“And that help is not coming,” I said, “isn’t that true, bishop?” Asser nodded. He was too angry to speak. “There will be an attack on Wessex,” I said, “and Alfred will need his army to meet that attack, so we must cope with Haesten on our own.”
“How?” AElfwold asked. “Haesten’s men are everywhere and nowhere! We send an army to find them and they’ll just ride around us.”
“You retreat into your burhs,” I said. “Haesten isn’t equipped to besiege fortified towns. The fyrd protects the burhs, and you take your cattle and silver behind those walls. Let Haesten burn as many villages as he likes, he can’t capture a properly defended burh.”
“So we just let him ravage Mercia while we cower behind walls?” AElfwold asked.
“Of course not,” I said.
“Then what?” AEthelred asked.
I hesitated again. Haesten, by all reports, had chosen a new strategy. When Harald had invaded Wessex the year before he had brought a great army and with it he had brought an army’s baggage: the women and children and animals and slaves. But Haesten, if the urgent messages spoke true, had brought nothing but horsemen. He had brought his own men, the survivors of Harald’s army, and the Danish warriors of East Anglia to plunder Mercia and they were moving fast, covering miles of ground, burning and stealing as they went. If we marched against them they could slide out of our path or, if we found ourselves in treacherous ground, assemble to attack us. Yet if we did nothing then inevitably Mercia would be weakened so much that men would rather seek Danish protection. So we had to strike a blow that would weaken the Danes before they weakened us. We had to be daring.
“Well?” Asser demanded, thinking that my hesitation denoted uncertainty.
And still I hesitated because I did not think it could be done.
Yet I could not think what else we could do.
Everyone in that hall was watching me, some with unconcealed dislike, others with desperate hope. “Lord Uhtred?” AEthelflaed prompted me gently.
So I told them.
Nothing was simple. AEthelred argued that Haesten’s ambition was to capture Gleawecestre. “He’ll use it as a base to attack Wessex,” he argued, and reminded Bishop Asser how, many years be fore, Guthrum had used Gleawecestre as the place to assemble the Danish army that had come closest to conquering Wessex. Asser agreed with the argument, probably because he wanted the thegns to reject my plan. In the end it was AEthelflaed who cut the argument short. “I go with Uhtred,” she said, “and those who wish can come with us.”
AEthelred would not accompany me. He had always disliked me, but now that dislike was pure hatred because I had rescued AEthelflaed from his spite. He wanted to defeat the Danes, but even more he wanted Alfred dead, AEthelflaed put aside, and his chair turned into a real throne. “I shall assemble the army in Gleawecestre,” he declared, “and thwart any attack on Wessex. That is my decision.” He looked at the men on the benches. “I expect you all to join me. I demand that you join me. We muster in four days!”
AEthelflaed gave me a quizzical glance. “Lundene,” I mouthed to her.
“I go to Lundene,” she said, “and those of you who wish to see a Mercia free of the heathens will join me there. In four days.”
If I had been AEthelred I would have scotched AEthelflaed’s defiance there and then. He had armed men in the hall while none of us wore a weapon, and a single command could have left me dead on the floor’s rushes. But he lacked the courage. He knew I had men outside the hall and perhaps he feared their vengeance. He quivered when I approached his chair, then looked up at me with nervous and sullen eyes. “AEthelflaed remains your wife,” I told him quietly, “but if she dies mysteriously, or if she sickens, or if I hear rumors of a spell cast against her, then I shall find you, cousin, and I shall suck the eyeballs out of your skull and spit them down your throat so you choke to death.” I smiled. “Send your men to Lundene and keep your country.”
He did not send men to Lundene, nor did most of the Mercian lords. They were frightened of my idea and they looked to AEthelred for patronage. He was the gold- giver in Mercia, while AEthelflaed was almost as poor as I was. So most of Mercia’s warriors went to Gleawecestre and AEthelred kept them there, waiting for an attack from Haesten that never came.
