‘I heard they were harsh.’
‘Harsh!’ Hywel was suddenly bitter. ‘Your King Æthelstan demanded twenty-four pounds of gold, three hundred of silver, and ten thousand head of cattle a year. A year! Each year till the crack of doom! And we must give him hawks and hounds too! We are meant to send a hundred birds and two hundred hunting dogs to Gleawecestre each spring so he can choose the best.’
‘And you pay?’ I made it a question, though I knew the answer.
‘What choice do I have? He has the armies of Wessex, of Mercia, and of East Anglia. He has fleets, and my country still has small kingdoms that itch me like fleas. I can fight Æthelstan! But to what end? If we don’t pay the tribute he will come with a horde and the kings of the little kingdoms will join him and Dyfed will be harrowed hill and vale.’
‘So you’ll pay till the crack of doom?’ I asked.
Hywel smiled grimly. ‘The end of time is a long way off, Lord Uhtred, and the wheel of fortune turns, does it not?’
I looked at Cellach. ‘He’s demanding the same of your father, lord Prince?’
‘More,’ Cellach said abruptly.
‘And,’ Hywel continued, ‘now he wants to add the army of Northumbria to his horde. He is pissing beyond his frontiers, Lord Uhtred. He is pissing on you.’
‘Then he’s only doing what you do,’ I said flatly. ‘What you do against all those lesser kings who itch you like fleas. Or what your father does,’ I turned to Cellach, ‘or what he’d like to do against Owain of Strath Clota or against the Kingdom of the Hebrides. Or,’ I hesitated, then decided to confront him, ‘what you’d like to do with my lands.’
Cellach just stared at me. He had to know of Domnall’s visit to Bebbanburg, but he betrayed nothing, said nothing.
Hywel must have sensed the sudden discomfort between us, but he ignored it. ‘King Æthelstan,’ he said, ‘claims to be making peace! A most Christian thing to do, yes?’
‘Peace?’ I asked, as if I had never heard of such a thing.
‘And he makes peace by forcing us to come to this godforsaken place and acknowledge him as our,’ he paused, ‘how can I put it? As our High King?’
‘Monarchus Totius Brittaniae,’ put in a sour voice from the tent’s shadows and I saw a priest sitting on a bench. ‘Monarch of all—’ the priest began to translate.
‘I know what it means,’ I interrupted him.
‘And the monarch of all Britain will tread us underfoot,’ Hywel said softly.
‘Piss on us,’ Cellach added angrily.
‘And to keep this most Christian peace,’ Hywel went on, ‘our High King would have strong garrisons on his borders.’
‘Christian garrisons,’ Cellach put in.
Again I said nothing. Hywel sighed. ‘You know what we’re saying, Lord Uhtred, and we know nothing more except this. Men made oaths to Æthelstan like obedient little boys! I swore to keep the peace, and Constantine did the same. Even Guthfrith knelt.’
‘Guthfrith?’
Hywel looked disgusted. ‘He grovelled like a toad, and swore to let Æthelstan keep troops in his country. And all those oaths were witnessed by churchmen, written on parchments and sealed with wax, and copies were given to us. But there was one oath taken in secret. And all my spies cannot tell me what that oath was, only that Ealdred knelt to the king.’
‘And not for the first time,’ Cellach added snidely.
I ignored that. ‘Ealdred swore?’ I asked Hywel.
‘He swore an oath, but what oath? We don’t know! And once the oath was sworn he was taken out of our sight and out of our hearing, we were only told that he’s an ealdorman now! We must call him lord! But an ealdorman of what? Of where?’
Silence, except for a slight patter of rain on the tent’s roof, a patter that came and went quickly. ‘We don’t know where?’ I asked.
‘Of Cumbria?’ Hywel suggested. ‘Of Northumbria?’
‘Of Bebbanburg?’ Cellach growled.
I turned my head and spat.
‘You don’t like my hospitality?’ Hywel asked, amused.
I spat to keep faith with my promise to Benedetta, and because I did not want to believe what Cellach had suggested. ‘I met Ealdred just now,’ I told Hywel.
‘Ah! I would spit too. I hope you called him “lord”.’
‘I think I called him a rat-faced turd. Something like that.’
Hywel laughed, then stood, which meant we all stood. He gestured me towards the tent’s door. ‘It’s late,’ he said, ‘but let me walk with you, Lord Uhtred.’
A score of my men were waiting outside the tent and they accompanied us, as did twice as many of Hywel’s warriors. ‘I doubt your archer will try again,’ Hywel said, ‘but it’s best to be sure, is it not?’
‘He won’t try, lord King.’
‘It was not one of my men, I promise you. I have no quarrel with Bebbanburg.’
We walked slowly towards the campfires marking my shelters. For a few paces neither of us spoke, then Hywel stopped and touched my elbow. ‘The wheel of fortune turns slowly, Lord Uhtred, but it does turn. It is not my time yet, but that time will come. But I doubt that Constantine will wait for the wheel’s turning.’
‘Yet he swore his oath to Æthelstan?’
‘When a king has three thousand warriors on your frontier, what choice do you have?’
‘Three thousand? I was told he only had two thousand.’
‘Two thousand around Eoferwic and at least another thousand here. And King Constantine can count shields as well as any man. He was forced to promise not to interfere with Northumbria, and to pay tribute. He agreed.’
‘So he’s oath-sworn,’ I said.
‘And so were you and Æthelstan sworn together, but every man in Britain knows what happened to that oath. He promised not to invade your country, yet here he is. You and I follow the old ways, Lord Uhtred, we
