‘We can’t stay here,’ I said. No one spoke. The East Anglians, I thought, could not close down the city for ever. Merchant ships would arrive and others would want to leave, and Æthelhelm would want the riches that customs dues could bring him. That meant there would be more shipping and perhaps, if we waited, a chance would come to seize one of those vessels. Yet I kept going back to the thought of Gunnald the slave-trader. Was that because of the promise I had made to Benedetta? I looked at her long solemn face and just then she looked back to me and our eyes held each other. Her expression did not change and she said nothing. ‘We don’t have a choice,’ I said, ‘we go tonight.’

‘Lord Varin has forbidden people to walk the streets at night,’ Father Oda pointed out.

‘We go tonight,’ I insisted, ‘just before dawn.’

‘Sharpen your swords, lads,’ Finan said softly.

I had said we had no choice, but of course we did. A lifetime of war had taught me that fighting a battle without forethought was usually to invite defeat. Some battles start by accident, but most are planned. It can still go horribly wrong, even the best plans can be ripped apart by the enemy’s plan, but a good leader does his best to scout the enemy, to learn all he can about that enemy, and all I had was the report of two boys. They had seen a ship that they thought had oars and they had seen three guards. Beornoth was right, three guards were nothing, but the noise we made in breaking into the slaver’s yard and defeating his men could bring the bridge garrison running. Then there was Varin’s order that no one was to be in the streets at night. So first we must reach the slaver’s yard without being seen and then we must break into the yard silently before stealing a ship. So yes, there was a choice, and a sensible man would wait until the city fell back into its daily routine, would wait until folk could walk the streets at night, and wait until the guards on the wharves were bored and careless.

But could we wait? The stench of the cesspit alone was reason to leave. Varin had captured the city, but he had yet to search it thoroughly, and there was the ever looming danger that he would send men to rake though Lundene’s ruins and cellars in search of the enemies he must know had survived the city’s capture. And soon he would have more men as reinforcements arrived from East Anglia and from Wessex. ‘The guards patrolling the streets,’ I asked, ‘do they carry shields?’

‘The men on the wharves had shields,’ Aldwyn said, ‘but they weren’t carrying them.’

‘The shields were stacked?’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘And the men we saw patrolling the streets didn’t have shields,’ Father Oda said.

‘The guards at the city gate did,’ Benedetta added.