Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [8]
‘Haesten is still licking his wounds,’ he told me.
‘We should have killed him,’ I grumbled. Haesten had retreated to Ceaster after I had destroyed his fleet and army at Beamfleot. My instinct had been to follow him there and finish his nonsense once and for all, but Alfred had wanted his household troops back in Wessex and I did not have enough men to besiege the walls of the Roman fort at Ceaster, and so Haesten still lived. We watched him, looking for evidence that he was recruiting more men, but Osferth reckoned Haesten was getting weaker rather than stronger.
‘He’ll be forced to swallow his pride and swear loyalty to someone else,’ he suggested.
‘To Sigurd or Cnut,’ I said. Sigurd and Cnut were now the most powerful Danes in Britain, though neither was a king. They had land, wealth, flocks, herds, silver, ships, men and ambition. ‘Why would they want East Anglia?’ I wondered aloud.
‘Why not?’ Finan asked. He was my closest companion, the man I trusted most in a fight.
‘Because they want Wessex,’ I said.
‘They want all of Britain,’ Finan said.
‘They’re waiting,’ Osferth said. ‘For what?’
‘Alfred’s death,’ he said. He hardly ever called Alfred ‘my father’, as though he, like the king, was ashamed of his birth.
‘Oh there’ll be chaos when that happens,’ Finan said with relish.
‘Edward will make a good king,’ Osferth said reprovingly.
‘He’ll have to fight for it,’ I said. ‘The Danes will test him.’
‘And will you fight for him?’ Osferth asked.
‘I like Edward,’ I said non-committally. I did like him. I had pitied him as a child because his father placed him under the control of fierce priests whose duty was to make Edward the perfect heir for Alfred’s Christian kingdom. When I met him again, just before the fight at Beamfleot, he had struck me as a pompous and intolerant young man, but he had enjoyed the company of warriors and the pomposity vanished. He had fought well at Beamfleot and now, if Willibald’s gossip was to be believed, he had learned a little about sin as well.
‘His sister would want you to support him,’ Osferth said pointedly, making Finan laugh. Everyone knew Æthelflaed was my lover, as they knew Æthelflaed’s father was also Osferth’s father, but most people politely pretended not to know, and Osferth’s pointed remark was as close as he dared refer to my relationship with his half-sister. I would much rather have been with Æthelflaed for the Christmas feast, but Osferth told me she had been summoned to Wintanceaster and I knew I was not welcome at Alfred’s table. Besides, I now had the duty of delivering the magic fish to Eohric and I was worried that Sigurd and Cnut would raid my lands while I was in East Anglia.
Sigurd and Cnut had sailed south the previous summer, taking their ships to Wessex’s southern coast while Haesten’s army ravaged Mercia. The two Northumbrian Danes had thought to distract Alfred’s army while Haesten ran wild on Wessex’s northern border, but Alfred had sent me his troops anyway, Haesten had been stripped of his power, and Sigurd and Cnut had discovered they were powerless to capture any of Alfred’s burhs, the fortified towns that were scattered all across the Saxon lands, and so had returned to their ships. I knew they would not rest. They were Danes, which meant they were planning mischief.
So next day, in the melting snow, I took Finan, Osferth and thirty men north to Ealdorman Beornnoth’s land. I liked Beornnoth. He was old, grizzled, lame and fiery. His lands were at the very edge of Saxon Mercia and everything to the north of him belonged to the Danes, which meant that in the last few years he had