temples. ‘You killed him without trial!’ he accused me.
I towered over him, but he faced me pugnaciously. ‘I’ll hang a dozen more of your men if they fight in the street,’ I said, ‘and who are you?’
‘Ealdorman Sigelf,’ he said, ‘and you call me lord.’
‘I’m Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said and was rewarded by a blink of surprise, ‘and you can call me lord.’
Sigelf evidently decided he did not want to fight me. ‘They shouldn’t have been fighting,’ he acknowledged grudgingly. He frowned. ‘You met my son, I believe?’
‘I met your son,’ I said.
‘He was a fool,’ Sigelf said in a voice as sharp as his face, ‘a young fool. He’s learned his lesson.’
‘The lesson of loyalty?’ I asked, looking across the street to where Sigebriht was bowing low to the king.
‘So they both liked the same bitch,’ Sigelf said, ‘but Edward was a prince and princes get what they want.’
‘So do kings,’ I said mildly.
Sigelf caught my meaning and gave me a very hard glance. ‘Cent doesn’t need a king,’ he said, clearly trying to scotch the rumour that he wanted the throne for himself.
‘Cent has a king,’ I said.
‘So we hear,’ he spoke sarcastically, ‘but Wessex needs to take more care of us. Every damned Northman who gets his arse kicked in Frankia comes to our shores, and what does Wessex do? It scratches its own arse then sniffs its fingers while we suffer.’ He watched his son bow a second time and spat, though whether that was because of his son’s obeisance or because of Wessex it was hard to tell. ‘Look what happened when Harald and Haesten came!’ he demanded.
‘I defeated both of them,’ I said.
‘But not before they’d raped half of Cent and burned fifty or more villages. We need more defences.’ He glared at me. ‘We need some help!’
‘At least you’re here,’ I said emolliently.
‘We’ll help Wessex,’ Sigelf said, ‘even if Wessex doesn’t help us.’
I had thought that the arrival of the Centishmen would provoke some action from Edward, but instead he waited. There was a council of war every day, but it decided nothing except to wait and see what the enemy would do. Scouts were watching the Danes and sent reports back every day and those reports said the Danes were still not moving. I urged the king to attack them, but I might as well have begged him to fly to the moon. I begged him to let me lead my own men to scout the enemy, but he refused.
‘He thinks you’ll attack them,’ ?thelflaed told me.
‘Why doesn’t he attack?’ I asked, frustrated.
‘Because he’s frightened,’ she said, ‘because there are too many men giving him advice, because he’s scared of doing the wrong thing, because he only has to lose one battle and he’s no longer king.’
We were on the top floor of a Roman house, one of those astonishing buildings that had stairs climbing to floor after floor. The moon shone through a window, and through the holes in the roof where the slates had fallen. It was cold and we were wrapped in fleeces. ‘A king shouldn’t be frightened,’ I said.
‘Edward knows men compare him to his father. He wonders what Father would have done now.’
‘Alfred would have called for me,’ I said, ‘preached to me for ten minutes, then given me the army.’
She lay silent in my arms. She was gazing at the moon-speckled roof. ‘Do you think,’ she asked, ‘that we’ll ever have peace?’
‘No.’
‘I dream of a day when we can live in a great hall, go hunting, listen to songs, walk by the river and never fear an enemy.’
‘You and me?’
‘Just you and me,’ she said. She turned her head so that her hair hid her eyes. ‘Just you and me.’
Next morning Edward ordered ?thelflaed to return to Cirrenceastre, an order she pointedly ignored. ‘I told him to give you the army,’ she said.
‘And he said?’
‘That he was king and he would lead the army.’
Her husband had also ordered Merewalh back to Gleawecestre, but ?thelflaed persuaded the Mercian to stay. ‘We need every good man,’ she told him, and so we did, but not to rot inside Lundene. We had a whole army there, over four thousand five hundred men, and all it did was guard the walls and gaze out at the unchanging countryside beyond.
We did nothing and the Danes ravaged the Wessex countryside, but made no attempt to storm a burh. The autumn days shrank and still we remained indecisive in Lundene. Archbishop Plegmund returned to Contwaraburg and I thought his departure might embolden Edward, but Bishop Erkenwald stayed with the king and counselled caution. So did Father Coenwulf, Edward’s mass priest and closest adviser. ‘It’s not like the Danes to be supine,’ he told Edward, ‘so I fear a trap. Let them make the first move, lord King. They surely cannot stay for ever.’ In that, at least, he was right, for as the autumn slid cold into winter the Danes at last moved.
They had been as indecisive as us, and now they simply recrossed the river at Cracgelad and went back the way they had come. Steapa’s scouts told us of their retreat, and day by day the reports came that they were heading back towards East Anglia, taking slaves, livestock and plunder. ‘And once they’re back there,’ I told the council, ‘the Northumbrian Danes will go home in their ships. They’ve achieved nothing, except taking a lot of slaves and cattle, but we’ve done nothing either.’
‘King Eohric has broken his treaty,’ Bishop Erkenwald pointed out indignantly, though what use that observation was escaped me.
‘He promised to be at peace with us,’ Edward said.
‘He must be punished, lord King,’ Erkenwald insisted. ‘The treaty was solemnised by the church!’
Edward glanced at me. ‘And if the Northumbrians go home,’ he said, ‘Eohric will be vulnerable.’
‘When they go home, lord King,’ I pointed out. ‘They might wait till spring.’
‘Eohric can’t feed that many,’ Ealdorman ?thelhelm pointed out. ‘They’ll leave his kingdom quickly! Look at the problems we have in feeding an army.’
‘So you’ll invade in winter?’ I asked scornfully. ‘When the rivers are flooding, the rain is falling and we’re wading in freezing mud?’
‘God is on our side!’ Erkenwald declared.
The army had been in Lundene for almost three months now, and the food supplies of the city were running low. There was no enemy at the gates, so more food was constantly being carted into the storehouses, but that took an immense number of wagons, oxen, horses and men. And the warriors themselves were bored. Some blamed the men of Cent for delaying their arrival and, despite my having hanged a man, there were frequent fights in which dozens of men died. Edward’s army was querulous, underemployed and hungry, but Bishop Erkenwald’s indignation at Eohric’s betrayal of a sacred trust somehow invigorated the council and persuaded the king to make a decision. For weeks we had the Danes at our mercy and granted them mercy, but now they had left Wessex the council suddenly discovered courage. ‘We shall follow the enemy,’ Edward announced, ‘take back what they have stolen from us, and revenge ourselves on King Eohric.’
‘If we’re following them,’ I said, looking at Sigelf, ‘we all need horses.’
‘We have horses,’ Edward pointed out.
‘Not all the men of Cent do,’ I said.
Sigelf bridled at that. He was a man, it seemed to me, ready to take offence at the slightest suggestion of criticism, but he knew I was right. The Danes always moved on horseback, and an army slowed by foot soldiers would never catch them or be able to react quickly to an enemy move. Sigelf scowled at me, but resisted the temptation to snap at me, instead he looked to the king. ‘You could lend us horses?’ he asked Edward. ‘What about the horses of the garrison here?’
‘Weohstan won’t like that,’ Edward said unhappily. A man’s horse was one of his most valuable possessions, and not one that was casually lent to a stranger going to war.
No one spoke for a moment, then Sigelf shrugged. ‘Then let a hundred of my men stay here as garrison troops and your, what was his name, Weohstan? He can send a hundred horsemen to replace them.’
