Queen Asa thrust savagely upwards with the broad-bladed knife. Shef felt a thud, a prick of pain over his ribs. Looked down at the boy in his arms. Saw him turn up his face, start to ask some disbelieving question. Saw the knife driven clean through the boy's heart and body. The knife in the hands of his grandmother.
Somewhere, again, Shef heard a lid slam. Slam again and again.
The room had gone completely still and silent. Shef released his grip, slowly straightened the small body out, laid it on the ground.
As he looked down, his eyes seemed for a moment to blur. He seemed to be looking not at the slight shape of a ten-year old, but at a grown man, tall and burly, with a mane of hair and beard.
The moment passed. Shef was once more in the parlor, staring down at a bloodstained shape. Harald was dead now. Shef had felt the life go. Arms were at his shoulders again, hustling him away, and this time he did not resist. Behind him Queen Asa took slow step after slow step towards the body of her grandson, reaching out a tentative, shaking hand. Shef lost sight of her as they ran him through the door into the hall, out through the main door shattered by the catapult-stone, into the open.
Outside the hubbub broke out again, someone shouting, “But she's still got my knife,” other voices snarling at him, Osmod counting, “Seven, eight, nine, all right, that's the lot, get moving.” Cwicca appeared from somewhere with a firebrand and the barrel of dry kindling the slaves used, hurled first one and then the other into the cart, watched the flame spread as he slashed the horse free of its traces.
“They won't get our mule,” he shouted.
“What are you doing with those women?” Osmod shouted as Karli came into the light, a woman in each hand and two more running anxiously behind him.
“They've got to come with us.”
“It's only a six-oar boat, there's no room.”
“They have to come. Especially now the boy's dead. Their throats will be cut at his burial.”
Osmod, ex-slave himself, argued no more. “All right, move it.”
In an untidy stream nine men and four women ran down the path leading to the little beach where Martha had killed Stein only the evening before, Cwicca and Osmod bringing up the rear, crossbows raised. Half way down it, Shef heard a great shriek split the air behind him. Ragnhild returned from her walk along the shore. Behind it, men's voices shouting. The guardsmen they had left behind, rallied and anxious to avenge their defeats.
The run turned into a headlong dash, each person making for the beach and the boat they could see waiting, Udd and Hund with oars poised ready to shove off. Men and women poured over the thwarts, seized oars or were pushed out of the way. The overloaded boat jammed on the shingle, Shef and Karli leaped out again and heaved it bodily out six feet, ten, till the beach shelved away and they were dragged in over the sides, only inches above the water. Six men found their places, braced their feet, took one pull, another, as Osmod hoarsely called the time.
Framed by the light from the now fiercely-burning cart, Shef saw the figure of Queen Ragnhild walking down the beach, her arms stretched out. Arrows from the men behind her skipped over the water, but Shef ignored them, waved down the crossbows poised to answer.
“Luckstealer!” she cried. “Bane of my son. May you be the bane of all those around you. May you never know woman again. May no son succeed you.”
“It wasn't his fault,” muttered Wilfi from the bow, rubbing his head where the iron stake had split it. “It was that daft old woman who took my knife.”
“Shut up about your knife,” growled Fritha, “you should have held on to it.”
As the bickering continued, the boat pulled steadily away into the black dark, waiting for concealment before bending round away from Halvdan's cruisers to the mainland no more than a short mile off.
Shef stared over the stern till he could see no longer, at the woman still raving and weeping by the shore.
Chapter Fifteen
Alfred, King of the West-Saxons, co-ruler with the absent King Shef of all the English counties south of the Trent, watched his young bride with slight nervousness as she walked the last few steps to the top of the hill overlooking Winchester. There was some chance—the leeches could not yet be sure—that she might be carrying his child already, and he feared she might overtax her strength. He knew though that she hated protection, held his tongue.
She reached the top, turned and looked out over the valley. It was already a mass of white blossom, where the Hampshire churls had planted the apple trees for their beloved cider. On the broad fields the other side of the stockaded town teams could be seen plowing, men following the slow oxen up and down the furrows; very long furrows because it took the eight-beast teams so long to make a turn. Alfred followed her gaze, pointed to a spot in the middle distance.
“Look,” he said, “there is a team plowing with four horses, not eight oxen. It is on your own estate. Wonred the reeve saw the horse-collars the men of the Way used for their catapult-teams, and said he would try it for plowing. He says horses eat more than oxen, but if they are hitched properly they are stronger and faster and do much more work. He says he is going to start breeding horses for size and strength as well. And there is an advantage no-one thought of. It takes a good part of a churl's day to get out to the further fields and back if he is leading a yoke of oxen. With the horses they ride but and back, so they have more time in the fields.”
“Or more time to rest, I hope,” said Godive. “One reason poor churls live so little time is that they have no rest but Sunday, and the Church takes that.”
“Used to take that,” corrected Alfred. “Now it is up to the churl.”
He hesitated a moment, patted her shoulder gently. “It is working, you know,” he said. “I don't think any of us ever realized how rich a country can be if it is left at peace, with no masters. Or only a master who cares for the country. But the good news comes in every day. What King Shef, your brother, told me is perfectly correct. There is always someone who knows an answer, but nearly always it is someone whom no-one has ever asked before. I had a group of miners visit me yesterday, men from the lead mines in the hills. They used to be owned by the monks at Winchcombe. Now the monks have gone, they work the mines themselves, for my reeve and the alderman of Gloucester. They told me that the old Rome-folk used to mine silver in the same hills, and that they think they could do the same.
“Silver,” he mused. “If the black monks had known that, they would have whipped their slaves till they died in search of it. So the slaves did not tell them. They tell me because they know I will give them a share. And with new silver—it is not long ago that every time we minted the money was worse, and soon Canterbury money would have been as bad as York. Now, with the silver I put back from the Church hoards, a Wessex penny is as good as any in Frankland or the German lands beyond. And the traders come in from everywhere, from Dorestad and Compostella, and the Franklands too if they can evade their own king's ban. They all pay harbor-dues, and I use it to pay my miners. The traders are happy, and the miners are happy, and I am happy too.
“So, Godive, you see that things are not as bad as they were, even for the churls. It may not seem much, but a horse to ride and a full belly even in Lent is happiness to many.”
A bell began to chime from the Old Minster in the town below, its strokes ringing out over the steep valley. Ringing for a bridal, probably: the priests who remained in Wessex had found that if they were to keep any worshipers for the White Christ they had to use their assets of music and ritual, more impressive still than the strange tales of the Way-missionaries from the North.
“It still rests on war, though,” she replied.
Alfred nodded. “It always did. I saw this valley a desolation of burnt fields when I was a boy. The Vikings took the town and burnt every house in it except the stone Minster. They would have pulled that down if they had had time. We fought them then and we fight them still. The difference is that now we fight them at sea, so the land
