“So my queen is a bastard?”

“She’s not,” I said firmly.

“But they say she is?”

“The church says so.”

“So why marry her to me?”

“Because they think you’re stupid enough to believe that a bastard royal is a pledge of their sincerity. And because it confuses the Scots.”

“Them too? How?”

“Because making Eadgyth your queen,” I suggested, “tells the Scots that you’re allied with her father, and that might make the hairy bastards think twice before they try to take Northumbria as their own. The West Saxons don’t want you to lose half of Northumbria before they take it all for themselves.”

“Even so,” he said, “Eadgyth’s not much of a prize, is she?”

“She’s a good woman,” I said firmly, “and I like her.”

He laughed at that, then spurred on. I did like Eadgyth. She had her twin brother’s good sense and her own gentle demeanor. Her marriage had come as a complete surprise to her. She had resigned herself to a life of prayer as a virtual prisoner in a convent, then just six days before the Witan, she had been plucked from the cloister, given cast-off clothes that had belonged to Edward’s previous wife, and brought north to Tamweorthin. The speed with which Edward had made that decision was impressive, and I wondered why, then decided that the marriage was not really intended as a gesture to Sigtryggr. My daughter’s death had offered Edward, or more probably his closest advisers, an unexpected opportunity to give Æthelhelm a subtle warning. Edward, by acknowledging Eadgyth as his child and by making her a queen, was suggesting he might make her twin brother into a king, and that threatened the future of Ælfweard, Æthelhelm’s nephew. Yet Edward had also made sure that Ælfweard alone sat in a place of honor at the Witan, and so had preserved Æthelhelm’s hopes. The West Saxon court, I reflected, was a wasp’s nest, and I had secretly added my own sting to that royal mess.

And so we rode north, going to war.

PART THREE

Fortress of the Eagles

CHAPTER NINE

At Bebbanburg the sea kept up its ceaseless beat and the wind brought the smell of salt with the sea birds’ cries. I had been away too long.

And at Bebbanburg I had to listen to the sympathy folk felt for Stiorra and the anger they harbored against her killers, and all I could do was promise revenge.

Taking revenge was another matter. Sköll, I knew, was somewhere in Cumbraland. That was all I knew. Whether he was on the coast or in the hills, I did not know. Brother Beadwulf, who had stayed in Eoferwic with the squirrel, had told me that Sköll had captured a silver mine in the hills, but when I had pressed him for more he confessed he knew almost nothing. “I heard men speak of him, lord, that’s all. He lived far to the north of Arnborg’s hall, I know that much.”

“And he has a silver mine?”