London - Edward Rutherfurd [74]
The second event was more pleasant. At the end of Blodmonath, she realized she might be pregnant. But I’ll wait another month, just to be sure, she thought contentedly. Though she did wonder now, a little anxiously, where and how they would be living when the child was born.
Offa continued to do all he could to please the master. He also managed to sneak off once or twice to the empty city, where, having fashioned himself a little pick and shovel, he burrowed into places that seemed promising. It was after returning from one of these secret expeditions one evening that he witnessed the arrival of a new cargo at the trading post.
There were half a dozen slaves. A tough, ugly-looking merchant was leading them along, but Cerdic greeted him civilly enough. “You come late in the year,” he remarked.
The men were fine, dark-haired fellows tied to a rope. Their cropped hair and depressed looks proclaimed their new condition. “The King of Northumbria raided the Scots last year,” the merchant explained. He grinned. “Captives. I had a hundred when I left the north. This is what’s left.”
“The dregs?”
“Take a look. They’re not bad.”
Cerdic inspected them. He did not trouble to cavil about the merchandise. “They seem sound,” he agreed. “But I’ll probably have to feed and house them all winter. Slave traffic usually starts in the spring.”
“You can work them yourself.”
“Nothing much for them to do once the snows come, is there?”
“True. What’s your price, then?” People liked doing business with Cerdic because he was straightforward and never wasted time. Offa saw the two men go into Cerdic’s hall together. Before long, the merchant had left.
For the moment, the six fellows were housed in the slave quarters and chained up each night. During the day they were exercised, and one or two were set to work hauling wood or repairing one of the storehouses. Offa watched them, wondering what their final fate would be, and felt sorry for them.
A whole day passed before anyone realized that young Wistan had disappeared. Nor did anyone know where he had gone, except that he had told one of his brothers he wanted to go hunting. It was strange in itself for him to go hunting alone, and when he did not return, Elfgiva was worried. Cerdic was more sanguine.
“It must be a girl,” he said curtly. “He’ll be back.” When another night passed, he remarked grimly: “He’ll have some answering to do to me, for going off without permission.” But another day and night passed without any sign of him.
Wistan had risen early. By the first grey light of dawn he was by the waste ground at Thorney, crossing the ford. It was low tide. His horse only had to swim a short part of the crossing, and when Wistan emerged on the southern side he was hardly wet. His route took him a mile or so to the south, first on to the slopes above the marshy ground. Then he turned eastwards, keeping roughly parallel with the river.
It was a clear, cold day. As he rode over marsh and through oak woods, he could see the dim ruins of the empty city two miles away on the other side of the river. The ground began to rise after that into ridges that grew progressively higher. Two or three miles more and, as the sun broke over the horizon, he had a splendid view of the sweep of the glinting river as it made its great series of bends towards the estuary. At the bottom of the long slope down the ridge, beside the riverbank, was a tiny hamlet known as Greenwich. Ahead, the ridge broadened out, the light oak woods giving way to a great expanse of open heath. Across this he followed the hard, turf lane that covered the metalled Roman road and which would lead him, by the afternoon of the following day, to the settlement of Rochester.
He was going to see the girl.
He slept the next night at Bocton. Then, early in the morning, with a fond look at the magnificent view over the Weald, Wistan rode on to her home.
He knew her family, of course, but as it happened he had not seen the girl for some years. Indeed, he thought wryly, last time I saw her she was just a skinny child like me. It was hard