by James Wilde
The clanging bells died away, and the hubbub of voices began to ebb.
‘Who is she?’ the monk asked when he realized why Hereward kept peering round the ballast heap.
At first he thought the warrior was not going to answer, but then he replied with studied detachment, ‘Her name is Acha. Taken from the Cymri and brought here to fetch water and keep the fires burning. She said she met you at the minster.’
Alric nodded. ‘And you are in love?’
Hereward clipped the monk round the ear and went to sit on his own for a while.
Time passed. The snow stopped falling, and the black clouds began to drift away. In their absence, icy stars glittered in a majestic sweep across the heavens, and a full moon cast shimmers across the water.
In the town, the bonfires still burned and the questioning call and response of Tostig’s search parties continued to echo. When footsteps trudged nearby, Hereward drew his sword and crept on to the heap of rocks. Alric crawled beside him. They saw the newcomer was only a sailor making his way to one of the larger ships. Another joined him, and then a stream of them meandered up. The seamen stumbled, sleepy-eyed and still half drunk from the tavern, chattering in tired voices. But as they prepared their vessel for sailing, they began to sing. Torches sparked into life to light their work, and to warm their hands.
‘An early start to cross the whale road to their homeland,’ Alric muttered.
‘We have nothing to offer them to buy passage.’
‘It is our only way out of Eoferwic.’
‘What do you suggest? That I kill them all and steal their ship, and the two of us man it on the whale’s way, with your prayers for help? A great plan.’ Hereward slithered down the slope and sat brooding.
Alric continued to watch the sailors, turning over ideas but finding no solution. After a while, he noticed a dark figure, cloaked and hooded, gliding along the quayside. From the elegant steps, he could see it was a woman.
‘Hereward,’ he whispered.
The warrior scrambled back up the slope, his face lighting when he saw her. Climbing over the ballast heap, he crunched through the snow towards her. The woman stopped, hesitated for one moment, and then pulled back her hood.
Hereward came to a sharp halt, arms outstretched.
It was Judith.
The warrior backed away a step, as if Tostig’s wife was the first sign of an attack. But then she smiled, a little sadly, Alric thought, and beckoned the warrior to step closer.
‘She does not come, Hereward,’ the woman said, her face lit by the sailors’ torches.
The warrior’s expression revealed nothing. ‘Why?’
After a pause, Judith forced a smile. ‘It is not the time for her. Perhaps in future days…’
Hereward’s laughter couldn’t hide his disappointment. ‘Why are you here?’ He looked past her along the dark quayside.
‘My husband does not know I have come,’ she said, answering his unspoken question. ‘I am here alone.’ Alric saw a hint of affection in her gleaming eyes that surprised him. She pulled her cloak tighter. She was shivering. ‘What happens between man and wife is kept in their hearts only, but sometimes a woman can see things a man cannot. Whatever you might think, my husband is a good man, but he has his troubles and sometimes he strives for things that will harm him, or listens to men who give poor advice. I would never speak out against him, but I pray for him at the church every day.’
Alric watched Hereward hanging on her every word. The monk saw an odd look to the warrior’s face, almost childlike, or perhaps it was the shadows flickering in the torchlight.
‘I have seen you grow into a man over the last few summers,’ Judith continued. ‘You were as wild as they say when you first came to court, but you have learned the ways of your elders. Do you hear my words?’
‘I am not a good man,’ the warrior replied, as if the woman had asked a different question.
‘You are a wounded man. And like all who have been wounded in battle, sometimes your pain consumes you, and it turns to rage, and you lose the part of you that searches for peace. Yet still, I think, you are a good man, Hereward, and you would be a better one, if only hands of kindness reached out to you.’
Alric felt his heart swell. It was as if the woman had looked into his own mind, he thought.
