Death of Kings (38 page)

We had lost five men; two Mercians and three West Saxons, but we had savaged the enemy. Finan had two captives, and I sent them ahead with the fugitives. The bridge was crowded with horses and fleeing people, and I stayed with Steapa, guarding the southern end until I was certain the last of our people was across the river.

We barricaded the northern end of the bridge, heaping logs across the road and inviting the Danes to come and be killed between the Roman parapets. But none did. They watched us work, they gathered in ever greater numbers on the West Saxon side of the river, but they did not come for their revenge. I left Steapa and his men to guard the barricade, certain that no Dane would cross while he was there.

Then I went to question the captives.

The two Danes were being guarded by six of Æthelflaed’s Mercians, who protected them from the fury of a crowd that had gathered in the space before Saint Werburgh’s convent. The crowd fell silent when I arrived, cowed perhaps by Broga whose mouth was still stained with blood. I slid from the saddle and let Oswi take the reins. I still carried Serpent-Breath in my hand, her blade unwashed.

There was a tavern hung with the sign of a goose next to the convent and I had the two men taken into its yard. Their names were Leif and Hakon, both were young, both were frightened and both were trying not to show it. I had the yard gates closed and barred. The two stood in the yard’s centre, surrounded by six of us. Leif, who did not look a day over sixteen, could not take his eyes from Serpent-Breath’s blood-caked blade. ‘You have a choice,’ I told the pair. ‘You can answer my questions and you’ll die with swords in your hands, or you can be obstinate and I’ll strip you both naked and throw you to the folk outside. First, who is your lord?’

‘I serve Jarl Cnut,’ Leif said.

‘And I serve King Eohric,’ Hakon said, his voice so low I almost could not hear him. He was a sturdy, long-faced boy with straw-coloured hair. He wore an old mail coat, ripped at the elbows and too big for him and I suspected it had been his father’s. He also wore a cross about his neck, while Leif had a hammer.

‘Who commands your army?’ I asked them.

They both hesitated. ‘King Eohric?’ Hakon suggested, but he did not sound sure.

‘Jarl Sigurd and Jarl Cnut,’ Leif said, just as uncertainly and almost at the same moment.

And that explained a great deal, I thought. ‘Not Æthelwold?’ I asked.

‘Him too, lord,’ Leif said. He was trembling.

‘Is Beortsig with the army?’

‘Yes, lord, but he serves Jarl Sigurd.’

‘And Jarl Haesten serves Jarl Cnut?’

‘He does, lord,’ Hakon said. Æthelflaed was right, I thought. Too many masters, and no one man in command. Eohric was weak, but he was proud, and he would not be subservient to Sigurd or Cnut, while those two probably despised Eohric, yet had to treat him as a king if they were to have his troops. ‘And how big is the army?’ I asked.

Neither of them knew. Leif thought it was ten thousand strong, which was ludicrous, while Hakon just said they had been assured it was the largest army ever to attack the Saxons. ‘And where is it going?’ I asked.

Again neither knew. They had been told that they would make Æthelwold the King of Wessex and Beortsig the King of Mercia, and those two monarchs would reward them with land, but when I asked if they were going to Wintanceaster they both looked blank and I realised neither had even heard of that city.

I let Finan kill Leif. He died bravely and swiftly, a sword in his hand, but Hakon begged to see a priest before he died. ‘You’re a Dane,’ I told him.

‘And a Christian, lord.’

‘Does no one worship Odin in East Anglia?’

‘Some, lord, but not many.’

That was worrying. Some Danes, I knew, converted because it was convenient. Haesten had insisted his wife and daughters were baptised, but that was only because it yielded better terms from Alfred, though if Offa had not lied about everything before he died then Haesten’s wife was a true believer. These days, as I face my own death and my old age dims the glories of this world, I see nothing but Christians. Perhaps in the far north where the ice grips the summer land there are some folk left who sacrifice to Thor, Odin and Freya, but I know of none in Britain. We slide into darkness, towards the final chaos of Ragnarok, when the seas will burn in turmoil and the land will break and even the gods will die. Hakon did not care whether he held a sword or not, he just wanted to say his prayers, and when they were said we took his head from his shoulders.

