“W-what creatures?” Wimund cast a nervous glance to the heaving waters. “What’s down there?”
The boatswain turned to Wimund and grinned darkly. “No one knows, but ‘tis deep enough to hold anything you can imagine. Now start reefing.”
The ship rose and plunged dramatically as the waves grew bigger and the wind stiffer. Ailénor pressed against the mast to steady her stance, as did Garreth. He strained the ropes to lean closer as the waters buffeted the ship and sent sheets of spray onto the deck and into the hold.
When Grimbold and Wimund bungled their efforts to draw up the sail, the boatswain cursed vividly. He stationed Grimbold on the tiller, then saw to the task himself as he bawled directions to Wimund. Barely had they finished when a large wave broke over the ship’s side, drenching everyone and covering the planks with foam.
The boatswain lurched toward the aft deck. Crouching down, he hauled out several implements and buckets. Making his way back to the mast where Wimund still stood, he thrust a wooden, shovel-shaped tool in his hand. “‘Tis a bailer,” he called out. “Start bailing.”
Obviously shaken, Wimund hastened to do as he had been told. The boatswain next turned to Garreth and Ailénor, released the knife from his belt, and cut them free. This brought a furious shout from Grimbold and caused Wimund to turn back, but the mettlesome boatswain stood fast.
“We need every hand to see this through, including the woman who brought this piece of bad luck. They are going nowhere. Now, watch that rudder till I get there. The rest of you ship water.” Thrusting the buckets into Garreth’s and Ailénor’s hands he made his way astern.
Garreth and Ailénor worked side by side, as did Wimund and Grimbold nearby. Huge waves continued to break over the ship’s side, bringing frothing waters and making it difficult to stand or see. At one point, Ailénor slipped and fell, but Garreth quickly caught her up.
“I thought you were the one with the sea legs,” he teased as he set her to her feet.
As he held her against him, they looked in unison at the squall line as it drove toward them, filled with fury and lightning. Ailénor pulled the sopping, draggled hair from her face and peered through the sheeting waters. In the distance she saw the loom of watch fires.
“Look!” she cried out, pointing toward the lights and what could only be land.
Making out the fires, the boatswain nodded brusquely. “We’ll beat for the lights and try to outrun the worst of the storm. Reef the sail,” he shouted to Garreth. “Not too far or we’ll lose our steerage way.”
“I will help you.” Ailénor moved to Garreth’s side, disregarding the boatswain’s sharp glare that bespoke what he thought of a woman touching his sail. Together, she and Garreth took up the sail another foot.
As the minutes passed, the storm closed steadily upon them. Sighting the fires proved difficult and intermittent.
“Where are we?” Garreth shouted to the boatswain.
“Selsey is my guess. Unless ‘tis the Isle of Wight that lies off the coast. Either way, we need head between the two and slip into the estuary.”
The news heartened Garreth, for if ‘twas true, they still held to their original course and could make it to Hamwih, however badly they limped into its port.
The ship fought on through the violent waters, driving toward the loom of light off starboard. But as they approached their objective, the line of the storm hit full force, the great black cloud swallowing them whole.
Wimund shrieked in the ensuing darkness. Garreth grabbed Ailénor and pulled her down to the deck, searching at the same time for something solid to grip on to. His hand met with a shot of line attached to the gunwale. Seizing upon it, he wrapped it about his wrist and held fast.
Lightning flashed, revealing Wimund where he clung to the mast and Grimbold holding on to a rib of the under-decking. The boatswain rode the storm at the tiller. Thunder reverberated in their ears, followed by cold, pelting rain filled with chunks of hail. Garreth loosed his soggy mantle and covered Ailénor against the stinging onslaught.
As the ship pitched amongst the waves and the storm moved over them, the rains began to fall vertically. At the same time, Ailénor detected a shift in the wind.
“We are catching the back winds,” she shouted to Garreth.
They climbed to their feet and sought the lights. Several moments later they located them. The fires appeared brighter but were no longer off starboard. Rather, they shone off to the left, port side, the winds’ circular pattern having driven them southward.
