Through the darkness, Offa looked across the yard from the barn where he had been hiding. They were only twenty paces away and he could see them clearly enough by the dim light of the doorway. Ricola was playing her part well, laughing at something the master had just said, head a little thrown back. She was friendly, naturally warm, enticing without actually provoking him. She saw Offa as he slipped inside.
It was quite simple, but he had to be quick.
It was hot in Cerdic’s hall. For a second the air, thick with smoke, stung his eyes. The fire and lamps lit the scene with a warm glow. It was not as easy as he had expected to get to where Elfgiva was sitting. The table ran down the centre of the little hall. Halfway along, his path was blocked by two of the stockmen who had decided to pass out together in a heap, quietly snoring. Unable to skirt them, he climbed over instead. They did not notice.
At last he came to his mistress’s side, ready to say the words Ricola had made him rehearse carefully. He leaned forward.
But Elfgiva was talking to an elderly farmer from upriver. When the slave tried to speak to her, she waved him away. Since, however, the young fellow seemed insistent, she told him to wait. Politely she continued the conversation with the old farmer, who was telling her an interminable story. It was boring, but one must show respect. The farmer’s ancestor had killed no less than three men in battle, including a considerable chief from the north, before Elfgiva looked at the slave again and noticed that he was getting very agitated.
The message Offa had rehearsed was very simple. “My wife sent me, lady. She begs you to help her. She does not want to offend the master.” A loyal slave in an awkward position. He could leave the rest to her, Ricola had told him.
But time was passing. The farmer seemed well set to tell Elfgiva about his ancestor’s brothers too. Offa became anxious. When, at last, with a faint show of impatience, Elfgiva turned to him, he became confused.
“My wife –” he began.
“I shall not need her tonight.” Elfgiva smiled and started to turn away.
“No, lady. My wife –”
“Not now.” Again she was turning from him.
“My wife, lady,” he tried, a little desperately, then, forgetting his lines: “Your husband and my wife . . .” He gestured towards the door.
She frowned at him. “What are you talking about?” She smiled at the farmer quickly.
“They sent for you,” he blurted out, now hopelessly confused. And at last she shrugged, excused herself, and a moment later was moving towards the door.
What was keeping Offa? Ricola had calculated everything so carefully. She needed the merchant to go just so far and no further, but time had passed and Cerdic was getting excited. She wondered what to do. More time passed. The merchant had put his hand on her shoulder. Either she must fight him off now and provoke his anger, or . . .
Still they did not come. Cerdic’s smile was growing. She almost winced, tried gently to remove his hand, which had found her breast. Not yet, she wanted to scream. Not yet.
But he was stooping to kiss her.
When Elfgiva emerged from the low doorway into the darkness of the yard, she saw clearly enough the figures of her husband and the slave by the entrance of the little hut. Her husband was kissing the girl, who showed no sign of struggling. Her shawl lay on the ground beside her. As they disengaged and glanced towards her, Cerdic smiled with a mixture of guilt and triumph. But the girl, in a ridiculous pantomime of pushing him away, looked at her with fear.
At that moment, Elfgiva remembered only one thing. What had the little slave so impertinently said to her the other day? “If you won’t have him, others will”? Something like that. And now the girl thought she could take him herself.
Elfgiva shrugged. She was hurt, of course. She was furious. But if her husband chose to amuse himself with a slave, she thought with bitter contempt, it was a matter beneath her notice. Paying no more attention to Offa or the lovers, she turned back to the feast, followed by the young fellow, who was trying to say something. She did not even listen.
For this was the one thing that poor Ricola had not fully understood. Her mistress might confide in her when she was in distress, but to the high-born Saxon lady, the girl was still only a slave. She was not a rival. Hardly even an embarrassment. She was a chattel to be used for the night if her husband had nothing better to do, to be discarded at will. Elfgiva could, even in these circumstances, dismiss her from her mind just as she wished.
Which was exactly what she did now. As she made her way back up the table to the garrulous farmer, Elfgiva merely waved young Offa away.
By the time the young fellow went outside again, Cerdic and Ricola had vanished.
That night seemed long to Offa. The wind had dropped. In the earlier part, as he sat by the door of his hut, he could see figures passing out of the hall opposite or stumbling about in the yard. Occasionally he heard the faint murmuring of a drunken laugh from somewhere. Was he hearing the merchant and Ricola?
There was nothing Ricola could do. He realized that. Even if she resisted, the merchant was bigger and far stronger, and as slaves he and Ricola had few rights. The irony of the situation struck him. As a freeman back in the village he could have stood up to the elder. He could at least have demanded compensation. But by losing his head and then his freedom, he had ensured that the same thing could happen again, and that this time he would be helpless.