Haesten was plundering all across Mercia. In the next few days, as I waited at Lundene and listened to the reports brought by fugitives, I saw how the Danes were moving with lightning speed. They were capturing anything of value, whether it was an iron spit, a harness, or a child, and all that plunder was sent back to Beamfleot where Haesten had his stronghold above the Temes shore. He was amassing a treasure there, a treasure that could be sold in Frankia. His success brought more Danes to his side, men from across the sea who saw Mercia’s impending fall and wanted to share in the land that would be divided when the conquest was done. Haesten captured some towns, those that had not yet been turned into burhs, and the silver from their churches, convents, and monasteries flowed back to Beamfleot. Alfred did send men to Gleawecestre, but only a few, because rumors were now rife of a great Northumbrian fleet sailing southward. It was all chaos.
And I was helpless because, after four days, I led only eighty- three men. They were my own shrunken crew and those few Mercians who had come in response to AEthelflaed’s summons. Beornoth was one, though most of the men who had sided with me at Lecelad had stayed with AEthelred. “More would have come, lord,” Beornoth told me, “but they’re frightened of the ealdorman’s displeasure.”
“What would he do to them?”
“Take their homes, lord. How do they live, except on his generosity?”
“Yet you came,” I said.
“You gave me my life, lord,” he said.
My old house was now occupied by the garrison’s new commander, a dour West Saxon called Weohstan who had fought at Fearnhamme. When I had reached Lundene, arriving unexpectedly on a rainswept night, Bishop Erkenwald had ordered Weohstan to arrest me, but Weohstan had doggedly ignored the order. Instead he came to see me in the Mercian royal palace that occupied the old Roman governor’s mansion. “Are you here to fight the Danes, lord?” he asked me.
“He is,” AEthelflaed answered for me.
“Then I’m not sure I have enough men to arrest you,” Weohstan said.
“How many do you have?”
“Three hundred,” he said with a smile.
“Not nearly enough,” I assured him.
I told him what I planned and he looked skeptical. “I’ll help you if I can,” he promised, but there was doubt in his voice. He had lost almost all his teeth so his speech was a hissing slur. He was over thirty years old, bald as an egg, ruddy faced, short in stature, but broad in the shoulders. He had skill with weapons and a hard manner that made him an effective leader, but Weohstan was also cautious. I would have trusted him to defend a wall forever, but he was not a man to lead a bold attack. “You can help me now,” I told him that first day, and asked to borrow a ship.
He frowned as he considered the request, then decided he was not risking too much in granting it. “Bring it back, lord,” he said.
Bishop Erkenwald tried to stop me taking the ship downriver. He met me at the wharf beside my old house. Weohstan had tactfully found business elsewhere and though Erkenwald had brought his personal guard, those three men were no match for my crew. The bishop confronted me. “I govern Lundene,” he said, which was true, “and you must leave.”
“I am leaving.” I gestured at the waiting ship.
“Not in one of our ships!”
“Then stop me,” I said.
“Bishop,” AEthelflaed was with me and intervened.
“It is not a woman’s place to speak of men’s business!” Erkenwald turned on her.
AEthelflaed bridled. “I am…”
“Your place, lady, is with your husband!”
I took Erkenwald by the shoulders and steered him onto the terrace where Gisela and I had spent so many quiet evenings. Erk
enwald, much smaller than me, tried to resist my arm, but he stayed still when I released him. The water foamed through the gaps in the old Roman bridge, forcing me to raise my voice. “What do you know of AEthelred and AEthelflaed?” I asked.
“It is not for man to interfere in the sacrament of marriage,” he said dismissively.
“You’re not a fool, bishop,” I said.
He glared up at me with his dark eyes. “The blessed apostle Paul,” he said, “instructs wives to submit to their husbands. You would have me preach the opposite?”
“I would have you be sensible,” I said. “The Danes want to eradicate your religion. They see Wessex weakened by Alfred’s sickness. They would destroy Saxon power in Mercia, then move against Wessex. If they have their way, bishop, then within a few weeks some spear- Dane will be skewering your belly and you’ll be a martyr. AEthelflaed wants to stop that and I’m here to help her.”
To his credit Erkenwald did not accuse me of treachery. Instead he bristled. “Her husband also wishes to stop the Danes,” he said firmly.
