Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [53]
‘He wouldn’t be alive now if it wasn’t for you.’
‘For us,’ I said.
‘And what has he done for us?’ Finan demanded. ‘Jesus and his saints, we destroy Alfred’s enemies and he treats us like dog shit.’
I said nothing. A harpist was playing in the hall’s corner, but his music was soft and plangent to match my mood. The light was fading and two servant girls brought rushlights for the table. I watched Ludda slide his hand up a skirt and wondered that he had remained with me, though when I had asked him he had said that fortunes rise and fortunes fall and he sensed mine would rise again. I hoped he was right. ‘What happened to that Welsh girl of yours?’ I called to Ludda. ‘What was her name?’
‘Teg, lord. She turned into a bat and flew away.’ He grinned, though I noted how many men made the sign of the cross.
‘Maybe we should all turn into bats,’ I said unhappily.
Finan scowled at the table top. ‘If Alfred doesn’t want you,’ he said uneasily, ‘then you should join Alfred’s enemies.’
‘I swore an oath to Æthelflaed.’
‘And she swore one to her husband,’ he said savagely.
‘I won’t fight against her,’ I said.
‘And I won’t leave you,’ Finan said, and I knew he meant it, ‘but not every man here will stay through a hungry winter.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘So let’s steal a ship,’ he urged, ‘and go Viking.’
‘It’s late in the year for that,’ I said.
‘God knows how we survive a winter,’ he grumbled. ‘We have to do something. Kill someone rich.’
And just then the guards on the hall door challenged a visitor. The man arrived in mail, helmeted, and with a sheathed sword at his waist. Behind him, dim in the fast gathering darkness, was a woman and two children. ‘I demand entry!’ he shouted.
‘God alive,’ Finan said, recognising Sihtric’s voice.
One of the guards tried to take the sword, but Sihtric angrily slapped the man aside. ‘Let the bastard keep his sword,’ I said, standing, ‘and let him come in.’ Sihtric’s wife and two sons were behind him, but they stayed at the door as Sihtric paced up the hall. There was silence.
Finan stood to confront him, but I pushed the Irishman down. ‘It’s my duty,’ I told Finan quietly, then walked around the high table’s end and jumped down to the rush-covered floor. Sihtric stopped when he saw me approaching. I had no sword. We did not carry weapons in hall because weapons and ale mix badly and there was a gasp as Sihtric drew his long blade. Some of my men stood to intervene, but I waved them down and kept walking towards the naked steel. I stopped just two paces from him. ‘Well?’ I demanded harshly.
Sihtric grinned and I laughed. I embraced him, and he returned the embrace, then held the hilt of his sword to me. ‘Yours, lord,’ he said, ‘as it always was.’
‘Ale!’ I shouted to the steward. ‘Ale and food!’
Finan was gaping as I walked Sihtric to the high table with my arm about his shoulder. Men were cheering. They had liked Sihtric and had been puzzled by his behaviour, but it had all been planned between us. Even the insults had been rehearsed. I had wanted Beortsig to recruit him, and Beortsig had snapped up Sihtric like a pike attacking a duckling. And I had ordered Sihtric to stay in Beortsig’s employment until he had learned what I needed to know, and now he had come back. ‘I didn’t know where to find you, lord,’ he said, ‘so I went to Lundene first and Weohstan said to come here.’
Beornnoth was dead, he told me. The old man had died in the early summer, just before Sigurd’s men crossed his estates to burn Buccingahamm. ‘They stayed the night at the hall, lord,’ he told me.
‘Sigurd’s men?’
‘And Sigurd himself, lord. Beortsig fed them.’
‘He’s in Sigurd’s pay?’
‘Yes, lord,’ he said, and that was no surprise, ‘and not only Beortsig, lord. There was a Saxon with Sigurd, lord, a man Sigurd treated with honour. A long-haired man called Sigebriht.’
‘Sigebriht?’ I asked. The name was familiar, lurking at the back of my memory, but I could not place him, though I remembered the widow in Buchestanes saying that a long-haired Saxon had visited Ælfadell.
‘Sigebriht of Cent, lord,