‘You’re gracious, lord King.’
‘Ah, he butters me!’ He spoke to the other men in the tent, most of whom I suspected did not speak the Saxon tongue, but they smiled anyway. ‘I was gracious with His Holiness the Pope,’ Hywel continued, ‘who suffers from aches in his joints. I told the poor man to rub them with wool grease mixed with the urine of goats, but did he listen to me? He did not! Do you suffer from aches, Lord Uhtred?’
‘Frequently, lord King.’
‘Goat’s piss! Rub it in, man, rub it in. It might even improve the way you smell!’ He grinned. He looked as I remembered him, a sturdy man with a broad, wind-reddened face and eyes that readily creased with merriment. Age had whitened his clipped beard and his short hair over which he wore a simple gilt-bronze circlet. He looked to be about fifty years old, but he was still hale. He signalled to my companions. ‘Sit, all of you, sit. I remember you.’ He pointed at Finan. ‘You’re the Irishman?’
‘I am, lord King.’
‘Finan,’ I supplied the name.
‘And you fought like a demon, I remember that! You poor man, I’d think an Irishman had better sense than to fight for a Sais lord, eh? And you are?’ He nodded at Egil.
‘Egil Skallagrimmrson, lord King.’ Egil bowed, then touched Berg’s elbow, ‘and this is my brother, Berg Skallagrimmrson, who has to thank you.’
‘Me! Why would a Norseman thank me?’
‘You spared my life, lord King,’ Berg said, blushing as he bowed.
‘I did?’
‘On the beach,’ I reminded him, ‘where you killed Rognvald.’
Hywel’s face darkened as he remembered that fight. He made the sign of the cross. ‘Upon my word, but that was a wicked man. I take no pleasure in death, but that man’s screams were like the balm of Gilead to my soul.’ He looked at me. ‘Is he honest?’ He jerked his head at Berg. ‘Is he a good man?’
‘A very good man, lord King.’
‘But not a Christian,’ he said flatly.
‘I swore to have him taught the faith,’ I answered, ‘because you demanded that as a condition for his life, and I did not break my word.’
‘He chose otherwise?’
‘He did, lord King.’
‘The world is full of fools, is it not? And why, good bishop, are you holding an arrow? Do you plan to stab me?’
Anwyn explained what had happened in the darkness. He spoke in Welsh, but I did not need a translator to understand the tale. Hywel grunted when the bishop finished and took the arrow from him. ‘You think, Lord Uhtred,’ he asked, ‘it was one of my men?’
‘I don’t know, lord King.’
‘Did the arrow kill you?’
I smiled. ‘No, lord King.’
‘Then it wasn’t one of my boys. My boys don’t miss. And this isn’t one of my arrows. We fletch them with goose feathers. These look like eagle feathers?’ He tossed the arrow onto the brazier where the ashwood shaft flared up. ‘And other men in Britain use the long hunting bow, do they not?’ Hywel asked. ‘I hear they have some small skill with it in Legeceasterscir?’
‘It’s a rare skill, lord King.’
‘So it is, so it is. And wisdom is rare too, and you are going to need wisdom, Lord Uhtred.’
‘I am?’
Hywel gestured to a man sitting next to him, a man whose face was hidden by the deep hood of his cloak. ‘I have strange visitors this night, Lord Uhtred!’ Hywel said cheerfully, ‘you, your pagans, and now a new friend from a far place.’
The stink of the arrow’s burning feathers soured the tent as the man pushed back his hood and I saw it was Cellach, eldest son of Constantine and Prince of Alba.
I bowed my head. ‘Lord Prince,’ I said, and knew that Hywel was right; I would need wisdom.
I was among Æthelstan’s enemies.
Four
Cellach had been my hostage once, years ago, and for a year he had lived with me and I had become fond of him. Back then he had been a boy, now he was a man in his prime. He had his father’s looks, the same short brown hair, blue eyes and serious face. He offered a wary smile as greeting, but said nothing.
‘You would think, would you not,’ Hywel said, ‘that a meeting of the kings of Britain would be a matter for celebration?’
‘Would I, lord King?’
Hywel heard my scepticism and smiled. ‘Why would you say we were gathered, Lord Uhtred?’
I gave him the same answer I had given Egil as we journeyed to Burgham. ‘He’s like a hound,’ I said, ‘he’s marking his boundaries.’
‘So King Æthelstan is pissing on us?’ Hywel suggested. I nodded, and Cellach grimaced. ‘Or,’ Hywel looked at the tent’s roof, ‘is he pissing beyond his frontiers? Enlarging his land?’
‘Is he?’ I asked.
Hywel shrugged. ‘You should know, Lord Uhtred. You’re his friend, are you not?’
‘I thought I was.’
‘You fought for him! Men still talk of your battle at the Lundene gate!’
‘Battles get exaggerated, lord King. Twenty men squabble and in song it becomes a heroic bloodletting.’
‘That’s true,’ Hywel said happily, ‘but I do love my poets! They make my pitiful skirmishes sound like the slaughter of Badon!’ He gave a sly smile as he turned to Cellach. ‘Now that was a real battle, lord Prince! Armies in the thousands! And we Britons massacred the Sais that day! They fell to our spears like wheat before the reaping hook. I’m sure Lord Uhtred can tell you the tale.’
‘It was three hundred years ago,’ I said, ‘or was it four? And even I’m not old enough to remember that story.’
Hywel chuckled. ‘And now
