‘We were driven ashore in Frisia.’
‘We?’
‘I was a crewman on a trading ship. Three of us, the master and two seamen. We managed to get ashore and were captured.’
‘And were sold?’
‘We were sold,’ he said bitterly.
‘You were a good seaman?’
‘I am a good seaman,’ he said defiantly.
‘Then catch,’ I said, and tossed the sword hilt first to him. He caught it and looked at me in bemusement. ‘That’s my pledge that I’ll free you,’ I said, ‘but first you have to get me home. Finan!’
‘Lord?’
‘Release them all!’
‘Are you sure, lord?’
I looked back to the slaves and raised my voice. ‘If you stay here in Lundene you will remain slaves. If you come with me you’ll be free men, and I swear I will do my best to send you home.’ There was the sound of iron links rattling on the deck and clanking through the fetters as the long chains were pulled back.
‘We’ll need a smith to knock those manacles from their ankles,’ Finan said. ‘Remember ours? We had sores for weeks afterwards.’
‘I never forget,’ I said grimly, then raised my voice. ‘Irenmund! Are you released?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, lord!’ Finan corrected him.
‘Come here,’ I called.
Irenmund came to the steering platform, the heavy metal rings attached to his ankle fetters clinking as he walked. ‘Lord?’ He said the word uncertainly.
‘I am a jarl,’ I told him, ‘and I want you to tell me about this ship.’
He sneered. ‘She’s stern heavy, lord, and she yaws like a bullock.’
‘They didn’t move the ballast?’
He spat over the side. ‘Lyfing Gunnaldson knows nothing about ships and I wasn’t going to tell him.’
‘Does the ship have a name?’
‘Brimwisa,’ he said with another sneer. The name meant ‘sea monarch’, and, whatever else she was, this ship was no ruler of the waves. ‘One more thing, lord,’ Irenmund said hesitantly.
‘What?’
He hefted the short-sword. ‘Five minutes ashore?’
I looked into his eyes, blue eyes in a face hurt by cruelty, and I was about to deny him, but then remembered my own feelings when I had been released from the shackles. ‘How many of them?’
‘Just the one, lord.’
I nodded. ‘Just the one. Gerbruht! Oswi! Vidarr! Go with this man. Let him do what he wants, but make sure he does it quickly.’
I moved the children into the bows to help balance the ship and, when Irenmund returned, still holding the sword, though now it was red with blood, we cast off the mooring lines and the tired oarsmen backed the ship gently into the river’s current. The stern was immediately swung downstream so that we were pointing westwards instead of downriver, but a few strokes of the steerboard oars turned the hull until our cross-decorated prow pointed towards the distant sea. ‘Slowly now!’ I called. ‘Take her gently! We’re in no hurry!’
Nor was I in a hurry. It was better to leave slowly, raising no suspicion that we had cause to flee the city. The wind was no help to us so we rowed only enough to keep our headway, carried more by the ebbing tide and the river’s current than by the sweep of oars. Finan came to stand by me. ‘I’ve been in some mad places with you,’ he said.
‘Is this mad?’
‘A ship of slaves? In a city of enemies? Yes, I’d say it was mad.’ He grinned. ‘So what do we do?’
‘We get out of the estuary, we turn north, and we pray for a good wind. We should make Bebbanburg in three days, maybe four.’ I paused, watching swans on the sun-touched water. ‘But it means I’ve failed.’
‘Failed? You’re getting us home!’
‘I came to kill Æthelhelm and his rotten nephew.’
‘You’ll kill them yet,’ Finan said.
The sun was warm. Most of the oarsmen were young, stripped to the waist, sunburned and sinewy. Word of Irenmund’s revenge had spread through the benches and the rowers were grinning even though they were tired. I had assumed Irenmund had wanted to kill Lyfing Gunnaldson, but instead it had been the burly black-ringleted man whose screams had reached the wharf. ‘He made a mess of him, lord,’ Vidarr had told me with indecent relish, ‘but he was quick.’ Now Irenmund was back on his bench, hauling the oar, but slowly. The current would carry us till the tide turned, then the hard work would begin unless the gods sent a friendly wind.
Father Oda had been talking to the oarsmen and now joined us. ‘Mostly Saxons,’ he said, ‘but three Danes, two Frisians, a Scot, and two of your countrymen, Finan. And all of them,’ he added pointedly, looking at me, ‘Christians.’
‘You can pray with them father,’ I said cheerfully.
We were passing the wharves on the northern bank. Shipping was thick there, though to my relief there were few warriors visible on the wharves. The day seemed lazy and quiet, even the river’s traffic was scanty. Nothing was coming upriver against the tide, but we passed a handful of smaller boats that ferried goods to the southern bank. The air smelled cleaner out in the river’s centre, though the Lundene stench of smoke and shit was still there, but by tonight, I thought, we would be in the open sea beneath the stars. I was going home and my only regret was that my oath was unfulfilled, but I consoled myself that I had done my best. Æthelhelm still lived and his vile nephew was now called King of Wessex, but I was taking my people home.
We passed the Dead Dane and came in sight of my old home, the Roman house on its stone wharf at the river’s edge. Gisella had died there and I touched the hammer at my neck. In my heart I believed she was waiting for me somewhere in the realms of the gods. ‘Three days, you think?’ Finan interrupted my thoughts.
‘To get home? Yes. Maybe four.’
‘We’ll need food.’
‘We’ll call into a harbour in East Anglia. Take
