‘The gods preserved us,’ I answered in Danish.

His face brightened. ‘You’re Danes!’

‘Danes, Saxons, Irish, Frisians, Norsemen, and everything in between.’ I put two shillings on a barrel that was used as their table. I was not surprised to find Danes here, they had invaded this part of Cent years before and many had stayed, had married Centish women, and adopted Christianity. ‘One of those,’ I said, nodding at the silver shillings, ‘is for sheltering us. The other is for opening your mouth.’

‘My mouth?’ he was puzzled.

‘To tell me what’s happening here,’ I said as I took Serpent-Breath and my helmet from the big leather bag.

‘Happening?’ Kalf asked nervously, watching as I buckled the big sword at my waist.

‘In the town,’ I said, nodding southwards. Ora and its small harbour lay a short walk from Fæfresham itself, which was built on the higher ground inland. ‘And those men in red cloaks,’ I went on, ‘how many are they?’

‘Three crews.’

‘Ninety men?’

‘About that, lord.’ Kalf had heard Berg address me as ‘lord’.

‘Three crews,’ I repeated. ‘How many are here?’

‘There are twenty-eight men in the tavern, lord,’ Kalf’s wife answered confidently and, when I looked enquiringly at her, she nodded. ‘I had to cook for the bastards, lord. There are twenty-eight.’

Twenty-eight men to guard the ships. Our story of being Frisian slave-traders must have convinced Wighelm or else he would surely have tried to stop us landing. Or possibly, knowing his small force could not fight my much larger crew, he was being cautious, first by insisting we landed on the creek’s far side from the tavern, and then by sending a messenger south to Fæfresham. ‘So the rest of the crews are in Fæfresham?’ I asked Kalf.

‘We don’t know, lord.’

‘So tell me what you do know.’

Two weeks before, he said, at the last full moon, a ship had come from Lundene carrying a group of women, a small boy, two babies, and a half-dozen men. They had gone to Fæfresham, he knew, and the women and children had vanished into the convent. Four of the men had stayed in the town, the other two had purchased horses and ridden away. Then, just three days ago, the three ships with their red-cloaked crews had arrived in the harbour, and most of the newcomers had gone south to the town. ‘They don’t tell us what they’re doing here, lord.’

‘They’re not nice!’ the wife put in.

‘Nor are we,’ I said grimly.

I could only guess what had happened, though it was not hard. Eadgifu’s plan had plainly been betrayed and Æthelhelm had sent men to thwart her. The priest who came to Bebbanburg had told me that she had endowed a convent in Fæfresham, and Æthelhelm might well have assumed she would flee there and have sent men to trap her. ‘Are the women and children still in Fæfresham?’ I asked Kalf.

‘We haven’t heard that they’ve left,’ he said uncertainly.