He moaned at his own stupidity.
For a little while he had vainly hoped that perhaps Ricola might manage to escape from the merchant. Perhaps Cerdic would be too drunk, or she would somehow be able to give him the slip. It was a faint hope at best. As the night deepened and Ricola did not appear, it passed.
He wanted, against all good sense, to go and look for them. Where were they? In the barn perhaps? Or one of the huts?
“What would I do anyway?” he muttered to himself. “Stick a pin in him too?” As he considered the hopelessness of the situation, and his folly in letting Ricola start this whole business, he shook his head. “I’d never have done it if it hadn’t been for that preacher,” he murmured. “Much use his new god’s been to me.” It seemed to him that the Frey on the Cross was a powerless god after all.
As she lay in Cerdic’s powerful arms, Ricola was thoughtful. Her mind had drifted to her husband, then to Elfgiva. What would tonight mean to them all? To her marriage, her position with her mistress, her future relationship with the merchant? She ran her hand softly over the merchant’s chest, feeling the blond hair. She wanted to go, but he was still only half asleep and his strong arm gently restrained her. In the early hours, he became wakeful once more.
One thing at least Ricola knew. Within her she already carried a tiny life – the life that belonged to her and Offa alone and which, come what may, she must protect.
Ricola might have been very surprised, however, if, in the vague greyness of the midwinter dawn, she could have seen her mistress.
Elfgiva did not sleep. She had lain awake, tossing restlessly. Again and again, the events of the evening had passed before her eyes and it was not long before her anger gave way to another, simpler emotion. Regret. Why didn’t I just stop him? she asked herself. And then, as if addressing another: He was yours, and you turned him away.
She was hurt, yet she felt sorry for her husband too. She knew his needs, but she had refused them. And why? Loyalty to her gods. Fear of humiliation. Pride. But was her pride bringing her any happiness? Was humiliation worse than this mess? As for those ancestral gods and her loyalty to them, had Woden, Thunor and Tiw brought her any comfort during this winter night? It seemed to her that they had not.
A little before the first hint of light, she wrapped a heavy fur around her and walked down the slope to the water’s edge. The river made little sound. In the darkness it looked black. Hunching her shoulders, she sat on the jetty and stared at the water.
What would her father have done? He would have set sail for some distant shore,
trusted in his gods and braved the sea. But her father was a man. As the night wore on, the old seafarer seemed less and less relevant. And yet perhaps that vigorous old soul might have approved when, as the water began to turn from black to grey, she stood up, straightened her shoulders and proceeded briskly up the slope.
Young Ricola had been right after all. Her ruse had worked, even if later than she had planned. Elfgiva had decided to take control of her marriage again.
That morning, therefore, it was with a sense of relief and warm pleasure that Cerdic listened to his wife, who announced firmly: “I will follow your new god. Tell your priest he can baptize me.” To which, however, she added: “The slave girl goes.”
He grinned and embraced her.
“The girl goes,” she repeated.
He shrugged as if it were of no account. “Whatever you want,” he said. “After all, she belongs to you.”
Unknown to any of them, one other event had taken place during the long watches of that winter night.
This was the arrival of a visitor.
As the dawn arose over the long Thames Estuary, a single longship had come stealing up the river on the incoming tide. Now, on this dull, damp day, it had just entered the great bend downstream from the settlement.
As his squat, seaworthy vessel came in sight of the jetty at Lundenwic, the small, hard man standing near the bow looked ahead of him with anticipation. He was in his forties, with a rather brutal face, and a patchy grey beard that was clipped very short. Of all the Frisian traders, he was the only one who would make the journey to the island at this bleak and dangerous time of the year. He did so because he was fearless, clever and greedy. He bought his merchandise cheap because he saved their owners the cost of housing and feeding them in the winter months, and he was usually the only man who could supply any goods that might be urgently needed before the spring. His traffic was in human beings. All along the north European coastline it was known: “That cunning Frisian’s the only one who can supply winter slaves.” He reached Lundenwic at midday.
When he saw the Frisian ship, Cerdic smiled. “I thought he’d come,” he remarked to the foreman.
“You were counting on it,” the foreman responded with a grin.
“True.” When Cerdic had bargained for the slaves from the north he had let the merchant think he would have the expense of keeping them all winter, and so had got a much better price. “I never said I couldn’t sell them until the spring,” Cerdic reminded the fellow. “I only said the slave trade usually begins in spring.”
“Of course.” Cerdic never lied.
By mid-afternoon the Frisian had inspected the northern slaves and agreed a good price. He was surprised and delighted when, as a goodwill gesture, Cerdic offered him two more slaves – a man and a woman – at a discounted price. “I just want to get rid of them,” Cerdic explained. “But they won’t give you any trouble.”
