‘That tells you he’s not planning anything other than raids.’
‘It tells me he’s not planning seaborne raids,’ I said, ‘but what’s to stop him marching overland?’
‘Perhaps he will,’ Beornnoth allowed, ‘when Alfred dies. For now, he’s only stealing a few cattle.’
‘Then I want to steal a few of his cattle,’ I said.
Beortsig scowled and his father shrugged. ‘Why prod the devil when he’s dozing?’ the old man asked.
‘?lfwold doesn’t think he’s dozing,’ I said.
Beornnoth laughed. ‘?lfwold’s young,’ he said dismissively, ‘and he’s ambitious, he asks for trouble.’
You could divide the Saxon lords of Mercia into two camps, those who resented the West Saxon dominance of their land and those who welcomed it. ?lfwold’s father had supported Alfred, while Beornnoth harked back to earlier times when Mercia had its own king and, like others of his mind, he had refused to send troops to help me fight Haesten. He had preferred his men to be under ?thelred’s command, which meant they had garrisoned Gleawecestre against an attack that had never come. There had been bitterness between the two camps ever since, but Beornnoth was a decent enough man, or perhaps he was so close to death that he did not want to prolong old enmities. He invited us to stay for the night. ‘Tell me stories,’ he said, ‘I like stories. Tell me about Beamfleot.’ That was a generous invitation, an implicit admission that his men had been in the wrong place the previous summer.
I did not tell the whole story. Instead, in his hall, when the great fire lit the beams red and the ale had made men boisterous, I told how the elder ?lfwold had died. How he had charged with me and how we had scattered the Danish camp, and how we rampaged among the frightened men at the hill’s edge, and then how the Danish reinforcements had counter-charged and the fighting had become bitter. Men listened intently. Almost every man in the hall had stood in the shield wall, and they knew the fear of that moment. I told how my horse had been killed, and how we made a circle of our shields and fought against the screaming Danes who had so suddenly outnumbered us, and I described a death that ?lfwold would have wanted, telling how he killed his enemies, how he sent the pagan foemen to their graves, and how he defeated man after man until, at last, an axe blow split his helmet and felled him. I did not describe how he had looked at me so reproachfully, or the hatred in his dying words because he believed, falsely, that I had betrayed him. He died beside me, and at that moment I had been ready for death, knowing that the Danes must surely kill us all in that blood-reeking dawn, but then Steapa had come with the West Saxon troops and defeat had turned into sudden, unexpected triumph. Beornnoth’s followers hammered the tables in appreciation of the tale. Men like a battle-tale, which is why we employ poets to entertain us at night with tales of warriors and swords and shields and axes.
‘A good story,’ Beornnoth said.
‘?lfwold’s death was your fault,’ a voice spoke from the hall.
For a moment I thought I had misheard, or that the comment was not spoken to me. There was silence as every man wondered the same.
‘We should never have fought!’ It was Sihtric speaking. He stood to shout at me and I saw he was drunk. ‘You never scouted the woods!’ he snarled. ‘And how many men died because you didn’t scout the woods?’ I know I looked too shocked to speak. Sihtric had been my servant, I had saved his life, I had taken him as a boy and made him a man and a warrior, I had given him gold, I had rewarded him as a lord is supposed to reward his followers, and now he was staring at me with pure loathing. Beortsig, of course, was enjoying the moment, his eyes flicking between me and Sihtric. Rypere, who was sitting on the same bench as his friend Sihtric, laid a hand on the standing man’s arm, but Sihtric shook it off. ‘How many men did you kill that day through carelessness?’ he shouted at me.
‘You’re drunk,’ I said harshly, ‘and tomorrow you will grovel to me, and perhaps I will forgive you.’
‘Lord ?lfwold would be alive if you had a scrap of sense,’ he yelled at me.
Some of my men tried to shout him down, but I shouted louder. ‘Come here, kneel to me!’
Instead, he spat towards me. The hall was in uproar now. Beornnoth’s men were encouraging Sihtric, while my men were looking horrified. ‘Give them swords!’ someone called.
