'Shall I fetch him?' Alfred asked nervously.
'No.'
'His mother ...' he began.
'… must wait till morning, lord.'
'What can I tell her?'
'That her son is not coughing, lord.'
?lswith screamed that Edward was dead, but Eanflaed and Alfred calmed her, and we all waited, and still there was silence, and in the end I fell asleep.
I woke in the dawn. It was raining as if the world was about to end, a torrential grey rain that swept in vast curtains from the Saefern Sea, a rain that drummed on the ground and poured off the reed thatch and made streams on the small island where the little huts crouched. I went to the door of Leofric's shelter and saw ?lswith watching from her doorway. She looked desperate, like a mother about to hear that her child had died, and there was nothing but silence from Iseult's hut, and ?lswith began to weep, the terrible tears of a bereaved mother, and then there was a strange sound.
At first I could not hear properly, for the seething rain was loud, but then I realised the sound was laughter. A child's laughter, and a heartbeat later Edward, still naked as an egg, and all muddy from his rebirth through the earth's passage, ran from Iseult's hut and went to his mother.
'Dear God,' Leofric said.
Iseult, when I found her, was weeping, and would not be consoled.
'I need you,' I told her harshly.
She looked up at me. 'Need me?'
'To build a bridge.'
She frowned. 'You think a bridge can be made with spells?'
'My magic this time,' I said. 'I want you healthy. I need a queen.'
She nodded. And Edward, from that day forward, thrived.
The first men came, summoned by the priests I had sent onto the mainland. They came in ones and twos, struggling through the winter weather and the swamp, bringing tales of Danish raids, and when we had two days of sunshine they came in groups of six or seven so that the island became crowded. I sent them out on patrol, but ordered none to go too far west for I did not want to provoke Svein, whose men were camped beside the sea. He had not attacked us yet, which was foolish of him, for he could have brought his ships up the rivers and then struggled through the marsh, but I knew he would attack us when he was ready, and so I needed to make our defences. And for that I needed ?thelingaeg.
Alfred was recovering. He was still sick, but he saw God's favour in his son's recovery and it never occurred to him that it had been pagan magic that caused the recovery. Even ?lswith was generous and, when I asked her for the loan of her silver fox-fur cloak and what few jewels she possessed, she yielded them without fuss. The fur cloak was dirty, but Eanflaed brushed and combed it.
There were over twenty men on our island now, probably enough to capture ?thelingaeg from its sullen headman, but Alfred did not want the marsh men killed. They were his subjects, he said, and if the Danes attacked they might yet fight for us, which meant the large island and its village must be taken by trickery and so, a week after Edward's rebirth, I took Leofric and Iseult south to Uaswold's settlement. Iseult was dressed in the silver fur and had a silver chain in her hair and a great garnet brooch at her breast. I had brushed her hair till it shone and in that winter's gloom she looked like a princess come from the bright sky.
Leofric and I, dressed in mail and helmets, did nothing except walk around ?thelingaeg, but after a while a man came from Haswold and said the chieftain wished to talk with us. I think Haswold expected us to go to his stinking hut, but I demanded he come to us instead. He could have taken from us whatever he wanted, of course, for there were only the three of us and he had his men, including Eofer the archer, but Haswold had at last understood that dire things were happening in the world beyond the swamp and that those events could pierce even his watery fastness, and so he chose to talk. He came to us at the settlement's northern gate which was nothing more than a sheep hurdle propped against decaying fish traps and there, as I expected, he gazed at Iseult as though he had never seen a woman before. His small cunning eyes flickered at me and back to her.
'Who is she?' he asked.
'A companion,' I said carelessly. I turned to look at the sudden steep hill across the river where I wanted the fort made.
‘Is she your wife?' Haswold asked.
'A companion,' I said again. 'I have a dozen like her,' I added.
'I will pay you for her,' Haswold said. A score of men were behind him, but only Eofer was armed with anything more dangerous than an eel spear.
I turned Iseult to face him, then I stood behind her and put my hands over her shoulders and undid the big garnet brooch. She shivered slightly and I whispered that she was safe and, when the brooch pin slid out of the heavy hide, I pulled her fur cloak apart. I showed her nakedness to Haswold and he dribbled into his fish scaled beard and his dirty fingers twitched in his foul otter skin furs, and then I closed the cloak and let Iseult fasten the brooch.
'How much will you pay me?' I asked him.
'I can just take her,' Haswold said, jerking his head at his men.
I smiled at that. 'You could,' I said, 'but many of you will die before we die, and our ghosts will come back to kill your women and make your children scream. Have you not heard that we have a witch with us? You think your weapons can fight magic?'
None of them moved.
'I have silver,' Haswold said.
'I don't need silver,' I said. 'What I want is a bridge and a fort.'
