“I am,” I said.
He stared at me suspiciously. “You met Bjorn?”
“I met a man pretending to be dead,” I said.
He ignored that, which surprised me. I remembered how affected he had been by his meeting with Bjorn, so impressed indeed that Æthelwold had become sober for a while, but now he took my dismissal of the risen corpse as a thing of no importance. “Don’t you understand,” he said, still gripping my elbow, “that this is our best chance!”
“Our best chance of what?” I asked patiently.
“Of getting rid of him,” he spoke too vehemently and some folk standing nearby turned to look at us. I said nothing. Of course Æthelwold wanted to be rid of his uncle, but he lacked the courage to strike the blow himself, which is why he was constantly seeking allies like me. He looked up into my face and evidently found no support there, for he let go of my arm. “They want to know if you’ve asked Ragnar,” he said, his voice lower.
So Æthelwold was still in contact with Sigefrid? That was interesting, but perhaps not surprising. “No,” I said, “I haven’t.”
“For God’s sake, why not?”
“Because Bjorn lied,” I said, “and it is not my fate to be king in Mercia.”
“If I ever become king in Wessex,” Æthelwold said bitterly, “then you had better run for your life.” I smiled at that, then just looked at
him with unblinking eyes and, after a while, he turned away and muttered something inaudible that was probably an apology. He stared across the church, his face dark. “That Danish bitch,” he said vehemently.
“What Danish bitch?” I asked, and, for a heartbeat, I thought he meant Gisela.
“That bitch,” he jerked his head toward Thyra. “The one married to the idiot. The pious bitch. The one with her belly stuffed.”
“Thyra?”
“She’s beautiful,” Æthelwold said vengefully.
“So she is.”
“And she’s married to an old fool!” he said, staring at Thyra with loathing on his face. “When she’s whelped that pup inside her I’m going to put her on her back,” he said, “and show her how a real man plows a field.”
“You do know she’s my friend?” I asked.
He looked alarmed. He had plainly not known of my long affection for Thyra and now tried to recant. “I just think she’s beautiful,” he said sullenly, “that’s all.”
I smiled and leaned down to his ear. “You touch her,” I whispered, “and I’ll put a sword up your asshole and I’ll rip you open from the crotch to the throat and then feed your entrails to my pigs. Touch her once, Æthelwold, just once, and you’re dead.”
I walked away. He was a fool and a drunk and a lecher, and I dismissed him as harmless. In which I was wrong, as it turned out. He was, after all, the rightful King of Wessex, but only he and a few other fools truly believed he should be king instead of Alfred. Alfred was everything his nephew was not; he was sober, clever, industrious, and serious.
He was also happy that day. He watched as his daughter married a man he loved almost like a son, and he listened to the monks chanting and he stared at the church he had made with its gilded beams and painted statues, and he knew that by this marriage he was taking control of southern Mercia.
Which meant that Wessex, like the infants inside Thyra and Gisela, was growing.
Father Beocca found me outside the church where the wedding guests stood in the sunshine and waited for the summons to the feast inside Alfred’s hall. “Too many people were talking in the church!” Beocca complained. “This was a holy day, Uhtred, a sacred day, a celebration of the sacrament, and people were talking as if they were at market!”
“I was one of them,” I said.
“You were?” he asked, squinting up at me. “Well, you shouldn’t have been talking. It’s just plain bad manners! And insulting to God! I’m astonished at you, Uhtred, I really am! I’m astonished and disappointed.”
“Yes, father,” I said, smiling. Beocca had been reproving me for years. When I was a child, Beocca was my father’s priest and confessor and, like me, he had fled Northumbria when my uncle had usurped Bebbanburg. Beocca had found a refuge at Alfred’s court where his piety, his learning, and his enthusiasm were appreciated by the king. That royal favor went a long way to stop men mocking Beocca, who was, in all truth, as ugly a man as you could have found in all Wessex. He had a club foot, a squint, and a palsied left hand. He was blind in his wandering eye that had gone as white as his hair, for he was now nearly fifty years old. Children jeered at him in the streets and some folk made the sign of the cross, believing that ugliness was a mark of the devil, but he was as good a Christian as any I have ever known. “It is good to see you,” he said in a dismissive tone, as if he feared I might believe him. “You do know the king wishes to speak with you? I suggested you meet him after the feast.”
“I’ll be drunk.”
