Читать книгу War of the Wolf - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 9

I did not go to Æthelflaed’s funeral.

She was buried in Gleawecestre in the same vault as her husband, whom she had hated.

Her brother, King Edward of Wessex, was chief mourner and, when the rites were done and Æthelflaed’s corpse had been walled up, he stayed in Gleawecestre. His sister’s strange banner of the holy goose was lowered over the palace, and the dragon of Wessex was hoisted in its place. The message could not have been plainer. Mercia no longer existed. In all the British lands south of Northumbria and east of Wales there was only one kingdom and one king. Edward sent me a summons, demanding I travel to Gleawecestre and swear fealty to him for the lands I owned in what had been Mercia, and the summons bore his name followed by the words Anglorum Saxonum Rex. King of the Angles and the Saxons. I ignored the document.

Within a year a second document reached me, this one signed and sealed in Wintanceaster. By the grace of God, it told me, the lands granted to me by Æthelflaed of Mercia were now forfeited to the bishopric of Hereford, which, the parchment assured me, would employ said lands to the furtherance of God’s glory. ‘Meaning Bishop Wulfheard will have more silver to spend on his whores,’ I told Eadith.

‘Maybe you should have gone to Gleawecestre?’ she suggested.

‘And swear loyalty to Edward?’ I spat the name. ‘Never. I don’t need Wessex and Wessex doesn’t need me.’

‘So what will you do about the estates?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said. What could I do? Go to war against Wessex? It annoyed me that Bishop Wulfheard, an old enemy, had taken the land, but I had no need of Mercian lands. I owned Bebbanburg. I was a Northumbrian lord, and owned all that I wanted. ‘Why should I do anything?’ I growled at Eadith. ‘I’m old and I don’t need trouble.’

‘You’re not old,’ she said loyally.

‘I’m old,’ I insisted. I was over sixty, I was ancient.

‘You don’t look old.’

‘So Wulfheard can plough his whores and let me die in peace. I don’t care if I never see Wessex or Mercia ever again.’

Yet a year later I was in Mercia, mounted on Tintreg, my fiercest stallion, and wearing a helmet and mail, and with Serpent-Breath, my sword, slung at my left hip. Rorik, my servant, carried my heavy iron-rimmed shield, and behind us were ninety men, all armed, and all mounted on war horses.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ Finan said beside me. He was gazing at the enemy in the valley beneath us. ‘Four hundred of the bastards?’ he paused. ‘At least four hundred. Maybe five?’

I said nothing.

It was late on a winter’s afternoon, and bitterly cold. The horses’ breath misted among the leafless trees that crowned the gentle ridge from where we watched our enemy. The sun was sinking and hidden by clouds, which meant no betraying sparks of light could be reflected from our mail or weapons. Away to my right, to the west, the River Dee lay flat and grey as it widened towards the sea. On the lower ground in front of us was the enemy and, beyond them, Ceaster.

‘Five hundred,’ Finan decided.

‘I never thought I’d see this place again,’ I said. ‘Never wanted to see it again.’

‘They broke the bridge,’ Finan said, peering far to the south.

‘Wouldn’t you, in their place?’

The place was Ceaster, and our enemy was besieging the city. Most of that enemy was to the east of the city, but smoking campfires betrayed plenty to the city’s north. The River Dee flowed just south of the city walls, then turned north towards its widening estuary, and by breaking the central span of the ancient Roman bridge, the enemy had ensured that no relief force could come from the south. If the city’s small garrison was to fight its way out of the trap they would need to come north or east where the enemy was strongest. And that garrison was small. I had been told, though it was nothing more than a guess, that fewer than a hundred men held the city.

Finan must have been thinking the same thing. ‘And five hundred men couldn’t take the city?’ he said derisively.

‘Nearer six hundred?’ I suggested mildly. It was hard to estimate the enemy because many of the folk in the besiegers’ encampment were women and children, but I thought Finan’s guess was low. Tintreg lowered his head and snorted. I patted his neck, then touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt for luck. ‘I wouldn’t want to assault those walls,’ I said. Ceaster’s stone walls had been built by the Romans, and the Romans had built well. And the city’s small garrison, I thought, had been well led. They had repelled the early assaults, and so the enemy had settled down to starve them out.

‘So, what do we do?’ Finan asked.

‘Well, we’ve come a long way,’ I said.

‘So?’

‘So it seems a pity not to fight.’ I gazed at the city. ‘If what we were told is true, then the poor bastards in the city will be eating rats by now. And that lot?’ I nodded down to the campfires. ‘They’re cold, they’re bored, and they’ve been here too long. They got bloodied when they attacked the walls, so now they’re just waiting.’

I could see the thick barricades that the besiegers had made outside Ceaster’s northern and eastern gates. Those barricades would be guarded by the enemy’s best troops, posted there to stop the garrison sallying out or trying to escape. ‘They’re cold,’ I said again, ‘they’re bored, and they’re useless.’

Finan smiled. ‘Useless?’

‘They’re mostly from the fyrd,’ I said. The fyrd is an army raised from field labourers, shepherds, common men. They might be brave, but a trained house-warrior, like the ninety who followed me, was far more lethal. ‘Useless,’ I said again, ‘and stupid.’

‘Stupid?’ Berg, mounted on his stallion behind me, asked.

‘No sentries out here! They should never have let us get this close. They have no idea we’re here. And stupidity gets you killed.’

‘I like that they’re stupid,’ Berg said. He was a Norseman, young and savage, frightened of nothing except the disapproval of his young Saxon wife.

‘Three hours to sunset?’ Finan suggested.

‘Let’s not waste them.’

I turned Tintreg, going back through the trees to the road that led to Ceaster from the ford of the Mærse. The road brought back memories of riding to face Ragnall, and of Haesten’s death, and now the road was leading me towards another fight.

