Æthelred’s fleet carried a message to the Danes of East Anglia. If you raid Wessex, Alfred was saying, then we shall raid you. We shall harry your coast, burn your houses, sink your ships and leave your beaches stinking of death. Alfred had made Æthelred into a Viking, and I was jealous. I wanted to take my ships, but I had been ordered to stay in Lundene, and I obeyed. Instead I watched the great fleet leave Lundene. It was impressive. The largest of the captured warships had thirty oars a side, and there were six of those, while the smallest had banks of twenty. Æthelred was leading almost a thousand men on his raid, and they were all good men; warriors from Alfred’s household and from his own trained troops. Æthelred sailed in one of the large ships that had once carried a great raven’s head, scorched black, on her stem, but that beaked image was gone and now the ship was named Rodbora, which meant ‘carrier of the cross’, and her stem-post was now decorated with a massive cross and she sailed with warriors aboard, and with priests, and, of course, with Æthelflaed, for Æthelred would go nowhere without her.
It was summer. Folk who have never lived in a town during the summer cannot imagine the stench of it, nor the flies. Red kites flocked in the streets, living off carrion. When the wind was north the smell of the urine and animal dung in the tanners’ pits mixed with the city’s own stench of human sewage. Gisela’s belly grew, and my fear for her grew with it.
I went to sea as often as I could. We took Sea-Eagle and Sword of the Lord down the river on the ebb tide and came back with the flood. We hunted ships from Beamfleot, but Sigefrid’s men had learned their lesson and they never left their creek with fewer than three ships in company. Yet, though those groups of ships hunted prey, trade was at last reaching Lundene, for the merchants had learned to sail in large convoys. A dozen ships would keep each other company, all with armed men aboard and so Sigefrid’s pickings were scanty, but so were mine.
I waited two weeks for news of my cousin’s expedition, and learned its fate on a day when I made my usual excursion down the Temes. There was always a blessed moment as we left the smoke and smells of Lundene and felt the clean sea winds. The river looped about wide marshes where herons stalked. I remember being happy that day because there were blue butterflies everywhere. They settled on the Sea-Eagle and on the Sword of the Lord that followed in our wake. One insect perched on my outstretched finger where it opened and closed its wings.
‘That means good luck, lord,’ Sihtric said.
‘It does?’
‘The longer it stays there, the longer your luck lasts,’ Sihtric said, and held out his own hand, but no blue butterfly settled there.
‘Looks like you’ve no luck,’ I said lightly. I watched the butterfly on my finger and thought of Gisela and of childbirth. Stay there, I silently ordered the insect, and it did.
‘I’m lucky, lord,’ Sihtric said, grinning.
‘You are?’
‘Ealhswith’s in Lundene,’ he said. Ealhswith was the whore whom Sihtric loved.
‘There’s more trade for her in Lundene than in Coccham,’ I said.
‘She stopped doing that,’ Sihtric said fiercely.
I looked at him, surprised. ‘She has?’
‘Yes, lord. She wants to marry me, lord.’
He was a good-looking young man, hawk-faced, black-haired and well built. I had known him since he was almost a child, and I supposed that altered my impression of him, for I still saw the frightened boy whose life I had spared in Cair Ligualid. Ealhswith, perhaps, saw the young man he had become. I looked away, watching a tiny trickle of smoke rising from the southern marshes and I wondered whose fire it was and how they lived in that mosquito-haunted swamp. ‘You’ve been with her a long time,’ I said.
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Send her to me,’ I said. Sihtric was sworn to me and he needed my permission to marry because his wife would become a part of my household and thus my responsibility. ‘I’ll talk to her,’ I added.
‘You’ll like her, lord.’
I smiled at that. ‘I hope so,’ I said.
A flight of swans beat between our boats, their wings loud in the summer air. I was feeling content, all but for my fears about Gisela, and the butterfly was allaying that worry, though after a while it launched itself from my finger and fluttered clumsily in the southwards wake of the swans. I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt, then my amulet, and sent a prayer to Frigg that Gisela would be safe.
