Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell Page B

best to keep the peace treaty, so if Sigefrid was to be removed, then it would be the West Saxons who did the work, and I who would be responsible for leading them.
    I had made my plans. I had written to the king and he, in turn, had written to the ealdormen of the shires, and I had been promised four hundred trained warriors along with the fyrd of Berrocscire. The fyrd was an army of farmers, foresters, and laborers, and though it would benumerous it would also be untrained. The four hundred trained men would be the ones I relied on, and spies said Sigefrid now had at least six hundred in the old city. Those same spies said that Haesten had gone back to his camp at Beamfleot, but that was not far from Lundene and he would hurry to reinforce his allies, as would those Danes of East Anglia who hated Guthrum’s Christianity and wanted Sigefrid and Erik to begin their war of conquest. The enemy, I thought, would number at least a thousand, and all of them would be skilled with sword, ax, or spear. They would be war-Danes. Enemies to fear.
    “The king,” Gisela said mildly, “will want to know how you plan to do it.”
    “Then I shall tell him,” I said.
    She gave me a dubious glance. “You will?”
    “Of course,” I said, “he’s the king.”
    She laid the distaff on her lap and frowned at me. “You will tell him the truth?”
    “Of course not,” I said. “He may be the king, but I’m not a fool.”
    She laughed, which made Stiorra echo the laugh. “I wish I could come with you to Lundene,” Gisela said wistfully.
    “You can’t,” I said forcefully.
    “I know,” she answered with uncharacteristic meekness, then touched a hand to her belly. “I really can’t.”
    I stared at her. I stared a long time as her news settled in my mind. I stared, I smiled, and then I laughed. I threw Stiorra high into the air so that her dark hair almost touched the smoke-blackened thatch. “Your mother’s pregnant,” I told the happily squealing child.
    “And it’s all your father’s fault,” Gisela added sternly.
    We were so happy.
     
    Æthelred was my cousin, the son of my mother’s brother. He was a Mercian, though for years now he had been loyal to Alfred of Wessex, and that day in Wintanceaster, in the great church Alfred had built, Æthelred of Mercia received his reward for that loyalty.
    He was given Æthelflaed, Alfred’s eldest daughter and second child.She was golden haired and had eyes the color and brightness of a summer’s sky. Æthelflaed was thirteen or fourteen years old then, the proper age for a girl to marry, and she had grown into a tall young woman with an upright stance and a bold look. She was already as tall as the man who was to be her husband.
    Æthelred is a hero now. I hear tales of him, tales told by firelight in Saxon halls the length of England. Æthelred the Bold, Æthelred the Warrior, Æthelred the Loyal. I smile when I hear the stories, but I do not say anything, not even when men ask if it is true that I once knew Æthelred. Of course I knew Æthelred, and it is true that he was a warrior before sickness slowed and stilled him, and he was also bold, though his shrewdest stroke was to pay poets to be his courtiers so that they would make up songs about his prowess. A man could become rich in Æthelred’s court by stringing words like beads.
    He was never King of Mercia, though he wanted to be. Alfred made sure of that, for Alfred wanted no king in Mercia. He wanted a loyal follower to be the ruler of Mercia, and he made sure that loyal follower was dependent on West Saxon money, and Æthelred was his chosen man. He was given the title Ealdorman of Mercia, and in all but name he was king, though the Danes of northern Mercia never recognized his authority. They did recognize his power, and that power came from being Alfred’s son-in-law, which was why the Saxon thegns of southern Mercia also accepted him. They may not have liked Ealdorman Æthelred, but they knew he could bring