The Half-Slave Read online

  Ascha thought for a moment. ‘I saved his life. I think he would.’

  ‘Kral will want a good price, and slaves are not cheap.’

  It all came back to him. Octha’s booming laugh, the chests being lowered onto the Clotsinda, Herrad’s soft smile. ‘He’s rich, rich enough.’

  Lucullus nodded. ‘Then we must move quickly. I’ll speak to Kral. No, on second thoughts, the boy is better. He owes you. Leave it to me.’

  Ascha watched as Lucullus sidled over and spoke to Kral’s son, bending his head. The boy listened, looking up at the lofty Gaul. He turned suddenly, and Ascha saw him shake his head.

  Lucullus came back. ‘I am sorry. The boy knows of no Octha.’

  ‘Go back and ask him again,’ Ascha said. ‘Tell him it’s important. Tell him I will make it worth his while.’

  Lucullus turned.

  ‘Wait!’ Ascha said. He pulled off the burnstone that Octha had given him, thankful that the slavers had not taken it, and handed it to Lucullus. ‘Give him this.’

  Lucullus glanced at the burnstone. He went and spoke to the boy again. Ascha saw Kral’s son shrug his shoulders in a gesture that could have been regret, and then moved away.

  Lucullus sloped back with his hands stuffed in his tunic and an apologetic look.

  Suddenly everything felt like dirt.

  The Frisian woman sold the two children to a Danish merchant. She brushed the dust from their shoulders, gave them a quick hug and a kiss and left, happy with her sale. The girl and her two brothers were traded to a red-faced farmer and his wife. The wife clapped her hands, tapped the girl on the shoulder and led her away, the boys following like new-born lambs.

  Some buyers tried to buy Ascha and Lucullus, but Kral refused.

  ‘He’ll get a better price if he sells us all together,’ Lucullus muttered out of the side of his mouth. ‘Otherwise he’ll never shift the Jute or your Hun.’

  By late afternoon, they were the only slaves left in the hall. Kral paced up and down, slapping his cudgel against his thigh. The doors opened suddenly and Ascha looked up hoping it was Octha, but instead a woman came in accompanied by a thin-faced foreman and several men.

  Ascha’s face fell.

  The woman was Frisian, tall and solid with a round-hipped body and a heavy jaw. She wore silver wire rings on her fingers and carried a heavy iron key on her girdle. She strode into the middle of the hall and looked about her as if she owned the place. When she saw that most of the slaves had been sold she shouted angrily at the foreman and then stumped over to Kral. She nodded towards Ascha and Lucullus.

  ‘How much for those two?’

  ‘I’m selling them as a bundle,’ Kral said with a greasy grin. ‘Four strong men, all trained for farm work. Good workers. Reliable.’

  ‘Reliable!’ the woman sniffed. She took Kral to one side and they began to talk, heads low. Kral’s son stood by his father’s side, drinking in every word. From time to time, he turned and glanced at Ascha, but said nothing.

  The woman was taller than Kral and used it to her advantage. She stood close to the slave-master, forcing him to look up at her. Ascha saw her look at Gydda, touch her nose and ear, and shake her head. Nobody wanted a slave who had been cut. But Kral wouldn’t budge. It was all or nothing.

  The deal was done.

  They shook hands. Ascha looked to the door, hoping against hope the merchant would suddenly appear. Kral gave the woman an oily smile. She crooked her finger and the armed men unwound themselves from the door and strolled over. One of them was a big man with long but thinning hair, tied back. He held up a set of iron fetters and shook them in Ascha’s face. Ascha struggled but two men gripped him by the arms while another bent and fastened the fetters to his wrists and ankles. An iron collar was clamped to his neck, and a chain looped through the shackles and the collar locked with a pin. The fetters were heavy and pinched cruelly.

  Ascha held his manacled arms up to the foreman’s face. ‘Is this necessary,’ he snarled.

  The man shrugged. ‘Orders are orders,’ he said.

  Ascha told him what he could do with his orders.

  The foreman smiled and took a good swing and punched Ascha in the face. Ascha staggered. His chains were yanked, and he was dragged away. Shuffling out of the door, fetters clanking around his ankles, Ascha looked back.