Though we looked anything but threatening as we rode down the long, gentle slope. We did not hurry. We came like men who were finishing a long journey, which was true, and we kept our swords in their scabbards and our spears bundled on the packhorses led by our servants. The enemy must have seen us almost as soon as we emerged from the wooded ridge, but we were few and they were many, and our ambling approach suggested we came in peace. The high stone wall of the city was in shadow, but I could make out the banners hanging from the ramparts. They showed Christian crosses, and I remembered Bishop Leofstan, a holy fool and a good man, who had been chosen as Ceaster’s bishop by Æthelflaed. She had strengthened and garrisoned the city-fort as a bulwark against the Norse and Danes who crossed the Irish Sea to hunt for slaves in the Saxon lands.

Æthelflaed, Alfred’s daughter, and ruler of Mercia. Dead now. Her corpse was decaying in a cold stone vault. I imagined her dead hands clutching a crucifix in the grave’s foul darkness, and remembered those same hands clawing my spine as she writhed beneath me. ‘God forgive me,’ she would say, ‘don’t stop!’

And now she had brought me back to Ceaster.

And Serpent-Breath was about to kill again.

Æthelflaed’s brother ruled Wessex. He had been content to let his sister rule Mercia, but on her death he had marched West Saxon troops north across the Temes. They came, he said, to honour his sister at her funeral, but they stayed to impose Edward’s rule on his sister’s realm. Edward, Anglorum Saxonum Rex.

Those Mercian lords who bent their knee were rewarded, but some, a few, resented the West Saxons. Mercia was a proud land. There had been a time when the King of Mercia was the most powerful ruler of Britain, when the kings of Wessex and of East Anglia and the chieftains of Wales had sent tribute, when Mercia was the largest of all the British kingdoms. Then the Danes had come, and Mercia had fallen, and it had been Æthelflaed who had fought back, who had driven the pagans northwards and built the burhs that protected her frontier. And she was dead, mouldering, and her brother’s troops now guarded the burh walls, and the King of Wessex called himself king of all the Saxons, and he demanded silver to pay for the garrisons, and he took land from the resentful lords and gave it to his own men, or to the church. Always to the church, because it was the priests who preached to the Mercian folk that it was their nailed god’s will that Edward of Wessex be king in their land, and that to oppose the king was to oppose their god.

Yet fear of the nailed god did not prevent a revolt, and so the fighting had begun. Saxon against Saxon, Christian against Christian, Mercian against Mercian, and Mercian against West Saxon. The rebels fought under Æthelflaed’s flag, declaring that it had been her will that her daughter, Ælfwynn, succeed her. Ælfwynn, Queen of Mercia! I liked Ælfwynn, but she could no more have ruled a kingdom than she could have speared a charging boar. She was flighty, frivolous, pretty, and petty. Edward, knowing his niece had been named to the throne, took care to have her shut away in a convent, along with his discarded wife, but still the rebels flaunted her mother’s flag and fought in her name.

They were led by Cynlæf Haraldson, a West Saxon warrior whom Æthelflaed had wanted as a husband for Ælfwynn. The truth, of course, was that Cynlæf wanted to be King of Mercia himself. He was young, he was handsome, he was brave in battle, and, to my mind, stupid. His ambition was to defeat the West Saxons, rescue his bride from her convent, and be crowned.

But first he must capture Ceaster. And he had failed.

‘It feels like snow,’ Finan said as we rode south towards the city.

‘It’s too late in the year for snow,’ I said confidently.

‘I can feel it in my bones,’ he said, shivering. ‘It’ll come by nightfall.’

I scoffed at that. ‘Two shillings says it won’t.’

He laughed. ‘God send me more fools with silver! My bones are never wrong.’ Finan was Irish, my second-in-command, and my dearest friend. His face, framed by the steel of his helmet, looked lined and old, his beard was grey. Mine was too, I suppose. I watched as he loosened Soul-Stealer in her scabbard and as his eyes flicked across the smoke of the campfires ahead. ‘So what are we doing?’ he asked.

‘Scouring the bastards off the eastern side of the city,’ I said.

‘They’re thick there.’

I guessed that almost two thirds of the enemy were camped on Ceaster’s eastern flank. The campfires were dense there, burning between low shelters made of branches and turf. To the south of the crude shelters were a dozen lavish tents, placed close to the ruins of the old Roman arena, which, even though it had been used as a convenient quarry, still rose higher than the tents above which two flags hung motionless in the still air. ‘If Cynlæf’s still here,’ I said, ‘he’ll be in one of those tents.’

‘Let’s hope the bastard’s drunk.’

‘Or else he’s in the arena,’ I said. The arena was built just outside the city and was a vast hulk of stone. Beneath its banked stone seating were cave-like rooms that, when I had last explored them, were home to wild dogs. ‘If he had any sense,’ I went on, ‘he’d have abandoned this siege. Left men to keep the garrison starving, and gone south. That’s where the rebellion will be won or lost, not here.’

‘Does he have sense?’

‘Daft as a turnip,’ I said, and then started laughing. A group of women burdened with firewood had stepped off the road to kneel as we passed, and they looked up at me in astonishment. I waved at them. ‘We’re about to make some of them widows,’ I said, still laughing.

‘And that’s funny?’

I spurred Tintreg into a trot. ‘What’s funny,’ I said, ‘is that we’re two old men riding to war.’

‘You, maybe,’ Finan said pointedly.

‘You’re my age!’

‘I’m not a grandfather!’

‘You might be. You don’t know.’

‘Bastards don’t count.’

‘They do,’ I insisted.

‘Then you’re probably a great-grandfather by now.’

