When he had eaten a little and pushed the rest away, it was time for sleep. The household rose, stretching and yawning, to make ready for the night, and Beornwulf himself took down the lantern and kindled its candle to make his usual round of the steading before he slept. Then, turning in the doorway, caught Owain’s eye and jerked his head towards the darkness of the summer night behind him—not that he need have troubled, for of late years they had almost always shared that late round of the byres between them. Owain remembered just in time not to whistle Dog from the hearth-place and went out after him.
It was very dark, for the low cloud had shut out the stars, and in the darkness the wash of the sea seemed to draw nearer. Beornwulf walked out through the gap in the thorn hedge, as though he wanted to be clear of house-place and household before he said whatever it was that he had in his mind to say, and Owain walked a pace behind him. He rounded the corner of the steading hedge and checked beside the humped shape of the pea stack, facing seaward, and for a few moments the two men stood together in silence, the dogs about their knees. Then Beornwulf said gruffly, ‘He was a good dog, and I shall miss him—as much as though he were one of my own, I dare say. But words are poor things, and it was not to tell you that, that I called you out here.’
‘No,’ Owain said, staring into the darkness of the marsh beyond the yellow pool of the lantern.
‘I was with the King my foster brother this morning, after you rode for home. In three days’ time I return to him, to set out on a long wayfaring. I think that I shall be back before summer’s end, but no man when he sets out can be sure of the day of his return. I leave all things about the farm in your hands while I am away.’
There was a little silence, while the hush of the sea swelled and retreated, swelled and retreated in the dark. Then Owain said, ‘Saxon master, is that wise?’
Beornwulf answered him after another silence. ‘British thrall, I think so.’
‘There are still Gyrth and Caedman, who have worn your thrall-ring longer than I.’
‘They may grumble at your hand on the reins, but you will find that they do not question it.’
‘Because you have told them that that is to be the way of it, until you come again?’
‘No, because you are what you are, and they are what they are.’
Owain glanced round at him, and away again. ‘Have I leave to ask where this wayfaring leads?’
‘To the Court of King Aethelbert of Kent,’ Beornwulf said. ‘I was right when I guessed that Teitri was to go further than Haegel’s farm; he is to go for a royal gift to the High King, and it is I that am to take him.’
It had been a very still night, but as though the name of the Kentish King had called it up, a long soft breath of air came sighing across the marshes from the sea and for the second time that day, memory was playing an odd trick on Owain; the memory of Uncle Widreth sitting just here, on the warm side of that year’s pea stack, whittling a bird from a scrap of silvery driftwood, and the sound of his old tired voice was in his inner ear like the echo of the sea in a shell. ‘Life is fierce and harsh to the young, but gentler when one grows old. Only while one is young there is always the hope that one day something will happen—that one day a little wind will rise …’
Only it never did rise. One just went on hoping until one day one was old like Uncle Widreth.
The long sighing breath of air had died into the grass, but another was already hushing towards them across the levels. Beornwulf sniffed the weather like one of his own hounds, as he turned back towards the steading. ‘We shall have wind by morning,’ he said.
13
The Wreck
‘AH, you may wag your heads and look unbelieving till your ears drop off,’ said the harper. ‘Maybe you don’t hear so much, down here in this cursed cut-off tongue of the land. But I smelled the Ravens gathering before Wibbendune fight, more than twenty years ago, and I have not forgotten. I tell you, I have been snuffing that reek again among the border kingdoms all summer past.’ And he dragged the folds of a once-gaudy cloak about him and hitched himself yet closer to the fire.
The great pile of blazing driftwood burned close under the lee of the boatshed; in the open it could not have lived a moment on such a night, but leeward of the boatshed there was a pocket of shelter from the late summer gale that came booming up across the levels in the dark, and the very force of the wind carried the rain slanting overhead in a roof of driving wet that only fell hissing into the flames when the gusts dropped for a moment.