“I’ll take them,” the Frisian said, and put them in chains with the rest.
There was a little trouble, though. At sundown, the girl started screaming that she wanted to talk to her mistress. But it seemed that the mistress had no wish to speak to her, so the slave-trader gave her a quick whipping to quieten her down before going to the hall to eat with Cerdic. After a night’s sleep, he would depart on the ebb tide.
In the Anglo-Saxon calendar, the longest night of the year was known as Modranecht – mothers’ night.
It had been a long time since Cerdic and his wife had slept together, but now, when they did so, the merchant experienced a sense of homecoming, and as for Elfgiva, it seemed to her in the depths of that long night that something had opened again within her. Something wonderful and mysterious.
The next morning, she awoke with a quiet and special smile.
The boat was ready to leave.
It was a Norse longship with a rising keel, very like the one Offa had unloaded that autumn. Its wide draught would allow the slaves to sit in the central section and stretch out their legs. To ensure they gave no trouble, their ankles would be manacled.
Still Ricola was thinking desperately. All night she had lain in the slave quarters hoping for some reprieve. She had tried to speak to Elfgiva. A few moments with her – that was all she needed – and she could have explained everything. She was sure of it. But ever since Cerdic’s men had come to seize her and Offa the previous morning, it was as though her mistress had disappeared entirely. For Elfgiva and her husband the two slaves had, quite suddenly, ceased to exist. When she had protested, tried to scream her message to the people outside the slave quarters, the Frisian had cruelly whipped her. After that, no one had come to the slave quarters. No one.
Surely somebody would take pity on her. Wistan at least, if not his mother. She guessed that this isolation must be deliberate. Either Elfgiva or her husband had given orders. She and Offa were not to be approached. No contact at all. They wanted the two slaves out of their lives.
And yet if Elfgiva only knew her secret. If she could just let her mistress know that she was pregnant. How could she as a woman fail to sympathize? As dawn at last arrived and she thought she heard people moving about, her hopes grew a little and focused upon a single, vital point. Somehow, between the slave quarters and the Frisian’s boat, she had to get this one message to Elfgiva. No matter how many blows the Frisian rained upon her with his cruel whip, she had to tell her.
An hour passed. The light was stealing under the door. After a while it opened and the Frisian entered. In silence, he fed them barley cakes and water before disappearing. Some time passed, then he reappeared with four of his eight sailors and led them all out into the cold, grey morning.
There were, as she had guessed there would be, a number of people on the bank waiting to see them leave. She saw the stockmen, the foreman, the women with whom she had worked every day. But not one of Cerdic’s family. Not even one of the four sons. If they were watching, they were out of sight.
At the top of the bank she passed close to one of the women. The cook.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispered. “Tell the Lady Elfgiva. Quickly!”
“Stop talking,” the Frisian called out curtly.
Ricola looked at the woman beseechingly.
“Don’t you understand?” she cried out softly. “I’m pregnant.”
A second later she felt a searing pain across her shoulders, and then the Frisian’s hand on the back of her neck, pushing her forward. Twisting her head painfully, she managed to look back at the woman. The cook’s broad Saxon face was pale, a little frightened perhaps, but she did not move.
Something distracted the Frisian now. He removed his hand and started to the front of the line. Ricola was passing the foreman now.
“I’m pregnant,” she called to him. “Won’t you just tell the mistress that? I’m pregnant.”
He stared at her as calmly as if she were a piece of livestock. Crack! The whip came hissing down again. Once, twice, catching her on the neck, making her scream with agony.
Now she was beside herself. She had nothing to lose. No dignity left. Never mind the pain.
“I’m pregnant!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Lady Elfgiva! I’m pregnant! Can’t you understand? Pregnant! I’ve got a child!”
The fourth blow cut into the first. Deep. For a second she almost passed out. She felt strong arms dragging her down the bank while she babbled uselessly: “A baby . . . I’m having a baby.” Her whole body was shuddering with the shock and the pain. But still nobody moved.
Some five minutes passed while she sat in the boat, coming back to her senses. The Frisian’s sailors were calmly loading stores. The Frisian himself, directing his men, seemed to have forgotten her. It was as though her outburst had never taken place.
Surely when she had shouted her message it must have echoed all round the trading post. Surely Elfgiva, or at least one of the family, must have heard. She looked at the northern slaves in front of her. Their faces were resigned, almost deadened. Th
ey, at least, had no hope. Some distant Frankish farm or Mediterranean port awaited them. They would be worked hard until they grew weak, then, quite possibly, be worked harder still until, having given every ounce of value they had, they dropped. Unless they were very lucky.
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.