“It’s not my fault, Eadwine! I never told them!”
At the name all doubt vanished instantly. All four men sprinted forward, bellowing to unseen comrades. Eadwine spared Aethelind a single contemptuous glance, and fled.
The hawthorns on the bank slowed him down. Someone grabbed at his arm, wrenching the crown of the sleeve out of the armhole, but the grip slackened with a cry of pain as the hawthorn branches whipped back into his assailant’s face. Someone else grabbed at him from the other side. Eadwine lurched towards the man, throwing him off balance, and kicked him hard in the groin. It would only gain a split second, but a split second was all he needed. He broke through the last branches onto the bank. As he dived, two men thudded onto the spot where he had been.
Aethelind ran to the bank when the shouting had stopped. No corpse. No prisoner. Just a knot of men standing on the bank, arrows nocked and spears poised, intent on the river.
“There!”
Halfway across and some considerable distance downstream, a dark head broke the surface. Three spears and two arrows splashed into the water around it.
The swimmer threw up his arms with a strangled cry, and the river swallowed him. All that remained, drifting slowly downstream on the ebbing tide, was a small oily slick of blood.
Chapter 18
Ashhere peered out from behind an oak tree. A solitary ploughman was plodding up and down the field behind a ponderous pair of oxen.
“Psst!”
The ploughman glanced up, saw nothing, shrugged, and carried on. Ashhere felt his mouth go dry and his palms begin to sweat. The ploughman was the image of his elder brother Fordhere, last seen in a ring of bloodied blades as the remnants of Aelle’s hearth-troop closed around their defeated king to defend him to the death. Could it be –?
“Psst!” he hissed again, more urgently.
This time the ploughman stopped and looked round with more care, his gaze scanning the field edge, the ditch and the tangle of brambles before coming to rest on the figure capering and waving beside the oak. His mouth dropped open, then split into a grin of delight and disbelief.
“Ash?” He bounded the few steps to the end of the furrow, hurdled the ditch and enfolded Ashhere in a crushing bear-hug.
“Ford!” cried Ashhere, pounding his brother’s mighty shoulders. “Ford! It is you!”
“Ash!” cried Fordhere. “Little brother!”
“By the Hammer! I thought you were dead!”
“Beard of Woden! I thought you were!”
“You first, little brother,” Fordhere spluttered, when the flood of incoherent swearing and mutual back-slapping had died away. “How come you’re not dead?”
“No, no, you first. What are you doing here?”
“Working the land,” grinned Fordhere, gesturing at the oxen which had shambled to the end of the furrow and were nosing for something to graze on in the ditch. “Like Grandpa. Ploughman to ploughman in three generations.”
“But the battle! How come you weren’t killed?”
“I didn’t run away!”
“I never thought you would have.”
Fordhere relaxed, looking a little sheepish. “Sorry, Ash. Didn’t mean to bite your head off. I’m a bit touchy about it, is all. Because I didn’t run away and I won’t have anyone saying I did.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” said Ashhere, with feeling. “But what happened? Did Pa get away too?”
Fordhere shook his leonine head and dashed the back of his hand across his eyes. “Pa took a spear in the throat. Just as we’d given up any hope and formed a ring round the banners. I got the bastard that did it, though. Split him open from shoulder to breastbone while he was trying to get his spear back.” He mimed a slashing sword-stroke to the right shoulder, and grinned in fierce satisfaction. “Bastard. Not that it did me much good, ‘cause two of his mates come after me then, both together. Don’t rightly know what happened next. I hit one of ‘em, and then the next thing I knew it was morning and some mangy cur was snarling and snapping with its head in the guts of a corpse next to me. That made me sit up, I can tell you! I’d been pretty badly knocked about, and I was covered in blood, and all my gear was gone, so I suppose I’d been looted and left for dead. There was nobody about apart from the dogs and some seagulls, and I was dying for a drink, so after I’d stopped being sick I tried to crawl to the river. I didn’t get very far.” He grimaced. “I wasn’t in very good shape. Anyway, some enemy warriors found me first. I thought they’d skewer me on the spot, but instead they got very excited. They gave me water and one of them ran off and fetched their lord. By the time the lord arrived I was feeling a bit better and thinking that Thunor must be holding his hand over me, so when the lord wanted to know who I was I said I was a poor married serf from the coast and I hadn’t got any money and hadn’t done any fighting and I’d only come to carry food for my thane’s warriors.”