I sent more messengers to Edward, only this time I sent Finan because I knew the king would listen to the Irishman, and I sent him with seven other men. They were to ride west before crossing the Temes, then go fast towards Wintanceaster or to wherever else the king might be, and they carried a letter I wrote myself. Men are always surprised that I can read and write, but Beocca taught me when I was a child and I have never lost the skills. Alfred, of course, insisted that all his lords should learn to read, mainly so that he could write his chiding letters to us, but since his death not many bother to learn, yet I still have the skills. I wrote that the Danes were cursed with too many leaders, that they were lingering too long just south of the Temes, that I had slowed them by taking horses and leaving them with a mass of wounded men. Come towards Cracgelad, I urged the king. Collect every warrior, I urged him, call the fyrd, and advance on the Danes from the south and I would be the anvil against which he could beat the enemy into blood, bones and raven-food. If the Danes moved, I said, I would shadow them on the northern bank of the Temes to block their escape, but I doubted they would move far. ‘We have them in our hand, lord King,’ I wrote, ‘and now you must close the fist.’

And then I waited. The Danes did not move. We saw the smoke pyres in the distant southern sky that told us they were scouring a wider area of Wessex, but their main encampment was still not far south of Cracgelad’s bridge, which we now had made into a fortress. No one could cross the bridge unless we allowed it. I went over each day, taking fifty or sixty men to patrol a short distance on the southern bank to make certain the Danes were not moving, and each day I returned to Cracgelad astonished that the enemy was making it so easy for us. At night we could see the glow of their campfires lighting the southern sky and by day we watched the smoke, and in four days nothing changed except the weather. Rain came and went, the wind stirred the river and an early autumn mist obscured the ramparts one morning, and when the mist lifted the Danes were still there.

‘Why aren’t they moving?’ Æthelflaed asked me.

‘Because they can’t agree where to go.’

‘And if you led them,’ she asked, ‘where would they go?’

‘To Wintanceaster,’ I said.

‘And besiege it?’

‘Capture it,’ I said, and that was their difficulty. They knew men would die in the burh’s ditch and on its high wall, but that was no reason not to try. Alfred’s burhs had given the enemy a riddle they could not solve, and I would have to find a solution if I was to retake Bebbanburg, a fortress that was more formidable than any burh. ‘I’d go to Wintanceaster,’ I told her, ‘and I’d hurl men at the wall until it fell, and then I’d make Æthelwold king there and demand that West Saxons follow me, and then we’d march on Lundene.’

Yet the Danes did nothing. They argued instead. We heard later that Eohric wanted the army to march on Lundene, while Æthelwold reckoned it should assault Wintanceaster, and Cnut and Sigurd were all for recrossing the Temes to capture Gleawecestre. So Eohric wanted to bring Lundene into his kingdom’s boundaries, Æthelwold wanted what he believed was his birthright, while Cnut and Sigurd simply wanted to extend their lands southwards to the Temes, and their arguments left the great army drifting in indecision, and I imagined Edward’s messengers riding between the burhs, gathering the warriors, bringing together a Saxon army that could destroy the Danish power in Britain for ever.

Then Finan returned with all the messengers I had sent to Wintanceaster. They crossed the Temes well to the west, looping about the Danes, and came to Cracgelad on horses that were sweat-whitened and dust-covered. They brought a letter from the king. A priestly clerk had written it, but Edward had signed it and the letter bore his seal. It greeted me in the name of the Christian god, thanked me effusively for my messages, and then ordered me to leave Cracgelad immediately and to take all the forces under my command to meet the king in Lundene. I read it in disbelief. ‘Did you tell the king we have the Danes trapped on the river?’ I asked Finan.

Finan nodded, ‘I told him, lord, but he wants us in Lundene.’

‘Doesn’t he understand the opportunity?’

‘He’s going to Lundene, lord, and he wants us to join him there,’ Finan said flatly.

‘Why?’ And that was a question no one could answer.

I could do no good on my own. I had men, true, but not nearly enough. I needed two or three thousand warriors to come from the south, and that was not going to happen. Edward, it seemed, was taking his army to Lundene, going by a route that kept him well clear of any Danish outriders. I swore, but I had sworn an oath to obey King Edward and my oath-lord had given me an order.

So we unlocked the trap, let the Danes live and rode to Lundene.

King Edward was already in Lundene and the streets were filled with warriors, every courtyard was being used as a stable, even the old Roman amphitheatre was crammed with horses.

