The man I had sent to find a rope brought one with a heavy wooden bucket attached, and I used the pail as a weight to hurl the rope over the projecting inn sign of the Red Pig. ‘Find me a man, any man, one who’s fighting,’ I told Steapa.
He stomped off while I made a noose. A wounded man, guts hanging, crawled down the hill. A woman was screaming. The gutter was running with ale-diluted blood. One of the king’s men arrived with a horn. ‘Sound it,’ I said, ‘and keep blowing it.’
Steapa dragged a man to me, we had no idea whether he was from Wessex or Mercia, but it did not matter. I tightened the noose around his neck, slapped him when he begged for mercy, and hauled him into the air where he hanged, legs kicking. The horn blew on, insistent, unignorable. I handed the rope’s end to Oswi, my servant. ‘Tie it to something,’ I said, then turned and bellowed at the street. ‘Anyone else want to die?’
The sight of a man dancing on a rope while he chokes to death has a calming influence on a crowd. The street went quiet. The king and a dozen men had appeared at the palace door and men bowed or knelt in homage.
‘One more fight,’ I shouted, ‘and you’ll all die!’ I looked for one of my men. ‘Pull on the bastard’s ankles,’ I said, pointing at the hanged man.
‘You just killed one of my men,’ a voice said, and I turned to see a slight man with a sharp fox-like face and long red plaited moustaches. He was an older man, perhaps close to fifty, and his red hair was greying at the temples. ‘You killed him without trial!’ he accused me.
I towered over him, but he faced me pugnaciously. ‘I’ll hang a dozen more of your men if they fight in the street,’ I said, ‘and who are you?’
‘Ealdorman Sigelf,’ he said, ‘and you call me lord.’
‘I’m Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I said and was rewarded by a blink of surprise, ‘and you can call me lord.’
Sigelf evidently decided he did not want to fight me. ‘They shouldn’t have been fighting,’ he acknowledged grudgingly. He frowned. ‘You met my son, I believe?’
‘I met your son,’ I said.
‘He was a fool,’ Sigelf said in a voice as sharp as his face, ‘a young fool. He’s learned his lesson.’
‘The lesson of loyalty?’ I asked, looking across the street to where Sigebriht was bowing low to the king.
‘So they both liked the same bitch,’ Sigelf said, ‘but Edward was a prince and princes get what they want.’
‘So do kings,’ I said mildly.
Sigelf caught my meaning and gave me a very hard glance. ‘Cent doesn’t need a king,’ he said, clearly trying to scotch the rumour that he wanted the throne for himself.
‘Cent has a king,’ I said.
‘So we hear,’ he spoke sarcastically, ‘but Wessex needs to take more care of us. Every damned Northman who gets his arse kicked in Frankia comes to our shores, and what does Wessex do? It scratches its own arse then sniffs its fingers while we suffer.’ He watched his son bow a second time and spat, though whether that was because of his son’s obeisance or because of Wessex it was hard to tell. ‘Look what happened when Harald and Haesten came!’ he demanded.
‘I defeated both of them,’ I said.
‘But not before they’d raped half of Cent and burned fifty or more villages. We need more defences.’ He glared at me. ‘We need some help!’
‘At least you’re here,’ I said emolliently.
‘We’ll help Wessex,’ Sigelf said, ‘even if Wessex doesn’t help us.’
I had thought that the arrival of the Centishmen would provoke some action from Edward, but instead he waited. There was a council of war every day, but it decided nothing except to wait and see what the enemy would do. Scouts were watching the Danes and sent reports back every day and those reports said the Danes were still not moving. I urged the king to attack them, but I might as well have begged him to fly to the moon. I begged him to let me lead my own men to scout the enemy, but he refused.
‘He thinks you’ll attack them,’ Æthelflaed told me.
‘Why doesn’t he attack?’ I asked, frustrated.
‘Because he’s frightened,’ she said, ‘because there are too many men giving him advice, because he’s scared of doing the wrong thing, because he only has to lose one battle and he’s no longer king.’
We were on the top floor of a Roman house, one of those astonishing buildings that had stairs climbing to floor after floor. The moon shone through a window, and through the holes in the roof where the slates had fallen. It was cold and we were wrapped in fleeces. ‘A king shouldn’t be frightened,’ I said.
