‘That’s right.’
He looked her up and down, and I saw hunger of a sort in his expression. ‘She’d fetch a fine price, I reckon. Does she belong to you?’
‘She’s not for sale, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘What is she then? Your wife?’
‘A fellow traveller.’
If the Dane was at all insulted by my terse manner, he didn’t show it. He shook his head. ‘I don’t have space aboard for that many. Three of you, easily, possibly four. But not five.’
T?fl wasn’t the only game he knew how to play. I supposed I should have expected as much. I removed the smaller and thinner of the two arm-rings that I wore, and placed it in front of him.
‘Do you have space now?’
He fingered it, his sweaty brow furrowing while he contemplated whether or not to accept, and I stood watching, waiting, thinking that this was already a steep price to pay, and wondering how much more I could afford. Thankfully that was a decision I didn’t have to make.
‘We sail in two days, on the morning flood tide,’ he said.
‘Two days?’ I repeated. The sooner we could leave these shores, the better, and I’d been hoping to find a ship that could take us almost straightaway.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘In a hurry to leave, are you?’
I knew that to protest would be pointless, and might only further arouse his suspicions, of which I was sure he already had a few, and so instead I kept my mouth shut.
‘It makes no difference to me who you are or what it is you’re running from. But I’ll tell you this: we won’t wait for you. If you’re not there by the time we’re ready to cast off, you can swim to Yrland for all I care. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘You can keep your gold until we’re out on the water,’ he said. ‘So that you don’t have to worry about me sailing away with it. I’ve been called many things in my life, but a thief isn’t one of them. I have a reputation to maintain, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.’
I knew only too well the value of reputation, marred though mine was in those days. He passed the gold and the arm-ring back to me, we clasped hands, and it was agreed. We were going to Dyflin.
Nineteen
WE SPENT A restless two nights at the Two Boars while the Dane, whose name we learnt was Snorri, concluded his business. Restless, because I was convinced that those men who had come looking for me at Earnford would not be far behind us, and because I was aware, too, that the longer we lingered in one place, the greater the chance of our being caught.
But they did not come, and so it was with some relief that at last we sailed, Hrithdyr’s hold having been filled with bolts of wool-cloth, barrels of salted porpoise-meat, Rhenish quernstones and casks of English wine that came from the vineyards further up the Saverna valley. The wind was on the turn, however, a sure sign of worse weather to come, and Snorri kept looking to the grey-darkening skies and muttering in his own tongue, all the while fingering a small chain that hung around his neck from which, I noticed, hung both the heathen hammer and the Christian cross. Perhaps he still held to some of the old ways but was fearful of our Lord’s wrath and so wore the cross as well to placate Him, or possibly he thought that by worshipping both our God and those of his pagan ancestors, his soul would be guaranteed a place in one heaven or the other. Whatever he believed, his prayers seemed to work, for the storm that we’d all predicted failed to come, at least on that day.
We entered the Saverna early that afternoon, hugging close to the Wessex shore while the grey waters grew ever choppier and the wind whipped the waves into white stallions. No storm came that evening either, though, and so the following day we crossed to the Welsh side, making port on an island where stood a small stone chapel dedicated to a certain St Barruc, of whom none of us had ever heard. We were just in time, too, for no sooner had we dragged the boat up the shingle on that island’s sheltered shore than we were pelted with hail, and a gale rose from the west and the sea foamed and crashed against the cliffs. There we were forced to wait until the wind turned again and the seas calmed.