‘You want to be pursued by three shiploads of Æthelhelm’s warriors?’ I asked in return.
‘No, lord.’
‘It was necessary,’ I said, though in truth I doubted that any of the three ships could have caught Spearhafoc. They were typical West Saxon ships, well-made but heavy, brutish to row and sluggish under sail.
The wind had gone around to the south-west. The evening air was warm, the sky almost cloudless, though now smirched by the pyre of dark smoke from the burning boats. The tide was low, but had turned and the flood had begun. I had moved Spearhafoc well away from the blazing ships and moored her to the most northerly wharf, close to the entrance channel. Fisherfolk watched from their houses, but they stayed well clear both of the fire and of us. They were wary, and with good reason. The sun was low in the west, but the summer days were long and we had two or three hours of daylight left. ‘I won’t stay here overnight, my lady,’ I told Eadgifu.
‘We’ll be safe, won’t we?’
‘Probably. But we still won’t stay.’
‘Where do we go?’
‘We’ll find a mooring on Sceapig,’ I said, ‘then if we’ve heard nothing from your brother we go north tomorrow.’ I watched the village through the shimmer of fire. No one had appeared from Fæfresham, so whoever had won the confrontation in the town was evidently staying there. Two ravens flew high above the smoke. They were flying north and I could not have wished for a better sign from the gods.
‘Æthelstan might be in Lundene,’ Eadgifu told me.
I looked at her, struck as ever by her loveliness. ‘Why would he be there, my lady?’
‘Lundene belongs to Mercia, doesn’t it?’
‘It did once,’ I said. ‘Your husband’s father changed that. It belongs to Wessex now.’
‘Nevertheless,’ she said, ‘I heard that Æthelstan would garrison Lundene as soon as he heard of my husband’s death.’
‘But your husband still lives,’ I said, though whether that was true or not I did not know.
‘I pray so,’ she said entirely unconvincingly. ‘Yet surely Prince Æthelstan must have forces near Lundene?’
She was a cunning bitch, as clever as she was beautiful. I say cunning because her words made absolute sense. If she was right and Edward had divided his kingdom then Æthelstan, who was no fool and who must have heard of the will’s contents, would move quickly to take Lundene and so sever East Anglia from Wessex. And Eadgifu, who well knew of my long friendship with Æthelstan, was trying to persuade me to take her to Lundene rather than to Bebbanburg.
‘We don’t know that Æthelstan is in Lundene,’ I said, ‘and we won’t know until after Edward is dead.’
‘They say the prince has put his troops just north of Lundene,’ Benedetta said.
‘Who’s they?’
She shrugged. ‘Folk in Lundene say that.’
‘A king is dying,’ I said, ‘and whenever a king dies there are rumours and more rumours. Believe nothing you cannot see with your own eyes.’
‘But if Æthelstan is in Lundene,’ Eadgifu persisted, ‘you would take me there?’
I hesitated, then nodded. ‘If he’s there, yes.’
‘And he will let my children live?’ she asked. Besides Edmund she had two babies, a boy called Eadred and a girl named Eadburh.
‘Æthelstan is not a man to kill children,’ I said, which was not the answer she wanted, ‘but if you have a choice between Ælfweard and Æthelstan, choose Æthelstan.’
‘What I want,’ she said angrily, ‘is Ælfweard dead and my son on the throne.’
‘With you ruling for him?’ I asked, but she had no answer to that, or at least none that she wanted to speak.
‘Lord!’ Immar called. ‘Lord!’ and I turned to see three horsemen appear in the shroud of smoke that drifted from the burning boats. The horsemen saw us and spurred towards us.
‘Awyrgan!’ Eadgifu shrieked the name with alarm. She stood and gazed at the men who flogged their tired horses towards our wharf. Behind them came a score of red-cloaked men in pursuit. ‘Awyrgan!’ Eadgifu shouted again, fear for him plain in her voice.
‘Gerbruht!’ I called. ‘Cut the forward line!’
‘You can’t leave him here,’ Eadgifu screamed at me.
‘Cut it!’ I bellowed.
Gerbruht sliced through the bow line with an axe and I drew Serpent-Breath and moved to the aft line. Eadgifu clutched at my arm. ‘Let me go!’ I snarled, shook her off, then sliced through the sealhide rope. Spearhafoc trembled. The tide was pushing her onto the wharf, but the wind was against the tide and there was just enough wind on the furled sail to float us out into the channel. Beornoth helped by seizing an oar and thrusting against a weed-thick piling. The three horsemen had reached the wharf. They threw themselves from their saddles and ran. I saw the terror on Awyrgan’s face because Æthelhelm’s men were close behind, their horses’ hooves drumming loud on the wharf’s timbers. ‘Jump!’ I shouted. ‘Jump!’
They jumped. They made a desperate life-saving leap, and two collapsed sprawling on Spearhafoc’s rowing benches while Awyrgan fell just short, but managed to grasp Spearhafoc’s low midships rail where two of my men took hold of him. The pursuing horsemen reined in and two of them threw spears. One blade thumped into the baulks of timber supporting our mast, the second missed Awyrgan by a finger’s breadth, but the men in Spearhafoc’s bow were using oars to pole her off the channel’s muddy bank and north towards the wider waters of the Swalwan Creek. More spears followed, but all fell short.
‘If we’d stayed,’ I told Eadgifu, ‘those horsemen would have rained spears on us. Men would have been wounded, men would have been killed,’
‘He almost
