crucified.” I smiled at Erkenwald. “Maybe you should send your treasurer. Or maybe come yourself?”
Erkenwald stared at me blankly. I assumed he was praying that his god send a thunderbolt to punish me, but his god failed to oblige. The king sighed again. “You can negotiate yourself?” he asked me patiently.
“I’ve purchased horses, lord,” I said, “so yes, I can negotiate.”
“Bargaining for a horse is not the same as…” Erkenwald began angrily, then subsided as the king waved a weary hand toward him.
“The Lord Uhtred sought to annoy you, bishop,” the king said, “and it is best not to give him the satisfaction of showing that he has succeeded.”
“I can negotiate, lord King,” I said, “but in this case I’m bargaining for a mare of very great value. She will not be cheap.”
Alfred nodded. “Perhaps you should take the bishop’s treasurer?” he suggested hesitantly.
“I want only one companion, lord,” I said, “Steapa.”
“Steapa?” Alfred sounded surprised.
“When you face an enemy, lord,” I explained, “then it is well to take a man whose very presence is a threat.”
“You will take two companions,” the king corrected me. “Despite Sigefrid’s hatred I want my daughter to receive the blessings of the sacraments. You must take a priest, Lord Uhtred.”
“If you insist, lord,” I said, not bothering to hide my scorn.
“I do insist,” Alfred’s voice regained some of its force. “And be back here quickly,” he went on, “for I would have news of her.” He stood, and everyone else scrambled to their feet and bowed.
?thelred had not spoken a word.
And I was going to Beamfleot.
One hundred of us rode. Only three of us would go to Sigefrid’s camp, but three men could not ride through the countryside between Lundene and Beamfleot unprotected. This was frontier land, the wild flat land of East Anglia’s border, and we rode in mail, with shields and weapons, letting folk know we were ready to fight. It would have been faster to go by ship, but I had persuaded Alfred that there was an advantage in taking horses. “I’ve seen Beamfleot from the sea,” I had told him the previous evening, “and it’s impregnable. A steep hill, lord, and a fort on its summit. I haven’t seen that fort from inland, lord, and I need to.”
“You need to?” It had been Brother Asser who answered. He was standing close by Alfred’s chair as though he protected the king.
“If it comes to a fight,” I had said, “we might have to attack from the landward side.”
The king had looked at me wearily. “You want there to be a fight?” he had asked.
“The Lady ?thelflaed will die if there’s a fight,” Asser had said.
“I want to return your daughter to you,” I had said to Alfred, ignoring the Welsh monk, “but only a fool, lord, would assume we will not have to fight them before the summer is over. Sigefrid is becoming too powerful. If we let his power grow we will have an enemy that can threaten all Wessex, and we have to break him before he becomes too strong.”
“No fighting now,” Alfred had insisted. “Go there by land if you must, speak to them and bring me news quickly.”
He had insisted on sending a priest, but to my relief it was Father Willibald who was chosen. “I’m an old friend of the Lady ?thelflaed,” Willibald explained as we rode from Lundene. “She’s always been fond of me,” he went on, “and I of her.”
I rode Smoca. Finan and my household warriors were with me, as were fifty of Alfred’s picked men who were commanded by Steapa. We carried no banners, instead Sihtric held a leafy alder branch as a signal that we came seeking a truce.
It was an awful country to the east of Lundene, a flat and desolate place of creeks, ditches, reeds, bog grass, and wildfowl. To our right, where sometimes the Temes was visible as a gray sheet, the marshland looked dark even under the summer sun. Few folk lived in this wet wasteland, though we did pass some low hovels thatched with reed. No people were apparent. The eel fishermen who lived in the hovels would have seen us coming and hurried their families to safe hiding places.
The track, it was hardly a road, followed slightly higher ground at the edge of the marsh and led across small, thorn-hedged fields that were heavy with clay. The few trees were stunted and wind bent. The further east we went, the more houses we saw, and gradually those buildings became larger. At midday we stopped at a hall to water and rest the horses. The hall had a palisade, and a servant came cautiously from the gate to ask our business. “Where are we?” I demanded of him before answering his question.
“Wocca’s Dun, lord,” he answered. He spoke English.
I laughed grimly at that for dun meant hill and there was no hill that I could see, though the hall did stand on a very slight mound. “Is Wocca here?” I asked.
“His grandson owns the land now, lord. He is not here.”
I slid out of Smoca’s saddle and tossed the reins to Sihtric. “Walk him before you let him drink,” I told Sihtric, then turned back to the servant. “So this grandson,” I asked, “to whom does he owe oath-duty?”
“He serves Hakon, lord.”
“And Hakon?” I asked, noting that a Saxon owned the hall, but had sworn an oath to a Dane.
“Is sworn to King ?thelstan, lord.”
“To Guthrum?”
“Yes, lord.”
“Has Guthrum summoned men?”
“No, lord,” the servant said.
“And if Guthrum did,” I asked, “would Hakon and your master obey?”
The servant looked cautious. “They have gone to Beamfleot,” he said, and that was a truly interesting answer. Hakon, the servant told me, held a wide swath of this clay-heavy land, which he had been granted by Guthrum, but Hakon was now torn between his oath-sworn allegiance to Guthrum and his fear of Sigefrid.
“So Hakon will follow the Earl Sigefrid?” I asked.
“I think so, lord. A summons came from Beamfleot, lord, I know that much, and my master went there with Hakon.”
“Did they take their warriors?”
“Only a few, lord.”
“The warriors weren’t summoned?”
“No, lord.”
So Sigefrid was not gathering an army yet, but rather assembling the richer men of East Anglia to tell them what was expected of them. He would want their warriors when the time came, and doubtless he was now enticing them with visions of the riches that would be theirs when ?thelflaed’s ransom was paid. And Guthrum? Guthrum, I supposed, was simply staying silent, while his oath-men were seduced by Sigefrid. He was certainly making no attempt to stop that process and had probably reckoned he was powerless to prevent it in the face of the Norseman’s lavish promises. Better, in that case, to let Sigefrid lead his forces against Wessex than to tempt him to usurp the throne of East Anglia. “And Wocca’s grandson,” I asked even though I knew the answer, “your master, he is a Saxon?”
“Yes, lord. Though his daughter is married to a Dane.”
So it seemed that the Saxons of this dull land would fight for the Danes, perhaps because they had no choice or perhaps because, with marriages, their allegiance was changing.
The servant gave us ale, smoked eel, and hard bread and, when we had eaten, we rode on as the sun slid into the west to shine on a great line of hills that rose abruptly out of the flat country. The sun-facing slopes were steep so that the hills looked like a green rampart. “That’s Beamfleot,” Finan said.
“It’s up there,” I agreed. Beamfleot would lie at the southern end of the hills though, at this distance, it was impossible to discern the fort. I felt my spirits sinking. If we had to attack Sigefrid then the clear course would have been to lead troops from Lundene, but I had no wish to fight my way up those steep slopes. I could see Steapa eyeing the escarpment with the same foreboding. “If it comes to a fight, Steapa!” I called cheerfully, “I’ll send you and your troops up there first!”