‘This is my kindness to you, in the hope that it will help you find that peace you need.’ Judith glanced back at the sailors busying themselves on the ship. ‘Those are my countrymen. They sail home tonight to be with their families after the storms kept them trapped here over Christmas. The whale road is still dangerous, but they risk all for love.’ She let the word hang in the air and then continued, ‘I spoke to Acha, and she told me where I could find you. She has not told my husband. She will not. She has her own wounds, you know that.’ Hereward nodded. ‘I have arranged free passage for you on the ship. What you do when you reach Flanders is your choice, but you deserve a second chance. If you heed me, you will give your life to God, and in that way you will find all that you search for.’
Hereward remained mute for long moments. Alric searched the man’s face and saw him struggling to accept that anyone had done him such a kindness. In that moment, the monk was gripped with curiosity about what made this man so different, so confusing. There were many caverns inside him, all of them dark, he thought.
‘Should I depart,’ the Mercian said, ‘in days to come I will sail back and kill Harold Godwinson for his crimes against me.’
‘If you take that course, you will cede England to William the Bastard. Harold is the only man who can stand against him.’
The warrior remained silent.
‘You think life harsh when the Godwins play?’ Judith continued. ‘See what it will be like if the duke seizes the prize he covets. Normandy has run red with blood for years. Rivals poisoned at court. Villages laid waste. Rebellious voices stilled with axe and sword.’
‘It is the Viking blood that courses through the Normans,’ Hereward said.
The countess nodded. ‘And yet William has thrived. What kind of man does it take to rule such a violent place? A brutal man. A cold man. A man for whom no price is too high to pay for power. Now see him on the throne of England and imagine what our home will be like.’ The monk watched a shadow cross his friend’s face as Judith shook her clasped hands in pleading. ‘Harold Godwinson can be as hard as the duke, and that is what England needs at this time. Not a sapling, but a broad oak that will not bend in any storm. Would you deprive your people of that stout resistance?’
The warrior bowed his head. ‘No.’
‘You are a strong man with a brave heart, Hereward. For once, the strongest thing you can do is walk away and never come back.’
He assented with a curt nod. Thanking his benefactor, he asked, ‘Will you arrange passage for my friend, too?’
Alric felt surprised once again.
Judith smiled. ‘It is already done,’ she said. Then she leaned in to whisper something into the warrior’s ear, and for the briefest of moments Hereward looked unaccountably sad. Then the woman pulled her hood back up and hurried away into the night.
‘What did she say?’ Alric asked when he had scrambled to his companion’s side.
‘She said all monks should be beaten whenever they speak.’ He glanced towards the eastern sky where a thin sliver of silver was just appearing. ‘The course of my life has changed this night,’ he said in a reflective tone. ‘Before, it meandered its way to the sea. Now it plunges into a deep, dark chasm, and where it will finally emerge I do not yet know.’
‘All waters run to the sea eventually.’
Bowing his head, Hereward drew a deep breath. ‘My old life ends here. Harold has won. I cannot help the king. I have been betrayed on every side, even by my own father, and now I am driven from my homeland, shamed, hunted, despised. What does the future hold?’
Alric rested a hand on the warrior’s shoulder. ‘Now we wait for God to reveal your purpose t
o you. The terrible things you have endured may be the Lord’s way of shaping you for the road ahead. There is a pattern to all things, though we cannot see it.’
Together, the two men strode towards the singing sailors. The torchlight lit a path to the ship, but beyond it lay only dark waters.
CHAPTER TWENTY — SIX
4 January 1063
For two days, the ship battled heaving seas and freezing northern winds that left the sailors’ beards and eyebrows white with frost. In the harsh conditions, Hereward found little time to brood on what he had left behind. Alric spent the hours huddled by the brazier that swung from a chain at the stern, or heaving over the side as the deck bucked beneath his feet. And then, on the second night, a storm swept in like a hungry wolf.
Iron waves whipped up into towering cliffs. Under pitch-black skies a lightning flash froze faces in expressions of terror as the ship’s dragon-headed prow soared almost vertically on the convulsing ocean. ‘O Lord, save my soul!’ Alric cried in fear above the booming thunder. His sodden tunic clung to him as he gripped the mast with rigid fingers. A wave crashed down, wrenching at his arms, but he held on for dear life.
