once formed pictures of the Roman gods, but they were all torn up now and those that were left were mostly covered by rushes that were stained by the previous day’s blood. The big hall stank like a butcher’s yard and was wreathed with smoke from the blazing torches that lit the cavernous space.
The new King Egbert turned out to be the old King Egbert’s nephew and he had his uncle’s shifty face and petulant mouth. He looked scared when he came onto the dais at the hall’s end, and no wonder, for the mad Hrothweard had summoned up a whirlwind and Egbert must have known that Ivarr’s Danes would be coming for revenge. Yet Egbert’s followers were caught up in the excitement, sure that Alfred’s victory foretold the final defeat of the Northmen, and my arrival was taken as another sign from heaven. I was pushed forward and the news of my coming was shouted at the king who looked confused, and was even more confused when another voice, a familiar voice, called out my name. ‘Uhtred! Uhtred!’
I looked for the speaker and saw it was Father Willibald.
‘Uhtred!’ he shouted again and looked delighted to see me. Egbert frowned at me, then looked at Willibald. ‘Uhtred!’ the priest said, ignoring the king, and came forward to embrace me.
Father Willibald was a good friend and a good man. He was a West Saxon who had once been chaplain to Alfred’s fleet, and fate had decreed that he would be the man sent north to carry the good news of Ethandun to the Northumbrian Saxons.
The clamour in the hall subsided. Egbert tried to take command. ‘Your name is,’ he said, then decided he did not know what my name was.
‘Steapa!’ one of the men who had escorted us into the city called out.
‘Uhtred!’ Willibald announced, his eyes bright with excitement.
‘I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ I confessed, unable to prolong my deception.
‘The man who killed Ubba Lothbrokson!’ Willibald announced and tried to hold up my right hand to show I was a champion. ‘And the man,’ he went on, ‘who toppled Svein of the White Horse at Ethandun!’
In two days, I thought, Kjartan the Cruel would know that I was in Northumbria, and in three my uncle Ælfric would have learned of my coming, and if I had possessed an ounce of sense I would have forced my way out of that hall, taken Hild with me, and headed south as fast as Archbishop Wulfhere had vanished from Eoferwic.
‘You were at Ethandun?’ Egbert asked me.
‘I was, lord.’
‘What happened?’
They had already heard the tale of the battle from Willibald, but his was a priest’s version, heavy with prayers and miracles. I gave them what they wanted which was a warrior’s story of dead Danes and sword-slaughter, and all the while a fierce-eyed priest with bristly hair and an unruly beard interrupted me with shouts of hallelujah. I gathered this was Father Hrothweard, the priest who had roused Eoferwic to slaughter. He was young, scarce older than I was, but he had a powerful voice and a natural authority that was given extra force by his passion. Every hallelujah was accompanied by a shower of spittle, and no sooner had I described the defeated Danes spilling down the great slope from Ethandun’s summit than Hrothweard leaped forward and harangued the crowd. ‘This is Uhtred!’ he shouted, poking me in my mail-clad ribs, ‘Uhtred of Northumbria, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a killer of Danes, a warrior of God, a sword of the Lord! And he has come to us, just as the blessed Saint Cuthbert visited Alfred in his time of tribulation! These are signs from the Almighty!’ The crowd cheered, the king looked scared, and Hrothweard, ever ready to launch into a fiery sermon, began frothing at the mouth as he described the coming slaughter of every Dane in Northumbria.
I managed to sidle away from Hrothweard, making my way to the back of the dais where I took Willibald by the scruff of his skinny neck and forced him into a passage which led to the king’s private chambers. ‘You’re an idiot,’ I growled at him, ‘you’re an earsling. You’re a witless dribbling turd, that’s what you are. I should slit your useless guts here and now and feed them to the pigs.’
Willibald opened his mouth, closed it and looked helpless.
‘The Danes will be back here,’ I promised him, ‘and there’s going to be a massacre.’
His mouth opened and closed again, and still no sound came.
‘So what you’re going to do,’ I said, ‘is cross the Ouse and go south as fast as your legs will carry you.’
‘But it’s all true,’ he pleaded.
‘What’s all true?’
‘That Saint Cuthbert gave us victory!’
‘Of course it isn’t true!’ I snarled. ‘Alfred made it up. You think Cuthbert came to him in Æthelingæg? Then why didn’t he tell us about the dream when it happened? Why does he wait till after the battle to tell us?’ I paused and Willibald made a strangled noise. ‘He waited,’ I answered myself, ‘because it didn’t happen.’
‘But …’
‘He made it up!’ I growled, ‘because he wants Northumbrians to look to Wessex for leadership against the Danes. He wants to be king of Northumbria, don’t you understand that? And not just Northumbria. I’ve no doubt he’s got fools like you telling the Mercians that one of their damned saints appeared to him in a dream.’
‘But he did,’ he interrupted me, and when I looked bemused, he explained further. ‘You’re right! Saint Kenelm spoke to Alfred in Æthelingæg. He came to him in a dream and he told Alfred that he would win.’
‘No he did not,’ I said as patiently as I could.
‘But it’s true!’ he insisted, ‘Alfred told me himself! It’s God’s doing, Uhtred, and wonderful to behold.’
I took him by the shoulders, pressing him against the passage wall. ‘You’ve got a choice, father,’ I said. ‘You can get out of Eoferwic before the Danes come back, or you can tip your head to one side.’
‘I can do what?’ he asked, puzzled.
‘Tip your head,’ I said, ‘and I’ll thump you on one ear so all the nonsense falls out of the other.’
He would not be persuaded. God’s glory, ignited by the bloodshed at Ethandun and fanned by the lie about Saint Cuthbert, was glowing on Northumbria and poor Willibald was convinced he was present at the beginning of great things.
There was a feast that night, a sorry business of salted herrings, cheese, hard bread and stale ale, and Father Hrothweard made another impassioned speech in which he claimed that Alfred of Wessex had sent me, his greatest warrior, to lead the city’s defence, and that the fyrd of heaven would come to Eoferwic’s protection. Willibald kept shouting hallelujah, believing all the rubbish, and it was only the next day when a grey rain and a sullen mist enveloped the city that he began to doubt the imminent arrival of sword-angels.
Folk were leaving the city. There were rumours of Danish war-bands gathering to the north. Hrothweard was still shrieking his nonsense, and he led a procession of priests and monks about the city streets, holding aloft relics and banners, but anyone with sense now understood that Ivarr was likely to return long before Saint Cuthbert turned up with a heavenly host. King Egbert sent a messenger to find me, and the man said the king would talk with me, but I reckoned Egbert was doomed so I