There was a constant shifting about the fringes of the firelight, dark figures looming out of the darkness and others, plunging off into the dark again, as the men who kept their ceaseless watch on the dykes and brushwood walls and the long curve of the shingle bank below the haven, came in to snatch a warm and a rest while someone else took their turn for a while. It was late, drawing on to the black hour before dawn, but there would be no sleep tonight for the men who watched the shore, not while spring tides and wild easterly gale together were piling the seas up on to the coast, bringing the old familiar danger to the lower levels.
Owain, just in from his own turn along the shingle bank (not many thralls turned out to the coast-watch, but with Beornwulf still from home, he had come to take Beornstead’s share), glanced up from the fire, listened with a quickened heart-beat for what the harper would say next. But for a little while he said nothing more, only stared into the flames and cracked his long finger bones in time to unheard music. And there was nothing to hear but the roar of the gale, and under the gale—so far down that one felt it in one’s bones rather than heard it—the deeper boom and crash of the sea, stronger and more menacing with every moment that passed.
‘Hark to it,’ someone said. ‘Will you hark to it! And it’s not much more than three-quarter tide yet.’ And there was a deep grumbling of voices round the fire, and here and there men glanced over their shoulders as though the menace of the tide was a monstrous thing that they might see looming down upon them out of the dark. Someone threw a fresh branch of driftwood on to the fire, and the flames leapt up, casting a tawny glare over the faces of men and dogs huddled about it. The new flare of the firelight picked out the brindled bars of Grip’s hide, turning the white breast-mark to a wavering silver flame; Grip, who belonged to the boat-builder’s son, was one of Dog’s offspring—there were a good few, around the Seals’ Island—not so very like his sire in the daylight, but now, in the light of the driftwood blaze … Sharp pain struck at Owain, and he turned his gaze and his thoughts away quickly; to anything that would not carry the memory of Dog’s living warmth bunched against him; to the harper at the further side of the fire.
Wandering gleemen came often enough to the High Hall of Haegel the King, but they seldom wandered on south into the Seals’ Island, with their load of songs and sagas and their gathered news of the outside world; and so it was, maybe, that there were so many men, far more than need have turned out from their own firesides, gathered about the watch-fire tonight. This one was not a very good harper, truth to tell, but he made a cheerful noise, and he was not grudging of himself; he could have stayed warm and dry with the women and the bairns in Gamal the Headman’s house-place, but he had chosen to come out with the other men and share the darkness and the storm, only leaving his harp behind where the rain could not get at it. He had even given them one or two songs, roaring them out above the storm—he had a great voice, even if it was not very tuneful—until somehow it seemed as though the sheer weight of the tempest had crushed the singing, and huddled in the shelter of the boatshed they fell to talking in shouted fits and snatches, instead. An ugly little man with small, dark, very bright eyes and a long inquiring nose that seemed to quiver as one watched it, a nose, Owain thought, that one could well imagine searching the wind for that smell of the Ravens gathering …
‘The border kingdoms?’ old Gamal the Headman asked, returning to the thing that they had been speaking of some while before. ‘And what is it that you w
ould be meaning by the border kingdoms?’
‘Those that border on the great Kingdom of the West Saxons, for sure.’ The gleeman looked up, and the fire set tiny flames dancing in those small bright eyes of his. ‘The little kings with a few spears to Ceawlin’s many, looking to the safety of their own hunting runs. Too strong a neighbour to be comfortable, is Ceawlin of Wessex, and has been these many years, and maybe they begin to think, these little kings, that if they were to band together their spears might number as many as Ceawlin’s, especially now that there is bad blood between him and his brother’s sons. It is in my mind that someone has whispered that in their ears—that someone is whispering it, all the while.’
‘And who would that “someone” be?’ Brand the Smith leaned his huge bulk forward into the firelight, half in earnest, half mocking in his deep rumbling voice. ‘Tell us, most wise of all gleemen, since you know the secrets of so many kings.’
