The Burning Land. Bernard Cornwell
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she tossed into the ditch as she joined me. She grinned, looking as happy as she had once looked before her marriage, then nodded towards the lumbering wagon. ‘Is that my half-brother?’
‘Yes. You’ve seen him before.’
‘Not often. Doesn’t he look like his father!’
‘He does,’ I said, ‘and you don’t, for which I’m grateful.’ That made her laugh. ‘Where did you get the mail?’ I asked.
‘Æthelred likes me to wear it,’ she said. ‘He had it made for me in Frankia.’
‘Silver links?’ I asked. ‘I could pierce those with a twig!’
‘I don’t think my husband wants me to fight,’ she said drily, ‘he just wants to display me.’ And that, I thought, was understandable. Æthelflæd had grown to be a lovely woman, at least when her beauty was not clouded by unhappiness. She was clear-eyed and clear-skinned, with full lips and golden hair. She was clever, like her father, and a good deal cleverer than her husband, but she had been married for one reason only, to bind the Mercian lands to Alfred’s Wessex, and in that sense, if in no other, the marriage had been a success.
‘Tell me about Aldhelm,’ I said.
‘You already know about him,’ she retorted.
‘I know he doesn’t like me,’ I said happily.
‘Who does?’ she asked, grinning. She slowed her horse, that was getting too close to the crawling wagon. She wore gloves of soft kid leather over which six bright rings glittered with gold and rare stones. ‘Aldhelm,’ she said softly, ‘advises my husband, and he has persuaded Æthelred of two things. The first is that Mercia needs a king.’
‘Your father won’t allow it,’ I said. Alfred preferred Mercia look to Wessex for its kingly authority.
‘My father will not live for ever,’ she said, ‘and Aldhelm has also persuaded my husband that a king needs an heir.’ She saw my grimace and laughed. ‘Not me! Ælfwynn was enough!’ She shuddered. ‘I have never known such pain. Besides, my dear husband resents Wessex. He resents his dependency. He hates the hand that feeds him. No, he would like an heir from some nice Mercian girl.’
‘You mean. …’
‘He won’t kill me,’ she interrupted blithely, ‘but he would love to divorce me.’
‘Your father would never allow that!’
‘He would if I was taken in adultery,’ she said in a remarkably flat tone. I stared at her, not quite believing what she told me. She saw my incredulity and mocked it with a smile. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you did ask me about Aldhelm.’
‘Æthelred wants you to. …’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘then he can condemn me to a nunnery and forget I ever existed.’
‘And Aldhelm encourages this idea?’
‘Oh, he does, he does,’ she smiled as if my question was silly. ‘Luckily I have West Saxon attendants who protect me, but after my father dies?’ she shrugged.
‘Have you told your father?’
‘He’s been told,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think he believes it. He does, of course, believe in faith and prayer, so he sent me a comb that once belonged to Saint Milburga and he says it will strengthen me.’
‘Why doesn’t he believe you?’
‘He thinks I am prone to bad dreams. He also finds Æthelred very loyal. And my mother, of course, adores Æthelred.’
‘She would,’ I said gloomily. Alfred’s wife, Ælswith, was a sour creature and, like Æthelred, a Mercian. ‘You could try poison,’ I suggested. ‘I know a woman in Lundene who brews some vicious potions.’
‘Uhtred!’ she chided me, but before she could say more, one of Finan’s men came galloping from the rearguard, his horse throwing up clods of earth torn from the meadow beside the road.
‘Lord!’ he shouted, ‘time to hurry!’
‘Osferth!’ I called, and our pretend king happily jumped from his father’s wagon and hauled himself into the saddle of a horse. He threw the bronze circlet back into the wagon and pulled on a helmet.
‘Dump it,’ I shouted to the wagon’s driver. ‘Take it into the ditch!’
He managed to get two wheels in the ditch and we left the heavy vehicle there, canted over, the frightened horses still in their harness. Finan and our rearguard came pounding up the road and we spurred ahead of them into a stretch of woodland where I waited until Finan caught up, and just as he did so the first of the pursuing Danes came into sight. They were pushing their horses hard, but I reckoned the abandoned wagon with its tawdry treasures would delay them a few moments and, sure enough, the leading pursuers milled about the vehicle as we turned away.
‘It’s a horse race,’ Finan told me.
‘And our horses are faster,’ I said, which was probably true. The Danes were mounted on whatever animals their raiding parties had succeeded in capturing, while we were riding some of Wessex’s best stallions. I snatched a last glance as dismounted enemies swarmed over the wagon, then plunged deeper into the trees. ‘How many of them are there?’ I shouted at Finan.
‘Hundreds,’ he called back, grinning. Which meant, I guessed, that any man in Harald’s army who could saddle a horse had joined the pursuit. Harald was feeling the ecstasy of victory. His men had plundered all eastern Wessex, now he believed he had turned Alfred’s army out of Æscengum, which effectively opened the way for the Danes to maraud the whole centre of the country. Before those pleasures, however, he wanted to capture Alfred himself and so his men were wildly following us, and Harald, unconcerned about their lack of discipline, believed his good fortune must hold. This was the wild hunt, and Harald had loosed his men and sent them to deliver him the King of Wessex.
We led them, we enticed them and we tempted them. We did not ride as fast as we might, instead we kept the pursuing Danes in sight and only once did they catch us. Rypere, one of my valued men, was riding wide to our right and his horse thrust a hoof into a molehill. He was thirty paces away, but I heard the crack of breaking bone and saw Rypere tumbling and the horse flailing as it collapsed in screaming pain. I turned Smoka towards him and saw a small group of Danes coming fast. I shouted at another of my men, ‘spear!’
I grabbed his heavy ash-shafted spear and headed straight towards the leading Danes who were spurring to kill Rypere. Finan had turned with me, as had a dozen others, and the Danes, seeing us, tried to swerve away, but Smoka was pounding the earth now, nostrils wide, and I lowered the spear and caught the nearest Dane in the side of his chest. The ash shaft jarred back, my gloved hand slid along the wood, but the spear-point pierced deep and blood was welling and spilling in the spaces between the links of the Dane’s mail coat. I let the spear go. The dying man stayed in his saddle as a second Dane flailed at me with a sword, but I threw the stroke off with my shield and turned Smoka by the pressure of my knees as Finan ripped his long blade across another man’s face. I snatched the reins from the man I had speared and dragged his horse to Rypere. ‘Throw the bastard off and get up,’ I called.
The surviving Danes had retreated. There had been fewer than a dozen and they were the forerunners, the men on the fastest horses, and it took time for reinforcements to reach them and by then we had spurred safely away. Rypere’s legs were too short to reach his new stirrups, and he was cursing as he clung to the saddle’s pommel. Finan was smiling. ‘That’ll annoy them, lord,’ he said.
‘I want them mad,’ I said.
I wanted them to be impetuous, careless and confident. Already, on that summer’s day, as we followed the road alongside a meandering stream where crowsfoot grew thick, Harald was doing all I could ask. And was I confident? It is a dangerous thing to assume that your enemy will do what you want, but on that Thor’s Day I had a growing conviction that Harald