Sihtric held out his hand. ‘Give me a blade!’ he shouted.
I started towards him, but Beornnoth lunged and caught my sleeve in a feeble grip. ‘Not in my hall, Lord Uhtred,’ he said, ‘not in my hall.’ I stopped, and Beornnoth struggled to his feet. He had to grip the table’s edge with one hand to stay upright, while his other hand pointed shakily towards Sihtric. ‘Take him away!’ he ordered.
‘And you stay away from me!’ I shouted at him. ‘And that whore wife of yours!’
Sihtric tried to break away from the men holding him, but they had too tight a grip and he was too drunk. They dragged him from the hall to the jeers of Beornnoth’s followers. Beortsig had enjoyed my discomfiture and was laughing. His father frowned at him, then sat heavily. ‘I am sorry,’ he grunted.
‘He’ll be sorry,’ I said vengefully.
There was no sign of Sihtric next morning and I did not ask where Beornnoth had him hidden. We readied ourselves to leave, and Beornnoth was helped out to the courtyard by two of his men. ‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that I’ll die before Alfred.’
‘I hope you live many years,’ I said dutifully.
‘There’ll be pain in Britain when Alfred goes,’ he said. ‘All the certainties will die with him.’ His voice faded. He was still embarrassed by the previous night’s argument in his hall. He had watched one of my own men insult me, and he had prevented me from giving punishment, and the incident lay between us like a burning coal. Yet both of us pretended it had not happened.
‘Alfred’s son is a good man,’ I said.
‘Edward’s young,’ Beornnoth said scornfully, ‘and who knows what he’ll be?’ He sighed. ‘Life is a story without an end,’ he said, ‘but I’d like to hear a few more verses before I die.’ He shook his head. ‘Edward won’t rule.’
I smiled. ‘He may have other ideas.’
‘The prophecy has spoken, Lord Uhtred,’ he said solemnly.
I was momentarily taken aback. ‘The prophecy?’
‘There’s a sorceress,’ he said, ‘and she sees the future.’
‘?lfadell?’ I asked. ‘You saw her?’
‘Beortsig did,’ he said, looking at his son who, hearing ?lfadell’s name, made the sign of the cross.
‘What did she say?’ I asked the sullen Beortsig.
‘Nothing good,’ he said curtly, and would say no more.
I climbed into my saddle. I glanced around the yard for any evidence of Sihtric, but he was still concealed and so I left him there and we rode home. Finan was puzzled by Sihtric’s behaviour. ‘He must have been drunk beyond drunkenness,’ he said in wonder. I answered nothing. In many ways what Sihtric had said was right, ?lfwold had died because of my carelessness, but that did not give Sihtric the right to accuse me in open hall. ‘He’s always been a good man,’ Finan went on, still puzzled, ‘but lately he’s been surly. I don’t understand it.’
‘He’s becoming like his father,’ I said.
‘Kjartan the Cruel?’
‘I should never have saved Sihtric’s life.’
Finan nodded. ‘You want me to arrange his death?’
‘No,’ I said firmly, ‘only one man kills him, and that’s me. You understand? He’s mine, and until I rip his guts open I never want to hear his name again.’
Once home I expelled Ealhswith, Sihtric’s wife, and her two sons from my hall. There were tears and pleas from her friends, but I was unmoved. She went.
And next day I rode to lay my trap for Sigurd.
There was a tremulousness to those days. All Britain waited to hear of Alfred’s death, in the certain knowledge that his passing would scatter the runesticks. A new pattern would foretell a new fortune for Britain, but what that fortune was, no one knew, unless the nightmare sorceress did have the answers. In Wessex they would want another strong king to protect them, in Mercia some would want the same, while other Mercians would want their own king back, while everywhere to the north, where the Danes held the land, they dreamed of conquering Wessex. Yet all that spring and summer Alfred lived and men waited and dreamed and the new crops grew and I took forty-six men east and north to where Haesten had found his lair.