The gleeman shook his head, and a grin flashed across his face from ear to ear. ‘Na, I am a harper who keeps his eyes and ears open as he moves from hearth to hearth, not a soothsayer to read hidden things in the fallen chips from an apple branch, nor an old woman with the second sight. I say that something is brewing among the little kingdoms, and I say no more.’
And suddenly out of a long past autumn evening there leapt upon Owain the memory of the King’s words as he sat with his foster brother on the foreporch bench at Beornstead. ‘His brother’s sons will surely say “We also fought for the Kingdom, and now Wessex is great. Why then is our share so small?” and so may come trouble on Ceawlin’s threshold. And that, I think, will be the chance of those who do not love Ceawlin—notably Aethelbert of Kent.’ Four or five years ago that must have been, and now this little long-nosed gleeman had smelled the Ravens gathering. The queer mood of waiting that had been on him ever since Beornwulf set out for the Kentish Court quickened all at once to a sense of expectancy that was no mere echo of distant events stirring, but nearer and more urgent, rushing towards him across the dark marshes on the wings of the gale. The feeling was so strong that he half drew his legs under him as though to rise and meet it—whatever it was. Then he shook his shoulders under the folds of the heavy cloak and sank back again. The men’s voices had grumbled into silence, leaving the night to the howling voices of the storm.
Suddenly the wind dropped away into a long hollow quiet before the next gust, and into the quiet broke a long-drawn breathless shout. The huddled figures about the fire were scrambling to their feet, eyes straining in the direction from which the cry had come, ears straining for another above the tumult of the gale. Owain, springing to his feet with the rest, saw a blink of yellow light beyond the thorn branches. ‘This is it,’ he thought, with a sudden calm in himself. ‘Not Ceawlin and the King of Kent—the shingle bank is going.’
The light became the gleam of a lantern bobbing towards them. Beside him he heard the bull voice of Gamal the Headman pitched above the storm. ‘What is it? Is the bank going?’
Out of the raging darkness a voice shouted back. ‘Na, na—a wreck—’ and next instant a man loomed up after his voice, gasping and shaking the hair out of his eyes. ‘Ulf saw her first. She nearly made it, but the waves are pounding on to the dunes at the harbour mouth. She’ll beach on the Seal Rocks for sure—if she’s not there by now.’
A splurge of voices greeted his words, the men of the settlement crowding close about him. ‘She may still make the anchorage at Cymenshore,’ somebody said, but Gamal shook his head impatiently. ‘She might have done, a while since; not now—the wind’s going round.’
And they glanced at each other in the swinging light, fiercely speculating. After six years on the coast Owain knew that brightening of the eyes. It was not the first time since he came south with Beornwulf that a ship, storm-caught and running for the shelter of the Windy Haven, had been driven past it to meet her death on the open coast or among the rocks of the Seal Strand. It was a gift of the gods to be half hoped for in winter, but scarcely in the summer-time. They were kindly enough men in their day-to-day lives; but a wreck was a wreck, just as war was war …
‘Come on, then, neighbours.’ Brand hitched his rough mantle more closely about him. ‘Come on, or the fish-folk beyond Cymenshore will reap it all.’
‘Fair shares for them that stays to watch the bank, though,’ somebody put in, and there was a general laugh.
‘Aye, fair shares, but they’ll be precious thin ones, if the fish-folk get there first.’
Men were already tugging their cloaks around them, plunging off into the wind and rain towards the promise of the wreck, and Owain found that he was one of them. Behind them he heard the harper laughing and urging them on, it might have been in savage mockery, as a huntsman urges on his hounds to the kill.
Then the gale swooped roaring between those who went and those who stayed, and they heard no more.
Clear of the shelter of the boatshed the wind leapt at them like a live thing, battering the breath back into their bodies. Owain leaned sideways, head down into the gusts. Low down in the east beyond the harbour bar, the first wan light was broadening. Owain saw the sea-beast shapes of the fishing boats pulled high up the keel-strand, the crouching land-beast shapes of the settlement barns and byres and house-places huddled under the thorn windbreaks, and beyond, half lost in the trailing curtains of rain, seeming perilously higher than the sodden land, the white menace of the sea.
