*
I woke the next day just as the sun was coming up, a glimmer on the distant horizon that turned the waters into a sea of shimmering gold. The oars had all been stowed inboard and most of the men lay curled up in their blankets beside their ship-chests. But the wind was rising, gusting at us from astern, and Aubert was amidships giving orders as the mast was raised and the sail unfurled, its alternating stripes of black and yellow billowing out, pushing us on downriver.
The river had broadened, so much so that I could hardly pick out the shores to either side. Blinking, rubbing my eyes to clear the last traces of sleep, I breathed in a deep draught of frigid air. A lone gull swooped low in front of the ship, soon joined by another which flew up from the river, and the two rose to the blue sky, dancing in flight, twisting around and about each other, crying as they did so.
It was a clear dawn, but a cold one. I blew warm air into my hands as I shook off the woollen blankets that covered me. Around me the other knights were all still sleeping; of our party ?lfwold was the only other up and he was at prayer. Aubert soon returned to take the tiller and I spoke to him for a while, though he was bone-tired. He had not slept all night; his eyes looked dark and heavy and he kept yawning. I offered to take his place for a few hours while he rested, and he readily accepted. With open water around us and a following wind, managing the tiller ought not to be difficult, he said. As long as I kept her facing into the sun I could not go wrong.
And so I sat on his ship-chest, gazing out across the wide river, towards the many small islands which drifted past, and beyond, to the south and a shoreline dotted with trees, with low hills in the distance: the part of England known as Mercia.
A sudden shadow was cast over me and I looked up to see Beatrice leaning upon the side of the ship, the profile of her face sharply outlined in the low sun. Her eyes were closed and she wore a slight smile, as if she were enjoying the play of the breeze across her cheeks.
‘My lady,’ I said, a little surprised to see her there. I had expected one of the other knights, or perhaps ?lfwold. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Well enough,’ she replied. The smile faded from her face but she did not open her eyes.
I wondered if she was angry about what I had said the night before, and almost opened my mouth to apologise. Our flight from Eoferwic, the encounter with the English fleet, the pursuit: it had all left me on edge, and I had not been thinking clearly. But I stopped myself long before the words formed on my tongue. I had meant what I said, and there was no point in denying it.
‘Tell me,’ she said abruptly, ‘have you ever been married?’
I stared at her, taken aback by the question. She turned and met my look, but I could not read anything from her expression; her brown eyes gave no clue. The breeze tugged at her cloak but she did not try to pull it closer, cold though she must have been. Her demeanour, the way she carried herself, suggested a maturity which her youthful appearance belied, and I wondered if she were a little older than I had first thought.
‘Only to my sword,’ I answered, when I’d recovered my wits.
She gazed back out upon the river, nodding as if she were coming to some new understanding, but she did not speak. The silver bands she wore around her wrists shone brightly in the morning sun.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Only because if you had,’ she said, ‘you would know what it means to have to leave a loved one behind.’
An image of Oswynn came to mind: an image of her as I had last seen her, that night at Dunholm, with her dark hair falling across her smiling face. And I recalled the moment Mauger had stood before me in the street and told me she was dead, and I felt something of the same fire that had consumed me then returning.
‘I know what it means,’ I said, rising from the ship-chest to face Beatrice, my cheeks burning.
She stared back at me, impassive, though I stood a whole head taller than she. ‘You do not show it.’
‘There’s a lot I don’t show,’ I said, though what I truly meant by that, I didn’t know. All I wanted were words that I could throw back at her.
She smiled again, though it was less a friendly smile than one of derision – almost as if she understood all this and was enjoying my discomfort.
‘And what about you?’ I asked, turning the attention away from me for one moment. ‘Have you married?’ I didn’t see how she could not, if she were as old as I thought – but on the other hand I had not seen her with any man back in Eoferwic, nor did she wear a marriage-ring on her hand.