‘We’ll get wet!’ Eadgifu protested.
‘Wet is better than dead, my lady, now hurry!’
She still hesitated until Awyrgan leaped overboard then waded ashore and held out his hand. I saw her smile as she took it, then Awyrgan, along with the sentries, helped them all into the creek. Eadgifu squealed as the water came over her waist, but Benedetta calmed her. ‘Lord Uhtred is right, my lady. Better to be wet than dead.’ Once at the ship’s side we unceremoniously lifted Eadgifu into the ship. She scowled as she reached the deck. ‘Your husband’s dead,’ I told her with deliberate brutality.
‘Good, may he rot in peace,’ was her curt answer, though I suspect her anger was delivered more towards me for soaking her rich clothes than at her husband. She turned and offered a hand to help Awyrgan into the boat, but Beornoth gently edged her aside and lifted the man by himself. Then Eadgifu saw Halldor and the priest at the stern of the boat and she spat towards them. ‘Why are they here?’
‘Prisoners,’ I said curtly.
‘Kill the Dane,’ she said.
‘He has to answer questions first,’ I told her, then reached down and took one of the babies from Benedetta’s grasp.
‘Bastards are coming!’ Finan warned me from Spearhafoc’s stern.
The two small fishing boats crammed with Æthelhelm’s men were rowing towards us, though they were still a long way off. They were rowing hard, but their boats were clumsy, heavy and sluggish. We pulled the last woman and child aboard, then poled Spearhafoc off the bank and out into deeper water. ‘Oarsmen! Pull!’ I shouted. ‘Finan! Put the bird on the prow!’
That made my men cheer. They liked it when our sleek sparrowhawk carving crested the prow, though in truth she looked more like an eagle than a sparrowhawk because her beak was far too long, but she had savage eyes and a menacing presence. Finan and two other men slotted her into place and hammered home the two pegs that held her firm. The crews of the two fishing boats, seeing us coming eastwards towards them, had stopped rowing and were now standing with spears in their hands. But either the sudden appearance of the sparrowhawk’s feral head or the sight of the small waves beginning to break white and quick at Spearhafoc’s cutwater persuaded them to sit and pull desperately for the southern shore. They feared a ramming. ‘Pull!’ I bellowed at the oarsmen.
The rowers dragged on the oars’ looms, thrusting Spearhafoc still faster. Gerbruht and two other men hauled on the main halliard to hoist the sail. The fishing boats were still trying to escape us and I heard a man scream at his oarsmen to pull harder. I was steering towards them, and, as the sail caught the wind, our ship seemed to leap ahead, but then, just before we reached spear-range, I hauled the steering-oar towards me, and Spearhafoc turned to slide past them on the creek’s further side. We could easily have sunk both fishing boats, but instead I would avoid them. Not because I feared them, but in the closing moments before we rammed the first boat we were likely to be assailed by spears, and I had no wish for a single man of Spearhafoc’s crew to be wounded or worse. We had escaped and that was victory enough.
A dozen spears were hurled as we passed, but all fell far short, and then we were coursing eastwards towards the open sea. We brought the oars inboard and lashed them down. Gerbruht had tied down the sail’s last sheet and so I gave him the steering-oar. ‘Just follow the creek,’ I told him, ‘then steer north. We’re going home.’
‘God be praised,’ he said.
I jumped down from the steering platform. Our two prisoners, the tall, well-dressed Dane and the smaller priest, were under guard by the mainmast. Awyrgan, his clothes soaked, had been joined by the two men who had escaped pursuit with him, and was standing over the prisoners with a drawn sword. He was taunting them. ‘Leave us,’ I told him.
‘I—’
‘Leave us!’ I snarled. He irritated me.
He went to join Eadgifu and her ladies at the stern, and I drew the short knife from my belt. ‘I don’t have time to persuade you to answer my questions,’ I told the two men, ‘so if either of you don’t answer straightaway I’ll blind you both. When did the king die?’
‘A week ago?’ the priest, shivering with fright, answered quickly. ‘Maybe six days. I’ve lost count, lord.’
‘You were with him at the end?’
‘We were in Ferentone,’ the Dane said stiffly.
‘Where he died,’ the priest added quickly.
‘And Æthelhelm was there?’
‘Lord Æthelhelm was with the king to the end,’ Halldor said.
‘And Æthelhelm sent you south?’ The priest nodded. The poor man still looked terrified, and no wonder. I was holding the short knife near his left cheekbone and he was imagining the blade slicing into his eye. I twitched it. ‘He sent you south to do what?’ I demanded.
The priest whimpered, but Halldor answered. ‘To remove the Lady Eadgifu and her children to a place of safety.’
I left that lie unchallenged. Eadgifu might have been safely walled up in a convent, but the two boys would be lucky to see another autumn. The girl, who had no claim to the throne, might have lived, but I doubted it. Æthelhelm would probably wish to cull the whole brood. ‘And the king,’ I said, ‘divided the kingdom?’
‘Yes, lord,’ the priest muttered.
‘Æthelstan is king in Mercia?’ I asked. ‘And that piece of weasel shit, Ælfweard, rules in Wessex?’
‘King Ælfweard rules in Wessex and East Anglia,’ the priest confirmed, ‘and Æthelstan is named King of Mercia.’
‘But only if the Witan confirms the king’s dying wishes,’ Halldor said, ‘which they will not.’
‘They won’t?’
‘Why
