Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [120]
They had crossed the Temes. We discovered that next day when we reached Cracgelad where I had killed Aldhelm, Æthelred’s man. The small town was now a burh, and its walls were of stone, not earth and wood. The fortifications were Æthelflaed’s doing, and she had ordered the work done, not only because the small town guarded a crossing of the Temes, but because she had witnessed a small miracle there; touched, she believed, by a dead saint’s hand. So Cracgelad was now a formidable fortress, with a flooded ditch fronting the new stone wall and it was hardly surprising that the Danes had ignored the garrison and instead had headed for the causeway that led across the marshes on the north bank of the Temes to the Roman bridge, which had been repaired at the same time that Cracgelad’s walls had been rebuilt. We also followed the causeway and stood our horses on the northern bank of the Temes and watched the skies burn above Wessex. So Edward’s kingdom was being ravaged. Æthelflaed might have made Cracgelad into a burh, but the town still flew her husband’s banner of the white horse above its southern gate rather than her flag of the cross-grasping goose. A dozen men now appeared at that gate and walked to join us. One was a priest, Father Kynhelm, and he gave us our first reliable news. Æthelwold, he said, was with the Danes. ‘He came to the gate, lord, and demanded we surrender.’
‘You recognised him?’
‘I’ve never seen him before, lord, but he announced himself and I assume he told the truth. He came with Saxons.’
‘Not Danes?’
Father Kynhelm shook his head. ‘The Danes stayed away. We could see them, but as far as I could tell the men at the gate were all Saxons. A lot of them shouted at us to surrender. I counted two hundred and twenty.’
‘And one woman,’ a man added.
I ignored that. ‘How many Danes?’ I asked Father Kynhelm.
He shrugged. ‘Hundreds, lord, they blackened the fields.’
‘Æthelwold’s banner is a stag,’ I said, ‘with crosses for antlers. Was that the only flag?’
‘They showed a black cross as well, lord, and a boar flag.’
‘A boar?’ I said.
‘A tusked boar, lord.’
So Beortsig had joined his masters, which meant that the army plundering Wessex was part Saxon. ‘What answer did you give Æthelwold?’ I asked Father Kynhelm.
‘That we served Lord Æthelred, lord.’
‘You have news of Lord Æthelred?’
‘No, lord.’
‘You have food?’
‘Enough for the winter, lord. The harvest was adequate, God be praised.’
‘What forces do you have?’
‘The fyrd, lord, and twenty-two warriors.’
‘How many fyrd?’
‘Four hundred and twenty, lord.’
‘Keep them here,’ I said, ‘because the Danes will probably be back.’ When Alfred was on his deathbed I had told him that the Northmen had not learned how to fight us, but we had learned how to fight them, and that was true. They had made no attempt to capture Cracgelad, except for a feeble summons for the town to surrender, and if thousands of Danes could not capture one small burh, however formidable its walls, then they had no chance against Wessex’s larger garrisons, and if they could not capture the large burhs and so destroy Edward’s forces inside, then eventually they must retreat. ‘What Danish banners did you see?’ I asked Father Kynhelm.
‘None plainly, lord.’
‘What is Eohric’s banner?’ I asked everyone in earshot.
‘A lion and a cross,’ Osferth said.
‘Whatever a lion is,’ I said. I wanted to know if Eohric’s East Anglians had joined the Danish horde, but Father Kynhelm did not have the answer.
Next morning it was raining again, the drops pitting the Temes as it slid past the burh’s walls. The low cloud made it hard to distinguish the smoke plumes, but my impression was that the fires were not far south of the river. Æthelflaed went to Saint Werburgh’s convent and prayed, Osferth found a carpenter in the town who jointed his cross properly and fixed it with nails, while I summoned two of Merewalh’s men and two of Steapa’s troops.