“And they fell for it?” Ashhere questioned, incredulous. He touched his hammer amulet. “Thunor must have been watching over you!”
“He was that,” Fordhere agreed, grinning broadly. “Good job Pa never managed to get any polish on us, eh? It’d never work for a real nob. And when I say I’d been looted, I mean looted. Every stitch. So I suppose there wasn’t anything to show I was lying. The funny thing was, though, they seemed most interested in my hair. One of them poured water on it and scrubbed it with a cloth, and they seemed very put out when they saw it was fair. Dunno what that was all about. Anyway, they lost interest in me and let me go, and after a couple of days I managed to crawl here and old Leofric took me in. Remember him? Pa’s best spearman, has the fattest pigs and the fattest wife in Deira. And here I am. Mam and the girls are here too. Leofric fetched them from the hall as soon as he heard. He may have been retired for years, but he’s still Pa’s man to the death. Besides, Leofric hasn’t got a son and his wife’s sick, so he’s glad of the help.” He gestured at the weed-strewn field, becoming animated. “D’you know, this is the first time in three years this field’s been ploughed? Crying shame, it is. And there’s another field beyond the stream that’s just as bad. I reckon I can plough and crop both of ‘em this year, if Red-beard sends us kind weather. We’ll need more beasts to manure them, so next year I‘ll get the neighbours to help me dig a drainage ditch so cows can graze the wet fields below the house in summer. The new thane says his mother expects to get twice as much milk out of their cows as Leofric gets out of his, so he’s promised to swop me one of his father’s breeding bulls for some breeding stock from Leofric’s pigs, ’cause he says he’s never seen pigs as fat as them in his life, and his dad likes fat bacon –”
“The new thane?” Ashhere interrupted, breaking into his brother’s happy plans.
“He’s called Eofor, comes from somewhere in the Tyne valley. Decent sort. Funny to think we were probably trying to kill each other a few months ago. Seems a bit silly now. He helped Mam look for Pa’s body and build the funeral pyre and raise a burial mound. He’s confirmed Pa’s grant of Leofric’s land, and as Leofric hasn’t got a son he confirmed me as Leofric’s heir. Good of him, because he could just as easily have given it to one of his own men and reduced Leofric and me to staying here as serfs or going back to the family folk-land and scrabbling for elbow-room at ten men to half a hide. Mind you –” he winked “– I reckon his sister fancies me. She’s here keeping house for him until he finds himself a wife. Pretty lass, smiles all the time, plenty to get hold of. Knows a lot about dairying, too. I reckon she’ll do me very nicely. It’s about time I settled down.”
“But,” Ashhere began, lost for words. “But he’s the enemy! What about vengeance?”
“I avenged Pa on the field. And you’re not dead, so I don’t have to avenge you.”
“For your lord! For the king!”
“Aelle?” Fordhere shrugged. “He wasn’t much good, you know.”
“Yes, but he was ours!”
“He was useless,” Fordhere said curtly. “It might have been all right for you, u
p in your backwater where there’s never any fighting –”
“Huh! We fought all the time!”
“– but I can tell you we got sick of losing. He’d lost his luck, and ours with it. The gods were fed up with him. They’re on Aethelferth’s side. Aethelferth won the battle, right? He killed Aelle. So that proves the gods think he should be King. I’m not about to argue.”
Ashhere swallowed. “What if Eofor asked you to fight for the Twister – I mean, Aethelferth?”
For the first time, Fordhere looked uncomfortable. “Oh, my fighting days are done, little brother. I’m not a thane any more.”
“You’re a free man, so you’re obliged to fight for your lord if he asks you to.”
