‘Or maybe a forage party,’ Finan said dourly.
‘They don’t seem interested in us,’ I said as we rowed on northwards.
‘You hope,’ Finan said. Then the horsemen disappeared behind an orchard. The sun might have been low, but it was summer and a long evening lay ahead.
Which could yet bring us death.
Nine
It should have been a pleasant evening. The day was warm, but not too hot, the sun slanted across a green land, and we rowed slowly, almost gently. The oarsmen were near the end of their strength, but I did not demand more effort. We were travelling at a walking pace, content that no one pursued us. True, we had seen a small group of Æthelhelm’s men at the village by the Ligan’s ford, but it seemed they had taken no interest in us, and no horsemen appeared in the fields to our left and so we went slowly northwards between willows and alders, past meadows where cattle grazed, and by small steadings marked by smoke that rose into the windless air. We kept rowing as the shadows lengthened into the long summer evening. Hardly anyone spoke, even the children were quiet. The loudest noises were the creaking of the oars and the splashes of the blades that left ripples which the current swirled downstream. I relieved Irenmund on the steering-oar and he took the oar of a youngster who looked on the point of collapse. Finan squatted beside me on the steering platform, and Benedetta perched on the rail with one hand on the sternpost. ‘This is Mercia?’ she asked me.
‘The river is the frontier,’ I explained. ‘Which means that is East Anglia,’ I pointed to the right bank, ‘and that,’ I pointed into the setting sun, ‘is Mercia.’
‘But if it is Mercia,’ she went on, ‘then we surely find friends?’
Or we would find enemies, I thought, but I said nothing. We were rowing up a long straight river stretch and I could see no sign of any pursuit. I was certain Waormund’s ship would not have been able to pass the ford, at least not until the tide rose, and his men, tired from rowing and burdened by mail and weapons, could never catch us on foot. My fear was that Waormund would find horses and then he would be on to us like a stoat slaughtering leverets, but as the sun blazed its last in the west we saw no sign of any horsemen.
We passed by two more villages. The first was on the western bank and was surrounded by the rotting remnants of a palisade and by a ditch that was half filled in. That fallen palisade was a reminder of how peaceful this part of Britain had become. It had been a wild frontier once, the border between the Saxons of Mercia and the Danes of East Anglia. King Alfred had signed a treaty with those Danes, ceding them all the land to the east, but his son had conquered East Anglia, and the river was peaceful again. Now Edward’s will, that divided his kingdom between Æthelstan and Ælfweard, might mean that the palisade would need to be repaired and the ditch deepened. The second village was on the eastern bank and had a wharf fronting the river where four barges, each about the size of Brimwisa, were tied. None of the barges had a mast stepped, but all were equipped with stout tholes for oars and one had her deck heaped with sawn timbers. Beyond the wharf were felled trunks that two men were splitting with wedges and mauls. ‘Timber for Lundene,’ I said to Finan.
‘Lundene?’
‘The ships don’t have their masts stepped,’ I said, ‘so they can get under the bridge.’ The Saxon city beyond Lundene’s Roman walls was where the hunger for timber, for new houses, for new wharves, and for firewood, was unending.
The two men splitting the trunks paused to watch us pass. ‘There’s a ford up there,’ one shouted, pointing north. He spoke in Danish. ‘Careful now!’
‘What’s this place called?’ I called back in the same language.
He shrugged. ‘A timber yard!’
Finan chuckled, I scowled, then looked behind, but still saw no pursuing horsemen. At best, I thought, Waormund would return to Lundene and set out in the morning with sufficient men to slaughter us. He would search the river till he found Brimwisa and, if she was deserted, scour the nearby countryside. For a moment I even thought of turning the ship and rowing downstream, hoping to reach the Temes and then the open sea, but it would be a night-time journey against the tide with an exhausted crew in a shoaling river, and if Waormund had a shred of sense he would leave his ship with sufficient men to block the Ligan and so trap us.
We crossed the ford north of the timber yard without scraping the shingle, though some of the oars faltered as they struck the river bed. ‘We must stop soon,’ Benedetta insisted, ‘look at the men!’
‘We keep going while there’s light,’ I said.
‘But they are tired!’ she said. I was tired too, tired of trying to escape a predicament all of my own making and anxious because of the horsemen we had seen. I wanted to stop and I feared to stop. The river was wide here, wide and shallow, and Benedetta was right, the oarsmen were near the end of their strength and we were barely making progress against the sluggish current. The sun was low now, touching the crests of distant hills, but outlined against that burning sun I could just see a high thatched roof above a stand of elms. A hall, I thought, and a chance to rest. I pulled the steering-oar towards me and ran Brimwisa aground, her bows just nudging the bank.
Finan glanced at me. ‘Stopping?’
‘It’ll be dark soon. I want a place to