It was midday before we were abreast of Caninga. The tide was low and the mudflats stretched into the calm estuary where we were the only ships. I took Sea-Eagle close to Caninga’s southern shore and stared towards Beamfleot’s creek, but I could see nothing useful through the heat haze that shimmered above the island. ‘Looks like they’ve gone,’ Finan commented. Like me he was staring northwards.
‘No,’ I said, ‘there are ships there.’ I thought I could see the masts of Sigefrid’s ships through the wavering air.
‘Not as many as there should be,’ Finan said.
‘We’ll take a look,’ I said, and so we rowed around the island’s eastern tip, and discovered that Finan was right. Over half of Sigefrid’s ships had left the little River Hothlege.
Only three days before there had been thirty-six masts in the creek and now there were just fourteen. I knew the missing ships had not gone upriver towards Lundene, for we would have seen them, and that left only two choices. Either they had gone east and north about the East Anglian coast, or else they had rowed south to make another raid into Cent. The sun, so hot and high and bright, winked reflected dazzling light from the spear-points on the ramparts of the high camp. Men watched us from that high wall, and they saw us turn and hoist our sails and use a small north-east wind that had stirred since dawn to carry us south across the estuary. I was looking for a great smear of smoke that would tell me a raiding party had landed to attack, plunder and burn some town, but the sky over Cent was clear. We dropped the sail and rowed east towards the Medwæg’s mouth, and still saw no smoke, and then Finan, sharp-eyed and posted in our bows, saw the ships.
Six ships.
I was looking for a fleet of at least twenty boats, not some small group of ships, and at first I took no notice, assuming the six were merchant ships keeping company as they rowed towards Lundene, but then Finan came hurrying back between the rowers’ benches. ‘They’re warships,’ he said.
I peered eastwards. I could see the dark flecks of the hulls, but my eyes were not so keen as Finan’s and I could not make out their shapes. The six hulls flickered in the heat haze. ‘Are they moving?’ I asked.
‘No, lord.’
‘Why anchor there?’ I wondered. The ships were on the far side of the Medwæg’s mouth, just off the point called Scerhnesse, which means ‘bright headland’, and it was a strange place to anchor for the currents swirled strong off the low point.
‘I think they’re grounded, lord,’ Finan said. If the ships had been anchored I would have assumed they were waiting for the flood tide to carry them upriver, but grounded boats usually meant men had gone ashore, and the only reason to go ashore was to find plunder.
‘But there’s nothing left to steal on Scaepege,’ I said, puzzled. Scerhnesse lay at the western end of Scaepege, which was an island on the southern side of the Temes’s estuary, and Scaepege had been harried and harrowed and harried again by Viking raids. Few folk lived there, and those that did hid in the creeks. The channel between Scaepege and the mainland was known as the Swealwe, and whole Viking fleets had sheltered there in bad weather. Scaepege and the Swealwe were dangerous places, but not places to find silver or slaves.
‘We’ll go closer,’ I said. Finan went back to the prow as Ralla, in Sword of the Lord, pulled abreast of the Sea-Eagle. I pointed at the distant ships. ‘We’re taking a look at those six boats!’ I called across the gap. Ralla nodded, shouted an order, and his oars bit into the water.
I saw Finan was right as we crossed the Medwæg’s wide mouth; the six were warships, all of them longer an
d leaner than any cargo-carrying vessel, and all six had been beached. A trickle of smoke drifted south and west, suggesting the crews had lit a fire ashore. I could see no beast-heads on the prows, but that meant nothing. Viking crews might well regard the whole of Scaepege as Danish territory and so take down their dragons, eagles, ravens and serpents to prevent frightening the spirits of the island.
I called Clapa to the steering-oar. ‘Take her straight towards the ships,’ I ordered him, then went forward to join Finan in the prow. Osferth was on one of the oars, sweating and glowering. ‘Nothing like rowing to put on muscle,’ I told him cheerfully, and was rewarded with a scowl.
I clambered up beside the Irishman. ‘They look like Danes,’ he greeted me.
‘We can’t fight six crews,’ I said.
