Osric had found a wooden implement that looked like a grain shovel with a short handle. He began using it to scoop loose water from the bottom of the boat and back into the sea. He paused for a moment and reached inside his shirt. He pulled out a purse that I recognized had belonged to the captain of the cog, and passed it across to me. As I took it, I opened my mouth, about to thank him for saving our lives, when I saw that my words were not needed. Osric was doing something which I had not seen since the day my brother drowned, a death for which he had blamed himself.
Osric was smiling.
Chapter Three
We came ashore on a beach of round, smooth grey stones. Two urchins stood up to their knees in the shallows and watched me clumsily row the last few yards. The boys had been gathering shellfish and cautiously retreated as I climbed out of the little boat. The land swayed slightly as I walked towards the boys with a smile fixed on my face.
‘Can you take us to your homes?’ I asked.
They looked at me blankly. Without a word, they turned and ran, the stones clattering under their bare feet as they disappeared over the dunes at the back of the beach.
Osric and I picked our baggage out of the boat and began to trudge after them. With an afterthought, I stopped.
‘Let me have that pack for a moment,’ I said. He took off the pack and I searched among the garments that I had managed to save from my home: shirts and underclothes; a pair of spare shoes and a rolled-up cloak; an extra tunic and sandals for Osric; an embroidered belt; leggings. There was nothing else. I used the captain’s dagger to trim a strip of cloth off an old shirt and wrapped it around my head, covering one eye. At home everyone had known about the colour of my eyes, but now I was among strangers and it would be best to leave it to others to suppose that the bandage concealed an empty socket.
Osric looked on and said nothing. He closed the pack and swung it on his back, and together we resumed our journey. We crested the slope and, a short distance away, hurrying towards us across an expanse of boggy ground thick with reeds was one of the two lads we had seen on the beach. He was accompanied by a man dressed in the long brown robe of a priest.
They halted in front of us, barring our way. The priest was an old man, so bony and shrunken with age that his threadbare gown hung loose upon him. His face was deeply lined and only a few wisps of grey hair surrounded his tonsure. He regarded us with a mixture of curiosity and mild suspicion. He had lost most of his teeth so he mumbled as he spoke. It hardly mattered. I did not understand what he was saying, only that he was asking a question, and his tone was not hostile.
‘We would welcome your help,’ I said in Latin.
He looked at me in surprise, as I did not have the appearance of someone with an education.
‘The lad tells me that you came out of a small boat,’ he said, switching to the same language.
‘We’re travelling to the court of the Frankish king,’ I replied.
Again he looked surprised.
‘I supposed you are shipwrecked mariners or perhaps pilgrims. We sometimes see pilgrims from across the water, on their way to Rome.’
‘We had to abandon ship,’ I lied.
I was met with a puzzled look.
‘There has been no storm.’
‘A fire on board,’ I invented hastily. ‘The cook was careless. The other passengers and crew got away in another boat. If you could set us on our way, I would be grateful.’
The old priest hesitated, looking uncertain.
‘Carolus, our king, could be in any of a dozen places. He has no fixed residence.’
It was my turn to be taken aback. I had imagined the great ruler of the Franks to be living in a splendid palace in a settled capital, not wandering from place to place like a nomad. Life would be more difficult if Osric and I had to go searching his vast kingdom to catch up with him.
‘But most likely he is at Aachen in this season,’ said the priest. ‘He is engaged in building works there, an extraordinary project I understand.’
‘Then perhaps you could tell me the best way there, and how far we must travel,’ I said.
‘What about your boat? Will you be leaving it behind?’
I guessed that the priest considered a small boat to be an item of considerable value.
‘I will be glad if you accept the boat as a thankgift. I have no further use for it,’ I said magnanimously.
The priest glanced at Osric standing crookedly a pace behind me.
‘You will need the permission of my abbot if you and your companion are to go any further.’
He spoke a few words to the boy. Doubtless he was telling him to go to the beach and secure the boat before it drifted off for the lad scampered away over the dunes.
‘Come with me!’ he said, ‘There’s a village nearby where you can rest. Tomorrow we will go on to the monastery and meet the abbot.’
We squelched along the footpath which wound through the reed beds. The priest led the way, splashing through the puddles. The ragged hem of his gown was dark and sodden. We skirted several large ponds, their dark brown water still and silent. I shivered at the memory of my brother’s death.
‘My name is Lothar,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘You were fortunate that I was in the area when you arrived, or no one would have understood you — they speak their own local dialect. The village belongs to my monastery and is a very poor place. The families live by fishing and by collecting whatever is cast up along the shoreline.’
From his tone of voice I gathered that he was still not fully convinced that Osric and I were genuine castaways.
‘I didn’t see any fishing harbour,’ I said.
‘The coast here is too exposed to heavy winter storms. The villagers keep their boats in a river mouth nearby, and in bad weather they net the inland ponds.’ He could no longer restrain his curiosity. ‘Where did you learn to speak Latin so well?’
‘My father arranged for a priest to teach me.’ I did not say that the priest had been on the run. Bertwald was being pursued by the Church for theft and had arrived with his mistress in tow, a wild-looking slattern with a dramatic bush of wiry, auburn hair. My father, who believed in the Old Ways, took pleasure in giving shelter to a renegade from a religion for which he had no use. Bertwald had stayed with us for nearly ten years, with little to do except breed children and instruct me, his only pupil. Together he and Osric had been the two great influences of my growing up and I was only just beginning to appreciate how good a teacher Bertwald had been. Besides Latin, he had taught me how to read and write and even some grammar and logic. When he was drunk he would boast about the importance of the foundation to which he had once belonged. He’d claimed it had its own school and a library with fifty books. But in the end his loose talk undid him. One of our local Christians betrayed him to his former bishop and he had left as hastily as he had arrived.
We reached the fishing village, a huddle of small huts thatched with reeds. There were nets everywhere. They were heaped outside doors, draped over roofs, stretched between posts to dry, and strung out at a convenient height so they could be repaired. Every able-bodied man who was actively employed was mending nets. Unsurprisingly, the place reeked of fish.
Our supper was stale bread and shellfish stew, and we passed the night in one of the huts, asleep on mattresses of discarded nets. When we rose in the morning, we too had a distinctly fishy smell.
‘We’ll bathe when we reach the monastery,’ Lothar assured me. It was not yet full daylight, and a dozen villagers joined us. In the half-darkness each man was bent forward under the weight of a large wickerwork pannier strapped to his back. I thought I heard a faint creaking as if their burdens were alive.
The dawn came, dull and grey and with not a breath of wind as we walked inland. The ground rose gently, the landscape changing from wet marsh to dry uncultivated heath. Flocks of small birds rose from the low bushes on either side of the path, and a large hare lolloped away before stopping and turning to look back at our little column as we tramped along. It was a wild and desolate place and we saw no sign of human habitation. After three hours we stopped briefly for a meal of chewy strips of dried fish washed down with lukewarm water from leather bottles. There was no conversation. The accompanying villagers were a taciturn lot. They sat on the ground, not removing the panniers from their backs. Eventually, soon after midday, we came to an area of open woodland and finally saw some buildings. Our guide quickened his pace. ‘We should arrive in time for nones,’ he said.