Except there were those ships’ crews getting drunk in Hamtun’s winter taverns and those were the men Leofric wanted, and to get them he had to persuade Alfred to relieve Hacca of their command, and luckily for us Hacca himself came to Cippanhamm and pleaded to be released from the fleet. He prayed daily, he told Alfred, never to see the ocean again. ‘I get seasick, lord.’
Alfred was always sympathetic to men who suffered sickness because he was so often ill himself, and he must have known that Hacca was an inadequate commander of ships, but Alfred’s problem was how to replace him. To which end he summoned four bishops, two abbots and a priest to advise him, and I learned from Beocca that they were all praying about the new appointment. ‘Do something!’ Leofric snarled at me.
‘What the devil am I supposed to do?’
‘You have friends who are priests! Talk to them. Talk to Alfred, Earsling.’ He rarely called me that any more, only when he was angry.
‘He doesn’t like me,’ I said. ‘If I ask him to put us in charge of the fleet he’ll give it to anyone but us. He’ll give it to a bishop, probably.’
‘Hell!’ Leofric said.
In the end it was Eanflæd who saved us. The redhead was a merry soul and had a particular fondness for Leofric, and she heard us arguing and sat down, slapped her hands on the table to silence us, and then asked what we were fighting about. Then she sneezed because she had a cold.
‘I want this useless earsling,’ Leofric jerked his thumb at me, ‘to be named commander of the fleet, only he’s too young, too ugly, too horrible and too pagan, and Alfred’s listening to a pack of bishops who’ll end up naming some wizened old fart who doesn’t know his prow from his prick.’
‘Which bishops?’ Eanflæd wanted to know.
‘Scireburnan, Wintanceaster, Winburnan and Exanceaster,’ I said.
She smiled, sneezed again, and two days later I was summoned to Alfred’s presence. It turned out that the Bishop of Exanceaster was partial to redheads.
Alfred greeted me in his hall; a fine building with beams, rafters and a central stone hearth. His guards watched us from the doorway where a group of petitioners waited to see the king, and a huddle of priests prayed at the hall’s other end, but the two of us were alone by the hearth where Alfred paced up and down as he talked. He said he was thinking of appointing me to command the fleet. Just thinking, he stressed. God, he went on, was guiding his choice, but now he must talk with me to see whether God’s advice chimed with his own intuition. He put great store by intuition. He once lectured me about a man’s inner eye, and how it could lead us to a higher wisdom, and I dare say he was right, but appointing a fleet commander did not need mystical wisdom, it needed finding a raw fighter willing to kill some Danes. ‘Tell me,’ he went on, ‘has learning to read bolstered your faith?’
‘Yes, lord,’ I said with feigned eagerness.
‘It has?’ He sounded dubious.
‘The life of Saint Swithun,’ I said, waving a hand as if to suggest it had overwhelmed me, ‘and the stories of Chad!’ I fell silent as if I could not think of praise sufficient for that tedious man.
‘The blessed Chad!’ Alfred said happily. ‘You know men and cattle were cured by the dust of his corpse?’
‘A miracle, lord,’ I said.
‘It is good to hear you say as much, Uhtred,’ Alfred said, ‘and I rejoice in your faith.’
‘It gives me great happiness, lord,’ I replied with a straight face.
‘Because it is only with faith in God that we shall prevail against the Danes.’
‘Indeed, lord,’ I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, wondering why he did not just name me commander of the fleet and be done with it.
But he was in a discursive mood. ‘I remember when I first met you,’ he said, ‘and I was struck by your childlike faith. It was an inspiration to me, Uhtred.’
‘I am glad of it, lord.’
‘And then,’ he turned and frowned at me, ‘I detected a lessening of faith in you.’
‘God tries us, lord,’ I said.
‘He does! He does!’ He winced suddenly. He was always a sick man. He had collapsed in pain at his wedding, though that might have been the horror of realising what he was marrying, but in truth he was prone to bouts of sudden griping agony. That, he had told me, was better than his first illness, which had been an affliction of ficus, which is a real endwerc, so painful and bloody that at times he had been unable to sit, and sometimes that ficus came back, but most of the time he suffered from the pains in his belly. ‘God does try us,’ he went on, ‘and I think God was testing you. I would like to think you have survived the trial.’
‘I believe I have, lord,’ I said gravely, wishing he would just end this ridiculous conversation.
‘But I still hesitate to name you,’ he admitted. ‘You are young! It is true you have proved your diligence by learning to read and that you are nobly born, but you are more likely to be found in a tavern than in a church. Is that not true?’
That silenced me, at least for a heartbeat or two, but then I remembered something Beocca had said to me during his interminable lessons and, without thinking, without even really knowing what they meant, I said the words aloud. ‘“The son of man is come eating and drinking”,’ I said, ‘“and …”’
‘“You say, look, a greedy man and a drinker!”’ Alfred finished the words for me. ‘You are right, Uhtred, right to chide me. Glory to God! Christ was accused of spending his time in taverns, and I forgot it. It is in the scriptures!’
The gods help me, I thought. The man was drunk on God, but he was no fool, for now he turned on me like a snake. ‘And I hear you spend time with my nephew. They say you distract him from his lessons.’
I put my hand on my heart. ‘I will swear an oath, lord,’ I said, ‘that I have done nothing except dissuade him from rashness.’ And that was true, or true enough. I had never encouraged Æthelwold in his wilder flights of fancy that involved cutting Alfred’s throat or running away to join the Danes. I did encourage him to ale, whores and blasphemy, but I did not count those things as rash. ‘My oath on it, lord,’ I said.
The word oath was powerful. All our laws depend on oaths. Life, loyalty and allegiance depend on oaths, and my use of the word persuaded him. ‘I thank you,’ he said earnestly, ‘and I should tell you, Uhtred, that to my surprise the Bishop of Exanceaster had a dream in which a messenger of God appeared to him and said that you should be made commander of the fleet.’
‘A messenger of God?’ I asked.
‘An angel, Uhtred.’
‘Praise God,’ I said gravely, thinking how Eanflæd would enjoy discovering that she was now an angel.
‘Yet,’ Alfred said, and winced again as pain flared in his arse or belly, ‘yet,’ he said again, and I knew something unexpected was coming. ‘I worry,’ he went on, ‘that you are of Northumbria, and that your commitment to Wessex is not of the heart.’
‘I am here, lord,’ I said.
‘But for how long?’
‘Till the Danes are gone, lord.’
He ignored that. ‘I need men bound to me by God,’ he said, ‘by God, by love, by duty, by passion and by land.’ He paused, looking at me, and I knew the sting was in that last word.
‘I have land in Northumbria,’ I said, thinking of Bebbanburg.
‘West Saxon land,’ he said, ‘land that you will own, land that you will defend, land that you will