and peered through the gloom. Then he whistled like a blackbird and I recognised him. ‘Is that Brida with you?’ the young priest asked.
She was also in leather, with a Welsh sword strapped to her waist. Nihtgenga ran to Willibald, whom he had never met, and allowed himself to be stroked. Tatwine and the other warriors all tramped in, but Willibald ignored them. ‘I hope you’re well, Uhtred?’
‘I’m well, father,’ I said, ‘and you?’
‘I’m very well,’ he said.
He smiled, obviously wanting me to ask why he had come to Æthelred’s hall, but I pretended to be uninterested. ‘You didn’t get into trouble for losing us?’ I asked him instead.
‘The Lady Ælswith was very angry,’ he admitted, ‘but Alfred seemed not to mind. He did chide Father Beocca though.’
‘Beocca? Why?’
‘Because Beocca had persuaded him you wanted to escape the Danes, and Beocca was wrong. Still, no harm done.’ He smiled. ‘And now Alfred has sent me to find you.’
I squatted close to him. It was late summer, but the night was surprisingly chill so I threw another log onto the fire so that sparks flew up and a puff of smoke drifted into the high beams. ‘Alfred sent you,’ I said flatly. ‘He still wants to teach me to read?’
‘He wants to see you, lord.’
I looked at him suspiciously. I called myself a lord, and so I was by birthright, but I was well imbued with the Danish idea that lordship was earned, not given, and I had not earned it yet. Still, Willibald was showing respect. ‘Why does he want to see me?’ I asked.
‘He would talk with you,’ Willibald said, ‘and when the talk is done you are free to come back here or, indeed, go anywhere else you wish.’
Brida brought me some hard bread and cheese. I ate, thinking. ‘What does he want to talk to me about?’ I asked Willibald, ‘God?’
The priest sighed. ‘Alfred has been king for two years, Uhtred, and in those years he has had only two things on his mind. God and the Danes, but I think he knows you cannot help him with the first.’ I smiled. Æthelred’s hounds had woken as Tatwine and his men settled on the high platforms where they would sleep. One of the hounds came to me, hoping for food and I stroked his rough fur and I thought how Ragnar had loved his hounds. Ragnar was in Valhalla now, feasting and roaring and fighting and whoring and drinking, and I hoped there were hounds in the Northmen’s heaven, and boars the size of oxen, and spears sharp as razors. ‘There is only one condition attached to your journey,’ Willibald went on, ‘and that is that Brida is not to come.’
‘Brida’s not to come, eh?’ I repeated.
‘The Lady Ælswith insists on it,’ Willibald said.
‘Insists?’
‘She has a son now,’ Willibald said, ‘God be praised, a fine boy called Edward.’
‘If I were Alfred,’ I said, ‘I’d keep her busy too.’
Willibald smiled. ‘So will you come?’
I touched Brida, who had settled beside me. ‘We’ll come,’ I promised him, and Willibald shook his head at my obstinacy, but did not try to persuade me to leave Brida behind.
Why did I go? Because I was bored. Because my cousin Æthelred disliked me. Because Willibald’s words had suggested that Alfred did not want me to become a scholar, but a warrior. I went because fate determines our lives.
We left in the morning. It was a late summer’s day, a soft rain falling on trees heavy with leaf. At first we rode through Æthelred’s fields, thick with rye and barley and loud with the rattling noise of corncrakes, but after a few miles we were in the wasteland that was the frontier region between Wessex and Mercia. There had been a time when these fields were fertile, when the villages were full and sheep roamed the higher hills, but the Danes had ravaged the area in the summer after their defeat at Æsc’s Hill, and few men had come back to settle the land. Alfred, I knew, wanted folk to come here to plant crops and rear cattle, but the Danes had threatened to kill any man who used the land for they knew as well as Alfred that such men would look to Wessex for protection, that they would become West Saxons and increase the strength of Wessex, and Wessex, as far as the Danes were concerned, existed only because they had yet to take it.
Yet that land was not entirely deserted. A few folk still lived in the villages, and the woods were full of outlaws. We saw none, and that was good for we still had a fair amount of Ragnar’s hoard that Brida carried. Each coin was now wrapped in a scrap of rag so that the frayed leather bag did not clink as she moved.
By day’s end we were well south of that region and into Wessex and the fields were lush again and the villages full. No wonder the Danes yearned for this land.
Alfred was at Wintanceaster, which was the West Saxon capital and a fine town in a rich countryside. The Romans had made Wintanceaster, of course, and Alfred’s palace was mostly Roman, though his father had added a great hall with beautifully carved beams, and Alfred was building a church that was even bigger than the hall, making its walls from stone that were covered with a spider’s web of timber scaffolding when I arrived. There was a market beside the new building and I remember thinking how odd it was to see so many folk without a single Dane among them. The Danes looked like us, but when Danes walked through a market in northern England the crowds parted, men bowed, and there was a hint of fear. None here. Women haggled over apples and bread and cheese and fish, and the only language I heard was the raw accents of Wessex.
Brida and I were given quarters in the Roman part of the palace. No one tried to part us this time. We had a small room, limewashed, with a straw mattress, and Willibald said we should wait there, and we did until we got bored with waiting, after which we explored the palace, finding it full of priests and monks. They looked at us strangely, for both of us wore arm rings cut with Danish runes. I was a fool in those days, a clumsy fool, and did not have the courtesy to take the arm rings off. True, some English wore them, especially the warriors, but not in Alfred’s palace. There were plenty of warriors in his household, many of them the great Ealdormen who were Alfred’s courtiers, led his retainers and were rewarded by land, but such men were far outnumbered by priests, and only a handful of men, the trusted bodyguard of the king’s household, were permitted to carry weapons in the palace. In truth it was more like a monastery than a king’s court. In one room there were a dozen monks copying books, their pens scratching busily, and there were three chapels, one of them beside a courtyard that was full of flowers. It was beautiful, that courtyard, buzzing with bees and thick with fragrance. Nihtgenga was just pissing on one of the flowering bushes when a voice spoke behind us. ‘The Romans made the courtyard.’
I turned and saw Alfred. I went on one knee, as a man should when he sees a king, and he waved me up. He was wearing woollen breeches, long boots and a simple linen shirt, and he had no escort, neither guard nor priest. His right sleeve was ink-stained. ‘You are welcome, Uhtred,’ he said.
‘Thank you, lord,’ I said, wondering where his entourage was. I had never seen him without a slew of priests within fawning distance, but he was quite alone that day.
‘And Brida,’ he said, ‘is that your dog?’
‘He is,’ she said defiantly.
‘He looks a fine beast. Come,’ he ushered us through a door into what was evidently
