Pyrlig went on, ‘which is that we must move with the speed of a Saxon seeing a Welshman’s sword.’
‘He means we must move fast,’ I explained to Æthelred, who knew perfectly well what the Welshman had meant.
My cousin ignored me. ‘Are you being deliberately offensive?’ he asked Pyrlig stiffly.
‘Yes, lord!’ Pyrlig grinned, ‘I am!’
‘I have killed dozens of Welshmen,’ my cousin said.
‘Then the Danes will be no problem to you, will they?’ Pyrlig retorted, refusing to take offence. ‘But my advice still stands, lord. Make haste! The pagans know we’re coming, and the more time you give them, the more formidable their defences!’
We might have moved fast had we possessed ships to carry us downriver, but Sigefrid and Erik, knowing we were coming, had blocked all traffic on the Temes and, not counting Heofonhlaf, we could only muster seven ships, not nearly sufficient to carry our men and so only the laggards and the supplies and Æthelred’s cronies travelled by water. So we marched and it took us four days, and every day we saw horsemen to the north of us or ships downstream of us, and I knew those were Sigefrid’s scouts, making a last count of our numbers as our clumsy army lumbered ever nearer Lundene. We wasted one whole day because it was a Sunday and Æthelred insisted that the priests accompanying the army said mass. I listened to the drone of voices and watched the enemy horsemen circle around us. Haesten, I knew, would already have reached Lundene, and his men, at least two or three hundred of them, would be reinforcing the walls.
Æthelred travelled on board the Heofonhlaf, only coming ashore in the evening to walk around the sentries I had posted. He made a point of moving those sentries, as if to suggest I did not know my business, and I let him do it. On the last night of the journey we camped on an island that was reached from the north bank by a narrow causeway, and its reed-fringed shore was thick with mud so that Sigefrid, if he had a mind to attack us, would find our camp hard to approach. We tucked our ships into the creek that twisted to the island’s north and, as the tide went down and the frogs filled the dusk with croaking, the hulls settled into the thick mud. We lit fires on the mainland that would illuminate the approach of any enemy, and I posted men all around the island.
Æthelred did not come ashore that evening. Instead he sent a servant who demanded that I go to him on board the Heofonhlaf and so I took off my boots and trousers and waded through the glutinous muck before hauling myself over the ship’s side. Steapa, who was marching with the men from Alfred’s bodyguard, came with me. A servant drew buckets of river water from the ship’s far side and we cleaned the mud from our legs, then dressed again before joining Æthelred under his canopy at the Heofonhlaf’s stern. My cousin was accompanied by the commander of his household guard, a young Mercian nobleman named Aldhelm who had a long, supercilious face, dark eyes and thick black hair that he oiled to a lustrous sheen.
Æthelflaed was also there, attended by a maid and by a grinning Father Pyrlig. I bowed to her and she smiled back, but without enthusiasm, and then bent to her embroidery, which was illuminated by a horn-shielded lantern. She was threading white wool onto a dark grey field, making the image of a prancing horse that was her husband’s banner. The same banner, much larger, hung motionless at the ship’s mast. There was no wind, so the smoke from the fires of Lundene’s two towns was a motionless smear in the darkening east.
‘We attack at dawn,’ Æthelred announced without so much as a greeting. He was dressed in a mail coat and had his swords, short and long, belted at his waist. He was looking unusually smug, though he tried to make his voice casual. ‘But I will not sound the advance for my troops,’ he went on, ‘until I hear your own attack has started.’
I frowned at those words. ‘You won’t start your attack,’ I repeated cautiously, ‘until you hear mine has started?’
‘That’s plain, isn’t it?’ Æthelred demanded belligerently.
‘Very plain,’ Aldhelm said mockingly. He treated Æthelred in the same manner that Æthelred behaved to Alfred and, secure in my cousin’s favour, felt free to offer me veiled insult.
‘It’s not plain to me!’ Father Pyrlig put in energetically. ‘The agreed plan,’ the Welshman went on, speaking to Æthelred, ‘is for you to make a feint attack on the western walls and, when you have drawn defenders from the north wall, for Uhtred’s men to make the real assault.’
‘Well I’ve changed my mind,’ Æthelred said airily. ‘Uhtred’s men will now provide the diversionary attack, and my assault will be the real one.’ He tilted up his broad chin and stared at me, daring me to contradict him.
Æthelflaed also looked at me, and I sensed she wanted me to oppose her husband, but instead I surprised all of them by bowing my head as if in acquiescence. ‘If you insist,’ I said.
‘I do,’ Æthelred said, unable to conceal his pleasure at gaining the apparent victory so easily. ‘You may take your own household troops,’ he went on grudgingly, as though he possessed the authority to take them away from me, ‘and thirty other men.’
‘We agreed I could have fifty,’ I said.
‘I have changed my mind about that too!’ he said pugnaciously. He had already insisted that the men of the Berrocscire fyrd, my men, would swell his ranks, and I had meekly agreed to that, just as I had now agreed that the glory of the successful assault could be his. ‘You may take thirty,’ he went on harshly. I could have argued and maybe I should have argued, but I knew it would do no good. Æthelred was beyond argument, wanting only to demonstrate his authority in front of his young wife. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘that Alfred gave me command here.’
‘I had not forgotten,’ I said. Father Pyrlig was watching me shrewdly, doubtless wondering why I had yielded so easily to my cousin’s bullying. Aldhelm was half smiling, probably in the belief that I had been thoroughly cowed by Æthelred.
‘You will leave before us,’ Æthelred went on.
‘I shall leave very soon,’ I said, ‘I have to.’
‘My household troops,’ Æthelred said, now looking at Steapa, ‘will lead the real attack. You will bring the royal troops immediately behind.’
‘I’m going with Uhtred,’ Steapa said.
Æthelred blinked. ‘You are the commander,’ he said slowly, as though he talked with a small child, ‘of Alfred’s bodyguard! And you will bring them to the wall as soon as my men have laid the ladders.’
‘I’m going with Uhtred,’ Steapa said again. ‘The king ordered it.’
‘The king did no such thing!’ Æthelred said dismissively.
‘In writing,’ Steapa said. He frowned, then felt in a pouch and brought out a small square of parchment. He peered at it, not sure which way up the writing went, then just shrugged and gave the scrap to my cousin.
Æthelred frowned as he read the message in the light of his wife’s lantern. ‘You should have given me this before,’ he said petulantly.
‘I forgot,’ Steapa said, ‘and I’m to take six men of my own choosing.’ Steapa had a way of speaking that discouraged argument. He spoke slowly, harshly and dully, and managed to convey the impression that he was too stupid to understand any objection raised against his words. He also conveyed the thought that he might just slaughter any
