by Peter Telep
Three merchants walked past her on her left. They all shouldered a long pile of even-cut timber and all wore tired, blank gazes. Only the rear one gave her a second look.
At the end of the lane, she turned left onto Pier Street. With dismay, she saw that about a thousand yards uproad people crammed the path. Though the waxing gibbous moon was cloaked by a fairly thick layer of clouds, Marigween could still make out the well rigged mastheads and partial outline of the keels of two ships docked at the wharves to her right. The crate-lined street led to the quays, which in tum led to those vessels. She wished there was a side road to get by the crowd. On her left was an unbroken line of ship-related storefronts that stretched all the way off to what was assumedly the Customs House opposite the ships. There was only rocky shoreline to her far right and the unseen channel beyond. With no other course but straight, she resignedly continued forward.
Once she was a member of the crowd an illusion took hold, and the knots of people did not seem as tight as they had from the other end of the road—or had the illusion been back there? Either way, passage was not as difficult as it had looked.
Marigween received several offers from rough skinned men who swore they could shoe her rounsey quickly and cheaply, though their words implied payment would not necessarily have to be made in deniers, and one suggested a “favor,” which Marigween knew would somehow include the removal of her clothing. She politely smiled and shook her head, no. They called after her with warnings about how she was ruining a good mount.
Sack, crate, and barrel handlers jostled to avoid her as she came opposite the first ship. Men carrying packed goods went up the vessel’s gangplank, disappeared into the hold, then came out empty-handed. One loader’s gaze was obscured by the stuffed burlap sack on his shoulder, and he wandered into Marigween’s path. The loader did, however, hear the clatter of Marigween’s rounsey and hastened his pace—just in time to avoid being bumped. He shouted back to Marigween, his words foreign, his voice understandably burred with anger. Marigween swallowed the tiny lump in her throat, steeled her head, and stared forward.
After a few moments, the normal hum and buzz of pedestrian traffic resumed behind her, and she felt the muscles in her shoulders loosen a bit. She approached the Customs House on her left. Its front door was open, and its interior glowed from candlelight. She could see perhaps a half dozen officially clad customs officers inside, each seated behind desks at the rear of the office. Merchants formed lines that neared the doorway to pay their tariffs. The whole affair was kept honest and civil by a half score of guards in tunics of link-mail, their hands at ready rest on the balled ends of the swords at their sides.
She passed the Customs House and saw that for the first time on Pier Street the buildings did not abut each other. There was an alley perhaps two yards wide between the Customs House and the next two-story structure. With no windows on either building to face the alley, it was cast in shadows so dense they obscured its true length and what lay at its rear. At its foot, the passage was littered with pieces of stone and gabled roof that had weathered off the buildings.
Marigween felt something sweep over her, a feeling, a tremor, something that told her to move and move quickly. It was much more than the old warnings about dark passages and women traveling alone. The feeling was not entirely based on the visual impact of the alley; she reasoned it would have come on her even if she were someplace else. She never ignored her intuition. She shot a look behind her.
Merchants entered and left the Customs House, and there was no one apparently following her. In fact, there was no one even close to her.
But in that second, there was a scuffle of feet in front of her, and by the time she swung her head around, three men, their faces masked by black cowls, blocked her path. The tallest one went immediately for her rounsey’s bridle and brought the horse to a jarring halt.
“What do you want?” Marigween asked, summoning force into her tone, but feeling the fear well up and drown any further attempts at bravery.
Another of the men went to her right side and yanked her boot out of the stirrup.
“Hold! What are you doing!” That same feeling she’d had during the wolf dream returned, the one that left her dry-throated and her ribs sore from the punching of her heart.
The cowl on her left seized her arm and began to tear her out of her saddle. She fought back, but the cowl on her right now utilized her foot to force her leg up, and the momentum he created was too much to battle. She fell into the arms of the cowl on her left, and one of her boots hung from its stirrup a moment, then was wrested free by unseen hands.
She cried out for help, but in the time she had to take another breath, her arms were pinned by the wrists to the cobblestone. One of the cowls stuffed a rag into her mouth.
Baines began to cry, and suddenly there was talk among the cowls. The one on top of her said nothing, but the other two exchanged argumentative words. The tongue was foreign, slightly familiar, probably Saxon. It sounded like they hadn’t counted on her baby. She’d hidden Baines extremely well under her cloak.
Movement. The pressure lifted from her wrists as the cowl rose and fell back onto his haunches. She sat up, lifted one arm, hand balled to strike him, the other hand going to the gag in her mouth, but both arms were caught in wrist holds by the other two cowls.
As the two began to drag her into the alley, the other ran after, leaned over, and dug Baines out of the bag strapped onto her chest.
Marigween grew stiff and tried to pull down her arms. Tears filled her eyes. She bit down on the gag and screamed. No one would hear the muffled plea. Her gaze stayed with Baines. Now, she didn’t just want to save herself and her baby. She wanted to kill all three of these devils for their violation; for having gone just this far they deserved to die. But this wasn’t over yet.
The cowl that carried Baines moved in front of her, out of sight.
