close behind. A dog harried sheep out of our path, obeying the shrill whistle of a shepherd on a farther hill. Pyrlig sighed. “Every time he sees ?thelfl?d,” he went on, “he feels the chains that Alfred has hung on him. He would be king, and he cannot be king because Alfred will not allow it.”
“Because Alfred wants to be King of Mercia?”
“Alfred wants to be King of England,” Pyrlig said, “and if he can not boast that title, then he would have his son wear that crown. And so there cannot be another Saxon king. A king is God’s anointed, a king is sacred, so there must be no other anointed king to obstruct the path.”
“And ?thelred resents that,” I said.
“He does, and he would punish his wife.”
“How?”
“By divorcing her.”
“Alfred wouldn’t stand for it,” I said dismissively.
“Alfred is a sick man. He could die at any moment.”
“Divorcing her,” I said, “which means…” I paused. ?thelfl?d, of course, had told me of her husband’s ambitions before, but I still found them scarcely credible. “No, he wouldn’t do that!”
“He tried when we all thought Alfred lay dying,” Pyrlig said, “and ?thelfl?d got word of what was to happen and took refuge in a nunnery at Lecelad.”
“On the border of Wessex?”
Pyrlig nodded. “So she can flee to her father if they try again, which they will.”
I swore softly. “Aldhelm?” I asked.
“The Lord Aldhelm,” Pyrlig agreed.
“?thelred will force her to Aldhelm’s bed?” I asked, my voice rising with incredulity.
“That would be the Lord ?thelred’s pleasure,” Pyrlig said drily, “and doubtless Lord Aldhelm’s greater pleasure. And when it is done ?thelred can offer the church proof of adultery, confine her to a nunnery and the marriage is over. Then he’s free to marry again, beget an heir, and as soon as Alfred dies he can call himself king.”
“So who protects her?” I asked, “and who protects my children?”
“Nuns.”
“No man protects her?”
“Her husband is the giver of gold, not she,” Pyrlig said. “Men love her, but she has no wealth to give them.”
“She does now,” I said savagely, and dug my spurs into the horse I had purchased in Dunholm. I did not have much wealth left. I had purchased more than seventy horses to make this journey possible, and the little silver that remained was packed into two saddlebags, but I had Serpent-Breath and I had Wasp-Sting and now, because the three spinners had twisted my life yet again, I had a purpose. I would go to ?thelfl?d.
Lecelad was a straggle of hovels built along the northern bank of the Temes where the Lec, a boggy stream, flowed into the river. A watermill stood where the stream emptied itself, and next to it was a wharf where a handful of small, leaking boats was tied. At the eastern end of the village street, which was a collection of mud-colored puddles, was the convent. It was surrounded by a palisade built, I suspected, to keep the nuns in rather than their enemies out, and over that rain-darkened wall reared a gaunt and ugly church made of timber and wattle. The bell- tower scraped the low clouds as rain seethed from the west. On the far side of the Temes was a wooden landing stage and above it, on the bank, a group of men who sheltered beneath a makeshift awning propped on poles. They were all in mail, their spears stacked against a willow. I stepped onto the wharf, cupped my hands, and shouted at them. “Who do you serve?”
“Lord ?thelnoth!” one of the men shouted back. He did not recognize me. I was swathed in a dark cloak and had a hood over my fair hair.
“Why are you there?” I shouted, but the only reply was a shrug of incomprehension.
That southern bank was West Saxon territory, which was doubtless why ?thelfl?d had chosen Lecelad. She could flee into her father’s kingdom at a moment’s notice, though Alfred, who held the bonds of marriage to be sacred, would doubtless be reluctant to offer her refuge for fear of the resultant scandal. Nevertheless I guessed he had ordered Ealdorman ?thelnoth of Sumors?te to watch the convent, if for no other reason than to report any strange happenings on the river’s Mercian bank. They would have something to report now, I thought.
“Who are you, lord?” the man called back across the river. He might not have recognized me, but he saw I led a band of horsemen and perhaps the gold of my lavish cloak-brooch glinted in the dull rainy air.
I ignored his question, turning instead to Finan who grinned at me from horseback. “Just thirty men, lord,” he told me. I had sent him to explore the village and find how many men guarded the convent.
“Is that all?”
“There are more in a village to the north,” he said.
“Who commands the thirty?”
“Some poor bastard who almost shit himself when he saw us.”
The thirty men were posted in Lecelad itself, presumably on my cousin’s orders and presumably to make sure ?thelfl?d stayed immured in the ugly convent. I hauled myself into the wet, slippery saddle and fiddled my right foot into the stirrup. “Let’s kick this wasp’s nest,” I said.
I led my men eastward past cottages, dunghills, and rooting pigs. Some folk watched us from doorways, while at the street’s end, in front of the convent itself, a straggle of men in leather jerkins and rusted helmets waited, but if they had orders to prevent anyone entering the convent they were in no mood to enforce them. They moved sullenly aside as we approached. I ignored them and they neither demanded my name nor tried to stop us.
I kicked the convent’s gate, spattering rain from its upper edge. My horse whinnied, and I kicked the gate a second time. The Mercian troops watched. One ran into an alley and I suspected he was going to fetch help. “We’ll be fighting someone before this day’s through,” I told Finan.
“I hope so, lord,” he said gloomily, “it’s been much too long.”
A small hatch in the big gate slid open and a woman’s face appeared in the hole. “What do you want?” the face demanded.
“To get out of this rain,” I said.
“The villagers will offer you shelter,” the woman said and began to slide the hatch shut, but I managed to get my toe into the space.
“You can open the gate,” I said, “or you can watch us chop it to splinters.”
“They are friends of the Lady ?thelfl?d,” Father Pyrlig intervened helpfully.
The hatch slid fully open again. “Is that you, father?”
“It is, sister.”
“Have manners vanished from the surface of God’s earth?” she asked.
“He can’t help it, sister,” Pyrlig said, “he’s just a brute.” He grinned at me.
“Remove your foot,” the woman demanded crossly, and when I obeyed she closed the hatch and I heard the locking bar being lifted. Then the gate creaked wide.
I climbed out of the saddle. “Wait,” I told my men, and walked into the nunnery’s courtyard. The gaunt church comprised the whole of the southern part, while the other three sides were edged with low timber buildings, thatched with straw, in which I assumed the nuns slept, ate, and spun wool. The nun, who introduced herself as the Abbess Werburgh, bowed to me. “You’re truly a friend of the Lady ?thelfl?d?” she asked. She was an elderly woman, so small that she scarcely reached my waist, but she had a fierce face.
“I am.”
Werburgh twitched with disapproval when she noticed the hammer of Thor hanging at my neck. “And your name?” she demanded, but just then a shriek sounded and a child hurtled out of a doorway and pelted across the puddled courtyard.
It was Stiorra, my daughter, and she threw herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. I was glad it was raining, or else the nun might have thought the drops on my face were tears. They were. “I knew you’d come,” Stiorra said fiercely, “I knew, I knew, I knew.”
“You’re Lord Uhtred?” the abbess asked.
“Yes.”
