The Half-Slave Read online

  The girl stood between Baculo and the merchant, brandishing her little knife and jabbing at the Gaul’s face.

  ‘No,’ Ascha heard her shout. ‘No, you will not!’

  Baculo cursed her in gutter Latin and whipped back his head to save his eyes. ‘Out of my way, girl,’ he shouted and jinked looking for an opening. The merchant gazed up at them both, his jaw dropping in lolling disbelief.

  Ascha’s hand went for his seaxe before he remembered Flavinius had taken it. He swore. Baculo feinted with his knife and then punched the girl in the mouth. She reeled back. Ascha came up behind Baculo. Scooping up a cargo hook he swung it in a single fluid movement into the Gaul’s groin. Baculo’s scream shredded the air.

  Behind the girl, Wacho left the steering-board and moved towards the merchant, seaxe already drawn. He seized Octha with a beefy forearm, dragged him up, and laid the edge of his knife against the old man’s throat. The girl shouted out in fear or anger and slashed, opening the boat master’s forearm to the bone. Wacho grunted but continued to grip the merchant tight.

  Ascha pulled on the cargo hook, but Baculo’s thighs had clamped shut, trapping the hook. Ascha stepped over Baculo’s writhing body, grabbed the girl by the arm and dragged her away.

  He stood facing Wacho with knees slightly bent, arms in front of his chest, head lowered. Octha was choking, his eyes rolling up in his head.

  ‘I told you to stay out of it!’ Wacho snarled.

  ‘I know you did,’ Ascha said.

  ‘This is not your fight.’

  ‘No,’ Ascha agreed and took a step forward.

  ‘Come any closer, boy, and the old man dies!’

  Ascha let his arms drop. ‘Then kill him,’ he said. ‘I met him yesterday.’

  Wacho frowned. The seaxe lifted. Ascha kicked Wacho on the knee with the side of his boot and then hit him in the face with his elbow. The boat master grunted. Ascha hit him on the nose with the heel of his hand and heard the bone crack. Wacho released Octha who dropped to his knees. The girl rushed to help him. Ascha moved in fast, knowing he had to put Wacho down. He punched the boat master in the throat and drove his fist into Wacho’s ribs. Wacho gasped and let the long-knife fall with a clatter on the deck. Wacho stumbled back with his hands to his face, blood streaming from his nose. Before Ascha could do anything, the boat master half-turned, lost his footing and toppled into the river.

  ‘Carver!’ the girl shouted.

  Ascha swivelled.

  Baculo was on his feet, his breeches drenched in blood, advancing with murder in his eyes. Ascha bent and came up with Wacho’s seaxe. As the Gaul lunged, he parried and seizing Baculo by the hair, forced back his head.

  He paused, remembering the beer Baculo had given him the night before.

  And then he cut his throat.

  They heard feet scrabbling and two rivermen appeared above the cargo mound. Their eyes widened when they saw the bodies of Baculo and the slave. Ascha called out to them that Baculo was dead, and their master probably drowned. He said that if they rowed the Clotsinda to the next landing, they would come to no harm and would be free to take Baculo’s body and go home. When the rivermen realized that Wacho was gone, the fight went out of them. The attack, they said, was Wacho’s idea. Wacho had planned to kill the merchant and dump him overboard. They said nothing of what would have happened to the girl.

  When the rivermen had slid back the way they had come, Ascha went to the girl.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

  She nodded. She seemed stunned but unhurt. He saw that the hem of her skirt was spattered with the slave’s blood.

  ‘We have to get off this boat in case the crew change their minds,’ he said.

  She nodded again. She went to the big slave and closed his eyes, stepping over Baculo’s body as if it were dogshit. She spoke softly to the slave boy who was curled up on the deck trembling. She ran a hand through the boy’s hair, patted his cheek and then went to Octha. She wrapped the merchant in a blanket and made him comfortable. She and Octha exchanged a few words and then she stood and attended to the boat. Ascha watched as she checked the sail, adjusted the sea ropes and then took hold of the steering board and turned the boat toward shore. He made no move to help. He felt drained and weary. He’d never before killed a man who was not his enemy and he was surprised at how much it shocked him.

