And just then, as the day’s last light drained in the west, I saw that men were coming from the city. The eastern gate had been opened, and a dozen horsemen now threaded their way through the narrow gap between the city’s ditch and the abandoned barricade. “Get those barriers built!” I commanded my men, then turned a tired Tintreg and spurred him to meet the men we had rescued.

We met them beside the city’s deep ditch. I waited there and watched as the horsemen approached. They were led by a tall young man, clad in mail and with a fine helmet decorated with gold that glinted red from the distant fires. The cheek-pieces of his helmet were open to reveal that he had grown a beard since I had last seen him, and the beard, black and clipped short, made him look older. He was, I knew, twenty-five or twenty-six, I could not remember just when he had been born, but now he was a man in his prime, handsome and confident. He was also a fervent Christian, despite all my efforts to persuade him otherwise, and a big gold cross hung at his chest, swinging against the shining links of mail. There was more gold on his scabbard’s throat and on his horse’s bridle, and ringing the brooch that held his dark cloak in place, while a thin circlet of gold ringed his helmet. He reined in close enough to reach out and pat Tintreg’s neck, and I saw he wore two gold rings over the fine black leather of his gloves. He smiled. “You are the very last person I expected, lord,” he said.

And I swore at him. It was a good oath, brief and brutal.

“Is that the proper way,” he asked mildly, “to greet a prince?”

“I owe Finan two shillings,” I explained.

Because it had just begun to snow.

It is one of the privileges of age to be in a hall, warmed by a fire, while in the night the snow falls and the sentries shiver as they watch for enemies trying to escape from a trap they have made for themselves. Except now I was not sure who was trapped, or by whom.

“I never sent Father Swithred to fetch help,” Æthelstan said. “Your monk lied. And Father Swithred is in good health, God be thanked.”

Prince Æthelstan was King Edward’s eldest son. He had been born to a pretty Centish girl, the daughter of a bishop, and the poor girl had died whelping him and his twin sister, Eadgyth. After the pretty girl’s death Edward had married a West Saxon girl, and had fathered another son, which made Æthelstan an inconvenience. He was the king’s eldest son, the ætheling, but he had a younger half-brother whose vengeful mother wanted Æthelstan dead because he stood between her son and the throne of Wessex, and so she and her supporters spread the rumor that Æthelstan was a bastard because Edward had never married the pretty Centish girl. He had indeed married her, but in secret because his father had not given permission, and over the years the rumor was embellished so that now Æthelstan’s mother was said to be the daughter of a shepherd, a low-born whore, and no prince would ever marry such a girl, and the rumor was believed because truth is ever feeble against passionate falsehood.