I gave him a harsh look. ‘Bastards don’t count,’ I snarled, making him laugh, then he made the sign of the cross because we had reached the Roman cemetery that stretched either side of the road. There were ghosts here, ghosts wandering between the lichen-covered stones with their fading inscriptions that only Christian priests who understood Latin could read. Years before, in a fit of zeal, a priest had started throwing down the stones, declaring they were pagan abominations. That very same day he was struck down dead and ever since the Christians had tolerated the graves, which, I thought, must be protected by the Roman gods. Bishop Leofstan had laughed when I told him that story, and had assured me that the Romans were good Christians. ‘It was our god, the one true god, who slew the priest,’ he had told me. Then Leofstan himself had died, struck down just as suddenly as the grave-hating priest. Wyrd bið ful a¯ræd.

My men were strung out now, not quite in single file, but close. None wanted to ride too near the road’s verges because that was where the ghosts gathered. The long, straggling line of horsemen made us vulnerable, but the enemy seemed oblivious to our threat. We passed more women, all bent beneath great burdens of firewood they had cut from spinneys north of the graves. The nearest campfires were close now. The afternoon’s light was fading, though dusk was still an hour or more away. I could see men on the northern city wall, see their spears, and knew they must be watching us. They would think we were reinforcements come to help the besiegers.

I curbed Tintreg just beyond the old Roman cemetery to let my men catch up. The sight of the graves and thinking of Bishop Leofstan had brought back memories. ‘Remember Mus?’ I asked Finan.

‘Christ! How could anyone forget her?’ He grinned. ‘Did you …’ he began.

‘Never. You?’

He shook his head. ‘Your son gave her a few good rides.’

I had left my son in command of the troops garrisoning Bebbanburg. ‘He’s a lucky boy,’ I said. Mus, her real name was Sunngifu, was small like a mouse, and had been married to Bishop Leofstan. ‘I wonder where Mus is now?’ I asked. I was still gazing at Ceaster’s northern wall, trying to estimate how many men stood guard on the ramparts. ‘More than I expected,’ I said.

‘More?’

‘Men on the wall,’ I explained. I could see at least forty men on the ramparts, and knew there must be just as many on the eastern wall, which faced the bulk of the enemy.

‘Maybe they were reinforced?’ Finan suggested.

‘Or the monk was wrong, which wouldn’t surprise me.’

A monk had come to Bebbanburg with news of Ceaster’s siege. We already knew of the Mercian rebellion, of course, and we had welcomed it. It was no secret that Edward, who now styled himself King of the Angles and Saxons, wanted to invade Northumbria and so make that arrogant title come true. Sigtryggr, my son-in-law and King of Northumbria, had been preparing for that invasion, fearing it too, and then came the news that Mercia was tearing itself apart, and that Edward, far from invading us, was fighting to hold onto his new lands. Our response was obvious; do nothing! Let Edward’s realm tear itself into shreds, because every Saxon warrior who died in Mercia was one less man to bring a sword into Northumbria.

Yet here I was, on a late winter’s afternoon beneath a darkening sky, coming to fight in Mercia. Sigtryggr had not been happy, and his wife, my daughter, even unhappier. ‘Why?’ she had demanded.

‘I took an oath,’ I had told them both, and that had stilled their protests.

Oaths are sacred. To break an oath is to invite the anger of the gods, and Sigtryggr had reluctantly agreed to let me relieve the siege of Ceaster. Not that he could have done much to stop me; I was his most powerful lord, his father-in-law, and the Lord of Bebbanburg, indeed he owed me his kingdom, but he insisted I take fewer than a hundred warriors. ‘Take more,’ he had said, ‘and the damned Scots will come over the frontier.’ I had agreed. I led just ninety men, and with those ninety I intended to save King Edward’s new kingdom.

‘You think Edward will be grateful?’ my daughter had asked, trying to find some good news in my perverse decision. She was thinking that Edward’s gratitude might persuade him to abandon his plans to invade Northumbria.

‘Edward will think I’m a fool.’

‘You are!’ Stiorra had said.

‘Besides, I hear he’s sick.’

‘Good,’ she had said vengefully. ‘Maybe his new wife has worn him out?’

Edward would not be grateful, I thought, whatever happened here. Our horses’ hooves were loud on the Roman road. We still rode slowly, showing no threat. We passed the old worn stone pillar that said it was one mile to Deva, the name the Romans had given Ceaster. By now we were among the hovels and campfires of the encampment, and folk watched us pass. They showed no alarm, there were no sentries, and no one challenged us. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ Finan growled at me.

‘They think that if relief comes,’ I said, ‘it’ll come from the east, not the north. So they think we’re on their side.’

‘Then they’re idiots,’ he said. He was right, of course. Cynlæf, if he still commanded here, should have sentries posted on every approach to the besiegers’ camp, but the long cold weeks of the siege had made them lazy and careless. Cynlæf just wanted to capture Ceaster, and had forgotten to watch his back.

Finan, who had the eyes of a hawk, was gazing at the city wall. ‘That monk was full of shit,’ he said scornfully. ‘I can see fifty-eight men on the north wall!’

The monk who had brought me the news of the siege had been certain that the garrison was perilously small. ‘How small?’ I had asked him.

‘No more than a hundred men, lord.’

I had looked at him sceptically. ‘How do you know?’

‘The priest told me, lord,’ he said nervously. The monk, who was called Brother Osric, claimed to be from a monastery in Hwite, a place I had never heard of, but which the monk said was a few hours’ walking south of Ceaster. Brother Osric had told us how a priest had come to his monastery. ‘He was dying, lord! He had gripe in his guts.’

‘And that was Father Swithred?’

‘Yes, lord.’

I knew Swithred. He was an older man, a fierce and sour priest who disliked me. ‘And the garrison sent him to get help?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘They didn’t send a warrior?’

‘A priest can go where warriors cannot, lord,’ Brother Osric had explained. ‘Father Swithred said he left the city at nightfall and walked through the besiegers’ camp. No one challenged him, lord. Then he walked south to Hwite.’