  They borrowed a spade from a local farmer and buried the slave on a wooded rise overlooking the river. When it was done, Ascha dropped the spade and prepared to leave.

  Octha was sitting on one of the chests, his elbows on his knees, staring at his feet. He seemed stunned by what had happened. He looked up as Ascha approached.

  ‘They would have killed us,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ Ascha said.

  ‘I’ve known Wacho for years, always thought of him as my friend.’

  ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘The farmer will put us up for the night. Another boat will be along in the morning and will take us downriver. We’ll be at the Rhine mouth in three days.’

  Ascha could see Herrad and the boy looking down at where they had buried the big slave. Her hands were clasped before her and he saw her lips moving. He wondered if she was praying.

  ‘And you?’ the merchant said.

  ‘East,’ Ascha said. ‘I’m going home.’

  The merchant pushed down on his thighs and got to his feet. ‘Then we go in opposite directions,’ he said.

  Ascha nodded. Unlikely they would ever meet again. The merchant seemed to have the same thought. He paused and looked at him directly.

  ‘Where did you learn to fight like that, boy?’

  ‘Picked it up here and there,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Here and there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re a woodcarver?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And where did you say you were from?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  The merchant took Ascha’s hand and looked him in the eye.

  ‘Whoever you are, I wish you a safe journey. Remember my name: Octha the Merchant. On this river, everybody knows me.’

  The merchant dipped his head, took off his burnstone and put it around Ascha’s neck. ‘I want you to have this,’ he said. ‘Its magic will protect you.’

  ‘I don’t need it.’

  ‘Don’t argue, boy. It will do you a lot more good than it will an old fool like me.’

  Ascha ran a thumb over the amulet. The amber was rich in colour and smooth to the touch. He looked at Octha, nodded his thanks and moved away. At the edge of the clearing he turned, struck by a thought.

  ‘Old man, can I ask you a question?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What’s in the chests?

  The merchant looked back at the two boxes.

  ‘Glass,’ he said.

  ‘Glass?’

  The merchant raised his shoulders. ‘Colonia is the only town in upper Gallia where Roman glassmakers can still be found. There are four dozen wine goblets in those chests. Exquisite things. All wrapped and packed like a babe in the womb.’

  ‘What will you do with them?’

  The merchant rubbed a thick thumb against his fingers. ‘Sell them, of course! I know men who will pay good money for such luxuries.’

  Ascha shook his head. Two men, three if you counted the slave, had died for a box of glass. He walked over to the girl.

  ‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ he said.

  Herrad looked at him, and he saw her eyes drop to the burnstone around his neck. She turned and walked with him a little way up the hill. They stopped and faced each other. ‘Maybe you should stick to carving flowers and animals,’ she said with a smile. ‘Your sea-monsters are too ferocious for this world.’

  He said nothing.

  She held out her hand, and he took it. Her skin was cool and her eyes seemed bottomless. Ascha glanced back at the merchant. Octha was talking to the farmer. He could see him waving his arms
and pointing to the river; boasting about the fight, as likely as not. Herrad smiled at him, and he at her, and then she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. It was over before he knew what had happened.

  ‘Goodbye, Carver,’ she said.

  At the top of the valley he looked back. He could see them both far below, the stocky figure of the merchant in his robe next to the slighter form of the girl. He waved and then a soft rain began to fall and he lost them.

  9

  He struck east, moving up the valley of the Lupia from the Rhine. The going was slower, but he pushed on as fast as he could. He crossed the watershed and moved on down until he found the headwaters of the Wisurg which he knew would lead him home. He thought about what the merchant had said about Radhalla. The thought of confronting the Cherusker troubled him.

  One morning on waking, he had a sudden memory of the girl standing before the mast, her knife flashing in the sunlight. The picture was so vivid, he almost gasped.