Edward was in the old Mercian royal palace. Lundene was properly in Mercia, though it had been under West Saxon rule ever since I had captured it for Alfred. I found Edward in the big Roman chamber with its pillars, dome, cracked plaster and shattered tile floor. A council was in session, and the king was flanked by Archbishop Plegmund and by Bishop Erkenwald, while facing them, in a semicircle of benches and chairs, sat more churchmen and a dozen ealdormen. The banners of Wessex were propped at the back of the chamber. A lively discussion was under way as I entered, and the voices fell silent as my feet sounded loud on the broken floor. Scraps of tile skittered away. There had been a picture made with the tiles, but it had vanished by now.

‘Lord Uhtred,’ Edward greeted me warmly, though I noted a slight nervousness in his voice.

I knelt to him. ‘Lord King.’

‘Welcome,’ he said, ‘and join us.’

I had not cleaned my mail. There was blood in the gaps between the tight rings and men noticed it. Ealdorman Æthelhelm ordered a chair brought next to him and invited me to sit there. ‘How many men do you bring us, Lord Uhtred?’ Edward asked.

‘Steapa is with me,’ I said, ‘and counting his men we have five hundred and sixty-three.’ I had lost some in the fighting at Cracgelad, and others had fallen behind because of lamed horses as we rode to Lundene.

‘Which makes a total of?’ Edward asked a priest seated at a table to the side of the chamber.

‘Three thousand, four hundred and twenty-three men, lord King.’

He obviously meant household warriors, not the fyrd, and it was a respectable army. ‘And the enemy?’ Edward asked.

‘Four to five thousand men, lord, as best we may judge.’

The stilted conversation was plainly meant for my ears. Archbishop Plegmund, face as sour as a shrivelled crab apple, watched me closely. ‘So you see, Lord Uhtred,’ Edward turned back to me, ‘we did not have enough men to force an encounter on the banks of the Temes.’

‘The men of Mercia would have joined you, lord King,’ I said. ‘Gleawecestre is not so far away.’

‘Sigismund has landed from Ireland,’ Archbishop Plegmund took up the tale, ‘and has occupied Ceaster. The Lord Æthelred needs to watch over him.’

‘From Gleawecestre?’ I asked.

‘From wherever he decides,’ Plegmund said testily.

‘Sigismund,’ I said, ‘is a Norseman who’s been run out of Ireland by the native savages, and he’s hardly a threat to Mercia.’ I had never heard of Sigismund before and had no idea why he had chosen to occupy Ceaster, but it seemed a likely explanation.

‘He has brought crews of pagans,’ Plegmund said, ‘a host!’

‘He is not our business,’ Edward intervened, obviously unhappy at the sharp tone of the last few statements. ‘Our business is to defeat my cousin Æthelwold. Now,’ he looked at me, ‘you will agree our burhs are well defended?’

‘I hope so, lord.’

‘And it is our belief,’ Edward went on, ‘that the enemy will be frustrated by the burhs and so will withdraw soon.’

‘And we shall fight them as they withdraw,’ Plegmund said.

‘So why not fight them south of Cracgelad?’ I asked.

‘Because the men of Cent could not have reached that place in a timely fashion,’ Plegmund said, sounding irritated by my question, ‘and Ealdorman Sigelf has promised us seven hundred warriors. Once they have joined us,’ he went on, ‘we shall be ready to confront the enemy.’

Edward looked at me expectantly, plainly wanting my agreement. ‘It’s surely sensible,’ he finally spoke after I had made no comment, ‘to wait until we have the men of Cent? Their numbers will make our army truly formidable.’

‘I have a suggestion, lord King,’ I said respectfully.

‘All your suggestions are welcome, Lord Uhtred,’ he said.

‘I think that instead of bread and wine the church should serve ale and old cheese,’ I said, ‘and I propose that the sermon should be at the beginning of the service instead of at the end, and I think priests should be naked during the ceremonies, and…’

‘Silence!’ Plegmund shouted.

‘If your priests are going to conduct your wars, lord King,’ I said, ‘then why shouldn’t your warriors run the church?’ There was some nervous laughter at that, but as the council went on it was clear that we were as leaderless as the Danes. The Christians talk about the blind leading the blind, and now the blind were fighting the blind. Alfred would have dominated such a council, but Edward deferred to his advisers, and men like Æthelhelm were cautious. They preferred to wait until Sigelf’s Centish troops had joined us.

‘Why aren’t the men of Cent here now?’ I asked. Cent was close to Lundene and in the time it had taken my men to cross and recross half of Saxon Britain the men of Cent had failed to complete a two-day march.