The group turned together to look at the strange contrivance a few yards from them. It was like a shallow box, on long handles so that it could be carried like a stretcher. Between one pair of handles ran an axle with wheels on it, so that it could be trundled on level ground. Inside the box lay the trunk of a man, though now that the box was tipped forward he was upright, able to see over the battlements like the rest. Most of his weight was taken by a broad strap round his chest and under his armpits. His groin rested on a padded projection. He braced himself on the bandaged stumps of his knees.

“I serve as a warning,” rumbled Wulfgar, his voice shockingly deep-toned coming from such a seemingly small man. “One day I will serve as vengeance. For this and all the heathens have done to me.”

The other men did not reply. They knew the effect the mutilated East Anglian thane had had, the almost triumphal progress he had made from his home, ahead of the Army, halting in every village to tell the churls what lay in store for them and for their womenfolk.

“What good has all the rallying done?” King Ella asked bitterly.

Cuthred screwed up his face in calculation. “Not slowed them. Not lost them many. Made them keep together. May even have tightened them up. Still around eight thousand of them.”

“We can put half as many again in the field,” said Arch Deacon Erkenbert. “We are not the East Anglians. Two thousand men of military age live in Eoforwich itself. And we are strong in the strength of the Lord of Hosts.”

“I don’t think we’ve got enough,” said Cuthred slowly. “Not even counting the Lord of Hosts. It sounds good to say you’re three-to-two. But if it’s a fight on level ground it’s always one to one. We’ve got champions as good as theirs, but not enough of them. If we marched out to fight them we would lose.”

“Then we will not march out against them?”

“We stay here. They have to come to us, try and climb the walls.”

“They will destroy our properties,” cried Erkenbert. “Kill the stock, carry off the young people, cut down the fruit trees. Burn the harvest. And there is worse. The rents on Church properties are not due till Michaelmas, none have yet been paid. The churls still have their money in their pouches, or hidden in the ground, but if they see their lands ravaged and their lords penned inside a wall, will they pay?”

He threw his hands up theatrically. “It would be a disaster! All over Northumbria the houses of God would fall into ruin, the servants of God would starve.”

“They won’t starve for loss of a year’s rents,” said Cuthred. “How much of last year’s have you got set aside in the minster?”