in his head. Guthrum? He is the least to be feared.’
‘The least?’ I sounded dubious. Guthrum might be called the Unlucky, but he was a considerable chieftain and led a large force of warriors.
‘He thinks with his heart, Uhtred,’ Alfred said, ‘not his head. You can change a man’s heart, but not his head.’ I remember staring at Alfred then, thinking that he spouted foolishness like a horse pissing, but he was right. Or almost right because he tried to change me, but never succeeded.
A bee drifted through the door, Nihtgenga snapped impotently at it and the bee droned out again. ‘But Guthrum will attack us?’ Alfred asked.
‘He wants to split you,’ I said. ‘One army by land, another by sea, and the Britons from Wales.’
Alfred looked at me gravely. ‘How do you know that?’
So I told him about Guthrum’s visit to Ragnar and the long conversation which I had witnessed, and Alfred’s pen scratched, little flecks of ink spattering from the quill at rough spots on the parchment. ‘What this suggests,’ he spoke as he wrote, ‘is that Ubba will come from Mercia by land and Guthrum by sea from East Anglia.’ He was wrong about that, but it seemed likely at the time. ‘How many ships can Guthrum bring?’
I had no idea. ‘Seventy?’ I suggested, ‘a hundred?’
‘Far more than that,’ Alfred said severely, ‘and I cannot build even twenty ships to oppose them. Have you sailed, Uhtred?’
‘Many times.’
‘With the Danes?’ he asked pedantically.
‘With the Danes,’ I confirmed.
‘What I would like you to do,’ he said, but at that moment a bell tolled somewhere in the palace and he immediately broke off from what he was saying. ‘Prayers,’ he said, putting down his quill, ‘you will come.’ It was not a question, but a command.
‘I have things to do,’ I said, waited a heartbeat, ‘lord.’
He blinked at me in surprise for he was not used to men opposing his wishes, especially when it came to saying prayers, but I kept a stubborn face and he did not force the issue. There was the slap of sandalled feet on the paved path outside his chamber and he dismissed us as he hurried to join the monks going to their service. A moment later the drone of a chant began, and Brida and I abandoned the palace, going into the town where we discovered a tavern that sold decent ale. I had been offered none by Alfred. The folk there were suspicious of us, partly because of the arm rings with their Danish runes, and partly because of our strange accents, mine from the north and Brida’s from the east, but a sliver of our silver was weighed and trusted, and the wary atmosphere subsided when Father Beocca came in, saw us, and raised his inky hands in welcome. ‘I have been searching high and low for you,’ he said, ‘Alfred wanted you.’
‘He wanted to pray,’ I said.
‘He would have you eat with him.’
I drank some ale. ‘If I live to be a hundred, father,’ I began.
‘I pray you live longer than that,’ Beocca said, ‘I pray you live as long as Methuselah.’
I wondered who that was. ‘If I live to be a hundred,’ I said again, ‘I hope never to eat with Alfred again.’
He shook his head sadly, but agreed to sit with us and take a pot of ale. He reached over and pulled at the leather thong half hidden by my jerkin and so revealed the hammer. He tutted. ‘You lied to me, Uhtred,’ he said sadly. ‘When you ran away from Father Willibald we made enquiries. You were never a prisoner! You were treated as a son!’
‘I was,’ I agreed.
‘But why did you not come to us then? Why did you stay with the Danes?’
I smiled. ‘What would I have learned here?’ I asked. He began to answer, but I stilled him. ‘You would have made me a scholar, father,’ I said, ‘and the Danes made me a warrior. And you will need warriors when they come back.’
Beocca understood that, but he was still sad. He looked at Brida. ‘And you, young lady, I hope you did not lie?’
‘I always tell the truth, father,’ she said in a small voice, ‘always.’
‘That is good,’ he said, then reached over again to hide my amulet. ‘Are you a Christian, Uhtred?’ he asked.
‘You baptised me yourself, father,’ I said evasively.
‘We will not defeat the Danes unless we hold the faith,’ he said earnestly, then smiled, ‘but will you do what Alfred wants?’
‘I don’t know what he wants. He ran off to wear out his knees before he could tell me.’
‘He wants you to serve on one of the ships he’s building,’ he said. I just gaped at him. ‘We’re building ships, Uhtred,’ Beocca went on enthusiastically, ‘ships to fight the Danes, but our sailors are not fighters. They’re, well, sailors! And they’re fishermen, of course, and traders, but we need men who can teach them what the Danes do. Their ships raid our shores incessantly. Two ships come? Three ships? Sometimes more. They land, burn, kill, take slaves and vanish. But with ships we can fight them.’ He punched his withered left hand with his right and winced with the pain. ‘That’s what Alfred wants.’
I glanced at Brida who gave a small shrug as if to say that she thought Beocca was telling the truth.
I thought of the two Æthelreds, younger and older, and their dislike of me. I remembered the joy of a ship on the seas, of the wind tearing at the rigging, of the oars bending and flashing back the sun, of the songs of the rowers, of the heartbeat of the steering-oar, of the seethe of the long green water against the hull. ‘Of course I’ll do it,’ I said.
‘Praise God,’ Beocca said. And why not?
I met Æthelflaed before I left Wintanceaster. She was three or four years old, I suppose, and full of words. She had bright gold hair. She was playing in the garden outside Alfred’s study and I remember she had a rag doll and Alfred played with her and Ælswith worried he was making her too excited. I remember her laugh. She never lost that laugh. Alfred was good with her for he loved his children. Most of the time he was solemn, pious and very self-disciplined, but with small children he became playful and I almost liked him as he teased Æthelflaed by hiding her rag doll behind his back. I also remember how Æthelflaed ran over to Nihtgenga and fondled him and Ælswith called her back. ‘Dirty dog,’ she told her daughter, ‘you’ll get fleas or worse. Come here!’ She gave Brida a very sour look and muttered, ‘Scrætte!’ That means prostitute and Brida pretended not to have heard, as did Alfred. Ælswith ignored me, but I did not mind because Alfred had summoned a palace slave who laid a helmet and a mail coat on the grass. ‘For you, Uhtred,’ Alfred said.
The helmet was bright iron, dented on the crown by the blow of a weapon, polished with sand and vinegar, and with a face-piece in which two eyeholes stared like the pits of a skull. The mail was good, though it had been pierced by a spear or sword where the owner’s heart had been, but it had been expertly repaired by a good smith and it was worth many pieces of silver. ‘They were both taken from a Dane at Æsc’s Hill,’ Alfred told me. Ælswith watched disapprovingly.
‘Lord,’
