‘You! Who are you?’ A tall man in Æthelhelm’s red cloak was staring at us from the wharf. ‘And why aren’t you moving?’

‘Who are we?’ Brihtwulf muttered, looking at me.

It was Father Oda who answered. He stood, his pectoral cross bright above his black robes, and shouted back. ‘We are Lord Ealhstan’s men from Herutceaster!’

The tall man did not question either name, both of which were Oda’s inventions. ‘Then what in Christ’s name are you doing?’ he snarled. ‘You’re supposed to be on the walls!’

‘Why did you kill that man?’ Oda demanded sternly.

The red-cloaked killer hesitated, plainly offended at being questioned, but Oda’s natural authority and the fact that he was a priest made the man reply, if surlily. ‘Him and a dozen others. The bastards thought they’d run away. Didn’t want to fight. Now for God’s sake, move!’

The clamour of the bells, the death of the men on the wharf, and the anger of the man shouting at us seemed an enormous commotion in response to Merewalh and his two hundred men. ‘Move where?’ Brihtwulf called back. ‘We only arrived last night. No one told us what to do.’

‘I’m telling you now! Go to the walls!’

‘What’s happening?’ Father Oda shouted.

‘Pretty Boy has come with his whole army. Seems he wants to die today, so move your East Anglian arses and do some killing! Go that way!’ He pointed west. ‘Someone will tell you what to do when you get there, now go! Move!’

We moved. It seemed that the west wind was indeed an omen.

Because it had brought Æthelstan from the west. He had come to Lundene.

So we would fight.

Twelve

‘Pretty boy?’ Brihtwulf asked as he paced beside me.

‘He means Æthelstan.’

‘Why pretty boy?’

I shrugged. ‘Just an insult.’

‘And he’s come to attack Lundene?’ Brihtwulf asked, astonished.

‘So he said, who knows?’ I had no answer, unless the garrison had mistaken Merewalh’s two hundred men for Æthelstan’s army, which seemed unlikely.

Two horsemen in red cloaks spurred past us, going west. ‘What’s happening?’ Brihtwulf shouted at them, but they ignored us. We had gone through one of the gaps in the river wall and were walking west along the street beyond. We passed Gunnald’s yard, the gates shut, and I had a sudden image of Benedetta in her cowled gown. If I lived through this day, I thought, I would go to Werlameceaster and find her, and that made me think of Eadith, and I pushed that uncomfortable thought away just as we reached the slight bend in the street where it led up to the northern end of the great bridge.

‘It has to be Æthelstan,’ Finan said. He was staring south across the wide river.

Merewalh had sent a messenger to Æthelstan, seeking permission for this madness, but had the message encouraged Æthelstan to join it? I stared at the troops on the opposite bank of the Temes. There were not many in sight, perhaps forty or fifty showing between the houses of Suðgeweork, which was the settlement built at the bridge’s southern end, but those men were plainly there to threaten the high wooden-walled fortress that protected the bridge itself. A dozen spearmen were hurrying south across the bridge, presumably to reinforce the fort’s garrison.