a few days ago!’ I said angrily. ‘Suppose Sigtryggr hadn’t been distracted by the West Saxons, what would he have done when he heard about Constantin?’
‘Marched north,’ my son said.
‘But he can’t, because the West Saxons are pissing all over his land to the south. They’re allied!’
‘The Scots and the West Saxons?’ my son sounded incredulous.
‘They made a secret treaty weeks ago! The Scots get Bebbanburg, and the West Saxon church gets Lindisfarena,’ I said, and I was sure I was right. ‘They get a new monastery, relics, pilgrims, silver. The Scots get land, and the church gets rich.’
I was sure I was right, though in fact I was wrong. Not that it mattered in the end.
Olla and my son were silent until my son shrugged. ‘So what do we do?’
‘We start killing,’ I said vengefully.
And next day we rode south.
‘No killing,’ my daughter said firmly.
I growled.
Sigtryggr was no longer in Lindcolne. He had left most of his army to defend the walls and had ridden with fifty men to Ledecestre, a burh he had ceded to Mercia, to plead with Æthelflaed. He wanted her to influence her brother, the King of Wessex, to withdraw his troops from Hornecastre.
‘The West Saxons want us to start a war,’ my daughter said. She had been left in command of Lindcolne, leading a garrison of almost four hundred men. She could have confronted Brunulf with that army, but she insisted on leaving the West Saxons undisturbed. ‘You probably outnumber the bastards in Hornecastre,’ I pointed out.
‘I probably don’t,’ she said patiently, ‘and there are hundreds more West Saxons waiting across the border, just looking for an excuse to invade us.’
And that was true. The Saxons in southern Britain wanted more than an excuse, they wanted everything. In my lifetime I had seen almost all of what is now called Englaland in Danish hands. The long ships had rowed up the rivers, piercing the land, and the warriors had conquered Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia. Their armies had overrun Wessex, and it had seemed inevitable that the country would be called Daneland, but fate had decreed otherwise and the West Saxons and Mercians had fought their way northwards, fought bitterly and suffered mightily, so that now only Sigtryggr’s Northumbria stood in their way. When Northumbria fell, and eventually it would, then all the folk who spoke the English tongue would live in one kingdom. Englaland.
The irony, of course, was that I had fought on the side of the Saxons all the way from the south coast to the edge of Northumbria, but now, thanks to my daughter’s marriage, I was their enemy. Such is fate! And fate now decreed that I was being told what to do by my daughter!
‘Whatever you do, father,’ she said strictly, ‘don’t stir them up! We haven’t confronted them, talked to them, or threatened them! We don’t want to provoke them!’
I looked across at her brother, who was playing with his nephew and niece. We were in a great Roman house built at the very summit of Lindcolne’s hill, and from the eastern edge of its wide garden we could see for miles across a sunlit country. Brunulf and his men were out there somewhere. My son, I thought, would like nothing better than to fight them. He was blunt, cheerful, and headstrong, while my daughter, so dark compared to her brother’s fair complexion, was subtle and secretive. She was clever too, like her mother, but that did not make her right.
‘You’re frightened of the West Saxons,’ I said.
‘I respect their strength.’
‘They’re bluffing,’ I said, and hoped I was right.
‘Bluffing?’
‘This isn’t an invasion,’ I said angrily, ‘it’s just a distraction! They wanted your armies in the south while Constantin attacks Bebbanburg. Brunulf isn’t going to attack you here! He doesn’t have enough men. He’s just here to keep you looking south while Constantin besieges Bebbanburg. They’re in league, don’t you see?’ I slapped the garden’s stone parapet. ‘I shouldn’t be here.’
Stiorra knew I meant that I should be at Bebbanburg and touched my arm as if to soothe me. ‘You think you can fight your cousin and the Scots?’
‘I have to.’
‘You can’t, father, not without our army to help.’
‘All my life,’ I said bitterly, ‘I have dreamed of Bebbanburg. Dreamed of taking it back. Dreamed of dying there. And what have I done instead? Helped the Saxons conquer the land, helped the Christians! And how do they repay me? By allying themselves with my enemy.’ I turned on her, my voice savage. ‘You’re wrong!’
‘Wrong?’
‘The West Saxons won’t invade if we attack Brunulf. They’re not ready. They will be one day, but not yet.’ I had no idea if what I said was true, I was just trying to persuade myself it was the truth. ‘They need to be hurt, punished, killed. They need to be frightened.’
‘No, father,’ she was pleading now. ‘Wait to see what Sigtryggr agrees with the Mercians? Please?’
‘We’re not at war with the Mercians,’ I said.
She turned and gazed across the cloud-dappled hills. ‘You know,’ she said, quietly now, ‘that some West Saxons say we should never have made the peace. Half their Witan say Æthelflaed betrayed the Saxons because she loves you, the other half say the peace must be kept until they’re so strong that we’ll never resist them.’
‘So?’
‘So the men who want war are just waiting for a cause. They want us to attack. They want to force King Edward’s hand, and even your Æthelflaed won’t be able to resist the call to fight. We need time, father. Please. Leave them alone. They’ll go away. Go to Ledecestre. Help Sigtryggr there. Æthelflaed will listen to you.’
I thought about what she had said and decided she was probably right. The West Saxons, fresh from their triumph over East Anglia, were spoiling for a war, and it was a war I did not want. I wanted to drive the Scots from Bebbanburg’s land and to do that I needed Northumbria’s army, and Sigtryggr would only help me attack northwards if he was certain that he had peace with the southern Saxons. He had gone to Ledecestre to plead with Æthelflaed, hoping her influence with her brother would secure that peace, but despite my daughter’s urgent pleading my instinct said that the road to Bebbanburg lay through Hornecastre, not through Ledecestre. And I have always trusted instinct. It might defy reason and sense, but instinct is the prickle at the back of the neck that tells you danger is close. So I trust instinct.
So next day, despite all my daughter had said, I rode to Hornecastre.
Hornecastre was a bleak place, though the Romans had valued it enough to build a stone-walled fort just south of the River Beina. They had built no roads, so I assumed the fort had been made to guard against ships coming upriver, and those ships would have belonged to our ancestors, the first Saxons to cross the sea and take a new land. And it was good land, at least to the north where low hills provided rich pasture. Two Danish families and their slaves had settled in nearby steadings, though both had been told to leave as soon as the West Saxons occupied the ancient
