Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [108]
‘What happened?’ I asked Cuthbert.
‘Oh God, lord,’ he said, his voice quavery.
I slapped him hard around the face. ‘What happened?’
‘They came at dusk, lord,’ he said, his hands shaking as he tried to clasp them, ‘there were a lot of them! I counted twenty-four men,’ he had to pause, he was shaking so much and when he next tried to speak he just made a mewing noise. Then he saw the anger on my face and took a deep breath. ‘They hunted us, lord.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They searched around the house, lord. In the old orchard, down by the pond.’
‘You were hidden.’
‘Yes, lord.’ He was crying and his voice was scarce above a whisper. ‘Saint Cuthbert the Cowardly, lord.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ I snarled, ‘what could you do against so many?’
‘They took the girls, lord, and killed everyone else. And I liked Ludda.’
‘I liked Ludda too,’ I said, ‘but now we bury him.’ I did like Ludda. He was a clever rogue and he had served me well, and worse, he had trusted me and now he was cut from the groin to the ribs and the flies were thick about his entrails. ‘So what were you doing while he died?’ I asked Cuthbert.
‘We were watching the sunset from the hill, lord.’
I laughed without mirth. ‘Watching the sunset!’
‘We were, lord!’ Cuthbert said, hurt.
‘And you’ve been hiding ever since?’
He looked around at the red mess and his body shook with a sudden spasm. He vomited.
By now, I thought, the two angels would have confessed the whole deception and the Danes were laughing at us. I looked north and east for smoke in the sky, the sure sign that a war had broken out, but I saw none. The temptation was to assume that the killers had been a small raiding party who, their revenge taken, had headed back to safer land, but was the raid just that? A revenge for the ships of Snotengaham? And if it were such a revenge, how did the raiders know the angels were my idea? Or was Plegmund’s peace breaking into a thousand bloody pieces? The raiders had not fired the Roman building, suggesting they did not want to draw attention to their presence. ‘You say there were Saxons among the war-band?’ I asked Cuthbert.
‘I heard them talking, lord,’ he said, ‘and yes, there were Saxons.’
Æthelwold’s men? If it was Æthelwold’s followers then it was surely war, and that meant an attack from Ceaster if Offa was right. ‘Dig graves,’ I told my men. We would begin by burying our dead, but I sent Sihtric and three men back to Fagranforda. They carried orders that my whole household should retreat into Cirrenceastre, and to take the livestock with them. ‘Tell the Lady Æthelflaed she’s to go south into Wessex,’ I said, ‘and tell her to pass the news to Æthelred and to her brother. Make sure King Edward knows! Tell her I need men, and that I’ve gone north towards Ceaster. Have Finan bring every man here.’
It took a day to assemble my men. We buried Ludda and the others in Turcandene’s churchyard and Cuthbert said prayers over the fresh mounds. I still watched the sky and saw no great plumes of smoke. It was high summer, the sky a clear blue in which lazy clouds drifted, and as we rode north I did not know whether we rode to war or not.
I only led a hundred and forty-three men, and if the Danes were coming then I could expect thousands of them. We rode first to Wygraceaster, the northernmost burh in Saxon Mercia, and the bishop’s steward was surprised by our arrival. ‘I’ve heard no news of a Danish attack, lord,’ he told me. The street outside the bishop’s large house was busy with a market, though the bishop himself was in Wessex.
‘Make sure your storehouses are full,’ I told the steward, who bowed, but