Death of Kings Read online

  I nodded. I trusted his judgement. Two crews of men had ridden from west to east and the hooves of their horses had trampled that scar into the waterlogged ground. Two crews were following the river to where? I slowed my horse, letting Beortsig catch us. ‘Where did you say Sigurd was celebrating Yule?’ I asked.

  ‘Cytringan,’ he said.

  ‘And where’s Cytringan?’

  He pointed north. ‘A good day’s journey, probably two. He keeps a feasting hall there.’

  Cytringan lay to the north, but the hoof-prints had been going east.

  Someone was lying.

  Two

  I had not realised quite how important the proposed treaty was to Alfred until I returned to Buccingahamm and found sixteen monks eating my food and drinking my ale. The youngest of them were still unshaven striplings, while the oldest, their leader, was a corpulent man of about my own age. He was called Brother John, and was so fat that he had trouble offering me a bow. ‘He is from Frankia,’ Willibald said proudly.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘He is the king’s songmaster! He leads the choir.’

  ‘A choir?’ I asked.

  ‘We sing,’ Brother John said in a voice that seemed to rumble from somewhere inside his capacious belly. He waved a peremptory hand at his monks and shouted at them, ‘the Soli Deo Gloria. Stand up! Breathe deep! Upon my word! A one! A two!’ They began chanting. ‘Mouths open!’ Brother John bellowed at them, ‘Mouths wide! Mouths wide as little birdies! From the stomach! Let me hear you!’

  ‘Enough!’ I shouted before they had finished their first line. I tossed my sheathed sword to Oswi, my servant, then went to warm myself by the hall’s central hearth. ‘Why,’ I asked Willibald, ‘must I feed singing monks?’

  ‘It’s important we make an impressive display,’ he answered, casting a dubious eye on my mud-spattered mail. ‘We represent Wessex, lord, and we must demonstrate the glory of Alfred’s court.’

  Alfred had sent banners with the monks. One showed the dragon of Wessex, while others were embroidered with saints or holy images. ‘We’re taking those rags as well?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Willibald said.

  ‘I can take a banner showing Thor, perhaps? Or Woden?’

  Willibald sighed. ‘Please lord, no.’

  ‘Why can’t we have a banner showing one of the women saints?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m sure we can,’ Willibald said, pleased at the suggestion, ‘if that’s what you’d like.’

  ‘One of those women who were stripped naked before they were killed,’ I added, and Father Willibald sighed again.

  Sigunn brought me a horn of mulled ale and I gave her a kiss. ‘All well here?’ I asked her.

  She looked at the monks and shrugged. I could see Willibald was curious about her, especially when I put an arm around her and drew her close. ‘She’s my woman,’ I explained.

  ‘But,’ he began and finished abruptly. He was thinking about Æthelflaed, but did not have the courage to name her.

  I smiled at him. ‘You have a question, father?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said hurriedly.

  I looked at the largest banner, a great gaudy square of cream linen emblazoned with an embroidery of the crucifixion. It was so large that it would need two men to parade it, and even more if the wind was blowing anything above a gentle breeze. ‘Does Eohric know we’re bringing an army?’ I asked Willibald.

  ‘He has been told to expect up to one hundred people.’

  ‘And does he expect Sigurd and Cnut too?’ I enquired acidly, and Willibald just stared at me with a vacant expression. ‘The Danes know about this treaty,’ I told him, ‘and they’ll try to prevent it.’

  ‘Prevent it? How?’

  ‘How do you think?’ I asked.

  Willibald looked paler than ever. ‘King Eohric is sending men to escort us,’ he said.

  ‘He’s sending them here?’ I spoke angrily, thinking that I would be expected to feed even more men.

  ‘To Huntandon,’ Willibald said, ‘and from there they take us to Eleg.’

  ‘Why are we going to East Anglia?’ I asked.

  ‘To make the treaty, of course,’ Willibald said, puzzled by the question.

  ‘So why isn’t Eohric sending men to Wessex?’ I demanded.

  ‘Eohric did send men, lord! He sent Ceolberht and Ceolnoth. The treaty was King Eohric’s suggestion.’

  ‘Then why isn’t it being sealed and signed in Wessex?’ I persisted.

  Willibald shrugged. ‘Does it matter, lord?’ he asked with a trace of impatience. ‘And we’re supposed to meet at Huntandon in three days,’ he went on, ‘and if the weather turns bad,’ he let his voice fade away.

  I had heard of Huntandon, though I had never been there, and all I knew was that it lay somewhere beyond the vague frontier between Mercia and East Anglia. I gestured to the twins, Ceolberht and Ceolnoth, and they hurried over from the table where they had been sitting with the two priests sent with Willibald from Wessex. ‘If I were to ride straight to Eleg from here,’ I asked the twins, ‘what way would I go?’

  They muttered together for a few seconds, then one of them suggested that the quickest route lay through Grantaceaster. ‘From there,’ the other one continued, ‘there’s a Roman road straight to the island.’

