“Not at present. He has been joined by many of Harald’s crews who fled your victory at Fearnhamme, but I don’t doubt he needs more men.”
“He’ll seek them from Northumbria?” I asked.
“It’s a possibility, I suppose,” Offa said, and that answer told me what I wanted to know, that even Offa, with his uncanny ability to sniff out secrets, was ignorant of Brida’s ambition for Ragnar to lead an army against Wessex. If Offa had known of that ambition he would have hinted that the Northumbrian Danes might have better things to do than assault Mercia, but he had slid past my question without sensing any opportunity to take my silver. “But ships still join the Jarl Haesten,” Offa went on, “and he may be strong enough by the spring. I’m sure he’ll seek your help too, lord.”
“I imagine so,” I said.
Offa stretched his long thin legs under the table. One of the terriers whined and he snapped his fingers and the dog went instantly still. “The Jarl Haesten,” he said cautiously, “will offer you gold to join him.”
I smiled. “You didn’t come here as a messenger, Offa. If Alfred wanted a letter sent to me he had cheaper ways of sending it than by satisfying your greed.” Offa looked offended at the word greed, but made no protest. “And it was Alfred who ordered Father Beocca to write, wasn’t it?” I asked, and Offa nodded slightly. “So,” I said, “Alfred sent you to find out what I’m going to do.”
“There is curiosity in Wessex about that,” he said distantly.
I laid two silver coins on the table. “So tell me,” I said.
“Tell you what, lord?” he asked, gazing at the coins.
“Tell me what I’m going to do,” I said.
He smiled at being paid for an answer I surely knew already. “Generous, lord,” he said as his long fingers closed round the coins. “Alfred believes you will attack your uncle.”
“I might.”
“But for that, lord, you need men, and men need silver.”
“I have silver.”
“Not enough, lord,” Offa said confidently.
“So perhaps I will join Haesten?”
“Never, lord, you despise him.”
“So where will I find the silver?” I asked.
“From Skirnir, of course,” Offa said, his eyes steady on mine.
I tried to betray nothing. “Is Skirnir one of the men who pays you?” I asked.
“I cannot bear journeying in ships, lord, so avoid them. I have never met Skirnir.”
“So Skirnir doesn’t know what I plan?”
“From what I hear, lord, Skirnir believes every man plans to rob him, so, being ready for all, he will be ready for you.”
I shook my head. “He’s ready for thieves, Offa, not for a warlord.”
The Mercian just raised an eyebrow, a signal more silver was needed. I put one coin on the table and watched it vanish into that capacious purse. “He will be ready for you, lord,” he said, “because your uncle will warn him.”
“Because you will tell my uncle?”
“If he pays me, yes.”
“I should kill you now, Offa.”
“Yes, lord,” he said, “you should. But you won’t.” He smiled.
So Skirnir would learn I was coming, and Skirnir had ships and men, but fate is inexorable. I would go to Frisia.
THREE
I tried to persuade Ragnar to come with me to Frisia, but he laughed it away. “You think I want to get a wet arse at this time of year?” It was a cold day, the countryside sodden from two days of heavy rain that had crashed in from the sea. The rain had ended, but the land was heavy, the winter colors dark, and the air damp.
We rode across the hills. Thirty of my men and forty of Ragnar’s. We were all in mail, all helmeted, all armed. Shields hung at our sides or on our backs, and there were long scabbarded swords at our waists. “I’m going in winter,” I explained, “because Skirnir won’t expect me till spring.”
“You hope,” he said, “but maybe he’s heard you’re an idiot?”
“So come,” I said, “and let’s fight together again.”
He smiled, but did not meet my gaze. “I’ll give you Rollo,” he said, naming one of his best fighters, “and whoever volunteers to go with him. You remember Rollo?”
“Of course.”
“I have duties,” he said vaguely. “I should stay here.” It was not cowardice that made him refuse my invitation. No one could ever accuse Ragnar of timidity. Instead, I think, it was laziness. He was happy and did not need to disturb that happiness. He curbed his horse on the crest of a rise and gestured at the wide strip of coastland that lay beneath us. “There it is,” he said, “the English kingdom.”
“The what?” I asked indignantly. I was gazing at the rain-darkened land with its small hills and smaller fields with their familiar stone walls.
“That’s what everyone calls it,” Ragnar said. “The English kingdom.”
“It isn’t a kingdom,” I said sourly.
“That’s what they call it,” he said patiently. “Your uncle has done well.” I made a vomiting noise which made Ragnar laugh. “Think of it,” he said, “the whole of the north is Danish, all except Bebbanburg’s land.”
“Because none of you could take the fort,” I retorted.
“It probably can’t be taken. My father always said it was too hard.”
“I shall take it,” I said.
We rode down from the hills. Trees were losing their last leaves in the sea wind. The pastures were dark, the thatch of the cottages almost black, and the rich smell of the year’s decay thick in our nostrils. I stopped at one farmstead, deserted because the folk had seen us coming and fled to the woods, and I looked inside the granary to find the harvest had been good. “He gets richer,” I said of my uncle. “Why don’t you tear his land apart?”
“We do when we’re bored,” Ragnar said, “and then he tears ours apart.”
“Why don’t you just capture his land?” I asked, “and let him starve in the fortress.”
“Men have tried that. He either fights or pays them to leave.”
My uncle, who called himself ?lfric of Bernicia, was said to keep over a hundred household warriors in his fortress, and could raise four times that many from the villages scattered across his realm. It was, indeed, a small kingdom. To the north its boundary ran along the Tuede, beyond which lay the land of the Scots who were forever raiding for cattle and crops. To the south of Bebbanburg’s land was the Tinan, where
“The Scots are always troublesome,” I said.
“His warriors are useful when they raid,” Ragnar admitted.
So ?lfric of Bernicia could be a good neighbor, cooperating with the Danes to repel and punish the Scots, and in return he asked only to be left in peace. That was how Bebbanburg had survived as a Christian enclave in a country of Danes. ?lfric was my father’s younger brother, and he had always been the clever one in the family. If I had not hated him so much I might have admired him. He knew one thing well, that his survival depended on the great fortress where I had been born and which, all my life, I have thought of as home. There had once been a real kingdom ruled from Bebbanburg. My ancestors had been the kings of Bernicia, ruling deep into what the Scots impudently claim as their land, and south toward Eoferwic, but Bernicia had been swallowed into Northumbria, and
