Sword Song

the masthead, while two flags hung from the cross spar, which would have held a sail if the ship had been at sea. One flag showed a saint, while the other was a green cloth embroidered with a white cross. At the ship’s stern was a small cabin that cramped the steersman, but provided Alfred a place to keep his desk. A second ship, the Heofonhlaf, carried the rest of the bodyguard and still more priests. Heofonhlaf meant bread of heaven. Alfred never could name a ship.

Heofonhlaf berthed first and a score of men in mail, carrying shields and spears, clambered ashore to line the wooden wharf. The Haligast followed, her steersman thumping the bow hard on a piling so that Alfred, who was waiting amidships, staggered. There were kings who might have disemboweled a steersman for that loss of dignity, but Alfred seemed not to notice. He was talking earnestly with a thin-faced, scrape-chinned, pale-cheeked monk. It was Asser of Wales. I had heard that Brother Asser was the king’s new pet, and I knew he hated me, which was only right because I hated him. I still smiled at him and he twitched away as if I had just vomited down his robe, bending his head closer to Alfred who could have been his twin, for Alfred of Wessex looked much more like a priest than a king. He wore a long black cloak and a growing baldness gave him the tonsured look of a monk. His hands, like a clerk’s, were always ink stained, while his bony face was lean and serious and earnest and pale. His beard was thin. He often went clean-shaven, but now had a beard streaked thick with white hairs.

Crewmen secured the Haligast, then Alfred took Asser’s elbow and stepped ashore with him. The Welshman wore an oversized cross on his chest and Alfred touched it briefly before turning to me. “My lord Uhtred,” he said enthusiastically. He was being unusually pleasant, not because he was glad to see me, but because he thought I was plotting treason. There was little other reason for me to sup with his nephew ?thelwold.

“My lord King,” I said, and bowed to him. I ignored Brother Asser. The Welshman had once accused me of piracy, murder, and a dozen other things, and most of his accusations had been accurate, but I was still alive. He shot me a dismissive glance, then scuttled off through the mud, evidently going to make certain that the nuns in Coccham’s convent were not pregnant, drunk, or happy.

Alfred, followed by Egwine, who now commanded the household troops, and by six of those troops, walked along my new battlements. He glanced at Ulf’s ship, but said nothing. I knew I had to tell him of the capture of Lundene, but I decided to let that news wait until he had asked his questions of me. For now he was content to inspect the work we had been doing and he found nothing to criticize, nor did he expect to. Coccham’s burh was far more advanced than any of the others. The next fort west on the Temes, at Welengaford, had scarcely broken ground, let alone built a palisade, while the walls at Oxnaforda had slumped into their ditch after a week of violent rain just before Yule. Coccham’s burh, though, was almost finished. “I am told,” Alfred said, “that the fyrd is reluctant to work. You have not found that true?”

The fyrd was the army, raised from the shire, and the fyrd not only built the burhs, but formed their garrisons. “The fyrd are very reluctant to work, lord,” I said.

“Yet you have almost finished?”

I smiled. “I hanged ten men,” I said, “and it encouraged the rest to enthusiasm.”

He stopped at a place where he could stare downriver. Swans made the view lovely. I watched him. The lines on his face were deeper and his skin paler. He looked ill, but then Alfred of Wessex was always a sick man. His stomach hurt and his bowels hurt, and I saw a grimace as a stab of pain lanced through him. “I heard,” he spoke coldly, “that you hanged them without benefit of trial?”

“I did, lord, yes.”

“There are laws in Wessex,” he said sternly.

“And if the burh isn’t built,” I said, “then there will be no Wessex.”

“You like to defy me,” he said mildly.

“No, lord, I swore an oath to you. I do your work.”