Marigween screamed again and felt her gag soak with saliva. All that was her, muscle and mind—all that was woman—fought to get free. The strain sent her to the peak of a mental mountain, then she plunged back into a black lake of futility. The men were too strong.
The alley’s walls blurred by, and the image of the street and wharf at the end of the alley was lost in tears and gloom. The images were dreamy, and ironically she wished she were back in the wolf dream now. Even though it horrified her, she’d been able to hang on to the inner sense and comfort that it was wasn’t real and morning would soon come. Reality, once the safe com fort, now wore the black cowl of death.
She listened to more gibberish from her attackers. The alleyway ended, and she glimpsed the rear of the Customs House. The Customs House, with all its armed guards—and no way to alert them.
She was thrown onto her belly. Her chin slammed onto the stone. The stinging in her breasts competed with the multitude of sudden aches that awoke in her legs. Presently her hands were wrenched to the small of her back, and some kind of cord was spooled around them. Another pair of hands was at her ankles doing the same. Her gaze tracked straight along the bumpy cob blestone to the bottom edge of a wooden fence. Through a broken picket she could see movement. Someone was watching from behind that fence.
It didn’t matter. They had her. And whoever viewed the scene was probably too afraid to interfere.
An absence dawned. She no longer heard Baines’s whimpering.
Marigween scraped her swelling chin over the cobble stone as she craned her neck. All she could see were the boots of the cowls. A second later she was rolled, spun into a woolen blanket, and her gaze was reduced to a scope of cloth at one end. Dizzy, she gazed through the hole, then sensed hands on her. Then her view rose to a pair of peasant tofts behind the Customs House, then that was swept away to a view of stone as they turned her. She fought weakly against her restraints for a few moments as they carried her, but, as before, she fell limp in defeat.
Had they killed her child? If so, she hoped their plans for her included d
eath. To lose Baines was to lose the most important part of her life. She would never be whole again.
Lord …
M y baby …
Tania had seen them before, these impressment gangs. They kidnapped men and forced them to serve on ships. They also took women who acted as concubines for the ships’ officers.
What was that young woman doing riding around the port alone? Tania knew few women who were as foolish or as unlucky.
She stepped to the edge of her fence, opened the gate, and crossed to the rear of the Chancellor’s House. She glided along the stone wall until she reached the comer of the house where it bordered on the alley. She peeked furtively into the dark passage, then she noted with satisfaction that the gang was gone. She prayed the bundle they’d left behind was still all right.
There it was, on the ground where cobblestone met the foundation of the Customs House, bound tight in its own linen blanket, face covered for suffocation.
With her heart leaping, she crossed the alley, ran to the bundle, and lifted the baby into her arms. She folded away the blanket to reveal the tiny, pink face. Gently, she shook the infant a bit and blew air into his face.
And then the child coughed.
“Praise be to His name, little one. You’re all right.”
An instantaneous future, a wonderfully new future birthed in Tania’s imagination.
Already she knew she could love this child. It would take no effort. She could raise the baby as her own. But what would Hayes say? First her husband would tell her that they were both too old to raise another child, that four had been enough. Then he would throw her illness back into her face; he would say that she wasn’t capable of being a good mother because of it. But what of the baby? The child deserved them, deserved their love. She wouldn’t think of the baby’s parents anymore. They were gone. She’d saved this little one’s life. She deserved to raise the baby. Why not?
She fully unwrapped the child and held his naked form up to the stars. “You’re coming home with me. I want your father to meet his new son.”
With a joy she had not felt in only God knew how many moons, Tania rebundled the boy, nestled him in the crook of her arm and hurried off toward her toft.
3
Seaver walked down Pier Street toward the wharves. The sunlit Bristol channel dazzled in a way the murky, green waters around Caledonia never had. He allowed himself a moment to consider staying, and his gaze at the legendary port was almost wistful
But what would he do here? There were only a few deniers in his pocket from the sale of the rounsey. How far would they get him? He would have to become a laborer in the grain market and carry sacks on his back all day. If he decided to do that, he might as well become the farmer who produced those sacks—and that he could do back home. As far as passage was concerned, he knew he had certain talents a ship’s captain could use that would earn him a free ride.
He shuffled by the loaders and ship’s crew, then crossed onto the wharf where the Saxon cog was docked. He asked around, and in a few moments found the captain. To Seaver’s delight, the man turned out to be the same skipper who had taken him to Britain in the first place, though Jobark had commanded a warship back then. The hale, ponytailed sailor was happy to see Seaver—that is, after having his memory nudged.
They stood before the barnacled keel of the cog, and Seaver eyed the man’s cinnamon-colored beard. “And what’s this?” he asked, swiping a finger across the hair.
“The sand of the seas, true enough,” Jobark explained with a glimmer in his eye. “And perhaps one of the reasons I left the Trowgel in the first place.” He wiped a sweaty palm on his short-sleeved tunic, then scratched an itch on his right bicep. The tanned muscle bulged, and a blue vein split it neatly in two.
“Ah,” Seaver said with a knowing smile. “A bit more freedom as captain of a merchant cog, eh?”
