amused by that.”
“And do you use her?” I asked harshly, looking into his honest eyes.
“Is that your business?” he asked defiantly.
“No,” I said, “but you do want my help.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “I would not call it that,” he said, sounding defensive, “but we love each other.”
So ?thelflaed had drunk the bitter water before the sin and that, I thought, was very clever of her. I smiled for her, then went to Sigefrid’s feast.
?thelflaed was seated in the place of honor to Sigefrid’s right, and I was next to her. Erik was on the farther side of Sigefrid, with Haesten beside him. ?thelflaed, I noticed, never looked at Erik. No one watching, and plenty of men in the hall were curious about the King of Wessex’s daughter, could surely have guessed that she had become his lover.
The Northmen know how to give a feast. The food was plentiful, the ale was generous and the entertainment diverting. There were jugglers and stilt walkers, musicians and acrobats, and lunatics who dissolved the lower tables into gusts of laughter. “We should not laugh at the mad,” ?thelflaed told me. She had hardly eaten, except to nibble at a bowl of seethed cockles.
“They get treated well,” I said, “and it’s surely better to be fed and housed than left to the beasts.” I was watching a naked madman convulsively search his groin. He kept peering around at the laughing tables, unable to understand the noise. A tangle-haired woman, egged on by raucous shouts, took off her clothes one by one, not knowing why she did it.
?thelflaed stared at the table. “There are monasteries that will look after the insane,” she said.
“Not where the Danes rule,” I said.
She was silent for a while. Two dwarves were dragging the now naked woman to the naked man and the watching men were collapsing with laughter. ?thelflaed looked up briefly, shuddered, and stared down at the table again. “You talked to Erik?” she asked. We could talk English safely for no one could overhear us, and even if they could they would not have understood most of what we said.
“As you meant me to,” I observed, realizing that was why she had insisted on taking Father Willibald into the hall. “Did you make a proper confession?”
“Is that any business of yours?”
“No,” I said, then laughed.
She looked at me and offered a very shy grin. She blushed. “So will you help us?”
“To do what?”
She frowned. “Erik didn’t tell you?”
“He said you wanted my help, but what sort of help?”
“Help us to leave here,” she said.
“And what will your father do to me if I help you?” I asked, and got no answer. “I thought you hated the Danes.”
“Erik is Norse,” she said.
“Danes, Norse, Northmen, Vikings, pagans,” I said, “they’re all your father’s enemies.”
She glanced down at the open space beside the hearth where the two naked lunatics were now wrestling instead of making love as the audience had doubtless anticipated. The man was much bigger, but more stupid, and the woman, to huge cheers, was beating him on the head with a handful of floor rushes. “Why do they let them do that?” ?thelflaed asked.
“Because it amuses them,” I said, “and because they don’t have a pack of black-robed clergy telling them what’s right and what’s wrong, and that, my lady, is why I like them.”
She looked down again. “I didn’t want to like Erik,” she said in a very small voice.
“But you did.”
There were tears in her eyes. “I couldn’t help it,” she said. “I prayed that it wouldn’t happen, but the more I prayed the more I thought about him.”
“And so you love him,” I said.
“Yes.”
“He’s a good man,” I assured her.
“You think so?” she asked eagerly.
“I do, truly.”
“And he’s going to become a Christian,” she went on enthusiastically. “He’s promised me that. He wants to. Really!”
That did not surprise me. Erik had long shown a fascination with Christianity, and I doubted it had taken much persuasion on ?thelflaed’s part. “And what of ?thelred?” I asked her.
“I hate him,” she hissed those words so vehemently that Sigefrid turned to stare at her. He shrugged, unable to comprehend her, then looked back at the naked fight.
“You will lose your family,” I warned her.
“I will make a family,” she said firmly. “Erik and I will make a family.”
“And you’ll live among the Danes whom you told me you hate.”
“You live among the Christians, Lord Uhtred,” she said with a flash of her old mischief.
I smiled at that. “You’re sure about this?” I asked her, “about Erik?”
“Yes,” she said intensely, and that was love speaking, of course.
I sighed. “If I can,” I said, “I will help you.”
She laid a small hand on mine. “Thank you.”
Two dogs had begun to fight now and the guests were cheering the beasts on. Rushlights were lit and candles brought to the top table as the summer evening dimmed outside. More ale came, and birch wine too, and the first drunks were singing raucously. “They’ll start fighting soon,” I told ?thelflaed, and they did. Four men suffered broken bones before the feast was over, while another had an eye gouged out before his angry drunken assailant was pulled away from him. Steapa was seated next to Weland, and the two men, though they spoke different languages, were sharing a silver-rimmed drinking horn and appeared to be making disparaging comments about the brawlers who spilled across the floor in drunken rage. Weland was obviously drunk himself, for he draped a huge arm around Steapa’s shoulders and began to sing.
“You sound like a calf being gelded!” Sigefrid roared at Weland, then demanded that a real singer be fetched, and so a blind skald was given a chair by the hearth and he struck his harp and chanted a song of Sigefrid’s prowess. He told of the Franks whom Sigefrid had killed, of the Saxons cut down by Sigefrid’s sword, Fear-Giver, and of the Frisian women who had been widowed by the bear-cloaked Norseman. The poem mentioned many of Sigefrid’s men by name, recounting their heroism in battle, and as each new name was chanted the man would stand and his friends would cheer him. If the named hero was dead then the listening men beat three times on the tables so that the dead man would hear the solemn ovation in Odin’s hall. But the biggest cheers were for Sigefrid, who hoisted an ale-horn every time his name was mentioned.
I stayed sober. That was hard, for I was tempted to match Sigefrid horn for horn, but I knew I had to return to Lundene next morning and that meant Erik had to finish his talk with me that same night, though in truth the eastern sky was already lightening by the time I left the hall. ?thelflaed, escorted by sober and older guards, had left for her bed hours before. Drunken men were sprawled in noisy sleep beneath the benches as I walked out, while Sigefrid was slumped on the table. He had opened one eye and frowned as I left. “We have agreement?” he asked sleepily.
“We have an agreement,” I confirmed.
“Bring the money, Saxon,” he growled, and fell back to sleep.
Erik was waiting for me outside ?thelflaed’s quarters. I had expected him to be there, and we took our old places on the rampart from where I watched the gray light spread like a stain across the calm waters of the estuary.
“That’s