  He came to a village deep in the forest on the edge of Saxon territory. He dropped to one knee, snuffling the air and then walked on warily. The village was a scene of desolation, huts and granaries burnt to the ground, timbers charred, the ash still smouldering. In the fields cattle lay dead, their legs pointing to the sky. Smoke drifted.

  He walked on, scanning the trees, fearful of what he might find. On the other side of the village, he came across a group of peasants digging a grave pit. There was a chill in the air and their breath came out in smoky plumes. They watched him approach, staring with eyes that were bleak and empty. Close by, a dozen bodies lay in the mud, wrapped in sacking, waiting to be put in the ground.

  ‘We be of one blood,’ Ascha whispered.

  ‘One blood,’ they said.

  ‘Who did this?’

  They made no answer. He asked again, and a villager murmured, ‘Cheruskkii. They came yesterday. They said we must pay them tribute or they would be back.’

  Ascha blinked and looked towards the north. He had never known Saxons to raid so close to their own homeland. He felt a dark premonition that something bad was going to happen.

  He went on, each day much like another. The days grew cooler and the nights were cold. He stuffed his boots with grass and tied his blanket around him. The road turned into a droveway and then into a river track that petered out as the river neared the sea. One afternoon, he lifted his eyes and saw a grey horizon studded with terpen, the grassy mounds on which the north shore folk built their homes to keep them above the storm flood. Like scabs on a pig’s back, he thought. Rooks cawed and seagulls mewled. He was bone-weary, hungry and his feet ached.

  But he was home.

  He came to the hedge which marked the village boundary. A cold rain fell, and mist blotted out the estuary. He had forgotten how bleak the homeland was. When he thought of the green woods and rolling plains of Gallia, the lands of the Theodi seemed grey and desolate.

  He ate his last piece of bread, took a sip of water from his flask and then sat and watched the pale wood smoke drifting over his village. He felt nervous, unsure of what to expect. Would his people remember him? Would they know who he was? What would he say when he faced his father again? He clenched his jaw and went over in his mind what he had to do. Keep your ears open for talk of war. Count the long ships that pass down the Wisurg. Take note of the tribes that join the Confederation.

  After a while, he got to his feet. He scraped the thick mud from his boots on a clump of grass and walked on.

  Scabby-kneed children stood barefoot in the street and stared at him. Dogs snuffled his cloak. He walked down dank and narrow alleyways, twisting through huts and outbuildings, breathing in the acrid tang of his birthplace, a sour mix of salt marsh, wood smoke and human waste.

  His father’s hall lay in the middle of the terp surrounded by a rough palisade. The hall’s roof curved like a saddle, and the boards were peeling, the chinks daubed with mud. A doorway was carved with painted animals, birds and flowers, his own work.

  He lifted the bar of the gate and stepped inside. Blood was pumping into his chest, and his mouth was dry. A woman emerged from the house. She walked to a garden, furrowed with vegetables, picked up a hoe and began to work. He watched her without moving, a lump in his throat. She seemed smaller than he remembered, the hair greyer beneath the linen cap.

  And then, as if disturbed by some foreboding, she turned and looked straight at him, one hand raised to shield her eyes. Slowly, so as not to alarm her, he stepped away from the shadow of the palisade. The woman’s eyes travelled over him for what seemed a long while and then she suddenly stiffened, and a hand flew like a little bird to her mouth.

  ‘Hello, Ma,’ he said.

  The hoe slipped from her fingers and rattled on the ground.

  They hugged and held each other for a long time. Ascha felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He kissed his mother, and she wound her arms around his waist and squeezed him tight.

  ‘You look older,’ she said. ‘And your clothes are different, and what have you done to your hair?’

  He laughed and ran a hand over his head. His hair was growing out but was still short.

  ‘I thought I would never see you again,’ she said. ‘Look at you, all grown up!’ She gave a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

  ‘It’s good to be home, Ma,’ he said. He put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close.

  ‘Go inside and I’ll get you something to eat,’ she said. She grasped him by the elbow and pushed him towards the door.

