LITMIR.BIZ

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because the Danes ruled Mercia. There were plenty of Mercians who would fight for a West Saxon king, but none would risk their lives for a king reduced to a soggy realm in a tidal swamp. ‘You will return the pyx!’ Ælswith ordered me. She looked ragged, her greasy hair tangled, her belly swollen and her clothes filthy. ‘Give it back now. This instant!’

      I looked at Iseult. ‘Should I?’

      ‘No,’ Iseult said.

      ‘She has no say here!’ Ælswith shrieked.

      ‘But she’s a queen,’ I said, ‘and you’re not.’ That was one cause of Ælswith’s bitterness, that the West Saxons never called the king’s wife a queen. She wanted to be Queen Ælswith and had to be content with less. She tried to snatch back the pyx, but I tossed it on the ground and, when she reached for it, I swung Leofric’s axe. The blade chewed into the big plate, mangling the silver crucifixion, and Ælswith squealed in alarm and backed away as I hacked again. It took several blows, but I finally reduced the heavy plate into shreds of mangled silver that I tossed onto the coins I had taken from the priests. ‘Silver for your help!’ I told the marshmen.

      Ælswith spat at me, then went back to her son. Edward was three years old and it was evident now that he was dying. Alewold had claimed it was a mere winter’s cold, but it was plainly worse, much worse. Every night we would listen to the coughing, an extraordinary hollow racking sound from such a small child, and all of us lay awake, dreading the next bout, flinching from the desperate, rasping sound, and when the coughing fits ended we feared they would not start again. Every silence was like the coming of death, yet somehow the small boy lived, clinging on through those cold wet days in the swamp. Bishop Alewold and the women tried all they knew. A gospel book was laid on his chest and the bishop prayed. A concoction of herbs, chicken dung and ash was pasted on his chest and the bishop prayed. Alfred travelled nowhere without his precious relics, and the toe ring of Mary Magdalen was rubbed on the child’s chest and the bishop prayed, but Edward just became weaker and thinner. A woman of the swamp, who had a reputation as a healer, tried to sweat the cough from him, and when that did not work she attempted to freeze it from him, and when that did not work she tied a live fish to his chest and commanded the cough and the fever to flee to the fish, and the fish certainly died, but the boy went on coughing and the bishop prayed and Alfred, as thin as his sick son, was in despair. He knew the Danes would search for him, but so long as the child was ill he dared not move, and he certainly could not contemplate the long walk south to the coast where he might find a ship to carry him and his family into exile.

      He was resigned to that fate now. He had dared to hope he might recover his kingdom, but the cold reality was more persuasive. The Danes held Wessex and Alfred was king of nothing, and his son was dying. ‘It is a retribution,’ he said. It was the night after the three priests had left and Alfred unburdened his soul to me and Bishop Alewold. We were outside, watching the moon silver the marsh mists, and there were tears on Alfred’s face. He was not really talking to either of us, only to himself.

      ‘God would not take a son to punish the father,’ Alewold said.

      ‘God sacrificed his own son,’ Alfred said bleakly, ‘and he commanded Abraham to kill Isaac.’

      ‘He spared Isaac,’ the bishop said.

      ‘But he is not sparing Edward,’ Alfred said, and flinched as the awful coughing sounded from the hut. He put his head in his hands, covering his eyes.

      ‘Retribution for what?’ I asked, and the bishop hissed in reprimand for such an indelicate question.

      ‘Æthelwold,’ Alfred said bleakly. Æthelwold was his nephew, the drunken, resentful son of the old king.

      ‘Æthelwold could never have been king,’ Alewold said. ‘He is a fool!’

      ‘If I name him king now,’ Alfred said, ignoring what the bishop had said, ‘perhaps God will spare Edward?’

      The coughing ended. The boy was crying now, a gasping, grating, pitiful crying, and Alfred covered his ears with his hands.

      ‘Give him to Iseult,’ I said.

      ‘A pagan!’ Alewold warned Alfred, ‘an adulteress!’ I could see Alfred was tempted by my suggestion, but Alewold was having the better of the argument. ‘If God will not cure Edward,’ the bishop said, ‘do you think he will let a witch succeed?’

      ‘She’s no witch,’ I said.

      ‘Tomorrow,’ Alewold said, ignoring me, ‘is Saint Agnes’s Eve. A holy day, lord, a day of miracles! We shall pray to Saint Agnes and she will surely unleash God’s power on the boy.’ He raised his hands to the dark sky. ‘Tomorrow, lord, we shall summon the strength of the angels, we shall call heaven’s aid to your son and the blessed Agnes will drive the evil sickness from young Edward.’

      Alfred said nothing, just stared at the swamp’s pools that were edged with a thin skim of ice that seemed to glow in the wan moonlight.

      ‘I have known the blessed Agnes perform miracles!’ the bishop pressed the king, ‘there was a child in Exanceaster who could not walk, but the saint gave him strength and now he runs!’

      ‘Truly?’ Alfred asked.

      ‘With my own eyes,’ the bishop said, ‘I witnessed the miracle.’

      Alfred was reassured. ‘Tomorrow then,’ he said.

      I did not stay to see the power of God unleashed. Instead I took a punt and went south to a place called Æthelingæg which lay at the southern edge of the swamp and was the biggest of all the marsh settlements. I was beginning to learn the swamp. Leofric stayed with Alfred, to protect the king and his family, but I explored, discovering scores of track-ways through the watery void. The paths were called beamwegs and were made of logs that squelched underfoot, but by using them I could walk for miles. There were also rivers that twisted through the low land, and the biggest of those, the Pedredan, flowed close to Æthelingæg which was an island, much of it covered with alders in which deer and wild goats lived, but there was also a large village on the island’s highest spot and the headman had built himself a great hall there. It was not a royal hall, not even as big as the one I had made at Oxton, but a man could stand upright beneath its beams and the island was large enough to accommodate a small army.

      A dozen beamwegs led away from Æthelingæg, but none led directly to the mainland. It would be a hard place for Guthrum to attack, because he would have to thread the swamp, but Svein, who we now knew commanded the Danes at Cynuit, at the Pedredan’s mouth, would find it an easy place to approach for he could bring his ships up the river and, just north of Æthelingæg, he could turn south onto the River Thon which flowed past the island. I took the punt into the centre of the Thon and discovered, as I had feared, that it was more than deep enough to float the Dane’s beast-headed ships.

      I walked back to the place where the Thon flowed into the Pedredan. Across the wider river was a sudden hill, steep and high, which stood in the surrounding marshland like a giant’s burial mound. It was a perfect place to make a fort, and if a bridge could be built across the Pedredan then no Danish ship could pass up river.

      I walked back to the village where I discovered that the headman was a grizzled and stubborn old man called Haswold who was disinclined to help. I said I would pay good silver to have a bridge made across the Pedredan, but Haswold declared the war between Wessex and the Danes did not affect him. ‘There is madness over there,’ he said, waving vaguely at the eastern hills. ‘There’s always madness over there, but here in the swamp we mind our own business. No one minds us and we don’t mind them.’ He stank of fish and smoke. He wore otterskins that were greasy with fish oil and his greying beard was flecked by fish scales. He had small cunning eyes in an old cunning face, and he also had a half-dozen wives, the youngest of whom was a child who could have been his own granddaughter, and he fondled her in front of me as if her existence proved his manhood. ‘I’m happy,’ he said, leering at me, ‘so why should I care for your happiness?’

      ‘The Danes could end your happiness.’

      ‘The

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