put these guards on the house.”
“Men you trust,” I said.
“My men,” he said warmly, “and yes, trustworthy.” He held out a hand to check me. “I’ll bring her out here to meet you,” he explained, “because she likes being in the open air.”
I waited while Father Willibald looked nervously back at the Northmen who watched us from outside Sigefrid’s hall. “Why are we meeting her out here?” he asked.
“Because Erik says she likes being in the fresh air,” I explained.
“But will they kill me if I give her the sacrament here?”
“Because they think you’re doing Christian magic?” I asked. “I doubt it, father.” I watched as Erik pulled aside the leather curtain that served as the hall’s door. He had said something to the guards first, and those warriors now moved to each side, leaving an open space between the building’s facade and the fort’s walls. Those ramparts were a thick bank of earth, only some three feet high, but I knew their farther side would fall a much greater depth. The bank was topped by a palisade of stout oak logs that had been sharpened into points. I could not imagine climbing the hill from the creek and then trying to cross that formidable wall. But nor could I envisage attacking from the fort’s landward side, climbing in the open down to the ditch, wall, and palisade that protected this place. It was a good camp, not impregnable, but its capture would be unimaginably expensive in men’s lives.
“She lives,” Father Willibald breathed, and I looked back to the hall to see ?thelflaed ducking under the leather curtain that was being held aside by an unseen hand. She looked smaller and younger than ever and, though her pregnancy had at last begun to show, she still looked lissom. Lissom and vulnerable, I thought, and then she saw me, and a smile came to her face. Father Willibald started toward her, but I held him back by gripping his shoulder. Something in ?thelflaed’s demeanor made me detain him. I had half expected ?thelflaed to run to me in relief, but instead she hesitated by the door and the smile she had offered me was merely dutiful. She was pleased to see me, that was certain, but there was a wariness in her eyes until she turned to watch Erik follow her through the curtain. He gestured that she should greet me, and only then, when she had received his encouragement, did she come toward me.
And now her face was radiant.
And I remembered her face on the day she had been married in her father’s new church in Wintanceaster. She looked the same today as she had then. She looked happy. She glowed. She walked as lightly as a dancer, and she smiled so beautifully, and I recalled how I had thought, in that church, that she had been in love with love, and that, I suddenly realized, was the difference between that day and this.
Because the radiant smile was not for me. She looked behind once more and caught Erik’s eye, and I just stared. I should have known from everything Erik had said. I should have known, for it was as plain as new-shed blood on virgin snow.
?thelflaed and Erik were in love.
Love is a dangerous thing.
It comes in disguise to change our life. I had thought I loved Mildrith, but that was lust, though for a time I had believed it was love. Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination.
Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss. I loved Gisela, and we were fortunate because our threads had come together and stayed together and were twined about each other, and the three Norns, for a time at least, were kind to us. Love even works when the threads do not lie comfortingly side by side. I had come to see that Alfred loved his ?lswith, though she was like a streak of vinegar in his milk. Perhaps he just got used to her, and perhaps love is friendship more than it is lust, though the gods know the lust is always there. Gisela and I had gained that contentment, as Alfred did with ?lswith, though I think our voyage was happier because our boat danced on sunlit seas and was driven by a brisk warm wind.
And ?thelflaed? I saw it in her face. I saw in her radiance all her sudden love and all the unhappiness that was to come, and all the tears, and all the heartbreak. She was on a voyage, and it was a journey of love, but it was sailing into a storm so bleak and dark that my own heart almost broke for her.
“Lord Uhtred,” she said as she came close.
“My lady,” I said, and bowed to her, and then we said nothing.
Willibald chattered, but I do not think either of us heard him. I looked at her and she smiled at me and the sun shone on that springy high turf beneath the singing skylarks, but all I could hear was thunder wrecking the sky and all I could see were waves shattering in white-whipping fury and a ship swamping and her crew drowning in despair. ?thelflaed was in love.
“Your father sends his affection,” I said, finding my voice.
“Poor Father,” she said. “Is he angry with me?”
“He shows no anger to anybody,” I said, “but he should be furious with your husband.”
“Yes,” she agreed calmly, “he should.”
“And I am here to arrange your release,” I told her, ignoring my certainty that release was the very last thing she now desired, “and you will be pleased to know, my lady, that all is agreed and you will be home soon.”
She showed no pleasure at that news. Father Willibald, blind to her true feelings, beamed at her, and ?thelflaed rewarded him with a wry smile. “I am here to give you the sacraments,” Willibald said.
“I would like that,” ?thelflaed answered gravely, then looked up at me and, for an instant, there was despair on her face. “Will you wait for me?” she asked.
“Wait for you?” I asked, puzzled by the question.
“Out here,” she explained, “and dear Father Willibald can pray with me inside.”
“Of course,” I said.
She smiled her thanks and led Willibald back to the hall while I went to the ramparts and climbed the brief bank so that I could lean on the sun-warmed palisade and stare down into the creek so far below. The dragon ship, her carved head dismounted, was rowing into the channel and I watched as men unchained the moored guard-ship that blocked the Hothlege. The blocking ship was tethered at bow and stern by heavy chains connected to massive posts sunk into the muddy banks and the crew slipped the ship’s stern chain and then paid it out with a long rope. The chain sank to the creek bed as the ship swung on her bow chain to open like a gate on the incoming tide to clear the passage. The newly-arrived boat was rowed past, then the blocking ship’s crew hauled on the rope to retrieve the chain and so dragged the ship back to bar the creek again. There were at least forty men on that blocking ship, and they were not just there to haul on lines and chains. The flanks of the ship had been built up with extra strakes, all of heavy timber, so that her sheerline was well above the height of any vessel that might attack her. To assault that blocking ship would be like tackling the palisade of a fortress. The dragon ship glided up the Hothlege, passing the boats hauled high on the muddy creek bank where men were caulking the planks with hair and tar. Smoke from the fires under the tar pots drifted up the slope where gulls circled, their cries raucous in the afternoon’s warmth.
“Sixty-four ships,” Erik said. He had climbed up beside me.
“I know,” I said, “I counted them.”
“And by next week,” Erik said, “we will have a hundred crews here.”
“And you’ll run out of food with so many mouths to feed.”
“There’s plenty of food here,” Erik said dismissively. “We have fish traps and eel traps, we net wildfowl and eat well. And the prospect of silver and gold buys a lot of wheat, barley, oats, meat, fish, and ale.”
“It will buy men too,” I said.
“It will,” he agreed.
“And thus,” I said, “Alfred of Wessex pays for his own destruction.”
“So it would seem,” Erik said quietly. He stared southward to where great clouds piled over Cent, their tops silver white and their bases dark above the distant green land.
I turned to look at the encampment inside its ring of ramparts and saw Steapa, walking with a slight limp and with his head bandaged, appear from a hut. He looked slightly drunk. He saw me, waved, and sat in the shade of Sigefrid’s hall where he appeared to fall asleep. “Do you think,” I said, my back still turned on Erik, “that Alfred has not thought of what you’ll buy with the ransom money?”
