wanted to take Wessex, then he must lead an army of disciplined men prepared to undertake siege warfare. I looked at my friend, lost in the joy of feast and ale, and could not imagine him with the patience to defeat Alfred’s organized defenses.
“But you could,” Brida said very quietly.
“Are you reading my thoughts?”
She leaned closer to me, her voice a whisper. “Christianity is a disease that spreads like a plague. We have to stop it.”
“If the gods want it stopped,” I suggested, “they’ll do it themselves.”
“Our gods prefer feasting. They live, Uhtred. They live and laugh and enjoy, and what does their god do? He broods, he’s vengeful, he scowls, he plots. He’s a dark and lonely god, Uhtred, and our gods ignore him. They’re wrong.”
I half smiled. Brida, alone of all the men or women I knew, would see nothing strange in chiding the gods for their faults, and even try to do their work for them. But she was right, I thought, the Christian god was dark and threatening. He had no appetite for feasting, for laughter in the hall, for ale and mead. He set rules and demanded discipline, but rules and discipline were just what we needed if we were to defeat him.
“Help me,” Brida said.
I watched two jugglers toss flaming brands into the smoky air. Gusts of laughter echoed in the great hall and I felt a sudden surge of hatred for Alfred’s pack of black-robed priests, for the whole tribe of life-denying churchmen whose only joy was to disapprove of joy. “I need men,” I told Brida.
“Ragnar has men.”
“I need my own,” I insisted. “I have forty-three. I need at least ten times that number.”
“If men know you’re leading an army against Wessex,” she said, “they’ll follow.”
“Not without gold,” I said, glancing at Skade who was watching me suspiciously, curious what secrets Brida whispered in my ear. “Gold,” I went on, “gold and silver. I need gold.”
I needed more. I needed to know whether Brida’s dreams of defeating Wessex were known beyond Dunholm. Brida claimed she had told no one except Ragnar, but Ragnar was famously loose-tongued. Give Ragnar a horn of ale and he would share every secret known to man, and if Ragnar had told just one man, then Alfred would learn of the ambition soon enough, which was why I was glad when Offa, his women, and his dogs arrived at Dunholm.
Offa was a Saxon, a Mercian who had once been a priest. He was tall, thin, with a lugubrious face that suggested he had seen every folly the world offered. He was old now, old and gray-haired, but he still traveled all across Britain with his two squabbling women and his troupe of performing terriers. He showed the dogs at fairs and at feasts, where the dogs walked on their hind legs, danced together, leaped through hoops, and one even rode a small pony while the others carried leather buckets to collect coins from the spectators. It was not the most spectacular entertainment, but children loved the terriers and Ragnar, of course, was entranced by them.
Offa had left the priesthood, thus incurring the enmity of the bishops, but he had the protection of every ruler in Britain because his real livelihood was not his terriers, but his extraordinary capacity for information. He talked to everyone, he drew conclusions, and he sold what he deduced. Alfred had used him for years. The dogs gave Offa an entry into almost every noble hall in Britain, and Offa listened to gossip and carried what he learned from ruler to ruler, eking out his facts coin by coin. “You must be rich,” I told Offa the day he arrived.
“You are pleased to jest, lord,” he said. He sat at a table outside Ragnar’s hall, his eight dogs sitting obediently in a semicircle behind his bench. A servant had brought him ale and bread. Ragnar had been delighted at Offa’s unexpected arrival, anticipating the laughter which always accompanied the dogs’ performance.
“Where do you keep all that money?” I asked.
“You really wish me to answer that, lord?” Offa asked. Offa would answer questions, but his answers always had to be paid for.
“It’s late for you to be traveling north,” I said.
“Yet so far the winter is surprisingly mild. And business brought me north, lord,” he said, “your business.” He groped in a large leather bag and took out a sealed and folded parchment that he pushed across the table. “That is for you, lord.”
I picked up the letter. The seal was a blob of wax which bore no imprint and seemed undisturbed. “What does the letter say?” I asked Offa.
“Are you suggesting I’ve read it?” he asked, offended.
“Of course you did,” I said, “so save me the trouble of reading it.”
He gave a hint of a smile. “I suspect you will find it of little importance, lord,” he said. “The writer is your friend, Father Beocca. He says your children are safe in the Lady ?thelfl?d’s household and that Alfred is still angry with you, but will not order your death if you return south as, he reminds you, your sworn oath demands. Father Beocca finishes by saying that he prays for your soul daily, and demands that you return to your oath-given duties.”
“Demands?”
“Most sternly, lord,” Offa said with another ghost of a smile.
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing, lord.”
“So I can burn the letter?”
“A waste of parchment, lord. My women can scrape the skin clean and reuse it.”
I pushed the letter back to him. “Let them scrape,” I said. “What happened at Torneie?”
Offa considered the question for a few heartbeats, then decided that the answer would be common knowledge soon enough and so he could tell me without any payment. “King Alfred ordered an assault, lord, to end Jarl Harald’s occupation of the island. The Lord Steapa was to bring men upstream in ships while Lord ?thelred and the ?theling Edward attacked across the shallower branch of the river. Both attacks failed.”
“Why?”
“Harald, lord, had placed sharpened stakes in the river bed, and the West Saxon ships struck those stakes and most never reached the island. Lord ?thelred’s assault simply became bogged down. They floundered in the mud and Harald’s warriors shot arrows and threw spears, and no Saxon even reached the thorn palisade. It was a massacre, lord.”
“Massacre?”
“The Danes made a sally, lord, and slaughtered many of Lord ?thelred’s men in the river.”
“Cheer me up,” I said, “and tell me that Lord ?thelred was killed.”
“He lives, lord,” Offa said.
“And Steapa?”
“He lives too, lord.”
“So what happens now?”
“Now that is a question,” Offa said distantly. He waited until I had placed a coin on the table. “There is argument among the king’s counselors, lord,” he said, slipping the silver into his pouch, “but the cautious advice of Bishop Asser will prevail, I’m sure.”
“And that advice is?”
“Oh, to pay Harald silver, of course.”
“Bribe him to leave?” I asked, shocked. Why would any man have to bribe a fugitive band of defeated Danes to leave their territory?
“Silver often achieves what steel cannot,” Offa said.
“Ten men and a boy could capture Torneie,” I said angrily.
“If you led them, maybe,” Offa said, “but you’re here, lord.”
“So I am.”
It cost me more silver to learn what Brida had already told me, that Haesten, safe in the high fort at Beamfleot, planned an assault on Mercia. “Did you tell that to Alfred?” I asked Offa.
“I did,” he said, “but his other spies contradict me, and he believes me wrong.”
“Are you wrong?”
“Rarely, lord,” he said.
“Is Haesten strong enough to take Mercia?”
