a skirt and wondered that he had remained with me, though when I had asked him he had said that fortunes rise and fortunes fall and he sensed mine would rise again. I hoped he was right. ‘What happened to that Welsh girl of yours?’ I called to Ludda. ‘What was her name?’
‘Teg, lord. She turned into a bat and flew away.’ He grinned, though I noted how many men made the sign of the cross.
‘Maybe we should all turn into bats,’ I said unhappily.
Finan scowled at the table top. ‘If Alfred doesn’t want you,’ he said uneasily, ‘then you should join Alfred’s enemies.’
‘I swore an oath to ?thelflaed.’
‘And she swore one to her husband,’ he said savagely.
‘I won’t fight against her,’ I said.
‘And I won’t leave you,’ Finan said, and I knew he meant it, ‘but not every man here will stay through a hungry winter.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘So let’s steal a ship,’ he urged, ‘and go Viking.’
‘It’s late in the year for that,’ I said.
‘God knows how we survive a winter,’ he grumbled. ‘We have to do something. Kill someone rich.’
And just then the guards on the hall door challenged a visitor. The man arrived in mail, helmeted, and with a sheathed sword at his waist. Behind him, dim in the fast gathering darkness, was a woman and two children. ‘I demand entry!’ he shouted.
‘God alive,’ Finan said, recognising Sihtric’s voice.
One of the guards tried to take the sword, but Sihtric angrily slapped the man aside. ‘Let the bastard keep his sword,’ I said, standing, ‘and let him come in.’ Sihtric’s wife and two sons were behind him, but they stayed at the door as Sihtric paced up the hall. There was silence.
Finan stood to confront him, but I pushed the Irishman down. ‘It’s my duty,’ I told Finan quietly, then walked around the high table’s end and jumped down to the rush-covered floor. Sihtric stopped when he saw me approaching. I had no sword. We did not carry weapons in hall because weapons and ale mix badly and there was a gasp as Sihtric drew his long blade. Some of my men stood to intervene, but I waved them down and kept walking towards the naked steel. I stopped just two paces from him. ‘Well?’ I demanded harshly.
Sihtric grinned and I laughed. I embraced him, and he returned the embrace, then held the hilt of his sword to me. ‘Yours, lord,’ he said, ‘as it always was.’
‘Ale!’ I shouted to the steward. ‘Ale and food!’
Finan was gaping as I walked Sihtric to the high table with my arm about his shoulder. Men were cheering. They had liked Sihtric and had been puzzled by his behaviour, but it had all been planned between us. Even the insults had been rehearsed. I had wanted Beortsig to recruit him, and Beortsig had snapped up Sihtric like a pike attacking a duckling. And I had ordered Sihtric to stay in Beortsig’s employment until he had learned what I needed to know, and now he had come back. ‘I didn’t know where to find you, lord,’ he said, ‘so I went to Lundene first and Weohstan said to come here.’
Beornnoth was dead, he told me. The old man had died in the early summer, just before Sigurd’s men crossed his estates to burn Buccingahamm. ‘They stayed the night at the hall, lord,’ he told me.
‘Sigurd’s men?’
‘And Sigurd himself, lord. Beortsig fed them.’
‘He’s in Sigurd’s pay?’
‘Yes, lord,’ he said, and that was no surprise, ‘and not only Beortsig, lord. There was a Saxon with Sigurd, lord, a man Sigurd treated with honour. A long-haired man called Sigebriht.’
‘Sigebriht?’ I asked. The name was familiar, lurking at the back of my memory, but I could not place him, though I remembered the widow in Buchestanes saying that a long-haired Saxon had visited ?lfadell.
‘Sigebriht of Cent, lord,’ Sihtric said.
‘Ah!’ I poured Sihtric ale. ‘Sigebriht’s father is Ealdorman of Cent, isn’t he?’
‘Ealdorman Sigelf, lord, yes.’
‘So Sigebriht is unhappy that Edward was named King of Cent?’ I guessed.
‘Sigebriht hates Edward, lord,’ Sihtric told me. He was grinning, pleased with himself. I had planted him as a spy in Beortsig’s household and he knew he had done his work well, ‘and it isn’t just because Edward is King of Cent, lord, it’s because of a girl. The Lady Ecgwynn.’
‘He told you all this?’ I asked, astonished.
‘He told a slave girl, lord. He rutted her and he has a loose tongue when he’s rutting, and he told her and she told Ealhswith.’ Ealhswith was Sihtric’s wife. She was sitting in the hall now, eating with her two sons. She had been a whore and I had advised Sihtric not to marry her, but I had been wrong. She had proved to be a good wife.
‘So who is the Lady Ecgwynn?’ I asked.
‘She’s Bishop Swithwulf’s daughter, lord,’ Sihtric explained. Swithwulf was Bishop of Hrofeceastre in Cent, that much I knew, but I had not met the man, nor his daughter. ‘And she preferred Edward to Sigebriht,’ Sihtric went on.
So the bishop’s daughter was the girl who Edward had wanted to marry? The girl he had been ordered to abandon because his father disapproved. ‘I heard that Edward was forced to give the girl up,’ I said.
‘But she ran away with him,’ Sihtric told me, ‘that’s what Sigebriht said.’
‘Ran away!’ I grinned. ‘So where is she now?’
‘No one knows.’
‘And Edward,’ I said, ‘is betrothed to ?lfl?d.’ There must have been some harsh words spoken between father and son, I thought. Edward had always been presented as the ideal heir to Alfred, the son without sin, the prince educated and groomed to be the next King of Wessex, but a smile from a bishop’s daughter had evidently undone a lifetime’s preaching from his father’s priests. ‘So Sigebriht hates Edward,’ I said.
‘He does, lord.’
‘Because he took the bishop’s daughter away. But would that be enough to make him swear loyalty to Sigurd?’
‘No, lord.’ Sihtric was grinning. He had kept his biggest news back. ‘He’s not sworn to Sigurd, lord, but to ?thelwold.’
And that was why Sihtric had returned to me, because he had discovered who the Saxon was, the Saxon whom ?lfadell had told me would destroy Wessex, and I wondered why I had not thought of it before. I had considered Beortsig because he wanted to be King of Mercia, but he was insignificant, and Sigebriht probably wanted to be King of Cent one day, but I could not imagine Sigebriht having the power to ruin Wessex, yet the answer was obvious. It had been there all along and I had never thought of it because ?thelwold was such a weak fool. Yet weak fools have ambition and cunning and resolve.
‘?thelwold!’ I repeated the name.
‘Sigebriht is sworn to him, lord, and Sigebriht is ?thelwold’s messenger to Sigurd. There’s something else, lord. Beortsig’s priest is one-eyed, thin as a straw, and bald.’
I was thinking about ?thelwold, so it took a moment for me to remember that far-off day when the fools had tried to kill me and the shepherd had saved me with his sling and his flock. ‘Beortsig wanted me dead,’ I said.
‘Or his father,’ Sihtric suggested.
‘Because Sigurd ordered it,’ I guessed, ‘or perhaps ?thelwold.’ And it suddenly seemed so obvious. And I knew what I had to do. I did not want to do it. I had once sworn I would never return to Alfred’s court, but next day I rode to Wintanceaster.
To see the king.
?thelwold. I should have guessed. I had known ?thelwold all my life and had despised him all that time. He was Alfred’s nephew, and he was aggrieved. Alfred, of course, should have killed ?thelwold years before, but some feeling, perhaps affection for his brother’s son or, more likely, the guilt that earnest Christians love to feel, had stayed his hand.
