Once inside I had to let my eyes adjust to the gloom, but then I saw what I was seeking. Masts and spars and sails. I ordered my men to carry all the spars and sails out to the wagon, then walked to the shed’s open end to watch the river swirl past. The tide was falling, exposing long steep slicks of mud.
“Why spars and sails?” Edward asked from behind me. He was alone. “The steward brought mead,” he said awkwardly. He was frightened of me, but he was making a great effort to be friendly.
“Tell me,” I said, “what happened when you tried to capture Torneie.”
“Torneie?” Edward sounded confused.
“You attacked Harald on his island,” I said, “and you failed. I want to know why.” I had heard the story from Offa, the dog-man who carried his news between the kingdoms, but I had not asked anyone who was there. All I knew was that the assault on Harald’s fugitives had ended in defeat and with a great loss of men.
He frowned. “It was…” He stopped, shaking his head, perhaps remembering the men floundering through the mud to Harald’s palisade. “We never got close,” he said bitterly.
“Why not?”
He frowned. “There were stakes in the river. The mud was thick.”
“You think Beamfleot will be any easier?” I demanded, and saw the answer on his face. “So who led the attack on Torneie?” I asked.
“?thelred and I,” he said.
“You led?” I asked pointedly. “You were in front?”
He stared at me, bit his lower lip, then looked embarrassed. “No.”
“Your father made certain you were protected?” I asked, and he nodded. “What about Lord ?thelred?” I went on, “did he lead?”
“He’s a brave man,” Edward said defiantly.
“You haven’t answered me.”
“He went with his men,” Edward said evasively, “but thank God he escaped the rout.”
“So why should you be King of Wessex?” I asked him brutally.
“I,” he said, then ran out of words and just looked at me with a pained expression. He had come into the shed trying to be friendly and I was raking him over.
“Because your father’s the king?” I suggested. “In the past we’ve chosen the best man to be king, not the one who happened to come from between the legs of a king’s wife.” He frowned, offended and uncertain, voiceless. “Tell me why I shouldn’t make Osferth king,” I said harshly. “He’s Alfred’s eldest son.”
“If there is no rule to the succession,” he said carefully, “then the death of a king will lead to chaos.”
“Rules,” I sneered, “how you love rules. So because Osferth’s mother was a servant he can’t be king?”
“No,” Edward found the courage to answer, “he can’t.”
“Luckily for you,” I said, “he doesn’t want to be king. At least I don’t think he does. But you do?” I waited and eventually he responded with an almost imperceptible nod. “And you have the advantage,” I went on, “of having been born between a pair of royal legs, but you still need to prove you deserve the kingship.” He stared at me, saying nothing. “You want to be king,” I went on, “so you must show you deserve it. You lead. You do what you didn’t do at Torneie, what my cousin didn’t do either. You go first into the attack. You can’t expect men to die for you unless they see you’re willing to die for them.”
He nodded to that. “Beamfleot?” he asked, unable to disguise his fear at the prospect of that assault.
“You want to be king?” I asked. “Then you lead the assault. Now come with me, and I’ll show you how.”
I took him outside and led him to the top of the river bank. The tide was almost out, leaving a slippery slope of gleaming mud at least twelve feet high. “How,” I asked him, “do we get up a slope like that?”
He did not answer, but just frowned as though considering the problem and then, to his utter astonishment, I shoved him hard over the edge. He cried aloud as he lost his footing, then he slipped and floundered on his royal arse all the way down to the water where at last he managed to stand unsteadily. He was mud-smeared and indignant. Father Coenwulf evidently thought I was trying to drown the ?theling, for he rushed to my side where he stared down at the prince. “Draw your sword,” I told Edward, “and climb that bank.”
He drew his sword and took some tentative steps, but the slick mud defeated him so that he slithered back every time. “Try harder,” I snarled. “Try really hard! There are Danes at the top of the bank and you have to kill them. So climb!”
