of the journey we camped on an island that was reached from the north bank by a narrow causeway, and its reed-fringed shore was thick with mud so that Sigefrid, if he had a mind to attack us, would find our camp hard to approach. We tucked our ships into the creek that twisted to the island’s north and, as the tide went down and the frogs filled the dusk with croaking, the hulls settled into the thick mud. We lit fires on the mainland that would illuminate the approach of any enemy, and I posted men all around the island.

?thelred did not come ashore that evening. Instead he sent a servant who demanded that I go to him on board the Heofonhlaf and so I took off my boots and trousers and waded through the glutinous muck before hauling myself over the ship’s side. Steapa, who was marching with the men from Alfred’s bodyguard, came with me. A servant drew buckets of river water from the ship’s far side and we cleaned the mud from our legs, then dressed again before joining ?thelred under his canopy at the Heofonhlaf’s stern. My cousin was accompanied by the commander of his household guard, a young Mercian nobleman named Aldhelm who had a long, supercilious face, dark eyes, and thick black hair that he oiled to a lustrous sheen.

?thelflaed was also there, attended by a maid and by a grinning Father Pyrlig. I bowed to her and she smiled back, but without enthusiasm, and then bent to her embroidery, which was illuminated by a horn-shielded lantern. She was threading white wool onto a dark gray field, making the image of a prancing horse that was her husband’s banner. The same banner, much larger, hung motionless at the ship’s mast. There was no wind, so the smoke from the fires of Lundene’s two towns was a motionless smear in the darkening east.

“We attack at dawn,” ?thelred announced without so much as a greeting. He was dressed in a mail coat and had his swords, short and long, belted at his waist. He was looking unusually smug, though he tried to make his voice casual. “But I will not sound the advance for my troops,” he went on, “until I hear your own attack has started.”

I frowned at those words. “You won’t start your attack,” I repeated cautiously, “until you hear mine has started?”

“That’s plain, isn’t it?” ?thelred demanded belligerently.

“Very plain,” Aldhelm said mockingly. He treated ?thelred in the same manner that ?thelred behaved to Alfred and, secure in my cousin’s favor, felt free to offer me veiled insult.

“It’s not plain to me!” Father Pyrlig put in energetically. “The agreed plan,” the Welshman went on, speaking to ?thelred, “is for you to make a feint attack on the western walls and, when you have drawn defenders from the north wall, for Uhtred’s men to make the real assault.”

“Well I’ve changed my mind,” ?thelred said airily. “Uhtred’s men will now provide the diversionary attack, and my assault will be the real one.” He tilted up his broad chin and stared at me, daring me to contradict him.

?thelflaed also looked at me, and I sensed she wanted me to oppose her husband, but instead I surprised all of them by bowing my head as if in acquiescence. “If you insist,” I said.

“I do,” ?thelred said, unable to conceal his pleasure at gaining the apparent victory so easily. “You may take your own household troops,” he went on grudgingly, as though he possessed the authority to take them away from me, “and thirty other men.”

“We agreed I could have fifty,” I said.

“I have changed my mind about that too!” he said pugnaciously. He had already insisted that the men of the Berrocscire fyrd, my men, would swell his ranks, and I had meekly agreed to that, just as I had now agreed that the glory of the successful assault could be his. “You may take thirty,” he went on harshly. I could have argued and maybe I should have argued, but I knew it would do no good. ?thelred was beyond argument, wanting only to demonstrate his authority in front of his young wife. “Remember,” he said, “that Alfred gave me command