of Gleawecestre was staring at me. ‘Well, earsling,’ he demanded, ‘what are you doing here?’
It was my father.
My son looked tired and angry. He was wet, covered in mud, his hair was like a damp haystack after a good romp, and one of his boots was slashed. The leather was stained black where a blade had pierced his calf, but he was not limping so I had no need to worry about him, except that he was gaping at me like a moonstruck idiot. ‘Don’t just stare at me, idiot,’ I told him, ‘buy me some ale. Tell the girl you want it from the black barrel. Sihtric, it’s good to see you.’
‘And you, lord,’ Sihtric said.
‘Father!’ my son said, still gaping.
‘Who did you think it was?’ I asked. ‘The holy ghost?’ I made room on the bench. ‘Sit beside me,’ I told Sihtric, ‘and tell me some news. Stop gawping,’ I said to Uhtred, ‘and have one of the girls bring us some ale. From the black barrel!’
‘Why the black barrel, lord?’ Sihtric asked as he sat.
‘It’s brewed from our barley,’ I explained, ‘he keeps it for people he likes.’ I leaned back against the wall. It hurt to bend forward, it hurt even to sit upright, it hurt to breathe. Everything hurt, yet it was a marvel that I lived at all. Cnut Longsword had near killed me with his blade Ice-Spite and it was small consolation that Serpent-Breath had sliced his throat in the same heartbeat that his sword had broken a rib and pierced my lung. ‘Christ Jesus,’ Finan had told me, ‘but the grass was slippery with blood. It looked like a Samhain pig slaughtering, it did.’
But the slipperiness had been Cnut’s blood, and Cnut was dead and his army destroyed. The Danes had been driven from much of northern Mercia and the Saxons gave thanks to their nailed god for that deliverance. Some of them doubtless prayed that they would be delivered from me too, but I lived. They were Christians, I am not, though rumours spread that it was a Christian priest who saved my life. Æthelflaed had me carried in a cart to her home in Cirrenceastre and a priest famed as a healer and bone-setter tended me. Æthelflaed said he pushed a reed through my ribs and a gust of foul air came from the hole. ‘It blew out,’ she told me, ‘and stank like a cesspit.’ ‘That’s the evil leaving him,’ the priest had explained, or so she said, and then he plugged the wound with cow dung. The shit formed a crust and the priest said it would stop the evil getting back inside me. Is that true? I don’t know. All I know is that it took weeks of pain, weeks in which I expected to die, and that some time in the new year I managed to struggle to my feet again. Now, almost two months later, I could ride a horse and walk a mile or so, yet I had still not regained my old strength, and Serpent-Breath felt heavy in my hand. And the pain was always there, sometimes excruciating, sometimes bearable, and all day, every day, the wound leaked filthy stinking pus. The Christian sorcerer probably sealed the wound before all the evil left and sometimes I wondered if he did that on purpose because the Christians do hate me, or most of them do. They smile and sing their psalms and preach that their creed is all about love, but tell them you believe in a different god and suddenly it’s all spittle and spite. So most days I felt old and feeble and useless, and some days I was not even sure I wanted to live.
‘How did you get here, lord?’ Sihtric asked me.
‘I rode, of course, how do you think?’
That was not entirely true. It was not far from Cirrenceastre to Gleawecestre, and I had ridden for some of the journey, but a few miles short of the city I climbed into a cart and lay on a bed of straw. God, it hurt climbing onto that cart’s bed. Then I let myself be carried into the city, and when Eardwulf saw me I groaned and pretended to be too weak to recognise him. The slick-haired bastard had ridden alongside the cart telling silky-tongued lies. ‘It is sad indeed to see you thus, Lord Uhtred,’ he had said and what he meant was that it was a joy to see me feeble and maybe dying. ‘You are an example to us all!’ he had said, speaking very slow and loud as if I were an imbecile. I just groaned and said nothing. ‘We never expected you to come,’ he went on, ‘but here you are.’ The bastard.
The Witan had been summoned to meet on Saint Cuthbert’s feast day. The summons had been issued over the horse-seal of Æthelred and it demanded the presence in Gleawecestre of Mercia’s leading men, the ealdormen and the bishops, the abbots and the thegns. The summons declared that they were called to ‘advise’ the Lord of Mercia, but as rumour insisted that the Lord of Mercia was now a drivelling cripple who dribbled piss down his legs it was more likely that the Witan had been called to approve whatever mischief Eardwulf had devised. I had not expected a summons, but to my astonishment a messenger brought me a parchment heavy with Æthelred’s great seal. Why did he want me there? I was his wife’s chief supporter, yet he had invited me. None of the other leading men who supported Æthelflaed had been called, yet I was summoned. Why? ‘He wants to kill you, lord,’ Finan had suggested.
‘I’m near enough dead already. Why should he bother?’
‘He wants you there,’ Finan had suggested slowly, ‘because they’re planning to shit all over Æthelflaed, and if you’re there they can’t claim no one spoke for her.’
That seemed a weak reason to me, but I could think of no other. ‘Maybe.’
‘And they know you’re not healed. You can’t cause them trouble.’
‘Maybe,’ I said again. It was plain that this Witan had been summoned to decide Mercia’s future, and equally plain that Æthelred would do everything he could to make certain his estranged wife had no part in that future, so why invite me? I would speak for her, they knew that, but they also knew I was weakened by injury. So was I there to prove that every opinion had been aired? It seemed strange to me, but if they were relying on my weakness to make sure that my advice was ignored then I wanted to encourage that belief, and that was why I had taken such care to appear feeble to Eardwulf. Let the bastard think me helpless.
Which I almost was. Except that I lived.
My son brought ale and dragged a stool to sit beside me. He was worried about me, but I brushed away his questions and asked my own. He told me about the fight with Haki, then complained that Eardwulf had stolen the slaves and plunder. ‘How could I stop him?’ he asked.
‘You weren’t meant to stop him,’ I said and, when he looked puzzled, explained. ‘Æthelflaed knew that would happen. Why else send you to Gleawecestre?’
‘She needs the money!’
‘She needs Mercia’s support more,’ I said, and he still looked puzzled. ‘By sending you here,’ I went on, ‘she’s showing that she’s fighting. If she really wanted money she’d have sent the slaves to Lundene.’
‘So she thinks a few slaves and two wagon-loads of rusted mail will influence the Witan?’
‘Did you see any of Æthelred’s men in Ceaster?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘And what is a ruler’s first duty?’
He thought for a few heartbeats. ‘To defend his land?’
‘So if Mercia is looking for a new ruler?’ I asked.
‘They’ll want someone,’ he said slowly, ‘who can fight?’
‘Someone who can fight,’ I said, ‘and lead, and inspire.’
‘You?’ he asked.
I