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‘Where do we get firewood?’ Godric asked. He was young, a Saxon, and had once been my servant.
‘The barricade, you fool,’ Finan said, pointing to the besiegers’ makeshift wall that guarded the road leading from the eastern gate.
And just then, as the day’s last light drained in the west, I saw that men were coming from the city. The eastern gate had been opened, and a dozen horsemen now threaded their way through the narrow gap between the city’s ditch and the abandoned barricade. ‘Get those barriers built!’ I commanded my men, then turned a tired Tintreg and spurred him to meet the men we had rescued.
We met them beside the city’s deep ditch. I waited there and watched as the horsemen approached. They were led by a tall young man, clad in mail and with a fine helmet decorated with gold that glinted red from the distant fires. The cheek-pieces of his helmet were open to reveal that he had grown a beard since I had last seen him, and the beard, black and clipped short, made him look older. He was, I knew, twenty-five or twenty-six, I could not remember just when he had been born, but now he was a man in his prime, handsome and confident. He was also a fervent Christian, despite all my efforts to persuade him otherwise, and a big gold cross hung at his chest, swinging against the shining links of mail. There was more gold on his scabbard’s throat and on his horse’s bridle, and ringing the brooch that held his dark cloak in place, while a thin circlet of gold ringed his helmet. He reined in close enough to reach out and pat Tintreg’s neck, and I saw he wore two gold rings over the fine black leather of his gloves. He smiled. ‘You are the very last person I expected, lord,’ he said.
And I swore at him. It was a good oath, brief and brutal.
‘Is that the proper way,’ he asked mildly, ‘to greet a prince?’
‘I owe Finan two shillings,’ I explained.
Because it had just begun to snow.
It is one of the privileges of age to be in a hall, warmed by a fire, while in the night the snow falls and the sentries shiver as they watch for enemies trying to escape from a trap they have made for themselves. Except now I was not sure who was trapped, or by whom.
‘I never sent Father Swithred to fetch help,’ Æthelstan said. ‘Your monk lied. And Father Swithred is in good health, God be thanked.’
Prince Æthelstan was King Edward’s eldest son. He had been born to a pretty Centish girl, the daughter of a bishop, and the poor girl had died whelping him and his twin sister, Eadgyth. After the pretty girl’s death Edward had married a West Saxon girl, and had fathered another son, which made Æthelstan an inconvenience. He was the king’s eldest son, the ætheling, but he had a younger half-brother whose vengeful mother wanted Æthelstan dead because he stood between her son and the throne of Wessex, and so she and her supporters spread the rumour that Æthelstan was a bastard because Edward had never married the pretty Centish girl. He had indeed married her, but in secret because his father had not given permission, and over the years the rumour was embellished so that now Æthelstan’s mother was said to be the daughter of a shepherd, a low-born whore, and no prince would ever marry such a girl, and the rumour was believed because truth is ever feeble against passionate falsehood.
‘Truly!’ Æthelstan now told me. ‘We didn’t need relief, I asked for none.’
For a moment I just stared at him. I loved Æthelstan like a son. For years I had protected him, fought for him, taught him the ways of the warrior, and when I had heard from Brother Osric that Æthelstan was under siege and hard-pressed, I had ridden to rescue him. It did not matter that saving Æthelstan was against the interests of Northumbria, I had sworn an oath to protect him, and here I was, in the Roman great hall where he had just told me that he had never sought my help. ‘You didn’t send Father Swithred?’ I asked. A log cracked in the fire and spat a bright spark onto the rushes. I ground the spark beneath my foot.
‘Of course not! He’s here.’ Æthelstan gestured across the hall to where the tall, stern-faced priest watched me suspiciously. ‘I have asked Archbishop Athelm to appoint him Bishop of Ceaster.’
‘And you didn’t send him out of the city?’
‘Of course not! I had no need.’
I looked at Finan, who shrugged. The wind had picked up, driving the smoke back into the great hall, which had been a part of the Roman commandant’s house. The roof was made of sturdy timbers covered with tiles, many of which remained, though at some time a Saxon had hacked a hole in the tiles to let the smoke out. Now the freshening wind gusted the smoke back, swirling it around the blackened rafters. Snowflakes came through the roof-hole, a few even lasting long enough to die on the table where we ate. ‘So you never sought my help?’ I asked Æthelstan yet again.
‘How often do I have to tell you?’ he asked, pushing the jug of wine towards me. ‘And besides, if I’d needed help, why send for you when my father’s forces are closer? You wouldn’t have helped me anyway!’
I growled at that. ‘Why would I not help you? I swore an oath to protect you.’’
‘But trouble in Mercia,’ he said, ‘is good for Northumbria, yes?’
I nodded grudgingly. ‘It is.’
‘Because if we Mercians fight each other,’ Æthelstan went on, ‘we can’t be fighting you.’
‘Do you want to fight us, lord Prince?’ Finan asked.
Æthelstan smiled. ‘Of course I do. Northumbria is ruled by a pagan, by a Norseman—’
‘By my son-in-law,’ I interrupted him harshly.
‘—and it is the fate of the Saxons,’ Æthelstan ignored my words, ‘to be one people, under one king and one God.’
‘Your god,’ I snarled.
‘There is no other,’ he said gently.
Everything he said made sense, except for his nonsense about one god, and that good sense meant I had been lured across Britain for no good purpose. ‘I should have left you here to rot,’ I growled.
‘But you didn’t.’
‘Your grandfather always said I was a fool.’
‘My grandfather was right about so many things,’ Æthelstan said with a smile. His grandfather was King Alfred.
I stood and walked to the hall door. I pulled it open and just stared at the glow of fire above the eastern ramparts. Much of that glow came from the encampment where Cynlæf’s men sheltered from the snow that was slanting fast from the north. Braziers burned on the ramparts, where cloaked spearmen kept a watch on the cowed enemy. The brighter light of two flaming torches just outside the hall’s great doors showed the new snow piling against the house walls.
So Brother Osric had lied. We had brought the monk south with us, but I had got tired of his endless complaining about the cold and about his saddle sores, and we had let him leave us at Mameceaster, where, he claimed, the church would shelter him. I should have killed the bastard instead. I shivered, suddenly feeling the night’s cold. ‘Rorik,’ I shouted back into the hall, ‘bring my cloak!’
Brother Osric had lied. The monk had told me that Æthelstan had fewer than a hundred warriors, but in truth he had twice as many, which was still a very small garrison for a place the size of Ceaster, but enough to stave off the feeble assaults Cynlæf had made. Brother Osric had told me the garrison was starving, but in truth they had storehouses still half-full with last year’s harvest. A lie had brought me to Ceaster, but why?
‘Your cloak,