“I’ll defend my land and my family against all comers, like any free man. And as long as Eofor’s a decent lord and Aethelferth’s a decent king, I’ll fight where they ask me to. That’s fair dealing.” He clapped Ashhere on the shoulder. “Don’t look so sad, little brother! Fortune of war. Come and have a drink and meet Eofor. You’ll like him. Don’t worry, he doesn’t hold grudges –”
Ashhere shook his head, backing away.
“Oh, come on, little brother. I’m dying to hear how you got away and where you’ve been all this time –”
“I,” said Ashhere through his teeth, “have been keeping faith with my lord.”
Fordhere’s cheerful grin faded. He gulped. “The atheling?” he managed, in a whisper. “Is it true he survived? Beard of Woden! Last I saw of him he was laying into their line like a man in a hurry to get to Woden’s hall.” He looked round wildly. “Is he here? Ash, tell him to go away! He’s a fool if he thinks he can raise an army here. He’ll get no support.”
“That won’t surprise him,” Ashhere said bitterly. “He found that out before the battle, when he was the only one who hadn’t lost to the Twister’s men and you lot shouted him down. If you’d done what he said, maybe you’d still be a thane and not a ploughman!”
Fordhere looked at his feet. “The gods were against us,” he mumbled. Then, with more spirit, “Anyway, why should we listen to a lad with a head full of moonshine? What’s he ever done? Outside of his own family and followers, who’s ever heard of him?”
Ashhere thought vaguely that at least one Pictish tribe, several Bernician chieftains and a large number of raiders and pirates all had cause to remember Eadwine’s name with fear. But there was no point saying that, since none of them were people Fordhere knew and therefore they didn’t count.
“Ash, listen to me,” Fordhere persisted. “I won’t tell anyone, for your sake. Even though the reward would make me richer than a king! But tell him to go away! We don’t want more trouble.”
“He has a brother and a father to avenge,” Ashhere said stubbornly. “And he won’t turn aside from that.”
“Against Aethelferth?” A grudging respect crept into Fordhere’s face. “He’s got guts, I’ll say that for him. But – little brother – it doesn’t have to involve you. Stay here, settle down. Mam would love to have you back, and Leofric’s daughter always liked you –”
Home, family, security. A roof over his head. Food on the table. Perhaps in time his own hearth to come home to, his own wife and children. Ashhere was sorely tempted. Eadwine had already released him from his oath, in that bitter exchange on the banks of the Ouse. But he had insisted on staying bound then, when he had nowhere to go and no-one but Eadwine to look after him. It was not fair dealing to leave now that he was offered a cosy corner to hide in. Besides, he was not yet ready to abandon the spear for the plough, or to exchange a lord’s commands for a wife’s.
“No, Ford.” He clasped his brother’s hand. “I wish you well. But I follow my lord until death.”
Eadwine clung to the root of an alder tree overhanging the west bank of the Ouse, gasping for breath and struggling to do it quietly. Both halves of the city had erupted like an overturned anthill, swarming with men, women and children all intent on fishing a king’s ransom out of the river. Most were rushing downstream, as he had hoped, looking for a floundering swimmer or a floating corpse. Already a surfacing grebe, a log and a dead sheep had been the targets of a flurry of missiles, and some way downstream a man was leaning out over the water enthusiastically trying to hook what he would soon find out to be a waterlogged tree. Others, with more sense and more likelihood of success, were launching boats from the wharves, and on the opposite bank a baying pack of hounds came tumbling out of a yard. Hounds! Could they follow his trail back to the courtyard, back to Rhonwen? No, his old habit of secrecy about the Brittonic half of his life had provoked him to divert through a tanner’s yard on the edge of the ruins, and no hound yet whelped could follow a trail through a tannery. Rhona was safe. It was only his own head he had thrust into the noose. He had badly underestimated Aethelferth the Twister. Of course Aethelferth would have found out his connection with Aethelind. Eadwine’s half-sister Acha was Aethelferth’s wife and through her Aethelferth probably knew all manner of personal details about Eadwine. Certainly about his betrothal – Acha had made her opinion of the match very clear at the time and at regular intervals since. And if Aethelferth was prepared to forego a whole year’s tribute, he would certainly not have neglected to set a watch on Aethelind, and probably on everyone else he thought Eadwine might try to contact. Just as Eadwine would have done himself if their positions were reversed. It was fortunate that Acha had always maintained a haughty disinterest in his Brittonic connections, or he would most likely have been arrested at the monastery. What had he been thinking of, blundering along like a dozy partridge into a snare? He had not been thinking at all, that was the trouble. Consider it a valuable lesson. If he lived long enough to learn from it.