  He stepped inside and peered about nervously. The hall was much as he recalled, dark and double-aisled, one end given over to cattle and separated from the living area by a wicker screen. Around the walls were benches, beds, a salting tub, water buckets, troughs, a table and his father’s chair. A planked floor was strewn with rushes, the walls bare but for brightly-woven blankets and his father’s war harness. Mail coat, shields, helmet and sword burnished until they shone. A fire glowed in the sandbox, and he could smell the burning pine. He ran a hand down the length of the table and touched the back of his father’s chair with the tips of his fingers. He breathed in the musky smell of home and, as the memories came rushing back, his eyes misted.

  His mother gave him eggs cooked in sage, boiled meat, cheese and bread washed down with sour milk. He ate hungrily. When he had finished, she sat him down by the fire, held his hands, and told him of his father’s death.

  ‘He was travelling,’ she said, speaking in Latin as she always did when they were alone. ‘He fell from his horse and broke his thigh. They brought him home and put him to bed, but he caught the wound fever. He was sick for a long time. Towards the end he had pains here,’ she touched her chest. ‘I treated him as well as I could, but nothing seemed to work. One day I left him for a moment and when I came back he had changed. He was very pale and his skin was wet, as if greased with goose fat. I touched him on the shoulder and he just toppled over. When I felt his wrist, he was dead.’

  Ascha looked at her. His father was dead? He felt cold all over.

  ‘I had no way of telling you,’ his mother said helplessly. ‘I didn’t know where you were.’

  ‘When did he die?’ he said.

  ‘About a month ago.’

  He tried to remember where he would have been, probably marching to fight the Herul. The breath came out of him as if he’d been kicked by a bull. He forgot his hatred and the burning anger he had tended for five long years. His eyes prickled, and he walked away so his mother wouldn’t see. He blundered into the yard not knowing where he was going. He bit his knuckle and ground his fist into his eye socket. It was as if someone had reached in and ripped away some innermost part of him. Had there been no sign of Aelfric’s departing spirit? No shadow?

  And then he remembered the dream at the river crossing, his father calling to him.

  His father had not forgotten him.

  His mother followed him into the yard. Sh
e put her arms around him and held him. He turned and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

  ‘He grieved for you,’ she said. ‘He grieved every day. He felt he had no choice but to send you away.’

  Ascha shook his head. ‘Did he have a warrior’s burial?’ he said thickly.

  She nodded. ‘Your father’s sworn-men paid him full honour.’

  His father had been buried in full war gear in a felt shroud with spears and shield, his second best sword and his favourite seaxe. A horse had been killed and planted in the soil with him. Food and a bucket of ale had finished the corpse dressing.

  ‘Your father always liked his beer,’ his mother said.

  He laughed at that and the tears welled up again.

  ‘Folk came from all the neighbouring tribes,’ she said. ‘It was a good funeral. Hroc insisted.’

  ‘Hroc?’

  She looked at him. ‘Hroc is hetman now,’ she said.

  He couldn’t believe what he’d heard. Hroc was hetman?

  She nodded.

  ‘But he is not firstborn. And he was not my father’s choice.’

  His mother led him back into the hall and sat him down. She paused and then said, ‘Since you went away there has been a lot of trouble. The Cheruskkii have become very strong.’

  ‘I know, Ma. I know all about the Cheruskkii.’

  She nodded, accepting without question that he knew. ‘They wanted us to join them. They thought that having us aboard would make their war lawful. Your father was against it. He thought it would be the end of who we were.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was a raid. Two young boys and a girl were taken. A man was killed. Your father suspected the Cheruskkii, but they denied it. He was already sick by then. He was dying and he knew it. But before he died, he decided he would make Hroc hetman.’

  ‘But why Hroc?’ Ascha said, the bitterness flowing out of him. ‘Hanno had the birthright.’

  ‘Hroc knew the Cheruskkii. He was friends with Sigisberht, Radhalla’s nephew, as your father and Radhalla were once friends.’ She looked at him, her eyes far away and glistening. ‘And he was always the stronger.’