Death of Kings

I ignored the comment because the twins would never have understood my fears. Ceolberht and Ceolnoth had devoted their lives to the conversion of the Danes, and they saw the proposed treaty with Eohric as proof that their god was winning the struggle against the heathen deities and they would be dubious allies for an idea that was tempting me. ‘And Eohric,’ I asked the twins, ‘is sending men to meet us at Huntandon?’

‘An escort, lord, yes. It will probably be led by Jarl Oscytel.’

I had heard of Oscytel. He was the commander of Eohric’s housecarls and thus the warrior-in-chief of East Anglia. ‘And how many men will he bring?’ I asked.

The twins shrugged. ‘Maybe a hundred?’ one said.

‘Or two?’ the other said.

‘And together we shall all go to Eleg,’ the first twin said happily.

‘Singing joyfully,’ Brother John put in, ‘like little birdies.’

So I was expected to march to East Anglia carrying half a dozen gaudy banners and accompanied by a pack of singing monks? Sigurd would like that, I thought. It was in his best interest to stop the treaty ever happening, and the best way to do that was to ambush me before I ever reached Huntandon. I was not certain that was what he planned, I was simply guessing. For all I knew, Sigurd really was about to celebrate Yule and had no intention of fighting a swift winter campaign to prevent the treaty between Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia, but no one survives long by assuming his enemy is sleeping. I gave Sigunn a light slap on the rump. ‘You’d like to spend Yule in Eleg?’ I asked her.

‘Christmas,’ one of the twins could not resist muttering the correction, then blanched at the look I gave him.

‘I’d rather have Yule here,’ Sigunn said.

‘We’re going to Eleg,’ I told her, ‘and you’re to wear the gold chains I gave you. It’s important we make an impressive display,’ I added, then looked at Willibald, ‘isn’t that right, father?’

‘You can’t take her!’ Willibald hissed at me.

‘I can’t?’

He flapped his hands. He wanted to say that the glory of Alfred’s court would be contaminated by the presence of a pagan Danish beauty, but he did not have the courage to say the words aloud. He just stared at Sigunn, who was the widow of one of the Danish warriors we had killed at Beamfleot. She was about seventeen years old, a lithe, slight girl with fair skin, pale blue eyes and hair like shining gold. She was clothed in finery; a dress of pale yellow linen edged with an intricate blue border of embroidered dragons that writhed about the hem, neckline and sleeves. Gold hung at her throat and showed at her wrists, symbols that she was privileged, the possession of a lord. She was mine, but for most of her life she had only known the company of Haesten’s men, and Haesten was on the other side of Britain, in Ceaster.

And that was why I would take Sigunn towards Eleg.

It was Yule, 898, and someone was trying to kill me.

I would kill them instead.

Sihtric had appeared strangely reluctant to obey my orders, but the man he brought me was a good choice. He was a young man, scarce more than twenty, and claimed to be a magician, which meant he was really a rogue who travelled from town to town, selling talismans and charms. He called himself Ludda, though I doubted that was his real name, and he was accompanied by a small, dark girl called Teg, who scowled at me from beneath thick black eyebrows and a bird’s nest of tangled hair. She seemed to be muttering under her breath as she looked up at me. ‘Is she casting spells?’ I asked.

‘She can, lord,’ Ludda said.

‘Is she?’

‘Oh no, lord,’ Ludda reassured me hurriedly. He, like the girl, was kneeling. He had a misleadingly open face, with wide blue eyes, a generous mouth and a quick smile. He also had a sack strapped to his back, which proved to contain his charms, most of which were elfstones or shining pebbles, along with a bundle of small leather bags, each of which contained one or two rusty scraps of iron.

‘What are those?’ I asked, nudging the bags with my foot.

‘Ah,’ he said, and gave a sheepish grin.

‘Men who cheat the folk who live on my land are punished,’ I said.

‘Cheat, lord?’ He gazed up innocently.

‘I drown them,’ I said, ‘or else I hang them. You saw the bodies outside?’ The corpses of the two men who had tried to kill me still hung from the elm.

‘It’s hard to miss them, lord,’ Ludda said.

I picked up one of the small leather bags and opened it, spilling two rusty clench-nails onto my palm. ‘You tell folk that if they sleep with this bag beneath their pillow and say a prayer then the iron will turn to silver?’

The wide blue eyes became wider. ‘Now why would I say such a thing, lord?’

‘To make yourself rich by selling iron scraps for a hundred times their real value,’ I said.

‘But if they pray hard enough, lord, then Almighty God might hear their prayer, mightn’t He? And it would be unchristian of me to deny simple folk the chance of a miracle, lord.’

‘I should hang you,’ I said.

‘Hang her instead, lord,’ Ludda said quickly, nodding towards his girl, ‘she’s Welsh.’

I had to laugh. The girl scowled, and I gave Ludda a friendly cuff around the ears. I had bought one of those miracle bags years before, believing somehow that prayer would turn rust to gold, and I had bought it from just such a rogue as Ludda. I told him to stand and had the servants bring both he and his girl ale and food. ‘If I were travelling to Huntandon from here,’ I asked him, ‘how would I go?’

He considered the question for a few heartbeats, looking to see if there was some trap in it, then shrugged. ‘It’s not a hard journey, lord. Go east to Bedanford and from there you’ll find a good road to a place called Eanulfsbirig. You cross the river there, lord, and keep on north and east to Huntandon.’

‘What river?’

‘The Use, lord,’ he hesitated. ‘The pagans have been known to row their ships up the Use, lord, as far as Eanulfsbirig. There’s a bridge there. There’s another at Huntandon, too, which you cross to get to the settlement.’

‘So I cross the river twice?’

‘Three times, lord. You’ll cross at Bedanford too, but that’s a ford, of course.’

‘So I have to cross and recross the river?’ I asked.

‘You can follow the northern bank if you wish, lord, then you don’t have to use the bridges beyond, but it’s a much longer journey, and there’s no good road on that bank.’

‘Can the river be forded anywhere else?’

‘Not downstream of Bedanford, lord, not easily, not after all this rain. It will have flooded.’

I nodded. I was toying with some silver coins, and neither Ludda nor Teg could take their eyes from the money. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘if you wanted to cheat the folk of Eleg, how would you travel there?’

‘Oh, through Grantaceaster,’ he said immediately. ‘It’s by far the quickest route and they’re mighty gullible folk in Grantaceaster, lord.’ He grinned.

‘And the distance from Eanulfsbirig to Huntandon?’

‘A morning’s walk, lord. No distance at all.’

I tumbled the coins in my palm. ‘And the bridges?’ I asked. ‘Are they wood or stone?’

‘Both wooden, lord,’ he said, ‘they used to be stone, but the Roman arches collapsed.’ He told me about the other settlements in the valley of the Use, and how the valley was still more Saxon than Dane, though the farms there all paid tribute to Danish lords. I let him talk, but I was thinking about the river that would have to be crossed. If Sigurd planned an ambush, I thought, then he would place it at Eanulfsbirig, knowing we must cross the bridge there. He would surely not pick Huntandon because the East Anglian forces would be waiting on the higher ground just north of the river.

Or maybe he planned nothing at all.