I always carried a pouch of coins, a heavy pouch, though I suspected it would lighten fast unless I could devise a way of escaping the city. I gave Father Oda a handful of silver shillings. I was hesitant to allow Benedetta to go with him, but as Oda pointed out the presence of a woman and a priest would allay suspicions. ‘They are looking for warriors, lord,’ Oda said, ‘not for married couples.’
‘It’s still dangerous for a woman,’ I insisted.
‘And only men may face danger?’ Benedetta challenged me.
‘She will come to no harm,’ Oda said firmly. ‘If any man offends her I will threaten him with the eternal furnaces of hell and the endless torments of Satan.’
I had been raised with those threats hanging over me and, despite my belief in the older gods, I still felt a shiver of fear. I touched the hammer. ‘Go, then,’ I said, and so they did and returned safely three hours later with three sacks of food and two small barrels of ale.
‘No one followed them, lord,’ Aldwyn told us.
‘There was no trouble,’ Oda reported with his usual calm. ‘I talked to the commander of the gate and he tells me there are now four hundred men in the city and more are coming.’
‘By sea?’ I asked, fearing for Spearhafoc.
‘He did not say. Lord Æthelhelm is not here, nor is King Ælfweard. Those two remain in Wintanceaster as far as he knows. The new garrison is commanded by Lord Varin.’
‘Who we saw yesterday.’
‘Indeed.’
‘It was good to breathe proper air,’ Benedetta said wistfully.
She was surely right because the stench of the cesspit was overwhelming. I was sitting on the damp floor, leaning my head against the dank bricks, and I thought that Jarl Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg, had come to this. I was a fugitive in a Lundene cellar leading a handful of warriors, one priest, a royal slave, and a band of ragged children. I touched the hammer hanging at my neck and closed my eyes. ‘We have to leave this damned city,’ I said bitterly.
‘The walls are guarded,’ Father Oda warned me.
I opened my eyes to look at him. ‘Four hundred men, you say. It’s not enough.’
‘No?’ Benedetta looked surprised.
‘Lundene’s wall must be near two miles round?’ I said, looking at Finan, who nodded agreement. ‘And that doesn’t count the river wall,’ I went on. ‘Four hundred men can’t defend two miles of wall. You’d need two and a half thousand men to fight off any attack.’
‘But four hundred men can guard the gates,’ Finan said quietly.
‘But not the river wall. Too many gaps in that.’
‘Reinforcements are coming,’ Father Oda reminded me, ‘and there’s more.’
‘More?’
‘No one can move in the streets after sunset,’ he said. ‘Varin sent men to announce that edict. Folk must stay indoors until sunrise.’
No one spoke for a moment. The children were tearing into the bread and cheese that Benedetta had given them. ‘No!’ she cried sternly, stopping their squabbling. ‘You must have manners! Children without manners are worse than animals. You, boy,’ she pointed at Aldwyn, ‘you have a knife and you will cut the food. You will cut it evenly, the same for everyone.’
‘Yes, lady,’ he said.
Finan grinned at the boy’s obedience. ‘You’re thinking,’ he said to me, ‘of stealing a boat?’
‘What else? We can’t drop over the wall into the city’s ditch, we won’t fight our way through a gate without starting a pursuit by horsemen, but a boat might serve.’
‘They’ll have captured the wharves,’ Finan said, ‘and be guarding them. They’re not fools.’
‘There were soldiers on the wharves, lord,’ Aldwyn put in.
‘I know where we might find a boat,’ I said, and looked at Benedetta.
She looked back, her eyes glinting in the cellar’s darkness. ‘You are thinking of Gunnald Gunnaldson?’ she asked.
‘You told me his wharves are protected by fences? They’re separate from the other docks?’
‘They are,’ she said, ‘but maybe they captured his ships too?’
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘or maybe not. But I made you a promise.’
‘Yes, lord, you did.’ She offered me one of her rare smiles.
No one else understood what we spoke about, nor did I explain. ‘Tomorrow,’ I said, ‘we go tomorrow.’
Because Uhtred, son of Uhtred, the killer of priests and the would-be killer of a king would become a killer of slavers too.
Aldwyn and his younger brother, who everyone called the Ræt, were my scouts again. They were gone for much of the day, and the longer they stayed away the more nervous I became. I had two men standing guard outside the cellar mouth, concealed there by the mounds of rubble. I joined them at noon to escape the foetid stench of the cesspit and found Benedetta with one of the smaller girls. ‘She’s called Alaina,’ she told me.
‘Pretty name,’ I said.
‘For a pretty girl,’ Benedetta was cuddling the child, who had very dark hair, frightened eyes, and skin the same light golden colour as Benedetta. I guessed she was seven or eight years old, and I had noticed her in the cellar’s gloom because she was both better dressed and looked to be in better health then the other children. She had also looked more miserable, her eyes red from crying. Benedetta stroked the girl’s hair. ‘She came here just before us!’
‘Yesterday?’
Benedetta nodded. ‘Yesterday, and her mother is like me. From Italy.’ She said something in her own language to Alaina, then looked back to me. ‘A slave.’ She spoke defiantly, as if it were my fault.
‘The child’s a slave?’ I asked.
Benedetta shook her head. ‘No, no. Nor is the mother any more. Her mama is married to one of Merewalh’s men and she left the house to take food to her husband and the other sentries. That’s when the enemy came.’
‘The girl was alone?’
‘Alone.’ She bent to kiss the child’s hair. ‘Her mother said she would be home soon, but she never came home. And the poor child heard screaming and she ran from the sound. Aldwyn found her
