I watched him return, past Wace and Eudo and the others, to join the women at the bow. Leaving a husband and father behind to the mercy of unknown forces could not be an easy thing to do, and I had no desire to intrude upon them. We had tried to afford them space whenever we could, though there was precious little of that aboard a ship such as this. Better that ?lfwold was the one to speak with them; he knew them as I did not.
For a while I sat in silence, once again gazing out over the murky waters. To our steerboard side passed a mound, no more than thirty or forty paces in length, clustered with stubby, leafless trees. Another loomed up ahead, black and featureless against the moonlit waters, but Aubert’s face showed no sign of concern as he leant on the tiller, steering us around it. The river was steadily widening – had been ever since we passed Drachs – and was now easily three or four hundred paces in span, and perhaps much more. In the gloom it was hard to tell; where earlier I had been able to see shadows of the woods through the mist, now there were none as the surrounding land gave way to marshes.
I rose from the square oak chest I was sitting on and made my way along the length of the ship, between the two banks of oarsmen and around the mast, to the bow platform where the rest of the knights were still throwing dice.
Eudo looked up as I approached, and moved aside to make a space for me in the circle. ‘What’s the news?’
‘With any luck we’ll reach the Humbre by dawn tomorrow,’ I replied.
Radulf scratched the side of his large nose. ‘What about Alchebarge? When do we make port there?’
‘You’ll have to ask the shipmaster,’ I said as I poured some ale from a leather flask into an empty cup.
The sturdily built one – Godefroi, I remembered – gave Radulf a sharp nudge in the side. ‘We’ll all be piles of bones sitting here if you don’t roll those dice soon.’
‘I’m warming them,’ Radulf said, rubbing them vigorously in his hands.
‘You’ve been warming them long enough—’
Radulf cast, interrupting him; the little carved antler cubes clattered upon the deck, rolling and spinning before coming to rest on a five and a six. He leant forward to gather in the stakes, and then passed the dice to Philippe, who cupped his hands and threw, revealing a pair of ones.
‘Are you joining us again, then?’ Wace asked.
‘We need someone who can challenge him,’ Eudo said grimly, gesturing towards Wace’s great heap of pebbles, then back to his own two. Philippe was left with only five, having lost his last throw, while his companions were faring barely better, with eight each.
‘I don’t wage a war I know I can’t win,’ I said, grinning, ‘but if you’re beginning another game—’
A stifled shout came from the lookout. He pointed out past the prow across towards the larboard shore. Frowning, I hurried past ?lfwold and the two ladies.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, following the line of his outstretched finger. Through the mist, it was difficult to make much out.
‘There,’ the lookout said. He was a stout man, with a large gut and a straggling beard. ‘Between those two mounds, in the distance, close to the far shore.’
Wace arrived beside me. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
The two islets the lookout was referring to were shrouded in bands of mist that shone ghost-like in the moonlight. Between them a dark shape, long and thin, slipped silently upstream across the white-flecked waters. I watched it for a few more heartbeats to make sure that I wasn’t mistaken, but when the faint tap of a drum started to carry across on the breeze, I knew there was no doubt.
‘A ship,’ I murmured.
Except that there was not just one, for behind it appeared another, and another and another still, clustered together: a dozen of them at least, and perhaps even more.
It was a fleet.
Fourteen
CURSING UNDER MY breath, I turned and made for the stern. Already Eudo was on his feet, but Radulf, Philippe and Godefroi hadn’t noticed that anything was amiss and were still throwing dice. I kicked over their ale-cups as I passed, spilling their contents across the deck.
‘Get up,’ I said over their protests. ‘All of you to arms.’ I stepped down between the oarsmen – many of them looking spent after a day of near-constant exertion – hurrying as best I could along the narrow planking that ran down the ship’s centre line. ‘Aubert!’
‘I see them,’ he said.
Some of the men had slowed their stroke; others had stopped altogether to look over their shoulders at the band of ships, water dripping from the ends of their resting oar-blades.
‘Row,’ I barked at them. ‘You’re not paid just to sit!’
I reached the stern platform and stepped up beside Aubert, who was tugging hard on the tiller. ‘Those are longships like ours,’ he said. ‘Built for speed. For war.’
‘Could they be some of our own?’
He shook his head. ‘If any fleet of ours was coming up to these parts, I’d have heard tell of it for certain.’
I swore, knowing what that meant. It was only last night, after all, that an English army had arrived outside the gates of Eoferwic. That we now found an unknown ship-band sailing upriver seemed to me to be more than just chance.