The priests left Bebbanburg next morning, their satchels filled with lies and their heads ringing with tales of how I had raised, protected and fought for the king they served.
‘You think he believed you?’ Benedetta asked me as we watched the priests take the road south.
‘No,’ I said.
‘No?’
‘That kind of man has a nose for truth. But he’s confused. He thinks I lied, but he can’t be sure.’
She put her arm through mine and leaned her head on my shoulder. ‘So what will he tell Æthelstan?’
‘That I probably killed Ealdred,’ I shrugged, ‘and that Northumbria is in chaos.’
Æthelstan claimed to be King of Northumbria, Constantine wanted to be King of Northumbria, and Anlaf believed he was King of Northumbria.
I strengthened Bebbanburg’s ramparts.
There had been a grim satisfaction In Ealdred’s death, but as the summer passed I began to suspect it was a mistake. The idea had been to throw all the blame onto the Scots, to divert Æthelstan’s anger from me to Constantine, but reports from Wessex, sent by friends, suggested that Æthelstan had not been fooled. He sent me no messages, but men reported that he spoke angrily of me and of Bebbanburg. All I had really achieved was to throw Northumbria into chaos.
And Constantine took advantage of that chaos. He was a king, he wanted land because land was a gift he could give to his lords. Lords had tenants, and tenants carried spears, they tilled crops and raised livestock, and crops and livestock were money. And money paid for the spears. Cumbria was not the best land, but it had river valleys where grain grew tall, and hills where sheep could graze, and it was as fertile as most of Constantine’s harsh kingdom. He wanted it.
And in the chaos that followed Guthfrith’s death, when no king was crowned in Eoferwic to claim lordship of all the land, Constantine grew brazen. Eochaid, who had been named ‘ruler’ of Cumbria, held court in Cair Ligualid. Silver was given to the church there and the monks received a precious casket, studded with blood-red carnelians, that contained a chip of the boulder on which Saint Conval had sailed from Ireland to Scotland. The walls of Cair Ligualid were manned by Eochaid’s men, most bearing a cross on their shields, though some carried Owain of Strath Clota’s black shields. At least Anlaf, who claimed to be Guthfrith’s successor, made no move to claim Northumbria. News said he was too distracted by his Norse enemies, that his armies were striking deep into Ireland.
But those Scottish shields meant that Constantine’s troops were now deep inside Cumbria. They were south of the great wall the Romans had built, and Eochaid sent war-bands further south, into the land of the lakes, to demand rent or tribute from the Norse settlers. Most paid, those who refused had their steadings destroyed and their women and children taken as slaves. Constantine denied it, he even denied naming Eochaid as the ruler of Cumbria, claiming that the young man was acting on his own and was doing no more than the Norse did when they sailed from Ireland to take a patch of rough Cumbrian pasture as their own. If Æthelstan could not rule his own territory then what did he expect? Men would come and take what they wanted, and Eochaid was just another such settler.
The summer was waning when Egil came to Bebbanburg in his sleek ship Banamaðr. He brought news. ‘A man named Troels Knudson came to me three days ago,’ he said when he was seated in the hall with a pot of ale.
‘A Norseman,’ I grunted.
‘A Norseman, yes,’ he paused, ‘from Eochaid.’
That surprised me, though there was no reason that it should. Half the men on the land Eochaid claimed to rule were Norse settlers and those who accepted him were treated well. There were no missionaries trying to persuade them to worship the nailed god, the rents were low, and if war came, which it must, then those Norsemen would likely fight in Eochaid’s shield wall. ‘If Eochaid sent him,’ I said, ‘he must have known you would tell me?’
Egil nodded. ‘Troels said as much.’
‘So whatever news he brought is for my ears too.’
‘And comes from Constantine, probably,’ Egil said. He paused to pull Alaina onto his lap. She was fond of him, as all women were. ‘I made you a ship,’ he told her.
‘A real one?’
‘A little one, carved from beechwood.’ He pulled the model from his pouch. It was a beautiful thing, maybe the length of his hand. It had no mast, but there were tiny rowing benches and a fine prow carved with a wolf’s head. ‘You can call it Hunnulv,’ Egil said.
‘Hunnulv?’
‘A she-wolf. She will be the terror of the ocean!’
Alaina was delighted. ‘I’ll have a real ship one day,’ she said, ‘and it will be called Hunnulv.’
‘And how are you going to buy a ship?’ I asked her.
‘I won’t. You will.’ She gave me her most impudent grin.
‘I’m thinking of sending her to one of the hill farms,’ I told Egil, ‘one of the poorest ones where she’ll have to work from daybreak to sundown.’
Alaina looked up at Egil. ‘He won’t!’ she said confidently.
‘I know he won’t,’ Egil said, smiling.
‘So Troels Knudson?’ I suggested.
‘Sees war coming.’
I grunted again. ‘We can all see that.’
‘If there’s a war,’ Alaina asked, ‘can I come?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You’ll be too busy fetching water and washing sheep-shit from your clothes.’
‘War is no place for small girls,’ Egil said gently.
‘So Eochaid sends a Norseman to tell us what we already know?’ I asked.
‘He tells us,’ Egil went on, ‘that the smithies of Wessex and Mercia
