atop the mighty earth bank was rotting like the one in Lundene, but a great heap of newly felled oak trunks suggested that someone here was ready to repair the defences. Finan and I went ashore at the wharf by the Roman bridge and walked to the bishop’s house beside the great church. The steward bowed to us and, when he heard my name, did not dare ask for my sword. Instead he took us to a comfortable room and had servants bring us ale and food.
Bishop Swithwulf and his wife arrived an hour later. The bishop was a worried-looking man, grey-haired, with a long face and twitching hands, while his wife was small and nervous. She must have bowed to me ten times before sitting. ‘What brings you here, lord?’ Swithwulf asked.
‘Curiosity,’ I said.
‘Curiosity?’
‘I’m wondering why the Danes are so quiet,’ I said.
‘God’s will,’ the bishop’s wife said timidly.
‘Because they’re planning something,’ Swithwulf said. ‘Never trust a Dane when he’s silent.’ He looked at his wife. ‘Don’t the cooks need your advice?’
‘The cooks? Oh!’ She stood, fluttered for a moment, then fled.
‘Why are the Danes quiet?’ Swithwulf asked me.
‘Sigurd’s ill,’ I suggested, ‘Cnut’s busy on his northern border.’
‘And ?thelwold?’
‘Getting drunk in Eoferwic,’ I said.
‘Alfred should have strangled him,’ Swithwulf growled.
I was warming to the bishop. ‘You’re not preaching peace like the rest?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I preach what I’m told to preach,’ he said, ‘but I’m also deepening the ditch and rebuilding the wall.’
‘And Ealdorman Sigelf?’ I asked. Sigelf was the ealdorman of Cent, the county’s military leader and its most prominent noble.
The bishop looked at me suspiciously. ‘What of him?’
‘He wants to be King of Cent, I hear.’
Swithwulf was taken aback by that statement. He frowned. ‘His son had that idea,’ he said cautiously, ‘I’m not sure if Sigelf thinks the same way.’
‘And Sigebriht was talking to the Danes,’ I said. Sigebriht, who had surrendered to me outside Sceaftesburi, was Sigelf’s son.
‘You know that?’
‘I know that,’ I said. The bishop sat silent. ‘What’s going on in Cent?’ I asked, and still he was silent. ‘You’re the bishop,’ I said, ‘you hear things from your priests. So tell me.’
He still hesitated, but then, like a millpond’s dam bursting, he told me of the unhappiness in Cent. ‘We were our own kingdom once,’ he said. ‘Now Wessex treats us as runts of the litter. Look what happened when Haesten and Harald landed! Were we protected? No!’
Haesten had landed on Cent’s northern coast while Jarl Harald Bloodhair had brought more than two hundred ships to the southern shore where he had stormed a half-built burh and slaughtered the men inside, then spread across the county in an orgy of burning, killing, enslaving and robbing. Wessex had sent an army led by ?thelred and Edward to oppose the invaders, but the army had done nothing. ?thelred and Edward had placed their men on the great wooded ridge at the centre of Cent and then argued whether to strike north towards Haesten or south towards Harald, and all the while Harald had burned and killed.
‘I killed Harald,’ I said.
‘You did,’ the bishop allowed, ‘but not till after he’d ravaged the county!’
‘So men want Cent to be its own kingdom again?’ I asked.
He hesitated a long time before answering, and even then he was evasive. ‘No one wanted that while Alfred lived,’ he said, ‘but now?’
I stood and walked to a window from where I could stare down at the wharves. Gulls screamed and wheeled in the summer sky. There were two cranes on the wharf and they were lifting horses into a wide-bellied trading ship. The ship’s hold had been divided into stalls where the frightened beasts were being tethered. ‘Where are the horses going?’ I asked.
‘Horses?’ Swithwulf asked, puzzled, then realised why I had asked the unexpected question. ‘They send them to market in Frankia. We breed good horses here.’
‘You do?’
‘Ealdorman Sigelf does,’ he said.
‘And Sigelf rules here,’ I said, ‘and his son talks to the Danes.’
The bishop shuddered. ‘So you say,’ he said cautiously.
I turned to him. ‘And his son was in love with your daughter,’ I said, ‘and for that reason hates Edward.’
‘Dear God,’ Swithwulf said quietly and made the sign of the cross. There were tears in his eyes. ‘She was a silly girl, a silly girl, but joyous.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
He blinked away the tears. ‘And you look after my grandchildren?’
‘They’re in my care, yes.’
‘I hear the boy is sickly,’ he sounded anxious.
‘That’s just a rumour,’ I reassured him. ‘They’re both healthy, but it’s better for their health if Ealdorman ?thelhelm believes the contrary.’
‘?thelhelm’s not a bad man,’ the bishop said grudgingly.
‘But he’d still cut your grandchildren’s throats if he had the chance.’
Swithwulf nodded. ‘What colour do they have?’
‘The boy’s dark like his father, the girl is fair.’
‘Like my daughter,’ he said in a whisper.
‘Who married the ?theling of Wessex,’ I said, ‘who now denies it. And Sigebriht, her rejected lover, went to the Danes out of hatred for Edward.’
‘Yes,’ the bishop said quietly.
‘But then swore an oath to Edward when ?thelwold fled north.’
Swithwulf nodded. ‘I heard.’
‘Can he be trusted?’
The directness of the question unsettled Swithwulf. He frowned and shifted uncomfortably, then gazed through a window to where crows where loud on the grass. ‘I would not trust him,’ he said softly.
‘I couldn’t hear you, bishop.’
‘I would not trust him,’ he said more loudly.
‘But his father is ealdorman here, not Sigebriht.’
‘Sigelf is a difficult man,’ the bishop said, his voice low again, ‘but not a fool.’ He looked at me with unhappy appeal. ‘I’ll deny this conversation,’ he said.
‘Have you heard us having a conversation?’ I asked Finan.
‘Not a word,’ he said.
We stayed that night in Hrofeceastre and next day went back to Lundene on the flooding tide. There was a chill on the water, the first taste of autumn coming, and I rousted my men from the new town’s taverns and saddled horses. I was deliberately staying away from Fagranforda because it was so close to Natangrafum and so I took my small troop south and west along familiar roads until we reached Wintanceaster.
Edward was surprised and pleased to see me. He knew I had not been in Fagranforda for most of the summer so did not ask me about the twins, instead telling me that his sister had sent news of them. ‘They’re well,’ he said. He invited me to a feast. ‘We don’t serve my father’s food,’ he assured me.
‘That’s a blessing, lord,’ I said. Alfred had ever served insipid meals of weak broths and limp vegetables, while Edward, at least, knew the virtues of meat. His new wife was there, plump and pregnant, while her father, Ealdorman ?thelhelm, was plainly Edward’s most trusted counsellor. There were fewer priests than in Alfred’s day, but at least a dozen were at the feast, including my old friend Willibald.
