I was a pagan, but none dared confront me for I went nowhere beyond the estate without my men and my men went nowhere without their swords.
The harvest was in the storehouses. Now was the time for the Danes to come, when they could be sure to find food for their armies, but neither Guthrum nor Svein crossed the frontier. The winter came instead and we slaughtered the livestock, salted the meat, scraped hides and made calves’ foot jelly. I listened for the sound of church bells ringing at an unusual time, for that would have been a sign that the Danes had attacked, but the bells did not ring.
Mildrith prayed that the peace would continue and I, being young and bored, prayed it would not. She prayed to the Christian god and I took Iseult to the high woods and made a sacrifice to Hoder, Odin and Thor and the gods were listening, for in the dark beneath the gallows tree, where the three spinners make our lives, a red thread was woven into my life. Fate is everything, and just after Yule the spinners brought a royal messenger to Oxton and he, in turn, brought me a summons. It seemed possible that Iseult’s dream was true, and that Alfred would give me power for I was ordered to Cippanhamm to see the king. I was summoned to the Witan.
Mildrith was excited by the summons. The Witan gave the king advice and her father had never been wealthy or important enough to receive such a summons, and she was overjoyed that the king wanted my presence. The witanegemot, as the meeting was called, was always held on the Feast of St Stephen, the day after Christmas, but my summons required me to be there on the twelfth day of Christmas and that gave Mildrith time to wash clothes for me. They had to be boiled and scrubbed and dried and brushed, and three women did the work and it took three days before Mildrith was satisfied that I would not disgrace her by appearing at Cippanhamm looking like a vagabond. She was not summoned, nor did she expect to accompany me, but she made a point of telling all our neighbours that I was to give counsel to the king. ‘You mustn’t wear that,’ she told me, pointing to my Thor’s hammer amulet.
‘I always wear it,’ I said.
‘Then hide it,’ she said, ‘and don’t be belligerent!’
‘Belligerent?’
‘Listen to what others say,’ she said. ‘Be humble. And remember to congratulate Odda the Younger.’
‘For what?’
‘He’s to be married. Tell him I pray for them both.’ She was happy again, sure that by paying the church its debt I had regained Alfred’s favour and her good mood was not even spoilt when I announced I would take Iseult with me. She bridled slightly at the news, then said that it was only right that Iseult should be taken to Alfred. ‘If she is a queen,’ Mildrith said, ‘then she belongs in Alfred’s court. This isn’t a fit place for her.’ She insisted on taking silver coins to the church in Exanceaster where she donated the money to the poor and gave thanks that I had been restored to Alfred’s favour. She also thanked God for the good health of our son, Uhtred. I saw little of him, for he was still a baby and I have never had much patience for babies, but the women of Oxton constantly assured me that he was a lusty, strong boy.
We allowed two days for the journey. I took Haesten and six men as an escort for, though the shire-reeve’s men patrolled the roads, there were plenty of wild places where outlaws preyed on travellers. We were in mail coats or leather tunics, with swords, spears, axes and shields. We all rode. Iseult had a small black mare I had bought for her, and I had also given her an otterskin cloak, and when we passed through villages, folk would stare at her for she rode like a man, her black hair bound up with a silver chain. They would kneel to her, as well as to me, and call out for alms. She did not take her maid for I remembered how crowded every tavern and house had been in Exanceaster when the Witan met, and I persuaded Iseult that we would be hard-pressed to find accommodation for ourselves, let alone a maid.
‘What does the king want of you?’ she asked as we rode up the Uisc valley. Rainwater puddled in the long furrows, gleaming in the winter sunshine, while the woods were glossy with holly leaves and bright with the berries of rowan, thorn, elder and yew.
‘Aren’t you supposed to tell me that?’ I asked her.
She smiled. ‘Seeing the future,’ she said, ‘is like travelling a strange road. Usually you cannot see far ahead, and when you can it is only a glimpse. And my brother doesn’t give me dreams about everything.’
‘Mildrith thinks the king has forgiven me,’ I said.
‘Has he?’
I shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’ I hoped so, not because I wanted Alfred’s forgiveness, but because I wanted to be given command of the fleet again. I wanted to be with Leofric. I wanted the wind in my face and the sea rain on my cheek. ‘It’s odd, though,’ I went on, ‘that he didn’t want me there for the whole witanegemot.’
‘Maybe,’ Iseult suggested, ‘they discussed religious things at first?’
‘He wouldn’t want me there for that,’ I said.
‘So that’s it,’ she said. ‘They talk about their god, but at the end they will talk of the Danes, and that is why he summoned you. He knows he needs you.’
‘Or perhaps he just wants me there for the feast,’ I suggested.
‘The feast?’
‘The Twelfth Night feast,’ I explained, and that seemed to me the likeliest explanation; that Alfred had decided to forgive me and, to show he now approved of me, would let me attend the winter feast. I secretly hoped that was true, and it was a strange hope. I had been ready to kill Alfred only a few months before, yet now, though I still hated him, I wanted his approval. Such is ambition. If I could not rise with Ragnar then I would make my reputation with Alfred.
‘Your road, Uhtred,’ Iseult went on, ‘is like a bright blade across a dark moor. I see it clearly.’
‘And the woman of gold?’
She said nothing to that.
‘Is it you?’ I asked.
‘The sun dimmed when I was born,’ she said, ‘so I am a woman of darkness and of silver, not of gold.’
‘So who is she?’
‘Someone far away, Uhtred, far away,’ and she would say no more. Perhaps she knew no more, or perhaps she was guessing.
We reached Cippanhamm late on the eleventh day of Yule. There was still frost on the furrows and the sun was a gross red ball poised low above the tangling black branches as we came to the town’s western gate. The city was full, but I was known in the Corncrake tavern where the red-headed whore called Eanflæd worked and she found us shelter in a half-collapsed cattle byre where a score of hounds had been kennelled. The hounds, she said, belonged to Huppa, Ealdorman of Thornsæta, but she reckoned the animals could survive a night or two in the yard. ‘Huppa may not think so,’ she said, ‘but he can rot in hell.’
‘He doesn’t pay?’ I asked her.
She spat for answer, then looked at me curiously. ‘I hear Leofric’s here?’
‘He is?’ I said, heartened by the news.
‘I haven’t seen him,’ she said, ‘but someone said he was here. In the royal hall. Maybe Burgweard brought him?’ Burgweard was the new fleet commander, the one who wanted his ships to sail two by two in imitation of Christ’s disciples. ‘Leofric had better not be here,’ Eanflæd finished.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he hasn’t come to see me!’ she said indignantly, ‘that’s why.’ She was five or six years older than I with a broad face, a high forehead and springy hair. She was popular, so much so that she had a good deal of freedom in the tavern, that owed its profits more to her abilities than to the quality of the ale. I knew she was friendly with Leofric,