“Her husband also wants to separate Mercia from Wessex,” I said. He did not say anything to that because he knew it was true. “So who do you trust to protect you from martyrdom?” I asked. “AEthelred or me?”
“God will protect me,” he said stubbornly.
“I shall only be here a few days,” I said, “and you can help me or hinder me. If you fight me, bishop, you make it more likely that the Danes will win.”
He looked across at AEthelflaed and a tremor showed on his thin face. He was smelling sin in our apparent alliance, but he was also thinking of the vision I had given him, a vision of a mail- coated Dane thrusting a blade into his belly. “Bring the ship back,” he said grudgingly, echoing Weohstan, then abruptly turned and walked away.
The ship was the Haligast that had once been the vessel that carried Alfred up and down the Temes, but it seemed his sickness had caused him to abandon such voyages and so the small Haligast had been brought through the treacherous gap between the bridge piers and was now used as a scouting vessel. Her master was Ralla, an old friend. “She’s light- built,” he said of the Haligast, “and she’s quick.”
“Faster than Seolferwulf?” I asked. He had known my ship well.
“Nowhere close, lord,” he said, “but she runs well on the wind, and if the Danes get too close we can use shallower water.”
“When I was here,” I said in a mild voice, “the Danes would run from us.”
“Things change,” Ralla said gloomily.
“Are the pagans attacking ships?” AEthelflaed asked.
“We haven’t seen a trading ship in two weeks,” Ralla said, “so they must be.”
AEthelflaed had insisted on coming with me. I did not want her company because I have never thought women should be exposed to unnecessary danger, but I had learned not to argue with Alfred’s daughter. She wanted to be a part of the campaign against the Danes and I could not dissuade her, and so she stood with Ralla, Finan, and me on the steering platform as Ralla’s experienced crew took the Haligast downriver.
How many times had I made this voyage? I watched the glistening mudbanks slide past and it was all so familiar as we turned the river’s extravagant bends. We went with the tide, so our thirty oarsmen needed only make small tugs on their looms to keep the ship headed downriver. Swans beat from our path, while overhead the sky was busy with birds flying south. The marshy banks slowly receded as the river widened and imperceptibly turned into a sea reach, and then we headed slightly northward to let the Haligast drift along the East Anglian shore.
Again it was all so familiar. I gazed at the drab low land that was called East Sexe. It was edged with wetlands that slowly rose to plowed fields, then, abruptly, there was the great wooded hill that I knew so well. The crown of the hill had been cleared of trees so that it was a dome of grass where the huge fort dominated the Temes. Beamfleot. AEthelflaed had been imprisoned in that fort and she gazed at it wordlessly, though she reached for my hand and held onto it as she remembered those days when she was supposedly a hostage, but had fallen in love, only to lose the man to his brother’s sword.
Beneath the fort the ground fell steeply to a village, also called Beamfleot, that lay beside the muddy creek of Hothlege. The Hothlege separated Beamfleot from Caninga, a reed- thick island that could be flooded when the tide was high and when the wind blew hard from the east. I could see that the Hothlege was thick with boats, most of them hauled onto the beach beneath the great hill where they were protected by new forts that had been made at the creek’s eastern end. The two forts were a pair of beached and dismasted ships, one on either bank, their seaward planking built up to make high walls. I guessed a chain still ran across the Hothlege to stop enemy vessels entering the narrow channel.
“Closer,” I growled to Ralla.
“You want to run aground?”
“I want to get closer.”
I would have steered the Haligast myself except my bee- stung hand was still swollen and the skin taut. I let go of AEthelflaed’s hand to scratch the itch. “It won’t get better if you keep scratching it,” she said, taking my hand back.
Finan had shinned up the Haligast’s mast where, with his keen eyesight, he was counting Danish ships. “How many?” I called impatiently.
“Hundreds,” he shouted back and then, a moment later, gave a proper estimate. “About two hundred!” It was impossible to make an accurate count for the masts were thick as saplings, and some boats were dismasted and hidden by other hulls.
“Mary save us,” AEthelflaed said softly and made the sign of the cross.
