‘And the enemy,’ he went on, still speaking calmly, ‘will send horsemen on patrol.’

I said nothing, nor did anyone else speak until Finan broke the silence. ‘It is always wise,’ he said drily and using the words I had spoken to Bedwin not long before, ‘to listen to a Dane when he talks of warfare.’

‘So we won’t stay on the road,’ I said. ‘We’ll use the woods where the horsemen can’t find us. Oswi, get us to one of the northern gates.’

The attempt to reach the northern city wall also failed. Whoever led the East Anglian army was no fool. He had sent men to capture and then guard each of the seven gates. Two of those gates pierced the walls of the Roman fort built at the city’s north-western corner and, when we drew close, we heard the sound of men fighting. There was an open space in front of the fort and to the west of the ruined amphitheatre, and a score of bodies lay on that paved square that was lit by the torches burning on the palace walls. Blood had run on the stone and trickled into the weed-thick gaps between the old paving slabs where men in red cloaks were stripping the corpses of mail. The fort’s southern gate, one of the two that led into the city, was wide open, and six horsemen came through the arch. They were led by an imposing man who rode a great black stallion, wore a white cloak, and had a mail coat of brightly polished metal. ‘That’s Varin,’ Father Oda whispered.

‘Varin?’ I asked. We were again hidden in the deep shadow of an alley.

‘An East Anglian,’ Father Oda explained, ‘and one of Lord Æthelhelm’s commanders.’

‘Varin is a Danish name,’ I said.

‘He is a Dane,’ the priest said, ‘and like me he is a Christian. I know him well. We were friends once.’

‘In East Anglia?’ I asked. I knew that Father Oda’s parents had settled in East Anglia, sailing there from their home across the North Sea.

‘In East Anglia,’ Father Oda said, ‘which is as much a Danish land as it is Saxon. A third of Lord Æthelhelm’s East Anglian troops are Danes. Maybe more than a third?’

That should not have surprised me. East Anglia had fallen to the Danes before Alfred had come to the throne and had long been ruled by Danish kings. Their sovereignty ended when Edward’s West Saxon army defeated them and, though many had died in the fighting, the Danes who survived had known which way fate’s wind was blowing and so had converted to Christianity. They then swore loyalty to the new Saxon lords who took over the wide estates. Æthelhelm the Elder, who had died while my prisoner, had been given vast tracts of East Anglia and had raised an army of hard-bitten Danes to defend it. Those were the men who, with their Saxon comrades, had come to Lundene this night.