again.”
“Your crew can be trusted?”
“They are my oath-men. They can be trusted.” Erik paused. A small wind lifted his dark hair. “But what they will not do,” he went on in a low voice, “is fight my brother’s men.”
“They might have to.”
“They will defend themselves,” he said, “but not attack. There are kinsmen on both sides.”
I stretched, yawned, and thought of the long ride home to Lundene. “So your problem,” I said, “is the ship that blocks the channel?”
“Which is manned by my brother’s men.”
“Not Haesten’s?”
“I would kill his men,” he said bitterly, “there’s no kinship there.”
Nor affection either, I noted. “So you want me to destroy the ship?” I asked him.
“I want you to open the channel,” he corrected me.
I stared at that dark blocking ship with her reinforced sheerline. “Why don’t you just demand that they get out of your way?” I asked. That seemed to me to be the least complicated and safest way for Erik to escape. The chained ship’s crew was accustomed to moving the heavy hull to allow vessels to enter or leave the creek, so why would they stop Erik?
“No ships are to sail before the ransom arrives,” Erik explained.
“None?”
“None,” he said flatly.
And that made some sense, because what was to stop some enterprising man taking three or four ships upriver to wait in a reed-shrouded creek for Alfred’s treasure fleet to pass, then slide out, oars beating, swords drawn and men howling? Sigefrid had pinned his monstrous ambition on the arrival of the ransom and he would not risk losing it to some Viking even more scoundrelly than himself, and that thought suggested the person who probably embodied Sigefrid’s fear. “Haesten?” I asked Erik.
He nodded. “A sly man.”
“Sly,” I agreed, “and untrustworthy. An oath-breaker.”
“He will share the ransom, of course,” Erik said, ignoring the fact that if he got his wish then no ransom would ever be paid, “but I’m certain he would rather have it all.”
“So no ships sail,” I said, “until you sail. But can you take ?thelflaed to your ship without your brother knowing?”
“Yes,” he said. He drew a knife from its sheath on his belt. “It’s a fortnight till the next full moon,” he went on, then scored a deep mark in the sharpened top of an oak log. “That’s today,” he said, tapping the fresh cut, then carved another deep mark with the blade’s sharp edge. “Tomorrow’s dawn,” he continued, indicating the new cut, then went on slashing the palisade’s top until he had made seven raw scars in the timbers. “Will you come at dawn one week from now?”
I nodded cautiously. “But the moment I attack,” I pointed out, “someone blows a horn and wakes the camp.”
“We’ll be afloat,” he said, “ready to go. No one can reach you from the camp before you’re back out at sea.” He looked worried at my doubts. “I’ll pay you!”
I smiled at those words. Dawn was bleaching the world, coloring the low long wisps of cloud with streaks of pale gold and edges of shining silver. “?thelflaed’s happiness is my pay,” I said. “And one week from today,” I went on, “I’ll open your channel for you. You can sail away together, make landfall at Gyruum, ride hard to Dunholm and give Ragnar my greetings.”
“You’ll send him a message?” Erik asked anxiously, “to warn him of our coming?”
I shook my head. “Carry the message for me,” I said, and some instinct made me turn to see that Haesten was watching us. He was standing with two companions outside the big hall where he was strapping on his swords, brought by Sigefrid’s steward from the place where we had all surrendered our weapons before the feast. There was nothing strange in what Haesten did, except my senses prickled because he seemed so watchful. I had a horrid suspicion that he knew what Erik and I talked about. He went on looking at me. He was very still, but at last he gave me a low, mocking bow and walked away. Eilaf the Red, I saw, was one of his two companions. “Does Haesten know about you and ?thelflaed?” I asked Erik.
“Of course not. He just thinks I’m responsible for guarding her.”
“He knows you like her?”
“That’s all he knows,” Erik insisted.
Sly, untrustworthy Haesten, who owed me his life. Who had broken his oath. Whose ambitions probably outstretched even Sigefrid’s dreams. I watched him until he went through the doorway of what I assumed was his own hall. “Be careful with Haesten,” I warned Erik, “I think he is easily underestimated.”
“He’s a weasel,” Erik said, dismissing my fears. “What message do I take to Ragnar?” he asked.
“Tell Ragnar,” I said, “that his sister is happy and let ?thelflaed give him news of her.” There was no point in writing anything, even if I had possessed parchment or ink, because Ragnar could not read, but ?thelflaed knew Thyra and her news of Beocca’s wife would convince Ragnar that the runaway lovers told the truth. “And one week from now,” I said, “as the upper edge of the sun touches the world’s rim, be ready.”
Erik thought for a heartbeat, making a fast computation in his head. “It will be low tide,” he said, “slack water. We’ll be ready.”
For madness, I thought, or for love. Madness. Love. Madness.
And how the three sisters at the world’s root must have been laughing.
I spoke little as we rode home. Finan chattered happily, saying how generous Sigefrid had been with his food, ale, and female slaves. I half listened until the Irishman finally sensed my mood and fell into a companionable silence. It was not till we were in sight of the banners on Lundene’s eastern ramparts that I gestured he should ride ahead with me, leaving my other men out of earshot. “Six days from now,” I said, “you must have the
Finan half smiled, but said nothing. We were riding through hovels that had sprung up on the edges of the marshlands beside the Temes. Many of the folk who lived here were slaves who had escaped their Danish masters in East Anglia, and they made a living by scratching through the refuse of the city, though a few had planted tiny fields of rye, barley, or oats. The meager harvest was being gathered and I listened to the scrape of blades cutting through the handfuls of stalks.
“No one in Lundene is to know we’re sailing,” I told Finan.
“They won’t,” the Irishman said grimly.
“Battle-ready,” I told him again.
“They’ll be that, so they will.”
I rode in silence for a while. People saw my mail and scuttled out of our way. They touched their foreheads or knelt in the mud, then scrambled when I threw pennies to them. It was evening and the sun was already behind the great cloud of smoke rising from Lundene’s cooking fires, and the stench of the city drifted sour and thick in the air. “Did you see that ship blocking the channel at Beamfleot?” I asked Finan.
“I took a squint at her, lord.”
“If we attacked her,” I said, “they’d see us coming. They’d be behind that raised sheerline.”
“Almost a man’s height above us,” Finan agreed, revealing that he had done more than just take a squint.
“So think how we might get that ship out of the channel.”
“Not that we’re thinking of doing that, lord, are we?” he asked slyly.
“Of course not,” I said, “but think on it anyway.”
Then a squeal of ungreased hinges announced the opening of the nearest gate and we rode into the city’s gloom.
Alfred had been waiting for us, and messengers had already informed him of our return so that, even before I could greet Gisela, I was summoned to the high palace. I went with Father Willibald, Steapa, and Finan. The king
