Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [132]
She lay silent in my arms. She was gazing at the moon-speckled roof. ‘Do you think,’ she asked, ‘that we’ll ever have peace?’
‘No.’
‘I dream of a day when we can live in a great hall, go hunting, listen to songs, walk by the river and never fear an enemy.’
‘You and me?’
‘Just you and me,’ she said. She turned her head so that her hair hid her eyes. ‘Just you and me.’
Next morning Edward ordered Æthelflaed to return to Cirrenceastre, an order she pointedly ignored. ‘I told him to give you the army,’ she said.
‘And he said?’
‘That he was king and he would lead the army.’
Her husband had also ordered Merewalh back to Gleawecestre, but Æthelflaed persuaded the Mercian to stay. ‘We need every good man,’ she told him, and so we did, but not to rot inside Lundene. We had a whole army there, over four thousand five hundred men, and all it did was guard the walls and gaze out at the unchanging countryside beyond.
We did nothing and the Danes ravaged the Wessex countryside, but made no attempt to storm a burh. The autumn days shrank and still we remained indecisive in Lundene. Archbishop Plegmund returned to Contwaraburg and I thought his departure might embolden Edward, but Bishop Erkenwald stayed with the king and counselled caution. So did Father Coenwulf, Edward’s mass priest and closest adviser. ‘It’s not like the Danes to be supine,’ he told Edward, ‘so I fear a trap. Let them make the first move, lord King. They surely cannot stay for ever.’ In that, at least, he was right, for as the autumn slid cold into winter the Danes at last moved.
They had been as indecisive as us, and now they simply recrossed the river at Cracgelad and went back the way they had come. Steapa’s scouts told us of their retreat, and day by day the reports came that they were heading back towards East Anglia, taking slaves, livestock and plunder. ‘And once they’re back there,’ I told the council, ‘the Northumbrian Danes will go home in their ships. They’ve achieved nothing, except taking a lot of slaves and cattle, but we’ve done nothing either.’
‘King Eohric has broken his treaty,’ Bishop Erkenwald pointed out indignantly, though what use that observation was escaped me.
‘He promised to be at peace with us,’ Edward said.
‘He must be punished, lord King,’ Erkenwald insisted. ‘The treaty was solemnised by the church!’
Edward glanced at me. ‘And if the Northumbrians go home,’ he said, ‘Eohric will be vulnerable.’
‘When they go home, lord King,’ I pointed out. ‘They might wait till spring.’
‘Eohric can’t feed that many,’ Ealdorman Æthelhelm pointed out. ‘They’ll leave his kingdom quickly! Look at the problems we have in feeding an army.’
‘So you’ll invade in winter?’ I asked scornfully. ‘When the rivers are flooding, the rain is falling and we’re wading in freezing mud?’
‘God is on our side!’ Erkenwald declared.
The army had been in Lundene for almost three months now, and the food supplies of the city were running low. There was no enemy at the gates, so more food was constantly being carted into the storehouses, but that took an immense number of wagons, oxen, horses and men. And the warriors themselves were bored. Some blamed the men of Cent for delaying their arrival and, despite my having hanged a man, there were frequent fights in which dozens of men died. Edward’s army was querulous, underemployed and hungry, but Bishop Erkenwald’s indignation at Eohric’s betrayal of a sacred trust somehow invigorated the council and persuaded the king to make a decision. For weeks we had the Danes at our mercy and granted them mercy, but now they had left Wessex the council suddenly discovered courage. ‘We shall follow the enemy,’ Edward announced, ‘take back what they have stolen from us, and revenge ourselves on King Eohric.’
‘If we’re following them,’ I said, looking at Sigelf, ‘we all need horses.’
‘We have horses,’ Edward pointed out.
‘Not all the men of Cent do,’ I said.
Sigelf bridled at that. He was a man, it seemed to me, ready to take offence at the slightest suggestion of criticism, but he knew I