‘Yes, lord King,’ I said again.
We talked for a few more minutes, then were dismissed. Finan and I walked slowly back to the Skull Gate where Guthfrith’s head still had lank hair and scraps of raven-torn flesh. Our feet crunched in the sand as a wind from the sea stirred the thin dune grass. ‘Do you believe him?’ Finan asked.
‘Who can you trust in the north?’ I asked.
And all I knew was that Æthelstan was going to war.
But against whom?
‘It makes no sense,’ Benedetta insisted that night.
‘No?’
‘He says Constantine was humiliated, yes? So Constantine makes trouble because he is humbled. But now Æthelstan will humiliate Constantine again? So there will just be more trouble!’
‘Maybe.’
‘Not maybe. I am right! The dragon did not lie. The evil comes from the north. Æthelstan is waking the dragon! You see if I am not right.’
‘You’re always right, amore,’ I said, ‘you’re from Italy.’
She gave me a surprisingly sharp jab on the arm, then laughed. And, as I lay sleepless, I thought she was right. Did Æthelstan really hope to conquer Scotland? And how could he ever subdue their savage tribes? Or had he lied to me? Was he telling me that he would attack Scotland so that I was not ready for a sudden assault on Bebbanburg?
So we waited. By night the sky around Bebbanburg glowed with the fires of Æthelstan’s army, and by day the smoke smeared into the gathering clouds. Where the gaudy tent had stood there was now a wooden fence, higher than a man and with a fighting step, ostensibly to stop us making a sally into the great encampment where, every day, more men arrived. Æthelstan’s ships patrolled offshore, and six more warships joined them. It might not be a true siege, but it looked like one.
Then, some two weeks after Æthelstan had arrived, he went north. It took a whole day for his army to leave. Hundreds of men and horses, hundreds of packhorses, all filing north on the road that led to Scotland. He had not lied to me. The ships went too, spreading their dragon sails to a summer wind, and behind them came Spearhafoc.
I had promised Æthelstan that I would help, but I had no intention of stripping Bebbanburg of its garrison. I had pleaded age. ‘A month or more on horseback, lord King? I’m too old for that. I’ll send my son with a hundred horsemen, but with your permission I’ll join your fleet instead.’
He gazed at me for a few heartbeats. ‘I want the Scots to see your banner,’ he said. ‘Your son will carry it?’
‘Of course, and the wolf’s head is on my sail.’
He had nodded almost absently. ‘Bring your ships then, and welcome.’
There would have been a time, I thought, when he would have pleaded for me to ride with him, to lead my men alongside his, but he was confident of his own strength now and, it was a bitter thought, he believed I was too old to be useful. He wanted me to go north, but only to show that he could command my loyalty.
And so, with a crew of forty-six, I took Spearhafoc out of the harbour to join his fleet that ghosted north in front of a small and fitful wind. Æthelstan might have told me to take my ships, but I took just Spearhafoc, leaving most of my men to garrison Bebbanburg under Finan’s command He hated the sea. I loved it.
It was a strange sea that day. It was calm. The southerly wind threw up no waves, but sighed across a long shining swell. Æthelstan’s fleet was in no hurry, content to keep pace with his army that followed the northern road. Some of his ships even shortened sail so as not to outpace the plumper cargo ships that carried food for the army. It was a warm day for late summer, and we headed into a pearly haze, and Spearhafoc, good ship that she was, gradually slid through the fleet. She alone had a beast on her prow, the arrogant sparrowhawk, while the ships we overtook had crosses. The largest of them, a big pale-timbered ship called Apostol, was commanded by Ealdorman Coenwulf, the leader of Æthelstan’s fleet, and as we drew near a man beckoned to us from the Apostol’s steering platform. Coenwulf stood beside the man, pointedly ignoring us. I steered Spearhafoc close enough to alarm the man who had beckoned. ‘You’re not to get ahead of the fleet!’ he shouted.
‘I can’t hear you!’
Coenwulf, a pompous, red-faced man, very conscious of his noble birth, turned and frowned. ‘Your place is in the rearguard!’ he called abruptly.
‘We’re praying for more wind too!’ I shouted back, waved cheerily and pushed the steering-oar over. ‘Arrogant bastard,’ I said to Gerbruht, who just grinned. Coenwulf shouted again, but that time I really did not hear him and I let Spearhafoc run until she was leading the fleet.
Coenwulf’s ships sheltered in the Tuede that night and I went ashore to see Egil who I found on the fighting platform of his palisade and gazing upstream to where the sky was reddened by the fires of Æthelstan’s camp. It was far off at the first ford crossing the Tuede. ‘So he’s really doing it?’ Egil asked.
‘Invading Constantine’s land? Yes.’
‘Poking the dragon, eh?’
‘That’s what Benedetta said.’
‘She’s a smart one,’ Egil said.
‘And I’m what?’
‘The lucky one.’ He grinned. ‘So you’re sailing north?’
‘As a show of loyalty.’
‘Then I’ll come too. You might need me.’
‘Me? Need you?’
He grinned again. ‘There’s a storm coming.’
‘I’ve never seen the weather so settled!’
‘But it’s coming! Two days? Three?’ Egil was bored, he loved the sea, and so he came to Spearhafoc, bringing his mail, helmet, weapons and enthusiasm, and leaving his brother Thorolf to guard his land. ‘See if I’m not right,’ he greeted me as he clambered aboard, ‘there’ll be a big blow soon!’
He was right.
