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give Steapa when he kills you. A hundred shillings.’

      ‘Uhtred’s not worth it,’ Leofric said with rough humour.

      ‘Why does he want me dead so badly?’ I wondered aloud. It could not be Mildrith, I thought, and the argument over who had killed Ubba was long in the past, yet still Odda the Younger conspired against me.

      Harald paused a long time before answering. He had his bald head bowed and I thought he was in prayer, but then he looked up. ‘You threaten him,’ he said quietly.

      ‘I haven’t even seen him for months,’ I protested, ‘so how do I threaten him?’

      Harald paused again, choosing his words carefully. ‘The king is frequently ill,’ he said after the pause, ‘and who can say how long he will live? And if, God forbid, he should die soon, then the Witan will not choose his infant son to be king. They’ll choose a nobleman with a reputation made on the battlefield. They’ll choose a man who can stand up to the Danes.’

      ‘Odda?’ I laughed at the thought of Odda as king.

      ‘Who else?’ Harald asked. ‘But if you were to stand before the Witan and swear an oath to the truth about the battle where Ubba died, they might not choose him. So you threaten him, and he fears you because of that.’

      ‘So now he’s paying Steapa to chop you to bits,’ Leofric added gloomily.

      Harald left. He was a decent man, honest and hard-working, and he had taken a risk by coming to see me, and I had been poor company for I did not appreciate the gesture he made. It was plain he thought I must die in the morning, and he had done his best to prepare me for the fight, but despite Iseult’s confident prediction that I would live I did not sleep well. I was worried, and it was cold. The rain turned to sleet in the night and the wind whipped into the byre. By dawn the wind and sleet had stopped and instead there was a mist shrouding the buildings and icy water dripping from the mossy thatch. I made a poor breakfast of damp bread and it was while I was eating that Father Beocca came and said Alfred wished to speak with me.

      I was sour. ‘You mean he wants to pray with me?’

      ‘He wants to speak with you,’ Beocca insisted and, when I did not move, he stamped his lamed foot. ‘It is not a request, Uhtred. It is a royal order!’

      I put on my mail, not because it was time to arm for the fight, but because its leather lining offered some warmth on a cold morning. The mail was not very clean, despite Iseult’s efforts. Most men wore their hair short, but I liked the Danish way of leaving it long and so I tied it behind with a lace and Iseult plucked the straw scraps from it. ‘We must hurry,’ Beocca said and I followed him through the mud past the great hall and the newly built church to some smaller buildings made of timber that had still not weathered grey. Alfred’s father had used Cippanhamm as a hunting lodge, but Alfred was expanding it. The church had been his first new building, and he had built that even before he repaired and extended the palisade, and that was an indication of his priorities. Even now, when the nobility of Wessex was gathered just a day’s march from the Danes, there seemed to be more churchmen than soldiers in the place, and that was another indication of how Alfred thought to protect his realm. ‘The king is gracious,’ Beocca hissed at me as we went through a door, ‘so be humble.’

      Beocca knocked on another door, did not wait for an answer, but pushed it open and indicated I should step inside. He did not follow me, but closed the door, leaving me in a gloomy half darkness.

      A pair of beeswax candles flickered on an altar and by their light I saw two men kneeling in front of the plain wooden cross that stood between the candles. The men had their backs to me, but I recognised Alfred by his fur-trimmed blue cloak. The second man was a monk. They were both praying silently and I waited. The room was small, evidently a private chapel, and its only furniture was the draped altar and a kneeling stool on which was a closed book.

      ‘In the name of the Father,’ Alfred broke the silence.

      ‘And of the Son,’ the monk said, and he spoke English with an accent and I recognised the voice of the Ass.

      ‘And of the Holy Ghost,’ Alfred concluded, ‘amen.’

      ‘Amen,’ Asser echoed, and both men stood, their faces suffused with the joy of devout Christians who have said their prayers well, and Alfred blinked as though he were surprised to see me, though he must have heard Beocca’s knocking and the sound of the door opening and closing.

      ‘I trust you slept well, Uhtred?’ he said.

      ‘I trust you did, lord.’

      ‘The pains kept me awake,’ Alfred said, touching his belly, then he went to one side of the room and hauled open a big pair of wooden shutters, flooding the chapel with a wan, misty light. The window looked onto a courtyard and I was aware of men out there. The king shivered, for it was freezing in the chapel. ‘It is Saint Cedd’s feast day,’ he told me.

      I said nothing.

      ‘You have heard of Saint Cedd?’ he asked me and, when my silence betrayed ignorance, he smiled indulgently. ‘He was an East Anglian, am I not right, brother?’

      ‘The most blessed Cedd was indeed an East Angle, lord,’ Asser confirmed.

      ‘And his mission was in Lundene,’ Alfred went on, ‘but he concluded his days at Lindisfarena. You must know that house, Uhtred?’

      ‘I know it, lord,’ I said. The island was a short ride from Bebbanburg and not so long before I had ridden to its monastery with Earl Ragnar and watched the monks die beneath Danish swords. ‘I know it well,’ I added.

      ‘So Cedd is famous in your homeland?’

      ‘I’ve not heard of him, lord.’

      ‘I think of him as a symbol,’ Alfred said, ‘a man who was born in East Anglia, did his life’s work in Mercia and died in Northumbria.’ He brought his long, pale hands together so that the fingers embraced. ‘The Saxons of England, Uhtred, gathered together before God.’

      ‘And united in joyful prayer with the Britons,’ Asser added piously.

      ‘I beseech Almighty God for that happy outcome,’ the king said, smiling at me, and by now I recognised what he was saying. He stood there, looking so humble, with no crown, no great necklace, no arm rings, nothing but a small garnet brooch holding the cloak at his neck, and he spoke of a happy outcome, but what he was really seeing was the Saxon people gathered under one king. A king of Wessex. Alfred’s piety hid a monstrous ambition.

      ‘We must learn from the saints,’ Alfred told me. ‘Their lives are a guide to the darkness that surrounds us, and Saint Cedd’s holy example teaches that we must be united, so I am loathe to shed Saxon blood on Saint Cedd’s feast day.’

      ‘There need be no bloodshed, lord,’ I said.

      ‘I am pleased to hear it,’ Alfred interjected.

      ‘If the charges against me are retracted.’

      The smile went from his face and he walked to the window and stared into the misty courtyard and I looked where he looked and saw that a small display was being mounted for my benefit. Steapa was being armoured. Two men were dropping a massive mail coat over his wide shoulders, while a third stood by with an outsized shield and a monstrous sword.

      ‘I talked with Steapa last night,’ the king said, turning from the window, ‘and he told me there was a mist when Svein attacked at Cynuit. A morning mist like this one.’ He waved at the whiteness sifting into the chapel.

      ‘I wouldn’t know, lord,’ I said.

      ‘So it is possible,’ the king went on, ‘that Steapa was mistaken when he thought he saw you.’ I almost smiled. The king knew Steapa had lied, though he would not say as much. ‘Father Willibald also spoke to the crew of the Eftwyrd,’ the king went on, ‘and not one of them confirmed Steapa’s tale.’

      The crew was still in Hamtun,

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