“Nine thousand men?” Ralla suggested dourly.
“Not as many as that,” I said. Many of the boats belonged to the survivors of Harald’s army and those crews had been half slaughtered at Fearnhamme, yet even so I reckoned Haesten had twice as many men as we had estimated at Gleawecestre. Maybe as many as five thousand, and most of them were even now rampaging through Mercia, but enough remained at Beamfleot to form a garrison that watched us from their high wall. The sun’s reflection winked from spear- blades, but as I shaded my eyes and gazed at that formidable rampart on its steep hill it seemed to me that the fort was in disrepair. “Finan!” I shouted after a while, “are there gaps in that wall?”
He waited before answering. “They’ve built a new fort, lord! Down on the shore!”
I could not see the new fort from the Haligast’s deck, but I trusted Finan, whose eyes were better than mine. He scrambled down the mast after a few moments and explained that Haesten appeared to have abandoned the fort on the hill. “He has watchmen up there, lord, but his main force is down on the creek. There’s a big bastard of a wall there.”
“Why abandon the high ground?” AEthelflaed asked.
“It was too far from the ships,” I said. Haesten knew that better than anyone, for he had fought here before and his men had managed to burn Sigefrid’s ships before the Norseman could bring men down the hill to stop him. Now Haesten had blocked the creek beneath the hill, guarding its seaward end with the beached ships and the landward entrance with a new and formidable fortress. Between those strongholds were his ships. It meant we could probably take the old fort without much trouble, but holding the high ground would not help us because the new stronghold was out of arrow range.
“I couldn’t see very well,” Finan said, “but it looked to me as if the new fort is on an island.”
“He’s making it difficult,” I said mildly.
“Can it be done?” AEthelflaed asked, sounding dubious.
“It has to be done,” I said.
“We have no men!”
“Yet,” I said stubbornly.
Because my plan was to capture that stronghold. It was crammed with Haesten’s prisoners, all the women and children taken as slaves, and it was in Beamfleot’s new fort that his plunder was being stored. I suspected Haesten’s family was also there, indeed the families of every Dane ravaging Mer
cia were probably in that place. Their ships were there too, protected by the fort. If we could take the fort we could impoverish Haesten, capture dozens of hostages, and destroy a Danish fleet. If we could capture Beamfleot we would win a victory that would dismay the Danes and cheer every Saxon heart. The victory might not win the war, but it would weaken Haesten immeasurably and many of his followers, losing faith, would abandon him, for what kind of a leader was a man who could not protect his men’s families? AEthelred believed Mercia’s salvation was best secured by waiting for Haesten to attack Gleawecestre, but I believed we had to attack Haesten where he least expected an assault. We had to strike at his base, destroy his fleet, and take back his plunder.
“How many men do you have?” Ralla asked.
“Eighty- three at the last count.”
He laughed. “And how many do you need to capture Beamfleot?”
“Two thousand.”
“And you don’t believe in miracles?” Ralla asked.
AEthelflaed squeezed my hand. “The men will come,” she said, though she sounded far from convinced.
“Maybe,” I said. I was staring at the ships in their sheltered creek and thought, in its way, that Beamfleot was as impregnable as Bebbanburg. “And if they don’t come?” I said softly.
“What will you do?” AEthelflaed asked.
“Take you north,” I said, “take my children north, and fight till I have the silver to raise an army that can capture Bebbanburg.”
She turned her face up to mine. “No,” she said. “I am Mercian now, Uhtred.”
“Mercian and Christian,” I said sourly.
“Yes,” she said, “Mercian and Christian. And what are you, Lord Uhtred?”
I looked to where reflected sunlight winked from the spear- points of the watchmen on Beamfleot’s high hill. “A fool,” I said bitterly, “a fool.”
“My fool,” she said, and stood on tiptoe to kiss my cheek.
“Row!” Ralla bellowed, “row!” He shoved the steering oar hard over so that the Haligast turned southward and then west. Two large enemy ships were nosing out of the creek, sliding past the new ship- fortresses, their oar- banks catching the sun as they dipped and rose.