‘Down here, lord!’ Oswi called.
Oswi was young, clever, and a good warrior. I had met him when he was an orphan haunting the streets of Lundene and making a living by theft. He had tried to steal from me, had been caught and, instead of giving him the whipping he deserved, I had pardoned him and trained him as a fighter. He knew the city, and he must have known what was in my mind because he led us downhill through a maze of alleys. The footing was treacherous in the dark and I almost fell twice. Father Oda was guiding Benedetta now, the rest of us all had drawn swords. The noise in the night was louder, the roar of men, of screaming women, of howling dogs and the hammer of iron-shod hooves, but no enemy had yet pierced these narrow alleys in the western part of the city.
‘Stop!’ Oswi held up a hand. We had reached the street that ran just inside the old river wall, and the bridge was close to our left. We were hidden by dark shadow, but the approach to the bridge was lit by torches and there were men there, too many men, men in mail and helmets, men with shields, spears and swords. None wore the dull red cloak of Æthelhelm’s men, but nor did any of them carry Æthelstan’s symbol on their shields.
‘East Anglians?’ Finan asked me.
‘Who else?’
The East Anglians were barring our way eastwards, and we shrank back into deep shadow as dozens of horsemen came into sight. They came from the east, were led by a man wearing a red cloak, and were carrying long spears. I heard laughter, then a command to go uphill. The hoofbeats sounded again as we shrank into the alley, hidden there by shadow and fear.
I swore for the third time. I had hoped to get down to the tangle of wharves and work my way along the river bank to the house, but that had always been a forlorn ambition. Berg and his men had either been overwhelmed and slaughtered, or else they had reached Spearhafoc and were even now out in the river’s darkness. But had this East Anglian army come by boat too? That seemed unlikely. It would take a seaman of uncanny ability to negotiate the seaward twists of the Temes in the moon-shrouded darkness, but one thing was sure; the eastern part of the city, the part I needed to reach, was swarming with the enemy.
‘We go north,’ I said, and knew I was trying to lead us out of a mistake. There had never been a real chance of reaching Spearhafoc and in taking my men and Benedetta down the hill I had gone in the wrong direction.
‘North?’ Oswi asked.
‘If we can leave the city,’ I said, ‘we have a chance to reach the road to Werlameceaster.’
‘We have no horses,’ Father Oda pointed out calmly.
‘Then, damn it, we walk!’ I snarled.
‘And the enemy,’ he went on, still speaking calmly, ‘will send horsemen on patrol.’
I said nothing, nor did anyone else speak until Finan broke the silence. ‘It is always wise,’ he said drily and using the words I had spoken to Bedwin not long before, ‘to listen to a Dane when he talks of warfare.’
‘So we won’t stay on the road,’ I said. ‘We’ll use the woods where the horsemen can’t find us. Oswi, get us to one of the northern gates.’
The attempt to reach the northern city wall also failed. Whoever led the East Anglian army was no fool. He had sent men to capture and then guard each of the seven gates. Two of those gates pierced the walls of the Roman fort built at the city’s north-western corner and, when we drew close, we heard the sound of men fighting. There was an open space in front of the fort and to the west of the ruined amphitheatre, and a score of bodies lay on that paved square that was lit by the torches burning on the palace walls. Blood had run on the stone and trickled into the weed-thick gaps between the old paving slabs where men in red cloaks were stripping the corpses of mail. The fort’s southern gate, one of the two that led into the city, was wide open, and six horsemen came through the arch. They were led by an imposing man who rode a great black stallion, wore a white cloak, and had a mail coat of brightly polished metal. ‘That’s Varin,’ Father Oda whispered.
‘Varin?’ I asked. We were again hidden in the deep shadow of an alley.
‘An East Anglian,’ Father Oda explained, ‘and one of Lord Æthelhelm’s commanders.’
‘Varin is a Danish name,’ I said.
‘He is a Dane,’ the priest said, ‘and like me he is a Christian. I know him well. We were friends once.’
‘In East Anglia?’ I asked. I knew that Father Oda’s parents had settled in East Anglia, sailing there from their home across the North Sea.
‘In East Anglia,’ Father Oda said, ‘which is as much a Danish land as it is Saxon. A third of Lord Æthelhelm’s East Anglian troops are Danes. Maybe more than a third?’
That should not have surprised me. East Anglia had fallen to the Danes before Alfred had come to the throne and had long been ruled by Danish kings. Their sovereignty ended when Edward’s West Saxon army defeated them and, though
