He looked shocked. Perhaps he was not fully awake and thought he had misheard. “You!”

“Me.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“I just think the best-looking man in the kingdom should be king.”

He understood I was joking then, but he was in no mood for laughter. He just grunted and urged his horse on. He led sixty of his warriors, while I led all of mine who were not already guarding the arena where Father Bledod was waiting for us. I had told the Welsh priest to join us. “How else will we know who Gruffudd’s boy is?” I had explained. Away to our left, many of Cynlæf’s defeated men were already walking eastward with their wives and children. I had sent Finan with twenty men to spread the news that they should leave or else face my warriors, and Finan’s small force had met no opposition. The rebellion, at least in this part of Mercia, had collapsed without a fight.

“Father Swithred,” Æthelstan said as he watched the beaten men walk away, “thought we should kill one man in ten. He said it was the Roman way.”

“Why don’t you?”

“You think I should?” he asked.

“No,” I said firmly, “I think you should let them go. Most of them aren’t warriors. They’re the folk who tend the fields, raise the cattle, dig ditches, and plant the orchards. They’re carpenters and fullers, leather-workers and plowmen. They came here because they were ordered to come, but once home they’ll go back to work. Your father needs them. Mercia is no use to him if it’s hungry and poor.”

“It’s little use to him if it’s rebellious.”

“You’ve won,” I said, “and most of those men wouldn’t know a rebellion from a wet fart. They were led here. So let them go home.”

“My father might disagree.”

I scoffed at that statement. “So why didn’t your father send a relief force?”

“He’s ill,” Æthelstan said, and made the sign of the cross.

I let Tintreg walk around an unburied corpse, one of Cynlæf’s house-warriors we had killed the previous day. Snow had settled on the body to make a soft shroud. “What’s wrong with the king?” I asked.

“Tribulations,” Æthelstan said curtly.

“And how do you cure that?”

He rode in silence for a few paces. “No one knows what ails him,” he finally said, “he’s grown fat, and short of breath. But he has days when he seems to recover, thank God. He can still ride, he likes to hunt, he can still rule.”

“The problem,” I said, “sounds like an old sword in a new scabbard.”

“What does that mean?”

“It sounds as if his new bride is wearing him out.”

Æthelstan bridled at that, but did not argue. Instead he looked up at the sky that had cleared overnight. A bright sun glinted from the snow. It would melt quickly, I thought, as quickly as the siege had ended. “I suppose he’s waiting for the weather to improve,” Æthelstan went on, “which means he might be coming soon. And he won’t be happy that the rebels are leaving unpunished.”