‘Edward knows men compare him to his father. He wonders what Father would have done now.’
‘Alfred would have called for me,’ I said, ‘preached to me for ten minutes, then given me the army.’
She lay silent in my arms. She was gazing at the moon-speckled roof. ‘Do you think,’ she asked, ‘that we’ll ever have peace?’
‘No.’
‘I dream of a day when we can live in a great hall, go hunting, listen to songs, walk by the river and never fear an enemy.’
‘You and me?’
‘Just you and me,’ she said. She turned her head so that her hair hid her eyes. ‘Just you and me.’
Next morning Edward ordered Æthelflaed to return to Cirrenceastre, an order she pointedly ignored. ‘I told him to give you the army,’ she said.
‘And he said?’
‘That he was king and he would lead the army.’
Her husband had also ordered Merewalh back to Gleawecestre, but Æthelflaed persuaded the Mercian to stay. ‘We need every good man,’ she told him, and so we did, but not to rot inside Lundene. We had a whole army there, over four thousand five hundred men, and all it did was guard the walls and gaze out at the unchanging countryside beyond.
We did nothing and the Danes ravaged the Wessex countryside, but made no attempt to storm a burh. The autumn days shrank and still we remained indecisive in Lundene. Archbishop Plegmund returned to Contwaraburg and I thought his departure might embolden Edward, but Bishop Erkenwald stayed with the king and counselled caution. So did Father Coenwulf, Edward’s mass priest and closest adviser. ‘It’s not like the Danes to be supine,’ he told Edward, ‘so I fear a trap. Let them make the first move, lord King. They surely cannot stay for ever.’ In that, at least, he was right, for as the autumn slid cold into winter the Danes at last moved.
They had been as indecisive as us, and now they simply recrossed the river at Cracgelad and went back the way they had come. Steapa’s scouts told us of their retreat, and day by day the reports came that they were heading back towards East Anglia, taking slaves, livestock and plunder. ‘And once they’re back there,’ I told the council, ‘the Northumbrian Danes will go home in their ships. They’ve achieved nothing, except taking a lot of slaves and cattle, but we’ve done nothing either.’
‘King Eohric has broken his treaty,’ Bishop Erkenwald pointed out indignantly, though what use that observation was escaped me.
‘He promised to be at peace with us,’ Edward said.
‘He must be punished, lord King,’ Erkenwald insisted. ‘The treaty was solemnised by the church!’
Edward glanced at me. ‘And if the Northumbrians go home,’ he said, ‘Eohric will be vulnerable.’
‘When they go home, lord King,’ I pointed out. ‘They might wait till spring.’
‘Eohric can’t feed that many,’ Ealdorman Æthelhelm pointed out. ‘They’ll leave his kingdom quickly! Look at the problems we have in feeding an army.’
‘So you’ll invade in winter?’ I asked scornfully. ‘When the rivers are flooding, the rain is falling and we’re wading in freezing mud?’
‘God is on our side!’ Erkenwald declared.
The army had been in Lundene for almost three months now, and the food supplies of the city were running low. There was no enemy at the gates, so more food was constantly being carted into the storehouses, but that took an immense number of wagons, oxen, horses an
d men. And the warriors themselves were bored. Some blamed the men of Cent for delaying their arrival and, despite my having hanged a man, there were frequent fights in which dozens of men died. Edward’s army was querulous, underemployed and hungry, but Bishop Erkenwald’s indignation at Eohric’s betrayal of a sacred trust somehow invigorated the council and persuaded the king to make a decision. For weeks we had the Danes at our mercy and granted them mercy, but now they had left Wessex the council suddenly discovered courage. ‘We shall follow the enemy,’ Edward announced, ‘take back what they have stolen from us, and revenge ourselves on King Eohric.’
‘If we’re following them,’ I said, looking at Sigelf, ‘we all need horses.’
‘We have horses,’ Edward pointed out.
‘Not all the men of Cent do,’ I said.
Sigelf bridled at that. He was a man, it seemed to me, ready to take offence at the slightest suggestion of criticism, but he knew I was right. The Danes always moved on horseback, and an army slowed by foot soldiers would never catch them or be able to react quickly to an enemy move. Sigelf scowled at me, but resisted the temptation to snap at me, instead he looked to the king. ‘You could lend us horses?’ he asked Edward. ‘What about the horses of the garrison here?’
