Alaina stared at me with wide eyes. She looked scared. She saw an older man with a scarred, hard face, a battered mail coat, a gold chain, and a brace of swords at his waist. I smiled at her and she looked away, burying her face in Benedetta’s clothes. ‘Maybe,’ Benedetta said, ‘the two boys are caught?’
‘They’re cunning,’ I said, ‘they won’t be caught.’
‘Gunnald would like to have them as slaves. Especially the young one. He can sell small boys almost as easily as little girls.’ She leaned down and kissed Alaina’s forehead. ‘And this poor one? She would fetch a good price.’
‘The boys will come back,’ I said, touching the hammer and so earning an Italian scowl.
‘You think?’
‘I think,’ I touched the hammer again.
‘And what will you do with them?’
‘Do?’
‘What will you do with them!’ she repeated the question aggressively as if to suggest I had wilfully misunderstood it the first time. ‘You take them with you?’
‘If they want to come.’
‘All of them?’
I shrugged. I had not really thought about the children’s future. ‘I suppose so. If they want to come.’
‘Then what do they do if they come?’
‘There’s always a need for servants at Bebbanburg,’ I said. ‘The girls will work in the kitchen, the hall or the dairy. The boys in the stables or armoury.’
‘As slaves?’
I shook my head. ‘They will be paid. The girls will grow and be married, the boys become warriors. If they don’t like it they can leave. So no, they won’t be slaves.’
‘You will not teach them?’
‘Sword-skill, yes.’
‘To read!’
I hesitated. ‘It’s not a very useful skill for most folk. Can you read?’
‘A little, not much. I would like to.’
‘Then maybe you can teach them what little you know.’
‘Then Alaina can read her prayers,’ Benedetta said.
‘I can pray!’ Alaina said.
‘You speak Ænglisc!’ I said, surprised.
‘Of course she does!’ Benedetta said scornfully. ‘Her father is Saxon. We will find her father and her mother? Yes?’
‘If we can.’
Though what we could do, or rather what I hoped we could do, had to wait for Aldwyn and the Ræt to return, which they did in the late afternoon, slithering down the rubbled slope and grinning proudly. I took them into the cellar where Finan and the rest of my men could hear what they had to say.
‘There are not many guards on the wharves,’ Aldwyn said. ‘They walk up and down in three groups. Six men in each.’
‘With spears and shields,’ the Ræt added.
‘The bird on most shields,’ Aldwyn said, ‘and some with just a cross.’
‘Not many men for that length of wharves,’ Finan said.
‘The slaver’s house is near the bridge,’ Aldwyn said. ‘He has a wharf there, but we couldn’t get there.’
‘Which side?’ I asked.
‘Towards the sea, lord,’ Aldwyn said.
‘We couldn’t reach the wharf,’ the Ræt explained, ‘because there’s a wooden fence.’
‘But there was a gap in the wood,’ Aldwyn said, ‘and a ship there.’
‘We looked through!’ the Ræt, who I guessed was seven or eight years old, said proudly.
‘How big?’ I asked.
‘A big gap!’ the Ræt said, and held his grubby hands maybe two finger-widths apart.
‘The ship,’ I said patiently.
‘The ship? Oh, big, lord,’ Aldwyn said, ‘long!’
‘And just one ship?’
‘Just one.’
‘And the entrance from the street?’ I asked.
‘A big gate, lord. Big! And men with spears inside.’
‘You looked through the gate?’
‘We waited till they opened it, lord, and men came out. We could see the guards inside.’
‘Big guards,’ the Ræt said open-eyed, ‘three of them.’
‘Three guards are nothing, lord,’ Beornoth put in.
‘But the noise we make breaking down a big gate will bring the East Anglians,’ I said. ‘It’s close to the bridge and the bastards are thick there.’
‘There must be other ships to steal,’ Finan suggested.
‘We saw no oars on the other ships, lord,’ Aldwyn said.
‘They usually lie between the rowers’ benches,’ I said.
Aldwyn nodded. ‘That’s where you told us to look and we saw none.’ Which meant, I thought, that the East Anglians had confiscated the oars to stop men escaping. ‘Except in the slave ship,’ Aldwyn added.
‘She had oars?’
‘I think so, lord.’ He sounded uncertain.
‘Like thin logs, lord,’ the Ræt said. ‘I saw them!’
‘We need oars,’ I said, and wondered how my few men were to row a big ship downriver. ‘There was a sail?’
‘Bundled on the stick, lord, like you said.’ Aldwyn meant the yard. But unless the gods were kind and sent us a westerly wind we would have a hard time taking a stolen ship downriver under sail. We needed oars, and I was relying on the report of an eager boy who was not entirely sure of what he had seen.
‘We can’t stay here,’ I said. No one spoke. The East Anglians, I thought, could not close down the city for ever. Merchant ships would arrive and others would want to leave, and Æthelhelm would want the riches that customs dues could bring him. That meant there would be more shipping and perhaps, if we waited, a chance would come to seize one of those vessels. Yet I kept going back to the thought of Gunnald the slave-trader. Was that because of the promise I had made to Benedetta? I looked at her long solemn face and just then she looked back to me and our eyes held each other. Her expression did not change and she said nothing. ‘We don’t have a choice,’ I said, ‘we go tonight.’
‘Lord Varin has forbidden people to walk the streets at night,’ Father Oda pointed out.
‘We go tonight,’ I insisted, ‘just before dawn.’
‘Sharpen your swords, lads,’ Finan said softly.
I had said we had no choice, but of course we did. A lifetime of war had taught me that fighting a battle without forethought was usually to invite defeat. Some battles start by accident, but most are planned. It can still go horribly wrong, even the best plans can be ripped apart by the enemy’s plan, but a good leader does his best to scout the enemy, to learn all he can about that enemy, and all I had