He sighed, then reached out with his good hand to hide the amulet of Thor’s hammer that was showing at my neck. He tucked it under my tunic. “Try to stay sober,” he said.
“Tomorrow, perhaps?”
“The king is busy, Uhtred! He doesn’t wait on your convenience!”
“Then he’ll have to talk to me drunk,” I said.
“And I warn you he wants to know how soon you can take Lundene. That’s why he wishes to speak with you.” He stopped talking abruptly because Gisela and Thyra were walking toward us, and Beocca’s face was suddenly transformed by happiness. He just stared at Thyra like a man seeing a vision and, when she smiled at him, I thought his heart would burst with pride and devotion. “You’re not cold, are you, my dear?” he asked solicitously. “I can fetch you a cloak.”
“I’m not cold.”
“Your blue cloak?”
“I am warm, my dear,” she said, and put a hand on his arm.
“It will be no trouble!” Beocca said.
“I am not cold, dearest,” Thyra said, and again Beocca looked as though he would die of happiness.
All his life Beocca had dreamed of women. Of fair women. Of a woman who would marry him and give him children, and for all his life his grotesque appearance had made him an object of scorn until, on a hilltop of blood, he had met Thyra and he had banished the demons from her soul. They had been married four years now. To look at them was to be certain that no two people were ever more ill-suited to each other. An old, ugly, meticulous priest and a young, golden-haired Dane, but to be near them was to feel their joy like the warmth of a great fire on a winter’s night. “You shouldn’t be standing, my dear,” he told her, “not in your condition. I shall fetch you a stool.”
“I shall be sitting soon, dearest.”
“A stool, I think, or a chair. And are you sure you don’t need a cloak? It would really be no trouble to fetch one!”
Gisela looked at me and smiled, but Beocca and Thyra were oblivious of us as they fussed over each other. Then Gisela gave the smallest jerk of her head and I looked to see that a young monk was standing nearby and staring at me. He had obviously been waiting to catch my eye, and he was just as obviously nervous. He was thin, not very tall, brown haired and had a pale face that looked remarkably like Alfred’s.
There was the same drawn and anxious look, the same serious eyes and thin mouth, and evidently the same piety judging by the monk’s robe. He was a novice, because his hair was untonsured, and he dropped to one knee when I looked at him. “Lord Uhtred,” he said humbly.
“Osferth!” Beocca said, becoming aware of the young monk’s presence. “You should be at your studies! The wedding is over and novices are not invited to the feast.”
Osferth ignored Beocca. Instead, with his head bowed, he spoke to me. “You knew my uncle, lord.”
“I did?” I asked suspiciously. “I have known many men,” I said, preparing him for the refusal I was sure I would offer to whatever he requested of me.
“Leofric, lord.”
And my suspicion and hostility vanished at the mention of that name. Leofric. I even smiled. “I knew him,” I said warmly, “and I loved him.” Leofric had been a tough West Saxon warrior who had taught me about war. Earsling, he used to call me, meaning something dropped from an arse, and he toughened me, bullied me, snarled at me, beat me, and became my friend and remained my friend until the day he died on the rain-swept battlefield at Ethandun.
“My mother is his sister, lord,” Osferth said.
“To your studies, young man!” Beocca said sternly.
I put a hand on Beocca’s palsied arm to hold him back. “Your mother’s name?” I asked Osferth.
“Eadgyth, lord.”
I leaned down and tipped Osferth’s face up. No wonder he looked like Alfred, for this was Alfred’s bastard son who had been whelped on a palace servant-girl. No one ever admitted that Alfred was the boy’s father, though it was an open secret. Before Alfred found God he had discovered the joys of palace maids, and Osferth was the product of that youthful exuberance. “Does Eadgyth live?” I asked him.
“No, lord. She died of the fever two years ago.”
“And what are you doing here, in Wintanceaster?”
“He is studying for the church,” Beocca snapped, “because his calling is to be a monk.”
“I would serve you, lord,” Osferth said anxiously, staring up into my face.
“Go!” Beocca tried to shoo the young man away. “Go! Go away! Back to your studies, or I shall have the novice-master whip you!”
“Have you ever held a sword?” I asked Osferth.
“The one my uncle gave me, lord, I have it.”
“But you’ve not fought with it?”
“No, lord,” he said, and still he looked up at me, so anxious and frightened, and with a face so like his father’s face.
