'Or are you in so much of a hurry to kill me,' I went on, 'that you dare not wait to hear the truth?'
'I have Steapa's sworn testimony,' Erkenwald said, as if that made any other evidence unnecessary.
He was flustered.
'And you can have my oath,' I said, 'and Leofric's oath, and the oath of a crewman who is here.'
I turned and beckoned Haesten who looked frightened at being summoned, but at Iseult's urging came to stand beside me.
'Put him on oath,' I demanded of Erkenwald.
Erkenwald did not know what to do, but some men in the Witan called out that I had the right to summon oath-makers and the newcomer must be heard, and so a priest brought the gospel book to Haesten. I waved the priest away.
'He will swear on this,' I said, and took out Thor's amulet.
'He's not a Christian?' Erkenwald demanded in astonishment.
'He is a Dane,' I said.
'How can we trust the word of a Dane?' Erkenwald demanded.
'But our lord king does,' I retorted. 'He trusts the word of Guthrum to keep the peace, so why should this Dane not be trusted?'
That provoked some smiles. Many in the Witan thought Alfred far too trusting of Guthrum and I felt the sympathy in the hall move to my side, but then the archbishop intervened to declare that the oath of a pagan was of no value. 'None whatsoever,' he snapped. 'He must stand down.'
'Then put Leofric under oath,' I demanded, 'and then bring our crew here and listen to their testimony.'
'And you will all lie with one tongue,' Erkenwald said, 'and what happened at Cynuit is not the only matter on which you are accused. Do you deny that you sailed in the king's ship? That you went to Cornwalum and there betrayed Peredur and killed his Christian people? Do you deny that Brother Asser told the truth?'
'But what if Peredur's queen were to tell you that Asser lies?' I asked. 'What if she were to tell you that he lies like a hound at the hearth?' Erkenwald stared at me. They all stared at me and I turned and gestured at Iseult who stepped forward, tall and delicate, the silver glinting at her neck and wrists.
'Peredur's queen,' I announced; 'whom I demand that you hear under oath, and thus hear how her husband was planning to join the Danes in an assault on Wessex.'
That was rank nonsense, of course, but it was the best I could invent at that moment, and Iseult, I knew, would swear to its truth. Quite why Svein would fight Peredur if the Briton planned to support him was a dangerously loose plank in the argument, but it did not really matter for I had confused the proceedings so much that no one was sure what to do. Erkenwald was speechless.
Men stood to look at Iseult, who looked calmly back at them, and the king and the archbishop bent their heads together. Ælswith, one hand clapped to her pregnant belly, hissed advice at them. None of them wanted to summon Iseult for fear of what she would say, and Alfred, I suspect, knew that the trial, which had already become mired in lies, could only get worse.
'You're good, earsling,' Leofric muttered, 'you're very good.'
Odda the Younger looked at the king, then at his fellow members of the Witan, and he must have known I was slithering out of his snare for he pulled Steapa to his side. He spoke to him urgently. The king was frowning, the archbishop looked perplexed, Ælswith's blotched face showed fury while Erkenwald seemed helpless. Then Steapa rescued them. 'I do not lie!' he shouted.
He seemed uncertain what to say next, but he had the hall's attention. The king gestured to him, as if inviting him to continue, and Odda the Younger whispered in the big man's ear.
'He says I lie,' Steapa said, pointing at me, 'and I say I do not, and my sword says I do not.' He stopped abruptly, having made what was probably the longest speech of his life, but it was enough.
Feet drummed on the floor and men shouted that Steapa was right, which he was not, but he had reduced the whole tangled morass of lies and accusations to a trial by combat and they all liked that.
The archbishop still looked troubled, but Alfred gestured for silence.
He looked at me. 'Well?' he asked. 'Steapa says his sword will support his truth. Does yours?'
I could have said no. I could have insisted on letting Iseult speak and then allowing the Witan to advise the king which side had spoken the greater truth, but I was ever rash, ever impetuous, and the invitation to fight cut through the whole entanglement. If I fought and won then Leofric and I were innocent of every charge.
I did not even think about losing. I just looked at Steapa. 'My sword,' I told him, 'says I tell the truth, and that you are a stinking bag of wind, a liar from hell, a cheat and a perjurer who deserves death.'
'Up to our arses again,' Leofric said.
Men cheered. They liked a fight to the death, and it was much better entertainment than listening to Alfred's harpist chant the psalms. Alfred hesitated, and I saw, Ælswith look from me to Steapa, and she must have thought him the greater warrior for she leaned forward, touched Alfred's elbow, and whispered urgently.
And the king nodded. 'Granted,' he said. He sounded weary, as if he was dispirited by the lies and the insults. 'You will fight tomorrow. Swords and shields, nothing else.' He held up a hand to stop the cheering. 'My lord Wulfhere?'
'Sire?' Wulfhere struggled to his feet.
'You will arrange the fight. And may God grant victory to the truth.' Alfred stood, pulled his robe about him and left.
And Steapa, for the first time since I had seen him, smiled.
'You're a damned fool,' Leofric told me. He had been released from his chains and allowed to spend the evening with me. Haesten was there, as was Iseult and my men who had been brought from the town. We were lodged in the king's compound, in a cattle byre that stank of dung, but I did not notice the smell. It was Twelfth Night so there was the great feast in the king's hall, but we were left out in the cold, watched there by two of the royal guards.
'Steapa's good,' Leofric warned me.
'I'm good.'
'He's better,' Leofric said bluntly. 'He'll slaughter you.'
