“It was, it is.”

I had expected another demand that I give Æthelstan my oath, though on reflection it seemed unlikely that Æthelstan would reveal that demand to anyone. Instead it seemed he wanted me to attend the Easter Witan so he could press me himself. At least I assumed as much. “And why should I go?” I asked truculently. “My lands in Wessex and Mercia were stripped from me.”

“You must ask Prince Æthelstan, lord,” Osferth said. “I was just charged with delivering the message.”

“I need to find Sigtryggr,” I said. “That’s more important than any damned meeting of the Witan.”

Two days later we rode into Mameceaster. The burh was new, built around a Roman fort that stood beside the River Mædlak on a low breast-shaped hill that had given the place its name. My men called it Titceaster. A wall of timber and earth surrounded the new streets with their small houses, but the real strength of the burh was the old fort. Our horses’ hooves sounded loud on the stone-paved road that led through the twin arches of the fort’s northern gate, which, like the walls of Ceaster, was built of stone, though Mameceaster’s stone was darker. The lower courses were thick with moss, but the upper showed signs of repair where the long years had collapsed the ramparts. The body and separate head of one of Cynlæf’s rebels stank on the old fort’s gate. The two pieces had been nailed there and the birds feasted on the rotting flesh. “I always wondered,” Osferth remarked as we rode past the macabre trophies, “why Sigtryggr didn’t garrison the place first.”

“Because it’s in Northumbria?”

“No one knows! It certainly isn’t in Northumbria now.”

My son-in-law, or rather my once son-in-law, could have fortified Mameceaster, but the truth was that he only had sufficient forces to garrison Eoferwic and Lindcolne. The other great fortresses of Northumbria were ruled by lords, as I ruled Bebbanburg, and as my journeying of the last weeks had proved we lords did not always do Sigtryggr’s bidding. Edward of Wessex expected obedience from all his subjects, but Northumbria was ruled by Vikings who might or might not obey whoever called himself king in Eoferwic. “Northumbria was a great country once,” I said to Osferth as we reached the center of the old Roman fort. “The Scots paid us tribute, the Mercians feared us, there was gold.”

“Everything changed when the pagans invaded,” he said. His men had vanished into the side streets where their families lived and where their horses were stabled. Mameceaster’s fort reminded me of Ceaster because the Romans built their forts to a pattern. Their buildings had long collapsed, but the new houses, storerooms, and stables had been made where the old ones had stood. Ceaster still had a great hall, but here that hall was all timber and thatch, and close to it was a new church, even bigger than the hall. Everywhere the Saxons build they make a church.