  Kral’s boy stood at the end of the hall, staring after him.

  18

  They walked all day through a flat country that had no end, sunlight streaming over green fields. It was late when they left the road and took a dirt track which led to a farm. In the fields, slaves leaned on their spades and watched them with dark and sullen eyes.

  That night they slept on straw with their feet fettered, and the barn door chained and locked. They were tired and hungry, and their feet were raw where the chains had rubbed.

  The farm slaves told them that the woman who owned them was a widow who had lost her man on a raid. The widow was a hard mistress, they said. Labour on the farm was back-breaking, mostly felling and lugging logs, dunging fields and digging sea-ditches.

  Ascha half-listened and lay in the dark imagining white sails off the Gallic coast, keels grinding over the gravel, Radhalla’s raiders storming ashore. He had to warn the Franks that the Saxons were coming, but first he had to get away.

  The next day the four of them were taken out of the barn and their shackles removed. The foreman and two guards led them to a field that squelched underfoot, gave them each a mattock and traced a line in the dirt with his heel.

  ‘Each man digs his own height and three times his length,’ he barked.

  They looked at the mud and at each other and then the whips began to fall.

  Ascha thought about what he should do. He was determined that he was not going to spend the rest of his life as a slave on the widow’s farm. The slaves were chained at night, but were unchained to work. During the day they were supposed to be guarded but the guard usually went back to the farm where it was warm. He decided he would make his escape soon, after the foreman had taken them to the fields. If he was lucky he would not be missed until the evening roll-call. He would go south and try to get across the Rhine to Frankland. He would hide during the day and travel at night. Steal some clothes, a cap to hide his slave-cropped hair, a cloak. Make for the Rhine and see if he could work his passage over.

  They would hunt him down, of course. The slavecatchers would mount patrols on the roads and waterways. Use dogs probably. And the foreman would take great delight in punishing him if they found him. But they would expect him to travel east towards the Saxon homeland, not south to the Rhine. The plan depended on his ability to evade capture until he got to Frankland. Once there he would have to persuade the Antrustions that he was a Frankish spy and not a runaway.

  He flexed his toes, remembering Bauto’s words.

  Would the other slaves betray him? He’d given them no inkling of his plans but he could never be sure. The real worry was Lucullus. If the Gaul decided to give him away, he was lost.

  That night he took Tchenguiz aside and told him.

  ‘It’ll be dangerous,’ Tchenguiz said.

  He nodded. It would.

  ‘Tha’ll need food,’ Tchenguiz said. ‘I’ll save some of mine.’

  Ascha nodded his thanks. He had already saved a piece of cheese and a chunk of bread and hidden them, wrapped in a cloth, under his blanket.

  A sudden thought struck him. ‘Tchenguiz, does tha ever think of my father?’

  ‘Ha!’ Tchenguiz said. ‘Thi father was my friend. I miss him every day.’

  Ascha smiled and then the guards came, banging their cudgels against the barn door, to chain them in for the night.

  Two days later, Ascha made his move. The guard had escorted them to the field and left them. They stood in a trench, knee deep in brown and scummy water and exchanged glances. Ascha shook hands with Gydda, Lucullus and Tchenguiz and patted the food bag he had hidden under his tunic. They gave him a tig
ht smile and wished him luck. He clambered out, head flicking to and fro, took a deep breath and then ran at a half-crouch across the field. The earth was heavy and glutinous and stuck to his feet in thick lumps. He squatted down and breathed again. He wouldn’t have long, maybe half a day, before they realized he was gone. He turned and saw Gydda, Tchenguiz and Lucullus, heads bobbing, swinging their shovels. He ran heavy-footed to the hedge and went to ground again.

  He was about to move on when he heard the coughing bark of a vixen. He froze. Something was wrong. He turned and saw Tchenguiz waving and pointing frantically towards the farm. He swivelled and saw the foreman and several guards coming back down the track.

  He swore and ran his fingers over his shorn head in an agony of indecision. What should he do? Make a run for it? But it was too early. They’d catch him in no time. He would have to go back and hope they hadn’t seen him. He upped and ran across the field. A quick sideways glance told him the foreman was already at the field’s gate. He saw guards and could hear dogs. He floundered on, his feet as heavy as lead. He came to the trench and with a shout leapt in. He collapsed at the bottom, covered in mud and his chest heaving, hoping he hadn’t been seen.