Finan scratched his groin. ‘They making a camp there, you think?’ That was a nasty thought. It was bad enough that Sigefrid’s ships sailed from the northern side of the estuary, without another vipers’ nest being built on the southern bank.
‘No,’ I said, because for once my eyes had proved sharper than the Irishman’s. ‘No,’ I said, ‘they’re not making a camp.’ I touched my amulet.
Finan saw the gesture and heard the anger in my voice. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘The ship on the left,’ I said, pointing, ‘that’s Rodbora.’ I had seen the cross mounted on the stem-post.
Finan’s mouth opened, but he said nothing for a moment. He just stared. Six ships, just six ships, and fifteen had left Lundene. ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Finan finally spoke. He made the sign of the cross. ‘Perhaps the others have gone upriver?’
‘We’d have seen them.’
‘Then they’re coming behind?’
‘You’d better be right,’ I said grimly, ‘or else it’s nine ships gone.’
‘God, no.’
We were close now. The men ashore saw the eagle’s head on my boat and took me for a Viking and some ran into the shallows between two of the stranded ships and made a shield wall there, daring me to attack. ‘That’s Steapa,’ I said, seeing the huge figure at the centre of the shield wall. I ordered the eagle taken down, then stood with my arms outstretched, empty-handed, to show I came in peace. Steapa recognised me, and the shields went down and the weapons were sheathed. A moment later Sea-Eagle’s bows slid soft onto the sandy mud. The tide was rising, so she was safe.
I dropped over the side into water that came to my waist and waded ashore. I reckoned there were at least four hundred men on the beach, far too many for just six ships and, as I neared the shore, I could see that many of those men were wounded. They lay with blood-soaked bandages and pale faces. Priests knelt among them while, at the top of the beach, where pale grass topped the low dunes, I could see that crude driftwood crosses had been driven into newly dug graves.
Steapa waited for me, his face grimmer than ever. ‘What happened?’ I asked him.
‘Ask him,’ Steapa said, sounding bitter. He jerked his head along the beach and I saw Æthelred sitting close to the fire on which a cooking pot bubbled gently. His usual entourage was with him, including Aldhelm, who watched me with a resentful face. None of them spoke as I walked towards them. The fire crackled. Æthelred was toying with a piece of bladderwrack and, though he must have been aware of my approach, he did not look up.
I stopped beside the fire. ‘Where are the other nine ships?’ I asked.
Æthelred’s face jerked up, as though he were surprised to see me. He smiled. ‘Good news,’ he said. He expected me to ask what that news was, but I just watched him and said nothing. ‘We have won,’ he said expansively, ‘a great victory!’
‘A magnificent victory,’ Aldhelm interjected.
I saw that Æthelred’s smile was forced. His next words were halting, as if it took a great effort to string them together. ‘Gunnkel,’ he said, ‘has been taught the power of our swords.’
‘We burned their ships!’ Aldhelm boasted.
‘And made great slaughter,’ Æthelred said, and I saw that his eyes were glistening.
I looked up and down the beach where the wounded lay and where the uninjured sat with bowed heads. ‘You left with fifteen ships,’ I said.
‘We burned their ships,’ Æthelred said, and I thought he was going to cry.
‘Where are the other nine ships?’ I demanded.
‘We stopped here,’ Aldhelm said, and he must have thought I was being critical of their decision to beach the boats, ‘because we could not row against the falling tide.’
‘The other nine ships?’ I asked again, but received no answer. I was still searching the beach and what I sought I could not find. I looked back at Æthelred, whose head had dropped again, and I feared to ask the next question, but it had to be asked. ‘Where is your wife?’ I demanded.
Silence.
‘Where,’ I spoke louder, ‘is Æthelflaed?’
A gull sounded its harsh, forlorn cry. ‘She is taken,’ Æthelred said at last in a voice so small that I could barely hear him.
‘Taken?’
‘A captive,’ Æthelred said, his voice still low.
‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ I said, using Finan’s favourite expletive. The wind stirred the bitter smoke into my face. For a moment I did not believe what I had heard, but all around me was evidence that Æthelred’s magnificent victory had really been a catastrophic defeat. Nine ships were gone, but ships could be replaced, and half of Æthelred’s troops were missing, yet new men could be found to replace those dead, but what could replace a king’s daughter? ‘Who has her?’ I asked.
