Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [15]
‘What are those?’ I asked, nudging the bags with my foot.
‘Ah,’ he said, and gave a sheepish grin.
‘Men who cheat the folk who live on my land are punished,’ I said.
‘Cheat, lord?’ He gazed up innocently.
‘I drown them,’ I said, ‘or else I hang them. You saw the bodies outside?’ The corpses of the two men who had tried to kill me still hung from the elm.
‘It’s hard to miss them, lord,’ Ludda said.
I picked up one of the small leather bags and opened it, spilling two rusty clench-nails onto my palm. ‘You tell folk that if they sleep with this bag beneath their pillow and say a prayer then the iron will turn to silver?’
The wide blue eyes became wider. ‘Now why would I say such a thing, lord?’
‘To make yourself rich by selling iron scraps for a hundred times their real value,’ I said.
‘But if they pray hard enough, lord, then Almighty God might hear their prayer, mightn’t He? And it would be unchristian of me to deny simple folk the chance of a miracle, lord.’
‘I should hang you,’ I said.
‘Hang her instead, lord,’ Ludda said quickly, nodding towards his girl, ‘she’s Welsh.’
I had to laugh. The girl scowled, and I gave Ludda a friendly cuff around the ears. I had bought one of those miracle bags years before, believing somehow that prayer would turn rust to gold, and I had bought it from just such a rogue as Ludda. I told him to stand and had the servants bring both he and his girl ale and food. ‘If I were travelling to Huntandon from here,’ I asked him, ‘how would I go?’
He considered the question for a few heartbeats, looking to see if there was some trap in it, then shrugged. ‘It’s not a hard journey, lord. Go east to Bedanford and from there you’ll find a good road to a place called Eanulfsbirig. You cross the river there, lord, and keep on north and east to Huntandon.’
‘What river?’
‘The Use, lord,’ he hesitated. ‘The pagans have been known to row their ships up the Use, lord, as far as Eanulfsbirig. There’s a bridge there. There’s another at Huntandon, too, which you cross to get to the settlement.’
‘So I cross the river twice?’
‘Three times, lord. You’ll cross at Bedanford too, but that’s a ford, of course.’
‘So I have to cross and recross the river?’ I asked.
‘You can follow the northern bank if you wish, lord, then you don’t have to use the bridges beyond, but it’s a much longer journey, and there’s no good road on that bank.’
‘Can the river be forded anywhere else?’
‘Not downstream of Bedanford, lord, not easily, not after all this rain. It will have flooded.’
I nodded. I was toying with some silver coins, and neither Ludda nor Teg could take their eyes from the money. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘if you wanted to cheat the folk of Eleg, how would you travel there?’
‘Oh, through Grantaceaster,’ he said immediately. ‘It’s by far the quickest route and they’re mighty gullible folk in Grantaceaster, lord.’ He grinned.
‘And the distance from Eanulfsbirig to Huntandon?’
‘A morning’s walk, lord. No distance at all.’
I tumbled the coins in my palm. ‘And the bridges?’ I asked. ‘Are they wood or stone?’
‘Both wooden, lord,’ he said, ‘they used to be stone, but the Roman arches collapsed.’ He told me about the other settlements in the valley of the Use, and how the valley was still more Saxon than Dane, though the farms there all paid tribute to Danish lords. I let him talk, but I was thinking about the river that would have to be crossed. If Sigurd planned an ambush, I thought, then he would place it at Eanulfsbirig, knowing we must cross the bridge there. He would surely not pick Huntandon because the East Anglian forces would be waiting on the higher ground just north of the river.
Or maybe he planned nothing at all.
Maybe I saw danger where there