our land. It was not ours then, of course, but it was still a far land. They were winners and fighters, they were heroes to a child, and Beocca’s disdain made them only more heroic to me. At that time, before my father’s death and before Ragnar the Dane adopted me, I thought I was a Christian, but I never had a fantasy of becoming a Christian hero by facing a wild beast in Eoferwic’s decaying arena. Instead, I dreamed of fighting in that arena, and saw myself placing a foot on the bloodied chest of a fallen warrior as thousands cheered me. I was a child.
Now, old and grey-bearded, I still admire the Romans. How could I not? We could not build an arena, nor make ramparts like those that surrounded Ceaster. Our roads were muddy tracks, theirs were stone-edged and spear-straight. They built temples of marble, we made churches of timber. Our floors were beaten earth and rushes, theirs were marvels of intricate tilework. They had laced the land with wonders, and we, who had taken the land, could only watch the wonders decay, or patch them with wattle and thatch. True, they were a cruel people, but so are we. Life is cruel.
I was suddenly aware of shrieks coming from the city’s ramparts. I looked to my right and saw helmeted warriors running on the wall’s top. They were keeping pace with us as best they could, and cheering us on. The shrieks sounded like women, but I could only see men there, one of them waving a spear over his head as if encouraging us to kill. I lifted my spear to him, and the man responded by jumping up and down. He had ribbons, white and red, attached to the crown of his helmet. He screeched something at me, but he was too far away, and I could not catch his words, only sense that he was celebrating.
No wonder the garrison was happy. Their enemy had crumpled, and the siege was lifted, even if most of Cynlæf’s troops were still in their encampment. But those troops had shown no lust to fight. They had run or hidden in their shelters. Only the household troops opposed us, and they were now fleeing towards the dubious safety of the old arena. We caught a few laggards, spearing them in the back as they stumbled southwards, while others, more sensible, threw down their weapons and knelt in abject surrender. The light was fading now. The reddish stone of the arena reflected the flames of the nearest campfires, giving the masonry the appearance of being washed in blood. I curbed Tintreg by the arena’s entrance as my men, grinning and elated, reined in around me.
‘There’s only this one way in?’ Finan asked me.
‘As I remember, yes, but send a half-dozen men around the back to make sure.’
The one way in was an arched tunnel that led beneath the tiered seats into the arena itself, and in the fading light I could see men pushing a cart to make a barricade at the tunnel’s far end. They watched us fearfully, but I made no move to attack them. They were fools, and, like fools, they were doomed.
Doomed because they had trapped themselves. It was true there were other entrances to the arena, but those entrances, which were evenly spaced about the whole building, only led to the tiered seating, not to the fighting space at the arena’s centre. Cynlæf’s men had kept their horses in the arena, and that made sense, but in their desperation to escape they had fled to the horses, and so found themselves ringed by stone with just one way to escape, and my men guarded that one tunnel.
Vidarr Leifson, one of my Norse warriors, had led horsemen around the whole arena and returned to confirm that there was just the one entrance to the fighting level. ‘So what do we do, lord?’ he asked, twisting in his saddle to peer into the tunnel. His breath clouded in the cold evening air.
‘We let them rot.’
‘Can they climb up to the seats?’ Berg asked.
‘Probably.’ There was a wall a little higher than a tall man that prevented wild beasts from leaping up to maul the spectators, so our enemy could scramble up to the seats and try to escape through one of the stairways, but that meant abandoning their precious horses, and, once out of the building, they would still have to fight past my men. ‘So block every entrance,’ I ordered, ‘and light fires just outside every stairway.’ The barricades would slow any attempt by Cynlæf’s men to escape, and the fires would warm my sentries.
‘Where do we get firewood?’ Godric asked. He was young, a Saxon, and had once been my servant.
‘The barricade, you fool,’ Finan said, pointing to the besiegers’ makeshift wall that guarded the road leading from the eastern gate.
And just then, as the day’s last light drained in the west, I saw that men were coming from the city. The eastern gate had been opened, and a dozen horsemen now threaded their way through the narrow gap between the city’s ditch and the abandoned barricade. ‘Get those barriers built!’ I commanded my men, then turned a tired Tintreg and spurred him to meet the men we had rescued.
We met them beside the city’s deep ditch. I waited there and watched as the horsemen approached. They were led by a tall young man, clad in mail and with a fine helmet decorated with gold that glinted red from the distant fires. The cheek-pieces of his helmet were open to reveal that he had grown a beard since I had last seen him, and the beard, black and clipped short, made him look older. He was, I knew, twenty-five or twenty-six, I could not remember just when he had been born, but now he was a man in his prime, handsome and confident. He was also a fervent Christian, despite all my efforts to persuade him otherwise, and a big gold cross hung at his chest, swinging against the shining links of mail. There was more gold on his scabbard’s throat and on his horse’s bridle, and ringing the brooch that held his dark cloak in place, while a thin circlet of gold ringed his helmet. He reined in close enough to reach out and pat Tintreg’s neck, and I saw he wore two gold rings over the fine black leather of his gloves. He smiled. ‘You are the very last person I expected, lord,’ he said.
And I swore at him. It was a good oath, brief and brutal.
‘Is that the proper way,’ he asked mildly, ‘to greet a prince?’
‘I owe Finan two shillings,’ I explained.
Because it had just begun to snow.
It is one of the privileges of age to be in a hall, warmed by a fire, while in the night the snow falls and the sentries shiver as they watch for enemies trying to escape from a trap they have made for themselves. Except now I was not sure who was trapped, or by whom.
‘I never sent Father Swithred to fetch help,’ Æthelstan said. ‘Your monk lied. And Father Swithred is in good health, God be thanked.’
Prince Æthelstan was King Edward’s eldest son. He had been born to a pretty Centish girl, the daughter of a bishop, and the poor girl had died whelping him and his twin sister, Eadgyth. After the pretty girl’s death Edward had married a West Saxon girl, and had fathered another son, which made Æthelstan an inconvenience. He was the king’s eldest son, the ætheling, but he had a younger half-brother whose vengeful mother wanted Æthelstan dead because he stood between her son and the throne of Wessex, and so she and her supporters spread the rumour that Æthelstan was a bastard because Edward had never married the pretty Centish girl. He had indeed married her, but in secret because his father had not given permission, and over the years the rumour was embellished so that now Æthelstan’s mother was said to be the daughter of a shepherd, a low-born whore, and no prince would ever marry such a girl, and the rumour was believed because truth is ever feeble against passionate falsehood.
‘Truly!’ Æthelstan now told me. ‘We didn’t need relief, I asked for none.’
For a moment I just stared at him. I loved Æthelstan like a son. For years I had protected him, fought for him, taught him the ways of the warrior, and when I had heard from Brother Osric that Æthelstan was under siege and hard-pressed, I had ridden to rescue him. It did not matter that saving Æthelstan was against