‘Where he was taken ill?’

‘Where he was dying as I left, lord,’ Brother Osric had made the sign of the cross. ‘It is God’s will.’

‘Your god has a strange will,’ I had snarled.

‘And Father Swithred begged my abbot to send one of us to reach you, lord,’ Brother Osric had continued, ‘and that was me,’ he finished lamely. He had been kneeling in supplication, and I saw a savage red scar crossing his tonsure.

‘Father Swithred doesn’t like me,’ I said, ‘and he hates all pagans. Yet he sent for me?’

The question had made Brother Osric uncomfortable. He had blushed, then stammered, ‘he … he …’

‘He insulted me,’ I suggested.

‘He did, lord, he did.’ He sounded relieved that I had anticipated an answer he had been reluctant to say aloud. ‘But he also said you would answer the garrison’s plea.’

‘And Father Swithred didn’t carry a letter?’ I asked, ‘a plea for help?

‘He did, lord, but he vomited on it.’ He had grimaced. ‘But it was nasty, lord, all blood and bile.’

‘How did you get the scar?’ I had asked him.

‘My sister hit me, lord,’ he had sounded surprised at my question. ‘With a reaping hook, lord.’

‘And how many men in the besieging force?

‘Father Swithred said there were hundreds, lord.’ I remember how nervous Brother Osric had been, but I put that down to his fear at meeting me, a famous pagan. Did he think I had horns and a forked tail? ‘By God’s grace, lord,’ he went on, ‘the garrison fought off one assault, and I pray to God that the city hasn’t fallen by now. They beseech your help, lord.’

‘Why hasn’t Edward helped?’

‘He has other enemies, lord. He’s fighting them in southern Mercia.’ The monk had looked up beseechingly. ‘Please, lord! The garrison can’t last long!’

Yet they had lasted, and we had come. We had left the road by now, and our horses walked slowly through the besiegers’ encampment. The luckiest folk had found shelter in the farm buildings that had been made by the Romans. They were good stone buildings, though the long years had destroyed their roofs, which were now untidy heaps of thatch on beams, but most people were in crude shelters. Women were feeding the fires with newly gathered wood, readying to cook an evening meal. They seemed incurious about us. They saw my mail coat and silver-crested helmet, saw the silver ornaments on Tintreg’s bridle, and so realised I was a lord and dutifully knelt as I passed, but none dared ask who we were.

I halted in an open space to the north-east of the city. I gazed around, puzzled because I could see few horses. The besiegers must have horses. I had planned to drive those horses away to prevent men using them to escape, as well as to capture the beasts to defray the costs of this winter journey, but I could see no more than a dozen. If there were no horses then we had the advantage, and so I turned Tintreg and walked him back through my men until I reached the packhorses. ‘Unbundle the spears,’ I ordered the boys. There were eight heavy bundles tied with leather ropes. Each spear was about seven feet long with an ash shaft and a sharpened steel blade. I waited as the bundles were untied and as each of my men took one of the weapons. Most also carried a shield, but a few preferred to ride without the heavy willow boards. The enemy had let us come into the centre of their encampment and they must have seen my men taking their spears, yet still they did nothing except watch us dully. I waited for the boys to coil the leather ropes, then climb back into their saddles. ‘You boys,’ I called to the servants, ‘ride east, wait out in the fields till we send for you. Not you, Rorik.’

Rorik was my servant, a good boy. He was Norse. I had killed his father, captured the boy and now treated him like a son, just as Ragnar the Dane had treated me as a son after his forces had cut my father down in battle.

‘Not me, lord?’ he asked.

‘You follow me,’ I told him, ‘and have the horn ready. Stay behind me! And you don’t need that spear.’

He pulled the spear out of my reach. ‘It’s a spare one for you, lord,’ he said. He was lying, of course, he could not wait to use the weapon.

‘Don’t get yourself killed, you idiot,’ I growled at him, then waited to see that the boys and the packhorses were safe beyond the encampment’s edge. ‘You know what to do,’ I called to my men, ‘so do it!’

And it began.

We spread into a line, we spurred forward.

Smoke from the campfires was acrid. A dog barked, a child cried. Three ravens flew eastwards, wings dark against grey clouds, and I wondered if they were an omen. I touched spurs to Tintreg’s flanks and he leaped forward. Finan was on my right, Berg on my left. I knew they were both protecting me, and I resented that. Old I might be, but weak no. I lowered the spear-point, nudged Tintreg with a knee, then leaned from the saddle and let the spear-point slide into a man’s shoulder. I felt the blade jar on bone, relaxed the thrust, and he turned with eyes full of pain and astonishment. I had not tried to kill him, just terrify. I rode past him, felt the blade jerk loose, swung the spear back, raised the blade, and watched the panic begin.

Imagine you are cold, bored, and hungry. Maybe weak with sickness too, because the encampment stank of shit. Your leaders are telling you nothing but lies. If they have any idea how to end the siege, short of waiting, they have not revealed it. And the cold goes on, day after day, a bone-biting chill, and there is never enough firewood, despite the women going every day to forage. You are told that the enemy is starving, but you are just as hungry. It rains. Some men slip away, trying to reach home with their wives and children, but the real warriors, the household troops who man the great barricades outside the city gates, patrol the eastward road. If they find a fugitive he is dragged back, and, if he is lucky, whipped bloody. His wife, if she is young, vanishes to the tents where the trained warriors live. All you can think of is home, and even though home is poor and your work in the fields is hard, it is better than this endless hunger and cold. You were promised victory and have been given misery.

Then, on a late afternoon of lowering clouds, as the sun sinks in the west, the horsemen come. You see big horses carrying mail-clad men with long spears and sharp swords, helmeted men with wolf heads on their shields. The men are screaming at you, the thump of the big hooves is loud in the muck of the encampment, your children are screaming and your women cowering, and the brightest thing in the winter afternoon is not the shine of the blades, not even the silver that crests the helmets nor the gold hanging at the attackers’ necks, but blood. Bright blood, sudden blood.

