down on the soiled fabric of the captain’s tunic.
Osric’s dark face appeared over the captain’s shoulder. No one had paid him any attention until now. He must have scuttled across from wherever he had spent the night. Now he was clamped like a deadly spider on the captain’s broad back.
The sailor sent to fetch the codline took a half-step towards the pinioned captain as if to go to his help. His movement produced a scream of pain, and a gurgled command for the sailor to stay back. The flow of blood onto the captain’s collar increased a fraction.
I had no idea where Osric had obtained his weapon. It must have been a tiny dagger or a sharpened spike. Perhaps he always carried it on his person. The sailors had not bothered to search a crippled slave. Certainly they hadn’t expected him to spring to the defence of his master.
‘Knife,’ Osric said to me. Shakily I reached out and took the captain’s knife from his belt.
The captain gave another squeal of anguish as Osric dug the point of his weapon a little deeper.
The crew of the cog gathered in a threatening group, barely a couple of yards away. They had recovered from the shock of seeing their captain taken prisoner and were watching us closely, calculating how to rescue him. I counted five men and one further sailor at the wooden bar that steered the ship. One of the men closest to us made a furtive gesture. He was signalling something to the steersman, who in turn jerked the wooden bar abruptly. The big sail above my head flapped thunderously and the slope of the deck beneath my feet suddenly altered. I clutched for support. But whatever it was that the sailors had planned, Osric knew what they were doing. He kept his fierce grip on the captain and shouted some sort of command. He emphasized the order by twisting the point of the blade in the captain’s neck. His victim let out another yelp of pain, and his back arched in anguish. The steersman hurriedly pushed the wooden bar back to its previous position, and the angle of the deck returned to what it had been before.
‘Pull in the little boat,’ said Osric to me. He nodded towards the back of the ship. I looked in that direction and saw that the cog was towing a small open boat behind her. I had been too seasick to notice such matters before.
Unsteadily I made my way to the rope tied to the boat and began to haul it in. It was surprisingly difficult, but the effort made me feel a lot better. When the boat was close under the side of the cog I fastened the rope tight and stood waiting.
‘Move!’ ordered Osric, jabbing again with his blade. He obliged the captain to sidle sideways around the edge of the ship until the two of them had joined me.
‘Cut that big rope!’ Osric said to me, nodding towards a rope as thick as my wrist tied at the base of the mast. I had seen the sailors use it to haul up the sail at the start of our voyage.
I still had the captain’s large knife in my hand. The cog’s crew had murder in their eyes as they watched me begin to saw through the heavy rope. It took several minutes. When the last strands gave way, I had the good sense to jump backwards. The big sail came slicing downward and collapsed in a great heap on the deck.
I ran back to rejoin Osric and the captain.
‘Now take away the helm,’ Osric told me. I had no idea what he was talking about until I followed his glance and realized he meant the big wooden handle controlling the ship’s direction.
I walked across the deck towards the steersman and when he hesitated to step aside I raised the blade of the captain’s knife menacingly; I was beginning to enjoy myself. He retreated, and I found I was able to pull the wooden bar free. Osric did not need to tell me what to do next. I threw it overboard.
In a couple of strides I was back with Osric and the captain, whose tunic front was now stained with blood. The cog was no longer moving through the water but was wallowing awkwardly, heaving up and down, turning this way and that, pushed by the wind.
‘You first,’ said Osric to me. I scooped up my satchel and Osric’s pack and dropped them into the little boat. I swung myself over the side of the ship, hung for a moment, then let go. I landed awkwardly in the little boat, falling in an ungainly heap. I recovered myself as Osric joined me, dropping nimbly down from the cog. Without a word he took the captain’s knife from my hand and slashed through the rope that fastened us to the larger vessel. Instantly the gap between us widened as the wind blew our boat away.
I looked to Osric for guidance. He was busily untying a pair of oars that had been lashed in the boat. Only then did it occur to me how Osric’s broken leg and twisted head had made very little difference to his agility aboard the cog. For a man with his handicap, being on a ship was altogether different from being on land.
Something plunged into the sea nearby, throwing up a little spout of water. I looked up. Someone on the crippled cog had found a bow and arrows, and in his rage was shooting at us. But we made an almost impossible target, and very soon we were out of range. The last I saw of her, the cog was drifting helplessly away into the distance, the small figures of her crew gathered on deck trying to raise sail.
I took the oars from Osric and he showed me how to slide them through two rope loops to hold them in place as I settled on the bench and made ready to row.
‘Which way?’ I asked.
He pointed. I could see only the waves around us. Then the rowing boat rose on the crest of a large wave, and far in the distance I saw a low grey line. It had to be the coast of Frankia.
I turned to my task and took a pull at the water. One oar dug into the sea, the other waved in the air. I nearly fell off my bench. Rowing a boat at sea was not going to be easy.
Osric had found a wooden implement that looked like a grain shovel with a short handle. He began using it to scoop loose water from the bottom of the boat and back into the sea. He paused for a moment and reached inside his shirt. He pulled out a purse that I recognized had belonged to the captain of the cog, and passed it across to me. As I took it, I opened my mouth, about to thank him for saving our lives, when I saw that my words were not needed. Osric was doing something which I had not seen since the day my brother drowned, a death for which he had blamed himself.
Osric was smiling.
Chapter Three
We came ashore on a beach of round, smooth grey stones. Two urchins stood up to their knees in the shallows and watched me clumsily row the last few yards. The boys had been gathering shellfish and cautiously retreated as I climbed out of the little boat. The land swayed slightly as I walked towards the boys with a smile fixed on my face.
‘Can you take us to your homes?’ I asked.
They looked at me blankly. Without a word, they turned and ran, the stones clattering under their bare feet as they disappeared over the dunes at the back of the beach.
Osric and I picked our baggage out of the boat and began to trudge after them. With an afterthought, I stopped.
‘Let me have that pack for a moment,’ I said. He took off the pack and I searched among the garments that I had managed to save from my home: shirts and underclothes; a pair of spare shoes and a rolled-up cloak; an extra tunic and sandals for Osric; an embroidered belt; leggings. There was nothing else. I used the captain’s dagger to trim a strip of cloth off an old shirt and wrapped it around my head, covering one eye. At home everyone had known about the colour of my eyes, but now I was among strangers and it would be best to leave it to others to suppose that the bandage concealed an empty socket.
Osric looked on and said nothing. He closed the pack and swung it on his back, and together we resumed our journey. We crested the slope and, a short distance away, hurrying towards us across an expanse of boggy ground thick with reeds was one of the two lads we had seen on the beach. He was accompanied by a man dressed in the long brown robe of a priest.
They halted in front of us, barring our way. The priest was an old man, so bony and shrunken with age that his threadbare gown hung loose upon him. His face was deeply lined and only a few wisps of grey hair surrounded his tonsure. He regarded us with a mixture of curiosity and mild suspicion. He had lost most of his teeth so he mumbled as he spoke. It hardly mattered. I did not understand what he was saying, only that he was asking a question, and his tone was not hostile.
