And still I stared. Edward was dividing his kingdom? That was madness. His father’s dream had been to make one kingdom out of four, and Edward had brought that dream so close to reality, yet now he would take an axe to it? And he believed that would bring peace? ‘Truly?’ I asked.
‘Truly!’ Eadgifu answered. ‘Æthelstan will rule in Mercia and the nasty pig boy will rule the other two kingdoms until my brother defeats him. Then my Edmund will be king.’
Madness, I thought again, pure madness. Fate, that malevolent bitch, had surprised me again, and I tried to persuade myself that it was none of my business. Let Ælfweard and Æthelstan fight it out, let the Saxons kill each other in a welter of blood and I would go back north. But the malevolent bitch had still not done with me. Æthelhelm lived, and I had made an oath.
We rode on.
Once back in the harbour we piled our captured shields, weapons, and mail in Spearhafoc’s belly. They could all be sold. The ship was floating some three or four feet below the level of the wharf and Eadgifu protested that she could not jump down, nor would she be carried. ‘I am a queen,’ I heard her complain to her Italian companion, ‘not some fishwife.’
Gerbruht and Folcbald ripped up two long timbers from the wharf and made a crude gangplank, which, after some protests, Eadgifu agreed to use. Her priest escorted her down the perilous slope. Her eldest son, Edmund, followed her down and immediately ran to the heap of captured weapons and dragged out a sword with a blade as long as he was tall. ‘Put it down, boy!’ I called from the wharf.
‘You should call him prince,’ the priest reproved me.
‘I’ll call him prince when he proves he deserves the title. Put it down!’ Edmund ignored me and tried to swing the blade. ‘Put it down, you little shit!’ I bellowed.
The boy did not drop the sword, just stared at me with defiance that turned to fear as I jumped down into Spearhafoc’s belly. He began to cry, but Benedetta, the Italian woman, intervened. She stepped in front of me and took the sword from Edmund’s hand. ‘If you are told to drop a sword,’ she said calmly, ‘then you drop it. And do not cry. Your father is a king and maybe you will be a king one day, and kings do not cry.’ She tossed the sword onto the pile of captured weapons. ‘Now say you are sorry to the Lord Uhtred.’
Edmund looked at me, muttered something I could not hear, then fled to Spearhafoc’s bows where he clung to his mother’s skirts. Eadgifu put an arm around him and glared at me. ‘He meant no harm, Lord Uhtred,’ she said coldly.
‘He might have meant no harm,’ I answered harshly, ‘but he could have caused it.’
‘He could also have hurt himself, my lady,’ Benedetta said.
Eadgifu nodded at that, she even smiled, and I understood why she had called the Italian woman her treasured companion. There was a confidence in Benedetta that suggested she was Eadgifu’s protector. She was a strong woman, as competent as she was attractive.
‘Thank you,’ I said to her softly.
Benedetta, I saw, had a small smile. She caught my eye and the smile stayed. I held her gaze, wondering at her beauty, but then the priest stepped between us. ‘Edmund is a prince,’ he insisted, ‘and should be treated as royalty.’
‘And I’m an ealdorman,’ I snarled, ‘and should be treated with respect. And who are you?’
‘I’m the prince’s tutor, lord, and the queen’s confessor. Father Aart.’
‘Then you must be a busy man,’ I said.
‘Busy, lord?’
‘I imagine Queen Eadgifu has much to confess,’ I said, and Father Aart blushed and looked away. ‘And is she a queen?’ I demanded. ‘Wessex doesn’t recognise that title.’
‘She is Queen of Mercia until we hear of her husband’s death,’ he said primly, and he was, indeed, a prim little man with a coronet of wispy brown hair surrounding a bald pate. He noticed the hammer at my neck and grimaced. ‘The queen,’ he continued, still looking at the hammer, ‘wishes that we wait for news from the town.’
‘We’ll wait,’ I said.
‘And then, lord?’
‘If she wishes to go with her brother? She can go. Otherwise she goes with us to Bebbanburg.’ I looked up at the wharf. ‘Gerbruht!’
‘Lord?’
‘Get rid of those ships!’ I pointed to the three ships that had brought Æthelhelm’s men from Lundene to this muddy harbour. ‘Take what’s useful from them first,’ I called after him.
We salvaged sealhide ropes, new oars made from larch wood, two barrels of ale, three of salted pork, and a faded banner of the leaping stag. We heaped them all in Spearhafoc, then Gerbruht fetched a metal bucket of embers from the tavern’s hearth and blew the embers to life in the bellies of the three ships. ‘The crosses,’ Father Aart said when he realised what was happening.
‘Crosses?’
‘On the front of the ships! You can’t burn our Lord’s symbol.’
I growled in frustration, but recognised his unhappiness. ‘Gerbruht,’ I bellowed, ‘remove the crosses from the prows!’
All three ships were alight before he and Beornoth managed to knock out the pegs holding the crosses. ‘What do I do with it?’ he asked when the first came loose.
‘I don’t care! Float it!’
He threw the cross overboard, then jumped to help Beornoth loosen the second cross. They freed it, scrambled aft, and escaped the flames just in time, but were too late to save the third
