‘And to watch Toteham?’ I pressed him. I was not sure where Toteham was, but from what I had overheard it must have been between Lundene and Werlameceaster.

My assumption proved to be right because the question provoked an awkward silence. ‘Toteham has only a small garrison,’ a man called Heorstan finally said. He was a middle-aged man who served as Merewalh’s deputy. ‘They’re too few to cause us trouble.’

‘Small?’

‘Maybe seventy-five men?’

‘So the seventy-five men at Toteham don’t cause you trouble,’ I said caustically, ‘so what do they do?’

‘They just watch us,’ one of Merewalh’s warriors answered. He sounded surly.

‘And you just ignore them?’ I was looking at Merewalh.

There was another awkward silence and some of the men sitting in the sunlight shuffled and stared at the dusty ground, suggesting to me that they had already proposed attacking Toteham and that Merewalh had rejected the idea.

‘If Æthelhelm sends an army out of Lundene to attack King Æthelstan,’ one of the priests spoke up, evidently trying to save Merewalh from embarrassment, ‘we are to follow them. Those are also our orders. We are to fall on their rear as the king assaults their vanguard.’

‘And where is King Æthelstan?’ I asked.

‘He guards the Temes,’ Merewalh said, ‘with twelve hundred warriors.’

‘Guards!’ the priest stressed the word, still attempting to defend Merewalh’s inactivity. ‘The king watches the Temes as we watch the roads to Lundene. King Æthelstan insists that we do not provoke a war.’

‘There’s already a war,’ I put in harshly. ‘Men died two days ago.’

The priest, a plump man with a circlet of brown hair, waved as if those deaths were trivial. ‘There is skirmishing, lord, yes, but King Æthelstan will not invade Wessex, and thus far the armies of Lord Æthelhelm have not invaded Mercia.’

‘Lundene is Mercian,’ I insisted.

‘Arguably, yes,’ the priest said irritably, ‘but since the days of King Alfred it has been garrisoned by West Saxons.’

‘Is that why you left?’ I asked Merewalh. It was a brutally unkind question, reminding him of his foolishness in abandoning the city.

He flinched, conscious of all the men who sat listening to our discussion. ‘You’ve never made a bad decision, Lord Uhtred?’

‘You know I have. You just rescued me from one of my worst.’

He smiled at that. ‘Brihtwulf did,’ he said, nodding at a young man sitting to his left.

‘And he did it well,’ I spoke fervently, earning a smile from Brihtwulf, who, on Merewalh’s orders, had led the men who had rescued me. He was the youngest of Merewalh’s commanders and had brought the largest number of troops, well over a hundred men, which should have qualified him to be Merewalh’s deputy, but his youth and inexperience had counted against him. He was tall, dark-haired, strongly built, and newly wealthy, having inherited his father’s estates just two months before. Finan approved of him. ‘He’s got more silver than sense,’ the Irishman had told me, ‘but he’s a belligerent bastard. Keen to fight.’