  ‘Island?’

  ‘Eleg is an island,’ a twin said.

  ‘In a marsh,’ the other added.

  ‘With a convent!’

  ‘Which was burned by the pagans.’

  ‘Though the church is now restored.’

  ‘Thanks be to God.’

  ‘The holy Æthelreda built the convent.’

  ‘And she was married to a Northumbrian,’ Ceolnoth or Ceolberht said, thinking to please me because I am a Northumbrian. I am the Lord of Bebbanburg, though in those days my vicious uncle lived in that great ocean fortress. He had stolen it from me and I planned to take it back.

  ‘And Huntandon,’ I asked, ‘lies on the road to Grantaceaster?’

  The twins looked surprised at my ignorance. ‘Oh no, lord,’ one of them said, ‘Huntandon lies farther north.’

  ‘So why are we going there?’

  ‘King Eohric, lord,’ the other twin began, then faltered. It was plain that neither he nor his brother had thought about that question.

  ‘It’s as good a route as any,’ his brother said stoutly.

  ‘Better than Grantaceaster?’ I demanded.

  ‘Very nearly as good, lord,’ one of the twins said.

  There are times when a man feels like a wild boar trapped in woodland, hearing the hunters, listening to the hounds baying, feeling the heart beat harder and wondering which way to flee, and not knowing because the sounds come from everywhere and nowhere. None of it was right. None of it. I summoned Sihtric who had once been my servant, but was now a house-warrior. ‘Find someone,’ I told him, ‘anyone, who knows Huntandon. Bring him here. I want him here by tomorrow.’

  ‘Where do I look?’ Sihtric asked.

  ‘How do I know? Go to the town. Talk to people in taverns.’

  Sihtric, thin and sharp-faced, looked at me resentfully. ‘I’m to find someone in a tavern?’ he asked, as if the task were impossible.

  ‘A merchant,’ I shouted at him. ‘Find me someone who travels! And don’t get drunk. Find someone and bring them to me.’ Sihtric still looked sullen, perhaps because he was unwilling to go back into the cold outside. For a moment he looked like his father, Kjartan the Cruel, who had whelped Sihtric on a Saxon slave, but then, controlling his anger, he turned and walked away. Finan, who had noticed Sihtric’s truculence, relaxed. ‘Find me someone who knows how to get to Huntandon and to Grantaceaster and to Eleg,’ I called after Sihtric, but he gave me no answer, and walked out of the hall.

  I knew Wessex well enough, and I was learning parts of Mercia. I knew the land around Bebbanburg and about Lundene, but much of the rest of Britain was a mystery. I needed someone who knew East Anglia as
well as I knew Wessex. ‘We know all those places, lord,’ one of the twins said.

  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.

  Maybe I saw danger where there was none.

  �
��Have you been to Cytringan?’ I asked Ludda.

  He looked surprised, perhaps because Cytringan was very far from the other places I had asked him about. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said. ‘What’s there?’

  ‘The Jarl Sigurd has a feasting-hall there, lord. He uses it when he hunts in the woods there.’

  ‘It has a palisade?’

  ‘No, lord. It’s a great hall, but it’s empty much of the time.’

  ‘I hear Sigurd is spending Yule there.’

  ‘That could be, lord.’

  I nodded, then put the coins back in my pouch and saw the look of disappointment on Ludda’s face. ‘I’ll pay you,’ I promised him, ‘when we come back.’

  ‘We?’ he asked nervously.

  ‘You’re coming with me, Ludda,’ I said, ‘any warrior would be glad of a magician for company, and a magician should be mighty glad of warriors for an escort.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ he said, trying to sound happy.

  We left next morning. The monks were all on foot, which slowed us, but I was in no great hurry. I took almost all my men, leaving only a handful to guard the hall. There were over a hundred of us, but only fifty were warriors, the rest were churchmen and servants, while Sigunn was the only woman. My men wore their finest mail. Twenty of them led us and almost all the rest formed a rearguard, while the monks, priests and servants walked or rode in the centre. Six of my men were out on the flanks, riding ahead as scouts. I expected no trouble between Buccingahamm and Bedanford, and nor did we find any. I had not visited Bedanford before, and discovered a sad, half-deserted town that had shrunk to a frightened village. There had once been a great church north of the river, and King Offa, the tyrant of Mercia, was supposedly buried there, but the Danes had burned the church and dug up the king’s grave to seek whatever treasure might have been interred with his corpse. We spent a cold, uncomfortable night in a barn, though I spent part of the darkness with the sentries, who shivered in their fur cloaks. The dawn brought mist across a wet, drab, flat land through which the river twisted in great lazy bends.

  We crossed the river in the morning mist. I sent Finan and twenty men across first and he scouted the road ahead and came back to say there was no enemy in sight. ‘Enemy?’ Willibald asked me. ‘Why would you expect enemies?’