The boatswain looked momentarily uncertain of their position, then made alterations and drove hard toward the land. The others resumed bailing despite their weariness, but the storm had yet to lose its teeth.
Suddenly the boatswain rose and pointed toward the land. “‘Tis the north edge of the Isle. Someone, get to the fore and look for the shoals.”
Garreth started forward, but as Ailénor watched, she saw a huge rogue wave rise like an arm from the sea and crash down upon the sentine, swamping its deck, knocking Garreth back, and sweeping the boatswain overboard. The vessel lost all its way and bobbed like a cork on the sea. Wimund wailed and hugged the mast, while Grimbold scrambled for the tiller. Grasping it, he pulled it back hard.
“Arrêtez! Stop!” Ailénor screamed, seeing his mistake. “You’ll drive us onto the rocks. Push the other way.”
Garreth regained his feet and lunged toward the aft deck. Climbing up, he shoved Grimbold aside and seized the tiller, thrusting it out and putting the wind on beam.
Grimbold started to give challenge, but Garreth faced him down. “We do as she says. She knows more of ships than we, and I know the waters. There are rocks and sandbanks all along here. Unless you can navigate the tiller and follow her instructions, then you best make yourself useful on the foredeck and look for the shoals.”
Grimbold reluctantly went to the fore. Garreth, in turn, motioned for Ailénor to join him. With Ailénor’s help, he held the vessel on a rough course. He had no intention of risking a landing on the island or a desire to wait out the storm there. Hamwih was a better choice, especially to rid themselves of the Irish cutthroats.
Garreth followed Wight’s shore to its northern tip, then steered the ship straight north across the Solent to the deep harbor known as Hamtun Water. Half an hour later, amidst driving rains and nerve-grating thunder and lightning, Hamwih’s lights came mercifully into view.
Garreth sighted the wharf, a thin gray line barely visible through the raging storm. He looked to Ailénor.
“Support me in this,” he said swiftly, without explanation, then shouted to Grimbold. “The shoals are treacherous here. We are going to try to sail in alongside the wharf, but we have too much way to make a safe approach. Get Wimund to drop the sail to slow us. We’ll still have momentum. Be ready on the fore of the deck with the mooring lines. When we come in parallel with the wharf, jump onto it and get the line around one of the pilings.”
“That’s insane!” Grimbold yelled.
“You must try.” Ailénor feigned desperation. “We have too much speed to run the ship ashore. We can only hope to lash onto the wharf and use it as a brake.”
Grimbold mouthed his displeasure but leapt into the hold to rouse Wimund. Ailénor turned to Garreth.
“Do you really intend to attempt this?”
“No.” Garreth kept his eyes determinedly ahead. “I intend to run us aground.” He heard her gasp. “Brace yourself and be ready to jump when the time comes.”
As the distance diminished between the ship and the pier, Garreth held the ship on course. He watched Wimund fumble with the sail but made no progress. ‘Twould be a rougher grounding than he planned. With Grimbold poised on the foredeck, the lines in hand, Garreth drove for the wharf. The distance rapidly shrank, but at the last moment he pulled hard on the tiller, taking the ship off the wind and veering onto the rocky shoals.
The ship jumped forward, its bow splintering on the rocks, then heeling to its port si
de. Garreth lost his footing on the slick deck but saw Grimbold knocked overboard in a tangle of rope.
Garreth mounted the starboard rail and reached out his hand to Ailénor. As he did, he caught sight of Wimund clambering up out of the hold and forging toward them like an enraged bull.
Ailénor followed Garreth’s gaze. Her heart turned over, but at the same time the corner of her eye caught sight of the Psalter that had been sliding about the deck. She lay hold of the weighty book and hefted it shoulder high. Aiming for Wimund’s head, she swung and clouted him solidly in the jaw, cracking the aged ivory panel.
Wimund staggered, then struck out, hitting the book from Ailénor’s hands and sending it spinning through the air and overboard into the waters.
