The crowd parted as our horses’ hooves sounded loud in the street behind them, then we were in the open space and I saw two spearmen beside Æthelflaed’s door. One was sitting on a stone urn that held a small pear tree. He stood and snatched up his shield as we arrived, while the other rapped on the closed door with the butt of his spear. Both men were in mail, they wore helmets, and their round shields were freshly painted with the dragon of Wessex. There was a small hatch in the door and I saw it slide to one side and someone peered out at us. Two boys were guarding horses on the eastern side of the square beside Æthelflaed’s tall wooden church. ‘Count the horses,’ I told my son.
‘Twenty-three,’ he answered almost at once.
So we outnumbered them. ‘I don’t expect a fight,’ I said.
Then a scream sounded from inside the house.
A scream to pierce the ears with all the force of a well-made spear striking through the willow boards of a shield.
‘Sweet God,’ Finan said.
And the screaming stopped.
The door to Æthelflaed’s house opened.
Brice appeared.
I knew Brice. Not well, but inevitably our paths had crossed in the long years we had struggled to push the Danes farther northwards. I had seen him in encampments, had even exchanged a word or two before battle, and he was a veteran of many battles, a man who had stood in the shield wall time after time, and always under Ealdorman Æthelhelm’s banner of the leaping stag. He was skilled with weapons, strong as a bull, but slow of wit, which is why he had never risen to command one of Æthelhelm’s larger companies. Yet today, it seemed, Brice had been put in charge of the men sent to find Æthelstan. He strode towards us, a warrior in his formidable war-glory, but I had too often dressed in the same way to be impressed by the display.
His mail was good and tight, probably from Frankia, but it had been cut in a half-dozen places where new rings showed against the duller metal. He wore tall boots of dark leather, while his sword belt, buckled tight about the bright mail, was decorated with silver lozenges. His sword was long and heavy, scabbarded in a red sheath criss-crossed with silver bands. A silver chain hung at his neck. A dark-red cloak was spread by his wide shoulders, clasped at his throat by an ornate brooch studded with garnets. He wore no helmet. His red hair was longer than most Saxons liked to wear it, framing a face that had seen many enemies. He had gouged a cross onto his right cheek then rubbed the wound with soot or dirt to leave the dark mark that proclaimed him a Christian warrior. He was a hard man, but what else would he be? He had stood in the shield wall, he had watched the Danes come to the attack, and he had lived. He was no youngster. His beard was grey and his dark face deep-lined. ‘My Lord Uhtred,’ he said. There was no respect in his voice, instead he spoke sourly as though my arrival was a tedious nuisance which, I suppose, it was.
‘Brice.’ I nodded to him from my saddle.
‘The king sent me,’ he said.
‘You serve King Edward now?’ I asked. ‘What happened? Did Lord Æthelhelm tire of your stench?’
He ignored the insult. ‘He sent me to fetch the boy bastard,’ he said.
I looked up at the wooden tower that crowned Æthelflaed’s church. A bell that had cost her a heavy chest of silver hung there. She had been so proud of the bell, which had been made by Frisian craftsmen and brought across the sea. It carried an inscription about its skirt: ‘Æthelflaed, by the grace of God and by the blessing of Saint Werburgh, had this bell made’, and by the grace of God the bell had cracked the very first time it was struck. I had laughed when it happened, and ever since the bell had not rung to summon folk to church, instead it just hurt the sky with its harsh noise.
‘Did you hear me?’ Brice demanded.
I took my time to turn from the cracked bell, then I looked Brice up and down. ‘Which boy bastard?’ I finally asked.
‘You know who,’ he said.
‘I should buy the Lady Æthelflaed another bell,’ I said to Finan.
‘And she’d like that,’ he said.
‘Maybe I’ll have “the gift of Thor” written on the thing.’
‘And she won’t like that at all.’
‘Lord Uhtred!’ Brice interrupted our nonsense.
‘You’re still here?’ I asked, pretending surprise.
‘Where is he?’
‘Where is who?’
‘The bastard Æthelstan,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know a bastard called Æthelstan. Do you?’ I asked Finan.
‘Never heard of him, lord.’
‘The boy Æthelstan,’ Brice said, struggling to restrain his temper, ‘King Edward’s boy.’
‘He’s not home?’ I pretended surprise again. ‘He should be at home or else at school.’
‘He’s not here,’ Brice said curtly, ‘and we looked in the school. So find him.’
I took a deep breath, then dismounted. It took an effort to hide the pain and I had to hold onto the horse for a moment as the agony drained from my side. I even wondered whether I could walk without support, but then managed to let go of the saddle. ‘That sounded like a command,’ I said to Brice as I took a few slow steps towards him.
‘From the king,’ he said.
‘The King of Wessex?’ I asked. ‘But this is Mercia.’
‘The king wants his son returned to Wessex,’ Brice said flatly.
‘You’re a good warrior,’ I told Brice. ‘I’d welcome you into any shield wall, but I wouldn’t trust you to empty my piss pot. You’re not clever enough. That’s why you don’t command Æthelhelm’s household troops. So no, you don’t serve the king because the king wouldn’t want you. So who did send you? Lord Æthelhelm?’
I had annoyed him, but he managed to bite back his anger. ‘The king,’ he said slowly, ‘wants his son, and you, Lord Uhtred, will find the boy and bring him here.’
‘You might find it strange,’ I said, ‘but I don’t take orders from you.’
‘Oh, you will,’ he said, ‘you will.’ He thought he was hiding his nervousness by belligerence, but I could see he was confused. He had orders to fetch Æthelstan and the boy had gone missing and my warriors now outnumbered his, but Brice did not have the sense to abandon his mission, instead he would tackle it as he did every other problem, by savage directness. He turned his head towards the house. ‘Bring her!’ he called.
The house door opened and a man brought Stiorra into the sunlight. A murmur sounded through the crowd because my daughter’s face was smeared with blood and she was clutching her torn robe to
