Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [97]
‘We’re at peace,’ I said sarcastically, ‘hadn’t you heard?’
‘Tell that to Eohric,’ Weohstan said, climbing back to join me. All the land to the north-east was Eohric’s land, and Weohstan told of Danish patrols coming close to the city. ‘They’re watching us,’ he said, ‘and all I’m allowed to do is wave at them.’
‘They don’t need to come close,’ I said, ‘their traders will have told them everything they want to know.’ Lundene was always busy with traders, Danish, Saxon, Frankish and Frisian, and such merchants carried news back to their homelands. Eohric, I was certain, knew just how vulnerable Lundene’s defences were, indeed he had seen them for himself. ‘But Eohric’s a cautious bastard,’ I said.
‘Sigurd isn’t.’
‘He’s still sick.’
‘Pray God he dies,’ Weohstan said savagely.
I learned more news in the city’s taverns. There were shipmasters from the whole coast of Britain who, for the price of an ale, offered rumours, some of them true. And not one rumour spoke of war. Æthelwold was still sheltered in Eoferwic, and still claimed to be King of Wessex, but he had no power until the Danes gave him an army. Why were they so quiet? It puzzled me. I had been so confident they would attack at the news of Alfred’s death, but instead they did nothing. Bishop Erkenwald knew the answer. ‘It’s God’s will,’ he told me. We had met by chance in a street. ‘God commanded us to love our enemies,’ he explained, ‘and by love we shall make them Christian and peaceable.’
I remember staring at him. ‘Do you really believe that?’ I asked.
‘We must have faith,’ he said fiercely. He made the sign of the cross towards a woman who had curtseyed to him. ‘So,’ he asked me, ‘what brings you to Lundene?’
‘We’re looking for whores,’ I said. He blinked. ‘Do you know any good ones, bishop?’ I asked.
‘Oh, dear God,’ he hissed, and went on his way.
In truth I had decided against finding whores in Lundene’s taverns because there was always a chance that the girls might be recognised, and so I led Finan, Ludda and Father Cuthbert down to the slave dock that lay upriver of the old Roman bridge. Lundene had never possessed a thriving slave market, but there was always some small trade in young folk captured from Ireland or Wales or Scotland. The Danes kept more slaves than the Saxons, and those that we did possess were usually farm labourers. A man who cannot afford an ox could harness a pair of slaves to a plough, though the furrow would never be as deep as that made by an ox-drawn blade. Oxen were less trouble too, though in the old days a man could kill a slave who proved a nuisance, and face no penalty. Alfred’s laws changed that. And many men liked to release their slaves, believing it earned them God’s approval, and so there was no great demand in Lundene, though there were usually a few slaves for sale at the dock beside the Temes. The traders came from Ratumacos, a town in Frankia, and almost all those traders were Northmen because the Viking crews had conquered all the region about that town. They came to buy the young folk captured in our border skirmishes, and some also brought slaves to sell, knowing that the wealthy men of Wessex and Mercia appreciated an exotic girl. The church frowned on that trade, but it thrived anyway.
The wharf lay not far beyond the river wall and the slaves were kept in dank wooden huts inside the wall. There were four traders in Lundene that day and their guards saw us coming and warned their masters that rich men were approaching. The traders came into the street and bowed low. ‘Wine, my lords?’ one asked. ‘Ale, perhaps? Or whatever your lordships desire.’
‘Women,’ Father Cuthbert said.
‘Be quiet,’ I growled at him.
‘Jesus and Joseph,’ Finan said under his breath and I knew he was remembering the long months he and I had spent as slaves, chained to Sverri’s oars, our arms branded with the S of slavery. Sverri had died, as had his henchman,