Garreth followed the path of the priceless Psalter with a sickening feeling. But as Wimund lunged for Ailénor, he jumped from the rail and slugged him straight on. Wimund reeled backward, plunging into the hold in a lumpish heap and lay unconscious.
“Let’s get out of here,” Garreth panted, grabbing Ailénor’s hand.
Together they leapt from the ship into the shallows. Stumbling through the surging waves, they fled for the lights of Hamwih.
Chapter 5
The storm raged unabated as Garreth and Ailénor made their way up the sloping shore through sheeting rains.
A heavy roll of thunder resounded overhead, followed by an earsplitting crack and a brilliant flash of light that illumined the town in an eerie, false daylight.
Ailénor tucked close to Garreth. At once his arm encircled her, and his hand fastened about her waist. She, too, looped her arm around him, instantly aware of the lean hardness and warm line of his body beneath her hand. Forcing her thoughts and herself ahead, she gripped up the sodden weight of her gown and fought the mud that clutched at her slippers.
Again lightning crackled sharply and fissured the skies, branching outward in a great display. Before the light died, Garreth pointed to a graveled street that led from the shore toward the town and directed her there.
“Where are we?” Ailénor called above the din.
“Hamwih.” His response coincided with a clap of thunder.
“Where?” she repeated, squinting against another blinding flash.
“Hamwih. Come. We need to find shelter.”
And safety, Garreth added mentally. Safety, not only from the convulsing storm, but from the miscreants who might be close at their backs. Surely when the two recovered they would be after them again like hounds on a scent. There would be no rest until he and Ailénor reached the protection of the royal palace at Winchester. By God, he’d not let anything more befall her.
His thoughts circled back to their more immediate needs. Fortunately he had a passing knowledge of the town, having sailed from Hamwih’s port a number of times, as recently as July. He now pulled on memory for a place where they might take refuge.
The town sprawled to a considerable size, yet half its area lay abandoned or in ruin. Hamwih was a dying town. Over the last decades the once thriving port and market center had been gradually displaced by Hamtun, a more favored site on the west side of the peninsula, situated on the River Test. Added to that, the town had never fully recovered from the Norse raid of the century past. Large tracts of land lay derelict, offering no more than weeds and traces of foundations.
As Garreth guided Ailénor past a collection of sheds, shops, and animal stalls, he swiftly considered, then dismissed, a number of possibilities that might offer them a safe haven.
Hamwih boasted an inn, but if the wastrels closed hot upon their trail, they would easily find them there. Most of the deserted buildings he could recall were no more than shells — single-roomed, ground-floor structures with no place to conceal two people in the event of a search. Given the sundry states of their neglect, the buildings themselves might prove as hazardous to tarry in as the storm itself.
Garreth felt Ailénor shudder at his side and perceived the lag in her step. The rain lashed down on them, cold and unremitting. He must find a place directly, even if they need retreat elsewhere once the storm lessened.
The sky fired afresh, and his eye caught sight of a familiar outline in the near distance — the answer to an unvoiced prayer. He smiled, then chided himself for not having thought of it first off. Sending his thanks heavenward, he conducted Ailénor toward the east side of town that lay along the River Itchen.
They found their way easily, following the straight and regular streets. With a wry, inward smile, he remembered his last visit to Hamwih, when he embarked for Francia. He had arrived amidst wedding festivities that the townsfolk celebrated with great joy. The revelers had promptly adopted him and plied him with drink. It seemed Hamwih’s widowed miller married its widowed ale-wife. Ale flowed aplenty that day — an exceptionally fine ale as he recalled.
He reined in his thoughts as the mill and the miller’s cottage came into sight, standing apart of and a stretch beyond the end of the tenement-lined street. He scanned the three-storied mill, and his mood cheered. ‘Twould serve their purposes well.
Garreth pointed out the miller’s snug cottage to Ailénor, a welcoming sight. Light flowed about the cracks of its door, and a ribbon of smoke battled the rain as it escaped the center of the thick, thatched roof. They hastened toward it, and in the next instant Garreth knocked firmly on the door.
