I remembered Tatwine, a barrel of a man and a real fighter, whose arms were smothered in blotchy black marks, each made with a needle and ink and representing a man killed in battle, He gave me a crooked smile. 'Still alive, lord?'
'Still alive, Tatwine.'
'Be good to fight alongside you again.'
Good to have you here,' I said, and it was. Few men are natural-born warriors, and a man like Tatwine was worth a dozen others.
Alfred had ordered the army to assemble again. He did it partly so the men could see their own numbers and take heart from that, and he did it, too, because he knew his speech the previous night had left men confused and uninspired. He would try again.
'I wish he wouldn't,' Leofric grumbled. 'He can make sermons, but he can't make speeches.'
We gathered at the foot of a small hill. The light was fading. Alfred had planted his two banners, the dragon and the cross, on the summit of the hill, but there was a small wind so the flags stirred rather than flew. He climbed to stand between them. He was alone, dressed in a mail coat over which he wore the faded blue cloak. A group of priests began to follow him, but he waved them back to the hill's foot, then be just stared at us huddled in the meadow beneath him and for a time he said nothing and I sensed the discomfort in the ranks. They wanted fire put into their souls and expected holy water instead.
'Tomorrow!' he said suddenly. His voice was high, but it carried clearly enough. 'Tomorrow we fight!
Tomorrow! The Feast of St John the Apostle!'
'Oh God,' Leofric grumbled next to me, 'up to our arsholes in more saints.'
'John the Apostle was condemned to death!' Alfred said, 'he was condemned to be boiled in oil! Yet he survived the ordeal! He was plunged into the boiling oil and he lived! He came from the cauldron a stronger man! And we shall do the same.' He paused, watching us, and no one responded, we all just gazed at him, and he must have known that his homily on Saint John was not working for he made an abrupt gesture with his right hand as if he were sweeping all the saints aside. 'And tomorrow,' he went on, 'is also a day for warriors. A day to kill your enemies. A day to make the pagans wish they had never heard of Wessex!'
He paused again, and this time there were some murmurs of agreement.
'This is our land! We fight for our homes! For our wives! For our children! We fight for Wessex!'
'We do,' someone shouted.
'And not just Wessex!' Alfred's voice was stronger now. 'We have men from Mercia, men from Northumbria, men from East Anglia!' I knew of none from East Anglia and only Beocca and I were from Northumbria, but no one seemed to care.
'We are the men of England,' Alfred shouted, 'and we fight for all Saxons.'
Silence again. The men liked what they heard, but the idea of England was in Alfred's head, not theirs. He had a dream of one country, but it was too big a dream for the army in the meadow.
'And why are the Danes here?' Alfred asked. 'They want your wives for their pleasure, your children for their slaves and your homes for their own, but they do not know us!' He said the last six words slowly, spacing them out, shouting each one distinctly. They do not know our swords,' he went on,
'they do not know our axes, our spears, our fierceness! Tomorrow we teach them! Tomorrow we kill them! Tomorrow we hack them into pieces! Tomorrow we make the ground red with their blood and make them whimper! Tomorrow we shall make them call for our mercy!'
'None!' a man called out.
‘No mercy!' Alfred shouted, and I knew he did not mean it. He would have offered every mercy to the Danes, he would have offered them the love of God and tried to reason with them, but in the last few minutes he had at last learned how to talk to warriors.
'Tomorrow,' he shouted, 'you do not fight for me! I fight for you! I fight for Wessex! I fight for your wives, for your children and your homes! Tomorrow we fight and, I swear to you on my father's grave and on my children's lives, tomorrow we shall win!'
And that started the cheering. It was not, in all honesty, a great battle speech, but it was the best Alfred ever gave and it worked. Men stamped the ground and those who carried their shields heat them with swords or spears so that the twilight was filled with a rhythmic thumping as men shouted, 'No mercy!' The sound echoed back from the hills. 'No mercy, no mercy.'
We were ready. And the Danes were ready.
That night it clouded over. The stars vanished one by one, and the thin moon was swallowed in the darkness. Sleep came hard.
I sat with Iseult who was cleaning my mail while I sharpened both swords.
'You will win tomorrow,' Iseult said in a small voice.
'You dreamed that?'
She shook her head. 'The dreams don't come since I was baptised.'
'So you made it up?'
'I have to believe it,' she said.
The stone scraped down the blades. All around me other men were sharpening weapons.
'When this is over,' I said, 'you and I will go away. We shall make a house.'
'When this is over,' she said, 'you will go north. Ever north. Back to your home.'
'Then you'll come with me.'
'Perhaps.' She heaved the mail coat to start on a new patch, scrubbing it with a scrap of fleece to make the
