LITMIR.BIZ

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went on staring at me. She had blue eyes with brown flecks, a slightly snub nose, and her lower lip was larger than her top lip. Her bruises had gone, though a faint dark blush on one cheek showed where she had last been struck. She looked very serious. Wisps of golden hair showed around her bonnet. ‘Why didn’t you warn me, Uhtred?’ she asked.

      ‘Because you didn’t want to be warned,’ I said.

      She thought about that, then nodded abruptly. ‘No, I didn’t, you’re right. I put myself in the cage, didn’t I? Then I locked it.’

      ‘Then unlock it,’ I said brutally.

      ‘Can’t,’ she said curtly.

      ‘No?’ Gisela asked.

      ‘God has the key.’

      I smiled at that. ‘I never did like your god,’ I said.

      ‘No wonder my husband says you’re a bad man,’ Æthelflaed retorted with a smile.

      ‘Does he say that?’

      ‘He says you are wicked, untrustworthy and treacherous.’

      I smiled, said nothing.

      ‘Pig-headed,’ Gisela kept the litany going, ‘simple-minded and brutal.’

      ‘That’s me,’ I said.

      ‘And very kind,’ Gisela finished.

      Æthelflaed still looked up at me. ‘He fears you,’ she said, ‘and Aldhelm hates you,’ she went on. ‘He’ll kill you if he can.’

      ‘He can try,’ I said.

      ‘Aldhelm wants my husband to be king,’ Æthelflaed said.

      ‘And what does your husband think?’ I asked.

      ‘He would like it,’ Æthelflaed said and that did not surprise me. Mercia lacked a king, and Æthelred had a claim, but my cousin was nothing without Alfred’s support and Alfred wanted no man to be called king in Mercia.

      ‘Why doesn’t your father just declare himself King of Mercia?’ I asked Æthelflaed.

      ‘I think he will,’ she said, ‘one day.’

      ‘But not yet?’

      ‘Mercia is a proud country,’ she said, ‘and not every Mercian loves Wessex.’

      ‘And you’re there to make them love Wessex?’

      She touched her belly. ‘Perhaps my father wants his first grandchild to be king in Mercia,’ she suggested. ‘A king with West Saxon blood?’

      ‘And Æthelred’s blood,’ I said sourly.

      She sighed. ‘He’s not a bad man,’ she said wistfully, almost as if she were trying to persuade herself.

      ‘He beats you,’ Gisela said drily.

      ‘He wants to be a good man,’ Æthelflaed said. She touched my arm. ‘He wants to be like you, Uhtred.’

      ‘Like me!’ I said, almost laughing.

      ‘Feared,’ Æthelflaed explained.

      ‘Then why,’ I asked, ‘is he wasting time here? Why isn’t he taking his ships to fight the Danes?’

      Æthelflaed sighed. ‘Because Aldhelm tells him not to,’ she said. ‘Aldhelm says that if Gunnkel stays in Cent or East Anglia,’ she went on, ‘then my father has to keep more forces here. He has to keep looking eastwards.’

      ‘He has to do that anyway,’ I said.

      ‘But Aldhelm says that if my father has to worry all the time about a horde of pagans in the Temes estuary, then he might not notice what happens in Mercia.’

      ‘Where my cousin will declare himself king?’ I guessed.

      ‘It will be the price he demands,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘for defending the northern frontier of Wessex.’

      ‘And you’ll be queen,’ I said.

      She grimaced at that. ‘You think I want that?’

      ‘No,’ I admitted.

      ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘What I want is the Danes gone from Mercia. I want the Danes gone from East Anglia. I want the Danes gone from Northumbria.’ She was little more than a child, a thin child with a snub nose and bright eyes, but she had steel in her. She was talking to me, who loved the Danes because I had been raised by them, and to Gisela, who was a Dane, but Æthelflaed did not try to soften her words. There was a hatred of the Danes in her, a hatred she had inherited from her father. Then, suddenly, she shuddered and the steel vanished. ‘And I want to live,’ she said.

      I did not know what to say. Women died giving birth. So many died. I had sacrificed to Odin and Thor both times that Gisela had given birth and I had still been scared, and I was frightened now because she was pregnant again.

      ‘You use the wisest women,’ Gisela said, ‘and you trust the herbs and charms they use.’

      ‘No,’ Æthelflaed said firmly, ‘not that.’

      ‘Then what?’

      ‘Tonight,’ Æthelflaed said, ‘at midnight. In St Alban’s church.’

      ‘Tonight?’ I asked, utterly confused, ‘in the church?’

      She stared up at me with huge blue eyes. ‘They might kill me,’ she said.

      ‘No!’ Gisela protested, not believing what she heard.

      ‘He wants to be sure the child is his!’ Æthelflaed interrupted her, ‘and of course it is! But they want to be sure and I’m frightened!’

      Gisela gathered Æthelflaed into her arms and stroked her hair. ‘No one will kill you,’ she said softly, looking at me.

      ‘Be at the church, please,’ Æthelflaed said in a voice made small because her head was crushed against Gisela’s breasts.

      ‘We’ll be with you,’ Gisela said.

      ‘Go to the big church, the one dedicated to Alban,’ Æthelflaed said. She was crying softly. ‘So how bad is the pain?’ she asked. ‘Is it like being torn in two? That’s what my mother says!’

      ‘It is bad,’ Gisela admitted, ‘but it leads to a joy like no other.’ She stroked Æthelflaed and stared at me as though I could explain what was to happen at midnight, but I had no idea what was in my cousin’s suspicious mind.

      Then the woman who had led us to the pear tree garden appeared at the door. ‘Your husband, mistress,’ she said urgently, ‘he wants you in the hall.’

      ‘I must go,’ Æthelflaed said. She cuffed her eyes with her sleeve, smiled at us without joy, and fled.

      ‘What are they going to do to her?’ Gisela asked angrily.

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘Sorcery?’ she demanded. ‘Some Christian sorcery?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ I said again, nor did I, except that the summons was for midnight, the darkest hour, when evil appears and shape-shifters stalk the land and the Shadow-Walkers come. At midnight.

       Eight

      The church of Saint Alban was ancient. The lower walls were of stone, which meant the Romans had built it, though at some time the roof had fallen in and the upper masonry had crumbled, so that now almost everything above head height was made of timber, wattle and thatch. The church lay on the main street of Lundene, which ran north and south from what was now called the Bishop’s Gate down to the

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