No wonder they panicked.

We drove them like sheep. I had told my men to spare the women and children, even most of the men too, because I did not want my horsemen to stop. I wanted to see the enemy running and to keep them running. If we paused to kill then we gave that enemy time to find their weapons, snatch up shields, and make a defence. It was better to gallop through the hovels and drive the enemy away from their piled shields, away from their spears, away from their reaping hooks and axes. The order was to strike and ride, strike and ride. We came to bring chaos, not death, not yet. Death would come.

And so we wheeled those big horses through the encampment, our hooves hurling up clods of mud, our spears sharp. If a man resisted, he died, if he ran, we made him run faster. I saw Folcbald, a huge Frisian, spear a flaming log from a campfire and toss it onto a shelter, and others of my men copied him. ‘Lord!’ Finan shouted to me. ‘Lord!’ I turned to see he was pointing south to where men were running from the tents towards the clumsy barricade that faced the city’s eastern gate. Those were the real warriors, the household troops.

‘Rorik!’ I bellowed. ‘Rorik!’

‘Lord!’ He was twenty paces away, turning his horse ready to pursue three men wearing leather jerkins and carrying axes.

‘Sound the horn!’

He spurred towards me, curbing his horse as he fumbled with the long spear and tried to retrieve the horn that was slung on his back by a long cord. One of the three men, seeing Rorik’s back turned, ran towards him with a raised axe. I opened my mouth to shout a warning, but Finan had seen the man, twisted his horse, spurred, and the man tried to run away, Soul-Stealer flashed, her blade reflecting the flames of a fire, and the axeman’s head rolled off. The body slewed along the ground, but the head bounced once, then landed in the fire where the grease that the man had rubbed into his hair while cleaning his hands flared into sudden and bright flame.

‘Not bad for a grandfather,’ I said.

‘Bastards don’t count, lord,’ Finan called back.

Rorik blew the horn, blew it again, and kept blowing it, and the sound, so mournful, insistent and loud, drew my horsemen back together. ‘Now! Follow me!’ I shouted.

We had wounded the beast, now we had to behead it.

Most of the folk fleeing our rampage had gone south towards the big tents, which evidently housed Cynlæf’s trained warriors, and it was there that we rode, together now, knee to knee, spears lowered. Our line of horsemen only split to avoid the fires that spewed their sparks into the coming darkness, then, as we spurred into a wide open space between the miserable shelters and the tents, we quickened. More men appeared among the tents, one carrying a standard that stretched out as he ran towards the barricade that was supposed to deter the defenders from sallying out of the city’s eastern gate. The barricade was a crude thing of overturned carts, even a plough, but it was still a formidable obstacle. I saw that the standard-bearer was holding Æthelflaed’s banner, the daft goose holding a cross and a sword.

I must have laughed, because Finan called to me over the sound of hooves on turf, ‘What’s funny?’

‘This is madness!’ I meant fighting against men who fought under a banner I had protected all my grown life.

‘It is mad! Fighting for King Edward!’

‘Fate is strange,’ I said.

‘Will he be grateful?’ Finan asked the same question my daughter had asked.

‘That family never was grateful,’ I said, ‘except for Æthelflaed.’

‘Maybe Edward will take you to his bed then,’ Finan said happily, and then there was no more time to talk because I saw the standard-bearer suddenly turn away. Instead of running to the barricade, he was hurrying south towards the arena, followed by most of the household warriors, and that struck me as strange. They numbered as many as we did, or almost as many. They could have formed a shield wall, using the barricade to protect their backs, and we would have been hard put to defeat them. Horses would not charge an obstacle like a well-formed shield wall. Our stallions would veer away rather than crash into the boards, so we would have been forced to dismount, make our own wall, and fight shield to shield. And the besiegers north of the fort, the men we had not yet attacked, could have come to assault our rear. But instead, the enemy ran, led by their standard-bearer.

And then I understood.

It was the Roman arena.

I had been puzzled by the lack of horses, and now realised that the besiegers’ beasts must have been placed in the arena rather than in one of the thin-hedged paddocks to the east. The vast building lay outside the city’s south-eastern corner, close to the river, and was a great circle of stone inside which banks of seats surrounded an open space where the Romans had enjoyed savage displays featuring warriors and fearsome animals. The arena’s central space, ringed by a stone wall, made it a safe, even an ideal, place for horses. We had been riding towards the tents, thinking to trap the rebel leaders, but now I shouted at my men to spur towards the great stone arena instead.

The Romans had puzzled me when I was a child. Father Beocca, who was my tutor and was supposed to turn me into a good little Christian, praised Rome for being the home of the Holy Father, the Pope. The Romans, he said, had brought the gospel to Britain, and Constantine, the first Christian to rule Rome, had declared himself emperor in our own Northumbria. None of that inclined me to like Rome or the Romans, but that changed when I was seven or eight years old and Beocca walked me into the arena at Eoferwic. I had stared amazed at the tiers of stone seats climbing all around me to the outer wall where men were using hammers and crowbars to loosen masonry blocks that would be used to make new buildings in the growing city. Ivy crawled up the seats, saplings sprang from cracks in the stone, while the arena itself was thick with grass. ‘This space,’ Father Beocca told me in a hushed voice, ‘is sacred.’

‘Because Jesus was here?’ I remember asking.

Father Beocca hit me around the head. ‘Don’t be stupid, boy. Our lord never left the holy land.’

‘I thought you told me he went to Egypt once?’