  ‘Take this and dig,’ Tchenguiz said, shoving a spade into his hand.

  He took the spade and furiously began to dig.

  The guards surrounded the trench. A curt command and the four slaves were ordered out. They climbed up and stood in a line. The foreman inspected the ditch, slapping his club against his boot and then walked along the line of slaves. Ascha stood, his breath coming in long juddering bursts and waited. His ribs ached and he guessed that the wound had opened again. The foreman came to Ascha and paused, looking him up and down, and then poked him in the chest.

  ‘The widow wants to see you,’ he snarled. ‘Look lively.’

  Ascha spat to clear his mouth of grit. He wiped his hands down his breeches and handed the spade to Tchenguiz and then went with the foreman to the farm.

  The widow’s house was stone-built and whitewashed, the yard paved and freshly swept. By the door, an ancient mule with a stiff mane and a white belly stood in the traces of a two-wheeled cart. The foreman rapped on the door and pushed Ascha inside.

  The house was clean, the floor strewn with fresh rushes, the room almost bare save for benches, a table and a bed built into the wall. The shutters were half-closed and the room was dark and subdued.

  He could smell cabbage and musty linen.

  The widow was sitting on a bench by a fire, talking to a man who sat with his back to the door. The stranger wore a mud-spattered cloak that steamed gently in the fire’s warmth. An old sword propped against the wall. No shield.

  ‘You wanted to see me,’ he said.

  The widow looked up.

  The man turned and put back his hood, a swathe of curly grey hair hanging over his neck and ears, a big smile in a whiskery face.

  Octha.

  Ascha filled his chest with air and slowly let it out. ‘You took your fucken time,’ he muttered.

  Octha surveyed Lucullus, Tchenguiz and Gydda with a sour expression. ‘All of them?’

  ‘All of them,’ Ascha said.

  ‘I owe you a life,’ Octha grumbled. ‘I owe them nothing.’

  ‘Don’t worry, old man, I’ll see you paid.’

  The widow struck a hard bargain, unwilling to lose her labour when all the young men were away raiding. Octha haggled, but eventually he and the widow agreed a price.

  The widow put Octha’s silver on the scales, adjusted the weights, and beamed.

  ‘How did you find me?’ Ascha said.

  Ascha and Octha were riding in the cart, bouncing down the thickly rutted road towards Thraelsted. Gydda and Tchenguiz sat on the cart’s tail, swinging their feet and staring out at the country. Lucullus slept, draped widthways across the cart, his head wrapped in his thin arms.

  ‘The slaver’s boy came looking for me,’ Octha said. ‘I sent him away but he kept coming back. He was very persistent. He told me the widow had bought you and showed me the burnstone I’d given you.’

  Octha put his hand in his tunic, pulled out the burnstone on its cord and gave it to Ascha. ‘The widow’s husband used to be a friend of mine. The rest was easy.’

  ‘I am grateful, to the boy and to you,’ Ascha said. He took the burnstone and put it around his neck.

  Octha glanced at him, not unkindly. ‘Get some sleep,’ he said. ‘We have a long way to go and you look as if you need it. Herrad will be waiting for us when we arrive.’

  Ascha felt overwhelmed with relief. He looked up at the wide sky and then out at the slowly unwinding landscape. He thought of Herrad and smiled. He was looking forward to seeing her again. And then he rested his head on his arms and slept.

  A fine rain, almost a mist, was falling when they clattered through a stone arch and into the courtyard of the castellum. A parcel of labourers watched them with idle eyes, and a dog that had been sleeping in the dirt got to its feet and barked.

  Ascha gazed about him.

