London - Edward Rutherfurd [86]
And what did they do with a pregnant woman? Did they let her stay with her husband? She thought probably not. And with the child? Whoever bought her might let it live. More likely – she could hardly bear to think of it. More likely, she had heard, they drowned the child as soon as it was born. What use was a baby to a master?
Her eyes caught sight of the boat’s high, curving prow. How cruel it seemed, like some great, cold blade about to strike through the waters. Or the beak, she thought, of some ominous bird of prey. She turned her gaze back to the bank.
Lundenwic. The last place where any of their feet would touch Britain’s soil. Lundenwic, the wharf from which the Anglo-Saxons sold their sons and daughters. Grey, grim Lundenwic. She hated it, and all those faces so calm upon the green bank.
“Doesn’t seem to worry them that we’re going like this, does it?”
She suddenly realized that in her desperation she had not spoken to Offa since the night before. Poor Offa who had stuck a pin in the village elder, who had gone along with her misguided plan. Offa, the father of her baby that was probably to die. She looked at him, but he said nothing.
Now the Frisian was returning. The sailors fore and aft were ready to cast off. It was all over. Shaking her head in defeat, she gazed at the bottom of the boat, and so did not see Elfgiva coming down the grassy bank.
She had heard.
But it was not only Ricola’s cry that had brought her down. It was the cry together with something else – the something that had passed between husband and wife in Cerdic’s hall that mothers’ night, the tiny seed of joy in that long midwinter night. When Elfgiva awoke that morning and stretched, and felt her husband kiss her, and then heard the girl’s cry, it was this new and secret warmth that caused her to take pity on poor Ricola and her husband.
Soon afterwards, therefore, to their great surprise the couple found themselves back in the homestead, standing before their mistress outside the long, thatched hall.
There was little conversation, however. Elfgiva was brief. She silenced them at once when they started trying to explain themselves. She had no wish to hear. “You’re lucky not to be on the slave ship,” she informed them. “And now you may count yourselves luckier still. I am giving you back your freedom. Go where you want, but never show your faces at Lundenwic again.” Imperiously she waved them away.
Soon afterwards, Cerdic, watching them down by the jetty, was tempted to give the girl a present, but thought better of it.
The snow came that afternoon, a steady, soft snowfall that blanketed the riverbank.
Offa and Ricola had not gone far. Down by the ford on the island called Thorney, in the shelter of some bushes, Offa had constructed a crude hut. The snow was a help. Working quickly, he was able to build up snow walls around it, so that by the time darkness set in, he and Ricola were warm enough in a little hovel that was half brushwood and half igloo. In the entrance, he made a fire. They had a little food; the cook had given them barley bread and a packet of meat left over from the feast that would last them for a few days. But soon after nightfall, a hooded figure on horseback approached their little camp and dismounted, and by the firelight they saw the friendly face of young Wistan.
“Here,” he said with a grin, and swung down a heavy object he had been carrying behind his saddle. It was a haunch of venison. “I’ll come tomorrow to make sure you’re all right,” he promised before riding away.
And so the young couple began their new life out in the wild. “Now we can let our hair grow,” Offa reminded Ricola with a smile. “At least we aren’t slaves