He hit me again to cover his embarrassment at being corrected. He was not an unkind man, indeed I loved Beocca even though I took a delight in mocking him, and he was easy to mock because he was ugly and crippled. That was unkind, but I was a child, and children are cruel beasts. In time I came to recognise Beocca’s honesty and strength, while King Alfred, who was no one’s fool, valued the man highly. ‘No, boy,’ Beocca went on that day in Eoferwic, ‘this place is sacred because Christians suffered for their faith here.’

I smelled a good story. ‘Suffered, father?’ I had asked earnestly.

‘They were put to death in horrible ways, horrible!’

‘How, father?’ I had asked, hiding my eagerness.

‘Some were fed to wild beasts, some were crucified like our Lord, others were burned to death. Women, men, even children. Their screams sanctify this space.’ He had made the sign of the cross. ‘The Romans were cruel until they saw the light of Christ.’

‘And then they stopped being cruel, father?’

‘They became Christians,’ he had answered evasively.

‘Is that why they lost their lands?’

He had hit me again, though not forcefully nor angrily, yet he had sown a seed in me. The Romans! As a child it was their force that impressed me. They were from so far away, yet they had conquered our land. It was not ours then, of course, but it was still a far land. They were winners and fighters, they were heroes to a child, and Beocca’s disdain made them only more heroic to me. At that time, before my father’s death and before Ragnar the Dane adopted me, I thought I was a Christian, but I never had a fantasy of becoming a Christian hero by facing a wild beast in Eoferwic’s decaying arena. Instead, I dreamed of fighting in that arena, and saw myself placing a foot on the bloodied chest of a fallen warrior as thousands cheered me. I was a child.

Now, old and grey-bearded, I still admire the Romans. How could I not? We could not build an arena, nor make ramparts like those that surrounded Ceaster. Our roads were muddy tracks, theirs were stone-edged and spear-straight. They built temples of marble, we made churches of timber. Our floors were beaten earth and rushes, theirs were marvels of intricate tilework. They had laced the land with wonders, and we, who had taken the land, could only watch the wonders decay, or patch them with wattle and thatch. True, they were a cruel people, but so are we. Life is cruel.

I was suddenly aware of shrieks coming from the city’s ramparts. I looked to my right and saw helmeted warriors running on the wall’s top. They were keeping pace with us as best they could, and cheering us on. The shrieks sounded like women, but I could only see men there, one of them waving a spear over his head as if encouraging us to kill. I lifted my spear to him, and the man responded by jumping up and down. He had ribbons, white and red, attached to the crown of his helmet. He screeched something at me, but he was too far away, and I could not catch his words, only sense that he was celebrating.

No wonder the garrison was happy. Their enemy had crumpled, and the siege was lifted, even if most of Cynlæf’s troops were still in their encampment. But those troops had shown no lust to fight. They had run or hidden in their shelters. Only the household troops opposed us, and they were now fleeing towards the dubious safety of the old arena. We caught a few laggards, spearing them in the back as they stumbled southwards, while others, more sensible, threw down their weapons and knelt in abject surrender. The light was fading now. The reddish stone of the arena reflected the flames of the nearest campfires, giving the masonry the appearance of being washed in blood. I curbed Tintreg by the arena’s entrance as my men, grinning and elated, reined in around me.

‘There’s only this one way in?’ Finan asked me.

‘As I remember, yes, but send a half-dozen men around the back to make sure.’

The one way in was an arched tunnel that led beneath the tiered seats into the arena itself, and in the fading light I could see men pushing a cart to make a barricade at the tunnel’s far end. They watched us fearfully, but I made no move to attack them. They were fools, and, like fools, they were doomed.

Doomed because they had trapped themselves. It was true there were other entrances to the arena, but those entrances, which were evenly spaced about the whole building, only led to the tiered seating, not to the fighting space at the arena’s centre. Cynlæf’s men had kept their horses in the arena, and that made sense, but in their desperation to escape they had fled to the horses, and so found themselves ringed by stone with just one way to escape, and my men guarded that one tunnel.

Vidarr Leifson, one of my Norse warriors, had led horsemen around the whole arena and returned to confirm that there was just the one entrance to the fighting level. ‘So what do we do, lord?’ he asked, twisting in his saddle to peer into the tunnel. His breath clouded in the cold evening air.

‘We let them rot.’

‘Can they climb up to the seats?’ Berg asked.

‘Probably.’ There was a wall a little higher than a tall man that prevented wild beasts from leaping up to maul the spectators, so our enemy could scramble up to the seats and try to escape through one of the stairways, but that meant abandoning their precious horses, and, once out of the building, they would still have to fight past my men. ‘So block every entrance,’ I ordered, ‘and light fires just outside every stairway.’ The barricades would slow any attempt by Cynlæf’s men to escape, and the fires would warm my sentries.

‘Where do we get firewood?’ Godric asked. He was young, a Saxon, and had once been my servant.

‘The barricade, you fool,’ Finan said, pointing to the besiegers’ makeshift wall that guarded the road leading from the eastern gate.

And just then, as the day’s last light drained in the west, I saw that men were coming from the city. The eastern gate had been opened, and a dozen horsemen now threaded their way through the narrow gap between the city’s ditch and the abandoned barricade. ‘Get those barriers built!’ I commanded my men, then turned a tired Tintreg and spurred him to meet the men we had rescued.

We met them beside the city’s deep ditch. I waited there and watched as the horsemen approached. They were led by a tall young man, clad in mail and with a fine helmet decorated with gold that glinted red from the distant fires. The cheek-pieces of his helmet were open to reveal that he had grown a beard since I had last seen him, and the beard, black and clipped short, made him look older. He was, I knew, twenty-five or twenty-six, I could not remember just when he had been born, but now he was a man in his prime, handsome and confident. He was also a fervent Christian, despite all my efforts to persuade him otherwise, and a big gold cross hung at his chest, swinging against the shining links of mail. There was more gold on his scabbard’s throat and on his horse’s bridle, and ringing the brooch that held his dark cloak in place, while a thin circlet of gold ringed his helmet. He reined in close enough to reach out and pat Tintreg’s neck, and I saw he wore two gold rings over the fine black leather of his gloves. He smiled. ‘You are the very last person I expected, lord,’ he said.

