‘And Mehrasa?’
He gave her an adoring look. ‘She really is an angel, lord.’
‘She looks happy,’ I said, and so she did. I doubted she fully understood the strange things she was asked to do, but she was learning English fast and she was a clever girl. ‘I could find her a wealthy husband,’ I teased Cuthbert.
‘Lord!’ He looked hurt, then frowned. ‘If I have your permission, lord, I would take her as my wife.’
‘Is that what she wants?’
He giggled, he really giggled, then nodded. ‘Yes, lord.’
‘So she’s not as clever as she looks,’ I said sourly. ‘But she must finish here first. And if she gets pregnant I’ll seal you up with the other bones.’
The tomb was doing exactly what I had wished it to do. The questions men asked told us what was on their minds, thus Sigebriht’s anxious enquiries about ?thelwold confirmed that he had not abandoned his hopes of becoming King of Cent if ?thelwold were to topple Edward from the throne. The angel’s second task was to fight the rumours that came south from ?lfadell’s prophecies that the Danes would gain the overlordship of all Britain. Those rumours had dispirited men in both Mercia and Wessex, but now they heard a different prophecy, that the Saxons would be the victors, and that message, I knew, would encourage the Saxons, just as it would intrigue and irritate the Danes. I wanted to goad them. I wanted to defeat them.
I suppose that one day, long after I am dead, the Danes will find a leader who can unite them, and then the world will be consumed by flames and the halls of Valhalla will fill with the feasting dead, but so long as I have known, loved and fought the Danes they have been quarrelsome and divided. My present wife’s priest, an idiot, says that is because God has sown dissension among them, but I have always thought it was because the Danes are a stubborn, proud and independent people, unwilling to bend their knees to a man simply because he wears a crown. They will follow a man with a sword, but as soon as he fails they drift away to find another leader, and so their armies come together, fall apart, and then reform. I have known Danes who almost succeeded in keeping a mighty army together and leading it to complete triumph, there was Ubba, Guthrum, even Haesten, all of them tried, yet in the end they all failed. The Danes did not fight for a cause or even for a country and certainly not for a creed, but only for themselves, and when they suffered a defeat their armies vanished as men went to find another lord who might lead them to silver, women and land.
And my angels were a lure to persuade them that there was reputation to be made in war. ‘Have any Danes visited the tomb?’ I asked Ludda.
‘Two, lord,’ he said, ‘both merchants.’
‘And you told them?’
Ludda hesitated, glanced at ?thelflaed, then back to me. ‘I told them what you ordered me to tell them, lord.’
‘You did?’
He nodded, then made the sign of the cross. ‘I told them you would die, lord, and that a Dane would earn great renown by slaying Uhtred of Bebbanburg.’ ?thelflaed drew in a sharp breath and then, like Ludda, made the sign of the cross. ‘You told them what?’ she asked.
‘What Lord Uhtred told me to tell them, lady,’ Ludda said nervously.
‘You’re risking fate,’ ?thelflaed told me.
‘I want the Danes to come,’ I said, ‘and I need to offer them a bait.’
Because Plegmund was wrong, and ?thelhelm was wrong, and Edward was wrong. Peace is a fine thing, but we only have peace when our enemies are too scared to make war. The Danes were not quiet because the Christian god had silenced them, but because they were distracted by other things. Edward wanted to believe they had abandoned their dreams of conquering Wessex, yet I knew they would come. ?thelwold had not abandoned his dream either. He would come, and with him would come a savage horde of sword-Danes and spear-Danes, and I wanted them to come. I wanted to get it over. I wanted to be the sword of the Saxons.
And still they did not come.
I never did understand why it took the Danes so long to take advantage of Alfred’s death. I suppose if ?thelwold had been a more inspirational leader instead of being a weak man then they might have come sooner, but they waited so long that all Wessex was convinced that their god had answered their prayers and made the Danes peaceable. And all the while my angels sang their two songs, one to the Saxons and one to the Danes, and perhaps they made a difference. There were plenty of Danes who wanted to nail my skull to their gable, and the song of the tomb was an invitation.
Yet they hesitated.
Archbishop Plegmund was triumphant. Two years after Edward’s coronation I was summoned to Wintanceaster and had to endure a sermon in the new great church. Plegmund, stern and fierce, claimed that God had conquered when all the swords of man had failed. ‘We are in the last days,’ he said, ‘and we see the dawning of Christ’s kingdom.’
I remember that visit because it was the last time I saw ?lswith, Alfred’s widow. She was retiring to a convent, driven there, I heard, by Plegmund’s insistence. It was Offa who told me that. ‘She supports the archbishop,’ Offa said, ‘but he can’t stand her! She nags.’
‘I pity the nuns,’ I said.
‘Oh Lord alive, she’ll have them hopping,’ Offa said with a smile. He was old. He still had his dogs, but he trained no new ones. ‘They’re companions now,’ he told me, stroking the ears of a terrier, ‘and we’re growing old together.’ He sat with me in the Two Cranes tavern. ‘I’m in pain, lord,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘God will take me soon,’ he said, and in that he was right.
‘Have you travelled this summer?’
‘It was hard,’ he said, ‘but yes, I went north and I went east. Now I’m going home.’
I put money on the table. ‘Tell me what’s happening.’
‘They’re going to attack,’ he said.
‘I know that.’
‘Jarl Sigurd is recovered,’ Offa said, ‘and boats are coming across the sea.’
‘Boats are always crossing the sea,’ I said.
‘Sigurd has let it be known there will be land to possess.’
‘Wessex.’
He nodded. ‘And so the crews are coming, lord.’
‘Where?’
‘They’re assembling at Eoferwic,’ Offa said. I had already heard that news from traders who had been in Northumbria. New ships had come, filled with ambitious and hungry warriors, but the traders all claimed that the army was being assembled to attack the Scots. ‘That’s what they want you to think,’ Offa said. He touched one of the silver coins on the table, tracing his finger over the outline of Alfred’s head. ‘It’s a clever thing you’re doing at Natangrafum,’ he said slyly.
I said nothing for a moment. A flock of geese was driven past the tavern and there were angry shouts as a dog barked at them. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, a feeble response.
‘I’ve told no one,’ Offa said.
‘You’re dreaming, Offa,’ I said.
He looked at me and made the sign of the cross on his skinny chest. ‘I promise you, lord, I told no one. But it was clever, I salute you. It annoyed Jarl Sigurd!’ He chuckled, then used the bone handle of a knife to crack open a hazelnut. ‘What did one of your angels say? That Sigurd was a small man, badly endowed.’ He chuckled again and shook his head. ‘It annoyed him a lot, lord. And maybe that is why Sigurd is giving Eohric money, a great deal of money. Eohric will join the other Danes.’
‘Edward says he has a pledge of peace from Eohric,’ I pointed out.
‘And you know what Eohric’s pledges are worth,’ Offa retorted. ‘They’re going to do what they should have done twenty years ago, lord. They’re going to unite against Wessex. All the Danes, and all the Saxons who hate Edward, all of them.’
‘Ragnar?’ I asked. Ragnar was my old dear friend, a man I thought of as a brother, a man I had not seen in