“What are you doing?” Coenwulf demanded of me.
“Making a king,” I told him quietly, then looked back to Edward. “Climb, you bastard! Get up here!”
He could not do it, cumbered as he was with heavy mail and with his long sword. He tried to crawl up the bank, but still he slid back. “That’s what it’s going to be like,” I told him, “climbing out of the moat at Beamfleot!”
He stared up at me, filthy and wet. “Do we make bridges?” he suggested.
“How do we make a bridge with a hundred farting Danes throwing spears at us?” I demanded. “Now come on! Climb!” He tried again, and again he failed. Then, as his men and mine watched from the top of the bank, Edward gritted his teeth and hurled himself at the greasy mud for one last determined attempt, and this time he managed to stay on the slope. He used his sword as a stick, inching higher and the men cheered. He kept slipping back, but his determination was obvious, and every small step was applauded. The heir to Alfred’s throne was plastered with mud and his precious dignity was gone, but he was suddenly enjoying himself. He was grinning. He kicked his boots into the mud, hauled on the sword, and at last managed to scramble over the bank’s edge. He stood, smiling at the cheers, and even Father Coenwulf was beaming with pride. “We have to climb the moat’s bank to reach the fort,” I told him, “and it will be just as steep and slippery as this slope. We’re never going to make it. The Danes will be raining arrows and spears. The bed of the moat will be thick with blood and bodies. We’re all going to die there.”
“The sails,” Edward said, understanding.
“Yes,” I said, “the sails.” I ordered Osferth to unfold one of the three sails we were stealing. It took six men to unwrap the great sheet of stiff, salt-caked cloth. Mice scampered out of the folds, but once it was spread I had men drape the sail down the mudbank. The sail itself offered no footholds because sailcloth is fragile, but ropes are sewn into it and thus every sail is a crisscross of reinforcing ropes, and those latticed lines would be our ladders. I took Edward’s elbow and he and I walked down the sail to the water’s edge. “Now,” I said, “try again. Full speed. Race me!”
He won. He ran at the bank and his boots caught on the sail ropes and he reached the top without using his hands once. He grinned with triumph as I came behind, then he had a sudden idea. “All of you!” he called to his bodyguard. “Down to the river and climb back up!”
They were suddenly enjoying themselves. All the men, mine as well as Edward’s, wanted to try the network of sail ropes. There were too many men, and eventually the sail slid down the bank, which is why I was taking the spars. I would thread the lattice of ropes onto the spars, then lash the spars into place so that the makeshift rope ladder would be stiffened by the spruce frame and, I hoped, stay in place. On that day we just pegged the sail to the bank and ran races, which Edward, to his evident delight, won repeatedly. He even found the courage to talk briefly with Osferth, though they discussed nothing more important than the weather, which the half-brothers evidently found agreeable. After a while I ordered the men to stop scrambling up the sail, which had to be laboriously refolded, but I had proved it would work as a means of climbing out of the fort’s moat. That would just leave the wall to cross, and those of us who did not die in the moat would almost certainly die on the ledge of land beneath the wall.
The steward brought me a small horn cup of mead. I took it and for some reason, as my hand closed on the cup, the bee sting, which I had thought long vanished, began to itch again. The swelling was entirely gone, but for a moment the itching was back and I stared at my hand. I did not move, I just stared, and Osferth became worried. “What is it, lord?”
“Get me Father Heahberht,” I said and, when the priest arrived, I asked him who made the mead.
“He’s a strange man, lord,” Heahberht said.
“I don’t care if he’s got a tail and tits, just take me to him.”
The sails and spars were loaded on the wagon and escorted back to the old fort, but I took a half-dozen men and rode with Heahberht to a village he called Hocheleia. It looked a peaceful and half-forgotten place, just a straggle of cottages surrounded by big willow trees. There was a small church, marked by a wooden cross nailed to the eave. “Skade didn’t burn this church?” I asked Father Heahberht.