And I swore at him. It was a good oath, brief and brutal.

‘Is that the proper way,’ he asked mildly, ‘to greet a prince?’

‘I owe Finan two shillings,’ I explained.

Because it had just begun to snow.

It is one of the privileges of age to be in a hall, warmed by a fire, while in the night the snow falls and the sentries shiver as they watch for enemies trying to escape from a trap they have made for themselves. Except now I was not sure who was trapped, or by whom.

‘I never sent Father Swithred to fetch help,’ Æthelstan said. ‘Your monk lied. And Father Swithred is in good health, God be thanked.’

Prince Æthelstan was King Edward’s eldest son. He had been born to a pretty Centish girl, the daughter of a bishop, and the poor girl had died whelping him and his twin sister, Eadgyth. After the pretty girl’s death Edward had married a West Saxon girl, and had fathered another son, which made Æthelstan an inconvenience. He was the king’s eldest son, the ætheling, but he had a younger half-brother whose vengeful mother wanted Æthelstan dead because he stood between her son and the throne of Wessex, and so she and her supporters spread the rumour that Æthelstan was a bastard because Edward had never married the pretty Centish girl. He had indeed married her, but in secret because his father had not given permission, and over the years the rumour was embellished so that now Æthelstan’s mother was said to be the daughter of a shepherd, a low-born whore, and no prince would ever marry such a girl, and the rumour was believed because truth is ever feeble against passionate falsehood.

‘Truly!’ Æthelstan now told me. ‘We didn’t need relief, I asked for none.’

For a moment I just stared at him. I loved Æthelstan like a son. For years I had protected him, fought for him, taught him the ways of the warrior, and when I had heard from Brother Osric that Æthelstan was under siege and hard-pressed, I had ridden to rescue him. It did not matter that saving Æthelstan was against the interests of Northumbria, I had sworn an oath to protect him, and here I was, in the Roman great hall where he had just told me that he had never sought my help. ‘You didn’t send Father Swithred?’ I asked. A log cracked in the fire and spat a bright spark onto the rushes. I ground the spark beneath my foot.

‘Of course not! He’s here.’ Æthelstan gestured across the hall to where the tall, stern-faced priest watched me suspiciously. ‘I have asked Archbishop Athelm to appoint him Bishop of Ceaster.’

‘And you didn’t send him out of the city?’

‘Of course not! I had no need.’

I looked at Finan, who shrugged. The wind had picked up, driving the smoke back into the great hall, which had been a part of the Roman commandant’s house. The roof was made of sturdy timbers covered with tiles, many of which remained, though at some time a Saxon had hacked a hole in the tiles to let the smoke out. Now the freshening wind gusted the smoke back, swirling it around the blackened rafters. Snowflakes came through the roof-hole, a few even lasting long enough to die on the table where we ate. ‘So you never sought my help?’ I asked Æthelstan yet again.

‘How often do I have to tell you?’ he asked, pushing the jug of wine towards me. ‘And besides, if I’d needed help, why send for you when my father’s forces are closer? You wouldn’t have helped me anyway!’

I growled at that. ‘Why would I not help you? I swore an oath to protect you.’’

‘But trouble in Mercia,’ he said, ‘is good for Northumbria, yes?’

I nodded grudgingly. ‘It is.’

‘Because if we Mercians fight each other,’ Æthelstan went on, ‘we can’t be fighting you.’

‘Do you want to fight us, lord Prince?’ Finan asked.

Æthelstan smiled. ‘Of course I do. Northumbria is ruled by a pagan, by a Norseman—’

‘By my son-in-law,’ I interrupted him harshly.

‘—and it is the fate of the Saxons,’ Æthelstan ignored my words, ‘to be one people, under one king and one God.’

‘Your god,’ I snarled.

‘There is no other,’ he said gently.

Everything he said made sense, except for his nonsense about one god, and that good sense meant I had been lured across Britain for no good purpose. ‘I should have left you here to rot,’ I growled.

‘But you didn’t.’

‘Your grandfather always said I was a fool.’

‘My grandfather was right about so many things,’ Æthelstan said with a smile. His grandfather was King Alfred.

I stood and walked to the hall door. I pulled it open and just stared at the glow of fire above the eastern ramparts. Much of that glow came from the encampment where Cynlæf’s men sheltered from the snow that was slanting fast from the north. Braziers burned on the ramparts, where cloaked spearmen kept a watch on the cowed enemy. The brighter light of two flaming torches just outside the hall’s great doors showed the new snow piling against the house walls.

So Brother Osric had lied. We had brought the monk south with us, but I had got tired of his endless complaining about the cold and about his saddle sores, and we had let him leave us at Mameceaster, where, he claimed, the church would shelter him. I should have killed the bastard instead. I shivered, suddenly feeling the night’s cold. ‘Rorik,’ I shouted back into the hall, ‘bring my cloak!’

Brother Osric had lied. The monk had told me that Æthelstan had fewer than a hundred warriors, but in truth he had twice as many, which was still a very small garrison for a place the size of Ceaster, but enough to stave off the feeble assaults Cynlæf had made. Brother Osric had told me the garrison was starving, but in truth they had storehouses still half-full with last year’s harvest. A lie had brought me to Ceaster, but why?

‘Your cloak, lord,’ a mocking voice said, and I turned to see it was Prince Æthelstan himself who had brought me the heavy fur garment. He was cloaked himself. He nodded to one of the sentries to close the hall door behind us, then stood beside me to watch the snow fall soft and relentless. ‘I didn’t send for you,’ he said, draping the thick fur across my shoulders, ‘but thank you for coming.’