‘Here!’ Hereward bellowed, throwing a length of rope for the monk to wrap around his wrist. ‘Hold tight.’ The warrior felt numb to the bone from the freezing brine. If they were pitched into the water they would not last long, he knew. All around him the sea-hardened sailors prayed for dawn as they battled with the oars.
The ship careered along black valleys like a leaf caught in the wind. The sail had long since been torn free. The cloth flapped wildly, threatening to wrench the mast from its moorings or turn the vessel over and drag them all down to the depths. The untethered rigging lashed the air. Hereward ducked as a greased hemp rope flashed towards his head, but the seaman next to him reacted too slowly. The tip of the rope tore across his face, ripping out his left eye. Stunned, the sailor crashed to the flooded deck. Before Hereward could grab him, a wave plucked the man up and threw him overboard.
Catching the rigging on its next pass, Hereward wrapped the rope around his wrist for support and braced himself, legs apart. Bitterness welled up in him. To be caught up in such a calamitous storm so close to their destination seemed unjust.
Along the deck, the sailors shivered in their rancid-smelling greased furs and clung to whatever support they could find. In their drawn faces, Hereward could see their fear of the fate that awaited them. Soon they would succumb to the warm-sleep from which no man ever awoke, he knew.
Another freezing wave smashed into him with the force of fifty hammers, ripping his feet off the deck. His mouth and nose flooded with salt water and his head spun, but the rope around his wrist held tight.
The straining ship soared high on the swell, hung for a moment and then plummeted prow-down into the next trough. Hereward’s stomach shot up into his throat. The monk retched. The vessel slammed into the water as if it had hit rocks. Men flew into the air and crashed back down on to the boards, fumbling for hand-holds. The warrior felt sure he could hear the hull screaming in protest. Beneath the deck, the ribs had been lashed into place with pitch-soaked cords to allow the hull to flex in strong water, but even that would barely cope with this ocean’s brutal punishment. The treenails were holding for now, but Hereward knew the wooden rivets couldn’t last long.
At the stern, one of the seamen struggled futilely with the steering oar. A crack sounded louder than the booming of the sea, and the oaken rudder snapped. The remnants drove up into the sailor’s face, pitching him back and into the towering sternpost. Another, quieter crack echoed as his back broke.
‘This wave-steed is dying beneath us,’ Hereward shouted. The ravens flew so close now he could almost feel their wings on the back of his neck, yet he felt no fear. A part of him welcomed what lay ahead, although he would have preferred an honourable death, with his sword in his hand. He glanced at the monk, trying to find some final words of kindness that would ease the man’s soul at the last. But the monk’s face now gleamed brightly, his eyes wide with hope.
‘A beacon,’ Alric gasped. ‘I saw a beacon. Our prayers have been answered.’ He would have pointed if he could have torn his frozen hands from the mast.
Hereward peered ahead as the ship plunged into another trough, but saw only the impenetrable dark. ‘It was a star,’ he said. ‘There is only water.’
‘I saw it,’ Alric protested. ‘We are close to land. Thank the Lord.’
Hereward decided to let his companion find some comfort in his wishful thinking.
Bracing himself again, he clung on to the greasy rope as another cold wave crashed against him. The vessel moved like lead, spinning round and rolling low in the water. The warrior knew the waves had almost filled the below-deck.
It will not be long now.
The thought had barely flashed into his head when he realized he was staring into a wall of black water. The wave came down.
He was drifting. His mother was there, as beautiful as he remembered from his earliest days, her pale face unmarred by blue bruises, her lips and nose not split, not bloody. And Tidhild was there too, taking his hand and trying to whisper something to him. But the more insistent she became, the more he resisted.
‘The oak is split in two,’ his mother called. ‘But it is not the end.’
Birds were shrieking. Ravens, he thought, his head awhirl with the reedy cries. The ravens have come.
Not ravens, he realized after a moment. Gulls. All around him, in his head and out, their cries rising and falling.
