Then we walked towards Werlameceaster. Rædwalh had given me directions to follow a wagon track until we reached the great road, then to keep on westwards. ‘The great road?’ I had interrupted him.
‘You must know it, lord!’ he said, sounding astonished at the possibility that I did not. ‘The road from Lundene to the north!’
I did indeed know that road. It had been made by the Romans and it led from Lundene to Eoferwic and beyond that to Bebbanburg. I had ridden that road more times than I could remember. ‘Is it close?’ I asked.
‘Close?’ Rædwalh had laughed. ‘You could spit on it from the other side of these woods. You only need reach the road,’ he had continued, ‘then walk two or three miles north and you’ll come to a crossroads—’
‘I don’t want to spend any time on the road,’ I had interrupted him.
‘Not if you want to stay hidden,’ he had noted shrewdly. My curious group of warriors, freed slaves, women, and children would be noticeable, and travellers would talk. If our pursuers came from Lundene then they would use the old Roman road and would question everyone they met, so the fewer people who saw us the better.
‘So I cross the road?’
‘You cross the road and keep going westwards! You’ll find plenty of woodland to hide in, and if you go a small way north you’ll find a good track that leads all the way to Werlameceaster.’
‘Is it busy?’
‘Maybe a few drovers, lord, maybe some pilgrims.’
‘Pilgrims?’
‘Saint Alban is buried in Werlameceaster, lord.’ Rædwalh had made the sign of the cross. ‘He was executed there, lord, and his killer’s eyes popped out, and quite right too.’
I had given Rædwalh another gold coin and then we had left. The sky was almost cloudless and as the sun rose so did the warmth. We went slowly and cautiously, pausing among trees to wait for the Roman road to be empty before we crossed, then following hedgerows and ditches that led us westwards. Alaina insisted on carrying the spear which she had used to kill the man trying to pierce my throat. The weapon was far too big for her, but she dragged the hilt along the ground with a stubborn look on her face. ‘You’ll never take it off her now,’ Benedetta said with a smile.
‘I’ll put her in the next shield wall,’ I said.
We walked on in silence, dropping into a shallow valley filled with trees. We followed a forester’s track that led through thick stands of oak, ash, and coppiced beech. A black scar showed where a charcoal maker had burned his fierce fire. We saw no one and heard nothing except our own footfalls, the song of birds, and the clatter of wings through leaves. The woodland ended at a dry ditch beyond which a field of barley climbed to a low crest. Barley. I touched my hammer and told myself I was being a fool. We had passed two other such fields and I had told myself I could not spend the rest of my life avoiding barley fields. Finan must have known what I was thinking. ‘It was only a dream,’ he said.
‘Dreams are messages,’ I said uncertainly.
‘I dreamed you fought me over ownership of a cow once,’ he said, ‘what sort of message was that?’
‘Who won?’
‘I think I woke up before we found out.’
‘What dream?’ Benedetta asked.
‘Ah, just nonsense,’ Finan said.
We were following a blackthorn hedge that marked the field’s northern boundary, a hedge dense with bindweed and bright with cornflowers, with poppies and pink bramble blossom. North of the hedge lay a field that had been cut for hay. The stubble dropped gently to the road that led to Werlameceaster. We saw no travellers. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to walk on the road?’ Benedetta asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but that’s where the enemy will look for us.’
She thought about that as we climbed the last few paces to the low crest. ‘But they are behind us, yes?’
‘They’re behind us,’ I said confidently, then turned and pointed east to where the road came from the woods. ‘We’ll see them come from there.’
‘You’re sure now?’ Finan asked.
‘I’m sure,’ I said, and then suddenly I was not sure at all. I still stared at where the road came from the stunted beeches, but I was thinking of Waormund. What would he do? I despised the man, knew him to be cruel and brutal, but had that opinion made me think him stupid? Waormund knew we had escaped up the River Ligan, and he knew too that we could not have gone too far upriver on the low tide before our ship grounded. But when we had abandoned the Brimwisa I had not known how close we were to Werlameceaster. I had left the ship on the eastern bank, hoping to mislead Waormund, but now I doubted that he had even bothered to search upriver for us. It did not need a clever man to work out where we would be going. Waormund knew we needed allies and he knew too that I could not expect to find any in East Anglia, but westwards, scarcely a morning’s walk from the river, lay an army of Æthelstan’s men. Why would Waormund bother to follow us when he could lay in wait for us? I had been searching the eastern and southern ground for any sight of a scout, looking for the glint of sunlight glancing off a helmet or spear-point, but I should have been staring westwards. ‘I’m a fool,’ I said.
‘And is that supposed to surprise us?’ Finan asked.
‘He’s ahead of us,’ I said. I did not know why I sounded so certain, but the instinct of too many years, of too many battles, and of too much danger was convincing me. Or perhaps it was simply that of all the possibilities the one that scared