‘Weohstan won’t like that,’ Edward said unhappily. A man’s horse was one of his most valuable possessions, and not one that was casually lent to a stranger going to war.
No one spoke for a moment, then Sigelf shrugged. ‘Then let a hundred of my men stay here as garrison troops and your, what was his name, Weohstan? He can send a hundred horsemen to replace them.’
And that was how it was decided. Lundene’s garrison would give the army a hundred horsemen and Sigelf’s men would replace them on the walls, and then at last we could march and so next morning the army left Lundene by the Bishop’s Gate and by the Old Gate. We followed the Roman roads north and east, but it could hardly be called a pursuit. Some of the army, those with experience, travelled light, but too many contingents had brought wagons, servants, and too many spare horses, and we were lucky to travel three miles in an hour. Steapa led half the king’s warriors as a vanguard with orders to stay within sight of the army, and he grumbled that he was forced to travel so slowly. Edward had ordered me to stay with the rearguard, but I disobeyed and went far ahead of Steapa’s men. Æthelflaed and her Mercians came with me. ‘I thought your brother insisted you stayed in Lundene?’ I told her.
‘No,’ she said, ‘he ordered me to go to Cirrenceastre.’
‘So why aren’t you obeying him?’
‘I am obeying him,’ she said, ‘but he didn’t tell me which road to take.’ She smiled at me, daring me to send her away.
‘Just stay alive, woman,’ I growled.
‘Yes, lord,’ she said with mocking humility.
I sent my scouts far ahead, but all they discovered were the hoof-prints of the Danish retreat. Nothing, I thought, made sense. The Danes had assembled an army that probably numbered over five thousand men, they had crossed Britain, invaded Wessex, and then done nothing except take plunder. Now they were retreating, but it could hardly have been a profitable summer for them. Alfred’s burhs had done their work by protecting much of Wessex’s wealth, but staving off the Danes was not the same as defeating them. ‘So why didn’t they attack Wintanceaster?’ Æthelflaed asked me.
‘It’s too strong.’
‘So they just walk away?’
‘Too many leaders,’ I said. ‘They’re probably having councils of war just like us. Everyone has a different idea, they talk, and now they’re going home because they can’t make a decision.’
Lundene lies on the border of East Anglia so on our second day we were deep inside Eohric’s territory and Edward released the army to take its revenge. The troops spread out, plundering farmsteads, rounding up cattle and burning villages. Our progress slowed to a crawl, our presence signified by the great pillars of smoke from burning houses. The Danes did nothing. They had retreated far beyond the frontier and we followed them, dropping from the low hills into the wide East Anglian plain. This was a country of damp fields, wide marshes, long dykes and slow rivers, of reeds and wildfowl, of morning mists and eternal mud, of rain and bitter cold winds from the sea. Roads were few and tracks were treacherous. I told Edward time and again to keep the army closed up, but he was eager to ravage Eohric’s land and so the troops spread wider, and my men, still acting as scouts, had a hard time staying in touch with the farthest flung men. The days were shortening, the nights became colder and there were never enough trees to make all the campfires we needed, so instead men used the timber and thatch from captured buildings and at night those fires spread across a great swathe of land, yet the Danes still did nothing to take advantage of our dispersal. We went ever farther into their realm of water and mud, and still we saw no Danes. We skirted Grantaceaster, heading towards Eleg, and on the higher patches of land we found huge, great-raftered feast-halls, thick thatched with reed that burned with a hard, bright crackle, but the inhabitants of the halls had retreated ever further from us.
On the fourth day I realised where we were. We had been following the remnants of a Roman road that ran straight as a spear across the low land, and I scouted westwards and found the bridge at Eanulfsbirig. It had been repaired with great lengths of rough-cut timber laid across the fire-blackened stonework of the Roman piers. I was on the Use’s western bank, where Sigurd had challenged me, and the road from the bridge ran towards Huntandon. I remembered Ludda telling me there was higher ground on the far side of the river there, and that was where Eohric’s men had planned to ambush me and it seemed likely that Eohric would have the same thought now and so I sent Finan and fifty men to scout that farther bridge. They returned in the middle of the afternoon. ‘Hundreds of Danes,’ Finan said laconically, ‘a fleet of ships. They’re waiting for us.’