  In one corner of the courtyard, a broken and wind-bitten tower stood like a fat thumb. The courtyard was hemmed in by a wall that was broken in places and open to the fields beyond. Octha’s house was a large two-storied building, built from ragstone robbed from the castellum. One wall of the castellum had collapsed and stones lay tumbled in the field. He saw sheds and workshops and another stone-built building with a shingled roof and iron-bound doors which he thought must be the merchant’s warehouse. Stacks of barrels and crates and large two-handled wine storage jars stood in one corner, and a wood pile served as a hovel for pigs. A thin track pushed through a gap in the wall and ran to the water’s edge. He caught sight of a jetty with a boat moored alongside. The tide was out and water glinted on the mud flats. He could smell the sour odour of sun-dried seaweed.

  The door opened, and Herrad came out. She wore a dress of homespun in green, open at the sides, over a linen undergarment. Her hair had grown and fell to her shoulders in a dark and shimmering mass. She put her hands to her eyes against the sun and watched them approach. He was struck by how calm she seemed. The cart rolled to a halt and he climbed down.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Carver.’ she said, more polite than warm. She offered him a cool hand and he took it. He stared at her, painting her face with his eyes, and then he saw himself as she might, smeared with mud and filth, dressed in stained rags, his hair cropped close. He felt his face flush and dropped his head in shame.

  Gydda and Tchenguiz stood shuffling their feet and looking about them, bewildered by the sudden shift in fortune. Lucullus half-lifted a hand in greeting and smiled, his gaze frank and open.

  ‘These are my friends,’ Ascha said roughly.

  Herrad smiled. ‘You had better come inside,’ she said and turned to lead the way.

  ‘After you,’ Lucullus said to Ascha and bent from the waist with a little Gallic flourish. Ascha scowled and pushed past him. Octha whipped the horse and drove off to the stable

  The house was dark and warm with the smell of dogs and cooking. At the far end he glimpsed a bed pushed up against the wall and partly hidden by a leather curtain. There were two chests and a cupboard. An iron cauldron hung on chains over a low fire. An old woman in black was gutting a chicken at a long wooden table. She looked up as the men came in, her elbows wet with entrails. Herrad said something to her, and the woman wiped her hands and left.

  ‘Femke will bring you water to wash,’ Herrad said. ‘And food.’

  The woman came back with a ewer of water and a copper bowl. She took some leaves from a bag and crushed them and stirred them in the water and then stood back. The men mumbled their thanks and took it in turns to wash, throwing the water over their faces and rubbing their hands together. The table was laid and the girl gestured for them to sit.

  ‘A blessing on this house,’ Lucullus said, giving Herrad an easy grin.

  She smiled at him, and Ascha felt a splinter of envy work its w
ay under his rib. The old woman returned with eels, cold fish, hard yellow cheese, round wheels of soft white cheese, ham, a block of butter, a loaf of grey bread and a red-glazed bowl of boiled eggs. She went away and came back with a pitcher of cold thick milk. The men gazed at the food, wide-eyed.

  Octha returned.

  He pulled up a stool, stepped over it and sat. Leaning forward with his elbows on the table he gestured for them to eat. Herrad went and sat by the fire and bent to her sewing. The men ate greedily, shoving the food in their mouths and running their fingers around the wooden plates and licking them clean. Octha passed the food along and watched silently. When they finished what was before them, Octha signalled to the old woman and she brought more.

  Afterwards, they pushed back the bench and sighed with contentment.

  ‘I’ll show you where you will sleep tonight,’ Octha said.

  Ascha felt impossibly weary. He got to his feet, but Octha motioned for him to stay. ‘You and I have too much to talk about,’ he said.

  Octha left with Tchenguiz, Lucullus and Gydd, while Ascha and Herrad sat by the fire, listening as the footsteps receded across the yard. He wanted to speak but couldn’t think of the words. He could see the line of her throat against the fire, her skin the colour of dark honey. In the dancing firelight he saw what he had not seen before, that her cheeks were pitted with tiny pocks, lingering scars of some childhood fever. He was struck again by her calmness, so much more than he remembered. Once she looked up from her sewing and he thought she was going to speak but she only smiled and went back to her work.

  The door swung open with a crash and Octha entered. He laughed suddenly for no reason, pulled up a bench, stirred the fire with an iron poker, smacked his palms together and called the old woman to bring more beer. He poured for Ascha and tipped his beaker and drank heavily, slurping down the beer. He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth and beamed at Ascha.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, my boy,’ he said, slapping Ascha’s knee like a hearty uncle.