Count Volsiov had a private audience with the king, and some rumors made it difficult for him to remain silent any longer. In the long shadow of Westminster Abbey, Edgar seemed to be reminiscing about something, and the Count was almost startled when he first began to speak.

"Your Majesty, I have heard some disturbing news lately." Without any temptation, the Count of Northumbria said straight to the center, "Some say that the Emperor has won Rome. ”

"My lord, we have nothing to hide, it's just that what you've heard is an outdated rumor." Edgar had no intention of lying from the beginning, "It is true that Rome has fallen, but the Normans have captured some of the Venetian ships and have returned from Greece; At the same time, I believe that some people in the cardinal have moved Prince Capua, because according to Rome, his army is withdrawing from Calabria. ”

"What about the Germans?" The Count was a little appalled by the King's knowledge, and he had heard only vague rumors from the court, while the King seemed to have witnessed the war in Italy.

"The College of Cardinals seems to be very optimistic, and according to our information, at first the Emperor was very strict and demanded that the Pope surrender to him immediately, but when he refused, he offered to abandon the 'false Pope' Clement in exchange for the Pontifical Coupon's coronation of him."

"Did Rome agree?"

"There are people in the bishopric who want to agree, but the Pontifical See refuses to give in." The king spread his hands, but there was no expression of pity, "The last thing we know is that the army of 35,000 men of Robert, Duke of Apulia, is heading north at full speed, and the emperor has only more than 10,000 people around him. ”

The Count of Northumbria breathed a sigh of relief, he did not want to see another hostile pope in Rome, as Alexander II had done in the past.

After seeing off Vorsiov, Edgar lost interest in looking at the church and began to turn back to the old royal palace, and on the way, Ulf's guard suddenly spoke: "Your Majesty, it seems that you do not want Rome to be victorious?" ”

"If the Holy See had gained the upper hand, I fear that he would make all the princes of Germany tremble, and that the Emperor's yoke might seem more like a shadow than a burden." The king said what he had been hiding from the bottom of his heart, Gregory VII's personality was too arrogant and inflexible, and once the Holy See had the upper hand in the imperial infighting under his leadership, he would definitely continue to push forward reforms, especially to expand the scope of suzerainty, it can be said that many princes in the east joined the emperor's camp because of this concern, if the Pope confirmed their conjectures, all the Saxon nobles except Otto von Nordheim could turn to Henry, And that would mean that all his efforts in that principality were in vain.

After the jousting tournament held for Prince Edmund's name day, the cold gradually set in, and news from the mainland indicated that the emperor had retreated to the diocese of Ravenna, and another rumor that the Pope had been assassinated.

"Figs dyed with poison hemlock juice...... Interesting. Edgar did not expect Henry to be so skilled in the use of poison, and he secretly reminded himself that he would be aware of such plots of his enemies in the future, and on the other hand, this incident also showed how desperate the emperor was now.

But he did need to be more prepared, Rome today is not really capable of self-preservation, at least under Gregory VII, the Holy See can rely on a woman and the Normans, Edgar does not know which is worse, the Tuscan lady has never caused trouble for Rome, and the Normans, God bless their allies!

Therefore, in the next few years and even ten years, Emperor Henry's power will not only not decline, but may reach its peak. Edgar chose to support Rome at a critical moment: he was currently the only monarch in the Western world who openly refused to recognize Clement III, which meant that England would certainly be retaliated against. Fortunately, Edgar was prepared for this, he ruled an island country, and any empire that wanted to conquer it must first control the seas. And at this time on the southwest coast, shipyards in Plymouth were already testing two newly launched warships.

In order to avoid revealing some secrets, the king only brought the Bishop of Canterbury to the naval armory, and after only one glance, he asked the question: "How should the tower ship without oars take part in the naval battle?" ”

Edgar laughed, "Like a dragon, attack with wings and fire." ”

"If Your Majesty is saying that the white sails hanging from those masts are dragon wings, then I have no objection, but where is the flame of this dragon?" The bishop had never imagined such a thing in his life, a fire-breathing sailboat—more like the babbling of a drunkard.

Of course, the bishop was very satisfied with another large ship, this longship could accommodate 100 crew members, unlike the Mediterranean world, the northerners did not need too many slaves to paddle for themselves, such as the Vikings, who were both warriors at sea and excellent oarsmen, of course, if they were against the Venetian fleet, the lack of ramming ability might be an Achilles' heel, but in the North Sea, such a ship was enough to protect the coast of the kingdom.

Edgar also made a little change to the sailboat, he had abandoned the old tiller design, and he didn't plan to add something like a clumsy wrench to this new type of warship, which was difficult to maneuver and limited in length. Edgar introduced a later vertical tiller, a vertical lever mounted on a rotatable pivot that extended from the aft deck to the position of the tiller and then attached to the top of it. After a mechanical modification, Edgar was able to extend the range of angles that could be reached by the rudder to almost 80 degrees, which greatly increased the agility of the large ship.

"It's far from the Royal Navy." Edgar sighed with some self-deprecation that he had envisioned a new propeller-propelled warship, but in his previous life he was only a cavalry officer, not an engineer or a ship designer, let alone solve the power problem, not even the control of the amount of water in and out and the involvement of foreign objects, so the paddle steamer did not need to think about it, let alone the offshore ironclads of the Royal Navy.

In fact, even if he were able to build a steel monster, to allow such a large ship to pass through the river, it would have required the construction of temporary dikes to store water, which the Germans would later call Staustuffen, and a more permanent similar facility called Wehrleucken, which Edgar did not have the manpower to do at this time. Without access to the various estuaries, whether it's the Thames or the Elbe, these ships would be much less valuable today – the Vikings of yesteryear would have been able to sail the Dragonhead directly into the Seine.

"Are we off course?" In the Atlantic, Ansgar, the knight of England, watched the sea with some nervousness, he hadn't seen a single seabird in a few days.

"I don't know, what kind of astrolabe is that guy is still messing with, but the Norwegians say he's a liar." The answer was a Quill of Sussex, named Oswald, who was speaking of a bachelor at King's College, said to be a geographer and naturalist.

"Are they still complaining about that?" Ansgar was a little impatient, the Norwegians preferred to enter the Guadalquivir River and sack Seville, but their king intended to sail south first, and in fact, if some Yar had not stopped him, the young man even planned to go west to look for the "Madeira Islands" on the map of the King of England - no one knew where the name came from.

The Yars were careful to praise the king's adventurous spirit, which did not reveal his true intentions or arouse his enthusiasm, and insisted on staying away from the coastline—the lords of today were no longer the pirate chieftains of yesteryear, who lived in elegant gardens, ran their estates, listened to the poets about the overseas expeditions of the heroes of antiquity, but did not wish to emulate the red-haired Eric and his children.

The final compromise was to continue south, first to the legendary "Lucky Island" (Canary Islands) and then send a fleet north in search of land or islands deep in the Atlantic, such as "Madeira". As for the main forces of the Norwegians and the English, they would receive supplies from the Moorish lands and then enter the Mediterranean Sea to attack the Balearic Islands.

"Are the sores on your legs better?" The knight had seen how miserable the seamen with sores on their legs were, and he did not want Oswald to follow in their footsteps.

"You can still fight." The Sussex man replied, and raised the thick boar spear on his arm as if to indicate that he was not a burden.

They were not only going to Al-Andalus, where the land was rich and the people were weak, but also the Berber lands, which were rich in desert warriors, and who, according to the confession of a Moorish captive, had a military order in the south, whose leader had conquered countless city-states west of Tunisia.