Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [107]
‘Which is?’
He looked at my coins on the table and said nothing. I sighed and added two more. Offa drew the coins to his side of the table and made a neat line of them. ‘They’ll want you to believe their attack will come from East Anglia,’ he said, ‘but it won’t. The real attack will be from Ceaster.’
‘How can you possibly know that?’ I asked.
‘Brunna,’ he said. ‘Haesten’s wife?’
‘She’s a real Christian,’ he said.
‘Truly?’ I asked. I had always believed the baptism of Haesten’s wife was a cynical ploy to deceive Alfred.
‘She has seen the light,’ Offa said in a mocking tone. ‘Yes, lord, truly, and she confided in me.’ He looked at me with his sad eyes. ‘I was a priest once and perhaps you never really stop being a priest and she wanted to make confession and receive the sacraments and so, God help me, I gave her what she wanted, and now, God help me, I have betrayed the secrets she told me.’
‘The Danes will make an army in East Anglia?’
‘You’ll see that happening, I’m sure, but you won’t see the army gathering behind Ceaster, and that’s the army that will march south.’
‘When?’
‘After the harvest,’ Offa spoke confidently, his voice so low that only I could hear. ‘Sigurd and Cnut want the biggest army seen in Britain. They say it’s time to end the war for ever. They will come when they have the harvest to feed their horde. They want the largest army ever to invade Wessex.’
‘You believe Brunna?’
‘She resents her husband, so yes, I believe her.’
‘What is Ælfadell saying these days?’ I asked.
‘She’s saying what Cnut tells her to say, that the attack will come from the east and that Wessex will fall.’ He sighed. ‘I wish I could live long enough to see the end of this, lord.’
‘You’re good for another ten years, Offa,’ I told him.
He shook his head. ‘I feel the angel of death close behind me, lord.’ He hesitated. ‘You’ve always been good to me, lord.’ He bowed his head. ‘I owe you for your kindness.’
‘You owe me nothing.’
‘I do, lord.’ He looked up at me and, to my surprise, there were tears in his eyes. ‘Not everyone has been kind to me, lord,’ he said, ‘but you have always been generous.’
I was embarrassed. ‘You’ve been very useful,’ I muttered.
‘So in respect for you, lord, and in gratitude to you, I give you my last advice.’ He paused and to my surprise pushed the coins back towards me.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Give me the pleasure, lord,’ he said. ‘I want to thank you.’ He pushed the coins still closer to me. A tear rolled down his cheek and he cuffed it away. ‘Trust no one, lord,’ he said softly, ‘and beware Haesten, lord, beware the army in the west.’ He looked up at me and dared touch my hand with a long finger. ‘Beware the army at Ceaster, and don’t let the pagans destroy us, lord.’
He died that summer.
Then the harvest came, and it was good.
And after it the pagans came.
Ten
I worked it out later, though the knowledge was small consolation. A war-band rode to Natangrafum and because so many of the warriors were Saxons no one thought their presence strange. They arrived on an evening when the tomb was empty, because by then the peace had lasted so long that the angels rarely appeared, but the raiders knew exactly where to go. They rode directly to the Roman house outside Turcandene where they took the handful of guards by surprise and then killed fast and efficiently. When I arrived the next day I saw blood, a lot of blood.
Ludda was dead. I assumed he had tried to defend the house, and his eviscerated body lay sprawled across the doorway. His face was a grimace of pain. Eight others of my men were dead, their bodies stripped of mail, arm rings and anything else of value. On one wall, where the Roman plaster still clung to the bricks, a man had used blood to make a crude drawing of a flying raven. The drips had run down the wall and I could see the print of the man’s hand beneath the raven’s savagely hooked beak. ‘Sigurd,’ I said bitterly.
‘His symbol, lord?’ Sihtric asked me.
‘Yes.’
None of the three girls was there. I supposed the attackers must have taken them,