Cold pebbles, hard under his face.
The boom of the waves, the sucking sound of water retreating over stone.
His eyes opened to a thin silver light. Every fibre of his body burned and his head felt as if it were filled with iron. Heaving, he wrenched himself up on his arms and retched seawater. Scarcely able to believe he was alive, he glanced around at a pebbly beach littered with the remnants of the ship. Strakes washed on the surf and a pile of rigging lay nearby. Several bodies lay face down along the shore, suspicious gulls padding around them.
Though sodden, he did not feel cold. The sound of crackling and spitting and a heat at his back drew his gaze to a bonfire being fed by a tall, thin man with a pockmarked face. He cast a bored eye over Hereward and stooped to pick up more driftwood. Eight survivors of the wreck sprawled around the fire, which was keeping them from dying from the warm-sleep. Some were still unconscious, he could tell. Others sat staring into the flames in shock. Lurching to his feet, Hereward was relieved to see Alric on the other side of the fire. The monk was still lying face down, but twitching like a dreaming dog.
‘You saved us?’ Hereward asked the pockmarked man.
‘He speaks no English,’ one of the seamen muttered. ‘He is Flemish.’ The sailor waved a hand in the direction of three other men wading into the surf to search for anything worth salvaging from the wreck.
Peering down the beach, the warrior could make out a broad river estuary gleaming in the early morning light. The landscape at his back was flat and scrubby, skeletal black trees bowing away from the harsh sea wind.
‘It seems a long way from England.’
Alric now loomed at the warrior’s shoulder, looking over the Flemish countryside. Hereward saw that his companion was shaking, more from the aftermath of their experience than from the cold.
‘England waits for us. We will return one day,’ the warrior muttered.
The monk slumped back on to the pebbles, squeezing the seawater from his hair. ‘I am starting to believe that you bear a charmed life. However often you lead me into brushes with death, you always pluck me back from the brink.’
‘If memory serves me, you did a good enough job yourself of welcoming death into your life.’ Standing, Hereward shielded his eyes to watch three men on horseback riding across the pebbles towards them. His hand slipped to Brainbiter, still in its scabbard despite the sea plunge.
Alric pressed his fingers against his com
panion’s wrist. ‘We have been reborn into a new life. This is your opportunity to leave behind the man you were and become the man you would be.’
‘We are who we are,’ Hereward said, but he let his hand fall to his side none the less.
Reining in their horses, the three men eyed the shipwreck survivors, trying to discern who was the spokesman for the group. In an insistent, querying tone, they made their demands in the rolling Flemish tongue, which reminded Hereward of the waves breaking upon the beach. The seaman who had first spoken to the warrior translated the men’s orders, in accordance with which the survivors lumbered wearily to their feet and traipsed behind the horsemen into the cold morning.
They trudged along rutted tracks, thankful to be free of the snow that gripped England. After an hour, church spires appeared on the silver-grey horizon and soon the ramparts of the town of Guines loomed up. They passed an abbey, the quiet broken only by the rhythmic rattle of a waterwheel, and skirted a leper-house, the morning’s bread left outside the door still uncollected. Within the walls, three church towers rose above the thatched and timber roofs, but Hereward found Guines sleepy after the bustle of Eoferwic. Dogs yapped in the street, and men emerged from their workshops to eye the cause of the disturbance, returning to their tasks a moment later with a sniff and a shrug.
Though Alric had promised a new dawn, the warrior found he could not forget England or his hatred of Harold Godwinson. Without vengeance, how could he ever free himself from his shame, his grief and his loneliness?
The riders dismounted and led the seamen into the hall of the local ruler, where they warmed themselves by the hearth, waiting to be seen. Not long after, a snowy-haired man, bent by his years, shuffled in with his retinue. His face was hollow-cheeked and crumpled by wrinkles. With a groan, he lowered himself into a carved oaken seat on a low dais at the far end of the hall while his attendants gathered on either side. His barely audible words creaked like leather, but the seaman translated for his companions.