Finan pulled me back into the house. ‘You stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll go talk to the sentries at the bastion.’ I began to protest, but Finan cut me off. ‘Stay here!’ he insisted, and I let him take a half-dozen men along the dark street. I locked the door and went back to the larger rooms where Eadgifu was spreading her own cloak on one of the mattresses. Edmund, her eldest son, was peering into the other room with its stinking floor, but I dragged him away and thrust him back to his mother. Father Aart, who had vomited helplessly for almost all of Spearhafoc’s voyage, had recovered, and opened his mouth to protest at my treatment of the prince, but one look at my face persuaded him to stay silent. He was frightened of me.

‘The straw has fleas,’ Awyrgan complained.

‘Lice too, probably,’ I said. ‘And don’t be in too much of a hurry to make beds.’

‘I’m not making a bed,’ Eadgifu said, ‘just a place to sit. We’re going to the palace, surely? In Lundene I always stay in the palace!’

‘We’ll go to the palace, my queen,’ Awyrgan reassured her.

‘Don’t be a bloody fool,’ I snarled at him. ‘Those were Æthelhelm’s men. If we’re wrong and they’re still occupying the city, then we leave. We leave tonight. Finan’s gone to discover what’s happening.’

Awyrgan stared at me. ‘Leave tonight?’

It would be difficult. The Temes was wide, and though the current would help us downstream there were shoals in the river that would make it a perilous journey in darkness. But if Æthelhelm’s men were still holding the city we would have no choice. ‘How long do you think we’ll all live,’ I asked Awyrgan with a patience I did not feel, ‘if Æthelhelm’s troops are here?’

‘Maybe they’re not?’ Eadgifu asked.

‘Which is what Finan is finding out, my lady,’ I said, ‘so be ready to leave in a hurry.’

One of the babies began crying and a maidservant hurried the child out of the room. ‘But if Æthelstan’s men are here,’ Eadgifu pleaded, ‘we can go to the palace? I have clothes there! I need clothes!’

‘Maybe we’ll go to the palace,’ I said, too tired to discuss it. If the city was safe then I would let her find her luxury, but till then she could scratch her flea-bites.

I went back to the river terrace to escape the stench of the house and there sat on the low wall that fronted the Temes and gazed down as Berg and two men turned Spearhafoc so that her prow was pointing downstream. They did it efficiently, made her fast again, and so ready to leave the city in a hurry if Finan brought bad news, then all three settled into the ship’s wide belly. They would guard the ship from the night thieves who could strip rigging and steal oars.

I watched the river swirl and tried to make some sense of the day. I reckoned Waormund must have sailed straight back to Lundene when he saw our ships destroying his small fleet off the Northumbrian coast, but if Æthelstan controlled the city, as we had been told, then why was Waormund still here? Why had the big West Saxon not left with the rest of Æthelhelm’s men? And why only six warriors? I had seen four men, but there had been six straw beds, and that too was strange. Why would six men quarter themselves in this riverside house when presumably the rest of Æthelhelm’s men would be lodged in the old fort or guarding the palace at Lundene’s north-western corner?