London - Edward Rutherfurd [56]
It was a century and a half since his family had departed the once Roman city of Londinium. Small-time merchants, they had served in the militia when the legions left and watched with concern the city’s decline. They had still been there in 457 when thousands of people from Kent had streamed in to escape a huge force of Saxon marauders. Although, on that occasion, the formidable walls, strengthened with extra bastions and a great stout wall along the waterfront, had protected them, it had proved to be the city’s last hour of glory, the beginning of an end that came quite swiftly. The Saxon farmers who took over the land had no use for cities. The old metropolis, its purpose lost, sank into decay and emptied. A generation later, Offa’s family were impoverished; another and they drifted away. Offa’s grandfather had eked out a living as a charcoal-burner in the forests of Essex; his father, a jolly fellow and a wonderful singer, had been adopted by this small Saxon village and allowed to marry a Saxon girl. These villagers, then, were Offa’s people: he had no others.
It was a small place, just a forest clearing really, but set beside one of the many streams that followed modest, meandering courses through woods and marsh down to the lower reaches of the Thames. There were a few brown thatched huts, a long wooden barn, two fields, one ready to harvest, the other fallow, a meadow, and an area of open grass where four cows and a shaggy horse were idly grazing. There was a black painted boat by the riverbank. Oak, ash and beech trees stood sombrely around. Pigs snouted for nuts and acorns on the soft forest floor.
Once a Roman road from Londinium to the east coast had passed only a mile away, but its line was grown over now. The village was not entirely cut off, however, for a winding track through the forest brought occasional travellers, and over the stream there was a small wooden bridge.
Young Offa was one of the poorest of the villagers. He did not possess the peasant’s full quota of land, the yardland. “I’ve only a farthing,” he had warned his bride when he courted her – a quarter of a yardland. To support himself, he worked for others. Still, he was free. A Saxon peasant in a village. Yet now, as soon as they had drowned his wife, they were going to inflict a punishment perhaps worse than death upon him.
“Let him bear the wolf’s head,” the elder had pronounced. Let him live like the wolves in the forest – friendless, alone. An outlaw. That was the terrible punishment they reserved for a freeman. An outlaw had no rights. If the village elder came after him to kill him, he was free to do so. No one in the area would take him in. He must wander where he could, to survive or die alone as he pleased. That was the doom of the Anglo-Saxons.
Ricola, his wife, was naked now. She looked at him. Her cheerful, round face was very white. He knew she loved him, but her expression said only one thing: You did this to me. I’m going to die. You aren’t.
Some of the men were leering at her. They could not help it. After all, she had a delicious young body. Pink and white flesh, a trace of puppy fat, soft young breasts. Two men held open the sack. The man with the adder was grinning. Saxon justice was harsh.
“Woden,” the young man murmured, “save us.” And he looked around in desperation.
Surely their lives could not end like this.
Elfgiva and her party rode slowly. It was only a day’s journey, and she still felt confused. It was not just the question of denying her faith, though nothing was dearer to her. There was something else: she had an instinctive sense of foreboding. And the closer she was to home, the worse it became. What did it mean? Was it a message from the gods?
How dreary the clouds seemed. They had come from behind her and now they masked the sun. The travellers were passing through a stretch of