They were heading down the long curve of the coast where the sand and shingle bar of the haven came sweeping in to the land. Now they were among the dunes; they kept to the landward side when they could, but even so the boom and crash of the surf was a thing to stun and deafen all the senses, and the ground shuddered underfoot as though the great rollers were the Hammer of Thor striving to pound the land into nothingness. When they came down to the Seal Strand at last, there was light enough to show them other dark figures there before them and that they had guessed aright as to where the ship would ground.
She was hard and fast on the rocks, a small coastal vessel, black against the white-combed seas around and beyond her. Mastless and already breaking up, she was so close inshore that they could see the men on board her. That was the appalling thing, Owain thought, that they were so near that one could see the men who were going to drown; little black clinging figures that did not seem real—But they were real, and they in their turn must be able to see the men on shore and the gleam of the lantern fading sickly, into the wild light of dawn. All so near, three or four spear-casts, maybe, not more, and there was nothing that one could do.
Steadily, remorselessly, the great waves were pitching on to the wreck—for she was no more than a wreck, now—and with each hammer-blow of the great swinging seas, something more of her would be smashed away, one less figure clinging to the tangled rigging. It was a horrible, a pitiful thing to see. Now she was just a black mass of beams and spars and tangled cordage, like the battered skeleton of some sea-monster long stranded on the rocks—yet with a few men clinging there still.
The men on shore were wading out as deeply as they dared, to catch the bales and wine-skins and tumbling spars that had begun to come ashore, before the undertow could snatch them out again. Quite suddenly, as though in answer to a summons that he neither understood nor questioned, Owain found that he had flung off his cloak and was wading out also. The low dazzle of a stormy sunrise was shining into his eyes; the savage undertow dragged at his legs and the shingle churned and shifted under his feet, and once down he would be done for; but he waded on, knee deep, thigh deep. Behind him he heard shouts of warning, but he paid no heed. He was waist deep now, he was lifted half off his feet, and next instant he was clinging to a rock slippery with green weed, the waves breaking clean over him.
A wine-skin bobbed past, dark and buoyant like a porpoise, but he let it go by and in a while saw it sucked out again. A seaman’s body swept by him, dim-seen under water, and a moment later another body, uplifted on the curved shoulder
of a swinging sea.
The stormy light touched the fair hair and beard, the copper-tanned skin. Beornwulf had come home in a strange way.
14
Freedom and a Sword
OWAIN caught the man as he went by. His hand slipped, but he had him now by the hair and now under the shoulder. He would have let the sea carry them shoreward together, but he remembered that wicked undertow, and kept his grip on the rocks with one hand, clamping the unconscious man against him while the great surging sea went by, and braced himself with feet clenched into the shifting shingle, to withstand the backwash that must follow. There were some men not more than a few spear-lengths away, and he yelled to them: ‘Here! Brand! Hunfirth! It’s Beornwulf! Help me get him out!’
No one heard him the first time, and he yelled again, with a kind of despairing rage. ‘To me! Here to me! It’s Beornwulf! Oh, for God’s sake leave the wine-skins and help me!’
That time someone heard. He saw an arm upflung in answer.
When the struggle eased for a moment in the slack water between wave and wave, he shook the drenched hair out of his eyes, and saw through the flying spray that the men were forming a living chain out into the surf, working their way towards him. To leave unknown seamen to drown was one thing, but Beornwulf was a Seals’ Island man, and outdweller or no, he was kin to many of them. The leader of the chain—it was Brand the Smith—was quite near now, but Owain was very nearly done; another spent wave dragging seaward would take him with it, and already the pressure of the next great breaker was roaring up behind him. It broke well out on the rocks, and the yeasty water swung boiling shoreward. Owain let go his rock and plunged forward with it in a desperate stumbling rush.