‘So who did send the monk?’ I asked.

‘Maybe no one.’

‘No one?’

Æthelstan shrugged. ‘Perhaps the monk knew of the siege, wanted to summon help, but knew you’d mistrust him, so he invented the tale of Father Swithred.’

I shook my head. ‘He wasn’t that clever. And he was frightened.’

‘You frighten many Christians,’ Æthelstan said drily.

I stared at the snow whirling around the corner of the house opposite. ‘I should go to Hwite,’ I said.

‘Hwite? Why?’

‘Because the monk came from the monastery there.’

‘There’s no monastery at Hwite,’ Æthelstan said. ‘I’d like to build one, but …’ his voice trailed away.

‘The bastard lied,’ I said vengefully, ‘I should have known!’

‘Known? How?’

‘He said Father Swithred walked south from here. How could he? The bridge was broken. And why send Swithred? You’d have sent a younger man.’

Æthelstan shivered. ‘Why would the monk lie? Maybe he just wanted to summon help.’

‘Summon help,’ I said scornfully. ‘No, the bastard wanted to get me away from Bebbanburg.’

‘So someone can attack it?’

‘No. Bebbanburg won’t fall.’ I had left my son in command, and he had twice as many warriors as he needed to hold that gaunt and forbidding fortress.

‘So someone wants you away from Bebbanburg,’ Æthelstan said firmly, ‘because so long as you’re in Bebbanburg they can’t reach you, but now? Now they can reach you.’

‘Then why let me come here?’ I asked. ‘If they wanted to kill me, then why wait till I’m among friends?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, and neither did I. The monk had lied, but for what reason I could not tell. It was a trap, plainly it was a trap, but who had set it, and why, were mysteries. Æthelstan stamped his feet, then beckoned me to accompany him across the street, where our footsteps made the first marks in the fresh snow. ‘Still,’ he went on, ‘I’m glad you did come.’

‘I didn’t need to.’

‘We were in no real danger,’ he agreed, ‘and my father would have sent relief in the spring.’

‘Would he?’

He ignored the savage disbelief in my voice. ‘Everything has changed in Wessex,’ he said mildly.

‘The new woman?’ I asked caustically, meaning King Edward’s new wife.

‘Who is my mother’s niece.’

That I had not known. What I did know was that King Edward had discarded his second wife and married a younger girl from Cent. The older wife was now in a convent. Edward claimed to be a good Christian, and Christians say that marriage is for life, but a hefty payment of gold or royal land would doubtless persuade the church that their doctrine was wrong, and the king could discard one woman and marry another. ‘So you’re now in favour, lord Prince?’ I asked. ‘You’re the heir again?’

He shook his head. Our footsteps squeaked in the new snow. He was leading me down an alley that would take us to the eastern gate. Two of his guards followed us, but not close enough to hear our conversation. ‘My father is still fond of Ælfweard, I’m told.’

‘Your rival,’ I said bitterly. I despised Ælfweard, Edward’s second son, who was a petulant piece of weasel shit.

‘My half-brother,’ Æthelstan said reprovingly, ‘whom I love.’

‘You do?’ For a moment he did not answer me. We were climbing the Roman steps to the eastern wall, where braziers warmed the sentries. We paused at the top, staring at the encampment of the defeated enemy. ‘You really love that little turd?’ I asked.

‘We are commanded to love one another.’

‘Ælfweard is despicable,’ I said.

‘He might make a good king,’ Æthelstan said quietly.

‘And I’ll be the next Archbishop of Contwaraburg.’

‘That would be interesting,’ he said, amused. I knew he despised Ælfweard as much as I did, but he was saying what it was his familial duty to say. ‘Ælfweard’s mother,’ he went on, ‘is out of favour, but her family is still wealthy, still strong, and they’ve sworn loyalty to the new woman.’

‘They have?’

‘Ælfweard’s uncle is the new ealdorman. He took Edward’s side, and did nothing to help his sister.’

‘Ælfweard’s uncle,’ I said savagely, ‘would whore his own mother to make Ælfweard king.’

‘Probably,’ Æthelstan agreed mildly.

I shivered, and it was not the cold. I shivered because in those words I sensed the trap. I still did not know why I had been lured across Britain, but I suspected I knew who had baited the trap. ‘I’m an old fool,’ I said.

‘And the sun will rise tomorrow.’

‘Lord Prince! Lord Prince!’ an excited voice interrupted us. A small warrior was running along the ramparts to greet us; a warrior small as a child, but dressed in mail, carrying a spear, and wearing a helmet decorated with red and white ribbons.

‘Sister Sunngifu,’ Æthelstan said fondly as the small figure dropped to her knees in front of him. He touched a gloved hand to her helmet and she smiled up at him adoringly. ‘This is the Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ he introduced me, ‘and Sister Sunngifu,’ he was talking to me now, ‘raised a band of fifty women who stand guard on the ramparts to give my warriors a chance to rest and to deceive the enemy of our numbers. The deception worked well!’

Sunngifu moved her gaze to me, offering a dazzling smile. ‘I know the Lord Uhtred, lord Prince,’ she said.

‘Of course you do,’ Æthelstan said, ‘I remember now, you told me.’

Sunngifu was smiling as if she had waited half her life to greet me. I saw she was wearing a nun’s grey habit beneath the mail coat and thick cloak. I reached down and gently lifted the ribbon-decked helmet just enough to see her forehead, and there was the small reddish birthmark, shaped like an apple, the only disfigurement on one of the most beautiful women I have ever known. She was looking up at me with amusement. ‘It’s good to see you again, lord,’ she said humbly.

‘Hello, Mus,’ I said.

The little warrior was Mus, Sunngifu, Sister Gomer, bishop’s widow, whore and troublemaker.

And damn the trap, I was suddenly happy to be in Ceaster.