His breath was coming more easily now. Soon he would be able to move again. He put his hand to his upper left arm, where a spear or an arrow had torn a bloody gash in his flesh. Very lucky that the blade had not stuck. It hurt abominably, but the limb still worked.
Someone was coming down the bank, parting the bushes and prodding into the thicker vegetation with a spear. Eadwine took a deep breath and dived without a ripple. Just as well the river was always thick with silt. As long as he was under water he was invisible. The only flaw in this strategy was that he needed to breathe.
He surfaced again further upstream, this time in the shelter of a weeping willow not far below the downstream end of the civilian city wall. No missiles greeted him, and no yell of recognition. The bush-beater was downstream, disturbing a protesting moorhen. A boat glided past on the current and he pressed back into the bank, hidden behind a trailing branch. But it was only halfway through the day, if that, and he had no hope of prolonging this aquatic hide-and-seek until nightfall. For one thing, the cold would kill him in that time. Already his muscles were stiff, and the wound on his arm had almost stopped bleeding. For another, the tide was ebbing. Eboracum was a long way from the sea and the tidal fall was not great, but it was quite enough to shrink the water away from the concealing fringe of vegetation and leave him exposed on the foreshore like a stranded fish. But if he left the river anywhere near the city, the bank was so thick with searchers that he was certain to be seen long before he could find anywhere to hide. There was one chance. Just one.
He dived again, soundless as a water vole, and laboured upstream in the shallows. Good swimmer though he was, it was hard work against both tide and current, dodging submerged debris and trailing branches, surfacing for a snatched breath only when his lungs seemed on fire. He was past the monastery now, surely somewhere near the place. He blinked water out of his eyes, squinting to see clearly. Two alders with their trunks entwined – yes. The hollow in the bank where the kingfisher lived – yes. And there it was, leaning over the water like a protective sentinel, its roots so entwined that they formed a little peninsula where the bank had been cut away on either side, the veteran willow tree that had probably been growing on the river bank before the city was ever founded. Local folklore said the giants who
built the city had left it standing so they would have somewhere to rest in the shade. Eadwine reached for a jutting root as if for a friendly hand. Now for the difficult part.
A thick branch swung low over the river. Eadwine stretched up. He could reach it, just, but his hands were so numb the fingers would not grip. Frantic with fear, shrinking behind the willow roots, he breathed on each hand in turn, flexing the fingers until some strength came back. He tried again. Both hands gripped the branch. Inch by inch, muscles groaning, he pulled himself up. His clothes streamed icy water, trying to glue him to the surface. The cold struck him to the marrow. He clenched his teeth to prevent them chattering. Beads of sweat stood out on his face, mingling with the water. Pain burned through the torn muscle on his left arm. He had been able to do this as a boy, when nothing more than a bet with himself hung on it. He must be able to do it now, when a slip and a splash would cost his life.
His chest was level with the branch. Another heave and he was lying across it, the weight off his arms at last. Blessed relief! But no time for rest, not yet. At any moment someone might nose a boat under the protective screen of branches, or force a way through the bushes on the bank. He dragged himself fully onto the branch and reached upwards and right for the next one. It shook under his weight. He had been lighter last time, and the tree not so old. But it only had to hold him for an instant and then he would be safe. If it was the right tree. If it had not changed.
It was the right tree, and it had not changed. The hollow heart was still there. What had been roomy for a skinny twelve-year-old was a tight fit for an adult, but it was enough. Feet first, he wriggled into the opening and let himself slither down into the dry, dusty, cobweb-hung, woodlouse-rustling, beetle-chewed interior. There was just space to fold himself up so that his head and shoulders were hidden below the lip of the hole. Now he was invisible. Unless he made a noise, no-one would find him without chopping the tree down.
Paths of Exile Page 33