'It is a necessary madness,' he said calmly, then stopped to lecture me. 'What does Wessex believe?
It thinks I am defeated, it thinks the Danes have won, it readies itself for the spring and the coming of more Danes. So they must learn something different. They must learn that the king lives, that he walked among his enemies and that he made fools of them.'
'That he got given a bloody nose and a black eye,' I said.
'You won't tell then that,' he said, 'any more than you'll tell folk about that wretched woman who hit me with an eel. We must give men hope, Uhtred, and in the spring that hope will blossom into victory. Remember Boethius, Uhtred, remember Boethius! Never give up hope.'
He believed it. He believed that God was protecting him, that he could walk among his enemies without fear or harm, and to an extent the was right for the Danes were well supplied with ale, birch wine and mead, and most were much too drunk to care about a bruised man carrying a broken harp.
No one stopped us going into the royal compound, but there were six black-cloaked guards at the hall door and I refused to let Alfred get close to them.
'They'll take one look at your bloodied face,' I said, 'and finish what the others began.'
'Then let me at least go to the church.'
'You want to pray?' I asked sarcastically.
'Yes,' he said simply.
I tried to stop him. 'If you die here,' I said, 'then Iseult dies.'
'That wasn't my doing,' he said.
'You're the king, aren't you?'
'The bishop thought you would join the Danes,' he said. 'And others agreed.'
'I have no friends left among the Danes,' I said. 'They were your hostages and they died.'
'Then I shall pray for their pagan souls,' he said, and pulled away from me and went to the church door where he instinctively pushed the hood off his head to show respect. I snatched it back over his hair, shadowing his bruises. He did not resist, but just pushed the door open and made the sign of the cross.
The church was being used to shelter more of Guthrum's men. There were straw mattresses, heaps of chain mail, stacks of weapons and a score of men and women, gathered around a newly-made hearth in the nave. They were playing dice and none took any particular interest in our arrival until someone shouted that we should shut the door.
'We're leaving,' I said to Alfred. 'You can't pray here.'
He did not answer. He was gazing reverently to where the altar had been, and where a half-dozen horses were now tethered.
'We're leaving!' I insisted again.
And just then a voice hailed me. It was a voice full of astonishment and I saw one of the dice players stand and stare at me. A dog ran from the shadows and began to jump up and down, trying to lick me, and I saw the dog was Nihtgenga and that the man who had recognised me was Ragnar. Earl Ragnar, my friend. Who I had thought was dead.
Nin
i e
Ragnar embraced me. There were tears in both our eyes and for a moment neither of us could speak, though I retained enough sense to look behind me to make sure Alfred was safe. He was squatting beside the door, deep in the shadow of a bale of wool, with his cloak's hood drawn over his face.
'I thought you were dead!' I said to Ragnar.
'I hoped you would come,' he said at the same moment, and for a time we both talked and neither listened, and then Brida walked from the back of the church and I watched her, seeing a woman instead of a girl, and she laughed to see me and gave me a decorous kiss.
'Uhtred,' she said my name as a caress. We had been lovers once, though we had been little more than children then. She was Saxon, but she had chosen the Danish side to be with Ragnar. The other women in the hall were hung with silver, garnet, jet, amber and gold, but Brida wore no jewellery other than an ivory comb that held her thick black hair in a pile. 'Uhtred,' she said again.
'Why aren't you dead?' I asked Ragnar. He had been a hostage, and the hostages' lives had been forfeit the moment Guthrum crossed the frontier.
‘Wulfhere liked us,' Ragnar said. He put an arm around my shoulder and drew me to the central hearth where the fire blazed.
'This is Uhtred,' he announced to the dice players, 'a Saxon, which makes him scum, of course, but he is also my friend and my brother. Ale,' he pointed to jars, 'wine. Wulfhere let us live.'
'And you let him live?'
'Of course we did! He's here. Feasting with Guthrum.'
'Wulfhere? Is he a prisoner?'
'He's an ally!' Ragnar said, thrusting a pot into my hand and pulling me down beside the fire. 'He's with us now.' He grinned at me, and I laughed for the sheer joy of finding him alive. He was a big man, golden-haired, open-faced, and as full of mischief, life and kindness as his father had been.
'Wulfhere used to talk to Brida,' Ragnar went on, 'and through her to me. We liked each other. Hard to kill a man you like.'
'You persuaded him to change sides?'
