There was little river traffic, just two more hay barges and some fishing craft. Our long sweeps creaked in their tholes, giving us just enough speed for the steering-oar to bite. The sky slowly darkened, pricked with the first stars, and a half-moon was bright overhead as the sun died in scarlet glory. By now, I thought, Merewalh’s men had swept the enemy out of Toteham and had harried them south. The fires would soon be lit on the heaths, telling Æthelhelm that an enemy had come. Let him stare north, I prayed, let him stare north as we crept westwards through the night.
Towards the city of darkness.
We reached the city without going aground, the flooding tide carrying us safely in the deepest channels. We were not alone. Two ships passed us, close together, their oar-blades flashing in the moonlight, and both ships were crammed with men. The leading ship hailed us as she passed, wanting to know where we were from, and Father Oda called back that we were Ealhstan’s men from Herutceaster. ‘Where’s Herutceaster?’ I muttered to him.
‘I made it up,’ he said loftily. ‘They won’t know.’
‘Let’s hope we’re not too late!’ a man from the second ship shouted. ‘All those Mercian girls just waiting for us!’ He jerked his hips and his tired oarsmen managed a cheer, then the two ships were past us and became mere shadows on the moon-glossed river.
We could smell the city from miles away. I gazed north, hoping to see the glow of fires from Merewalh’s men, but saw nothing. Nor, truly, did I expect to. The heaths were far off, but Lundene was coming ever closer. The flood was nearing its end and we quickened the big oars as we rowed past the city’s eastern bastion. A torch burned there and I saw a dull red cloak and the red reflection of flame from a spear-point. The wharves, as ever, were dense with shipping, while a long ship with a high prow on which a cross was mounted was moored to the stone wall where Gisela and I had lived. It was Waormund’s ship, I was certain, but no one watched from the stone terrace. A light flickered behind a shutter of the house, then we were past and I could hear men singing in the Dead Dane tavern. Once past the tavern I searched the wharves for a place to berth. There was no empty space, so we moored the three barges outboard of other ships, men jumping from our decks to lash our clumsy craft to the landward hulls. A man crawled from beneath the steering platform of the ship I had chosen. ‘Who are you?’ he asked irritably.
‘Troops from Herutceaster,’ I said.
‘Where’s Herutceaster?’
‘North of Earsling,’ I said.
‘Funny man,’ he growled, saw that Vidarr was doing no damage to his ship, but merely tying off our lines, and so went back to his bed.
There were sentries on the wharves, but none near us, nor did those who had seen us arrive take much notice. One sauntered down the long landward wharf where torches burned feebly in brackets mounted on the river wall. He stared across the intervening ships and saw that our barges were filled with troops, some wearing the distinctive red cloak, and so wandered back to his post. It was evident no one saw anything remarkable in our arrival, we were just the latest of Æthelhelm’s levies to come from his estates in East Anglia. ‘I wonder how many troops are here?’ Father Oda said to me.
‘Too many.’
‘Full of comfort, aren’t you?’ he said, making the sign of the cross. ‘We need to know what’s happening.’
‘What’s happening,’ I said, ‘is that Æthelhelm is gathering the biggest army he can possibly muster. Two, three thousand men? Maybe more.’
‘He’ll find it hard to feed that many,’ Oda said.
That was true. Feeding an army was a much harder task than assembling one. ‘So perhaps he plans to march soon,’ I guessed, ‘then overwhelm Æthelstan by sheer numbers and so be done with it.’
‘It would be good to know if that’s true,’ the priest said and, without another word, he climbed up onto the next ship.
‘Where are you going?’ I called after him.
‘To find news, of course.’ He crossed the two ships that lay between our barge and the wharf and I saw him walk towards the nearest group of sentries. He talked to them for a long time, then made the sign of the cross, presumably giving them a blessing, before walking back. I helped him down onto our deck.
‘The sentries,’ he said, ‘are East Anglians. And they’re not happy. Lord Varin is dead.’
‘You sound sorry too.’
‘I did not dislike Varin,’ Father Oda said carefully. He brushed his black robe, then sat on the barge’s low rail. ‘He was not a bad man, but he was killed for allowing you to escape. He hardly deserved that fate.’
‘For allowing me to escape! He was put to death?’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘I am!’
Oda shrugged. ‘Æthelhelm knows you swore an oath to kill him. He fears that oath.’
‘He fears a pagan’s oath?’
‘A pagan’s oath,’ Oda said sharply, ‘has the devil’s force, and a man is wise to fear Satan.’
I looked across the river at the few flickering lights showing in the settlement on the southern bank. ‘If letting me escape deserves death,’ I said, ‘then surely Æthelhelm should kill Waormund too?’
Oda shook his head. ‘Waormund is beloved of Lord Æthelhelm and Varin was not. Waormund is a West Saxon and Varin was not.’ He paused and I listened to the water rippling past the hull. We were well downstream of the bridge, but I could still hear the river pouring ceaselessly through the narrow arches. ‘The boy was allowed to kill him,’ Oda went on bleakly.
‘Ælfweard?’
‘It seems Lord Varin was tied to a post and the boy was given a sword. It took some time.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘Men were made to watch, and were told it