‘Hundreds?’
‘Can’t cross the river to count them properly,’ he said, ‘not without getting killed, but I saw a hundred and forty-three ships.’
‘So thousands of Danes,’ I said.
‘Just waiting for us, lord.’
I found Edward in a convent to the south. Ealdorman Æthelhelm and Ealdorman Sigelf were with him, as were Bishop Erkenwald and Father Coenwulf, and I interrupted their supper to give them the news. It was a cold night, and a wet wind was rattling the shutters of the convent’s hall.
‘They want battle?’ Edward asked.
‘What they want, lord,’ I said, ‘is for us to be stupid enough to offer them battle.’
He looked puzzled at that. ‘But if we’ve found them,’ he began.
‘We must destroy them,’ Bishop Erkenwald declared.
‘They’re on the far side of a river we cannot cross,’ I explained, ‘except by the bridge that they are defending. They will slaughter us one by one until we withdraw, and then they’ll follow us like wolves behind a flock. That’s what they want, lord King. They’ve chosen the battlefield and we’re fools to accept their choice.’
‘Lord Uhtred is right,’ Ealdorman Sigelf snapped. I was so surprised that I said nothing.
‘He is,’ Æthelhelm agreed.
Edward plainly wanted to ask what we should do, but he knew the question would make him look weak. I could see him working out the alternatives and was pleased that he chose the right one. ‘The bridge you spoke of,’ he said, ‘Eanulfsbirig?’
‘Yes, lord King.’
‘We can cross it?’
‘Yes, lord King.’
‘So if we cross it we can destroy it?’
‘I would cross it, lord King,’ I said, ‘and march on Bedanford. Invite the Danes to attack us there. That way we choose the battlefield, not them.’
‘That makes sense,’ Edward said hesitantly, looking towards Bishop Erkenwald and Father Coenwulf for support. They both nodded. ‘Then that’s what we’ll do,’ Edward said more confidently.
‘I ask a favour of you, lord King,’ Sigelf said, s
ounding unnaturally humble.
‘Whatever you wish,’ Edward said graciously.
‘Allow my men to be the rearguard, lord King? If the Danes attack, let my shields take their assault and let the men of Cent defend the army.’
Edward looked surprised and pleased at the request. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘and thank you, Lord Sigelf.’
And so the orders were sent to all the scattered troops, summoning them to the bridge at Eanulfsbirig. They were to march at first light, and at the same time Sigelf’s Centishmen would advance up the road to confront the Danes just south of Huntandon. We were doing exactly what the Danes had done. We had invaded, destroyed, and now we would withdraw, only we withdrew in chaos.
The dawn brought a bitter cold. Hoar frost touched the fields and the ditches had a skin of ice. I remember that day so well because half the sky was a bright, glittering blue and the other half, all to the east, was grey clouds. It was as though the gods had half dragged a blanket across the world, dividing the sky, and the edge of the clouds was as straight as a blade. That edge was silvered by the sun and beneath it the land was dark, and it was across that land that Edward’s troops straggled westwards. Many had plunder and wanted to use the Roman road, the same road up which Sigelf’s men were advancing. I saw a broken wagon loaded with a millstone. A man was shouting at his warriors to mend the wagon and at the same time was whipping the two helpless oxen. I was with Rollo and twenty-two men and we simply cut the two oxen out of their harness, then pushed the broken wagon with its immense burden into the ditch, shattering the thin ice. ‘That’s my stone,’ the angry man yelled.
‘And this is my sword,’ I snarled back, ‘now get your men west.’
Finan had most of my men close to Huntandon, while I had ordered Osferth to take twenty horsemen and to escort Æthelflaed west of the river. She had obeyed me meekly, which surprised me. I remembered Ludda telling me that there was another road that ran from Huntandon to Eanulfsbirig outside of the great river bend, and so I had warned Edward of that route and then sent Merewalh and his Mercians to guard it. ‘The Danes could try to cut off our retreat,’ I told Edward. ‘They could send ships upriver or use the smaller road, but Merewalh’s scouts should see them if they try either of those things.’