‘He is,’ Merewalh said.

‘With twelve hundred men? Who are all scattered along the river?’

‘They must guard all the bridges and fords,’ Merewalh admitted.

‘And how many West Saxons guard the southern bank of the Temes?’

‘Two thousand? Three?’ Merewalh suggested uncertainly, then challenged me. ‘So what do you think King Æthelstan should do?’

‘Stop talking and start fighting,’ I said, and there were murmurs of agreement from the men on the benches. I noticed it was the younger men who nodded first, though a couple of older warriors also muttered approval. ‘You say he’s at Wicumun? Then he should attack Lundene before Æthelhelm attacks him.’

‘Lord Uhtred is right,’ Brihtwulf spoke. His flat statement had prompted no response and, emboldened by that silence, he continued. ‘We’re doing nothing here! The enemy isn’t sending men by road so we’re just getting fat. We need to fight!’

‘But how?’ Merewalh asked. ‘And where? Wessex has twice as many men as Mercia!’

‘And if you wait much longer,’ I retorted, ‘they’ll have three times as many.’

‘So what would you do?’ Heorstan asked. He had not liked the way I had peremptorily cut him off earlier, and the question was almost a sneer, certainly a challenge.

‘I would cut off the heads of Wessex,’ I answered. ‘You say Æthelhelm and his earsling nephew are in Lundene?’

‘We were told so,’ Merewalh answered.

‘And I was in Lundene not long ago,’ I went on, ‘and the men from East Anglia don’t want to fight. They don’t want to die for Wessex. They want to get home for the harvest. If we cut off Wessex’s two heads they’ll thank us.’

‘Two heads?’ Father Edwyn asked.

‘Æthelhelm and Ælfweard,’ I said harshly. ‘We find them, we kill them.’

‘Amen,’ Brihtwulf said.

‘And how,’ Heorstan asked, still with challenge in his voice, ‘would we do that?’

So I told him.

‘I was a big baby,’ Finan told me later that day.

I stared at him. ‘Big?’

‘So my ma said! She said it was like giving birth to a pig. Poor woman. They said she squealed horribly when she squeezed me out.’

‘I’m fascinated,’ I said.

‘And I’m not really a big fellow at all. Not tall like you!’

‘More like a weasel than a pig,’ I said.

‘But there was a wise woman at my birth,’ Finan ignored my sarcasm, ‘and she read the blood.’

‘She read the blood?’

‘To see the future, of course! She looked at the blood on my wee body before they washed it away.’

‘Your wee body,’ I said, and laughed. The laughter made my cracked ribs hurt. ‘But that’s sorcery,’ I went on, ‘and I thought you Irish were all Christians?’

‘So we are. We just like to improve it with a touch of harmless sorcery.’ He grinned. ‘And she said I’d live a long life and die in my bed.’

‘That’s all she said?’

‘That’s all,’ Finan said, ‘and that wise woman was never wrong! And I’m not likely to go to bed in Lundene, am I?’