“We are studying the life of Saint Cedd,” Beocca said to Osferth, “and I expect you to have copied the first ten pages by sundown.”
“Do you want to be a monk?” I asked Osferth.
“No, lord,” he said.
“Then what?” I asked, ignoring Father Beocca who was spluttering protests, but unable to advance past my sword arm that held him back.
“I would follow my uncle’s steps, lord,” Osferth said.
I almost laughed. Leofric had been as hard a warrior as ever lived and died, while Osferth was a puny, pale youth, but I managed to keep a straight face. “Finan!” I shouted.
The Irishman appeared at my side. “Lord?”
“This young man is joining my household troops,” I said, handing Finan some coins.
“You can’t…” Beocca began protesting, then went silent when both Finan and I stared at him.
“Take Osferth away,” I told Finan, “find him clothes fit for a man, and get him weapons.”
Finan looked dubiously at Osferth. “Weapons?” he asked.
“He has the blood of warriors,” I said, “so now we will teach him to fight.”
“Yes, lord,” Finan said, his tone suggesting he thought I was mad, but then he looked at the coins I had given him and saw a chance of
profit. He grinned. “We’ll make him a warrior yet, lord,” he said, doubtless believing he lied, then he led Osferth away.
Beocca rounded on me. “Do you know what you’ve just done?” he spluttered.
“Yes,” I said.
“You know who that boy is?”
“He’s the king’s bastard,” I said brutally, “and I’ve just done Alfred a favor.”
“You have?” Beocca asked, still bristling, “and what kind of favor, pray?”
“How long do you think he’ll last,” I asked, “when I put him in the shield wall? How long before a Danish blade slits him like a wet herring? That, father, is the favor. I’ve just rid your pious king of his inconvenient bastard.”
We went to the feast.
The wedding feast was as ghastly as I expected. Alfred’s food was never good, rarely plentiful, and his ale was always weak. Speeches were made, though I heard none, and harpists sang, though I could not hear them. I talked with friends, scowled at various priests who disliked my hammer amulet, and climbed the dais to the top table to give Æthelflaed a chaste kiss. She was all happiness. “I’m the luckiest girl in all the world,” she told me.
“You’re a woman now,” I said, smiling at her upswept woman’s hair.
She bit her lower lip, looked shy, then grinned mischievously as Gisela approached. They embraced, golden hair against the dark, and Ælswith, Alfred’s sour wife, glowered at me. I bowed low. “A happy day, my lady,” I said.
Ælswith ignored that. She was sitting beside my cousin, who gestured at me with a pork rib. “You and I have business to discuss,” he said.
“We do,” I said.
“We do, lord,” Ælswith corrected me sharply. “Lord Æthelred is the Ealdorman of Mercia.”
“And I’m the Lord of Bebbanburg,” I said with an asperity that matched hers. “How are you, cousin?”
“In the morning,” Æthelred said, “I shall tell you our plans.”
“I was told,” I said, ignoring the truth that Alfred had asked me to devise the plans for the capture of Lundene, “that we were to meet the king tonight?”
“I have other matters for my attention tonight,” Æthelred said, looking at his young bride, and for an eyeblink his expression was feral, almost savage, then he offered me a smile. “In the morning, after prayers.” He waved the pork rib again, dismissing me.
Gisela and I lay in the principal chamber of the Two Cranes tavern that night. We lay close, my arm around her, and we said little. Smoke from the tavern hearth sifted up through the loose floorboards and men were singing beneath us. Our children slept across the room with Stiorra’s nurse, while mice rustled in the thatch above. “About now, I suppose,” Gisela said wistfully, breaking our silence.
“Now?”
“Poor little Æthelflaed is becoming a woman,” she said.
“She can’t wait for that to happen,” I said.
Gisela shook her head. “He’ll rape her like a boar,” she said, whispering the words. I said nothing. Gisela put her head on my chest so that her hair was across my mouth. “Love should be tender,” she went on.
“It is tender,” I said.
“With you, yes,” she said, and for a moment I thought she was crying.
I stroked her hair. “What is it?”
“I like her, that is all.”
“Æthelflaed?”
“She has spirit and he has none.” She tilted her face to look at me and in the darkness I could just see the glint of her eyes. “You never told me,” she said reprovingly, “that the Two Cranes is a brothel.”