years.
‘He’s not well,’ Offa said gently, ‘not well enough to march.’
That saddened me. I poured ale and one of the tavern girls hurried over to see if the jug was empty, but I waved her away. ‘And what about Cent?’ I asked Offa.
‘What about Cent, lord?’
‘Sigebriht hates Edward,’ I said, ‘and he wants his own kingdom.’
Offa shook his head. ‘Sigebriht is a young fool, lord, but his father has reined him in. The whip has been used and Cent will stay loyal.’ He sounded very certain.
‘Sigebriht isn’t talking to the Danes?’ I asked.
‘If he is, I haven’t heard a whisper,’ Offa said. ‘No, lord, Cent is loyal. Sigelf knows he can’t hold Cent by himself, and Wessex is a better ally for him than the Danes.’
‘Have you told Edward all this?’
‘I told Father Coenwulf,’ he said. Coenwulf was now Edward’s closest adviser and constant companion. ‘I even told him where the attack will come from.’
‘Which is?’
He looked at my coins on the table and said nothing. I sighed and added two more. Offa drew the coins to his side of the table and made a neat line of them. ‘They’ll want you to believe their attack will come from East Anglia,’ he said, ‘but it won’t. The real attack will be from Ceaster.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’ I asked.
‘Brunna,’ he said. ‘Haesten’s wife?’
‘She’s a real Christian,’ he said.
‘Truly?’ I asked. I had always believed the baptism of Haesten’s wife was a cynical ploy to deceive Alfred.
‘She has seen the light,’ Offa said in a mocking tone. ‘Yes, lord, truly, and she confided in me.’ He looked at me with his sad eyes. ‘I was a priest once and perhaps you never really stop being a priest and she wanted to make confession and receive the sacraments and so, God help me, I gave her what she wanted, and now, God help me, I have betrayed the secrets she told me.’
‘The Danes will make an army in East Anglia?’
‘You’ll see that happening, I’m sure, but you won’t see the army gathering behind Ceaster, and that’s the army that will march south.’
‘When?’
‘After the harvest,’ Offa spoke confidently, his voice so low that only I could hear. ‘Sigurd and Cnut want the biggest army seen in Britain. They say it’s time to end the war for ever. They will come when they have the harvest to feed their horde. They want the largest army ever to invade Wessex.’
‘You believe Brunna?’
‘She resents her husband, so yes, I believe her.’
‘What is ?lfadell saying these days?’ I asked.
‘She’s saying what Cnut tells her to say, that the attack will come from the east and that Wessex will fall.’ He sighed. ‘I wish I could live long enough to see the end of this, lord.’
‘You’re good for another ten years, Offa,’ I told him.
He shook his head. ‘I feel the angel of death close behind me, lord.’ He hesitated. ‘You’ve always been good to me, lord.’ He bowed his head. ‘I owe you for your kindness.’
‘You owe me nothing.’
‘I do, lord.’ He looked up at me and, to my surprise, there were tears in his eyes. ‘Not everyone has been kind to me, lord,’ he said, ‘but you have always been generous.’
I was embarrassed. ‘You’ve been very useful,’ I muttered.
‘So in respect for you, lord, and in gratitude to you, I give you my last advice.’ He paused and to my surprise pushed the coins back towards me.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Give me the pleasure, lord,’ he said. ‘I want to thank you.’ He pushed the coins still closer to me. A tear rolled down his cheek and he cuffed it away. ‘Trust no one, lord,’ he said softly, ‘and beware Haesten, lord, beware the army in the west.’ He looked up at me and dared touch my hand with a long finger. ‘Beware the army at Ceaster, and don’t let the pagans destroy us, lord.’
He died that summer.
Then the harvest came, and it was good.
And after it the pagans came.
Ten
I worked it out later, though the knowledge was small consolation. A war-band rode to Natangrafum and because so many of the warriors were Saxons no one thought their presence strange. They arrived on an evening when the tomb was empty, because by then the peace had lasted so long that the angels rarely appeared, but the raiders knew exactly where to go. They rode directly to the Roman house outside Turcandene where they took the handful of guards by surprise and then killed fast and efficiently. When I arrived the next day I saw blood, a lot of blood.
Ludda was dead. I assumed he had tried to defend the house, and his eviscerated body lay sprawled across the doorway. His face was a grimace of pain. Eight others of my men were dead, their bodies stripped of mail, arm rings and anything else of value. On one wall, where the Roman plaster still clung to the bricks, a man had used blood to make a crude drawing of a flying raven. The drips had run down the wall and I could see the print of the man’s hand beneath the raven’s savagely hooked beak. ‘Sigurd,’ I said bitterly.
‘His symbol, lord?’ Sihtric asked me.
‘Yes.’
None of the three girls was there. I supposed the attackers must have taken them, but they had failed to find Mehrasa, the dark girl. She and Father Cuthbert had hidden in some nearby woods and only emerged when they were certain it was my men who now ringed the slaughterhouse. Cuthbert was crying. ‘Lord, lord,’ was all he could say to me at first. He fell to his knees in front of me and wrung his big hands. Mehrasa was steadier, though she refused to cross the house’s blood-reeking threshold where the flies buzzed around Ludda’s opened gut.
‘What happened?’ I asked Cuthbert.
‘Oh God, lord,’ he said, his voice quavery.
I slapped him hard around the face. ‘What happened?’
‘They came at dusk, lord,’ he said, his hands shaking as he tried to clasp them, ‘there were a lot of them! I counted twenty-four men,’ he had to pause, he was shaking so much and when he next tried to speak he just made a mewing noise. Then he saw the anger on my face and took a deep breath. ‘They hunted us, lord.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They searched around the house, lord. In the old orchard, down by the pond.’
‘You were hidden.’
‘Yes, lord.’ He was crying and his voice was scarce above a whisper. ‘Saint Cuthbert the Cowardly, lord.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ I snarled, ‘what could you do against so many?’
‘They took the girls, lord, and killed everyone else. And I liked Ludda.’
‘I liked Ludda too,’ I said, ‘but now we bury him.’ I did like Ludda. He was a clever rogue and he had served me well, and worse, he had trusted me and now he was cut from the groin to the ribs and the flies were thick about his entrails. ‘So what were you doing while he died?’ I asked Cuthbert.
‘We were watching the sunset from the hill, lord.’
I laughed without mirth. ‘Watching the sunset!’
‘We were, lord!’ Cuthbert said, hurt.
‘And you’ve been hiding ever since?’