“Then hang no more men without a fair trial,” he said sharply, then turned and stared across the river to the Mercian bank. “A king must bring justice, Lord Uhtred. That is a king’s job. And if a land has no king, how can there be law?” He still spoke mildly, but he was testing me, and for a moment I felt alarm. I had assumed he had come to discover what ?thelwold had said to me, but his mention of Mercia, and of its lack of a king, suggested he already knew what had been discussed on that night of cold wind and hard rain. “There are men,” he went on, still staring at the Mercian bank, “who would like to be King of Mercia.” He paused and I was certain he knew everything that ?thelwold had said to me, but then he betrayed his ignorance. “My nephew ?thelwold?” he suggested.

I gave a burst of laughter that was made too loud by my relief. “?thelwold!” I said. “He doesn’t want to be King of Mercia! He wants your throne, lord.”

“He told you that?” he asked sharply.

“Of course he told me that,” I said. “He tells everyone that!”

“Is that why he came to see you?” Alfred asked, unable to hide his curiosity any longer.

“He came to buy a horse, lord,” I lied. “He wants my stallion, Smoca, and I told him no.” Smoca’s hide was an unusual mix of gray and black, thus his name, Smoke, and he had won every race he had ever run in his life and, better, was not afraid of men, shields, weapons, or noise. I could have sold Smoca to any warrior in Britain.

“And he talked of wanting to be king?” Alfred asked suspiciously.

“Of course he did.”

“You didn’t tell me at the time,” he said reproachfully.

“If I told you every time ?thelwold talked treason,” I said, “you’d never cease to hear from me. What I tell you now is that you should slice his head off.”

“He is my nephew,” Alfred said stiffly, “and has royal blood.”

“He still has a removable head,” I insisted.

He waved a petulant hand as if my idea were risible. “I thought of making him king in Mercia,” he said, “but he would lose the throne.”

“He would,” I agreed.

“He’s weak,” Alfred said scornfully, “and Mercia needs a strong ruler. Someone to frighten the Danes.” I confess at that moment I thought he meant me and I was ready to thank him, even fall to my knees and take his hand, but then he enlightened me. “Your cousin, I think.”

“?thelred!” I asked, unable to hide my scorn. My cousin was a bumptious little prick, full of his own importance, but he was also close to Alfred. So close that he was going to marry Alfred’s elder daughter.

“He can be ealdorman in Mercia,” Alfred said, “and rule with my blessing.” In other words my miserable cousin would govern Mercia on Alfred’s leash and, if I am truthful, that was a better solution for Alfred than letting someone like me take Mercia’s throne. ?thelred, married to ?thelflaed, was more likely to be Alfred’s man, and Mercia, or at least that part of it south of W?clingastr?t, would be like a province of Wessex.

“If my cousin,” I said, “is to be Lord of Mercia, then he’ll be Lord of Lundene?”

“Of course.”

“Then he has a problem, lord,” I said, and I confess I spoke with some pleasure at the prospect of my pompous cousin having to deal with a thousand rogues commanded by Norse earls. “A fleet of thirty-one ships arrived in Lundene two days ago,” I went on. “The Earls Sigefrid and Erik Thurgilson command them. Haesten of Beamfleot is an ally. So far as I know, lord, Lundene now belongs to Norsemen and Danes.”

For a moment Alfred said nothing, but just stared at the swan-haunted floodwaters. He looked paler than ever. His jaw clenched. “You sound pleased,” he said bitterly.

“I do not mean to, lord,” I said.

“How in God’s name can that happen?” he demanded angrily. He turned and gazed at the burh’s walls. “The Thurgilson brothers were in Frankia,” he said. I might never have heard of Sigefrid and Erik, but Alfred made it his business to know where the Viking bands were roving.

“They’re in Lundene now,” I said remorselessly.

He fell silent again, and I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that the Temes is our road to other kingdoms, to the rest of the world, and if the Danes and the Norse block the Temes, then Wessex was cut off from much of the world’s trade. Of course there were other ports and other rivers, but the Temes is the great river that sucks in vessels from all the wide seas. “Do they want money?” he asked bitterly.

“That is Mercia’s problem, lord,” I suggested.

“Don’t be a fool!” he snapped at me. “Lundene might be in Mercia, but the river belongs to both of us.” He