“Yes and no,” Jobark said, his tone lifting in the singsong way Seaver remembered. “Kenric once told me the beard makes me look weak. He suggested I take it off.”
Seaver shook his head, hearing the suggestion—an order—in his head; it was the type of obscure and frivolous command that Kenric was wont to make. Were Seaver capable, Kenric would probably have ordered him to grow. “Don’t have to worry about him now,” Seaver assured him, “whether you’re on a war ship or a merchant cog.”
Jobark nodded. “So you say. But the army you saw moving east, they’re going to help him, no?”
“It was probably true. The help that Kenric had been waiting for was on its way. Had Seaver made a grave error by fleeing the castle? Would Kenric be victorious now? And if he was, would he send assassins out to find and kill Seaver for desertion? And would they go as far away as Caledonia and Ivory Point to find him? Fears. Fears. All of them as yet unjustified. He blinked them off and frowned.”That army has to divide, and besides that, from what I could tell, they’re inexperienced con scripts. Whoever is leading them cannot be anyone special. Most of the capable Saxon leaders have been in Britain quite some time now. He’s probably some new promote.”
Jobark stepped in close, lowered his voice, and his gaze searched the wharf for overhearers. “Rumor has it that his name’s Cerdic. He’s with his son Cynric. And are you fitted for this? They’re Jutes.”
The question narrowed Seaver’s brow. “Who placed Jutes in charge of a Saxon army?”
Jobark made a half shrug. “It’s odd. I don’t know. But I will say this: It’s a glass that reflects the times.” He stepped back, then waved a hand. “Look around. Look at the Picts, the Jutes, the Saxons, the Angles, they’re all here. And even those from the East with those thin eyes o’ theirs.”
Jutes in charge of Saxons? It was a Jute who’d murdered his father. That fact spurred a prejudice he would never overcome. Never would he take an order from a Jute. He would slit his own throat first. He didn’t care how irrational it was to hate the entire Jute people based on one incident. Blood ties were blood ties, and the Jutes had broken his.
He had looked at the port, as Jobark had prompted, but, too lost in thought, the landscape glazed into a mottled blur. He faced Jobark. “I’m going back home. I offer service to you for passage.”
Jobark bit his lower lip. “I guessed that already. But, if I recall, you’ll be of no help to us with the rigging. I’ll have to use you as—”
“Are you running a few gangs?” Seaver asked, cut ting off Jobark’s resigned decision to make Seaver a mindless loader before the captain got it out of his mouth.
Jobark’s brow rose. “I am, true enough,” he said, and his voice hinted at some irony Seaver had stumbled upon. “I just sent one out last night. They fetched me a red-haired, soft-skinned lady—and I mean lady, not a minx—that’s going to make sailing back to Caledonia like a boat ride in Woden’s realm.” His newly formed smile lowered a notch with more thought. He puffed air, then continued. “But they had some trouble. They got her onto the wharf but wound up in a fist and slash with a few of the marshal’s guards. I lost one to the pillory. He’s up there now.”
Seaver looked to the west, saw the punishment mound and the heat-wavered tops of the pillory and stocks. “Though I’m not much for a dial, I’ve been known to track the sun rather accurately—which is to say that my time to come is good, eh? You need some one? Someone who speaks Celt?” That last would cinch it for him, he knew.
“Good sailors are hard to come by,” Jobark said. Seaver smiled. “I know where to look.”
“Yes,” Jobark said, his nod indicating that he had already made his decision, “I think you do.”
4
“Brigands! Devils!”
In the torch of midday, Orvin watched as their mules and all their supplies were led away by the four young, filthy-faced highwaymen.
It had taken three of the boys to knock Orvin to the ground. Merlin, old fool that he was, had simply dis mounted while the others had worked on Orvin.
Orvin had not even had the chance to
draw his sword or fire his crossbow, for the brigands must have been watching them for a while and had timed their ambush perfectly. They had appeared from nowhere.
He swore under his breath, swore again, then looked at Merlin, who sniffed curiously at the air. He shouted to the druid, “I’ve gone hand to hand with Saxons! Beat them down to their knees! I rescued the young saint’s Marigween from my burning stables, killing a Saxon to do so”!
“Then how is it we stand here with no mounts, no weapons, and no food?” Merlin asked, still sniffing the air.
Orvin snorted. “You could’ve helped! Three of them on me, the other about to engage you—and what do you do?—just hand him your mule. In the name of ALL the saints, where was your cunning, your brilliance, your … magic”? Orvin still had one weapon: his mouth, and he would continue to feint, riposte, parry, and stab with it.
But if Orvin was a verbal swordsman, Merlin was a chess player, finger-combing his beard and studying his board, oblivious to the blade poised over his head. “The illusory and the real often blend into a borderland. But we are far from that realm. Here in Britain, magic is in the mind, in the earth, in …” he sniffed again, “the senses.”
“Rhetoric,” Orvin spat. “Is that the kind of nonsense you feed to Arthur /No wonder we’ve all such a belly ache!” He turned away from the druid, stared at the spot where the brigands were last seen: a hill to their southeast. “I loved that bow and sword. And we had food. And my back … and what are you sniffing at?” He faced the white-haired menace.