Ailénor shivered and nestled closer to Garreth. He gave her a reassuring squeeze and knocked again, this time calling out a greeting in his Saxon tongue.
Ailénor clearly recognized several words, including his use of the king’s name. That she should understand anything surprised her, but she had scant time to ponder it as the door wedged open and buttery light spilled from the cottage.
A man’s whiskered face appeared in the space, the top of his head no higher than Ailénor’s cheekbones. Past his shoulder, she spied a small, plump woman standing by an open hearth, her protective arms encircling two children, a lanky lad who looked much like the miller and a girl who obviously favored her mother. All four appeared dubious of their late-night visitors.
As Garreth spoke in rapid Saxon, the man’s expression altered, and the lines puckering his forehead and mouth began to relax. Likewise, the woman’s face brightened, as though she recognized Garreth. Unexpectedly, the man drew wide the door and motioned the soggy travelers to step inside out of the rain. To Ailénor’s dismay, Garreth declined with a shake of his head but gestured toward the mill and spoke further with the miller.
Again, Ailénor comprehended a number of words. Her thoughts skipped back to past conversations she’d had with her Uncle Rurik. His ships traded regularly with England. Ever he maintained ‘twas entirely possible for his Nordic crewmen to converse with the Saxons. Their peoples shared a common ancestry and a common tongue. Nowadays, the differences of language were more like those of a thick dialect. Much could be compassed if one but listened with care.
She directed her full attention back to the two men, grateful a second time in as many days that she spoke the tongues of her parents’ birth lands. Her knowledge of Danish would serve her well while in England, however briefly.
But she found the men had concluded their exchange, and Garreth now drew a leather pouch from his tunic. Ailénor’s brows winged upward as he filled the man’s palm with silver coins. At once, the miller gave over the silver to his wife, directing her to some task, then grabbed his mantle and ring of keys from a wall peg. Joining Garreth and Ailénor in the downpour, he led them to the mill.
Keeping in step with Garreth, Ailénor peered through her spiky-wet lashes to the building ahead. Her spirits lifted.
‘Twas a charming structure, timber built over a stone foundation, deeply thatched, and possessing a great waterwheel that now creaked in protest against the bruising storm.
The miller shoved his hefty iron key into the lock of the stout oak door, and in the next instant they found themselves standing inside the ground floor of the mill, dripping and shivering but
out of the jaw of the storm.
The miller moved off for a moment, then Ailénor heard the sound of steel striking flint. A small flame appeared, puncturing the darkness, then a second. The miller rejoined them, offering one of two rushlights to Garreth, then guided them toward a staircase that flanked the inside wall.
Ailénor could see little. The narrow light played off the oaken floor, thick posts, and massive overhead beams. Darkness swallowed the room beyond the flame’s immediate reach, though she could make out the waterwheel’s shaft where it entered the building and a hint of the mill’s machinery.
At Garreth’s urging, Ailénor followed the miller up the stairs with Garreth joining them directly behind. The steps proved steep, and she climbed with some difficulty in the dragging weight of her rain-soaked gown.
The next floor lay in impervious blackness, like the first, excepting where the rushlights drove it back. The hollow echo of their footsteps told her ‘twas a large, open space — a workroom of some sort, she presumed. All floors would be utilized in the milling process. Naught would be allowed to remain idle.
The miller led them up another flight of stairs, these much steeper than the ones before, so that Ailénor had to clutch hold of the railing and, in part, pull herself up. Her muscles burned in protest, and she feared she might slip and fall back atop Garreth. Several long, winded moments later she gained the top and stood on the uppermost level of the mill.
She inhaled deeply, swiftly, trying not to pant outright as she evened her breaths. Garreth finished his climb and moved beside her. He enclosed her at once within the circle of his arm and held forth the small rush lamp to inspect their surroundings. As he did, he stroked her upper arm with the pad of his thumb. ‘Twas a gentle, reassuring movement meant to soothe, yet it stirred to life a most disturbing yet pleasurable sensation deep within her. Ailénor’s breathing pattern broke all over again.
The Captive Heart (Kathleen Kirkwood HEART Series) Page 12