coast.'
'You know that?'
'I do indeed, I do indeed! He told me! I've just spent ten days in Cippanhamm. I speak Danish, see, because I'm clever, and so I was an ambassador for my king. How about that! Me, who used to eat mud, an ambassador! Crumble the cheese finer, my love. That's right. I had to discover, you see, how much money Guthrum would pap us to bring our spearmen over the hills and start skewering Saxons.
Now that's a fine ambition for a Briton, skewering Saxons, but the Danes are pagans, and God knows we can't have pagans loose in the world.'
'Why not?'
'It's just a fancy of mine,' he said, 'just a fancy.' He stabbed his finger into a tiny pot of butter, then licked it. 'It isn't really sour,' he told Iseult, 'not very, so stir it in.' He grinned at me. 'What happens when you put two bulls to a herd of cows?'
'One bull dies.'
'There you are! Gods are the same, which is why we don't want pagans here. We're cows and the gods are bulls.'
'So we get humped?'
He laughed. 'Theology's difficult. Anyway, God is my bull so here I am, telling the Saxons about Guthrum.'
'Did Guthrum offer you money?' I asked.
'He offered me the kingdoms of the world! He offered me gold, silver, amber and jet! He even offered me women, or boys if I had that taste, which I don't. And I didn't believe a single promise he made. Not that it mattered. The Britons aren't going to fight anyway. God doesn't want us to. No! My embassy was all a pretence. Brother Asser sent me. He wanted me to spy on the Danes, see? Then tell Alfred what I saw, so that's what I'm doing.'
'Asser sent you?'
'He wants Alfred to win. Not because he loves the Saxons, even Brother Asser isn't that curdled, but because he loves God.'
'And will Alfred win?'
'If God has anything to do with it, yes,' Pyrlig said cheerfully, then gave a shrug.
'But the Danes are strong in men. A big army! But they're not happy, I can tell you that. And they're all hungry. Not starving, mind you, but pulling their belts tighter than they'd like, and now Svein's there so there'll be even less food. Their own fault, of course. Too many men in Cippanhamm!
And too many slaves! They have scores of slaves. But he's sending the slaves to Lundene, to sell them there. They need some baby eels, eh? That'll fatten them up.'
The elvers were swarming into the Saefern Sea and slithering up the shallow waterways of the swamp where they were being netted in abundance. There was no hunger in ?thelingaeg, not if you gorged on elvers.
'I caught three basketfuls yesterday,' Pyrlig said happily, 'and a frog. It had a face just like Brother Asser so I gave it a blessing and threw it back. Don't just stir the eggs, girl! Beat them! I hear your son died?'
'Yes,' I answered stiffly.
'I am sorry,' he said with genuine feeling, 'I am truly sorry, for to lose a child is a desperate hard thing. I sometimes think God must like children. He takes so many to him. I believe there's a garden in heaven, a green garden where children play all the time. He's got two sons of mine up there, and I tell you, the youngest must be making the angels scream. He'll he pulling the girls' hair and beating up the other boys like they were goose eggs.'
'You lost two sons?'
'But I kept three others and four daughters. Why do you think I'm never home?' He grinned at me.
'Noisy little things they are, children, and such appetites! Sweet Jesus, they'd eat a horse a day if they could! There are some folk who say priests shouldn't marry and there are times I think they're right. Do you have any bread, Iseult pointed to a net hanging from the roof. 'Cut the mould off,' she told me.
'I like to see a man obeying a woman,' Father Pyrlig said as I fetched the loaf.
'Why's that?' I asked.
'Because it means I'm not alone in this sorry world. Good God, but that ?lswith was weaned on gall juice, wasn't she? Got a tongue in her like a starving weasel! Poor Alfred.'
'He's happy enough.'
'Good God, man, that's the last thing he is! Some folk catch God like a disease, and he's one of them. He's like a cow after winter, he is.'
'He is?'
'You know when the late spring grass comes in? All green and new and rich? And you put the poor cow out to eat and she blows up like a bladder? She's nothing but shit and wind and then she gets the staggers and drops down dead if you don't take her off the grass for a while. That's Alfred. He got too much of the good green grass of God, and now he's sick on it. But he's a good man, a good man. Too thin, he is, but good. A living saint, no less. Ah, good girl, let's eat.' He scooped some of the eggs with his fingers, then passed the pot to me. 'Thank God it's Easter next week,' he said with his mouth full so that scraps of egg lodged in his huge beard, 'and then we can eat meat again. I'm wasting away without meat. You know Iseult will be baptised at Easter?'
'She told me,' I said shortly.
'And you don't approve? Just think of it as a good wash, then maybe you won't mind so much.'
I was not in ?thelingaeg for Iseult's baptism, nor did I wish to be, for I knew Easter with Alfred would be nothing but prayers and psalms and priests and sermons. Instead I took Steapa and fifty men up into the hills, going
