‘Tonight?’ Thorolf asked.
‘Tonight, and we go quietly, but we go!’
‘Jesus,’ Finan said.
‘The king mustn’t see us readying to leave,’ I insisted, then turned to Finan. ‘We go first, you, me and our men.’ I turned to Egil and Thorolf, ‘but you and your men will leave just before dawn.’
No one spoke for a few heartbeats. The wine still bubbled and hissed at the fire’s edges. ‘You really think Æthelstan plans to steal Bebbanburg?’ Finan asked.
‘I know he wants it! And he wants the four of us at his feast tomorrow, and while we’re there he’ll have men riding to Bebbanburg, and they’ll be carrying a letter to my son, and my son and Æthelstan are old friends and my son will believe whatever the letter says. He’ll open the Skull Gate and Æthelstan’s men will ride in and they’ll take Bebbanburg.’
‘Then we’d better leave now,’ Finan said, standing.
‘We ride south,’ I told Finan, ‘because not far away there’s a Roman track to Heahburh.’
‘You know that?’ he sounded surprised.
‘I know there’s a road south from Heahburh. It took the lead and silver to Lundene. We just have to find it, and Æthelstan won’t expect us to use that road. He’ll expect us to go north to Cair Ligualid and follow the wall east.’
‘And that’s the road we take?’ Egil asked.
‘Yes.’ Egil had brought far more men to Burgham than I, and my hope was that Æthelstan would believe we had all taken the Roman road north and so send his pursuit that way while Finan and I rode like demons across the high country. ‘Go before dawn,’ I told Egil, ‘and ride fast! He’ll send men after you. And keep the fires burning here till you leave! Make them think we’re still here.’
‘What if Æthelstan’s men try to stop us?’ Thorolf asked.
‘Don’t attack them! Don’t give them the excuse to start a war against Bebbanburg. They have to draw the first blood.’
‘Then we can fight?’ Thorolf asked.
‘You’re Norsemen, what else would you do?’
Thorolf grinned, but his brother looked worried. ‘And when we get home,’ he asked, ‘what do we do?’
I did not know what to say. Æthelstan would surely interpret my flight as a hostile act, but would he think it signalled a Scottish alliance? I sat for a moment, riven by indecision. Better perhaps to accept his offer? But I was the Lord of Bebbanburg, I had spent most of my life trying to recapture the great fortress, and would I now meekly surrender it to Æthelstan’s ambition to see his flag flaunted from my walls? ‘If he attacks our land,’ I told Egil and Thorold, ‘make your best peace with him. Don’t die for Bebbanburg. If he won’t make peace, then take to your ships. Go viking!’
‘We will …’ Thorolf growled.
‘… take ships to Bebbanburg,’ Egil finished for his brother, who nodded.
I had fought so long and so hard for my home. It had been stolen from me when I was a child, and I had fought the length and breadth of Britain to regain it.
And now I must fight for Bebbanburg again. We would ride for home.
Six
We rode through the moon-sifted darkness. When the clouds covered the moon we had to stop and wait till our path was visible again, and in the roughest places we led the horses, stumbling in the night, fleeing from a king who swore he was my friend.
It had taken time to saddle the horses, to cram bags with food, then to go south past the Welsh encampment and follow the Roman road that would eventually have led us all the way to Lundene. We were seen, of course, but no sentry challenged us, and my hope was that no one would think a group of horsemen travelling south were really intent on fleeing northwards. Behind us the fires in our abandoned camp flared high as Egil’s men fed them.
The road forded a river, then ran straight through stone-walled pastureland to a small settlement where dogs barked behind palisades. I had only the haziest idea of this countryside, but knew we needed to turn north-eastwards and at the settlement’s centre a road led that way. It looked like a cattle-track, deep trampled by hooves, but I saw broken stone edging the verges that suggested it had been made by the Romans. ‘Is that a Roman road?’ I asked Finan.
‘God knows.’
‘We need to go in that direction.’
‘Then it’s probably as good a road as any.’
I was following a star, just as we did at sea. We went slowly because both the road and its verges were rough, but before the stars were lost in encroaching clouds they told me the road was indeed taking us north-east towards the bare hills that slowly showed themselves in a grey dawn. I feared that the crude track was not the road I sought, and that it would end at the hills, but it climbed slowly towards even steeper hills, their summits shrouded in cloud. I looked behind to see a pall of smoke over distant Burgham. ‘How long will it take us to get home, lord?’ Aldwyn, my servant, asked anxiously.
‘Four or five days if we’re lucky. Maybe six?’
And we would be lucky if we did not lose a horse. I had chosen a route across the hills because it was the shortest way home, but in this part of Northumbria the slopes were steep, the streams fast, and the road uncertain. By now, I hoped, Egil was well on his way north towards Cair Ligualid and, I assumed, was being followed by Æthelstan’s troops. As we climbed higher I constantly looked back to see if men