‘Sigefrid,’ Aldhelm muttered.
Which explained where the missing ships from Beamfleot had gone.
And Æthelflaed, sweet Æthelflaed, to whom I had made an oath, was a captive.
Our eight ships rode the flooding tide back up the Temes to Lundene. It was a summer’s evening, limpid and calm, in which the sun seemed to linger like a giant red globe suspended in the veil of smoke that clouded the air above the city. Æthelred made the voyage in Rodbora and, when I let Sea-Eagle drop back to row alongside that ship, I saw the black streaks where blood had stained her timbers. I quickened the oar strokes and pulled ahead again.
Steapa travelled with me in the Sea-Eagle and the big man told me what had happened in the River Sture.
It had, indeed, been a magnificent victory. Æthelred’s fleet had surprised the Vikings as they made their encampment on the river’s southern bank. ‘We came at dawn,’ Steapa said.
‘You stayed all night at sea?’
‘Lord Æthelred ordered it,’ Steapa said.
‘Brave,’ I commented.
‘It was a calm night,’ Steapa said dismissively, ‘and at first light we found their ships. Sixteen ships.’ He stopped abruptly. He was a taciturn man and found it difficult to speak more than a few words together.
‘Beached?’ I asked.
‘They were anchored,’ he said.
That suggested the Danes had wanted their vessels to be ready at any state of the tide, but it also meant the ships could not be defended because their crews had been mostly ashore where they were throwing up earth walls to make a camp. Æthelred’s fleet had made short work of the few men aboard the enemy vessels, and then the great rope-wrapped stones that served as anchors had been hauled up and the sixteen ships were towed to the northern bank and beached there. ‘He was going to keep them there,’ Steapa explained, ‘till he was finished, then bring them back.’
‘Finished?’ I asked.
‘He wanted to kill all the pagans before we left,’ Steapa said, and explained how Æthelred’s fleet had marauded up the Sture and its adjacent river, the Arwan, landing men along the banks to burn Danish halls, slaughter Danish cattle and, when they could, to kill Danes. The Saxon raiders had caused panic. Folk had fled inland, but Gunnkel, left shipless in his encampment at the mouth of the Sture, had not panicked.
‘You didn’t attack the camp?’ I asked Steapa.
‘Lord Æthelred said
it was too well protected.’
‘I thought you said it was unfinished?’
Steapa shrugged. ‘They hadn’t built the palisade,’ he said, ‘at least on one side, so we could have got in and killed them, but we’d have lost a lot of our own men too.’
‘True,’ I admitted.
‘So we attacked farms instead,’ Steapa went on, and while Æthelred’s men raided the Danish settlements, Gunnkel had sent messengers southwards to the other rivers of the East Anglian coast. There, on those riverbanks, were other Viking encampments. Gunnkel was summoning reinforcements.
‘I told Lord Æthelred to leave,’ Steapa said gloomily, ‘I told him on the second day. I said we’d stayed long enough.’
‘He wouldn’t listen to you?’
‘He called me a fool,’ Steapa said with a shrug. Æthelred had wanted plunder, and so he had stayed in the Sture and his men brought him anything they could find of value, from cooking pots to reaping knives. ‘He found some silver,’ Steapa said, ‘but not much.’
And while Æthelred stayed to enrich himself, the sea-wolves gathered.
Danish ships came from the south. Sigefrid’s ships had sailed from Beamfleot, joining other boats that rowed from the mouths of the Colaun, the Hwealf and the Pant. I had passed those rivers often enough and imagined the lean fast boats sliding out through the mudbanks on the ebbing tides, with their high prows fiercely decorated with beasts and their hulls filled with vengeful men, shields and weapons.
The Danish ships gathered off the island of Horseg, south of the Sture in the wide bay that is haunted by wildfowl. Then, on a grey morning, under a summer rainstorm that blew in from the sea, and on a flooding tide made stronger by a full moon, thirty-eight ships came from the ocean to enter the Sture.
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