“Truly!” Æthelstan now told me. “We didn’t need relief, I asked for none.”

For a moment I just stared at him. I loved Æthelstan like a son. For years I had protected him, fought for him, taught him the ways of the warrior, and when I had heard from Brother Osric that Æthelstan was under siege and hard-pressed, I had ridden to rescue him. It did not matter that saving Æthelstan was against the interests of Northumbria, I had sworn an oath to protect him, and here I was, in the Roman great hall where he had just told me that he had never sought my help. “You didn’t send Father Swithred?” I asked. A log cracked in the fire and spat a bright spark onto the rushes. I ground the spark beneath my foot.

“Of course not! He’s here.” Æthelstan gestured across the hall to where the tall, stern-faced priest watched me suspiciously. “I have asked Archbishop Athelm to appoint him Bishop of Ceaster.”

“And you didn’t send him out of the city?”

“Of course not! I had no need.”

I looked at Finan, who shrugged. The wind had picked up, driving the smoke back into the great hall, which had been a part of the Roman commandant’s house. The roof was made of sturdy timbers covered with tiles, many of which remained, though at some time a Saxon had hacked a hole in the tiles to let the smoke out. Now the freshening wind gusted the smoke back, swirling it around the blackened rafters. Snowflakes came through the roof-hole, a few even lasting long enough to die on the table where we ate. “So you never sought my help?” I asked Æthelstan yet again.

“How often do I have to tell you?” he asked, pushing the jug of wine toward me. “And besides, if I’d needed help, why send for you when my father’s forces are closer? You wouldn’t have helped me anyway!”

I growled at that. “Why would I not help you? I swore an oath to protect you.”

“But trouble in Mercia,” he said, “is good for Northumbria, yes?”

I nodded grudgingly. “It is.”

“Because if we Mercians fight each other,” Æthelstan went on, “we can’t be fighting you.”

“Do you want to fight us, lord Prince?” Finan asked.

Æthelstan smiled. “Of course I do. Northumbria is ruled by a pagan, by a Norseman—”

“By my son-in-law,” I interrupted him harshly.

“—and it is the fate of the Saxons,” Æthelstan ignored my words, “to be one people, under one king and one God.”

“Your god,” I snarled.

“There is no other,” he said gently.

Everything he said made sense, except for his nonsense about one god, and that good sense meant I had been lured across Britain for no good purpose. “I should have left you here to rot,” I growled.

“But you didn’t.”

“Your grandfather always said I was a fool.”

“My grandfather was right about so many things,” Æthelstan said with a smile. His grandfather was King Alfred.