'He won't,' Iseult said calmly.
'Damn it, he's good!' Leofric insisted, and I believed him.
'It's that God-damned monk's fault,' I said bitterly. 'He went bleating to Alfred, didn't he?' In truth, Asser had been sent by the King of Dyfed to assure the West Saxons that Dyfed was not planning war, but Asser had taken the opportunity of his embassy to recount the tale of the Eftwyrd and from that it was a small jump to conclude that we had stayed with Svein while he attacked Cynuit. Alfred had no proof of our guilt, but Odda the Younger had seen a chance to destroy me and so persuaded Steapa to lie.
'Now Steapa will kill you,' Leofric grumbled, 'whatever she says.'
Iseult did not bother to answer him. She was using handfuls of grubby straw to clean my mail coat.
The armour had been fetched from the Corncrake tavern and given to me, but I would have to wait till morning to get my weapons, which meant they would not be newly sharpened. Steapa, because he served Odda the Younger, was one of the king's bodyguard, so he would have all night to put an edge on his sword. The royal kitchens had sent us food, though I had no appetite.
'Just take it slow in the morning,' Leofric told me.
'Slow?'
'You fight in a rage,' he said, 'and Steapa's always calm.'
'So better to get in a rage,' I said.
'That's what he wants. He'll fend you off and fend you off and wait till you're tired, then he'll finish you off. It's how he fights.'
Harald told us the same thing. Harald was the shire-reeve of Defnascir, the widower who had summoned me to the court in Exanceaster, but he had also fought alongside us at Cynuit and that makes a bond, and sometime in the dark he splashed through the rain and mud and came into the light of the small fire that lit the cattle shed without warming it. He stopped in the doorway and gazed at me reproachfully.
'Were you with Svein at Cynuit?' he asked.
'No,' I said.
'I didn't think so.' Harald came into the byre and sat b
y the fire. The two royal guards were at the door and he ignored them, and that was interesting. All of them served Odda, and the young ealdorman would not be pleased to hear that Harald had come to us, yet plainly Harald trusted the two guards not to tell, which suggested that there was unhappiness in Odda's ranks. Harald put a pot of ale on the floor.
'Steapa's sitting at the king's table,' he said.
'So he's eating badly,' I said.
Harald nodded, but did not smile. 'It's not much of a feast,' he admitted. He stared into the fire for a moment, then looked at me. 'How's Mildrith?'
'Well.'
'She is a dear girl,' he said, then glanced at Iseult's dark beauty before staring into the fire again.
'There will be a church service at dawn,' he said, 'and after that you and Steapa will fight.'
'Where?'
'In a field on the other side of the river,' he said, then pushed the pot of ale towards me. 'He's left-handed.'
I could not remember fighting against a man who held his sword in his left hand, but nor could I see a disadvantage in it. We would both have our shields facing the other man's shield instead of his weapon, but that would be a problem to both of us. I shrugged.
'He's used to it,' Harald explained, 'and you're not. And he wears mail down to here,' he touched his calf, 'and he has an iron strip on his left boot.'
'Because that's his vulnerable foot?'
'He plants it forward,' Harald said, 'inviting attack, then chops at your sword arm.'
'So he's a hard man to kill,' I said mildly.
'No one's done it yet,' Harald said gloomily.
'You don't like him?'
He did not answer at first but drank ale then passed the pot to Leofric. 'I like the old man,' he said, meaning Odda the Elder. 'He's foul-tempered, but he's fair enough. But the son?' he shook his head sadly. 'I think the son is untested. Steapa? I don't dislike him, but he's like a hound. He only knows how to kill.'
I stared into the feeble fire, looking for a sign from the gods in the small flames, but none came, or none that I saw.
'He must be worried though,' Leofric said.
'Steapa?' Harald asked, 'why should he be worried?'
'Uhtred killed Ubba.'
Harald shook his head. 'Steapa doesn't think enough to be worried. He just knows he'll kill Uhtred tomorrow.'
I thought back to the fight with Ubba. He had been a great warrior, with a reputation that glowed wherever Norsemen sailed, and I had killed him, but the truth was that he had put a foot into the spilled guts of a dying man and slipped. His leg had shot sideways, he had lost his balance and I had managed to cut the tendons in his arm. I touched the hammer amulet and thought that the gods had sent me a sign after all.
'An iron strip in his boot?' I asked.
Harald nodded. 'He doesn't care how much you attack him. He knows you're coming from his left and he'll block most of your attacks with his sword. Big sword, heavy thing. But some blows will get by and he won't care. You'll waste them on iron. Heavy mail, helmet, hoot, doesn't matter. It'll be like hitting an oak tree, and after a while you'll make a mistake. He'll be bruised and you'll lie dead.'
He was right, I thought. Striking an armoured man with a sword rarely achieved much except to make a bruise because the edge would be stopped by mail or helmet. Mail cannot be chopped open by a sword, which was why so many men carried axes into battle, but the rules of trial by combat said the fight had to be with swords. A sword lunge would pierce mail, but Steapa was not going to make himself an easy target for a lunge.
'Is he quick?' I asked.
'Quick enough,' Harald said, then shrugged. 'Not as quick as you,' he added grudgingly, 'but he isn't slow.'
'What does the money say?' Leofric asked, though he surely knew the answer.
'No one's wagering a penny on Uhtred,' Harald said.
'You should,' I retorted.
He smiled at that, but I knew he would not take the advice. 'The big money,' he said, 'is what Odda will 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 hardworking, 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 gashed 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.
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